Cosmic Justice

A woman told Matt Dillahunty, “I believe in the Christian God, because I don’t want to live in a world where those with power impose their evil intent on the masses and not face any type of consequence.  Without God, people can easily escape human justice.”

Dillahunty replied:  I don’t buy into that.  She also raised the point that someone had mentioned pedophile priests, and being a pedophile is immoral, but they can escape from human justice, therefore, God’s justice is eventually gonna get them.

“What kind of world do you live in, if this is your principal objection to world views that don’t include some cosmic justice in them??  If you’ll excuse the condescending remark, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’  Life isn’t fair, and the desire for justice that you talk about, is one of the key foundations of most every religion.

We’re all aware that sometimes Good goes unrewarded, and Evil goes unpunished, so some justice-seekers invent a security blanket to insure that they aren’t mired in depression.  It allows them to avoid facing the harshness of an indifferent reality, whether it’s Heaven, or Hell, or Karma, dictating infinite rebirths.  It serves the same purpose.

Some of us realize that there’s no good reason to believe that the Universe is anything other than indifferent to our existence and our perceptions of good and evil, and that dealing with Reality on Reality’s terms is the only way to make any real improvement in the situation.

Life isn’t fair, and that’s actually comforting if you think about it.  If Life were fair, it would mean that you actually deserve the bad things that happen to you, and that those who benefit from evil deeds similarly deserve.  The knowledge that there is no reason to expect justice is the reason that we ensure that we impose justice.

The realization that good is not always rewarded, is what drives us to reward it when we see it.  The realization that evil is not always punished is what drives us to work together as a co-operative society to deal with our problems collectively and individually, in a way that drives real change, and minimizes harmful actions.

Realizing that justice is not guaranteed allows us to appreciate it when it happens, and work toward causing it to happen on a more regular basis.  Your particular God-view of justice represents the height of irresponsibility and injustice.  Your chosen religion has us born as reprobates, guilty before we’ve taken a single breath, responsible for things we’ve never done.  It offers instant, undeserved forgiveness for the most horrible of crimes, and punishes those whose only crime is disbelief, forever!

It advocates slavery, denigrates women, curses homosexuals, orders the stoning of unruly children, sanctions wars of extermination, condones human sacrifices, and poisons every mind it touches.  It includes only one unforgivable crime – disbelief.  Is that just??  This justice that you so admire is no such thing.  It is divine edict.  It’s arbitrary, capricious, and ultimately unjust and immoral.

Yes, I realize that there are pedophiles out there, who’ve escaped our flawed justice system.  Do you realize that your system says that they are all eligible for an eternal paradise??  How does that address your objection?  Under the rules of Christianity, the pedophile who escapes justice here, can also escape your ultimate justice.  He may spend eternity in paradise, while someone who spent their entire life doing good, helping others, and contributing in a generally positive way to the one and only life that we’re sure to get, ultimately is judged unworthy of that reward.

Don’t kid yourself.  You haven’t accepted a comic sense of justice that alleviates the problem.  You’ve accepted one that you believe alleviates the problem –for you.  It is a selfish justification that shows no regard for real matters of justice.  It is the height of arrogance, and your desire to feel special, because somebody up there thinks you’re special.

Well, according to the paradigm you advocate, He thinks that anyone willing to worship him is special, with no regard to justice or character.  Go!  Read Romans.  No-one makes this point clearer than Paul.  The Law was established with full knowledge that no-one would be able to fulfill it.  It was established to demonstrate this inability, and damn us further – and then a loophole was created to allow some people through, regardless of their standing with The Law.

Your religion has made you a slave.  It has made you uncaring.  It has made you support immorality and injustice, while claiming that arbitrary edicts and loopholes count as either.  It is a reprehensible lie, that poisons the mind, and prevents you from understanding reality.  When the scales drop away from your eyes, as they have for many of us, we’ll be here, and you’ll realize that you’re not alone, and not to blame.

Fibbing Friday Cookies

Here’s a second batch of words from Pensitivity101’s blogging colleague Archon’s Den suggested site.
What would you say these mean?

1. Accismus

It’s a mathematical term to describe other people’s relative value to you.  An oil-rich Indian chief in early 20^th Century Oklahoma could afford three wives.  To the two plain wives, he gave each a bison pelt.  To his special pretty wife, he gave an exotic animal skin from Africa.  The two bison-wives each had one child, but his favorite birthed twins….  So, the squaw on the hippopotamus is equal to the sum of the squaws on the other two hides.

2. Apocryphal

This is an Engineering nerd, with a stereotypical pocket protector, and a pronunciation problem.  When he takes that little plastic sleeping bag-thing, and fills it with three pens with different-coloured ink, a well-sharpened #2 Venus wooden pencil, a mechanical pencil, a fine-tip marker, a text Hi-Liter, and a somewhat antique, but still functional slide rule, and jams all that into his shirt, along with a Texas Instruments Scientific calculator, he really has apocryphal.

3. Bridewell

That’s where they found my great-uncle’s wife, after she became a Karen.  He said they started out with two hearts and a diamond, but he finally needed a club and a spade to deal with her.

4. Festinate

That’s what your finger will do, if you get a splinter, but don’t remove it soon enough.

5. Snool

This is the ego-soaked, self-important president of my local HOA Committee – a true legend in his own mind.  He has more rules than a Stanley tape-measure factory.

6. Rendling

This is how you tear apart a Costco roast chicken to consume it.  The wife saw me do it, and asked, “Are you going to eat that entire thing all alone?”  I replied, “No, I’m going to have some French fries with it.”

7. Fanfaronade

I noticed on my way home, that a budding capitalist kid on my street has a drink stand on the sidewalk.  I would appreciate a citrus beverage, and would like to help his enterprise, but he’s Wwwaaayyy… up the block.  Maybe I could get Uber-Eats to pick it up for me.

8. Bloviate

After eating most of a gourmet pizza last night, with cauliflower, capers, red onions, pineapple, and anchovies, I rolled out of bed this morning –literally – with a distended abdomen that looked like the fat guy in the Monty Python skit.  I raced to the hospital, and while the ER doctor is fetching the special catheter to release all my gas, I’m using my tablet to look up “Flummery.”

9. Pudibund

Three things don’t lie, drunks, small children – and yoga pants.  This is also known as camel toe.

10. Rebarbative

Porcupine quills are like tiny one-way arrows.  They go in, but you can’t get them out.  Take your dog to a strong veterinarian with pliers.  Let it hate him.

Familiar Fibbing Friday

These might sound familiar, but Pensitivity101 wants to know how would you explain them?

1. What is Free Will?
   
   That’s where I receive the entire inheritance, because the court can’t locate my dodgy brother. Could be Witness Protection…. Could be avoiding angry husbands….  Could be identity theft.

2. What is persona non grata?

If you receive an invitation to a wedding and reception, unless it is addressed to Mr. & Mrs. Schlemiel, or Mr. Schlemiel +1, do not bring along your current blow-jobber  bed-warmer!  He/she/it/they are not included in the seating plan.

3. What is bog standard?

That is the British equivalent to the American, ‘close enough for Government work.’  Also, to the Engineers motto – Force To Fit – File To Hide – Paint To Cover.

4. What is builder’s tea?

That’s the 10 AM break at the construction site for a hot cuppa.

5. What is a couch potato?

Sadly, any one of far too many members of the current Electronic Generation.  They are evolving to have light blue skin because they get their tans from the screens of half a dozen glowing devices.  Soon, they will be known as mouse potatoes – or guinea pig-potatoes, for those whose little peripheral is wireless.

6. What is a finger in every pie?

The little math nerd from Accounts Receivable, who we don’t even invite to the weekly office meeting, but who shows up anyway, like a Dominos delivery driver, with a dozen charts that look like pizzas.
Bar graphs, Rolanda!!  Bar graphs!!  They’re much easier to read and understand.

7. What is meant by nip in the bud?

‘Nip in the bud??!’  I thought it was ‘Nip in the Butt!’  No wonder I got fired for sexual harassment – and I had just learned that harass was one word.

8. What is to pitch in?

That’s a cricket term which means that a large portion of the viewers have stopped watching the game, and moved on to something far more exciting…. Like watching the grass grow.

9. What is rule of thumb?

That is how the wife micromanages, and runs my life.  She used to just have me under her little finger…. But then I gained weight.  😮

10. What is to steal someone’s thunder?

That is the culmination of a game played by ten-year-old boys of all ages, involving passing gas.  The winner is not the loudest, or the longest – but the one who can clear the room, or at least have the rest coughing and waving.  Extra points if the drapes change colour.

More Buck For The Bang

One of my readers recently offered me the chance for a mutual suicide – and I laughed and laughed.

When the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune – and the aches and pains and misfortunes of modern life are too much, I was to obtain a box of .308 rifle ammunition, and transport it to his home in the wilds of the Ohio outback.  We would load similar guns, face each other, and on the count of three, shoot each other dead.

That’s how it would work, In Principle.  In Fact, if his gun-handling abilities matched mine, we’d probably shoot someone’s pig, and flatten the tire of a passing farm wagon.  The Amish Mafia would kidnap and abuse us.  The part that I laughed hardest at, was the American-centric notion that I could just, somehow, waltz into a local Canadian establishment, and be handed a box of shells.  Even with me not owning a gun, the Government is afraid that I might throw them at someone.

Canada is not like Russia, or China, or North Korea, where civilian gun ownership is banned, prohibited, and strictly prevented.  In Canada, Anyone can own a firearm – as long as they have a healthy bank account, and the patience of Job.

To possess anything firearm-related, you have to sacrifice a tree to produce enough paper to satisfy all the bureaucratic boondoggles, and to print enough money to pay for it all.  There are forms for this, licenses for that, and certificates for everything else.  Only when you have generated enough paper documents to equal the weight of the gun, are you actually allowed to acquire and keep it.

I would require a background/psychological evaluation form, a signed permission slip from the wife, to have and keep it in our home, a carry permit to bring it there from point of purchase, a different carry permit to take it (Only) to and from home, to a licensed shooting range.  None of this target practice at bottles at the dump.  I would need a form proving to Police officers where and how I was safely and securely storing the gun – with any ammunition locked in a different location, and they all cost money. The police – local, Provincial, and RCMP – have a license to randomly search my home, a minimum of once a year, to ensure that I am complying with all the rules.

It would all begin with – despite the fact that I have almost 300 hours of gun safety training, the government would force me to attend their $200/$300, 30-hour course and test, where, if I carelessly used the vernacular terms bullet, or shell, instead of their OCD-authorized word, cartridge, I would be failed, and my wallet and I would have to start all over again.

Twenty years ago, when I still rode a motorcycle, I would occasionally ride to the north end of town, where there was a company called Shooter’s Choice, a combination of retail sales, and a supervised shooting range.  They had a glass display case with most of the handguns that I would never be able to afford.  I was warned to stop drooling on the counter.

The fact that there was also a nearby strip-club, and one of the Region’s best French-fry wagons, might help explain the attraction – one-stop sin shopping.  Alas, they are all gone.  The strip club was too close to a Mennonite Worship Hall, and the city cancelled their license.  Now it’s just a road-house bar.  Skin is taboo, but booze is okay.  The fries-wagon moved to a smaller city.

An automotive repair had me nearby recently.  Just for old-time’s sake, I drove over.  The glass handgun display case now contains fishing lures, archery equipment, hikers’ trail-bars, and rifle scopes – to be used to watch our gun-owning (non)-rights disappear into the distance.  😀

’21 A To Z Challenge – C

(The un-named) They say that curiosity killed the cat, but I say that some curiosity, mixed with a healthy dose of skepticism, and cynicism, can prevent you from becoming a manipulator’s cat’s-paw.

I once worked as a Purchasing Agent for a Bernie Madoff-wannabe owner of a small business – a little metal stamping shop with 25 plant employees.  He apparently had dreams of more and larger automotive contracts, a bigger plant, and 250 employees – or 2500…. Or 25,000!  😯

He had loyalty and honesty only for himself and his company, and no commercial morality.  Management staff were told not to ever allow any barricades to his business – “over, under, through or around.  Don’t come to me with problems!  Come to me with solutions.  Rules are for fools.”

I hired a young man in his early 20s, as a Production Control Clerk.  He was getting married, and he asked the company President for a mere two days off, for an abbreviated honeymoon.  The boss gave him an extended lecture about how he should not even get married.  He should reserve his time and energy for the company.

The Boss was on his second wife.  I don’t know why they bothered to marry – social propriety??!  He put in 12-hour weekdays, often 8-hour Saturdays, and sometimes came in on Sunday.  I don’t know if they ever dined together.  She was a Middle Manager, putting in lots of hours herself, and had girlfriends and hobbies.  He had…. the company – and a disturbing habit of drinking in his office at the end of workday.  He often chivvied me and other staff to remain and keep him and his booze company.  😦

Back in 1982, debit cards didn’t exist, and credit cards weren’t common.  One day he asked me if I had a credit card.  I answered, yes.  “Well, you should get yourself another one.”  Why??!  “So that, when I tell you to buy something for the company, you can keep the charges separate.”

He was already paying 30-day invoices at 120 days.  He expected me to use a personal card to purchase company supplies??!  What assurance was there that I would ever be reimbursed?  I quietly declined to get sucked in.

One day, he wisely decided to computerize the entire office system. (Yes, there was a time when computers weren’t everywhere.)  He hired a tech-nerd who could do the job.  Coincidentally, the guy just happened to have experience in the Purchasing field.

He interrogated other office staff, but, for three weeks he spent a lot of time with me, finding how I had set up my process.  Finally, the boss came to me and said, “Business is slow right now.  You’ve got your paperwork well-organized.  If I give him some assistance, Roscoe and I can handle it.  I’m scheduling your hours to zero for now.  You don’t need to come in.

I never even got fired.  He just stopped paying me.  Losing any job and its income can be quite traumatic, but I was actually (eventually) happy not to be employed at this one, when the police, or the bankruptcy bailiffs, showed up.  Rules are for fools eventually killed him, when he violated flight regulations and splashed a rented 4-seater all over a friend’s pasture.

Ego And Insecurity – Episode 2

Trying to debate the existence of God, with someone who has renounced critical, rational, logical thinking, is like trying to administer medication to a dead body.

A Fundamentalist Christian recently declared that, if he found a passage in the Bible which stated that two plus two equaled five, he would unquestioningly believe it. Another was quoted as saying that, if it was proved to him that the entire Bible had been written by forgers, he would still believe that they were Divinely-inspired forgers. Who could have a meaningful debate, or even an intelligent conversation, with someone with such desperately hidebound assumptions?

A recent Christian response to anyone presenting Biblical mistakes or contradictions, has been to defensively ask (demand), “Do you think that you are smarter than me?” That question is as vague, insecure, irrelevant and meaningless as all their unproven beliefs and claims. Smartness is almost impossible to define or measure. I’ve written of a woman so clueless that she didn’t realize that she had Polish ancestry. Yet she owned three homes, while my MENSA-grade IQ was still paying rent.

“Smart” is not the matter at hand. Instead, it is the gullible, sheep-like, unthinking, dogmatic rejection of any portion of evidence of reality that conflicts with their (and their church/religion’s) unthinking hope/wish that their existence was exactly the way they needed it to be, to make them feel good about their life choices.

I realize that ‘salvation’, and ‘eternal life’, are very important concepts. It’s just that far too many people put far too much belief and energy into things that have no real connection to God. In a legal sense, I’ll stipulate to the existence of God. That means that I may, or may not, accept the concept, but I’ll allow it for the purposes of discussion. I’ll also, grudgingly, agree to ‘Christ as Savior.’

ALL the rest, is bullshit! Petty rules and orders, dreamed up by men, for the benefit of men. God doesn’t need you to kneel. Even if He did, he’d want you down on BOTH knees, not just the right one, with the left foot forward. He doesn’t care if you accept Him, dabbed with ashes, or oil, with a little water sprinkled on you, or dunked whole-hog in a creek or pond.

I can manage to get born, married and die without some guy in a funny hat and dress being there to demand his 10% – not for GOD, but for him, and his church. Ritual actions can be important, not in terms of God, Jesus, and salvation, but for ‘the group – the congregation,’ as well as those performing them, so that the group will accept them.

They are an external indication of an internal decision of belief, but no specific rites or actions are any more “right”, (or wrong) than any others. Lutherans will not go to Hell, just because they don’t genuflect, no matter what your priest/preacher tells you. In the Old West, preachers were often not available. Many couples were ‘married’ by gathering friends and family, and performing some overt, ritual act, like ‘jumping over a broom,’ with a Bible present.

“Church” becomes a place where we go once a week, to pass judgement on others. A lot of folks would do well to dispense with the irrelevant details, dreamed up and enforced by men, having nothing to do with God, Christ, or salvation, and concentrate more on ‘Love thy neighbor’, and ‘Do unto others….’

Episode 1 is here, if you’re interested.

Promptly Produced

I want to write! I want to produce, to compose, to publish, to attain fame and fortune, or at least acknowledgement, acclaim and adoration, to achieve contact and communication with others….  and apparently, so do tons of other folks.

Many people like me, who are productive, but not creative, are always searching for a little sumpin’-sumpin’ in the way of inspiration.  I am not amazed, but perhaps awed, by the number of ‘prompts’ that are available.  Words or phrases are offered, or pictures, to write stories or poems around.

There are 33-word Flash Fiction Challenges, which I stay away from. Hell, I can’t even say hello in 33 words.  There are 50-word, 100-word, and 150-word Challenges to write a complete story.  One somewhat odd challenge is a weekly offering of seven random words, to include as many as possible in a poem or tale.  This is one week’s selection.

Being, as usual, shy a theme to base a short story on; I was giddy with anticipation, to trot out my writing skills.  I didn’t feel any doubt, and didn’t think that this challenge could punish my compositional abilities.  I was sure that I could manage to publish a bland, uninteresting paragraph or two.

I can write as much or as little as I want. Unlike the 100-word Flash Fiction Challenge, there’s not even a proposed word limit.  Over there, if I run a word or two over, I have to shave a couple off.  If I’m a few short, I just compose an addition, and pop a couple more in.

giddy, addition, punish, manage, shy, shave, pop, doubt, base, trot

Fortunately, at least for me, there’s no rule that what I write has to be deep, or socially significant – just use the words.

I try to get a Rochelle 100-word FF each week, and have some WOWs ready for when I’m not successful.  The A to Z Challenge gives me 26 theme opportunities, spread over a year.  I assemble 4 joke posts at a time, and publish them about every two weeks, but I’m always on the lookout for ideas that I can use to tell a ‘Me’ story.

Do any of you use ‘prompts’ to produce posts? Which ones?  Where do you find them?  And do you have any suggestions for me?   😕

THE BLOG-POST THAT I WAS NEVER GOING TO WRITE

God is for the wise – religions are for fools.

“The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.” ~Robert Anton Wilson

Dear God (if you’ll excuse the expression), how can they so casually dismiss everybody else’s religious claims, yet profess to unflinchingly believe the exact, same thing, with a different color paint on it.

I don’t call myself an Atheist.  I don’t call myself much of anything.  If I have to, I like the son’s definition – A Militant Agnostic.  I don’t know, and neither do you.  I have been called many things by ‘religious people.’  Every person, and every religion, creates a ‘God’ in the way they want Him to be.  I like to think that there’s a unifying force in/to the universe, so I believe in a God, just not your God, subject to your imaginings, and all the man-made rules and restrictions of your particular (or anybody else’s) religion.

Muslims fight with Jews, who feel that Christians are mistaken. Catholics look down on Protestants.  ‘Good Christians’ claim that Mormons are ‘not Christians,’ even though they worship the same God, and accept Jesus as their savior.  They just don’t believe that Christ was the last person to hear from God.

If there is a Divine Being who created Heaven and Earth, there’s only one of Him/It, but you’d never know that from some Christian claims.  A caller to the Atheist Experience show railed that the Atheists, “are almost as bad as those Godless Muslims”, not seeing the contradiction.

The moderator insisted that Muslims are not Godless. “In fact, they worship the same God that you do.”  I thought the caller was going to explode!  Apparently a good Catholic, he insisted, “They do not!  We worship God in three parts!  They only worship one God.”….but it’s the same God.  The problem is not with different Gods.  The problem is how different people worship, view, pray to, and react with, one God, in different ways. You see Him in three parts.  They see Him as one unified whole.  People were burned at the stake over how many Angels could dance on the head of a pin.  Far too many exclusionary fools seem far too worried about irrelevant, unimportant details.  Who’s right?  All of them – and none.

A well-known Atheist, sarcastically claimed that, “We’re all Atheists.  I just worship one less God than you do.”  The words were scarcely out of his mouth, before the Christian Apologetics, obviously missing the irony, insisted that, ‘Well, that’s okay for those gods, but ours is the REAL God, the particular imaginary one that we believe in and expect you to believe in, with no more proof of existence than Odin, Zeus, Jove, Yahweh or Allah.’

A good Catholic, who thought that my That’s Not Funny post wasn’t that funny, sent me some more Christian vs. Atheists jokes.

1. Q: What do you get when you cross an atheist and a Jehovah’s Witness?
   A: Somebody knocking at your door for no reason.

2.  Q: Why did the Atheist cross the road?
A: He thought there might be a street on the other side, but he wouldn’t believe it until he tested his hypothesis.

and finally…
3.  Q: What is so ironic about Atheists?
A: They’re always talking about God.

The third joke is especially true of you non believers. How many articles do you see written on my blog professing the existence of the Lord? I don’t write many because I know He is there. This is the same reason I have absolutely no blog posts on the legs of the chair I am sitting on…I know they are there.

That’s fine – until you sit down on that chair that you know is there – and it isn’t.  We’ve all done it; some of us more than once.  The same thing could happen with ‘your God.’  A little double-checking couldn’t hurt.

You don’t even need to be Atheist, to feel that Jehovah’s Witnesses knock on people’s doors for no reason. Christians will belittle and make fun of ‘Jovies,’ but, when push comes to shove, they’ll cut them some slack, “Because they are Christians, after all – sadly mistaken Christians – but ‘one of us.’”

An open mind can always stand a closed one, if it has to – by making room for it in the general picture. But a closed mind can’t stand it near an open one without risking immediate and complete destruction in its own terms.  In a closed mind, there’s no more room. Gordon R. Dickson, author – Tiger Green – 1965

The Atheist-crossing-the –road joke isn’t funny, because it ridicules those who seek the truth.  Truth may not be what you ‘believe’ it to be.  The unquestioning faithful may blindly believe in salvation, but in no other life endeavor, would non-cynical, un-researched participation in a course of action, be considered a good idea.  The ‘God’ that you believe in, is not any other person’s ‘God’, not your husband’s, your wife’s, the person next to you in the church pew – or even the priest/preacher at the front.

The third one shows how some Christians mistakenly feel themselves attacked. Atheists don’t ‘always talk about God.’ They talk about Christians, talking about their God – claiming to know what He thinks and wants. If there were more Christians, secure in their own, but quietly acceptant of others’ opinions, and fewer aggressive know-it-alls, there’d be far fewer Atheists pointing out apparent mistakes and contradictions.  If Snidely Smartass hadn’t published his ‘Smart Christian – Dumb Atheist’ joke, I wouldn’t have written my post.  As ye sow, so shall ye reap.   😛

***

The Queen’s English

The Queen’s English.
Yes, I’ve heard that about her!  😆

If only more of the English people would speak the English language. Some of them think that, if a word is good enough to be said once, it should be slightly changed and said twice.  Sometimes this doubling-up is done to emphasize the meaning, but I am sure that sometimes it is done just to confuse those who don’t speak the local dialect.

It has brought us a bunch of word-pairs like; holus-bolus, okie-dokie, hurdy-gurdy, hunky-dory, hurly-burly, lovey-dovey, argy-bargy, hinky-dinky, rinky-dinky, hanky-panky, razzle-dazzle, willy-nilly, fuzzy-wuzzy, namby-pamby, itsy-bitsy, (t)eensy-weensy, (t)eeny-weeny, higgledy-piggledy, mumbo-jumbo, roly-poly, and tittle-tattle.

Why ‘Tock-Tick’ does not sound right, to your ear

Have you ever wondered why we say tick-tock, not tock-tick, or ding-dong, not dong-ding; King Kong, not Kong King?  It turns out that it is one of the unwritten rules of English that native speakers know, without even knowing.

The rule, explains a BBC article, is; “If there are three words, then the order has to go I, A, O. If there are two words, then the first is I, and the second is either A or O.”  Mish-mash, chit-chat, dilly-dally, shilly-shally, tip top, hip-hop, flip-flop, Tic Tac, sing-song, ding-dong, King Kong, ping-pong.

There’s another unwritten rule at work in the name Little Red Riding Hood, says the article. Articles in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion, size, age, color, origin, material, purpose, noun.  So, you can have a lovely, little, old, rectangular, green, French, silver, whittling knife.  If you tamper with that word order in the slightest, you sound like a maniac.

That explains why we say “little green men”, and not “green little men,” but “Big Bad Wolf” sounds like a gross violation of the “opinion (bad)- size (big)- noun (wolf) order. It isn’t though, if you recall the first rule about the I-A-O order.

That rule seems inviolable. “All four of a horse’s feet make exactly the same sound, but we always say clip-clop, never clop-clip.”  This rule even has a technical name, if you care to know about it – the rule of ablaut reduplication – but then life is simpler knowing that we know the rule, without knowing it.

Play it by ear.
If a word sequence sounds wrong, it probably is wrong.

Reading Challenge – 2016

Oh wow, yet another post about what I read last year.  Last year, I threatened vaguely hinted that I might list what I did/did not read, that filled the above Challenge list.  Not being a great team-player/rules-follower, the results are not impressive.  The covers are all shown back at ‘It’s All Newton’s Fault’, if you want another look.

A book published this (2016) year.
N/A I’m too busy trying to catch up on about four series, so that the next ‘unread’ one is less than 5 years old and I can borrow it from the library at no charge, to be bothered with anything less than a year old.

A book you can finish in one day.
Henry Freeman – The Crusades From Beginning To End
A 156 page disappointment, with no real information, not worth the price.

A book you’ve been meaning to read.
Jonathan Kellerman – Flesh And Blood
After owning it for 15 years, I finally got around to actually reading it. (See below)  A somewhat pedantic little procedural, nowhere nearly as interesting as his wife’s mysteries.

A book recommended by your local librarian or bookseller.
N/A Years ago, there was a TV ad which touted, “You can always tell a Heinz pickle, but you can’t tell a Heinz pickle nothing.”
Heinz pickle = Grumpy Old Dude

A book you should have read in school.
N/A See last year’s statement.  Perhaps some of the Sci-Fi that I’m now rereading.  Maybe I should have got to them sooner.

A book chosen for you by your spouse, partner, sibling, child, or BFF.
Jared Diamond – Guns, Germs And Steel
More ‘recommended’ than ‘chosen’, by my online BFF, BrainRants, it was an enlightening treatise showing how White Europeans ended up owning or controlling so much of the world.

A book published before you were born.
E.E. (Doc) Smith – The Spacehounds Of IPC
With Jim Wheeler’s prompt, I am rereading some old Sci-Fi.  I think I should get extra points for this one.  It’s hard to find books that were published before I was born.  This one was from 1931.  I also reread the original Buck Rogers, from 1928.  I refuse to reread The Bible.

A book that was banned at some point.
N/A I probably have read one at some point, because some of the most supposedly inoffensive books have been banned, somewhere, sometime, including Harry Potter.  I just didn’t actively search one out.

A book that you previously abandoned.
N/A

A book that you own, but never read.
Jonathan Kellerman – Flesh And Blood
I can’t believe that I was always so far ahead with books to read, that I didn’t get around to this one for 15 years.  Then I read it, and realized why.

A book that intimidates you.
William Patterson – Robert A. Heinlein biography – Part II
This was big, and dry – but ultimately, very rewarding.

A book you’ve already read at least once.
Aside from IPC and Buck Rogers, I also reread;
Isaac Asimov – Pebble In The Sky, and Nemesis
Robert A. Heinlein – Tunnel In The Sky
A. Bertram Chandler – The Far Traveller
John Brunner – To Conquer Chaos, The World Swappers, and The Super Barbarians as well as 10 other classic science fiction books.

With all those N/As, if I hadn’t seen the list of books I did read, I might have thought I didn’t really read much.  I just don’t read a lot of what some others feel is acceptable.  You read my posts last year.  Did you have time to read anything else?  😕