The name of the Abrahamic God?

Something I have learned over the years is that some Christians do not know the name of their own god.  While I’m not familiar with Jewish and Muslim familiarity with “His” common name, I find this tantamount to a child not knowing the name of its father.  He doesn’t have a name, he’s just “Dad.”  In this case, He’s just “God.”  This is not the case.
The name of the Abrahamic god is Yahweh.   Pronunciation is 100% up in the air since the Roman’s did a very good job of making sure that everyone who knew how to pronounce the name became exhumed and if anyone still does know the proper pronunciation, they aren’t talking (Come on Jews!  Throw the Biblical scholars a fucking bone!  Unless you don’t have one, in which case, carry on).  Nonetheless, that’s his name, don’t wear it out.
On a side note, Christians, you are unequipped to take the Lord’s name in vain.  You are your god’s proverbial redheaded step children.  He didn’t even tell you his name.  You CAN’T take it in vain.  You can’t even pronounce it correctly.  Many of you don’t even know it.  Either way, “goddamn” is not  a swear in Christianity.  “Fuck Yahweh and his tyrannical bullshit” on the other hand would be  a swear.  That would be taking the Lord’s name in vain.  A more applicable blaspheme would be “Damn you by Yahweh.”  After the person you used it on figures out what you’re talking about, they’ll be highly offended and you’ll be highly damned.  If you believe in that stuff.

And now you know!

What to do immediately following a breakup?

While this subject strays far from my usual blog post, being entirely based in opinion, each and every one of the directions given were arrived upon through the use of rational thought and non-emotional thinking.  Briefly, I will list these directions on what to do following a break up and while these directions are largely focused at males (myself being a  male), the advice should still be applicable for females.

1.  Stop thinking emotionally.  If you “feel” like doing something, you probably shouldn’t.  Give yourself a 24 hour cool down.

2.  Take a shower.  While this step serves no actual purpose beyond a purely therapeutic one, it at the very least keeps you from doing anything stupid while you have time to consider what just happened.

3.  Do not tell any of your friends for the next 24 hours.  They will want to comfort you and since a traditional break up remedy is alcohol, you do not need this (though you may want it).  After 24 hours (or however long you need) has passed and you have told them, you can decide for yourself whether or not to drink.  This is not advised though, drinking post-breakup leads to stupidity.

4.  Think of your recent breakup as less a negative and more a positive (hard, I know).  The worst has already happened, it only gets better from here (unless something awful happens which makes it worse, but that is unlikely).

5.  Take a deep breath and think seriously of what you’re going to be doing with yourself the next day and the next week.  By planning your week, you are giving your life structure where structure has been taken away.

6.  Wait at least two days to ask someone else out and no longer than a month.  Ignore this rule if you only desire sex, but calling up someone you’ve had a crush on and going “Hey, I just broke up with my girlfriend, wanna go on a date?” is probably not going to net you a lot of success.  Maybe a pity-fuck, but not much more than that.

7.  Always remember: it’s not the end of the world (unless you kill yourself).

Well, this is my rough outline of what to do and think about immediately and shortly after a breakup.  Maybe it will be helpful to others or maybe they’ll think it’s a bunch of bullshit.  Works for me.

That gods coming back from the dead is common in religious mythology?

While most if not all of my readers are familiar with the story of Christ’s resurrection following his crucifixion, many of you may not be aware that there are a number of other religious traditions that hold that their deities came back from the dead.

Here are a few examples from different religious traditions:

The Greek Tradition:  A young Dionysus (Bacchus) was lured from safety by the Titans with wondrous toys.  Upon seizing Dionysus, the Titans murdered him, ripped him asunder, and cooked his flesh.  Upon smelling the cooking, Zeus went to investigate.  Discovering the source of the Titan’s culinary delights, he slew them.  Zeus then resurrected Dionysus.

*in some forms of this legend, humanity is also created in this act, but this is likely a latter day attempt by followers of Dionysus to inflate his importance*

The Zoroastrian Tradition:  In this faith, we are ALL the recipients of a resurrection.  Humanity and this world is a gigantic trap to lure in evil.  When evil is destroyed, Ahura Mazda (the God of Good) will resurrect all mankind and grant them immortality.  Presumably there will be a party afterwords.  As the host deity is Persian, I suggest you not eat the hors d’oeuvres unless you have a penchant for peacock eye.

The Egyptian Tradition:  In this faith, there is a great amount of resurrection, for gods and mortals!  The most famous example is that of the god Osiris.  Osiris was murdered by his brother Set, and his body was chopped up (even his penis!) and scattered around the Kingdom of Egypt.  Only the perseverance of Osiris’ wife Isis in collecting every bit of his body allowed Osiris to be resurrected.  Luckily for him, he was a god, his wife was a god, and that seems to have been enough.  It’s good to be divine!  Minus the body mutilation stuff…

The Aztec Tradition:  This one is a bit tricky.  The god Quetzalcoatl is often associated with the man Quetzalcoatl.  The logical conclusion would be that man and god are synonymous or that man was named for god.  We’re talking religion though, so logic is irrelevant.  The god (or man, it’s hard to tell) Quetzalcoatl was exiled due to the trickery of his rival god Tezcatlipoca.  Something about making him think he was getting old and ol’ Quetzalcoatl having sex with a lady of questionable quality.  Sounds like a midlife crisis to me… but according to the legend, Quetzalcoatl would return from his death/exile one day, and end the sacrifice of blood to the gods.

While the Aztecs didn’t get Quetzalcoatl to come back, they did get Cortez.  He DID end blood sacrifice too!  So, this one actually came true.  Kind of.  Score one for prophecy!

The Norse Tradition:  In Nordic mythology, the god Baldur the Beautiful (son of Odin and Frigga) was made invincible by his mother from all things, save one (there’s always gotta be a catch!).  His weakness was a small plant called mistletoe (that name ring a bell?) and his adopted cousin Loki thought it would be a great prank to fasten a dart from the mistletoe and kill Baldur with it.  A laugh riot that Loki!

Well, his mother was quite miffed and saddened that her son was dead, as mothers usually are.  So, Frigga marched down to see the Norse goddess of death, Hel.  After much pleading, Hel agreed to release Baldur if all beings mortal and immortal would weep for Baldur.  So they alllll wept.  Except for Loki (who happens to be Hel’s husband), who for some reason decided to accomplish his not weeping by transforming into an old lady.

Now, you might be thinking: “Wait a minute!  That’s a god ALMOST coming back from the dead!”   Well believe you me, it gets better.  The Ragnarok happens (or hasn’t happened, or will happen…  time is relative in the Norse faith) and Loki gets killed, as well as most of the gods and most everyone else.  Since Loki is dead, and everyone’s probably crying anyway because of the near end of the world,  Baldur comes back!  Paradise on earth ensues, peace forever, immortality for all, it’s good stuff.

So, if you see Loki…  make him cry.  With a bit of creative  thinking, maybe we can have paradise without a catastrophic war!  Then all of us, Loki included can sing Kumbaya as lead by Baldur the Beautiful.

Babylonian Tradition:  Tammuz the Babylonian god of Vegetation died once a year and was in turn resurrected by his wife Ishtar a Goddess of Fertility.  The time in between resurrections was winter, meaning that his death was likely a way of attempting to explain why things got cold and stopped growing once a year.  Knowing how weather is in Iraq, those wimpy Babylonians didn’t know how good they had it!

Cult of Mithras: This one’s a trick, Mithraic traditions hold nothing of Mithras’ resurrection or dying at all.  He was a supreme friggin’ god!  He moved around the cosmos.  You don’t kill the guy that moves around the cosmos!  Bad things happen when that happens…

Conclusion: Well, here are all the gods lined up equally in their dying and resurrecting.  It can be said that when all gods are equal, all gods are equally insignificant, but you can be the judge of that.  Open up your heart and take home one of these snuggly wuggly supernatural beings free of charge!  Baldur’s looking lonely, and no one’s wanted to play with poor Osiris in centuries.

Till next time, hope you learned something!

That Pheasants are not native to North America?

Many of you have likely seen a pheasant in the wild or even hunted one and are aware of pheasant conservation groups such as Pheasants Forever.  But pheasants are not actually native to North America.  They’re not even native to Europe.  Pheasants spread from Asia to Europe and spread from Europe to North America during colonization.

So, ironically, one of the most beloved of all game birds in the United States is in fact a species foreign to North America.

That the United States of America is not a democracy?

I’m going to start simple, with an apparently commonly unknown fact.  So very many people these days seem confused as to the type of government that we in the United States live in.  Did you know that the United States is a Republic?  While many of our elected Representatives, intellectuals (as well as not so intellectuals), and TV personalities will bandy about the word “democracy” in reference to the state of the U.S. government, this is simply not true.

For a flash of nostalgia, repeat after me: “I pledge allegiance to the United States of America, to the Republic for which it stands…” I hope I didn’t just give you a hazy grade school flashback, but those words that your teacher forced (gently encouraged) you to repeat every day may not have a personal meaning to you, they do hold a fact, the U.S. is a Republic.

While the Pledge states the fact that we in the U.S. have a republican government (FYI, republic and Republican are entirely different things, if there’s any confusion, I’ll do a post on this later) it does little to illuminate the details of this state of affairs.  Let me do what the pledge fails to do, and explain what a republic is, why we have one, and the differences between a republic and a democracy.

The Republic: The defining feature of a republic is representative government.  Representative government basically means that the citizens of that country vote to elect representatives to do the dirty work of running the country for them.  These representatives are then empowered to make decisions on a local, national, and international scale in the name of the citizens that elected them.

I’ll not go into the branches of the U.S. government (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial), but besides the Judicial (which is a kick in the nuts for any argument in favor of calling the U.S. a democracy), these branches are all made up of people elected by citizens of the United States, or appointed by these representatives (think bureaucrats, also not democratic) to run the country, an example of these other unelected bastards is the FCC.

The citizens in a republic never draft legislation (laws, ideas, things that need to be done, to be painfully simple), and rarely vote on it, though there is the rare example of a citizen suggesting legislation to their representative and later having it be made into some form of legislation (the natural cynic in me assumes it’s hardly recognizable).  The rare direct vote (Proposition 8 banning gay marriage in Cali being an example) on a law leads some credence to calling the United States a Democratic Republic, but this type of thing is quite rare, and simply means that as a republic, the U.S.A. has decided to borrow some aspects of a democracy, this does not make the U.S. a democracy though.

The Democracy: A democracy is far more simple to describe in its workings than a republic.  The complexity of running one comes from the simplicity of the form of government.  In a democracy, every citizen is their own representative.  They may elect a single representative to be their supreme voice in times of war, but in domestic decisions, the citizens of a democracy vote on everything.  Yes, I did say EVERYTHING.  Public spending on irrigation?  VOTE!  Should we invade so-and-so’s ass-hole country?  VOTE!  Should we raise taxes, lower taxes, or leave them the same?  VOTE!  Get it?  Got it?  Good.

So, does anyone out there remember voting on whether or not we should invade Iraq?  On whether or not we should reform health care, and then all that time you took crafting plans to do so and then voting on them? (Congressman and Senators are excluded from saying yes, you uppity elected fucks…  Just kidding keep up the hard/lazy work!)  Holy shit, you don’t?!  That’s because you live in a Republic, where you elect representatives.  If you didn’t know that, now you do.

Thanks for reading, and if you learned something, you’re welcome, but I’m more welcome because you did.