My lIfe, in installments

Chapter 1.    Does God have a sense of humor?

I lived in The Haight in San Francisco in the late '60's and had quite a vibrant following.  I would sit on a stool in coffee shops and just talk...about politics, culture, telepathy, and people would fill the place to listen.  I only read someone's mind once in public; it brought too much attention and made me uncomfortable.  I stopped speaking about telepathy too.  I guess at the present stage of my life I'm ready to open up a bit. 

The '60's was a visionary time because nothing was happening, so you could only see things coming and be visionary.  Now many of the speculative futures we talked about are arriving, and a visionary can see dramatic change either now or in the near future, inspiring a popular sci-fi genre of near-future stories (e.g. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, which could come true just about any time, judging by the real-life adult version: the 2016 presidential campaign).

After a middle-class childhood filled with longing to be a member of the Bloomsbury Group instead of throwing the Green Sheet onto driveways in Woodland Hills, I started off as a hopeful undergraduate at U.C. Berkeley with a girlfriend and visions of a literary life.  She and I watched Mario Savio speak on the Sproul Hall steps, urging us, among other things, to use whatever words we wanted, "bad" or otherwise.  Mario asked everyone to raise a fist in solidarity.   I did not raise my fist, as I could already say "fuck" and "shit" if I wanted to.  She raised her fist.  Conformist!, I raged within. The next week she broke my heart by sleeping with every man she met.

I had thought I had a grip on life, but I had no grip on anything.

My major was English Lit., which I liked, but I couldn't understand what contribution to society, or to literature, the graduate studies made.  I loved reading Jonathan Swift, for instance, in my undergraduate class, but I found that graduate students do not read Swift- they read critiques of Swift, followed by a career of reading critiques of those critiques then writing one's own critiques of the critiques.  Who reads this stuff, and why?  

I decided that college was irrational and I had youthful impulses to change things.  I considered starting a movement to revolutionize college so that it would be a better fit with the youthful mind, at least in language arts.  But Mario stole my thunder with his call for freedom to say "fuck" and "shit," inspiring a mass movement to support the Anglo-Saxon's thousand year struggle to speak the mother tongue.  

Fear of not being a college graduate compelled me to get my bachelor's, but I fled academia after graduation.  The '60's were in full swing, a combination of nihilism and hedonism.  There were two types of hedonist.  The ideological hedonists had a belief system to support their proclivities, which held that all you need is love at the dawn of the Age of Aquarius.  The plain hedonists just sought pleasure while admitting they didn't know if they were entitled to it.  I was in the latter group.  I found that a message of nihilism is only acceptable if it's funny.  Well, I'd better back up and define a nihilist. A nihilist is someone who doesn't think the universe is funny.  A funny nihilist is someone who thinks it's funny that the universe isn't funny.  

I started to wonder if God had a sense of humor, and this started to seem to me the central question about God and existence.  Not that I already had decided there was a God, but it seemed to me, given the dire need in our universe for things to be funny, that if there were a creator god of our universe and it turned out this god did not have a sense of humor, that would be incredibly bad news.

After extracting my B.A. from the system I started my speaking career, but I became obsessed with the question of God's sense of humor, if any, and I left home to search the world for wisdom on the question.  This blog tells tales from my adventures, as well as stray political thoughts, and, for the first time, I will openly discuss my telepathic abilities and reveal some useful tidbits.

All the best, 

Harry the Human

The big GOP debate

By the time the major debate with Trump et al came on at 8:00pm, I had watched two hours of the B list debate (see next post) and my telepathic energy and curiosity had waned, though there were a few interesting aspects to report.

It seems now that any candidate who has spent time as a front-runner, e.g. Trump and before him Jeb Bush, must pay by becoming overly familiar and vulnerable to being toppled.  Trump felt the difference and tried to counter it, though the network, hungering for Trump's past outrages, did not help him.  CNN moderator Jake Tapper brought up Trump's recent ad hominems directed at Carly Fiorina's face, while the cameras broadcast that face to 25 million viewers so that we could all watch her struggle.  But Trump, sensing the top-dog dilemma, was not in the mood to play that card, and backed out with, "Carly, I think you look beautiful," immediately after which he wondered if that sounded lame, if he would be left high-and-dry by attempts to be civil.  

Fiorina is using Bush's setback and the possible weakening of Trump to shine a bit. During the "face" segment, she felt like a vice was squeezing her soul, but she showed some strength in getting through it, to her advantage.  From her psyche all I could pick up was a blazing drive to win, but one of her handlers was present, and I read a concern that Fiorina should not use verbs like "crush" and "destroy" so much.

There were some interesting moments during the Iran deal debate when I gathered that all the candidates and media figures have received the word that no one, whether a supporter or detractor of the deal, is to depict it as an oil deal, though that is what it is; any peace involved will be the peace oil companies need for drilling.  Because the climate change debate is coming to the fore, giant oil deals are not inspiring to the public.  Better to argue about nuclear proliferation than oil drilling.

I honestly had trouble staying awake towards the end of the three somewhat pointless hours, though one bright spot got my attention: Ohio governor John Kasich delivered a lecture about the use of ad hominems by the candidates, urging a civil discourse. Almost in telepathic unison, every other candidate thought, "Shut up, you asshole!"

GOP debate: Mind-reads from Harry the Human

I just watched the first debate with the four Republicans from the B list on CNN from the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, 72 miles from where I live in Pearblossom.  The proximity helped me with telepathy, but there was a lot of static and I'm wondering if there are blocking devices in the library (the Pentagon has been working on human telepathy, how to pick up thoughts and transmit them, how to block them).  In spite of the unusual static, I was able to pick up some telling partial thoughts.

During the warm-up I briefly scanned the hosts, Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper. The flash of interest in the debates buoyed them, but they are concerned that Trump is the only source of that interest.  Their minds tried to push away the depressing thought that current politics is repellent to most people.

Three of the candidates- Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum and Lindsey Graham (not so much George Pataki)- are consumed with concern that the Tea Party, which none of them was able to successfully represent in government, should not blame them for its fall from grace within the Party, but should embrace them as the last officials around who profess the true faith.  None of the candidates expects to be president; the hope is that the Tea Party angle will pay off with a respectable local career.  

I scanned the studio audience and, though they agreed with many policy statements from the candidates, almost no one expected anything productive to develop should one of them be elected president.

The stimulating parts of the debate were when, after an hour and a half of jovial schmoozing in the green room, they dissed each other onstage.  Though seasoned politicians expect betrayal of outward friendliness from their colleagues, their "reptilian brains" were surprisingly enraged each time it happened.

For instance, in the first stab of the evening, after Santorum, in a sanctimonious spiel about avoiding personal attacks on Republicans, criticized Jindal for attacking Trump, I picked this up, clearly and forcefully from Jindal's mind: "You fucking piece of shit...I'll fucking tear your fucking....," until static cut it off.

When Graham announced that Santorum didn't have an immigration plan, Santorum thought, "You god-damned lying son of a bitch, I'll stomp the living crap...." and static.  

Santorum plotted his revenge.  After Graham talked about his difficult childhood, when his parents ran a modest restaurant and bar, Santorum said, "95% of Americans don't own a restaurant and bar," and Graham thought, "You sick fuck...I will shove a pitchfork up your ass 'til you beg for mercy...."

When Pataki said that Kim Davis, a clerk who refuses to certify gay marriages, should be fired, because fighting for her religious rights in violation of her job requirements is reminiscent of Iran, a theocracy where imams can interfere in people's lives, all the other candidates sprang internally to attention, as they had not heard this from Pataki before. For some brief moments there was fear that Pataki's analogy would make sense to people and take hold.  Graham thought, "That piece of shit Yankee...I'll show him theocracy....," etc.

That's about it for the first round.  See above for my A list readings!