I recently finished Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August, a book about the opening of World War I, and several years ago I also read her A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century. They're both extremely well-written and researched, but it wasn't until I read the introduction to The Guns of August did I realize she wasn't a professional historian; she was originally a journalist but at the time of these books she was a housewife.

Now, I could tell these books were meant for popular consumption because of the writing style — historians like to cut the bullshit and just get to the point, which ultimately results in very dry works — but I was under the impression that she was a professor producing for the masses, like Bart Ehrman's books on Christianity or David McCullough's biographies. She wasn't. She was a smart lady who liked a topic and decided to produce a book about it.

And I didn't realize it, but the introduction told me she experienced a backlash from the academic community. Today she's viewed as a significant authority — she came to my attention thanks to my own professor — so it's difficult for me to imagine how she could be rejected. I'll admit there are times I've read popular history and think it's not meant for me, but that's because I can sense whilst reading it the person isn't an expert and is just rehashing what the actual experts say. Tuchman used primary sources. She wasn't reiterating other great WWI scholars said.

I think there's something to be said for college degrees because it guarantees a standard when you're hiring someone. But simultaneously I think people forget that just because you don't have a college degree doesn't mean you're incapable of what someone with a college degree does. You can argue that history is the easier subject because that just involves reading books, but I'd counter that with math it's just solving equations or Einstein came up with his greatest theories just sitting around and having "thought experiments."

I think instead of people becoming defensive, like a biologist writing something about chemistry and chemists becoming all snooty about it, people should just appreciate what you see. Tuchman's work is definitely meant for the educated layman, no doubt about that. But that doesn't mean it's a piece of crap. I can think of a lot of popular books that are fucking amazing. If I were a professor, I'd definitely recommend Diarmaid MacCulloch's A History of Christianity or Jeffrey Rosen's The Supreme Court. And Tuchman knew her position. In fact, she reveled in it. She felt that academics lost touch with what writing is and only produced boring works that were meant for their closed group of people. If scholars were criticizing her for not being like them, then she must be doing something right.

Of course, I have to look at today's world and see if I'm biased. For example, I'm faced with someone like David Barton, who says he's a constitutional historian. His background is not in history but rather religious education (aka he's a minister). And he's the forefront of many conservative arguments against the idea of separation of church and state. Right now he's receiving venom from scholars who say he's basically a revisionist and even his publisher withdrew his book about Jefferson because of lack of concrete evidence.

I'm trying to figure out if this is the latest Tuchman. My background in American history is poor at best, so I can't look at his books and judge the veracity. Maybe he is practicing revisionist history. But then again, who isn't? Historiography proves every generation sees their history differently. Again, maybe this guy is really just talking bullshit. To be honest I've never read anything of his so I can't even critique his style. But just because he hasn't gone through the schools I'm not gonna disavow him. Because I saw from Tuchman something beautiful, and I hope someone else can do the same.

I downloaded the artbook for Rune Factory 3 recently and realized I had no idea who any of these people are. This sheep kept on popping up in multiple pictures and it took me about ten minutes to vaguely recall the protagonist transformed into it. But that's as much as I could remember from that game.

Similarly in World Destruction, I only can name three of the characters and just the skeleton of the plot.

This is really disturbing because I've spent hours on each of those games. I have to wonder whether the games are just that forgettable or if there's something wrong with me. I'm gonna say the latter because although Rune Factory is the same plot each time, World Destruction was unique and left a lasting impression on me. Or so I thought.

Eleven years ago shortly after the theatrical version of The Fellowship of the Ring was released (holy fuck, has it been that long?), I decided to finally sit down and read the books. I actually had bought them in the mid-90s after a friend breathlessly recommended them but never opened them; I didn't even know what they were about until the movie came out. I was immediately disappointed and never got farther than Frodo reaching Rivendell before I couldn't take it anymore and put it down.

A few days ago I decided to try again, figuring I'm more mature now and have read a shit ton of dryer material without giving up. And... yeah. I can do this. It's better than I remembered although I still prefer the movies. It's slower, that's probably why I couldn't handle it. Like, think about how the movie portrayed it: How long do you think it was between Bilbo's birthday party and Gandalf's return to warn Frodo about the realities of the Ring? The impression I got from the movie was a few months, maybe a year max. It's seventeen years in the book when Frodo turns fifty. And how long do you think it took for Frodo to leave after he got this news? In the movie he left that night with the Black Riders on his trail immediately. In the book it's several months as he plans for his trip: selling Bag End, buying a new house to explain his sudden disappearance, getting rid of all of his belongings. There's other instances like Arwen didn't save Frodo from the Riders and it actually took fourteen days after he got stabbed to reach Rivendell. I could go on.

There's one omission that fascinates me now. Tom fucking Bombadil. Holy shit. I vaguely remembered him from my first venture in 2002 as a singing fool, which he is. But oh my god, what the fuck. Okay, the movies completely ignore him. If you can recall, Frodo is being chased by the Black Riders at night, but he jumps on a boat and manages to thwart them. The next scene all four Hobbits are arriving at the gates of Bree and head to the inn where they meet Strider. In the book there's like three chapters in between. Because Frodo planned for his departure, he has time to think about his plan of action when he realizes these crazy fuckers in black cloaks are after him. He decides to cut through the Old Forest to get to Bree because staying on the road is dangerous. Instead they get attacked by the trees and are nearly killed by horrible monsters called "barrow wights" before they making their way through. But most importantly, they meet Tom Bombadil, who is the master of these woods.

This guy just blew my mind. He doesn't give a shit about anything. If you think about a jolly guy who's completely at peace with himself and the world, that's him. He's just walking around, singing, and having a good time even when there's fucking horrible monsters running around. He's also married to a woman who's the "daughter of the river," whatever that means. But I knew there was some crazy shit about him when Frodo gave him the Ring for a moment and he put it on. First off, he didn't disappear. Secondly, it didn't affect him whatsoever. No temptation, nothing. It had no power over him.

Then we find out later he's probably the oldest person in Middle Earth and may possibly be a god. He made the boundaries of the Old Forest his home, and whilst inside there he pretty much can do whatever the fuck he wants. In fact, he's so powerful that in the Council of Elrond where they decide to take the Ring to Mordor (if you can recall it's the scene where we're introduced to Legolas, Gimli, and Boromir), that Elrond initially suggests just giving it to Bombadil because he's capable of protecting it. Gandalf shoots that idea down because Bombadil would just kinda forget about how important this is because he's indifferent to the outside world.

What amazes about this guy is he fucking didn't do anything for the story! He was cut from the movies and they didn't suffer for it! The oldest and one of the most powerful people in Middle Earth was completely removed and it made no impact! What the hell is he? Why is he there? It's the fucking craziest thing I've read in this damned book. Why did Tolkien make this incredible person who does absolutely nothing?

Because Harlan is in San Francisco and far away from the New York Jewish community, we thought he'd appreciate a package of lox and bagel for Christmas. It turns out he also sent us a package of lox an bagel for Christmas from the same exact company. I got a panicked call from mom saying, "We just got a packed filled with lox and bagel! Are you certain you wrote the right address?!"

After the fire we were bereft of cutlery and dishes, but thankfully my father stored some of his mother's old plates and bowls in the garage. Unfortunately they have gold inlaid all over them, which makes them completely useless for microwave purposes. I know exactly what kind of plates and bowls mom and dad want for the house, but they're holding off until we move. Until then I have to warm my spaghetti on the stove. In fact, I have no idea why the hell we even have a microwave.

The interesting part about reading ancient works is they don't use the same standards we do today. In fact, they don't really have standards. For example, Herodotus intended the topic of his book to be the Greco-Persian Wars, but ultimately he just wrote about whatever the fuck he wanted and even committed a large portion to Egypt. If anyone wrote like that nowadays, they'd be completely slammed for straying from the point or being loquacious.

Philosophy is like that too. The format of philosophical works change depending on the era. A great example is Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica. He came out of the scholastic movement, which heavily depends upon debate. The entire work is something like this:

Question (e.g. Is God everywhere?)
-Negative answer 1 (e.g. "God isn't everywhere because...")
-Negative answer 2 (e.g. "He also isn't everywhere for this reason too...")
-Negative answer 3 (e.g. "This is also a good reason why he isn't everywhere...")
-Quote from the Bible or some church father that proves the positive answer
-Long explanation as to why the positive answer must be right
-Reply to negative answer 1 (e.g. "Your argument is unsound because...")
-Reply to negative answer 2 (e.g. "This too is wrong because...")
-Reply to negative answer 3 (e.g. "Your reasoning is false because...")

And that's how they debated in the schools, so he wrote from what he knew. Plato also wrote from what he knew, and his form is called the dialectic method that was espoused by Socrates. The idea is two or more people with opposing points of view muddle their way through reasoned arguments to finally reach the truth of the matter. In theory it sounds great, but when you say the word "dialogue," you're expecting two participants. Most of Plato's works involving Socrates is something like this:

Socrates: "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Don't you think so?"
Some dude: "Yes, I think so."
Socrates: "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Wouldn't you agree?"
Some dude: "Most certainly."
Socrates: "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Isn't that true?"
Some dude: "I couldn't have phrased it better myself."

That's not a dialogue. That's just Socrates talking and the dude is a sycophant. Admittedly the Socratic method is starting off by asking the dude his opinion... only to shoot him down and completely trample over him for the rest of the work. I know Plato loved Socrates and all, but did you even fucking try. It's me listening to a speech. And whilst I know because this is Plato's work so it'll be Plato's opinions, then you just have to ask why bother with the dialogue at all and just write down your opinions like Aristotle did?

I apologize deeply for my oversight. Please forgive me.

And when we're not talking about inane nonsense, we talk about shit like this:

[21:53:03] Dun 4 Hire: Yo.
[21:53:15] gattsu456: Tse
[21:53:18] gattsu456: Yo.
[21:53:37] gattsu456: What up.
[21:55:05] Dun 4 Hire: Guessing I interrupted another IM.
[21:55:13] gattsu456: Nah.
[21:55:28] gattsu456: Unless I was typing "Goatse" to someone.
[21:55:33] Dun 4 Hire: OH MY GOD
[21:55:36] gattsu456: I just didn't have it switched to Dvorak.
[21:55:41] Dun 4 Hire: I WAS LITERALLY GOING TO TYPE, "THAT ONLY REMINDED ME OF GOATSE."
[21:55:51] Dun 4 Hire: LITERALLY MY HANDS WERE ABOUT TO TYPE THAT SHIT.
[21:55:53] gattsu456: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH US?
[21:56:19] Dun 4 Hire: THREE FUCKING LETTERS.
[21:56:22] Dun 4 Hire: AND IMMEDIATELY WE THINK OF THAT.
[21:56:29] gattsu456: THREE FUCKING LETTERS.
[21:57:04] Dun 4 Hire: WE ARE THE WORST TYPE OF PEOPLE.

GLITTER

Fuck that shit. Yeah, it looks pretty and all, but when I have to handle it myself I suddenly find myself looking like a dollar hooker with it smeared all over my body. And it seems to be the in thing because now I'm scouring around for Christmas presents and glitter is all over that shit. Before most of our ornaments were actually made of wood or glass. Glass balls are still around... if they're painted with glitter. And that's what I'm getting because it's what I'm finding over and over at stores. Oh, don't get me wrong; these ornaments look absolutely gorgeous. It's just all over my hands and body and clothing and hair... I'm only guessing what'll happen when we put them into storage. We open the box next year and see a layer of glitter at the bottom whilst the ornaments themselves are completely bare.

Seriously though, why the hell is it so difficult to find wood ornaments?

The Middle East recently was covered with a blanket of snow in the past few days, the first it's seen in over a century. And it seems like they're still trying to figure out how this works:

So in case you were wondering what it's like when Moham and I get together, it's just stupid:

[14:28:35] gattsu456: What up, son.
[14:46:26] Dun 4 Hire: What's good.
[14:47:14] gattsu456: What's hood?
[14:49:50] Dun 4 Hire: What's ... should?
[14:50:02] gattsu456: I'm shouldn't.
[14:50:04] gattsu456: What about you?
[14:50:37] Dun 4 Hire: I've should.
[15:19:33] gattsu456: Holy shit.
[15:19:37] gattsu456: That is pretty should.
[15:19:42] gattsu456: Really should, I should say.
[15:19:56] Dun 4 Hire: I'm not certain if I should should so much though.
[15:20:11] gattsu456: The question remains: can one should too much?
[15:20:21] gattsu456: And if so, should they?
[16:08:30] Dun 4 Hire: I think people may should as they wish, but whether they should is another issue.

[13:51:32] gattsu456: You should?
[13:51:48] gattsu456: 'Cause I'm fucking should.
[13:51:57] Dun 4 Hire: I'm so fucking should, I'm even coul.
[13:51:58] Dun 4 Hire: d
[13:55:21] gattsu456: I don't know if either of us are would though.
[13:55:31] gattsu456: Would you be would?
[13:58:02] Dun 4 Hire: I would be, but I don't think I could would that much would.
[13:58:35] gattsu456: Yeah, to would too much would remove any need to be could, wouldn't you say?
[14:01:11] Dun 4 Hire: I would. I would so much that I would should.
[14:03:51] gattsu456: Such amounts of would would definitely could the world over twice..

Not even joking, we could go on for hours with this nonsense.

I watched Alex play and finish Sleeping Dogs, which is about an undercover cop in Hong Kong, taking down the Triads. Really, if you've played GTA you know basically what this game is about except now they've added extra features of drug busts or hunting prostitution rings. The melee fighting is definitely better with environmental kills like throwing a person's face into a chainsaw that just happens to be lying around. There's actually a trophy for beating a man to death with a fish.

Which makes you wonder what the fuck is wrong with Hong Kong. Seriously, this cop literally kills hundreds of people, blows up whole buildings, launches grenades into the streets, and countless other crimes. And this is all just to take down the leadership of one gang. There's at least one other Triad group running around Hong Kong, and god knows what he'd do to finish that one off. My question is this: If you're willing to let this guy run wild through the streets for the sake of ending crime, what the FUCK was the situation before he arrived? There's no way it was worse than this. Is it really worth it? The town is now a war zone, and he definitely lit a couple of the matches that set this bomb off.

Still, at the end of the day it was fun to watch, especially whenever Alex fucked up his driving and I could see his character get launched forty feet into the air through the front window of his car and the body bounce along the ground like a ball. And really, isn't shit like this the reason why we started playing GTA to begin with?

I was in a shop recently and saw a kangaroo costume from Japan that we owned before the fire. I checked the tag and asked the owner what size F was. She replied it stood for Full, i.e. it can fit everyone.

Goddammit Japan. Stop using English words that make no sense. Why not take a page from our video games' book and say it's E for Everyone?

In the 1090s Emperor Alexius of Byzantium found his greatest enemy, the Turks, literally right across the river from him. Looking around for allies, he turned to the Christians in the west for help and appealed to Pope Urban II to ask the leaders under his pastoral care for assistance. The opening of the Crusades is in 1095 when Urban preached at the Council of Clermont and set in motion what would be a centuries-long process. Both he and Alexius were expecting a few leaders to head out with their trained knights, and many did: Duke Godfrey of Bouillon, Count Raymond of Toulouse, Count Stephen of Blois, Bohemond of Toranto...

However there was an offshoot that both Urban and Alexius didn't expect or wanted: the Peasants' Crusade. When word broke out about their Christian brethren fighting against the infidels, fervor overcame the people who wanted to break away from their miserable lives and believed they could find peace in the Holy Land. It as a mix of millenarianism, religious idealism, and ignorance. It ended with about a mass of 40,000 unorganized civilians who had no fucking idea where they were going, didn't know how to fight, had no weaponry to speak of, and with no proper leadership. When they appeared on Alexius' doorstep, he had no fucking clue how to deal a rowdy squabble who started stealing from his people for supplies. So he just shoved them all across the river and told them to wait there until the proper western leadership arrived. However they didn't listen to him and believing their faith would protect them attacked a Seljuk fort where they more or less were slaughtered.

I was reading a book about the crusades when I came across this line about the Peasants' Crusade: "On the whole their march was successful. It is eloquent of the good order which they maintained that their progress as far as Hungary was entirely without opposition and that the armies which followed them found no hostile feeling but instead were joined by many volunteers."^* My eyes popped out when I saw this. If there's anything I know about the Peasants' Crusade as they marched through Germany, it's this: They fucking slaughtered as many Jews as they could get their hands on along the way. The peasants were already in a zealous mindset with this march, and the movement allowed all of their bigotry to be unleashed on the Jewish population. There were forced conversions, theft of their property for supplies, and just plain murder and bloodshed. Not only did the author just completely skip over the massacres entirely, he painted a picture of an orderly march without much harassment of the general populace. Well, I guess technically he was right: The only people protesting these killings did it pro forma so there wasn't really a hostile feeling and yeah, lots of people joined in along the way to help out... killing people. The portrayal is so odd for me because there's no scholar today who would talk about the Peasant's Crusade without mentioning the Jews.

But then it occurred to me: This was written before 1933. The author Dana Munro was a famous medievalist who rose to prominence in the latter part of the nineteenth century and died in 1933. This book in particular was published posthumously in 1935. Because he lived before the Holocaust, because he was raised in a culture that was still pretty anti-Semitic, it's possible the atrocities of the Peasants' Crusade never really crossed his mind.

That's what we call "historiography" or the study of the study of history. A history of history if you will. It's interesting to see how historians themselves change viewpoints depending on their own society, what time period they lived, or what their own personal background was. Sensitivity to antisemitism definitely increased after the second World War, just as attention to racial tensions after the Civil Rights Movement or female subjugation after the Women's Rights Movement. George Armstrong Custer is an interesting example of this. Initially he was praised for his heroism, but as sympathy to the Native American plight arose people began to criticize him not only for his actions at Little Bighorn but also those during the Civil War and even just his personality. It fell to a low point during the Vietnam War when he was seen as a symbol of the Ugly American with no consideration for other cultures. But as Vietnam has slightly faded from our memory, his reputation has increased again.

Still, what the fuck man? Munro, there is no way you wrote the sentence "It is eloquent of the good order which they maintained." How the HELL did you think the Peasants' Crusade was good fucking order? Some of them were just following a donkey they thought was sacred and believed it was leading them to Jerusalem. There was no order to be found in that mess. Quite frankly, I'm impressed it even made it to Constantinople. You're a scholar; aren't you supposed to know this shit?

^* Dana Carleton Munro, The Kingdom of the Crusaders, (Port Washington, NY: Konnikat Press, 1935), 35.

My dad lives in dire fear of identity theft. It's a genuine concern we should all have, but his paranoia is to the point that I wonder if something happened to him in his youth. For example, dad always makes a point of logging out of the computer. That's fine, but I thought I could point out to him that he could save time because every time he closes the lid to the laptop it requires you to input the password a second time anyway. But he flipped out, saying what if someone broke into the house, went onto his computer, and stole all his information. Honestly? If someone's broken into your house, him playing around with your computer is the least of your worries. And because it's dad, he already makes a point of logging out of any problematic sites like Citibank anyway.

Or here's another example, which I find to be the most incredible. He becomes visibly upset whenever I throw away shipping boxes that have my name and address on it. I can't tell you how much time he's devoted to ripping off our names off of every package that lands on our doorstep. Even though I've explained to him on several occasions that you can find all of that information on the internet anyway and even in his youth his name and address was in the white pages, he doesn't give a shit.

So you can imagine my surprise when dad was totally cool with giving out my social security number. I lost my keys back in San Fran, and the super said he couldn't make a copy of the key to the building without permission from the landlord. The landlord required my ID... and social security number. What? ID I can understand, but what the fuck does he want my SSN for? But dad didn't even question it! Think about that. He's literally spent hours of his life scraping off addresses from packages, but it never occurred to him that it was really weird for a landlord to ask for a SSN. In fact he became upset when I questioned it and had to lie down for a while. I'm so confused by this situation. What the hell is the point of a paranoia if it doesn't warn you in actual useful situations? It's like having an unreasonable fear of knives and can't even enter a kitchen because the knives are on the counter, but when a person approaches you on the street and draws one, you don't think it's a good time to run. That's literally what's going on right now.

I hate sewing because it consumes so much time, but I love every second I do it. Now I know what a fucking meth addict is like. Well, without the "seeing the bugs under my skin" aspect.

Nowadays Christianity has several sects: Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, and Protestantism is broken into about a bajillion different sects, usually divided into those who believe in the Trinity (Lutherans, Episcopalians) and those who don't (Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses). But even when I see the violence between these groups, to me they're more or less the same thing just with lightly different flavors. Why? Because I've studied early Christianity and I knew how freaky that shit could get before it was institutionalized.

In the early 300s Emperor Constantine assumed power over the Roman Empire and within a few decades turned Christianity from the reviled religion into one that was legally accepted and on the path to dominance. Divided peoples can unite when faced with a common enemy. America experienced it after the events of September 11th. But once Constantine removed Christianity's — the Roman state throwing their members to the lions — the variant beliefs suddenly came to the surface. They were always there, it's just most people were focusing on hiding and not dying to really care whether their neighbors were practicing the same blend of Christianity. Now that there was no distraction, what was ignored for over a century suddenly was in everyone's face. Constantine quickly realized the leaders of his favored religion were squabbling with one another and called a council to Nicaea in 325 to get everyone to agree and standardize the religion. He had mixed results, but it was the first step in creating the Christianity we know today by literally killing all the dissenters.

See, the problem is Jesus never wrote anything himself. The four gospels provide conflicting views about him, but in today's world where Christianity is established with a strong base this doesn't really matter. Whether Jesus said, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mt.27:36, Mk.15:34) or "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" (Lk.23:46) isn't really important to us. But in early Christianity when people were faced with a hostile, dominant, pagan religion, they had to defend their beliefs. And when you do this, you have to face deep questions about your faith. Like, what is the exact relationship between Jesus and God? In John it implies a coequal relationship, but in Mark he's definitely the inferior one. And if Jesus is divine, doesn't that make Christianity a polytheistic religion? That's why Christianity developed this idea of the Trinity — three substances but one being — to counteract the accusations that they weren't actually monotheistic. But there were some people, like the Arians, who rejected the Trinity and said Jesus was just a normal man. Then how did he obtain his powers? Did God just bestow his divine powers on Jesus during his baptism, as was seen with God's dove and voice (Mk.1:10-11) and then take them back when Jesus was on the cross, which is why he asked God why he was forsaken? And if Jesus is just a dude, why are we even considering him at all? Should we just ignore him and focus on God? What was the point of him? And if God did this once, couldn't he do it again?

These types of tricky questions were sprouting all over the place, which was causing problems in the church leadership. There were people in Antioch saying Jesus was just man, people in Egypt saying he was only divine (they actually said Jesus didn't die on the cross at all but just handed it over to someone else and melted into the crowd), and people who said he was both. And the Bible wasn't providing any answers because of its contradictions. That's Constantine tried to force a standardization because he knew interpretation of the text wasn't going to help.

But the ancients had another problem that we don't today: The Bible itself wasn't standardized either. Nowadays we have the four gospels, Acts of the Apostles, Pauline letters (half of which are spurious), other letters, and the Book of Revelation. That's it. But before there were tons of books floating all over the place and because Jesus didn't write shit and people didn't have the techniques we do today to ascertain veracity, no one could dispute it. You have a gospel saying it was written by Mary Magdalene. Who can refute that? Or just recently they've dug up the Gospel of Judas.

So basically what happened is the more powerful members of the church cut away any scripture that didn't agree with them. It was a gradual progress, but thanks to efforts by Constantine and church fathers like Jerome or Clement, we have a list that no one even questions anymore. And they were kinda right because some of these have teachings we find really fucking odd. For example, my favorite line from the Gospel of Thomas is, "And Jesus said, 'Any man born of a woman is the son of a whore.' "

Which finally leads me to my point: Gnosticism. I said in the beginning Christianity, regardless of the sect, is more or less similar with superficial differences like having bishops or not. When you examine Presbyterianism and Catholicism, they seem the same when compared to Gnosticism. That's the fucking weird one of the bunch. I don't even consider it part of Christianity and think of it as a separate religion. But they thought of themselves as Christians and had the scriptures (which other Christians didn't accept) to prove it. Now, before I talk about Gnosticism I need to give a disclaimer: Because it never took off, it never became consolidated like Christianity did. There is probably no group that believed everything that I'm about to say. They picked and chose. But the general theme is there.

Gnosticism is the answer to two questions: Why is God in the Old Testament completely different to God in the New Testament? And more importantly, why is there suffering in the world? Their creation myth answers this. In the beginning there was a good god. There's varying reasons why, but Wisdom suddenly appeared and wanted to have sex with this god. When he rebuffed her, out of her anger she created another, inferior god that is called the Demiurge. The Demiurge thought it was the most powerful being in the universe, not realizing there was a better god out there, and out of its own arrogance it created the world to prove how awesome it is. After some time the good god realized what was going on and sent his son, Jesus, down to the people to explain the truth of the matter. That's why the gods are different: The Demiurge is the god of the Old Testament, and the good god is the god of the New Testament. For Gnostics, the Old Testament is just wrong altogether and is not in their canon (they weren't the only Christian sect at the time to reject it). And that explains why there's evil in the world: A fucked up god could only inevitably create a fucked up world. If the actual good god created all of this shit, we wouldn't have wars, disease, earthquakes, starvation, etc. And propagating just continues the the cycle of suffering. For Gnosticism, the end game is all of us die. They didn't believe in reproduction. We have to destroy everything until we all return to the good god.

Gnosticism was a rival to mainstream Christianity, particularly in the east like Egypt or Syria. Augustine himself was a member of a sect called Manichaeism before he switched over. Thanks to Constantine the Roman government clamped down on them, but it probably continued in smaller communities underground until Islam came. And it sprung up again in the 1100s and 1200s in southern France by a group called the Cathars. No one knows why Gnosticism suddenly became a thing when it was quiet in western Europe for centuries, but I can say the power structures in Europe freaked the fuck out and actually sent a crusade. Yeah, there weren't just crusades going over to the holy land. They were headed straight to southern France and they wiped that shit out. That's why it's called the Spanish Inquisition as opposed to just plain "Inquisition." Because it actually started in southern France to root out these Cathars and the Spanish just asked later if they could hire that shit for their own country.

When I look at Gnosticism or any of those scriptures that didn't make it to the canon, I wonder sometimes what could've been. The Gnostics are definitely the weirdest of the bunch, but there were all other sects of Christianity: the Ebionites, the Marcionites, the Nestorians... How would the story of Christianity have played out if they had a more prominent role? In America we just focus mostly on Protestantism and Catholicism, but there still are vestiges of these early sects out there, particularly in the Middle East where unorthodox followers fled after being persecuted in the Roman Empire for heresy. I doubt Gnosticism would've risen in a big way considering its ultimate message of death, much like how the Shakers are dying out due to their beliefs in complete celibacy, but in the ways it could've influenced Christianity. Today some scholars see a mirroring between the Demiurge and the good god and Christianity's Satan and God.

And when people complain to me about Catholicism's idolatry or Protestantism's penchant for following an egotistical charismatic leader, I'm totally cool with that. There's weirder shit out there. And if that's how you want to express your religion, then fucking go for it. Because there's no "true" Christianity. If the earliest Christians were dealing with this type of shit that's more complex and heterogeneous than anything we have today, I doubt there ever was a "true" Christianity. You can see it in the Bible even. Peter and Paul did not get along because Paul was a late comer. And people were spreading rumors about Paul that you see in his letters. This shit was never unified and it never will be.

The company that makes the Rune Factory series is filing for bankruptcy. What the fuck is the point of living anymore?

I think I've mentioned this before, but my piano teacher is really paranoid. She has a particular fear of helicopters, which she imagines would crash into her apartment at any moment. Yet even though she is demonstrably one of the most unsafe drivers I've ever seen to the point I'm curious how she hasn't killed herself yet, she does not consider that you're more likely to die in a car than a helicopter to the face.

Which is why today was particularly painful. Because our neighborhood is right next to the site of the derailment, helicopters circled overhead from pretty much sunrise to sunset. And, as she always does, she called the police to complain. In fact, she called several times. Now, I'm fairly certain she already as a reputation as "Crazy Lady Who Ties Up the Phone Line Every Time She Hears Reporters Giving Traffic and Weather Updates," but this is a real emergency here. I would not be able to put up with this bullshit at that time. And I don't know why she can't be considerate enough to think, "Maybe I shouldn't stem resources to focus on my problem so that they can help the people who were just injured."

This is the type of person who can't let us have nice things. The person who sets the bar that we create the rules for. A coffee shop puts a jug of milk for costumers to add at their discretion, but some asshole takes the whole jug for himself so they've banned it. That type of thing. I'm not saying she's personally hurting other people with her shenanigans, but it's that type of self-centered mindset that I can't really comprehend.