Then if time and space have any purpose, I shall belong to it

[sovay]

And today is my anniversary with derspatchel. We have been together for two years, engaged for one, and married for three months. That timeline continues to amaze me when I look at it. We will celebrate tonight, as is the custom, at the Friendly Toast.

According to the flyers we've been seeing around Davis Square, on Saturday March 15th—the Ides of March—the Somerville Arts Council is sponsoring a reenactment of the assassination of Julius Caesar in Union Square. Of course this is the sort of thing a person wants to attend, especially if a person brings olives and bread and the nearest contemporary equivalent to garum and sits around watching the stabbing with snacks. (Apparently there will be interactive events. We're hoping they include offering bystanders the chance to step up and take a whack, although that may not work unless Caesar is a piñata. Which is such an appealing idea I might be disappointed now if he's not.)

This year, the evening of the Ides is also the beginning of Purim. I believe there is an obvious next step. It involves graggers. Let Cassius' name be blotted out!

(I suspect we should not drink until we can't tell the difference between Cinna the conspirator and Cinna the poet, because that deck is stacked to begin with.)

Happy March! It's snowing!

Comments

[sovay]

Happy anniversary!

Thank you!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Ohmygosh, please post photos of the reenactment of the assassination of Julius Caesar. For one thing, I want to show them to the healing angel, who is taking Latin and read Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in English. For another, I would love to see myself, but can't.

You know, if he's not a piñata, we should maybe make that be a Readercon activity. I, for one, would enjoy helping to make a papier mâché Caesar.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Hah! Excellent.

[sovay]

What is the nearest contemporary equivalent to garum?

I was thinking of Vietnamese or Korean fish sauce.

Thank you!

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

You can stab me ANY time... okay, that came out wrong.

[sovay]

A pity I'm spending that whole day on a bus...

Where are you going to be at the end of it?

The Cinna family really was quite complicated, wasn't it?

ALL FAMILIES WHERE EVERYBODY HAS THE SAME THREE NAMES ARE NOT HELPING. I AM TOTALLY LOOKING AT YOU, CAECILII METELLI. LOOKING AT YOU VERY HARD.

[sovay]

Also, now I will have Kate Beaton's version of Cinna the poet's poetry in my head for the rest of the day.

"BRUTUS. SHUT UP. YOU'RE GOING TO DIE."

Thank you!

[sovay]

since lead lined drinking goblets are passe, One Must Make Do..

And no silphium, either. We'll do what we can.

[sovay]

Happy anniversary!!

Thank you!

[sovay]

Happy anniversary! May it be festive and joyous.

Thank you! We had a good time at the Toast and even survived walking there from Lechmere in below-freezing winds.

Remind me at some point to tell you about the parody of Julius Caesar I was in when I was 10?

Please do!

[sovay]

Yay, both of you!

Hee. Thank you!

[sovay]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/10/26/240237774/fish-sauce-an-ancient-roman-condiment-rises-again

Oh, cool. I just figured Southeast Asian fish sauce.

[sovay]

Ohmygosh, please post photos of the reenactment of the assassination of Julius Caesar.

I will endeavor to bring a camera! Or at least a person who owns one!

You know, if he's not a piñata, we should maybe make that be a Readercon activity. I, for one, would enjoy helping to make a papier mâché Caesar.

Now that everyone's talked about, we should really make it happen. Live nightingales (see nineweaving) are probably out, though.

OH MY GOD WE COULD USE CHOCOLATE MICE FROM BURDICK'S. THAT WOULD TOTALLY SOLVE THE DORMOUSE PROBLEM. THIS MUST COME TO PASS.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

CHOCOLATE MICE FOR THE WIN.

We will all be pleased as cats.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

That's a wonderful image. I certainly hope there is.

(Once when I was cooking with my mother she asked me to pass her the "gollum masala." After a moment she said "Wait a minute, that sounds disgusting. Please pass me the garam masala, and let's try not to imagine ground up Gollum in a bottle.")

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of Vietnamese or Korean fish sauce.

That was all I could think of. Does it work on bread?

For some reason I've always imagined garum as having a thicker consistency than Southeast Asian fish sauce, but I don't know why it would. That image probably goes back to my childhood, when fish sauce that wasn't garum was something I'd only ever heard of in my father's war stories. I'm not sure at what point I made the connection between garum and nuoc mam.*

For that matter, I've never encountered Korean fish sauce. Is it very different to the Vietnamese or Thai variety?

*That's what my father has always called it. I get the impression that said name actually belongs to a compound dipping sauce that's made from fish sauce.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

He can mingle with the sheeted dead, squeaking and gibbering in the Roman streets.

My mother used to confuse the words "tofu" and "futon," which entered her vocabulary at about the same time, and which were both rectangular white slightly compressible things.

[sovay]

My mother used to confuse the words "tofu" and "futon," which entered her vocabulary at about the same time, and which were both rectangular white slightly compressible things.

There's probably a joke to be made here about comparable edibilities, but I like tofu when people aren't trying to make it pass for meat, so I really don't feel I can.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Oh, Mom liked it, too (as do I). We had a lot of stir-fried futon :-)

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Hooray for surviving below-freezing winds. That sounds like a journey that should definitely conclude with a festive meal.

So, for three years, between the ages of 9 and 11 I went to a one week Jewish summer sleepaway camp affiliated with my youth group, and every year, a guy called Rico Rose (who I really ought to look up) and some other folks, sometimes including me, wrote and then put on a full length Shakespeare parody for the whole camp.

So I was in Reuven and Harriet, Jules Gutin and MacDonald. Oddly enough, Jules Gutin was marginally about a real person, and I now know and am friends with his daughter. When I realized this, I got to stun her with "I was in a play about your dad when I was 10."

My role mostly consisted of a scene between two women -- in the original I think they're concubines -- in this case we were just women in bathing suits, in a very cold dining hall, applying mascara and sharing camp gossip instead of court gossip, the better to move the plot forward. It was very silly, but fun. I remember a lot of people being covered up to the elbow in ketchup after the murder sequence.

I still have the full script for MacDonald, which beable was also in, as two of three 'wenches' who set up MacDonald for his meteoric rise to fast-food franchise domination. You can probably see where this goes. Duncan Hines has a particularly comedic death scene.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Dormice! Fabulous!

Nine

[beable]

I suspect we should not drink until we can't tell the difference between Cinna the conspirator and Cinna the poet, because that deck is stacked to begin with

+1

I very much want to celebrate The Ides of Purim now. I can even tie in Pi Day(s) (a friend thinks since it is 3.14159... that we should celebrate on March 14th and 15th) on the grounds that one needs to use round pieces of dough to make hamentaschen triangles, so mathematically it fits.

[sovay]

I very much want to celebrate The Ides of Purim now. I can even tie in Pi Day(s) (a friend thinks since it is 3.14159... that we should celebrate on March 14th and 15th) on the grounds that one needs to use round pieces of dough to make hamentaschen triangles, so mathematically it fits.

I think that is an excellent elaboration.

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

Oh hey, this is today! And I completely forgot, but luckily I've had this post open in a window for ten days and somehow managed to refind it today! How opportune.

Also happy (belated) anniversary! That is a good thing!

~Sor

[sovay]

Also happy (belated) anniversary! That is a good thing!

Thank you! Happy Ides of Purim!