The pendulum of the heart alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.
---
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle..
(Just a photographic aside.. )
The pendulum of the heart alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.
---
The pendulum of the heart alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.
---
Paging Herr Doktor Jung..
So, I just took a nap. I had this dream:
I'm a sailor. I'm on an aircraft carrier deck with Dan Smith. I'm pointing out the weapon tubes to him. There are eight all together in two rows of four, all closed tubes vertically embedded in a lower deck we're looking down upon. Two torpedoes (vertically aligned in the deck - I don't think this makes sense), four tactical surface to surface and surface to air missiles, two nuclear ballistic.. Or something like that. The details are a bit hazy now, but they were very clear in the dream, because I was telling Dan all about it. He wants to go down to look at them closely. We do, and he decides to go walk over next to them, which he's not supposed to.. If you've been in the military, you'll know that they love to make places taboo to walk upon. Do not walk on the lawn. Do not cross that parking lot. Do not step outside that line. If you do, and we catch you..
Well Dan does it. He walks where thou shalt not walk. I get all panicked, and start calling to him to come back, before someone notices and we get in trouble. He either can't hear me, or is ignoring me. Sure enough, a female NCO (one of the older relics, probably an E-9 or something - which to me is big trouble, getting noticed in flagrante delicto by such a near nueter demi-godesse) sees him from above, and comes down full of wrath. Dan casually walks back over and talks to her. She calms down, and smiles. I realize we're going to get away without me getting punished, which is a relief.
We go inside the ship. Other things happen, which I cannot remember, really. I think Dan buys me a notebook. One that I've already written in. He goes away, and I go into this auditorium. It's dark. But I can see a short girl with shoulder length brown hair and a purple tie dye shirt and gym shorts running manically in circles around the small circle at the head of a basketball foul shooting rectangle. I laugh, because it's ridiculous, and turn to leave. The girl calls out to me to hold the door, but in a way that makes it pretty clear that she likes me. Likes me, likes me. You know what I mean. The girl runs over, and I see that it's Ellen Paige. She's shorter than I thought she'd be, and that's pretty short. She's like a hobbit. We leave the room, and I make fun of her. I immediately get a bad conscience, because it feels cruel. It strikes me as hugely strange that I am making fun of this girl that I have had a crush on (I mean, Ellen Paige, who hasn't, you know?) .. It turns out she likes me, and here I am making fun of her in a mean way. It's such an inversion of my previously conceived cosmic power relations that I get confused. Ellen leaves, and I start looking for her to apologize. I have two of her costumes. I catch sight of her through the window of a house on a hill. It's dark out, but the lights are on inside. She's made up like a clown, but she's wearing a Bella Lugosi vampire costume. This strikes me as hugely transgressive. I sneak up, knock on the door, and leave the costumes. I hide, she comes to the door, finds the costumes and takes them inside. She's happy. I'm forlorn.
Dream ends. I wake up. I lay there wondering about how Dan Smith (a guy I liked and admired from high school, and a Mormon, but someone I haven't seen in twenty years or thought about in a while) ended up in my dream.. And Ellen. The actress from Juno and Hard Candy dressed as a vampire clown.
I've clearly got issues. It's obvious in the numerology..
---
I'm a sailor. I'm on an aircraft carrier deck with Dan Smith. I'm pointing out the weapon tubes to him. There are eight all together in two rows of four, all closed tubes vertically embedded in a lower deck we're looking down upon. Two torpedoes (vertically aligned in the deck - I don't think this makes sense), four tactical surface to surface and surface to air missiles, two nuclear ballistic.. Or something like that. The details are a bit hazy now, but they were very clear in the dream, because I was telling Dan all about it. He wants to go down to look at them closely. We do, and he decides to go walk over next to them, which he's not supposed to.. If you've been in the military, you'll know that they love to make places taboo to walk upon. Do not walk on the lawn. Do not cross that parking lot. Do not step outside that line. If you do, and we catch you..
Well Dan does it. He walks where thou shalt not walk. I get all panicked, and start calling to him to come back, before someone notices and we get in trouble. He either can't hear me, or is ignoring me. Sure enough, a female NCO (one of the older relics, probably an E-9 or something - which to me is big trouble, getting noticed in flagrante delicto by such a near nueter demi-godesse) sees him from above, and comes down full of wrath. Dan casually walks back over and talks to her. She calms down, and smiles. I realize we're going to get away without me getting punished, which is a relief.
We go inside the ship. Other things happen, which I cannot remember, really. I think Dan buys me a notebook. One that I've already written in. He goes away, and I go into this auditorium. It's dark. But I can see a short girl with shoulder length brown hair and a purple tie dye shirt and gym shorts running manically in circles around the small circle at the head of a basketball foul shooting rectangle. I laugh, because it's ridiculous, and turn to leave. The girl calls out to me to hold the door, but in a way that makes it pretty clear that she likes me. Likes me, likes me. You know what I mean. The girl runs over, and I see that it's Ellen Paige. She's shorter than I thought she'd be, and that's pretty short. She's like a hobbit. We leave the room, and I make fun of her. I immediately get a bad conscience, because it feels cruel. It strikes me as hugely strange that I am making fun of this girl that I have had a crush on (I mean, Ellen Paige, who hasn't, you know?) .. It turns out she likes me, and here I am making fun of her in a mean way. It's such an inversion of my previously conceived cosmic power relations that I get confused. Ellen leaves, and I start looking for her to apologize. I have two of her costumes. I catch sight of her through the window of a house on a hill. It's dark out, but the lights are on inside. She's made up like a clown, but she's wearing a Bella Lugosi vampire costume. This strikes me as hugely transgressive. I sneak up, knock on the door, and leave the costumes. I hide, she comes to the door, finds the costumes and takes them inside. She's happy. I'm forlorn.
Dream ends. I wake up. I lay there wondering about how Dan Smith (a guy I liked and admired from high school, and a Mormon, but someone I haven't seen in twenty years or thought about in a while) ended up in my dream.. And Ellen. The actress from Juno and Hard Candy dressed as a vampire clown.
I've clearly got issues. It's obvious in the numerology..
---
Divers Middle Eastern Video Clips: Paschal Edition
First, this is how certain Syrian Christians celebrate the Resurrection:
This impressive explosion of joy took place in Latakia, اللاذقية, on the coast of Syria (the same region the ruling Alawite Assad family is from, incidentally).
This next clip is from Israeli late night television:
(be forewarned, this bit's pretty offensive)
Lastly, I share this clip of my favorite apparition and stigmatist, Myrna Nazour, from Soufanieh, near Damascus:
(this, the first installment in a 30 something part series, will give you the basic gist of the story)
Myrna of course (of course!) receives the stigmata every year at Easter.
When I was at DLI, one of my teachers, an Orthodox Christian woman from Basra, Iraq, gave me a copy of the icon of Our Lady of Soufanieh, which as that clip notes in the original bleeds oil. The events surrounding this icon and Myrna are known as the "Miracle of Damascus." It's an ecumenical phenomenon.. Myrna is Catholic but her husband is Orthodox, and my impression is that the apparition is hugely popular throughout the Arab world, amongst both Orthodox and Catholics.
The image:
One of my favorite icons, incidentally.
In any case, Our Lady of Soufanieh and Myrna both preach unity amongst the Catholic and Orthodox, and peace with the Muslims. One of main the reasons I dig it.
Anyway, just to let you all know, Syria ain't Kansas. Just a late newsflash from Damascus..
---
This impressive explosion of joy took place in Latakia, اللاذقية, on the coast of Syria (the same region the ruling Alawite Assad family is from, incidentally).
This next clip is from Israeli late night television:
(be forewarned, this bit's pretty offensive)
Lastly, I share this clip of my favorite apparition and stigmatist, Myrna Nazour, from Soufanieh, near Damascus:
(this, the first installment in a 30 something part series, will give you the basic gist of the story)
Myrna of course (of course!) receives the stigmata every year at Easter.
When I was at DLI, one of my teachers, an Orthodox Christian woman from Basra, Iraq, gave me a copy of the icon of Our Lady of Soufanieh, which as that clip notes in the original bleeds oil. The events surrounding this icon and Myrna are known as the "Miracle of Damascus." It's an ecumenical phenomenon.. Myrna is Catholic but her husband is Orthodox, and my impression is that the apparition is hugely popular throughout the Arab world, amongst both Orthodox and Catholics.
The image:
One of my favorite icons, incidentally.
In any case, Our Lady of Soufanieh and Myrna both preach unity amongst the Catholic and Orthodox, and peace with the Muslims. One of main the reasons I dig it.
Anyway, just to let you all know, Syria ain't Kansas. Just a late newsflash from Damascus..
---
Monday, April 25, 2011
Film Review: Source Code
Review: Source Code. Liked it. Thumbs up, B+. 4 Stars out of 5.
This is like the Matrix crossed with the Bourne movies, but better, in that the "matrixy" aspect of this film doesn't suck, and is actually almost coherent and mildly intriguing, as opposed to merely unspooling into puerile stupidity like the Matrix trilogy does.
(I saw only one and a half of those three films, by the way. Mildly enjoyed the first one, but then fell asleep in the theater during the second, an honor I think is only shared by that Vanilla Ice film that came out back in 1991 - I saw it in Izmir, and fell asleep after 15 minutes.. )
The basic plot of the film is this: they've developed technology called the "source code" that allows us to project the mind of someone with similar biological parameters back upon "the halo" left in time of that person's consciousness for eight minutes before their death.
Or something like that.
If you accept this conceit, and are able to suspend disbelief that much, the rest of film is pretty straight forward.
Jake Gyllenhaal's character is sent back to inhabit the mind of a man on a train about to be destroyed by a terrorist bombing. In the beginning he doesn't understand what is happening to him, and is repeatedly blown up, each time to again be re-sent into that same eight minute time frame to investigate and discover who left the bomb, and what his plans for future mayhem are.. He's a detective feeding information to his handlers who control the "source code" and who interrogate him at the end of each of his subsequent missions into the code.
Like Jason Bourne, he's an almost clean slate within the immediate narrative arc. He knows his name, remembers that he's a captain in the Army who last he can remember was in Afghanistan flying helicopters.. He has no idea how he ended up in the situation he's in, getting sent back repeatedly onto this train.
Each time he gets set into the source code, he is in the same moment, but is able to use knowledge acquired in previous sorties to delve deeper into the situation, and further understand what is happening. He not only figures out what is happening on the train, but also starts to piece together the larger context, and understand things about himself he didn't know before.
Storytelling 101. Nicely done.
Jake's character's mind is able to retain memories of his previous experiences in the "source code" and in this the narrative emerges.
There's a nice twist at the end of the movie that I did not expect, that knocks it all up a level and makes the entire plot even a little more interesting.
In sum, this film, like the Matrix, is a gnostic fantasy, in which the material world is reduced to a numerical "matrix," the "source code." In this the mind is more real than matter, and in fact the mind eventually escapes matter altogether, becoming an angelic intelligence. The self is also reduced to consciousness, to thought and memory, and is in a perfect Cartesian fashion ontologically and existentially alienated from the body, which is finally understood to be a passing illusion like all other matter.
The real is knowledge and numbers. The "code" or "program." The material is a passing and imperfect illusion to be manipulated by the mind through accumulated knowledge and understanding.
The fact that each time he reenters the source code he has only eight minutes of halo to work with before the source code resets, is of course a numerological trope.
The shape of the number 8 is itself the infinity sign. The snake eating itself, time folding back in itself. The Resurrection of Christ occurs on the first day of the week, which is to say the day after the end of the beginning, the renewal after death.. The seventh day consummates time in rest, which is death, but is recapitulated in the the first of the new week which is also eighth day. There were also eight people on Noah's Ark, when God "reset" creation. I think there is much more esoteric meaning to that number, but can't be bothered to delve into that now.
If you stop the film at the beginning of the preview clip I post here above on the part around the 20 second mark where his watch is shown, you'll notice that he "comes to" at 8:40 am. Forty is 8 times 5. 5 is death. Friday (the day of the Crucifixion) is the Christian fifth or Jewish sixth day. Christ bore five wounds (each hand, each foot, the spear in his side. My blog thematically commemorates his head being left alone, and only crowned with thorns..)
His release comes at 8:48 am. 8 6 times 8.
It also occurs to me that Jake's character's name "Captain Stevens" which may possibly be a reference to the proto-martyr St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr whose feast is the day after Christmas. The man whose body he inhabits is named Sean, which is a Gaelic corruption of the French Jean or English John, which comes from the Hebrew "God is Gracious," and is of course the name of the "Forerunner" John the Baptist who baptizes with water (symbolizing death and rebirth) as well as John the Apostle, the only apostle who did not run away during the Crucifixion, but who stayed at the foot of the Cross. The Apostle John is also the only one of the apostles to die a natural death, the only one not to be finally martyred..
Furthermore, the girl Captain Stevens wants to "save" is named "Christina.."
(Christina being played by the very foxy Michelle Monaghan.. Note also that Vera Farmiga, playing the air force officer running the source code computer is also beautiful as always..)
The bomb is a release in fire, pentecostal (by 10 by 5) or something like that..
All of these details may take on a certain symbolic resonance after you've seen the film.
I'm a neophyte at all of this, fill in the punchlines for me, please.
My point is that the filmmaker's clearly a clever fellow, and I appreciate that.
So, the entire film is mildly entertaining, as well as another testament to our cultural fascination with computers and faith in progress.
Worth seeing, in other words.
---
This is like the Matrix crossed with the Bourne movies, but better, in that the "matrixy" aspect of this film doesn't suck, and is actually almost coherent and mildly intriguing, as opposed to merely unspooling into puerile stupidity like the Matrix trilogy does.
(I saw only one and a half of those three films, by the way. Mildly enjoyed the first one, but then fell asleep in the theater during the second, an honor I think is only shared by that Vanilla Ice film that came out back in 1991 - I saw it in Izmir, and fell asleep after 15 minutes.. )
The basic plot of the film is this: they've developed technology called the "source code" that allows us to project the mind of someone with similar biological parameters back upon "the halo" left in time of that person's consciousness for eight minutes before their death.
Or something like that.
If you accept this conceit, and are able to suspend disbelief that much, the rest of film is pretty straight forward.
Jake Gyllenhaal's character is sent back to inhabit the mind of a man on a train about to be destroyed by a terrorist bombing. In the beginning he doesn't understand what is happening to him, and is repeatedly blown up, each time to again be re-sent into that same eight minute time frame to investigate and discover who left the bomb, and what his plans for future mayhem are.. He's a detective feeding information to his handlers who control the "source code" and who interrogate him at the end of each of his subsequent missions into the code.
Like Jason Bourne, he's an almost clean slate within the immediate narrative arc. He knows his name, remembers that he's a captain in the Army who last he can remember was in Afghanistan flying helicopters.. He has no idea how he ended up in the situation he's in, getting sent back repeatedly onto this train.
Each time he gets set into the source code, he is in the same moment, but is able to use knowledge acquired in previous sorties to delve deeper into the situation, and further understand what is happening. He not only figures out what is happening on the train, but also starts to piece together the larger context, and understand things about himself he didn't know before.
Storytelling 101. Nicely done.
Jake's character's mind is able to retain memories of his previous experiences in the "source code" and in this the narrative emerges.
There's a nice twist at the end of the movie that I did not expect, that knocks it all up a level and makes the entire plot even a little more interesting.
In sum, this film, like the Matrix, is a gnostic fantasy, in which the material world is reduced to a numerical "matrix," the "source code." In this the mind is more real than matter, and in fact the mind eventually escapes matter altogether, becoming an angelic intelligence. The self is also reduced to consciousness, to thought and memory, and is in a perfect Cartesian fashion ontologically and existentially alienated from the body, which is finally understood to be a passing illusion like all other matter.
The real is knowledge and numbers. The "code" or "program." The material is a passing and imperfect illusion to be manipulated by the mind through accumulated knowledge and understanding.
The fact that each time he reenters the source code he has only eight minutes of halo to work with before the source code resets, is of course a numerological trope.
The shape of the number 8 is itself the infinity sign. The snake eating itself, time folding back in itself. The Resurrection of Christ occurs on the first day of the week, which is to say the day after the end of the beginning, the renewal after death.. The seventh day consummates time in rest, which is death, but is recapitulated in the the first of the new week which is also eighth day. There were also eight people on Noah's Ark, when God "reset" creation. I think there is much more esoteric meaning to that number, but can't be bothered to delve into that now.
If you stop the film at the beginning of the preview clip I post here above on the part around the 20 second mark where his watch is shown, you'll notice that he "comes to" at 8:40 am. Forty is 8 times 5. 5 is death. Friday (the day of the Crucifixion) is the Christian fifth or Jewish sixth day. Christ bore five wounds (each hand, each foot, the spear in his side. My blog thematically commemorates his head being left alone, and only crowned with thorns..)
His release comes at 8:48 am. 8 6 times 8.
It also occurs to me that Jake's character's name "Captain Stevens" which may possibly be a reference to the proto-martyr St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr whose feast is the day after Christmas. The man whose body he inhabits is named Sean, which is a Gaelic corruption of the French Jean or English John, which comes from the Hebrew "God is Gracious," and is of course the name of the "Forerunner" John the Baptist who baptizes with water (symbolizing death and rebirth) as well as John the Apostle, the only apostle who did not run away during the Crucifixion, but who stayed at the foot of the Cross. The Apostle John is also the only one of the apostles to die a natural death, the only one not to be finally martyred..
Furthermore, the girl Captain Stevens wants to "save" is named "Christina.."
(Christina being played by the very foxy Michelle Monaghan.. Note also that Vera Farmiga, playing the air force officer running the source code computer is also beautiful as always..)
The bomb is a release in fire, pentecostal (by 10 by 5) or something like that..
All of these details may take on a certain symbolic resonance after you've seen the film.
I'm a neophyte at all of this, fill in the punchlines for me, please.
My point is that the filmmaker's clearly a clever fellow, and I appreciate that.
So, the entire film is mildly entertaining, as well as another testament to our cultural fascination with computers and faith in progress.
Worth seeing, in other words.
---
Sunday, April 24, 2011
By the Way..
Human desire is consummated and both at once parodied in itself.
Sin and love are both sublime sacred jokes.
Just an odd notation.
Blessed Pascha.
---
Sin and love are both sublime sacred jokes.
Just an odd notation.
Blessed Pascha.
---
Resurrexit vere! Χριστός ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!
Yesterday (Good Friday) I went to McDonald's and ate four filet o'fishes and three one buck side salads with balsamic vinaigrette for my one Good Friday meal. Sat there for a few hours and drank lot's o' iced tea (I gave up all hot n' heinous "soft drinks" for penance's sake, and only broke that abstention once in 40 days..)
Today, I got up late and went to McDonald's again, and ate chicken salad with bacon, another side salad, a McChicken sandwich (also off the dollar menu!) and then a couple hours later got a large wildberry yogurt smoothie. I sat there for maybe six hours all told, drinking more unsweetened iced tea dashed with slight amounts of lemonade, and reading.
Ave Sancta Claudia Procula, uxor Pilati, ora pro nobis..
A rousing finale to my Lent.
But not exactly in keeping with the Athonite fast.
But I'm a broken lapsed Orthodox, now. Just a poor Catholic.
On the way home I stopped and bought a gallon of rich red table wine, came home and did some work on my new will. I'm writing it on my own, following a model and reading Vermont inheritance law as I do it. I'm specifying that they not cremate my remains, and that they pay all my taxes before charity or my nieces and nephew get a thing. I'm adamant about that. Pay my taxes dammit. Also, make sure that Comcast and AT&T get theirs, too.
You know, the only black mark on my credit report is when I broke my cell phone contract with AT&T before leaving for Europe a few years ago, and then flipped them the bird. I owe just under 300 bucks, I think. If I want an iPhone in purgatory, I may need to pay them.
(I may need ask Tommy forgive me too.. But not for the sake of my cell phone..)
Just over an hour ago I broke the seal on that bottle, and my lips touched wine for the second time in over two months.
I've not kept the fast fully nor prayed well, and I am a guilty man..
Yet tonight I keep the vigil.
I'm thinking of how much fun it would be to be at a good Orthodox parish tonight.
Fifty days of strict fasting, nuts and water on Holy Saturday, then a two hour long vigil liturgy begun late in the evening..
Cyclical chants for well over an hour, standing the entire time (feel how the spirit is willing..) dim candle lit incense ridden anticipation..
Light breaks darkness some point after midnight.
After the mystery is made consummate, Father comes into the church hall, where there is a cornucopia laden table overflowing with food and drink like something out of Paschal Slavic version of Dickens.
He blesses it all and us..
Then all heaven breaks loose. It's two in the morning, and everyone's feasting like it's the millennium: here there are ten year old kids and grandmothers gladly all about. My home brew is uncapped and praised like it's bordeaux. Old guys with barely understandable accents circulate with homemade vodka, filling my dixie cup to overflowing.
Every time I keep a long (Lenten or Advent) fast and then make the requisite vigil with the Orthodox, I somehow serendipitously find myself up bathed in a suffused breaking dawn..
One always shared with some few happy exhausted winsome friends still ready for breakfast, followed by a very long nap and yet *maybe* another liturgy..
(See how vapid and hedonistic my approach to my beloved.. Exi a me quia homo peccator sum Domine..)
Here I in all my tepidity and decadence nevertheless dare pray:
Κύριε Ιησού Χριστέ, Υιέ του Θεού, ελέησόν με τον αμαρτωλόν..
Bless us all, and keep us, may your your Face always shine upon us and be with us, forgive us all everyone of our sins.
That you my Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, may grant us all Triumph and Victory over the temptations of our visible and invisible enemies.
That by your Grace we may all crush beneath our feet the prince of darkness and his powers.
That we may all rise with you and so rise from the tomb of our sins and offenses.
That you may fill us all with joy and happiness in your Holy Resurrection.
That we may all merit the Grace of entering into your Chamber at your Divine Wedding Feast, to rejoice beyond limit together with your Heavenly Attendants and the Host of Saints glorified through you, the Church Triumphant in Heaven.
Amen. Alleluia, Alleluia.
+++
Today, I got up late and went to McDonald's again, and ate chicken salad with bacon, another side salad, a McChicken sandwich (also off the dollar menu!) and then a couple hours later got a large wildberry yogurt smoothie. I sat there for maybe six hours all told, drinking more unsweetened iced tea dashed with slight amounts of lemonade, and reading.
Ave Sancta Claudia Procula, uxor Pilati, ora pro nobis..
A rousing finale to my Lent.
But not exactly in keeping with the Athonite fast.
But I'm a broken lapsed Orthodox, now. Just a poor Catholic.
On the way home I stopped and bought a gallon of rich red table wine, came home and did some work on my new will. I'm writing it on my own, following a model and reading Vermont inheritance law as I do it. I'm specifying that they not cremate my remains, and that they pay all my taxes before charity or my nieces and nephew get a thing. I'm adamant about that. Pay my taxes dammit. Also, make sure that Comcast and AT&T get theirs, too.
You know, the only black mark on my credit report is when I broke my cell phone contract with AT&T before leaving for Europe a few years ago, and then flipped them the bird. I owe just under 300 bucks, I think. If I want an iPhone in purgatory, I may need to pay them.
(I may need ask Tommy forgive me too.. But not for the sake of my cell phone..)
Just over an hour ago I broke the seal on that bottle, and my lips touched wine for the second time in over two months.
I've not kept the fast fully nor prayed well, and I am a guilty man..
Yet tonight I keep the vigil.
I'm thinking of how much fun it would be to be at a good Orthodox parish tonight.
Fifty days of strict fasting, nuts and water on Holy Saturday, then a two hour long vigil liturgy begun late in the evening..
Cyclical chants for well over an hour, standing the entire time (feel how the spirit is willing..) dim candle lit incense ridden anticipation..
Light breaks darkness some point after midnight.
After the mystery is made consummate, Father comes into the church hall, where there is a cornucopia laden table overflowing with food and drink like something out of Paschal Slavic version of Dickens.
He blesses it all and us..
Then all heaven breaks loose. It's two in the morning, and everyone's feasting like it's the millennium: here there are ten year old kids and grandmothers gladly all about. My home brew is uncapped and praised like it's bordeaux. Old guys with barely understandable accents circulate with homemade vodka, filling my dixie cup to overflowing.
Every time I keep a long (Lenten or Advent) fast and then make the requisite vigil with the Orthodox, I somehow serendipitously find myself up bathed in a suffused breaking dawn..
One always shared with some few happy exhausted winsome friends still ready for breakfast, followed by a very long nap and yet *maybe* another liturgy..
(See how vapid and hedonistic my approach to my beloved.. Exi a me quia homo peccator sum Domine..)
Here I in all my tepidity and decadence nevertheless dare pray:
Κύριε Ιησού Χριστέ, Υιέ του Θεού, ελέησόν με τον αμαρτωλόν..
Bless us all, and keep us, may your your Face always shine upon us and be with us, forgive us all everyone of our sins.
That you my Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, may grant us all Triumph and Victory over the temptations of our visible and invisible enemies.
That by your Grace we may all crush beneath our feet the prince of darkness and his powers.
That we may all rise with you and so rise from the tomb of our sins and offenses.
That you may fill us all with joy and happiness in your Holy Resurrection.
That we may all merit the Grace of entering into your Chamber at your Divine Wedding Feast, to rejoice beyond limit together with your Heavenly Attendants and the Host of Saints glorified through you, the Church Triumphant in Heaven.
Amen. Alleluia, Alleluia.
+++
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Ma Chere Douce Kate: Difficile, Laisse-moi Tranquille.
Lyrics:
They say a girl like me should wed,
And take a man to lay in my bed.
But I would like to stay young and free,
And oh, I wish they would let me be.
Oh, I wish they would let me be..
Let me be.
Robin the miller he's fond of brass,
He sees a fool's face when he looks in glass,
Thinks he'll bargain like grain for me.
But oh, I wish he would let me be,
Oh, I wish he would let me be.
Robin, let me be.
There came a man named Bonnie Jim,
He looks so fine in his holiday trim.
Thinks he'll take me off to the sea,
But oh, I wish he would let me be.
Oh, I wish he would let me be.
Jim, let me be,
Jim, let me be.
La la la la la la la la la.
La la la la la la la la la..
Cousin Dick he has gold and land,
He thinks all this will win my hand.
My hand or lips he will never see,
But oh, I wish he would let me be.
Oh, I wish he would let me be.
Dick, let me be.
This young soldier boy is Ned,
His gun's like his own, he can shoot me dead.
His eyes are blue, but they don't see me.
Oh, why does he let me be?
Oh, why does he let me be?
Let me be,
Why do you let me be?
La la la la la la la la la.
La la la la la la la la la..
(Thanks to Sophie for these lyrics)
---
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Freedom, Vermont & Unity: Bernie Rulz!!
Another economics/political post, it's a Lenten Tuesday:
I love my new home and senator. Stick it to them nasty Anti-Federalist corporatist libertarian trogs, Bernie!! I love you, man.
[That graphic came from here, where you can read it in a larger version.]
---
I love my new home and senator. Stick it to them nasty Anti-Federalist corporatist libertarian trogs, Bernie!! I love you, man.
[That graphic came from here, where you can read it in a larger version.]
---
Matt Taibbi & Eliot Spitzer: Put the Bastards in Jail, Now.
This is straight up:
I say this in all seriousness: if and when things get worse, the archons in charge of our kleptocracy will pay for having broken the social contract so viciously and shamelessly. Six months in a maximum security prison (Taibbi's prescription here) will be in that context a light sentence.
---
I say this in all seriousness: if and when things get worse, the archons in charge of our kleptocracy will pay for having broken the social contract so viciously and shamelessly. Six months in a maximum security prison (Taibbi's prescription here) will be in that context a light sentence.
---
Sunday, April 17, 2011
A comment of my so called creative process..
My last project (and only other adventure in blogging) I conceived as a series of postcards of my life abroad in Switzerland, but that got complicated by the fact that I was sharing it with friends and family each of whom constitutes individually a different audience in my mind.
Because I was living in a monastic community, I was automatically talking about religion with people whom I normally don't share that with in our friendships. I also kept spurting about all sorts of things I normally keep locked up in most contexts..
Like everyone, each of my friends shares different parts of my life, I have a different voice, am a different person to each of them, really. Writing for everyone - and then random strangers, too, who began reading it - hundreds of them - was a bit wrenching.
I also ran naively into privacy issues, when the Swiss and French schooled me on cultural differences regarding privacy.. Many of them when they found out I was putting stuff online told me to keep them out of it.
So I felt inhibited, and sometimes a bit paranoid. I posted off the cuff, and then wondered if I exposed too much or annoyed anyone by inflicting my crap on them, or else exposed my friends in ways they would resent.
Whenever I posted stuff of an "existential" nature, especially when I did it in a raw and rambling fashion, I felt some angst.
It felt self indulgent.. But I wanted to do it.. I liked it.. But wanted to do it without annoying my friends. So I canned the old blog, and started this one, meant to be much more focused and disciplined. I wanted to get things into writing that I'd been thinking about and struggling over, whether anyone read it or not.
The potential audience would be a foil for me getting the work done. And I would do it in a more concise manner.
This blog is the result.
The thing is, I'm still rent with a bit of angst. I don't know where to begin, there's so much, and when I do write I've been doing it in a haphazard and jerky fashion.
Posts here have generally been written in less than an hour, most often in under 20 or 30 minutes. I write something, post it.. And then re-read it and immediately see a dozen errors or things I should of added, and so do a 5 minute re-write and re-post. An hour later, I come back, notice more errors, fix them and re-post it again.
Very disciplined process, and perfectly suited to annoy anyone rss'ing this.
I've started writing a dozen different essays, though, and have notes (both dictated and written, as well as an accumulated archive of source materials & media to post) for many more. I need to start writing with discipline, here.
Take for example the last post: there are multiple typos in it, and at least one major factual error (Mosul is in northern Iraq - I was also thinking of Basra when I wrote that line on Iraqi cities, and the word "southern" just slipped in there..)
I leave them as they are, a testament to my editorial competence and my talent comme un ecrivan.
I'll try to keep this project coherent and not too absurd or sententious. I'll try to develop certain themes and lines of logic between my posts, to quilt them in a way that makes sense.
Even though my aim isn't to attract a lot of intention, I do want to be readable and interesting to anyone who does compliment me by following this.
Comments and criticism, always gratefully & sincerely accepted.
I'm posting this without a proofread as a Lenten mortification for you my dear audience. I have your spiritual well being in mind.
After Lent, I will proof read in earnest, I promise. I have to get back to my self flagellation now, though.
(I fibbed, I can't help myself. One slapdash revision. There.)
Cheers.
---
Because I was living in a monastic community, I was automatically talking about religion with people whom I normally don't share that with in our friendships. I also kept spurting about all sorts of things I normally keep locked up in most contexts..
Like everyone, each of my friends shares different parts of my life, I have a different voice, am a different person to each of them, really. Writing for everyone - and then random strangers, too, who began reading it - hundreds of them - was a bit wrenching.
I also ran naively into privacy issues, when the Swiss and French schooled me on cultural differences regarding privacy.. Many of them when they found out I was putting stuff online told me to keep them out of it.
So I felt inhibited, and sometimes a bit paranoid. I posted off the cuff, and then wondered if I exposed too much or annoyed anyone by inflicting my crap on them, or else exposed my friends in ways they would resent.
Whenever I posted stuff of an "existential" nature, especially when I did it in a raw and rambling fashion, I felt some angst.
It felt self indulgent.. But I wanted to do it.. I liked it.. But wanted to do it without annoying my friends. So I canned the old blog, and started this one, meant to be much more focused and disciplined. I wanted to get things into writing that I'd been thinking about and struggling over, whether anyone read it or not.
The potential audience would be a foil for me getting the work done. And I would do it in a more concise manner.
This blog is the result.
The thing is, I'm still rent with a bit of angst. I don't know where to begin, there's so much, and when I do write I've been doing it in a haphazard and jerky fashion.
Posts here have generally been written in less than an hour, most often in under 20 or 30 minutes. I write something, post it.. And then re-read it and immediately see a dozen errors or things I should of added, and so do a 5 minute re-write and re-post. An hour later, I come back, notice more errors, fix them and re-post it again.
Very disciplined process, and perfectly suited to annoy anyone rss'ing this.
I've started writing a dozen different essays, though, and have notes (both dictated and written, as well as an accumulated archive of source materials & media to post) for many more. I need to start writing with discipline, here.
Take for example the last post: there are multiple typos in it, and at least one major factual error (Mosul is in northern Iraq - I was also thinking of Basra when I wrote that line on Iraqi cities, and the word "southern" just slipped in there..)
I leave them as they are, a testament to my editorial competence and my talent comme un ecrivan.
I'll try to keep this project coherent and not too absurd or sententious. I'll try to develop certain themes and lines of logic between my posts, to quilt them in a way that makes sense.
Even though my aim isn't to attract a lot of intention, I do want to be readable and interesting to anyone who does compliment me by following this.
Comments and criticism, always gratefully & sincerely accepted.
I'm posting this without a proofread as a Lenten mortification for you my dear audience. I have your spiritual well being in mind.
After Lent, I will proof read in earnest, I promise. I have to get back to my self flagellation now, though.
(I fibbed, I can't help myself. One slapdash revision. There.)
Cheers.
---
The Divine Comedy: the Gospel as Parody
Today is Palm Sunday. This is one of those blessed and relatively rare years in which the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Catholic) calendars are in harmony. We celebrate Holy Week and Pascha together this year. As the Universal Church always should.
During Lent I've been going almost daily to mass, and reading the psalter.
One of the things that keeps on striking me lately, is how funny the Bible is.
He rides in on an ass. He's making fun of us, of our pretensions.
When the French took Damascus from the Turks in 1920, the commanding General Henri Gouraud rode his charger into the tomb of Saladin in the great Ummayad Mosque, dismounted and planted his boot on the "Sword of Religion's" (that's what Salah al-Din literally means in Arabic) grave and declared, "Réveilles-toi Saladin, nous sommes revenus. Ma présence ici consacre la victoire de la croix sur le croissant!"
Get up Saladin, we've returned. My presence here consecrates the victory of the cross over the crescent!
That's how we like to do it. Charge in on a warhorse, all glory, then crush the enemy's head and spit on his grave. Then consecrate it all in pride and vanity.
We like to put boots up asses, see. That's definitely the American way.
(I love how this video of Toby Keith's immortal poetical expression of that sentiment begins with the image of a puppy wrapped in a flag.. Irony is dead.)
But God rides in barefoot, on an ass. And then goes to the religious and political authorities and allows them to slaughter him. He takes the boot upon himself.
The Gospel - in fact the entire bible - is rife with such inversions as God coming in glory on a donkey.
He's always making the most unexpected entrances, and turning our expectations upside down.
He shows up as a baby, is worshiped by donkeys and gets put in a box for feeding grain to asses (called in English a manger, from the French "to eat.." Taste and see..)
(there's great iconography of the animals in the stable worshiping him..)
Then he goes up on a hillside by the sea of Galilee, and preaches the "Sermon on the Mount," which is where he parodies Moses, and reveals himself to be God. See the sidebar, I've posted the Beatitudes he taught there. These are the Christian answer to the Ten Commandments.
I think they're really funny. Blessed are the poor? Says who?
Jesus, that's who.
And he sat down to teach them. He did not stand in the presence of the Lord as a rabbi does proclaiming scripture in the synagogue, or Moses did coming off the mountain with the written word. He went up and sat.
I've been to the "Mount," it's actually a great grassy hillside right next to Lake Tiberius (also called the Sea of Galilee, but it's not much of a sea at all, actually).. When I stood on it, I laughed. Not at all like majestic solemn old Mount Sinai.
Not exactly what I'd expected. Very gentle. A good joke.
He calmed that sea one night when his disciples were stuck out fishing in the middle of a storm. They were terrified by the storm, then terrified that he'd calmed it. He walks out onto the lake, and calls to them to come to him. Peter (our dearly loved pope) hops out, takes a few steps and sinks.
That my friends, about sums it all up. Very funny.
Stick your finger in me, Thomas. It is finished.
In the Name of the Rose, one of my favorite books, Emberto Eco tells this beautiful story about a Franciscan monk and a novice (played in the uneven late 80's movie version by Sean Connery and Christian Slater) who come to monastery where there's been foul play. The plot revolves around an newly discovered manuscript of Aristotle's ("The Philosopher," as Thomas Aquinas dubs him in the Summa) on laughter. The bad guys are bent on keeping this text from ever seeing the light, because the concept of laughter is so subversive to authority. They eventually kill almost everyone and burn the monastery down along with the book, because they can't handle a joke.
One of the characters (I think it's the arch-badguy, the abbot) makes the observation that in the Gospel Christ never laughs. He cries at the tomb of Lazarus..
(another funny story: "Lord, you're late! He's dead. You were supposed to come when we called you!" Open the tomb. "But he'll be stinky!" You still don't get it. Roll the stone away. They do it. Lazarus comes out dressed like a mummy.
That one had me silently belly laughing to in my pew when it was read at mass a couple weeks ago..)
He gets angry and whips the money changers like curs.
Lots of divine emotion gets expressed.
But no laughter.
Why? Because he's a straight comedian.
"I give them the sign of Jonas," he said.
And this is the thing: the Book of Jonah (like the Book of Job) is a comedy.
Go tell the people to repent, Jonah. "No. Stop bugging me." Jonah runs away, gets on a boat to Finisterra (the name of the end of land where Spain tapers out into the void just beyond Santiago de Compostelle), thinking he can hide from God. There's a storm, like that one on the Sea of Galilee. The sailors are terrified, so when Jonah confesses that God's out to get him, they throw him overboard and so calm the waves. Christ parodies this when he walks out onto the sea himself. Jonah is swallowed by Leviathan. He rests in the gut of a fish (the tomb of the sea) for three days..
(This is an inversion of when the fish leaps out of the Euphrates and Tobias grabs and eats it, then burns its liver to scare away Asmodeus from his beloved.. Or when Christ eats his last meal of grilled fish before he rises into heaven.. See how the symbols and the things signified, how all the referents proliferate? That's what a good comedy is all about..)
He gets spit up onto the beach, resurrected. He then grudgingly decides to obey God, and goes to preach repentance to the people of the great city (Ninevah, or Mosul- the capital of of what is now Southern or Kurdish Iraq, the northern twin of Baghdad, which is on the rivers of Babylon) whom he thinks are disgusting people not worthy of being pardoned. "I don't want to go preach forgiveness to those bastards. I want them to burn like Sodom and Gommorah did.." But he does it now anyway, because he didn't much enjoy being stuck in that fish. He preaches, and they all convert and put on sackcloth and ashes. A great revival. Billy Grahm's wet dream. The End.
It's out of control. And when the meaning dawns on you, you should laugh.
That's why fools who can't take a joke either think that the whole thing is contrived and "just a myth" or else run around saying that it's all "literally" true.
I hate the word literal. It's a nearly useless word that is its own deconstruction.
Our problem is that we need to control everything. We need to pretend we understand. We need to be right. Most of us are running around imposing our narratives on things, telling other people that they're wrong. Faith is parodied as a means of social control, of controlling our own insecurities.
Our tendency is to attempt to turn it all into a recipe for anathematizing and controlling other people..
("The Bible vs. Science," "Creation Science," nursing unhealthy obsessions with Darwin.. The Nazis, the eugenicists, militant atheists and the folks down at the Four Square Bible Church have got it all figured out, see.)
A means of categorizing and reducing or even annihilating the heretical other in all his scandal.
Grinding boots up Muslim asses, for example. Planting boots on their graves.
The irony of militant atheists like Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris writing book length screeds condemning the many horrific things people have done while proclaiming religious motives and justification, but then themselves advocating massive violence and terror against Muslims is a classical example of this..
An example so idiotic and shameless that it traumatizes my mind.
"The Inquisition means the Catholic Church is evil!"
This, immediately followed by "Muslims are evil, and I support the U.S. government's enhanced interrogation and rendition of terrorists, and Israeli and U.S. coalition violence against them!"
Like I say, no sense of irony. Very stupid.
They cannot see that they are doing much what the Nazis did to the Jews, or what the inquisitors in the violent aftermath of the wars that expelled the Muslims and Jews from Spain, did.
It's not that different. It's coming from the same place: rectitude, ideology as tribalism, annihilation of dissent.
Assassination, terror, and violence as censorship.
The other and his ideas are so threatening we must crush him politically or else kill him. Islam (or Judaism, or Catholicism, or jahaliyah - that's a favorite term among Salafist Muslims, it means pagan ignorance and decadence, all that is not Islam, or whatever) is so dangerous, we must eradicate it.
Shut up. You're wrong. If you don't shut up and do what I tell you, and believe what I tell you to believe, we will kill you.
My earlier posts about the "Left Behind" novels and the Grand Inquisitor are all meant to be driving at this same thesis.
When I put all these things up, I mean it to be read in full context. A context that is to me one of irony, parody and amusement.
Because death and evil are either a joke, or nothing's funny.
For what God does is almost always unexpected, you can't prepare your mind or body for the revelation. You can store up a year's worth of food in your basement, buy guns and ammo, vote Republican and try to keep America pure from whatever you think is evil and threatening, but in the end none of that will matter.
You can prepare your heart and soul, though.
One last joke:
Did you hear the one about that guy that stood up in a Podunk hick town synagogue a couple thousand years ago, pointed at the book of Isaiah and said “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing..”
Cymbal clash. Bada-bump.
Jews. They're pretty damn funny bunch. Always going for the best punchlines.
Blessed Holy Week, everyone. Let's keep one another in our prayers.
---
During Lent I've been going almost daily to mass, and reading the psalter.
One of the things that keeps on striking me lately, is how funny the Bible is.
He rides in on an ass. He's making fun of us, of our pretensions.
When the French took Damascus from the Turks in 1920, the commanding General Henri Gouraud rode his charger into the tomb of Saladin in the great Ummayad Mosque, dismounted and planted his boot on the "Sword of Religion's" (that's what Salah al-Din literally means in Arabic) grave and declared, "Réveilles-toi Saladin, nous sommes revenus. Ma présence ici consacre la victoire de la croix sur le croissant!"
Get up Saladin, we've returned. My presence here consecrates the victory of the cross over the crescent!
That's how we like to do it. Charge in on a warhorse, all glory, then crush the enemy's head and spit on his grave. Then consecrate it all in pride and vanity.
We like to put boots up asses, see. That's definitely the American way.
(I love how this video of Toby Keith's immortal poetical expression of that sentiment begins with the image of a puppy wrapped in a flag.. Irony is dead.)
But God rides in barefoot, on an ass. And then goes to the religious and political authorities and allows them to slaughter him. He takes the boot upon himself.
The Gospel - in fact the entire bible - is rife with such inversions as God coming in glory on a donkey.
He's always making the most unexpected entrances, and turning our expectations upside down.
He shows up as a baby, is worshiped by donkeys and gets put in a box for feeding grain to asses (called in English a manger, from the French "to eat.." Taste and see..)
(there's great iconography of the animals in the stable worshiping him..)
Then he goes up on a hillside by the sea of Galilee, and preaches the "Sermon on the Mount," which is where he parodies Moses, and reveals himself to be God. See the sidebar, I've posted the Beatitudes he taught there. These are the Christian answer to the Ten Commandments.
I think they're really funny. Blessed are the poor? Says who?
Jesus, that's who.
And he sat down to teach them. He did not stand in the presence of the Lord as a rabbi does proclaiming scripture in the synagogue, or Moses did coming off the mountain with the written word. He went up and sat.
I've been to the "Mount," it's actually a great grassy hillside right next to Lake Tiberius (also called the Sea of Galilee, but it's not much of a sea at all, actually).. When I stood on it, I laughed. Not at all like majestic solemn old Mount Sinai.
Not exactly what I'd expected. Very gentle. A good joke.
He calmed that sea one night when his disciples were stuck out fishing in the middle of a storm. They were terrified by the storm, then terrified that he'd calmed it. He walks out onto the lake, and calls to them to come to him. Peter (our dearly loved pope) hops out, takes a few steps and sinks.
That my friends, about sums it all up. Very funny.
Stick your finger in me, Thomas. It is finished.
In the Name of the Rose, one of my favorite books, Emberto Eco tells this beautiful story about a Franciscan monk and a novice (played in the uneven late 80's movie version by Sean Connery and Christian Slater) who come to monastery where there's been foul play. The plot revolves around an newly discovered manuscript of Aristotle's ("The Philosopher," as Thomas Aquinas dubs him in the Summa) on laughter. The bad guys are bent on keeping this text from ever seeing the light, because the concept of laughter is so subversive to authority. They eventually kill almost everyone and burn the monastery down along with the book, because they can't handle a joke.
One of the characters (I think it's the arch-badguy, the abbot) makes the observation that in the Gospel Christ never laughs. He cries at the tomb of Lazarus..
(another funny story: "Lord, you're late! He's dead. You were supposed to come when we called you!" Open the tomb. "But he'll be stinky!" You still don't get it. Roll the stone away. They do it. Lazarus comes out dressed like a mummy.
That one had me silently belly laughing to in my pew when it was read at mass a couple weeks ago..)
He gets angry and whips the money changers like curs.
Lots of divine emotion gets expressed.
But no laughter.
Why? Because he's a straight comedian.
"I give them the sign of Jonas," he said.
And this is the thing: the Book of Jonah (like the Book of Job) is a comedy.
Go tell the people to repent, Jonah. "No. Stop bugging me." Jonah runs away, gets on a boat to Finisterra (the name of the end of land where Spain tapers out into the void just beyond Santiago de Compostelle), thinking he can hide from God. There's a storm, like that one on the Sea of Galilee. The sailors are terrified, so when Jonah confesses that God's out to get him, they throw him overboard and so calm the waves. Christ parodies this when he walks out onto the sea himself. Jonah is swallowed by Leviathan. He rests in the gut of a fish (the tomb of the sea) for three days..
(This is an inversion of when the fish leaps out of the Euphrates and Tobias grabs and eats it, then burns its liver to scare away Asmodeus from his beloved.. Or when Christ eats his last meal of grilled fish before he rises into heaven.. See how the symbols and the things signified, how all the referents proliferate? That's what a good comedy is all about..)
He gets spit up onto the beach, resurrected. He then grudgingly decides to obey God, and goes to preach repentance to the people of the great city (Ninevah, or Mosul- the capital of of what is now Southern or Kurdish Iraq, the northern twin of Baghdad, which is on the rivers of Babylon) whom he thinks are disgusting people not worthy of being pardoned. "I don't want to go preach forgiveness to those bastards. I want them to burn like Sodom and Gommorah did.." But he does it now anyway, because he didn't much enjoy being stuck in that fish. He preaches, and they all convert and put on sackcloth and ashes. A great revival. Billy Grahm's wet dream. The End.
It's out of control. And when the meaning dawns on you, you should laugh.
That's why fools who can't take a joke either think that the whole thing is contrived and "just a myth" or else run around saying that it's all "literally" true.
I hate the word literal. It's a nearly useless word that is its own deconstruction.
Our problem is that we need to control everything. We need to pretend we understand. We need to be right. Most of us are running around imposing our narratives on things, telling other people that they're wrong. Faith is parodied as a means of social control, of controlling our own insecurities.
Our tendency is to attempt to turn it all into a recipe for anathematizing and controlling other people..
("The Bible vs. Science," "Creation Science," nursing unhealthy obsessions with Darwin.. The Nazis, the eugenicists, militant atheists and the folks down at the Four Square Bible Church have got it all figured out, see.)
A means of categorizing and reducing or even annihilating the heretical other in all his scandal.
Grinding boots up Muslim asses, for example. Planting boots on their graves.
The irony of militant atheists like Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris writing book length screeds condemning the many horrific things people have done while proclaiming religious motives and justification, but then themselves advocating massive violence and terror against Muslims is a classical example of this..
An example so idiotic and shameless that it traumatizes my mind.
"The Inquisition means the Catholic Church is evil!"
This, immediately followed by "Muslims are evil, and I support the U.S. government's enhanced interrogation and rendition of terrorists, and Israeli and U.S. coalition violence against them!"
Like I say, no sense of irony. Very stupid.
They cannot see that they are doing much what the Nazis did to the Jews, or what the inquisitors in the violent aftermath of the wars that expelled the Muslims and Jews from Spain, did.
It's not that different. It's coming from the same place: rectitude, ideology as tribalism, annihilation of dissent.
Assassination, terror, and violence as censorship.
The other and his ideas are so threatening we must crush him politically or else kill him. Islam (or Judaism, or Catholicism, or jahaliyah - that's a favorite term among Salafist Muslims, it means pagan ignorance and decadence, all that is not Islam, or whatever) is so dangerous, we must eradicate it.
Shut up. You're wrong. If you don't shut up and do what I tell you, and believe what I tell you to believe, we will kill you.
My earlier posts about the "Left Behind" novels and the Grand Inquisitor are all meant to be driving at this same thesis.
When I put all these things up, I mean it to be read in full context. A context that is to me one of irony, parody and amusement.
Because death and evil are either a joke, or nothing's funny.
For what God does is almost always unexpected, you can't prepare your mind or body for the revelation. You can store up a year's worth of food in your basement, buy guns and ammo, vote Republican and try to keep America pure from whatever you think is evil and threatening, but in the end none of that will matter.
You can prepare your heart and soul, though.
One last joke:
Did you hear the one about that guy that stood up in a Podunk hick town synagogue a couple thousand years ago, pointed at the book of Isaiah and said “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing..”
Cymbal clash. Bada-bump.
Jews. They're pretty damn funny bunch. Always going for the best punchlines.
Blessed Holy Week, everyone. Let's keep one another in our prayers.
---
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