Penitente agite!

From the eleventh-century Old English penitential Scriftboc:

"If an animal has been polluted by a man's penis, let it be killed and given to dogs. If there is doubt about this, let the animal live."

I know it's rude, but it's so funny. Not about the bestiality, but the fact that they leave room in case of doubt. As though some Anglo-Saxons were running about having sex with so many animals that they lost track. Or perhaps they got so drunk that the next morning they couldn't remember if they'd fucked a pig or not.

Done done done

I finally finished work on the big book. I've spent almost every evening for the last three weeks indexing it, which involved going through 400 pages of proof with a highlighter at what felt like an agonisingly slow rate. It's a good job nobody told me beforehand how mind-numbingly tedious indexing a book is.

But it's done! After six years of research and revision, all the final typos and errors have been teased out, copyright permission obtained ($230 for the privilege of quoting a single Wallace Stevens poem on the first page!!) and index finished, and the whole thing passed on to my editor.

As I was finishing it this evening I cut my thumb opening a bottle of milk. I didn't have any plasters so I just waited for Mother Nature to do her congealing thing, but then instead I grabbed my indexing proof and scrawled

IT IS DONE

on the front page in my own blood. It seemed fitting. Outside I hear fireworks going off. They may be for Guy Fawkes Night, but I'm going to pretend they're for me instead.

Busy busy

I haven't updated for a while because this new job is a time vampire. Things are starting to calm down slightly now though, so my evenings and weekends may re-emerge from the amorphous blob of seminars, lecturers and admin meetings that has absorbed my formerly innocent post-PhD life.

I sympathise, Steve

To give you an idea of how dull my life now is, the most exciting thing I did recently was buy a little action figure of Mr Spock which I saw in Sainsbury's. I'm not sure if it was really an impulse buy, as after I saw it I rolled my trolley slowly all the way down the home furnishing and kitchenware aisles while I mulled over the pros and cons.

In the end I took the plunge and counted out pennies until I was sure I afford the curiously specific asking price of £4.11. I then had to endure a conversation with a checkout kid who turned out to be a complete nerd and wanted to know my opinion of the latest Star Trek film. (I told him I thought it was shit.)

This is what my Spock toy looks like:

£4.11 well spent, I think. I bought it in honour of a planned Star Trek movie night with Moogdroog and her housemate, to show that even Babylon 5 fans like me are willing to make conciliatory gestures towards Trekkies.

Speaking of which, I read a Babylon 5 vs. Star Trek forum discussion where this comment made me Laugh Out Loud:

I love B5. My missus preferred DS9. It's a good job we weren't seeing each other at the time as she'd have got a punch in the face.

It's nice to see love crossing such great cultural divides.

I've put my Spock action figure on my kitchen window sill next to my British soldier action figure. The British soldier action figure, however, keeps falling over when I try to stand him up by himself.

Maybe I should buy an American soldier action figure for him to lean on.