Return to Mediocrity

Posted on October 23, 2017 by Professor Taboo

As I know many of my followers/readers are not hardcore sports fans, let me give some perspective on Oct. 10th, 2017. Headlines across America might have read…

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Unfathomable? Impossible? Maybe those headlines give the American non-sports or general sports fan a glimpse of what has been going on with our United States Soccer Federation and our men’s national team the last fifteen years or more.

In November 2016 I wrote a post (A Litmus Test) about the USMNT fall and firing of one our winningest Head Coaches, Jürgen Klinsmann. In my post a year ago I pointed out what I thought were three central pillars that dictate a FIFA member’s national team success, mediocrity, or failure. If a national footballing federation like our USSF wants to find a dynasty-proven premier model to follow, it doesn’t have to look too hard at all. In fact, it is or should be a no-brainer.

Ever since the first FIFA World Cup in 1930, football, or futebol, or soccer as Americans call it, has by all records been the world’s greatest most popular, most watched sporting event in all of modern history. Around the entire globe crazed, obsessed fans can tell you in remarkable detail specific plays, passes, saves, and goals by who and where for any number of futebol matches! And the records, the stats, the teams, the players, the articles, and video-highlights are easily found anywhere. Here are the three greatest national futebolling dynasties, top to bottom, followed by consistent strong contenders. These include FIFA Federation dynasties, in parenthesis, which are just as competitive as World Cups:

Brazil — 5 world championships and the only nation to have participated in all twenty World Cup tournaments (8 Federation Championships)
Germany — 4 world championships (3 Federation Championships)
Italy — 4 world championships (1 Federation Championship)
Argentina — 2 world championships (14 Federation Championships)
Uruguay — 2 world championships (15 Federation Championships)
Spain — 1 world championship (3 Federation Championships)
France — 1 world championship (2 Federation Championships)
England — 1 world championship

If a new or burgeoning national futebol/soccer governing body — with an equal or better sports fan-base to grow — wants to see how Brazil, Germany, Italy and a host of several other dominating countries play the game at the highest levels, with weaker economies than the U.S., and do it year after year, tournament after tournament, producing world-class players and coaches generation after generation, above are 4-5 nations to mimic with everything it takes to be a juggernaut dynasty for 88-years and 88 more.

A defeated Matt Besler post-game

Yet, one very tiny Caribbean nation eliminated the U.S. Mens National Soccer Team from its 8th consecutive FIFA World Cup tournament. More embarrassing than the loss Oct. 10th to tiny Trinidad & Tobago is the fact that CONCACAF is by far the easiest federation to qualify from to play in the quadrennial World Cup tournament out of all FIFA federations. Given the U.S. made it to the Quarter-finals in 2002, this begs the serious question, What direction has U.S. soccer headed in?

Having played at a very high-level of soccer myself most of my adult life — collegiately, professionally, and semi-pro — on the continents of Europe, South America, Africa, and of course North America, under several coaches and playing styles, with and against some excellent players and several world-class players, for an American I feel I have a well-based, fair standpoint (since 1975) to assess our nation’s soccer/futebol progress. However, this time I won’t. I am going to defer to someone who has much higher experience, much higher qualifications to tell America and the USSF like it is and won’t sugar-coat it. He repeats much of what I’ve been advocating and screaming since 1990.

One of Five American World-Class Soccer Players: Claudio Reyna

Of the handful of American boys that the rest of the futebolling world would label world-class, capable of playing several prolonged seasons in Europe’s elite leagues and teams in the starting-11, Claudio Reyna is a shoe-in. Real quick, he played from 1994-2008 at the highest levels with Bayer Leverkusen, VfL Wolfsburg, Rangers, Sunderland, and Manchester City before retiring with the New York Red Bulls. Had he not suffered so many leg injuries, most critics say Claudio would’ve held almost all American soccer records for a long time eclipsed only by Clint Dempsey or the rising Christian Pulisic. I feel what Claudio has to say about Oct. 10th and the state of U.S. soccer today carries a whole lot of weight. Here are his words from an interview with soccer website Goal.com:

REYNA:
“Our approach and our behavior to the sport here — to coaching, to everything, is just wrong. We’re far too arrogant. We’re far too obnoxious. We are egotistical, having never won anything or done anything, and that’s not the case around the world. You travel to Spain, Argentina, Germany and you run into coaches and sporting directors and there’s a humility about their work that doesn’t exist here, and that’s, for me seeing it, is to me a big concern.

When you have a disappointment like last week, and we’ve had past disappointments as well, and we’ll have disappointments in the future, but what we need to understand that it’s for me behavioral. We have coaches who think they’re better than they are. Across the board, we just think we do things better than we really do. I mean in every way. Whether it’s broadcasting, or media, coaching, we’re just not as far along as we tell ourselves we are. We need a little honesty, and hopefully this brought it. I think it’s far too late. I think we’ve been asleep at the wheel for a little bit too long.”

For the key pivotal positions throughout the U.S. soccer culture, youth development, up to the USSF and USMNT since the 1970’s, anyone who is outside of soccer just doesn’t understand what Claudio is saying. Non-futebol leaders, administrators, coaches, presidents, corporate sponsors and fans (who ultimately pay for the product on the fields), bring with them this old guard USA mentality that America is the best at most everything!

REYNA:
“We have all these countries around the world we can learn from, and you go over there and you’re not going to see different training sessions. You’re going to see good games, and poor games, like in any league across the world.

But the one thing that we haven’t realized, I think, when we have our American soccer people go abroad to learn, I don’t think they see the behaviors of the people and how they coach in their day-to-day work. That’s the shake-up I hope people realize more than anything.

You go to a U-14 and U-15 coach in Spain, and they are 10 times more humble than a U-14 or U-15 coach in Connecticut, New Jersey or New York, who thinks they’re the next Pep Guardiola or Patrick Vieira.

Until we realize that — that we’re not as good as we think we are at all levels — then I think we’re going to continue being what we are, which is mediocre.”

Spain’s La Liga dominates recent world-class club futebol

In my personal opinion and experience, Claudio is partly correct about European leagues and games. However, the reason the English Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, and Brasileiro Série A are the top leagues in the world are because of the product they have on the field and sidelines. The best players on the planet play in these five leagues and paying fans with paying sponsors want to watch excellent entertaining futebol of the highest levels. Bad games are few and far between in these leagues between the bottom-dwelling clubs.

Why is the MLS, America’s pro league, consider 2nd or 3rd Division by world standards? Reyna believes that though soccer has grown in popularity in the U.S., the quality has not improved or kept up with that growth.

REYNA:
“What I think has happened in the past 10 years is we’re confusing investment, expansion, growth, (U.S. Development Academy), and all these other things with progress. All these things have sort of created a feeling that we’re progressing, but I call it expanding, growth and more fans.

From the general growth side it’s happening, but are we really progressing? When I look around at certain levels I don’t see progress happening.

I remember the great Johan Cruyff would say something about Dutch football, or Franz Beckenbauer in Germany, and when other big players and coaches spoke out and were honest, it shook things up and make people ask, ‘How are we teaching the game to our youth? How are we playing the game? What’s the competition like?

We don’t have those kind of serious discussions here. We just seem to talk, but never really make any significant changes.”

And I would add here that because of an old guard mindset of sports egotism, like we had about Olympic basketball for so long, Americans falsely thought we could just create our own pro-soccer league here with a lot of American players and a few old retiring European or S. American has-beens and soon advance into the World Cup’s Quarter or Semi-finals. That was the American mentality after the 1994 FIFA World Cup here in the U.S. when we upset Colombia and especially after our performance in the 2002 World Cup.

REYNA:
[The old guard] “are sitting together and thinking about strategies and how we’re going to get better. We need a little humility and modesty at the table. Unfortunately, we have a little too much ‘Mr. I Know Everything’, ‘Mr. Arrogance’, ‘Mr. Obnoxious’, ‘Mr. Loud’, and when those get together nothing happens.”

This is who I believe Claudio is calling out, the American generation in key pivotal positions who did not grow up playing little league soccer, school soccer, and college soccer. At best, that old guard might have had their kids playing, but not at top-quality European or S. American influenced academies with the same foreign coaches. When one wants to learn all the in’s and out’s of a intricate complicated sport, you go and learn from the best in the world. That is what S. Americans did for basketball in the NBA and that’s what the rest of the world did for baseball in the MLB. What has the old guard and USSF done? Can it improve or change as necessary?

What does Claudio think about our retiring 30-year olds, current mid-20 year olds, and teenage soccer generations?

REYNA:
“There’s good players at every age group. There’s some very good players in this country. As supporters of these players, whether it’s coaches, sporting directors, team presidents, we need to continue to push ourselves to make sure they have the best environment to develop because the talent is here. One thing I’ll never say is we don’t have good players, because we do.”

Gabriele Marcotti, a European sports journalist-columnist and self-protested “outsider” to U.S. soccer, wrote a good 7-point piece for ESPN FC earlier this month that I think pin-points some chronic and festering problems. Check it out. His first four points are excellent. Back to Claudio…

REYNA:
“There’s a lot of positives despite the disappointing result that we had last week. I think we’re all embarrassed. I’m embarrassed as a former player that I have to go around and have people make fun of us, and get texts from my friends in Europe who remind me we’ll be on [vacation] next summer. I can laugh, but it hurts. It definitely hurts.”

I am right there with your pain Claudio. It does indeed hurt, particularly when the USMNT and USSF have no legitimate excuses for missing the 2018 World Cup in Russia. The first head that should immediately roll is President Sunil Gulati. This decline and disaster has happened on his watch.

As a personal closing opinion and note, without question, all of the USMNT greatest futebol achievements, greatest futebol players, and greatest futebol moments have come with, by and during eras when American players had prolonged experience or were playing in top foreign leagues. After at least five decades of soccer, what does that suggest about our youth development programs and domestic Major League Soccer?

(paragraph break)

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Martian Laws

Posted on October 18, 2017 by Professor Taboo

“If the oxygenator breaks down, I’ll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks down, I’ll die of thirst. If the Hab breaches, I’ll just kind of implode. If none of those things happen, I’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death. So yeah. I’m fucked.“

“They say once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially colonized it. So, technically, I colonized Mars. In your face, Neil Armstrong!“

“I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.“

“I blew myself up. Everything went great right up to the explosion.“

∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼ ∼

Botanist Mark Watney is a fantastic character in the 2015 film “The Martian.” The movie is one of my all-time favorites. Those are just a few of the classic lines Watney stated while stranded, alone, on Mars, trying to survive for another 4-years, minimum. Complicated? Daunting? Yeah, to say the least. And that’s strictly concerning the human needs of Martian explorers and colonists, which by the way were not just Americans.

Earth-bound nations and their people have a long, long history of fighting each other and not getting along. What happens on Mars, or any celestial body, when Earthly independent nations with their own agendas start mixing with or conflicting with foreign foreign agendas? Watney indeed talked about those guidelines in the film, that applied back on Earth and Earth’s orbits, but what about on Mars?

In an October 2017 article on Smithsonian.com, writer Gbenga Oduntan probes into these issues with some questions regarding the governing of activity on and around Mars. I find it all intriguing because by 2022 and 2028 these manned Mars expeditions will become reality.

Psychological Factors

Mars is around 34.2 million miles away from Earth, which means it would take a manned spacecraft between 150-300 days — depending on the speed of the launch, the alignment of Earth and Mars, and the trajectory of the journey the spacecraft takes — to reach the red planet. The human physiological challenges of a year in spaceflight are numerous. If the trip doesn’t kill you or drive you insane, living on Mars might. The emotional stressors of being away from Earth are perhaps more numerous. Then consider living on an unforgiving, uncooperative alien planet and all sorts of further complexities compound manned expeditions.

[after Mindy has discovered that Watney may be alive]
“Can you imagine what he’s going through up there? I mean, he’s 50 million miles away from home. He thinks he’s totally alone. He thinks we gave up on him. What does that do to a man, psychologically? What the hell is he thinking right now?” — Vincent Kapoor, The Martian

click here to enlarge

Experts at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and Planetary Science Institute say helping boost the astronaut’s morale on the journey and on the surface of Mars would be the need to have enough living-space and good food for them to garden. Crops from “green walls” could supplement their space-food diet. Of course loading up the spacecraft with these pseudo-Earth human comforts and needs means a heavier payload, more fuel, and more cost considerations. Humans on Earth and in most governed states are required to pass tests to be issued operator licenses for autos and machinery. What sort of licensing tests should there be for Mars? These are only a few of the material, legal, and psychological challenges of manned spaceflights to Mars.

Policing and Martian Rights

The appropriate and safe activity on Mars and her two moons Phobos and Deimos will be practically endless. How should it be governed and policed? What should be permitted for states and corporations like Elon Musk’s SpaceX? Certain manufacturing of drugs and materials requiring sterile atmospheres could be done in space stations. Space and Mars discoveries under present laws can be patented and commercialized. Hence, what should be the legitimacy of Martian mining?

As laws stand now, conducting expeditions for the sake of science and sustenance for Martian missions are granted. However, creating property rights over celestial resources are not. This means the commercial extraction of resources back to Earth is illegal until international space treaties are updated. Unfortunately, history has shown that cooperation between opposing nations has often been hit or miss to put it mildly. It is likely that new laws and treaties for property and resources 34-million miles away will be ignored by Martian workers and their employers. Just ask the Native Americans of the U.S. Like the California Gold Rush of 1848 and the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889, the U.S. and Luxembourg have made attempts already to gain appropriation of natural resources in space. Essentially the two countries are preparing to issue Carte Blanche to private companies for winner-takes-all acquisitions.

The Intergovernmental Agreements of 1988 and 1999 drawn up for the Columbus Space Station Project then the current International Space Station offer civil and criminal jurisdiction for all nations participating in space exploration. Parties to these agreements set out to govern the conduct and ramifications of international operating environments, particularly concerning the ESA’s (European Space Agency) eleven independent member states. Yet, even the totality of these agreements and policies in several instances are not fully elaborated, they do provide a compass for a comprehensive legal framework that can serve as an example for international space law and a forward-looking view to new developments.

“Mark Watney: Space Pirate.”

Nonetheless, it has become tradition that astronauts, cosmonauts, etc, are almost always subordinate to the hierarchical authority of one commander from their native registered country. That commander’s authority is usually cut-and-dry; final. Like in the naval traditions of hierarchy the ship’s captain has full and ultimate command and it is his/her responsibility for the care and safety of crew and passengers or “space colonists.” These past command traditions and roles will need modernizing however, for space travel and celestial population and survival.

Current Space Station Laws

“I’ve been thinking about laws on Mars. There’s an international treaty saying that no country can lay claim to anything that’s not on Earth. By another treaty if you’re not in any country’s territory, maritime law applies. So Mars is international waters. Now, NASA is an American non-military organization, it owns the Hab. But the second I walk outside I’m in international waters. So Here’s the cool part. I’m about to leave for the Schiaparelli Crater where I’m going to commandeer the Ares IV lander. Nobody explicitly gave me permission to do this, and they can’t until I’m on board the Ares IV. So I’m going to be taking a craft over in international waters without permission, which by definition… makes me a pirate.

Mark Watney: Space Pirate.“

As Watney illustrates, there are a plethora of complexities not only aboard a space station orbiting Earth or Mars, but just as many complexities surround stations on the surface of Mars that need to be spelled out. According to the Outer Space Treaty, Mars belongs to everybody back on Earth. Nobody can “own” a celestial body. Today private companies on Earth can go to Mars whenever they choose, construct permanent habs, and start new Martian societies, as long as they do so under the Outer Space Treaty’s laws and bylaws. For good or bad this also includes weaponry. Those operations are not allowed to interfere with operations of others on Mars or in space. As Watney correctly alluded, maritime laws, at least for now, are applicable examples. But as was also touched on, including other independent nations to Martian activities and things are not so clear-cut, yet.

Here in the U.S. if you want to put a satellite into orbit, you must first obtain permission from the federal government. Depending on what activity will be done in space you must get further permission or license to do such activity. However, move outside of Earth-orbit and there are no current licensing agencies to supervise legal ramifications of celestial colonization. Space tourism by private companies has been on the rise for several years so governments are going to have to sort out licensing protocols very soon.

click here to enlarge

Like any new, untouched, pristine area or park, opening them up to the general public means human trash and contamination. The Outer Space Treaty specifically states this activity or behavior by humans or business entities is prohibited and it includes our contaminating microbes. Yet, here’s the Catch-22. Private or government spacecraft, by order of the OST, are required to decontaminate their ships as best as possible before sending and/or arriving on foreign planets. But humans are near impossible to decontaminate because our health depends on these microbes. Places on Mars or on other celestial bodies that may contain water or forms of frozen water and liquids or once did must receive the highest protections and laws possible. Even the most thoroughly decontaminated vessels may need banning from specific areas. Let’s keep in mind though that these laws, their jurisdiction, and enforcement in the end fall only under the U.S. flag. International space cooperation and collaboration among nations and peoples will see unchartered territory in the coming decades. Can it be made easier or harder? How so and how not?

Once again, there will always be titans of commerce who scream about “bureaucratic red-tape” and their (unfounded?) feeling of repression toward “human progress and developement” while their greed lurks in the wings waiting to pounce. History is saturated with these exploitations of resources at the expense of the bio-eco systems and/or the lives of lower-class vulnerable humans. Why would space, Mars, and beyond be any different?

Like 15th century European Empires discovering the New World bringing with them their way of life, materials, waste, and weapons, space debris around Earth-orbits today is already well past a point of substantial risks of collisions. It is only a matter of time before damage to a space station, human injury or loss of life caused by congested operations, overcrowding, trash, and debris will lead to legal and/or political conflicts. How soon should Earth’s international space community hash-out these very real future events? Is it even possible? Will it be easy or hard?

Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Explore & Learn Always

Is The Swingers’ Lifestyle Male-Driven?

Posted on October 11, 2017 by Professor Taboo

As part of the Alternative Lifestyles blog-posts migration over to the new blog The Professor’s Lifestyles Memoirs, this post has been moved there. To read this post please click the link to the blog.

Your patience is appreciated. Thank you!

Cyber-status: Self-Reminder

Posted on September 29, 2017 by Professor Taboo

Surprise! This is a quicky shorty.

In my previous 4-part series Games of Unknowledging, one of the general classifications of ignorance, or in this case so much information ready, available at your fingertips or just a mouse-click away, practically every hour of every day is a prime example of Time and Mental Constraints. It means that given how quickly information is available in our high-tech modern world, we online users, computer geeks, iPhoners and Androiders “cannot possibly study and understand all things. We must leave some alone, select what subjects deserve our needs and attention. As a result, this form of ignorance is a product of inattention and can be lost for a period of time or forever.“ Being the eternal student and lover of broad education in as many areas of life and disciplines as possible, I really struggle with these constraints! After almost 8-years of blogging here and 40+ blogs I’m following, one of my recurring restraints is now my inability to keep up in a timely fashion with all the WordPressers that post/publish every 1-2 days, or sometimes multiple posts per day!

Should I feel negligent, a sense of remorse? Have I committed the horrible offense of biting off more than I can possible chew, let alone digest? Do all our fellow bloggers go through similar questions, doubts, and feelings of disappointing? Do hyper-frequent bloggers expect every single follower to have 20-, 35-, 50-minutes per post multiplied by whatever number they follow — in my case 43 for a total of 43 x 35m = 1,505 minutes, or possibly 25.1 hours — if all 43 posted a new post per day!? When would I write and compose blogs? When in the hell would I sleep? Is this the avant-garde definition of internet obesity? 😵

Back at ground control, there is a problem
Go to rockets full, not responding
Hello Major Tom, are you receiving
Turn the thrusters on, we’re standing by
There’s no reply

Que the perfect song for this insanity…

Earth to Professor. Come In Professor!

Now of course, more realistically and suspending my incorrigible tendency for satire, all our bloggers we follow do not publish every single day, I know that. Why not? Because they do realize (correct?) that all regular bloggers that not only write and post, but also READ other blogs, can’t possibly be in front of the monitor or on their iPhones/Androids 14-hours, 18-hours, or 25-hours straight per day, right? After all, WordPress is NOT setup like that popular, non-stop, 25/7 social-media platform with only a 140-character limit that even the President of the United States uses tweeting international and national headlines, and political, legal, religious, sporting, or scientific personal opinions that aren’t original from his half-functioning brain, right?

No, WordPress isn’t like that. WordPress is for intelligent, well-considered and planned blog-articles of more than 140 (or less) kindergarten characters that have good original stimulating content from various genres of life, right? These types of blog-posts illicit (demand? require?) quality valuable time and attention from their readers, yes? Thus, my struggle to manage well even my fond favorites of 10-12 blogs, much less 40+ blogs! Hahahaha, who am I kidding? My head and body scream at me if I sit in front of my computer monitor for 3-hours straight a day! There have been times when I pushed that beyond 4-hours — I won’t share details what bodily function became painful before I realized the time spent! I can get very, very focused when in that mode. My personality is such that I try hard to give someone my undivided attention. I was raised that way.

We’re Only Human

Well “informed” or overkill? A bed of roses or hate-cultivator? The debate has been presented before and raged since 1991. Is a hyper-library of all imaginable information-on-steroids good or bad for society? It is a never before seen colossal-version of our U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. Free-speech is a legal right here, sure. But it does also involve concurrent responsibility, that is to say that the speaker/writer has as much accountability for their content as the listener/reader has to understand, filter and scrutinize before judging its value. When the topic is serious, impactful, or even life-saving or life-risking, I believe this interchange should NOT be a fly-by-night 5-second operation. With the advent of internet this accountability has exponentially swelled and it’s only growing in size as billions upon billions of people are given a microphone or camera to a global audience. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, naming only two, lit up the Pandora Paradox™ that perhaps outshined (and outburned?) the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs.

My round-about point with all this is to say I have been having a difficult time kindly and responsibly following all your blogs I’ve liked and selected to read and follow. I think maybe 15-20 could be better manageable; anymore than my current 43-45 I just simply cannot get to everyone if several publish daily. “I’m only human“ afterall — as he hums The Human League song — and only capable of limited time to read, comment, and willingly indulge in WordPress conversations or parleys, while simultaneously finding some limited time to compose and publish my own blog-posts. Hah! I have a total of 13 drafts, unfinished posts currently going back to February 2015! What tha hell? 😲

What does help my time and mental constraints for keeping up with all of you is that over the 8-9 years I’ve been blogging, numerous blog sites I selected, for whatever unknown reasons, have vanished, been deleted/deactivated, or have become lethargic. I see these cyber-deaths as a positive for the living! Their end provides the opportunities for new or active, yet to be discovered and exciting blogs and bloggers. A fluid circle of life! These song lyrics from one of my all-time favorite bands, lyricist, and drummer, have been slightly modified to protect the slightly heathen innocent:

No, followers are not for rent
To any god, site or government.
Always hopeful, yet discontent
He knows changes aren’t permanent –
But change is

(paragraph break)

Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

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The New-Man from Old

Posted on September 17, 2017 by Professor Taboo

“One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting
to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.“
— Andre Gide

(line break)

It was said a long, long time before in ancient times by a wise soothsayer, “Therefore the He-on-High will give you a sign, the brightest star in the night which lights the way: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a boy, and will call Him New-Man.“

OB-GYN Examination Room
A fiber optic camera observes a five-month-old male fetus as he gently floats, weightless, suspended in the amniotic fluid of his mother’s womb. We focus on the unborn’s hand, already a tiny, exquisite work of art, moving towards his newly formed lips. He sucks his thumb.

Hospital Delivery Room
The seconds old baby boy New-Man — umbilical cord still attached, smeared with blood and protective skin grease — is held up by an anonymous pair of latex gloves to the camera. Shocked by the unaccustomed light and cool of the delivery room, the newborn fights for his first, arduous breath. Following almost immediately… a cry.

From another angle we see the crying infant on a television screen, seen by expectant millions around the world! They had been waiting for this birth, this night, for a very long time. Other teachers known as Magi come from far, far away to pay New-Man homage. Why? New-Man is the highest of all leaders ever, here to show once and for all the Way to paradise through extraordinary miracles now and after death, forever!

Childhood Homes — Bethmayhem & Nazasporin, GE, Palestone County
New-Man the toddler was immediately in danger. Because He and his parents were incredibly popular, the highest Nielsen-ratings ever recorded! Commercial sponsors everywhere were paying top-dollar for direct or indirect slots on the show! Mr. Bigley, the local leader of the tri-county area including Gaylee (GE), Palestone County, could NOT STAND having his fame and limelight shared by some infant-toddler that could almost speak on the same intellectual level as Mr. Bigley! Following the long-standing Imperial Pax Romana tradition of self-protection and perpetuation, Mr. Bigley already had several family members and in-laws eliminated. For this new toddler-threat, Mr. Bigley ordered that all little boys throughout the tri-county area, including Bethmayhem and Nazasporin, be removed! No one was going to steal His Majesty’s throne!

Much Bigger Than A Throne
For decades since arriving in Palestone County, Mr. Bigley listened non-stop to stories and rumors about a coming Rescuer for all the oppressed citizens of Gaylee, Palestone and Joedaya counties and beyond the seas. This coming “Rescuer” called New-Man has been talked about among the subjugated Hipparues for at least 1,000 years! In fact, top Hipparue officials say at least ten principal ancient predictions were fulfilled/confirmed by New-Man’s birth. Four of those ten undeniably astronomical and specific:

Born in Bethmayhem
Born from a virgin woman
A massacre of hundreds or thousands of boys in and around Bethmayhem due to him
A galactic quasar would lead Magi from the distant east to him

These four astonishing fulfilled predictions from many centuries earlier, along with 40 more, possibly 300 more predictions, has never been remotely possible by any man past, present, and most likely ever in the future. The enormity of these fulfillments can never be overstated. This “New-Man” was like none other. Further still, not only did this infant boy have centuries of desperate expectations by his Hipparue people and THE MOST unique one-of-a-kind cosmic nights of birth, but some ten, eleven years later New-Man made an even wider impression as a boy upon his wisest adult leaders inside the capital of Joedaya in the Hipparue Auditorium #II. For about 3-days New-Man utterly amazed and astounded all the high-ranking auditorium officials with his questions and answers!

If his centuries long and foretold coming wasn’t enough, if his one-in-a-million cosmic birth by a quasar bringing Magi from afar wasn’t enough, if his designation as New-Man from the one on High along with all its meaning wasn’t enough, if the local Mr. Bigley’s hunt and slaughter of hundreds-to-thousands of innocent boys was not big enough, now over those three days in front of all those high-ranking leaders inside Auditorium #II surely made his young face, super-human wisdom, his name, and his family background known all throughout the region and across the seas! Some were already claiming his “divine” nature, as well they should. This sort of long expectant news and chatter spreads very fast! Everyone in the land would know who New-Man was the minute he walked into a room or entered town, no doubt about it. After all, those previous 12-years were Earth-shattering!

Then Nothing — Total Silence, Total Indifference by Everyone Everywhere!
Yes, this is indeed how the story goes. You are in the middle of your favorite dessert, not even one-third into it and it is yanked out from under your chin while you still hold your spoon in the air about to scoop-up another bite. Whoosh! It is truly the epitome of a “never saw that coming” moment! A plot-twist that fooled/fools every single person who ever met New-Man and/or his parents, or ever heard the remarkable prediction-fulfillments of centuries long expectant news. Vanishes, supposedly never to be heard from or seen again for seventeen years! Gone. Huh? Yes, poof… into total nothingness, silence, and indifference by all New-Man’s fanatics, admirers, enemy or allied leaders, Magi or scholars of the day. Suddenly, no one cares anymore! Seriously? Are you as baffled by and suspicious of this bombshell as I am?

Are you asking the same question(s) as I did? I’m very curious, what is it/are they?

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Live Alive! — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

Should you have any further interest in additional incongruencies of folklored Christianity and its obscured origins and testaments, read these following op-eds: