Mark Morford — Notes & Errata

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

Hi. I am now going to touch your junk!

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Sweet Jesus, we should have thought of this ages ago. Why didn't we think of this ages ago?

It seems so obvious. You want to ignite some delicious outcry in this brutally divided country? You want to unite the wary populace around a single, seething hotbutton of patriotism, privacy and putrefied civil liberties?

Do not launch bogus wars that cannot be won. Do not tell them lies about a major health care reform package that actually helps millions. Do not invade their dreams with thoughts of happy gay people holding hands in a wedding chapel. Do not rip their retirement accounts to shreds, sell them bad home loans with a grunt and a slippery Wall Street grin. What are you, an amateur?

What you do is, you go direct. You grope them right on their tingly 'n forbidden genital regions, AKA God's country, AKA Father O'Malley's special secret, real and true and WTF-do-you-think-you're-doing. Works every time. Just ask the Vatican.

Either that, or you demand they submit to a full-body scan of their copious, world-famously overweight American flesh, those bits and parts they don't even share with a mirror much less a giant camera the size of a refrigerator, and then stifle a laugh as you secretly post said photos to a creepy anonymous blog run by the Russian mafia (Note: possible exaggeration).

Basically, you shame and humiliate them, over and over again, in a giant public space, in front of their families, herding them like confused bison through an increasingly absurd, demeaning series of tests and checkpoints. And you do it all under the auspices of protecting them from a few extremist imbeciles who (we are told) want to blow them up and kill their dog and steal their Kim Kardashian pre-paid debit cards.

This is the real way to provoke a revolution. This is a wonderful way to rally the nation, get our values in order and set both political parties scrambling for a tolerable response. In the age of wild transparency, direct genital invasion is pretty much all we have left.

See, we've been going about this invasion-of-privacy thing all wrong. From Bush's illegal wiretapping to Facebook's wily account settings, the panic over personal privacy has been, until now, mostly about data — your home address, credit card number, PIN, SMS chats, your filthy lawn appearing on Google street views, that sort of thing. It's all vague and rather abstract; we can't actually feel anything.

But this is different. This is literal. Nothing, apparently, sets us off more than some unhappy TSA worker — an increasingly unenviable job, you gotta admit — yanking you out of line and giving you the delightful option of getting your entire body X-rayed from ass to nipple, or being groped all over in case you might be carrying something explosive in your pants.

Is that not amazing, by the way? That a solitary "Christmas underwear bomber" has now changed the complexion of the entire country and inconvenienced tens of millions with a single failed attempt? Yes, all this groping is because of one guy, and he's not even Justin Bieber. How incredible is that? Who says an individual can't make a difference? Who says the terrorists haven't already won?



Let's also put aside the assorted political bitching of people like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal — never one to pass up an opportunity to whine like a goddamn child and blame Obama for everything, despite how it was the Bush administration that invented the damnable TSA in the first place. Jindal says we should skip the groping and scanners and use some kind of profiling instead.

Dear Governor Jinhal: That's a fine idea. Of course, you yourself, with your shifty eyes and scary, anti-American Hindu lineage, would be singled out for a hard grope in a millisecond. Just sayin'.

And let's ignore the inconvenient truth that a recent ABC poll found that 81 percent of Americans actually support the full-body scanners, at least until it happens to them. Is it not wonderful? Are we not a nation of fanciful hypocrites? Just add it to the list: security cams, irradiated food, red light cameras, handguns in bars? You bet! Except, oh wait, unless you're talking about something near me.

No, let us instead appreciate the wonderful variety of humiliations now pouring forth at the hands of TSA employees. Babies, bladder cancer survivors, prosthetic breasts, the elderly? Done. Exaggeration, alarmism, false reports? You got it. Twitter all achirp with alleged TSA wrongdoing, fully nine years after the agency was invented to force kids to pour out their sippy cups, trash everyone's toothpaste tubes and confiscate 10 million toenail clippers? Naturally.

And then, of course, there's the "touch my junk, and I'll have you arrested" meme, started by some twitchy dude with a cell phone and too much attitude named John Tyner. Tyner's surreal airport debacle launched the year's most juvenile catchphrase — which, in the Age of Palin, is all you need to launch a new American revolution. Dude, your 15 minutes are going fast. Enjoy.

Here's what I'm thinking: Perhaps we can reverse-engineer this personal groping idea and figure out a way to let it serve us all. Let it be a new rallying cry: Within the American genitalia, true power lies. Grope free or die. Don't grope on me. Who Would Jesus Grope? I'm still working on it.

Suggestions: The FDA ties groping into the new anti-smoking campaign, to accompany hideous graphics of cancer and rotted teeth. Want a pack of Marlboros? First take off your pants and let us take some pictures.

How about a shiny new handgun, NRA-guzzling citizen? You bet. Right after this cavity search, performed by gay married circus clowns on meth.

About to hustle the whole clan to Walmart at 4:30 a.m. on Black Friday to score a pile of plastic MP3 players made by 12-year-olds in Malaysia? Please step over here for a quick feel-up of your children. Thank you.

I know, it's a little vague. I don't quite know the point of it all yet. Problem is, I'm afraid I won't have much time to figure it out before this all blows over and we're onto the next public outrage because, well, that's just how we roll.

You know it's true. Recall, won't you, the general uproar shortly after 9/11, when the first TSA regulations hit the unsuspecting culture? When Americans suddenly faced mile-long security lines and were later told they had to ... wait, what did you say? Dump out my hand lotion? Toss my grandmother's soup? Remove my goddamn shoes? Are you serious? Are you insane? Oh my God, the indignity.

And now that's all just one big, resigned shrug. We've advanced to, sigh, touching each others' junk. What does it all mean? What's the country coming to? Are we safer? Are we stupider? Are we just more awful and annoying than we realize? Is that Al Queda, laughing like hyenas in a cave?

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

How to talk trash with Almighty God

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, December 01, 2010


You know how to make God pay attention? You blame him for your dropped touchdown pass.
In ALL CAPS. On Twitter. God *loves* that.

What are you gonna do, Mr. Important, Mr. Almighty in the Sky, Mr. Created Everything in Six Days and Then Apparently Fell Into a Drunken Mai Tai Coma on the Beach for Give/Take 10 Billion Years?

What are you gonna do, cause a famine? Melt the ice caps? Induce global pandemics, war and rape and disease, sadness and poverty and earthquakes? What you got, oak blight? Bedbugs? Jersey Shore?

I mean, whatevs. You don't scare us. Been there, done that, you know?

Gotta say, it's getting a little tiresome, really, all this death and destruction, fire and brimstone, kowtowing and dread. Exhausting, really. It's time for a change.

Truth is, billions of flawed bipeds have been languishing under a million-year worry that if we jump out of line, blaspheme to your holy face or even draw a cute n' bearded cartoon of one version of you that you'll ... well, who the hell knows what? Flood the oceans with blood? Snap Italy like a twig? Make all women wear giant potato sacks and never have sex? Explain what "brimstone" is? As if.

Let's just say it outright: Big deal. Enough of you. Enough of this. Something's gotta give, you know? (see YouTube Clip below) It's high time we as a generally rashy, hugely confused but still relatively high-functioning mammal spoke some hard truth to divine Christian/Muslim/Jewish power. Because the fact is, you ain't all that. Not anymore, anyway. What, you got some lightning for me right now? Locusts? Sure you do.



Look, I don't mean no wild disrespect, but why shouldn't we call you out on this rigged game you call life? Nothing is really improving down here. Nothing has really changed after all these millennia of worship and fawning and perfectly good virgins hurled into the volcano except, dammit, fewer perfectly good virgins.

How long are we supposed to keep up this charade? How long can you go on without taking a little responsibility for the teeming pile o' havoc thou hast wrought?

Because here's what we're realizing: It's pretty much all your fault, God. Allah. Jesus. Yahweh. Ba'al. Whatever. Here we are, been praising you for what, thousands of years? A million? Dressing in ridiculous outfits, observing silly rituals, offering alms and farm animals and money, falling to our collective knees before whatever wanton form we've assigned to you throughout the ages: the sun, moon, crops, the ocean, flaming tigers, sullen cows, multi-armed blood-spewing demon-goddesses, bearded grandpas in a toga, the perfect martini, you name it. And for what?

This is the thanks we get? This is how you treat us? Slums proliferating, cholera outbreaks, water shortages, iffy iPhone reception, innocent children suffering by the millions? We won't forget this insult, that's for sure. Well, not before the end of this sentence, anyway.

Let me just put it out there, semi-rhetorically: Are we really any better off today than when it all began, when we hobbled out of the roiling oceans on our shaky little fins, aiming for the banana trees? Are we really happy with how it's all turned out so far? As the wise man said, millions of us praise you 24/7, and this how you do us?

I figure it's high time someone calls you on your crap. This epic script you wrote? Riddled with flaws, the story arc falls apart in the middle, and the hero is actually a confused masturbatory nose-picking megalomaniac with a thing for war and money and porn. And this is our fault?

What would you say if we all revolted? Went on a human-wide strike and turned our attention elsewhere — to, say, plants and moonlight and sex? That's what I thought.

Fact is, it's not like you have much choice. Have you been checking the polls? The musty old church is failing. Millions are abandoning organized religion for the more verdant pastures of self-determination and spirituality and that thing about the moonlight and the porn. You might never recover your past glories, they say. Not in your old format, anyway. What have you to say for yourself?

Get those fingers out of your divine ears. Don't pretend you're not listening. Don't pretend you're not reading this column right now. I know you are. That is, when you're not reading brainless tweets from NFL receivers or soaking up praise from the winners at the Country Music Awards or cringing as almost everyone violently misquotes you, over and over again, from the Vatican to Saddleback, GOP rallies to Taliban cave meetings. That must be fun.

It's not like we haven't tried. We did what we could with the weird, cryptic set of tools you supposedly gave us. Free will, love, insatiable curiosity, mandibles, orgasm, chocolate, music, legs up to there? Fantastic. And we've busted our butts to get it right, trained for millennia to be ready for the moment when the game-winning pass is zinging through the sunshine-drenched air into our perfectly outstretched arms. A sure thing! Game over! All praise!

And then, boom. Dropped the ball. Outta nowhere. For no reason on your green earth. Really? This is how it's supposed to be? This how you do us? We will never learn from this, not ever.

Oh, I know the risks of speaking up. They say you are not to be mocked. They say the sinners and the blasphemers, the perverts and the kinkmonkeys will get theirs in the end, a big day of atonement in the sky full of hacksaws, screaming and the new KeSha CD piped in like the devil's Muzak.

Of course, those who believe in that also believe in pregnant virgins, crimson demons and fat babies with wings. These lost souls tend to take it all embarrassingly literally, like a five-year-old hearing Peter Pan for the first time. Hey, mythology is fun, right up until it's dangerous and bloody and rapes your livestock during the Crusades.

But you know what? It doesn't seem to matter. Mock or no mock, praise or no praise, we get nailed, over and over again, no matter what. Sickened, crushed, bloodied, heartbroken, ruined, revived and rejuvenated, only to be ruined once again. We drop that damn ball, over and over again, every single day. So much for praise.

Unless ... wait, unless we've been going about this God thing all wrong? Unless you're actually not some sort of scowling robe-clad deity hanging out right there in the end zone, the political rally, the mosque or temple or shrine, but are rather this sort of indefinable hum and thrust and pulse, constant and forever, emanating from and penetrating into everything at all times everywhere? Because that would be weird.

That would mean everything, all the noise and death and joy, all the bliss and sickness and grief throughout time and eternity, they are all just myriad expressions, facets, faces of the divine pulse. How could that possibly be right? How can we possibly get our angry, needful, aching minds and hearts around that? And what are we gonna do with all this goddamn brimstone?

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/12/01/notes120110.DTL&ao=all

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

Why are you always walking in circles!

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, December 08, 2010


Nice try, determined human. You just *think* you're walking all straight and true.
Just close your eyes. Good luck. — Photo: Tony Dejak/Associated Press.

Come here, darling, and let me blindfold you. No, not for that. We'll save that for later, with the rum and the oils and the fur-lined blankets, the soft hum of the night.

For now, just the blindfold. Comfortable? Tight enough? No light, no landmarks, no stars, no touch, no way to navigate except via your own internal compass and maybe some low and expectant moaning? Excellent.

And now, off you go. Start walking. Or perhaps swimming. Or even sailing. Any sort of locomotion, really, that would employ only said internal guide and no way to know in just what direction you're moving, but endless space in which to move.

Are you afraid? Worry you might walk on forever, never to return? Concerned you might fall off the edge of the world? Fear not. You won't get lost. You won't get swallowed by the Void. Here is the big secret: You'll come back around eventually. Hell, everyone does.

Have you heard? Did you read about the intriguing, adorable new study, featured on a terrific little NPR segment just recently, that says no matter who you are and how you're built, no matter if you're right-brained or left, pygmy or giant, black or white, gay or straight, hairy or bald, French or Scandinavian, you will, eventually and no matter what, walk in a circle?

It's true. This is the finding, the universal truth, as evidenced by German researcher named Jan Souman who might win the prize for most unexpectedly cool and enthralling little study of the year. All of us, if blindfolded, will eventually walk (or sail, swim, etc) in a circle.

It might be a huge circle. It might take awhile. Or you might loop around crazily a few times, like a Spirograph on meth. You almost certainly won't know it's happening because your perfectly reasonable little brain will be utterly convinced that you're moving dead straight ahead. But a circle it shall be.

Do you think you know why this happens? Do you have a theory? You are probably wrong.

Souman tested most possible explanations for our wonky personal orbit. It's not because one leg is longer than the other. It's not because the Earth is tilting just so. It's not a balance thing, a right/left brain thing, a one-side-is-stronger-than-the-other thing. It is unrelated to gender or weight or political affiliation, though some will surely deny it's happening at all because it sounds vaguely liberal and it was on NPR and some people's perspectives just aren't all that nimble.

In short, we do not know why it happens. It just is. And when something just is, when something just lies there like a gemstone of winking wonder, well, it drives us a little bit insane. Either that, or we just smile and nod as we recognize, deep down, that this is how it really should be. Looping around? Moving in a crazy kind of circle and not really knowing why? That just feels right, makes a kind of intuitive sense. Don't you think?

After all, straightness is essentially a cultural construct, a stiff and rather unimaginative scheme foisted upon us by industrialized society, by hierarchical religion, by hard science's undying worship of forebrain logic. Straightitude is just another illusion, occasionally useful, sometimes helpful, almost never natural.

But it sure is powerful. We are, almost without exception, trained from birth to believe the best way through is the straight and true. March in a line, work your way up, think through the problem, bring the hammer down, toil on the assembly line, fight on through to the other side — it's all designed to keep us, you know, in line, efficient and triumphant and please keep your limbs inside the car and your eyes straight ahead and do not jump from the track. Thank you.

Of course, it's all just thinly veiled bullsh*t. There are, after all, very few straight lines in nature. There are very few straight lines in the human body. Sure, your cells contain geodesic networks of bars and struts for structure, but they certainly don't all move or mingle on a single track. Their dance is one of sublime evolution, the wiggle and pulse of a divinely animated cosmos. What, you can't feel it?

Here's a curious fact: Did you know humans are the only creatures on earth capable of drawing a straight line? I'm almost certain it relates to this story somehow. But I don't exactly know how. Perhaps I'll circle back to it later. Aha!


Straight and narrow? As if. This is more akin to the *real* shape of the human trajectory,
heart, soul, breath, god. Isn't it obvious? — Photo: Courtesy of Dan Friedman.

It's the very nature of life itself, really: the breath, the cycles of birth and death, the circulatory system, the great expansion and contraction of the universe, over and over again. The wheel of karma. The spinning of the chakras. The endless cycles of reincarnation. Ouroboros. Orbiting planets. God is an infinite loop, a grand inhale and exhale, far more complex, wild and starry-eyed than our meager philosophies can possibly contain. I mean, obviously.

Maybe this is partly why we treasure straight lines? Why architectural symmetry and clean structure appeal to our senses so powerfully? Because it's so very not us. Architecture gives us a semblance of balance and stability amidst a wayward, wandering, whirling consciousness. You think?

So then, if life is not meant to be a linear attack, a battle to get from here to there in the shortest possible distance, a grueling march from birth to death — unless, of course, you really want it to be — and if looping around is sort of natural and innate, well then, just what the hell does it all mean?

The answer might not be a formula we can unpack. It might not be available to the rational mind. Sure, most of us enjoy the idea of setting off on our own unique paths, our own custom trajectories, following we think is a rather lucid conduit to self-determination. Hey, you go your way and I'll go mine. Right?

But maybe something even more profound is at play, as we mosey down our tracks. Maybe deep down we have this instinctive understanding that such linear path-making will never unfurl as we expect. It's just not the way energy moves.

Is it not just a little bit obvious? Is it not wisdom as old as time? Maybe what we all really want, down in the subtle realms of love and breath, touch and eternity — once we get way out there, out in the vast and impossible distance — is to loop right back around again, hoping and aching to find each other once again.

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

Five things that change everything

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, December 15, 2010

This is what they say. This is the breathless abandon that accompanies each tale of discovery and terror, pain and glory across the vast and troubled worlds of science and tech, politics and warfare, love and sex and death, oh my.

"This changes everything," they say. This revelation, that amazing gizmo, this startling new way of seeing things, that flaccid terrorist's imbecilic underwear bomb that now means anyone can be freely groped at the airport. Baby, the terrorists won long ago. Haven't you seen the news?

This box just arrived. Let's see what we've got.

1. Here we have a wall. A thing that divides us, that separates but also contains. That holds everything out, and also in. Also, a thing you safely hide behind, trembling and panting, as the monsters, the tanks, the demons, the enemy gunfire whiz on by, seeking to end your existence but not finding you because, hey look, wall.

Not anymore.

"You get behind something when someone is shooting at you, and that sort of cover has protected people for thousands of years," said Lieutenant Colonel Chris Lehner, manager for the new XM25. "Now we're taking that away from the enemy forever."

Behold, the military's new "game changer" weapon, a programmable "smart" grenade launcher whose shells, well, like the man gushes, actually hunt you down behind a wall and kill you where you tremble. Neat.

Isn't it ironic? How we've developed countless horrific ways to massacre each other, most of them banned by various protocols and laws for being too appalling and inhumane and unspeakable: sonic waves, atomic warheads, radiation beams, chemical warfare, a thousand ingenious ways to induce unutterable pain? And yet, here, a new device that changes everything by doing the same thing as a billion devices before it, only, uh, "smarter." Jesus but we are a thoroughly ludicrous species.

2. Winner, most deliriously misleading headline of the year: "NASA finds new life form." OMG you guys! NASA! New life form! Maybe some crazy soil sample came back from Omega X-19 containing some pulsing blue alien microbes! Perhaps they found the living, conscious source of dark matter! Wait, what? They only found an odd microorganism in creepy ol' Mono Lake in California? A place where any tourist with a $95 Canon P&S could tell you bizarre things certainly must live? Oh.

Do not misunderstand. The discovery of an uncanny new organism that rearranges the six common ingredients for "normal" life — carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur — and instead munches arsenic for a living and it's not Dick Cheney? Well, that opens up all sorts of fascinating possibilities for what might be out there. Yes, gods of science, "this changes everything." But we're just not yet exactly sure how.

3. Which one might it be? Which one of the latest shifts could change everything? Is it this tiny generator? Is it Boeing's production of super-efficient solar cells at massive, consumer-ready scale? Or perhaps it's MIT's recent breakthrough discovery that could radically alter the course of energy production forevermore so long as we don't run out of water and sunlight and genius MIT geeks who never have sex? Maybe.

It would be lovely to think one idea could do it. But this has always been the impossible dream of empires on the verge of collapse: that somewhere in the maelstrom of wanton discoveries lies a wild new technology, a stupendous magic bullet that seven billion bipeds pray will soon absolve us of our unchecked gluttony, cure the vicious cancer we've inflicted on ourselves and make everything right with the world. Sure. As Jesus used to say, good luck with that.

4. Do you know what Wikileaks is? What it actually represents? It's not a dire threat to national security. It does not endanger soldier's lives. Nor is it some bogus trigger for the unutterably vile Espionage Act of 1917, appallingly brought back to life not merely by right wing nutballs but also far too many members of the Obama administration, as they try to convince the world the very heart of democracy is being threatened by some oddball blond Aussie and his mad fetish for political transparency.

Dear paranoid politicos: F**k you. We are not suckered. The onus is on you, not us. And back off the New York Times.

What Wikileaks really is, besides being countless thousands of pages covering the most brutally mundane churn of the daily war machine — yes, war is hell, but not in the way most of us think — Wikileaks is one unprecedented, stunningly detailed explanation of just how the global diplomatic sausage gets made.

And lo, it is vile sausage indeed. This is the biggest revelation of all, the thing that changes everything: What we're learning is, this meat is more rancid, disrespectful, abusive, cruel, barbarian and childish than anyone wanted to imagine. No wonder world governments and whimpering doltbuckets like Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee want this Assange guy dead.

It's because Wikileaks is just terrifically embarrassing, humiliating to the bone, so lucid and detailed in its anatomy of the dark and heartless political soul it will be years before its sundry nasties are fully unpacked and absorbed.

This is the real reason Washington and world governments alike are so alarmed by Wikileaks' revelations. It reveals most of them to be world-class charlatans and fools, dictators and megalomaniacs who would eat their own babies for a glimpse into each other's personal Dear Diaries. Same as it ever was? Sure. Only much, much worse.

The humiliation, the awkwardness, the ugly maneuverings are simply off the charts. Wikileaks is global politics, banking, diplomacy, war stripped ugly and flea-bitten and bare. More civilian deaths, abuses of power, assassination attempts, botched raids, illegal air strikes, wasted funds, inane acts of spying and clandestine backroom dealings than even these thousands of pages can capture.

Truly, the banality of global political evil has never been this exposed. Hell, even the Vatican is condemning Wikileaks over revelations about its own pathetic sex scandals in Ireland. In my book, that alone makes Julian Assange a goddamn saint.

5. Now, look here. Or rather, up there. It would appear there are far more stars in the sky than once believed. In fact, the raw number of stars we once thought existed in space-time might just actually triple, thanks to new findings by oddball scientists with very large brains. The number of stars, they say, might now be somewhere around 300 sextillion.

Tasty word, sextillion. And 300 of it is a 3 plus 23 zeroes, or three trillion times 100 billion, or a number so mind-scramblingly large that to imagine it crosses some internal threshold of basic understanding, hurling us headlong into realms of magic and surreality that makes the world turn tiny and translucent. Go ahead, try it. See? It's a nice number.

Oh and BTW? 300 sextillion, says our sly scientist, also happens to be the rough sum total of all cells inhabiting all human bodies on planet earth at this particular moment. 300 sextillion stars, 300 sextillion cells. Isn't that fascinating? Isn't that an odd coincidence?

Well, no, say the wise ones. Not really. Now pipe down and get yourself awed.

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

The wine-lover's guide to the apocalypse

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, December 22, 2010

OMG, you guys! What if you woke up one morning and walked outside and, oh my God, everyone was completely gone?

What if all you saw were burned-out buildings, the smoking hulks of military trucks, lots of howling shadows and, well, that was totally it, except for maybe a handful of hot, suspicious-looking co-survivors with shifty eyes and large weapons all accompanied by a lone supermodel female wearing a deliciously filthy wifebeater T-shirt? Whoa.

Wait no, better yet: What if you awoke in the hospital, stumbled outside in your bloody gown, and everyone had turned into a strangely lethargic brain-eating zombie or a really fast blood-spitting zombie, and ... no, no wait, you awoke in a spaceship, inside a stifling air-locked capsule with no memory of who you were or how you got there, malevolence was clearly lurking every corner, and everything was claustrophobic and spooky and metallic?

In the woods! You wake up in the woods covered in blood and broken glass, in a crashed car, with a duffel bag full of cash and guns and nine mysterious passports with your picture in each of them, and you have 24 hours to piece it all together before you're killed by armies of zombie ninja robots in black helicopters. Wouldn't that be awesome? Someone should make a movie. Oh wait.



And so I'm watching the trailer for yet another of these delightfully stupid apocalypse porn fantasias, called "The Event", or maybe "The Vanishing", or "The Awakening", or "Oh No Not This Goddamn Stupid Idea Again", or "28 Days After 28 Days Later Than You Thought It Was About a Month Ago", and just as the lunk-headed hero is staring down yet another shadow zombie hellbeast from the depths it hits me: Good lord and how pathetic, is this really the best we can do?

This is the extent of our imagination? It's the end of the world, and all we can envision is a spasmodic 10-year-old boy's one-dimensional comic book nightmare, all phallic guns and angry grunts, gushing blood and screaming hard-nippled women, our fears reduced to a single monotonous synapse?

It's pitiable, really. Why do we never spin our fun-filled apocalypse scenarios just slightly more creatively, interestingly, in wildly different directions, creating hotbliss daydream superworlds that — as the new day dawns — stun and titillate, impress and transform us in an instant? Would you pay to see that? To live it?

To hell with your oozing zombies and howling shadows. Me, I wonder what would happen if I awoke to the news that, say, 164 NFL players, 75 NASCAR drivers, 50 Republican congressmen, most of the NRA and roughly a baker's dozen of major heads of state suddenly revealed themselves to be wildly and happily gay.

I wonder what would happen if I woke up to the blissful news that the Catholic Church had decided to shut down, to open its hidden trillion-dollar vaults of gold and pagan treasure and to reinvent itself as a giant pro-choice, pro-gay charity, thereby dispensing with the misogynistic, sanctimonious rhetoric that hasn't worked since Jesus was knee-high to a Buddha statue. OMG, you guys, how amazing.

Where is my movie about what happens when you walk outside and discover that someone has washed your car for free, no one is at war, there is no cancer and not one single obnoxious celebrity is providing the overloud voice for one single obnoxious Pixar/DreamWorks panda, tiger, zebra, cowboy, penguin, lion or parrot? Wow.

What happens when you wake up and the air smells like sex and coffee and Turkish incense, the world's oceans have stabilized, pollution has somehow magically vanished from industry, and economic improvement is no longer tied to unchecked population growth but instead has something to do with dancing and orchids and the widespread study of Sumerian poetry?

What, too bizarre? Right. Satanic fanged fetuses, that makes sense.

Of course it sounds impossible. It also sounds a bit, well, boring. Where is the drama? The bitter conflict? The guns, scarred flesh and alien lasers that read your thoughts and turn your skull glowing blue just before it explodes? Where is the meta-commentary on colonialism, or jingoism, or immigration, or rape, or child abuse, racism, terrorism, drug abuse, alcoholism, capitalism, hate and war? Who the hell wants to see a bunch of people, you know, happy and healthy and full of divine juice, laughter, love and sly, knowing grins?

It is not at all what we care to imagine for ourselves. We are, after all, trained like dogs to feast on fear, to hone it and swallow it like a drug.

We love fear, don't we? Our horror porn and torture porn and murder porn, religious draconianism and demon possession and death from above and below. This is the grand message, over and over again: We are always just a hairsbreadth away from gruesome doom. We are ever but a thin sheen of morality away from killing each other with chainsaws for a shoe or a candy bar. It's only a matter of time before we devolve to our natural state of unchecked, flesh-eating hideousness.

What's the opposite of the apocalypse? What's the word for what happens when, just beneath the surface of our beloved violence and victimhood, there lies, well, a white-hot ember of slippery enlightenment, one that doesn't want everyone pustular and dead from an unstoppable monkey virus? What happens when we're all infected with a germ that turns us into a cross between the Dalai Lama, Rumi, a porn star and a pastry chef?

It sure as hell ain't called the Rapture, where only those covered in trembling shame get "saved" by some angrily selective father-deity who favors saccharine hymns sung in stadium seating. It ain't a cutesy 2012 meta-shift, where only those who aren't trembling in Christian/Muslim dread get to inhale the sacred fumes from the divine's perfumed tailpipe.

It is, I mostly like to think, something we can't quite imagine just yet, something slightly out of our range of consciousness, beyond language and our art, but which we sense ever so slightly in every touch, breath, orgasm, tear, sip of wine, glance of messy and fascinating love. It's the sacred Other where magic intersects with the perfect burrito. You know of what I speak? Have you tasted that quiet idea? Shall we try to make a movie?

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

The great impending OMG of 2011

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, January 05, 2011

It was, to my slippery and wayward mind, one of the wonkiest, wobbliest, most sputteringly interesting years in ages, full of sound and fury and shrill, insufferable conservatism signifying nothing, but in a way that makes it seem like, you know, everything.

Do you remember much of 2010? Is it already a big blur, a fading Polaroid, a smeary dreamscape of pain and wonder and random celebrity deaths? Do you remember, say, Mel Gibson's sociopathic rants, Gary Coleman's sad demise, Christine O' Donnell's ditzball witchcraft? Do you care much anymore? Of course you don't. Then again, in a way, you totally do. Because you remember. It's all in there, somewhere. Ain't it strange?

This is the astonishing thing: All end-of-year lookbacks at the major stories, scandals, dramas and traumas contain one shared ingredient, one bizarre commonality built straight into their media DNA: How insanely fast we forget all about them. No sooner are we all aflutter, enraged and atwitter over one issue or conflict, then we shrug it off and leap onto the next Incredibly Important Thing, barely remembering what all the fuss was about in the first place.

It is your great reminder, repeated here for the 1,000th time: All those events and spectacles we think are so imperative at the time, so mandatory to our very survival, vanish in almost an instant. The 24-hour news cycle coupled with our short attention spans and hooked into the fact that life is a ridiculous mystical circus dreamgasm of joyful futility means, well, we don't understand nearly as much as we think we do. Also, the Great Play is still unfolding exactly as it should.

Do you remember the hissyfit over the Ground Zero mosque? Completely gone now, all that melodrama and Islamophobic puling reduced to ashy nothingness. Do you even know the final outcome? If the mosque is still going to be built or if the space will instead become something far more patriotic, like a Designer Shoe Warehouse or maybe 10 Starbucks outlets all in a tight little row? It's OK, neither do the Islamophobes.

How about the grand iPhone 4 "Antennagate" scandal that paralyzed the nation, shut down schools and had every geek screaming that they found a tiny flaw in Steve Jobs' magnificent, infallible ego? Indeed, Apple suffered horribly for that silly melodrama, didn't they? Didn't sell a single iPhone after that. So very sad for them.

Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was killed in a plane crash. Dick Cheney still refused to die from another heart attack. A leathery hunk of confused hate named Terry Jones didn't burn the Koran outside a rancid little "church" somewhere in Florida, but not before he got the attention of the president himself, which is bizarre and disorienting in a way that makes you sort of cringe. And then shrug, sigh and move the hell on.

It's all fun and games until someone loses a perspective. Hell, I make part of my living getting all hot and bothered, wary and sly about the issues of the day, trying to slot them into the grand scheme, pointing up the ridiculousness and semi-seriousness, when anyone with a sentient heart knows that, not very deep down, it all means not a blip. It's like the Zen koan rewrit large: What's the sound of one hand clapping against a tree falling in the endangered forest if no one is there to create a vapid reality show about it? Please Tweet your answers now.

Anyone care to recall Tiger Woods putting on his blandest stone-face and apologizing like a flaccid dog to Oldsmobile, Nike, Budweiser and capitalism itself, for screwing up the Tiger brand? What about Jesse James nailing a Nazi-riffically tattooed model a thousand times as Sandra Bullock adopted a black baby to make it all better? The bedbug apocalypse? Tom DeLay (hopefully) heading to prison? The Great Glenn Beck/Jon Stewart Rally Wars of 2010? All cute and lovely. All so much scrapbook fodder, fresh feed for the chickens.

And still we love it. It is the marvelous dichotomy of modern culture: We care enormously, we don't care at all. We hate to love it, and vice versa. Every day it's the same again, yet we are mesmerized, enthralled, absurdly hardwired to believe oh my God we are so unique and our issues so wildly critical and melodramatic, surely no one has ever suffered or endured what we've had to endure before, even though, of course, they totally have.

We have a name for this whipsaw socioemotional glop in journalism. It's the same one they use in fiction, in poetry, in TV, in skywriting and greeting cards, call-in radio and cave paintings, Facebook status updates and homoerotic text messages sent from Gucci-clad Atlanta pastors to young boys in heat.

We call it storytelling.

From Wikileaks to the World Cup, Toyota's jammed gas pedals to the Great Betty White Phenom of 2010, these are, each and every one, merely the cute tales we choose to glom onto so we may know ourselves, our times and our culture, and not feel utterly lost and alone on a tiny blue speck of whirling nothingness way, way off in the far corner of a galaxy the scale of which we cannot even fathom.

This means all stories, from highbrow New Yorker genius to lowbrow swill like "Bridalplasty" and Fox News; all reveal just how errantly spins our moral compass, how wide is the range of our experience, how many holes have eaten through the pillowcase of our threadbare value system. Of course, not all tales are created equal: Which type brings you the most nourishment is but a reflection of your mind's ability to make distinctions, your soul's ability to dance with the Mystery.

What's more, a handful of stories often withstand the mindless churn, resonate a bit longer, hold a special place in the scrapbook. The BP spill, health care reform, the end of DADT, the Haiti earthquake, the stunning saga that was the Chilean miner's rescue — tales like these get a gold star by their headlines, an "A" for moral (or immoral) effort. These become cornerstones, turning points, the brightest flags on the circus parade route. Still, pan far enough out, it's all just a spectacularly vain extravaganza. Just ask the graveyard.

So then, as we venture forth into 2011, as we glance back one last time at the wanton tales that defined us in 2010, we get another opportunity to ponder the age-old existential riddle, perhaps elucidated most accurately by author and noble trickster Tom Robbins. "I believe in nothing, everything is sacred. I believe in everything, nothing is sacred." Doesn't that make it a wonderful year indeed?

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

The murderous rampage next door

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Every tragedy births a supplication. Every assault, violent attack, assassination attempt and murderous spree begets the same series of questions, a palms-open appeal to the gods of law, society, humanity.

It goes like this: What will we learn? What will change? Will any solutions emerge? Who can fix this? Is it even possible? And finally, what the hell is wrong with us?

So it is that, in the wake of the Tucson rampage wrought by a deranged monster named Jared Loughner, a man with far too easy access to firearms and a brain far too full of tortured rhetoric, comes the collective wail from the right, the left, the president himself: Something must be done. We will get to the bottom of this. We will examine from every angle, figure this out, heal the wound.

Right. What wound would that be, exactly? The bottom of what? What, really, can or will be done? No one seems to know. Or rather, they sort of do, but no one has the nerve to do it. Ain't that America.

Regardless, some have already taken action. Already, two political creeps have decided to reduce themselves to, well, almost the same level as Loughner himself. Representative Jason Chaffetz (Republican, Utah) and Representative Heath Schuler (Democrat, North Carolina) have declared that they will start packing heat, carrying their own handguns around D.C. like twitchy thugs, because gosh, it just makes sense. More guns will somehow equal less guns, and violence never begets more violence. Well done, boys. You're a couple of goddamn geniuses. Now shut up.

Cringingly childish, their response is nevertheless typical of the maleducated American ethos — reactionary, fearful and seemingly unable to examine not only root causes, but a bogus value system that champions infantile cowboy machismo over, well, almost everything else.

But never mind them now. Let's dance backwards for a second. Do you recall if anything changed in America as a result of the Columbine massacre? Anything significant in terms of gun laws, the educational system, or our understanding of the troubled youth mind? Did we evolve a notch or two as a result of that profound and heartbreaking wound? What about after the '07 Virginia Tech massacre, in which Seung-Hui Cho's insane spree resulted in the deaths of 30 people?

Answer: Not so much. More school security, maybe. More cameras, sophisticated alarm systems, bars on the windows. A few schools hired more psychologists. Check that: We did learn something. We learned that if there's one thing we're good at, it's armoring up, locking down, imprisoning ourselves deeper into the cave of dread. Meanwhile, the kids are still not all right.

What about the granddaddy of them all, 9/11? No question: The nation changed violently, dramatically. But mostly toward the negative. Bush/Cheney's toxic response made sure of that: two wars, the Patriot Act, the TSA, wiretapping, Axis of Evil, terror alerts, Homeland Security, Islamophobia, the works. Not a single move toward self-examination, compassion, humanity or humility.

Only with Obama have we begun to carefully peel it back a little and re-examine our role in the world, open ourselves to international input and cooperation, realize we are not, and never really have been, the beatific Christian superman to the planet. Often just the opposite, in fact. But we've still a long way to go.

Another question swims like a piranha in the current headlines: Do the likes of Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Rush, Sarah Palin's "Take back the 20" list, Arizona's hate radio broadcasters, et al spur the mentally unstable to violent behavior?

More broadly: Does a blood-splattered, inflammatory media — especially right-wing media, with its nonstop calls to attack the government, hate liberals, stockpile bullets before Obama comes for your guns — help create a more explosive, Loughner-friendly environment, much like those fundamentalist mullahs who plant the seeds of hate in young Muslim minds?

You know the answer. It's a bit like asking if violent video games really do desensitize children's minds, or if smoking too much pot every day will eventually make you a useless, slow-blinking dolt. It might not be the sole cause, but it's certainly a factor. How big a factor depends, in part, on the level of one's instability to begin with.

Which leads us straight to Occam's Razor. The simplest answer is usually most accurate. Loughner was insane. No amount of hate radio, conspiracy websites or Palin ditzmongering could fully create the likes of him. He acted alone, he and his tiny, fetid brain. So is part of the answer simply improving the system that keeps the mentally unstable from having such easy access to 9mm semiautomatic Glocks?

Maybe. But the fact is, Loughner's festering insanity also found easy, fertile ground indeed to flourish into violence. Almost right up until the moment Loughner pulled the trigger, the ever-paranoid, Tea Party-enraged portions of this country essentially cheered him on, sent him a brochure, welcomed him as one of their own.

Look, this is America: While you are halfheartedly allowed to be as optimistic, spiritually awake, book-learned, calm and reasonable as you wish, you are aggressively encouraged to be as suspicious, xenophobic, poorly informed, well-armed, God-fearing and insular as you possibly can. Let's be absolutely clear: When it comes to toxic rhetoric and the general spew of hate and fear, the GOP and its frothing media army outgun liberals by a factor of, oh, about a thousand to one.

So here we are, another brutal tragedy, 20 people shot, six dead, a public servant in critical condition. What have we learned? What is our takeaway? Do you have a sense of it yet?

On one level, Loughner is but another fractured mirror, held up to reveal our darkest cultural themes, obsessions, illnesses. We ask, "How can we minimize those factors that allow monsters like him to exist in the first place?" Most answers fail spectacularly.

Will the hate radio provocateurs do any soul-searching? They will not. Will we get stricter gun laws? Barely. Will treatment programs for mental illness improve? Hardly. Will the media, pop culture, our politicians, our society ever get past the vile veneration of the firearm, which results in 30,000 gun-related deaths a year, by far the worst rate in the civilized world? What are you, a communist?

So maybe we do the only thing we have left to do. We turn inward. Each and every one of us, when slammed by these kinds of horrific stories, looks to the only thing we can ever really count on, the great human constant of life.

It goes like this: Deep in the heart of every human breast — right, left, center — beats the same desire. We all want peace. We all want more love, ease, a lessening of pain and suffering. How we get there depends on your daily choices, your angle and flavor of engagement with the world.

The final questions emerge. Are you an agent of the calm and the open-hearted, or a pseudo-victim of the fear and the reactionary? Have you already made your choice?

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

Your science is stuck in my mystical

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Look! Here are some scientists. Are they not cute? Are they not totally adorable like angry pfffting kittens as they scoff and furrow their brows and make many dismissive sounds with their pursed mouths, all in the general direction of the very idea of ESP, or psychic ability, or pretty much anything related to the mystical and the weird, the unquantifiable and the supernatural? Man, they really hate that.

Here they are, in the New York Times just recently, all aflutter that an esteemed fellow scientist and scientific journal — Daryl J. Bem and The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, respectively — wuld dare to publish a paper on the more than likely possibility that the beloved New Age chestnut known as extrasensory perception (ESP) might, just might, actually exist, in some tiny way, maybe, if we all just quit whining about it and opened up to the idea a little. The horror! The humiliation! What will happen to our funding?

Look! Here are the selfsame scientists, throughout the ages, baffled and entranced, confounded and enthralled; countless times have they been convinced that a huge range of formerly strange and magical phenomena — dark matter, black holes, bacteria, a round planet, gravity, anal sex, Portland — must be total bunk because, well, the phenom simply could not be proven by the sundry scientific models of the time, until they could.

Is that not adorable? How so many brilliant people are absolutely right until they are proven wrong? And vice-versa? Is anyone keeping track?

For my part, I am ever in casual love with these stories, with any slippery idea that knocks the brutally logical all asunder (and, oh hell yes, vice-versa), possibilities that make professional fact clingers moan, especially when someone in their field — a generally respected someone, someone with credentials and credibility and a nice smile — dares to dip his or her big toe into the waters normally reserved for twirling hippies who believe in crystals and astrology and things that go OM in the night.

Do not misunderstand. I adore science. I'm a big fan of scientists, and their beloved method. Who doesn't appreciate how hard, clear fact can effortlessly thwart the ludicrous crackpots of the world, prove the general idiocy of, say, Sarah Palin, or creationism, or George W. Bush? I am just as entranced by the discovery and unmangling of the universe, the mind, the human cell as anyone kneeling before the altar of Scientific American.

What's more, I understand their general lament, about the danger of allowing the utterly ridiculous any play in the rigorous pursuit of reliable knowledge. This way madness and the breakdown of lucid understanding lies.

Then again, if there's one divine lesson I've also learned in my short stack of years on this blue speck of remote spacedust, it is that we are, each and every one of us, also totally full of sh*t.

Whoops. Wait, sorry, that might've been too subtle. What we are is, totally full of ourselves, thinking we know so much, assuming we have a reasonable, rational grip and grasp of the whole. Or if we don't, it's just a matter of time until we do because, well, clearly everything must contain some cogent explanation, somewhere, right? Such adorable gall.

Which leads to the other lesson I've learned, deep in the marrow: To suggest that the scientific method, peer-reviewed research, et al, while deeply precious to the advancement of the species, is the only path to valid human knowledge? I find this is almost exactly as packed with total shimmering BS as believing there's a hoary grandfather squatting on a gilded throne in the Carina Nebula surrounded by winged toddlers, all watching you make stupid choices and masturbate to Danish fetish porn. Which is to say, please.

Put it this way: Only the bitterest fundamentalists of any ilk would disagree with the fact that pure science and pure mysticism are, in their own unique spheres, violently limited. It's the timeless conundrum, the age-old battle. Most agree the two are eternally conjoined and interlaced, as awkwardly interdependent as an old married couple who simply forgot how to have sex.

But wait, this is not a column about how staid, beautiful science, when finally confronted with sufficient evidence, will eventually come around to accepting sundry "mystical" notions, once the serious testing is complete or when delicious quantum theory absorbs all errant possibilites. Nor is this about disallowing the idea that science is not enthralled with such notions, eager as anyone to investigate and understand.

Not exactly. This is more about the innate truism that there are movements and pulses, states and flavors of understanding science will never, not ever, be able to quantify, measure, figure out, or even accept, because they are not, by their very nature, things that can be figured out.

Just as you can take a poem and unpack it to death, analyze its meter and beat, its syntax and spondaic feet and never come close to touching its power, so it is there are ways of accessing truth that have nothing whatsoever to do with hooking your brain up to an fMRI, or measuring a chemical compound in the blood, or demolishing particular protein structures or portions of the subcortex and seeing what happens to your language centers.

You certainly do not have to believe me. Luckily, I'm far from alone. I'm reminded of a fantastic little book by the late psychoanalyst Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, called Extraordinary Knowing. In the book, Mayer decides, against her better, experienced scientific judgment, to investigate a rather astonishing phenomenon that happened to her — the pinpoint locating and return of a stolen harp by means of a psychic dowser.

She investigates. She interviews her peers, experts, various geniuses in their scientific fields, from surgeons to psychoanalysts, researchers to professors, and sure enough begins to find something, well, extraordinary.

One after another, in hushed and private, slightly embarrassed tones, many of her most serious and widely respected colleagues begin to tell her that the real reason they are great at what they do, the explanation for why they harbor some sort of special touch, wisdom, healing power, knowledge and so on, is not merely due to rigorous training, massive education, endless practice. There is... something else.

They do not know exactly what it is. They do not even know how they access it, or how it became part of them in the first place, or what it might mean. They do know it's very much something that would be scoffed at by others in their field, angrily discredited, impossible to prove by any means we now understand. So they keep it to themselves.

In short, they know it is something beyond them, extrasensory, supernatural, metaphysical, or whatever word you wish to ascribe to it that nevertheless contains all manner of negative cultural connotation and therefore falls just short. In the end, Mayer herself stops short of allowing that ESP and dowsing and such are "real," but she does a hell of a job of allowing for far wider, weirder possibilities than we now generally tolerate.

We know so much, we know nothing. Outside of both these truths lies a third thing, in a space where the first two intersect and dance and leave behind a gleaming, impossible residue that tastes like God, but probably isn't. What do you think it is?

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

10 amazing truths you already suspected

Volume VI! Wine on a stick, orgasmic compliments, disco Bibles!

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, January 26, 2011

(Previously: Volume I | Volume II | Volume III | Volume IV | Volume V)

______________________________________

Did you already know? I bet you already knew. Or at the very least, had a sneaking suspicion...

1. The end is near-ish! Government overspending will be the death of us all! Massive, crushing debt will blot out the sun and ruin your lawn! Buy gold and hoard it in your small intestine for the End Times that are coming soon! The GOP and Glenn Beck hath spoken!

Yes, it's the everyday puling of the Republican right, a common refrain about how the liberal gummint is dead-set on bankrupting the nation as fast as possible. And the Tea Party eats it up like the giant sourball of falsehood it very much is.

Ironic, then, how it's actually the Tea Party-riffic red states that suck up far, far more in government handouts than the blue. Did you already know? I bet you did. Even more amusing is the inverse relationship: The more red/Republican a given state votes — and hence the more loudly it complains about government spending — the more it swallows federal handouts like Charlie Sheen inhaling Bolivia. It's true. It's also sort of amazing.

2. It all dovetails sweetly with the fact that the more morally righteous and fundamentally Christian a red state is, the higher its teen pregnancy rates, the sadder its abortion rates, the less it cares for its poor and its needy, the more awful its sex education, the less it contributes to the national dialogue and the more paranoid its gun-loving, Bible-misquoting, Fox News-adoring citizenry.

Does it matter? Nope. As evidenced by the last election, the Republicans know — and brilliantly leverage — a rather vile truism liberals cannot seem to grasp: When all is said and done, it pays to be a hypocrite.

3. Fox News makes you stupid. Fox News makes you stupid. Fox News viewers are the most misinformed about the world of any group next to Michele Bachmann's closetful of pathetically maleducated demons. You already knew this, a new study confirms it, but perhaps repeating it over and over again will slowly embed this fact into the skulls of Murdoch's army? Right. Probably not. But it's still fun to say. Fox News makes you stupid. Fox News makes you stupid. The pope loves disco balls and ABBA (see below). Fox News makes you stupid.

4. America's biggest problem? Nope, it isn't guns, violence, Bieber haircuts or Fox News. It's insufficient access to booze. True! Some days you have to walk, like, 20 feet to get to the nearest open vodka spigot. Precious handfuls of America's college students have yet to binge-drink themselves into toxic comas. Thank God, then, Wal-Mart is testing some new wine-dispensing vending machines. Yes, indeed.

Because if there's one thing you want to go with your new rifle and gallon drum of meth-making fertilizer, it's a $2.99 magnum of Wal-Mart Sauv Blanc dumped out by a giant machine stationed next to the arcade game where you try to grab a creepy 25-cent Chinese-made stuffed animal with a huge metal claw (see video clip below). Fun for kids!



5. Only idiots care about great sex. Only people without a mad desire to be praised like puppies for their every spit and gurgle would ever want to screw like happy banshees and induce orgasms that make God's toes curl. As for America's "young, bright college students"? Well, they'd prefer a nice complement, maybe a good grade on a paper, over sex any day. Yay youth!

So suggests a weird and entirely useless new study, in which it is awkwardly proven that today's Facebook-obsessed meta-narcissists are clearly not having enough slippery, mind-blowing orgasms that shatter their precious worldviews and make them taste the divine. If they were, they'd know: great sex is a stupendous compliment, perhaps the best one love, money or Wal-Mart Sauv Blanc can buy. Just ask the pope.

6. The pope! Right. Wouldn't be a proper "10 Truths" list without a mention of the ever-quotable P. Benedict, always ready with a fine, hoary excuse for the gay porn palace that is the Catholic priesthood.

Benedict's latest justification for much of the priestly pedophilia and sexual abuse of (recent) yore? It was the bell bottoms. The hot tubs. John Travolta. The rainbows and disco dancing and everyone snorting huge rails of cocaine off David Bowie's eyebrows in Studio 54.

In other words, it was the '70s! Everyone was doing the perverted sex thing. Promiscuity, adultery, maybe a little rape, kids fellating each other in public, the sexual revolution. Really, can you blame a lonely priest circa 1976 for wanting a piece of the hot, young disco action?

Why yes, Pope Benedict. You very much can.

7. Hi, CBS News! I am hereby hurling a giant crouton of disrespect in your direction for your recent, hugely irresponsible story about how those nefarious terrorists — the same masterminds who somehow haven't been able to pull off a single stunt of any scale or relevance in America in 10 years — these monsters are right now scheming to spread all kinds of scary poisons all over ... can you guess? America's salad bars.

That's right. According to your panicky, complete BS story, the twin towers were just a warm-up. The real action for modern terrorists will be trying to sicken handfuls of overweight Americans by way of spreading cyanide over the Salisbury steak at the Sizzler buffet. Note to CBS News and Al Queda: Have you seen the fried, mutilated garbage in most American food outlets these days? Have you ever eaten at Taco Bell? Honey, cyanide is the least of our worries.

8. Mmm, Taco Bell. The very name conjures images of tormented Chihuahuas, florescent orange liquids and steaming vats of a gnarled, meat-like paste that fills the gullets of gullible Americans who are addicted to sodium, corn syrup solids and, uh, "polysaccharide absorbed as glucose."

And lots of it! You will be not the slightest bit surprised to read that Taco Bell's "beef" isn't actually meat. The vast majority of it — 65 percent, to be exact — consists of assorted chemicals, salts, anti-caking agents, binders, fillers, fake smells, imitation flavoring, lost dreams, road tar, hair gel, horse toenails and, strangely, John Boehner.

What might surprise you is that someone is suing the folks at Taco Bell over the fact that their swill isn't 100 percent real meat, as if they didn't know. Hell, even the "real" meat isn't real meat, what with the hormones and antibiotics and weak, corn-fed cows that taste like sadness. Taco Bell: Think Outside the Colorectal Cancer.

9. America's favorite book? The Bible. The single tome that tops the bestseller list every year and is cited by all GOP hopefuls as their favoritest book ever next to "The Hungry Caterpillar" and "Curious George Disappears Into a Gay Pride Parade and Emerges Four Days Later Wearing Nothing But a Cock Ring and a Smile"? The Bible.

The book the vast majority of Americans know the least about, never fail to misinterpret their facts when referencing, generally haven't actually read and largely haven't the slightest clue what they're talking about despite how they claim to set their wobbly moral compasses by it? One guess.

10. The end is near-ish! Totally not kidding this time! It's just a few months away, May 21 to be exact, which gives you just enough time to drive around in a horrible little car with cute stickers all over it, never have sex and lose all your friends as you spread the dire word that, well, you'd better shape up and set things right before Jesus comes down, sees your fetish porn collection, reads your last Facebook update, scoffs mightily and blasts your poor soul to hell. Or maybe Orange County. Or John Boehner.

May 21! It's a Saturday. Bring sandwiches. And vodka.

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

All your problems, instantly solved

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Generation Facebook is totally bummed, dude. Incoming freshman across the nation report their emotional health is at an all-time low, even though they've barely been on the planet long enough to understand the question, even though they've only been alive about as long as it takes a good single-malt Scotch to reach nirvana.

It's gotten so bad that even the "best and brightest" of today's college flesh admit they'd rather get a good grade, a compliment, some sort of ego-fluffer aimed at their fragile personalities, than have sex. I know, right? What's a porn-loving, kink-obsessed, devoutly hypocritical nation to do?

Some say it's Facebook's fault, that there's a sinister side effect to the world's largest online narcotic, given how whenever you check your friends' status updates, everyone invariably seems to be happier and hornier, traveling and singing in the rain, eating better and doing more giant tennis balls of cocaine with Charlie Sheen than you, so you feel horrible and cut off, and you flip over to the porn, glumly.

Others blame technology overall, asserting that the Net, text messaging, smart phones et al and have destroyed "real" human interaction, making us isolated and socially incompetent, even though if it wasn't for Twitter and its ilk the world wouldn't know many astonishing details know of, say, Egypt's revolution, or Iran's, or Kanye West's hideous teeth. It's a double-edged sword, really. Or a mixed blessing. Or two sides of the same coin. Or some analogy I don't care to remember right now because I haven't had a fluffy compliment in the last five minutes.

Perhaps it's runaway obesity that's causing all the gloom? It's a peculiar conundrum indeed: Despite all the awareness-raising over the past 20 years regarding, say, organic foods, fat content, high-fructose corn syrup and so on, Americans are still getting fatter, childhood obesity is off the charts, and Type 2 diabetes is hitting epidemic levels. How can this be? How are we so blind and dumb? I blame the media. Oh, and the schools. And Glenn Beck. You infantile bastard.

How about the still-awful state of our health care, the economic grind, the bleak future everyone seems to be facing, even though it's actually not all that bleak and in fact holds more potential and promise for radical re-thinking of who and what we are than any time in 100 years? Hell, look at the burgeoning pot business alone. Talk about your growth economy. Dear college kids: Buy grow lamps now. Srsly.

Then again, it could be worse. It could always be worse. Just look at those lost children over in Japan, the ones who walk around all day with sparkly blue sailor uniforms, shiny shopping bags, expensive smartphones and ... cotton medical masks.

Wait, what? It's another bizarre phenom in a country known for yawningly bizarre phenoms. Countless teens have taken to the "cult of the mask", wearing medical masks all day, every day, for no reason other than, well, who the hell knows? Depressed economy. Hopeless future. Apartments the size of a shoe. It gets worse. There are millions of others, called hikikomori, teen Japanese shut-ins who live with their parents and never leave their bedrooms. For years.

See? Maybe it isn't so bad anymore, Pampered Young People of America? Plus hey, look over here, there might just be a quick and easy solution to all our woes. Americans love those!

What if you can improve everything in your world merely by cooling down your house? Did you read about that? Sure enough, improvements in central heating and insulation means our metabolisms have been slowing down. We are perhaps a little too warm, too cozy. This makes us soft and mushy and too damn lazy to get off the couch because, you know, mmmm.

Turns out you burn more calories when you're a little chilly, because the body must work harder to keep you warm. Also, if you get too cold, you might get the urge to grab another warm human and wriggle all over them in salacious, God-defying ways in order to generate heat and lower your electric bill. Try it. Try it now.

Could this be the answer to everything? Turn the heat down a little. Have more sex. Burn more calories. Lose more weight. Stay off the Facebook. Avoid pseudo-happy people who really aren't happy but just pretend to be in their overblown status updates. Emotional health rises! Compliments abound! Problem solved! Everybody into the pool!

OK, maybe not. Because goodness knows, it's tough not to be a mite sickened when you read how, say, Glock handgun sales shot through the roof, as it were, just after the Tucson rampage. Seems lots of very sad, very lost people are desperate like dark hate to own a piece of the brand that helped murder nine humans and permanently disfigure a congresswoman. We are nothing if not repulsively sentimental.

Perhaps it all comes down to ... bad manners? Maybe we've simply forgotten how to, you know, show a little respect, chew with our mouths closed, sit up straight, smile patiently, knock it off with the screaming and the drugs and the Lady Gaga in a dress made of meat. Maybe we should take a cue from China, where the ever-displeased government, furious at all the unruly Chinese tots, has called for basic etiquette classes to be taught in the country's schools, pronto. Not a bad idea, really. Shall we try it?

I know, it will never happen. We are too obsessed with sex and intolerance, with gender and genitalia. The political right, in particular, absolutely despises you who are reading this sentence right now. It's true. Did you hear how the Republicans are currently seeking to enflame their most fearful, ignorant base by way of igniting the abortion fight all over again? Yep.

How will they do it? By attempting to redefine rape, of course, so as to make it seem less, you know, rape-y.

The GOP would hereby like to inform all women and especially younger girls that, unless physical force was involved, it wasn't actually rape. Therefore, if you got knocked up, the Repubs ain't paying for no slutty abortion, y'hear? Drugged, incest, statutory? Too terrified to struggle? Too bad for you, kiddo. The Republican Party hates you, and your terrifying vagina.

Does it really matter? Does it really bear any weight in a world where you can, if you so desire, sit in your giant octopus chair and stroke a leather-clad fetish skateboard with your bare feet, all while designing your own luxury dildo on your Swarovski-encased iPad? In the words of the great masters: It matters enormously, it matters not a whit.

So buck up, distraught youth. Sure, the wolves are at the door. Sure, the economy is acrumble. What else is new? The world ain't so bad. In my day, we had to dial rotary phones with our fingers. We had to buy our pot illegally. We had to wait four days for a letter. Buy records in a store. Read a map. Invest in Exxon. Buy newspapers. Use dial-up modems. Endure George W. Bush.

Hell, if you're lucky, you've got Obama for another six full years, minimum. You've got it good, babydoll. And if all else fails, you can ask your iPhone for directions to the nearest pot emporium, and it will spit out GPS coordinates, tell you the best brownies to buy, rate the comfort level of the couch, show you the nearest parking space and automatically inform all your friends of your exact locale to meet up to join the, uh, "revolution." What the hell else do you want, a pony?

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

How to rule the world for five minutes

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, February 09, 2011

There are many ways to have national or even international media attention heaped upon your head for a short burst of time, if you so desire. Why you would desire such a thing is, of course, between you and your demons. Choose wisely.

One way is to write a mildly shocking spidwad of a book, an intentionally barbed little tome everyone agrees is sort of heartless and even a bit nasty, but which has nevertheless been marketed in a very clever way, mostly by placing it squarely in a topic category normally reserved for more thoughtful, safe, politically correct fare, like a sneer in the middle of church, a middle finger in a flowerbed, a slap to the face of a kindergarten class.

Make it a book about, oh, let's say parenting, maybe about the benefits/drawbacks of being a hard-ass snake of a mother, strict and borderline cruel in the not-very-nice Chinese mother way, even though you're not actually from China and just used "tiger mother" in the title to get attention from the Wall Street Journal. And guess what? It totally worked! Amazing.

For best results, justify your questionable parenting skills by claiming your Chinese-style tough love will make your kids grow up strong and regimented, which will in turn help them achieve great things, marry into privilege and make lots of money, which they will promptly spend on large doses of Klonopin and Xanax and expensive Upper East Side therapists in a vain attempt to bury 20 years of resenting the hell out of you.

That's one way. Conversely but not really all that differently, you can whip out your checkbook and write a fresh one for, let's say 30 grand, and hand it over to a baffled porn star for services rendered — read: shimmying naked with you for a single night while you cavort in wine-stained shirts and inhale massive amounts of cocaine and freak out the neighbors who, of course, were on a reality show. Goodness, isn't everyone?

You can perform this party-boy shtick repeatedly, as you go on public record to claim that it is, of course, no big deal and nobody's business, and who the hell cares because Jesus it's not like anyone's getting hurt, and you still get your job done, and oh, by the way, you make $2 million dollars a week by starring on one of the clunkiest sitcoms in America. And you know what, Charlie? You totally have a point.

Put it this way: In a world where 30 grand is essentially pocket change, a scrap of cash, the equivalent of you or I or the average hipster spending 30 bucks on vegan quinoa salads, unread copies of n+1 and a recurring subscription to kink.com's hogtie torture channel, we are reminded: It's all relative. I mean, isn't it?

What else? You can go on a gun rampage in Arizona, murder nine people, inspire countless dead-souled Americans to buy a Glock handgun of their own. You can righteously bash the cult of Scientology, and then watch them pule and whine that no one understands them, except their army of libel lawyers.

You can post a viral video of a deliciously intriguing — but alas, probably a PR hoax — UFO sighting over the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, one that instantly ignites our deepest desire to really, really want there to be more to heaven and earth than is dreamt of in Rupert Murdoch's withered philosophy, because holy hell if it's all lousy parents and Charlie Sheen and gun maniacs from Arizona, well, we are a sad and lost species indeed.

Not good enough? You have other options. You can, of course, work like the devil to build a harsh, slow-burning, massively corrupt regime over the span of a few decades atop one of the most ancient civilizations known to humankind, as you personally devolve into a bleak-eyed, withered dictator, slightly insane and tone-deaf to all reality. Fun for you!

But why not? It's a common global theme beloved throughout history: Oppress the people for years until your entire country explodes in fury of poverty and resentment and frustrated revolution, one that, with any luck and the continued support of $2 billion a year in U.S. aid for your military, will soon fall back into barely contained chaos and fitful democracy, maybe. Fun for us!

This, by the way, is a long and difficult option and not fully recommended, lest you want to live out your remaining years in fear of being shot and wondering what happened to your soul, as you write your overlong memoirs no one wants to read, chapter five of which will surely contain a lengthy invective of blame aimed squarely at your mean-assed snake of a mother.

But by far the best and most delightful, time-tested method by which you can get yourself some international attention — and easily my personal favorite, if for no other reason than you can make the entire thing up from scratch, usually while naked and delirious and at least partially drunk — is to proclaim, calmly and clearly and without a hint of irony, the imminent end of the world.

Works best if you can name a specific date, even better if that date is relatively soon (May 21!), better still if you can base your number on some sort of ridiculous algebra you made up after a dozen shots of grapefruit-flavored vodka, a case of whippets and a lost weekend in a beat-up Winnebago in Reno. Apocalypse soon!

Bonus: It absolutely helps if you are a pastor, nearly 90 years old, cute and frail and adorably off your nut, one who smiles like deranged Uncle Harold at all the international reporters who for some reason want to interview you and get your thoughts on the Mayan calendar, what Jesus will be wearing on Judgment Day and what happens after May 21 when everyone's still here and just as bored, jaded and horny as ever. Be sure to sigh and smirk and wish all the reporters the best of luck down there in hell.

Perhaps best of all, any good apocalyptic vision gets to serve as fantastic catch-all for all that came before, the grand culmination of our voracious fascination with the hollow and the vain, a giant, Jesus-shaped Vitamix of doom.

Dictators and gun rampages, wasted celebs and abusive parents, ridiculous excess and pornographic debauchery so normalized that nothing's shocking anymore? It's all part of the plan, baby, more evidence that Jesus is coming back real soon now, and he can't wait to party with Charlie Sheen, cash in his Apple stock and finally redeem that Groupon for 50 percent off a Sonoma wine tasting/hot tub party with 100 of his closest cherubim.

Oh wait, sorry. I mean, sweep up all the true believers in a huge, beatific Dodge Caravan fueled by totally non-gay love, leaving the rest of us to figure out just what the hell is wrong with this delicious hellbound circus sideshow we call a world. Won't that be fun?

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

Hello, sinner! What are you guilty of today?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, February 16, 2011

The launch of an iPhone app that guides Catholics through confession has prompted a furious response from gay rights groups, who accuse it of “promoting anti-gay spiritual abuse” ... Among the questions users are asked is: “Have I been guilty of any homosexual activity?” — Guardian

______________________________________

Greetings wayward sinner!

Have you done anything unconscionable today? Have you engaged in any thought pattern, activity or perhaps even a strange interpretive dance that might be considered, well, dirty?

What about blasphemous? Heathenish? Maybe even (ohplease ohplease) sexually deviant or deliciously filthy in the eyes of a panicky, manic depressive God? Something that would make priests swoon, Mormons moan and more than a few Republican senators run off to the bathhouse for a hot sweat and a rubdown?

Of course you have. In fact, we know you have. You clicked on this very story, yes? Slightly titillated by the headline? Browser cookies enabled? Facebook status updates set to "Friends of Friends?" Enjoy the smell of lavender body oil in the morning? Like to wiggle? Thought about sex in the past 4.6 minutes? Thank you. We have all the information we need.

Don't worry, we are here to help. After all, as everyone knows, sins are plentiful, pleasurable and addictive like cotton candy rainbow kisses in the hot tub of vodka Jell-O ecstasy Charlie Sheen 8-ball cocaine Lohan bunny rabbit Sarah Palin clown sex chocolate porn vibrator party. Or something.

In other words, sins are everywhere. Sins are growing off the goddamn branches like ripe, dripping cherries in the sweet, sweet summertime, all sticky and tempting like that thing you do with your tongue in the morning that makes me gasp and thrash and grab the edge of the bed and ... Whoops, sorry. Sinful!

Of course, sins only exist if you actually believe in the dreadful concept, which means you also probably believe you are a flawed, miserable fleshball who can do nothing but sin, and therefore God — who is, sadly, way, way out there, completely separate from you — is ever staring down with those giant, disapproving eyes. Good thing so many people believe such nonsense, or we'd have nothing to work with, would we?

That said, we know how difficult it can be to admit all your transgressions, especially those you perform repeatedly, perhaps even as you're reading this column right now, squirming in your chair, sighing in your loins, hands wandering to your sinbits, wishing for a lap dance from a flirty little angel shaped like Megan Fox with a Matt Damon chaser.

So then, to make things easier for you, we're providing the following handy starter list of sins you might or might not have occupied yourself with lately, just to get you going. It's OK, you can thank us later. With that tongue thing. Shhh.

Simply click the boxes next to the sins you've accomplished, are thinking of accomplishing or often fantasize about accomplishing if you only had the time/sufficient olive oil/horseback riding equipment. Remember: There are no wrong answers, because in the eyes of this kind of God, every answer is a wrong answer. See? Shame is fun!

Recently, I have (Please click all that apply):

♦ Engaged in homosexual activity against the will of the Catholic Church, John McCain and most of the Tea Party, even though they don't understand it yet because, you know, Tea Party.

♦ Engaged in the above, but pretty much enjoyed the living hell out of it. So did the priest. And my staff sergeant.

♦ Donned a mesh T-shirt, leapt on the kitchen table and brazenly danced to the new Lady Gaga gay anthem "Born This Way," which is a dead ringer for Madonna's "Express Yourself," which was a dead ringer for this horribly grating sound I heard coming out from under a passing school bus one day. My wife was slightly confused.

♦ Enjoyed a recent Dan Savage advice column about the right and wrong way to fist your partner. In Utah. In public. I hope my mom didn't see me reading it.

♦ Two words: Bristol Palin. Two more: Strap-on. Wait, that might be one word. Let me ask the priest.

♦ Felt like hanging Barbara Bush (Jr.) up by her toes for publicly coming out in support of gay marriage, long after it was remotely risky, long after it would've been about 100 times more helpful to do so, long after it would've made a tiny bit of a difference in the national dialogue. Yes, it's a fine gesture. Yes, we can applaud her public "awakening." Yes, better late than never. But still. Where were you — and your silly mother — six years ago?

♦ Felt intense passion in my heart that led me to join a long-simmering protest that led to a massive rally that ultimately resulted in the overthrow of a repellant multi-billionaire dictator who's been propped up by the U.S. government to the tune of $2 billion a year for the past 30 years, and now my entire country is in the throes of a rather astonishing democratic revolution the likes of which we have never known and it might, just might, trigger an avalanche of protest and revolution across the entire region and explode into a giant fireball of frustration against all manner of disgusting totalitarian Middle Eastern regimes led by hoary, out-of-touch old Islamic men who love to oppress/abuse women, despise gays and crush freedom of all kinds, but who still sell the U.S. copious amounts of oily lifeblood and befriend senators and invest billions in the perhaps greatest and most powerful god of all, the one you are never allowed to say a bad or sinful word against: American capitalism.

♦ Tweeted a beautiful Rumi quote about how the divine you seek is already you. Also: John Travolta is gay. Same tweet!

♦ Had sex with the lights on. They were stadium lights.

♦ Posted passionate Facebook status update supporting revolution in Yemen. Immediately followed it with link to shocking story about how Emma Watson appears to be growing her super cute hair out. OMG!

♦ Defied angry Christian god for approximately one millionth time, this time by once again reminding all sentient, sexually active women in South Dakota to get the hell out, now.

♦ Engaged in homosexual activity. Thought about confessing it, but then I might be forced to leave the seminary. Or the NFL. Or Saudi Arabia. Or my loveless marriage. Or junior high. Or Fox News. Or NASCAR. Or Kansas. Or Focus on the Family. Or the NRA. Or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Or the House of Representatives. Or John Travolta's bedroom.

♦ Stopped caring long ago about anything the Catholic church says or does except when it's so delightfully silly and mockable that I can't help but take a moment to roll my eyes and laugh, before getting back to the ripe, sticky, delicious mess of real life.

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

The greatest movie you'll never see

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Hey, I have an idea! Instead of a movie about, say, a wretched middle-aged letch who poses on Facebook as a hunky teen stud so as to befriend, seduce and subsequently ruin the life of a pretty 14-year-old white girl from the suburbs, one whose parents just so happen to be Clive Owen and Catherine Keener who both appear to be ridiculously panicky and distressed throughout much of the movie ...

How about we make a movie about, say, the countless ignitions and romances, love notes and marriages, wedding photos and baby pictures, evolutions and even revolutions currently flooding all over those same networks like sticky fire in the veins of our jaded and bitter god?

Or hell, go ahead, make one about a creepy and possibly illegal hookup, but let's dare to suggest that it doesn't actually end up traumatizing everyone involved and instead is just one of those obnoxious things that happens in life, and we groan and get over it and move the hell on? Is that too much to ask?

Hey, I have an idea! Instead of one more military apocalypse porn fantasia about enormous, screamingly mechanized super-aliens who invade Earth to colonize/impregnate/beat the living crap out of us for no valid reason whatsoever, but oh my goodness they somehow just can't seem to annihilate our tiny, ludicrous speck of a planet with their insanely advanced superhuman weaponry because our astonishing ingenuity and unquenchable love of life finally proved just too much for them ...

How about a movie where the aliens wipe out our petulant species in, say, 10 minutes flat, re-colonize Earth and make it green and fiery and interesting again? Or one where said aliens aren't disgusting metasoldiers with nine eyes and fish guts for faces and they, instead of war and doom, deliver us such massive doses of radiant wisdom our overwhelmed collective soul simply explodes into a fine powdery tobacco to be smoked by a million laughing deities shaped like trees? I have a screenplay underway.

Here's an idea. How about a sublime indie movie where the characters don't speak in forlorn small-town grunts infused by half-poetic nonsense that's supposed to tell us something about hope and lost dreams that've been slowly smothered by the unchecked bleakness of small-town life ...

How about an indie movie where some of the characters actually care about grooming, talk about national politics and investigate the nature of God and existence using dirty sex and travel and books, all of it awash in awe and science and lots of meditation deep in the fertile woods where absolutely zero ax murderers and hairy rapists lurk like ridiculous cartoon nightmare trolls?

Or hey! What if God is depicted not a crusty old black man/childish voice in a suburban dad's head, and He doesn't decide on a drunken celestial bar bet — because of course God is nothing if not reducible to frat-boy inanity — to impart all His supreme powers to a single idiotic male with the intention of teaching him a grand lesson about Love and Life he will discover through assorted insulting relationships and boob jokes written by 10-year-old boys on coke?

How about if said god-infused human instead decides to, oh I don't know, reinvent the cosmos on a single exhale, flip the transcendental channel, put the dolphins back in charge and sends puny warmongering humanity to the subconscious catacombs as we all cartwheel like ecstatic clouds into the ether? Can anyone film that?

Is any of it possible? Can we remake our familiar, increasingly offensive myths into something maybe a bit more luminous and true? Maybe a screenplay where the superhero is not transformed from an innocent bystander into a thick-necked frat boy multibillionaire with a fetish for rubber, hammers and nonstop ultra violence? Captain America! He once was a skinny sweet loser and now, zap bang wow, look! He's a glossy dumb-as-rocks slab of muscle-bound kill-'em-all Republican wet dream war machine! All vengeance! Neat!

I'd give my left elbow for a superhero whose sole power is, oh let's say, slyly awakening the souls of people around her, instantly bringing everyone she happily slaps across the face into slippery alignment with the absolute consciousness of oh my God yes, all while supplying multiple orgasms, fine whiskey and free health care for all. Hey, look! No one died!

Is it not, in turns, fascinating and sad, mesmerizing and heartbreaking? We appear to be drunk like the Texas legislature on nonstop aggression and mundane repetition, intolerance and hate, fear and panic. We cannot get enough.

Movie after movie, schlock after schlock, myth after juvenile myth, we are hammered by the same weakly constructed scenarios told with such tragic lack of deep curiosity that eventually something awful happens: We actually begin to see these insidious tales as at least partially real, reasonably accurate representations of the human condition.

"Of course the world is full of relentless war and pain," we say, as we are smashed over the head for the 10,000th time by another movie featuring relentless war and pain. "Of course it's all tragic melodrama and horrible illness, clenched angst and endless loss, bogus heroism and bizarre sex practices that ruin the lives of everyone in a 20-mile radius. I mean, of course. Look around. It's everywhere."

And I look, and I see, and sure enough I am sucked into an absolutely miserable, deeply infuriating (can you tell?) two-minute trailer for a new movie called "Trust", the aforementioned utterly contemptible family melodrama/After School Special about creepy online predation that actually almost never happens in real life and will simply serve to induce more undue fear in easily terrified parents as it violates your intelligence the way the Republican party violates women and ... wait, right. Who cares.

None of it is real. None of it makes any actual sense or leads to the advancement of the human soul. We have become, it would appear by nearly every major Hollywood movie now displayed like flaming razor wire at your local 'plex, exhausted by our own stories, pulverized by our own false myths to the point of abject numbness, so completely soaked through the bone with one-dimensional representations of our place in the world, we can't tell where the self-hating screenplay ends and the real, fluid, endlessly dynamic possibility begins.

Is that too vague? Too fatalistic? Can we transform it all in an instant? Of course we can. Let's make a movie.

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

Your own private Wisconsin

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Did you hear what happened in Tunisia? Did you hear what happened in Egypt?

Are you up to speed on what's still happening in Yemen, Bahrain, Oman and Iraq? What about the bloody uproar in Libya? You hear the hints and whispers of upheaval and flower-laden pushback now fomenting over in ever-scowling, ever-paranoid China?

Of course, I'm sure you've read and heard a great deal about the churning melodrama over in, of all places, Wisconsin, where plenty of sneering Republicans are attempting to smash workers' rights in the name of corporate draconianism and blatant cronyism the way a Tea Party creationist smashes gradeschool intelligence. What a thing.

Or perhaps not? Perhaps you've scanned the blaring headlines and even seen some grainy footage from the various rallies, human chains and tank-filled foreign streets, but still have little idea just how to parse it all, where it all slots in to the grand schema, the big picture, the What It All Means-ishness of your day-to-day.

You are not alone. Chances are, if you're like me, if you're like most Americans, if you're paying reasonable amounts of thoughtful attention, you know spectacular things are afoot, urgent things, things that make politicians wail and envoys grumble, pundits furrow and ambassadors panic as various dictators and sultanates spontaneously combust.

In other words, even if you can't possibly know all the tortured political machinations of the various powder keg nations involved, even if you can't pronounce the name of a single oppressive Saudi sheik (there are so many), even if you don't care to understand Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to be an obstreperous dimestore shill for billionaire right-wing energy barons who despise your very existence, you surely understand one vital point: Revolution is afoot.

What's more, it feels like the good type of revolution, the kind where the human animal not only struggles en masse against its oppressors, but even, occasionally, wins. What a thing.

So then, the question: Can you at all relate? Do you sense what it's like to take a deep breath and hurl yourself against the great wall of dogma and oppressive overlord? Does it help that many of these revolutions are very much being televised — or rather socially networked — often in 140 characters or fewer, which is very civilized way indeed to narrate a revolution, especially for a violently ADHD nation like America? This just in: Brevity is the soul of disobedience. Who knew?

Do not, by the way, pay much heed to the president's response so far. Truly, our fine Obama is nothing if not measured to a damnable fault right now, urging this or that calm, voicing this or that displeasure over this or that hunk of bloody violence, when more often than not you want him to leap up and stomp his foot and say thank God Mubarak is out and that insane monster Gadhafi is going down and how can we topple more Middle Eastern regimes, and btw what can we do to kick over the whole goddamn poker table and reset the entire game board more fairly, more ingeniously, more hopefully for a new era?

But of course, you know better. You know it's all about oil reserves, and high finance, and strategic military bases. You know it's all about volatile alliances with grotesque dictators disguised as "allies" who treat their people like chattel as they pay for million-dollar parties and fly in Mariah Carey to sing to them, in their solid gold hot tub, while the CIA looks on.

You know it all spins around Israel, or Pakistan, or the vile old Koch brothers, or perhaps the billions of investment dollars pouring into dead-broke America from dreadful oil monarchies, the vile abuses of which we carefully ignore lest the money — or the oil — dry up.

In other words, your cynical side can kick in all too quickly and tear down any feelings of revolutionary goodwill that may be emerging. Hey, we're Americans. Jaded suspicion is what we do.

But maybe, through it all and if your heart is set just so, we can find a delicious conundrum, wrapped in ponderable, shaped like a tantalizing prospect.

It goes like this: Given the sparking, transformative energy many of these protests and revolutions emit like an intoxicating perfume, how can you participate from afar? In other words, even if you can't literally join the various global protests, when revolutionary fervor saturates the air, how can you ride that wavelength in your own world, body, breath? Possible? Of course it is.

We can perhaps take the wide view, the deeper view. The masters, the gurus, the wise ones teach how every such upheaval, cultural fissure, fluctuation in the social pulse is but another opportunity. You sense the rift in the fabric, the energy swirling like a karmic firestorm as millions of people from hugely diverse regions suddenly take to the streets and shout from the rooftops? There's your opening.

Maybe you can't send much money. Maybe you already sent a pizza, voted against the cretins in power, cancelled your trip to Abu Dubai. Maybe you aren't exactly prepared to zip on over to Yemen, grab a burning Molotov and march. Hell, maybe you don't really care about the fat sheiks in Bahrain because what the hell do those billionaire misogynists have to do with the price of a decent dental plan for your kids?

Nevertheless, you know the cause is just. Do not miss this ride. Do not let the opportunity swirl by untapped. Harness this moment like it's a goddamn wild horse and make changes in your own world, push back against boundaries and regimes, oppressive dogma and deception. Why not? Hold up a sign. Support a local organization. Seek release. Live authentically, love intently, push back again the injustices immediately around you. Sound simple? Sound obvious? Sure it is. I dare you.

After all, each and every one of these stunning global protests is nothing but another verse in the universal struggle for more liberation, more empowerment (or in the case of Wisconsin, less disempowerment), more self-determination, the human animal ever hungry to choose its own fate without so many nefarious bindings and chains, jackals and billionaire trolls eating away the core.

As it is for you, so it is for the collective whole, the universal body. Micro to macro, intimate to communal and right back again. Viva la revolucion, baby. What's your offering?

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

A grateful nation thanks Charlie Sheen

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, March 09, 2011



It is a time of great reckoning. A time when an anxious, troubled nation huddles in tight clusters of fear and uncertainty, shot through with far too much war, economic grief, Tea Party idiocy, iffy cell phone reception and low-level karmic doom.

But wait! Just when all seems lost ... look! Yonder! Could it be? It is! A dazzling beacon winks out from the savage darkness. We are saved! Let us now wheel in the hookers and Veuve Clicquot and large bazookas full of cocaine! God bless America.

Behold, he hath risen. Every generation, every year, every gaseous cultural hiccup, a new god/demon/pariah emerges upon whom we can project all our fantasies and neurosis, fears and judgments, outermost Tweets and innermost grunts. Said humanoid must be an attention slut of great self-import who effortlessly flips between conquering hero and ravaged victim, depending on our collective whim. Last year? Tiger Woods, with a Mel Gibson/Lindsay Lohan chaser.

So far, 2011 is turning out to be Charlie Sheen's year, though it's still far too early to call it, and Miley Cyrus appears to be a single Ketamine porn shoot away from total cataclysm, who the hell knows what's happening to Lindsay and doesn't Adam Sandler appear to be on the knife edge of, well, something sadistic and chemically terminal? 'Tis quite the most tremendous thing about American celeb-death fetishism: No one has the slightest clue who might be next. Awesome.

This much we do know for sure: We are enthralled. Sheen came outta seemingly nowhere and exploded like a roman candle made of black diamonds, boundless drugs and unimaginable floods of money, spewing bloody shards of glass amidst hilarious, impossible syntax, happily raising his glistening middle finger to AA, God, the media and even our beloved President Bartlet (see YouTube clip), all at once.



And lo, the new savior was born. Or rather, revealed. Oozed forth. Popped like a cyst. And so on.

But oh, we have chosen well. Charlie does not disappoint. Much to our collective delight, Sheen has turned out to be some sort of smart-ass PR genius/careening train wreck of mediocre talent hitched to an artistically malformed TV show that freely rapes the brainstems of umpteen million viewers a week as it hawks Round Table Pizza and Toyota Camrys in between ghastly one-liners concocted by Klonopin-popping 12-year-olds who live in Malibu and still masturbate to Penthouse.com.

In other words, "Two and a Half Men" is (or rather, was) absolutely perfect. It is quintessential, premium-grade American schlock, the finest in vacuous, moderately demeaning bullsh*t entertainment we can possibly concoct next to "Jersey Shore" and maybe Bristol Palin's upcoming book. It's a huge and blinding cubic zirconium of imminent soul death. What, too much? As if.

Hence and by extension, Charlie Sheen is perfect. A spectacularly middling actor of no real import with decent comic timing, a razor wit and a thing for cocaine, porn stars, polyamory, multiple kids and hilariously nonsensical, megalomaniacal verbal zingers, all oversprinkled with tantalizing dustings of domestic violence and tabloid sensationalism. Like we say about God, the devil and Karl Rove, if Sheen didn't exist, we'd have to invent him.

And why? Because, silly, as already mentioned: We are surrounded by anxiety and distress. We are overrun with Tea Party dingbats who want to arm college students and professors alike, wingnut maniacs who think science is a hoax and the president is a Muslim and/or raised in Kenya, Republicans who so openly despise women, sex, gays and themselves that they just can't help getting busted snorting meth in the gay fetish dungeon with teenage boys.

In short, the levels of hypocrisy and the lack of spiritual and intellectual education on display across the cultural spectrum, from church house to Congress, are so brutal it's no wonder millions of Americans do the only thing they know how to do — turn to pop culture for salve and distraction, laugh track and a modicum of relief.

Problem is, the distractions must somehow match the level of our ferocious discontent. Gentle entertainments, art, spiritual work, poetry, NPR, a reasonable and calm-voiced president? This will not do. Our tormented and battered souls seek parity with the violent uncertainty we feel all around. Our pop culture Frankenstein must be infused with treacherously high levels of mania, dread, fantasy and looming, melodramatic death.

He hath risen, twitching, sweating profusely and spinning like a top. How long will it last? How long until something gives? Not long. Sheen is the perfect energetic match to what we see and feel all around us right now. He's a spectacularly fractured mirror reflecting the grotesque system that birthed him — smart, funny, wasted, hugely overpaid, egomaniacal, sexy, violently unhealthy, perverted, overamped, creepy, unhinged, lacking all center, moral compass spinning like a Catharine wheel, entirely unable and unwilling to take a deeper look at root causes. Ain't that America.

You might say: Enough already. You might say: Far too much energy, time, media attention has been spent on Sheen as it is; it's not worth it, leave the poor guy alone, clearly he's spiraling out of control, is disturbingly bi-polar, an insomniac ("I don't sleep. I wait."), a fistful of Ambien and a 3 a.m. gunshot away from an ambulance ride to Cedars-Sinai and the Hollywood Cemetery.

Go ahead, say it's sad, tragic, that you feel bad for his kids or the dingbat women in his life. Or flip it all over and say it's sort of awesome and entertaining and man, what I wouldn't give to live like Sheen for a week, unbelievable parties and gasping media frenzies, babes galore and two million Twitter followers in four days, Scarface-grade piles of blow all leading up to the grand finale: a ferocious, Facebook-ready gun battle with the FBI in the end because, wow, what a way to go.

Doesn't matter. Say any of it or none; you're already in. You're a fragment of that mirror. Are we not proud? What delightful monsters we can create! What nefarious celebrity apparatus we hath wrought!

So thank you, Charlie, for embodying, absorbing and reflecting back all our best and worst tendencies, our darkest, most titillating fears and our wildest fantasies about sex and money, addiction and madness, fame and fiery death. We will surely consume you completely very soon, and you us. This is the good news, the sad news and the obvious news: It will all be over soon. God bless America.

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

My most shocking, intimate photos

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, March 16, 2011


Look deep. No, deeper. You can see it all, no? (Note: cross-eyed effect only due to image splice for this column.
I was actually sober. Mostly.) — Photo: Through the Hayes Optometry.

In the spirit of gratuitous oversharing, these are my retinas.

Aren't they spectacular? Aren't they beguiling? Aren't they sort of magical and revelatory, intimate and true?

I don't mind bragging. I don't mind showing you. I don't mind revealing my innermost visual realms because, well, I believe I have nothing to fear from sharing. After all, it's not like I'm giving you my ATM number, home address or admin access to my Facebook page. They're just retinas. I'm oddly proud of them. How much am I giving away by showing you? How much do you think they reveal, really?

A hell of lot, it turns out. My new eye doc recently snapped these pics during a routine exam, in the midst of measuring and zapping, dilating and focusing. She then instantly showed them to me on a high-res monitor Ð all praise to the amazing tech age, baby — in her office and, upon my enthralled questioning, proceeded to go into all sorts of wondrous detail about what these images contain, all the blood vessels and optic nerves (the bright white area), the various focal regions (the denser reds) and healthy shapes and luminous textures. It was, in a word, entrancing.

It was also, in a few more, a little terrifying, because while I'm happy to learn my heavily astigmatic eyes are still in excellent health overall — especially given how many hours I spend staring intently at a computer monitor — she went on to inform me just what sorts of issues and ailments she was looking for, what parts were most revealing, and most importantly, just how badly, sadly and horribly things can go wrong.

One snapshot of your retinas, you can see death. You can see illness and pain, history and time. The eyes are the windows to the soul? Sure. They're also the window to mortality and suffering, tragedy and even abject miracle. As the great philosopher C. Sheen would say, duh.

My fine doc went on to share the heartrending tale of a six-year-old boy who came to her not long ago for a routine exam, exhibiting no apparent problems. She measured and tested, as usual. Then she took photos exactly like the ones you see here. The instant she peered into the lens, she gasped. With one glance, given the size of and pressure on those same optic nerves (which shoot out directly from the brain, mere millimeters behind), she immediately saw the boy had a severe brain tumor.

Lacking decent health care, the kid was quickly thrust into the overwrought, impossible machine of SF General hospital (which did the best they could, considering). The emergency surgery was unsuccessful. The boy soon died.

She showed me various photos of all kinds of macular degeneration, white flecks of waste deposits, what insufficient eyeball blood flow can do. Then, a most amazing example: a series of photos in which one of those long, snaky blood vessels was terribly engorged, twisty as the Columbia river — a giant, misshapen red worm that, in a series of successive images, appeared to travel nearly all the way around, deep to the back of the eyeball.

In the very last photo, she revealed where the worm ended, and what it was feeding: a bright, gnarled mass tucked way back in the corner of the eye. A tumor. Cancerous. Extremely difficult to treat, potentially blinding. The patient had no idea it was there. Astounding.

All was not doom and degeneration. I also heard of miraculous new treatments and technologies, amazing corrective lenses, minor outpatient eye surgeries that can be done in an hour and make you see the world anew, right along with hardcore experiments now underway to maintain and restore sight and keep you happily imbibing the visual world around you right up until they install the iPhone 10 chipset in directly into your sub cortex and you never have to go outside again.

It was all flavors of enlightening and encouraging, distressing and amazing, and I left with the stunned reminder of how little we as a general populace know — or more accurately, see — of our feral inner realms. My world suddenly felt bright and shockingly detailed, though that could be because my eyes were still heavily dilated and everything was all blasted whites and glaring reflections. Whatever. Take your perspective bitch-slaps where you can get them, you know?

Here is my proposal. Given the miracle of modern technology, given the powerful cameras and astonishing machines now at our effortless disposal, it is my belief every human, as part of basic preventative health care (I know, I know), should be shown the insides of their bodies as much as possible, from eyeball to bladder, brainstem to toenail.

Live. On video. In person. Every checkup. Every time. Vivid and real, full of blood and guts and phlegm, tissue and bone, tumor and terror and thrumming, functioning life.

Need a basic checkup? Something amiss? Feeling twitchy? Time for a lube and oil? Let's slide a camera up there and have a look at your insides. Watch the monitor, please. Look here, and here and here. Isn't it gorgeous? Isn't it creepy and amazing? This is your body, right now. Take care of it; you only get one.

Now look over here; here is what can go wrong. Here is what will happen if you keep smoking, keep eating that garbage food, keep not moving much, keep stressed-out and asexual and full of anxiety and fear, keep gorging on alcohol or anger or abject Republicanism, all in the name of money, or ego, or achievement, ad nauseam, until you die.

Here is my proposal. You want to change human behavior for the better? It is not enough to merely employ the typical media scare tactics. It is not enough to, say, stick disease porn images on cigarette packs, gnarled black lungs and rotted teeth and cancerous tumors on your lips.

First you gotta show people their own lungs, raw and in person, more intimate and hands-on than a priest at a Boy Scout convention. Then show them, in the same room, in the same five-minute span, back to back, their lung covered in soot, the breakdown of the tissue, a few photos and maybe a video of the lungs of the last patient that came in, the one with the tumors and the emphysema, soon headed for the morgue.

Scared straight. Scared luminous. Scared so goddamn grateful for what you have, for your nicely functioning fleshbits and your insanely privileged first-world existence that you might, just might, never take it for granted again, as you walk around in a low-level state of buzzing, humming, heavily dilated appreciation and blissful amazement forevermore.

Keyword: might. After all, we're Americans. Our attention spans are violently short, limited, myopic. It's just a thought. Or rather, a vision. But you want to see the world anew, stunned and astounded and blasted thankful, beyond words, beyond technology, beyond God, over and over again, until it's all over? Just look deep into your own eyes. Trust me: They'll never lie.

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

Glenn Beck is a message from God

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, March 23, 2011

"I'm not saying God is, you know, causing earthquakes — well, I'm not not saying that either. But I'll tell you this ... There's a message being sent. And that is, ‘Hey you know that stuff we're doing? Not really working out real well. Maybe we should stop doing some of it’. I'm just saying." — Glenn Beck

______________________________________

People! Beloveds! Glenn Beck is absolutely right.

There is indeed manifest glory all around! There is divine meaning, electric significance, cosmic text messaging blasting forth this very instant from all over the world, nay the universe, both negative and positive, radiant and dangerous, Shiva and Shakti, all whirling in a great cosmic dance, from parking space to porn star, Libyan uprising to nuclear meltdown, Wisconsin insult to Indian Holi festival to the very first gasping, sputtering breath of Spring.

I am delighted to share this wisdom, this sacred thrust and thrum, with the infamous Glenn Beck! I had no idea the renowned right-wing fudgeball was, like me, also a burgeoning neo-pagan tantrika with a mystical, metaorgasmic, well-caffeinated alchemist edge, studying and practicing and soaking in the universal Spanda, the eternal vibrational wisdom of the ancients.

Is it not amazing? I had no idea the so-called "King of All Semicoherence," the same portly n' pungent pundit who recently claimed on his radio show, in some sort of semi-garbled nonsensical half-statement, that the Japan earthquake/tsunami and subsequent nuke meltdown are very likely "a message from God," and we'd best "buckle up" because we're in for "a very bumpy ride" because of — well, I'm not sure what. The Clean Air Act? Abortion? George Soros? Our dependence on Japan for some vital iPad 2 components?

Doesn't matter. And Beck didn't bother to say. But his meaning was gloriously, luminously clear: All life really is in constant, self-revealing investigation, all space, time and matter merely consciousness ever waking up to itself through, well, us! And the "bumpy ride" is indeed the eternally feral Shakti life energy romping like wild lightning all over the eternal ground of awareness that is Shiva. Fantastic!

Did you know this about Beck? That he was so delightfully versed in the deeper examinations of Hindu scriptures, so studied in the trika traditions, with maybe some mystical Christianity, Buddhist Eightfold and Toaist Three Jewels (compassion, moderation and humility, as Beck surely practices) tossed in for good measure? I sure didn't.

Truly, it's astonishing to read of someone so far "out there" on the right-wing fringe, someone so legendary for his aggressive ignorance of all things subtle and intellectually astute, someone whose "facts" are regularly discredited, well, it's just refreshing to learn the man knows a thing or two about, say, Shaivist unity consciousness, or the Mahayana cognitive obscurations, perhaps Christian mystic's desire for direct experience of God, all of it based on texts and teachers who sing so far outside the halls of the typical monotheistic, dualistic gobbedlygook religions they might as well be, well, radical liberals.

How else to explain? Certainly no one can be so ridiculous as to suggest that some sort of miserable, bearded Christian deity was just sitting around, bored out of his mind and a bit pissed off, and suddenly decided, on a frustrated whim, to flick his middle finger against the Pacific plate and touch off a temblor that killed thousands and sent a nation into a vicious tailspin, just to "send a message," like a petulant toddler acting out against quiet time.

Certainly no one could be so childishly heartless, so spiritually inept to suggest some sort of cosmic vendetta is at play. Beck cannot possibly be that dumbly cruel. After all, he's no Pat Robertson. Is he?

Let's look at Beck's enlightened words. He claims the "stuff we're doing" isn't "working out real well." Sagacious! Surely Beck is referring to the incessant, addictive constructs of the human ego? Our ceaseless need to create and desperately cling to various images and stories to tell us how we should feel, whom we should love or hate, what we should or should not believe in at the expense of our own karmic freedom?

Surely Beck is reminding us all of just how dangerous it is to attach too strongly to fixed identities, outcomes, goals, accomplishments, the constant striving for more, more, more, when really the divine is about a kind of blazing stillness, a collapsing back into pure consciousness, into absolute reverence for what is? Beck has it exactly right: It's not about doing; it's about being. Wonderful.

I know, it's also a little tricky, difficult. Beck's statements clearly reveal he's not the insufferable lintsnorter everyone with a functioning soul suspects him to be, and is instead on a hugely challenging, but richly rewarding spiritual path, one that requires intense wrangling with the ego's incredible powers of conviction and illusion-making so the student may learn to see through all manner of charade, false narrative and mental trickery, including but not at all limited to Christian dualism, demonization of the Other, Bill O' Reilly, even the gloomy myth of sin, all ultimately coming to rest on the fluid idea that we are all, each and every one of us, the divine being we seek, God in microcosm, all dancing in ecstatic, self-recurrent consciousness. Do I have that right, Glenn?

In this mystical view, the Japan quake really was a message from God — or rather, the collective unconscious speaking more and more loudly, clearly about our increasingly violent and unhealthy mis-alignment with the planetary ecosystem, with our own core being, with what is. Beck is wise indeed!

Do you know what else is a message from God? Your fingers. Your lover. This column. That Toyota. This bag of frozen peas. Yemen. Cells. Lava. Videoconferencing. Pencils. Yappy little dogs. Quantum mechanics. Dark matter. Lip balm. Finland. Tweezers. Basketball. Machine guns. Pho. Neuroscience. Water.

Also: Love. Orgasm. Temerity. Wonder. Lemurs. Coffee. Leather gloves. Memory. Time. Sorrow. The plight of nations. Poverty and wealth, desire and lust, death and rebirth, ignorance and shame, compassion and gratitude. Anything and everything and, yes indeed, that includes Glenn Beck himself.

Behold, I am in compassionate harmony with Glenn Beck like I never thought possible, and I am grateful. Perhaps we should form a study group. Perhaps we should form a spiritual kula on Fox News, practice meditation science, hold space for one another to dive down deep, work on revealing God not merely in, but as ourselves, the constant divine dialectic. Glenn Beck is absolutely right. Let us just be, not always do.

I'm just saying.

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/03/23/notes032311.DTL&ao=all

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

Fox News ate my nuclear dolphins

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Near as I can tell, we are all going to die a slow incomprehensible radioactive death relatively soon now. Or we're not.

Reports are flooding in from around the world that the Fukushima meltdown was one of the worst disasters in mankind's short history, a game-changing horror of unimaginable scope and psychological timbre that will wreak emotional and environmental havoc for years, decades and even millennia to come, spreading radioactive particles over thousands of square miles of Japan and beyond.

What's more, none of that is really true, the disaster isn't really all that bad, the radiation levels are relatively low and Japan is feeling much better already, thanks for asking.

The Fukushima meltdown is easily as terrible as 1979's Three Mile Island, which, it turns out, wasn't all that bad, depending on who you don't care enough to ask. Fukushima is probably the second worst disaster of its kind in history, even though no one really knows how to measure the full extent of these things so that's probably false as well, although we do know it's not as bad as Chernobyl because nothing could ever really be that devastating ever again, except for the fact that it totally could.

What are you doing about all of it? Word has it if you're not popping iodine pills and seaweed and — oh yes — also stocking up on handguns, canned ravioli and a month's worth of fresh water for the next big quake, well, you clearly didn't read Jim Berkland's warnings, that old rogue USGS scientist who said the Japan quake was just the beginning, was merely the trigger for a huge chain reaction blasting through the Ring of Fire, and various forces both tidal and lunar are right now colliding and colluding to slam the living hell out of Northern California. Are you prepared?

You'd better be. Jim says a massive, devastating quake could quite nearly wipe us out, and he predicts it's almost certainly coming — whoops, oh dear — last week, right around the time of the supermoon, which was also supposed to trigger all sorts of ungodly global crisis but turned out to be nothing more than a nice time to gaze upwards and howl and then sip some wine and have sex. Oh well.

Whom do you want to believe? What vague and indeterminate misinformation do you want to poison your heart like the waves and specks of deadly low-level radiation currently not heading out way over 6,000 miles of ocean in the form of mist and seagulls and furious dolphins, soiled Toyota Corollas and shrill Fox News idiocy that makes you embarrassed to be alive in the modern world?

This just in: We are very much in serious danger, but the liberal media and various sinister governments are covering it all up to prevent an all-out panic. Unless we're not, and they aren't, because that would be completely stupid, and also impossible.

Does the truth actually matter? After all, isn't Japan both a literal and a karmic warning sign? Does it not portend very dark things to come, the direct result of our strained relationship with Earth, an obvious indicator that we have overstayed our welcome and are living too close to the edge? Except wait, no, not really, because while there are far worse signs than Japan (tar sands, BP oil spill, colony collapse, Keisha), there are also many that are far better, and really we're not doing so bad after all, when you think about it.

Good news: We're living longer than ever. Cancer rates, murder rates, smoking rates, teen pregnancy rates are down. In nine very happy countries, organized religion is becoming extinct. Overall quality of life is improving planetwide. China and India and many developing nations are all experiencing unprecedented growth and prosperity due to advanced technology and the global supereconomy, relatively speaking.

Bad news: All this means is we're living further and further beyond the planet's means, stretching her resources to the breaking point just so seven billion of us can have a bit of clean water, aspirin and free WiFi in the skinnin' hut.

Hear that ticking sound? It's a massive time bomb of incomprehensible socioecological devastation, just beginning to explode. Or maybe it's God's rose gold Panerei, ticking warmly as She counts down the minutes to the great awakening, the grand shift, and we all transmute to light energy and fuzzy sighs. Neat!

Which do you prefer? Are things getting uglier by the minute, moving closer and closer to imminent doom? Or are things really on the upswing, generally improving and getting brighter despite the onslaught of negativity and Fox News moronism?

Does the Fukushima disaster mean nuclear power is wildly dangerous and must be stopped, or does it mean we should build more reactors, because hell, not even a 9.0 quake and tsunami mere inches from the site could cause much more than an extremely localized, relatively contained incident? Baby, we got this nuclear power thing down. Or we don't.

It is 2011 and here is what we know: Reality is fluid, fact is malleable, cause and effect completely uncertain. We know what we don't know, but we also know the opposite. We are told multiple stories, versions, ideas, adaptations of truth that cannot be verified or confirmed, because our global media has lost nearly all credibility, largely because of, well, you, because everyone wants it all for free, the value of an engaged, highly informed populace has plummeted, and also because media conglomerates have shamelessly whored out their once-respectable newsrooms as a profit centers.

Result: Fox News. Result: Andrew Breitbart. Result: A shamelessly malevolent GOP that openly loathes its own constituents and fellates the rich like never before. Result: The truth simply doesn't have much of a chance. Wait, does it? Maybe it does. After all, positives abound.

There has never been a better time to be an optimist. There has never been a better time to be a fatalist. There has never been a deeper collective urge to tune out all the careening white noise and dash off to the woods with a packet of poppy seeds and a copy of "Sailing to Byzantium" and start your own cult.

Except that the woods are full of pesticides, meth labs and redneck Tea Party inbreds who think Obama is a Muslim Nazi socialist, guns are for licking, and you, yes you, are a despicable godless commie pervert for caring enough to read this column right now.

Except no, it's actually not, and they probably don't. They're probably all very nice, honest people, full of love and heart and hope, just trying to get by. You know, just like you. Really, who can say for sure?

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

The great Barack Obama conundrum

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, April 06, 2011

And suddenly we come to the crux of the problem: What shall we do about Barack in 2012?

Have you heard this question recently? Have you felt its icy breath on your neck, its uncomfortable presence in your day, your heart, your daily media grind? I bet you have.

Right now, it looms bright and large. For our fair president has just announced, via slick email/tweet/video clip showing all sorts of dorky postcard Americana — red barns, fluttery flags, babies on a stick, $9 coffee drinks — that he is officially running for re-election.

Yes, already. This is apparently now how it works in American politics: You are allowed no more than 2.4 years of impossibly difficult service as redeemer president, shouldering the overwhelming burden of failure foisted on you by your pathetic predecessor, before you have to start fundraising, glad-handing and talking wistfully about your Kenyan father all over again.

But never mind that now. Because liberals are, as they say, up against it. Many are fidgeting and fussing, puling about the fact that, while they grudgingly admit Obama has mostly been a fine, articulate, highly regarded president who has passed a huge amount of progressive legislation and returned America to a place of relative honor in the international community, turns out he's not been nearly fine enough.

Just the opposite, in fact. To the sneering disappointment of the puritanical left, Obama has turned out to be pretty much exactly what he said he'd be during his '08 campaign: flawed, exceedingly moderate, a resolute compromiser, overly pragmatic when he should've been a badass, temperate when he should've been white hot and furious, offering concessions when he should be bringing the hammer down.

In short, Obama has failed. He has not at all been the delicious chocolatey superjesus of radical sociopolitical transformation most on the hard left hoped, prayed and sacrificed precious Prius bumper ad space he would be.

Hence, the conundrum. Given all this mealy disappointment, how now to best rally the troops and get out the vote in 2012 with anything resembling the passion and fervor of 2008, so as to defy any further sickening GOP onslaught? How to champion a guy who has been such a general liberal letdown, even though, when all is said and done, he's been mostly completely remarkable?

Let us now check the liberal Whine-O'-Meter. Guantanamo is still open. Military tribunals have been (reluctantly) re-established. The Patriot Act still exists. Military spending has actually increased. You still have to hand over your tweezers at the airport. Obama had an astonishing, historic chance to overhaul Wall Street's most vile system of pigf**kery, and instead has allowed the fattest hogs to keep right on rigging the game and raping the Treasury at will.

On it goes. Talk of serious environmental legislation has completely vanished from Obama's speeches. Ditto major education reform. Health care reform, while still desperately needed, has been a modest success at best and far too easily beaten down by a hateful GOP as pathetic with ideas and integrity as it is impressive with self-loathing and brass knuckles.

What else you got? Obama only half-assedly backed the unions in the Wisconsin debacle. He only took a definitive stand against Mubarak when it was clear that U.S.-backed thug was going down hard. He finally took a step to kill DADT and DOMA, the latter of which wasn't really a step at all but more like the a decision not to take any more steps. Effective, but hardly the glorious, from-the-rooftops declaration of gay rights support most hoped for.

And then there's Libya. Obama's decision to involve the U.S. in yet another military operation threw everyone, right and left, for a loop. Because while he did nearly everything right — full UN support, the U.S. only in a limited, supporting role, a truly insane dictator who really was massacring his own people, a rapid timetable for withdrawal — the last thing Americans want is a third war, particularly from a guy who seemed like the closest thing we'd get to an anti-war activist in our lifetime.

It can be a little whipsawing. Sure, the extremely difficult Iraq drawdown is going brilliantly, on time and on target. Sure, the economy is recovering, a little. Sure Obama saved GM and a million jobs. Sure he's great on women's rights, unemployment and housing aid, college loans, science, high-speed rail, all sorts of non-sensational but still hugely impressive triumphs that never make screaming 300-point headlines in HuffPo, TPM and Politico.

Then again, the gap between the wealthy and the middle class is worsening. CEO pay has soared while most workers can barely hold on. Afghanistan is still an expensive mess. And who the hell is buying a Volt?

Now, you can argue, as I often still do, that Obama has a sense of the long view like no president in our lifetime. He seems to understand that his true positive impact will be felt cumulatively, over time, way down the road (your kids will love him). He thinks not egomaniacally, not insta-gratifyingly, but historically. This alone makes him one of the most remarkable politicians of any stripe, now or ever.

And this is precisely the problem. As it stands right now, by the inflammatory, Glenn Beck/Charlie Sheen standards of the day, Obama isn't merely annoyingly calm and liberally imperfect, he also just a little bit ... boring.

But therein lies the answer. The solution to this conundrum is actually very easy.

If you're unsure of Obama because he's been less the demigod superhero studbunny you hoped for, well, you have but to merely glance at the competition.

Across the board and down the line, the GOP contenders for 2012 so far are laughingstocks and charlatans, complete caricatures of actual humans with brains. The Palins and the Bachmans, the Huckabees and the Newts, the Trumps and the Romneys — it's all birthers and paranoids, adulterous slugs and ditzball sociopaths, fringers and terrified Mormons, a bloody madhouse clown car of cutesy whiffleball glop. I can hardly wait for the debates.

So while libs can whine all they want about Obama's imperfections and so-called failures, the instant you turn it all around and look at the alternatives, and then hitch them to the current GOP-led House's plans to gut the budget and spew hate on women and gays, the arts and the poor, promote Islamophobia and kowtow to the rich, well, suddenly Obama shines all over again like the gleaming savior we all want him to be.

Suddenly all the complaining turns into nitpicking. Suddenly that vague dissatisfaction is instantly overshadowed by this shuddering, sour tang deep in the gut that just about screams OMFG, thank God Obama's there, how much worse off we'd be without him, how much good he's actually accomplished, how blessed his articulate intelligence, how proud we are every time he travels abroad — please, please, please don't ever leave and sorry we complained in the first place and oh my God please don't leave.

Yes, it's moral and political relativism, writ large. Who cares? What else could it ever be? So count your presidential blessings, libs, for while they may be tattered and rashy and often pinch and ride up, they are, on the whole, still plentiful and hugely impressive and just shockingly better than any alternative you can name, much less vote for. And you know it.

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

Smells like Utah, tastes like Holland

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, April 13, 2011

And then it came to pass that they almost shut down the entire U.S. government over — what was it again? — condoms and pap smears and those ever-horrifying, omnivorous vaginas? Right.

Let us now note in our sparkly unicorn dream journals this rather pathetic eyeblink of time, one of those definitive, all-American moments when it was once again made absolutely clear just exactly why everyone from every stripe and creed absolutely hates the federal government and politicians, particularly the right-wing versions who heartlessly dredge up a vile and exhausted issue like abortion and a fine cause like Planned Parenthood, and hurl them like bloody grenades to sicken your soul.

Ah, abortion, the single issue no one in America save for fringe religious fanatics cared to have regurgitated in the public debate, a fact that didn't stop the GOP, which saw an opportunity to create wedge and hate and gain evermore power, as women across the nation felt an all-too familiar icy shudder pass through their ovaries, the same bolt of cold misogyny they've felt ever since the first church elder put quill to parchment declaring them all whores and temptresses and repositories of unclean menstrual blood. Except for the virgins. Who were, of course, even scarier.

But let us not get caught up in the savage and unsolvable abortion debate right now, because there are far more fascinating and demonic energies afoot; why, just over here we find that, in the latest example of our insatiable appetites for cheap energy no matter what the cost to land, life, beauty, or anything of value beyond powering the bleak engines of capitalism, a Canadian company is now fast proposing to start strip-mining huge and pristine swaths of Utah.

And why? For the sticky, bitumen-based oil therein, of course, just like they do in ravaged Alberta, home of the infamous tar sands projects, easily the nastiest examples of gluttonous land rape known to humanity except for maybe Las Vegas and Newt Gingrich.

With oil at more than $100 a barrel, the company argues, it's fast becoming more financially (certainly not ethically or morally) feasible to begin slashing apart the Earth to get at this malicious and difficult-to-obtain resource. Environmentalists are appalled at the idea. Oil companies are salivating at the prospect of making parts of America look like this, or this, or this. Who do you think will win? What is the foremost capitalist priority? Utah, prepare to get ugly.

Not to worry, however, because this very column has been certified 100 percent organic. Do you feel better? Do my very words now sink more easily and tastily into your eyesockets and heartcore and brainbucket merely because I mentioned that fine and healthful term? Verily, studies prove that they do.

It's sort of good news, and sort of not, this study in which people automatically assumed "organic" meant more delicious, even if it wasn't. Does it matter? Is perception not most of the battle? Just look at the GOP. Openly hating on women and their own constituents, but somehow making them believe it's all for their own good because hey, health care reform sucks and rich people are awesome. Genius.

In such upbeat, organic spirits do we bound over to the utopian vistas of Utrecht, Holland, where you will watch this YouTube video (see video clip below) in what will surely be total awe as you observe what appears to be the city's rush hour commute, all teeming humans dashing hither and yon, carrying briefcases, planning lunch dates, moving eagerly toward sundry destinations, getting it done. Familiar, right? Wrong.



Notice anything unusual? That's right. Almost no cars. No SUVs, mopeds, motorcycles or much of anything with a combustion engine, and nothing that spews oil, requires a dipstick or a $50/tank refill. You will see mostly bicycles, hundreds and hundreds of them, interrupted by the occasional metro bus or train, zipping along as sweet as Netherlandish pie, all clean air and happy trees and people not screaming or honking or killing each other over a lane change or a parking space.

It's a vision of urban pastoral weirdness to which few Americans can relate, at once ridiculously quaint and yet somehow desperately to be desired, as you then walk outside and see the ocean of cars clogging the urban American landscape, and sigh. Especially if you live in, say, Utah.

But wait, we are not yet done being amazed and tearfully heartwarmed. For here is the tale of a former strategist for the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), one of those nasty, ill-informed hate groups that likes to march all over America thoughtlessly slamming the very idea that homosexuals should be allowed to deeply and fully love whomever they want, and have it officially recognized by the state.

Here is one Louis J. Marinelli, writing a rather astonishing letter in the form of a blog post, as he comes full circle, emerging from the depths of murky, homophobic right-wing dogma into the stunned light of fully and clearly supporting gay marriage after all. What a thing.

Let us watch in humble awe as a fellow human does what too few of us seem willing or able to do: completely reverse course, undergo a momentous change of heart and soul, find absolutely zero reason to keep on denying other humans some simple dignity, a basic human right, the expansion and progress of love. There's a lesson in there somewhere. Or everywhere.

So then. Shall we end this brief columnal journey upbeat or sour? With a mention that MTV has ordered not one, but two "Jersey Shore" spinoffs? What of the tale that the FDA has approved yet another drug for an ailment that probably doesn't exist? What about the awesome saga of the meteoric rise and hard, thudding fall of one Glenn Beck, eaten alive by his own clownish paranoia, anti-Semitism and doomsday bunker fetish?

Here's a story about Toyota selling its one-millionth Prii in the U.S. Here's another one suggesting too much alcohol causes cancer, one saying drinking coffee sort of doesn't, and one more suggesting strawberries might help prevent it.

What about the amazing/creepy spider trees of Pakistan? PETA's infantile idea to rename the Tenderloin district of San Francisco? Organized religion headed for extinction in nine very happy countries?

Right. I'll let you decide. After all, it's all 100 percent organic. Except maybe for that very first part. Chew wisely.

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

Please step away from the fear

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Recently did my fine and ever-loving and yet slightly overworried parents, still married and flirty and sort of amazing after something like 147 years together — and no, I have no idea how the hell they did it, so don't even ask — forward on a terrifying hunk of email to me, full of sound and fury and unchecked socioeconomic gloom, signifying nothing.

It was an email, I quickly surmised, that had bounced around their group of retired, largely Republican friends and then commented on and fretted over a bit too much, all about what the hell is happening to the world, how dramatically things have changed, what can or cannot be done about it and, more than anything else, how they feel fearful for their kids — which, for the purposes of this column, we'll call, me.

It was an email, simply put, about the end of the world. More specifically, the end of the American empire, of the United States as global economic superpower, primarily due to various and sundry "horrific" factors having to do with the threadbare American workforce, the staggering loss of manufacturing and factory jobs in this country, the spiraling debt, the shocking erosion of our industrial base, and so on.

"Facts About The De-industrialization Of America That Will Blow Your Mind" screamed the email's headline, instantly indicating its mad desire to be not the slightest bit tactful or reasonable. The piece then went on to list all manner of "horrifying" data about America's post-industrial implosion, from the mundane (a single Ford factory closing due to "globalization") to spurious forecasts about China, "rotting war zones" like Detroit, and how America's number one export is now, quite literally, garbage.

On it went, item after item, all context-free and gleefully myopic in its abject fearmongering and its intent to scare the unsuspecting reader out of his stock portfolio and into investing in gold bars. Unfortunately, I haven't the space here to list the most garish examples — there are just so many — but if you're so inclined, remove your pants, pray to Shiva, and click.

A quick Google side trip revealed the column's origins: a frighteningly Christian lad named Michael Snyder, shameless slinger of endless "shocking" doomsday scenarios via a site called "The Economic Collapse Blog," packed like a Jesus-clad fallout bunker with screeching headlines like "20 signs a horrific global food crisis is coming," "65 ways everything you now own is systematically being taken away from you" and "Armageddon for homeowners." So, you know, fun times at Michael's house.

Nothing new here, really. After all, Christian panic mongers like Snyder (and Glenn Beck, and the Tea Party, and the Tories, and nervous cavemen) have been trafficking in similar flagellation for eons. But thanks to the Net, the spiteful imp at the center of his list — which is to say, fear — now has far more fluid access to the brainstems of the unwary and the retired.

Now, right about here is where I would normally spin off and casually defy Snyder's Rapture-ready silliness, maybe something about how it goes without saying that for every overblown gloomsday factoid he spits forth — many of which he swiped from Prospect magazine and then injected with fatal doses of hysteria and angst — there is always, always a counterforce, an irrefutable sign of positive amazement, something to make you gasp and feel just a twinge, a glimmer of newfound hope for our perpetually doomed species.

But then, serendipity happened. Just after I sent my parents my "beware of viral email fundamentalist Christian fatalism spittle" speech, I stumbled across yet another new study that essentially reaffirms something you already suspected.

The study said: The brains of liberals and conservatives are wired differently. We respond to stimuli differently, process information differently, view the world through lenses unique to our political viewpoint. I know, shocking.

But then, the upshot: "Liberals have more gray matter in a part of the brain associated with understanding complexity, while the conservative brain is bigger in the section related to processing fear."

And then, "It's conceivable that individuals with a larger ACC [anterior cingulate cortex] have a higher capacity to tolerate uncertainty and conflicts, allowing them to accept more liberal views."

I realize you are not the slightest bit surprised by this. I realize, furthermore, it's a slightly specious generalization. After all, I know plenty of liberals who are quite terrified of the slightest bump in the karmic night. And I know a few conservatives — not many, but some — who have tremendous joie de vivre and see the world as a big mud puddle to be splashed around and loved well. They still don't want to fund the arts, help the poor or support universal single payer health care, however. Silly people.

But the fundamental truth remains. Fear equals conservatism (and vice-versa), which naturally leads to isolationism, protectionism, paranoia, religious dogma, surveillance cameras and wiretapping and Dick Cheney and guys like Snyder who write junk like "The Economic Collapse Blog" and aren't instantly stuck by lightning for being loudmouth heretics who traffic in the basest energy known to man, without shame.

And here are my otherwise fantastic and usually savvy parents, lured in by this overamped Christian, feeling increasingly powerless against the onslaught of his unfiltered "facts," the imp of fear driving them headlong into excess worry and despair. My father explained the emotional toll that such context-free information has on his group of friends, thusly:

"None of us work any longer, so there is no chance to rebuild — we feel frustrated and helpless because there is nothing we can do (italics mine). Age does make you more conservative. I can well remember when our own world kept us so busy we did not have time to worry so much. Now we have time — all of us, meaning our friends, are concerned about our kids and how you will survive."

This struck me as heart wrenching as it was revelatory. "Of course, there are a thousand things you can do," I thought. "Of course, while some anxiety is to be expected, most is just, well, poisonous." But then I recognized the conservative brain aswim in its element, overworking the fear synapse, seeing only frustration and the lack of power to return to some perceived previous glory, instead of engaging the more liberal mindset: seeking ways to invent a wildly new future.

This is what I told my fine folks: It's never too late. There are a million things you can do, are doing, right now, to improve the world. The products you buy, the foods you eat, the stores you patronize, the news sources you value, the politicos you vote for, the love you make, the information you choose to share, the stories you believe in — every single choice, from coffee cup to charity donation, joke retold to tender human touch — these are what make all the difference.

These are, cumulatively and collectively, what really make a great society. The jobs, the factories, the economics? These do not exist in a vacuum, independent of the daily churn. You don't have to be part of the active workforce to make an enormous impact.

But the very best and most important thing we can do to change the world? The single finest way to make your mind, your body, your nation healthier and stronger across the board? Do not buy into the fear. Defy the imp. And ignore flaming scrunchballs like Michael Snyder. I'm quite sure it's what Jesus would have wanted.

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

Bored-ass Jesus will see you now

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, April 27, 2011

There is, as a gentle compatriot recently reminded me, a certain naïve sweetness, a sort of infantile charm, to Texas Governor Rick Perry recently issuing an official document asking everyone in his giant, dusty hunk of Godlandia to please drop to your knees right now and pray for some good, old-fashioned rain.

Indeed, Perry's official Proclamation for Days of Prayer for Rain in Texas — thusly issued after a staggering drought has ravaged the state for months, ruined crops, devastated local economies and dropped reservoir levels to record lows — might at first glance induce, as it most certainly did for me, a chortle and gasp at the governor's somewhat mindless view of God; it might first make you think, "Oh Rick, you loveably despicable hunk of right wing chuzpah, you. Don't you know such peculiar entreaties just make God roll her eyes and laugh?"

But then I paused and stepped into the wider view, reminding myself that such divine petitions have actually been around for millennia, across all lands and clans, from Christian to pagan, Islamic to Native American, every sort of human tribe imaginable offering every sort of aching, needful plea to any one of a million faces of god for all manner of blessing and baby, windfall and watershed, crop rebirth and game-winning touchdown pass. Naïve? Maybe. Sort of beautiful and eternal? Well, mostly.

Don't we all understand, at root level, that there is tremendous transformative power in collective prayer? Just as there is in, say, collective meditation, collective love, collective hate, collective song, collective breath, collective just about anything? So you know, why the hell not? You go, Rick, even if you are a wildly hypocritical, climate-change denyin' shrillbucket of gun-happy obnoxiousness. Whoops, sorry. All love, baby.

It all dovetails nicely — assuming you strip naked, drink enough whisky and howl at the moon, as I have — with the goofball imaginings currently on exhibit over in Oakland, in the form of a happy nutball octogenarian named Harold Camping, a frail little pastor of a strange little church whose mathematically precise Rapture deadline is coming up — oh my God, really? — in just a few weeks.

It's all coming down on your blasphemin' head on May 21, to be exact, the date which Camping recommends all hardcore Christians set the alarm early and pack some bologna sandwiches, strawberry Kool-Aid and superlative blotter acid for the long, strange trip to the great intergalactic cherubs n' candycorn theme park in the sky. You ready?

As a thoughtful reader recently pointed out, technically speaking, the Rapture is when angels and Jesus both descend from their Swarovski-crusted high chairs and swoop down with giant cosmic Dustbusters to suck up the living and the dead alike, bodies and souls of the true believers who have, presumably, followed scripture to a T and hence rarely sin, lust, overeat, masturbate to kink.com, or wonder if maybe, just maybe there might be something to all that "all religions are one" thing. Which is to say, about four of them.

Or maybe not! Maybe the number of sucked-away believers will be in the millions. Maybe even, dare to wonder, half the U.S. population. Can you imagine? Think of all the extra parking! Pollution reduced, teen pregnancy rate drops like a stone, nearly all the flyover states returned to wildlands and no more wars because, hey, no more tragic Puritanical worldview to mindlessly defend. Not so bad, really.

Or is it? Not to be outpaced in the race to the bottom of the spiritual kiddie pool, behold the ever-jumpy atheists, kicking back at Camping like spoiled children, actually going so far as to put up their own anti-Rapture billboards here in the Bay Area, to deflect the not at all massive stampede of uneducated humanoids running toward Camping's spaceships like terrified lemmings.

Yes, it's the war of the Judgment Day billboards. The American Atheists would hereby like to remind everyone that the Rapture is for ninnies, and real men don't believe in, well, anything at all, and never once should you admit to laying awake at night and feeling the hum, the pulse of the divine and conscious universe coursing through your veins like liquid fire. OK? So knock it off.

Never once should you sense deep in your very bones there is far more to heaven and earth than dreamt of in organized religion's meager philosophies, or in the equally ridiculous categorical rejection thereof. Never once should you feel that ecstatic, overwhelming sensation that, when all is said and prayed, consciousness is really all there is, and you already are God, and hence to be an atheist is essentially saying that you yourself don't exist, and you never did. Neat!

Ah, existential irony. Jesus loves that stuff.

But oh, poor Jesus, once again caught in the twee crossfire of mankind's terrible lack of imagination, once again reduced to a petty deity stuck way out there off the cosmic turnpike, a judgmental, lopsided hooligan who actually gives a damn about things like rainfall, and touchdowns, and borders, and math, and political parties, and gender, and whether or not you understand that the Second Coming has nothing whatsoever to do with bazooka-wielding angels blasting everyone into fiery smithereens, and everything to do with, you know, waking up.

That is to say, coming alive to consciousness, realizing the collective, interconnected hum of all, that sort of thing. As any good mystical scholar will tell you, the Rapture is just reductive Christian shorthand for man's spiritual re-awakening, the Great Shift, as prophesied by, well, just about every mystical philosophy known to humanity, most far preceding Christ himself.

After all, wasn't Jesus just an awakened master in the form of a hippie Jewish mystic, well versed in the wide view, attuned to far larger, deeper themes than Bibles and billboards, tribes and chosen peoples? And isn't he just terribly bored to death with all the silly literalism and petulant spitwads hurled across American freeways in his name?

But hey, if it will help, and before the apocalypse comes, I'll happily join right in and offer up a prayer for some rain for Texas, too. I'm sure the governor won't mind some liberal, left-coast, pro-gay, pro-sex, pro-choice, tantric-inspired love, right? I'm sure he'd happily do the same for San Francisco, right? We're all one, after all. Right?

See you at the Rapture. I'll bring the whisky.

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

Osama bin Laden saves America

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, May 04, 2011

I'm hereby delighted to report that many on the hard right, that fantastically insane cluster of hyperclenched beerchuggers who fully believe that Obama is a not only a Muslim, but also a Nazi commie socialist Mexican immigrant robot with lasers for eyes and molten pacifism for blood, do not actually believe Osama bin Laden is dead.

It's actually a dastardly CIA conspiracy, is what it is. Or if he is dead, well, lame ol' President Obama certainly had nothing to do with it, and it's all probably some giant PR stunt anyway, and that highly suspicious "burial at sea" was far too courteous given how everyone knows OBL's body should have been ripped apart by ravenous tigers in the middle of a NASCAR racetrack before the star-spangled eyes of tearful Wonderbread schoolchildren, etcetera and ad nauseam.

In short, we can rest in our reassurance that the more insane and mistrustful of our country are just as ridiculously askew as ever. Hell, we've got the hugely tasteless T-shirts to prove it.

As for everyone else, well, electric possibility reigns. You may right now be noticing that a rather delightful hush has fallen over the GOP, a reluctant reverence, a simple understanding that even the slightest peep in the direction of decrying Obama, or trying to shift the focus back to their whimpering agendas — that, say, gas prices are somehow more important than the destruction of the global symbol of evil in the world — any such puling would be horrifically immature, trifling in the extreme, politically fatal.

And no wonder. No matter where you land on the spectrum of overt weirdness that is celebrating a ruthless targeted killing, no matter how you view the brutality of warfare, the distorted costs of justice or America's creepy, cheerful bloodlust, there is right now a palpable shift, an irrefutable tang to this unexpected turn of events unlike many others in our short, spastic history.

Parse it as you will, but it's not every day the global symbol of all that is vile and wrong with the human animal gets taken out by the global symbol of all that is decent and right with American-style democracy.

An oversimplification? Probably. But it all points to a possible radical rethinking for (and of) Obama himself, a grand opportunity to regain both momentum and message lost. It's also a perfect occasion to reignite the entire "Change We Can Believe In" mantra for a newly electrified populace.

Question is, can he do it? Has he learned anything from the past 2.5 years of brutal pushback and opportunities squandered? Or will it all slip away in a maelstrom of mishandled message and twitchy Rush Limbaugh blubbering?

At present there is little doubt: The potency of the moment is Obama's to lose. There are those calling this the "man on the moon" event of this generation, on par with the Berlin wall collapse, a triumph of American will and sophisticated military cunning so significant the temperament of the country will never be the same.

So historic is the shift, in fact, that all Obama really has to do now is let the astonishing details of the clandestine operation trickle down and word of his direct, daring involvement penetrate the collective consciousness, and not only will any current agenda items be supercharged with new vigor, but many of his administration's previous, unsung achievements will take on a fresh luster as well.

The details are as mesmerizing as they are dark and unsettling. The undisclosed meetings. The careful orchestration. The strategic refining. The incredible secrecy, months of training by the most enigmatic facets of our elite military, the final call to make it happen. It's as gruesome and somber as advanced military craft gets.

It's also overwhelmingly cinematic, the American good-versus-evil fantasy writ large, even as it speaks to Obama's powerhouse strengths of focus and intention. No waste. Minimal collateral damage. Precision and timeliness and absolute clarity of purpose.

(Meanwhile, mere hours before it all goes down, effortlessly singe your critics and enemies alike at the correspondents' dinner, and travel to survey the damage in Alabama. Not bad for a couple days' work, really).

Or perhaps not. Perhaps all we'll feel now is an overheated jolt of jingoism, a warped sort of respect for the billion-dollar special forces military teams — the same groups reportedly responsible for some of the most brutal torture and rendition under Bush and Obama alike. A mixed blessing, to be sure.

Or perhaps all we get now is this strange sense that bin Laden was, after all, just a symbol, and without a massive effort on the part of Obama to upheave the acidic political and ideological tone in America, a new symbol will simply emerge elsewhere to enrage and divide us anew. America loves its demons. It seems we always must find something, someone upon whom we can transfer all our fears. Can Obama change that? Is it even up to him?

One thing is absolutely clear: We don't get many such moments in a given lifetime, especially one containing such a strange and dazzling bolt of irony.

It goes like this: Osama bin Laden successfully poisoned much of the American spirit, brought tragedy, pain and unwanted, devastating war, was leveraged as an excuse to commit all manner of despicable misprision by the Bush administration, and changed the complexion of a nation for the worse.

And now, his bloody demise a full decade later at the hand of a far more measured, intelligent, focused president could actually, in a way, bring America back to life, give it a focus and purpose like it never quite had before. The same pitiful demon that caused much of our pain could, if handled correctly, turn out to be the source of a new, more thoughtful kind of liberation. How's that for wayward poetic justice?

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

8 awesome facts to make you go blind

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, May 11, 2011

This much we know for certain:

• A new study from Finland, or maybe it was Russia, suggests that if you watch "Fast Five" and "Thor" back-to-back and then play 22.7 straight hours of the new "Duke Nukem Forever" retrosexist video game as you swill down an entire bottle of bacon vodka whilst belching the names of all female Tea Party members who think abortion is an inveterate evil caused by heathen pervert sex-maniac females who deserve zero rights or control because, after all, God thinks rape "isn't so bad", you will actually go back in time and turn into a lump of gelatinous cave mold.

• New reality show! "Bristol Palin Prepares to Enter Rehab Sometime in Late 2012 or Possibly Early 2013 Depending on Proximity to Charlie Sheen" (working title) is officially set to debut, of all places, on the Biography Channel. I am not making most of this up.

"We wanted a show that was both childishly surreal, deeply insulting to anyone with a functioning cerebellum and yet somehow impossible to ignore, like poison ivy eating away at your big toe," Bio programming director Laura Hayes Kilpatrick did not say, after slamming down a half dozen shots of Stoli Stasberi, kicking three of her six cats off her lumpy futon and sighing emptily into the void that is her life. "Look, did you even know Bio existed before reading this item? No you did not," she did not add, her left eye twitching strangely. "God, I need a Xanax."

• Florida's long, noble tradition of showing too much butt crack and then having sex with unsuspecting animals is finally over. Governor Rick "Who?" Scott is expected to sign two new bills outlawing both righteous practices, because apparently rampant bestiality and teens who wear slouchy, underwear-revealing jeans 'round their knees in a don't-you-dare-suggest totally homoerotic fantasy homage to some sort of inmate thug lifestyle have become epidemic in creepier parts of the sunshine state where people own too many goats and like to tattoo their necks. Which is to say, most of them.

• Assuming all the forces of bleeding wrongness in the universe have aligned and Moloch has signed off on the proper paperwork, the news should be out by now: Newt Gingrich is running for president in 2012.

It's a fantastically cringe-worthy announcement that caused most of the nation to gag violently then blast coffee through its nose, as it tried valiantly not to burst out laughing at the ongoing ludicrousness of American political life, all while resisting the overwhelming urge to rush out and see "Thor" again to numb itself into an ignorance-is-bliss stupor.

Still reading? These words making sense? Then chances are quite good you don't live in Detroit.

Did you hear? Apparently, nearly half of Detroit's remaining population is functionally illiterate, struggles to read or write or fill out any paperwork — like, say, a job application. Which actually makes a sad sort of sense, as the auto industry apocalypse has left only a fraction of the original Motor City population intact, most of them poor, most of them stuck in America's foremost dying metropolis given how those who left after the meltdown were the ones who had enough money, education and opportunity to do so.

Irony quotient? Surprisingly high, as right-wing pundits and politicos alike are expressing mock alarm and indignation at the news, and demanding that Something Be Done as they complain about what has become of our educational system, even though it's generally the GOP that rejects serious education reform, thinks college is for elitist snobs and wants everyone home-schooled by Sarah Palin-shaped trolls. Mostly.

• Ah, but at least we'll always have the Vatican. Constant, endlessly dour, steadfast in its timeless misogyny, hollow intolerance and brutal, everlasting out-of-touchedness. You go, Benedict.

Proof? No sweat. Simply try suggesting that maybe, just maybe, after all these corrupt, sexually abusive, homosexually charged years, after more than 200 decades of oppression, bogus celibacy and stifling sexual dread, it might be time to allow women and married men to be ordained as priests.

Australia's Bishop William Morris suggested exactly that, just recently. Can you guess what happened? That's right. Like an alcoholic father with a lurching temper did the Vatican bring the hammer down and fire Morris on the spot, without an eyeblink of deeper thought or a hint of remorse. See? Ever reliable and consistent, the Vatican is. A bit like torrential flooding in the deep South. Or perhaps cancer. Or maybe death.

• Here is my not at all shocking personal confession. I sort of hate condoms. Hate using them, dislike the smell and the feel and the entire, shall we say, energy-depleting process of installing and operating the unfun little beasts. How to make them more usable? More appealing? Less prone to sighing annoyance? Is there a way?

Here's one: Magically line them with a special vasodilating gel (hence the nickname, Viagra condoms) that makes using them somehow more heartily invigorating, more ironclad and upright and user-friendly. Do this and, short of the male birth-control pill, you might just have yourself a man-happy, erection-friendly revolution. Isn't that right, Futura Medical, who just invented said wonderlatex, called the CSD500, soon available in the U.K. and maybe the U.S.? We shall find out.

• In loosely related news — assuming you like to view the world that way and really, why wouldn't you — the other universally acclaimed wonderdrug known as ecstasy (MDMA) has been proven once again to have no real side effects, doesn't make you want to kill yourself and doesn't increase mortality rates overall, especially if used in relative moderation and not like some panicky teen raver or Burning Man first-timer who has no clue what he's doing and shouldn't be left alone in Drunken Barbie Camp with all those glow sticks, fake fur and baggies of little magic pills.

Sadly, a new Danish study shows that pot users suffer a mortality rate about five times higher than the norm (your mileage, and possible explanations, may vary). Cocaine and meth, six times. Heroin and related injectables are, as you might expect, off the charts. But ecstasy, well, it just keeps being proven to be not so bad in the slightest, and actually might, just might be one of the most remarkably safe, effective, enlightening drugs ever invented. Good thing it's still illegal.

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From SFGate.com

Hi! In three days you will all be dead

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Good news for you! All worries, over soon. All concerns laid to rest. Everything transformed in a white-hot eyeblink of OMG WTF into a lukewarm puddlepool of odious harp music, angel squeals and tepid moral pudding. I know, right? Finally!

This much we know: In a mere 72 hours (give or take, time zone depending, sometime before brunch) millions of true believers shall be whisked off to a cloudless overlit megadome where no one has sex and no one reads books and everyone is huddled together in a massive quivering vanilla cuddleparty, despite the requisite 500 layers of scratchy taffeta. Please remove your jewelry.

Are you ready? Whatever will you wear? Who will feed your dog? Hurry on now, you only have ... oh dear ... three days left until May 21, the oft-repeated, now infamous date of the Rapture, as predicted by Oakland's own nutball octogenarian and world-famous sideshow pastor Harold Camping, after a lifetime of careful biblical calculations and number-crunching and blah blah etcetera you know the rest. (If you don't know, here's a handy FAQ).

So anyway, it's Armageddon, real soon now. Do you have plans? Have you made proper arrangements? For those of us left behind to suffer this terrible beautiful planet after the fanatical Christians depart, there will be plenty to do. There are looting groups forming on Facebook. There will be Rapture parties galore. Brunch parking will be awesome. After all, Armageddon is on a Saturday. Were you thinking Sunday? As if. Sunday is when God rests, barbecues some wild salmon, watches "Idol".

Perhaps we shouldn't be so cocky. Perhaps the good pastor isn't so very far off. The world, you have to admit, is in a bleak state indeed. Arab nations are in turmoil, prophetic biblical lands are war-torn and decimated, oil is threatening to dry up, fresh water too, the euro is on shaky ground and the American empire is on the verge of bankrupt implosion. I know! What else is new?

But that's not all. Ominous signs abound in nature, too. Permafrost is melting fast, honeybees are offing themselves en masse, dead dolphins are washing ashore, epic flooding is destroying the south, tsunamis are poisoning Asia, the Duggars just won't stop procreating. 2010 is now officially on record as the Weirdest Weather Ever, and 2011 is on track as the year we break seven billion horny hell-bound bipeds on a floating rock that never really wanted more than, say, a couple million. Fun for us!

It all adds up, no? But then again, something doesn't feel quite right. Something feels a little too ... positive. Glowing. Possible.

Flashback to the Dark Days of Bush, when the fundamentalists were all giddy from inhaling the toxic fumes of their own homophobic xenophobic bloviation and doom-tracking lists like the Rapture Index were happily sucking at the tit of guys like Ted Haggard; megachurches were all the rage in collective psychosis, and even Bush himself said God told him that launching a few wars and murdering thousands of Islamic innocents was "totally cool" with Him.

In other words, End times predictions were hotter than Ashton Kutcher's tweets, except Kutcher was a 20-something dork and Twitter hadn't been invented yet. What a time it was.

Still, nothing happened. The world felt far more desolate and off-kilter than it is now. America was diving headlong into its ugliest period in nearly a century, conspiracy theories were a dime a dozen, and Fox News' juggernaut of idiocy was just hitting its stride. Angry Jesus simply could not have picked a better time than, say, 2003 to be wildly disgusted and wipe us all out so He could start over with some feral bunnies and a fistful of opium poppies.

It's tough not to feel a twinge of disappointment, then. If you're anything like me, maybe the curious, ironic part of you likes to sigh, sip its Maker's Mark and say, "Gosh, wouldn't it be interesting, wouldn't it be fascinating if once, just once, someone were actually right about just one insane fringe theory of doom?"

Aliens among us, peak oil, 9/11 holograms, a single global currency, lizard overlords from the fifth dimension, Area 51, Osama bin Laden killed and secretly frozen in 2002 and kept in Dick Cheney's freezer and then thawed out 10 years later just so Generation Facebook can gawk at his withered mug and go, "Him? Really? That frail, filthy imp of human pathos is the reason I have to take my goddamn shoes off at the airport and suffer the Tea Party, Alex Jones and Islamophobia?"

Maybe we've been going at it all wrong. Maybe if there's one thing we've should have learned by now about the Rapture, about the end of everything, it's this: It's a slow bitch.

Climate change, the end of oil, the Pacific Garbage Patch, it all takes awhile to knock us completely flat, relatively speaking, despite how all our zombie movies and Armageddon porn fantasies have us vanishing in a bloody, cataclysmic, CGI-enhanced poof.

Here's a fun thought: Maybe Armageddon is already happening, piece by piece and storm by storm, but we clever humans are smart/dumb/lucky enough to adapt just enough to stay barely one step ahead, to stretch poor Mother Earth's resources a little further and to whistle past the graveyard one more time to make it home in time for some pizza and porn. Barely.

Maybe the Rapture isn't meant to happen in a big megawhoomp zap, like a giant piñata filled with little candy Jesuses exploding all over the Colorado Rockies. Maybe it's actually an epic saga, unfolding slowly over time, like the world's longest vaguely depressing but beautifully shot documentary film. Fantastic lighting! Expert camerawork! Stirring, hardscrabble tales of love and hope! Too bad everyone dies in the end.

Or maybe it's just this: Maybe for one moment this Rapture Saturday you pause, you step back from it all, you take a breath and a deep, hard look, and you realize it's not really so bad after all. You note how, through the muck and the bleak, infinite blessings abound. Because they do.

You do nothing at all, really, except realize the eternal truth, known since humankind was knee-high to a mystical hiccup: The Rapture is instantly available, at any moment, in any breath, if you just widen out a little and take it all in.

No harps. No angels. No nutball pastors. No deities. Hell, no religions whatsoever. You don't have to actually go anywhere at all. Except, you know, inward. Simple, really.

______________________________________

Mark Morford's new book, “The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism”, is now available at daringspectacle.com and Amazon. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. He never reads the comments.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is markmorford.com.

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

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