State of the World, not including Hillary and Obama

Please don't confuse the world situation with the 2008 presidential sweepstakes.

We admit that Hillary's opposition research on Sen. Obama's childhood education in a Madrassah (Islamic school) in Indonesia (Wahhabi or not, that is the question) is a wild story. The ironies raised are so overwhelming in volume, we will just have to transcend that story right here and now.

But speaking of Islam and world peace, well, let's just not go there for now.

Instead, consider that our colleagues at WorldNetDaily report that one of their highest-traffic articles of all time was the account last week of the retired air force colonel who witnessed and photographed flying objects "not of this world."

The WorldNetDaily editors reported that this report "has ignited a frenzy of interest in unexplained airborne phenomena" and a flurry of other reports.



Now there are two possible explanations for this unexplained phenomena:

1) The world population, having been barraged with confusing and contradictory information about Senators Obama and Hillary, has been desensitized to their physical and political surroundings and have tuned out the daily reality show masquerading as news into a new frequency (much like Dan Rather did) enabling them to see things that others cannot. Or, on the other hand,

2) Those overachieving space aliens, having been barraged with confusing and contradictory information about Senators Obama and Hillary, have decided their cosmic cousins on planet Earth, in their own peculiar and pathetic way, are crying out for help. Thus they are planning to intervene and solve our world's problems in their own way and in their own time.

Which brings us back to the topic at hand: we just dropped in to see what condition's the world's condition is in. In response, we offer for your attention a 90-second graphic history of world religion and war.

Now, after you have taken that in, we'll release you back to the mind control machinations of Obama, Hillary and their workaholic spin doctors. Alternatively, you could tune out, retire to the back yard and tune in.

Next: Are space aliens illegal aliens?

I woke up this morning in need of a latte

I woke up this morning in need of a latte. Food too natch, something from the biscotti phylum, and one of those much-touted long walks on the beach.

The complete fantasy package is a long walk on the beach with a latte and my dog. I’m wearing Birkenstock loafers and biodegradable hemp fiber shorts that run half on electricity, half on gas. The dog is a golden retriever named Dakota or maybe Aragorn. Yeah, Aragorn. And not my dog but a free, self-determining compan­ion animal, irrespective of race or creed.

That Indian on television who cried looking at litter along the road, he’s there too, on the beach, looking at more litter. At his feet lies a half-full can of Sherwin-Williams Peach Blos­som Whisper interior, oil-based latex paint. “We cover the earth,” the label says.

A newspaper called The Answer is blowing in the wind. A few loose pages catch around my leg and I look down at the classifieds. A light drizzle begins to fall as the Personals Section gets my attention. Tangled in my legs are four broadsheet newspaper pages of “in search of” ads (“ISOs”) in six-point type. It’s a warmish day and the drizzle intensifies into a full-fledged shower. Raindrops fall straight down from a windless sky.

Just before the pages are turned into papier-maché, I manage to read one of the ads. “ADJPNSCSCND (asian divorced jewish professional non-smoking christian street car named desire) ISO like-minded man for LTR. Must enjoy quiet walks in the rain. E. Rigby”

I look up and there she is. The author of that very ad is just fifty yards up the beach, walking quietly in the rain. I look around and see others. A lot of others, in fact. Why hadn’t I noticed them before? All the lonely people, where do they all come from?

There are now hundreds, maybe thousands of solitary indi­viduals, all walking quietly. Nobody is speak­ing to anyone. There isn’t a rain hat or an umbrella in the bunch. Most are deep in thought, gazing down at the sand. A few are facing the sea while, metaphorically, also facing the latency of their unrequited hopes as a harbinger of humanity’s ultimate desola­tion amid love’s inability to deliver the goods forthwith…

Whatever.

The only sound on the beach is unison sighing.

A nice-looking youngish guy, yet somehow old in acquired wisdom – thin, with blue eyes, thick black hair, killer abs. He walks in low jeans and a shirt left unbuttoned, through the intermittently spaced lost souls, feeling his way as much with intuitive radar as with his eyes, searching, sifting. He approaches a young woman carrying a mocha java grande made from aged Sumatran beans. Full-bod­ied, smooth, spicy, complex. As is her coffee.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” She nods back and a moment of silence settles over them.

“You know,” he finally says, “I climbed cathe­dral mountains. I saw silver clouds below, saw everything as far as you can see. And they say that I got crazy once and that I tried to touch the sun. I lost a friend, but kept the mem­ory.”

Though alarm bells of warning are going off in her head, they are like a ringing in the far distance, as removed as an Amish farmhouse fire bell two counties over. She looks at him with her head slightly tilted. Her soft mouth, shorn of all defenses, can utter only, “Gosh.”

He gazes sagely into the middle distance. “Now I walk in quiet solitude, the forest and the stream, seeking grace in every step I take. My sight is turned inside myself to try and understand the serenity of a clear blue moun­tain lake.”

She intones a long “wowwww,” way too softly for her own good. Her eyes are wide, unde­manding of anything.

Flashing a Jack Nicholson scheisse-eating grin, he takes the mocha java from her hand, downs the rest of it and tosses the cup. "Name's Lucifer. I like long walks on the beach."

In a voice as quiet as the air floating between her ears: “Jennifer. Virgo. I like quiet walks in the rain.”

“Cool.”

I watch them stroll away together. The shower abates, and as it does, the walk­ers in the rain fade one by one. Nobody actu­ally goes to their car and drives away. They just fade, literally, unmindful that it is also happening to everyone around them. With the cessation of x-amount of raindrops, each one grows increasingly transparent until right near the end when they suddenly poof into nonexistence.

The air makes a tiny plinking sound as each one disappears. Plink... plink... plinkplink... plinkplinkplinkplink. It was like watching a video of popcorn popping, being played in reverse.

It seems these personals ad walkers can exist only in the rain. Only at the beach. Their loneliness was compounded by the fact that none of the ads said, “love loud, boozy socializ­ing on the beach in the rain.” Just quiet walks. Intimate, confessional statements from people trying to end their solitude by proclaiming a love of solitude. Once again there is a need for the existence of a typeface for irony.

Also typed in ironics, is my sworn statement to the Environmental Protection Agency on the unfortunate demise of a large school of dol­phins accidentally killed in the preparation of this report. The printer, plugged in, fell off the table and bounced off the pier into the Club Med cove. The little Flippers never knew what hit them, and I’m sure they didn’t suffer.

Go ahead and judge me if you want. I have come to accept that I can’t be everything to all people. I am learning to be happy with myself, to love me as I am. I often surprise myself with gifts. I need a latte.

My biodegradable hemp fiber shorts are half-filled with gas as I go placidly amid the noise and haste, remembering what peace there may be in silence.

Larry Moffitt
Editor, www.ReligionAndSpirituality.com

Communism can be fun

It's Friday, the New Year has begun, Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House, and you're still not inspired. What to do?

Here in the USA, you go out to dinner with friends or family, take in a movie or fire up the computer for a little surfing or blogging.

In North Korea, you can rule out all those options. You're stuck in some cold barracks with nothing to do but stare at the framed photos on the wall of the Great Leader (Kim Il-Sung) and the Dear Leader (Kim Jong-Il).

Okay. That's good. There is meaning in life. But there's still something missing. That little spark, the joie de vivre that would make you wag your tail if you were a dog. And this is where the Dear One has Nancy and Harry beat. He can't raise the minimum wage but he can provide happiness!

No more Mr. Nice Guy

As the editor of ReligionAndSpirituality.com, I’m somewhat of an atheist magnet. A guy, let’s call him “Jim Bob,” wrote to criticize that our website is a citadel of Christian “wingnuts” of the “Religious Reich.”

Yikes! (although I do admire the richness of his language).

Jim Bob added, “I haven’t seen one word by a Muslim, Jew, Native American, Hindu, or any other religion but Christianity.”

The thing is, ReligionAndSpirituality.com is a very, very big tent, with 50-something weekly columnists. You can't throw a rock in there without hitting a Muslim; Jew; Baha'i; Buddhist; Hindu; pagan; straight-arrow, boy scout Christian; left-wing, commie, pinko Christian; thoroughly disillusioned former Christian or someone who talks to dead people.

So he’s never actually read the website. But that’s okay. I’m big-minded about this sort of thing and I explained in a beautifully polite and dignified manner, the enormous width and depth of the site’s content.

Okay, I may have also said he was a pathetic asshole. But not in a way that’s like a bad thing, or uncharitable. It was more like reminding him. Still, Jimbo took it in the wrong spirit, so the exchange didn’t go very well.

Is it just me, or has atheism taken a decidedly hostile turn lately? Seems like it used to be more live-and-let-live, as embodied in the words of John Lennon, the gentle soul of unbelief.

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky

Atheism used to have a sense of humor. The famous 15th century political strategist Niccolo Machiavelli was on his death bed. The Bishop visits him and implores, “Niccolo, you are dying. Save your soul. You must renounce Satan and all his works.”

Machiavelli struggles to lift himself up on one elbow. “Father, I beg you, this is no time to be making enemies.”

Oxford University is the Jerusalem of atheism (or rather “reason” as they like to call it). “Reason” is in no way touchie-feelie. It likes stuff it can measure, cleanly and crisply. It was at Oxford where Howard Walter Florey discovered the medical value of penicillin and where Robert Hooke developed the microscope.

This is science; it’s the binary exactness of ones and zeroes. Off or on, buddy. Black or white. Put up or shut up. Don’t expect “reason” to join you in a group hug, or be thoughtful enough to hold your hair back for you when you puke.

Oxford proudly displays a naked, sprawled out statue of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was expelled from Oxford 200 years ago. He was expelled for being an atheist. What this should remind the ruling elite of today’s Oxford is how susceptible to head-spinning reversals are even hallowed halls. A hundred years from now they could easily have on display, a bareass sculpture of the provost who expelled Shelley.

My problem with atheism is as follows: It posits that after a person shuffles off the coil and goes to room temp, there is no “there,” there. You are dust, floating in emptiness, Not even dust. Just atoms. Heck, not even atoms. Nothing, nada, zip.

El Void-o.

Plus, your theory could easily be wrong, and if so, then you’ve also irritated God. And really, who needs that?

Atheism is lose-lose by its own definition.

Comedian Rodney Dangerfield said, “I went to an atheist’s funeral once. There he was, all dressed up and no place to go.” Rodney, who is currently dead himself these days, presumably now knows what’s available to go to. If I can get one of our columnists to chat him up about it, I’ll let you know what he says.

Larry Moffitt
Editor, www.ReligionAndSpirituality.com