Random Thought Thread

[Ish]

The ancient Roman public religion had a minor deity, Fascinus, who represented good health, good fortune, and protection. Effigies and amulets of him were used to invoke his divine protection from sickness and bad luck. Specifically, sicknesses and bad luck caused by the Evil Eye. (The Evil Eye also had a sort of hypnotic mind control power which was known as “fascination,” which is the root of that word in English.)

The most common depiction was a simple erect phallus worn as a charm on simple cord around the neck, popular with Roman soldiers and newborn babies. 

When a Roman general was paraded through Rome in triumph, the Vestal Virgins would mount a effigy of an erect phallus (often with wings) to the underside of the chariot to protect him from witches. (Yep, modern ‘Mericuh! truck nuts are actual a two millennia old pagan religious tradition.)

But by far my favorite depiction of Fascinus was as a giant erect phallus, with eagle wings and lion’s paws, with a phallus of its own AND a phallus for a tail. (Yep, the internet Dickbutt meme was around more than two-thousand years before the internet.) This Fascinus phallus-griffon thing was often depicted ejaculating onto (or into) an eye with a scorpion on it (representing the evil eye).

So, what’s the lesson in all this fascinating nonsense?

Well, as our modern world is currently being consumed by sickness and bad luck, I think we should all unite together and give a flying [big bad swear word].

 

 

[WestRider]

Three piece birthday suit.

[Raindog]

[Raindog]

[InfestedKerrigan]

3 hours ago, Raindog said:

It's good to see Jake put the California Water Crisis behind himself, and focus on his family.

[Ish]

45 minutes ago, InfestedKerrigan said:

It's good to see Jake put the California Water Crisis behind himself, and focus on his family.

[Raindog]

[InfestedKerrigan]

@Romans832 Chinatown/My two Jakes reference.

[Romans832]

1 minute ago, InfestedKerrigan said:

@Romans832 Chinatown/My two Jakes reference.

Thank you so much

"2 bees" or "not 2 bees"

[InfestedKerrigan]

I still have to remind myself that people are not, likely, referring to Jerry when they mention "Gov. Brown."

[Raindog]

[Raindog]

[InfestedKerrigan]

When I find myself in times of trouble, Kharn the Betrayer slays for me, chanting words of worship, "Blood for thee!"

[Munkie]

I went on my weekly shopping trip for a week's supply of groceries the other day and couldn't help but notice larger crowds and a more picked over store than usual. Toilet paper and canned goods, I get. 

But why is all the chicken gone??? Not all the meat, ONLY CHICKEN. 

Is chicken the best meat for the end times? 

The best theory I've got is while the panicked masses are surveying the meat section and deciding what to heard, they think back to the last virus scare--swine flu. 

"Dirty, dirty swine. I can't risk it, gotta avoid swine."

But then further back in their minds, another thought, "which animal is a swine again...? Dammit, think! Your family's lives depend on this.....I know it's a red meat beast....ah [big bad swear word] it, I'm just buying chicken."

 

And then, much later, a third thought:

"Wait....what does 'avian' mean again?"

[Ish]

Toilet paper isn’t actually in short supply, even if store shelves are temporary empty, there’s still warehouses full of the stuff and no reason that Charmin, et. al., cannot make more. We should just chill. 

But people won’t chill. Stocking up on toilet paper is a relatively cheap action, both in terms of monetary cost and opportunity cost. People like to think that they are “doing something” when they feel at risk.

The panic over toilet paper isn’t a real reflection of toilet paper supply. If you have enough supply on hand already to get through the next week or two, you’ll be fine. There will be more on the shelves soon.The toilet paper panic started in Australia, back in December/January, when China first began to shut down its exports. Australia gets the vast majority of its paper products from China, so when China started to cut off the paper supply, Australians started to stock up on essentials. Americans get the majority of our paper products from the Pacific Northwest and western Canada. We’re not going to run out.

Chicken is cheap, especially in bulk. So if $20 will buy you two pounds of steak, four pounds of ground chuck, or ten pounds of boneless skinless chicken thighs, people feel like they are “doing something” by buying the bigger quantity.

Of course, since the U.S. is a net exporter of food and with the exception of some specialty items, like wines and cheeses, we get all of our staples domestically... We ain’t gonna run out of food.

Disaster preparedness experts call this “zero risk bias,” in which people prefer to try to eliminate one type of possibly superficial risk entirely rather than do something that would reduce their total risk by a greater amount. It’s why people stock up on toilet paper, bottled water, and cans of soup... But never buy a basic first aid kit. There’s an old joke amongst preppers that basically boils down to one guy in his apocalypse bunker with ten million cans of beans and no can opener.

[InfestedKerrigan]

When they say barbarians destroyed Rome, they're talking about the Germans, French, Italian, and Bulgarians, in actuality, are they not?  I've never given it much though, and am not too familiar with Romes decline outside of how it relates to Fox and his martyrs.  However, it's still those fiefdoms and future countries that were ebbing and flowing with each other, and able to expand under Rome's new clothes as Pope.  Which is why I infer what I am.  Ish, too early for your germanophilia?

[Ish]

I’m an Anglophile, not a Teutonophile.

The city of Rome was “sacked by barbarians” seven times in its history. But it’s tricky to refer to the people who did the sacking as “Germans, French, Italians, and Bulgarians” as those countries didn’t exist and the people doing the sacking wouldn’t have identified themselves as such.

In 390 BCE by the Senone Gauls, who lived in the region that roughly corresponds to the modern French-Italian border;

In 410 CE by the Visigoths, in 455 CE by the Vandals, in 546 CE and 550 CE by the Ostrogoths; all peoples who originated in Central Asia, who moved into Central Europe, but traveled extensively and spread throughout the continent;

In 1084 CE by the Normans, under Robert Guiscard Duke of Apulia and Calabria, which is basically the “toe” and the “heel” of modern Italy’s “boot;”

And lastly in 1527 by mercenaries serving Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.

You can kinda think of the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Vandals as distant ancestors of the modern Germans... But that’s pretty tenuous, plus they’re so far back in history that, really, they’re sort of the ancestors of everyone in Europe.

Guiscard’s Normans originated in what is now France (specifically Normandy), but of course the Norman came from Scandinavia originally (Norman = North Man)... and they all lived in what is no modern Italy and Scilly. 

Charles V ruled the Holy Roman Empire at more or less it’s apex, covering pretty much the entirety of the European continent. Only the British isles, Scandinavia, Russia, and the Balkans weren’t part of it... and he had some minor territorial holdings in most of those regions too. 

It wouldn’t be until the Treaty of Westphalia (1648 CE) when Europe would really coalesce into the modern nation-states we have today. In fact, most historians will argue that the idea of a nation-state – where the people identify more strongly with a national government than ethnotribal affiliation – was essentially created by the Treaty of Westphalia... and it would still be several centuries before Italy, Germany, and France would all “unify” into Italy, Germany, and France.

 

[Munkie]

4 hours ago, Ish said:

Chicken is cheap, especially in bulk. So if $20 will buy you two pounds of steak, four pounds of ground chuck, or ten pounds of boneless skinless chicken thighs, people feel like they are “doing something” by buying the bigger quantity.

See, this is how I know people aren't ready for the end times

What are you tightwads gonna do with 500 lbs of chicken when the grid goes down? Me? I'm cashing out my 401k and eating only the choicest cuts.

I only need enough meat to get me to cannibalism season, anyway.

[Ish]

1 hour ago, Munkie said:

I only need enough meat to get me to cannibalism season, anyway.

The best cannibal seasoning is just simple salt and pepper.

[jesselowe]

4 hours ago, Ish said:

Charles V ruled the Holy Roman Empire at more or less it’s apex, covering pretty much the entirety of the European continent. Only the British isles, Scandinavia, Russia, and the Balkans weren’t part of it... and he had some minor territorial holdings in most of those regions too. .

 

Francis I would like a word. Several, actually, after the Battle of Pavia...

[Raindog]

My wife witnessed a man buying twelve heads of kale. When the sale was complete, he exclaimed, “We are saved!”

No one family can eat that much kale before it goes bad and I am pretty sure kale won’t save you from the Coronavirus.

[Ish]

1 hour ago, jesselowe said:

Francis I would like a word. Several, actually, after the Battle of Pavia...

To be fair, I was grossly oversimplifying several centuries of history in order to make a broader point about Europe’s transition from ethnic tribalism to modern nation-states. 

 

[InfestedKerrigan]

2 hours ago, jesselowe said:

Francis I would like a word. Several, actually, after the Battle of Pavia...

As Ish said, this was a very loose and broad stroke, abstract on Eurasian anthropology.  It's why I started off teasing, due to Angles and Saxons being Germanic tribes, even though Ish has expressly stated being an Anglophile previously. ^_^  The minutiae, although super fascinating, surely, is a far deeper treatise than being afforded by Random Thoughts, and deserves more.  The gist of it was establishing that Mediterranean Europe considered non Mediterranean Europe uncivilized Barbarians. I think I had largely assumed it was the Huns and Moors, but that wasn't standing up to even my own admittedly ignorant scrutiny. 

[WestRider]

1 hour ago, Raindog said:

No one family can eat that much kale before it goes bad

Hold my beer.

[andy]

8 hours ago, Raindog said:

My wife witnessed a man buying twelve heads of kale. When the sale was complete, he exclaimed, “We are saved!”

No one family can eat that much kale before it goes bad and I am pretty sure kale won’t save you from the Coronavirus.

Perhaps bought as a TP substitute?