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I saw a mad gaiety in his shadowed eyes
My poem "Tapping the Vine" is now online at Goblin Fruit. It was written for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
time_shark and tithenai. The turndun is an Australian Aboriginal form of the ritual instrument known in English as a bull-roarer and in classical Greek, as a component of the Dionysian Mysteries, as a rhombos (ῥόμβος). The OED tells me the name is "Native Australian of the Kurnai tribe in Gippsland." I do not know if the language it came from is still extant; I hope so.
On an utterly un-classical topic, How to Train Your Dragon (2010) was quite a bit more awesome than I had been expecting. I had assumed the dragons would be good: they were. (The protagonist dragon is of the feline rather than the purely saurian model, which accords with my tastes; it is also not a wish-fulfillment animal companion.) I had not assumed they would be in the same film as aeronautical engineering, subtle non-stupid gender stuff, and cursing by Odin and Thor. Yes, all right, Northumbrian smallpipes are not particularly Norse, and neither is the tradition of apotropaic names. But the credits song was by Sigur Rós!
And my fever broke sometime this afternoon, so I am going to celebrate by going to bed at a reasonable hour, or at least staying up with The Annotated Hobbit (2002) rather than a thermometer.
time_shark and tithenai. The turndun is an Australian Aboriginal form of the ritual instrument known in English as a bull-roarer and in classical Greek, as a component of the Dionysian Mysteries, as a rhombos (ῥόμβος). The OED tells me the name is "Native Australian of the Kurnai tribe in Gippsland." I do not know if the language it came from is still extant; I hope so.On an utterly un-classical topic, How to Train Your Dragon (2010) was quite a bit more awesome than I had been expecting. I had assumed the dragons would be good: they were. (The protagonist dragon is of the feline rather than the purely saurian model, which accords with my tastes; it is also not a wish-fulfillment animal companion.) I had not assumed they would be in the same film as aeronautical engineering, subtle non-stupid gender stuff, and cursing by Odin and Thor. Yes, all right, Northumbrian smallpipes are not particularly Norse, and neither is the tradition of apotropaic names. But the credits song was by Sigur Rós!
And my fever broke sometime this afternoon, so I am going to celebrate by going to bed at a reasonable hour, or at least staying up with The Annotated Hobbit (2002) rather than a thermometer.
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Thank you. I am very glad you think so.
The movie sounded quite good. I fear 3D will make me ill, but that may be worthwhile anyway.
We saw it on an ordinary screen at the Waltham Embassy and it was not a noticeable detraction; the textures are beautifully rendered and looked like the sort of immersive effects that are not nausea-making, in any case (unless you react badly to things like Omni films on principle). The dragon is a particularly beautiful creation. It is not anthropomorphic and it is not a fantasized single animal; at different moments it reminds of cat, bat, salamander, falcon, but mostly it is reminiscent of itself.