Filters

“Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

“Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

―Matthew 6.1-8 (RSV)

One starts to wonder what God’s spam filter looks like. In the age of social media, the great testament to humanity seems to be a flood of cat videos and calls to prayer.

One could simply sever ties with their friends who are religious, but that seems stupid to the point of bigotry, and, besides, it will do nothing about the cat videos.

No, really, do you realize cat videos are a cartoon joke? As with hikikomori, the shut-ins, anime jokes about the Japanese obsession with cats are a societal critique, as gentle a prod as possible to remind that something is amiss.

In these United States, we are starting to adopt the cat obsession, and while the idea of becoming a shut-in because one owned only one pair of trousers that fell out the window one day while drying so he decided to just never leave the house again might seem obscure―and probably makes much more sense to the Japanese―what, exactly, would the joke look like if it was about Americans and prayer?

Maybe It’s Best I Don’t Have a Dog

Okay, so my only question is whether all the people who forwarded the inspiring story of Rickey Wagoner around that internet book with faces, and the bird’s nest thing, and all that, are now obliged to go around to every person they annoyed with that excrement and apologize for being so stupid.

At any rate, the Associated Press reports:

A white bus driver’s story that a religious book in his shirt pocket blocked bullets as he was attacked by three black men isn’t supported by evidence and testing, Dayton police said Wednesday as they closed the case, which had been investigated as a possible hate crime.

Rickey Wagoner, 49, told police he was outside his city bus Feb. 24 when men assaulted him. He said that two bullets hit the inch-thick book containing Bible verses and that one hit his leg and that he was stabbed in the arm, according to a police report. The report also said Wagoner told police he grabbed the gun and shot at the fleeing men.

Wagoner had told police that the assailants were black and that he thought the attack might have been a gang initiation.

But his account wasn’t found to be factual, Police Chief Richard Biehl said at a news conference.

“This assault, as reported, is not true, not accurate,” Biehl said. Police did not say Wagoner made up the story and didn’t explain why he would have made the report. Biehl did say it appeared Wagoner owed on back taxes.

Sigh.

Right.

Truth told, I rather prefer the Daily Mail take on the story: “Bus driver shot and stabbed HIMSELF before making up story that only his Bible had stopped fatal bullets fired at him in supposed hate attack”.

In related news, the nation’s foremost failure-cum-racist-cum-failure, the one and only Donald Trump, is apparently upset that black people have civil rights, too. In other words, no news, or, what killed the dog.

____________________

Associated Press. “Bus Driver’s Bullet-blocking Book Tale Is ‘Not True’: Police”. The Huffington Post. June 18, 2014.

Associated Press and Daily Mail. “Bus driver shot and stabbed HIMSELF before making up story that only his Bible had stopped fatal bullets fired at him in supposed hate attack”. Mail Online. June 18, 2014.

Trump, Donald. “Donald Trump: Central Park Five settlement is a ‘disgrace'”. New York Daily News. June 21, 2014.

Wills, Nat M. “No News, or, What Killed the Dog?” Camden: Victor, 1908.

Crumb does creation (and more)

Although I’m not much for the comic and graphic novel market (I think my library consists entirely of one adaptation of Re-Animator and one of Rawhead Rex) the forthcoming project by R. Crumb has my attention:

Having already given the world Mr. Natural, the cartoonist Robert Crumb has finished his long-awaited work about another mystical gray-bearded figure — namely, the Almighty — in a comic-strip retelling of the Book of Genesis, The Guardian reported. On his Web site, rcrumb.com, Mr. Crumb, right, announced that after four years he had completed the project, adapted from the King James Bible and a translation by Robert Alter. The finished work, “Robert Crumb’s Book of Genesis,” is scheduled to be released on Oct. 19. “It’s very visual,” Mr. Crumb said, according to The Guardian. “It’s lurid. Full of all kinds of crazy, weird things that will really surprise people.”

Quadrennial quotes

It’s a long story of how I came to find this one. Okay, not so long as it is boring. And irrelevant. Well, not quite. I was toying with the idea of treating symptoms instead of diseases, and was looking for a Biblical verse. Along the way I found this story, littered as it is with amazing quotes:

“I gave my life to Jesus when I was 21, and while reading the scriptures one day, I saw a passage about Jesus telling people to chop off their hand if it causes them sin or troubles, so that’s what I did. I had a compulsive urge to grab my rod/staff and stroke it which ended up with me spilling my seed, so I knew something was wrong with me …. I tried holding my staff and spilling my seed with my left hand, but it just didn’t feel the same to me, so I decided to chop off my right hand because that was the hand that was giving me the most pleasure and guilt at the same time. I was in a real quandary and was very confused and emotional.”

• • •

“While I was in the emergency room getting sewn up, I met my current wife who was there because she had plucked out her left eye with a salad fork and she was bleeding almost as bad as I was”….

“As we were both lying there on our gurneys, she looked over at me and told me that she was addicted to winking at men she found sexually attractive with her left eye, and that after a while, her left eye seemed to have a ‘mind of its own,’ and that it had gotten her into all kinds of trouble over the past few years.”

“I couldn’t control it, and that’s why I plucked it out, just like Jesus told people to do,” she said.

• • •

“I was afraid our new baby girl might be born without a right hand because my husband had chopped his right hand off, but Dr. Shinto cleared up that evolutionary faux pas in my mind, and I now trust him with my husband’s life and also with his new right hand, whatever it turns out to look like.”

It’s not particularly well-written from a fictional perspective, and the only Google references to Timothy Ringstob I could find lead back to this story. So there’s no follow-up, like how his hand is doing four years later. And I didn’t find any major media coverage, which is odd since they’ll cover a bunch of migrant workers flocking to Yakima, Washington to see an apparition of the Virgin in the oily sheen on the back of a freeway sign.

So I’m really, really hoping this is fiction, because those are some of the funniest quotes I’ve read in a while. Seriously, adapt this thing for the screen, get actors who can deliver those lines straight, and you’ve got … well, okay, not a blockbuster, but an art-house Oscar contender.

Yeah, I know, I know. I’m four years late to this one. But, still ….

A call for theological justification

Someone, please, help me out: If … if, if, if …. If someone makes a claim based on a religious principle, what is the obligation to reconcile the claim with the religion?

Okay, let’s try a working example. Tom Searles reports, for The Charleston Gazette:

A handful of people who believe digitized photos on state driver’s licenses could be the beginning of the biblical “mark of the beast” will receive special licenses from the Division of Motor Vehicles today.

Phil Hudok, a Randolph County teacher who previously refused to enforce school rules requiring students to wear bar-coded identification badges because it violated his religious beliefs, will be one of the first.

“We’re a Christian, nondenominational scripture-believing group,” Hudok said.

Hudok, pastor Butch Paugh and 12 others met with DMV Commissioner Joseph Cicchirillo in 2006 about the perceived problem. At the time, state officials were getting ready to comply with the federal Real ID Act of 2005, which would have forced states to share information about licensed drivers with other states.

Under the plan Cicchirillo established, Hudok and other followers of Paugh will be allowed to have their license photos taken at the Capitol DMV office and then removed from the computer system. DMV will maintain a hard copy of the pictures at the main office.

“What these people objected to was the digital image,” Cicchirillo said.

The federal act also requires personal information, such as birth dates and driving records, in the system. “All the other information stays there,” the commissioner said.

He said there has been no outpouring of people objecting to the digital photos.

“Right now, I have three or four people who have requested it for religious reasons,” he said. “I think what they told me was it had to do with the mark of the beast.”

Scratch this

A thought arose of late when considering a recent Italian court decision that apparently makes it illegal for a man to scratch or adjust himself in public.

The Italian ruling clubs together all forms of “crotch-scratching”— prompted by discomfort or by superstition — as offensive. Certain actions are considered inappropriate for public viewing. They not only offend the “average man” — a useful alibi for legislators — but also taint the sanctity of the public sphere. The issues raised by the Italian ruling go beyond the obvious question of violating an individual’s right to touch himself. Suddenly, this behaviour becomes as suspect as a range of other ‘uncivil’ activities — spitting, peeing or bathing on the streets — which would be severely condemned in any Western society ….

…. There is nothing inherently dangerous about crotch-scratching. Unlike spitting or peeing publicly, it does not ‘pollute’ in any physical sense. It is rather like a moment of unconscious intimacy with oneself, like biting fingernails or tugging at one’s hair. The West remains unmoved by unabashed public display of sexual affection, but is perturbed by a superstitious habit.

The Italian legislation is the outcome of a history of sensibilities that is unmistakably Western. These sensibilities have been formed as much by increased awareness of civic norms as by a heightened self-consciousness (as in the flatulent woman on the plane). It is unlikely that India will ever have a law that forbids men to touch their privates in public (in which case, every second man would have to be fined by the minute.)