American Gods

Its high time I stopped my half-hearted attempts to write in the early mornings after several rounds of Dota. For one thing, it's nigh impossible to concentrate as much as I wanna, since i'm usually on the verge of slumping over the keyboard from exhaustion. Moreover, anything I write sounds infinitely shallow, and the past 3 attempts to blog in the mornings have resulted in unfinished half-fuck drafts which, when glossed over by Yours Truly, seem like absolute shit.

Don't get me wrong: It's not that I take this blogging seriously. It's just that there's gotta be some measure of pride involved when i'm writing something, right? Who doesn't strive to be awesome? Or funny? Or, at very least, mildly interesting? So i've a perfectionist streak, and I like to excel in the things I choose to do.

And IMO it'd suck to not even be mildly interesting. I'd hafta write stuff like: "Dear Diary: Today I went to church, after which I then had chicken rice with dad and mom. Then I visited the library and I borrowed "101 Ways To Commit Ritual Suicide". Wow! What a great book. I then went to aunt's house for dinner and had a torrid evening of incestuous sexual fornication with uncle bob. Oh boy i'm so tired ok I shall end here goodnight I love you God." Think 100 entries of similar content, and that's the general idea i'm getting at.

... On second thought, I take that back - it's actually kinda interesting to read about a completely dysfunctional kid like that.

Anyway, that isn't the point. The point is that I acknowledge I write nothing but absolute cheese after Dota (pretty rotten cheese, at that), and consequently I am now writing this in the late afternoon, couple o' hours before I begin my evening gaming marathon.

But i'm just as tired as i'd be in the early morning, because I just got back from the gym. WHY IS THE WORLD ALWAYS OUT TO GET ME?! Fucking hell.

- - - - - - -
I finished Neil Gaiman's American Gods a couple weeks back, and found the general drift of the book to be extremely interesting. Basically, Gaiman defines gods in his novel as entities formed from the beliefs of people, and what he does is personify them and give them faux-human bodies/identities (think pseudo-Clark Kent, that sorta thing) with which they walk the mortal realms alongside us humans, yet retain the powers by which they are known for.

Confused? Let's see... Take Jesus' deification, for example. Millions (billions) believe in him, and thus Jesus (by Gaiman's definition) is a pretty powerful god cuz he's got tonnes of backing. Or maybe Buddha - He might've been a man who attained enlightenment sitting under a tree, or he might've been a figment of a scribe's imagination... Doesn't matter. What matters is that people believe, sacrifice and devote themselves to him, making him a god. Maybe he even has some 1337 skillz like that Buddha Palm in Kung Fu Hustle... Or maybe he can Jump Over The Wall with incredible ease. Some nonsense like that.

Ok, that was pretty lame, but yeah - Basically, this allows for a whole entourage of potential gods and goddesses. Remember, the gods we worship today aren't just the only ones around: Gaiman's novel revolved around the Norse gods Odin and Loki (the All-Father and the Lie-Smith), and over the relatively short span of human existence on Earth we've worshipped anything from insects, to animals, to incredible creatures beyond our wildest imaginations, which gives us a slew of perhaps thousands of potential gods/goddesses. And we're not quite done: How about the modern-day worship (using worship in loose terminology) of television? The internet? The phone? The Ferraris everyone dreams of owning? Err... Jessica Alba? Umm. Yeah, there's lots to worship these days too.

So after beating around the bush so much, there's just 3 points to my train of thought right now:


Firstly, i've been bemoaning the demise of the festive spirit I once knew as a kid, going back perhaps a decade or so. Don't you feel it? How hollow excitement and calculative behaviour has replaced genuine joy and the spirit of generosity in present-day CNY, for example? How Christmas has become... What? Yet another public holiday? A time to receive presents and bitch about the people who've ignored you? A time for drunken revelry and blinding people with spray-foam? Another occasion to fuck around, perhaps? I honestly don't know what it is these days, but I do know this: Every decoration I see in town is branded with the the label of some random MNC, and I observe nothing but mad rushes to sale venues and the general ugliness of Singaporean behaviour. Call me a cynic, but i'll be damned if you haven't looked back and wondered what the fuck has gone wrong with society today.

And as I read American Gods I thought to myself, Perhaps what we've done is to stop paying tribute to the Festive Spirit, discarding the inherent appreciation of what the festivities meant and replacing them with the worship of material/non-material benefits these events bring. Greed, Modernity, Kiasuism... anything you can think of which has risen over the years to stem the genuine nature of how we once were; these are the new gods we worship.

It's kinda quirky, but yes - reading the novel does that to you. Gives you funny thoughts and all. I tend to think of it as freeing the imagination. He might just be right... You'd never know, wouldja?


Secondly, I thought it made pretty good sense that there's hundreds, maybe thousands of gods existing in this world. All you Christians can cry foul and fling your bibles at me, but if you spare some brainpower on the topic you'll find that it has to be true. If there weren't any other gods around, why are the first two commandments devoted at length to preventing the worship of 'other' gods? Please don't attempt to choke me down with your blind faith, but give it some serious, honest thought. Makes sense, innit?

It's a conclusion further supplemented by the miracles other gods have provided for their followers; there's no way anyone can discount the testimonies of thousands of believers of each separate god. So there's bound to be many liars (and may they all burn in hell and be cursed with non-functional mp3 players), but there'll definitely be occasions whereby the truth is being told. Coincidental miracles, then? Can't be right either: the Christian god is omnipotent, which means coincidences can't possibly happen if there's only one god. And it can't be that i'd pray to Buddha and God responds, because God states in Exodus i.e. the 10 commandments that He's a jealous fella who wouldn't hesitate twice to rotan us for being naughty and bowing to big gold statues.

Think about it. I've actually gone mental over more possibilities, but I think this entry's already too long as it is and my fingers're getting tired.


Thirdly, it's a good book. Go read it - American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Bloody imaginative stuff... But what would you have expected from the creator of Sandman? A surprisingly excellent wordsmith, too; just gotta like the way he writes man, it's frikkin excellente.


P.S. - I feel like changing the template. This one's been around kinda long, hasn't it?