ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE

After reading Dan Brown’s Inferno I had to read Dante’s Divine Comedy:  I got through Inferno and half way through the second section, Purgatorio, but then Stalled out.

I am not sure why I picked up the book Damned by Chuck Palahniuk, but it turned out to be a parody of Dante’s Inferno.   Except, instead of a Pilgrim, the traveler through Hell it is a dead, thirteen-year-old, precocious girl. 

The travel is spiced with sexual innuendos and some outright outrageous sexually specific scenes (not pedophilia.)    There are demons, and rivers and lakes containing various bodily fluids.  Not a read for the squeamish.

The travelers

A strange book.   It has hooked me.   I will read the sequel: Doomed.

the Ol'Buzzard

REPUBLICANS WERE THE PARTY OF TRUMP BEFORE TRUMP

I find it hard to post.   The Trump presidency is such a daily cluster-fuck that my poor slow cooker recipes, DYI hints, apocalyptic climate predictions and general Maine lore shade unimportant by comparison to what is happening to our democracy.    So lately I have avoided the computer. 

People seem shocked by the reaction of the Republican Party to the blatant racism, misogamy and maleficence of office of the Presidency that is the part and parcel of the Trump White House.

In 1948 southern racist Democrats began fleeing the Democratic Party when desegregation became part of the Democratic platform.   Within a few years these southern racist democrats became a major faction in Republican Party.   The Republican party also opened their arms to the southern fundamentalist Christians.   Over the years the Republican hierarchy willingly accepted any fringe group that they felt they could manipulate to vote Republican; placating them by giving lip service to social policies that would cement that base, while enacting actual policies that served the rich and powerful. 

As a result, the base of the republican became dumbed down and easily manipulated.  

Then the Republican party made the mistake of encouraging and energizing the Tea Party; and low intelligent, uninformed masses dawned tri-corner hats, waved Don’t Tread on Me flags and, to the surprise of the Party elites, systematically took over the asylum. 

If you are a KKK member - there is a place for you in the Republican Party; if you are a white supremacist - there is a place for you in the Republican Party; If you are a fundamentalist Christian that denies evolution and believes the earth is six thousand years old - there is a place for you in the Republican Party; if you are a moronic science denier - there is a place for you in the Republican Party; if you are a militia nutcase advocation the overthrow of the federal government - there is a place for you in the Republican Party, If you are an ammosexual wearing you assault rifle into McDonald’s - there is a place for you in the Republican Party; if you feel that women aren’t capable of making decisions about their own bodies - there is a place for you in the Republican Party; and if you are a homophobe…..

This is the Republican Party that finally found their savior in Donald Trump. 

This is not the Party of Donald Trump, but the Republican party with a leader that at last reflects the values of the party he leads. 

the Ol'Buzzard

THE HOLY BIBLE- OL'BUZZARD VERSION: THE FLOOD

Noah’s son Ham approaches his mother Zipporah.

Mon says, “Where is your father?”

Ham, “He’s out in the backyard building on his boat.”

Mom, “Wish he’ spend as much time working for money as he spends on that boat.” 

Ham, “He says God told him to build the boat.” 

Mom, “Yes, and God tells him to go to the Happy Hole and spend his money every Friday before Sabbath.”

Ham, “Dad says God told him there is going to be a flood and we will need a boat.”

Mom, “you’re as dumb as your dad.  We’re in the middle of a desert.  We don’t need a boat.   We have a flash flood every spring and we all go up on the hill till the water goes down.”

Ham, “But dad says…”

Mom, “Oy vey .  My father arranged my marriage to dumbest and old carpenter in the town, all for a new wheelbarrow.   Now I have an ancient, senile husband and four retarded sons that are a chip of the block of stupid wood.”

Ham, “How old is dad?  He said six hundred when I asked him.”

Mom, “Holy Mother of Moses.  I give up.”

Later that year the spring rains come, and the dry river bed starts to swell.   The village is leaving for higher ground. 

Noah, “Come on Mother, get in the boat.   God is going to save us.”

Mom, “your drunk.   And you’ve got the boy’s drunk too.”

Noah, “God told us to drink as much wine as we can to lighten the load, so the boat will float.   Now you and the girls and kids need to get in the boat – God said to.”

“Mom, “The girls and babies and I are going up on the hill like we always do till the flood goes down.”  

Noah, slurring his words; “God told me to take two of every animal in the world, and the boys are loading them now – but there is still some room for you and the family.”  

Mom, “Two of every animal in the world?”

Noah’s son Japhet comes in the kitchen, “Pa, the cats won’t stay in the boat.   We’ve got the goats and the dogs in, but there ain’t enough room for the ass so I tied him to the back – he can swim so he should be all right.” 

  

Japhet scratches his ass and says, “I had Shem put in two chickens and two ducks like you said, but we only got one cow – what you want to do?”

Mom, “You’re not drowning the cow – she’s coming with me.”

Japhet, “Pa.  ain’t there more animals in the world than ducks, chickens, goats, dogs, cats and cows?”

Noah, “Now son, did you ever see any other animals?”

Son, “Naw Pa, but people say...”

Noah, “You see, that’s just fake news.  The true facts, God calls them alternative facts, is what you see and what I tell you.   Now did you load the food?”

Japhet, “We got that twenty-five gallons of wine you made and six loaves of bread like you said, and we got the fishing gear.   We can eat a chicken if we don’t catch fish.”

Noah, “You dumb fool, we can’t eat a chicken – God said there has to be two.”

Japhet, “but why two Pa?”

Noah, “You stupid shit, so we can breed more after the flood.”

Japhet, “But Pa, the chickens are both hens.  We don’t got no rooster.”

Noah, “Get in the damn boat.

Zipporah shakes her head and leaves with the boy’s wives and children. 

The rain continues for five days and the water rises to three feet. 

Up on the hill the residents are enjoying the yearly community flood gathering.   Noah’s wife occasionally hears her drunk husband and sons singing sailor shanties down in the valley.   

When the flood recedes, the villagers return to find Noah and his sons passed out on the roof of their house, the boat full of water and the animals gone.   There are some chicken and duck bones scattered about the roof. 

Years later Noah tells the story of the Ark and the flood to an Arab scribe who writes it down word for word. 

In Egypt God has the story read to him: “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…”   Then he tweets: What dumb asses, so funny, so stupid.   Sad

then

Will build a wall.  Jews will pay for it.

 the Ol'Buzzard

PULL OUT OUR TROOPS?

Opinions are like assholes – everybody has one; however, some stink worse than others. 

Bush got us started in the Middle East fiasco even though Colin Powell warned, ‘if we break it we own it.’  

With 22 years in the military I have seen the results of war.  I have seen body bags stacked like cord wood on pallets waiting for the C-130 to pick them up.   I have smelled the morgue in DaNang in the hot jungle summer.  I have seen an 18-year-old kid with his guts blown out, having to deal with wearing a colostomy bag for the rest of his life and wondering how his fiancé is going to react.

This morning I listened to the news programs and hear all the bellicose talk by the panels, none of which have ever served in the military, much less combat duty. 

There is Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, U.A.E., Qatar, and Jordan; all Sunni nations with a blood stake on peace in the Middle East – also add Israel.  Yet, we are carrying the fight and our military people are dying, our money is being dumped into this religious confrontation that goes back a thousand and five hundred years.

I have never before agreed with Trump – and I am sure his tweet about pulling the military out of the Middle East had some self-serving motive; but I do agree with pulling the military out of that quagmire.     These Middle East countries are more than willing to let the United States carry the fight while their military sit on the sideline and observe.

  

The gas attacks in Syria are reprehensible; but those are Sunni lives and the Sunni should handle it.  Also, Israel has a stake, and they are a well-armed nuclear nation.   It’s time Israel put aside their apartheid politics and became the broker in the Middle East

Like Vietnam, we should cut our losses and leave.   When the Middle East countries realize we are not going to carry their water, they will have to step up and solve their own problems.   If they won’t: fuck-um.

We have spent more than we ever should have in that part of the world. Our cost has been in American lives, injured service personnel, unreasonable deployments splitting up families, and trillions of dollars. 

Any solution is only temporary: we can not solve this.

It is time the to get the fuck out.

My opinion

the Ol’Buzzard

MINING SPACE

Science fiction is often the seed for science exploration.  

Silicon Valley depends on rare earth minerals for electronic products.  The main provider of rare earth minerals is China, and the supply is finite.   A new source of rare earth minerals would be valued at trillions of dollars, and the search is now on.   

The newest quest for mineral wealth is in asteroid mining.   Heavy metals on earth sink to the core and are difficult to obtain, but many asteroids are composed of platinum and gold and other rare earth minerals; including diamond.  

We are on the cusp of the technology necessary to mine asteroids.  The NASA mission OSIRIS-REX is exploring the technologies and techniques necessary to develop mining operations on asteroids and comets.  

Commercial ventures are being financed around the world to be on the frontier of this new gold rush; to exploit the vast wealth now thought to be available in space.  Here in the United States investors Larry Page, James Cameron and Peter Diamandis of Google have announced a venture company called Planetary Resources with the goal of asteroid mining. 

The idea is basically to plant a propulsion system on a near earth asteroid and use it at an appropriate time to bring the asteroid out of its normal orbit and place it in an orbit around the moon, or a large asteroid in a permanent orbit around earth.  The minerals could then be extracted by space crews or other methods and ferried back to earth.

An asteroid one mile wide impacting the earth could destroy any major metropolitan area.    And less we forget, it was an asteroid six miles wide, traveling at fifty thousand miles per hour that impacted the earth near Mexico releasing the energy of one hundred million nuclear bombs, that brought about the extinction of the dinosaurs.

What could possibly go wrong? 

THE HOLY BIBLE – OL’BUZZARD VERSION EXODUS

EXODUS. OR HOW THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL SLIPPED ACROSS A SECURE BORDER TO TAKE JOBS AWAY FROM ARABS. 

WARNING – FOR ADULTS ONLY:

This story contains some of the Adult Themes and language used by President Donald Trump.

God tweeted: No voyeurism.  Fake news.   It’s a good thing to be friends with the Pharaohs.   Little Adam and crooked Eve. They were fired.  I’ll build a beautiful wall and Adam will pay.   Sad.

The children of Israel, the Jewish people who were the incestral  descendants of Adam and Eve had been kicked out of The Garden of Eden when God threw a temper tantrum.    They ended up in Egypt.

God tweeted: No collusion.  Jews very bad people.  Polls show I am very popular in Egypt.

Jewish preachers, known as Rabies, had convince the people they always suffered indignity and scorn because a woman had caused Adam to disobey God in the Garden of Eden - damn apple incident. 

 Finally, a proselytizer conman named Moses talked some of the slaves into disobeying their Egyptian masters and flee with him across the desert.  

It was an easy sell.

He promised them a new Eden that only they, the chosen people, should inhabit.   He was blindly followed by his base to the narrowest section of the Red Sea.

God tweeted:  Border Patrol agents not allowed to do their jobs.   Caravans coming.  Disgraceful.

The people were so pumped to be out of slavery that they partied at every opportunity - which didn’t please Moses.  

 Feeling he was losing control, Moses decided to stage dramatic intervention that would so impress his congregation they would fall back in line.  


Having memorized the tidal charts of Egyptian seamen, Moses knew that the Red sea was soon due for its yearly, dramatic low tide.  He went up on the side of the mountain and hid behind an outcropping until the tidal level begin to recede.

   Then coming out onto a rock shelf  and carrying a couple of flat stones he announced that God had talked directly to him and had given some commandments, written on stone tablets.     

Moses declared the people must follow these commandments or else they would be cast back into slavery.

·       Commandment Number One was to worship only the God that Moses proclaimed.    

·       Commandment Number two was to accept Moses as their leader and direct representative of God.

Some of the people wanted to see the flat rocks that God had written on; but they were blank, so Moses dropped them (oops) and they smashed.   One piece of the fragmented rock landed on Moses’ right foot and broke all the metatarsals.   This caused some people to laugh. 

 In pain and frustration Moses slammed his staff upon the ground and begin to swear.   He started throwing rocks at his congregation and calling them ingrates, and sons of swine, and fornicators with pigs.  

About that time, a man who was taking a dump on top of a hill overlooking the Red Sea, came running back and announced that an army was approaching from the east.    He also declared a miracle had occurred and there was now a dry path across the sea.

Everyone grabbed their packs and took off leaving Moses shouting and banging his staff on the rocky shelf. 

After having crossed the Sea the high tide returned.    It was then that people realized Moses was not with them.  Some said that they had last seen him dancing with glee on the side of the mountain as the people crossed the Sea.    

Later, the leaders tried to remember what Commandments Moses had laid down.  Everyone had been drunk at that time, so memories were not precise.    Abe said that it had something to do with only one God.  His brother Seth, who did not like sitting through daily worship services, said that he remembered Moses saying they should worship God one day a week.  Jeremiah, who was having trouble with his rebellious children, said that children should obey their parents.  Ezekiel, whose wife Ester was known to sleep around, declared that one of the commandments had been against adultery.  

It took most of all night and thirteen containers of fermented goat piss, but it was finally agreed that God, through Moses, had given the people Ten Commandments that they must follow. 

Meanwhile, the young God that had been given earth was spending his time watching Egyptian military battles during the day and hanging out in rich men’s harems at night.   He was not the least interested in the idiots who were wandering around aimlessly in the desert eating grass hoppers and drinking camel piss.

God tweeted: Dumb commandments.   Jews are criminals, rapist and Drug dealers, but some are good people.  Must protect Eden borders.  Will build a beautiful wall.   Harem rumors untrue – I call them fake news.  No one respects women like God.  

Next: the story of Noah.

 

THE HOLY BIBLE – OL’BUZZARD VERSION

 GENESIS: OR HOW IT CAME ABOUT THAT GOD CREATED THE WORLD

WARNING – FOR ADULTS ONLY:

This story contains some of the Adult Themes and language used by President Donald Trump.

God was a young god.  Sometimes He would ask his Father where He came from, but his Father would tell Him to shut up and eat His honey.   His father and Mother were always locking themselves in their celestial bedroom with other Gods and Goddesses, drinking wine and make strange noises - and they wouldn’t let him in.  

When God would complain to his Mother, she would always tell him to go play.   God sulk in the corner for eons.   When his Father asked Him what was wrong, God told his Father that all the other children of Gods had realms to play in, but He didn’t have one.   Finally, to shut him up, his Father showed Him a small planet in a distance solar system and told Him He could have that planet – He could be God of that planet, if He would go away and leave the adults alone while they partied. 

God had attend the Wharton School of Creation and now his father had given Him his own planet, so he felt quite confident as a Majestic Deity . 

In the beginning the earth was without form and void so He put on some dinosaurs, but soon got tired of watching the dinosaurs so he killed them all.

He made lions; but the lions were always trying to eat each other, so He made sheep and zebras for the lions to eat.    The sheep and zebras also were hungry, but God was tired.    He said, ‘fuck-it let them eat grass.’

God thought to Himself, I should have something that can worship me.  Here I am the God of this planet and these dumb animals don’t even know it.

He decided to make an animal that looked like himself.    He built a beautiful garden with six apple trees and put a man in it.   But the man was always masturbating or else trying to mount the sheep, so God made a woman with the same anatomy as His mother, so that the man would have someone to have sex with, and leave the sheep alone. 

God would hide in the tree and watch the man and the woman fornicate, and that was cool; but the humans He had created were so engrossed with each other, they were not paying attention to him. 

So, God decided He would make some laws that His humans would have to obey; that way the humans would have to recognize Him as their Lord and Master.  

He brought the two people in front of him and told them they could eat the fruit from the other five scrawny apple trees, but they were not allowed to eat the apples from this best tree. 

 ‘This is to let you know who is the boss and that you should worship me” God said.   

The man didn’t care which tree he ate from as long as Eve would put out.   But soon after God’s pronouncement, Eve had PMS.    She told Adam that God was and narcissistic idiot and a voyeur that was always trying to grab her by her pussy.   She said there was no reason for them not to have the best apples.    She told Adam he was cut-off until he grew a pair, stood up to God, and brought her the best fruit. 

Adam thought about it: Obey God and have no sex, or get her the damn apple and get laid.   The choice was easy. 

When Adam disobeyed God and brought Eve the best apple, God threw a temper tantrum and ran the humans out of the orchard.

After that Eve got pregnant, then pregnant again.   After a lot of incest there were the Jewish people in the land of Egypt.  

To be continued.   Next the tale of Moses.