Phonetic Survey!

Because you asked for it! Because Labov can’t call everybody in America’s house! Because it can be done!

There’s a new North American English dialect survey going on, and they want you and you and you to contribute. Basically, the idea is to amass as large a database of recordings as possible, so they had to make it fast and easy. All you have to do is go to the website, answer a few questions (or fewer, if you’re feeling shy) that don’t even require personal identifiers, and then read a list of words into your computer microphone.

Pretty easy, huh?

The idea is that there are certain common words which can be pronounced several different ways, and are. By mapping how people from various places say things, you can map their dialectal features — in this case, their accents.

This survey is for people who’ve grown up speaking English, in the US or Canada. (So yeah, it’s not really all of North America, as of yet.) English doesn’t have to be your native or only language for this, but you should have spoken English as a kid. (But if this survey works, more surveys for other areas and languages will probably follow, as night follows day.)

I don’t know these Yale linguists from Adam, but it’s a good thing they’re doing.

Well, That Explains It.

Greene County, 1803-1908 says that there were Owenites in Yellow Springs. Owenism was a utopian movement founded by Robert Owen. These particular Owenites were religious, however.

I am starting to wonder what there hasn’t been, in Yellow Springs.

There’s no denying that Ohio has had more than its share of community-oriented sects and utopian movements. This book review actually gives a pretty good list of them.

To Say Nothing of the Bear.

My dad informs me that the tavern/hotel/first Greene County courthouse was furnished with its own bear.

Not for bearbaiting. He just lived outside the courthouse, on a chain like a dog chain, and was relatively tame. Sort of a yard bear.

Ah, the young statehood of Ohio.

I haven’t found whatever my dad found this in; but apparently in Howe’s Historical Collections of Ohio, there’s a picture Howe made of the ex-courthouse in 1846, with a young black bear tied to a corner of the tavern/house. Broadstone’s 1918 History of Greene County, Ohio, where I read this, says that a young bear was a common pet for children at the time. Oooooookay….

Swear on the Book….

I was going to look up previous shootings in Beavercreek for you, of which there have not been many. Instead, I found a brief history of the first courthouse in Greene County, which was actually a log house and tavern/hotel in Beavercreek or Alpha. It was not used for more than a year or two. But its last session, in 1804, was notorious for setting a local precedent about swearing courtroom oaths.

It so happened that when it came time to swear, nobody had brought along a Bible. There were books on a small shelf area by one wall, though, so Arthur St. Clair*, the lawyer from Cincinnati who was serving as prosecuting attorney, went rummaging through this ill-lit area. (You must picture him wearing a cocked hat and a sword, and unfortunately having a slight lisp. He apparently made an impression.) He searched around, and finally announced, “Well, gentlemen, here is a book which looks thist like a Testament.” So they started court with it.

After court, when they could see what they’d been doing, it turned out that they’d done all that swearing on a volume of the Arabian Nights. So… what with this incident, and probably what with local religious groups often being uneasy about swearing… for a century or so, it became the custom in Greene County to just swear with your hand in the air, not on the Bible or a New Testament or anything else.

Man, I need to read more local history.

* Not the General/Governor Arthur St. Clair of St. Clair’s Defeat, who was one of the ten congressional presidents under the Articles of Confederation, and who was an old geezer in Pennsylvania by then. This was his son, Arthur St. Clair II, who served as prosecuting attorney and attorney general of the Northwest Territory. Arthur St. Clair III was also a Cincinnati lawyer.

Drunken Charging at Police with Knife Is Bad Idea

While I was gone, a guy managed to get himself killed by a Beavercreek police officer, over in the new apartments over the way from my parents’ place. This is pretty freaky, since it’s never happened since Beavercreek got incorporated as a city back in the Eighties. But what’s freakier is that the guy was a retired master sergeant and not just J. Random Loser. Beavercreek’s an Air Force town, so it’s (probably) not some case of a cop not being used to military people.

Scott Brogli apparently was involved in some kind of domestic violence with his wife and 17 year old son. (He didn’t have any previous record of such, at least around here.) The police were called by a neighbor who said he saw some drunk guy at the apartments with a gun case in hand, chasing a woman. He said in the 911 call that the drunk guy had fallen and dropped the gun case, and that the neighbor had then picked up the gun case and run away to his own nearby apartment. The 911 caller sounded pretty nervous about the prospects that the drunk guy would come after him. The wife got away and drove away, and at some point she ended up at Miami Valley Hospital getting treated for whatever happened to her. The son was apparently still at the apartment when everything went worse.

At some point, Brogli also apparently barricaded himself in (or at least blocked the entrance by throwing stuff around), and he was sleeping/passed out/resting on the floor, before the police arrived. When they dropped by, he apparently responded by charging out the door at the officers with a kitchen knife, so they shot him.

Of course, this sort of thing is not what Beavercreek police officers are used to, either. (Riverside or Fairborn, maybe occasionally this would happen. Beavercreek, not so much.) Also, people are wondering whether the barricade stuff was some kind of flashback, and hence that he wasn’t responsible for the attack and the domestic violence. Hard to say. Probably mostly being drunk, unless some kind of physical or mental illness made him seem drunk when he wasn’t.

Here’s a 2009 picture from Langley AFB of the man at his work. He’s the guy on the right. (Boy, you never can tell what will happen with people.) So I guess he _just_ retired. (Not a good time to do it, with this economy and a teenage kid.)

Anyway, Beavercreek Police will be investigating further. The officer who shot him is on administrative leave. I don’t think the Air Force JAG will get involved, because the guy was retired. They might help out, maybe.

UPDATE: Excessive use of search terms in post is bad idea.

Apparently I used a man’s last name too many times in a single blog post, because apparently my obscure little true crime post on my obscure little blog got found by a couple of upset people. I have corrected this, because it’s a bit stupid to have random punditry get a high search engine rating. If they came here via another blog that links to mine, I can’t do anything about that.

I have replied to these folks in the combox. I agree that I might have used more decorum in my post — probably should have. I think they took my post rather harder than is justified, though.

The whole point of this post, which I apparently didn’t make clear, is that whatever happened is clearly very strange, and a mystery; and very personally disturbing to a lot of people beyond those directly involved. Comparing it to Darwin Awards stuff is the only way to express how bizarre it all is. What would bring a reputable retired master sergeant, a family man, into collision with a young suburban police officer, also a family man? What on earth was going on, in a place so peaceful and so close to my own family? I want to know, because I want to be sure that my family is safe; and I am afraid that we will all find out something scary. About whom and what, I don’t know.

If this were a mystery show, I could list a dozen possible plots. I could devise motives for every single person involved (including the 911 neighbor) or some kind of horrible twist of fate, or a terrible illness, or an accidental ingestion of jimsonweed or other poisons. But I don’t have any kind of information for that, and I really don’t find it appropriate to just speculate wildly like that. This made people feel I was leaning too hard on the dead, as definitely guilty or evil. Well, I didn’t mean it that way. (And you’d already have heard a lot meaner comments from other people if you’re from the area, about both the police and the dead man. There’s nothing more guaranteed to put people in a bad mood than shots fired in anger somewhere even vaguely in their vicinity. Or their children’s vicinity, especially.)

I do have a right to talk about it on my blog, though. Something happened, and it is shocking, and the only way I know to deal with the horror of it is to talk about it. It’s the normal thing one does as a human — yap and yammer. (If you don’t like it, you’ll have to find another species. Maybe elves deal with it through interpretive dance.) I also tend to deal with such things by dark humor. If bad things happen to me, I laugh. If I’m scared, I laugh. If bad things happen in what used to be a woods I played in, I laugh. The shrieking and crying hysterically can be put off till later, that way.

I’m sorry I didn’t offer condolences right off to the family or to the guy’s friends. You have a right to ding me about that. But I’m not sure what one would say. It’s not an etiquette problem that shows up often in ordinary life.

I also don’t think we should assume this is PTSD. The Vietnam vets spent a zillion years telling people that military veterans don’t go running around attacking people like maniacs when they have attacks of PTSD, and I believe them.

I’m also not anti-military. (The US military, anyway. Pakistan, not so much.) Given that it’s the default American attitude unless you’re someplace like Berkeley, I didn’t think it was necessary to say anything. But fine, I’ll be clear. I assume that US military and ex-military people are sane, intelligent, responsible, solid citizens who protect their families and their neighbors, and very seldom have I seen it be otherwise. That’s why this happening is so wacked.

Look, I’m not in favor of whipping up a lynch mob about sensational crimes. But I’m not going to pretend all is well, or keep my mouth demurely shut. The shooting was a news event, which makes all participants open to public comment. I’m talking about it. I’m linking to articles about it, so you can see what definite info I’m basing my comments on, and also see just what is guesswork and gas. If you don’t like my writing, the comment box is open, and so is the rest of the Internet. Enjoy.

UPDATE: I’ve given folks a week of Liberty Hall, but the comment box is now closed. If I’ve done this right, the old comments will still be visible.

I’m Back….

On the whole, it was a fun trip. Could have done with fewer adventures and sudden twists (not to mention a more level glycemic index) but there you go. 🙂

It’s amazing how much better life looks, though, when you’re back in your own little home. I like Going Places and Doing Things (not to mention Copying Books That Aren’t Easily Available), but I’m a hobbity homebody at heart.

Never Speak Descriptively of the Dead?

Look, I don’t want to be a jerk about this. But the fact is that the late Senator Byrd was in the KKK as a Kleagle (recruiter) and an Exalted Cyclops, and that the historical evidence is all against his later claims only to have joined the KKK in WWII or as an anticommunist organization. So it’s a bit difficult to mention his career as a politician without pointing out that his original base was not just the Young War Hero thing, but also the White Hoods and Sheets Vote, the Burning Cross Vote. He only changed his harsh public position on race when it began to endanger his further election.

CNN has assiduously avoided mentioning this, and it’s been covering the heck out of Byrd’s death in their airport coverage. The newspapers seem to have been more of a mind to comment on this aspect of his life.

I’m not glad he’s dead; he was a fellow creature, and I hope for the salvation of his soul as I would for anyone’s. I hope the change in his ideas was genuine, and that he truly regretted what he did. But his death does close a very dark chapter of American history, the passing of which nobody is going to regret. It is ridiculous to speak so guilelessly about him as being nothing but a nice man and a pattern of senatorial civility.

(I’ve noticed that no non-white CNN reporters seem to have been asked to say all these nice things about him. Hmmmmmm.)

It’s also a bit ingenuous to mention all his pork barrel politics as being solely for the good of his state, when he had his name plastered all over a zillion public works in West Virginia as a continuing campaign ad. Not a man of self-effacing duty, no.

Sleepin’ in the Airport

I love flying on a stormy day! Love it!

Basically, I ended up waiting seven hours to get a flight out of Pittsburgh, and then had to sleep in the airport like a lot of others waiting for connections. So yeah, I have an extra day of vacation from work, whether I like it or not.

(Yeah, it’s not smart to reveal on the Internet that one is away; but pretty much all my valuable possessions are with me. Heh.)

The terminal had noises of frightened birds running all day and night, ostensibly to scare away the airport’s “bird population”. And sure enough, this morning I saw a little sparrow hopping around the gate, running under the furniture and looking for food. I guess this explains why I saw a sunflower seed shell in a corner….

Argh, So Tired

The musical boot camp aspect of this colloquium is currently triumphing over the spiritual retreat and pilgrimage portion. 🙂

So please do not take any postings from this week too seriously if they have become incoherent. I took a small nap last evening and slept for four hours, missing dinner but not even hungry. Very rarely does my body decide it doesn’t need to eat, so I must be pretty tired.

Don’t worry. The spiritual aspect does resurface on a regular basis. Just not at this moment….

In other news, apparently Anthrocon is going on somewhere around here. Usually, this sort of news would inspire me to at least a certain interest. This morning, I don’t really care. Too tired.

However, I do note an unusually stupid news article which notes the existence of Anthrocon and runs a picture of costumed fen looking like mascots, quotes a furry fan, but refuses to fully define what the heck they’re talking about, referring you instead to the convention website. (Which does their non-Internet readers a ton of good. And who else is subscribing in numbers to a newspaper, but older people who aren’t on the Internet?) The result is that they make the costumed folks look like the whole story.

I realize that the reporter hath no dog in this sort of fannish definition fight, but criminently, what a journalistic failure.

I think the shower is about to become free, so I’d better go.

Not Really Irrelevant Fashion Report

Nowadays, with interest in early music and chant so high, the CMAA Colloquium is full of new faces, including a lot of young faces from high school and college. There’s always been a few non-practicing Catholics, non-Catholics and non-Christians who attended simply for insight into the music, also. This intersection of young newbies and non-Mass attendee newbies has meant seeing a lot of interesting fashion choices, especially since the weather is hot. 🙂 (No, nothing scandalous. Just different.)

There were some really nice outfits among the women attending, I must say. In my commitment to understanding an art not natural to me (and in the interests of not looking like I dress myself in the dark, even though sometimes I do), I have of course been trying to get ideas from them. 🙂 There didn’t seem to be much in the way of dumpy dresses, this year, which was good. I mean, why go to the trouble of wearing skirts and formal clothes if they’re not going to look at least minimally good?

Despite seeing some nice women’s hats on the way here, and seeing a good number of men who brought their summer hats along, I haven’t seen any women but myself wearing hats to Mass. I’m not sure whether to be unhappy about this, or revel in my more-trad-than-thou-ness.* 🙂 There were a good number of ladies wearing headwear lace of some shape or another, but with all the new people, the percentage was down from what it’s been in the past. (I don’t think that’s bad or good; it’s just the way it is.)

What was encouraging was that there was no clear hegemony of a single headcovering style. Rather, it was clear that ladies now have both a wide selection of styles, and the acumen to choose a style flattering to their individual faces and hairstyles. This is good, because it shows self-respect and prudence, and keeps EF traditionalism from looking like a cult. (Catholics just aren’t a uniform bunch, even when it comes to school uniforms, so it really does look more normal.)

The point of all this is that, since we’re going to Mass every day, and since every day we’re going to a lot of trouble to do elaborate music to help Mass in both Latin Rite forms be celebrated with all the trimmings, it would be silly not to dress up. So it does require some thought, to figure out how to dress for the weather in a church with no AC, and to do it seven days in a row. 🙂 So it’s good to see it done successfully, and it’s interesting to study what the CMAA women consider to be best practices in this area. 🙂 If assisting in beautiful devout liturgy is what this conference is about, then Massgoer fashion really is part of it.

* For those who don’t follow this blog, I really am not fashion-minded by nature, but I try to take an interest because it’s part of society. (If nothing else, I can console myself that it’s a form of semiotics.) I don’t feel any pull to cover my head for religious reasons, as Catholic women used to do before Vatican II. But I’m amenable to following the older tradition when I feel like it, or when I’m in a more traditionalist-filled setting (as at CMAA). I feel no interest in lace on me head, because Irish- and German-American Catholics didn’t really do that before the beehive hairdo. (Scarves and hats were the thing, for hundreds of years.) I bear an instinctive distrust of such edgy, innovative clothing as lace veils – especially since they do nothing for me, unless I were to get a beehive perm. Thus, my charming black straw “packable hat” really is more trad (as well as looking extremely cute and fashion-forward).

What I Did on My Summer Vacation, 2010

Here I am at Duquesne University at the 20th CMAA Sacred Music Colloquium, posting at six in the morning because the rest of the day is rather full. (Chant choir in the morning; polyphony choir in the afternoon; talks in the morning, afternoon, and evening; Lauds/Morning Prayer at 7; Compline/Night Prayer at 9:30; Mass at 3; and other stuff depending on the day….) But they’re feeding us well, Pittsburgh is lovely, the company is good if mostly very different from me in interests, and climbing hill after hill doesn’t bother me too much. (Duquesne has obviously worked hard to be handicapped accessible, but you must choose your routes carefully. There are many routes through campus which, by geographic necessity, are only accessible on foot or in a very agile vehicle.)

I have learned a few important things already which will help me. I picked the Beginning Chant schola again this year, because I still can’t sightread chant notation well enough for Intermediate. (Well, let’s face it; I can’t really sightread modern notation, either. I know what the notes mean, and I can make a fair whack at applying them, but that’s called illiteracy if you’re talking about reading words.) There were a lot of distressed and confused music students this year, so much talk about music theory ensued. This actually helped, as it led to much discussion of how you don’t actually have to learn individual notes on a staff (as they often make them do in music school), but rather, the relationship between the notes that make up the scale. This seems much more doable, and makes sense of the idea of representing the scale with your body that’s used in the Ward Method.

The other interesting point brought up was a medieval definition of beauty: “splendor formae”. (Sp?) Apparently there are all sorts of implications that the beauty of something good is a visual representation of the inner goodness and importance of it. If beauty’s not there, that goodness is veiled somewhat, which isn’t evil but does give up a lot in persuasive power (and sometimes, in fittingness). If beauty is there, goodness is more fully revealed and has more persuasiveness. But at Mass and other liturgies, it becomes more a case of pointing out what’s really there because it is there and that’s just the way it is, than of trying to do something truly worthy of God (which you could never fully do) or of trying to please our parentally easy-to-please God (which you can pretty easily do, but which as a goal might stick you with singing Barney songs in church).

My secondary goal is almost done, but I need a few more pieces of usable change. Yesterday I took some time for copying off Clandillon and Hanagan’s 1927 Irish song/tune collection Londubh an Chairn. It’s a very good collection, and I’m sorry I’ve never seen it reprinted, at least in the US and in my limited experience. It explains a lot of what circulates in Celtic music circles, actually; it must have been very popular with the parents of the Clancy/Makem generation. It’s also interesting because, like Joyce from the previous century, Clandillon and Hanagan came from inside the Irish musical tradition and weren’t outsider song collectors. “This was a song of my father’s” (meaning one he sung) is repeated again and again.

The interesting bit for me was that they had their tunes for the various folk hymns they knew (mostly by good old Tomas Gaedhealach O Suilleabhain), and documented from how far back they knew them, or their family knew them. They were documented as being much, much older than any possible copyright date (1856, for one of them). So no worries there.

I poked around a bit and found some other interesting stuff that was even older and some good reprints. Not a huge collection, but not pigs’ feet, either. Lots of world music info, for sure.

I noticed something I’d never noticed or forgotten about Peter Kennedy’s big folksong collection from the British Isles. He had a big BBC radio show called As I Roved Out, which recorded folksingers in their homes back in the 1950’s. So in his book, he references BBC recording numbers, even though they weren’t accessible to the general public. Huh.

Time to go start another day. See you later!

I-75 Jesus Statue Struck by Lightning, Burns to Ground

It was horrible kitsch as a work of sacred art, but it also was a real landmark. Not any more. Last night, it burned down.

The Solid Rock Church’s famous statue was officially called “The King of Kings” but known to many (after the Notre Dame University picture) as “Touchdown Jesus”. It was also the subject of a comedy song that got national play on Bob and Tom, and which called it “Big Butter Jesus”. It was a six-story high bust of Jesus with upstretched arms directly behind a recumbent cross and the church’s retaining pool (which led me at first to think it was supposed to be a picture of a sinner being saved or baptized, but I guess it was really the Ascension or the Second Coming). The statue was taller than the church, but it was made of foam, sprayed over an armature of fiberglass and wood, with a steel armature for the upraised arms. It was built in 2004.

Last night we had tons of storms, and apparently the statue sustained a direct lightning strike. (And really, it was in a great position to attract lightning.) The plastic foam skin burned really well. All that was left was the steel armature. The fire also burned some of the church’s big concert amphitheater behind the statue, destroying some sound equipment in its attic. The church itself was okay.

(I’m sad for them, but I’m glad nothing worse happened and that nobody was hurt.)

Impressive pictures of the statue burning, over at WHIO, but sent in by Tiffani West-May, one of the viewer photographers.

Of course, some of the “baby Christians” at the church are taking this as a bad sign. This seems premature. I don’t know what that megachurch’s doctrines are, and I have no reason to be fond of the place; but I can assure them that church belltowers, church steeples, and other tall church things do get struck by lightning fairly often. That’s why we have such things as lightning rods. But lightning is pretty powerful, and sometimes a lightning rod isn’t enough to conduct all that electricity to the ground.

Bad stuff happens. It happened to Jesus, even, which is kinda part of the point of being Christian.

I’m happy to say that the poor shaken kid on the news, who had actually seen the lightning strike, did move along by the end of the interview to saying that he (along with other church members who were beginning to gather) meant to use this incident to deepen his faith and mature as a Christian. That’s the right attitude.

Actually, if it hadn’t been for the lightning strike being seen by a good number of folks passing the Trader’s World/Monroe area, police would probably have found the fire suspicious. Nobody made much fuss before the statue was built, that I can remember, but my mom tells me that there’s been a lot of stories lately about people protesting the statue after it became nationally famous. (Apparently some bunch of humorless atheist non-libertarians who don’t believe in private property, and some bunch of people from the mosque down in Cincinnati along I-75.) So you can expect some kind of attempt at a zoning fight when and if the church rebuilds.

(Monroe doesn’t restrict signage along I-75, though. I mean, look at the giant stallion rampant sign for Trader’s World! And why would they? It’s their bread and butter and taxbase, having all those Trader’s World type businesses getting people to exit the highway.)

Ilya Muromyets: The Tie-In Video Game

Apparently, some kind of Ilya Muromyets vs. Solovey the Bandit cartoon came out in Russia back in 2007. (Not the first animated version of the story, either. Apparently there was a 1978 Soviet one, which seems to be on YouTube in its entirety. Without subs.) The trailer’s pretty long, but apparently that’s just the beginning of the story. Here’s another trailer with more. None of this stuff has subs, but I think you’ll get the idea.

And apparently, there was a tie-in videogame.

Ilya Muromyets (Ilya of Murom) was of course one of the great knightly heroes of Kyiv (ie, Ukrainian), who was adopted by Russians for their own* and given a Russian origin. In real life, he was a guy named Ilya Pechersky who retired from the warrior game, became a monk, and was buried at Kiev’s Pechersky monastery. Much like St. William of Gellone, who became famous in the Matter of France (as the knight William of Orange), his pre-monk career became the stuff of legend.

As in, “born a cripple but healed by two mysterious pilgrims, he was given supernatural strength by the dying knight Svyatogor (but not a Green Lantern ring), and immediately hurried to serve Prince Vladimir the Beautiful Sun down in Kyiv, encountering many adventures before he came at last to Camelot… er, Kyiv.”

Now… as all of you who play “casual games” know, you often get some pretty freaky videogames from other countries. (You can tell because the translations for hidden object names can be somewhat ‘unique’.) Russian- and Slavic-origin videogames in this arena get translated fairly frequently, as with the Natalie Brooks series.

So… sure enough… the Ilya Muromyets video game is here, translated as Elias the Mighty. (Ilya does equal Elias or Elijah, depending on who you ask.) It’s a pretty good matching gallery/shape recognition game, and you can try it for thirty minutes for free.

I do notice that Solovey (his name means “Nightingale”, and indeed, he had Deadly Sonic Powers!) is depicted in clothes that might make you think he was a Tatar or a Cossack or something of that nature. That wasn’t how I read the story… he was never an outlander in anything I ever read. He and his men were gen-u-ine nativeborn bandits, yeehaw! But the 1978 Soviet one makes the guy look like some kind of evil Arab genie, so possibly I’ve been missing some kind of cultural stereotyping of him.

Here’s a trailer for a previous animated movie (2006) about the Kyiv bogatyri and Prince Vladimir, also from Melnitsa Animation Studio. This one was about Dobrynya Nikit’ich and Zmei the Dragon. Dobrynya’s the skinny peasant guy.

(And apparently whatever bizarre Polovtsi stereotype they were working with Solovey, the way they draw actual Tartar characters is Even More So. Sheesssssh. But Kyiv’s awfully purty, and nobody does Freaky Dragon Voices like Russian people. And there’s a musical number.)

Here’s yet another trailer for a movie from Melnitsa Animation (2004), all about Alyosha Popovich and Tugarin Zmei, another byliny story about the Kyiv knights. Alyosha’s the beefy blond guy. He’s a (married Orthodox) priest’s kid, so like all Preacher’s Kids he’s got issues. One of the clips posted on YouTube shows his baptism, which is a hoot.

They’ve got a trailer for yet another movie that is coming soon: The Three Bogatyrs and the Shamanic Tsaritsa. Oooooh, that does look like a scary magical queen… a scary Arabic queen and not a scary shamanic queen… um. (Yeah, kind of a theme here. But then, Moscow’s gotten bombed a lot more often than New York, so I guess I can understand that. And Evil Tartars are part of the whole Russian byliny thing, just as much as Evil Saracens are in Arthur and Charlemagne. Although you do get good Saracens in both, though usually ones in the process of converting.)

These all seem to be pretty much comedies, but they’re just so darned pretty. I wish we could get some Arthurian flicks of at least this quality, though without Evil Saxon Stereotyping, of course. 🙂

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* Of course, the Norman English and the French and the Germans and half of Europe all made that Welsh dude Arthur a culture hero of their own, and the English pretty much appropriated him despite being descended from his Saxon enemies.

So there you go. Everybody belongs to everybody. Just don’t try to get imperialist over your neighbor with it.

Too Many Ads!

When you get to the point that the collective length of your bumper ads and promos is longer than your actual content in your podcast, perhaps you should reconsider your podcast’s structure.

Oh, and I really don’t appreciate people who make their podcast files read-only in some weird way, apparently just so I have to go through an incredible amount of rigmarole to delete them from my machine. I know Windows is a cruel mistress, but geez, people! I’ve got enough headaches without you turning my own computer against me!

(Yes, I’ve stepped away from the dazed life of too much serotonin in my system and back into the crazed librarian ferret life of too much dopamine. I have no time to space out until my vacation comes. I embrace my nitpickiness. I eat my spinach.)