While I think CM Punk was at the pinnacle of his hotness about 2007-2008, I think Dirty White Boy CM Punk from his indie days was pretty delish, also. Of course I would still marry him right now or at his earliest convenience.



Blond CM Punk beckons you.

Because we Westerners learn so much of our ancient history through the Greek writers, most of us are familiar with such figures as Artaxerxes, Cyrus, Bagoas, etc. through a peculiarly Greek or sometimes Latin filter. Of course these people spoke to and about one another in Old Persian, and wouldn't have recognized their own names in such a form. In the interest of science, I've compiled a list of some of the common Old Persian names and their corresponding Greek forms, with the meaning if known.

Old Persian | Greek
Vahuka | Ochus
Artafarna | Artaphrenes (with sacred truthfulness)
Artaxshacha | Artaxerxes (ruling through truth)
Bagabukhsha | Megabyzus
Gaumata | Cometes
Parushyatish | Parysatis (much blessing)
Xshayarsha | Xerxes (ruling over heroes)
Bagadata | Bagoas (given by god)
Darayavush | Darius (holding firm to good)
Ishtuvegu | Astyages
Kurush | Cyrus
Kambujiya | Cambyses
Chishpish | Teispes
Amastri | Amestris/Amestrine (strong woman)
Vashtateira | Stateira (beauty of the sign of Mercury
Hakhamanish | Achaemenes
Vishtapa | Hystaspes

Sources:

M.A. Dandamaev. A Political History of the Achaemenid Empire, 1989
Ragozin, Zenaide. Media, Babylon and Persia, 1903

LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAAAAIN

ITS JUST A JUMP TO THE LEFT

The year is 1185, the place: Constantinople. So our sordid tale contines with Andronikos I Komnenos as master of the Byzantine Empire, dawdling his child-bride on his knee, and in his off hours making steady progress on thinning out the hordes of younger Komnenoi.

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My pet peeve is when our colonial cousins turn up their noses at a crass Americanism in the English language, which turns out to be anything but. Due to our history, a lot of terms that were once standard in Britain and/or Ireland were fossilized in America, like dragonflies in amber, while they were superseded or joined by different terms across Da Pond and in Canada (which for obvious reasons had a closer connection to Britain than America did). A lot of what you might call Americanisms didn't originate in America at all.

For the record, none of these words are Americanisms, although some of them may be STANDARD here rather than abroad. When settler mothers murmured these words into the ears of the newborn babies in the American colonies, they were repeating words taught to them by their *own* mothers back in England, Scotland, Ireland, etc.

Reliable: cited by the Oxford English Dictionary as in regular British use two centuries before America was even a thing.
Talented: Invented by the oh-so-British author Edward Bulwer-Lytton.
Influential: Invented by the equally British Roger North, who died in 1734.
Wait On: Used by Chaucer, Milton, and George Eliot in the sense of "to await", "to lie in wait for", etc.
Oftentimes: Banquo uses in in MacBeth. It appears in the King James Bible for fuck's sake.
Transportation: Very common in Renaissance era England, eventually superseded by "transport" according to OED.
Gotten: This one has been part of English about half as long as there's BEEN an English language. It's from the Old Norse geta. It is still used in a handful of English dialects.
Clever: Used by Alexander Pope in the sense of "nice, likeable".
Mad: As used to mean "angry", was used in Britain since the 1300s according to the OED.
Fall: As used to mean the season between summer and winter, "fall" derives from the Old English faellen, "to fall, to decay". You can't get much more Saxon than that. Replaced by the fancy French automne in British English.
To Learn: In the sense of "that'll learn ya!" has a grand heritage, coming from Old English læran, "to teach".
Leash: Although you may walk your dog on a lead, back in the 1300s your ancestors might've put a leash on *their* dogs, according to OED.

I just discovered a couple of articles pointing to evidence that trichotillomania is comorbid with schizophrenia, dysthymia (neurotic depression), and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

From Essentials of Psychiatry (2011), p. 285:

"...approximately 82% of an adult sample met criteria for a past or current comorbid Axis I disorder, the most common being affective, anxiety, and addictive disorders. Of the patients with comorbid disorders, there was a lifetime prevalence rate of 65% for mood disorders, 57% for anxiety disorders, 22% for substance abuse disorders, 20% for eating disorders, and 42% for personality disorders. The most frequently cited comorbid personality disorders are histrionic, borderline, and obsessive-compulsive."

This is interesting to me because I have trich, and because my brother is a diagnosed full-blown paranoid schizophrenic. My father's family history is beset with bizarre, violent, and suicidal behavior; at least since the generation of my paternal great-grandfather, who's sister killed five of her children by shooting them in the barn, burned down the house with the sixth child inside, and then drowned herself in the Mississippi river. One of my paternal grandfather's cousins (so the niece of the above great-aunt) committed suicide, and another was a possible suicide -- he disappeared off the back of a riverboat. Maybe it was an accident and maybe it wasn't. Another cousin from this same generation in the Hospital for the Insane in Jackson, MS. And then there's my paternal grandfather, who murdered a man and spent his sentence in a mental hospital for it. I have long suspected that there is undiagnosed schizophrenia in my paternal line.

What does this mean for me? Will I develop schizophrenia? As of a couple of years ago, when I talked to a psychologist about my brother, it doesn't seem likely. However, I am intrigued by the comorbidity of trich and schizophrenia, as well as the other disorders, and what that might mean long-term and over generations. I also have dermotographia, a relatively rare skin disorder, and I've wondered if THAT is connected as well, but so little research has been done on trich that it could be comorbid with feline AIDS and we wouldn't know.

First of all, its cracking me up that the Tony/Bruce portmanteau ship name is Brony. I mean, REALLY.



1. RDJ self-consciously shifts away from Mark Ruffalo when the interviewer makes the "special relationship" crack.

2. A moment later, his arm is right back around Ruffalo.

3. When RDJ mentions that it's easy to beat up a drunk guy, Mark Ruffalo chirps "Yes!" like he's beat up a lot of drunk guys in the past.

4. RDJ jokes about adopting a child with Ruffalo, only to declare that "Tony Banner is a great name!" If Tony and Bruce were to get married, we now know who would take whose last name.

Back from my second viewing of Avengers!

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This is how Hank Pym says hello.

I read a fic recently where Bruce Banner thought of a napkin as a 'serviette', and this came to mind. There's been a backlash over Americanisms in British fandoms, notably Harry Potter; there's websites and lj comms devoted to helping Americans British better in their fics. But there's sadly little on the reverse.

The thing is, Bruce Banner is astoundingly unlikely to use such a distinctively un-American word for something as everyday as a napkin. Even I only know what a serviette is because I read a Britpicking website, and I can wax lyrical on the history of huscarls for fuck's sake. Bobby Drake is even less like to use the word 'Bloody' in the typical British manner. But I'm American and I spell everything with extra 'u's and go 'Pip pip, guvnah!', you cry. Listen up, fanpoodle. Just because you're such a Britophile that when you sneeze The Doctor feels a light breeze caress his left testicle, does not mean that Bruce Banner and Bobby Drake are the same way.

Already saw someone displaying their limited knowledge of media history when they complained that Avengers seemed like a rip-off of Doctor Who. Doctor Fucking Who of all things. And I'm like:

NO LET ME SCHOOL YOU ON THE HISTORY OF THE AVENGERS, HO.

But I managed to restrain myself. The first person to suggest that Hawkeye is a "rip-off" of Katniss from the fucking Hunger Games series will not be so lucky.