If the bible is inerrant, then Joseph had two daddies.

You know, when someone says the bible is inerrant, I usually send them to read Matthew 1:16 and Luke 3:23.

Matthew 1:16 reads:

and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

and Luke 3:23 reads:

Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli

Both passages refer to both Jacob and Heli as sons, so we can reasonably assume that they're both male. If you say the bible is inerrant, then Joseph had two fathers. If you believe that the bible isn't inerrant, then you can pass this off for a mistake. Although I would personally find it somewhat alarming that a mistake like this was made in the highest book of my religion.

Or, as I took it, that the bible isn't inerrant, and that this is just one of the more glaring examples of lack of self-consistency.

I value self-consistency; I look for it in movies and fiction and in people. I find it more often in movies and fiction than people. That used to bother me, but now, not so much. I'm not entirely self-consistent, and I doubt that anyone is. But I think a system of philosophy -- which is what most religion seems to be, at least to me -- should be self-consistent.

I wonder where I got this peculiar fetish...

Suicide is not painless

At work the day before yesterday, I dropped a glass coffee pot and it shattered on the edge of a shelf, causing an impressive amount of glass shrapnel. I'm lucky, I guess; I stepped back and put my arms up, so rather than getting a face full of glass, I only have a series of mostly minor cuts on my arms. Most of them are shallow, a few are deeper, and a couple of them are longer than the others.

There's a cut on my left wrist that didn't even go all the way through my skin, but it's fairly long, so that gets three stitches. One on my right elbow, although not as long, was quite a bit deeper; it even had some arterial spurt action going on before the bleeding stopped. It got one stitch.

Of all the cuts, I find these two to be the most interesting and oppositional. The one on my wrist looks like a lame suicide attempt. It hardly bled at all, and I don't know why they felt it needed some help getting back together. And why'd they use stitches? It's shallow enough to use superglue. However, because of its location, and not so much its severity, it gets the most attention from my superiors and crewmates. Great. I'll have a scar on my wrist the rest of my life.

The one on my elbow, though, was bloodier and messier than the one on my wrist, but it got less attention because, I suppose, people don't normally try to kill themselves by cutting their elbows. Maybe this'll start a new trend.

Anyway, I'm in a bit of pain. I think I'll leave it at that.

Oh, I want to copy this and make the shift leaders read it aloud...

So, I got a copy of The Bluejacket's Manual from Amazon. It's pretty much the handbook on how to do stuff the Navy way. And it's frequently abbreviated BJM. BJ, he he.

So I've been reading it, and I've gotten to the part about leadership. Here's a bit:

Know your job. Few things are more uninspiring for subordinates than to recognize that their leader does not know her or his job. As a leader, you will earn confidence and respect of those who work for you if you know everything you can possibly know about your job. You should also strive to learn as much as you reasonably can about the jobs of your subordinates, but use this knowledge to improve your communications with subordinates, to instruct when necessary, and to monitor what they are doing. Do not use this knowledge to intrude on their work.

Oh, I want to copy the whole section and give it to the managers at McDonald's.

I hope it just keeps getting better.

A few things I'll never tell my Recruit Division Commander

Recruit Division Commanders (RDC) = Drill instructors. But you don't call them Drill instructors, if you want to keep your life.

1) That I love my rack (bed) . Most of my life, I haven't had a bed to sleep on, so when I do have one, I practically revere it. I don't care how many times he makes me strip it only to make it up again (and I imagine that will be many, many times) it's still my place to sleep.

2) I've had 5,000 hours of drill (thank you, band camp). It's one thing to say you know all the fundamentals, it's another duck entirely when you can do all the fundamentals while double timing backwards. No, I think I'll keep that to myself.

3) I'm a little scared of guns. No, I'm really scared of guns. This doesn't mean I'm going to get out of qualifying on 9 mm pistol and M16 rifle. It's a case of Suck it up, bitch.

4) Whenever I take out the trash, it makes me feel nauseated. Fine, I'll toss my cookies into this bag, and then tie it up and throw it out. Suck it up... err, no. Carry some breath mints?

But most of all

5) He can't make me unhappy. Although it's absolutely true, if I say that, I think the RDC will take it as a challege to make my life as hellish as possible.

neither here nor there

I wrote this at a forum I frequent, on a thread dealing with the Virginia Tech shooting.

I find it ironic that the WBC is going to be protesting. I think that they believe that if everyone in the US believed as they believe, then bad things would stop happening -- that is, it's the stuff that other people are doing that's making them unhappy, disappointed, or angry, rather than having a degree of control over their feelings and doing something to make the world better.

I'm not sure about the shooter's (s'?) situation, but I can't imagine (though that might just be failure of the imagination) someone gunning down 33+ people not being angry or desperate about something. Rather than dealing with it or talking about it, he hurts other people. It's other peoples' fault that he's hurt of course, and not his own. If they changed, then he wouldn't think these things or feel these things, rather than take a degree of responsibility for his own feelings.

someone replied to me:
Wait so are you saying that it's not the shooters fault that he gunned down so many, but it's societies fault, or are you just explain a position that some people might take to this event?

So I responded
I keep forgetting, sarcasm doesn't read well over the internet.

I think that people who blame others for their actions and situations are most at fault. It'd be unreasonable to blame just one thing, idea, or influence on what happened, and no, I can't blame society for what one person did. Certainly there was a confluence of outside influences, but for me, it boils down to one point:

If he had taken responsibility for how he felt, rather than blaming other people, this tragedy probably wouldn't've happened.

You could say this about Columbine, or heck, you can say that about 9/11. What do the terrorists say to us, in essence? If you change to become like us, we'll stop attacking.

And that's bullshit.

You made me do this, one report has him writing?

Whoever that's directed at (on the off chance that this person is alive,) they didn't go and buy a couple of pistols. They didn't buy the ammo. They didn't make a plan, they didn't pull the trigger. Most likely, this person hurt him, maybe even humiliated him. And that happens to almost everyone. And since most people don't go and become school shooters, this too is bullshit.

I can imagine that he idolized his pain. His pain makes him special, his pain marks him, or something. Gah. I don't know if you can reach out to a person like that, so you can't say, oh, if someone did this for him or that for him... he had people "reaching out" to him all the time in little ways, and he rejected it. I don't know at what point some intervening person could've stopped this, but it could've been stopped, all the way up until the first shot was fired, by him.

Taxes, McDonald's, comments, and DEP meetings

Dear libertytax.com, I appreciate being able to use your site to prepare my taxes. However, I don't like finding out three days before my taxes are due, that my electronic taxes were rejected. Fuck you in the fucking neck.

on to more pleasant things.

Final Embrace said...

The only part of this story that's hard to swallow is that you work for McDonald's.
I mean, really. In your post about abortion (today's post) you use a semicolon correctly. Do you expect me to believe that you labor daily at a fast food restaurant?
Otherwise, keep up the great writing.

Well, I don't suppose it really matters whether or not you believe that I work at a fast food place. Given my situation, I could either work there, at a gas station, Subway, or the local Chinese restaurant. Menial labor. I have to say that it's good for me to work in this in-between time, otherwise I'd likely get depressed and lazy and bitter. I could start a small business doing something like writing resumés, but I personally don't like the idea of opening a business that at the onset has a close date. Well.

I had my first DEP meeting (that would be a meeting of all the kids that are in the Delayed Entry Program in the area in the Navy); it went both better and worse than I expected. Better, because I had confirmation that I have indeed memorized my Eleven General Orders for a Sentry, Sailor's Creed, and Rank and Recognition. Worse, because I've found out how out of shape I'm in. Well, that's fixable and I do have time to fix it. I am going to be strong and fit by the time I visit my friend who's already graduated boot camp.

Abortion, drugs, and the meaning of life.

For a long time my position of abortion was that of a pro-lifer. I've changed a bit from that now, I suppose I've become less rigid in judging others. I consider myself personally pro-life; I doubt I'll ever have an abortion. But, I've come to realize that if we make abortions illegal, that doesn't do away with the demand. There will be women who want abortions, and doctors (and if it becomes illegal, pseudo-doctors, I'm sure) who are willing to perform them. What happens is that there's no legal recourse if a woman's abortion is botched. Medical tourism to countries who do allow abortion would almost certainly rise. On the flip side, if you don't like abortion and it's legal (as it is now), no one is forcing you to have one. You have a perfect right to call it immoral, protest it, and write negatively about it, but no matter how much you protest or write, there will never be a consensus.

For a long time, my stance about drugs was simple: they were bad. I've changed a bit from that now. For instance, marijuana isn't toxic enough for someone to smoke weed to death, unlike the possibility of smoking cigarettes to death or drinking oneself to death. The substances in it have proven to ease pain and increase appetite, and have been used in painkillers, some specifically prescribed to chemotherapy patients. Is smoking weed directly worse? I'd think not.

I've never smoked, I've never gotten drunk, and I've rarely been in the mere presence of weed. This does not mean I'm somehow morally superior to those that do choose to do so, and I think that if someone wants to go get stoned, they should be able to do so safely and legally. (Well, as long as they're not in the armed forces, but that's covered by an additional code of laws). I think that we should legalize all illegal drugs, regulate the hell out of them, then tax them like we do for cigarettes. We'll give the money to the armed forces. Build an aircraft carrier from that tax money and call it the "Mary Jane." People can have bumper stickers that say "Support our troops, smoke a joint." (I'm easily amused, heh.)

No, we'd never be so outright with where the tax money would be going. I'm sure some people would go out of their way to grow their own in order to not support the troops. And those that would get the really illegal weed, because their moral qualms over wars and the industrial-military complex (whatever the hell that is) would prompt them to specifically not buy the legal and regulated kind, and then we'd have the problem of discerning legal weed from illegal weed.

And the meaning of life? I used to think that if everyone thought and talked like me, only then we could have world peace. I now think that we'd loose so much diversity, it'd be a pretty boring place. I think part of the meaning of life is allowing room for other's opinions, and diversity.

Incompentence

I'm going to be blatant. The store manager at the McDonald's I work for is ultimately incompetent.
I don't mean she's a bad person. Personally, I rather like her. Nor do I mean that she is mentally impaired in some way. She just doesn't have the skills to run the store well, and if left to her own devices (that is, some of the shift managers stopped supporting her and telling her what to do), it would be a likely disaster. And sometimes it is a disaster, even if she is supported.

One of the Point-of-Sale computers (POS, sometimes we call them pieces of shit) had been malfunctioning. Instead of calling in the problem directly, she stuck a note on it, "don't use this." I wonder, did she think it was going to go away? Anyway, I was pushing a bit for her to call it in right now, so if we needed to do a system reset, it would be at 5 in the morning. She was unsure, and so she waited for a more competent manager to come in and weigh the situation.

Unfortunately, the next manager didn't come in until 8am. They agreed that yes, they needed to call this in, and as it turned out, they did need to do a system reset.

Oh, that sucked. System resets take at least 45 minutes, and according to the franchise rules, we weren't allowed to close for this. So for about an hour, we were taking orders by hand, figuring out the seven percent tax, keeping a log of what was ordered. During what's usually a busy breakfast hour.

It wasn't as bad as it could've been. I was given the task of taking orders and figuring the prices for drive thru. I've paid enough attention that I know most of the menu items' prices including tax, but there were a couple times where I had to compute the 7%. I'm sure I got something wrong during that hour, but generally things (at least from my perspective) went about as smoothly as you could hope for.

Judging by my coworkers, though, it could've been a disaster. One girl insisted on having a calculator for finding the change. Another gave out free things, and later got in trouble for it. One was amazed by the arithmetic that decorated my orders. To me, it's just simple math that I've had a lot of practice doing.

A manager is in a position of power and authority; however, without input from the people who are in their authority, it would be hard to have a grasp on what's really going on. It's a reciprocal kind of relationship, since a manager can't manage without talking to and considering the opinions of their "followers," and the "f0llowers" need an authority in order to function as a unit.

I learned all this at band camp. I have a feeling it will be reinforced at boot camp.

Let There be Peace on Earth, or My Idealism is Showing

One of my favorite hymns from going to church was "Let there be Peace on Earth:"

Let there be peace on Earth,
And let it begin with me.
Let there be peace on Earth,
The peace that was meant to be.
To take each moment
And live each moment
In perfect harmony!
Let there be peace on Earth,
And let it begin with me!

To me, it seems to advocate a personal responsibility in world peace. It sounds like an oxymoron, but it'll only be when everyone on Earth chooses personal peace that we'll have world peace. I still believe it's possible (perhaps because I'm young?), though entirely unlikely, at least in my lifetime. Excuse me, is my idealism showing? But if you believe that world peace is only possible if everyone thinks the same, or shares the same faith, then you're never, ever going to get it.

on a tangential note...

I can recall having a conversation with my mother about Marlyn Manson. She was in total disapproval of his choices, going on for a solid fifteen minutes about why he's bad. My end of the conversation can be summed up as:

You can't control what he does to his body.
He does what he does for shock value.
When you talk about what he's done, particularly in an indignant or offended way, you're actually reinforcing his shocking behavior.
Moreover, you're teaching people that if they want attention, they should do something wild and crazy.

I used the example of a flasher, that he does what he does for people's shocked reactions. If the people he flashed were to, say, comment on the lining of his coat, behaving in an un-shocked way, they'd be taking his reinforcement away. If the media decided not to cover the craziest segments of society, except perhaps in conjunction with a larger story (and then, very carefully), then I imagine that as a whole, we'd see less of the crazies. And with the extremists not getting any real coverage, then perhaps we can see some real depth to serious stories. Oh shit, my idealism is showing again.

I think largely ignoring people who want others to be annoyed, offended, or angry is a good step towards peace on a larger scale.

Though, I do wonder how well this attitude will serve me at Boot Camp...

There are no girls on the internet

If you're reading this, chances are it's because someone linked to me, since I'm not really out to promote myself. And I'm mildly amused that she referred to me as a male.

Eh. It's not as if I chose a particularly feminine name. Or as if I'm not doing something as typically masculine as, say, joining the military. Or like there are pictures of me. Or I'm all like, "The crimson ichor of my wymenhood cycle is leaking from my puffy, raw vagina." (thank you, encyclopedia dramatica).

But, I bet it's because there really aren't any females on the internet. They're too busy cooking, cleaning, and shaving their legs to go on teh interweb, and all females on the internet are really males, unless they show proof of their femalian qualities, and even then, that's subject to review. "You're a girl?" they say, followed promptly by"pix plz." I suppose in print I'm not particularly girly. I can live with that. And why should I get my panties in a twist when someone who I only know through what she chooses to publish on her blog calls me a guy, based on what I've chosen to publish on my blog? We must have very narrow views of each other, lol.

If this is the worst thing that happens today, then it's a pretty good day.

Why I don't like the 700 club

I can remember thinking, while mom was in one of her jesus-highs and watching the 700 club, "Why does God heal in time with the music?" Admittedly, I didn't think about post-production, but it felt weird to me. It was the first time I applied a little critical thinking to my faith. I started to watch with a more neutral and less incredulous point of view.

On the 700 club, they often have a segment where they heal people. Not just pray for sick people but heal them, and (creepy) watch them be healed. There is something much like this in New Age religions; it's called Astral Projection. Now if I were to say to my mother (if I had the chance) that this is like Astral Projection, and define it, she'd probably defend it on the grounds that it's Christians doing it. I imagine we'd get stuck in a good ol' circular argument.

Sigh.

Don't let it go

There are some childlike attributes to my personality. I still see the world with a sense of wonder, and I'm openly curious about what I don't know. I still ask "why?" quite a bit... why do you hold that position? why does this work? That sort of thing. I love easily and I love for a long time; I don't know if that's a childlike trait, but I think it is. I can still get lost in watching the clouds, or examining a bug. I just can't forget how beautiful the world really is.

Sometimes, when I hear someone tell another person to "grow up" they're usually telling them to loose these traits... Going through school, the older I got, the less wonder there was.

I'm not sure why I wouldn't let it go, but I'm glad I never did...