Burning Man, It’s Human Sacrifice!

Okay, I love The Wicker Man, one of my fave films. The original, of course. I own the collector’s limited edition director’s cut, and re-watch it now and then. It’s wonderfully irreverent, and Poor Sgt. Howie is so darn uptight. That said, it’s just a movie. Historically, there’s not a lot of proof when it comes to ancient pagans stuffing people into effigies and burning them alive, although this was widely believed to be the case for a good number of years. Burning effigies though, is a time-honoured tradition among humans, and has been done for all manner of reasons. Sometimes, just because it’s fun, and y’know, big bonfire.

Kevin Swanson, pastor and professional nut, has now decided that Burning Man is all about human sacrifice. I’m not exactly sure why, because I am not going to listen to the broadcast. If someone else is brave enough (and with a better connection) to do so, please enlighten me as to any actual reason for this nonsense. Burning an effigy at Burning Man is a defining thing, that much is rather clear in the name of the festival, so I would have thought that was a no-brainer. It’s a tradition, been going on for a long time.

On his radio show last week, right-wing pastor Kevin Swanson argued that the annual Burning Man festival is trying to bring back human sacrifice, but has been unable to do so only “because of the influence of Christ” on our legislators who recognize that the practice is prohibited by Old Testament law.

There’s a helluva lot of sacrificing going on in the old testament, and if most of it wasn’t human, maybe that’s because Jehovah was busy directing this, that, and the other person to indulge in one genocidal slaughter after another. I tend to think that fits the rubric of human sacrifice. Jehovah got pissed at a whole bunch of people, and it was pretty much non-stop killing, with breaks for rape and stuff.

“The only way that we can defend a law, a civil law, against the worship of false gods by way of human sacrifice or animal sacrifice is by applying Old Testament law,” Swanson said. “We don’t serve our foreign gods by human sacrifice or animal sacrifice simply because the word of God doesn’t allow for it and, as Christians, as a Christian worldview, as a Christian legislator, or as a Christian governor, I could not allow it in any given city or state because the Christian worldview only allows for a single sacrifice, and that’s already been accomplished.”

Rats below, that’s quite the word salad you have there, Mr. Swanson. There is no law, civil or otherwise, against worshiping gods of any kind. You’re free to worship anyone or anything you like. As anyone is free to indulge in animal sacrifice when it comes to meals, I don’t see how you get to differentiate over just how someone sacrifices a chicken or such. By the way, Jehovah didn’t have anything against animal sacrifice, it just got up his nose when people sacrificed more to Baal. Then Jehovah would order all those people to be, um, sacrificed.

We don’t “serve our foreign gods”? Who might those be, Mr. Swanson? I thought you subscribed to monotheism. Ah, the christian worldview. You can stuff it, because that is not the worldview held by all people. It’s certainly not held by me.

Swanson said that Burning Man is all about “radical inclusion,” which he insisted is just another name for “radical polytheism [and] radical human sacrifice. This is what they’re headed for. They want to bring human sacrifice back.”

Ooooh, radical inclusion. Sounds good to me. No, it’s not another name for polytheism. Besides, you’re the one talking “foreign gods”. And no one is talking human sacrifice, for fuck’s sake, where do you come up with this shit? Either you’re drinking a right interesting type of Kool-aid, or someone’s slipping something in your coffee, dude.

RWW has the soundcloud, if anyone wants to listen.

The Tiny Tyrant: Sucking Marrow from Bones.

The Secret Service has a problem – they can’t pay their employees. The Tiny Tyrant’s profligate habits, and those of his family have sucked the bones dry. While there is an obligation on the part of the service to protect key people, the sheer amount of money wasted by the Tiny Tyrant is overwhelming. Three million dollars for every weekend jaunt. Millions more for every vacation the Kushners take, and they seem to take a lot of vacations every year. Millions more for overseas coverage. Millions more for Ms. Trump and the kid to stay in NYC for months on end. Then there are the little things, like $60,000 in golf cart rentals. This from the idiot who could not stop talking about President Obama golfing now and then. Sixty Fucking Thousand Dollars. And since the Chief Idiot won’t golf anywhere except his properties, guess where the money is going? Quite the fucking racket.

WASHINGTON — The Secret Service can no longer pay hundreds of agents it needs to carry out an expanded protective mission – in large part due to the sheer size of President Trump’s family and efforts necessary to secure their multiple residences up and down the East Coast.

Secret Service Director Randolph “Tex” Alles, in an interview with USA TODAY, said more than 1,000 agents have already hit the federally mandated caps for salary and overtime allowances that were meant to last the entire year.

The agency has faced a crushing workload since the height of the contentious election season, and it has not relented in the first seven months of the administration. Agents must protect Trump – who has traveled almost every weekend to his properties in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia – and his adult children whose business trips and vacations have taken them across the country and overseas.

“The president has a large family, and our responsibility is required in law,” Alles said. “I can’t change that. I have no flexibility.”

Alles said the service is grappling with an unprecedented number of White House protectees. Under Trump, 42 people have protection, a number that includes 18 members of his family. That’s up from 31 during the Obama administration.

Overwork and constant travel have also been driving a recent exodus from the Secret Service ranks, yet without congressional intervention to provide additional funding, Alles will not even be able to pay agents for the work they have already done.

The compensation crunch is so serious that the director has begun discussions with key lawmakers to raise the combined salary and overtime cap for agents, from $160,000 per year to $187,000 for at least the duration of Trump’s first term.

But even if such a proposal was approved, about 130 veteran agents would not be fully compensated for hundreds of hours already amassed, according to the agency.

“I don’t see this changing in the near term,” Alles said.

USA Today has the full story.

Exploring Japanese Hell.

“God of Heavenly Punishment.” From the scroll “Extermination of Evil” ( 1127 – 1192 AD).

As a child, growing up in Japan, there was one book that terrified me. Luckily, I didn’t own it. The red hardback sat on the bottom shelf in my friend’s room and every time I went over to play I could see it, out of the corner of my eye, staring me in the face. Once we pulled it out and flipped through the pages; each featured a grotesquely illustrated realm of hell with scenes of fire, torture, and suffering. It was, I assure you, a children’s book. But it was made for parents to use as leverage whenever their child acted up, or misbehaved. And boy was it effective.

These concepts of hell (jigoku; 地獄 in Japanese) are derived from ancient Buddhist scriptures, and I’m ceaselessly amazed by the imagination of the monks and artists who came up with so many different forms of punishment. The range from the fairly standard – being eaten alive by demons and dragons, or being torn apart at the crotch – to the more inventive – being forced to hold large stalks of daikon radish in your mouth and being used as a drumstick. Then, there’s my favorite: being flattened out by a roller and then cut up into soba noodles.

Now, a new art book that’s being released in October has collected a wide range of images that depict hell in Japanese art from the 12th century to the 19th century. The massive single-volume collection consists of almost 600 pages of works designated as Japanese National Treasures and features the various depictions of hell by artists such as Kazunobu Kanō,Yoshitoshi Tsukioka and the master of horror Kyōsai Kawanabe.

It’s currently available for pre-order on Amazon. Essays from historians of both Japanese art and Buddhism are also included in bilingual text. If you have kids you may (or may not) want to leave this book sitting around.

You can read, and see much more of the always gruesome hell at Spoon & Tamago.