NPR on Bug Bunny

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17874931

Sacred Trickster

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKlbBgQHPqo

Monkey

Gorillaz.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd_ZyLqTd-Q&feature=related

Making the World Safe for Monsters and Girls with Big.... uuhhh..... Guns.

From Phil Guzzo.

http://www.robotmonsterous.com/

Tears of a Clown

While spending time with my mother during her last few days at the curiously named "Crosslands" nursing facility, I found myself thinking about how tricksters are mediators between life and death, boundary crossers, gods of the crossroads, and the significance of being human and somehow not entirely human in a situation where death is close at hand. I found myself pondering the need for deathbed humor, and wishing I could come by more of it. I found myself thinking about how tricksters are not always so hilarious.

The trickster experience is the human experience, the navigation of dealing with uncertainty in an often scary universe, of trying to make some sort of sense of the seeming entropy of our existence. What good can come of this terrible thing that is in front of me?

Well, at her funeral, there was laughter..... talk of her leaving the car running all through church, memories of her pedaling across town on an undersized bike trying to rescue my sister on the back of my dad's car in her fuzzy carpet slippers, and dropping one on the way, images of her -- at 78 -- sledding down a snow covered hill and laughing.... her stories, her smiles... This is the emergent phenomenon, the tricksterly outgrowth of release from pain.

But I also know that tricksters must cry.

Riding at the Crossroads

While doing some post-holiday mall slumming, I found myself at the food court, which happens to be paired here with an odd assortment of what I call "mall rides." The pale simulacra of amusement park offerings for the pre-K set has often puzzled and amazed me. They are now a feature of most mall settings, but I remember them from my childhood as discount store phenomena, and you may still see them at WalMart or KMart. My memories settle around Gibson's, which in the Laramie of the 70s was a precursor to the box stores.

I know this dates me, but I can actually remember when the horse there only required a nickle. And my mother was always reluctant to give that for the brief jiggle in store. I could never admit to her that, deep down, even I was a little disappointed in the brevity of the actual "ride." I really expected to be somehow transported to the mythical West in which I was supposedly living. This week I watched as adoring parent after adoring parent poured quarters upon quarters into the various shimmying, noisesome contraptions. I don't think this means people are more casual with their money, just that they've been better persuaded that spoiling their kids is the thing to do.

This is when it occurred to me that the whole mall ride industry was an ingenius trickster scam. Somebody somewhere is making a gruntload of money off of parents inability to resist the giggle of a 2 year old who is being bumped about by a motorcycle mock up. While it is true that this age group is easily amused, the fact of the matter is that they are just as easily amused by an empty cereal box, for free. But the scam has worked magnificently. It is noteworthy, however, that now these rides come with a slippery trickster disclaimer: "Parent's do not leave your child unattended." So like them to cover their legal behinds.

I must admit, a part of me still wants to ride that horse, on the off chance the ride's become better through the years. I want to believe.

WalMart - The Trickster's Gateway to Hell

I came to a profound conclusion a short time ago. All WalMarts (especially the super ones) are actually connected. There are many portals in a host of communities, and each portal has a different perspectival aspect, but it is really all the same store somehow linked through a temporal/spatial wormhole of some sort.... there really is only one WalMart. The more I thought about it, the more I realized this is actually some secret level of Hell, which - when you move therein - sucks upon your life force, evaporating time, money, energy..... I think there may be a black hole connected to the wormhole. It's all very indistinct....

Then I imagined trickster looking for his wife/girlfriend here, as he is called upon to do in many trickster tales. He cannot find her in the women's intimates, but is dazzled by the simultaneous horror of their crassness and appeal. He seeks her through aisle upon aisle of packaged food and kitsch paraphernalia, as a manager passes by, asking a subordinate, "Were you not listening during my meeting?" He passes two large women who are lazily pushing their wobbling carts as one says to the other, "If you can't find it at WalMart, you just don't need it." He finds her in the movie section, but has a hard time dragging her away from the flatscreens, and just before he makes it to the door, he can't help looking over his shoulder at the big display of beef jerky options. Arg!

Yes, WalMart is the post-modern hell of endless mediocrity and optimally abased consumerism. So why, I keep asking myself, do I end up spending so much time there.....?

Monkey Magic

"The nature of monkey was irrepressible." Heh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iUMWy4hqAg

Thank you Andrea.

Reynard the Fox

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Reynard-the-fox.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynard

Loki Stones

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Lokistone.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/45/Loki-GerryMillar.jpg

From the movie "Collateral"

FELIX: Do you believe in Santa Claus?

MAX: No.

FELIX: Neither do I. But my children do. They are still small. But do you know who they like even better than Santa Claus? His helper, Pedro Negro. Black Peter. There's an old Mexican tale that tells of how Santa Claus got so very busy looking out for the good children that he had to hire some help to look out for the bad children. So he hired Pedro. And Santa Claus gave him a list with all the names of all the bad children, and Pedro would come every night to check them out. And the people, the little kids that were misbehaving, that were not saying their prayers, Pedro would leave a little wooden donkey on their windows. And he would come back and if the children were still misbehaving, he would take them away and nobody would ever see them again.

Meet Krampus

Be afraid.

http://www.socyberty.com/Holidays/Krampus-The-Sinister-Sidekick-of-Santa.371905

Was Saint Nicholas A Trickster?

I vote yay. Of course, being born on St. Nicholas Day must count for something. You decide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas_Day

First People Legends

http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/SpiritChiefNamesTheAnimalPeople-Salish.html

(thanks again to Jerod)

Sundiata and Friends

(another pilfering from my other trickster blog) Reading about African tricksters took me back to an African literature class I had several years ago. My exposure to the book "Sundiata" predates the movie "The Lion King" so I must confess I never saw the correlation, but there's a website that calls Sundiata the Lion King below. To summarize very briefly and ineloquently, Sundiata was the West African megastar epic hero some 700 or so years ago. His story is something like Charlemagne's, Gungadin's, Odysseus', or the like: in short, well, epic. It was told for years only by griots, who bore a strong relationship, incidentally, to court jesters, or perhaps bards is a better analogy. They were the royals' keepers of knowledge. To learn more go here: (http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/middle/sundiata.htm

Another book I remember from that class is "The Palm Wine Drinkard", which has many amusing tales about incidents at crossroads. These stories have "trickster" written all over them. The book includes such priceless chapter headings as "RETURN THE PARTS OF BODY TO THE OWNERS", "A FULL-BODIED GENTLEMAN REDUCED TO A HEAD", and
'THE FATHER OF GODS SHOULD FIND OUT WHEREABOUTS THE DAUGHTER OF THE HEAD OF THE TOWN WAS." (see a glimpse of the book itself at http://www.africanreviewofbooks.com/100best/100bestsamples/tutuola.html)

The Ambrosia Quartet performs "Coyote March on a Full Moon" by Paris Fairbanks, an American Indian composer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2BYD-6n1hc

With special thanks to Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate

Tricky Tricky Cancer

After a recent cancer scare, my thoughts turn once more (as they so often do) to tricksterly things. I'm sure that thinking of cancer as a trickster entity is neither new, nor a stretch. Tricksters are more often referred to as "virulent" but the more we learn about cancer the more links we see to viruses. The ways that a disease -- whether cancer or virus -- can outwit the body's own immune system gives us pause and opportunity to contemplate the nature of myth, the ways that ancient peoples (and modern) find to account for the unthinkable, the unbearable. Our stories are more scientific now, to be sure, but we continue to be cleverly outdone by illnesses that take our loved ones from us in inexplicable ways. Trickster is, after all, the mediator between life and death, the one who crosses between decay and growth, hope and despair, love and loss. I'm just grateful that, for the time being at least, I will not be requiring the trickster tradition of deathbed humor. It's all about survival after all.

Political Segue: Obama Nation

Yes, this is a play on the word abomination, which I'm sure many people have believed Obama to be, and that only highlights his tricksterism. Obama came from the fringes, not really "properly" black or white, always evading traps laid for him, and through creative discourse captured the imagination of a nation. He is the ultimate survivor. He is the master of "the dozens" in debates. Let us just hope he does not, with that so-serious look he had when he spoke tonight, end up in the role of that trickster nemesis, "Hates to be Contradicted," who was so well embodied by our soon-to-be past pres, W.

Or worse (better?) still, let us hope he does not get caught up in the other trickster weakness that Monica Lewinsky represents. Bill Clinton was quite fool enough in that regard, as the trickster tends to be when his pants get involved, or lack of same.

So here's hoping for the best a trickster can offer an ailing nation, with a cautionary nod at what a trickster can further mess up.

Aporia

This term -- in its purest form -- reflects a lack of opening, or couched differently, a lack of opportunity. Rhetorically, it is about doubt, uncertainty, contradiction, paradox, the unsolvable conundrum. Trickster tales are full of the like, and how to get out of them, or at least make peace with their presence. When confronted with fire at both ends of a hole, trickster digs a new passageway. When surrounded by enemies, s/he diverts the one and outwits the other. Let us never forget that to be a trickster is to be clever and to survive, whatever it takes. There is always a way. Vive Le Trickster!

RE: Politicians

Did I mention the self-interested, consummate survivor angle?