GAH!!! I’m just finding out again how lucky I was not to get hooked up with my first bf. We’re IMing and he’s giving me a lecture about how screwed up the medical profession is and how he’s taking charge of his health because he reads the JAMA. Glad I dodged that bullet. I was too naive to realise what a jerk he can be. Wonder if that explains the 3 wives…?
Lucky for me, he lives in Arizona and it’s not likely I’ll ever see him again.
thanks, gt, for the welcome home
Well, so much for getting things done today, I just woke up around 7pm, so I got nothing done today - it’s going to be a BIZZY weekend. I have to get a lot of PR stuff done for the chorus, and wouldn’t my printer pick now to malfunction
Hopefully, I’ll be able to get it fixed, or I may have to adjust to use window envelopes. That’ll be interesting. (I can print the letters at work, when no one’s looking, but not the labels…)
Oooooooooo…what do you think’s going to happen ? Maybe they’ll fine you? Good luck. Better being fined than audited.
FCM, I know how you feel. i found my ex’s website some time ago, and he used to be cutely geeky but now he’s gone way over the edge and has a really sorry boring job - tax agent. Eek.
Be back in a few minutes with the Holiday for Friday night!
Ha. My ex just turned into a big slut. Apparently I was forcing him to subsume his tendencies in that direction. Whatever. Still, I had a weird dream about him last night.
My first BF–lives alone with a dog. His mother is very happy that way. (cue Twilight Zone music)
I have nothing to say–off to bath and bed for work in am. I sure hope something comes of this online app I did today.
Also, since I am working tomorrow, I put in a request for bad weather. Just thought those concerned should know.
Anyrose is back and in good posting form. Now we just need Winston back…and (insert anyone I have forgotten here).
I have too many ex-gf’s to count.
I’m in the Witless Protection Program…
I hope it’s just a fine…
YO! People who were supposed to bring #2 son home from Bday party–BRING HIM HOME ALREADY.
Party was supposed to end at 8pm. It’s now 8:40pm. I wanna take a bath! I can’t take a bath when someone is gonna knock on my door soon!
Stoopit late people. (this is what happens when I ask for a favor–note to self, don’t ask for favors!)
Never mind. He’s home now. (stoopit me)
Next Holiday! We’re almost at the end of the week, but I’ll have one for Saturday and Sunday, don’t worry!
(this is long btw)
Janam Ashtmi
The Birth of Krishna
Before His Birth:
Vasudev was the best friend of the stern Kans Raj. In gratitude and friendship, Kans decided to wed his beloved sister, Devaki, to Vasudev. Now Kans was not a good man, and on their most joyous wedding day, however, Kans learned of a prophecy that the seventh son of this marriage would spell his doom if he did not change his ways.
Kans was enraged, and flew into a temper. (Personally I think he went insane). He immediately drew his sword to kill Devaki. Vasudev fell at his feet and swore he would give all his children over to Kans the minute they were born, only not to kill Devaki who was after all completely innocent. Vasudev perhaps hoped the sight of the children might melt his brother-in-law’s heart.
Kans agreed, and imprisoned Devaki-Vasudev. But the sight of the children did not melt Kans’ heart. Instead he killed each one by ripping it from the arms of its mother and dashing its head against the stone wall.
[Please note: While bad, there is more than what is seen here. In Hindu culture, one must continue reincarnating until all sins have been washed away, and a death caused in childhood and ordained by the gods washes a good deal of sin away. Life is meant to be pain, and a life ended in childhood also spares that ain. Still not nice, but you see how it is.]
Vasudev protested, saying it was his *eighth *child that the prophecy spoke of, and why kill the rest, but Kans would hear none of it. Six of Vasudev’s children were killed this way.
Legend says that Vasudev’s other wife, Rohini, was staying in the palace as well. She came to Devaki, when the latter was pregnant with her seventh child, and the Lord in his infinite power transferred the spark of life from Devaki to Rohini. Rohini smuggled in a dead child, and they claimed one child was born as a stillbirth. Kans rejoiced, shouting “Now Vasudev’s children are so frightened of me that they return from whence they came even before they are born!”
Krishna Is Born:
The Lord himself incarnated as Devakai’s eighth son, and the parents had a vision of The Lord appear to them as well. He told them to take him to the village of Gokul, across the Yamuna River. When Vasudev queried how, magically all the guards fell asleep, the chains unlocked and the gates unbarred, and Vasudev was able to walk free.
He took the baby in a basket on his head, and began walking. The River Yamuna was very swift and fast-flowing, and it got deeper and deeper until it threatened to engulf Vasudev. But when the water was nearly above his head, the baby Krishna’s feet touched the water, and suddenly the river receded, the water parted (take that, Moses!) and a path was cleared to him.
He made it to the house of his friend Nand, who was waiting for him. Nand’s wife Yashoda had just given birth to a baby girl, and Nand encouraged Vasudev to switch the babies. When Vasudev protested the girl would be killed, Nand merely held up his hand and told him to trust.
Vasudev returned by the same path. As soon as he lay the baby in Devaki’s arms, the chains re-locked, the gates shut, and all the guards woke up, and the baby started crying. The guards ran to fetch Kans, who hurried back. However, when he lifted this baby by the ankles to dash it against the wall, the baby magically disappeared from his arms and the image of an adult woman appeared on the wall. She spoke, saying Kans’ evilness would bring his doom about, that the baby was born, and that Kans was as ineffectual as any child.
Thus was our Most Illustrious God born.
Krishna with his foster mother, yashoda.
The Celebrations
We celebrate it by making preparations as we would for a new baby in the house. We make butter and milk and cheese, his favorite foods. He also would steal butter in His childhood. Actually he was known as the butter-thief, so we re-enact His playfulness and ingenuinity in obtaining the butter pots the milkmaids would hang high so as to be out of His reach. In India they wash an idol of the infant Krishna and place it in a cradle, then draw tiny footprints with colored powder outside their door.
We do indeed dance at Janamashtmi, although they tend more towards devotional dances and songs.
Personal Experiences:
When I was performing, several songs in my reportoire were dedicated to Krishna. I played Krishna whenever I was able, as it was most enjoyable to pretend to break pots and bother the milkmaids and be boisterous and wide, and loud in dance, rather than graceful and overly feminine all the time.
For a long time I believed in Krishna, even when I had lost faith in other things. And even now, when I am atheist I still hold a particular fondness in my heart for him. As I look around my desk I have a statue of him and his love Radha, in silver filigree, as well as a lovely portrait of baby Krishna eating butter.
After this week you all know I’m adopted, i think, so that was another reason I identified so closely with Krishna. Why, even He was raised by a foster-mother!
Here is my favorite picture of the adult Krishna, with his love Radha:
Why is he blue?
I’ve loved your stories! Talk about your fighting ignorance! I’ve learned a lot.
Thanks!
I’d like to point out that the first mention of Krishna appears at 900 BCE.
BCE is apparently a new way to track dates, rather than the BC which is archaic in that the birth or death of Christ really doesn’t make a lot of difference to people not living in the Western world. CE stands for “common era”, and will eventually replace AD, hopefully. BCE thus stands for Before the Common Era. It’s still tracked the same way, just a more universal way to say it.
He is blue for multiple reasons. The “real” reason, insofar as there is one, is probably this:
Hinduism is mostly a religion of the intelligentsia. So the deep meaning is that blue is the color of the sky, thus the color of the earliest form of infinity humans could grasp. He wore yellow. Yellow represents the color of the earth. So this means - the great glory of infinity, bound up in a tiny little human package, born to earth.
When I was a child, I was told such stories as:
He is blue because as a child he was bitten by Kala Naag, the giant serpent who threatened his home village. Krishna defeated him, but the color forever changed him blue.
There is a song that tells he was born on such a dark, stormy night, so his color was changed forever.
I’ve also heard that he is blue because he was a native of India, whereupon the Aryans who invaded were much fairer. So they depicted him as being blue. The world now being unsure of whether the Aryans invaded or not, this theory is not so good.
Holy crap, on researching this I happened across a Stormfront page. Purge the brain, where’s the bleach, how dare they mention Krishna, the bastards!
Interesting!
When the Kid was maybe 11 or 12, she came home from school one day and announced that her very favorite Hindu God was Krishna.
Her mom and I were quite surprised at this, as until this time we didn’t know she knew any Hindu Gods, let alone have a favorite.
I remember clearly her trying to tell us the story of Krishna - though not in such detail. I remember the butter stealing, and the evil man killing babies, and one being hidden away with another family.
Keep this up and I’m going to know about Hindu deities than I do about the ones I was raised on!
I’m a little cranky this morning. I wanted to sleep in but they were mowing the lawn out back. Who mows the lawn Saturday morning? yawn Last year they did it on Wednesday mornings, which I didn’t mind so much because you had to get up anyway.
Out of my crankiness I got up and vacuumed. I’d spilled some beads last night but didn’t want to vacuum them at 11:30 at night, even on Friday. Today I figured, everyone’s awake anyway, because of Lawn-Mower Man. So there!
Good morning one and all.
Today promises to be a very busy day. The daughter is going bowling with some friends of hers, so I need to go the bank and withdraw some cashola for her. I don’t have any on me. Plus, I need to go to the store to get something for the party we’re attending tonight. Also, Mr. Taters has softball practice today. There are a couple of other things I need to do, but I can’t remember them. At any rate, daughter’s friend is picking her up at 1:00 this afternoon, so I need to make sure she has cash by then. The party starts 6:30 and hubby’s practice is at 3:00.
Oh! I need to get gas for my rig. I’m very close to the “E”. I usually don’t let my rig get that low, but we used my rig to go out to dinner last night and we had to drive a fair distance to get there and back.
FCM, what evening is going to work for you in regards to us meeting up when I head to DC?
As I have NEVER been to DC, I have idea of the distances involved and what places to go to eat. I’ll actually be staying in Alexandria, somewhat across from the Skyline Building.
I tried to get an earlier flight to DC, but the flight I’m on was the earliest flight available. So, I depart Seattle at 8:50 AM and arrive in DC at 5:45 pm.
I’m very excited about meeting you LIVE and IN PERSON!
The sun is out and it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day here. Tomorrow they’re talking about temps in the high 60s. It’ll be a regular heatwave!
**Bobbio, ** your stalker is really weirding me out. I hope that everything turns out alright. I wish I could offer some suggestions, but never having had to deal with sort of thing, I wouldn’t know what to say.
Mr. Taters just informed me that he may not go to practice. His shoulder is all messed up and sore and has been for quite some time. I think he needs to go to the doctor, but in typical guy form, he blows off that advice.
Off to cruise the Dope and clean myself up.
Wow, everybody must be busy, busy, busy today.
I thought about starting a Taters is coming to the DC area thread, but really, I seem to spend most of my time on the SDMB here at the MMP. I mean, I post occassionally to other threads, but I honestly don’t think most folks outside of the MMP would really know who I am.
It’s too bad that Sean and Bobbio live so far away from where I’ll be, because it would be nice to meet them in person as well.
I have tentative plans to hopefully meet up with my cousin as well. I haven’t seen her in over 20 years. However, she retired from the Air Force earlier this year and is starting a new job about now, so she’s not real sure we’ll be able to meet up.
I still haven’t accomplished anything today other than looking at my newspaper, drinking coffee, reading the internet news sites, and reading and posting here. I’ll have to get a move on here…
thank you, mika, for the wonderful education you are providing for the record, Jews have been using BCE and CE for centuries or at least one century, because my grandparents used it But I am fascinated by your posts and can’t wait to read the next one.
also Phooey on lawmower people. Bad enough they come out on Saturday mornings - but the other crew comes Sunday morning!!!
Happy Saturday! Mika, keep those holidays coming! This is great stuff. I feel like I’m really getting a bead on Hindu culture. 
We’re on for Wednesday, right? What’s a Stormfront page?
So, as I briefly mentioned yesterday, I’m switching to a new laptop. I actually have the new one sitting next to the old one as I type this. I told them I’d give them the old one on Tuesday, which gives me until then to switch the files over. The new one is very similar to the old, but there are several distinguishing features: First, it has twice the RAM. One gig instead of 512 MB. Also, it has a fingerprint sensor for added security-ness, although really it’s just the “gee whiz!” factor. And it has a gyroscope of some sort, because it can detect when the computer is moving and stop the hard drive (to avoid damage) accordingly. The battery seems to be somewhat better too, although I strongly suspect that’s because the old one has deteriorated from being plugged in all the time. It seems that it needs to be depleted every so often to maintain its charge.
The thing I like most about the new machine? It’s so CLEAN. Honestly, after 3 years my old laptop has more of my hair and skin cells than I do, all tucked neatly in its keyboard. If I hung on to it much longer, it’d have enough to make a clone of me - an evil clone, ready to do its evil bidding. It’s a good thing I’m getting rid of it, or else my clone would take me prisoner and use me to conquer the world. Just think about it: my evil laptop and my evil clone, who together know more about me than I do, with me as their captive? You’d all be doomed. You should thank me for saving you. I accept cash and all major credit cards.
