Egg-Gate

Meanwhile, in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s kitchen…

Perry (MTG’s husband): Honey, did you pick up eggs when you went to the store yesterday?

MTG: I went for a peaceful walk, which is what everyone is entitled to do under their First Amendment. I wasn’t going to actively engage in violence or any type of action.

Perry: I didn’t say you were. I’m asking if you got eggs. You did go to the store yesterday, right?

MTG: No, that's not accurate.

Perry, growing slightly agitated: But you left a note saying that you were going to the store.

MTG: I don’t recall writing that.

Perry: It’s on your notepad.

MTG: You’re using a CNN article... CNN has lied about me a number of times.

Perry: No, I have the note right here...

MTG: I have had many people use my notepad over the years.

Perry: Look, the note says, ‘I’m going to the store. Be back in an hour. Signed Marjorie’. You were expressing your intention to go to the store!

Lawyer appears from behind the counter: This violates... her right to free speech. There’s... um... nothing in the note that can... er... be construed as her... er... stating an intention to go to the grocery store. So, it’s objectionable.

Perry: I’m just reading the fucking note!

MTG: That really wasn’t the purpose of that note.

Perry: I’m just trying to find out if we have eggs! You marked on your calendar that you'd be going to the store!

MTG: It was put on my calendar, but I never went.

Perry: So, who marked it on your calendar?

MTG: I don’t know. I was too busy getting ready to go for my peaceful walk.

Perry: Okay, so do we have eggs?

MTG: I’m sorry, I can’t answer. I don’t know anything about it. We had been spending a vast amount of time reading and researching and talking to people, and had seen tremendous evidence of voter fraud. I don’t know if you know this because you’re not from Georgia, but our secretary of state has an investigation going on…

Perry exits the room screaming.

Quit Ruining Passover by not Celebrating Sukkoth!

I was invited to take part in a livestream recently to discuss Holy Week (the week leading up to and including Easter). I was quite nervous because I don’t usually participate in livestreams, so I took a lot of notes in case my mind went blank. Well, as it happened, we didn’t discuss Holy Week very much. That’s fine, I still had a lot of fun, and I got to interact with some friendly new people. So, I’ve decided to put the notes to good use and write a blog post about Palm Sunday.

Palm Sunday is a celebration of Jesus’s ‘triumphal entry’ into Jerusalem before his trial and crucifixion (Mark 11, Matthew 21, Luke 19, John 12). The story begins as Jesus and his disciples near Bethphage and Bethany, and he wants to acquire transport so that he can ride into Jerusalem. In the Synoptic Gospels, he sends two of his disciples to find a donkey, but in John, he does it himself. Matthew’s version is the most bizarre of the three because rather than riding on a single donkey, Jesus rides two simultaneously like some kind of rodeo clown!

You see, there was this ‘prophecy’ in Zechariah 9:9, which read:

‘Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’

Both Matthew and John (mis)quote it, but Matthew’s version adds the word ‘and’ (Matthew 21:5):

‘Say to Daughter Zion,
“See, your king comes to you,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”’

So, in order to make the episode fit the prophecy, Matthew has Jesus riding both a donkey and her colt.

In all four stories, people line the streets to greet him, but weirdly, despite it being the lead-up to Passover, they appear to be celebrating the festival of Sukkoth; waving palm leaves, shouting out, ‘Hosanna!’ and quoting Psalm 118. Passover occurs in the spring, during the month of Nisan (March/April), but Sukkoth is a harvest festival that falls in Tishrei (September/October).

Sukkoth is also known as the Festival of Ingathering as it falls at the time when the harvest is gathered, or Festival of Booths after the small dwellings (sukkah) made of plant materials such as palm leaves that the farmers would live in when they gathered the harvest.

During this festival, the Jews recite the Hoshanot, which includes cries of, ‘Hosanna!’ (please save us) as the priests carry palm or willow branches. Another tradition is to build sukkah decorated with the Four Species; four plants mentioned in the Torah (Leviticus 23:40): citrus trees, palm trees, leafy trees, and willows of the brook/valley. In the Talmud, these are given as the fruit of a citron tree (the etrog), a closed frond from a date palm tree, a myrtle tree branch, and a willow branch. The Hallel (taken from Psalms 113–118), which is a Jewish prayer recited during Jewish festivals, is recited in full on Sukkoth.

So, why were the people who went to view Jesus before Passover celebrating Sukkoth? One can only speculate, but it does cast doubt on the historicity of the story.

A New Testament

I'm often asked how I came up with my translation of the Bible. That's a good question, so I thought I'd finally reveal the truth. One night as I lay in bed, I was visited by an angel called Idioti, and he told me he was a member of a lost tribe of Israelites who’d been banished to north-east England, and they’re the ones who built all the castles.

Anyway, he told me to go out and find some golden tablets, so I spent all of the next day digging up my neighbour’s garden to no avail. My neighbour was furious when he came home from work, so I blamed it on the gas company. The next night, the angel returned to tell me I’d been digging in the wrong place, so the next day, I dug up my neighbour’s living room.

So, anyway, when I finally got out of jail for petty vandalism, I set about translating the two golden tablets I found. The writing looked like crude drawings, kind of like what a three-year-old would do if you gave them a crayon, so translation was difficult. Luckily, the angel brought me a special device called a bong, and when I used it, the writing seemed to float off the page like smoke, and dance in a swirl of colours. I spent twelve weeks staring at a cobweb on my ceiling and giggling to myself.

At the end of the three months, I still hadn’t translated anything as the writing on the tablets made no sense whatsoever, so I did the only thing I could do: I made a bunch of shit up!

Tell Me When It Squirts

I had a dental appointment yesterday to get a filling. When I entered the examination room, the dentist asked me if I needed to be numbed.

I replied, ‘I don’t know. You tell me… ’ How the hell was I supposed to know whether what she was about to do was going to be painful?

So, she gave me an injection and said, ‘Let me know if you feel any sensitivity.’

‘Okay,’ I replied, ‘I’ll raise my hand.’

Without allowing any time for the injection to kick in, she started cleaning my teeth, a process she called ‘de-scaling’. Then she set about doing something to the tooth that needed to be filled. I have no clue what, but it felt like she jammed a pickaxe into the nerve. So, I raised my hand, arched my back reflexively, and twisted my face into a grimace.

‘Is that sensitive?’ she asked calmly.

She still had her fingers in my mouth, so I gurgled, ‘Ugh ugh.’

She gave me another injection. It took a while before I relaxed enough for my back to make contact with the chair. As she continued faffing with my mouth, I pretended to be fascinated by the light fixture. It just feels awkward to make sustained eye contact with somebody who is shoving metal objects into one of your face holes.

At one point, she had her finger hooked in the corner of my mouth and was pulling, turning my head in the process. She said, ‘Turn your head.’

So, I instinctively turned in the direction she was pulling.

‘The other way,’ she sighed impatiently.

So, I spent the rest of the appointment in an oral tug of war whilst trying to stay focused on my favourite light fixture.

By the end of the appointment, my mouth was completely numb on one side. I went to swill with the weird pink drink they have, and it squirted out the side of my mouth like a garden sprinkler. Slightly embarrassed, I joked in a slurred voice, ‘I guess I’m going to leave it a while before I have coffee.’

She tutted and said, ‘I only gave you quarter of a syringe.’

By the time I got home, my mouth was numb three-quarters of the way across. I went to have a cold drink, and it instantly leaked out the corner of my mouth straight down my shirt. I had to change my clothes. Needless to say, I’m glad I didn’t try to drink coffee.