Mostly these days I think about the Rapture. I think about the righteous seated on the right hand of the father, making a clean getaway as shit storms down in furious flames of destruction on every thing else.

At least, I’m figuring Armageddon is lying just around the corner. Why else would a demon (’cause really he ain’t good enough to be a full fledged anti-Christ) be living in the Whitehouse making the world worse with mayhem and neglect?

Shit, speaking of signs of the coming Apocalypse, I just got a phone call from Bukowski’s in Inman Square, Cambridge. Anyone in Cambridge comedy knows what that means. I’m all tingly hearing from some of my favorite men (who I don’t live with except in my heart).

So, there’s the big picture of gloom and doom and we are all got to die. And, there’s the little picture. The end of the world in which I’ve had a headache for two days and mentioned to convince myself it’s probably terminal, but that I will Kevorkian my way to peace while whatever foul and pestilent force lives off of my weakened flesh. In other words, I might be getting a cold or some other virus.

The plus side of the potential cold is that it’s source is probably the office Typhoid Mary who swept through work in a whorl of damp tissues, because meetings can’t be missed or whatever. The beauty of this germ transaction is I’m starting to hold a grudge against her any way. In fact, she is rather ripe for caricature and some sick hybrid of office reality spawned in my imagination would have in the past been written about in these very virtual pages.

But, I am reformed and no longer make grand sport and grander hyperbole about office politics. Instead, charming motherfucker that I am, and all smiling ball of firey sunshine, I joked about the Ivy League with some on on the phone who, in fact, was schooled at such a place. Rather than writing about Ivy League motherfuckers, I figured I could befriend one.

Next, I will rescue kittens and bunnies from the swirling sewage around New Orleans and hug them into robust health.

Anyway, I should mainline some more Advil and calculate exactly how my suicide will be hatched.

(Oh, one last thing. Just in case any one out there didn’t already know that I am intellectually challenged, oafish and an uncultured clod. Last night M. was talking about naming hurricanes, and I said “Well, when you were growing up, didn’t they name typhoons?” Falled by a pause and my continuing, “Oh, yeah, they must have, because there was the famous one, Typhoon Mary.”

Then, after a couple of minutes I realized exactly how stupid I am. Typhoon Mary? Jesus.)

NEVER MIND THE POST BELOW.

I had some upload issues.

AAARRRGGGHHHH.

For Memorial Day weekend this year, I played with guns (among other things).

I did a little videotaping, and I finally edited something that certainly amuses the fuck out of me. (And, I’m often my own worst critic.) If anyone out there sees this video and wants to comment or send an email, I’d appreciate it.

As I type this post, I am wearing a deep, creased frown of worry and inconsolable sadness. I am bereft.

I, along with my nation, mourn the loss of Chief Justice William H. Renquist. Bill, we hardly knew ye.

Now, I ain’t one to speak ill of the dead, so I won’t dwell on Nixon appointee Renquist’s legacy. But, fucking hell, I am sick in my heart to think of G.W. Bush getting not just an associate justice appointment on the bench, PLUS the Chief Justice.

People moaned and bitched and criticized Bill Clinton. But, at the end of his presidency, there seemed to be some tangible changes in the world. Good shit, too, like a budget surplus, opened channels of diplomacy and dialogues on health care and education.

GWB will leave a tangible legacy, as well. Dead people in Iraq, dead people at home, world-wide contempt for the U.S. at record highs, education at new lows (creationism, anyone?) and trillions in debt. Now, undoubtedly a Supreme Court more conservative than any since 1789 or so. He’d probably exhume and re-animate William Jenning Bryant to really bring back some god-fearing Christianity if he could.

If there is an “Intelligient Designer” he’s a great, big dick, or he really hates us here in the old U.S. of A.

A fine Monday holiday, this. Both M. and I have devoted uncalculated hours to good personal hygiene and grooming. Of our core compatibilities, vanity ranks pretty high.

I’ve been thinking about New Orleans, and saw the flick “The Skeleton Key” last night, which reminded me just how much of the area is swamp, river, lush bumps of land and more swamp. The San Mateo bridge here runs for miles and kind of reminds me of the bridge over Lake Ponchatrain. Although, here, it feels more terra firma on either side.

It’s kind of interesting that major parts of Boston are giant land fills built over marshes, where sand was dumped hundreds of years ago to build up a city. Same for San Francisco. But, for some reason, down in the bayous of Louisiana and the Missippi River, they didn’t build the ground up above sea level, they worked on holding the water back. Maybe it has something to do with the difference between ocean ports and fresh water, where it was relatively easy to build up Boston Harbor and San Francisco Bay. Don’t know. Maybe it’s just one of those things that’s part circumstance and cultural attitude and back in the 1700s, they were just digging on the swamps and voodoo instead of piling up sand.

I’ve also been thinking a fair bit about globalization and what not involving the world. ‘Course, these days, there’s a bit of me that’s getting paid to think about the globe.

Among the many individual stories that depress the fuck out of anyone with a conscience who doesn’t believe any other human deserves the fate of scrounging for food and shelter in a fetid swamp of flood waters, I’m perversely cheered by the international response. Although, all the countries hating on the U.S. and Bush (for good fucking reasons) must be ratcheting up their disgust 100 fold for our failure to care for our own. Seriously, though, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia are kicking in the donations to help out a US disaster.

The U.S. should learn something.

The only other thing on my mind is settling down after a buddy visited from Boston. It’s weird to have a little bit of my old home show up in the new one. Didn’t make me homesick, it made me sure that I did the right thing.

Fuck ya, Labor Day weekend has arrived. Three whole days of freedom. I drove home blasting tunes on the iPod and convertible wide open to the sun and the wind.

But, then, I had a pang of guilt about Hurricane Katrina and the horrible mess, actually and metaphorically and governmentally and basically every which way, that is now New Orleans. It’s a city I’ve been to a couple a times and rather liked (not just for the tits, beads and 32-ounce glasses of booze).

It is one of those cities that has its own striking geography; I can remember the other-worldly feeling of arriving at night and driving along levees with swamp creature noises on both sides of you.

My guilt subsided, though, when I realized I had just moved to Silicon Valley, which is invariably on the short list of another tragedy that the nation just might handle inadequately.

I’m pretty proud of Condi Rice for heading back to DC after she caught a Broadway show. Damn, those tickets are expensive and you don’t want to waste that cash. It ain’t like the poor and miserable wouldn’t still be there in a couple few days. (Thanks to the place I now work, and it’s neighborhood, there’s a special warm place for Condi’s whereabouts when the government is failing to govern. Can’t wait until she returns to the ‘hood, if only because it means this administration is through.)

I’m not sure I’m quite comfortable with the charges of racial bias and, basically, that it’s because of the critical mass of African Americans that nothing has been done. I think it’s more about being poor. There’re enough trailer parks full of whites blown away by tornados each year that no one does much about either.

The shitty thing is the formula is pretty much the riskier the locale the poorer the people. Except for your occassional house in Chatham or land-slid mansion in the Hollywood Hills.

Anyway, I gots to go enjoy some sun before the next big earthquake hits.

I am currently obsessed with the brilliant marketing ploy and bad
science that is "intelligient design." I love the creativity where
the Christian Right constantly finds new angles to explore in
thrusting a 2-millenium old religion down our collective throats.

Even more refreshing is the newest, and arguably most fucked up, angle
that I discovered through this guy’s website —
http://hbeeinc.com/blog .

Apparently, some astoundingly crazy Christians have pointed out how
the swirling blob of Hurrican Katrina captured on radar screens
resembles the swirling blob of a 6-week forming embryo. Why? Because
capital-G god is smiting the godless abortion-filled Sodom of New
Orleans, of course, silly.

The bright side of that lunacy is searching it further I found this
website: http://venganza.com.

I so worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster now.

I can’t stand the paranoia that lives within me (and as it turns out
after a phone conversation lives outside me, too.)

There should be some sort of fucking acid test for whether you were
destined to screw up, implode (or in my case be perceived to fuck up)
in the old workplace. Or, if your seemingly cool boss might be
inclined to throw you to the wolves on a whim.

A girl’s got to know when and if there might come a time when she
mights have to get a lawyer working for her again.

Everything about this job and this state so far indicates it’s a far
cry from my former digs. From the Onion (www.theonion.com) reading
president to the fact that just about everyone here has come from a
variety of past jobs and varied interests and seems pretty true to the
school of making the world a better place. Shit, people here right
letters to the editor and op ed pieces out there in the public world,
where everyone can see them.

But, little old me, I’m keeping my light slightly under a bushel.=20
Because I can’t let myself take the risk of trusting I won’t get
fucked again.

So, when the boss starts talking about Intelligient Design and leaves
an article from the NY Times on my chair and we discuss the decline
and fall of American culcha. (She thinks it’s the end of civilization
with US inhabitants at their fattest, dumbest and most complacent
ever. I told her I think it’s the "End Times" and I’m waiting for the
Rapture.) So when all this goes down, and I want to write about
Intelligient Design, I’m checking myself and over-thinking whether
it’s work safe. What the angle might be. Where I can get reamed
anew.

Fucks with my ‘blog-writing mojo, that’s what.

Same with checking out the new boss’s husband’s website, which
apparently has gotten a lot of ‘blog buzz. It’s an interesting music
thang. I’m listening now. But, I ain’t linking to the site.

Fucking hell. I should have changed my name when I moved west. From
now on my name is Cassandra Peebles.