2:180, #484: Friday is Why Day

Since an entire week went by without a post to this insanity site, I thought I'd take some time and question reality, now that I've gotten four days of masonry work on the Grey Havens behind me.
Soooo...

Why do we call the red condiment in a bottle or squeeze container "ketchup" or "catsup?" If you want the "skinny" on the word derivation, go to [http://itotd.com/articles/385/the-story-of-ketchup/] and read up.

Why do we have 'innies' and 'outies' as navel options? Well, the first website I checked says it's a random process; although it appears 90% of us have lint collectors and only 10% have the push button that sticks out. And...can a Calvinist believe that a statistically skewed finding like this can have ANYTHING to do with random anything?!! Just exactly WHAT did the Lord have in mind when he bestowed outies on so few of His handiwork?

Why is a sport confined primarily to the USofA called the WORLD Series? Yeah, I know, this is a repeat and the baseball commissioners "back in the day" wanted really FABULOUS words to define their game...so sue me.

Why does Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist, call the OT God "a malevolent bully" and the NT Jesus "meek and mild?" Seems a rather unscientific reading of the Bible when the Prince of Peace describes His work as "bringing a sword."

Why do Evangelical Christians develop sphincter pucker in light of the clearly calamitous conditions that are going on around the world when they've been praying "Thy Kingdom come" all these years and the Bible clearly predicts things will get worse and the anti-Christ has to show up first?

2:179, #483 Raining Day Ramblings

I wonder where the phrase, "log in," originated? Googling it didn't help and I'm enough of a Conspiracy Theorist that I think it's a subliminal ploy by the tree huggers to make us feel guilty that we're ravaging the environment psychologically by dealing with "logs" that are, by definition, dead tree parts!

I also wonder, if Major League Baseball...a male sport...has bull pens, should Ladies Professional Softball Leagues have cow pens?

Since the Major League playoffs are extending into near-freezing weather...the Phils/Dodgers will get a low temperature of 36 degrees on Sunday night...will a ruling have to be made about pitchers throwing snow or ice balls?

Is there a certain irony that my new atheist friend defines her basic moral world life view as The Golden Rule, introduced to the world by a guy who's either the Son of God or a delusional psychotic blasphemer similar to Peter Boyle's character Jack McDermott in "The Dream Team?"

Why is the chocolate bar, Milky Way, named after a mass of fireballs traveling at high speed through the cosmos? Just what was Frank C. Mars smokin' back in 19-ought-23?!!

I'm off to read some of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. I guess to particularize Psalm 14:1, "The fool has said in his heart there is no God..." God should get someone to write The Dawkins Delusion?

2:178, #482: Russian Heritage

There's this photo of a guy on The Joshua Project website that is an eerie comparison to the goomer at the left of this paragraph that further confirms not only that I have Russian roots in my gene pool...is that like a tree growing in a swamp?!!...but of what I might look like in a few years if I decide to shave the middle of my current chin hair growth. I don't know what the copyright laws are and I'm a bit paranoid and conspiracy theoretical, so if you want to see someone who looks a good be like I do, go to [http://www.joshuaproject.net/countries.php] and scroll down to the Russian guy.

The other spooky sorta-look-alike was pointed out to me by the guys at our Bookstore here at Camp Cornelius. This one's a guy called The Edge on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine with Bono of U2 on it. AND, believe it or not, when I was clean shaven, a woman actually came up to me in a restaurant and told me I looked like Kevin Costner. I will refrain from any bigoted remarks about Caucasians but will say that I can act at least as well as Ole Kevoski...except in his first two movies, "Fandango" and "Silverado" that I HIGHLY recommend.

So why am I writing this in the first place? Well, a new friend who happens to be an atheist agrees with the Bob/The Edge photo similarities and I was going to write her back about the Russian guy, among other things, so I was "doing what I do" as Malcolm Reynolds would say... no I don't even vaguely resemble Nathan Fillion.
Got Serenity and doubles?

2:177, #481 MY TURN!!

I had another one of my early morning epiphanies Tuesday morning after watching "The Forbidden Kingdom" Monday night with Elfson and Audiovisualman. I found my third movie with one of my favorite lines in it..."My Turn!"

The first example of that is in "Serenity" when the Crew is being attacked by Reavers and Simon Tam gets wounded, apologizes for not being able to protect his baby sister (who we now know is an Alliance trained killing machine) and she replies, "You've protected me all my life, Simon." She then stands up with a great look of determined mania in her eyes and says, "MY TURN!!" and proceeds to annihilate the Reavers (savages who were created by the Alliance in a MAJOR mistake of experimentation).

The second time I spotted this line is in "Iron Man." Tony Stark is told by the Afghanistan Bad Guy to build a Jericho Missile from parts in a cave. Well, Ole Tony creates his first Iron Man suit, gets shot several hundred times and then says, "MY TURN!!" and cranks out dual flame throwers from his arms, annihilating the bad guys in Round 1 of his various encounters.

Tuesday night's three's-the-charm line came when the 20th century Caucasian kungfu wannabe strikes the stone encasement of the Monkey King Immortal to release him to deal with the Jade Warlord after most of the movie's fight scenes. Of course, Jet Li as said Monkey Immortal looks out with a great grin and wild eyes and says, "MY TURN!!" and proceeds to do what Monkey King Kungfu Immortals do.

The epiphany was that, after tolerating Satan, his demons, and billions of creatures made in His image some of whom don't even acknowledge He exists, at the End Of All Things when the Lord returns, I think the "loud shout" in conjunction with the Last Trumpet is going to be "MY TURN!!"
The rest, to paraphrase, will be eternity!
Got front row standing room only?

2:176, #480: Scottish Sexton

I've a new favorite song these days, "Loch Lomond," as sung by the accappella group, Stanford Fleet Street Singers. You probably are familiar with the phrase "you take the high road and I'll take the low road," but did you know the story behind the song? It turns out two Scots were captured trying to join the Jacobite Uprising of 1745 to support Bonnie Prince Charlie's bid for the Crown. One was sentenced to death while the other was set free. The song tells how the spirit of the one would take the "low road" of death and get to Scotland before the survivor walked the "high[land] road" back home. Youtube's got some great stuff regarding the story as well as some excellent renditions of the song.

I'm thinking that maybe my preference for flannel shirts is a genetic predisposition from my Scottish Murray roots that I get through my maternal grandfather's lineage that he traced back to a John Murray around 1835...Nope, you Reformed Knee Jerkers...not THE John-I've-got-a-compassionate-glass-eye Murray of Westminster Seminary fame!! Well, while watching "Braveheart" all 15 times, I figured one on my ancestors, who it turns out might have been Sir Andrew Murray according to one Murray Clan website, fought with blue face paint, while great great, etc. grandfather Sexton put down his shovel from burying the dead and joined up with Edward the Longshanks to invade Scotland.

Further research indicates the Murray Clan found its roots in the loins of Freskin de Moravia, a Flemish noble who helped cross pollinate the Highlands with some Bonnie Lassies of the Hills. Flemish folks are from around Flanders, Belgium which came out of Germanic tribes of the Franks and Celtic-Germanic Belgae; which goes to show that my ancestors would humpdy dumpdy with just about anybody! ;p So, along with my Scottish antecedents, I've got Gallic, Celtic, Russian, Anglo-Saxon, Frankish, and who knows what else.

So, as a Mutt American, I have a "lot of Gaul" as a Philly driver, love beans and Franks, know how to work the Angles on a problem, know how to put English on a cue ball, and get off Scot-free from my trespasses and sins in Christ.

Got heraldic shields and kilts?

2:175, #479: Bob Wonders...

...since Jesus healed the lame, gave sight to the blind, and hearing to the deaf, did He ever restore rotten teeth?

...if the 40 guys who swore not to eat until they killed Paul starved to death?

... if it's coincidence in the providence of God that John 6:66 says, "As a result of this many of his disciples withdrew, and were not walking with Him anymore?"

...if you stand in front of a sign that says, "Fire Zone: No Stopping or Standing by Order of Fire Marshall" in order to read it, are you breaking the law?

...why we drive on parkways and park on driveways?

...if God taps His foot in time to the music His kids play while "making a joyful noise unto Him;" which might explain earthquakes since "the earth is His footstool?"

Got Wonders?

2:174, #478: Former Incarnations

I figure God...the Living and True One...is THE God of order, so if He had worked things out in His providential coincidence the way I see it in a post-Reformation, Van Tillian, Zen sort of way, He'd have repeated characteristics in our various incarnations that the deluded folks who actually believe we get several opportunities at this life would conjure up. I've been thinking of some of my current characteristics and have concluded that:

Based on the number of dirt baths I've given myself in the last 24 years driving the John Deere tractor and zero turn mower, I was one of the sparrows Jesus referred to in Matthew 6:25-34; which also happens to be my self-chosen life verses, so in my Mental Feng Shui that doubles the probabilities that I'm right.

I also heard David Attenborough's special on the American Brown Bear a couple of years after I got saved and when he said that the brown bear's life centers around eating, I knew I had pegged at least one more incarnation...maybe even a repeat in several differing generations!

Since I was born in November, 1951 during the Korean War and I have an unusual appreciation of kimchee and other Korean foods, I figure I was a North or South Korean soldier who had a bullet with his name...probably "Kim"...on it and low and behold, here I am!!

My years of grunt work, both in construction and here at Camp Cornelius convinces me that around 960B.C. I was one of the stone cutters for Solomon's Temple and have carried over that talent in the pointing work I've been doing on the Grey Havens all summer. Oh, yeah, I probably helped build the Second Temple in several incarnations from 516-70B.C. and then was one of the Roman soldiers in 70A.D. who tore it back down, given the number of things I've had to build and tear down here at Camp Cornelius.

My wood cutting, tree pruning, chain saw using skills were probably first developed when I was a Gibeonite drafted into the wood cutting/water toting work for Israel sometime shortly after "Joshua fit de battle ub Jericho!" (Cf. Joshua 9:3-17)

My penchant for playing loud music probably came from multiple Goyim incarnations of Mongols, Visigoths, Babylonians, Medo-Persians, and a host of others, including Saxons, Scots, Teutons, and Russians in the last 500 years or so.

The Sexton part of my make up is obviously family related and probably stemmed from "the Black Death came to London after it started at Westminster and there were not enough sextons to cart off the bodies" as one source I saw on the internet but whose reference I've since lost.

Finally, my sense of humor...twisted as this post obviously makes it appear... that has made me a jester in the Court of the King of Kings probably stems from being multiple "fools" for multiple kings down through the millenia. My favorite color is flannel plaid...probably inspired by "fool's motley" in the middle ages and the Scottish tartan that runs in my history.

Oh, and since "Amazing Grace" is my favorite hymn and has the same basic seven notes of a slave tune John Newton heard whilst acting as a slave trader in his early life, I probably was one of the motley crew that was "two years before the mast;" which could also explain why as a kid I read the entire Horatio Hornblower Series!
Got Divine Intervention?