how uniform your beautiful is...

Walter, Karen and I were sitting on my rooftop yesterday with the sun smiling down on us--and this funny conversation started as a result of a book I'm reading for one of my essays. It's Abelard's "Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian". It's one of those 10 page "summarize this" history class things. So far I'm really liking Abelard just because he's so out there and into himself. Reminds me a bit of me (you know -- the illusions of grandeur and whatnot). This is where I break the fourth wall a la Zach Morris and blatantly wink at you guys. The first thing that endeared me to him was his statement that all Jews are stupid and all Christians are insane. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not going to write off two whole sects of people as stupid and insane, that would be bad, but you have to admit it's hysterically funny, especially for something that's being written in the 1100's.

So as I was reading this text out loud to them (sporadically when something funny hit me) we got onto a somewhat sensitive topic that is covered quite extensively in it. Circumcision. Weird. I know. It's funny what's acceptable in our society these days and we discussed how a majority of males in the U.S.A. are for a lack of a better word "cut". Then we discussed personal preference for our hypothetical children. Personally I think it's more aesthetically pleasing, but I'm not one to discriminate. Recalling an episode of Sex and the City (I know, I know) a lot of women are just more comfortable with a cut "member"*. Eventually we decided that it was a moot point until any of us had kids or different sexual partners, etc. Walter didn't really participate in that as he likes girls. I think he was overall just amused by the conversation but not really contributing, except to make funny remarks every now and again and fist bumping with me. That's kind of how we roll, but I digress...(hey TG).

So then I had work today - my first shift at the new job, and while I took the book with me I didn't really have time to read it, my break wasn't that long. I got home and promptly passed out in bed beside my laptop (it sleeps with me when there's no man in my bed, I'm a dork). Hey, when it takes you three hours to build a goddamned chair because of shoddy engineering or machining we can talk. Regardless, I woke up at around midnight and decided to go back to reading the book. And....we are still on the topic of circumcision. And it's funny. So let me tell you why!

I'm dating a sweet Jewish boy. I'm an atheist, probably on the scale of Richard Dawkins who I know is almost fundamentalist in his views, which I'm not, but I do (to a certain extent) agree that religion can be a form of child abuse. So back to my point - I'm reading this text and this jumpst out at me : "The Lord forbids us to marry pagans and above all those pagans whose land we possess, saying somewhere: Take care that you never join in friendship with the inhabitants of the land which may be your ruin. Neither shall you take their daughters as wives for your sons lest they make your sons commit fornication with their gods". I believe that's from Exodus. It doesn't matter, what matters is, my boyfriend should be worried b/c I might make him have sex with the Large Hadron Collider. Muah hah hah. I love namedropping that thing by the way.

Also this other quote jumped out at me, re: women in this day and age who prefer cut men. "For the sign of circumcision seems so abhorrent to the Gentiles that if we were to seek their women, the women would in no way give their consent, believing that the truncating of this member is the height of foulness, and detesting the divine sign of holiness as an idolatry." Interesting how that has changed so much in the past oh - thousand years or so.

That's all for now....I'll update if there's more interesting material, or who knows, maybe I'll post my eventual atrocious essay on here.

Now that would be a hoot.

*Abelard's text refers to it as such also.