Queensland is Goin’ to Hell

I don’t have much of an excuse. I certainly could’ve finished this off by now, I just haven’t. Coulda put up all the pics as well. Didn’t. And that’s all I’ve got to say on that.

On to this: The Bible’s a pretty big book, bigger still when you consider how flimsy they always make those pages. Seriously, publishers really think this book doesn’t deserve the paper quality of even John Grisham’s latest? John Grisham’s latest in paperback? I’m certain that’s a smiteable offence.

But my point is, I’ve been under no illusion that I’d get it finished over the course of one busy month in Australia. After about our fourth stop, I knew more than ever I wouldn’t get very deep into it at all, unless I could read it while on the train, and that would require buying one, and well, that just ain’t gonna happen. So I settled with the humble goal of getting through Genesis.

Problem: once we left New South Wales, the hotel Bible well dried up. I don’t know if it’s because Queensland is a largely illiterate state, or because Gideons can’t survive in hot, equatorial climates, or what. But I do know that when the rapture finally does happen, the citizens of Austraila’s vast northeast are gettin’ Left Behind. Nary a good book to be found anywhere we stayed.

Thank God (I assume) that we were heading back down to good, pious Sydney for our last couple of nights. Our final hotel housed for me just what the (Christian Scientist) doctor ordered, right there in my nightstand drawer.

My final thoughts on the origins of the universe and all of humanity? Pretty anticlimactic, though I will say I liked the usage of “spake” as the past tense for “speak.” I’m gonna start using that one myself. Otherwise, what you get from the last handful of Genesis is soap opera stories of long-thought-dead-sons-now-kings reuniting with their 110 year-old fathers, all very Sally Jessy Raphael. But that’s an off-season episode of Sally; let us not forget the tale of Lot and his daughters, way back in the sweeps of Chapter 19 (31-36):

And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth:

Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.

And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.

And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.

And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.

Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father.

Ugh. And that’s all I’ve got to say on that.