Archive for November, 2022

Perhaps the fastest (though not the pleasantest) way to journey to the “other side” is via an NDE or Near Death Experience. NDEs are a transformative event where the souls of temporarily flatlined stiffs leave their bodies, behold otherworldly dimensions and then are miraculously ushered back to their once lifeless bodies. Some say an NDE removes all fears about death and replaces it with an unshakably affirming knowingness, more real than anything found on Earth.

• Pinterest user Sally Klein, who had a near death experience when a blowfish recipe went terribly wrong, said of her NDE, “OMG. It was like you were permanently perfumed with pumpkin spice. Can you imagine? It was no longer seasonal. It was Pumpkin Spice fulltime! Fulltime all the time!”
• Comic Con fanboy Calvin Turlock said of his Marvel-ous NDE, “The Marvel Universe is real. Superpowers are real – I took down Dwayne Johnson.”
• Amazon boss Jeff Bezos recounted his NDE, “It was amazing. I compared my financial situation with the Almighty’s and it turns out I have more money than God…no wait. That was my regular life here on earth.”

 

When we go over to the other side it seems we all go where we expect ourselves to go. Hmmmm. What if we had no expectation? Where would we go then?  

 

 

Whose Side Are You On?

 

Well currently we’re all on this side – at least for now. But eventually we’ll all be on the other side where we discover it’s all one; and there really isn’t, and never has been, an “other side.” Are we clear? NDEs are just the miraculousness of experiencing everything, everywhere, all at once. But is all this heavenly hyperbole really miraculous? – Meh. It’s only miraculous to us earthbound creatures pondering it all from this side.

 

 

It’s Just a Job

 

I’m sure the entities that superintend this cosmic function of bringing souls into and out of this world, don’t come home teeming with tender stories of mythic miracles like NDE experiencers do. More likely they come home smelling of the souls they’re shuttling back and forth all eternity – like a fishmonger might come home smelling of fish or a florist like flowers. It’s a hazard of the profession. Hustling souls in and out of the 3^rd rock from the sun is just a job for some. This supposedly extraordinary bookkeeping process of managing departed souls (of which NDEs are probably just a kinked glitch in the system) is only a portion of the overall operating system of the universe and merely the bailiwick these superintendents oversee. (You don’t have to believe any of this, but it’s probably true anyway.)

 

We poor slobs however, marvel in wonderment at this-couldn’t-be-happening-to-little-ole-me experience. NDEs are not something special happening to you, for you. I surmise NDEs are just part of a process to move souls in and out of bodies around the cosmos. There’s no reason to feel special or anointed if it happens to you. Don’t underplay it either. Just consider it. You’re a big part of the whole shootin’ match whether you think you’re tragically inconsequential or fabulously magnificent. You see the truth doesn’t require your belief. And I mean that in a good way. You don’t have to believe in something in order for something to happen. For example, I don’t believe in Santa Claus, but I still get presents at Christmas.  

 

On this earth, where we tend to get lost in the need to make permanent our personal identity, we’re regularly privy to maybe 2% of all the magnificence operating on the other side. Why this magnificence of the hereafter is so apparently distant and hidden from us I’ll never know. But it is – generally. The hereafter (hereafter referred to as the hereafter) is kinda like electricity. Most of us relate to electricity through on and off switches; barely cognizant of the humming transmission lines, generating plants and the eons it took to produce the gas, coal or oil (fossil fuels) firing them. The hereafter contains all the hidden electrical infrastructure. We aren’t allowed to see all of God’s electrical magnificence so we can stay focused on our jobs here on earth – whatever that may be. This model I present might not accurately describe matters, but it does provide 2 dimes – I mean “a paradigm.” That’s my 2 cents anyway. Moving on. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Wilma Cantwell groaned to death after reading my pun: “I was going to write this list in Times New Roman font, but it’s really not my type.”
2. In Compton, Dylan Barrett Browning was crushed to death in a vicious drive-by poetry slam. Investigators say there was no rhyme or reason to it.
3. Swami Baba Ganouj died when, after an out-of-body experience, he couldn’t get back in to his body again. In 3 attempts he failed to identify all the bicycles in a cosmic Captcha Code and got locked out. Enjoy the Astral plane Baba.
4. 

   Picture I always include in my resume. So what if I haven’t worked in 9 years. It’s who I am.

   In 1985 Sheena Loman was flabbergasted to death after sampling New Coke

5. A Marilyn Monroe impersonator died when she tried to reenact the famous subway dress scene from The Seven Year Itch and an unexpectedly powerful burst of air from the subway grating lifted her and her billowing dress into the path of an oncoming bus.
6. Finn Atwater died from being morbidly alphanumeric. Her Pinterest User Name was $5@H²0 (“$5” = a fin and “@H²0” = Atwater). RIP Finn.
7. In 1952, the actress Rita Hayworth was instantly vaporized by paparazzi when they simultaneously took 22 glimmering shots of her. She was gone in a flash.
8. Caleb Cushing of New York City turned to salt after accidentally seeing his grandmother doing naked hot yoga. He briefly became a pillar of the community – a salt pillar – till that same powerful burst of air that killed the Marilyn Monroe impersonator, blew Caleb to smithereens.
9. Patrick Dunder, died when he was peering down a railroad track to make sure no train was coming and the barricade arm came down and conked him on the head.
10. An absent-minded Grateful Deadhead dyed today when he realized he was wearing a white t-shirt. He tie-dyed.

While touring in Jerusalem, I got into a confusing conversation with my tour guides Said Abdullah and his brother Aviv.

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I asked Said if people from Yemen were friendly.

Said said, “There are no enemy Yemeni. Any enmity with the Yemeni is cockamamie.”

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Me: You’re sure there are no enemy Yemeni?

Said: Yemen, I’m Syrias.

Me: You’re Syrias? OK. Does your brother know about all this?

Said: No, but I plan to Tel Aviv.

Me: Interesting. Well allow me to Babylon. Did you know that when you tell a lie it’s “instant bull?”

Said: No. Istanbul is in Turkey.

Me: It is? I can’t keep my Bosporus Strait. Do you remember that Beatle song where they sing ♫Strawberry Fields Nothing Israel ♫?”

Said: Iraq my brain, but I don’t know that song. However I do know the Beatle song where they sing, ♫You say Dubai and I say Hello ♫.

Me: After this can we visit the pyramids in Egypt?

Said: Well we could go, or we Kuwait.

Me: What do you think of the pyramids at Giza?

Said: The pyramids are perfect, but the Sphinx stinx. See the thing of it is is israel wants us to stay.

Me: Is it true that when in Jerusalem you do as the Jerusalemanians do

Said: This Israeli true.

Me: What Israeli true?

Said: That we are not going to the pyramids. We went once and got ripped-off by a fellow tour guide – Egypt us.

Me: OK. I’m just glad the COVID scare is over. Da masks were Syria-sly bad.

Said: Yes. Damascus, Syrias.

Me: Oman. That Israeli true. Hey Said, what do you call someone’s father who works for Ziploc?

Said: That’s easy. Baghdad.

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My father’s peculiarities were prodigious. Of course when you’re young and in thrall of your father, you see no peculiarities – it’s just Saturday with dad. So I never really noticed them till I got older. I knew he was a smart guy, but in many ways he was also a functioning non sequitur. And I attribute most of his eccentricities to his mother Helen’s benign malfeasance (I think she dropped him on his ego – a lot). Inside the bosom of this bleak and scolding woman beat a stingy heart pumping out precious little affection. Consequently, my forsaken father looked askance at all he surveyed and fought mightily to compartmentalize his wounded emotions. The poor guy. It turns out that choosing the right parents is a very important thing. Why so little is done about this is beyond me.

 

 

My dad was a depressed person, but he never visited his dysfunction on others. No “woe is me” from that guy. He just withstood the incongruities of life, waiting for someone, or some entity, to respond to his bedrock assertion, “I never asked to be born.” My dad’s philosophy was a slightly darker version of Disney’s. Whereas Disney might be the happiest place on earth, to my dad, life was “the inconvenient-est place on earth.” In his eyes life was such a bother, for something so inconclusive. For better or worse, some of his nuanced take and skewed analysis didn’t fall too far from the tree.

 

 

My dad was not a hater. He was a withstander. He was the Chuck Norris of enduring things he’d rather not contend with. And I loved him because, because…oh, I don’t know why. It’s just what you do in this universe of God’s trickle-down Lovenomics. I mean the Almighty is rollin’ in the stuff and we (his adoring children), residing far down stream, get the briny runoff – just enough to hydrate us and motivate us to search for its source in hopes of further slaking our cosmic thirst. Enough I say! I rise up and proclaim “Occupy God,” but that’s perhaps another story I’ll write at another time. For now, this quaint and foible-filled feature is what I want to share with you.   

 

 

I’ve chosen to highlight only one of Dad’s oddities because if I listed them all, this chronicle would need to be retitled The Never Ending Story. The following goofily aberrant father-son playdate was indicative of his refracted perspective. In 1970, in the midst of their divorce, my caring, warm-hearted mother arranged a Saturday night sleepover for me with my father. She had to arrange it because he sure as hell wasn’t capable of organizing it himself. Though he may have desired some quality time with his adolescent son, he was genetically incapable of doing anything that wasn’t statutorily required or absolutely necessary for survival. Bowing to convention would be anathema to this man of apathetic appetites – plus it would be way, way too inconvenient. Read the rest of this entry »

1. 

   Self e-face-ing?

   The birth rate would drop to 0

2. You’d hear a lot more “Y’know, you remind me of somebody”
3. People would be a lot nosier
4. 10 Most Wanted Posters would generate a lot of false positives
5. It would’ve been a lot easier to chisel Mount Rushmore
6. Spice Girls a lot less popular
7. In the TV show Streets of San Francisco, it’d be real hard to tell Karl Malden from Michael Douglas
8. Stunt doubles would no longer have to hide their faces
9. There’d be no cute Beatle
10. Christianity in jeopardy. Worshipers would find it hard to pray to Karl Malden.
11. We’d all have faces only a mother could love
12. Porn industry would come to a screeching halt
13. The Phantom of the Opera wouldn’t bother with a mask
14. 90% of doctors would go into rhinoplasty.
15. Stocks of facial recognition companies would tank
16. The movie Titanic would definitely lose its edge
17. Police sketch artists…out of business
18. Interest in Kate Upton would drop significantly.
19. And of course, Chuck Norris would still look like Chuck Norris