WTF History: Charles VI

I shouldn’t be blogging. I have too much to do: prepare a 20 minute presentation on something I’ve barely researched (but should have spent months on), write a sentence outline for my 20th Century Architecture term paper, study for a huge exam, read about witchcraft and write an essay on it… amongst other things.

Instead I’m going to blog about Charles VI. He was kind of the Britney Spears of his day. Rich, powerful, loved – despite being batshit insane. This is evident in his nicknames: Charles le Bien-Aimé (the well loved) and Charles le Fou (the mad).
He ascended the throne of France at the age of 11 and ruled from 1380 – 1422. Everything seemed pretty normal at first… Then, in 1392, he was traveling with some companions (to avenge an attempted assassination attempt on his friend) when someone accidently dropped their lance. The clang startled him, he screamed “Forward against the traitors! They wish to deliver me to the enemy!" and started attacking his own friends. With his sword. He killed several people before he was restrained, at which point he went into a coma.
From then on he was continuously plagued by bouts of madness that came in various forms. He once went 5 months without bathing or changing clothes. He went through fits where he didn’t recognize his wife and children, nor his own name or the fact that he was king. He also suffered from "glass delusion" – he thought he was made of glass and was constantly afraid of shattering. This went so far as refusing to poop lest sitting on the privy broke his (glass) bones.

When he wasn’t in a state of insanity, the court (especially his wife) tried to distract him with all kinds of diversions. The most famous of these was quite counter productive. It was later called the "Bal des Ardents" or "Ball of the Burning Men." Basically, Charles VI and all of his BFFs decided it would be fun to dress up as Wildmen (”wood savages”) and do a little dance for the court. To achieve the "Wildman" look they dressed in linen clothes covered in pitch (oil) and “shaggy hemp” so they looked hairy (like Wildmen supposedly were). So – just to be clear: they were covered in pitch and hemp in a torch-filled castle. Luckily, they took the precaution of forbidding any torches in the hall. Everything was going swimmingly with their “Dance of the Savages” until the King’s brother (supposedly unaware of the shenanigans) walked in with a lit torch. Of course, It sparked and the wildmen’s fake howling turned into screams of agony. Charles was saved by a woman who threw her dress over him. Another dancer jumped into a vat of wine. However, the rest of Charles’ besties were not so lucky. They died slow agonizing deaths over a period of days and several other guests were left with permanent injuries from trying to tear the cloth off the burning men.
I’m sure that really helped his mental state!

WANT.

I would do awful terrible despicable things to own this table:

  (Nettlestone Library Ensemble, available [here])

But I’ll just try to save up the money first.

In searching for an image of it, I came across an amazing blog about bookshelves: The Blog on the Bookshelf. It made me gasp aloud in child-like wonder. And sinful coveting.

Bestiaries: Scorpions

One of the classes I’m taking this semester is Animals in Medieval and Renaissance Art. It’s a seminar course (pretty much all graduate students) and aside from our extensive reading assignments, we have to write a 20+ original research paper. The whole reason I took this class was because of my love of bestiaries, so naturally that’s what I’m writing my research paper on!

What is a bestiary? Well, basically is is a medieval ‘book of beasts.’ It’s often described as "medieval zoology" or "medieval natural science" – which has a kernel of truth. However, it is much more complicated. The intricacies could fill multiple books (and sadly, I’ve read them), but basically the bestiary is a combination of theological and scientific explanations of animals. The end result is an often fantastically wrong account of the natural world, full of insightful morals, confusing contradictions, and hilarious pictures.
Apparently researching bestiaries pretty much EVERY DAY isn’t enough punishment for myself, because now I feel the urge to blog about them! So I’m going to do a few posts about various animals found in bestiaries.

For this post I’m going to focus on the scorpion, in honor of the dead one I found under my desk at work.

Scorpion attributes:
- it is a kind of worm
- to make a scorpion, one must bury the claws of crabs
- if one is stung by a scorpion, that person will become hydrophobic (afraid of water)
- scorpion stings are fatal to girls and women. Men only die if they are stung in the morning when the poison is strongest
- the scorpion will never strike the palm of your hand
- the south wind gives scorpions the ability to fly (they stretch out their arms like oars)

Some depictions of scorpions in bestiaries:
(as usual, click to enlarge)

British Library, Sloane MS 1975, Folio 13r

Kongelige Bibliotek, Gl. kgl. S. 1633 4º, Folio 58v

 
Koninklijke Bibliotheek, KB, KA 16, Folio 126v

Information and images were taken from www.bestiary.ca – an awesome site!

This is odd…

Roger Ebert linked to my poor neglected blog from his!
So maybe my rambling little corner of the web isn’t totally ignored?

Well now I’m inspired to actually update this thing. So prepare for more rambling on random topics…

Summertime, and the livin’ is… busy

This has been one busy summer! I have work as usual, plus two summer school classes. I took a drawing class and a Medieval art class. Both were fantastic classes, but they sucked away all my free time!

Here is still life I did in my drawing class of a bunch of random stuff. More pictures from my phone can be found [here].

Now I’m on my two week vacation (half over) until the semester starts (my last semester!). I’ve been doing a lot of reading. Sadly, I finished my last Sharon Kay Penman book. Luckily she’s writing a new one, but I will have to wait a whole YEAR for it! Luckily I have had several great books to keep my mind off of it
I also discovered Netflix. I’ve avoided it for years because… well, I don’t rent many movies. Most movies these days are utter crap. Eric and I go to the independent movie theater, but we usually can’t rent those movies because places like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video have an abysmal independent/foreign section.
WELL, I signed up for a free trial of Netflix and… OMFG. All the classics/independent/foreign/documentaries I’ve been searching for are on there! The best part is that several of them can be watched INSTANTLY on my computer and, even better, through my xbox (and therefore TV)! It’s fantastic!

Eric and I have been waiting for the house stuff to come through. We are pretty close to getting a contract, just have to update the bank on some stuff and we should be good to go! Woo!

Second Lappy!

I’m writing this from my new laptop! It’s not going to replace my usual laptop – I just wanted something more mobile than my huge 10lb 19 inch desktop-replacement Sony Vaio! Something I could throw in my bag and take to school (or wherever).

The netbook I chose to get is the ASUS EeePC 1000HE – Amazon page [here].

I just got it in the mail today and so far, it’s amazing! I named him Zygmunt, but I call him Ziggy for short

Amazon Kindle

I have a bone to pick with the Amazon Kindle. Now, I understand what they are trying to do – access to millions of books under a minute is an interesting and noble cause. However, I just don’t understand how people can think it is superior to a book, or even that it will replace books. (ASU is even experimenting by giving some students Kindles to replace their textbooks!)

Now, it’s not just the ridiculous price tag that bothers me, but the experience of reading from a Kindle itself. To me, reading a book is not just about receiving information, but an experience (partly tactile). I was reading The Library At Night by Alberto Manguel this afternoon and he summed up how I feel about reading from a screen:

“As any reader knows, a printed page creates its own reading space, its own physical landscape in which the texture of the paper, the colour of the ink, the view of the whole ensemble acquire in the reader’s hands specific meanings that led tone and context to the words. (Columbia University’s librarian Patricia Battin, a fierce advocate for the micro-filming of books, disagreed with this notion. “The value,” she wrote, “in intellectual terms, of the proximity of the book to the user has never been satisfactorily established.” There speaks a dolt, someone utterly insensitive, in intellectual or any other terms, to the experience of reading.)

… leafing through a book or roaming through shelves is an intimate part of the craft of reading and cannot be entirely replaced by scrolling down a screen, any more than real travel can be replaced by travelogues and 3-D gadgets.”

If people enjoy the Kindle, good for them. I hope it encourages reading for people who normally wouldn’t (if you shell out $500 for the latest gadget, hopefully you’ll force yourself to use it!). I’m all for anything that gets people to read, even if it means books like Harry Potter and Twilight, and overpriced gadgets like Kindle. However… for me personally, I’ll stick to my old fashioned tomes that line my walls, not my hard drive. Aside from the supposed enormous selection (they are currently only at 275,000), I think I, as a huge book nerd, can live without the supposed “benefits” on the Kindle… as seen in the comic below:

(click to enlarge)

In one last caveat: I love how the kindle is marketed as a “wireless reading device” – isn’t that what a book is??

Nine Inch Nails concert!

 
(this picture was taken by someone else at the concert… credit goes to them of course, but I don’t know who they are!)

March 15th Eric and I went to the NIN show at Cricket Pavilion.  We saw a few people we know, bought some over priced shirts, and woke up the next day feeling like we got in a fight with Angry Trent Reznor (and lost, of course). As always, it was an amazing show. The setlist was INCREDIBLE. They even played The Fragile! We had reeeally good seats because we got pre-sale tickets like the SECOND they went on sale.
You know what I love about NIN concerts? We always end up making these weird intense connections with the people next to us. At this show there were two girls next to me… after the first song we were screaming “THIS IS FUCKING INCREDIBLE!!!” and jumping around/dancing/head banging/etc with each other. By the second one she was screaming “THE THREE OF US WANT TO BEAR YOUR CHILDREN!” (amongst other things) to Trent while we laughed hysterically and made exhibitions of ourselves. And by the third song… we were planning a four-some sex tape with Trent which my future husband, for some reason, objects to (I think he’s just feeling left out…).

That’s all I’m going to say about it for two reasons. 1) NIN shows are always beyond words and 2) I have a fever at the moment. So does Eric. We’ve been watching Family Guy and South Park all day, like winners.
Hopefully we are better by tomorrow because we are seeing Flight of the Conchords!

Getting Organized (this is boring)

So, in the madness that is finals, I find myself following my age-old study/organization techniques. I think that everyone has their own system of getting things done, but I’ve heard a lot of a book called… well, Getting Things Done. [This] site has a DIY planner that looks kind of interesting (everyone seems to love it). But do I need to fix something that’s not broken?

My current “system” is as follows:
— All birthdays, due dates, appointments, etc are kept in a weekly planner. Specifically, one of the Taschen Diaries. Ever since I started using them a few years ago I always got the Frida Kahlo one. This year, however, I wasn’t able to find one so I got the Van Gogh. I keep my planner in my school bag and desk, but I don’t carry it around with me EVERYWHERE. I also note things like “Saw Slumdog Millionare – it was amazing” When I read my planners years later, it’s little things like this that make me smile. Although I keep a journal, it’s these little day to day things that interest me as well years later.
—- I have a small moleskine that I do carry around with me most everywhere. In there I keep track of all the random things life throws my way: books I want to read, funny overheard quotes, school-related ideas, to-do lists, sketches, gift ideas, etc. The only thing is that it is “unorganized” to other people but … I love the organic layout. It’s my brain, my life, in it’s natural (unorganized) state. I can find things quickly based on my own memory of events and connections I make. It’s the same way I organize my computer files, and it works best for me. However, no one can ever find anything on my computer but me (and probably my small moleskine, if anyone tried).

As for school-specific organization, I always have a multi-subject college ruled notebook for each semester. Most of classes are Art History: I take notes in class, then I later go through and highlight major points that will be on the exam. I star all the sub-points that are important. Then I type out my notes, usually in OneNote along with images of the work of art. Just typing them out is a form of study, as well as re-reading them to highlight. 
Then I make flash cards with the image on one side, and the notes on the back. The Scotch Tape Adhesive Runner has saved my life note-card wise! It’s almost like… liquid tape. I only use as much as I need, it sticks REALLY well, and it doesn’t let the images rip off when I shuffle.
I keep my cards in a system of note card holders. I have small soft cover ones (only $.50) for each class, and then large boxes for each semester. Eventually I throw the cards away, but sometimes they are useful in other classes, so I usually wait a while.

What’s your system for organization?
I envy the people who don’t have much to organize… I don’t think I could survive without my planner/moleskine!

Lost All My Mirth

This semester is coming to a close. As I’m cramming for finals and writing research papers, there is one assignment I’m actually looking forward to. After a semester of writing analysis papers  in my Shakespeare, we actually get a “fun” assignment (they were all fun to me!) – we have to write a movie remake of one of the plays we read. Naturally, I’m doing my favorite play ever: Hamlet.

My favorite version of Hamlet is, surprisingly (even to me), a “modern” remake of it starring Ethan Hawke. Here is his delivery of, quite possibly, my favorite part of Hamlet:

I have of late – but wherefore I know not – lost all my mirth…
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

I haven’t started writing my paper yet, but I think I’m going to set Hamlet in 1950s France. Why? Because I see Hamlet as an existential play, and he should be right there with Camus and Sartre!

Ok, time to get back to studying