If there is anything on this green/blue orb hurtling through our present cosmos that stirs me up, it is when the little technical things that are supposed to make our lives easier tear up. Things like cars......water softeners.......plumbing behind the walls....computers that won't load up a game for your diversion from the previous three things. And when you know just enough to garner a bit of confidence in tackling the faltering things, it turns out it is only knowledge enough to make you dangerous enough to compound said problems.

....the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.

Disraeli, Conningsby

Well, what a doozy of a willy-willy season it's been (that's what they call hurricanes in western Australia and I think I'm gonna revert to it from now on).

What can be next? But still yet, why have we had what we've had, in human terms? And when we extrapolate to the whole human experience and history.....just what does the providence of God mean in these (and other calamitous) times? What is the mode of God's providential activity? Why deliverance for some and demise for others? What of limitation, contingency factors and human freewill? And above all, what is possible in each given situation?

Any takers?

And so, we begin again. At 897 MB, Hurricane Rita became the third most intense hurricane in Atlantic basin history, in terms of central pressure- even more so than Katrina. But this present monster I think will only be a shadow of itself by the time it makes landfall at probably a strong cat 3. It will be devastating nonetheless.

Going to see the one and only Mission Man at the Balcony from 8-10pm tonight, who, by the way, has been a regular haunt at the Johnson household.

I really do get by with a lil' help from my friends

Oh, sometimes I long to accelerate out of my oft-infirmed listlessness with the speed of an X-Class solar flare. And there in the nether reaches of the voids of space-time I could float- lofty and unencumbered- ignorable as I would be in my familiar vacuum of melancholic ostentatiousness.

Just a perfunctory, medullar mind poot. Move along.

Wanna BET There's Something Wrong With This Picture?

Despite the plight of these thousands of poor and recently homeless in the Gulf Coast, Black Entertainment Television has revealed its self, albeit in the shadiness of its late-night lineup.

Actually for BET, it's business as usual on Sunday, late nights. With the talk of some around the nation beginning to center upon the cries of racism dictating the relief efforts, BET is apparently unfazed, maintaining and parading a clownish triumvitrate with these, their huckster-brand of health, wealth and prosperity vultures:

Robert "Diane-Sawyer-Is-The-Devil" Tilton

Don "Lemme-Sell-You-A-33-Dollar-Prosperity-Bracelet" Stewart

Peter "Got-Caught-With-An-Earpiece-In-My-Ear" Popoff

How are these shameless money-shafting minions still given the airwaves, in light of the times? How is BET serving their audience with this chicanery? Tilton was exposed by "Primetime Live" in the early nineties and described by then Texas attorney general Dan Morales as "raping the most vulnerable segments of our society -- the poor, the infirm, the ignorant ... who believe his garbage." On his BET time block, he frequently herds in black gospel singers to legitimize his presence. Don Stewart's miracle bracelet is yours free for a love gift of at least 33 USDollars. Peter Popoff may actually be shown here with the earpiece that his wife used to funnel "divine revelations" about his audience in his ear. (For more on Petey, see here).

Even BET's director of corporate communications, Rob Santwer, said (of Tilton's program) in the Salon.com piece referenced here that it was the kind of thing you'd turn the channel as soon as you'd see it. Then why pump it out?

This surely can't be on par with BET's credo toward black empowerment, can it? With these predatory poor-man's money reavers still on the loose, they aren't doing anything but holding all of us down, black, white or otherwise.

I know the need is nerually numbing and my sensibilities can't even hug this disaster, but I don't know if I'm ready yet for these superstar-studded benefits with promos and egos almost as big as the Katrina's eyewall itself. I know it's not impossible that celebrity can help and that some may genuinely care. If it does some good, very well then. What about writing checks in secret and not affording onesself the imposed good press that comes with headlining such a spectacle grotesquely overshadowed by this specter of suffering? Why can't potential ticket buyers just go ahead and give that money to pre-existing organizations? It's still not really selfless giving, because we're getting something irretractably and absurdly mundane.....a concert. Yeah, I should lighten up and go to bed.