Shatner does Moses

We knew someone would step in to fill the shoes of Charleton Heston. But .... Captain Kirk?

It's too late for Passover, but you can hear William Shatner's unique vocal stylings as he reads passages from the book of Exodus and the Passover Haggadah, accompanied by the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra playing music from Exodus: An Oratorio In Three Parts.

Didn't know Shatner was Jewish? All four of the Star Trek and Boston Legal star's grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. So he's got street cred for this role.


You can listen to clips from the opus here.

(Via Jewcy.com)

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Beastie: Can any good come out of Idaho?

Forget about political gaffes, missteps and the fickleness of the polls. We can all relax. The election's already decided.

Zodiac vodka has determined America's next president by comparing the astrological signs of past election winners.

(The zodiacal "signs" link people's birth dates to star "constellations" that many claim can be seen out in the country, in the desert or from the deck of a cruise ship. Good Christians are already in bed by that time, anyway, so I wouldn't know.)

FYI-- It's Obama. The company's press release [slightly suspect because it was released April 1] was triumphant:

"ZODIAC Vodka, a luxury potato vodka handcrafted and distilled in Idaho, USA, has concluded that the Leo Barack Obama, will defeat the Scorpio Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, as well as the Virgo John McCain in the general election.

"ZODIAC researched every major presidential contestant since Washington and Adams in 1789. Statistics were compiled for each of the twelve zodiac signs. The Leo/Scorpio match up in the Democratic Party heavily favors Obama. Leos have a 12-point advantage in the win percentage category, with Scorpio at 24 percent and Leo at 36 percent. Leo has never lost to a Scorpio. Scorpio, however, has lost to 11 of the 12 signs and has the greatest number of election losses, 16."

Uh, hey, watch it! ... I'm a Scorpio, that is if you don't take into account Ophiucus, in whose sign the sun actually sits on my birthday. (I've never seen that adequately explained, but never mind).

Zodiac’s methodology accurately predicted in January that John McCain would be the Republican nominee, so there you have it.

All the more reason for us to get back to calculating more important things, like the spiritual Sons of Belial lurking behind the Number of the Beast.

Come to think of it, Idaho is the last place anyone would think of finding the Antichrist. Or vodka, for that matter.

Hmm.

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Gird up your loins with the 'Carb-Load Seder'

Jewish marathon runners are in a quandary. This year, Passover begins just two days before the Boston Marathon April 21. The holiday's strict dietary rules mean Jewish runners can't eat bread and pasta, the normal staples in the days before the big race.

For Jonah Pesner, the answer is matzoh, the unleavened bread used in the Passover ceremony. Besides matzoh, Pesner plans to pound down foods such as potatoes during a rare "carb-load seder" the night before the race.

The "carb-load seder" might strike some as strange, but it sort of fits with the historical circumstances of the Exodus. The Jews had to high-tail it out of Egypt into the desert carrying all their stuff. Things went well until they hit "the wall," which for marathoners occurs about 20 miles into the race when the carbs run out, glycogen runs low, and the body starts burning fat instead.

For the Israelites, "hitting the wall" meant running into the Red Sea with Pharoah's chariots closing in fast. Something had to give. For Moses & Co. it took a miracle. For some of the Jewish marathoners, it simply means breaking the religious restrictions. One Jewish runner says he'll eat some oatmeal and maybe a bagel on race day.

"It's not like I've been perfect in my religious beliefs. I'm beyond that," he said.

The question he needs to ask is: What would Charleton Heston do?


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Et ne nos inducas in sputum

This week's religious "people person" award will have to go to Rev. Dr. Tom Ambrose, 61, of St. Mary and St. Michael Church in Trumpington, England. The vicar was accused of spitting on his parishioners and exhibiting "arrogant, aggressive, rude, bullying, high-handed, disorganised and at times petty behavior."

The vicar denies the spitting part. "I do not spit and I never swear," he insists.

Apparently, Rev. Ambrose upset older parishioners by using slide shows instead of sermons and using so much incense in church that some worshippers felt sick. He was relieved of his post by his bishop after a tribunal investigated the charges.

As the good vicar should have realized, slide shows are just the first step on a slippery slope toward flash animations, youtube videos and God knows what else. Glad they caught it so early.

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Damn, dirty apes!

In memory of Charleton Heston's passing, I'd like to reprise a guest column contributed by Dr. Zaius, Minister of Science and Chief Defender of the Faith, that ran last summer.

"There is no contradiction between faith and science... true science. I think the sacred scrolls are clear on this. It may be more true now than ever. Man is a menace. A walking pestilence."

Dr. Zaius' entire article "Intelligent Design, Live Earth and the Shaping of Simian Behavior" can be read here.


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The use and misuse of numerology

The BBC ran a story today examining how entrepreneurs are using numerology to launch new businesses and further their careers:

When Samantha Roddick, the daughter of Bodyshop founder Anita Roddick, launched her business, she crunched numbers with her bank manager, her accountant - and her numerologist.

"When I pulled the whole team together, I just got everybody's numerology done," she says, describing how she used numbers to organize her new staff into efficient working groups.

"And then you just look at the overall numbers and how they interact. Ones are very ambitious, hard-working, career-centric, money-driven, Threes are very creative, as are Sixes. Fives, they're very apt to a lot of change."

But what about all those Six-Six-Sixes? That's something the article didn't discuss. A closer looks reveals the sad underbelly of this marriage of business and mysticism.

Face it, in most offices you'll find some employees whose names add up to 666, the dreaded Number of the Beast. In an office environment in which numerology reigns, these employees are shunted off to dark cubicles, given make-work tasks and kept off the upward career ladder. No one sits with them in the corporate cafeteria. Often they're even denied coffee privileges.

As a longtime leader in rooting out possible candidates for The Beast, I'd like to take a stand today for the little guy, the employee who is being discriminated against just because his or her numerological equivalent just doesn't pass muster according to some self-appointed, mystical number-crunching numerologist.

Numerology is a delicate affair. Circumstances, mood, current events, LDL cholesterol levels, all must coalesce in a carefully choreographed pattern, a dance enlivened by the music of the spheres. Employing this hidden power as a blunt instrument for financial gain is not only a travesty, but grounds for a lawsuit under the Equal Employment Opportunity laws that prohibit employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. (Numerological evaluation is implied).

And just who or what is this "BBC " anyway? I decided to turn the tables to test my hunch that this is just a "front" organization masking a ploy to bring in the worldwide reign of the Antichrist.

Flipping on the Beastie Machine, I entered the broadcaster's well known moniker, "BBC." It totaled only 104, nowhere near 666, the Number of the Beast. I admit, I was disappointed.

Then I tried the BBC's full name, "British Broadcasting Corporation." That was way too high at 1,863.

Next I pulled random associations out of the air: BBC News:, 460; BBC World Service, 960; the BBC's weird, foreign-looking domain url, bbc.co.uk, 230. And the BBC's dangerously one-worldy slogan, "Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation," 1,248.

This was going nowhere. But nothing worth doing is easy.

After a sleepless night of continuous nose-to-the-grindstone sleuthing, I paused. Was I ready to accept that my powers of interpretation were finally in decline? Could I confront retirement, rocking on the front porch with a cup of tea, watching helplessly as a world disintegrated before my eyes?

I went back to work with a new resolve.

"Heinous BBC Trust" produced an interesting twist-- 999, (i.e. 666, but flipped, perhaps indicative of a world turned upside down under the onslaught of the Beast).

Several hours later, I felt I was seriously closing in on my goal.

"Fiendish, unholy BBC" produced a total of 664-- tantalizingly close.

"Ghastly, bad, unholy and vile BBC" was a tad too much at 668.

Finally, I typed in "Spitefully bad BBC" and the Beastie Machine, almost exhausted, produced a sluggish whirring sound. The numbers popped up: 6-6-5.

Consulting my logarithmic tables, old sea charts and time-zone maps, I hoped that with a little tweaking, the numbers would actually add up to 666. And I was right!

Brilliant! as they say in old country. I've whacked off another sleazy noggin of the multi-headed Beast of Revelation.

But we should have known, really. What kind of TV network charges you a license fee just to own a television set?

A Communist one, that's what.


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Battlestar Gospelactica?

The first episode of the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica is titled "He that Believeth in Me" and was promoted with a publicity photo from the SciFi Channel that recreates Leonardo DaVinci's The Last Supper masterpiece. What the frak is that all about?

I plan to find out tonight.

Beastie: Sticky-tab Spirituality

Followers of a spiritual group called Summum want to add their "Seven Aphorisms" to a Ten Commandments display in a park in Pleasant Grove, Utah.

Summum (as in summum bonum, Latin for "the greatest good") adheres to the teachings of the Gnostic Gospels and promotes... mummification. They believe Moses received two sets of stone tablets on Mount Sinai -- one inscribed with the usual Commandments, the other containing seven divine principles: psychokinesis (the power of the mind to control objects), correspondence, vibration, opposition, rhythm, cause and effect, and gender.

OK. This seems not only superfluous but tacky. Besides making a total of 17 things, a number that has no spiritual significance in any discipline, it might open the floodgates to sticky-tab spirituality. Next we'll be seeing extra blessings tacked on to the Sermon on the Mount, like "Blessed are the mummies, for they shall leave well enough alone" or some such thing. Really, do we want constant tinkering with our established cliches?

In a previous post, I rambled on about launching my mortal remains to the lunar surface. The Summum group has a more down-to-earth approach--mummification. The practice "assists the progression of one's essence," they claim.

"Some decisions are too important to leave to anyone else. Modern mummification is available through funeral homes worldwide. Please have your local funeral home contact us to begin making arrangements."

There's even a creepy "kids" version of the website featuring a character called Mummy Bear.

"In 26,486 BCE, a small, fluffy, bear is born in Atlantis. His name is Ankh Amon...."

Children are supposed follow his adventures and learn the origins of mummification. (The label on the bear's downloaded image says his name is actually Verne. Hmm).

All this got me to thinking--could the Antichrist himself be lurking within these web pages? I wheeled out the Beastie Machine, poured a cup of java and started entering cryptic phrases to send through the gematria converter.

"Bad old Mummy Bear Verne" totaled only 634, not quite 666, the fabled Number of the Beast mentioned in the Book of Revelation.

The rest of the afternoon was spent crossing off adjectives that didn't quite capture the slippery, demonic little furball. (I guess his essence kept progressing or something).

Finally I typed in "bad dead zombie Mummy Bear Verne" and punched the red button. The gears screeched as the numbers popped up in the viewscreen: "6-6-7."

Close enough for the Acrostic Gospels. Summum Bonum, ipso facto, ex libris, ecce homo.


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