Friday Night Miscellany (a little late)

A short essay that I found very interesting about the original religion has been posted at Reality Sandwich: Imagine a time (whether prehistorical or transhistorical) when human beings lived moment-to-moment in the presence of the sacred. Religion was unnecessary. There was no separation between spirituality and life, no distinction between the sacred and the mundane, no division of the Godly and the worldly. When we lost the ongoing and immediate sense of sacredness, then we needed religion to bring us back to it. "Religion," after all, means "that which renews our connection." No matter that modern religions have been distorted into a force for separation and not connection. If we look carefully within any one of them, we will find traces of the Original Religion, the religion borne from that immediate, experiential identity with the divine. Born from the divine, it also has the potential to bring us back to the divine. Ohmygoddess! On the 5:00 p.m. national news right now - a certain "evangelical" leader here in the US believes that the symptoms of global warming are signs that we are in "THE END TIMES" (doom music here, cue thunder and lightning) and therefore true believers must NOT do anything to interfere with the outworking of God's Divine Plan. No, they can continue to zip around in their gas guzzling Suburbans and produce 1,000 pounds of non-recyclable garbage each year for every member of their households, while preparing spiritually for THE END. Well, what hogwosh. Anyone with a third grade education should be able to reason out that if it REALLY is God's plan, then no matter what puny humankind does we won't be able to interfere with it's out-working; but if it is NOT God's plan then whatever we do may have some moderating effect and could save millions of lives (humans and animals). The logical thing to do is to attempt to moderate the effects of global warming. Trying to do so is not going against God's plan if it's not God's plan. And if it IS God's plan well then He'll just pull His big old white beard and laugh His butt off at us. Duh! I like this Quote of the Day from the Dailygrail.com: ...If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers. Thomas Pynchon In a college literature course in undergrad many moons ago, I had to read Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. The only thing I remember from the whole epic is something about a light bulb in a Nazi factory that one day discovered it couldn't burn out and gained self-awareness. I believe it was called Bernie the light bulb. Whatever happened to Bernie the light bulb? Is "he" still alive??? This could be a question of grave existential import... (Edited at 6:29 p.m. oops - it's Byron the Immortal Light Bulb, not Bernie). Absolutely historical (oops, I mean hysterical) headline story from the online version of The Sun: 'Creepy gnome' terrorises town. A must watch video (to get the full 'creepy gnome' effect). Enjoy!