On Religion

I understand that religion draws much of its power from explaining things to people who need things explained. Mostly, these are things like "What is the purpose of life?" and "How do I find meaning in a seemingly cold, finite existence that is but a blink in the eye of the measurable universe?" You know, philosophy.

Then there are people who make me think that if you're going to make the decision to be part of a religion, you'd best pass a test evaluating your competence to comprehend and distinguish things like parables and literalness. Example:

I don't mind having to explain to you that the King James bible is a translation commissioned by the court of King James of England in 1604 in order to further distance the Church of England from the Catholic church, who still performed mass in Latin up until 1965. That's not something you'd be expected to know. Hell, I had to look up the dates while I was typing it just to have something better than a ballpark figure.

I may get a little miffed when I have to explain how the King James Version and the New American, and New International, and Revised editions are all different translations of the four gospels and such, made at different times from mostly the same source material, accounting in newer cases for more accurate descriptions of people and events, as reflected by modern English. The actual differences allude me, so why should you know more than that they are different in subtle ways, but tell the same story in predominantly the same fashion.

I get pissed when I have to take the time to explain to you twice that all Christian bibles will have both the Old and New Testaments.

Listen, I get that you're trying to get your daughter into Sunday School and faith young, but that child is going to have her faith drastically shaken when she turns nine and realizes she's smarter than you. You don't want to risk her getting brainwashed because you didn't know what it was you were teaching her. I have a friend who was taught there were 36 weeks in a year, until I confounded her with math in her early twenties.

If I ever had faith, it would not be in humanity days like this.

We Got A Joker In the Audience

We found this little guy closing up at work last night:




Her little brother I found tucked into a bible:




Tired as I felt, it was a good night, suddenly.

Ironic Book Locations in a Barnes & Noble

"No, we're not B. Dalton and we're doing just fine, thank you."

• Books on back pain
• Health; bottom shelf
  
• WWII magazine
• Newsstand; Current Events
  
• "Get Rich Quick!"
• 'Misplaced' in Religion; Bibles
  
• "Wuthering Heights," (164 years old)
• Teen fiction (which is incidentally equal in size to "Paranormal Teen Romance," god help us.)
  
• Every comic book not in the comics section:
• Allison Bechdel's Fun Home, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Spiegelman's Maus in Bio
• The manga bibles (religious, not artistic). [Two different ones, plus versions of Genesis and Exodus, but oddly not R. Crumb's fully illustrated Book of Genesis.]
• All of the Simpsons/Dilbert/Peanuts/etc comics misfiled as "Humor" that are actually better suited as kindling.

On "Biblical Proportions"

"This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions."

"What do you mean, 'biblical?'"
"What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff."
"Exactly."
"Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!"
"Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes…"
"The dead rising from the grave!"
"Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together … mass hysteria!"

- Ghostbusters

I'm pretty sure the initial thought was placed in my head by something I heard on television. Maybe a joke on The Daily Show, perhaps an awkward comment somewhere, I don't really remember.

What matters is that I don't have the meteorological wherewithal to refute this idea that's gotten into my head:

1. The Gulf of Mexico is filled with a massive oil spill.
2. Everyone is worried that as hurricane season approaches relief efforts will have to cease.
3. Hurricanes have massive lightning strikes.
4. People are fearing the ocean catching on fire.

Now that's pretty terrifying in general, but we're all pretty aware that heavily polluted lakes and rivers and such can catch fire, and in more fun cases it is actually possible to burn seawater by bombarding it with science- microwaves.
But we all seem to be forgetting something else hurricanes do:

• Produce water spouts.

Yes, hurricanes suck water up out of the ocean and then rain it down over the course of hours or days. If that water is filled with oil, and if at any point that oily water is ignited by one of the many lightning strikes between the interior of the hurricane and the ocean, we will be getting killed by a giant raging firestorm of fire.

Almost.

And where do most hurricanes make landfall? The Gulf. Often Louisiana. Don't think this is a likely possibility? Here's a video of oily backwash raining down in Louisiana last week.

Now, I'm not usually one to buy into any of that "God is punishing us for our promiscuity and The Gays and harboring Jews" malarkey, but even I have to admit New Orleans is getting shit on pretty bad by the universe, lately. I mean it's one thing to write off the flooding as being well deserved after you built an entire tourist city below sea level, but the flooding lead to power and light outages, skin irritation and lung damage/death from mold and bacterial, and widespread famine. More recently they've been dealing with tornadoes and now it's fucking raining fire.

FUCKING RAINING FIRE!

Seriously?! So that's flooding, famine, lesions, darkness and fiery death. We were like four plagues into the story of Passover and the universe just skipped straight to Sodom and Gamorrah.

I don't know about you all, but I want to see the government step in and fix this shit while footing the bill to BP before we have to find out if two-month old moonshine counts as a first-born son.