Around the Cosmos in 365 Days: Narcissistic Refractions in the Mirror of my Añoverbosary

It almost passed without my noticing it, but yesterday was the one year anniversary of this blog. I hope I can reflect on this occasion without getting all sentimental. That goes for you too, so watch out with the overheated rhetoric.

Where to begin this self-indulgent exercise.... Where else but with ME! One thing blogging has taught me is that I have a number of skills that I didn’t really know I had before I started blogging, for example, Islamophobic humor.

It all started with LGF, which is one of the most important news resources in the world. What Charles does there is a daily monument to the failings of the MSM, which is much more concerned about a pathetic old chicken hawk harassing young men than the Islamists who would kill every child--not to mention gay man--in America if they could. If all Americans were exposed to the stories Charles brings to light, I am sure that eighty percent of the country would understand the nature of our enemy and be solidly behind the war on terror. For the other 20% of doctrinaire moonbats in the reality based community, no amount of reality will ever suffice.

I just googled my name on LGF, so I know the exact day it all began: 8-9-03. That’s when I started posting on LGF under the clever name “Bob G.” That was in the days before registration, when Charles’ readership was quite small compared to today.

At first I was shocked and outraged by the stories Charles would post. But at some point I decided that it was pointless to get all worked up and respond with righteous indignation. So I started trying to come up with humorous one-liners. I still feel that, in addition to smoking the terrorists out of their holes, we should systematically joke 'em out of their holes. We should relentlessly mock them and their stupid theology, something that would have come naturally to Americans in the days before political correctness. It should have started no later than 1979, and should have only intensified when they issued a Fatwa on Salman Rushdie.

There are well over 1,000 posts under the name of Bob G. For example, some of Bob G’s early contributions included a historical observation about the Muslim world: “Did you know that Muslims discovered zero? The problem is, they’ve been discovering it ever since.” (Yes, I know, they only preserved the idea of zero, but you can’t let facts get in the way of a good joke.) I also mentioned some Palestinian bumper stickers I’d seen, such as: "Practice Premeditated Acts of Violence and Gratuitous Cruelty,” "Obey Authority," "My Other Car is a Truck Bomb," "Jihad is Not Healthy for Infidels and other Vile Creatures," "Follow Me, I'm Lost," "My Son Graduated Summa Boom Loudly from Arafat Hi," and "Pray for World Conflagration." After a bomb lab was discovered in the Palestinian territories, I asked, "Isn't qualifying it as a Palestinian bomb lab redundant, like Bozo the clown?"

Then, on 2-9-05, Gagdad Bob was born, when another reader on LGF suggested the name (obviously a takeoff on the haplessly grandiose Baghdad Bob.) Gagdad Bob still occasionally comments on LGF, and I see that the number is now up to 1883. I’m looking at some of his early contributions now. There was a story about money laundering in the Palestinian Authority, to which I remarked, “Sources close to Arafat say that money was the only thing he ever laundered.” There was another story about some terrorist apologist who was described as a “the Rosa Parks of Islam.” I said the description was accurate, because he insists on the right to blow up any part of the bus he chooses. I also commented on the media describing Bin Laden as a “Saudi dissident.” I agreed, noting that Arab society is mired in the 14th century, while bin Laden wants to bring them to the 13th. In response to some terrorist front group--probably CAIR--I said “Excuse me, but if Allah had intended Muslims to have civil rights, don't you think he would have given them some in the Koran? Maybe he knew something we don't.”

Then, at some point in the summer of 2005, I discovered ShrinkWrapped, and began leaving more serious comments there. Frankly, I was shocked to discover another non-moonbat mental health professional. I thought I was the only one. I emailed him immediately and offered my support, since he is still deeply closeted, whereas I am relatively “out” (although I do not advertise my proclivities; I’m guessing that only one coworker shares my dark secret--the rest probably assume that I am a normal Bush hating liberal.... well, maybe not normal, but not abnormal enough to be a conservative).

Then, one of ShrinkWrapped’s readers--I wish I remembered who it was--sent me an email saying how grateful he was for my comments there. He included about a dozen of them in the email, and suggested to me that I should start my own blog. I read through the comments, and thought to myself, “hmm. Those are interesting. Or, if not interesting, at least pretty damn weird.”

In the meantime, my book, which had come out in early 2005, was greeted with resounding silence. It was unanimous: this was not a book to be tossed aside lightly, nor even with great force. No, it was a book to be ignored entirely. So I thought to myself, why not use the blog to try to generate a little interest in the book? I knew full well that the book wasn’t for everyone. However, at the same time, I knew that it couldn't be for no one either. I just knew that somewhere out there was a small population of ontological guerillas, cosmic omsteaders, extreme seekers and evolutionary freedom fighters for whom this book would be just the thing, if only they knew about it. At least I could give people the choice of whether to ignore it.

The book still hasn’t made any money--or if it has, I haven’t heard about it. But--and not to congratulate myself, but it’s true--I didn’t write the book with any commercial motivations whatsoever. I’ve told the unlikely story of how it got published in a previous post, so I won’t repeat it here. But I really tried, insofar as I was capable, to write something with no “expiration date,” so to speak. Even where the book contains old perennially true ideas, I tried to dress them up in a fresh new way. I really wanted the book to be “relevant” forever.

Now, you have undoubtedly noticed that the so-called news, as filtered through the MSM, is not really news. Rather, it is the appropriation of an institution called “news” for the promulgation of a worldview. I, on the other hand, have an all-encompassing weltanthang through which I attempt to interpret the news of the day. This is what eludes my detractors entirely, because everything I write is the reflection of a vision of cosmic spiritual evolution. In truth, this is what anyone does who reflects on the events of the day, except the liberal media pretend they are free of their cheap paradigm a dozen. In other words, it is only your overarching paradigm that allows you to notice what is important in the first place and to put it in context. Therefore, it is no surprise that the liberal media constantly confirm the assumptions of liberalism.

Ultimately what I want to do is understand the events of time from the standpoint of eternity. I’m not saying that I do it well, only that I seem to have discovered a little muddle-world niche that no one else inhobbits. In a very real sense, the blog has become the center of my spiritual practice, after ten years of a very different kind of spiritual practice that primarily involved meditation, reading, reflection, withdrawal from the world, and “ascent.”

But in my 49th year, a number of events conspired to turn my cosmos upside down and inside out. I remember back in my 20’s reading a book that said that our lives run in seven year cycles. Furthermore, these cycles are fractals, so that each seven year cycle has the same deep structure as all the others. And one complete cycle is 7 x 7. In the back of my mind, I always had this idea that something big would happen in my 49th year, some kind of transformation, or culmination, or symbolic death and rebirth. I don’t know. Something.

As it so happened, I did die. In several ways. First was the publication of the book, which was a very real sort of death, after having had my entire being revolve around it for so many years. Then there was the birth of my son after having been married for 17 years and enjoying an altogether different kind of life. That old life was dead. Then there was the surprising discovery of type I diabetes, which is--if you play it right--to be constantly shadowed and tutored by Death.

Now, instead of a yoga of ascent and “escape” from the world, I practice a yoga of descent and engagement with the world. This is now much more consistent with the Judeo-Christian view, which maintains that the world is worthy of our being in it, even if not of it. But it is also entirely consistent with Sri Aurobindo’s yoga, which picks up where the old yogas leave off. Now I realize that it’s very easy to go off to some retreat, disengage from the world, and ascend into a blissful detachment from this vale of tears.

But if you are truly an extreme seeker and off-road spiritual aspirant, that path is for wimps. It’s like one of those freakish body builders who spends his days lifting weights. But put him on a baseball diamond or a basketball court, and he’s worthless. Now I am committed to truly making the word flesh, and in so doing, make the world fresh--every morning. It's a much bigger challenge to try to bring spirit down into the world than to flee up and out of the world into spirit.

In other words, we must embody our realization in everything we do. Nevertheless, everyone must approach spirit in their own way. Everyone is a unique “problem of God,” but with a unique gift as well. In my case, I can no longer even imagine writing anything without the background context of spirit. I feel like those medieval artisans who crafted the gargoyles on top of the cathedrals that no one would ever even see. Nevertheless, these craftsmen were acutely aware that God was looking, so that nothing less than their best effort would ever suffice.

Occasionally I write a gargoyle that gets gargoogled and generates a gaggle of traffic. It’s almost always something of the political “red meat” variety, such as my psychological takedown of Clinton. But whenever that happens, I make it a point to test the limits in a self-defeating manner by writing a post of High Cosmic Weirdness to immediately clear the room of those who do not understand the larger purpose of the blog. For in the end, this can never be a mass movement. Rather, we can only build the membership of the Transdimensional Order of the Friendly Sons of the Cosmic Raccoons the old-fishin' way: one lonely raccoon at a time.

*****

By the way, to my shock and surprise, some readers have been purchasing indulgences through Petey’s sad little tin cup. I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude. Frankly it’s a little embarassing. To be honest, I have an issue with praise. I’ll have to run it by ShrinkWrapped, but I think he would say that it’s because my outward humility just masks my crass exhibitionism and sense of entitlement.