I was walking the roommate's new dog around the neighborhood yesterday. It was a good break from hours of proof-checking a bunch of geometry.
Everything was blooming! My eyes loved the sight of colorful flowers and fresh green leaves, but all the flying pollen proved unsettling for my nose, which tried its darnest to run off to angiosperm-free pasture. We hobbled by a church about a mile away that was looking a bit more circus-y than usual.
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| When prayers can't expel bugs, call Terminix... |
You know, Noah shoulda gotten rid of the bugs when he had the chance... Surely bed bugs and other land-based pest couldn't have survived the supposed global flood if they were refused ark space, could they?
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| Cross on top of a Christian church steeple |
But, at any rate, looking at the weirdly humorous temporary look of the church a thought came to me that I ought to be grateful that the Romans used crucifixion on Jesus. I mean, what if they had decided to hang him instead? Can you imagine looking at churches with a noosed gallow on top of them instead of a cross?
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| Moroni statue on top of the San Diego LDS Temple |
At least the Mormons have the good sense to put a shiny golden trumpeting angel on top of their temples... though they sort of ruined it by naming the dude Moroni (imagine having to live through high school with a name like that!)...
Somebody asked me about the temple-top statues once; I think they all face toward Jackson County, Missouri, where the Latter Day Saints believe is the location of the original Garden of Eden. I know that's not what the Bible or any other non-Mormon legends say, but it is quite ingenious, really. If only I could have used 'divine revelation' as excuse for making things up while answering my history and geography tests during my school years I would have aced everything (and cried 'religious bigotry!' if the answers were marked wrong)... Alas, I'm not religious. My professors would have flunked my atheist butt right out of school. 
Right. Back to work I go....
7 comments:
hey mister Smorg!!
what a great post, still laughing at it and the religious-bigotry stuff! and hey! i didn't know about that orientation to Missouri for the Garden of Eden, whenever i feel lost, i will try to face that way ;) lovely stuff mister Smorg, hope you keep on having those thoughts while walking the new doggie :) Los Gatos say meoow to you!
Hello Smorgy,
What abnout creating your own religion, featuring trumpets, wrath, felicity and the tithe for all your followers.
You would get rich quite fast and a certain number of people would get happiness they did not find elsewhere.
Georg
Meowww Bella Bere: :oD Glad to hear you were laughing with me, too. Gosh knows, my sense of humor gets a bit morbid at times, especially when it gets foggy outside. :o) Meowww back to los gatos, too! I wish I have cats instead of dogs. I'm way too lazy for them. :oP
Hallo Georgy: Helas, I'm afraid I'm not stuff religious heroes are made off, my friend. I have hard enough time mingling in a party, all the devout attention would creep me into insanity. Besides, they (the religion founders) all end up proclaiming their own godhood sooner or later (Joe Smith did, tho most of his modern day Mormons wouldn't even know about it... but then they wouldn't know most things about him that their church doesn't want them to know). I have enough trouble being human, a godhood would really be too much for me... ;o)
Bonjour Smorgy,
Let me take the liberty to come back here. I highly appreciated the gallows idea. Might be strange to have a god hanging from there but maybe we would get used to it. Human species is so adoptive, I don't think we would strain more under this sign, especially if it is made of gold or expensive tropical wood.
Cheers my friend
Georg
Bonjour Georgy: Ha! You're probably right there... I still remember the cross in the philosophy classroom back at St. Louis University (my alma mater... a Jesuit college). It even had a very pale Jesus hanging on it. I really didn't like looking at the thing, but none of the Catholics there seemed to mind.
On another note, I stopped by at the Hare Krishna temple in Pacific Beach near here as I rode my bike home from La Jolla the other day and they have this life size and very realistic looking dummy of their dead teacher, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, in there that I found endlessly creepy... It sort of reminded me of how the Soviet kept Lenin's corpse on display for the longest time at Red Square, you know?
Hello Smorgy
I have a lot of catching up on your blog to do!! After all those geometry chapters I'm amazed you haven't made mention of the rotational symmetry in the flowers and calculated the height of the buildings using the angle of inclination of the Sun! Are you sure that cross doesn't look like an addition symbol? Perhaps a multiplication sign rotated 45 degrees clockwise? hee hee hee ...
Going out to dinner to an all-you-can-eat dumplings place tomorrow!!!!
Best regards from cold grey rainy Melbourne
G'day Andrei!
Bwahahaha, luckily those chapters got done before I started calculating everything I see... though I must confess that the trig chapter gave me a mad impulse to substitute every 1 I write with a trig term instead (you know, like 1/sin90, etc). :oP Good thing I didn't take up on that math major changing offer after my freshman year... I mean, I'm already weird enough like it is to begin with!
How went the dinner! There is nothing quite like good Chinese dumplings in this sort of weather (we're having cool cloudy gray days at the moment). I think I might drop in on the Asian market tomorrow or Friday for some of those since I need to restock on the beef balls anyway. :o)
Thanks a bunch for stopping by and hope the weather there improves soon!
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