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Tag We’re It

Published April 12, 2013 Oddbins 8 Comments

Here on wordpress, the platform upon which this here “red” blog dwells, we are encouraged to group our pieces into “categories.” Which on other blogs are known as “tags.”

These are, like, general heads, that are supposed to encompass what we most often scrawl about.

But, you know, these days, I just don’t write much, any more, about stuff that so easily fits into them Deked categories. That I myself created.

So, I am dumping the things.

I am not, today, the person who created this blog. And so I will no longer try to fit myself to it.

Embarrassingly appendi categories like “Iran” and “Asia” and “Israel/Palestine”—these are being given the heave-ho.

Thank jeebus.

Henceforth, I shall strive to wriggle myself into those categories that most often most aptly reflect what it is these days I most often write about: Animal Matters, Eros, La Musica (for when a piece is dependent on lifted music), Mammalian Politics, Oddbins (the catch-all), Science Men, There (into the great wide open), and Wyrds (for when I wantonly crib Too Many words from fellow travelers).

It will take a little time to effect the switchover.

And, of course, this latest resolution, is itself subject to revision.

For instance: I will know: that I am really where: I want to go: when each piece is tagged: solely: Into The Great Wide Open.

Manor Matters

Published April 7, 2013 Animal Matters , Oddbins 8 Comments

News and reviews of recent events in and around the Manor.

—When you are a squirrel, and you use a hind leg to scratch a flea or a mite or something, said leg moves faster than the speed of light.

—There is no rug so long, so large, or so thick, that these cats cannot Somehow propel it around the room as if it were weightless.

—I have obtained Scientific Proof that dust bunnies are created by cats. Dust bunnies are (nearly) everywhere in this place. Every morning, I awake to a new and forbiddingly large crop. These must be soon Dealt With, lest I become trapped in here, unable to get out. There is so much material there, in the daily haul of dust bunnies, that I am thinking of discovering a means by which to spin it into clothing. I will then become a dust-bunny-sweater magnate. But there is one room in the Manor where the cats are not permitted to go. I go in there, but not them. In this room, there are no dust bunnies. Never have been. This means I do not make dust bunnies. And neither does anything else. Only cats make them.

—The deer known as Mom has shown up here pregnant again. Apparently this is an annual thing with her. Clearly, there needs to be a Study as to the availability of birth control among deer. She don’t look so good as she did last year. Guess this pregnancy is harder on her than the last. In this, she is like the woman at the lawyer’s office.

—Whenever I lie there wondering, “how come I haven’t seen any skunks lately?,” somewhere outside, usually directly next to the Manor, a skunk perceives a Menace, reacts accordingly, and then all the air belongs to stench, and I must reach for the gas mask. Therefore, I try not to have these thoughts.

—Also in the olfactory arena, whenever I am running short on sleep, really need to get some, and have to be up very early for some law project, just as I enter dreamland, some cat proceeds to the catbox, and there blats forth a load so poisonous and extreme it requires evacuation of the entire neighborhood, and the arrival of the HazMat team.

—There is a very nice washer and dryer combo in this place. However, I have come to Know that these units are from space, and from the future. They are studded with many mysterious controls. And although I have tried to master these, I have come to reluctantly learn that once I press “power” and “start,” my control over these machines ends. They then take over completely. For instance, the dryer will display a digital read of the time remaining to do its thing, but will then change its mind numerous times, shifting the digital display accordingly. It will tell me, say, that the clothes will be dry in 35 minutes; I will arrive back in 30 minutes, only to find the thing switching from 5 minutes, to 15 minutes. Right there in front of me. There is no digital time display on the washer, and no way of ascertaining just how long it thinks it needs to run to wash the clothes. I am helpless before it. Also, the washer flooded the Manor on Christmas, and on Easter. Only on those two days. What this means is obvious. Some people see Jesus in a tortilla. Some people see Jesus on their windshield (see photo above). I have Jesus in my washing machine.

—When you are in a city, the police station is a hulking, menacing, brooding, fortified compound. It is like you are in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Fiefdom. You can be arrested, or even shot, simply for looking at it Wrong. When you are here, there are daffodils around the police station. And sometimes you can see the police tending them.

—Serious eccentricity is permitted here. And only a block from the police station. For there is the lair of Rat-Dog Man. The ground level of a perfectly nice house is eschewed by Rat-Dog Man, who chooses instead to dwell in the basement. And down there in the dark, he cohabits with a coven of rat dogs. I discovered this upon one nerve-wracking afternoon, when I was wandering areas outlying the Manor, because the young-un cat had gone astray. I saw this open basement window, and, thinking maybe the young’un cat had jumped in there, I leaned down and called his name into the darkened basement. Only to be immediately assaulted by the hideous yaps of multiple rat dogs. This, I believe, was a good test of the valves to my waste-disposal system: as I did not void any substances, I think they remain in good shape. In any event, Rat-Dog Man regularly permits his herd out of the bowels of the basement and into the yard adjoining the unused house, so that they might offer up their wastes. Occasionally—usually in the rain—Rat-Dog Man will bark at them nastily to hurry up. The rat dogs have been known to object to this, generally by bolting out into the alley. We call this The Great Escape. Rat-Dog Man then climbs into his car and proceeds to slowly roll down the alley and neighboring streets, bellowing at top volume for them to return. It is for reasons like this that we do not need television here.

—The police also turn a blind eye to the wanton Crime Lords of the feed store across the street. Because the state legislature here is infested with howling imbeciles, there are many Laws forbidding—under penalty of fines and imprisonment—the feeding of various wild animals. The Crime Lords know that we free human beings alive on this earth don’t care about these Laws, and so they offer up innumerable vast bins clearly and contemptuously marked with such legends as “squirrel mix” and “deer treats.” This, legally speaking, is equivalent to a pharmacist setting up prescription-less shelves cheerily offering such goodies as “Friday night coke” and “mushrooms for the masses.”

—There is still the hideous belching from the lube shop. Not today, though. For today is Sunday. And the lube shop is closed. It is the day of rest.

—Hunter Thompson once said: “when a man gives up drugs, he wants big fires in his life.” I don’t know about that, and anyway it’s April, and so here the season for big fires has passed. However, I have discovered that, here in my dotage, I require decorative switchplates in my life. I did not know that such things even existed, until a few weeks ago. And maybe they didn’t. ; 0 Now, though, I need them everywhere. They have become a Requirement. When you go into the tubes, you will find that there are creative men and women, all over the land, bringing art to switchplates. And they will send this art to you, if only you give them just a little Money. So this I am doing. Pictured here is the dragonfly switchplate I obtained and affixed by the front door of the Manor. It is beyond godly.

—I have been here a year now, and still the ants continue their ceaseless march to and from the attic. There have been days when they’ve been sluggish, and days when they’ve moved but in ones and twos, but never has the march ceased entirely. They are like a perpetual motion machine. I still have no idea what they’re doing up there. But because there has never once been a single ant actually inside the Manor, I stick still to the agreement, set forth in the link above, that they be permitted to go their own way, without any snooping from mine.

Hubble Hubba

Published March 31, 2013 Animal Matters , Oddbins , Outer Limits 3 Comments

The latest photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope are in, and it seems the device has at last succeeded in penetrating the veil of Heaven.

Among other images—which shall be offered here, from time to time, exclusively to red readers—the Hubble returned shots of the Big Guy himself, the fellow variously known as Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah, etc.

Many humans have long wondered just what the guy might look like.

Now they know. Feast, here, thine eyes.

I have to say that I myself am not much surprised.

It appears from this image that part of him might need to be Repaired. I am assuming this is a temporary Easter-season thing.

Sun And Games

Published March 9, 2013 Oddbins , Outer Limits 10 Comments

Don’t look for the answer. The answer is usually dull. Look for the mystery.

—Ken Kesey

Seems the Science Men are having a Puzzlement, because the sun is not behaving in the way that they think it should.

‘Something unexpected’ is happening on the Sun, NASA has warned.

This year was supposed to be the year of ‘solar maximum,’ the peak of the 11-year sunspot cycle.

[But] sunspot numbers are well below their values from 2011, and strong solar flares have been infrequent, the space agency says.

[NASA has] observed just a few small sunspots on an otherwise clean face, which is usually riddled with many spots during peak solar activity.

Experts have been baffled by the apparent lack of activity[.]

Now, I’m no expert, but I’m certainly not baffled. For the sun is no longer there. And has not been for some years. And it can naturally be expected that an object that does not actually exist, might behave abnormally.

The Reality of the Potemkin Sun has been mentioned here on red from time to time.

The Potemkin Sun version of reality is part of the Secret Lore that is transmitted orally among initiates in some of the psychic institutes and outfits out there on the US west coast. I know about it only because one among those initiates Broke Vows. As I’ve related before, the Potemkin Sun version of reality claims that some time early on in the Clinton administration—that is, in 1994—the sun went nova, and the Earth was burnt to a cinder. However, no one on this planet noticed this, because of the efforts of the “good aliens” (the thinnish creatures best known for their attempts to protect people from the “bad aliens,” those no-good-’un grays prone to picking folks up off lonely interstates, playing with their gonads, implanting non-ordinary knickknacks in their brains, and then setting them back loose).

In this instance, the good aliens allowed human brains to believe that the Earth was still here. And so were the humans. The aliens kindly threw up into the sky a Potemkin Sun, so that humans could go on believing that everything was Normal. They did this, it is said, because during the Harmonic Convergence of August 1987 human beings apparently proved to be “worthy,” and “almost ready for the next step.” Which involves not needing bodies. The good aliens figured it would be a shame to allow everybody to burn off like bugs on a grill, just a few short years before they would no longer be bothered by such things as being confined to bodies prone to vaporization in roaring jets of molten flame.

The aliens will take down the Potemkin Sun, so goes the theory, when humans no longer need it. When, I guess, they will all sort of join together and swirl away as energy beings, a la the close of Childhood’s End.

So. There you have it. The sun is not Real. So of course it will not engage in the sort of sunspot activity common among suns that are Real.

Glad I could straighten this out. For the good folks at NASA.

This Is A Stickup

Published March 8, 2013 Eternal Recurrence , Johnny Law , Oddbins 14 Comments

The term “concealed carry,” it has developed a whole new meaning, now that a woman has been found to have lugged around a loaded revolver stuffed up her vagina.

Jennifer Delancy and Christie Harris were blithely, though blearily, weaving along the roads of these United States, when local gendarmes determined it might be a wise idea to pull them over.

In the course of the ensuing traffic stop, it was discovered that both women had rap sheets longer than god, and that one had an active warrant out for her arrest.

Meanwhile, drug dogs deployed, and sniffing round these two women, were going absolutely batshit.

It was decided to transport the two women to the local pokey.

“On the way there, one of them tells the officer she has a[] hypodermic needle in her shoe, and they remove that,” Pontotoc County District Attorney Chris Ross said. “The other one said she had to go to the bathroom.”

“The other one”—a.k.a. Ms. Harris—was, it was discovered during booking, harboring “something strange” within her corporeal container.

“The officer observed the handle of a revolver sticking out from inside her body,” Ross said.

Court records state it was a “wooden and metal item sticking out from her vagina area.”

A further search brought forth “[b]ags of drugs [] secreted in Harris’s rectum.”

Yeehaw.

Crystal meth, drug paraphernalia, a pistol and a loaded clip of bullets were found inside the vehicle.

During the ride to jail, Harris “stated several times that she needed to go to the bathroom,” said police.

Officer Kathy Unbewust conducted a strip search of Harris, despite the latter’s objections.

Unbewust said that she observed a wooden and metal item sticking out from her vaginal area. The concealed weapon contained “three live rounds inside and one spent shell.”

“It would seem to be a very dangerous place to carry a loaded firearm,” Ross said. “If it goes off it’s only going one place.”

As might have been predicted—with something like 100% accuracy—Harris is a methamphetamine person.

For, not only does meth convince a person that it is Absolutely Imperative to completely dismantle one’s car at 3:00 in the morning, so too does it command that ramming objects strange and unnatural up the glory hole is nothing but Right and Meet.

Oklahoma has previously been identified on this blog as the veritable vortex of the emerging national penchant for brewing methamphetamine in the aisles of the local WalMart.

Now, apparently, Oklahoma is also on the absolute cutting edge of The Need to squirrel away vast quantities of meth, accompanied by firearms, up the holy of holies.

As has been here heretofore observed, the Oklahoma state motto is currently Labor Omnia Vincit— or, “Labor Conquers All Things.” I believe—I say again—it is time to change that motto. To something like E Pluribus Dumbfuck. Or, “Meth Labs R Us.”

Christianity Explained

Published January 30, 2013 Oddbins , Sunday Services , Wyrds 1 Comment

He was still trying to sift Tyrer’s information into perspective, along with the astonishing sight of all these grown men, and two revolting-looking women, singing in unison, getting up, sitting down, solemnly droning out prayers, bowing their heads to their very strange God who, after the service, Tyrer had explained was actually three people, the Father, his Son who was crucified like a common criminal, and a kami. “So ka?” Hiraga had said perplexed. “So, Taira-san, woman name Madonna who not God has son God—but she not God—and she pillow with kami who not God but like hatomoto of God with wing who not husband, husband also not God, but father is, so father of her son is grandfather, neh?”

“No, there was no pillowing. You see . . . “

Again he listened, eventually pretending to understand so he could question Taira about the enmity of the two churches. And when, head aching from concentration, he had discovered the reason for the schism—and the resulting scale of hatred and mass killings and universal wars—he knew for certain in some areas gai-jin were totally mad: the split was only because an old bonze called Luther, three hundred-odd years before, had decided on a different interpretation of some minor point of dogma that had been invented by another bonze fourteen or fifteen centuries before him. This man, clearly another lunatic, had decreed, amongst other things, that poverty was to be sought, and no pillowing with women would, after death, send you forever to somewhere called Heaven, where there was no sake, no food and no women, and you were a bird.

Barbarians are beyond belief. Who would want to go to such a place? Anyone could see at once that old bonze was like any other ambitious, disgruntled fool who, after a lifetime of pretending to be chaste, just wanted to have a wife or concubine openly like any ordinary sensible bonze or person.

—James Clavell, Gai-Jin

For Whom The Bell Tolls

Published January 20, 2013 Animal Matters , Oddbins 3 Comments

Those who have wondered why I have not posted here much lately should know that I have been consumed by fear and trembling, pretty much paralyzed in the knowledge that my cats consumed Santa Claus.

Things in life were going pretty well here, until Christmas morning.

Then I arose to discover that two of the felines with whom I share the Manor had caught and killed Santa when he came down the chimney to dispense presents.

The first sight to greet my eyes, on that fateful morn, was the young’un cat plunging into Santa’s drawers, there to feast upon a morsel of his loins.

This harrowing scene is depicted in the photo offered above.

I tried to drive the wanton Claus-consumers away from the fallen fat man, but they snarled and spit and sedulously stood their ground.

By the time I got to the guy, he had gone the way of all flesh.

All that remains now are the upper portions of his pants.

Depicted in the photo there to the right.

I don’t know what is going to happen. I presume the cats will be brought up on charges: at the very least, Assaulting a Figment. I fear I myself shall be charged as an accessory.

So if this site goes dark, you’ll know the reason why. We have all been transported to The Hague.

And, if you didn’t get what you wanted or expected this Christmas, you now know about that, too. Santa never made it to your place. He fell in the line of duty. Here in the Manor.

The Hardest Part Is To Shoot Ramon

Published January 20, 2013 Eternal Recurrence , Oddbins , Rutting For Office , War On Terra , War On Women 8 Comments

Among the people who will not be inaugurated president today is the strange and unusual slave-holder and Hebrew-fearer Pawn Rawl.

In 2012, the 311-year-old Rawl sought the presidency for something like the 13th time. But no one wanted him.

He ran non-stop, like some chipmunk on speed, from one end of the nation to the other, and back again, throughout the entirety of the GOoPer primary campaign. But in the end he received only 2,095,795 votes. Or roughly the same number of ballots cast in November for Barack Obama in the city of Chicago alone.

Rawl was a favorite of the extraterrestrials who owned and controlled the 2012 GOoPer primary campaign. And so he was induced to remain in the race even after such falling bodies as the pizza topping (Herman Cain), the bedbug in a skin-suit (Newt Gingrich), the farm animal (Rick Perry), and the raccoon (John Huntsman) had crashed and burned.

Perhaps the high point of Rawl’s campaign was when his eyebrows slid off his face during a televised debate.

For reasons that passseth understanding, Rawl had decided he needed to apply eyebrow toupees. When, there on the TV, the things proceeded to melt and migrate all over his dim-bulb phiz, and in a perfect expression of the hapless mendacity that defines everything about the man, his people announced that “allergies” had caused Rawl to suddenly sprout fake, mobile eyebrows.

When a Rawl hot-air balloon deflated and fell to earth onto some road outside a hamlet in South Carolina, it became apparent that the man was but a pale copy of the humbug Wizard of Oz. But by then no one cared.

Rawl not only failed to attain the presidency, but also gave up this year his seat in Congress, where various assorted Texas yeehaws, retroverts, and knuckledraggers had sent him over the past decade, so that he could periodically take to the floor and there mumble darkly about Money.

Rawl has long been a favorite of the sort of people who shoot speed in both arms and then stay up all night cleaning their guns and obsessing about assaults on the American dollar.

Rawl is a partisan of gold, because he has determined that paper money is crawling with germs spread by black and brown and other Wrong people; precious metals, it seems, can retard both the presence and potency of these germs.

Too, people who should otherwise know better would occasionally hug Rawl to their heavy-breathing bosoms, because he spoke out against the US mucking about in foreign lands, and because he disfavored the surveillance state.

What these people failed to get is that Rawl abjures foreign wanderings because he believes all non-Americans to be a form of monkey. He would not war on them, but neither would he give them a crust of bread. He doesn’t want to get involved, in whatever it is that’s going on out there in the world, because he Knows it is the Work of the Jews.

Similarly, his suspicion of the surveillance state arises from fears that gub’mint boys might interfere with the plans of he and his posse to beat with big sticks any black or brown or red or yellow people who happen to wander into their stores and there attempt to purchase a donut.

Now, in retirement, Rawl can return to his primary concern: Occupy Womb Street. Out on the campaign trail, Rawl made no secret of the fact that in an America According To Pawn, all doctors who performed abortions would be lashed into jail, and so would all the women who sought them.

So much for this “libertarian” protector of “freedom.”

All the vaginas, belong to him.

Here at red, we are occasionally able to access alternative universes.

And so today is presented a dispatch from one such Reality. Find below, the inaugural address, of President Pawn Rawl.

Who I Am

Published December 22, 2012 Animal Matters , Eros , Eternal Recurrence , First Peoples , Into The Light , La Musica , Liberte Egalite Fraternite , Ms. Ah-Ha , Oddbins , Outer Limits , Peasant Palate , Sunday Services , Variations In B-Flat , What's Good 1 Comment

Reindeer For Rent, v2.0

Published December 13, 2012 Animal Matters , Eternal Recurrence , Into The Light , Oddbins , What's Good Leave a Comment

Last holiday season I offered the young’un cat to Santa Claus as a possible new or additional reindeer. This year I renew the offer, though it must be said that now his rates have gone up.

As can be seen in the photo below, the young’un cat’s eyes remain googly extremely googly; they put out plenty of light, and are not bound by space or time. Paired with Rudolph, there at the head of the team pulling the sleigh, the young’un cat would guarantee that Santa would never get lost, no matter how much fog or liquor he might encounter.

It is apparent, at least to me, that the jello-bellied gift-spewer Needs the young’un cat.

Last year I additionally opined that employment would be good for the young’un cat, to absorb his excess energies; among the excess, then, was his intensive involvement in a sleep-deprivation experiment, with myself as the subject.

This is what he was then doing to me:

No matter when I try to sleep, he eventually turns against it. And then works diligently, until it cannot be. He has decided, for example, that whatever portions of my body are covered with hair, he may assault, as I sleep, with his claws. My scalp is now so routinely excavated that I am thinking of hiring him out as a miner.

Because his excavating is always accompanied by operatic wails, I think I may hire him out as a musical miner. I have not heard miners emit sounds with this volume and intensity since those Welshmen in How Green Was My Valley.

I have also begun referring to the young’un cat as The Dream Crusher. This is because of late I have been gifted with extraordinary dreams; while there is a method I use to pull dreams into the waking state, most often these days that process is derailed, when the young’un cat decrees that my skull should be employed as his dartboard, or elects to eagerly ride his tricycle across my forehead.

Fortunately, over the ensuing year we have come to an accommodation. He now understands what is a Sane hour to arise, and does not assault me with either claws or operas unless I attempt to slumber past said hour.

He has also gained much, in work experience. The Manor, as I believe I have previously referenced (I haven’t?), has become a vortex of four-legged welfare recipients, waves of deer flowing through each day to stare at me with those doe eyes that claim they will drop immediately dead unless I shovel vast quantities of feed their way. They all have names, on their little welfare-recipient name-tags: Yearling Pet, Mom, Cutie, The Other Fawn, Dark Doe, Big Buck, Billy Buck Naked, White Head, Mr. Spindly Horns, Mr. Broken Horn, No You Can’t Get Through The Hole In The Fence With Those Antlers You Big Oaf, etc.

Anyway, the young’un cat goes out every morning to attempt to bring order to the horde. He has been fully accepted by these deer as The Ruler, or at least as rug-rucking, curtain-shredding Hell something that should not be run off.

Through the day, he further observes their maneuvers, this time from inside the house. At times he is compelled to ruck rugs and shred curtains, in apparent attempts to communicate to them Vital Messages.

I find this carnage objectionable, but understand that there is nothing to be done: I will simply have to wait until he moves beyond it, as with the sleep-deprivation Horror.

The point is, the young’un cat now has much daily experience with deer. And reindeer are just deer with some rein in front of them. So he is highly qualified to rangle Santa’s people. And is willing to do so. So long as the frigid fat man forks over sufficient Money. Said funds are, after all, Needed, round this place. To replace that which the young’un cat, in his youthful zeal, Runs Amok.

Where Santas Crawl And Elves Chunder

Published December 13, 2012 Capital Crime , Eternal Recurrence , Oddbins Leave a Comment

“The word is world!” Orson shouted at her.
“I said world!” she shouted back.
“Speak as though you came from New York,” he told her.
“I did come from New York. How does one from New York speak?”
“Not the way you speak!”
“Why should I talk like someone special?”
“Because you are.”
“Yes, but I don’t want you to be conscious of it.”

—Orson Welles and Eartha Kitt, in rehearsal for Time Runs

Across many cultures, many times, humans ritually combine in groups to consume vast quantities of intoxicants, commonly entering states of no, this world isn't weird at all inebriation so pronounced and prolonged that they often, later, bring new meaning to such phrases as “I did WHAT?” or “how do you mean, there are ‘charges’?”

This is particularly true of American humans, marooned as they are in a nation where people have been awash in intoxicants since the Founding.

Various “reasons” are summoned to engage in these bacchanalian rites. In America, these “reasons” can range from viewing the spectacle of identically-dressed young men furiously battling over balls, to honoring a calendar passage like a birthday, or genuflecting before a totem like the clover.

In recent years, humans in New York City have increasingly combined to decide that the advent of the Christmas season is reason enough to dress up like a Santa person, or one of his assistants or associates, consume vast quantities, and then pour out onto the streets to wantonly hump and heave upon them.

These humans call themselves SantaCon, and maintain that: “We do not pout. We do not cry. We are Jolly.”

It is further asserted that “SantaCon is a non-denominational, non-commercial, non-political and non-sensical Santa Claus convention that occurs once a year for absolutely no reason.”

Finally, “Santa does not accept corporate sponsorship or speak to the press.”

As can be seen here, it is evident that, as is true of so many things, SantaCon has inevitably spread, like bedbugs or bad writing, from out of New York, and into the larger World.

This year, the world’s very first 2012 iteration of SantaCon shall commence, today, December 13, in some place called Macomb, Illinois. Over the next week or so, the event shall ride a giant tsunami of hormones and liquor through such international hot-spots as Modesto, California and Boise, Idaho. As well as wee sleepy hamlets like London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Vienna. The SantaCons in locales such as santa gets nekkid San Francisco and Fort Lauderdale feature a pronounced nakedness component, something absent in the fests in, say, Winnipeg, Buffalo, or Oslo. At least among those who want to continue to live.

Ur-iterations of this event seem to include the 1994 “Santarchy” of Suicide Club in San Francisco, and a 2005 anti-commercialization shindig in Auckland, New Zealand, one that boiled over into “such criminal acts as looting stores, throwing bottles at passing cars, and assaulting security guards.” Novelist Chuck Palahniuk, meanwhile, several times penned mention of a “Santa Rampage,” which subsequently got loose from out of his books, and poured out onto the pavement.

Dispatches from the 2011 Manhattan SantaCon may be found beyond the “furthur.” Know that as the 2012 version convulses the planet, I will feel it my Duty to first Monitor the madness, and then Report it.

furthur=>

It Came Upon A Cthulhu Quite Clear

Published December 13, 2012 Eternal Recurrence , Oddbins Leave a Comment

(Another seasonal fave, originally posted in December 2009.)

A Redding, California substitute teacher has pronounced a crusade that will place before California voters a ballot initiative that would require state schools to teach students about Christmas carols, and then order them to either sing or listen to the things.

The teacher’s name—no, this is not a joke—is Merry Susan Hyatt.

Fretting that “we were having Christmas without Jesus,” Hyatt said of her initiative: “this is to make sure that we are allowed to have Christmas carols, and no school board member or principal is going to tell us, ‘no, you may not play ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ in your classroom.”

Hyatt’s initiative would permit heathens to extract their children from these annual assemblages of the Godly. Said outcasts would be provided with an unspecified “appropriate alternative,” one that would hopefully not resemble too much the bastinado or the boot.

Hyatt believes that the failure of state schools to command children to intone “Silent Night” is responsible for schoolyard violence and other upbubblings from Hell.

“The kids don’t have a moral compass,” she said. “It’s not much, but I think it [Christmas carols] would help.”

Hyatt said she’s been surprised at the level of violence in many elementary school classrooms where she has taught, and she believes it’s because Jesus isn’t present in Christmas celebrations.

“You have to invite Jesus to have him work in your life,” she said, adding that if you have a Christmas party without Jesus, he won’t help. “He’s the prince of peace; he’s the only one who can get these kids to stop being so violent.”

Hyatt contends that once students are required to repeatedly recite “Good King Wenceslas,” then Good will reign.

“These kids, they need it,” she said. “They need to see that we believe in Jesus, and he is the Prince of Peace. That’s why we are the best country on Earth.”

At first I considered circulating a competing ballot initiative that would similarly require schoolchildren to sing such alternative Christmas carols as “Hark, Hear Shakti’s Bells They Ring,” “Good King Vlad The Impaler,” “Santeria Night,” “We Three Bodhisattvas Of Orient Are,” “Oh Come Allah’s Faithful,” “Carol of the Baal,” “Good Pagan Women Rejoice,” “What Cthulhu Is This,” “Thor Rest Ye Merry Mayhem Men,” “O Hopi Night,” and “He Came Across To Moses Quite Clear.”

Then I realized that it would be of greater benefit to such children, their parents, their heirs, and to all on earth, as it is in heaven, if, before leaving high school, every California child could be enabled to play the song offered below, with equivalent technique, and all the very spirit, heart and soul.

Nuts With Numbers

Published December 12, 2012 Oddbins 4 Comments

I have been prepared for quite some time for people to get wiggy on December 21, 2012. That is because the white people screwed up, in their reading of the old Mayan calendar, and so believe that on that date the world will come to some sort of end.

Kind of a Harold Camping thing, but without the Jesus, or the weird old man.

And, sure enough, as the dread day nears, the frenzy increasingly foams, with flocks of the apocalypse-now faithful streaming to Mount Rtanj in Serbia and Pic de Bugarach in carve pumpkins, not people France, sites where it is believed that Good extraterrestrials will Somehow kindly contrive to protect those assembled from Armageddon.

But until the last couple days I managed to miss that amongst some of the humans it was not possible to wait until December 21 to get Strange. Instead, there must needs be an outbreak of weirdness today—December 12, 2012. Presumably because in white-people time-counting all the numbers line up, as 12/12/12. Sorta like the slot machine coming up all cherries.

And so we have the spectacle of this man in Texas who, in honor of the day, was compelled to carve a pentagram into the back of his son.

A Richland Hills man has been arrested and charged with assaulting his son after telling a 911 operator he carved a pentagram into his 6-year-old son’s back.

Just after midnight Wednesday, officers were dispatched to a home on the 3700-block of Ruth Road after the boy’s father, identified by police as Brent Troy Bartel, called 911 and said, “I shed some innocent blood.”

When the dispatcher asked what the man meant by that, the man replied, “I inscribed a pentagram on my son.”

The dispatcher asked why and the man said, “It’s a holy day.”

Apparently the nimrod used a box cutter. The good news is that the carving is not deep enough to require stitches, and the child is expected to be alright. Physically.

Now, I have been known to now and again get wired behind numbers. But never have I felt compelled to seek out sharp objects and begin inscribing designs on those near and dear.

I have two words for ol’ Tex there. Dude: Halloween. We have a perfectly good holiday, and every year too, when one may carve to one’s heart’s content. The pumpkins won’t mind. And working out on said vegetables will not get you in the papers. Or put you in the pokey.

Christmas In Many Lands

Published December 8, 2012 Asia , Capital Crime , Oddbins Leave a Comment

party

Book ‘Em, Santo

Published December 8, 2012 Cineman , Eternal Recurrence , Oddbins 2 Comments

(The latest mutation of a seasonal favorite that previously appeared, with various different-one words, here and here.)

The frenzy to arrest people long ago veered completely out of control. And now, as we enter this holiday season, we learn that these days it is necessary to place in the pokey even people who but publicly deny the existence of Santa Claus.

And this didn’t even happen in America. It was the Canadians, who did this.

Seems that during a Kingston, Ontario Christmas parade, a man, seized by the need to speak truth to power, and fortified by alcohol, shocked the children assembled by volubly informing them that Santa Claus is just made-up shit.

Police promptly picked him up and heaved him into the hoosegow.

People at the annual Santa Claus parade reported that a man was moving through the crowd telling children “the truth” about Santa Claus, saying that he wasn’t real.

“It hits every officer,” [Kingston policeman Steve] Koopman told the Canadian National Post, “as most of us have children ourselves. Some people have been saying, ‘We didn’t know police arrested for telling the truth.’ Some of us may disagree with that. In all honesty, he was disturbing everyone there on the thoroughfare.

“He was disturbing the families, obviously disturbing the children. We felt it very necessary to take him off the street and think the charges were warranted,” Koopman explained.

Koopman noted that the person arrested had his hair gelled into two “horns,” making him look like the famous Grinch from the Christmas classic, How The Grinch Stole Christmas.

Probably we will next be subjected to stories in which the children assaulted by this horrific Grinch and his inconvenient truth, were all rounded up and clapped into camps, for intensive psychological counseling. As the years go by, we will recurrently learn that many of them, permanently crippled by this incident, all counseling and treatment having, alas, failed, ran utterly wild in lives of the most heinous crimes.

I mean, shit, it happened to me.

Though when I was told that Santa was a figment, no squad cars came roaring up to disgorge beefy men with big clubs, to grapple my dad into the back seat, and then screech him off to the jailhouse.

furthur=>

There Will Be Blood

Published December 8, 2012 Cineman , Oddbins 3 Comments

Back in the Olden Days, men regarded women as but sexual vessels: women were instruments with which men experienced sexual pleasure; whether women themselves got anything hot and juicy out of the experience, to men this mattered not.

Too, men wantonly roamed their pee-pees across the land, spewing seed in all and sundry. While a woman who shared her delta of venus with someone precogs other than her principal partner could expect to be consigned to a jail, morgue, or asylum.

That was then. This is now.

Now, if you are a man, and you fail to ensure that your woman scales the sexual heights, you may by that woman be attacked and beaten. And if you are a man, and your woman suspects that your Clenis may have gone a-roaming, you may by that woman be killed.

Last week a Manatee, Florida woman went maenad when her lover neglected to drag her over the rainbow. According to the police report:

[They] are boyfriend and girlfriend who live in the same home and are involved in a sexual relationship. According to a statement obtained from [the man], he and [the maenad] were involved in sexual intercourse. [He] then climaxed and [she] did not. At that time, she became upset and began hitting and scratching him, causing scratches near his eye and nose. He also stated that this is not the first time she has been physical with him, and that she has many issues from her past and that she “goes off” frequently.

This fellow could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he had simply heeded the wise advice imparted by those noted relationship therapists the Grateful Dead in their sex manual “Sugar Magnolia”:

she don’t come
and I don’t follow

Also last week, prosecutors revealed that a Pennsylvania woman accused of slaying her boyfriend last April did so because she “smelled sex” on him. The woman and the dead man had been lovers for eight weeks. When she suspected that his Clenis had been sampling other scents, it was necessary for her to retrieve her handgun and shoot him.

The other night I was watching Diner, Barry Levinson’s film about a group of Baltimore lads back in the Olden Days of 1959. These young men are entranced by, desire, do not understand, and are more than a little bit scarified by women. In their own personal lexicon, they refer to these women as “death.” It is possible that these boys were precogs.

Dead Wood

Published December 5, 2012 Animal Matters , Into The Light , Oddbins 3 Comments

When I moved into the Manor here last spring, it took a while to determine which trees were with me, and which were not.

Non-evergreen trees, when dormant, can look pretty poorly. Sickly sticks, with feet. Are you alive, I would ask them? Or the Other?

Many of them would not answer for some leaning tree of here time. Pretty pokey, in putting their leaves out.

Finally, though, round about summer, it became clear that everybody was living—except for this one old grizzled dude at the front of the property. I kept hoping he would send out just a leaf or two. But: no such luck.

Finally, I had to face it: that tree had gone over.

Why?

Who knows? These things happen.

In keeping with the national pastime, I blame Obama.

Dead things, standing, eventually they fall. And so it was with this person. We have been having some storms here, which is Normal, for this time of year, notwithstanding the amusing hair-on-fire amongst the weather-frenzied. And part of the Job of storms is to lay to rest dead things. So they can go back to the soil, and meanwhile provide homes for all sorts of people still living. So, somewhere amongst the recent wind and the rain, I noticed that this tree had been uprooted, and was leaning into a big fir. The fir doesn’t care: it is big, and alive, and the dead guy is comparatively small, and probably doesn’t weigh much of anything, being dead and all.

I suppose the Normal thing to do is to get some Man out here with a Loud Saw to wrest it to the ground and cut it into rounds.

Why?

Over there in Italy, they have a Leaning Tower of Pisa, which is a tourist attraction. Humans come to look at it, and even spend Money. Why shouldn’t they come to gaze upon the Leaning Tree of Here? Maybe they will even give me Money. If they give me enough, I can retire. Or at least afford to feed all these welfare-recipient “wild” animals who have somehow decided I am the filler of the feedbag.

Also, the Leaning Tree of Here, since it looms over the walk I traverse to enter and exit the Manor, encourages Alertness. I mean, the thing is going to further fall, someday. It would be best, for me, if it didn’t do that while I am under it. So, when I walk under it, I am Aware. Just in case. This is called living in Present Time. Which is supposed to be good for you.

So, we shall see.

Heavy Duty

Published November 30, 2012 Capital Crime , Destry , Oddbins 9 Comments

Amazon aficionados are aware that one of the ways the place tries to encourage you to buy stuff is by offering “Super Saver” free shipping.

Somebody at the Wall Street Journal with nothing better to do set out to determine just what sort of extreme-poundage pachyderms Amazon will nuts heave across the land for free.

And so discovered that apparently the weightiest item Amazon will roll to your door is the Cannon Safe CO54 Commander Series Premium 90 Minute Fire Safe. The thing weighs 1672 pounds, and normally the company charges about $700 for shipping.

This is an item that would be purchased—at Amazon for $3486.57—only by somebody with a serious Problem. It stands six feet tall, features a 5.75-inch thick steel door with 13 locking bolts, and can hold up to 48 guns.

Anybody who conceives a need to squirrel away 48 guns requires Treatment.

Which brings us to Glenn Beck, and his people. Horrified that the black man has been returned to the White House, Beck had a breakdown in which he babbled and blithered about George Washington, and weepingly advised his audience to pull their children out of school, and buy farmland and guns. Because the apocalypse is at hand.

So it is indeed fortunate that Amazon will ship for free to these nutters a mammoth Fear Box in which they can secret away their firearms. I suppose they could also stash their root vegetables in there. As well as themselves.

Dem Bones

Published November 28, 2012 Johnny Law , Oddbins 6 Comments

The Americans, noted Puritans, tend to regard Sweden as a hotbed of sexual libertines, who run utterly wild at all times, ceaselessly plunging in and out of each other’s orifi, with total abandon, and no restraint.

So shocked, probably, shall these Americans be, that the Swedes appear to have drawn at least one line, in matters sexual.

For in that nation, now, a 37-year-old woman faces criminal prosecution, simply because she seems to prefer sex with skeletons.

This, apparently, constitutes the crime of “violating the peace of the dead.”

The prosecutor could not explain how the woman had managed to collect almost an entire skeleton, but explained that the human remains had been used in an “unethical” way.

“In the confidential section of the investigation we have material which indicates she used them in sexual situations,” the prosecutor told the TT news agency.

The woman is believed to have used the human bones for sexual gratification. The evidence that the prosecution presented to the press on Tuesday included two CDs labelled “My necrophilia” and “My first experience.”

Katarina Öberg, head of the centre of Andrology and Sexual Medicine at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, admitted this was the first time she had heard of such a case in Sweden.

“During my ten years I have never had a patient with necrophilia,” she said. “Although, I guess it is not really something that one confesses to having.”

The woman has pled not guilty, and maintains she did nothing wrong. She admits to collecting bones, but says she accumulates the dry stuff “out of a historical and archaeological interest.”

And it’s not like she was keeping it a secret.

She had reportedly bragged to some nearby children about keeping knives and dead people in her apartment.

She is also willing to share her bones, having peddled a few over the intertubes.

According to the prosecution, the woman has also sold skulls over the internet.

The latest transaction was between the woman and a person in Uppsala, eastern Sweden. The buyer had allegedly stocked up on three skulls and a spine.

She has reportedly posted to an intertubes forum:

“I want my man like he is, whether he is dead or alive. He allows me to find sexual happiness on the side.”

You know, this is pretty broad-minded. A lot of people, they can be pretty picky about their lovers. This woman, she doesn’t even require that her partner be alive.

And they want to put her in jail.

What is this world coming to.

Home For The Holidays

Published November 26, 2012 Oddbins , Rutting For Office 6 Comments

What in the sam hill is going on with Captain Underpants?

What is with this acting Normal, all of a sudden? Shouldn’t he have done this shit before the election? Pumping his own gas, riding a log out at Disneyland—now twitting a holiday photo from the Underpants family kitchen.

Why isn’t he going away, as is usual practice for The Loser? Please don’t tell me he is trying to rehabilitate himself, with an eye towards a political future. Laws no. Maybe he just can’t stand being out of the news.

Whatever the reason, this latest photo I find alarming, on several grounds. First, what happened to his head? When did it get so elongated? Wife Ann appears to have a head normal for a human being, while the Captain’s is twice as long, and half as wide. Did somebody put the thing in a vise? If so, why? We know that Underpants is going in for Moreau-like body modification, from the evidence of his endowed penis, which has, since the election, grown to the size of Missouri. Is this head disability a side effect?

Also, what is with the stainless steel pot? These people have more money than god. So why aren’t they cooking with copper? They could line all the kitchens in each of their 217 homes with copper pots and pans, and also afford to keep on each of these premises a tinsmith, to tend to the things. So why don’t they?

I just don’t get these people.

Rue, Britannia

Published November 25, 2012 Eternal Recurrence , Oddbins 3 Comments

So Prince Charles is having something of a public whine about the fact that he is now old enough to need a walker, yet still he will not be king.

Chuckles’ mother, Elizabeth, Queen of England, is 86, and in the midst of a thus far successful life-extension experiment involving sitting around surrounded by Corgis, sipping sherry, and listening to tunes on the iPod that Barack Obama gave her.

Elizabeth’s mother lived to the age of 101. Her life-extension experiment also involved alcohol. So much so that those who prepared her for burial and laid her to rest reportedly did so in flame-retardant clothing.

Chuck, while recently wandering round Dumfries House, referenced his “reputation for pursuing projects with notorious vigour,” thusly:

“Impatient? Me? What a thing to suggest! Yes of course I am.” He added: “I’ll run out of time soon. I shall have snuffed it if I’m not careful.”

Charles has been something of an Eeyore about his throneless state for quite some time.

In 1992, at a hoedown celebrating his mother’s 40th year on the throne, Charles said to his then father-in-law, the Earl of Spencer: “You are fortunate enough to have succeeded to the title when still young.”

In 2004, receiving congratulations from a soldier on attaining his 56th birthday, Charles observed glumly: “I’m now at the age at which my grandfather died.”

Some have suggested that Elizabeth abdicate, and allow Charles to ascend to the throne.

But why should she? She’s queen.

Others opine that Charles shouldn’t take the throne at all, but should allow son William to follow Elizabeth into the big chair. Chuck’s ex-wife, Diana, held this view. The notion that Charles should just sit in the corner gained new adherents in the national afterglow of William’s recent marriage to Kate Middleton. Of course, that marriage is still young, and Kate has yet to exercise such royal prerogatives as taking a lover, and strolling the streets of Paris with him.

Then there is William’s younger brother Harry, who suffers from a tragic birth defect in which he was born without sense. This causes him to do things like join the British armed forces and be deployed to Afghanistan, while strutting around back on the home-front in a swastika armband.

Previously there was an Issue with the British royal family and Nazis. Edward VIII, king of England during the 1930s, when Nazis were actually active, thought them goosesteppers pretty Kool. This might have presented a problem, when the Nazis commenced goosestepping across Europe, had not Edward in 1936 climbed down off the throne so he could climb atop an American divorcee. This was a no-no at the time. Not Nazis. But placing the royal pee-pee inside a woman the primates of the Church of England deemed “morally unacceptable.”

A Maine Thing

Published November 23, 2012 Oddbins , War On Women 12 Comments

I am no longer certain that the people of Maine can claim to be Sane, or even Normal.

First came recent news that a truck rumbled out onto a Maine airport runway, causing a nonplussed plane to crash into it, settle, and burn.

Then, the Maine airways authorities pronounced that the truck had behaved in a way both Sane, and Normal.

Now we hear of the Maine man who pistol-whipped his estranged wife with his pee-pee.

No. I do not make this shit up.

The incident occurred in July, when his wife of 39 years, who was estranged from him, stayed at his place. He offered her $20 for sex, and when she refused, he took out his penis and struck her with it, according to the prosecution’s version of events, to which he pleaded guilty.

Defense Attorney Justin Andrus said Thomas was tremendously upset that his marriage of 39 years was ending. He said his estranged wife was planning to go to Pakistan to meet a man she met online.

“This was not his normal conduct,” Andrus told Justice Jeffrey Hjelm during the sentencing hearing[.]

“Not his normal conduct.” This is good to hear. That it is still considered Not Normal, there in Maine, for this man, or any other man, to whip out his pee-pee, and start flagellating with it some ex-pillow companion, simply because she wants to follow online some man from Pakistan.

Increasingly, there really are no additional words, to add to these stories, of the ways and means, of the Americans.

Time Warp

Published November 23, 2012 Animal Matters , Eros , Eternal Recurrence , Oddbins , Sunday Services 11 Comments

Joe Ratzinger, the ex-Nazi who today wears the big hat in the Catholic Church, has written a book in which he ruefully admits that no one really knows when the hell Jesus of Nazareth was truly born. Seems it’s pretty certain the guy was born earlier than commonly assumed, and as a result all the Christ-centered calendars are completely out of whack.

According to Rats, the Wrongness and Confusion began with one Dionysius Exiguus, a dude rudely dubbed “Dennis the Small.”

“The calculation of the beginning of our calendar—based on the birth of Jesus—was made by Dionysius Exiguus, who made a mistake in his calculations by several years,” the Pope writes in the book[.]

“The actual date of Jesus’s birth was several years before.”

Dennis the Small, who was born in Eastern Europe, is credited with being the “inventor” of the modern calendar and the concept of the Anno Domini era.

The monk’s calendar became widely accepted in Europe after it was adopted by the Venerable Bede, the historian-monk, to date the events that he recounted in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which he completed in AD 731.

The Bible does not specify a date for the birth of Christ. The monk instead appears to have based his calculations on vague references to Jesus’s age at the start of his ministry and the fact that he was baptised in the reign of the emperor Tiberius.

So nobody knows what year the guy popped up. And all the calendars are Wrong. And meanwhile the December 25 date for Jesus’ birth, is just shit made up, a transparent attempt, there back in the day, to accommodate pagans already accustomed to partying each year on the Winter Solstice.

“There is no reference to when he was born in the Bible—all we know is that he was born in the reign of Herod the Great, who died before 1AD,” [Professor John Barton of Oxford University] told The Daily Telegraph. “It’s been surmised for a very long time that Jesus was born before 1AD—no one knows for sure.”

The idea that Christ was born on Dec 25 also has no basis in historical fact. “We don’t even know which season he was born in. The whole idea of celebrating his birth during the darkest part of the year is probably linked to pagan traditions and the winter solstice.”

Also in his book, Rats snarls that those who claim Jesus was born in Nazareth, which he was, rather than in Bethlehem, as the song would have it, are heretics, who in the good old days would simply have been burnt.

Elsewhere in the tome, the vagina-fearing Ratzinger, worldwide head of Occupy Womb Street, foams at the mouth and rolls on the floor at the notion that Jesus was the product of a pee-pee pumping waves and particles into Mary’s holy of holies.

[He] insists that the doctrine of the virgin birth be taken at face value and that it is an “unequivocal” pillar of Christian belief.

In a section of the book entitled “Virgin Birth – Myth or Historical Truth?”, he reaffirms that Christ was not conceived through sexual intercourse but by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The “virgin birth” horseshit was invented in the 2nd Century CE, a couple hundred years after Jesus lay a-molderin’ in the grave, and, like most of the other trappings draped over the guy, it derives from pagan sources.

In his Rat-writ the former Hitler-hewer crossly contends that the angels that attended Jesus’ birth did not sing, but rather spoke, and therefore Christians should bugger off with all the fuggin’ Christmas carols.

He writes that when the gospels refer to the “heavenly host” of angels “praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest”, they in fact spoke the words rather than sang them.

Rats knows that caroling bubbles up from pagan loins, and so he wants it stopped right now.

The Rat-man book is called Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives. With such a title, one might expect that it contains actual verbatim quotes, from the very lips of the young god-man. These can be expected to include:

—”Good milk today, mom. Whatever you’re eating, keep it up.”

—”Frankincense and myrrh, frankincense and myrrh—always frankincense and myrrh. Can’t somebody for once bring some Reese’s Pieces, for chrissake?”

—”I don’t have to listen to you, Joseph. You’re not my real father.”

—”Hey: has anybody invented diapers yet? Maybe a flush toilet?”

And, of course, the immortal:

—”Fuck! I incarnated in this place?”

The Ratzinger tome finally lies that there were no animals present at Jesus’ birth.

[C]ontrary to popular belief, Jesus’s birth was not presided over by oxen, asses, camels or indeed any other beasts.

“There is no mention of animals in the Gospels,” he wrote[.]

Bullshit. What does this guy know? He used to strut around wearing a swastika armband.

Despite what this dope says, it is in truth a well-known Fact that not only were animals all over the dern place, there in the manger, but, furthermore, and because they were so nice that night to the new god-man, he fixed it so that every year, on the night of the anniversary of his birth, all the animals all over the world get to talk in human language, if they feel like it.

Anyone who has ever truly been around animals has witnessed this. I myself have on several occasions provided transcripts.

Maybe if Rats spent more time around animals—not to mention vaginas—he’d have more of a Clue as to what really goes on around this joint.

Maybe he’d even know what time it is.

red