Guys. Guys. This article is just ... I need to talk about it; it touches so many things that are important and relevant and fascinating, about sexuality and identity and community and history and media and fandoms and everything. But I'm still processing my thoughts, so for now I'm typing it up here in its fullness (which is a true labor of love ( Read more... )

Twitter has given me a new sense of awe and respect for Gackt (strange as that may initially sound). His work ethic and his dedication to his fans are truly staggering; I was just looking over the posts he made this morning (evening, in Japan) and though I can't read all of them completely, the gist is that he was taking a break in between ( Read more... )

Well, I'm officially back from England. At the moment I'm also a bit jet lagged, incredibly worried about some friends in Japan whom I still haven't heard from, and hyper aware of all the school work I'm supposed to be doing; but I figured if I didn't sit down and do this now, I'd never get around to it ( Read more... )

Hey, Medievalists (and anyone else interested in the subject):

I'm currently reading the most fascinating book: The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology by Ernst H. Kantorowicz. It's a bit old, as far as the scholarship's concerned -- originally published in 1957 -- and the the author (a non-practicing Jew who fought with the ( Read more... )

I had an interesting conversation tonight with Dr. Alverez, my Medieval Spain professor. It was one of those conversations that sort of developed by accident, and I didn't fully realize what it was we'd been talking about until after, when I was sitting on the metro. But for all that, it was rather interesting ( Read more... )

Okay, I'm supposed to be doing five hundred other things, but I just read this in one of my books for class while riding the bus home, and I had to share. The book is Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination by Paul Freedman:

Among the strangest of Pegolotti's spices is momie, also known as mumia and informally in English as mummy. ( Read more... )