Tag Archives: EverythingIsBetterWithLatin!™

Joys of Analogue Media

One of the long-lost pleasures of vinyl that I’m recently recovering is going through stacks of used LPs at record stores. These are thinner on the ground than they were in the 20th C, but when I find one I … Continue reading

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CW: Trumpolatry

Many things about Trumpism are disgusting, but there’s a specific kind of abject ecstacy in Trumpolatry that is really repulsive. “It’s like something from Tacitus,” I always think. Today I ran across the quote I’d been not-quite remembering. clamor vocesque … Continue reading

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Two Duds: WAS IT MURDER? by James Hilton and A QUESTION OF PROOF by Nicholas Blake

Fiction set at upper-class British schools was a popular genre in the 19th and early 20th C, and murder mysteries were the dominant form of popular fiction in the early and mid-20th century, so it’s only natural that cross-pollination would … Continue reading

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The Future of the Past: F&SF, January 1963

In my ceaseless quest to avoid useful work, I recently opened up an old magazine from my double-stacked shelves of old sf/f zines, this one being the January 1963 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. “This is … Continue reading

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Surfing the Time Waves

I’m reading the minor declamations of pseudo-Quintilian in Shackleton-Bailey’s great Loeb edition. The idea is to briefly escape the current political nightmare by immersing myself in the weird little stories of these controversiae. It’s not going that well. For example: … Continue reading

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Nerves in a bundle? Fall into a morðcrundel!

I’m rereading Beowulf, preparatory to teaching it in a couple weeks to my Norse Myth class. This kind of thing always involves falling into the dictionary and getting swept away by a tide of weird words. This afternoon’s discovery is … Continue reading

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Garum + Chili = ?

I was trying to figure out why you couldn’t say this in Latin, then thought, “Well, it could only improve garum”, and finally realized: oh, they mean cocina latina. Some of these keywords for Bluesky feeds are deeply ambiguous. (“Conan” … Continue reading

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Kind of a Drag

Here’s the decoration for my office-door schedule this semester. In some ways I’m one of the volentes, in most ways I’m one of the nolentes, but am feeling the motion either way.

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Masks to the Max

A rack of personae from a Latin manuscript of Terence in the Vatican Library, which always reminds me of this song by They Might Be Giants (who are, in fact, giants):

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Outlaws, Were-Bears, and Skunks

I’ve been reading the Gesta Herwardi (“The Deeds of Herward” a.k.a. “Hereward the Wake”), one of the original outlaw stories from England (although it’s written not in English, but in Latin—because, no doubt, Everything Is Better With Latin!™). The Robin … Continue reading

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