Consider that Satan wants to create as much chaos on Earth among humans as possible, to make people unhappy and to grab souls for himself.  The Satanic solution is to prohibit abortion.  Force the heavenly powers to work sabbaths and all to crank out souls for  crack babies and AIDS babies, incest and rape conceptions, souls for babies who aren’t wanted, aren’t cared for, aren’t educated, babies who can create crime, war, disease, poverty, famine and all of the evil and sin Satan needs to destroy the beauty of the Earth and shatter human aspirations for peace, love, and contentment.  As further proof, remember that an innocent soul not tempted to sin goes directly to his creator God (perhaps after a period of dry cleaning), a better place than prison, hospital, or hell.  A soul aborted is a soul lost to Satan, but one unwanted and forced to be born can produce unspeakable evil, to do glory to Satan and mock a caring, benevolent God.

This mythical interpretation is obviously correct.  Consider that all of the Satanic anti-choice fetus people prayed that an American president not be elected who believed a woman has a right to reproductive freedom.  They abraded their knees and polished their prayer beads to beseech God to elect a bigot president.  The very heavens rang with the noise of their prayers and rantings.  God either did not listen, or disagreed with their position.  Their candidates were defeated, and pro-choice was affirmed as the law of the land.   Never has the will of God been so clearly seen.  God saw through Satan’s motives and rejected the prayers of those who would let Satan get his paws on God’s little souls.

Totally undaunted by this most obvious expression of the divine will, the unwitting forces of darkness have increased their efforts to control those who disagree with them.   Indifferent to the laws of God and man, and the rules of basic humanity and courtesy, they have engaged in a reign of terror against doctors, facilities, and personnel dedicated to following the law and assisting women who don’t want a conception to become a child.  The tactics have included bombings, threats, harassment, intimidation, assaults, and now, finally and predictable, cold blooded murder.  A gently healer was shot in the back by one of Satan’s converts who wanted to stop the doctor from helping women.  The murderer’s fellow travelers have raised funds for him and have implied, and sometimes stated, that the murder was morally correct.  There was despair in heaven and rejoicing in hell.  Satan had succeeded in making evil appear to be good.

But God is not mocked.  He who sits in the heavens will laugh them to scorn.  Satan’s siege against dignity and humanity will be long, but reason will prevail.  If it does not, these demonically possessed people will kill everyone who disagrees with them on abortion, and then turn their efforts to those who believe in evolution, who read forbidden books, to all of those who do not want to be ruled by evil people purporting to speak for God.

Defend our constitution.  Speak out against wrong misguided mythology.  You must.  For your own safety’s sake.

Don’t tell them about the I.U.D.  It has been sluffing fertilized eggs for years, and has thus far escaped their notice.

 

Edwin F. Kagin (c)

 

From the Archives.

Good thing this is all settled and over now and that

there is no longer a problem, huh?

ON GENITAL BASED MORALITY (GBM)

Morals are manners, and manners are subject to change.

Mrs. Carolyn Benton Cockefaire

As this blasphemy goes to press in early February of 1999, the next to the last year of this millennium, a sideshow skirmish in the American Religious Civil War (ARCW) whimpers to an end.  This fanatic digression from reason (fortunately doomed to failure–for now at least) was flamed by attempts of the storm troopers of the religiocencratic forces to kick out the President of the United States because they deem him immoral and unfit to govern because of what he and a human of female persuasion did with his and her genitals, and that he then allegedly lied concerning the doing thereof.

Voluntarily, with the consent of the victims, our nation has managed to become a joke among nations because the piously powerful refuse to recognize or admit that human beings are sexual beings, and not necessarily monogamous ones.  In furtherance of this fool’s folly, they ground their understanding of morality on a vain attempt to define humans as somehow outside of the natural world (the only one we know) and apart from other living creatures with whom it is imperfectly shared.   If humans were monogamous, they would behave in monogamous ways, as do monogamous animals.  To cope with not being monogamously made, rules have been invented requiring monogamous behavior from non-monogamous creatures. These made up rules, that human nature deplores, are defined and presented as the unchangeable moral law of god.  In consequence, pretentiously pious persons lie about sex and delude themselves about morality by genitally defining goodness, and damning, as morally defective, all who dissent, detract, or disobey–including our head of state who also just happens to champion a variety of humanistic causes his detractors undauntingly damn.

Incredibly, the miserable monolithic moronic moral code of those ethical paupers who would destroy us and our democracy in the ARCW is based on genitals (not to be confused with gentiles).  This is indeed curious in that sex (not gender–gender is a term of grammar), would be hard pressed to get along without genitals.  Where there is sex, there are genitals.  It’s god’s plan; “male and female created he them.”  The god the stories say ordained procreation wisely gave created creatures the tools with which to procreate.  These tools of god’s plan are the very genitals conjugally challenged sufferers of moralist madness abhor.  Rejection of dreaded essential genitals is the center, the very essence, of their nutty notions of moral law. This idiotic and evil short circuiting of reason, this delusional deduction of dunces, may be understood as Genital Based Morality (GBM).

GBM is an infantile system of primitive simplistic thinking, involving magical make believe, and is thus quite easy to understand. Abortion, homosexuality, pornography, prostitution, unmarried sex, oral sex, sodomy (maybe Gomorra), non-monogamous sex, “adult” videos, nudist clubs, nude beaches, nude dancing–anything that  touches upon, views, uses, or has anything whatsoever to do with, genitals, is immoral and bad.  See how easy it is.  Further inquiry, reasoning, or evidence is superfluous and irrelevant. If it is genital, it is bad.  Barbie and Ken must not have genitals lest they display the ultimate reality of being human, and thereby educate, confuse and corrupt little children who should be taught to believe the world works in ways other than it does. Legislatures and judges should let a relgiocrazy kill their kid by denying medical treatment, yet prosecute nudist clubs for permitting people to walk around in the uniform of the day of Eden. Steal from widows and orphans if you must, so long as you don’t do the dirty in forbidden ways, or watch others do it, or pay for it, or, god help us all, enjoy it.  Rather think of England and canning apricots than be damned by those damned genitals causing forbidden thoughts or, in cases of extreme sin, actually giving their owner(s) forbidden pleasure.  GBM subordinates every other consideration regarding personal and group thought and behavior to this prime (not primal) directive.

How did we come to this unhappy state?  Scene shifts to downtown Baghdad, Iraq.  Where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet.  Garden of Eden.  Year the first.  Setting of a bronze age myth that has done much mischief whenever and wherever believed.  Adam and Eve were set up by god.  They were naked.  They didn’t know this was bad because god didn’t tell them. God knew it was bad, but they didn’t.  So there they were, the first nudists, as innocently unclothed as the heathen participants in the first Olympic Games,  put naked in paradise by a voyeuristic god in a place where snakes talked and had legs and told the truth about knowledge not killing people.  Then Eve got Adam, per snake advice, to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, of which god had told them not to eat.  And he did, and she did, and women have been blamed for this ever since, for god was displeased that they had disobeyed, listened to that snake, and acquired the nasty knowledge that the only human genitals on earth were shamefully exposed.  God then killed some innocent animals to clothe our first parents so they would not be in a state of shame with their genitals showing.  Some believed this story and taught others to believe it.  Some believe it today.  Thus was Genital Based Morality (GBM) born.  We don’t know what god wore

It is unclear just how A & E could have been expected to know it was wrong not to obey god before they had knowledge of good and evil.  But religion need not be rational. The lesson is that knowledge is bad, and that nakedness is shameful.  With full knowledge of their shameful state of genital visibility, Adam and Eve were booted out of Eden by a loving and all knowing god, a god without whose knowledge and approval no sparrow falls.  Ever since, those predestined to sin by this same all merciful god have been damned to eternal suffering for sinning.  GBM has never claimed to be logical or fair.  Neither has god.  Actually he/she has, but this claim is not supported by the record.

Secular humanists, and others who think an ethical system should extend beyond the groin, are condemned by those who see themselves as righteous and saved.  The self-righteous contend non-believers cannot be good people, for such sinners lack a proper sense of shame and guilt derived from an alleged moral base. This fantasizes an objective, defined, findable, and absolute moral authority that tells good people what is right and what is wrong, a moral compass without which there can be no values.  In this understanding, it is a lack of belief in “natural law” (a misunderstood term) that has spread from godless humanism to science, to classroom, to generate the corrosive moral rot that is wrecking our society, denying us the intervention of a displeased god, who we offend with abortion, homosexuality, unwed sex, pornography, and god help us all, evolution.  Oddly, all of these but the evolution thing seem to have something to do with sex.  Come to think on it, the evolution stuff does too.  The bottom line says if you aren’t guilted out by GBM you are a bad person who is going to spend eternity in Hell.

GBM is a relatively recent religious repression. Apart from the Eden tradition, religious teachings of the past (including lots of really sexy bible stories they don’t tell you about in Sunday school) haven’t made anything like this much of a fuss over genitals.  Indeed, they seem to have been rather favored–both kinds (genitals, not religions–there are lots more than two kinds of religions).  The ancient Greeks made much larger than life models of them (genitals) and put them (the models) on display at public theatres.    Such a display in modern moral middle America would get you sent to the cooler in seats of learning like Cincinnati.  Genitals probably haven’t changed much, but attitudes toward them have.  The fault is neither generic nor genital.   It is the miasmal  moral morass of garbled glib guilt gilded gibberish packaged, proclaimed, and peddled as the will of god given unto lesser mortals by those who interpret the truths of natural law.  You know, people like Dr. Laura, Henry Hyde, and the bigots who run “Right to Life,” claim to be “family friendly,” seek “answers in genesis” (not genitals) and, because of the GBM that guides their petty lives,  want to kick our President out of the White House, as the naked A & E were kicked out of Paradise (not to be confused with Club Paradise) because they acquired knowledge and an awareness of being attached to their genitals.

Those waging the ARCW claim our head of state lied under oath about his private conduct with his privates.  Ah, wonder if they know of the manner of swearing when one swore a mighty oath before the holy Patriarchs of the bible?  Abraham and Jacob’s method of swearing required the placing of “his hand under the thigh.” This involved, I swear, the person giving the oath putting his hand on the genitals of the one to whom he swore.  This practice gave weight to the oath.  Don’t know why this method was adopted, or when it was abandoned (am just glad it was).  At least GBM had a real, if different, meaning back then.  Maybe the President was attempting the reintroduction  of this ancient practice.  Don’t know how women took oaths, or if such was even permitted.  After all, who could trust any woman after Eve?  My Helen has a bumper sticker that says, “Eve was framed.”

Genitals were so important in the bible that trimming the male version via circumcision was a religious requirement.  And it is written in the word of god that a eunuch cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, nor can one who has had his “stones crushed,” i.e., had his testicles smashed.  Doesn’t seem right or fair somehow, but it does show how much genitals meant to those who penned those bronze age writings.  Jesus later suggested that it would be better if a man cut off his genitals.  Some early church fathers, like Origen, did just that.  Don’t know if the “crushed stones” rule applied and kept him out of heaven.  That would have been a shame indeed.  After Jesus, genitals did not seem so highly regarded, but they were made even more important by being used to define all aspects of the moral law–by becoming the basis of good and evil.  Maybe Jesus started GBM.  Whoever did was probably scared of women.

The pre-GBM bible book, the Song of Songs, sometimes erroneously called the Song of Solomon, has quite a bit to say about genitals.  It is Jewish, and pre-Christian.  Puritans, not daring to recognize it for what it is, say this bible story is an allegory touching on Christ’s love for his church.  It is actually an erotic work (seems Egyptian, really) about a man’s lust for his sister, touching on his desire to climb her branches and, like a young roe,  graze about her breasts and genitals.  Christ’s love for the church, indeed!  How much in general genital denial these clever clerics be, especially those proudly proclaiming the cults of celibacy and cloister.

Consider as an alternate approach, one in marked contrast to modern GBM, the ancient Egyptian creation myth.  It was a bit different from the one taught in Christian Sunday schools.  The great god Rah ejaculated (yes, from his genitals) the stars and all that is–sort of a climactic cosmology.  The Egyptian version of the Holy of Holies held a statute of the god with erect phallus.  Priestesses and priests held sacred ceremonies reenacting, with the pharaoh, the living god, the comic climax.  Now how’s that for a religion?  Gives a whole new meaning to the idea of handmaidens.  Archeological evidence of these religious beliefs and practices were suppressed by modern puritans who displayed some of the sacred religious art of the Egyptians with an informational museum type sign placed, like a fig leaf, over the essence of the religious symbolism of the pictorial depiction of the turgid pharaoh, the living god.  Only by moving the sign could the true meaning of the mysteries of Egyptian religion be revealed, truths once commonly accepted and viewed openly by all, including little children who were not taught to be embarrassed or shamed by genitals.  After all, reasoned our unsaved predecessors, where would we be without them?

Then there was sacred prostitution.  And there were seasonal approved-by-prevailing-local-religions orgies to teach the crops and herds to reproduce and grow, and to encourage the gods to let them do so.  The great men of the bible had many wives, with no complaint from god.  When king David was old, they put two young women in bed with him to keep him warm.  Lot’s daughters got him drunk and seduced him.  If a king could not get an erection, it was felt he could no longer rule.  No impeachment plot nonsense over sex then.  Genital shame is a modern Christian phenomenon.  GBM has replaced ethics.  Denial has become duty and holiness has been traded for honor. Repression has pushed reason from the banquet table of life.   Moralists who think everyone should follow their GBM are generally good persons in the worst sense of the word.  If they tell you they are “born again Christians,” thank them for the warning.  They are usually more tedious and venal the second time around.

Do you find all the moralizing and genital ranting going on these days just a little silly?  Good.  It is.  GBM denies the realities of the world. The preacher doesn’t tell on the deacon when they meet in the whorehouse.   Everybody lies about sex.  Under oath too.  Ask any divorce lawyer.  This is because of GBM and the failure to admit that we, who some say are made in the image of god,  are not all monogamous creatures, and monogamous or not, we tend to like sex (the exceptions to this are beyond the scope of this discourse). This causes problems when a moral code is imposed and accepted that denies our mortal nature.  Our kind would have become extinct long ago if we had followed such a moral law and actually repudiated the idea of deflowering virgins. Enforcement of rules that try to cancel out the very chemistry of life will be about as successful as attempting to plow the sea or baptize a cat.

So we laugh when moralists like Dr. Laura get caught with their pants down in indiscreet photos–from a less famous time–posted on the internet, or when those who accuse the President are found to have themselves tasted forbidden fruit.  Hate and hypocrisy are the twin tyrannies that fuel GBM.  Surely there is more to living a good life than making ethical judgments based on genital repression.  Consider, dear reader, if you would care to spend eternity in the company of those who do.

If history teaches anything, it is that moral judgments change.  This applies to everything from sexual behavior to smoking in public (some say they smoke after sex–others say they never noticed).  Today’s customs can become tomorrow’s perversions, as we make taboo the thrills of our fathers, or heap honor on persons and ideas they hated.  Things change.  That’s the one universal truth.

And there are, to be sure, decent monogamous (not to be confused with monotonous) humanistic humans.   There are also humans who can eat spaghetti with chop sticks.  This does not mean we should outlaw forks.

Edwin Kagin ©

 

 

 

THE RIGHTS OF THE UNCONCEIVED

 

Let’s add to irrationality

To nonsense unbelieved

And urge, against free human choice,

The rights of the unconceived

 

The unborn, however unwanted,

Have protestors who defend

Who will not take their misery home

But make sure their paths begin

 

The maimed, the pained, the hopeless

Have rights of tragedy unrelieved

Yet we ignore a great moral sore

The plight of the unconceived

 

We must have laws with iron braced jaws

To insure new lives are received

It should be a crime at any time

To deny life to the unconceived

 

Should fertile lad and fertile lass

Henceforth with any passion pass

Consummation must be achieved

To insure the rights of the unconceived.

 

 

Edwin F. Kagin (c)

THE CASE OF THE FROZEN EMBRYO

Bye baby banting

Soon you’ll need decanting

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

 

A biology student named Delf

 Scientifically played with himself

And when he was done

He labeled it “Son”

And filed it away on the shelf. 

 

Anon

 

Nonsense struck another blow

In the case of the frozen embryo

A Judge has ruled them human life

And awarded custody to the wife

In the divorce it was her wish

To get the goo from the petri dish

Where the little ones were conceived

Where marital passion was relieved

The children went to a frozen tomb

To await resurrection in some womb

There will have to be child support

Ordered by paternity court

To keep the frozen kids alive

Until it’s time they should revive

But it really must be nice

To keep your babies lives on ice

Frozen solid until you say

You are ready to let them play

But there must be other fears

For those who wipe their icy tears

If they should be flushed away

Or allowed to thaw and rot one day

Would a murder charge obtain

Against the one who sent them down the drain

And what should their birthday be

Those conceived in petri

Do the cold days of gestation count

For little souls who just want out

Of a limbo that won’t start

The beating of a little heart

Of course there is no heart to beat

Or even tiny fetus feet

There are no bitsy toes on embryos

And what sex nobody knows

So you cannot even name

Those cells that all look just the same

Ah, the problems that occur

When rational thought and reason err.

Edwin F. Kagin (c)

 

“Rap” is an ancient form of rhythmical speech. One who delivers a modern performance of such is known as a “Rapper,” and what the Rapper does is known as “Rapping.”

One practitioner of this art is improbably known as Cee Lo Green. What kind of a name, might one wonder, is Cee Lo? But all names are culturally connected to something or other. What about improbable names like Edwin, Pamela, or Vergilius? To criticize the dude for the name would be an ad hominem logical fallacy and probably racial. What kind of name is Green?

Cee Lo Green what did you mean? What did you mean oh Cee Lo Green? Did you mean to be obscene? Is your religion just plain mean?

John Lennon and I were born in the same year. He is 48 days older than me. Among the many differences between us, perhaps the most important just now is that I am alive and he is dead. And this has been our relationship for the past 31 years.

You have no doubt heard quite a bit recently about “standing” to bring cases in court. Here is a good example. No person, or organization, that I know of has standing to contest Cee Lo’s admitted modification of John Lennon’s masterpiece “Imagine” when he sang this work in a public display at Times Square, on New Year’s Eve that celebrated the arrival of 2012, said by some to be the last year for the life of our planet and for all that thereon dwell.

And note just how the words were changed in the Cee Lo presentation.

John Lennon had written: “nothing to kill or die for / and no religion too.”

The Cee Lo version said: “nothing to kill or die for / and all religion’s true.”

It is a sad fact that Helen Kagin is not alive to confront this outrage. “Imagine” was her favorite song and she adopted it as a theme song for Camp Quest. I warned her that she might get sued for copyright violation, but she didn’t care and did it anyway and no one ever complained. Helen would have been on them faster than a priest on an altar boy.

However, if you do not have some legal right to the song, you have no right, or “standing,” to complain in court. The change in wording from “and no religion too” to “and all religion’s true” is way beyond accidental. It is a deliberate change, and it is, in my view, wrongful, but I also know I cannot really do anything about it

Or, it could perhaps be argued that Cee Lo had not looked carefully at the words of a song he knew he would be singing on television from Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

And, that change of three words changes the entire meaning of the song. We know that, and he knows that. The idea was to do some religious implantations into Americans of the idea that religion, whatever form it may take, is, ipso facto, good. The mere fact that “all religion’s true” is a meaningless statement does not deter the evangelical drive of those who would see us all converted.

In may be that the heir(s) of the rights to the song either approved of the change in words before it was sung, approved after it was sung, or don’t really care. None of these possibilities give you or me any rights whatsoever to enforce who sings the song how. Nor do we want to get an official court opinion saying that, given the facts as they now exist, the words can be changed, in the manner done here, at will.

There is still, of course, the Court of Public Opinion. And it is to there we could go to make our outrage heard. Every atheist in the country could write to NBC protesting the permitted mangling of this great atheist song by John Lennon. We can, in all of our strength, write, and forcefully tell, of our outrage that NBC permitted such a thing as letting some rapper change the atheist meaning in the song “Imagine” to make it appear to be a song stumping for, and affirming, an all inclusive view of religion as universally true. Then, after all of our voices have been heard, maybe NBC or some polling outfit can ask people what they think and report that 87 % or more of Americans think the change in the words of “Imagine” was a good thing. Then it is our turn.

And the Court of Public Opinion might then be treated to a great pouring out of proof that John Lennon had in fact, become a strong Christian, and a supporter of Jesus Christ. And that he got murdered before he had a chance to tell the world. And this could, in theory, be confirmed by his heirs. And the argument that could flow from that assertion could easily encompass the concept that John Lennon would have approved of the changes to his atheistic song to make it into a positive song strongly supporting the side of religion, and dog knows what else.

And thus would we have done our work and our world a great disservice by once again permitting the religious principle to operate that a lie is okay if it helps prove the truth.

Does this mean you should do nothing? Of course not. This is truly an outrage and an affront to the memory of John Lennon and to the very integrity and meaning of his song “Imagine.”

Complaints based on artistic grounds will probably be more effective than arguments grounded on theological biases.

Our argument, and protest, should be grounded in principles of ethical and fair treatment for atheists. As Bobbie Kirkhart observed, how would “they” like it if we should sing, in public forum media, “How Great Thou Aren’t?”

Maybe we should.

So, welcome to another little skirmish in the American Religious Civil War (ARCW).

Edwin
© Edwin Kagin 2012.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Rapture occurred on midnight at the opening of the year 2000—twelve years ago today!

Despite so many years, and so many proofs, there are still those who insist stupid things, like that the end of the world will happen in December of 2012. The end of the world has already happened. Get used to it. The Rapture came a dozen years ago this very day.

As a reminder, or as proof for those who actually do not know, here reproduced below is the only known surviving document generated contemporaneously with our terrible end.

ON THE TRANSUBSTANTIATION OF THE WORLD:

THE REVELATION TO EDWIN

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
T.S. Eliot

Edwin, unto those who yet remain for the eternity to come, to all those left behind who, though damned, yet know it not, Greetings. Little of comfort can be said or given unto you, save the assurance that truth, however dire, should be valued of more worth than the vanity of false belief and the futile imagining of a vain thing.

I erred when last I wrote, in false strayed prophecy, that the world would not end and that the rapture would not come. On the midnight stroke that called in the 2000th year of our Lord, this, our world, ended. The saved saints, living and dead, were raptured into Heaven. We, and all of us who remain–who you must now know are the eternally damned–were left behind. Left behind, forever, without hope, in a world that has been utterly destroyed. Left in a world beyond repair. Left in a world that is, with no hope of redemption, ruined.

That which had been prophesied, this horror foretold, was not at once known to have been so fully and so finally fulfilled. There were only small things to be seen as signs. The weather was too warm, and cats seemed less opaque than usual. Cats, we note too late, are not mentioned in the Bible. Dogs are mentioned eight and thirty times. Now know we why. Cats know why too. Cats have always known.

The truth, the horror, of what had happened was made known to me, for reasons I neither know nor understand, in a mighty vision. Whether in the body or out of it, whether asleep or not, I can in no wise truly say. I only know it was revealed unto me that our world is now past and forever gone. And that I am charged to tell you.

Hope of supernatural salvation for any who remain is likewise gone, for the blessed of the almighty power, all of the chosen elect, have been raptured away. We who are left are left unto eternity, denied forever and forever the beatific vision, denied the fulfillment of the blessed hope. There will never be offered another chance to gain that heavenly world beyond the natural world. We are all alone, with our fallible human reasoning, in our world that lack of faith destroyed. The only world we have ever had. No supernatural power will ever visit us again. We are alone for all time, with only ourselves to guide and save us.

How, might one ask, as I asked, can our world have ended, yet seem so solidly to continue and appear so plainly to remain? So asked I in my vision, and the answer as a mystery came. With the mystery of that answer came the charge to publish the truth abroad–to assure the anguish of all of us who are fellow travelers on this orb that was first created and lately then destroyed.

There appeared before me a book, the edges of which were blackened and burned, as in a refiner’s fire, and the seals of which book, wherewithal it had been sealed, had been broken asunder. And the book was open unto a page. And the words upon that charred and tattered page could still be plainly seen and clearly read. And these were the words that were thereupon writ:

Know thou, doomed mortal, that thy world hath ended. It ended in the first moments of the first day of the first month of the year you call 2000. The Rapture hath come. It came as the world ended, and those who were chosen to be saved have been taken away unto a new Heaven and a new Earth. All who are ever to be raptured have been raptured, and all those not then raptured are never to be raptured. Those not raptured are left behind, by Divine Design, to live out their mortal lives in a world that hath now ended, a world in which they, the not saved and the not raptured, must henceforth forever remain.

Then asked I, through terror and tears, unto the unknown darkness about me, how our wrecked and ruined and wretched world could still so sentient seem.

And a voice, likened unto a voice of doom, sounding as the taste of wormwood and gall, answered from out a whirlwind unto me, with directions to tell the answer unto you, my fellow mortals, who along with me alike to death are damned:

Hear, Oh fool, thou who would not see the supernatural or on faith believe that which was unseen. Know thee, in this final answer–for no further answer shall ever come–that thy world has been transubstantiated, with all of its substance forever changed, with only the accidents of its appearance as land, sea and sky remaining, that cause it to seem, in each of its particulars, to those of undiscerning hearts, immutable and unchanged. As it was in the days of Noah, so has it now been finally fulfilled as it had been formerly forever of old foretold.

As it was in the time of Noah! The flood, the ark, the animals, the drowned children. Only eight adult humans spared. Only four breeding pairs of humans left alive when finally dried the heavenly waters that had choked the life from all other adults and from all children, both in and out of the womb, from those who, in person or by the hands of their doomed mothers, scratched and screamed, as their lives slowly ended, against the splintery sides of the ark of salvation, as it floated above their weakened forms that finally sunk beneath the righteous waves. Seven pairs of every clean animal were mercifully spared. Those not saved then died. Their fate was to be preferred to that of those not saved this time, to the fate of those condemned to live where faith has failed.

I then understood this vision granted me. Those awaiting the rapture of the blessed were as foolish virgins awaiting their bridegrooms while despising their coming. Few were chosen, and few were taken. It was not written how many would be saved, only that it would be as in the time of Noah, and surely it was so. The religiously pious, the self- righteous, those assured unto themselves of their goodness and of their salvation, all are as fully denied as are those who, through the use of reason, reject untestable faith as folly.

Heed not the much speaking yet to come from false preachers, for such fools are as sure to die as you. Laugh at pretenders who claim knowledge, at those who dare presume upon eternal truth, for they are here with all of us, un-raptured and alone in a transubstantiated world, in a world wherein their faith has failed.

My charge is now completed, and my revelation has been revealed. It remains but to remind you that only our human minds, with their naturally evolved abilities to create and learn and reason, yet abide. Nothing supernatural will ever exist for us, or be available unto us. What can be done by humankind in our new world, where mortals live for this life alone and can look neither to hopes of immortality nor to any power or powers beyond the bounty and boundaries of our natural world, cannot now be known, because such a thing has never yet been fully attempted or truly tried.

We have no choice, it seems, but to live in our world without faith in anything beyond ourselves. For that is all we have. Perhaps it is all that we have ever had. But it is enough.

May the years yet to come unto you bring you peace and joy. And do take heart, for you have this day seen the prophesy fulfilled that there will be Kagin’s Columns yet to come.

Edwin Kagin ©

This is what I wrote before the new year that was to bring about the end of all things.

ON ARMING FOR ARMAGEDDON

What you don’t know won’t hurt you–it will kill you.
Sign in U.S. Air Force training facility.

Then said he unto them…he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.
Jesus, the Christ. Luke 22:36.

If, on December 31, 1999, at the very stroke of Midnight that heralds the dawn of the year 2000 C.E., the world ends, the Messiah comes or returns, the Apocalypse happens, the Battle of Armageddon begins, the saved are raptured from moving cars that careen on into busloads of godless, unbelieving, Camp Quest-type little children, believers ascend up into the air to meet Jesus who is on his way down to Earth to establish his Kingdom–if the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised, and if the Revelation to Saint John the Divine prove true and one third of the stars fall to the Earth, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride, and the sheep be separated from the goats, and the believing good be lifted up unto the highest Heaven to take their reserved seat at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, whilst the unbelieving bad are dragged to their well deserved eternal torment awaiting them in the deepest pits of fiery Hell as Gounod’s Faust plays in the background–then, Gentle Reader, you should know that you are now holding your very last ever “Kagin’s Column,” because your narrator is going to repent, be saved, and be out of here, leaving you condemned remaining sinners with only this final heresy. That should make it quite a collector’s item–if anyone there be left around to collect it.

But, bless you, the world should go on as before, and there should be more Kagin’s Columns, because none of these dire things will happen. They won’t happen because such beliefs are superstitious nonsense. They are primitive myths. The only way they can be harmful is if they are believed. Contemplate, if you will, just what would really happen if one third of the stars “fell” to Earth.

Webster defines superstition thus: any belief, based on fear or ignorance, that is inconsistent with the known laws of science or with what is generally considered in the particular society as true and rational; esp., such a belief in charms, omens, the supernatural, etc. The myths are not the danger. Those who believe in the myths are the danger. A related problem is that there is very poor agreement in our “particular society” regarding what is “true and rational.” Some think the world is only ten thousand years old and that animals and people were created from nothing in six days. No evidence to the contrary makes any difference. They want their myth taught in schools. Others want their myths taught instead. For the past two thousand years, we have had a lot of wars over what myths should be taught in school.

The feared “Y2K bug” is somewhat different. For future researchers, reading this in the far future, Y2K (standing for “Year 2000”) is a code given for the unpredictable problems inherent in the unfortunate fact that lots of the computers that order our lives have not been taught to understand that time might go past the year 1999. Until the clock strikes 2000, we just won’t know how big a problem that little training defect really is.

Anyhow, a seemingly growing population of irrational humans are preparing for the disasters they are certain will flow from their end-of-the-world delusions that mingle the non-existent with the fixable, as they set about to bring upon themselves and us the chaos that is feared. People are hording food, water, and weapons to await the end of civilization, the end of the world, the coming of Jesus, Judgment Day, and Lord knows what else. And they are prepared to waste other believers whose eschatology (look it up) is only slightly different from theirs. Guess what they will do to people like those secular humanists, who they think really caused all the problems of the world in the first place by teaching evolution, and by taking the Ten Commandments out of public courthouses, and by prohibiting prayers in public places like Jesus ordered on his last visit.

Let’s say Jesus really did “return” to Earth. How well received do you reckon he would be, considering that the many different Christian denominations appear incapable of agreeing on even the smallest points of theological doctrine? Do you suppose His Holiness the Pope will step aside and let Jesus have his chair? Do you guess the T.V. preachers will leave their bully pulpits and, on bended knee, hand over to their Messiah their microphones and their diamond mines? Does one even wildly imagine that the many religious leaders of the world will be disposed to permit the god they have awaited to resolve for them the disputed points of their several faiths?

To survive the madness that seems certain to befall us, we need to understand that the feared coming millennium is not a real thing. There is no “real” millennium, just as there is no “real” line on the ground between the states of Kentucky and Tennessee such as one might see on service station road maps. A millennium, like all measurements of time, is something humans made up and then forgot that they made up. We can measure time any way we like. It makes no difference, so long as all agree on the rules. But even the rules are unclear. China, the Maya, and lots of other countries and peoples all have very different dates, based on different origin myths, for what we call 1999.

The year 2000 is not the beginning of a new third millennium. It is the last year of the second millennium. 2001 is the first year of the third millennium. Here’s why. When a baby is less than one year old, her age is cooed out something like, “five days old,” “nine weeks old,” “three months old,” that sort of thing. She is not said to be “zero” years old. When said child has lived a full year, she is then said to be “one year old,” and has her “first birthday,” surrounded by adoring relations. At one year old, the child starts her second year of life. For all of that second year she is said to be one year old. The second year of life, when finished, is celebrated as the child’s “second birthday.” And so it goes throughout life. One is always one day, to three-hundred-sixty-four days, older than one’s stated age.

If our numbering of years worked like birthdays, then 2000 would indeed be the first year of the third millennium. Like the aging baby, the 2000th birthday would mark the completion of the 2000th year of living and the start of the 2001st year of living, and 2001 would come at the end of the 2001st year of living. But it doesn’t work like that with dates. There is no dating of “three days,” “seven months” or such, during the first year of this imaginary calendar, as there is in the dating of the lives of babies. The first year of the calendar would have been the year “one” the entire year, from New Year’s Day on, not the year “zero” or some fraction of time less than one year. At the end of that first year, the year “one” was finished, and the year “two” began on New Year’s Day. The tenth year of the calendar means that nine previous years have been completed, and that one is living in a true tenth year, not working toward the end of the eleventh year, as would be the case if we were talking about birthdays rather than calendars.

For birthdays, the start of year 2000 would mean you have actually started the 2001st year of living. For calendars, the start of year 2000 means you are starting the final year of that millennium. 1000 was the last year of the first millennium, just as 100 is the 100th year of a 100 year period of time. 101 is the first year of the second set of 100. 2000 is the last year of this millennium. 2001 is the first year of the next millennium. Most people don’t understand this and think a new thousand year period starts at midnight on December 31, 1999. This is particularly true of the crazies who ascribe cosmic meaning to that event, as did their predecessors in religious madness in the year 1000. The world didn’t end then. The world won’t end now.

The whole idea of the importance of the coming millennium is that it is believed to be two thousand years after the birth of Jesus. But this is incorrect. If the Bible is to be believed, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great of Judea. It is a well known fact of history that Herod died in the year 4 B.C.E. Therefore, Jesus could not have been born later than that date. Therefore, sadly, the real millennium occurred on or before 1996, and we missed it.

Chances are that, if you are reading this, you are a naively innocent liberal who thinks people are inherently good and well intentioned, and that religiously, or otherwise demented, fanatics won’t really shoot you in the face for no sane reason if, with tolerance and caring, you simply understand and accept them. People who hold this view are frequently identified only as “victims.” It has been said that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. Please accept, for your own safety’s sake, the truth that there really are dangerous people about who will kill you for the fun of watching you die, and please further accept that millennium madness will bring these types out around New Year 2000 like earthworms after a summer rain. There are Christian militia groups, often commanded by ministers, trained in the use of military firearms, committed to “regaining” America for Christ. They have trained home invasion units to deal with the enemies of God–you know, those who practice the “religion of evolution”, promote the “murder of the unborn”, want “special rights” for homosexuals, want God out of the classrooms, and so forth. Do you know the type? You better, because they know you.

Your narrator has been denounced by them in churches, as have other identified individuals who disagree with them. Well, they are making straight the way for the return of Christ to lead them against the Antichrist, believed by some to be already among us, and revealed by the “mark of the beast” in such things as the bar codes used in food stores. Yeh, no kidding! They really are that nuts, and they are armed and extremely dangerous.

If you don’t have enough respect for the value and importance of your own life, and the lives of those you love, to acquire and learn the safe and disciplined use of appropriate tools for self protection and home defense, then at least try to acquire a working knowledge of the belief systems of those committed to harming you. Defending one’s life is a moral obligation. Knowledge is indeed power, and you may learn enough to avoid a deadly confrontation. Jews in Germany tried to avoid confrontation. Ask someone in Israel today how they feel about the liberal’s dream of making their family safer by not having a gun in the house.

Here’s a crash course in just what, in broad overview, those looking for something supernatural to happen around New Year’s Eve or Day believe:

Chapter One. God, for uncertain reasons, decided to make everything from nothing, including our universe, our planet, and ourselves. God made people, and they disobeyed God by gaining knowledge of good and evil. Although they could not have fairly been held to know it was wrong to disobey God before gaining knowledge of good and evil, God punished them for not being the kind of created beings God wanted them to be.

Chapter Two. The numerous descendents of the two created people that had disappointed God also disappointed God, so God killed all of them in a flood. Only eight adult people survived, by living for a year in a large floating box that was 450 feet long, by 75 feet wide, by 45 feet high, that also contained samples of every kind of animal, bird, and bug of the inundated planet. Every living child on earth was killed by God’s flood, as was every pregnant woman and every fetus. God’s views on the murder of children could not have been made more clear. God promised not to do it again.

Chapter Three. The Earth is repopulated by the eight people and the animals that survived the flood in the box. God was still disappointed by the behavior of the descendents of the people he had saved from drowning. God then supernaturally produced a son from the body of an unwed teenage girl, so that the boy could grow up and be killed as a sacrifice to God for the sins of everyone else. After the son was killed, God brought him back to life and took him to Heaven. All people have to do to go to Heaven when they are dead is to believe that God let his son be killed, as a child sacrifice for their sins, and then brought him back to life. Before he went back to Heaven, the reanimated dead son said that he would return shortly to Earth to take believers back with him to be with him and God.

Chapter Four. For nearly two thousand years, the faithful have waited for the son God made, permitted to be killed, and then brought back to life, to come to Earth and get them as he promised he would do. For some reason, this is thought more likely to occur on thousand year round numbered years. So, despite the Bible’s assertion that no one can know the day or the hour it will occur, the crazies prepare for the return of the son of the god, with wildly differing versions of what will happen upon his return. Some, but far from all, of the possible events and outcomes predicted are set forth in the opening paragraph of this blasphemy. As in most matters of faith, you can take your choice.

Naturally, nothing supernatural will happen, because there is no supernatural to happen. That is not the concern. What is of concern is the possible actions of those who believe something end-of-the-world like will happen and who are committed to helping it along. Some such have already emerged, and they have worked much mischief. We can be certain more wait the fast closing end of the year 1999. It is these living persons set upon harming others and achieving self-fulfilling prophecies that we should fear and guard against, not the fears and fairy tales that drive them. They are the darkness we need fear.

Here are some of your narrator’s prophecies for the future, drawn far more specifically than any of those of the Bible or of any of the 900 telephone line psychics. The year 2000, the last year of this millennium, will come. The Messiah will not come. The world will not end. Neither Jesus nor Satan will appear. Nor will the Antichrist. There will be no Rapture. There will be no apocalypse. There will be no battle of Armageddon. The failure of these events to occur will strengthen the faith of some, as the people continue to imagine a vain thing. There will be more Kagin’s Columns.

The final year of this millennium, that will so quickly come, should be for us a time of reflection. The dating of our years, the structure of our centuries, and the very idea of a millennium, are, to be sure, artificial. But so are most of the many signposts that mark our roads and measure our days. Symbols are powerful. They are of great importance and value, so long as we don’t mistake the symbol for what it is meant to symbolize. We can find meaning in the final year of this arbitrary thousand year period that is a slice of how we measure time. The past one thousand years has been filled with war and with superstition, the latter often giving birth to the former. The next thousand years can see our kind populate the stars, or it can see us regress to the worst of the past darkness from which our evolved human minds have delivered us.

Consider, as a benediction for our age, the words of Thaddaeus, said to have been from the first century of the first millennium (see Kagin’s Column, “On the Gospel of Thaddaeus”):

May that measure of peace, justice, harmony and understanding denied religion and its deities be attained by mortals through the use of their minds, and may reason, science, curiosity, and discovery replace the fear, the guilt, the pain, and the ignorance of trembling in terror before capricious gods. Ecce homo.

Happy New Year!

Edwin.
(c) Edwin Kagin.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. Omar Khayyam.

The Tao that can be talked about is not the true Tao. Tao Te Ching.

The universe has changed and you have changed since you started reading this column. The universe is still the universe and you are still you, but you are not the same you in the same universe as when you started this adventure in reading, and both have changed again since the last comma. This is because of the nature of the universe, not because of the nurture of this writing. Like it or not, the world has now changed yet again, and so it will always be. Change is the only constant. When you were born, you started your dying, and, since birth is the leading cause of death, death is the only certainty you can claim. You need not believe or accept this. It doesn’t matter a bit. The universe doesn’t care what you believe, is indifferent to what you want, and is unaffected by what you think. None of your feelings, aspirations, or actions are of any more consequence than those of a turkey prayerfully believing that Thanksgiving will never come. Still, thinking humans invent religions and philosophies to convince themselves that what is isn’t, and that they, at least, are special, exempt, and certainly more important to the universe than turkeys. All such thought things fail. The greater the attempt to deny what is, the greater the misery of those who try to keep the river from flowing where it is flowing. No moment is ever the same as any other moment. The river, while the same, is never the same. No one can ever bathe twice in the same river.

So is there any meaning to life? Of course. But it cannot be taught or revealed. There is nothing to teach and there is nothing that is hidden. You have to invent it. Invent what? The meaning of your life of course. It’s that simple. The reason “It” seems so complex is because of belief in dualism–because people insist on looking for two or more things where there is only one, because they do not understand that they are part of it, and that they write and star in their own play. This misunderstanding causes suffering. The suffering can be stopped by letting go of the belief that the world is composed of different forces or things that act in opposition, one constantly at war against the other. One can simply accept that yesterday is past and tomorrow may never come. Most people are concerned about everything in the world except what they are doing right now, in this moment that is all there really is and all that anyone ever really has.

Dualism is the curse of Western philosophy. It is baffling to the Eastern mind that people would try to look to something outside of themselves to save them. Dualism is so much a part of the way we automatically think about everything that we are unaware of operating from a bias or mind set that is not universally shared. Whether we approach discussion or decision from a religious or secular orientation, we seem unable to dare, dream, or decide without nagging uncertainty and painful conflict. We drown in dichotomies.

The religious of Christian persuasion worry about the “problem” of “good versus evil,” and fantasize two opposing armies, one led by a god and the other by a demon. The dualistic dilemma extends to such questions as “free will” versus “predestination,” a non-issue that troubles secular scholars in the form of “free will” versus “determinism.” The imaginary “mind-body” problem of both secular and religious polemics was presented by a student to the Zen master. “Master,” said the pupil, “my mind is troubled. How can I pacify it?” “Take out your mind and show it to me,” said the master, “then we can determine how best to calm it.” Another disciple asked a master “How can I become enlightened and learn the meaning of life?” The master asked, “Have you finished your breakfast?” “Yes,” said the truth seeker. “Then,” said the master, “wash your bowl.” The finger that points to the moon is not the moon. Life is lived by living.

Consider a two edged sword. Take the hilt in both hands and study it. There are two separate blades, yet it is one sword. Move it. Can one blade be moved without moving the other? Can one edge strike the other edge? As a two edged sword cannot be two edged with only one edge, there can be no idea of goodness without the existence of something to which it can be compared. A concept like “true” is meaningless without “false.” One could not exist without the other. Love and hate are two horns on the same goat.

The “yin and yang” of oriental thought is widely misunderstood by those nursed in dualism. It is not two conflicting principles forever engaged in constant struggle–male/female, dark/light, good/evil, heaven/hell, right/wrong, or whatever else some insecure professor might dream up. The two are part of the same thing. Both are contained within the one circle.

The heart of the samurai is the sword. The symbol of the samurai is the cherry blossom. There is no contradiction. The arts of archery and flower arranging are of equal importance. Each is a part of the same thing, like the two blades of the one sword. Like the yoke and white of the one shell.

Tao flows–eternal, ever changing, yet always the same. This is a paradox only in our perception. Fullness of life is grasped by letting go. If your cup runneth over, it maketh a mess for someone to clean up. Only the empty cup can be safely filled.

Right now is all we have. As John Lennon observed, life is what happens while we are making other plans.

Edwin.

© 2011 by Edwin Kagin

An old man caught a lemming once
That was trying hard to die;
Before it finished its last plan,
He took it home to fry.

He flicked its little head right off,
Prepared it for the pan;
“Now his meat can serve some use,”
Thought the little man.

“He’d aimed to end up his own way,
But that don’t matter now;
This knife of mine worked just as good;
Besides he’ll do for chow.”

“No matter how you die, you’re dead;
There ain’t no doubt to that.
He chose to go; I helped him out.”
And he popped it in the fat.

(c) Edwin Kagin 1995

Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.
Humorous tombstone
________________________________________
Today’s cheery topic treats what to do with your carcass when you are dead. Like it or not, one day you will have to be disposed of. Animals don’t make a fuss of this fact; they go off and die. Humans, believing they are better than animals, invent religions. The prime motive of most religions is to create a myth about some kind of individual continuance after all electrical activity in the brain stops and the organism starts to rot. As the old preacher put it, “Brothers and sisters, this is only the shell; the poor nut has gone.” Where the nut has gone is a matter of much debate, as is the problem of what to do with the shell. Some religions believe the body must be buried, others hold it must be burned. Take your choice.

Traditional Christian human remains disposal involves burying the corpse in a box in the ground. Bodies were to be laid East to West, so the dead flesh could rise to great Christ who is coming from the East. No kidding. Christianity teaches a bodily resurrection and an ascent of the reanimated cadaver to heaven. The Bible says nothing about humans possessing an “immortal soul.” You can win bets with believers on this point. Them bones are to rise again. The ghoulish, and those who have witnessed autopsies, may wonder how those who slept in the graves will get by with the brain, heart, lungs, intestines and other really important stuff removed and thrown away. And mystical indeed will be the rebirth of the decapitated — say a saint like Sir Thomas More whose body is in one place and whose head was stuck on Traitor’s Gate. Ah, the mysteries of faith. What of those who died in Christ in explosions or carnage that converted living flesh to mangled roadkill? What of the woman whose murderer husband ran her dismembered body through the wood chipper? Will those whose bodies are cremated to ashes in a fiery furnace yet in the flesh see God? So goes the belief. The Book of “Job” says yes, even if the carcass is eaten up by worms, you will see God in your bodily form. The age you will be isn’t revealed. Maybe you get to choose.

Persons planning to be buried should understand that no grave on earth is anything other than a present or future crime scene or archaeological site. Eventually, someone will dig you up for saleable goodies or for information your burial stuff and postmortem analysis can reveal about your time. Or your grave can be scooped away to make room for a subdivision to house the children of the “life what a beautiful choice” movement. The greatest tombs of the greatest kings, designed to be secure for eternity, were magnets for thieves who weren’t fooled by myths of
curses. You can stroll through the burial chamber of a pharaoh, stripped by tomb robbers centuries before archaeologists put the living god’s remains in a glass case in a museum. Native American sacred burial grounds, and even Civil War graves, are being plundered by the irreverent, who sell the honored dead’s tools and belt buckles at flea markets. More people are alive right now than have ever been alive at any one time in the history of the planet. If everyone is buried, eventually there will not be space available for both the living and the dead. Guess who wins that argument.

You could donate your body to a medical school for dissection by students, but there are usually more than enough dead incompetents to satisfy this need. The best way to get rid of your burdensome dead body is to burn it up. Crematorium ashes are sterile and far easier to dispose of than decaying meat and bone. The ashes can be scattered somewhere, cast into a bust of yourself (to be sold at some future garage sale), put in a decorative vase, or used to plaster the wall or provide variety in the cat box. Your then heirs can be creative. It doesn’t matter — for you won’t be there. The Bible says, “For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope; for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.” Ecclesiastes 9:4-5, by God. How the foregoing can be reconciled with the notion of life after death is another of those mysteries of faith.

If you have lived in such a manner that anyone will miss you or lament your absence, there are rational ways for them to celebrate your existence, share and purge grief, and then get on with their lives. Those tending to your disposal should cremate your corpse privately and quickly, after permitting family, if they wish, to see how your dead body looks. It may help them appreciate you are really not going to be seen or heard from again. After a suitable number of days or weeks, depending on how your survivors feel, they can have a party in your memory. Photos and videos could accompany anecdotes of your presence on earth, and artifacts of your life’s journey could be displayed as, amid feasting and merriment, you, in your diversities (if any), are remembered.

Before you return to wherever you were before you were born, it might be a good idea to so live that people remember you fondly. This is not a dress rehearsal. Life ends / Tao flows.

Don’t take life too seriously; you won’t get out of it alive anyway.

Edwin

(c) Edwin Kagin
April, 1994

The great vortex that is Christmas 2011 is petering out in the exhausted malaise of its celebrants, with presents and paper and ribbons and bows strewn everywhere about and gluttony proving the reason for its inclusion in the catalog of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Tomorrow Christmas will be forgotten for another year as dazed players push, and maybe even pepper spray, one another in a great stampede to profit from refunds, exchanges, and sales. Tomorrow morning, Christmas is, by dog, over.

Except in Canada and England and maybe some other places about which I do not know. The day after Christmas is a holiday in England and Canada known as Boxing Day. I know this because my Helen was Canadian and told me about it. This national phenomenon, like universal health care, again shows that some non-American customs and ideas might actually be superior. Like having a full day to rest up after the Christmas madness. Canada celebrates Thanksgiving too, but not on the same day as we do, and for different reasons, so it is not relevant here.

The theory of Boxing Day is that the occupants of the manor are to use that day to box up leftover food and perhaps some gifts for the household servants and the poor. Don’t know if they actually do that these days or not. Nevertheless, Boxing Day is, in the enlightened countries that recognize it, a public holiday.

I prefer to think of the day after Christmas as a day of rejoicing that the holiday is finally over. And a time for getting ready for the next holiday—one truly worth celebrating—New Year’s Eve ticking down and merging into New Year’s Day. This is about as secular as a holiday can get. At least in the traditions that spawned the Christian Christmas. It is absolutely essential to the mythic traditions to stay awake and await the midnight stroke of the clock that announces the arrival of the New Year. And, if possible, to kiss someone you love.

In that it seems that absolutely nothing of any consequence happens anywhere between Christmas and New Year’s Day, one can be inventive.

It is my custom to purchase the calendars for the next year only after Christmas has gone away. This is because they are usually on at least half price sale. After the first of the year, the calendars remaining for sale will become increasingly less expensive. But since I think it is tempting fate—I dare not say bad luck—not to have all calendars of my home and office reflecting the correct month and year, the first thing I do after the ball drops, and the first kiss of the year has happened, and the new year has been toasted, is to remove the old, now dead calendars, to reveal the calendars for the shining new year I have pre-placed behind the calendars of the year then gone. The requirement to purchase the calendars after Christmas does not apply to those calendars thoughtfully sent for free by some outfit trying to get one to contribute to something like Citizens Against Continental Drift.

Then the days before the next year can be spent listening to the media generated lists of accomplishments and errors done during the dying year, together with the names of persons you are expected to recognize who died during the year. And then there are the predictions of the psychics and other such. It would be fun to carefully write down these predictions and date them. Then, at the next New Year’s Day, they can be pulled out and submitted to a reality check. Might make a nice blog too. I think I will do it.

More on the coming year and the going year later.

Edwin.
December 25, 2011
© 2011 by Edwin Kagin.