"We are in what the Sufi philosopher René Guénon called “the darkness between worlds.” We should accept it; even, if we have the strength, embrace it. We should use it as an opportunity to sharpen the blade of our souls on the stone of the world." In other words, wax and tune your favorite board and surf the apocalypse. Is there any other choice? Might we even find joy there? I for one will try!
I remember you saying something about how, as a child, you always thought something was “off” about the world constructed around you. Me too, and I’m sure many others feel the same. The hardest thing is feeling into how to be a bridge between those worlds without collapsing into fear. How to use the tools of this one - the tools at our disposal - to build the next. I recently came across the parable of the banker and the fisherman (not sure where - here’s a link to a version The Parable of the Mexican Fisherman and the Bankerhttps://joneytalks.medium.com/the-parable-of-the-mexican-fisherman-and-the-banker-f1c064f323f5) and it feels, of course, intuitively true (of course, oversimplified, as parables must be). But I lack fishing skills, don’t live near a river, and can’t garden to save my life. So that story gives me a feeling that is hard to implement.
For me, a big part of the return to fishing is a return to stories. A departure from Ted Talk thinking, a re-expansion away from direct and egoic problem solving and back into a richer sense of humanity. I think I was swept towards systems thinking in a very deadening way.
You asked whether you should do those briefing type posts on specific data or something more like this. If you have to choose I vote do this. No one else really can — or not like this.
Fundamental awareness in relief of chaos. It is genuine and fleeting. A moment of freedom from complaint but hunger will incite again the willingness to forgive dharma. Give this singular mind a chance to spread roots. Don't return to the failure for more failure. Adjust.
I’m sorry I missed the community call today because I had the oddest dream, speaking of prophecy…
I dreamed I was throwing a dinner party, although I recognized few of my guests. There was one woman with waist length gray hair who arrived with a gift of something she called blood wine. As she handed me the gift box, I blinked and saw her for who she really was. She was the maiden Kali with a skull made of obsidian, lips of gold, eyes of pearl. And she knew I could see her too. But she placed a finger in front of her golden lips and told me not to tell.
I’m not sure if this is a good, bad, or “interesting” omen, but the dream didn’t feel like a nightmare.
It sounds like you were visited by Skelton woman; while feared, she is the keeper of true wisdom and lasting happiness, for the life/death/life cycle is natural and necessary. But so many are unwilling to face her, death, and let fantasies of an easy, lasting bliss die and the hard realities of work and sacrifice and vulnerability shape the depths of love and purpose. Thanks for sharing your dream!
Definitely interesting, and surely a big dream. Your description - "skull made of obsidian, lips of gold, eyes of pearl" is both beautiful and convincingly vivid - as real encounters in dreams tend to be. I am intrigued by the "blood wine" part of the dream - such a powerfully evocative image! We are feeling Kali's potent influence everywhere right now - terrifying, transformative, and (hopefully) a harbinger of something new and beautiful. If the dream didn't feel like a nightmare, I would take it for a positive and hopeful encounter, with the understanding that human choice is a major deciding factor in how it plays out.
Daniel - Thanks for providing an opportunity for people to come together on Zoom to exchange ideas. I feel certain that group engagement is a vital first step for addressing the complex and ever changing field of reality we are currently facing. It does feel as if humanity is on a sinking ship, clinging in desperation to old flotsam and jetsam. These kinds of group conversations could be viewed as a preliminary to trying to figure out how to construct an actual new landmass where a sustainable future could take hold, with ideas as resources.
As an idealist (and a grandparent), I can't be comfortable thinking that all is lost or that it doesn't matter whether it is or not. l think we are being called to maintain hope and to work together on behalf of the whole. I don't know what that looks like exactly, but I have a kind of faith in the possibilities, even when the current state of things feels so bleak and scary. In my own life I've experienced my share of minor miracles, and I'm willing to believe that people can collaborate to initiate a major one or two. And the numbers may feel too small to make a difference, but when I start fretting over that I remind myself to think homeopathically.
Hi Lee, I appreciated what you shared on the call yesterday and hope to connect in the future! Sometimes I think my ideas of what is helpful and necessary, the work of spirit and heart, appear trivial and twee when compared with people that can build software, gather large numbers of folks, have amassed resources, etc. But I realize there’s a bridge to be built between the hard, logical, masculine and the soft, magical, feminine. Just because it isn’t currently valued much doesn’t make it less valuable. Me appreciating and understanding my own story and miracles is relatively new. I’m still putting all the words and steps together. We all have something to bring forth in this story of change. Hearing people like yourself speak gives me hope and motivation. All the best!
Hi Valerie - It's wonderful to know that my words landed with you. I have come to believe that the "soft, magical feminine" is a very potent rising power in our midst, and is exactly what is needed right now, though it doesn't make headlines. It is probably necessary for at least some of us to pay attention to the news, but if we are looking to the news as an indicator of what is happening on a deeper level, I would say we are looking for life in an empty tomb. Sixty years ago, when I was just finishing high school, Bob Dylan wrote "The Times They Are A'Changin" and I believed him. I still do, but dang, its a slow process and seems to involve a lot of backsliding. One more thing: Rudolf Steiner commented that, in America in particular, the women would be leading in terms of spiritual development. The men, he said, would get overly caught up in technological gadgets, and women would be holding the real spiritual vision for the future. Yes, we should stay connected! Thank you for your words.
I listened to that song by Simon and Garfunkel yesterday :D I did a lot of crying and listening to music in fact the last two days, I think tears and songs are the way forward right now
More of the jewels on my cheeks, thank you Lee. In my dreams like last night the tears are waves so high, they half cover the windows outside of a water adjacent property I am residing in
Daniel - YES to THIS: "As the “material reality” around us continues to crack apart in this time of prophetic destruction / recreation, we are receiving a precious, difficult gift from the universe: We can go deeper into the core of the heart. We can shed the illusion of separation to break through, into the pure humility and generosity that is the essence of Christ consciousness. There really isn’t going to be anything else for us to do, pretty soon. So let’s embrace this wonderful, terrifying opportunity."
I feel so aligned with this and have been working on it with women (and now men, too) in groups around the Sacred Heart and also something I think of as a Cosmic Tantra. There is an actual yoga to this, a practice waiting to be (re)discovered. This is what I spend a lot of time meditating on and working on these days.
I enjoyed your references here and it does give me hope. Your prophesy rang as 100% true to me. I loved every word.
When I was involved in deep shadow (Integration) work (late 90s-2010s) it was a solo, even lonely transformation in which I lost friends & family because I left their worldviews behind. Since then the "troubles" have amplified to where we are today. I can't help but think this dark night is something different in that maybe it must be traversed collectively.
The reactive elements (collective shadow) have gathered together to assert the energies of resentment, separation & vengeance. Can the conscious among us gather & resonate an integrating, unifying (healing) energy? I feel it's won or lost at the energetic "level".
'The reactive elements (collective shadow) have gathered together to assert the energies of resentment, separation & vengeance. Can the conscious among us gather & resonate an integrating, unifying (healing) energy? I feel it's won or lost at the energetic "level".' Yes! While they are both happening at once, the reactive elements, though louder and more noticeable, are like old habits, outworn and kind of boring. Whereas the newer, healing energy has the advantage of youth, the advantage of vitality, the advantage of being appropriate to the time. (I'm probably a little under the influence of the Bob Dyan film which I saw recently.)
The unifying energies also have an advantage, they are riding the waves of social evolution because they are aligned with the evolutionary impulse. Unity consciousness (Oneness) is like a universal magnet. It draws the negativities and dissolves (neutralizes) them. We can align ourselves with this energy.
To reinforce the René Guénon assessment in a comment above, this is what mythologist Michael Meade recently said is the mythological framework for apocalypse which in Greek origins means collapse/renewal, revelation/disclosure, lifting of the veil between worlds. The grossness of this one is as searingly hot as the fires in the City of Angels. Again this is biblical Apocalypse, Anti-Christ material to reference Matthew Fox again. However, I’m just not into this fiery end of the world as the end of everything. It’s the necessary reality shift we need to move into the next one, enter a better sipapu (in Hopi and Pueblo terminology.)
Ironically the hugely influential environmental publication Dark Mountain started over ten years ago with an essay that started by stating “the end of the world is not the end of the world full stop” by John Michael Greer.
They were talking about this then.
What’s also interesting is how you frame the Zuckerberg statement and notice the time shift. It seems forever ago. Luigi Mangione feels like last year, and is completely out of the news already. Time itself seems to be unraveling.
Alison mentioned in the comments above the discomfort you feel and felt growing up. I literally have a video in my stories on Instagram right now of a rabbi talking about neurodivergence and how it brings with it a heightened sense of discomfort with what is wrong with the world. Our divergence is our bodies and selves not being made for this world and wishing/aching for it to be more perfect. Our role and job is to dream and create the more perfect world (just stay away from RFK in the process). There was just an announcement that Musk might buy TikTok America if it’s cut off from China. It’s so absurdly inappropriate that again it’s just an opening for all of us to look at the blaze/inferno we’ve created.
*pardon if this part stings a bit.
You may get some readers and some subscribers as you chronicle these events but the world is calling this out too. We are all little corporations now. The planet is on fire yet we are going to try and make a buck as it burns? Need subscriptions as the US turns into a Nazi surveillance state and throws you into concentration camps in your dreams?
I don’t say this to be mean but how many people on your substack couldn’t even write to you or comment to say “No!,” or let you know they lived in the building across the street from you and could offer you a route of escape if you posted that there were Nazi’s we’re at your door ready to take you away? This applies to nearly everyone on substack. I can’t tell you how many conversion stories, or solutions to major issues have been placed behind a paywall. We are all absolutely fucking insane.
In this system, our old dying world, the Artist played the capitalist game and had to fight and scratch their way to make it. They had to be selfish, born rich, teach at a university while knowing they were putting that vast majority of their students into inescapable debt, be part of the right group, or their Mother had to be in a relationship with a countercultural icon like Kerouac. This model of art and creativity was just as cruel, blind, and harsh as any corporate CEO or corporation.
If the artists become the beast, we are all the beast. You can’t expect a corporate CEO who is literally beholden to shareholders to make choices a single artist/writer etc won’t make for themselves alone. Trump, Musk, Zuck are our subconscious opposites who we get to point at and say “there’s the problem” while never stopping to look at the smaller scale injustice and absurdities we’ve accepted in our own lives in this broken world. Making it in a broken system isn’t making it.
Erase Kerouac from history and you probably aren’t the one writing books and getting paid on substack. Erase the family money your family got from some past corruption or owning of human beings and that business you are running now never happened. Erase the land theft and genocide to indigenous peoples and if you are in the US that house or apartment you are living in doesn’t exist (mine included.)
That world is dead. I am growing weary of the details of its demise. Time to build the new world. Time to stop participating in the old. Time to realize our gifts are only gifts if we use them to create a world that is more fair and equal, otherwise we’re just hypocrites. Just to be clear I am writing this to you now while sitting on my ass at 1pm while my significant other works herself to death in a painfully misogynistic corporate death machine so that I can.
I deeply respect you and your work. I hope I have not offended you. You are welcome to disagree but it is what it is believe.
Starting off on a bit of a tangent but hear me out for minute:
In J.R.R. Tolkien's cosmology a class of angelic beings was dreamed into existence by a great entity. These angelic beings then made music to steer the creation of the material world into existence. To keep things interesting, a current of discordance was thrown into the mix, giving the rhythm and harmony an impetus for transformation. This ties in to the whole middle-earth world through the interplay of different races with Sauron (an angelic being) continually reappearing to disturb the peace. While the bulk of his work centers on relatable stories, I love how this fictional cosmology ties into so many existing one, and even into the psychedelic experience.
I like Tolkien's analogy because music is so fundamental to human consciousness and our understanding of the passage of time. As you put it, "a song that sings itself into being". We each sing our own song, but we're also part of a massive human choir, being drowned out by both our peers and anything else that is tuned into this conscious field... which may be everything. Great reminder that all we can do is to strive for love and devotion, as everything else just seems to add to the discord. I saved this paragraph as a mantra, because I definitely need a daily reminder.
This also reminded me of something completely different but very related, a Hunter S. Thompson quote: "Buy the ticket, take the ride." It creates the imagery of being on a rollercoaster where you can scream, lean into the turns, and flail your arms, but you're essentially strapped in and along for the ride. I'm just disappointed that Biff from Back to the Future II may be the character that ushers in our potential demise. How ironically unfunny is that?
"We are in what the Sufi philosopher René Guénon called “the darkness between worlds.” We should accept it; even, if we have the strength, embrace it. We should use it as an opportunity to sharpen the blade of our souls on the stone of the world." In other words, wax and tune your favorite board and surf the apocalypse. Is there any other choice? Might we even find joy there? I for one will try!
Yes
I remember you saying something about how, as a child, you always thought something was “off” about the world constructed around you. Me too, and I’m sure many others feel the same. The hardest thing is feeling into how to be a bridge between those worlds without collapsing into fear. How to use the tools of this one - the tools at our disposal - to build the next. I recently came across the parable of the banker and the fisherman (not sure where - here’s a link to a version The Parable of the Mexican Fisherman and the Bankerhttps://joneytalks.medium.com/the-parable-of-the-mexican-fisherman-and-the-banker-f1c064f323f5) and it feels, of course, intuitively true (of course, oversimplified, as parables must be). But I lack fishing skills, don’t live near a river, and can’t garden to save my life. So that story gives me a feeling that is hard to implement.
For me, a big part of the return to fishing is a return to stories. A departure from Ted Talk thinking, a re-expansion away from direct and egoic problem solving and back into a richer sense of humanity. I think I was swept towards systems thinking in a very deadening way.
You asked whether you should do those briefing type posts on specific data or something more like this. If you have to choose I vote do this. No one else really can — or not like this.
Fundamental awareness in relief of chaos. It is genuine and fleeting. A moment of freedom from complaint but hunger will incite again the willingness to forgive dharma. Give this singular mind a chance to spread roots. Don't return to the failure for more failure. Adjust.
I’m sorry I missed the community call today because I had the oddest dream, speaking of prophecy…
I dreamed I was throwing a dinner party, although I recognized few of my guests. There was one woman with waist length gray hair who arrived with a gift of something she called blood wine. As she handed me the gift box, I blinked and saw her for who she really was. She was the maiden Kali with a skull made of obsidian, lips of gold, eyes of pearl. And she knew I could see her too. But she placed a finger in front of her golden lips and told me not to tell.
I’m not sure if this is a good, bad, or “interesting” omen, but the dream didn’t feel like a nightmare.
It sounds like you were visited by Skelton woman; while feared, she is the keeper of true wisdom and lasting happiness, for the life/death/life cycle is natural and necessary. But so many are unwilling to face her, death, and let fantasies of an easy, lasting bliss die and the hard realities of work and sacrifice and vulnerability shape the depths of love and purpose. Thanks for sharing your dream!
Definitely interesting, and surely a big dream. Your description - "skull made of obsidian, lips of gold, eyes of pearl" is both beautiful and convincingly vivid - as real encounters in dreams tend to be. I am intrigued by the "blood wine" part of the dream - such a powerfully evocative image! We are feeling Kali's potent influence everywhere right now - terrifying, transformative, and (hopefully) a harbinger of something new and beautiful. If the dream didn't feel like a nightmare, I would take it for a positive and hopeful encounter, with the understanding that human choice is a major deciding factor in how it plays out.
Daniel - Thanks for providing an opportunity for people to come together on Zoom to exchange ideas. I feel certain that group engagement is a vital first step for addressing the complex and ever changing field of reality we are currently facing. It does feel as if humanity is on a sinking ship, clinging in desperation to old flotsam and jetsam. These kinds of group conversations could be viewed as a preliminary to trying to figure out how to construct an actual new landmass where a sustainable future could take hold, with ideas as resources.
As an idealist (and a grandparent), I can't be comfortable thinking that all is lost or that it doesn't matter whether it is or not. l think we are being called to maintain hope and to work together on behalf of the whole. I don't know what that looks like exactly, but I have a kind of faith in the possibilities, even when the current state of things feels so bleak and scary. In my own life I've experienced my share of minor miracles, and I'm willing to believe that people can collaborate to initiate a major one or two. And the numbers may feel too small to make a difference, but when I start fretting over that I remind myself to think homeopathically.
Hi Lee, I appreciated what you shared on the call yesterday and hope to connect in the future! Sometimes I think my ideas of what is helpful and necessary, the work of spirit and heart, appear trivial and twee when compared with people that can build software, gather large numbers of folks, have amassed resources, etc. But I realize there’s a bridge to be built between the hard, logical, masculine and the soft, magical, feminine. Just because it isn’t currently valued much doesn’t make it less valuable. Me appreciating and understanding my own story and miracles is relatively new. I’m still putting all the words and steps together. We all have something to bring forth in this story of change. Hearing people like yourself speak gives me hope and motivation. All the best!
Hi Valerie - It's wonderful to know that my words landed with you. I have come to believe that the "soft, magical feminine" is a very potent rising power in our midst, and is exactly what is needed right now, though it doesn't make headlines. It is probably necessary for at least some of us to pay attention to the news, but if we are looking to the news as an indicator of what is happening on a deeper level, I would say we are looking for life in an empty tomb. Sixty years ago, when I was just finishing high school, Bob Dylan wrote "The Times They Are A'Changin" and I believed him. I still do, but dang, its a slow process and seems to involve a lot of backsliding. One more thing: Rudolf Steiner commented that, in America in particular, the women would be leading in terms of spiritual development. The men, he said, would get overly caught up in technological gadgets, and women would be holding the real spiritual vision for the future. Yes, we should stay connected! Thank you for your words.
I listened to that song by Simon and Garfunkel yesterday :D I did a lot of crying and listening to music in fact the last two days, I think tears and songs are the way forward right now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c9_XkYYjTU
More of the jewels on my cheeks, thank you Lee. In my dreams like last night the tears are waves so high, they half cover the windows outside of a water adjacent property I am residing in
Valerie - If you email me maybe we can set up a time to connect: leepo@sbbmail.com
Daniel - YES to THIS: "As the “material reality” around us continues to crack apart in this time of prophetic destruction / recreation, we are receiving a precious, difficult gift from the universe: We can go deeper into the core of the heart. We can shed the illusion of separation to break through, into the pure humility and generosity that is the essence of Christ consciousness. There really isn’t going to be anything else for us to do, pretty soon. So let’s embrace this wonderful, terrifying opportunity."
I feel so aligned with this and have been working on it with women (and now men, too) in groups around the Sacred Heart and also something I think of as a Cosmic Tantra. There is an actual yoga to this, a practice waiting to be (re)discovered. This is what I spend a lot of time meditating on and working on these days.
I enjoyed your references here and it does give me hope. Your prophesy rang as 100% true to me. I loved every word.
When I was involved in deep shadow (Integration) work (late 90s-2010s) it was a solo, even lonely transformation in which I lost friends & family because I left their worldviews behind. Since then the "troubles" have amplified to where we are today. I can't help but think this dark night is something different in that maybe it must be traversed collectively.
The reactive elements (collective shadow) have gathered together to assert the energies of resentment, separation & vengeance. Can the conscious among us gather & resonate an integrating, unifying (healing) energy? I feel it's won or lost at the energetic "level".
I recently wrote about the collective shadow here: https://iamtsebastian.substack.com/p/americas-collective-shadow-climbs?r=36ewx
'The reactive elements (collective shadow) have gathered together to assert the energies of resentment, separation & vengeance. Can the conscious among us gather & resonate an integrating, unifying (healing) energy? I feel it's won or lost at the energetic "level".' Yes! While they are both happening at once, the reactive elements, though louder and more noticeable, are like old habits, outworn and kind of boring. Whereas the newer, healing energy has the advantage of youth, the advantage of vitality, the advantage of being appropriate to the time. (I'm probably a little under the influence of the Bob Dyan film which I saw recently.)
The unifying energies also have an advantage, they are riding the waves of social evolution because they are aligned with the evolutionary impulse. Unity consciousness (Oneness) is like a universal magnet. It draws the negativities and dissolves (neutralizes) them. We can align ourselves with this energy.
Well that transmission aged well! Maybe I should read the whole book again.....
It really is that time right now and that's scary but deserves humble reverence.
To reinforce the René Guénon assessment in a comment above, this is what mythologist Michael Meade recently said is the mythological framework for apocalypse which in Greek origins means collapse/renewal, revelation/disclosure, lifting of the veil between worlds. The grossness of this one is as searingly hot as the fires in the City of Angels. Again this is biblical Apocalypse, Anti-Christ material to reference Matthew Fox again. However, I’m just not into this fiery end of the world as the end of everything. It’s the necessary reality shift we need to move into the next one, enter a better sipapu (in Hopi and Pueblo terminology.)
Ironically the hugely influential environmental publication Dark Mountain started over ten years ago with an essay that started by stating “the end of the world is not the end of the world full stop” by John Michael Greer.
They were talking about this then.
What’s also interesting is how you frame the Zuckerberg statement and notice the time shift. It seems forever ago. Luigi Mangione feels like last year, and is completely out of the news already. Time itself seems to be unraveling.
Alison mentioned in the comments above the discomfort you feel and felt growing up. I literally have a video in my stories on Instagram right now of a rabbi talking about neurodivergence and how it brings with it a heightened sense of discomfort with what is wrong with the world. Our divergence is our bodies and selves not being made for this world and wishing/aching for it to be more perfect. Our role and job is to dream and create the more perfect world (just stay away from RFK in the process). There was just an announcement that Musk might buy TikTok America if it’s cut off from China. It’s so absurdly inappropriate that again it’s just an opening for all of us to look at the blaze/inferno we’ve created.
*pardon if this part stings a bit.
You may get some readers and some subscribers as you chronicle these events but the world is calling this out too. We are all little corporations now. The planet is on fire yet we are going to try and make a buck as it burns? Need subscriptions as the US turns into a Nazi surveillance state and throws you into concentration camps in your dreams?
I don’t say this to be mean but how many people on your substack couldn’t even write to you or comment to say “No!,” or let you know they lived in the building across the street from you and could offer you a route of escape if you posted that there were Nazi’s we’re at your door ready to take you away? This applies to nearly everyone on substack. I can’t tell you how many conversion stories, or solutions to major issues have been placed behind a paywall. We are all absolutely fucking insane.
In this system, our old dying world, the Artist played the capitalist game and had to fight and scratch their way to make it. They had to be selfish, born rich, teach at a university while knowing they were putting that vast majority of their students into inescapable debt, be part of the right group, or their Mother had to be in a relationship with a countercultural icon like Kerouac. This model of art and creativity was just as cruel, blind, and harsh as any corporate CEO or corporation.
If the artists become the beast, we are all the beast. You can’t expect a corporate CEO who is literally beholden to shareholders to make choices a single artist/writer etc won’t make for themselves alone. Trump, Musk, Zuck are our subconscious opposites who we get to point at and say “there’s the problem” while never stopping to look at the smaller scale injustice and absurdities we’ve accepted in our own lives in this broken world. Making it in a broken system isn’t making it.
Erase Kerouac from history and you probably aren’t the one writing books and getting paid on substack. Erase the family money your family got from some past corruption or owning of human beings and that business you are running now never happened. Erase the land theft and genocide to indigenous peoples and if you are in the US that house or apartment you are living in doesn’t exist (mine included.)
That world is dead. I am growing weary of the details of its demise. Time to build the new world. Time to stop participating in the old. Time to realize our gifts are only gifts if we use them to create a world that is more fair and equal, otherwise we’re just hypocrites. Just to be clear I am writing this to you now while sitting on my ass at 1pm while my significant other works herself to death in a painfully misogynistic corporate death machine so that I can.
I deeply respect you and your work. I hope I have not offended you. You are welcome to disagree but it is what it is believe.
Starting off on a bit of a tangent but hear me out for minute:
In J.R.R. Tolkien's cosmology a class of angelic beings was dreamed into existence by a great entity. These angelic beings then made music to steer the creation of the material world into existence. To keep things interesting, a current of discordance was thrown into the mix, giving the rhythm and harmony an impetus for transformation. This ties in to the whole middle-earth world through the interplay of different races with Sauron (an angelic being) continually reappearing to disturb the peace. While the bulk of his work centers on relatable stories, I love how this fictional cosmology ties into so many existing one, and even into the psychedelic experience.
I like Tolkien's analogy because music is so fundamental to human consciousness and our understanding of the passage of time. As you put it, "a song that sings itself into being". We each sing our own song, but we're also part of a massive human choir, being drowned out by both our peers and anything else that is tuned into this conscious field... which may be everything. Great reminder that all we can do is to strive for love and devotion, as everything else just seems to add to the discord. I saved this paragraph as a mantra, because I definitely need a daily reminder.
This also reminded me of something completely different but very related, a Hunter S. Thompson quote: "Buy the ticket, take the ride." It creates the imagery of being on a rollercoaster where you can scream, lean into the turns, and flail your arms, but you're essentially strapped in and along for the ride. I'm just disappointed that Biff from Back to the Future II may be the character that ushers in our potential demise. How ironically unfunny is that?