You know, that's about 12.3 tons. I doubt the average appartment could take that much weight (unless he distributed them evenly thoughout, but....)

Besides, even God needs a Secret Pain, don't you think?

Dangit, Nutty, why don't you read the books I tell you to read and watch the movies I tell you to watch?

The Universal Baseball Association, J. Henry Waugh, Prop. addresses God's Secret Pain. In a book about baseball. Where the metaphor is subtle and transparent and subsumed into the narrative.

While I'm at it, Band of Outsiders.

I think it's equally misguided to think he's not meant to be an asshole, though. You weren't supposed to worship God because he was the nicest. You worship him because he's God. The idea that God should be benevolent is a NT retcon. When God finally speaks to Job directly, he basically says, "'Cause I'm the Almighty, that's why; you can't judge my actions." That's the only argument that makes Job stop bitching. Ezekiel makes the same point rather emphatically.

That's also how I read it. And I think the contemporary response of getting all up in God's grill and defiant is wrong-headed. If you accept the posit of the OT, or Job, that God is the Creator, then yo - a little deference. But humility is not an American virtue.

I think I watched some show about the Book of Job a while back where there were scholars saying that the last chapter or two, when Job regrets his impertinence, are believed to be by a different author.

That's what I was taught. I was just thinking about that yesterday in relation to (a) the Code enforced ending of Gilda and (b) Wordsworth's incessant revisions of late poetry, each of which got progressively worse.

These all fall under the heading: Why it's okay for me to edit things in my head despite the "official" release. The sanctioned version isn't always the right one.

I didn't get that out of Universal Baseball Association. Hmmm.

That whole thing almost sounds like a joke....

Coated in vaseline? Ya think?

Coated in vaseline? Ya think?

Well, that part could be true... or at least I'm not expert enough in the care and storage of Civil War cannonballs to know that doesn't make sense....

I mean, I'm sure it's all damp in the fallout shelter if it's 4 flights of stars below ground level....

A Chicagoista totally needs to go over and check that guy out.

A Chicagoista totally needs to go over and check that guy out.

Yeah, I could carry one cannonball a few feet and then be all, "Sorry - hurt my back. Gotta go. Wait, let me grab a few beers first."

I could carry one cannonball a few feet and then be all, "Sorry - hurt my back. Gotta go. Wait, let me grab a few beers first."

Dude, you should totally stumble into the pile of slick balls.

I really hope they're friends of hers, not just random people trying to affect her narrative.

Two best-selling authors have asked the best-selling author of all not to kill off the central character of her stories. John Irving (The World According to Garp) and Stephen King (Carrie) told a news conference in New York Tuesday that they had written to J.K. Rowling asking her not to kill Harry Potter in the final book of her series about the boy wizard. (Each of her Harry Potter tales has been or will be made into a motion picture. She has indicated that several key characters will die in her final Potter book, which she is currently writing.) Referring to a scene in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Final Problem, in which Doyle killed off his famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, King told reporters, "I don't want [Harry] to go over the Reichenbach Falls." Irving commented, "My fingers are crossed for Harry." (If history is any indication, there may still be hope for Harry even if Rowling does kill him off. The public was so outraged after Doyle sent Holmes to his death that it mounted a letter-writing campaign that resulted in the author's resurrection of Holmes.)

King, Irving, and Rowling all did some sort of charity event together a couple days ago, so that's not quite as random as it sounds.

King, Irving, and Rowling all did some sort of charity event together a couple days ago

And then they fought crime.

The university is going through brownouts and the A/C has gone down and the heat index is 105.

(It's afternoon -- isn't the weather supposed to be breaking now?)