Anonymous asks:

Religious attacks aside, I think your recent post on the Orlando shootings were well stated. It sickens me that this kind of thing happens so often in our country, and I can’t imagine any logical reason to allow civilians access to assault rifles. I just want to say I know plenty of religious people on your side. And don’t feel guilty for being “spared” of this sort of attack. Ideally, we’ll reach a time where humans aren’t slaughtered for trivial reasons (or any at all). I’m glad you’re safe.

Thanks; I appreciate the message. I’m sorry if that part bothered you; emotions were running a bit high when I wrote that, but I have Christian, Muslim and Jewish friends, some of whom are gay or bisexual themselves. It’s just frustrating to see religion used to justify bigotry over and over again because a small minority still want to worship a bloodthirsty Bronze Age sky god instead of his 21st century reincarnation – as I’m sure many of the religious would agree.

Anonymous asks:

Since you are an archeologist-kinda guy and also from the Pacific Ocean, is it your big dream to discover remnants of the lost continent, Mu?

…no? Not to be abrasive, but… I’m rather more interested in discovering things that exist. You can’t “lose” a continent; there would be geological evidence for it.

Anonymous asks:

Who is/are your favorite Classical mythological figure(s)? Me, I’ve always been partial to Prometheus and Hephaestus (what can I say, I’m a sucker for fiery things, and Fire’s my favorite type! :P)

You know, I don’t think I really have one. I probably should because I’m a classicist and stuff, and I talked about it with Jim the Editor (who is a classicist as well) for like an hour about it and came to no particular consensus, so I’m just going to go with something interesting and non-obvious and say Helen, just because she’s such a complex and controversial character. Like, you have Homer’s version in the Iliad, where she is vilified by pretty much all the Greeks and some of the Trojans while simultaneously being the exact thing they’re supposedly all fighting over, and she knows it. She is well aware that everyone blames her for this terrible war, and she kinda blames herself for it too, because even if she wasn’t really in control of anything that happened, how could you not, in her position? And there is this one amazing scene where she calls out Aphrodite – the goddess of sexuality, the source of what little power a woman can ever have in Helen’s world – for all the awful bull$#!t she’s been put through over the years because of her beauty. And true, Aphrodite does immediately slap her down for it, but the thing is, no one else in Homer ever talks back to a goddess the way Helen does; they talk to each other about the awful things the gods do to them, but no one will ever actually say it to their faces (or at least not knowingly), because that’s the kind of thing that gets your ass smited, big time.

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Anonymous asks:

Hey you pokéstupid why do you think Australia and NZ are stupid countries? Your usa not america isn’t the center of the world, its the center of xenofobics like u

You misunderstand, gentle reader. I’m from New Zealand (I thought my use of the phrase “back home in New Zealand” would render all confusion impossible, but clearly not…). I was calling the United States ridiculous and backward (tongue firmly in cheek, of course… well, mostly).

Anonymous asks:

What is your favorite Ice-type?

Hmm… probably Aurorus, purely for reasons of dinosaurs. I don’t think I really have a better reason than that.

Anonymous asks:

Happy new year! This question is random, but you do well at coming up with amusing responses to odd questions. Also I love your blog. Anyway: Do you have a new years resolution and what is it?

(Yes this is how far behind I am on questions; shut up)

I tend not to actually declare new year’s resolutions, because if you openly make a new year’s resolution and then fail to keep it, you’ll be cursed by Janus, the two-faced Roman god of doorways, beginnings and endings, and the new year. I know “god of doorways” doesn’t sound menacing, but trust me, you do not want to be on that guy’s bad side. But anyway… things that I generally want to do this year BUT ARE NOT FORMAL RESOLUTIONS, DO YOU HEAR ME JANUS include having my $#!t together more with regards to cooking for myself and keeping my apartment tidy, and also finding the time somewhere to go to Scotland and visit Jim the Editor because we haven’t seen each other (barring Skype) in over a year now.

Anonymous asks:

It’s coming into winter time so I thought I’d ask, can you ice-skate? What is your favourite winter-time activity?

Something I’ve realised since moving to America is that, in the part of New Zealand I come from, we don’t really have winter. We have more of a long, wet autumn that sort of shades back into spring at the other end (more tropical parts of the world have a rainy season and a dry season; Auckland has a rainy season and a rainier season). The notion of specifically wintertime activities isn’t all that important to you when you’re from a place where it never snows, I think (and I definitely cannot ice-skate). Although I suppose if I had to say, I’m very fond of winter desserts. There’s no reason you can’t make apple pie or rice pudding at any time of the year, but those hot desserts are so much better when it’s cold outside. I should really go and find my mother’s recipe for chocolate self-saucing pudding one of these days…

Anonymous asks:

If you had to make a team of pokemon that best represents your personality, what pokemon would be on it and why?

Well, I asked Jim the Editor, who as my best friend has an informed but more impartial perspective on the matter, and he came up with the following:

Growlithe, because I’m loyal to my friends and quite stubborn, but my “bark is worse than [my] bite,”
Kangaskhan, because I’m caring and nurturing,
Gogoat, because I’m empathetic and, again, stubborn,
Omastar, because I’m bad at dealing with change,
Farfetch’d, because I’m clearly horribly ill-equipped for life, but somehow manage to stumble through by blind luck,
and Unown, because I’m obsessed with dead languages and obscure knowledge, and also because “from the outside [I] seem mysterious and interesting but once you get to know [me] [I’m] simple, boring and don’t do much ;-)”.