Comments | bellatrys: Now to some more recent history--

bellatrys

Now to some more recent history--

Nov 02, 2008 13:35

Taking a brief break from TEH SRS before buckling down to work on even more of the big messy linkful stuff, I leave you with some amusing links this afternoon - including this blast from the recent past: I had remembered that the, ahem, exposure of Mr. Barberini Faun, aka Jim/Jeff/Gannon/Guckert of "Talon News", came about after he asked a " ( Read more... )

meta, pop culture, random, links

Comments 6

nenya_kanadka November 2 2008, 19:28:31 UTC

BTW, cheap costume idea that seemed to work okay for me: LOLcat.

(Cat ears, tail, and cardboard sign with some slogan in LOLspeak. The ears cost me $4. (The black pants and shirt under $10, via sales & Goodwill, but if you already have them then you don't even have to spend that.))

I thought it was original, but it did have the problem that hardly anyone knew what I was supposed to be. I need to go to geekier parties. :D

(The comment has been removed)

Yeah, long discredited bellatrys November 2 2008, 20:04:52 UTC

Just like the claims that it was actually 'shrooms. Straight Dope summary here.

ETA the gal who came up with the theory back in the '70s wasn't an expert on agriculture or history or epidemology, but a psychologist/ethnologist, and historians refer to this as an "undead" meme.The flying thing (with or without brooms) is simply part of the whole witch-meme - or more accurately, magic-meme - going back through the ages, remember that it's something that WG Hopkins specifically rejects as not credible, even though it's so bound up in the tales of witchcraft, back in 1646. (I've read scholars attributing it to the pop cultural fusion of traditions of the Sidhe riding out and the Wild Hunts with tales of diabolism and the Evil Eye, which makes sense to me ( ... )

cf. footnote #13 wombat1138 November 2 2008, 20:23:38 UTC

at http://books.google.com/books?id=uaC-7pnqdtEC&pg=PA240 , though IIRC the social punishment in Japan was simply disparagement and shunning rather than lynching by their semi-peers (perhaps one of the few benefits(?) of violence having been traditionally monopolized by an authoritarian regime).

blogofstench November 2 2008, 21:31:42 UTC

Mmmm, unctuous truckling...

More faux-feminist Arthuriana anonymous November 4 2008, 00:27:10 UTC

Miles' books sound like everything that makes me not want to read "The Mists of Avalon" if I so got paid for it, only worse.

yup, that's about it bellatrys November 4 2008, 02:30:00 UTC

There's not even any pretense at a consistent style - or timeline! - and as several reviewers on Amazon also noted, the attempt to forcibly weld Mallory's Camelot onto a superstructure Primary World historical Britain results in much head-explodeyness for people who actually know anything about European history...

IOW, it fails as a retelling of Mallory qua Mallory, and it fails as a historical-realization of the Matter of Britain, too. (It also fails epically - as opposed to epochally - in being a feminist retelling of the Arthurian legends, and fails literarily on the "show, don't tell" and the Informed Attributes scales, in the process.)