This is where I get it out of my system. There is no particular subject matter, though B got it for me on the belief that I can vent here as opposed to elsewhere (like at breakfast). Given the chance to write, I will write whatever. Politics, Mariners baseball, my amusing religion, weird crap that happened this day. I call it “Strange Fire” inspired by Leviticus 10, where God barbecues Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu after they offered “strange fire before the Lord.” The tradition is they were vaporized as if God had phasers on kill; there was nothing left of them. Seems a little harsh, doesn’t it? The Christian interpretation is pretty straightforward — the two men disobeyed God and desecrated a holy place, and so got megacampfired. Not surprisingly, Jews are all over the place in trying to make sense of this weird. There are more than a dozen stabs at it(some listed here). The most common one is that they wandered into the tent drunk. Another is that God zotzed them because they thought they were too cool to marry any of the lowborn girls in town. They insulted their brothers. It was a really a finger in Aaron’s eye to punish him for the Golden Calf episode. They wanted to get too close to God, a carryover buzz from their uncatered meet and greet with El Shaddai in Exodus 24. Whatevs.
But there is not much insight on what the “strange fire” was. The Hebrew word for “strange” in the passage is זָרָה (zorah), usually translated as “foreign” or “alien”. Certainly not “foreign” in the context of visa requirements or ICE sweeps. More like “weird”. I like to think that strange fire is exciting, a bit incomprehensible, extraordinary, maybe dangerous. A worthy goal for undisciplined writing.
I am not religious, and this is not a religion blog, though I admit to be alternately amused by and pissed off by my cranky old religion. Mostly I suppose I will come here to bemoan the tragedy of the American polity, now that I newly experience a country where the ruling party thinks colleges are a bad idea and that it is perfectly acceptable to be led by an incompetent, narcissistic liar and his grifting children. There is to me a little flavor of the feeling when Bonds passed Aaron. Yeah, he has the most home runs, but the feeling of pride and achievement is not to be found. And it sort of craps up the whole concept of record-keeping, which is the lifeblood of baseball nerddom. I was told that in body building, they had two divisions, open and chemical-free. There should probably be a chemical free record book in baseball. In that spirit, since fraud and lying is at the heart of everything Trump, all aspects of his disgusting occupancy, including his election, should be accompanied by asterisks, daggers (single and double handle), asterisms, and interrobangs. Also this thing: ※.
Related: Bonds was just plaqued by the Giants and the fulsome praise filling the audio feed omitted to mention how he almost singlehandedly destroyed baseball. Just an oversight I suppose. But it leads me to a certainly that in fifty years, some getting-nowhere Steven Miller look-alike (or maybe Miller himself) will start a drive to reconsider the legacy of Donald J. Trump, not as bad as you thought, etc. etc. This shit always happens. When I went to college some crank published a book saying that Napoleon III has been wrongly portrayed as an opportunistic asshole, when he was clearly just such. If Napoleon III, employer of a palace officer whose specific duty was to round up girls every night for his pretend imperial majesty, can be rehabilitated, why not Trump?
Fin.
