Question

What if every single Amazon worker in every country were to go on coordinated strike? What would register on Bezos' seismograph? Why not try it, just to see what would happen? What else is there to do?

Every now and again, one gets a flash of insight into the tenderness with which Jesus underwent his passion. This glimmer - just a touch of it changes a person - is not seen anywhere but in the way Jesus takes away your sins and your guilt. His tenderness is so great, so unfathomable, the first thing you realize is how little you have known Jesus.

Throughout his passion, Jesus was not stoical, he did not "tough it out", he did not steel himself, he was not resigned. Rather, the very bowels of his tenderness were opened like a broached cask of new wine.

Try to picture the way he spoke those words of salvation to the Good Thief.

Every man dies. Not every man really kills Grandma.

Gee whiz, thanks William Wallace!

LOL.

Anyways, that Braveheart meme I posted was made by Timothy Jones and featured on his facebook back in like 2012 or something, and I remembered it when I read this excellent essay by Sam Rocha: Braveheart Freedom Will Kill You.

My first encounter with a multi-level marketing pyramid cult was Primerica, over a decade ago.

I was kneeling in the second-to-last pew after Mass in communion, and I noticed in the farthest periphery of my eye someone coming in and kneeling down in the pew behind me. I knew right away that the person was intent on me, had looked at me, and was in fact kneeling there waiting for me.

I knew all that, instinctively, immediately. I knew this person was kneeling there pretending to pray. I was slightly annoyed, because now I was self-conscious about taking my time with Jesus; I waited a few more minutes, and figured I would just get up and go, because otherwise I would then be kneeling there pretending to pray.

And as I was going out through the vestibule, the man got up and approached me. He began talking; I can't remember what he said; at the time I was considering possibilities of other kinds of work. He gave me his card, but he wanted to make sure he could get in contact, so he wanted my number. It was all very non-aggressive I'm-interested-in-your-value-and-would-like-to-promote-you kind of thing. I gave him my work number.

We arranged a meeting at my place. He came with a woman. The day before the meeting I took the time to google Primerica, and pretty quickly decided I wasn't going to get involved, firmly made up my mind.

While I didn't tell them what I had read about the company - which reading was my first time learning about pyramid MLM - being the main reason why I didn't want to join, I didn't exactly lie to them either: I told them I'm not the kind of person who is good at just approaching people and visiting homes to make sales lectures and so on. That was in fact the honest truth.

When I said that, and that I didn't want to be involved, the lady became suddenly upfront and aggressive. I can't remember her exact words, but she was like, "Who did you talk to?! What did they say?!"

And in my mind I was like, "LOL WTF!"

I'm glad for the little encounter, because from that point forward I have been able to know pretty much right away when I am either approached by, or happen upon, a multi-level marketing pyramid cult.

So the Church closing worship spaces in conjunction with public state closures is PERSECUTION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM BY THE STATE!!!

But the Church opening its worship spaces in conjunction with public state openings is...what? RELIGIOUS FREEEEEDOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!! (said in the voice of Mel Gibson playing a complete bullshit and fictitious William Wallace).

Yeah, makes a lot of sense.

LOL

COVID-19 intimacy/romance advice

B.C.'s health official Dr. Bonnie Henry has instructed frisky love birds to leave space for the Holy Ghost:

“One of the people that I know in my life remarked to me that, ‘You know, now that we can’t go to bars and clubs and things, going out to the park and sitting at a distance and having picnics, those are the new romantic things people are doing.'”

I told you the 1950's were coming back.

Ha ha ha!

Just think: by publicizing Covid conspiracy theories about state imposition on the Church, you are calumniating your local bishop.

Huh, imagine that.

You might want to take that to confession.

COVID-19 is a Divine Punishment/Chastisement and we need to open the economy RIGHT NOW!!!

LOL

There is no such thing as "sacrificing the economy". But there is such a thing as sacrificing your ideology and your fear. That is, your fear of losing your idea of the economy.

An economy can be rebuilt/restarted/re-set literally overnight. This is why the Great Depression was not mere fallout. It was deliberately sustained through the contraction of the money supply. The money supply was squeezed more and more with each passing year.

The Great Depression wasn't some fallout from "inflation". There is no such thing as an economic fallout over a ten year period. It is impossible. The Great Depression was deliberately sustained. There. Was. No. Money.

There was no money because the private banks were squeezing it out of the system. It was asset stripping. The "calling of arrears". It was a decade-long power grab. And it wasn't that the power-grabbers were merely saving their own skins. The point of the parasite is to parasitize the host.

You think that the general population worrying about the economy has anything on the fears of the 1%? The 1% is the bracket that feels every tick on the seismograph over and above anyone else. The more power and wealth you attain, the more the fear of losing - no, not all of it - the more the fear of losing the least amount.

You can take that as a form of consolation. The widow with her mite will always be a billion times more generous than a billionaire donating even half his fortune.

If the criminals who sustained the Great Depression had done what was right instead, it would not have meant their impoverishment. Not at all. You see, they wanted to continue their wicked accumulation; they viewed their sacking of the nation as "automatic".

The Ring came to ME!

People mention the Great Depression like it was an economic failure/tragedy that happened in some once-upon-a-time that looked like a black and white photo in some high school textbook.

What we call the Great Depression was in truth a crime against humanity.

Money is a transaction token. Any value, any definition one wishes to say of money - "money is a unit of labour saved", etc. etc. - is already assumed under "transaction token".

Let me put it this way: when two people engage in a transaction with each other, are either of those two people, by engaging in the transaction, seeking to impoverish themselves?

We already bring and assume all the values. Money is a transaction token. And the 1% know and understand that fact very well.

What needs to happen in pandemic is to keep things puttering along. Cancel debts, mortgage payments/loans in whatever ways, whether it's total cancellation, or suspension until pandemic is completely past. And that, in tandem with some form of UBI (for the duration of pandemic), while shutting out from monetary aid the big corporation billionaires.

All that would be to ensure that those businesses and jobs are there to "return to". Ample money supply needs to be circulating in order to keep things puttering along while the country is in lockdown.

The powers don't want this for the simple reason that they know how good it will look. Imagine that: they know and fear that right-and-just emergency measures with a view towards solidarity in a crisis will outshine decades of so-called free market trickle down triple-ply financialized capitalism. LOL.

But this is guaranteed: if you "re-open" the economy while pandemic is still happening, you will crash the economy. That is an absolute guarantee. I'm sure those in favour of "re-opening" would later scapegoat the lockdown measures.

Also, but more importantly, if you "re-open" the economy while a pandemic is happening, you are confirming that economy beyond all dispute as an economy of death.

It is well within the power of the Republicans to do what is right. The truly sick thing is to realize they won't do it because it would cast a light back upon the previous decades, and people would start thinking new thoughts.

Reason is not the enemy of faith

Why? Essentially because reason comes from God.

Reason - rationality - is God-given. And He gave it to us for a reason: to bloody well use it.

The inability to use your reason because you are a broken individualist does not mean you have faith.

Viewing the pandemic through a political lens is a failure, and it leads to blind notions about what "peak" and "flattening the curve" mean, like these were magical green lights to go ahead and "open" things back up. People seem to be quite stupid. These are only means of controlling the rate of infection. If a second or third wave hits, it can be very much back to square one.

When the pandemic first broke out and crisis measures were just starting, a friend of mine said, "I think this will all blow over in a couple weeks."

And I was like, "Yep, you're in denial."

That's pretty much been my response to every conspiricist/fideist long-winded culture-war hazmat-brain condom cult pronouncement about everything from punishment/chastisement to hoax to lab conspiracy etc.

My response is, "Yep, you're in denial."

I'm not one to make predictions, but perhaps come August, or some time thereabout, we will be faced with two options:

1. Continued quarantine/isolation/business closure with the protection of jubilee/debt cancellation across the board and UBI

or

2. Social Darwinism (aka passive genocide).

The Christian Fundamentalists/Conspiricists/Fideists have planted themselves fully in Option 2.

Oh, by the way, anyone who says the Church has closed, or that the State has imposed these sanctions on the Church, is a damn liar.

Many, if not most, churches remain open for private prayer (with x marks the spot on pews for distancing) and confession is available by appointment, and in some cases outside parking lot where the priest is ten feet behind glass panel and disinfectant with paper towels is there for the penitent to wipe down after he or she is done and all out of ear shot, and all the online stuff as well.

And for every doom-and-gloom story about some Orwellian drone in the air and broad brush scenes of sheeple in lockdown of the State, there are 500 stories about heroism, ordinary kindness, openness, discovery, charity, faith, and all the rest.

Actually the ratio is probably more like 1000 light to 1 gloom. But for the conspiricist fundamentalists these sorts of stories are decidedly inconvenient to their doom-and-gloom narratives. And besides, they just spin the stories of light into that of the worldly humanist sheeple living under the illusion of the spirit of anti-christ.

They have their own firing pistol, their own firing time, and their own end-win.

The ordinary person looks at the facts and is like, "2 plus 2 equals 4, thus I need to do this and that in order to prevent such and such."

And the conspiricist is all like, "NOOO, WE'RE IN AN ORWELLIAN LOCKDOWN STATE AND IF YOU HAVE FAITH ENOUGH THEN 2 PLUS 2 EQUALS FIVE!!!!!"

LOL

Watched The Rise of Skywalker last night...

aaaannd...we're back to blood wounds from blasters and X-wings perfectly flyable after being under ocean water for like decades.

And I liked the rip off of the Oregon coast doubloon decoder scene from The Goonies. That was nice.

And Emperor Palpatine had...children. Huh, imagine that. But he's also this sort of undead guy in some kind of nondescript Dark City thingamajiggy situation.

But then I watched this scene,




and I was like IT'S COVID! IT'S COVID-19!!! They've been sublimating it to us! They've been planning this for years!

Haha!

Anyways, good luck with all that!

LOL

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!!!!!

NOOOO YOU CAN'T DO THAT DONTCHA KNOW YOU NEED HELP FROM THE ALIENORINOS NOOOOO!!!

haha stone on stone go brrr!!!

I freaking love this man...

"You know, limitations are not necessarily bad. They actually inspire creation."

"So one day I sat down here and I says this is where I want to build a house. I had absolutely no idea of what I was going to do. And I looked up there and I says oh there's the sky, there's the trees, I want that point of reference to be the beginning of the house. So I thought okay I want this curve, 'cause orientation and everything is perfect, and so then in one second that's established. Then I get up and I look up here and I says oh, I don't want that ceiling to be that high and coming this way, so I say lets bring it down to human scale, then I turn around and I say oh I want to look uphill. Twenty seconds the whole house was designed."

Many people have little idea of how actually medieval that way is, in the best and truest sense of the word. During the Era of the Collapsing Cathedrals (a truly apocalyptic time) the process was live and learn as we go. That's how the cathedrals and churches were designed and built. The actual finish of the process is quite open to any number of executions. But they started with a root measurement, which started with someone standing somewhere and saying I want this to go here, and I'll make the reference of this particular viewpoint the standard for my own private form of measurement.

This is totally accessible to anyone today to do. The medieval period wasn't some special secret code that was lost to history. Just watch the series Secrets of the Castle to find that out. They rebuilt from foundations an old castle in France using only the methods and means of the old day and age. And people are like "NOOOO is it even possible for anyone in our modernist age to restore Notre Dame Cathedral or build something like Notre Dame Cathedral NOOOOO!!!" LOL