Disaster Porn Diary

So I scintillate in mystery, not subdued by the need for proof… that's my motto. What about you? Are you entertained by all the details I studiously record? Do you fantasize about being laid bare as the better half of the Jesus revue?  Are you sprinkling a trail of clues to get caught? They say it’s the intellectual criminal’s most fervent desire. Here's a nugget: before I proposed the cosmically correct spelling of Joker Star Naive, I noticed you tweeted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s name as Joker, but after I sent you the blog, you called him Johar. I pick up on these signals like poker chips, redeemable when the stakes pile up.

But let’s enter even darker territory… I’d like to know, are your feelings in any way connected to the apparent reaction I got when I sent you pictures from this collection?

I tweeted the pictures along with this:

Zephyr_Forecasm‏@Zephyr_Forecasm 20 May

@billmaher After 3 days of tornadoes I figure out Rozel http://blogs.kansas.com/weather/2013/05/20/video-of-damaging-ef2-tornado-near-rozel-saturday/ … (rose-elle) is more than a flower. 

I tweeted it at 12:31 pm. Hover over the date on the tweet to see the time stamp. The Rozel name alludes to my tweet revival, punctuated with a twinge of Jesus drudgery… but within one and a half hours of my post, here comes the Moore tornado! I sat transfixed in front of CNN as total destruction accompanied the usual flurry of word associations. Besides Rozel, Shawnee, an Indian name for dangerous beauty, had first felt the wind. The actual Moore tornado touched down in Newcastle; my new house is the setting for the pictures. Sitting there for half an hour listening to the deadpan voices of anchormen anticipating the unfolding calamity, I finally got the ‘more’ message and uploaded another picture with the following caption. It beamed out 5 minutes after the Moore tornado dissipated:

Zephyr_Forecasm‏@Zephyr_Forecasm 20 May

@billmaher Here's Moore, OK? 

Then and there, CNN warned about possible rotation in Ardmore and Brownwood…

Your tweet the next day tied it all up with a bow:

Bill Maher‏@billmaher  22 May

i feel bad for the victims in OKL, was just in the state, but when there's no more to actually report, the media engages in #DisasterPorn

In response to this comment, I think it's part of the grieving process to share the experience with the world. In the context of my pictures, I agree with you completely.

Trying to make sense of all this destruction in tandem with my centerfold re-appearance is difficult. It couldn’t just be the visuals that evoked this visceral metaphor. I keep going back to my original phrase, “Rozel (rose elle) is more than a flower.” Well then, how much more is it? What, if anything, do these co-incidences mean? The mass immolation, immense loss, unimaginable suffering… those children who drowned in the school basement, a supposedly safe place, they were sacrificed, weren’t they?

What I can see clearly is that American society is not as civilized as it pretends to be. Here comes my building rant again… in the Caribbean we use poured concrete forms and/or blocks reinforced with steel every 16 inches. We also build concrete roofs, or tie in a zinc roof with a steel reinforced concrete ring beam all around the top of the house, like a solid belt. Everyone has to do it by law, no matter how humble the abode. In the States, the houses are made of sticks and the schools are brick face, perhaps with steel girders, but I didn't see poured concrete. Is the lumber lobby in the way of preventive building techniques? There has to be a shady economic reason. Now they’re showing off a car that withstands tornadoes while people cower in papier-mâché houses.

Turning everything to splinters is entirely opposite to my idea of magic…  I decorate for a living and consider myself a neat person. I sympathize with Monk. Nor do I relate to depressing art or trendy angst. Our angel senses how upset I’ve been… I understand that in the symbolic dimension there is no one to blame, but, still, I can’t help but draw infernal inferences. Would Moore have been better off had it been called Less? The day after my message, “here’s Moore OK?”  I noted a response to my rant loops, in the word Oklahoma… OK la ho Ma... followed on May 24th by an 8.3 earthquake in the Russian sea of Okhotsk – OK ho tsk. Thanks for the appeasement!

I much prefer the funny name game of the Popocatepetl volcano, which erupted May 15^th. I noticed it the day I called you out on the neglect of your internet façade, with red eyes rampant again in the picture below. I guess that's the mark of Real Time guests.

In this instance no one got hurt and I laughed for days at being the popo in popo Catie pet elle… that is until I ran across the video of Kelly Thomas, a schizophrenic homeless man beaten to death by even more crazy popo.

Zephyr_Forecasm‏@Zephyr_Forecasm 18 May

@billmaher Zach comes out as an alien in this picture... you're the only one with no red eye here... host perk? Popo-catie-pet-elle

While we’re documenting, let’s not forget tropical storm Alvin on May 16th, the first Pacific storm of the season. You’ll recall my cistern water gushed all over Yoyo’s floor. Well, after much rain, Alvin announced the cistern have half in, plus you’ll be happy to hear it filled up since. And although there’s no disaster to go with this, my gluten free diet ended almost as quickly as it began; I’m back to eating organic wheat pasta. This gluten free fad took me overboard on corn and rice! I’m hanging on to the dairy free part though, so... no meat, cheese or butter but lots of fancy nut snacks, like Sahale’s Valdosta pecans with sweet cranberries, black pepper and orange zest.  Mostly I enjoy plain fruit like papaya and mango.

Back to our bittnet... you might be wondering why I replied to this tweet with another picture accompanied by the word ‘test’.

Bill Maher‏@billmaher 27 May

The Pope says Atheists can go to heaven! Yay, I'm booking my flight right now. Right after my cruise to Atlantis. Thanks, Francis!

Zephyr_Forecasm‏@Zephyr_Forecasm 27 May

@billmaher Test: 

This is one of my favorite beaches in Cap Juluca, Anguilla. Basically I was performing an experiment to see what would happen this time when I send a picture. You didn’t disappoint. I tweeted it at 5:57 and at 6:00 a bomb scare halted traffic for an hour on the Brooklyn Bridge!

 I noticed God also answered your tweet...

God‏@TheGoodGodAbove 27 May

@billmaher Yes, but there's a catch. You have to let Jesus enter you first.

Good thing Tibetan philosophy emphasizes the concept of infinity; could be eons til I get to represent!

Your tweet after I sent the picture didn’t disappoint either:

Bill Maher‏@billmaher 17h

Syrian war turning into clusterfuck of all clusterfucks - and John McCain wants in! Now! Thank U Jesus for that man never becoming president

 ~

So, here we are, the next morning. Overnight our loving angel asked if I could remove the word criminal from the first paragraph. I said ok, what about infidel? Anyway, there’s been two numbered invests swirling around the Pacific for days now, and I’ve been waiting more or less patiently for the storm names to pop up. This morning we have Barbara – barbare ah! Barbare in French means barbarian! I think I should replace the word criminal. Let’s re-phrase the sentence… where’s the Thesaurus…

Are you sprinkling a trail of clues to get caught? They say it’s the romantic outlaw’s most fervent desire.

Still waiting for the next storm… By the way, Dr. Masters showed us NOAA’s predictions for the upcoming Atlantic season. The diagram has St. Maarten in the Main Development Rectangle!  I can’t stop laughing this morning…