The world may be chaotic but we individually can remain whole and focused.
Our leaders may be amoral and manipulative but we individually can be respectful and sensitive to one another.
The daily stream of news reports can be filled with vileness, anger, confusion, and loss of hope but we individually can be fountains of joy, vision, clarity, fellowship, and positive change.
With the recent discovery that an old favorite around this time of year, a man who children have always looked on with delight and expectation — yes, THAT bearded old white man in a red suit — has refused to be vaccinated or take a PCR test, alarm bells have gone off and warnings are being issued across the globe. Anthony Fauci and the CDC have led the media blitz with a press release which was stark and unambiguous:
SANTA CLAUS MAY BE A SUPER SPREADER!
As expected, the effervescent and unflappable ambassador of Christmas cheer just laughed off what he characterized as ad hominem nonsense and returned to the formidable task of fitting presents for 3 billion children in a sleigh that, to be blunt about it, has seen better days.
Speaking of which, Elon Musk — with the generosity that has been his hallmark in his rise to stardom in the public eye — offered Santa one of his Tesla Cybertrucks for this year’s orgy of free gifts, bestowed with profligacy and limited irony on the spoiled kids in the countries topping the OECD. Santa demurred, citing hundreds of years of tradition and enigmatically quoting what he claimed were canons from tracts of the Essenes.
Personally, I have no way to judge the cautionary alerts on Santa. Several commentators on Fox News claim that the surprise announcement is just another attack on Christmas by the Christian-hating atheistic left wing. Others think that like the media feeding frenzy around the omicron variant, this is just more much ado about nothing. There’s one contingent of what’s been dubbed the lunatic fringe which just posted this on their website with links to a controversial alternative media channel called OpEdNews:
“All of the official bloviating is self-contradictory. Simply stated, what the CDC and NIH are saying all fails the much-touted PCR test, which is comparing their fantastical musings to what Paul Craig Roberts has to say on the matter. You lose, Fauci and Gates. Roberts is how we determine who’s a ‘super spreader’ and who isn’t. If anything, the PCR says you guys test positive as super-spreaders of the BS virus.“
Whatever you personally decide, common sense should prevail. If a strange man appears in your living room, put on a mask and rubber gloves and ask to see some ID. If he checks out, that’s no excuse for flirting with death by hugging or kissing him. For sure, no tongues.
I go out of my way to keep my readers and loyal fans ahead of the news, 1) by not just regurgitating the usual stuff that passes for BREAKING NEWS, garbage that mysteriously keeps “breaking” for months on end with panel discussions and tedious updates; and 2) by always providing accurate stories and insights that sometimes takes years for the typical mainstream media outlets to finally get right.
So I’m frankly getting tired of media outlets “scooping” my stories.
A truly aggravating example is the photo at the top of this page.
“A lunar rover has spotted a strange cube-shaped object and will alter its official course to check it out, needing 2-3 months to arrive.”
“The Chinese Yutu 2 lunar rover spotted a bizarre shape in its cameras while traversing a C-shape enclosure made up of ferocious impact craters on the moon’s far side.”
“The drivers zoomed in on the pictures, slowly admiring them one by one. Suddenly, an obtrusive cube on the northern skyline attracted their attention. This object pierced through the winding of the skyline, like a ‘mysterious hut’.”
Those comments are from an article about this under-whelming breakthrough in lunar exploration, on a site called Good News Network. It should be called Old News Network.
Not only is this amazing new discovery old news, but to put it mildly, it’s less than spectacular. What are we looking at here? A blurry photo taken with a camera with vaseline on the lens, pointed by robotic command from 240,000 miles away, probably using a refurbished Dell computer running Windows 95. You know how primitive those Chinese scientists are, still doing critical calculations with an abacus.
More to the point, why is this new news? Because over a year ago, I provided this photo.
You can’t help but notice the stark difference in the quality of the images. My sources are GOOD! And reliable! This incredible shot was posted by a dance team I follow on TikTok, and they’ve become an invaluable source of “hot off the press” information for me.
They also alerted me to the dangers of eating GMO-laced products, especially junk food and quick-and-easy meals like TV dinners and instant ramen. Here is the photo of a young man whose mother lived on Macaroni & Cheese In-A-Box for her entire pregnancy.
The point is, if you want to know what’s really going on in the world, you know who to turn to.
If on the other hand, you prefer getting compromised, ancient reports of inferior quality and dubious merit, just keep looking to the usual suspects: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNN, Washington Post, Rachel Maddow, and the Good News Network.
OMG!
Just got a desktop alert about a talking zebra in the Amsterdam Zoo that channels Jesus.
Gotta go!
Why should I be ashamed to let people know about my books? I worked hard on them, am proud of my work, and honestly didn’t write them for glory and money — though I admit I certainly wouldn’t turn away either — but merely put a smile on some sad faces out there or a twinkle in a few eyes dulled by bad TV and too many computers and smart phones.
It’s genuinely hard to wrap my head around this literary excursion. It’s been thirteen years since I got serious about writing full-length books. Yes, it all started in 2008 while I was teaching English right here in Tambasasayama, now my permanent hometown. Little did I know back then I’d marry a lovely Japanese lady and then so enthusiastically embrace the idea of making Japan my permanent place of residence. Petrocelli was my first novel, written in my spare time between teaching classes. Now I have a total of 13 finished, published works, another novel coming out in spring 2022 — Love Connection: Romance in the Land of the Rising Sun. There’s also a completed travel/fantasy/cookbook which may never see the light of day called What Do Mermaids Eat? — I’m still looking for a publisher).
Wow! Fifteen books in 13 years! “I’ve got blisters on my fingers!” (Why does that sound familiar?)
Anyway . . . moving on to the self-promotion, shameless or not. Until January 1st, all of the ebooks pictured at the top of the page are 50-75% off at Smashwords, a premium ebook sales channel. If you want to dive in, the links can be found HERE.
Oh . . . but there’s more! Amazon has a special on The Man Who Loved Too Much trilogy Kindle ebooks. Are you ready for this? Only 99 cents each!
Go for it! Here are the links . . .
Recognizing we’re closing in fast on Christmas, you still might want to look at this . . .
Okay … the title is hyperbole. No religion is actually fun. Most seem preoccupied with scary demons, suffering, sacrifice, gnashing, weeping, incantations, uncomfortable positions, and men dressed in funny clothes.
But at least some Buddhists have a sense of humor!
My lovely wife, Masumi, arranged a three-day holiday this past weekend to Shikoku. We ate great noodles — Shikoku is the world udon capital — visited shrines and temples, saw some spectacular landscapes, and were taken by surprise and incredibly charmed by the island’s largest city, Matsuyama. There we ate local cuisine at an area restaurant, walked the streets and visited the shopping arcade, a feature which is part of every decent-sized Japanese city. We spent the better part of an afternoon at Matsuyama Castle, one of the biggest in Japan, and from my experience to date, the most spectacular in every respect. It’s over 500 years old and its sprawling compound sits on a hill overlooking the city.
The castle was phenomenal but the high-point — literally — of our very short trip for me personally was our visit to the sprawling grounds of Jizou-ji Temple. It’s located in Itano, Tokushima Prefecture, Shikoku (the northeast region of the island, shortly after crossing the bridge from Awaji). Mind you, this temple was founded over 12 centuries ago and even has a big, knobby gingko tree which is over 800 years old. I suggest it was the high-point because it is situated on top of the highest mountain in the area, requiring us to to take a ropeway lift just to get within hiking distance.
What makes this temple truly unique are the 500 life-sized statues of 500 arhats. These men are enlightened followers of Buddha. None of them have hair.
It seemed that just about every human emotion was on display, so I asked Masumi what exactly the point of this holy menagerie was. She explained that they were expressing the entire range of possible reactions to the idiocy of human behavior: their disbelief, shock, disapproval, bewilderment, disdain, disgust, mockery, denial, their resignation, horror, pleas for sanity, hope for improvement, futile escape from the undeniable truth.
These statues line the walkways, peak out from behind trees, sitting, standing, kneeling, offering their take on human folly and the ridiculous mess we tend to make out of things. You can see for yourself, their expressions are priceless.
As grim as many of them might appear, frankly it was impossible to not see the humor in the enterprise. A huge dose of irreverence tossed in with requisite piety.
This is sure a far-cry from the “religion” I got when I was growing up. Of course, this is a subject for a multi-volume tome — probably the most boring memoir ever written — but suffice it to say I grew up Catholic, even went to Catholic school for six years, under the tutelage of female sado-masochists, aka nuns. There are only two emotions entertained by Catholicism: shame and fear. I will confess, as the class clown for my elementary school, to at least trying to generate some comic relief. Which only lasted until either I was beaten with a ruler or long wooden pointer, or sent to the torture chamber of Mother Superior, the school’s official Reichsführer and final solution disciplinarian.
I realize there’s a pandemic destroying the economies, families and communities across the planet, but you’d be hard-pressed to find evidence of it here in Japan. People are out and about having fun. Most of them are Buddhists. Some of them are just wild and crazy.
The first philosophy book I ever read was Bertrand Russell’s Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare. I was 13 years old.
Lord Russell’s writing made a huge impression on me. Though at the time I was reading mostly science and math books, the enterprise of looking at the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom from the broad perspective of a philosopher made deep roots in my sub-conscious and thus my first year of college I changed my major from chemistry to philosophy.
Even more central to the development of my world view and political priorities was the focus of this monumental book on the madness of arming ourselves with nuclear weapons. Here’s the abstract:
“Written at the height of the Cold War in 1959, Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare was published in an effort ‘to prevent the catastrophe which would result from a large scale H-bomb war’. Bertrand Russell’s staunch anti-war stance is made very clear in this highly controversial text, which outlines his sharp insights into the threat of nuclear conflict and what should be done to avoid it. Russell’s argument, that the only way to end the threat of nuclear war is to end war itself, is as relevant today as it was on first publication.”
Compared to today, those were innocent times. 1959 in my view was hardly the height of the Cold War, rather a way station for subsequent ramping up of tensions, which would first peak during the Cuban Missile Crisis at the end of 1962, discernably slow down with the resolution of that confrontation first part of 1963, then again continue to build until 1986 when Russia and the U.S. between them had nearly 65,000 nuclear bombs. Here’s a of the nuclear arms race between the two super-powers:
So in 1959, there were about 12,000 nuclear weapons available for mass annihilation. It is notable that most of those were in the U.S. arsenal, that of the U.S.S.R. less than 10% of the total. The U.S. continued its huge advantage until the U.S.S.R. finally reached parity twenty years later.
We now have active and immediately deployable about 8,000 nuclear weapons. If we count “inactivated” nukes which while not immediately deployable, could very quickly be put online, the total is slightly over 12,000, about the same as 1959. I say that the late 50s represented more innocent times for two reasons. First, back then as I just pointed out, the U.S. had almost all the nukes. The U.S.S.R. certainly wasn’t going to launch their 100+. It would have been almost instantaneous suicide. And while there was some talk a little later about destroying the “commies” both in China and the U.S.S.R. while we had the upper hand, sanity and some shred of moral conscience prevailed. The second reason we are less innocent now and in fact find ourselves living among the greatest threats to human survival in history is simple. Nukes are now in the hands of seven more nations. Three of them don’t inspire much confidence. North Korea, Pakistan, and India are considered “unstable” and U.S. policy toward them doesn’t exactly incentivize them to be less volatile. Likewise with China, which the U.S. openly antagonizes, insults, provokes, and officially has declared it will eventually have to go to war with to keep it from becoming a peer power. China has around 350 nuclear bombs, enough to destroy life on Earth 3 1/2 times over. India and Pakistan combined have about 300 nukes and have made no secret about their intent to use them if they end up in a major war with one another.
Have we learned anything from our flirtation with self-engineered extinction?
What really captured my attention and fired my imagination was Bertrand Russell’s open and highly public opposition. He wasn’t a cowering academic. And because there were still a few sane thought leaders in the world at that time who had high visibility and enormous public respect, Lord Russell was not alone in his passionate appeals for ending the scourge of war.
It’s tempting to say we haven’t learned anything in the past seven decades. But that’s a ridiculous conclusion. The truth is we knew back then and know now exactly what’s wrong and what needs to be done. We had celebrations across the globe recently when the 50th nation ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the U.N. “officially” declared nuclear weapons illegal. Any sane, decent human being knows nuclear weapons have no place in the world now or ever, and are a death sentence for the human species waiting for signature — which will be the first mushroom cloud over a major city anywhere on the planet. Of course, none of the nations who have nuclear weapons signed the treaty, there’s no way to enforce the treaty, and the nuclear nations will do whatever they damn please regardless.
Which requires us to pause and inhale a deep breath . . . OF REALITY.
For seven decades I’ve been listening to the same painful moans and pitiful mantras. About a whole host of crises and problems: poverty, famine, war, terror, infanticide, genocide, war crimes, bioweapons, oppression, exploitation, on and on and on. And anyone my age will tell you the same. Not much has changed. The excuses are more compelling, the euphemisms are cleverer, the blame-game is Olympic Gold Medal material, the talking heads delivering the 24/7 stream of non-sequiturs prettier and more handsome. Yeah, there are incremental improvements here and there. But SEVENTY YEARS? We’ve put humans in space, transplanted organs, created self-driving cars, mass-produced a telephone-camera-computer-video conferencing computer that fits in the palm of a hand, yet 24,000 people still starve to death EVERY DAY. And we’re still snarling at one another like rabid hyenas threatening war and flirting with extinction. Come on!
The one lesson that obviously has not sunk in is that . . . ALL OF THESE STRUGGLES ARE ABOUT POWER: Those who have it and those who don’t. We can — as Lord Russell did and many good, well-meaning contemporary activists currently do — say all of the right things. But those fighting the good fight DON’T HAVE THE POWER. Those who subject the rest of the human race to indignities, oppression, the sickening homicidal wars, DO HAVE THE POWER and they are not listening. Not to us anyway. They listen to themselves, they serve themselves, their only loyalty is to an agenda that will keep them in power and secure their ability to use and abuse that power as they see fit.
THAT is the lesson we haven’t learned. We know that nuclear weapons are a death warrant. We know that they are a suicide pact. But there they are and there they will continue to sit, ready to unleash more death and destruction — and if not the annihilation of the human species at least the end of anything resembling civilization — than ever before imagined.
If we stop to think, to look at it objectively, the vast majority of people in the world want no part of this. It is a tiny, power-drunk, empire-obsessed, sociopathic few who hold us hostage to their psychotic fantasies.
Let’s break it down . . .
We know what needs to be done.
The lunatics are not now and will never listen to us.
We know how to change everything to make a better world.
The lunatics have their own plan and refuse to change.
The lunatics have the power.
We don’t have the power.
What should we do?
Isn’t it obvious?
Are you ready?
Love Connection: Romance in the Land of the Rising Sun is unlike any love story you’ve ever read. Set in Japan and East Africa, it is based on real events.
Arriving this coming spring. ARCs will be available in February 2022. Pre-orders will begin in April.
This is from the Author’s Closing Personal Comment at the end of the book:
As a society, the Japanese people may be the most honest in the world. There are legendary stories of individuals forgetting their wallets, handbags, computers, shopping bags, leaving them in plain sight in highly-trafficked public places. They return hours later and their valuables are right where the left them. Or have been turned into the police, everything still there, even credit cards and cash. We expect of others what we see in ourselves. Meaning, Japanese trust others because they themselves can be trusted. The problem is that this level of integrity can backfire when confronting others who are not so morally sound. It can be extremely destructive at every level when manipulated to personal advantage by individuals who are cunning, ruthless, sociopathic.
We have a nickname for our friend Keiko Iwashita. My wife and I call her “Bangladesh Lady”. There’s a very inspiring story behind this.
Keiko and her husband 岩下八司 (Hachiji) have an NPO (non-profit organization) called Polli Unnoyon Shonsta, which raises money to establish schools mainly in Bangladesh.
With 163 million people, Bangladesh is the eighth most populous country in the world, and one of the most densely populated. 98% of the people are Bengalis and over 90% are Muslims. The economy has recently been growing at an impressive rate but in terms of per capita GDP, it still ranks 164th in the world.
When the rich countries prefer to protect their privilege by committing billions of dollars to defending themselves against largely imagined foreign threats, competing in pursuit of infinite growth on a finite planet, much of the generated wealth funneled into the holdings of the already obscenely wealthy, it is only through individual efforts like that of Keiko and Hachiji that the enormous gap between rich and poor nations can be reduced. Maybe on paper it doesn’t look like much. But the difference they are making in the lives of those children who attend their schools is profound.
Charity begins at home? Actually, charity in this case begins at someone else’s homes, and those homes are 4,500 kilometers away — it’s 2,799 miles from Osaka to Dhaka.
Then again, Bangladesh is like a second home for this amazing couple.
People often say they want to “change the world”, do something positive, contribute to the betterment of humankind, but feel overwhelmed by all of the problems we face. Life is so complex and convoluted, usually it’s hard to know how and where to begin.
In a time, where 85 people have more wealth than the poorest 3.5 billion of the world’s population, there are more things to do in more locations than ever.
Keiko and Hachiji point the way with their generous spirit and inspiring example.
The object of their derision and evident nausea was the marble rendering of Venus de Milo by Alexandros of Antioch, a Greek sculptor of the Hellenistic Age.
A spokesperson who might have just arrived from an Insane Clown Posse concert or an Extinction Rebellion rally shouted through a bullhorn.
“How can you have such a disgusting symbol of primitive values in full sight of not just undeserving adults but the thousands of children who come here? It’s exploitative, gender rigid, misogynistic, insensitive — just plain WRONG, WRONG, WRONG on every level. How many innocent boys have been turned into haters and rapists by this sexualized carving, this symbol of moral anarchy, this overt enticement to erotic anarchy? How many young girls been body-shamed and driven to suicide by its faux submission to modesty and subliminal glorification of coquetry?”
Without having any clue what the leader of the woke mob was saying, Max Hollein, current Appointed Director of the Met, managed to calm the irate protesters down, and convince the grumbling, weeping, giggling, frantic, but mostly neutered protestors that something could be worked out, a compromise was possible. No way was Mr. Hollein going to stand by while such a masterpiece was turned into rubble.
The world-renowned museum was closed for three days. Behind the locked doors, the woke protesters went to work. There was understandably a lot of back-and-forth between the woke crowd and the staff who ignorantly still embraced a traditional world view, but eventually compromises were made, the museum re-opened, and visitors hungry for the enrichment of great art were able to fully enjoy an “acceptable”, fully PC-friendly version of the disputed sculpture, one which was pan-gender sensitive and fully inclusive.
Alright . . . it’s not Elle or Guns & Ammo or The Atlantic. But it’s a real magazine and it’s out of San Antonio, Texas. A POETRY MAGAZINE!
Let’s face it. You won’t find the big bucks in poetry. So you can’t expect a four-color cover and glossy 80# photo stock, printed in one of the world-class print houses in Italy. Or ads for it during the half-time show at the Superbowl.
Lone Stars Magazine. Texas is the “Lone Star State”. Get it? And notice this is Issue #97. Meaning they’ve been at this for a while. This is not some impulse dreamed up between a rodeo and a local paint ball war games tournament.
So . . . why am I bringing any of this up?
Well . . . I’m darn proud to say that a recent poem of mine got published in this particular issue. A miracle if there ever was one!
I’ve made it clear in the past — if anyone was paying attention — I’m not a poet, I’ve never wanted to be a poet, any resemblance between my attempts at poetry and actual poetry is purely coincidental. But for some reason, these poetry magazines seem to think I’m the real deal. Who am I to argue?
I even wrote a satirical piece, making fun of poetry and the whole process of writing it:
There’s at least one person who thinks it’s hilarious. (That would be me.)
Let me cut with the false humility, stop being such an arrogant butt plug, and attempt to painlessly explain the situation.
Lone Stars published three of my other poems over the past couple years but this was a particularly juicy assignment and I couldn’t resist.
Contributors to Issue #97 were supposed to write a poem about what a poet is. So I did!
There you have it. Clever? Interesting? Probably not.
Maybe I should light fires in the forest?
Juggle tofu with my tongue?