I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
Edgar Allen Poe

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
- H. L. Mencken

Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so
-Bertrand Russell

What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are ...
-James Branch Cabell

March 10, 2013 - 10:48 a.m.

Mighty Thor vs Marco Polo

OMG I realized I should be writing and it's only 9:39 AM. During the week If I'm not getting up for school I set my alarm to wake me at 8:30 so I can play the WfUV Question of the Day. Most days I end up posting it on the Facebook Group. I like John Platt's Sunday Breakfast more than I like the stations weekday fare, he plays my music, but I don't set my alarm. Most days I wake up around 8:30 anyway but if I'm out late on Saturday and sleep till 10 I live with it. I sometimes don't understand myself. Last night was the rare Saturday night that I was home and I totally forgot to listen to Vin Scelsa's Idiot's Delight. I have never adjusted to him being on Saturday Night and always thought it was not a good time for him. On commercial radio he was on Sunday Nights. Vin's listeners like myself are people that go out and do things on Saturdays. The Big Broadcast, the Sunday night show, attracts an older audience that is much more likely to spend a Saturday night at home.

I'm very happy because right now John is playing the wonderful ilyAIMY. I love hearing my friends on the radio. In about 15 minutes John is going to interview Bobtown,

So what did I do last night instead of listening to Vin? I watched Thor on Amazon Prime. Yes that's a strange thing for me to watch but I blanked on good movies I wanted to see that aren't too long. It isn't just that though, I've been thinking of Norse Mythology several times recently. The only one I can remember now came out of what has become my daily musing on religion. I've been working on a series of short stories about God and they tend to be inspired by assuming God exists and asking questions and creating hypotheticals like. What if god didn't believe he was god? Why did god create the universe? What might god really want from people? An atheist is a good person to deal with these things as he never feels the need to follow dogma. I go in some strange directions. One of these went from Christ to the notion of sacrifice to Norse mythology. Norse gods could be Christlike in some ways more than Jesus. Jesus didn't chose to suffer, he asked why God had forsaken him. He didn't volunteer to be crucified. I know there is more to it but that's the straight storyline. There are two Norse gods who consciously made sacrifices for the benefit of the world, First Odin gave his eye in trade for knowledge about Ragnarok, the final battle, the Twilights of the Gods, so he could put it off as long as possible. Tyr the god of wars was portrayed as far more admirable than the Greek/Roman Ares/Mars. He is heroic. When the wolf Fenris was chained he only agreed to allow the gods to put the what seemed like an insubstantial chain around his neck if a god would place his hand in is jaws while they did it. Tyr volunteered and when Fenris realized that he was tricked and couldn't break the chain he bit off Tyr's hand. He remained one-handed. Odin and Tyr walked in with both eyes open so to speak and gave up a body part for the good of everyone else. That's a level of altruism never found in classical mythology. Even as a kid I loved that.

So yes deep philosophical musings got me to watch a silly action film. Gods work in mysterious ways.

It says Marco Polo here. That's to remind me to talk about what I'm reading, "The Travels of Marco Polo." This is also harkening back to my childhood. I had a map on my wall showing the paths of the great explorers. The second oldest one was Marco Polo. I also had some sort of giveaway calendar of historic events as headlines and one was "Marco Polo reaches Cathay." Despite this early interest in him and knowing how important he was in inspiring the age of exploration I never read his book till now, It's fun figuring out what he's talking about. He describes a rock that turns into threads and you realize he means asbestos. There's a rock that they burn and that's coal He calls all religions that aren't Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, as idolaters but from the descriptions you can figure out which he means. He tells the story of Buddha without saying "Buddha." Back to Cathay. I was always taught that Cathay was what the Europeans called China but that's not quite right. Cathay is Northern Chine while southern China is Manzai. They were considered to be two countries by the Mongols and as he was at the court of Kublai Khan that's his viewpoint. He gets some things weirdly wrong. He places Japan ten times as far from the mainland as it is and populates it with Caucasians. But he does tell the story of how the Mongol invasion was thwarted by a big storm. The Japanese called it the Divine Wind, Kamikaze in Japanese. That's where the suicide pilots got their name from. They were to save the country just as the Divine Wind did.

Marco Polo didn't just explore new lands but book writing. Some things he hadn't quite worked out. As he starts describing each country he'd say "the people are idolaters, are subject to the Great Khan, burn their dead, and use paper money." He wrote that every time. He obviously grew tired of it and started to just use the beginning of the list and add "etc." It's pretty easy reading and I'm glad I am finally getting to it.

Tonight I'm going out to listen to music, Kat Quinn so My Gentle Readers will get their more usual fare.


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Memories: Not that Horrid Song - May 29, 2018
Wise Madness is Now In Session - May 28, 2018
The NFL and the First Amendment - May 27, 2018
On The Road Again - May 26, 2018
Oliver the Three-Eyed Crow - May 25, 2018



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Horvendile March 10, 2013
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