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Welcome!

I, God, welcome you to my blog!

The good book says only God is good, so it seems to me somebody needs to step up.

I hope you enjoy reading this, the Jesse Journal, as much as I have enjoyed writing it. Please feel free to subscribe, write me an email, request that I write about any particular topic you may want my perspective on, send a prayer, click on the charity link, or donate money to my bicycle fund! Have fun!

Your pal, Jess
Ladies- I'm a single, straight, virgo/boar INTJ (age 51) who enjoys books, getting out into nature, music, and daily exercise.

(my email is JesseGod@live.com)

F.Y.I. There are about 2200 posts..

Here's a quote from Fyodor Dostoevsky to start things off right: Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Sanity and Music

Is anyone on earth sane?










Wikipedia link to Sanity

Sanity quotes
The body must be repaired and supported, if we would preserve the mind in all its vigor. -Pliny the Younger

There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business. -James Russell Lowe

I used to be able to make all my other circumstances subservient to my art. I admit, however, that by so doing I became a bit crazy. -Ludwig van beethoven

Ordinarily he is insane, but he has lucid moments when he is only stupid. -Heinrich Heine

Every man has a sane spot somewhere. -att'd to Robert Louis Stevenson

Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be! -Miguel de Cervantes

Of course, in an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too. -Saul Bellow

The statesmen of the world who boast and threaten that they have Doomsday weapons are far more dangerous, and far more estranged from 'reality,' than many of the people on whom the label 'psychotic' is affixed. -R.D. Laing

I am quite sure that a good number of 'cures' of psychotics consist in the fact that the patient has decided, for one reason or other, once more to play at being sane. -R.D. Laing

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you. -Carl Gustav Jung

Sanity is not truth. Sanity is conformity to what is socially expected. Truth is sometimes in conformity, sometimes not. -Robert M. Pirsig

The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people, but if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials. -att'd to Mark Twain

And no treatment of sanity would be sane without the music, so here's 21 songs to help you on your quest (although Roy Masters said on the radio once that listening to music (too much?) was a form of insanity, itself):



Did all that help you answer my question? lol.

Let's see; wisdom gleaned: the mind is a function of a healthy body, busy-ness, proper prioritization....insanity is viewed as worse than stupidity...talking about sanity evokes weird metaphors ("a sane spot"?...insane in 98% of the membrane, lol)..including TOO MUCH SANITY can be a form of madness... and everyone is touched by it because we live in an insane age (historically, when was it sane? and how soon can it be, again)...psychotic is a label that means next to nothing in the bigger picture, where esteemed leaders have fingers on doomsday buttons...sanity and insanity can be roles to play (and most often are?)...some of us want to be insanely sane...but there's a risk that some (relatively) insane person(s) will try to cure you. You can be in pursuit of truth, or pursuit of conformity/community, in your pursuit of happiness, and they may take different paths. Consensus reality might not actually be (as real as it should be?).

Bugs Bunny Goes Insane:

Thursday, March 26, 2009

New Kindles for Prisoners!!

I think people in jail or prison should be given jail versions of something like, if not actually, the new kindle. The content could be screened, the selection could be approved, and the prisoners could be educated, entertained, distracted, and rewarded.

This is my new cause :-)

Send a letter to your congressperson!
-Jess

Okay, so how I envision it is in single-occupancy cells, so it can't be used as a weapon, but it can be used as an escape...into the many worlds of books. It would carry the available reading inside it, and could not be used to hack into the police database, obviously. It might be alot sturdier (unbreakable?) than the pencil-thin versions used for this new kindle 2.0. Also, I imagine it would have a selection of things pre-loaded into it like the law, bible, etc. It could hold oodles (thousands) of books, so experiences of other prisoners could be on there, ETC..

also
-Different people could get differently customized readers?
-The inmates could provide some kind of service (like reading books onto tape? science?) that would provide the 'income' for purchasing the books they want. Ideally, I would like everything in the library of congress available for free, but maybe that wouldn't be prudent.

As another, related, idea: Why don't congresspersons have kindles that have access to the entire library of congress?? Best Idea Ever! (if I do say so, myself). Maybe us lowly folk might be able to get them, too, sometime.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Solving the Problem Problem

1. The problem problem.
By this, I mean: people are overwhelmed by a sense that they are powerless to solve the myriad problems facing us both individually and collectively. There are just too many problems, it seems, and the list keeps getting longer. So the problem problem, defined, is that people give up because of a can't do attitude. It's a sense of being overwhelmed, and feeling small. Right now, there's this ridiculous notion that we're in the end times. I hate to break it to you, but time will last forever. It never began, and it will never end, so yeah, from that point of view, you're just a blip, but you might as well be a happy blip, making other happy blips. And don't let me hypnotize you into a sense of smallness, meaninglessness, and despair: 100 years or whatever is a pretty long blip! Enough doom and gloom.

solutions:
1)Just take baby steps. Solve one problem at a time. It feels good. Don't ever give up. Give your life meaning. Don't ever give in to feeling you can't make a difference, or that life is absurd (even if it is). Be motivated by getting sweaty and sleeping well at night, having taken concrete steps to make a better world. Also, of course, a big motivation for me is seeing people smile. Love everything, and have a positive attitude, no matter what. But don't be phony. Fall in love. Be a hero, and spread joy wherever you go. So solution 1 to the problem problem is Action, keeping busy taking action, never quit. (which is not to say that needed, revitalizing naps aren't good).

2)I have an idea to make the internet a thriving medium for solving problems, large and small, of any type. It kind of already is. I think the world wide web should be an international phenomenon in which everybody is helping everybody solve one another's problems. Answers and solutions need to find their problems, and vice versa. I checked out 'problem.com' and got an essay by a professor about the recent Israel vs. Hamas garbage. That's one of (what, millions?) of problems. So solution 2 to the problem problem is creating an architecture online that allows users to submit problems, as well as submit solutions, in an easily navigable format. All problems have their solutions, and there are more than enough of both to keep us all busy for awhile. So solution 2 to the problem problem is connecting the solutions to every problem. Maybe I'm being a bit crackpot. I mean, supply usually meets demand, and there's plenty of gardening/self-help/legal advice, and whatever, at your local library. Still...

3)I have another perspective, and solution, to the problem problem. The problem problem can also be defined as a sense of bewilderment before the grand scale of problems we face, and what should one do first, or where should one begin. It's a matter of prioritizing. The book Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems, by the Copenhagen Consensus, prioritized their 23 problems through econometric modelling and CBA (cost:benefit analysis). That's really good. Let's do it. But there's more to it than economics. Well, first of all, I'm convinced that if everyone wasn't busy running away from their problems, and instead attacked them head-on, we'd have an even better world, with far fewer, if any, problems. So just an attitude of keep 'em coming, and plugging away at everything as it comes, is a solution in itself. Don't procrastinate, stay on top of your problems, and free up time to help others with theirs. If all your basic needs are met, and you're living comfortably, and you want to be a good person, you probably want to help where it makes the most difference. I have a sense that some problems are more important than others. Buying a Bentley is less important than buying a van that brings a portable library to children in subsaharan Africa, or something (like feeding the starving). Society has it's priorities all screwed up, placing personal consumption ahead of and instead of health and happiness for all. Perfection, however, is a state without any problems, i.e. heaven. So, to reiterate, as long as you're doing something, I'm not complaining. But if you can save the world in the same amount of time it takes to save some coupons, well, obviously... So this prioritization of problems could be a feature of this problem.com architecture, according to what problems, if solved, will help other problems get solved faster. All problems are inter-related, but I believe there's a snowball effect, as the juggernaut of Solutions makes a bigger and bigger impact, as key problems get solved before the more minor ones. Just imagine if 6.7 billion people would all be collectively solving our planet's problems! Selfishness and greed are a hefty problem, that hinders the service-mentality that would evaporate all the troubles we face. So, the 3rd solution to the problem problem is to get everybody in problem solving mode (as if there was a war happening, the politicians keep saying, which really gets people excited), and for people to really put some effort into getting their heads around the various criteria we should adopt toward prioritization, sequencing, and where to begin to ultimately achieve a global nirvana, heaven, and maximally problem-free reality.

We need focus. One thing at a time, for each of us. All things at the same time, for all of us. Easy does it. Git r' done. Love is all you need. It's all logistics.

Wait...did I just solve the problem problem problem? lol.

Link I found on May 6. Because I'm a global telepath? Or my thoughts are the collective (un)conscious? Dunno, really, but maybe my blog is actually causing something.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Crisis Overload

Whoever said life's a bitch, they sure weren't kidding

I majored in International Relations, Third World studies at UC Davis. I got my minor in Spanish. From childhood, basically from the point in second grade at St. Stephen's when I collected coin from my family into that little folding box with the picture of the african child with the distended belly.... I have wanted to Do Good.

Now that I have read the bible, and have schizoaffective disorder (the diagnosis, anyway), I want to do good in my own way, in whatever ways I can. This blog has kind of taken over my life. The bible says only God is good. So, presto, I make myself God. And I decree everyone else is God, too. Pretty simple stuff. And since I'm not supposed to work, I'll do my best from home to spread the memes that will change the world. Thus, this.

I remember at college, every class, every professor seemed to be all about spreading the word about a litany of problems facing the world; and it seems to me academia is basically in the business of collecting problems. It was only rarely that you ever got hope from some discussion about concrete actions people were taking to solve these problems. In other words, it seemed like people were full of themselves, and liked to listen to themselves talk and feel smart.

I'm afraid of falling into that category, myself.

So I'm going to take stock of, and enumerate, all the problems I've addressed thus far in my blog. Then I'm going to attempt to compile all the ways people, from whatever situation we might be in, can actually Do Something About The Problem. That will make me feel better about essentially being a blowhard, like everybody else. I want consequences, effects, reaction, results. Git r' done. Just do it. Act now. No better time than the present. Alright?

1)

XDRTB

Scary. xdrtb. Extreme Drug Resistant Tuberculosis.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

What to do, what to do

Developing Countries
help your fellow man
"If you're bored, you're boring"

Developing Countries (but there's room for improvement everywhere)
Pick a card, any card...
Afghanistan ; Ashraf Ghani's TED talk (finance minister).
Albania
Algeria
Angola
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belize
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia
Botswana
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Brazil
Brunei Darussalam
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Cape Verde
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
Colombia
Comoros
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Republic of the Congo
Costa Rica
Côte d'Ivoire
Croatia
Czech Republic
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Estonia
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Fiji
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Ghana
Grenada
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hungary
Indonesia
India
Iran
Iraq
Jamaica
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kiribati
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Lithuania
Republic of Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Mauritania
Mauritius
Moldova
Mongolia
Montenegro
Morocco
Mozambique
Myanmar
Namibia
Nauru
Nepal
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
Oman
Pakistan
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Qatar
Romania
Russia
Rwanda
Samoa
São Tomé and Príncipe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Slovakia
Solomon Islands
Somalia
Sri Lanka
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Sudan
Suriname
Swaziland
Syria
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Timor-Leste
Togo
Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Tuvalu
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Developing Countries without economy
Cuba
North Korea
Developing Countries with economy, but not listed by IMF
Palestine

some thoughts:
Be Good. Do Good. Think and Say Good. (only) God is good.
Each location, each person in fact, deserves a customized response....
Development: We must seek growth, not perfection
(not just economic growth, silly -it's a personal improvement mantra)
St. Ignatius motto: Be a man for others.
Boy Scout slogan: Do a good turn daily.
Song lyric: One world is enough for all of us.
(not 3rd, 4th, 5th worlds) -d.e. quote

Basic 'good"
Meet Basic Needs for all: food, shelter, clothing.
(tasty, nutritious, enough)
(protect from the elements, warmth, comfortable, style)
-look good-feel good

Positive atmosphere: Safety & Security, Comfort, Health, (mental and physical)
(peace, no war or conflict, conflict resolution, peace officers, properly sized social units -1 world, working together, no militaries, wasteful military expenditure, economy structured to protect against starvation, homelessness, that provides new shoes or whatever, and provides peace of mind, human right to healthcare).

mental health:
PLUS: Friendship, Companionship, Relationships, Community
(if loners prefer isolation, they should not suffer psychically, however)(community spirit, everybody about helping everybody out, all for one, one for all)

silly sayings
You only need peace when the world is in pieces? Inner peace.
May the rest of your life be the best of your life: continual growth, betterment, improvement.

(We all live in a yellow submarine, we're all in the same boat, it's a global village, spaceship earth. Live together, or die separately). Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me. (Let it be gin?) Make love, not war. All you need is love. Just say no. Go climb a rock.

*One of my professor's recommendations: Pick a place, learn the language and culture and history, and go make yourself indispensable to your country.

I say: You're God, throw your weight around. Make a better world.
Some say: hello; I say heaveno. Kinda dumb. Forgive me, oh gods, for I have sinned.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Biggest News Story

Death by Poverty
-To me, it looks like a modern-day holocaust. (With the whole world as the complicit (racist?) nazis). I'm talking about perhaps 100k deaths/day. (!)

Here's the link to the story (from '05).

-(bigger picture) Death rate: Overall, around 100 people die every minute, for a total of 146,000 every day, all ages, all causes, around the world (That's 53.29M total human deaths a year). -forgot to document the source, sorry. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this. Everyone dies. But...

-The 20,000 figure in the '05 article refers to the number who die of "extreme poverty."
That's 7.3M/year, (or about 13.79% of the 53M, mostly children).
(aside: what percentage of extreme poverty deaths are adult?)

-It's 4 years later. So the question becomes: Less or more? And how soon til Zero?

This article, from 2/17/07, says (only!) 18,000 children die of poverty daily (6.57M/yr) while
This website says 30,000 children die of poverty daily. That's 11M/year. (source?year?)
So who knows, right?
One is too many, of course. The world can rise to meet this basic need. Heck, maybe even Barack could.

more data:
-Wikipedia's article on 'death rate' says this about the year 2006:
"According to Jean Ziegler (the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food for 2000 to March 2008), mortality due to malnutrition accounted for 58% of the total mortality in 2006: "In the world, approximately 62 millions people, all causes of death combined, die each year. In 2006, more than 36 millions died of hunger, or diseases due to deficiencies in micronutrients"[1].

So we have various answers: 6.57M ('07)c, 7.3M ('05), 11M (?)c, 36M ('06),
with a c next to the figures that only count children.

-So how did 7.3M become 36M, in one year?? And how did 13.8% of death become 58%? What is it now, and why? Hunger is a painful way to die, I've heard. Maybe, to be technical, the two sources weren't measuring the same thing. Either way, death through poverty subtracts. All of us Make A "Difference" every day, it seems, through a near universal sweeping under the rug of this atrocity of a lack of compassion and action. Evil exists. Neglect and willfully abstaining from feeding children, in my view, is bad. 20k may have become 98,630 (36M/365) deaths a day, instead. I ask, is it really "all good"? In one year, a 5-fold increase in preventable death...and mostly children. Robot brain says: can...not...deal...must....watch...the office... Sure hope I'm not a part of the disease.

-Egads, brain. (Must...break....free...be...part...of....sol..u..tion)
Mr. Sachs thinks we might solve this over the next 15 years, by 2025.

-I'm officially declaring STARVATION to be priority one. I mean, duh. Ugh. I should be positive. Alright! Just do it! Sara just had me dance in the kitchen to American Boy by Estelle feat. Kanye West. Kind of a strange juxtaposition, there. Danse Macabre?

-With these kinds of facts, I just wonder if the supposedly sane aren't completely delusional. I mean, you can only operate under 'live and let die' up to a certain point, right? Why the hell can't we as a human race get our shit together?

One more:
Anup Shah, Today, over 26,500 children died around the world, GlobalIssues.org, Last updated: Thursday, January 31, 2008

okay, two:
I think this is where he got his info:
From a 2003 Johns Hopkins paper, as follows:
"More than 10 million children die each year, most from preventable causes and almost all in poor countries. Six countries account for 50% of worldwide deaths in children younger than 5 years, and 42 countries for 90%. The causes of death differ substantially from one country to another, highlighting the need to expand understanding of child health epidemiology at a country level rather than in geopolitical regions. Other key issues include the importance of undernutrition as an underlying cause of child deaths associated with infectious diseases, the effects of multiple concurrent illnesses, and recognition that pneumonia and diarrhoea remain the diseases that are most often associated with child deaths. A better understanding of child health epidemiology could contribute to more effective approaches to saving children's lives."

-The data is a bit fuzzy, I'll admit. The population of Nigeria is obscure, for example, and the stats fluctuate, and the most current counts probably aren't available.

Also from Wikipedia (Wikipedia needs internal consistency):
-Approximately 27 percent of children under 5 in developing world are malnourished, and in these developing countries, malnutrition claims about half of the 10 million deaths each year of children under 5.

-1 person dies every second as a result of hunger - 4000 every hour - 100 000 each day - 36 million each year - 58 % of all deaths (2001-2004 estimates).[14][15][16]

-1 child dies every 5 seconds as a result of hunger - 700 every hour - 16 000 each day - 6 million each year - 60% of all child deaths (2002-2008 estimates).[17][18][19][20][21]

-There were 923 million hungry people in the world in 2007, an increase of 80 million since 1990,[10] despite the fact that the world already produces enough food to feed everyone - 6 billion people - and could feed the double - 12 billion people.[11]

-Wikipedia link to Malnutrition.

-Here's a quote from the CIA factbook: "The addition of 80 million people each year to an already overcrowded globe is exacerbating the problems of pollution, desertification, underemployment, epidemics, and famine. Because of their own internal problems and priorities, the industrialized countries devote insufficient resources to deal effectively with the poorer areas of the world, which, at least from an economic point of view, are becoming further marginalized."
-The CIA also says the GWP (Global World Product) is 70.65T ppp (purchasing power parity), and that military spending is 2% of that, roughly....which would be, "roughly", 1.413T dollars. Wake up and stop avoiding all this shit! That is an humongous amount of measurable evil, in my view. Unless we really want to start saying that murder is good. Yes, I AM saying military expenditure = murder. I really don't want to hear that weapons systems don't kill people. They kill in two ways: opportunity cost, and in their usage. Militaries, bad. War, evil.

-Anyway, back to the main topic, a)hunger, b)extreme poverty, c)lack of micronutrients claim now, what...near 100k, or "just" 20k per day?

Does anyone care? Do the powers that be want military spending to result in some winnowing down of global overpopulation? All in the name of feeling militarily "strong" while bodies (and arms, I might add) rot, bloat, and weaken? Using CIA factbook data, I calculate 0.823% (est. '09 world death rate) of 6.76B (current pop.) is 55,634,800 dead per year. That's 152,424 dead/day (from all causes). But there's 137M births per year, for a net gain of 81.3652M new human souls on our island paradise called earth a year. An extra 222k/day. The CIA says, and I quote, "already overcrowded." Of course, I don't trust the CIA, necessarily. But it sounds right. Keeping in mind, however, that Hitler wanted liebensraum (living space) for his superior Aryans, which should set off some bells. Remember, 36,000,000 dead in 2006 from hunger or diseases resulting from micronutrient deficiency.

Hunger or Diseases Resulting from Micronutrient Deficiency. (H or Dr. from M.D.) How bout them apples. The holocaust murdered 6 million jews. This is 6 holocausts in one year. Mostly unreported. Plus, there's abortion. God damn. Okay, so it's only one holocaust, you got me.

So is overpopulation/the threat or sense of overpopulation...Is this a motive for institutional neglect, if not outright ill will? We must never lose our humanity. Or is it already in the lost and found box. We should look.

-How many children die from poverty now, like what percent? Anup Shaw's figure of 26,500 child deaths a day (up to what age? 5 or 14?) sums to 9,672,500 child deaths a year, like basically around 10m. So 17.3857% of all deaths are of children, at the moment.

-Also, what percentage of death is preventable? That would be an even larger number, including things like overeating and smoking and refraining from lifestyle change, for example from people not doing physical labor to clean up garbage and build sewers and all the rest.

-So I've got info from '03, '05, and '06. It's bad no matter how you slice it. Btw, I'm not saying we should be adding 90 or 100 million new souls per year to our planet, instead of just 80M. But we should commit to the survival and thriving of children, once born (and, I would add, once conceived). Large families (average family size, that is) become smaller after some threshold of income, I believe. Parents will have less kids if they can reliably trust in the survival of their offspring, I think, too. We can have our development, and living dead, too. I mean, effective lifesaving global policy, too.

I believe in being Sisyphean. No matter how absurd, pointless, futile things can seem, we must derive meaning from our endurance and willingness to keep rolling the ball up the hill. I will not be drugged into oblivion, and forced to watch crappy commercials and meaningless programming with laugh tracks telling me shitty jokes are actually funny, while paris is burning, or was it rome. Obviously, some of my stats are outdated. If it's not 100,000 dead per day, it's only 16,000. That's encouraging and hopeful, actually. There's a story there, lurking between the lines. Keep on truckin'. So there. Gr.

This post puts the 'inter' in internet. It serves as a lesson to double-check, and attempt to get the most current, internet statistics. 16k or a 100k deaths per day, it still really sucks. I'll use the secret and make my request to the universe: 1) No preventable death/everyone in good health 2)enjoyable and happy and comfortable, with minimal pain or suffering, life. And 3)Sustainability and wise governance. See, even God prays.

Barack is currently working on the economy, and has an ambitious agenda to enact appreciable change in education, energy, and healthcare. I hope he doesn't forget the ROW (rest of world), and especially the developing world, as part of his healthcare reform.

But wait, I should empower myself, I mean, I'm God and all. Let there be health! And it was so.

Monday, March 9, 2009

God's response to Religulous

Caligula, arugula, ridiculous...













-Does Bill Maher's movie pronounce the G re-LIG-you-luss or re-lidge-youluss?

-The movie, now matter how it's pronounced, is as absurd as the bible says everything is, I would have to say. The bible says God believes everything is futility and nonsense. Even love, I guess.

God approves his and this message. It meets the seal of approval. No, it's not one of the 7 seals.

-Religion is a way (that tries) to make sense of the madness, give meaning and importance to lives that, truth be told, only have as much meaning as one gives to it. There's nothing wrong with institutional lies. You reflect on them, and learn the truth by assembling data and arguments that refute the sillinesses. Or you believe them, which makes for an interesting, if not entertaining, world. Figuring things out for yourself gives you a stronger hold on Truth and Reality. Your view of self can be the ruler of the universe (in your own head, if not anyone else's), or head of household, or a worm, and you'll still be as infinitely small and unimportant in the grand (supposed) scheme of things (or as large and crucial) as anyone else. That's what I believe. Maybe there is a grand poo-bah in the sky. There are movie stars and politicians and historically important people and geniuses, but at heart we're all the same, in my view. Unfortunately, people are likely to think their perspective applies to everyone else, too. I think people can quite often be misguided about what they should do to make others happy. Because people are different, the golden rule can sometimes be rotten. And people may just eat what isn't shoved down their throats.

-we say there's a scheme, incidentally, when it's all a bunch of sturm und drang (storm and stress), noise, motion, and complex unfolding of fate, it seems, where all of us are like billiard balls and God holds the Q. Would you rather hit the balls or be knocked around, lol.

Aside: Either fate is good, and designed by a grand schemer, or we each are free to scheme up our own lives, as our own gods. What a horrible theology it would be to think we are all satan's pawns, and we are all fated for death, suffering, torment, and punishment for not being perfect, by some mysterious criteria. I think life is a big mess, and we clean it up in our heads through all sorts of ways, often at variance. Beliefs are funny things. Almost too easy to make fun of, at times.

Maybe fate exists without any God, and my sense of being a first mover is delusional. Maybe we are all free participants in everyone else's fate, and as Jesus said, we don't know what we're doing. We all make waves, and some waves are bigger than others, and some waves are constructive and others destructive. Stillness and peace and calm and tranquility is important.

The movie begins atop Meggido, from which the word Armageddon is derived, with Bill Maher introducing a particularly bizarre bit of Christian theology, in which Jesus is supposed to come at the end of the world, and save only those who believe in his name. That would be Yeshua, right? Yeshua, 7. Jesus Christ, 7. Am I being asked to believe in 7, at the cost of not being "saved", whatever that means.

A "savior" is usually conceived as being an anti-negative. Saved from death or torment, etc. But any savior worth his salt, in my view, would be pro-positive, and be a maker of heavenly experience, such as being in love. So God is like that cherub with the bow and arrow. If God is love, then ultimate happiness would be being IN GOD. Which can be taken literally, in two ways. For me, it could be being inside my wife, hubba hubba, or I should start eating people (since I'm not really about insertion). Or, God could be taken to mean the world, and those who are "out of it" (it being God) are in some sense removed from reality, or delusional and/or psychotic. Delusional means having false beliefs, and psychotic means being in a mental state caused by psychiatric or organic illness, characterized by a loss of contact with reality and an inability to think rationally. A psychotic person often behaves inappropriately and is incapable of normal social functioning. This is all defined by consensus. Consensus reality is a bitch, if you're an atheist or agnostic, sometimes. Virtually everyone is delusional, in my opinion. Not that I care, necessarily. A delusional reality may very well be much more enjoyable than a horrifying truth. Reality has to be good, even when it clearly isn't, for so many. I guess reality gets converted into happy wellness one believer at a time, and you have to start with yourself. Prison can be a religious place. Psychology trumps the indifference of the universe. As Kurt Cobain sang, dive in me.

If God is everything, and God is good, then everything is good (which it clearly isn't). You can't fault God, though; he's trying (he's just not omnipotent).

I suppose we have the technology at this time to "save people," in some sense, like virtually in a computer or something, and humanity can certainly destroy itself and play God with the delete function, too. By the way, I'm not asking you to believe in your own divinity. Submission is just fine. Some people are lions, and other sheep. Slaves can become Masters, and v.v. I'm really not into a hierarchy of a great chain of being. I'm not into the first shall be last, either.

Maybe God is a rotating position, and my claim to divinity is like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was the San Francisco mayor for a day, lol. Bill Maher doesn't like self-fulfilling prophecy, for some reason. He seems to be of the persuasion that religion can only screw things up, as it is "detrimental to the progress of humanity." Personally, I think anything can be anything. Shit can be diamonds, and vice versa. "Religion" covers a lot of ground, and what may work for some may not for others. God only knows whether religion, writ large, is helpful or harmful, in the bigger picture (ha). I'm not about to rank religions for you, but I would recommend that you be open to the best wisdom from all of them.

Religion is one way for people's imaginations run wild. Schizophrenics or people who hear the voice of God or who feel possessed maybe can integrate into a crazy world better if they cloak their experience in religion, babbling in tongues or whatnot. It's so much easier to say the devil made me buy this dress, or God told me to ask you for money, or whatever...an angel came to me in the form of a sea monkey.

I liked Maher's point about religion kind of being on autopilot, with people reenacting rituals just as something to do, like cutting the grass around a mysterious, possibly alien, form of a man with an erection on a British hillside. The aliens might have godlike power(s), or we could worship the image, too. Maybe the image is of Jesus, with a monstrous shlong. George Carlin prayed to Danny Devito or something, so what's the harm. I liked Bill's preaching the crazy gospel of scientology. Not much difference from the others, in my opinion. I also liked his interview ith "Dr." Jeremiah, in which God turns out to be the ultimate pimp, or something. Pimps my ride to heaven on a white horse, like Gandolf. Like a convertible white Mustang. Good stuff. The immaculate conception and virgin birth are some truly bizarre beliefs, and it was good to see the 4 other gods who fit the bill on that score, including Luke Skywalker (?). I liked his openness about his personal history with a jewish mom and catholic dad and sibling, although I think it would have been fun for him to have said, 'Yes, I am God' to see where that would have gone. JL Jesus Miranda was fun. Sarah Silverman and Kathy Griffin are edgy like that.

-If you're crazy (or supersane?), brooks can babble, asses and snakes can talk, and people can live inside a giant fish (maybe a whale was made into a boat). Bringing a lawyer into confession is a weird concept, but potentially plausible. What a world. Cool movie.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Dead Christ

They say Christ is risen

from death, from earth (ascended into heaven)


I say he's just dead.


dead as a doornail. Are doornails alive? hm, maybe jesus is still around.

whatever, though.
This is Mantegna's Dead Christ
Andrea Mantegna, 1506

Friday, March 6, 2009

CNN Heroes







Examples of Service

1)Wikipedia on CNN heroes, with links to the (10) 2008 and (18) 2007 winners.

2)ALSO, CNN's official heroes link

I once knew a cat named Hero.
You can be a hero in little ways, too.
Big or little, everyone should be a hero.
Superheroes are always killing bad guys.
I believe the superior superhero does not, however.
There's Mighty Mouse, and Hero the Cat.
Pity if one superhero killed another.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Religion Jokes

Dear God in Heaven....Holy Mackerel...and Jumpin' Jesus on a Pogo Stick..

LINK (46 religion jokes)
LINK (864 religion jokes; jokes.com)
LINK (21 Jokes about religion)
LINK (50 jokes; life is a joke.com)

Some say that life is but a joke; but you and me we've been through that... -Jimi Hendrix

The 4 above links sum to a total of 981 jokes, with possibly some repetition. Maybe you should consider saving this project for a rainy day?

God replies to Tom Honey

I listened to his TED lecture; LINK

It's a bit soporific, but appreciated nonetheless.
Here are my answers to his questions:

How did I allow the tsunami?
I "allow" people to die. I "allow" earthquakes of all sizes.
And I "allow" all to ow.
There is no afterlife heaven, or soul to go there, and creating this construct of a God who will protect everyone and "allow" them into heaven is incredibly naive, and does not mesh with my nature, at all, as I have been a tormented soul, so to speak, to the point of getting a smidgen of pleasure from death and destruction, although I'd just as soon have everybody enjoy long healthy lives, including me, free from torment, which doesn't seem to be in the cards, unfortunately. I think the devil may have stolen the pleasure card from the deck. Only God is good, and sinners are in the hands of an angry God (I crack my knuckles alot).

1) vicar...20 years..I have an aunt named Vicki/a mother with initials AR, and T (the 20th letter) is a cross.

2) almighty? I can't do alot. Maybe I shouldn't believe in my own powerlessness.
(They say love is the most powerful force in the universe. Tom Honey might need to fall in love.)

3) I'm knowable. But what are the odds, right?

4) I'm half my mother; my feminine side

5) a universal (catholic) search for meaning. The mean is mean.

6) my wife's maternal grandmother died around the time of the tsunami.

7) shit happens, and we all die

8) I feel your pain and torment, sometimes, to a point. At least that's one way of interpreting my headshocks, chestpains, and voice.

9) I am a bit cold and indifferent, unfeeling.. I'm tired of my schizophrenia. My wife thinks apathy is an effect of my medications.

10) Maybe I am connected to every living soul. I don't believe in souls, or ghosts, or spirits, but maybe there is a "spiritual" reality (like vibes, telepathy, radio waves) that unites me to y'all. You feel me, dawg?

11) we're all God.

12) Sara and I have found the perfect parking space. We had just read the Secret. The universe rearranges itself around your wishes, it says. (Btw, having lived in SF I thought tsunamis were cool, growing up, wondering if they could ever happen to our city. So maybe I did cause it. Death as an unintended consequence? Doubt, questioning, uncertainty, I don't know, perhaps).

13) My last name anagrams to 'as earth' What's in a name?

14) The tsunami was a release of earthly tension. It's just physics.
(Btw, when you incorporate yourself into the physics of the world/clear your head, things happen that seem spiritual, and reality comes alive, which is what we often call the divine.)

15) God is everything, good and bad, but god is a way of seeing the brighter side, for most. Unless you're a satanist. In which case Satan is good and God evil. God doesn't care if you call him Satan. It's all good, some people say. What if you don't eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, right? Evil can be flavorful.

16) Puppet master? Maybe god wants you to cut the strings. Or he delegates his puppeteering when his fingers get tired. Celestial policeman? Earth is in the heavens, and my laws are enforced unevenly, according to karma, guilt of the offender, and the Big Picture. And maybe a few other factors, like luck or whim or circumstance. Fate. Partiality? Everyone dies as a mere blip on the screen of eternity. Religious communities are formed to help their members, so an us/them superiority mentality can often result, which I disapprove of, by the way. Genetic fitness is the Higher Law. Everyone is not an expendable unit in a great campaign, though; we're all just here, all good. We are ruled by love, we have a good identity; only behaviors differ.

17) Maybe a God invented our universe, and bears the ultimate moral responsibility for both pleasure and pain. I'm not that old. Thank God.
18) I'm a super human.
19) indwelling compassionate soul of the universe; sure, why not. As the Dead Milkmen sang, Now Everybody's Me!
20) I'm benevelent, doctrinally, but an angry s.o.b. very often within.
21) my inner conversation is drugged to death, I hate my voice, and I pray/prey.
Feed your head, and Yum, meat.
22) namaste (name as T; a burden, a cross)
23) i have a high tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty.
(But oftentimes whoever's in my head needs to know things.)

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Cyberjesus

Tell them the blind can see!

The BBC says a man who has been completely blind for the last 30 years has been outfitted with a bionic eye.

It doesn't work that well, but it's something, a start.

"But with more than two years of the trial left to run, these are early days and continued testing will be crucial in determining the success of the new technology."

Yeah, baby!

Jefferson's Bible

Miracles, shmiracles

New congressmen/women/persons being indoctrinated, whoopee.
Here's a thought: If you want to separate church and state, don't have any churches in the state, don't allow legislators to go to church or to pray (aloud OR quietly to themselves), and don't have a swearing in ceremony using religious literature, or an opening prayer to start a congressional session. In fact, it could go the other way, too. There could be a state that's entirely religulous. What madness.

The Washington Post says:
Jefferson's Bible is an edited version of the New Testament that excludes all verses pertaining to miracles or the supernatural.

Does the satanic bible have miracles in it?
Does dianetics?
Does Starhawk believe in them?
what a funny world.
If it happens in nature, it's not supernatural, so I'll buy Jefferson's premise.

from WaPo, again:
From 1904 to 1957, new members of Congress received copies of "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth," the so-called Jefferson Bible, at taxpayer expense. The practice was ended quietly, but in 1997 a Nebraska professor named Judd W. Patton began sending the Jefferson Bible to new Congressmen at his own expense.

Was there a miracle in 1957?
Perhaps everything is normal, or contrarily- everything is miraculous.
Or both: Everything is normally miraculous. And/Or miraculously normal.

I suppose it depends on what food and drugs you're on.
I'm on spaghetti with meat sauce. Totally trippy, dude.
or is that the depakote, risperdal, cogentin, lexapro, and moban.
Actually, life isn't very trippy, and that's a good thing. (for me, I think)

4-8 year-olds on Love

While getting my medication adjusted, lately,
I came across this list of 18 quotes from 4 to 8 year-olds, answering the question of
"What does love mean?"

1. "When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis, too. That's love."

2. When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth."

3.Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.

4. Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making you give any of theirs.

5.Love is what makes you smile when you're tired.

6. Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is okay.

7.Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My mommy and daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss.

8.Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.

9. If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate.

10. Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it every day.

11. Love is like a little old woman an a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.

12. Love is when mommy gives daddy the best piece of chicken.

13. Love is when mommy sees dadd smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford.

14. Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.

15. I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.

16. When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.

17. Love is when mommy sees daddy on the toilet and doesn't think it's gross.

18. You really shouldn't say I love you unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it alot. People forget.

I just wanted to pass this on. Maybe it's a bit too cutesy. I have to say I like the adult list, below, better. My wife thinks at least some of these (supposed) quotes might be contrived.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Love quotes I like


33 quotes, or as George H.W. Bush would say: points of light.
Love can be dark, though.

From Robert G. Ingersoll
1.Love is the only bow on life's dark cloud.It is the Morning and the Evening Star.It shines upon the cradle of the babe,and sheds its radiance upon the quiet tomb.It is the mother of Art,inspirer of poet, patriot, and philosopher.It is the air and light of every heart, builder of every home,kindler of every fire on every hearth.It was the first to dream of immortality.It fills the world with melody,for Music is the voice of Love.Love is the magician, the enchanter,that changes worthless things to joy,and makes right royal kings and queens of common clay.It is the perfume of the wondrous flower -- the heart and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon,we are less than beasts;but
with it, earth is heaven and we are gods. (italics mine)

Robert Heinlein-
2.Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own

Roy Croft-
3.I love you
Not only for what you are
But for what I am
When I am with you

Rumi-
4.Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Alfred Adler
5.We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a "getaway." We cannot love and be limited.

Alfred Tennyson-
6.I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

Allan K. Chalmers
7.The Grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

Arthur Rubinstein
8.Love life and life will love you back. Love people and they will love you back

Bertrand Russell-
9.The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Blaise Pascal-
10.The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of.

Chaucer-
11.For there is one thing I can safely say: that those bound by love must obey each other if they are to keep company long. Love will not be constrained by mastery; when mastery comes, the God of love at once beats his wings, and farewell -- he is gone. Love is a thing as free as any spirit; women naturally desire liberty, and not to be constrained like slaves; and so do men, if I shall tell the truth.

Don Byas-
12. You call it madness, but I call it love.

Elie Wiesel
13. The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.

Emily Dickenson-
14.That Love is all there is, Is all we know of Love.

Erich Fromme-
15.Infantile love follows the principle: "I love because I am loved."
Mature love follows the principle: "I am loved because I love."I
mmature love says: "I love you because I need you."
Mature love says: "I need you because I love you."

Franklin P. Jones-
16.Love doesn't make the world go 'round; love is what makes the ride worthwhile

HH Dalai Lama-
17.-Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually. Peace, for example, starts within each one of us. When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us.

18.-We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.

Hazrat Inayat Khan-
19.The sage said, "The best thing is not to hate anyone, only to love. That is the only way out of it. As soon as you have forgiven those whom you hate, you have gotten rid of them. Then you have no reason to hate them; you just forget. -spiritual dimensions of psychology

Herman Hesse-
20.You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation...and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.

Jean Baptiste Henry Lacordaire -
21.We are the leaves of one branch, the drops of one sea, the flowers of one garden.

Jimi Hendrix-
22.When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.

Jonathan Swift-
23.We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

Margaret Anderson-
24.In real love you want the other person's good. In romantic love you want the other person.

Mark Twain-
25.Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century

Mary Parrish-
26.Love vanquishes time. To lovers, a moment can be eternity, eternity can be the tick of a clock.

Oscar Hammerstein, II-
27.Do you love me because I'm beautiful, or am I beautiful because you love me?

Paul Tillich-
28.The first duty of love is to listen.

Pearl S. Buck
29.The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.

Rumi-
30.Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded. Someone sober will worry about events going badly. Let the lover be.

spanish proverb-
31.Where there is love, there is pain.

Ursula K. LeGuin-
32.Love doesn't just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.

Willa Cather-
33.Where there is great love, there are always miracles.

I wrote another post of (different) love quotes on 6/23/08