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July 18, 2006
"My real problem is that they let the trickster Gods into it. Like farting. You KNOW farting was Pan's idea. It's just exactly his style."
Nerd wrath, or, how to build a bazooka out of Estes model rockets and some plastic piping. Complete with pretty long-exposure photography.
how scary is it that there are people on this site that could probably design weapons better than entire terrorist organizations
Microsoft's got a new "iPod-slayer" called Zune, but of course Redmond is screwing the whole thing up by thinking more features makes up for less storage. Not a smart idea when video is supposed to be a key feature...plus, Microsoft's forgetting that Apple has its annual iPod refresher coming up soon. Major new changes are unlikely until January, but price drops could come as soon as August. Then, Zune's 30 gigs will look even more paltry. via
According to the sources, the device will offer 30GB of storage, though it will deliver the "same pricing, look and feel as the 60GB iPod". That would suggest a retail price of $399, the price point for the high-end iPod. Immediately, the sticker is likely to draw comparisons to the comparable 30GB iPod, which is available for $299.
Tim Boucher writes about Jesus, the Trickster:
I realize that a lot of traditionalists will gasp and back away from the idea that Jesus was trying to “trick” anybody. How could anybody who proclaimed that they are “the way, the Truth and the life” be considered to be a trickster? In order to dismantle that notion and re-assemble it into something more useful, we have to decide what the nature of “Truth” is. Is the truth something simple and easy? It can be, but it can also be something earth-shattering, complex and difficult. It can be something that we can’t for the life of us ever possibly put into words. In that sense, Jesus could spread the ineffable Truth simply by confounding and confusing and getting us out of our old habits and patterns of thinking.
More specifically though and more in keeping with the Trickster myths, Jesus actually did pull some crazy stunts. Didn’t he? What about that whole thing where he died and then came back to life again?
“Ha! Gotcha, sucker!” we can imagine him saying to the Devil as pulls a sort of Three Stooges routine, pokes the devil in the eye smacks him on the head and floats up out of Hell, throwing down the power of Death once and for all. Ttricksters, too, are often identified with culture heroes who bring boons to the people, such as Prometheus who brought us fire. Jesus certainly fits the bill here as well. Jesus tricked the Jews and the Romans with this stunt too. He proved that the power of his Kingdom transcended the pitiful laws of this material world we inhabit. His teachings also invert power structures and invite creative solutions to old problems and assumptions which we thought there was no way out of. In fact, most of his teachings, life and even his miracles can be seen with a new beauty, humor and irony when viewed through the lens of the Trickster.
And via that last link, the Yoruba story of Eshu:
Eshu was walking down the road one day, wearing a hat that was red on one side and blue on the other. Sometime after he departed, the villagers who had seen him began arguing about whether the stranger's hat was blue or red. The villagers on one side of the road had only been capable of seeing the blue side, and the villagers on the other side had only been capable of seeing the red half. They nearly fought over the argument, until Eshu came back and cleared the mystery, teaching the villagers about how one's perspective can alter a person's perception of reality, and that one can be easily fooled. In other versions of this tale, the two tribes were not stopped short of violence; they actually annihilated each other, and Eshu laughed at the result, saying "Bringing strife is my greatest joy".
Posted by Jon Rubin at July 18, 2006 10:45 PM
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Comments
And in fact, there’s some speculation that the charges, strangely political in nature, brought against Jesus by Pilate involved accusations of Goeteia, which roughly translates to the “deceitful magic” or “lesser magic” that is practiced by a goes, as opposed to the higher magic of a magus. This Goeteia was often believed to involve either possession by or control of a demon. When Jesus asks how the people call him, Simon Peter (I think) tells him that many say he is John the Baptist. This is an odd statement, as Jesus was accused of being drunk and gluttonous (Matthew 11:19), in contrast to the asceticism of the Baptist, who furthermore worked neither signs nor wonders. A possible explanation is that what the people were saying was that Jesus, as a magician, had gained control of the Baptist’s spirit.
It’s also interesting that Jesus is placed upon a donkey in his final days. From Jesus the Magician: “There was a long standing legend that the god of the Jews was a donkey...The legend probably arose from the fact that the donkey was the sacred animal of Seth, the villain in the Egyptian pantheon, who was commonly thought by Egyptians to be the god of foreigners. He was also, being a villain, given a large role in magic. The Jews were among the largest group of foreigners in Egypt, so their god, Iao [Yah, or Yahweh], was identified with Seth. Io or Eio in coptic means “donkey,” so the identification was almost predetermined. Moreover, the Jews had a great reputation as magicians; this confirmed the identification. Therefore the donkey-headed Seth on magical gems is identified as Iao.” Although I guess this probably doesn’t amount to much.
There’re some other possibilities…one being that Jesus adhered to a shamanistic tradition, which would put his sojourn into the desert into context. Personally, I believe he spent the early years of his life in Egypt, where he picked up some of the old ars magica, and later supplemented his sermons with Egyptian parlor tricks in order to maintain the attention of his audiences.
Posted by: colin at July 20, 2006 08:10 AM