A collection of one ...

The blog's been pretty limp for a long time - unfortunately not the kind of infrequency that keeps a reader wanting more. I follow several others like that, but even my following of other blogs has been pretty poor of late. I don't read like I used to, don't write at all, really haven't blogged either. And am not even really thinking about "maybe I'll write again" and so on.

That said ... please go visit one of those I follow! Jeff Sypeck is such a good writer, and his observations about anything he uses *his* blog to point to are worth the stopover every time. In this case, too, the way he's pointing has me fascinated AND my mind is blown. Spoiler alert: Mike Tyson is fascinated by Clovis, the Merovingians, the Franks???? I mean ... Huh. It doesn't take me back, ahem, but does provide the unexpected imaginary mindpic of Mike Tyson reading my novel (had it ever seen the light of day). Huh.

... wait for it ...

... because, for my writing friends, this is a REALLY good column about writing.

It's also good for the advice-column that it actually is.

Layers. Mmmmm.

Your wrist

That scene
in Pippin.
Where Catherine sings paeans
to the arch of his foot.

In high school, that was illuminating
and silly...
and I liked it and laughed at it,
though not because
I understood.

Today
the picture of you
Your face is always visible from its place
but today
I saw only the line of your wrist
and for a moment
it was unfamiliar
wrong
but I stopped, I looked at it
and was reassured.

Your wrist is elegant. As are your fingers.
Long and lean, immaculate, powerful.

Your wrist.
I miss it.
It held me once.

Missed.

Half Life

June 26, 1993.

... and this would be Beloved Ex.
Posted with permission.

If I can't believe it's been just over three months since my stepfather died, or fifteen years since I saw my dad's face ... believing that (a) twenty-five years have passed since this day, and (b) twenty-five years is half my life is WELL beyond my wee and paltry brain's capacity.

Huh.

Collection

If you haven't already heard about the gorgeousness of Steve, you really ought to have a click. Steve happens to be a new auroral phenomenon ... or maybe he's something else entirely - but he's beautiful, his story is ridiculously charming, and you really have. to meet. Steve.

Oh my gosh, y'all. Judging a book by its spine ... is now kind of copyrighted. Events! Local bookstore small-business gloriousness! Discuss.

Here's a new one on me. I have friends who live in Israel, and have known many folks who grew up there, or lived there in the 80s, and one of my best friends goes pretty much every year with her family. I have even been myself, though that too was back in the 80s, and I was only fourteen. Through all this acquaintance with Israel, particularly Jerusalem, I've never heard of the Razzouk family: Coptic Christian tattoo artists who have been at work for seven centuries (first in Egypt, but since 1750 in Jerusalem). It makes sense that literally marking a pilgrimage to the Holy Land would be an enshrined act of faith, but having grown up in an American Christian community in which tattooing is all but The Devil's Work, this just had never occurred to me. From fertility to the blood and pain of a tattoo, they make a badge of faith and a reminder of it too. Interestingly, the family have also used the art in therapeutic tattoos, which we have seen on Otzi and seems to have been practiced for millennia across the world in many cultures. A fascinating article from tattoo anthropologist Lars Krutak.

Side note - at the longer link above and then here, I learned that George V and Edward VII both had tattoos. Huh.

"You can do ANYTHING you set your mind to."

25 years ago now, having left my marriage and come home to Virginia, I found myself in a job with one of the best managers I've ever known, a woman I'll call C. C managed a keen balance between getting the ratty jobs done but finding each employee's talents, and playing to them. So it was that, as a secretary, I ended up assisting the guy who was writing a book. And the IT guy. Writing our newsletter. And, by the end, taking care of orphan clients (we were an insurance and financial services agency).

It was just at the moment I was about to be sent to Minnesota in February for securities training that I left that gig. But I never did forget that manager, and C stands out to this day as one of the smartest people I've ever worked with. And I've worked with some great, wise people.

All this time later, I have found a position where I get to do my own balancing - still a secretary, but one with decades more experience on the resume, and in a company/with a team where I have been able, almost singlehanded, to define my job. I get to play to my own strengths now.

Not long ago, I was thinking again about how I ended up being a secretary. Yeah, it was the early and mid-80s that formed me, and yeah I was VERY much an underachiever during my early career (though, looking at that job I mentioned above - maybe not so lacking in gumption as I have told myself for so long now) ... but nothing was stopping me from pursuing some more specific or lucrative or creative ambition.

But, the thing is: my parents always told me, "You can do anything you set your mind to."

Here is the problem: they never gave me specifics. Mom might occasionally talk about things *she* would wish to do, or which she found prestigious.

But neither my mom nor my dad ever did as C did: took up the thread of what I loved, or was good at (which were not entirely the same thing), and revealed to me the particular things my talents or my abilities could lead to. Nope, not even my dad. And he was a professor - a student advisor. His very life and career were dedicated to pushing people toward success.

Or ... maybe just to knowledge. To understanding those concepts he himself taught, or to harnessing those from other disciplines, which his students were studying. Synthesizing these to the tools to reach their specific goals.

My dad was encouraging to a fault - but the fault was, he just opened the doors wide. He provided no guide but "anything" - and that was too much. Overwhelming, or under.

I have always known that what I do is "less" in the eyes of other people; nobody's subtle about it. I basically fell into it to make a living. Doing what I do was not a dream, wasn't something I *sought*. I have made it mine, and I'm not complaining nor regretting. But it, in the barest and least freighted, but clearest sense of the phrase, "is what it is."



I could do anything I set my mind to. Sure. But in high school, I already knew I was directionless.

And MOST OF US ARE as teenagers. And that is okay.

But then majoring in Theater (or, insufferably, Theatre/Dance, at my insufferable alma mater) never was going to get me famous and wealthy and yield a successful movie star at the end of college.

(To which I now say: Thank MAUD.)

But it wasn't getting me anywhere else, either. Working on the crew was pizza money and fun, not a career trajectory. Our department wasn't good enough to provide one of those, frankly.

And I could type.

So I fell into my first jobs, my early talents - whatever they might have been - sublimated to make a living, and over the years I've done well, or just done *enough*, and scrabbled and fought my way to giving a damn ... and here we are.



I am proud of my work, and I love what I do. But don't ever think that this was my fantasy. Or even my calling. It was barely my *aptitude*, even, for a while there.





This morning, musing to a friend at work that my hair was looking particularly teased-and-tapered in an 80s sort of way, I pulled up Beauty and the Beat on my phone, and revisited that time before directionlessness became ... well, to borrow one of the Go-Go's song titles, Automatic.

The Go-Go's, I think, may seem a bit bugglegum and maybe even gimmicky these days. But that first album, steeped in 1981 and its New Wave-ness, was not a feather-light pop concoction. There is a menace in the chords. This album is bouncy, but it's bouncing on bruises, and it's propulsive. (Automatic is very dark and affecting. It *still* hits me in a very deep place, perhaps the more for life's experience rather than less.)

And this album is inextricably linked to the one person, before C, who ever pointed me at anything specific.

It was my brother.

I can't remember how it came up, and how it ever seemed "real" at all - and, the fact is, the moment of this memory may not have lasted more than a few days. But my brother, for some reason, excitedly encouraged me to get a band together, like the Go-Go's. To cover them, for Stunt Talent Night. He pointed to Kathy Valentine, and said I could do what she did.

It didn't change my life - or, at least, it didn't set me on a path. But my brother was the only family member who ever looked at anything in me, and pointed to anything at all. He didn't say "You can do anything you set your mind to."

He said, "You could do THAT."


I was too shy. I didn't know any musicians. Time ticked on, the moment passed, I never did it. Years later, I still entertained the odd fantasy of being a drummer - or, later still, a lead singer. But instead I watched Beloved Ex do it, and was still too shy. And never thought to connect to the many musicians we did know then, to try to become one of them. Well, never thought of it seriously. Never had the confidence to try.

And I had a job. And hadn't, perhaps, divested myself of the vague idea I might become wealthy and famous by sitting around waiting, hopefully being 80s-foxy enough for the world just to arrange its attention and money around me. Or maybe being a writer. Or just getting by, day to day.

There were a lot of years of getting by, long periods of time lived day to day.

And, not in the least ironically at all, it was my brother, again, who pointed me at something, years later. Aged 35, he asked me to go to a writers' conference ... and we all know how that has gone. Still the world has not arranged itself around my ridiculous success. But at least I consider myself something more than a 'nartist now.


I don't wish things had gone some other way. My life is an awfully good one to live, and the means to my living never has been the most important thing to me (the people I work with are, though). The idea of an alternative life in which What I Do *was* more important is no source of regret for me; perhaps in that life, my soul would not have been the one I have here and now, and my soul means everything to me.

No, I don't wish things had gone differently at all.

Just: looking at my parents. Thinking of the way C managed the people she worked with. I'm actually just surprised it *didn't* go differently. And curiously grateful I failed to have certain dreams ... ? What I did have was people like C, and others, and enough privilege to say I've made my way successfully, even if not prestigiously.


And I'm doubly grateful for that big brother, too. Turns out - he's actually even more special than I understood. Back in those years when I idolized him so, and didn't even know why.

TROUT Again!

Funny I should run into this today, after yesterday's musing about Brautigan et al. Could be one to hunt down.

Image: Wikipedia, of course

Collection

Here's a link I hope Jeff Sypeck will see, after our conversation about cars not so long ago.

Just in time for Hallowe’en! Culture versus costume arises for someone other than Sexy Indians or Sexy Asians this year … witness the Maui costume from Disney. Because I guess someone thought we needed more diversity in bigotry. At least the character design for Princess Moana doesn’t look as inhumanly thin and malproportioned as other Princesses. One wonders how much she is allowed to speak in her own eponymous film.

Although apparently the word "three" has been transformed to mean something else here, I *will* say that, as a longtime eczema sufferer, I'll try anything ... "We found one particular gene which showed the biggest difference. And what's interesting is that we know this particular gene is involved in three specific diseases: depression, asthma and eczema, and cancer. This is a really striking finding." On the wonders of turmeric. Hey, beats taking drugs.

"Even neolithic art gets fat-shamed" ... The History Blog's piece on the recent Turkish find of a mother goddess figurine. Bonus goddess, from the comments section, a pre-Christian Cybele found in Anatolia.

Finally - this isn't a full blog post's worth of thought, but I have been struck a bunch of times lately by odd moments of synchronicity. Today, I read the article about turmeric above, and less than twenty minutes later when I went for lunch, one of the dishes on order was stewed chickpeas in tomato with cumin and turmeric (and, I suspect, the magic of nutmeg). Extremely good. Not half an hour after I got my lunch, the chef, whom I have NEVER seen on our floor before, just happened to come down the hall. So I got to tell him how good the chickpea dish was. It's interesting how things fall into place together sometimes, isn't it?

Women's Equality Day

This morning, Wikipedia informed me that it is Women's Equality Day. Ever heard of it? Ever celebrate it? Did you buy sheets on sale, or have a barbecue? I'm not sure of the proper procedure here.

I just feel like... if we have to have a "day" for it: we are doing it wrong.

The Most Incredible Pen I Ever Met

Life's too short not to use the good pen.

Being a writer, every now and then someone gives me A Nice Pen.

I have a whopper of a colorful mother-of-pearl pen that was my first "because you are a writer" pen, given by a friend several jobs ago when I had to leave that much-beloved employer. It weighs something on the order of a pound or so, and its diameter is enormous, but it's a great-writing instrument. I love it most because of its provenance, but it's a lovely thing just to look at and great for a flourishing signature.

My current job brought a boxed set my way, a pen and pencil set in graphite casing, just beautiful.

Another friend gave me a pen hand-lathed by her own son; a slender, curvaceous number I favor frequently because it is beautifully weighted. This pen goes with me everywhere, in whatever purse I happen to be carrying.

The James River Writers conference has been a source of good pens as well.

One of the best pens they've had in the swag bag for a couple or three years happens to come from a sponsor semi descended from, or step-related to, the employer I had to leave so regretfully at the time I received the MOP pen mentioned above. It gives me a wry smile, because those who've stayed on through this generation of that employer have not universally been thrilled with the evolution, but they are people I still respect immensely, and miss.

JRW is also a great source for some of the best cheap pens I've ever had. Another sponsor provides snappy little lightweights that also have a great curve appeal, and they often come in nice colors you can find in the drawer. Some of these have lasted as long as the ten-plus years for which I've been attending JRW events.

Easily the most astonishing pen, if we may call it such, is the highlighter with which I do my hard-copy research.

This is a highlighter.

It was bought in a set of four colors.

In 1982.


To steal a phrase from the most intense aunt in my family: I kid you not.


This highlighter was born in the age of pin-dot printing, when static was something we concerned ourselves with, or, at least, the marketing dudes of the day did. When this FONT was cool-oh and futuristic looking. It came with blue, green, and yellow companions - the yellow long since used up, the blue still gasping 35 years on, and the green perhaps lost in time.

The pink highlighter works. It's fresh as a daisy, and has that satisfyingly firm tip that feeds its ink with a waxy smoothness that is gratifyingly dependable.

I didn't save this beast for special occasions. For decades, it lived with my mom. She cleaned out a desk, decades *ago* now, and I inherited it, and its mates. There was little reason to use it, but no pressing reason to toss it, and the thing has aged quietly for all this time.

It's probably more than twice the age of my eighteen-year-old niece. It has outlasted countless personal computers, fashions, even automobiles. Five of those, in fact. Individually, it may have cost a quarter or so - perhaps more, if we splurged on a princely tool for modern computer highlighting work! - but investment-wise, is has outperformed any conceivable commodity in any market in any corner of, perhaps, the entire universe itself.

And it shows no sign of giving up. It doesn't even show its age, though the design is perhaps amusingly quaint.

Pink has, since my earliest research on The Ax and the Vase, been the color for highlighting research for the WIP. I found the subject of the WIP early on in working on Ax, and so I used pink to differentiate it from the drab old yellow I was using to work on reading for Ax.

I used this highlighter. There have been one or two other pink ones, in a pinch, but those (!!!) died. Quickly.

This workhorse, though, lives on. And on.

I have a silly and affectionate idea it may see me through work on the WIP, and finally give up its hardy ghost, fulfilled at long last, the methuselah pen, the ancient markiner, the oldest highlighter known to man.

If not, I plan to leave it to the younger niece - also a writer.

In the meantime, it is working for me. And I am, quietly, but consistently, amazed by the little thing. It has such ... life.



What is your best or most beloved or oddest pen?

Funny the Way a Day Can Go

Today was the first day back in the office for an awful lot of the Eastern Seaboard, and I made it an especially early day, getting right to it by 7:15 this morning and starting off running.

It wasn't a bad day, but after leaving early and getting home with a scrap of afternoon left to me, I read a long and especially disturbing article (blog post on THAT to follow, but I don't want to contaminate this post with a link), did a little more shoveling, did the pet thing, and ... kind of found myself mired in a place of dread and fear.

Hormones'll do that to ya, when they don't take you to the lush, weepy place. If something honestly disconcerting gets into your brain, it can leave you seriously upset, sometimes without even quite realizing why. It gets worse when you are alone: the other heartbeats in my house do go a long way to keeping me from going completely hermit-daft, but Gossamer and Penelope can't TALK with me, they can't laugh.



Thank G-d for good friends.

Cute Shoes called me around eight, and pulled my head out of my navel, and we laughed and rolled our eyes about a few things, and she let me off the phone in a better mental place. Cute Shoes is pretty OSUM like that (including when she induces me to evil, pointing out the sale at American Duchess, and then joining with me in the "I own a pair of American Duchess shoes" club). And, indeed, she's OSUM in other ways as well.

It put me in such a better mood I was able to call my mom, and she and I laughed for a while too. I turned on the episode of Fixer Upper she had on, and watched what ended up turning out to be about my favorite design of theirs they've EVER done, a mix of modern and cozy, light and warm, family memories and new design. And Fixer Upper stars a couple who do make me laugh.

Mom and I got off the phone to keep watching, and then I had to call her to laugh that the unfinished natural cedar planks they were using on one wall looked like bacon strips. Then she called me at the end (while I was resisting the urge to call her and ooh and ahh over how beautifully the house turned out) to ooh and ahh over how beautifully the house turned out. It MUST have been gorgeous, because mom and I don't really have similar aesthetics.

Friends are a good thing. I am so grateful.

Even so, I wouldn't have minded having Mr. X around to improve my mood. He's probably my favorite person in the world to watch laughing. And to *make* him laugh - well, just even thinking about it makes me happy.



Hooray for hormones!

Favorite Things: Turquoise, Beautiful Youths, and Thanksgiving

Traffic Source

I'm used to seeing Russian sites and even the occasional Reider blog in my stats, directing traffic this way. Can't quite figure out, though, why the Wikipedia page for Jehovah has been sending hits to this blog a bunch lately.

Insert Quizzical Puppy Face here.

I don' geddit. But I'm bein' rilly RIIILLY good for G-d.

Funny Thing Happened On the Way to Slowing Down ...

Uhhhh - I got seven queries out tonight. Holy damn.

Pantsless

As the child, sister, and niece of scientists, I have a pretty hard time believing in magic – much though I always wanted to.  *Superstition* - now, that’s easy, it’s just a matter of silly habits.  But actually believing in sympathetic, mystical, or merely physical magic; I’m no good at it.

Yet, since the Conference on October 18-19, there has been a mysterious and complete, inexplicable disappearance in my life, and I am at a perfect loss.

Literally.

This past spring or summer, after Admin’s Day, I used the gift certificate they gave the secretaries in thanks, to buy a simply spiffing pair of palazzo pants.  They were comfortable, went with tons of my things, would have seen me through every season, and were comfortable, stylin’, and flattering.  In short, the holy grail.

I’m saying these were excellent pants.

And the things have either:  run away from home, or simply defied the law of Object Permanence.

I have looked in every closet eighteen times.  With a FLASHLIGHT.  I’ve ransacked the shelves at the back of the closet, pulled back the old box shoe rack to look behind it, inspected the items on every single hanger time and time again, gone through the cabinetry in there dozens of times, looked in the floor, peered in the dark again and again.  Every closet.  Guest room, master, wardrobe, foyer, linen closet upstairs.  Dressers too, guest room and master, because there’s been a seasonal wardrobe shift since the Con.

Nada.

I’ve done laundry countless times, of course, since mid-October.  And these pants steadfastly refuse to miraculously appear – not on the clotheslines in the basement, not in the basket, not in the machines, not in the trashcan in the basement, not on the disused plumbing fixtures in the middle of the floor, not on the ironing boards.  Not behind the washing machine nor dryer.  Not in the kitchen cabinets nor drawers.  Not in any of the storage dressers.  Not in the library on the DVD shelves.

Nope.

I have looked, even, in the mending, which happens to be in my office these days.  I thought, maybe I forgot an the hem was going, maybe I put the pants in the quick-fix pile I keep and never get to quickly.

Every so often, I think of some new place to look (usually:  again).  Every so often, I look.  Again.

Zilch.

It’s maddening, bewildering.  Inexplicable.  This mystery will not be splicked, and heck if I have not tried.  And tried.  And tried.

I’m beginning to think I’ll find an agent (and maybe even be sold) before these damned pants will reappear and satisfactorily explain themselves.



 

Being a woman, of course, I have *looked* for new palazzo pants.  For second-best, for something to settle for.  For (cue that Who riff) a Sub-sti-chute.



Oh, but NONE of the pants I’ve perused desultorily are the same.  Most are cheap, an *awful* lot are not black, are very heavily patterned.  None want to be replicants, rebound stand-ins for The Only Pants I Ever Loved.  None is made with as well-draped a textile, none has the weight or quality of The Missing.  Some veer perilously close to being SLACKS.  Heavens forfend.

I do not wear slacks.

I *can* not wear my palazzos.  I can’t do the great sweaer outfits they’d have been so perfect for, with my cute little shoe-booties, sophisticated colors, and long scarves, warm around my neck.

I cannot wear them: for Thanksgiving.  Horrors!  They’d have been so good for Thanksgiving.  Their kind, yoga-style (non-elastic-banded) waistband – not an option, for the holiday when it would be so very welcome.  Their long, floppy legs, soft and fine for napping in.

Alack!

I cannot wear them in a car, I cannot wear them in a bar.  I cannot wear them, Sam I’m Not.  I cannot wear them, no matter what.



But the real problem is something deeper, something more profound, even, than That Perfect Garment, the comfortable, washable, versatile and good looking pants.

No.  More desperately, and more to the ultimate, mind-deteriorating, insanity-inducing point:  I can’t figure out … What. the. Hell.

It’s a COGNITIVE torture, this terrible case of non-presence.

My brain honestly cannot cope with what has become of these pants.  Never mind not being able to find them.  Not being able to understand what could have become of these things, this item in my care, this bit of flotsam in the material blessings over which I carry stewardship.  THAT’S the problem.


It would be preferable to believe that (a) my pants don’t actually possess the power of teleportation, (b) someone didn’t come in my house just to steal nothing in the world but these precious pants, and (c) I didn’t forget that awkward moment when, apparently, I was driving home from the Con, shucked my pants while in the car, threw them out the window with a whoop of deranged glee, freeing myself from these inexplicable pants, and apparently walked back in my house naked from the waist down.  *Erm*

I’m pretty serious about that (c), too.

Unless I have lost my way around a perfectly ordinary house I’ve lived in for FIFTEEN YEARS now … these pants simply do not exist anymore.  They are nowhere in evidence, in the only possible place I’m capable of *comprehending* they should be.  They are nowhere to be found inside my house.

And yes, I have looked under all the beds.  With that flashlight, and multiple times, again.  And no, I never lent them to anybody, nor took ‘em to a dry cleaner.

I take nothing to a dry cleaner, man.

These pants appear to have renounced molecular cohesion, shivered themselves into nonexistence, and dispersed, to play with the dust bunnies, mold, cave crickets, and dust.  Either that, or they actually honestly don’t exist, even in particulate form, whatsoever anymore.

They’re chimera pants.

Dare I say:  they are immaterial.



*Ducks to avoid the response to that last line*

What’s inexplicable in your life, this Thanksgiving?

Wallop Rocket

I just stood in my back yard and watched a rocket take flight over Virginia.  Kind of exciting, for reasons beyond the tiny, bright light in the twilight sky - and I am kicking myself for not taking my binoculars outside.

Once I saw it, though - no question of going inside and missing a moment.  It was just neato-spedito, to use the term of excitement popularized by my bro closer to a certain moon landing I caught as an infant, but don't properly recall.

On the phone with my mom waiting for something to appear, she and I were frustrated by multiple airplanes - but, once I did see it, there was no mistaking the tiny, but unmistakably vastly distant, fiery light in the sky.  Smaller than a plane, but more vivid, and with the barest visible (for my eyes, not what they once were) trail of light.

As it arced from the south in what may have been a curved trajectory eastward and away from the Earth, the steady light appeared in the minutest way to flicker - from the puny vantage point of a woman in a backyard, it looked like it was turning away and perhaps the irregularity of its afterburners "face on" (or bum on, more like) allowed the intensity of the faraway fire to show its dim, distant flares from the different angle.

The speeding star of light started out farther south than I expected to see it, my catching it when I did was almost by chance.  Its distance was impossible to quantify in description, but this light was clearly not on a plane with the planes; something ineffable communicated that it was very far off - and its speed was clear, given that.

It stayed bright for a minute, but once it took its turn, fairly close to my own parallel, for the east, it diminished VERY quickly.  Even the flaring light that appeared at this point shrunk in my vision bewilderingly fast.

Dad would have enjoyed this.  We'd have come inside and maybe had popcorn - or made it and taken it out with us.  Or chocolate pudding.

Mom and her neighbors didn't really see it, it sounded like, but I'm happy I got to.


***


Here is the really amazing thing about the whole event, though.  I came inside, pulled up this post, wrote it, and even put the link in above ... before I finally went to the NASA Wallops Island site and decided to look at footage or images or the story.

And the launch was scrubbed for tonight.  Ten minutes before the 6:45 Eastern liftoff, the thing was canceled.

It didn't happen.



***


Very recently, I learned something in my life that is profoundly and deeply important, which I appear to have blocked out completely.

Tonight, I witnessed something that didn't happen.

The power of the human brain can be breathtaking and beautiful, but its power to do crap like this is seriously disturbing.  I wanted to tell my brother, my nieces all about this.  I did tell my mom.

And it never happened.

I'm not persuaded I'm losing my mind, but am open to the possibility I"m alone there.

"And, Reader, I Purchased It"

Surely, it is fated.  THIS is the post that put me over 100,000 hits on this blog!  And I called this morning - they still had the desk - and I paid for it.

As I understand it, the desk was much loved by its previous owner, a guy who had it for many years and ran a business - and was also at some point (I don't know whether it was when he had the desk) an assistant coach for the Dallas Cowboys.  They're planning to tell him it's going to someone who'll love it, too - and he'll be so pleased.

I told 'em they could leave out the part about how I'm no football fan ...

Well, this poor desk is in for a change.  But I think it'll find it interesting around here.

Homework

Okay, so watching The Borgias now qualifies as homework for history.  And not even in Big, Dumb America (being facetious, don't beat me up ...), but in the UK.  And for A-LEVEL history, at that.  This, for those not in the know as to the British educational system, is short for ADVANCED level.

Please stand by while I nip off to go shoot myself in the neck.

I promise, I’ll be very humane …

Oddly Enough ...

... not the first story of hope I've seen about a pickle startup this week ...

Catacombs (Do Your Own Puns)

Oh to live in The Eternal City, where discovering history under your apartment is a bore.  So let the cats do the archeaology, and the foreign press get breathless and punny about it.