Gotta get you to publish that senior thesis, man!

That was the part that seems off: he tried to to deny it until he couldn’t. Also noticeable that he wasn’t “borrowing” Tosca or Butterfly, but lower tier Puccini. Rent didn’t have these issues with the Puccini family, but that was obviously much more overt allusion, like Homer in Vergil vel sim.

Another thing about him: he stole his most famous riff (music of the night) from Puccini’s La Fanciula Del West and settled with the Puccini family out of court. I’m as Kristevan as they come wrt intertextuality, but this one is tough to defend

Lucretius->Shakespeare->Milton->Haydn’s Creation->Walt Whitman->Darnielle-> The Kuiper Belt

Talk about a pedigree!

Probably the most “Darnielle-coded” thing I’ve seen you say here for a good bit; now I’m genuinely wracking my brain for any reference to a samovar in the discography, and, coming up blank, am disappointed by this fact

This is just basic hero cult praxis: bring your mola to the deity

The biggest tell here is that Wagner lifted seven notes from the finale of the Reformation Symphony and put them into Wotan’s mouth when he asks Freia to “bring our youth back to us” in Rheingold. I think the kids call this fangirling; the social anthropologists call it cultural appropriation.

The thing on that, as Gurnemanz will tell you, is that you get stuck in a zone where Space becomes Time, and Time Space. But, JD, if ever the Panasonic Muse called out to you!

The dude just operates in the stratosphere; it’s not fair

Earlier, we know from the fifth century the “lionness on the cheese grater” joke from Lysistrata (and see Wilamowitz’ lengthy comment on that one) and Aristotle’s observations in HA 8. Would be interesting to triangulate all this with what bioarch can tell us

Suggestive that the word “leo” doesn’t really occur in Latin texts with frequency until the 1st century BCE; a few times in Plautus. There’s a fascinating proof in Lucretius (that must preserve some earlier Epicurean content) that Lions hate chickens because the chicken atoms hurt the Lion’s eyes

@flintdibble.bsky.social has your answer

There goes my hope as a person living in Florida that we would be rid of DeSantis when his term ends in 2026

JD, you know your assignment, man

Remember that lost Senecan treatise De Vespertilione?