Well, I did it! I now own the widely coveted Bachelor of Art (Art History) degree! … I have to say, it feels pretty damn good. Especially since I graduated with a 4.0 like a rock star! (or nerd?) Since everyone keeps asking what “the plan” is, I guess I should put it here too. I plan on going for my Master’s in Library Science, which starts in December (assuming I get in of course). Between then and now I’m going to study for the GRE (math, oy), learn Latin and German, and volunteer at libraries. Apart from working and going to school full time (so I can get health insurance)…

I’m currently writing this from a hotel in Flagstaff – this trip was Eric’s graduation gift to me (along with a book buying spree that makes me weak in the knees to think about). Everyone keeps saying “there’s nothing to do up there!” like it’s a bad thing or something. Since Eric and I spent the past few months working all day, everyday, we want to do NOTHING for a couple days except watch movies, read books, lay around, etc. aaaand that’s all we’ve been doing. I just took this picture of Eric to illustrate:

It’s been pretty cold up here, which is a nice experience for a couple of desert rats such as ourselves. There’s even this magical stuff called “snow”!!! I actually got to go out and buy a couple jackets, scarves, etc. I’m enjoying wearing something other than short sleeve T-shirts and flip-flops! Today my Dad and brother (Boo) came up so Boo could go snowboarding. We went up to the top of the Snowbowl. While Boo was snowboarding we decided to just hang out…. We were doing pretty good until the visibility dropped to NOTHING and the horizontal blinding snow almost froze us to death. We ran back in the lodge and drank lots of hot chocolate while Boo was stuck on a stopped ski lift, freezing half to death. On the way back down the mountain my dad did lots of crazy fish-tailing (for fun) while we jammed out to Christmas music. All in all, an excellent day, and an excellent trip! Sadly, we go home tomorrow Time to go back to the real world, I suppose…

(as usual, click to enlarge)

Here are some awesome stereoscopic pictures from the turn-of-the-century Japan! Stereoscopy is basically taking two almost identical images and placing them side-by-side (“stereo card”) and viewing them through a “stereoscope” to create an illusion of depth/3D (well, there are different methods, but that’s what they did at this time period). Through the magic of computers, there can now be turned into animated gifs:

The rest of them can be found [here] at Pink Tentacle

What got me into Art History was a History of Photography class I took many years ago. Although I focus on Medieval and Renaissance Art now, there is always a part of me that gets giddy over photo history and old photographs. Especially old hand-colored photographs. Of Japan. So I absolutely SQUEED when I saw the animated stereoview of [geisha looking at stereographs]!!!

I can’t believe Sesame Street is 40 years old. It was such a staple of my childhood – and the same for many others before me and since! My favorite character was, of course, Cookie Monster. I had a bunch of stuffed animal cookie monsters that I loved dearly. Even a kick-ass cookie monster shirt that I rocked throughout high school (because really, you’re never too old for Sesame Street).

The only thing better than Cookie Monster is Cookie Monster in Polish!

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!

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.

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!

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…

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!

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

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??