Strange Days Indeed!

I apologize beforehand for this stream of consciousness post, I will try not to ramble too much. Originally I was going to post another bit of my writing while I try to find the next paranormal story or series to work on here and also while I try to get my new blog going. I just have to get some of these thoughts out of my head. I actually owe a great deal of the inspiration for this post to people whose blogs I link to. I was going to name each one individually, but in the end did not think that would be necessary, as I think there is also some cross-linking between the ideas people I link to are working on. Also some of the inspiration comes from people who comment here. I was also reminded of why I wanted to do this post by one of my own posts! The words that reminded me were not mine however, but Royston Lambert's from when I was doing the series on Hadrian and Antinous. In the 26 November post about Hadrian's succession to emperor Mr. Lambert's words were, "It was a strange and disconcerting beginning....".

This is the way I am starting to feel about the coming 'reign' of America/Rome's new emperor. I will definitely have to give a nod to Michael at Gosporn for the wording of this sentence! I would also like to give a quote from one of Jeff Well's posts that is also in his fantastic new book, Rigorous Intuition: What You Don't Know Can't Hurt Them. I did a post about this book on 20 December, here is the quote from Mr.Wells from his 31 July 2006 post, 'The Violent Bear It Away', "The Age of Nations is over, and many of the most powerful are no longer ruled by forces, which safeguard the interests of the state, let alone it's citizens. We're entering an extinction boundary, between the reign of mammals and the return of the jellyfish. What are the politics of jellyfish?" Wonderful wording and imagery as always Mr. Wells! The 'jellies' or the 'deep ones' as people of Lovecraftian bent might have it are coming back in great numbers. There are an ever increasing number of 'jellyfish' type UFOs in the sky also. I wonder if on some very deep sub/unconscious level of reality if the gods of old are coming back. When I look back over the events of the last ten years, especially the last eight-sometimes a sense of unreality hits me that is so strong, I say to myself, "Can this be real?" or "Is this really happening?"

Here is a breakdown of but a few of the events that have happened recently and things said about them, that have caused a deep sense of angst/loss inside my soul that leaves me wondering if humanity is going to make it past this 'sticky wicket' -a nod to Mother Shipton, I think? here, we are in. Locally to my dismay I found out a bit of news that I wish I had never seen or heard about. On 23 December 2008 in Chandler, Arizona-a city that I live very close to, a mentally disturbed man followed two very young boys as they were heading to a park to play and beat them both to death with a baseball bat. How sick is that? How will the families of these two little boys ever recover? And of course its not just this-its every time you turn around there is some horrid new example of human brutality to humans in the news. Just a matter of hours ago I saw a headline on Yahoo news where a French synagogue has been firebombed -no doubt due to the Israeli pounding of Hamas in recent weeks. Here I am not pointing fingers-I think this is where people always go wrong. Only the "Big Pine Cones" in Russian wordage are to blame for the overall horrific state of affairs in the world-although we, the 'small people' each and every one of us, no matter our rank on the social totem pole, race, sexual orientation, religion etc may all have to bear a kind of collective guilt for allowing 'leaders' like the current batch to rule over us. That's not enough to worry about-OK -let us start small and work our way up to big issues-although the small and the big may intermingle quite a bit here.
1) Job growth in the United States during 43s tenure was just 2%-and that is if you believe government stats-it was the smallest 8 year gain on record and GDP grew at the slowest rate since the Truman administration (synch wink here :-). A Moody's economist said, "We really went nowhere for almost 10 years." I say No Shit Sherlock! Oh well they can always print more bucks right? If anyone has the least bit of grasp of financial history they will know where all fiat currencies eventually end up -which leads to
2) William Buiter, a former Monetary Policy Committee member for the Bank of England from June 1997 to May 2000 believes that the plug is about to be pulled on the US dollar. He thinks that an increase in government spending will be catastrophic and foreign investors will not only turn away from the buck, but also US backed assets including government bonds.
3) Bernard Madoff, the man who allegedly committed the largest financial crime in history will not go to jail as he awaits trial. Mr. Madoff will be able to await hiw trial in his tony Manhattan penthouse. This really galls me to no end-here we live in a country-and indeed a world where homelessness is being criminalized. A man stealing food to feed his starving family can go to jail for stealing a fucking (scuse the lingo please-anger here) loaf of bread-but the greedy pigs who run our world continually pull shit like this and get a slap on the wrist. All equal under the law-haha-what total garbage! Anyone who believes this about the USA in the 21st century needs to come out of their caves.
4) Russia is a little pissed off right now -to put it mildly. A new deal to start supplying the Ukraine with gas just fell through. The Ukraine, Poland and Bulgaria (the poorest EU member) have been hardest hit by this, but the Bear's displeasure has rattled nerves all over the continent. Topolanek, the Czech prime minister and other European officials are clearly unnerved as lights in factories have blinked out and homes went without heat in some of the new European Union member states of east Europe. This is also a very cold winter and even if Russia decides to turn on the gas it will take 3 days to repressurize the pipelines. Oh-did I say cold? Well ole Mr. Sun just might have something to do with this and this leads to
5) "Its quietest before the storm" applies to the solar maximum also think scientists at NASA and the period between 2004 to 2008 has been unusually quiet for our dear Helios-but not to worry-hehe NASA thinks our friendly little star is going to make up for this in the 2010-2012 timeframe with "the mother of all solar maximums". MFM wonders if we are not about to be nuked into being crispy critters if Mr. Sun is going to do it for us! O -I said nukes! well not to worry here folks!
6) Think about this set of countries at each others throats as critical resources dwindle and the food supply gets to about a thousandth or millionth of the level it is at now-geez right when there are the most people living-good timing there! USA, China, Russia, Iran, Israel, India, Pakistan and lets never forget Mr. Hair in North Korea-but not to worry he seems like a good bloke(wink) and that isn't even all of the nations in the nuclear-can I say it this way now-or do I have to wait until 20 January and say noookular til then!

Do not worry fellow citizens of the world-I am sure our valiant leaders have it all figured out for us -hey they did such a good job on September 11, Katrina, the boxing day tsunami in 2004, Sudan, Ethiopia, Iraq, Afghanistan, a fucking superb job on 'noookular' containment-wouldn't you say? How about the global financial meltdown-hey thumbs up there boys-U B Smart! It just makes my little ole heart pitter patter with joy thinking that this bunch of clowns are going to be guiding us "to the light" as food rations drop, the global economy tanks, climate change gets more severe, more and more nations get the bomb. Like I say NOT TO WORRY!

Sorry folks-had to get this out of my system. This is why you will not find MFM doing politics too much! I am trying to find a nice paranormal series to get going to get my mind off things and also work on my other blog. Tomorrow if I am able to post I might have to subject you to my writing:-). Peace and be well all of you! Special thanks goes to wise woman, Michael Skaggs, Xdell, Jeff Wells, Anadae, Nina, Michael at Gosporn, Aggie, Ben-Emlyn Jones, aferrismoon and all of the other wonderful, funny, intelligent and thoughtful people I link to and follow and that comment here! I have to give the most thanks and hugs and love to my mom, dad, brother, payro and clementina-without who, neither me nor MFM and Dev's Questions would exist! Don't go to the following link unless you want more bad news http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/09/soviet-doomsday.html