Down to Nine

We had some weather last night.

Hur hur hur. We have weather every night.

Last night, however, we had WEATHER, the kind Jim Cantore stands around in and masturbates to just out of the camera's eye and under a thick, blue Lands End jacket. And don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about; I know you've seen the video.

Holy smoke, Robby! Bring me another towel! I've gotta wipe up! This shit's gonna freeze and then I'll have to sandblast it out of my underwear!

After I got home from Otherwork last night, my wife and I were snuggling down into bed, she on her back, me with my hands in places they ought not to be. Bands of heavy rain had been lashing the house off-and-on for hours, sprinkled with intermittent flashes of lightning and dull roars of thunder. In short, it was a perfect rainy night in early spring.

As things were getting more sexytime in the bedroom, there was a brilliant flash of light. It was the kind that announces that a deity of some kind has just arrived and you better sit up, pay attention and write this down: There's some serious news about to be imparted from on high.

This was followed almost immediately by a crack of thunder like the world was splitting in half, and the house shook tremendously for a period of at least fifteen seconds. The roar of thunder slowly spread out across the sky, rolling away through the rain-soaked heavens, reminding others that the fury was just coming toward them and they, too, had better be ready to receive word from above.

We immediately heard the shufflings and snifflings in the hallway, and I gingerly removed my hands from those places that might lead to trouble. A moment later, a child was in the room, and a second child was standing in her room, wondering just what the fuck had happened and why is my father scribbling things down in Aramaic so furiously.

The wife returned the children to their beds, tucked them in. I looked out the window to ensure that the house was not ablaze. This seemed like enough at the time. I turned on the television, hoping to get an update on the weather. Our oh-so-reliable Time Warner Cable...was out. It took the internet with it, as we soon discovered, when the wife tried to pull the radar up on her laptop. We called Time Warner Cable, told them what happened, and then decided it was time for bed.

I carried the laptop back over to its roost. The lights were extinguished. Perhaps sexytime would start again, after Thor/Zeus/Quetzalcoatl had rudely interrupted earlier. As I was returning to bed, it happened.

I kicked the clothes basket next to the bed with my bare foot. More, I kicked the side with the open slots for vents with my pinky toe. Immediately, pain shot up my leg as my pinky toe was ripped off by the plastic edge and thrust up the side of my calf. I screamed in agony, stumbled, zombie-like, to the bed, and fell, my foot aching a sweetly sharp ache, phantom-limb-pain confusing my foot and its sudden lack of toe.

After forcing back tears--I'm a man, dammit!--exhaustion finally got the better of me, the pain finally ebbing enough for me to sleep. When the morning's light shone, I examined my once proud right foot now it all its mangled glory. A nasty gash, a toenail bent back, possible infection with gangrene. And a low, dull ache that is my new, constant companion.

Someone bring me some whisky and the bolt cutters: it's time to end this pain once and for all.

If You Give a Jenks a Cookie...

So, I've been pretty absent for a while, popping in from time to time to update you on the lives of holy people who lived countless centuries ago. Wait, what? You hadn't noticed? Oh, well, I see.


Oh, oh, so you did notice? How kind of you.

Anyway, I'll just cut to the chase: I'm a very busy man. Don't believe me, do you? Well, for starters, I work. That takes a pretty big chunk out of my week. And that's just my nine-to-five job. See, last fall I decided that crippling debt was not something I wanted to necessarily live with anymore. Ramen noodles and Hamburger Helper--while both very, very delicious--aren't really what a man hurtling toward middle age should be feeding his family of four. In that spirit, I picked up a part-time job at a certain bookstore with an ampersand in the name. And no 'S' on the end of the name, goddammit! You're standing in a bookstore! Presumably that means you can read!

/rant

I haven't made much of a to do about this because 1) who wants to admit that they're working two jobs? and 2) the store is just off the interstate, and I don't want any of you crazy fuckers showing up and shooting me with a shotgun.

As for the job itself...I actually kind of like it. For starters, the goals are pretty clearly-defined (sell books, don't piss off customers). The other added bonus is that I'm sleeping with one of the bosses. Heh heh heh. How many of you can say that?

It's true, though; my wife got promoted up to manager after I had started working there.

But, this isn't about her. This is about me, dammit.

The other nice thing is that the job comes with a lot of perks. For instance, the employee discount is teh awesome. There's also the added advantage that the store is wedged--conveniently--between Duke and UNC. Oh, look! The cafe is filled with nubile young women, and none of them have sense to put on something other than shorts and a tank top when they come to study! My my. I'm feeling thirsty. I think I'll just wander over and get a cup of water...

And then, there's the big advantage. Usually on the first Saturday of every month, during the 11:00 story hour, there's a character who comes to the store to greet the kids and wave at them and hand out cookies. When the costume showed up, there was no one on the schedule who was willing to put the costume on...except for me. I jumped at the opportunity, especially when I heard it was Mouse from If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

Now, here's the thing. I'm six-foot-three-and-a-half inches tall. And, well, I'll just say that my metabolism has slowed a bit since college. Yes, we'll leave it at that...The instructions for the mouse costume was for someone who is 5'7".

Comedy was sure to ensue.

Undaunted, I strapped myself into the costume. Unfortunately, when I hoisted the suspenders up over my shoulders, it pulled ass-end of the costume up with it. After much wriggling around, I was finally able to get the costume into the most comfortable crevices of my ass crack. Once the body portion was on, I was able to get the rest of my costume put on. The sleeves and feet just barely made it so that I was completely covered. And then I had to put the head on.

This fucking thing was massive, and some brilliant engineer thought "You know what? It's not enough to make it dark and hot and echo-y in here. Let's put a giant aluminum hook in it, right where it will meet the back of the costume-wearer's skull." Fucking engineers. And believe me, it was hot. And sweaty. And close. And smelled...like hot and sweaty and close with a side dish of hospital antiseptic spray. Mommy! Mouse smells like debauchery and lysol!

But you know what? It was fucking awesome.

I showed up and little kids everywhere began to scream in horror delight. There were even some brave souls who decided that waving at Mouse wasn't enough; they wanted to hug Mouse! Which, you know, was cool and all, except that these little shits barely came up past my knee, which meant that to hug them, Mouse had to bend at the waist.

Now, two things here. One, I've already mentioned that the backside of the costume was riding up my ass pretty badly. Fortunately, Mouse's ass is padded and has a tail dangling down to hide any backside moose knuckle. Two, the head was just sort of precariously perched upon Mouse's shoulders. I had to do my best to bend my back and waist just enough so that the ass-end of the costume didn't bifurcate my backside any further and so that the head of Mouse didn't fall off and roll across the kids' department. Because, you know, that's not going to be traumatic or anything. And I did this all with an aluminum hook jabbing me in the back of the casaba, threating to poke a hole in my brain box and letting all my smarts ooze out the back of my head.

In the end, however, I emerged from the Mouse costume sweaty yet gratified, my underwear half-shoved up my ass, the back of my skull battered and bruised, and my entire being carrying a slight aroma of sour body and antiseptic spray. However, there were no children crying or screaming or otherwise traumatized.

I just wish that some of their MILF mothers would have wanted a hug, too.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day...Again.

Yeah, yeah, I'll get to that soon enough.

But, here, today, right fucking now, it's Saint Patrick's Day! And, in case you missed the other parts of the series, here they are in reverse order? Why? Fuck Clemson, that's why.

Part the Third
Part the Second
Part the First

Patrick kind of got things rolling around here with my modern, tangentally historical interpretations of the hagiography, so at this point it's kind of a let-down if I don't talk about him on Saint Patrick's Day. Right? Right. Let's start drinking.

At this point, though, I've pretty much tired out the legend of Saint Patrick. With that in mind, I'll try and touch on other things linked to Saint Patrick. He was probably the first missionary for the Christian world, bringing the Word of God and Teachings of Christ to the illiterate savages on the edge of the world. That last part is a fancy way of saying "Ireland".

Patrick's work in Ireland was pretty amazing. The Irish went from a people who had very little in the way of what we would think of as civilization: they didn't write many things down, they didn't have vast, sprawling cities, they painted their bodies and were savagely fierce fighters. About the only thing that they did have that we consider "civilized" was an oral language (they were fantastic story tellers) and an organized religion. As luck would have it, three happened to be a rather sacred number in the Celtic religions of the island. A lot of the gods came in threes, or had three aspects or faces. And if this sounds mildly familiar to you, imagine how the Trinity sounded to the Irish.

The Irish are also inexorably linked in with Celtic civilization, and the large numbers of Irish immigrants who showed up in Boston is probably why the Celtics play basketball there. However, the Celts did not originate in Ireland. Their culture came from the middle of Europe, around the areas of southern Germany, Austria, northern Italy and Switzerland. They spread out from there, and they adopted various different names that were somewhat linked. The Greeks called them Keltoi, and had various run-ins with them as they moved down the Balkan peninsula and on into Turkey into an area known as Galatia. Paul's letter to the Galatians is an epistle aimed at the descendants of these Celts.

The Celts also descended into Italy, where they attacked Rome in 353 BC, sacking it and nearly bringing an end to Roman civilization and dominance in the area. However, as I mentioned above, the Celts were a nomadic people by nature and so they didn't stay in Italy long. They eventually moved out and inhabited an area known as Gaul. Of course, Old Blue Eyes, Julius Caesar, exacted revenge for the sacking of Rome when he conquered and subsequently divided Gaul into three parts. Granted, it wasn't revenge that drove JC, but a desire to get some of the better wine-growing lands around the northern Mediterranean.

The Celts also descended into the Iberian peninsula and set up shop in Galicia in Northern Spain and spread out into Lusitania, as well. Lusitania incorporates a lot of central Spain and Portugal. Again, the Romans conquered this area around the time of the Punic Wars and brought them under the umbrella of Republican Rule. This wasn't because of any sort of desire to exact retribution on the people, but more a desire to get their lands and keep out any Carthaginian influence.

Finally, some of the Celts moved on to the islands of Great Britain and Ireland. Once more, Trajan brought the Roman rule to Britannia, chasing the Gauls into Wales and back across the Irish Sea to Ireland. Ireland's position as being at the very edge of the world (in Euro-centric histories) was perfect for the last vestiges of the free Celtic peoples: it was flat, had many navigable rivers, and the weather was pretty mild, as well. The Romans tried, but never could conquer the Emerald Isle, partially because there was no where else for the Celts to flee to so they were forced to savagely defend themselves, and partially because it was so fucking far from Rome.


However, enter in a young slave, a Roman citizen by birth, who was captured from the western coast of Britannia about the time that Rome was exiting the area and who fell in love with these people who captured him. He escaped, made it back to Rome where he converted to Christianity, and then set out to spread the Word of Christ. Being that he loved the Irish people so much, he returned and taught them how to read and write, showed them the three faces of God by allegedly using one of their sacred native plants, and spread Christianity across their island. His name was Patricius.

And, in a way, the Romans finally conquered the last of the Celtic peoples.

Happy St. Valentine's Day!

Today is St. Valentine's Day, who is a saint who may or may not have actually existed, and if he did exist, he could have been one of fourteen different men. We're not even sure if we're celebrating the one guy or everyone named Valentine (a popular name at the time because valens is Latin for "strong, worthy, powerful"). Traditionally, it is said that Valentine was martyred because he would not deny Christ before emperor Claudius II (not to be confused with Cl-cl-claudius, Caligula's uncle and the fourth Roman emperor). Tradition states that Valentine was beheaded on February 14th, 269 AD.

There is a problem here, though. Claudius II (or Claudius Gothica) has no record of being a great persecutor of Christians. In fact, the rulers prior to Claudius Gothica had been rather tolerant of the Christians; it wouldn't be until Diocletian took control of the empire that Christians would be ostracized and summarily persecuted (about twenty years after Claudius Gothica). Now, most people think that the feats of "St. Valentine" were completely invented by Geoffry Chaucer. There are others who cling to the notion that the Catholic church had to create a holiday to offset the Roman Lupercalia, which was a springtime fertility celebration. You know how those Romans liked a good...or bad...holiday. Or at least you should by now.

Speaking of Romans, let's talk about one of their gods! Cupid is inexorably linked with Valentine's Day (which is kind of funny, if you think about it) as being the bearer of bad news love. Cupid, of course, is the Roman God of love, desire, and lust, and he is the son of Venus (the goddess of love) and Mars (the god of war). Never mind that Venus was married to Vulcan. Oh, those saucy immortals!

Cupid is often--and mostly erroneously--associated with Eros, who was an embodiment of the power of love and sprang forth from the primordial ick known as Chaos. Hesiod, the other Greek poet, tried to backtrack and make Eros a son of Ares and Aphrodite, which would line up with the Romans (he did this prior to Roman influence). Cupid's name comes from the Latin cupido, which means "desire" or "lust" whereas Eros simply means "sexual love" in Greek. Eros, however, gives us the words "erotic" and related terms.

Cupid himself did not make it into too many of the ancient epics. He appears briefly in the Aeneid, wherein he causes Dido some added torment before she sets herself on fire (spoiler alert). The most famous myth in which Cupid appears is Cupid and Psyche. He was, however, widely worshiped as a fertility god and a god of sexuality, which sort of lends a certain delicious irony to him being associated with a Christian feast.

The depiction of him carrying a bow and arrow goes back to ancient times. His arrows, at one point, were only used to incite lustful feelings within one or more people. Eventually, he started carrying two quivers: one filled with golden-headed arrows for the love-making; the other was filled with lead-tipped darts and were used to cause war. This could be another reason why Hesiod rewrote Eros' parentage, so that he had both the power to cause love and to cause war, like his immortal parents. Despite this, he was not considered one of the fifteen twelve Olympian gods.

Of course, these days, if something is fun or "too mainstream", some assholes have to come along and try to ruin it for everyone else. Enter AntiCupid, who I can only assume is blue and needs to be trapped away in a special holding field. AntiCupid is the brainchild of all those people who feel spurned or unloved on Valentine's day. All failed relationships and dating problems are AntiCupid's fault, because, you know, it's not you, loser, it's clearly the work of some nefarious godling. AntiCupid's arrows lead to hours of whiny music, cutting and a predilection toward wearing black clothing. His Greek counterpart is "Emos".

Claudius Gothica would be proud.

Friday Morning Latin Lesson, Vol. XCVIII

Today, moviegoers, is the opening of the new Roman epic movie, The Eagle. In case you were wondering, in Latin, the title of the movie would simply be Aquila, that being the Latin word for "eagle". That might seem familiar to you if you're an amateur astronomer, as Aquila is the name of the constellation of the eagle. It might also be familiar to you if you have a particularly beaky, hooked schnozz, and we tend to describe such noses as "aquiline". To bring this crap-fest full-circle, the Romans were reputed for their aquiline features.

The Eagle is a movie adapted from a book by Rosemary Sutcliff titled The Eagle of the Ninth about a young man seeking the truth about the disappearance of his father's legion, the Ninth Spanish, in northern Britain.

Wait...the Roman legion named the Spanish disappeared in Britain? That sounds like a story!

The Roman legions were divisions in the army (unless you're a lazy fuck; if that's the case, you simply refer to the entire Roman army as "the legion"), usually varying in size, but they could be up to 6000 men. They were usually comprised of Roman citizens, but occasionally there would be men from outside the Roman state fighting in the legions in hopes that Roman citizenship would be granted to them and their families should they survive long enough to retire honorably. Wait, that sounds familiar...

Strictly speaking, legions were infantry units--the typical disciplined bands of soldiers that we envision when we think of the Roman army. They could be supported by cavalry, ranged troops, and skirmishers, who were essentially guys with spears who were sent out onto the field to die. Typically, the auxiliary troops were comprised of provincial soldiers. A typical legionnaire would have a spear (called a pilus), a sword sword (the gladius) a shield (scutum) and some light chain mail (lorica hamata).

During the years of the Republic, legions were created and disbanded as needed. This is how the Celts could sack Rome in 353 BC--the Romans had to hastily assemble a defensive force that was ill-trained and ill-prepared to face the onslaught of bands of wild savages from the north. It wasn't until the time of a fellow named Marius that anyone thought to create permanent, standing armies to serve the Roman Republic (this was late in the second century, BC).

Marius created a permanent army--again, divided into legions--and had the brilliant idea of paying them for their services. Soldiers were expected to serve for a minimum of six years (less in case of such things as dismemberment, permanent injury or death). Marius also saw fit to praise the soldiers, rewarding them for acts of bravery on the battlefield. In short, this led to bands of soldiers who became faithful to one man as opposed to Rome itself (though the man would often claim to be doing things for the benefit of Rome, to make his actions seem legit).

The legions were numbered...but since there had been so many legions created and disbanded, they took to giving themselves nicknames. The nicknames could come from any number of sources, such as where they were headquartered, i.e. Hispana (Spain), Macedonica (Macedonia, north of "Greece"), or Italica (ur, duh, Italy); from the emperor (obviously after the Republic turned into the Empire), i.e. Flavia, Augusta, Traiana; from the Gods, i.e. Minervia (Minerva), Iovia (Jupiter) or Herculia (Hercules); from some adjective describing them, i.e. Felix (lucky), Victrix (victorious), Fidelis (faithful) or my personal favorite, Rapax meaning "Devourers". Or there were the ones, like Aquila or Alaudae (larks) which were taken from animals.

So, to answer the question, the IX Hispana was a Roman legion stationed in the province of Hispana Terraconensis and sent to the island of Britain for support of the troops there.

As for what happened to them, perhaps this is the answer:

Veni, vidi, territus sum, curcurri.
Pronounced: "Way-nee, wee-dee, tare-ee-toose soom, coor-coor-ee."


I'm sure someone will get the subtle meaning here...hovertext for the translation

As the legions became faithful to the more powerful men in Rome, there began to become some strife among those men who collected power around themselves. One was obviously Marius, the dude who created the permanent legions. Another was a guy named Cornelius Sulla, who was a rival of Marius. Another was Marius' nephew, a fellow named Gaius Julius Caesar. The faithfulness of Caesar's soldiers allowed him to cross the Rubicon (a question on Final Jeopardy earlier this week) and, essentially, capture Rome. Since Rome was in a state of civil war, and the laws allowed for it, Caesar set himself up as dictator for life. This, in turn, allowed for his nephew (and adopted heir) Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus to seize power in the wake of Julius Caesar's murder on the Senate floor. Augustus, of course, would consolidate power, kill his two rivals, and become the first Roman Emperor.

And that, as Paul Harvey would say (if he weren't dead), is the rest of the story.