Our original doorbell was this tiny little box on the right side of the door. This made it easily overlooked because 1. the box itself is literally 1x1" and the button barely 0.25" and 2. it was located on the opposite side of the handle, where the human eye would look for one. Consequently several times we used to miss lots of packages or people at the door because they'd just use the door knocker, which can't be heard unless you're in the living room or the basement bedroom.

The thing is it's happening again, and I don't know why. There's no excuse. We moved it to literally right next to the screen door handle, which your eyes should go to if you want to open it, the button is fucking huge AND it's illuminated. There's no way you can miss this. Why the hell would you not press it? It's not that difficult. You put your index finger onto the button and press down. I'm certain you can do it.

Cicero was a famous Roman orator and lawyer and his prose is considered the best that Latin has ever produced. A cornucopia of his work survives precisely for that reason, and amongst them On Duties was particularly popular during the Renaissance because it provided instruction for civic-minded Italians. In the opening you learn this book is actually a letter: Cicero's son is in Greece learning philosophy, so Cicero thought it wise to send him his own manual of philosophy. I've seen this often in ancient and medieval works. Back on my xanga, I mentioned Abelard's Historia calamitatum was a letter. As was Augustine's famous City of God.

Although I've been reading and translating these for years, it wasn't until just now I realized how fucking weird this is. I still write to people, and usually they're about four to five pages with my tiny handwriting. Can you imagine getting a fucking book in the mail and finding out it's just your dad wanting to give you advice? Or let's go back to City of God. The copy on my bookshelf is 1091 pages in tiny print. In handwriting that could easily double. "Here's your mail. Your friend Augustine thought it would be important to talk about how God relates to everything in history and prattled about it for about two thousand pages." Holy shit, I thought the two hours I devote to a single letter was a long time. At some point during the process I think I would forget what the hell I was writing about. And remember, this was before they had computers to help with the editing process. Nevermind that, this was before they even had paper. That's a lot of devotion to communication.

When I was looking for phones to buy for the house, I noticed something odd:

I like Amazon listed the first phone as "black," and then offered this other phone as if it's exactly the same version except a different color. "We have both the black and hamburger versions of this phone." "Oh man, I don't know which one to choose! They're so similar!"

As for the Germans themselves, I should suppose them to be indigenous and very slightly blended with new arrivals from other races or alliances; for originally people who sought to migrate reached their destination in fleets and not by land; while, in the second place, the leagues of the ocean on the father side of Germany, at the opposite end of the world, so to speak, from us, are rarely visited by ships from our world. Besides, who, to say nothing about the perils of an awful and unknown sea, would have left Asia or Africa or Italy to look for Germany? With its wild scenery and harsh climate it is pleasant neither to live in nor look upon unless it be one's fatherland. ^*

Medieval studies requires students to know at least Latin, German, and French, along with any other languages required for your specialty like Italian or Greek. My medieval history professor told me she never really learned German and only took an exam, and even with her shaky knowledge she managed to get a 96. Why? Because after a few lines she realized the text she was given to translate came from Tacitus' De origine et situ Germanorum or On the Origin and Situation of the Germans. And any medieval student worth his salt has read that at least nine or ten times because it's the first ethnography of the Germanic tribes lying on the borders of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the Common Era. Academics pour over it, trying to get some sense of the people who would eventually overrun the Romans and change Europe from a classical world into a medieval one.

But apparently it's also one of the justifications the Nazis gave for the purity and superiority of the German race. That passage I gave above is literally how Heinrich Himmler argued for the unadulterated German race. Whereas Tacitus is saying that Germany is such a crappy place that he can't imagine anyone else but Germans willing to live there, Himmler would say Germans haven't dirtied their blood by mixing with others like the British or the Spanish.

I look at this and laugh. Nowadays Tacitus wouldn't hold up in an academic sense; he never traveled to Germany himself and most of his sources were from hearsay from people who didn't even speak German. And you can tell pretty early on he's not only writing this as a sort of ethnography but also as a way of comparing the supposed German probity with Roman immorality. For example, he says the German women are particularly chaste, practically glaring at the Roman women from his own culture. So the Nazis would look at that and say Germans were fucking amazing from the beginning because Tacitus hyped them up.

Afterward some people have tried to suppress Tacitus as an origin of insidious thoughts. For me, it's hard to conceive how people could be obsessed with him either way. He's a Roman writing about a culture he didn't really know that well, much like a lot of ancient authors from Herodotus to Jordanes. Putting modern labels on him and his work is anachronistic. That wasn't his intention, he probably was wrong in a lot of aspects, and there's no fucking way he could even conceive of a modern German state or Nazism.

I guess that's why I get pissy when people say the humanities are useless. Okay, my field will never create a better battery or make an agricultural breakthrough that'll save millions of people. But at least I can be the person in the room who can turn to someone and say, "Stop making shit up about the past to prove your point. That has nothing to do with your point. You just want something to back you up, but in reality you have no proof about that. It's just nonsense." It's like when Sarah Palin fucked up about Paul Revere. There has to be someone who can step forward and bring reason to the argument. Otherwise you've got Nazis breaking into people's houses for a book that really doesn't relate to them to begin with.

^* Tacitus, Germania, trans. M. Hutton (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 131

Mom doesn't know my weight, and this probably wasn't the best way to inform her:

Mom: Okay, can you take that ladder and get that pan off the shelf for me?
Me: Here's the ladder.
Mom: Okay, get it now.
Me: Uhhhh, I think you should get it. That ladder's max capacity is 225lb, right?
Mom: Yeah, it's 225lb. You can handle it.
Me: (smile)
Mom: You're joking me.
Me: (smile)

We haven't bought any beds yet because we're trying to slowly remove all the boxes inundating our house, so at the moment I'm temporarily sleeping in the office upstairs. My entire life I had open space on both sides of the bed. But in the apartment I was up against the wall and here it's the same. The difference is before the wall was on my right and now in the office it's on my left. This is causing so many problems for me. I now instinctually get up on my left after two years in the apartment, which means I just smash face-first into the wall. Every. Single. Fucking. Time. If you're standing outside my room at about 7AM, you hear this giant thud followed by lots of swearing.

I trudge my way through this situation because I know there's worse ways to wake up.

There are a group of scholars who say Shintoism isn't a religion because it doesn't possess important criteria, e.g. a doctrine and a sacred book. I find that to be complete bullshit. "Religion" is a term we've created to label movements society has. That means you're deliberately creating an exclusive definition. You could say, "Hey, even if you're just communing with spirits, that's totally cool. It's a religion." But no. You demand it has something equivalent of the Bible. Or the Qu'ran. Or the Vedas.

Because if you don't, that means you're dismissive of not only the Japanese's beliefs, but also the Native Americans', the Africans', the ancient Romans' and Greeks', hell, pretty much anything before the Jews, Hindus, and Zoroastrians came upon the scene. And THAT is pretty fucking egotistical. Imagine going to a Shinto Shrine and telling a priestess right to her face that what she's doing and believes in isn't a religion. That it doesn't count. Considering the amount of effort these people have put into it, that's pretty insulting.

You all know the Stamp Act, right? It's one of the taxes that moved the United States to declare independence from Great Britain. I was reading about it and the colonists' reaction:

A country gentleman whose servant was afraid to go out to the barn on dark night asked him, "Afraid of what?"
"Of the Stamp Act," the servant replied. ^*

That's pretty intense. Imagine being too scared to leave your home because Obamacare is out in the wild now, lurking in the shadows.

^* Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (New York: Ballantine Books, 1984), 155.

Everyone knows that historically Ireland has had a tumultuous relationship with England, but that didn't start until the 1100 when one of the deposed Irish kings appealed to King Henry II of England for help. As what commonly happens when a foreign troop is allowed in, they just stay there and conquer the country themselves.

Several years later, Henry decided to have his son John made King of Ireland. To solidify this, he sent John there to meet with the local leaders, hear their petitions, and gain their loyalty. One person in his retinue was Gerald of Wales, who chronicled what he saw. Gerald is a tricky person for historians. See, his family were some of the initial invaders and he wanted to portray the Irish as uncivilized and requiring English sovereignty, but like Jordanes he still provides important source material that historians need.

I haven't read anything of his until recently, and my first impression is this: He basically went bar hopping the entire time and wrote down any fantastical story he heard over a beer. Oddly enough, in a book filled with anecdotes about women fucking goats or beavers biting their own testicles off, this was my favorite passage:

Wolves in Ireland generally have their young in December, either because of the extreme mildness of the climate, or rather as a symbol of the evils of treachery and plunder which here blossom before their season. ^*

I just love how he put these into such extremes: "Well, it could be that wolves give birth early because the weather isn't so bad in Ireland compared to other places. Or it just may be because there is evil always in this country." I can't get over it. How do you reach that conclusion? Surely there needs to be a step in between that. Like, just use that logic with anything else: "Well, I lose my keys often. It may be because I have a poor memory or am disorganized. Or it may be because I have an evil soul. Either one, really."

^* Gerald of Wales, The History and Topography of Ireland, translated by John J. O'Meara (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), 77.

Upon observing the rainbow lights illuminating the Empire State Building at night:

Reggie: Yo, what's with all the rainbow colors?
Me: I don't know. Is it Gay Pride Week or something?
Moham: Isn't it Easter?
Me & Reggie: ...
Me: Jesus, I totally forgot it's Easter. The fucking Muslim figured this shit out and the two Christians just sat here like idiots. Christ.

Ate Neneng is into Filipino soap operas recently, and considering that she cannot navigate YouTube on her own, I have to choose each episode for her. I've noticed there are two profiles that commonly upload her shows. One person cuts the top and the bottom to make it seem wide screen, then puts this filter over it to replicate an old film with dots and lines and shit. The other person overlays this TV on the video, so you can't see some of the crap going on. Why would you ever do this? Why can't you just fucking give a show normally? It's not like you're making advertisements or anything. You're just being annoying. And you're putting in useless effort to be this annoying!

Tonight there's a lunar eclipse at about 2AM that I'd love to see from my roof, but unfortunately I'm so fucking exhausted from moving boxes all day and tomorrow I have to get up early to move them more again. I told Ate Neneng about this, and she said very seriously, "Oh, the eclipse is bad the pregnant lady. The baby is hurt and dies."

Damn, ladies, you better stay the fuck inside tonight.

The New York Times ran a multi-part series a few months ago focusing on a homeless girl named Dasani (named after the water) and how social programs both help and hinter her family. Her parents are pretty much an example of what conservatives warn about: They never graduated high school, do and sell drugs, don't work, had way too many children than they can afford, and are in and out of rehab.

The article focused how little help they get from the city. $23K for eight children and themselves, their shelter has perverts roaming the halls and bathroom, the facilities are barely maintained and filled with vermin — Dasani herself had to fix the plumbing in the room — and the child welfare workers are not sympathetic to the pressures of the situation. I can't imagine foster care doing them any good.

But as I read about Dasani, I could totally see her growing up and never leaving her condition. At the moment she's ten and sees the world with a child's clarity and determination: She won't do drugs, she won't have kids too early. I'm just imagining her entering high school and that all changing. Her mother for one is a bad influence. She is a pugnacious individual and encourages Dasani to do the same to the point that Dasani is suspended from school for fighting after multiple warnings. Education is the best way out of a bad situation, and her mother is not helping in that aspect.

Actually the mother is trying to get Dasani to be noticed and perhaps go on television or enter a sports team. While that's a noble dream, I feel she's entering the same trap lots of other people from impoverished communities enter as well. Although you will get a lot of money if you succeed, the competition is tough and your chances aren't that good. Unlike other people, you have no safety net to fall back on if this doesn't work out. It's better to focus on a more dependable and probably less lucrative path for now to create that safety net in the middle class so your children have a chance.

At the same time I can see what the article is getting at: The parents definitely mismanage money, they don't deserve what they're getting, but okay. Let's take away from them. What about the innocent children then? Yeah, there's too many of them, but I don't feel comfortable saying, "Yeah, you little shit, you've been riding the gravy train for too long." By punishing the parents, you're inadvertently punishing the kids. Some people sneer and say the children will become just like their parents, which I said above can possibly happen, but at the same time it possibly can't. You don't know what potentiality is. There are plenty of people who came from poor situations and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams; isn't that was the American dream is about?

Then there are people who say taking away welfare programs will encourage the parents to work (the father seems useless in this aspect) and have less children. Possibly, but simultaneously let's look at the late 1800s before the welfare programs were in place. Plenty of people were alcoholics who didn't work, and plenty of people still had children, it's just those kids starved and died. I don't think anyone would be comfortable with that situation in modern-day United States.

When I came out of The Times series, I wasn't really able to offer any answers. Again, the parents are pretty much completely at fault for what's happening. This is not a case of the system fucking them over. They did it to themselves. But the kids didn't do it, and you want to remove them from that lifestyle quickly so they don't become their parents. It's causing conflicting emotions; I don't want to reward bad behavior but I still feel there's a societal duty to poor children. Thank god I'm not a politician because I'd be paralyzed.

Today I got an email from my fool of a brother with the subject, "Important Question." The only words in the email were, "Please forward this to my father," along with an M4A file. Immediately I could feel my heart pounding. Was something wrong? What could he possibly need? Before I relayed the message, I played it and got this with a very serious voice:

Dear Dad: I have a question. Is Schubert, the classical music composer, originated from the state of California? I expect your response promptly. Bye.

I have no idea why I expected anything but idiocy.

We now have central heating and air conditioning in the house. Our system has three different zones for each floor, and in the basement there's a unit that heats/cools. To reflect the zones, three units have to be outside to expel the air, much like an air conditioner in a window. I wanted these to be placed on the roof, but mom and dad didn't want repairmen going upstairs if there's an issue and said to place in the backyard. In their defense we were assured they would be about the size of suitcases.

How fucking wrong that assessment was.

I can't describe how fucking huge these things are. I believe they're larger than I am. At least they're quiet, but standing in front of them is like entering a wind tunnel. I thought about putting plants in front to cover up this giant eyesore, but with that wind all leaves and flowers would be demolished in a couple of minutes. Now I'm vaguely pondering how much it would cost to move that shit onto the roof, but that would annihilate any possibility for a deck.

If you've ever looked around our house carefully before the fire, you may have noticed at the top of the basement stairs there was a switch with duct tape all over it. That was to dissuade you from using it since it turned off the gas. The question we should all be asking is why the original architect of the house thought it would be cool to make a switch to turn off the gas. And place it at the top of the basement stairs, a spot that seems perfectly logical to turn on the lights in the basement.

The problem is with the new set up, the actual switch for the lights is in the exact same location as the previous one for the gas. So whenever I head downstairs, there's always five to ten seconds of flailing as I move my hand to flip it, my instincts kick in telling me you can't touch that switch, and then realizing what the new reality is.

Everyone and their mother has a subcontractor nowadays, and if I had the power to control the universe for a day one of the things on my checklist would be to stop that. Throughout this entire process of rebuilding the house, subcontractors have fucked me over. It's because there's no oversight, no coordination, no direction, and no one takes responsibility when something goes wrong. For example, let's take today: We were supposed to finally have the gas hooked up, but a subcontractor came out, looked at the pipe that our plumber attached (another subcontractor), said it wasn't done properly, and then left. Two weeks until another appointment slot is open, AND when we called Con Ed itself they said it should've been fine.

Or we can take attaching the internet to our house. I already mentioned the horrors I went through, but when the final step came they totally fucked it up again. See, we now have internal wiring for CAT6, and there's a box in the basement where the internet is plugged in. The subcontractor Time Warner sent out totally fucked that up and only got one port in the basement working with the rest of the house dead. And they had the balls to tell us internet was working as they left, but in the report to Time Warner they said we didn't have proper wiring.

I know why large corporations are doing this: If they don't have their own army of employees, they don't have to worry about their health insurance and such. But at the same time that just completely fucks up customer service and productivity. Literally no one seems to know what the hell is going on. I have no idea how people who aren't retired deal with this shit because they would've had to take off practically a month to manage all this bullshit.

Yes, okay, this is my Latin dictionary. Yes, I know it's in the command prompt. Yes, I know there's no graphics. All you do is type in the word and it gives you the fucking result. It's really helpful and I use it all the time. What the fuck more do you want?

In order to increase the ceiling height, we lowered the basement floor by about a foot. However that meant that pipes which were under the floor before are now above it. This created a foot-wide platform along one side of the room where the contractor tried to hide the sewage pipe. I originally intended to put the TV there, but there was no way for me to shove a TV-stand on something a foot wide, so that meant I'd have to put it in front and that'd look really stupid.

So I had the contractor put a built-in bookshelf there, and it looks fucking magnificent. I'm actually a little intimidated because I don't think I have enough video games/manga to fill it up.

I was reading an article about landscaping with moss, and this line stood out for me: "Mr. Kauffman’s research suggests that a log stripped of all moss may take 20 years to grow back fully. Leaving a third of the log untouched, however, may cut the regeneration time to 10 years." Why? Because I have a poignant memory of when I was young — probably about five or six — and walking down a suburban street with just Harlan. I can't recall exactly where this was, but the tall trees that cast the entire neighborhood in shadow even on that bright day still remain strong in my mind. And there was about five inches between the sidewalk and the curb that just had soil with thick layer of moss all the way from the corner and down the long, long block to the other corner. And I remember kicking the shit out of it. I fucking destroyed all the moss there. If you looked back, which I did at the end of our walk, all you could see into the distance were pieces of moss scattered across the sidewalk and into the street. The feeling of satisfaction of such thorough work was suddenly dashed when Harlan quipped, "You know it takes about twenty years for all of that to grow back, right?" To this day I still feel a lingering sense of guilt, knowing that when the residents came home from work or left their homes, they discovered a beautiful part of their neighborhood was annihilated thanks to the whim of a small child.

World War I may not have the same pizazz as its successor, but if you know anything about it, it's trench warfare. That's what all the military players in the second World War were trying to avoid: that horrible attrition that just had men mowed down under machine gun fire. Of course, in the process they just had civilians get mowed down by carpet bombing instead, but that's another issue.

But if there's anything else you'd know about World War I, it's the Battle of the Marne. Essentially Germany had taken out Russia in one battle, so it could turn all of its attention to France one month after the war began. Very quickly superior Germany artillery broke through the French and British line and France was invaded on several points. This was called the Great Retreat, where the Germans actually got within five miles of Paris and winning the war. However the Allies managed to find an opening in the German line and attacked it, forcing them back: This is the Battle of the Marne, which saved the Allies from total destruction. After that everyone dug down and trench warfare began.

The head of the French army was a general named Joseph Joffre. Although there are many things you can say about his leadership, there's one quality that's amazing: He is completely unshakable. While people are panicking around him, he remained as a calm, steady presence who kept his head even during the most dire moments. (France would not have surrendered to the Germans in World War II if he were still running the ship.) I was listening to a podcast about World War I the other day, and someone quoted his autobiography. At that point the British were not impressed with the French performance and were thinking of just leaving because it wasn't really their fight to begin with. Joffre had to convince the head of the British army, Field Marshal John French, to stay and fight in the Marne. (Yes, that is a confusing name, especially when you read lines like, "French did not like the French so much.") Here's what Joffre says when he talked with French about the upcoming counterattack:

I put my whole soul into the effort to convince the field marshal. I told him that the decisive moment had arrived, and we must not let it escape. We must go to battle with every man both of us had, and free from all reservations. So far as the French army is concerned, I continued, my orders are given. And whatever may happen, I intend to throw my last company into the balance to win victory and save France. It is in her name that I come to ask you for British assistance, and I urge it with all my power I have in me. I cannot believe that the British army will refuse to do its share in this supreme crisis. History would severely judge your absence. Then as I finished, carried away by my convictions and the gravity of the moment, I remember bringing down my fist on a table, which stood at my elbow, and crying, "Monsieur le Marshal! The honor of England is at stake!"

Up to this point, French had listened imperturbably to the officer, who was translating what I'd said, but now his face suddenly reddened. There ensued a long, impressive silence, and then with visible emotion he murmured, "I will do all that I possibly can." Not understanding English, I asked [the translator] Wilson what Sir John had said. He merely replied, "The field marshal says yes." I had distinctly felt the emotion which seemed to grip the British commander-in-chief, above all I remarked the tone of his voice, and I felt, as did all the witnesses to the scene, that these simple words were equivalent to an agreement signed and sworn to.

Tea, which was already prepared, was then served.

Man, this guy was almost Churchillian in his writing. Even though this moment took place a century ago, I can palpably feel the tension, the emotion, and the desperation that was in that room. When I was listening to the podcast quoting this, I could feel my breath stop at how incredible this exchange was. But then he had to fuck it up in the final moment. You could've ended it with the signed and sworn agreement, but no, you had to tell us you then chatted over tea afterward. What else do you talk about? How you went to examine the front lines, saw brave young men dying before your very eyes, could see a man still charge even though his bowels were falling from his wounded midsection, and ended that paragraph with that night you ate some ham? Incredible.

I'm in the midst of Final Fantasy XIII, but I can't play it because my room is literally overflowing with boxes and my TV stand is covered with tools. As you can probably tell from my previous posts, I'm also playing Final Fantasy XIV, but as I said before internet is a no go. The expansion for Diablo III came out last week and I have it, but because Blizzard is a little bitch, I can't play it unless I connect to Battle.net. I vaguely recall complaining about this before on my xanga, but it's absolutely ridiculous that I have to connect to the internet to play a single-player game. They won't even let me install it. What the hell was the point of buying the disc then? Why not just have a digital copy? Why the hell did they think this was a good idea? I can't conceive of any good reason for this shit.

Normally I'd turn to the other game I'm working on, StarCraft II, but Blizzard can go to hell. So I guess Civ V is back in action.

Although we've moved into the house, we don't have gas. Estimated ETA is about two weeks. Ultimately that means we can't cook, use our washing machine/dryer, or have hot water. Thankfully we switched our heating to electric, but it still means I'm showering in cold water in 50° weather. This is because of a fuck up at the Department of Buildings regarding our submitted plans, and they're late in issuing an approval. Con Ed won't attach the gas meter without that, and even then it could take two weeks to get a construction crew out here to handle it.

I also don't have any internet; I'm currently writing this at a neighbor's house. About a month ago dad called Time Warner, informed them of the situation, and explained what needed to be done: There is no wire going to the house itself, so a crew will have to reattach it. He set up an appointment weeks in advance, and when the dude came out and looked at our house, he said he was only responsible to internal wiring, and that we would need a construction crew. About a week later the experience was repeated with another dude. So far we're waiting to see what happens on try 3.

See, when people complain about governmental inefficiency and that private businesses are the answer, I reply so far business has been just as much of a pain in the ass. The Department of Buildings has been a complete nightmare in this process and definitely delayed the completion of this project by about three months while we waited for permits. But simultaneously customer service for businesses is something we all fucking complain about.

I think you can definitely make a case for capitalism vs. governmental planning. For example, whilst the USSR had factories of useless shit that Moscow thought would be useful, companies in the US could quickly determine what was making money and what wasn't, and adapted accordingly. And if they didn't, they died out. That's what happened to the pony express when trains and cars entered the picture.

But what happens when they can't die out? What I mean is, usually the refrain is if you don't like one company, switch to another. That works with stuff like orange juice, but what else do I have besides Time Warner? I can't get satellite because the apartment buildings are in my way. And I can't switch to Verizon because FiOS hasn't extended to my area yet. And now Time Warner's thinking of combining with Comcast, so there literally is no competition.

Both political parties need to examine their ideologies. The Democrats are saying government can help lots of our problems, but they don't really examine bureaucracy and waste enough. And the Republicans say flexible businesses will help everything, but they refuse to discuss the issues with monopolies. But of course, with the current political system I doubt that's gonna happen.