Reflections From a Murky Pond

And, introducing the Pope Hammer! 😆 Yes, this is a real thing that the Catholic Church came up with long ago. Whenever a sitting Pope died, it was the solemn duty of the Cardinal Camerlengo to “gently” strike him upon his head three times while calling out his Baptismal Name aka his given or first name. If he didn’t respond – after being struck in the head by a hammer up to three times – he was declared truly and really dead and the process for selecting his successor was begun.

So… Sometime “fairly” soon:

BAM! Jorge? BAM! Jorge? BAM Jorge?

Yeah, I’m guessing that Pope Francis aka Jorge Mario Bergoglio isn’t going to get merely a set of love taps when he’s presumed dead. Being both the first Jesuit Pope and the First non-European one doesn’t bode to well for him in that respect, given the nature of the Church. 😉

It was bad enough when the Liberal and Progressive sorts put Planned Parenthood in our schools, allowing for the issuing of both birth control and abortions to minors, often without parental notification or consent. Now, they’re indoctrinating children into the belief that they’re queer, trans, nonbinary without informing the parents of those children.

Sure sounds like a bunch of state-sponsored #groomers to me. First, they provide a means of covering up rapes and sexual abuse, then they separate the children from the parents, making the parents the adversary to be avoided, and continue grooming them into what they want the children to be.

This needs to be stopped. Some good measured have been done so far to correct for this violation, but we Americans have not risen up and done near enough nor the right things to put a permanent end to these practices and the #Groomers engaging in them or sitting by and allowing it to continue.

‘Tis odd but true; New York, thanks to actions by the state’s legislature and NY’s Governor, Kathy Hochul – most likely as a sop to the climatards and/or due to getting kickbacks from Recompose – has legalized the composting of human remains, euphemized as natural organic reduction, terramation, and/or recomposition. This makes New York the 6th Democrat-controlled state, following Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont, and California, to allow the controversial practice.

To my mind and irrespective of the reasons Democrats had for putting for and then passing this into law, in so long as it is a truly voluntary choice – i.e., the Dems don’t “regulate” and tax burials and cremations to the point that they’re no longer valid choices for most people – I not only don’t mind this, I like it. I have a normal American man’s love of family and have always been an avid gardener. Having my composted remains added to my family’s gardens suits me quite, quite well. Christian groups, especially Catholics hold a quite different opinion though, one which makes no historical or Biblical sense to me at all.

This Is About As Biblical As One Can Get

Despite what certain Catholic across the country have proclaimed, composting the remains of a dead person is about as biblical as it gets.

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

— Genesis 3:19 (KJV)

That makes it pretty clear to me, and that is in English. If we move to a closer source, Classical Hebrew, “dust” in Genesis is aphar adamah (dust of the soil), which would be the soil and the soil alone, whereas the beasts were created from the ha’eres (the land as a whole). So, Man was created from the fertile soil and shall eventually, after a life of labor wresting sustenance from that soil, return to it. Amen.

Snarky Sidenote: Yes, to my fellow linguistic enthusiasts! Adam’s name was “Dirt.” 😆

This is the basis for why Talmudic law forbids both cremation and embalming the dead. We are soil and we must be returned to it and become it again.

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As for the Catholics odd-seeming over-veneration of corpses? It creeps me out a bit – relics! 😮 – but it’s their thing andt they’re welcome to it. It is, however, a false argument in this cases. Buried in the ground, buried at sea, cremated, or composted – he 1st three all being allowed by Church doctrine – intrinsically carry with them any veneration or sanctification of a person’s mortal remains. But, nor do they carry and intrinsic profanation of those remains.

Frankly speaking, I find it closer to spirit of Catholic teachings to have a tree growing from one’s composted remains or to have the value left in one’s flesh feeding the garden that helps sustain one’s family than to have one’s meat chemically treated so that it both can’t rot for ages and would poison the ground (adamah) it was “returned” to if the vault it was placed in failed; or one’s ashes consigned to a columbarium and swiftly forgotten; or buried at sea and just as swiftly forgotten and more unreachable.

And hey! Those Catholic clergy and their Church have a lot of properties with a lot of green space. There’s nothing to say that their faithful couldn’t bequeath their no longer needed, composted dead flesh to bring life to them. 😉

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“You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.”
A Canticle For Leibowitz
Walter M. Miller (1959)

There’s the Gods’ honest truth! Biden’s not in any way a smart man – though he possesses ample amounts of the low cunning normally found in career politicians – but he’s an order of magnitude less stupid than those sorts that support him and equally smarter than those who don’t actually do so but vote for him and his ilk out of hatred for Americans.

Periodically we’ve been hearing about a movement to Return To the Office now that the panicdemic – if not to some people’s minds the pandemic itself – is over. For most of a year now we’ve been hearing about it and that is likely to increase in frequency, desperation, and stridency in 2023. But, quite frankly, I don’t see it happening for the most part or across many industries that actually moved to remote work due to COVID-19.

But, simply and statistically put, the majority of workers who can work remotely want to continue to do so forever. Hence, it’s not bloody likely that RTO will gain much traction in the foreseeable future.

I’m Not Even Going To Try Getting My Work Clothes Back

And besides, the wise amongst us have already repurposed our investmentwear – the clothes we purchased and maintained for fiduciary purposes – for other purposes that brought us better, more immediate, and more long-lasting benefits. 😉

I mean, honestly, I haven’t worm my old businesswear in years and I’m not going to try to get them back from my women at this point.