patriam deserimus casei gratia

Some of you have already seen this elsewhere.

I was looking up various "women in Tacitus" things on google (and I don't recommend googling images of, e.g., Messalina while at work). So one resulting question is, what is up with this Boudicca here? (Cleavage warning.) It's especially ridiculous(*) given the description quoted from Dio(**) just below it.

Imagine two Roman soldiers at Colchester:

Miles I: Eheu, perimus! Illa barbara vere furere videtur!
Miles II: Quomodo discernere potes?
Miles I: E medicamine labrorum spadici!

Soldier 1: Oh no! We're screwed! That barbarian chick sure looks enraged!
Soldier 2: How can you tell?
Soldier 1: It's the brown lip-liner!

But perhaps this is not quite how I should be engaging with the material.

---------------
(*) As are some of the "facts" on the site, although it's confusing that the author seems to know some obscure things while getting some basic stuff really wrong.
(**)The historian, although others have pointed out the obvious heavy metal connection, given the picture.

Only a couple of minutes of internet time and I'll be spending most of it hunting for letters on the Swiss keyboard.

Anyway. Just saying hello because technology allows me to do so. I have 90 minutes until my flight to Paris; next order of business: breakfast.

I just went and had my last haircut at New Life Cuts in Salem, which wasn't as bizarrely anthropological as it has been in the past.

Basically, for those tuning in late (I can't immediately find other posts related to this to link to), the nearest barbershop is run by some young black Spanish-speakers in their 20s who play lots of Spanish-language Christian hip-hop while crowds of people hang out, either waiting for haircuts or engaging in Bible study (or both, of course).

Today was somewhat disappointing from the story-telling side, but from the haircut point of view it was a success, especially as I did not have to wait the usual two hours before getting into a chair.

I know I've mentioned it before because it's so mention-worthy, but one of the barbers has released an album of songs of praise. It's totally not my bag, but I figured my mom'd eat it right up and got it for her for Christmas. I'm listening to it right now and I'd like it if it were the sort of thing I liked. But at least it should go over well with her.

Track three, which you can listen to at the above link, features as a guest rapper the guy who actually cut my hair today. But it's too bad about that children's chorus at the end.

... of Latin for Gamers!

I haven't looked this over, and it was 98.3% written almost a year ago, even the HTML, and just pasted blindly in. Criticism welcome (the pronunciation guide could especially use some refinement) but I will not immediately engage in dialogue about it for a week or two, I expect.

PART WHATEVER: Verbal Components (in progress)

Everyone knows that spell-casting means speaking in Latin! From Buffy to Harry Potter to Ars Magica to Ambrose and/or Magellan in The Gamers, all it takes to unleash powers beyond mortal ken is to intone a simple phrase in Latin or near-Latin!
( Legite plura... )

LARP today. Last one ever, for my character, whether he survives or not.

I should tidy up a bit in case people come by before we all meet at the Athenaeum. (It's amazing how much crap can pile up even when you have very little in your apartment.) But with the rain perhaps they will just go strait to the site.

Today I have accomplished:

- reading livejournal.
- drilling airholes on the backs of two pet carriers that had such holes only on three sides.

... uhm, that's largely it. This is a problem.

I did some other stuff, here and there, of late, like dinner with termofart on Thursday and going to Target yesterday and arranging for an insurance ID card and so forth. J. has started paperwork on a small apartment in Lisieux, but there are bureaucratic hitches that may not be in place in time for her actually to get it; she's also arranged to look at two more early next week.

Well. Off I go; 50 min. til game and things I should be doing.

For some reason my browser isn't letting me post comments, but instead the "post" button takes me to a journal at random (although I am seeing a "teen lesbian" pattern). For most, it was probably along the lines of "I'm very sorry that you're having a rough time of it, and my thoughts are with you," as it seems lots of people are having, well, rough times.

There's at least one exception, though; one comment would have gone along the lines of "that's seriously wacky about the crackhead roommate who sacrificed a rabbit to Satan," but I suppose that really doesn't need to be pointed out.

I really mean it about the sympathy, though.

Today, unpacking the rental truck, was onerous. There were two locations for everything to go, and both were up a flight or two of stairs. The worst was the stuff going into the attic over the garage -- which included most of the furniture and all of the book boxes -- which had to be taken up a rickety ladder thing. For the most part we had someone sit at the top of it and we passed things up, but man, lifting book boxes over one's head is just no way to spend a holiday.

Still, it all fit. Hooray not having to rent storage space!

We paused around tea time for cake. J. and her sister both have September birthdays, so we celebrated them with, well, cake. The three-year-old (said sister's daughter) was quite vexed that it was not also her own birthday, limiting her present-gathering opportunities.

Now I have consumed some home-brew wheat beer and some homemade hard cider, and I think I'll be going to bed early.

I must interrupt my work to share with you this subject heading:

pork chop gonads related to 13

That is all.

Now, if you are a vegetarian, this will not impress you, but last night J. and I ate homemade organic hamburgers (cooked rare) from Massachusetts-raised beef with Stilton and maple mustard and tomatoes from the back yard, accompanied by a frisé salad, topped with a hazelnut oil vinaigrette (and toasted hazelnuts), and a Peachy Canyon Zinfandel, which we'd bought something like two years ago after tasting one once at a party hosted by jazonlizard and perseverate and which we had been hoarding with the impoverished-graduate-student mentality that a bottle of wine that costs two whole digits should at least be saved for just the right food pairing.

It was all quite tasty.

Excepting the tomatoes and frisé (and the hamburger buns from the store down the street that sells them pre-bagged in sensible pairs), these ingredients had all been hoarded for months or years, in cupboards or freezers; we tend to collect foodstuffs and save them for special occasions that never seem to come, and now all of this is catching up with us as we prepare to put everything in storage for a year. There is a mandate to consume! The clock is ticking away, and there's all this odd food to be eaten! Granted, it's a problem that's a delight to have, and it certainly beats not having enough food, and with our current financial situation it's nice that we can live off our pantry and freezer and don't have to buy much beyond fresh vegetables and milk.

Still: we can get stressed about the damnedest things.

What's amazing is that the hazelnut oil hadn't gone rancid. We'd been saving it for three years, about 600% of its shelf life.

- Good weekend. Rained a bit, though. LARPs, dinner with friends, some filing, some MP3ification of CDs that I won't therefore be tempted to take to France.

- Watched "Edward Scissorhands" on DVD with the French soundtrack, as that counts as serious study.

- Learned that the BU dental school will require a 4-hour consulting appointment before any actual work, whatever it might be, is done, which reminds me from a few years ago how long it takes to have anything done there, although it's cheaper. J.'s dentist (incidentally an instructor at said school) needs one eighth of that time. I will be transferring my records there; I don't really have money or time, but (despite wsmith's grand plans) there's no such thing as a temporal credit card.

- J. warns me that the living room, when I return tonight, will have been rendered noticeably soulless through packing activities. We'll be de-soul-ifying the apartment considerably over the next few days. This will not be so much fun.