It`s almost been a year since I put a little post up about Matrix and the conclusions and theories a lot of people put up about its mythology.

Star Wars director and creator George Lucas, as some of us know, were a student under Joseph Campbell, the famous comparative mythologist…he appears to have learnt from Campbell that all the good stories have already been told, all we can do is piece the component parts of these stories into new tapestries and stories. Since the 19th century and the influx of both romanticism, which re-examined and re-invented the golden age of the late antiquity religions,cosmologies and mysteries – and Orientalism, which did much the same with the oriental and asian religions and philosophical systems – our culture has appreciated, again, Mythologies and Legends as having religious significance, in addition to the historical and literary significance which were accorded it prior to this. The Gothic Novel, the Romance Novel and eventually the first movies – borrowed themes from such Mythology and fed these back to us, some of the most beloved of fictions were believed to be true, albeit in a more subtle way, many generations before.

George Lucas sure as hell is no Guru or spiritual advisor, nor should he arrogate to himself the role of an educator…I do not suspect him of this either, but the situation with Lucas is much like the situation with the Wachowski brothers and their prodigy – The Matrix – as has been tirelessly observed by Science Fiction afficinados, the suggestions made in The Matrix reflects a developement within the Genre, informed and increased by writers such as Philip K. Dick whose stories inspired among other cinematic fantasies the cult movie Blade Runner and subsequently a whole genre of movies with an Dystopic (the dark, caustic and apocalyptic counterpart to sunshine Utopia) theme. Fantasy and Science Fiction are genres which freely and sincerely mixes the components of our cultures – be it religion,myth,dreams,gods and technology.. the most mythomanic of these, as have been demonstrated by mythologists production of literary output in this genre, is of course the Fantasy genre, the stories told at the twilight, or while immersed in the dream-like atmosphere of “another world”.

There is a lot of Blade Runner in Matrix, a lot of other earlier fantasies of being immersed in an “almost reality”, part of the thrill being introduced to riddles about the fabric and constitution of “our world” which have been shared, perhaps candidly, between thinking men and women from the days humanity began walking upright, or even before that.

First and foremost The Matrix is a high-tech Visual and Aesthetic experience – a demonstration of the suggestive and alluring spin technology has for us; recently there was a Mobile Network breakdown in this city and the entire population saw demonstrated how helplessly and pathetically dependent they had become of the little gizmo that enables wireless transfer of data: be it a conversation by voice, by SMS or by computer… if you think a little further you will find how radio communication, the transfer of millions of unobtrusive and invisible signals…has become the infrastructure of our cities “lives”..does not our lifestyles and our homes come to resemble more and more like a Cocoon?

And if we are swaddled up in a cocoon, what will crawl or fall out of it once it bursts? Neo erupts out of a cocoon in the first installment of The Matrix, this theme of humans being batteries for technology, or the providers of necessary things are outline in Jean-Luc Godard`s paranoid noir movie Alphaville already in 1965, and before him in Fritz Lang`s Metropolis, also it features in Dark City.. which even features the chanting of “Go Back to Sleep” from the monstrous chief-computer`s droning voice..and the hero of that movie discovers finally that his world is not real, but a fabricated illusion as well… Could it be our dear Wachowski brothers aren`t that refined.. that they are feeding us bits and pieces of our own mythology, from the dreamworlds of our pulp fiction novels,Sci-Fi magazines, Twilight Zone on TV and a plethora of movies.. that this is the reason we recognize themes from exotically oriental metaphysics to recognizable “Biblical” themes, is that this compartment of our culture has been recycling the ancient myths again and again…?

At the time I write this, my dear friends, I have still not seen the second installment of the series; Matrix:Reloaded, I might go this weekend ..

The Journal of Religion&Film have put online a new article on the phenomenon of the Matrix(es) : Reassessing Matrix/Reloaded by Julien R.Fielding – I think I will leave it for a better study after I have seen the wildly popular sequel.. but thought I`d share it with those of you who have…

A Great Tit landed on my hand and began feeding on my lunch…

I hope this makes sense to some of my readers. Or else I will

have to explain (sigh) – The Great Tit is a bird of the Parinae family,

its Latin species name being Parus Major. It is a very common bird in

the garden and everyplace else for that matter. It is black,white,blue

and yellow.. Why am I writing about this? Well, I did expect it at all, I`ve seen birds feeding from peoples hands, but it always appeared to me to be orchestrated and strained. This encounter weren`t like that at all. It appeared to me that the bird was as much sharing my lunch, as investigating this strange fellow sitting on a bench in the park. I have begun to eat my lunch in the outdoors occasionally, having the great fortune to be able to work inside the area of the Botanical Garden in Oslo…something I am beginning to appreciate more and more.

Enterprising Honorable businessmen (from Nigeria) who have somehow gotten their assets tied up in foreign lands due to some totally unforseen (yet predictable) malaise – may now finally get some help in getting their hard-earned (/inherited) moneys back….

At the 3rd Annual Nigerian EMail Conference…

…..I think it must be a lonely life being a Honest and Sincere businessman writing emails to the Entire World on a Weekly Basis….

Misery (not to forget Shameless and Degenerate Greed) loves company..

I think it might be a wonderful idea..

…too bad it is satire… brought to us by J-Walk Blog

It looks like I am staying in my job at the Zoological Museum at Toeyen in Oslo. A bit of a downside is that I earn around 5.50 Dollars (49 Nok) an hour due to the indecently low pay the Work and Administration Ministry has decided people rehabilitated from long-term illness needs.. I think they need twice the amount just to “pay” the tax of 35% of our income to secure social securities for the future.On my freetime I suspect sometime in the future I will hang around our Finance Minister and the Director of the Work and Administration Department homes waving menacingly with a steel-capped baseball bat and demand they dish out some breadcrumbs. Americans, Class War is reality in Norway and your brilliant invention “the Free Market” gains more popularity among politicians (spineless things.. in fact, I suggest we look into the possibility they might have been misrepresented as mammals, perhaps they are invertebrae.. I`ll look into the taxonomy, if I have the time) and voters

and employers..we`ll either have another French Revolution on our hands, or Norway, the second most richest nation will have a majority population consisting of mute and beaten slaves, like 19th century Africa and contemporary Bangladesh.

My job consists in registering the data contained on labels fixed to needles with specimens of Coleoptera – that`s “beetles” ..nice little carapached chitin critters with six legs and antennae.

Some of the specimens are over 2 centuries old, they change color, sometimes turning translucent at times due to some weird exposure. Some of them smells of mothballs.. When I began I thought it was some kind of poison ether or formaldehyde..in terms of the first possibility, our Civil worker friend, Hallvard, reported that poisoning the critters were a popular way of killing them, until Entomologists (thats “bug freaks”) began falling over with their legs in the air.. I think he exaggerated, like the rumour he loved spreading about the cleaning maid letting out infamously poisonous Black Widows from their terrariums, forming invisible and lethal lairs around this ancient building… Never trust a kid that cuts off George Bush`s head and places it on Elle MacPherson body and pastes the infamy on his wall..

Anyways… this snippet pleased me somewhat as a Gnostic:

Among the most famous quote about beetles comes from the great population geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, who was asked what might be learned about a Creator by examining the world. His response: “an inordinate fondness for beetles“.. Terry Pratchett, in his Discworld novel The Last Continent lets a creator (not The Creator, but among them) begin Genesis anew on an separate and new island in the great Circle sea..somewhere off the coast of EcksEcksEcks …blooming and sprawling with life, vegetative and animal.. only possessing one rather noticeable and vital flaw.. there are only one of each.. hence the name Mono Island.. anyways, at a significant place in this story about a young creator and his island (sic!) *plot spoiler alert*, the most observant of the Wizards (your academic and traditionalist type of wizard, forget Harry Potter and Gandalf a moment..) who are stranded on this particular island, Ponder Stibbons, decides to stay behind on the Island while the wizards are rescued into a boat and pushed out to brave the sea in a ship grown for that purpouse – gets to discover that the particular creation of this creator appreciates most and above all…. is a Cockroach! Cockroaches and Beetles, incidentally, are not the same species.. a Beetle evolves through several morphic stages and processes.. Cockroaches clutch out their evolved self and only grows bigger.. and nastier… Anyways, Pratchett most probably found that quote of Professor Haldane.. he is quite a multivarious scholar, that Terry..

Beetling along…

And sorry for all the ranting. 😉

Rumour had it that the Norwegian software entrepeneurs behind the most user friendly and efficient Internet browser application Opera were ceasing support and update the product for the Macintosh platform. This is fortunately not the case, Macminute reported today that Opera has released version 6.02 of Opera (sic!).

Im relieved, but notice they want me to upgrade my OS from 9.1 to 9.2.2 .. which is quaint since Apple`s rather user-unfriendly attitude has made Os 9.2.* incompatible with the older generations of G3 computers.. including my “brand new” Powerbook G3 series laptop…so I`ll just have to wait and see..