it's the end of the world as we know it and i feel fine

[timeripple]

PSA: I have just learned that sometimes total honesty can feel really, really good. Now, back to your regularly scheduled lunacy.

30 November 2004
Finally. Goats!

3 December 2004
I have forced one of the characters in Menander’s Dyskolos to say, “Excellent!” Mua-hahahaha!


4 December 2004
A half-imaginary, half-paraphrased-and-rearranged conversation between my Greek Poetry: Genres and Traditions tutor (who is really quite nice and no real disrespect is intended) and yours truly (you can work out which bits are imaginary on your own):

Tutor: Well, er... Fiona, is it? Yes, well, this is a very interesting paper…
Me: *smug*
Tutor: ... but the topic was influences of Ptolemaic rule and life in urban Alexandria on Hellenistic poetry, not, um… “Pretty Boats”.
Me: …
Tutor: You wrote, “The father-son duos of Ptolemy I and II versus Antigonus Monaphthalmos and Demetrius duking it out for supremacy of the post-Alexandrian seas were particularly spectacular.”
Me: *enthused* Yeah, they were. They got into this total naval arms race, right, and started building these really big ships…And wasn’t there this one big floating monstrosity that was way too big to actually be used in battle…
Tutor: Yes, yes, the Ptolemies fought many battles in their attempts to expand their portion of Alexander’s empire.
Me: Yeah, and there was this one really cool naval battle where Demetrius…
Tutor: And they were fighting against Alexander’s other successors for land.
Me: Well, yes, but then Demetrius started improving on the quinquiremes, and one of the Ptolemies built a “30”…
Tutor: Um, yeah. Whatever. Classical historians have a long and noble tradition of ignoring nautical archaeology, which I will proceed to uphold. Also, the Pythagoreans have nothing to do with Theocritus and pastoral poetry.
Me: But he totally says this shepherd will be lolling around with a bowl of roasted beans while thinking about… I mean, is he trying to make a statement about the rusticity of the shepherd dude, or…?
Tutor: No. Pythagoras had a digestive problem with beans. Everybody from his part of Greece did. And that is totally irrelevant anyway.
Me: *interested* Really? That explains so much! *recollecting* I mean, bother!

Hahahaha! Have just had wonderful breakfast conversation, ranging from obscure Greek myths (So, this guy Sisyphus, right…) through Star Trek (Voyager wonderfulness, Enterprise bashing, Janeway adoration, TNG debating, the Utter Wrongness of Chakotay/Seven, concession that Phlox is cool, Tom Paris love….), Anime (in which I confess my traumatisation by the Tale of Genji), Power Rangers and whole host of TV shows (yes, edajaram, that means She-Ra and Captain Planet), and finally back to Tom Paris via Captain Proton’s being modeled on Commando Cody. Whoever that is.

Right. It’s time for me to employ my new paper-writing philosophy, which is as follows: I know something you don’t know. And, unlike these oh-so-smug Presocratics, I will now proceed to tell you what it is.

Comments

[edajaram.livejournal.com]

You spoke about all that stuff and I WASN'T THERE? DUDE. :P

Not on!

;)

But I forgive you.

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

Well, I didn't say anything about Captain Planet or She-Ra... except that my lunatic ex-roommate tied me to a chair and forced me to watch one episode, after which I ran screaming from the room. :P