“All energy flows according to the whims of the great Magnet. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I've been thinking a lot about religion lately. My family didn't focus on religion when I was a kid.

My father was the product of a broken home. His mom took off with her husband's best friend when my dad was only 10 years old.  He joined the navy at 17, a year or so before Pearl Harbor. WWII left him bitter and broken; he was ordered to open fire into a life-raft full of Japanese sailors, and he knew from experience what burning human flesh smells like ( pork roast ). Not surprisingly, he was also a devout atheist, and alcoholic. In the few years I knew him we had some spirited, Rainier Ale fueled philosophical discussions. I remember we used to talk about reincarnation, and he would draw pictures of Wampus Cats and Humbugs. He was a nice man ( until the third quart of ale ) and well liked by children and dogs, a pretty good artist, and he once wanted to be a Park Ranger. Instead he ended up a Boiler-Maker who helped weld the Titan Missile silos.

After my mother was arrested in 1969 for embezzling from the Reality company she worked for, he devoted himself to drinking and never worked again. He died in 1976 at the age of 54

My mother always used to say to me, "go outside and play". She was beyond disappointed that I wasn't a boy.

Enough of the past.

Lately my son's been telling me I need Jesus. I don't know if he's serious or not. He has a dry sense of humor. But I think I know what he means.

Our Nation is in DEEP SHIT. Turns out Joe McCarthy was right, the "Commies" ARE out to destroy us, and they are very patient. It's taken years to bring us to this state of vulnerability.  Our People have been so degraded and divided that we are easy pickins. If We, The People, don't recover some sense of unity, and FAST, this entire nation, this experiment in self-governance, will be lost, and we will wake up to find ourselves living in the world's biggest gulag. 

Which brings us to religion.

I am not a "believer", although I kind of wish I was. I envy the comfort people take from their religions, the sense of community it gives them, and how their faith helps them achieve impressive results like Cathedrals and The Holy Roman Empire. Not to mention "faith healing". Never underestimate the placebo effect, or what can happen when energy is focused properly.  Religious beliefs aside, I think we can all agree that life exists. How or why I don't know, I don't believe anyone does, and it doesn't really matter anyway. If Einstein was right about energy and matter being eternally interchangeable, then life is pure energy, and as Tony Robbins says "energy flows where attention goes", which finally brings me to my point: People are energy and religion can be a lens used to focus that energy, just like a laser.

In a time when our culture and history is being openly attacked and destroyed daily, and the flag is set ablaze on the toppled statue of George Washington, we need something and we need it fast! You could do a lot worse than Jesus.

The Lookining

A funny thing happened to me yesterday. I went into town, something I actively avoid doing these days, but beer doesn't buy itself and show up in the fridge on its own, ya know. As a rule I avoid all unnecessary contact with other humanoid lifeforms. Especially EYE CONTACT. Oh, I REALLY avoid eye contact. I don't even wear my glasses unless I'm driving, and instinctively flinch away from all reflective surfaces. However, quite by accident, while shuffling across the parking lot of the place I go to buy the essentials of life, I happened to find myself looking directly at another person, and by some strange coincidence, that person returned my glance, at which time we both SMILED and nodded at each other in some primordial ritual of greeting and recognition.

Much as I hate to admit it, that brief moment of contact made me feel...better. It was actually a pleasant experience, to acknowledge and be acknowledged by a fellow being. It was so pleasant, in fact, that I decided to try to reproduce the experience inside the supermarket by actively looking at people and smiling, just to see what happened. God only knows what kind of pervert they thought I was.

Out the dozens of people in that stressful environment, while most prefered to remain insulated from perception, at least four returned the smile, so I consider the experiment a great success. Perhaps this is an indication of an awakening, an inner realization of the situation humanity is sliding into and the need to reestablish contact with each other before it is too late.

I vow to continue this effort in human interaction on my future bi-weekly excursions into what remains of our civilization, and see what fruit it bears.

An Essay On Happiness

What is "Happiness"? A quick google search reveals that happiness is: The state of being happy.
Thanks a lot google.

Dictionary dot com, on the other hand,  goes off the rails:   1, 2. pleasure, joy, exhilaration, bliss, contentedness, delight, enjoyment,satisfaction.  Happiness, bliss, contentment, felicity imply an active or passive state of pleasure or pleasurable satisfaction. Happiness results from the possession or attainment of what one considers good: the happiness of visiting one's family. Bliss is unalloyed happiness or supreme delight: the bliss of perfect companionship. Contentment is a peaceful kind of happiness in which one rests without desires, even though every wish may not have been gratified: contentment in one's surroundings. Felicity is a formal word or happiness of an especially fortunate or intense kind: to wish a young couple felicity in life.

That covers a LOT of ground. Time to put things in perspective.

All my life I have resisted the urge to feel happy.

Why? Superstition, maybe. Deep down in my core lurks the suspicion that "being happy" was just begging the fates to take a massive shit all over you.  Why, one could ask oneself, if one were not a narcissistic sociopath, do I deserve to be happy when there is SO MUCH SUFFERING in the world, and I don't mean just on the human scale, which is horrific enough, but the UNIVERSAL scale, in a world where life itself can only exist by the non-stop brutal murder and devouring of every other life form ever created? With the exception of vultures, I guess. But still. Seriously. What the fuck?

Then I got old, and everything, (and yes, I do mean everything) I have ever loved, either died, destroyed itself, just left me, or worse, had to be released by my own hand. The complete futility of my very existence, always prescient at the back of my mind from my earliest remembrance, came smashing into the arena of my daily consciousness. I know, I'm using a LOT of personal pronouns, but then, this IS all about ME. In my defense though, when I say me, I mean us, because we are all one, my child. Buddha be with you.

Anyway, like I said, I've always felt guilty about feeling happy. And here I am, in the waning years of my life, for the most part alone, save for two geriatric dogs, a couple of demanding cats, an indeterminate number of feral chickens, and a son who calls me every Sunday whether he wants to or not.

So what's my point? Happiness is overrated, and probably non-existent. What REALLY counts is gratitude. Being thankful for what you get. Having to not be hungry, truly a blessing. A toilet that flushes,  how wondrous!  A hot shower every night, miracle of miracles! Yes, that is the key. Being grateful lets you truly enjoy what you have, without being crippled by guilt. And there is something else...being grateful for what you can give. That is a double blessing. Having enough that you can share. It does not get better than that.

Such Is Life.

In November, if I'm still alive, I will be 61 years old, and if life has taught me anything, it is this: people are stupid, ungrateful assholes. We never appreciate ANYTHING. We judge and find lacking everyone who has ever loved us or tried to do anything for us, and, like the song says, we never know what we've got 'till it's gone.

 I speak from experience. My name is Lois, and I am an asshole.

Truth be told, I have never understood anything. Born the third daughter to two horribly damaged people who survived the Great Depression (now THAT was an accurate description for life as we know it) and WWII, we all clung on to life trying to be happy without knowing what the rules were.

We failed.

Why did we fail? To steal a line from Don Quixote, because we saw life as it is, and not as it should be. When we ask "why", it is not to ask why we are dying, but why we had ever been born, and maybe we ask because we are disconnected from everything, like an amputated limb, we shrivel and rot. Without  any connection to anything there is nothing. No purpose. No joy. No reason to even exist.

My deepest regret in life is that I could not MAKE anyone happy. Nothing I did altered anything. My existance changed nothing for anyone. We are given such a brief span of time to touch the world, and it blinks out, leaving a scant few who remember you only as a disappointment, if at all. All I had to give was my time. My gift to my children was simply...time. And freedom. I tried to give them as much freedom as I could, because I knew that once you are alone in the world, freedom is a rare commodity.

Of course, that was interpreted as, what? Neglect, apparently.

Well, shit. You do what you can, and that's all you can do.

Laughter comes more easily now,
As pain becomes hilarious.
Death take us, though we know not how,
We go where it will carry us.
We can't atone for what we've done
Though we pray to be forgiven.
No harm was meant to anyone.
Can't escape the hell we live in.

To Be, Or Not To Be?

That is the question. Old Shake-a-spear knew his shit. I have outlived my usefulness and then some. Or have I? Really don't know. Everyday I think of my long lost daughter. She had to be free. I've come to accept that. To be free, she had to shake me off. Should I hold out hope that we can reconnect some day? Is that narcissism or just love's longing for itself? What the hell do I know? Only know...I miss her.

My suggestion for future "oaths of office"

Instead of "so help me God"...

"God" is a human construct through which all personal responsibility is abdicated, and horrendous crimes can be justified . I refute the existence of any god, and acknowledge that I, and I alone, am responsible for my actions and the consequences thereof.

Another day

Just got off the phone with my 67 year old sister in California. She calls me occasionally, when no one else will answer. I listen to her complain about her past, AGAIN, listen to her complain about her present, listen to her Fox News induced bullshit. She occasionally asks me a question about MY life. I try to respond. She cuts me off in mid sentence to relate something about how it corresponds to HER life. I bite my tongue. I get angry. I open a beer. Time goes by. I listen, because...shit, why DO I listen? Well, it's HER nickle, and, damnit, somebody has too, I guess. It is our human obligation to listen to someone reaching out, right?  I open another beer. MORE time goes by. I get REALLY drunk. I TRY to talk to her, to MAKE her connect with another human, and see common ground. I fail. She is not interested in connecting. She just wants SOMEONE to listen. Well, fair enough. We all need someone to listen.  But, damn, it is actually painful to absorb her psychic detritus! However, being a child of the light, I embrace my cosmic obligation, and drink more beer! Fuck, am I drunk.

Where am I going with this? I kind of forgot. Oh wait, yeah! It is this: We all connected. The good of the many outweighs the good of the few. Or the one. Everything I needed to know I learned from Star Trek. We need to forget what makes us different from one another and embrace what we all have in common. Can that even happen? Yes, given enough time. Do we have that much time left? Oh, shit. I don't know. Well, I don't know about you, but I'm gonna have another beer.

I had a lot of fun making this. I made this video as a reply to the current racial protest on campus because I wasn't allowed to speak at the event. It's my first major attempt at political commentary, so there are probably errors. My whole time at OSU things like this have been happening, and I'm getting pretty sick of it. I used to be such a nice, left leaning guy too...
Posted by Bart Degeneffe on Friday, January 1, 2016