patriam deserimus casei gratia

Not that I've updated this thing much in the past decade or more, but I'm archiving all of this on Dreamwidth as we speak. Follow me there for further lack of new content.

Пу́тін — хуйло́.

I just started a new tumblr blog, possibly to become a group blog, mainly because I liked the sound of "poikily throikily" (*).

The first post is an adaptation of Sappho, fr. 1(**) into double dactyls.

Any of my friends here with a tumblr who want to contribute comic-verse adaptations and translations of reasonably well-known literature, hit me up, yo.

( For those afraid of offsite links )

(*) A nonsensical corruption of the first Greek word in the poem.
(**) Normally, I'd be annoyed that whoever put together all of those Sappho translations used Comic Sans, but it's appropriate enough in this context.

...I would be remiss not to link you to someone's Latin "yo mama" jokes.

Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA) made headlines the other day when, in the wake of Hurricane Irene, he said that FEMA budget shortfall could be made up only by slashing the money from something else. For the Republicans, every crisis is an opportunity to shrink the government further. Take, for example, the current economic woes our country faces: the Republican answer to widespread unemployment is to add to it by firing as many public employees as possible.

We can work with that.

Listen: operating Congress is expensive. Now, here in Rhode Island, we have a little over a million people and two Representatives. In Wyoming Montana, they have one representative for just under a million people. We Rhode Islanders can only admire that efficiency. If we made all of the House of Representatives run on the Montana model – one representative for every million people or so, rounding up or down to the nearest million (usually down; we're trying to save money here), we could cut, for example, three representatives from the Honorable Mr. Cantor's home state, seven from Texas, as many as sixteen from California, and so on, totaling a grand layoff of 120 members of Congress.

My back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest this would save American taxpayers about $300 million a year in salaries, benefits, office costs, and staffer pay – and that's before other savings like lower electricity, the reduced need for security, and so on.

Now, $300 million isn't a lot compared to the size of the deficit, but it's a good round number for a lot of programs conservatives complain about, like the recently imperiled Economic Development Administration, which sends grants to economically devastated communities of the sort that, we are given to understand, Obama has been creating on a daily basis. It could instead cover, for example, the annual budget for anti-terror transit security, if that seemed important.

Would this be less democratic? Probably. Or would a reduced Congress be more efficient? Who knows? Doesn't matter. We're not talking about what's good for our country; we're just talking about slashing the budget. Let's not lose track of what's important here.

Republican parent: I've decided that alimony is too high, so instead my associates and I are going to shoot little Timmy unless you give us at least two million dollars and a pony.

Democratic parent: Holy crap! Okay, look, Here's four million, but I can't do the pony thing. Please don't shoot Timmy; that would be awful.

Republican parent: The pony's a dealbreaker; we've all signed a pledge. Wait a minute, the other kidnappers are saying we also want to be able to kidnap Timmy again in a few months. Ball's in your court.

Democratic parent: There's no way I can accept that! Here's two million and a pony after all; don't hurt our kid.

Republican parent: No, it's a million now, and another crack at Timmy in six months for a few more million because we know you'll pay it, and -- wait. The other kidnappers also want us to have permanent custody. 

Democratic parent: Wait, seriously?

Republican parent:  Do you really want Timmy to get shot? Time for someone around here to be a responsible parent!  [Aside to onlookers] Don't worry; we think shooting Timmy would actually rebalance his humours.

Onlookers: What terrible parents they both are!

Occasional Latin-related blogging can now be found here.

I'm just dusting this thing off to link to the best thing I've ever read on the 'syllabus' plural controversy.

Yes, that DOES mean I've read more than one thing about it.

Be sure to read part two.

Okay, now back to surfing the web for hot photos of dominatrices, or whatever.

If you are one of the people still stumbling upon this old journal for the Latin translation of "Baby Got Back," enjoyed it, and have not seen this reinterpretation of the classic yet, you should go see it (video; as worksafe as the "Baby Got Back" lyrics are).

Thanks to rojagato and amberspyglass for the heads up.

Apparently there's been a resurgence of interest in this, to judge from recent comments and reports to me from people I know that they have seen recent references; it is also the only explanation for this, which, if it can be believed, means that google's page-ranking places this journal slightly higher than cassieclaire or docbrite, which seems unreasonable, so I don't know. On the other hand, the former at least seems not to have updated in years, so perhaps the date on that report is not accurate.

Anyway, hello. I'm not writing anything new here, though, at least not until my dissertation is done.

If you're a fan of obscure academic humor and you haven't found it yet otherwise, go read the Geoffrey Chaucer blog, which I suspect must be someone else's dissertation-procrastination project. If that's true, as a fellow graduate student I shouldn't encourage you to encourage him or her, but damn, it's funny stuff.

Here is the incomplete rough draft of a "Latin for Gamers" page for the World of Darkness 2.0:

http://www.reocities.com/quislibet2003/gamers/wod2.html