Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Riddle Contest

SCA Life has an Anglo-Saxon riddle for you to solve as part of a contest. Old English professors* like me will immediately recognize it. The winner gets to choose which of Catslyn's** filks*** she uses in some wordplay or another. I'm going to recuse myself, and would encourage anyone else out there who earns a living as a professional medievalist to do the same. Let's give others a chance, eh?

Please, no one spoil the fun for the rest of us. If anyone posts the answer here in the comments section, I'll delete it.

*Er, by that I mean "professor of Old English," not "elderly English professor."
**In the original post, I misidentified the blogger as "Anachronista." A foolish mistake, because Anachronista's blog is called, well, "Anachronista."
*** By the way, I hate filking. A lot.

5 comments:

  1. Um, Dr. Nokes, are you by chance meaning the 'other' Anachronista medievalist out there - or should I free up my schedule for some songcrafting?

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  2. Feh! This is the second time in as many weeks I've confused two different bloggers ... although last time it was that I divided the same blogger into two people!

    Maybe I can get the University to assign me a student assistant whose only job is to keep medieval bloggers straight for me.

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  3. hehe, that would be a fun job! You could make them draw you colour-coded diagrams based on subject area and most which blogs most often link each other... write short bios... keep a blog about their blog-hunting experiences... oh, the endless possibilities! I'm sure it would fall under the heading of "torturing students", too, thereby providing much amusement for you. And, as an added bonus, you could put them in charge of the blogroll, and accordingly if anyone got cranky about being kicked off the cool table, you could blame the student assistant. An all-round excellent solution, i feel.

    meanwhile... i perused the wiki page and am puzzled as to what there is to hate about people who write songs about scifi/fantasy, and then write songs about a community of people who write songs about scifi/fantasy.
    am i missing something?

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  4. I don't hate the people -- I hate the songs. I hate filking for the same reason I hate karaoke.

    I've only heard one filker, ever, whom I liked, and that was Tom Smith, "The World's Fastest Filker." He has a website here.

    He's very funny, doesn't take himself too seriously, and is wicked on the improvised lyrics.

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  5. No, really, there IS another Anachronista medievalist at http://anachronista.net/

    Kind of weird, really.

    By the way, I love filk!

    But Filk is like a Big Mac. Cheap, addictive and bad for you if you regularly indulge your cravings for it.

    But every now and then you want fast, greasy and convenient. When you are called up at a Bardic circle unprepared, Filk is generally palatable to your audience, and you might even get some to sing along.

    Anyhow, thanks for mistaking me for her and alerting me to the contest.

    I had to enter. I hope I win.

    For I have a dastardly plan...

    ReplyDelete