We Can't Escape Into Sports Anymore

This is Thursday March 12, 2020 and I think it’s girl scout day.  It’s like a “Film Noir” movie script.  It’s like a Stephen King novel like “The Stand” come to life.  Frankly it’s bumming me out.  President Trump was serious and reading from a script obviously not written by him in his twenty minute speech or so.  Gone was the political game playing.  This was serious stuff.  Travel of European nationals has been banned for thirty days.  When I first heard it I thought travel to Europe from America entirely was banned.   Trump wants payroll tax help for the average hourly wage worker.  Any help will surely be appreciated.  And we’re going to need the help because some of the measures in the past 24 hours since the speech seem draconian.  Gatherings of 250 or more have been banned in California by the governor.  I’ve heard the rumor Disneyland has been closed by the governor.   The NBA and the NHL have canceled the rest of their seasons.  They didn’t talk about play-off games.  Major league baseball has canceled the rest of spring training.  The start of the regular reason is in extreme doubt.  March Madness has been canceled for the NCAA.  They previously were going to play the games without an audience.  They are doing “Live” studio game shows like Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune without an audience.  If you want my feelings about most of this stuff I think it’s bullshit.  They even said Broadway in New York and the Lincoln Cancer and Carnagie Hall will be dark.  Can you imagine the enormous effects on the gross national product with all of this stuff?   Restaurants are closing down and in some cases going out of business.  Like I say it’s bullshit.  It's an artificial depression of our own making.  Nothing about the coming depression will be a natural phenomenon.   The Dow Jones Industrials were down over 2300 points today.  This is a new point record and is in excess of a ten percent drop as I figure it.  The numbers were in the twenty-one thousands.  I just heard in the news it’s the lowest figure since Trump’s inauguration.  This should make a few diehard Trump fans happy I guess.  It only points out, so they would say, the enormous stimulative effect Trump’s presidency have had on the stock markets. 

I went for snacks in the front room and Brother Bart was already there just after two.  I sat down and had a cup of popcorn with lots of unpopped cernals I spit on the floor, and one Oreo and a cup off tea.   Brother Bart started with the Bible study right away.  He said he was going to preach on the parables of Jesus and he actually got to six of them.  The first was on the workers in the vineyard.  The “payment” was as I said that you get eternal life in the hereafter.  There was a guy in the group that asked a lot of questions.  He asked about being born again so Brother Bart elaborated on that subject.  The second parable was on the two sons.  One said he would go work in the field and didn’t and the other son said he would not work in the field but then changed his mind and went to work in the field.  This is the son that “did the will of his father”.   The third parable was one that brought me up short.  It illustrates that you can’t just say “I accept your forgiveness for my sins and come into my life”.   Brother Bart said you had to believe everything about the Bible including the scenario laid out in the following parable about the tenants in the vineyard.    The landowner of the vineyard let his field out to tenants and he sent his servents into the field to collect the harvest but they treated the servants shamefully and beat some of them up badly.   Then the landowner sent his own son to collect the payment that was due and they conspired to kill him thinking they would get his inheritance.  This whole allegory is a highly biased account of the Jews and Israel and how God has never been that pleased with Israel all along.  The next parable was also anti-Jewish the way Bart tells it.  It was on the wedding feast.  The punch line is that the “good people” of the community, the Jews, declined to come to the wedding feast so the bridegroom went out into the highways and bi-ways to collect the general population, good and bad, and the place was packed with guests.  Brother Bart says these represent “the nations”.   Brother Bart stressed that the Jews were non-believers.  There was no acceptable excuse to "decline" this one time. And then there was the brief parable of the fig tree putting out its leaves and you know that summer is on its way.  This symbolizes the rapture that will occur “in this generation” and we are to presume that means since May of 1948 when Israel became a nation.  I pointed this out.  The final parable was on the ten virgins and the five foolish virgins why didn’t bring enough oil for their lamps and finally the door was shut against them and they didn’t get to partake of the festivities with the bridegroom.  This symbolizes the rapture.  I pointed out that the five foolish virgins were also saved.  But Brother Bart disagreed.  He said there are people in the church that are not believers.  That guy asked other questions leading Bart to talk about the founding fathers here in America and how they were all believers and maybe the Corona virus is sent here as a judgement and warning of God.  Then Cathy was saying something and I got up and left.  It was nearly a quarter after three and I had to use the bathroom back here.

[domestic news]  Housekeeping came in just after nine before I was quite prepared.  It seemed like a long hour.  I wandered two and fro about the building.  Actually just after nine it began raining and it was raining in earnest till at least three thirty.  I was afraid the room might leak because the rain was so relentless.  I changed my dinner meal to a grilled cheese sandwich.  When I returned at almost ten Joe was waiting outside for the floor to dry.  She hadn’t put a bedspread on my bed, but otherwise it was made.  She just came back a minute ago and offered bedspreads to Joe and me and I told her I already had a bedspread.  I had gotten one from the pile that was still warm from the dryer.  At least I knew that it had been washed.  Then I watched Gary and Shannon.  It’s funny how they say that they didn’t want to talk about the Corona virus and to turn off the TV news to clear the negative vibes from our minds.  But all they did was talk about the virus.  For lunch we had a good enchilada and white rice and green beans.  We had watermelon for dessert.  I went back and got a second (or was it first?) cup of coffee.  It was more Gary and Shannon and finally after noon I just turned it off.  I lay down briefly then I went out back to smoke.  Then I turned on the TV froth on KNBC and lay back down just meditating or something.   Days of our Lives featured Zander menacing that nurse in the elevator.  She’s lucky she escaped that ride with her life.  Victor is persistent in wanting her dead.  Victor has no conscience and has no empathy for either Will or all the others such as Sonny that are impacted by his lies.  Nicole is getting increasingly suspicious of Zander.  Christin remembered a heart shaped birth mark on the neck of her newborn baby and it’s a birth mark that Sarah just made reference to.  

Just an update about the Sea of Green.   Back in the late seventies I had a model of the metaphysical world that had the Sea of Green as realm eleven, flanked by realms ten and twelve.  These were both this universe but one of them had a psychic controlling influence on the other, because it was the realm with all of the dead people.   I was thinking the other day that perhaps the Sea of Green transcends the fifth dimension into parellel universes.  But later I was reassured by the Federation that this is not the case.   The Sea of Green is reality based (unlike psychics like Sylvia Brown) and it's skin to the psychic chessboard.  If people are unhappy in this realm, their unhappiness is based on their own reality and not being tormented by fifth dimensional phantoms.  The Orion federation has in the past connected itself to Osirus, the Egyptian god of the dead.  There has always been that identification with "The Dead" in the Federation.   But I don't know the metaphysical relation between the two universes.  As Chuck Smith would say, "More information is needed".