Help me I am a hostage and they demand pizza

Or at least that's what I have been asked to post.

Anyway, I'm officially, unofficially, and in all other ways broke.

Good things have happened, but in light of the new developments I'm staying away from home longer than planned which fucking sucks, that's the hostage bit.

Specifically I'm staying until the good things that have happened become official.

Anyway, pizza.

My sister wanted to celebrate by getting something "hot" to eat with the example being pizza.  Note the fact that I am completely broke.

The example of Pizza was reiterated repeatedly.

When my sister was double checking that we really have to wait until tomorrow for the good things that happened to become official she referred to me needing to be here (lest the family be legally forced to break up) as holding me hostage, and noted that I don't like being held hostage.  (This is true.)

And that's when the pizza became a demand of my captors.

So, I am being held hostage and my captors demand pizza.

If you send enough money for pizza to my paypal account (donate button in upper right hand corner or using my email address, cpw [at] maine [dot] rr [dot] com, with the send money feature in your own paypal account) I can use my debit card to buy pizza.

Thus: Help me!  I am a hostage, and they demand pizza.

Excerpt from the findings of the Tri-Rodent Commission on the recent inexplicable events

Due to the lack of confirmed hamster sightings in the immediate area a near consensus has formed rejecting the "Gnawed on by Hamsters" theory, however, for a dissenting view, please see The Chronicles of the Hamster I·ninja·ati, in particular "Chapter 7: Gnawing Undetected".

We have the most unpopular major party nominees on record. Someone set that to music.

I have no idea what the signs say, but with Hillary and Donald both being unpopular to a record setting degree, it does seem like the song's appropriate for this election.

And if you can vote in the US, but haven't yet: Vote Already!  (For fuck's sake, people.)

Trump and losing

[Originally posted at Slacktivist.]
[So, for context someone said . . . I'll just copy it.]

Tsotate wrote:

He might be happy at taking the party down with him, but he'll never be happy about his name now becoming synonymous with "loser". There's a facebook event with over nine-thousand people signed up to stand outside Trump Tower pointing and laughing on November 9. That's not the sort of response Trump can be happy about.

So I responded with:

-

He's the best at everything. He even loses big. He's the best loser. Other people might lose their car keys, but Trump can lose so much more. Nobody loses like Trump.

Did over nine thousand people show up to point and laugh at Mitt Romney? No. But they will for Trump. Why? Because when Trump loses he loses YUGE. Nobody loses better. Trump loses best.

Trump is great at losing. Why they ought to call it, "Trumping" he's so good at it.

- - -

Did I say there were four Trump things?  I think I did.  That means we've reached the end of "Trump Trump Trump Trump"  Woo!

A very long word I made up with very little meaning

I thought of mentioning parasemipseudoquasiesqueoidishylike somewhere else and then realized I'd never talked about it here.

It started simply enough, I was thinking about the various suffixes for -like.

Latin: -esque

Greek: -oid

Old English: -ish

Thus:
Like a star becomes:

Star-ish - Old English
Stellar-esque - Latin
Aster-oid - Greek

(When asteroids were first discovered they were just fuzzy points of light in a telescope that looked star-like while clearly not being actual stars.)

But it's more complex than that.  -esque comes from Latin but actually originates in German.

The suffix -y multiple etymologies (all from the same proto-Indo-European root) and actually manages to come from Old English, Latin, and Ancient Greek.  (Most of the time words branch away from a common origin, but sometimes they come together.  In this case both happened.)

And what of -like?

Like is actually from Old English too.  "Starlike" being preferred over "starish" because ... Jasper?

And why just suffixes?

And so I started to create a word with no-root that was composed entirely of prefixes and suffixes that meant "similar to by not the same as."

parasemipseudoquasiesqueoidishylike

To break it down:

PARA - Para literally means "beside".  Here meaning something similar enough that you put it beside the real thing, but different enough it isn't in the same place.  As in paramilitary.  A paramilitary organization isn't the legitimate/official military but it's close enough to a military that it's worth putting military in the description and, since there generally is a legitimate/official military, operates off to the side of it.

SEMI - Literally "half" but it comes to mean partial, almost, somewhat, sort of, quasi.  We'll get to quasi.

PSEUDO - Literally "fake".  Pretty easy to see how it comes by the "similar to but not the same as" meaning.  The sun is not a fake bunny.  To be a fake bunny you have to be similar to a bunny in some way.  Shape is the most obvious (as seen in stuffed animals, lawn ornaments, and chocolates) but one could imagine a program that has lines of code act as bunnies.  More straight forward, "fake" and thus "pseudo" means that something isn't the thing but is similar in ways that we might associate with an imitation to the thing.

QUASI - Literally "almost".  A longer definition is "similar to, but not exactly the same as" which you'll note is the definition that I was looking for in these prefixes and suffixes.

Thus end the prefixes.  Now the suffixes:

ESQUE - Blame the French.  This word went from proto-Indo-European to proto-Germanic to Lombardic to Latin to Italian without changing it's core meaning as a simple adjective forming suffix.  Then in French it gained the meaning of "resembling.

OID - Ancient Greek meaning "similar in form but not the same as".  Want to know something fucked up?  Android means "Similar to but not the same as a specifically male person" even though Greek had a perfectly good word that meant person without restricting gender.  Someone somewhere had to decide not to use "Anthropoid" and instead specifically exclude non-male people.  Thankfully we've expanded the meaning, but what the fuck?

ISH - Literally "similar to / somewhat / approximately" but it can also mean "typical of" which lacks the "but not the same as" part.

Y - Arguably the weakest link in the word, but ishy is awesome.  Certainly one can imagine, "It's not X but it's Xy" being said and it does have a lot of overlap with "ish", but of all the parts of this word this is the one that has the least "but not the same as" connotations.

LIKE - This is the last component I added, and not because it's the last part of the word.  Originally I had parasemipseudoquasiesqueoidishy and spent a while figuring out the right order for the bits to go in, then I decided to tack a "Like" onto the end.  Litterally ... "Like".  Not good enough?  Fine.  Litterally, "Having some of the characteristics of."

Put it all together and you get parasemipseudoquasiesqueoidishylike.  What does it mean?  Nothing really.  It has no root.  It has a lot of parts that mean, "Similar to but not the same as []" but nothing to fill the void of [].

Based on the suffixes it should be an adjective, but without something to put between the quasi and the esque it doesn't describe anything.

It's just, sort of, parasemipseudoquasiesqueoidishylike.

Click-bait religion

[Originally this was going to be religious listicles and all I had worked out was Ten things... and Almost a hundred things...]

This one weird trick will let you be a decent human being
(the golden rule)

The six most important days in history
(Creation of the world, story one, from Judaism and derivatives)

Ten things God does NOT want you to do
(The Ten Commandments)

An boy and an angel go on a road trip, you won't believe what happened next
(The Book of Tobit)

Almost a hundred things wrong with the Catholic Church
(The 95 Theses)

Twelve people who get thrones on Olympus; You won't believe who has to sit on the floor
(Gods are people too, so I stand by the use of "people" above.  The 12+1 Olympian gods of Greek mythology)

Eight simple steps to escape suffering
(The eight-fold path)

Five tricks to living a righteously awesome life
(The pillars of Islam)

Eight worlds you didn't know existed (and one that you live on)
(The nine realms of Norse mythology)

-

I wanted to have more from a larger variety of faiths, but as you can see above, my creativity was already wearing pretty thin.  Share your own in the comments.

The sound of one hand clapping

So kōans came up and the only I know best is, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

This, though, isn't a kōan anymore.  We know.

In music a clapper has two pieces of wood to be the hands connected by a joint of some kind, often times a hinge.  It makes sense, since it basically does what hands do to clap.  It doesn't help us answer the question of one hand clapping because it has two "hands".

In party favors a clapper is something like this:

The important thing to notice about it is that it has three hands.  Wave it back and forth and it will produce the sound of three hands clapping.

This we can work with.

Now that we know the sound of three hands clapping, and given that the sound of two hands clapping is a known quantity, the sound of one hand clapping can be discovered via simple subtraction.

"Plumbing Problems" (The Truth Behind Walmart)

[Originally posted at Slacktivist]

Context: Walmart closed 5 stores on the same day, without any prior notice, for six months as a result of "plumbing problems" even though the stores have no problems with plumbing, Walmart's in-house plumbing technicians have no idea what's going on at the stores in question, no plumbing permits have been sought, and when a plumbing inspector showed up on his own initiative to help them secure the necessary permits he was sent away.

It seems that the five stores were closed in an attempt to squelch worker protests, as is Walmart's way.  So the closures of the stores (two in Texas, one in California, one in Oklahoma, one in Florida) is kind of depressing, thus Fred Clark's suggestion:

And we can’t start to believe that if we let ourselves get depressed and dismayed and disheartened by this latest bit of depressing, dismaying and disheartening news. 

So here’s an idea to cheer us up a bit before we even start to think about responses like consumer boycotts, demonstrations, Pete Seeger sing-ins, or legislative campaigns. 

Let’s try to imagine some other possible explanations for the “mystery” of Walmart’s sudden outbreak of “plumbing problems.” What was going on in those stores? Or, perhaps, beneath those stores? Were these closures an attempt to keep some dark secret? Were they necessary to keep the public — the world — safe from something else, something it couldn’t possibly understand?

-

Texas:

Jason retraced his steps in the Walmart, looking for where he might have dropped his favorite marble.

-

California:

Marie walked aimlessly through the Walmart, imagining her path traced out arcane symbols, forgotten by all except the old gods who ruled this world long before the last sauropod had come and gone.

-

Back in Texas:

Alex chased the child, how had the little thing gotten such a head start when Alex only looked away for a second? This was why Alex didn't like helping to watch kids.

-

Florida:

Joslyn didn't know why the GPS on the phone had decided to give strange, seemingly random, directions to move about the Walmart. Joslyn certainly didn't know why the phone would care whether or not that candle was moved three inches to the right, but Joslyn was sure of one thing: The phone said that the destination was world domination, and it was getting closer.

-

Oklahoma:

Maggie felt that today was the day. Her dreams had told her to go to the center of all evil in the world, so she had come to Walmart. She was accustomed to dowsing with a pendulum. The expensive looking "gem" at the end of the chain was a hunk of worthless acrylic. The cheap looking chain was platinum.

She followed the path revealed to her, feeling that each step brought her closer to the glorious summoning.

The excitement within her built so that she hardly noticed as her incantation rose above the sub-audible. She found she didn't care. Let the mundanes laugh at her; today was the day.

Almost no one paid attention to Maggie. Even if they had known she was speaking Etruscan, no one in the store knew how much of a marvel that was.

-

At the meeting of worlds:

It stirred.

Here, without place, and with only tenuous connection to time, there was only one Walmart.

Jason, Marie, Alex, Joslyn, and Maggie were as one. They stood in the same place, walking the same path, at the same pace. Their name was a five part cacophony: its name. Their every footstep added to a symbol with but one meaning: come hither.

Jason, having found his marble, walked out the door; Marie felt her symbol was complete; Alex followed the child out of the store; Joslyn's GPS read, "Return home and await the appointed hour;" Marie said, "Let it be done," in Etruscan as she exited.

It heeded the call.

-

"There have never been plumbing problems in--"

The pipes rumbled, gurgled, and resembled a very disturbed digestive system in their sonic display.

"Then what do you call that?"

"That's not... RUN!"

-

"So, tell me again, what's wrong with the pipes?"

"You mean besides the fact that they've become the living homes of a gestalt entity that wants to eat our brains?"

"Yes, besides that."

"Uh... nothing."

"Then I don't see why we can't keep the stores open."

"Did you miss the part where it would destroy the souls and devour the bodies of our employees?"

"No."

"And our customers?"

"So what? Closing the stores will substantially cut into our profits."

"If all of our customers are dead, we won't have any profits."

"Well..."

"We need at least eighteen months to make these locations safe, anything less than absolutely committing to eradicating the menace and the infection could spread to every Walmart on earth."

"There is no way that I'd authorize that, the lost profits are too high."

"IF EVERYONE IS DEAD YOU CAN'T MAKE MONEY!"

"Six months and not a nanosecond more."

"There's no way we can do it in that little time."

"The decision is final."

-

[Original Work Index]

Word Problems

You live in a two story home (see attached page for floor plan, assume all walls are one foot thick, and each room is eight feet tall), you have decided to turn the house into an aquarium.

Questions:

1. How much sand will you need to buy to cover the floors to a depth of three inches?
   
   
   
2. What will the weight of that sand be?  (Sand has a density of 80 to 100 pounds per cubic foot.  Assume it averages 90 pounds per cubic foot.)
   
   
   
3. What would the sand weigh on the surface of the moon?
   
   
   
4. Would it have been better to buy those colored little rock things that are in some fish tanks? (Show your work.)
   
   
   
5. What will be the PSI exerted by the sand upon the floors?  (Give answers for the ground floor and upper floor separately and label both.)  Will the floors withstand the force?
   
   
   
6. You will need to waterproof the house so that it does not leak.  You plan to do it with a revolutionary new type of tarp which is massless, volumeless, and completely water tight.  What square footage will you require?
   
   
   
7. The tarp comes in the following sizes:
   8 ft x 20 ft for $20.97 - - - - 12 ft x 24 ft for $ 31.97 - - - 18 ft x 24 ft for $56.97
   24 ft x 24 ft for $75.97 - - - 30 ft x 50 ft for $198.00 - - - 40 ft x 40 ft for $211.00
   30 ft x 60 ft for $238.00
   
   Assuming that you need at least four inches of overlap to ensure the structure remains water tight, what combination of tarps will you buy to do the job with the lowest cost?  (Show your work.)
   
   
   
8. How many gallons of water will be required to fill the house? (Show your work.)
   
   
   
9. Jake from down the street thinks he can get you a better deal on the sand, the tarp, and the water, but his supplier requires that measurements be made in metric.  Convert the previous answers (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8) to metric.
   
   
   
10. You want to replace the windows and doors with clear material so that you can look in on the fish.  Assume that water does not compress (this is usually a safe assumption as it does not compress much.)  The density of water is 62 pounds per cubic foot.  Recalling that in a liquid pressure at a given depth is exerted equally in all directions, how much pressure will doors need to withstand?  How much will windows on the ground floor?  How much will windows on the second floor?
    
    
    
11. Would you be better off using glass or plastic as your transparent material? (Show your work.)
    
    
    
12. What is the force exerted by the water and the sand on an average square foot of flooring
    a) on the ground floor?
    
    
    
    b) on the upper floor?
    
    
    
13. Sea water has a density of 64 pounds per cubic foot.  What would the previous measurements (10, 12) be if you decided to make the house a salt water tank instead?
    
    
    
    (For questions 14-17 assume that you settled on fresh water.)
14. You don't want the water to be stagnant so you plan to set up small water movers to develop a current in the house-tank.  You have ten such water motivators.  Where should they be placed?  (Show your work.)
    
    
    
15. You don't want the current to be too small because you think that might lead to dead zones developing. instead you have desired to move water at the maximum velocity that will not tear the house apart.  What is that velocity?  (Hint: use Bernoulli's principle to help determine the effect doorways will have on this calculation.)
    
    
    
16. Alice from up the street has convinced you that maximum current is a waste.  What is the minimum velocity your water motivators need to induce (using the placements from question 14) in order for 90% of the water in the house to circulate throughout the house in a 24 hour period?
    
    
    
17. Given that the volume of water in the house (see your answer to question 8) is finite, only a certain number of fish will fit into it.  Larger fish require more free space than smaller ones.  The higher the proportion of large fish you buy, the fewer fish you will buy overall.  The higher the proportion of small fish you buy, the more fish you will buy overall.
    
    What is the most awesome ratio of small to large fish?  (Show your work.)
    
    
    
18. You've decided to make the house have a mix of fresh and salt water zones.  How many times did the average student just say, "Fuck"?
    
    
    
19. Using the water motivator positions determined in 14 and the water motivation velocity determined in 16, determine how long it would take for the water in the house to become 95% homogenized if you did nothing to maintain the different salinities.
    
    
    
20. You want the house to be 40% fresh water, 40% salt water, and 20% brackish water (by volume) describe the system required to maintain this distribution (within 2% tolerance) in perpetuity.
    
    
    
21. How many times will the average bull shark pass through different salinity zones in a year?  (Show your work.)
    
    
    
22. The octopus has been eating your sharks.  If the octopus draws an average of 15 tourists primarily college students, and the sharks draw an average of 30 primarily children, is it most cost effective to get rid of the octopus, stop buying new sharks, or continuing to replace the sharks as they are eaten under the following conditions?
    
    a) children get a 40% discount but tend to bring 1.25 adults for every two children, college students get a 20% discount but tend to bring .5 non-student adults per every 10 students, and 80% of the adults accompanying children are non-students.
    
    
    
    b) Children get a 10% discount but tend to bring 1 non-student adult for every two children, college students get no discount.
    
    
    
    c) Children get no discount on weekends but get in free on week days.  College students get in free on Tuesdays but pay full price on other days.
    
    
    
    d) The octopus has requested you buy it larger sharks, these last few were kind of scrawny.
    
    
    
23. A leak has developed in the floor and begun to flood your high school friend's secret lab where ze was trying to create a genetic combination of shark and octopus.
    
    If the equation for the size of the hole is X(t) = X(0) + k * dX(t) * P(t) where X is the size in square feet of the hole, X(0) is the size of the hole when it was first noticed, k is 3.14/(6ft), dX(t) is the change in the size of the hole at time t, and P(t) is the length of the perimeter of the hole in feet at time t (assume a circular hole), how long will it take before:
    
    a) The basement lab is half full?
    
    
    
    b) The computers in the basement lab get wet and short out?
    
    
    
    c) The specimens escape into the local sewer system?
    
    
    
    d) You have to plug the hole with a tourist to stop your fish from running out of water?
    
    
    
24. You live in Iowa, the state with the most EF5 tornadoes per square mile.  After the house is destroyed by one, what are the odds (use p-value) that the SeeFee channel will pay you to be in the documentary, "Sharknado In Real Life"?
    
    
    
25. What is the maximum speed a shark octopus hybrid can move on land, as measured in furlongs per fortnight?
    
    
    

-

Extra Credit:

1. Which fish spent the most time in the den?
    
2. Which fish spent the most time in the kitchen?
    
3. Which fish spend the most time in the living room?
    
4. What is a parametric equation for the movement of the octopus through the bedroom when it is stalking prey?

A charter school, on the moon, with Steve.

Lonespark has suggested that we start a charter school on the moon.  We'll see if we can work "With Steve," into the name somewhere.

She can teach science, and Norse myth, and Norse religion and such.  I'll cover classics and math and whatnot.  Then we get into the recruiting.  Ana Mardoll is a computer programmer, she can also teach classes on feminism, I would think.  Fred Clark could clearly cover such diverse subjects as Journalism, theology, how not to be an asshole (ethics), and HOW NOT TO WRITE.  (I also nominate him as spiritual leader, but it's just a nomination meaning it can be declined and other people might get nominated too.)

"How not to write" will likely have teachers from all departments pitching in.  Certainly no degree in how not to write would be complete without Ana Mardoll's insights on Twilight and Xanth.

It seems, to me, that we face three hurdles:

1. Accreditation
2. Recruiting
3. Getting to the moon

NRA: Chloe got her licks in

[Originally posted at Slacktivist.]
[The canonical conversation goes thus:

(Chloe:) “Then I got my licks in, telling her all about how you and I met, where you were when the Rapture happened, and how you and I and Daddy became believers.”

(Buck:) “Verna must have thought we were all from another planet.”

One could read getting her licks in as accidental honesty at how aggressive and unpleasant RTC witnessing is.  Or, one could read it like this:]

-

"Then I got my licks in," Chloe said.

"That's good," Buck said.

"Yeah," Chloe said with her voice becoming distant and a faraway look in her eyes. "She's tasty."

"What?!"

"I mean, I told her all about how you and I met, where you were when the Rapture happened, and how you and I and Daddy became believers.”

“Verna must have thought we were all from another planet.”

"It felt like we were floating," Chloe said, the distance returning.

"What was that?"

"Um... it felt like we were fighting. She's so hostile and combative and stuff."

"Ok, ok."

-

[Left Behind Index]

Left Behind: Who's writing this, anyway?

[Originally posted at Slacktivist.  In response to the idea that the continuity is dependent on who is telling the story though it sort of got sidetracked from that and never really got into in any depth.  The plan was for an artistic piece where the style and such completely shifted based on the character telling it, the result was this.]

Rayford: And then the dashing pilot, who was sexy and manly and looked up to by all, swooped in and saved the day.

Ken: You do realize you're not the one flying this time?

Rayford: Right, forget all that stuff. The pilot was just background.

Ken: I heard that.

Rayford: Buck, you're up.

Buck: We lit the barrel of gas and then I preformed a tricky maneuver that involved spinning the bus one hundred and eighty degrees and bringing it to a complete stop, at the same time, which caused the barrel to fly out of the back, hit the bad guys, and EXPLODE!

Chloe: Um, science.

Buck: Is not in effect because of my powers of manly awesome.

Tsion: (To Chloe) Do you have to deal with this all the time?

Chloe: Pretty much.

Tsion: (To God) What have I done to anger you so, and how might I atone for it and get out of this mess?

Tsion: (To Narrative) I got into the plane without incident.

Buck: And we flew to America.

Ken: The range on a Learjet doesn't actually--

Buck: TO AMERICA.

Ken: Fine, to America.

Buck: I walk into the cockpit, which I can do because I'm cool and connected and--

Ken: Chartering my plane.

Buck: and say, "Cap--"

Ken: What the hell?  Am I Steve Rodgers now?

Buck: I can say "Cap," because I'm friends with everyone and thus don't need to remember their names from one page to the next. I can just make up nicknames on the spot. I say, "How are you doing, Cap?"

Ken: Well I'm apparently in a Budweiser commercial, hence the "How ya doin'?" and my main foil is a badly done knock off of the Old Spice man in that like the Old Spice man he thinks continuity is for other people--I'm on a horse--and yet has none of the charm of the Old Spice man.

Chloe: Oh, he's way worse than that.

Buck: "How you doing, Cap?"

Ken: "Much better now that we're in American airspace," which doesn't exist anymore and is too far from our destination for us to reach, "because before..." what's the silliest thing I could say?

Chloe: "Purple elephants are flying"?

Ken: That might be too silly. (To Buck) Let me start over. “A lot better, now that we’re over American air space. I had no idea what you guys got yourselves into,” because, seriously, who expects someone to be on the run from nonexistent governments as a result of the crime of converting to Christianity without a licence? “and who knew what kind of fighter pilots might have been on my tail.”

Chloe: You do realize that--

Ken: All fighters are now part of the Global Community Air Force, which has standardized its forces such that there's only one kind of fighter left in existence? Yup. Also, my jet could never outrun them.

Chloe: Playing for absurdity points?

Ken: Something like that.

Tsion: I commend you for being able to keep your wits about you in this situation, I swear this is Vogon Poetry.

Nicolae: (From off stage) I NUKE EVERYTHING! I KNOCK OVER THE FUCKING TABLE AND SAY, "YEAH, GOD? HOW YOU GOING TO TRIBIULATE A WORLD THAT'S NOTHING BUT MOLTEN SLAG?" BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Tsion: Is he serious?

Chloe: Unfortunately.

Tsion: What kind of book have I gotten myself into?

Nicolae: An endangered species? BOOM! A historic site? BOOM! A major metropolitan area? BOOM BOOM!

Buck: You know, that reminds me, World War III is still going on.

Chloe: I thought we dropped that arc.

Buck: This is totally World War III.

Chloe: Even though it isn't a world war and ... why do I even bother?

Buck: I say to Cap--

Ken: My name is KEN.

Buck: I say to Cap, “I don’t think we were worth all that, with World War III going on.”

Chloe: I hack into a secret military death-sat using the skills I picked up in my time at university doing things I've never been at liberty to explain. I target a certain Learjet that's recently entered former-American airspace. I look for the heat signature that's in the cockpit but not flying the plane. I kill that person without harming the others.

God: Divine Right Veto. He's one of the main characters.

Chloe: Would you stay out of this?

God: No.

Chloe: Well then could you be useful?

God: No.

Chloe: I convert the entire congregation of New Hope to Christian socialism and mobilize them to do good works in the world. Also, I get myself a Coke. *pause* (Eyeing God) That ok with you?

God: No one ever notices them anyway, so sure.

Hattie: I have wanton sex and enjoy every minute of it.

Nicolae: BOOM!

Hattie: Just, you know, not with him.

Chloe: Good call.

Rayford: When do I get to fly my fully loaded--

Hattie and Chloe: Extremely phallic.

Rayford: --giant plane. I've let you guys have your fun but it's time for everything to center around me again. This book is about me, me, me.

Chloe: I cannot believe that I share half of my genetics with you. I begin to look into the possibility that I'm some sort of science experiment and thus don't have a shred of genetics in common with either of my so called parents.

-

[Left Behind Index]

What we know about Steve (Theology)

Lonespark and I often say the traditional prayer to Steve, taught to us by the great prophet Eddie Izzard:

I was on the moon... with Steve.

The full prayer is actually, "I was dead at the time.  I was on the moon... with Steve."  This gives us some information on Steve, though not a lot.  Steve resides on the moon.  Steve is somehow associated with the afterlife.  Steve tends to be involved in cases where someone was dead but got better.

In the same sermon Izzard mentions Jeff the god of biscuits and Simon the god of hairdos.  Steve and Simon are conflated in many Izzardian traditions that don't check their facts often enough, leading to the belief that Steve is the god of hairdos who lives on the moon.

Fred Clark points out that Steve figures prominently in American religion in this post from 2004:

"Steve" has emerged as a central figure in American theology. He even played a significant role in the recent national elections. Yet despite his enormous influence, we know little about Steve aside from a single reference to him in our holy texts. This reference is, like the catechism, extra-canonical but considered authoritative:

"God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."

The catechism he mentions begins with these three questions:

Q: Who made you?
A: God made me.

Q: What else did God make?
A: God made me and all things — except Steve.

Q: Why did God make all things except Steve?
A: God made all things except Steve for His own glory.

Fred's post, which is worth reading in its entirety, goes on to speculate as to the nature of Steve.  Is Steve a little known fourth member of the trinity?  Fred thinks, "No."  He concludes with:

Thus again we come to mystery. Steve was neither made nor begotten; yet Steve is.

What can we do in the face of such mystery? It is beyond our ken. We cannot hope to understand, we can only drop to our knees to sing a bewildered hymn of praise to the Creator of all things except Steve.

The scholia to Fred's exploration of Steve contains some more hints of a Steveian tradition now lost to us.

John S Costello shares this:

SAT: Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
B, concurrently: Except Steve.
SAT: Praise him all ye creatures here below;
B: Not you, Steve.
SAT: Praise him above ye heavn’ly host;
B: Stay silent, Steve.
SAT: Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
B: And Holy Steve.

Tico asks:

So, if Steve is one of Satan’s minions, would that make all Steves evil (or stevil, as the case may be)?

Danil claims that Steve evolved.

lespool shares this bit of poetry:

Our Lord appears to lack ubiquity
(— obsessed with homosexuality)
and never knew the devil made his rounds
cajoling Eve inside the garden grounds.
Her ignorance was awful hard to take,
for poor ole thing starts talking to a snake.
But lost potential caused insanity
and she sought knowledge from an apple tree!
Whilst Adam had libidinous pursuits
till Eve seduced and tempted him with fruits.
Yet knowledge came with little aptitude
except to notice — God preferred them nude!
Hence, Eve and Adam drest in figs and leaves
concealing nudity as thick as thieves.
But disobedience shalt bear the blame
(— for modesty twas such a naked shame)!

And while Steve is never mentioned one must assume that it is somehow related for it is in the scholia to Fred's article about Steve.

Angelia Sparrow speculates:

Maybe Steve was one of those kids Mama Lilith had after she left Adam and went out to fornicate on the banks of the Euphrates with fallen angels?

though that would make Steve begotten.

ako gives us our best insight in to the lost Steveian tradition:

The real secret? God didn’t create Steve.

Steve created God.

Way back, before the beginning of the universe and time and everything, there was just Steve, his easy chair, and a fridge full of beer. It wasn’t a bad life (no linear time meant the beer never ran out), but it was a bit dull.

One night, old Steve got a bit drunk, and created an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent deity (he says he doesn’t remember if he made it omnibenevolent or not; there was a lot of beer). It took Steve awhile to realize what he’d done, but as soon as he figured it out, he made the obvious request.

Being bored, lonely, and also gay, Steve said, “God, make me a boyfriend.”

God said “Okay,” and whipped up Adam. And it was good.

Things worked out for a while, but Adam got bored. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do, and the sex just wasn’t…fun. Steve liked it, but it wasn’t really Adam’s cup of tea. He wanted to go places, do things, meet other people who had curves, and more interestingly concave bits.

“I’d like a universe,” Adam sighed.

“What do we need a universe for?” Steve asked. “We’ve got cold beer and a recliner. That’s better than a universe!”

“How about a universe that contains cold beer and recliners?” God offered.

“No,” said Steve. “I’ve got sex and beer. I’m happy, and you don’t count. God just made you so I could have sex. I should have told him to make you less whiny.”

Well, that was the end of it. Adam walked off, and asked God to whip up a universe for him to stay in. He left Steve, and ducked off into the universe, in hopes of meeting the interestingly curvy and concave person God promised.

Sure enough, Eve turned up, and her and Adam hit it off like a house on fire. But Steve kept hollering and throwing beer bottles from outside the universe, and messing up the Garden of Eden. Even worse, he’d sneak over for drunken booty calls with Adam that upset Eve no end. Eventually God had to step in.

“Look, Adam. I made you two Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Steve was there when I showed up. So you should stick with Eve. She makes you happy, you make her happy, and you two don’t leave broken glass all over the universe. So don’t date Steve. No Adam and Steve. Got that?”

Adam got the point, and that was the end of it. Unfortunately, future generations got a bit muddled, and somehow concluded that the warning also applied to couples named Bill and Kevin, John and Karl, or even Melissa and Penelope; despite the complete and total absence of Steve.

However this version of the Steveian tradition was clearly not universal as lespool almost immediately argued it was incorrect:

ako … That doesn’t make any sense — because you left out Lilith. Lilith existed long before Steve’s cosmic alcoholic haze evolved and in a drunken stupor created god to make Adam but not Eve even though God disobeyed Steve and created her anyway. You may have all the answers as to why the earth was created before the universe — BUT YOU CAN’T JUST IGNORE LILITH simply because she’s an inconvenient truth fer crying out loud!

And a further obvious challenge to ako's version of the myth of Steve is that the introduction claims it's a secret, which implies that what follows is an account of the Steveian Mysteries but the Steveian Mysteries, like the rules of Mao, must never be transmitted to outsiders.  We have an apparent contradiction: Since it is written down it cannot be the thing it seems to claim to be.

In the end we are left to grasp at the few scraps we know for sure and attempt to make sense of them:

• God did not create Steve
• Steve exists
• Steve was on the moon (with Eddie Izzard) at which point his companion was dead but would not stay dead
• God made all things except for Steve

Counting

1. Unity
2. The even prime
3. The only consecutive prime
4. First perfect square
5. The first elder twin prime
6. First squarefree composite
7. Perfect number in Babylonian numerology
8. First perfect cube
9. First non-unity Kaprekar number
10. Base.
11. Landed on the moon.
12. First sublime number.
13. Months in a lunar year.
14. Fortnight
15. Quarter of an hour.
16. Lowest perfect forth.
17. "The most random number"
18. Chapters in Ulysses
19. The impossible cribbage score
20. First primitive abundant number
21. Spots on a standard die
22. Paths in the tree of life
23. Read the Illuminatus Trilogy an you'll see where the whole fuss started.
24. Squares in a tesseract
25. First aspiring number
26. Number of cards of a given color in a deck of cards.
27. Plastic parts in a Rubik's cube
28. Only natural number with a unique Kayles nim-value.
29. First number that is a  Pell prime and a Pillai prime
30. First sphenic number.
31. Number of triads in the standard twelve tone musical system
32. First perfect fifth
33. Bones in typical human spine
34. The first semiprime Markov number
35. Youngest age at which one can legally become president of the USA.
36. Number of Tzadikim Nistarim
37. First irregular prime
38. Number of minutes a Stargate can stay open if not fed by an external power source.
39. First perfect totient semiprime Perrin number
40. First pentagonal pyramidal semiperfect octagonal Størmer number
41. First centered-square (natural Einstein Proth) cousin prime
42. The Answer

Snarky Twilight: Vampire Pool

[Originally posted at Ana Mardoll's Ramblings.]

[Inspired by the comment "Vampire baseball isn't really about a tighter focus on nuance or skill, but is rather really more about super-sizing the existing game," from the main post.]

Edward: Come on, I want to show you how we play pool.
Bella: The table is the size of a public swimming pool, you use bowling balls, the cues are masts of small ships, and the balls move very fast when you hit them.
Edward: How could you know that?
Bella: Good guess.
Edward: But...
Bella: Look, you're not the sort to invent a new game that involves balls of several different sizes, some as small as marbles, made out of various materials --some magnetic, some ferromagnetic, some non magnetic-- which, combined with the electromagnets in the table --hooked up to a random number generator or a sensor suspended in a cup of really hot tea-- make for a changing game field impossible for any human to keep up with but on level with the difficulty necessary to interest a vampire.
Edward: You've been thinking about this?
Bella: Actually I just made it up as I said it, I'm sure someone who had a hundred years to think could come up with something better.

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[Snarky Twilight Index]

Snarky Twilight: The Ride to Baseball

[Originally posted at Ana Mardoll's Ramblings.  Note that this will probably be superseded by a revised version (fewer "[...]"s for one thing) at some point in the undefined future.  Not that this version will ever be taken down.]

*Edward tries to strap Bella into the Jeep*
Bella: I am totally capable of putting a harness on myself thank you very much.
Edward: But the book says--
Bella: This is fiction, damn it. In fiction the people who do things by the book are always wrong. It's in real life when going by the book pays off.
Edward: This isn't a crime show.
Bella: Then why am I the badass daughter of the local sheriff who finds herself embroiled in a cobweb of lies and whatnot going back centuries and inextricably linked to *as melodramatically as she can* murder.
Edward: I think you took the wrong details away from the spark notes.
Bella: Next thing you'll be telling me that the Volturi aren't a centuries old cult that engages in human sacrifice.
Edward: That may be a technically accurate way to describe them but it's totally missing the point.
Bella: Says the person who still thinks that appealing to what the book says will have any effect upon me.
Edward: Whatever.
Bella: You know what the book says. The book says "This is a . . . um . . . big Jeep you have." which is totally not sexual innuendo at all.
Edward: It's not!
Bella: Why not?
Edward: It’s Emmett’s.
Bella: Makes sense. The book keeps on saying you have a body like a Greek God, and that means teeny-tiny penis so I guess Emmett gets the fully loaded 747 and you get the puddle jumper.
Edward: IT DOES NOT MEAN...
Bella: Go on. Say it.
*silence*
Bella: You know you want to. Prove you took anatomy class.
Edward: That's not what "Greek God" means.
Bella: If you're not a Satyr, which you're not, Greek God totally means small genitalia. It's supposed to be a physical symbol of the emotional control you totally lack in all non-symbolic capacities.
Edward: It can mean other things.
Bella: Do you have a beard?
Edward: No.
Bella: Wings like Eros?
Edward: No.
Bella: A bow with which you can shoot plague arrows?
Edward: No.
Bella: Then you're not exactly resembling a Greek God in any other way.
Edward: Can we get on with it?
Bella: By all means. My, what big eyes you have.
Edward: Wrong story.
Bella: It's still your line.
Edward: What? Right. Um... I didn’t think you’d want to run the whole way.
Bella: Which logically means I'll still be running part of the way.
Edward: You’re not going to run.
Bella: For the love of fuck, I’m going to be sick.
Edward: Keep your eyes closed, you’ll be fine.
Bella: So totally not why I'm going to be sick.


* * *


Edward: Sorry, Bella, we have to go on foot from here.
Bella: You know what? I’ll just wait here.
[...]
Edward Hmmm . . . It seems I’m going to have to tamper with your memory.
Bella: In several cultures that was outlawed before the death penalty. In others they just kill anyone who so much as suggests doing such a thing with stones.

[...]
Edward: It’s over, Bella.
Bella: Sweet! I've got so many other things to do. I can't believe this book is finally over. In my travels met a nice lesbian couple and when the redhead was my age she was a main character too but instead of being stuck in abstinence porn she was saving the world and had been for years.
Edward: I meant the running was over.
Bella: Oh!
[...]
Bella: Oh, you’re the only one who’s allowed to get mad?
Edward: I wasn’t mad at you.”
*Bella begins to turn away*
*Edward tries to hold onto her*
Bella: If you don't let go this book will abruptly end in Chapter 15.
*Edward releases her*
Bella: You were mad.
Edward: Yes.
Bella: But you just said —
Edward: That I wasn’t mad at you. Can’t you see that, Bella?
Bella: Not really. All signs really point to me as being the target of your irrational anger.
Edward: Seriously, that's not it.
Bella: Then why?
Edward: I infuriate myself,
Bella: And then take it out on me.
Edward: The way I can’t seem to keep from putting you in danger.
Bella: You could start by actually trying.
Edward: My very existence puts you at risk.
Bella: I think it's more your behavior than your existence.
Edward: Sometimes I truly hate myself.
Bella: With good reason.
Edward: I should be stronger,
Bella: No argument from me there.
Edward: I should be able to —
Bella: Yes, you should.
Edward: I love you
Bella: Could have fooled me.
Edward: It’s a poor excuse for what I’m doing
Bella: It's not an excuse for anything.
Edward: but it’s still true.
Bella: Love is what you do, so I call bullshit.
[...]
Edward: Now, please try to behave yourself
Bella: I think you're forgetting which of us has the problem here.

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[Snarky Twilight Index]