Sunday, December 14, 2003

Driving home tonight, the woman on the radio said it was 10 Greenwich mean time, which made me think, gosh it's late there. But it wasn't late - early. They're six hours ahead, not behind. I always think of BBC World News as being a late night show, and think of the BBC reporters reading the news from some dark, still office building in the middle of a quiet, shut down business area in downtown London. And that's the way I hear their voices, as late night radio voices - the morning ones peppier, saying phrases like "since U.S. forces ousted the Taliban" with some emphasis on the "ousted," followed by some advertising placement, "which reminds me that I hope those soldiers were wearing Coppertone 45, especially with that dreadfully hot Afghani sun." Which is image how the daytime BBC reporters would sound, the morning show crew, still with their British English and British mannerisms, but in the same wrapper as U.S. AM radio hosts. I think if I moved  to London, I'd have to wait for my circadian rythms to be completely adjusted before I began listening to BBC World Radio again - or I would probably immediately want to drive home, listen to the remainder of the last piece before getting out of the car, and go inside, maybe write for a while, brush my teeth and go to bed. All of those steps might give me chance to clue into the fact that it was still day before I actually fell asleep, but my body would still feel it had somehow been tricked. Denise and I were talking a little tonight, first jokingly about comparing Christian and Jewish miracles, about how we may never understand the deeper cultural context of some of, probably many of, the images in Old and New Testament traditions - that the fact that Jesus walked upon the waters of his own volition, versus Moses calling upon God to part the Red Sea so they could walk across dry land. Jesus didn't even need the dry land. Didn't need God - because he was God, in terms of imagery. We also talked about how God was battling other Gods in the old testament. Who, after all, was powering the Egyptian's powerful magic? And our God ended up beating out the other Gods not by doing better magic, but by HIS brutality. Can't beat you in magic? How 'bout I slaughter innocent male firstborns? How appropriate and ass-kicking God for our own Western Civilization. We may not have better ideas, but we have better weapons, better organized violence, more willingness to commit to extremely brutal, civilian targeted tactics. 4:44:06 AM