Theodora Elucubrare

So I'm doing reading for the paper due May 19th, not the one due Tuesday morning, or even better, writing the one due Monday afternoon. Whatever, that's what the weekend's for, right?

Anyway, I am glad I did, because I've found my new favorite theories: Olaus Rudbeck, Atlantica, and Daniel Juslenius, Aboa vetus et nova. The first is Swedish, and argues that - wait, I might as well use all of William Wilson's summary - "which 'established' that Sweden was in reality the legendary island Atlantis, the Hyperborean region of Greek mythology... and the source of all culture." Well then.

Of course, the Finns couldn't take this lying down. If the Swedes were going to claim crazy things, well then the Finns were going to claim crazier things! Again, William Wilson summarizes: "He went still farther, boasting that Finnish was actually one of the basic languages created at the confusion of tongues." Of course, this was not all the ancient Finns had done: "The Finns had migrated to their northern home... under the leadership of Noah's grandson Magog. There they had become a mighty warlike nation and had subdued armies as far away as Spain. The women, too, participated in these heroic struggles, for, as Juslenius explained, the Amazons of Greek mythology had lived in Finland."

And nothing like this would be complete without a claim of a great conspiracy against your favored group (which, in the case of people like von Daniken, includes... yourself): "However, the envious Swedes... had destroyed all traces of this learning in order to crush Finnish national feeling."

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.

It's 3:33 AM, and I just finished my history paper and it's only a week late and oh God it's finally DONE. I am so happy. Now I don't have to think for the rest of the school year, especially since the SATs are over.


And the papacy should have been at Rome. Duh.


Damn French.

But the English were wrong in the Hundred Years' War. Damn English.