Archive for the ‘Religion’ Category
I’m not known for being a huge Christmas fan but when the season hits, I try to get with the program. My way is more subtle than most but at least I’m trying. Since damn near every retailer has already decorated for Christmas, I decided to make my first contribution to Christmas 2022. How about some interesting facts and lore about mistletoe.
- Mistletoe is known as the kissing plant. Just so you know, it’s only a kissing plant if you can figure out a way to get someone to stand under it. The way things are these days, the wrong approach will get you slapped with a sexual-harassment complaint. You’re better off waiting for the right woman (that would be any woman) to ask you to step under the mistletoe. Then it’s all good.
- In the lore of mistletoe all you hear are good things. Good luck, good health, and lasting friendships are just some of the benefits.
- If you’re a single person you can use mistletoe for another more useful purpose. Draw a circle in front of a fire. Take two leaves of mistletoe giving one in your name and placing it in the circle. Name the other with your lover’s name and place it outside the circle. If your lover is to marry you, the lover’s leaf will jump inside the circle next to your leaf. Jumping leaves… Sounds a little crazy to me.
- Some information received from a gaggle of old wives reveals that mistletoe can ward off sicknesses. For that to work the mistletoe must be cut from an oak tree with the golden hook and never allowed to touch the earth. Disasters are sure to be in your future if you let that tiny little leaf hit the ground.
- Mistletoe was known to be gathered for some Celtic winter solstice festivals. Druids removed the mistletoe from the oak tree with the well-known golden hook and used it as a charm against the many and various evil spirits. It was also supposed to encourage fertility which is always a real plus. Right girls?
- Austrian folklore believes that if you lay mistletoe at your bedroom door, you’ll have a sweet sleep and a beautiful dream. Match that up with encouraging fertility and you got yourself a party.
- For all you ranchers out there, mistletoe was also known to be effective with cattle. If you give a bough of mistletoe to a cow that’s calved after New Year’s Day, you’ll prevent bad luck from attacking your entire herd. Oh yeah just so you know, “No Kissing!”
- If by chance you strike out for the forest in November and December looking for mistletoe and can’t find any, run and hide, disaster is sure to follow. Only fresh mistletoe will retain its magical charms. Anything older than a year has passed its “Use By” date.
There you have it. Everything you always wanted to know about mistletoe but were afraid to ask. So, get off that comfortable couch, put on some warm clothing, get your ass out into the woods before all the good mistletoe is gone. You never know when a band of wandering Druids may sneak in and take all the good stuff.
MERRY CHRISTMAS
And a special thanks to Linda Spencer
Since yesterday’s posting was all about people and how and when they lost their virginities, I thought today I would do a short but interesting look at the history of “kissing”. It was always among my favorite things and the older I got the higher up my list of favorite things it went.
- I guess we should start with the Garden of Eden and Adam. Scripture says that God breathed the “spirit of life” into him and it might explain why many religious ceremonies include kissing.
- A Canadian anthropologist demonstrated that 97% of women shut their eyes during a kiss but only 37% of men did.
- As with many things it seems the Romans got involved with kissing early on. A husband returning from work would kiss his wife on the lips to see if she’d been drinking during the day. The Romans had three different types of kisses: abasium, the kiss on the lips; osculum, a friendly kiss on the cheek, anduavium, the full mouth and tongue. Emperor Tiberius once banned the practice of kissing after an epidemic of lip sores.
- Kissing at one point was frowned upon because it had been used as a sign of betrayal by Judas Iscariot. He identified Jesus to his enemies in the garden of Gethsemane by kissing him.
- Kissing under the mistletoe is an English tradition and started with the kissing bough, which had mistletoe at its center. When the Christmas tree replaced the kissing bough, the mistletoe was salvaged.
- How and where you kiss used to be a sign of where you stood in the social pecking order. Equals kissed each other on the cheek. The lower you ranked to another person, the lower you had to kiss him. Thus, a slave would kiss his masters’ feet, and a prisoner not even allowed to do that. They were forced to kiss the ground near the foot.
- Alice Johnson, a 23-year-old American waitress, won a car in Santa Fe, New Mexico, after kissing it for 32 hours and 20 minutes in a 1994 competition. She loosened four teeth in the process.
- An American insurance company discovered that men were less likely to have a car accident on their way to work if they were kissed before they set off.
- In Sicily, members of the Mafia have stopped kissing each other because the way they kiss was a dead giveaway to the police, and mobsters were getting arrested.
- The first film kiss was in, appropriately enough, the 1896 movie The Kiss. The participants were John C. Rice and Mae Erwin.
- My last entry will give all of you a reason to kiss a little more often. Kissing can prevent illnesses. When you absorb other people’s saliva, you also receive their enzymes, which gives you their immunities like a kind of antibiotic. Unfortunately kissing can also pass on diseases too.
“YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS; A KISS IS JUST A KISS.”
Dooley Wilson in Casablanca
In the past I’ve been criticized for being somewhat unhappy with almost every organized religious group. I calmly sat by quietly accepting quit a number of less than Christian comments. They didn’t make me angry as you might think but in fact they made me smile. They just convinced me and others that I was probably accurate in my opinions. Today I will further defend my position by quoting some fairly well known individuals. They, like everyone else have opinions on damn near everything.
- “Science without religion is lame, religion with science is blind.” Albert Einstein
- “If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without it?” Benjamin Franklin
- “In all ages, hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns upon the heads of thieves, called kings.” Robert G. Ingersoll
- “An archbishop is a Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.” H.L. Mencken
- “Religion is induced insanity.” Madalyn Murray O’Hair
- “Unlike Christianity, which preached a peace that it never achieved, Islam unashamedly came with a sword.” Steven Runciman
- “The Catholic faith is confession on Saturday. Absolution on Sunday. At it again on Monday.” H.G. Wells
- “If I had been the Virgin Mary, I’d have said, “No!” Stevie Smith
*****
So many people, so many opinions. As the old saying goes, “Opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one.” It remains a truth regardless of what religion or lack of religion you believe in.
ENJOY YOUR SUNDAY, YOU SINNERS!
Are you an avid reader? I’ve been one since a very early age and it will continue forever. One of my favorite reads is just about anything ever written by Isaac Azimov. He was a prolific writer as well as a noted intellectual. His areas of interest were many but today I’ll post a few facts he gathered concerning books since we’ve both shared a love for them. Books are great and history is even greater. How can I go wrong posting about the history of books?
- Columbus had with him on his first voyage to the New World a copy of Marco Polo’s book about his 13th century, twenty-two-year odyssey to China and back.
- Twice as many books on religion were published in England as works of fiction in 1870. Sixteen years later, novels far outnumbered religious works.
- The Library of Congress houses over 72 million pieces of research material, including over 16.5 million books and 31 million manuscripts, and costs over $150 million a year to run.
- The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels was ignored in Germany when it was published in 1848, and a Russian translation was suppressed by censors in the 1860’s. It remained a rare pamphlet until it was reprinted in 1872.
- The art of printing from wooden blocks with the characters in reverse was initiated in Buddhist monasteries in China. The oldest surviving printed book that can be reliably dated is a Buddhist text, the Diamond Sutra, made in China in 868 A.D.
- Euclid is the most successful textbook writer of all time. His book Elements dated around 300 B.C. has gone through more than 1000 editions since the invention of printing.
- General Lew Wallace’s bestseller Ben Hur was published in 1880 and was the first work of fiction to be blessed by a Pope.
- America’s first best-selling novelist was a woman, Susanna Haswell Rowson. Although it was a melodramatic work with wooden characters and a hackneyed plot, Charlotte Temple, published in 1791, appealed to popular tastes. It went through more than 200 editions.
- Icelanders read more books per capita than any other people in the world.
- To get her book published, in 1896, Fannie Farmer had to pay publishers Little, Brown and Company the printing costs for the first 3000 copies. The publisher refused to take the risk, saying that women would not buy still another collection of recipes. Ironically, her Boston Cooking School Cook Book eventually became the most popular cookbook of its time and a “gold mine” through the years for the publisher; millions of copies have been sold in dozens of editions.
THANK YOU ISAAC
Yesterday as I was creating my lunch, I threw in a healthy dash of soy sauce. It’s my only way of eating salt without totally violating my doctors’ orders. In my humble opinion food has very little taste without it. Try eating popcorn or corn on the cob without salt. Ridiculous!!!! Since it sends my blood pressure through the roof, I’m forced to obey but not entirely. Rather than continuing to drone on about my salt issues here are a few facts about salt (trivia wise).
- Each year, 9,000,000 tons of salt, more than 10% of all the salt produced in the world, is applied to American highways for road deicing. The cost of buying and applying the salt adds up to $200 million dollars.
- Salt helped build the Erie Canal. A tax of 12 1/2% on New York State salt, plus tolls charged for salt shipments, paid for nearly half of the $7 million dollar construction costs.
- There is a salt mine in the Polish town of Wieliczka, near Kraków, that has been in operation for nearly 1000 years.
Enough about salt, I just threw in a few tidbits for the fun of it. Let’s try something else like military history. It was in the Army that I was first forced to eat salt tablets. Talk about mixed messages. Good for me then, not so much now.
- The British and French armies in World War I did not advance more than 3 miles at any point on the western front in the whole year of 1915. Those three miles costed the French army alone nearly 1.5 million men.
- The Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II were given privileged treatment and considered to be heroes. All volunteers, they underwent rigorous training that prepared them for their suicide missions. If they refused to stay in the corps, they were shot as traitors.
- The Crusaders were able to conquer Acre, a coastal city 80 miles north of Jerusalem, in July 1191, only after 100,000 men on both sides had been killed.
- Through the six-year war of independence ranged enraged over most of the 13 colonies, George Washington’s Continental Army never consisted of more than 22,000 troops at any one time.
- On the eve of World War II, the US Army ranked, with reserves counted, 19th among the world’s armed forces. This placed the United States after Portugal but ahead of Bulgaria.
Let’s enjoy our last few weeks of summer. Things here in Maine can finally return to normal after the tourists begin leaving after Labor Day. People have been telling me that we’re in for a difficult winter. I really don’t mind all that much because I hate hot weather. I’ve made the statement many times that if “climate change” continues to make things warmer in Maine, I’ll be moving to northern Canada to live in an igloo. LOL
CHASTITY IS CURABLE IF DETECTED EARLY
As I’ve stated many times before I’m not a fan of any organized religion. I’ve given my reasons for feeling that way many times and won’t bore you with the details again. It seems that I’m not totally alone in those feelings as reflected by the following statements made by people of note. Read on!
- “A Christian is one who follows the teaching of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.” Ambrose Bierce
- “I don’t believe in God because I don’t believe in Mother Goose.” Clarence Darrow
- “Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.” Lenny Bruce
- “So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake – Religion is bunk.” Thomas Edison
- “When a man is free of religion, has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life.” Sigmund Freud
- “The Bible is nothing, but a succession of civil rights struggles by the Jewish people against their oppressors.” Jesse Jackson
- “I do believe our Army chaplains, taken as a class, are the worst men we have in our service.” Abraham Lincoln
- “The Creator is a comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.” H. L. Mencken
- “I think there is an immense shortage of Christian charity among so-called Christians.” Harry S Truman
- “The Catholic faith is confession on Saturday. Absolution on Sunday. At it again on Monday.” H.G. Wells
I’m not preaching with this post because that would be somewhat hypocritical. It’s just nice to hear from others who agree with my beliefs. Too many Christians have been less than kind in their criticisms of my opinions on religion. Here’s my quote for today.
“Have a great week and best wishes from a “Recovering Catholic”.
Have you ever had the pleasure of talking with someone who has mastered the art of speaking in clichés? ? I’ve met one or two over the years and it’s actually pretty funny. We all use clichés everyday but almost no one knows how they originated and what their original meaning was. Here are just a few examples . . .
BAKER’S DOZEN
This phrase dates back to medieval England. Henry III (1216-1272) instituted a law, The Assize of Bread and Ale, that called for severe punishment for any baker caught shortchanging customers. English bakers developed the habit of including an extra loaf of bread when asked for a dozen to ensure that if one were stolen, dropped, or lost, they wouldn’t be accused of shortchanging their customers.
BY THE SKIN OF ONE’AS TEETH
By the narrowest of margins. By a hairs breath. There are several metaphors emphasizing the physical danger of a given situation from which one might just have escaped. “By the skin of one’s teeth” specifically is a slightly misquoted biblical phrase that means to have suffered a “close shave”.
“My bone cleaveth to my skin, and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.” Job 19:20
COLD ENOUGH TO FREEZE THE BALLS OFF A BRASS MONKEY
This means that the weather is extremely cold, and although the expression sounds delightfully vulgar, it was not originally a reference to a monkey’s testicles. A brass monkey is a type of rack in which cannonballs were stored. Being brass, the “monkey” contracted in cold weather, resulting in the cannonballs being ejected. The expression has also mutated into a shortened form, again commenting on the temperature, as “brass monkey weather”.
EVERY DOG HAS IT’S DAY
This is a commonly used phrase that seems to have appeared in an English writing of R. Tavener in 1539 and subsequently by Shakespeare:
“Let Hercules himself do what he may, the cat will mew, and the dog will have his day.” Hamlet (1600;5:1)
Well, there you have it. These three clichés have been used by millions of people and now you’re one of the few that knows the actual story behind them.
As I’ve stated on many occasions, I am not a religious person. But as I do my homework for this blog, I discover many things that I didn’t know before about religion. While I disagree with most organized religions that currently exist, I found that there are a few that I had no knowledge of at all and that being said, I thought I’d pass along their information to all of you.
- The first group is the Universe People. They live in and around the Czech Republic and believe that ancient non-earthly beings operate a fleet of spaceships orbiting the earth. The Universe People followers are waiting to be transported into another dimension. I hope they have a really nice trip!
- The second group is named after Bhagwan Shee Rajneesh. This gentleman was an India-born mystic who settled in Oregon in the 1980s. The group’s claim to religious fame is that Rolls-Royce’s are a sign of holiness. He owned dozens of them. He also tried to poison nonbelievers by introducing salmonella into the salad bars of several Oregon fast-food restaurants. Take no communion wafers from these folks.
- The third group is called the World Church of the Creator. It’s a white separatist movement advocating a white-only religion called Creativity. Ironically, despite their name, group members do not believe in God. They are atheists! They are also idiots, pure and simple.
- Number four is called Nuwaubianism. It’s a loose term referring to the religion founded by Dwight York, a black supremacist leader and convicted child molester (currently serving a 135-year prison sentence). These people believe all humans have seven clones living on different parts of the planet. Humans were bred on Mars as part of a Homo erectus breeding program gone awry, and famed scientist, Nikola Tesla, was born on the planet Venus. Let’s have a big AMEN here!
- Number five is one I’ll only mention briefly because they’re all dead. And that was Heaven’s Gate. A cult founded by Marshall Applewhite, whose followers believed that once they were free of their earthly bodies, a spaceship would take them away to a celestial paradise. In 1997 with the appearance of the Hale-Bopp comet they were assured their spaceship had arrived. In March of that year all 36 members of the cult were found dead in a mass suicide. Problem solved!
What more can I say about organized religions. My only
comment is that “You just can’t make this shit up.”
If you’ve read this blog at all your well aware that I love citing quotations. I’m a firm believer that quotes that are remembered and repeated often have some sort of meaning that touches people. Unfortunately, some quotable people offer up quotes that are remembered for their stupidity and ignorance. Today I will cite a few that I’d prefer to forget, and I hope you will as well.
- “Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can’t help but cry. I mean, I’d love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff.” Mariah Carey
- “We went to Atari and said, “Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us?” They said, “No.” So, then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, “We don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.” Steve Jobs looking for financial backers for the Mac.
- “Atomic energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous.” Sir Winston Churchill
- “The Edison Company offered me the general superintendency of the company but only on condition that I would give up my gas engine and devote myself to something really useful.” Henry Ford
- “True, I’ve been a long time making up my mind, but now I’m giving you a definite answer. I won’t say yes, and I won’t say no, but I’m giving you a definite maybe.” Samuel Goldwyn
- “Rock ‘n Roll is phony and false, and some, written, and played for the most part by cretinous goons.” Frank Sinatra 1957
- “I believe that Mink are raised for being turned into fur coats and if we didn’t wear fur coats, those little animals would never have been born. So, is it better not to have been born, or to have lived for one or two years to have been turned into a fur coat? I don’t know.” Playmate Barbie Benton
I think that’s about enough of these stupid quotes but unfortunately during my research I discovered there’s probably many more of these than the one’s worth remembering.
HAVE A PLEASANT UNQUOTABLE WEEKEND
Since I had a lot to say about dogs yesterday, it seems only right that I report a few things, both good and bad about cats. Here are a few . . .
- 7000 years ago, some of the first settlers in ancient Egypt were farmers, growing grain along the banks of the Nile. Their fields were overrun with about a zillion mice and ravenous rats. The farmers helped the cats develop a taste for those little rodents and one good cat could clear a field of vermin in an evening. They became such a part of the Egyptian lifestyle that in later years they were actually worshiped.
- Bastet was an Egyptian goddess with the body of a woman and the head of a cat. She became one of the most revered of the Egyptian gods, in charge of fertility, beauty, and motherhood.
- Julius Caesar, King Henry II, King Charles XI, and Napoleon all had terrible aelurophobia, a fear of cats.
- The prophet Mohammed was a big cat lover. His favorite cat, Muezza, once saved his life by warning him about a dangerous snake.
- Florence Nightingale, the world’s most famous nurse, was cat crazy. She owned more than 60 cats over the course of her lifetime.
- One more Egyptian note. In the 1800’s archaeologists digging in the shadows of the Egyptian pyramids unearthed a huge cemetery filled with more than 300,000 cat mummies.
I hope all of you rabid dog fans out there can now relax a little. We cat persons understand, appreciate, and sympathize about your passion for dogs. Some of your emails were a little disturbing but I really do understand your pain. LOL
CATS STILL RULE!
everyuselessthing.com 