My 9th grade English class involved at least excerpts of the first five books. I remember because we got to the end of Book 5, i.e. the last book Moses was supposed to have written himself, and he died before the end! Stupid ghostwriters.

I will say, now that I've got a lot of the foundational western culture Greatest Hits under my belt, I find it really thrilling to do process detective work over centuries. Like the transformation of the story of Adam and Eve -- who first called the fruit of the tree of knowledge an apple? Who first decided that Eve was an idiotic slut, and not just the unlucky one who happened to stumble over the snake first? How did the competing versions of "man and woman he made them" and "Adam is the real deal and Eve was just, like, an appendix writ large" -- how did people explain adhering to one and not the other, when they're side by side in the original text?

In sum: Milton is to blame. Blame Milton. Or blame Milton's shitty attitude after his divorce.

Years ago i bought a recording of the Philip Glass opera Akhnaten. I had never heard of Akhnaten before and what I read just fascinated me. Akhnaten (aka Amenhotep IV) was a Pharaoh who instituted the first monotheistic religion.

Supposedly Judaism borrows a lot from Atenism (the religion of the sun god Aten, the monotheistic god promoted by Akhnaten) - I was really interested in this but I've never read more about that.

From the Wikipedia article [link] :

The idea of Akhenaten as the pioneer of a monotheistic religion that later became Judaism was promoted by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in his book Moses and Monotheism and thereby entered popular consciousness. Freud argued that Moses had been an Atenist priest forced to leave Egypt with his followers after Akhenaten's death.

...

More recently, Ahmed Osman has claimed that Moses and Akhenaten were the same individual. While these speculative views have gained acceptance in some quarters (e.g. Laurence Gardner, Bloodline of the Holy Grail, Lost Secrets of the Sacred Ark; Gary Greenberg, The Moses Mystery: The African Origins of the Jewish People), most mainstream Egyptologists do not take them seriously, pointing out that there are direct connections between early Judaism and other Semitic religious traditions, and that two of the three principal Judaic terms for God, Yahweh and Elohim, have no connection to Aten.

Hmmm...

I just don't get people who lack intellectual curiosity. How can you not want to know things about things?!

I sometimes wonder if such people live their entire lives in the same mental state as I experience after getting home from a late night at work, when I just want to microwave something vaguely edible and fall asleep in front of the TV.

Though perhaps the fundamentalist types wouldn't be choosing Buffy the Vampire Slayer tapes or a rental DVD of To Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar as viewing material...

Yay! mr. flea's speeding ticket court date was today. He represented himself. The DA charged him with a lesser offense (9 miles over vs. 21 miles over) and he pleaded guilty and paid his $120 (in cash) and is all done. Thanks for all your anecdotes and support, other people with traffic court experiences.

I was thinking, though, wouldn't it suck to be a traffic court judge? I mean, BORING, and who aspires to that shit?

Yay!

Did Mr. flea make a deal with the DA? Or did the DA decide on his own to charge Mr. flea with the lesser offense just because he showed up?

I declare that conflating Jesus with Oscar Wilde is the most amusing conceit of 2007 to date.

Ugh. I'm tired from baby snuggling. You'd think that would be an easy task, but when you've got the baby in your arms in bed for several hours it's not the most restful sleep. She's still so tiny, you can't just roll around like you would with a toddler. OTOH, she doesn't kick you in the kidneys like a toddler.

I only got the brief account, tommy, so I'm not sure how it went down. Update at 11! I know he pulled his (whistle-clean) driving record and make sure to take a shower and changed his shirt after the baby snotted all over it...

The cats are attacking!! Cats Invade Neb. House, 3 Injured

Also, haven`t some Buffistas had weird experiences with Ambien? Because there are new warnings out about it: [link]

The review was prompted, in part, by queries to the agency from The New York Times last year, after some users of the most widely prescribed drug, Ambien, started complaining online and to their doctors about unusual reactions ranging from fairly benign sleepwalking episodes to hallucinations, violent outbursts, nocturnal binge eating and — most troubling of all — driving while asleep.

Daily Mail article on Angelina's latest adoption. I'm charmed by the mention of Maddox trying to comfort his newest brother. Not sure what you say in a situation like that (ignoring the language barrier for now) other than "It's okay. Mom does this all the time. At least you're big enough to play with, unlike the last one. No idea which country they got her from."

I seem to have outgrown Ambien weirdness. Either that, or my friend's lying to me. But I have been successfully not merely awake but out and conducting conversations and business transactions. When compared to some of the strage postings I'd make under the influence, it's quite a big jump.

The cats are attacking!! Cats Invade Neb. House, 3 Injured

I knew it!