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It will damage you
It is wetly snowing. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel tells me it started around ten-thirty this morning and freaked the cats out. By now they are blasé and much more interested in the white pumpkin in its rustling paper bag or in general mischief. Last night Autolycus figured out how to take the top of a milk bottle.
Yesterday:
My flash "Anonymity" was positively reviewed at Apex Magazine. I'm still happy about this.
M.F. Dulock was selling loukaniko, so I bought some. I plan to make it for dinner tonight.
Rob and I double-featured the evening with el Día de los Muertos at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography (corn-husk tamales, brightly colored paper cut-out skulls fluttering whenever someone opened the door; at the altar open to visitors, I left a memorial card for Luis Yglesias, Rob for Cousin Billy) and the closing night of the Post-Meridian Radio Players' Tomes of Terror: Nevermore.plumtreeblossom's Prohibition-era "The Cask of Amontillado" was the perfect chill to end the night on.
This month J.P. Licks has more than four non-dairy flavors. I got a malt vanilla coconut-milk milkshake. It was delicious.
Hestia is upstairs in the bedroom where it's warmest; I can't blame her. Autolycus is sleeping directly under the thermostat, which means on top of a shelf of my classics books—Cyprus, Carthage, classical Greek religion, the folder of notes for the translation of Ištar's Descent to the Underworld I never published. [edit: He just jumped off the bookshelves and planted himself on my lap. I am warmer than J.G. Pedley's New Light on Ancient Carthage (1980).] Rob is working on a project. I used Daylight Savings' extra hour to write a poem. I really hope this is a pattern. My birthday month was much harder than I wanted it to be.
derspatchel tells me it started around ten-thirty this morning and freaked the cats out. By now they are blasé and much more interested in the white pumpkin in its rustling paper bag or in general mischief. Last night Autolycus figured out how to take the top of a milk bottle.Yesterday:
My flash "Anonymity" was positively reviewed at Apex Magazine. I'm still happy about this.
M.F. Dulock was selling loukaniko, so I bought some. I plan to make it for dinner tonight.
Rob and I double-featured the evening with el Día de los Muertos at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography (corn-husk tamales, brightly colored paper cut-out skulls fluttering whenever someone opened the door; at the altar open to visitors, I left a memorial card for Luis Yglesias, Rob for Cousin Billy) and the closing night of the Post-Meridian Radio Players' Tomes of Terror: Nevermore.
plumtreeblossom's Prohibition-era "The Cask of Amontillado" was the perfect chill to end the night on.This month J.P. Licks has more than four non-dairy flavors. I got a malt vanilla coconut-milk milkshake. It was delicious.
Hestia is upstairs in the bedroom where it's warmest; I can't blame her. Autolycus is sleeping directly under the thermostat, which means on top of a shelf of my classics books—Cyprus, Carthage, classical Greek religion, the folder of notes for the translation of Ištar's Descent to the Underworld I never published. [edit: He just jumped off the bookshelves and planted himself on my lap. I am warmer than J.G. Pedley's New Light on Ancient Carthage (1980).] Rob is working on a project. I used Daylight Savings' extra hour to write a poem. I really hope this is a pattern. My birthday month was much harder than I wanted it to be.
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Yes! And the use of "Auld Lang Syne."
Which night were you there?
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I was there on Wednesday -- my roommate was one of the party guests in Cask. :D
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THAT WAS IN NO WAY FORESHADOWING THAT WAS A TOTALLY NORMAL THING THAT HAPPENS TO NORMAL PEOPLE AT NORMAL NEW YEAR'S PARTIES WHEN THEY HAVE BEEN AWFUL ENOUGH PEOPLE TO MAKE MURDEROUS ENEMIES FOR LIFE. NORMALLY. LIKE YOU DO.
I was there on Wednesday -- my roommate was one of the party guests in Cask.
Just assume I'm behind on the details of everybody's life because this fall has sucked—you live with
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And yes that is correct! Except I keep accidentally referring to her using the wrong LJ/DW name.
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That is *brilliant.* Why have I never seen/heard that idea done before?
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Because
(It worked expertly.)
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Wasn't he supposed to Not be Up There?
...the folder of notes for the translation of Ištar's Descent to the Underworld I never published.
!!!!
I did not know about that...
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He's not allowed on the shelves in my office. The shelves in the dining room are semi-fair game because Hestia slept on them as a tiny kitten and it's difficult to dissuade her rationally now that she's a larger cat, so Autolycus feels left out if he doesn't get the same rights. If they wrecked any of the books, they'd lose napping privileges p.d.q. no matter what, but the worst that's happened so far is an enthusiastic leap once unseated Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes This World (1997). And I can live with that, provided it only happens every six months.
I did not know about that...
So there was the semester in 2005 where I was posting each new section of Ištar's Descent as I translated it, because I was reading it for a class with Eckart Frahm. (That was great.) At the time, my publisher was displaying some interest in collecting and publishing the translation; Eckart encouraged me in this idea and even suggested that I add some supplementary material for people who weren't all that familiar with Mesopotamian myth. (And in the course of discussing the kind of material I wanted to include, I managed to step on the boundaries of a fellow student in a way that I feel sure they have never forgiven me for, even when in all likelihood they have either forgotten or just don't think about it anymore. It still upsets me.) Then my publisher lost interest in the idea and no one else ever displayed any and it's nearly ten years later and I don't feel confident enough in my knowledge of the language anymore to believe it would be worth going back to the project; I haven't lost all my Akkadian, obviously, because I found myself writing way too much about the conjugation of Akkadian verbs to
. . . okay, there's a lot of Tiny Wittgenstein tied up in that folder, isn't there?
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Yup. Although I could say the same about a lot of my stuff.
Anyway, I may have to click back to your 2005 entries at some point and have a look at those! [I think that must've been *just* before I got an lj myself.]
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the folder of notes for the translation of Ištar's Descent to the Underworld I never published and also, my father has Akkadian, and just retired, so if you want someone to bolster your sense that the translation is worthwhile, I might be able to convince him to use that part of his brain again.
(And in the course of discussing the kind of material I wanted to include, I managed to step on the boundaries of a fellow student in a way that I feel sure they have never forgiven me for, even when in all likelihood they have either forgotten or just don't think about it anymore. It still upsets me.)
I offer many hugs and first crack at a time machine if I unearth one in my dwelling.
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I appreciate the offer. I have friends who are Assyriologists who I could call on. I would just have to decide (a) there was a market for it (b) there was a publisher for it (c) it would be worth it for everyone, including the readers. There are a lot of bad translations in the world. I really, really don't want to add to their number.
I offer many hugs and first crack at a time machine if I unearth one in my dwelling.
Eh, I'd probably just use it to watch a lot of theater.
*hugs*
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Thank you! Yay.
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November is generally a bleak month, but it has the possibility of all the warmth of a good hearth (hello Hestia!), and steaming drinks. I hope it's a healthier and all-around better month for you than October was.
(And that's an excellent review indeed!)
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Currently the Warmest Spot is my Green Basket Chair Full of Clean Clothes and Towels. She is curled into a trim little chat'ssant (cat croissant), nose to tip of tail and paws. Autolycus is sprawled somewhat more expansively on my desk underneath the lamp, which has been serving as a cat sun lamp since the weather started to turn. Also this placement puts him within easy petting reach, an impulse to which I admit I do succumb every now and then. Such a fluffy belly and so close. He wakes just enough to purr.
November is generally a bleak month, but it has the possibility of all the warmth of a good hearth (hello Hestia!), and steaming drinks. I hope it's a healthier and all-around better month for you than October was.
Thank you. I am hoping so, too. A lot of things are going to be difficult going in.
(And that's an excellent review indeed!)
It was completely unexpected and really lovely.