We Kill The Fatted Calf Tonight, So Stick Around

When people ask me why I blog -- which no one has, mind you, but let's just pretend for a second that someone did -- I generally reply with:

It's a desperate cry for attention.

Haha, right?

But also sadly, pathetically true.

My goal is to be big.  Men Without Hats big.  Carrot Top big.

Bigger, even, than Jesu...oops, better not continue down that line of thought.  We all remember where that got Lennon.

But now that I think about it, there is ONE area where I'm bigger than Jesus.  No way did He meet or exceed my size-34 waist - or size 33, if He wore Perry Ellis khakis, which He wouldn't.

I mean, think about it -- no way could He have been bigger-waisted than me.  Heck, they didn't even HAVE Twinkies back then, and even if they did, I'm not sure He could've eaten one because I don't think polysorbate 80 is kosher.  Which is good, because I'm not sure even He could've resisted the temptation to flip the Twinkie over and shlurp the cream filling out of the stigmata on the Twinkie bottom.

But anyway, to become as big as my ego demands I be, clearly there are some folks to whom I need to reach out.  Specifically, 51% of the voters in this country opted to vote for a guy who, in my opinion, has the IQ of a turnip.  Say what you will, but these people are a majority, and I want them as Subdivided readers.

President Bush is a religious man, and he appeals to a religious audience.  Now to my mind, there are a couple of pretty good reasons to follow any particular religion -- the first being a belief in and desire to follow an omnipotent creator, and the second being a desire to explore one's spirituality.  Both fine goals, no?

But there's another sort of religiosity out there as well -- and it's driven by a desire to point a finger at those different from oneself and say, "Aha -- unclean!"

Christians of this latter sort tend to grasp onto two particular books of the Bible -- Leviticus, from the Old Testament, and Revelation from the New.  Never mind so much about all the stuff in between, like the parts where that hippy guy goes around preaching boring liberal shit like "love" and "compassion."  Instead, from Leviticus we get a great big laundry list of items about which we can put others down -- and Revelation does a swell job of describing the wrath of God that's going to come down on those heathens.

But hey -- who has time to sit around and read Leviticus these days? 

That's where I come in.  I want to help you, my red state friends, in your mission of becoming even more judgemental.  So from time to time over the next few weeks, I'm going to read and summarize Leviticus for you.  By the end of all this, you'll know just who's an abomination, who you should smite, who's unclean, etc.  Think of all the new folks you'll be able to seethe about!

One problem though.  We don't start digging into the really juicy stuff for quite a while.  So we'll get to the abomination scorecard later.  For now, I'll just sum up the first four chapters, which deal primarily in selecting and preparing your sacrifices.

In Chapter I, we learn about our animal-type sacrifices.  Specifically, we're talking about sacrifices "from the herd or from the flock" -- meaning cows, goats or sheep.

Now if you're of a mind to set up a little sacrificin' action, here are some pointers.  Find yourself an unblemished male, slaughter it, and splash the blood on the sides of the altar.  Skin it, cut it up into pieces -- don't forget to wash the inner organs and shanks -- then lay the head, suet and gobbets of meat onto the altar.  Then you know what you've got there, chum?

No, not chum.  What you've got there is one sweet smelling obligation to the Lord. 

Also in Chapter I, we learn about bird sacrifices.  Only a turtledove or pigeon'll do.  Don't forget to have your priest snap its head loose and squeeze the blood against the altar!  Then, remove the feathers & beak, then toss that bad boy into a deep fryer onto the east side of the altar.

Moving on to chapter two, we learn about our cereal offerings.  No, we shan't be sacrificing Toucan Sam or Lucky the Leprechaun, as delightful as that idea sounds.  Instead, we'll be frying, baking or deep-frying one of your whole grains, seasoning with salt, then placing onto the altar.  From the sounds of things, Cheez-Its would work just fine.

In Chapter III, there's more of the same -- although this time there's a sudden emphasis on removing the fatty membranes that apparently cover just about any organ you'd care to name.  Chapter IV is a rehash of Chapters I - III, but with an emphasis on the duties of the priest.  There's also something in there about tail severing.

When we return to "I Read Leviticus So You Don't Have To," we'll dig in on Chapter V -- and start dishin' the dirt.

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*UPDATE* -- I'm going to shoot for new installments of "I Read Leviticus..." every Monday.  Next installment -- Monday, September 12.  Also, bonus points to the person who can identify the source of the title of this particular entry.  Think 70's pop.

Comments

[Josh]

Holy smokes (ha ha, get it? "Holy smokes"? GET IT?), this is a fine idea. I fully plan to direct my readers here to keep them entertained during my hiatus. That should make you, if not bigger than Jesus, at least bigger than, say, Zoroaster is these days.

By the way, I'm sure Leviticus makes it *seem* that animal sacrifice and cereal sacrifice are equally pleasing the eyes of the LORD, but if you were the LORD, and you had one guy propitiating you with a bird killed by the priest's bare hands and then squeezed out onto the altar like a tube of toothpaste, and another guy trying to curry favor with some sort of saltine cracker -- well, who would YOU back up in his hour of need? I think it's pretty obvious.

jf

[yellojkt]

Men Without Hats big? You're selling yourself short. MWH never even had a #1 hit. Go for Dexy's Midnight Runners big.

[Ol'Froth]

34 waist?? You need to add at least 9 inches to be bigger than Ol'Froth! I'll buy you a beer at the next Blogfest to start you on your way.

[jet]

dammit dammit dammit. now i have "come on eileen, tooloorye aye, come on eileen, tooloorye aye" going thru my head.

[Sarah]

The only thing that would make such vital biblical analysis more riveting would be multimedia coverage of reinactments of key chapters. Bandwidth be damned!

[Other_Sally]

Actually, Josh is right--God wasn't too keen on vegetarians! After all the whole Cain and Abel rivalry came about because Abel (being a shepherd) sacrificed a lamb, and Cain (being a farmer) sacrified grains, and God just didn't care much for the non-bleeding sacrifice.

[Nala]

Sarah's onto something there! Religion just hasn't been the same since the blood sacrifices stopped.

What god wants god gets god help us all.

[JCF]

Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-Bennie and the Jet - ssssssssss.

[susie]

Oooh, oooh! Bennie and the Jets!

We have a speaker coming up who will argue that eating meat is the moral equivalent of torturing puppies. I believe I will break out the "God only wants bleeding sacrifices" argument and see how it goes over on campus.

[dre]

now i've got the thomas theme AND elton john battling to the death IN MY BRAIN. y'all suck.

[Sylko]

I always thought it was sad that God dissed Cain for offering the farmed goods.

[Brucker]

Cool, I'm doing a similar project for my own blog (check link), although I suspect my intentions may be different. Nonetheless, whatever your intentions, I may link to your blog simply to avoid having to summarize Leviticus in my own blog, as it's probably the most boring book in the whole Bible.

[Got Fuzzy]

Reminds me of my favorite West Wing episode, where Pres. Bartlet (who is the real president in my active fantasy life) lays into a gay-bashing Dr. Laura type at a White House reception. He pulls out all the juicy bits in Leviticus, which most modern moralizers skip over when cherry-picking what edicts they want to enforce, like what price should he charge for his eldest daughter, or if he should stone his brother for growing two different crops side by side or if shooting him is OK. Yep, angry, judgmental gods are the best kind of gods.

[Clair the Loon]

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/40517

[Leathermessiah]

Got Fuzzy: That is possibly my favorite scene ever to have occured in the West Wing. That show is beautiful, and I'm right with you in the fantasy land where Bartlet is the real President. Sheen/Sorkin in '08: "Hell, they've already been doing it for years".

[Noumenon]

You need to split this post up into an introduction post and the real leviticus post so people can link directly to Part One. I actually forgot what I had been linked here to see before I got down to the Leviticus part.

[Levitus_guy]

Have I missed something? Not to be a pest, but hey-- how tough can it be to read Leviticus so the rest of us don't have to? Now, git crackin'.

[~gloria~]

Well, my friend, I do think you are funny, and I shall hereafter be a very big fan. However, I did want to tell you (yes I know it is a useless and wasted comment) that Leviticus is not about making people feel bad but keeping people healthy.

While the word "unclean" does have a certain ring of condemnation to it, it's all about making sure people don't go around infecting others. In an era of pre-pasturizationand pre- refridgeration, it was about all they could do to keep the nation of Isreal alive.

I know, I know, it really means nothing to you as you'd really like to make fun of the Bible, and I won't tell you to stop comments like:

"I think it's safe to say that Chapter 15 opens up with the single most obvious statement in the bible:

'Every man who is afflicted with a chronic flow from his private parts is thereby unclean.'

To which I can only add: 'No shit.'"

Are comic genius... still... it had to be said. And poorly. And clearly I was the one to do it. :P

Oh, and Sally, it wasn't that Cain's offering was fruits and veggies that it was acceptable, it was that it wasn't the best of his fruit. Cain was just a kind of lazy greedy type guy with a bad heart. Later on, God takes all kinds of grains and fruit and stuff as offerings proving that he is no, as once thought, a hater of all things veggie.