"Leave A Legacy"

So this thing is for February - which year? Who knows. I am still trying to consider this to be an actual present rather than just a piece of trash laying around that was surreptitiously dropped into a gift bag. It's a little bit of a shame that I'm the one person in my kinband that's good at presents.

Anyhow - maybe that will be something I'll be remembered for after death.

This thing here is all about death and how you're supposed to be grand in death. The story is - the author goes to a big funeral for a nice guy and then immediately starts to think about the brief discourse on the funeral of Jehoram in 2 Chronicles (not the Jehoram mentioned in Kings understand - a different Jehoram). So first of all - Sure that's what you thought about - some obscure king from the 9th century BCE. Second of all - I immediately thought of one of the funnier Futurama episodes - where Bender is made pharaoh and builds his own (flaming) colossus - with a casino and millions of snakes. The next thing I thought about is the peculiar practices associated with death and how they're linked to a priestly caste who amorally profits from people's deaths. I was taken back to funerals I myself have gone to - where some grotesquely unctuous churchman interjects all his oily platitudes - stealing for his church & deity all the value of the person we had come to remember. And in those instances I was well aware of the churchman's due - his ugly remuneration in exchange for obsequious palaver.

So this compulsion to have a legacy is to me, the very picture of vanity - and I'm more than a little surprised to see it mentioned here as a virtuous pursuit. To be beloved by others is certainly virtuous - but to pursue that love with any interest in what your funeral will be like... I mean - tacky right? I'm reminded of the words of a greater wizard than me: "A heart is judged not by how much it loves but by how much it is loved by others." I loved Gygax and Arnenson - I mean, I really did - I cried a little when either of them died - and I didn't go to their funerals, I didn't need to make grandiose displays- I...

I dunno - this whole thing seems to be about how you should see to it that after death some greedy cleric gets his due. That's my takeaway here.

The bible passages though - they're straight up mystifying - it's a big, big stretch to connect it to the idea of a good funeral. Jehoram is one of those also-ran kings of Israel who didn't make a big splash & who was defeated & inconspicuous in history - the bible naturally blames this not on the inferior strategic position, economics or military readiness of the Israelites - rather it's the fault of the wicked king. In the same passage, with a straight face the author talks about how JHVH intends that the line of the Davidian kings go on in perpetuity - and has promised as much - which... I mean, it's pretty hard to take this seriously as a work of the divine if this is the message - "your minor kingdom will exist forever / or until the intercession of Assyria/Persia/Babylon/Alexander/Rome & so on." In particular when placed alongside contemporaneous works - like the Assyrian kings who regarded Jehoram's kingdom as a vassal state, just for example.

The self aggrandizing works of the ancients never shy toward subtlety. They record victories by gigantic, eternal kings without pause - and it's a little bit of a delight when there are conflicting accounts of these giant hunter-god-kings both saying that they beat the other one in war and that their deified status is such and so.

Anyhow - I want my tombstone to say: "Struck by lightning in a church while fighting dogs."