Oye Como Va

Every time I got home from work, this new security guard at our house always stands in attention and gives me a salute after a hard days work. For a minute I feel like some important military officer every time I reach our doorstep, though I can’t remember if he’d still salute me whenever I come home drunk with peter or ariel at one in the morning, maybe because I’m too wasted to think that I’m still that officer or probably he’s sleeping on the job. I should tell him to quit doing that, he does look silly.

Santana is coming to our little city this Sunday and I’m very much interested in listening to them live, but I’ve heard that they’re going to do a Woodstock kind of gig in some empty parking lot. And from the kind of crowds outdoor rock concert draws, I might end up squeezing myself into a great mass of humanity than rather be listening to music. I was hoping they’d sing in a theater or someplace orderly where you could pull up a chair and listen in peace. Though the only good thing about a outdoor rock concert is that chances are, beer is sold in the place.

It’s already a Friday and hell I don’t have any idea where to get hold of a ticket to the concert. The only place I’ve heard where I could one is from this rock radio station, my friend told me that if you called up that rock station and sang one of santana’s song “black magic woman” you could get yourself a free ticket. Oh hell one ticket is not worth for making fun of yourself on air for the whole city to hear, and I don’t even think I can buy her story that you could get a ticket from singing. By the way “Oye como va” is santana’s song which I like the most, my spanish is terribly poor and correct me if I am wrong, does it mean "hear it as it goes"?

Evangelion Judas

I was planning to go on a cruise for the lent holidays but hell every seat was taken and guess I will be holed up at home again for the rest of the weekend. There was an interesting documentary that aired on the national geographic channel for lent though.

Something to think about this lent

The life of jesus is told in the gospels of mark, mathew, luke and john of the new testament. But in addition to what christians preach, there exists a dozen more hidden gospels that never made it to the new testament 2000 years ago. Some of these were the gospels of thomas, thaddeus, philipp, mary magdalene and one gospel in particular, from the celebrated traitor of all time, the gospel of judas.

In a nutshell

Early Christianity around 100 AD was an underground religion and romans persecuted these christians because of their faith. Christianity was preached sporadically with anonymity during those ages and it became diverse with each preacher, each preaching according to the gospel at his disposition.

St. Ireneaus of Lyon decided to define the teachings of christianity to what it is now by narrowing down to stories of the gospels to the versions of mark, mathew, luke and john because for whatever reasons they saw them fit. And moreover if these christians were to die a martyr under the romans, the least is that they have a common dogma in their faith unto their death.

In fact St. Ireneaus did denounce the existence of the gospel of judas, though no copy was ever found.

1974, a farmer finds the only papyrus codex to the gospel of judas under the desert caves of Egypt. The codex finds its way to a couple of antique dealers and collectors for a couple more years until in 2000 when its significance was realized and reconstruction and interpretation of the whole codex was made. Authenticity was beyond doubt. It wasn’t til april 6 that this ancient document was made public. Hence the curiosity of yesterday’s date (see last post) and it was about time too that we heard judas’ side of the story.

It must have been tough for judas to be branded as the icon of betrayal by the christians, but after 2000 years, the revelation of his gospel said otherwise. Im even planning to buy a book about it at amazon.com. It did interest me a lot knowing it breached the bible and challenged the christian faith, or simply I have a penchant for misunderstood villains.

What is it all about?

Contrary to the 2000 year old christian doctrine, the revelation from the gospel of judas discloses that judas betrayed jesus because jesus asked him to do so.

Knowing that Judas was reflecting upon something that was exalted, Jesus said to him, “Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom. It is possible for you to reach it, but you will grieve a great deal. [36] For someone else will replace you, in order that the twelve [disciples] may again come to completion with their god.”

“But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me”

“And then the image of the great generation of Adam will be exalted, for prior to heaven, earth, and the angels, that generation, which is from the eternal realms, exists. Look, you have been told everything. Lift up your eyes and look at the cloud and the light within it and the stars surrounding it. The star that leads the way is your star.”

If he never betrayed jesus, the crucifixion never took place, lent never took place, and everybody could still be eating meat this weekend.

What if the gospel of judas is not true? Then what makes the other gospel so true. Then that what faith is all about, believe in what you want to believe.

Strange Time

Tonight at 2 minutes and 3 seconds after one in the morning of wednesday april 5th the year of our lord 2006, time will be read as:

01:02:03 04/05/06

終於我了剪長髮

My younger brother shaved his hair off before I left for manila last week, ariel shaved his hair off after I got back from manila and Natalie Portman shaved her hair off in this movie vendetta I just saw 2 days ago. It was about time I find out if my head was round too or if it had horns so I also decided to shave my hair off first thing yesterday morning. Yule bryner I was not but it didn’t look bad though, my employees even told me I looked like I gained weight.

I also decided to try my luck in lifting weights, I needed to build more real flesh under my skin and I couldn’t fool everybody long enough that I gained weight by just exposing my scalp. I signed up in this gym whom the owner was friends with my father, because I wanted the gym staff to know who the hell I was and save me the trouble of going through all the registration crap before I change my mind about doing gym workout.

I got to the gym around noon, the only thing the staff had me signing on was this question sheet asking if I had heart problems, bone problems or any health problems, and for a minute it began to look like a waiver form. None of the questions concerned me except when it did ask if I drink alcohol, and at this chronic rate that I drank, I would be one hell of a liar if I said I didn’t when the world knew better. I answered yes but then the question had to leave one big space below it for me to relate my drinking habits. Hell they wouldn’t want to know, I left the whole thing blank and it was probably enough to let them know I drink.

I was terribly concerned about the place, everybody around had muscles the size of bread buns sticking to every part of their body, except bless this other wimp who was about my built and was working hard about it. And worse, all four walls of the gym had mirrors on it so I saw the glory of my scalp from all directions. First thing my instructor had me doing was to sit and pedal in one place for 20 minutes in this immobile bicycle contraption, and it only took me 3 minutes til I got bored. I had to distract myself by thinking of something, even those dumb hamsters can’t go on running in hamster wheels that that long without anything on their tiny brains. The only thing I could see from where I sat was this digital meter making tabs about the progress I am making from pedaling both legs in one place. I saw from the meter that for about 10 minutes I should have traveled 2 and a half kilometers if that contraption only had wheels. I was beginning to think how fast I can go if it were a real bike, but I realized a human can already sprint up to 25 kph and from that rate, I was only as fast as the rate that I can walk. I should have told the instructor that I could have walked around the city block below for 20 minutes than to sit and kick and think stupid thoughts in one place.

And for the rest of the hour the instructor had me doing routine movements with dumbbells that I felt my whole body was worn out for the rest of the day, like I just carried dumbells on reenacting the road to calvary a week before lent.