(no subject)

I am writing a paper. Not, of course, at this moment, but if someone asked me the question "what did you do last night," I would answer, "I wrote a paper." I hope that by five I will be entitled to use the perfective in Russian.

This paper is about the relationship of power and punishment in the theory of Michel Foucault. I do not like Michel Foucault very much, for various reasons.

This paper is also a giant pain. I would much rather not be writing it, for now I must reread the record of the trial of Tempel Anneke for witchcraft, which is very very long, and not all that interesting.

I am on my fourth cup of tea for the day. I will probably make it to ten by the end of the night.

ETA: What the hell is this?

"On Thursdays during the Ember days, periods of fasting for the Catholic Church, the Benandanti claimed their spirits would leave their bodies at night in the form of small animals (wolves, butterflies and rats in the Friuli). The spirits of the men would go to the fields to fight evil witches (malandanti). The Benandanti men fought with fennel stalks, while the dark witches were armed with sorghum stalks (sorghum was used for witches' brooms, and the "brooms' sorghum" was one of the most current type of sorghum [2]). If the men prevailed, the harvest would be plentiful."

Actually, Guy Gavriel Kay uses this in Tigana.