Just Call Me "Agave the Blest"

It's finals week, with all that entails. I just finished a paper on Euripides' Bacchae, and was inspired to create short comic version of the climactic scene at the end, when Agave, still in the throes of Dionysiac madness, presents the severed head of her son Pentheus to her Cadmus, her father:

Agave: Now, father,
ours can be the proudest boast of living men.
For you are now the father of the bravest daughters
in the word. All of your daughters are brave,
but I above the rest. I have left my shuttle
at the loom; I raised my sight to higher things--
to hunting animals with my bare hands.
You see?
Here in my hands I hold the quarry of my chase,
a trophy for our house. Take it, Father, take it.
Glory in my kill and invite your friends to share
the feast of triumph. For you are blest, Father,
by this great deed I have done.

Cadmus: This is a grief
so great it knows no size. I cannot look.
This is the awful murder your hands have done.
This, this is the noble victim you have slaughtered
to the gods. And to share a feast like this
you now invite all Thebes and me?
O gods,
how terribly I pity you and then myself.
Justly--too, too justly--has lord Bromius,
this god of our own blood, destroyed us all,
every one.
(Bacchae of Euripides, Arrowsmith trans. 1960)

Here is my take on the scene:



Moral of the story: do not fuck with Dionysus.

I Aten't Dead. No, Seriously.

Well, that took longer than anticipated. I meant to start posting again as soon as I replaced the batteries in my camera, but in my usual procrastinatory fashion, I've only just now gotten around to it. So, without further ado, here are a couple of doodles for your perusal:

This here is a very strange Wolverine. He appears to have lost a fight with Picasso, or possibly Dali. As you might expect, he is not too pleased about this, and is taking out his bestial rage on my math notes.


This is how they got babies back in the days of Queen Victoria. Ladies would just be sitting around, thinking pious thoughts, when --POOF! Baby! This is the sort of thing I learn in my Charlotte Bronte class.


Anyway, I have no idea if anyone even reads this anymore, but I hope to get back into posting doodles at something resembling regular intervals. They will doubtless be interspersed with Cat Stories and fangirling, but I beg my readers' indulgence...

Q: What do you get

when you cross Anthony Ainley and a root vegetable?

A: This.

Seriously, you guys! "Radish" really does come from the Latin "radix", so CLEARLY a pun on "the root of all evil" needed to be made! I'm just doing my duty as an English/Classics major!

...I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

We Are Living in an Age of Marvels

Technology is truly amazing, no? A show airs in London on saturday night, and thanks to the wonders of the International Date Line and internet video hosting, I can watch it a few hours later! Afterwards, I can read discussion and reaction posts from fans all over the globe who have done likewise. Such is the nature of the World Wide Web.

But I'm not here to talk about that. No, internet TV and its dubious legality pale in comparison to what else this modern age has produced. Millenia of human achievements have brought us to this point. That's right:

Virtual Bubble Wrap.

Rome and Teh Intarwebz

It's days like this that remind me why I've stuck with Latin. Going over Amphitryon in today's class, the following exchange

Mercurius: Ain vero?
Sosia: Aio enim vero.

was translated thus:

Mercurius: O RLY?
Sosia: YA RLY.

In the same spirit, I made an icon for my nonexistent livejournal:

...Have I mentioned how psyched I am about season 4?

I mean, seriously. Agatha Christie! Pompeii! Giant Bees! A finale that promises to be even more cracktacular than Last of the Time Lords! Man, this is gonna be epic.

...Yeah, that's pretty much it. Back at school, woo.

The Blog Post of Rassilon

By rights I should be home on spring break right now, in Maryland, where March is actually considered one of the spring months. But for what are no doubt deep and inscrutable reasons of her own, Mother Nature decided to dump fourteen inches of snow on NE Ohio. Long story short, my flight got cancelled and I'm essentially snowed into my dorm room until at least tomorrow afternoon. But I have a computer with an internet connection, so I've spent the last day-and-a-half amusing myself by reading vast reams of fanfic and watching British tv shows on the internet. Hopefully the weather will clear up soon so I can go home and do the same thing, only with regular meals.

Okay, so this is the part where I start wittering incoherently about Doctor Who like the pathetic fangeek that I am, and you nod politely and hit the "back" button because you have no idea what I'm going on about. Consider yourself warned.

So...I watched "The Five Doctors" today, and it is kind of the best thing ever. In a completely cracktastic, whovian, Oh My God Are You Serious sort of way, of course. Among the factors contributing to its awesomeness:

--spinny floating triangle of Death! (or temporal displacement)

--Gallifrey! Which totally does not look like a quarry at all! And silly time lord hats!

--Tegan! Turlough! Sarah Jane! The Brig! The Master! Daleks! Cybermen! Everybody who has ever been in Doctor Who ever! It's great!

--"He's my best enemy". OMG EXACTLY.

--The Master being all, "You won't let me help you, fine, I will KEEL YOU ALL!" Definitely nowhere near the level of batshit he reaches in the s3 finale (no rocking out to the Scissor Sisters, just lots of smirking and some manaical laughter), but there's definitely a screw loose somewhere. Though to be fair, the same could be said of the Doctor.

--The Master being all, "Mwahaha, fools!" and then getting pwned by the Brigadier. Hah.

Some Proper Doodles, Finally

At long last, I got around to replacing the batteries in my camera. So tonight, I present you with an exciting tour of my Religions spiral!

First, there's a strange creature that appears to have escaped from the Book of Kells to lurk in my margins:


Then there's the creepy gas mask kid from Doctor Who...


And in case that wasn't nerdy enough, here's a cartoon that only makes sense if you're familiar with both season 3 of Doctor Who and Plautus' Amphytryon: Jupiter's cover is blown by a Judoon platoon.


I have no idea what prompted me to draw a pair of Antebellum fauns, but there you have it...


To conclude, here's another margin-lurking beastie:

OMGWTFBBC!

I have this thing that happens when I watch too much British television where my internal monologue acquires a British accent. This is a bit maddening because I keep wanting to say things like "bloody" and "nutter" but I can't because I'm American and would sound daft ("daft" is also on the list).

Anyhow, this sad state of affairs has come about because I have shiny new Obsession of the Month. Actually, more like two. Or possibly three...

First, Doctor Who. I mean, how could I resist a show where the title character travels through time and space in a blue police box? I watched a few episodes, my eyes were opened, and I asked, "where have you been all my life?" I flew through the New Series, and now I'm doing my best to catch up on forty-odd years of the old-school stuff. I went from "um, wasn't that the one with the guy in the scarf?" to being able to rattle off all ten doctors and a wealth of obscure trivia. This fandom has eaten my brain.

Second, Torchwood. This is a Doctor Who spinoff, shares a few characters (Martha Jones ftw!), and takes place in the same universe (whoniverse?). It's sort of CSI Cardiff meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and is supposed to be a sort of "Doctor Who for grown-ups". That basically means that there's cussing and everyone hooks up with everyone else (seriously, I am not exaggerating. It's like watching fanfiction). It's great fun.

Third, Life on Mars. This is unlike the other two in that it isn't really a proper obsession (yet, anyhow) and it's the sort of thing I mentally class as "Sci-fi for people who don't like sci-fi". The premise hinges on time travel: a police investigator is hit by a car in 2006 and wakes up in 1973. But even though that's a crucial plot point, LoM isn't really a show about time travel. It's a well-crafted, subtle, beautiful, trippy story in 16 episodes. Seriously, I cannot recommend this show enough.

Okay, now that I've satisfied the "my fandoms, let me show you them!" urge, I'm going to shut up and do some homework. Or finish watching Life on Mars.

...As a rather tangential and irrelevant sidenote, I kind of had a hard time watching the first few episodes of LoM because the only other role I'd seen John Simm in was the Master in Doctor Who. That kind of imprinted itself on my brain, and consequently I kept expecting Sam Tyler to turn into an evil psychopathic Time Lord. It was a bit disconcerting.

Kylie Returns, With Bad Visual Puns!

For those who get it and/or find it amusing: welcome to the Irredeemable Geekitude Line. You just crossed it.

For those who don't: turn back while you still can.

In other news: Plautus is more fun than Cicero, Chaucer is still awesome, and Doctor Who is my new Obsession du Jour. Squee, rants, and meta may be forthcoming, if I ever get around to it.