Royal Technology

Lori's Blog 1-18-11

Two days of Tudors will have you thinking about things you wouldn't normally consider. For example:

The advent of technology has allowed for the instant gratification of messaging and e-mail. Back in the day of that King who looked nothing like Jonathan Rhys-Meyers they wrote their letters on hand made papers with bird feathers dipped in ink made from ashes. They didn't have envelopes so they folded up the page and poured molten wax over the flap edge then pounded it with a metal stamp so you'd know it wasn't tampered with before you got it. They "entrusted" all off this labor to someone who would then gallop it across the country and over the mountains, traverse the rivers, and canter halfway across the next country where they would put it in the hands of the person it was intended for. This is how they conducted wars and arranged marriages of their newly born children in an effort to gain property and make allegiances so they wouldn't have to conduct so many wars. Standard response time... six months! A girl could take it personally. It also explains why they started so early.

During his campaign for "reform" which really meant I need ultimate cosmic powers despite my itty bitty living space in relationship to the size of the world King Pompous-Butt- Never-Pious attained a printing press. As his advisor shows the press to two of the tag-a-long-gang he refers to it as a 'newest and greatest weapon'. Of course there has always been propaganda and there have always been smear campaigns and you just never consider how exactly they got around before everyone could read and printed material was easily had. No newspapers back then. It was a splurge to own and be able to read that first ever bit of propaganda - the bible. Consider how much was omitted, and rewritten before enough people knew enough to know better. I guess that's what King Cataclysm and his groupies were reliant on, and I guess they were lucky because it did indeed work in their favor, that is why there is a church of England. It's all kind of staggering isn't it?

Perhaps the scene that brought the true state of their conditions to the harshest light is the one in which the King sat while a servant picked through his hair pulling out lice and nits. Yeah it all looks so cool on television; the big castle with the blazing fire places and the tapestries adorning every wall. The giant ball gowns and capes of fur... all because they were freezing their arse's off!

No showers! But then who would want to take a cold one anyway as the only hot water was heated over the fire in buckets and there certainly wasn't any plumbing. And once you got out of the cold bath you were in a stone cold room and no blow dryer so you had to live with freezing locks. Somehow I don't think they smelled or looked as nice as they do on television. Please note I have refrained from expounding on the lack of plumbing but you go ahead and let your mind run wild with that one.

No Tudors today so I opted for a new book, a classic I hadn't been required to read; The Crucible. It's been in my need to read pile for a very, very long time. As I started to read I realized it too was about bending religion and redefining it to suit your needs in the microcosm of Salem. And there too it was more about property and power than it ever was about spirituality. I'd say it was a coincidence but then my son's memory was sparked by seeing the book on my coffee table, the book he needed to write a paper on. A paper that is due tomorrow. Synchronicity: everything in its own time for its own reason.

I promise the blog tomorrow, should there be one, won't be about religion or government. Nope tomorrow I am either going to expound on the notion of mental capacity as it was presented in a book I just finished or else I am going to write something creative using the vocabulary of the other book I just finished. After white knuckling it back and forth through the Boston tunnel and being electrified during the time in between we'll see what kind of mood I'm in. Either way you should be afraid. Be very afraid.

Be Safe.