Once More Unto the Breach

Hey, friends. Well, after a four-year hiatus, I'm back in the blogging game. For those of you who missed my last foray, I was co-host of a blog with the old Greek demigod, Pan. It was called, appropriately enough, Pan's Garden. Well, after a short time Pan got bored and I got distracted by little things like the death of my father, marriage, a new house, and two new businesses. But the itch to blog is back and it's time to be scratched. So without further ado, here goes...

P.S. For anyone interested, here's the URL to the old site: Pan's Garden. But I've saved you the trouble by excerpting from the best post (from Christmas 2003). Here it is:

Christmas Message From Pan
Merry Christmas, everyone. Hope all you mortals enjoyed yourselves. You may wonder what I'm doing wishing anyone celebrating Christmas well; after all it was Jesus' birth that ushered in my passing from the world (well, near passing). And I was bitter and angry for many years--especially during those particularly dark years between, say, 900 and 1600. The maligning of my once-great name was bad enough, but the merciless torturing of my lovers and compatriots--which reached its peak during the Inquisition--that had me tearing myself apart with a burning hatred for centuries.

But the passage of time does amazing things. Eventually, my pain began to subside and I came to understand that it wasn't really this Christ that was my nemesis as much as it was man's littleness. I actually came to feel pity and (almost) a sense of comraderie with this Buddhist-sounding Jew from Galilee. Here's this guy, by my reckoning a strange mixture of shrewd political rabble-rouser and naive, up-with-people type. Not really the sort I'd hang out with, but not someone I couldn't ever get along with, either. Ultimately, I think he felt he was doing some good in the world, and, indeed, he was far more enlightened than most of his compatriots in that part of the world. Too bad, then, that after his untimely death, some very petty, power-hungry men should build an entire religion on his name by perverting the very ideas he stood for. That must certainly be galling. I mean, for the lion's share of past two millennium the so-called catholic church and many of their protestant off-shoots have perpetuated some of the silliest yet most heinous nonsense seen in the world. And gotten away with it. [Jeff: I see now where the Bush administration learned most of its tricks. :-)]

Well, what you humans call evil hasn't gone away and isn't confined to ne'er-do-wells of any one religion. Still, my feeling is that we Greeks had a much better understanding of human nature and a much more realistic way of coming to terms with it. But in the spirit of the Solstice season, I willingly and happily (and figuratively, as he likey wouldn't like my fecund stench) embrace my man-god colleague and wish his many mortal followers a Merry Christmas.

I'll now pass the keyboard back to Jeff (one of my favorite mortals currently walking the earth) who probably has some mundane nonsense to babble on about.

Christmas Message From Jeff
Hey all, Merry Christmas. Glad to see Pan could get some of that off of his chest. It took years of pulling teeth, but apparently that therapy paid off. Hope it doesn't kill his robust sex drive. [Pan: What, are you fucking kidding? You mock me, mere mortal.]

Anyway, my Christmas was pretty good. I wasn't feeling very much in the spirit yesterday. Haven't really felt very Christmas-y at all this year. But ended up spending a good evening with Annie and her mom, Martha. We had a great dinner (enchiladas and a fruity salad followed by ice cream) and put a puzzle together while watching a movie.

I got some great gifts, though. Annie got me the two things I really wanted: a copy of Malleus Maleficarum and a Boss RC20 Loop Factory Phrase Recorder.

The Malleus Maleficarum, which I believe translates to "Witch's Hammer" or "Hammer of the Witches", was originally published in 1486 and functioned as a sort of witchhunters bible, especially during the Inquisition. Indeed, it was cowritten by an Inquisitor and designed to aid Inquisitors in the identification, prosecution, and punishment of Witches. It's truly bizarre and terribly sad (and infuriating). What is most bizarre about it is the matter-of-fact tone it has while describing the most absurd of concepts: whether witches copulate with incubi or succubi, whether that semen could produce offspring, how witches obscure men's members from themselves, different levels of punishment for different types of witchcraft crimes, etc., etc. On and on like this. It's actually quite tedious. Yet the outcome of what is described was the horrible torture and mutilation of millions of people. Which makes the tone all the more creepy and maddening. And this was one the most exalted books--after the Bible, of course--for centuries.…