Dave Sim's blogandmail #60 (November 10th, 2006)

STAROO!

[UM. IT ISN'T A MISSPELLING OF CHRIS STAROS IS IT?

THE BRILLIANT PUBLISHER OF TOP SHELF PUBLICATIONS AND THE PERSON WHO RECOMMENDED LEBONFON AS THE NEW AARDVARK-VANAHEIM PRINTER?

NO, BUT THAT CERTAINLY MAKES FOR A GREAT EXCUSE TO SAY

"Hi, Chris!"]

Okay, I just finished writing Sunday's Blog & Mail. If you're an easily wounded atheist you might want to skip that one. And it's now 6:15 and almost time for my final prayer. It's funny. I no sooner get used to the vast expanse of time between my afternoon prayer and sunset prayer in the summer months than here I am back in the days of pre-winter with my noon, afternoon, sunset and night prayers so close together you could throw a blanket over them.

Good letter from Jason Pilley in Southend-on-Sea which I'll divide into three parts here, starting with his parting shot:

Parting shot: after reading your recent Blog & Mail entry (you know, you really need a more catchy name for it—something like BLOGAGEDDON 3000 or THOUGHTGASM!!!!) in which you wrote about giving to charity and how, in the course of writing, a leaflet from a specific charity had "coincidentally" fallen through your letterbox, it took me a microsecond to decide that, no, I wasn't going to give that organisation any money, and a further couple of seconds to decide why not exactly: right because it's Dave Sim's coincidence, not mine. Happy ending! Oh wait: two days later, a friend offered me a day's work gardening. While driving there, he mentioned that he'd just decided what Christmas presents to buy his family this year, ewwwww, but then he continued (you've guessed, right?) he said he'd had a leaflet drop through his letterbox, a leaflet from a charity stating that all donations up until Christmas would gain for the donor a card saying what the money had been spent on, the idea being that this card would make a nice gift. ("Mrs. Phillips, this Christmas I've got you farming tools in Africa." "Is this some kind of sick joke?"). So anyway, yeah, I told my friend to add my day's wages to his pile. I hope I'm not expected to make a habit of it…

It depends. On Judgement Day when you come before God and you're expected to make a case for yourself, I assume it will be good that you can say, "Remember back in the fall of 2006 when I donated a day's wages for those farming tools in Africa?" But when God says, "Yeah, but you lived for thirty-eight more years after that," don't you think you should have a few other donations you can bring up? Seriously, though, I appreciate you letting me know about this since so much of the time I'm convinced that I'm just "reading into the record" and that no one really pays any attention to anything I say and my only value is to people fifty or a hundred years from now. On Judgement Day, now, I can say to God "And among other things, I indirectly persuaded Jason Pilley to donate a day's wages for farming implements in Africa."

Before that, Jason posed a question:

Question: you've said that (paraphrase) God's attitude to YHWH is to give him/her/it exactly what he/she/it asks for every time, with the idea that, as things spiral more and more out of control, he/she/it will in time acknowledge God's sovereignty. You've also directed contempt at men—males—who capitulate to every ridiculous and destructive whim of women. Am I right in seeing a discrepancy here? Of course blah blah mysterious ways and blah blah our laws are not His, nonetheless does not God, according to your cosmology, by not giving YHWH a firm spank on his/her/its buttocks demonstrate either weakness or, if Absolute power on His part is assumed, a self-evident desire for the issue not to be resolved—does He perhaps get something out of this that He couldn't get otherwise?

See tomorrow's Blog & Mail for my answer

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If you wish to contact Dave Sim, you can mail a letter (he does NOT receive emails) to:

Aardvark Vanaheim, Inc
P.O. Box 1674
Station C
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2G 4R2

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