Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Missed the best name!
Weather.com apparently gave up on finding a Q name for today's winter storm. They're just calling it "Storm Q". Come on, folks! You've missed the most perfect winter god of all, an Eskimo weather-god!
Qailertetang.
The short Wiki piece on Qailertetang feels suspiciously modern and suspiciously fictional. I'll stick with Franz Boas who says Qailertetang was a servant of Sedna, the crippled one-eyed fingerless mistress of the underworld. [See p 168 in this PDF.]
Let's all run around shouting "Hoo, hoo, hoo" to propitiate Qailertetang! Can't hurt, and it's a whole fucking lot nicer than the modern ceremony where we run around stealing trillions and trillions and trillions from poor people, who then freeze to death; and we hand the trillions and trillions and trillions to super-rich stock speculators, who then eat the poor people. (Menu: Medallion of peasant au pauvre in a balsamic libor reduction. Kosher, of course.)
The part about wishing for calm weather and a calm soul is just unspeakably beautiful. I can't say anything snarky about it.
As I was looking through the Boas text, ran into another interesting bit:
Hmm. Seems like the Eskimos survived a previous warm period. This means their food (seals, bears, etc) also survived a previous warm period. I thought all "scientists" told us that was impossible. "Before there was any rise and fall of the tide..." is especially tantalizing. Do the Eskimos remember a time when the moon was farther away?
= = = = =
Artistic note: Apologies to real Eskimos and their gods. I do NOT intend to disrespect or profane their ceremony. Exactly the opposite. I only wanted to mash the complex sequence into a simple animation that Polistra and friends could perform.
Let's all run around shouting "Hoo, hoo, hoo" to propitiate Qailertetang! Can't hurt, and it's a whole fucking lot nicer than the modern ceremony where we run around stealing trillions and trillions and trillions from poor people, who then freeze to death; and we hand the trillions and trillions and trillions to super-rich stock speculators, who then eat the poor people. (Menu: Medallion of peasant au pauvre in a balsamic libor reduction. Kosher, of course.)
The part about wishing for calm weather and a calm soul is just unspeakably beautiful. I can't say anything snarky about it.
As I was looking through the Boas text, ran into another interesting bit:
Hmm. Seems like the Eskimos survived a previous warm period. This means their food (seals, bears, etc) also survived a previous warm period. I thought all "scientists" told us that was impossible. "Before there was any rise and fall of the tide..." is especially tantalizing. Do the Eskimos remember a time when the moon was farther away?
= = = = =
Artistic note: Apologies to real Eskimos and their gods. I do NOT intend to disrespect or profane their ceremony. Exactly the opposite. I only wanted to mash the complex sequence into a simple animation that Polistra and friends could perform.Labels: 1901, Carbon Cult
¶ 7:01 AM
