Please stop calling my phone.
I never wanted to give you a phone number, but you wouldn’t turn on my lights without one.
You woke me up at 7:am today to have a recording tell me I can pay a constant bill every month by signing up for your new service.
I don’t want to pay a constant bill. I want to pay exactly what I owe, no more no less.
You then called me at 4pm to let me know that you have a “direct payment” option that ties right into my checking account.
Couldn’t you have just tucked this information into my monthly bill so I can promptly throw it out? Did you really need to wake me up at 7am, AND bother me during a meeting at work?
I tried calling back, but it was busy.
Also, this “gas prices are rising due to lost profits” thing… let me explain something to you.
If I say “I want to 500 million in sales this year” and end up only hitting 300 million, that extra 200 million is NOT a loss. (RIAA pay attention)
Projected shortcomings do not qualify as a “loss”. They may be a failed opportunity and imply business problems, but they’re not a loss.
If my operating costs are 400 million, and I only make 300 million, that’s a loss!
According to your latest figures, you’re still making more money than you pay out in operating costs. That means you’re in the black. Sure, the profits aren’t as big as you would have liked, but it’s NOT a loss.
Raising rates due to this “phantom” loss makes no sense at all. What if other companies followed your ideas?
“Dear consumer – We sold xboxes this year at a low price of $149 expecting consumers to buy an average of 7 games, since you only bought 2 games this year, we need to charge you $200 to make up for our loss”
“Dear sir, when I diagnosed you with cancer I expected that it would be life threatening and that you’d be recieving treatments from me for the next few years. Now that your cancer is in remission, I need to make up for my losses, so your son’s school physical will be billed at $25,000 this year. Thank You.”
Get with the picture DTE. If you didn’t own a monopoly on the energy market, you’d have been out of business a long time ago.
January 1st, 2005
Do you know what your kids are up to online? Of course you do! You?ve blocked all the porn sites, set up filters, and even have a monitoring program to let you know if your kids are talking about sex, or porn, or meeting up ?uncle bob? from the chat room. You?re a smart parent, but you?re still probably clueless.
There?s a new trend popular among teenage chatters, and your filters won?t pick up any of it. It?s called l33tspeak, netspeak or just plain slang (leet speak from the word elite). You know what I?m talking about. Acronyms like lol wtf bbiab and nm. Using single letter words: U replaces you, R replaces are, o replaces oh, m replaces am etc?
Less popular, but still widely used (especially in games) is true l33tspeak, which involves using numbers instead of letters. 4 replaces A, 3 replaces E, 7 replaces T 1 replaces L, and $ replaces S. These are just a few examples, some of it is worse like /\/ and /\/\ , or 13 instead of B.
Today?s kids are taking their creativity to the internet, and it?s affecting the way they speak. So bad in fact, that school teachers have even reported seeing ?lol? (laughing out loud) turn up on hand-written papers. (How would you pronounce that?)
Many kids as old as 17 don?t know the difference between homonyms such as there, their, and they?re. Hell, there aren?t too many 17 year olds left who can even spell h-o-m-o-n-y-m anymore, and no it isn?t spelled with an i.
If you?re concerned about your kids, it?s absolutely crucial you learn to understand their language. Your filters may pick up porn, but do they catch the word ?pron??
Another key phrase is the word PAW, short for ?parents are watching?. Can you think of a non-naughty use for that sentence? I can?t.
Sure you blocked porn sites, but what about Google image search? Any teenager can tell you that online image searches are the best free porn sites ever.
So what can you do? Talk to your kids. Get your own copy of AOL Instant Messenger and put their names on your buddy list. Read their profiles, you?ll be surprised what you find in there.
Need to find out what they?re up to? Try typing their screen name, email address, name, or cell phone number into Google and see what pops up. I guarantee you?ll find your son or daughter?s picture, email address, and tons of should be private information about them listed on sites like hotornot.com, buddypic.com, facebattle.com, facethejury.com, or facebook.com
Does your son or daughter have a livejournal or a blog? If so do you read it? You probably should. There?s nothing wrong with reading their diary if they?re posting it on the internet. Thousands of other people probably are.
For the concerned parent, Microsoft offers a Guide to L33tSpeak on their website, and noslang.com offers a free Internet slang dictionary and translator where you can brush up on your slang, or translate your son / daughter?s live journal.
January 1st, 2005
Travis Conway never thought he would have to face the day where he had to tell his children that mommy wasn?t going to be home for dinner. He sat outside Glenview Elementary, motionless, in his old rusted pick-up marked with a few patches of blue paint along the fender. The warm spring air blew across his short, black hair and the sound of classical piano compositions could vaguely be heard through the only functioning speaker in the rear.
The sound of the school bell broke him from his daze and he tried to gather his composure and wipe his eyes with the McDonalds napkin from the console. However, he had to be careful not to put pressure on the lump over his right eye. He had always kept a large stack of napkins in the console in hope that his kids would never see the double action pistol he kept hidden inside.
?Daddy!? his youngest, Olivia, yelled as she weaved past other students with nothing less than a smile on her face. His oldest, Andrew, was close behind.
?Hey sweetie,? he said to her as she jumped into the front seat and pulled the door behind her.
?Olivia, open the door for your brother.?
Andrew finished trading his last few Zorgamon cards with a friend and squeezed into the back seat, forcing Olivia?s backrest to push forward slightly.
?Dad, can I stay the night at Eric?s?? he asked.
Travis couldn?t seem to let the words leave his mouth as another tear fell down to his lips. He grabbed the napkin as quickly as he could, he couldn?t dare let his kids seem him like this.
?Daddy what?s wrong? Why are you crying?? Olivia asked. Although three years younger than her brother, she had always been the more perceptive one.
Andrew seemed to have already forgotten his question and had focused back to the trading cards.
?Kids, listen,? he said. ?Something?s happened?to your mom.?
?What happened?? Olivia said.
?Well?I?m not sure how to say this,? he said. ?Bad guys came to the house today, Olivia, and well?they hurt mommy.? It was at this point Andrew had put down his cards and leaned forward, poking his head into the front seat like most kids would do on a car ride.
?Kids…the bad guys hurt mommy.? He found himself stuttering and repeating the same thing. It killed him to say this.
?Mommy was killed this morning, kids. The bad guys hurt and killed her and she?s?she?s not coming back.?
It was at that moment that the tears from his face seemed to somehow transfer directly to Olivia?s.
?She?s in heaven now, kids, she?s in a much better place I promise,? he said before they could say anything.
Speechless, Andrew fell back into his seat, staring out the window at his other classmates. The smiling classmates that got onto their assigned busses, and the classmates that stood by the curb. Those kids would be able to give their moms and dads hugs when they arrived.
* * *
It was a quiet drive home, and hearing laughter of children in Dansford?s city center didn?t help control his emotions. Nearly every block had a bakery, and the wares in the display windows of each shop looked more delicious than what had been on sale in the pervious place. The scents of cinnamon, powdered sugar, nutmeg, apples, and chocolate eddied in the warm spring air.
About ten minutes after leaving Glenview, they were on the other side of town into the more open and less-populated rural area. When they arrived to their two-story country home, Travis was dismayed to see that the press had already arrived. Print journalists and television crews with mini-cams were being kept behind a police line.
He parked his car as news crews grouped together and rushed towards his car like middle-aged women would in a rush to the newest ?Tickle-Me-Elmo? at the store opening of Toys R Us.
?Mr. Conway!? the race-winning reporter shouted as approached his truck with her camera-man, who was at a loss of breath. ?Mr. Conway, what do you think of the allegations against Antonio Shuyler for the murder of your wife??
Another reporter arrived seconds later and interrupted. ?Mr. Conway, you have had previous counts of interaction with Mr. Shuyler, does this relate to your wife?s death?? he said, practically shoving his microphone into Travis?s face.
Travis felt as if he could punch the woman right in her pretty face and pull out his pistol against the man for being such arrogant bastards. But he couldn?t, not in front of the kids.
?C?mon kids, lets go,? he said to them, grabbing Olivia with his right hand and Andrew with his left. ?Keep your heads down.? He pushed his way through the herd of other reporters, keeping his head facing the ground to avoid the constant flashes of journalists and locals.
?Kids,? he said as he made it into the house, slamming the door behind him, ?Go change out of your school clothes and hurry back down here, we have to go.?
January 1st, 2005
Ding-dong!” goes the doorbell. Is it Avon calling? Or perhaps Ed McMahon with my three million dollars? No, it’s Yahweh’s Witlesses again, just wanting to have a nice little chat about the Bible…
Boy, did they ever come to the wrong house! So we invite them in: “Enter freely and of your own will…” (Hey, it’s Sunday morning, nothing much going on, why not have a little entertainment?) Diane and I amuse ourselves watching their expressions as they check out the living room: great horned owl on the back of my chair; ceremonial masks and medicine skulls of dragons and unicorns on the wall; crystals, wands, staffs, swords; lots of Goddess figures and several altars; boa constrictors draped in amorous embrace over the elk-horn; white doves sitting in the hanging planters; cats and weasels underfoot; iron dragon snorting steam atop the wood stove; posters and paintings of wizards and dinosaurs and witchy women, some proudly naked; sculptures of mythological beasties and lots more dinosaurs; warp six on the star-filled viewscreen of my computer; a five-foot model of the USS Enterprise and the skeleton of a plesiosaur hanging from the ceiling; very, very many books, most of them dealing with obviously weird subjects… To say nothing of the great horned owl perched on the back of my chair and the Unicorn grazing in the front yard. You know; early Addams Family decor.
And then, of course, it being late in the morning, you can expect Morning Glory to come wandering out naked, looking for her wake-up cup of tea. Morning Glory naked is a truly impressive sight, and the Witlesses look as if she’d set her tits on stun as they stand immobilized, hands clasped over their genitals. With the stage set and all the actors in place, the show is ready to begin.
Their mission, of course, it to save our heathen souls by turning us on to “The Word of the Lord” – their Bible. I guess they figure some of us just haven’t heard about it yet, and we’re all eagerly awaiting their joyous tidings of personal salvation through giving our rational faculties to Jesus. Every time they come around, I look forward to trying out a new riposte. Sure, it may be cruel and sadistic of me, but hey, I didn’t call them up and ask them to come over; they entered at their own risk!
This time should be pretty good. After letting them run off their basic rap while lovely Morning Glory serves us all hot herb tea, I innocently remark: “But none of that applies to us. We have no need for salvation because we don’t have original sin. We are the Other People.”
“Hunh? What?” they reply eloquently. It’s clear they’ve never heard this one before.
“Right,” I say. “It’s all in your Bible.” And I proceed to tell them the story, using their own book for reference:
Genesis 1:26 – The [Elohim] said, “Let us make humanity in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild beasts and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth.”
Elohim is a plural word, including male and female, and should properly be translated “Gods” or “Pantheon.”
27 The Gods created humanity in the image of themselves, In the image of the Gods they created them, Male and Female they created them. 28 The Gods blessed them, saying to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all living animals on the earth.”
Now clearly, here we are talking about the original creation of the human species: male and female. All the animals,plants, etc. have all been created in previous verses. This is before the Garden of Eden, and Yahweh is not mentioned as the creator of these people. The next chapter talks about how Yahweh, an individual member of the Pantheon, goes about assembling his own special little botanical and zoological Garden in Eden, and making his own little man to inhabit it:
Gen 2:7 – Yahweh God fashioned a man of dust from the soil. Then he breathed into his nostrils a breath of life, and thus the man became a living being. 8 Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden which is in the east, and there he put the man he had fashioned. 9 Yahweh God caused to spring up from the soil every kind of tree, enticing to look at and good to eat, with the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the garden. 15 Yahweh God took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and take care of it.
Now this next is crucial: note Yahweh’s precise words:
16 Then Yahweh God gave the man this admonition, “You may eat indeed of all the trees in the garden. 17 Nevertheless of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat, for on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die.”
Fateful words, those. We will refer back to this admonition later.
Then Yahweh decides to make a woman to go with the man. Now, don’t forget that the Pantheon had earlier created a whole population of people, “male and female,” who are presumably doing just fine somewhere “outside the gates of Eden.” But this setup in Eden is Yahweh’s own little experiment, and will unfold to its own separate destiny.
21 So Yahweh God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and enclosed it in flesh. 22 Yahweh God built the rib he had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man.
Right. Man gives birth to woman. Sure he does. But that’s the way the story is told here.
25 Now both of them were naked, the man and his wife, but they felt no shame in front of each other.
Well, of course not! Why should they? But take careful note of those words, as they also will prove to be significant . . .
Now this next part is where it starts to get interesting. Enter the Serpent:
Gen. 3:1 – The serpent was the most subtle of all the wild beasts that Yahweh God had made. It asked the woman, “Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?” 2 The woman answered the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden. 3 “But of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden God said, ‘You must not eat it, nor touch it, under pain of death'” 4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “No! You will not die! 5 “God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.”
What a remarkable statement! “Your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” The Serpent directly contradicts Yahweh.
Obviously, one of them has to be lying. Which one, do you suppose? And, if the serpent speaks true, wouldn’t you wish to eat of the magic fruit? Wouldn’t it be a good thing, to become “like gods, knowing good and evil”? Or is it preferable to remain in ignorance?
6 The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the eye, and that it was desirable for the knowledge that it could give. So she took some of its fruit and ate it. She gave some also to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together to make themselves loincloths.
The author makes an interesting assumption here: that if you realize you are naked you will automatically want to cover yourself. Further implications will unfold shortly…
8 The man and his wife heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from Yahweh God among the trees of the garden. 9 But Yahweh God called to the man. “Where are you?” he asked. 10 “I heard the sound of you in the garden,” he replied. “I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.” 11 “Who told you that you were naked?” he asked. “Have you been eating of the tree I forbade you to eat?”
And so the sign of the Fall becomes modesty. Take note of this. The descendants of Adam and Eve will be distinguished throughout history from virtually all other peoples by their obsessive modesty taboos, wherein they will feel ashamed of being naked. It follows that those who feel no shame in being naked are, by definition, not carriers of this spiritual disease of original sin!
12 The man replied, “It was the woman you put with me; she gave me the fruit, and I ate it.”
Right. Blame the woman. What a turkey!
13 Then Yahweh God asked the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman replied, “The serpent tempted me and I ate.”
So of course she blames the serpent. But just what did the serpent do that was so evil? Why, he called Yahweh a liar! Was he wrong? Let’s see…
21 Yahweh God made clothes out of skins for the man and his wife, and they put them on.
Out of skins? This means that Yahweh had to kill some innocent animals to pander to Adam and Eve’s new obsession with modesty!
And now we come to the crux of the Fall. Yahweh had said back there in chapter 2:17, regarding the fruit of the tree of knowledge, that “on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die.” The Serpent, on the other hand, had contradicted Yahweh in chapter 3:4-5: “No! You will not die! God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” So what actually happened? Who lied and who told the truth about this remarkable fruit? The answer is given in the next verse:
22 Then Yahweh God said, “See, the man has become like one of us, with his knowledge of good and evil. He must not be allowed to stretch his hand out next and pick from the tree of life also, and eat some and live forever.”
Get that? Yahweh himself admits that he had lied! In fact, and in Yahweh’s own words, the Serpent spoke the absolute truth! And moreover, Yahweh tells the rest of the Pantheon that he intends to evict Adam (and presumably Eve as well) to keep them from gaining immortality to go with their newly-acquired divine knowledge. To prevent them, in other words, from truly becoming gods! So who, in this story, comes off as a benefactor of humanity, and who comes off as a tyrant? THE SERPENT NEVER LIED!
This story, to digress slightly, bears a remarkable resemblance to a contemporary tale from ancient Greece. In that version, the Serpent (later identified as Lucifer, the Light-Bearer) may be equated with the heroic titan Prometheus, who championed humanity against the tyranny of Zeus, who wished for people to be mere slaves of the gods. Prometheus, whose name means “forethought,” gave people wisdom, intelligence, and fire stolen from Olympus. Moreover, he ordained the portions of animal sacrifice so that humans got the best parts (the meat and hides) while the portion that was burned to the gods was the bones and fat. In punishment for this defiance of his divine authority, Zeus condemned Prometheus to a terrible punishment for an immortal: to be chained to a mountain in the Caucasus, where Zeus’ gryphon/eagle (actually a Lammergier) would devour his liver each day. It would grow back each night. Zeus promised to relent if Prometheus would reveal his great secret knowledge: Who would succeed Zeus as supreme god? Prometheus refused to tell, but history has revealed the answer…
The interesting thing about all this is that the Greeks properly regarded Prometheus as a noble hero in his defiance of unjust tyranny. One may wonder why the Serpent is not so well regarded. On the contrary, snakes are loathed throughout Christiandom.
23 So Yahweh God expelled him from the garden of Eden, to till the soil from which he had been taken. 24 He banished the man, and in front of the garden of Eden he posted the cherubs, and the flame of a flashing sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.
So that’s it for the Fall. But the story of Adam and Eve doesn’t end there.
Gen 4:1 – The man had intercourse with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain… 2 She gave birth to a second child, Abel, the brother of Cain. Now Abel became a shepherd and kept flocks, while Cain tilled the soil. 3 Time passed and Cain brought some of the produce of the soil as an offering for Yahweh, 4 while Abel for his part brought the first-born of his flock and some of their fat as well. Yahweh looked with favor on Abel and his offering. But he did not look with favor on Cain and his offering, and Cain was very angry and downcast.
Well, why shouldn’t he be? Both brothers had brought forth their first fruits as offerings, but Yahveh rejected the vegetables and only accepted the blood sacrifice. This was to set a gruesome precedent:
8 Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out;” and while they were in the open country, Cain set on his brother Abel and killed him.
Accursed and marked for fratricide,
16 Cain left the presence of Yahweh and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
We can assume that the phrase “left the presence of Yahweh” implies that Yahweh is a local deity, and not omnipresent. Now Eden, according to Gen. 2:14-15, was situated at the source of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, apparently right where Lake Van is now, in Turkey. “East of Eden,” therefore, would probably be along the shores of the Caspian Sea, right in the Indo-European heartland. Cain settled in there, among the people of Nod, and married one of the women of that country. Here, for the first time, is specifically mentioned the “other people” who are not of the lineage of Adam and Eve. I.e., the Pagans.
So let’s look at this story from another viewpoint: There we were, around six thousand years ago, living in our little farming communities around the Caspian Sea, in the land of Nod, when this dude with a terrible scar comes stumbling in out of the sunset. He tells us this bizarre story, about how his mother and father had been created by some god named Jahweh, and put in charge of a beautiful garden somewhere out west, and how they had gotten thrown out for disobedience after eating some of the landlord’s forbidden magic fruit of enlightenment. He tells us of murdering his brother, as the god of his parents would only accept blood sacrifice, and of receiving that scar as a mark so that all would know him as a fratricide. The poor guy is really a mess psychologically, obsessed with guilt. He is also obsessively modest, insisting on wearing clothes even in the hottest summer, and he has a hard time with our penchant for skinny-dipping in the warm inland sea. He seems to believe that he is tainted by the “sin” of his parent’s disobedience; that it is in his blood, somehow, and will continue to contaminate his children and his children’s children. One of our healing women takes pity on the poor sucker, and marries him…
17 Cain had intercourse with his wife, and she conceived and gave birth to Enoch. He became builder of a town, and he gave the town the name of his son Enoch.
With both of their first sons not turning out very well, Adam and Eve decided to try again:
25 Adam had intercourse with his wife, and she gave birth to a son whom she named Seth… 26 A son was also born to Seth, and he named him Enosh. This man was the first to invoke the name of Yahweh.
Now it doesn’t mention here where Seth’s wife came from. Another woman from Nod, possibly, or maybe someone from another neolithic community downstream in the Tigris-Euphrates valley. But her folks also, cannot be of the lineage of Adam and Eve, and must also be counted among “the other people.”
But whatever happened to Adam? After all, way back there in chapter 2:17, warning Adam about the magic fruit of knowlege, Jahweh had told him that “on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die.” So, when did Adam die?
Gen. 5:4 – Adam lived for eight hundred years after the birth of Seth and he became the father of sons and daughters. 5 In all, Adam lived for nine hundred and thirty years; then he died.
Hey, that’s pretty good! Nine hundred and some odd years isn’t bad for a man who’s been told he’s gonna die the next day!
Well, the story goes on, and maybe next time the Witlesses come to visit I’ll tell more of it. But suffice it to say that those of us who are not of Semitic descent (i.e., not of the lineage of Adam and Eve) cannot share in the Original Sin that comes with that lineage. Being that the Bible is the story of that lineage, of Adam and Eve’s descendants and their special relationship with their particular god, Yahweh, it follows that this is not the story of the rest of us.
We may may have been Cain’s wife’s people, or Seth’s wife’s people, or some other people over the hill and far away, but whichever people the rest of us are, as far as the Bible is concerned, we are the Other People, and so we are continually referred to throughout.
Later books of the Bible are filled with admonitions to the followers of Jahweh to “learn not the ways of the Pagans…” (Jer 10:2) with detailed descriptions of exactly what it is we do, such as erect standing stones and sacred poles, worship in sacred groves and practice divination and magic. And worship the sun, moon, stars and the “Queen of Heaven.” “You must not behave as they do in Egypt where once you lived; you must not behave as they do in Canaan where I am taking you. You must not follow their laws.” (Lev 18:3) For Yahweh, as he so clearly emphasises, is not the god of the Pagans. We have our own lineage and our own heritage, and our tale is not told in the Bible.
We were not “made” like clay figurines by a male deity out of “dust from the soil.” We were born of our Mother the Earth, and have evolved over aeons in Her nurturing embrace. All of us, in our many and diverse tribes, have creation myths and legends of our origins and history; some of these tales may even be actually true. Like the descendants of Adam and Eve, many of us also have stories of great floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other cataclysms that wiped out whole communities of our people, wherein “I alone survived to tell the tale.”
Nearly all of our ancestral tribes (and especially those of us who today are reclaiming our own Pagan heritage) lack that peculiar obsessive body modesty that seems to be a hallmark of the original sin alluded to in the story of the Fall. We can be naked and unashamed! Why, our Goddess even tells us, “as a sign that you are truly free, you shall be naked in your rites.” Not being born into sin, we have no need of salvation, and no need of a Messiah to redeem our sinful souls.
Neither heaven nor hell is our destination in the afterlife; we have our own various arrangements with our own various deities. The Bible is not our story; we have our own stories to tell, and they are many and diverse. In a long life, you may get to hear many of them…
May you live long and prosper!
January 1st, 2005
