Tetherd Cow Ahead

Faithful Acowlytes all! It is that time of year again and for me, 2010 has truly flown by. I approach the end of my seven month visit to the USA and our project is almost finished. You will hear all about it in 2011, around about the beginning of March, so be sure to stay tuned.

Because I’ll be travelling with my family for the next few weeks things will be a bit quiet on the Cow, so I want to take this opportunity (with the help of a video from one of my favorite artists, Mr Luke Jerram) to wish you all a very happy festive season, and a joyous and peaceful holiday. Thank you for your visits, comments and intellectual rigor ((Well, except for Malach – no intellectual rigor there.)) over the past year and I look forward to offering you a more attentive Cow year in 2011, when I will be back on home turf with a little bit more time to devote to things Cow. Many new ideas in the pipeline!

One piece of news that will disappoint many of you – the annual Rasputin competition will have to be a little delayed this year. I will not have time to devote to it before New Year, sadly. But I’ll make it up to you in 2011, I promise!

Merry Christmas! Hyvaa joulua! Glædelig Jul! Natale hilare et Annum Faustum! Heughliche Winachten un ‘n moi Nijaar! Gozhqq Keshmish! QISmaS botIvjaj ‘ej DIS chu’ botIvjaj! Alassëa Hristomerendë! Alassëa Vinyarië! ᖱᒣᖳᒐᒉᑊᖿᒪᔪᖱᖽᐧᒡᒧᐧᖾᒍ!

The Sony Pictures studios where I’m working in Los Angeles was once upon a time owned by MGM. It’s nice to know that, if you know where to look, remnants of the Golden Era of movie making can still be found.

The area where I’m staying in Los Angeles has a large Orthodox Jewish population. I’m quite fond of experiencing diversity in my surroundings but I have to say that I find being among strong religious communities rather off-putting. It emphasises for me the way that religion is a kind of mass delusion that encourages people to do very silly things.

For example: the Talmud states that, as a devout Jew you should ‘Cover your head in order that the fear of heaven may be upon you’ and Jewish men are strongly recommended not to walk more than four cubits with their head uncovered. To this end, I see many local men in this neighbourhood wearing the small skull cap called a kippah (or yarmulke) as they go about their business.

Yesterday while I was in the supermarket, I noticed a guy wearing a kippah which must have been pretty much the most minimal thing you could put on your head and get away with calling a ‘head covering’. It was not much more than the size of a Ritz cracker, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that he bent down to take something off a lower shelf, I doubt I would have seen it at all.

The problem I have with this kind of thing is the way that humans have decided to interpret an edict from the Holy Scripture to suit their own, human, purposes. Followers of many religions propose that something is The Word of God and then seem comfortable with adding as many human caveats and qualifications as they see fit. They act like disobedient children, who, when asked to do something they don’t like, interpret it to suit their own agendas. Where is there any kind of rigor in this way of thinking? It is yet another example of the countless double-standards that riddle religious doctrine. ((Not that I’m advocating fundamentalism, you understand, but at least the logic of it is coherent.))

I’m betting that the original intention of the Talmud was that you should wear a proper head covering like a hat or a scarf. ((Which, even in itself, is a berserk religious instruction that makes little rational sense.)) It’s obviously a pain in the ass to wear a hat all the time, so someone, somewhere got the idea that they could interpret the ruling a little more loosely, and a generous head covering became a cap, and a cap became the kippah we usually see today. The ridiculous little cheese cracker that I saw yesterday seems to me to be the most grudging acceptance of religious commitment. It prompted me to wonder why, instead of wearing the daft thing at all, the guy didn’t just go bare-headed and pretend that the supermarket was less than four cubits from his house. As far as I can see, it’s exactly the same kind of logic.

Yeah, now see, the problem with this supposedly comforting sign in the elevator in my apartment complex, are the words ‘little danger’. It leaves open the very real possibility that there’s some danger of uncontrollable elevator dropping or suffocation.