The Farmstead

A snappy slideshow about the history of writing and the development of the English alphabet, as plugged by the faculty website (I knew there was a reason I went on there from time to time...):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14544388

Including reference to dear old Ugarit just for you, wildecate!

(I'm not that fussed about the music in the background, but don't let that put you off...)

(PS. Also, aha, it looks as though the poem I was ranting about a while ago wasn't completely wrong about its Sumerian tablets for counting stuff, and probably wasn't thinking of Linear B. It was just me being wrong, so that's nice to know (although IIRC the poem still needed pulling up on the idea that there wasn't all this other stuff going on in Sumerian, which did indeed continue on afterwards for millennia; I still think the tone was off).

I'm moving house tomorrow! Mostly packed up now, but since I'm moving across town via the goodwill of a car-borrowing (but nevertheless still insured) friend, I'm starting to worry whether I have an impolitely large amount of stuff. Not much I can do about it now, of course, but I have a feeling the best way to do the move will be to park my housemate and me at either end of the journey (housemate is current nextdoor neighbour, also moving via my friend) and pingpong the car between us to make full use of the available seats. But then that doesn't sound very fun for anyone. But then that's why they call them favours? (*tries to convince self that her stuff is a single carload if only the driver is taken into consideration, thus making rudeness+boredom reasonable*)

I also should be going away to France in a couple of weeks time, though, to learn French for a month, and my house won't actually have internet before then, so I'll be tethering my laptop to (through?) my phone and may be somewhat absent (at least until I've done some hesitant forays and worked out what my MB allowance actually means in terms of surfing time - must look up the LJ and DW suffixes to open links in that super-blank style so as not to waste stuff). Once in France, of course, I'll either make loads of new friends and never be here or find everyone on my course strange and off-putting and want to spend as much time away from them as possible. So presence cannot be predicted - though I wouldn't mind using the month away to finish some writing projects, because I fear my target of drafting through the end of the Spikeid by WCUK is unlikely to be met (I have all of X, maybe half of XI, though I think I need to rework that, and none of XII, though everything is now very clear in my head).

To be fair, I was in the writing habit last week, so it's possible I'll get back; it's just that the conference we had this week, the cause of my drunkenness in my previous post, rather sucked up all of my time. It was very good though, and I finally recognised myself in seminars again - ie. I was awake and engaged and approved/feared as the Annoying Young Person with No Name who Insists on Asking Questions. I'd lost my nerve, mostly, over the year and it was nice to find out that the belligerence hadn't been completely beaten out of me. Must try and retain it as the future goes on...

Anyway, seven days to WCUK!! Looking forward to it. (Must write talk.) There is nattering to be done! :D

I think that's a post? My brain's been churning with remembering the various disparate things I've been needing to keep on top of (have a wedding to go to as well, natch, including hen do on Sunday, meaning I likely won't be sleeping in my new house till Monday), so all I have to offer is this random brain-butter stuff. Soz.

I forgot to have lunch, so am quickly stuffing my face before my French class, but yays!! I'm officially staying for my PhD!! Our marks don't come out until the 14th, so I still don't know exactly how I did on my thesis, but I've just got an email confirming that (in general/'for the purposes of graduation') I have achieved a High Pass (the equivalent of a first, pretty much) on the course overall, and that the committee has decided I can definitely come back (and have they funding they offered me) in October.

My mum has deemed their delivery of the news a slight anticlimax, but it is quite nice. Though I'm still curious for the 14th...

Must put socks on now.

1. Why does Sainsbury's use milk in their flapjacks? It's sickly and completely unnecessary.
2. Why am I so sensitive to the taste of milk in sweet things? This is like when college ruined baklava by lacing the whole lot with cream.
3. Why are ablative absolutes so inelegant in English? I don't think I should be penalised in a classics essay for clearly having read too much stuff that uses them.
4. Why doesn't anyone like gerunds? They only want to be free...

I was going to make a post about various bits of my day, including the invention of sausage au vin à la frying pan (in brief: you can taste it hasn't been in the oven and cohered properly - bogwitch, you were right); next attempt will involve a stock cube to hopefully offset this) and my trip to the newly opened, souped-up to 11 Post Office (the highlight of which was a free-roaming assistant(?!?) accosting me on my way in, asking if she could help with anything, and getting my response of 'Well, I was just looking for a post office, really - where I could buy an envelope and send a letter?') - but, alas, I iz tired and uncertain my powers of description are up to it, so suffice to say I have now applied for my PhD (if the post office wasn't in fact through a portal to Bizzaro World) and don't have to worry until the funding interview in March. Also, I cooked something purple.

However, since it only involves typing, I will share with you the particular quote that won today's research:

I haven't set out to offer a comprehensive survey, merely an open-ended investigation into what is out there, how it works, how one author's approach differs from another, and where the form seems to be headed. The foundation of this endeavour is rough and ready: I grabbed a bunch of poems. I offer a translation of each poem and give a broad idea of what its sense might be, along with minimal notes on any textual difficulties; and I develop a criticism which aims to mirror the shifting complexities of the reading experience. One thing I do not set out to do is close down signification within texts that (in my view) intentionally resist it. I'm not much of a deconstructionist, but I do take it as fairly evident that language is slippery in use, and anyone who reacts badly to the milder deconstructionist/postmodern ideas will probably not enjoy what follows. Also, some of the moves I make with material culture - in particular, the way I read the cheapness and nastiness of the Nikarkhos book fragments as something significant that we can work with, figuring out a model readership so to speak via the back door and maybe even politicising them - may not strike everybody as the proper way to do classics. Sorry. But I think classicists should spend more time with zinesters and webmonkeys before they write this sort of thing off.

-- Gideon Nisbet (2003), Greek Epigram in the Roman Empire: Martial's Forgotten Rivals, Oxford. xv-xvi.

;)

Ah, posting...

I've been meaning to say thank you to whoever nominated A Wild Night Out for best comedy and best quickie at the Sunnydale Memorial Awards (I get a bit embarrassed about nominations, so I was sort of mincing past it), so thank you. BUT ALSO, as what actually reminded me this morning, thank you to the person who nominated the Spikeid for best plot, best post-series and best unfinished. Whoever you (both?) are, you made my respective days. I feel rather well-represented now in the lists...

None of my fics felt Halloweeny enough to do the Halloween-fic-link thing, though maybe Trial by Mini-Quiches fits, in which Spike goes to a demonic wedding reception after Dead Things. I would, er, copy out the challenge and the headers and stuff, but I'm quite lazy... It's short, from way back in 2005, AO3-warning-free and has Clem in it! I'm not sure that needs half a page of info.

And lastly, I have a question! For better or worse I am starting work on an essay about Odyssey V (the bit with Calypso) in terms of gender reversal and dodgy sexual relationships as a route to psychological recovery, hopefully incorporating Spuffy in S6 as part of the analysis. Since my memory for interviews is rubbish, I was wondering, before I start searching myself, whether anyone can remember interviews/articles/meta posts where gender reversal (or indeed lack of it) in S6 gets discussed, specifically in relation to Dead Things or As You Were (possibly Gone as well; any time while teh sex is happening, really)? I won't reference/quote any fans without asking and the stress will probably be on Homeric scholarship, but it's always good to have an overview of who thinks what. Thanks, gang!

FICATHON!!

Usually I lump all my ficathon stuff together (ah, laziness), but I have a feeling the two fics I've done so far don't really work as a group, so here I am separating them.

This first was in response to eleusis_walks's prompt The Odyssey - Kalypso, Kirke - sing, goddess.

I was cheeky and stuck with the anglicised names. There is quite a bit of swearing in this, but otherwise nothing that would get a warning on AO3. Thank you to my dear writerconuk friends for a certain level of inspiration. :P

Goddesses like to gossip. Drunkenly.

( Stories the Mortals Never Hear. )

(Sorry H, and anyone else who sees this and still has things to do.)

Nine hours, nigh on sixty pages of scrawl later, and I'm done!! Whooop! I had a feeling at about 10.20 this morning that the exam was never going to end, but luckily (as I thought it might do) time started going quite quickly by the time I got to starting my third essay at 11. And then I went to the pub for lunch, and had a Desperados (tequila-flavoured beer), which I didn't think they even did over here (it was brewed in France, so I wonder if it was imported) and a burger. Then I went to shops, which were a bit rubbish, but I was saved from the potential travesty of not buying anything from Fopp the record shop by an advert on the way out that said Crystal Castles had a new album! I'm listening to it now, and it's great - still very CC-like, but with a touch more clubbiness and even(!) listenability. I also bought some jelly beans, on which I'm gorging.

For posterity's sake, before I forget (though it's almost certainly of no interest to anyone else), I'm putting below the cut the diss title + nine questions that will decide my degree. Dubious amusement may be found, though, alas, I didn't do the question where we were asked to discuss a quote from Billie Piper... ('We've only been exposed to the drug-fuelled, sex traffic side - but the fact is, there are middle-class, cultured, well-read women who take part in this job.' (Billie Piper on Belle de Jour). Is this remark helpful for understanding prostitution in antiquity?)

( So this is Classics (and what have you done?) )

Beer festival this evening! :D

(Oh, wow, I am suddenly so tired...)

Oh, the Romans... Sometimes Always they amuse me so. As part of trying to work out whether or not we can say whether there was any sort of moral/sexual geographical zoning in Pompeii (say whether there was a 'red light district', to quote an exam paper - I say not in literal terms, but in ideology/perception/phenomenology yes, definitely) I've been reading the records of inscriptions around the town - ie. the dirty graffiti, basically.

( Cut for NSFW Romans! (And more! Incl. street poetry!) )

1. I'd only heard of Harold Bloom because of the Naomi Wolf accusation (which I've long been inclined to believe) and wasn't entirely sure what to make of him. Reading The Anxiety of Influence, however, I'm left with the impression that he's basically a wanker. For a start there's the random appropriation of classical concepts as ill-fitting metaphors with little or poorly explained understanding of what those terms imply outside of their usage in his book, and on top of that there's the idea that Shakespeare was a great flourishing of originality that burst out of nowhere, except maybe Marlowe and the Pre-Socratics - ??? I completely understand the need to study English lit. without constantly going 'ooh, Classics', but using Classics badly is just insulting.

2. For the purposes of fic-soundtracking (oh, not too time-consuming procrastination, how I love you) I've found myself trying to work out which song I own is the most representative of Euripides' Medea. I have settled on the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Man, and am rather well satisfied by the choice.

And, to make this a Spanish Inquisition 'two', 3. It's snowing again. Or possibly sleeting, but heavily in any case (though the whatever-precipitation-it-is is quite fine).