The Things We Blog About
Neil Gaiman’s metacommentary about the post in which he notes the 8th anniversary of his blog:
And I thought, eight years ago, when I began carefully charting the progress of American Gods, nervously dipping my toes into the waters of blogging, would I have imagined a future in which, instead of recording the vicissitudes of bringing a book into the world, I would be writing about not-even-interestingly missing cups of cold camomile tea?
And I thought, yup. Sounds about right. Happy Eighth birthday, blog.
On being plagiarized
As we all know, one of the problems of posting our work publicly is it can be taken by others and presented as their own work. In a post about Hugin and Munin, Dark Raven has incorporated my own musings on Odin’s two ravens as a mythic representation of the interconnection of thought and memory as understood in medieval memory theory verbatim and without citation.
A Google Alert drew my attention to the use of machina memorialis in relation to Hugin and Munin, and at first I thought, “cool, someone’s citing me, I want to see what they’re saying.” Quite disappointed to find that they’re not saying anything new. Dark Raven’s added an introduction to who the ravens are, the relevant passage from “Grímnismál” as well as the passage from Snorri’s Edda that I included, added some cool images, and reversed the order of my two paragraphs. The plagiarized passages from Dark Raven’s blog read as such:
This legend is at least as old as the 13th Century when Snorri wrote the Prose Edda. We also find reference to the ravens in the thirteenth-century Codex Regius, the manuscript which contains the peom “Grímnismál,” “Grimnir’s Sayings.” We know, however, that the Codex Regius is a copy of another manuscript and it is believed many of the poems are much older than the thirteenth-century manuscript date. Likewise, exactly how far back Hugin and Munin date is unclear, but images of Odin and his two ravens are found in art dating to the Migration Period (ca. 400 – 600 CE).
In these two ravens I see a mythic representation of the connection between thought and memory. Our ability to think allows us to access and make use of our memories. And our memories, whether they are naturally or artificially stored, represent that which we know, what we call knowledge. Just as Hugin and Munin are separate but closely related entities, thought and memory are discrete but connected cognitive functions.Thought allows us to make use of our memories by means of reminiscentia, while at the same time our memories serve as a machina memorialis, as the engine of thought. Thought and memory being knowledge, must be shared, just as the ravens shared there knowledge with Odin.
The passages, from my web site, read thusly:
In these two ravens I see a mythic representation of the connection between thought and memory. Our ability to think allows us to access and make use of our memories. And our memories, whether they are naturally or artificially stored, represent that which we know, what we call knowledge. Just as Hugin and Munin are separate but closely related entities, thought and memory are discrete but connected cognitive functions.Thought allows us to make use of our memories by means of reminiscentia, while at the same time our memories serve as a machina memorialis, as the engine of thought.
This legend is at least as old as the 13th Century when Snorri wrote the Prose Edda. We also find reference to the ravens in the thirteenth-century Codex Regius, the manuscript which contains the peom “Grímnismál,” “Grimnir’s Sayings.” We know, however, that the Codex Regius is a copy of another manuscript and it is believed many of the poems are much older than the thirteenth-century manuscript date. Likewise, exactly how far back Hugin and Munin date is unclear, but images of Odin and his two ravens are found in art dating to the Migration Period (ca. 400 – 600 CE).
Dark Raven hasn’t even bothered to fix my typos.
For the record, I don’t mind finding my words on someone else’s blog. Hell, some of my blog posts are little more than someone else’s words. Blogs can and do function as commonplace books. It’s the link, the acknowledgement, that I’d like to see.
DIY Lolcats
Looking to make your own contribution to I Can Has Cheezburger? The LolCat Build(e)r is for you. It won’t help you with the grammar, however. For that, take a look at Cats Can Has Grammar.
Looking for a Hellmouth Vacation?
Via Neil Gaiman’s blog, I see there’s supposed to be a subterranean inferno burning in Uzbekistan. The story goes–who knows if it’s true as everything I’ve found seems to just be recycled content like this post is–that thirty-five years ago drillers looking for gas collapsed the roof of a huge cavern full of poisonous gas, which they set on fire with the intent of burning it off. It is, supposedly, still burning. I should note that some sources place it in Turkmenistan rather than Uzbekistan. Here’s a picture of the place, via My Blue Star Life:
Gaiman linked to a set at Slightlywarped.com’s Curiosities. You might also want to check out this video.
Update: A follow up on Gaiman’s blog (sent in by a reader) indicates that the site in question is in Turkmenistan, located here in Google maps.
Beowulf and Fundamentalism
Walter Ong has an interesting discussion on the nature of fundamentalism in his unpublished lecture “Voice, Text, Fundamentalism, Hermeneutic, and God’s Word: The Personal Grounding of Truth1”(available at the Walter J. Ong Collection’s Lectures page). Fundamentalism (religious, cultural, etc.), according to Ong, is rooted in textual bias, which is a particularly useful insight for understanding “Beowulf: Fiction or History?” which is another one of those Beowulf proves the Bible/disproves evolution articles. Here’s my favorite passage, which got me thinking about Ong’s discussion of fundamentalism :
Only one manuscript of the original poem exists. People found it, partly burned, in England about five hundred years after Beowulf lived. No one knows who originally wrote it. Many literature books say that it is fiction, one of the earliest examples we have of an English novel. But if someone were writing fiction, he would not name so many real people; he would invent characters as novelists do. And if someone wrote it long after the events, he would not know all those real people who lived in Beowulf’s time. It must have been first written at or near the time that Beowulf lived. All parts of the story hold together as though one person wrote it. It does not show evidence that bards sang it and added and changed as the years moved along.
Fiction is fiction and fact is fact and never shall the two be mixed. I’ll leave the factual errors in this paragraph (and the essay as a whole) alone.
It’s important for the author of this article to establish Beowulf as history rather than fiction, that the very fact of being written down inherently proves that the poem is about real events, so that the she can argue, two paragraphs later:
Why, then, do so many literature critics say that Beowulf is fiction? It is because they do not believe that dinosaur creatures lived at the same time men lived. Their evolutionary worldview says that dinosaurs lived long ages before men evolved on the earth. Therefore, in their minds, this all must be fiction. But with a Biblical worldview, we can see that dinosaurs entered the ark with Noah—land species at least—and they lived on the earth again after the Flood. But the post-Flood earth was not so hospitable to large creatures and they eventually became almost extinct.
Grendel, you see, as was already explained in this piece, is not an individual monster but a species:
The main monster in the story of Beowulf is Grendel. That is capitalized as though it is a proper name like Fido or Black Beauty. But it was a species of serpent. People spoke of grendels pond or grendels pit or grendels wood, naming them according to where they lived. Grendel in the story was a grendel mere because he lived in a large brackish pond full of coarse ferns. He probably had a loud, deep-throated growl. Hints about that are an ancient word grindill that means to bellow, and a Middle English word grindel that means angry.
Hmmm…I thought all this seemed familiar. Seems I blogged about this piece 15 months ago, then discussing it within the context of mnemonic socialization. Since I discuss this in terms of fundamentalism, I’ll let it stand.
Thanks to highlyeccentric, who brought this piece back to my attention via a comment posted on Unlocked Wordhoard.
- See in particular the section “Textual Bias, Fundamentalism, and the ‘I’” (pp. 14-22). This essay is adapted from his essay “Hermeneutic Forever: Voice, Text, Digitization, and the ‘I’.” [↩]
YahooGroups and Spam
I’m guessing this isn’t news to many people–or maybe it is, maybe I’m getting hit because the Kairos ed board uses YahooGroups to discuss business–some spammer is signing me up for YahooGroups lists which only seem to exist for the purposes of distributing spam. Today I learn that I’m subscribed to Fanculture, Composing_selves, and Rhetorical_ethics just so I could get three more messages about “Trendy Used Laptops.” What most interests me about this is how targeted these fake lists are. I don’t think I’d join a list called fanculture, but if you’re a long-time reader of this blog you’ll know I hover around the periphery of a few fandoms. And, well, composing_selves and rhetorical_ethics? Again, I’m not likely to join those particular lists, but largely because there’s only so many lists one can be subscribed to. If they got any closer, say Technorhetorician_medievalists_who_study_memory@yahoogroups.com, I’d suspect a friend was having a bit of fun.
Eau de Cthulhu
So, I’d heard about Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Perfume Oils, having read about their Good Omens and Stardust and other Neil Gaimanish perfume oils on Gaiman’s blog. Not being interested in perfumes and colognes, I didn’t actually follow the link. My wife, who heard about Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab the other day (someone was raving about their Embalming Fluid scent), took a look and told me to check the site out.
They’ve got lots of scents. Lots of unusual scents. My favorite line is Picnic in Arkham, which includes scents named for (and inspired by) all your Lovecraft favorites such as The Deep Ones, Azathoth, Y’ha-Nthlei, Brown Jenkins, and, of course:
CTHULHU
If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings… It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence…A creeping, wet, slithering scent, dripping with seaweed, oceanic plants and dark, unfathomable waters.
I love that description: “A creeping, wet, slithering scent, dripping with seaweed, oceanic plants and dark, unfathomable waters.” I’m tempted to order samples just to find out what Cthulhu and gang smell like.
If Lovecraft or scents of unspeakable horrors aren’t your thing, you’re sure to find something of interest at the site. For instance, who could pass up Hymn or Jailbait from the Sin & Salvation collection, or the scents of Kyoto, London, and Vinland from the Wanderlust collection? While the Muses are part of the Excolo, their mother Mnemosyne, unfortunately, is not. My favorite, however, may just be
ODIN
Odin is highest and eldest of the Æsir: he rules all things, and mighty as are the other gods, they all serve him as children obey a father. The All-Father, Lord of Wisdom and War. Odin’s name itself translates to “fury”, “excitation” and “poetry”and that is the core of His essence. He is the God of Victory, and holds sway over hunting, verse, war-lust and berserkers, magic, illumination, foresight, death, plots and machinations, and He dispenses the Mead of Inspiration to poets from his sacred vessel, Óð-rœri. He gifted mankind with runes, both sacred and mundane, and the ability to use them for both communication and magical work. He grants glory and madness, inspiration and courage, power and wisdom. He commands the einheriar of his Hall, Valhalla, and the Valkyries that claim the souls of valiant warriors. Lord Odin’s favored weapon is the spear Gugnir, which he uses to claim those chosen to die in battle. He is accompanied by his ravens, Hugin and Munin [thought and memory], and his wolves, Geri and Freki [the Greedy], and rides an eight-legged horse, Sleipner, that is, in itself, symbolic of death. His scent is dry elm bark, amaranth, warrior’s musk, and Odin’s Nine Herbs of Power.
If only there were scents for his ravens…
Absolute Dad?
Having covered a number of definitions of rhetoric as a preface to study of the history of rhetoric, I asked the students in the Rhetorical History class to pick a short text and discuss it rhetorically. One student chose this Absolute ad. (Click on the image for a larger version.)
I read a description of this ad before I saw it, and I was sure it was one of Adbuster’s spoofs on the Absolute campaign. It’s not. As a married male in my 30s, I assume that I’m part of the target audience for this ad, but I don’t get it. In fact, it just weirds/creeps me out.
South Park Mac vs. PC
Via Lance Strate, a South Parkian parody of Apple’s Mac and PC ads:
As Lance notes, the URL for South Park Studio in the video is wrong. You’ll find it at www.sp-studio.de.
Best Google Referrer Ever?
I’m the top hit for that?
Twitter Feed- Four separate sets of plans canceled on me this weekend. With few friends in this state, that's an epic failure.
- One class down and one to go.
- The Call of Cthulhu in Under 2 Minutes http://nblo.gs/7sqXb
