Tuesday, March 14, 2006

who invented irony?

from FreeWillAstrology this week, Virgo:

The ancient Greeks had words for love that transcend our usual notions, writes Lindsay Swope in her review of Richard Idemon's book Through the Looking Glass. Epithemia is the basic need to touch and be touched. Our closest approximation is "horniness," though epithemia is not so much a sexual feeling as a sensual one. Philia is friendship. It includes the need to admire and respect your friends as a reflection of yourself--like in high school, where you want to hang out with the cool kids because that means you're cool too. Eros isn't sexual in the way we usually think, but is more about the emotional gratification that comes from merging souls. Agape is a mature, utterly free expression of love that has no possessiveness. It means wanting the best for another person even if it doesn't advance one's self-interest. The phase you're currently in, Virgo, is providing you with opportunities to explore the frontiers of at least three of these kinds of love.

uh huh.

Ever get those fantasies going where you go back in time and shoot Hitler in his youth? I wonder what our inner lives would look like if we could take a power hose through time, stick it up the ass of Western Thought, and blow the Greeks out. I spose then we’d all be Spartan? Austere, but Free? ( Or Free, but Austere?)

Jonathon Coulton - I feel fantastic (mp3) when I take my steak tastes better pill