anybody gonna be in philly that weekend? brannon, sam, john macI, and myself will be there to see derick and the urban imperative.
I haven’t conducted any polls lately, but I suspect that a large percentage of Ben’s Friends readers believe in absolutes. Great. I accept absolutes. But how do I know what the absolutes are. Is it an absolute because I've read a few books about it or have observed it? Can I be sure of it because I've examined one smidgin of a percentage of the evidence that's out there, or because my unreliable senses have perceived it, or because it makes sense to my finite, 21st-century-white-male-american-christianized-middle-class mind? Perhaps our universe is governed by absolutes, as a well-ordered universe would be, but do I give myself too much credit in imagining that I have figured out the absolutes of reason and theology? Any thoughts?
It bothers me that I’ll never be able to comprehensively study out everything there is to know about truth. There’s just too much data. But what bothers me more is that I don’t care. I’m limited more by laziness and dishonesty than I am by intellectual finiteness. Even if I were able to examine all the evidence for the existence of God or the historicity of the resurrection, I’m unconvinced that I would be diligent enough, or truly interested enough in the cold unforgiving truth, to really find out for myself. My brain is trumped by my desires. My wandering heart fails me long before my gray matter does.
Lemony Snicket
Yesterday I read The Bad Beginning, the first in A Series of Unfortunate Events, by Lemony Snicket. It’s an easy read, and a rather engaging one at that. “Engaging” in this context means “I had lots of errands and chores to accomplish that were neglected because I was reading the book.” If you’re not familiar with the series, you can learn a lot just from the title of the series. The events in the entire series are, I understand, terribly unfortunate for the set of protagonist siblings, the Baudelaires. I took a particular liking to the youngest of the Baudelaire siblings, Sunny, who likes to bite things. I will soon be writing a Freudian analysis of the novel, as soon as time allows (“as soon as time allows” in this case means never, as my Victorian sense of decency forbids me to ever write anything of the kind). Incidentally, someone has written a Freudian analysis of The Cat in the Hat. So far as I know, though, none have been written about any of Lemony Snicket’s works.
More words. Looking for a synonym of “love potion”? You’re at the right place. Or, in case you’ve been looking for a word to describe those people who “find the will of God” by randomly selecting Bible verses, this is your lucky day. If you need the word to describe your technophobic boss, I’ve got one for you. And if you want to learn of customs that are weird...no--customs that are frighteningly bizarre...you’ll like the last one.
verbiggeration: obsessive repetition of meaningless words and phrases, esp. due to mental illness
Luddite: 1. Any of a group of British workers who between 1811 and 1816 rioted and destroyed laborsaving textile machinery that they thought would diminish employment. 2. One who opposes technical or technological change
rhapsodomancy: the seeking of guidance through the chance selection of a passage in literature
philter: a love potion
uxoricide: the murder of one’s wife
couvade: a practice in certain cultures in which the husband of a woman in labor takes to his bed as though he were bearing the child