going to hell
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10:06 am
Wednesday
May 24
Shalom in the Home
filed under: going to hell
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I don’t remember who mentioned that TLC show to me but I finally remembered to add it to my Tivo list the other day. I got a chance to watch it yesterday and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
It’s fun to watch Cody learn about things like what Shalom means and the JCC. While I did grew up in the South (Shalom, Ya’ll!) I also grew up in a neighborhood with a fairly large Jewish population. I swam at the JCC for years when I was little. I remember going to see Fiddler on the Roof there. In high school I got the radio deejay job because my friend Paige was in Israel for the summer. My second serious boyfriend was Jewish. I came *this close* to converting and a lot of what he was reading at the time combined with the Catholic boarding school I’d gone to my freshman year made me really start to examine organized religion and how I felt about it. So the idea that Cody’d never heard of the JCC until after he met me is so weird!
So back to Shalom in the Home. The episode I watched was about the lesbian couple with the two daughers. I thought it was particularly cool that the daughters had the same mother and had been inseminated by sperm from the same anonymous donor so those girls are actual biological sisters. Not that a family isn’t a family if they’re not biologically linked. I just thought that was kind of neat. This was an interesting family. Both mothers were successful smart women and the daughters were clearly intelligent and creative. There was some stress but in the end the family had worked things out.
I think my favorite part was when Rabbi Shmuley (is that not the coolest name ever?) was very careful to explain that we are all God’s children and it’s not our place to judge any of his children. There are a lot of things I don’t like about organized religion but that’s the kind of accepting love in Judeo-Christianity I can always get behind.
So imagine my delight when the doorbell rang fifteen minutes ago and there was a woman on my front porch with her two children (roughly the ages of supergirl and superboy). The mother was holding a bible. My house is like a magnet for door to door sales but I hadn’t had anyone testifying for quite a while. I’d forgotten to put the “No soliciting” sign back up after Halloween but the sales calls have diminished over the years. Which is good because Cody is sleeping during the day and the doorbell and dog barking interrupts his sleep.
Weirdly my hundred pound dog clawing at the storm door didn’t even seem to phase her or her kids. I was mostly just confused that she wasn’t the UPS guy and she had such a look of compassion on her face that I didn’t have time to come up with a quick excuse. So she started talking about how one should look to the bible for comfort instead of paying attention to the depressing news (depressing because of sins of ommision and maybe warmongering by our elected leaders perhaps?) and talked about the promises of the world beyond. Specifically passages from the book of Matthew. I think people are free to believe in whatever they want but I’m not so crazy about having it peddled door to door or legislated into my life. It always seems to lose its sincerity by then. So I stood there and pet my dog. And looked at her kids who mostly looked hot and tired even this early in the day.
And I quoted what Rabbi Shmuley had said, which I think took her by surprise since clearly we had the messy yard and three headed dog of pagans. Then I told her that my husband is sleeping because he works nights but good luck to her. And she’s welcome to come back tonight when we’ll be roasting a goat and dancing nekkid around the yard. Ok, not that last part. But I didn’t offend anyone and I managed to quote a guy named Rabbi Shmuley and it isn’t even noon yet.
Shalom and Blessed Be, ya’ll!
1:15 am
Wednesday
Apr 13
Jesus Christ!
filed under: going to hell
1 Comment
If only this were a joke but this is from an actual screen shot of a real website. Looks like the Beverly Hills Teddy Bear Company plans to make some money on the surge in popularity of Christianity by using biblical figures and selected passages and incorporating them into an incredibly tacky toy. If I actually believed in this religion I would probably be insulted by it.
A few comments I can’t *not* make.
Why David? And why does he have a mullet?
I love Mary’s ghetto mod frosty lipstick and Wilma Flintstonesque dilated pupils.
Speaking of dilated pupils, does anyone else think Moses looks kind of like he’s been living in Jamaica and smoking a lot of pot while everyone else thought he was in the desert? Cody thinks his voice sounds just like James Earl Jones. “Luuuuuke..pass the dutchie from the left hand side”
Does anyone else doubt the liklihood of Jesus sporting his beard with a soul patch?
And what the fuck is with the Raiders of the Lost Ark poster style? Are we supposed to think about all those wacky scrapes Jesus and his whip got into while searching for his Daddy’s grail and dodging those pesky nazis? Dun de dunDUN dun de DUUUN.
I can’t help thinking about all the hate mail Kevin Smith got when he was making Dogma - a movie that, in the end, puts a lot of creedence in the concept of faith and divine love. 
Now seriously. Which is more insulting to Christianity? Buddy Christ or these action figures?
And I can’t pass up another opportunity to reference the Jesus Christ sports statues. Don’t forget kids: if you lose the game it’s because Jesus doesn’t love you.
8:42 am
Saturday
Feb 26
Sunrise Sunset
filed under: going to hell
1 Comment
new free online game is beta testing nice improvements on the original
I found some cute needle holders. I’ll knit but I won’t sew.
Fiddler on the Roof is on. I love this movie. It’s a part of my childhood. My parents had the broadway album and we had all kinds of big skirts and gypsy-looking clothes (a lot of it was old square dancing costumes from Nana I think) and I used to dress up and spin around in them. And I remember a stage production of it at the JCC in 76 or 78. Was my sister in it or just one of her friends?
We used to have a membership there and used the pool almost all summer. Their snowcones were like a berry gelato.
It’s very hard to describe the strong Jewish influences we grew up with in Birmingham. It’s not a community that people would associate with Alabama. But the neighborhood we lived in particularly had a very active community. Matzos in the cafeteria during passover. Learning the Dreidel song right along with The Twelve Days of Christmas. I came *this close* to converting at one point. But that was because of a boyfriend and I just don’t think religion should be based on whom you’re fucking. Just one of my crazy little ideas. It did start me on the idea that Christianity is not exactly for me which inspired a lot of reading and study about world religions and religious histories. Which I usually examine in a more sociological way than actually believing in any of it.
But as cynical as I am about a lot of organized religions, I keep a pretty healthy amount of respect for Judaism.
Anyway, I was just thinking about how the fiddler might represent God. Or Tevye’s imagination of God. Probably not a new concept but I hadn’t thought about it before.
That rayon boucle is evil for n00b knitters. I was getting extremely frustrated so today I started a cream colored stockingette scarf with hearts done in a seed stitch. It won’t be as cutesy country kitchen as it sounds but probably traditional enough to give to my mother-in-law for her belated birthday present.
6:17 am
Friday
Dec 10
Hello Creationists wherever you are.
filed under: going to hell
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Still clinging to the stubborn belief that we are not descended from animals? Go read this .
Or, since news sites can be kind of crappy with their archive links and I want to be able to read this again, you can read it here.
Gorillas hold ‘wake’ for group’s leaderGorillas last respects similar to human behavior
Wednesday, December 8, 2004 Posted: 10:34 AM EST (1534 GMT)
BROOKFIELD, Illinois (AP) — After Babs the gorilla died at age 30, keepers at Brookfield Zoo decided to allow surviving gorillas to mourn the most influential female in their social family.
One by one Tuesday, the gorillas filed into the Tropic World building where Babs’ body lay, arms outstretched. Curator Melinda Pruett Jones called it a “gorilla wake.”
Babs’ 9-year-old daughter, Bana, was the first to approach the body, followed by Babs’ mother, Alpha, 43. Bana sat down, held Babs’ hand and stroked her mother’s stomach. Then she sat down and laid her head on Babs’ arm.
“It was like they used to do in the exhibit, lying side by side on the mountain,” keeper Betty Green said. “Then Bana rose up and looked at us and moved to Babs’ other side, tucked her head under the other arm, and stroked Babs’ stomach.”
Other gorillas also approached Babs and gently sniffed the body. Only the silverback male leader, Ramar, 36, stayed away.
Keepers said the display wasn’t surprising.
“She was the dominant female of the group, the peacekeeper, the disciplinarian, the one who kept things in a harmonious state,” Pruett Jones said.
Koola, 9, brought her infant daughter, whom Babs had showered with attention since her birth in August.
“Koola inspected Babs’ mouth for a while, then held her baby close to Babs, like she loved to do the last couple months, letting Babs admire her,” Green said.
Babs had an incurable kidney condition and was euthanized Tuesday. Keepers had recently seen a videotape of a gorilla wake at the Columbus, Ohio, zoo and decided they would do the same for Babs. Gorillas in the wild have been known to pay respects to their dead, keepers said.
“I had a headache for the rest of the day after all the tears I cried watching them,” Green said.
