CONSTIPATED

So I have a few ideas for posts germinating in my brain, but at the moment I seem to be incapable of turning those ideas into actual words so, for now, I'll give you a sample scene from the book.  Hope you enjoy.

Way back when, when the soon to be Israelites were meandering about in the desert for forty years trying to recall how they’d confused good old ‘I am who am’ with the oversized bull from Wall Street, Moses faced a similar problem. Jews, even then, were a litigious bunch, and with an entirely new set of codes and regulations, loopholes and their corresponding lawsuits abounded. Now this was fine - especially for the lawyers - but, much like today’s judicial system, the courts, or in this case, court, found itself backlogged and overburdened. You see, for all his laudable traits, and I’m sure there were many (personally I think humility is a bit overrated, but whatever), Moses was a bit of a control freak. I suppose it’s understandable, you commune with God for a few days, carry his tablet down a mountain twice and all of a sudden you feel like you’re the only one who can explain what God really wants. So, Moses goes off and becomes God’s own judiciary, adjudicating his butt off eighteen hours a day five days a week from the relative discomfort of a bench in a tent. As you can imagine though, standing in line in middle the Sinai desert waiting for your case to be called isn’t anyone’s idea of a day at the beach, sand notwithstanding, and whether Moses knew it or not his customer service rating was taking quite the hit on Amazon.com. Anyway, this goes on for a couple hundred sunburns when along comes Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law (and inspiration to every delegater and contractor since).


“Moses” he says, “your people are suffering.”

Now Moses was a man of God and like most men of that ilk he was a bit of an ascetic and so he responds, “I know it’s a bit warm Jethro, but it’s a dry heat.”

Jethro himself was a former pagan priest so he knew that without having ritual human sacrifice as a backup plan keeping the people happy was mucho importante (Jethro took Spanish in high school, and, little known fact, was actually the inventor of the chalupa), so persists.

“Moses” he continues, “couldn’t you train a few disciples, teach them what they need to know so they can handle the basic stuff?”

Moses was intrigued at this point because really, ascetic or not, how many times can you listen to people fight over who owned the nasal spray (Like I said, it was a dry heat), so he says to Jethro, “You might be on to something here dad (Moses was respectful like that), but won’t the people complain if they have to settle for some schnook judging for them instead of me?”

Now as I said, Moses was a humble man, but even humble men can take pride in their work, so Jethro knew he had to play it safe if he didn’t want to hurt his son-in-law’s feelings – plus Moses still had that plague wielding staff and, after the whole smashing of tablets thing, a reputation for having a bit of a short fuse. “Of course they’d prefer to have you judge them personally Moses, but we’re in middle of a desert, and for all manna’s wonderful properties it doesn’t have much in the way of SPF.”

“This is true.” Moses replied, recalling with a bit of shiver the manna disaster of 2 p.e. “That stuff is like body oil. Aaron was practically molting.”

“Exactly,” said Jethro, “this way people can go to men they know you’ve trained and who report to you for their all small claims stuff instead of having to line up from here to the Red Sea.”

“Reed Sea.”

“We’ll see about that one, Moses.”

Anyway, after a few tugs at his beard Moses told Jethro he liked the idea and so division of labor was born.