"The internet is an odd place. Some people spill their guts. Others just want to show you their fish."

Fun with AIs

Here are some transcripts of conversations with ALICE and my own little Daffodil.

Fun with Star Trek

General Idiocy

(10/99) EB: "You've got to remember that roads in Pennsylvania are different. You never know what they're going to do next."
CH: "Like squirt deer."

(10/99) EB: "Fish don't give very good backrubs."

(3/00) Drastic says "Dead languages are like dead people. They can be dressed up funny."

(2/01) [chatlounge]
Sekhmet sees Yi's square head has not yet been sufficiently pounded into a round hole. :)
Yi is not square. Is slinkyshaped.

(2/01)Tecmessa then shakes Sepdet. "My gawd, remind me never to GM anything for her, ever again."
Sepdet blinks at Tecmessa. "She just needs a sixteen ton carrot painted FOLLOW ME in neon letters."
You say "Is this a problem?"

Tecmessa wants Elan so I can challenge his butt and get it out of my head.

Sepdet says, "Bad priest. No holy wafer."

Wakshaani | Newswire, Pennsylvania, August 28th, 2001. "The Renfest gone Awry continues today as tens of thousands of Rennaissance re-enactors, Society for Creative Anachronism members, and several unknown other parties have decided, in the words of their official spokesperson, to say "Up thine, America!" and form their own Medievil nation. Once a two week gala event, this now aparently permenant homesteading is being enforced by both the force of arms and the planting of crops."

More wakdom: "I'm an English Major, you know. And a bane. You've no right to be shocked."

Unknown: Borg: Continuity is irrelevant. You will be assilimated.

Brittany has been identified as Sam the Eagle in the Muppet show, which triggered me to put Sepdet up on the shiny sparkly rock singing, "One day we'll find it... the moonbridge connection... the no-moons, the half-moons and meeeee."

11/01 Cam atempts to crack the world's shell? Damn! I only have one minute left!

sepdet on 2:19 pm on Nov. 13, 2001
Vegetables are the downfall of many a non-native-speaker. (I

Translation of Tacitus from a website: For they either terrify their foes or themselves become frightened, according to the character ofthe noise they make upon the battlefield; and they regard it not merely as so many voices chanting together but as a unison of velour.

Student Bloopers I have actually received

Fill in the blanks:

The twins who are credited with founding Rome are Barbie twins.

The act of raising a person to the status of a god or goddess after death is raising the roof.

The Etruscan practice of ascertaining the will of the gods, performed by a priestly official inspecting the liver of a sacrificed animal, was weird.

Another student suggested purgery for the above question.

The term for a classical Greek city-state is Doris.

Creative slide identifications:

Egyptian tomb painting: "Egyptian go-go dancers. Shows that Egytians had other things to do other than just mummifying.

Stone on which Code of Hammurabi is carved: "The phallus of Herodotus."

Scroll of Hunefer: "Scroll of Humphreys. New Kingdom. It is made of dried squash and painted on. It features a kingdom being judged to enter the Afterlife."

Farnese Bull: "Man petting a horse and stepping on people."

Terms & ID's:

Livia [wife of Augustus]: "Livia was a flowery meadow or garden that was widely admired. Found just outside of Mt. Vesuvius, it was destroyed by the eruption."

Yet another case of conflating 3 time periods into one: "Capitoline Hill: It was the site of the Parthenon as well as the Temple of Persepolis".

Alexander the Great: "defeated Julius Caesar and took reign. Conquered Italy and expanded his empire." Huzzah for alternate realities.

Spolia: "When your Greek food is spoiled."

Name one building project of Julius Caesar: "Caesar's palace in Las Vegas."

From various essays:

:

"The Egyptians were a large and expansive society."

"The faces of Ramses I were constructed in good work that showed the features clearly (except that one of the faces was erupted)...There were full of color-pigment on the head of Hatshepsut. The head looked very like a real human head."

"Imhotep was a small skinny well-known architect."

"There are orifices in the stool on which Imhotep is seated."

"Baset, with eyes point directly upon a basket full of her offspring, is the antithesis of what motherhood is about. she also seems to be showing emotion of happiness as through a small crack I take as a smile."

"It has almond-shaped eyes and big ears set aside. There are many layers between the eyes and the eyebrows and lines around the mouse. It is the indication that this is a portrait of an old man. It also seems like smiling. The partial of the left side wig is broken off."

"The artists show signs of a lack of reproduction thogh. We can distinguish this by finding people with two right hands or heads where they don't belong."

"This statue shows Myercinus standing tall and proud like any pharaoh, and right by his side, holding him by the stomach is his queen."

"The Discobolus was made by Myron, in 450 bc, and it was a roman copy of the original." This is the sort of recursive timewarping that got Dr. Who in trouble.

"Modern-day discus throwers cringe their teeth and flex their muscles as hard as they can in mid-throw. There is no evidence of that on the Discobolos."

"He holds a long spear in his hand, symbolizing that he may be a worrier."

The Parthenon vs the Pantheon

"The Parthenon was a very massive architect."

"The Parthenon is a freestanding temple on the Necropolis."

"Done in the Doric style, the structure is viewed as light and airy, almost bubbly."

"There were elaborate friezes such as Athena's birth from Zeus' leg and Athena and Poseidon playing games." [Parcheesi?]

"The Parthenon in Athens was a Doric building with little Ionic feathers."

"The Pantheon is a dorm-like building." [That would be "dome" for those who are awake.]

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"Kouroi were created to portray young men and women about the age of puberty to show people in the moment in time at which the mortals were at the same perfection of the gods. Us mortals quickly lose this state of perfection."

"Queen Hatshepsut was a steeping stone to the allowance of women in minor political affairs."

Chatal Huyuk: "This primitive nation of harbingers of grain and domesticated animals was occupied from 8000-15000 BC. However, strangely enough, it would appear that this civilization religion might have been was founded by females."

"He appears rather uncaring, almost ruthless. Showing him slightly taller and larger than his wife creates this effect. She is also depicted holding his arm. This infers that Nebbettawy is subservient to her busband and is socially ranked well below him. [ADD SOME BULLSHIT]"

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Sex on the brain

This example was odd from start to finish. The assignment was to discuss some aspects of Roman portraiture, and how various important Roman officials chose to present themselves in their statues to demonstrate their rank, offices, wisdom, experience, etc. This student seems to have missed the two lectures where we discussed the idea of stuffy Roman portraits and picked several pieces that had little or nothing to do with what we'd talked about in class. And then things got weird. Here's an excerpt:

"The next is the Venus de Milo. Venus is already the sign of love and fantasy, but this bust shows the loss of her arms. Purposly the artist never provided her with arms, allowing her not to grasp onto love. Maybe, Eros was sleeping twice a week, who knows. But the symbolic jesture of an armless woman shows her loss of tender care, a gentle touch, and all that a woman is known for at that time in history." --which is all very well, except, of course, the Venus de Milo's arms are broken off like many a classical statue, and we showed a slide of one of its hands. And then there's his description of an Etruscan coffin modelled in the shape of a fully-dressed couple reclining on a banqueting couch and smiling at the viewer, a scene about as erotic as mom and pop having their morning cup of coffee at the breakfast table:

"Last but not least is the sarcophagus of Cepitus. Here, a couple are lying down on top of a tomb, ready to commit sin. This is what is to be buried with a king [?!]. Not something that would be in the best of taste, but this was his passion."

Which is, I suppose, a portrait of sorts, although it's not Roman either. Then again, the student's last name meant "love".

CODA: While discussing this paper on the phone with Mom, she asked if I had questioned the student on his odd sexual interpretations of the paper. I told him that a) I didn't want to know, and b) I didn't think it appropriate to write upon his essay: "You are a sick and twisted puppy, a menace to society, who should be kept away from small children and GOATS."

1999 art history class

(10/99) "The importance of Stonehege [sic] is in that it demonstrate post and lentil construction."

(10/99) Stonehenge, identified: "Greece--built to control flooding"

(10/99) Abu Simbel, identified: "A lion cub in a Halloween costume"

(10/99) Mastaba, identified: "An area in a temple where people were gravely remembered" [actually an early form of Egyptian tomb, the precursor to the pyramids]

more fill-in-the-blanks & short IDs

When Emperor Vespasian died, he was hailed as a revetment.

A hot plunge Roman bath is called a calidarium. A cold plunge bath is called a trepidarium.

Cloisters, defined: A type of jewelry.

Geats, defined: Safety pins. This is the name of the people that Beowulf ruled; we were reading Beowulf at the time.

Excerpts from student papers on several medieval paintings.

(3/00) "He was born in the 1472ad, and lived to an age of forty-five, then desisted in 1517ad... The painting is illustrated with figures of religious significance which associated to Christian Bibles. There is not a trace of any pagan deity in the painting, so it is not mythological in its contend... The Virgin Marry, the child Crist, and a saint are the three figures of which focus in the painting... each layers become fainter as it get further in the never ending oblivion... Linear Perspective have the conposition fit into layers from wide to thine... The further it gets, the more it fads and smears to lose focus, thus creates depth as to the human eyes."

(3/00) "From a viewer's point of view, Joseph holding a book in his right hand and St. Francis holding a crucifix are behind, right, and left side of the Virgin Mary. Their bodies are twisted and turned in a way to look ultra stylish and graceful. Mary has a beautiful gold shoulder piece on her shoulder." (3/00) "In the middle ground stands the facade of a convent with a crowd of monks conversing animatedly."

(3/00) "A dove flies towards Mary with rays of light that seem to be in the process of striking her on her dainty head."

Old 1999 Bloopers! And the Incredible Flying Fallacy!

Thought I'd lost these, but Mom found an email with some of my favorite bloopers from another Art History section I taught.
I was grading essays about artifacts in a travelling Pompeii exhibit. I learned some very interesting things. (Most of them seem to have fastened on the first piece we suggested they write on, which, coincidentally, was in the first room. It's a floor mosaic from a dining room showing about twenty different species of fish and shellfish.)

* The fish mosaic is a vivid symbolic representation of the suffocation of the residents of Pompeii via volcanic ash, since the fish are shown as if floating above the surface of the water (hence drowning) and a squid is shown spewing out ink (the ash). Many other pieces of art in Pompeii symbolically portray the anguish of its dying inhabitants. [Too bad none of the inhabitants noticed the dire warnings painted in their very houses by foresighted artists decades before the eruption.]

* Alternatively, the Fish Mosaic, created in the first century BC, is symbolic of Jesus Christ.

* "In the Mediterranean World, the sea represents an artistic inspiration and scientific expiration."


"Their love of nature was apparent with the plush gardens they had that took up a large portion of a typical home."

"There are a good number of winged fallacies as well as oversized and over
exposed male genitals or individuals that are represented pretty naturally
in ancient worlds including Pompeii."

(Too bad she didn't do her paper on the tacky Roman lawn ornament of a male dwarf clutching his enormous erect "fallacy").

2000 years is a "significant amount of time" so, since the fish in the mosaic are exactly the same as species alive today, this disproves the theory of evolution. ( Um. First rule of debate: know something about the theory you're disputing!)

The Madness Continues

Here is also a warped summary of the legend of Osiris and Isis, a rant on Barbie, and of course, the old Quote Board is still around too. Many gems from my college days.

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