Icelanders: ‘Gimme that old-time religion’

Posted on February 5, 2015 by oddmanout215

God id dead, but Odin is back!

God is dead, but Odin and his gang are making a comeback.

Many Icelanders have had their fill of the enfeebled Christian deity and are feeling the nostalgic pull of the old Norse gods:

Asatruarfelagid, a neopagan organization, plans to start construction next month on the country’s first Norse temple since Christianity arrived in the island nation roughly 1,000 years ago…
…While the temple will be dedicated to ancient Norse ideals, the leader of Asatruarfelagid said the context is a bit different in modern times.
“I don’t believe anyone believes in a one-eyed man who is riding about on a horse with eight feet,” Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson, a musician who is also high priest of Asatruarfelagid, told Reuters. “We see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology…”

Swamp Rabbit read the news and said, “Thanks for statin’ the obvious, Hilmar.”

He meant that all religious stories are “poetic metaphors” unless you literally believe in Noah’s ark and so on. And that it’s no surprise some people feel consoled by pagan rather than Christian metaphors, which lost most of their remaining allure in the 20th century.

“All them one-god religions is dead,” the rabbit said, “except to fanatics.”

Not quite. A few non-fanatics still wring spiritual meaning out of the one-god religions, but most people in our time put their faith only in rituals and myths that attend to the pursuit of wealth.

“Neopagans don’t make a religion of money,” I said. “They want people to stop fouling up nature to feed their greed. Their gods are aspects of nature. Christians made their god anti-nature.”

The rabbit twitched his nose and sniffed at me. “What you say to them that says people was savages till they swapped old-time pagan religions for the one god?”

“I say Christian civilization gave us two world wars, the Holocaust and the atom bomb. Give the old gods another chance.”

He pondered that one and said, “Ain’t you never heard of Götterdämmerung?”

Posted in enviromentalism, history, humor | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Hemingway does Super Bowl XLIX, files late

Posted on February 3, 2015 by oddmanout215

hemingway

This year there were many victories. The Patriots captured the big town beyond the northern lakes where the Vikings sail and there was a victory over the Chiefs on a great plain and the Pats went back East and crossed the bay to a fort with a field of fake grass near a large building with a restaurant on many floors in a village called Foxborough. The town was very nice and the fort was very fine. There were more victories and the townies toasted the Pats in the cafes and bawdy houses.

The leaves fell and a cloud rolled off the bay and suddenly the Pats were in it and it was snow. The winter took hold and the town was different. The war was changed too. The Pats broke camp and flew south and west to a bawdy house in the desert for the final battle. The day was clean and cool and the night was even better. The Pats and Seahawks fought till they were weary and left the field.

I watched the second half on a flat screen at a galleria and ate spicy Doritas and drank Powerade Zero with Miss Barkley. “Call me Catherine,” she said. The galleria was very nice and Catherine was very fine. We held hands. Katy Perry lip-synced “Firework” and sailed around the field on a boom crane and shouted “God bless America.”

The troops fell into line and trotted back onto the field. The Seahawks brought up trench mortars and blew a big hole in the Pats’ front line. The Pats regrouped and counterattacked. The Seahawks held the line and attempted a coup de main. It failed and the Pats prevailed.

I was on assignment but the night was young. I told Catherine her hair was very beautiful. We drove for hours and jumped into a boat and rowed to a hotel in Switzerland. “And you’ll always love me, won’t you?” Catherine said.

In the morning I rolled out of bed to write my story. I stared at the blank page until I remembered the details of the game. The players wore splendid uniforms and butted heads often and were very brave. In a few weeks I won’t even remember who played. I filed my story and put on my coat and walked out into the rain.

Editor’s note: Last year I sent Virginia Woolf to cover the game, but she made a mess of it. It was a boring affair, so she left early and filed something about a lighthouse.

Posted in fiction, humor, mainstream media, sports | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

A ‘fiery sex scandal’ for a slow news day

Posted on January 30, 2015 by oddmanout215

On their way to a fire or a debauch?

On their way to a fire, or to a debauch?

Swamp Rabbit and I were arguing again. The primary goal of mainstream news organizations is to scare people, he said. Fear sells. Just look at the huge response to news coverage in PA, NJ and NY of the “monster snowstorm” that never hit those states.

“You’re wrong,” I said, showing him the front-page story in Wednesday’s Philadelphia Daily News:

A fiery sex scandal threatens to burn up multiple firefighters’ careers, including some top brass, according to former Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers.
Ayers told the Daily News today that the investigation into a young paramedic’s claims of sexual misconduct began shortly before he retired in June.
The paramedic filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging misconduct against another paramedic. Soon after, rumors surfaced that she had sexual encounters with numerous firefighters, paramedics and supervisors in firehouses while on- and off-duty all around the city.

“The goal is to is titillate,” I said, using one of my favorite words. “The story can be a monster storm, a sex scandal, a murder on Main Street. It doesn’t matter, so long as it titillates.”

“Use whatever fancy word you want, Odd Man. News stories is to scare people. Will I git snowed in? Is my husband screwin’ around? Will I get murdered on my way home from the SuperFridge?”

I told him we were both saying the same obvious thing. News outlets — tabloids, so-called broadsheets, TV news shows, whatever — exist to dish out infotainment, not news, especially now that they’re fighting Internet sites for people’s attention.

“The snow story scared me,” I said. “But it’s fun to read about firefighters having sex. What would you do with all that down time, hold Bible classes?”

The rabbit sniffed at my wood stove and said, “Wait till this here shack catches fire and all them firemen are off gettin’ laid. Have fun with that.”

I unlocked the cabinet near the stove and handed him a bottle of Wild Turkey. “Here,” I said. “You’re a real drag when you’re sober.”

Posted in fiction, humor, life in the big city, mainstream media | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Apocalypse now, or just another dumb forecast?

Posted on January 27, 2015 by oddmanout215

It's the end of the world again!

What John Bolaris reads instead of tea leaves

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate,” I told Swamp Rabbit, quoting from an old movie but referring to Philly-based John Bolaris, one of the shiny happy people paid by the media machine to communicate weather forecasts.

Bolaris was on the radio, explaining why the “monster storm” predicted for us barely touched PA and NJ before rolling over New England, where big storms in the East usually end up. It seems he and his fellow weather swamis had to choose from a number of possible computer-generated storm models, meaning scenarios. He and they chose wrong, but better to be safe than sorry, blah blah.

“What a blowhard,” I said. “People in the real world get fired for being that wrong.”

The rabbit, sounding more savvy than he did last winter, said I was the one who was wrong. “His job ain’t to inform people, Odd Man. It’s to scare ’em, like them horror movies do. People like being scared. The more scared they is, the more they watch the TV news. Ain’t you learned that yet?”

I was still ranting. “I spent the whole night worrying that the roof of this shack might cave in from the snow that never fell.”

“Well there you go,” the rabbit replied. “The weatherman done his job, didn’t he?”

Footnote: Too bad the mainstream media would rather hype winter snowstorms — they’re so unusual! — than inform people about long-term climate change. But that’s another story — a real story.

Posted in apocalypse, humor, life in the big city, mainstream media, Philadelphia | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

New tickets to paradise from PA Lottery

Posted on January 26, 2015 by oddmanout215

Nothing says “lower-class desperation” more clearly than state-sponsored lotteries:

A new Pennsylvania Lottery game debuts Tuesday, while other longtime drawings are getting new names. The new game is called PICK 2, a twice-daily drawing that allows players to bet on any two-digit number. Other daily lottery drawings, in which players choose three to five digits, are being rebranded under the “PICK” name. The 38-year-old Daily Number, the lottery’s first daily draw game, will now be known as PICK 3.

lottery

And no one appreciates this desperation more than the hustlers who organize the lotteries and the politicians who use lotteries and casinos for back-door taxes, because they’re too crooked and cowardly to raise legitimate taxes on the well-to-do.

I thought of these guys today when I ran to a convenience store to steal NyQuil for my sick friend Swamp Rabbit. One employee was ringing up overpriced junk food and another was collecting money from the faithful after taking their numbers and printing their lottery tickets. A crusty chap in a Cowboys cap intoned his numbers, as if the right combination would open the treasure chest: “4-6-9. 6-9-4. 9-4-6. 6-9-5…”

Then I had to fax something, my machine at the shack is beyond repair. I ran to one of those squalid little bunkers — there are chains of them — where people who can’t afford bank accounts buy money orders or place bets, or both. The employees work from behind a sheet of glass, or plastic, thick enough to stop an RPG. On the wall next to their little bomb shelter are messages on flyers:

Cigarettes
Tokens
Please specify day or night numbers
Sorry, we cannot cancel Cash 5, Powerball, Super 7, Quinto

Back at the shack, I commiserated with the rabbit. I told him check-cash joints provide one-stop shopping for the doomed. The lottery, cigarettes, money orders that cost an arm and a leg, all under the same roof. And four-dollar faxes! It’s like crossing the border to the land of the lost. If you go there, don’t expect to find your way back.

The rabbit coughed then took a swig of NyQuil. “You done crossed the border, too, in case you ain’t noticed.”

Not for the first time, I wanted to grab him by his ears and toss him in the swamp. “I’m just going through a rough patch, you dumb rodent. Any day now I’m gonna sell my new novel and blow this dive.”

“Right,” he said. “The same day I win a million bucks playing PICK 2.”

Posted in casinos, economic collapse, humor, life in the big city, mainstream media, taxes, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

If Comcast’s CEO had sucked up to Teddy Roosevelt

Posted on January 24, 2015 by oddmanout215

"Did I hear you right? You want Time-Warner? You're a funny guy, Roberts.

‘Did I hear you right? You want Time Warner, too? You’re a funny guy, Roberts.’

Swamp Rabbit had an interesting thought today. You’ve got to wonder, he said, how many media companies Comcast CEO Brian Roberts would have gobbled up if recent U.S. presidents hadn’t been stooges for big business.

Net neutrality is only one of Comcast’s big battles right now: the other is getting approval for its merger with Time Warner Cable. Here, too, Comcast’s lobbyists have close connections in Washington. In fact, the [Wall Street] Journal reports that Comcast actually invited a senior antitrust official with the Justice Department to a party a month before it announced the merger. The official declined. Comcast has also had a relationship with President Obama for some time now. The Journal reports that Comcast employees contributed $337,000 to his reelection campaign and that he’s gone golfing with Roberts.

Imagine Roberts sucking up to Teddy Roosevelt to acquire even more riches and power. The rabbit thinks the bull moose, speaking softly, would have called Roberts a malefactor of great wealth, then whacked him with a big stick, probably a 5-iron.

“You’re way off,” I said. “Golf is the sport of corrupt cornballs. Teddy Roosevelt didn’t play golf. He played real sports, the kind that get your heart rate up.”

“Whatever,’ the rabbit replied. “Point is, there wouldn’t be no so-called relationship with Roberts. There would be a law against him.”

Footnote: Being a monopoly means never having to say you’re sorry when thousands of customers say you suck.

Posted in history, humor, mainstream media, Obama, plutocracy, sports | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Deflategate’ a bigger story than state of union

Posted on January 22, 2015 by oddmanout215

deflategate-425x239

I was on the porch at the shack with Swamp Rabbit, critiquing Barack Obama’s sixth State of the Union address. Obama was the embodiment of magical thinking for American liberals, an icon of hope because he was an articulate outsider. He turned out to be the consummate insider, a good pal of Jamie Dimon and other elite fraudsters, but put him onstage and he still sounds like a crusader against income inequality:

It’s now up to us to choose who we want to be over the next fifteen years, and for decades to come. Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?

I told the rabbit that the questions Obama posed have been answered many times since the Reagan years, when the income gap between the rich and poor already was widening. But our silver-tongued leader obviously enjoys re-asking it, especially now that both the Senate and House are in Republican hands and his opportunity to fight income inequality has come and gone.

“The man is a lame duck,” the rabbit said. “Don’t matter what he says or what you say. How ’bout you git down off that soapbox? There’s real news goin’ on out there.”

I pointed out to him that I was standing on his case of Wild Turkey, not on a soapbox. “What’s the real news?” I said.

It was “Deflategate.” Someone from the New England Patriots, prior to the team’s game against the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday, may have let some of the air out of the footballs the Patriots would use. Slightly deflated balls might be easier to throw and catch, so the balls may have been a factor in the Patriots’ lopsided victory. In other words, the Patriots have been accused of cheating. Stop the presses!

“That’s crazy talk,” I said. “Everybody knew the Patriots were going to win that game. You’re just mad because you didn’t have the money to bet on them, and because you lost money on them the week before. How come the Patriots are news but Obama isn’t?”

The rabbit twitched his nose and spat in the swamp. “Because nobody knows yet how the Patriots story is gonna turn out. That’s more than you can say for the Obama story.”

Posted in Congress, economic collapse, globalization, Great Recession, humor, mainstream media, Obama, plutocracy, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pope Francis vs. Bill Maher, pope of snark

Posted on January 18, 2015 by oddmanout215

Pope Francis in the PH

Poor Pope Francis, cast into eternal darkness by comedian Bill Maher, host of Real Time and unofficial head of the Church of the Latter Day Snarks:

“I was starting to really like this pope,” Maher said during his monologue on Friday. “He’s dead to me now. Oh yeah, f*ck the Pope. Look, George Bush said it: you’re either with us or against us. Apparently the Pope is not with us.”

Maher was disappointed that the Pope said religion should be off-limits for insults at the same time that he condemned the attack against the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo that left 12 staff members killed.

I say, f*ck Bill Maher. He prides himself on being politically incorrect but his knee-jerk rejection of ideas that clash with his point of view is just the opposite — politically predictable. His snarky act has gotten old.

I don’t agree with Pope Francis on this one — no institution should be “off-limits for insults” — but most of his other social criticisms are on target. Bottom line, he always takes the side of the poor against the obscenely wealthy, the oppressed against the oppressors. Which is more than you can say for Maher and his fellow limousine liberals, who have more in common with hardcore Republicans than with progressives.

Credit where it’s due: Swamp Rabbit just reminded me that Maher’s golden moment as a social critic came soon after 9/11, when he told Middle America that people who crash airplanes into skyscrapers are anything but cowards — that we were the cowards for “lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away.” “Now that was politically incorrect,” the rabbit said.

Correction: When Francis became pope, I thought he’d turn out to be another corrupt figurehead who wore funny hats. I was wrong, except for the hats.

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Seeking disaster’s bright side in Atlantic City

Posted on January 17, 2015 by oddmanout215

Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian is like Voltaire’s Pangloss, or Eric Idle in Life of Brian. He always looks on the bright side of life, even life in Atlantic City, which has been in a downward spiral for years thanks to corrupt and incompetent public officials and casino executives.

In his State of the City speech this week, Guardian argued that A.C. could get back on the winning track by diversifying its economy instead of continuing to depend almost entirely on revenues from crumbling casino businesses. Fittingly, Guardian made his speech in the ballroom at Caesars, whose parent company had just filed for bankruptcy protection.

Smart people warned A.C. to diversify decades ago, to make it more “family-friendly” before casinos became legal in nearby states and drew away a large percentage of the gamblers. It didn’t happen. Four of 12 A.C. casinos went dark in 2014, throwing thousands of people out of work. Gaming revenues have shrunk to almost half of what they were eight years ago. You might say Guardian is planning radical surgery for a patient who has already been wheeled to the morgue — unless you look on the bright side.

Give the mayor credit for appreciating the absurd and for giving a good pep talk, even though he hit a sour note when he said, “At least we are not Detroit.” This was like saying we are not London during the plague years, or Dresden after the fire bombs.

Atlantic City is many times smaller than Detroit and should have been much easier to fix. It has a beach and a boardwalk and an ocean, and it once had legions of chumps journeying from far and wide to blow their money on games of chance. It was a test case for the argument that legalized gambling was a good way to jump-start depressed communities.

So much for that argument. Casinos care about casinos, not communities. When they can no longer plunder, they run.

Posted in arts, casinos, down and out, economic collapse, humor, movies, pop music, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cat Stevens still can’t abide ‘blasphemy’

Posted on January 14, 2015 by oddmanout215

He didn't mean to hurt you... He's just a zealous guy.

He didn’t mean to hurt you… He’s just a zealous guy.

The hippie-era troubadour and Muslim convert Yusuf Islam, aka Cat Stevens, is on the comeback trail and already putting his foot in his mouth. For a recent Rolling Stone article, Yusuf was asked about his declaration that “[Salman Rushdie] must be killed. The Quran makes it clear: If someone defames the prophet, then he must die.” He said this way back in 1989, shortly after the Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa against Rushdie for blaspheming the prophet Muhammad in his novel The Satanic Verses.

One might assume that the 2015 version of Cat Stevens, singing and playing again in the secular world, would unambiguously disavow his old statements about Rushdie, who was forced into hiding for many years because of the fatwa. But one would be wrong. Instead, Yusuf told RS:

I’m a firm believer in the law… I was never a supporter of the fatwa [against Rushdie], but people don’t want to hear that because they keep saying that I believe in the law of blasphemy. All I’m saying is, how can you deny the Third Commandment? It’s an Islamic principle that you must follow the law of the land where you reside.

Swamp Rabbit and I scratched our heads when we read this. Was the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer saying that Rushdie shouldn’t be killed, period, or that he should only be killed in countries where Islam and the law are the same thing?

The rabbit took a swig of Wild Turkey — to help him think more clearly, I guess. He said, “Sounds to me like Yusuf ain’t honest enough to admit he talked like a jackass back in the day. He should apologize to Rushdie, or keep his yap shut.”

I almost agreed with the rabbit. Yusuf should be able to say whatever he wants to say, but no way would I ride the peace train with a guy who can’t quite renouce the ultimate form of censorship. Even if I could afford the ticket.

Posted in humor, mainstream media, pop music | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment