Rapture!

Someone left a pamphlet about the rapture (and 666 and Visa's tracking using 666, which I feel is woefully out of date given the recent Target problems.  That current event seems ripe for Satanic correlation) on the corporate elevator. Not rapture ON the corporate elevator. But they left the pamphlet on the elevator. I don’t think the rapture will be limited to one back elevator near my office.  That seems awfully specific and limiting.  Then again, my wife and I saw Devil in the theater, so if Satan can specifically target elevators, maybe God does as well.

Anyway, the pamphlet urges me not to be left behind when my relatives head up to see the guy in the sky, but then it goes on to say only 4,000,000 humans will actually ascend. Given a population of roughly 6 billion, and not accounting for what this implies about the wrongness of those other religions, that means there’s only a 1 in 1500 chance anyone is going to make it to the pearly gates. So only like ¼ of a person out of all the people I really know - if you use my Facebook acquaintance list as a measure - are headed up. 

It seems like if I want to play the odds, I should busy myself doing all the things that make me happy, not rapture-specific activities, because it’s likely my friends and family will just be staying here with me anyway. The pamphlet does say I can increase my odds by dying a martyr and that one of the traditional ways to do this is to get my head chopped off.  This meshes nicely with the advice to get started preparing right away.  But in that case, the case where I chop off my own head to increase my odds by a few points, I think it would help if the others I care about were to do it first so I’m not left ahead, instead of left behind (that is punny on so many levels).

So friends and family, do you have any desire to chop off your head in his name and then let me know how it goes?  I think it would significant help in my pre-rapture planning.  And no stealing “Left Ahead” – I think I can make a parody using that title.

Pro-life movies

34 and counting. I'm that close to 2500 posts. Scary, particularly as I'm not posting as regularly as I used to. Last night, Pooteewheet and I watched "The Forgotten" just before bedtime. I didn't know much about it, other than my brother warning me it wasn't very good. It was awful. And it waited until the very last moment to beat you over the head with the fact that it had a message that was very, very important. I'm going to spoil the shit out of it for you. When aliens try to steal your memories, they should realize that the first memory you have of you and your child is not when they're a baby, but when they're growing inside of you. In the interest of who the hell cares if your movie is prolife or not, these are categorized by students for life (.org):

Films with a Pro-Life Message:

• Amazing Grace (2007)
• Bella (2007)
• Children of Men (2006)
• Apocalypto (2006)
• The Island (2005)
• Hotel Rwanda (2004)
• The Forgotten (2004)
• Gattaca (1997)

Films with a Pro-Abortion Message:

• Vera Drake (2004)
• Cider House Rules (1999)
• A Handmaid’s Tale (1990)

I'm not so sure A Handmaid's Tale is a pro-abortion movie, although this individual (Anne Barbeau Gardiner) disagrees. She points to a part of the book where someone historically refers to abortion as birth control, proof that we're being clubbed over the head with an anti-abortion rhetoric by Atwood. But if you have an abortion to prevent a birth...isn't it birth control? I fail to understand how you could refer to it as anything else. Yes, yes...murder, etc. But still...it was used to control a birth. Even if it was a murder in your mind, it's still birth control. Saying it's one of the other is semantics. The Handmaid's Tale isn't about abortion, it's about someone else controlling your body so completely that you can't help but draw parallels to how people do and want to control your body in the current culture.

Burning the Koran

I started to write this post about burning the Koran. The issue being, I don't care, because it's a book.

This was from my Progress Report newsletter in response to the Quaran burning, “But this act of hate -- just like the burning of a cross, or painting of a swastika…”

Me: Burning a cross isn’t an act of hatred against a religious group. It’s an act of racism. You could argue the KKK doesn’t like Catholics or Jews either. But they’re not burning the cross as a symbol of hatred against those religions. If you go with the primary focus of the cross burning agenda, black/minority Americans, you have to consider that one of the reasons the symbol is particularly harmful is because people have been lynched and otherwise murdered with the damn thing burning in front of their houses.

A swastika has millions of deaths associated with it. It’s a symbol of hate because the Reich murdered Jews, gypsies and homosexuals by the trainload. Perhaps you could assert that a cross is an act of hatred. Or the existence of the Jewish state flag. But on the flip side, you could argue the same about the crescent moon or the flag of a dozen nations who desire the end of Israel.

Did I miss the part where we murdered lots of Muslims while burning a book? Even if you think US involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq is unfounded, the burning of the Koran isn’t a symbol that is levied in conjunction with those events. The U.S. flag is. Burning the Quaran is far more equivalent to burning the U.S. flag than it is to a swastika or cross burning. Doing a quick search on Google – that indeed seems to be the parallel that Muslims are drawing today (9/9/10).

http://www.google.com/search?q=muslim+u.s.+flag+burning&rlz=1I7GGLD_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7

As someone who supports the right of anyone to burn the flag because it’s just a flag, it doesn’t offend me when anyone avails themselves of that right, though I might indeed be nervous if a group of Muslims were burning flags in my front yard. But only because these things don’t generally end in a reasoned, nonviolent protest. If they did, then I’d encourage them to burn away if it was cathartic. Which is why the Koran burning doesn’t offend me much. Comparing it to cross burning and scribbling a swastika on someone’s front door is just hyperbole from the left that serves as much to inflate the whole issue as anything from the right. You might as well be claiming that no one should have an abortion because it offends certain Christians.

Beyond Me: But of course, PZ Myers says it better than me, which I discovered after I'd been typing for a while, and unlike me, he's tried to throw away a holy wafer, only to receive death threats. It's a cookie! Or a cracker, if you think cookies are frivolous. If you're going to get upset about something that happened under a U.S. aegis, with regards to Muslims, maybe you should pick something that has meaning, like the raping 0f prisoners. If you're offended with any act that has any word of God on it, it's going to be an f-ing long haul, because if you parse out the Koran, some word of God is being destroyed pretty much every single minute.

If it's your book, I respect your right to burn it, even if I don't respect you. The opposite of Fahrenheit 451 is not justice and tolerance, it's Fahrenheit 451. Being liberal doesn't mean embracing intolerance with tolerance. It means fighting for freedom of expression regardless of political correctness.

Papa

Christy and Steve brought us back a present from their trip to Europe. Our very own Papa Benedetto XVII sucker from the gelato shop. Here he is blessing my backyard and Luna's pen.

Why I've Been Away for a Week

I found religion. Don't believe me? See. Bet you didn't know the arms on the outside crosses, flanking the true cross, went up last. That was revealed to me in my revelation. It's how you can tell it's authentic, because that wasn't revealed to anyone else. You can start tithing immediately.

Handshake

Today I noticed someone walking up the stairs at work trailing their hand along the handrail. I realized it was the same person who had once refused to shake my hand before an interview. This got me to thinking, "What's the difference? A lot of hands have touched that rail." It wasn't that she wouldn't shake anyone's hand. She shook the hand of the female co-interviewer on the way out. So it was more of a "don't shake hands with guys thing." But given who many hands had touched the rail, it had to be more of a "don't shake hands with guys in public" issue, not a concern about boy cooties. Which is fine. I don't have to agree with your religious practice to respect it, and in the end, I don't even care if it is a religious practice - I'm not going to force or pressure you, beyond the initial thrusting of the digits, to shake my hand.

But I was still interested in the whys and wherefores, so I went in search of someone on the web who could speak to why it was taboo. Which led me here. Which only led to more questions if, as this comment suggests, there are Muslim options around handshaking, which I think I was experiencing (and not just a physical revulsion in response to me personally).

1.) It's an option to not make physical contact, and it's a choice issue. Then why is it acceptable to shake a woman's hand, and not a man's hand? If it's seen as improper because of sexuality issues, then how do you function in a society where an encounterable percentage of the women you meet are gay? I'm not saying they have any interest in you, but neither do all the men you meet. The context seems to be the same.
2.) It doesn't have to be a religious reason. Sure. It could be that you're scared people don't wash appropriately. Perhaps you know Mean Mr. Mustard and that he shakes hands and who he shakes hands with. Therefore you don't want to shake hands with anyone he knows. But in that case, once again, why avoid shaking men's hands only. Sometimes women shake Mean Mr. Mustard's hand, even though they shouldn't.
3.) It's a relative/non-relative issue. Once again - then why not shake a man's hand, but shake a woman's hand if both are equally unrelated?
4.) The primary poster writes that in the story in question, the difference is professional vs. personnel. That also doesn't hold in the case I'm referring to, as it was professional from front to back.
5.) The poster's metaphor that it's like "a full face snog with your boss" is way off. I can empathize. I've seen almost the equivalent of a full face snog between a boss and an employee - at the very least, I know they were considering it. But in that context, once again, are you having a full face snog with your female coworkers when you shake their hands?
6.) And here we see the sexes reversed, and a discussion about whether it's acceptable with a glove, which also doesn't seem to get universal agreement if you read the answers until you get to the item about haraam.

So if the issue is opposite sex, skin touching, I'm going to go out on a limb here and offer my take and see if someone disagrees. Wouldn't it just be easier to claim skin contact is not allowed and not shake anyone's hand? Or would that be seen as an unacceptable compromise?

Cracker

For a bit of fun reading, go check out Pharyngula's post about a guy trying to sneak a communion wafer out of a mass (characterized by some as a kidnapping). It had so many comments (and that didn't include the email and death threats) that he had to cut it off at 1000 and start a new thread.

She Says and the Record Meme

She Says posted a record meme via Jami. So in the spirit of always faithfully meme-ing whatever it is she feels needs to be memed, I post my own contribution. But not before alerting her that my official minister credentials from the county showed up today. I am now legal to perform the marriage ceremony in the State of Minnesota. Any chance you want to get married in Minnesota? I can provide 12 hours of premartial education that will not only cut your license fee from $100 to $30, but be downright surreal, in an educational way. Anyone else looking to get married? My schedule is currently unbooked. Sorry Mean Mr. Mustard - in Minnesota you cannot marry your sister or cousin or just add Miss Obispo County 1969 as a sisterwife.

The rules for the meme:

You are in a band. Your band is about to release their first CD. Now, follow these directions to build it. Go to

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The tail (last three or four words) of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4. Use the graphics program of your choice to put them together into your first CD.

I think the result has a ZZ Top sound to it and is every bit as fine as a Leo Sayer album cover.

Bible Trivia

Eryn and I were behind a car today whose license plate was ACTS319. It really confused me, because I was pretty sure--and I looked it up just to be certain--that there was no 31st book in Acts. Freakin' poser.

Proper Etiquette?

I had a rental inspection later today by the city of Richfield, so I was in the renter's side of the duplex with the inspector while he did his walk through looking for infractions. We passed easily, so Ming and his "you're a slum lord" can just bite me. But the inspection brought up a particular question: What is the proper etiquette surrounding if their directional prayer hanging is actually pointing them at Duluth for their daily prayers? Be secretly amused that they're worshiping a lift bridge? Tell them? I went with keeping mum...I'd probably get in trouble for some sort of religious persecution as a landlord for mentioning it.

Angles?

MNSpeak has a post up about The Prophecy Club coming to Bloomington. So I wandered out to the site to check out and see what sorts of things I should be worried about. Fortunately, I learned that there are at least 285 angles I'm safe from, prophetically speaking, provided there's no doubling up, so that's reassuring (image below). I'm not sure how those angles relate to planes - maybe advice like, "Don't ride a plane engaged in angles close to 180. For the lord has said, these angles will cause you no end of grief, for lo, I have invented gravity, and it may smite thee." Or, "An angle of 90 or 270 is grevious in mine eyes, for it may indicate thou hast consumed all the sacrificial wine and should not be operating a motor vehicle." How good is your DVD/VHS quality if you can't proofread angels in your advertising?