Expect Biden to fundraise on government shutdown in 3...2...

That was a tweet I read last night, something very close to that, and I thought in the moment, "Yeah, the bum."

But wait.

I bet tea party fundraises on it too. They would anyway, they would fundraise on everything. And so they have just now fundraised on this shutdown. And why wouldn't Biden? Come to think of it, why wouldn't any Democrat or any Republican? They will all say the same or similar thing.

I feel my nation played. Played like a ukulele.

And an accordion. And a drum kit. And a saxophone. A bagpipe.

The noisy instruments. For some odd reason this reminds me of a story I just now found on my laptop, Blinding of Truth by Falsehood.

He actually blinds him. The whole thing is odd because Truth is usually personified by Maat and this story diverges from the norm and makes Truth a male in conflict with his brother, in the end neither is vanquished, rather, the situation ends in balance, unsatisfactory, but very, oh well, Egyptian.

Falsehood wants to kill his brother Truth so he goes before the nine gods the so-called Ennead and told them a big fat lie about his brother stealing a blade, a ridiculously described blade that shows that the Ennead is none too familiar with the material world, a mountain forms the blade, a woods form the haft, the god's tombs form the scabbard and a herd forms the belt, the whole thing is epic, he claims Truth stole that blade and must be blinded for punishment, they do, he is blinded and the story develops about how Truth's son eventually has vengeance.

Blinding is just the first part, Falsehood tries to kill Truth and believes he is successful and that Truth is dead. But Truth lives and had a son.

At the critical point of discovery, the boy asks his mother who is his father because all the lads are making fun of him for not having one even though he excels in every way imaginable, a real stud this kid, masters all subjects and an excellent athlete, his mother says, "see that blind guy over there watching the door? That's your dad."

Here is were we lose something in the translation. This is not so clear.

Then he said to her, "You deserve the members of your family be gathered together and  a crocodile be summoned."

What does that even mean? Chaos would be the hippopotamus, their crocodile is of two types, curved tail and straight tail, In hieroglyphics, the curved tail does mean gather. The straight tail is determinative for crocodile. The word for crocodile is m-s-h mesh, and s-b-k sobek is the word for crocodile god.

The text is in demotic badly smudged, rubrics unintelligibly faded, lacuna all over the place. Basically smeared wiggly lines. I'm amazed anyone can make sense of any of it.

Even in demotic, you'd think a crocodile will stick right out, that your eye can go straight to it, but no. Even with all three translations, demotic, hieroglyphic, English, one cannot match them up so easily. Even with rubrics, they do not match. As if they are not saying the same thing.

I discovered a copy in hieroglyphics yesterday on my computer and wondered why I would have such a thing on this little laptop. I did not download that but it is just the sort of thing I'd go for. There is no point in transcribing demotic into hieroglyphics, that would be silly, except for etude and I didn't sign up for a study group for this. I think it came as part of JSesh program library or addendum to a dictionary.

The crocodile is there in the text but disappointingly tiny. You can hardly see it at all. The font does that. Ordinarily it would be big and it would end a line or a register. [Just like 'baby' and "song" and  "lullaby," in the Beatles Golden Slumber in asl you cannot slap a baby around like that so they must be changed when used together.]

Locating the crocodile, bringing the family together with its tail would stick out in pictures if painted on a wall, is what made me think of these two things together. These politicians do inform us of their  Parliamentarian machinations and leave it to us to figure out which outrageous 12-sided dice-rolling Dungeons and Dragons playing geek is truth and which is falsehood, all the while all of them and their freshly minted opposition too fundraising on it. Over an dover.

The ancient story frankly sucks, it is disappointing. You're hoping for some ancient insight but there is none worthwhile. Truth is blinded by Falsehood, son of Truth blinds Falsehood in revenge. Now Truth and Falsehood both watch doors, blindly.