I'm holding out for a vacation in Mexico with Lars.

"There are still tickets left. Not much time, get yours today." -- a trip to the hokey land

I'd go if I had the cash to burn, not because of Lars but for the chance to see some of the worlds holy sites.

Tenskwatawa,

I don't get it. What do you mean by "hokey land"?

I'd go in a hot minute. What would be more fun than to kick back in a lawn chair with Lars, crack a cold one and watch Israeli bulldozers knock down Palestinain homes? Heck, we could even pack our Glocks and pop off a few rounds if the locals got uppity.

Hey Anonymous,

Just be careful that you don't get blown to bits by a suicide bomber while riding on a public bus or eating at a restaurant.

Lc Scott, 'hokey' was the easiest pun I had, (dropping 'folly,' 'bully,''wily,' and maybe 'prole-y'), to give my disgust at tagging anyplace 'holy,' or they all are and none more holy than any other. So I meant disrespect.

But as your question sounds serious to my ear, I can try to answer in spirit of Truth.

In the Biggest Picture, Jerusalem recently celebrated its 3500th continuous-inhabited birthday since founding. That's remarkable, even awesome, not particularly 'holy.' So I claim some sense of the depth of its veneration. Still, no 'holy' on it.

The thing was, the Hebrew pyramid-building slaves 'invented' sound-for-symbol, which rudiment becomes the alphabet, soon afterwards. So by the time they got to Jerusalem they were 'writing' their campfire tales, and that's their glory and that's the only difference from all the others. (There was earlier writing, the hieroglypics, but it was royal, not commoner -- so ceremonial, not folkloric. Studying astrology can lead you back 4500 years ago, or more, in the earliest books talking about Mars and Jupiter and Saturn hallmarking gods and devils; and Venus, goddesses; and Mercury, scribes; not to mention Ra and Isis and Horus - sun, moon, earth, thus humankind. The Egyptian Book of the Dead. Which is borrowed in passages in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Which is plagarized in Bible parts, both Old and New T.'s. Writing worth keeping. Allow fifty generations retelling a story, and two or three translations between languages, and pretty soon you see central stories told various ways. The universe created in seven 'days?' This other version says in seven 'stages.' And this further one says each of the seven (visible) planet 'cycles' matches a developmental stage in each human's life. Get it? Among my favorites is substituting 'months' for 'years' -- moon cycles for sun cycles -- in, like, Methusaleh's 'age,' and presto, he's 960 months old, like 80 years, which is notably old among his peers. Fathers a child at age 480? Get it on, Methusaleh.)

All the biblical stuff is good tales, and about par for the course, for the age and in many places. Check out what went on then along the Nile and Indus and Ganges and Brahmaputra and Yangtze Rivers -- some classy stuff. Still, not 'holy,' despite that they all say so.

[Simply an aside, my Jesus view is unlikely to be yours. He's running precocious in Temple at age 12(?), then nothing until he rides back into town at age 30(?). Where's he been? There's a monastery up a mountain in Nepal, got his signature on the guest book. I believe it. All his 'parables' and even his 'Lord's Prayer,' are a couple of synonyms and a translation or two close to earlier buddha-hindu-confucian material. 'Do unto others as you'd be did?' 'Love thy neighbor as you, baby?' Try: 'Goes around, comes around.' 'Nirvana is selflessness.' Like the pharoahs said, there's nothing new under the Sun. But further, Jesus gets away. Either in body or begatted. That 'Mary' is his wife, they have a kid(s), they get in a boat, land ashore at the Pyrenees, Languedoc, say, (Ashkenazim meets Sephardim?), take up residence and lay low. Really rather mundane. The rest, it's said, is history -- 100 genertions. This is the 'blood royal,' sang real in Iberian, then sangreal, then san greal, the 'holy grail' the 'holy Romans' go stomping about for 1500 years to 'capture' (read: decapitate), to annihilate 'prior' claim. It's the whole mess o' history of Europe, 2000 years running, and through it all as much as we know is this 'writing' business. Got that alphabet thing going. And seven-day weeks, each named for a (visible) planet. Beyond that, one detailed historic event is as good as the next, and I believe or disbelieve particulars on alternate days. It's just a plotline, and there's a story in that. I believe it, from when I read it first in Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and then copied in The DaVinci Code, as the one story all the stories of history (2000 Euro-years) connect in and are made sensible by. To me, anyway. The greatest story ever told, so to speak. Still, not 'holy.' Really, mundane.]

The hokey 'holy land' joke gets started late, like 90 years ago. A commoner Jack Philby bribes a king Ibn Saud with a big chunk of land, (territorial mandate, say), if the king will split it and keep some Jews on half of it, who the supremacist Anglo-Saxons think to exterminate, er ... exile. In characteristic lying doubletalk, the glib Brits promote it as a carrot of attraction, ("we gotcher Holy Land, right 'over there' in the Arabian Desert"), instead of the alternative caning swaggerstick, (in the rule of thumb), of their inbred dementia, er ... discipline, in imposing sadistic oppressiveness. Voila, Israel.

What with word-power of post-P.T.Barnum p.r., (uh, and massmind broadcasting invented), co-developing in the same latest 90-year age, there is a ton o' story in it and behind it and around it, which a link refers you to, (see: Philby Plan), for your reading pleasure, and elucidation.

'Nuff said by me of it. Still, it is just another century, another story. H'ain't got much 'holy' spam in it. Do the hokey pokey and turn yourself around, that's what it's all about.

Holy to me is the land we walk on, the water that falls from the sky, the air we breathe, and ethereal sunlight.