introspection
aardvarchaeology | July 19, 2008A much-publicised trial in Falun, Sweden is giving me a funny feeling. The man on the stand has confessed to the murder of a woman and a small girl, and is also charged with the violent rape of both and of a second woman. The case makes me feel queasy in more ways than one.
Anybody half sane will of course feel incomprehending revulsion when faced with the fact of men with the drive to beat, rape and murder. But there's something more to it for me. And I think I know what it is. This insane sadistic sex murderer was just following his strongest urges. And so have I done for all my adult life…
aardvarchaeology | August 17, 2007I got to thinking about my most-prized possessions. Which are they really? Which of my stuff would I try to rescue if the house caught fire, or if we had to flee enemy troops and bring along or hide our valuables?
One way to look at it would be to simply enumerate the most expensive stuff I have, the things that would cost the most to replace if they disappeared or would fetch a good price if I sold them. But YuSie and I don't really have any valuables. No gold or precious stones or artwork or other collectibles worth mentioning, and our home electronics are simple and years old. So's our car…
aardvarchaeology | July 26, 2007A weakness of mine is that the memories of a few embarrassing events in my past sometimes come back to haunt me and make me cringe with self-loathing. Very likely, I am the only person in the world who ever thinks of (or even remembers) these events, but I just can't help feeling bad about them. Two of the worst have to do with archaeology and English, and so I thought I might as well dump them on you, Dear Reader.
1. Summer of 1993. I am 21, working my second season as a field archaeologist, and I've just learned about context-stratigraphic excavation and documentation methods à la Edward…
aardvarchaeology | June 6, 2007
Eight years ago to the day I was invited to a party one Sunday afternoon. I didn't know the hostess very well: we'd only met twice, at a Mercury Rev concert and a library, and we'd exchanged e-mail addresses. At the time, I was eight months into a surreal period of my life when I was happily learning to be a dad half of the time and energetically dispersing overdue wild oats the other half. That Sunday, I showered and bought some flowers and went.
The party was a buffet in a little courtyard in Stockholm's Old Town, and the guests were many and colourful: largely young bright exchange…
aardvarchaeology | May 28, 2007
I have the soul of a stamp collector. Some might object that it's an unusually loud and psychedelic stamp collector, but I think it's so. It shows in my research (data-heavy, fussing over terminological definitions, with a lot of statistics), in my attacks on nebulous jargon and muddled thinking in archaeology, in my affiliation with the skeptic movement, in the way I sort things into neat piles and papers into binders after throwing away as much as possible, in the way I do whatever my calendar tells me to do on a certain day, in the way I dislike sudden schedule changes and…
aardvarchaeology | May 16, 2007Saturday I slipped on a tux for about the fourth time in my life and went to my little cousin's wedding. It turned out a visit to another world, or at least an alien subculture: corporate suit land. Everybody was a lawyer or a businessperson with a lot more money than I'll ever have, and I found it really hard to connect to people. Their holiday pastimes, the inflection of their speech, even the hairstyles were unfamiliar. It suddenly became clear to me how tightly defined my own social circle actually is in terms of interests and occupations.
So I decided to take a look at who my people are…
aardvarchaeology | April 5, 2007My dear scibling and fellow big-nose European Bora, over at the one Sblog that comes before Aard in the alphabetical list, has "tagged me with a meme". That is, he has handed me a coat of chainmail. No, he's sent me a chain letter, with a blogging assignment. I usually don't bother about these things because a) I'm afraid to scare readers away, b) I don't find them very fun to write myself. But this time, the question is one that might actually be interesting to some people, and somebody posed it to me face-to-face recently. Why do I blog?
As a hint, let me first quote from The Jet's latest…
aardvarchaeology | April 3, 2007I'll tell thee everything I can;
There's little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
"Who are you, aged man?" I said,
"And how is it you live?"
And his answer trickled through my head
Like water through a sieve.
I'm a birthday boy! Half-way to 70. Why not read one of my favourite absurd poems?
aardvarchaeology | March 15, 2007
There's childhood and youth and young adulthood. And then comes middle age. I've been wondering when my Middle Ages are going to begin. I've left the Iron Age of my youth, for sure, and I have a feeling that my Roman Imperial times are drawing to an end. So, the other day, I found the answer. Three weeks from now, I will be closer to 50 than to 20. That must be my AD 409. That's when the last remaining Imperial officials in the province of Britannia start packing their gear and no longer answer plainly when you ask them how old they are. "Thirty-something" is all they reply.
I'm going…
aardvarchaeology | February 5, 2007Many people who excel at something do so by concentrating on a few tightly defined areas of interest. A colleague of mine once explained to me that she has a narrow-gauge mind (Sw. smalspårig). I like that expression a lot: this woman hasn't got a one-track mind (Sw. enkelspårig), nor a narrow mind, it's just narrow gauge. In her case, it seems that the tracks of her mind lead either to Iron Age small finds or to reading mystery novels.
Another colleague once conversed with me for the first time when I was between marriages and pretty one-tracked on the subject of women. This friendly…
aardvarchaeology | February 1, 2007
One thing I've never fought about with my ex-wife nor my wife is money. This is no mean feat asBoth ladies are somewhat Bohemian souls with a taste for fine shoes and ladies' fashion.
I have never made much money myself.
I have a child with each of them.
The secret, apart from the basic requirement of marrying only sensible people with an adequate income, is to keep each person's income and expenses separate. This may sound profoundly un-romantic and anti-family, but believe me, it's a lot more romantic and family-like than the ugly fights that invariably result when one spouse uses the…
aardvarchaeology | January 18, 2007A gifted friend of mine suffers from a continuous psychological dilemma. He wants to be more productive and become somewhat famous, but he's pretty lazy and there isn't anything in particular he really wants to do. So, despite being hugely talented, he often feels inadequate. His problem is that he wants to have done things, but he doesn't want to do them.
We share many characteristics. I'm also driven by an internal imperative to be productive, and I also crave the appreciation of my peers. (I mean, look at me here, blogging.) The main difference is that I am, without having done anything to…