Feeling grinchy

You know what really made that green Grinch gripey about Christmas? I have it on good authority that long ago, in his youth, the Whos in Whoville had put him in charge of the town Christmas party.

As a real life person in charge of a Christmas party for nearly a thousand people, I feel so Grinchy today that I can barely stand it. The logistics -- uggh! The financial procurement -- arrgh! Whatever can go wrong probably will, and people will overwhelm the food table leaving nearly nothing for the poor schmucks behind them in line.

I just want it to be over. Over. Over. I want to go back to my cave on the mountaintop and escape all the noise, noise, noise.

Inexplicable misogyny

If you were walking down the street one day and saw a man striking himself in the head with a hammer, cursing himself by all the gods and smearing his body with feces, I am sure that you would agree with me that he needs professional help.

What then, of men so ignorant and mentally unbalanced as to take pleasure in demeaning and oppressing Women, his Sisters in humanity?

Isn't it so much more pleasurable, my fellow men, to uplift and cheer on these divine beings -- to rejoice in Their every success, to stand with Them and assist Them to achieve Their unfathomable potential?

I went to a website the other day in which some lowlife was trotting out the usual misogynistic stupidity and I upbraided him, far more gently than he deserved. Of course it's true, as he stated, that much of the world's architecture and achievements have been made by men. That only stands to reason since men have spent most of history overtly or covertly suppressing and destroying the achievements of Women -- from the public burnings of the poems of Sappho to the centuries-long attempts to keep Women from gaining an education or voting.

Under such conditions, it is amazing and wonderful that we have as much from the hands and minds of Women as we do.

Today I discovered another gem of Womankind, whom I will blog about later, Hildegard von Bingen.

Worthy causes

Perhaps some people have pockets stuffed with cash, legally earned one would hope, and can give it away until their arms get tired, to anyone who asks. The rest of us have to be more judicious. That poses a problem, since there are so many good causes: eliminating AIDS, about which Chase March recently blogged; muscular dystrophy, diabetes, wounded veterans, disaster relief, the Special Olympics, homeless shelters, Girl Scouts ...

But you know something? What looks like a problem is in one way a wonderful, wonderful sign. All these organizations have at their heart people doing good. In other words, millions of people are doing good in the world. Doing good -- a topic that LayDdee blogs on, one of my favorite subjects on Her blog.

I have just learned about another great idea. It's called donorschoose.org. Teachers in need of supplies for their classes can submit a wish list to this website and donors can then peruse this list and pay for an item.

I will soon post a permanent link on Isis for this site. After all, without education, where would any of us be today?

Happy Hanukkah (and some thoughts on Judaism)

Happy Hanukkah to all who celebrate it!

I am not Jewish. But I recognize the huge contribution that this people/culture/religion has made to the history of civilization.

Christianity began as a movement within Judaism and owes the so-called “Old Testament” of its scriptures to that faith, as well as its basic concepts of a loving Father-God and other theology. Its founder and its early leadership was utterly Jewish, a long-ignored or suppressed fact. The Catholic writer Carroll goes so far as to assert that even Jesus and Paul considered themselves Jews, wholly Jews, from birth to death.

Islam owes much to Judaism as well, however much some within its ranks might wish to deny that. And the prophet Mohammed didn’t lift off to heaven from the site of the Dome of the Rock just from happenstance or because it was a convenient high place along his journey. It was a holy place where, like it or not, a sacred Jewish temple once stood and to which that sacred aura still clung in his day, and to which it yet clings today.

The old physical stereotype of a Jew is patently ridiculous, because Jews today are of many backgrounds and cultures. I have known Jews who are black, blonde or sporting bushy red beards.

This blog is no place to go into great detail (and I am not qualified in the least to do it anyway!) but the history, philosophy and contributions of Judaism to humanity are worth the study of every intelligent person.

I continue to learn new things all the time. One Jewish commentator on a blog that I visit, discussing a hypothetical Christian conversion, helped me to realize how little I still know about the aforementioned thought process of Her faith. Unlike Christianity, in which most sects are mild to hyper-aggressive in seeking converts, Judaism not only does not proselyte, in many ways it discourages converts. Seems counterintuitive, at least to my Christian-raised mind. But there are reasons, thought-provoking reasons, for this difference.

In addition, the concept of a rewards-based heaven, even of a specific afterlife, is a totally Christian construct from which such a prospective convert must divest him or Herself, She wrote -- certainly no easy thing to do.

Personal hygiene in hell

As I lay shivering in my living room on Friday, wrapped in a blanket, wondering what the hell was wrong with my internal thermostat, I turned on a program that I like: Man vs. Wild.

This episode should have helped, if anything could, to warm me back up. The survivalist hero, Bear Grylls, jumped out of a helicopter into the scorching sands of the Sahara Desert, where he proceeded to survive for several days by eating raw lizards and spiders and by licking rocks for water.

Now Mr. Grylls does take pains to inform the viewers of his show that “he is occasionally [deliberately] presented with situations” in order to demonstrate to said viewers how to survive them. But otherwise, we are supposed to believe that we are witnessing reality -- no snacks slipped to him on the sly, no moleskin dropped in a care package for his blisters if he forgot to pack any.

For example, a cobra that popped up at some point was dropped off in his vicinity, he said, so that he could explain how a person stranded in the Sahara should behave in the presence of such a beast.

True it is that all of us manly men in the world like to think that such a situation is entirely possible in our lives, whether we bag groceries in Cleveland or fix trucks in Texas and that of course we need to know how to respond in a cool, manly fashion. In this, we differ from Women, who are quite cognizant that They will never encounter a Sahara serpent, and who wish that Their damn fool husbands would watch some other show instead, that doesn’t involve a guy chewing on a raw lizard and remarking that it tastes like blood and guts and scales.

As the episode wore on and Mr. Grylls continued his agonizing stumble across the sands of hell, I began to wonder about something. Now I am not the world’s most hirsuite guy but I do have dark hair and even after just a few hours away from my razor, I’m sporting a pretty noticeable facial shadow.

But Mr. Grylls, who was so desperate for water during the trek that, as I said, he licked rocks and squeezed damp sand through his tshirt, day after day, never seemed to grow a beard. Did he carry an electric razor with him? Or did he just shave dry, in a most incredible, manly way?

Been sick, sort of

I realize that I haven't updated this blog in four days. I was planning to do some major blogging over the weekend, but then I picked up some strange bug. Chills and sort of a fever but nothing else. Strangest thing. No blurpy stomach, no drippy nose.