To those who still check this blog occasionally, or might visit it by accident while cleaning up their bookmarks, know this:

Bored Athenians, after five and a half fairly chaotic years of brief commentary and shameless link-theft, is suspending operations due to all contributing authors being seduced away by Twitter, which far better suits our miniscule attention spans and need for immediate posting gratification.

You can find ongoing pedantry, punditry, and platitudes from your favorite Bored Athenians on Twitter at @evil_overload, @vennui, and @shenifonler.  Ennui can also be found combining sentences into coherent paragraphs and kicking other sorts of grammatical ass at http://pennoir.wordpress.com.  Read her words, and heed them well.  We’ll be watching.  The extensive archives will be left online for nostalgic perusal during times of boredom, rememberence, or Twitter outages.

Thanks, y’all, it’s been great!  The Blog is  dead, long live the Blog!

-Evil Overload

Categories: That's F*cking Historical!, Introspection
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Categories: That's F*cking Historical!, Conservative Heresy
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It’s 11 minutes long and it’s pro-McCain, but it’s entertaining, it was already banned once, and it explains the problem fully and backs it up with facts:

Categories: That's F*cking Historical!, Chaos Purge, Wot's All This Then?, Conservative Heresy, arses
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From amidst the febrile ravings of RStevens

Categories: That's F*cking Historical!, Wot's All This Then?, arses
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(Blame Manous for this sage advice)

Categories: That's F*cking Historical!, Smart Art
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From the pages of Wikipedia:

“King Goujian of Yue, king of Yue, was once imprisoned after a defeat in a war by King Fuchai of Wu, king of the State of Wu. The state of Yue later became a tribulatory to Wu. Secretly planning his revenge, Goujian’s minister Wen Zhong suggested training beautiful women and offering them to Fuchai as a tribute. His other minister, Fan Li, found Xi Shi and Zheng Dan, and gifted them to Fuchai in 490 BC.

Bewitched by the beauty of Xi Shi and Zheng Dan, Fuchai forgot all about his state affairs and on their instigation, killed his best advisor, the great general Wu Zixu. Fuchai even built Guanwa Palace (Palace of Beautiful Women) in an imperial park on the slope of Lingyan Hill, about 15 kilometers west of Suzhou. The strength of Wu dwindled, and in 473 BC Goujian launched his strike and put the Wu army to full rout. King Fuchai lamented that he should have listened to Wu Zixu, and then committed suicide.

In one disputed account of her fate, it was written that Goujian ordered Xi Shi to be drowned by being thrown into a lake, to avoid being tempted by her as Fuchai was.”

This tale of a kingdom laid low by beauty has become the historical illustration for Stratagem #31, the “Beauty Trap”, from the Thirty-Six Stratagems.

Categories: That's F*cking Historical!
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