Is God dead?

The year was 1883,the month is unknown.

God died metaphysically sometime that year when the Friedrich Nietzsche epic "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" was published. Through the words of the mythical persian poet, Zarathustra, Nietzsche laid out the strongest case ever as to why God had to die.

Actually Neitzsche asserted that God had begun to suffer through a long slow death 2000 years ago, an agonizingly slow death as his creatures immediately and without letup through the centuries suffocated him by demanding his pity.

Here is an excerpt from Neitzsche's classic to clarify in his own words:

From Part 4:

"WHAT does all the world know at present?" asked Zarathustra of the old pope he encountered on his journey.

"Perhaps that the old God no longer lives,the God in whom all the world once believed?"

"You speak the truth O godless one," answered the old man sorrowfully. "And I served that old God until his last hour.

"You served him to the last?" asked Zarathustra thoughtfully,after a
deep silence,"you know HOW he died? Is it true what they say, that
sympathy choked him. That he saw how MAN hung on the cross,and could not endure it?

"So you are saying to me that his love for man became his hell, and at last suffocated him with pity ?

The old pope however did not answer,but looked aside timidly,with a
painful and gloomy expression.

"Let him go,"said Zarathustra,after prolonged meditation,still looking
the old man straight in the eye.

"Let him go,he is gone.Though it is honorable of you to only speak
in praise of this dead God,you know as well as I WHO he was,and that he had curious ways."

"I speak among three eyes," said the old pope jestfully(he was blind in
one eye),"in divine matters,I am more enlightened than Zarathustra
himself,believe me you utterly godless one.

"I served him many long years, my will followed all his will. A good
servant, however, knows everything, many a things which a Master
hides from himself.

"He was a hidden God, always very secretive. Even with his own son
he operated with secrecy as to his conception. At the door of his faith stands the hint of adultery.

"Whoever honors him as a God of love,does not think highly enough of love itself.Did not that God want also to be Judge?

"But one who truly loves does not seek reward and requital.

"When he was young,that God out of the Orient,he was harsh and revengeful,and built himself a hell which delighted those who loved him most.

"At last,however,he became old and soft and mellow and pitiful.
he became more like a grandfather than a father,but most like a tottering old grandmother.

"Then did he sit shrivelled in his chimney corner,
fretting on account of his weak legs,world-weary,will-weary,until one day he suffocated of his all too great pity."

"You,old pope,"said here Zarathustra,interrupting,"have you seen THAT
with your own eyes?

"It could well have happened in that way:in that way,but maybe otherwise.
When Gods die they always die many kinds of death.

"Well!"said the old pope,"regardless of the actual specifics,one way or other,he is gone.God is dead! He was counter to the taste of my ears and eyes; worse than that I will not speak against one who died.

Zarathustra replied,"I love everything that looks bright and speaks honestly.

You know this to be true,old priest.
There was something of your own type in him.
He was the priest type.He was equivocal.

"He was also indistinct.How he raged at us,this wrath-snorter,because we
understood him badly! But why did he not speak more clearly?

"if the fault lay in our ears,why did he give us ears that heard him badly?

"If there was dirt in our ears,well was it not this dead God who put it in them?

"So much died with him,this potter who had not learned thoroughly how to shape clay!

"But what was unforgiveable was that he took revenge on his pots and creations, because they turned out badly. That was truly a sin against GOOD TASTE.

"There is also good taste in piety, at last the great godless poet concluded.

"Away with SUCH a God! Better to have no God, better to set up destiny on one's own account,better to be a fool, better to be God oneself!'"

End of excerpt......

There you have it. God was "equivocal" and "indistinct", a "wrath snorter", too much like a priest. As I interpret this, in Nietzsche's view God gradually became ineffective as he morphed from a harsh and revengeful creator into an old, soft pitiful, world weary,will weary, grandfather and eventually a tottering old grandmother smothered in pity.

So Man murdered God. Forced to be a judge, God could not, at the same time be the ultimate LOVER that mankind insisted he be, a distinct,unequivical unconditional Father.

Does this perhaps explain why most people are self-indulgent, obsessively self-centered and unhappy?

Possibly.

I am just a simple man, an athiest who can think up questions but most of the time cannot answer them. A hypocrite who has the chutzpah to call himself The Answerman

I can understand how most religions will label this blasphemy but for the confirmed disbeliever it makes sense.

A humiliated spouse (Jenny) upends a cheating louse (Mark)

Did Jenny Sanford stamp all men as pigs over the weekend?

Absolutely. Yes

Whether intended or not, that was the net effect of her Saturday morning interview with the Sun-Times. The Sun-Times is the newspaper of the South Carolina Myrtle Beach area. This is the district her husband once represented as an up and coming boy wonder congressman.There are more redneck men per square inch in this state than anywhere else in the free world. But there are also powerful,cunning gals who know what makes these guys tick

Jenny grabbed this scandal right out of Mark's dirty claws. She revealed more about herself in a few short paragraphs than her swinish hubby did in hours of self remorse.

She has known about her husband's cheating heart for many months but women like Jenny don't give up the title of "First Lady" easily.She begged him to end the affair.

Mark,in all his pignified stature,turned right around and begged her to let him have just one more fling with Maria Belen Chapur,divorced mother of two sons and a former reporter in Argentina.

Sort of like an alcoholic pleading with his AA sponsor to let him have just "one more drink".

The Sunday NY Times, in the Sunday Styles section has a revealing article suggesting that infidelity is rapidly becoming a minor setback in a marriage and certainly not an important enough reason to head to a divorce court.

On the Op-Ed page, Maureen Dowd castigated the pitiful Governor as only she can.

What's so different about this drama being played out on the public stage is that this time the wife is shaping the story to the press while the chastened hubby stands by with his thumb in his mouth.

I love the Gov.'s recent public statement about Jenny:

"I'd simply say that Jenny has been absolutely magnanimous and gracious as a wonderful Christian woman in this process"

I barfed, pulled myself together, and then paraphrased what this creep was really saying to his deluded redneck following:

" Jenny is a relgious woman from the deep south; she understands that we men are all pigs and need woman to keep us feeding at our home trough most of the time. She also understands that because we are pigs, we need to wander for some strange swill occasionally. Thank God for the bible."

Running a little long with today's topic and I promised to be concise but bear with me a little further. Both of the egotistical characters in this lurid drama are wealthy members of southern royalty (where almost all wealth is inherited wealth from the slave labor system). Jenny and Mark never fail to mention the children as a reason they are trying to save their marriage.

How convenient to use the kids as the rationalization for a stupid decision which will ultimately hurt the children the most.If Jenny really was as concerned as she says she is now, she would have dumped him when she first learned of the affair.

Staying in a bad marriage for the children's welfare is ridiculous. It teaches the children about nothing except hyprocrisy.

Jenny and Mark, face up and split up for the children's sake.

Mark, have you no shame? Resign as Governor today.

PS: As you might expect in a state like this, Sanford's cabinet is standing as almost one in defense of their John Wayne leader. However I would be remiss if I didn't salute one heroic figure. State Sen. Jake Knotts, R-West Columbia called on Sanford to "do the right thing and step down" while also encouraging other legislators to follow his lead.

Very seldom does a Rebublican break ranks in the Age of Limbaugh so we have to honor them when they do.

IS THE K-ROD AFFAIR HURTING THE YANKEES?

Kate Hudson sans blonde hair, was at the Yanks-Mets game last night at Citi-Field cheering on her favorite ballplayer, A-Rod.

Is this public affair hurting the Yankee team?

Let me answer it this way.

When Marilyn Monroe was cheering for Joe DiMaggio and the Yanks were winning pennant after pennant in the 50's I don't recall any of Joe D's teammates spreading rumors that the team was being "distracted".

A-Rod hit a moon shot home run last night into the right field stands and walked 3 times. So he did smirk a little while rounding 2nd base and just before he entered the dugout; so what? Isn't baseball supposed to be a game?

A-Rod looks happier than I can ever remember and when he is happy he can carry a team on his back. As a long time Yankee fanatic I say let him have his fun. I am so tired of watching the robotic Derek Jeter (a truly great player) who never shows any emotion lest he embarrass his parents who are in the stands.

With Melky and Cano doing their hi-five dancethon when either hits a homer and Swisher jumping into the stands between innings, the team is starting to loosen up and it is just what they need.

This edition has been playing choke-up baseball for the past 5 years in the post-seasons, so maybe these shenanigans will carry them to the promised land.

Kate and A Rod make a lot better match than most of the Cougar zaniness I have seen lately. They are 31 and 34 respectively, their kids are about the same age, and face it they look great together.

Back in the 50's and 60's, both the Mets and Yanks would have whole sections of stands where the players wives and girl friends sat together, so lets not blow this whole thing out of proportion. Baseball can be too long and too boring as it is played today. I say, let the cameramen liven it up and show us more shots of Kate Hudson.

Kate, I know you are a brunette for your latest movie role but couldn't you wear a blond wig? And wear something sexier too. You are the best steroid substitute A-Rod could possibly have found.

Did Governor Sanford hold anything back?

Has Gov. Sanford told us everything?

Not a chance in hell.

Within the next few weeks other women will come forward to reveal romantic laisons with Sanford..

Yeah, I know he swore in his airport press conference that he had never been unfaithful to his wife before he met the Argentinian woman with the great "hip curve". Well if we still believe our elected politicians only lie to us once then we should take Sanford at his word and give him another chance.

We should give Elliot Spitzer another chance and the former Governor of New Jersey and the congressman in Florida who cavorted with the congressional pages.

Sanford has been Governor for many years and lets not be naive; many many women have likely let him know they were interested. Very few adulterers slip just once.It is not consistent with the nature of the beast.

Mark Sanford is the same "holier than thou" guy who was all over Bill Clinton when he was being impeached. He is the same guy who turned down millions of dollars in aid from the surplus bailout which is sorely needed in South Carolina,one of the most illiterate states in the U.S.

The crescendo of local redneck politicos who came to his defense this morning was nauseating.

Just one man's take on the issue of cheating politicians, but i respect a cheater much more than a liar. These creeps from both sides of the aisle should be barred from public office for life,not for the adultery but for the cover-ups.

Is Artie Lange the Incarnation of Ignatius Reilly?

Will the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, "Confederacy of Dunces" finally be made into a movie 40 years after it was written?

The answer should be yes.

ARTIE LANGE IS IGNATIUS REILLY!

There can no longer be any reason for the drug addled Hollywood directors to delay bringing the funniest character in literary history (my opinion)to the Silver Screen.

Read this description of Ignatius from Walker Percey's foreward to the original publication of the classic novel:

"Here at any rate is Ignatius Reilly, without progenitor in any literature I know of -- slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one -- who is in violent revolt against the entire modern age, lying in his flannel nightshirt, in a back bedroom on Constantinople Street in New Orleans, who between gigantic seizures of flatulence and eructations is filling dozens of Big Chief tablets with invective..................

An intellectual, ideologue, deadbeat, goof-off, glutton, who should repel the reader with his gargantuan bloats, his thunderous contempt and one-man war against everybody -- Freud, homosexuals, heterosexuals, Protestants, and the assorted excesses of modern times. Imagine an Aquinas gone to pot, transported to New Orleans whence he makes a wild foray through the swamps to LSU at Baton Rouge, where his lumber jacket is stolen in the faculty men's room where he is seated, overcome by mammoth gastrointestinal problems. His pyloric valve periodically closes in response to the lack of a "proper geometry and theology" in the modern world."

I ask you, is this character a clone of the Artie Lange we know and love? Is the author of "Confederacy", John Kennedy Toole who committed suicide in 1961 many years before his epic was published,a distant uncle of Artie?

What a great movie this would be. Lange would be sure to win an Oscar as he would be playing himself; there would be no need for him to act. Hand him the script and make sure he stays with it. Of course, knowing Artie,he will probably be back on heroin before the movie is completed but that would make him even more like Ignatius.

My suggestions for casting the major characters from the novel:

Patrolman Mancuso....................... Jim Carrey (a blockbuster supporting role is just what he needs to revitalize his, dead in the water, career.)

Ignatius Reilly's whacko mother................ Celest Holm, an Oscar winner in the 50's, 92 years old going on 48, still hot, either senile or insane but, still damn funny.

Myrna Minkoff of the Bronx,Reilly's Socialist gril friend..........Marisa Tomei

Jones, the black bum turned janitor, a hilarious observer of the New Orleans scene who gets back at whites for 200 years of oppression with his acidic tongue.

He can ONLY be played by Tracey Morgan.

Your suggestions and opinions are invited and welcomed.

A QUESTION TO MYSELF

Mr. Blogmeister, what is your favorite poem?

My favorite poem is the saddest poem I have ever read. At the same time it is the most anti-war poem. There is nothing more seductive and destructive in the soul of man than war. I read and reread this great poem by Walt Whitman when I forget that fact:

Come Up From the Fields Father
by Walt Whitman


Come up from the fields father, here's a letter from our Pete,
And come to the front door mother, here's a letter from thy
dear son.

Lo, 'tis autumn,
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages with leaves fluttering in the
moderate wind,
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the
trellis'd vines,
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately
buzzing?)

Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain,
and with wondrous clouds,
Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm
prospers well.

Down in the fields all prospers well,
But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter's
call,
And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right
away.

Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps
trembling,
She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap.

Open the envelope quickly,
O this is not our son's writing, yet his name is sign'd,
O a strange hand writes for our dear son, 0 stricken
mother's soul!
All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the
main words only,
Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry
skirmish, taken to hospital,
At present low, but will soon be better.

Ah now the single figure to me,
Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and
farms,
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans.

Grieve not so, dear mother, (the just-grown daughter speaks
through her sobs,
The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay'd,)
See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.
Alas poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to
be better, that brave and simple soul,)
While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,
The only son is dead.

But the mother needs to be better,
She with thin form presently drest in black,
By day her meals untouch'd, then at night fitfully sleeping,
often waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep
longing,
O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape
and withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son

Daily Question?

Yes, I will post a question every day and then answer it.

The question will be timely and provocative.

My answer, I hope will be thought provoking and concise.

I am a "Jack of all trades and a Master of none" so readers

might expect surprises.