Disorderly Content

Thursday night's Daily Show mentioned that Joe The Plumber is heading to the Middle East as a reporter for some right wing website. That would be funny enough, especially since he's as inept with words as he is with a plunger. But what's even better is his reaction to the dangers of going into a war zone. Wurzelbacher's response? He's sure God will protect him because he's a good Christian. Yeah, that's why all those Moslems and Jews are dying. God's too busy worrying about Christians. I can't wait for the locals' reactions to that particular insight.

To quote Bugs Bunny, "What a maroon!"

Just in time for Passover, a colleague sends me this reduced version of the holiday seder. Be assured that nothing of importance has been omitted:

The Two Minute Haggadah

A Passover service for the impatient.

Opening prayers:

Thanks, God, for creating wine. (Drink wine.)

Thanks for creating produce. (Eat parsley.)

Overview: Once we were slaves in Egypt. Now we're free. That's why we're doing this.

Four questions:

1. What's up with the matzoh?
2. What's the deal with horseradish?
3. What's with the dipping of the herbs?
4. What's this whole slouching at the table business?

Answers:

1. When we left Egypt, we were in a hurry. There was no time for making decent bread.
2. Life was bitter, like horseradish.
3. It's called symbolism.
4. Free people get to slouch.

A funny story:
Once, these five rabbis talked all night, then it was morning. (Heat soup now.)

The four kinds of children and how to deal with them:
Wise child - explain Passover.
Simple child - explain Passover slowly.
Silent child - explain Passover loudly.
Wicked child - browbeat in front of the relatives.
Speaking of children: We hid some matzoh. Whoever finds it gets five bucks.

The story of Passover: It's a long time ago. We're slaves in Egypt. Pharoah is a nightmare. We cry out for help. God brings plagues upon the Egyptians. We escape, bake some matzoh. God parts the Red Sea. We make it through; the Egyptians aren't so lucky. We wander 40 years in the desert, eat manna, get the Torah, wind up in Israel, get a new temple, enjoy several years without being persecuted again. (Let brisket cool now.)

The 10 plagues: Blood, Frogs, Lice - you name it.

The singing of "Dayenu":
If got had gotten us out of Egypt and not punished our enemies, it would have been enough.

If he'd punished our enemies and not parted the Red Sea, it would have been enough.

If he'd parted the Red Sea... (Remove gefilte fish from refrigerator now.)

Eat matzoh. Drink more wine. Slouch.

Thanks again, God, for everything.

SERVE MEAL.

Shocking, really. Last night found me in the last place I ever expect to be: a house of worship. The occasion was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year; the impetus my Scaper friend Lindy, who as host of The Scapecast was also responsible for my fledgling voice acting career.

So how was it, being in a temple when someone wasn't getting bar mitzvahed or married or buried? Long; the Rosh Hashanah service takes a while. And strange, at least for me. First because it's been a while, but mostly because the service isn't what I was used to, back in the days when I was dragged kicking and screaming (well, not literally, at least not most of the time) by mom and dad. Theirs was a Conservative temple, where everything onstage was done by men, and unaccompanied by choruses or musical instruments or amplification. And strangest of all were the Stations of the Cross on the walls; the temple borrows a local church for the High Holy Days, since their own facilities are inadequate for these once-a-year activities.

Would I do it again? Dunno; I didn't exactly fill with religious fervor. Still, it was a pleasant way to spend an evening. And I did get a blog post out of it. That's something.

In the spirit of the holidays, I offer a little Passover tribute. Personally, I have a hard time accepting any story that involves Jews getting packed and on the road before the bread had time to rise. But it's a tradition! And I'll have a whole new reaction watching The Ten Commandments from now on. "Let me people go!", indeed.

Is anybody else creeped out by those eHarmony ads on cable? They're so omnipresent even a DVR-er like me has seen way too many of them. And there's just something wrong about them, about the slightly glassy-eyed look of these tenaciously happy couples, to say nothing of that weird Warren character who's trying to pair everybody up.

But not everybody, I guess. I've been reading various blog postings on Consumerist with interest. First there were the people who were rejected because they're only legally separated and not yet divorced. Now I read about someone who got kicked out because he's a regular drinker, as if one beer at dinner makes you an alcoholic. Which is a problem with multiple choice; what if the choices don't let you give an accurate answer? But more disturbing are reports of people who were found unacceptable because they identified themselves as atheists. Apparently, Dr. Warren's perfect world of two-by-two is reserved for the God-fearing. And I'm willing to bet that certain interpretations of God are more acceptable than others, if this confession of a former employee is any indication.

Years ago, my Chassidic sister told me that if I became religious, she could have me married in no time. I didn't know what repulsed me more: being religious, being married, or being married to somebody like that. Now I have no doubt it's Door Number Three.

I'm sure atheists all over the world are breathing a sigh of relief. Just imagine if this study had come out some other way! I speak of course of a study of 1800 patients that was published in the American Heart Journal, as reported by those fine folks at Boing Boing. And which the Huffington Post got from the New York Times a mere six hours later. Not that being first is anything important.

Anyway, to the study. Groups of six hundred surgical patients each were prayed for but not told they were or weren't, not prayed for and also not told either way, and prayed for and told about it. The folks doing the praying were a combination of Catholics and Protestants. And the results: the first group (prayed for but unaware) had complications after surgery in 52% of the cases, the second (no prayer) had 51% and the third (prayed for and knew it) had 59%. Which is a good argument for not letting anybody pray for you. Or it would be, if the results 30 days after surgery weren't the same for all three groups.

So prayer doesn't work. Or maybe it's just Christian prayer that's the problem. Can we get somebody to fund a study around the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

I heard an interesting interview on the NPR show Fresh Air a few days ago. The interviewee was Bart Ehrman, a biblical scholar who was talking about his latest book. Misquoting Jesus is about how the books of the New Testament as they exist today are not the words of the original authors, how the copyists of the first centuries of Christianity made changes either through mangling or by design. It's a fascinating story of the early church, as well as later efforts of scholarship and detection. And it's one that can't help but have serious implications for those who believe in these works. Including Professor Ehrman, who begins his tale by examining his own Born Again-ness and his realization that it was based in part of a house of cards. For if his bible is the word of God, and those words have long been lost, what authority does that give the words that God didn't inspire?

As a non-Christian, I can only stand on the sidelines of such a debate; it's not my faith that is at issue. But as a student of history and, perhaps, of humanity, I find such matters as fascinating as they are ultimately frustrating.

I love watching jokes get stretched further and further until they take on a life of their own, disconnected from the circumstances of their birth. Such I hope is the case of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the godhead of a new religion that came into being as a response to educators in Kansas (a contradiction in terms, I know) who decided that Intelligent Design should be taught in science classes. What's next? Leeches in medical schools?

Anyway, Boing Boing reported on the growth of the joke, including a Wikipedia entry for his exaltedness, the FSM. And today they've taken it another step, with their attempt to create the FSM version of the Christians' holy mackerel. I so hope some enterprising maker takes this on as a product. This is getting almost as good as All Your Base...

Update 09/11: And the joke keeps growing. The Huffington Post points to an article in the Telegraph about Pastafarianism and its phenomenal growth as a religion. (Hey, if Jedi can make it, why not the FSM?) Good writeup, aside from the boneheaded reference to the Scopes Monkey Trial. That was Tennessee, not Ohio, not that I expect a Brit to know the difference.

As the owner of a BCD wristwatch and the former owner of a calculator that operated in hex, octal and binary (it also did decimal), I hold a certain fondness for niche devices. Even ones where I don't fit the niche. Which is why I'm so entertained by a piece in Engadget about a Jewish watch. No, it doesn't take a little off the top. And no, it doesn't read from right to left. But what it does do is report the time in Hebrew, offers a Hebrew calendar as well as the Gregorian one and warns you about the approach of sunset, so you can get the candles ready and all that mischegos. Granted, it only has data for seven locations around the world: Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles and Buenos Aires But those are the important ones, right?

Putting the lie to the idea that only right wingers have God on their side is this communiqué from a group calling itself Unitarian Jihad. Why they chose SF Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll as the conduit for their message is something I leave to wiser and purer souls than yours truly to divine.

In celebration of Passover, we have... oh, I hate to ruin the surprise. Just click here and play the Flash animation. It's all good.

Who knew that religious people could have a sense of humor? And how can you not love this page at the United Church of Christ's website that welcomes SpongeBob Squarepants into the church's warm and witty embrace. A nice message of inclusion, as well as a finger in the eye of Dr. Dobson and his Focus On The Family bunch. The middle one, I hope.

Ya cain't make stuff like this up. You could try, though. Thanks to Boing Boing for the pointer to The Bitter Shack of Resentment, which tells us that Santa's Depot has nativity scenes made from s'mores. Much better than the Catholic version; I hear that's made from wafers...

And a Happy Chanukah to you too. But not too happy, at least not if you're driving.

Having just written about merged religious holidays, how funny to be reading the recap of last week's Joan of Arcadia on the wonderful Television Without Pity and be sent to the wonderfully named Finder's Kippahs, an all-yarmulkahs-all-the-time web store. I haven't enjoyed the narrowcasting nature of the web since I first discovered Paddle Palace, a store completely devoted to table tennis. Is this a great country or what!

Former Apple Fellow Alan Kay used a line I like in his talk at MacWorld a bunch of years ago: "The right point of view is worth twenty I.Q. points." An article referenced by Kottke.org brought that quote to mind. I like to think that I'm smart. But when I heard the amazing story about the remains of tiny humans discovered on an Indonesian island, and the fact that Homo floresiensis likely coexisted with Homo sapiens for thousands of years, I never once thought about Creationists.

I once had to listen to my Chassidic brother-in-law try to explain away the fossil evidence of dinosaurs as the result of evil breeding experiments between horses and giraffes or somesuch nonsense. For the truly religious, dinosaurs can't have existed. After all, God wrote the bible. And God knows everything, since he created it all. So how could he have left out something as big as dinosaurs?

And now we have little humanoids coexisting with primitive Man. How can a literal interpretation of the bible explain that one? Another species of man overlapping in time with us? How could God have neglected to mention that little development?