So as of yesterday I have an altar from IKEA. Not that IKEA advertises it as such - rather, I've redeemed that most fallen of furniture-pieces, the TV table, and repurposed it toward a nobler end than the one it was destined for ( Read more... )

So I've been doing a fair bit of historical research -- not for my poor, neglected website, though I have all the material I need to read for my next entry gathering dust on my desk, awaiting a time of motivation ( Read more... )

From Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries, in the section dealing with Christian attempts to eradicate the "rustic" paganism of the illiterate country folk once they were done with the priesthood and temples in the cities:

"Take the learned Agobard of Lyons, bishop until his death in 840: he writes a treatise titled, though ( Read more... )

So we were without water here for 24 hours, after my parents' laundry room and the sun room flooded. Giant snow drifts kept us trapped indoors for 48 hours. So yeah, I've had better holidays.

It's given me a lot of time to read, though. I finished Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins.

( Book review follows )

I've updated my historical website with something historical for a change. The new article is about homosexuality in the media at the end of the 19th and the turn of the 20th century in Canada ( Read more... )

I just thought I'd pop in to wish a Happy Lughnassadh to all those who observe it ^_^

I'm very slowly getting caught up on LJ again. Mostly I've been wrapped up in writing, in work, in Timothy Findley. I tried Psychonauts today -- I saw it at node357's -- and it deserves its reputation.

Er, yes -- how about ancient Roman Graffiti from the city of ( Read more... )

I just finished a book entitled Mysteries of the Middle Ages by Thomas Cahill. I gave it as a gift once and it seemed interesting, so I bought a copy for myself as well ( Read more... )

Today I finished Lover's Legends: The Gay Greek Myths, Andrew Calimach's attempts to restore at least one version of the more homoerotic Greek stories. Few of them are direct translations -- they're all mixes and matches of different fragments from a wide variety of sources to create possible lost versions.

He uses the Erotes of pseudo-Lucian to ( Read more... )

Here's the kind of stuff you stumble on to checking Wikipedia's list of "unusual articles."

Two of my favourites:

The BBC (no less) reported that the United States military briefly considered a bomb that would cause gay sex among enemy combatants:

"The plan for a so-called "love bomb" envisaged an aphrodisiac chemical that would provoke ( Read more... )

Turns out my new athame is far more authentic than I gave it credit for. In fact, it's an almost perfect replica (though simplified, made of cheaper materials, and blunt-edged) of an actual sword dating from the Roman period called the Sword of Tiberius, pictured hereThe things I took for modern affectations -- the knob-like ending and the grooves ( Read more... )