Interstices & Liminal Spaces

From Cahill's Mysteries of the Middle Ages*, p. 21 of the hardback:

The human body, an iffy thing, easily undone, was yet the acme of the beauty of the cosmos.  No wonder that a male on the cusp of full manhood was the loveliest thing in the universe, repeatedly portrayed in statuary and fresco, "the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals," desirable by all, whether female or male (though completely possessable by none), whose hot blood beat against the walls of his body, seeking release, turning to white foam and spurting from his engorged penis--"a human Espresso machine," as Brown~ calls him.

Pardon me, I'll just be over here laughing helplessly.

* At this point, he's still talking about Alexandria and the Greek influence on the middle ages.
~ Brown seems to be Peter Brown; precise book unknown.

This article, reproduced in full below the cut for when I read this six years from now and the article is gone:

( No idea what I'm gonna do with it, but wow. )


Way too neat not to do something with later!

I mean, I was reading LotR fic before bed.  Why in the world did I dream of Rich Ryan, in full Victorian grande dame drag (seriously -- hairstyle, makeup, brocaded full length gown)... fighting someone else in much the same get-up?  And winning, I might add.  My brain, guys, is clearly a strange place!

...for reasons which will shortly become very apparent.  Pardon me, I'm still over here going, 'What the blazes did I just write?' On the other hand, a character I greatly dislike is back out of my head and no longer talking to me.  Mere words cannot express the relief, and please pass the brain bleach, or at least assure me that no, 3 PM is not too soon for wine?

Icon, please, while I edit?  And then,er, any of you familiar with both X-Files and Marvel who'd look at a 1400-1500 word fic? (Or maybe someone who barely knows either and can tell me where I lost them?  Seriously. What the everliving hell was I thinking?!)

ETA:: Also?  OW.  A strained ankle is not of the good.  Thank goodness for ice packs.

Found over on Neil Gaiman's Tumblr:

"[Col. Jeffrey Sanderson, chief of staff at Fort Jackson, home of the Army's largest basic training school] said the Army's own studies show that only 3 in 10 people ages 17 to 24 are eligible to enlist, with the remainder barred by health or legal issues, or the failure to earn a high school diploma or equivalent."

Ouch. We're failing these kids. And no, I don't mean by offering them a chance to go through a structured General Educational Degree program and join the military. I mean the statistic that 70% of US kids just finishing/out of high school (however they got out) are starting their lives with jail time already on the books, or in such physical shape that they can't get *into* boot (not even out of it), or without a GED when these days most jobs over minimum wage want at least some college time.

All I can say just now is, thank you to everyone out there who's trying to get teenagers through school, out of trouble, or into good habits of any kind.

Rest of the article is here, or ( behind the cut, if you find this link a couple months down the road )

I mean, sure, all the spam about 'buy this' and 'free that' and the two spam emails in a row offering to either enlarge my breasts or my penis... Okay, they're just making sure they hit all the bets. Whatever.

But when I registered my iPod Mini with Apple (the iPod I won, in a company picnic drawing), apparently this meant I had mucho spare bucks. Apple just sent me an email to tempt me with their new desktop system -- only $3300. ::shakes head:: We won't even discuss the fact that I've been using Microsoft Word for 21 years now, or that I understand the logic structures of MS programs well enough to navigate new program menus with only minor problems. I mean, I wouldn't turn down a souped-up MacMini, just to get used to Apple and see if I want to switch, although honestly, I probably won't get one myself. Why spend the money when I was the only person in my company who ever handed an Apple computer back to Information Resources and asked plaintively for a DOS 3.1 system back, please, because I could make it work....

$3300? Who in the world did they think they were sending that too?

...and putting it off and this is the entry I didn't want to write. If you don't know why the Eyrie went on hiatus, reading this will explain it. If you do know, this probably won't tell you too much more. Well, it's got a lot more details I suppose -- it's my journal and I kind of need to get this out of my system. Feh.

Right. I'll cut it here so as not to lengthen stuff on my friends (who I suspect are already tired of my weird tests showing up *g*)... ( Read more... )