You are ultimately in control. While things might appear to get away from you now and then, that’s just blowback from the stuff you controlled yesterday and stuff you are in control of fixing today and tomorrow.
Everything, from the kind of day you have to your eternal salvation, is in your own hands.
So, don’t ask for help.
Thanks to rev. billy bob gisher ©2005 of Bugtussle, New York’s Less People Less Idiots for directing me to the faint sounds of Joe Bageant’s inner voice in his blogged essay:
Joe Bageant: Welcome to Middle-Class Lockdown
Joe Bageant’s little inner voice is like everyone else’s. Whenever I shudder at the condition of the republic, whenever I feel its utter absence of community, it scolds me and tells me I am crazy: Nothing is wrong. This is merely the way things are. It has always been this way. You cannot change that. You expect too much. Look at your wife. She’s not upset. She wonders why you cannot just go ahead and be happy. What you see around you is normalcy. Take care of your own family. Relax. Buy something. And I do too. Which is why I own nine guitars, though I can only play one at a time, and even then not very well. The voice made me do it. I was bored.
It’s a good read, if a little morose in its loneliness, about the state of our nation. We’re so wealthy that we don’t need each other. We don’t run to the neighbor’s for a cup of sugar, we run to the Super Wal-Mart, because we’re not sure if the neighbor is named Linda or Sharon, we’re pretty sure Linda-Sharon hasn’t baked anything in years, and we’re in no mood to admit to the neighbor who’s lawn is nicer than ours that we need anything at all.
61 years ago, United States Marines were fighting a bloody battle against Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima:
Who really raised the flag on Iwo’s Mt. Suribachi
What if today’s press reported on the Marines landing on Iwo Jima by Zell Miller
More Iwo Jima info at IwoJima.Com.
The Church’s teaching authority comes from its membership. Since the Catholic church has such a great number of members, some of whom are very powerful people in their own right, the Church has a good deal of authority.
I hear the 3/4 is training at winter warfare school. Looks fun, in a biting cold kind of way.
CH-53E, those are Marines huddled on the snow.
Snow shoes
‘Monster’ Cat In China Weighs 33 Pounds
Cruising the blog ‘hood recently, I came across the story of the story of this huge cat on Der Tommisar’s The Donegal Express:
That cat’s a virtual planetoid, it’s got it’s own weather systems . would you look’a tha’ thing? with his wee beady eyes, It’s Eoooge!
Now this pic has the owner, hefting so much cat flesh, looking proud as can be. It’s not a pumpkin, man! get hold of yourself and exercise the feline before it evicts you.
I couldn’t be proud of owning a cat like that, I’d despise myself for giving in to it every time it demanded another pound of ground pork. My kids would be afraid of it. I’d grow to hate it more each time it needed to be helped into bed….. unless…. I might be proud of a cat like that….
[drifts off to sleep, thinking of 33 lbs. cats.]
Lots (more…)
A year and a half ago I wrote the following:
A followup post is (here).
Today’s information aesthetics blog links us to:
a relational visualization chart showing the branches & connections of 100 years of music using the London Underground map
information aesthetics - music underground map
I dunno, coincidence? was someone reading?, or did I let the meme out?
That October 2004 MusicPlasma post is the only time, to my knowledge, that I’ve been plagiarized, some French bulletin board user swiped the whole post and represented it as his own. I never would have known were it not for one of his compatriots ratting him out and linking to me as the source.
“Catholic” is a word that means “buried underground to control stench”. The early church was persecuted and mass had to be celebrated in underground burial catacombs to avoid having everyone fed to lions, thus “Catholic Church”.
“Catholic guilt” is a phrase that long-long ago referred to deeply-repressed, subconcious (buried) guilt. It had nothing to do with the Church or its teaching on sin and forgiveness. It’s a semantic collision with the similarly named church that has come to share the new meaning, “Imposed by the Vatican”.
Church is not Holy.
We may learn about God or have emotions about the eternal in the building called church, but the bureaucracy is man-made. The Church is an earthly corporation created by men for control of money and people. It has no role, power or existence outside the “real” world here in time and space.
The Church, when you take away the stained glass and the eternal subject matter that it sells is no more Holy or Sacred than Amway, Mary Kay or Tupperware.
There are thousands of Christian Churches. Sometimes it seems like there’s one on every block. They’re all special, each in their own distinct way.
An obvious benefit of the great number of churches is that should you feel ill-at-ease in your current community, you can always try another house of worship. This can help keep an appropriately entertaining tone in the promises of hellfire and brimstone, for your pastor knows that at any time, you can vote with your feet and take your tithing business elsewhere.
If you shop around your own neighborhood, you’re bound to find one where the teachings fit your moral needs, the music director knows the same hymns you do and the services are short, but not too short.
In the extremely unusual circumstance that your area does not offer worship such as your soul requires to feel fed you can always start one of your very own. The IRS has a form for this. It might catch on! If it does become popular there are profitable options inTelevision and Radio syndication in addition to the publishing business.
