The number of the Beast is the number of a train

Today I took a train to New York to attend a memorial gathering for Marion, who would have turned 53 this coming Monday.

While waiting at Penn Station for my train home, I heard someone on the PA announce the arrival of Amtrak train number 666. Since I've long felt that Penn Station is more or less the first circle of hell, it is an appropriate destination for a train with that number.

I was amused to see that it immediately turns around and returns to Harrisburg, its point of origin, as train number 667.

I m reminded of C.S. Lewis's book The Great Divorce, in which a bus runs back and forth between heaven and hell.

The media versus the police

The media have been systematically discrediting one institution after another: churches painted as havens for pedophiles; sports franchises as corrupt bastions of steroid-addled wife-beaters; legislatures and courts bought and paid for; and so on. Now it is the turn of the police, only yesterday the heroes on the front lines of the global war on terror: now they are all racist thugs who would as soon shoot you dead as look at you.

If only the Mediocracy would turn its spotlight of shame on itself, that the scales should fall from tens of millions of our eyes and we might begin to perceive our world as it really is; but I suppose that is too much to ask.