Sunday, November 03, 2013

Paying Respects to the Misbegotten



This morning I got up around five thirty and listened to that whacko guy on KFI till six.  Clearly he’s not strictly tea party because he was talking about this whole selling of munitions thing we have going trying to play “both sides against each other’ stirring up conflicts and shipping arms to both sides for profit.   There was that program “Burn Notice” last night where this guy had a lot of whitty wisdom.  He said “Sometimes in order to take a fanatic down, you have to become as it were, his “prized student” and learn from HIM- - what will make HIM go down.  (Selah)  Sometimes long time relations can be ended by “some tragic misunderstanding” but at other times the ‘misunderstanding’ itself can be “engineered” by one of the parties as it were to “look like a hap hazard event” when it’s really anything but.  I can’t help but think of Pastor Bill Halliday with this.  How often have I said to myself after contact with him that went really badly “Well, it must just be some horrible misunderstanding”.   If you are criminal with no scruples you have the ‘edge” on your competition because you can be strictly “goal driven” with no hesitations or moral doubts to get in your way.  It could be the US Military policy is like this with foreign governments.  He spoke of Iran-Contra, which was a classic case of playing both sides against each other.  Of course Oliver North was there in his fancy uniform before congress like some kind of a God damned hero, when he was anything but.   There was one guest on Meet the Press that talked about- - minimum federal sentences for drug offences, so that you can get ten years for mere possession of a few grams of cocaine.  This guy has been among these prisoners and seen that hey have “no lives to go back to “even if they were to get out.  They aren’t “rehabilitated” and really need more “life skills” instead of prison serving as an apprenticeship for becoming a more hardened criminal.  It’s an old argument and one that gets routinely rejected because no congressman wants to be labeled as “Soft on Crime”.   I guess what the people are to assume is the “Bed Seed” theory where once you spot one of these bad seeds in society it’s best to pluck it out right them- - before it can contaminate all the good seed.  We have five percent of the world’s population yet 25% of all the world’s prisoners.  We have the highest per capita imprisonment rate in the world.   What’s wrong with this picture?

You had one of these “Juicer” things on TV.  Only lately has it dawned on me that there is a fundamental difference between a Juicer and just a Blender.  This one features a low inductance motor- - for you V = IR fans out there - - magnetic inductance is basically how a motor works, so this Juicer gets More done with Less power.  And it extracts a whole lot more juice from the fruits and vegetables than a blender.  Of course you don’t want “cooked’ apple juice, or any other juice.  Melinda Lee herself is down on “clarified butter” because it has neither the flavor nor the nntrients of regular butter.  And ditto for juices.  Personally I keep resolving I’m going to start drinking V 8 for its red, orange, and green carrotenoids- - and in particular the nutriend Aztezanten.  But I don’t follow through.  He used the fish tank illustration to demonstrate how you need to “clean the water in your system” to get rid of all that schmootz.   Never eat anything died bright orange- - or anything that’s air puffed or with the consistency of a sponge- - or with a shelf life of six months or longer.  Personally I don’t consume those flavored potato chips, just the plain.  I wonder what sort of chemicals you are ingesting with all of that artificial flavoring.  Some people scarf down whole big bags of whatever, but I don’t because at least I’m a little aware of sodium content.   Probably bottled water would be a good idea, too.  But I think refined wheat is better for me personally.  Cane sugar is better than corn sugar.

I didn’t get around to turning Leo Le Port on till after one.  Since I’ve never used either a DV-R or a Tevo- - I didn’t know the difference.  Tevo’s are more expensive and have more features and options.  Leo said you can use the analog hole to record movies but I didn’t know that with DV-R you had to confine your viewing to that television and couldn’t digitally copy to your heart’s content to disk drive or whatever.  Apparently you can’t.  So how much does the DVR store in the way of recordings?   Do you have to play them back really soon?   So OK, digital is HTMI, but on the Component plugs- - this is High Definition also, but it’s analog – or electronics the way God intended it.  I listened to the show till two.  Now Windows 8.1 is out but Leo continues to maintain that Windows 7 was the pinnacle of desktop computing software and that with Windows 8 “Microsoft is in its adolescence, trying to make the awkward transition from desk top to tablet computing- and isn’t particular good at either”.  Apparently “surface’ has a newer, better version out.  Leo continues to warn us that ‘As soon as Microsoft has its Tuesday updates, install them right then because the minute Microsoft announces an update, it flags that particular weakness to the bad guys, so they know just where to hunt stuff down and hack into your system.  I listened to the program all the way till two o clock.

Not to go out of order or anything but I listened to Breakfast with the Beatles from the beginning almost continuously till about eleven or so and sporadically after that.  OK we know “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party” is one of John’s favorite songs.  I have yet to get a confirmation on that from my own “contact”.   There was this whole raft of “Leslie Gore’ style songs about crying at parties and being jealous of a girlfriend- - and you’ll dump her if she looks at another guy and all”.   Julian Lennon was the guest of the morning.  It was kind of a trippy experience because he seemed a whole lot “less like John” than I had imagined.  How whole accent is more reminiscent of George Martin than his father.  His latest album is “Everything Changes”.  If I were ever to do an album a more likely title would be “Nothing Changes”.   So they played the tracks of “Beautiful People” and “Invisable” and some from “Photograph Smile” and finished with the ultimate anthem, his breakthrough single of late 1984.  So I guess he’s working with Steven Tyler.   That one Mc Cartney song about “It didn’t hurt me none- - it was good for my soul” - - seems to be channeling George Harrison a little in the guitar work.

This paragraph is last because the editing isn't as tight as it could be. 

We’ve all heard about misbegotten idea or ideas that were DOA or “killed in the crib”, nipped in the bud or whatever.  Cosmically they never got their act together like “star crossed lovers’ or something.   I would like to discuss two parrellel tracks.  The first is the idea of Universal Health Care, and the other is my becoming a Born Again Christian.   People wonder why President Obama seems so “snake bit”.  For one, I think he is fundamentally an impatient man who thinks more highly of his own ideas than the rest of the world does.  So he has that slogan of “Yes we can” and nobody ever stops to figure out what that means, or whether it means anything at all other than something that helped him sell a book in 2007.   This whole economic recovery seems snake bit.  They say that in 1983 that “The US economy had a tail wind and everybody was pulling for it, and working together- congress and the President, to insure that it was a successful recovery.  Mitt Romney comes on Meet the Press today- - and one thing I’d be saying if I were he - - would be that “If I were President this economy would be performing a whole lot better than it is”.   Because the Congress would be passing those jobs bills and endeavoring to make the President look good.   But let’s compare the current Affordable Care Act with Medicare in 1965.  A year later the thing was up and running and nobody questioned it.  By 1968 as someone pointed out, not even George Wallace made an issue of Medicare’s right to exist as a functioning element of government.  This time we have a bill that was submitted premature, by a President who was elected at least four years premature, before he had sufficient experience to know what he was doing - - and lo and behold here we are nearly five years later and even democrats are saying “perhaps we should re-think this whole process because Obama Care clearly isn’t working”.   In a cold, objective view of the situation, a one year delay in any mandate would not be inappropriate at all to request.  People say “Well it’s only five percent of insure people who are affected”.  But it’s a case of “death by a thousand paper cuts” or more aptly, “Death by a thousand anicdotes”.    Part of this National Aversion tht America has to health care can be traced back to Ted Kennedy, who single handedly prevented us from getting Health Care in early 1974 when President Nixon proposed it.  This is the same Ted Kennedy who almost single handedly got Ronald Reagan elected because of that highly devisive speech he delivered at the Democratic Convention.  Conservative sources also say that Ted Kennedy was undermining Jimmy Carter in other ways, such as foreign policy.  We now come to my Born Again Christianity.  In 1972 or so I seemed well on my way to becoming a born again Christian.  When Hal Lindsey was delivering one of his “Last Days” speeches at the Anaheim Convention Center- - I was routing him on.  I was all for it.  “End of the World? - - that’s Cool”.  Even in 1973 there was all of this “Henry Kissinger is the Antichrist” stuff.  But just as Health Care died on the vine under Harry Truman and other Presidents- - so my interest in Christianity was dying on the vine because starting around mid 1973 a Wall went up between me and my brother that lasted over two and a half years.  So we jump to June of 1975 when I was again showing interested in this supernatural stuff- - - I was into the book Aracne Rising - - astrology - - “Venus and Mars are allright tonight’ and all of that.  I bought those Eric Von Donnigan books such as Charriots of the Gods and Gold of the Gods.  Even Jimmy Swaggart in those days, whom I listened to on the radio said that “heaven is a planet”, not that I entirely bought that.  In October I ordered Doug Clark’s latest prophecy book in a letter and received it shortly, and I was reading the books “666” and “1000”.   But at some point- - perhaps “1000” was a bit too much to take- - my interest in the whole thing cooled.  I stood to get a real job in recording engineering if I could get through the Golden West Recording Arts program.  That was the real world- - and not this other hocus pocus.  But the wall between myself and my brother remained.  Even when he announced his divorce, or what looked like one coming- - Paul’s remarks were directed primarily to my parents and not me.  I felt like a fly on the wall or something.  He gave me “Evidence that Demands a Verdict’ that Christmas.  It made interesting points.  But as you know I fell into a depression in January of 1976 and I’m not entirely sure why.  Why does the economy “slip into a depression?”   Was it some biochemical imbalance?   Maybe I just looked at my life so far and came to the conclusion “It isn’t happening” whatever IT was.   This WALL between me and my brother wasn’t broken until March 20th of 1976.  One must keep in mind that I had not been over to my brother and his wife’s apartment ONCE in the entire year of 1975, so far as I can remember.  At this time Paul invited the family over to see where he was living now, with a married couple, and the dog, and the garden and all.  After maybe three weeks or so- - you could say he was “settling in”.   One might think, “Well that’s a good start”.   I was thinking “If I can get back a relation with Paul maybe we can talk about religion again - - we’ll see”.  But that’s not what happened.   It’s like President Obama in 2004 can have “asperations of being President some day, but just not tomorrow”.  On March 24th 1976 just four days later- - I “Became a Born Again Christian”.   Suddenly a lot of weird stuff began happening we have discussed before.  But it’s like Obama and the Republicans.  There was this WALL between the President and the Republicans in 2009.  Sometimes you just Can’t say that “Come hell or high water I’m going to get this Health Care bill passed.”  You just can’t shut the Republicans out and say “I won the election so I make the Rules”.  This breeds ill feelings.  In terms of my Born Again Christianity - - one can argue that I “really didn’t know what it was all about” till late summer of 1977 a year and a half later.  From that point in time, and in the next few weeks and months you could say “I became Educated on the whole subject” and I assure you, not in a good way.  I “found out what it was all about”.   I have covered this gallery of horrors before in my writings.  But this era would kind of symbolize- - “What will happen when Obama Care is actually rolled out and people have to live with it”.   We wouldn’t go to war with Syria because Obama didn’t have the support of the American People.  Obama’s rating in the polls has been dropping steadily for months and his popularity has fallen to 42% or something.  I’m just thinking in my mind that- - like Mort Zucherman and my sister in law say- - is Medical Health Insurance rates are skyrocketing NOW- - where are they headed?   How do you have all hell braking out around you and say “It will all be better” when your track record on the topic completely sucks?   Another topic discussed on Meet the Press was this idea of dumping Joe Byden and making Hillary Vice President.  This idea didn’t poll well because people saw it as a basic act of disloyalty to Byden, and if I had been asked I would have said “Keep Byden”.

No comments: