Another point on JLB's 'Irishmen' -- I think it's a fairly common trope in non-anglophone writing, the idea of the 'English/British' character who turns out to be really Irish, and thus a King-hater rather than a King-lover. I read a Russian detective story recently (one of the Fandorin series set in Tsarist times -- Winter Queen? Turkish Gambit?) where an Irish journalist provides a crucial plot twist. Maybe Capt Madden in Forking Paths belongs to this lineage (inverted, though: his Irishness makes him doubly determined to prove his British loyalty).

<Forking Paths>: from Barefoot in the Head by Brian Aldiss...

When? How many rounds?

Or what will the time control be?

Praying you begin discussing topics relevant to next paper I have to hand in (why didn't I take a Irish lit course? Or Borges?)-- Today I have to write about <them thingys they send out to Pluto to have a look around>. (mandatory field credit course- "Moons for Goons" science requirement)

I wrote on <process in children's art instruction"> (required field credit) a few days ago. Then I emailed it in, printed out a copy, and then tore it up. Then I wrote one English letter at random on the back of each little bit of torn paper.

Then I very carefully gathered up all of the pieces, and flushed them down the toilet.

does that count as Art?

(knocks coffee over on computer)

Homework is such an ugly word.

Fieldwork, why don't they call it?

or Field Mouse Work?

I don't <think> I'd read White Noise, btw, at the time in question. JG Ballard, especially The Atrocity Exhibition and stories like Princess Margaret's Face Lift, was a big influence. I like White Noise, and also Ratner's Star, but my favorite DeLillo has to be <te onomata> ... The Names.

"How many languages do you speak?", as one cultist would say to another...

<Then I very carefully gathered up all of the pieces, and flushed them down the toilet.

does that count as Art?>

Better than art. It's Rehydrated Aleatory Alphatabulomancy, or RAA. In principle, the pieces surface in somebody else's toilet somewhere in the universe and form a deeply significant message...

<Underworld>, however, sucked bad. Except for the part about <Jackie Gleason> Hurling beer and hot dogs at the Ball Park.

Haven't read <the names>

Once again, <Dom>:

<Sarry, Bud, we don't lorn Dutch in the US>...

and, for good measure:

<If speaking American was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for my kids>

<American good enough for Jesus...> Did somebody <really> say that? Your info seems precise, doc, so it must be true. I'd heard of it as a kind of, um, apocryphal joke, but... Jumping Jehosophat, Hay-Zeus!

Next thing you'll tell me is there's a nuclear submarine base in Texas called Body-of-Christ. Heh heh. As if...

All that had ended by 1824, for many reasons - such as the defeat of revolutionary France, the ending of the 18th century Irish parliament, the 1801 UK act of union, and the shifting of political focus to the (ultimately sectarian) issue of 'catholic emancipation'...

The theme also requires a society where failed rebellions and lost battles are commemorated in later times: Ireland, Poland, Serbia come to mind.

The plotting of a cabal, of course, could be any time, any place -- a universal history of infamy, perhaps?

For a much earlier (historically) Borgesian version of Ireland, have you seen the poem where an Irish king addresses a Viking invader, Magnus Barfod? It got quoted here back in the forum's infancy.

Here, have another PhD from Forum University Capablanca-Karpov. You is now a triple doctor, doc, OK?

Because this will be your last day, king Magnus, I swear it.

Because before its light is snuffed out, I will defeat you and snuff you out, Magnus Barford.

(From <Anhang zur Heimskringla> (1893) by H. Gering [yet another fake reference...])

The "The Mirror and the Mask", from <The Book of Sand>, also takes place in "Ancient Ireland".

Incidentally, if he had set the original rebellion in 1798, then its centenary would have had to take place before Irish independence -- another reason to move forward to 1824/1924, perhaps?

I wrote a story once about a political assassination, in which it was left deliberately unclear whether the general being killed was in Latin America, or Greece, or elsewhere in the Balkans. There were elements of each that fitted the theme and structure, but specifying would have ruined it. And of course I was under the spell of Borges (and Marquez, and Fuentes) at the time.

Sometimes Borges, as ultimate reader and porer-over-books, seems to project one society or country onto another. It happens also in the story of Vincent Moon (the 'Irish' Englishman) and his scar. The narrator describes a firing squad which sounds more Mexican than Irish. And the 'cities' where the 'obscure' civil war takes place: this sounds slightly off-key to me. Apart from Dublin, Cork and Limerick, the Irish civil war 'cities' (c. 1922)were mostly small towns and villages.

He evokes a sense of space that seems more expansive, like perhaps Argentina, or a war with multiple urban centres (the Spanish civil war?).

(stumbles)

(puts on clothes and drags herself downriver for conferences with her "Professors" for which she is ill prepared)

<Professor Bumblebee>: "And what is the state of your Honors Thesis on William Faulkner, young lady?"

<Jess>: "I'm on to your little game, you know."

(later that spring Jess opens her Transcript: <Faulkner = zero>

Especially when it's hard to top the funniest bit of all-- him walking into a fatal Milk Truck and all...

He'd have liked that: posthumous Scottishness even as another gulf war does not take place. L'Ecossais Imaginaire.

In memoriam, the Beau Drilla Killa.

So let us look back to Proto-Telescopia, the 16th and 17th centuries (in Europe), that strange and exciting period poised between all the garish superstitions of medieval xtianity and the emergent science of Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton et al. It wasn’t all just <*scientist makes observation, thinks for a bit, jots down equation, so, hey, that’s another bit of basic physical law conquered, want to try a cup of that new Arabian drug, Koffee?*> Some folk had alternative notions.

Astronomy before the invention of telescopes was pretty static. The nakedly observable – visible celestial bodies – had been observed for tens of thousands of years. Mythologies, like societies, came and went.

Sometimes the moon was a giant fish, or the sun (our father) was a being of pure shining godliness, and the stars were pinpricks in a black velvet cushion. The Fischer-Queen and the Fischer-King struggled for control of the celestial hemisphere (no Marsoop-Eyals having been Creatured, yet), and the Fischer-Knight fell on a grail quest.

The rings of Saturn were not seen and understood until lens resolution improved with Galileo. But keen-eyed stargazing peoples, like the Dogon tribe in West Africa, had spotted something weird about the planet’s shape, seemingly bulging elliptically before collapsing to your regular planetary circle/disk/sphere.

The Dogon also claimed to have met creatures from Sirius, and ‘knew’ that Mars had two moons – making them prime material for Von Daniken and Ancient Astronaut theories. (Which I regard as amusing nonsense, despite my fondness for Stargate SG-1).

Meanwhile, a religious problem. The question of Christ’s circumcision troubled medieval theologians. Several churches claimed to display the holy foreskin alongside other relics like the ‘true’ cross. Such relics could be quite exotic: one church claimed to have the skull of John the Baptist, but another trumped this with the skull of John the Baptist as a child. And feathers from the wings of the angel Gabriel were also revered.

That foreskin was a problem, though. Medieval popes never made a definitive ruling. Some theologians argued that Christ’s foreskin – aka The Holy Prepuce – may have separated from the rest of him early on, but should have later ascended into heaven with the main body.

(In a movie version, a tiny scrap of dried skin tunnels out of the ground, and reaches escape velocity as onlookers gasp in amazement. I’ve wondered about its shape – would it have been a flat strip, a cylindrical ring, a torus, or maybe a Mobius strip? How many dimensions had the Sacred Prepuce?)

The Parallel Liftoff theory, however, raises another question: is there something special about prepuces, or would beard-trimmings and toenail-clippings have similar adventures? Not to even imagine other possible excreta.

Anyways. This week I read an article about a theologian who suggested that the Holy Prepuce had not only left the planet, but it had become the Rings of Saturn.

Beautiful. The last surreal gasp of fundamentalist mania before science shut the doors on it? Of course, when the maniacs got out 200 years later they were far, far crazier...

A probe, doctor? A probe in Uranus?
No thanks, I prefer being sick.

Extraterrestrial astronomer in pre-Shoemaker Era: “Comets? They couldn’t hit Jupiter at this dist---“

Guess I'll have to make do with Eco, Ballard and Greenaway next time somebody asks me about the metaphysics of presence.

Round towers proper were built beside monasteries during the period of Viking raids, c.8-9th cents. They were relatively tall, slender, with no ground-level access. If the terrible Norse arrived, the monks piled into the tower (along with manuscripts, chalices, women, food, pigs, etc), barred the door and battened the hatches.

The raiders could pillage the monastery but those in the tower would be safe. At least that's the story, and several such towers still exist. It seems an extraordinary defensive measure: surely the Vikings had ropes, ladders, shovels, axes? Yes -- but not the time, usually, for a protracted siege. It was hit-and-run, usually.

The other type is a Martello Tower, built as defensive posts during the Napoleonic Wars, always on the coast. It was one of these that Joyce lived in with Oliver Gogarty, providing the opening scene of Ulysses. These towers are smaller (about 2 storeys), but very solid, with thick walls (to resist artillery and naval bombardment). They're not unique to Ireland, but many were built here and many survive. One is a Joyce museum. I lived right next to another in the 1980s: it contained a sweetshop and ice-cream kiosk serving the nearby beach. I think it's gone 'cultural' now, though -- either that or been bought up by U2.

Martello towers are rather like Staunton pattern Rooks. Monastic round towers are taller, thinner, less castellated, more phallic, but still vaguely like a chess piece. Half-bishop half-rook, maybe.

As for symbolism: I don't think the towers ever had the currency (sic*) of an emblem like a harp or shamrock, but they *were* used symbolically. I'll think about this...