Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007

Time	Event
12:23a	Feast of the Holy Innocents Another Christian Holiday I had never previously encountered is the Feast in memory of the innocent children slaughtered by Herod the Great, celebrated Dec 28th, the fourth day of Christmas (when my true love gave me four Colly Birds--that is, black birds, for those of you keeping track.)  There is not independent evidence that this event happened--Josephus, for example, does not mention it--but historians agree it is not out of character for the ambitious and bloodthirsty oriental potentate who rebuilt the Temple to unparalleled grandeur, but was also uneasy on his throne. I did not tell my young children about this feast day--I had enough trouble explaining World War I and the poppies of Flander's Fields to my eight-year-old, whose delicate emotional capacities are shocked by the march of General Jinjur's Army of Revolt against the Emerald City during the reign of the Scarecrow King--but I thought in honor of the day, which I did not celebrate this year, I should post this grim but interesting memorial to one Christian who opposed the Nazis (hat tip to James Lileks). ( Read more... ) (5 Comments | Comment on this)
1:15a	Jinn! Well, well. It looks like there are still Genii terrifying the Faithful, and I do not mean the prettified version from Disney, but the pre-adamite kings created from smokeless fire. Where is Solomon when you need him? http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8401289 They pointed out jinn settlements just below the snow-line on the mountain slopes. Inside, over plates of mutton and grey rice, tea, snuff and Korean cigarettes, they told the story of how the cook had been possessed by a jinn the week before. He was a devout man, they said, a non-smoker and illiterate. “He fell ill. When he recovered, he found he could speak and write in many languages. The jinn that was in him was well-travelled but also pushy. It demanded a cigarette, then another, and then it became impatient and swallowed lighted cigarettes whole.” In Somalia, the port of Bossaso is famous for its sorcerers. Some of its ruling class claim to have intermarried with jinn long ago. On a recent visit your correspondent was taken to a metal shed at the edge of a slum where jinn were supposed to be banished from taking human form. The air inside the shed was thick with frankincense. There was a man cloaked in red cloth kneeling on the ground. A jinn was in him, a sorceress running the ceremony said, and indeed the man wore an eerie expression, as though a part of him was obscured. Young men jumped up and down around him, chanting and beating drums. The gunmen accompanying your correspondent were too scared to step into the shed. Later, walking away from the shed in hot sunshine, one of the gunmen insisted that he could see a jinn scavenging for bones in the dirt. There did not appear to be anything there. (10 Comments | Comment on this)
1:51a	SF Writers are odd folk But they make me laugh: http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/004744.html (6 Comments | Comment on this)

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