Scorpion Day -2011

Last year astronomers downgraded Pluto or as its known by its formal designation 134340 Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet. Its low mass was a problem, especially since beyond the Solar System larger objects orbit the Sun. Some scientists were not so quick to accept the IAU’s finding against Pluto and its three satellites; Charon, Nix, and Hydra. The public also questioned the validity of the scientific body’s decision. California called the decision ‘heresy’ and New Mexico passed a resolution in honor of Pluto’s discoverer and native son Clyde Tombaugh to affirm that Pluto would always be a planet while over the skies of the Enchanted State.

A few skeptics espied a more sinister aspect to the IAU’s celestial coup de Pluto.

With Pluto out of the way the religionists could plot the date of the Grand Planetary Alignment in accordance with Mayan prophecy as to the End of Times. Doomsayers have predicted the actual date of The End to be December 21, 2012 or 12-21-2012. Andy the security guard at the diamond exchange has warned non-believers that the magnetic pull of the planets will knock Earth off its axis.

“South will be West and East will be North.” Andy served in Vietnam. He has seen death. The End is not the opening song in APOCALYPSE NOW. “The clock is ticking.”

Andy is not alone in his affinity for The End. Millions of his religionists are praying for the Event to spur the 2nd Coming of their Messiah, the Ugly Son of god, however last month the date of The End was pushed forward by a biblical conjurer from California arguing against the 2012 termination of all things good, bad, and in-between.

“That date has not one stitch of biblical authority,” laughed the head of Oakland’s Family Radio, whose math calculations coupled with prophecies from the Good Book have guided his determination. “It’s like a fairy tale. The real end of times is 2011. May 21, 2011 to be exact.”

That date is a little more than three months away and last week I spotted a group of doom-believers marching down the sidewalk of 5th Avenue. Placards were attached to the bodies of Mayan men.

“Repent. May 21, 2011 is nigh.”

Pedestrians ignore the warning just like the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah. I shouted for them to take their shit to Kansas or any of the other square farm states or South of the Mason Dixon line. If The End is on May 21, 2011, then I’m quitting work on May day and flying East to be with my family. We will see out the End of Times drinking beer, for after May 21, 2011 the Book of Revelations predicts five tough months until the real End.

“And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.” Revelation 9:5

The Thais love eating scorpions,

Bible-thumpers are not welcome on my soi. The Thais call the missionaries ‘ET’ because they don’t sweat in their white shirts and ties. I tell the Thais that these religionists are dangerous and the greatest threat is their all-consuming ignorance.

The founder of Family Radio has listed the most important events in history as the following;
11,013 BC—Creation. God created the world and man (Adam and Eve).

4990 BC—The flood of Noah’s day. All perished in a worldwide flood. Only Noah, his wife, and his 3 sons and their wives survived in the ark (6023 years from creation).

7 BC—The year Jesus Christ was born (11,006 years from creation).

33 AD—The year Jesus Christ was crucified and the church age began (11,045 years from creation; 5023 calendar years from the flood).

1988 AD—This year ended the church age and began the great tribulation period of 23 years (13,000 years from creation).

1994 AD—On September 7th, the first 2300-day period of the great tribulation came to an end and the latter rain began, commencing God’s plan to save a great multitude of people outside of the churches (13,006 years from creation).

2011 AD—On May 21st, Judgment Day will begin and the rapture (the taking up into heaven of God’s elect people) will occur at the end of the 23-year great tribulation. On October 21st, the world will be destroyed by fire (7000 years from the flood; 13,023 years from creation).

2011 is 7000 years after the Deluge.

And while their god promised to never flood the Earth again, the seas are rising around the world thanks to the rapacious progress of globalization. Food is scarce due to crop failures. Dictatorships are falling in the Middle East. Sin is a sales technique for the multi-nationals. Greed is rampant. The rich are very rich and the poor are many.

The situation looks bleak for Mankind, but there is no grand alignment of the planets scheduled for 2011 or 2012.

Then again the reilgionists’ god is a cruel god.

Yahweh pogromed the 1st born of Egypt without mercy.

Jehovah killed Job’s family.

The bad god also turned Lot’s wife into salt. A good god would have chosen gold.

And the motherfucker has no education or watch, so beware of May 21, 2011.

To err is human, to err all the time is the right of a god or the very rich. – James Steele, blasphemer.

ps we passed December 21, 2012 or 12-21-2012 without any threat to Mankind other than ourselves.

The Outrage of Christ

THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST by Nikos Kazantzakis was a revelation for a young Catholic boy living on the South Shore of Boston in 1967. I found the book in our town library next to his successful novel ZORBA THE GREEK. The blurb on the dust cover shockingly declared that Kazantzakis had written this book to argue the innate weakness of the flesh in the Son of God. Works of heresy had traditionally been  banned in Boston throughout the 1950s. The lack of due date stamps within the front cover revealed that book had never been read by anyone in my town. I stuck it under my arm and walked to the check-out counter.

"This book has been here over seven years." The librarian examined THE LAST TEMPTATION, as if she had never seen it before. She opened the pages to the publishing date. "It was published in 1955. The Greek and Catholic Churches condemned it."

"Maybe it had been in hiding." I was a weekly visitor to the library. The librarian was familiar with my reading habits. She allowed me to withdraw adult books without question.

"ZORBA THE GREEK was very popular. Any time someone makes a movie from a book, people come into the library to read it. Afterward I have to hear how the book was better or the movie was better."

"THE TEN COMMANDMENTS were better than the book." 

I had seen the Bible epic at the South Shore Drive-In with my parents. I hadn't told them that I was a non-believer. An admission like that earned the belt from my mother.

"That's almost sacrilegious." She frowned from behind her desk, then laughed, "I was kidding. I liked THE TEN COMMANDMENTS better too. Let me know how this book is."

I left and read the entire novel over the weekend. 

On Saturday night my older brother came into the bedroom and grabbed it out of my hands. He asked if it was a dirty book. 

"No." Kazantzakis offered an intoxication of heresy more heady than sex.

Frunk threw the book on my bed.

Then what good is it?"

"None, I guess," I laid back on the pillows and returned to ancient Judea.

The author contradicted the very teachings of the Church. Jesus was a man. He succumbed to the pleasure of Mary Magdalene. The devil tore at his soul. After surviving the crucifixion Messiah fled in India and lived a long life, unfortunately it was all a dream and he woke to find himself nailed to the cross. Kazantzakis' suggestions created a Fifth Testament complementing my juvenile atheistic version of the last chapters of the New Testament..

Jesus had been crucified on the cross. The Romans had declared him dead, but he had been in a coma. After the earthquake had opened his tomb, the apostles had discovered him alive and declared him the Son of God. Jesus had believed them until Thomas had returned from India. 

The missing apostle to the unhealed wounds in Jesus' feet and hands and told his friend that if the Romans had done this once, then they will complete the job, if they found him alive. Jesus hadn't come back from the dead to be re-crucified and he fled to India with Thomas, his mother, and Mary Magdalene.

My version was unfounded heresy, until I later read in VS Naipul's AMONGST THE BELIEVERS that a tomb existed in Northern India containing the body of a holy man from Judea. Yuz Asaf or Issar had been a healer and lived to the age of 127. Muslims in Kashmir revered the tomb as the final resting place of Mary. Craved footprints of Yuz Araf's gravestone bore wounds in the feet. 

More heresy.

In 1988 Martin Scorcese released THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. The movie was banned in the Philippines and Singapore and a Paris cinema was firebombed by Christian extremists. Thirteen spectators were injured in the attack. The same number of people at the Last Dinner.

Christians are very sensitive about any questioning of the divinity of Jesus or blasphemous exploitation of his image.

The controversial photo PISS CHRIST earned Richard Serrano a brimstone outrage for its use of urine. The artist received hate mail and death threats. His grants were cancelled, despite counter-protests for the freedom of speech as guaranteed by the American Constitution. The work was thoroughly trashed by Christian Fundamentalists in France that Spring and they have mounted a similar campaign against a Paris theater for showing a play in which a portrait of Jesus is covered in shit at the end of the play.

Outrage.

As an atheist I refrain from attacking anyone's religion.

If belief in a mythical Nailed God happifies the believers, so be it, but if they seek to change the way I think, then I'll resist the bible-thumpers and jihadists every step of the way.

And here's how.

Why did Jesus cross the road?

Because he was nailed to the chicken!

Yes, if there is a Hell, we're all going to go there.

I think that comes from a Curtis Mayfield song.

And I found Hell's address in THE LAST TEMPTATION on Wikipedia.

IT'S IN THE STATE OF MICHIGAN.  

From a 1960s postcard.     “HELL MICH. Greetings from Hell. Mich. Hell, Michigan can be reached from U-96, 15 miles South of the Pinckney Exit or from I-94, 12 miles from either the Baker Road Exit thru Dexter, or the Chelsea Exit thru Unadilla, Michigan.    

Once more thanks to Wikipedia.

Happy Good Friday

For Catholics around the world Ash Wednesday kicked off the Easter Season. Forty days of abstinence from a favorite pleasure was a token of sacrifice for the crucified Messiah.

On Palm Sunday the faithful brandished palm fronds to celebrate the Son of God entering Jerusalem. Each and every Good Friday of my childhood the priests and nuns led a mournful procession around our church stopping at each station of the cross. I was an altar boy, even as a juvenile atheist.

Prayers, incense, candles.

There was nothing joyful about the ceremony.

God's Son going to his death.

Good Friday was a day of buzzkills.

Ten Aprils ago I was working on a small film at the northern end of Mulberry Street. I caught sight of a three young priests lugging a large wooden cross. About a hundred teenagers followed them. Their faces glowed with devotion to their faith. The director, knowing my feelings about the Catholic Church, sidled up to me and said, "It's their holiday. Don't say anything."

"I won't, if they won't."

Several of the passing worshippers wished us, "Happy Easter."

"Happy nothing." I muttered up my breath, recollecting my persecution by the priests' and nuns for my youthful atheism.

"Zip it." The director kicked my shin. Eric was a private apostate. As New Englanders out only faith was the Boston Red Sox, heaven was on 4 Jersey Street, and our sacrament a Fenway Frank. Both of us were die-hard faithful.

"Okay." He was paying me to work and not to haranguing the believers. The procession disappeared into Nolita and we resumed shooting our scene.

I have to learn some tolerance. My mother would like that. She was a good Catholic and a loving parent.

Happy Easter, Mom.

Going To Hell Jokes

1. An Indian man dies and arrives at the Pearly Gates. “Yes, how can I help?” asks St Peter. “I’m here to meet Jesus,” says the Indian man. St Peter looks over his shoulder and shouts, “Jesus, your cab is here!”

2. What’s the difference between the real Jesus and a picture of Jesus? It only takes one nail to hang up the picture.

3. Did you know that after the crucification, Jesus pretty much lost his sweet tooth? The M&Ms kept falling through the holes in his hands.

4. What did Jesus say when they removed his hands from the cross?

FEET FIRST!!

5. What did Jesus say as he was being crucified? “Ahhhhhhhhhhh…!”

Is there any better way to celebrate Good Friday than having a good laugh?

If Jesus Came To My House

According to the New Testament Jesus was crucified by the Romans atop Calvary. His apostles entombed their Messiah in a cave. His mother and Mary Magdalene mourned his death. The High Priests of Judah celebrated the demise of another troublemaker. Only Jesus didn't die easy.

On the third day the Son of Joseph supposedly rose from the dead.

Fifty days later He assumed divinity and Christians have worshipped the Living Christ for thousands of years.

IF JESUS CAME TO MY HOUSE by Joan G. Thomas was a popular Catholic School book during the 1960s.

As an atheist I read it to discover the thoughts of my enemy.

It wasn't a bad book, although Jesus never cooked anything or performed any miracles.

Gods don't have to work.

Just like rich people.

Both worry about idle hands and the Church came out a handbook to prevent Catholic schoolboys from masturbation.

According to the Vatican 2352 masturbation is to be understood as the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. "Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action. The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of "the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved.

True love.

The Church has never acknowledged true temptation other than Jesus' trails before Satan, where he refused the wilds of this world.

However Jesus saw half-man.

God is all-seeing, so Jesus is half-seeing.

And temptation is everywhere.

God knows where too.

Like I said, "Thankfully I'm an atheist."

And if there ain't no God, then God knows nothing.

Thankfully all my temptations are left in the past.

But not the need to masturbate.

Passion Week Pattaya 2008 - Five Excuses for Sin

Back in 2008 on Good Friday morning in New York Christians prepared to commemorate the crucifixion of Christ at churches throughout the city. Catholics will chant the Rosary during the Stations of the Cross, as incense fumes from holy thuribles. I shall attend none of these rites and neither shall any atheists in Pattaya, for while I might be on the other side of the world, I have lived long enough in the Last Babylon to know that Friday night was special for wicked residents of that tawdry beach resort and most will be heading down to Walking Street for fun and games.

The crucifixion of Christ was the last thing on their minds, since most of their week had been spent recovering from the previous weekend.

On Saturday and Sunday every time you mentioned you were feeling like ten pounds of shit in a one pound bag, your Thai wife muttered, "Som nam nah." or "Serves you right."

Tuesday was wasted in a vain attempt to find your cell phone, with which you vaguely recollect a go-go dancer girl photographing you nude onstage and you judiciously decided that it was better to leave your phone lost. After you purchasing a new cell phone, your drinking partner called to say you didn't look too fat completely naked. 

He had photos. 

You whisper into the phone, "Speak to you later."

Wednesday your wife has stopped staring at you like she wished you lived in a two-story building so she can push you down the stairs.

Thursday evening you treated her to shopping at largest beachfront shopping mall in the world and dined at her favorite restaurant. She ordered the most expensive food on the menu. Things were almost back to normal, but tomorrow is Friday and there was no way you intend on staying in the house.

You could be a real man and say, "I pay for everything. I'm going to do whatever I want when I want wherever I want."

But you better be prepared to sleep with one eye open for the next few nights.

Personally I opted for the coward's way out and used one of following five excuses.

"My friend is having trouble with his girlfriend and needed to speak with someone."

In order for this excuse to work, you had to prep your wife by telling her various tales of friend's woe. Even better if the two women don't like each other, since your wife will be pleased at her counterpart's misfortune.

Of course your wife will understand why your friend was having trouble. He went out every Friday night and got you drunk. 

Always blame the person not in the room. Believe me, he will do the same.

Excuse # 2 "It'll only be for an hour or so."

Thai women understood that when a farang said an hour he meant an hour, unless it had anything to do with drinking while looking at naked women. Then the farang's time reference was distorted by the international non-time zone.

This time warp was most apparent on your night out, when you looked at your new cell to discover that it was almost midnight and you had only drunk five drinks. 

If you left now, everything will be perfect, except your friend, who's having all the trouble with his girlfriend, ordered another round of tequila and pushed you on stage with three go-go girls with whips.

You calculate. 

"One drink. One dance. Another fifteen minutes."

Next thing you know it's 3am and you have no idea how you got to this hotel room.

When you stumble through your house door, your wife will ask, "Do you have any idea what time it is."

Once more blame it on your friend.

"Billie kept saying it wasn't late."

Blaming him is fair, because as previously stated he's not in the room and can defend himself later. All you need is enough time to get to bed.

Excuse # 3 "It's business."

Anytime you walk out of the house with 10000 baht it most certainly was business.

Especially since you invested every baht in booze and women.

Hopefully there was no return on this investment.

Excuse # 4 "It's my friend's last night."

This was maybe three times a year occasion.

Your best friend was either going home to replenish his financial coffers or else on a visa run to Malaysia. Your wife doesn't need to hear the whole truth. She knew you two together were no good, but at least there was only one more night of the guy who made you lose five cell phones in the last year.

Excuse # 5 "You can come with me if you want."

This one threw them off balance. 

Your wife will say, "Okay." 

But as the clock ticked down to blast-off she will realize that you'll make her miserable by taking her to farang pubs where Filipino bands do covers of dinosaur rock bands and the only food was burgers or sizzling steaks, and every man in the place was over 250 pounds and sweated like a Bengali laundryman.

One night like that and your wife will never come with you again. This way you can be free to get drunk, dance naked on stage, and lose your cell phone, because that was what a Good Friday night was all about in Pattaya.

As for Saturday.

That was the day of repentance and saying "Never again."

But your wife knew better and so did that go-go dancer with your new cell phone and so had Jesus on the cross.

FUCK, SHIT, CUNT, PISS / Boston Avatar -2017

Mel Lyman played banjo and harmonica for the Jim Kweskin Jug Band out of Boston in the 60s. The charismatic musician formed a neo-transcendental commune on Fort Hill in economically depressed Roxbury and in 1967 released a bi-weekly journal called AVATAR espousing the re-birth of the inner-self as reflected by the glory of Mel Lyman, who had toppe the Beatles by claiming he was God.

"Love isn't something you find, something you do, something you study. Love is something you BECOME after there is no more YOU."

I ran into several of their members in the late-60s. I was a teenager. They had no interest in someone as young as me, since I was male. I begged my father to buy property on Fort Hill. A bedraggled tenement cost a few thousand dollars. He thought that the neighborhood was a blight on Boston. They now cost $400,000-800,000. A hundred-fold return on that investment.

"Best to napalm the hill and start over again."

That was the end of my real estate career, but Lyman attracted followers and the Avatar recruited believers from around the country. https://www.splicetoday.com/ reported that at its peak, the Lyman Family numbered about 150 people, roughly three times the number associated with Manson. They settled into the ghetto neighborhood of Fort Hill, where they bought distressed houses and fixed them up, very early adapters to the concept of “flipping” real estate. They took over a newspaper and ran a printing company. Mel hated hippies and feminists. In the Lyman Family, men were men and women were women. Mel insisted that Family members present a straight, business-like appearance. Their massive consumption of LSD was legendary.

The commune expanded to several houses and the Boston police under orders from the city's judiciary sought to quell its growth by arresting the vendors selling the Avatar with the sale of obscene material. The Avatar responded with a centerfold provocatively printed with the words; FUCK, SHIT, CUNT, PISS.

According to famed defense lawyer, Harvey Silverglate the Cambridge and Boston police attempted to prosecute 80 vendors. Only five were found guilty, but their conviction's were overturn, due to the DA's inexperience with First Amendment issues and the assenting opinion of the State's Supreme Court stated that “this rather sad publication is not obscene.”

End of story and the Avatar finished its run as a mouthpiece for the beliefs of Mel Lyman. The Fort Hill commune moved into the future, but the leader passed away in April 1978.

According to Wikipedia the exact date and location are unknown.

I am going to reduce everything that stands to rubble
and then I am going to burn the rubble
and then I am going to scatter the ashes
and then maybe SOMEONE will be able to see SOMETHING as it really is WATCHOUT

Mount Ranier Snow Storm 1999

In late-May 1999 my father and I traveled to Seattle to meet up with Ty Spauling, whom I had met in the Himalayas 1990 on a trek to Lantang Glacier. I had told him on our return to Kathmandu that should be ever be passing through Bangkok to stop by the Malaysia Hotel on Soi Duplei and asked for me. Room 203 overlooking the musty green swimming pool. Two years later sure enough the Hawaiian walked through the lobby and the rest was history; Paris, New York, Hawaii, Ireland, now Whitby Island on Puget Sound.

A road trip down the coast to Astoria and then Moutn St. Helens and finally Mount Rainer. My father loved every mile, happy diverted from his wish to join my mother in heaven. On Mount Ranier Ty adn I planned a hike up the mountain. NOthing strenuous. It was mid-afternoon. Both of us were in good shape and the trail was unforgiving, and the sky clear. Not for long. A mist oiled though the pines and the temperature dropped from the 70s to the 40s. I felt snow on the air and suggest turning around. Ty wanted to hike gurther up the slope.

"If it starts snowing, turn around." We shook hands and I began an hour-long descent.

At the sunlit lodge my father asked, "Where's Ty?"

"It looked like snow."

And he didn't turn around?"

"No."

He ordered two glasses of wine and I kept my eye on the trailhead. Twenty minutes later Ty appeared unscathed by his adventure. He ordered a bottle of wine. A good one as wouldan epicurean.

"How was it?" aske my father, a Maine native. New Englanders knew snow.

"Blizzardy for about ten minutes, then it stopped."

"The waiter poured him a glass. We clinked glasses. Enough said about that hike. Ty and I haven't spoken about it since. Maybe I'll call him today to find out. In Hawaii and me in Brooklyn. Faraway but distance can't keep us apart.

The Non-Existence Of God

"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God."

The other day someone posted this quote on Facebook.

I commented, "I know nothing and understand nothingness is the basis of quantum mechanics, however my devotion to atheism comes from having died several times and seen the white light. no god no nothing. a white light. although a friend passed and after his return he said he had seen the Pearly Gates, but no God. No anyone. Same as me."

Science is basically Man's attempt to define nature to prove the existence of a God.

Although the quote has been redacted on facebook to read I'm am not an atheist. Actual quote "I am not a pantheist."

Einstein also has said, "'God' is a mystery. But a comprehensible mystery. I have nothing but awe when I observe the laws of nature. There are not laws without a lawgiver, but how does this lawgiver look? Certainly not like a man magnified,"

I remain an anti-Believer, although during my long illness and healing process I gratefully accepted the prayers of the Faithful. They were positive and positivity is a great tool against negativity.

THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL OF PASSAICH - BET ON CRAZY by Peter Nolan Smith

When Cecil B. DeMille released THE TEN COMMANDMENTS in 1956 and it was an immediate box office success, earning the cinematic retelling of Exodus over $180 million dollars. In 1962 Paramount Pictures re-released the film for screenings at drive-ins across the nation and my father loaded my five brothers and sisters into our Ford station wagon to view the epic with a cast of thousands at the South Shore Drive-In in Braintree, Massachusetts.

After paying for our entry my father cruised the left-handed lane looking for a good vantage spot. He was an ace at parking. My mother spotted an open slot, but before my father turned and a rock struck our car.

My father's head spun to the left and he spotted a teenager scrambling up the grassy slope. He jammed the column shift into P and jumped out of the car. He had played football in college and caught the young man within seconds. The hillside was too dark to see if he had punched the stone-thrower, although my father returned to the station wagon rubbing his knuckles.

"Damned kids today."

"Watch that language." My mother considered swearing a sign of moral decay and had never used a bad word in her life.

"Sorry." My father loved my mother almost as much as he loved his six children.

After parking in the perfect spot, he gave my older brother and me money to buy popcorn from the concession stand. Frunk was eleven and I was ten. This was the first time that we hadn't worn wear pajamas to the drive-in and we walked over to the refreshment stand. Teens loitered under the neon lights. They looked so cool.

Returning to the station wagon my older brother and I handed the popcorn and soft drinks to our parents to divvie out to our siblings. We set up lawn chair before the family car and watched the movie in the warm summer air.

Moses heroically faced down the Pharaoh's magicians, yet the bald Yul Brenner refused to let the Hebrews leave his land.

Moses warned of plagues.

His childhood friend laughed in his face, then the Nile turned into blood, frogs overran the land, gnats infested the dead frogs, wild beasts were driven crazy by the gnats, livestock died from the diseased wild beasts, a pestilence of boils spread on the skin of the Egyptians, a hailstorm destroyed the remaining crops and locust clouded the sky.

The worst was saved for last.

A darkness fell over Egypt and the first-born of every Egyptian died with the passage of the Angel of Death.

Azrael or 'Help from God' was merciless in his mission. I had been a non-believer since the age of eight and this depiction of God's ruthlessness rehardened my heart against the faith of America.

"Why would God kill innocent babies?"

"God acts in strange ways." My older brother had possession of the popcorn. This wasn't the place for an argument about God. Charlton Heston was awed by the burning bush under the starry skies of the South Shore. Hundreds of tiny speakers echoed his voice across the drive-in and at the movie's end the Hebrews reached Canaan, although without Moses who doubted God's promise and insisted this land of milk and honey wasnt the final destination.

"God doesn't act in strange ways. He acts like a creep." My best friend Chaney had drowned in Lake Sebago and he had been a first born.

"Sssh, you want Mom to hear you?"

I shut up, since my youthful atheism would have deeply hurt my mother, but over the following years I questioned my Jewish friends about celebrating Passover's ancient decimation of the Egyptian young.

Back in the last century Passaich I wandered into 47th Street to pick up a diamond before everyone rushed home for the high holiday.

Richie Boy greeted me with a shrug.

"When are you leaving?"

Everyone else in the exchange was closing shop.

“Ask the old man.” Richie Boy pointed to my former boss.

I knew the answer.

His father planned on staying to the bitter end of the day and I said, “Manny, it’s Passover. Go home already.”

“And what’s that to you? You're a goy.” Manny shared my anti-religious beliefs. “When you pay my rent, then you can tell me what time I close my business.”

Manny’s desk was cluttered with the usual piles of paperwork. In all the years I had worked for their firm, the pyramid of papers rose and fell without ever disappearing in entirety.

“Close now and I’ll buy you a martini.”

“I’m busy.” This office was the octogenarian's home away from home.

“Manny thinks he might make a sale,” Hlove commented under his breath. The junkie had replaced me when I left for Thailand two years ago. He hadn't a good word for me. I had none for the snitch, who's main skill was brownnosing Richie.

"No one is buying nothing today That’s it. We’re going home." His son signaled his two employees to pack up the merchandise. Hlove and Deisy didn't have to be told twice.

This decision ignited a fight between father and son.

I went outside to wait for Richie Boy.

“Damien, you have something to give for Passiach?” Lenny the Bum shambled up to the window. His bloated face shined with sweat and strands of hair were plastered across
balding skull. He was dressed in his usual attire of a filthy tee shirt and shabby trousers.

“For you, I always have something.” I dug into my pocket for a dollar. “Where are you celebrating Passaich?”

“I’m working the street.” Lenny was a workaholic like Manny. “I have to get money to take care of my sister.”

“You’re a good brother, Lenny.”

“Plus I don’t really celebrate Passaich.” Lenny didn’t look healthy, but he had disproven many rumors of his demise.

“Why not?” Lenny was no atheist.

“What does Passaich celebrate?” Lenny leaned over to whisper what he had to say, as if it were a secret.

“Passover commemorates the Angel of God passing over the Jewish houses in Egypt, which is the Greek name for Kemet, but I agree with you. How can anyone in their right mind celebrate the death of innocents?"

"Damian, I didn't kill any Egyptians and I didn't kill Jesus either. I'm just a harmless Jew," Lenny whined with a shrug. "But the Pharaoh was a bad man."

"Or so the Bible says."

"Please." Lenny lifted both his hands in defense. He was a religious bum. His head was always covered by a yarmulke. "Don't think bad of us. We have had a hard time over the centuries. You know that there was no angel of death. The young probably died from infected food, since the first-born always got the food first. Who knows, but it was a sad scene when Yul Brenner carried his dead son in his palace."

"You know the Hebrews weren't slaves. No one working on the pyramids was a slave. They got paid for their labor."

"The Bible says different."

His Yahweh and the Father of the Nailed God of my rejected religion were cruel gods. Jehovah let his son die on a cross. As a father I could never sacrifice my son, but then I'm human and gods are divine. They get away with everything.

"You know I saw THE TEN COMMANDMENTS at the South Shore Drive-In."

“It was a good movie, but Charlton Heston was no Jew.” Lenny rocked back and forth on the heels of his busted shoes. "Plus there was nothing good about the Ten Plagues as you say. Especially the death of the first-born of all Egyptian humans and animals. Yahweh instructed the Hebrews to sprinkle lamb’s blood on this doors, so his spirit would skip their houses in his search for the first-born males of the Egyptians.”

“I was taught that God was all-knowing and all-seeing, so why couldn’t He see which houses were Jewish?”

“Damien, Yahweh moves in strange ways.”

“Most people think the killer of the male first-borns was an angel, but it was actually Yahweh blundering through the night killing young boys. Do you think there was any collateral damage like how smart bombs hit schools in Afghanistan and Iraq and Palestine?”

“How should I know? I wasn’t there, but enough of this narishkait, because Passaich is a celebration of death. Death of the guilty, but also the innocent. This I can not celebrate. Freedom, yes. Extermination, no.”

Several people had gathered around our discussion and a religious diamond dealer angrily demanded of Lenny, “You really think Yahweh was a murderer?”

“It wasn’t the first time.” Lenny depended on the kindness of this street to support his sister and didn't need this attention.

“Actually I think that the second-sons of Egypt plotted to kill all the first-borns to destroy the rules of primogeniture and then blamed the Hebrews.” I was talking nonsense to deflect the flak aimed at Lenny.

“Primogeniture?” The diamond dealer had a yeshiva education.

“Primogeniture is where the first born inherits everything from the father. Like Cain and Abel.”

“Cain killed Abel.” Lenny nodded in agreement.

“The second son plot."

“Es iz nit geshtoygen un nit gefloygen," the diamond dealer muttered in Yiddish.

“What’s that mean?”

“It never rose and it never flew.” Lenny smiled with the pleasure of hearing Yiddish, which had been abandoned by the Hassidim in favor of Hebrew. “In plain speaking ‘bullshit’.”

“It’s not foolishness,” I protested with the fervor of a devotee to the untruth. “Worshipping murder is an abomination. Be peaceful is better."

“God does not murder. He takes revenge.” The diamond dealer spoke with words with conviction. “And in this case it was his Killing Angel doing the killing.”

“Isn’t that the same name used by Josef Mengele?”

"Feh." The diamond dealer was feed up with us.

“That fucking Nazi was called the Angel of Death.” Lenny soured on the mention of his name. He had lost family in the camps. “Passaich was over 3500 years ago and the apotropaic rite actually predates Exodus."

"Apotropaic?" I had never heard the word.

"Something to ward off evil."

"Magic, feh." The diamond dealer spat the two words."

"Not magic, just a ritual of daubing the door lintel with a blood-soaked hyssop to prevent demonic forces from entering the house."

"Hyssop?"

"Yes, a mountain flower."

"Magic. Devils. Double feh." The diamond dealer looked at his Rolex watch and stormed down the sidewalk.

"I shouldn't be so smart. People don't like smart, especially when you challenge their religious beliefs and my people love a good book."

"The Torah?"

"It's the only book to them and they would be even more disapproving, if I told them that Passaich was a combination of a Canaanite and Mesopotamian rituals. The Exodus connection came later, but what do I know?"

"More than me."

"I'm still a bum."

"A smart one."

"That and $3 dollars and I can get a little bottle of brandy. You have something to give?"

"I already gave you, but what the hell." I handed over another two dollars.

“I love you Damian and pray you see your children soon.”

“And a Happy Bunny Day to you, Lenny.

The slumpy bum wandered off pestering another diamond dealer for a dollar. He was a hard worker.

“What was that all about?” Richie Boy exited from the exchange.

“The origins of Passaich.”

“Passover?” He looked into the exchange. His father was still at his papers. “You hungry?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too. What about getting something to eat at the Oyster Bar?”

Shellfish were very tref, but Richie Boy was a bacon Jew, “Sounds delightful.”

Richie Boy and I headed for Grand Central Terminal, passing Lenny.

“Happy Easter.” He offered us.

"I only celebrate the bunnies."

"And chocolate."

"I love chocolate."

I gave him another dollar.

"Enjoy." As a sinner I was willing to forgive almost everyone for everything, since to err is human, but to forgive is a divine trait.

Only forgetting is more human.

Just ask Lenny.

Until then I wish everyone had a good sedah.

Hag kasher vesame`ah, for the only exterminating angels I ever see are the bartenders at the 169 Lounge in Chinatown.

Dakota and Johnny know how to murder the next day, but I lived through this Passover.

After all I'm just a goy.

Man O Manischewitz 2012

In 2012 Fort Greene was a friendly neighborhood. People said hello to each other. I smiled greetings, glad to be here. It was a 'we' world, although I wished I was in Thailand with my family.

Across the street an elderly Trinidadian woman collected beer cans and bottles for the deposit money. I gave Jinny all my empties, at least ten a week. At five cents a can my annual contribution added up to $25.

One rainy afternoon I exited from the Fort Greene Observatory, Ginny was struggling to drag her cart loaded with plastic soda bottles onto the sidewalk. Her daily effort financed her yearly visit to the casino. She loves the slots.

"Wait there," I shouted and walked over to help maneuver her load out of the street.

"Thank you, sweetie." She smiled and scurried back to her basement apartment, "I have something for you. Watch my things."

"Sure." I estimated that she had collected over two hundred bottles this morning or $10 for her battle with the one-armed bandits of Aqueduct. Thirty seconds later she emerged from her flat with a plastic bag.

"This is for you." Ginny handed me a bottle of Manischewitz Concord Grape Wine, 100% kosher for Passover.

"Thank you." I accepted the bottle with gratitude. No one had given me a Christmas gift let alone a Passaich gift. I had first drunk the kosher wine at the age of twelve. 1964. it had been sweeter than Coke. "I'll drink a toast to you with my landlord AP."

"He is such a good man. And those children are lovely."

"Yes, they are." I pointed to her cart. "You need any help with that?"

"No, I'm going down to Pathway to redeem the money. I think I might go to the casino on New Years Day."

"Then I wish you luck." 2013 was a long way away.

I returned to AP's brownstone and showed my friend the bottle.

"Man O Manischewitz." AP made a face. His palate was used to more sophisticated wines.

"I can't remember the last time I drank it. It must have been back in the Zapple and Boone's Farm years." I examined the bottle for percentage of alcohol. "It says 11%. Care for a glass?"

"Not right now." He had just eaten pasta with clams for lunch, which calls for white wine and certainly not glatt kosher wine. Of course clams are tref, but AK loved his seafood and bacon too.

"Later?" I hated drinking alone.

"Much later."

I had no reason to wait and cracked open the bottle in the top-floor apartment. The bouquet was pure sweetness. I poured a glass and brought it to my lips. A simple sip renditioned me back to 1966.

Man O Manischewitz.

Some things in life never change.

"Here's to you, Ginny."

Dinner With Lazurus

According to John 12:1 six days before Passover Jesus visited Lazurus, whom he had risen from the grave the previous year. Dinner was served by Lazurus' sister, Martha. His last miracle.

"Silami?" Aramaic for 'how are you doing?' must have been his Resurrectionist's greeting.

"Better than being dead or in Beersheba," Lazurus have joked.

"Anidanidi weyini ina yemībela negeri inidēti newi?" offered Jesus

"Love some."

This conversation is pure conjecture, since no one possessed a divine cellphone to record the dinner for the New Testament, but the Passaich fare was traditionally lamb and pita bread as ascribed by the tradition of High Holy Day celebrating the slaughter of the First Born to free the Hebrews from Egypt. Jehovah was a motherfucker.

After the feast Lazurus' other sister Mary about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. John 12:3.

As a child in Catholic school, the nuns taught that Mary Magdalene anointed the Messiah's feet, but it was Mary of Bethany based on Mrk 14:7

Judas objected, "“Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” 12:5.

“Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.John 12:7-8.

Luke 7;16 remarked a woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. The other books lean toward Mary of Bethany. A pure woman as was Mary Magdalene was a wealthy follower of Jesus much maligned by the Church since Pope Gregory's Easter sermon portraying Mary Magdalene as a repentant prostitute or promiscuous woman .

Later that week God's Only Son on the Cross called out, "Oh Lord why has Thou forsaken me?"

Mind that there was no capitalization in Aramaic.

Neither was there any further mention of Lazurus in the New Testament, although he and his sisters were rumored to have fled Judah to settle in Marseilles along with Mary Magdalene.

All of this coming from word of mouth.

And according to James Steele, "All stories are true, if interesting."

Last Supper For Thirteen

The Synoptic Gospels recount Jesus Christ's Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem on a donkey.

Seven days later the preacher had been betrayed by Judas, arrested by the authorities, tried by the Romans, crucified on the order of Pontius Pilate, buried in a cave, and rose from a deathlike coma a week later.

Over the centuries scholars have debated the date of the Last Supper. Most Biblical experts agree that the even took place sometime between AD 30-36 with one physicist, Colin Humphrey, pinning down that mythic repast with Jesus and the twelve apostles to April 1, 33CE.

A tumultuous eight days.

To celebrate Passaich one of the apostles hired a room just outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem in a joint called the Upper Room perhaps run by an Essene from Bethany, who must asked joked, “Everyone know what they want?”

"Something traditional," a member of the thirteen probably punned with a shrug.

There wasn't much of a choice.

According to culinary historians the Saarmeal consisted of leaven bread and other food cholent, a stewed dish of beans cooked very low and slow, olives with hyssop, a herb with a mint-like taste, bitter herbs with pistachios and a date charoset, a chunky fruit and nut paste.

No one ever said it was a good meal, but things soon went south with Jesus' arrest by the Temple guards of the Sanhedrin in the Garden of Gethsemane. His enemies within the temple wanted him gone and nine hours later Jesus was dead on the cross.

No last meal.

At least none I can find.

The Temple hierarchy really didn't like him.

A lot.

Last Passaic after a long walk to the Brooklyn Museum to view Jimmy DeSana's SM photos Dakota Pollack and I dined on cod, sweet potato, and broccoli.

Not glatt kosher, but none of it tref.

And since I don't drink anymore. No wine.

No beer either.

Sei gesund.

ps there is no such thing as a good kosher wine.

Feh.

Maundy Thursday

In 1977 I lived in Park Slope with James Spicer. The silver-haired jazz impressario representing several jazz stars only charged me $120 for a room in the spacious townhouse. We drank up the street at the Gaslight Pub. James thrived on the streetwise clientele and I sparred with a Frenchman for pinball supremacy. Michel the French bartender was better with the flippers, while I mastered the machine's bump and grind without tilting the ball. James drank hard and heavy, hitting on the young Irish thugs frequenting the old school bar. It wasn't unusual for him to get up in the morning with a black eye. He had a thing for rough trade.

Late on an April night I woke in my room. James knelt by the bed, anointing my feet with oil.

"James, what the fuck are you doing?"

"I thought you might like this. It's Maundy Thursday."

"So?"

"You're a bad Catholic." James disapproved of my atheism. "The word comes from the Latin Mandatum, ceremony of the washing of the feet."

"By Mary Magdalene?" I didn't recall her having anything to do with Jesus' fatal visit to Jerusalem.

"No, no, no, that was early in the New Testament. "Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair." That was that time, but this is before the Last Supper. The washing of feet was by Lazurus' sister."

"James, thanks, but I really would like to go back to sleep."

"Sure, I understand you have no traditions." The forty year-old New Yorker stumbled from my bedroom and I wiped the oil from my feet.

I haven't had my feet oiled since, but across the world Catholics and Christians annually celebrate Maundy Thursday, on which Jesus hosted the Last Supper and washed the Apostles' feet to demostrate the sanctity of humiity."

In Luxembourg children wander the streets with wooden clappers calling the faithful to church.

Throughout Western Europe and America bishops bless holy oils for the sacraments.

None of these rites can compare with the ablution of a drunken gay man.

It was an act of love.

Passing Judgment Over Passover

Passover is the most important religious holiday on the Jewish Calendar, celebrating the Angel of Death passing over the first-borns of the Hebrew as Yahweh's Holy Annihilator murder the first-born of the Egyptians. This last plague of Moses freed the bonded Hebrews from the Land of the Pharaohs. The actual date is lost to time as is the name of the Pharaoh. Some religious historians date the Biblical tale to the rule of Rhamses II, although no historian from that time recorded the plagues and the story of Moses sounds a lot like the Neo-Assyrian version of the birth of the king Sargon of Akkad in the 24th century BC.

But if Passover is not plagiarism, how to explain the last plague.

The massacre of the first-born.

Possibly the first-born were first given food in the morning and the bread could have been poisoned by a toxin or else died from sleeping too close to the ground as was their privilege and breathed a toxic gas or more plausibly the children were poisoned by the slaves.

Every slave-owners feared that fate,except the Hebrews were never slaves, just workers trying to flee their debts.

Serves you right, but all part of the ruthless God of Israel.

"I'll fuck your eyes out." Exodus 12:11

And people ask why I'm an atheist.

Many reasons.

please be peaceful, Azrael.

Palm Beach Sunday 2008

In April 2008 I lived nowhere. My apartment in the East Village had been taken over by the faceless management company. I had lived with my wife and daughter in Pattaya until this April. We had had good times and bad times. It was home, then again I considered anyplace home once you buy a roll of toilet paper. I had been sad to leave, but my January arrest by the Thai cyber-crime police had necessitated a change in employment.

My wife and I discussed the options.

Teaching English in Thailand paid little. At tops 20,000-30000 baht per month.

My friend Lisa in Palm Beach listened to my story over the phone and said, "You can come here. I have a house for you to take care of. It's a little money, but you can get a start." Palm Beach in the middle of a recession seemed a good destination and I kissed my wife and daughter good-bye at the Bangkok airport. I had no idea when we might see each other again. The flight was long. I stayed in New York three weeks and then headed south to Palm Beach. Lisa greeted me at the airport. At fifty-five I was almost the youngest male passenger in the terminal.

"Good to see you." Lisa gave me a hug.

"Thanks for having me."

"No problems, just remember it's low season." Low season meant the rich had vacated Palm Beach for more temperate climates; the Hamptons, Duchess County, Tuscany, Switzerland, the south of France, and the more tony zipcodes of New England. "I'm not going anywhere, because I'm broke."

I had $200 in my pocket.

That evening I sent my wife half and my mistress half. Mem will be having my baby in July. I took over a house near Donald Trump's Mar-o-Lago. My job required walking the owners' Airedale. She was a crazy dog. My only social contact here was Lisa and her son Kris. They were bunkered down at her villa on Chilean Place. We watched Euro Football 2008 together, cheering on France, which didn't make the knock-out round. Life was simple. Beach. Walk Pom Pom. Go for a swim on the empty beach. Write my novel about teenage devil worship in the 1960s, eat lunch with Lisa and her loving son Krys, drink beer, then a bottle of cheap wine in the evening. Few tourists ventured this far south on the beach. too many mansions. Better that way for Pom pom, but I craved more humanity and Palm Beach ran short of that commodity any time of the year.

My friend Bruce lived in Miami Beach. Normally the writer resided was in the East Village, however he had rented out his flat to support a life in Florida. I called and invited him up to Palm Beach.

"I'd love to come up." Bruce wrote stories about his sexual adventures with young foreign men. His last book won the Prix de Flore in France. The French had toasted him at Cafe de Flores. He was considered a young artist. Bruce was a little older than me and the mirror loses its youth juice after 50. We both only regarded out shadows at sunset.

"And I'll bring some friends. Two Romanian writers and a young New York one, I think you met at my party." Bruce had hosted a party in honor of a French artist in early May. I couldn't recall the name.

"Young man."

"In his 20s."

"Too old for you."

"Fresh."

My directions were simple. Up I-95 and turn toward the ocean at US 98 after. That Sunday they arrived in a rental car. Bruce was the first out of the car. The writer wore knee-high black sox and a Romanian soccer uniform anonymously tailored by machines to flatter his XXL frame. "Stop staring at the sox. They hide my varicose veins. Yes, even gods get old."

He introduced his friends. The Romanians were my age, however Glenn was a youth. Gay too, but not in that horrible steroid Chelsea gay way.

He shaking my hand and introduced his friends. "Scottie and his wife, Sylvia. They are the best people. Glenn's my slave,"

I idn't ask for an explanation and escorted my guests inside the house. They were impressed by the swimming pool and scared by Pom Pom. She growled a little too easily to be kidding around and I warned them to keep their distance. She snapped at Bruce, until I whispered our secret command.

"Darling, you didn't tell me the mansion had a monster dog."

"Pom Pom is a little crazy."

"Crazy? She tried to bit off my asscheek. Would have had it too if I wasn't so athletic."

"More vicious than crazy."

"Vicious, hah." Bruce was fearless. "I spend twenty years with hustlers on 42nd Street. I know how to deal with tough."

He tamed Pom pom with a slice of cheese. The big dog begged at his side the rest of the day. We concocted a dinner out of my left-overs; pasta, carrotte rapee, toast with cheese. Wine was our drink of choice. Bruce whispered his desires for the driver's wife, although only in the most cerebral of liaisons. After lunch we strolled through a garden path to the beach. Bruce and I walked down to Rod Stewart's mansion. Pom Pom and Glenn in tow. The Alaskan was a good slave. Not Pom Pom.He confided several secrets to me. We had known each other over twenty years. I gave him advice on love.

"A man with a wife and mistress in a foreign country must know the meaning of love."

"I do when I hold my daughter in my arms."

"And when will you go back?"

"I don't know." The sun dropped behind the palm trees. We swam in the ocean. I hadn't been with this many people in nearly a month. Lisa came down from Chilean Avenue for a beer. She was a good laugh. Happy to be away from her Palm Beach friens. Bruce taught Pom Pom tricks. He was the master of ceremony. Palm Beach almost seemed paradise, then it was time for them to go. Bruce pulled me to the side and duked $20 into my hand.

"For some more wine."

"Thanks, I need it." Dixie Supermarket sold big bottles. $7 for 1.5 liter. It wasn't so bad with ice. for I wasn't looking for veritas in vino, but oblivio.

"Darling, everything will be fine. You were arrested. You didn't go to jail. You came here. You still speak with your wife and mistress. You'll be a father again and________"

"And?" I hope for him to say I was a brilliant writer.

"And you're living in a mansion."

"Yes, with a crazy dog." Pom Pom ran up to Bruce seeking a last favor.

"Silly dog." Bruce patted the Airedales's head. "The only cheese I have is under____"

"Spare us."

"If I must." Bruce kissed me good-night and slipped his arm around Glenn. Pom Pom barked good-bye and I waved, as they drove to Ocean Drive. Lisa beeped her horn. I walked over to her car. The sky darkened overhead.

"That was something we never see in Palm Beach. Real people. I can't wait till we get out of here."

"Me neither."

She always talked about selling her house and vacating the USA for Paris, but she like me wasn't gong anywhere, but low season in PB. She backed out on the driveway. Pom Pom and I stood outside for several seconds. Rain splattered down from the now black sky and we retreated to inside the house. It wasn't home, but I didn't need a home in Palm Beach, only a place to rest my head and this house suited that Pom Pom and my needs fine.

ps I still have that jean jacket.

April Foolishness

Back in the last decade a friend called to tell me that a business associate had been trampled by a herd of deer on his Easthampton property. I didn't question the story and immediately phoned Billy O.

"Are you okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be okay." Billy O was a realtor of moderate wealth. He was in love with his beautiful wife and two daughters. His voice was free of pain.

"No reason." I realized that my friend had played a practical joke for April Fool's Day. "Have a nice afternoon."

I hung up the phone and sat on my bed slightly angered by my friend's prank, but it was April Fool's Day and my landlord got a good chuckle upon bushwhacking about my gullibility. He was also friends with Billy O.

"It's an April Fool's tradition."

"And my brother's birthday." I had contacted Frank early to wish happy birthday. "The tradition comes from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales with merry-makers celebrating March 32th by sticking a paper fish on the backs of friends and family."

"That's silly," AP's son commented from the next room. James had good hearing.

"Yes, it is, but back in the Middle Ages the New Year was celebrated on March 25th to match the Spring Equinox, then the Pope changed it to January 1st by the Edict of Rousillon."

"You know a lot of stuff." James attended an expensive neighborhood school. His parents expected him to excel in his classes. He fulfilled their wishes every report card.

"I'm a vast abyss of useless knowledge. I read a lot." Not as much now as earlier in the year. The world was doomed to end on May 21, 2012 according to the Christians and they don't joke about the Apocalypse. "James, there's a dog on your head."

"No, there isn't." His hands went to his head.

"April Fool." Six year-old boys are easier targets, but so are fifty-nine year old men.

And that's no joke.

April Fool's Day 2022

My older brother was born on April 1. His profession is the Law.

Five years ago he told my sister, also an attorney, that he would have no problem defending Satan or any other client as long as they paid his fees. My nephew was in an Ivy League. His tuition cost more than I earned last year. My brother needed clients and a lot of them, including the Brockton Police, who were more wicked than Satan.

This morning I phoned his office to wish him 'happy birthday, but couldn't resist playing a prank.

"Can I speak with one of the partners? My name is James Steele and I represent Phillip Morris."

No one is more evil than the tobacco companies, except the CIA torturer Jame Steele and the Catholic Church.

The secretary transferred the call and my brother came on the line.

"Your brother lost a court case against our firm. He didn't even bother to show up for the trial."

"Trial for what?"

"Copyright infringement." My brother had no idea about my business in Thailand. "The judgment was $550,000."

"What does this have to do with me?"

"Well, it's your birthday and I thought I'd give you a scare."

"Being my age is scary enough." My brother recognized my voice and cursed me out. "Happy fucking April Fools Day."

Actually some of that story was true as are the best lies.

A little true and a little not and you have an April Fools prank, of course no one in America can explain why 4/1 was a day for stupid pranks. Some people theorized that after the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar May 1 was the day designated for planting your crops. Anyone doing so before that date was an 'April Fool'.

April 1 had also been the first day of the year in France.

Back in the past people had to depend on kings and priests for the right dates.

And there was no trusting those higher-class types in the Dark Ages.

Not now either, which is why each year I mark the calendar for my brother's birthday.

He's a year older too.

Thirteen months to be exact, but who's counting.

Certainly not this Irish twin.

April 1, 1980 Journal Entry East Village

April 1

My brother Frank's Birthday

April Fool's Day 1979

Yesterday Michael Selbach and I felt the urge for a short trip up the Hudson on his Kawasaki 650cc motorcycle. The day was sunny and I dressed in white denims; jacket and jeans, then rode the subway up to Times Square. The David's Pot Belly's cook waited on the corner of 42nd and Eighth. He handed me a Bell helmet and I climbed on the back.

"I never thought you'd be my bike bitch."

"Hey, this is only platonic."

He headed over to the semi-destructed West Side Highway and we cruised north along the Hudson.

"Shall we go to the Cloisters?" he shouted with his head slightly turned away from the wind.

"I went there two weeks ago. Have you ever been to West Point?" The famed military academy was about fifty miles away.

"No, I haven't."

"It's worth the ride, plus there's the Storm King Highway overlooking the Hudson. A must see." I had been there once with my family. Like me my father loved the road.

"Sounds good to me."

We crossed the Fiord on the GW Bridge to New Jersey and sped along the Palisades Parkway.

Far back in the Ice Age this falaise had guarded an extinct continent against the rising ocean, as the melt-off from the mile-high glacier carved through the tectonic plate to form the Hudson hundreds of feet below us. A fierce wind along the parkway buffered us from lane to lane. Thankfully traffic was light after the 9W exit and we soon sheltered by the bare branched trees.

The towns along the western bank were situated out of sight from the roadway. THe surrounding towns had outlived their original purpose to become suburbs for men and women commuting into Manhattan for work. We passed by the exit signs dentoing their existence without seeing their centers. After Nyack the land ruralized with farms spreading over the hills, until we reached a massive quarry shipping gravel to reconstruct New York City recovering slowly from the dereliction of the 1970s.

Michael topspeeded on the highway. 86 mph. Helmets restricted any conversation and I spoke within my mind to my minds.

After Haversack we entered the suburban sprawl of malls and little league fields. The station wagons were filled with young boys in baseball uniforms driven by well-coiffed mothers. The young boys studied our passage with a a sense of yearning. Some of them had to want to be us.

Michael and I had grown up in similar surroundings on the West and East Coasts. A life as a bum was preferable to their parents' enslavement to the 9 to 5. I had left behind the suburbs in 1974 and I harbored no urge of returning to the sprawl of my birth.

Lately Michael had been talking about moving to Hoboken, as if he was abandoning the city. I was bound to the East Village. I wasn't leaving until it was time to leave and today that felt like never.

Haverstack gave way to West Haversack without a struggle. George Washington might have retreated through these lands after the military debacle in New York over two centuries ago. The towns were replaced by farmland and then tenth-growth woodlands. Michael hit 80W for a few miles before we exited for West Point.

US 6 spanned the Hudson River on the Bear Mountain Bridge. In 1948 Jack Kerouac started his trip across America here. That trip inspired ON THE ROAD. I wanted Michael to stop, so I could stand where the Beat writer had stood thirty-two years ago. The bridge dated back to the 1930s. America really began here. I had last hitchhiked across the continent in the winter of 1975. I stood wishing I was on my way to the Coast, instead I sat back on the bike.

We descended into marshes. Railroad tracks were strapped to the western bank. A sign WEST POINT 10 MILES stood at attention by the roadside. My father had driven here on our Ford Station Wagon in 1966. I had been almost fourteen. My mother had wanted me to be a priest or a cadet.

Michael and I entered the academy by Thayer Gate. The graduates of the the 1960s and 1970s had served in Vietnam. The power of the world's strongest army. Defeated by rice farmers. Now five years after the Fall of Saigon the cadets of the 1980s in their dress uniforms showed no defeat. Their stiff posture marked their dreams of America's future glory. Vietnam wasn't their defeat, but it was our victory. Michael and I were both anti-war leather punks.

A sign announced NO PARADE TODAY.

"It's a good show." Back in my youth I had wanted to be a cadet. Anything to get out of my hometown on the South Shore of Boston. I would have looked good in the uniform.

We stopped at the military graveyard. Home eternal for thousands of officers. We stood at George Custer's grave.

"He's no hero."

"And neither are we."

We saddled up and the Kawasaki climbed the steep two-laner to the top of the Storm King Highway, 420 feet over the Hudson. We stopped at the precipitous vista point. The Hudson ran north between the Berkshires and Catskills. Both mountain ranges had been shorn of their height by the glaciers.

"You know I might have fallen in love with Vickie." Michael had been seeing the redheaded fashion student for a few months. I was still recovering from Lisa's desertion. My blonde girlfriend had disappeared into Europe to be a fashion model. I had seen her in a German lingerie ad. Michael had been a good friend. His wife had left him last summer.

That's a good thing for you."

"But not you?"

"It's was bound to happen. I'm happy you're in love. I know how to drink alone."

"Really?"

No, but better you than neither of us."

"What about you and Elizabeth?"

I had been seeing the lanky Virginian for a few months too. We had even met each other's parents.

"We're going nowhere."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah I'm too haunted. I don't felt anything for anyone. Not even myself. It's better that I break up with her before I really hurt her."

"Or yourself." Michael straddled the Kawasaki. "Too bad, she's a great girl. By the way you should look at your jacket."

"Why?"

"Look."

I took off the Levi jacket. The back tire had thrown up a oily rooster tail to splatter the back of the white jacket.

"Damn. That ain't gonna come off."

"Your jeans match."

"Double damnit."

I got on the bike behind Michael. If I had a motorcycle, I wished we were bound for the West Coast and a sore ass, but we crossed the Hudson at Newburgh and drove south to New York and our lives.

The Hoax of Hypocrisy - 2011

Many years ago the BBC announced that the Vatican Library was publishing its collection of banned manuscripts and books online.

Fans of antique erotica, rejoice. The world's largest collection of pornography is about to be published on the web. Just make sure you have a credit card handy.

The Vatican Secret Archives announced yesterday plans to digitalize a previously unacknowledged collection of prohibited materials.

Kept hidden by an act of pontifical secrecy, the items, once decreed obscene, are being unveiled as part of a new papal directive on transparency. The collection includes tens of thousands of drawings, frescoes, engravings, artifacts, and ephemera dating from the Renaissance back to classical antiquity.

Included in the materials available for a free but censored preview are an illuminated manuscript depicting the Song of Solomon and several illustrations of Mary Magdalene.

Profits to Defray Bankrupt Dioceses.

Costs and pricing for full access to the online collection have not been finalized. Income generated from paying subscribers will be set aside in a special account administered by the Catholic Church.

The account will be used to reimburse losses by churches that have declared bankruptcy to eliminate their obligation to pay court judgments in sexual abuse cases.

Government, Industry Experts to Oversee Project

Funding for the collection's digitalization has been procured via an executive order from Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, who has expressed a strong interest in "protecting our priceless cultural heritage." Berlusconi has appointed a confidential liaison to oversee the process.

Age verification, credit card processing, and account maintenance will be run by adult entertainment magnate Larry Flynnt."

The Vatican and BBC-News quickly disclaimed the announcement as a hoax, for despite constant rumors of the Secret Library within St Peter's Basilica the Papal Office has denied the existence of such a treasure trove of trash.

Of course it was an April Fool's Hoax, which comes from the pagan holiday of Hiking on Mount Rainer minutes before a snow storm 1999.

March 25 instead of April 1.

Next year I'll be ready for Hilaria as will the rest of the pagan nation.

Palm Sunday History 2024

Palm Sunday traditionally celebrates the Passover donkey ride of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem. The Holy Day is so named, because the Messiah was greeted by followers with palms, signaling a triumph of the soul. There is no account from the Roman or Pharisee scribes of this event, although the literacy rate of Roman Palestine hs been estimated at 3%. Few people at that time never how to read or write. Stories were passed from people by word of mouth. The Gospel according to Mark written in Koine Greek originated in Roman Syria in 60 CE, although believers claimed that the New Testament came from a hypot The celebration of Palm Sunday first occured in the 4th Century CE at the Church of Jerusalem. The donkey symbolized peace as opposed to war by a horse and covering the path of someone was considered to the hgihest honor in the Eastern world.

It was a good day for the Messiah, who mythiclly wept upon seeing Jerusalem, knowing his ultimate fat.

This Palm Sunday was a very rainy day.

I went nowhere near a church.

I sat with the venerable Professor Bertell Ollman.

We ate lunch. Dessert was ice cream. Afterwards we watched a nature show about the Evolution of earth. There was no mention on God in the time of the dinosaurs. The Great Reptiles perished in the Great Extinction. Jesus understood that fate awaits us all sitting on a donkey overlooking Jerusalmen. Persons unknown passed that incident through a thousand mouths until reaching St. Mark, who wrote the earliest Gospel.

The Word of God.

Hearsay.

Standing as the truth through the millenia.

Times Square Swagger

good look for the strip. Wicked danger available at a price. That is not an actor. He has answers to the needs johns can answer by themselves.

Impasse a la Hormuz

Weeks into the spread of the Eternal War to Iran and Lebanon by the Twins of Terror, the USA and Zion the price of fuel around the world has risen without any cessation, as billionaires, greed, and the financial market have forsaken all reason in order to steal trillions from the billions of underclass citizens of the world. Most recently Trump held phone conversations with a Truth Social AI Iran to claim a truce might be possible with the terrorist nation.

Those in charge of the Islamic Republic have claimed that no such talks had been initiated, as Israel targets anyone suspect of having any say in the matter. Someone rejected 47's 15-pont peace plan and their drones continue to strike Zion-USA-OPEC targets across the Levant. But not Saudi Arabia, America and Zion's other partner in the Menage-A-Trois of Lebensraum 2026. F35s are useless in this war, except to bomb civilians. Trump has called for Iran to open the Straits of Hormuz. First in five days and now in ten days__

Why?

Because our overseas arsenals are empty. The attacks from the US Navy has emptied the missile and jet fuel stocks across America's strategic bases in Europe, the Middle East, and the the Indian Ocean, if not also the Pacific and America. These current pauses in the senseless bombing of Iran are even more senseless in the sense that there is no intelligence to these attacks, since upon reoccupying the Oval Office Trump has eliminated the top ranks of the Pentagon just like Stalin had purged the officer corp of the USSR in the years before the Nazi's Operation Barbarosa. 47 replaced Joint Chiefs with gungho warriors and patriotic sychopants dedicated to the Chiristian crusade against Islam.

Peter Hesgeth.

I worked at the door in nightclubs around the world. We never let in his kind. Nazi racists who spat, "I can buy you."

"You can't even rent me."

And he on his knees to Jesus praying from the Second Coming of Christ.

Madmen in charge of an antiquated global military power.

Solutions - don't pay your taxes, stop using credit cards, stop paying your debt, be kind to people, stop walking in the streets with all your senses chained to the Meta-verse, stop buying the manna of the people, potato chips, and addictive sodas and favored waters. Recognize your chains. They don't belong to you and you don't belong to them.

Meanwhile at the very north of Oman on the Impasse de Hormuz the small fishing village of Kumzar lays safe so far from the conflict protected by steep cliffs and a narrow harbor. Probably not for long as the cocaine Trump has given control of the US military apparatus to a coke fiend ie Peter Hesgeth. How do I know he and Trump are coke fiends? Because I know, because I know.

Salaam Kumzar it has its own language.

To know more about the frontline to be please go to https://www.razanalzayani.co/home/kumzar