Hal Johnson's Blog, page 31

Annotations on Alaska

These are annotations for the sixteenth chapter of the book Impossible Histories. I’m not saying you need to keep a copy of IH open next to you as you read, but it might make some things clearer? I should probably mention that you can buy the book just about anywhere, including here, or you can nag your local library about acquiring a copy.

p. 306
•epigraph: The epigraph for this chapter would have been:

…through Behring Straits, and into the remotest secret drawers and lockers of the world.
§Melvil...

The past is a foreign country I: Revenge of the Nerds

[Have I mentioned I have a book available for pre-order? Or (if you hate pre-ordering things) that I also have a relatively new book available for regular order?]

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the past few years it is that human beings have no long-term memory. We are unable to conceive of what the world was like even in the recent past. In 2006, when Chip Taylor wanted to characterize the two political parties, it was the Democrats he decided to call “conspiracy flingers” (hear it here)...

A garland of quotations XVII

I am not one of those whom one may ask about their why. Is my experience but of yesterday? It was long ago that I experienced the reasons for my opinions. Would I not have to be a barrel of memory if I wanted to carry my reasons around with me? It is already too much for me to remember my own opinions; and many a bird flies away. And now and then I also find a stray in my dovecot that is strange to me and trembles when I place my hand on it.
•Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883).

No man, whate...

Annotations on the fall of Rome

These are annotations for the fourteenth chapter of the book Impossible Histories. I’m not saying you need to keep a copy of IH open next to you as you read, but it might make some things clearer?

Consider preordering my next book?

p. 289
•epigraph

Except for graveyards and bathhouses, the whole earth is a mosque.
§Al-Tabirzi, A Niche for Lamps (C14).

p. 290
•the empire’s leadership does not have the best reputation: Here’s Emerson: “The barbarians who broke up the Roman empire did not arrive a day to...

What if Hannibal had marched on Rome?

[Please consider purchasing Impossible Histories , the book that is just like this essay except better researched, or pre-ordering Apprentice Academy : Sorcerers , a book unlike this essay in every way.]

Why, let us build a city of our own,
And not stand lingering here for amorous looks.
•Marlowe, Dido, Queen of Carthage (c. 1586?).

The Roman historian Livy (59 BC–17 AD) wanted nothing so much as to explain to his readers what made Romans so impressively powerful, virtuous, etc. and look! now they have...

A garland of quotations XVI

Preorder Sorcerers (please!)

For God’s sake…Remember Rehoboam! Remember Philip the Second! Remember King Charles the First!
•John Wesley, letter to Lord Dartmouth (6/14/1775).

One day Apollonius asked one of the priests, ‘Are the Gods righteous?’ “Doubtless,’ was the response. ‘Reasonable also?’ ‘Why, what could be more reasonable than Divinity!’ ‘And do they know the circumstances of men?’ ‘That is the very root of their Divinity, that they know all things,’ was the answer. ‘If this be so,’ said A...

Annotations on polar exploration

These are annotations for the fourteenth chapter of the book Impossible Histories. I’m not saying you need to keep a copy of IH open next to you as you read, but it might make some things clearer?

p. 268
•epigraph: I’d wanted the epigraph here to be:

In Baffin’s Bay, where the whale-fish blows,
Is the fate of Franklin—no one knows.
Ten thousand pounds I would freely give
To learn that my husband still did live.
§“The Sailor’s Dream”; quoted in Joseph P. Faulkner, Eighteen Months on a Greenland Whaler (...

The case against the metric system

“Down with metrics! We don’t need no foreign rulers!”
•Cracked magazine, ca. 1982.

I’m not here to tell you not to use the metric system. It’s fine, the metric system is fine. Like most systems, it has good parts and bad parts. I am here to tell you that the metric system as is generally sold in America, is a bill of goods. If the metric system could help you you probably already use. Everyone else is just getting lied to by people with mental problems.

Like many Americans, I got sold the metric sy...

A garland of quotations XV

As man may eat of the flesh of beasts, so may gods eat of the flesh of man.
•Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Gods of Mars (1913).

There have been cases of cannibalism in Scotland, but no bestial transformation is hinted at in connection with them.
•Sabine Baring-Gould, The Book of Were-Wolves (1865).

Rumor had it that the Khmer Rouge made a practice of sneaking up behind young virgin girls, killing them with axes, then removing their livers, grilling them and eating them, and swallowing the bile raw. They...

Annotations on Richard the Lionheart

These are annotations for the thirteenth chapter of the book Impossible Histories. I’m not saying you need to keep a copy of IH open next to you as you read, but it might make some things clearer?

p.240
•epigraph: The epigraph here was to be:

Lord Jesus kyng of glorye
Suche grace and vyctorye
Thou sente to Kyng Rychard,
That neuer was found coward!
§Richard Coer de Lyon (C14).

p. 243
•The death of Thomas à Becket: This is the plot of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral (1935).

•Death to the Greeks: The n...