Sunday 31 March 2019

TL:DR: The Genesis Question part forty-seven

Hi, Everybody!

So, two things:

1, the bizness:
The Jaka's Story remaster has a Starcode!  APR191258 First month orders will be signed and numbered! "However many orders there are in the next 3 weeks, that's how many signed copies there will be. Diamond will order over the initial orders by some other amount, and those will become inventory books available after the initial order...but they won't be signed." [Thanks again, Sean!-Matt]

Greg Hyland is Kickstartering the second volume of the Monster Atlas, and if he gets another fifteen hundred and fifty-eight bucks [Erk! I'm using the AMERICAN figures. in CANADIAN, he needs another 674 bucks CAD-Matt], it'll have Gerhard art like the first volume. It'll look a little something like this.

There's more auctions up at ComicsLink (eight days left). And last week's update has a special AMOC auction. (Seiler's winning at $100 US.)

If you're waiting for a Indiegogo live for the Postcard Kickstarter, like the one for the birthday card Kickstarter, I don't know if there will be one.

The remastered Volume 1 is available digitally for $9.99.

2, I ran out of pages from issue 289/290 to run in front of Dave's Genesis Question commentaries. Dave suggested I use Jewish, Christian or Muslim religious images. But then, Superman's Frenemy: David Birdsong sent in a bunch of (so far) unused Cerebus in Hell? images and now I'ma gonna run them. So:
____________________________________________________________________________
image by Doré, Sim & Birdsong

21 December 14

Hi Troy & Mia!

Short one this week: trying to catch up on my sleep after getting back from the Kitchens' last night:

Psalms 19:1-6

To the chief musician, A Psalm of David.
The heavens declare the glory of God: and the firmament showeth his handiwork.

It's interesting that these are expressed in the two different manners,  allowing for a multiplicity of inferences.  The fact that the first half of the verse expresses it as "declare" -- which can suggest either actual OR metaphorical speech  --  that is, the heavens actually speaking in a language while the second half of the verse expresses it as "showeth" (which limits the meaning to a depiction or incarnation or both) suggests to me that "showeth" is used to COMPEL the inference (or what I would INFER to be the right inference) that "declare" is used literally: the heavens do actually speak.

The references appear to hearken back to Genesis 1:6-8, but with a slightly different nuance, because the reference here is to "heavens", plural, while Genesis 1:6-8 addresses the creation of THE heaven, the firmament that separates "the waters" -- waters under the heaven and waters over the heaven.  So, it seems to me there is a comparable compelled inference being offered here.  Just as there is a suggestion of speech OR demonstration (first half) so there's a suggestion of demonstration, only (the second half), the way it is expressed suggests that There isn't just one heaven, there is more than one and that these "plural heavens" are different from, not only the firmament (Heaven), but from each other.  BUT that -- however many heavens there are (The Koran tells us that there are seven) -- each heaven, by means of literal speech, declares the glory of God.

Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge

As I read this, it seems to me obviously to relate to the dichotomous relationship between "day" and "night" -- that the day is God's first creation, while the night is God Himself.  And that they are separate consciousnesses.  God isn't His first creation, but God knows what His first creation is thinking at all times.

Thinking is, by its nature and in many of its aspects, self-directed.  We literally talk to ourselves inside our heads.  What this verse appears to suggest to me is that this is an invariable conditional aspect of creation itself. 

God's first creation, "day" has a specific consciousness and that consciousness speaks to itself.

"Day unto day".  And that "day speech" takes many forms.  Some of it is lucid and some of it is just speech -- talking for its own sake "talking just to hear myself speak".  Whereas, in the same sense, God doesn't speak to Himself in the same way.  Whereas "day", as a limited construct and entity, muses upon things, speculates, declaims (the actual AND the fictitious AND the delusional)...

…and I would argue that that's what Scripture IS: mostly "day" musing, speculating and declaiming and God, intermittently, interjecting Reality…

…"night unto night" -- God speaking to God -- is just a pure demonstration/expression of invariable knowledge.  God doesn't speculate because God Knows.  It's the definition of God: omniscience. God doesn't declaim in the sense that the YHWH does -- rule upon rule upon rule, proscribing and attempting to micro-manage human behaviour -- God just expresses the nature of Reality, the construction that God made in which we ALL enact our lives.  "Here's where you are, here's the order everything was created in, 'Be fruitful and multiply'" and in God's sure Knowledge, that's really all that's needed to be expressed.  We, as human beings -- and "day" as God's first creation with delusions of being God -- will pursue multiple enactments and examine all possibilities over the course of our billions of years on planet earth and, at last, thoroughly understand Reality.   

As if this wasn't complicated enough -- but, I have to say, very lucidly and specifically expressed so as to limit -- but not eliminate -- incorrect interpretation -- the third verse seems to create no end of problems for the KJV translators.  I suspect because they didn't really understand what the first two verses were saying, so it was impossible for them to arrive at a translation that continued the sense of 19:1 and 19:2 as they read it. What they came up with was:

[interpolated: There is] no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. 

and then added, as an alternative translation in the margin:

No speech nor language without [interpolated: these their] voice is heard

And only after these variations, do they offer the literal English translation of the Hebrew:

No speech nor language without their voice heard.

Which follows naturally and smoothly, I think, from how I'm reading it.  God's first creation expresses him/her/its self in terms of thought and speech -- musing and speculating and declaiming -- while God expresses Himself in demonstrations of God's Knowledge which is Absolute and Irrefutable…BUT! characteristic of God's grace, God's undeserved kindness: there is "no speech nor language without their voice heard".

That is, that that's the purpose of speech as an attribute of human beings. 

Everything we say, we express either what God's first creation is musing, speculating and declaiming upon or we express God's Reality.  ALL voices are heard, though.  Arguably -- and I think it's the purpose behind the Psalm itself -- this is the driving idea behind creation:  expression.  The sheer magnitude and panoply of ideas, good, bad, indifferent, right, wrong and everything in between that came into existence as an implication of God's first creation having autonomy and free will needed something as immense as the known universe just to make sure that it could all -- however long it took -- find voice, express and enact itself.

This thought, as I read the text, continues in the subsequent verses:

Their [line/rule/direction] is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world: In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun

Of course, at the time, David wouldn't have had an idea of the immensity of what was being expressed.  To David the sun was just a ball of fire that passed through the heavens every day.  He had no idea of the relative size of the earth and the sun or the implications of the context as expressed. He would have read it as being aligned with what would be revealed in Ezekiel with the eastward facing gate: sun worship, but in the name of God/YHWH.

 "Day unto day" (YHWH) expressing and "night unto night" (God) demonstrating not only holds true as the nature of human beings and human societies, but also as the nature of the earth itself -- "THROUGH ALL the earth, and their words to the END of the world" --  and extends from there to the sun.  The discussion, the expression, musing, speculation and declamation in tandem with God's knowledge, is taking place on and in the sun as well: as the roiling conflagration/discussion between helium (YHWH) and hydrogen (God).

And then God provides an analogy of what this Reality is, the nature of What God Is Doing and Has Done and Will Do which couldn't really be appreciated until our present day with our own Sure Knowledge: that the earth is a tiny chunk of rock orbiting a mid-sized star and that all the stars visible in the night sky are a mere fragment of the totality of God's creation.  It took literally thousands of years to go from God's revelation of His Reality in Psalm 19 to the point where a human being would know enough to understand Who He Is which, as I read it, is expressed as:

Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race

His going forth from the end of the heaven and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof

Next week, God willing:  More Psalms.

A Very Merry Christmas to both of you and to Drexel!

Best,


Dave
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Next Time: Alright, enough of this Aardvark bullshit, I'm switching this blog to a REAL comic book treasure: Rob Liefeld!

Saturday 30 March 2019

CAPOSTROPHE!: LGBTQetc. PEOPLE No.1

Hi, Everybody!

The Jaka's Story remaster has a Starcode!  APR191258 First month orders will be signed and numbered! "
However many orders there are in the next 3 weeks, that's how many signed copies there will be. Diamond will order over the initial orders by some other amount, and those will become inventory books available after the initial order...but they won't be signed." [Thanks again, Sean!-Matt]

Greg Hyland is Kickstartering the second volume of the Monster Atlas, and if he gets another fifteen hundred and fifty-eight bucks [Erk! I'm using the AMERICAN figures. in CANADIAN, he needs another 674 bucks CAD-Matt], it'll have Gerhard art like the first volume. It'll look a little something like this.

There's more auctions up at ComicsLink (nine days left). And last week's update has a special AMOC auction. (Seiler's winning at $100 US.)

If you're waiting for a Indiegogo live for the Postcard Kickstarter, like the one for the birthday card Kickstarter, I don't know if there will be one.

The remastered Volume 1 is available digitally for $9.99.

________________________________________

Anyway, the solicitations for LGBTQetc. PEOPLE No.1 and the REMASTERED JAKA'S STORY came out, and well...


It didn't go well...
First let's look at the solicit, and see if we can see where things went..."wrong?"?
_____________________________________________________________________
Click for the biggerness, NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH SMALLNESS!!!

In 1963, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced THE X-MEN #1, and began a discussion about the blatant misogyny which results from bringing a teenage girl into an all-boys school, from the male members sexually objectifying Jean Grey when she first arrives (“WOW! She’s a real living doll!” “A Redhead! Look at that face…and the rest of her!”), to Hank McCoy committing sexual violence by kissing her on the cheek WITHOUT her consent, to voyeurism as she tries on her new costume and they all watch from around the corner.

This June, Aardvark-Vanaheim is proud to continue the dialogue with the 21st Century’s version of “The Strangest Heroes Of All” in the latest CEREBUS IN HELL? one-shot: LGBTQetc. PEOPLE No.1!
Diamond Order Code APR191257 (June, 2019)
LGBTQetc. PEOPLE No.1
(W) Dave Sim
(A) Dave Sim Gustav Dore
(CA) - Benjamin Hobbs parody of Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers' X-MEN No.1 cover (1963)
NOW WITH NO @#$%ING REPRINTS! EPIC-LENGTH ALL-IN-ONE 24-PAGE ISSUE!! MEET THE INFERNAL REALMS' MOST INCLUSIVE SUPER GROUP! LESBIANA HOMBRE™! Gay Chicano Female trapped inside the White Masculine body she never made! REDWOOD CITY™! He may look like a tree, but he’s actually a mid-sized metropolitan California tourist destination (and excretes his own pine cones!) BORDERLINE BOBBIEY™! Amazingly, he changes gender identity every time you refer to her by a different pronoun! Just watch him! You go, girl! BELVEDERE™! Tired of being a stallion centaur Belvedere demands her right to give birth as a broodmare! "No WOMB! No PEACE!” Watch, as the STRANGEST HEROES AND FEMALE HEROES OF ALL go head-to-head with Cerebus! Can the aardvark and his WAVERY HOMOPHOBIA LINES hold up against a SUPREME COURT DECISION!? Features the hit song "Don't Pine for your cone, Redwood City!" ALSO! CEREBUS GOES ON STRIKE!
B&W 24 pages………………………………………$4.00

But wait, there's more!

June also brings the expertly REMASTERED JAKA'S STORY, available to order NOW: Diamond Order Code APR191258

A-V is proud to present, at long last, Jaka's Story the Remastered Edition, fully-restored page-by-page from the original art boards. To celebrate this event, this edition will be signed-and-numbered by writer/cartoonist Dave Sim (limited to the amount of copies of the initial Diamond order).
Jaka's Story, the fifth volume of the CEREBUS series, represents a point of departure for the series, focusing as it does on a small cast of characters, living out their lives in orbital, Thoreau-like “quiet desperation”, drawn ever inward, until at last, they inevitably collide. It is a book of unparalleled intimacy and unrelentingly-detailed observation, combining Sim's unerring eye for gesture and small-scale conflict with Gerhard's groundbreaking background art and environmental design. The two artists create here a look unprecedented in the comics medium—as if the main characters were drawn by Don Bluth and Jaime Hernandez, costumed by Aubrey Beardsley, set-dressed by William Hogarth, and then rendered by Franklin Booth and Barry Windsor-Smith. In the now-decades-old “Comics as Art” discussion, Jaka's Story is arguably a long-misplaced key book. Sim takes his lifelong interests in art, desire, and power, and throws them into a mix spiced with Oscar Wilde (and a dash of Love and Rockets.) Because of its comparatively small-scale and self-contained nature, this book is recommended as a fine entry point to the CEREBUS series in general, especially for the lit-comic reader.
This new edition, painstakingly restored and printed on acid-free paper with a durable sewn binding, reveals astounding detail never before present outside of the original art itself. The carefully-textured, detail-rich art is now on full display for the first time, including delicate line work, slashing brush lines and organic texture, and some of the most sophisticated pen-and-ink rendering of the second half of the twentieth century. This volume also includes eight brand-new pages of extras, including a 6,000-word essay by restorer and critic Sean Michael Robinson, discussing the background and “secret origins” of the book, providing historical context for a whole new generation of readers.

As well, the first 4 issues of CEREBUS IN HELL? are now available for digital download through Comixolgy, along with the EXPERTLY AND LAVISHLY DIGITALLY REMASTERED CEREBUS VOLUME 1!

You can also watch episodes of CEREBUSTV every Friday for only 88 cents and purchase digital copies of any and all of the CEREBUS Trade paperbacks and merchandise from CerebusDownloads.com.
The BEST Deal In Comics! You can currently download ALL the CEREBUS trades for $99 CDN!!

To keep up to date with the latest on all things CEREBUS and DAVE SIM related, check out AMOMENTOFCEREBUS.COM, including Dave's Weekly Update every Friday.

And as always, please hit the unsubscribe button below if you'd rather not receive these periodic messages!

Sincerely,
Aardvark-Vanaheim
"In Hell, Everyone Is Included"
Copyright © 2019 Aardvark-Vanaheim, All rights reserved.
Our mailing address is:
Aardvark-Vanaheim
P.O. Box 1674
Station C
Kitchener Ontario N2G 4R2
CANADA
_______________________________________________________________________________________

Ya know, neat. But apparently...

Wherein Rich Johnston quotes people from the Twitters, where (apparently, I don't know as I'm "off" the Twitters for the next several years,) people are losing their shit over this.

Well, the Cerebus in Hell? Braintrust (Your pal and mine: Sean Micheal Robinson, Superman's Frenemy (and known Collaborator): David Birdsong, Heir to the Throne: Eddie Khanna, "Gee I should get around to giving him a funny title one of these days": Benjamin Hobbs, and Me (Yeah, I don't know whose brilliant idea to include me in a "BRAINtrust" it was either...) got to discussing it, and it turns out Dave Sim DIDN'T WRITE THE PROMO IMAGE OR THE PROMO TEXT. The text was written by Heir to the Throne: Eddie Khanna. Basically, this bit:
In 1963, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced THE X-MEN #1, and began a discussion about the blatant misogyny which results from bringing a teenage girl into an all-boys school, from the male members sexually objectifying Jean Grey when she first arrives (“WOW! She’s a real living doll!” “A Redhead! Look at that face…and the rest of her!”), to Hank McCoy committing sexual violence by kissing her on the cheek WITHOUT her consent, to voyeurism as she tries on her new costume and they all watch from around the corner.

This June, Aardvark-Vanaheim is proud to continue the dialogue with the 21st Century’s version of “The Strangest Heroes Of All” in the latest CEREBUS IN HELL? one-shot: LGBTQetc. PEOPLE No.1!
That's all Eddie. He even dropped by Bleeding Cool, to let them know:
Hi there. 
Dave actually didn’t have anything to do with the promo piece and text. I wrote the part about the comparison with X-Men #1, and someone else did the promo image and dialogue (although the solicitation text was written by Dave). So if anyone is offended by that part of it, it’s not Dave Sim you should be directing your anger at. That being said, perhaps wait until the issue comes out before judging it? Either way, thanks for the publicity.
The promo image and dialogue was (unless I'm mistaken,) by Superman's Frenemy (and KNOWN COLLABORATOR!!!): David Birdsong.

Anywho, I was at work when this all started rolling, so I said I'd fax Dave and let him know what's up later tonight, but Heir to the Throne: Eddie Khanna sent over a fax, and got a response:

Which is why I say:

I got a feeling it's gonna be another VERY interesting Please Hold on Thursday...

Next Time: Dave gives up on this "God" stuff and starts writing Feminist Poetry... Nah, I'm kidding, more Genesis Question commentary...

Friday 29 March 2019

Can Dave still ink? Let's start with a pencil... (Dave's Weekly Update #280)

Hi, Everybody!

The Jaka's Story remaster has a Starcode!  APR191258 First month orders will be signed and numbered! "
However many orders there are in the next 3 weeks, that's how many signed copies there will be. Diamond will order over the initial orders by some other amount, and those will become inventory books available after the initial order...but they won't be signed." [Thanks Sean!-Matt]

Greg Hyland is Kickstartering the second volume of the Monster Atlas, and if he gets another fifteen hundred and fifty-eight bucks, it'll have Gerhard art like the first volume. It'll look a little something like this.


There's more auctions up at ComicsLink (ten days left). And last week's update has a special AMOC auction. (Seiler's winning at $100 US.)

If you're waiting for a Indiegogo live for the Postcard Kickstarter, like the one for the birthday card Kickstarter, I don't know if there will be one.

The remastered Volume 1 is available digitally for $9.99.


And, heeeeeere's Dave:


Problems viewing this video? Watch directly on YouTube...


Man, I'm starting to regret being poorer than Seiler...

Next Time: Something!

Thursday 28 March 2019

Two Days Before

MARGARET LISS:
A few years ago I scanned all of Dave Sim's notebooks. He had filled 36 notebooks during the years he created the monthly Cerebus series, covering issues #20 to 300, plus the other side items -- like the Epic stories, posters and prints, convention speeches etc. A total of 3,281 notebook pages detailing his creative process. I never really got the time to study the notebooks when I had them. Just did a quick look, scanned them in and sent them back to Dave as soon as possible. So this regular column is a chance for me to look through those scans and highlight some of the more interesting pages.

If you have a copy of the Cerebus Cover Art Treasury, which not only showcases all the covers from Cerebus but gives some notes from Dave and Gerhard on the covers and it also has some preliminary sketches from Dave Sim's notebooks, you might have seen one of the preliminary sketches that Dave did for the cover of Cerebus #35.

Cerebus #35 cover page from the Cerebus Cover Art Treasury
That is page #153 from notebook #2. As you can see, the sketch on the notebook page has some similar elements - the characters and what they are doing, but the layout is different.

Prior to that sketch, Dave did a different sketch for the cover to Cerebus #35 on page 149.

Notebook #2, page 149
So Cerebus standing on a chair getting fitted for a suit instead of carrying the materials for it. And instead of Bran it is Astoria standing beside Cerebus.

Wednesday 27 March 2019

SIM CITY: THAT ISSUE AFTER out TODAY!


Benjamin Hobbs:

SIM CITY: THAT ISSUE AFTER is available NOW at your LCS!


Now in Previews, LGBTQ ETC. PEOPLE #1!
Promo strip courtesy of the always funny David Birdsong!

Next Week: The CIH? "Brain-trust" comes up with ALL NEW, ALL DIFFERENT Kickstarter pledge tiers!

Tuesday 26 March 2019

"It's a Whole New Look and Sound for the Weasels"; The Ol' AMOC Mailbag Strikes Back

Hi, Everybody!

The Jaka's Story remaster has a Starcode!  APR191258 First month orders will be signed and numbered! (I'm not sure how this works...)

Greg Hyland is Kickstartering the second volume of the Monster Atlas, and if he gets another eighteen hundred and forty-nine bucks, it'll have Gerhard art like the first volume. It'll look a little something like this.


There's more auctions up at ComicsLink. And last Friday's update has a special AMOC auction. (Seiler's winning at $100 US.)

If you're waiting for a Indiegogo live for the Postcard Kickstarter, like the one for the birthday card Kickstarter, I don't know if there will be one.

The remastered Volume 1 is available digitally for $9.99.
_______________________________________________________________________


So the ol' AMOC mailbag got this:
Hi.  I have some Cerebus crossovers to share with you for your blog.

I have the Awakening Comics #2 Cerebus appearance, as well as "It's a Whole New Look and Sound for the Weasels" from Patty Cake #3.
This is from the SIXTH AMOC Special Friend Of The Day: John Pannozzi

Suitable for framing...
Now, the Awakening Comics thing got posted during "Steve Peters Week".

But I didn't have the Patty Cake thing, so:



Thanks John!

Next Time: I hear there's a new Cerebus in Hell? coming out tomorrow. Dollars to Donuts Ben Hobbs mentions it. A lot...

Monday 25 March 2019

Dave's Collected Letters: Scream #4




Hi, Everybody!

The Jaka's Story remaster has a Starcode!  APR191258 First month orders will be signed and numbered!

Greg Hyland is Kickstartering the second volume of the Monster Atlas, and if he gets another ninteen hundred and twenty-seven bucks, it'll have Gerhard art like the first volume. It'll look a little something like this.

There's more auctions up at ComicsLink. And last Friday's update has a special AMOC auction. (Seiler's winning at $100 US.)

If you're waiting for a Indiegogo live for the Postcard Kickstarter, like the one for the birthday card Kickstarter, I don't know if there will be one.

The remastered Volume 1 is available digitally for $9.99.
_______________________________________________________________________


Friend to the Blog, and Heir to the Throne, Eddie Khanna sent in:
Hey Matt, not sure if this has been posted before (and I'm too lazy to check), but here's a letter from Dave to Skywald' SCREAM from 1974 (pg. 24. I'm sending you the whole thing, because, hey Why not?).
 
-Eddie
 Image result for Scream #4 skywald

And that's why we like Eddie 'round here. Thanks Eddie!

Next time: Eddie sent in more stuff. Wanna see that?

Sunday 24 March 2019

TL:DR: The Genesis Question part forty-six

Hi, Everybody!

So, two things:

1, the bizness:
There's a Indiegogo live if you missed the Kickstarter for the birthday card.

The remastered Volume 1, digitally for $9.99.


No word on the postcard Kickstarter, or a Star code for the remastered Jaka's Story, but I'll add 'em to the list when I get 'em!
2, I ran out of pages from issue 289/290 to run in front of Dave's Genesis Question commentaries. Dave suggested I use Jewish, Christian or Muslim religious images. But then, Superman's Frenemy: David Birdsong sent in a bunch of (so far) unused Cerebus in Hell? images and now I'ma gonna run them. So:
____________________________________________________________________________
image by Doré, Sim & Birdsong
14 December 14

Hi Troy & Mia:

Okay, back at THE GENESIS QUESTION:

We left off near the end of Chapter Three with Mr. Ross' citations in support of his criticism of "the gap theory" wherein he asserts: "Thus, it makes a mockery of those Scripture passages commanding us to 'test everything' and to look to the creation for evidence of God's existence and character'".  I don't think he makes a persuasive case, Scripturally, for that assertion, but, going citation by citation:

Psalms 8

To the chief Musician, upon Gittith, a Psalm of David.

O YHWH our Lord, how excellent thy name in all the earth! Who has set thy glory above the heavens.

I don't think David was a prophet, per se, but I do think he was considered to be, historically, the best conduit for the YHWH's theological assertions/pretensions.  I'd be guessing if I was to speculate on the extent of that conduit status -- i.e. how much and many of the Psalms were dictated to David by the YHWH (or in the case of those Psalms dedicated to God, dictated to him by God or someone delegated to that task by God). 

The assertions do seem to be to "informed" by Reality (or, at least, Reality as I construe it). 

The fact that David asserts that the YHWH's name is excellent IN all the earth, rather than ON all the earth suggests to me that it's an authentic YHWHistic enunciation.  Likewise "Who has set thy glory ABOVE the heavens" also seems to me authentically YHWHistic, although I would doubt the latter assertion as being accurate theologically.  I think the YHWH's consciousness inhabits the earth AND the heavens -- earth's atmosphere -- but doesn't extend past that point.  The YHWH being aware of that fact would, I think, supply sufficient motivation on the YHWH's part for making that assertion: an intended expansion of territory by simple enunciation.  Which I don't think happened but…no harm in trying, I suppose.

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou [Hebrew: founded; KJV:ordained] strength, because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

This seems to me an equally authentic YHWHistic theological view along the same lines as Isaiah's "And a child shall lead them".  It's popularly conceived as a Godly way of viewing things:  only by becoming as innocent and guileless as an infant can we truly follow God's teachings (the Synoptic Jesus made a couple of prominent assertions along those lines). 

Personally, I see that as a misconstruction of what the YHWH, it seems to me, is actually talking about:  that it's an exaggerated construction of the "elder being/younger being" argument.  That the YHWH always takes the side of the youngest, even to the extent of taking the side of babes and sucklings against….presumably, the Eldest Being, which is, of course, God…deemed here to be "the enemy and the avenger". 

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained;

A reference, I infer, to Genesis 1:16.  Personally, I infer Genesis 1:14-19, "the fourth day narrative" to be a YHWH-inspired insertion, placed there by A Dam after he ate the forbidden fruit (A Dam's reasoning being that this was the best spot for it, directly after the reference in 1:12 to "the tree yielding fruit, whose seed in its self").  It makes sense neither narratively -- 1:11 and 1:20 follow each other more rationally and logically: "the earth brings forth" followed by "the waters bring forth" -- or scientifically (the sun and the moon and the stars are not contemporary creations).

Theologically opportune for the YHWH is how I would infer its inclusion here. 

What man that thou art mindful of him?  and the son of man that thou visitest him?

I'm not sure, but this might be one of the earliest -- if not THE earliest -- references to "the son of man".  It seems to refer, first, to men generally -- and the fact that it is perfectly astonishing that either God or YHWH is "mindful" of men (which it is!) -- and then appears to refer to exceptional men who are deemed worthy of being visited, personally, by the YHWH (and/or God).  Which I infer is David's way of referring to himself while being genuinely humble about the implied honour.  "The son of man", particularly in David's context, being deemed to be secondary to "man". 

His later troubles with Absalom perhaps being the "birds coming home to roost" from this earlier assertion:  where Absalom temporarily inverts the relationship and usurps his father, David's place and stature… 

For thou hast made him a little lower than the Angels; and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

…probably having much to do with the blasphemous implications (or so I infer) built into this assertion/extrapolation.  Whether David is referring to man generally, "the son of man" generally or himself specifically, this is sincerely poisonous stuff.  If "man" is the "him" referred to: that is, "man" generally has been made "a little lower than the Angels" and God has crowned man, generally, with glory and honour -- well, I'd want to make 100% certain that that's a verifiable revelation before having it written down anywhere.  It raises too many questions:  if man, generally, is a little lower than the Angels and if men deemed worthy of being visited by the YHWH (and/or God) are, presumably, on a rank higher than that -- where does David place himself on that spectrum of stature? 

It seems to me a misconstruction of earthly circumstance.  To whatever extent David was "crowned…with glory and honour" -- and presumably he was, as King in Israel in a context that would have been at the "high end" of prosperous in the Bronze Age -- that, it seems to me, is a quantum level away from being "a little lower than the Angels".  Inferring material prosperity to confer and/or imply near-deistic stature seems, as I say, "sincerely poisonous stuff".     

Thou hast made him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet.

I don't think David is fully conscious of what he's enunciating which, to me, makes him easy prey for the YHWH in attempting to provoke God.  I mean, it's technically accurate:  in Genesis 1:28 God blesses man (man and woman):

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

…so it can easily be argued that God has made man "to have dominion over the works of thy hands".  But it could also be argued that this is a continued meditation on "the son of man" or on David himself.  In which case, if my inference is correct -- that the YHWH IS the earth -- David is just, rather comedically, being subdued by the earth which is asserting his/her/its dominion over him.  The assertion is technically accurate in the sense that "Thou hast made him (man, generally, the son of man, generally or David specifically) to have dominion over the works of thy hands" but that isn't necessarily how things are working out.  Which strikes me as a provocation on the YHWH's part: asserting the YHWH's dominion over David who God "hast made him to have dominion over the works of thy (God's) hands".    

[Hebrew: Flocks and oxen, all of them/KJV: All sheep and oxen] yea and the beasts of the field.

This strikes me as a further provocation if I'm correct in my conjecture that the significant difference between the covenant as proposed in Genesis 1:26 and as enunciated in its final form in 1:28 is that "the cattle" are missing.  Man DOESN'T have dominion over the flocks and oxen and the beasts of the field. So, the YHWH appears to be rubbing God's Face in that fact:  David, the cattle and "yea, and the beasts of the field" are, at this point in human history, under the YHWH's dominion.

Then, as I read it, as a side observation, the YHWH, through David adds:

The foul of the air, and the fish of the sea, [interpolated: and whatsoever] passeth through the paths of the sea.

This strikes me as a still further provocation, water being God's medium.  The interpolation violates the intended meaning, as I read it. The interpolation creates the impression that "the foul of the air, and the fish of the sea" are a continuation of the previous thought.  Without the interpolation, it becomes what I infer it is: a dry encapsulation -- after asserting what is under the YHWH's dominion, as the YHWH sees it -- of what is under God's dominion:

The foul of the air, and the fish of the sea, passeth through the paths of the sea.

Basically, as I read it, the YHWH is asserting through David that God has dominion over those creatures that pass through God's medium or who emerged from God's medium (Genesis 1:20: "And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath [Hebrew: soul/KJV: life] and fowl may fly above the earth in the [Hebrew: face of the firmament of heaven/KJV: in the open firmament of heaven"]) but that's ALL that God has dominion over.

And concludes the Psalm by directed David, the YHWH servant, conduit and mouthpiece to enunciate:

O YHWH, our Lord how excellent [interpolated: is] thy name in all the earth?

Next week:  More Psalms! (God willing)

Best,

Dave

PS: It's interesting that Psalms 8 comes up the same week that Pope Francis has

enunciated a change in Church doctrine suggesting that dogs have souls and "go to their reward" just as men do.  As can be seen in the reference to Genesis 1:20, the original Hebrew refers to "soul" while the KJV transmogrifies that term into "life" .


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Next Time: Boogers. I'm gonna post boogers... -Past Matt