40 Reasons Local News is the Best News:
This man is a monster.
What common medieval fantasy tropes have little-to-no basis in real medieval European history?
Were blades ever poisoned?
Rarely. Most potent poisons expire and lose their lethality quickly. There’s also a risk of the smalles little cut when you hande the blade – especially in a struggle – killing you as the assassin as well. Poisons were rare and expensive and could be pretty easily traced, so most would just take their chances that another stab or two would do the job better than a poisouned blade.
I am sure you have already read the Phineas Gage piece, based on our shared interests, but if you have not:
Beyond that sketch of his activities, there’s no record of what Gage did in the months after the accident—and we know even less about what his conduct was like. Harlow’s case report fails to include any sort of timeline explaining when Gage’s psychological symptoms emerged and whether any of them got better or worse over time. Even the specific details of Gage’s behavior seem, on a closer reading, ambiguous, even cryptic. For instance, Harlow mentions Gage’s sudden “animal propensities” and, later, “animal passions.” Sounds impressive, but what does that mean? An excessive appetite, strong sexual urges, howling at the moon? Harlow says that Gage cursed “at times,” but how often is that? And was this a saucy “hell” or “damn” here and there, or something more dastardly? Harlow notes that Gage started telling his nieces and nephews wild stories about his supposed adventures. Was he confabulating here, a symptom of frontal lobe damage, or simply indulging a love of tall tales? Even the conclusion that Gage “was no longer Gage” could mean almost anything.
OH MY GOD THIS IS THE GREATEST THING I AM BOILING WITH HATRED:
*And if you have any pride in your own cooking, you would do well to steer clear of the doodie. “My ex-girlfriend fancied herself a good cook,” says my friend Dan. “And she was,” he adds. “But I was better.” One night, they ended up in a standoff over onions. “I wanted a dice, and she was doing a rough chop,” he says. His girlfriend accused him of being condescending. “She got really mad,” he says. She was like, ‘If you ever talk to me like that again, I will fucking kill you.’ And I got defensive. I was like, ‘I won’t, if you cut the onion right.’”
*
I LOVE ELLEN BURSTYN:
I was half-expecting to see you pop up in Aronofsky’s latest, Noah, even if just for a second.
Oh, I was almost in it! There was a moment where he tried having the voices of the monsters, or whatever they’re called. The stone monsters. He had me record the voices, and then he twisted it to make it sound like something else, and then he decided not to use that. So I was almost in it. My voice was almost in it. I was very disappointed that I didn’t get in it. [Laughs.]
How to stop a wedding.
RIP, Farley Mowat, a really complicated and ornery man who was exceptionally Canadian:
Determined to go out at his post, banging away on his manual typewriter on the second floor of a heated shed in his backyard, Mr. Mowat insisted that writing was the only function – “well almost only function” – that he was still capable of performing at 88. He refused to have a bulging aortic aneurysm treated or to undergo a triple bypass several years ago, and he insisted until the end of his life that refusing medical intervention not only prolonged his existence, but enabled him to enjoy a higher quality of life. “I’m floating on a very, very thin surface tension, which can erupt at any moment” he said in November, 2009.
You monsters made me spend HOURS last night reading about Cassandra Clare and plagiarism and so on. When I die and must make an accounting for why I never read past Swann’s Way in A Remembrance of Things Past, I’m blaming you.
“The best time I took a rescue cat to a pet psychic”:
He believed he was five. When we told Rhonda he was off by about a decade, she paused and said, “Oh, he says he doesn’t get time. He says, ‘I’m a kitten.’’” (It might have been a quick save on her part, but to look at Milo, he is clearly a creature who cannot be too concerned with the unrelenting march of hours, years.)
Missed connections for a-holes:
At the gym parking lot today. You were the hot guy with the soul patch in the Kia Forte. You took my spot. I was waiting for that spot, and you just swooped in and took it. I wish you could have heard me honking at you. Our eyes connected but you just kept walking. If I had the chance to see you one more time, I would roll down my windows and call you a dick.
Update: my friend and some likeminded parents got that Utah fourth grade public school trip to the Church History Museum squashed with the aid of the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
