So, I was going to tell you about the little eagle with a mohawk and nicely developed pects that will fit on the end my little finger. But then, while looking for crap from the web that would help me explain what I just said, I found this Hindu anti-defamation website that is sad and funny at the same time. It mentions my "Handy Hindu" and says, "This is another insult to Hinduism and its followers, the Hindus. Hindu gods as finger puppets is indeed making a mockery of Hindu beliefs and sentiments." Try out other western bo-bo's at Hindu Focus and tell me if they aren't ridiculous.

Here's a straigt up insult hurled at the Hindus: I love my Handy Hindu Garuda. Nay, I WORSHIP it.

Some company in Seattle made toilet seats that have Hindu gods on them. Hindu's love their iconography but not the same ways as westerners do. They (and I must admit that I've got to believe what I've been told about this by Hindus) actually think that the icon is the thing. In an undiminished way, little cast porcelain gods are capable of receiving their devotion and putting their spiritual deposit in the big karma bank. This makes almost no sense to westerners who have been told repeatedly that god cannot be rendered in physical form and any attempt to do so is a blasphemy. Ok, whatever. You can argue about Virgin Mary and Swastikas and all that. What's really going on here is that POP culture is the new god of the west and these Hindu guys do not see the humor in losing a holy war to POP.

What is POP, after all but applied postmodern aesthetics and philosophy? Hindus have woefully inadequate tools to fight this holy war and they will lose. Their attempts at defense are sad, and in the end, laughable. And I do not feel sorry for them.

The little finger puppet I have, and which I truly love, is Garuda. It's a Hindu god and the national symbol of Indonesia, an Islamic state. Hella long ago Indonesians got a dose of early Hindu mythology and really got into the Garuda dude. Way more than the Indians, I'm guessing, because they liked birds a lot. So, when they were conquered by the Muslims in the 15th century, the Muslims had to keep all the symbols that the people got off on, even though Muslims generally don't dig deified icons, so Garuda stuck around. Then, when Indo went indie in 1945 they gave it a western coat-of-arms and made it the national symbol.

Why do I mention this? It's old news. Because I don't know how to lecture on semiotics and it's the best I can do. Basically, we got a whole new understanding of how signs and symbols work in the 50's and 60's that caused western minds to bend away from the strict representational view of the world that these Hindus are in. In POP art icons became almost completely divorced from the things they represented so that the symbols themselves were the things they signified. Reciting from the holy Baudrillard on the successive phases of the image:

1. It is the reflection of a basic reality. - Hindus
2. It masks and perverts a basic reality. - Muslims, Jesuits and Iconoclasts
3. It masks the absence of a basic reality. - Sorcery, Astrology, Occult
4. It bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum. -- POP

Baudrillard "quotes" from Ecclesiastes:

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.

These upside down ideas are catching on. A lot of people under 40 already understand and accept them implicitly. They even co-exist in the same person with old-world representational ideas like love of sports teams and rock and roll. That's one reason why I live my Handy Hindu and why I won't take it off my finger.