Catching up

[danohu]

nina321 gently reminded me that I haven't updated this for a while, and I thought I'd do a roundup. So let's start going backwards, and see how long it takes me to get bored.

Today's been a fairly pleasant day of work and semi-work. Morning of Pali, which I'm liking more each week, and really annoyed that I don't get an exam in it. Then I spent a couple of hours this afternoon reading Ovid, after helixaspersa inadvertantly reminded me that of the existence of Latin poetry. The good part was that I remembered more Latin than I'd expected. The bad part was that I'd forgotten how tedious all the killing-people bits are. And the bonus was this wonderfully comic translation of somebody being attacked with a spear:

fronte tamen Rhoeti non inrita cuspis adhaesit

'Yet the tip, not without effect, lodged in Rhoetus' forehead'

But perhaps I've just been away from classics too long, and I've forgotten the particularly latin translatorisms.

Clock turns back another day....

Thursday. Peculiar, but very ego-boosting. I found out that I'm having an article published in the same journal as Stephen Hawking. (and Kurt Vonnegut, and Naomi Klein. And Hawking's writing about international law rather than theoretical physics, and it's not a journal in the peer reviewed sense. But it's good enough for me!). And then, to cap it off, I got interviewed on a South African Islamic radio station. Which was nice.

The other good bit of Thursday was Alec, Rob and Dave singing silly things at Candle Club. Their college 'rawhide' is even better with music and practice, though I think there was too much noise for many people to hear the lyrics. Also, somebody played 'zombie' by the Cranberries. Which was wonderful, because I've been vaguely wondering what it was for years, and now I know. In fact, I've been wondering ever since I heard it about 10 years ago on a schoolfriend's mis-labelled tape, which convinced me that it was something by the Crash Test Dummies. I don't mind so much, since it introduced me to one of my favourite groups, but it's nice to find out what the song really was.

Right. Bored with the past now (mainly because I can't remember doing anything on Wednesday). Onto the future, which holds...

Tonight: Stay at home. If I'm keen, I'll do some sanskrit. If not, I'll put some more stuff onto Per's cunning new website. And I'll probably spend an hour or two pissing about on msn/lj/irc (so keep me company!).

Then tomorrow, I'm heading to London for the Indymedia 5th birthday party. Which should be really great: Penny Rimbaud, Rhythms of Resistance, and lots of happy anarchists (*). And my sister is coming down, entranced by the prospect of seeing George again (**). Plus, I should get to see some of the cambridge activist diaspora, who, with a couple of honourable exceptions, haven't spread themselves anywhere more exotic than London.

Sunday: back to Cambridge, where we're doing one of the 'social events under a thin political veil' that are P&P's greatest talent. The veil is 'buy nothing day' (***), which is us stop buying things for the sake of buying them. The social event is half a dozen of us somewhere in the town centre, with juggling, face-painting, music, origami, rigged twister, and whatever else people bring along. You should all (yes! all half-dozen of you!) come along and have some kind of fun.

Right. That's the update done - back to stealth mode.


* who, for the record, don't include me. Despite what an amazingly large number of people think, I'm not an anarchist. I just think they throw the best parties.

** also for the record, they're just good friends. And even if they weren't, i don't understand why people want me to keep my sister segregated from interesting men.

*** or as Josh would like it to be, 'steal something day'. Josh is an anarchist, though not one of the anarchists who throws good parties. I think it's what happens when you get your ethics from postmodern critical theory.

Comments

[nina321.livejournal.com]

We don't want to keep your sister segregated from interesting men, we just want to keep her segregated from George.
He'll corrupt her.
Which Dave did songs with Alec and Rob? And more importantly, does anyone have footage!? I wanna seeeeeeee!

[nina321.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I meant to say...
I found this on my computer earlier... I'll try to link to a PDF format of it.

Check it, it's like a whole science report in latin! (http://home.graffiti.net/nina321:graffiti.net/report.pdf)
I don't know why this is on my computer. It was listed as a template, but I'd think it's a little restricting.
I don't like to ask too many questions.

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

woo!
I've intermittently wondered about that, and you've just spurred me into looking out some information on it. It's the standard semi-gibberish latin that a few programs use as dummy text. But I'd not realised just HOW standard - turns out this has been going for 500 years. From http://www.lipsum.com/

'Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book....1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC.'

[helixaspersa.livejournal.com]

no, no don't read Ovid, read VIRGIL. Or even better, Homer, but perhaps you don't have Greek (not too tricky after Sanskrit I wouldn't have thought though). Virgil because a) he's better than Ovid and b) Ovid is much better after Virgil, because he is so much about Virgil; much funnier post-Virgil too. Read the Eclogues, than which nothing is more beautiful (another translationese construction to add to your collection).