Random Religious Thought of the Day

Lilith and the Serpent

Sometimes I think the strangest  things.  Like this one:

What if the whole of Judeo-Christian religion started out as a human misunderstanding and misrepresentation of a REALLY bad breakup between Lilith and Lucifer?

Get thee gone, United Way.

I hate the United Way pledge drive week.  And the weeks leading up to it.  The constant emails. The never-ending reminders.  The ‘activities’ which are really just more fund-raisers.  Bakes sales, dress down days that cost twice as much as normal dress down days, pizza days, ice cream days, raffles that are misleading.   Oh, the raffles.  But I better start in order.

I have worked at companies that demanded 100% participation.  You HAD to return the donation card.  The concession was that you could donate 0$.  They counted it as a donation.  Yep.  A donation of 0$.  But it got them the 100% participation.

Back in the day, there were lists and you found your charity and donated to that list.  So your money might not even make it to the charity to which you want to donate.

On top of that, the United Way keeps a fairly significant portion of the donations to cover the operational costs.  After all, it is a HUGE organization and has lots of fund-raising and advertising and miscellaneous costs. 

Then they have the miscellaneous ‘fun’ fundraising stuff that really is a crunch on the pocket-book this close to the holiday season.  Because some people actually save for Christmas spending instead of spending and then paying it off afterwards.

The raffles can get really annoying.  You may think you are buying into the raffle, but if you don’t actually turn in that donation card with a minimum donation on it, your name doesn’t get put into the raffle.  It just seems shady to me.

If you really want to make ALL of your donation money count, you need to find the actual donation site for you pet charity. 

I don’t even object to the United Way based on some charities it sponsors.  I know a lot of people won’t donate because they raise donations for Planned Parenthood.  I don’t have any issues with Planned Parenthood. 

My objection is to their business practices and I refuse to participate.  I’ve been know to take the donation packed and card straight to the shredder.  That way, if they try to force me to turn it in, I’ll flat-out tell them I shredded it.  I hate the ‘forced participation’ aspect of it. 

The United Way is nothing but a form of lobbyist.  They lobby for donations for charities instead of lobbying for political interest.  But a lobbyist nonetheless.  It is a fundraising business and, like all businesses, they pay themselves first.

Spam vs Count humor. SHORT POST

So I lost one twitter follwer after my spam post. 

Gee, I wonder if that was from whence the one most frequent spam address came?

Halloween is in the air! And so are Sinus Infections.

It you are going to be a ghost, do it with style.

To start with, I’ve been trying to fight off a sinus infection.

If you base it on thick, gunky mucus that is 50 shades of green, then it was definitely an infection. They say you can’t possibly get rid of infections without antibiotics, but I’m not so sure. I’ve had pretty good luck with regular irrigation via a netipot. Sure, it takes time and you have to do it, consistently, about every 4 hours. Drink plenty of tea and soup, garlic and cayenne are good tools. So is onion. But the color gets better, the mucus starts to thin some. Eventually you are back to normal.

When you compare it, antibiotic take a good 10 days, you have to take them anywhere from twice a day to every 4 to 6 hours. And then you increase your resistance to then and help create antibiotic resistant strains of various bugs and diseases. Not to mention the rather high odds for women to get ‘other’ infections because antibiotics also kill the good things in our bodies we need.

I think I’ll stick with my netipot.

This fight over who rules my sinuses has been going on since the weekend. Monday I nearly stayed home. Then I decided I would go in and see how things went. Maybe I could leave early if I was getting worse. Well, that was a bad idea. We were short two compilers in another department so the unit I’m in had to help cover for them. There was no leaving early.

Tuesday, I didn’t feel any better. I was in a good mood and decided I could get through the day. I did it Monday, after all. OMG (yes, I really typed it). I ended up leaving in a very cranky mood. It wasn’t triggered by a caller for a change, but by a co-worker.

Wednesday I felt much worse and took the day off. I slept. I got 14 hours of sleep. I also ran out of medicine last night and it was too late to bother going to the store. But good sleep has helped get rid of the sore throat, clear up part of the headache, and green has cleared up to white. My ears are still bothering me. I dislike the way my sinuses drain into the ears.

And I had ‘weird’ dreams all night. Now I normally have weird dreams. These were weird even for me. The result was that I was up early, bright eyed and bushy tailed. But that energy didn’t last long and I’m ready for a nap now. It will be a long day.

But the day is improved by the wonderful, blustery, windy, overcast sky. This morning’s weather was perfect, beautify, just what I like. I love fall and all it brings.

It brings more wind, more clouds, sometimes more rain; leaves turn colors, fall, and make great big piles to bury oneself in. It leads to naked, skeletal tree limbs, reach out, reaching up, clawing at the world and sky. The air turns crisp, and cold, and sharp, and scented with wood smoke and the hint of a future winter.

I love Fall. It is my favorite season. I feel the energy that summer steals from me starting to return. And it marks the return of my favorite holiday. Halloween. I would do Halloween all year round but no one wants to let me.

On the way to work I saw a sign for Spirit of Halloween. It is one of the two Halloween superstores that open up around September. I love these stores. Massive collections of costumes, decorations, party ware, wigs, makeup, hats, masks, the fun never ends.

We also have a local decorating store, called Nobbies that usually has a fantastic Halloween selection. At least it did until last year. That was a rather significant let down. They had their usual large display of costumes. But the actual décor was significantly reduced. I have to admit it was somewhat depressing.

Perhaps even distressing.

Yes, distressing. The spending on Halloween now rivals the spending on Christmas, but last year, thinking people would not be spending as much, the stores stocked less. Much less.

Still, this is another year. Another Dollar. Another Halloween. Another chance to find that perfect item that you can justify leaving out all year long. Another opportunity to increase my skull collection.

They say diamonds are a girl’s best friend. I think they seriously underestimate the happiness that can be found in a good skull.

Commenting on that Skinny Gurl Blogger.

In response to the blogger who runs that Skinny Gurl website, who says she is 5 foot 7 and takes pride in staying 100 lbs, I have this to say:

Anyone who is 5 foot 7 inches and only 100 lbs needs to see a doctor. It is impossible to get proper nutrition that far underweight.

I’m only 4 foot 11 inches and 100 lbs is getting close to the BOTTOM of my weight range. I felt sick and unhealthy when I dropped to 96 lbs. I felt best, when younger, at 98 to 100. Now I would give my eye teeth to reach 120 again. But I would never want to be so thin that I looked like I was rescued from a nazi death camp

She also says that there is a double standard. She thinks no one things twice about telling super thin women they need to eat more but they don’t say anything about overweight women eating too much. Actually, they do, but usually in a passive aggressive manner. It’s more like they make a point to say snide, derogatory, and insulting comments near enough to the overweight person to make sure they hear it.

The difference is that the comments directed towards overweight people are meant to be hurtful and they don’t say it to a person directly. People saying anything to thin people are more likely to be a friend or someone you at least know and it is said directly to them out of care and concern.

Can’t she see that difference?

When she insults people who actually are healthy and not over or below their weight range with highly derogatory and insulting language is part of the problem of poor self-image among women and girls. It is not a solution to Skinny Gurl’s anger or irritation that people don’t want to accept her ultra skinny, internment camp look.

Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th. I always feel weird about this day at any time of the year other than fall. It makes sense in fall. It makes me feel all Halloweeny.

Halloween. My favorite holiday. I have black cat, pumpkins, a skull, a witchy teddy bear, a gothic fairy, and a gothic doll all on display on my shelf at work. These are my year round decorations and not the actual Halloween décor I put up at the end of September.

I am the Halloween girl. I even have a tattoo of a black cat cuddling with a Jack O’ Lantern on my shoulder. When my parents took me to Hawaii, I even managed to find a lovely black sarong with white and pale blue hibiscus on it.

Now a rather bizarre study was done on automobile accidents on Friday the 6th compared to Friday the 13th. They found that fewer people were driving at all on Friday the 13th. People seemed to want to avoid driving. At the same time, more people were admitted to the hospital due to vehicular accidents than on a ‘normal’ Friday. I’m willing to guess it is more a case of people expecting bad things to happen, who start to watch for them and are less careful because of the distraction. This is in the nature of a ‘self fulfilling prophesy’.

What I didn’t know is that this is actually the MOST widespread superstition and 8% of Americans suffer from varying degrees of paraskevidekatriaphobia. Lovely word that. 8% sounds low but actually represents about 21 million people.

13 is sometimes called the Devil’s Dozen. Which is kind of weird to me. It’s also a baker’s dozen. There was some story about why bakers would toss in an extra if you ordered a dozen, but I don’t remember the story any more.

The silliest reason for the origin of fear of the number 13 is the fact the people could only count to 12 and therefore 13 was a mystery. They get this 12 idea from having 10 fingers and two feet. Apparently, toes wouldn’t count. See, silly.

It seems 13 fluctuates between lucky and unlucky at different time in different places. I’m not sure if there is any value in trying to pinpoint where fear of 13 originated. And I’m a big fan of archaeology and anthropology, so that’s saying something. What I’m not sure.

More of the unlucky 13 bits and pieces seem to be after the rise of male dominated and/or solar dominated religions. The theory is that it evolved to vilify or demonize the lunar and or female orientated religious.

There also seems to be a rather strong hatred of Friday’s in the past. This is weird as these day, we live for our Fridays. Once the end of work bell rings, we have 2.5 days to ourselves. Well, those of us with regular day jobs do.

Apparently, everything bad that happened in the Bible happened on a Friday. I want to know how “they” know that. How in the world can they know that the whole business with the apple and the snake happened on a Friday? How could anyone possibly know that the “Flood” started on a Friday?

And since many pre-Christian societies thought Friday was an auspicious day to get married, Fridays must be bad and the Friday goddess (Freya/Frigg/Venus) was recast as a witch. Wow. Can I get a copy of the Venus Di Milo with a witches hat on her head, a broom clutched in one hand, and a black cat sitting on the clam shelf at her feet?

On the whole, I like superstitions and find them a fascinating subject. Some even have an odd sort of logic to them. But Friday the 13th as an unlucky day has always seemed the ultimate in silliness to me.

Things that are SLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW!

A slug or snail creeping along the ground.

Molasses almost any time of year. This year, with the heat wave, it might be moving a bit faster.

Time when you are standing in a long line.

Any self-serve checkout lane.

Trying to run in water.

Trying to run in loose snow.

Trying to run in soft sand.

The hands on a clock when you are in a medical waiting room.

According to friends who had babies, the last month of a pregnancy.

The evening if you have great plans the next morning. For children, Christmas Eve lasts forever, unless you do gifts on Christmas Eve, then it is that day that lasts FOREVER.

The delivery guy when you order food. Unless it is Jimmy Johns.

Any movie you don’t like.

The first two chapters of Island of the Blue Dolphins.

Preparing and cooking homemade lasagna when you are really hungry.

Losing weight.

American trains in comparison to most other industrialized countries.

American internet speeds in comparison to most other industrialized countries.

The formation of glaciers.

Glacial Migration.

Work on a light day.

Word of the Day: Defenestration

Defenestration in Prague, 1618.

Defenestration:

The act of throwing an adversary out of a window. One recent morning, I woke up trying to remember what defenestration was. Since I ended up having a bad day, I don’t know if it was an omen that I might want to defenestrate someone by the end of the day.

I thought it might be a form of torture or medieval execution method. Not so much. I also can’t remember what I was reading or watching that might have used the word. I was rereading David Eddings Mallorean series. It’s possible, that in the book where they run into the self-taught sorcerer, Senji, the term might have been used. Every so often, Eddings used to throw in a 20$ word.

The word starts cropping up after the renaissance period had started. In fact, the first two recorded usages of it were in Prague. When mentioning this to my roommate, he then said people who throw themselves out of windows would be defenestrating themselves. I argued against this as an example of this was where authorities changed one man’s cause of death from suicide to defenestration. It has to be someone tossing someone else out a window, not throwing yourself out. The ‘de’ part of the word indicates out or away which reinforces that view. After all, it is hard to throw yourself away from yourself.

Of course, this does not actually have to be fatal. It is the same word if the window is on the ground level or if it is on the 15th floor. Defenestration is the action and not the result. The Latin indicates a window or an opening, but it most often involves a window. Being tossed out of a bar by a bouncer might also be called defenestration. Particularly in those old western movies where the miscreant is literally tossed through the opening and not so much if the bouncer calmly escorts the offensive person from the premise.

As you can see, these would not be usefull in securing a building after hours.

Which reminds me, I don’t think saloons really had those swinging doors. Those doors do not secure the entry way. Even if they latched, a person could crawl under the ‘door’ to get into the bar and steal booze. They also would not keep rain or snow out of the bar in bad weather. I think those were used as internal ‘doors’. It would make going in and out of the kitchen easier than a regular door but still block the activities of the kitchen from the view of the inhabitants or guests. 

Well, I suppose they could have had doors like that, but they had to have had additional doors to close in front of or behind the swinging ones in order to lock up for the night.  You never see that in pictures unless it is on a modern building doing a retro western theme.  I keep wondering if it is part of the romanticized version of the ‘wild west’ we have developed.

An American’s take on Greece, Austerity, and World Economics.

Austerity measures have slashed services, wages, and jobs. So many people are out of work or making half the income they did before for more work done. They don’t have the money for goods and services so businesses are now unable to pay their taxes.

People are fleeing the cities and returning to the towns and villages they or their parents originally came from. They are seeking out relatives in these small places while they find a new place. They are taking up smaller jobs and spend much of their time tending gardens which is a major reason for this rural exodus.

If you have tiny home with a garden plot you at least can grow your own food. You may also have space for some goats or chickens. This way you can have dairy and protein.

Austerity measures don’t work and made the problem worse. They needed a better solution and it may be too late now for anything to really do any good. Going rural will be a solution to the food problem. But I think countries on an Austerity Plan may end up slipping backwards into a type of third world status.

This kind of fits in with my Tipping Point blog. While it is mainly about ecology and resources, a part of the issue is the basis of the world economy. The economic engine is based on spending which is why businesses and companies have so much political power. And they seem to be the reason that consensus on environmental issues seems to be a total failure.

As long as the economy is based on spending and people have less and less because big business is tying up most of the world’s money, austerity measures will not repair a broken economy but actually make it worse. People are going rural to save money but they will probably keep the smart phones and computers in order to stay connected and try to find ways to do distance work, create work, or simply job hunt.

Lower quality of living and health with high-tech toys. Although, the rural people who have home plots and an animal or two that can produce a renewable food source may end up having a higher quality of live as those in urban settings get worse and worse.

The Word of the Day

Onions.  Just Onions.  Make of it what you will.  Will of it what you want.  Want of it what you know.  Know of it what you dream.