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Well perhaps not cavorting, unless you count reading a text and making notes as cavorting. But, still no signs of the jeebus, earthquakes, horsemen with bad hair, or anything like that. I realize its only 8:00am, but you would think we would have at least some sort of prelude to the apocalypse…
First, to any and all Christians who claim to believe the world is ending tomorrow, I don’t believe you for a second. I invite you to prove me wrong. Spend the rest of today donating every single penny and asset you have accumulated over you life to charity. Give up your house, your life savings, everything you own (maybe pack yourself a lunch) to the underprivileged. You won’t need it anyway, and the charity will look good on your resume when pining for positions in heaven. What’s the matter? Not enough faith? I thought not.
But before the second coming of christ (giggety giggety) we have another very important event: today is Draw Mohammad Day! Here is my 2011 contribution, a fine display of microsoft paint skills, if I do say so myself.
If you have no idea what this post is all about, here is a great vid from one of my youTube favs, Thunderf00t, explaining everything.
Don Giovanni premiered in Vienna in 1787. The author of the libretto, Lorenzo da Ponte, described it as a dramma giocoso, a work that includes both comic and tragic elements. The comedy includes a variety of mishaps, while the tragedy includes attempted rape, murder, and finally the Don being dragged straight to Hell, complete with a chorus of demons.
The background to the scene above: Don Giovanni happens upon a wedding party. Zerlina, played by Joan Rodgers, is the bride. Giovanni decides he wants Zerlina, and arranges for her to become separated from the rest of the wedding party, including the groom. He tries to seduce her, but the seduction is interrupted when one of Giovanni’s previous victims happens on the scene. In the video clip, Zerlina is re-united with her future husband, who is extremely jealous of the attention Giovanni is paying to her. Zerlina wins his affection back with a combination of flirtation and self-abasement.
I’m currently working on learning this aria. There are a lot of things that make it fun to sing. It’s fun to sing flirtatious characters. The melody is relatively simple, but is entertaining from a technical perspective, with its interesting leaps and runs. Done well, it’s an excellent show-off piece. I hope to get it to that point.
I also hate it. It seems to be a case of Feminism Ruins Everything. To me, a woman who has grown up expecting to be treated as an autonomous human being and the equal of any man, it’s a really disturbing piece. Masetto should be reassuring Zerlina that he will do his best to support and protect her, not blaming her for Giovanni’s unwanted attention! And, given that Masetto is being a jealous prick, Zerlina should be tearing him several new orifices, not offering to stand like an unresisting lamb to be beaten and then kiss his hand. Trying to wrap my emotions around the idea that Zerlina’s behaviour could be realistic for a woman of her social status in that era, is sobering. It’s not really that long ago, after all, that women really did need to get married Or Else. And that any suspicion of non-virginity or infidelity would lead to Or Else. A woman like Zerlina might have been so totalized in her identity that it would never occur to her to expect anything but jealousy from Masetto, and that she would in fact blame herself for having attracted Giovanni’s attention. Unfortunately, when I’m as disturbed as this idea makes me, I don’t sing well. Still working on finding a way of singing this aria musically, without grossing myself out.
Just a small update today, and in light of our world ending I figure I would say a few things… first a pox on Statistics Canada for sending me a nasty census reminder to participate and secondly, promptly arranging to have the online census form bork out and be unavailable when I finally clear time to actually do the damn thing.
However, if the world is ending on the 21st, then I have it made in the shade!
“According to evangelical Christian leader Harold Camping, the world will come to an end this Saturday.
Camping, the 89-year-old leader of Family Radio Worldwide, predicts that the second coming of Jesus Christ will occur on May 21. Camping claims that those who have accepted Christ as their savior will rise into the air and join him in the sky before proceeding on to heaven, an event known in evangelical circles as “the rapture.”
Once the rapture occurs, those left behind will experience the wrath of God until the world is completely destroyed by fire on Oct. 21, 2011.”
Sounds like a bad deal except for the whole rapture part because then we will have less religious inanity to deal with for awhile.
“What is the inspiration for such unquestioning faith? Camping claims his prediction was derived from a mathematical analysis of the Bible. His doomsday calculus is the square of the product of 5 (which represents “atonement”), 10 (which represents “completeness”) and 17 (which represents “heaven”). That number — 722,500 — is equal to the number of days between Christ’s crucifixion and his return to judge the earth. According to Camping, Jesus is scheduled to arrive on May 21, 2011, 6 p.m. local time.
I guess it should have been obvious.
However, this isn’t the first time Camping has made such a prediction. Two decades ago, his mathematical gymnastics resulted in the prediction that the world would end in September 1994. When the world did not cease to be, Camping blamed it on a miscalculation, but the experience wasn’t a complete failure: the publicity he generated led to increased donations and book sales.”
Damn, he’s only been wrong once, and of course it was a ‘miscalculation’. Some days I think it would nice just to start my own cult and prey on the stupid to make money and live like a sultan for the rest of my days. (Yes I am watching the sock-gnome cult thread developing and taking careful notes, stay tuned).
It is not a burning hate of Apple that I possess, merely the facts about the hardware that makes my lip curl and snide comments usher forth. Hence, as always (or at least mostly always) I present the evidence for my point of view. :)
Sorry for the late post folks, there was some serious singing to do today, at a church…never fear we went into the belly of beast and returned triumphant at the cost of the Sunday Disservice being late. Oh the things we do for our art. :) Enjoy.
Farming out the business of the Sunday Disservice can be trying at times as so much good material exists and is being freshly created here in the interwebs. This small snippit is from a commenter on Pharyngula and describes quite nicely the flaming hoops you have to jump through just to keep everyone’s favorite Zombie story consistent and clear.
1. There is no credible evidence that anyone named “Jesus” ever existed. The myths retold in the book called the “bible” were written decades to a century after the purported events by people who were not there (seriously, just look at Luke 1:1 for confirmation — he claims right there that he’s an historian, not an eyewitness). In addition, no contemporary historian seems to have noticed anything having to do with such a person. So, the evidence suggests that Jesus is nothing more than a mythological creature to start. (Hint: Josephus, Origen, and all the rest you’re going to quote were born quite a number of years after the alleged events.)
2. Any belief in the divinity of Jesus begins and ends with miracles. Without miracles, Jesus is just another nutjob who got whacked for mouthing off to the authorities. Only by virtue of miracles can the divinity of Jesus be claimed. Now, I’m not going to say that miracles are impossible — after all, they wouldn’t be miracles if they weren’t impossible.
Instead, I’m saying that the so-called miracles of the NT are stupid. The amount of power inherent in such acts is enormous — and yet, the god of everything who knows everything could not see fit to leave the slightest shred of proof behind that these “miracles” actually happened. What we do get is “the dog ate my homework” miracles.
* Where’s the wine? We drank it.
* Loaves and fishes? Eaten.
* The healed sick? Dead.
* Lazarus? Dead again. (Really? If I were a god and I raised someone from the dead, they would good and well stay un-dead.)
* The risen Jesus? Invisible in heaven.
Seriously, these are the stories that you MUST believe in order to credibly believe in the divinity of Jesus. And my 6-year-old could make up more-believable stories.
You don’t have a problem of faith – you have a problem of credibility.
Greetings gentle readers, it is that time of year again when my professional and academic interests overlap. A nice way of saying that between being a teacher during the day and now also a student during the night, the amount of time I have to blog will be reduced dramatically. The posts from me will be less frequent but I hope my fellow commentators Mystro and Intransigentia can take up a little of the blogging slack. I will make sure the DWR Sunday disservice continues though, I’ve been having way too much fun with that as of late and would hate to see it go away.
Your readership and commenting is appreciated, carry on.
Arbourist.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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