It was with great surprise that the Oracle of Ottawa heard of the passing of George Jones. What surprised the Oracle of Ottawa even more was that he died cared for, and in bed, and that he lived to be 81 years old. It is a hell of a long way from Saratoga, Texas to being a pillar of Western Popular Culture. Many readers are no doubt surprised that the Oracle even knows who George Jones was, but the Oracle must come clean and freely admit that between the most excellent rock concerts of my fondly misspent youth, the Oracle would always crank up the radio when a George Jones song came on in the car. And growing up in the Ottawa Valley we had one of the first FM Classic Country stations, CKCY. and everyone up the valley tuned in, and back in those days it was all Classic Country, and if you listened you were very familiar with George Jones.
George Jones strikes a wicked Hunter S. Thompson pose
and see's it all to the end.
The Oracle of Ottawa comes from a generation that can very easily remember the sound of the Grand Old Opry coming in through an AM radio on a Saturday night in the 1960's. And of course we all heard the stories of George as he became more and more famous and his life careened more and more out of control. And in recent years as more and more details availed themselves from George himself, the Oracle of Ottawa was forced to realize that Keith Richards was really just a ribald amateur compared to George Jones!
The excess was legendary. The Oracle can't help but comparing the similarities of the lives of Hunter S. Thompson and George Jones. Both were equally famous in their craft at very nearly the same time in American cultural history. One in the printed word and the other in song. One survived it all and one did not. There are some very important lessons here. The first is that is very hard to kill a Marine, and George Jones was a Marine. And the second lesson is that a man will survive most anything if he does not give up on his God(s). And the Oracle was always impressed with the Possum's deep underlying faith. So much for Fredrich Nietzsche...
Those who feasted on delicacies perish in the streets, those who were brought up in purple cling to ash heaps. Lamentations, 4:5, NRSV
The coming Easter of 2013 is certainly going to be one for the books. Deep in the secure bunker the Oracle of Ottawa marvels at what is visual on his big screen Sony in full HD. A Pope from the new world. The first Jesuit ever, and winning it all at odds at greater than thirty three one! And all very firmly and decisively in the early ballots. All things and events that the Oracle of Ottawa thought would never and could not possibly ever happen, has happened in my lifetime.
What ever will happen next? Will an outlaw biker become President of the United States? Will the NDP form the next Federal Government here in Canada? It all makes the Oracle of Ottawa wonder why the story of the death and resurrection
of a man over two thousand years ago is such a hard sell to all who live
today in this "modern" world? Oh ye of little faith. Watching it all unfold on the old style vulgar media, and on You-Tube, the Oracle of Ottawa can feel a certain kind of electricity that he has not experienced since being a kid in the 1960's. On several occasions over the last week or so, the Oracle of Ottawa has literally felt the ground shift under him.
All the big time new media atheists have been ever so strangely silent. The Oracle of Ottawa wonders what Christopher Hitchens would have said at this miraculous string of events? Or if the great Doctor Hunter S. Thompson was alive and in his sober prime, what the copy for the Rolling Stone article would have looked like? Could you imagine Hunter in the Square of Saint Peter's in Rome covering the great story, just picture it if you possibly can.
Now that Pope Francis is officially inboard and driving as of today, the Oracle wonders when the blood will flow in the streets so to speak. For any one who knows of such things the Oracle still recommends that a close eye be kept on certain wholesale personnel changes that the Oracle of Ottawa is sure to start happening very shortly. Especially at the Institute for Works of Religion, otherwise known as the Vatican Bank. The Oracle still stands by his prediction that somehow and very strangely all securities markets are going to experience an upward surge of hundreds of points as that once constrained Invisible Hand is allowed free reign again. It certainly has a lot of catching up to do, doesn't it?
If God is for us, who is against us? Romans, 8:31, NRSV
The Oracle of Ottawa is totally beside himself! What a day. When I did up the my "favorite picks" post for this conclave, the Oracle of Ottawa was well aware of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, but not even the Oracle of Ottawa would allow himself the possibility of it ever happening. (Surely the dear readers would have suspected that the Oracle had truly slipped his clutch plates.) Not even if I lived to be as old as Moses! Oh ye of little faith.
Pope Francis - Our ship comes in...
The Oracle of Ottawa clearly remembers the utterly devastating disappointment of hearing of the election of Pope Benedict XVI. The worst possible choice. The Oracle was despondent for a very long time after that one, and had all but given up hope. Fortune again put me right at a radio as the event transpired, very weird that, I was driving in the car, somewhere in Ottawa, hoping to give it all a bye. Convinced that the pick of the next right wing wacko would take at least till Friday coming. It bubbled up on the CBC as they broke into live coverage, the white smoke was observed, but the choice was not known. Bracing for for another crush of disappointment, the Oracle of Ottawa decided to keep the radio on, and take it like a man.
(Rumor has it that even God is SJ!)
To tell you the truth, it was way better on radio, it was just like being in the Square, way at the back...Well it was all a total shocker! The CBC thingy had trouble pronouncing the name of the newbie Pope. Then the Oracle heard above the roar of the crowd Argentina! Then he caught "the first Jesuit"! Then Pope Francis! God damn! It is a freaking miracle! It is a good thing that the Oracle had his seat belt on, I swear I could feel myself rising from the car seat. Then, you can't make this stuff up, it snowed, a radiant white snow, yet the sun was shining through it. Well at this point, the Fear came over the Oracle of Ottawa, but a voice inside of me said; Fear not Oracle, For I the Lord have delivered this day the whole world. The Fear retired forthwith.
Armoured Cadillac - Don't leave home without it Pope Francis!!
Even if you are not a Catholic this is important. Even if you are not a Christian, this is important. Even if you are a Jew or a Muslim or a pagan, this is important. This will affect the world and everyone in it even if they never heard of Pope Francis. The first Pope from the New World, the first Jesuit(!!!), the first non European Pope in over 1200 years. And that he picked the name Francis, whether it is for Saint Francis Assisi or Saint Francis Xavier is immaterial, neither of those Saints would have voted Republican or Conservative! And that to the oracle of Ottawa is the massive move forward.
Now you are surely asking, what the hell is a Jesuit? The Oracle of Ottawa will provide a few analogies to try to explain how important this is. Basically, Jesuits are the one percenters of the Catholic Church. Think of a soldier of the Waffen SS or a Hells Angels biker. Well believe it or not, these guys are just as nuts and can be just as frightening. As a matter of fact, to this very day, there are countries that they are not allowed to step foot in! The total number of the order today is less than 20,000. But they are still all over the world, even in Russia, and of course they are here in Ottawa also. They played an incredibly important part in the development of Canada, United States of America and most all of South of America. They keep a very low profile, so much so that the Oracle of Ottawa still has never met one in the flesh. You just hear about them after the fact mostly. They have made an incredible contribution to the development of the whole world and have many Saints, Martyrs and Blessed's among there number.
Now this Pope is going to have immediate and very long term effects that the Oracle is convinced is going to reverberate around the world. The first immediate effect is the ordered removal of all those under the counter derivative deals that have been placed by the rotten right wingers in the Vatican Bank in support of a complicated master plan of various MNC's that are part of the master plan of the "New World Order" to take all the workers of the world back to the nineteenth century. When these are lifted we all will know it! Most all the indexes around the world will jump by several hundred points in a very short time as the plug is removed and the worlds moneys start to move again. Mark the Oracles words on this one. Later on there will be something near as big as Vatican II, where upon all the worlds most prominent economists, labor leaders, and other social scientists will be called to Rome for the express purpose of dealing with the curse of wealth and poverty. Wait for it....
In closing, as always, the Oracle of Ottawa is very worried already about one big thing, and that is the immediate safety of our new Pope Francis. For all the Catholics that are over the age of 55, will know what fear the oracle of Ottawa is expressing. The Oracle can only hope that Pope Francis is on the phone back to his home Jesuit House to get a shitload of people that he knows and trusts with his life, and that includes the cook! No more bus or other public transport ever! You take that limo and make sure it is armoured to hell and back! If there isn't any in the Vatican carpool call the State Department and see if President Obama can spare one of his Cadillacs. The Oracle of Ottawa wishes he was joking here, on this point, but sadly he is not.
What a day! I can still hardly believe that it actually happened in my lifetime.
