Hi, I’m Eush, from the PI, via Ohio, now in Nashville. I ply my trade in Classical studies but moonlight in general gallimaufry. Hit me up here.
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Usually Xiu Xiu’s music only works for me at very particular times, but this? Is working for me.
Xiu Xiu - Ceremony
This is the worst vacation ever! I am going to cut open your forehead with a roofing shingle!—that minor tantrum from “I Broke Up” is probably Xiu Xiu’s most famous line. Indeed, the lyric gets to the core of the group’s confrontational, self-obsessed music. Xiu Xiu tries their damnedest to be weird, shocking, victimized, worthless, revolting, etc.—which often works when they have a bunch of noise and electronics to drown out the screaming. But you already know this and we don’t listen to Xiu Xiu much for this reason.
Anyway, here’s Xiu Xiu murdering the New Order classic, and I’m quite fond of it. The band put out a song called “Ian Curtis Wishlist”, so I get the sense that this cover is as hostile as it is sincere. Thus, where Joy Division robotically confined themselves to musical rigidity and emotional restraint, Xiu Xiu blows up the song, cramming as much dissonance and malfunction as possible. In a way, this is the flipside of the kind of disorder that JD obsessed over: “she’s lost control” becomes “let’s lose control”. It’s tempting to psychologize this take on the song—how fucking emo and Generation Y of them! Personally, I’m left struggling with the paradox of the group: If screaming is your way of showing that you are sincere and have something to say, then why do you scream all the time?
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The long-sought source of the aqueduct that brought clean fresh water to ancient Rome lies beneath a pig pasture and a ruined chapel, according to a pair of British filmmakers who claim to have discovered the headwaters of Aqua Traiana, a 1,900-year-old aqueduct built by the Emperor Trajan in 109 A.D.
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Spartacus: Blood and Sand
More like Spartacus: Blood and SUCK, am I right
More like Spartacus: Blood and SWEET JESUS! NAKED LADIES, am I right? Unfortunately, the show is balls of the highest order. It’s not even dumb fun the way 300 was; in fact, this looks like 300 on a tight budget. A very tight budget. The acting was atrocious, the sets were cheap-looking, and the CGI hurt my face.
I loved the disclaimer in the beginning that said that the violence, language, and sexual activity on the show was supposed to be faithful to what the Romans and surrounding peoples did. As if it was really necessary to have the Thracians go around saying ‘cunt!’ all the time.
I can let the historical inaccuracies pass (I’m not really up to speed on my Roman history anyways); it usually gets shunted into oblivion for the sake of drama and whatnot in these sorts of things. But with all that, the drama is sorely lacking, and the storytelling just isn’t compelling. And all the gratuitous swearing and sex made it feel like it was a wish-fulfillment type of deal written by a teenager. The swearing isn’t even done well, and the violence looks cheap. After the first episode, I don’t really care about any of the characters (hell, I don’t even know their names), or what happens to them. Not even full frontals or Lucy Lawless can make me watch this show again.
OK, maybe booze. Lots of it.
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Found these 1900-1901 editions of Aristophanes’ Fabulae I and II at The Strand yesterday, and had to pick them up (along with a volume of Pindar’s works). I am a sucker for books with really old notes in them.
This one even has a newspaper clipping from the early 1900’s stuck in the pages.
(Pictured: lines from Thesmophoriazusae)
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KF alerted me to the existence of this—during senior week, we stole the Classics department’s bust of Homer and took it to different places on campus and photographed it. Afterwards, we made a photo album of it and gave it to our professors (who didn’t even notice Homer was gone, by the way).
They have since put it up on the home page of Oberlin College’s Classics department.
So I present to you, Homer’s Odyssey.
Phoenix - “If I Ever Feel Better”
On one condition: they have to do it inside their church, with the entire membership present, and the doors locked.
...
“Don’t you write a book about this, George Orwell!”
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