BEEP! BEEP! IT'S ME.

"Begin at the beginning,and go on till you come to the end: then stop." (Lewis Carroll, 1832-1896)

Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked."Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat."I don't know," Alice answered."Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."

"So long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation. "Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

"All right," said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone. "Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin," thought Alice; "but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!"

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I am diagonally parked in a parallel universe. Like Arthur Dent from "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy", if you do not have a Babel Fish in your ear this blog will be completely unintelligible to you and will read something like this: "boggle, google, snoggle, slurp, slurp, dingleberry to the power of 10". Fortunately, those who have had the Babel Fish inserted in their ear, will understood this blog perfectly. If you are familiar with this technology, you will know that the Babel Fish lives on brainwave radiation. It excretes energy in the form of exactly the correct brainwaves needed by its host to understand what was just said; or in this case, what was read. The Babel Fish, thanks to scientific research, reverses the problem defined by its namesake in the Tower of Babel, where a deity was supposedly inspired to confuse the human race by making them unable to understand each other.

"DIFFICILE EST SATURAM NON SCRIBERE"

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Friday, September 15, 2006

Beelzebub Has a Devil Put Aside for Me



My fate for being a non-believer is obvious in all its musical glory. I am condemned to eternal head banging whilst singing "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Beelzebub or Ba‘al Zebûb appears as the name of a deity worshipped in the Philistine city of Ekron. There appears to have been little, if any, meaningful distinction between Beelzebub and the polytheistic Semitic god named Ba‘al. Monotheistic Jewish reference to Baal was almost certainly pejorative, and grew to be used among other terms for Satan. Hence the name also later appears as the name of a demon or devil, often interchanged with Beelzebul.

The
demonization of the deity is thought to have been one basis for the personification of Satan as the adversary of the Abrahamic god, though other influences such as the Zoroastrian Daeva may have contributed.

The source for the name Beelzebub is in 2 Kings 1.2 – 3,6,16 where King Ahaziah of Israel, after seriously injuring himself in a fall, sends messengers to inquire of Ba‘al Zebûb, the god of the Philistine city of Ekron, to learn if he will recover. Elijah the Prophet then condemns Ahaziah to die by Yahweh's words because Ahaziah sought council from Ba‘al Zebûb rather than from Yahweh.

(Tsk Tsk. God competition rears its ugly head.)

So, if "Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me" does this mean a devil whose specific purpose is to torture and harrass me, or is it one that I get to annoy? Now if the latter is the case, what would be the best way to annoy it? I figure the complete collection of Billy Ray Cyrus music should just about do the trick. :)

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8 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well, I'm gonna put it into context with the preceding bits;

"Bismillah, we will not let you go...momma mia, momma mia, momma mia let me go..."

Bismillah comes from an Arabic phrase; Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim which is commonly translated as "In the name of God, most Gracious, most Compassionate" so Bismillah basically means "In the name of Allah". That being the case, I'm going for a devil whose specific purpose is to torture and harrass me. Billy Ray would probably do the trick in this instance as well though...:)

I've been working up to a post on the history of the devil, so if you'll excuse me for a moment Beep...:)

There's reason to suggest that during more congenial and polytheistic times, Baal was the general of Yahweh's armies and that Yahweh was merely a member of the pantheon. It seems that at some point there was a falling out and Yahweh spends a lot of time and effort taking over. Throughout the Pentateuch (first five books) he tells people to destroy alters to Baal and poles errected to Asherah (top God of the Caananite pantheon "worshiped by your forfathers" - Judges 2:13) and seemingly usurping the throne. He and his prophets then demonise them throughout the rest of the old testament. Although Satan probably get's his beginnings here, both his eventual personality and popular imagery are subjected to a number of cultural influences and we end up with nothing like Baal (basically, a man pictured on a bull who dealt in fertility). It's an interesting cultural and literary history...

Yeah I know, I'm a nerd. Sorry Beep. Now back to Freddy and the boys...:)

15/9/06 4:20 pm  
Blogger Daniel said...

How the 'devil' would I know, Beep, what lies in store for you? Probably the same as me: a hole in the ground, a nice, deep, comfortable hole that is very quiet and very peaceful (until future developers build a high-rise apartment on the site). Cheers!

16/9/06 12:33 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Just stopping by to say hi. "Bohemian Rhapsody" rocks. :-) I am too tired to say anything meaningful other than... let the believers have all their deities. Perhaps they deserve them... :-)

16/9/06 2:09 pm  
Blogger beepbeepitsme said...

RE ted: Interesting extra info, ty for that. When you post your article concerning the devil/satan I will be sure to read it.

RE daniel: I figure a long sleep of nothingness doesn't sound too bad to me, but don't tell the believers, they will be pissed..

RE sh: People seem to always have required a superior anthropomorphic version of themselves to look up to. I have never been much of a hero worshipper, either the heroes in real life or the heroes of mythology, so I don't get it at all.

16/9/06 4:54 pm  
Blogger Daniel said...

Finally got your site linked on mine, Beep.

Funny thing about the believers. They really can't handle the fact that folk like us can just accept the reality of what life is and still get on with it. Live and let live I say! Why can't they?

16/9/06 9:12 pm  
Blogger Tod said...

And then there's this.

19/9/06 3:37 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Beep,

Thought I'd let you know that El Diablo Part I is up here.

And shamelessly plug my blog as well...:)

19/9/06 5:19 pm  
Blogger beepbeepitsme said...

RE ted:
Shameless blog plugging is allowed. Especially as I do it all the time myself.

21/9/06 6:15 am  

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