Posted on 03/20/2011 8:50:21 PM PDT by bronxville
Sorry, I was thinking of something else. Yes, yearning is youthful. I remember yearning to be older so I could do anything I wanted, unfortunately I never did take heed when told to enjoy the freedom of youth. Today I imagine I’m one of many, yearning to breathe freely again, which won’t happen until he gets out of office and even then I’m not sure it will change. We were sold out decades, a century ago, centuries, or on another sphere, since Eden. When I remember I turn it over to God but am relentless at taking it back.
The OOD?
Obama likes communist/fascist-style logos and posters to define him. Recall his campaign poster....the stark head-portrait done in blood-red and black-stroked Andy Warhol/Stalin/Big Brother style, defined in critiques as stark, unsmiling, arrogant, half-artsy, half creepy....reminiscent of a totalitarian dictator whose rule is enmeshed with a seductive cult of personality.
An original copy of the Obama campaign poster is now in the Smithsonian. How cool, edgy and 1930's USSR-ish!
Don't even get me started on Obama's personal pepsi-style logo which he and his propaganda ministry have substituted for the presidential seal.
Leni
Perhaps this is where you get the Christian idea of sin incarnate: Lucifer, described as the morning star. Seeming illumination through sex or the erotic.
Thus, the drop of Pepsi to number 3, behind Coke and Diet Coke! Bowbama's fall will be as precipitous!
i like the part of the story where he comes home in disguise after 10 years and the only person who recognizes him is his ancient and broke down hunting dog.
then he goes to lunch where a bunch of losers are hitting on his wife. she says she will marry the guy who can string O’s bow and shoot an arrow thru axe heads. no one can, until they come to O, he does, shoots the axe heads, and then all the posers at the lunch.
end of story.
One of his servants also also recognizes him. Pretty good video of his return home starts at 2:20:00.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-477642800802772504#
good vid, but i didnt see the dog. that bummed me. its my fave part of the tale.
that was good. also i thought the bow scene was good. although my dim memory of the book was it wasnt thru the holes but the axe heads themselves, but i guess that was either wrong or just totally undoable in film.
you know, I hadn’t thought of it before but The One and his staff came into the WH thinking he was Apollo, able to drive the Chariot of the Sun.
Instead, he was more like Phaeton whose ego drove him to attempt the leap to Godhood and drive the Chariout.
The horses whinnied and stomped impatiently and, as the bar was dropped, they tore through the clouds. “Oh no,” Phaethon gasped, “we’ve already started.” The horses were immediately out of control since the weight they were pulling was feather light and Phaethon wasn’t able to hold the reins firmly so the bits were barely noticeable in their teeth. The horses ran wild, leaping through the air, fighting against each other for the lead and bumping and tossing the chariot like a toy. Phaethon turned pale in fear. He had only begun and already the horses were out of control and he was thoroughly lost.
Terrified by the height, Phaethon’s stomach hurt as he saw the earth far, far below. It all seemed like a bad dream. He broke into a cold sweat and the reigns became slippery in his hands. He started to faint. Why hadn’t he listened to Apollo?
“No, I can’t give up” he said. It took more concentration than he had ever used, but he managed to gain his composure again and remain conscious. He quickly surveyed his course. He had already covered a huge distance, but there was more to cover ahead. He had no idea what to do or where to go. Then he saw in horror that he was traveling directly toward the beasts of heaven. Immediately ahead he saw the Scorpion, its tail and stingers spread across the sky like a trap. Phaethon was close enough to see black, poisonous venom dripping from the monster’s body. In absolute terror he dropped the reins.
As soon as the horses felt their reins lying on their backs, they broke loose, flying faster yet across the sky and running over the stars. They ran wildly up to the top of heaven and then down near the Earth. The Earth burst into flames. The heat dried up and cracked the land and evaporated lakes and rivers. Meadows and fields turned to ashes and the forests became a raging inferno. Cities were consumed in firestorms and it seemed to everyone on earth as if civilization were coming to a blazing end.
Phaethon saw the Earth in flames at every corner of the globe. The sweat poured from his brow as the chariot grew white-hot beneath his feet, and the air, filled with ashes and whirling sparks, was so hot he choked as each breath burned his lungs. The sky was completely shrouded in dense, hot smoke which grew so dark he could see nothing. He lost all sense of direction as he was swept along by the uncontrollable will of his flying steeds.
The fiery chariot raced low over Asia and lower yet over Africa. It was then that the fields and forests of northern Africa became the Sahara Desert. The Nile, attempting to protect her source, hid her mouth far below the surface in a deep corner of the continent. The glacial polar ice-caps evaporated and turned into fountains of steam. The oceans boiled and the fish, seals, dolphins, whales and all other sea creatures, suffocated from the heat.
Fires raged across the continents as stampeding creatures fled for their lives, racing to beat the walls of flames. The Earth cracked and her crust shrank until deep crevices split the globe and it looked as if the fires of Hell had broken through the surface and were consuming the planet in a fiery apocalypse. Demeter cried for the loss of everything she loved, but even her tears evaporated in the intense heat.
“Oh Zeus,” cried Atlas, “the Earth has grown as hot as the sun upon my shoulders. I can’t hold it any longer.”
Earth and Demeter screamed out in pain. Poseidon and the Naiads cried for the destruction of their oceans and creatures. Finally Eros warned that if the sea and land and sky were annihilated, the universe would return to chaos.
Zeus listened to the gods and watched the heavens smoking from pole to pole. He climbed to the highest peak of Olympus and raised his arms. Always before, when he did this the clouds would part; but now there were no clouds for they had all been burned or evaporated. While the thunder rolled across the hills, Zeus grabbed a lightning bolt and hurled it through the smoke filled sky, straight into Phaethon’s heart. The bolt flew with such force that it knocked him from the chariot. His burning body fell through the sky like a meteor and the smoke trail traced his descent until he fell to earth into the waiting arms of the river Eridanus. The kindly Naiads retrieved his body and placed it in a tomb. On the tomb’s marble gate, they wrote, “Here lies Phaethon. He drove Apollo’s chariot.”
Then Zeus placed Eridanus in the stars as the River of the Sky, and he placed Phaethon’s brother Cycnus as Cygnus, the swan. Because the Scorpion frightened both Phaethon and his horses, Zeus severed its claws and transformed them into the scale of justice called Libra, and Zeus said, “These stars will remind everyone that ego can destroy the balance of the universe.”
Those old Greeks had a teaching myth for every human frailty. Too bad the voters were sold that they were getting Apollo but instead got Phaeton.
I give Odysseus the benefit of the doubt here. What good would it do to warn them of the terror that was to come (Scylla and Charybdis)? They are travelling the way they must in order to achieve home, warning them, might cause them to cower.
Also, mark the grief with which Odysseus relates his tale to Alcinous and the Phaeacians...He is a broken man by journey’s end...wiliness has given way to wisdom.
Yep, I have a hard time believing the choice of name is an accident. Whoever came up with it likely knew he could sell it with it’s fancy-schmancy poetic ring, especially to someone so superficial as Pres. Obama and his ilk.
I wonder what those liberals who know their Greek Lit think of it.
“Instead, he was more like Phaeton whose ego drove him to attempt the leap to Godhood and drive the Chariot.”
Good one but was Phaeton being an egotist or just challenged by such an adventure (not unlike many a young man today) while Apollo was a full-blown narcissist who could suddenly turn into a vindictive sadist. There was no way Phaeton was going to outdo the self-absorbed Apollo - who also had the most male lovers of all the Greek gods. The similarities are leaning toward Apollo...
“Earth and Demeter-Ceres screamed out in pain.”
Hillary the masochist.
“Poseidon and the Naiads cried for the destruction of their oceans and creatures.”
Hillarys partner Poseidon-Neptune was a god who showed avoidant tendencies in his desire to hide away in the deep parts of the sea with his mermaids - some say to avoid Demeter.
“Finally Eros warned that if the sea and land and sky were annihilated, the universe would return to chaos.”
Al Gore. :)
Perhaps someone here who remembers their Greek could consult the original text and determine if these formulae were of archaic or contemporary construction.
Might as well throw in an ode to Michelle:
"Wanna tell you a story
'Bout a woman I know
Ah, come to lovin'
Ooh, she steals the show
She ain't exactly pretty
Ain't exactly small
Forty-two, thirty-nine, fifty-six
You could say she's got it all!"
Can the rosy fingers of the “rosy-fingered dawn” be a euphemism for bloody fingers? Since the “rosy-fingered dawn” is the beginning of trials, tribulations, and death, it’s a possibility.
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