Saturday July 03, 2004

Didn't Crash Into Anything This Afternoon, Either!

A beautiful day on the water was capped off with a ding-free docking. Finally! Thank God and the huge, bulbous orange fenders.

Learned a few helpful things along the way, too -- things people have been trying to tell me, and they're not rocket science, but they finally sunk in:

1. You can fend off the nasty, demon-possessed bow pulpit of the neighboring boat with your hand, so his spikey Danforth anchor, sticking outrageously far out from it, doesn't scrape you. You really can. He's all talk. His bark is worse than his bite.

2. The boat steers from the stern, where the engines are. All the weight's back there too. That means the bow swings free, and is the more likely end to go wild when you're trying to dock. So if you can secure the bow line quick, you're almost home.

3. Finally, slips nearer the shore enjoy much less current (friction from the shoreline slows it down), making docking way much easier. Way way much easier.

Other big news: I figured out how to use my radar. I have radar, can you believe it?! Of course, I don't know what any of the little black squigglies on the screen mean, but I figure I can practically drive the boat in the dark now. Especially with those huge fenders. Heh heh heh... ;*)

Even more big news: or rather, a big confession. I went and bought it. Gave in and bought the Mother Of All Flashlights, the 6-D Cell behemoth I resisted for so long. But don't think too poorly of me. Ace Hardware sent me a 50% off coupon, good today only, AND a $5 off coupon because they missed me. So it was hardly like buying it. It was more like they gave it to me.

I'm still waiting for Cingular to figure out that they want to give me that phone.

If I can dock the boat and walk away smiling, anything is possible.

(2004-07-03 16:22:52.0) Permalink

Java really is everywhere!

You won't see it in the on-line version of the article at msnbc.msn.com (I wonder why?), but if you have a copy of the June 28 Newsweek on hand, check out the special section on China. Scott's friend Steve is on the front page of the section, and on page E12, there's a big picture of Timothy Chen, the new CEO of Microsoft China. Wearing what is unmistakably a JavaCard around his neck. Maybe he just got back from SunNetwork Shanghai, who knows? In any event... Java is everywhere!

Okay, now I have to go back to the bathr... library.

Sorry, too much information, I know.

(2004-07-03 06:39:46.0) Permalink

Thursday July 01, 2004

Come on, Lucky Seven... of Nine! (Subtitle: Jeri Ryan, Jeri Ryan, Jeri Ryan, Jeri Ryan, Jeri Ryan, Jeri Ryan. Jeri Ryan.)

As we speak, I'm #16 on the blogs.sun.com list of "most popular weblogs", and I am truly grateful.

Also a little curious.

I'm not famous, not that smart, not that popular, certainly not that good looking or fashionable. In other words, in a fair fight, MaryMary will kick my ass every time.

So I'm gonna get some help. From that Borg babe on Star Trek: Voyager, Jeri Ryan.

Let me say her name again: Jeri Ryan, Jeri Ryan, Jeri Ryan, Jeri Ryan, Jeri Ryan, Jeri Ryan. Jeri Ryan. There, that's seven times, to go with her character's Borg name, "Seven of Nine". The Borg, if you're unfamiliar with them, are kind of like grid computing taken to its biological extreme. In Jeri's case, she was the seventh node in a cluster of nine systems (don't you love the way I'm dropping in all these cool Sun references? :) and almost certainly the best looking of the bunch.

Lately, she's been in the news because her ex-husband was running for a soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat in Illinois. But their divorce papers from four years ago just went public, and they include allegations of some rather bad behavior on his part during their marriage, and in the wake of all this, he decided to drop out of the race.

I don't want to go anywhere near the subject matter of the allegations, though if they're true, it sounds like she's (much) better off without him. But I will note that in the wake of all this news, "Jeri Ryan" hit #2 on the list of Google's "Top 10 Gaining Queries for the Week Ending June 28, 2004". (You can find the latest list at http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html.)

Anyway, my theory is that all these people are going to be googling "Jeri Ryan" -- especially if she climbs over "farenheit911" as the top search term -- and I want to catch the wave. Heh heh heh. Now this is marketing. ;*)

So, if you're looking for more info on Jeri, I'm afraid I've misled you. Not as bad as claiming to be the son of some governmental official from far, far away, who only needs to "borrow" your checking account to transfer funds out of the country. But this is pretty low. Here, here's a link back to Google, all filled out for you, so you can find what you were looking for. With my apologies.

But I'm not apologizing to you, Mary. You've got gifts. Me, I just have my killer instincts.

Better check your rear view mirror, kiddo, I'm coming up fast!

(2004-07-01 19:37:36.0) Permalink

God and Belly Dancing, Part I

Well, as promised, more wild and crazy theological fun. :)

Perhaps you've been wondering why a link to "Belly-dancing Theologians (Boston)" appeared on this page a week or so ago. Well, you can wonder no more. It's a pointer to my friend DeAnna's website, "OnTheRaqs.com", where she advertises her professional belly dancing services. "Raqs Sharqi" is Arabic for belly dancing, which -- factor in her delightfully twisted sense of humor, as in "Shaken Not Stirred" -- explains the URL.

I met DeAnna a few years ago through her religion column in the North Andover Citizen, our local paper. We're much too small a town to have our own religion columnist: DeAnna worked for Community News, which published a number of local papers, and syndicated certain columns throughout, including hers. She wrote on the most interesting topics, including the snappy slogans you find on the front-lawn billboards of New England UU (Unitarian Universalist) Churches, and most memorably, that interesting wailing that Cheb Mami (he's a guy, by the way) is doing in the background of Sting's "Desert Rose". She traced the roots of that style of music back to the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures), one of my great interests, and to the mysterious term "Selah", which you'll see from time to time in the Psalms.

It was this latter column that led me to write to her at the newspaper's email address, to see if she'd be interested in meeting some of the people from my Antiochian Orthodox church in Worcester, or our sister parish in Lawrence, both named after St. George, the Patron Saint of Lebanon. It turns out DeAnna has a great interest in middle eastern people and culture, and was researching an article on the post-war reconstruction of Beirut, which -- she eventually proved to her editors at the Boston Herald -- was indeed a bigger deal than Boston's "Big Dig". Nobody in Boston believes there is any bigger deal than the Big Dig, nor could there ever be, so it took quite a bit of convincing. As part of her research, she traveled to Beirut and was hosted by the president of our parish council, who keeps an apartment there (in the same complex as the President of Lebanon), and was toured around the city, often described as "the Paris of the Middle East", by his driver. Her interest in belly dancing stems from that trip and the many night clubs she visited, whose growing number is emblematic of the rebirth of the city.

DeAnna's background is as eclectic as her tastes: she studied to be a Pentecostal minister, with theology degrees from Boston College and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and worked as a private investigator prior to becoming a journalist and religion columnist. And now she is a part-time professional belly dancer.

Like my own, her interests cross-pollinate... which finally brings us to God and Belly Dancing. DeAnna's written a book, "God Belly Danced", which documents -- among many other things -- biblical accounts of belly dancing in the ancient near east. The book has been excerpted on a belly dancing website, starting with a brief article which relates the Hebrew word for dance (Chol) with the name of God (YHWH, "the One who lives"), and with Eve (Chava, "the mother of all the living"). Living, she argues, is not a dull, quiet thing, but full of shaking and pulsating:

In our current mindset "being" is a state. "Just be" means simply to sit there, take a few deep breaths and meditate. But Yahweh "will never slumber nor sleep" (Psalm 121:4) and most of the time Yahweh's presence brings shaking, storms, wind and thunder.

Yahweh's very being pulsates with energy and power. When Yahweh creates the world in Genesis, the process is cataclysmic, not mild. Likewise, no living human comes into being quietly, unless during a tragic stillbirth. When a nurse or doctor first induces a child to breathe, the newborn usually lets out a bloodcurdling scream. That's when you know you have a healthy baby.

In other words, belly dancing is a more profound, essential thing than you'd think.

Anyway, I agree with many of the things she's written, and disagree with some others. Top of mind: I believe that childbirth did not originally -- prior to the fall -- include labor pains, that Jephthah really did sacrifice the daughter who greeted his return from battle with belly dancing, and that Salome, whose belly dancing led to the beheading of St. John the Baptist, was a baaaad girl.

We got together this morning to discuss. And some more interesting theological "Did You Know?"s came up. (That's why this is "Part I".)

Stay tuned!

(2004-07-01 13:03:50.0) Permalink