Greetings from the land of eternal cloud...

...semi-perpetual humidity, intermittant rain, and the occasional thunderstorm.

I appear to have recovered somewhat from the urge to run screaming from all social contact. And the annoying suicidal ideations have taken a hike for the time being as well. I'm interested to note that this correlates with the government finally ponying up my unemployment/jobseeker benefits and making the future look just a little less impossible and bleak. It seems that feeling trapped and powerless and being deadbeat broke go very well together. Who knew?

Anyway. I'm almost starting to get a grip on where my thesis next year might be going. Yeah, I know, I haven't even got my letter of acceptance yet, but I'm a compulsive worker, what can I say? I've been spending quite a bit of time in the library, and a couple of books - one by a guy called van Eijk, and one by a lad called von Staden - have me thinking that Alexandria might be the place to start. While there's no evidence associating the Alexandrian anatomists, Herophilus and probably Erasistratus (who practised human dissection and - allegedly! - vivisection) with the Library and the Mouseion, or indeed with the temple of Serapis, which had healing associations, the co-existence of all these elements in the one city might be worth examining to see if it can shed light upon the inter-relation of healing cult and surgeons. Or whether in fact any such relation can be defined.

Which means that I have to go back and read P.M. Fraser's history of Alexandria, the which I managed to avoid doing last year, on account of it being dry as dust and dreadfully long.

That's the price you pay for wanting to be a historian, I suppose.

I think it's time for me to go now, though. Last night I walked eight kilometers and went to karate, and today I've been climbing: my muscles hate me and want me to die, and tomorrow I'm plotting to do more exercise. (I'm thinking about training for 5Ks. Well, it's the first step on the way to 10K, right?) The climbing was weak. But better than last week.

Greetings from the land of eternal cloud...

...semi-perpetual humidity, intermittant rain, and the occasional thunderstorm.

I appear to have recovered somewhat from the urge to run screaming from all social contact. And the annoying suicidal ideations have taken a hike for the time being as well. I'm interested to note that this correlates with the government finally ponying up my unemployment/jobseeker benefits and making the future look just a little less impossible and bleak. It seems that feeling trapped and powerless and being deadbeat broke go very well together. Who knew?

Anyway. I'm almost starting to get a grip on where my thesis next year might be going. Yeah, I know, I haven't even got my letter of acceptance yet, but I'm a compulsive worker, what can I say? I've been spending quite a bit of time in the library, and a couple of books - one by a guy called van Eijk, and one by a lad called von Staden - have me thinking that Alexandria might be the place to start. While there's no evidence associating the Alexandrian anatomists, Herophilus and probably Erasistratus (who practised human dissection and - allegedly! - vivisection) with the Library and the Mouseion, or indeed with the temple of Serapis, which had healing associations, the co-existence of all these elements in the one city might be worth examining to see if it can shed light upon the inter-relation of healing cult and surgeons. Or whether in fact any such relation can be defined.

Which means that I have to go back and read P.M. Fraser's history of Alexandria, the which I managed to avoid doing last year, on account of it being dry as dust and dreadfully long.

That's the price you pay for wanting to be a historian, I suppose.

I think it's time for me to go now, though. Last night I walked eight kilometers and went to karate, and today I've been climbing: my muscles hate me and want me to die, and tomorrow I'm plotting to do more exercise. (I'm thinking about training for 5Ks. Well, it's the first step on the way to 10K, right?) The climbing was weak. But better than last week.

Books 2010: elder gods, evil cultists, cannibalism

Books 2010: 68-69


68. Charles Stross, The Fuller Memorandum.

Freaking brilliant.

I love the Laundry books. Squamous horrors, government bureaucracy, and Bob Howard. This one wears a debt to Anthony Price proudly on its sleeve, and we have a slightly historical mystery, a collection of somewhat dubious Russians, and occasional interesting deviations from Howard's first-person narration.

Also, evil cultists. Fantastic.



69. T. Maccius Plautus, The Pot of Gold and Other Plays, Penguin Classics, London, 1965. Trans. E.F. Watling.

Plautus came from Umbria in Italy, and in the late third and early second centuries BC, adapted Greek comedies for a Roman audience. What we learn about Roman comedy from this: do not expect women to be anything other than shrewish, conniving, and grasping; expect rich old men to get richer and good young men to become wealthy and lucky in marriage, twins will always be mistaken for each other, and doctors ask lots of useless questions.

I'm not feeling very kindly towards Plautus, really, after five plays crammed full of more misogyny than appears in Aristophanes' entire opus. But the bit with the doctor, all ten lines of it, will be useful for thesisising.

Books 2010: elder gods, evil cultists, cannibalism

Books 2010: 68-69


68. Charles Stross, The Fuller Memorandum.

Freaking brilliant.

I love the Laundry books. Squamous horrors, government bureaucracy, and Bob Howard. This one wears a debt to Anthony Price proudly on its sleeve, and we have a slightly historical mystery, a collection of somewhat dubious Russians, and occasional interesting deviations from Howard's first-person narration.

Also, evil cultists. Fantastic.



69. T. Maccius Plautus, The Pot of Gold and Other Plays, Penguin Classics, London, 1965. Trans. E.F. Watling.

Plautus came from Umbria in Italy, and in the late third and early second centuries BC, adapted Greek comedies for a Roman audience. What we learn about Roman comedy from this: do not expect women to be anything other than shrewish, conniving, and grasping; expect rich old men to get richer and good young men to become wealthy and lucky in marriage, twins will always be mistaken for each other, and doctors ask lots of useless questions.

I'm not feeling very kindly towards Plautus, really, after five plays crammed full of more misogyny than appears in Aristophanes' entire opus. But the bit with the doctor, all ten lines of it, will be useful for thesisising.