I can't shut up

About the weather! Sorry about that.

Today is Easter and I know there were civic and private egg hunting parties planned all over the Peninsula, but how many people will want to drag their wee tots out into the monsoon rains? Looking out my window this morning watching it teem, I felt for a while like I was in a Somerset Maugham book. Surly, abusive plantation owner husband. Rain. Sullen oppressed natives. Rain. Lonely, going-crazy wife. Rain. Rubber trees. Rain. Craggy, sweaty man -- passing stranger? Foreman? Rain. A scene on the veranda. Anger, despair, rain. Did I see this movie? It looks so familiar in my mind's eye, all dark grays and misery. Put me off reading Maugham for the rest of my life.

Today is Easter and I can't help but think on my other favourite obsession: religious fundamentalists. Don't you think that if Jesus came, or came back, however you want to see it, that the first people putting up the high-tech crucifix would be Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins or that utter asshole of the universe, James Dobson? Wealthy, hate-filled, punitive...drunk on power they distilled from the words of a person who allegedly said, "It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God." And: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." And: "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men."

For all these clowns bray about the literal truth of the Bible, they seem to have handily dispensed with the whole second half of the story -- the very half that is the words of the man/god they claim to worship so fervently. They are not really Christians at all, but some sort of warped, twisted non-Jews. They are radical Old Testament followers, without the millennia of thought and intelligence of Judaism, which of course also has its crazies, but overall seems to be less offensive than so-called Christian conservatism.

Anyway, for all those of you who are Chocolatists and venerate the Chocolate Holidays, enjoy your rabbit ears!