Mercury Poisoning

"Aren't you going to introduce me to your hat?" She purred.

"No Ma'am, I don't think that would be a good idea. This is a rather disreputable hat and I wouldn't want it on my conscience. You seem to be a nice girl." He said and tossed back the remainder of his scotch.

"Why don't you let me decide what is best for me?" She said sliding into the seat opposite him. "I like the look of your hat."

"Trust me ma'am, you don't. This felt is steeped in evil and would rain ruin down on one such as you. Besides it wouldn't match your pumps."

"If that hat is so rotten why do you wear it? Are you so good that you can't be corrupted? What makes you so special, huh?"

"I'm afraid that I have been so tarnished by the world that this hat can no further mar my soul." He said. "It finds me to be a kindred spirit."

"Oh you are not so tuff. You are still concerned about me. If you were truly corrupt you wouldn't care what hat I wore."

"Step back there sister," He said. "You never said anything about wearing. Wearing is a far cry from introductions. Have you no morals?"

She laughed derisively. "How better to meet a hat than to wear it? How else can a girl get acquainted?"

"I see you like to live dangerously," He said. "That kind of thinking could get you killed. A bad hat is not a laughing matter."

She slid off the seat and walked past him with deliberately amplified hip motions and tucking a card into the band of his fedora whispering, "If you change your mind, ring me up sometime. My head does get so cold on these winter nights."

He watched her leave in the mirror over the bar and then motioned to the barman for another scotch. Reaching up he tossed the fedora on the table and scowled at it. "Why is it all the dames go straight for you? I can't get any action at all since I stuck you on my head. I should trade you in for dapper bowler or a suave panama or a dashing Stetson, anything but you."

The hat just smiled quietly to itself as he downed another double.

Monday

Headache and tension mark the modern life.
A thousand pricks and cuts the soul degrades.
All beauty and joy rendered to paler shades.
Each day, 'tween office walls doth offer strife
and severs calm as a butcher's knife
doth sever flesh with whetted blades.
Each moment glimpsed of outdoors' shades
doth inflate a longing rife
to saunter out among the leaves
and nature's simple beauty capture.
A longing wells within that naught can ease
but memory of past times retrieves
one moment of nature's rapture
puts again the confined mind at ease.

Strain J-3-16

He watched her across the room as she peered into her microscope, jotted down some notes, replaced the slide and repeated the action. She continued changing slides and making notes through the entire tray representing the last week's subjects. With each slide she seemed to grow more tired. When she finished, took off her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose, he spoke."New strain?" She nodded her head in response but did not speak. "More compound dwellers? I had leaflets last week - under my door." "No," she said. "Just some mildly paranoid proselytizers. A few apocalyptic tendencies but nothing too volatile."
"Well, that's good I suppose." He said.
"Good? No, it's not good. I'm not worried about the exact characteristics of the strain. It's just that we're seeing a new strain nearly every week. Do you realize that close to 89% of the population feels the 'presence' now?" She sighed and visibly slumped on her stool. "I really think it's time that we act. I think it's time we look into adding anti-virals to the water supply."
He raised his eyebrows at the suggestion and looked at her over his glasses, but didn't say anything.
Her own worries and insecurities leaped to fill the silence. "We would have to do it with complete secrecy or it would be the fluoride scare again, only worse - much worse. But it's a much bigger public health concern than tooth rot. I don't see how we can keep from acting soon"
"They will not love us for it." He said softly.
"What?"
"I said, 'They will not love us for it.' Even if the anti-virals are completely successful as they seem to be in the lab, it will only be the next generation who will benefit. If we do this and it works, there will be chaos. 89% you say; that's probably a low estimate. That many people suddenly cut off from the presence..." He whistled a long low whistle. "Even if we eradicate the virus, the thoughts and the memories are still there, if they find out or even believe a rumor that's close to the truth, they will tear us down and any institution that protects us. Are you prepared for that?"She cocked her head to the side and mockingly replied. "Who's paranoid now?"
"Not paranoid. I just don't want you to have any delusions about what it means to remove the delusions of the god-spoken. When the presence is gone they will seek a reason. Most will assume they have been abandoned due to a lack of faith and zeal. A religious mind deprived of the presence will try to work harder, pray harder, to do something. Kill the viral body and you sow the seeds of zealotry. Some will claim to feel the presence returned and will lead the others. If god has abandoned our nation, our people, it must be because of 'them'. You don't burn your neighbor's house and kill his family if he looks like you and talks like you, he can't be the problem, but another neighborhood, another town... What if they look different, talk different, eat different food? Civilization will burn."
"Could you be more melodramatic? Have you no faith in humanity at all? You make it sound like we shouldn't even try. How many wars and genocides has the presence caused and you say that removing it will cause even more... Supposing you are right, what do we do?"
"You know my stance. We inoculate our children and those we trust and slowly spread through the world, a population of the immune. And there have been some promising results from trials just using rational argument to combat the virus. The team at Cern has indicated that under a certain weight of evidence the virus just gives up and leaves the body."
She laughed derisively, "You are walking paradox. First you see humanity as a volatile mob that can't be trusted with its own freedom from delusion and now you think they can be trusted to take evidence to combat a virus. Wow! You do never cease to amaze."
"Wish you were right, for my son's sake and yours, but I fear your way too."

Department of Defense Contractor Arrested and Charged With Improper Disposal of Classified Materials...

(Humor Fiction)
Fri Apr 24, 2008 3:15pm EST

Department of Defense Contractor Arrested and Charged With Improper Disposal of Classified Materials

The Individual Believed to Have Worked Alone

CHARLESTON, Apr. 24 /BSNewswire-FUBARNewswire/ --- A Department of Defense
contractor was arrested in Charleston SC on Apr. 24, 2008, and charged with
improperly disposing of U.S. Department of Defense (DOD)classified materials, the Department of Justice announced today. The individual is believed to have acted alone in an ongoing conspiracy to subvert critical elements of national security.


In a fifteen-count indictment returned on Apr. 1, 2008, and unsealed today in
U.S. District Court in Atlanta, Bubba McJunkin was charged with eating, over a period of five years, an estimated 1500 documents classified confidential and top secret. McJunkin then allegedly excreted the documents in an unclassified toilet.


"This case demonstrates that the DOJ will aggressively investigate and prosecute any who attempt to derail the efforts of the Department of Defense to keep the nation's secret. It is not so much that McJunkin consumed the documents in question but that he, with open disregard for his responsibility to his nation, went in an unsecured toilet. The DoD provides clear guidance on the proper use of high flow composting toilets that completely obliterate any readable material in the fecal matter," said Thomas L. Bland, Assistant Attorney General.


According to the indictment, McJunkin conspired to flush the nation's secrets into an unsecured sewer where Al Qaeda could easily retrieve them.

"Investigating corruption and unsecured toilet practices within the Defense Department is a priority for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), and this case demonstrates that DCIS will expend the resources to investigate these sorts of allegations, no matter how anal it makes us seem," said Ignatius Patrick Freely, Special Agent in Charge for DCIs.




This indictment is an example of the Department's commitment to protect U.S.
from it's ever present enemies by keeping a tight reign on the bowels of those with access to privileged information. The National Defecation Leakage Prevention Initiative announced in October 2004 is designed to promote the early detection, identification, prevention and prosecution of improperly flushed document laced feces.


The investigation is being conducted by the Freedom Plotz Division's National
Criminal Enforcement Section and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.
Anyone with information concerning illegal conduct in the passing and flushing document laden turds by DOD employees is urged to call the National Criminal Enforcement Section of the Freedom Plotz Division at 202-119-5555.

Open Question of Faith

I want to pose an open question on faith to world at large.

What do you believe and why?
I know that is too general. What I am looking for is an understanding of what makes people tick. What is convincing and why? So, if you are atheist, agnostic, christian, muslim, hindu, et cetera, why do you believe what you do?

Note: Because X book says so does not cut it.

Some Random Scenes... Thing That Occur To Me

If rage has a color, true rage, it would not be red or crimson. It would be the pale and hollow white of a blood drained face. Bright reds are angry colors, passionate colors. Rage pumps itself full of blood to the point of bursting and then bleeds out to an anemic pallor. Anger causes violence. Rage levels mountains. Rage burns villages and leaves the bodies of the dead on pig poles to rot.

The spirits of the dead were queuing up outside of the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin, jockeying for position. I turned to the old man next to me as we watched the scrum. "Does it really do them any good?" I asked. "This flap at the Chapel I mean, does this guy really have any special abilities?"
The old man was silent for a few minutes. He took his time answering, long enough to make me think that he hadn't heard me or was ignoring me. I had just met him but already this habit of slow response was wearing on my nerves. I had been following the pilgrim souls as they made their way to the chapel and the old man had been standing near an olive tree in the piazza watching the crowd form. I approached him and attempted a conversation that was more or less one sided.
"No", he finally said. "He has no special abilities unless you count simple minded concupiscence as a talent."
"Why are so many people, both living and dead flocking here?" I asked. There were as many living souls in and around the Chapel as there were dead. I could see them milling about through the smoked glass veil that separates the worlds.
"Did you ever play a lottery when you were alive?" He asked.
"Yes, on occasion. It was a laugh. I never really hoped to win. Why, what does this have to do with the Chapel?"
The old man shifted his eyes to me for a few seconds, long enough to covey pity or contempt. "Why don't you go ask one of them? You followed them here; surely you must have... faith." He spoke the last word in much the same way one might say cockroach or maggot.
I was silent for a bit as I watched a spirit with a red head scarf work its way into the crowd. "I followed out of hope not faith." I said. "They say that one of the priests here speaks to the dead and gives comfort to the living. I just wanted to... hoped that... it was true."
"As for the lottery thing, I assume that you are telling me not to put my hopes on a long shot." I added.
The old man touched the end of his nose with a bent and gnarled finger and inclined his head. Then he gestured toward the Chapel just as a cheer went up from the spirits and the living fell to their knees and fumbled rosaries.
"What is happening?" I asked. "I can't see." I craned my neck to see over the sea of spirits but it was no good. I was too far back and even climbing on to the low wall surrounding a fountain did nothing for my perspective.
The old man chuckled and muttered, "Behold the Oracle speaketh."
I listened as silence fell through the crowd. One man was speaking, a living man standing on the dais in the Chapel. He spoke slowly in sepulchral tones. The living listened in rapt attention. Some prayed, some wept. As the solemnity of the living grew, so did the agitation of the dead. The agitation was turning to anger as the spirits close enough to hear relayed the words through the crowd.
"What is happening?" I asked. "Why are they so angry?"
"They are getting exactly what they should have expected." The old man turned and walked slowly toward a side ally leading away from the piazza. I stood rooted listening for a few minutes and then hurried after the old man.
"I need to know what is happening. Why should they expect to be angered? Or do you mean that they should not be angry because they should have known something wasn't going their way? I don't understand. All they want is to talk to the priest. Won't he talk to them?"
The old man stopped. He turned halfway and looked me up and down. "You do know that you can't talk to the living. You have tried. You have tried a great deal. It can't be done. But you can talk to me." He continued on his way down the alley. I followed in silence.
I had tried. I had tried for three years straight, watching as my family mourned, then accepted and then moved on. I tried as my pictures got relegated to albums and my children forgot my face. I tried as my wife dated and remarried. The frustration. The anger. The pure rage I felt at being separated with no means to communicate. That is why I followed the pilgrims. That is why I was here. Eventually I stopped accosting strangers and demanding answers. I had only recently despaired to ever watch in silence.

One day as I sat in the middle of a busy roadway, letting the cars and trucks momentarily smear and distort me as they blew through, imagining that I could actually feel it, I heard a rumor. A group of the wandering dead were standing on the sidewalk planning a trip to see a mystic priest who could talk to the dead.
I followed, not believing anymore than I believed in such things when I was alive. I didn't associate with the pilgrims or engage with them at all. I just followed, half way around the world to Southern Italy. Now here in this place I could hear those pilgrims chanting and howling their fury as I walked after the old man.

The old man veered into a public house, made his way to a back corner and settled himself comfortably into a booth already occupied by a living couple. The young woman shivered as the old man passed through her. Her lover instinctively wrapped his coat around her and ordered another drink. I took up the seat opposite sitting in the young man. I matched the man's position for a moment and fixed the old man with a double exposed stare. "I always hate to do this. Occupying the same space as someone else. It creeps me out."
The old man chuckled, "You won't have to for long."
He was right. The couple soon hurried away casting furtive looks over their shoulders at the corner booth. I remained silent for a few moments before asking again what angered the crowd. The old man considered me for bit and finally said. "You really don't know do you?"
I made an exasperated and somewhat rude gesture at the old man who slowly and deliberately said, "You can't talk to the living."
"I know that. You said that already."
"But you can talk to me."
"You said that too. What do you mean? Of course I can talk to you, you are dead."
The old man touched the end of his nose as to indicate a correct response.
"Are you going to explain yourself?" I asked. "OK, I can't talk to the living because I am dead. I can talk to you because you are dead. The pilgrims want to talk to the living but they can't. Are the just mad because he is a fraud?"
"That man is no fraud." The old man said sharply.
"OK, What is it then? He refused to talk to them. He would only talk to a few?"
"No, not exactly. It’s like this; some of the living are open to... possession by spirits. They have to initiate it or be responsive to it."
"So you mean to tell me that if I could find one of these people, I could climb inside and talk to the living that way?" I cut a longing look back at the door and the noise of the crowd.
"Hold your damn horses." The old man snapped. "It ain't that simple. If it was every spirit on this side would be walking around wearing an idiot suite. Don't you see? There are a lot of simple minded, easily manipulated people in the world and a lot of unhappy souls on this side. If you could just find a responsive mind and climb in, chances are you would find that someone beat you to it. Anyway, the universe would be lot more messed up even than it is. People can't keep their mouths shut. Not even the dead. You get possessed bodies running right and left and next thing you know someone has let on about something they couldn't possibly have know about and then it gets out that there actually is an afterlife and spirits and all that. That happens and religion falls apart, governments fall, all hell breaks loose. A lot of very powerful people on both sides get pissed off that happens." “He sighed.”No, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but you got the gist. The old boy is possessed by someone from this side."
“Who? How?”
“Who? No idea. How? I lost interest a long time ago. There are some prices a man like me won’t pay. Now I just wait.”
“For what?”
“Whatever comes. Whatever comes.”


I crept to the edge of the curtain that gives privacy to the small cell. The elderly priest paced back and forth with the agitated energy of a child waiting for something. The priest took a decanter from a shelf and poured water on the floor one, two, three times then extinguished the lone candle. Cued by something I could not see in the gloom, the priest stopped and drew an intricate pattern in the air before him. Suddenly the priest collapsed like a bundle of loose sticks leaving a spirit standing in his place. The spirit adjusted its red head scarf and disappeared through the back wall of the cell. I watched as the priest awoke, crawled onto his narrow bed, pulled his knees up to his chest and wept. He was pleading prayers to the Virgin to protect him and forgive him when I finally left him to his misery.
...This is part of something I have been writing at for a while. Don't know why really...

A Zealot By Any Philosophy

A zealot by any philosophy is still a zealot. This is a point usually missed by the zealot.

Over the last weekend, I attended a family reunion for the Thanksgiving holiday. The bulk of my father's family are extremely religious. The stripes of religiosity vary but the overall taint is the same. Extreme views abound. I find myself being more and more uncomfortable around extremists no matter what they espouse.

Maybe I am missing something but I have trouble drawing a distinction between the kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out fundamentalist Christian and the strap on twenty pounds of dynamite and meet the virgins Islamic nutter. They both scare me. Thankfully the Christians, at this point in history, have not started putting their guns and ammo to use.

But there is always tomorrow.

With all apologies to Allen Ginsgerg

...
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Muslims.
Them Muslims them Muslims and them Arabmen. And them Muslims.
The Muslims wants to eat us alive. The Muslims's power mad. He wants to take our morals from out our schools.
Him wants to grab Lady Liberty. Her needs a Qur'an Reader's Digest. her wants our auto plants in the desert. Him big evil terrorist running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes American kids read Qur'an. Him need big green backs.
Hah. Her cut off all our heads. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?

Here I Go Again Opening a Can of Worms

First the disclaimer for anyone prone to jumping to conclusions and extrapolating: I am not trying to extol or excoriate any faith. I am trying to make a specific point, that is it.
Background: Ann Coulter made some remarks that were typical of Ann Coulter. Here is the transcript--
Slash-and-burn columnist Ann Coulter shocked a cable TV talk-show audience Monday when she declared that Jews need to be "perfected" by becoming Christians, and that America would be better off if everyone were Christian.
Coulter made the remarkable statements during an often heated appearance to promote her new book on advertising guru Donny Deutsch's CNBC show "The Big Idea."
In response to a question from Deutsch asking Coulter if "it would be better if we were all Christian," the controversial columnist responded: "Yes."
"We should all be Christian?" Deutsch repeated.
"Yes," Coulter responded, asking Deutsch, who is Jewish, if he would like to "come to church with me."
Deutsch, pressing Coulter further, asked, "We should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians?" She responded: "Yeah."
Coulter deflected Deutsch's assertion that her comments were anti-Semitic, matter-of-factly telling the show's obviously upset host, "That is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews."
The commentary:
OK, I am not directly commenting on the remarks of Coulter. I am commenting here on the reaction to Coulter. Particularly that of Michael Savage. I am not a Michael Savage fan but I have never thought ill of him either. I just figured that he was another talk show host, interchangeable with any other one. Then I heard him going off on callers over the Ann Coulter thing. Several people called in to defend Coulter. They argued that her remarks reflect the Christian belief that Christ fulfilled the prophecies of the old testament and thus from the Christian perspective Judaism is obsolete. I am paraphrasing but that was the main point the callers made. Savage just exploded, shouted them down. Insulted them and called them "gutter dragging anti-Semites", "bigots"and many other vile names.
Now this is what I find interesting about the whole exchange. There seems to be a strange trend in modern discourse where no one understands what it means to believe. If someone believes, truly believes that god A is the only god. Then there cannot be any possibility within there belief for god B. Therefore, if another person believes in god B, the believer in god A has to (in accordance with his own belief) believe that the believer in god B is wrong. There is no way around it. To sanction the belief in god B is to invalidate the belief in god A. This is not bigotry, it is simply belief. The believer in god A can respect the believer in god B and accept their right to believe in god B but they cannot accept belief in god B as valid.
In the scenario above, if Coulter believes that Christ is the messiah of the Old Testament then she is completely correct within her belief to think that all Jews who reject him as messiah are wrong and hope for their conversion. To think otherwise would be contrary to her own belief and thus invalidate her belief.
Savages remarks and accusations were far more bigoted than Coulter's. One man who called in said that Coulter was hoping that the Jews would be "completed" by conversion. Savage started shouting that he was saying that Jews were only 1/3 or a 1/5 complete spiritual beings because they were not Christians. This is absurd. If a Christian takes his faith seriously then he has to believe that anyone who isn't a Christian is incomplete, is wrong. The same goes for any other religious system. Believing that someone is wrong is not bigotry.
I don't expect any better of people than this miserable failure to think and debate. It would be nice however if the people with the public forums would stop and think before they react. If you follow Savage's logic its wrong to believe anything that is exclusionary of what anyone else believes. Therefore you have to believe everything, but since beliefs are mutually exclusive you must believe in nothing. You cannot believe in nothing, even pure science leaves gaps that must be filled in with conjecture and the scientist has faith in his conjectures.
It all comes back to the fact that no one seems to understand what it means to believe, to respect and to tolerate.

Principia Discordia

Background: Principia Discordia is one of the funniest tongue-in-cheek false religious books around. It purports to be the holy book of Eris, Greek Goddess of Chaos (Discordia to the Romans).

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/