Christmas scars Czech children and other random facts before the week begins

Doug Arellanes reports on a Czech Christmas tradition.

I played Pacman last night for the first time in 20 years. I haven’t gotten any better. After some shyness, my daughter played too and said, “I can see why you think that’s cool.” Then we watched “Cat in the Hat.” Great movie. Yes, Jeff, it’s safe for kids who believe in Santa. 🙂

This morning, we continued our family’s recent spate of church shopping. (Had visited University Presbyterian twice, but were put off by its triumphalist smugness… although my son liked the white columns.) Today, we went to the , recommended by some laid-back friends. The church has a worthy [url=http://www.mindspring.com/~c3h/C3HUUA_History/c3huua_history.html]history. Unconventional service, but you (ok, I) gotta love two middle-aged men rendering Joni Mitchell’s “River” as a Christmas song.

I also enjoyed the sermon, which pivoted on the point that the gospels have been translated twice — from Aramaic to Greek to English — and that lots of meanings have been lost and found in those translations. Read a couple of versions of a translated work and see there’s a lot of room for creativity in even a single round of translation.

To experiment a little, I ran the Lord’s Prayer through Babelfish translator from English to Spanish and back. Here’s the English outcome:

Our father, who the sky art sanctified is known kingdom, thy thy comes, thy will be done, in the Earth because he is in sky. East Dénos perdónenos day our daily bread and our infractions, as we pardoned to which violate against us. And condúzcanos not in the temptation, but entregúenos of badly. For thine it is the kingdom, and the energy, and the glory, for always and always. Love

My son doesn’t like the Community Church’s modernist architecture. Yes, the lack of windows is pretty idiotic, and could be easily fixed with a sledgehammer. (Sadly, I’m almost comforted by the concrete: I grew up spending Sunday mornings inside a sinfully ugly, windowless concrete chapel completed in 1971.)

To remind you why River is a great Christmas song, here’s the opening verse:

It’s coming on christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on…

Finally, I’m eager to know what Josh Marshall has up his sleave to report about “the never-truly-busted-open OpEd Payola scandal.”

PS Shannon Okey suggests everyone contribute to the knitbloggers’ “give farm animals to a poor village” drive.