The Coltons Point Times

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Take Me Now God! - Excerpt #4

[Authors note: For those of you following this story I have tried to simplify it. If you just started there is a series of excerpts and if you want to start at the beginning just copy and paste the following links. Note that this release is now Excerpt 1 as it was the preface but left out of the earlier releases. Have fun with the preface which is titled the Postmortem.]

Take Me Now God! Review
What a Novel Idea
http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/2009/05/what-novel-idea.html

Take Me Now God! Excerpt #1
Postmortem
http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/2009/06/take-me-now-god-excerpt-1.html

Take Me Now God! Excerpt #2
Epilogue
http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/2009/05/excerpt-1-take-me-now-god.html

Take Me Now God! Excerpt #3
Terminator Comet
http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/2009/06/take-me-now-god-excerpt-2.html

TAKE ME NOW GOD!
(An Unauthorized Autobiography)

Copyright 2009 jiM PuTnaM

Excerpt #4

WITNESSES

About 25 years ago I found out for the first time that I was worldly. Sounded good to me. Like a jet setter of sorts. Man of the world. Then I found out what it meant. Took a legion of Jehovah’s Witnesses to finally get through to me. I mean I was brainwashed as a Catholic since birth. Deprogramming takes some time.

I smoked. I drank. I danced. I swore. I fought. I believe in the country. I paid taxes. I liked holidays. And by doing some or all of the above I had somehow rejected God and was condemned to be stuck here in hell for eternity. It meant I was lost to the material world, forever banished to drift aimlessly in an endless sea of darkness and never see the light of the spiritual kingdom, or some such illuminating thought.

Learned that from the Watchtower, the National Enquirer of the Witness Kingdom. The only magazine with bigger distribution than Reader’s Digest. Back when I was still in intensive brainwashing I was told the Jehovah’s Witnesses, plus the Christian Scientists, Mormons, and about every other group that was not Catholic, was a cult.

That’s all it took to get me interested in finding out more. So I made it a habit to study all kinds of religions all my life. Ever wonder who in the world would let the door-to-door Jesus people in their house? I confess, it was me. Course I debated them as much as I debated the nuns and priests. Except the Witnesses never tried to exorcise me like my own did. I was always good for their witness quota if not salvation.

Of all the groups I studied I was most fascinated by the Mormons and Witnesses. The Mormons because of their commitment to the nation, the Witnesses because of their opposition to the nation. Then I found a lot of similarity between the Witnesses and the Hopi Indian. Lost tribes seem to have a lot in common.

Neither recognized the authority of the federal government. And while the Hopi were making their last stand in the desolation of the Arizona desert, the Witnesses were making their last stand in the desolation of Brooklyn. Besides, the Hopi had their ancient prophecies and the Witnesses had their Michael Jackson.

When I was a kid I always wanted to be a monk. Think the Witnesses reminded me of monks. After giving up all they had to give up, might as well be in a cloistered order in the mountains somewhere.

Two main things intrigued me about the Witnesses. First was their refusal to take blood transfusions for any reason. Second was the legendary ways they could beat the government out of taxes, OOPS, cancel that. I mean second was the importance of the 144,000 soldiers of God mentioned in Revelations.

Until I talked to the Witnesses, I never realized all 144,000 of God’s chosen would be Witnesses. Didn’t say much for the other 99% of the population, or the Pope. Of course they never could explain to me how there were only 144,000 of God’s chosen yet there were several million Witnesses. What happens to the rest of the righteous ones? Dinner for the seven-headed dragon I suspect.

Spent over a year in California living with Witnesses. Not in a commune or anything, they were fairly normal in living arrangements. But I went to the temple and debated with the elders for all hours of the day and night. They asked me for insights into all the other religions I had studied, and I asked them for tax tips.

Then one day my mission became clear. There had to be some reason for living with Witnesses for over a year, all the while subjecting myself to being branded a “worldly” person. I had been fascinated for quite some time with their refusal to take blood on biblical grounds. I could respect the position as well as their foundation.

But it seemed to me there should be an alternative to certain death, and a number were dying because of this religious belief. So I studied and ran across something the Japanese had patented called artificial blood. Now as long as the transfusion was not real blood, I saw no reason it wouldn’t be okay. And if the artificial stuff could help you survive long enough for your own system to replace the lost blood, then everyone wins.

After numerous discussions the Witnesses checked it out through their secret hierarchy and finally agreed to try it. It didn’t conflict with their teachings and might save some lives. Then the trouble began and my mission became clear. The artificial blood was not approved in the US. To get it approved, it had to go through the long and cumbersome process of Food and Drug Administration approval. Yet every day it seemed like more people were dying because they couldn’t take blood. New drug approval by the FDA was measured in years, not weeks.

So they asked me to help them, to find the short cut. With my federal experience I was to get the approval of the government for experimental use of the artificial blood. From day one I ran into an endless series of roadblocks. Before I was through my little humanitarian quest was to expose bigotry and discrimination to a degree I never suspected was possible in the land of the free.

I appealed to the chairman of a US Senate Committee for help. A famous Senator with a bunch of famous family members and a famous political dynasty behind him. One of his aides was assigned to help get the FDA approval. When I explained it to the aide over the phone, he asked if it was the same cult that refused to take blood transfusions. I said yes. He said they deserved to die. I figured that meant help would not be forthcoming any time soon.

So I played my trump card. I played back the tape of the phone call. The tape where he said they deserved to die. Then I told him the next time he heard the tape it would be playing on 60 Minutes, national television. Damn Catholics. I can say that, I was one. Seems there was a miraculous transformation. I asked God’s forgiveness for my tactics then thanked God for helping me get it done. No conflict there.

We got the waiver shortly after. Too late to save the father of a Witness I knew. But the very day of the approval people started being saved. Later a story appeared in the Watchtower. Don’t remember if it mentioned me. I never saw it. Doubt they could mention how worldly people help out. Wouldn’t look good for recruiting. I was already off on a new adventure. But I always liked the Witnesses. They’re into the End Times too.

ENDLESS SEARCH

As I sit and watch the daybreak
and the sun lights up the sky
I cannot help but wonder
why such beauty is a lie

For the beauty that we gaze on
is not within our grasp
the peace within that dawning morn
can’t be made to last

And so my search continues
as I travel on my way
in my quest for understanding
I have only this to say

As I travel to the cities
that people call their homes
I cannot help but wonder
why so many are alone

Dissent and animosity
that’s growing from within
makes everyone an enemy
though you view them as a friend

Don’t try to understand me
or make your love be known
for I was born to wander
no place to call my own

So as I journey onward
and fade with time till dead
forget you ever met me
but remember what I said

The answer I can’t find here
from two faces of the day
so now I must continue
and once again I say

Like a rolling stone I have no home
like the winds of the west I never rest
like the birds of the sky I’m free to fly
like a ray of hope I live then die

NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCES

Whoever coined the phrase, “life is cruel” was an eternal optimist, I know. Take the subject of near death experiences. If life were simply cruel we’d get one of these in a life time. But near death experiences were a way of life with me. If I’d known the near death stories could sell so many books I would’ve kept notes from day one. And I’d be rich by now.

The first happened almost before I even had a chance to get my diapers wet for the first time. They took me home from the hospital, and our apartment promptly catches on fire and burns down. The Ex says Satan was just trying to make me feel at home. I had a better idea. Figured it was either my older brother not willing to share the attention with a new baby, or mom trying to cook to impress me. Either explanation made more sense than Satan. I vowed to keep my eyes open after that. Probably explains why I was never able to sleep.

After moving to a new place I was sitting out front in a stroller with the bottom plate off. I started pushing with my feet and the next thing I knew I was sailing down the long, sloping stretch of sidewalk leading to a concrete flight of stairs with no help in sight. Was airborne for a short time as the stroller rolled in mid air and I smashed my face into a step halfway down. Even my permanent teeth were damaged and they weren’t out. Had so many stitches it took until high school for the scar tissue to not be noticeable. Guess my head had to grow into my injury.

The next couple of near deaths were medical related. Had the mumps so bad I couldn’t eat. Into the hospital for an IV. Then a measles induced fever brought me back again, to be packed in ice before my brain fried. Got a couple of years off before I came back with a bang. This time I drowned in a lake at summer camp. Both brothers stood watching as I sank under for the third and final time. I would have killed them if I hadn’t been busy dying myself. They thought I was playing around.

During this experience I managed separation from my body and was that strange. Was able to watch myself sink to the bottom of the lake. Resigned myself to die. It was quite peaceful. Didn’t see any angels or tunnel leading to brilliant light No spirits were waiting to guide me home. Guess I wasn’t near enough to death, or to heaven.

When I hit bottom I had muscle spasms and my legs bolted out straight, slamming against the bottom, and propelling my nearly limp body to the shallow end where counselors were waiting to grab me and bring me back to life. I was okay. Think my desire to get even with my brothers helped me through it.

By now I was beginning to feel immortal. Five attempts to die and they kept throwing me back. There would be many more. Like the time my younger brother and I were bored so we stole a box of rifle shells from a neighbor’s garage and tried firing them by smashing them with bricks. When that failed we tossed the whole box in an incinerator and had to run for our lives when the fire set off the ammunition. Felt like a front row seat at the Battle of Normandy.

Once my kid brother and I snuck into the basement so I could play priest again. We flattened the bread into hosts but the light in the old coal room where I intended to say Mass was off so I moved a folding chair under it and reached up to the chain. As the light came on I realized I was in a pool of water and then I lit up with the light. Bob knocked me loose from the arcing electricity through my body

Was swimming in a lake near a diving platform when lightning struck out in the middle. I dove under the surface just as the electrical charge came sizzling across the water. The guy I was with was caught hanging on the platform trying to get out and was severely burned in a circle around his chest. But he lived.

My eighth near death experience was in 8th grade when I had the brain concussion and slipped into a coma. Trying to be a hero in football playing without a helmet. We won, I lost, I had total amnesia and no idea where home might be. That night I slipped away in a coma and three days later I came back to life. What else could possibly go wrong? I wasn’t even in high school yet.

There was the time I plowed into two deer at 5:00 am doing 80 miles per hour. After the car finished rolling down a hill I woke up with a deer in the front seat beside me. Or the time I was towing a car and fell asleep. Both cars went into a slow motion spin out in the rain, then we disappeared backwards over an embankment and slid down into a ditch.

Once I was driving an MGB convertible and pulled up to a stop sign. At the last second I eased off the brake and rolled a couple of inches forward. Heard an odd whooshing sound, turned my head to the left and saw a hunting arrow sticking out of my head rest. If I hadn’t of rolled forward the arrow would have been in my neck. Some idiot was down the block playing Robin Hood.

The day after I graduated from high school my buddy and I were racing along the Pennsylvania Turnpike for NYC when a typhoon hit. We were in a VW bug trapped in the middle of a bunch of massive semi-trailers. At the bottom of the hill the road was flooded so we held on for dear life as the VW plowed into the water. With semis beside, behind, and coming toward us in the other lanes, it didn’t look good. Somehow the VW magically bounced up on the island dividing the turnpike saving us from instant pulverization.

When I was working in politics doing an investigation of fraud in federally funded programs I was driving a federal car and the windows were blown out by shotgun blasts. Never a dull moment. By then it was clear, I couldn’t get out of here. Some called it luck but I wondered. What was so great about not being taken?

I was caught in riots in New York City, Washington, DC and Omaha. Floods and tornadoes tried to get me. Strange things kept happening around me even when they weren’t happening to me.

In all I guess I had about 20 chances to write a best seller before they finally tapered off a few years back. Blew them all. There are some stories we just aren’t meant to share. She said it stood to reason, they wouldn’t let me out. A demon’s work is never done. I suppose that’s about right. Might make leaving this time a little harder. But I like challenges.

FAT LITTLE JIMMY GOT CRIBBLED

Little Jimmy strolling down the street
hear the pitter patter of his little feet
watch him scream and yell so loud
always heard, above the crowd

Well Jimmy met his match one day
while in his stroller he did play
a trip so fast was his to take
down the walk, without a brake

He had no wings but he did fly
right off the ground into the sky
but fat round kids must come back down
and so he crashed, upon his crown

Now there’s a lesson to be told
about this cribbled kid once bold
flying’s not for kids to do
cause then the people, will laugh at you

Little Jimmy strolling down the street
hear the pitter patter of his little feet
watch him scream and yell so loud
he’s always heard, above the crowd

GENEALOGY

What if I never get my life together? Then what? I mean, I tried growing up but found that entirely unacceptable. Now what the hell am I supposed to do? My life has been out of control since I got jerked out of the womb against my will. I mean, there was a mistake. I was supposed to be born to a Rockefeller or maybe a Mellon. They could afford me. But to my family. No wonder they had to pull me out. I had no intention of leaving until the mistake had been corrected.

I’d do a life review about now but I’d die laughing before I got through it. Not the way I want to end this life. Besides, there’s too many other people in line to knock me off. Wouldn’t want to spoil the fun for them. Of course I’ve already disappointed all those people that predicted my demise long before now. I call it debunking the psychics. They had no business making such predictions.

Guess I’ve just about tried it all by now. Can’t think of much more I have the energy or will to attempt. Did some interesting things I think. But my mother would never know. She has never figured out what I’m doing. Every time I’m around her she tells people something newer and stranger about me. Like the last time she said I was a Fed for the last 20 years. What the hell does that mean?

I haven’t been anything for five years, let alone twenty. Guess she might not approve of the things I’ve done. That would explain changing my history. If I hadn’t of caught my teachers changing history all the time I might not have understood. Mothers can change history, any history, especially when it comes to their kids. They don’t like what you do, they make up a new story.

Just wish she’d fill me in before me introduces me to people that think I’ve done something interesting. Although this last incident didn’t sound interesting to me. Maybe she finally gave up on me. She used to tell people interesting tall tales about me. Like I won all kinds of Emmys, was the governor of some state, or maybe that I’d made some spectacular archaeological discovery, like finding the lost continent of Atlantis or the ancient Hopi prophecy tablets. They were creative. A Fed? Now that’s boring.

Sometimes I think I’d like to take a peek inside her head. Then when I start to sense what is there, I run. What little I saw reminded me of Grand Central station under construction. Total chaos. Be hard to live with that I suspect. After having us for kids she probably feels like she’s been the victim of a psychic bush whacking. Someone once told me, and it might have been the Indians, that it takes four generations for the sins of the father to surface in the heirs. She found a short cut I guess.

But then I’ve never been a mother whose idea of dinner was a nice sit down meal at the country club. One whose idea of housework was what room service people did. She was groomed for royalty and stuck in the middle class. What are you going to do without the servants? Panic I guess.

That was why my first area of learning was home economics. Never understood that term either. Cooking, cleaning and sewing doesn’t translate to economics to me. It was more like survival. Then again, I made it an economic enterprise in my youth. I used to charge my brothers to clean up their mess. Then charged them to iron their shirts. I usually reserved my cooking for myself. I was more interested in seeing the long term effect of mother’s cooking on them.

Developing such a pattern in your youth can adversely affect you later. You don’t trust people to cook for you. And heaven help them if they so much as touch your laundry. I had my own particular way to fold things. And everything had a place. People still see my place and pronounce me anal retentive, yet another degrading term. Ever notice how only the total slobs call you that.

When you share a room all through your youth and have to fight for clothes and food, you get to be rather compulsive about your things. So few things can ever truly be yours in that kind of environment. I guarded them with my life and went to extremes to protect them from the marauding masses in the family.

Both my mother and father came from families that made pack ratting a science. Thus I inherited that genetic flaw as well. Both grandfathers were in the pack rat hall of fame. I did my best to keep up the family tradition but could never hold a candle to those masters.

Then I marry someone whose idea of something old and worn out is when you get it home from the store. I was looking for trouble there. Here I was the result of years of biological breeding to be a master recycler, a savior of all things old, and she wants to throw away anything with dust on it. Doomed from the start.

Kids are stupid and I was a kid once. Amazing the hindsight of maturity. Do you realize if we mastered hindsight we could never make a mistake. And how boring would that be? I always learned far more from mistakes than by doing something right. Isn’t learning supposed to be all about finding out what you don’t know, not doing what you do know?

Some people really get turned on by genealogy. I never did. It seemed to me that the risk of exposing dark secrets was always greater than finding out something good. Why else would your family’s past be shrouded in mystery? My dad did a massive family research project once. I never did see the results. But I saw bits and pieces.

That was how I knew Emilia Earhart married into the family, shortly before disappearing from the world. And how I learned that the little girl who testified against the witches in Salem was family. Talk about karma. After all those witches got fried because of my ancestor I suppose we were cursed for all time. Maybe that explains all the strange things that happened to me. Even the first causalities of the revolutionary war were family. Always looking for a good fight. Figured the British Empire would be a worthy opponent.

I leave the genealogy to the Mormons. Let them preserve my past. They can even convert all those dead souls from my family tree. In a way, its reassuring to me to know that long after I’m dead the Mormons can still come along and reinstate me into the good graces of the spiritual kingdom. Of course I never thought of Salt Lake City as the New Jerusalem but it has to be somewhere.

At least I’ve resolved the religious dilemma this lifetime. I decided to be a multi-religious zealot. I’m a Jew for Hanukah so I get 8 days of Christmas. Then I become a Witness for the other Christmas and birthdays so I don’t have to give gifts. I’m a Buddhist into self-transformation when I don’t want to go anywhere with people I don’t like. A Celtic Druid when I’m stoned, or is it surrounded by stones?

I’m Native American with a love for the Earth when it’s time to mow the grass. Mormon when it comes to marriage so I can have a few wives. Chinese when I can’t stand kids. A Muslim when I want five or six extra breaks during the workday. I’m an evangelical Christian when I want inspiration and a fundamentalist Christian when I want to trash the government and all other religions. Finally, I’m a Republican when the Democrats are in office, a Democrat when the Republicans are in office, and Independent when I think about it or when I’m around Perot.

In summary, I just am. Life is good.

I’LL TRY GOOD-BYE

I was born one autumn morn
the offspring of a war
that I never fought nor saw
nor even tasted

And even though I tried
I could never run away and hide
I could never get away go back
so it’s good-bye

My father was a politician
I was a politician’s son
though I never felt my life
had been wasted

And even though I tried
I could never run away and hide
I could never get away go back
so it’s good-bye

Always walked in long tall shadows
of my next of kin
never could live up
to expectations

And even though I tried
I could never run away and hide
I could never get away go back
so it’s good-bye

Raised to be a dreamer
whose work is never done
searching for the answers
to life’s mysteries

And even though I tried
I could never run away and hide
I could never get away go back
so it’s good-bye

Looking back on where I’ve been
the prodigy of war
walked that lonely trail
of broken dreams

And even though I tried
I could never run away and hide
I could never get away go back
so it’s good-bye

THE COUNSELOR

After so many years of hearing people tell you how bad off you really are, there comes a point when you start wondering for yourself. The Ex was only the latest to suggest I needed professional help. Think it started back with the nuns in grade school. About ten years ago they finally wore me down and I went to a psychologist or counselor or whatever you call them.

The premise which I finally accepted was the question, why am I not happy. The lady I was with at the time was worried that I kept accomplishing all these great things over and over and never seemed to get any pleasure from them. Sounded like a good idea to me, to find out why. She was right too, I never did really get any pleasure from accomplishing things.

First the psycho asked me if I was happy. I said no. She asked why and I said I saw no reason to be. All I had to do was look around me. When she pressed for why I didn’t seem to feel a sense of accomplishment I said it was because I always had things going on which weren’t accomplished.

Once we won a congressional campaign we were not supposed to win and I felt no sense of satisfaction. We had pulled off one of the top upsets in the country and I missed it. She asked why and I said I knew how much work was required to get him ready to take office. And I knew how hard it would be to keep him out of trouble when he got into office. Why should I be happy?

When we got a television special I helped create an Arts and Entertainment network national broadcast I didn’t feel that great. I knew the many people involved and the incredible long hours it took to put it together. Same was true with the Emmy winning series for National Geographic I worked on. Awards were never that important.

Sessions after session went by and all we were doing was talking about all the things I did and why I thought there was still too much left to do to be happy. Eventually I told her I was tired of being the subject of her next book. It didn’t seem like I was getting anywhere with the counseling. Either she had to send me to someone who could test me for a real problem or chemical deficiency, or I was through.

Off to the real shrink. After extensive testing he called me in the office. I was expecting him to tell me some kind of mind altering drugs were necessary. Instead he said the reason you are not happy is because what you do is not important to you. He said my outlook was worldly, even universal, and that I was unable to look at myself as an individual capable of accomplishing what I thought was important.

Seems when I had answered his questions about what I wanted to accomplish by saying wiping out hunger, providing housing for the homeless, ending war, eliminating hatred, that it ended any need for treatments. He said I didn’t have a problem. It would just be hard for me to ever be able to relate to my own needs when so many others wore so heavily on me. And what I accomplished was insignificant in my mind to the things I was worried about.

So that was it. Two more times I went to see shrinks for opinions and both times the shrink said they didn’t know if I had any chemical deficiency, but they would put me on powerful drugs just to see how it changed me. Can you imagine that? Mind altering drugs just to see the difference? That’s like a doctor treating you for something that isn’t wrong. I think the real nuts are behind the desks in the shrink’s office. Then again, the same thing happened to me with the appendix. Maybe it is my problem.

Now I figure I’m destined for a life without fulfillment. That’s another reason not to hang around. If I wanted that I’d go for the mind altering stuff in hopes that me being in a catatonic state would be more acceptable to the people around me. If God doesn’t take me soon then maybe he will let me house the homeless or feed the hungry. I could go for a few miracles. Then I might find satisfaction in what I accomplish.

DIDN’T BOTHER LOOKING BACK

When I went away baby
promised I’d be back some day
as you watched me say good-bye
tears flowed from your eyes

You were young and I was funny
went in search of fame and money
down a path I’d never been
to start it all again

Didn’t bother looking back
rode those rails on down the track
in search of dreams I dared not seek
God I was so weak

Then one day I woke up
the dreams I chased were gone
they were so elusive
for so long

I didn’t understand it
those dreams were in my grasp
somehow I just couldn’t
make them last

Now I’m back at home again
looking for a long lost friend
the love I left so long ago
guess I didn’t know

How she waited by the phone at night
cried until the morning light
one day no more tears would come
the tears were finally done

When I set out down that road
to be free, guess I told
the love I left behind
I won’t be back no more

The highway that I traveled down
a one way ticket out of town
was more than she could stand
I was such a fool once more

I didn’t understand it then
when I got home I lost a friend
I realize the cost
of being free

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Obama Extends Control Over Media As Journalistic Standards Continue Freefall

In yet another slap in the face to the 4th estate, the supposedly media guardians of freedom of information and truth, the Obama White House actually staged a question for the president during his news conference today, June 23.

The White House Press Office has already made a joke of the Washington Press Corp by only calling on a limited number of reporters for questions during his news conferences. But today they crossed the line of journalistic integrity by bringing their own news plant to the conference.

You see, until today nobody knew the Huffington blog site was a major national media outlet as it has always been a cheerleading squad for Obama and many liberal causes but thanks to the president the Huffington gang has joined the elite.

At the news conference guards escorted a Huffington reporter into the midst of the White House press corps to ask a question on behalf of the people of Iran. Now does that mean the White House is not capable of getting a question from anyone in Iran without going through a news censorship source?

It was staged and in a clumsy way at best. The venerated old press corps should have been insulted by this grandstanding at the news conference but they sat there like the mindless fools they must be, for only fools could be ignoring all the standards of journalistic integrity like our Washington media.

What ever happened to objective reporting? What ever happened to seeking the truth? Ever since CBS and the New York Times started inventing anonymous sources we have been on a fast track toward the destruction of media credibility. What happened in the last election was the press demonstrated that there is no such thing as journalistic integrity as they tossed "fair and unbiased" reporting out the window.

Character assassination became in vogue, slanted articles became standard, lies and innuendo became fact and advertising dollars became the guiding force for news coverage in the past year of politics in America and the result is as expected. The people lose out.

At least all the public was not fooled as polls on the credibility of media plummeted to the same depths as Congress which is about as low as you can go. The pattern is clear that people do not believe the press corps anymore and they should not believe them if they have any brain waves still left functioning.

News media, like reality television, is mindless entertainment. People know it. Every year ratings for network news drops, newspaper subscriptions are cancelled, newspapers go broke and television stations will be the next to fade into the history books.

Ever since corporate America decided to buy up all the media the goal of the news media has shifted from one of journalistic integrity to one of satisfying the stockholders and advertisers. Make no mistake, it matters not whether you are a raging MSNBC liberal or a staunch Fox conservative, manufacturing news is okay and leading the readers through editorial slants on stories is even better.

For a couple of hundred years the 4th estate earned the protection of the 1st Amendment of the Constitution, the freedom of the press, but that was passed long before the news media became bought and paid for just like our politicians. There is nothing left that is free about the press.

As more newspapers go broke, TV ratings continue to drop and news staffs get cut back throughout our great nation one can only hope that fewer biased articles and lies will be propagated by the media. That might be one benefit from the self-destruction of the news media. Perhaps it is long overdue.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Goldman Sachs Gets Multi-Billion Dollar Payback for Backing Obama

Obama Buddies Get Richer as Congress Seems Dumbfounded

So what is the best investment in America? Buy a president. Just ask Goldman Sachs who secretly decided long before last year's election that the one candidate who could keep them from bankruptcy, who would allow them to cover up billions of dollars in bad mortgage loans and ignore oil price manipulation was the promising junior senator from Illinois.

As reported over and over the past three years in this paper, Goldman met secretly with Obama long before the election and decided Obama was the one. They helped raise millions of dollars for Obama and guided him throughout the campaign planting former Goldman executives throughout the Obama campaign and new Administration to help assure they got what they wanted.

They helped insure that federal government money would be used to pay them back all the bad loans made to AIG. One of Obama's top financial advisors was able to invest $5 billion in Goldman less than a year ago and has already made over $1 billion profit, Warren Buffett no less. A revolving door was set up to help usher former Goldman executives into the Obama White House and Treasury and throughout the many financial agencies of government.

As Goldman got government money to help them survive they were forcing competitors out of business to take over the world investment banking market. They used federal TARP funds and bailouts of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG to replenish their coffers and eliminate competition.

They are the only financial institution to triple their value since Obama got elected. There has been no meaningful investigation of their role in the sub prime mortgage disaster and oil price manipulation of last year and this year to expose how they have made billions of dollars at the expense of hapless and greedy institutional investors and private investment funds.

They were instrumental in modifying federal rules and regulations to keep the sub prime mortgages and oil futures derivatives outside government regulatory control while the world economy was brought to the brink of disaster. They even bought the very oil futures market that set the world prices while their own energy experts were predicting unjustified oil price cost hikes.

While Goldman was busy dumping billions of dollars in toxic mortgages into the world market they were also forcing AIG to repaying them billions in potential losses, a move that forced the federal government to come in with over $180 billion in federal bailout dollars for AIG under the new AIG CEO, a former Goldman executive, who helped Goldman receive 100% of all debt owed by AIG.

Last week Goldman joined fellow bankers JP Morgan, Credit Suisse Bank and Deutsche Bank in paying back the federal TARP funds, $88 billion between them, thus freeing themselves from federal scrutiny. Then secretly this past weekend they informed employees that the biggest bonuses in 140 years would be paid out this spring, though what they meant was the over $500 million in bonuses would be the most in history. It was also based on just the 1st quarter results, since Obama took office, in 2009. What a slap in the face to the president who complained about executive bonuses. Yet Obama has never uttered a word about the Goldman manipulation of the government, regulations, markets or bonuses.

Since 2006 Congress has stood idly by, perhaps because Goldman pumped millions of dollars into our presidential, house and senate campaigns, and Congress did nothing to investigate the Goldman role in the economic collapse. Obama is silent about Goldman, Congress is acting as if they got caught with their fingers in the cookie jar, and Goldman continues to use the federal economic system as their own private account.

If nothing comes out of this the citizens of America should know once and for all that our government leaders are really bought and paid for and demand impeachment. It is time to throw out all the scoundrels and the opportunity begins in 2010 before there is nothing left of America. Obama ran on a platform against Wall Street while being the patron saint of Wall Street. The media refuses to tell us the truth. The government can't. It is up to the citizens to take back America.

Mohammad - Iranian Student - Do not Abandon Us In Iran

Barack Hussein Obama - Are You Listening to the People

This morning, Monday, a young Iranian was interviewed by CNN and he pleaded that President Obama please do not abandon the hundreds of thousands of Iranians risking their lives to bring about human rights and democratic reforms in Iran. Like the young woman Neda, murdered in the protests, he is one of the silent majority in Iran who have had enough.

As the President of the world leader in promoting Democracy, Obama has shown no more than a casual interest in the plight of the Iranian people whose protests since their fraudulent election has rattled the very foundation of the Islamic leadership that has kept the people in a state of captivity and second class citizenship since the 1979 Iranian revolution.

First Obama said it didn't matter who won the election, a slap in the face of the people risking their lives for democratic reforms and human rights. Then realizing he was wrong, he tried to paper over the earlier stand by saying the Iranian government should not use violence to stop the protesting. The unlawful government of Iran has been using violence and the abuse of human rights for 30 years against their own citizens yet he didn't even condemn it.

Wake up Obama. Are you willing to let thousands of young freedom fighters be slaughtered because you intend to pursue diplomacy with a ruthless regime? Ever since Obama took office Iran and North Korea have flaunted their violations of human rights, increased the suppression of their citizens, and laughed at the international calls for reform. Why do the Iranian freedom fighters have to burn an effigy of the President to get his attention?

While Obama twiddles his thumbs both Iran and North Korea have been on a fast track to complete the development of nuclear arms, rockets, and spawned hatred throughout the Middle East. Obama's goal of accommodation has encouraged threats to world peace throughout the world. He still thinks he can sit down and negotiate with soul less despots who place no value on human rights and dignity. When a cancer permeates a government it is time to replace the government and to back the people fighting the government.

Media reports indicate that even his Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are opposed to the inertia in the Administration concerning the freedom fighters in Iran. If he doesn't listen to his top advisors who is he listening to?

The lowly student risking his life in Iran has a simple idea to stop the oppressive regime, stop the flow of foreign gasoline that is fueling the Iranian war machine. He is willing to risk more harm to the people by stopping the flow of gasoline because freedom is worth the sacrifice. The gasoline is what keeps the development of the nuclear bombs underway and the military suppression of the people.

Where is the leadership of the free world Obama promised? Why does he continue to ignore the threats against the world and the violence against the people in Iran by a corrupt and suppressive regime? Why can't he hear the call for help from the hundreds of thousands of freedom fighters, mostly the young and future generation of the Middle East, to please not abandon us in our struggle?

Monday, June 15, 2009

Take Me Now God! - Excerpt #1

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Letterman Cannot Stop Sucking Up To Obama - Trashes Palin

This week acerbic-tongued Letterman once again demonstrated he can be the liberal mouthpiece and hack for Obama by trashing Sarah Palin in his monologue and Top Ten List for reasons that defy explanation. His raw sexual innuendos about Palin and raunchy jokes about how her 14 year old daughter got "knocked up" defy reason and good taste and demonstrate that as a lackey for Obama he is doing him no good.

Maybe he has been told to finish the hatchet job on Palin that he started during the campaign because after all the smear tactics of the liberal left media Palin remains more popular than ever. And with oil prices having more than doubled since Obama was elected and refused to authorize more domestic oil drilling, his popularity has been taking a fast track down.

Letterman was always the tool of the leftists with his tirades against McCain and Palin but this time he went far beyond his worst performances to date. Perhaps it was because this was the first week that Conan O'Brien took over the far more popular Tonight Show making Letterman a two-time loser to Leno and O'Brien as the King of Late Night TV.

Letterman has been known to have an acid tongue and he even apologized to Paris Hilton for raging about her jail time, but then Paris was an Obama supporter and she is a millionaire, two requirements to be friends with good old Dave.

Well Letterman has been a distant second to NBC's Johnny Carson, Jay Leno and now Conan O'Brien so maybe it is time CBS retire the old man before be gets them in lawsuits.

Obama Fiddles, Congress Procrastinates and Rome Burns while Goldman, Morgan & the Rothschilds Reap Profits

It is early summer, one year since the oil price crisis nearly destroyed the world economy. Back then the Commodities Future Trading Commission (CFTC) disclosed a six month investigation of oil price manipulation was underway. A year later and the CFTC disclosed oil speculators controlled over 80% of all the oil derivatives contracts sold.

Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citibank and Bank of America control the world derivatives market for major commodities. JP Morgan also controls the world gold futures market, which true insiders long considered a subsidiary of the Rothschilds, both the gold market and Morgan. So once again the boys on Wall Street have decided to drive up the prices.

Who really controls these markets? Take oil futures as an example. Successful manipulation would require control of several elements of the complex financial manipulation. These elements include being the recognized market expert or maker, having the funds to speculate in the market, and having the will to gamble by buying into the market. Goldman Sachs has played all three roles.

The research center of Goldman Sachs, the energy analysts and darlings of the media used a series of predictions last year to drive up the price of oil futures, revising the price predictions continuously until Goldman said oil would reach $200 a barrel. In spite of negative market forces and no justification for oil price increases the price spiraled to $147 a barrel.

Funds managed by Goldman provided the fuel to spark market activity while a wholly owned subsidiary of Goldman, J. Aron & Company, was the vehicle to buy and resell the oil futures contracts. Add to this the fact Goldman, and Morgan are major owners of the very oil futures market in London that sets prices and one wonders what the hell our government is covering up by refusing to attack the financial giants.

We know special interest money can buy a lot of influence in our nation's capitol but Obama and Pelosi are creating a whole new standard for proving the buying of politicians can be a most profitable investment. Look what happened when Goldman was about to lose $30 billion in loans to AIG for derivative purchases made by Goldman for AIG. Congress and the President gave AIG the biggest bailout in history and Goldman recovered 100% of the money owed it from the federal bailout.

Now bondholders and stockholders in Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM, Chrysler and a host of other companies certainly didn't recover 100% of their money and most lost all of their money. Why did Goldman and Morgan recover 100%? Ask our new president who long ago was taken in by Goldman executives at secret meetings in 2006 and 2007, whose employees gave Obama more Wall Street money than any other candidate and whose former employees are strategically placed throughout the new administration.

Goldman Sachs is the only financial company whose stock nearly tripled in value since Obama got elected. Goldman stock reached a low of $53.31 a share last November, by the March crash it climbed to $73.95 a share and today is over $150.00 a share, an astounding 281% increase in value.

Not even JP Morgan of the big four derivative traders achieved the same although Morgan was far ahead of most banking and investment houses. Morgan went from $23.38 when Obama was elected to a low of $15.90 in the March madness to $35.00 today, an increase of 49%.

Bank of America was at $11.47 last November, $3.14 in March and today is $11.98, a 4% increase leaving it slightly above where they started. Citigroup Chase was $3.77 in November, $1.02 in March and $3.41 today, a loss of about 10%.

The Obama Factor (since his election in November):

Goldman Sachs - 281% increase in value
JP Morgan - 49% increase in value
Bank of America - 4% increase in value
Citigroup Chase - 10% loss in value

Dow Jones - 16% increase since election in November
Oil Prices - 138% increase since December low
Home Values - 21% loss of value from a year ago
Gold prices - 33% increase since Obama election

Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to master manipulating. There is the case of the 25-35 oil super tankers leased by oil producers and financial houses at a cost of about $63,000 a month each. These giant ships can carry up to 20 million barrels of oil per ship. If a ship was filled and parked in March the oil in that ship has already increased $700 million in value.

Then there is the potential for financial houses like Goldman and Morgan to use the information provided to them for due diligence by corporations seeking financing to call loans and options and virtually squeezing the distressed companies into bankruptcy. This gives them the opportunity to acquire the assets at fire sale prices like Morgan did with Bear Stearns and Goldman did with oil pipeline giant Semgroup.

Finally there is the potential conflict of interest I raised nearly three years ago of Goldman and Morgan being founders and major investors in ICE, the international company that now owns the London oil futures market.

One thing none of our illustrious politicians seem to be talking about is the long promised campaign reform to close all the loopholes in financing political campaigns. Nearly $1 million was poured into Obama's campaign by Goldman employees. Special interest money flowed at a record rate into all campaigns although some was disguised as individual contributions.

Obama shattered all records spending about $750 million while political parties and special interest groups spent a couple of hundred more million for his campaign, making him the first billion dollar candidate in our history. Apparently he raised so much money that the source of over $88.6 million cannot even be identified. To date and in spite of his promises, there has been no effort to introduce legislation to limit federal fund raising or to expose such massive unidentified contributions in future races.

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Obama's Helter Skelter Agenda - Maybe Harvard Wasn't Ready for the Presidency

It has been since 1962 that a true Harvard grad has been president, a span of 47 years while it has been 49 years since one was elected president. Of course we are referring to John Kennedy and I think it is clear already that Barack Obama sure isn't any John Kennedy.

Oh yes, the fact checkers may say "wasn't George Bush, Jr. a Harvard Business School grad" and the answer is yes but based on what he did with the economy and what Obama has done since taking over it might be something that Harvard may not want to talk about. Besides, Bush was a Yale undergraduate while Obama was a Columbia undergraduate.

Now Obama seems to be a nice enough kid. Maybe he made a few mistakes because of his lack of experience, mistakes getting to the White House and mistakes now that he is there, but in spite of his claims that being a community organizer qualified him to run the economy, fix Wall Street and give us all health care, we now know that is just plain nonsense.

I don't remember anyone in the campaign telling us the Obama Administration would be an on-the-job training program for future liberal leaders rather than the president of all the people all the time. His gang has ignored Republicans and Independents and tried to use the Democratic majority in Congress to jam legislation down our throat.

The Obama handlers seemed to forget that just 53% of Americans voted for Obama while 47% opposed him. His was not an overwhelming public mandate but a referendum on the Bush Administration which seemed to be drifting aimlessly the last few years in office. Even Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois, the last famous liberal presidential candidate from Illinois and three time loser could have beat Bush last year.

Unfortunately for the Republicans Bush was soooo unpopular Speaker Nancy Pelosi was able to get a Democratic majority in the House and Majority Leader Harry Reid got one in the Senate thus, in their minds, giving the president an ironclad veto proof majority in Congress.

So after promising us a break from old style politics and transparency and no lobbyists and prosecution of crooks and new ideas, etc., etc., etc. Obama was able to use the Pelosi-Reid majorities and slam a massive amount of legislation down our throats to fix all the things the Republicans screwed up the past 8 years. It was a great opportunity and a historic landslide of laws but they were written by the same old politicians and lobbyists who were already owned by the special interests from Wall Street to Union Leaders and the laws were filled with the same pork barrel projects we always expected before.

As for the Emergency stimulus bill which Obama touted as the savior of America at a cost of $787 billion to fund shovel-ready projects that could be implemented immediately, we are entering the 5th month since passage and so far the accelerated efforts of Obama have managed to get $44 billion spent, just 5% of the money. Most was probably for unemployment benefits which has nothing to do with stimulus.

In spite of the failure of the program, the economy continues to recover meaning why did we need the program in the first place? We didn't. But Obama did to fund all the none stimulus social agenda he wanted to advance the liberal cause in the nation. Our secret march toward socialism will leave an amazing legacy if left unchecked by Congress.

In less than six months since Obama took office the USA has borrowed more money than the entire amount borrowed during the previous 30 years. In terms of foreign countries of course China continues to hold the biggest mortgage on the future of America with $767.9 trillion in US debt and a total of $1.4 trillion in US debt and US currency. Since we forced Chrysler and GM into bankruptcy and Fannie May and Freddie Mack were bailed out with federal ownership I guess that means China and the other foreign debt holders will own America's largest auto and mortgage companies as well.

The top 7 foreign debt holders are China ($767.9 b), Japan (686.7 b), Caribbean Bank Centers ($213.6 b), Oil Exporters ($192.0 b), Russia ($138.4 b), UK $128.2 b), Brazil ($126.6 b), and Luxembourg ($106.1 b) with a total of $3.2 trillion in foreign debt ownership.

Now the Administration takes comfort in knowing the Federal Reserve here in the US owns the greatest amount of US debt, $4.8 trillion, but who owns and controls the Federal Reserve? Not the US government. Not the US president. Not the US Congress. No, the twelve regional Federal Reserve banks are owned by the private banks doing business with the Fed.

The Obama record shattering borrowing has pushed the US into a debt never before seen and he has just begun. Waiting in the wings are more bank and other bailout programs, energy efficient spending, more health care spending, and a crippled Social Security and Medicaid programs all in need of billions and billions of dollars.

The failure of the Obama economists to accurately project unemployment trends led to gross errors in the estimated costs or value of new programs like the stimulus and bank bailout, the bank stress tests, and the US budget revenue and deficit projections. Obama and the Democratic Congress decided the unemployment rate would stop at 8% because of all their spending yet the rate shot to 9.4% in spite of the spending or lack of spending. It will most likely rise throughout 2009 as projected in the Coltons Point Times and peak around 10% before the effects of economic recovery, not stimulus spending, begin bringing it back down.

So far Obama and the Democratic Congress have brought us record unemployment, record debt, record foreign deficits, record foreign ownership of US assets, record bailouts of banks, mortgage companies, insurance, auto and other industries, and record oil prices with no demand to support it.

Even the Obama worshipers like the media, liberals, unions, bureaucrats, teachers, disenfranchised citizens and Democrat puppets are beginning to get nervous about the failures of programs to protect them and their special interests. Wait until they begin to feel the effects of spiraling interest rates and skyrocketing inflation rates to pay for all the liberal agenda which will surely be the result.

Oh yes Obama is a likeable guy. His wife is likeable as well. But being likeable and from Harvard, Columbia and Princeton Ivy League schools as they are does not make one mature, street smart nor able to govern any better than a Ronald Reagan also from Illinois who attended tiny Eureka College with a student body today of just 750 students.

Thursday, June 04, 2009

The Roots of Country Music - Appalachia to Nashville

Most people probably have little understanding of the roots of country music in America because it has always been taken for granted that country is one of the core genres we have always had around. It is known as the heartbeat and soul of America and been around about as long as the Europeans have been here.

Over the years we may have heard country music we liked, some even crossed over to pop and rock charts, and many stars in other genres either started as country music singers or became famous and then cut a country song or album. But do we really know from whence it came?

When English speaking America was first being colonized in the 1600's the coastal areas were settled first, Virginia, Massachusetts and Maryland, all by 1634 and it did not take long for the European immigrants to make their way to the Appalachian Mountains, the Southern Appalachians that is, which included the Blue Ridge Mountain range and Cumberland Plateau. Western Virginia and Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee territories along with pieces of the Carolinas and Georgia made up the region which served as a barrier to westward expansion.

Immigrants came to the area because the coastal regions were already populated and with them came the Old World musical instruments were brought together in barn dances and celebrations by these hardy people settling the region. This was in the days before electricity, before electric guitars and synthesizers

The Irish fiddle, German dulcimer, Italian mandolin, Spanish guitar and African banjo were brought to these celebrations and played together in hillbilly jam sessions far from the operas and symphonies of the cities on the east coast. This came to be known as "Old Time" music.

In the 19th century some immigrant groups moved to the Texas area to settle and further integrated the hillbilly sound with Spanish, Mexican and Native American music and large dancehalls were built where the locals could gather and dance to the sounds. This was the final step in the evolution of the roots of Country Music.

Then came the 20th century with cars and roads and radio which brought down the barriers of communication and people from throughout the nation could hear this unique American creation. The first country recording was in 1921 and throughout the 1920's as radio expanded so did the country music.

Country musicians were great innovators ever since mixing the instruments from five counties up in the Appalachians and electricity, recording and touring gave them more and more opportunities to do this. Hillbilly music grew in popularity driven by the Carter Family and Jimmy Rodgers and in 1925 WSM-AM radio in Nashville started the first country music broadcast, on November 28, 1925, when the WSM Barn Dance was first broadcast. In time it would become the Grand Ole Opry under the guidance of people like Roy Acuff.

By the 1930's and Great Depression people were poor and the radio became the primary source of news and entertainment. Soon a fledgling movie industry introduced the Singing cowboys while radio was expanding the barn dances with legendary country shows being broadcast from Chicago to Texas to California. In the 1940's these shows introduced singers like Roy Acuff, Bill Haley, Eddie Arnold and singing cowboys like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.

Bob Wills and his legendary Texas Playboys was among the innovators of country music when in 1935 he introduced drums to the band, a first, then became the first group with the electric guitar in 1938. Yet it was not until the early 1960's that the steel guitar and drums were fixtures in country bands.

Hillbilly music spawned Hillbilly Boogie by 1939 and a new country genre called Bluegrass emerged with the sound of Bill Monroe, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs at the end World War II. By this time country music included Hillbilly, Boogie, Blues, Honky Tonk, Gospel and Rockabilly.

To the rest of the world country music was called Hillbilly until 1944 when the name was changed to Folk and Blues music. By 1949 it was labeled Country or Country Western, the latter referring to the singing cowboys of movies and then television. Honky Tonk saw the rise of Ernest Tubb, Floyd Tillman, the Maddox Brothers and Rose, Lefty Frizell and Hank Williams.

Along came the 1950's and country music changed again as Rockabilly dominated with Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins leading the way. From 1955-1960 ABC-TV became the first network with a nationwide country show called the Ozark Jubilee that showcased country stars to the nation. Elvis helped drive the cross-over between Rockabilly and Rock 'n Roll.

Late in the '50's came the Lubbock Sound of Buddy Holly and then there was a country backlash as the industry felt rock 'n roll was to dominate. Ray Price, Marty Robbins and Johnny Horton began to shift the music back to traditional country.

In the early 1960's the Nashville sound became dominant with producers like Chet Atkins, Owen Bradley and Billy Sherrill reviving the genre with legendary singers Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves and Eddy Arnold. Ray Charles introduced Country Soul in 1962 with his release of I Can't Stop Loving You. A new sound in Nashville called Countrypolitan was created featuring the sounds of Tammy Wynette and Charlie Rich. But soon the Nashville sound became stale.

Out west Honky Tonk and Western Swing were merged by Bob Wills and Lefty Frizell to form the Bakersfield Sound. It would encompass the diversity of different styles from Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Tommy Collins and Wynn Stewart.

In other places like Lubbock, Tulsa and Austin the disappointment with the Nashville Sound and control of the record labels was causing an Outlaw movement. Inspired by the success of The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Rolling Stones in demanding creative control of their music and control of their songs, the Outlaws gravitated to Austin where Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson became the leaders.

Not only did their music change but their image as well. Gone were the clean cut, clean shaven cowboys of old and in were the long haired radical Outlaws of the future. Jessie Colter, wife of Waylon, was one of the female pioneers while Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard soon joined forces.

With The Beatles astounding success blending rock and pop music Nashville was hungry to tap into the crossover sound needed to reach the mainstream markets. Others, seeking a return to the "old values" of rock 'n roll, created a new genre called Country Rock.

The Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers, Allman Brothers, Marshall Tucker Band, Poco, Buffalo Springfield and Eagles exploded onto the music scene as Southern Rock and Heartland became new subgenre spin offs. Ever since there has been a tug of war between traditional country and country rock or country pop as stars like Dolly Parton, Rosanne Cash, Linda Ronstadt, Juice Newton, Alabama, Hank Williams, Jr., Brooks and Dunn, Garth Brooks, Dwight Yoakum, Shania Twain, Faith Hill, and Keith Urban helped move country towards rock over the years.

By the mid 1970's Olivia Newton John and John Denver captured the Country Pop crossover market and powered their way to CMA and Grammy Awards with multi million selling hits. Soon a whole new group of country performers would take up the mantle.

George Straight, Alan Jackson, Clint Black, Toby Keith, Reba McEntire, Kenny Chesney, Alison Krauss, Vince Gill and Tim McGraw among others perform the Classic Country style today while the pop crossover comes from new artists like Carrie Underwood from American Idol fame and newest sensation Taylor Swift who have breathed new life into the country music industry.

What is next? Who knows. Still, those who understand that country music is an ever-changing genre that morphs into a variety of styles depending on the needs of the people and the innovation of the artists, must feel good as a broad range of artists currently dominate the radio airwaves and rule the concert circuit.

As the major record labels collapse, the radio stations strangle on their own automated programming and the formula music once again becomes stale we know it is the time when country music always rediscovers itself. Nashville will be a lot better as a result, all country artists will benefit, the public will reap the rewards of new and innovative country music and history will once again record that the American country sound once again became relevant in a time of need and a time of truth.

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Take Me Now God! Excerpt #3

TERMINATOR COMET

My mom called me again the other night just before midnight. She does a couple of times a week. And that’s another reason I’m getting out of here. No wonder I lived at the far end of the country for the last 35 years. New Jersey no less. How many people flee to New Jersey to get away from their mother?

She lived in Iowa so l first ran to Arizona. Then she moved to Arizona and I moved to Nebraska. She moved to Texas and I went to California. She went to Kentucky and I went to New Jersey. Cause and effect. If she got closer than 500 miles I was out of there. Then I wound up in Kentucky too.

Around midnight she called again to tell me who was on the Art Bell Show on radio that night. I never should have answered the phone. As I understand it, her being an old Democrat and all, there is a certain hierarchy in the universe consisting of John Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, God and Art Bell. Whatever is said on the Art Bell show is gospel truth.

Every 20th call from her I turn on the radio in case someone other than a nut case is on. So she calls the other night and says someone Art really trusts is on and I have to listen. Sure mom, I got nothing better to do. Seems Art has some guy on talking about the dreaded Terminator Comet.

Now I follow comet sighting. Hell, I follow all kinds of potential disasters. Hurricanes, floods, monsoons, tornadoes, earthquakes. You name it I track it. Where would I have been without the internet. Been attracted to disasters since I chased fire engines as a kid. Come to think of it, I needed the preparation. My life was a disaster ever since.

There were tornadoes. Three homes where I lived in three different states were hit by them. Could that happen to anyone but a disaster? Even stood in a parking lot watching as a tornado roared over my head and smashed into downtown Nashville. Worked the sandbag lines during flooding on the Mississippi River. Caught in floods and earthquakes in California. Blizzards in Nebraska. Hurricanes in New Jersey. You name it, it found me.

I was an expert, a Disaster Master. And I’d never heard of the Terminator Comet. So I listened to Art that night. Seems his guest was my kind of person. Nuts. The guy said the Terminator Comet was headed right toward Earth and the government didn’t tell us. It was supposed to hit November 7. Today is November 20.

Then he posed the ultimate dilemma. He said it actually did hit Earth nearly two weeks ago. Since no one but the military knew, there was no warning. And when it hit, it was a giant comet remember, everyone was killed instantly. It happened so suddenly the entire human race died simultaneously. Imagine that.

If I believe him. I’m dead already. Ending it now would be redundant. And if we all died instantly, no one had a chance to think about their life after death. So whatever their thoughts were prior to death, and whatever their life was at the time of the comet, that’s where they remained after death. Everyone dies and nothing changes.

What the hell kind of a deal is that? You remember being killed by the Terminator Comet last November 7? Take my word for it, you wouldn’t. So we either solved the mystery of death and now know nothing changes when you die, or the guy is full of shit. I lean toward the latter. Beamish would have told me if I was dead.

Don’t think I’ll be answering the phone at night anymore.

LOOKING GLASSES

Look through someone’s glasses at this world we call our home
Put yourself in their head and then let your mind just roam
You see a view you could not share where you were once before
The window now will take the place of where you saw a door

THE PHONE CALL

Got trapped into answering the phone tonight. Circumstances beyond my control. Had pretty much given up answering the phone. No one calls, at least not for me. Get several calls a day for the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association. Phone company gave their old number to me.

So I get calls all times of the day and night asking about breeding horses. Was fascinated at first. Then it started to get to me. People plotting which mares to breed with which stallion. Bad as an arranged marriage. Guess the horses didn’t care though.

So I quit answering the damn phone. Let the machine take a message. But I got trapped. My brother-in-law, we dubbed him the Rasta Man, was getting ready to leave for a trip to the Bahamas to help rebuild a home after the hurricanes hit. I had made my first trip to the Bahamas earlier this year for my sister’s wedding. Then the islands get hit by the first hurricane in a century after I leave. Karma.

Even though he was just going to help out a friend, foreign countries don’t take kindly to foreigners coming in and taking work away from the locals. But there aren’t any skilled carpenters and master builders like the Rasta Man in the Bahamas. So he gets a call from a friend on the islands warning him the Bahaman Immigration people were not going to allow him back in the country to work.

Now that scared the holy shit out of him. He was there a few weeks earlier and the rebuilding supplies didn’t arrive so he loafed on the beach for 2 weeks. No one saw him working. Yet they report him just when the supplies arrive and he is returning. Guess some local had told the authorities he was coming back to work. Finally his friend convinced him to go, that he wouldn’t be arrested and deported or jailed.

I told him if he was arrested he’d spend the end of the millennium in the Bermuda Triangle. He was scheduled to return one week before New Years. Knowing his luck he’d be locked in jail as an 18 foot tidal surge came boring down on the place. That just happened a few weeks earlier. But I told him he also might just be there for the raising of Atlantis. He ignored me and asked me to answer the phone for the next few days, in case he needed to get out of jail.

That’s how I got trapped into answering the phone, and getting THE PHONE CALL. It was my mother again. Complaining at first how I never answered my phone. Of course not. Then the conversation took a decided sinister mood. She blasted me for not taking her to the store shopping. Hell, I don’t even go shopping.

And then, she told me about the airplane contrails in the sky, crisscross patterns like trails of billowing cotton stretched as far as you could see to the east of town. Next thing I knew she told me about the black stuff that was all over her apartment. She said it was like a shredded, black, plastic, garbage bag. Little pieces were all over everything.

Then a stupid question came out of my mouth. I asked her where it came from. She said they were dropping it from the planes. It was a chemical concealed in the harmless looking puff balls they left across the sky. Seems the government was poisoning us. Art Bell told her.

I asked if it might be normal air pollution. With Indiana and Ohio to the north of Kentucky, there were plenty of sources of industrial waste. But she insisted they were big chunks. Too big for air pollution. So Art Bell said the government was bombarding us with poisonous chemicals from airplanes.

I told her I usually found evidence of pollution on my car, because it was white. She found hers inside the apartment. Imagine that, the government bombarding the inside of my mother’s apartment with shredded, black, plastic, garbage bags covered with deadly chemicals. She didn’t know if it was on her car too, she hadn’t been outside.

Finally I pointed out that the winds were blowing to the east. If she saw the contrails were east of town, the chemicals would have blown the other direction. How did they manage to blow straight into the wind? Why was the poisoning our problem and not West Virginia’s? Stumped her on that one. So she ignored the question.

NOTHING VENTURED NOTHING GAINED

The time it is today
we can’t wait until tomorrow
the things we have to say
may get lost in time we’ve borrowed

So live today like it’s your last
forget tomorrow and the past
don’t hang on to what is not
or think of what you haven’t got

Don’t say it might have been

THE SECOND PHONE CALL

But even THE PHONE CALL paled in comparison to THE SECOND PHONE CALL. From the Ex. First time I’d heard from her since weeks earlier when I was declared Satan. Seems she had e-mailed me and felt it necessary to explain things. That was the second mistake that night, answering the phone again.

First she gave me a thumbnail overview of how I destroyed her life, her family’s life, her ex-husband’s life, a couple of psychics, boyfriends, and on and on and on. I was accused of many, many other things as well. And then I was accused of driving her into the arms of her new boyfriend, which she had just dumped.

I was confused. She was dating him before our last encounter weeks ago. So she gave me a detailed explanation that she was vulnerable, and he moved in to protect her. She really liked someone saying he loved her and wanting to do everything for her. But he wouldn’t leave her alone, for the next couple of weeks. Finally he was literally camped out in her driveway, I guess waiting to get me when I came after her.

He was now getting pushy with her. Demanding she go with him to Atlanta for Christmas to meet his parents, then on to Florida with him for a cozy New Years. That’s not even the best part of it. After she had to drive him out of her driveway, she said she felt real sorry for him because she hurt him. She couldn’t love him back. It was my fault, I had ruined her attitude about men.

Who the hell am I? Dear Abby? I told her I didn’t think it was appropriate for her to discuss her boyfriend problems with me, after all I am Satan. Maybe she should call her psychic hotline for help. They worked wonders with our relationship. Maybe she will.

So then she said her brother-in-law, a cop, told her to get out of town because I was the unabomber. No transition in the conversation. From hurting her boyfriend to the mad bomber. Here I thought the unabomber was in jail. Guess that’s how versatile Satan can be.

And the next morning she was moving back to Illinois. Selling her house and moving. Oh yes, moving back to her old house with her ex-husband and kids. I told her there was a good chance the move might also hurt her new boyfriend, not to mention how odd the entire concept of moving back in with her recently divorced ex-husband might appear. But I was sure she was doing the right thing.

I still had difficulty finding out what I had to do with all this. Then found out I had traumatized her daughter, she couldn’t even go to school, so they had to leave town. It had been weeks since I had seen or talked to her daughter and the last time we were together I had taken them out for a nice dinner. She didn’t seem too threatened then.

So she explained how I did it. It was the psychic that cleared things up. She and her daughter were talking to the psychic about her revelations of how much a part of the dark side I was. At least that was the psychic consensus after several hours of discussion. No one even bothered to talk to me about it. And I couldn’t very well go over and argue my defense. The sniper in the driveway would have picked me off. The one she just threw out.

The psychic got the daughter terrified with her descriptions of the danger they were in, so much that the poor kid couldn’t go to school anymore. Of course, she had already been warned by the school about too many absences, and the new threat did result in unlimited time for e-mail and television. It was great. The kid gets constant TV and the internet with no homework, the Ex gets her horseman parked outside protecting her, and I get trashed and blamed for everything,

There was more, lots more. But it only deteriorated from there. Made me wonder what the purpose of the call was in the first place. Hell, I was no threat. She was never alone long enough for me to get close to her. Guys were even camped out in her driveway to take care of her every need. Not to mention a visit by her ex-husband.

That’s it for answering the damn phone. I’m done. So what if my brother-in-law sits in jail in the Bahamas. Answering the phone only gets me into bigger problems.

DREAMS THAT CANNOT BE

Shadows on the wall are chasing dreams that cannot be
trying to bring them home again so that my eyes might see
happiness has come so close but slipped right through my grasp
when love was handed out it seems I passed

So now I’m taking memories I’ve borrowed from my dreams
some memories that cannot be and ones I’ve never seen
believing that I’ll find myself when after I’ve been there
when it’s too late to capture whatever’s out somewhere

So I will go on searching for those dreams that cannot be
living in my memory of times I did not see
wondering if this journey that I’m on will reach an end
hoping that before I’m gone my broken heart will mend

THE SUICIDE

Yet another chapter in the mother story. My mother is old, like 80 something. Long ago I gave up training her. But she still insists on tormenting me to my or her grave, whichever comes first. A few years back when she was having a rough time she used to threaten suicide. I would send her tips on how to do it right. Even sent her a Dr. Kervokian gift certificate one Christmas. It shut her up for a while.

So yesterday she has a friend call me to tell me they just set fire to mom’s kitchen. Seems a plastic lid was stuck to the bottom of a pizza pan they were cooking and the damn thing went up in flames. Of course they didn’t know the lid was stuck there. They both checked the oven before cooking since my mom stored all kids of shit in there. She put three pans under the pizza. Not one, but three. And the lid was stuck between the bottom two. I discovered what was left of the lid later when I inspected the scene.

They felt the fire was some kind of mystical experience. Perhaps a sign of the end times I guess. Didn’t remember reading anything about mom’s pizza fire in Nostradamus, or Revelations, or even from the Hopi Indians. When they called they said the toxic smell of plastic was a bit overpowering so I told them I would meet them for coffee while the smoke cleared, then go check it out. They wanted to come over to my place but that wasn’t going to happen.

At a coffee shop they told me how it was like being in the twilight zone. (Here I thought their every minute was like living in the Twilight Zone). Mom whispered to me that perhaps some evil force was trying to stop them from getting out the word about Mary. Now that threw me. My sister was named Mary, but it couldn’t be her. So I asked which Mary they were promoting this week.

The friend rather haughtily says, “well Mary Magdalene of course,” as if I should know that. “You mean the hooker from the Bible?” I asked. She didn’t like my attitude. “And what was it”, I asked, “that the Devil would object to in you discussing Biblical hookers with people? If anything I would think the old boy would be pleased.”

Ignoring me, the friend related a vision she had in California when this Mary came to her. I asked what Mary did or told her and she said nothing, just appeared. I asked how that constituted spiritual insight. She didn’t know. But she had seen this particular Mary and it may or may not have changed her life. I said perhaps there was another reason a hooker came to you in your visions. Again she didn’t like the attitude.

After explaining to her that I preferred to focus on the other Biblical Mary, the Virgin one, we changed the subject. So mom tells me, in front of her friend, how her friend is contemplating suicide. I noted that she certainly came to an authority. Hell, mom has been threatening suicide for the past couple of decades.

Her friend was going to use the stove. She was going to lay down with her dog and cat, turn on the gas, and just end it all. I thought that was reasonable, if the animals had agreed to share her plight. Problem was her gas had been turned off. Same with the electric and phone. I gave her a better idea. Just get in her old smoke belching Mercedes in the garage and take the final ride. The way that car spit out fumes it would be over in no time. Didn’t even need a hose. Less mess.

She said life was hopeless. After raising a family she had no idea why she was here, what purpose she was meant to serve. I asked what made her think she had any purpose. Why do people always think everyone has a purpose? Do we really think we are that special? Seems she didn’t like that advice either. No wonder I don’t have a radio show offering personal counseling, Dr. Laurel Hardy.

In the end I told them I didn’t think the Devil was responsible for the plastic lid melting and catching fire in the oven. I mean I would have known. And I could see no good reason for Satan to want to harm that pizza. And I didn’t think a kitchen fire was necessarily a sign of the End Times from God. As to what any of this had to do with that Mary, I hadn’t a clue. Besides, if mom’s friend was going to commit suicide the fire might just have been a welcome home card.

I went back home to my sanctuary. It’s not safe anywhere anymore. I’m returning to my old ways. From now on I’m just sending out Dr. Kervorkian gift certificates. No more crisis intervention.

BRIEFCASE BLUES

Sitting in the airport waiting
while the world is dissipating
endless hopes and endless dreams
times that I have never seen

And reaching back to where I was
can’t hang on got no cause
a mind with nothing left to think
eyes that stare, and never blink

So please let me off this journey leading to no end
when I get to where I want I start it all again
I’ve been down before and I know just where I’ll be
please let me off, all I’m asking’s to be free

Cause nothing’s all that’s left of me
a broken shell of what would be
as I travel to no where
shades of darkness fill the air

and reaching back to where I was
can’t hang on I got no cause
a mind with nothing left to think
eyes that stare, and never blink

So please let me off this journey leading to no end
when I get to where I want I start it all again
I’ve been down before and I know just where I’ll be
please let me off, all I’m asking’s to be free

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