Please do not offer my god a peanut.

WHERE IS YOUR GANESH NOW!?

Sybarite: Please do not offer my god a peanut.

Well, I got what I wanted.

Connection Refused

By the many arms of Ganesh...

Please stop trying to give my god a peanut.

mitchcumstein1: Sybarite: Please do not offer my god a peanut.

Well, I got what I wanted.

Dammit

Masterstuff: Antimatter: thinking it was stolen raises an interesting question. What is the penalty for grand theft deity, anyways?

Eternal damnation and a $150 fine.

Also, please come again.

Sybarite: Please do not offer my god a peanut.

This thread is closed.

Thank you. Come again!

Antimatter: thinking it was stolen raises an interesting question. What is the penalty for grand theft deity, anyways?

I'm pretty sure its a maximum sentence of a smiting and/or a lingering curse to dog you and your line all of its days

stevetherobot: rebelyell2006: I can't imagine a museum that would need a broken Indian statue that is not an antiquity, unless it is specifically a museum about India. And if it is an antiquity, it might be illegal. People just don't think things through when they give unsolicited donations to museums.

Maybe it was this guy.

[cache.io9.com image 450x323]

Finally found his fortune and glory?

Having read a few Great Detective stories in my time, the usual penalty for stealing the Heathen Idol (or more precisely, the Eye of Ishtar or the Sacred Tail of Tiddles the Cat God, or something, usually a giant gemstone of no particular value due to cloudiness, poor cutting, fractures, etc.) is one of the following:

1) the Great Detective deduces that the ritual ceremonial knifes in your back are of a type only used by the cult of one temple in the backwoods of some exotic locale to punish blasphemers and temple thieves, and that therefore the murderer is really the Antique Dealer and not the strange foreign cultists seeking revenge after all, who turn out to be the Samoan Salvation Army or something like that;

2) the Great Detective discovers that your great-uncle and his faithful "manservant", Bob, were murdered by the cultists as revenge for desecrating their idol and their temple, but that the supernatural happenings all had a perfectly rational explantion after all and all the cultists have gone back to Krishnapourimumbojumbo;

3) the cultists kill you and turn your daughter or girlfriend into a King Cobra or some other exotic heathen monster, but the Great Detective figures out how to thwart them, thus obtaining the Great Jewel of Gingham for the British Museum collection of over-sized cursed gemstones of incalculable value obtained by light-fingered British tourists over the centuries.

There are, of course, as many variations on this theme as there are murder mysteries or tales of the occult. But as a general rule, you should learn the important moral not to fark around with the Heathen Powers that Be. Divinities, especially Heathen Divinities, are tetchy and they don't like people touching their stuff.

The penalty for stealing an idol made out of plaster or cheap plastic, however, is generally being mobbed by a lot of enthusiastic vigilantes and trampled to death, or possibly stabbed 101 times. It's not nearly as romantic as cultists, supernatural revenge, and Great Detectives, but it makes for a lot of good "dumb criminal" stories for people who like tales of quick and dirty justice against petty thieves.

It's a pity more temples don't have ventilation shafts leading to hamburger grills, or the thieves could get stuck in them to the amusement and delight of many thousands of thoughtless Christians, etc.

Theft of Diety, under $50.
Punishment: forced to return diety, pay fine, sweep the Street of the Fakirs on weekends.

Theft of Diety, Grand Theft. Diety evaluated at $5,000 or more: To be executed in a slow and heinous death, three times a day, for the amusement of tourists and locals with time on their hands. One day a week off for the religion of your choice.

Theft of Diety, Aggravated: Pursued by the Furies to Hell and Back. An eternity of terror and torment. A brief mention in Ripley's Belief it or Not, but otherwise a name that lives in ignomy forever or is eternally forgotten, never to be spoken again.

You should remember that even if the ritual object you steal is essentially valueless, such as a sacred talking stick or a temple prostitute, you may become the centre of an international crisis and cost your country billions of dollars if a war or trade sanctions are involved, regardless of who wins the war or the trade war.

Wanted for obligatory questioning


/hot

Mythunderstood: brantgoose: Theft of Diety, under $50.
Punishment: forced to return diety, pay fine, sweep the Street of the Fakirs on weekends.

Theft of Diety, Grand Theft. Diety evaluated at $5,000 or more: To be executed in a slow and heinous death, three times a day, for the amusement of tourists and locals with time on their hands. One day a week off for the religion of your choice.

Theft of Diety, Aggravated: Pursued by the Furies to Hell and Back. An eternity of terror and torment. A brief mention in Ripley's Belief it or Not, but otherwise a name that lives in ignomy forever or is eternally forgotten, never to be spoken again.

You should remember that even if the ritual object you steal is essentially valueless, such as a sacred talking stick or a temple prostitute, you may become the centre of an international crisis and cost your country billions of dollars if a war or trade sanctions are involved, regardless of who wins the war or the trade war.

Aggravated Chronic Misspelling of "Deity": Three life terms in Tartarus, no possibility of parole. (Helpful hint: if it contains the word "die" in it, it is not referring to an immortal.)

Whoops! Didn't notice the eggregious solecism or I would have emended it posthaste.

I know how to spell that word. After all, it comes from deus, Deus, a god, God.

Typing quickly betrays me sometimes. I find errors that I've known better than to make for longer than most people have been alive. I used to wonder if Spellcheck didn't sneak them in, but I've caught myself making them from time to time, like the classic "there", "their", "they're" confusible. I think it might be a sort of dyslexia that comes on as I age. My Father makes mistakes that are clearly not the result of ignorance and it could be hereditary (one of my cousins is dyslexic). On the other hand, everybody does it unconsciously from time to time, like Freudian slips and other double entendres.

It's one of life's small embarassing mysteries, like not being able to remember whether it is 7+5 or 8+5 which adds up to 13 without stopping to think. I know why I do that: When I learned the multiplication tables by rote, the places where I stopped to rest are the places where I make math errors in addition. In other words, it's a heuristic glitch.