Don't Vote For Any Christian Satanists, If You Don't Mind

One of the beauties of life is that everyone is a unique individual, no two people are alike. But none of us is ever so unique that we don't look something like our parents. (Not too unique that we don't all look like cannon fodder to someone who took an oath to protect us.) It's a very fine line to walk -- which, frankly, still causes me to be incredulous that he has gotten away with it. A Christian satanist. Do you think there could ever really be such a thing? Sounds like being thrown into a black hole, if you ask me -- a paradox which would not compute and cancel itself out.

I wonder what the first primates thought when suddenly one of their babies began to look a little, well ... humanish. Well, dang, the father and husband primate would say, what the hell's been goin' on Beulah?

To which Beulah would reply, Don't look at me ... it's just in my genes.

To which the the father and husband would said, That's what I'm a'talkin' about.

I'm a frustrated comedy writer, in case you're wondering. It is a hobby of mine, probably an annoying hobby, which is to practice writing set-up lines and punchlines, and to do it right in the middle of an essay or poem. And why, because you are a guinea pig. Although I love you as a fellow human being, whoever you are. This is my sandbox for polishing certain projects. I figure I might as well let people read what I'm doing as I'm doing things in sections while I'm doing it. It keeps me on my toes, although the Googles analytics show that this sandbox of mine called "Magdala is in Ethiopia; and Mary Magdalene Never Existed" has not registered a single hit, ever. Zero, goose eggs. Zilch. Even though I have reasons to be suspicious. There's a Dr. Web out there who knows what I'm talking about.

But, I digress, which is my privilege, because blogging and sending email are little more than writing a note on a paper airplane and sending it flying to Peggy Sue, if you think about it. The Internet is alive and well-ish, I guess. Some folks are making money, which is what will keep it alive ... until THEY decide differently.

Who is they? Or rather THEY? Creatures I have met, I feel pretty sure, which exist in real time, and are not figments of your imagination. Or mine. You can't have a figment of your imagination on your own, I am convinced. And, of course, there was a reason for my supernatural fun house I found in my bedroom every night for six months to a year. And me doing this, whatever this is, is the wondrous result. Regurgitation. Therapy. A way to kill half a day. Kind of a cheap carnival in your face, whenever you want it ... unless the hackers are winging you.

Once more, digression for which I apologize ... but I don't really care. You think I care? I don't know anything about you, whoever you are reading this, although there are none of you. Not on Blogspot. We'll take this, with Janet's help, over to TANATA later on, where it's a hot place. You dig?

Of course, when writing a script, a screenplay, you're focused on nothing but dialogue at first, I think, if you're any good. Action sells, but dialogue is what makes a great film great.

Is that a fact?

Yeah. Oh, yeah, and I happen to be schizophrenic, and I have rapid mood changes, not as badly with medication, and sort of multiple adapting personalities, which I had never thought was all that uncommon, until my psychosis because the focus of a church sting. They were sure that I was as weird as I was because of sin. I looked guilty, when I had the least reason to feel guilty between them and myself -- them being preachers and Christian businessmen with whom I had worked. They revealed themselves out of their reckless stupidity to be struggling more with their faith than I was with mine. It was a table turner for sure when these fellows discovered that what made me weird, as I revisited my past after 9/11 and rediscovered, was my military experiences, which included a beating and significant concussion, after kissing the pavement with my forehead. I'd never been knocked out before. I was in a coma for a week. I recall when I finally came to ... that while I was back ... something was different. My thoughts did not go as deep. I couldn't think abstractly as I once had, and I was suffering on top of that with crippling panic attacks that came streaking at me from out of nowhere.

And I played around with that for 20 years, off and on. Am I crazy? Do I seem it? I am clinically 100 percent psychologically disabled, according to the state of Tennessee and the federal governments, for which I receive disability checks, praise God in the highest. Had it not been for that help coming in when it did, I'd have lost everything, because the stress was starting to wear me down, and the kids didn't want to, nor should they have to watch me as I worked it out. They all came through with flying colors after my nervous breakdown and finally begin diagnoses with loss of brain capacity. So why am I still here, and why do I write lucidly, at least? It is by the grace of God and my awareness that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is God that I am made new everyday when I wake up. Those doesn't mean I'm not aging. I'm 54. But hope when you have had none and loving what you do, which is research and writing, is a wonderful thing indeed.

And every person, every individual, is entitled to know that feeling because God made it possible for that person to be born. Anyone who robs another person's hope ... is asking for it.

Because I busted my ass when I got out of the service to make something of myself after first getting a college education, I learned a lot, but had no interpersonal skills to make a lot of what I learned; but, I did okay for a while. I overstudied, fearing that I would fail and my past would have won. But I got two and a half degrees, the latter one being half of a graduate degree in Christian counseling, a program which I never finished. I worked as a journalist at two daily newspapers ... and excelled. At least far beyond my expectations. I was deliriously, unrealistically happy. While, at the same time, my debt was growing on account of my meager salary and that of my wife, who was a nurse. Raising two kids in a wealthy and wealth conscious community like Chattanooga and the two mountains, Signal, where I live, and Lookout, was not at all a piece of cake. In fact it contributed to my disintegration. I couldn't keep up with the Joneses ... and didn't want to.

I'd have preferred to move into a log cabin out in the sticks anyway.

Inadvertently, we tried to keep up, thinking we were just as smart as these rich folks, if not a little more so, though there are no jobs in Chattanooga, except tourism related and professionals.

I didn't run out of gas ... so much as the gas ran out of me. I'd have kept going on the fumes, after being fired from 12 jobs because while I was talented, often overqualified, I was very shy and unsociable, I suffered with obsessive behaviors on the job, to the point where I was a pinball. The Pinball Wizard. By that I mean, I just bounced from one interpersonal disaster to another. I wasn't mean, or unwilling to try, I wasn't cruel ... I just wanted to write and be left alone, so that I wouldn't have to do two things at once and blow it. And I always looked anxious to my colleagues, who noted that I was trying too hard and working too hard, but you see, if I didn't compensate in some way to have a chance of supporting a wife and a family, all that I had wanted before I was drafted ... and Susan had been my fiancee would have been unattained. And that just was fucking not going to happen. I loved too much. It has always cost me.

But now I'm new, because I understand myself, and I've been to the abyss at least twice ... it was nothing like Gandalf's experience. It is frankly too hard to describe and too chilling to try. Honestly, it left something in me ... and I do not wish to acknowledge it. But it surfaces ... and that's when I become a different person. I go from being very childlike and artistic, sensitive, to a person who would not hesitate to take out anybody if they tried to hurt one of my family. I will not hesitate. Because I was trained, albeit briefly, that if there are enemies and weapons involved and the situation gets out of control ... you match whatever your opponent is doing ... and try to do to him what he is trying to do to you. Unfortunately, none of that does you any good if a part of the Second Division Ethiopian Army ties and blindfolds you and treats you like a spy ... because, I sort of was. I was trained to be a military intelligence specialist, doing cryptography and teletype work, and field work ... in a pinch.

I had joined the Navy not to be in combat in Vietnam. I was promised a ship on the East Coast, so I could get married. Instead, I was trained stateside and shipped with a top secret clearance to the highlands of Ethiopia. A virtual Eden, in many ways, for reasons which I will explain, but a very dangerous place with civil war raging all around us, not out in the open, but house to house, guerilla warfare. Totally unexpected. Young men garroted with piano wire and killed in their sleep because of their political affiliations. Eritrea was seeking independence from Ethiopia, which would give the former province the Red Sea coast, and access to a very important and ancient seaport called Massawa, while landlocking, in effect, Ethiopia.

more to come