The Rambling Thoughts of My Detached Mind

"The power of their belief will imprison you until religion becomes myth,” sympathized the Devil.

Lebanon’s new President is an American-trained army chief.

An Orange American will become President, and dominate an extended news cycle, but not before orange becomes ash in almond-thirsty California.

From their holiday homes, celebrities turned activists aren’t going to tackle the politically incorrect causes of those flames (but the silent ones are likely to evacuate their taxes from LA forever).

Importantly, are my California subscribers safe and fireproof? Yeah, its a big state, and I doubt any of you are living in the Palisades, but fire begets fire. I’ve experienced disaster. I’m torn watching these stories, and I’m sucking in smoke like it was yesterday.

Even though underground fires will long lurk for opportunity, I’m relieved that the wind has lost its breath. War, however, acts as if its participants have strong lungs...

This past week, Ukraine sadly sent a lot of men to die in a guaranteed-to-fail tangent incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. The latter knew it was coming, and used it as an opportunity to recapture some of its territory.

“Touché” thought Zelensky, and a young widow cried.

That self-congratulatory self-flagellating Rammstein shindig has resulted in promises to Ukraine being extended to 2027. More presents will make teenage Slavs jump to be conscripted!

In the other kind of present, Russia gained a major victory in reaping the city of Toresk. After a 9-month struggle (that’s cost both sides heavily), it’ll soon occupy the strategic position of Chasiv Yar. And so on…

I worked on a feature recap of 2024, and was going to post it on Sunday, but I’m killing it. Besides, a lot of you still on holiday. More than that, I’m tired. My hot brain is an Indian slave on a Saudi construction site.

Instead, I’m absurdly sharing ancient (but not necessarily wise) words with the two of you not at Disneyland - and who don’t have family, friends or a dog - and thus don’t care that I’m not updating you on who got killed last year.

I’m wondering if my hopeless fight for a better world began with the fight for my identity, or the escape from myself? I wonder how many activists were youthfully unsettled like me… and will always be?

THE LAST CHURCH

The last church I went to consisted of a new and an old building. Beside the old one, a thin hedge ran from the playground, past the house where the pastor and his family resided, to a low, red wall.

It was at this end where a small, wooden gate interrupted the hedge. A cemetery grew on the other side. It was old and almost everywhere, headstones sprung like tree stumps from the unkempt grass, weeds snaking around them and green fungi crusting the love words into obscurity.

That church, as with the others I’ve encountered, is like that cemetery - DEAD.

Death doesn’t adopt the form of worm-infested corpses. Death is the lack of honest praise, the absence of unadulterated love for God. Death is the liars seeking and attaining social standing, the children drowning under the waves of religion swelled by their parents, and the pastor who is sometimes not a pastor, but a mere man making a living based not on faith but on deception, lusting after the power that he sways over his, and not God’s, congregation.

In 1989, that was the first reason why I left, and for years became the rambling thoughts of a detached mind...

Part I – God:

It was one of those days when boredom denied the existence of time and killed the possibility of comings and goings. Heat wrestled with its victims like a locked-up hippo in heat, and I cried no complaint as my mind severed me from this shallow world so that I fell onto a stony ground most hard.

Daemons and ghosts approached me, and soon we juggled words in the manner intellectuals procrastinate, concerning the death of true religion in the hearts of Man, and about the magicians Christos and Crowley.

I could not help but notice that my new companions were burdened with sadness and reflection throughout our politics. Lest I seem uncaring, I delicately questioned.

“Don’t you know!” they all cried in disbelief. I bowed my head in no, ashamed of my naivete. “For you are our God.”

Part Two – Family:

Not for the first time, I found myself out of love with the day, so I invited my friends to my boredom.

Christ, despite leaving his lonely pedestal, looked exceedingly glum. “Their imagination mistook me for a god so now I find myself failing their expectations,” he dribbled.

“Now the power of their belief will imprison you until religion becomes myth,” sympathized the Devil.

I cried, for at least they were victims of others’ device.

After they left, I realised that experiences, not blood, conceived families. Thus, my family and the Trinity stands: Jesus, the Devil and Me. In the mirror we bear remarkable resemblance.

Part 3 - The Party:

Off, again, to where cold beer and lack of cheer go. That place where the beaches are black and I'm under attack by ghosts and unholy hosts who talk jabberwocky like me.

Fuck that! Shout at the buildings. Shout at the street. Pull down the sun and blow up the moon. Hey God, get off that pedestal and stretch your mind. It’s party time and you’ve got to move your feet (“to the rock steady beat”). Bring some angels and let's get laid.

Pay the Devil, he needs the cash. Let him stand on the stage, a Messiah of a rock band that will sing in throaty baritone about you and me and breasts… poetical lyrics.

Let's drink whiskey and vomit feelings.

Let’s become art.

The diary moments of my youth show my struggle to escape my mother's brainwashing (not her fault, as she was trying to escape her childhood).

Despite my adult Absurdism, or because of it, I’ve used religious metaphors, whether it be the comedy of sending Bumwheel to Hell, or comparing South Africa to Hell on Earth.

If that “rock steady beat” of Madness, from their debut album in 1979, swelled party memories (for me, a reminder of the 90s), you may be curious to know that they’re still alive (as we all are), and released a song 7 months ago - the title, ‘Hour of Need’ is appropriate.

Thanks for sharing your beliefs in the EVERYTHING POLL, and for visiting my movie page.