Doom Prophets and Death Cults: A Shake Down in the Halls of Love

I hate the doom prophets – the foul, stinking, carrion eaters. These people prey on a powerful human instinct and exploit it to gratify their own egos. That's my opinion anyway; but I have evidence to back up my point of view. Here it is:

Everything dies.

We all know this. Almost as soon as we are conscious, we understand that we are mortal. Ah, we don't really totally grasp it until certain periods in our lives force the reality upon us – and after that we work hard to forget it – but we know that we will die.

And we see it all around us, every day. In the course of any life we wrestle with the specter of death. We are bombarded by it. Peripherally or directly, we are all bombarded by death all day long, every day. There are dramatic examples – soldiers dying in wars, citizens gunned down in the streets of the cities, lovers murdered by jealous exes. Incredible seismic shifts in the very surface of the Earth have pulverized Haiti and caused the ocean to boil and swallow so many people in Japan. There are countless examples of lingering deaths – two days ago I met the most beautiful, charming person; a towering, kind man of Scandinavian descent, with a stunning woman by his side; he has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, and less than a year to live. There are the horror stories of youth: suicides, abortions, overdoses on drugs. Death can come as a complete mystery. Death can come randomly. So many die on the roads every year, every day.

So what compels a person to calculate the date on which the world will end?

Personally I think it is ego. There is some fascination with being the last of a dying breed – Charlton Heston in “Omega Man” - Ishi with his brain in a specimen jar. People want to think they will be the last to experience this crazy, terrifying life. Miserable people – I find them miserable, and pathetic, and beneath contempt. We all fight and work so hard to find the good and the reason for this life, and these doom prophets want to tell us it is meaningless, and that we live this life as a sacrifice, to move onto some “better place.” This is a “death cult,” plain and simple. You can gussy it up all you want with talk of peace and love; forgiveness – but it's still a death cult.

The world will end. A meteorite, or a massive environmental catastrophe – maybe the atmosphere will degrade, plague, disease, who knows? At some point we know the star that provides us our warmth and light will burn out, or explode. There will be an end to this planet, and to life as we know it. I can't tell you when that time will come. If I could, I wouldn't want to. The best we can do is to live our lives knowing that death is always there – and to carry on.

madbob@madbob.com

Germs, Anecdotal Sources, and Penny Dreadfuls

“I bet Narcissus had some amazing wanks.”

Peter Serafinowicz

Argh I don't know. I had this great piece sort of structured in my head on the way home from work but now it isn't making any sense. The computer is barely functioning – now it seems to have come to life; sprung up at last. Jesus.

The place is abuzz with activity. Bill is licking out an empty carton of sour cream. Trish is reading, and eating microwaved food. I am lamenting roasted lizards. I am considering work loads and feeling my shoulders rise. They are just about to hit the bottoms of my ears. “The tension is palpable” is probably how they would write it in a hard-boiled detective story; or in a “penny dreadful.” At times like these I feel it is necessary to drink red wine. It sounds dumb, but it works out, mostly, more often than not. That is the best we can ask for.

This is the face of a twitter addict. I can't string two coherent sentences together anymore. Life has become a series of disjointed, chain-reacting, one-line jokes – maybe two – so long as it fits into the allotted 140 characters.

And the point, what I am getting back around to, is the narcissism involved in writing. “LOOK AT ME!” I scream it in this column, when I sing, play music, dance, post to my FaceBook account; tweet...

Hard Times

I'm having the weirdest time right now. I have this friend who is a very devout Christian, and he has been sending me some really strange information, that I am absolutely convinced is bullshit. He is so Goddamned convicted though! Any piece of information he gets, that fits into what he already believes, he is totally willing to believe that shit: 100 percent! 1,000 percent! I mean, I'm not even going to get into the content, it's horrible, offensive stuff; but the material is being generated by authors of, if any, dubious distinction; and their entire works will rely on a single, anecdotal source. It... I can't really even bring myself to formulate an appropriate rebuttal because I can't figure out where to start. What these “authors” are doing is making stories up to fit with an agenda.

A part of me feels like this is beautiful. If you have the ability to sculpt words like this – to more or less completely fabricate in order to advance your ideology – more power to you. I'm sure the anecdotes are based on a germ of truth. Everything is based on at least a germ of truth. These kinds of stories are a brilliant, warped, reflection of our innate desire to understand, to believe... in something.

See, the word is fickle, the word is manipulatable, the word is lugubrious. Nothing is at it seems; there is no fixed point in this Universe – save, possibly, that dense, dark, immaculate spot in the very center of the thing... there, maybe, finally, we could find some sort of order. Do you think? Now I'm not really sure...

madbob@madbob.com

18 Beers to L.A. - Sobriety, Ron Paul, and the Bright Side of Death

Well the World's favorite reality show has finally come to an end. An on-going nine and a half year narrative – with a deep and tangled back story – culminating in a daring late-night raid on a fortified compound; a blatant and calculated assassination. Brilliant. I think a lot of us forgot that narrative, or rather pushed it into the background, into the semi-conscious, to get on with things. Heads down, move forward: progress, progress, progress. This killing brings about a full stop - finality.

Death is sobering. In this case, folks are celebrating, going crazy, rejoicing that this plane of existence has been freed of a certain bodied energy that had spread a taint onto everything. The hangover is coming. The reality of what has been done – everything that has been done, will set in soon enough. Now we remember: the good, the terrible, the inconceivable – the waste and loss and the human suffering for no real reason; for ideologies and borders; boundaries, rules, religions, resources... (resources are real, sure enough. I'm not sure a war has ever been fought that didn't involve resources. I mean, really, what would be the point?)

Anyway – life goes on. We'll pick ourselves up, shake off the blood and the sweat, experience our psychological trauma. For a second we will empathize with the dead, and then we will get back to the act of being alive.

Flying in a Jet Airplane

I'm going to brave the intense security of our state's capitol airport and fly down to Los Angeles this weekend. I was hoping that the recent damage discovered on an assortment of Southwest Airline jets would result in a reduced fare. Maybe it did, Southwest appears to still be the cheapest airline – but the fares are not cheap, not even reasonable – they clock in right around the tail end of “barely affordable.” But it is this, or to drive my 1989 Toyota pick-up over a thousand miles in a handful of days – risking break-down on the side of the highway, death smeared along one of the L.A. freeways, or just die of pain and boredom somewhere on a tired stretch of I-99. Not worth it; and the gas and necessary beers would probably set me back more than the plane ticket – assuming the whole thing went off without a hitch.

Not that I have such great faith in air travel. I heard Ron Paul talking today about the “moral hazard” created by government programs and protections. His way of thinking explains that, because there is an FAA, or whatever governing bodies, that exist to find fault – it takes some of the pressure off of industry to regulate itself, and to expect and demand a higher level of safety and efficiency. It sounds great on paper – I am ready to sign up; but then that cynical part of my brain kicks in and says: “hey wait a minute – if the markets self-regulated, then why did we ever need these governing bodies to step in in the first place?

Anyway, my chief reason for confidence in flying doesn't lie with the airlines, or the planes, or the pilots. No, to my way of thinking, one of the chief benefits of flying is that, if I should go down in a fiery wreck, at least my family would be compensated for my death. It doesn't get much better than that, these days.

madbob@madbob.com

Re-Ermgence of the Lizard Brain - Donald Trump and the New Old GOP

Donald Trump is claiming to be in the 2012 Presidential Race. I don’t know what to think about that. Trish tells me he can’t be serious – that between his well-documented philandering, multiple wives, and potentially controversial financial wheeling and dealings, there is no way he would be willing to be dragged through the proverbial mud. She suspects it is all a big publicity stunt, another opportunity for the Donald to stand in front of cameras, and a boost for his popular Celebrity Apprentice series on television. She’s pretty smart, and probably right; but still, the announcement by the Donald, and some of his ensuing interviews, leave me troubled.

What bothers me more than any of Trump’s personal shenanigans is the world view that he holds. It is an old-school, reptilian mentality – eat or be eaten, kill or be killed, screw the other guy before he screws you first. He avows a philosophy of greed and materialism, and holds that his financial successes mean that he is, by extension, a successful person, a worthwhile human being, a “winner” in the game of life.

I don’t share the Donald’s shallow, harmful view of human-kind. I’m sure in his day to day life that he saunas with other reptiles and they all slither and dither and enforce one another’s vicious perception of the world around them. People are so good at seeing what they want to see, and filtering out any information that counters our established world view; or that reflects badly on our persons.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

You know if we look back on the 2008 election, we had a President, and especially a Vice-President, that synched up more closely with the beliefs Trump is espousing, and we, as a country, didn’t like the direction they took us in. We elected a man who was more willing to compromise. The right has done their damnedest to paint Obama as a radical leftist – but he isn’t. If there is a complaint to be made against Obama, it is that he capitulates too often to the demands of the right. But that’s who we wanted, and that’s who we got. Now people want to go backwards and try the path of the lizard again? No thanks.

If the Republican Party is leaning towards the lizard brain, the Democrats are in full monkey-brain mode – scattering and chattering, unable to stay on task or in focus. The positive for the Republicans is that they have a plan. This puts them ahead of the Democrats. The problem is that the Republican’s plan is a shitty one that funnels all the wealth up the corporate chain to the top reptiles.

We are entering into a crucial era wherein we need to leave behind the monkey brain, and the lizard brain, and tap into the new emerging human brain. I don’t think we can look to Washington for the human brain – the job descriptions of Federal politicians won’t allow for it to emerge. The government can’t help us on this count. We’re going to have to get there ourselves.

Madbob@madbob.com

Damn the Word - Is it Enough?

Another long week. I'm away now – out here on our small compound, a half hour north of the fertile mid-sized berg that is Chico. I'm away and out of the loop. I try and keep track of the goings on there by reading the various newspapers and tuning into assorted social media sites. I see that the Chikoko fashion collectives' springtime Bizarre Bazaar will be taking place in the near future. Those ladies are pure, positive creative energy and fun – the collective is a perfect synergy of the high-minded affectations of the fashion world combined with local charm and welcoming. The Bizarre Bazaars attract like-minded vendors hawking some of the most clever and unique wares: clothing, dolls, whimsies, art, craft, etc. etc. - that you could ever hope to see in one place.

A Hundred Years Ago

The train is going by right now – it nicks the back corner of our parcel. In fact this piece of land used to belong to the Union Pacific Railroad. They turned it over to the city of Los Molinos almost a hundred years ago. There are long, tall berms of earth running through the property. Railroad tracks used to run along those berms. Now they are grown over with grass, and valley oaks dot the land. Walking along the old railroad beds affords a view of the surrounding areas.

Rome is Burning

The politicians in D.C. are squabbling about the budget now. It is a funny system we have set up – this idea of a Republic. It is a great system in relative good times – but I have my doubts about the ability of the system to act with enough haste when times really call for action. It is a system set up and administered primarily by attorneys. Attorneys are great at impeding progress – not so when it comes to fostering change. Anyway, that's the system we have – we will live and die by that sword, I suppose.

14 Million Years Old and Counting

Myself I have been wrestling with questions of love, faith, and meaning. Born under no particular God and raised with no religion, I have come to a point where I struggle to relate meaning to events. For so long I have leaned on the art, the writing, the music – tried to persuade myself that the work was enough, that the words had meaning, and that the collective communication fostered by arts and music would generate its own sort of faith. It hasn't held up. I'm thinking about giving up and giving into the concept of meaninglessness, randomness, chaos. I may end up becoming what the theists fear the most from the atheists – the godless, immoral, lost non-soul – adrift in this spinning cosmos of ancient stardust and dark matter. Here we are, hurtling through space, spinning around some unimaginably massive, dense, sucking hole in the sky. My nose is running, moles are sprouting hairs, ticks are crawling into my increasingly hairy ears. This is life – I am another particle of matter, a piece of a greater whole, or at least a larger whole. This separation I am feeling is false – simply a manifestation of a treacherous ego.

Like I said, it's been a long week.

madbob@madbob.com

Bob Parsons, The CEO Culture, and Therapy

Bob Parsons is a Fucking Idiot

There are really no better words to describe the guy. It's the year 2011 and everyone is Tweeting or Facebooking, or what have you; and this asshole decides it would be a good idea to a. ambush and kill an elephant, and b. post the video of said elephant-slaughter as a “vacation log” on his hugely popular, domain providing website. It is almost as though Parsons actually hates his own company, and all who work for him. If the blogosphere is any indication, there is presently an exodus of website owners who are moving their domains from GoDaddy to wherever the hell else.

I've heard Parsons' explanation of the affair and there is a sort of twisted logic to it; but it is so wrong. Parsons claims he was acting at the behest of the local tribal elders, who needed to be rid of an elephant, because it was destroying the village crops. This is a very valid concern, as an elephant can destroy an entire season's worth of crops in a single go. So yes, I will grant Parsons that simple point – that, for the sake of the villagers, the elephant had to be kept away from the crops. But that is where our agreement ends. Now, of course, to a relatively austere tribe, the most feasible way to get rid of a rampaging elephant is to destroy that animal. But Bob Parsons is not a member of an austere tribe – he is one of the richest men on the face of the planet. He is capable of gathering numerous resources that could be used to, oh, I don't know, BUILD A FUCKING FENCE. Jesus. All it takes is an electrified fence and the elephant is not going to get to the crops. Heck, Parsons has enough dough he could have flown the elephant first class to the San Diego Wildlife Reserve. I don't know, but I do know that killing the elephant and bragging about it on-line was not a great way to boost business. If I were a GoDaddy employee I would be royally pissed; particularly if I worked in customer service.

It really makes me wonder about these assorted CEOs living in their ivory towers. I mean, you get your Tony Hayward crying about how he “wants his life back” in the midst of a catastrophe that has left 11 men dead and thousands out of work – the guy is still pulling down millions and yachting to boot! Do these people have anyone around them who is even remotely grounded in reality? Aw whatever, it's enough to drive you into...

Therapy

That's right, yours truly has started seeing a therapist (I can hear a collective “about time!” out there). So far I am digging it – for an hour a week this poor man is forced to listen to me talk about myself. Really though, it is good. Left to my own devices, my thought patterns can get very circular – the therapy helps me straighten some of those paths out a little bit. If you're thinking about doing it, go for it – the stigma is long gone on this one. Happy sailing!

madbob@madbob.com

Let's Talk About Sex

I hate talking about sex – I really do. I am forty years old, have been married for over eleven years, and sex still scares and confuses the hell out of me. I don’t get it. (Read that last sentence any way you want.) No but seriously – there are so many ways you can have sex – and I am not talking about positions. There is emotionally attached sex, emotionally devoid sex, sex for fun, pleasure, pain, hate, humiliation. Sex can be used to boost, or tear down the ego.

For myself, sex has always had strong emotions attached to it – but then there are times when it has not. I’ll tell you this: the best sex I have had is with a partner I love and also like; but that doesn’t mean I haven’t had some very good sex with a person I barely know, or with a person I don’t even like very much. Then of course there is the classic adage: “Crazy fuck is a good fuck.” There is some truth to the statement. There is something to be said for a partner that is wild and uninhibited, or someone who is working through their chaotic emotions through the act of intercourse. So bizarre.

Sex is scary. There are a lot of physical negatives that sex can bring about – abortions, disease, unwanted pregnancy; and there are loads of emotional negatives that can accompany the act as well. It can cause shame, anguish, self-loathing. Sex can be debasing. But there is something alluring about being debased; hence our fascination with the drug addicts and the rock and rollers – people who have the ability, the folly, or the guts to transmute to the level of beasts. I have, on occasion, gone out of my way to have a sexual experience that debased me, solely for the sake of being debased.

I’m not a notch on the bedpost guy, but that is probably because I don’t have many notches on my bedpost. If I had a hundred notches, maybe I’d be advocating for the thrill of the conquest – heck, if I had thirty notches… Admittedly though, that thrill of new flesh is very strong and very exciting.

I don’t know – there are those out there capable of compartmentalizing the emotions that accompany an intimate act like sex: porn stars and prostitutes come to mind. They compartmentalize out of necessity. Then there are the swingers and the free-lovers who actively choose to divorce the intimacy from the act. I don’t know if I could ever do that – I don’t know if I would want to. I mean, sure, jealousy and possessiveness are negative emotions that can come with attachment; but being able to exclusively love and trust someone you are intimate with is a wonderful feeling.

Anyway, what do I know? Not a damn thing really. I guess my advice would have to be this: find a partner you really like, really love, and who is a little bit crazy. Hey, it works for me!

madbob@madbob.com