15 minutes- stretched

"Most of all, it was the kind of fame -- that peculiar blogosphere kind of fame -- that made Congdon's fans feel they knew her intimately" (Not that I'd ever heard of this person til I read the online CNN bit).

OK, that explains it. Why I have always felt the bloggers I read regularly are personal acquaintances. Perhaps they 'get it.' I'm sure they get emails from tons of people who address them as tho they were brothers, sisters, sons, daughters. Oh BTW, tylenol can kill you. Violent video games w/Christian message. CNN again. I need a cigarette.

Ah ha - it's those gosh darned "Left Behind" folks, again. Reading one of those books (well, the small part I was able to consume before becoming 'full' of babble)remind me strongly of Ron Hubbard's pretense at sci fi.

"The people came out of a very large building, with multiple windows on the ground floor, and a variety of balconies above. Balconies which were variously made of concrete, different kinds of wood, such as pine, maple, mahogany, oak. These people were young and old, fat and thin. The young children were walking more slowly than the adults. A parent sometimes had to stop and wait for the child to catch up. Some of the people had red hair, some were sporting long black hair; some with blonde hair, which might have been long or short. They wore multiple colors; some were in blue, some were in green, some were in pink, some- - - -" etc. etc.

etc. Using every possible word that could be used, inflating the text to cover the maximum pages, with really very little substance involved. Hmmm L. Ron Hubbard, heh heh, the man who told a Sci Fi convention in the 1920's that the ideal way to make as much money as you could would be to set up your own religion.

And so he did. The rest, as they say, is history.

I was thinking, last night, of how extremely screwed up our government is these days. Industry insiders being appointed as overseeing regulators of their own industry, courts packed by right wing nuts ruling against our very own Constitution; president 'w' (small 'w') with his evil twin executor (the anti-Christ, Cheney)- all beginning to remind me very much of a couple of Robert Heinlein books written in the 50's. One in which the trend toward total minority employment in government offices led to a society ruled by the 'bureaucrats' who were all of colour, and loftily condescending toward all the fairer folk they oversaw: a simple extrapolation of the times. (ad.)At least three other books (one was a trilogy - can one say that?) which posited a far flung starry Empire ruled by or being attacked by a People of MiddleEastern Muslim heritage. Since they were always the villians, the most radical form of Sharia played a part in at least one of these imagined universes (universi?) IIRC, these were spawned in the late '70's, when the West was experiencing its first oil shortage, ie., gas prices skyrocketing, wide spread shortages. Who else could we vilify? Amazing isn't it, the human animal, either individually or in nation wide groups, can always find the "other" to blame for what every ill visited upon it.

Other books less clearly remembered, paint pictures that merge in my musings with the current events in our government.