Too bad I'm not available....

No responses yet-- so check it out:

Photo: I'm not including a photo. I'm sure this will cost me some points, but I hope I can make them up elsewhere on the form. It's sort of a bold move, don't you think? Kinda makes a statement about the impermanence of the flesh and the temporary nature of our physical existence. Besides, I never seem to show up in photos... or in mirrors. Hmm.

Age: 34-ish. (When we finally tracked down my mom, she couldn't remember the exact year she left me at the YMCA)

Disposition: Intensely laid back, which sometimes manifests in a fiery, uncompromising Savonarola-like fury. But hey, whatever.

Ideal Mate: Someone just like me, except sorta foreign-looking.

Hobbies: Long walks in the forest with my trusty band of society's offscouring, robbing from the rich to give to the poor. I can take apart and reassemble a zither in under 8 minutes. I also collect stamps. And I'm a member of the Pheidippides Heritage Society, whose members run marathons hoping to die at the finish line.

Religion: Episcopalian. Wait-- scratch that. High Church Episcopal. But actually there's a strong vein of Calvinism that I picked up during my summer missions project with the farming family in Iowa. In fact, intertwined with the Calvinism (which is coming back-- see Time Magazine's March issue) is an equally intense dedication to social justice. But, hey, certainly not Liberation Theology. Ha, of course, if that were true I wouldn't tell YOU! Anyway, see the attached pdf with my thesis-length theological musings, or read my latest blog posting at www.skippy'sjesus.com. (Do not feel pressured to visit my online store for t-shirts or coffee mugs)

Education: Four years at University of Texas at Elm Mott. (One semester as cheerleader for the Fightin' Fire Ants! Yay!) Still working on my last remedial basketweaving course-- after that they'll send me my diploma, I think.

Employment: Poet-in-residence at our local public library. This is currently not a paid position, but there are a lot of perks. Access to the bathroom is a big perk. And the research information librarian will answer most any question I have. Really, it's a pretty sweet deal. The intern pays me 5 cents a book to help him reshelve while he curls up in the corner for some Second Life on his iPod Touch. That keeps me in Mountain Dew.

Turn Ons: Naked women usually do the trick, although as I get older, I sometimes need to slam down an extra Mountain Dew.

25 Random Things About God

1. Jeez, I never thought this "25 Random Things" deal would get so big when I first started circulating it.

2. Why's that airline pilot getting all my glory? After all, I put the Hudson river there.

3. I love getting up in the morning to watch the universe rise.

4. My Addictions: Coffee, "Lost," ultra-marathons (40 years is my limit), my crackberry, wreaking vengeance.

5. TODAY'S TO DO LIST: Start interfaith dialogue (always forgetting this), clean up environment, take out that terrorist training camp at 34 degrees 33'56.80 N 73 degrees 56'31.25 E.

6. I'm really sorry I took a short vacation--just a long weekend, really-- and caused that world financial crisis. Last time I took a vacation I came back and found Bush had stolen the election. Darn! But don't I deserve some time off?

7. Found out this week the music of the spheres is in the wrong format to load on my iPhone. Wouldn't you know it?

8. And yes, I have both a Blackberry and an iPhone. Are you really surprised?

9. My secret fear is that my solution to the problem of evil won't stand up to peer review.

10. I miss the Neanderthals.

11. Prosperity preachers may be surprised that I spend most of my time talking to chaiwalla slumdogs.

12. Don't worry, I'm planning to explain everything on the 400th anniversary of Darwin's birth.

13. Using the Sumerian numerical system, shouldn't I be through now?

14. I'm still a little nervous about that Large Hadron Collider.

15. Can someone please tell me where I left the Ark of the Covenant?

16. Lately I've been stitching together random DNA strings. Started out as a bracelet, but who knows what I'll end up with.

17. Sometimes I flash on being a sunflower and imagine I'm looking at myself.

18. I've been tinkering around with a new moral code. Here's an example: You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours... until you beg for mercy. (Hey, it's just a draft version).

19. What if I were the god of a universe that was really tiny and inside a much bigger macro-universe, controlled by a much bigger god? And what if that god were me, too? This is the kind of thing I think about just before I go back to sleep.

20. I'm tired of this. So I'm reversing the arrow of time, recalling all the world's "Random Things" postings, renaming them "20 Random Things" and chopping off the last five items to conform to what is now my new template. You'll never know the difference. (Most people don't realize it, but I do this sort of thing all the time).

---Skippy R., The Wittenburg Door

Next, the 'Soylent Green' Bible

The Green Bible has sprouted on the religious publishing scene, and has even received a stamp of approval from the Sierra Club. The new version, which costs $29.95, "will equip and encourage you to see God's vision for creation and help you engage in the work of healing and sustaining it."

This New Revised Standard Version published by HarperCollins highlights environmentally significant passages in green, is printed with soy ink on water-coated recyclable paper and bound in a cloth-and-linen cover.

The only drawback is that the book is not totally edible.

If Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis and the Sojourners crowd are "Red Letter" Christians, then who are "Green Letter" Christians? Well, Brian McLaren explains "Why I Am Green." And Matthew Sleeth, N. T. Wright and Desmond Tutu contribute, along with Earth-conscious essays and poems from Wendell Beery, St. Francis of Assisi and Pope John Paul II.

Why do we need a Green Bible? Because "with over 1,000 references to the earth in the Bible, compared to 490 references to heaven and 530 references to love, the Bible carries a powerful message for the earth."

On the other hand, out of the 773,692 total words in the Bible, "and" is used almost 70,000 times. Forgive my quibbling, but the scriptures carry a powerful message for conjunctions, too.

In one essay by J. Matthew Sleeth, a good point is made that the Bible starts with a tree in Genesis and ends with one in Revelation. That's cool. I like that. I also understand most of the green-highlighted passages I read in the online sample-- they call it the "Green Bible Trail." Sort of like W. A. Criswell's "Scarlet Thread through the Bible" except about landscaping instead of salvation.

But I'm confused about why some passages were left out.

For instance, in the sample given from the book of Ruth, nothing was highlighted in green at all. In the story about Ruth gleaning in Boaz's field, it says he "heaped up for her some parched grain. She ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over. " Why isn't that in green? Is it because people are messing with nature here, taking dominion over it, using it to feed themselves?

Just askin'.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't want us to all have to scramble for survival on a planet blighted with toxic waste, choking on pollution and divorced from nature by our technology. (Oh yeah, never mind, that's already happening). But don't cheat me by rationing my green-highlighted Bible passages!

Environmental checklists can get ridiculous. At the bottom of the screen on the publisher's web site, I noticed it proudly proclaims: "This site was made without using paper."

A website without paper!

I wish that would catch on, because I'm tired of getting ink all over my hands when I click through the New York Times headlines links. Thanks, HarperCollins.


• Furl • StumbleUpon • Technorati Tags: Green Bible, Christian humor, satire, humor

The Olympics, and achievement just out of reach

Before our morning Bible study some of us walk up to the local coffee shop, bypassing Starbucks. We're friends with the owners and the staff and we've been walking up there almost every day for a decade.

When Bill opens the place, he takes some time to banter with us, mostly making fun of our friend Gary. With nonstop Olympics coverage this week, Gary's been regaling us with stories of his glory days when he almost made the U.S. Olympic team in gymnastics in 1964.

Many of us have such stories-- the if-only tales of fame and success just out of reach.

Gary was amazed that the gymnasts were doing routines that his generation never even imagined were possible. A French guy's "Victoria cross" the night before was especially shocking, he said. He shook his head. Gary is 65 and somewhat out of shape, but occasionally he does a handstand for us, and all the change falls out of his pockets. It's pretty funny and sort of amazing, too.

If-only tales. We've learned to embrace these missteps in life, because without them, we might have missed God along the way. Instead of being bitter about getting a silver medal instead of a gold one, Gary is just happy for what he's been given. That's rare.

But stories of almost-success will never be the same for us now.

A chance encounter

A few weeks ago, Bill said he'd been riding his bike around the lake when he heard someone shouting or crying, he wasn't sure which. He turned the bike around and pedaled back down the road and saw a woman inside a security fence that enclosed one of the large estates that face the lake.

She explained her daughter was out of town, and she had come by her house to check on things, and the electronic gate had shut and she didn't have the code to get out. She was trying to reach her husband on her cell, but there was no answer. She broke into tears.

The real cause of her distress was her son-in-law, she said. He had been hiking and climbing in the Sangre de Cristo range in Colorado, and his family had not heard from him for a few days. They were all greatly concerned.

It was a rare moment of transparency and weakness shared between two strangers. Bill used his phone to get in touch with the husband, and finally got her out of the gate. Then he continued on his bike ride.

A few days later he found her husband's number in his phone and decided to call to check on the situation.

No, the husband said, they still hadn't heard anything. They were assuming an accident had happened.

Life can be strange

We'd been following Bill's bulletins on the situation since his first encounter. I prayed for the guy and his family as we walked home that day, if memory serves.

A few days after that, the report came in-- the man had fallen off a mountain during a hike and was missing.

Today, as Gary was ending his Olympics story of how gymnasts used to do things in the old days, Bill came over with the newspaper. There was the obituary. The man had fallen 1,700 feet to his death. He was 44.

Another tale of success just out of reach, I guess. This time a true tragedy.

As we lamented the man's fate and expressed amazement at Bill's happening upon the mother-in-law and the whole quirkiness of coincidence, Bill mentioned he was getting ready for his long-planned vacation next week.

Maybe he hadn't connected the dots on everything until that moment, but we did, and we sort of just looked at him, blankly.

Bill's going to Colorado to climb Long's Peak.

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Maybe I made a mistake

Maybe I made a mistake.

Summer finally caught up to us a few weeks ago, just as my bike commuting was becoming routine. We've had 17 straight days of triple-digit heat. It's taking me longer to recover, and it affects my judgment.

For instance, last week I was wheeling through downtown one afternoon, past City Hall, past the homeless hangout, into the Farmers' Market district. There's a flower market there that's sort of an oasis on my trek. It's beautiful, especially in contrast to the baking heat of the concrete around me.

I jumped the curb to get a better look, lost control of the bike and slammed directly into a concrete post on the sidewalk. With my cat-like reflexes I embraced the impact and did a controlled collapse, ending up hugging the street. The bike's fork was bent and wouldn't roll. I was scratched and bruised, but nothing was broken.

It was late enough that the market area was pretty deserted. Like many urban areas, downtown Dallas goes dead after work, although that's starting to change. Still, the sun was up just high enough to fry me. I tried to drag the bike into a patch of shade. At more than 100 degrees it was starting to sap my energy.

I called my wife. This concrete post sort of jumped out in front of me, I told here. She said she'd come pick me up after she finished watering the garden. Fine.

I couldn't sit down because the concrete was too hot. I wanted to go over to the flower market, but I didn't want to leave my bike. I was embarrassed and sort of stunned.

In an instant, my whole afternoon had changed.

I was about to lodge a private complaint to the Lord about my condition, when I noticed Big Bob.

I'm calling him Big Bob, but all I saw was a large homeless man, clutching a beer bottle in a paper sack shuffling past me down the sidewalk. He didn't acknowledge me, and he didn't pass close enough for an exchange of greetings.

I almost felt like Bruce Willis in Sixth Sense. We were in two separate dimensions. Although I was sweaty and haggard-looking by this point, I was obviously not from his world. I was dead to him, and under normal circumstances he would have been to me. So, what was God trying to tell me here?

Big Bob walked over toward the wall of a building, until he almost had his nose to it. What the...

He unzipped and peed right against the wall. Broad daylight. Didn't even set down his bottle. Then he shuffled off.

Gee. That puts a cap on today's experience, I thought.

What brings a man to the place where his city serves him merely as a latrine? What mistakes, wrong turns and blind alleys in life brings you to this place?

Well, maybe in an instant, his whole life had changed.

And that bottle in a bag. One thing we learned early on when our community started taking in homeless people is that when they tell you they only had a few of beers, they're not talking about that little frosty bottle of Heineken you share with a friend at the local pub. They're talking about a 24-ounce bottle of Bud from 7-11. Two or three of those better explains why they, for instance, might have set fire to a dumpster.

One man who lived with us for several years explained that the bottles also come in handy at night. Just before you lie down under the bridge, you very loudly smash the bottle, making sure everyone else sees the remaining jagged edges of what's left in your hand just before you curl up. And the leftover broken glass can serve as a warning if anybody sneaks up on you while you're asleep.

But I didn't have to worry about any of that. I just had to get what was left of my bike back to my renovated two-story home in an old East Dallas historical district.

No wonder Big Bob relieved himself on his city.

Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe we all did.

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Beastie: Tip of apocalyptic iceberg

There's am alarming development that I see eventually causing the breakdown of civilization as we know it.

Consider the story of Dr. Arnold Kim, physician-turned-blogger.

Sure, blogging can be emotionally rewarding and intellectually stimulating. It can also be addictive, a huge time-suck and eventually grind a person down into millions of cynical bits. Usually it produces a weird combination: the blogger doing Leonardo DiCaprio's "I'm King of the World!" on the doomed Titanic.

But there's something socially and morally wrong about Arnold Kim, who heads up MacRumors.com, the website of Apple gossip and rumor, leaving his medical practice ...to blog.

That's right. He stopped treating kidney disease, abandoning the sacred role of the healer, to practice his blogging hobby full time.

Of course, it's a lucrative website-- he can draw a six-figure salary at either job (something we at The Door know nothing about).

But as a society, can we really afford to have valuable contributors just drop everything for the brief thrill of seeing their name in print? In the past, writers and journalists toiled for years hoping they'd eventually offer as much to humankind as a doctor does on his first day out of medical school.

Forget about rising oil prices, terrorism and Brokeback Mountain. This truly fills me with dread.

Think of the consequences if this catches on. Do we want our firemen ignoring the bell just to spellcheck their latest blog entry? Homeland Security agents working on their trout fishing blog while aliens sneak into the country hassle-free? Judges turning in their robes merely to service the Internet uber-feed? Engineers fiddling with their youtube subscriptions as bridges collapse under rush hour traffic?

Someone call Sen. Grassley! This can go nowhere good. The vision is disturbing, even here in my cozy cubicle. Affected as if by the strange, deadly malaise in The Happening, people will start jumping off of buildings, texting their posts as they drop. I'm sure this is mentioned somewhere as a sign of the apocalypse.

No, better to leave blogging to the desperate and wicked social substrata of geeks and losers who currently dominate the field.

When the smart, the successful and the beautiful begin to post their opinions in the blogosphere, the real world is put in deadly peril.

And we bloggers might then have to take some responsibility for it.

LOL! As if!

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Help us cease from striving

If you're burned out on televangelist appeals for money, megachurch ministry-bloat and evangelical politics, it might be refreshing to take a look at an organization that's trying to give a life-long, no-strings-attached hug to a few million of the poorest, dirtiest, most despised people on earth.

I dropped in on Gospel for Asia's annual conference last weekend at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas. Their main topic was how to accommodate more poor people in their churches.

It seems that back in 2001 about a gigagillion Dalits-- India's lowest-caste "untouchables" -- got together and announced that Hinduism just wasn't doing it for 'em any more. The thrill was gone. So they offered the Christians, the Muslims, the Buddhists and any other religion an opportunity to pitch their version of spiritual reality to them.

The result is that GFA is scrambling to establish thousands of schools and churches around India to accommodate an increasing influx into their ranks of people who literally define the word "outcast." The word Dalit actually means "broken people."

Dalits can't be squeezed for big tithes and offerings. They don't bring anything to the table. In fact, they always show up with deep and often tragic needs. One Dalit who spoke at the meeting recalled how his parents somehow managed to claw their way our of grinding poverty to get him into a school, but he was only allowed to sit in one little spot in the corner on the floor away from the others. He wasn't allowed to drink from --or even get near-- the water faucet. "I experienced poverty, starvation and untouchability," he explained. "Now I am touched by the gospel of Jesus."

When I traveled to India a couple of years ago with GFA, I saw hundreds of these poorest of the poor along the roads everywhere doing the dirty work, squatting over little cooking fires, begging, defecating at the side of the road, scrounging for scraps of plastic or bits of cloth. These probably aren't the outsourced customer service guys from India you talk to when your computer goes on the blink. They're what St. Paul called the "offscouring of the earth."

The apostle understood, like GFA does, that these are the very people Christ died for. And He can only touch them through us.

But then, this Dalit's prayer caught me off guard: "Lord, help us cease from striving."

Huh? Isn't that what evangelism is all about-- striving to get the main thing done, accomplishing the mission, working the plan, doing it right?

Maybe not. The speakers all seemed to be talking about servanthood, being bondslaves. Slaves don't have many plans, and the pay isn't very good, besides.

At one GFA session, Gayle Erwin, author and a member of the GFA board, understated the case when he observed, "nobody comes out of GFA with million-dollar homes." In other words, Sen. Grassley is not interested in this group. It has too much obvious integrity. Despite the decreasing value of the dollar, there was little agonizing over the economy at the conference. The only mention of it was a suggestion: "You better hurry up and give quick."

GFA President K. P. Yohannan eloquently described the plight of the Dalits, but didn't mention that he still drives his early '60s VW when he's in the States. No air-conditioning. A native of India, Yohannan started GFA back in the 1970s after studying for the ministry in Dallas. Since then he's gone from looking goofy to looking grizzled, but carries himself with an air of peace and self-detachment that puts everyone around him at ease. GFA now has more than 16,500 native missionaries serving in 11 countries in South Asia. You can support one of these native missionaries for a ridiculous total of around $50 a month.

These Gospel for Asia people take Jesus very seriously but without our western/American overlay of overachieving busy-ness, guilt, arrogance or attachment to political causes. In the Indian state of Kerala, where GFA's largest seminary campus is located, the government is run by communists who sometimes work in cooperation with Christian groups. Yikes! Jerry Falwell's rolling over in his grave. It's a different world. Of course, GFA is as conservative as can be, except when it comes to the poor. Then they're liberal in the New Testament sort of way, with the emphasis on "liberality."

Lots of news came out of the meeting. One native leader from Burma told about delivering aid to victims of the devastating cyclone and people being saved as unburied bodies littered the fields. One of the native missionaries in Nepal who served time in jail for his faith described radical changes that have opened up that country to religious freedom.

And the media noticed one interesting angle-- while hundreds of supporters of Gospel for Asia prayed and sang, hundreds of Harry Potter fans at the opposite end of the hotel gathered--in full costume-- to role-play, buy Quidditch sticks and Hoggwart's capes and hear speakers delivering scholarly papers on the book and fantasy film series. (The two groups' wary interaction was discussed by the Dallas Morning News Religion Blog).

For me the big news from the conference was, when faced with a world of screaming need, the only effective response is to pray like the Dalit convert did, "Lord, help us cease from striving."

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I lost my shorts downtown

I've been riding my bike to work lately. My eight-mile route goes right through downtown Dallas, and it allows me to take the pulse of the city, not to mention its temperature and humidity levels, estimate its ozone pollution and gauge the mental state of its citizenry.

I can often taste its urban grime in my mouth, too.

The other day I waited at a light behind an old pickup truck driven by a spikey-haired middle-aged woman. As I breathed her exhaust, I read her bumper sticker: "My body's not a temple, it's an amusement park." Hmm. She did look sort of like a Coney Island carny.

My own body's feeling more like a junkyard of worn out parts these days. Drivers usually ignore me, but I can't ignore the terrain. Our streets are terrible for bicycles. A previous mayor vowed to fill in the potholes, but that never happened. Oh well, the ride helps me "buffet my body," as St. Paul put it, so I guess it's good for me.

Down near the soup kitchen a long line of homeless people snakes around the side of a building. On a bike, this can be an intimate encounter. I can look right into their eyes, and I wonder what they're going to do, how they got here, where they came from. They must think I'm crazy. Dallas just opened a big new homeless shelter. Why aren't these folks over there?

Our church has taken in homeless people for years, so I have no illusions. These are all humans, in dire situations. Some are addicts. Some are just on a streak of bad luck. Some want friendship and a sanctuary. Others don't.

When I got to work, I realized that somewhere downtown, a bungee cord came loose and I lost my shorts. I carry a rolled up pair of shorts for the ride back in the afternoon when it's extra hot, and they were gone. Darn! I really liked those shorts.

Maybe one of the homeless guys found 'em and they're walking around downtown, pockets filled with other people's spare change and a crumpled up pack of cigarettes. I hope so.

On the way back it's twice as hot, and slightly uphill most of the way. I'm sweating in my khaki slacks and my goofy helmet. I pass by the homeless crowd again. This time they're in the shade, trying to stay cool. Some are sleeping. Some are arguing. A couple of guys are tossing a ball around. There's a big van from the health clinic parked across the street. That's nice to know. No telling what medical problems they're dealing with on the street.

None of the guys are wearing my shorts.

I began riding my bike for several good reasons. Gasoline is too expensive. I want to fight terrorism by not sending my money to the Middle East. I'll get more exercise. I'll experience a moment of zen. I'll reduce my carbon footprint. Blah blah blah. My plan was efficient, logical, maybe even prudent.

But seeing the homeless crowd every day has become the biggest part of my new routine. They live in a world that is never efficient or logical. It's crazy and out of control. I've started praying for the ones who stare at me as I peddle by. Viewed from a car, they don't seem so desperate, so hot, or so many.

I lost my shorts downtown the other day.

Maybe I'll lose my heart next, who knows?

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Prepare to be tweeted like dirt

I’ve never tweeted.

I confess, I’m a tweet virgin. Never even gotten a tweet, let alone sent one.

Yes, I’ve thus far avoided joining the Twitter community. Twitter is a free social networking service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"-- text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to each other through the Twitter site. This way people can keep up with what you’re doing between blog posts and website updates and e-mails and phone calls.

Amazingly, Twitter touts itself as a “solution to information overload.”

On the other hand, if you join someone’s Twitter group you’re a “follower,” which has a nice discipleship-like sound to it.

Here’s the kind of stuff I’ve probably been missing:

George: Seething in anger at my coworkers and boss who are slowly draining me of creativity and the spark of human kindness. 2 minutes ago from web

Bob: This scabies medicine feels really weird. I almost don't want to put my shirt back on. Yech. one hour ago from txt

Gloria: Instead of praying today, I’m tightening up my prayer list. Just eliminated David cuz we haven’t talked in, like, forever. 9:45 a.m. June 24, 2008 from web

Alicia: Almost finished reading Thomas Friedman's NYT column. Malaise set in after realizing world is flat, and passed out. Woke up in pool of own vomit. 7 a.m. June 24, 2008 from web

Louis: Should I worry about my Dish TV spying on me after Bush signed that telecom bill? 11:35 p.m. June 23, 2008 from web

Albert: Jst gt carjacked. Mistakenly grabbed phone to twitter instd of handgun. Damn! 9:47 p.m. June 23, 2008 from txt

Steve: Hey, lightening alrt. Run for co 8:43 p.m. June 23, 2008 from txt

I’m willing to give Twitter a shot, though. Should The Door start a Twitter group? Do we really want to know what Joe Bob is up to at 1:30 in the morning? Do we?

Discuss.

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Monkey business

It's easy to overlook the obvious.

The biggest mistake many businesses and project planners make is to forget to place a deity on the payroll.

The Dallas Cowboys certainly learned this lesson back in their heyday. They were God's team as well as America's team, and it worked (until Deion Sanders sort of overdid it).

This month a business school in India was looking for a chairman for their institution. "We scanned many big names in the field of technology and management. Ultimately, we settled for Lord Hanuman, as none was bigger than him," said Vivek Kangdi, vice chairman of The Sardar Bhagat Singh College in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh. The school awards bachelor's degrees in engineering and management.

Hanuman the monkey god is one of the most popular gods in the crowded pantheon of Hindu deities. According to the report on CNN, his most famous feat, as described in the Hindu epic the Ramayana, was leading a monkey army to fight the demon King Ravana and rescue a kidnapped princess.

This reminds me of the liner notes on the Christian music album my friends and I put together back in college. "Produced by the Holy Spirit" we wrote then. We meant it in the most humble way, rather than as total presumption. But, hey, we were young. One reviewer pointed out that the Holy Spirit must have neither taste nor skill if our album was any indication.

Let this be my public apology to God. Blasphemy pops up so easily in our thoughts, I suppose, that we come to think of it as piety.


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Beastie: Bonfire of the Anglicans

An alarming report from across the pond--a motion calling for the disestablishment of the Church of England has been listed in the House of Commons as No. 666, the Number of the Beast.

As we all know from watching The Tudors, the Church of England was created so those in charge could suppress their enemies and justify their actions by using religion in order to control their own political destiny. Sort of like Church-State relations in America today, except without the torture. Well, OK, it's pretty much exactly like today.

Wrapped up in personal business as I've been, toiling like a Hebrew slave at my day job, I was shocked out of blogging slumber by this report, and decided to investigate.

It seems the proposal was registered just as Parliament debated scrapping Britain’s blasphemy laws.

Bob Russell, Liberal Democrat MP for Colchester and one of the signatories, said: “It is is incredible that a motion like this should have, by chance, acquired this significant number. This number is supposed to be the mark of the Devil. It looks as though God or the Devil have been moving in mysterious ways."

I've visited Britain and surrounding areas, and I can assure you that the whole place is ripe for demonic mischief.

I was constantly feeding strange coins into their odd telephone boxes. I visited their pile of New Age rocks at Stonehenge and became extremely wired after drinking about 20 cups of their tea. The language makes them particularly susceptible to devilish deception. I tried to get someone to accurately repeat, "In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen" without success.

Or take this example from the BBC's sports desk: "It is the first time since 1884/5 that England have named the same line-up for five successive Test matches." England "have"? If they can't distinguish singular from plural, how will they fare in a test of wills against the Prince of Darkness?

I wheeled out the Beastie Machine and carefully wiped dust from its delicate gears as it's battery warmed up for the task.

I typed in "Jolly Old England." Calculating from my patented mix of Gematria and random quotes from NYT puzzle master Will Shorts, Beastie immediately spat out the number 251. I then tried "United Kingdom." That came to only 206. "Great Britain" only to 493. "British Empire" was too much at 866.

With trepidation I entered a word said to be the longest in the English language, and somehow seemed to apply now: "antidedistablishmentarianism." But it was way over the top at 1,683.

Many mysteries in the scriptures are said to be "sealed up" even to the prophets themselves. Could this be a secret that had no interpretation?

Worried, I mixed a cocktail of ginseng, caffeine, taurine, guarana, maca and Tang, took a nap and awoke refreshed, but still with no clear direction.

Maybe I should focus on the Church of England itself. "Church of England" came up as 633. Bingo!

"Anglican Church"--659. Getting closer. Ol' Beastie was emitting a whine not unlike the call of a lovesick wallaby as it struggled to crunch the flood of numbers.

"Unholy Anglicanism" came out as 694, over the mark.

Darn! So close-- within a boar's whisker of exposing the plan of the Evil One. Now what?

I made the sign of infinity in the air over the shuddering and smoking Beastie Machine, and typed in my very last idea: "Bad Anglican Church."

The machine squealed and lost several bolts and washers out its intake valve before the numerals appeared on the screen: 665.

665 is practically 666, if you take into account Greenwich Mean Time. So take that on your stiff upper lip, Old Scratch!


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Turkmen Tales

Let's hope this marks the final chapter in the story of Saparmurat Niyazov, the "Father of All Turkmen," who was absolute dictator of Turkmenistan for 20 years until his death in 2006.

The new ruler, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, ordered the rotating golden statue of Niyazov removed from the center of the capital, Ashgabat, to stand beside a highway near the edge of town with tacky billboards and other roadside curiosities.

The new president also restored the former calendar, which had been changed by Niyazov to name the months after himself, his mother and other family members.

A friend of mine-- an aid worker-- lived for a while in Turkmenistan several years ago, and came back with hilarious but also disturbing stories about this guy. That's when I started to notice reports in the press of his harrowing antics.

He banned ballet, gold teeth and recorded music; he ordered the construction of a lake in the middle of the desert and a ski resort on the snowless foothills of the Iranian border.

Using oil revenues, he undertook massive building projects to glorify himself, including a theme park --"The World of Turkmen Fairy Tales"--based on his country's folk tales, and made his book, a "spiritual guide" called the Ruhnama, compulsory reading for students, workers, and well... everybody.

I guess the books (and the old calendars) are now being used to heat people's homes as the country claws its way back into the 19th century.

The new administration isn't exactly all sweetness and light, though. Turkmenistan has promised to amend its Religion Law to become more liberal, but the majority Muslim population still can't leave the country for the haj to Mecca.

And on April 11, officials from the local Religious Affairs Department and the secret police, raided a Bible class held by the Greater Grace Protestant church in a private flat in the capital.

Pastor Vladimir Tolmachev told Forum 18, a human rights watch organization, he was warned that the church was not allowed to teach its own members without permission from the government's Religious Affairs Committee (even though that conflicts with its officially recognised Charter). Officials told Tolmachev further warnings could lead to the church's registration being stripped from it, rendering all its activities illegal.

The church has no building of its own and has already had to move its services ten times this year, the report said.

This is definitely not fertile soil for a prosperity-gospel church.


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Suffer the little children...

With all the discussion of child abuse at the polygamist ranch in West Texas recently, you might be thinking, "Surely they're not the only folks to mistreat their kids." And you'd be right.

In fact, people never get tired of finding novel ways to put their kids in jeopardy for what seems to be a good idea at the time.

Take the devotees of a Muslim shrine in Solapur in western India's Maharastra state. For more than 500 years they've been observing a bizarre ritual--throwing their young children off a tall building for luck and to improve their health. They believe it will make their children strong, and they say no accidents have ever happened.

(In fact, Maharastra is just teeming with good luck. The poverty rate is only 24 per cent, down from 38 per cent back in the '90s. Presumably, the impoverished didn't get dropped).

Closer to home, a Corpus Christi, Texas, judge reduced felony charges against the director of a Christian boot camp and an employee to simple assault in connection with the alleged dragging of a 15-year-old girl behind a van after she fell behind during a morning run. The 32-day boot camp for girls ages 13 to 19 includes 28 days at a facility near San Antonio, then four days at a camp in Banquete, about 10 miles west of Corpus Christi. The boot camp is run by the embarrassingly named Love Demonstrated Ministries of San Antonio.

But then, sometimes kids just need an old fashioned spanking.

It's too late for 18-year-old Ryan Schallenberger, a straight-A student who planned to blow up his South Carolina high school. He intended "to die and go to heaven and once he got there, he wanted to kill Jesus," according to police who arrested him. (Kids say the darnedest things). They discovered his journal, which lauded the Columbine killers, contained notes on more than 10 types of explosives that Schallenberger experimented with and evaluated a year ago.

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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.