Tell us more about your crush-harem ogged.
there are crushes and then there are CRUSHES
i'm not really sure if i know of a qualitative difference between them
1: Like the Iranian nuclear program, ogged's harem is long on potential and short on bang.
Before you know it, the Death Star will be fully operational.
re: 7
Are Jews disproportionately at risk?
11: One of the exes was Jewish, I thought. Past performance, etc., but the Swedish thing doesn't seem to be working out so well.
Heh. I just came out of a meeting in which a Jewish partner, talking to a Jewish associate about her upcoming vacation in Greece/Turkey, recommended that she visit Ephesus. He asked her if she knew the Epistle to the Ephesians: when she denied knowledge he turned to me and said "Well, you know it." It was difficult not responding "I'm sorry, I just look Christian."
Yeah, the ex was Jewish. So is the Lifeguard, for that matter. Mmm, Jewish.
14: The one you asked out? I thought she was Iranian, for some reason.
14. Mmm, Jewish.
Yeah, your Mom will totally go for that.
Hey, there are plenty of Iranian Jews. Mostly living in Great Neck, I believe.
13: You probably know it as well as most Christians.
If knowing the title qualifies, which it probably does. The only thing I know from an Epistle is the 'faith, hope, and love' spiel you get at weddings, and that's Corinthians.
Yeah, your Mom will totally go for that.
My mom loved the ex, and has a bunch of close Jewish friends, you bigot.
Isn't the epistle to the Ephesians the one in which Paul gets really fucking annoying about gender?
I thought she was Iranian, for some reason.
Dude, you know the rules.
Anyway, I support baa, should he want to pursue a preemptive strike on ogged's reproductive organs. Some things are too terrible, however minuscule the risk.
19: I would say knowing it was a biblical reference qualifies.
You said she had Iranian friends on the blog.
It's always amazing to read the non-gospel new testament and note how very different it is from the gospels.
How very different is it, ogged?
So far diplomacy is keeping the threat contained.
Mostly in its boringness. I'm pretty good with the Gospels and the Pentateuch (actually, mostly just Genesis and Exodus) because one does get stuck in the occasional church service with nothing to read but the Bible in the pew, but the rest of the Bible is so dull as to be practically illegible. I like Ecclesiastices, I suppose, but that's about it.
Oh, you're right, that is amazing.
30: I thought it was a lack of technical know-how.
Yeah, twelve seems low. I'm not going to count though, I'm getting an early night tonight. Camping next week though, and it's going to rain, perhaps I'll make a list. Most recent was a plumber with a cute arse and gorgeous calves ....
I like the way LB spells Ecclesiastes.
I'm pretty good with the Gospels and the Pentateuch
The Pentateuch is boring as fuck. Law this, covenant that, stone stone stoney mcstone. Fuck the P author; fuck him right in his priestly ass.
37: Pure ignorance, and too lazy to google.
Let me defend the bible as literature, you heathens. In addition to Genesis and Exodus, and Ecclesiastes, superb books include:
1. Samuel -- as political history alone, and not just for the section where Samuel hews the king of the Amalakites into pieces.
2. Kings likewise, and it has Jonah.
3. The book of Job. Which incidentally, contains the best single discussion of analytic philosophy: "I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all. Shall vain words have an end?"
4. Esther. Funny stuff. And a great villain-comeuppance.
5. Psalms. Hit and miss, but often excellent
6. Proverbs.
Job is good; the best answer for the problem of evil I've seen.
41: Kings doesn't have Jonah. The book of Jonah has Jonah. I'll give you that the book of Jonah is far and away the best book in the Bible, though. It certainly kicks the crap out of Job. "I'm God and I'm bigger than you and I'll shit on you as long as I want!"
37: How do you know she didn't mean Ecclesiasticus? Besides it being apocryphal, of course.
Job is good; the best answer for the problem of evil I've seen.
That God is evil? Not the best solution - that would be atheism - but it's certainly a solution.
I admit that "lump it" may not be the answer we were looking for.
the best solution - that would be atheism
Why do the Manichees always get short shrift?
I like the answer to evil in Ecclesiastes, which is, basically, also "lump it," but within a slightly less malevolant world.
Why do the Manichees always get short shrift?
'Cause they're ugly and dumb and they smell bad.
Why do the Manichees always get short shrift?
Because Peter Tork was the only one with any talent.
Give it up for Jonah. Also, the epistles are interesting if you try to imagine the context of them being written/delivered. But they aren't page turners.
So the subject of Ephesus comes up, and Unfogged turns into a Bible study group? Without even mentioning, say, Artemis? How sorely I've misjudged you, Mineshaft.
No, the 'were you there when I drew forth Leviathan with a hook' and all that bit; which can be read as an assertion that the motivation for and necessity of God's actions is beyond the comprehension of created beings -- that we simply aren't fitted to understand what's happening well enough to judge it as evil or not.
53: Hmm, I think I meant Michael Nesmith.
47: I dunno, it always had a Smoove B feeling for me. "The joints of thy thighs are like jewels, and I will freak those jewels gently all night long."
I love how this thread immediately turned into a discussion of the Bible.
58: You say that like it's a bad thing.
I would never include my boyfriends in a list of crushes. I have never had a crush on any of the people I've dated, and haven't dated any of the people I've crushed on. This is either meaningful in an awful way about me, or... uh, I guess that's the only option.
56: But God's motivation isn't beyond the understanding of created beings. It's explained to us right in the beginning of the book. And God isn't making the claim that Job can't understand God's motives; he's making the claim that Job doesn't have the right to question God's actions (because God is much older and bigger and so forth).
Mostly I just like its canonical status. im in ur holy book fillin ur mind with impur thotz.
All of the Bible is interesting if you try to imagine it as the Inspired Word of God, Meant to Teach Something Very Important to You. But I suppose that's cheating. Take that away and a lot of it zzzzzzzzz.... Genesis is okay in an Epic of Gilgamesh sort of way. Other books have plenty of redeeming qualities and interesting bits, but pretending they're really on par with great literature qua literature seems to me to be a stretch.
64: The Bible is horrifying if you try to imagine it as the Inspired Word of God. Trust me, I have the years of childhood hell nightmares to back it up. On the "Bible as literature" thing, sure, I'll agree.
(piling on)
Why do the Manichees always get short shrift?
Because they're slow-moving and unafraid of humans, and thus don't get out of the way of fast-moving boats.
Horror can be interesting, stras.
I was still worried about him, and spent hours trying to figure out ways for him to be less lonely..... I was also worried for my Dad..... I was terrified that Dad would be alone in an empty house. I lay awake nights, trying to figure out what would help their loneliness. I was leaving math section one day and happened to ask my math TA how he was. He was fine, but a little lonely.....
By my standard, of course, Megan is a seriously troubled and confused girl. I can see her bringing a jug band to cheer up St. Francis Assisi in his hermitage.
Horror can be interesting, stras.
When it's happening to other people, yes.
I like the part of the Bible where that hippie fellow says that nice stuff about the poor and the meek, but I'm kind of soft-hearted.
69: I am confident St. Francis would have enjoyed a jug band a great deal. This was a man who spent a fair amount of time socializing with donkeys, remember.
72: I do, too. What I don't like is when they bring him back as a fire-breathing zombie god at the end and then he eats the world.
To be fair, donkeys are wonderful creatures. Perhaps the best of all creatures.
Come on, the gospels are literary gold. The minor prophets do kind of drag on, but I get a kick out of reading the prescribed sanitary practices of society 3000 years ago, so I like Leviticus and such. Paul, I could do without.
Judges!
Psalms.
Not Proverbs, too many describe the mindset of a cagey provincial suspicious of city folk. I've always wondered whether there is any tradition of satirical humor that informs Isaiah, who seems so much better-adjusted than that Jeremiah. The other funny texts would not have survived, of course, and Isaiah only by accident because someone (maybe Jeremiah himself, certainly Jerome) didn't get the joke. Job and Ecclesiastes are both wonderful. Gospel of Thomas.
I used to know a guy who loved his mules like kids. He couldn't talk enough about his mules. His girlfriend knew they came first, too.
It was purely Platonic. These mules were underage. I think he liked them because they were consistent and easy to please.
Paul takes a lot of abuse just because he was more prolific. His epistiles are really no worse than the other New Testament epistles.
the prescribed sanitary practices of society 3000 years ago
Say what now?
80: Paul gets a bad rap for working out his thing about Jesus in public, which is pretty uncool. Take it down a notch, bro.
80: Paul gets a bad rap for being a capable politician who wrapped himself in piety.
The part I was questioning was "3000 years ago."
Wikipedia says, "According to datings of the text by Orthodox rabbis this [the revelation to Moses] occurred in 1280 BCE."
61 is true for me too, I think.
I've had crushes on people, but they've never been people I've ended up going out with.
I have a crush on Epistle to the Ephesians.
87: I meant the implicature rather than the statement per se.
56: Not quite. If the answer to the problem of evil and Job were 'where the fuck were you when I made the leviathan? huh? huh?', there's a bit of a problem with the reading, because God really sounds pissed off at that point, and he seems to be pissed off at Job, and giving the sorts of reasons that Job's friends gave for evil. They're all philosophers who try to justify Job's suffering by appealing to stuff like Job's sinfulness and other things. But God rewards Job at the end of the story as the only one who really gets it. After yelling at him with this 'i made the fucking elephant, you make shit'
The only way I can make sense of it is to go meta. Job is the righteous guy not because he thinks that God's ways are mysterious or because he accepts some argument, but because when his friends were all doing philosophy to try to answer the problem, Job went and talked to God. That's what Job did right, and that's what the theist's answer is supposed to be: pray, and figure it out from there.
[/end soapbox]
[you may sign up for my class but i'll make you write the papers.]
91: Just that the implication seems to be that these are things that were practiced 3000 years ago but are not practiced today. Which is false, of course.
I suggest you read Leviticus one more time, teo.
And then go get yourself a paddle for the end of your spear, IYKWIMAITYD.
Obviously it's not followed to the letter, but we do the best we can. And by "we" I mean certain people who are like me but not me.
88:
Crushes are pretty distinct from dating partners. I've only turned one crush into a boyfriend, that I recall.
Crushes are necessarily somewhat ephemeral, no? Some sort of distance involved, not knowing the person terribly well, such that they frequently end when, as Megan says, they're replaced by the next crush, the person does something jackassed; or when romance is seriously considered and ultimately rejected for any number of reasons.
12 crushes at once? Nah, not unless you count my seekrit feelings about Johnnie Depp. Otherwise, serial crushing. Which is not the same thing as serial dating.
Basically I just get irritated at the Christian tendency to discuss the OT generally (and Leviticus specifically) exclusively in historical terms.
Judith is pretty good. She gets to kill a general with a tent peg.
All the Letters can go jump in the lake. Revelation's sort of fun, if you like your drug trips heavy on the apocalyptic visions.
btw, I sincerely hope the "squished your head" post title is a reference to -- was it the Kids in the Hall? -- thing involving sighting someone in the distance and squishing his/her tiny head between your fingers.
Nobody but me seems to have found that hysterically funny. You see.
98: what Christians discuss it exclusively in historical terms? We're still all about Leviticus 18:22.
Judith is apocryphal. At least for Jews. And if you like detailed architectural specifications with your apocalyptic drug trips, Ezekiel's your man.
I liked the blogging the Bible series in Slate. I'm also glad he did it, not I.
93: I understand that there are Orthodox Jews holed up somewhere doing Orthodox Jew stuff, but the reason why I find Leviticus fascinating is because of the three thousand year old remove between me and and the author. I find the 200 mile remove between me and NYC less interesting.
Judith is pretty good. She gets to kill a general with a tent peg.
I thought that was Jael, the wife of Heber. Which I know because Bertie Wooster won a Scripture prize.
100: "I am crushing your head! Crush! Crush!"
Kids in the Hall rawk(ed).
64: I've always found it the most fun to read the Bible as an anthology of religious writings from bygone civilizations, which is basically what it is. That way even the dull parts are fascinating, in an archaeological sort of way.
But for literary appreciation, I do have to give props to Ecclesiastes (I can't help but picture the author as an ancient counterpart to the nihilists in The Big Lebowski) and Samuel (in fact, any book where the Ark of the Covenant turns up -- ancient precursor to The Luggage). Also, Maccabees doesn't get enough love. And the Song of Songs, for that matter; I've always wondered how the hell someone managed to sneak a book of steamily erotic poetry into the Bible.
101: Sure, but what about Leviticus 11:7?
Jael is the one with the tent peg (Judges 4:17-21). Judith also kills a general, but in some other fashion.
I contracted a crush the other day. It's a sexually transmitted affliction. You just have to wait it out until the acute phase passes.
Judith beheaded Holofernes. I don't know who he is or why she did it, but there's paintings of her doing it, so we know she's to blame.
24 "Most blessed of women be Jael,
the wife of Heber the Kenite,
most blessed of tent-dwelling women.
25 He asked for water, and she gave him milk;
in a bowl fit for nobles she brought him curdled milk.
26 Her hand reached for the tent peg,
her right hand for the workman's hammer.
She struck Sisera, she crushed his head,
she shattered and pierced his temple.
27 At her feet he sank,
he fell; there he lay.
At her feet he sank, he fell;
where he sank, there he fell-dead.
28 "Through the window peered Sisera's mother;
behind the lattice she cried out,
'Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why is the clatter of his chariots delayed?'
29 The wisest of her ladies answer her;
indeed, she keeps saying to herself,
30 'Are they not finding and dividing the spoils:
a girl or two for each man,
colorful garments as plunder for Sisera,
colorful garments embroidered,
highly embroidered garments for my neck--
all this as plunder?'
31 "So may all your enemies perish, O LORD!
But may they who love you be like the sun
when it rises in its strength."
Then the land had peace forty years.
It's poetry week at Unfogged.
Are people really more interested in bible stories than forcing Ogged to give a detailed and hopefully embarassing accounting of his dozen current crushes?
He's already given detailed and embarassing accountings of all his crushes. You have to read the archives.
Especially the bit about the fruit basket.
The Book of Tobit, you pagans and apostates. Angels, demons, heroes, giant fish--what's not to love? That book helped me while away more than one Mass.
But the best bits are in the apocrypha.
It's not our fault you Jews cut all the exciting parts out of your Bible, teo.
I thought a book wasn't properly apocryphal unless none of the major canons included it.
122: No, that's pseudepigrapha. Apocrypha from a Jewish perspective means books that are included by Catholics but not by Jews (or Protestants).
121: It's not our fault the Catholics crammed all this other crap in.
Not our fault the fun bits couldn't get past your ratings board. Something about wanting a family-friendly holy book.
I like to imagine that the ancient Biblical canonical scholars weren't very different from a couple of guys arguing over the canonical status of Star Trek: the Animated Series.
Apocryphra? All the really cool shit is in the pseudepigrapha. It's all about the book of Enoch.
When did the King James Version start leaving out the Apocrypha?
When publishing companies realized that Protestants buy loads more Bibles than Catholics.
Did anyone read the New Yorker article a few months ago about the Bible publishing industry? It was very interesting.
118 is totally right, BTW.
124: Technically, I think it was the Orthodox who jammed it all in.
It was before there was a distinction, I believe.
No, this isn't happening. I mean, I understand I'm coming late to the party, but did we really switch to a discussion of Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians prior to #20? The one that wins Owen Wilson forty bucks in Wedding Crashers?
Top 4 Biblical crush moments:
1. David seeing Bathsheba. Do you believe in adulterous sovereignty at first sight? Yes, I know that it happens all the time. (Thanks to D. H. Lawrence for the tip.)
2. Washing Jesus's feet. We've all been there, with some unrequiting savior or other, and he was a total gentleman about it.
3. God and the Israelites. He comes on all nice, and then announces, "I am a jealous God."
4. Lot. Edgy!
Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.
2. Washing Jesus's feet. We've all been there, with some unrequiting savior or other, and he was a total gentleman about it.
This was the basis for a funny "Shouts & Murmurs" once.
Lot... edgy?
I don't want to know what you consider "unacceptable."
134.2 A boy I had a huge crush on once drew on my feet. I was going swimming in the morning, so when he'd finished (a DM on one foot, a sandal on the other) he washed them. Bowl of warm soapy water, soft flannel ... christ, I'm getting the horn again just thinking about it. I ended up going out with him for nearly two years. Jesus was definitely getting plenty with that foot-washing move.
23: One of the top hits for "Ephesians 5" is worth your while.
I'm getting the horn again just thinking about it
Would that be one of those black-market human horns?
black-market human horns
Harvested from Chinese grannies.
134: Gotta put in a vote for Boaz & Ruth as one of the top biblical crushes. "Then Boaz said to his servant who was in charge of the reapers, "Whose young woman is this?" (Ruth 2:5)
Now that's classic crush behavior, and it only gets better from there.
Didn't David do basically the same thing when he was king? Like, sent the husband of some woman off to war so he could hit on her with impunity? I had liked David before I read that story about him.
The Apocrypha often have a strong Persian influence. "Cosmos, Chaos, and the world to come" has a lot to say about this.
The Persian influence in world history was really enormous, but the Greeks, the Jews, the Muslims, and the Christians all minimize it. Sort of the Rodney Dangerfields of history.
143 -- yes, Joseph referenced this very story in his 134.
145: Oh, yeah, I didn't notice that. My biblical knowledge doesn't exactly equal that of Joseph or Chimt Illms.
Oh, and 134 didn't mention Samson. He was totally crushing. And talk about a Dada-esque ending.
147: And let's not forget the crush Potiphar's wife and her lady friends had on Joseph. Talk about a woman scorned...
I think John really had a thing for Salome. Methinks the zealot doth protest too much.
Clearly his love was unrequited.
144: Are we really going to let John suck up to Ogged that way?
Just that the implication seems to be that these are things that were practiced 3000 years ago but are not practiced today.
Or that they were practiced 3000 years ago at all.
