Paul Sheehan, shameless recycling, and Judgment Day is possibly nigh ...

(Above: only in America).

Now where was I? Apart from being utterly, completely and gloriously unaware of Australia, and the musings of the inner city urban elite chattering commentariat thereon.

And in particular, the inchoate, confused thoughts of that bread-sniffing yeasty 'Colonel' Paul Sheehan, who is so generally grumpy that surely at some point soon he will earn a field promotion to General 'grumpy' Paul Sheehan.

But not with today's effort in the Herald, Homespun wisdom of a true guru. Sob, from having the New York Times delivered to the hotel room, to this ... a recycling of the thoughts of Warren Buffet.

It's so shameless - plagiarism dressed up as homage - that it would be nice if Buffet took it into his head to sue. But likely enough he wouldn't, on the American principle that being talked about is way better than the alternative. Not being talked about.

Of course if you wanted to read Buffet direct from the horse's mouth - without Sheehan's laborious transcription and redaction of his thoughts - you could just head off to Warren Buffett's Secrets.

Or why not head off to Warren Buffett's Letter to Uncle Sam, wherein - shock horror - he thanks the US federal government for its intervention, and admits his own company had a touch of the wobbles before the intervention.

Of course Buffett doesn't actually mention Obama - preferring to give the credit to George W. and a bunch of government bureaucrats - but one thing's for sure. You won't see any of that kind of talk - 'restore calm', 'you delivered', 'actions were remarkably effective', 'extraordinary emergency, you came through' - in Sheehan's version of Buffett's thoughts.

Instead, and this is where it gets comical, you find that prince of pessimism Sheehan, recycling this kind of insight:

Reject easy pessimism: ''Throughout my lifetime, politicians and pundits have constantly moaned about terrifying problems facing America. Yet our citizens now live an astonishing six times better than when I was born … We are not natively smarter than we were when our country was founded nor do we work harder.

But look around you and see a world beyond the dreams of any colonial citizen. Now, as in 1776, 1861, 1932 and 1941, America's best days lie ahead.''

Reject easy pessimism!

Talk about an invitation to stop reading Paul Sheehan, who week in week out recycles easy pessimism, shameless paranoia, hysterical exaggeration and perverse distortions, except when Warren Buffett tells him not to. Only in Australia.

Well enough of Sheehan already, who has now taken the Alan Ramsey principle to extreme (in his later years Ramsey recycled in a furious frenzy the thoughts and scribbles of others), because the mention of colonial citizens reminded me of a splendid moment in American history, when sundry Tea Partiers, dressed in colonial gear, turned up to berate the world at the National Press Club (It's dress-up day for the Tea Party). Only in America.

Talk about clowns in hats, which reminds that we did see The Motherfucker With the Hat while in New York, which in a curious way to brings us back to Sheehan, since the one insight that Sheehan offers in his recycling of Buffett is that the man is eighty and is still showing signs of intelligence and productive energy.

80?

Bah humbug, we sat next to Lilian, fresh from Arizona, and she was over ninety, and busy planning her cruise on the Queen Elizabeth, and desperately searching for a ticket to The Book of Mormon, and willing to spring for any 'ticket broker' or 'ticket facilitator'. And I'll swear on a stack of bibles she'd never heard of Paul Sheehan ...

Never mind, the last we'd heard from Sheehan was how Islam was ruining the world, and that reminds us of a splendid sighting, or perhaps an absence of a sighting.

It might have not been given much prominence in Australia but an ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jewish newspaper called Di Tzitung took a stand alongside fundie Islamics and fundie Xians, by airbrushing Hilary Clinton and Audrey Tomason out of the now famous photo of the Situation Room during the Osama bin Laden mission.

Here you go. Clinton and Tomason in:

Clinton and Tomason gone:

The pathetic excuse?

“In accord with our religious beliefs, we do not publish photos of women, which in no way relegates them to a lower status... Because of laws of modesty, we are not allowed to publish pictures of women, and we regret if this gives an impression of disparaging to women, which is certainly never our intention. We apologize if this was seen as offensive.”

(And you can read more about the fuss here and here).

Only in America.

And now, speaking of easy pessimism, it's time to note that the pond will fall silent on May 21st forever.

No, no, no, it's not some easy pessimism about a life spent reading Paul Sheehan recycling Warren Buffett's thoughts, it was all the talk of the New York subway. Here's the weekend's subway throwaway rag's splash (click to enlarge):

Yep, the Bible teaches us that when the events of the past are coordinated with our modern calendar, we can learn dates of history such as Creation (11,103 B.C.), the flood of Noah's day (4990 B.C.) and the death of Solomon (931.B.C.)

And if you keep doing the math, which is to say seven thousand years after 4990 B.C., the year of the Flood, it turns out that 2011 is the nominated year for Judgment Day - 4990 + 2011-1 = 7,000 (you have to leave out a year because there's no year zero).

Thus Holy God is showing us by the words of 2 Peter 3:8 that He wants us to know that exactly 7,000 years after He destroyed the world with water in Noah's day. He plans to destroy the entire world forever ... Amazingly, May 21, 2011 is the 17th day of the 2nd month of the Biblical calendar of our day. Remember the flood waters also began on the 17th day of the 2nd month in the year 4990 B.C.

Amazingly you won't read about this in Paul Sheehan and amazingly you might wonder how this kind of rhetoric could make a big splash with pamphlets, subway ads and demonstrations in the street.

Thank the lord, She arranged to give me a free pamphlet but someone paid so it could be handed out for free:

Well it's all the work of a mob called Family Radio, in Oakland CA, and it becomes clear how fundie religion gets the cash to make the splash when you see a television advertisement from one mob suggesting if you send in a thousand bucks, god will make you rich. That's right, not make the hucksters and plucksters a thousand bucks richer, but you a millionaire.

It's still the land of Elmer Gantry, and the poor white and black southerners seem to fall for it every time. Only in America. Oh okay, and only in Australia. Thanks Hillsong ...

Which brings us to The Book of Mormon, and the astonishing notion that Mitt Romney wants to be President of the United States, berating Obama for Obamacare, yet somehow finding it in his heart not to denounce or renounce Romneycare. Only in America. (For those who haven't seen the show, the good news is that the cast recording will be available for download tomorrow, and then you can sing along to Spooky Mormon Hell Dream, featuring dancing takeaway Starbucks cups).

Which brings us to the cheering news that Paul Thomas Anderson is about to make a film about Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard. It's a pretty thin connection to make I know, but it turns out that the kind of bowling alley in which the preacher man is clubbed to death in There Will Be Blood exists in original form below the Frick Museum (In Frick's Basement, an Unknown Masterpiece).

Sadly fire codes prevent the public from taking a gawk, but never mind upstairs there's a couple of El Greco's, sundry Vermeers, a couple of Rembrandts, including a great self-portrait, and so on and so forth, including a children's room ripped from Marie Antoinette, and reconstructed in situ, proving (a) that a revolution in France was long overdue and (b) never under-estimate what the robber barons of America got up to when it came to looting the French in particular, and Europeans in general, of their patrimony.

Listening to the forlorn chit chat of French tourists gazing at their lost treasures is one of the more poignant duties of any New York tourist ... Only in America, and for more on the Frick, go to the gothamist for Inside The Frick's Secret Rooms.

And that, in a rambling way, is that for the moment.

It's not every day that the pond gets to trump Paul Sheehan by announcing the precise day of judgment, but the most excellent part of this news is that Sheehan appears on a Monday, and so the earthquakes in New Zealand will have started some two days earlier, and no one will have to read his exposition next week on the collected thoughts of Sarah Palin ... or any of the other current possible GOP candidates, as they fall over on what currently seems like a weekly basis ...

Goodbye Huck, we hardly got to know you, but you'll always have Fox and your guitar.

Bring it on lord. Bring on the judgment day.

You see, when Sheehan starts going Hallelujah over Buffett, you get the unseemly feeling you might be only minutes away from a musical entitled The Book of Magic Water.

And meantime you can listen to The Book of Mormon in its entirety - or individual songs - by heading off to NPR here. It's not the same as watching the show, but sadly for the moment, you can only do that in America ...

Oh and don't forget to drop in on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' official view of the musical, here.

Latter day, latter day. Book of Arnold. Maggots in the scrotum.

Sorry, there's so many rich pickings in the United States for the pond, that sometimes insanity seems the only logical response. Come to think of it, that's also the best response to Paul Sheehan recycling Warren Buffett ...

(Below: a moment from The Book of Mormon, only in America).

UPDATE: Photo thanks to reader nath99, found here, as 212012, the decent secular humanist conspiracy theory, with its own wiki here, maintains its hold, and 144,000 grips the world. It's judgment day armageddon, a battle of the octagon, but not to worry, you can read Apocalypse now? 30 days when the world didn't end, with all time favourites being the earliest call, by the Assyrians back in 2,800 BC, and the Lotharingians calling it for March 25th, 970 AD.