Ryter finished book # 5 today!

Today is the first day of the seven-day-long Floralia, a festival to honor Flora (Chloris), goddess of flowers. She was a fairly minor goddess but was strongly associated with spring, so it was appropriate that she have a festival at this time of year. Flora was the wife of Favonius (Zephyr), the god of the gentle west wind and (appropriately) of spring, which he was said to bring. In Greek myth, their son was Carpus, god of fruit (NOT god of fruits, that's Ganymede), but I don't know if that part of the myth carried over.

Anyway, today was celebrated by theatrical performances, circus games, and, in the evening, offerings of milk and honey to Flora. Hares and goats were released to run the streets and various beans and legumes were thrown to the spectators. The whole city was decked out in flowers-- even temples were covered in flowers, though only white ones. The people dressed in bright, colorful clothing instead of the customary white and there was much dancing and drinking. Great fun.

Incidentally, Roman prostitutes considered this holiday to be their own. I'm guessing it's all the drunk guys wandering around with flowers on their heads needing to prove their manhood, but that's just speculation...

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Okay, I found something that amuses me greatly. It's an emo bunny complaining about how he can't get laid. I really like that song, despite the fact that the lyrics are kinda weird. Warning: The only really easily decipherable phrase is "Everybody else has had more sex than me" so you might not want to watch it when that would start an awkward conversation...

You know, you'd think it would be easy for a bunny to get laid. They're freakin' rabbits.

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Ryter: So what did you do today?
Basiorana: Tore open the sternum of a pigeon with my bare (well, gloved) hands.
Basiorana: You?
Ryter: Finished a novel.
Basiorana: Mine's creepier.

Yeah, we were dissecting in Bio lab today. I asked my lab partner if we could do the pigeon, on account of the rats being a bit too well preserved-- they looked like they would get up and walk around. Well, until they were cut open and their guts were splayed everywhere.

Nothin' like a dissection to bring out the perversion in people, though. Honestly. One guy took a pair of scissors and lopped off the pigeon's head; the guys in the back were tossing a rat brain around... Yeah. And just think, most of us are pre-med or pre-vet. Comforting, ain't it?

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And in other news, the English portfolio looks like it will be fairly easy, maybe an hour's work tops. Everything else still looks impossible. Oh, and I forgot to mention the paper on Kinorhynchs I have due next week... Joys.

Random Dreamings

I had the strangest dream last night. My brother and I walked over to the neighbor's house, like we used to do when we were little. WE were the same age as now but everyone there was younger, like they were years ago before we stopped playing with them and their parents got divorced.

We rang the bell, but no one answered, yet the door was open, so I said, "I guess they're around back." This used to happen a lot when we were kids- they'd be playing out back and wouldn't hear the bell. So we walked out back, and I was confused- because they weren't there, yet there were signs of them everywhere. There was a plate of still-warm cookies on the table. I headed back to the front of the house, and my brother followed- but when I turned around, I noticed he had a cookie he was eating.

"What are you doing?" I cried. "You can't eat that, it's not yours!" He shrugged and then went back to ignoring me. Suddenly the mother of the family, a woman who doesn't even live there any more since the divorce, came tearing out of the house screeching at him. "You stole that! You've been stealing our stuff! EVery day I come home and something else is missing!" My brother took off like a shot across the lawn, headed for our house, and she turned to me, still yelling, though clearly she wasn't mad at me. "Your brother is a little twerp! He's been stealing our things and breaking into the house when we aren't there, and he let a rat out in the house--" Suddenly I had this very vivid (fictional) recollection of having had two pet rats who went missing. "Wait, what happened to the rat?" I asked. "Well, we got him," she replied (with the clear indication that that meant he was killed), and I exploded. Ignoring her, I took off after my brother, finding him in my front lawn. When he saw my face, he started to run, but I jumped on him, dragging him down. I was about to beat the crap out of him when I woke up.

This dream was really weird, because besides the inconsistencies with the neighboring family, my brother's entire history of theft was stealing a handful of brass buttons from a store- each of which was worth about two cents and, due to the size of his hands at the time, there were only about four of them. He was like, five. Plus I really can't imagine him letting an animal loose in someone else's house. Especially not now, he's sixteen and a good kid.And there's the fact that even if I could catch my brother running, there's no way he wouldn't just be able to win a fight in like, five seconds. It was completely bizarre. Very vivid, though. The cookie smelled freshly baked and the grass was wet with dew.