I finished that book on Inanna. It is, basically, a beautiful translation of the myth of Inanna and the Huluppu-tree, Inanana and Enki, the Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi, Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld, and seven hymns. A little bit of commentary about Sumerian and Akkadian culture. But there’s actually nothing at all about the potentially trans/nonbinary people in her priesthood.
In the Descent myth, Enki (the god of wisdom) fashions two “creatures of no gender”, kurgarra and galatur, from the dirt beneath his fingernails, and sent them to sympathize with Ereshkigal’s pains to convince her to give up the captured body of Inanna. That’s in the book. But not in the book: these were the names of priestly callings. Galatur were composers and singers of mourning songs, dressing in feminine clothing, taking feminine names and singing/speaking in a feminine dialect; there’s a line about Inanna having changed them from men into women to strike awe into the people. Kurgarra were leaders of processionals and specialists in protective magics, apparently holding both masculine weapons and symbols of a feminine role, and the either An or Inanna had transformed them as well.
Again, I’m not going to attempt to hold up Sumer as a utopia for trans and nonbinary people. Simply that the oldest recorded human history does in fact include people whose gender doesn’t fit in one of two tidy little boxes. That “radical gender ideology” as a certain felon called it, is at least two millennia older than the Bible (and least four millennia if you’re looking at the cult of Inanna in general during the Uruk period, rather than the date of this particular writing).
I finished watching season two of Arcane. While they stopped leaning quite so heavily on music videos, the story — already a tangled mess of conspiracies, murders, terrorism, family bonds, romantic bonds, betrayal of both of those, illusion and magic — just got increasingly, cosmically, “we’re going to do five minutes of psychedelic special effects instead of explaining any of this and then have entire episodes in alternate timelines” weird. There were certainly some very emotionally stirring episodes and moments, and like I said before, the show consistently looks gorgeous. But overall, I just don’t know. No regrets in having watched it, but I can’t really call it a masterpiece either.
To prevent myself from maxing out my vacation days, I took Friday and Monday off work. I recorded songs on both Thursday and Friday, and will probably do some more today. That’s 31 minutes of music so far.
My spouse had the idea of taking my parents to the St. Louis Aquarium and a nice meal on one of these days, when they’d be less likely to be crowded. But Valentine’s Day isn’t great for restaurants — in fact we tried to go to Mimi’s last night, thinking about how it’s rarely got more than a handful of customers when it’s not Sunday brunch, and there was a waiting list. People with reservations were waiting quite some time, mainly in parties of two, so after maybe an hour’s wait we gave up. Old Spaghetti Factory nearby was also packed full. We went to Culver’s instead.
The forecast for Monday is 11-22 degrees F (about -11 to -5 C) and some very light snow showers in the morning. Not the weather I’d have chosen for an outing, but we might go anyway.
That newest character I started in Guild Wars 2 is doing really well. I’ve soloed several Champions now, including some I had serious trouble with on previous characters. I did eat dirt a couple of times, through a combination of bad luck and overconfidence. But I’m convinced that high sustain condition builds are the way to go for a solo character. Between the poison/burning/torment etc. ticking away on enemies, and a couple of necromantic pets distracting them, I can keep the pressure on even while dodging or getting out of range to heal up. (Normally if you get outside an enemy’s range they immediately heal up to full so you can’t repeatedly hit-and-fade. They do the same if you attack enemies from positions where they can’t get to you — no sniping from an overhang or killing underwater creatures from dry land.)
(The camera in GW2 is totally reasonable for exploration and combat but not great for portraits.)