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Y'all must be as tired of reading about how little free time my work schedule has lately been leaving me as I am of writing about it, but I just thought that I would mention how I was in church on Sunday to sing with the choir, and the sermon was about love, but the service was mainly about gay marriage rights, and after the service, our minister and our intern minister were leading a group who were going to take the Metro into DC and march in the National Equality March. I know there are people who were opposed to the NEM, and I don't really get it. By which I mean that I understand their objections, but I think they make no sense. But I didn't join the group and march: I had to go to the office.

Anyway, the service itself was very moving. The couple who did the chalice lighting are very active in PFLAG, and the wife read the passage from Ruth that is often read at straight weddings:

Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.

I got a little choked up. Of course, later in the day, in between tax returns, I took a moment to look the passage up, and it wasn't until then that I realized the person Ruth is cleaving to with such vigor is not her husband (who has died) but her mother-in-law. I couldn't help thinking that Ruth's steadfastness was less a reflection of love for Naomi than fear of returning to her own family. Then I read the rest of Ruth, which is very short, and while the language of the KJV is a little bit opaque, so I couldn't really follow exactly what was happening, it seemed like Naomi sent Ruth -- who must have been something of a looker -- to simultaneously seduce and tease Boaz into marrying Ruth and taking care of both her and Naomi. I reckon that things often seem more romantic when they're taken out of context, though that, of course, is no argument against gay marriage.


Anyway, I'm not sure it was this past Sunday, but it was sometime within the last week or so, and I was at the office, feeling displeased, but then I noticed that there was a new entry up on Mimi Smartypants, and that made me happy. I don't link to Mimi Smartypants on the sidebar because I figure that everyone knows about it already, even though I was once chastised by another commenter on another blog when I complained that the blogger had simply copied and pasted (although he had probably retyped it) an entire MS entry. This seemed to me a) lazy, and b) pointless because everyone already knows Mimi Smartypants, but this other commenter, who was from Outer Mongolia or Idaho or some place like that, told me that I was wrong because he hadn't known about Mimi Smartypants. Of course, my initial reaction was that he likely didn't know about indoor plumbing, either, but I kept that to myself. Anyway, there was a link on MS to a video by some heavy metal group called Teitanblood. I'm not a big fan of metal, but since I was at the office, where I always keep my speakers turned off, I figured it was safe to watch even a video called something very like (or perhaps exactly so: I really don't feel like fact checking on this particular item) "Seven Chalices of Blood and Vomit." I couldn't watch all of the video, because I found it tedious, but I became somewhat fascinated with the etymology of "Teitanblood." I was never able -- in all of the ninety seconds I spent trying -- to figure it out, but I did learn that there was an instrumentalist of some sort named Set Teitan in some European metal band, so perhaps it was his blood and/or vomit in the name of the band and video.


Anyway, while doing my extensive, ninety-second research into the history of both Teitanblood and "Teitanblood," I came across a page which referred to another, apparently also metal, group called We Butter the Bread with Butter, which struck me as certainly one of the most culinarily enlightened heavy metal band names of the new millenium. Unless of course, they went out of existence in the old millenium. it was sort of hard to tell because the site (I would link to it, but I don't think I could find it again. You know how it goes when you're haphazardly surfing, don't you? Exactly what it was that you saw on site A that led you to site B becomes murky over time. It's a lot like the way my mind works shortly before I fall asleep. Except that when I'm falling asleep, I don't ever remember to copy and paste before forgetting where I got the information from.) I found was in what appeared to be an Eastern European language of some sort. Still, I would like to think that, if I had any idea what it said, this passage would resonate with me:

Pod nazwą We Butter the Bread With Butter kryje się duet z niemieckiego Lübben tworzący muzyke na pograniczu deathcore’u i cybergrindu. WBtBWB ‘wyspecjalizowało’ się w nowych aranżacjach znanych i lubianych niemieckich piosenek dla dzieci (Alle meine Entchen; Backe, backe Kuchen itp, itd). Dzięki oryginalnemu połączeniu charakterystycznych, prostych i znanych tekstów, ciężkich i melodyjnych riffów, elektroniki, szybkiej perkusji, growlu i wrzasków zespół szybko zyskał spore grono fanów nie tylko na terenie krajów niemieckojęzycznych.

I mean, that says it all, right? Unless, of course, it says something horrific and/or illegal. I recently read Lev Grossman's The Magicians (recommended: well written and very entertaining), and there's a scene in there where during a lecture, the protagonist gets bored during a lengthy incantation and decides to make the professor's lectern (or something) wobble slightly, and that very small and apparently innocent alteration results in somebody getting killed in a particularly unpleasant manner. So you can imagine the sort of risk one takes by inserting an entire paragraph of an unknown language. Hopefully I haven't posted anything horrific and/or illegal. Or worse: there may be Eastern European metal aficionados out there who simply cannot believe that I would post that because it either over- or understates the influence of We Butter the Bread with Butter, and, believe me, that was never my intention: I believe they were exactly as influential as you believe they were.

Anyway, in case I've inadvertently broken local obscenity laws, ruffled the feathers of any metalheads, or caused your best friend to be devoured by a fictional character, please accept my apologies, along with the nearly infinite cuteness of these kittens. Kittens cure all.