Twitterpated

• 06:32 I have to get blood drawn this morning. #
• 06:37 @kidicarus222 Mexican Train sounds more like a kind of alcohol than a board game. #
• 06:37 @kidicarus222 Was one of them at the end of the Simpsons episode "Lisa's Sax"? #
• 19:27 I had a dream about a porno store that had a children's play area. I wonder if that would work in real life. #
• 19:56 @twobitme As dumb as smoking Q-Tips? I remember kids in elementary school doing that. #
• 20:01 Hey, @eehouls! Get a copy of "Mike Milligan and His Steam Shovel"! #
• 20:01 I remember liking that book as a kid. I had a thing for construction equipment. Maybe a lot of kids do. #
• 20:02 I heard someone at work say that Papa John's was the only fast food pizza they liked. Since when is takeout pizza fast food? #
• 20:03 I guess you could consider the places that sell preheated pizza slices as fast food joints, though. #
• 20:03 I like Pizza Hut a lot, but I can see how other people don't. Their cheese has kind of an unusual flavor. #
• 20:05 So we're back to car windows being frosted in the mornings, and sunniness in the afternoons? Make up your mind, Mother Nature! #
• 20:09 The first King of Poland was named "Boleslaw"? #
• 20:26 Was there ever a time when Greta Van Susteren was capable of opening her mouth all the way? #
• 21:23 If Bill Maher really wanted to do talk-show-style interviews, why did he pretend he was making a Real Time episode at all? #
• 21:25 I find it kind of hard to believe that Maher thought "The Passion of the Christ" was a good film. #
• 21:26 @JaredofMo No, I've never heard of Papa Murphy's, although I've had bake-at-home pizza from other places. #
• 21:27 @JaredofMo My point was that this guy tried to say Papa John's was fast food, when it isn't. It's cooked in an actual oven. #
• 00:01 Is it possible to track referrals to LiveJournals? #

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Apple Venus on a Half-Open Shell

I'm getting bored with these song-by-song reviews, but since I don't like to leave the project unfinished, here's my take on XTC's comeback album, Apple Venus Volume 1. It was released in 1999, after the band's strike with Virgin Records had been settled (well, maybe not totally, but enough so that XTC could put out a record on another label). I had just recently become a fan of the band when this was released. I bought it on the release date, and I was honestly blown away by it. The band obviously hadn't lost any of their skill during the years. Too bad they only released one other album after this.



( Let us talk about some trivial things we like. )

All right, just one album left to go, and I'll hold off on this series of posts for a little while. I'll probably bring it back eventually, once my interest in it is rekindled. But anyway, look forward to Wasp Star at some point in the near future.

See the Green Man blow his kiss from high church walls

My original plan for today was a post on Theseus, but listening to the song "Green Man" tempted me to find out a little about...well, I think you can figure it out. What's harder to figure out, however, is exactly who the Green Man figures were supposed to represent. The name "Green Man" wasn't coined until 1939, and refers to various stone faces with vegetation either surrounding them or as actual facial features. They might not all be depictions of the same guy, but the general consensus seems to be that they were fertility and woodland deities. The presence of such presumably pagan figures on English churches might be traced to the early Christian traditions of incorporating rather than eradicating pagan traditions, although this page suggests that they might have been regarded as demons by Christians in the Middle Ages. That's the case for a lot of pagan deities, though, so it's certainly possible that both are true.

The Green Man has been linked to any number of mythological figures related to plants and forests, including Odin, the horned god Cernunnos (note to self: do a post on horned gods at some point), the Roman Sylvanus, leaf-clad forest fairies, and even Robin Hood and Father Christmas. And with May coming up pretty soon, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the English May Day figure known as Jack in the Green. I'll probably have a little more to say about him once May Day actually rolls around.

So, what's next for my mythological post series? Well, I'm running out of more obvious ideas, but Theseus is definitely going to be the subject of one of them. And since St. George's Day is on Thursday, I might well have something to say about the dragon-slaying saint next week. I'd like to do an entire post on Ragnarok, and there's always the horned god idea I mentioned earlier in this entry. Any other ideas?