LoC 65: Top 50 Urban Legends

[Tripe]

Real first names at least.

[MerryWanna]

Oh and Merry, I worship Dionysus so I understand some of where you're coming from, because he's actually more a god of altered states than wine, it's just that wine was the way you got there most of the time through most of history. Many of the maenads I know live in your neck of the woods incidentally.

You've been posting to/with one of them all along - especially, now that things are getting better for me, even at my age I can still maenadify like the best and younger among them. I'm just in a cranky mood today (mentioned above) because I am annoyed about chores. (And even maenads have to do laundry, or else they gross out the dancers and the lovers and the trippers and even the drunken staggerers around them, sometimes!)

Also, my box keeps crashing, but prayers to Techgnosis fixed that up yet again.  It frankly, freakishly amazes me how often this actually does work - Techgnosis is one of the world's youngest Gods to make itself one of the lords of the whole planet in less than half a century! I have Great Respect for Techgnosis, but youth and all that power make this one of the Gods whose ass needs smooching a LOT if you want to curry favour. 

[MerryWanna]

That's rather silly to postulate a new god for the internet age. Athena was always the goddess of techne and artisans, so there's no reason to think she wouldn't still be in that framework.  Remember that she was birthed fully-grown from the mind (nous) of Zeus, so she's always had that intellectual aspect. Calling her the goddess of "wisdom" is kind of stupid shorthand for that.

Athena has a lot on her plate, already; besides, as you point out, she's been sort of mistranslated. 

Techgnosis is specifically about computer-based tech, not the 'tech' of earlier times.  My mythos has Techgnosis as the younger brother of Mechgnosis, or just "Mecha", the lord of Machines, source of the Modern World and beloved of steampunks and suchlike. 

Techgnosis must ride on the back of his older sibling, for the networks that are his domain could not exist without basic motors and generators of electricity.

I like dreaming up mythos.  There hasn't been much in the way of new ones lately except for that of H.P. Lovecraft, and the intricate complex joke-within-a-million-other-jokes world of the "Church of the SubGenius". 

Mine's sort of half joke and half (ir-) reality. So call it silly, if you will; it matters not.

[Tripe]

I should say I'm liking all of those last few posts because it's nice to have a discussion about religion that's not monotheism centred.

I like the creation of Gods, the theory found in Maya Deren's work and which forms the basis of the theological structure of the Discworld really. If gods exist, I think that's as close to an accurate description of how they come to be than anything else really.

Which is why I believe in the God Audition and the Prayer of Conan.

[Tripe]

I'm picturing a tiny god or goddess lying on the palm of Nike while she stand of the palm of Athena, Nike can be diddling that deity in the manner with which one fondles a smart phone.

[MerryWanna]

I should say I'm liking all of those last few posts because it's nice to have a discussion about religion that's not monotheism centred.

I like the creation of Gods, the theory found in Maya Deren's work and which forms the basis of the theological structure of the Discworld really. If gods exist, I think that's as close to an accurate description of how they come to be than anything else really.

Which is why I believe in the God Audition and the Prayer of Conan.

Totally agree on EVERYTHING. Been told by about a dozen people I'd like Discworld, I've got to just up and hit my favourite used bookstore, which is in, of all places, Glen Park.  Stuff I couldn't find on Valencia Street, or up on Haight I'd find at this little place on Chenery Street. Surrounded by upscale hair salons and expensive cafes, it seems not to belong there, but it's been there forever.  Wish I could remember the name, it was always just 'that cool bookstore down there' when I lived with my ex two blocks up a rather steepish hill on Bemis Street.  He might have been the first of the dozen to recommend it, actually...

The God of Audition has not been kind to me lately - though this may be a hardware issue, I am frustrating my collaborative partner in Choronzon, because every time I try to "sing" the lyrics to the three "songs" on the album we're almost done with that need this aspect or it just would wreck the whole album and make it just another bunch of noise, without the important story it tells being communicated at all...Audition won't record a mic track, or even a mic sound file.  Have tried replacing mics, cords, using different versions, so now I am thinking my computer's audio card is malfing in some way.  It's confusing, since it has TWO sound cards, but neither work in REC mode.  I have gone absolutely nuts trying to fix this for almost half a year. The audio cards and system drivers and all that work just fine with both listening to things and recording using tracker programs like FL Studio, but do anything involving a mic, I get nothing.  Is this one or more of the sonically-oriented Muses trying to tell me something? Like, "YOU CAN'T SING.  Don't even try. It will offend us, so we won't LET you record this?"

Choronzon is the sort of project ("bands" play live; our East/West split makes this impossible) where it just doesn't matter if I can sing or not; Nico couldn't sing either, but I always loved her stuff. We take what we do as mostly playing for ourselves and our 'demigod' (I guess you'd say) anyway.  But man, I gotta solve this or I will go koo-koo.

[Tripe]

Bird and Beckett?

Ah, no, not the god of audition, he God Audition; trying out various gods to see if they've earned a little worship, and the tool for doing that is the Prayer of Conan. In the film it goes like this:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZWEQiW2TYAM" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/ZWEQiW2TYAM</a>

Which basically breaks down to this:

Deity, we both know what this is, this is the thing I want please grant that to me, if you don't forget about you.

But if they do give you that, then your end of the bargain is to provide something to them by way of thanks (that varies depending on what the deity is I think).

[Tripe]

Yeah that works too but I like referencing Conan, especially since it's a parody of this, at least the name.

[MerryWanna]

Bird and Beckett?

Ah, no, not the god of audition, he God Audition; trying out various gods to see if they've earned a little worship, and the tool for doing that is the Prayer of Conan. In the film it goes like this:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZWEQiW2TYAM" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/ZWEQiW2TYAM</a>

Which basically breaks down to this:

Deity, we both know what this is, this is the thing I want please grant that to me, if you don't forget about you.

But if they do give you that, then your end of the bargain is to provide something to them by way of thanks (that varies depending on what the deity is I think).

Hahaha.  OK, got that.

I actually don't recognise any gods of software items - that's all covered by Techgnosis interfacing with whatever muse I'm dealing with - my comment was basically a joke. 

The Crom recitation is fairly congruent to my attitude when dealing with mythos entities. Since we create them (even if someone else named them ages ago) our belief in their reality is what causes the personification, becoming an interface with the force being dealt with.  I solved the faith question with "well, these mythos entities are real, because they're perceptions of my real neurons, and the real bioelectric current activating them - if nothing else.  As for the rest, since it can't be proved one way or another...'the hell with it', I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, since the doubt of the benefit doesn't do much but make life more boring than it needs to be. :-)"

As for what they want in return, it's mostly attention. They mostly just like to be noticed; though some are more attention-whores than others (Techgnosis, I'm looking at you when I say that!).  Personal guardian demon-demigods, like my Choronzon, also reap a little more than mere attention - but that's more like a mutual trade-off, since it sure doesn't drain my energy to commingle with it. When it happens, I swear people will smile at me out of the clear blue sky the next day, total strangers, who'd normally never even look at me.  Whatever this thing is, I like that I found it - or verse-vice-a.