The News - 2011 Road Toll

Good afternoon.  This is the Discombobula news for Friday, 30 December 2011.

In our leading story, the national holiday road toll rose to 31 last night after a Victorian man in his 20's crashed into a tree in Wangaratta.  He was unable to be revived by paramedics and died at the scene.  His passenger was injured.

Insert here a paragraph about empty chairs at Christmas dinner tables to emphasise how awful it is that 31 people have died since we all went on holidays and 31 families are grieving (well, hopefully) for 31 people who died.

That above paragraph is contained in this news report because we the media basically think you are all too stupid to be able to work out that 31 people dying on the roads in the holiday period is a bad thing.  If we didn't spell it out in extremely large capital letters we are concerned that you would confuse it with the cricket scores and think that we need to raise the road toll, resulting in an anarchic nation of souls taking to the roads seatbeltless and pissed, to see how many old people they can run over in a 24-hour period.

Because we know, deep down in our market research, that you are a bunch of morons.  Our polls show that neither you nor we are capable any more of any mode other than fearmongering mode, and that giving you the colour and the shape of the whole story is a pointless enterprise, given that you would not know what to do with it unless we spelled out to you what to do with it.   And we frankly can't be bothered.

This last paragraph of this news report is not actually really here.  For all of the abovementioned reasons, we are too scared to paint the entire picture, which is this:  despite there being thousands and thousands more cars on the roads since the 1970s, the amount of people who died in road fatalities in 1970 was 3978.  In 2010 it was 1367.  That is good news.

May your news be good news, and good afternoon.

The house of rattling mirrors

Some ginormous cosmic-sized semi trailer with a massive smoke machine on its back is driving past the earth. Blowing away the land of smokescreens and rattling the house of distorted mirrors. The economic reckoning we have sensed was going to come - had to come, was untenable in its not-comingness - the living under the illusion that we have all been used to because we don't know any different - it's all starting to topple, to wobble, to rock and to roll. Perhaps we can learn to dance in the middle of it all.

Do not fear. Breathe. Good reminders in heady times. I think I need to double my centering prayer practice. Even though I trust that amazing things are going to happen on both sides of the reality ledger, there are so many fearful things facing us. Environmental and economic. Do I fear? I would lie if I said I never do. I can feel it lurking at times, sure. And pretending it's not there on the edges just makes it lurk more. But yes, I think we are living in amazing times and in a lot of ways we need these things to happen to get us moving. Gearing down and getting centered are vital to keep the fear away. That and faith and hope and vision, too.

This evening my time, there has been a coordinated effort to lower interest rates from the US, the UK, Canada, Sweden and Switzerland by half a percentage point. China also cut theirs by 0.27 percent. Whether they are able to stave off the next Great Depression remains to be seen. Whether people's hearts fail them for fear and set the markets toppling again is another story.

I like here what Poser or Prophet says:

Not that I know anything about this stuff, but I reckon that, if the global markets were to crash and we were to be heading for some sort of Great Depression at some point in the future then… well… then it makes sense for the Spirit to begin stirring now-ish in order to create communities of Christians who are learning how to share the basic elements of life, who are economically dependent upon one another, who are making connections across national boundaries, and who are trying to bridge the gap between the West and the Rest of the world.

There are many different scents on the wind. Some of them are scary. The house of economic mirrors is built on flimsy pretexts, on greed at one end and fear at the other. This world is greedier than it has ever been. Robbing its kids and grandkids to feed our own appetites. Perhaps the roosters need to come home. But don't forget to sniff the wind. There are all sorts of amazing things going on. The media won't report the most beautiful ones. Breathe.

PS: I love what the boys at The God Journey had to say about all of this (it's the podcast called The Unshakeable Kingdom). Wayne talks a lot about living with expectancy and trust and not fearing in these weird times, and this has been a sweet listen, for me. In fact, I've listened to it twice. The way he talked about his dad, who was going in for possibly-life-threatening surgery, was just so cool. Recommended listening for some encouragement.

Members of Twisted Sister Now Willing to Take It

September 29, 2008 | Issue 44•40

NEW YORK—In a stunning reversal of their long-stated reluctance to take it, members of heavy-metal band Twisted Sister announced Monday that, after 24 years of fervent refusal, they are now willing to take it. "I acknowledge that we promised not to take it anymore, but things change. The world is a different place today, and with that in mind, we would like to go on record as saying that, starting right now, we are going to take it," read a statement released by the band's lead singer, Dee Snider. "To clarify, we would still prefer not to take it, but as of now, taking it is an option that we would be open to. That is all." Bassist Mark "the Animal" Mendoza also stated that, in regards to what he wants to do with his life, he no longer solely wants to rock, but would instead prefer doing other things, such as raising a family and working as a claims adjuster in Rye, NY.

The Onion

crikey ...

This woman was attacked by a saltwater crocodile at the banks of a Northern Territory National Park. She calmly reached out and tried to prise its jaws open. Her husband jumped on its back and poked it in its eyes to let her go.

That's some kinda Joe Cool couple :)

Then again, what else are you gonna do? I guess when the adrenaline kicks in, and you get that amazing crystal clear clarity (so unlike the snot that is rolling around inside my own head), you just do what you gotta do.

Photo: Glenn Campbell
The Age