ROCK and role-play all night, and pray every day.

It's been a while since we checked in on the nanny theocrats at ROCK, mostly because I hate disturbing these selfless Theatair-X stall monitors while they're working toward the Christian equivalent of Sharia law, all the while remaining utterly clueless as to the analogy.

From 2012: REWIND: Some ROCK ‘n’ role playing.

Today, via the group's ROCK Ayatollah e-newsletter, we learn that the churchgoin' part of ROCK is usurping the civic engagement. Surprise, surprise, surprise.

We are newly energized !!

We are pleased to announce that God has a new plan for ROCK. After a nearly 10 year journey of faith and preparation, ROCK will start a Tuesday night prayer meeting in leased space on 7th Street Road at Energized Baptist Church.

On November 14, 2013, ROCK publicly announced our plan to downsize activities until there was renewed interest in ROCK's mission. In less than one week, God made it clear that He did not approve of our stated plan ...

 ... We believe it is God's desire for ROCK to start a Tuesday prayer meeting at Energized Baptist Church on 7th Street Road. The prayer meeting will model what we learned at Brooklyn Tabernacle. It will include, among other things, worship music; and prayers for our country, Louisville, each other, specific prayer requests submitted online, and healing. (We do need a musician!!).

Please, someone give them a musician. Maybe they'll get back aboard the spaceship and colonize elsewhere.

Public Art Scene Grand 1Si Conscription (with bonus grim reality).

Yesterday as I was standing outside of Quills talking on the phone, the 1Si recruitment gala broke up, and a woman with a name tag remarked to me that she wanted to induce me to change my mind about One Southern Indiana and rejoin the fold.

I smiled and grinned: No, we won't get fooled again, sorry. When most of what an organization espouses runs counter to my self-interest as a small, independent business, then it's hard to square such circles without the use of hallucinogenic chemicals -- and I drink enough alcohol already, thank you.

The following was a "Beer Money in the 'Bune" column published on September 30, 2010, back when the newspaper still barely mattered. The editor-at-the-time didn't get it; three years later, that particular symptom might have passed, but the fundamental malady remains intact, and that's too bad.

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BEER MONEY: “Life in OSi a grim reality.”

By GORDY GANT
Cleveland Plain Dealer Reporter

(New Albany, OSI) -- November 15th, 2065, is the 50th ISindependence Day in One Southern Indiana, the impoverished, stubbornly paternalistic enclave that broke away from Indiana after the state’s favorite son, Mitch Daniels, suffered a landslide loss to Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential race.

While living memories of that time have faded, the impact of events continues to influence daily life.

Depressed and shattered by his loss, the former governor fled to a hiding place near Birdseye and declared a state of Major Insurgency Moves. Concurrently, a band of tightly-knit oligarcho-theocrats at the economic development agency called One Southern Indiana (1Si) staged a series of cynical bait-and-switch ploys, culminating in a bloodless coup in 2015 that wrested civil authority from legally elected local governments.

After undergoing treatment, Daniels subsequently renounced his failed political revolt and took up religion, becoming an evangelist and the leading American proponent of wealth accumulation at his Your Tax Abatement is Jesus ministry prior to his death in 2019.

Meanwhile, the former chamber of commerce gradually undertook to improve the quality of life for its top tier of major business investment partners.

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Today, amid persistent shortages, the mood in 1Si is one of weary resignation. 1Sindependence Day will feature lengthy speeches and exaltations of economic progress, as broadcast over the 1Si-approved Clere Channel network, which Grooms bright Young future Stemlers for leadership in the community.

Most people merely will parrot the platitudes, resuming their search for firewood in the remnants of wooded areas, most long since clear-cut to build subdivisions with names like No Oak Glen and Elm Infested Acres.

1Si’s numerous manual laborers will get half-days off to drink non-alcoholic Victory Juice and parade past the descendents of the founders, seated atop the Tomb of the Unknown Exurbanite, jowly in their golf wear, drinking expensive, imported Corona Lights, and extolling the virtues of a non-union workforce.

Since the Great Oil Out of 2035, the parade has been non-motorized, and just a few miles away from the mausoleum are the massive unfinished hulks of the Ohio River Bridges Project, made redundant by the depletion of petroleum.

In vast, smoldering areas of a city formerly known as Jeffersonville, squatters now live in grimy tents, reduced to commuting by ox cart to mow grass at the homes of 1Si’s upper echelon at the Quarry Bluff gated compound, or forced to walk long miles to beg for alms at the Shrine of St. Daniels, owned and operated by Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana.

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ROCK was formally established as the moral and cultural arbiter of 1Si by the late Commandante Stemler shortly after the Glorious Revolutionary Economic Progress Capital Campaign was concluded. ROCK vowed to purify minds stained with Democratic liberalism, declaring in 2022 that all pornography had been eradicated (along with most books and all competing political parties).

ROCK’s slogan can be seen on every desktop: “Free speech is the devil’s workshop. Work for 1Si, instead.”

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Residents are not willing to speak openly to the few outside journalists permitted to enter 1Si. Their reticence is understandable. During the past two decades, as 1Si’s public policy council outlawed small retail businesses and began paying workers in Yum! Brands gift cards, it has become all too easy to lose one’s tacos, nachos and beanie weenies.

Miraculously, dissent has not been fully suppressed.

Thomas N., from Sellersburg, remembers the day when the One Southern Indiana operatives came to his street with their laptops.

“They were nicely dressed and friendly, but serious,” says the retired software analyst. “As a Democrat, I was worried when they started promulgating the 5 O’Clock Network Fundamental Purity Laws, but they were handing out free thumb drives to the kids. It seemed okay.”

“We were told that we’d have jobs, education and fiscal restraint, and we believed it,” he adds. “By the time things started getting bad, it was too late.”

A far younger man calling himself Koba expresses bitterness at the toll on modernity of 1Si’s iron-fisted rule.

“I live in a rental property owned by a Sodrelite, and it’s a piece of ****,” spits Koba, “but one day I was down in the crawl space, and I found these old books about green strategies and sustainability. It was like an epiphany, because I didn’t know there was any other way except consuming irreplaceable resources for 1Si’s enrichment.”

“I can’t let anyone see me reading these books,” he continues, “because if the 1SBlock Watch hears about it, I’ll lose my Yum! Card and be exposed as a Girly Man. And yet sometimes, late at night, I risk hacking through the firewalls of the 1Sinternet, and see how communities in other places operate.”

“It’s incredible. Did you know they actually have free elections in other parts of the country?”

---

Amy C. provides the official version of life in 1Si. She works as free enterprise re-education specialist in the Michael Dalby Institute of Public-Private Partnerships. As great-granddaughter of a Bi-State Authority member, she enjoyed a privileged upbringing and attended the prestigious One Southern Indiana University Southeast Christian Academy of ROCK.

“Although my spiritual guide, the Reverend Wickens IV, teaches us that we must be humble and self-effacing, I agree with all the central tenets of Stemlerism,” she begins. “We are building the perfect, economically developed society.”

“People who are not too stubborn to accept St. Daniels as their guide and fiscal savior know how to be respectful and constructive,” she concludes. “Given that we’re traveling the correct historical path, why tolerate people whose questions are no more than vicious personal agendas?”

Roger A. Baylor’s blog, NA Confidential, endorses any political candidate opposed to 1Si’s recent political endorsements. Read more at www.cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com

Hypocrisy In Action Right Before Our Very Eyes!!!

In yesterday’s Tribune, Clarksville’s ongoing passion play entitled Theatair X verus R.O.C.K received yet another airing.

Theatair X attorney says ordinance unconstitutional in Clarksville

One quote in particular got my personal goat.

ROCK’s President Brian Wickens reportedly said in a November press conference that a former FBI agent had been present inside the facility and witnessed illegal activities in progress.

The attorney for Theatair X pointed out there have never been any arrests made at the establishment and if ROCK’s phantom former FBI agent exists, he has never been identified by that organization nor has he ever reported such to the Clarksville Police.

What follows is the statement that riles me. Ms. Gramig, who is ROCK’s Research & Policy Coordinator offered that she is unaware of any ROCK officials making any contact with law enforcement.

“It’s not ROCK’s job to make sure the police does its job.” Says Gramig.

So if it isn’t the watchdog’s job to sound the alarm when the wolves approach the sheep pen, whose is it??

This is precisely the sort of hypocritical hogwash that has led many of us to wash our hands of the religions of our parents!

They speak of a civic moral responsibility for us to practice yet refuse to get their hands dirty to back it up.

This same logic follows if one were to witness a robbery/rape/murder in broad daylight it would be acceptable to express outrage that it happened while refraining to report the identity of the perpetrator.

And these are the folks that have the concern for my eternal destiny in their hearts??

Give me a break! No wait-----give me a double Scotch neat!!!

Organize, Organize, Organize!!!!

As requested by FOSSE http://savesilverstreet.blogspot.com/ and others concerned about the possibility of elementary school closings within New Albany’s core neighborhoods I’m passing along the latest available information (available to me that is) concerning the process underway.

As per the Tribune, http://www.news-tribune.net/local/local_story_065141245.html
Resources for Results Committee is to hear public opinions in New Albany in April.

It appears that the committee’s recommendations that have been three years in the making will finally get a public airing beginning on April 2nd with two others to follow.

This will be preceded by a preparatory meeting of the Save Silver Street folks this upcoming Monday evening. Click on their link above for more details.

Albeit school closings have not been my primary focus of these past three years, I have attended several meeting where this topic was cussed & discussed.

It seems that the out of town hired guns have been viewed by the NA/FC administration as a god-send as they apparently didn’t have a clue as to where to begin.

Or more likely, they wanted no part of the hard decisions so they employed a fall guy.

The public’s perception seems to view them as Guido & Carlo, along with their violin cases being called down from the South Side to do the dirty work and the innocents be damned!

There are probably some elements of truth in all of the above.

My personal view is this. I don’t want to see any of the core schools closed. Our venue has always been to find & promote ways to reclaim our neighborhoods and downtown.

Regardless of the statistics that are so highly praised I think we are seeing that happen before our very eyes. That is unless we choose to turn a blind eye to it.

Although the numbers are not large we are indeed seeing families of child rearing age choosing New Albany proper as the place to purchase an older home, invest time money & energy into its restoration and send their children to the local neighborhood school.

As a matter of fact, if one asks they will more often than not tell you such proximity to a facility within walking distance played a determining role in their final decision.

So why would we even think of closing one or more of them? Once again, statistics have shown over the years the proposed advantages in terms of education and societal improvement have been nominal at best.

As have the monetary savings involved in the complex process created as a result.

Transportation costs have gone through the roof in the past few years and there is no end in sight.

The safety issues that come with bussing children are all but uncontrollable as well.

As a parent, the turmoil caused by bonds between teachers, friends, & community being broken during the elementary years is more drama than a child really needs.

So again, why do it? Well as with all things it comes down to politics and money. The two are inseparable.

Understand that what I’m about to say is not an outright condemnation of the well to do.

However I do find it interesting that as I currently understand it, few if any of the sitting school board members either live in New Albany’s core nor do they send their children to school here. The same is true of the administration as I’ve been told.

Nay they live either in the outer suburbs or “up on the hill” as we are so fond of calling it.

So does this imply that they are somehow less concerned for their children’s welfare than are we down here in the valley?

No it just means that like us in that they see only what is in their immediate line of sight. They are blessed with the where with all to provide the best in terms of amenities for their offspring and like us, they’ll try with all their might to do so.

So for those folks, spending $50 million on a facility at Floyd Knobs is doing just that. The fact that to continue on that path means less available funds for neighborhood schools in New Albany is of little consequence as they have no reference point of such.

All that being said, what is the solution?? Well there are probably many but I’m going to again point to one by way of a recent New Albany issue.

The NA Common Council at the last meeting passed an Adult Cabaret Ordinance to address the adult entertainment industry within our fair city.

Throughout the multi month process there were two powerful paid lobby groups present to deliberate the pros & cons.

One represented the owners & operators of such establishments albeit not as professionally as they would have hoped.

The other (ROCK) had their act together and came to the table expounding the horrors eminent to us should we allow such to proliferate in our midst.

As it turned out neither side really won or lost completely but the ROCK group showed us how an organized focus can accomplish a task.

We need to learn that lesson on a variety of fronts in this city.

It was suggested early on to the various groups involved in the school issue that it would behoove them to join forces and lobby to save all of the present facilities not just the one they could see from their kitchen window.

To my knowledge that never occurred. However with the upcoming public input meetings they have one last chance to influence the outcome. I hope they don’t sacrifice it for the sake of protecting their individual turfs!

Here are a few more links of interest about this issue. Read up and be prepared!

http://www.news-tribune.net/local/local_story_057132345.html
New Albany-Floyd County's Resources for Results to host public hearings soon

http://www.news-tribune.net/letters/local_story_063183957.html
Reader expects school board members at Resources meetings

http://www.news-tribune.net/letters/local_story_050181058.html
Silver Street closure far from resolved

http://www.nafcs.k12.in.us/ NAFC Consolidated School Corporation

http://www.reclaimourculture.org/ ROCK