Map of the Voyage of the Argonauts

I’m tired of stumbleupon

Oh captain, captain look! A ship is over there!
Oh captain, captain why do those folks stare?
You should know, my son, since they had sailed
They have since become ghosts whose lives had failed.

(Mumbling) apologies to those expecting more frequent “stuff” here. We are busy with Fairy Scholarship, not that Pirates will be neglected there, at least of the non-postmodern variety.

My new favorite weekend garage reading.

Image source

Aporia

I am completely uncertain about how to categorize this. For certain “rhetoric” comes to mind, as it is indeed the only honest category to explain this term. Unfortunately, Stumbleupon’s post-postmodern sense of Ironic Sincerity does not include such a category. The SU category system having been invented through an automatic process at inception, based on a collection of popular search terms in the late 1990’s, reflects a cultural paradigm of earlier pre-Web 2.0 users; one whose perspective is obviously not attuned to SU’s current userbase. (I note, with a sense of full postmodern irony, that SU’s owners and developers are younger than the average users.) So, since most internet users have only a dim perception of the word “rhetoric,” usually one in a pejorative sense as in “that’s just rhetoric!” implying pure form without any regard to content, we are left with a sense of modernist Angst; that a system of categories exists which does not include one of the principal disciplines of classicism. Should I ask that Rhetoric be more than just a tag and a full fledged category? Is this an imperative? Or should we just allow culture its due? Many questions.

This is in response to this appeal.

7.1 Name: Venus aka Aphrodite, Ishtar
7.2 Photos: I got lots but this is my fav!

7.3: Height: 4 1/2 cubits?

7.4: Country of Birth: Foam on the Coast of Cyprus

7.5: How I found your website: I follow Mercury on Twitter

7.6: Some of my feelings about your lengthy message.

Relationship Status: Okay, it’s complicated. I have a husband who spends entire days tinkering with god gadgets such as flying horse drawn chariots, spears of lightning and drinking cups that never empty. I have a boyfriend who’s kinda hot but stupid and let’s his testosterone poison his brain everytime there’s about to be a fight then wanders off for several months. The last time this happened he was helping those UN guys look for WMD’s in Mesopotamia to see if they really could cause destruction and/or pestilence. Boy was he disappointed. He was in a blue funk over the whole thing for weeks and when we finally did get some hot action going it took all of three minutes. Bottom line: I’m really interested in this tantric sex stuff you keep going on about.

Spirituality: Uhm, well I don’t really do those 15 minute meditation things you mention. Wait! Do any of those involve masturbation cuz then it might be a yes. Oh! And I’m not a scientologist (phew!)

Body: *smiles*

Mind:

(No psychiatry. No mental disorders. No psych meds.)

Yup! None of that crap. Not sure about Bachelor’s degree though.

Social:

She is RELIABLE about phone calls and dates with me.

As long as I can find the right dress sure no problem. Let me tell you though that goddess hairstyles can take awhile to get right so this “reliable” business will have to be flexible okay?

Work/Vision:

She understands that the elite tyrants have reached an advanced state in the systematic imposition of their so-called “authority” onto the population of the entire world.

Boy don’t I ever! Actually I kinda know men are stupid about running things and get in the way of a good time.

She has the COURAGE to unite with and give her full Goddess support to a powerful man (me) who dares to believe that tyranny can be eliminated from the face of this earth during our lifetime.

Uh, okay, whatever…

Sexuality:

She believes in the light-filled MAGIC of sacred sex. She wants to utilize this magic to manifest our Global Vision. She realizes that her sacred sexual union with me is crucial for manifesting the Global Vision.

Actually I kinda invented the concept. I mean look at all that boinking going on! Not sure about the Light-filled though. Are you, like into kinky LED kinda stuff?

She is WILLING to surrender and be worshipped as a Goddess.
She is WANTING to surrender and be worshipped as a Goddess.
She is WAITING to surrender and be worshipped as a Goddess.

Been there, done that. Next!

My interest is NOT in controlling her, but rather in creating ecstasy in her

NOW yer talkin’!

7.7 Spiritual Practices: I like influencing mortals into the act of love. I know this deeply and it is in my very nature. I like playing footsies.

7.8. “Any objections you have to what I have stated in this web site, and/or things you might want to negotiate about.”

Actually I’m really just wondering about that “Light” thing you want to change everything for. Wait! Are you Prometheus? Is this some sort of candid-camera website thing? Cuz if you are I know this chick with a box.

7.9. “One or more questions you would like me to answer.”

Do you wear socks in bed? (I hope not!)

Irish Fairy Tales, The Story of Tuan Mac Cairill: Every beast pursued me... so that I got no rest, Arthur Rackham.

A un gato

No son más silenciosos los espejos
ni más furtiva el alba aventurera;
eres, bajo la luna,
esa pantera que nos es dado divisar de lejos.

Por obra indescifrable de un decreto divino,
te buscamos vanamente;
más remoto que el Ganges y el poniente,
tuya es la soledad, tuyo el secreto.

Tu lomo condesciende a la morosa caricia de mi mano.
Has admitido, desde esa eternidad que ya es olvido,
el amor de la mano recelosa.
En otro tiempo estás.
Eres el dueño de un ámbito cerrado
como un sueño.

~Jorge Luis Borges

To a Cat

The mirrors have not more silence,
nor more wile a wandering dawn;
you are, beneath the moon,
that obscure panther in the distance.

By undecipherable work of divine decree;
remoter than the Ganges and the sunset
yours is the solitude, yours is the secret;
we look for but cannot see.

Your langour lets my hand caress your entirety.
You have permitted, until this now forgotten eternity,
the love of a suspicious hand.

You are of a different time.
You are the lord of a private land,
like a dream.

~Jorge Luis Borges

I translated this on someone’s insistence. Although I quite enjoyed the experience, it took me longer than normal since my Spanish, not very good to begin with, is rusty.

Image source:
Arthur Rackham at Artsy Craftsy

Note to followers:
I am writing mostly offline so excuse the silence. Meanwhile, I shall post some old things I had neglected. — seb

Found this at tobey’s.

——

Instructions:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.

Them Silly List of Books

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (I’m guessing I’ve read this thrice. The appendices probably more.)
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (And this is here because?)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (The problem with having seen the film first is that Atticus has to look like GregoryPeck in your head.)
6. The Bible (Not all of it you understand. Favorite bit - Ecclesiastes)
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (And this was a decade before that year actually hit.)
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (In progress)
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (I loved it at the time. But then I was 16 so I doubt I’d underline this now.)
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (I already knew that the very rich could be horrible people but it was a good reminder)
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (Especially the Vogon Poetry)
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis (Isn’t this covered in 33?)
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden (Why is this here?)
40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (The movie wasn’t as funny as the book. What do you mean it’s not supposed to be a comedy? Why is this here?)
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding (High school assignment)
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan (You see it’s really a book about writing as process of redemption.)
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert (Have you ever noticed that all the greatest sci-fi novels are really about religion?)
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Pomo gothic-horror about a writer in Barcelona.)
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens (Seen both film and mini-series though.)
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (And apart from all the Shakesperean references – starting with the title – have you ever noticed that all the great sci-fi stories are really about religion?)
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (small man tries to teach big man to stop killing his pet mice.)
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas (How to get even. Really even. Keep notes since you will lose track of who did what to him to deserve what he does to them.)
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding (There’s too much chick-lit here already.)
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdied 
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville (there are really only two novels, MD and Don Quixote. Everything else is just gravy.)
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker (I’m still wondering why I haven’t)
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett 
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce (I’m still wondering why I haven’t)
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (It has it’s moments. But you have to try to stop laughing at others.)
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupéry (Maybe 10 times. Well it’s short.)
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams 
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (The humor here is intentional.)
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare (But there’s a “Complete Works” up there!)
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl 
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo 

——–

And just to let everyone understand that it’s a dumb list, here are some missing in action (that I’ve read):

Don Quixote – Miguel Cervantes
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man & The Sea – Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway (Ok, I had my EH period)
 The World According to Garp – John Irving
Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain (Okay, add this to DQ and MB)
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe 
Gulliver’s Travels - Jonathan Swift
Through the Looking Glass – Lewis Carroll 
Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Robert M. Pirsig (Look for this in Fully Booked in the Philosophy Section.)
The Once and Future King – T. H. White
Morte d’ Arthur – Thomas Mallory (Now what made me think of that?)
Jonathan Livingston Seagull – Richard Bach (I just thought I’d throw that in since everyone wanted to choose this for a book report in high school for very understandable reasons, until the teacher got wise and banned book reports of it. I was intending to do “Old Man & The Sea” anyway. It’s also short. Having said that, I did really enjoy the story of the little seagull that went splat! and became a Christ-like ghost symbol to the other seagulls.)
Stranger In a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein (I grok it)
I, Claudius – Robert Graves
 

 Okay I’m tired. Enough trying to remember every book I’ve ever  liked.