Feeling Pretty Psyched

So here it is, the Mayan Calendar has hit the end of the 13th Baktun, the Blue Kachina will be born to dance in the pueblos of the Hopi, our plane of existence will merge with the Supercontext and we will all know ourselves as what we are, pure spirit, that life is a game and God loves us all. I’m going to hang out with friends, jam and probably get a bit drunk.

December 21st, 2012 has been a special date for me for a while now, mainly because it was such a prominent plot point in Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, a comic about chaos magicians fighting ancient conspiracies run by eldritch abominations. It sort of became the charter myth of my adolescence for a while, still kind of is though Mage: the Ascension has been mixed in with it. So I’ve been pretty focused on this date, even coming up with an entire trilogy of novels as a teenager based on this date. It would have been bad and silly, would have ripped of the plot of Seven Samurai of all things, casting it against the backdrop of Apocalypse, and involved a man trying to do a musical version of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. I’ve worked out what I hope to be a better 2012 novel, which won’t be dated by Saturday. It involves a rag-tag group of magicians trying to align humanity’s chakras or whatever before the Mayan Calender runs out. It’s Magic Realism and it’s a comedy.

So besides the Mayan Apocalypse I have had something of an interesting time. I had my first romantic relationship, which wasn’t so much a relationship as a long fling, which ended in disaster and heartbreak. It’s been awhile so I’m fine talking about it, but not in great detail. To put it into some perspective, I spent the last few days after meeting her with my heart-broken more than it has ever been broken before, before realizing with the help with my parents that this woman couldn’t love me in any way that would have helped me. I bring this up because I see a certain resonance between the emotional breakdown I just went through and the alleged upcoming Doomsday.

Back to said Doomsday, I believe it’s  only fair to say that the Mayans don’t think it’s the end of the world. Yes, the Mayans are alive. I was surprised as anyone to hear that. They’re doing alright everything considered, since they have experts to deal with their calendar, such as it is. Observe the following article, found on CNN.

“It’s an era. We are lucky to see how it ends,” said wood carver Santos Esteban in Yaxuna, a sleepy village of fewer than 700 Mayans, located in a territory that once belonged to the ancient kingdom founded around 2000 B.C.

He feels it is a momentous occasion and is looking forward to the start of the new age. He is not afraid.

“Lots of people say it’s the end of the world, but we don’t believe that,” he said.

I’ve been aware of this interpretation for a while. It’s been the one I’ve favoured for the most part, since Doomsday is kind of a downer. At the very least, the Mayans are restarting their calendar and Terrence McKenna shouldn’t have taken the voices of aliens he meet via psychedelics so seriously. The fact remains as to why the Mayan Apocalypse is said to be the end of the world by crazy survivalists and jokers on the Internet. I’ve been getting all kinds of memes that say Galactus is going to eat us or there will be zombies eating us (Will people just shut up about the zombies already), but it all comes down to us being devoured by something or other. Meteors are popular too, in which case we will all be devoured in flame I suppose.

Basically, people want to world to end because we all kind of know our current system is fucked. I mean really, the environment is going through drastic changes and we’re saying that God wants to punish us for gay marriage. If God is going to punish us for anything, which Divine Love will probably prevent, it’s going to be messing with the balance of the ecosystem. I found an article on this sort of thing on Boing Boing.

And that aspect of human nature exposes the real impetus behind our childlike fascination with end times. People everywhere yearn for inner change – for a way to detach from the cycle of routine daily existence, with its conflicts, habits, addictions, worries, and boredoms. We’re surrounded by therapeutic and religious ideas – yet the wish for change and personal fulfillment is almost always unfulfilled. So, in our frustration, we look without. We hope that some kind of seismic shift will rescue us from the inability to alter ourselves. Scary as it may be, the end of what we know promises to rupture old patterns and push us toward something new.

So there it is. We want something to shock us out of the sink hole of a civilization we have found ourselves in. We’re to cozy and we know it, so we try to come up with stories about a sharp enough shock to get us out of the funk materialism and capitalism has put on us. I include myself in this, I will probably shortly revert to my usual ways of fiddling around on the Internet and generally screwing around.

After the break-up with the girlfriend, a relationship that was a huge mistake looking back, I believe I have come out stronger, knowing more about myself and my desires. I have gone through a change, but considering it all now I don’t know how big of a change this actually is. I remember her saying something about spiritually awakening me, but I am doubtful she ever had that capability and was just saying that to keep me around. I do feel, after going out with her and the disastrous emotional break down she put me through, that I have undergone a change, and I feel better for it. All in all, I am expecting 2013 to be a very good year for me.

FURTHER READING

Ben Brumfield, “Some believe Friday is doomsday on the Mayan Calendar; the Mayans don’t”

Horowitz, Mitch. “Once More Awaiting ‘The End'”

Needs more Antonin Artaud: The New Lone Ranger and Johnny Depp’s Racially Insensitive Bird Hat

So they’re making a Lone Ranger movie, which I wouldn’t have noticed if I didn’t have any reference to “Alejandro Jodorowsky” on the internet immediately sent to my email inbox. Yes, I do that.

So for all you people who are like me and are slowly phasing the mainstream out of your life, apparently the guys doing Pirates of the Caribbean (i.e. Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer) are making a Lone Ranger movie. Armie Hammer, who I’m not familiar with and sounds like a porn star name to me, stars as the Lone Ranger, and Johnny Depp is Tonto. Yes, Johnny Depp is Tonto. There are problems here, mainly by casting a white man in a red man’s role. The only reason it’s not red face is because Johnny Depp is wearing so much face make up. Admittedly, he looks pretty cool, especially considering he has a bird on his head, but couldn’t they find an Indian guy?

Alright, let’s place the unfortunate implications thing aside and say that they just couldn’t find a Native guy who wanted to play Tonto because of some of the controversy around the character speaking in a pidgin dialect. It should be brought up that Johnny Depp does not really have that good of a history playing First Nations guys. I have only heard rumours of The Brave, a movie Johnny Depp directed and stared in about an Indian guy who volunteers to be part fo a snuff film so that his wife and children can get out of the sickening poverty he lives in. Admittedly, the character in that movie is more the horrible reality for First Nations people, where as Tonto is more of a white man’s idea of what the First Nations were like during that time period; mystical warriors in a world that is moving on from them. Basically that makes them the American version of elves. Make of that what you will.

Also, why the hell does Tonto have a bird on his head? This has not been sufficiently addressed in my opinion. Why is he wearing a dead bird on his head? I looked up the whole feather-headdress thing. They’re supposed to be eagle feathers and your supposed to take the feathers off. WHY IS THERE A DEAD BIRD ON HIS HEAD? I’ve also checked the Wikipedia page on the Potawatomi, the tribe Tonto is supposed to be from, and they have no dead birds on their heads.

So asside from the whole issue of a white guy playing Tonto, there’s the whole accusations of Jodorowsky similarities. To be honest, beyond a certain level of Tonto being somekind of shaman in a funny hat I’m not seeing it. The trailer looks good, but I’m not planning on seeing this in theatres.

Houston Press: Will the Lone Ranger be the Alejandro Jodorowsky Summer Movie We Didn’t Know We Wanted but We Do?

Jezebel: Johnny Depp Takes Tonto Character from Racist to Merely Culturally Insensitive

 

That hat.

That fucking hat.

Goodbye to Slam

Some of you may be wondering “Dylan, what ever happened to the Ontario International Poetry Slam? That thing you blogged about.” Well, I lost. I didn’t lose miserably, unless you consider coming in fifth to last miserable, but other than that I had a good time. It’s also made me decide that the Poetry Slam just isn’t for me. It’s taken me awhile, but quite frankly I don’t like it that much. I thank it for getting me into poetry, but I honestly think we can do better.

Aside from that, I enjoyed most of the poets, and while I disagree on who got past. I would have voted for other people, but ultimately I feel that the winners deserved what they got. Good luck to everyone, and I hope you enjoy yourselves.

Great Wizard Fights of History: Antichrist Harry Potter vs. Mary Poppins (Warning: NSFW. Or near your children. Also spoilers)

So I’m an Alan Moore fan. I suppose that’s no secret to anyone, as he has shown up in my blog before. When the final volume of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen came out I was not really excited, because the critics have a point and Moore can get up his own ass with this mapping of Fiction-Landhe has started up. Never the less, I like Alan Moore and was going to give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe Century works better as a whole. I actually think that this may be the best example of the

But that’s not what I want to talk about. It’s not what you want to hear either. What you want to here is if Antichrist Harry Potter really shoots lightning from his penis.

Why yes. Yes he does.

So there was a lot of controversy, to say the least. I’m not really sure about this entire bit of Alan Moore’s oeuvre. I’m not sure what the point is, besides a general “our time period sucks,” thing, which I’m not really sure it communicates well. Maybe we’re a bit to close to the subject matter to tell, the Victorians would probably be offended by having Allen Quartermain be a washed up junkie, or Mina Murray be in charge of the League, or Allen and Mina boning each other in the woods. Having Harry Potter become the Antichrist may be a bit harsher on a cosmic level, but it’s not particularly different.

So yes, Harry Potter is the Antichrist, but what gets me is the Deus Ex Machina. Not that I’m complaining about Deus Ex Machina, that’s cliché to complain about Deus Ex Machina. We should have more Deus Ex Machina, if only because it will piss of those Strident Atheist Fuckers. What gets me is that God in this book is Mary Poppins.

So one could say that this is just Moore and O’Neil having a big pull on our leg, but there has got to be more going on here. Why Mary Poppins, and not some other fictional god figure. Heck, why not Aslan? If Harry Potter is to be the Antichrist, why not have the fictional aspect of Christ? Well, this is probably because Alan Moore is about as Christian as a snake-worshipping wizard. Aslan just wouldn’t fit. There’s also a certain gendered thing now that I think of it. Aslan’s nemesis is the White Witch, a female. In League, we have the female God figure against a male figure of evil.

(Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t think the League Universe Harry Potter is strictly evil. He’s basically just an angry young man who was manipulated by forces of evil. He’s basically just a kid who needs to calm the fuck down, and probably needs more of a sympathetic ear then he was given. Still doesn’t excuse him for trying to destroy the world, but that’s what you get when you let evil wizards run your school.)

Anyways, back to Mary Poppins. I ended up finding an article that gives much to this. I have been looking around and reading that Mary Poppins is an embodiment of the Thelemic Goddess Babalon. This didn’t really mesh with me at first since Mary Poppins doesn’t seem to fit entirely well with Babalon. I then read this.

Amy: The question of who Mary Poppins actually is should be fairly easy to answer for anyone who slogged through the marathon Kabbalah lec..I mean story arc in Promethea. The clue’s in her first name…. Mary is a manifestation of the sephirah Binah, and with a little inspection it seems she embodies both of the sphere’s attributes. A nanny (read: mother) to all, she’s the bottomlessly compassionate Marie, but, stern house-frau that she is and consort to the filthiest and most ‘fallen’ of all the victorian/edwardian stock characters, the chimney sweep, she also doubles up as Babylon. Her stated concern for ‘the healthy development’ of childrens’ imagination just serves to underline this promethean connection (and Moore’s concern, if it was ever in doubt, that Harry Potter is the imaginative equivalent of poison). – Mindless Ones “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Century: Part Three

This makes sense. Skip past Babalon, and Mary Poppins is an emanation of the Sephirot of Binah. So I have that as my answer, and I’m sticking to it. I will now publish this post, because it has been taking to damn long, and I have not given any new information on this text.