[Other voices:] Maailman onnellisin maa

The last time I really listened to music "in my target language" was back when I was studying Cambodian. Kommando Tehtävä are probably too left wing for me… but they're certainly of more interest than the average Beijing punk band.

Joku taas rappukäytävään oksentaa
Viikonloppuisin baarissa turpaan saa
Viinanhuuruista melankoliaa
Joka neljäs meistä lottoaa

Someone is throwing up in the stairwell again
You get a mouthful at the bar on weekends
Melancholy from alcohol fumes
One in four of us plays the lottery

Kyllä Suomi on maailman paras maa
Täällä Karpollakin riittää asiaa
Hengitysilmastakin veroa kai maksaa saa
Korkeakulttuuria Salkkarit toimittaa

Yes, Finland is the best country in the world
There is enough to do here in Karpo
I guess you have to pay a tax on the air you breathe
High culture delivered by Salkkarit*

[A Finnish TV "soap opera" that has been broadcasting continuously since 1999: like my own life, it's just one sex scandal after another, apparently.] 🦓

Ei täällä töissäkäynti kannata
Suomessa ei saa rikastua
Köyhiltä tuet pois leikataan
Ne säästötoimiksi meikataan
Kyllä Suomi on maailman paras maa
Täällä Karpollakin riittää asiaa
Hengitysilmastakin veroa kai maksaa saa…

It's not worth working here
You can't get rich in Finland
They're cutting subsidies for the poor
They're pretending to be austerity measures
Yes, Finland is the best country in the world
There's plenty to do here in Karpo too
I guess you have to pay tax even on the air you breathe…

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9uXpWOodss 

Book vs. Show: "Family Honor" in ASOIAF and HOTD.

Link to the video on "From Ink to Inc.", a relatively unknown channel: https://youtu.be/gMfIwIWJ6vo

I will, eventually, also upload this to à-bas-le-ciel —my well-established, utterly unknown channel. ;-) 

Josh Menchions: the King of Comedy. In Newfoundland.

 
LINK: https://youtu.be/Nh9PzrLARcQ

Daemon Must Die, Daenerys Must Die, Jon Snow Must Die: the Real Villains of ASOIAF & HOTD.

LINK: https://youtu.be/2fEIeJEZAMM

I said "Daemon Blackfyre" when I meant "Daemon Targaryen" AGAIN.  Throughout THE WHOLE VIDEO.  You'll figure it out.  House of the Dragon Season 3. #hotd #asoiaf  #hotdseason3 #season3 #s3 #grrm #gameofthrones For those who don't know, "ASOIAF" = A Song of Ice and Fire, a broader category (of books) that includes both House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones.

The dotted line between poetry and reality: the dotted line between Catullus and Cicero.

The source being quoted (and promoted) here was written in a less barbaric and brutal era of internet communications, 2014, when humanity was not exclusively devoted to wearing a mask, wielding a knife, and stabbing itself in the back:

‘Adulter, impudicus, sequester‘ convicium est, non accusatio.

(‘Adulterer, pervert, dealer in bribes’, this is the language of slander, not of prosecution.)

The strange tale told (and in large part concealed) in Cicero's strange Pro Caelio is the only evidence we have that what Catullus had to say about his own sex life was not fictional —and was not intended to be seen as fictional by his contemporaries.

Our Pro Caelio purports to be the speech delivered by Cicero to conclude the defence; a speech which is famous among classicists for its over-the-top denunciation of the sexual mores of the prosecution’s star witness, Clodia (a woman alleged to have been the inspiration for Catullus’ lover, [referred to in his poems by the pseudonym] Lesbia).

Here is the short article I am drawing your attention to:

https://whatwouldcicerodo.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/power-corruption-and-lies-in-defence-of-caelius/

The author is still alive and (as is typical of this era of the internet) continues posting to Instagram, but no longer to his (long abandoned) blog, linked to above.

https://www.instagram.com/sillettandrew/

York University —quite possibly the most miserable place on this earth that I have ever set foot— somehow ended up making a translation of the Pro Caelio available to the public without crediting the translator.

[Cicero:] But now I will handle her [Clodia, a.k.a. Catullus's Lesbia] with moderation, and proceed no further than my honor and the case itself demand. I have never thought it right to take up arms against a lady, especially against one whose arms are so open to all.

The denunciation that ensues, delayed by many digressions to contrast the morals of "the fallen age" we are (now) living in to the glorious past of a still-more-ancient Greece and Rome, tells us more about Cicero's character than it does about Clodia or Caelio or Catullus.

https://www.yorku.ca/pswarney/Texts/pro-caelio-trans.htm

What I do is esoteric: I don't explain anything to anyone.

What if this is going nowhere? #HOTD #ASOIAF

 

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUptMmb9IKs

House of the Dragon Season 3. #hotdseason3 #season3 #s3 #grrm #gameofthrones For those who don't know, "ASOIAF" = A Song of Ice and Fire, a broader category (of books) that includes both House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones.

Emily Ratajkowski, you're wrong for this one.

I think this one is not appropriate for any of my podcasts… so it will remain a youtube exclusive.

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7hkc-nlxVU

Here's the link to the article… although it is an article about an article, I note. https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/emily-ratajkowski-used-sex-to-become-new-woman-after-divorce/ She has said of herself that she stopped having sex with her husband around precisely this time when he'd cheated on her ("[they] stopped being intimate six months after she gave birth") although I would not assume a six month timeline, nor would I assume they had a wonderful sex life immediately before those six months —I would just assume that the decline of their sex lives, as a couple, was somehow related to his infidelity (perhaps his infidelity was the cause of the decline, rather than merely being an effect of the decline, we don't know).

Like Pythons Pretending to Be Ants.

Is anyone else here old enough to remember Couchsurfing?

Supernatural aspects of daily life: esoteric aspects of nihilism.

Happiness: a mask without a face.

The longest three minutes of your whole entire life. ;-)

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qYW-yrsTAK0