#stop the goat discussions now they're pretty much done

[darklingichor]

Once More Fom the Beginning, by Wendy Bertsch

I wish I liked this one more than I did. The way it was billed was a retelling of the old testament from the perspective of the women. This seems like a good premise for a chuckle or two. However, what it is is basically a sumerizatuon of the old testament with modern language showing all the men to be dicks and maybe a headshake or an eye roll from the women every now and again.

I mean, if I wanted to read the Old Testament, I would have, nothing was added to it by having everyone talking like they're 20 somethings in the western world. I mean, there was no humor, unless the humor was supposed to *be* the fact that they were talking like that and the woman stood around rolling their eyes.

I felt like this book really wanted to be like The Twisted Tales of Shakespeare where the humor comes from puns and playing with context and sentence structure.

It wasn't. Look, The Old Testement can read like a bonkers game of mad libs if you look at it right, and nothing was stopping the author from playing with the madness.

There could have been stories about how while the men were yelling and stabbing and talking to burning bushes, the women were behind the scenes trying to orchestrate a different plan and maybe the differences in their plan and the men's plan accounts for why some stuff doesn't make sense.

Or, maybe play with the stories a little.

Like:

The tower of Babel was just supposed to be a multilevel market place, designed to save space. They got it up pretty high, but people started arguing about branding and store fonts and whether one person should collect the rent or perhaps they should figure out a different solution, and then one day, during a particularly contentious discussion about who could actually own the space at the bottom (First for foot traffic) and who could be at the top (tourist spot, clearly) when Benjamin the fine foods merchent was arguing that he should have the top spot because people would be hungry by time they got there; while Jemima the goat merchant was insisting he should be at the top, because, the goats will end up there anyway ("I mean, c'mon Ben, you've met a goat!"). And while Ben was making the case that just because a goat could climb to the top doesn't mean they should ("Having everyone *below* goats? It's an open concept plan Jem, that could only end badly").

And all the shareholders put in their two cents, no one was watching when, running late Oppidiah, owner of the perposed ice cream and paint mixing emporium ( There were health concerns here which is why he was on thin ice as it was) tied his donkey to one of the support struts and ran inside. Now, the donkey was annoyed because the entire way Oppi was singing 1000 skins of wine on the wall and as migraine inducing as that song was, the jerk stopped at two. TWO! The least he could have done was finish! So, the donkey disregarded his tether and decided he was just going to leave the irritating little man behind. He began to walk away. Now, this was long before building inspectors and structural integrity rules. The whole structure creaked if someone sneezed too hard, if we're honest. So, it didn't take much for the support to pop free and send the whole thing tumbling down.

The reason that everyone ended up speaking different languages because everyone was pissed off at everyone else. Yeah Oppi tied the donkey up, but whose idea was it to allow for anyone to just walk up and mess with a building under construction? Why wasn't there a fence? Talk to Mickiel, the fence builder who wanted to be on three! Well, no one was paying him for labor and materials to assist in construction. Who was in charge if contracts? Oh don't even talk to Abrial, he's the one who brought in Oppi to begin with! All of them left in a huff, and refused to speak with each other ever again, they each taught their families a code with which they could talk shit about the others right in front of them and eventually each family became mutually unintelligable to each other. Also,this is why we call a donkey and ass, because that animal was a, in fact, an ass.

See? Just be a little silly. Instead, this book was just boring.