Writing Machine Refuge

So, my favorite podcast is The History of Rome which is about, well, the history of the Roman Empire. I'm listening to the whole thing for the umptenth time, and I just go to the part about Julius Caesar, and I had a BRILLIANT idea! How about keeping track of how each emperor died?

Does that sound fun? I think that sounds fun.

So.

The Julio-Claudians

Julius Caesar. Assassinated on the floor of the Senate after.. about 10 years? I think.

Augustus. Died of old age/illness after a long rein. Technically only all the Emperors after Augustus are considered emperor, but I don't really care that Augustus and Julius Caesar aren't really for sure Emperor. This title was kinda vague at the time anyway.

Tiberius. Died of old age after a long rein. Was into some pretty horrible stuff especially toward the end.

Caligula. Assassinated after four years for being completely corrupt and fucking nuts. (don't let little kids read any stuff about him. It ain't child-friendly) Thought he was a god etc.

Claudius. A decent emperor who was assassinated by his fourth or fifth (I forget) wife who was also his niece.

Nero. The son of said wife. Committed suicide rather than being executed by his own guardsmen. Had his mother and sisters assassinated. Was so evil he is the 'beast' in Revelations.


The Year of the Four Emperors

Galba. Assassinated by Otho. He was popular when he first became Emperor but was soon hated by everyone due to his cruelty during his march to Rome. He then refused to pay the bonus he had promised his soldiers. Bad idea.

Otho. Committed suicide rather than fight Vitellius and divide the Empire through civil war.

Vitellius. Killed by Vespasian's men in the palace. Apparently spent a great deal of money on triumphs and other matters, and executed any money-lenders that came calling. Supposedly also executed people who named him heir to get their money as well, but that all sounds like revisionist history lol. The Romans were great at trashing people they didn't like.


All three ruled just months.


The Flavian Dynasty

Vespasian. The last of the The Emperors in the Year of the Four Emperors. Ruled nine and a half years before dying of old age. Not bad!

Titus. Vespasian's oldest son. Ruled about two and a half years before dying of an illness, possibly plague. Was a decent Emperor who ruled when Mt. Vesuvius blew up and destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum and spent much of his time on the throne dealing with that mess.

Dominican. Ruled 15 years. Was probably a better Emperor than he was given credit for, but he was hated by the Senate and eventually assassinated by a servant in his household.


The Five Good Emperors, aka the Nerva–Antonine Dynasty

Nerva. Reigned for about two years. Died of old age. He is considered one of the "Five Good Emperors" primarily because of his choice of successor, Trajan.

Trajan. Reigned for a good 19 years. He was the emperor who ruled at Rome's greatest extent, the hight of the Roman Empire. Died of old age.

Hadrian. He probably wasn't Trajan's choice as a successor, but Trajan's wife was very fond of Hadrian. She made the right choice (unless you ask the Jews of course, they hate Hadrian worse than Hitler, and for understandable reasons). Reigned a long time, died of old age (well, actually congestive heart failure. Apparently his death was quite painful)

Antoine Pious. He was supposed to be a stop-gap emperor between Hadrian and Hadrian's chosen replacement, who was too young at the time of Hadrian's death to become emperor. However, he ended up living a very long time for the ancient world. He wasn't as brilliant as Hadrian or Trajan, but he continued their policies and as a result is one of the Five Good Emperors. Died of old age.


Totals thus far:

Assassination= 7
Old Age= 7
Illness (not related to Old Age) = 1
Suicide= 2

Grand Total= 17

Totals will be updated as more emperors are added.


More emperors will be added as I make my way through the podcast. This list will continue until A) The History of Rome is history, B) I stop listening to the podcast, or C) I get bored of making the list.


Backdated to keep it at the top.

but I'm working at a place that has lj blocked, but they don't know about dreamwidth lol.

anyway, have some Psy/Changeling fanfic. Slash, because this series needs some slash imo.

Erin sat straight, his posture consciously Psy-perfect. He tried to empty his mind of thought, visualizing still water, drifting clouds, distant mountains and rain. Anything that might calm his churning emotions and mask his broken-Silence. Nothing worked.

Beside him on the bullet train his mother sat in icy perfection. Not a twitch or a flicker of excess motion passed through her despite the swaying of the train as it sped toward San Francisco. Even after three years Erin still hadn't gotten used to it, it was as if her soul had been sucked away by the Center leaving behind an empty shell. She stared straight ahead, oblivious to the changeling family sitting across from them. Erin kept his gaze lowered, so as to not accidently challenge the predatory male. Probably a leopard, although wolves also frequented the city by the bay. He could feel the families' predatory minds, as slick and hot as well-sharpened knives pressing against the tender flesh of his brain. He wasn't supposed to of course, to most Psy changelings were naturally shielded, their minds simply too different to manipulate or read without tremendous effort.

To most Psy. To Erin they were like open books, easy to read and vulnerable to intrusion, as if they weren't shielded at all. It was an ability he had guarded carefully for most of his life. Stronger, more powerful Psy would seek to control him if they knew, and the changelings would kill him. Erin had no intention of becoming either a pawn or weapon.

The changeling male glared at him over the head of a toddler curled protectively in his lap. Erin was aware of the mother breast-feeding and infant, and he wondered what had made the family decide to travel with such young children--predatory changelings were notoriously over-protective.

You don't need to worry about me, he wanted to say to the changelings. Pure-Psy hunts us too.

His mother's organizer dinged softly and she answered it, her movements neat and precise. "Larsen has agreed to meet us at the station," she said, her words as precise as her movement. She spoke as if she were speaking of a business associate, not a potential roommate.

"Good," he said, and went back to shoring up his eroding shields. He hoped that Anthony Larsen wasn't a changeling, he wasn't sure he could he could handle the pressure.

It was illegal to filter housing ads by race, however. And it wasn't like they had a lot of options, housing prices being what they were. He just had to hope that he could find a solution soon, before his deteriorating shields took all his choices away.

Moved the ten gallon planted tank yesterday from the metal rack by the window to my dresser. It's sitting next to my betta breeding tank now. My male breeder has been very bad and refuses to make a bubble nest. I put the female in with him for a few days to try to inspire him, but all that resulted was domestic violence. So, she's back in the ten gallon to heal up. I tossed some extra java ferns into the breeder tank, so hopefully the extra cover will make things easier next time.

Annnd I made an impulse buy the other day, and got a Petsmart betta for my vase. It looks really nice, if I do say so myself. I tried to give him a mini heater, but even the little ones they make for betta tanks over-heated it. No damage done, but good think I was keeping track of it. This one is a light blue 'dragon scale'. I think I'll call him Little Boy Blue. Still not sure what to call the other two.

Moved the last two cardinal tetras to from the shrimp tank to the ten gallon with the others. Took me over a hour, the stinkers are great at hiding. Anyway, they're back with their school, so hopefully they won't be spending all their time hiding.

The endler's livebearers have spawned several times. There's tons of fry in the shrimp tank.

I'll take some pictures eventually. I'm really proud of my tanks. They look a bit messy because I'm not big into aquascaping (my approach to planted aquariums is to throw a bunch of stuff in there and see what survives, which is usually everything), but i don't care. I think they actually look more natural then some of the aquascaped ones, how many stream beds have you seen that look like a landscape?

Note: I'm actually pretty horrible at writing book reviews so there will be spoilers. Those not wanting to read them should probably just stick with the Nook review.

Welp, yesterday I broke down and bought a Nook. It's something that I've been wanting to do for awhile, my ultimate plan is to get rid of all my physical library (or as much of it as I can... hah) and replace it with digital copies. This is because I have way too much stuff for my studio apartment, and I think the less stuff I have the easier it would be for me to clean my shit up. Anyway, with the Nook I can now start doing that.

( The nook. )

( Changes: Colligum Chronical Volume 3 )

( Beauty and the Werewolf: 500 Kingdoms Series Book 6 )

Anyway, yeah, that's that book. Now, if you'll excuse me I'm going to go read about RIDING FUCKING REINDEER instead. Because. REINDEER.

With Office Depot. We'll see how this goes.

I'm surprised my application was still active with them, to be honest.

JournalFen has a thread! Other journal service users are welcome as well because why not, but I'll be starting a LiveJournal Naruto communit(ies) thread later today if one doesn't exist already. Need to the shower thing and the school thing first, lol.

Testing InsaneJournal as well, removed the thingie that caused the duplicate entry on IJ and LJ, testing to see if that worked properly. Blogger updated correctly. Thinking about linking that... or something to Facebook because I have given up trying to keep my online and offline life separate. I'm still going to use platedlizard online, however, my real name would look weird.

So yay?

that $4.34 cents I just got as a refund on my disbursement better not be it for the term, or I am up shit creek without a paddle.

At least my classes are paid for, but that won't even cover a week's worth of bus tickets, let alone food, gas, car insurance, my medication (haven't taken it in a week, already feeling the depression come back, IDK what I'll do if I don't get the rest of my student loans this term... probably kill myself and no I am not joking)

oh geeze, I'm getting suicidal thoughts again already. Next up, excessive consumption of alcohol, mid-night freakouts and self-mutilation! Oh my, what fun! I can't wait!

/pulls hair out

Time for another Chinese lesson!

So, if you ask a random person on the street (that is not in China, obviously) about Chinese characters they will tell you several common myths about Chinese writing. The myth that Chinese characters are pictographs, and the myth that you have to start from the beginning for each character. In fact only about 2-3% of Chinese characters are pictographs! The majority of Chinese characters (about 85%) are composed of a radical, which indicates meaning, and a phonetic, which indicates sound. So all you have to do is learn the 100 most common radicals and phonetics and you'll be able to read about 85%+ of all the characters you'll run across!

Or, as my teacher says, Chinese is actually easy. I'm not entirely sure I believe her yet, but oh well :D

So, I live in an apartment above my parents' garage. This means that occasionally I get rodents. Fortunately I have a cat who is an awesome ratter so this isn't usually an issue. Usually.

Recently I came back from a camping trip to find that my bread had been chewed on. I tossed it, annoyed, and yelled at my cat for not doing her job. She gave me her usual wtf look and went back to sleep, totally unimpressed. The next day a dead rat appeared on the floor, partially eaten, and I thought that was it... for about five minutes when I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. 'Oh shit' I thought as it scampered off. 'TWO of them?'. Admittedly I'm not the best house keeper and I have people and pet food up here. An infestation could be bad. As I started ripping apart my room trying to eliminate attractants I spotted the rat again.

It was a black-hooded rat.

Black hooded rats, for people who don't know, are domesticated rats. In other words, this was a former pet rat who had found its way to my place. I live across the street from a park and people are always dumping pets there, so I can only assume that's where it came from.

At this point I had a real situation on my hands.

Part of the problem is my attitude toward rats. Pet rats, as in from a pet store, are fun cute critters. I had them as pets as a kid. Wild rats, on the other hand, are horrible little monsters that all need to diaf. It's not logical, I know, but that's the way I feel. So now I had a pet rat living in my place like a wild rat. It was grossing me out, but I also felt I had a responsibility toward it because it was domesticated. I was afraid to catch it because I didn't want to be bitten (do rat carry rabis? I'm pretty sure they can catch it)

Unlike previous rats this one made little effort to hid itself, it was active all day long. Besides its coloring that behavior is what told me it was a pet rat, as they don't show anywhere near the amount of shyness toward humans that wild rats do. Over the course of the next few days my cat made numerous efforts to kill it, but for some reason she was never able to finish the kill, unlike previous rats. I'm not sure why, but maybe the rat's coloring put her off, or the rat understood cat behavior better or something.

Anyway, yesterday I got tired of the situation and put out a call on Craigslist for help. A lady who runs a rat rescue emailed me, and after I finally managed to get the rat into a pet crate I took it to her. She picked up the rat and lo and behold it was tame, if scared. It didn't bite her or anything, and settled down once it realized that she was not going to let it runaway. The rat was very skinny, possibly because it didn't know how to find food on its own, and had an eye filled with blood possibly from my cat, but other wise looked fine. So yay, one life saved, and it's no longer my problem.

So, that was my good deed for the week. Next post, practicing Chinese.