Attempting to Jumpstart my Brain

I'll try to get back into proper TIS form of barbaric simplicity over the next few days. Still having picture issues, but here is a relevant big club picture for this post.

After a very enjoyable, yet hectic, summer, I have spent the last few weeks actually trying to reassimilate Greek into my head in order to complete my Polybius paper from Spring Quarter. Finally, it is done and I can now start to look forward and prepare for a new quarter of teaching. The sections are twice as long as what I have done before, but I have considerable autonomy. Next week I have to try to get the students to digest Gilgamesh and the Law Code of Hammurabi. At least with Gilgamesh I get to debate the themes associated with the human condition under civilization versus a natural state of existence as essentially a wild beast - corruptive knowledge vs. blissful ignorance. We'll see which they think is better, and I will bring out the pitfalls of each side. Maybe, I'll extol the virtue of my barbaric big club political theory, but I doubt it.

In any case, I will get to elaborate on the insidious dangers and mollifying effects of love:

"for when he murmurs love to you the wild beasts that shared his life in the hills will reject him...as he lay on her murmuring love...For six days and seven night they lay together, for Enkidu had forgotten his home in the hills; but when he was satisfied he went back to the wild beasts. Then, when the wild creatures saw him they fled. Enkidu would have followed, but his body was bound as though with a cord, his knees gave way when he started to run, his swiftness was gone...; Enkidu was grown weak..." (The Coming of Enkidu: Epic of Gilgamesh) Love is false, Trust in Steel!