Carpocrates

The Gnostics believed that the true God (big G) was outside creation, and that this inferior world was created by either evil angels or a deluded, lying, lesser god (little g). This lesser force of creation is variously called the Demiurge or Ialdabaoth (pronounced just like it looks...).

Further, they held that each person contains a spark of the Divine that must be awakened in order to return to God.

A 3rd Century A.D. gnostic named Carpocrates wove these concepts into a fascinating doctrine of reincarnation. His teachings held that because the soul is invested with the divine, it cannot be corrupted. It must live in many bodies, life after life, in order to experience everything before it could be freed from the cycle of reincarnation to return to God.

Carpocrates was interested in speeding up this process. He held that because this world was created by an inferior god, the moral codes and laws of this world are also inferior. To experience everything, one would have to ignore the prohibitions on certain behaviors. By committing acts that society calls sins or crimes, the Carpocration Gnostic was simply paying the price of salvation. Sort of an early example of "if it feels good, do it."

Taken to its logical extreme, though, this doctrine is exhausting. If nothing is prohibited, then everything is compulsory. In practice, however, Carpocration rule breaking involved mostly sex. According to contemporary historians, they lived licentious lives, practiced various sexual magics, and sold love potions in order to fund their lifestyles.

For a few paragraphs now, you have been thinking, "O.K. Linus, why are you telling us about Carpocration Gnosticism?"

Glad you asked.

I got this cool book called the Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics and it rocks. Because it is in alphabetical order it is difficult to get a sense of the chronology of things, but I am beginning to see the larger patterns of heretical behavior.

Having said that, I realize that I am likely the only person in our happy little flock who is interested in this topic. Rather than bore you all to death in person, I thought I'd get it out of my system here, where you can all follow Clay's example and skip to the end.

I guess I should have told you that at the top of the post...
Sorry - my bad.

Atkins Dreams

"Psst... Linus... Hey, Liiiiinus..."

"*snork* Hmm?"

"Linus... We're cold, Linus... so cold..."

"What the... Who's there?"

"We're cold, Linus... save us..."

"Um... 'kay... assuming that you aren't just a side effect of some acid I took back in '84, where are you?"

"We're in the 'fridge, Linus... we're soooo cold..."

Moments later, standing before the fridge in my jammies, I realize that no mere ingestion of psychotropics in my youth can explain how the tiny voices of M&Ms in the freezer woke me from a sound sleep.


On a related note; if you open a bag of M&Ms and eat all of them but one, what do you have? Do you have an 'M' or an 'M&M'? It seems to me that you are holding an M&M, but, they each have only one M printed on their delicious candy shells...


You know, you're right. There is just about no food in the world that couldn't be improved with the addition of a candy shell. Kids would love it; getting them to eat broccoli, cauliflower, or brussel sprouts would be a snap if they came in a rainbow of colors - kind of like veggie Skittles. It would be great for adults, too. Think how much easier it would be to eat, for example, a big sloppy hamburger. The candy shell would add flavor, a crunchy texture, and protect your clothing - "patty melt in your mouth, not in your hands!"


I couldn't agree more about their commercials, though. I mean, the last thing a giant talking M&M should do is take a gig selling his brethren on tv. It's like a talking cow hawking steaks - it's something obliquely related to canabalism, I think, with a touch of slave-trading mixed in for flavor...


Their urban myth is all bunk, too. I ate a whole bag of green ones once, and I wasn't any hornier than usual. In retrospect, however, I admit that I might not be the best test case. At any rate, I think they made it all up to distract the American people from the health dangers of red dye #2. They pulled it from the market 'cuz they found out that if you force-feed the equivalent of 6000 red M&Ms to a rat, it will die.


Of course, nowadays it's no big deal to have a bag of all one color. You can get 21 fucking colors now by the pound, delivered to your doorstep. Back in the day, if we wanted a single color bag, we had to sort them by hand - it was actually a thriving sweatshop industry. Hundreds of Mexican women and children, living in squalid conditions on huge ranches in Utah, spent 12-hour days hunched over piles of M&Ms, sorting them into huge bins marked "amarilla," "verde," "marrón"... it was terrible. Damn Mormons. Thank god for the unions - they came in and cleaned up the industry. Rest assured, today your M&Ms are sorted by costly computer-controlled scanning devices, and those Mexican families are safely unemployed again.

Now, they've got Almond M&Ms, Rainbow M&Ms, Halloween M&Ms, Mini M&Ms, fucking Ogre size M&Ms - when I was a kid, we had one damn size, 5 fucking colors, and we were happy to have 'em too! We didn't need pink and blue M&Ms to help us figure out that it was Easter. You know why? Because we could read a fucking calendar, that's why! That's what's wrong with kids today - no discipline, too much Play Station, and pastel fucking M&Ms! If they had to sort their own greens out of the pile, they'd have more respect - you know what I mean? Hey! Are you listening to me?


Oh damn; I've been sleepblogging again. I hate it when this happens. The stubbed toes, the drooling on the keys, the rambling posts that even I don't understand. Fucking diet...

Ethical Wills

How will you be remembered when you die? Instead of just passing on your baseball cards and that complete set of Charles and Diana commemorative tea towels, you can now 'bequeath' your ideals and the lessons you have learned in this life.

Examples of ethical wills can be found in both the Old and New Testaments, but they are enjoying a resurge in popularity as evidenced by recent Washington Post and NPR reports. Unlike a living will or last will and testament, an ethical will is not a legal document. It is merely a text that is left to your relatives as a glimpse of who you were. This beautiful and thoughtful practice helps both the dying and the bereaved prepare, and leaves a treasured artifact for subsequent generations.

Naturally, some lawyers have figured a way to profit from all this...
Click here for software to aid you in writing your ethical will, or here if you prefer an old-fashioned book on the subject.

I imagine myself sitting around someday like Grandpa Simpson, jotting down my pearls of wisdom...

"Never pet a burning dog."

"No means No. Unless I said it, and then it means whatever she wants it to mean."

"Many things don't taste the way they smell." This is unfortunate in foods and beverages, but handy in the bedroom.

"Many things taste much better than they look." See above.

"Clothes never make a woman look fat. Ever."

"Don't settle for just one name." I have been known as Linus, Rene Michel, Yukio, Lochlainn, Centurion, Trooper Callahan, Kilty McFurious, Robin, Rob, Robbie-dobbie, Rotten Robin, Termike, Stumpbug, Big Jerk, Thor, and my current favorite, "Reverend."

"Ketchup is not a vegetable."

"Don't be too specific when calling out body parts during the 'Hokie-Pokie'"

and of course...
"Yo soy el pollo diablo."

Technology Gone Awry

Are you too busy to chant, meditate, and pray? What if you could cleanse your karma while checking your Email?

The Disk Drive Mantra could be the answer to your problem! Just right-click and save, then relax in the knowledge that your mantra is being repeated an average of 5400 times per minute as your hard drive spins!

If you'd like a more visual reminder of your practice, then the deluxe Digital Prayer Wheel is for you. Add a few to your webpages and let them spin your negative karma away while you sleep!

The most hilarious part of this all is the final line of one of the pages;
"P.S. It wouldn't hurt to think of the mantra from time to time while it's spinning around on your disk drive."
Yeah, that would be good.

Blog Identity

While commenting on another blog, I entered the address of my blog incorrectly. I put in just Linus, not Linus_Furious. I generally check any link I put up, because I am a technopeasant and it takes three or four tries to get it right. When I checked this one, it lead me to another Linus. I was struck with an odd excitement. Those of you who have more common names might be familiar with the strange moment of meeting a namesake, but for me it's pretty novel. Even my given name is rare; although I have met numerous female Robins (or Robyns or Robbins), I've never encountered a male one.

At any rate, I got excited and decided to go to the beginning of this Linus blog and read it all. (Don't take my posting of the link as an indication that you should do the same. Just read a few posts to get the feel - I don't want to ruin the holiday for anyone.)

Shouldn't have gotten my hopes up. Thankfully it was brief, but I subjected myself to it all. He hasn't posted since 2001 - that final post makes me wonder if he killed himself or something.

That sad possibility aside, the real irritant in this is that here is the blog address I truly wanted, misused and then forgotten. The blogiverse is so perverse sometimes...

Sunday Sermon
Patriotism

Today we celebrate the creation of our little Greco-Roman political experiment with the traditional rituals of grilling, drinking, and making stuff explode in different colors. Wouldn't Thucydides be proud?

These past few Independence days have been tough for me. I have never been overly patriotic - the most powerful "American Pride" experience I've ever had was back in '80 when Herb Brooks and the boys beat the Russians at Lake Placid. Jim Craig skating around draped in the flag was powerful, tear-producing stuff, but I was in jr. high at the time. A lot of things have happened since - like 12 consecutive years of warmongering Republican rule during my teens and twenties - that soured me on any kind of national pride. I prefer to think of myself as a citizen of the planet, not any country. We are all in this together, and what we have in common is much greater than our differences.

In the past, when I would share this view with others it was generally well received. Even the most staunch flag-wavers would grudgingly admit that humanity should unite, national borders not withstanding. That all changed on 9/11. Since that terrible tragedy, flag-waving and the attitudes that attend it have become a national passion for many. The problem with this is that inherently, Patriotism is a great big case of "Us, not You." Simply put, we collectively dance around and chant like little kids, "I'm American and you're not! We rock and You don't!"

What exactly are we proud of? Unless you are a naturalized immigrant, being proud of being an American is like being proud of having blue eyes. You are American through no effort or choice of your own - in short, by an accident of birth. Citizenship for most is a simple matter of geography and heredity, and we long ago decided that hereditary claims have little worth - that's why we have no titled nobles in America.

The driving force behind the human tendency to make these arbitrary divisions is shadowy, but Buddhists see it as an outgrowth of the basic problem of self. The Buddha taught that as long as we belive that we are seperate from everything else, we are living in the world of samsara (delusion). As you may have heard me say, "You, I, and the lampost are one." Divisions are inherently illusory, as they indicate a distinction between ourselves and the whole.

I'll grill some bratwurst and watch the fireworks... but I'll try to think of it as a celebration of freedom, and not a commemoration of any political separation.

Grill in Peace.

I'll see your Hellboy, and raise you an Ebola...

Hellboy should not be cuddly or plush... but the Ebola virus beanie is truly twisted.


Can I borrow $30,000?

It's for a good cause...

Ok, how about just $400?