1:23 pm-Waiting to go into a meeting, again, one where I can sit and kvetch rather than participate. Not much going on-thought this meeting was at 9:30 rather than 1:30 so I hustled to get here on time. Erika has the tummy bug, but not as bad. Working on incremental changes to BP, need to finish “the Project” and move on to HLD (I love using all the acronyms! You have to refer back to find out what I’m talking about.) Not much else-I’m eating lunch. Whoopee. Kids are home for Spring break, having fun-I got a bunch of phone calls about telling potty jokes with Mom. They’re going to a movie tomorrow afternoon.
Since I have the time, I’m actually going to write more-usually I can’t. And of course now I’m drawing a blank. I guess I’ll start with the Anna Nicole saga. The photographer is the father of the baby. Big deal. That’s my opinion of the entire ANS story. Bread and circuses. What with Mideast disaster and posturing, mortgage meltdowns, global climate change, fired federal prosecutors and everything else, this is big news? Even the Don Imus thing is more substantial than this. One of the problems with corporate media is that they’re focused on the bottom line, so news which has meaning and is either dull or depressing gets pushed off the page and eventually off the radar. And big lies and little lies and entertainment disguised as news, plus bad education, plus financial and work pressures, plus endless consumerist temptations, plus neverending childhood, plus demagoguery, endless repetition, religion suppressing rational thought, and we have a populace as herd of sheep-sheeple. Getting driven by fear, greed and whatever to wherever. We are going down, folks, one by one. Collective amnesia, head-in-the-sand syndrome-not enough of us are paying attention. <sigh> An informed and educated populace is the cornerstone of our republic and we are neither. Is this Germany in the 20’s or 30’s? Don’t know-we don’t really have the economic impetus of a massive financial disaster to really succumb to a madman, but the groundwork is here, and there are a number of people who believe it’s coming soon or is already here.
Last week, I was thinking about the whole flock of sheep and shepherd metaphor in Christianity-I guess it’s the Easter thing. And my thoughts were these-there are several troubling aspects to using a sheep/shepherd metaphor: first, sheep are notoriously brainless and followers and easily led, especially by proxies of the shepherd (sheepdogs)-this doesn’t give a good model for intelligent followers. The second is the use of sheep-wool and meat-sheep are led to be shorn and slaughtered. Again, not the best image as to your goals for your followers. I’m not interested in either being a blind follower or being led to the shearinghouse and the slaughterhouse. I was also thinking about the Catholic Mass and being politely asked to tone it down after discovering its spiritual underpinnings-that the Mass is a vehicle for channeling worshipers’ energies into a structure focused on the altar and the celebrant, and launching it upwards. I was blasting massive energies into it, and the priest was unable to handle it. I guess this underpinning isn’t overtly taught to priests, so they only learn it unconsciously and therefore can’t manage it properly. I left after that, the abortion position was unacceptable was well.
Then there’s the Easter bunny, eggs and the resurrection of Christ. South Park did an ep about this last week, positing that Jesus assigned a rabbit to be pope, because no human would be free of vice, corruption or fanaticism. There was a whole DaVinci Code subtext, plus an eerie similarity between the Bill Donohue character and Rove… And of course they were wrong. Funny, but wrong. The Easter bunny and eggs comes from Christian syncresis and appropriation of Eastre and the feast of spring-basically an equinoctial fertility celebration. The German legend is of Eastre finding a frozen bird and reviving it by giving it a hare’s head, thus making a hybrid of a resurrected bunny that lays eggs. Fundies don’t like this, of course…No matter. I’m not a Christian, so I don’t care. I celebrate it as a pagan.
Listening to: Democracy Now!, Quiet American, Manfred Mann (I loved this tune when it came out-don’t like the Springsteen original-I think it’s the guitar, plus it was this and Fly Like an Eagle that informed my first times getting high), Malcolm McLaren, Glass, Carbon Based Lifeforms, Steve Roach, Quiet American, Legendary Pink Dots, Cream, TMBG, King Crimson, Ravi Shankar, Mr. Kool Ade & Marco, Los Lobos (yum!), Mevlevi Sufi (yum, yum!), Mickey Hart, Joy Division