It is killingly hot outside and I am having the kind of day where my life feels unrecognizable to me, so this is a short post of things that I think are neat.
1. I keep thinking about this poem: John Dennison, "Psalm." It's difficult for me to evaluate the Christian framework within which it's analyzed (some of the conclusions feel reaching to me, but might not to someone with a better grounding in the theology), but I like how naturally its narrator transitions from potential threat to awkward but genuine reassurance and I really like the small, oblique hints that the situation may be less ordinary than it looks: that the narrator owns up to being out of their depth is one of the primary reasons we feel we can trust them. Reading through speculative goggles similarly leaves me wondering whether the child is perhaps not quite human ("before you dropped in the undergrowth . . . the small bird, fluttering in your mouth") even when I'm fairly certain the strangeness is meant to be taken as metaphor. It would make a good story. The piece is so colloquially well-written, it took me several days to realize it's terza rima.
2. Norman Lloyd is still alive! He falls into the category of character actors I feel positively about despite never seeing them in a major part, unless you count his film debut in Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942); it did make me remember his name. I feel bad about not being able to place him in A Letter for Evie (1946), because I am fond of that movie; I feel no guilt whatsoever about not remembering him from Spellbound (1945); I was happy to run across him last fall in The Black Book (1949). His being in Trainwreck (2015) doesn't make me want to see it, but I am glad he's working. I seem to be accumulating reasons to check out Chaplin's Limelight (1952). And I am reminded once again that I have wanted to see a production of Percy Mackaye's The Scarecrow (1908) for almost ten years now, weird little quasi-poetic folktale-fable that it is. Any local theater companies want to help me out?
3. Key & Peele's "Pirate Chantey" has been stuck in my head for a day now. I realize this is no record when it comes to me and earworms, but I'm just warning you. I find the entire thing charming.
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handful_ofdust: a second-to-first-century limestone stele from the tophet of Carthage. I should just make myself learn Punic: I have to rely on the British Museum to tell me that the stele is dedicated to Baal, because what I can see on it is the goddess Tanit, depicted at the top of the stele with the sun in her crescent arms and repeated below in slightly more anthropomorphic style. "Dedicated by Gaius Julius Arish, son of Adon-Baal." That should make the inscription the one referred to here as "Tunisia OU N 7." I would like to know more about this man and his mixed name. "Took on two Latin names to give the impression of a Roman tria nomina"—my first thought was that he must have been a freedman, Arish his birth name and the rest his owner's inheritance. Time ate whatever else there was.
5. I have thirty backers on Patreon! Thank you, all of you. I should try to say something intelligent soon.
1. I keep thinking about this poem: John Dennison, "Psalm." It's difficult for me to evaluate the Christian framework within which it's analyzed (some of the conclusions feel reaching to me, but might not to someone with a better grounding in the theology), but I like how naturally its narrator transitions from potential threat to awkward but genuine reassurance and I really like the small, oblique hints that the situation may be less ordinary than it looks: that the narrator owns up to being out of their depth is one of the primary reasons we feel we can trust them. Reading through speculative goggles similarly leaves me wondering whether the child is perhaps not quite human ("before you dropped in the undergrowth . . . the small bird, fluttering in your mouth") even when I'm fairly certain the strangeness is meant to be taken as metaphor. It would make a good story. The piece is so colloquially well-written, it took me several days to realize it's terza rima.
2. Norman Lloyd is still alive! He falls into the category of character actors I feel positively about despite never seeing them in a major part, unless you count his film debut in Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942); it did make me remember his name. I feel bad about not being able to place him in A Letter for Evie (1946), because I am fond of that movie; I feel no guilt whatsoever about not remembering him from Spellbound (1945); I was happy to run across him last fall in The Black Book (1949). His being in Trainwreck (2015) doesn't make me want to see it, but I am glad he's working. I seem to be accumulating reasons to check out Chaplin's Limelight (1952). And I am reminded once again that I have wanted to see a production of Percy Mackaye's The Scarecrow (1908) for almost ten years now, weird little quasi-poetic folktale-fable that it is. Any local theater companies want to help me out?
3. Key & Peele's "Pirate Chantey" has been stuck in my head for a day now. I realize this is no record when it comes to me and earworms, but I'm just warning you. I find the entire thing charming.
4. Courtesy of
handful_ofdust: a second-to-first-century limestone stele from the tophet of Carthage. I should just make myself learn Punic: I have to rely on the British Museum to tell me that the stele is dedicated to Baal, because what I can see on it is the goddess Tanit, depicted at the top of the stele with the sun in her crescent arms and repeated below in slightly more anthropomorphic style. "Dedicated by Gaius Julius Arish, son of Adon-Baal." That should make the inscription the one referred to here as "Tunisia OU N 7." I would like to know more about this man and his mixed name. "Took on two Latin names to give the impression of a Roman tria nomina"—my first thought was that he must have been a freedman, Arish his birth name and the rest his owner's inheritance. Time ate whatever else there was.5. I have thirty backers on Patreon! Thank you, all of you. I should try to say something intelligent soon.
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