A lazy writer gone astray

Despite making this post in August, this post spikes in brief periods throughout the year, depending on when folks like to start.

Reading all the cool costume projects people are working on

Acrylic on canvas, 30 × 40 cm, 2020

There was a time when we visited the North Sea several times a year. It was only about two to two and a half hours from home, so it was easy to pack a few things, gather the children, and leave for the day. My husband loved sea fishing, and the North Sea became part of our family life.Funny enough, when I first moved here more than ten years ago, I didn’t like it at all. It felt cold, windy, gray, and almost intimidating. I couldn’t understand why people loved it so much.But little by little, it changed.

Or maybe I changed.The wind stopped feeling so cold. The sea no longer seemed hostile. Even the loud seagulls became beautiful to me- I especially loved feeding them. I learned to wait for seals to appear above the water. I discovered that the beaches were full of life: tiny crabs, shells, oysters, sea worms, sometimes even sea urchins. Walking there with children felt like exploring a new world every time.

And on sunny summer days, the North Sea surprises everyone who thinks it’s always cold. The white sand becomes hot under your feet, and the cool water feels wonderfully refreshing.I haven’t been there for quite a while now. Life changed, our family changed, and those spontaneous trips slowly disappeared from our lives.But this painting keeps those memories alive. Whenever I look at it, I can still hear the wind, the waves, and the cries of the seagulls.

So the cardinal of Avignon sent the bishop of Cavaillon to do something about them. In front of a huge crowd, the bishop sprinkled some holy water into the waters of the port and told the dolphins to begone. Whereupon the dolphins indeed turned tail in terror and fled, and were never seen again.

So to avoid the creation of a cockatrice (or basilisk), the rooster was tried, found guilty, and burned at the stake along with its egg. A huge crowd was present.

The “rooster” in this case was likely a hen that had developed male characteristics (it happens).

Her piglets, however, were judged to have been innocent of the murder, and so were returned to the owner, with the caveat that he had to surrender them to the law if they were later found to have eaten any of the boy.

Not to be confused with a whole bunch of other, similar porcine trials.

Felix Hemmerlin’s treatise on exorcism, cited by e.g. Wagner’s Historia Naturalis Helvetiae (1680), informs us that around 1221-1229, eels once infested Lake Geneva in huge numbers. So Saint William, bishop of Lausanne, excommunicated them and banned them from the lake, forcing them to live in only one part of it.

… the Cadaver Synod.

Pope Formosus (“Good-looking”) was pope from 891 to 896, and apparently accumulated a few enemies. After his successor Boniface VI enjoyed all of a 15-day papacy, the next pope elected was Stephen VI.

And he hated Formosus.

How much? He had the corpse of Formosus exhumed, dressed up in papal vestments, and put on trial for his failings as a pope.

End result? Formosus was found guilty of papal fail. The corpse was stripped of its clothes, three fingers on its right hand were severed (no blessings for u), and it was tied to weights and dumped in the Tiber.

Needless to say Stephen VI came to a sticky end. An angry mob deposed him, he was strangled in prison, and Formosus’s corpse was fished up and reburied with honors. And the later popes passed edicts ensuring this kind of silliness would not happen again.

When the town of Autun was infested by rats in the early 1500s, they were accused of eating the province’s barley crop and were duly summoned to be judged in an ecclesiastical court of law. Chasseneuz was the defense attorney.

How do you defend an entire swarm of rats? You don’t, is the answer. You delay. Chasseneuz’s original defense was “my clients live all over the place, one summons won’t be enough”. So he got a court summons to be posted in all the infested parishes.

When the rats didn’t show up after the elapsed time delay, Chasseneuz proceeded to explain at length why. The rats didn’t come to court, he said, because of their enemies the cats, which are everywhere and always vigilant and hungry. “You cannot expect my clients to undertake a journey which would put them in mortal danger”, he argued in complete seriousness. “Thus they have the legal right to turn down a summons that endangers them”.

As far as we know, the rats never did appear in court, and remained unprosecuted.

my storytelling final! or, that week i almost went blind cross-hatching!

it’s a couple weeks old at this point, but i’m still proud of it (all that cross-hatching…) even though looking back at it now i can see a ton of flaws or things i just could’ve done better. maybe i’ll redo it one day.

the page colors are kind of wonky because they’re photographs; i didn’t have a scanner big enough for the pages.

It's sheer luck that Sally crosses paths with Medea before she meets Gabe. It's because Percy gets lost in a crowd in a department store, and Medea knows a sea demigod when she sees one. After all, she's had one for a step child before (Theseus) and knows how Poseidon can get if one gets endangered/misplaced, especially a tiny one (she may have though Percy was a full year younger than he was).

Sally recognizes who Medea is. Medea asks Sally out on a date. Poseidon asks Medea why she feels the need to date his exes. She asks him why he has similar taste to her and if he ever fucked or thought of fucking Jason.

Amphitrite has to break up the ensuing fight there.

Percy loves his stepmom! She's great! She gets rid of the weird things that occasionally follow him, scared the shit out of the weird teacher so he left his school, and introduced him to her super nice cousin Ariadne and her husband Dio. Who for some reason got his head dunked in a punch bowl by his wife. But their sons Pollux and Castor are nice and he's going to go to camp with them in the future!

Zeus does not think the step son of Medea stole the Master Bolt. He does however think his second oldest brother has really weird luck with Medea getting with his exes. This is the sixth time. The sixth fucking time.

Through choices, friendship, and salad, he found his way to the path of the warrior. But he won't walk it alone.

Their path is just beginning, but this story is over.

i liked it so much like how you went with what they said even though it was'nt one of the intended options and how it went full circle and it was great