Caught In A Web-Nado

Another day stuck in my office being forced to participate in ridiculous “training”. I get it. Fraud is bad. I can’t complain too much though. They could have made me go to some classroom somewhere, and I wouldn’t have been able to search the internet while they teach me how not to get caught laundering money. I got caught in a pretty good web-nado. I started with the lyrics to Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper”, which I had always thought was about cops, but I started thinking about it and I don’t think the British call any of their police troopers. I was right. The lyrics aren’t about police. They’re about British soldiers fighting in the Crimean War, which lead me to the look up the Crimean War. I didn’t know anything about the Crimean War other than the British and Russian were involved. This knowledge came from Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels. The Crimean War was serious business. It was almost like a dry run for World War I with the British, the French, and the Ottomans fighting the Russians over who was the rightful guardian of the Holy Land. It was the first war that used the telegraph and railways, and it also made Florence Nightingale famous. The fight over the Holy Land lead me to the Eastern Orthodox Churches, which are a lot more groovy and chill than I had thought before. I thought the Eastern Orthodox Churches were like the Roman Catholic Church with witches and vampires and active dark magic. I was wrong. They’re like the Roman Catholic Church, but much less concerned with concrete explanations for Christian mysticism. They’re much more comfortable making leaps of faith in matters of Mystery. They don’t have a long-winded explanation of transubstantiation, although they do believe that the bread and wine consumed during the Eucharist becomes the body and blood of Christ. They also don’t believe that Jesus asked anybody anything. He died for man’s sins and in doing so redeemed man, believe it or don’t. The only Hell is the active rejection of God’s love. I could get down with that, but for one thing. Fasting. No, that’s a deal breaker. I’m not giving up meat for half the year, especially during gravy season. God understands. If he didn’t, bacon wouldn’t taste the way it does. My “training” ended at some point. I noticed only because my computer sped up. I had a history lesson and a near religious conversion. I’ll call that a pretty good web-nado.