Shoot outs, OKC building, 9/11....

So I get in my car yesterday at 10 am and drive down the street and can't get to the buildings where I am going to pay some bills for the guy I house keep for because the road is blocked with a tipped over bike, wrecked cars and lots of police. Figuring a bad accident I try to get around that intersection, but a whole block is closed. Some wreck I figure and drive further east to get around it all. Didn't realize it was a shoot out AS I was there. Only got the full story as I read the paper online this morning, since I'm not hanging on the TV checking out the news all the time.

This made me think of something to share with you about me. I'm not hanging on the news all the time, getting shocked at what people are doing to each other, because if one's a real follower of God, human antics are never a shocker, actually. The Bible is full examples of bad behavior, but they don't go into the gory details since that's not the point. For example, anyone who knows any history knows that idolatry was not just worshipping some stupid calf statue but killing babies as sacrifices to false gods. Once you realize that the Chosen People themselves got lured into doing exactly that, not once but a number of times, you don't get too shocked at anything that people do-sad, yes, grieved, yes, but not shocked.

So now you understand why I wasn't glued to the TV first thing each morning and thus missed the opening acts of both the bombing in OKC and 9/11 itself. I found out about OKC when my cousin phoned and told me, then I turned on the TV. Years later I've heard through the grapevine that people wonder why I do not cry, run around, rend my garments and over emote when something like this happens. Huh? The Israelites themselves would listen to the word of God, who was personally there, and then turned around and killed babies to false gods, and I am supposed to be shocked that someone sets off a bomb? Grieved, yes, but not shocked and not acting like it's the first bad thing I've ever heard about humans doing.

Same thing about 9/11. I was on the computer chatting with an ex and so I did not have the TV on. No relatives called yet since the ones who were caught up in the actual events were still caught up in the actual events (escaping, being held in planes on the runway). When I'm done with my chat I turn on the Weather Channel on TV and wonder why they are talking about "of course there are no flights right now in the USA." That piqued my curiosity and I turned to any channel and saw the two buildings burning.

What did I feel? Grieved. The same as I always do. Was I shocked? No, because this stuff is really inevitable. Read the Bible.

Again I heard people being mad, through the grapevine, because I'm not acting out some sort of outrage or hysteria. That's like expecting someone who got through World War II, including concentration camps, to wildly applaud at a Western movie shoot out. When you've already long ago seen how far and how bad people will go, it's not a lack of caring that keeps one from being reactive like a howler monkey. Instead, I am thinking, "Oh oh. This is not good. People need to stop the slippery slope into hell on earth followed by hell for eternity."

So that's why my pulse did not even quicken as I came across what looked like a bad wreck and only later find out it was cops defending themselves from an attacking nut. "Just another day in paradise," as a friend of mine ironically says.

For all you Inca, Mayan, Aztec, Toltec etc fans

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/02/inca.sacrifices.ap/index.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Children sacrificed by the Inca appear to have been "fattened up" in a yearlong ritual, new research suggests.
Researchers studied hair from the heads and in small bags accompanying four mummies of children sacrificed in Inca rituals. Their findings are reported in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The children's hair had been cut first a year and then six months before they were killed. By studying the chemicals preserved in the hair researchers can calculate the diet of the children.
The Inca lived in the area that is now Peru and were conquered by the invading Spanish in the early 1500s.
The children's diet was initially focused on vegetables such as the potato, but in the last year of their lives it was enriched with corn -- an elite food -- and protein probably from llama meat, according to the researchers led by Andrew Wilson of the University of Bradford in England.
"Given the surprising change in their diets and the symbolic cutting of their hair, it appears that various events were staged in which the status of the children was raised," Wilson said in a statement. "In effect, their countdown to sacrifice had begun some considerable time prior to death."
Changes in the hair samples indicate that in their last 3-to-4 months the children began their pilgrimage to the mountains, probably from Cuzco, the Inca capital.
The scientists are not certain how the children died, but think they were given maize beer and coca leaves.
"It looks to us as though the children were led up to the summit shrine in the culmination of a yearlong rite, drugged and then left to succumb to exposure," said co-author Timothy Taylor, also of the University of Bradford.