Anthony Thompson > Recent Status Updates

Apparently my idea for a black humor novel where the main character metaphorically poops gold is a trickster archetype and not at all me being clever.

Nice. Monkey see, monkey poo.

"Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
The seat of desolation, void of light,
Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
Casts pale and dreadful?"

If the language has magic, here it is.

2nd Chronicles done. Josiah seems like a good guy.

Kingdoms and Chronicles are brutal. I'm ready for the Old Testament to be anything else but genealogies and King lists.

The Torah has nothing on Homer which predates most of it.

First Chronicles is nine chapters of slogging genealogies and then David goes, let's count the Jews, and God goes *NO* and then offers him one of three punishments, and David chooses 3 days of God's wrath in Jerusalem over being pursued for a year by his enemies, and then an Angel (UFO) just stands over Jerusalem with a sword (laser) and nukes the city for 3 days. There's a lesson there about his judgement vs man's.

So the entirety of the worst parts of the patriarchy of the 20tb century were closeted gay men. Cool.

Fucking A Voltaire is cool.

I was reading Zadig and was sort of curious why Zadig isn't more of a meme. Like... Zadig is him. The Sigma.

And then Voltaire told me.

"Men do not deserve to have a King like Zadig."

I appreciate Voltaire's faith in God and his mockery of men. It's like... Anthony flavored Chicken Soup for the Soul.

"The doctors knew she possessed power of the highest medeian caliber right away, exceeding even the trinkets of normal magic, which were rare enough on their own."

They sell this at Target. Publishers don't read books written by men, and they sell this at Target. Our entire world is fucked. Goodreads Challenges don't work, so why am I bothering?

So far it reads like she published straight from word.doc unedited.

More than one mystic has hinted that The Golden Ass is supremely deep. When Socrates is speared by Witches in the first book and the narrator (having been pissed on by said witches) continues with a half alive Socrates until they reach the river and the philosopher dies, I'm left thinking the mystics were right. In Apuleius I find Voltaire a millennium and a half early.

This is brilliant.

Kuang used Heuristics in the same way I do. That makes it common parlance and I don't have to feel bad about it. You guys do.

Kung Fu Hogwarts. Fire emoji.

My last update was in error. I respect Plato for his insights, but the second half of Timaeus is broadly indicative of what Science was before Experiment. I'm not judging, it's just not particularly interesting. Except for the idea of Animals following men into the world as former degenerate souls. That's brilliantly stupid, and I respect him for it.

.... So like .... Plato really saw it all. Like really really.

His spherical construct of the universe sounds like reality.

Kinda makes you think that the two concurrent bands between alpha and omega are what we've come to know as space time.

Space is energy increasing volume at the cost of potential. Time must increase energy at the cost of volume. Which I think is sort of the idea of light.

I felt humbled at one point for having the thought, "Is every white person in this book evil?"because Kuang had introduced a white character who wasn't just openly racist, only for them to turn openly racist half a page later.

I guess I better play up my Irish heritage if I'm to have space in this new world.

The previous owner left Plato's allegory of the cave untouched in their notations. I appreciate that they came in blind IG.

Plato logically deduces both Trigonometry and how Astronomy would go on to inspire fundamental models of the universe. That's.... Fucking impressive. And scary. Dude called out education's path for the next two thousand years.

The person who annotated this book previously highlights the weirdest stuff, condenses passages into the most bizarre two word summaries, redlines Plato's misogynistic tendencies, and then leaves the section about Philosopher Kings untouched.

I'm shook. I hope they're doing well.

Absalom!

So what I grew up knowing to be 1 and 2 Samuel are Kingdoms 1 and 2 in the Orthodox Bible, which is 10 books longer than the Protestant one.

We had to study them as kids, and while David's infidelity with Bathsheba makes it into the cut, the quite moving epic of Absalom, his son, did not. I'm largely unfamiliar with it, beyond being able to reference one sermon in the echoes of my memory about Joab.

Judges and Ruth.

Samson was a bit of a menace. Striking down ten thousand men with the jaw of an ass.

Joshua complete. Quite dull. The fall of Jericho is the most exciting thing in the book, and it takes place across like three verses.

The myths and powers of God have begun to simmer as we get close and closer to what would be considered an actual historical period, and as a result, an impotent God. In Joshua, God does not even speak to Joshua. At least he's not actively killing his chosen people anymore.

Deuteronomy. I'm done with the Pentateuch.

Moses! The Patriarch who is closest to whatever the Bible considers concurrent times. Born to Egyptian Nobility, led his people to wander in the desert for forty years, set the Israelites on a campaign of dominion, and then was rewarded by God with the sight of the finish line in the distance before dying. The most historical patriarch is the only one with a mortal death.

Numbers down. Moses wields yet another serpent staff. That makes two for the Satanic Panic crowd.

Balaam's prophecy is super interesting. I think I've only heard it sermonized once, but it's almost straight out of a Fantasy novel.

"Behold, a people like a lion’s cub will rise up
And will exult like a lion."

The foundation of Zionist argument lies there.

Leviticus done.

"A man or a woman who is a ventriloquist shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones, for they are guilty."

Just when I was getting bored.

I never realized that verse from Leviticus about not laying with a man came after a lengthy series of specific prohibitions on incest. Almost as if they knew if they said, "Don't unclothe family" people would find wiggle room.

Til. Columns are everything. Hogwarts is Gothic. Italians probably didn't build English churches.

So the Jewish law as laid out in Exodus is actually fairly progressive for a mid-eastern patriarchy from thousands of years ago. It's just when Moses' Lord shows up and demands people be killed for him that it sort of loses the vibe.

Someone said, "Look for spaceships when you read the Bible."

They're goddam EVERYWHERE.

Exodus ends with a cloud the Jewish people follow around cloud by day, fire by night.

So excited about this. Her last book was awful, and I'm ready for a promoted low-rung thinking ideologically backed book to become the hit non-fiction book of the year because it is both pretty and assures the reader that rationality is right, and that Christians are the big bad in the world.

Hoping Montell lives long enough to write about seeing Western Rationality for what it is, a reality tunnel/world view.

I think I'm probably going to read every book Kerry ever puts out. I'm just starting this one, and for the first time since Anne Dillard's Tinker Creek, I find myself on a psychedelic journey without the drugs.

Thirty seconds ago I just literally cackled so loudly as to startle everyone within a few hundred feet of me. Looking forward to the rest of this.

Academics will really be like here's a 100 page introduction to 70 pages of text, followed by 200 pages of notes.

I'm blessed we have them. I'm not a student of language.

'"No, Hater, I'll not sing your melodies," the Troubadour replied.'

Sold. A barely disguised Christ allegory wherein Satan is called the Hater, and Christ is just trying to sing. This book was written for me.