Marla and The Lunar Chicks

Marla (The Singer) and The Lunar Chicks

She Has Style, She Has Grace.

She Will Stab You on Your Face.

A League of Furies awakened. 

The women I... WE have lied to, betrayed. 

The women we have ignored and disparaged. 

Once The Idea exists, it cannot be killed. 

Behind The Waterfall

Mycroft :

Do you? 

Sherlock :

Do I what? 

H-how did you get that? 

I left it at the crime scene. 

Mycroft :

"Crime scene"? 

Where do you pick up these extraordinary expressions? 

Do you miss him? 

Sherlock :

Moriarty is dead.

Mycroft :

And yet...? 

Sherlock :

His body was never recovered. 

Mycroft :

To be expected when one pushes a maths professor over a waterfall. 

Pure reason toppled by sheer melodrama. 

Your life in a nutshell. 

Sherlock :

Where do you pick up these extraordinary expressions? 

(HE SNIFFS) 

Sherlock :

Have you put on weight? 

Mycroft :

You saw me only yesterday. 

Does that seem possible? 

Sherlock :

No. 

Mycroft :

Yet, here I am, increased. 

What does that tell the foremost criminal investigator in England? 

Sherlock :

In England? 

Mycroft :

You're in deep, Sherlock, deeper than you ever intended to be. 

Have you made a list? 

Sherlock :

Of what? 

Mycroft :

Everything. We will need a list. 

Good boy. 

Sherlock :

No, I haven't finished yet. 

Mycroft :

Moriarty may beg to differ. 

(HE SIGHS) 

Sherlock :

He's trying to distract me. 

To derail me. 

Mycroft :

Yes. He's the crack in the lens, the fly in the ointment

The virus in the data. 

Sherlock :

I have to finish this. 

Mycroft :

If Moriarty has risen from the Reichenbach cauldron, he will seek you out. 

Sherlock :

I'll be waiting.

Mycroft :

Yes. I'm very much afraid you will..... 

Mrs. Hudson : 

Two days he's been like that. 

Lestrade :

Has he eaten? 

Mrs. Hudson : 

No, not a morsel. 

Lestrade :

Press are having a ruddy field day. 

There's still reporters outside. 

Mrs. Hudson : 

Oh, they've been there all the time, I can't get rid of them. 

I've been rushed off my feet making tea. 

Lestrade :

Why do you make him tea? 

Mrs. Hudson : 

I dunno, I just sort of — do. 

Lestrade :

He said, "There's only one suspect," and then he just walks away and now he won't explain. 

Which is strange, because he likes that bit. 

Said it was so simple I could solve it. 

Mrs. Hudson : 

I'm sure he was exaggerating. 

Lestrade :

What's he doing, do you think? 

Mrs. Hudson : 

He says he's waiting. 

Lestrade :

For what? 

Mrs. Hudson : 

The Devil. 

I wouldn't be surprised. 

We get all sorts here. 

Well, wire me if there's any change. 

Mrs. Hudson : 

Yeah. 

(CREAKING) 

(FOOTSTEPS) 

Lucifer :

Everything I have to say has already crossed your mind. 

Sherlock :

Then possibly my answer has crossed yours. 

Lucifer :

Like a bullet. 

Speak Your Order Onto The World

In claiming the Power of Speech, as it is called, the Neophyte cries out to the Great One who stands foremost in the ray of knowledge on which he has entered, to give him guidance. 

When he does this, his voice is hurled back by the power he has approached, and echoes down to the deep recesses of human ignorance. 

In some confused and blurred manner the news that there is knowledge and a beneficent power which teaches is carried to as many men as will listen to it. 

No disciple can cross the threshold without communicating this news, and placing it on record in some fashion or other. 

He stands horror-struck at the imperfect and unprepared manner in which he has done this; and then comes the desire to do it well, and with the desire thus to help others comes the power. 

For it is a pure desire, this which comes upon him; he can gain no credit, no glory, no personal reward by fulfilling it. 

And therefore he obtains the power to fulfil it.

Fit as a Fiddle, Right Unto The Breach, Dear Friend! Once More.

Sycamore Trees

Sycamore Trees

Written by: David Lynch 

I got idea man

You take me for a walk

Under the sycamore trees

The dark trees that blow baby

In the dark trees that blow

And I'll see you

And you'll see me

And I'll see you in the branches that blow

In the breeze,

I'll see you in the trees

Under the sycamore trees

THE RELIGION OF 

ANCIENT EGYPT

By

W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE

D.C.L., LL.D., LIT.D., PH.D., T.R.S., F.B.A., F.S.A. SCOT.

EDWARDS PROFESSOR OF EGYPTOLOGY,

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON

LONDON 

ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO LTD 

16 JAMES STREET HAYMARKET 

1906

THE FUTURE LIFE

The various beliefs of the Egyptians regarding the future life are so distinct from each other and so incompatible, that they may be classified into groups more readily than the theology; thus they serve to indicate the varied sources of the religion.

The most simple form of belief was that of the continued existence of the soul in the tomb and about the cemetery. In Upper Egypt at present a hole is left at the top of the tomb chamber; and I have seen a woman remove the covering of the hole, and talk down to her deceased husband. Also funeral offerings of food and drink, and even beds, are still placed in the tombs. A similar feeling, without any precise beliefs, doubtless prompted the earlier forms of provision for the dead. 

The soul wandered around the tomb seeking sustenance, and was fed by the goddess who dwelt in the thick sycomore trees that overshadowed the cemetery. She is represented as pouring out drink for the ba and holding a tray of cakes for it to feed upon. In the grave we find this belief shown by the jars of water, wine, and perhaps other liquids, the stores of corn, the geese, haunches and heads of oxen, the cakes, and dates, and pomegranates which were laid by the dead. 

In an early king's tomb there might be many rooms full of these offerings. There were also the weapons for defence and for the chase, the toilet objects, the stores of clothing, the draughtsmen, and even the literature of papyri buried with the dead. The later form of this system was the representation of all these offerings in sculpture and drawing in the tomb. This modification probably belongs to the belief in the ka, which could be supported by the ka of the food and use the ka of the various objects, the figures of the objects being supposed to provide the kas of them. This system is entirely complete in itself, and does not presuppose or require any theologic connection. It might well belong to an age of simple animism, and be a survival of that in later times.

The greatest theologic system was that of the kingdom of Osiris. This was a counterpart of the earthly life, but was reserved for the worthy. All the dead belonged to Osiris and were brought before him for judgment. The protest of being innocent of the forty-two sins was made, and then the heart was weighed against truth, symbolised by the ostrich feather, the emblem of the goddess of truth. From this feather, the emblem of lightness, being placed against the heart in weighing, it seems that sins were considered to weigh down the heart, and its lightness required to be proved. Thōth, the god who recorded the weighing, then stated that the soul left the judgment hall true of voice with his heart and members restored to him, and that he should follow Osiris in his kingdom. This kingdom of Osiris was at first thought of as being in the marshlands of the delta; when these became familiar it was transferred to Syria, and finally to the north-east of the sky, where the Milky Way became the heavenly Nile. The main occupation in this kingdom was agriculture, as on earth; the souls ploughed the land, sowed the corn, and reaped the harvest of heavenly maize, taller and fatter than any of this world. In this land they rowed on the heavenly streams, they sat in shady arbours, and played the games which they had loved. But the cultivation was a toil, and therefore it was to be done by numerous serfs. 

In the beginning of the monarchy it seems that the servants of the king were all buried around him to serve him in the future; from the second to the twelfth dynasty we lose sight of this idea, and then we find slave figures buried in the tombs. These figures were provided with the hoe for tilling the soil, the pick for breaking the clods, a basket for carrying the earth, a pot for watering the crops, and they were inscribed with an order to respond for their master when he was called on to work in the fields. In the eighteenth dynasty the figures sometimes have actual tool models buried with them; but usually the tools are in relief or painted on the figure. This idea continued until the less material view of the future life arose in Greek times; then the deceased man was said to have 'gone to Osiris' in such a year of his age, but no slave figures were laid with him. This view of the future is complete in itself, and is appropriately provided for in the tomb.

A third view of the future life belongs to an entirely different theologic system, that of the progress of the sun-god Ra. According to this the soul went to join the setting sun in the west, and prayed to be allowed to enter the boat of the

sun in the company of the gods; thus it would be taken along in everlasting light, and saved from the terrors and demons of the night over which the sun triumphed. No occupations were predicated of this future; simply to rest in the divine company was the entire purpose, and the successful repelling of the powers of darkness in each hour of the night by means of spells was the only activity. To provide for the solar journey a model boat was placed in the tomb with the figures of boatmen, to enable the dead to sail with the sun, or to reach the solar bark. This view of the future implied a journey to the west, and hence came the belief in the soul setting out to cross the desert westward. We find also an early god of the dead, Khent-amenti, 'he who is in the west,' probably arising from this same view. This god was later identified with Osiris when the fusion of the two theories of the soul arose. At Abydos Khent-amenti only is named at first, and Osiris does not appear until later times, though that cemetery came to be regarded as specially dedicated to Osiris.

Now in all these views that we have named there is no occasion for preserving the body. It is the ba that is fed in the cemetery, not the body. It is an immaterial body that takes part in the kingdom of Osiris, in the sky. It is an immaterial body that can accompany the gods in the boat of the sun. There is so far no call to conserve the body by the peculiar mummification which first appears in the early dynasties. The dismemberment of the bones, and removal of the flesh, which was customary in the prehistoric times, and survived down to the fifth dynasty, would accord with any of these theories, all of which were probably predynastic. But the careful mummifying of the body became customary only in the third or fourth dynasty, and is therefore later than the theories that we have noticed. The idea of thus preserving the body seems to look forward to some later revival of it on earth, rather than to a personal life immediately after death. The funeral accompaniment of this view was the abundance of amulets placed on various parts of the body to preserve it. A few amulets are found worn on a necklace or bracelet in early times; but the full development of the amulet system was in the twenty-sixth to thirtieth dynasties.

We have tried to disentangle the diverse types of belief, by seeing what is incompatible between them. But in practice we find every form of mixture of these views in most ages. In the prehistoric times the preservation of the bones, but not of the flesh, was constant; and food offerings show that at least the theory of the soul wandering in the cemetery was familiar. Probably the Osiris theory is also of the later prehistoric times, as the myth of Osiris is certainly older than the dynasties. The Ra worship was associated specially with Heliopolis, and may have given rise to the union with Ra also before the dynasties, when Heliopolis was probably a capital of the kings of Lower Egypt. The boats figured on the prehistoric tomb at Hierakonpolis bear this out. In the first dynasty there is no mummy known, funeral offerings abound, and the khuand ka are named. Our documents do not give any evidence, then, of the Osiris and Ra theories. In the pyramid period the king was called the Osiris, and this view is the leading one in the Pyramid inscriptions, yet the Ra theory is also incompatibly present; the body is mummified; but funeral offerings of food seem to have much diminished. In the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties the Ra theory gained ground greatly over the Osirian; and the basis of all the views of the future is almost entirely the union with Ra during the night and day. The mummy and amulet theory was not dominant; but the funeral offerings somewhat increased. The twenty-sixth dynasty almost dropped the Ra theory; the Osirian kingdom and its population of slave figures is the most familiar view, and the preservation of the body by amulets was essential. Offerings of food rarely appear in these later times. This dominance of Osiris leads on to the anthropomorphic worship, which interacts on the growth of Christianity as we shall see further. Lastly, when all the theologic views of the future had perished, the oldest idea of all, food, drink, and rest for the dead, has still kept its hold upon the feelings of the people in spite of the teachings of Islam.

Ideas Cultivate Human Beings

 " Fincher used to toss around the, you know, 

sort of The Buddhist Thing that :-


You've Gotta Kill Your Parents,
and then

You've Gotta Kill Your God,

and then

You've Gotta Kill Your Teacher
[ If you can...]


I think  Tyler helps Jack reject The Value System of His Parents, and then, at the end, he has to reject Tyler, if Tyler's his Teacher, he has to sort of pull back - 

And y'know, Tyler helps him through the initial steps towards Enlightenment -

But in The End / By The End, he has to pull away from Tyler, even, to define himself as separate from Tyler.... "
- Ed Norton,
Fight Club DVD Commentary Track,
1999

BUT THAT ISN'T TRUE  -  
That's Not The Case, at all...

Palinhuk reiterated and really drummed ths point Home in particular over the 10-Issue run of Fight Club 2,
 15 years on :

Ideas are Real,
We are Not.


He is NOT Seperate from Tyler -
He isn't Real -
He Doesn't Exist -

 whereas,

Tyler Durden DOES Exist...

The Dark Princess

The Godfather has Two Wives.

The Summertime Wife — Kaye

And The Dark Princess — Apollonia

Colin Corleone

Strange and Unusual

I've read through that Handbook for The Recently Deceased. It says: 

'Live people ignore the strange and unusual". 

I myself am, 

Strange and Unusual.

Fate Wills It So

Fate Wills it So. 

The Hermit Tends The Light in the Midst of Outer-Darkness

Cut to the halls. Buffy and Cordelia are walking.

Cordelia: 

So, how much the creepy is it that this Marcie's been at this 
for months? 

Spying on us? Learning our most guarded secrets? 

So, are you 
saying she's invisible because she's so unpopular?

Buffy: 

That about sums it up.

Cordelia:  (exhales) 

Bummer for her. It's awful to feel that lonely.

Buffy:  

Hmm.  So you've read something about the feeling?

Cordelia:  (stops Buffy) 

Hey! You think I'm never lonely because I'm so  cute and popular? 

I can be surrounded by people and be completely alone.

 It's not like any of them really know me. 

I don't even know if they like  me half the time. People just want to be in a popular zone. 

Sometimes  when I talk, everyone's so busy agreeing with me, they don't hear a word 
I say.

Buffy: 

Well, if you feel so alone, then why do you work so hard at being popular?

Cordelia: 

Well, it beats being alone all by yourself.

She continues down the hall. After considering that for a moment Buffy 
quickly follows.

Zarathustra went down the mountain alone, no one meeting him. 

When he entered the forest, however, there suddenly stood before him an old man, who had left his holy cot to seek roots. 

And thus spake the old man to Zarathustra: “No stranger to me is this wanderer: many years ago passed he by. Zarathustra he was called; but he hath altered. Then thou carriedst thine ashes into the mountains: wilt thou now carry thy fire into the valleys? Fearest thou not the incendiary’s doom? Yea, I recognise Zarathustra. Pure is his eye, and no loathing lurketh about his mouth. Goeth he not along like a dancer? Altered is Zarathustra; a child hath Zarathustra become; an awakened one is Zarathustra: what wilt thou do in the land of the sleepers? As in the sea hast thou lived in solitude, and it hath borne thee up. Alas, wilt thou now go ashore? Alas, wilt thou again drag thy body thyself?” 

Zarathustra answered: “I love mankind.” 

“Why,” said the saint, “did I go into the forest and the desert? Was it not because I loved men far too well? Now I love God: men, I do not love. Man is a thing too imperfect for me. Love to man would be fatal to me.” 

Zarathustra answered: “What spake I of love! I am bringing gifts unto men.” 

“Give them nothing,” said the saint. “Take rather part of their load, and carry it along with them—that will be most agreeable unto them: if only it be agreeable unto thee! If, however, thou wilt give unto them, give them no more than an alms, and let them also beg for it!” 

“No,” replied Zarathustra, “I give no alms. I am not poor enough for that.”

 The saint laughed at Zarathustra, and spake thus: “Then see to it that they accept thy treasures! They are distrustful of anchorites, and do not believe that we come with gifts. The fall of our footsteps ringeth too hollow through their streets. And just as at night, when they are in bed and hear a man abroad long before sunrise, so they ask themselves concerning us: Where goeth the thief? Go not to men, but stay in the forest! Go rather to the animals! Why not be like me—a bear amongst bears, a bird amongst birds?” 

“And what doeth the saint in the forest?” asked Zarathustra. 

The saint answered: “I make hymns and sing them; and in making hymns I laugh and weep and mumble: thus do I praise God. With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling do I praise the God who is my God. But what dost thou bring us as a gift?” 

When Zarathustra had heard these words, he bowed to the saint and said: “What should I have to give thee! Let me rather hurry hence lest I take aught away from thee!”

—And thus they parted from one another, the old man and Zarathustra, laughing like schoolboys. 

When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: “Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that GOD IS DEAD!”

Diabolical Narcissism

What an Excellent Day for an Exorcism...

In all seriousness, as a Man, the thing which shocked the sense out of me most of all in watching this is  just how *well* she knows The Godfather - because she *understood* it.

I am watching it again right now as a direct consequence — I understand that Michael is the only son prepared to journey into The Underworld (the echoey, cavernous hospital) to confront The Dragon (the hag-like nurse) and rescue his Dead Father by moving him to another room where the demons cannot find him or come  claim him.

But it had never occurred to me that the moment that comes afterwards, where he enlists the aid of an innocent baker and well-wisher to *pretend* to be armed muscle guarding The Don that *that* was the moment when he became an evil man — 

I could dispute that : because what is an innocent man doing venturing into The Underworld as a Fool...? Surely that Fool’s Faith should keep him safe.

The conventional wisdom is that Michael becomes an evil man when he decides to kill Sollozzo and the Police Captain (out of pure wrath) — but maybe that’s wrong.

The Baker volunteers to help (and says he is prepared to do anything),  not knowing what that entails.

It’s not the narcissism of Michael that endangers The Baker, it’s the faith and love of  Michael and the grace of The Fool which keeps all three of them safe, and alive.

You Need a Teacher — Like Wolverine

I don’t know if it’s his something to do with his indestructibility, rendering him totally immune and impervious both to mean comments and long, sullen silences, his lack of any discernible roots or stable long-term romantic partnerships, or maybe just the simple fact of his just being so goddamn old, world-weary, well-travelled and wise —

But for some reason, there is something about Logan that gives him a deep insight and ability to motivate young people, and for some reason, teenaged girls, in particular in helping them to find their courage.

This is interesting, and very unusual, it’s a sort of a mentoring relationship you very rarely, because it’s got no great epic tradition in the mythologies of preceding eras.

It’s distinctly a Master-Student Teaching relationship, rather than being of the surrogate familial type relationship - it’s not paternalistic in nature, and it can’t really be seen or thought of as being that of big brother protector.

Notable amongst his female squires over the years have been Kitty Pryde, Jubilee, Angel (no, not that one, the other Angel), and the de-aged Rogue in the first X-Men Movie.

Perhaps it’s because - perversely - the young girls always feel safe with him while he’s around.

Maybe it’s just because they make him feel young.

She's He-re...

"Something is added to cricket by the angle of the sun as it stands at four o'clock in early September. 

The shadows are longer, there's a suggestion of colder days approaching, of Circular Time, of aspects of our lives dying away and returning. 

The other sort of time is called Linear Time -- Life is hard and then one dies.... if that's something one is liable to do. 

Cricket, to me, seems to stand for The Former and against The Latter. 

It's something that dies but returns and writes mortals into History, in stories and statistics. Perhaps that's why it appeals to me. 

I also die and return, like a hardy perennial. 

However, Linear Time is currently impinging on the Hampshire town of Stockbridge in the form of an end-of-season struggle to avoid relegation from the top-most league of village cricket. 

They're raging against the dying of the light, they need wins not draws. They need umpires to take the brightest possible view of those stormy skies overhead. 

They need to play in horizontal rain if they have to. I've seen them do just that in the last couple of weeks, but I've joined them so late this year that I may not be much help."