Papyrocentric Performativity Presents:
• Bullets and Butterflies – Mad Dog Killers: The Story of a Congo Mercenary, Ivan Smith (Helion / 30° South Publishers 2012)
• Jaundiced on George – George Orwell: English Rebel, Robert Colls (Oxford University Press 2013)
• Crabsody in View – RSPB Handbook of the Seashore, Maya Plass (Bloomsbury 2013)
Or Read a Review at Random: RaRaR
[…] the whole vintage package – which started as essentially a rediscovery of simple skills, tying generations together and serving as a visual cake-based bulwark against modern turbulence – has been used to sugar-coat a free-market nationalism that isn’t sweet at all. — Zoë Williams, Let’s ditch the nostalgia that’s invaded our TV and seeped into our politics, The Guardian, 30iv2018.
Elsewhere other-engageable:
• Oh My Guardian #5
• Zo with the Flow
• Reds under the Thread (more on mixed metaphory)
In this work, Edition of the “Way” [Tahrir al-Wasila], Khomeini gives opinions on such innovations as insurance, banking, lotteries, artificial insemination, anatomical dissection, sex-change operations, artificial insemination, space travel and marriage with extra-terrestrials. — James Buchan, Days of God: The Revolution in Iran and Its Consequences (2012), ch. 3, “The Iranian Religion”, pg. 135 of the 2013 John Murray paperback
I didn’t feel the need to read this. Just knowing it’s there is enough.
• Coming Out as a Gay Orthodox Talmud Teacher
It would have been even better if it had been in The Guardian, but this is an imperfect world.
Papyrocentric Performativity Presents:
• Queen and Not Heard – The African Queen, C.S. Forester (1935)
• Ley Ho, Let’s Go! – Britannia Obscura: Mapping Britain’s Hidden Landscapes, Joanne Parker (Vintage 2014)
• Hymn Pickings – The Church Hymnary, Various (Oxford University Press 1927)
• Clock, Stock and Biswell – A Clockwork Orange: The Restored Edition, Anthony Burgess, edited by Andrew Biswell (Heinemann 2012)
• Vid Kid – Violated by Video: The Eldritch Chills of an ’Eighties Childhood… from Video Nasties to Nazi Xploitation…, Paolo Nanderson (TransVisceral Books 2018)
Or Read a Review at Random: RaRaR
Cats are of divers colours, but for the most part griseld, like to congealed ise, which cometh from the condition of her meat: her head is like unto the head of a Lion, except in her sharp ears: her flesh is soft and smooth: her eyes glister above measure, especially when a man cometh to see them on the suddain, and in the night they can hardly be endured, for their flaming aspect. Wherefore Democritus describing the Persian Smaragde saith that it is not transparent, but filleth the eye with pleasant brightness, such as is in the eyes of Panthers and Cats, for they cast forth beams in the shadow and darkness, but in sunshine they have no such clearness, and thereof Alexander Aphrodise giveth this reason, both for the sight of Cats and Bats, that they have by nature a most sharpe spirit of seeing. — Edward Topsell, Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes (1658).
• φασὶ γοῦν Ἵππαρχον τὸν Πυθαγόρειον, αἰτίαν ἔχοντα γράψασθαι τὰ τοῦ Πυθαγόρου σαφῶς, ἐξελαθῆναι τῆς διατριβῆς καὶ στήλην ἐπ’ αὐτῷ γενέσθαι οἷα νεκρῷ. — Κλήμης ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς, Στρώματα.
• They say, then, that Hipparchus the Pythagorean, being guilty of writing the tenets of Pythagoras in plain language, was expelled from the school, and a pillar raised for him as if he had been dead. — Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, 2.5.9.57.3-4
• Als Heifetz das Werk dann durchspielt, scheitert er mehrmals an einer extrem schwierigen Passage. Der unfehlbare Heifetz soll zu Schönberg sagen: Dafür müsste ich mir sechs Finger wachsen lassen. Schönberg erwidert angeblich: Na ich kann warten.
• When Heifetz then played through the work, he made several mistakes in a very difficult passage. The impeccable Heifetz said to Schoenberg: “I’d need to grow six fingers for that!” Schoenberg allegedly replied: “Well, I can wait!”
• Shakespeare + Beethoven + Michelangelo = Wagner
अभि द्यां महिना भुवमभीमां पृथिवीं महीम् ।
कुवित्सोमस्यापामिति ॥८॥
हन्ताहं पृथिवीमिमां नि दधानीह वेह वा ।
कुवित्सोमस्यापामिति ॥९॥ — ऋग्वेदः सूक्तं १०.११९
“In my vastness, I surpassed the sky and this vast earth. Have I not drunk Soma? / Yes! I will place the earth here, or perhaps there. Have I not drunk Soma?” — Ṛg Veda, Mandala 10, Hymn 119, lines 8-9, translated by Wendy Doniger
Note: The title of this incendiary intervention is a portmanteau of “methylated” and “megalomania”. “Methylated” comes from the ancient Greek μέθυ, meaning “wine” and related to μέθυστος “drunk, intoxicated” (OED).
