Looking for that perfect Christmas gift? Look no further. Despair.com offers gifts “for the person who has everything, but still isn’t very happy about it.” Here’s a great suggestion for the business executive or the corporate stooge in your life. Get him the Demotivation lithograph, which says, “Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all of the unhappy people.” Or the Worth lithograph: “Just because you’re necessary doesn’t mean you’re important.”
Priceless.
Here’s an interesting puzzle that’s got people in Viking studies scratching their heads these days. If you go to this link at the Old Norse News blog, you’ll see a picture of a little silver figurine recently unearthed by archaeologists near the ancient royal site of Lejre, in Denmark.
The figure is seated on an elaborate throne. If you look closely, you’ll note that a bird sits on each arm of the throne.
Now Snorri Sturlusson’s Prose Edda, our chief source of information on the Norse myths, tells us that the god Odin had a throne in Asgard, and that he kept a pair of ravens, Hugin and Munin, who flew out every day to get news of the world, and then flew back to light on their master’s shoulders and whisper what they’d learned to him. Obviously, this figurine is a pretty good match for Odin. It even seems to have a damaged eye, and Odin was one-eyed.
The problem is that the clothing is clearly female.
What does this mean?
One possibility that comes to my mind is the obvious joke—it might be Odin in drag. One thing we know about his cult is that he was associated with a shamanistic ceremony called seið. There are numerous indications that seið was generally performed by women, and that men who participated in it were deemed to have performed a kind of unmanly act, comparable to sodomy.
Perhaps that’s the meaning of the figurine. Maybe Odin has changed genders to perform a seið. Purely a guess, from someone who has no great love of Odin.
One thing to bear in mind when studying Norse mythology is that, when Snorri wrote the material in the Prose Edda down, he was under the Church’s eye. He was purposely making the case that one could study the old gods academically, without falling into heathen practices.
Which makes it likely he left some stuff out.
This is one of the intangible rewards of blogging.
A few days ago I wrote about the death of mystery writer Stuart M. Kaminsky, mentioning how much I liked his books.
Today Kaminsky’s son Peter responded in the comments.
How very strange and satisfying.
Last night, I was talking about sex with some guys . . . wait, that doesn’t sound right. I was talking . . . I was minding my own business when suddenly someone asked me what ‘the birds and the bees” had to do with . . . the subject at hand.
Today I have an answer from our Etymology Desk: We don’t know. The phrases appears to have developed last century, but note this article from The Phrase Finder on suggested origins. None of them actually use “the birds and the bees” in reference to the act of marriage. There’s a 1927 newspaper article, but it couldn’t have been the coining of the phrase. Perhaps this is the influence of teachers whose oral instruction permeated the culture.
As for a related phrase, The Word Detective tells us that we don’t know the origin of “naked as a jay bird.” Why pick on jays when they aren’t unclothed any more than any other animal? Evan Morris says maybe it’s because blue jays are stand out among birds, obnoxiously so, in color and volume. On a discussion forum, someone says the folk wisdom he was told has to do with baby jays being pushed out of their nests before they have any feathers. Still, the printed evidence of this fails.
I went to see Disney’s new A Christmas Carol on Sunday. I didn’t like it as much as Ted Baehr and Michael Medved, whose glowing reviews persuaded me to see it in the first place, did. But I did like it, and I suspect it may grow on me, and the DVD will end up on my Christmas Carol shelf, along with the Sim, Scott and Finney versions, which I watch liturgically every Yuletide.
One bit of good news is that the familiar computer animation technique, which director Robert Zemeckis seems to have infinite faith in, has improved considerably. The eye problem, especially—the way all the characters in Beowulf seemed to be blind, because they couldn’t track the objects they were observing—has been solved. Facial expressions are also much better. Still, I find the animated people—almost human-looking but not quite, and mostly with slightly enlarged heads—a little off-putting. On the plus side, Tiny Tim (with whom I’ve never been very happy ) is much less irritating than usual here, and only spends a short time onscreen.
The animation technique brings one big, solid advantage. Here, at long last, we have a Scrooge who looks like Scrooge, a Scrooge who looks like the man I imagined when I first read the story (and I’ll bet you did too, if you’ve ever read it. Which is worth the trouble). Sim, Scott and Finney, for all their excellences (and they had many) didn’t really look like Scrooge. Their noses and chins weren’t long enough, and did not incline toward one another. Jim Carrey doesn’t look like Scrooge either, but the magic of CGI changes that (he also looks like the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come, as he plays all those roles. There’s a very odd scene where Christmas Past, along with Old Scrooge, is watching Young Scrooge, so you actually have a Carrey watching a Carrey watching a Carrey). Continue reading Disney’s A Christmas Carol
I wondered today how the word harp came to mean “talking tediously or nagging.” Is that meaning of the word related to the instrument by the same name? Are they different words which have developed into the same one over the years? Apparently, they are the same word, and the phrase “to harp on one string” was used in print as far back as 1513. I have no doubt that this phrase has something to do with bar patrons whistling for their beer at one time, but that story has yet to be concocted.
The stories are being concocted for the origin of the phrase “with bells on,” because there isn’t enough print material to argue well for any of them. Have you ever used this phrase or had it used on you? Why would anyone go to a party with bells on, or the British variation, “with brass knobs on”? How did the phrase develop to mean not only enthusiasm but also intensity, such as “He retaliated with bells on”?
Here’s a great lecture with Q&A by World Magazine’s Lynn Vincent on political dialogue today and where conservatives stand. This is very interesting and not at all exaggerated as some political speeches are.
It’s not often I come up with anything that, I imagine, could actually contribute to biblical studies, in even the tiniest way. Like never. But I think I’ve got something. Maybe it’s old news. Maybe somebody pointed it out long ago, and I just don’t know about it. But I’ve never heard it mentioned, that I can recall.
This Big Insight does not rise from the depth of my spirituality, or from my profound understanding of the words of Scripture. It arises from the fact that, as a Viking reenactor, I wear and use armor from time to time, something your average biblical scholar only gets to do during that crazy week in the senior year at seminary, when he gets initiated into the Secret Global Conspiracy and undergoes the Unspeakable Rite.
Just kidding.
Anyway, I’m thinking of the famous “full armor of God” passage, from Ephesians 6:10-18:
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes…. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place….” Continue reading Of belts and breastplates
This is the 700th anniversary of Alnwick Castle, the second largest inhabited castle in England. The Northumberland Earls and Dukes have lived here since 1309. This is also the location for some of the filming of the Harry Potter movies.
Some people might not care for this book (the Amazon reviews support that contention), because it’s different from Dean Koontz’ other work. But if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have noticed that Koontz frequently changes genres, and mixes and matches genres within a story. He doesn’t like to do the same thing twice (with the exception of the Odd Thomas and Frankenstein books, which just prove that he refuses to be predictable even in his unpredictability). With Your Heart Belongs to Me he has (in my opinion), not only broken new genre ground, but produced his best writing to date.
This book sings. Again and again, I paused in my reading just to savor how beautifully the author had expressed himself. The usual pattern for a popular writer, as far as I’ve observed, is to start out really good, with a book he’s probably labored over for years, and then to become increasingly sloppy, as his publisher’s demands for several books a year force him to churn stuff out and send it away in the rough. But Koontz is an infinitely better writer today than he was when he started, and the best of his recent work reaches (I think) the level of literary fiction. That’s certainly true of Your Heart Belongs to Me.
The blurb on the back told me that this was the story of Ryan Perry, an internet social networking billionaire who’s had a heart transplant and starts getting threatening messages from someone telling him, “You’re heart belongs to me.”
But in fact, Koontz takes more than half of the book to set that situation up. We see Ryan as a rich, healthy, happy young man who lives the American dream. He has an enormous house, surfs whenever he wants to, and is dating a gorgeous young woman. Then he starts experiencing physical symptoms which turn out to indicate, not a heart attack, but a congenital cardiac enlargement condition. He begins to be suspicious (the condition might have been caused by poisoning). He employs a security company to investigate various people who might want him dead. On a whim, he takes his business from the cardiologist he’s been seeing, and switches to a more famous, more expensive specialist. And along the way he has occasional visions—or hallucinations—that seem to be communicating a message. But it’s a message he can’t understand.
Finally his name comes up on the international transplant waiting list he’s on, and he gets his surgery. His recovery is good. But his girlfriend breaks up with him. (She says he knows why, but he can’t figure it out.) Then the messages start appearing—a bag of candy hearts, all with the same message, left on his pillow in a room that ought to be locked and secure. A heart-shaped pendant left on his pillow. A sudden knife attack, accompanied by a whispered threat.
It isn’t until he’s kidnapped and threatened with death that Ryan begins to acknowledge the things he’s been purposely overlooking, and to understand the meaning of the warnings he’s had. “It’s all about the subtext,” his girlfriend, a writer, once told him.
The ending is different from that of any Koontz novel I recall. But it was a good ending, entirely satisfying in its way.
I recommend Your Heart Belongs to Me highly. You’ll find yourself searching your own heart.