Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Randy Roman Coinage

Ancient Roman coins with sex scenes on them! Gives new meaning to the term "loose change," doesn't it?

(Via The Awl)

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Proud

After an inordinate amount of cock-teasing, New York State finally legalized gay marriage. Happy Pride, y'all!

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Pow-Pow-Power Gays... Pow-Pow-Power Gays... Pow-Pow Power Gays... POWER GAYS...

...Gays of New York! I particularly love the litigator who collects cow creamers (#44) at his Connecticut home.

Gentlemen, We Have The Technology. We Can Rebuild Him...

The Bionic Dog will be fighting crime any day now, I'm sure.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

An Arachnophile's Nightmare

I'm fascinated by things like social spiders, species that don't conform to their family's general plan. I guess I like the mavericks of the animal world. FYI, if you're seriously freaked out by spiders, be careful clicking that link.

Surprise! We're Still All A Little Bit Racist!

I always roll my eyes when people go on about how The Youngs (and I still am one, barely) are all "post-racial" now because of Obama and once all the old people die we'll live in Racialtopia, because it isn't true. We have a different, arguably better (at least marginally) relationship to race than other generations, but racism is still alive and well and will be for the foreseeable future. There's still plenty of work to be done, and I don't exclude myself from that.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Bourgeois Book Club

The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson

Like many, I had an Egyptomania phase in my youth. King Tut and the pyramids and gleaming gold are a hard siren's song to resist for a kid. My love of ancient history, including Egyptian, has never really faded, though, as evidenced by the many hours I spend watching horridly-CGIed documentaries on The History Channel and Discovery, and The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson has only renewed my ardor for the land Herodotus called "the temple of the world and the gift of the Nile."

Wilkinson takes on one of history's most daunting challenges: a comprehensive, one-volume history of ancient Egyptian civilization from prehistory to the death of Cleopatra, written for a popular audience. 'Tis surely a feat nearly as audacious and mind-boggling as the building of the pyramids themselves! But, like the pyramids, it was accomplished, and accomplished with sublime results. Quite simply, this is one of the best history books I've ever read.

Wilkinson eschews the typical "pyramids and Tut" version of Egyptian history. Indeed, his is an eye-openingly revisionist take. The pharaohs are as adept at casting about themselves a spell of mystery and romance today as they were in their own. We still think only of glorious statues and glittering treasure and all-powerful, but benevolent, god-kings. But they were autocrats, and like all autocrats were quite capable of using ruthless force and flagrant propaganda to bend people to their will. The life of a common Nile farmer was one of toil and disease and probably early death working land that wasn't his but rather the king's and often being conscripted into still-more toil in the grandiose construction projects the kings commanded to praise their own power and ensure their eternal life. If he did not mind this life, if he though his lot was fine, it was because his religion and his society had been carefully constructed to make him think this. And Egyptian history wasn't the placid, unchanging one often think of, and desperately projected by the Egyptians themselves, but full of rebellions, coups, invasions, and conquest.

And yet... To psychoanalyze every pharaoh, priest, and vizier over the course of 3000 years of history as megalomaniacal and cynical tyrants seems to carry things bit too far. Rulers can be just as inculcated with religious and cultural propaganda as anyone, and their own individuality must be considered. Also, as highly structured and bureaucratic as ancient Egypt was, the modern totalitarian regime, with its access to mass media and technology, can be orders of magnitude more intrusive and oppressive than the dreams of the most total autocrat in ancient history. Though the points that he makes about the darker side of pharaonic rule are an important corrective that points us towards a fuller picture of ancient life, one gets the feeling that Wilkinson himself knows that such comparisons can only be taken so far. I think he throws out comparisons to modern dictators like Kim Jong Il specifically for effect. Often grand statements about Egyptian totalitarianism are soon nuanced. And as he also points out, for all its inequality, the pharaonic system did bring order, stability, and widespread, if not exactly equitably shared, prosperity for centuries at a time.

Indeed, the resilience and power of its culture, which seduced and coopted conqueror after conqueror, and the fact that its general system of administration endured through all its trials and tribulations, point to the conclusion that it was well-suited to the needs of its people and environment. Ancient Egyptian culture was much more flexible and open than it even itself admitted. As gung-ho as they were to think and display themselves as a static, unchanging land, nothing can truly set itself outside the streams of history. Egyptian culture changed and adapted itself many times in response to new conditions, new ideas, and new threats, even as it cloaked them in trappings of the past. And not just conquest and conflict, but peaceful immigration, brought with them new peoples, ideas, and technologies. Despite its official xenophobia, which in some eras was incredibly strong, Egypt actually was quite cosmopolitan, multicultural, and welcoming of settlers... on its own terms. The sheer weight of its antiquity, ancient even in ancient times, and splendor almost inevitably assimilated those who came there, though.

I do wish to take issue with the designation of Cleopatra's death and the incorporation of Egypt into the Roman Empire as the end of ancient Egypt. Of course, to go farther would be adding to an already long chronicle, and Wilkinson is keeping with the general scholarly and popular consensus. However, I've always thought it was an erroneous demarcation. Roman emperors were often depicted as pharaohs and even continued the tradition of monumental building. More importantly, and as Wilkinson himself again and again stresses, what defined ancient Egypt more than anything else was its religion and its culture, neither of which ceased to exist the moment Cleopatra clasped an asp to her bosom. Tombs, monuments, and temples continued to be built and maintained for several hundred years. It is the triumph of Christianity that, in my totally non-professional view, really is the defining end of pharaonic civilization. But even thehn, though Egypt enthusiastically and rapidly converted, likely due in part to similarities between its own native religion and Christianity (the Christ-Mary/Horus-Isis relationship, the belief in immortality), the last hieroglyphs weren't carved until almost 400 AD, and Isis and other Egyptian gods were worshiped into the 500s despite the official closing of the temples. That, in my opinion, was the true end of Ancient Egypt.

Wilkinson's skills as a writer are remarkable. He doesn't bog down in the technical, yet never dumbs things down. Somehow, he makes what could have been an eye-glazing march of names and dates into a well-paced and compelling narrative. His command of the scholarship is total, and his ability to convey that information amazing.

Superficially, the gold and blue cover is elegantly attractive, the paper of the book delightfully creamy and aromatic, and the maps and illustrations, both black-and-white and full-color, are both stunning and informative. Enjoyable, engaging, and riveting, even the most casual (or not-so-casual) Egyptologist would find this book well worth the read.

Tuesday, June 07, 2011

X-Traordinarily Influential Cartoons

So I've been revisiting my cartoon-watching youth with DVDs of the 1990s X-Men cartoon. Definitely brings back memories. A few random observations:

I have the uncomfortable feeling that a great deal of my future sexuality was shaped by this show. A weakness for hairy, brawny men? A love of hot gingers? A thing for abs? A fetish for erudite, jocular blue-furred scientists? (Well, maybe that last one isn't actually a thing.) My taste in men may very well be directly attributable to a Saturday morning cartoon! In fact, I best this show totally sculpted a whole generation of gay boys' taste in men.

My GOD, is this show 90s! The hair! The clothes! Seriously, who the hell came up with those looks? Pink body armor? Jean Gray's "Hey, look at my vagina!" outfit? Storm's absolutely enormous hair? Bishop's mullet? And though it's become somewhat iconic, one does want to ask just what about yellow and blue screams "wolverine." (BTW, I'm sure this has been done in some comic somewhere at some point, because it's just such a neat idea, but one does have to wonder just who designs and sews all those superhero/villain costumes. Even the newest super-person seems to come on the scene already complete with snazzy outfit. Either superpowers come prepackaged with a talent for sewing, or there's a shop somewhere where they can go buy couture crime-fighting/supervillany ensembles. I picture Tim Gunn or someone taking an inside leg and asking, "So, Incredible Boob Woman, I'm thinking chartreuse and coral in a toile spandex. Oh, and I have one word for you: clamdiggers!")

As a kid, I actually liked Jubilee, a very, very unpopular opinion I've since found out. But, you know, I'm the same guy who loves the Ewoks and whose favorite Star Trek: The Next Generation character was Wesley, so I'm no stranger to unpopular opinions.

I'm vaguely, but not really, embarrassed to recall just how many times I would run around my house shouting, "I. Am. PHOENIX!111!!!"

Storm was and is my favorite. Such a badass, but in a quiet, dignified way, as befits a goddess. I just loved her voice, and the way she'd say stuff like "A rainstorm, to cool their hatred!" when she'd manipulate the weather.

Monday, June 06, 2011

That's One Pissed-Off Looking Rat!

Don't mess with no Armoured Rat! He looks like he'll cut a bitch!

Startling New Theory: Gold Is Just Something Leprechauns Shit Off The Edge of Rainbows!

So no one knows exactly where gold comes from. Its creation in supernovae and subsequent ejection into the interstellar medium, where it, along with all other naturally occurring elements, condense in areas with slightly-higher-than-average gravitational attraction relative to the rest of a particular nebula into stars and protoplanetary discs and then coalesce into planets with geology that concentrates certain elements in certain places, is just a theory. I mean, it's not based on exhaustive research in nuclear physics, astronomy, chemistry, geology, and metallurgy or anything, just something scientists made up to sound smart, making it as valid as any other so-called "theory." It could just as easily be the exhaust from Ra's solar barque, or petrified lion's fur, or Chthulu's snot! Who can really say? Certainly not infographic writers on financial websites talking about inflation-hedges!

Sunday, June 05, 2011