Don't Mess With Pro Sports!

For the LAST TIME,  football players ARE NOT EXEMPT from exams!

Today's post is a cautionary one for any orange-tinged, extravagantly combed-over so-called political leaders that might --just might --try messing with professional sports in their country in an attempt to distract the citizens from the things that matter most: good government, competent leaders, pro sports, and drinking beer while watching pro sports.

Soooo, how long HAVE you been a Broncos fan, Mr. Incredible Hulk?

You see, people the world over are really attached to their professional sports teams.  They enjoy the social aspect of gathering together in a huge crowd, watching athletes play a kid's game and almost murder each other in the process.  Sports were big in ancient times, too.  Take the Ancient Romans for example.  They enjoyed horse racing, gladiator fights, public executions and animal-on-human fights to the death.

Public games were initially associated with funeral rites for important people but, over time, these public spectacles became an integral part of Rome's political life.  Rich people and powerful politicians would sponsor the games which also included free food for Rome's poorest citizens.  The games served an important social purpose, as they were used to distract the plebeians, Rome's working class, from their humdrum existence so that they wouldn't revolt (to read what happened when the plebeians DID revolt, click here).  On one memorable occasion, games were used to try and "spin" an assassination.  Brutus was one of Julius Caesar's assassins.  To get the people of Rome to forget that and just move on, he sponsored a lavish series of games.  Caesar's adopted son, Octavian, sponsored an EVEN MORE KICK-ASS series of games so that the Romans WOULDN'T  forget and forgive.  Since Octavian became Rome's first Emperor and Brutus did not, one is left to conclude that the games had a pivotal role in shaping public opinion.

  As Roman society began its long period of moral decline, writers like Juvenal had occasion to lament the popularity of the games at the expense of civic engagement: 

"...the public has long since cast off its cares;

 for the people that once bestowed commands,

 consulships, legions, and all else, now cares no 

more and longs eagerly for just two things:

 bread and circuses."

-Juvenal, Satire #10

Rome also had a very robust tradition of professional equestrian sports, including individual horse racing, chariot racing, and one combined event that started out as a horse race, but halfway through, the jockey dismounted and finished the race on foot.  Chariot racing was a hybrid of individual and team effort.   The chariot itself had only one driver, but was supported by chariot wrights, wheelwrights, stable owners, horse trainers and such.  As a sport, it was  really exciting to watch --more so than today's NASCAR races -- and each racing team had its own fan base, or demes, which were identified by the color uniform the charioteer wore.  In Rome, the demes were the Blues, Greens, Reds, and Whites.  By the time of Rome's successor empire, the Byzantines, only the Blues and Greens had any real influence on the sport or on Byzantine society.  And it is with the sport of chariot racing at the Constantinople Hippodrome that I turn to next in this cautionary political tale.  

"Swan boinked my baby!"

In A.D. 532, Byzantium's Emperor was Justinian I.  To say he was an unpopular political figure was putting it mildly.  The empire struggled under taxes that were so high because of Justinian's foreign wars against the Persians; Byzantine nobles hated Justinian because of his hostility towards them and his supposed love for the common people; the commoners hated him because he had married a woman whose father was a circus animal trainer, and who herself was a prostitute/exotic dancer whose act was so raunchy that even I won't describe it here.  Suffice it to say that she presented an artistic and anatomically correct interpretation of Leda and the Swan, a story from Greek mythology where Zeus changes into a swan so he can boink the lovely and mortal Leda on the down-low.  Not being judgey or anything, but the Byzantine Empire was supposed to be officially Christian, and if immortal-on-mortal bestiality was okay with Justinian, maybe there was a problem at the top.  

On January 13, 532 a large, pissed-off crowd assembled at the Hippodrome to watch the races --yeah right, they were there to cause trouble.  By the 14th race, the crowd had given up all pretense of cheering and had instead taken up the cry of "Nika! Nika!"--Greek for Victory! or Conquer! --hurling insults at the Royal Box, then hurling rocks and small children.  They then set a bunch of fires, killed a bunch of soldiers, and attacked the palace.

"Yay team! Good race!  Now: who wants to riot in the streets?"

At about this point in the narrative, you might be asking yourself, "Why was the crowd so pissed-off in the first place --I mean besides the fact that Justinian was such a dick?" Well, during a small, regular, normal riot earlier that month, a bunch of Green and Blue demes had murdered each other and the survivors got arrested.  One of the arrested Greens and one of the Blues escaped on January 10, ran to a church and claimed sanctuary.  In an attempt to kiss Green and Blue ass, Justinian commuted the escapees' punishment to life in prison instead of death, which only further enraged both factions, because they wanted charges dropped entirely.  Add this to the high taxes and the trampy Empress, and you've got a recipe for disaster.

By now, with his palace under siege, his army defecting and his Senate backing a replacement emperor, Justinian quite sensibly grabbed a bunch of gold and jewels, loaded up a boat with anything valuable that wasn't bolted down, and was just about ready to sail when Theodora barged in and delivered the performance of her life:

"Oh, and did I mention that I look
bitchin' in purple?

"In my opinion, flight is not the right course, even if it should bring us to safety. It is impossible for a person, having been born into this world, not to die; but for one who has reigned it is intolerable to be a fugitive. May I never be deprived of this purple robe, and may I never see the day when those who meet me do not call me empress. If you wish to save yourself, my lord, there is no difficulty. We are rich; over there is the sea, and yonder are the ships. Yet reflect for a moment whether, when you have once escaped to a place of security, you would not gladly exchange such safety for death. As for me, I agree with the adage that the royal purple is the noblest shroud."

Thus fired-up, Justinian gathered his remaining loyal troops and slaughtered about 30,000 people, but none of that would have been necessary if Justinian didn't mess with sports fans in the first place.

We live in a world today where the President of the United States picks fights with the entire National Football League, with winning basketball and baseball teams, with college teams, with individual star players --hey, I'm waiting for him to tweet some smack about my nephew's middle school soccer team next. He'd better cut it out now --not just for the good of the game or for the good of the nation, but for his own good too. Because if he doesn't, Trump could be chased from the Oval Office by a bunch of pissed-off fans. And I don't see Melania doing anything about it a la Theodora.

"I'm outta here, losers!"

Easter: Another Catholic Rip-off of a Pagan Holiday

OK, just what the heck does a bunny hopping down the bunny-trail, hiding colored hard-boiled eggs, have to do with the death and resurrection of a 1st century Jewish itinerant rabbi? (no, a rabbit and a rabbi aren't the same critter!  Jeesh!  Didn't you ever watch any Bugs Bunny when you were a kid?)  What about Easter Egg Rolls on the White House Lawn?  What's the deal with ham, lamb, duck and other tasty critters at Easter dinner?  Where do marshmallow Peeps come into the picture? When did this straightforward holiday (a guy gets horribly executed, dies, descends into Hell, rises, is seated at the Right Hand of God, and will come back later and judge everyone who has ever lived) get so complicated?

First it was the ADA complaining about all the sugar in chocolate bunnies;
now it's parents who won't let their kids talk to giant rabbits.  Sigh!

Like most things, it all starts at the Dawn of Time (about 5:27 am EST on April 1, 100,003 BCE [which stands for Before Crap Existed]).  For some reason, men and women like having sex and like having babies (men mostly --the closest most men get to having the 'baby experience' is having too much fiber in their diet).  They liked it so much in prehistoric times that they made little clay figurines of big, fat, healthy, pregnant ladies as a kind of votive offering to whatever force in the universe helped people to have a baby of their own.  You see, the human reproductive system is a bit of a mess.  Women aren't fertile all the time, and when they are, they don't really advertise it the way sensible animals do, with displays like swollen, red genitals, random sprays of  sex-hormones, or nicely hand-lettered signs saying "Let's boink!"  Which explains why men are horny all the time --they've literally got a 1-minute window to release the swimmers into the right gal, or humanity goes extinct.

There it is! I told you guys I had a map!

Over the years, female fertility became a matter of concern because scads of people were dying (they didn't know it was because they were drinking from the same river they pooped in), so fertility cults became all the rage.  And what's not to like about a cult that advocates lots of sex, followed by lots of babies?  The Greeks, Romans, Persians, Indians, Chinese, Mayan and Inca all had a fertility goddess of some description (the prettiest? Roman Venus, of course ;-))  And that's where things stood (lay?) when Jesus of Nazareth was crucified by the Roman Procuator of Palestine, Pontius Pilot, sometime around 35 CE (which stands for Crap Exists!)  We're not really sure of the year, because the four Gospels are a little fuzzy on details like dates; we do know it happened during Passover Week in Jerusalem.

"Always look on the bright side of life!" whistling...

Meanwhile, back in Rome, the people were probably celebrating the mystery cult of Cybele, a major fertility goddess whose main shrine was on top of Vatican Hill.  She had a lover/husband/consort/pimp-Daddy named Attis who's big claim to fame was dying in a blood-bath on the first Friday after the spring equinox and being reborn the following Sunday.  Sound familiar?  So, when Christianity made it to Rome from the provinces, Roman Christians celebrated Jesus' resurrection at the same time.  They must have figured hey, there's already a party going on --we'll just have our little get-together and nobody will notice (wrong - the Romans regularly used Christians as wild animal food in the Colosseum).

Nice kitty! Damnit, which one of you is wearing that catnip cologne?

Christianity survived Rome somehow (they steered clear of the Suburna at night) and took its act on the road, where it promptly bumped into several Germanic and Gallic fertility cults similar to Cybele's.  One was the Saxon cult of Eostre (who some people pronounced as Eastre), the Saxon mother-goddess extraordinaire.  Her big festival was right around the time that Roman Christians celebrated the Resurrection, so the early Church fathers simply hijacked the party and substituted Jesus for Eastre.  It was that simple. And because people weren't as sharp then as they are now, it was a long time before anybody noticed the switcheroo and by then, people had already started wearing cute little crucifixes on chains around their necks and going to Mass and all that, so they just kept Jesus and forgot about... what's-her-name.

It's Eastre, you dipshit.  Try and have a baby now, lol!

Not all of Saxon-Mommy's influence was stamped-out by the early Church, however.  The rabbit was one of her sacred animals, because everybody knows that rabbits breed like... well, rabbits (hey, she is a fertility goddess).  Bird eggs were also sacred to Eastre because of the life they contained within the shell (unless you like yours scrambled), so during her festival, parents would dye eggs pretty colors using berries or plants like woad and hide them around the village for children to find.

Easter's pagan origins were such an open secret that those no-nonsense-tolerated types, the English Puritans, forbade any Easter celebrations in England and where they had settled in America.  To be fair, Easter celebrations in England had gotten a bit out of hand by the time of the Elizabethan Age (what the exact age was, nobody ever knew because Liz always lied about her age.  And wore a wig), so much so that it resembled a whole village of Yorkshiremen staggering around blind-drunk and vomiting wherever they could and however much they had just drunk.

Being a Puritan is way more fun than Easter egg hunts.
Ok ok, being a Puritan blows.

Celebrating Easter in America didn't even really catch on until after the Civil War in the 1870's.  My guess is that the Civil War, with its 600,003 dead made the collective American mind snap, opening it to a flood of longing for the departed and a fervent belief in the Resurrected Christ as a way to cope with all the sadness of war.  So, while ministers and priests dusted-off their Bibles and put the finishing touches on their Easter sermons (sermen? sermans?), American people were bugging really old people for stories of how folks back home in England used to celebrate before Oliver Cromwell kicked the seven shades of shite out of someone for having the gall to celebrate such pagan deviltry.


But since Americans are Americans (our ancestors were tossed out of every decent country in the world), they kept the serious God-'n-Jesus stuff at the church and centered the fun holiday stuff around children, who are the perfect symbols of fertility if you stop and think about it.  Now all that was needed was to add a dash of chocolate, and the Americans had a perfect holiday.

I want to close this blog by saying that I totally buy the whole death-and-resurrection bit, because without it, Jesus would just have been some ordinary Jewish preacher who got the shaft (of the centurion's spear in His side, along with a crown of thorns, a cross and a vinegar-soaked sponge to suck on while He died [those Roman douchebags!]).  I believed He died for our sins and that He will come back one day when we least expect it.  I have to believe this, because otherwise, it's such a poorly written story that nobody would believe in Jesus and we'd all be stuck worshipping some crazy forest lady who had too many rabbits and a thing for eggs (see above).  Much mischief has been done in Jesus' name, but more good things have been done as well.  That makes JC OK in my book.  Happy Easter!

Yo, back atcha, Adjunct Proff buddy!  You da bomb!

All You Need is Love

All You Need is Love

Julie, my first-ever reader, told me that I have been guilty of "angry-blogging," so Adjunct Proff's blog today will be all about L.O.V.E. --its history, its present state and some fearless prognostications for the future of Love (because Love does have a future if humans keep living together in families and communities, instead of virtually connecting via Second Life avatars)

Take a look at these magical breasts!

Back in cave-man-cave-woman times, there really wasn't much spare time to devote to love.  People lived close to nature and... just did what came naturally.

In fact, anthropologists and even the odd historian believe that early societies were completely matriarchal because, well, women were magical.  Hey, women could produce children.  And even better, they could feed these brand-new human beings from great tasting milk from their own breasts, so it was a good two or three years before these new humans even wanted any scarce food.  What could possibly be any more magical?

You see, early man probably didn't make the connection between sex and child birth because, hey, it took at least two to three months between copulation sessions (sex) and any evidence of pregnancy.  And given the loose clan structure of early societies, the now visibly pregnant woman may have mated with several other members (heh heh, members) of the clan, so there might not have been any certainty of who the baby-daddy was, even if they had made the connection.  So, matriarchy, with a particularly prolific mother-grandmother at its head, is a quite reasonable assumption about early human societies.

All of this was about to change, unfortunately for these peaceful matriarchal societies, with the arrival of agriculture --more specifically, animal husbandry or herding.  Prior to this, early humans had only been around animals long enough to stalk and kill them.  As herdsmen, they were around sheep, goats and piggies all the time --even when they were "makin' bacon."

So that's where babies come from!
Mommy said they came from her magical vagina...

It wasn't too much longer before men connected the dots: Man + Woman + Sex = Babies.  And this is where the power of women based on their ability to have children vanished.  Now, women were treated like livestock, fed if they proved good baby makers, or worked to skin-and-bones if they were unable to have children.  This is probably why early civilizations like to show their fertility goddesses as big, fat ladies, because well nourished women always had the healthiest babies.

Yeah bee-at-chez, I gots it all goin' on!

 And this is where women's status pretty much stayed, from the Dawn of Civilization to the Middle Ages (approximately 4,316 years).  Oh sure, Spartan women could own businesses and rich Roman women had some heavy clout, but these were the exception rather than the rule.  I'n not saying that there was no love during this time in human history --quite the contrary.  Check out this hot love-poem from ancient Egypt:

Come, my Soul, swim to me!
The water is deep in my love
Which carries me to you.

We are in the midst of the stream,
I clasp the flowers to my breast
Which is naked and drips with water.
But the moon makes them bloom like the lotus.

I give you my flowers
because they are beautiful,
And you are holding my handIn the middle of the water.

Wanna pet my pussy-cats?  Didn't think so...

If you want to know where, when and who invented romantic love (love-letters, mash-notes, flirting, etc.), read on.  The where was France (it figures!), Poitiers, to be specific; the when was 1168 to 1173; the royal who was the most extraordinary women of the entire Middle Ages, Elanor of Aquitaine.  Queen E lived fast and BIG.  During the course of her 75-80 year life (Queen E always lied about her age), she would inherit a fortune and a kingdom (Queendom?), get married, get an annulment, get married again, have a couple of kids and a totally dysfunctional family, be imprisoned, widowed, and eventually die with a champagne bottle in one hand and a royal flush in the other (ok, maybe not the champagne and cards bit).

I am a totally bitchin' medieval babe!

At Poitiers, Queen E set up what cultural historians have since dubbed "The Court of Love."  She did this by surrounding herself with really handsome knights, really knock-out-pretty ladies-in-waiting, the best of the troubadour  poets, and some pretty sexy unicorn tapestries.  And what did the denizens of Queen E's court do all day?  Well, Love!

Ladies dropped handkerchiefs and sleeves for knights to fight over; lovers intrigued with everyone in order to hook-up with each other in secret; lots of love-poetry was written, read out-loud, performed to medieval musical accompaniment, and even scratched onto the castle walls.

But by far, the most influential writing to come out of this period was a book called The Art of Courtly Love, a kind of medieval dating do's and don'ts.  This book was, essentially, the first ever rule book for that competitive, contact sport known as "The Battle of the Sexes."  Among the rules contained therein was the one that said "women should be placed on a pedestal, the better to be worshiped and admired by all."  Sounds like women are climbing back to their place of prominence, right?  Unfortunately, no.  Elanor's Court of Love was a mere blip on the radar of history.  Human society would remain pretty male-chauvinist-piggy for quite a long time to come.

Hey Princess, while yer up, gimmie another beer!

Let's get real here: there can be no love between men and women until there is equality between men and women: social, political, economic, cultural and sexual equality.  And there is not much doubt when THAT happened: sometime during the 1970's in the United States of America.  

Following the invention, distribution and general use of the birth control pill in the 1960's, women finally had a handle on their own reproductive matters.  Add to this the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade making abortion legal, and the fact that Mary Tyler Moore made it socially acceptable for a woman to have a career and not a husband, and you've got the makings of the Sexual Revolution.  It wasn't long before Gloria Steinem was burning her bra, Masters and Johnson were publishing their report on human sexuality, Jane Fonda was supporting edgy political causes, and Edith was talking-back to Archie on All in the Family.

I said you were singing flat because you were singing flat, you dick-head!

 So, love today: Well, there's a lot of nudity available on the internet.  And non-traditional families are on the rise: single mom, single dad, two mommies, two daddies, sister-wives with one patriarch [only in Mormon towns] and moms and dads who are transvestites or transgender.  Kind of makes the Father-Son Pancake Breakfast a way-more interesting affair than it was in the 1950's.

Guys, we're so hilarious that ABC should make a hit-sit-com about us!

So, what's love's future?  Adjunct Proff thinks that Love and technology will have a bea-utiful future together.  Instead of skyping, lovers who are parted by distance might be able to have virtual make-out sessions using holograms and virtual-reality environments.  Instead of Match.com, people will be able to go on virtual dates before actually meeting and discovering he's a balding, 50-something pudgy guy who lives with his mother.  Robot surrogate mothers may make motherhood possible for women in their 60's.

What won't change will be the blush at a compliment, that delightful nervousness right before a first kiss, and the catch-at-the-heart that a groom feels when he catches his first look at his bride as she marches down the aisle --with both of her dads.

My mom only had to deal with one mother-in-law