In Stephen Hawking’s recent Reuters article Why God Did Not Create the Universe, he asserts, “There is no place for God in theories on the creation of the Universe.”

Hawking goes on to say the Big Bang was “an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics.”  He then added, “Santa Claus is not real and Angelina Jolie’s breasts are silicone.”

Damn you, Hawking!

The brilliant people of the world are uniting, form of Scientism.  This rise of smartiness is a natural selection—I mean, reaction—to the religions of the world.  Granted, these are totally muffing it lately…and by lately, I mean that in geological time.  Muslim extremists are growing like ragweed and even the Pope has covered up a gazillion or so rapes. Honestly, the guy’s a frigging Bond villain.  Check this pic out:

Cardinal Sinister by Nick Walker "Flopsy’s dead and never called me papal."

The Problem remains, each individual and each culture moves through Beck & Cowan’s color coded stages of consciousness. There’s no skipping steps.  We are all tribal (red) at birth, but in most cultures one has the opportunity to move beyond this level, preferably while still playing in a sandbox somewhere.  If some upward mobility does not occur, you end up a Nazi, Al-Qaeda, or working for The Weekly Standard (I’m kidding, of course, only some of them are Nazis).  One could also hope that the next phase, fundamentalism (blue), would also be a brief stop on the way to bigger and better memes (let’s say on-or-around puberty).  Speaking of adolescence, this is why the aspect of voting for certain Tea Party candidates at a critical juncture in our history scares the shit out of me…which reminds me of a great Stuart Davis rant:

“The first fucking thing conventional and preconventional stages of development do with democracy is vote in undemocratic, theocratic regimes. Nice. Hamas. Nice. President fucking ‘God is on my side’ Bush. Nice. What are we? Nine? Ten fucking years old? I am so, SO sick of this shit, and you should be too. These arrested adolescents are pissing all over the altar.”

—Stuart Davis

This brings us to Hawking and the many entrepreneurial/scientific level folk of the modern world (orange).  Currently, they’re denying any opening for spiritual thought, because they are understandably disgusted with this mythic version of religion. 

This meme can be summed up with Bush’s I’m going to pray and then decide who to bomb approach to spirituality. The so-called authorities on the subject are, as Davis asserts, “pissing all over the altar.”  As a direct result, all educated folks have renounced the whole Christ and caboodle.

In the last century, anything not involving gross matter is deemed irrelevant—this, despite such twentieth century breakthroughs as quantum mechanics, String Theory, Bell’s Theorem, and the Cookie Monster Paradox (He chews on the cookies, he loves the cookies, yet none seem to enter his gullet?). 

To me, Bell’s Theorem proves the interconnectedness of all points throughout the Universe, but even the facts don’t seem to deter reductionists.  And here I thought that was their thing? They continue to ignore the increasing connection between Vedic philosophies and physics, and the growing body of proof that a brain subjected to meditation operates more efficiently.  And what happens when blood flows more freely in our frontal lobes and neural connectivity increases?  A view of the universe unfolds in an eerily similar manner as it has throughout the ages. This perennial philosophy occurs again and again.  It asserts there is a divine unity underlying all things—except, of course, Ghetto Shaman articles (the Universe isn’t perfect, after all).  

So why would our greatest thinkers ignore the conclusion of the most sophisticated machine on Earth, the human brain?  More importantly, what if those hyperintelligent, pandimensional beings mentioned in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy programmed their ‘meaning of life experiment’ into our very DNA?  Sorry, it’s the pot talking.

We ignore the conclusions of countless contemplatives at our own peril.  This perennial philosophy is a spiritual language, surfacing time and time again, interwoven throughout our archetypes, our myths, and our dreams—not to mention certain Jack Primus novels.

The Upanishadic/Coomaraswamy brand of this philosophy has permeated the heart of all major religions and contemplative philosophies.  And not just Buddhism and Hinduism, it has surfaced in the Gnostics, the Cabbalists, and even the Sufis (aka, the thoughtful versions of today’s watered down versions). In other words, things were going just fine until some fundamental Preacher, Rabbi, or Imam started pissing all over the altar.  Makes me want to curl up with some Kant or Nietzsche and give the whole thing a miss.  In essence, this is what most scientists have done.

For some context on how the west was done, look no further than the field of psychology.  We banished the intuitive, contemplative side of psychology at the turn of the century (right around the field’s inception).  You see, two main schools of thought, structuralism and functionalism, were vying for dominance back in Wilhelm Wundt’s Wunderland (a man heralded as the father of psychology and a strong Prop 19 supporter).  No one ever talks about the implications of this, but two perspectives entered and, to the detriment of the west, only one emerged. 

E.B. Titchener’s structuralism maintained that the goal of the psychologist was to “analyze consciousness into its basic elements and investigate how these elements are related”, an approach focusing on a “systematic self-observation of one’s own consciousness (Weiten, 2004).”

So, of course, his movement was doomed to failure, much like the Z-Party movement and my Rally to Restore Other Important Things and Stuff.  The subjective attempt at ‘mind looking at mind’ was a hard pill to swallow for even early psychologists, after all, positivism and empiricism were already the favored approach for a new field of soon to be, rat-poking Skinnerians (RPSs).  William James pulled the field of psychology toward the more favored approach, functionalism, and Titchener was forced into prostitution (sorry, I was channeling the great historian, Glenn Beck, again). 

In retrospect, this was an easy shift, because James’ functionalism studied things from a more stimulus-response paradigm (aka, endeavors clearly more rooted in the budding field of rat-poking).  In many ways, Titchener’s approach of defining consciousness was ingenious, but he was ultimately assigned to the dust bin of history.  Obviously, we should have continued to pursue both functionalism and structuralism, but c`est la valium.

The field of psychology has never looked back and, as a result, we remain forever separate from our own subjective experience.  A recent poll labels 1 in 10 Americans as depressed.  This doesn’t include people who frequent The Daily Discord (hint: it would much higher).  It also doesn’t include psychotic, mood, or anxiety disorders—to say nothing of addictions.  Not only have we ignored ourselves, we have banished our myths as well:

“Hence we find today, after some five hundred years of the systematic dismemberment of the mythological organ in our species, all the sad young men, for whom life is such a problem.”

—Joseph Campbell

Thousands of years ago, the folks over in early India chose not to ditch the Titch.  First, to keep the rat pokers happy, they made profound scientific discoveries in the objective world around them, but then they shifted their efforts and their focus inward into their own consciousness.   The result was the Upanishads (aka, after a highly sophisticated group of ancients passed Prop 19).

I remember in middle school being enthralled with the Sophists of ancient Greece.  In particularly, Heraclitus impressed me.  Is it a coincidence that, years later, Zeno’s would become my favorite bar?  I drink not.  Heraclitus asserted all of life is flux and change.  Oh, and Zeno’s rotates its taps.  Coincidence?  I don’t drink so.  Later, I discovered Heraclitus also believed in an underlying unity beneath the surface of all things.  He was later barred from Zeno’s for pinching what he tried to philosophically argue was his own buttocks.  No one was buying it. 

“Spirit is motion; it is the invisible animator of motivation of growth and change.  It is the urge to extend, encompass, transform, and become.” And, “Our society does not consciously cultivate or utilize the dreamlike state of awareness.  We are unfamiliar with our deep neural system in which the image and form of our worlds are created and projected.  We have been cut off from an entire aspect of our being.”

—Robert Lawlor (a huge Heraclitus fan and Prop 19 supporter)

In the modern west, consciousness went underground for a time.  Our myths died and, to the chagrin of Carl Jung, our unconsciousness and our dreams died along with them.  This perspective finally reemerged with the likes of Ken Wilber and his Integral Institute.  Oh, and this guy’s huge!  Here’s a picture from my local Barnes and Noble where Ken Wilber is placed right next to the Necronomicon in the flakiest corner of the New Age Zone.

So one of my heroes ends up next to a fictional grimoire, great.  Wilber has synthesized hundreds of psychological theories into a meaningful, understandable perspective.  On the other tentacle, Cthulhu has dragged many a poor soul into the nether realms to feed.  I can see the correlation.  Wilber asserts that meditation can only be subject to the scientific method if you partake in the grand experiment.  He also recommends approaching non-believers thusly:

“The people who raise this objection are almost always people who don’t want to look through the instrument of meditation, just as Churchman refused to look through Galileo’s telescope and thus acknowledge the moons of Jupiter. Let them live with their refusal. But let us – to the best of our ability, and hopefully driven by the best of charity of compassion – try to convince them to look, just once, and see for themselves.”

—Ken Wilber

Wilber wants everyone to start their own interior experiential experiment, through the art of meditation, to see how other insights are available in different/higher states of consciousness.  His views echo the tenets of Buddhism, epitomized in Hesse’s Siddhartha, where it’s not the teaching themselves, but the practice that is the key to enlightenment.  

“To nobody, O Illustrious One, can you communicate in words and teaching what happened to you in the hour of your enlightenment. That is why I am going on my way—not to seek another and better doctrine, for I know there is none, but to leave all doctrines and all teachers and to reach my goal alone—or die (fuckers).”

—Hermann Hesse

I added the “fuckers” part, but it’s clearly implied. Oh, oh, but wait!  In Cthulhu’s defense, his quote “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu” will make you pull off your own ears at the very sound of it (which is important too). 

The Dalai Lama has asked the scientific community to bring scientific methods to bear on Buddhism itself.  He’s willing to change the dharma, if necessary, to further adhere to the objective-side of reality.  He understands the importance of the external as well as the internal aspects of our existence.  Cthulhu, meanwhile, hates the Dalai Lama:

R’lyeh wgah’nag!”

—Cthulhu

You go, girl. On many issues I would still side with the Dawkins, Hawking, Hitchens, and Carrot Tops of the world—especially when the choice is between them or more fundamental thought.  They are still my heroes, albeit in one area, the external world.  As for spiritual matters, they are quite misguided and actually detrimental for moving many along that dynamic consciousness spiral.  They are ignoring developmental psychology, outright.  Besides, Hawking himself discovered the mind numbingly delicate balancing act that exists in our Universe between galaxies forming or everything collapsing into a black hole. He said the chances of such a balance were one in 10⁵⁹, which is like a trillionth of a gazillionth or some such.  Really?  That just happened? 

Recently, Bill Maher told Bill O’Reilly anyone who believes in God is a “dunce.”  Again, his anger stems from watching the consequences of fundamental thought still playing out in societies across the globe…or, it may be the fact I refuse to return his favorite bong.  I’m sure it’s one of the two.  You can’t ignore the spiral, or the development.  Each level is an integral part in the realm of ever-unfolding spirit. 

Meanwhile, on this ongoing crusade against religious thought, Christopher Hitchens is surely the Batman to Bill Maher’s Robin. In Hitchens’ Slate article on 9/8, he stated, “The taming and domestication of religion is one of the unceasing chores of civilization.”

I would like to change that to:

“Stressing meditation and contemplation is one of the unceasing chores of the enlightened.”

—Mick “not-enlightened-yet-but-still-attending-Ghetto-Shaman-workshops-regularly” Zano

Weiten, W. (2005). Psychology: Themes and Variations (6^th Ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.

Many believe we are subject to increasing synchronicities as we spiral toward some type of mass awakening in the near future.  I have noticed this increase in strangely linked events, but only when leveled against my own rising blood alcohol content and when dealing with old, pain in the ass pals who also happen to be fellow Discordians.

Communicating with the mindless also tends to magnify this effect.  When I deal with my college buddies any number of strange events tend to occur.  I spoke to our illustrious CEO, Pierce Winslow, at a wedding last week about some of those glory day coincidences (GDCs). Remember that time?…or, when this or that happened?  

He suggested I write a feature on it, so I categorized several stories that seemed beyond coincidence.  I decided there were too many of the damn things, and they weren’t really related, so I ditched the whole idea. 

Then, a few days ago, I was at a job interview when my cell phone, which I forgot to turn off, rang.  Of course, I wasn’t expecting it to ring—having few friends, it usually only happens once or twice a week.  Unfortunately, it was one of those times.  Imagine being in a job interview and your phone starts blaring, Awhooo Werewolves of London. Shocked as the woman interviewing me seemed, I pardoned myself and answered the phone.  I had missed the call but heard this message.

“Hey Dave, it’s Zano.  Do you have that feature for me?  Winslow said you were working on one.  Hey, I talked to Pokey finally.  He’s alive.  I guess that’s it, later.”

At that point, not only was the conversation over, the interview was as well.

So, I decided to narrow my story down to focus on the few weird phone call stories between Winslow, Pokey, Zano and I.  One story immediately came to mind.  Zano called me this other time, while I was coaching the local high school football team.  It happened to be third down and three.  I was amidst a huddle.  I called for a time out, ran out to the offensive to make a decisive, game altering play call.  I answered the phone and said, “Pass or run?” to whoever was calling. 

Mick replied, “Pass.” 

I hung up on him and called a pass play.  Of course, the pass was intercepted and ran back for a touchdown.  Phone call over, Mick’s coaching debut over, and game over to boot.  Now I understand why Pokey McDooris lives in a phoneless convent.

Mick’s wife is even worse and, when Pokey is involved, all hell tends to break loose.  Once I made the mistake of heading to Mick’s house for a little visit.  I could plainly see that someone was home, but the whole ringing-the-doorbell-thing wasn’t working out.  Pissed that I was being ignored—with a little help from a screwdriver and my criminal past—I climbed through a window.   The phone rang as I entered the kitchen and Mick’s wife and I both picked up and said, “Hello” in unison.   The conversation went like this:

At that point we both hear an operator of some sort saying, “Please deposit fifty-five cents.”

Turns out, this marked Pokey McDooris’s only call since moving to Arizona a year and a half earlier.  He was calling from some convent in Prescott and just listening to our conversation in pure bewilderment. 

Another strange piece of Discord lore is this: Pokey, at the time of our tale, had moved to Arizona, alone, for reasons only he can fully fathom.  He lived at a place called Church on the Street and then a couple of years later he moved back to PA.  Zano then, for reasons only he can fully fathom, moved his family to northern AZ.  Churches won’t have him, so I’m betting he’ll wind up on the street.

So after that wedding last week in Philadelphia, Winslow and I parted company. En-route through those Pennsylvania hills, I tried to think of other funny synchronicities.  None of our memories are too good after college, which really isn’t much of a surprise, really, considering our hopular habits and all.  There wasn’t enough for a whole feature, so that’s about when I was considering ditching the idea.

So a few days later, Winslow calls me.  I ask him about the sweatshirt that I had lost over the course of the weekend’s festivities.  I had also broken my glasses as well.  In other words, it was a good Irish wedding (hat tip: Timmo).  He asked me to describe it.  Turns out he’s wearing the damn thing!  So then I call Zano back in AZ to tell him I’m finishing up this article to see if he’ll like it.  When it comes to the Discord, truth be told, he’s kind of a pecker head.  I tell him my idea, tell him about the wedding, and tell him how Winslow’s wearing my sweatshirt, right now. 

Zano, without missing a beat, said, “Do you remember that grey shirt of yours that says  Outer Banks  North Carolina?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m wearing it right now.  I don’t know how it ended up in Arizona and I’ve been meaning to tell you about it, honest.”

I said “Pass or run, Zano,” and hung up on the bastard.

Next time my phone rings and it says Mick “Dumbass” Zano on the screen, I’m not answering and neither should you.  I wish, just once, he would call me for something important like, maybe, “Hey, Dave I moved to Arizona.” 

I found out that tidbit of information two weeks after the fact as I was once again crawling into the same window only to find a completely different décor.  No shit, I broke into someone else’s house!  Well, luckily, the new guy had a better beer selection than Zano.  But the chick in the tub was even less happy to see me.  OK, really, no one was home, which probably helped me avoid felony trespass charges…er, again. 

Now many of you are probably questioning the events of this fine feature article.  The only folk not questioning anything, probably know us personally.  They’re thinking, “typical.”  I personally believe in the weirdness magnet phenomenon (WMP).  You can’t hang out with these bozos for 20 years and come to any other conclusion.  And maybe there’s something to this whole drinkronicity thing as well.   Let me pop open a beer.  Hold on, the phone’s ringing…Oh, shit.

What about Beck? Glenn Beck is an enigma to me, much like algebra. He extrapolates to the point of absurdity; yet, there’s something to be said for this pseudo-intellectual Mr. Magoo from hell. Beck must regularly trip on substances even the Ghetto Shaman can’t get his grubby little hands on, but I’m still not ready to dismiss everything he says.

The problem is that we seek out the least common denominator when choosing our news and information sources. We never want things explained to us by someone who studied a particular topic their whole life. Because “elitism” is now deemed suspect, we’d rather listen to some guy—who desperately needs to get back on his medications—rant about something he knows little about. (Er, I know what you’re thinking, but keep reading this post, anyway.)

I think this is at the heart of why I despise Fox News. Yes, it’s true that shit is really going wrong these days. But why would I take these shameless morons’ word for anything at this point? Even the Crank has valid points, but where does corporate interest end and reality begin? Fox has been discredited to the point of absurdity (or, in this case, Discordity). The interesting thing is that few of us have noticed.  Example, just because I have some liberal views, it doesn’t mean I want Michael Moore championing them. 

As bad as our commander and communist gets, the story of our time remains, “Wow, people believed some really stupid shit in 2010.” And then the history teacher is going to remind the class, “The funny thing is, kids, this all happened right before the legalization of marijuana. Now everyone take a hit from your bowl and turn to page 227.” 

No matter how long the Tea Party movement steeps in this steaming cauldron of freedom, it’s still mostly bullshit. But I have always given Glenn Beck some credit for at least acknowledging the fact that government is officially broken (even when he was back on CNN). I have been able to decipher little else since, however. I can easily spot when the chalkboard dust gets to him—that point when logic quietly slips out of the studio, climbs into a limo, and high-tails it out of there. But sometimes, just sometimes, there are kernels of truth mixed in with his popcorn bucket of paranoid prognostication (PBPP).  

Last week on Hannity, SNL comedian Jim Brewer said, “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

The only thing he left out was, “And Sean, you are a big part of the problem.”

Once again, a comedian shows more insight than our pundits, politicians, and journalists. The problem of our time is that information—truth itself—has been hijacked. This is why I was surprised to hear fellow Discordian Pokey “I-only-listen-to-AM-radio” McDooris say how clearly he is seeing things politically, nowadays. Ahhh, Pokey, this is a time of great ambiguity. Sorry you didn’t get the memo. (Hint: You need a mailbox first.)

Last week, Beck asked viewers to commit to his latest hair-brained scheme—the “40/40” challenge—which is designed to restore, faith, hope, and charity over the course of 40 days and 40 nights. I guess he chose this time frame because it only took God 40 days to completely wreck the place. Beck is betting he can top that shit.

One of the points of high comedy in last week’s episode eluded Mr. Beck completely. Someone sent him a Moses-style staff that he was fawning over for the entire episode.

He actually remarked, “I tell my staff all the time…blah, blah, blah.”

He meant his coworkers, but he said this while stroking his wooden staff (which Christine O’Donnell would not approve of).

So after the show, I dutifully went to GlennBeck.com to find out where I can stroke my own staff (hint: there are better sites for that). Once there, I decided that I was going to take this challenge of his in earnest. Of course, I should have read this crap before I committed myself, but hindsight is always 40/40.

From the Beck files:

Step 1: If you want to have a firm reliance on divine providence, the first question you have to ask yourself is, “Does God exist, and do I know him?” (The question mark and quotation marks are mine; Glenn was apparently out. I think I added an “is” in there somewhere too. I know, I know; we’re the last group that should be making fun of grammatical errors—but I’m willing to bet Fox’s editing staff is slightly better financed than our team. And when I say team, I mean me and a six-pack.)

Step 1: Done. Here is my answer:

Step 2: This involves understanding who I am to him (God). “The reason you have to answer this question is because it will empower you. It will also humble you at the same time. It’s a very interesting relationship when you recognize who you are. You are his literal son or daughter. He is your dad.”

Step 2: Done. Here is my answer:

Step 3: I could not tease out step #3 from the mountains of madness. I really tried, but the guy’s kind of bonkers—in other words, his civics class doesn’t quite make it to the final.

So, I’m asking all of you to take the Zano Challenge. Go to GlennBeck.com, click “Take the Challenge” and try to find the third step. It’s not there. I looked. I can’t find it. I guess I have to have faith that on a good day, Glenn Beck can count to 4. I think if I clicked on “Make the Pledge 40/40” I would get Step 3, but if I stay on this site any longer I could lose my lunch. 

Back in the “Take the Challenge” section, well, there are these two paragraphs between Step 1 and Step 3. I’m not really recommending you read this. But if you happen to be mind-numblingly bored one day and you’re into the sheer masochistic fundamentalism (SMF) of it all, give it a whirl. (Note: SMF affects 1 in 5 Americans. The condition is treatable with meditation.)  

Back to the elusive Step 3. Go for it, if you feel lucky. Well, do ya’? If not, skip the Beck part and resume with your regular program already in progressive:

“You know, somebody said to me the other day, I was with I was actually with a rabbi the other day, and I had dinner with him and we were talking about things and he said you know what, Glenn, you know what people forget sometimes? He said, and I think you’ve forgotten it in your case with your health. He said, I’ve heard you say several times that you know it will all be fine and whatever God’s will is it will teach you and lead you to a better place, and I said yes. And he said, what is the one thing that you like to hear from your kids and it makes you it’s just something that they say that you know that you’ve done a good job. And I said, I don’t I mean, besides the obvious ones, I don’t know. And he said, Daddy, come here; I need your help. Remember, God needs to hear that.

The very next day I’m talking to another person who is very spiritual in their life and we were talking about something entirely different. She said, you know, I just heard a talk yesterday. She said, I just have to tell you, Glenn. She said, she said it was this lady who was talking about herself. And she said, you know, I can’t do it, I can’t make it. You know, I’m just stupid, or whatever it was. And she said, the other woman who is a spiritual giant said, tell me about your daughter. And the woman started to glow. And she said, what would you say if your daughter said those things? And she said, oh, well, she wouldn’t say those things because she’s not that way. And she said, she’s just so smart and she’s just so great, and she would be wrong and I would tell her that. She said, at your desk do you have a picture of your daughter? And she said, no, but I keep a picture of my daughter on my dresser at home. And in sage advice the woman said back to her, just remember that God has a picture of you, his daughter, on his dresser. And he thinks the same way about you that you feel about your daughter. Who am I to him? It’s humbling and empowering at the same time. And it also helps you have firm reliance on divine on the protection of divine providence because dad loves his children, dad protects his children. Know that the kind of protection he offers is eternal in nature, and it’s the best kind.”

The third step is in there somewhere. If you find it, please contact me by hitting the Contact Us button and making contact. You must find it in these two paragraphs, hitting the “Make the Pledge 40/40” doesn’t count. If you can’t find it within 40 days, don’t bother—my obligation to Mr. Beck will be over by then. At that time, all of our coastal cities will have flooded, or I will be parked outside of Mr. Beck’s home with an AK-47. I’m sure it’s one of the two.

Step 3: Done. Here is my answer:

Since I had no guidance, I decided Step 3 was to pray to Cthulhu.

Step 4: And the last step on that first part of the 40-day and 40-night challenge is pray on your knees once a day. Done. Now simply rinse, lather, and repeat for 39 more days. But if you act now, we’ll throw in four more steps at no additional charge!

I kid Mr. Beck, but I have more respect for him than most of the Foxeteers (which still isn’t saying much.) But there is an honesty and a sincerity in Beck that is often lacking in his colleagues. There’s a genuine desire to help somewhere in that delusional head of his. It’s not all a shtick; he’s really that goofy. At least he’s trying to get people to do their own research. He thinks information is being tampered with, so he shares some views with yours truly. He even questions himself sometimes, and wonders if what he is doing is even helping. Wow, for a Foxeteer, that’s astounding. I am pleased to see a hint of authenticity under all of those blubbering extrapolations.  

What Beck is also doing right is an attempt to clean up his own level of consciousness. He wants the best version of fundamentalism. Community, ethnocentricity, shared values, and nationalism are all very important to move the realms of developmental psychology forward. The problem remains that it often becomes too rigid and closed-off, and has the tendency to embrace an “us-versus-them” mentality. 

Now, I don’t want too many of my faithful readers (both of you) losing any sleep over this 40/40 thing, but some of Beck’s other shows are worth at least a critique. We need someone to decipher what he is saying and translate the goofi-nese into English. He is accusing Obama of being the New World Order progressive anti-Christ (NWOPAC). This stuff needs to be addressed! Part of it, albeit a small part, seems to ring true. There are some flavor crystals of truthiness sprinkled into his Kool-Aid from hell.

So here’s my solution: I want my own Great American Panel to address some of Beck’s historic claims. I want Andrew Sullivan, Fareed Zakaria, Christopher Hitchens, and Ken Wilber to study the string of nonsensical statements espoused by Beck, and then tell me where he actually makes a point and where he errs. I know, I know; my panel is composed of smart people and independent thinkers, but that’s OK. Let’s just hear what they have to say before we tar and Foxer them. If necessary, we can always filter their findings through the “more-than-two-syllables” machine. The point is, there’s a point in there, somewhere. And unless I can get a hold of some of the Ghetto Shaman’s Amazonian roots, I can’t make heads or tails of this shit.

As I watch my kids grow, I am often amazed at some of the things we, as a society, choose to teach our youngsters. No, I’m not just talking about The Ghetto Shaman’s column, at least this time.  But what are some of these children’s book authors smoking?  This post is a must-read if you are a parent.  Come on, people, has the Discord ever let you down before?  That was a rhetorical question.

Granted, when I was a kid, we had Tom & Jerry, Bugs Bunny, Wile E. Coyote, among others.  These anvil-dropping rejects certainly exposed us to our fair share of violence, but I think they were at least grounded in some moral purity.  Most of the violence was driven by hunger, which makes sense as most of those early cartoonists weren’t completely over the Great Depression.  They used to have to hold up signs that read: “will draw coyote dropping anvil on something for money” and the like.  It’s amazing any of them made it.  So they had an excuse.  What’s today’s cartoonists excuse?  Did they grow up with an Atari but no Nintendo?  Whatever the reason, I don’t want these people anywhere near my children. 

Here are just a few examples of the types of things we teach kids these days, either blatantly or subliminally.  Mere coincidence?  Take a look and decide for yourself.

1. From The Lady with the Alligator Purse book:

   Why are we teaching kids that Miss Lucy had a baby?  She also seems to have a bondage fetish.

2. From the Caillou Babysitter book:

   I’ll bet he wants to show her his new pajamas.  But why would toddler girls be wearing  a teddy in the first place? 

3. From the Caillou Daddy book:

   What in Hell is this guy doing?  I’m calling Child Protective Services right now.   I am mandated reporter!

4. From the Sesame Street Farm toy barn:

   Is it me, or does this look a little suspicious?  I’m having Ned Beatty flashbacks and I don’t even own a canoe.

5. Also from the Sesame Street Farm toy barn:

   There’s nothing sheepish about this scene. What, exactly, is this sheep sucking on?  Whatever it is, Elmo really seems to enjoy it.

6. From the Pat the Bunny book:

   I mean, come on, are you serious?  This book is for 2 year olds!  I wasn’t into show and tell until I was at least 5.  And sure she was underage, duh!

7. From the Little Princesses; Dreams Come True book by Walt Disney:

   I don’t think our kids should be introduced to bestiality until well into middle school. Oh, and Aladdin takes Jasmine for a very suggestive Magic Carpet Ride. I suppose his dream comes true as well.  Oh, and is the location of the magic lamp a coincidence?  Isn’t Jasmine supposed to rub it to make the Genie come out?  Which reminds me, I Dream of Barbara Eden.  Am I showing my age?

8. From the Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Friends show on Noggin and Nick Jr:

   First off, it’s Miss Spider, and she has eight kids (another Octomom scenario?).  Eight more fanged chelicerae the government will ultimately have to feed?  My spidey sense tells me she should have eaten her young! And keep in mind, she’s a spider.  Her significant other is a spider, and only three of the kids are spiders.  The other five are all different, every one of them.  Seems to me Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch gets a lot of visitors.   And all of them were probably eaten by the damn SOB.

In conclusion…well, I don’t really have one, but Winslow insists.  He’s like everybody’s dreaded English teacher, the bastard!  OK, and they all lived happily ever after …therapy.  

Collapsing Shack, AZ—So yeah, I’m sure this will come as a big surprise to everyone, but I’m an idiot. A big one, in fact, and not just because I’m a nearly seven-foot Viking type. I’m not going to get into the ‘why’ of it now, because I’m already hated enough but, um, I’m stuck taking a bucket-load of court-mandated classes (again), so I have to shell out a lot of cash for the thrill of being permitted to participate in this happiness (hint: never go drinking with Zano and/or a guy named Wog).

This awe inspiring article doesn’t cover those classes, mostly because they’ve just begun. What I am going to discuss is my assessment interview. Perhaps I should mention that I paid $75 for the privilege of having my wretched underbelly exposed to strangers. First off, I had to fill out a self evaluation that who knows how many people will get to see. Please rate your feelings from 1 to 5. So 5 means strongly agree, 4 means agree… blah blah, eat my shit, blah blah. Impatience 5, Judgmental 5, Self Hatred 5, etc.

After shelling out enough loot to get me drunk all week—with a few cheese steaks and chicken wings thrown in—and then filling out my ‘please describe what type of asshole you are’ survey, I got called back to speak to the Intake Worker. This started off great.  I kid you not, she started the interview with, “Oh, you work for the Such & Such Clinic?  I just applied for a job there, but some jerk named Mick Zano turned me down. Right then, I knew we were off to a rocking start. Leave it to Zano to kick a nearly seven-foot Viking type when he’s down.  I’m going to break his legs… “So, it says here you hate yourself, um…a lot. How could you be helped with that?”

“Not by you… but if you’d like I could put a good word in with Zano and maybe help YOU get a better job.”

“Really? Wow, thanks. That would be very nice of you.”

Flash to the outside, where I see another Intake worker.  This one is a former, OCD, proofreading Nazi, who was fired from the Such & Such Clinic for saying, and I quote, “Everyone with a penis, get your ass back into the damn classroom.” So after shoveling as much dirt as I can to Intake Specialist 1 about her deranged co-worker (well, she did point out my typos when I was teaching a class) we got back to business.

She started asking me more questions like “What do you do for fun?”

This, of course, prompted me to pull out a copy of my Chronicles of Jack Primus. You know any chance to make a pitch for my book, even when it’s not remotely appropriate…especially when it’s not remotely appropriate. Hey, maybe that should be my goal for these classes. Yes, I’m here to take these classes in an attempt to sell as many books as possible. I feel better now.  Maybe, when they let me the hell out of here, I’m only going to break one of Zano’s legs.

I could hear the trees screaming vengeance as more reams of paper were wasted and I had to sign my name more often than Sarah Palin at a Moron Empowerment Conference (MEC). Looking around, I wondered just how long it took them to dumpster-dive enough chairs to be able to start this business?

“So, Mr. Bone, do you think you’re interested in stopping your drinking?”

“Well, I’m Swedish.”

A lowered gaze met mine.

“Drinking ale is a natural thing going back thousands of beers, I mean years.” And I shit you not, I went on to say. “Curtailing my drinking consumption would be an insult to by ancestors.  I rarely rape and pillage anymore, so what’s left besides some ale?  Besides, it cuts into my power lounging.”

OK, I didn’t say that last part, but I thought it.

“Well then,” she said, looking over, “Ah, so you’ll be drinking again?”

“Yeah, and I’ll swim when I’m in water and eat when I’m hungry too.”

I received another drained stare. “So do you really think you could put in a good word for me with Zano? This job really sucks.”

I smiled.  Maybe instead of breaking his legs, I’ll buy him a beer.