Pondering Hobbies, the Unofficial Sixth Beatle & Other Assorted Items

1. Yesterday, the Professor was all sad because she didn’t have any hobbies. I suggested skeet shooting or sex toy designing. Taketoshi thought she should go into blacksmithing. I then voted for combining blacksmithing and sex toy designing, but got quickly laughed out of consideration.

As we were having this discussion, we were eating the most fabulous zucchini bread, which I am also eating right now, as we speak.

Of course, we then realized that the Professor’s hobby is baking.

Yum yum.

Not quite as great as having a friend in the sex toy business, but great nevertheless.

2. Sarcastro has had a bad week. It’s partially Bobby Flay’s fault. The post is poignant and touching (and a little funny), but it looks like the comments may be on the verge of something spectacular.

Most folks are offering sympathy. Some are writing poetry. One guy is trying to convince Sarcastro’s female readership to take shifts in nursing him back to his old self (for the record, I could probably take the 5:30-8 a.m. shift, if Sarcastro doesn’t mind Mrs. Wigglebottom). And, AND, his ex-girlfriend is on there calling him a jackass. It’s not right to gain amusement from other people’s pain, but it’s the American way, so enjoy.

3. I’ve recently heard from the Kingmaker. He told me I was one of the smartest people he’d ever met. I was overcome by the desire to make out with him in public. The trouble with mafia movies is that, though there’s a subtle layer of homoeroticism, with all the guns and the kisses of death, they don’t explicitly tell you when it’s appropriate to smooch the people who could end your career.

Still, I realized, pretty much all it takes is for you to say I’m brilliant, and I will make out with you.

4. I’m getting a number of hits from the United Arab Emirate and Saudi Arabia looking for “nephews and aunts fucking” and “I want to fuck my aunt.” To which I say, “Yuck!” and “I can almost guarantee that your aunt does not want to fuck you, young man.”

5. I stupidly let the dog sleep on my lap this afternoon, even though it is one million degrees out.

ID–The Remix

One thing I don’t want to get lost in our talk of Intelligent Design (because it seems like the conversation is going in other interesting directions) is that I don’t want us to fail to see this for what it is: a profound theological crisis.

Anyone with a basic understanding of the New Testament and a basic understanding of human nature ought to recognize what’s going on with this attempt to codify a certain type of Christian belief in the school systems and this attempt to shun homosexuals into non-existence and this attempt to return women to their rightful place under the authority of husbands.

What this is, at its heart, is a group of Christians trying to make a deal with God.

For those of you who need a short refresher course on how that tends to go, let me remind you. You can make deals with the Devil–even learn to play the blues–but you will lose your soul in the end.

You cannot bargain with God.

There are a number of theological problems with the ID debate.

First Christians again mistake Jesus’s nature. If you read the New Testament, you’ll see that one of the things that made Jesus unrecognizable as the messiah to most people is that they were expecting a military king, someone to come down and kick some ass for God. Instead, they got a carpenter and his fishermen buddies asking them to give up everything they had, even their dreams of military power.

And here we are again, with these Christians transforming themselves into a virtual army of God battling against the evils of the secular world, because, again, they refuse to see that their messiah refuses to be a general.

But these Christians really want power. They want a Godly man in the White House so desperately they refuse to see his failings as a human being. They want to have their way so desperately in the court houses that they overlook the pitfall of worshipping false idols. They want to have their way in the public schools so desperately that they ignore Jesus’s admonition to render under Caesar what is Caesar’s.

And they really, really don’t want to give themselves over to the transformative power of Jesus, because the only thing Jesus asks, again and again, is to let go of the things you think you can’t do without and see how it goes.

This, at its heart, is why they don’t go after adulterers with the same zeal they go after homosexuals or why they don’t go after rich people who refuse to give all they have to the poor with the same zeal they go after women who refuse to submit to men.

Because they are the money-hungry. The adulterers are among them. They want to fix what’s “wrong” out there. They don’t want to look inward at their own problems.

They’re trying to strike a bargain so that they don’t have to change.

“God, if you don’t expect me to do what Jesus asked, then I will go after those fornicators and blasphemers and heathens. Lord, if you just let me hold onto this power and have a little more, I will be an army against your enemies.”

Bargaining with God…

Good luck with that.