The World is Mundane

The World is Mundane.
I'm from Texas and I've been alive nearly 50 years. For all that time I have been hearing scare rhetoric about conspiracies and imminent doom; political, social, and biblical. As a kid in a fundamentalist elementary school I regularly experienced anxiety over an endless parade of religio-political scares...atheists will be outlawing Christianity "next year" and putting us all in detention camps. Satanists may be controlling your parents...watch them and tell us what you see. The rapture is coming "by the end of the decade" and if you don't do as you're told you'll be left behind. Communists will be invading the US "any day now" and the government is in conspiracy to hand it over to them. Jimmy Carter is the anti-Christ. John Lennon is the anti-Christ. JFK will return as the anti-Christ. Subliminal mind control is all around us. Clinton is going to convert the US to a communist dictatorship. One nice thing about advanced age is that one by one you watch each and every panic pass without indecent. If you pay attention you start to recognize all the new panics and not stress. Now it's terrorists sleeper agents are everywhere; Muslims & immigrants will destroy our precious way of life; gays are working to destroy traditional family values; liberals want to take away your guns so the government can oppress you; scientists are conspiring to perpetrate the "myth" of global climate change; and Obama's the anti-Christ or something like that. And we learn to see through the rhetoric to the true motives of the puppeteers and hate-mongers spouting this nonsense. It's like I'm learning to see the Matrix and it's very frustrating when other people with good brains can't. I can only imagine the people who keep buying into these scares are the same people who keep going to Adam Sandler movies expecting them to be good.

No Pepsi. Coke!

One of strangest things about Japan was pointed out by my son: you can't buy Pepsi here. You can buy Pepsi Next, Special, Watermelon...PINK. But not regular. Not in the machines. Not in convenience stores. Not in restaurants or kiosks. The only place apart from well-stocked supermarkets is in cinemas for some reason. As you can see here, even Dr. Pepper maintains a presence. Hmm.