The current movie, The Passion, lit up the USA under God as if the nails Gibson drove into the hands of "Jesus" were electric terminals that jolted believers from the daily grind of gross national product and greed back to religiosity. Another news blackout to keep the public from seeing soldiers in Iraq burned and hacked and strung from posts by jeering crowds. It was gruesome as Gettysburg where soldiers carried their own severed limbs back to their lines. I wonder how the snake handlers in their venom-belief liked the movie. Viewers did die and cry, though. The pathological believers of whatever orthodox faith-based story stuck in their veins like dead meat hungry with obsession, clogging their spirits, got the chance to puke up their pathos and sexual repression all over the big screen. The news stations were flooded with bizarre reactions. This helped the national "news blackout", which carries two or three headlines for weeks to keep us from real news of the desperate and young blowing themselves and others to bits in the name of Islam while sickening and tragic news stories of the war and the environment are suppressed, the carnival of religious U.S. under God is on again. It proves the claim that in entertainment the distinction between reality and make believe are blurred, and people spend thousands of dollars to be cut up and re-arranged to resemble their favorite movie stars. Some of the believers' reactions to The Passion were documented on Andy Rooney's website after he gave it a bad review. The reactions and comments were bizarre and irrational. We live in "A New Scare" where rational discourse is as dead as the arts and culture is safe. Later, on the Fox News program, Sean Hannity whose sanity seems as harmless as a frat haze was raving on a telephone interview with Mel Gibson, the Maker, who said he wanted to take Rooney out in the alley to settle things, saying that Rooney crawled out from under a rock, using the dated language reminiscent of a 50's meth freak bravado that belonged to another time. Maybe it's the tone they still have in Australia, but it didn't even sound like contemporary Hollywood carp. It oddly proved Capote's observation about the intelligence of actors.

The movie stirred again the religious froth thousands of years hence while young soldiers have enlisted from high schools on the promise of a college degree that may have no more worth than a good skill and a good library to read the story of a precocious Jew who may have traveled to India for some lessons to perform miracles and got twelve guys counting the fink to follow him only to end in trouble for challenging the authorities. The holy artificial insemination requires a little imagination. But it's as believable as finding tablets in the hills of New York to establish the third largest religion. I think going to the moon was as "unbelievable" as was much of the Holy Text. But wait until we develop cloning. We can all look like movie stars and have sexual gratification and love and erase the killing gene and supplant the why gene with a good Disney fairy-tale that rids ourselves of any thought of evil. Like the gospel songs. No misery. No sorrow. No thought of not being here, etc. There is hope for the faithful. Keep praying. But religions have proven to be evil for adults who govern countries. They are still sending the young to suffer and die, and that's evil no matter how you cut it. It is not of sound mind to turn human goodness into evil murder. Politics and religion do not mix. I'm tired of the memorials for kids out of high school to fight the cutthroats in the alleys of Bagdad and hills of Pakistan. Empty the prisons. Send criminals to kill criminals.

SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT — Kurt Cobain

There were two little boys under the bed playing nasty. One wanted to take the safety pin of the other's pants to play with his pee-pee. The other made the excuse that he couldn't take it off and would have to have his mother do it. He wanted to appear loyal like they might both depend on each other in a foxhole someday. The one with the safety pin saw a baby in a carriage and wanted to be braver that the other one and suggested smothering the baby. He got a warm feeling like when he and other boys would swing cats around by their tails, or kill things innocent. Fortunately, the plan was not carried out. And the boys never saw each other again..

The power of love after puberty to mid-life is the most powerful emotion on earth. There are many kinds of love, but eroticism is the main force. Good and evil also play a big role especially in abuse. Today playful eroticism has seemed to win out. The past sexual trends didn't really work. It seems better to have erotic play among kids their own age. Let them learn for themselves has been a good rule in history. The age is irrelevant and cannot be established, only the child knows. Society has been unable to set the age children play naughty together; however, by the late teens all the lies of sex and society are known.

Good and evil are within the seeds and possibly may expire to the winds at death. In between is pretty much responsive behavior to one's psychological and chemical environment. The latter was not that distinctive in Skinner's day, but quite noticeable now in toxic zones such as Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, where he was born. Children are especially vulnerable to peer environment from pre-teen to late teen when sexuality is most powerful and children are subjected to both morals and mores. They themselves can become evil at this stage especially if they are confused by church, authority figures, or school. Bad influences happen at this difficult age when innate honesty can come crashing in from external pressures that the young haven't had time to sort out on their own. College kids are "driven" into sicknesses that are needless. But they are pressured by society. Hopefully, they can have fun and keep off the street and keep from overuse of drugs and alcohol. Hopefully, they have known the liars, the gods, the devil. Hopefully they have thought and moved carefully and cautiously around money and greed traps and have fun in life moving up the niche ladder. At no other time in history has their government and society failed them so badly. They have to learn to be as careful as they can, even in comfortable settings. They have to learn to avoid bad surroundings, quickly.

When I taught in prison, one of my students was in for child abuse. He had been in an orphanage and was abused at an early age by a Nazi. He wrote of his experiences mainly with latch-key welfare kids from Albany to NYC. There is a great quantitative sub-culture that would surprise anyone, just in this region. That boys and men get together is universally historical and has almost been canonized by the Church. It is the age of a victim that can be the most danger, for it can be traumatic and influential especial coming from God's spokespersons. He had one bit of advice. Never use a male as a baby sitter.

Last year, locally, a high school kid, basketball star, etc. killed an old man with a baseball bat. The year before, a popular kid in school killed his parents. There is more that happens locally all the time all over the country. And on the news its always "nothing like this has ever happened at our school." Maybe it's a franchise. Maybe an evil clown slips into the board meeting...in private session, of course. Columbine happens in many schools. They can't teach driving. Almost every year a senior gets killed in a motor vehicle accident. There are hills and valleys and most drive too fast for the roads. They don't hire over the road truckers to teach the road. It used to be that the school was in the village and a grandparent could walk child to school. Now there is a school transportation industry and no place to walk. Public schools are danger zones.

Almost all humor has always been based on sex. Almost all innuendo in entertainment is based on sex. Sex is the inherent power of the almighty. Even the Amish subjugate their women. On TV, car ads show people feeling up the new models. Masturbation and a ride is implied in the Hummer. Sex is the stimulus that causes our culture, the impeachment of presidents, the reason for money, power, beauty, etc. Gratification is a religion. The alter boy, confession, etc was made for sex. Marriage was a deeper form of love. Abstinence was holy. It was a matter of chores with the Mormons. All sex is eroticism. Marriage is eroticism with the stamp of approval from the state, church and society, though it, like education fails more often than it succeeds. We don't like to hear this, because we prefer lies to facts. In order to kill our young, we have to makes lies look honest. They require a systematic effort with rewards that looks real. If it looks real, it is moral. That is why people act bizarre, like the fellow who spent thousands to buy tickets to see "The Passion" Like drugs, anything that makes one feel good on this earth becomes a moral issue. Now the "Evildoers" want what the "Infidels" have. We have run the movie back to the dark ages. Onward Christian soldiers. Can you believe this century? Only technology, which a Carl Jung said, carries the germ of the end in itself, prevails. Maybe cloning will do away with the fear of self and erase the killing code.

Even language does not escape morality. The semantics of a word cannot be studied scientifically, because the alphabet has to be replaced with dots or asterisks. Insanity sets in before logic. Our highest courts are spending their time on the "F" word and the Federal Communications authorities. It is an insane semantic oddity that complete the meaning of the word by automatically filling the word with the rest of its letters. The "F" word denotes and connotes the same referent as the word itself. But one can't formally write the intact word. Insanity. Yes, linguistics can easily become morally insane. The censored letters, "fuck" set off a trigger in American consciousness as does the word, "God." Synaptic referents blow apart any rational discourse. So much so, it is difficult to talk about, yet it is the most prevalent word and referent in our society. The middle finger a symbol, illegal as well. I would like to demonstrate the pathological connection of the male (penis component) power and the Almighty in our culture. This is obvious in other, if not all, cultures and their religions. I apologize that I can only write it from a male point of view. The male physiology is demonstrably part of the problem. As I have mentioned, the penis analogue is the gun. The most prominent giver and taker of life. The symbol of power in all sexual innuendo. While we try to rule on the "F word," we have invaded a country and killed several thousand people where none can rule.