Nirvana? Nevermind.

No hell below us, above us only sky? Maybe. I am on occasion worried about the hell part. Possibly being damned to burn in unbearable pain for eternity amidst the fires of hell is not a prospect I look forward to with relish. Not only can I not tolerate the heat as well as I once could, eternity is such a long time. As for heaven, no matter how clean and pleasant heaven may be, do I want to spend eternity fluttering about with wings on my back and a harp in my hands? Not unless it's a Harp Lager, no. But is the wings and harp thing only for angels, and not everyone in heaven is an angel? I'm not really sure how that all works. I must have missed that day in religion class at the Lutheran grammar school I attended.

And what about this Rapture thing? It was indeed one of Blondie's better songs, but I'm referring to that judgment day business alluded to in the what was apparently the first LSD inspired piece of literature, the book of Revelations. When the Rapture occurs Jesus Christ will return to separate the naughty from the nice, there will be lots of fire and brimstone (what the heck is brimstone anyway?), the naughty will descend into a fiery pit and the nice will ascend to the pearly gates and beyond.

But seriously folks, I don't think it's going to go down that way. I don't think it's going to go down at all. Earth is here forever, and all it's inhabitants as well, at least the ones that don't become extinct.

Earth is heaven and Earth is hell. Right now it is hell. It's hell because of the way we treat each other, with pettiness and ill-will, it's hell because we rape and rob and kill and assault and numb our souls with drugs and alcohol, it's hell because we're all going to the mall instead of going after Bin Laden.

There are flashes of heaven on Earth, flashes that transport us temporarily from our self-created hell. There is love and kindness, there are sunrises and sunsets and blue skies. But mostly we make Earth hell.

God, however, wants Earth to be heaven. His plan for us is that we humans become educated. God wants us to learn. He wants us to learn to love our fellow man, to learn not to kill and hurt and numb ourselves. God wants us all to coexist peacefully.

When peaceful coexistence occurs for generation after generation after generation then we will have heaven on Earth. We will have attained the nirvana God wants for us here on Earth.

Nirvana will only come when mankind truly learns to deal with it's problems, when every last human makes the effort to be good. There are many who try to make the world a better place yet it appears that nirvana keeps slipping farther and farther away. That's why I, pessimistically I'm afraid, feel that Earth will be here forever.

The Clusterf%&#ers: Rudy, Part Three

Here's a little something from Beantown, the apparent home of all the current great sports teams, about the mystifying Republican front-runner for the presidency, Rudy Giuliani. I say "mystifying" since the family values, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage GOP seems to be in love with a pro-choice, gay rights supporting cross dresser on his third marriage.

Giuliani's Iron Fist, by James Carroll of the Boston Globe.

Feelin' Grimm

Spreading freedom and democracy wherever we can

I was listening this past weekend to a show called "Those Were the Days." Hosted by a gentleman named Chuck Schaden, it re-broadcasts programs from the "golden age" of radio, mostly from the late 1930's through the early '50s.

With Halloween coming up, one of the featured broadcasts was the famous October 30, 1938 Orson Welles production of "War of the Worlds." If you're not familiar with it, the story is based on the novel of the same name by H.G. Wells, in which Planet Earth is invaded by unhappy, downright mean and violent, aliens from Mars. This radio production, set in New York and New Jersey, is possibly the most famous radio show of all.

Being a simpler time in America, with no cable tv or Internet or other distractions, many people tuned in to this show, presented partly in the form of news bulletins and with only one commercial interruption, and had the wits scared out of them. When folks heard that Martians were incinerating the US Army at a place called Grovers Mill, New Jersey and were headed for New York City, they panicked. It may just be an urban myth that people ran out of their homes intending to flee the invaders but the show did cause controversy and made Orson Welles a sensation.

The "War of the Worlds" broadcast was very well done and is a lot of fun to listen to, even in this day and age. Yet, while I was listening to the story of Martians invading the United States, I couldn't help but think: Gee, I hope President Bush isn't listening to this show or else he'll try to get us to go to war with Mars.

A Life Lesson from Baseball

My prediction of a Cubs-Red Sox World Series was only half-correct. The Red Sox will face the National League champion Colorado Rockies rather the Chicago Cubs, who are indeed having a bad century, championship-wise.

The Boston Red Sox are a team full of characters and personalities like David "Big Papi" Ortiz, Curt Shilling, Manny Rodriguez and the only player I can think of who seems to be named after a children's cereal, Coco Crisp.

The Colorado Rockies, on the other hand, are an unknown commodity, at least to the world outside Colorado. Not many paid any attention to them during the regular season; I know I didn't. But there is something distinctive about these Rockies, something that sets them apart, not just from other sports teams, but many businesses in general.

A recent article in the New York Times focused on the Rockies organizational goal to choose players with "character", because, according to General Manager Dan O'Dowd, "character is an innate part of developing an organization, and to me, it is nothing more than doing the right thing at the right time when nobody's looking. Nothing more complicated than that."

It has also been implied by the media in the past that the Rockies are trying to construct a Christian based roster. O'Dowd admits his Christian faith affects his decision making but not in terms of choosing players based on their faith but rather on their integrity and moral values.

The team has a Sunday chapel service as well as a Bible study class and, while one player says this team has the highest concentration of devout Christians he has played with during his nine year, seven team career, all players on the Rockies seem comfortable with the emphasis on character, responsibility and accountability.

Now, certainly, there are a lot of people who may mock the idea of Christian values and sports intermingling. If the Colorado Rockies win the World Series will it because God was on their side and forsook the less righteous Red Sox? Personally, and this is a sad commentary on me or the world or both, I'm always a little suspicious of those who claim to have religious faith guiding their lives. Far too many times have I seen people, in all walks of life, allege themselves to be guided by Christ only to prove they have no idea what it means to be a Christian.

But if you think about it, genuine Christian based values, and I emphasize the word "genuine," are really not bad values to run an organization with, be it a baseball team or an insurance company. It would be a good way to run a country as well.

Rockies relief pitcher Jeremy Affeldt says the team is "humbled" to be where it is now and that when he looks around the clubhouse, "I don't see arrogance here, I see confidence."

I think there are a lot of Christians, especially a certain someone in the White House, who could learn a lot from the Colorado Rockies, especially when it comes to responsibility and accountability. It may even be more important for that special someone to be reminded of the Christian emphasis on humility and to understand that arrogance is vastly different from confidence.

The Cluster%&#ers: Stephen Colbert

It's official! Stephen Colbert is now part of the Clusterf%&# to the White House! No longer just a presidential considerer, his hat is now in the ring, along with the 128 or so other candidates for the presidency.

Well, Colbert's got my vote. Or, he would, if I lived in his home state of South Carolina, which is the only state he's running in. And he's running as both a Republican and a Democrat. Shrewd move, Mr. Future President, shrewd move.

I think Colbert embodies what this country needs, a solid liberal Republican-Democratic conservative who will bring truthiness back to Washington. Can South Carolina alone put him over the top? Yes, yes, it cannot. Who knows really? But seriously, let's get Carl Rove and James Carville working on his campaign, and then we'll be getting somewhere (most likely the road to hell). God speed, Stephen Colbert, and God bless.

Mr. President, I have something to say

Comfort Addiction and the eventual triumph of the American Way

Today, October 15, 2007, is Blog Action Day. What's supposed to happen, and what is happening, is that a whole lot of people with blogs are supposed to post about one topic in order to heighten awareness of that topic. Today all the blogs are about the environment.

"Environment." That words covers a lot of territory. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the garbage we dispose of and how we dispose of it. There's a lot to worry about.

And worry I do. I like to think of myself as environmentally conscious, meaning I'm concerned about the negative effects of the earth of my behavior. I do recycle. I bring newspaper and other used paper products to the recycling center here in Wheeling, IL, as well as cans and plastic, rather than just throwing those items in the garbage. (Also, when I become king, littering will be punishable by death. Too stern a punishment you say? Get over it. Too many logistical issues to work out, what with all the litterers in the world? We'll work out the issues. But I digress.)

Does my recycling cancel out the deleterious effects of my driving a fairly sizable, older vehicle, the kind of vehicle in which a family of six could live comfortably in the trunk? No, I' m thinking bringing a couple of bags of newspapers to get recycled every couple of weeks doesn't even things out. But it's a comfortable car, smooth riding and fast, and I like it and I don't want to give it up.

Nor do I want to give up being able to set the air conditioner in summer to "frostbite." On the flip side, seasonally speaking, I like to have heat in the winter. I also like water. I like being able to turn on the tap and get what seems to be an unceasing supply of fresh water.

In general, I like being comfortable. Most Americans do; most people in the industrialized world do too. Even Al Gore does, as evidenced by the the energy sucking home he has in suburban Nashville, although he is making it more energy efficient. The author Kurt Vonnegut said we are addicted to fossil fuels. Well, that's part of it. But in general, we are addicted to comfort.

I want to be able to use my computer or watch tv with a light on that's bright enough for me to see, have a fridge full of edible delectables, and when I get bored with all that I want to jump into my touring automobile and drive across the country, should I so choose. That's what makes me an American. The freedom to do whatever the heck I want, in comfort.

So here's my challenge, America. Figure out a way for me to do what I want, comfortably, and not kill the planet at the same time. I'll continue to recycle, because I think it's a good thing, and I'll continue to shut the lights off when I leave a room.

But I don't want to drive a car that looks like a one-passenger insect just because it might get 100 miles to the gallon. No one else does either. American automakers, figure out a way to build a big-ass car like you used to make before I was born and make it economic fuel-wise.

And that's another thing: Fuel. Oil companies, guess what? Oil is a finite resource. There are only so many dinosaurs and other critters that died in the cause of making us fuel for all our vehicles. All the oil will be sucked out of the earth sooner or later, so how about stepping up to the plate and doing your duty as patriotic Americans, or for you non-Americans companies, good citizens of the world. Look for other ways to fuel our cars and planes and trains. I have faith in you. You will find alternative sources of energy for us all to maintain our comfortable lifestyles. And you will find a way to make an enormous profit doing so. Like I said, I have faith in you.

We here in this country, and people all over the world, cannot allow ourselves to be stuck in the past, because if we stay the course and keep doing what we're doing, we will not have a future. We all need to change the way we think and act regarding energy and the environment. I have faith that the United States of America will lead the rest of the world in discovering new ways to live our lives, the comfortable lives of modern people, in such a fashion that we will be able to have a world not depleted of resources and dying, but rather one that is not merely livable, but rather one that is a joy to live in, where we have clean air and water and land and everyone on the planet has access to enough air, water and land to live a life worth living.

Americans will lead the way to making a better world because Americans will find a way to make money making a better world. It's the American Way.

The Clusterf%&#ers: Rudy Giuliani, Part Two

I don't think I need to make any comment; just watch this video.

Happy belated Columbus Day

When I first heard "Phantom Limb" by the Shins I thought of the Beach Boys. The high pitched harmonies and great pop melody put me in the mind of songs like "God Only Knows" from the Pet Sounds era. At first I was half-hearted about the song, thinking it a bit derivative, but also finding it interesting that a modern band would want to emulate the Beach Boys. I just assumed today's youngsters would find the southern California surf sound a bit antiquated.

The more often I heard "Phantom Limb" the more I liked it, although I must admit I never paid much attention to the lyrics. I was just swept away by the music, dreaming about the sun and ocean breezes.

Today, though, I watched the video for the song on You Tube. I should have known something called "Phantom Limb" would not be about fun, fun, fun nor T-Birds nor anything resembling good vibrations. The video is done up, quite well I think, as a school play depicting some of the darker episodes of North America's conquest by Europeans. (No, I don't really understand the correlation between the songs lyrics and the video's images. I'd also like to mention that not one school play I was ever in gave cannibalism even a passing mention. Perhaps I'm the lesser for it. Then again, perhaps not.) It's an interesting video and a great song, a pop rock wonder, but when I hear it from now on I would prefer to retain my delusions and let the song conjure up images of warm and sunny beaches rather than conquistadors and sheep beheadings.

The Smell of the Dairy Air

I love the smell of manure in the morning. Well, not really. I don't love it, or even like it, in the morning or at any other time. However, the aroma of manure, emanating from a Wisconsin dairy farm and wafting through an open car window, does bring back pleasant memories.

A friend asked me not long ago why I enjoyed road trips to Wisconsin so much. This was during the summer when my wife and I had either been to or were going to visit Door County one weekend and an art festival in the capitol city of Madison on another weekend.

There's much to like about the Dairy State. The people are friendly, there are many picturesque places to visit and there are ample amounts of beer, fudge and cheese available, enough for everyone who lives there and visits from other states to get their fill.

I suppose, though, one reason I keep returning is a need to go back to where I had some of the most fun of my childhood. In my long lost youth of the 1970s my parents would take me once a summer, sometimes even twice, to Wisconsin Dells. The area was, and still is, sort of like Vegas for children; what happens there, stays there. At least until somebody cleans it up.

There was an attraction named Fort Dells, a cross between an amusement park and a replica of a fort from the 1800s where once an hour a bloodless shootout was staged between the notorious criminal Black Bart and the nameless good guys. We knew the good guys from the bad guys by the color of their hats, bad guys in black, good guys in white. Fort Dells also had a tower where you could ride to the top in a slowly spinning car and survey the surroundings. How this mini space needle fit in with the fort motif, I'm not sure, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

There was Tommy Bartlett's Water Show, boat rides on the Wisconsin River, a park with tame deer that would eat food bought from a vending machine stocked with deer chow right from your hand and the famous Ducks. These Wisconsin Ducks were World War II surplus vehicles that could drive on land and float on water. They had once sailed in Mediterranean waters and stormed the beaches at Anzio and now they were hauling kids and their parents through the woods and into the Wisconsin River. It was a lot of fun and I still remember the Duck driver saying, as he passed along side a steep ridge in the forest with nothing but chicken wire between us and the depths below, "If the wire can hold a chicken, it can hold a duck." Years later, when my wife and I went on a Duck ride, the driver told the same joke. It is, apparently, a tradition.

But I digress away from the foul stench of manure on a hot summer day. When one drives in Wisconsin one will pass dairy farms. Dairy farms often smell like manure. This is the aroma, the smell of the dairy air entering through the window of a speeding car on a summer day, that transports me to my youth. It does so whenever we drive somewhere in Wisconsin in the summer and I smell that smell. (I also remember the smell of my father's unfiltered Chesterfields, but the smell of cigarette smoke holds no sway with me; I just find it annoying.)

So there you have it. It is nostalgia for my youth spurred by a warm summer malodorousness that lures me to Wisconsin every year. That and the beer, cheese and fudge.

Dowd, but not dowdy

There is nothing sexier than a redhead with a sarcastic and superior intellect. In this opinion piece, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times is right on target about the least qualified Supreme Court justice.

I Did Do It by Maureen Dowd, New York Times

The Clusterf%&#ers: Rudy Giuliani

With all apologies to "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and their segment entitled "Clusterf%&# to the White House," here is the first of what will be many installments of my thoughts on the plethora of presidential candidates. First up, America's Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani:

Yeah, well, America's Mayor, my rear end. America's Mayor has an Irish surname, as, really, any good politician should, and was born in Bridgeport on Chicago's South Side.

Giuliani is an interesting character. On his website, he speaks of deporting all the illegal aliens. Ok, not a bad idea. They're not supposed to be here, let's send 'em back to where they came from. Last count though, there were about 12 millions illegals in this country and Rudy doesn't give any specifics as to how you round up 12 million people and send them home, not to mention how one would deal will the children of illegals who were born in the US, thereby making them American citizens. What kind of humongous outlay of resources is this going to take? Will Giuliani do what Bush did and create another useless governmental body like the Department of Homeland Security in order to deal with the illegal alien deportations?

Giuliani does strike a Reagan-esqe note when he speaks of fiscal responsibility on the part of the government. He sounds downright thoughtful when he speaks about things like keeping government spending in check, but he goes off the rails a bit when he gets all worked up about 9/11 and the days afterward, when he kept the city of New York from descending into chaos. He did a good job by many accounts, but he was not "one of them" as he put it recently, not one of the first responders he speaks of so often on the campaign trail, to the dismay of some. Giuliani was not digging through rubble, pulling out remains of fire fighters and police officers and office workers and inhaling who knows what kind of toxins. He was not truly "one of them."

Ultimately, Giuliani is self-obsessed and self-absorbed. You think Bill Clinton loved the limelight as president (and after)? If this guy gets elected he'll try to have a nightly show, on Fox of course, broadcast from the Oval Office. And his personal life? Again, if you think Clinton was bad, just wait for the Giuliani Show to begin. When he was mayor, he announced to the press he was divorcing his second wife, Donna Hanover. Unfortunately, he hadn't yet told her. Giuliani's two children with Hanover are not on speaking terms with him and he no longer seems to play an active part in their lives, or any part at all really. These things happen when divorces get ugly, but I don't think any of this bodes well for a Republican candidate, the GOP being the party that constantly speaks of "family values."

Sometimes you get a vibe where you look at a person and sometimes you just don't like that person. Giuliani is one of those guys for me. He gives me the creeps. I don't want him to be president, and I don't think he will be. Mitt Romney, the Ken doll of American politics, will be the Republican candidate. And Giuliani will have to find some other ways to get attention.

Wait until next year

Well, the Cubs went a very disappointing and surprising 3-and-out, so my prediction of a Cubs-Red Sox World Series will not come to pass this year. There is still hope for Boston to get in though, as they are 2 up on the California or Anaheim or Los Angeles or whatever Angels.

A Gent With No Land

"As a gentleman, he was supposed to eschew working for a living," reads a passage from Thomas Jefferson: A Life, by William Sterne Randall. Now, eschewing working for a living sounds pretty much the way I've been living my life lo these last 43 years. However, eschewing working for a living does unfortunately make for a poor cash-flow situation.

Jefferson, though, was one of the landed gentry. Randall quotes Daniel Defoe's definition of the gentry as " 'such who live on estates and without the mechanism of employment.' " Ah, there's the rub. While I meet the definition for lacking the mechanism of employment I also lack the estate.

Jefferson, and others of his place and time, were born into a certain amount of wealth and lived on large Virginia plantations. These estates allowed men like Jefferson to earn income while cultivating a love of literature and culture in general. There was expected to do something with their lives; they were expected to become "men of letters, such as clergy, lawyers, and physicians," but these were supposed to be more avocations than jobs, done without the idea of making money at them. That's what the estate was for and that's what I need. An estate. Others can till the land while I spend my days reading and enriching myself, occasionally leaving the house to make sure everybody is doing what they're supposed to be doing.

Let's face facts though: it's not going to happen. It's way too late for me to be born into a higher income class and, to be honest, the days of the estate may be long gone, at least the kind where the master of the house was inclined to spend his days intellectually improving himself. Texas ranches are akin in size to the estates of old, and similarly, have ranch hands to do the everyday labor while the master does whatever it is he does. Sometimes, what the master does is "public service," and when he comes home from his public service position at the White House for an extended period of rest (how does one survive without a six week vacation?), the master will roll up his sleeves and clear some brush, just as any man's man would do, for about as long as it takes to photograph him doing that, and then he will drive his air-conditioned SUV back to his air-conditioned luxury ranch house. But I digress.

Fire lookouts, people who sit in a high tower in the middle of a forest keeping an eye peeled for smoke (because where there's smoke there's fire) are not exactly members of the landed gentry class. But they do oversee a vast domain of land, something I've always wanted to do. And they have a lot of time to read and think, as long as they are able to spot a fire when they need to. The scenery is most likely beautiful and you even get paid to do it, although not that much. All this appeals to me, but alas, I am again a little late to the party. Lookouts are increasingly being replaced by technology; where there are only 800 manned lookouts now, in the 1930s there were 8,000. Just as I missed being among Jefferson's peers by a few centuries, I kind of missed the glory years of looking out by a few decades.

War and the things we bury

I've been watching "The War," the new Ken Burns documentary about World War II on PBS. It's been impossible to get through the episodes I've seen without tearing up at least a little bit. Some men recall their combat experiences, the first time in their lives they had ever been exposed to that level of violence in an up close and personal nature. Other men recall the brutal conditions they suffered through as Japanese prisoners of war, the beatings and the torture, the days, months and years of near starvation. There are women too. One was a young American girl living in the Philippines with her family when the Japanese took over and eventually made her and her family prisoners of war. Another woman was a nurse tending to wounded GIs, who on occasion could offer no more help than to hold the hand of a soldier as he slipped away to meet his maker.

Death and deprivation are pervasive in "The War," both on the battlefield and on the homefront. Burns focused on four small American towns from Watertown, CT to Sacramento, CA and we see how difficult it could be for parents and wives and friends to wait, wait and dread the arrival of a telegram from the government saying their loved one had died. There would be no reunion for them, not back on the farm in Minnesota, not on the front stoop of a house in Mobile, Alabama. A lot of men, more than many probably expected, just weren't coming home again.

What strikes me is how those who survived and returned, and the people they returned to, dealt with the war once it was over. Some admittedly held on to some anger, such as the anger one man kept inside regarding his Japanese captors. But even he, and so many others, seemingly picked up where they left off and went on to lead a normal existence, almost as if this thing that had taken over 100,000 American lives and killed millions world-wide, had never happened.

How does one go back to the farm or the office or the gas station or the bank or wherever with the memories one must have had? Did one think about seeing his best friend shot to pieces in a battle? Or does one repress it as much as possible in order to live life again and try to pursue happiness?

The "good guys" certainly must have repressed a lot and that repression probably took a lot out of them. But just what did it take for the "bad guys" to bury inside them the knowledge of what they were doing, terrorizing humanity and exterminating humans in so many inhuman ways?

Recently, I came across an article in the New York Times about an online display of newly found photographs from Auschwitz, presented by the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. They are not the photos we have grown familiar with, of dead, emaciated bodies stacked like cordwood, or families huddled together in a grossly overcrowded train car. No, these photos are of Nazis on their break time, their cigarette time, their leisure time. Genocide can be so exhausting, what with the crematoriums breaking down and all, they just get used so much you know, a Nazi really does need to stop and smell the roses once in a while.

In one photo, a member of the SS lights a Christmas tree, in another photo, a group of SS sing, in another, women are eating bowls of blueberries. What kind of delusional thoughts allowed them to go on like that, to go on with a normal existence while they send Jews and the other "undesirables" of Europe to the gas chambers? How deep did they repress the feelings they must once have had, of charity and kindness towards their fellow man? Or did they never have those feelings to begin with?

A Strange Intersection

We have arrived at a truly strange intersection, one where marketing meets nostalgia meets the creativity of one of the 20th-century's greatest artists meets the creativity/self-indulgence of a guy in Wheeling, IL meets internet technology. This is what the resulting crash looks like.

Beating a dead horse

Despite a previous post of mine, I honestly don't have anything against Marcel Marceau (I do hate mimes though; they rank lower than clowns in my book and there's only two clowns I like, Bozo and Krusty), but this is a pretty funny joke, as told by David Letterman on his Late Show:
"Marcel Marceau died. He mimed, 'Call an ambulance!' By the time they figured out, it was too late. Finally, after all these years, he really is trapped in a box."