You knew it would happen sooner or later: saint and his heretical nemesis DK squared off for a Battle Royale at the Blue Light.  (Or maybe it was just a drinking contest that just got tragically out of hand...)  saint shrugged off the Tequila Beat-down, proved himself the Jager Master, and puffed anything packed in the pipe.  Realizing he was being outshone by someone who doesn’t even drink, DK did his best to drive saint away by cranking Freebird, which (of course) will drive saint from any room (“never heard it all the way through, never will” he boasts.)  Of course, soon as the song ended he’d be back and head straight for the Jager.  By midnight DK was passed out on the carpet curled up in a big blue blankie, but saint was still standing, slicing limes for another round of Cuervo shots with Shaggy and McCarty.  saint even passed the dreaded Dr. McCarty Drunkenness Check: recite the alphabet, walk five steps, touch your nose with your eyes closed, the dreaded “follow my finger,” and the even more-dreaded “pull my finger.”  saint partied like the rock star he should be, and it was agreed by all (still awake) that this conclusively proved the superiority of barbeque sauce over ranch dressing.  After such a humiliating defeat, it’s not surprising that the next day DK was gone from Desert Palm for good.  The Blue Light has been banished!  However, rumor is that the Ranch Peninsulars are merely regrouping and that DK plans to build a little fort headquarters over on South Mountain.

According to a recent CNN story, a failed Argentinean fur-breeding enterprise a few decades ago released its beavers into the wild when the venture went bankrupt.  The beavers bread unchecked, and at over one hundred thousand strong are now the dominant force on Tiera del Fuego.  The island has been ravaged by the rodents, who are now hungrily eyeing the mainland.  Swimming’s no problem for the little guys, and at this rate Argentina can expect the beaver invasion any day now.  Soon South America will be overrun by beavers.  There is also evidence that they are working with their northern relatives for a coordinated conquest of the entire hemisphere.  Eventually we could be up to our knees in beavers.

Which might not be a bad thing.

Addendum:

We can add Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo) to our list of people in youth-oriented entertainment who are not aging.  (see WDU III,ii for full details.)

A new variation has been suggested for the “spinning cat/buttered toast time travel to kill the dinosaurs” theory (WDU II,iii).  The cat eats the toast to stop spinning/time traveling, but this results in a hairball that is what actually killed the dinosaurs.

saint just turned 31.  For those who don’t know your Bob Dylan, the Zimmermman Mantra was “Don’t trust anyone over 30!”

Of course, we at the Branch Floridians take that a step farther and just don’t trust anyone, so conflict solved.

But I digress.

saint had the week off, so he and FireSkunk took off on a road trip, cruising for burgers in daddy’s new car.  More likely they were scouting the Sonoran for prospective sites for the BadAss compound.  They ended up in Sedona, and were nice enough to send me a few postcards.  Judging from the pictures on them, I am tempted to agree with him that it is the most beautiful place he’s ever seen.  The mountains were just majestic, and he and FireSkunk had all the nature trails to themselves.  Just breathtaking, and no litter, either. But expensive, and very rich.  Even the trailer trash had satellite dishes. Sedona has been a center for both “paranormal” and “new age” practitioners for a while now, but oddly enough there is a large Catholic contingent there as well.  The Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Chapel of the Holy Cross is a Vatican mountain stronghold, for example.  This struck saint as odd until FireSkunk pointed out the subtle similarities between New Agers and Catholics.  “New Agers believe a crystal will keep them healthy, Catholics believe a Saint Christopher medallion will keep their car from crashing.”  Good call.

Perhaps it was with this subtle irony that the postcard of The Church of the Holy Cross had this week’s sermon on it.

Paul’s Epistle to the Romans has often been called the Apostle’s most carefully constructed (and confusing) statement of his beliefs, and perhaps one of the most profound (and perplexing) writings found in Christian literature.

It is also as close to a smoking gun that we have that Paul’s strings were pulled by the Brain Police.  The proof of the pudding is the first few verses of Chapter 13:

In other words, every government that exists is in power because God has willed it so.  Paul wrote that around the year 55, and was clearly referring to the Roman Empire.  Paul frequently used his Roman citizenship to bail his butt out of trouble, and was clearly a supporter of the Caesar.  Indeed, he just said that Caesar has the divine blessing of God upon him, and to go against the government is to go against God.

Be meek little sheep and blindly obey, baaa baa ba.

If every government is in power because God wants it so, then we have some serious problems.  For instance, Hitler was in power for 12 years, not only because the German people legally elected him (twice) but apparently because God wanted Hitler in power.  Likewise, God must have wanted Stalin, Cromwell, Robespierre, and Atilla the Hun to be in power.  The Lord must also have wanted Nero in power, persecuting Christians and using them as human torches for his Vatican Garden parties.  Currently God wants a lot of hard-core Islamic phundamentalists in power in the Middle East.  Interestingly, the Koran has a similar sentiment to Paul’s: “Oh Allah!  Owner of sovereignty!  You give sovereignty to whom You will, and You withdraw sovereignty from whom You will.” (3:26)

That last underscores an equally disturbing conclusion: God can apparently change His mind about who should be in power by allowing assassinations, invasions, and coups.

Strictly speaking, the idea that God appoints all governments (including “bad” ones) is not a new idea; the Old Testament prophets consistently viewed the Assyrians and Babylonians as being raised as God’s judgment against a lapsed people to teach them a lesson.  Unfortunately, this simplistic solution raises more questions than it answers.  It would take a doctoral thesis to discuss this properly, and even then the answers still leave an uneasy feeling in one’s stomach.  Then again, all of Paul’s writings have that effect.

Paul’s urging of active, blind obedience to the Overlords is completely consistent with his other teachings on social order: he also believed slaves should be obedient to their masters and wives to their husbands (Colossians 3:18-22, etc.)  His urging cooperation with Rome also fits in with the theory (championed by Baigent et al in The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception) that Paul was a Roman (and possibly Sanhedron) “mole” sent in to diffuse Christianity.  Since Baigent & crew only make sense with a bong hit (really, guys, what IS your fascination with the Forbidden Bloodline of Mystery?!?) we’ll put them aside for the moment and notice the timing of Paul’s plea to obey the authorities.  Paul is urging obedience to Rome about a decade before the Jewish Revolt, and interestingly he directs this towards the population of the city itself.  But of course Paul knew this letter would get read elsewhere, including in the Holy Land itself.

Whether or not Paul knew that the Brain Police secretly ran Rome is open to debate; personally I think he was pretty high in their hierarchy.  His order to obey is worth rereading in full:

Yeah, Paul: flock conscience.

Baaa.

and finally,

By Harriet the Hedgehog