So it's late, like 3:30 am right now. But I feel like ramblin'.

Last night, I listened to George Noury interviewing Minister Irvin Baxter Jr. on his "Coast to Coast AM" radio show (WLS 890 here in Chicago) about his highly intensive studies and writings on the topic of "end times" - meaning the last chapter of the Bible, and the question of whether we're all about to meet our Maker.  I was reminded of the fact that I spent about half of my 12 pre-college education years in a Lutheran school, where church and God, in that order, were made a part of your everyday life, like it or not. Religion was always my worst class in school (I scored "D's" regularly, while getting "A's" in everything else, at least in elementary school) but ironically, it was the topic I wound up being most interested in.

I cared not much for the mindless regurgitation of memorized facts and Biblical occasions, assembled in what I thought to be a rather haphazrd arrangement of mores and standards, outlined in text by God himself.  I could never get my head around the idea of an invisible diety picking up a Bic Biro medium point and whipping out a universe of cryptic advice that only succeeded in driving people to war and utter chaos over what it all meant.

But I listened as they went on about the stories, and how those stories advised us in our daily lives.  I also noticed that, while many of the stories made fine sense, and were relatively easy to interpret, some were much trickier, with wide-open holes left for what I thought to be far too much interpretation to be good for a whole world of people.  Some of those lines were just too vague to be described in the crystal-clear terms my teachers loved to use, especially when it came to outlining some advice which may have been poltically terribly incorrect.  They always had neat ways out of suggesting criminal behavior as "The Lord's work".

But the vagueness, after listening to an articulate, well-versed (literally) minister go on about "end times" and how we're watching the world's events slip neatly into their respective slots as laid out in the Book of Revelations, which, for some fucked up reason, has always been the most fascinating book of the Bible for me.  Maybe I always suspected, even as a kid, that we were REALLY pushing it.  It took me back to those times when, in the total social ineptitude that was my first twenty years on Earth, I was innocently drawn to this "end of the world" chapter, and the behavior that brought it on. 

I am not going to go on forever, here - it's bloody late. But I felt like passing this energy onto the internet, because so many people are out there looking for more folks who agree in their minds about how things are going for us right now.  So many people I talk to seem to know, not just suspect, KNOW, that we're running out.  Running out of resources, running out of spiritual connection to our planet, running out of patience for change, running out of time, plain and simple. And it looks like we're getting more stupider.  Ice is melting. Weather is changing. Wars aren't ending - they're becoming ongoing ways of existing all over the world, which is to say hell on Earth. World leaders are pushing for one government that will rule the lives of everyone, everywhere. 

That's depressing, right?  It sure is. But I'm not jumping off a bridge just yet.  It's true that I have no real skills in this world - if the music business were to cease to exist today, I'd be eating random bits of garbage off the ground for months or more, until I learned how to do something that actully provided for me, in the REAL world.  My natural tendency as an artist is to ENJOY, first and foremost, with just enough regard for my existence that I should learn to prolong it.  And while I've learned little about survival, I've learned lots about having a reason to try. Additionally, we are not alone.  I can only enjoy myself, BY myself, for so long before I feel a need to see other people enjoying themselves, too.  And if they can't, then it's my job to do something to help them find their way to live well. And maybe, with any luck, that endeavor will bring us together, in a community life with ups and downs and in-betweens, the way it's supposed to be.

So that's it.  If we didn't enjoy life, we'd have jumped off that bridge already.  And why wouldn't we?  Who the hell wants to suffer miserably, just to breathe air?  If sex wasn't fun, we'd have been gone immediately after the first generation of people ever on Earth.  Men and women couldn't never have tolerated each other long enough to raise a family if they didn't love to fuck.

If Satan will dominate this Earth, I know it will be for his offer to feed our hatred of all things that threaten us, with a promise to make it all better. But we can enjoy our lives, even as we watch the whole thing go straight to hell. We'd be fools not to.  How long do you think you get?

Cool. So I've effectively gone from End Times to Good Times.
Righteous.  The End Is Near.  Go Bananas.

I will now say that this is likely one of the less articulate, less concise, and more poorly-focused blogs I will ever write, and I intend to right that wrong another time, when it's NOT 4:12 am. But the pillow calls me and I must not resist any longer.  Sleep well, and dream about sex.  Mmmm....

Love your enemy long time,

Scottish