Friday, October 22, 2004

Dead Iraqis

I had some time to spare yesterday afternoon so went to the British Museum. Whenever I go, despite the staggering range of artefacts on display, I'm always drawn back to The Assyrians. Shunning the namby showbiz of the Egyptians and those ineffectual poseurs the Greeks, I find myself in the martial world of Ashurbanipal, Ashurnasirpal and Tiglath-pileser III. Theirs is a story of rapine and conquest: to see the reliefs depicting their kings and Gods is to feel the presence of a people who ruled through strength and fear. Their deeds are recalled in bas-reliefs of battle, siege, slavery and severed heads, yet their art has great formal and stylised beauty. In honour of the Assyrians, this weblog will in future be written entirely in cuneiform script. Anyone got a syllabic font from about 600 BC? (It's not like Comic Sans, not really, no. More like Webdings).

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Manhole Covers

All those years ago I tried to tell you that manhole covers were interesting. I was Japanese at heart it seems. See?