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2004 State of the Universe Address
by Swami Beyondananda

—EXCERPTS—

Going to Mars. That is the George Bush answer to global warming and environmental destruction. Well, we’re just about done with this planet. Time to mosey on to greener—I mean redder—pastures. The E.T.s are very concerned. Right after the Mars probe landed, the headline in the Intergalactic Gazette was: "There Goes the Neighborhood."

Sadly, 2003 was the year that the Irony Curtain descended over America—the invisible wall of impropaganda they put up to separate the people from the truth. And when Michael Moore broke through the soundless barrier at the Academy Awards Show, it was a moment of truth in a year that was short on truthful moments. His courage to speak the truth at a time when lie-ability appeared to be an asset makes him the leading candidate for this year’s NoBull Prize. Yes, the body politic has been inundated with so much toxic BS, our skeptic system has overflowed and we’ve ended up swallowing toxic ironies whole. This is called "irony deficiency." Seeing a doctor won’t help, but seeing a paradox will.

If a speech freely falls in the forest, and there is no one there to hear it, is it still free speech?

True, this is a dangerous world, and while Mr. Cheney can hide himself in some undisclosed location, Mr. Bush has to make an appearance from time to time, and must be protected at all costs ... from free speech. So to make sure that criticism of his policies doesn’t become massive enough to reach critical mass, protesters are now cordoned behind barbed wire in what are called—and I am not making this up—free speech zones. So Americans are still free to speak freely, as long as no one can hear them. Now I bet many Americans haven’t even heard of these free speech zones, and that is not surprising. It was one of those stories that went uncovered while the media was busy assaulting us with weapons of mass distraction. Like what happened at the Super Bowl. CBS—which apparently wants us to see only the B.S. they want us to see—refused to run a MoveOn ad critical of George Bush. Meanwhile, their affiliate MTV (or, as it has come to be known, Empty Vee) happily distracted us with the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake fiasco. This is all too typical of mass media nowadays—an overwillingness to expose a little boob, and an underwillingness to expose a big one. You can bet the Super Bowl will be entirely different in 2005. Rev. Jerry Falwell was very upset at what he called "trashy titillation and toilet humor" and vowed to clean it up. He has proposed that next year’s half-time entertainment be provided by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and the event be renamed the Tidy Bowl.

The War in Iraq is less than a year old, and it has cost us over $90 billion. That is $246,575,342 a day! Do the math. And if you find the math difficult to fathom, how about the aftermath? Who will foot the bill for this misadventure? I will tell you. That bill will be placed squarely at our children’s feet. Years and years of bleeding off our precious livelihood to pay for weapons of deadlihood. No wonder the ’hood is so deadly! Now of course there are those in the administration who say you gotta fight fire with fire, right? Well, I’ve been talking with some firemen lately, and you know what? They say, "No, you fight fire with water." We should be dampening support for those terrorists, and instead we seem to be firing them up. So here we are, caught between Iraq and a harder place, and unable to pull out because we wouldn’t want to lose face. Now I don’t know whose face is being saved over there, but for sure ass is being lost—ours and theirs. War may or may not be face-saving, but it is always ass-losing. So we the people must decide whether saving their face is worth losing our ass.

The world is in such serious condition, the Earth’s protective laugh force has been compromised. That’s right. Scientists have discovered a hole in the Bozone Layer—our planetary clown chakra—because not enough levity is rising.

If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, do you know what he’d be saying? First thing he’d say is, "Boy do I feel old!" But then he would say that we are sovereign citizens, not subjects, and the government is our servant, not the other way around. And we are not being served very well by our servants. They are serving themselves first, their cronies second, and we the people are picking up the tab. Thomas Jefferson, radical that he was, would be saying, "Forget those airline passengers. Let’s strip search the government!" The good news is, we have founded the Right to Laugh Party. One big party—everyone is invited—to help us all wake up laughing, and leave laughter in our wake. Why laughter? Well most Americans agree there’s definitely something funny going on, so why not use comedy to laugh those clowns out of power—which in and of itself will raise the laugh-expectancy on the planet. Our right to laugh is being compromised by laugh-threatening seriousness. Every-where I go, I see people not laughing. People are saying to me, "I don’t understand it. I coulda sworn we voted for West Wing. How’d we end up with the Sopranos?"

So how do we bring that blisskrieg home? First of all, we must really recognize the foolishness of getting even, and get odd instead. An eye for an eye will only create blindness. Instead of doing what has never worked, why not honor the odd possibility that by doing something different, we can actually get different results? Because the main reason for toxic human conditions is toxic human conditioning. Generations of this toxicity has left a lot of residoodoo. Through the human jestive system, we can transmute this toxic residoodoo into harmless laughter that will improve the atmosphere and restore the Bozone Layer. Laughter will help the body politic de-Tex—oops, I mean detox—and bring down the irony curtain as well.

But we must enlighten up! How many of you are willing to take a vow of levity? All those willing to take a vow of levity please rise! Repeat after me: "All for fun, and fun for all!" I now pronounce you duly absurdified.

May you laugh, laugh, laugh till the sacred cows come home. For truly the farce is with us.

© Copyright 2004 by Steve Bhaerman. All rights reserved. Contact the Swami at (800) SWAMI BE or online at www.wakeuplaughing.com. Luan Visit http://www.amnesty.ca - Amnesty International.

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