From the Hebrew, "to cease"-- and it's a good idea to DO some ceasing now and again, and Saturdays would "work" nicely for this blog. Divinely inspired, too--taking my cue from the Jews, of course, and the various Christian sects from 7th-day Baptists and Adventists all the way to the Lemba tribe of southern Africa, believe it or not. Saturday sabbatarians all. (In the pagan Roman and borrowed Anglo-Saxon traditions, our Saturnesdaeg was an unlucky day to undertake anything important, anyway, being governed by the the most disagreeable of the Greek gods--hence the superstition about "Saturday's child." But ironically, Saturn doesn't appear in the various Romance-language names for the 7th day; rather, all descend from the Latin Sambata Dies [e.g. Sp. sabado, Fr. samedi], the sabbath fossilized in the day before the day it's celebrated Roman-Catholically! Sun-day, pagan.)
So...as well as non-blogifying, I will also NOT be beating wool or scraping hides, two of the 39 Talmudic melakhat(=works) that could get you severely lapidated in Old Testament times, but I think I'm relatively safe in most of those areas of endeavor; however, I will be "building fires" today (using electricity) and writing/erasing two or more letters (why would one-letter-only NOT be fatal, while just...one...more aleph or gimel...?) as I am now--compounding the fire prohibition by punching in on the computer--offences that could also get you stoned, but not at all in a good way. Impossible to be a tee-total shomer shabbat, as John Goodman's quirky character tried in vain to be ("No, Dude, can't answer the F-ing phone [or words close to it]; can't even use the F-ing light-switch, DUDE!"), in The Big Lebowski. But I do go on. THAT"S why it's good to take a break at least ONE day out of the week; ergo, I won't be writing this today.
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Update 7-13-08--OK, henceforth every day of the week will be deemed a Saturday, for whatever purposes it needs to be put to--ipse dixit.
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