Balls and Walnuts
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Category Archives: Opium for the masses
A prayer for Pat Robertson
LORD,
Given that one of thy most precious qualities is MERCY;
And that thou hast forgiven Pat Robertson for saying 9/11 was YOUR punishment for gays, abortion, and anal bleachings;
And that thou hast forgiven him for calling for the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez;
And that thou hast forgiven him for calling all feminists “child killers”;
And that thou hast forgiven him for a lifetime of hubris, in claiming to know YOUR will;
Respectfully, LORD, I request THOU DROPPEST THE MERCY CRAP and remember one of thy other divine qualities, namely, JUSTICE,
And when thou, in thy divine wisdom, weighest the merits of Robertson’s recent call for a natural disaster to plague all of the men, women, and children of Pennsylvania, sinners and innocents alike, thou shouldest remember the Pharoah of Egypt: for you hardened your heart (sorry, LORD, but those thous and thys have become quite taxing of my puny mortal patience) and punished Pharoah for his sins, oh, how you punished Pharoah — that was truly righteous, LORD, good one! — but can we please, oh please, oh please, have some of that JUSTICE now?
When an ass clown calls for death and hardship for thousands of your faithful, and claims to do it in YOUR NAME, does that get your attention, LORD?
I’m sure you will choose a worthy and just punishment for PAT ROBERTSON (common name, LORD, so I gave you a photo above to help you find the right PAT ROBERTSON), but in case you’re busy and need some help, might I suggest you revive an old favorite — the ten plagues of Egypt? For extra zest, you might add “in his ass” to each of these plagues:
BLOOD in his ass.
FROGS in his ass. Come to think of it, hold off on that one. I like frogs too much.
LICE in his ass.
FLIES in his ass.
A HERD OF DISEASED CATTLE in his ass.
BOILS in his ass. LORD, you could do that one in your sleep.
A HAILSTORM in his ass.
LOCUSTS in his ass.
DARKNESS in his ass. Huh?
DEATH OF THE FIRSTBORN — no, you can stop there, LORD. I always thought you went a wee bit too far on that one. Instead, might I suggest
A GOOD-SIZED, YET NON-LETHAL EXPLOSION in his ass.
Amen.
D.
Technorati tags (thanks to Rob for doing the work for me):
Politics
Religion
Stupidity
Conservatives
Religious Right
Liars
Hypocrisy
Pat Robertson
Harriet Miers has a blog, Michelle Duggar fulfills her destiny yet again, & more linkage
File this under: Damn, why didn’t I think of that first?
I’ve been pissing myself laughing for the last half hour reading the Harriet Miers blog. For you non-Americans, Harriet Miers is Dubya’s most recent pick for U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Her main qualification seems to be her near total lack of qualifications. But who knew she had a blog?
Elsewhere in the political humor realm: Jurassic Pork has hatched a great meme in today’s President Magoo post. Bush as Magoo: blindness explains a great deal. JP’s Assclowns of the Week (yesterday’s post) is a fine read, too.
Note to any newbies: I’m a Berkeley boy, and my political leanings are a bit to the left of Ted Kennedy. If you’re at the opposite end of the spectrum, don’t bother to follow those links. It’ll only piss you off.
The next ones are filed under: Hey, that ain’t funny, that’s serious!
My beloved added to her blog last night with Burning Bush (sorry, no sexual double entendres there).
Last but not least, if any of you haven’t checked out Jeff Huber’s blog Pen and Sword, today’s post is excellent: Taking Back Our Country.
I’m not feeling terribly creative tonight. I had to run in to the hospital at 3:30 AM to take care of an emergency, so I’m feeling a wee bit post-call. I really really hope my patient doesn’t give me a repeat performance tonight, for her sake and mine.
Today is Yom Kippur. There’s a Jewish concept, pikuakh nefesh, which means “to save a soul”. It’s a great loophole for doctors. It means we can work on holidays and the Sabbath if we’re saving lives, because life is more important than the law (which is to say, The Law).
If you’re a regular here, you know what a half-assed Jew I am. While I might be able to justify working on Yom Kippur, I can’t justify fressing all day. It would take a lawyer of Talmudic proportions to claim I had to eat those coconut-covered brownies to keep up my strength, right? Right.
Half-assed or full-assed, I’m aware of the holiday nonetheless, and atonement is on my mind. I’d thought about blogging on my inability to let go of grudges, which I suspect is one of my nastier sins. I may still do that some day soon. Consider it a belated Yom Kippur post. For now, I’m more focused on eating dinner, waiting the requisite three hours, and then going to sleep.
Have I mentioned that I’m thinking of NaNoWriMoing? I’d like to blame it on peer pressure, but to be truthful, I’d rather be writing new stuff than editing my BFN (Big Fat Novel, which sounds a whole lot less stuck-up than magnum opus).
Anyone else doing the NaNoWriMo shuffle? We ought to cheer each other on.
Michelle Duggar, she of the iron uterus, popped today. Remember the Duggars? Johanna Faith Duggar is number sixteen. From the Seattle Post Intelligencer article (Intelligencer. WTF kinda word is that?):
“Their children include two sets of twins, and each child has a name beginning with the letter “J”: Joshua, 17; John David, 15; Janna, 15; Jill, 14; Jessa, 12; Jinger, 11; Joseph, 10; Josiah, 9; Joy-Anna, 8; Jeremiah, 6; Jedidiah, 6; Jason, 5; James, 4; Justin, 2; Jackson Levi, 1; and now Johannah.”
Look carefully at that list: Janna, Joy-Anna, Johannah. They’re not even trying to come up with unique J names for their girls.
Reminds me of our friend Kira, who used to call her parents “parental units”. I think the Duggars need to be honest and call their daughters “reproductive unit [number]”, in which case Johanna Faith is reproductive unit 6. Oops, I mean 7. I forgot Mrs. Duggar — she’s not done yet!
D,
But Onan knew that the seed would not be his . . .
I imagine other homeschooling parents have well thought-out curricula for their children, complete with lesson plans, lectures, daily assignments, and weekly field trips. I suspect they would shrink in horror at our ‘just winging it’ approach, also known as, “Okay. What do you want to do today?”
As I’ve mentioned before, we homeschool the lad because he was bored silly in 3rd Grade and the school wouldn’t give him challenging material. Currently, he’s reading To Kill a Mockingbird and studying grammar from Strunk and White, chemistry from Larry Gonick’s Cartoon Guide to Chemistry, and geometry from a book so dense it swallows thought. He hangs out with Karen in the office. Since she’s online reading political blogs much of the day and Jake never stops asking questions (about one every two minutes), he’s getting schooled in politics, government, and geography as well. He knows enough about current affairs to call our preznut an asswipe.
Never did I think we would become the sort of homeschooling parents who teach their kid from the Bible . . . until now.
As a direct result of my evil atheistic wife’s addiction to the Television without Pity Duggar Thread, Karen rediscovered the Brick Testament this morning. The Brick Testament pops up in the blogosphere every few weeks. In it, the Rev. Brendan Powell Smith has reduced much of the Old and New Testaments to a Lego extravaganza.
I’d love to say the Brick Testament sparked in my son a burgeoning lust for spiritual knowledge. In fact, he noticed this picture of Lego Adam taking Lego Eve doggy style, and I guess the sight of it sparked a different kind of lust.
On a more uplifting note, I can honestly say that my little atheist son spent the whole day reading Genesis. Really.
I think Bible studies are important. Even if you’re not a believer, the Old and New Testaments are part of our cultural heritage. Take a look at Bartlett’s Quotations sometime — check out how many pages are devoted to biblical quotes. I bet you’ll recognize most of them, and in many cases you’ll find yourself saying, “That’s from the Bible?” So, yeah, this stuff is important.
Unfortunately, Jake’s newfound passion for Genesis meant Karen had to explain the concept of “spilling one’s seed” to an almost-ten-year-old boy.
To her credit, she didn’t say, “Ask your father.” First she tried to explain masturbation to him; then she had to explain coitus interruptus. It took her a long time to explain this because she couldn’t stop laughing. Jake says, “Mommy is seriously cracked.” (He means she was cracking up.) Karen says, “At least I managed to avoid the whole topic of orgasm.”
By the way: contrary to popular belief, the Onan story is not a criticism of masturbation or coitus interruptus. God got cheesed because Onan violated the spirit of levirate marriage. Here’s the deal: Onan’s older brother Er died without children. By the laws of levirate marriage, Onan was obliged to take Er’s wife Tamar as his own and impregnate her. Her children would be considered not Onan’s, but Er’s. That way, Er’s bloodline would not die out.
Tamar, however, was a babe. Yes, yes, I know you can’t really tell that from the Brick Testament photo linked above. They fuzzed out all the good bits, so you’ll have to take my word for it. Tamar was hot. Selfishly, Onan didn’t want to get Tamar pregnant because he wanted to keep her as his love toy for as long as possible. If you remember that we Jews consider our children to be our afterlife (sort of), Onan’s selfishness deprived Er of his immortality.
That’s why God iced him.
I bet Karen hopes Jake gets back to Geometry tomorrow.
D.
“Are you spiritual?”
Um. Helloooo, Blogger? Is there a good reason why this post was up for several hours, and then disappeared, only to reappear as an older (AND INCOMPLETE!) draft version on my dashboard?
Or is this post being yanked by an even Higher Authority?
Cue Twilight Zone music.
Damn. I hate telling jokes twice.
At a Christmas party a few years ago, one of the local wives asked Karen, apropos of nothing, “Are you spiritual?”
Here was my wife, a firm atheist, being questioned on faith by someone who could only be described as a true believer. I watched, dumbstruck. I expected blood. But I had underestimated Karen yet again. As an attentive student of Miss Manners, she handled the question with ease.
“What an interesting question,” she said. “And such a good question, too. Isn’t it odd how infrequently folks talk about spirituality with people they hardly know? I wonder why that is?” And so forth. She kept at it until the topic had strayed a safe distance from the hot button of spirituality. The other woman never knew what hit her.
I was relieved — not so much because Karen had handled the question so deftly, but because no one had bothered to ask me.
That might explain how I came up with the Hannukah Lobster.
After that bit of humiliation, I brow-beat my parents into signing me up for Hebrew School. There, Israeli women who pronounced my name Dog taught me to read Hebrew, and later, a tyrannical cantor taught me my cantillation marks so I could belt out Torah lines with the best of ’em. Religious instruction consisted of disjointed Bible stories taught as historical fact with nary a word of moral or ethical analysis. As for Talmud — Talwhat?
Our rabbi fancied himself a comedian, a Jackie Mason in tefillin. What a dick. His whole pre-ceremony interaction with me consisted of a twenty minute interview, during which he badgered me about how baseball was a sport for intellectuals. He got me to cough up some dirt on my family, which he used during my bar mitvah as ‘humorous’ snark. Yeah, that’s right — in front of my friends, family, and the whole congregation.
That ended my schtick with Judaism, at least for a while.
See, it’s this last bit that Blogger keeps eating. Not the whole post, just this last bit. Grrr.
A few days ago, I mentioned Borges’ story, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”, wherein a little known, marginally successful author sets out to rewrite Don Quixote word for word. I’m beginning to feel like Menard, only it’s not Cervantes I’m struggling to channel. It’s me.
Well, here goes. One more time. This time I’m saving the HTML in a separate text file.
Over the years, my spiritual pendulum has swung from Judaism through Agnosticism to Zen Buddhism. I’m what you call a Jew-Boo (if you’re trying to be nasty, that is) or a Juddhist (my preferred designation). Those of you familiar with Buddhism know that its precepts are compatible with other religions. Zen, especially, is more a philosophy than a network of faith-based beliefs. So it’s not all that weird, despite what some of my tribe might think — the ones who sling the Jew-Boo label, that is.
Now that I’m an adult, I can take charge of my education. I have a halfway decent library on both Zen and Judaism, and I’ve read a fair fraction of it. I’m not an ignoramus. For that matter, I suspect I’ve read more of the New Testament than the average American Christian.
Nevertheless, when it comes to practice, I’m as piss-poor a Buddhist as I am a Jew.
The pendulum tends to take a sharp turn back towards Judaism whenever I’m faced with a pediatric airway emergency. Times like those, the last thing I want to believe is that I’m the one whose solely responsible for the life of this child. Those situations are frightening enough without that kind of load on my shoulders. Yup, that’s when the big time bargaining comes in.
Me: Hey, God? You remember me, the guy who recites his Shema every few years or so and hopes like crazy he’s catching You in a good mood. Well, hey, look. It’s like this. I have this kid here, she’s eighteen months old, and I would really appreciate it if you would help me look after her.
Him: (silence)
Me: Okay. Be that way. How about this: if things work out okay, I’ll start working on my son again. I mean, he’s nine years old. How entrenched could his atheism be? I’ll do my best, Lord, I really really will.
And so forth.
When you get down to it, I want to believe, particularly at times like those. Security, that’s what it’s all about. I don’t believe in an afterlife and I’m not particularly afraid of my own death. I am concerned about the safety and health of my family and my patients, and so I want to think Someone is up there watching over us.
At the same time, I realize no one makes it out of here alive.
That’s why questions like “Are you spiritual?”, “Do you believe in God?”, or even “Have you been saved?” distress me. The answer to all three is the same: It’s complicated.
You know something? For the folks who ask those kinds of questions, “It’s complicated” is the last answer they want to hear.
It’s complicated because I’m not the perfect Vulcan my wife is. It’s complicated because, while I hate blind faith, I’m too attached to my memes to let them go. It’s complicated because, like any true Agnostic, I really don’t know the answers.
I’d like to think my confusion is the hallmark of an intelligent mind, but I know it is nothing more than what it is: confusion.
And it doesn’t help that every time I come within a hair’s breadth of something approaching an epiphany of self-understanding, Blogger eats my column.
Okay. Here goes. Save HTML file. Hit publish button.
D.
How many is too many?
Meet the Duggar family.
Note that (Head Count) – Mom – Dad = 14. This is the Duggar family circa 2004, before #15 arrived. The Duggars were the subject of a Discovery Health channel documentary, “14 Children and Pregnant Again!”, which airs again on October 27 and October 29. Here’s the blurb:
“The Duggars are letting God dictate how many children they have and, with nine boys, five girls, and one on the way, Jim Bob and Michelle feel blessed many times over! Find out how the Duggars coordinate a household that would challenge any manager.”
Before discussing precisely how the Duggars coordinate that household, let’s get some Guinness Book of World Records perspective. According to sexualrecords.com, the 2001 Guinness Book gives the record to “the first wife of Feodor Vassilyev (1707-1782) of Shuya, Russia”: 69 children, many of them multiple births, 67 of whom survived infancy. In recent times, the record belongs to “Leontina Albina from San Antonio, Chile. Now in her mid-sixties, Leontina claims to be the mother of 64 children, of which only 55 of them are documented”.
Can we at least agree that 55 children is too many?
Back to the Duggars. Never mind that Jim Bob and Michelle dress their children like clones and give them names, ALL of them, that start with J (including Jinger — pronounced Ginger, in case you’re wondering). Never mind that the white suprem acist website st0rrmf runt dot org* luuurves the Duggars cuz they’re bringin’ all them white Christian babies into the world. After all, the Duggars can’t help it if they’ve become the neo-Knotsies’ poster family.
No. What I wonder is whether Jim Bob and Michelle are doing the job. Not that job — obviously, they’re doing very little else. I mean the job of parenting.
Take a look at the Quiverfull FAQ. Here’s their response to the question (not really a question, but what the hey), “You won’t be able to give as much time or attention to a dozen kids as you could to just two or three”:
“We trust that God will give us the ability to meet the needs of all the children He gives us — and that includes their need for love and attention as well as material needs.”
Read the rest, if you like. They go on to talk about all the great parenting opportunities you get eating and praying together as a family. And don’t forget the joys of having ten or more siblings:
“[H]ow could we consider robbing our children of the opportunity for a life-time of shared experiences with another brother or sister, in exchange for a theoretical increase in attention from their parents?”
I have a brother and a sister. One each. Did I really need to have another ten of ’em to get that wonderful experience? Damn it, I’m going to call my parents and tell them I’ve been ROBBED.
Karen and I got tweaked over the Duggars, the Prairie Muffins, and the Quiverfull folks thanks to the comments thread for this post at The News Blog. That thread led Karen to discover the Television Without Pity website, which, when it comes to television programming, has to be the snarkiest of the snarky snark. They truly live up to their name. Anyway, for the last four days, Karen has been a slave to TWP’s two hundred page thread of comments in response to “14 Children and Pregnant Again!” Since we haven’t watched the show, our understanding of its content comes from that comment thread. (Check it out, but prepare to be addicted. Some of the posters are hilarious — e.g., “I think my tubes just spontaneously tied themselves.”)
Remember, “Find out how the Duggars coordinate a household that would challenge any manager”? Here are a few highlights of the Duggars’ managerial, I mean child-rearing, methods.
- The kids are home-schooled. Their only outside contact is with other Fundamentalist Christian families; they don’t even go to church (they hold services at home).
- There’s a “buddy system” in place to care for newly weaned infants. Eight- to ten-year-old children are charged with care responsibilities for children under two. Where’s mom? Giving suck to the next in line.
- With fourteen (now fifteen) kids on board, economies must be observed. The photo above is the rule, not the exception: the kids all dress in the same clothes. The program also focused on meals in the Duggar household — they sure like Tater Tot casserole!
- In a household of this size, the chores are enormous. Each child is given his/her “jurisdiction”. A six-year-old is responsible for all of the laundry, and so forth.
Some of you will no doubt point out that in past generations, this, or something close to it, was the norm. But consider:
Back then, such folks lived on farms, and the numbers were necessary to provide labor.
Back then, infant mortality claimed a sizable share of the family.
Back then, birth control was illegal, unavailable, or (if available) next to useless.
Back then, a child wasn’t expected to do much more than finish grade school and learn a trade (or work on the family farm). With scaled-down expectations, and with the fruits of a family farm (such as a ready supply of chicken eggs and cow’s milk), a husband and wife could provide for a large family in what was, at the time, a respectably ample fashion.
Back then, what opportunities did a woman have? It was the rare woman who could rise above this fate.
Yes, you can argue that this is a free country. The Duggars are self-sufficient thanks to Jim Bob’s real estate investments, so they’re not living on the public dole. Why shouldn’t they procreate like bunnies, if that’s what they want?
I worry about the kids. Except for the youngest (the one lucky enough to be born just before Michelle Duggar’s uterus commits seppuku), they’ll grow up without a childhood, and they’ll grow up knowing nothing else but the Duggar Way. I can’t help but think the Duggars are carrying their freedom a little too far.
Further reading (in case you found this post last): So you want to be a Prairie Muffin?
D.
*I don’t particularly want these guys sniffing around my website, you know what I mean? Hence the misspellings. Google the Duggars and you’ll find plenty of Knotsie links.
Banned Books Week: the Muffin POV
Thanks to Kate for pointing out that, here in the (still free, but for a limited time only) US of A, it’s the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week.
Funny thing: one way or another, I would have found this out. I was trying to research Muffin attitudes towards child-rearing when I discovered the Buried Treasure Weblog, which is the online home of the Muffin Manifesto. (I blogged on this yesterday.) Carmon, the Buried Treasure Muffin Maven, has this to say about Banned Books Week:
“You probably already guessed that I don’t think all ideas are created equal. In fact, I think some ideas are so blasphemous that they ought to be challenged and yes, sometimes banned. The French Revolution was the ultimate object lesson on the aphorism “ideas have consequencesâ€: the evil, humanist ideas of the Enlightenment led to deadly consequences.”
How’s that for historical revisionism?
Carmon urges her readers to celebrate Official Discernment Week instead. Here’s another snippet:
“Even as we rejoice in the increasing quantity and availability of Christian reading matter, we must be vigilant to ensure that we teach our children to obey and honor God, and protect their impressionable minds from pervasive and perverse influences. Threats to their spiritual well-being exist in many quarters, even public libraries, on public television and yes, even on Fox News.”
Fox News: corrupter of our youth. I like this woman.
Not.
Next up: How many is too many?
D.
So you want to be a Prairie Muffin . . .
Modern world got you down? Tired of having to shelter your daughters from media images of harlots like Hillary Clinton, or unfeminine hippy rebels like Cindy Sheehan? Thinking how nice it would be go back in time to the early 1800s, a time before abortion, birth control, and pornography were the scourge of a good, decent, Godfearing woman like yourself?
Not to fear, milady. Submit to the will of a manly Godfearing man NOW. Become a Prairie Muffin.
What’s a Prairie Muffin? You’ll be hard pressed to find a definition on their website, so let me help you out. Here’s a crash course in becoming a Praying Muff. Um, Prairie Muffin.
Step 1. Do not lose your sense of humor.
On the Muffin site, you’ll find nuggets like this:
Note: It was decided in a hotly-contested election, that the husbands of Prairie Muffins would henceforth be known as “Prairie Dawgs.” An official Prairie Dawg greeting was also proposed. Single women aspiring to be Prairie Muffins will be known as “Muffin Mixes” and young children of Prairie Muffins are “Mini Muffins.”
Thus, lesson one is, you are not a woman. You’re not even a Prairie Muffin yet. You, my dear, are a muffin mix, eagerly awaiting a man to leaven your fertile, ah, flour and sugar mixture.
Step 2. Study and commit to heart the Prairie Muffin Manifesto.
Since the Manifesto has 39 steps, I’ll simplify it for you. Here are some of the bitter pills, erm, blessings of the Lord you’ll have to swallow.
In case you were wondering about your proper place in your all new Muffin-friendly home,
11) Prairie Muffins own aprons and they know how to use them.
Just so you know it’s not all about tater tot casseroles and Scrambled Egg Surprise,
9) Prairie Muffins do not reflect badly on their husbands by neglecting their appearance; they work with the clay God has given, molding it into an attractive package for the pleasure of their husbands.
You need never trouble your head again with unpleasant thoughts:
18) Prairie Muffins are fiercely submissive to God and to their husbands.
“You will be my master, hubs, or I’ll beat you to a bloody pulp!”
Now that you have your priorities straight,
Step 3. Get ready to spread your legs and keep ’em spread.
From the Manifesto,
3) Prairie Muffins are aware that God is in control of their ability to conceive and bear children, and they are content to allow Him to bless them as He chooses in this area.
Translation: get used to this . . .
cuz families of 10 to 15 children or more are not unusual. This, by the way, is a core Muffin belief: God meant you to have as many children as your womb can possibly bear.
Hope you like morning sickness. Here’s some Muffin reassurance for you from QuiverFull contributor Elizabeth, “mother of ten”:
“Yes, my children all know that I highly prize each one of them, and they know that I would welcome as many more as God would choose to give me. I am also honest enough to tell them that I have never been too crazy about being pregnant. However, I sure am crazy about those sweet little babies when they finally arrive.”
Yup, she sure is.
I’ll save the shining star of the Prairie Muffin movement, the Duggar Family — fourteen children, one more on the way — for some other day. For now, you had better . . .
Step 4: Get used to the world’s fugliest dresses.
Nuff said. Finally,
Step 5: Never take your eyes off the prize.
Back to El Manifesto:
2) Prairie Muffins are helpmeets to their husbands, seeking creative and practical ways to further their husbands’ callings and aid them in their dominion responsibilities.
‘Dominion’ is a code word for Dominionism. Read what Wikipedia has to say about Dominionism, or be content with my nutshell definition:
Reactionary evangelical Christian philosophy that encourages adherents to impose their moral code on the rest of us.
You know, like Alberto Gonzalez going after pornographers. That sort of thing.
Yes, I know I’ve been ignoring the guys out there. I don’t know about you, but this Muffin movement creeps me out. Maybe some guys like their women all covered in flour from 9 to 5 and screaming for fertilization from 6 to 8, practicing their sperm-retaining yoga a la Julianne Moore in The Big Lebowski, quilting and crafting and diapering and shit, but as for me, I like a woman with teeth.
Tomorrow:
D.
Intelligent design meets the Hanukkah lobster
Poor Mrs. Heimburger. What do you do when the smallest first grader in your class has the biggest mouth? She couldn’t get it through my skull that she had twenty-three other kids to watch over (yeah, class sizes were that small back then). God bless her, she tried her best to let me be me: the constant center of attention.
Come Christmas time, my big mouth got me into trouble. I told Mrs. Heimburger I was Jewish and didn’t celebrate Christmas. She invited me to the front of the class to tell everyone the story of Hanukkah.
Uh-oh. I didn’t know jack about Judaism, but she didn’t know that.
Like Odysseus, I was a man (well — kid) who was never at a loss. I took the front of the classroom and for the next several minutes held forth on the miracle of the Hanukkah lobster. (That’s not a mound of spinach on his head; it’s a yarmulkeh.)
When those kids eventually learned the story of Hanukkah, they must have realized I was talking out of my ass. I like to think I helped foster a healthy degree of skepticism in each and every one of them.
That’s why we should be teaching “intelligent design” in our schools. If we only teach the truth, how will kids ever recognize the lies? Worse still, they’ll never perceive the lies which are commonly taught in the American classroom, such as: the Californian Missions helped Native Americans; Manifest Destiny was a good thing; the Civil War was fought to free the slaves.
Here’s an idea: let’s teach critical thinking skills to our kids. And let’s begin by teaching them the difference between tenets of faith and scientific hypotheses. Let’s give them the tools they need to see “intelligent design” for what it is: a flabby attempt to dress up religious belief in scientific clothing.
Class motto: Doubt Everything.
Class mascot: the Hanukkah lobster.
D.
PS: I’m not the only person who wants his crazed beliefs taught in the classroom. Thanks to Kate Rothwell’s blog for pointing to the Flying Spaghetti Monster website. And this bloke is way ahead of me in marketing: check out his Cafe Press line of products, too.
the number-driven life
Each morning when I sit behind the wheel of my car, I look at the odometer and do two things. First, I check to see what kind of poker hand I have. Second, I ask myself whether I will, today, drive through a palindrome.
You know palindromes: numbers or words that read the same forwards as backwards, like “Ah, Satan sees Natasha,” or 34643. Why should I care about a palindromic odometer reading? Why do I have an instant of irrational worry if, after dictating an operative note, the service tells me I’ve just dictated #341790?
Superstition, you’ll tell me, is fundamentally irrational. You might as well ask why I keep a hunk of wood in my pocket so that I’ll always have something to knock on. (That’s a joke. Not a good one, admittedly, but I’d rather you not think me a full bowl of Fruit Loops.)
I’ll cop to the knocking-on-wood being irrational. But the numbers? Baby, that’s in the blood.
Imagine eleven-year-old me: a good-hearted, believing bar mitzvah-in-training, though not too good-hearted. Actually, I was a surly little bastard who resented the fact that all these Arcadians in my class were a full socioeconomic level above me, and they never let me forget it. Surliness is next to godliness (what, you never heard that one?) so my teachers (who inevitably pronounced my name Dog) frequently sent me to the library to, you know, soak up some Proverbial wisdom. That’s where I discovered Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, and through it, gematria.
Forget the Bible Code. The Jews got there a couple thousand years ahead of you guys. We’ve been crunching sentences into phrases, phrases into words, words into numbers, and numbers into even smaller numbers, because — and I’m sure of this one — we’re not content to accept God’s word at face value. You know that Biblical literalist bumper sticker, “God wrote it, I believe it, That ends it”? The Orthodox Jewish version would be, “God wrote it, now let’s figure out what he really meant.”
The only thing I remember from The Chosen was the gematria — the way the rabbi wowed his Hasidic congregation with wild feats of numerical prestidigitation. If I remember correctly, someone comments to the protag that the rabbi’s math is all wrong, but no one ever cared. And, the funny thing was, I didn’t care either, because the idea of parsing the Torah into numbers that had meaning struck me as unbearably attractive.
I invite you now to delve into that wellspring of knowledge which has given a spiritual enema to Britney Spears, Demi Moore, and (the archetype of all Judaically born-again celebs*) Madonna: kabbalah. For gematria is, in fact, the mathematics of kabbalah. Here’s that website again: The Art of Gematria.
So: is this stuff really in my blood, or did it merely get its teeth into me during my impressionable youth? I’m not sure. What I know — what I feel — is that numbers have a life beyond the abstract; that numerical functions have a foothold in reality that goes way beyond their graphical representation; that when we look at the world around us, we see a mathematical universe, or would see it, if only our senses didn’t lie.
D.
*Sammy Davis doesn’t count. As far as I know, he really did become Jewish.
Paging Miss Manners
Have I mentioned my raging crush on Olivia Hussey?
‘Twas Olivia’s Juliet (in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet) who first made my heart race. How, how could she speak words of love to that pasty-faced, mealy-mouthed Leonard Whiting? Let’s just say I’ve gotten very good at squeezing my eyes shut during Whiting’s stage time. Also, I’ve developed a preternaturally good sense of timing during the balcony scene, allowing me to unstop my ears for Juliet’s, “Swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon.”
Juliet was a sweetie, but it was Olivia’s Mary who won my eternal love.
Here, I was going to run off at the mouth about how Romeo and Juliet is Juliet’s tragedy, and Jesus of Nazareth is Mary’s tragedy; but then I realized I don’t know crap about Romeo and Juliet, nor do I know much about Christianity. Sure, I read the Gospels in college, just to prove a point to Weyton Tam (a high school friend who was certain I’d convert if I read the New Testament), but when you get right down to it the story doesn’t stick to me. I’m sure I’ll get the details wrong — on R&J as well as Testament II — and I’ll have to fall back on that WEAK excuse, “It’s my blog and these are my opinions, even if they are based on my imperfect memory of the facts.”
Well, I don’t need anyone’s help to make me look like a fool, least of all my own.
So instead of drawing ill-advised parallels between Mary and Juliet, I’m going to change the subject and ask your advice on a tangentially related matter.
A patient called in a few days ago, asking for medication for a recurring problem. I phoned in a prescription for the same medications I’ve used in the past — the same ones which have helped her repeatedly — and I had my receptionist squeeze her into the schedule ASAP. Today.
“Hi!” I said. “How are you feeling?”
Her boyfriend, she said, took her to his pastor, who “laid on hands and healed me”. (Mind you, she’d started the medications the day I phoned them in.) As I proceeded to examine her and pronounce her well, she said, “Oh, thank you, Jesus. Praise Jesus. Thank you Jesus.”
I kept a civil tongue. “Whatever works,” I said.
“Have you been saved?”
Not even a I hope you don’t mind my asking but. There it was, in my lap; and you know, I’m tired of saying, “I’m Jewish,” only to be told condescendingly, “Oh, you people are very close to God,” or, “The people of the Book! How fortunate for you!” How good for me, even if I am going to hell.
Instead, I stupidly went for the funny line. (And it wasn’t even all that funny.)
“Trust me, I’m beyond salvation.”
I might as well have bent over.
“Oh, Dr. Hoffman, no one’s too late for salvation. Never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever.” You get the point.
But, honestly, what am I supposed to say? I’m a Jew (even if I am agnostic, which my rabbi says is perfectly okay — I have a Jewish ethos, and that’s all that matters. Hey, he’s Reformed). I don’t believe in salvation, the divinity of Christ, the resurrection, heaven, or hell. I’m unconvinced as to the historicity of Christ. I appreciate the Christian philosophy as embodied in the Sermon on the Mount, but that’s as far as it goes. If I were forced to convert, like one of my conversos ancestors, I’d become a Jeffersonian Christian.
I’m sure there’s a correct answer to my question. Much of Miss Manners’ book is devoted to polite responses to rude questions. I’ve even read an earlier edition of her book, but — and I know I mentioned this recently — I have a memory like a sieve.
Maybe next time someone asks if I’ve been saved, I should say, “Yes, thank you very much; the Archfiend Himself has drawn my blood, and I have signed my name upon his parchment; yea, I walk with Belial, with Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies; I cavort with the Prince of Light and Darkness, the Foul Redeemer, the Monarch of Hell; and he has cleft me with his member, cold as winter’s ice, and left his mark upon me. How about you?”
I mean, if I’m going to be funny, I might as well be funny.
D.