Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
In her blog, Geraldine DeRuiter takes issue with her experience with Southwest Airlines’ seating policy, writing, “THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DO NOT HAVE ASSIGNED SEATING. Everyone has an “it’s me or them” mentality that extends to the entire flight. I want to sit here. . .”
“There is a special circle of hell for all of these people” [. . .] –Geraldine DeRuiter, The Everywhereist, March 8, 2017.
“Dante only wrote about the nine circles of hell because he was a man who never had to go to the DMV and the social security office in the same day. But I have seen this place…I have experienced it…and I lived to tell the tale.
“When your beautiful, perfect, amazing child is born, there are many adult responsibilities you have to handle, in addition to cuddles. One of those is making sure that your baby has a social security number, if for no other reason than you are going to want that tax write off come April. Our hospital has a wonderful woman that comes to your room, helps you fill out lots of paperwork, and then mails everything to social security for you. How wonderful! All you have to do is wait for their card to come in the mail.
“So, I waited.
“And waited.” –Britney Lowe, The Wondering Mother, 2019
Read the full blog entry here.
“Since covid, the DMV has been a nightmare experience especially in New Jersey. It wasn’t until November that the MVC decided that appointments might be better than waiting in line for 3 hours at 5 AM
“I’ve been to the DMV 6 times since May to get my permit / license. I’ve done everything including a BRC to slip the road test so that I could expedite getting my endorsement.
“After making an appointment in November (for my sixth trip) I showed up with all of my documentation this Saturday to finally get it done. I double checked all my paperwork. I brought extra paperwork so I could also get my REAL ID (my license is expiring in a month and my moto permit expires this month).
“I go in at my appointment I ACE the test (I actually already took it before but they literally LOST my score) and I flash my BRC cert from the summer to get my endorsement but despite showing this multiple times before to DMV folks, this woman today told me the small credit card sizes cert was it enough, I needed a larger form (examiners verification) to get my endorsement. I called my BRC office and they had no idea what the form is and have never issued one.
“Does god hate me? Am I am idiot? Should I just sell my bike?” –u/universal_ubiquity, Reddit, 2021
Read the full thread here.
“HELL – In a significant boost to the area, Satan confirmed today that the Underworld’s long-awaited 10th Circle will include the Acadiana Mall amongst its very first tenants.
“The project has been almost fifteen years in the making, however construction is now complete and officials are beginning to slowly but surely usher in people, places and businesses.” –thedailycrawfish337, The Daily Crawfish
Read the full article here.
Posted October 27, 2019, on Litterbox Comics.
“In Ghostbusters II, the mayor of New York makes mention of the city being ‘sucked down into the tenth level of Hell.’” —Wikipedia
“Heavenly Legal had issued a Malfunction Recall and she was a fallen angel sent from below to ensure poor souls like mine found their way into the tenth circle of Hell in an orderly fashion. ‘I thought there were only nine circles down there,’ I objected. ‘We had to add one for all those who’ve lived their lives as if they were going to live forever.'” —Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Chipotle’s The Cultivating Thought Author Series
Photo courtesy of Crystal on Tumblr, who also provides a full transcript of Carlos’ story.
“The Wait haunts all stages of writing for publication. There are different levels of waiting, a bit like Dante’s circles of hell. Waiting for critique, waiting to hear from agents, waiting to receive edits, waiting for feedback on edits, waiting waiting waiting W A I T I N G.” –Lindsay Galvin, LindsayGalvin.com, October 5, 2017
“Hell, Dante tells us, has nine circles, each one reserved for souls guilty of particular sins. The greedy, for example, go to the Third Circle, while heretics are flung down into the Fourth. If you’ve lived a lustful life, full of debauchery and fornication, you will find yourself in the second circle, writhing and naked with millions of other lustful souls who — wait, how exactly is that a punishment? According to Dante, the worst Circles of Hell are reserved for fraudsters and traitors, suggesting that he’d had an unfortunate disagreement with his publisher over royalties. But the great Italian fell short in his demonic visions, because there is another Circle of Hell: the Tenth. It is a place of infinite suffering and utter despair, echoing with the wailing of the damned. It is a movie theatre called Cinepolis Junior.” […] –Tom Eaton, Rand Daily Mail, March 14, 2017
“Grocery shopping with toddlers isn’t that much fun to begin with, but throw some -10ºF temperatures into the mix, and you’ve got a recipe for hell on earth. Frigid, snowy weather on grocery day is almost enough to convince me we’ll somehow manage to survive on a few cans of button mushrooms and a jar of olives until the next week.
“Besides trying to corral tiny people who have mastered the art of ‘walking’ but not so much the art of ‘walking without careening into every other person/cart/carefully laid out pyramid of soup cans in the store’, the main problem with winter grocery shopping with small children is that it presents a series of obnoxious choices.” […] –Aimee Ogden, Mommyish, February 23, 2015
