Watson and Holmes have a true crime podcast. Holmes goes off on very boring scientific tangents at least thrice an episode and Watson guides him back on topic with his extremely dry sense of humor. Lestrade is occasionally a guest on the show and Holmes finds new ways to subtly suggest he’s an idiot. Mycroft is in like one show a year and the fans love him because he’s unexpectedly very funny. They ask for more Mycroft episodes and it becomes a running gag that every week Mycroft is in a different obscure location where he cannot he reached. Mrs. Hudson invites herself in and knows a suspicious amount about dismemberment strategy and blood spatter.
Watson: Hello, and welcome back to the show. The elder Holmes will not be consulting on this case as he is still trapped in the catacombs and we have received word he has dropped his phone in a puddle of Parisian sewage. Rotten luck, truly. In other news, our landlady has begun rendering fat for the creation of lye soap, she claims it is lard but we have not seen her bridge club rival in some time. We will certainly come back to that later but now for the more pressing topic.
Holmes: This week we will be discussing the rash of arsenic poisonings occurring in Whitechapel between 1884 and 1887.
Watson: This week we WILL be discussing the rash of arsenic poisonings occurring in Whitechapel between 1884 and 1887, so help us God.
Watson: How have you been since we last spoke, Lestrade.
Lestrade: Well, somewhat vexed. A woman in my jurisdiction received a pair of human ears in the post and my wife has left m-
Holmes: WAIT WAIT, GO BACK!
Watson: EARS?
Holmes: EARS?!?!?!?
Holmes: HOW COME NO ONE GIVES ME EARS?!?!?!?
they then set up a PO box so people may send Holmes weird stuff they find, thus beginning his consulting detective career and also his collection of human teeth and cursed objects
one of the best parts of shards of love is when María Rosa Menocal is like, “scholars think that troubadours just came up with the love lyric independently, when love lyrics had been a big deal just down the coast in al-andalus? being sung by performers and women in the street? and likely travelling, as people travel? and just because we don’t have surviving translations of these lyrics from hebrew and arabic and mozarabic/andalusi romance vernacular into occitan you think the troubadours just came up with the idea independently? for fuck’s sake have you ever been to a rock concert IT DOESN’T MATTER IF YOU DON’T KNOW ALL THE WORDS, YOU DANCE AND SING ALONG AND FEEL IT ANYWAY”
and she’s right!!!!!!!
One of rock’s most striking phenomena is the range of “reading” that can and does take place when poetry is being articulated on a stage with language, body movements, music, and unusually strong thematic expectations. Here is where rock again provides an exceptionally enlightening example, allowing us to see, in action, the amazing–perhaps at some level incomprehensible–spectacle of people singing along to songs in languages they scarcely know, if at all; or–here the paradoxical variant–being moved by songs whose words they can make out only in part…
… it is no less true that language barriers are radically reduced when the medium is a song, when the meaning is also being conveyed in music; and this is directly related to the fact that a precise “understanding” of every word in a song is not at all necessary to understand exactly what is going on in the song…
… In such a context, I think, the whole lot of questions regarding the accessibility of “texts” between languedoc and al-Andalus, are rather radically altered. There was, of course, no reason to have contemporary translations of the muwashshaḥāt, and no reason we should even blink at the contrast that provides with the prodigious translations in other areas: of course you translate philosophy, but why should anyone even imagine doing translations of what those singers were doing up there on the stage? Dante said it explicitly: of course we translate the philosophy of the Greeks–but Homer? Clearly, the discrepancy is appropriate, a necessary difference between two universes with little in common. But the other point is that no translations ever would have been necessary in order to account for other evidence of considerable interaction all along the golden coast of languedoc, which at a certain point becomes al-Andalus. If a vital relationship ever did exist between the songs of the Hispano-Arabic world and those of the troubadours–songs whose refrains were all sung in varieties of intrepid new Romance vernaculars–it took place while the traditions were very much alive, in creative and compelling performance, before either tradition had to be studied in its written form or in a translation, and at a moment in the life cycle of the genre in which the power of a driven human voice and in which the wit and triumph of performance are remarkable translators…
… what is at stake is the fundamental and broad cultural picture we have painted at every level. It is necessary to point out that the shift of the model to the sphere where music is dominant points strongly to the originally Arabic “roots” of a significant part of the vernacular lyrical phenomenon, given the predominance of Andalusian musical instruments, many of whose names are still distinguishably Arabic…
me @ those black figures in the corner of my eye at my house that disappear when i turn in that direction: i know you’re there bitch
Hey, fun fact! Your peripheral vision is better equipped to see light and movement than when you look at something straight on. Dim light and shadow that would be indistinguishable when facing something can be seen out of the corner of your eye.
So, if you ever see light or movement on the edge of your vision, that suddenly vanishes when you turn, don’t worry! Whatever it is hasn’t disappeared! You’re just unable to perceive it when you’re looking right at it!
“Don’t worry” he says
As if I don’t have enough heart attacks from reflections on the inside of my glasses
“Don’t worry! Whatever it is hasn’t dissapeared!” Has the absolute OPPOSITE effect
I had a lot of trouble with math as a kid and fell down constantly. After extensive testing, one of the (many, unfortunately) things doctors found was that I straight up did not have peripheral vision. Turns out if you can’t see out the sides, you get dyslexia for numbers, aka dyscalculia. I spent three afternoons a week for a whole summer in a dark room staring through a sort of telescope into the floor, with just bright lights and colours in each lens, and they gave me exercises and boom. Eventually, I had peripheral vision.
Which is to say if you want to get better at spotting these monsters it is 100% possible. While I cannot tell you where to get the weird telescope therapy, try this: stretch your arms out in front of you, thumbs together and only your index fingers pointing up. Then slowly, keeping your eyes dead ahead, separate your hands and move them at the same time apart. Stop when they are just at the edge of your peripheral vision.
Every time you do this, staring only straight ahead but perceiving out the sides, you stretch the ability a little, and you should be able to see further and better from the sides until you hit a max.
