Dear Internet: I was joshing

So please stop looking here for variants on “sexy lion tamer costumes,” since eight misguided fools decided this was the place to holiday shop. I can only assume this means some kind of spandex and sequins for the Siegfried & Roy look, or a Carmen Miranda-style hat with Beanie Baby tigers prowling the rim. Alternatively, you go just go as a very bad lion tamer and appear in safari boots, nude bra and dainties, what with your clothing having been torn from your limbs by savage canine teeth. Or a very, very good one, and just wear a lion skin for skivvies.

ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES, INTERNET. Hint: do not go as a sexy lion tamer.

Then again this sums up the last day or so in Jetlag Land:

How succinct the summation of all of these words is. Sons and daughters, four score and fifteen years ago, my life and times were judged by the internet by the number times I mentioned the misbegotten conglomeration of terror known as “shorts and tights”. And smallpox.

The real winner, of course, is the tally for “sexy archaeologist,” “sexy indiana jones,” “sexy women archaeologists,” and “womens knickers”. Dozens, folks. Dozens and dozens.

It is very, very simple. For one thing, all archaeologists are sexy. We weed out the underlings in a Top Model fashion, so that the Ur-Race of Archaeologists can stalk the world on slender, unnatural limbs, and make skeletons cry with our beauty.

Oh, wait. Real archaeologists spend most of their free time covered in terrible tan lines and mud. So, technically, to be super sexy you could just wear a birthday suit and roll on a rugby pitch for a bit. SEXY MUD! How could this go wrong! Alternatively, you could go as a sexy lion tamer WHO IS ALSO a sexy archaeologist, and stick with the lace panties and whip (Barr 11/2010, first paragraph. It’s important to cite such works of sartorial splendor.)

Or, you know. Our real beast, our prime specimen of archaeological glory:

 

 

Sex-ayyyyy.

Curiouser and curiouser

Oddly since posting has become a haphazard production of Things I Found and whatnot, visitors have actually increased. Eight visitors, says I! Whyever could that be? The lush reds of photographs? The strange tins from Sainsbury’s?

No. Oh, no.

What is this, I don’t even know.

LION TAMER IN SUBFUSC EATS CAKE OFF SHOES: MARIE ANTOINETTE’S SECRET LIFE, REVEALED. PAPARAZZI HEADS ROLL AT ELEVEN.

Now I’m going to sleep off the massive blood loss and Red Cross cookies with the world’s worst bedtime story engraved on my eyeballs. Dear Internet: I hate you.

Juliet Bravo, over

It’s like a welcome mat, only made out of awesome. The U.S.S. Barry lives outside; the Trieste (WHICH TOUCHED THE BOTTOM OF THE DEEPEST DARKEST OCEAN) and Alvin (SIMILARLY COOL) are inside. Planes hang from the ceiling. Bombs line the floor. There are cannonballs, and mannequins of men wearing very, very silly pants. (Back in the day, officers wore ruffles and more gold brocade than Michael Jackson!)

Ahoy, there, fighting top of the U.S.F. Constitution. And Pirate Silly Outfit there, or whatever era yeoman thought those horizontal stripes were a good look, and not just cheap shirts fleeing the French Revolution.

Did I mention the guns? There are many guns. Countless, countless guns. This is rather disconcerting because the most popular exhibits are the gunseats, wherein you can sit in a seat attached to a gun, press buttons, swirl the thing, etc. This is immensely fun. The whole museum is full of BUTTONS and you can basically play with them for hours and hours. Or you could, if you were five. Or an intern. Ahem. This becomes mildly more creepy when the mini-marines, who are in fact children, only wearing mini-marine camouflage, clamber over the submarine weaponry. (Though I suppose a troupe of mini-marines fully grown to, say, Pug size, would be even more terrifying?)

Number of times I read about flogging a day: approximately 4959. Number of men in uniform: routinely a baker’s dozen; more on Ceremonial Cannon Firing Events. (If I were really in the Navy, this post could be written entirely in acronyms, but I believe in the power of vowels, and the subjunctive.) My Metro-given calves appreciate the waterfront walks, after recovery from the third broken escalator of the day. Today no one said anything about the Romans. It was actually a bit lonely.

Turn right at the warship, turn right at the park with cannons

Pictures soon because basically the museum is full of WONDERFUL THINGS such as stuffed penguins, and airplanes, and did I mention the sprawling lawns of armaments and ships? Because there are also ships. Lots of ships. And guns. Many guns. The door to the museum education lair is from the USS Constitution. Yes. That one. It is our door. Also we have a pirate kite. I think you could probably lock small children up in there and use it as a babysitter for, I’m guessing, roughly 23 years.

THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY. New! With exclamation marks!

Snap snap

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In which there is a god of small things, and of glorious miscellany.

Delving into the deep

It’s worth noting, maybe, that Jetlag has had 1300 odd visits in the past year and a half or so. I assume many of these were confused denizens of the internet, since they came via such search terms as “Yandy,” “deadly sins,” “naughty poems,” and my personal favo(u)rites, “sexy archaeologist” and “cute archaeologist”. Thanks, Google! Sorry also to anonymous visitors “inside al khazneh, “princess walks into a bar,” and “volcano bop,” who maybe did not find what they were looking for. Actually, it’s kind of poetic:

french fries happiness aston

the steelers conspiracy theory scholand

girl her trowel and the big bad world

lion tamer.

Okay, I do know that M is responsible for much of it, in the hopes that I removed the Terrible Picture of Gelatin from the front page; sorry about the month of radioactive goo, y’all. More to come. Perhaps there will be lions! Sexy! Princesses in bars!

Written on EST, from the left side of the Atlantic

I know, it’s odd. So a great deal happened: punting, exams, oh, my god, exams, the viva, Encaenia- the week, in sum, of the Three Days of Sub Fusc. Whisky tastings. Wrapped in eighteen yards of duct tape, my worldly possessions made it home on an airplane; somewhat surprisingly, so did both bags and all six bottles of legally imported scotch. United, I admit: I maligned you unthinkingly! But your tea is still lousy.

There’s a great deal to write about, and I should, because already the month of June is a hazy mash of baking intricate desserts and cramming elaborate sarcophagi panels into my skull. One hour to stir caramel sauce; four of opus sectile, lush freschi, ruined floors. One hour of shredding coconut and whisking eggs; four of imperial noses, curls, eyes. The years AD 70 to 250, in all of their sordid, sullen glory.

In the end of it all, I did pass. Graduation, as these things go, won’t be until October 2011, because Oxford never neglects an opportunity to be crafty and ridden with paperwork. In the meantime, I will be in various and sundry locations between D.C. and Philadelphia, purpose to be determined.

Oxford: you are a grand old dame, and I have loved the last year.

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Play with your food

Especially if it ever should look like this:

Key quote:

“There is something uniquely challenging to the modern palate about savoury jellies. It’s difficult to imagine how a whole chicken ‘chaud-froid’ (covered with a layer of aspic with cream creating the effect of a thick white condom) would go down in a modern restaurant setting. Oeufs en gelée, the great French bistro classic of poached eggs in aspic, is currently experiencing a bit of a revival yet the experience of biting through pork pie jelly into a warm yolk can be, to say the least, polarising to the British palate. When AA Gill tried one recently at Aqua Nueva it caused him to write the most horribly memorable line in the last decade of British restaurant criticism ” … it was like a big wine gum of pus, only not that nice.”

Immediately after that charming image, the Guardian cheerfully asks if perhaps there isn’t room for more aspic in our lives. Has anyone, ever, said, ah yes! The scones with the precious strawberry jam and the thick layers of clotted cream clearly needed a fun dash of gelatin! Oh, I have yearned for my mash to wiggle and attempt to flee the table, and for Toast and Soldiers to be an entertaining quest of quivering egg yolks and palpitating slivers of tortured bread!

Oh wait, you wanted fun, did you?

“The unusual foodstuff involves creamed cod-flavoured ice cream coated in vanilla and pepper batter, accompanied by potato ice cream chips made with Maris Piper potatoes, all served with salt and vinegar and lemon wedges.”

It’s either terrifying or genius. Trompe-l’œil and other fancy french terms, am I right? But seriously: the words “cod-flavoured ice cream” are enough to make going vegan sound like a reasonable reactionary response. Though the potato chip ice cream? Basically a complete meal! Totally genius!

Penny for your thoughts

“Coins and Monumentality in the Roman Empire, A.D. 70-250″. THRILLING UPDATE in TEN OR TWELVE ASSORTED PAGES.

Well. You know. THRILLING is relative to CORN DRYERS whose honour I will, in fact, protect. What I have done is spend handfuls of minutes staring intently at the back of a penny, seeking out Lincoln in all of his tiny glory. Yes. One tinfoil hat away from finding secret code in the shrubbery and playing connect-the-latin on the front of a dollar bill. (It’s educational, in that they “honored” or “plagiarized” Roman prototypes to make said coinage, which is cool, although there’s definitely a coin out there with a Serapis-headed serpent riding the back of a stallion and really, that’s worthily bad-ass. Maybe a quick series with Obama and the lightsaber? Just this once?)

Education! Ain’t it grand.

(Last essay. Last. Essay. Well, two thousand words in five hours to go, but still. Last essay!!!)

Enter title here: In the interest of eloquence, from the land of Great Britain, looking fondly back at one of her former colonies &c.

I have perused with no small Pleasure the Letter addressed to Two Great Men, and the Remarks on that Letter. It is not merely from the Beauty, the Force and Perspicuity of Expression, or the general Elegance of Manner conspicuous in both Pamphlets, that my Pleasure chiefly arises; it is rather from this, that I have lived to see Subjects of the greatest Importance to this Nation publickly discussed without Party-Views, or Party-Heat, with Decency and Politeness, and with no other Warmth than what a Zeal for the Honour and Happiness of our King and Country may inspire;–and this by Writers whose Understanding (however they may differ from each other) appears not unequal to their Candour and Uprightness of their Intention.

Full citation:

The Interest of Great Britain Considered with Regard to Her Colonies and the Acquisitions of Canada and Guadaloupe. To which are added, Observations concerning the increase of Mankind, peopling of Countries, &c. As the very ingenious, useful, and worthy Author of this Pamphlet [B------n F------n, LL. D.] is well-known and much esteemed in England and America; and seeing that his other Works have been received with universal Applause; the present Production needs no further Recommendation to a generous, free, an intelligent, and publick-spirited People. The Second Boston-Edition. London, Printed MDCCLX. Boston, N. E. Reprinted and Sold by B. Mecom, at the New Printing-Office, near the Town-House. 1760.

You know? There’s a part of me that welcomes the Twitter contingent from the House of Representatives. Access and space to speak have been, and are, crucial parts for the unique flavour of American democracy. But Reps: 140 characters barely buys you this title and that’s even if you don’t splurge on vowels. Verbose? Sure. Perhaps, though, it would be wise to remember ye olde pamphlets, and to consider the wisdom of writing well.

(Or, like a certain Classical fan):

The Mayor’s long-lasting affection for Latin comes from his belief in its benefits beyond the realm of dusty academia. “I won’t say it’s the route to colossal riches,” he told the class, “but I read almost nothing but Latin and Greek for 25 years, and I’m now in charge of every bus in London.”