escape to insanity

I had something really good to write about. It was brilliant. It was thought-provoking, and actually meaningful.

It was going to be awesome.

But I forgot what it was.

I was going to hold off on this until I could summon enough content to make an appropriately-sized list, but decided I didn't have the time or interest to go further than I already scraped together, so this is what you get. Don't like it? Tough on you.

Alright, enough of that intro stuff. No one really cares anyway, right? Right. So, without further ado, here's my list of top four stories in the Bible that I just plain don't understand. I'll operate under the premise you're not intimately familiar with each story, and try to provide some sort of synopsis.

Giving Away Your Unborn Kid

Plot synopsis: Woman named Hannah for some reason can't have a kid. (sorry… that should read “the LORD closed her womb.” Because, you know, it was His fault.) She prays to God for a kid and makes a promise if He comes through.

¹⁰ In her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the LORD, weeping bitterly. ¹¹ And she made a vow, saying, “LORD Almighty, if you will only look on your servant's misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the LORD for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head.”

…

²⁷ I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him. ²⁸ So now I give him to the LORD. For his whole life he will be given over to the LORD.” And he worshiped the LORD there.

- I Samuel 1:10-11,27-28

I understand that she was upset because she couldn't have any kids. In that era, you were basically a failure if you hadn't churned out about a dozen kids by the time you were 14. Kinda rough time to be a woman, I guess. In any case, I can understand that she prayed to God for a child. What I don't get is her promise to turn him over to the church in return. That seems unfair to the kid, and he hasn't even been born yet.

“Welcome to the world! Oh by the way I hope you'll like the church, because you're going to be serving there for the rest of your life. Enjoy!” Something to that effect? Let me know if I'm getting warm here. I just can't get behind a story like this, when it's basically selling an unborn child into slavery. Sure, it's the church, it's for God, it's not really slavery, is it Tom?

Except it really is. The child, whose name turned out to be Samuel by the way, was sworn to be a servant of the church long before he had any choice in the matter. Does God really want a servant who didn't choose that life? I can't imagine that's the way it's supposed to be.

Lot's Wife

Plot synopsis: Abraham's nephew Lot has gone to live in a faraway city named Sodom. (of Sodom and Gomorrah fame) God comes to Abraham and tells him that He's planning on wiping these two cities off the map, because the people that live there are so evil he has no choice. Abraham manages to haggle with The Big Guy, and gets Him to agree not to do the whole fire and brimstone thing if there are just ten people (read: ten men) in the whole city who God finds righteous.

So… God does his audit, and go figure, no ten such people are found. So He sends angels to get Lot and his family out of the city before things start to heat up. The family is warned not to look back at the city once God has started to destroy it, and sent running into the hills.

¹⁷ As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don't look back, and don't stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!”

…

²³ By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. ²⁴ Then the LORD rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the LORD out of the heavens. ²⁵ Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. ²⁶ But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

- Genesis 19:17,23-26

So that's the story. What I don't understand is that last bit, verse 26. His wife was turned into a pillar of salt because she stopped to look back at the city burning. That seems a bit harsh, no?

I understand that God's command was to not look back, but… c'mon. She wanted to see fire and brimstone raining down from the sky annihilating the city. That's not something you get to see every day. Most sermons I've heard about this say she turned around because she wanted to go back to the cities and resume her life of sin, but… I don't know if I buy that entirely. If it were me, and there was literally fire pouring out of the sky onto the city behind me, I think I'd need to see that.

Just seems a bit over-the-top to make her into a salt statue for the local deer.

Bury My Father

Plot synopsis: Jesus is walking along, and like any good groupies, people come up alongside and profess their love for him and his teachings, and want to follow him wherever he goes. He tells them there are apparently some ground rules for getting into this particular club.

⁵⁹ He said to another man, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” ⁶⁰ Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

⁶¹ Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family.” ⁶² Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

- Luke 9:59-62

Wow. Where to begin with this one. These two guys come up and tell Jesus that they want to follow him, and he blatantly tells them, “Nope! Denied.” Why? Were they evil misfits unsuited for the rewards to be reaped by following him? No such thing. One wanted to go bury his late father, and one wanted to say goodbye to his family before embarking on a trip to Jesus-knew-where.

Apparently that's sufficient reason to be denied access to the fan club. My pastor claims this was symbolic for wanting to go back to their old lives and resume their old habits instead, or something to that effect. I think it's exactly what it says. I think these guys wanted to go tie up their old lives and finish things off first.

You know, the little things. Like burying your deceased father and saying au revoir to the rest of the fam. You know, who would want to do that? Be respectful to your earthly family? Noooooooooooo. Certainly that's not allowed.

Bald Man's Revenge

Plot synopsis: Elisha (he's a guy, contrary to the misleading name) is the protégé of über prophet Elijah. He's just received a double-scoop portion of whatever power Elijah had, since Elijah just got swept up into heaven on a flaming chariot. Way to make an exit! In any case, Elisha is walking back into town, when he has an encounter (cue dramatic music):

²³ From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!” ²⁴ He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys. ²⁵ And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.

- II Kings 2:23-25

So let's get this straight. He just had this amazingly powerful encounter where he got a double-dip into the Almighty power, and then he's walking along and gets harassed by some kids. Now, I'm sure it was more than just some name-calling like they make it sound, but still. Unless they were stoning him, I can't see why he would need to curse them with bears. Bears? C'mon now. Why not killer bees or flying horses? That's scary stuff. So they called him 'baldy' and he had them killed. I can't imagine what this guy would have been like in middle school.

Maybe it's just me, but… sounds like someone could use some anger management classes. Preferably not the sort led by Jack Nicholson, but still. Might be a good investment, or a good court order.

Photo by tlianza. License: Creative Commons Attribution.

I ran out of headings.

Yeah, that's all the stories I had. Maybe it's a good thing I didn't go for the full seven, seeing as this turned out to be fairly lengthy. But… I just don't get these. I'm sure there were more stories I've read over the years that just made no sense whatsoever to me, but these were the ones that popped out specifically. Anyone want to share their immense wisdom with me and explain any of these to me?

While browsing the intarwebs, as I'm wont to do, I happened upon a strange advertisement to the side of the screen. Normally I would never have seen it (I ♥ Adblock Plus), but alas I had to use Internet Explorer temporarily. And so it was that I came across this delightful little gem.

This was the ad I saw. It's an ad looking for “local mystery shoppers” — supposedly, the idea is that you're paid to shop at particular stores so long as you report on how your experience was. You rat out the crappy clerks and “associates” and whatever other people are there to “assist” you in your shopping expedition, and you can keep whatever loot you've pilfered in the meantime. It's a simple enough scheme; lots of product-oriented businesses use it.

Except… what does this ad have to do with mystery shopping?

…yeah I couldn't figure it out either.

I suppose that could be a representation of what their mystery shoppers look like. Or… it could just be an attractive, highly-Photoshopped girl slapped up (no pun intended, I swear) on the image for no reason other than to get your eye to look at it. They must have spent some time oiling her up, too… look at the shine on her legs.

Let no one ever tell you sex doesn't sell. Cause… it does. I think. If people actually click that ad. I'm sure they do; people still click those stupid “swat the fly and win a prize!” banners, why should this be any different?

I saw this bumper sticker on my way home from work today… I did a double-take, as I thought there's no way someone would so blatantly advertise their addiction to a social networking site. But, upon looking closer, I saw that it was something quite different indeed. Note the characteristic blue globe of NASA to the left. Still… made me go “huh?” for a second.

And then there was this one from yesterday morning on my way to work. It took me a second to figure out what it said, then another second or ten to figure out why someone would have that as their plate. Oh well, I guess some people are just that driven to get to work. Got to work? Either they have some sort of compulsion about work, or they have to work or they'll die. Kind of like a really long, drawn-out version of Speed.

This meme seems to be circulating as of late, so I figured I'd give it a go 'round these parts. The name of the game is to post five things about yourself that others most likely don't already know.

So… for example… I can't say that my favorite animals are white tigers, because I'm guessing you probably already figured that one out. If you didn't know that about me already, well…. I guess you're not all that bright, are you? :P

Okay… so here goes.

Uno.
I couldn't write a poem if my life depended on it. My best efforts turn out something like this:

Roses are red,
violets are blue,
this line doesn't rhyme,
and neither does this one.

Two.
I'm deathly afraid of flying, stinging insects. It's the only thing I've ever come close to having a phobia of. I'll quite literally just freeze up if a wasp gets too close — I won't attempt to swat it away, I'll just freeze.

C.
I'm a sucker for girls with Australian accents.

Second-to-last.
I'm a grammar nazi. Okay, so that's something you might have already known. Hmm.

Real second-to-last.
I love the smell of fresh copies. Walking past the copy machine here after someone just slaughtered a tree is the greatest smell in the world next to freshly-cut grass and freshly-brewed coffee.

Fin.
I wasted four years and thousands of dollars on a college education, only to discover that what I went to school for was not even remotely what I wanted to do with my life. I've since had a few jobs that make use solely of the skills I taught myself, and absolutely loved them.

So that's me. Now it's your turn… I'm not going to tag specific people, I'm just going to let this one go to whoever wants to take thirty seconds of time to fill out a comment.

Go.

First, I apologize for the dearth of posts lately… I've been busy with work and such… and let's face it. I'm not exactly that exciting of a person to come up with something fascinating for you to read every day. Alright, now that that's settled, let's move on.

I had to go up to the public library today to drop off some books that were coming perilously close to being overdue – I haven't had as much free time to read as I used to. Because the person who designed the new library building is a moron, the parking lot is positioned about as far from the entrance as you can possibly make it without crossing into a new zip code. I don't know who looked at that design and said, “yeah, that looks good.”

I digress. Partly because I only had a few books to return, and mostly because I'm completely lazy, I opted for the book drop on the side of the building. It's a pretty standard outdoor book drop: metal hinged door mounted to the brick exterior. You drive up in your car (or bike, or whatever suits your fancy), pull down the door, drop your books/magazines/abandoned kittens in the gaping maw of the collector, and hightail it out of there before the coke-bottle-eyeglassed octogenarian drawing a paycheck from the library comes after you looking to exact a pound of flesh for the thirty minutes you were overdue. Like I said, pretty standard.

Except as I glanced at the door just prior to depositing my nearly overdue reading materials, I noticed something… odd.

I noticed a Braille plate at the bottom of the drop box door. Yeah, a Braille plate on the drive-through drop box. The drive-through box. The box you probably will never see (sorry, sorry) unless you plan on driving around to that side of the building.

Now, I understand that there are Braille dots on some odd things by default. There might be Braille dots on the keypad of the drive-up ATM, for example, simply because keypad buttons tend to come standard with some sort of Braille lettering. They just happened to be installed on an ATM that you drive up to. That doesn't apply in this situation, because this plate was quite clearly affixed after the rest of the box was put together. It was an aftermarket Braille plate, you might say.

Now, sorry, but what blind person is groping around the sides of the library going “Damnit, where is that book drop??” I'm not making fun of blind people here… I'm just pondering the likelihood of someone who's that visually impaired wandering around the outside of the library and accidentally stumbling upon the book drop.

“Huzzah! Now that I've accidentally found some large piece of metal, I shall grope it to see if I can discern its purpose in this world!

*gasp*

By the beard of Zeus, it has Braille!! I'm saved!”

I'm just sayin'.

So… I got an interesting voice mail today. First, I was confused because my phone didn't register a missed call, just a voice mail. In any case, I called to check what I had missed. Oh, the excitement!

I'm greeted by the voice of a woman who identified herself as Sarah something. Sarah something is the manager of some such department at a Best Western Hotel in a town a few miles from where I went to college. At first I was confused as to why this woman would be calling me.

As I listened on, her reason for calling became apparent. It's nice to get voice mails where the person actually explains why they called. Anyway… she started to explain that they were working on filling some recently vacated positions. She was looking through applications and found my name, apparently.

Let's back up a bit, shall we? Sometime last year, late August or early September, I had just moved away from my hometown, back to the town where I went to college. I had a townhouse there with a friend of mine, and was looking for a new job. While I was out trying to market my more career-oriented skills, I figured I'd slum it a bit and put in some low-level applications as backups. Just in case I didn't find a “good” job soon enough, I wanted some applications to fall back on: Wal-Mart, Blockbuster, etc. Since I'd worked at a Best Western for a couple seasons (summer/winter between college semesters) previously, it seemed like an obvious choice.

That was early September. Sep. Tem. Ber. Month Nine in a twelve-month year. This is now mid-June. Month Six. Including the month of September, that was ten months ago. Nine and a half if you figure that we're only halfway through June.

At what point is it just too late to call an applicant? Do they really think I'm just sitting around a year later, waiting for that call from Best Western? Do they really think that banquet set-up is such a posh job that I've been hoping they'd call, hoping I'd be offered the chance to slave away, breaking my back for minimum wage, part time? Please.

In any case, I've had two full-time career-oriented jobs. Two jobs that pay more than double what the Best Western bit would have offered, even after a raise or two.

Yeah. I had to laugh after hearing that voice mail. Calling me almost a year after I applied (in a last ditch effort, by the way)?

I think I'll call her back in April to let her know I'm currently unavailable.

To the woman in the green Honda Element on the bypass this morning:
Thanks for the angry glare. Traffic is rough in the morning, often slowing to a crawl for no apparent reason, and your harsh gestures help make it all worthwhile for all of us. It's just one of those things.

I know it was completely unreasonable for me to expect to change lanes. I'm almost ashamed of myself for needing to be in a lane that doesn't have a big yellow “Exit Only” sign above it. How dare I try to stay on the freeway instead of getting off at some exit downtown? The gall of some people, I tell you. So when I eased my Subaru into your lane, I can see how furious it must have made you to see another car embracing your section of the road. Those roads aren't made for more than one car, clearly. Maybe it's like Highlander for cars; there can be only one on the freeway at a time.

Pay no mind to my careful attention to where your car was at the time. Never mind that I carefully checked, several times, to make sure I wouldn't be cutting you off. That's completely irrelevant; I understand that no one may enter your lane ahead of you, and that you command a thirty-foot cushion of space in all directions around your car. See, that space between you and the white Buick ahead of you was just perfect for my little car, and I needed to be there. So thanks for the angry glare, and the sarcastic head movements. It shows you care.

To the guy in the black Mercury Grand Marquis on 35th:
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to listen to your music. Even though I was perfectly comfortable in my own car with my own stereo on, I'm grateful for your willingness to share your taste in music with those around you. I'm sure everyone within 50 feet of your car appreciates being given the chance to enjoy the delightful stylings of your favorite rap artist.

I particularly enjoyed the part where my car was shaking from the bass. Those custom subwoofers must have been expensive, and I appreciate every penny you spent on them. Were it not for your generosity, I wouldn't have been able to experience the wonders of losing my hearing for the duration of that stoplight, and each of the next four stoplights from there on. Thanks to your car, I received what almost felt like a full-body massage through my driver's seat, though that may have been my body attempting to run in expectation of an earthquake.

I hope you do well in your attempts to look “bad-ass.” I know the Grand Marquis is about as rough and tough of a car as they come, so you're well on your way to being a ghetto superstar. All you need now is a sticker across your back window with the name of your favorite rapper, maybe some of those fake bullet hole stickers, and some spinners. I'll let my grandmother and her friends know to upgrade their Grand Marquis in like fashion.

Okay, okay, I know it's been a while since my last post. I've been busy, alright?

Busy, or lazy. Pick one.

Anyway, I've accumulated some grievances and annoyances over the last few days. Most of them aren't new to me, just newly revisited. And because a good rant is always fun, here goes.

Cell phones in inappropriate places. I'm a fan of cell phones in general. My cell phone is my only phone, with the exception of the phone on my desk in my cubicle. That one's harder to carry around in my pocket, seeing as how it's tethered to the wall by an ethernet cable. In any case, I like cell phones. They're handy, they're convenient, they're lightweight, and they're getting cheaper (at least as compared to the original “mobile” phones of a decade or so ago).

But… there are times and places where cell phones are unwelcome. Theatres, churches, bodily cavities, and the like. Another of those places is the post office. At least, the post office that I use has a sign right at the front (and additional signs every few feet to the counter, in the event that you somehow missed the first seven) requesting that customers silence their cell phones while in the post office.

Now, I don't know about you, but I try to do whatever I have to do to appease the postal workers. Their lives are tough enough as is — how many other professions do you know of that have spawned phrases with the sort of implications “going postal” carries? Not too many, I'd imagine. I don't want my cell phone going off at the counter to be the trigger (no pun intended, I swear) that sets off an enraged worker.

And this button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers. This might be someone you've known for years. Someone very, very close to you.

Bonus points to whoever knows where that quote is from. I know at least one person who should get it immediately (I'm looking at you, Erik). Back to my rant. Today I was at the post office, sending a DVD back to the idiot who sent it to me (hold on, that part's coming eventually); who should be ahead of me in line but a girl with a loud cell phone. It rings amazingly loudly for a phone with a quarter-inch speaker — do they make aftermarket amplifiers for cell phones? She of course answers it, because why not. She proceeds to talk fairly loudly to whoever's on the other side, right up until she gets to the counter, pausing only to tell the woman she needs postage, blah blah. She hangs up and goes about her transaction; except… her friend apparently didn't understand that she was at the post office, and called her back. When she failed to answer, the same person called again, and again, and yet again. She finally answered it again only to say, “I can't answer the phone, I'm at the post office.” Um… silence your damn phone!! See, I used two exclamation points in that last sentence. That means extra grr.

Seriously, people, silence your phone. You're only going to be in the post office for a few minutes, you can live without a call for those precious seconds. Unless you're waiting to hear that a kidney just became available for your transplant, the call can wait.

So that's my cell phone rant for this post. Now, up a bit, I briefly mentioned that I was sending a DVD. Here's the second part of the rant, and the reason that I was at the post office in the first place.

I recently ordered a movie off Amazon.com, as I tend to do fairly often. The movie The Abyss was on television the other day, and reminded me that I wanted to get it on DVD. So I check Amazon, and of course there are multiple versions of the movie available. Well, I want to work on getting a good chunk of the Fox Collector's Edition DVD Series into my hands, so I settled on the Collector's Edition. Sure, it costs a bit extra beyond the regular version, but hey. I've got a real job now, I can afford to splurge every once in a while. So I plunk down the money for the 2-disc collector's edition, then sit back and wait for the package to arrive.

Well, today it showed up. Pretty decent shipping response, so I'm pleased. I open up the mailing envelope, and immediately I'm dismayed. Something was amiss. The box didn't look right. There was no collector's edition number on the spine, and the box doesn't look like the Digipack packaging that it was supposed to be in. Eh, oh well, I'll just list it on Amazon, and try to buy again from a different vendor. Then I notice… it's not actually the “Collector's Edition.” It's the “Special Edition.” Is there a difference? Well, not really, but yes. The big difference is that the going rate for the “Special Edition” is only about six dollars instead of the 18 I spent. Well, to hell with that, I'm not spending $18 for a $6 movie.

I immediately contacted the seller, crafting a careful response detailing my situation, making sure I don't sound angry or upset or anything. After sending, I got an email a few minutes later with seven words: “return for refund, sorry about the error.” How thoughtful. So I had to go to my local K-Mart (which has apparently degraded past “ghetto” to “disgraceful” since my last visit so long ago) to pick up a suitable envelope. Looked like someone had raided the shelves, because I ended up getting a giant envelope that could probably hold two DVD cases side-by-side.

Grr. That's beside the point. Okay people, Amazon has very specific listings, and very specific guidelines on how to list items. Before you list anything, it says to check to make sure that the item you're selling matches perfectly the item in the listing. Things like “special edition” versus “collector's edition” DO make a difference, believe it or not. Especially when there's a $12 price difference between the two. Oh, and when the cases look COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

So that's my Amazon rant. It felt good.

That's a lie. It felt like every other rant.

Courtesy of Calvin Tang over at Newsvine, I came across this awesome set of pictures of tigers diving for food. Those kitties are not to be messed with.

The only comment I could summon was such:

YES, MY BRETHREN! FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED!!!!!!

Ahem. I mean… these were awesome.