Do I wake or sleep?

I have tried to load some podcasts onto my shuffle and for some reason they won't play. It'll play songs fine but it won't play the podcasts--I've tried different podcasts and it's the same thing. Is it a security thing or something? Can someone (Jason?) tell me what to uncheck or whatever so I can listen to them?

Well, the good news is they caught the vile piece of filth who beat that poor woman at Social. He's a Moroccan construction worker who lives in Pennsylvania who's working here on a job. They also caught him on camera later that night shoplifting a beer. He's being charged with 1st- and 2nd degree assault, attempted rape, and attempted murder, because her injuries are so severe.

The bad (well, more insult-to-injury) news is that, if you can believe it, he's actually trying to claim self-defense. He also grinned at the cameras during the perp walk, because hey! What a great story to tell all of your construction buddies back home, how that bitch turned you down but you sure showed her!

Let's go over this:

*He asked her to dance, she turned him down
*He followed her into the ladies' room
*He attacked her in the stall
*and fractured her skull and broke her eye socket, leaving her unconscious on the bathroom floor with her pants pulled down.

The good news is, 98% of the comments are overwhelmingly supportive of the victim, and harshly critical of the piece of filth who attacked her.

The bad news is, there is the occasional dickless loser who says things like "well, why did she have to turn him down so harshly? If she hadn't been such a bitch..."

But I did love the one commenter who said "you guys are f-ing garbage. you never get laid for obvious reasons; you are scum. Death to scum." That is definitely hitting them where it hurts--obviously they don't believe that woman are worthy of respect, you're never going to raise their consciousness, but if you say "WOMEN HAVE AGENCY. THEY WON'T SLEEP WITH YOU IF YOU'RE A DICKLESS LOSER" that might actually sink in.

Some guys are predators. Nothing will sink in--there's a Nietschean abyss where a normal person's soul would be. For whatever reason--circumstances, upbringing, culture, religion (but ALWAYS by choice, no criminal ever pulls that "I couldn't help myself" crap around me, you always choose to commit a crime)--they are soulless, they exist to prey, to hurt, to defecate on, to kill women. Read about exactly what Ted Bundy did to Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman at the Chi O house in Florida--he's the perfect example (I won't go into details, it's pretty horrific). He literally chewed them up and spit them out. The evidence tied him to them through the bite marks. Read about Winston Moseley, the "man" who murdered Kitty Genovese and then raped her as she lay dying, who woke up that night and literally said "I want to kill a woman." (He'd already killed two other women.) It's always women. These guys always turn to women--women are weaker, less able to fight of, and for some reason, we're always to blame for--something. Not dancing with the guy, we're stand-ins for the mother, we're...I don't know. But somehow we're always to blame for some loser's problems.

I hope this guy never gets out of jail. And I hope this poor woman is able to heal.

Monserrate heckled mercilessly during his debate with opponent for Queens seat in upcoming special election.

My favorite part is the protesters who slashed red lipstick on their cheeks every time he promised to "cut" anything.

Monserrate was convicted last fall of slashing his girlfriend's face with glass a little over a year ago (he is seen on video dragging her through the lobby of their apartment building). Subsequently the State Senate expelled him out but he fought it--he actually sued the State Senate. A judge smacked him down, affirming the right of legislative bodies to discipline their own members. He was also right in the middle of those shenanigans last summer with the deadlock in the State Senate, and he's also voted against gay marriage in New York State, notwithstanding his campaign promise to Empire Pride to vote for it. Not only is he running again, if you can believe it he's cast himself as the victim in the whole girlfriend slashing-and-dragging, Senate expulsion thing. He made a speech, saying he "had been made a scapegoat" and "accused his critics of exploiting an 'ethical bully pulpit' and called the process to expel him 'the height of arrogance.'" Just...wow. Truly shameless. This is really just another example of the shithead-male entitlement thing as the beating at the Social--this is obviously a guy who thinks he has the right to discipline his "woman" and is outraged than anyone could suggest otherwise.

Guys. GUYS. I'm talking to YOU, "Governor" Paterson, and Charlie Rangel and the girlfriend-slashing rep from Queens, Montserrate, and our latest embarrassment, the ertswhile Representative Massa.

STOP RUINING THE BRAND. Okay, we all know the drill--Democrats get caught with women, (conservative) Republicans get caught with men. Democrats are populares, Republicans are optimates (heh, a little Roman Republic history there). Didn't you get the memo? What the hell is going on here? New York Democrats are a MESS right now. Who has the gall to try to maim his girlfriend with a razor and then not only refuse to allow himself to be censored by the state senate, but then tries to run again and steals Obama's election imagery and slogans? And Paterson is a pathetic trainwreck, an incurious, uninsightful party boy who is in way over his head. I want to say I'm disappointed but no--I'm not surprised at all. However I am disappointed in Rangel--a natural leader, a gifted politician and he turns out to be helping himself on the side. And OMG, MASSA, what a complete trainwreck. Dude, find a narrative and stick with it. And stop trying to blame someone--anyone--else for what you did. When Glenn Beck writes off your Democrat-bashing narrative in disgust, you know you've got problems.

Regarding infidelity in politicians--generally I don't care. That is between them and their spouses, as long as it doesn't affect their governing/decision-making. But when they're hypocrites, like Henry Hyde, that bothers me. I don't necessarily think they should resign, but obviously it completely nullifies the moral authority they claim to have.* And when they're promoting anti-gay legislation and they turn out to be gay--they are fair game, man. If you're going to stick your nose into the private lives of my friends and family and make them into 2nd-class citizens, then I have no sympathy when you're caught in the bathroom tapping in Morse code DO ME NOW to the stranger in the next stall.

*Spitzer is a special case--yes, he was a hypocrite not so much in words but because he made his career as a moral crusader, built his rep as AG on it, including targeting johns. Also after he'd been elected he did not Play Well with Others, he made a lot of enemies in Albany, and after he was caught he was a quadriplegic duck. He never would've been able to effect ANY legislation after the scandal so yeah--buh-bye. That's a tragic case, because he was actually very capable and intelligent. Unlike his replacement.

But seriously, New York Democrats. Clean it the fuck up. (Though in all fairness, the Democratic Party has basically kicked out Montserrate.) Stop embarrassing us. We don't look any better than Illinois or Lousiana right now.

Anya and I went over to Tesse's last night to watch the People's Court. Oh. Mah. Lord. Julie does NOT come off particularly well in this and actually a part of me (a small part) felt kind of bad for her, she seemed...vulnerable. She walked in, smiled (!) at the court spectators as though it were an audition or something and then as Rachel said seemed very confused about where to stand. Catherine and Michael, our stage manager, came in and Catherine just seemed more believable and authoritative from the start. Julie blamed the lack of cohesiveness in the show on Catherine, laid it all at her feet, was saying the show wasn't ready to go up, and she didn't want to be associated with a bad show. (Julie has always been very concerned about that sort of thing--you'd think someone who is so self-conscious would avoid casting themselves in roles for which they're way too old, like Hermione and Andromache.) Here's the deal--right before the plug was pulled, the show was very underblocked, and I was a little worried, I couldn't understand why we were still going so slowly. Catherine seemed to like readthroughs a lot--that's all fine and good, but when we're two weeks from opening, we need some blocking. And readthroughs are just a first step, we had done no text analysis, VERY important with the witches. (Especially since they'd cut the crap out of it--I started calling it Macb--. Why do people always want to cut Macbeth? It's the shortest of the tragedies as it is, guys! Why would you want to cut any of that spooky shit? The only thing you should cut is that stupid Hecate scene which Will didn't even write, and which adds nothing.)

However, the things that were good, were really good. David, our Macbeth, was terrific--God, was he good. During the readthroughs I would just watch him, and when he killed young Siward and sneered "Thou wast of woman born"....brrr! So good. He was so good, he made her better, and as I've said, Lady Macbeth is a character who is fundamentally, in every way, Julie's complete opposite, and she's not a good enough actress to play someone so different. But still David was pulling her along. The fights were good. Most of the rest of the cast was good (there was one weird dude who played the Porter who I couldn't stand, kept making these weird familiar remarks to me and Lori and Michelle. Naturally he's the one person who sided with Julie). As underblocked as the show was, we still had TEN DAYS left, plenty of time for a well-cast show to fall into place. So maybe Catherine wasn't quite as on top of things as she could've been--but ultimately that is Julie's responsibility as Producer. She should've kept a firm hand at the reins, especially after she'd fired the first director, her weird friend Lew. Listening to her blame Catherine for everything was frustrating--Julie, I've produced. I know what it's like. The buck stops with you. The director is there to direct, but ultimately you're what holds the show together.

So the judge ruled for Catherine--the amount was a little odd, I guess at first Catherine had filed for a smaller amount (like $150 or so), then the judge let her adjust it to a larger amount (the full amount of her negotiated director's fee, $450 or something). Catherine also sought reimbursement for the money she'd paid out for rehearsal space--you could tell the judge wanted to give her that but she didn't have any paperwork or emails to back it up, so she just got the $450.

What the hell was Julie thinking? I mean, it was tacky enough to yank the production but to stiff everyone? She claimed that everyone else had been paid, including the actors--uh, no we didn't! I just don't get why she went through all of this. Just pay the money. What you did was really, really poor form--you're just compounding it by being so cheap. Just pay the money. Afterward when they interviewed her, she said she thought it "wasn't right" that Michael, who is suing her separately, should be allowed to testify. What? Just stop it, Julie. The interviewer tried to get her to declaim some Lady Macbeth but she wouldn't. (GOD, would that have been comedy gold!) When Michael and Catherine came out, Michael made a point of saying the production had been remounted a few months later with "a lot of the same cast" (the production at the Workshop Theatre) and it was very good.

So, uh, my household is about to get a little bigger.

My brother Stuart is stationed in Naples now, as most of you now, and his posting is due to change this summer. He and his family will be picking up stakes and moving to California. Part of this process means placing their cat Edna Mo somewhere for a few months while they pack up and get them, their stuff and their two kids back over here. Normally they would place Edna with our parents but they've acquired some new dogs since the last time, dogs who apparently just loooove the taste of Kitteh. Stuart doesn't trust the dogs so he emailed me yesterday with a long, humble missive asking if he could foster Edna with me for a few months while they make the trek. I said of course, reminding him that Tatia will probably not like Edna, but Edna gets along with other cats, she'll probably be cool with Tibby. Stuart's also going to give me an allowance for the new bebbeh (not so young, though, she's older than Tatia). She'll be staying here from end of June to no later than early October. Probably a good thing, I can see the three of them figuring out that strength lies in numbers and ganging up on me. Just imagine that scene in Gulliver's Travels when Gulliver wakes up to find himself tied down by tiny wires as the Lilliputians swarm over him. Okay, so I'm not 12 times as big as the bebbehs but the possibility of mutiny remains.

Edna is also a tabby. DOODNESS, it's going to be a regular cattery at my place!

I've been doing a lot of reading ahead in class, as well as outside reading, and downloading family trees and whatnot, all in an effort to keep all the material straight. The textbook, while interesting and readable, isn't much more than a flying runthrough--understandably, since it's covering over 1000 years. But, as an example, its coverage of Julius Caesar doesn't even mention Cleopatra and all salaciousness aside, his relationship with her was very indicative of how thoroughly effed up the Ptolemaic administration of Egypt was. We had a real rousing discussion section today and this came up--one of the guys in my discussion section, a guy named Scott who's something of an expert in Egypt, was talking about why Rome didn't annex Egypt until much later and he said "because the political situation was such a mess there, it wasn't worth it." I interjected "as Julius Caesar found out!" He was almost killed there. Ptolemaic politics were so sterotypically female and feminine--someone was always getting poisoned or plotted against behind their back. Shakespeare's characterization of Egypt as female was obviously because of Cleopatra but even without that, the characterization is apt.

Columbia has a cool interface with students called Courseworks--you log on and go to your classes, and you can access slide shows and also post online discussions. This is something I posted in response to the book, Harris's War and Imperialism, that we discussed today:

On p. 41, Harris asks: "...whether or not the social ethos I have been describing was created by circumstances external to the Roman state, or whether Rome's distinctive behavior towards foreign states resulted from the social ethos." And that's the big question, isn't it? He starts from 327 BC (in the middle of the Samnite Wars) and ends in 70 BC, after Rome has convincingly conquered all of the Mediterranean. And he makes a strong case for Rome's inherent bellicosity, the militarism that saturated Roman mores and culture. But it's worth looking at how this may have developed, and I can't help but see a watershed moment in the 1st and 2nd Punic Wars, especially the latter. As much war as Rome may have pursued during the 5th and 4th centuries [i.e., with the Samnites, Etruscans, Sabines, and other peoples of the Italian peninsula], these were essentially defensive, a kind of macro-Darwinism, "dominate or be dominated" that perhaps was driven by the Celts' and Samnites' aggressive policies toward them (the latter finally reaching its natural conclusion when Sulla [general-turned-dictator during the chaos of the 1st century BC who basically upended the Roman constitution by marching on Rome--sound familiar?--wiping out most of the Senate and putting in his lackies instead] eradicated them in 83 BC, with Strabo [contemporary writer] remarking "he knew from experience that no Roman would be able to live as long as the Samnites existed").

We first have a change in perspective, a war that is essentially expansionist, with the first Carthaginian War. Though this war was in its execution more or less unremarkable (with the exception of Rome's development of its first navy), the 2nd Punic War must have tested the Romans severely. Not only was the casualty rate extremely high, but the war was fought right there on the peninsula, and some of their allies were even turning against them. There seems to be such an incredibly personal feel to the Hannibalic War, exemplified by the Romans' awareness of the all-conquering opposing general, Hannibal himself, whom even the Alps couldn't keep out. And yet for all that, the Romans came out of that war with their appetite for war seemingly enhanced, rather than subdued. It is after 201 that Rome engages in what are essentially a series of police actions, wars to maintain the balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean, conflicts that are the antithesis of defensive, necessary wars. Does this indicate that the pursuit of war was an integral, ingrained feature of Roman culture? Or was the 2nd Punic War the crucible that forged these characteristics permanently in the Roman ethos?

This is something I find I'm pondering more and more--how Rome's initial capacity for war developed into an essential part of its identity, by which its citizens derived their sense of self. I want to examine the development from citizen/soldiers fighting defensive wars of necessity ---> citizen/soldiers fighting wars of conquest for the greater glory of Rome and their own gain ---> de facto professional soldiers whose main loyalty is to their commander (and then only because that commander will get them the goods). My instinct, as I say above, is that something changed in the Roman psyche during the crucible of the 2nd Punic War. I think there was a unique quality to that war that could've either broken them completely or further refined them--as it happens, it was the latter. Something I brought up in class today was the poverty of Rome's culture until Hellenization in the 2nd century--until then, Rome had no theater, no epic poetry, little literature of any kind in fact and no music that survived. This was a culture that had refined itself to one main purpose--war. And yet there was something more to their culture--the Romans were constitutional geniuses, they did improve on the concept of the polis, they topped the Greek world in that respect. And they were not Sparta--Sparta was an extreme example of a society devoted to war. Rome wasn't that extreme, and interestingly, in the mid-2nd century, the national appetite for war apparently started to wane.

Happy Birthday, Holly!

It's 36° and we'll be hitting the low 40s today and for the next several days. And sunny! Yesterday morning it was very sunny--though still cold and damp, and of course by the afternoon it had gotten cloudy again. I'm probably way too optimistic but I think we may be seeing the first signs of spring--yay! I am SO ready for winter to be over!

And St. Patrick's Day is in less than a month!

I was on fiyuh today in class. My method of note-taking is paying off--constant synthesis of all this stuff. (And plus the fact that the Punic Wars are infinitely more interesting than the Italic Wars--elephants crossing the Alps, cool! Endless wars with the Samnites, booooo-ring.) The professor was talking about the cultural shifts that started in the 2nd century BC and referred to "political precedents that had already been compromised. He asked if we knew who he meant--I thought it was Scipio Africanus but I didn't say anything and he said (yup) "Scipio Africanus. Can anyone tell me why?" My hand shot up, he called on me, and I Hermione'd "Because of his success in Spain during the 2nd Punic Wars, he was appointed to Consul before having been elected praetor or questor, plus his term was extended indefinitely." Aw yeah! Then later he was talking about the cultural Hellenization that happened in Rome following Rome's imperialism in the eastern Mediterranean--this included things like coinage, the beginning of Roman history (i.e., Romans writing their own narrative) and the introduction and adaptation of Greek theater. He said something like "Plow-oooh-tus, does anyone know who that is?" No one said anything and as he started to write it on the board I realized who it was and I blurted out "I know who he is!" He pointed to me and I said "Plautus was a Roman playwright who wrote comedies which were known for their use of stock characters like the scheming slave, the lovers, the doddering old fool..." I thought, but didn't say, "he may be more familiar to modern-day musical comedies through A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum which is based on his plays." Although it occurred to me later--the script of Forum says that it takes place "200 years before the birth of Christ, a day in Spring." (I've done that show twice, and that setting always amused me.) But slavery wasn't really introduced in Rome until a little later (sometime after the Macedonian Wars when the Roman economy asploded). However Plautus didn't really compose original works--he adapted Greek plays to Roman tastes. Hence the anachronism.