things my impossibly young looking Roman history lecturer has said
‘listen to your seminar tutors over the booklet, but only for seminars – in lectures i am king. unless you have me as a seminar tutor as well, in which case i am your king and god.’
‘has anybody played Rome: Total War? no?’
‘Cataline tried to burn the city and everyone he hated but he failed because, in short, nobody liked him.’
‘the mediterranean diet didn’t include tomatoes in the ancient world. i know. oh my god. i know.’
‘so of course when Hannibal turns up, the senate goes ‘sod it, lets kick his arse’.’
‘one man’s optimates is another man’s silver-spoon bearing prick.’
‘we don’t have much information about the 70s BC, largely because Plutarch doesn’t care.’
‘i’m not saying Rome: Total War is entirely accurate, but its battle campaigns are surprisingly historically informed.’
[hand drawing a map in chalk because the projector is broken] ‘i’ll give it a go, this is why i hate technology, and oh. well. that’s not italy.’
‘every army needs bakers and prostitutes, this is just a fact of life.’
‘Sulla. He’s a bit of a badass, but also a bit of a prick.’
‘yes, that is a slide from Spartacus. The film, not the series, which is more accurate and less like soft porn.’
‘the Romans liked Campania because its very fertile. they didn’t know this was because of its proximity to a volcano – poor buggers found THAT out later.’
‘Crassus gets given command of Syria and high fives everyone in the senate.’
‘Catullus was very pithy, very hellenistic in style. unlike the Iliad, which is 24 books of tedium.’
‘An Afternoon at Carrhae: the Romans being shot at repeatedly by Parthian cavalry because if there’s one thing the Romans aren’t good at, it’s having a cavalry.’
‘It’s good to have fast legs in war. Caesar moves very fast, not unlike Napoleon. The Usain Bolt of ancient warfare. I’m not sure why I said that, it’s an atrocious analogy.’
‘Athens is the Edinburgh of the ancient world; it has nothing to offer but education and pretty buildings.’
‘Shout out to those of you who spent your teenage years playing Rome: Total War.Which is what I did.’
‘The senate go into a panic and they decide to flee Rome at dawn, but some idiot forgets the treasury. I know. Ridiculous.’
‘Again: don’t use elephants during warfare. They’re not as cool as they look. And given they’re now endangered, it’d just be mean.’
‘I had to use this meme, I’m sorry. You’re all aware of the one does not simply walk into mordor meme right? I’m sorry, we’ll move on.’
‘I put this photo in for dramatic effect but I realise that it’s just a field. I don’t know why people bother going to see battle sites, they’re all really boring. I saw bones once, they were quite interesting. But most battle sites: boring.’
‘Caesar doesn’t tell Rome anything while he’s away in Egypt for a year, so they have no idea Pompey’s dead. All they know is that Antony is being a pain in the ass, which is, in all honesty, not unusual for Antony.’
‘Caesar is very good at one liners. You always draft a pithy one liner before a battle so you have something to say when you win. You don’t want to win and then just be like ‘whoo, thank god for that.’’
I’m laughing my head off. “There should have been a warning.”
The warning is that it’s a retelling of the fucking Illiad. Honest to God, a story involving one of the most famous same-sex love affairs in the history of literature and there should have been a warning?
i dont think american filmmakers realise how huge london is, because sure you have the london eye and houses of parliament but when you say ‘london has fallen’ what??? so the nandos in catford is in flames? the tesco in peckham has descended into chaos? wtf??
And even if Peckham Tesco goes down you’ve still got the Lewisham one open 24 hours, yeah you’re in trouble on a Sunday evening but even in a survival situation you can probably hold out till Monday because all the local takeaways would still deliver, no one can stop those guys and no one should try
yeah and making it a little serious for a second, the city has such a historical/cultural expectation of being (or at least appearing) resilient in response to destruction that these portrayals are not realistic at all.
If you talk to people who were in London on 7/7 I feel that they use very different language about their experience, vs. people who were in New York City for 9/11. The brush with destruction is not portrayed as a life-changing experience, if that makes sense. The expectation is that the city has to keep moving. That obnoxious “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster (now a meme) was actually designed and printed in readiness to be posted everywhere if London actually fell to Nazi occupation. the expectation was that “descent into chaos” would let everyone down.
Like, in the London Blitz people made “not giving a shit as the city is gutted around you” into an art form.
this lady would make a great reaction image for drinking truth tea in the wake of drama:
like look at these guys here
“oh ffs that was my BUS”
I mean this guy is just delivering the milk like
TREVOR I DON’T THINK YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE GONNA CARE IF YOU’RE A LITTLE LATE
or this extremely safe community policing
“remember girls you need TWO policemen to go past the unexploded bomb”
or this
“hey Bridezilla your window fell off” “fuck off Helen this is my SPECIAL DAY”
or
“guys you’re supposed to be – guys pay attention”
or “Hey what should we do we are literally being bombed right now” “idk go hide in the tube??” “but it’s the kids’ bedtime” “yeah, but like… bombs”
“wait I’ve got a plan, we go to the tube and then…”
“ok so … so we’ve literally just tied the children to the train tracks” “shh…. they’re sleeping…. they’re safe now”
Anyway it’s not like Londoners are super brave or anything, it’s just that on the one hand there might be giant alien sea dragon robot tsunamis smashing the recognizable landmarks, but on the other hand they gotta make rent
This is why I kind of love the bit in Thor: The Dark World where American Jane is like YOU GUYS GET AWAY FROM THE WINDOWS and all the locals are like NAH I’M GETTING SMARTPHONE VIDEO OF THOR I’M PREPARED TO GET CUT UP BY EVIL ELF COLLATERAL BROKEN GLASS FOR THAT.
-Thomas Jefferson almost starts war with England because he escorted the wrong woman into dinner.
-Merriwether Lewis is accidentally shot in the ass.
-Andrew Jackson’s parrot is ejected from Jackson’s funeral because the American people won’t let the parrot say fuck.
-James Madison accidentally buys prostitutes.
-William Henry Harrison thinks bad life choices are a good idea and dies.
-The Treaty of Ghent
-Abraham Lincoln is elected and everyone in Baltimore is super pumped until they see a picture of him and collectively decided that nobody that ugly should be president. (disclaimer: I am not of the belief that Abe was ugly, but you have to admit the people of Baltimore and fucking petty and it’s hilarious)
-New England tries to secede because James Madison isn’t their real dad. The country takes it has a huge joke and laughs it off (even though they were 110% serious about leaving the union.)
-John C Calhoun. That’s it. Just John C Calhoun: what a fucking meme of a man.
James Madison accidentally buys prostitutes (x) (side note: I never thought I’d ever google the phrase “James Madison prostitutes” and yet here we are)
From Dr. William Samuel Johnson’s diary entry on June 18, 1787
“Only twice during the year did Dr. William Samuel Johnson (CT) indicate in his diary what had occurred in the Congress or the Convention. Today he followed the routine notation ‘In Convention’ with one word, ‘Hamilton.’” (source)
This was the date of Hamilton’s six-hour speech at the Constitutional Convention, so I think this one word pretty much sums up the day’s events.
Have I told you guys about the Fake Alaskan Volcano Eruption of April Fools 1974?
*sits down* Gather round, kiddies. its Story Time with Viv!
Whoa you calling me Tori was really weird for a second, not in a bad oh god no kinda way, but in a “who the hell is Bucky” kinda way
ANYWAY, gather round friends, and I will tell you the only story you need to hear if you want to really understand my home state.
APRIL 1ST, 1974
Residents of Sitka, Alaska woke up to a rare beautiful clear day(it rains all the damn time in Southeast Alaska), the sun was out, the sky was blue, and black smoke was rising from Mt Edgecumbe
Now Mt Edgecumbe is only 18 miles from Sitka
And it’s a dormant volcano that hadn’t erupted for thousands of years, so to see this:
was very unusual, and rather worrying.
“Shit,” the Sitkans thought, “we may be Alaskans and pretty weird about responding to danger, but even we know this might be bad”.
SO the Coast Guard was called!
They flew a helicopter up right away and guess what they found?
Was it:
nope
Maybe it was:
Nuh huh, sorry
It couldn’t POSSIBLY be:
God no, but that would be hella rad
It was this:
(this is not an accurate image, there were only 70 tires in real life)
Turned out that a 54 year old local dude named Oliver ‘Porky’ Bickar and some buddies had flown the tires up early that morning and he’d come up with the prank in 1970 but hadn’t been able to do it until ‘74 because all the other years had terrible weather on April Fools.
(He’d woken up that day, saw the clear sky and told his wife, Patty, “I have to go do it today” to which she replied “Just don’t make an ass of yourself” which delights me no end)
Porky has actually warned the police he was going to do this and also informed the FAA (gotta get that flight plan approved to haul those tires up) but, and oh god I love this, TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THE COAST GUARD
Luckily for him the Coasties thought this was the funniest fucking thing they had ever seen in their goddamn lives, and as it turned out, residents of Sitka agreed!
The story ended up exploding(ah ha ha do you get it? because volcano?) and national newspapers even covered it.
But Porky’s favourite response was a letter he got after the Mt St Helens eruption in 1980 that read:
“This time, you little bastard, you’ve gone too far.”
I’ve been told, though I can’t find any sources to verify this, that when he died another fire was set in the volcano by the town to honor him.
And that’s the story of how a man faked a volcanic eruption and became a state hero.
Kimchi and Justice 