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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.

Friday, November 21, 2014

Still Living in Berkeley!

I've got a New Place, everybody!

I found a room on Craigslist, and will be moving in next week :-)
And it's not too far from where I am, now!
Pleased as punch, and excited for the next chapter in my Bkly book-
Thanks everybody, who helped!
-Jess

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Toying with God

He Toys With Us

so the law of karma dictates we should give back as good as we get:
Toying With God!
(Onion article)

It recently occurred to me that BLOG could be perceived in religious terminology:
Jesus, in (english) numerology, converts to 10-5-19-21-19
or, 1-5-1-3-1
or, 2
the second letter is B

then, LOG, could stand for Lamb Of God

so, BLOG cryptically equates to Jesus, Lamb of God.
which is trippy! (even without the blog reference)
Catholics sing about it during communion.
mystical union (if you don't want to make the reference to cum-union)
actually, that could also be a techie reference, too: COM (like blogspot.COM)

anyway,
just as the relation of children to parents,
there is supposedly a relation of adults to a "heavenly father"
question: Does "heavenly father" have a God of His own?
or are there levels even beyond that?
(is life a heavenly video game?)

Anyway, Eucharist/communion/"the body and blood of Christ"
you stand in line, and say "amen"
a-men, like the a-team
A like a grade of 4.0, or ace, or -referencing Seinfeld- "ass-man"
which could be a proctologist, or a reference to anal sex.
I knew a (religious) guy in college whose name was Aymon.
He changed his name to TJ (whatever that stands for)
I wonder now if he did that because of my initials.

anyway, the lord is my shepherd.
life or death, like a shepherd who occasionally slaughters and eats (!)
the very lambs he so lovingly protects from the wolves.
Thus, we eat the God who eats us.
Eucharist is eating the cannibal, a revenge of sorts
a bit of justice, you might say.
Does God eat Christians (his lambs?)
and, of course, what's eating you? as they say.

we're all eaten by time, of course,
(senescence is a bitch.  an inevitable result of cellular replication)
and also, after burial or cremation-
as eventual wormfood
or eaten by fire, if we happen to be sent to the ovens (!)
cremation is a weird word.  Made into cream?
for the creme de la creme?
Will Prince be Cream-ated? ha, couldn't resist.
saints preserve us, hell is a fiery inferno...
(once you're dead, heaven and hell don't matter!)

eating is a weird, weird, trippy thing.
Jesse, my name, means "the whole office of the Eucharist"
esse means eating, in latin.   eating J.
just as drinking can be interpreted as vampiric,
so eating can be interpreted positively, negatively, or
(as is most often the case, and rightly so) neutrally.
Chuy is my name in spanish (like chewy!)
it's also Isai (AI is artificial intelligence, another computer reference)
(pronounced eesa-E, accented second i)
Chewbacca says May the force be with you.
May (5) force (2), christ! jesus!

Alright, I've said enough.  This lamb is silent.
eating is probably better without thinking too much about it!
-God out!
(Jess, Jesse, Chuy, Isai, Jesus (heyzeus), Jesu (jayzoo), JessT, Jester)

Monday, November 10, 2014

Today's Riff

The novelty of a November novel: No V
A work of fiction about a world without vampires, without victims, in a phrase: that doesn't suck.

Wait, you say. Suck is just an idiom, an expression, that literally relates to vacuums (another v word), but not to the world (unless gravity can be said to be “sucking” us onto the surface of the planet), or definitely not to people (because we only “suck” if we're 1)“sucking” breath after hard exertion/exercise, or 2)during fellatio, which is also called by it's opposite -“blow”, but which is really neither blowing nor sucking, or, 3) the possibility -so rare it barely deserves mention- after you've been bitten by a venomous snake, possibly a viper, in which you cut open the site and suck out the venom)... But the only time people suck, normally, is when they've got a cup of soda from a fast food joint, with a straw. And hopefully you won't have to deal with any sucking chest wounds. Perhaps you have a poetic sensibility and are cynical about life, in which the process of breathing is suck and blow, repeated ad nauseum.

Being out of breath sucks, especially if you're asthmatic. Venomous viper bites suck. Diabetes from too much sugary soda sucks. Being a victim of a vampire sucks. But fellatio most definitely does NOT suck, even when it does. Okay, hit the pause button again, you're thinking- vampires are fictional, mythological, nonexistent, and don't belong in a factual explanation of suckage: They only “exist” in our imagination and the collective unconscious, expressed in movies, tv shows, books, and plays, not reality...

But crime exists, unfortunately, and predators suck, being criminals who violate our rights. You might not believe in the devil, demons, sin, hell, or vampires, but these are useful concepts, nonetheless. They're useful both in pre-prevention of the possibility of potential perpetration, and post-punishment of caught criminals. Children believe in monsters, which is good, even if technically untrue, because ordinary people can be monstrous. In the psy-war between our better and worse, greater and lesser, selves, often conceived of as the cartoonish conversation of our conscience between angels and devils, gods and monsters, saints and demons, the battle for our souls, in the epic conflict between good and evil, the light and dark sides of the force, mythological figures and locations are forms that help us achieve more moral behavior, in spite of the sweetness of sin, and the tremendous temptation to turpitude. Love always wins, though, they say.

Heaven and hell, as prospective reward or punishment, carrot or stick as it were, help society avoid potential evil events, and also after crime, in the process of justice. Fear of God, and his henchman's horrific hell, scare people straight. The prospect of eternal torment causes suffering to criminals who might otherwise have no remorse, or possibly even enjoy prison. V and V literally look like two canines (“eye-teeth”), and poetically conjure concepts of vicious vampires (and their violated victims) who in reality are psychopaths or sociopaths who might believe themselves to be vampires, and therefore become “real”in the same way a dad believes himself to be Santa, or a priest believes himself to be God. There's a ring of truth. The virtual becomes real for those that believe. Operationally if not objectively true. Victims become vampires, too, when the thirst for justice becomes a desire for artificially created karma, in a word: revenge. Personally, I think this just makes things worse, adding suffering to suffering, torment to torment, potentially creating a never-ending cycle of violence and hate. Justice must err on the side of less net suffering. Incarceration, whether prison or jail, should not exact more suffering than the criminals caused in the course of their criminality. In fact, ideally, the criminal will keep his freedom, and go forth and sin no more, as they say.

War sucks. As General Sherman said, “war is hell.” As a former friend of mine said, “chess is war.” Causing war is the crime of the powerful, sending armies to kill each other in an orgy of bloodshed, for nonexistent entities called “nations,” who fail to see the commonality, the shared humanity, between peoples with different languages, skin colors, and religions. Some powerful people get bored, and think war spices up life with a little excitement, like a mma or wwf match, that cleanses society, kills off excess population, creates an economy, reduces the number of evil people, focuses and unites societies, improves and tests new technology, and distracts us from other bad news, perhaps perceived as worse than war. War can be painted in pleasing (non-red) colors (such as self-defense, security, safety, strength, protection, sacrifice, duty, valor, courage, honor) in the pubic mind.

Some of the evils of the modern world that might conceivably contribute to causing a distractive war could be the anomie of nihilism, or the banality of evil- in such things as the industrialized slaughter of animals, an unrecognized modern holocaust, or the existence of more slaves in modern society than in any other period in human history, or such extreme economic inequality in the world that the richest 85 billionaires have as much money as the bottom 3.5 billion people (nearly half the world's population!) ...supposedly equal human beings, I might add, who share the global village of this third rock from the sun, planet earth, an island paradise of life, in an infinite and indifferent universe. Also, we're in the midst of an extinction event, with ecosystems screaming under the weight of climate change and habitat destruction. People aren't surviving, either, with the tolls of natural disasters, crime, disease, war, suicide, and poverty. Malnutrition exists along side of obesity and food wastage. Addictions to sugar, nicotine, heroin, or any product at all really, drain economies and lower the quality of life. Pharmaceutical companies have a vested interest in the maximized unhealth of the world's population, so as to be in perpetual need of their medications, a dependency with vast societal and personal ramifications. The “mentally ill” receive government money, and can be trapped in unemployment, as well as suffering from stigma and resentment. Some of us have access to quality free healthcare, while others don't have access to either clean water or sanitation. Global inequality is unacceptable. We are all a part of the human community, on spaceship earth, a global village, with equal rights, and the capacity for ALL to have our basic needs met, with minimal suffering and maximal well-being, in a world that cares.

In sum, the issues of ecology, equality, slavery, poverty, meat, crime, and unhealth (such as obesity, malnutrition, and mental health problems like depression, anxiety, psychosis, suicide) for starters, add up to a need for distractions/escape like books or vacation or tv and religion, to make us feel better, in what can be a sick, sick world. Universal healthcare would be a good start, in my view. Getting into nature, exercise endorphins, the occasional restaurant meal, staying informed, breaking routine, and remembering the neediest, are just a few ideas that work for me.

War is not the answer. What is? Compassion, kindness, love, charity, service, community, cheerfulness, humor, friendship, wealth, comfort, security, freedom, respect, status, equality, education, recreation, entertainment, art, literature, poetry, dance, health and fitness, work, helpfulness, trust, truth, courtesy and respect, lawfulness, righteousness, rectitude, thrift, bravery, cleanliness, intelligence, curiosity, engagement, prayer and meditation, spirituality, libraries/reading/books, discipline, strength, integrity, honor, happiness, bliss, mental health, self-improvement.

We're all human, and we all want the same things. We want love, pleasure, sex, respect, status, comfort, security, money, freedom, companionship, camaraderie, friendship, laughter, humor, entertainment... These are what I want, anyway.

Terrorism. We're terrorists, too: Animals, babies, criminals, soldiers. We should stop killing. Thou shalt not kill. Meat, abortion, capital punishment, and war are stains on our collective humanity. Prisons shouldn't be hellholes of institutional terrorism, either, where racism and rape are rampant. Religious tolerance needs to be a global human value, recognizing that All religions seek Goodliness as Godliness and eschew Evil as Sin, in a universal human ethic of righteous moral love and respect.

God out.  Cheers!

final thoughs
Happiness and Health in Heaven.  Hatred and Horror in Hell.
Good or Bad.  Suffering or Bliss.  Love or Hate.  Life or Death.
"He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!"

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

What God Believes

God is love.  Love believes all things.

I was thinking about this weird biblical syllogism recently,
and thought I'd share (I AM a Teshara, after all)

If everyone is God (God is one), then each person's God is the One they Love.
That could be the (1) Self, for priests and singles, for example.
Or your (2) Significant Other.
Or, collectively, God loves (3) everyone (but not every zero, ha)
or, all of the above! (4)
(in which case, you could  be said to be in love, or be in heaven)
-bring heaven to you, instead of waiting to die and then being brought to heaven.
or, both!(?) 
death is "resting in peace," which is heavenly in its absence of suffering
(if not presence of happiness)

oh, and there's (5) which would be an exclusionary group, such as your family, your gang, your religion, your race, your country, your sports team, whatever. 
I think loving your S.O. should entail loving everyone else, though, being truly happy and fulfilled.
Loving some and hating others doesn't work, for me.

anyway,
If I am God, then I am love, and I believe all things:
such as: I love everyone, I love everything, I love life
this seems to be the message, for being good, and for therefore
getting into heaven (making life heavenly)
We all want to feel good.

But we also don't want to believe lies.
or be a party to spreading untruth.
I've got major issues with my childhood religion (Catholicism)
which I revisited last Saturday, at my nephew's baptism.
I'm also reading The Age of Atheists, an intellectual history by Peter Watson.

Maybe I should have more humility, and admit my own religion, my own dogma, which I have created to replace what I view is a patently absurd and ridiculous belief system, might in fact be wrong.  Even Jesus had his moment of doubt.  So if priests will meet me half way, and admit they might be wrong, too, (do any of us really KNOW anything?), then we can all flip that coin of disbelief into the biblical definition of love, believing all things!

B.A.T. is batty, though.  Simultaneously believing for example, that I both exist and don't exist, seems insane.  I am nothing if not a being in pursuit of sanity.  Maybe insanity is the only sane perspective? (!)  Physics gets weird, for example.

If every assertion and it's opposite are both true, however (presumably from different perspectives), the question arises, as a way of living one's life, and wanting to be good/god, and be happy/go to heaven, should we (a)agree with everybody, (b)disagree with everybody, or (c)(randomly?) mix things up?

"It's all good", for example.  Is it, really?
or
"hell, god's dungeon, exists and is a place of eternal torment, for sinners and disbelievers"
(I don't like that one, either)

what the bible teaches:
If the devil is the adversary, and only God is good (god is love, love believes all), then we are enjoined to be yes-men, and support everyone's (virtual) reality, regardless of what we thing (objective) reality is, in truth and fact.   So we must be liars!  We must act AS IF we believe anyone else's beliefs, no matter how absurd, false, untrue, ridiculous, or even evil, we may think the(se) belief(s) to be!

The devil, besides being the adversary, is called "the lord of lies" (lol!).  So (whoever holds) the opposite of what you believe is the devil, which is a subjective fact, not an objective one. Right?
Every side has it's own God and it's own devil.   All of us are both in heaven and hell.  Because truth is virtual.  Reality may be all the god there ever is, but each of us lives in our own world, our own "you" -niverse, our own head, with our own, unique mind/psyche/brain/thoughts/environment.

So, we must ask ourselves:
Is God dead?
Is God Santa for adults?
Is God imaginary, a story, a concept, a word, a meme?

Is the universe pervaded by love?
or is it
indifferent, infinite, dark, cold, empty, and boring?

answers?
-God is dead when a loved one dies, or when you don't love yourself/your life, or anyone/life.
-God gives "adult" gifts, just as Santa gives gifts to children (regardless if he/she in fact exists)
-God is One.  (Love is 99.  Hate is 88.)
All is vanity, frustration, futility, absurdity, nonsense.  (ecclesiastes)

or, as the bible seems to imply, All of the Above, the Holy Whatever.

Plant People!

I saw Invasion of the Body Snatchers!

Last week, Halloween, I saw IBS.
I thought I'd share the associations I made in my head with the concept of Plant People:

vegetarians are what they eat!
Robert Plant, Leif Erikson,
Tree (the comedian; it's also Theresa's nickname),
Michelle Branch (singer), Twiggy (a 60's model)
the Jesse Tree (the family tree/genealogy of Jesus)
Ents (from the Lord of the Rings)
fruits (gays) and vegetables (comatose)
The two Bushes (presidents George Herbert Walker, and Dubya)
"pushing up daisies"
-It also makes me think of
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, and for some reason, Eating Raoul.

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Soul

A Sol-itary Sol-dier
merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily: life is but a dream
A ghost without a soul! -oingo boingo

Here's the definitions of SOUL (dictionary.com)
noun
1.
the principle of life, feeling, thought, and action in humans, regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body, and commonly held to be separable in existence from the body; the spiritual part of humans as distinct from the physical part.
2.
the spiritual part of humans regarded in its moral aspect, or as believed to survive death and be subject to happiness or misery in a life to come:
arguing the immortality of the soul.
3.
the disembodied spirit of a deceased person:
He feared the soul of the deceased would haunt him.
4.
the emotional part of human nature; the seat of the feelings or sentiments.
5.
a human being; person.
6.
high-mindedness; noble warmth of feeling, spirit or courage, etc.
7.
the animating principle; the essential element or part of something.

Spirit makes me think of spears, or phallic penetration, (hole-y spirit!)
in addition to Blade Runner ("that's the spirit!")
and I think of spirituality as defined by physics -it's a physical phenomenon like radio waves or microwaves, or maybe even quantum entanglement.  But I don't believe in ghosts.  I think a photograph of a ghost is a simultaneous manipulation of both consciousness (mind-control), and photographic equipment (remotely).   Schizophrenia is a spiritual malady (or gift, if you happen to feel more positively about it) of connection to another mind, in my view.  Telepathy is an everyday reality for me, even if it remains mysterious in the how and why, like so much modern technology. Even so, I don't believe any part of me will survive death (excepting the blog! and maybe dna, if I have any kids, and of course, dust).  I don't think I'll be in heaven, in the heavens, appearing in dreams, like obi wan kenobi or whatever.  But I do think computers have my number, and could probably generate a reasonable facsimile.  I am not a soulless killer, except for bugs, etc..well, maybe I am:  I've eaten a lot of meat.   But I am a human being, not a superhuman God or subhuman vampire, although of course I've identified with both.  So in that sense, I'm a soul.  Soul music, and gospel, was never my bag for this bag-o-bones.  Happy day of the dead!

latest happenings in my life

Benjamin had his baptism yesterday at 4:30p mass at St. Stephen's, SF
afterparty at 801!  lots of shrimp and stuffed mushrooms (catering)
Halloween: Augustus was Bert (another was Ernie) adorable!
I went to Sara's and watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers. *
I handed out candy.  2 groups of kids, in Berkeley.
I read to Augustus from The Age of Atheism (hilarious, I thought)
(I would love to read to Benjamin.  I thought I would see him more.)
I ate a pint of Ben and Jerry's and had a can of coke, too.
ugh, if I'm really prediabetic, it's kind of like suicide by sugar.

Going to (catholic) mass makes me feel like shit.
Catholic mass and my family is just too damn brainless/zombie.
I mean seriously.  You guys really believe all that crap?
Weekly ritual pounds that nonsense into everybody's head-
and I'M the one that's crazy? really? 
It's madness, and it just taint true.

love believes all things?
well, I don't.  So I'm not love.
Not God, then.
But I'm not a demon or a vampire, either.
Just a goddamn humanist atheist, I guess.
It never ceases to amaze me how stupid people are, though.
Church sucks.  And I'm right.
I'm not about to pretend to believe, for the sake of community, or anything else.
How is it that brainless zombie automatons have so much money?
It makes no sense.
But I'm down for love, community, peace, forgiveness, and other benefits of religion,
even if the dogma is mostly a sack of shit.

If God believes all things, he simultaneously believes both everything and nothing.  Love is crazy, then.  Truly insane.  Clinically psychotic.

Immortality, for instance.
We're just bubbles.  A form that pops into oblivion.
No one is going to heaven (or hell, either).
And Jesus is dead.  Every prayer to him goes unheard.
It's just talking to yourselves, self-hypnosis.
And sin doesn't exist.  Crime does, but not sin.
You can't have God's Law without a God.
It's only your conscience, silly.  Santa for adults.
I'm pretty sure Souls and Angels are imaginary, too.
(the conventional definitions, anyway)

my (admittedly weird) thought (s-o-c) process on the topic:
     -sole is a solitary fish, underfoot:
sol is sun, a homonym with son, light of the world, glowb...
the sun is a star- jesus christ superstar, you say?
born again, coming out into the light, after death, being reborn...
photons, wave and particle duality,  jesus=15131=2
no mass but called "light" as if it has weight.   mass=energy (e=mc2)
2= mom and dad
(light, force, beast, jew)
     -Maybe angels were humanoid space-aliens with wings?

Maybe I'm forgetting that God is a "man of war", and that war is the art of deception.  But I'm not fooled.  No, not me.  And I like to keep it real.