Congratulation on Ang Lee for his Academy Award for Best Director!

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Abdication of Pope Benedict XVI

“Religious people scare me, but spiritual people inspire me!” – Unknown.

It is quite a surprising piece of news from the Holy See, not many people see it coming, do you? Who is next going to head this venerable institution founded by Peter and Paul? Mostly by Paul, if I may say so. I'm not robbing Peter to pay Paul here. Peter was the symbolic head of state while Paul was doing all the footwork, leaving his personal footprints all over Asia Minor and the Levant coasts. He ventured even as far as Rome. His handiworks still influence the thinking of the Church’s fathers to this day. The question now facing the Vatican is who has the anti-reformative cold feet to fill those satin-lined Fisherman's Sandals?

If you dabble in astrology and a fan of Nostradamus, the next supreme Pontiff is believed to be “from the new crescent moon”. Probably a cardinal from the Middle East country? Or from a country when the new crescent moon first appears in ascendance when the Conclave of Cardinals sequesters itself behind closed doors to select the next new piece of “Rock”, upon which Jesus would build his church?

But what a little piece of rock that is, the Vatican! It is a piece of paradise here on earth, if you ever see one. It is filled with so many heavenly art treasures that will reap the Holy Father an immeasurable earthly sum . . . if he chooses to liquidate them. Ah, the architecture that is St. Peter’s Basilica, lifts human spirit a-soaring to a new height of sensual pleasure that Michelangelo and Bernini once had experienced.

What is the relevancy of the Papacy to our world today? His Holiness’s spiritual grasp on the hearts and minds of his flock is still indisputable and palpable, but his temporal power will no longer inspire terrors and fears on the world's body corporal he once had with inquisitions and social castrations. His anathemas can no longer be cast further than the confining walls of the Vatican. His excommunication edicts can now be sidestepped in this age of Facebook and other social media. It turns out that the current Pope, Benedict, with an unfortunate moniker of "God's Rottweiler" given by a media pundit, has no canine teeth or he has long been defanged. Or he simply has been wearing dentures for all these years but had been kept in secrecy by the Curia Romana. Well, the end result is that his barks have been worse than his bites and had been found barking up a wrong tree at times.

He may still claims to be the castellan of all human virtues, custodian of millions of Roman Catholic souls and lord of all that little piece of rock he surveys. But marriage between religion and state has always been a bad idea, many crusades and holy wars have been born of this unholy union.

How do we improve the image and social standing of the Church in this age of PRs and media spins? The devil is in the detail, as they say. I have called on God's liaison officer, the Archangel Gabriel, for his Boss's comment on the current state of His Church.. Many attempts have been made but my calls so far have not been returned.

On the personal note, I wish the Holy Father well and hope he will find peace and personal redemption in his new life of contemplative prayers and private devotions. Personal preservation, not self-sacrifice, will go a long way to . . . well, preserve oneself. Heaven can wait. . . His legacy and achievements will be discussed and debated by the historians and the world at large for years to come.

There have been many discussions on the future role of the Pope. I think he'll be given the title "Pope Emeritus of the Holy See”, you see, not to be confused with "Papa Emmett" who lives across the Emerald Sea. Who is Papa Emmett, you ask? I don't know, probably from OZ or Ireland. He just happens to rhyme. . . (The "Devious Poet" strikes again!). The truth is, he will be hidden away in one of the abbeys doting the Lateran Hill and will spend the rest of his life as an anonymous penitent. Just like you can't have two crouching tigers marking their territories on the same hillock, as a Chinese philosopher once so wisely observed, you can't have two popes peddling salvation in the same 'hoods on "Roma's Seven Hills."

Religion, as well as government, provides the spiritual and temporal frameworks and support systems that fulfill some of our basic human needs. The needs to belong, to associate, for mutual aid, for identity and for security are universal in all of us. Like an automobile, they are good instruments or means that serve those ends. Like an automobile, they need fine tuning and part upgrade from time to time and a good and responsible chauffeur put in place to take the helm.

However, ever so often, those whom we put in the driver's seat abuse, misuse or even betray that trust, that lead some people to become spiritually cynical and politically apathetic. You shouldn’t blame the vehicle. That shouldn't be. The Church that Jesus built was a fine piece of transport system that moved us from barbarism to civilized society. So, all we need is to actively participate, to fine tune those systems and put in place wise, conscientious people with integrity to guide, govern so that the original messages and principles of the founders will not be lost in translation or misrepresentation.

After the Pope and the Queen of Netherlands, could the Queen of Shakespeare's Land be far behind? Charles has been waiting to get into that “uniform a la king” that got tucked away and stacked so high in his highness's attic for so long that it is now unfit for his girth but fit for the Tower of London Museum display. Give the poor bonny Prince of Wails a chance, eh Lizzy?

My Prophetic Ways with Poems and Blog Posts

Some of my discerning and discriminating friends pointed out to me that some phrases and words in my poems and blog posts are quite prophetic, if you know where to look. Some of you certainly do, with the fervor like a newly converted zealot.

I'm here to set the records straight. There is nothing hocus-pocus going on here. If you draw back the great curtain of Oz, you will find only a wizard of words, (modesty temporarily dispensed with here) pulling levers and pulleys to assemble alphabets and words on a great Scrabble board of life.

On the other hands, I can't guarantee that the additional stage props and backdrops were not put there by my Muse to enhance and liven up the ambiance a little bit . . . but who knows? . . . ;-)

Happy Chinese New Year to All!

Our Current Crops of Congressmen and Women

Most of the current crops of Congress members are providing me with a lot of inspirational fodders for practicing my gun-firing salvos of political satires. Don't you just love them? Most of them are a bunch of frustrated former law-book practitioners, consummate escape clause artists and problem non-solvers. And last but not least, with a few failed third-rated theatre / mummery performers thrown in the mix.

Judging from yesteryear harvests, and knowing that leopards never change their spots, the current crops also include a strange ménagerie zoo of downright alien and unapologetically un-American beasts, all on H-1B working visas with temporary stay in Congress. These include many certifiable "Just-Hanging-Around" legislative sloths, "Acting-Career-Transference" oratory magpies, "Hooked-On-Their-Own-Conviction" intellectual Jackasses, "Charge-At-All-Cost-20/40 Hind-Sight” visionary rhinoceroses and "Burying-The-Head-In-The-Sand" reality-checker Ostriches.

Take, for examples, that former Rep. Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin of Missouri, one GOP Senate candidate Richard “God Intended” Mourdock of Indiana and current Republican congressman Phil “Partly Right” Gingrey of Georgia, a former obstetrician-gynecologist, no less. These three clueless Stooges of misogynistic ignoramuses, and dying breed of anachronistic moral tyrannosauruses! (Nothing works me up like a charm to lighten up my present dour mood like a couple of rhymes, if you must know.)

They also secretly belong, I am led to believe, to the “silent majority” of Congressmen and women who are the loosest, trigger-happiest, most pro-NRA shootists, if you ever saw one, or three, or groups! These people shoot junks from both ends of their body orifices while spewing out their high moral wisdom nuggets from their bully pulpits like a tribunal of supreme religious pontifices. Many have that "devil-may-care", “screw-the-taxpayers” attitude, voiding their scats and dungs all over the place on our ship of state, leaving the taxpayers holding the mop and broom to pick up the “tabs”.

You can also spot the same symptomatic displays of these kinds of behaviors on some air-tube talking heads, air-wave pundits, mag-rag experts and paper-rag gurus. Well, some of them are actually mirror twins of those political types mentioned above, with no less irrelevant and irreverent chatterbox ménage à trois the like of Rush "OxyContin-Induced-Rush" Limbaugh, Sean "Finicky-Not-So-Truth-Picky" Hannity, and Ann "Anti-Current-Culture" Coulter, to name a few. Don’t they make strange unlikely bed fellows even in this age of live reality show? I’d like to think so.

However, it's unfair to lump up all members of Congress and other public servants whose integrity and hearts are in the right place in one same category. They are few and far between. Here are a few that come to mind. Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is an independent thinker and straight shooter and has a lot of good ideas on our current pressing issues about tax and Wall Street reforms, Citizens United, entitlements, balancing budgets and deficit reduction. Newly elected Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is another promising and yet untested one; I pinch a lot of hope on her.

On the public service side, former Big Apple's Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and now retired Secretary of State is worthy of our gratitude for her years of service to our great nation's causes and her answer and dedication to the call of duty. Senator John "Maverick" McCain, despite a promising start, turned out to be a little disappointment. I hope he'll get back to his old grooves and put country first and his own interests second when comes to serving our country, as he did so well during our unfortunate war in Vietnam. I'll call these men and women "statesmen and women" to distinguish them from the other nasty bunch, the quintessential "politicians".

Ah, politicians, what are we going to do without them!? Politics are dirty business. Only real stinko-philiacs dare to venture off to this miasma of obnoxious blow-offs and blow-hards! One can only wonder and flatulate. Uh . . . postulate!

(Note: flatulate, an intransitive verb, a coined, derivative verb from "flatulence", a non-abstract noun probably derived from a high Medieval Latin word "flatus". Now you know the rest of the story . . . and here you are. . . at the end of my post!. . . Ppuff!!!) ;-)

Congratulation on President Obama 2nd Inauguration

"Success is knowing your purpose in life, growing to reach your maximum potential, and sowing seeds that benefit others." -- Unknown

What is known is the purpose set forth by our country's Constitution regarding our president's and our Congress's roles in our lives. In order to reach the full potential vested in their respective offices, they must remember they are there to serve, and to seek out the common ground and work towards for this country's Greater Good. Let us begin then, on this auspicious day, the 2nd Inauguration of President Obama, we wish them success and a new spirit of cooperation to move this country forwards. And a grateful nation will remember the legacies they leave behind.

Let us also give thanks, on this day, to the legacy the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King had left on the country’s honor roll of men and women who have contributed greatly to the betterment of our countrymen.

An Apologist Poem for Emma Lazarus

Too often in our recent history, our Congress has forgotten the true spirits of America as incarnated in Emma Lazarus' famous poem: to care for the poor, homeless and huddled masses on our own teeming shores.

The cynical among us will dismiss all these as a Lotus eater's pipe dream, a Pollyanna's rosy lens view of our world. It is a Utopian world that cannot be achieved in this earthly realm. Ideals are half-awaken ideas of a daydreamer, they say, conceived out of the hazy mist of their REM sleep.

To these I offer a contrarian view. If you look through the window of history, you can see the domino-falls of Dictatorship, once deemed an impossible dream by the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free”. You can see a parade of dictatorships, may it be religious, imperial-colonial, monarchial, Fascist, patriarchal, sectarian, genocidal or plutocratic, all fall and will eventually fall before the march of Democracy. Sometimes these daydreamer's ideals do come true.

However, a true democracy can only survive and be sustained through an Informed Democracy, a democracy where an informed, educated and participatory public are actively involved in their country’s electoral processes. A democracy without an informed and educated public to adopt sensible egalitarian laws is a mob rule. A democracy where the minority voices are silenced is a dictatorship by arithmocracy. A democracy hijacked by special interests is tyranny imposed by a few on the country’s multitude. The antidote to anti-democracy undercurrent is a well-informed, educated, participatory public.

It was no wonder whenever a dictator came to power, the first thing he wanted to seize control was the mass media, the very incarnation of the Freedom of Speech. And now, his present-day equivalent, a demagogue, fears the most is his followers' exposure to the truth and contrarian views from the mass media; that is why you will find him frequently assaulting the mass media as not representative of his imaginary "Silent Majority".

Show me a "Silent Majority" and I'll show you a mute opera singer. They don't exist!
A majority may be silent in actions at first. A social quake is always preceded by a lot of disgruntled rumblings before it erupts into protests and riots. Any government should be well advised to put their fingers on the social pulses.

But most of current crop of lawmakers are too convicted of their own moral certitude and/or too intoxicated with lobby money to have the empathy for the average, disfranchised Americans. Our government, as it stands now, is a virtual plutocracy. Look at the influence our big corporations, big money and lobbyists exerted on our Congress.

So, to borrow a few words and spirits from her famous poem, I wrote the following doggerel to show the current political ethos of the voters:

Rise! You disfranchised, working-class thrall,
You tired, over-taxed masses must address
And stand with one voice to command our Congress:
"Give us your coin-tossed, poor lawmakers all,
They surely will not like what is in store,
We hold the key to the Congress's Exit Door!"

Butterfly Effect, Fiscal Cliff, Wall Street and Representative Government Redux

Even though our esteemed Congress has just passed a stop-gap measure, America will continue its slide down the Financial Graph Curve towards the Fiscal Cliff, dropping off into an Economic Crevasse and hitting the Monetary Debt Ceiling on the way down, finally winding up through a spending-cut Sequester Wringer.

The “do-nothing” Congress finally did something. Why? Partly because they don’t want to lose, comes next election, the perks and prestige their jobs bring. And partly, I think, some heavyweight fat cat moguls of various stripes and BMIs, after watching with terrifying alarm as their investment portfolios start shriveling up like their little johnnies after a 4-hour Viagra high with their favorite "street-walker interns", called up their indentured representatives in Congress. (Personally, I have more respect for these streeters than some Wall-Streeters, at least they make their hard-earned money the old fashioned way, through manual and uh . . . physical labor.)

In another arena, the same pressure was also mounting for some top brasses in the Pentagon, this Sequester thing was giving them some gastrointestinal problems; this would greatly affect their under-the-table lobbying they were doing for some defense contractors. Now if they couldn’t deliver a bigger slice of the Congressional spending pie, this would give them an anal-explosive complex in addition to their attendant occupational hazard, the military-industrial complex. No amount of psychoanalysis or therapies will solve that. Well, forget about Freud, they decided to take the anal-explosive matters in their own soiled hands and picked up the hot-line, a direct link to their cohorts in the Congress.

The masters summoned and the Congressmen or women obliged and performed their well-rehearsed, two-steps-forward and one-step-back bargaining dance, "Gangnam Style”, around the Cliff’s brink, temporarily slowing the slide. Now they are congratulating and patting each other on the back for their virtuoso performance for saving the day. To them it was all song and dance, but it was a bad imitation at best and a corrupted version at worst, of the inimitable master, PSY. And they know it. They are supposed to be our public servants, but instead they have become indentured servants to the fat cats.

As for the real tax-payers, they are completely psyched out, after holding their breath in suspense for so long and watched the one-trick dog and pony show in Washington with amazement, disbelief and disgust.

Meanwhile, the fat cats’ Wall Street cronies have a more pressing problem. This fiscal stress also gave them an anal problem. But they got the worse end of the complex spectrum deal, the anal-retentive complex. This gives me a reason to suspect that the much discredited Freud might be partially right. The potty trainings must be radically different for these two archetypes during their crucial formative years. So these Wall-Streeters will continue their pants-wetting (liquidating their hedge fund derivatives). And from time to time they will let out a collective, knee-jerk fart (dumping some of their self-appraised, value-inflated, stock portfolios). Those are some spittle and a lot of smoke, to be sure, but no cigars. What is a fella to do with all those private unwanted holdings? I'm not talking about stock and commodity options or pork and beans futures here. Well, nothing much. One can only sympathize. But I'm digressing.

Anyway, this letting out of hot airs from Wall Street will give rise to gale-force wind warnings in the rest of the financial world. These little puffs of smokes emanating from Wall Street will gather strength and become a series of jet-stream blasts of tsunami winds, riding the Occidental Arctic Express, made more severe by global warming (don’t get me started on that now) to buffet (et tu Warren? Just say it ain't so!) the rest of the world. These north-easterlies will suck up and freeze-dry any liquid assets in their paths. You have heard about the air guitar players, some of these Wall-Streeters are basically air stock players. They are playing some investors for gullible fools.

The antidote to all these is simple, plug up all those fart-holes, I mean all the loop-holes. That means reform Wall Street, modify the tax codes, enforce strict restrictions on political lobbies, nullify the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United Vs. Federal Election Commission” decision and clean up both chambers of the current Congress, nooks and closets all!

Now you tell me, if these are not the real "Butterfly Effect", America’s economic prowess and "representative" government in action or what?

In the "mean"time, have a happy and a preposterous New Year! Uh, I mean a pre-prosperous New Year for now, until these tsunami winds blow over!

With regards, PFJChow.