If You Can’t Beat ‘Em

 Last week we learned that the NSA is secretly collecting data on millions of Verizon subscribers of which I am one. There isn’t much I can do about this, but I can have some fun with it. I know that the government says it isn’t listening to conversations, but it could, and if it could it will, and if it will it is.

So if you, like me, are providing data to Big Brother at least make it interesting. I’m toying with the idea of no longer answering my cellphone, and letting the following message play for the benefit of the NSA:

“Hi. You have reached Rami Abu Aaron’s cell phone. I’m at a tea party with my Islamic friend Imam Jihadi scheduled for 9:11. We’re sharing a plate of hamas and pita, and planning to start a C-4 non-profit. Sorry I missed you, but remember whatever happens today, you’re da-bomb.”

The Real Message of the Cheerios Ad

I want to talk about the Cheerios ad featuring an interracial couple and their biracial daughter. *

I have heard from the Right that Cheerios is promoting biracial families. They are right. That’s why they are called the Right.

And I have heard from the Left that having the African American dad napping on the couch while biracial daughter and white mom discussion the intricacies of heart disease and prevention promotes negative stereotyping of African American men. And they would be right also if they weren’t the Left. But both positions miss the true message hidden in this commercial.

The real message is that Cheerios is supporting the Obama agenda. Here is why:

First, the little girl, like our president, has a white mom and a black dad. If the makers of this commercial didn’t want to link the little girl with our president they would have given her a black mom and a white dad.

Second, the ad says that eating Cheerios is good for your heart suggesting that eating Cheerios would lower healthcare costs and thus bring down the cost of Obama Care.

Third, Cheerios are O’s. And O is the logo for Obama.

When the little girl covers her African American dad with Obama logos, she is saying that African Americans have no choice but to support the Obama agenda. And what is that agenda but a bunch of words with the letter O in them: Gun Control (two O’s), Birth Control (two O’s), Affordable Care Act (one O), and Immigration Reform (again two O’s!). You add up the O’s and you get 7 O’s telling us that in the seventh year of his reign, President Obama will step down and appoint Hillary Rodham Clinton (TWO O’S!!!) as president.

Don’t doubt this conspiracy for a second. Even the word “conspiracy” has an O in it, and that cannot be a coincidence. And, even if it is, the word “coincidence” has an O in it, and that cannot be a coincidence since we are talking about the word coincidence and that is no coincidence so it must be a conspiracy.

Wake up, America. Stop buying Cheerios and repeal Obama Care.

* In the interest of full disclosure, I have Celiac disease and cannot eat Cheerios.

self Promotion

Here’s how my talk went last night: I spoke about something for about an hour, and then invited questions and comments. Based on the questions and comments I cannot tell you what I spoke about. I think I said something about why the Law of Attraction and The Secret make no sense to me, but then someone asked me what I thought about the Law of Attraction and The Secret. I think I spoke about how I didn’t believe in a separate soul, and that when we die we “become” what we already are (the wave returns to the sea that waves it), but then someone asked me what I thought about the soul and the afterlife. Maybe nobody was listening.

What I like most about lecturing isn’t the lecturing itself but the Q&A afterward. Last night’s Qs were weird. The level of New Age babble took me by surprise. I listened to people who claimed to visited by long dead rabbis, spirit beings, light beings, all of whom urged them to get their particular work out to the world.

I don’t blame people for coming to a lecture and trying to lecture. Hey, that’s what I was doing. And I give them credit for doing so uninvited, without a microphone and for free. Honestly, I wouldn’t have flown from Nashville to LA and then driven two hours to Santa Barbara to talk without remuneration. I talk for cash. These folks who lectured for free last night believe in their mission far more than I believe in mine. So kudos to them all.

What saddened me about these folks (and there were other people of a very different caliber as well) is that they needed me to validate them. Maybe that’s what happens when you don’t get paid to talk. The paycheck is my validation.

I can’t say I validated anyone last night, but I did my best not to disrespect anyone either. Who am I to say that God didn’t send an angel to instruct the fellow in the audience to spread the word he received?

And yet I did suggest that if the prophecy one receives is all about oneself and how you are a prophet with a vital message for the world, it probably isn’t prophecy you are experiencing, but acute narcissism.

It takes a big ego to want to get up and talk in front of an audience. But if the talk is all about your ego then the whole thing is merely self rather than Self promotion. 

Nothing to Say, No Reason to Say It

I’m flying nonstop from Nashville to LA. Once there I'll rent a car and head north to Santa Barbara where I'm to deliver a talk at UCSB. The topic has something to do with the Five Existential Questions I claim are at the heart of all religion, and which will form the core of whatever future religions we humans may invent: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? How should I live? and Why?

I have no paper to deliver, nothing from which to read, no Power Point presentation. And while the talk is to be based on my upcoming book, Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent, I really have no idea what I want to say to the people in the auditorium. 

I’m not recommending this style of presentation—winging it, my son calls it, and I still write papers for publication that can be read at conferences if someone asks me to do so. But the simple truth is I either have too much to say, or can’t think of anything to say at all. So I travel light, step up to the podium empty, and open my mouth to see what will happen.

Of course whatever happens I will manage to make it seem that I'm on topic: people came to hear about the Five Questions and the Perennial Wisdom, and I will not disappoint them. But how I will do this and what I will say is… what shall I say? In God’s hands?

In a sense that's true, and I quietly ask the Mother to assist in my lecture, and give thanks to her at the end, but I don’t really believe I speak for God or that she speaks through me. Evoking and thanking the Mother are simply my way of admitting to myself that I have nothing to say and no real reason to say it. I’m not a prophet or a guru, just a guy who strings other peoples’ thoughts together in ways that I find entertaining and sometimes even insightful. I see myself less a creator and more a midwife.

And I'm not uncomfortable admitting that the Mother I serve is a figment of the imagination. The ultimate reality, Brahman, Tao, YHVH, Allah, is beyond imagining, and while I believe we are all a part of It and that we can and do experience It constantly, I also believe we can say nothing about It because It isn’t an It, an object, but rather the eternal Subject, the I behind all I’s.

So I will see how I break the silence of the I and entertain my audience with the wit and wisdom of It and hope that someone, perhaps even me, might benefit from the exercise.

I, Smart Ass

I’m a smart ass. That isn’t just my assessment; its what a fellow at church told me this morning after I delivered my sermon. 

Out of curiosity I looked up “smart ass” on urbandictionary.com: A smart ass is “someone who is sarcastic, in a cutting yet witty manner. A person capable of making a remark that could be interpreted as an insult or a joke depending on the sensitivity of the listener and the specific situation. A smart ass is not necessarily a bad person just usually perceptive.”

I am not necessarily a bad person. I could be a bad person, but not necessarily so. That’s nice. But what I really like about being a smart ass is that people don’t know if I am insulting them or kidding them. My friend Bob says that’s how I get away with saying wildly outrageous things about religion to audiences of religious people.

This doesn’t always work. Once during a lecture at Occidental College I made the campus Catholic Priest so angry with comments I made about biblical humor (he said there was no such thing) that he refused to shake my hand or stand next to me in the receiving line.

Anyway, I seek to elevate smart–assery to a fine art, and use it pull the curtain back on the Great and Terrible Oz of Religion in order to free my listeners from the clutches of theological correctness. Another name for this is “holy rascal.” It has become my life’s work. And, since I don’t know if I’m kidding myself or insulting myself at this moment, so I must be really good at it.