That would be the story of a human male born without a human father (or mother, to be fair) by divine power and destined to ascend to divinity, a god who’s cult used caves as isolated meeting spots just like the early cChristians. A religion in which priests could only be male, and the adherents of said religion recognized seven sacred sacramental practices? Did you mean that Mithras? Because there are a lot of definite parallels. A new story sharing a lot of, but not all of, the themes of an existing story is both completely plausible and extremely likely.

Nah. These conspiracies always go "there."

A theater near me used to show it every midnight on Friday-Sunday. I never had any clue what it was, or why it was always being shown.

Someone contact George R Martins publicist!

Do you have any sources on this other than the article linked? I couldn’t find anything on this doing a cursory google search in french. It is widely known he wrote it in a short amount of time due to his work on “Le dernier jour d’un condamné” and “Les orientales”. I just think it’s a great bit of trivia on Hugo, but would hate to disseminate something that I have found no real evidence of. I’ll keep looking though! I think I will hit my library for a good bio on Hugo in French.

Absolutely Based.

Those soldiers must have felt real baaaaad but mutton can change the past.

The quote "I've been rich and I've been poor. And, believe me, rich is better" has been ascribed to almost every well-known black woman blues or jazz singer from before the 60s.

*April

Hubert Humphrey was asked how long it would take him to prepare a 15 minute talk, and he said a week. Asked how long for a two hour talk, and he said, I am ready right now.

note: I don't recall the actual numbers.

My first thought.

Quick check, are you referring to modern Norse paganism and revivals? Im referencing to the northern Germanic/Norse winter celebratory festivals recorded by the Romans in the 1st-5th century CE. Such as: bringing evergreens into dwelling and community centers, putting bright things onto said evergreens as well as in their homes including the extensive use of small candle-type things, as well as the stories of Germanic/proto-Norse male deities/spirits who would travel amongst their peoples during the winter equinox to bring gifts and punishments to those who were deserving of one or the other. This was during the period when Rome was Christianizing (Christianity was the dominant religion in the Roman Empire by 350 CE, give or take a few year) but the Romans, by their own words at the time, weren’t bringing these traditions to the Germanic provinces, they were bringing them back to Rome as bits of non-Roman/non-Christian customs.

Do we?

That's awesome!

Did you have the Charles Atlas seal of approval?

I like that quote.

It's just a jump to the left

Front range of the Rockies is like that almost every year, just nowhere near as humid.

Went to a midnight screening at an old theater for the first time recently. I’ll probably be going again at least once this year. It’s a fun time

...for money. No need to go there.

I'll forever be grateful that cellphones were not a thing when I played Rocky at our local theater back in the day.

I think his legacy is going to be a promising series being bungled lol.

Fair enough, I’ll dig deeper into the history of Easter and Eostre although a quick Wikipedia search indicates that in 1958, over 150 inscriptions from the second century CE devoted to the female goddess Austriahenae, so a lot of the “Bede invented her” stuff has been losing ground steadily over that 60 years or so, also the study of early Indo-European languages points to such a goddess existing among pre-Christian Germanic folk. I also do feel that it’s worth noting that Easter, the holiday/festival/religious rite, is celebrated in two distinctly different manners, there’s the religious way and the non-religious way. In the US, If you’re not fairly devout or actually attending an explicitly religious event (service, church picnic, etc) you don’t see much Jesus depicted, but you do see a lot of depictions of eggs, green grass, baby animals, and fruit flavors, all of which symbolize spring, not torment as a vehicle for redemption or suffering for the sins of others. You can stretch to make a decent case for a resurrection theme, but that’s still not all that plausible. Grass, baby creatures, eggs, and the rest of the common themes don’t represent Jesus’ resurrection (meaning dying, returning from the dead, shedding his mortality, and ascending to godhood), they represent renewal and new life (new life being the argument that seems most reasonable for tying the holiday to Jesus). Jesus doesn’t get renewed or reborn, he’s still Jesus in a different state, he explicitly goes back to spend some time with his apostles, he’s not a brand new person or a reincarnation). Unless we posit that most early Christians thought that animals and plants died and came back to life every year, which seems pretty unlikely based on how many birth and sowing parables are used in the Bible.

I'd happily give my $10 for a verbal 10 minute ending. Or a fan fiction ending. Really I'm just that ex that keeps coming back for closure.

So does a lot of the Midwest.

I’ve seen both -20°F (-50°F wind chill) and 105°F (with close to 95% humidity) in the same city in Michigan in my lifetime.