A couple of nights ago, I went with my friend Dave (inspired by the fact that we've been bonding for weeks now on old 80s music and other such nostalgia) to go see Camper Van Beethoven who played at Bimbo's. It was a blast, and Camper Van Beethoven was really good -- sometimes, ya know, those reunion of the old band incarnation shows can suck. But they didn't. They were really amazing.
They did a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" that I'd never heard them do before and it was really bizarrely wonderful. But they really have always had a way with twisted covers.
When they did their song "Take the Skinheads Bowling," couldn't help being reminded of my dead friend Norman (due to the fact that I remember being stuck in a car with Norman one drunken night years and years ago where we were waiting for the others to return from where they went a-romping, and Norman and I entertained each other by drunkenly singing that song to each other loudly ...hehehe.)
I used to go see bands all the time back in the 80s. I so rarely do anymore. Did happen to see Daniel Ash last year when I was in New Orleans, but nothing in between. It usually just seems like too much trouble and I don't even really pay much attention to what's going on out there in more recent days at all. Gettin' old or lazy, I guess. But this was a definitely amusing outing and felt even a little revived from it. Somehow, I'm half-enjoying and half-frightened of this little inadvertent nostalgia trip I keep going on lately -- some of which has been half-provoked by Dave, as he keeps telling me nostaglic bits from his misspent youth ..... while playing me Flipper ("Sex Bomb Baby, yeah!") and the Beat Farmers, for god's sake.
But, actually, can't totally blame him, as come to think of it, just about everybody I know who was cognizant during that time period seems to be indulging in something like this lately. What's the deal? Is it time for the punk big chill or some other sort of ice age or something? Oh, please, no.
Whatever it is, it's starting to drive me slightly insane as I keep wondering if my life is flashing before my eyes or if I'm just having flashbacks? Both, probably. But I'm probably actually just perimenopausal or something.
Anyway, dizzy from these fumes of nostalgia, I went digging through some old photos again and just added a couple new pages to my Misspent Youth photo pages. The ones I just added are Proto-bat (photos of me from 1983) and Living at Night Isn't Helping My Complexion. (photos of Norman, Lorrainne, and moi from 1986).
Well, to quote something else from ancient days, like Magenta would say: "How sentimental ......"
Yup. 'Tain't it?
Sigh.
This article in Spiked-Online, "AIDS in Africa: Sense at Last," has been bugging me for days ever since I read it last week. One of the puzzling mysteries of the epidemiology of HIV and AIDS, according to many articles written over the last decade and a half, has been, of course, the way the disease seemed illogically to follow different transmission patterns in Africa than in the West and elsewhere. Well, this article refutes that notion entirely and blames the earlier researchers of playing loose with some key facts:
...In short, tangential, opportunistic, and irrational considerations may have contributed to ignoring and misinterpreting epidemiologic evidence.'In my view, the authors are correct in their interpretation and are right to be angry. The history of AIDS commentary and research is one of misinformation, hyperbole and plain lies (3). It should be no surprise that elementary facts about the disease were overlooked in the rush to declare AIDS an international heterosexual calamity. This view was always informed more by political correctness in the West, and by a prurient observation of immoral fecklessness on the part of Africa, than by any rational assessment of empirical data.
So, what exactly did these new researchers conclude had been misinterpreted all along? Read the article. It's rather mind-boggling, really, if it's true.
Never sharing razors was often one of the risky things prevention guidelines instructed people to avoid. After reading this article, I can only guess that unfortunately must have also included Occam's Razor.
Andrea Harris's blog had an entry yesterday with the title: Doogie Howser Goes Goth. That's a hard thing to see first thing in the morning.
Turns out what she's referring to is a CNN article reporting that Neil Patrick Harris is playing the emcee role in a new production of Cabaret. (psst: look at the picture of him in the article.) Like I said, that's a hard thing to see first thing in the morning.
The Petting Zoo's Stick Figure Hardcore Porn Page!
The Tantric Sex and Catholic Schoolgirl ones made me laugh so hard, I almost fell off my chair.
Ah, yes, it'd be timely now to warn of the approaching Ides of March (the 15th), which just happens to mark a famous day in history for extispicy.
An Etruscan haruspex named Spurinna came up with the phrase "Beware the Ides of March," the famous warning given to Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. that said the 15th of March would be very unlucky for him and he should not leave his home. These soothsayers, Caesar's official priests, had actually divined this omen by using extispicy as the method of augury. Two oxen had been sacrificed by the priests for guidance, but when they put the sacrificed animals into the ritual fire, the oxen were consumed by the fire completely and much too quickly than was normal. This abnormality the priests saw as a decidedly bad omen.
Did Caesar listen to his priests? Nope. He ventured out to the Senate's steps, where he was subsequently skewered himself -- almost perhaps to the point where his entrails could have borrowed for a little divination had anyone dared presume upon him right then. (Human entrail reading happens to be called anthropomancy. Hmm. How about reading a Caesar's entrails? Well, that was one divinatory method that they didn't apparently attempt .... at least that we know of.)
The methods and types of divination in Caesar's day were numerous.* Entrail-reading could take many forms and had many "subspecialities." For example, hieromancy or hieroscopy refers to the general practice of divination via sacrificing animals while the actual examination of the liver and entrails of the animal is known as haruspicy. Any abnormalities in the viscera observed were considered especially significant and interpreted as signs. And examination of just the liver itself was yet another divinatory method called hepatoscopy.
Extispicy was a fairly involved hieromantic ritual with several different parts to it. Extispicy rituals started with the actual sacrifice and evisceration of the animal, followed by the entrail examination, and after that the entrails and the rest of the animal's carcass would be put onto a ritual fire. (burnt offerings.) The extispieces would carefully examine the entrails at each point throughout the entire process for certain signs and omens. When the animal and its entrails were in the fire, any signs and omens observed as they burned would fall under the term pyromancy or maybe even more precisely, causimomancy -- the latter being the practice of watching how an object in the fire reacts. (It was considered a good omen when something typically combustible did not ignite -- thus, probably why the opposite effect of the two oxen burning to a crisp so alarmed Caesar's priests that long ago day.)
If the priests had wanted to look at and interpret the cracks in the scapulas of the animals' bones as they burned -- that would be called scapulomancy. And, finally, after the fire has burnt out, they could always have indulged in a little tephromancy -- divination by looking at ashes from burned sacrifices.
Yup. They had about as many different ways of slicing up the viscera, peering into it, and barbecuing it as we in the modern day have specialty cable channels.
So, take that as your omen this day -- to beware the Ides of the March and watch out for TVs. Or at least examine your TV carefully for any abnormalities or ill omens if you deign to watch it this wicked day .... it might be trying to tell you or trying to sell you something portentous.
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*Note for real sticklers: I am not sure if all of the descriptions of the entrail-reading divination "sub-specialties" I cited are completely definitive or exact -- as the various sources I consulted tend to vary a bit on some of them. Nor is this necessarily a historically accurate description of these divination methods as they had been practiced in Rome during Julius Caesar's day -- as some of the sources I used to devise the explanations and check on the terms were referring to the rituals as they had been practiced by the Etruscans or Babylonians.
