My own self

If you like this world so much, keep your fool mouth shut and maybe I'll let you keep it.

Me? I'm going to be a god again.

- Lex Luthor,
Justice League Unlimited 2x12: Alive!

For Romans, treachery was one of the marks of a Carthaginian. Punic 'good faith', Punica Fides, meant the opposite. Also, they were cruel and superstitious. These traits came together in ttheir human sacrifices, above all of their own children. Carthage was feminized. Carthaginian women were dangerous seducers, like the mythical Queen Dido. Carthaginian men were effeminate, wearing loose unbelted clothes, and lacked control of their sexual appetites. Getting others to do their fighting for them showed their cowardice. In Roman eyes, this could be explained by their living in Africa. It was considered that the hot sun meant that Africans had little blood in their bodies, and so, fearing to lose what little they did have, they were scared of wounds, and thus were cowards. A final 'proof' of their barbarity, their otherness, was that they were believed to eat dogs.

The negative ethnographic image of Carthaginians was constructed partly out of reality (they did sacrifice some of their children), and partly out of fantasy (they almost certainly did not eat dogs).

- Harry Sidebottom,
Ancient Warfare - A Very Short Introduction. page 9.

You probably should not read this if you've not seen the Battlestar Galactica finale yet. It's pretty vague, but still.

Read more...

When the Roman Emperor Trajan in 101 AD set out for Dacia to kick some Ancient Eastern European butt, he prayed to the closest the Romans came to a top three divinities to aid him; the Triad of Gods on the Capitol hill – Minerva, goddess of warriors and wisdom, Juno, queen god and protector of the Roman state, and Jupiter, god king, god of the skies, and patron deity of Rome itself. To the prayer, he added a second, to Jupiter Victor - the god king in his specific function as a god of victory. He then called upon Mars Victor - the god of war in the same victory-inducing function - and Victoria, the goddess personifying victory.

You have to hand it to him - the man clearly knew the advantages of a polytheistic system of religion. It worked, too, the Dacians' collective asses were indeed suitably kicked, and Trajan's follow-up campaign further east went equally well. He took a break, then, and some years later set out for a second campaign eastwards, successfully expanding far into the Parthian empire and thus putting Rome's total at its biggest geographical size ever.

I can only assume he offered the gods a similar prayer of aid this second time - and I can equally assume that Apollo or some other god of healing must have gone utterly sick of being overlooked in Trajan's highly efficient communications with the celestial realm, becaue the campaign ended when the emperor, after almost two decades' worth of continous military victory, suddenly got sick and died.

They (slaves) ought to respect you rather than fear you... Some may say "This is what he plainly means: slaves are to pay respect as if they were clients or early-morning callers!" Anyone who holds this opinion forgets that what is good enough for a god cannot be too little for a master.

Seneca, in Letters to Lucilius, 47.18, as rendered in John Scheid's An Introduction to Roman Religion.

In the brown book in my sabretache there was the tale of an angel (perhaps actually one of the winged women warriors who are said to serve the Autarch) who, coming to Urth on some petty mission or other, was struck by a child's arrow and died. With her gleaming robes all dyed by her heart's blood even as the boulevards were stained by the expiring life of the sun, she encountered Gabriel himself. His sword blazed in one hand, his great two-headed ax swung in the other, and across his back, suspended on the rainbow, hung the very battle horn of Heaven.
"Where wend you, little one," asked Gabriel, "with your breast more scarlet than the robin's?"
"I am killed," the angel said, "and I return to merge my substance once more ewith the Pancreator."
"Do not be absurd. You are an angel, a pure spirit, and cannot die."
"But I am dead," said the angel, "nevertheless. You have observed the wasting of my blood - do you not observe also that it no longer issues in staining spurtings, but only seeps sluggishly? Note the pallor of my countenance. Is not the touch of an angel warm and bright? Take my hand and you will imagine you hold a horror new dragged from some stagnant pool. Taste my breath - is it not fetid, foul and nidorous?"
Gabriel answered nothing, and at last the angel said, "Brother and better, even if I have not convinced you with all my proofs, I pray you stand aside. I would rid the universe of my presence."
"I am convinced indeed," Gabriel said, stepping from the other's way. "It is only that I was thinking that had I known we might perish, I would not at all times have been so bold."

- As retold by Severian the torturer,
in The Shadow of the Torturer, first tale in The Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe

Priests prayed to Jupiter the Most Good and Most Great, adding 'unless you prefer some other name'. The formalism therefore had its share of indecision (...).

- Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome, page 4

"It's a big serious world out there; nothing to laugh about. Not ever. You must teach the children to fear, teach them to tremble. Teach them to be cruel. Teach them to be the danger in the dark. Hide in the shadows, then pounce or spring or leap or drop, and always kill. You know what the true meaning of life is?"
"Um," said Fat Charlie. "Is it love one another?"

Sitting down to read a novel by Neil Gaiman is an odd experience for me. In one way, it feels like I've read a good bunch of his stuff, but on the other, I feel like I've only read one actual novel. I've read his Sandman-series, but that is after all graphic novels compiled of many shorter stories, and thus very different from a normal novel. I've read Good Omens, but that book is co-written by Terry Pratchett and Pratchett's familiar satirical style was far more apparent to me in the reading experience than the more versatile Gaiman. I've read Odd and the Frost Giants, but that's a children's novel, and a short one at that. I've seen Beowulf, but he only co-wrote the script on that, and it's additionally based off of an ancient poem as well as being a movie, not a novel. Though you get a good impression of his tastes, I can't really claim to feel that having watched Princes Mononoke where he penned the English-language script taught me that much of his own writing style either. The movie that is indeed based on his own work that I've seen and loved, Stardust, had a script written by someone else, and I haven't yet read Gaiman's original tale. I've read his short story Monarch of the Glen, but that is a short story, not a novel, and one about a character I know from a previous work of his on top of that. That previous work, American Gods, is the only "proper" novel I feel I've actually read, in the sense that it's the only one that I feel have given me a clear image of how the man writes when on his own, unimpaired by a selective audience, a source material or a studio, and uninfluenced by a co-author.

And American Gods is probably the best single-volume fantasy novel I've ever read.

Thus I started Anansi Boys, torn between too high expectations and little expectations at all. Well, I'll say this straight up: I was not disappointed.

Anansi Boys is not at all like American Gods despite being set in the same universe. It's about the sons of a secondary character from American Gods, and how they cope with meeting each other. Mostly it's about one of them, a dreadfully shy and naive man named Charlie. Anansi Boys is a comedy, and though it's a comedy that sometimes ventures into darker places than most, it's still a light-hearted and easy read that I finished in a week. (A mind-boggling pace for me and my reading-habits in recent years) It's a story about family, about the relationship between parents and children and grown siblings who might not quite like each other, and about how it's all just terribly embarrassing.

The book (pretty naturally) reminded me a good bit of Good Omens, the other silly but somewhat dark novel of Gaiman's I've read. Turns out that a lot of the humour I thought of as Pratchett'y is also there in Gaiman's writing, but more laid-back. The type of humour is often the same as in Good Omens, but most of the time it's underhanded and as-a-matter-of-fact-ly phrased, which in its own way adds to the charm. While big parts of the plot were pretty obvious and easy to figure out ahead of time, this only barely subtracted from my enjoyment of the story as the joy in reading Anansi Boys is in following the characters to their finish line, not guessing fruitlessly what the finish line will be.

In no way as brilliantly memorable as the vastly complex and often sombre American Gods, Anansi Boys never tries to be. It's a fun, heart-warming and entertaining story of two brothers, and it sucked me in to not let go until I was on the final page. And it once again verified that Neil Gaiman is a man who can write just about anything and do so well.

Now, if I could only get around to reading Neverwhere as well...

Wow. Never thought I'd live to see the day.


Indiana Jones is more than a franchise, it's Culture, it's Common Background, it's one of those things that are so deeply embedded into the cultural consciousness that the idea of the thing, the concept of the thing, is greater than the actual thing.

Don't get me wrong - I love the old Indiana Jones-movies. Well, I love two of them and think the middle one is alright. But not nearly as much as I love the concept of them. Harrison Ford as the ultimate geek-adventurer hybrid searching for lost treasure and solving mysterious riddles is Epic and, as Barney would say, Legendary.

The odd thing is, he doesn't really do that much of that. Yes, there's a big Mystical Treasure in each movie - but the only one where the main part of the movie is really the actual search for it is the third one. The death-traps are mostly present only in the opening scenes of the original movie and the finale of the third one - and in the latter case, they're honestly not that impressive. National Treasure has got way more of this stuff than Indiana Jones ever did, and will still never become anything more than a decent rip-off (with a somewhat disappointing sequel) in just about anybody's head. That's not the point - they ARE Indiana Jones. The geeky, at times awkward, at times awesome action-hero will always be Indiana Jones, or some form of copy. And movies with hidden treasures, vast ruins and clever clues in dead languages will always be Indiana Jones. The fact that the movies really used that stuff rather sparingly is utterly irrelevant.

So there is a large expectation to this kind of sequel. It can't really be equated with anything else - not even the Star Wars prequels, as they, by their very nature as prequels, was an entirely different animal. This is a sequel to three stand-alone-movies that needs to do three things; justify itself as a movie in its own right, justify itself as a continuation of the three movies everybody in the audience has seen at least once each, and justify itself as an Indiana Jones-movie - which as I said might have less to do with the second point than you'd think.

Surprise! It does all three. Which quite frankly WAS surprising, at least for me. I was feeling sceptical - I went in to see this movie thinking that, oh, well, as long as I'd get to hear the Most Awesome Theme Ever at least once, it'd be worth the ticket. (I did, too.) But I walked back out feeling happy, satisfied, at ease. And actually, joyfully, craving more.

Now, by all means, it doesn't do them all equally well. Mostly the movie lives up to the second point of the three - which, quite frankly, as a rather huge geek, is the most important one for me. But it's really not that far behind on neither the third nor the first. The movie is very entertaining - the beginning in particular is quite splendid, and while it does get a little less sizzlingly fun for the rest of the movie it's still on the whole a very good ride. And it's definitely Indiana Jones. There are dead languages, there are death-traps and hidden chambers, and lo and behold, there is a mystical treasure. (I believe that with this movie on top of the others, Indiana Jones has personally witnessed that there must be some form of core of thruth to Ancient Egyptian religion, Ancient Mayan religion, Judeaism, Christianity, Shivaism and Kali-worship. That's a rather impressive list, right there.)

The plot was decent - it had some twists that were obvious, some twists that were not, and it mixed the nostalgia and self-referencing in just the right portions with the new stuff, which was a balanced I'd been worried they'd not be able to keep. But they proved me wrong. Another one of the touches I was very sceptical about - having Shia LeBoeuf join the cast as a young, boisterous sidekick - also worked out very well, all things considering, and the movie would've been a very different one and possibly less interesting one without him. The character brings a dynamic to Jones that's new for the character, and additionally makes the action-scenes with the elderly Jones a good deal more believable when he has a young man at his side.

As with any Indiana Jones-movie that's not the original, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull sorely misses Belloq. A competator that's Jones' equal hasn't been seen since, and that's a damned shame. Cate Blanchett does do a more than decent job as the Russian überspy, though. After the awesomeness that was The Last Crusade, Sean Connery as Henry Jones Sr. also leaves a void, though he is referenced with great respect (and often to great effect) at multiple points. Also, this movie features the indubitably best of Jones' love-interests returning from obscurity and filling out a lot of blanks.

It's not God's Gift to Cinema by an entire series of long-shots. Nor is it the best movie I'll see this year. But all in all, I'll say this movie is well worthy of being called part of the - I'll say it again - legendary series that is - far more so, actually, than Temple of Doom has ever been. To me, it felt as much as an Indiana Jones-movie as the old ones did. Is it as good as the other two? Hard to say after only having seen it once. Ask me again in five years. In which time I'm likely to have watched it at least another five times.

Because, let's face it, people, while Indiana Jones might get old, Indiana Jones does not. And this, quite certainly, was just that.

Indiana Jones.

A tentative - and very strong - 8,5/10

In a world with an infinite number of gods, divinity, or at least what made divinity worth cultivating, was always relative: not whether someone, emperor, beloved, or Jupiter, was a god, but to whom this was so.

- Ittai Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion, page 270

The next LotR? Highly doubtful. Very well done? Yeah.


And, something which as far as I gather should please Mr. Pullman to no end, it's at least on par with the Narnia-book-made-movie from two years back... Okay, it doesn't have anything as brilliant as James McAvoy as Mr. Tumnus, but aside from that, it's as good, I think, and in parts better.


Starring Nicole Kidman as a fun and well done female version of Darth Vader (if the Empire was called the Magistratum and existed in an 1800's fantasy/sci-fi version of London...), Derek Jakobi as O'Brien (only a somewhat, er, bigger brother), Ian McKellen as Azeem (if he was an alchoholic, huge, furry and, well, a talking bear), Ian McShane as Denethor (if he was also a bear, and, er, well, evil), and Daniel Craig as Aunt Polgara (if... if you bugger everything about the movie except the things allowing me to make the joke), the cast is very good, as is the characters. Yes, as I now somewhat unseriously joked, there is a lot in here that is hardly original - but the mix of it all, and the world it is placed in, is. Which is enough for me, when it's well done.

Of other cast should be mentioned Sam Elliot, Jim Carter and, of course, the girl who plays the main character, Dakota Blue Richards. She was surprisingly good.

Oh, and Christopher Lee. Gods know why he was even in there, he sat in a chair and had two lines, but his name came, like, fourth on the ending credtis.


The plot is... okay. Decent. Nothing stellar, and it got weaker by the very open ending. At times, too, they pushed the plot onwards too quickly, clearly trying to save time for action-scenes and push as many scenes as possible in from the books.

The world, though, is interesting. While the Witches seemed awfully redundant and Eagle'y (in the Hobbit/LotR-sort of *cough*-ex-machina way), the Gyptians were okay, as were the "normal" Humans and the icebears. (Which to Norwegians sounds more normal than you'd think...)

One of the two most interesting points about the world, though, is the all-encompassing Magistratum. Well, all-encompassing save for the Gyptians, the Witches, the Icebears and, for some reason, a University. For some reason, they all ('cept the University) seem to be unambigiously opposed to the Magistratum's rule, though they don't oppose it openly. And yet they show no hesitation in allying in an all-out attack in the ending scenes. Lack of logic, to me. But a minor one I'll let it pass. Apparently, it's supposed to be an allegory for the Catholic Church, but I never really caught that, so it's probably very obstrued in the film. Cool, though.

The second one, obviously, is the dæmons. At first, it struck me as cool but silly. Why would these creatures take the form of all kinds of animals except humans, and do so for humans alone? Seems a very Christian Man-Above-Animal way of looking at the world for a supposedly anti-Christian author. The plot-point about the icebear wanting a dæmon and the main character trying to pass as one for him, though, remedied that in great part. I like mostly everything about this concept, it's very appealing to the imagination and shows a lot of promise. I hope it'll be delved more into in subsequent movies. And in the books, if I ever get around to reading them.

A solid, even strong 7,5/10

Sarcasm is the lowest form of social discourse.

- The Devil,
Reaper 1x4: Magic

As Machiavelli concludes - with an irony worthy of Gibbon - the price we have paid for the fact that Christianity 'shows us the truth and the true way' is that it 'has made the world weak and turned it over as prey to wicked men'.

- Quentin Skinner on Machiavelli's Discourses, in Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction

"Son of Man" is a graphic novel by Peter Madsen (Danish comic book artist famous for his "Valhalla"-series) telling the story of Jesus from Peter's point of view.



And it is stunning.


I really, really loved it. Several scenes were highly impressive both in visuals and in dialogue - this was a truly great read. He covered most of the well-known pieces of Jesus' life, as well as some of the lesser known stories. I could only think of one I missed; the healing of Lazarus. There's even one slight elements hinting to adoptionism in the chapter with John the Baptist, which is interesting that is kept in considering this is apparently a book published by the Norwegian and Danish "Bibelselskab". (Bible syndicate? I honestly don't know how to translate this) However, for all I know of the New Testament, it could be verbatim from the Good Book itself.

Highly recommended to anyone able to read Danish or Norwegian.

In AD 180 [...] another group of Christians came before the Roman governor at Carthage. Their leader was one Speratus. Christian eyewitneses later recorded their version of events in the form of a trial transcript.


Governor: You may merit the clemency of our lord, the emperor, if you return to a right mind.
Speratus: We have never committed any wrong, we have never been party to any wicked deed, we have never uttered a curse, but we have given thanks when ill-treated because we honour our own emperor.
Governor: We also are a religious people and our religion is simple: we swear by our lord, the emperor, and pray for his safety, as you also ought to do.
Speratus: I do not recognise the empire of this world; but rather I serve that God whom with these eyes no man has seen, nor can see.
Governor: Cease to be of this persuasion.
Speratus: But that is evil.
Governor: Do you presist in remaining a Christian?
Speratus: I am a Christian.
Governor: Do you not wish any time for consideration?
Speratus: When right is so obvious there is nothing to consider.
Governor: Have a reprieve of thirty days and think it over.
Speratus: I am a Christian.


As Speratus became increasingly subversive in his remarks, the governor was forced, still unwillingly, to order his execution. [...] As Speratus' trial reveals, in the face of Roman disinterest, many Christians had to try quite hard to get themselves thrown to the lions.

- "The Roman Empire - a very short introduction" by Christopher Kelly, page 89-90.




Seriously. It's like a bloody Monty Python-sketch.

I'm trying to make sense out of my education by trying to focus my courses towards the classical era, that is, classical Greece and Rome, this upcoming term. I just hope they offer enough interesting specialization-courses from the era this fall that I can pull that off.

From before, I have the following courses covering the era in entirety or part:
RELV105: Ancient Religious History of The Mediterranean and The Middle East, and Norse and Sami religion. (Relevant pieces: Greek Religion, Roman Religion, Hellenistic Cults, Egyptian Religion, and possibly Mesopotamian Religion)
RELV250: Religion in the Classical World (Pretty much all of it relevant, obviously, this is basically specialization in the Greek, Roman and Hellenist pieces of RELV105, plus early Christianity)
RELV102: Christianity, Judeaism and Islam (Relevant pieces: the former two, especially Christianity, in the most ancient parts of the religious history)
HIS101: Overview of Anicent History (most the first third of the course, focusing on the Mediterranean world up 'til the fall of the Roman Empire)
HIS114: The Roman Republic (the entire course, obviously, relevant)
LAT101: Elementary Course in Classical Latin (though I know too little to actually make use of it, this is, of course, all relevant)

So, that's quite a bit, really, and it's the closest I get to there being a system to my degree. Of course, I have a lot of other courses which doesn't fit at all, but...

So, any thoughts? The plan right now, then, is to add on two more relevant history-courses this fall, and then apply for my Master's degree, either in history or, more likely, in religous science.

And no, they're not particularly Christmas'y.


http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20061220 ETHAN! XD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM XDXDXD What a rant! I love rants, when they're funny. Like this one. Funny.

http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=79947 If only God would release a Top Ten-list... you know... things that are important to Him...

http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=79786 Balls!

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20061227 OMGWTFPOLARBEARDEADSANTA!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6222153.stm I WANT TO JOIN IN!

http://www.jonathancoulton.com/lyrics/re-your-brains XD LISTEN!

As ordered by Obdormio.


Once upon a time, there was a - oh, bugger this, go here, read everything above the chart, and come back.


There. Good boy. Or girl. Or hermaphrodite. Or possibly bad boy. And/or girl. (Whoever said I wasn't a quick learner?) There's no way for me to know, is there?





Now that you've learned all that stuff about Elder and Infantile Gods, it's time to move on, and make like the Buddhists and forget: What you just learned was shit, and having mastered it, we can move up a level, to new shit.

You see, originally originally, there was but One Entity. His name was Tommy, and He was a grouchy sort of feller. Well, He was the only sort of feller, true enough, but he was distinctively of the grouchy disposition. Being grouchy, He quickly decided that being the One Entity was somewhat suicidal, as He had to take his bad mood out on himself all the time. (Well, He would have had to to that, had Time been invented, at least). So Tommy created the Second Entity, Jeff, the God of Biscuits. Jeff, however, was way too dry to be an appropriate victim for His grouchyness, so he made the Third Entity, also known as the Mother Of All. (There is rumoured to have been a fourth word to her name, but it has been shrouded in the depths of Time, Modesty and Sensible Censorship)

And so began the world.


Seeing as Obdormio, who ordered this topic, just logged off, I won't be getting instant gratification by way of ego-boosting commenting upon the post.

Therefore, this will be a two-parter. MWHAHAHAHAHA.

Here ends "Religion on Notablog, an astonishing roller-coaster of an article-series in two sizzling chapters, filled to the brim with, well, not saucy gypsies, I guess, but saucy stuff nonetheless, Part Initial One: The Start and the Beginning, a First Chapter."

I hope you're looking forward to the sequel, "Religion on Notablog, an astonishing roller-coaster of an article-series in two sizzling chapters, filled to the brim with, well, not saucy gypsies, I guess, but saucy stuff nonetheless, Part Two - that is the Second - The End and the Finish, a Final Chapter", as it will indeed be far longer, far more informative, and hopefully far more entertaining than this sordid piece of fei hua.