Successive strata of castlebuilding (spoiler : they decay over time) as part of a narrative on the greatest Italian circus in Romania and teenage sexuality

For what it's worth, I believe the gypsies got it pretty much exactly right (and before them, the Babylonians they learned it from) : prostitution should be just about mandatory for teenaged females.

Not actually mandatory, bringing in all the "government"-empowering nonsense of courts and fines and checks and bullshit ; but practically mandatory, like wearing shoes. When's the last time you saw a barefoot highschool sophomore ? Notwithstanding that it is perfectly possible, not to mention extremely easy : just don't put shoes on! Bam, you're barefoot!

Yet, in spite of this ease and flying in the face of historic tradition whereby for most of humanity's generations to date such females spent their day indeed barefoot, civilisation very much connotes shoesⁱ. It also connotes spending those years as a whore -- in the same ways and for the same reasons. And it's in fact what they do anyway, except stupidly (ie, disavowedly), to satisfy the stupidity of very harmful social conventions currently prevailing, and thereby losing most of the benefit of their dedication / worship. All that notwithstanding : going about town nude with a token price for half'n'half scribbled on the buttocks is the one religious obligation when you're 16, there's no other worshipⁱⁱ required (or indeed possible) at that age.

As you can see, pretense's still holding up. Because what the fuck else could it do ?

Below you might admire a donjonⁱⁱⁱ pair from Romania's iron age (not the first, the second, should we call it "steel age", after Stalin ?). They're cooling towers, you realise, the hyperboloid shape's optimized to force natural atmospheric convection into industrial utility. They're, if you wish, the first eolian power plants, though they do not produce electricity but diffusion and the energy extraction's intricate and a few steps removed from direct and obvious consideration, but in any case : as much a central artefact of 2nd iron age civilisations as the motte was the first ; and its encounter in the field just as indicative.

And they're just as abandoned, too, by human interest and by the flow of industrial productivity. They're the same thing, really : erstwhile necessaries, the sine qua non of yesteryear. Cooling towers no longer needed by a supposed civilisation no longer powerful or dedicated enough to generate the sorts of material heat that'd benefit from one ; castle towers no longer needed by a supposed civilisation no longer powerful or dedicated enough to generate the sorts of battle heat that'd benefit from one. The same thing exactly, you see ?

Now they decay, that's all they do these days ; but for their sins they were blessed to decay slowly, and so will survive their posterity a long, long time, to be visited, like old folks in their homes are sometimes waylaid by overactive if uncomprehending barbarians, "they're your grandchildren" "realy ?!"

No, not really. The swarming midges of today aren't the posterity of yesterday's manhood, begot in the Sun, but the spawn of its dregs, fermented in the shade. Yet... well, what can you do ?

What powerful yet unremembered race once dwelt in that annihilated place ?

The Fortress of Deva sits on top of a volcanic hill. It is connected by historic pipes to the rest of the pipin' assemblage thereabouts, for reasons fully understood but deliberately undocumented. Yet... it's attested cca 1250, you realise!

Below : another fortified position of the 2nd iron age, this one cylindrical rather than hyperboloid. Do you suppose this manifest difference in religious artefacts (I mean, obviously these are religious artefacts, review the standards by which this term is applied in "scientific" works on archeological finds and you'll be thorouhgly satisfied on the point, I've no doubt) translates some sort of theological dispute ? Did the straight tower tribe war with the hyperboloid tower tribe, and did they win ? Or did they lose ?

Do you suppose we could tell whether they won or lost, and how their wins and losses ebbed and flowed over the centuries, in the usual "scientific" manner ? I mean... all "we" would have to do is review the extant record, right ? Datas don't lie, do they ?

Do you suppose we could guess "what the words mean in context", and thereby "reconstruct" what their cultural differences leading to the contrast of civilisational expression we perceive might've been ?

O here, look, I found a tabled with some weird symbols on it : ˙lᴉɥᴉu olᴉɥᴉu xƎ. I believe to have accuratedly identified it as belonging to the fertility goddess cult of the 3rd stupid age, and also translated it, "cunt is the allsource". Problem^iv ?

Disney kinda stole this, did they.

That tower looks like it'd have some things to say and no mouth to say it with.

This, incidentally, is what O.O connotes to me, this one tower.

Rivulet in the shadow of the castle, a metaphore for human habitation, if you will. Or for anything else -- they're all the same thing anyways.

Original grant title, ennobling this family 1409. By the mid 1400s the original Serb's grandson, Iancu, was taking the fuck over, and his son Matthew was the best king the Hungarians ever had, according to the very Hungarians in question. The family's transparently^v of Serbian, rather than Romanian origins, notwithstanding a whole lot of nationalist wank.

Something with black knights an' tits.

Not all tile wears equally, you notice ?

Do you suppose there's a reason for this ? I mean... the tile stands for a healdic mark, which in turn stands for might and power as embodied in a family (mostly the men, but also the women). Some wear faster than others is all I'm sayin'.

Above : woodwork and ironwork making up a door.

Below : stonework making up a hill ; coincidentally the very hill upon which the door stands.

Above : the kerchief balcony. Because of course, what the hell else are they gonna do with themselves ? Hence the first paragraph.

Below : the problem with using two different kinds of wood to make a whole is that they... say it with me now... grow apart.

Yeah, that's right. You know what happens when that happens ? The door don't close no more, that's what.

Above : audience hall / court. Very practical design, obviously effectual and intelligently efficient. You go in through the right hand door, you make it through the selection skirting, you address the lord, you get your deserts and you exit, stage left. Thousands upon thousands of problems were probably handled by this early #trilema in this here seat of medieval Hunedoara, the kingdom of Hungary, the Vicariate-general of the Holy Roman Empire, Orbis Mundus.

Only gothic fireplace still standing in all of the historic kingdom of Hungary -- though as you can see not really standing all that well.

Batshit insane barbarisms of an incomprehensible cheek. Needless to say none of the items ever were brought here by the original inhabitants or would have been ; but the ecclectic collection's not even remotely from the same period, or in any useful manner related.

Do you know how sometimes a remote older relative will bring you some incomprehensible artefact of nonsense "because you like computers and things, right" ? This is exactly what passes for museum science in this sad corner of the world, a bunch of half-senile and utterly iliterate ploughsmen producing collections of like items as best they can discern. There was even a 1920s jagd uniform hanging on the wall in a corner.

The first time I visited this thing I was I think six, maybe five. Thereabouts in any case, hadn't started school yet. This mess of a pit, with its improbable and unexpected stairwells and access ledges and whatnot fascinated and oripilated me ; to this day it stands to my mind as a metaphore of learning, and understanding, and scholarly disciplines altogether. It's the fucking tower of Babel made perceptible, what!

Above (and below) : very creative roofing, from the days before spare parts, or design plans, or anything much. It comes as it comes, and if it doesn't then facem noi sa fie bine.

Somewhat closer to likely interiors, that copy of a Florentine chest for instance's quite possible, if not necessarily likely.

Complete batshit nonsense, but hey, gotta get the tourists interested somehow ; and boy-howdy were they ever! That was pretty much the only place in the whole damn thing they regularly herded about ; and what's more : their faces lit up, all smiles and belonging. What can you do, it's finally just like Disney told them Miami should be.

Chantry.

Tower versus tower, or as Catherine Sedley, Countess of Dorchester, Countess of Portmore told Louise Renée de Penancoët de Kérouaille, Baroness Petersfield, Countess of Fareham and Duchess of Portsmouth upon encountering Elizabeth Hamilton, Viscountess of Kirkwall, Baroness Dechmont an' Countess of Orkney : "we three whores". All that's missing's the Baroness Nonsuch.

Above : Decaying sub castle of unknown period ; apparently of the quadrist chimney sect (the older socio-cultural substrate upon both which both circular cultures arose).

Below : nature will take its course.

Above as below : not really the sort of thing you can see in the Sad States anymore, is it ? And through that lack of seeing no doubt idiotic "particulars" of the imagination are born as well, huh.

This is a girl they found. As you can see, the tuta was well sfondata at the time they found her ; though it's not clear if while still alive. In any case, some hairloops found nearby indicate something or the other about age, appurtenance an' appartenence. Am zis.

And now, past this door inscribed mysteriously with "12 year old" above, we shall step into the wonderful world of...

... torture.

The bladed wheel, like here depicted, was insanely popular in Central Europe throughout the medieval age, for reasons I can't fathom. I suspect there's nevertheless something there, though.

Yep, you've guessed it, vulvo-vaginal improvement devices. Also from the iron age.

And with that... we're done.

Say goodbye to the kittens!

———

1. Obviously "this might not work for everyone", an argument very much of the same substance as the observation that a mongoloid twelve year old will not be learning the multiplication table, irrespective of how right, proper an' adequate such learning'd be for any other twelve year olds. This is so, but also the mongoloid is abnormal, and not merely superficially but quite substantially (if we were religious, we'd say it's not his body, but his spirit that's abnormal) ; therefore his life experience has little bearing and carries little interest for the healthy, normally developed children. Making all the kids innumerate to prevent the mongoloids from sticking out is very much akin to forcibly dressing all the teenaged hussies to prevent the stunted future "careerwomen" from sticking out -- meaning very much not worth anyone's trouble. [↩]
2. Just because teh h is silent doesn't mean it isn't there! [↩]
3. Fortified main towers of the Norman tradition. [↩]
4. Don't tell me it never occured to you before all "emotions" both personal and historic as well as all "tradition" both written and unwritten are merely epiphenomena of a hardware RNG encountering a structure unequipped to discard it as noise ? Yes, you could have all the human civilisations you wish out of a numeric computer and an entropy source, why the hell not.

   What, why did you think was special about the wetware model ? [↩]

5. Leaving aside their traditions of nomenclature, not merely for children, the damned resistance structure's called nie bojte for fuck's sake, it's quite evident young Iancu spoke Serbian to his grandfather. [↩]