Missed a day, actually yesterday. But I did today's -- that should count for something. The link for those following along at home.
Let's start with the proverbs this time. I don't really see how these count as two different verses, dudes:
And there's some stupid obvious ones -- "And a poor man is better than a liar." for example. But I liked "House and riches are an inheritance from fathers; But a prudent wife is from Jehovah." and so did my wife for some reason.
Moving right along backwards, we get to the OT reading -- we're in Leviticus! Charming. So far it's just Sacrificing 101: "and the priest shall burn the whole on the altar, for a burnt-offering, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savor unto Jehovah." Is that what a burnt-offering is? An offering made by fire? Wow!
And provision is made for feeding the priests -- " and he shall take thereout his handful of the fine flour thereof ... and the priest shall burn it .... and that which is left of the meal-offering shall be Aaron's and his sons' ". Not a bad line of business to be a barbarian priest. Sit around all day in your ephod with your carbuncled breastplate of righteousness eating other peoples' flour.
Apparently the Israelites had frying pans. Who knew?
Matthew 8:14-34. Jesus sends the demons ("and their name was legion") into the swine. I've always wondered what the swine-owner thought about that one. I guess even if he wanted to bring a civil suit, he was drowned out by the multitudes "and when they saw him, they besought [him] that he would depart from their borders."
Oh, yeah, and the outside world can bite me. Apparently someone's getting killed in Florida or something? Whatever.
UPDATE: Reading yesterday's now. This jumped out at me: Exodus 39:34 "and the covering of rams' skins dyed red, and the covering of sealskins, and the veil of the screen". Where the fuck did they get a sealskin in Israel?
My web server was down between 10:30 this morning and about an hour ago, when I noticed it. Bummer.
The apparent cause was the failure of certain of the server threads to exit, causing the server to attempt to kill them with SIGTERM and restart. So the server committed suicide (servercide? httpuku?). But it was unable to come back up because some threads (the same ones that wouldn't exit) were still listening on port 80 and so the server was unable to bind. Seven hours later when I finally noticed, the threads had exited.
Nasty.
Not the Bible this time.
The Open Society and its Enemies: Volume I (Plato) by my man, Karl P.
I first read this book when I was an exchange student in Finland at the age of 16. It's surprising how much of it has stuck with me and formed the basis of my political opinions. Anti-utopianism and piecemeal social engineering, a basic classic liberal philosophy. My conservative tendencies must have come from Burke, which I read later that same year.
Re-reading this criticism -- primarily a criticism of Plato's Republic -- has inspired me to actually read the Republic. But it's heavy going, not just because I have a crappy translation, but also because "Socrates" is such a jerk. It's a lucky thing that it's a paperback, because that way I can blow off steam by throwing it across the room. I've just gotten to the part where "Socrates" says that we'll need to make sure to suppress all the false stories about the gods (the ones where the gods fight or argue) and make sure they're never taught to the children. I don't understand how dunderheads like Shane W. can claim that Plato wasn't pro-totality when one of the first concerns in the organization of the ideal city is to censor childrens' stories.
Here's the link in case you're following along at home.
I'm only halfway through, but let me just say - Jesus Fuckin' Christ. I was reading the Exodus bit and it was all blah blah altar to burn incense on, blah blah composition of the holy oil, blah blah wash your feet blah. Then suddenly it stopped being Jehovah's blueprints for the priesthood and as they used to say in the Dukes of Hazzard, Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Jesse and the boys were gettin' in a whole mess of trouble. Or in this case, Aaron and the people of Israel, making a golden calf and worshipping it.
Money quotes:
Then we go onto Proverbs: Boring Edition.
No way!
Skipping back to the gospel reading, it was a segment of Matthew I'm decently familiar with: the Christian extensions of the ten Commandments. Don't just not kill; don't even call names. Lust = adultery in the heart. Real Jimmy Carter stuff. To take it more seriously, some of the most important principles of my religion. And I do take it seriously -- or at least, I work hard at it.
While I'm here (I'm upstairs with the baby; she's watching a movie and I'm posting and the movie is about to end, so that's where this unaccustomed blogging time is coming from), let me quickly say that I've been listening to Eminem a lot recently.
I had a long post about this the other day which Internet Exploder ate, so I'm just tossing this bit off. My favorite thing about his music is the lyrics. You might not believe it, but Eminem is subtle. He's very clever and there's a certain word hound quality to his writing that I find very appealing. I bet you that Marshall Mathers is a killer Scrabble player.
Movie's over.
I'm trying to develop a habit, and it's awfully premature to be posting about it on the first day, but what the "heck", I'll post anyway. I signed up for one of those "Bible in a Year" sites and set myself up with a daily email reminder.
Let me tell you that February 23rd is not the best day to start on this task. At least, I hope it's not a typical day. Here's the reading: we start with the Beatitudes, which is nice, but that means that we're done with the Beatitudes. That was going to be the high point, I thought. Apparently not.
Then we go on a long and winding journey discussing the ornamentation of the high priest's ephod. WTF is an ephod, I'd never have known but for this; apparently it's the high priest's garb. So after like a page of the ephod, and a long discussion of how there should be a hem around the neckhole of the ephod so it doesn't fray, and pomegranates (!) and bells all along the skirts thereof. Oh yes; the priests should wear underwear -- "from the loins even unto the thighs shall reach."
Then details of the sacrifice necessary to consecrate the priests. A bullock and two rams, slaughtered, blood sprinkled about, and burned on the altar. There shall be a burnt-offering, and a wave-offering [apparently you pick it up and wave it at Jehovah?] and a heave-offering, which is not, as I thought, what happens when the smell of burning kidneys and liver makes you heave. Because apparently Moses gets to eat part of the heave-offering, and Aaron and his sons get the rest.
And finally, every day, you shall sacrifice on the altar two yearling lambs. That's a lot of lamb! I had to read the commentary to understand this bit, but duh, Christ.
Then we get back to the snappy stuff - Proverbs 13 has some good stuff in it:
Whew. That's enough for today.
Where to begin. I sent my mom a link to Jerry Brown's blog and she wrote back, "Check Daily Kos today to see how AARP is under attack."
My mom reads blogs?!
So I checked out the Kos link, and it was pretty funny, actually. It didn't seem like an effective ad -- apparently the real AARP agenda is to paint red X's on our troops and green checkmarks on two gay guys getting married.
But a little reflection shows that it'll be a fabulously effective ad. The message is The AARP is liberal. I know -- duh. But actually, it probably bears mentioning. Some fraction of AARP members/supporters are conservative especially on the gay marriage issue, and emphasizing that AARP takes a pro-gay marriage stance will be effective at separating these people from AARP. And the very fact of the surface silliness of the ad, not to mention the controversial topic, ensure that it will get buzz from big names like Atrios and Kos. Neatly done. And very very dirty pool.
The next thing I did was check out the sponsor's site, usanext.org site (something that I would surely never have done were it not for the ad). There was an item on there somewhere about the AARP receiving federal funding, so I researched that a bit, and it turns out that they do get some federal funds in grants programs to employ seniors, provide tax advice, etc. (Heritage Foundation press release on the subject) Not terribly surprising, not necessarily a conflict of interest. But this is what effective attack advertising should do-- raise questions, promote distrust of the attacked organization, generate buzz.
Times have changed! Things are getting worse!
No longer can you, in the words of a very memorable sign outside the Career Center, "Study A Broad At Beaver College" -- mighty Beaver College has since changed its name to "Arcadia University". Oh, the humanity.
(Apparently this was announced in 2000, so it's not exactly news.)