Pas de Maru, Part 2

Since I’m looking at my taxes in these last days before the deadline, I’m feeling especially strongly that the world is futile, existence meaningless and things in general have a certain, well, je ne sais quoi.

In short, I’m feeling feline and French. So here’s something that encapsulates the essence of ennui:

Je m'excuse, mais...I'll just pour myself un verre and contemplate les jeux de Jerry Lewis.

Beats the hell out of taxes.

Rome fast & loose

I picked up Robert Hughes’ Rome, A Cultural, Visual, & Personal History, because of a book review I read in some publication.

Thank God I picked it up from the library for free, because it’s such a disjointed, tedious and really annoying effort, that I’d have felt cheated even finding it on Amazon at a discount.

First of all—what is up with writing more than 450 pages of text covering more than 3000 years of civic history…and not providing any maps? Not one freakin’ map to document the growth of the city over those millennia.

I had the same complaint about Alistair Horne’s Seven Ages of Paris. But at least Horne didn’t play fast and loose with the actual, you know, history.

And Hughes is just pathetic—as are his editors, apparently. He was principal art critic for Time for years; I'm just wondering where he got to be so sloppy?

My primary examples come early in his narrative as he’s talking about the late Republic and early Empire. He gets names and dates wrong in a big way, changes family relationships and the like.

He makes Tiberius the elder son of Augustus by Livia—which would come as a surprise to his actual father, Tiberius Claudius Nero. (It’s true that Augustus adopted Tiberius, but that’s not what Hughes is saying; he's talking about a blood relationship.)

He claims that Caligula, (r. 37-41 C.E.), built the Tullianum (Mamertine Prison), but then puts the executions of both Jugurtha and Vercingetorix there—stating the latter was beheaded in 46 C.E. The prison dates from the 7^th Century B.C.E. (so, 700 years Before Caligula Emerged), and Vercingetorix was strangled in 46 B.C.E.

(Hughes did get Jugurtha’s death by starvation right, though. And the date. Sort of a nice change.)

I’m not a classicist and yet those things just jump out, and make me wonder what other codswallop he was purveying over the historical periods I really don’t know.

Like “the French Revolution broke out in 1792.” Seriously? Hughes has never heard of Bastille Day?

And, finally—no citing of sources. He’s got a bibliography but apparently neither he nor his editors nor his publisher could be bothered to actually cite the source of his various facts.

Perhaps, given the inaccuracy of those facts, he was just spitballing for the full 450 pages. 

Pachyderm road rage

So, I received this via email last week: guy in the VW is evidently in a hurry & decides to pass the slow-moving elephant. &, as you might imagine, the pachyderm isn’t having it.

Yay, elephant!

But it occurs to me that the sort of guy who tries to pass an elephant on a dirt road in Africa is probably exactly the sort of guy who tries to put himself & two buddies through a self-serve car wash in a shopping cart.

I’m concerned that these people may reproduce. Or vote.

Beam me up

This bit of web weirdness came my way: “daguerreotypes” of Star Trek characters.

Well, of course. Why not?

But a couple of thoughts:

First: Kirk looks like he served in Winston Churchill’s regiment, the 4^th Queen’s Own Hussars:

Although he doesn’t seem to have any campaign medals.

(Okay, I don’t know from Victorian uniforms. But I can see the presence or absence of medals.)

Second—why only the original Star Trek?

Feline eggstravaganza

Since we’ve had Big Cats celebrating for Christmas, I thought there’d be a certain balance to showing them on a Big Cat Easter Egg Hunt. 

Some of the eggs look like they're stuffed with, well, eggs. Others--well, I'm thinking maybe some industrial-strength catnip.