King of Etruria

28 September 2005

My nefarious cats tried to kill me today. A few hours after I got home, I thought it was a little cold in the house. I went to check the thermostat, and the cats had turned it down below 60! My guess is either: a) they were attempting to make me a corpsesicle so that they could eat all the cat food, tortilla chips, pepperoni, leather shoes, and rubber bands in the house; or b) in a show of solidarity for our bretheren in Louisiana, one of them grabbed the string of mardi gras beads that was draped over the thermostat and accidentally changed the temperature.

 

Posted at 2144.

24 September 2005

You know you've been married a long time when the most recent thing your husband gave you is a possum mandible.

 

Posted at 2326.

23 September 2005

I had to stop in the Medical Center Library at Duke today to get a 1927 article on the literary evidence for consumption (TB, not food) in ancient Rome, and on my way out I noticed a cart full of books that said "FREE BOOKS." Although I passed up a giant dictionary of medical terms, several books on psychoanalysis, a four-volume set on tetralogy (of course), a textbook on histology, and a book about fractures in children, I did pick up two slim volumes of Plato in translation: the Symposium and Phaedrus. I know where I'm getting books from now on.

 

Posted at 1552.

22 September 2005

In ANTH 10 today, the professor was talking about how purposeful burial was a hallmark of human-ness. A student raised her hand and said, "But you told us that elephants go to a special place to die, and that other elephants come and visit them. Isn't that the same thing?" The prof explained that, no, purposeful burial was different, as elephants don't actually bury one another. Later in class, she was showing a slide of an Upper Palaeolithic hut built out of mastadon bones, and explained that a mastadon was a distant relative of the elephant. Another student raised her hand and asked, "If elephants return to the bones of their dead relatives, do you think mastadons gathered around the hut?" Patrick's response when I related this story was, "Yeah, and elephants frequently hang out around pianos." That could be a new simile...

Harry knelt beside the heavy walnut coffin and cried for Lisa, whose life had been tragically cut short by a rampaging squirrel high on the morpine it had sucked out of little crippled Bobby's IV drip. As he stood up and watched the pallbearers carry out Lisa's last wish, to submerge the coffin in a vat of strawberry jam just off the fairway on the 16th hole, Harry told himself that, like an elephant in a piano store, he would visit her grave every Saturday.

 

Posted at 2226.

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I've decided that I hate the Brits. I've been reading up about the lex frumentaria, which several authors said was a dole of wheat. But then I read a couple articles in which they call it corn. Considering corn is a New World domesticate and the Romans didn't know about the Americas, I found this an odd claim. Turns out, the Brits call any kind of grain "corn" and call corn "maize." So if maize = corn, and corn = wheat, does that mean maize = wheat? Limeys.

 

Posted at 1214.

21 September 2005

A certain sabbatical-taking department chair felt the need to exonerate both the N&O and the North Carolina kinship network by e-mailing me about my September 16 entry about a strange photo caption in the newspaper. He writes: "This may be badly written, but I don't think it involves any 'Ahhhh, North Carolina'. Note that two of the kids are older: the third kid, the six-year old, must be the son of their cousin: "their uncle" refers to the first two, and "grandfather" refers to Daniel. In regular prose you'd spell that all out, but in a photo caption (newspapers were my path not taken) you're usually tight for space, though they could have said, 'Daniel's grandfather and the uncle of Brittney and Aaron.'"

So I suppose I'll amend my original statement. This newspaper headline was both poorly written and involves strange kinship relations.

 

Posted at 1500.

20 September 2005

Doesn't it always seem that when you're really at a stand-still in your research, suddenly a reference comes along that's the rosetta stone to it all? Apparently the key to drawing together skeletons, urban Imperial Rome, and the "middle class" is the lex frumentaria, originally passed by one of the Gracchi in 123 B.C. To find this, I had to read an article in an obscure French congress from 1991 by an historian who has a vague interest in ancient dietary concerns. Anyway, looks like I'm on my way to having a coherent dissertation proposal that can actually build on ideas in my master's thesis. Now all I need are some skeletons.

 

Posted at 1606.

16 September 2005

Following on the last blog entry, the caption for the picture on the front page of today's News and Observer is either really frightening or just poorly written:

Brittney Frost, 19, Aaron Frost, 14, and Daniel Frost, 6, help remove debris from the home of Norwood Frost, their uncle and grandfather, in Salter Path. Frost, 62, didn't share the sentiment that Ophelia hadn't been so bad. 'I've been here all my life,' he said. 'I ain't seen it that bad along the shore.'

Did anyone else notice that Norwood Frost is identified as the kids' uncle and grandfather? That was my first reaction, but then I thought, perhaps the N&O sticks to the comma rule wherein you don't put one at the end of a list before the and. But then they immediately refer to Norwood Frost and quote him. So I'm pretty sure my first interpretation was correct. How does that even work? The only way I can figure is that their grandfather married one of his daughters, thus becoming at the same time their uncle. Although I suppose he could have married his son-in-law's sister, which would make him a maternal grandfather and a paternal uncle? Ahhhh, North Carolina. Cultural anthropologists should study our kinship networks.

 

Posted at 1008.

11 September 2005

The News and Observer has some interesting headlines. Today's travel section headline was a complete lie: Lovely Lisbon. But yesterday's front page headline was utter truth: Sometimes Andy Just Beats All.

What's actually amusing about the Lisbon travel headline is that it changes from paper to paper. The N&O titled it "Lovely Lisbon," while the Contra Costa Times called it "Lisbon: City Unexpected" and the Capital News dubbed it "Stylin' in Laid-Back Lisbon." The woman who wrote the article spent all of two days - two days! - in Lisbon. Sheez.

And speaking of the paper... In spite of the help from the ants, I didn't get today's B.C. until I looked up the date when posting the above to the blog. I assumed it was some stupid religious day that has meaning only to the truly devout and truly insane. I wasn't far off, though.

 

Posted at 1228.

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What also annoyed me about yesterday's paper was the article in the city and state section about UNC gearing up to enforce jaywalking laws on and near campus. In 1999, UNC created a committee to study both pedestrian and car safety on campus, in terms of enforcing laws against either of them when they do not yield the right-of-way. The article in yesterday's paper, however, does not talk about drivers having to yield, just about students who cross against a light because of the short time in between classes. They plan to crack down on pedestrians who cross outside of crosswalks. However, this means that certain areas of campus like Cameron Ave and South Road would be prime targets for campus police to camp out and issue tickets to students who are, indeed, just trying to get to class and who have to suffer through long lines of cars in the middle of campus. On a campus as large and sprawling as UNC, with only 10 minutes between classes, it makes little sense to clog the middle of it with extraneous vehicular traffic. It was wonderful when Cameron Ave was under construction, permitting traffic only into certain areas and disallowing through traffic. The lack of traffic reminded me of UVa, where the main roads through campus are closed off by gates during the school day, permitting only buses and service vehicles through and keeping private vehicles out. Now Cameron has reopened, only to have no pedestrian crosswalks, causing drivers to ignore or voluntarily blind themselves to students crossing. I'm sure these will eventually be repainted, but honestly, vehicular traffic other than buses through such streets as South Road and Cameron Ave only results in ridiculous morning traffic jams and pedestrians who are forced to wait for cross-traffic to stop simply to get to where they're going: the classroom, which is supposed to be the focus of a university.

 

Posted at 1656.

10 September 2005

How do you think spammers come up with their names? I'm being serious. Do they cull first and last names from webpages, online phone books, or lists, then create endless permutations therefrom? But you couldn't really name your fake self Shylock MacMillan or Xian-Tzao Papadopolous and be taken seriously. Perhaps there is a realistic-sounding-name-generator program out there, Onomastika 1.0 or something, that takes into account "ethnicity" and region of the world, then creates plausible From: addresses. I should do a statistical analysis of all the spam that I get and see what the frequency is of first and last names, then compare those with the top 100 names on the US census. Because I'll bet there's a statistical correlation. Think the NSF would give me money for this?

 

Posted at 1856.

7 September 2005

I thought I'd share with all of you my most favorite recipe for gazpacho. It's not quite as good as the stuff at the Lojas das Sopas in Lisbon, but it'll do in a pinch. I'm eating a ton of it tonight.

Creamy Gazpacho
2 c V8
2 c diced cucumbers
1 c plain yoghurt
3 scallions
1/2 c parsley
1/2 jalapeno
2 cloves garlic
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 yellow pepper, diced
2 tomatoes, diced

In a food processor, pulse 1 cup cucumber, scallions, parsley, jalapeno, garlic, salt, pepper, and lemon juice until nearly smooth. Add vegetable juice and yoghurt and stir until mixed. Transfer to soup bowl. Add remainder of diced vegetables, stir well. Serve chilled.

 

Posted at 1857.

4 September 2005

Six things I learned from my 20-mile bike ride with Andy today:

1. The ATT doesn't officially start until the DBAP.
2. The bike trails near my house were apparently built along a sewer line.
3. Little kids are nothing more than dangerous, mobile obstacles.
4. I can actually bike up the Horton Road hill... in first gear.
5. There are dinosaurs in the wilds of the Quarry Trail.
6. After 20 miles, every single part of your body will hurt, from your face to your fingertips to your little toes.

But mostly, you should come to Durham to bike the ATT and the northern trails that go up around my house. I mean, come on. Where else in the Triangle could you pass a brontosaurus and two giant mushrooms in a 20-mile bike ride?

 

Posted at 1725.

3 September 2005

I'm in the process of cleaning out my shit bookshelves from Wal-Mart and reordering things in my new Piki-built-in bookshelf, and I found some things I wrote in high school. Our AP English teacher made us write one short story every month or so, and I also wrote some for my Humanities class. Since I got to relive my life from a decade ago, now you can too! Reproduced here are one story from English called "She Wore Green" and one from Humanities that is apparently untitled.

Anyway, my humanities teacher (also, coincidentally, my Latin teacher, who never gave me a grade lower than an A+), wrote this on the paper: "You're excellent at these poignant vignettes - the capture of a moment. I've seen stuff in the New Yorker magazine of less quality than this. I expect to see you published there before long! A++" Ahhh, I miss my high school Latin teacher. Only he could use the words "poignant" and "vignette" back-to-back, then invoke the New Yorker, and yet somehow not be pretentious in the least.

Well, if this grad school thing doesn't work out, I'm sure I could get my ridiculous angst-riddled teen short stories published.

 

Posted at 1515.

2 September 2005

I decided to transfer my fiction and Latin books from Patrick's office bookshelves to my new office bookshelves today (yay for Patrick building me bookshelves!), to free up some space for him. Since all our fiction is shelved together, it was actually kind of depressing... like we were breaking up, and I had to figure out which were mine and which were his. But then I realized that, if we were to split up, I would get all the Shakespeare, Eco, Kafka, Joyce, and even Harry Potter, Gore Vidal, and Tom Robbins, and he'd be left with... some Michael Crichton, half a dozen Dean Koontz, and a Sidney Shelton. But I guess it would serve him right for breaking up with me.

 

Posted at 1430.