Posts Tagged Myth

The Poe Toaster Revealed: Mystery Deepens

Posted by mistergroonk in Uncategorized on August 23, 2007

I’m unsure on how to feel about this. I made the Poe Toaster my personal weekly hero back in January. The Emo Kid/Tragic Goth in me could have lived a lifetime without knowing the(possible) truth.

But the birth of long lasting cultural mythology makes an interesting read. I read the article and was surprised. How strange that it didn’t seem to diminish the yearly ritual for me.

“We did it, myself and my tour guides,” said Sam Porpora. “It was a promotional idea. We made it up, never dreaming it would go worldwide.”

Porpora is an energetic, dapper fellow in a newsboy cap and a checked suit with a bolo tie. He’s got a twinkle in his eye and a mischievous smile, and he tells his tale in the rhythms of a natural-born storyteller.

No one has ever claimed ownership of the legend. So why is Porpora coming forward now?

“I really can’t tell you,” Porpora answered. “I love Poe. I love talking about Poe. I had a lot to do with making Poe a universal figure. I’m doing it because of my love for the story.”

[…]

Porpora’s story begins in the late 1960s. He’d just been made historian of the Westminster Presbyterian Church, built in 1852. There were fewer than 60 congregants and Porpora, in his 60s, was one of the youngest. The overgrown cemetery was a favorite of drunken derelicts.

The site needed money and publicity, Porpora recalled. That, he said, is when the idea of the Poe toaster came to him. The story, as Porpora told it to a local reporter then, was that the tribute had been laid at the grave on Poe’s January 19 birthday every year since 1949. Three roses — one for Poe, one for his wife, and one for his mother-in-law — and a bottle of cognac, because Poe loved the stuff even though he couldn’t afford to drink it unless someone else was buying.

The romantic image of the mysterious man in black caught the fancy of Poe fans and a tradition grew.

Not surprising that some have contested Porpora’s story.

(via cnn and Dunc)

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Chinese Villagers are Eating Dinosaur Bones…for Sexual Healing

Posted by mistergroonk in Admin, Animals, Science on July 5, 2007

The article didn’t say that but you just know they were.

BEIJING – Villagers in central China dug up a ton of dinosaur bones and boiled them in soup or ground them into powder for traditional medicine, believing they were from flying dragons and had healing powers.

Until last year, the fossils were being sold in Henan province as “dragon bones” at about 4 yuan (50 cents) per kilogram (2.2 pounds), scientist Dong Zhiming told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Dong, a professor with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said when the villagers found out the bones were from dinosaurs they donated 200 kilograms (440 pounds) to him and his colleagues for research.

“They had believed that the ‘dragon bones’ were from the dragons flying in the sky,” he said.

(via yahoo news)

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Thrice Caught in the Gaze of the Deerman

Posted by mistergroonk in Uncategorized on May 25, 2007

If he spies you 3 times. You die.

A week ago the column was devoted to recalling the legend of the half-man, half-deer who supposedly lurked in the woods north of Kewanee.

We were responding to a request from Neponset seventh grader Gus Block who asked the newspaper to “uncover the truth” in an unbiased fashion. Gus had heard some “pretty tall tales” about this Deerman from his “parents and other old people” and wondered if his leg was being pulled. We have since learned Gus overheard the adult Sunday School class at the Church of Peace reminiscing about stories of Deerman one Sunday morning and his curiosity was piqued so he penned a letter to the paper.

[…]

As we explained last week to Gus and the rest of our readers, the legend of Deerman began in the early 1960s in a column in this newspaper called “Mostly Malarkey,” written by editor and publisher Jerry Moriarity.

For several years the rumors of sightings and encounters circulated and “Deerman was here!” could be found scrawled on road signs, barns and walls throughout the Kewanee area.

[…]

… A Kewanee serviceman who asked to remain anonymous for his own safety read the Deerman column on our website and was amazed that the legend still exists. “The story I heard as a kid in the ’80s was that Deerman was created by a man who earned his living skinning and tanning hides in his barn. Somehow, late one dark and stormy night, something happened and he was given two legs of a deer, a man’s torso and arms (for writing), and the gigantic head of a 10-point buck,” said our serviceman. “It’s important to note that Deerman was not a cruel freak of nature, but the result of an unholy obsession with taxidermy.“

Half-man, half-animal legends being bandied about at Sunday School, you say? One would think that the Deerman and Jesus just wouldn’t mix.

(via warren ellis, star courier)

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Jinn: Born from the Smokeless Fire

Posted by mistergroonk in Admin, Just Freaking Neat on January 10, 2007

Gaiman linked to this quite nice article talking about the Jinn’s(or genie’s for the western layperson) place in history and contemporary times. The whole article is worth reading and knowing.

The Bible holds that God created angels and then made man in his own image. The Koran states that Allah fashioned angels from light and then made jinn from smokeless fire. Man was formed later, out of clay. Jinn disappointed Allah, not least by climbing to the highest vaults of the sky and eavesdropping on the angels. Yet Allah did not annihilate them. No flood closed over their heads. Jinn were willed into existence, like man, to worship Allah and were preserved on earth for that purpose, living in a parallel world, set at such an angle that jinn can see men, but men cannot see jinn.

[…]

In Somalia and Afghanistan clerics matter-of-factly described to your correspondent the range of jinn they had encountered, from the saintly to the demonic; those that can fly, those that crawl, plodding jinn, invisible jinn, gul with vampiric tendencies (from which the English word ghoul is taken), and shape-shifters recognisable in human form because their feet are turned backwards. Occasionally the clerics fell into a trance. Afterwards they claimed their apparently bare rooms had filled with jinn seeking favours or release from amulet charms.

[…]

But to more scholarly clerics jinn are little more than an energy, a pulse form of quantum physics perhaps, alive at the margins of sleep or madness, and more often in the whispering of a single unwelcome thought. An extension of this electric description of jinn is that they are not beings at all but thoughts that were in the world before the existence of man. Jinn reflect the sensibilities of those imagining them, just as in Assyrian times they were taken to be the spirits responsible for manias, who melted into the light at dawn.

(via neil gaiman and economist.com)

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James Gunn Rules over the Dead

Posted by mistergroonk in Grammar, Tutorials on January 6, 2007

This is not really Myth and not exactly Grammar. I’m just covering my bases so I’m sure to run into it in later searches. Ever since my History of English Language class my fascination with the etymology of names shot up 200%:

1.Is your last name really Gunn? Cuz that’s freakin’ cool. 2. Were you buds with Rooker prior to Slither? – Mike

Yes, that’s really my last name. My original family name (in Ireland) was MacGilGunn. My relatives there now are all named GilGunn. My grandparents shortened it to Gunn when they came over, to avoid anti-Irish bias (there was such a thing back then).

But even cooler is the origin of the name. MacGilGunn means Sons to the Servants of the God of the Dead. Gunn means “God of the Dead.” I shit you not.

And, no, I wasn’t friends with Rooker prior to SLiTHER, but I was a big, big fan.

That comes from James Gunn’s first blog of the year 007. He did SLiTHER and DAWN OF THE DEAD and SCOOBY DOO and lots of other things. ANGEL fans make a note. The character of Charles Gunn was named after James and Sean Gunn(brothers ya know.

There are lots of other writing and screenwriting questions answered in this particular blog, too.

(via james gunn and possibly james gunn’s god)

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Double-13 Friday Gives Crazies Pause

Posted by mistergroonk in Grammar, Holiday on October 13, 2006

Paraskevidekatriaphobics think on numbers too much.

This is not a good day for paraskevidekatriaphobics — those who fear Friday the 13th. It’s double-13 Friday. All the numbers in the numerical notation — 10/13/2006 — add up to 13 as well, giving great pause to the superstitious.

The phenomenon hasn’t happened in 476 years, said Heinrich Hemme, a physicist at Germany’s University of Aachen who crunched the numbers to find that the double-whammy last occurred Jan. 13, 1520.

“Pure chance,” the good professor told the press yesterday.

But it’s not exactly TGIF for the 21 million Americans who fear the day. Some may not travel or even get out of bed, said Donald Dossey, a North Carolina psychologist who coined the term “paraskevidekatriaphobia” 20 years ago. He estimates that the nation is out $900 million in lost productivity because of Friday the 13th sick-outs.

“It’s just ingrained in our culture — one of those collective, unconscious fears stretching back about 2,800 years,” Mr. Dossey said. “But it will be all gone tomorrow. By the time you learn to pronounce ‘paraskevidekatriaphobia,’ you’re cured.”

Friday the 13th has had unlucky baggage for centuries, with references to “bad” Fridays cited in the Bible, Norse mythology, Chaucer, French and British history, numerology and folklore sources, Mr. Dossey said.

Presidential hopeful John Edwards must be phobia-free. The former Democratic senator from North Carolina begins his 13th campaign trip to Iowa today, according to the Des Moines Register.

(via 7d and the washington times)

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Ancient Whale Rexes, Demon Ducks, and a Dead Mystery Critter in Maine

Posted by mistergroonk in Animals, Science on August 23, 2006

whale rex.jpgThe fossil is the latest in a list of ancient creatures including sabre-toothed kangaroos, horned “devil wallabies” and the unlikely-sounding “demon duck of doom” that are reshaping views of Australia’s prehistoric past.

The 25-million-year-old whale fossil has forced scientists to rethink the evolution of baleen whales, the placid giants which feed by using fine hair-like fibres in their mouths to filter plankton from the sea.

“The fossil proves the baleen whale, including toothless filter-feeders like the blue whale, often thought of as gentle giants of the sea, were not always so giant or gentle,” Monash University graduate researcher Erich Fitzgerald told AFP.

While baleens are large — with the blue whale reaching up to 30 metres (98 foot) — the prehistoric predator was a swift hunter-killer only 3.5 metres (11.5 foot) long that fed on fish and small sharks, Fitzgerald said.

Scientists in Australia have discovered a fossilised ancient relative of the blue whale, seen here, with a fearsome razor-toothed appearance that has seen it dubbed ‘the T-rex of the oceans’
He said it also had large eyes, like a modern great white, to compensate for its lack of sonar.

(via phys org)

Let that beastie kiss you at Seaworld.

8_demonduck.jpgA 12-million-year-old giant thunder bird called Bullockornis had a massive head with large powerful jaws. Although thunder birds were long thought to be plant-eaters, features of this bird’s skull suggest that Bullockornis may have been a flesh-eater. Scientists have nicknamed this huge bird for its suspected meat-eating habits and its possible distant relationship to waterfowl – the ‘Demon Duck of Doom’.

(via australia’s lost kingdoms)

Evil quacks.

deadmysterymainecritter 2.jpgTURNER, Maine –Residents are wondering if an animal found dead over the weekend may be the mysterious creature that has mauled dogs, frightened residents and been the subject of local legend for half a generation.

The animal was found near power lines along Route 4 on Saturday, apparently struck by a car while chasing a cat. The carcass was photographed and inspected by several people who live in the area, but nobody is sure exactly what it is.

Michelle O’Donnell of Turner spotted the animal near her yard about a week before it was killed. She called it a “hybrid mutant of something.”

“It was evil, evil looking. And it had a horrible stench I will never forget,” she told the Sun Journal of Lewiston. “We locked eyes for a few seconds and then it took off. I’ve lived in Maine my whole life and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

For the past 15 years, residents across Androscoggin County have reported seeing and hearing a mysterious animal with chilling monstrous cries and eyes that glow in the night. The animal has been blamed for attacking and killing a Doberman pinscher and a Rottweiler the past couple of years.

(via boston.com)

People love their legends.

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Superman is a Tulpa

Posted by mistergroonk in Admin, Comics, Just Freaking Neat on May 25, 2006

Neil Gaiman and Adam Rogers penned an article on the power and myth of Superman. I find myself reading it repeatedly.

About a decade ago, Alvin Schwartz, who wrote Superman comic strips in the 1940s and ’50s, published one of the great Odd Books of our time. In An Unlikely Prophet, reissued in paperback this spring, Schwartz writes that Superman is real. He is a tulpa, a Tibetan word for a being brought to life through thought and willpower. Schwartz also says a Hawaiian kahuna told him that Superman once traveled 2,000 years back in time to keep the island chain from being destroyed by volcanic activity. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t, but it does sound like a job for Superman – all in a day’s work for a guy who can squeeze coal into diamonds. Schwartz then tells of his own encounter with Superman in a New York taxi, when he learned firsthand that Superman’s cape is, in fact, more than mere fabric.

[…]

Superman stands between humanity and a capricious universe.
(read the entire article)

I do disagree with the statement that, “Bruce Wayne plays Batman.” In my mind, Bruce Wayne is the facade that Batman puts up in order to deflect accusing eyes. If you could talk to Bruce…if he were standing flesh and blood in front of you and you asked him the honest truth, “Who are you really?” I’m dead sure he would say, “I’m Batman,” without hesitation or campy intent.

(via wired news)

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Geomythology: Saving lives with Folklore

Posted by mistergroonk in Admin, Science on December 6, 2005

This is some damn interesting shit:

On the banks of Siletz Bay in Lincoln City, Oregon, officials dedicated a memorial last week to one of America’s worst calamities: a huge earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands of Native Americans 300 years ago.

But the memorial’s main job is not to commemorate the disaster, which has only just come to light, but to warn local people that similar devastation could strike at any time.

The area sits over massive fault lines whose dangers have been highlighted by a startling new scientific discipline that combines Earth science studies and analysis of ancient legends. This is geomythology, and it is transforming our knowledge of earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis, says the journal Science.

According to the discipline’s proponents, violent geological upheavals may be more frequent than was previously suspected.

Apart from the ‘lost’ Seattle earthquake, geomythology has recently revealed that a volcano in Fiji, thought to be dormant, is active, a discovery that followed geologists’ decision to follow up legends of a mountain appearing overnight.

Geologists have found that Middle Eastern flooding myths, including the story of Noah, could be traced to the sudden inundation of the Black Sea 7,600 years ago. The Oracle at Delphi has been found to lie over a geological fault through which seeped hallucinogenic gases. These could account for the trances and utterances of the oracle’s mystics.

‘Myths can tell us a great deal about what happened in the past and were important in establishing what happened here 300 years ago,’ said Brian Atwater, of the US Geological Survey in Seattle.

(via warren ellis)

Read the rest of this entry »

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Archimedes Death ray not a “Busted” Myth?

Posted by mistergroonk in History, Science on October 8, 2005

MIT geeks do have their uses:

1_deathRayFrescosmall.gifAncient Greek and Roman historians recorded that during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, Archimedes (a notably smart person) constructed a burning glass to set the Roman warships, anchored within bow and arrow range, afire. The story has been much debated and oft dismissed as myth.

2_burningSketchModel_small.jpgTV’s MythBusters were not able to replicate the feat and “busted” the myth.

Intrigued by the idea and an intuitive belief that it could work, MIT’s 2.009ers decided to apply the early product development ‘sketch or soft modeling’ process to the problem.

Our goal was not to make a decision on the myth—we just wanted to assess if it was at least possible, and have some fun in the process. Jumping ahead, you can see the result… but let’s start at the beginning of the process.

Also of interest, the mini-solar death ray.

(via boingboing)

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