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As the vulgar elephant doth
Dec. 30th, 2018 12:12 am
It's too bad Donald Trump keeps getting screwed by guys like Jerome Powell and Rex Tillerson and Jeff Sessions and James Mattis and Michael Flynn and Michael Cohen. He really oughtta fire the guy who keeps hiring these guys.
That can't possibly be original by now, but how about this one: so this one star says to this other star, "Hey, did you know I'm the brightest star in the night sky in the northern hemisphere in July?" And the other star says, "You're not Sirius!"
A funny thing just struck me about a bit on the home page of Annie Dillard's site, which hasn't changed in at least a few years now, which goes like this: "Please don't use Wikipedia. It is unreliable; anyone can post anything, no matter how wrong. For example, an article by Mary Cantwell misquotes me wildly." It is probably because I am so fond of Uncle Wikipedia that I missed the joke: the article by Mary Cantwell that misquotes her wildly appeared (and still appears) in the wildly failing New York Times (where, if I may stomp on the joke, it is a good deal harder than it is in the Wikipedia for someone who finds herself wildly misquoted to amend the text).
Another thing I missed and missed and then noticed a while back, upon re-reading The Maytrees, is that Lou Maytree gets six years younger between pages 13 and 21 on her first walk along the beach to Toby's shack. Ages are mentioned frequently enough in The Maytrees that you might get the idea that the math is pretty important. Another thing that struck me on re-reading The Maytrees is that it's easy to get the idea that Lou Maytree "is" Annie Dillard. But their names are not androgynous for nothing, and if you know a little of Annie Dillard's biography, you could also get the idea that Toby Maytree "is" Annie Dillard, and if you have a sense of Annie Dillard's personality from her writerly persona then you also have the sense that Deary "is" Annie Dillard, too. And The Maytrees is a reconciliation fantasy, as is The Tree of Life, and I never noticed until the other night that if it is the '50s when Jack is a boy and "the present" when Jack is Sean Penn, then the math doesn't seem right on Jack, either. [ETA: there's a picture of the queen in the newspaper Jack's father is reading when he tells Jack to reach him his lighter, which I've tracked down to 1953 (although I just went and found it from memory after a couple of weeks and now I'm not 100% sure that's the right one, sheesh).]
And to tie those two things together, why don't I note that I have gotten the sense from Jesus, and find that Paul is probably ambivalent about it, or that Paul maybe is reluctant to say to everyone what he really thinks about it, or that real Paul and fake Paul maybe have differing views on it, or some combination of these three things, that the "resurrection" of which Jesus speaks is not so much a resurrection of you as a person, let alone as a person you would recognize as yourself, as it is something like continued immersion in the God-being you come to share through your belief in Jesus, such that this eternal life thing comes to look maybe not so different from Eastern-style self-death. One thing's for sure: given what Jesus says to the Sadducees about no one being married to anyone in the resurrection, G.W. Bush's dad is not holding his mom's hand in heaven.
What I learned about Christmas this year is that it is a point of contention roughly between protestants and Catholics whether Mary and Joseph were "married" when they went to Bethlehem. This is one of those things where the thing you learned as a kid is a fact that sophisticated people know--in this case (cf. last year's homily on how you learned as a kid that sophisticated people know that Easter, not Christmas, is the most important Christian holiday), that Mary's being "betrothed" to Joseph does not mean she was married to Joseph (which the staunchly protestant NASB underlines by saying that they are "engaged")--turns out to be not so simply true.
What I learned about Hanukkah this year is that, unlike protestants and Jews (since the Septuagint was displaced as the source of the Jewish canon), Catholics, by virtue of having Maccabees in their bible, have elephants in their bible.
Currently at the back of my shed: -11.5. High today in Peterborough: 5.1, at midnight.
That can't possibly be original by now, but how about this one: so this one star says to this other star, "Hey, did you know I'm the brightest star in the night sky in the northern hemisphere in July?" And the other star says, "You're not Sirius!"
A funny thing just struck me about a bit on the home page of Annie Dillard's site, which hasn't changed in at least a few years now, which goes like this: "Please don't use Wikipedia. It is unreliable; anyone can post anything, no matter how wrong. For example, an article by Mary Cantwell misquotes me wildly." It is probably because I am so fond of Uncle Wikipedia that I missed the joke: the article by Mary Cantwell that misquotes her wildly appeared (and still appears) in the wildly failing New York Times (where, if I may stomp on the joke, it is a good deal harder than it is in the Wikipedia for someone who finds herself wildly misquoted to amend the text).
Another thing I missed and missed and then noticed a while back, upon re-reading The Maytrees, is that Lou Maytree gets six years younger between pages 13 and 21 on her first walk along the beach to Toby's shack. Ages are mentioned frequently enough in The Maytrees that you might get the idea that the math is pretty important. Another thing that struck me on re-reading The Maytrees is that it's easy to get the idea that Lou Maytree "is" Annie Dillard. But their names are not androgynous for nothing, and if you know a little of Annie Dillard's biography, you could also get the idea that Toby Maytree "is" Annie Dillard, and if you have a sense of Annie Dillard's personality from her writerly persona then you also have the sense that Deary "is" Annie Dillard, too. And The Maytrees is a reconciliation fantasy, as is The Tree of Life, and I never noticed until the other night that if it is the '50s when Jack is a boy and "the present" when Jack is Sean Penn, then the math doesn't seem right on Jack, either. [ETA: there's a picture of the queen in the newspaper Jack's father is reading when he tells Jack to reach him his lighter, which I've tracked down to 1953 (although I just went and found it from memory after a couple of weeks and now I'm not 100% sure that's the right one, sheesh).]
And to tie those two things together, why don't I note that I have gotten the sense from Jesus, and find that Paul is probably ambivalent about it, or that Paul maybe is reluctant to say to everyone what he really thinks about it, or that real Paul and fake Paul maybe have differing views on it, or some combination of these three things, that the "resurrection" of which Jesus speaks is not so much a resurrection of you as a person, let alone as a person you would recognize as yourself, as it is something like continued immersion in the God-being you come to share through your belief in Jesus, such that this eternal life thing comes to look maybe not so different from Eastern-style self-death. One thing's for sure: given what Jesus says to the Sadducees about no one being married to anyone in the resurrection, G.W. Bush's dad is not holding his mom's hand in heaven.
What I learned about Christmas this year is that it is a point of contention roughly between protestants and Catholics whether Mary and Joseph were "married" when they went to Bethlehem. This is one of those things where the thing you learned as a kid is a fact that sophisticated people know--in this case (cf. last year's homily on how you learned as a kid that sophisticated people know that Easter, not Christmas, is the most important Christian holiday), that Mary's being "betrothed" to Joseph does not mean she was married to Joseph (which the staunchly protestant NASB underlines by saying that they are "engaged")--turns out to be not so simply true.
What I learned about Hanukkah this year is that, unlike protestants and Jews (since the Septuagint was displaced as the source of the Jewish canon), Catholics, by virtue of having Maccabees in their bible, have elephants in their bible.
Currently at the back of my shed: -11.5. High today in Peterborough: 5.1, at midnight.
