Thor's Hammer

In the legend, the comic and the movie(s), Thor the God of Thunder has a hammer that only he can lift. He even says that anyone that can lift it can rule Asgard in his place. All of his fellow super-heroes try and fail to lift it, as he knew they would. There is only one Thor, and it is his hammer made for him alone. It is his right and duty to wield it. We all have our own version of Thor's Hammer, something that only we can "wield" or do, or something that is ours alone. It might be be a burden, it might be a privilege, it might be a duty, or it might be a right. More than likely it is, if you keep it long enough, all of the above at some point in your life. The point is that it is yours, and you don't have to share it if you don't want to, and even if you do share it, you can really divest yourself of being its sole proprietor.

This blog, which I have been shamefully neglecting, is, for today's purpose, my own small version of Thor's Hammer. Clearly, sometime near the beginning of the year I "downed tools" and stopped writing.  It was an act of pure, unadulterated laziness for which I am duly ashamed. It is also an act which I am going to try to remedy. I still suffer from a lack of actual writing talent, but that deficiency never stopped me before, and I should not allow it to stop me now. A lack of material is not to blame, there exists enough of that in my day to day life to keep me at this keyboard for years to come. Be it the rumors swirling like autumn leaves around my workplace (some of which I am the subject of, some of which I gleefully start or embellish, and some of which I am the keeper of), or the continued failure of my relationships and sports teams (to which there seems no end), or the pure insanity of the group of people that I chose to call my friends. All of those sources are fields of gold for material to write about, and with the proper name changing, and the occasional artistic license could be worked into something that could be considered entertaining.

I have attempted to share this blog (my hammer) with Ladislaw, but that ne'er do well is off living a life that would make Caligula proud, and has, it seems, also downed tools. I can't blame Ladislaw for the work stoppage. Keeping the tarts happy, holding down a semi-full time job, and managing to be a constant source of irritation to so many people must be exhausting. I shouldn't expect regular contributions to this blog to be particularly high on the list of things Ladislaw is concerned with doing. That isn't anyone fault exactly, Ladislaw has a hammer of considerable weight to drag around that takes up a considerable amount of time and effort. Fair play to him. She has, in the past, graciously allowed me to help with his hammer, but it remains her burden alone. That is a story for another day, and if Ladislaw can be arsed to do it, maybe he can tell it. Those details need not detain us here.

During the Viking Age, the age that we associate most with our buddy Thor, His hammer, forged with a slightly too short handle by dwarfs tricked into the making of it by Loki, became a symbol of the old gods, a rebellion against the Christianity that was becoming more prevalent in Scandinavia. The hammer became a sort of "anti-cross" to people who resisted that change and clung to the old ways (we fear change, so we can understand this entirely).  Without trying to sound like too much of a pretentious prick, this blog is my own (poor) version of an anti-cross. It wasn't exactly started as an act of rebellion, but it has developed into one over the years. It is my own small rebellion against the everydayness that Sarte and Camus explained, lamented, and eventually rebelled against. I do it poorly, and I understand that in many ways it is futile, but sometimes it is the act itself that is important regardless of the chances of success or the certainty of failure. It must needs doing, and I am the one that needs to be doing it.

Unlike Mjolnir (the name of Thor's hammer), this blog isn't capable of leveling mountains, and it certainly does miss more than it hits. It is not going to create thunderstorms which will make my many devious enemies cower in terror in the dirty, smelly hovel in which they live. It is not designed for that purpose, though it would be bloody nice if it could make thunderstorms happen, I love me some thunderstorms. But no, the more mundane, and more un-godlike task of this blog is not to be a burden, not to be something that I have put down, and now can't pick up again. Its task, its purpose, and its goals are to entertain. Mostly it is to entertain me, if it happens to provide other people with some sort of entertainment that is grand as well. I waver between hoping that it does, and not give a shit if it doesn't.

Either way, the point of this (if there is one) is that the work stoppage must come to an end, and if my loyal readership of four, maybe five people are still out there, I hope they will rejoice (though that might be asking just a bit too much) at the news.  If, by some small chance, the subsequent blog posts (of which I hope to write soon) entertain them, then that is a bonus. And if by some further miracle, Ladislaw manages to crawl out of whatever tart's bed they are warming, and crawls back to the keyboard to contribute, well their assistance in picking up this hammer will not be unappreciated.  Here's hoping.


 P.S. this post was written on a Thursday for a reason, it is Thor's day, now go forth and bring the thunder down upon your enemies.