Misc. Blogging

The bewildering signs were "one of the great things we want to show people visiting us," says financial-services consultant Josh Kurtzig, a Washington native who lives in Beijing. Correcting them is "really taking away one of the joys of China."
-Teams of Linguists patrol Beijing before the Olympics. Link courtesy of The Bitter Scroll

Yesterday, i got to drive a broken-down car up City Road and around behind the regiment, while the car owner and some other random pushed me sedately along. What fun.

This article, which appears to be about cars, was headlined on the Times Online today under the rather strange title of "No One In Canada Ever Has An Orgasm". Jus thought I'd share the oddness with you.

Meanwhile... Over at Neil Gaiman's blog, you will find four enchanting "tourist guides" to the world of Stardust. Very cute, although I notice that over the course of the four of them there are rather a lot of visual boob jokes.
Here's my personal favourite:

Wonderful lines:
T: Oh, mother, I'm so sorry! Are you alright?
Y: No, I'm not! And i'm not your mother, so get off me!
T: You're... you're not my mother?
Y: Do I look like I'm your mother?
T: No. Sorry.

Does being an Anglo-Saxonist make you a nice person?

Because, based on the Anglo-Saxonists I know (all two of them), this seems to be the case. And I don't mean just the standard If-You're-Not-Nice-To-Your-Students-They'll-Bugger-Off-And-Study-Postmodernist-Literature kind of nice. By now you've all gathered that Melanie is exceedingly cool, so we won't go into that again. But this semester I've discovered that Daniel Anlezark is also a most lovely and obliging sort of person to have around (good news, as he's the only person around to supervise AS honours theses).
I'm taking Dan's class on Medieval Dreams & Visions, which is fun. I'm not taking his Anglo-Saxon class, due to being in a sort of composite class with the honours students, run by Melanie. Nevertheless, when in week four I found myself utterly incapable of locating pictures of the exeter book to practice paelography on, Dan happily found me photocopies of something to keep me occupied until I could get my hands on the real thing, or (as it actually turned out) Melanie gave up and copied it herself. Not entirely surprising, given that it's his field and all, but nevertheless very nice of him.
What's more unusual is that Dan has been very helpful when it comes to the essay I'm working on for David's Medieval Cosmology course. He was quite happy for me to steal an essay question he had set for D&V, and write it for Cosmology. And he gave me a run-down on the Anglo-Saxon Boethius and sent me off with the names for the two (both vr old) editions and a few ideas in my head. As it happens, it didn't take much reading before I decided to abandon the visionary question and go hunting something about the transmission of Boethian ideas into 9th C. England. So I have to think of another question. But Dan didn't know I'd do that, and his letting me steal the question solved what had been a great stress for me all semester.

So, that's the theory for this week: being an anglo-saxonist makes you a nice person.
And it's very nice, I think, to have very nice teachers.

Popular Medievalism and Stuffed Toys

Baba Brinkman raps the Canterbury Tales
(Courteously shared with me by goblinpaladin, whom i'm most glad to discover because he means i'm no longer the only blogging undergrad medievalist at USyd. Now Jenny must mock both of us together)
Anyway, I think it's rather cool. When you think about rap you're supposed to think of da boyz in da hood, leaping into impromtu story and social critique from the margins... Which is somewhat like the image you're supposed to get from the Tales: da pilgrimz on da road, launching into story and social critique. Both of which are constructed- some pilgrims may have made up stories, and some rappers may be able to compose on the hoof, but not these ones here.
Brinkman is Canadian and will be performing at the Brisbane Writers Festival in a few weeks. How's that for popular medievalism, Dr Nokes?

Odd stuff from Slouching Towards Extimacy:
What to get the Anglo-Saxonist Who Has Everything: Viking Kitten Soft Toy
I quote from the website: This fearsome Norse Warrior loves pillaging and plundering all in his path… as he bobs around little ponds in his tiny boat. He’s 7 inches tall and has the toughest, most threatening, helmet and weaponry made purely from felt and stuffing.
And observe said kittens in a musical interlude with much testosterone