Whoa. I don’t know how y’all do linky links every week, sometimes twice a week, when I tesseract from one Thursday to the one 2 weeks later in the blink of an eye.
While I was gadflying gadding about the internet at 4:00 a.m., I stumbled across the Macionite gnostic sect of Christianity. Their claim to fame is that the founder got excommunicated because he believed/taught that “the benevolent God of the who sent into the world as the savior was the true Supreme Being, different and opposed to the malevolent Demiurge or creator god,1 identified with the Hebrew God of the Old Testament.” Um. Yeaaaaahhhhh, and … ? I mean, we’re gonna have to count some angels here to find him wrong, but this is a pretty basic concept.
It came to mind because Sunday we talked about the Parable of the Ten Virgins. Now, I’ve never liked this parable because it’s not a parallel story. The idea is that you have to be prepared to meet Christ at the second coming, and you don’t know when that will be, so here’s a nifty little story to help you understand it better. Except it’s not completely analogous. Dude was late to his own wedding. Why would you prepare for a wedding that starts at, say, 7:00 or whatever, and he doesn’t show up till midnight? That’s just rude.
We have the sister missionaries over every Tuesday for dinner. I do not know why I thought this was a good idea. Anyway, yesterday, we got a new sister transferred in. She’s very new, and boy, can you tell. (New zealots, amirite?!) Now, her companion (the senior trainer) is pretty quiet and soft spoken,2 and the sisters have been coming over for a couple of months. We’ve always had a blessing on the food, a nice visit, then they leave to go back to missionarying.
The new girl wanted to have a Sunday school lesson. I tried to explain this whole Ten Virgins business, but neither she nor my mom were having any of my Nattering Nabobbery of Negativism. I tried to explain that I get the allegory. I get the message. I’m trying to say, the dude was late, and ain’t nobody got time for dat.
It went nowhere, and my mother now thinks I’m stupid. Not really. She is frustrated with my inability to “see” the point. I get the point. That is not what I’m saying. I can hold two different thoughts in my head at once, Mom.
We had tacos.
Speaking of women in the Holy Books, a golden oldie. I had a scene in one of my books where my heroine rants about how Esther really got the king to kill a man for her, but I’ll spare you.
Where’s Heroic Mulatto? I need a ruling.
Also,
I found this relatively recently.
And this, with a newish (2012) twist:
- Yeah, so my church teaches that God organized matter. This goes along with the couplet, “As God now is, man may be.” This is Christianity 101, insofar as it is meant metaphorically, that man may become like God, not A god. Of course, we’re gonna turn that on its head because why not. ↩︎
- This girl didn’t say a word the whole dinner hour, and I caught a couple of side-eyes cast in her companion’s direction. I don’t think she’s gonna be able to put up with her any better than I’d be able to. ↩︎
That sounds very similar to the gnostic heresy.
If I read it right, that’s exactly what it is.
I was taught that God the Father (Yahweh) is the god of the Old Testament and Jesus the god of the New Testament (i.e., redemption/atonement).
I’m more inclined to think some of the incidents in the OT are allegories, because the alternative outrages my sense of justice/mercy.
I seem to recall some sect of Gnosticism believing that the old testament God died on the cross with Jesus and the new testament God was re-born on Easter.
That God of Love then went to live on the Moon.
These days, that’s a big reason I’m a very lapsed Episcopalian – the NT doesn’t have much validity if the OT is full of shit.
However, my favorite theological dispute of the early Church was duality versus singular nature (and the problems with either not just the contention between the two) and Augustine’s solution of trinitarian doctrine. And he made it stick – that’s the real miracle.
From my understanding of the Gnostics, the Creator and the Redeemer are different people. The Creator created the physical world and trapped humanity in it to suffer, and the Redeemer is trying to show the intelligent gnostics the truth behind the reality so that they can escape the physical world.
But I’m really a dilettante when it comes to knowing my various heresies.
Neph — do not make me need to read The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant to get the damned parallels Donaldson was trying to draw, dangnabbit… it just wasn’t nearly as good as the first two trilogies.
Neph – that sounds a lot like Zoroastrianism.
SDF-7:
I won’t, you could read the manual for Kult or Nephilim though.
Never thought anyone would cover Seals & Crofts. But damn.
https://youtu.be/XNo7ZZryuSQ
I’ve heard that before. I don’t care for it.
I sold that album dozens of times in the ’80s-’90s. Never once did I ever listen to it or most of the other stuff from that era. My kids picked up their musical tastes in the ’70s-’90s. Of course I wouldn’t listen to it and I don’t know what they listen to today nor do I care.
I keep my truck radio on Classical Country but turn it off if there is others with me. Not every one is appreciative of high class music.
The Isley Brothers did it, It’s heard every Funk and Soul Friday at The Hyperbole Design and Construction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3o6ECdCZ7Q
So much better. I love the Islay Bros.
How do you grow jasmine in your mind?
Be chosen by a really annoying higher power?
Shrooms.
We had tacos.
Hard shell or soft, ground meat or shredded?
Let’s be ecumenical here, both hard and soft shell, ground meat, shredded meat or chopped are all accepted. They were all created by God and passed down through his chosen people, the Mexicans.
Praise be to KSuellington.
Who are these weak minded retards still testing themselves for Covid?
The same ones masking and vaxxing?
I just threatened to fire a coworker for spouting off “Covid’s coming back around” to me.
He was 100% serious.
So was I.
Sean:
He’s correct. Covid viruses are still around, same as they were around before the lockdowns, same as they will be forever. But if he wasn’t afraid of a cold before, he shouldn’t be afraid of one now.
Obviously, he was technically correct, but that wasn’t the context of the discussion. Which has me aggravated with such people.
Ask him when he’s prepping for the Spanish Influenza while he’s at it. Not like mutations of that aren’t still extant as well.
*Sigh*
At some point I agree with the con artists….the people who are stupid enough to fall for the con deserve what they get.
I support the Oxford comma, and think its removal is retarded, but I’ll adapt to whatever style is required or prevalent for the given medium.
Oh, my!
Oh my!
I know full well I overuse commas and probably incorrectly. I always depend on the kindness of strangers not to ream me too badly on the subject.
*nervously tugs collar*
STEVE SMITH TELL SDF-7 HOOMAN STEVE SMITH PREFER SEMI-COLON.
That video was funny. Good use of the internet.
I detest the Oxford comma, but pray for the Cambridge period every month.
*shakes head sadly, takes ZWAK out of will*
He is a bit of a bounder, isn’t he?
In light of the fact that the 2nd coming that the disciples expected to see during their lifetimes is still a coming attraction ~1,990 years later, perhaps that was the point?
God’s just not that into you. 🙂
Yes, I KNOW that’s the point.
However, we’ve been old ad nauseam to be prepared because we DO NOT KNOW the hour or day of his coming. We get it. He’ll be here when he gets here.
MY point is that the women were invited to a shindig at X time. They had NO REASON to prepare for him to be hours and hours late.
This is where I would have gotten into where it clicked for me, but then it un-clicked after a third glance, so I won’t.
Culturally speaking, it probably fit the time. “You’re attending an event for an important man. You’re an unimportant woman. He’ll get here when he gets here, and you better be ready when he does.”
Apropos of little, that metaphor made its way into a Built to Spill tune, despite Doug Martsch being rather decidedly not a Christian.
Not to mention how easily you could probably be delayed in your travels by some stubborn jackass.
*groan-laugh*
Thor’s Day, according to some of my friends.
I understood way too much of that gen alpha slang that professor was speaking. I’m sad. Bigly.
I understood way too much of that gen alpha slang that professor was speaking. I’m sad. Bigly.
I couldn’t understand a goddam word of what I listened to (which wasn’t much). Did he have some sort of speech impediment?
Words dont have meanings….blah blah. Every generation comes along and hangs new words on the same old ideas giving them the impression that they are changing the world. The old person sees the same pattern over and over again.
I dont pay attention anymore.
Well, the youngest generation seems to be doing the opposite. Look at the new rawdog and bareback meanings.
It still holds…same thing. Swapping old words around to the same old meanings. I think in the Middle Ages the word ‘fuck’ was the polite way of referring to sexual intercourse. Around and around we go.
…If I knew it was gonna be that kinda party Id stuck my dick in the mashed potatoes
“I think in the Middle Ages the word ‘fuck’ was the polite way of referring to sexual intercourse.”
Polite is overstating things a bit, but in Medieval Europe society was more comfortable with an earthier style of discourse than we are now. You may remember from your linguistics courses the concept of semantic drift; words can change in both denotation and connotation. For example “nice” originally meant “foolish”, and people started using it for “harmless” as in someone or something was too dumb to cause you any harm. Then harmless sense of the word became positive in connotation.
Nice
“The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch”.
Gaiman ended up not being all that nice.
I once had in my possession a dictionary of cuss words. It had a surprising number of entries and very interesting histories for them. It pains me a greatly that I lost that book.
Sorry Brooks….with very interesting histories.
My biggest problem with writing is focus. I have about six things going through my head at any one time. How long will my graph of 1M yrs of human evolution compared to glacial and interglacial periods have to be if I use 5×5 graph paper with a square representing 1000 years and where will I hang it? I dont have 200 inches of wall space. Did I wash and drain the lettuce for the hamburgers. Fuck, the dog needs to go out. What is the wife saying?
Groovy, man, groovy.
Yeah and I’m rolling my eyes at Professor Autism coddling them with that ridiculous shit and pretending it’s a “language”.
“for the day of the lord cometh as a thief in the night”
-Reverend Cleophus James
Words dont have meanings….blah blah.
I remember earnest meaningful conversations during the Nixon presidency about the gross linguistic distortion of reality by the forces of evil.
Blah blah fucking blah is right.
No more blah blah blah!
That’s cool man. I remember those cats too. People are so square now.
Fuck Xiao Ma. Guy’s a flim flam man.
I’m impressed that Moj can summon you so easily.
Millions will die
Paula Soldner inspected meat and poultry plants around southern Wisconsin for 38 years: “I’m talking brats, hot dogs, summer sausage, pizza.”
Her Department of Agriculture job required daily check-ups on factories to ensure slicers were cleaned on schedule, for example. Her signoff allowed plants to put red-white-and-blue “USDA inspected” stickers on grocery-store packages.
Last month, Soldner took the Trump administration up on its offer of early retirement, joining an exodus from the Food Safety and Inspection Service that began under President Biden’s reorganization of the agency last year. Soldner, who also chairs the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals, says remaining inspectors must now visit eight facilities — double the usual number — each day.
That’s not possible, she says, so it’s unclear how much food is legitimately earning that stamp of approval.
“Did that plant receive that daily inspection from inspection personnel? In my mind, that’s a huge question mark,” Soldner says.
There wasn’t a single case of food contamination before Trump was inaugurated.
Millions will die!
Because somebody that was due to retire is actually going to retire.
I wonder what she thinks of the rabbis who certify for glatt kosher.
BONK BONK!
I just threatened to fire a coworker for spouting off “Covid’s coming back around” to me.
What are his feelings about pulling the plug on mrna bird flu vax?
You may remember from your linguistics courses the concept of semantic drift; words can change in both denotation and connotation.
*blinks, clenches jaw*
One of my multitudinous triggers: people who use “critical” when “crucial” is vastly more appropriate.
Also, people who say “people THAT” instead of “people WHO”.
-end of rant-
Then there are the people that dream of the perfect language spoken with perfect grammar….
The Academy. Are we the only country that does not have an official Academy?
Out of all the major (and most minor) languages, English is pretty much the only one without a regulatory body: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators
I’ve always argued that this is the reason for English’s strength: it’s open source.
One of my fascinations and weaknesses is the number of English words in Japanese.
Talk to any English native speaking student of Japanese and you will hear how we all hate trying to pronounce katakana words and figuring out WTF the English word is and what it means.
They cheerfully use English whenever it works and it becomes part of the language.
Some linguistic purist said English isn’t a language so much as three smaller languages stacked on top of each other like 3 kids in a trench coat pretending to be an adult.
It seems that mongrel languages have a certain strength.
Sammy? Sammy Davis, is that you?
He was one far out cool cat.
Good to see you around Heroic. You are correct. English is a real stand out in that respect. It is also why it is so difficult to learn.
+1 candy man
One of my fascinations and weaknesses is the number of English words in Japanese.
I saw a program on NHK World’s English service recently about Osaka’s kushikatsu restaurants. Part of that word comes from English. I’ll let people guess which part and what word it’s coming from.
メンチカツ, ミンチカツ as well.
I used to get tonkatsu (fried pork with cabbage) at the Japanese restaurant my parents liked. It never occurred to me that katsu is the Japanese garbling of “cuts”. Makes sense. Japanese often uses u as a filler vowel for foreign words that have different terminal consonants than Japanese.
N (Nihon, Rashomon) is pretty much the only terminal consonant in Japanese. Almost all other words end in vowels. Swahili is similar.
The program said “katsu” is actually short for “katsuretsu” which, as Derpy implies below, is from the word “cutlet”.
When I see any of ‘would of, could of, should of’ in text or email. Ugh.
It is perfectly grammatical to use “that” to refer to people. Behold:
“That’s Bob in the picture, isn’t it? He’s the one who’s wearing a hat.”
You could replace “who’s” with “that”, but most speakers like to avoid repeating the same word in two consecutive sentences.
Bottom line, who and that are functionally synonyms.
with “that’s”, rather
Like an esprit d’escalier, I only notice typos after I click “submit”.
But those two that’s are functionally different. The first usage can only be “that” – it is in fact referring not specifically to the person but to something not yet known (like “what is that?”), the second usage – the relative pronoun – can be “that” but I think “who” is preferred for people.
I mean, “who’s that?” is perfectly valid English, grammatically and idiomatically. That tells me the words are basically interchangeable.
Can I throw a “payed” into the semantic bucket, here?
It is payneful, isn’t it?
Using “jealous” when meaning “envy.”
My boss has never correctly used “than” in a work email. Every weekly KPI email I get: “we were ___ [higher/lower] on ___ this week then last week.”
It’s a demoralization technique.
Does he ask you if you see four lights?
Lol. He’s actually a great guy, but his grammar in general is atrocious in written correspondence. Which is ironic, since we exclusively handle chat and online communication. I’m getting a small promotion in a couple weeks which should allow me edit-level access to some of our internal documents so I can correct some of the misspellings and grammatical errors that have been grating on me since I was hired.
English is pretty much the only one without a regulatory body
But muh AP Style Guide.
We used MLA in high school, then I had to switch to APA for college, since the business college decided to use APA for no discernible reason whatsoever.
Chicago or GTFO!
https://mastodon.social/@historytothepeople/112006407350257708
Facing a wave of P320 lawsuits, Sig Sauer asked for immunity. NH lawmakers granted it.
Jobs! American jobs! New Hampshire jobs!
Experts who study the nation’s food supply say the safety of everything we eat — from milk and macaroni to meat and lettuce — is called into question because of massive cuts by the Trump administration to the three federal agencies charged with monitoring it: the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nothing is safe now.
They missed that ‘…started under Biden…’ part. More kids in cages?
My 3-day weekend begins. Time for good old-fashioned redneck rambunctiousness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpSR0oI5zy8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6jSqt39vFM
Why not make the Lost Cause fun?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmKEn5fsdrQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSIj17xbAyk
Huh, the Rebel Yell sounds like the Aztec death whistle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsTwCDW9PH0
Parallel cultural development, as they said on Star Trek.
I bet the trumpets of Jericho sounded as such, and less like the Stuka sirens:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQzv-8pJSqY
Also, nerdy professor needs to learn how to talk without smacking his lips. Forget Rosetta Stone, guy. Learn to speak *that* language.
Airplane! did this joke ages ago.
fun jive quiz from 1969: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zB1le4fDr4
Any group that feels marginalized will develop its own slang as a form of protection.
Some Yiddish-speaking linguist said a language is just a dialect with an army and a navy.
I’m only 1/5 honkey.
I scored 80%
I showed that quiz to my Critical Thinking class last year. The reactions were amusing. Their expressions seemed to say: “so…we’re not the first group to come up with our own slang?”
I got 5/10, probably because I’ve seen Airplane! a bunch of times and paid attention during Black History month in elementary school.
Moje, your link to the Language Nerd (or whatever he calls himself) was ++AWSE, to use a nerd-ism from my own Gen Jones era. 😉
Thanks!
Can I throw a “payed” into the semantic bucket, here?
Preach, Brother.
One thing that helped me get over my annoyance at grammar, spelling, and usage mistakes was to read stuff from 500 or so years ago.
Here are a few samples of English before it had a standard orthography:
“I am of this opinion that our own tung should be written cleane and pure, unmixt and unmangeled with borowing of other tunges; wherein if we take not heed by tiim, ever borowing and never paying, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt.”
-John Cheke, 1561
“Certaynly our langage now vsed varyeth ferre from that which was vsed and spoken whan I was borne.”
– William Caxton, Prologue to Eneydos (1490).
“Thayt Chevski, hye is ane rottah. I liketh him notte ande blayme hyme gretely. Lette hym bee beyten withe stikkes.”
— Chaucer
“Ooh eee ooh ah ah, ting tang walla walla bing bang”
– The Witchdoctor
Meh, not that hard to untangle, though I’ve studied many languages and got paid by NSA to degarble Arabic for a while.
“That Cheusky, he’s a rotter (scumbag). I don’t like him and blame him greatly. Let him be beaten with sticks.”
The standard Arabic word for 3 is thelatha, but it can be pronounced as klatha, klatay, selassa, telata, etc depending on the nationality and education level of the speaker.
Once in Charleston WV, a guy with a heavy hillbilly accent came to me and asked if I had a “ladder”. I said a “ladder” and mimed climbing. He said no, a “ladder” and mimicked flicking a lighter on. I couldn’t help him, but since that day, I have always carried a lighter.
Me think of girl constantly
My favorite Arabic teacher at DLI was from Gaza. Once he played a clip of an old, toothless Bedouin talking and challenged us to transcribe it. I told him that he was the Arabic version of Boomhauer and asked him to look up that clip. When it finished, I asked him if he understood anything Boomhauer said, and he did not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1fDVUHZ44E
Another time, he taught us some Arabic phrase that sounds innocent, but when you say the syllables in reverse order, it’s an obscene insult. So I said, we have a joke like that too and wrote “I am sofa king dumb” on the board and asked him to read it out loud. Everyone but him laughed when he did. Later, in his office, I saw him researching “sofa king”. I think he got the joke eventually.
Your tax dollars hard at work. The other teacher I had from Gaza was a lovely young woman who perfected her English in a Texas donut shop and drove a giant pickup truck. It saddens me to think that any of their relatives have been hurt or killed in the war.
Wooly Bully always baffled me.
Not to mention the closing music for WKRP.
We have some fundamental experiences that shape the way we see the world in everything we think and speak and do though few people are aware of it.
One of them is this – if you stand still and turn in a full circles you will see the world stretching out to the horizon in every direction and right in the center of all of that is…..you.
Hey, I’ve got a Built to Spill for that, too.
I like that one, Suthen.
Useful (Every heresy explained in 9 minutes):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8s2TDoSc00
There is actually a part 2, apparently, so I guess it wasn’t EVERY heresy. The dude bugs me. He reminds me of a guy I knew in college. So if it turns out he is closeted gay, I called it first. But, some of his videos are pretty good.