And they saw that it was hideously flawed: The Day God Died (a very short story with dissolves and flash-forwards)

In the beginning, there were six-packs and microwaveable meals, and they were good, or at least better than nothing at all, so quit yer bitchin'. Nobody ever got hurt--muchly--and all mimsy were the Borogroves, not even a mouse. There was something I was going to write, about some "City on a Hill," but they say the place has fallen into disrepair...you really don't want to go there, trust me on this one (worse than Detroit).

And the Lord spake far too often when there were no people around to hear it, then silence for thousands of years when there were and spake again saying, "Let there be light...oh shit. Did I pay the electric bill for last month? Oh boy. There I go again!" Yet somehow, there was light, and it too was good for a time until the bill collectors came. Six thousand years passed, somehow missing the dinosaurs and several ice ages by a mile, and then it was time to go to bed again, day-in, day-out, I tell ya'...

And they found that God's all about non-sequiturs, so he must be a Libertarian: One day in the 21st century (because you can do flash-forwards and even dissolves in allegory), a corporate executive belatedly died of a heart attack in his very posh home office in upper state New York. Like most CEOs, he was a criminal asshole and nobody cared when his time came, but you have to put these people somewhere after they're six feet under, so he made his way to the afterlife. No, the streets aren't paved in gold there either, so quit asking! "What idiot would believe such bullshit?" shrugged St. Peter. No one knew.

"I'm here to win!" said the CEO to the beleaguered bureaucrat manning the Gates of Heaven. Peter grinned.

"It appears that you have lost, schlub, but I got an idea a week ago I want to try out, so come with me." He took the CEO by the hand like fathers do with their drooling children at Wal-Mart and they ambled down the crumbling halls of a crappy Ministry in a dank, smelly corner of the afterlife. The stink of piss was everywhere, and the walls of Heaven were covered with obscene graffiti. Worst-of-all, someone had written "J.D. Salinger," which confused the executive since he'd never read a book after high school, or even that much during it.

"What's that?" said the CEO as they were looking at a hole in reality into a flat plane below. Tiny dots appeared to be moving on the surface, and it reminded the executive of his many flights over Ohio--the sprawl, with capillaries and arteries of commerce spreading out like a bubbling cancer, eating-away at the surface of the plan.

"That's limbo, also known as suburbs. No actual life takes place there."St. Peter retched while the suited Golem looked down at the scene below wishing he had a piece of the action.

"Right," said the CEO with that absolute certainty all the ladies love. They kept on further down the labyrinth of halls, endless halls, all growing darker and more disintegrated as they went. At times the walls seemed to exist merely as rapidly vibrating vapor and the CEO was able to stick his arm through them. "Nifty," he said, and shrugged.

"Keep talking kid, keep talking," said his divine escort laughing softly as old men often do.

Finally, they reached an enormous set of double-doors, bronzed and festoomed with lavishes of spirals, eyes, and flora. At the heart of the door was the design of a man who was in the center of a circle, his arms and legs endtended-out in the shape of a rightside-up Pentagram. All was silent and even the pair themselves were completely immobile. There is no movement in the presence of the divine, no action...but suddenly, there was. A deep moan pervaded the hallway and seemed to emanate from everywhere, then abruptly faded away as a sickly gurgle.

"What's that? the executive asked nervously.

"That was the death of God," St. Peter said, laughing and nodding wisely.

"What killed God?" he asked. St. Peter looked at the executive sadly.

" 'What'? You mean 'who.' Why, you did. Your very existence accomplished it."

"That doesn't make any sense to me. What do you mean? I've done everything right in life, been successful, did what I had to do to get ahead, and..."

"All fine and well, but did you ever consider the beauty of a Beethoven symphony, or the divinity in children laughing and playing in peace? Did you ever see the worth in all human beings, that every life is sacred in the end? Have you ever pondered in your life why mankind yearns for more, the loneliness, the angst that created the great works of art? Did you ever try to control your animal-impulses and be the better man? Did you ever try to improve yourself? Have you ever taken a stand in your life for what was the right thing to do for others?"

"Nope, none of those--hey, are you communist or something.?"

"Yes, I thought not, and that's why you were brought here. You see, you're lack, the temporal evidence that God created something imperfect, and therefore, was imperfect himself. Your mere proximity was enough to finish the job of an already dying deity that was in the denial stage of the grieving process. I can sleep the sleep of ages now, but first..."

Someone started hacking their way through the double-doors. With an abrupt kick, a man with wild, greasy hair and a thick-mustache crashed through. He was wearing a beautiful red robe studded with Hermetic symbols on a gold-red lame background, clutching a staff, wearing jack-boots. His eyes were both of the darkest night and the brightest day.

"Who's that? said the executive.

"That's Nietzsche, here to fix some shoddy craftsmanship."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Nothing, you are lack, you never existed."

Nietzsche spake, "The last man has come...and where's the nearest bar anyway?"

"Can I finally sleep?" said St. Peter.

"Soon, but there's a universe to fix! We're off!"

As well all know, such an allegory is preposterous, impossible. Nothing so absurd has ever been contended by any religion at any time in human history, except at lunchtime and before bed.

Top this shit, Sarah Palin...

Sarah says she can see Russia from her house, but I got one better. I can see Jesus from my house, and man, he looks like shit, dudes and dudettes, all carbonized, dust. They say that we're breathing atoms that were inhaled by the likes of Socrates, Heraclitus, Frederick the Great, Hitler, DeGaulle, DaVinci, Ivan the Terrible, FDR, William Blake, Zoroaster, Billy the Kid--everyone that ever lived, ever.

If Jesus was divine, wouldn't we all be touched in some way by him in this manner? Were there ever a human being divine, wouldn't we all be transformed? It's a pipe dream, and I want a suck on that, it must be good shit if it makes logic and reason flee almost entirely...

It's all a fairy tale to enslave you. The miserable need something, some vain hope. How about one that has something to do with life? Drop the death cults. Civilization has been around roughly 11,000 years, a blink in an inky abyss, our temporal universe. We have this time to get things right, and that's it. Even the Old Testament says there is no wisdom beyond the grave. It's better to assume that this is it, the only life we will ever have, and that death is inevitable and frequently a friend bringing release and a well-earned rest. Accept this, and you have part of the key as to how we're going to evolve and survive this century as a species.

"Eli, Eli lama sabachthani?" Dude?

Ed.--A pal forwarded this. I find it very funny. Who can't relate to his sentiments? Why else would he have yelled, screamed, and wailed, "Lord,Lord, why has thou forsaken me?" Some think he was calling out to the prophet Elijah, which makes more sense than the orthodox reading (I prefer the unorthodox one myself). Crying out, "Oh God! Oh God!" in agony doesn't really jibe well with the rest of the story and the other gospels too well, does it?

Thankfully, that's a Synoptic problem for another time...

Disgraced evangelical ex-pastor Ted Haggard "reinvents" self to become Christian businessman and reflections on my own religious roots

"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
--Denis Diderot

WWW--If you think there's any difference at all between an evangelical preacher or pastor from a "Christian businessman," you've already lost your ability to reason. Jesus would have laughed, then physically attacked these kinds of bastards, just as he's alleged to have done with the money-changers. Same kind of people.

The war between the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment that began in the 1700s continues unabated.

Why? Because some of us cannot--and will not--ever be able to cope with the fact that we have this short time on our earth, that life is a kind of "happy accident," and that we die and there's nothing after that. Why is this a bad thing? I don't get it and don't want to. Wanting to live forever sounds like vampirism. We die.

I can cope with it being that way, can you? Get a real goddamn job you bums, you liars, you assholes. Quit preying on the miserable, the vulnerable, and the lost. Leave them alone--there's your redemption, just leave people alone. My grandparents taught me that the preacher man has no more knowledge of God than anyone else. They taught me that these men--and very few women, even today--don't have any answers for your life or the meaning of all of this.

They were right. If a parish or a church helps people, that's fine, and that's all they should be there for. Otherwise, there is no point to their existence whatsoever.

In that sense, I can accept President-elect Obama's embracing of faith-based initiatives, because we're going to have to mobilize every single governmental and social institution to fix our economy and our world. But don't me or anyone else sing or pray for their meal as the Salvation Army and others do. Don't force your beliefs onto others for help. That's immoral, and you cannot change people, ultimately. When I look back at my family's history (the Blough-branch, the one I value the most), there's an impressive array of Anabaptism and Populism. They were people who fought "the good fight," the hardest ones, but the ones worth fighting for.

Nearly 500-hundred-years-ago during the Reformation, they arose in Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and much of Western Europe, to challenge the power of the union between Church and State, religious intolerance, and the conscription of young and old for wars fought for the powerful. Someday, there won't be a need for churches. Democracy breaks-out in every era in so many different forms.

In the earliest-days of Christianity, there was no "orthodox" canon, and women were often treated as equals in religious settings. When orthodoxy (literally, "right thinking") crushed the democratic diversity of Christianity, we lost the voice and wisdom of women. We're only now recovering from the mistakes from that time, something that should give us pause. Would there have been the witch-hunts and the untold murders of women and homosexuals over the centuries? Would there have been so many wars with the shaping of the sword-wielding Jesus?

We're coming to a watershed period here where the repressive structures of traditional and modern authoritarianism are falling away. Will we take-up these opportunities, or will be miss them when they're right in-front of our faces? The possibilities are breathtaking. No, there won't be some "workers' paradise" afterward, that's for other, secular religions of the Left. But we can improve things. We can improve our lives, and the lives of our children and their children. We can leave a legacy behind that's redemptive, the real thing. This life is all that matters.

Knowing that at least my own branch of the family has retained these Anabaptist values, and that my ancestors have tended towards being on the right side of history, I can only feel proud. How they were transmitted unconsciously through our family culture over the centuries is the real mystery, but it happened. That's all that matters. Ted Haggard should quit using Jesus as his crutch and go get a real job as the rest of us have had to our entire lives. If he has to push a mop, so mote it be, the bum.

"Our beloved Nancy Reagan is in the hospital." --John McCain

WWW--McCain mentioned this for no apparent reason during the final presidential debate, just underscoring again-and-again that he's living in the past. That's right, she's yours, not ours, and those of us with a clue would never refer to Nancy Reagan as "beloved." Not even for when she pressed her ignorant husband to say something about AIDs while he was still president. He eventually did, but it was too late.

Those who refer to Ronald Reagan and his wife in such terms have an agenda in saying such wildly ridiculous drivel. If they care at all, it's because he irresponsibly deregulated so many industries that they and their superiors got rich. Absurd. I know, but I'm...just...jealous. Of what, I have no idea.

The Weird Chicago site

Chicago, Illinois--What, you mean the fetor, the cops, the gangs, the smarmy rich people, the general rudeness of the people there, a basic climate of assholism, the 90 mph traffic on the freeways, the poverty, the town that found Lenny Bruce guilty, the thieves, Roger Ebert (OK, that's unfair), the Bears fans, organized crime, the gerrymandering, the South side (very little is worse than this), crime, and corruption of the place wasn't thrilling enough for you? Nope. There are ghosts in Chicago too, and I don't like the place.

One member of my father's side of the family whom I never met was a fireman in Chicago several decades ago. This guy stole things out of people's homes after they'd doused the flames. Charming, isn't it? My dad's immediate family owned a grocery store until the early-1950s--until my grandfather stopped paying protection money to the Outfit. That's Chicago. Sure-sure, other big cities have these problems and some of them are worse. My reply to that is go to Canada's larger cities like London, Toronto, or Vancouver, for a North American comparison. By God, they're congenial in Toronto, and it's practically the same size as Chicago. Their cities are cleaner too, and they aren't nearly as rude, that's for sure. This is due to a different history, a less violent one.

At this point, I should mention the absurdity of the notion that Chicago is haunted by pointing-out the fact that the city barely existed before the 1830s as a large trading post. [Ed.--Perhaps some of the ghosts are Atlanteans and Lemurians. I jest!] Let's get this straight: Europeans come to the place, and all of a sudden we have European-style concepts of ghosts. Sure-sure, Native Americans believed in ghosts too, I know, but since they lived here longer, wouldn't they be the majority of the apparitions? No, the truth is that we ran them to the reservations too, and Chicago needs its tourists, just like Edinburgh does. Do ghosts have an expiration date?

Out of necessity, there are ghosts there, and not just around Stoney Island. There's Resurrection Mary, victims of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, the Haymarket Square anarchists, Al Capone, H.H. Holmes, but as far as I can tell, no Fred Hampton. Granted, Chicago's history is short, but it could be argued a lot has happened there in the last two hundred years, and not a lot of it was very pretty, hence the hauntings--except I just can't make that leap. By now, you've probably deduced that I don't believe in ghosts. This is correct. Yes, there was time when I did, but I was young.

No, I'm not an atheist, I just don't believe in ghosts. Is there something after this life? I doubt it. Why does there have to be? More likely, it's zip, zero, nada, just the inky-black unconsciousness you feel at the dentist, only it's forever. Now, how bad can that be compared to having to go to church every Sunday or being around most everyone living nowadays for more than five minutes? Maybe "ghosts" are some kind of phenomena we don't understand yet scientifically, but we should be past these kind of supernatural explanations by now. Chicago isn't Sicily...or is it? Why would anyone want to come back to this thing we call the human condition anyway, especially to Chicago? Couldn't these ghosts have a little bit more imagination? If I came back, it would be to Tahiti, get real.

Regardless of all this, "Weird Chicago" is a really great site, even though I have no respect for the belief in ghosts as a supernatural phenomena whatsoever or the for the city itself. Right, if I can enjoy it, you'll probably love it, and they conduct tours of some of the oddball sites of the town by the lake.

But seriously folks, where are all of the ghosts of Native Americans, French fur traders, and Vikings in Chicago? It's not an unfair question. But go to Weird Chicago and see how wacky the superstitious beliefs of Central European immigrants (my father's ancestors) who came to the Windy City were during the 19th century (shit, how about right now), never mind your own wacky ones. I don't like Chicago, you can have it, but it's a fascinating disaster area, and makes for a great snapshot of what the Apocalypse might look like. I still don't understand why people pay lots of money to live there, frankly, especially with the winters and the suffocating press of humanity.

So what's Chicago good for? That's right, pizza, condiments, potato chips, and sometimes the Sox and the Cubs. Pity the working-class people who have to live there. The place doesn't have the breadth of history of a London, so the plausibility factor seems low. The running theory seems to be that if you die violently that you have no choice but to come back, and since the city has such a storied past, they must be teeming with ghosts. If you want a taste of human iniquity, Weird Chicago has some historical ephemera worth looking at. Or, just go there and smile a lot at people. That should work wonders.

Superstition and the obsession with the paranormal strike me as religion for the terminally-bored. Perspicacity? Hardly, it's just the obvious, and it's my lot in life to state it for all the oogah-boogah people out there, the true believers in the inane. Gots nuthin' to do with the bruthas, and for the record there was no Mrs. O'Leary's cow starting any fires in 1871, that's apocryphal. You build a city out of matchsticks, and whaddaya expect? It was frat boys, that's who. Who else could it have been?

And while I'm at it, why do so many bands born-and-raised in Chicago sound so namby, so wimpy and pathetic? That's all you can come up with living--if you want to call it that--in the midst of a Bosch-painting? There's a word for people like that: bourgeois. I don't like you or your town. What do I look like, a country & western band shouting-out names of towns for audience approval? Nonetheless, Weird Chicago is a great site that at the very least is educating people on some of the urban history of the city. But ghosts are really just our fear of death, I don't believe in them as the survival of personality. The Japanese love Chicago, though I don't know why.

http://weirdchicago.blogspot.com/

A gracious comment from Adam Selzer of Weird Chicago (excerpt): "There are stories of ghosts of the victims of the Ft. Dearborn Massacre around 16th and Prairie, but I don't know of any about the fur traders that are at all reliable (unless the stories that Jean LaLime is haunting the Tribune building are true). There are plenty of stories about "indian burial grounds," and native american curses, but I don't think any of them are true - most of them are the products of less reputable tour guides looking to embellish a story."

Thank you God: Hurricane Gustav underscores Republican inaction since Katrina

The Gulf Coast--The Industrial Canal's levee is overtopping again. Once again, we're seeing damages in the billions. Nearly 2 million people living in and around New Orleans and the neighboring parishes have fled. There appears to be no substantial government reaction. John McCain and the Republican National Committee have suspended nearly all activities at their convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. It seems that God has retained its sense of humor.

Almost never failing to say the wrong thing at the right time, candidate McCain stuck his foot in his mouth stating, "We must take off our Republican hat[s], and put on our American hat[s]." Or something like that, since the media doesn't appear to agree on the exact wording.

Well, right: "We can be heroes, just for one day," stated David Bowie so eloquently. And that's about as far as it's ever going to go. McCain and the GOP lack such eloquence, which comes from being on the wrong side of history. After all, besides being the un-American party, the GOP represents what's inhuman about humanity. The greed, the corruption, the venality, the vanity, the ignorance--and of course--temerity.

Three-years-ago, John McCain was eating cake with President George W. Bush while tens-of-thousands of Americans were left stranded in New Orleans, it's environs, and much of the rest of the Gulf Coast hit by hurricane Katrina. Very little has changed, and one can imagine the sighs of relief that were exhaled when the Bush canceled his speech before the Republican convention to cover his ass.

What's bizarre is that he went to Texas to do it, but he likes it there. We like it when he goes there, just not when he comes back. Americans are waiting with bated breath for him to never return from there to Washington D.C. ever again. God doesn't like the Democrats anymore than the Republicans, incidentally--he just hates Republicans more.

And now we're hearing that Senator McCain is working to "lead a humanitarian effort" to help down in the Gulf. That's great, but it's not really noble when you contributed to the incompetence, neglect, and corruption that created the mess that still exists down in New Orleans and the neighboring parishes 3 years and 3 days to the day of Katrina's landfall and the overtopping and breaching of the levee system there. That's a failure of government shared by both parties, but the majority of the responsibility resides with the antisocial GOP.

The GOP tends to play their hand too often (they suck at poker): now they're harping over a joke that a former DNC Chairman (Don Fowler, who was Chairman one year, from 1995-1996) made on an air-flight, seizing on it in their pathetic desperation to avoid any-and-all responsibility for their actions. The majority of Americans are used to this, and it's become tiresome. Fowler's comments aren't significantly different from that of religious lunatic James Dobson's bait-and-switch for the GOP when he commanded his zombie followers to pray for rain at the Democratic convention in Denver so that Obama couldn't give his speech--except that Fowler was kidding. Those "oogah-boogah" folks would be funny if they had no effect on the rest of us.

The writing's on the wall: if the business community keeps getting its way (greased by dirty politicians in both parties, but even worse with the GOP), then nature's going to strike-back and correct things. Nobody on earth can change this fact. It really is a very religious and spiritual-themed moment, isn't it? Nature has struck-back once again at a ridiculous economic order that overdeveloped in the region surrounding New Orleans, cutting-away precious marshland barriers that prevented such flooding for countless centuries, long before Europeans ever settled here in North America. That's not just stupidity, it's lower than animal behavior, and headed for the dustbin of history. Thank God for that.