Feeling a little sexy about the approaching Apocalypse

End Of World Blues: No one read the book and now, apparently, it's happening. Just don't say I didn't try to warn you.
We're all going to die, possibly very soon. Regrettable, for sure, but not all that surprising. And we do all get to die together. The first time we all did something together and the thing we did was die. I don't know about you, but I like it. So much more appealing than dying alone, randomly, leaving others behind to torment themselves with the unfathomable, unanswerable questions of why him, why now, why, God, why?
On the other hand, all the apocalypse-is-upon-us talk could be nothing more than the usual grim spin of desperate fundamentalists who believe that being literal is a valid alternative to being literate. They read badly and believe everything they read. So let's say there's a chance we're not all about to die. We could be stuck here, alive, for God knows how long? Talk about your unpalatable scenarios. Still, it's not a bad idea to be prepared. If the human race is doomed to survive, there are a few things we can try to do to make life a little more tolerable.

First, everyone needs to be a lot smarter. Okay, probably too late for this. Reading more fiction might have helped, but what's the point belaboring the fact that the majority of humanity doesn't read. Many, of course, due to the deplorable state of education, can't read, so it's pointless to blame them, certainly in writing, anyway. Then there are those who can read, but choose only to read the Bible. Sales of Bibles in the US have apparently risen dramatically since several Mega/corporate, prime-time Christian evangelists have started proclaiming the end of the world. Self-fulfilling prophesy. If enough people are reading the Bible at one time, the world pretty much has to end. From sheer, incomprehensible boredom, if nothing else.
Let's just say that reading the Bible is tedious, at best. Basically, it can put you to sleep, forever. Which, we'll recall, is pretty much what happened to Adam. He fell asleep in the Garden and never woke up. His ongoing dream has turned into the nightmare of what we refer to as life on Earth in the 21st. Century.
I mean, Jesus returns for his advertised second coming and finds everyone asleep. First thing out of his mouth is going to be something like, Jesus Christ, what the hell is going on here?
Don't blame us, Jesus. Blame God.
Who?
Oh my God! Jesus doesn't know who God is. What does it mean?

Second, start having more sex. Now that reading is pretty much passe, sex is really the only alternative to mindless, violent zealotry. Increased sexual activity would also cut down on Bible reading. It would also cut down on visits to the Mall, which, as most smart people already know, leads to a deadening of the senses, a decrease in basic intelligence and an increase in the baser appetites. Sex also burns calories, thereby reducing obesity. Not that Jesus is necessarily going to discriminate against the overweight, but, facing facts, even at the end of the world the laws of physics still apply. The heavier the payload, the more difficult the lift-off. Of course, sex will not help you lose weight or become smarter unless the sex act lasts longer than the current worldwide statistical average for the duration of sex, which, based on extensive research by Mormon missionaries around the world, stands at 11 minutes 36 seconds. Clearly, we all need to slow down, try to stay focused on what we're doing and take sex a bit more seriously. Turning the TV off during sex might also help. I fully realize that sex is no substitute for prime time television, but we are talking about saving humanity here. And it's not as if I'm saying stop going to church in order to have more sex. In fact, you could spice things up by having sex in church. Priests do it all the time, albeit with underage boys. This does not invalidate the concept. Think of it, you're sitting in church listening to a sermon so monumentally irrelevant and dull that, under usual circumstances, would make you wish you were already dead. But suddenly you don't care because the woman sitting next to you, who may or may not be the Pastor's wife, is giving you a hand job. No one around you notices because they've all slipped into a catatonic state that will last until either they get to the Mall, or get home and switch on the TV.
Or it could be your wife. She's busy praying that you will have a heart attack sooner rather than later because you're an emotionally vapid moron who can't even get an erection anymore and all of a sudden you've got your hand up her dress. She, meanwhile, is halfway to asking God to cancel that last prayer, wondering if the hand in her pants is merely the involuntary byproduct of premature senility, or if, praise Jesus, sex is not entirely dead in the world?
It's the uncertainty that makes it so exciting.
Okay, I'm getting slightly carried away, but the point is, God wants us to take a few chances, explore some new options. He or She or Whoever is set to send down the fire and brimstone, possibly an horrendous plague, or, worst case scenario, more CNN news anchors and extreme weather specialists. Not because He's angry with mankind, but because He's so monumentally bored. Can He be blamed? He's sitting there (wherever there is?) thinking to himself, how can these people be so dumb and uninteresting? Why don't they read more? I've half a mind to prove the brain dead, anal-retentive fundamentalists right.
Jesus, prepare yourself. I'm sending you back to Earth.
No fucking way, God, if indeed that is your real name. Once was definitely enough.
Oh all right, I'll send someone else. Go see if Bukowski's busy.
Jesus, says Jesus (odd, granted, but not completely outside the realm of possibility), what is with you and Bukowski?
What? The man's a great poet, not to mention the biggest son of a bitch I ever met. Maybe he can wake the assholes up.

Mental Health Is Hardly A Joke

After years of extensive and apparently exhaustive research, the Global Institute For Alarming Trends and Dire Prognostications has concluded that nearly every human living on the planet suffers from some form of mental illness.
It goes on to assert that a 'substantial minority' of these are hopelessly insane. And this does not include those who fall, regrettably, into the category of being simply mindless.
Needless to say, this is good to know, however bad it makes us feel knowing it. And at a mere cost of one billion dollars, a bargain by anyone's standards. Forget the fact that anyone actually living on the planet, with a bit of intelligence and a modicum of insight, already knows this.
Not so! says a spokesperson for the Institute, which, as it turns out, has been bombarded by angry letters from groups claiming to represent the civil rights of the mentally ill. (who knew these groups even existed and, more importantly, how does one join?) And I have to admit that the Institute's logic is impeccable. That they framed their response in the form of a syllogism is unfortunate, symptomatic of bad taste, perhaps, but nothing that can be construed as an evil, criminally insane conspiracy to delude the public and destroy the world.
It went something like this: Nearly everyone on earth is insane. The insane, by definition, are incapable of knowing they're insane. Therefore no one suspects that everyone is insane.
Hence money well spent.

Still, there are questions. Here's a sampling of the more pertinent ones, and the answers to them provided by the Institute:

If I think I may be mentally ill, does that mean I'm not? For example, when I look in the mirror - and believe me, this is never easy - the person looking back is not me. Doesn't this suggest that I am the victim of an alien body-snatching, or some other horrible ritual perpetrated by religious zealots?
Break all the mirrors in your house and seek out some form of professional help immediately.

I know a lot of people whom I would describe as mindless. Assuming they are, is it inaccurate for me to assume that they are out of their minds? In other words, can one be out of something one is not in possession of?

Good point! One of our mindless experts is, at this moment, searching for an answer.


If almost all humans on earth are mentally ill, doesn't that suggest that God must me insane?

Yes, we're sorry to say. If there was a God, he would almost certainly have to be insane. Luckily, there is no God, therefore those of us who believe in God can rest assured that a non-existent God cannot be insane.
You may carry on mindlessly worshipping.


Isn't the stigma of insanity nothing more than a crude device used by the powers that be to repress and constrain those of us
who still believe in the viability of creative, paradigm-shifting transformation?

You fucking postmodern troublemaker!


More on this escalating controversy coming soon...........


Lucy says hello!
Gaby disappeared yesterday.
Izumi claims she has to work overtime.
I may be losing my mind.

Lucy Leigh, In The Lab of Our Implausible Lives

I have a dog. She's smart and also dumb. Sort of like a scientist. Or an Eskimo.
(This is an allusion to the Eskimo Paradox, referred to and explained in a previous posting, possibly on another planet.)
All aliens, check your messages!
I'm what is euphemistically called an animal person. I think of myself as both man and beast. I also prefer animals to people. True, a case can be made that animals, in their own way, are as annoying as people, but they rarely, if ever, have stupid opinions which they feel compelled to tell you all about.
Dogs, for example, have fairly basic urges. They make no attempt to disguise these in long-winded verbiage punctuated with ample servings of cliche. And a plate of platitude for dessert. Yummy!
A dog's bark is its basic statement about life. It's self-explanatory. Direct and to the point, albeit annoying.
Basically, it's not that easy not being annoyed.
But as the great Zen prophet and wizened old Buddhist poet asshole Bassho said, 'Plenty of time not to be annoyed after you're dead and dust.'
Which, by the way, Bassho is. How's that dead and dust remark sounding now, old man? Bassho walked the entire length of Japan, spreading wisdom, dodging the swords of neurotic, annoyed Samurai, dreaming about a future in which 7-11's would dot the countryside, greatly easing the demands of walking forever in the Japanese wilderness. A friendly clerk, with any luck a pretty young girl wearing a kimono cut short enough to reveal an ankle bone, a rice ball wrapped in plastic with perhaps a bit of incomprehensible fish substance inside. Yes, Bassho was a visionary. He was also a masochist and a freak who spent 30 years walking around in the woods.

Who's to say what makes sense?

Walk on children. And no talking.....

I'm listening to a Jeff Beck CD; live, 2003, at B.B. King's Blues Club in NY.
Now I do not plug music as a rule, but my son does it on his blog and seems to get away with it.
Jeff Beck is clearly not for everyone. Particularly those who insist that a song has to have lyrics or it's just not a song.
But for those with interest in what it's possible to do with an electric guitar, live, that is, not in a studio, I recommend it.
And let's not forget that Jeff is 60, if he's a day. How his heart holds out through some of the riffs he manages to pull off is a mystery, and possibly a medical miracle.

Jeff Beck meets Bassho in the dusty, silent void of pure sound.
They meet on the top of a hill. Two out of their mind poets.
Beck with a Strat in search of a power source not yet invented.
Bassho with a book of happy pure dirt and in need of a bath.
The great gate of the northern mongrels awaits them.
Neither man speaks.
Packs of wild dogs sniff the air, pee harmonically and bark a vision of a future in which the wounded man/beast gets to have sex with the angel of creative madness.

So, Lucy and I walk the middle-sized holy mountain behind our house almost every evening.
She runs, I walk.
It's pretty much spring now and we're looking for bears.
She's looking for stuff to eat, I'm looking for anything that will make me feel alive in a direct an uncomplicated way.
She experiments with being a dog in the woods, I try to stay inside my body and have real thoughts.
Bear Warning Signs are everywhere.
So where are all the fucking bears?

Jeff Beck is playing his version of 'A Day In The Life.'

I saw an amazing shooting star one night on the mountain.
I always stop for a moment beside the stone graves of monks from the nearby temple.
What a cool place to be dead, I say to the dog.
We're already dust, but there's no point dwelling on it.
The humans don't have much of a clue. Just as well.
The smell of mud and wood on the wind.
Bamboo grows here, too.
We're in the Asian dream world
Slow-moving and full of fantasy.
Girls float on air here.
Ghosts are nervous and shy.

Now go find me a bear, you dumb mutt!

Blogging in the dull and hapless void

Something seems to be going on. People are, for reasons which remain unclear and somewhat suspicious, reading this blog.
Why, I'm tempted to ask? But then why should I? Whole gift horse in a mouth thing comes rushing back.
I'm read. And remember, better read than dead.
All right, I have to be honest.
I am dead.
I died of neglect. Now I'm merely suffering from hay fever.
Which I have to say is not as bad as when I was alive.
Always a silver lining.
And yes, I know. Cliches annoy the piss out of me, as well. Unless their mine. But only because I have studied irony extensively. I know how to use them in a way that makes it seem that I know how to use them. Something that cannot be taught. I also know how to iron quite well. Which is also ironic because although my name is Lee, I'm not Chinese and have never worked in a Chinese laundry. Not that I wouldn't be interested, in theory.

"Suffer from allergy, do you? Well, not anymore. Take our medication just once and we guarantee an end to the seasonal agony of allergen incompatibility. Forever!"
(Manufacturers advisory: Not applicable in states where euthanasia is illegal.
*Never take high potency poison without first consulting your doctor!)

Anyway, death and distractions aside, I had a lot to say at one time, but nobody had time to listen. I ended up having to talk to dogs and Japanese people. Pretty much exclusively.
Fair?
Hardly.

So let's recap:
I'm a dead writer who people now want to read, possibly because I'm dead and they suspect a postumous wave may be in the offing. Hey, better late then never.
Forget the fact that no one made much of an effort while I was alive. I could have used a little attention, a little help, maybe a bit of cash from book sales. But it doesn't matter. In all honesty, I didn't make much of an effort while I was alive, either. I've just never been sure that anything which seems to be happening actually is. I privately blame this on the alien encounter I had in 1971. It changed my life, in ways that were both unfathomable and ironic. Ask Diane Becker, who lives in Italy, if you don't believe me. She was there. Okay, she's not talking to me, for things which, as far as I know, never happened, but she was there. I'm almost sure she was.
But that's neither here nor there. I don't dwell on the past, not constantly, anyway, let alone the failure of others in my past, however hypothetical they may turn out to have been.
The past is dead, as am I.
Happily so, I might add.
I've never been happier.
What is happiness?

Let's move on.

Okay, I'm lying.
I'm not dead and no one reads this blog.
I don't care.
Even I don't read it.
I mean, why would I?
Language is merely the medium we employ in order to avoid the difficult questions.
Like what the hell happened to all my socks?
Was that a question?
Should I make rice?
Do you love me?
You're driving me insane. Is that what you want?
Was that a question?
Am I?
You mean...?

Unraveling the Illusion of Meaning/part 1

In response to the question, What do you want to do in the future? a Japanese university student writes:
"I want to go to France, because French food wants to eat me."

And, needless to say, we'd all like to be there to watch as this culinary paradox unfolds.

Another writes, "I want the job of welfare, because I want to help a lame dog over a turnstile."

Hard, admittedly, to get a handle on this one. Can't really see it as a viable career option. Just not that many crippled dogs trying to fly over turnstiles. Not in my experience, anyway. Lame politicians maybe. Plenty of them around, mental cripples mostly, but it would take a true to the bone altruist, a self-effacing paragon of saintly virture, to even consider helping them.
Let alone voting for them.

CNN Headline: Two more die in Pakistan during cartoon riots.

So what, seriously, is up with the Muslims? Talk about taking the vapid, senseless, mindlessness of organized religion to its logical conclusion. These people make the Born Again Christian set actually start to look good. I mean, there has got to be better things to do than pray to Allah 17 times a day and, when you're not busy praying (for what, one wonders?) you hang around on the street waiting for the next deadly riot to get started. Do any of these people ever go indoors? Sure, it's the climate, living in the hot, dull desert all day. the brain begins to boil, the hollows of hopelessness begin to fill with the fervor of religious banality. And it's all the obvious things, as well, like no jobs, no education, no sex.
Especially no sex. If these young, Arabs were getting layed on a regular basis they'd be much less likely to be murdering each other in front of the local mosque. They wouldn't have to be trampelling their fellow Muslims to death in their enthusiasm to reach yet another holy shrine (how many holy shrines do these people really need?)

Hey, let's go! We can run over all these old Muslim men and women and get to the shrine first and throw stones at the Devil.
No, I'm not in the mood today.
Infidel!
Relax! I'm as devout a Muslim as you, and I'm willing to kill you to prove it.
Praise Allah!
It's just that I had sex last night. Great sex, in fact.
Out of wedlock? Sinner! Your thing will be chopped off in the public square. After which there will be a mandatory riot.
All I'm saying is that sex is a lot more fun than killing people in the name of God.
Really? Is that possible?

(Disclaimer: Just to calm the torrid emotions of any irate Muslims reading this - and what are the chances? it's more likely that aliens on another planet are reading my blog) - I am not anti-Muslim. I hate all religions equally.)

Let's move on.....

Bush & the Intricacies of Political Irony:

Recall the grim days of the Bush Dynasty? Those 'Compassionate Conservatives' who plunged the world into a thousand years of unremitting darkness.

So we have this President, little George Bush, and his coroprate gang of zombie goodfellows. They want to control the world (at least the world's oil supply), as well as turn the USA into a corporate-friendly-police state. So? Blatant money politics stole the election for little George in 2000. Fortunately, the dim-witted American people forgot about this almost instantly. They were too busy finding Jesus and exploring the outer limits of collective obesity while watching Reality tv. Bush was as bad as any of us who still read and occasionally think past the buzz of hysterical sound bites knew he was. His advisors knew it, too. Even George himself suspected it. Then 9-11 happened. Terrible, but also lucky. Maybe the sneaky little bastards in the so-called intelligence community knew about it in advance. Maybe the Saudis set the whole thing up. Maybe Dick Cheney had a vision. Handle this thing right and Halliburton could someday rule the world. Maybe Carl Rove had to blow a couple of Shieks. What of it? As every good military leader knows, a certain number of casualites is always acceptable for the greater good.
Salvage a Presidency and enhance the conservative Republican agenda in one memorable swoop. And it worked. Okay, a bogus war costing half a trillion dollars certainly helped. Legions of expert propagandaists playing the fear card at every opportunity didn't hurt, either. Across America, millions of Americans who have never had an original thought realized they were in danger. What if they attack the Malls? Jesus Saves. Bush got re-elected. Blame the right-wing Christians for that one. Now most of them are being devoutly screwed by his policies, but they still don't seem to care. Their reward, after all, is waiting in heaven.
So, fine. A brilliant political strategy that worked better than anyone could have expected. A totally fearful electorate. Will go along with almost anything. The corporations win, the environment loses, the American middle class slowly disappears. Most of them had no health care, anyway, so perhaps they're better off.
The way it goes. the world de-evolves. Religion rules the masses and the Bushs' pray the people never wake up and figure out what's really going on.

At least there is still irony to sustain us in the darkness. To whit:
After all this effort to create a paranoid nation, the Bush people are shocked and awed that most Americans are against them selling several major US ports to an Arab country. The fear thing worked, they won, and now they're pissed off about it.
Nice touch. Near-perfect dissconnect with their own bullshit.

As painful as it is, have to love it.

They Shoot Republicans, Don't They?

At last, a news story that brings a authentic smile to the lips and a surge of pleasure-inducing chemicals to the brain.
Dick Cheney shoots some guy on a hunting tip. Mistook him for a large bird, apparently. It seems that Dick's glasses were fogged up at the time, he'd had a few drinks and was experiencing palpitations. Although his spokesperson preferred to describe it as the 'normal excitement engendered by the impending thrill of the kill'.
Really, who would ever give Dick Cheney a gun? A tank, maybe. An F-16, okay. But a shotgun?
Could there be a more heart-rending advertisement for the nobel and manly American pastime of slaughtering helpless animals for fun? The NRA has got to be ecstatic. Now that Cheney has legitamized blasting people you know by "accident," think of all the imbeciles who will be running out to buy guns and do the same thing.
Still, when I imagine Dick Cheney (not something I do often), I see him with a walker, muttering to himself, planning revenge on unspecified targets. Can't really see him carrying a weapon. The good news, of course, is that he shot a Republican lawyer from Texas. It doesn't get much better than that. Unless other Republicans jump on the band wagon and start shooting each other. It could become a Democratic slogan for the November elections: Why shoot a deer when you can shoot your Republican congressman (by accident, needless to say)?
The best comment of the day, from a so-called friend of the Vice President: "Dick cheney is the most sensitive of hunters."
Talk about oxymorons. The sensitive killer. A uniquely American type.
Way to go, Dick! You sensitive soul. We know you're not the sneaky, rapacious, self-serving, war mongering ghoul those Godless, left-wing sissies who have never murdered an animal for sport portray you as.

On other matters, to long lost friends and phantoms who periodically surface and make contact, it's great to know you're still out there. The circular nature of things make this possible. It's not as if we have a choice about staying on the merry-go-round. I blame the universe, rotating to a tune that only dogs can hear. As for figuring out what I'm trying to say, I don't, so why should you? But if you're determined, I suggest you check out my novels, accessed at PublishAmerica.com
All the best, stay well, stay in touch..

The Next Greap Leap Backwards

I'd like to pick up where I left off and continue to denigrate the Chinese. God knows, they deserve it. But I also want to at least pay lip service (a term that has always mystified) to the principle of fairness. So let's talk about how fucking clever they are. No easy feat getting the entire world to kiss your ass, but the Chinese are able to pull it off. That's because on most computer demographic models the Chinese population shows up as two billion dollar signs. That translates into a lot of sucking up that needs to be done. That's a lot of potential customers, my friends. Potential being the operative world. 90% of the Chinese population lives in conditions which make American style poverty look like an elitist joy ride. Think of it. As China patiently and insidiously cooks up complicated plans to take over the planet, there are millions of Chinese who have never seen a toilet flush. Even more shocking, there are large numbers of Chinese people who have no idea what a Disney character looks like. Are these people even human? And all of them speaking Chinese. Think about that. I don't know, it scares me.
Anyway, let's for the moment forget ridiculously unfair trade practices, a grotesquely undervalued currency, rampant intellectual piracy, total disregard for environmental well-being and the fact that all of China's top leaders look like reanimated caricatures from a wax museum. How the hell do they get away with it? I like to think of it as the ultimate great leap, the brilliant jump from rigid Communist dogma to 'Free' market Capitalism without having to worry about all the messy, emotional concepts which characterize democratic societies. The Chinese ruling class, bred on Mao, Marx and hostile takeovers, figured out rather quickly that the ability to buy cheap, consumer junk in WalMart, or it's Chinese equivalent, is, in fact, the essence of freedom. Who needs freedom of speech when shopping is readily available? Who needs elections (or erections, for that matter), when there are malls and an endless array of crap to buy on-line? In short, what the Chinese, always pragmatic, if nothing else, realized is that a controlled, productive, reasonably content work force has little, if anything, to do with human rights. How else to explain that the average, annual income in China is $400 and no one seems to complain about it. Do you want to express your opinion and risk prison, or do you want to go shopping? And hey, it's not like anyone living in a so-called free society ever has anything interesting to say. The words of Emperor Wang Po are as true today as they were when he reportedly said them, some 3000 years ago. 'Repression of the people works best when it's self-imposed.'

Needless to say, if Bush and his corporate cronies have their way, the USA will, in short order, become the next great, little province of Chinese mercenary market forces. Chinatown taken to the extreme.
I predict that in fifty years America will be a Chinese theme park, operated by Halliburton. What's left of the American work force will operate the concession stands. They will be strongly advised, though, in deference to residual democratic beliefs, not obligated to wear Dick Cheney masks on the job.
Welcome to the new world order.
In the meantime, good luck trying to find a pair of shoes not made in you-know-where.