Beastie: Hillary back on the radar

The headlines were awash in apocalypse:
• Widespread power outages in South Florida,
• Norway Formally Opens Arctic Doomsday Seed Vault,
• Scientists Predict When World Will End,
• Starbucks to close all U.S. stores for three hours.

Shocking.

Politics continued to boil. Not yet recovered from the McCain thing, the public was treated to press scrutiny of a questionable land deal by Barack Obama, and a campaign donation from a British-Iraqi billionaire.

Reports from the world of science were even more disturbing. Arrogant, secular humanist technicians actually filmed an electron circling an atom! (These presumptuous "men of science" are no better than nano-scale paparazzi in my book. Curiosity killed Schrödinger's cat, guys--remember?)

I'm sure it's taking every bit of restraint God can muster not to vaporize us with a large lightning bolt, and I feel his pain.

Indeed, as I stared down into the swirling red depths of my half-consumed bottle of fizzy IZZE pomegranate juice--my only vice and itself a sign of my own increasing self-indulgence-- it seemed the world was teetering on the very cusp of oblivion.

I had been hesitating for months to employ the Weekly Beastie machine on political suspects. My previous investigation of John McCain and Barack Obama had left a bad taste in my mouth and a thin film of crud on Beastie that came off only with tincture of tea tree oil and elbow grease.

Still, the urgency of the times and the lateness of the hour were driving me to feed Hillary Clinton's name through a similar "trial-by-Beastie."

Luckily, the Beastie Machine was cleaned, serviced, tanned and rested. I could not, however, completely remove the irritating anti-creationist fish-with-legs bumper sticker somebody stuck on its rear end during our New Year's Eve party. I hate that kind of sophomoric humor.

Anyway, with trepidation and great reticence I typed in the simple words, "Hillary Clinton" and spun the start-up crank. A shudder, a chug and then nothing. I tried it several more times, but Beastie was choking on Hillary Clinton.

Going in a completely different mental direction, I typed in "I am woman hear me roar." This time I got a response, but the number was ridiculously high-- 791, nowhere near 666, the legendary number of The Beast from the Book of Revelation.

"Bilhillary Clinton" was closer at 576. Entering her real given middle name, "Hillary Diane Clinton," inched the number somewhat higher, to 598.

On a wild guess I typed in "Wellesley H. D. Clinton." The machine let loose a series of mysterious sounds not unlike the notes signaling the extraterrestrials in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and then spat out the number: 664.

This is usually close enough to call immediately, but the seriousness of the endeavor-- we were, after all, challenging the forces of wickedness and hideous perversity-- led me to try one more test.

Remembering a derogatory slang term from a Rush Limbaugh program I heard one time, I tapped in the phrase "Alpha Female Hilldebeastie." The machine whistled as the numbers appeared: 665.

After factoring in for stagflation and the percentage drop in the stock market ticker that day, the message was unmistakable. A hair's breadth away from 666 is close enough for theological work.

Hillary was back on my radar.


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McCain, nip this rumor in the bud!

As I was driving home from work the other day, dodging falling satellite debris and listening to NPR, I heard a rumor that I hope was a mistake.

Since Condoleeza Rice has said she definitely won't serve as John McCain's black/woman running mate, some fool suggested the name of charismatic and successful televangelist Creflo Dollar.

Sure, I can understand the desperate reasoning. On the surface it looks like a brilliant political move.

One: He's black.
Two: He shores up Religious Right support.
Three: He's a capitalist, free market entrepreneur.
Four: McCain's fundraising problems would be over. Forever.

McCain has been bickering with Barack Obama about their pledge to use the federal matching funds program. Then McCain sort of decided to opt out himself. Creflo Dollar would make that whole argument go away. There would be no need for fund raising at all. The money would just pour in from heaven.

Example: Dollar's Georgia headquarters church building, the $18 million World Dome, was constructed without any bank financing at all.

Having Creflo's super-hot wife Taffy (and her 2008 Virtuous Woman Conference) on the ticket would blunt questions about McCain's relationship with a possibly non-virtuous female lobbyist.

Dollar's ministry is undergirded by more than a million "partners" who support him with a monthly "pledge." This army of supporters would impressively swell the numbers of McCain's campaign worker bees for the duration of the campaign.

No longer would McCain get in trouble for flying around on lobbyists' airplanes. Dollar has two jets, a Gulfstream-3 valued at $5.3 million and a Gates LearJet valued at nearly $1 million, to put at the service of the campaign. They're sort of magical planes, too. "Every time I step out of my plane, devils better get outta the way," Dollar says. That could come in handy during a campaign filled with dirty tricks and innuendo.

McCain could even borrow Dollar's vapid ministry slogan, "Solutions for Change, Understanding for Life," undercutting Obama's own vapid campaign theme.

McCain might also want to incorporate some of Creflo Dollar's theological ideas. The Prosperity Gospel philosophy might allow big government to shrink, with most of the funding for the poor taken over by God himself rather than draining government coffers. "The Bible makes it so very clear," Dollar told Business Week magazine. "Preach the Gospel to the poor. What's the Gospel to the poor? You don't have to be poor anymore! "

Now that's a proposal that could cut across racial, class and party lines.

This would also solve a few problems for Creflo Dollar. Sen. Grassley can't really investigate you for tax fraud if you're Vice President of the United States.

But think about the downside. Dollar is a sleazy, money-grubbing heretic who sucks the life out of the most vulnerable in society.

(Come to think about it, he'd probably make a better politician than pastor).

Let's just hope cooler heads prevail.

(Thanks to Jeff Johansen for his keen political insight and help on this article)

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How rood! Crucifixion nails for sale?

Three of the nails used to crucify Christ are for sale on the French eBay site for 10,000 euros.

If genuine, these suckers have done a lot of traveling.

Tradition says the Holy Nails were discovered by Constantine’s mother, the Empress Helena, about 300 years after the Crucifixion. ( See Skippy at the Kimbell: Where's the Cross?).

According to legend, one nail was tossed into the Adriatic to calm a storm. The other two were used by the Empress to protect her son. One was placed in his crown and another formed into a bridle for his horse, bringing to pass what had been written by Zecharias the Prophet: "In that day that which is upon the bridle of the horse shall be holy to the Lord" (Zechariah 14:20).

But that's just one of several traditions about the nails.

The French seem to have been the busiest collectors of the nails over the centuries, so it makes sense that they would be on sale at the French eBay site.

A Holy Nail was embedded in the celebrated Lance of Longinus, also known as the the Spear of Destiny, which by tradition pierced the side of Christ. Its tip was said to contain a nail or nails from the crucified Christ's hands and feet. Charlemagne kept the tip of the lance in the hilt of his famous sword, Joyeuse, according to The Song of Roland. The lance was an object of political and religious authority in Europe for more than a thousand years. It has also inspired several mediocre novels and even a video game.

Hitler put so much stock in the spear's occult powers that he made special arrangements to take possession of it when he gained control of the Schatzkammer imperial treasury in Vienna. At the end of the war, it was recovered and returned there by Gen. Patton. You can see the lance on display there today.

So now, apparently, the Holy Nails are all for sale... on eBay?

I'll start the bidding off with a used foil gum wrapper, but my "buyer rating" isn't very high. I'm sure Pope Benedict has a guy with an unlimited Visa card whose only job is to scan eBay all day long looking for bargain relics just like these.

He's probably already snapped 'em up.

(via Boing Boing)

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Crowns of thorns and jewels, Part III

(This post appeared first as Skippy at the Kimbell: Where's the Cross? at www.wittenburgdoor.com)

The first Christian "art" must have been the fish symbol that believers could trace in the sand to covertly identify themselves and then immediately erase. (This reminds me of the intricate sand drawings by Tibetan monks, which are also eventually erased. Both show the transitory nature of this world).

Over the centuries Christian art evolved into mysterious icons, then magnificent cathedrals, and currently has exploded into a variety of media including Contemporary Christian Rock, Veggie Tales, fish bumper stickers and Thomas Kinkade.

One question grew as I walked through the Kimbell Art Museum's excellent exhibit Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art . Where was the cross?

You have to navigate through several rooms filled with early Christian art before you find what has become the dominant symbol of Christianity. The earliest Christians apparently were still freaked out by crucifixion. After all, it was a death that could happen to any of them, and it was horrible, excruciatingly painful and usually reserved only for political rebels and the basest criminals. The cross evoked shame. Using the cross as a public symbol would have been a public relations disaster for the earliest believers.

Still, the cross was used by early Christians occasionally in seals and certain manuscripts. Tertullian mentions marking the cross on the forehead as a talisman against evil, but this also could have been taken from Ezekiel Chapter 9, in which a "mark" (the Hebrew letter tau or a cross) is written on believers' foreheads as protection against God's wrath.

Constantine had seen a "cross of light" in his vision before the battle of the Milvian Bridge-- the chi-rho symbol of a cross with the top bent round. He put the sign on all his soldiers' shields. After he became emperor, he ordered construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where his mother Helena "discovered" the true cross under some rubble. In 341 A.D Constantine outlawed crucifixion as a means of execution. The horror of the cross began to fade in the popular imagination. Soon, it was off to the races. Only a few years later, manuscripts begin to record the veneration of the cross.

By the end of the fourth century the paradoxical "jeweled cross" became popular among those who could afford it. This contradiction would have boggled the mind of a first-century follower of Jesus.

Christ hanging on the cross was not depicted until the end of the fifth century, but even then he was triumphant, with eyes open and no sign of suffering. It wasn't until the ninth century that Byzantine art began to show Christ with eyes closed, possibly reflecting a theological focus on the mystery of his death.

One of the last pieces displayed in the Kimbell's exhibit is the Reliquary Cross of Justin II dating from about 570 A.D. Made with gilded silver over a bronze core, with inlaid gems, this is veritable amusement park of religious symbolism. Precious gems dangle from the arms of the cross. On the back are engraved images of the Emperor Justin and his wife Sophia with arms raised in praise.


Why all the razzle-dazzle? According to the accompanying notes on the piece, "Under threat from barbarian invaders, the emperor was sending a message that he would provide protection with Christ's own authority."

Thus a new art form was born that in future centuries would be honed to perfection--rulers using Christian symbols to send political messages.

All I could think of when I saw this jeweled cross in the center of the room was the Trinity Broadcasting set of Paul and Jan Crouch and the phrase "over the top."

This piece is described as "reliquary" because inside is a compartment meant to contain a piece of the true cross. The compartment is now empty.

Could the Kimbell exhibit's centerpiece be a comment on the state of modern Christianity-- all razzle-dazzle and no cross?

Let's hope not.


Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art runs through the end of March.

(I discussed the exhibit previously in Part I and Part II).

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Beastie: In the year 2012...

Liz Smith, the creaking gossip columnist for the New York Post, writes in her Feb. 19 column that (shock!) many people on the Internet are predicting the end of the world.

Apparently, she's missed most of our Weekly Beastie columns. But we can only applaud her tardy alert.

"There's the Mayan calendar that sets Dec. 21, 2012, as the end of the world. This is backed up by theories on the Great Pyramid, in the I Ching, various Hindu teachings, Nostradamus and, of course, the biblical version of the apocalypse."

Now, I was not aware that the Book of Revelation touched on the Mayan predictions about the year 2012. But I decided to investigate.


First, of course, I googled "Mel Gibson." His two latest films, The Passion of the Christ and Apokalypto, seem to cover the territory completely.

Sure enough, things are already starting to crumble for Mel. He's being sued for $5 million by the screenwriter for The Passion. The guy claims he was only paid $75,000, and Gibson told him the film would be a small, $4-7 million project. Instead, the 2004 movie went on to gross several hundred million dollars.

Gee, I certainly hope Mr. Gibson doesn't have to go back to living in that dilapidated compound from the Road Warrior set.

Anyway, the news reports were beginning to line up, sort of like the Jupiter Effect. Scientists just discovered a "devil toad" fossil. And I also noticed that the Pentagon's plans to shoot down a failing satellite coincided with an eerie, red lunar eclipse, the last one until 2010 (!) Could Liz be on to something?

It was time to wheel out the Beastie machine, the intelligent toaster/foodprocessor containing a non-standard motherboard and certain upgrades and attachments that I've been using to delve into the occult mysteries of numerology.

The "answer" is never the problem with this machine. Asking the right question is the key.

I typed in "Liz Smith" while holding down the default solipsism button and flipping the sysop switch. (You're right, it sounds hard, because it is hard).

The machine whirred, paused, blinked and then belched. "Liz Smith" = 411. Darn! Nowhere near 666, the mystical number of the Beast revealed in the biblical Book of Revelation.

I next tried the nickname that New York magazine had given her: "Liztradamus." The machine whirred again. No luck-- that only registered as 606. Close, but ....

I tried to guess the secret magical moniker she probably uses in ceremonies of hideous blasphemy: "Botox Liztradamus" was too high, at 677. "ApokaLiztradamus" was way too much at 706.

You know, seriously? My Beastie Machine and I are getting tired of these dark nights of the soul, calculating deep into the wee hours with no recognition and the weight of the future of the planet riding on our shoulders. OK, the machine doesn't really have shoulders, that's merely an anthro..., popo... amphibli... uh, well, it's making it seem human when it's not, at any rate. Poor little guy.

In despair, I felt universal doom pressing in on us from all sides. I repeatedly banged my head against Beastie's metal casing. It hurt.

Wait! That's it! Doom!

I typed "Lizzie the old doomsayer" into the exhausted Beastie Machine and flipped the switch. After a couple of major disk errors, a bluescreen and a whirling beach ball of death, the machine regained it's composure and spit out the number: 666.

Thank God. Humanity was saved again from a demonic menace, and I could get back to more mundane calculations, like counting down to the new season of Battlestar Galactica.


[Interested science buffs can always check Beastie's calculations against the ancient Hebrew gematria calculator provided at The Order of Nazorean Essenes website]

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Crowns of Thorns and Jewels, Part II

In an earlier post, a bishop's stolen headgear got me thinking about the definition of art, the place of the artist in the body of Christ and the meaning of creativity.

So as I walked around the Kimbell Art Museum's excellent exhibit Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, I wondered --is this really the earliest Christian art?

What about some guy who was whittling a stick into the shape of a dove while Peter was preaching a sermon? That would be art as an act of devotion. Where are those everyday equivalents to the mother goddess carvings that seem to be scattered around every neolithic village they excavate? Where are portraits or even remembrances of the face of Jesus? Or portraits of the apostles?

Not only are there no contemporary portraits of the leading figures of the early church, no one even attempted them, apparently, until a couple of centuries after the fact.

They either didn't exist or were ground to bits by the mill wheel of time. In fact, by "earliest," the exhibit means those pieces that were guarded and survived the persecutions, earthquakes, invasions and neglect of the centuries, either by chance, by design or by providence. If you acknowledge Christians could have been creating art soon after the crucifixion, there is a gap of about a century and a half before the earliest extant works. Even longer until this ceiling fresco, (above) c. 320 A.D. from the Coemeterium Maius (the large cemetery) near the Catacomb of Priscilla in Rome, or the ivory plaque (below) from the mid fifth century.

We know the first Christians were creative. Worship music was being composed right from the start-- a couple are set down for us in the New Testament. The Apostle Paul mentions "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" as part of the earliest worship liturgy. These were mostly texts from the Old Testament, but brand new ones are recorded, too. There's no mention of painting, sculpture, mosaics or murals.

Several reasons for this are put forward in the exhibit's explanatory notes. I got a cramp scribbling them all down and then found out they have a book about the whole exhibit by guest curator Jeffrey Spier.

What the early Christian artists needed and didn't have was a rich patron. Art generally needs a sugar daddy to supply materials and support, Spier explains. Durable artworks couldn't be commissioned until Christianity was strong enough to include wealthier members who would pay for items that could be decorated with biblical images.

Next, there was a little thing called idolatry. The Jewish scriptures have a severe prohibition against idolatry, expanded by the Rabbis to include any artwork that might lead one's mind in that direction. This was strongest in Judea. It was only after Christianity had separated from its Jewish roots that those prohibitions were loosened or reinterpreted. At least that's the theory. Other experts insist that Jews were decorating their synagogues with murals and mosaics containing all manner of human and animal figures. But those examples were from outside of Judea, or after the first century, or both.

Another possible reason for the gap? The apocalyptic dimension of the kingdom Christians were proclaiming meant that this world-- including its artwork, architecture and social institutions--was slated for a drastic and fiery makeover.

Clement of Alexandria (150-215 A.D.) gives us the first documented mention of Christian art:

“And let our seals by either a dove, or a fish, or a ship running with a fair wind, or musical lyre, which Polycrates used, or a ship’s anchor, which Seleucus had engraved; and if the seal is a fisherman, it will recall the apostle, and the children drawn out of the water. For we are not to depict the faces of idols, we who are prohibited from attaching ourselves to them, nor a sword, nor a bow, since we follow peace, nor drinking cups, since we are temperate. Many of the licentious have their homosexual lovers engraved, or prostitutes, as if they wished to make it impossible ever to forget their erotic passions, by being continually reminded of their licentiousness.”

So, Christian porn was off limits! Clement apparently was not advocating creating new symbols, but explaining how to choose from among the many symbols already widely in use for Roman document seals, so that Christians could engage in business without endorsing pagan ideas. This passage is really about re-interpreting pagan symbols. A fish was a fish to a Roman. To a Christian it reflected the Greek acrostic ichthys, "Jesus Christ Son of God."

The earliest works in the Kimbell's exhibit are reproductions, because they couldn't ship the ancient sites to Fort Worth. They're 18th century watercolor copies of catacomb paintings decorating the secret underground places where Christians gathered to worship and bury their dead--for instance, the Catacombs of Domitilla and of Peter & Marcellinus in Rome, around 350 A.D. And they are mesmerizing.

The unnamed original artists don't rank with Michaelangelo. But considering the persecutions that led them to meet in hiding, these paintings--even secondhand-- exhibit a raw energy simply from the fact they were created at all.

The most eye-opening aspect of the exhibit is the subject matter: Jesus is depicted many times as a short-haired, beardless Good Shepherd with a lamb slung over his back. We expect the accompanying fish symbol and the dove, but an anchor? What's with that? Old Testament images dominate, but they're not always the stories we'd choose today. Jonah, for instance, is depicted all through the exhibit's works, not just being swallowed by the big fish, but relaxing under the gourd.

Why? Perhaps because the book of Jonah was one of the readings for the Jewish Feast of Yom Kippur, and Jesus himself made the connection between his death and resurrection and Jonah's three days in the belly of a whale.

The Good Shepherd image, surprisingly, was not biblical. It was taken directly from a traditional and popular pagan image reproduced throughout the Empire. The ring from the late third century (shown above) is deciphered as Christian only because of the dove in the tree and the initials I H C X, an abbreviation for Jesus Christ.

As Spier explains it,

“Christian artists were able to appropriate this figure and invest it with purely Christian significance. Jesus explicitly stated: ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep’ (John 10:11), and this passage was surely uppermost in the minds of Christians of the third and fourth centuries when they employed the image on their seal rings, gold glass cups, baptisteries, and tombs."

Christians have been appropriating pagan cultural symbols, celebrations and architecture ever since, for good or ill. Some catacombs even have figures of Orpheus mixed in with biblical images. In fact, co-opting what's popular in secular society has today almost supplanted originality in every aspect of Christian media, but that's another story.

The earliest datable instance of the Good Shepherd motif may be the clay lamp (shown above) from the Florentius workshop made in the early third century. It also depicts Noah’s ark and assorted animals. A stamp on the underside identifies the workshop as Florentius, in or near Rome, which produced many lamps with pagan symbols, Spier says. Apparently much of Christian art, once it got rolling, may not have been produced by Christian hands at all. It might have been merely commissioned from a pagan artisan by a Christian, who requested the particular symbols and decorations. So, is it still Christian art? At some point, people stopped caring.

After all, if Kris Kristofferson can sing Jesus was a Capricorn, definitions are out the window.

The exhibit runs through the end of March.

Next time: What happened when Christianity became legal, then dominant, and finally produced the holy relic only Paul and Jan Crouch could love?

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Assud the cowardly lion

Hamas' new children's TV show host is a Jew-eating bunny! This would normally be funny, in a Borat kind of way, but it's not satire. Its, um, real. Watch the video clip and let the creepiness wash over you.

When we last visited the Palestinian children's show Pioneers of Tomorrow, the star was Farfur the Mouse. He was killed by an Israeli soldier. Farfur was succeeded by Nahoul the Bee. But Nahoul got sick and died when he couldn't get to Egypt for medical attention because of the Israeli blockade of Gaza. In the latest segments, Nahoul has been replaced by Assud the Bunny.

Assud and his diminutive little girl co-host chat about their willingness to be martyrs for the homeland and rid the Al-Aqsa mosque of the "filth of the Jews." Then a listener calls to ask Assud, whose name means "Lion," why he isn't called simply "Rabbit."

"Because a rabbit is not good. He's a coward. But I, Assud, will get rid of the Jews, Allah willing, and I will eat them up, Allah willing, right?"

Right? Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't brainwashing children to blow themselves up by killing innocent civilians fit into the "cowardly" definition somewhere?

But don't worry about the cowardly "lion." If the show follows its trajectory, Assud will die soon. That's how these uplifting Hamas scripts always end.


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The stump speech we'll never hear

[As music of the rock anthem Cum On Feel The Noize by Slade slowly fades]

Thank you all for your energy and support! I look out on this crowd of supporters tonight and see, not just a dazzling diversity of races, ages, genders and classes, but a whole stadium full of people who think just like I do, in lockstep with my agenda. I love that. We certainly don't want any divergent ideas spoiling our celebration, do we?

And yes, you all turned out in record numbers to support our platform of transformation of this country into a nation that will bend to my will. And I'm going to let you know what that is soon, very soon. But for a moment let's just exult in the magic of being together and united by the exhilaration that drives out reasoned thinking and logical questioning. It's actually pretty fun.

You have worked diligently for months canvassing neighborhoods, calling and buttonholing your friends and even perfect strangers in support of our campaign. Most of you are volunteers. I have listened to your complaints about government, your desires for change in Washington and your opinions on policy issues. And I will incorporate your concerns into our program. But I will listen even more carefully to those who donated large amounts of cash to keep this drive going. That's only natural, don't you agree?

My vision for America is based on the values and aspirations we all share. Liberty, equality and peace, among others. I also have my own idiosyncratic take on many of these values that you will slowly and with horror come to realize months and years into my presidency. Don't worry, you'll get used to them. (You'd better, if you want to stay on my team).

And let's not let this moment pass without thanking the Lord of your choice, that Higher Power who has been overseeing our cause from the first. He or She is ever faithful to take particular and almost unbelievably minute interest in every single aspect of our campaign. Let's give God a clap offering right now! (We can put the deity back into it's box after the inauguration).

Sadly, after we lay out our positive vision of America, we must talk about the evil we face, the dark shadow that would extinguish America's great light.

No, I'm not talking about foreign terrorists. I'm talking about my political opponents and their ilk, who would presumptuously vote against us at the polls, work against our programs in Congress and badger us in the media and in those detestable blogs and talk shows. Be assured that as we carry forward our policy of bipartisan progress and unity, we will try at every turn to cripple our political opponents and position ourselves for the next election. And remember, we do it all for you.

Surely the lesson of wise leaders through the ages is that every positive movement needs an evil scapegoat. Promoting paranoia helps, too. We promise to stoke that version of unreality at every opportunity.

Finally my friends, let us redouble our efforts to stifle the bad, old politics of the past and bring in the good old politics of the future. Let's get rid of politics as usual. But let's be sure that it remains politics, whether unusual, new-fangled or just revarnished.

Thank you and God bless.

[Cue recessional Won't Get Fooled Again by The Who]

For a milder version of an all-purpose political speech, listen to this 1895 address read by Scott Simon on NPR 's Weekend Edition. And here's a transcript and comment by a Princeton archivist.


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Forget St. Valentine. What about Adar?

Sure, Valentine's Day is coming up--despite opposition in Saudi Arabia, India and elsewhere.

But did you know we slipped into Adar without even knowing it?

That's Adar, the Jewish month. It's considered the luckiest month in the Jewish calendar because it contains the feast of Purim.

The Talmud says, "Whoever enters Adar increases their level of joy." So... did you feel it?

This year contains a "leap month," creating both Adar I and Adar II . Confused? Jesus wouldn't have been.

The Faithhacker blog over at Jewcy.com points to a succinct explanation of lunar calendar stuff and why Jews just need an extra month sometimes:

On a 12 lunar month calendar, the month of Nissan, which is supposed to occur in the Spring, would occur 11 days earlier each year, eventually occurring in the Winter, the Fall, the Summer, and then the Spring again. To compensate for this drift, an extra month was occasionally added.

Got it now?

[Posted simply for your continuing edumacation]


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'Looking Good for Jesus' no more

The folks who brought us the "Wash Away Your Sins" line of bath products have finally stepped over the line, at least in Singapore.

A cosmetics line that extolls the virtues of "Looking Good for Jesus" has been pulled from stores in Singapore after some Roman Catholics complained the items were disrespectful.

"These products trivialize Jesus Christ and Christianity," Nick Chui, 27, one of the complainants, said. "There are also sexual innuendoes in the messages and the way Jesus is portrayed in these products."

Now those in search of "virtuous vanilla"-flavored lip balm and "Get Tight with Christ" hand and body cream will have to look elsewhere.

Granted, this is all in bad taste. But did anyone notice the business isn't secretly run by Richard Dawkins? They're only out for cheap laughs, not to trivialize Christianity. Blue Q also produces other novelty lines like "Let's Pretend I give a Shit" gum and "Cat Butts" air freshener.

I suppose PETA will be after them next.


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Filling that God-shaped hole

Now that Mitt Romney's dropped out of the primaries, we're left only with the Sturm und Drang of the Democratic contest for entertainment.

ABC's Senior National Correspondent Jake Tapper has two interesting posts on that topic. In one, he explains the biblical allusions in Huckabee's Super Tuesday speech – the widow's mite and the "small, smooth stone" from David and Goliath's battle, "in case you aren't the half of the country that automatically understands Biblical allusions."

Then he wonders at the messianic language used by Barack Obama followers. Quoting Obama supporter Kathleen Geier:

"Excuse me, but this sounds more like a cult than a political campaign. The language used here is the language of evangelical Christianity – the Obama volunteers speak of 'coming to Obama' in the same way born-again Christians talk about 'coming to Jesus.'...So I say, we should all get a grip, stop all this unseemly mooning over Barack, see him and the political landscape he is a part of in a cooler, clearer, and more realistic light, and get to work."

He also quotes Time columnist Joe Klein, who notes "something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism" he sees in Obama's Super Tuesday speech.

"We are the ones we've been waiting for," Obama said. "This time can be different because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different. It's different not because of me. It's different because of you."

Says Klein: "That is not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire. Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential."

And James Wolcott in Vanity Fair writes that "(p)erhaps it's my atheism at work but I found myself increasingly wary of and resistant to the salvational fervor of the Obama campaign, the idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria."

Actually this all seems to fit together.

Haven't the Democrats been looking or a counter balance to the values-voting evangelicals of the Religious Right? As Tapper points out, half the country is starved for meaningful spiritual allusions. Obama could fill that God-shaped hole in their hearts. A new messiah who, perhaps, gets "crucified" by defeat at the Democratic convention, could be the start of a powerful mythic storyline for secularists in need of a reason for being.

This will all last until Obama reveals himself as a mere mortal, which should come any day now. (See previous post on The Year of the Rat).


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The Year of the Rat Fink

Is it not fitting that the presidential race has really started rolling just as the Year of the Pig ends and the Year of the Rat begins?

According to Feng shui master Raymond Lo, quoted in an Agence France-Presse story, the rodent is seen as a "flower of romance," which means the year will stimulate romance, but also sex scandals.

(How would this be different from any other year?)

Lo says this year "will see the earth element sitting atop water, suggesting an outward solidity built on sliding foundations."

Uh-Huh. I can sort of sense that. Yeah.

Lee Sing-tong, a third-generation feng shui master, said there would be a big change in Hillary Clinton's health and career but that doesn't necessarily mean she will hold political power.

In contrast, Barack Obama, "has an in-born talent for leadership and is expected to be in an extraordinary political position in the next 10 years."

Crystal clear.

OK. We might all be hoping for a Ratatouille or even a Mrs. Fisby and the Rats of NIMH kind of Year of the Rat. I'd even settle or a Big Daddy Roth Rat Fink Year. But it could be a Willard version, or even -- horrors-- a year of the MAUS.

Brace yourselves. There's no cheese up this tunnel.


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The number of the candidates

Amid the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat during the Super Tuesday primaries, let's not forget some uncomfortable information provided recently by the Beastie Machine.

Some months ago, we examined Sen. Barack Obama for any hint of association with the Beast spoken of in the Book of Revelation:

First, notice the strangeness of his name. It sounds almost foreign. Sure enough, “Barack” means “blessed” in Swahili. And that's not all. It means the same thing in Arabic. Ditto in Hebrew. It is also a Sufi term referring to a sense of "divine presence" or "charisma."

Charisma? Uh-oh. Already he's sounding like a certain Carpathian character in those Left Behind books.

And we also took a hard look at Sen. John McCain. We found some disturbing facts. For instance:

The name "John McCain" has embedded within it the cursed appellation of history's first recorded murderer: Cain, the elder son of Adam and Eve.

In the case of both these candidates, we fed their names into our Beastie Machine and found the numerical values correspond closely with 666, the number of the Beast.

Don't worry. We'll examine the other candidates soon.

We post this merely as a public service announcement. Please return to your post-primary celebrations.

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Pancake flap upstages Super Tuesday

Well, IHOP would like to make you think so, anyway.

The pancake house chain was alarmed to discover that the 2008 Super Tuesday primaries were set for Feb. 5, a date that coincides with Shrove Tuesday — arguably the most important date in the pancake calendar!

(I didn't realize there was a pancake calendar, but then, why shouldn't every foodstuff have its own way of marking time?)

This isn't just a marketing gimmick for IHOP. Throughout the British Isles and in many other countries, the day before Ash Wednesday is commonly known as Pancake Day.

Ah, Pancake Day! In Ireland housewives run through town, each carrying a skillet with a large, very thin pancake. The idea is for the women to race to the finish line, tossing their pancakes as they run.

There's even a fertility angle. If the eldest unmarried daughter in a household is able to toss a pancake into the air and catch it again in the skillet, she will be married within a year. But if it doesn't flip or she drops it, she'll remain single.

See, this is what people did before Lost. Needless to say, the ladies of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary's "holy homemaking" graduate degree program would have this competition nailed.

In what is being billed as a compromise, IHOP says it will celebrate on Feb. 12 instead. Several state governors have agreed to proclaim Feb. 12 as "National Pancake Day." Lent, apparently, will proceed as usual despite the controversy.

To celebrate Shrove Tuesday, you can watch this video clip featuring an automated "confessional," even though the clip's been out for a while.

(Also, so sorry for the delay in finishing my review of the Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art exhibit. The subject got me pondering the definition and meaning of art itself, the place of the artist in the body of Christ, one thing led to another, and, well, when I've dug out from under all the research, I'll let you know what I've found out in Part II.)

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