Jesus Christ...

...what color were you?

 For pure LOL material, I prefer Dane-Jesus up there with the pale blue eyes and strawberry-blonde hair...

With Christmas rapidly approaching, I thought I'd take a minute to talk about Jesus. Let's ignore the fact that there's not even compelling record evidence to suggest that he even lived, as a corporeal person; and let's ignore the fact that he doesn't even arrive in Christian literature until a century after his death; and let's ignore that like about a dozen other virgin-born deities, parthenogenesis isn't possible with human beings; and let's ignore that if Jesus actually existed, he was likely not born in our December.


Let us, instead, think about what Jesus looked like. The above is my favorite one, because a pale, Teutonic Jesus just strips the entire veneer off of what Jesus ethnically was, and where he purportedly was born. Jesus was, if anything, a Jew...a Semitic male from Judea.Gonna' be hard for the Christians to accept this one, but he was meant to fulfill the line of David, to resore the Kingdom, to fulfill the Jewish prophecies and to break up the influence of the priest-class. If nothing, Jesus announced that he was the Messiah of Jewish prophecy.

So? ever seen a Semitic male, born in Palestine or Judea, to a Turkish mom? (Mary was from Ephesus in present-Turkey).

These lovely ladies are Turks...in present-day Ephesus.

...and....

This is a contemporary Semitic man, from the ancestral regions of Judea/Palestine...

So, how did we get the image of Jesus of as a Saxon warrior? I like to think it's a few products, really. One, is pure racism. For the same reason Jesus is always shown painted over in his genital region...a circumsized penis is too Jewish for the Christian class to handle. Another reason, I suppose, is that people want their gods to look like them (except for me...I prefer Cthulu, tentacles and all). Combine these two things: One a desire, and two a white-washing, and you get some odd results...

Crunk Jesus...

Welsh Jesus...

  Turko-Grecian Jesus (pretty damned close, probably).

and, what I think is most likely...this forensic reconstruction of a 1st Century Semitic Male....

This is your real jesus. An ethnic Jew of the 1st Century, with unkempt hair, curly beard, etc.  Let's see what the Bible thinks, shall we...RE: the family reunion in heaven.

DAD: His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;

SON: These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze

So, give our first century guy some white in his hair, and he is God. Take away the white from God's hair, and he is Jesus. Seems perfectly rational, and reasonable to me...Now, get over your pasty Jesus, people, and realize you are worshipping a very ethnic, very provincial desert god of prehistoric extraction. And, if you want, tell him happy birthday this Saturday...

1968 Sixty Minutes on Jesus' appearance. Anachronisms abound in this decidedly whiter America.

-d.s. 

Tuesday just lost all productivity...

...replaced the Wii with an XBox360 last night (it was my self-selected xmas gift :) And, weird dreams seem to have passed me by for an evening. Good thing the year is winding down, and all of my projects are not time sensitive, it permits me to now obsess about other things.


Speaking of which, please enjoy Clan of Xymox's "Obsession"

Probably more of a synthpop offering than one of the Clan's darker fares, but still, you fully expect this song to be in a really cheesy 80s movie...maybe featuring Andrew McCarthy or on a disc with the Thompson Twins.

In either case, there's nothing wrong with that.

-d.s.

Florida prosecutors pick on cripples; grandstand wildly.

About a month ago, I wrote a scathing piece on the chilling effect of private corporate censorship by Amazon against the creeper who authored the "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct".

Therein, I argue that 'tis better to provide legal, if not socially acceptable, fora for pedophiles to learn how to curb their appetites and stay within the law, than it is to permit unpopular, grotesque, but-legal speech to be chilled by any entity; much less a private one.


Seems like the author of that book, Philip Ray Greaves II, is back in the news today. This time for a reason that should pretty much anger anyone who gives a shit about criminalization of speech, police entrapment, and the politicization of the law.

Yep, he looks like a creeper too.

Obviously, not the most popular client to have...

From MSNBC:

Polk County sheriff's deputies arrested Philip Ray Greaves II hundreds of miles away from Florida at his home in Pueblo, Colorado, and charged him with violating Florida's obscenity law.

Polk Sheriff Grady Judd said his office was able to arrest Greaves on Florida charges because Greaves sold and mailed his book, "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct," directly to undercover Polk deputies. Judd says Greaves even signed the book.

Read that again, and process it. What Florida did was solicit Greaves to sell his book in their jurisdiction, where it is deemed criminal obscenity and indecent. Now, the problem is, the book isn't a crime under federal law, nor was writing, manufacturing, or selling it (or its contents) a crime in Colorado, where Greaves lives and where he was presumably minding his own business now that the furor has died down.

There is entrapment, and then there is entrapment. Normally, it is not entrapment if the police solicit someone to do something which is criminal. The reason being is that they are just taking (allegedly)  advantage of the defendant's proclivity towards committing a criminal offense. If someone is trying to do a murder for hire, drug deal, extortion racket, etc. entrapment wouldn't be a defense.

But here, the man writes a vile book, and is literally solicited to commit a crime that he likely did not know was even criminal to begin with. Even worse, the "crime" alleged by Florida is ordinary commerce...that he engaged in legally in Colorado, using the Federal interstate mail system...legally. Even worse than that, the "crime" is repulsive speech whose sale is criminalized in Florida. Just speech, that's it. And interstate commerce, apparently.

But, how do we know it's grand-standing and not a legitimate prosecution. I dare say the presser released by the Polk Co. Sheriff's Department says it all.

"If he will waive extradition, it's my goal for him to eat processed turkey on Christmas Day in the Polk County Jail," Judd said. * * * "If we can get jurisdiction ... we're coming after you," Judd said. "There's nothing in the world more important than our children."

 Yea, that's pretty much what I think of Sheriff Judd...

Lookit. This is repulsive, vile, stomach-turning...you name the adjective. But Florida is on rotten-ass ice here. 1. Colorado shouldn't even extradite him, as this was not a crime. 2. There are serious pre-emption issues here as well. The State used the feds to entrap a guy into a state level crime that is not a federal crime. The crime revolves around commerce. Well, Skippy, this commerce is interstate. Good luck with that one. 3. It's criminalization of speech for fuck's sake, and may be revisited by some very high courts very soon. 4. While communities have a right to police and protect THEIR CITIZENS, the 1st Amendment doesn't cease to be relevant. More important, Florida has no interest in this political prosecution because the crime was manufactured by Florida and brought into their jurisdiction...by Florida officials themselves. 5. Notice is going to be a big big problem. Generally ignorance of the law is not an excuse; however, when the criminality is the exercise of a fundamental right, and the commission of the crime involves participation in interstate commerce, how on God's earth could Greaves know he was engaging in criminal behavior?

 

Besides, perverts always look like pervs. Every lil' kid has built-in molester-radar.

Nevertheless, Greaves is an easy punching bag. Just like the Feds go after Assange because they cannot go after the N.Y. Times, Florida attempts to prosecute another person extra-territorially, who also committed no crime. Why? Because it's ass-fucking lazy, it's cheap populism, it's interference with legitimate law enforcement, and it's a helluva' lot easier than investigating and prosecuting the real problem here: Real Florida pedophiles who have committed unspeakable, unforgiveable violence against real Florida children.

This shit is just window-dressing.

-d.s.

The bittersweet dream...

Of a big bore V-8 speeding down an endless ribbon of highway, wind whipping caressing me like a lover, the painted desert further painted on the reflection of her sunglasses, her bright red lipstick and tousled hair, a radio that never sounds bad. She half-climbs into the backseat of the black convertible, as the wind worries at her dress.

We are young, reckless and utterly "ima wo ikiru"..."being", living in the moment with no past and no future, and an aimless, rudderless love for life itself.

Mood music. The excellent Danish punk, gothabilly band, Volbeat.

The first car we've encountered on this lonely highway, speeds us by. The driver's tie is at half-mast, bags line his eyes which show a far-away look of deep concentration on the road and whatever else lies heavy on his mind. In the backseat, a bored child's face is pressed against the glass. I try to smile at her as we pass, but no light comes to the little girl's eyes, and we're quickly forgotten.

And then the dream dies around me. What was perpetual sunset, is now a descending darkness. I feel the night's chill set in, and realize that I brought nothing to keep me warm. I begin to become consciously aware of the heavy lump in my pocket where an empty wallet lies. I worry as the gas needle drops faster than gravity would seem possible. What once was whimsy on her face turns into a cold distance, and furrows unconsciously gather in her brows. There grows a distant pang somewhere in the pit of my stomach that isn't attributable to growing hunger alone. I start to think about -not this moment- but the moment's that must come tomorrow, and the preparation that must be done now so as to live in that future, rather than this moment.

And, it's a dream. A bittersweet one; an irresponsible one; an impossible one. 

It is, in short, Rousseau's notion of the liberated individual; the spirit freed from the strictures of everyday society. And it leaves me gasping for breath as I choke against the tethers that I only occasionally feel, but which I've leashed about myself in an effort to stave off uncertainty.

A dream juxtaposed against a very real sacrifice. That is what I'll tell myself today, anyway.

-d.s.