Treasure #5

The Halter of Clydno Eiddyn

This halter hung on Clydno's bed, hanging by a staple (nail). When he went to bed, he would just wish for a certain type of horse and viola, it would be there for him in the morning. Outside of this, I am having a hard time finding stuff about this halter. I'm not sure if you could get a particular horse (I wish for Joe's horse) or if you could wish for a type of horse (I wish for an appaloosa). There seems to be no pictures of this thing and nothing else to describe it.

Since I have nothing on this horse halter, why not spend some time with this mythical horse that has nothing to do with the treasures of Britain.

The tikbalang - a demon horse from Philippine folklore. It hangs out in the mountains. It looks very weird - the joints are disproportionate to the rest of the body. When he squats down, his knees come above his head.

They love to lure travellers off the path and getting them lost in the woods. Of course, you can easily avoid all their hassle by merely wearing your shirt inside out. That or ask permission softly to pass by their woods, but the wearing the shirt inside out is so in these days. Just to put my money where my mouth is, I wore my shirt inside out today and ta-dah! No tikbalang attacks!

A tikbalang has a spiky mane. If you can obtain one of these tufts, then you can use it as a talisman to tame one and keep it as a servant. However, you need to leap upon the tikbalang from behind and then hold on until it gets tired of trying to knock you off balance.

Where do these guys come from? Aborted fetuses. That's right. If you're pro-life, here's another reason why you shouldn't have abortions. If you are pro-choice, then watch out. You might want to start wearing your shirt inside out...

We talked awhile back about the devil beating his wife (rain while the sun is shining). It appears that there is another saying about this weather phenomenon - "a tikbalang is getting married."

Merlin

Sundays at 8:00 pm you can catch a fairly new show on NBC called Merlin.  I'm a King Arthur fan as much as the next guy so I gave it a whirl and I have mixed feelings about it.  I do like having a show with the Camelot cast, it's on in the summer, so I have some time to catch it (although I'm DVRing it and watching it whenever), and the stories are nice, simple fun.  There is a good supporting cast.  However, the pros seem to end here.

I can get past changing the traditional storyline of Arthur since pretty much every author has his/her own take on the famous king - sometimes Mordred a cool guy, sometimes he is a bad guy, and sometimes (as in Excalibur) he is an annoying little kid laughing while hanging grail knights from a tree.  The storyline here is that Uther is still alive and hates magic because of something that happened when Arthur was born.  Igarine is nowhere in sight and Morgana is like an adopted sister to Arthur.  Merlin, who is a bumbling Clark Kent like character, is Arthur's manservant and saves his life on a routine basis using magic (in secret of course).  Guinevere is Morgana's servant and does NOT look the part at all.  That I have a problem with.  I do not like the character of Guinevere anyway (little strumpet), but I hate it even more now.  The actress is a fine enough person and I have no problems with her, but she is just not a Guinevere to me.  Also, I am wondering why they are creating so many new characters when there are plenty of established ones in the Arthurian canon to pull from.  Oh and lastly, the opening credits make it look like it will be worse than a Sci-Fi original movie.  

I give it 2 1/2  lightning bolts out of 5.  My wife agrees, but gives it a 3.  As she says, it's good, but it is not like 24 where it is, "Oh my gosh, we can't miss it!" type of good.  what do you think, those of you who've seen it.  Care to weigh in?

The Wivre

I found this monster in my book Giants, Monsters, and Dragons, which is really an excellent book and already reviewed on this blog. No real pictures seem to exist for this monster except for some screen shots from Final Fantasy (well, I didn't do an exhaustive search...).

Anyway, this creature is basically the French form of a wyvern. It is a dragon without wings and fiercely guards its treasure. You are sure to die from its attack... unless you do the one thing that makes it not attack you - strip off your clothes.

Yep, this beast will not attack anyone without clothes. This, I know is true, because I did an exhaustive Google search and not one nudist colony has ever been attacked by a wivre.

Percy Jackson Movie

Went to see the new Harry Potter movie.  It was good and a pretty good adaptation of the book (much like the last one- unlike #3 and #4).  But the real story was the previews.  Percy Jackson is hitting the big screen February - although from the web site and the preview, I don't think too much has been completed yet.  Check it out below.  I'll be there to see it.  Who else?

PercyJacksonAndTheOlympiansTheLightningThief

Poseidon's Gate

If you are not familiar with Kindle, it is a new way to read books.  Think of it as an iPod for books.  The whole thing is pretty neat and nifty and is probably going to stick around and continue to change the way we think of books.  I remember back in the early 90s having a conversation about the electronic book in my college class.  I had to read a book called The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts where the author predicted it would come to this.  My professor scoffed at the idea and moved on.  

I haven't thought much about that book until now.  I ran across an article about the horrors of the future of advertisements on eBooks.  It's a great read and I hope you'll go here to read it (after you finish reading my post and commenting, of course).

What kind of gets me is the title of the article. It is "Kindle at Poseidon's Gate."  I've never heard this term used before.  All I could really find on Google about Poseidon's Gate is several links to this article and some song by Cybertribe with that title.  I can only assume that this allusion means to open Poseidon's gate is to invite a flood of things that you may not particularly care for.  

I feel stupid for not having heard it before and am sure that it is a common saying with all of you.  Let me know if you've heard it before.  

$Mother Nature$

Mother Nature has to do a lot. Make flowers grow, control the tides, send in storms, gentle showers, sunshine, take care of forests, wild life, combat pollution, make rainbows, the list goes on and on. Over the years and thorough out the multitudes of cultures, mankind (excuse me, I was being sexist there) peoplekind have given her many names from Gaia (Greek) to Tonantzin Tlalli (ancient Mexico) to Phra Mae Thorani (Thailand). In fact, only the Egyptians screwed it up thinking that earth was male (Geb).

Seeing how important she is to us, we can forgive her for seeking out a few ways to make an extra buck or two. Even if she chooses to make a cheesy commercial now and then. If you are as old as I am, you grew up knowing that Mother Nature does NOT like to be fooled by margarine:

O.K., How much money do you think she earned from those commercials? Well, it was enough to keep her busy for two and a half decades. In the meantime, she has been making a nice living hawking environmental products on her online store.

And by keeping people informed on her own cable news channel (although times are tough for her there as she has been reduced to showing reruns of Captain Planet).

She also made a few bucks guest appearances in a few kids' shows every now and then, like her cameo onThe Year without a Santa Claus:

In fact, she is in quite a lot of Christmas specials (as I remembered after plugging in Santa Claus and Mother Nature into Google images a minute ago).

But now, she's back in the commercial biz again and I have to say, 1. I miss the old maragarine days and 2. Mother Nature isn't looking too good lately.

In today's time, everyone going green and all, you would think that Mother Nature would pick an ad for a hot news environmentally sound sports car or something like that. But no. Check out her newest ad line:

I guess the true lesson here is that money really does make the world go 'round.

Weird Myths

I was using Stumble to randomly flip through the net (you can try it at www.stumbleupon.com) when I came across a web site called Weird Facts.  As chance would have it, I came across their Weird Myths entry.  Here are some of the better ones (you can read them all at the link above).  Not all of them were actual myths, but some fun useless knowledge  anyway.  

Avoid people who talk to themselves. According to Ukrainian legend, that could indicate a dual soul and the second one doesn't die! Also watch out for the seventh son of a seventh son, a person born with a red caul (amniotic membrane covering the head), or a child born with teeth. A vampire can result if a cat or dog walks over a fresh grave, a bat flies over the corpse, or the person has died suddenly as a result of suicide or murder. Unfinished business can also cause a body to rise, as can inadequate burial rites, including a grave that is too shallow. Long ago, the people of Nicaragua believed that if they threw beautiful young women into a volcano it would stop erupting. One legend claims stealing someone's shadow (by measuring it against a wall and driving a nail through its head) can turn the victim into a vampire. Most vampires are described in folklore as flushed and ruddy, with swollen bodies and bloated faces. Often, they can be identified because they're sitting up in the grave. Trivia is the Roman goddess of sorcery, hounds and the crossroads. Abe Silverstein, who headed NASA's Space Flight Development Program, proposed the name Apollo for the space exploration programs in the 1960's. He chose that legendary Greek name because the virile Apollo was a god who rode through the skies in a magnificent golden chariot. The precedent of naming manned spacecraft for mythological gods had been set earlier with Project Mercury, also named by Silverstein. Ancient Greeks wove marjoram into funeral wreaths and put them on the graves of loved ones. The wreaths served as prayers for the happiness of the deceased in a future life. In Greek culture, brides carry a lump of sugar in their wedding glove. It's supposed to bring sweetness to their married life. The Sphinx at Giza in Egypt is 240 feet long and carved out of limestone. Built by Pharaoh Khafre to guard the way to his pyramid, it has a lion's body and the ruler's head. The Vikings believed that the Northern lights which are seen from time to time in the north sky were caused by the flashing armor and spears of Odin's handmaidens as they rode out to collect warriors slain in battle. On the stone temples of Madura in southern India, there are more than 30 million carved images of gods and goddesses. To prevent evil spirits from entering the bodies of their male children, parents dressed them in blue. Blue was chosen because it's the color of the sky and was therefore associated with heavenly spirits. Girls weren't dressed in blue, apparently because people didn't think that evil spirits would bother with them. Eventually, however, girls did get their own color: pink. Pink was chosen because of an old English legend which said that girls were born inside of pink roses. In the 1700's you could purchase insurance against going to hell, in London England. The Aztec Indians of Mexico believed turquoise would protect them from physical harm, and so warriors used these green and blue stones to decorate their battle shields. The mythical Scottish town of Brigadoon appears for one day every 100 years.