Listener Mail: Humbaba's Seven Terrors

So it's actually a response to an episode that published like the year prior, but it has to do with the Star Lac episode that we did. But we talked about the star Lac from Star Wars and some things in the natural world that that line up with it. So samaraw Right, Hello, Robert and Joe. I've only recently been introduced your wonderful podcast, and over the past year, the nexus at which my art, theology and science signaps

is intersect has lit up like a Christmas tree. Your recent replay of the starlike episode was fabulous, but I was a little surprised you didn't deep dive into the conundrum that has confused and horrified me. Since childhood. How could a living organism with an average lifespan be kept alive long enough to endure the suffering of being slowly

digested over a thousand years? I now wonder if I had taken this too literally, although a recent pandemic inspired reviewing of World War Z had me asking the same question. How could a zombie host organism remain without food for so long, or bleed out from injuries and simply not expire? Surely if the host stars or sustains oregon damage, the

zombie does too. I'm aware of organisms such as tartar grades that are preternaturally resilient and long living, but I am yet to hear of mammals or any creature within the animal kingdom being held in suspended animation due to a virus. I am, however, very happy to put overthinking it to one side and enjoy all things unanswerable for the sheer entertainment value. Thanks for continuing to delve into the weirdness such robust research in a commitment to intrigue.

Warmest regards tomorrow. Well, this is funny because I thought we did talk about this, but maybe we talked about it off Mike the confusion. I remember thinking when I when I was a kid, slowly digested over a thousand years. The implication is that somehow it makes you live for a thousand years. And I was like, well, what if we could harness the Sarlac technology, like whatever the Sarlac does to extend your lifespan, but without the digestion part. Yeah,

I don't know. I guess the different ways of interpreting it. You could say, well, okay, it's for one thing. You could say it's a legend. It's a local legend about an organism, so it doesn't actually digestive for a thousand years, though perhaps it's digestive system does take a long time. Um, but you're not gonna be alive through all of it. Or you could go in the other direction, you know, where it will feel like it takes a thousand years because it will be so painful. Again, I'm not sure

whose testimony that is relying on. I mean, uh uh. I guess some people do make their way out. We know of at least one that did. But then again, it is Star Wars. It is a galaxy far far away, So perhaps there is some reason and some way that an organism is kept alive inside the you know, digestive process of this vast creature. Yeah, the star like uses the force to keep you alive for a thousand years

while it digests you. Anyway, somebody follow up on that, get get one of those life extension gurus down down in there and see what's going on. Well, you know, it's what you said, is not impossible, right if if if you find um mendic glareans in all beings and it's just you know, the higher higher rates that produce uh, you know, four sensitive individuals, then I don't know, there could be something unique going on inside the star lac.

You know, maybe if it swallows you and your force sensitive or maybe there's yeah, who knows, maybe there's some sort of um, you know, a process us by which uh, these tiny organisms are themselves digest in the digested in the starlac. I don't know. Okay, maybe we should go onto this next message that is also a straggler about an older episode. This was about the episode on Invented Words. This comes from Chris. Chris says, Hi, Robert and Joe,

longtime listener from Australia. Here this is a bit of a throwback, but I wanted to contact you about your episode on Invented Words. In the episode, you suggested that the words selfie was merely the result of a creative Australian on the Internet. But I think there's more to

it than that. In Australia, we regularly add on to the ends of words, either an E or an O. For example, tradespeople, plumbers, landscapers, et cetera are often referred to as trade e s. Taking a sick day is referred to as chucking a sick e uh, and executing a U turn while driving is refer two as doing a UEI. We have that last one, at least here in the United States. But then Chris goes on a cigarette or tea break is a smoke O, a rough or uncouth person is a darrow from derelict, and a

service station or gas station is a servo. These are just a few examples among many many others. Sometimes it's most appropriate to add an O and other times an E. But I'm not a linguist, so I couldn't explain why. All I can say is that if I had to add to the end of the word self it would be with an E. So the invention of the selfie may actually just be the result of a language convention of spoken Australian English. Many thanks for all your great work,

Chris PS. I'm currently working on a study of invertebrate and vegetation recovery after bush fire. It means lots of time spent on a microscope counting ants and sorting them into subfamilies. Uh. And I think he's referring to you here, Rob, your son may enjoy the sub family A mer MESSI an E I hope I said that right. It's M y R M E C I I in a big

bloody mandibles. You can't go wrong, Chris. Oh yeah, that's right up his alley, superindo hands right now now, I thought we this is yet another one where I have a memory of us talking about this feature of Australian English, like the adding an e to the end of an e sound to the end of things. I think it's usually spelled with an I E. Chris did spell it that way in the email. Uh did this not come

up in the episode? I don't remember. I remember I vaguely remember us doing this episode, and I remember there being some source or sources we were looking at that were doing that had examined the history of selfie and tried to find some sort of an answer for it, and and yeah it was somehow traced to Australia. But yeah, it's been a while since I listened to that one.

I do remember thinking that the earliest written example of it anybody could find was an Internet comment, like a forum post is always an embarrassing origin for a word, but then again it makes sense that it would be be connected to this, just the the Australian usage um. This also reminds me of um. And this is not something that I think was a comment commentary on any actual uh, you know, linguistic or slang tendency, but just

for the the style of writing the skit. Uh, there's the Key and Peel skit about action movies where the two chauffeurs talking about Liam Neeson movies and they refer to him as Liam Neeson's And I saw a bit with Key and People where they were talking about like the rule for writing the sketch for subsequent sketches was that you have an actor's name ends in an S, you take the S off and if it doesn't end in an S, you add the s. So thus you

get like uh, Bruce Willie, Bruce Willie and Liam Neeson's, etcetera. It's funny how in reality we don't usually need to have the rules for language conventions like that spelled out. We just get it intuitively, you know, like he's talking about you just know it either ends in the E sound or the O sound. But you couldn't explain why. Yeah, generally these things just emerged that they're not constructed so much. Oh wait a minute, I know the earliest example that

the broader world became aware of. Right, it's got to be throw a shrimp on the barbie. Barbie means barbecue, that's right. Yeah, all right, here's another one. This one comes to us from Jonathan on the subject of halos. Joan rob I was wondering if you ever came across

this theory in your research of halos. I once read a suggestion that the concept originated in ancient times, when round plates were placed over the heads of statuary of important persons to protect them from being defiled by bird droppings. I love the possibility that such an ethereal symbol would have such a base origin. Uh, Jonathan. Our next piece of listener mail addresses this very idea, so hang tight,

and they continue quickly regarding ours. I was reminded of an essay by Aldus Huxley where he asserts, at quote, brilliantly illuminated by peternatural light, inwardly glowing images of bright

and purple color exist in the mind at large. Of course, that's a whole tangent, but it adds a slightly different view of why we may be so attracted by anything that seems to glow of itself best, Jonathan, Jonathan, I looked up the link you sent about about this essay by Huxley, So this actually comes from a summary and a review of Huxley by Paul Zucker, and I found the original, and so, yeah, he's talking about this book of Huxley's where Huxley is doing sort of a scientific

read on art criticism that involves, of course, a lot of ideas about mysticism and psychedelic experiences and stuff like that. Um. But I also came across this interesting paragraph of of Zucker summarizing Huxley's ideas quote, the problem is actually whether men began to prize Jim's to grind pebbles because they wanted to reflect the other world as far as possible in their work, or described that other world in terms of jewels, etcetera, because they had experienced their beautifying effects

in daily life. Is the transporting power of fireworks, of an illumination of all kinds of other glamorous spectacles and pageantries based on the feeling of an attenuated echo of the visionary world? Or does it merely represent a satisfaction of a visual sense? Huxley firmly believes in the first explanation.

So they're in interrogating the idea of whether, like a glimmers of light and shiny objects, whether that is a sort of natural part of just what the brain does when it's having a mystical or psychedelic or visionary experience inwardly. And then do we seek out you know, gold and rubies because that recreates for our eyes the experiences that we have in our minds when we see visions, you know, just what emerges naturally from the neurons firing in the

right way. Or is it that we have visions like that because we know that gold and jewels and the sun glint in that way in the real world. Yeah, that's a great contemplation. I mean, I guess one is tempted to take the middle ground and say that these these two things feed into each other, or at least that's my take. Okay. Anyway, this next message comes from Scott and it picks up on the first thing that

Jonathan mentioned. Hi, Rob and Joe, longtime listener here with either a potential insight or at least an amusing digression on Halo's after listening to your part one episode there on.

When I first went to the Parthenon Museum in Athens a few years ago, I read about how vertical holes in the back of the neck of many statues of divine beings supported a meniscus plural meniskoy, a crescent shaped metal piece hovering over the statue which functioned to keep birds from sitting on the head and pooping on it, at least according to a reference in the Birds by Aristophanes.

And that's an ancient Greek satirical lay. Uh. There were indeed many such holes in statues on display, but apparently no surviving miniskoy, perhaps because later generations stole and melted down the metal for some other purpose. This fact startled me because it seemed there was an obvious connection with halos. What if Greek statues originally had miniskoy in order to protect their heads from bird poop, but this functional design gradually began to be associated with divinity, only later to

enter painting and other forms. Of course, halos or other kinds of glows exist in iconographies of other cultures and perhaps predated miniskoy, but it is still possible that miniskoy influenced the history of halos and other artwork. There's controversy about miniskoy. At least one modern scholar doubts they even existed, and perhaps Aristophanes was making some kind of joke we

can no longer quite understand, and Scott supplies a link here. Uh. It's also possible that miniskoy were intended to be supernatural halo and Aristophanes was joking about their function when he knew full well they weren't there to keep birds off the heads, or perhaps this was only a secondary, fortuitous function. But I remained surprised that, at least as far as I can tell, there is little or no discussion in the scholarly literature about the relationship between miniskoy and halos.

Perhaps you can either find some and enlighten me, or by pointing to this gap in art history, encourage some of your listeners with the relevant skills to explore this connection. Scott, Well, Scott, this is a great email. Yeah, and a really great idea. We I did not come across this in my HALO research and uh and this is really interesting. It ra also raises a great question about, like, you know, the interpretation of comedy and satire from the past and from

other cultures. You know, um, not that will necessarily be the case in the future. I guess there's just so much more material to go on. But but you know, if we were to play that game of saying, what if the future aliens or future civilizations were look back and they only had this one bit of stand up comedy to go on, or what if they had only thirty minutes of Monty Python sketches to go on in order to try and understand what what life and the

twentieth century was like? You know, how would they begin to tease that apart? Because take take, for instance, say

the Ministry of Funny Walks. You know, that is an outrageous example of it's an outrageous skit that is not representing anything that literally exists existed in the world, but it is a ridiculous satire of of some of the things that we do engage in, you know, both in terms of of you know, governmental offices and so forth, and then also you know ridiculous uh, you know, marching steps that are that are common in you know, various armed forces displays and so forth. Well, so there's another

big issue with comedy. Uh, that's difficult to interpret across time because you can lose perspective across time as to what about it is supposed to be funny, even if you know it's supposed to be funny. I'm thinking, for example, of the Monty Python sketch about the dead parrot. Now, that's funny to us just because it is an absurd situation, and a lot of Monty Python skits are like that. They're not satirizing any particular thing that happens in the

real world. It's just absurd. But you can imagine a future historian looking at that skit and saying, like, was this a problem in the twentieth century where there are many pet shops in Britain that we're selling people, dead pets and this is a this is a joke about how common this is? Yeah, or you know, I think we've talked about this before, um, you know, growing up watching Mystery Science Theater three thousand. I don't know if

I've had this. I think we've had this conversation where there are jokes on MST three K that I've been laughing about my entire life, and I still don't necessarily know what they are about. In all cases, you know, there might be a reference to some sort of television show that the creators were familiar with because it was on TV, you know, when they were growing up. And uh, and so I don't specifically know the reference, but I know that it is funny, and I interpreted it is funny.

This is something. Yeah, I can't remember what episode this came up in, but are This is still one of the most interesting things about humor to me, that something can be funny even if you don't get the joke. This was especially common I remember a lot when I was a kid, but it still happens sometimes, Like they say an actor in a movie looks like somebody, and then it's funny when you hear it, Like it makes you laugh, but you actually don't know who that other

person is. Just something about the delivery was funny. Yeah, all right, let's move on to another one. This one comes to us from Joe Another Joe Uh. They write, thanks for the interesting podcast on Halo's. I love seeing the evolution of Halo's and art and the way they demonstrate the advancement in the understanding of light and how to depict it. Your discussion of halos and movies focused on more serious angel depictions, but I had a faint

since memory of Halo is in lighter fair. I started by looking at the recent and magnificent good omens, but these business like angels lack true halos, although as Zerra Fail is occasionally shot to have an apparent halo for comedic effects so like lighting effects, and often wears white hats with a golden band. The angel Uriel also has a gold motif on his face, but it's not really a halo. And they're the and they're the only angel

so decorated. Oh yeah, and I so um. Joe attached a few pictures for us to look at, and in the case of this character as Zero Fail, I haven't seen this show, so I don't know who these characters are, but Yeah shows that this character is often backlit and he has some like wispy white sideburns so that they very much catch the glow of the lighting from behind. This is the character played by Michael Sheen, the the

always excellent Michael Sheen. I think I watched the first episode of this and it is quite good, but for some reason I didn't keep going with it. It's too much to watch. I mean, I generally love anything uh Terry Pratchett, any anything that his his creativity was involved in. Oh anyway that Joe continues here. Then I remembered the charming I dated film Angels in the Outfield, which that is good because my mind did not immediately go here.

Joe rights the film has pure archetype angels robes, sandals, wings, and shimmering golden hoops about their heads. So there you have it, Halos in cinema. Joe included a link here for to a video. It's the scene in Angels in the Outfield. I haven't seen this movie since I was a kid, but I remember it very vividly. I think as a kid, Joseph Gordon loved in it. Am I wrong? About that. I think so. Yeah, there's a scene where

one of the characters like catches a flyball. The plot of Angels in the Outfield is that there is a professional baseball team that's extremely bad, and a kid makes a wish to Heaven that they'll I guess that they could win win, or that they win the World Series or something like that, and then the angels down and they're like, yep, we will answer your prayers, which seems just utter abuse of supernatural powers. Oh wait, I don't think I you know when they when I read the title,

I was confusing this with the what was it? Uh, if you build it, they will come movie. Oh you're thinking a Field of Dreams, Field of Dreams? Yeah, I had I had the too confused. I was thinking this must be the same film, but it's not. I thought you were maybe saying you were you were confusing it with air Bud. That'd be a good crossover. What if it's air Bud is a dog is a dog, but all dog go to heaven when they die. He comes

back as an angel, an angel dog and help. I mean, these can all films can just be made into one, and they're probably probably be better for it. I was trying to think who plays the angels and angels in the outfield? I was thinking, can I mentally cast this movie, like I remember one is Christopher Lloyd? But beyond that, could I round out the cast of extra angels from my imagination alone without looking it up? I was thinking, was John Lovett's in there? Was there John Lovett's Seraphim?

That seems right? Um, see, yeah, I'm looking at the cast now, and um it's confusing because there's the team is the angels as well, so it's hard to just really spot angels really quickly. Was Tony Danza an angel? He's the angel's picture, so I guess he's like a real I don't know if he's an actual heavenly Yeah. The only the only one that I'm noticing here that is definitely an angels, as I guess, Christopher Lloyd. He doesn't turn anyone into a pillar of salt in this

or anything. Christopher Lloyd as the Angel of death. Oh wait, wait, there's more though that. There's more on this email from Joe. They continue. I also appreciated the story of whom Babo you shared in one episode. Your discussion of the Seven r has reminded me of a modern story that may have borrowed this archetype Marvels Thanos and his Infinity Stones powers which, when possessed, render invulnerability an enemy of the forces of good, until the hero seizes them by trickery

and they are once again scattered across the cosmos. Also worth mentioning the freak see with which Ariola's are part of the design of superheroes are modern mythic figures. Thanks, as always for enlightening and engaging content, Joe, I have not seen the movies that have Thanos in them, But Rob, what do you know about Infinity Stones? Oh? Um, yeah, I mean I've I've seen those two movies, and yeah, Thanos Uh, Danos has a certain uh you know, ancient

Sumerian um aura to him. I would say, yeah, and in a sense, yeah, I think I think there's a strong comparison to be made there. It wouldn't He wouldn't shock me if that was an intentional comparison, at least on the part of the the original architects of this character in the comic books. Oh interesting, So is there a moment where like like like Iron Man and Black Panther and they all have to go into the cedar

forest or is it just did well yet? Now that you mentioned the showdown, the initial showdown with him, I think does take place in a forest. Um, we're on the edge of a forest, you know what. I think it takes place in um Waconda right now, So if I'm remembering it correctly, I've only seen it seen it the one time. Uh but yeah, yeah, Bombaba Thanos. There there may be something there. I'm sure this has been excruciating for all the Marvel fans who have seen these

movies a bunch of times. In here just me talk about how I don't know anything about them, but now that there, it makes me want to look for more angel symbolism in these films, because, yeah, you think of a character like Vision on the the really interesting one division show. Um, there, there are definitely angelic properties to him, you know. So yeah, it makes sense. Okay, we got another email about angels and halos. This one comes from Hannah.

She writes, Hi, Robert and Joe, just sending a quick message responding to your call for halo representation in genre movies. I'm not sure exactly how genre one might consider a surreal musical drama. But in All That Jazz nineteen seventy nine, the Angel of Death played by Jessica Lange, where is a hat with a wide, circular brim and a veil that is clearly supposed to evoke a halo in certain shots see below, and Rob, I've at touched a picture

for you to look at. I believe she does remove it part way through, but it's been a while since I've seen it. Really great film, but pretty hard to watch, especially the parts with footage of real open heart surgery. Wow, I've never seen this one, though I do love Jessica Lang. Uh. Hannah goes on to say all the best and thanks

as always for your awesome show. Hannah. Yeah, yeah, I've never seen All That Jazz either, but I've I mean, I've long been familiar with it by reputation being you know, Bob Fosse film and and uh having having old Roy there at the at the lead. So uh yeah, it's I don't know if I'll get around to seeing it in this lifetime, but but I might. Certainly. I would say that it is the mark of a potentially weird film if it is not a fantasy and an angel shows up, you know like that that alone is enough

to get me interested in it. Um, so, uh yeah, I think I hope maybe I'll put it on the list. All right, here's another one. This one comes to us from I'm not sure who's from, but this is how it starts. So this is from Robert. Oh okay, that's what threw me off because I just glanced at and I saw a couple of rods. So we had a Joe email. I know we have a Robert email. These are not from ourselves that we're not patting our own listener mail episode. Um, this is from Robert. Hey, guys,

I thought you might find this interesting. It doesn't explain halos in art, but it is about people glowing. There is a phenomenon called angels glow noticed during a Tennessee Civil War battle where some of the wounds begin to glow. The glowing ones tended to do better than the others. It was caused by a bioluminescent bacteria that produces an antibiotic compound. There is a Sawbones episode if you want to learn more without having to read regards Robert. I

love not having to read. Uh actually, so I looked this up. I was entring. I never come across this before the quick plug. I haven't listened to it in a long time, but Sawbones is a great show. Um oh yeah, yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's like a comedy medical show that's like half expert advice and and half jokes and it's it's it's fun. Um. But anyway, I looked up this phenomenon you're talking about, the idea of angels glow, and I did find it referenced in

some papers. I'm not sure if this is if this has been like really confirmed as the explanation for these reports, but it does appear to be possible. It seems like I think somehow around the Battle of Shiloh in the Civil War, there were these reports about wounds glowing, and so I found at least one paper published in Plos one by Geraldine Mulley at all called from Insect to Man photo or habbed Us sheds light on the emergence of human pathogenicity and photoor habbed Us, I guess is

the name of the microbe in question here. But the authors write that discoveries about this race quote the intriguing possibility that phot habbed as skin lesions might actually glow in the dark if bacterial number were sufficient, in a similar manner to the angels glow phenomena experienced by wounded soldiers at the Battle of Shiloh during the American Civil War.

So it looks like that that is a possibility. Do you think that the blood of creatures like the predator, uh, that it glows perhaps because there are phosphorescent bacteria in the blood? Amazing? Yes, possibly, yes, I'm gonna say, yes, that's a that's an indo symbion of the predator lives in the blood stream helps them, I don't know, do

something metabolism and and that bacterium glows. Well, it would pay to have an excellent metabolism if you're gonna be dropping in on into other ecosystems and you know, without really wearing much in the way of a suit and then engaging in like brutal, bloody combat with other organisms, getting their blood all over you and having wounds opening

to this environment would make sense. Wait, what was the idea we just talked about in a recent Oh, it was the one where the predators they're attracted to the heat of what they think is a is a war going on than it turns out as bitcoin mining, yeah, or people just gaming really hard. All right, here's a one last bit of listener Mailien comes to us from Jeffrey. Hello, gents, I love the show and just thought I would add a modern twist to the Santo episode of Weird House Cinema.

As I recall, there was a luchad or character, the Silver Angel, in the FX series The Strain. The character played a retired uh Luke Luca movie star who battled vampires using brass knuckles made of silver and in the form of crosses. In the show, the luch door is working in an Indian restaurant until a real vampire outbreak drives him to come out of retirement Vampire WrestleMania. Just wanted to add a little trivia to a great episode. Thanks for all you do. Haven't you watched the show? Uh?

We watched a bunch of it and then we ended up we kind of stopped around the time when this character was first introduced, so I've been wanting to pick it back up a again. I was enjoying it. I don't know why we stopped watching it. Um, but yeah, giving Giama de Toro weird Cool Vampires giant vampires. Um yeah, I'm not sure what my my issue was. Maybe it was it might bet have been one of these things.

Where as with some of these modern shows, it can be really interesting, but if you if you drag it out for too many episodes, um, you know you you're gonna end up having some episodes that are less uh enthralling. I don't know, but but I I enjoyed a lot of what I saw in it, and every now and

then I'm reminded that it's all out there. And then they finished the series and I should pick it up because I think also the final season or so gets like really post apocalyptic, and I've been curious to check that out but just haven't gotten around to it. I mean, I could really appreciate some some newer supernatural wrestling movies,

but I think there are a few caveats there. First of all, I'd be afraid that if somebody made movies like Santo and the Treasure of Dracula today, they would be too juicy, they would be too tongue in cheek, too much winking and and not played straight enough to be as good as that movie is. And then second, I think, is there a star with comparable charisma to

Santo today. I don't know, um, not that. I mean, yeah, you could have the Rock battle Vampires, but it would be the Rock battling vampires, and you can you can kind of imagine how that would go. It would um, I mean, I guess some people would love it, but um, it's not what I'm looking for. I don't think they would do it straight forward enough to be as funny as it needs to be. They would try to make it funny and thus make it less funny. Yeah, so I don't know. It's um, it would be difficult, but

it's possible. All things are possible. All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and uh close the uh the mailbox here, but we'll be back next Monday with more listener mail. You know. We'll catch up on some of the listener mail we weren't able to get to in this one and address new listener mail. So hey, right in, respond to what we talked about here in this episode. Respond to recent episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and

Weird Cinema, the artifact, Everything's on the table. Give us your take on all of these topics, and we can recommend topics for the future. Uh, and when you do right in, just make sure you include your you know how you want to be referred to on the podcast. So if you're if you think you need to give us some help with the pronunciation of your name, uh, let us know that. Let us know what your pronouns are as well. And uh, yeah, we look forward to

hearing from you. Oh yeah, it has come up several times. I should just say we're you have written in and given us two different names on on the email, one at the top and or it says like in one in the from field and one in the sign off line. I think we usually try to go by the sign off line, but to to reduce confusion, please if you have a preferred way to refer to you, whether that's name,

pronunciation or pronounce all that is helpful. So yes, please, Yeah, it doesn't even need to be uh you know your real name or you know it can be a can be a pseudonym. It can be a different pseudonym each time. Everything's on the table. In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, a Weird House, cinema, or the Artifact, you'll find all of it in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed, and you will find that wherever you get your podcasts

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