The Gatemaster
Gozer the Gozerian is the evil Sumerian God who is also known as The Destructor and is equally worshipped by the Hittites and Mesopotamians. He or she (Gozer was gender-nonspecific way before it became popular) is served by an array of minions and demigods including Vinz Clortho, the Keymaster. Vinz is some form of half-dog and half-bear in his incarnation during Gozer’s first attempt to destroy the world in 1984. Gozer, who is also known as Lord of the Sebouillia, can only lead his followers (Sebouillia is one of those places that you simply cannot get to from here) in their quest for the destruction of the world if he has the help of Zuul, the Gatekeeper. Vinz Clortho and Zuul form the classic Yin and Yang of a chaotic universe, in search of compatibility to enable the connection that can end our misery on this earth. What kind of minds do the two surviving writers of Ghostbusters, Dan Aykroyd and Rick Moranis, have, that they could come up with such great anti-diluvian history that sounds simultaneously realistic and other-worldly? You know that old expression, “you can’t write this stuff…you can’t make it up…”? Well, they made it up and as we know and as Oscar Wilde liked to say, “life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”
Do you see a little bit of Donald Trump in Gozer’s eyes? It should not surprise you if you do. Donald has minions and acolytes that serve him in hopes of rising to the status of demigods. And how else can you describe the man’s mission other than its intent on the destruction of the world as we know it? You may not know where to find Sebouillia, but you damn well know a gang of Sebouillians when you see them. They are led by a Lord that would be the very scoundrel that Samuel Johnson referenced as owning that last refuge of patriotism. While life is busy imitating art, history is busy repeating itself and what Johnson observed of his nationalistic antagonists in 1775 are the same characteristics borne by this century’s scoundrel, the Gozerian himself, Donald J. Trump.
Yesterday was the first day of the rest of our lives as a planet and I’m not so sure that is an overstatement. Joe Biden announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidential race and he did so with a video that recast his vision from 2019 into a story of salvaging democracy from the clutches of the Sumerians and the Sebouillians into a dream of just four more years to finish the job and get us all collectively to the Promised Land. This had the feel of Moses standing on the top of Mount Nebu looking out over the walls of Jericho to the land of milk and honey where we could all rebuild our lives in peace and harmony. Its a nice vision and a worthy objective. It is true that Moses has gotten us through the devil’s anvil of the Sinai, but there is still a Dead Sea to cross before we can get to that shining castle on the hill. The RNC, otherwise known as the Sebouillian Chamber of Commerce, chose to release a retaliatory video which they had lots of time to consider and prepare since the Biden announcement was hardly a surprise. So naturally, in keeping with our day and age, they used AI-generated images to paint this dystopian future should Biden get re-elected.
These two videos are the only things you need to watch to decide which future you want to trudge forward into. There is the Biden future of hope and goodness where all of our citizens work together to make better lives for one another. Real history with real people doing real good deeds for one another. And then there is the Gozerian future where everything Biden does goes to shit and destroys the nationalistic way of life that is so prized by Sumerians, Gozerians and Sebouillians alike. Taiwan get overrun by China, all regional banks fail simultaneously, the border gets overrun by illegals, who want to steal everything we have all worked so hard for our whole lives and, oh yeah, Nancy Pelosi’s city of San Francisco is destroyed by a fentanyl-addled gang of libtards. Well, at least they didn’t spew too much hatred and fear out all at once.
I wonder if anyone waiting in line to get into Mar-a-Lago realizes that none of the RNC video was real and that it was all a fabrication of AI? These are the same people that decry AI as the next apocalypse. What does that say, it says that when you make up an attack ad you can either choose to show clips of really bad things that actually happened (like Charlottesville and January 6th) or you can make shit up to scare people with made-up images since things have actually been going in the right direction and getting better over the last three years and there aren’t any good videos of horrible events to otherwise show. Once again, just amazing how part of our world wants to find reasons to destroy it because someone who wants to regain power is prepared to tell them that shit either has or will go bad and only they can prevent further destruction while they work to destroy the very fabric they say they want to preserve. If that sounds hard to follow, you would not be wrong in that assessment.
So, yesterday, I had a visit from the Gatemaster. Really. I recently had Handy Brad seal and repaint our front entrance to our property. This consists of a stucco entry with glass block lights and open, welcoming arms. There is no fence around our property so you might say this constitutes our entry gate. In fact, there is an automatic metal gate that can be slid back and forth to close off the driveway. Many houses around here are gated like this and automatic gates are not at all unusual. I consider ours more symbolic than anything since a gate without a fence is sort of silly. All it would take is a willingness to drive over a few cacti to circumvent a closed gate. So why ever close the gate? I don’t. But since the gate exists and the opening and closing mechanisms are there, I figure that once a year I should be sure it still works. I did and it didn’t. Who ya gonna call? Not Ghostbusters, but the Gatemaster. This guy, Ron, comes over and says he put the gate back on track and greased up the gears and that its all working just fine now. Then I see him driving up and down the driveway repeatedly. It doesn’t take long to figure out that he is trying to get the automatic gate-opening sensor in the driveway to work and it won’t. He tells me it will take a 40 foot trench and a replacement sensor to set it right.
But if you don’t ever use the gate and you just leave it open all the time, as we do, do you really need to spend $1,000 to get the sensor to work? Can’t you just use a less convenient clicker and make do? I think so. Gated communities and walls are among my least favorite things. They scream privilege and all the hatred and fear that the RNC likes to spew. I believe you can’t build your walls high enough or your gates strong enough to keep the bad out and that the only way to live is to embrace the needy of the world and try to give them good reasons for not needing or wanting to storm your gates. If I can get the Gatemaster to get the clicker program working, I will save my $1,000 and find other worthy causes to help justify my open-gate approach to life. That’s how you turn Gozer into the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.