Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
“Dante wrote about the nine circles of hell; but I discovered the 10th – school supplies shopping. I admit, I used to enjoy it. After all, the limitless possibilities of a blank sheet of wide-ruled notebook paper are boundless. But, there is a downside to the scavenger hunt to find plastic folders with prongs, binders by the inch, and a pencil bag for the 72 mechanical pencils on the list.” — Lara Patangan, Mercy Matters, August 13, 2014
Read the rest of the article here.
“In the years following my melanoma removal, I sometimes found myself without health insurance. This was before the ACA allowed kids to stay on their parent’s insurance until they turned twenty-six and my post-college temp job didn’t offer health benefits.
“When I did finally get a job that offered insurance, I had to pay twice as much as my peers because of my cancer history — and if it had been higher than stage II, they wouldn’t have covered me at all.
“I was appalled because I had been cancer-free for ten years at that point and I was otherwise very healthy. But they’re no dummies. I’m pretty sure they knew the cancer would come back before it ever would have crossed my mind and they weren’t about to put money on a horse they knew wouldn’t win.” — Lanie Brewster Quinn, Stupid Cancer Blog, May 14, 2017
Read more of the article here.
On Waiting For Doom, hosts Mike and Paul discuss “everyone’s favorite” superhero team, the Doom Patrol. In episode 107,”As In One of the Circles of Hell,” Mike and Paul talk about the Doom Patrol story that references the Inferno, “Tenth Circle.”
“We take our first nervous steps into an era we’ve never covered before…save for giving the entire run a brief recap back in Episode 7 (February 2015) because SOMEONE at the time refused to buy/read it…anyway, what was I saying? Oh. Yes. This week we take a look at the ‘Tenth Circle’ story from JLA (2004) issues 94 through 99, by John Byrne, Chris Claremont, Jerry Ordway, Tom Orzechowski and David Baron!” [. . .] —Waiting For Doom, Podbean, October 5, 2017.
You can listen to this episode and more from Waiting For Doom on Podbean, and Apple Podcasts.
To keep up with all things Doom Patrol and see all the visuals from WFD’s episode, check out MyGreatestAdventure80 on Blogspot.
Octobriana is a public domain Russian super-heroine, who first appeared in a comic strip in 1971. In the new Octobriana book, titled Octobriana: The Exotic Time Domina, there is a comic spoof of Dante’s Inferno titled “The Tenth Circle of Hell.”
In his review for Kult Creations, John A. Short writes:
“Firstly we have reprints of Reima’s two rare, out-of-print Octo strips from the early nineties… ‘Mission in the North’ (with artist Petri Tolppanen) and ‘The Tenth Circle of Hell’ (with artist Timo Niemi.) It is ‘The Tenth Circle of Hell’ that is the backbone of this book, since it runs to 37 pages and is by far the longest strip in the collection. The story sees the Spirit of the October Revolution flying her time travelling Wonder Machine to Hell to take on everyone from Cerberus, Pluto (the God not the dog), Medusa, the Devil and her own evil sister (Decabriana!) This spoof of Dante’s Divine Comedy has some great humour and cracking action all in artist Niemi’s macabre woodcut-style.” [. . .] –John A. Short, Kult Creations, October 9, 2015.
In addition to “Mission in the North” and “The Tenth Circle of Hell”, the new Octobriana book includes the comic strips “Origins”, “Wasted Time”, and “From Cuba with Love.”
This book was written and illustrated by Reima Mäkinen, Petri Tolppanen, Timo Niemi, Vesa Vitikainen and Sauli Jokinen.
You can pick up a copy of Octobriana: The Exotica Time Domina online at Turun Sarjakuvakauppa for 12,00 €.
On this list put together by Canim Istanbul, the author, a local of the city, gives prospective tourists five tips for a good time while in Istanbul. The first tip?
“1. Avoid the Tenth Circle of Hell, AKA Istanbul’s infamous traffic.
“The city’s traffic is a tempestuous creature that flares whenever and wherever it pleases, blocking streets and bridges for hours and hours on end. There are horror stories of people driving for four hours when they could have reached their destination in 30 minutes. Locals will advise you to avoid taxis, buses, or cars whenever possible and make use of the lovely modes of speedy transportation like the ferry, Metrobus, and the metro.” [. . .] —Canim Istanbul, June 5, 2016.
Check out the rest of Canim’s list here for four other handy tips about travelling in Istanbul.
“Not even one quarter through my life, I lost my way in a dark bedroom. The only illumination was the pale glow of the Common App website. This is a godless place. I switched from the Common App to Netflix and sulked.
“Distressed and lonely, I cried out, ‘SCREW COLLEGE! SOMEBODY HELP ME!’ and at that moment, a shade appeared in the doorway.
“’O hey dood,’ said the great poet Marsalis Adriano. He still wore his backpack and his face sported a smarmy grin that was still somewhat inviting. Perhaps it was just the light from my monitor playing off his mochaccino skin, but I felt I could trust him.
“’Hey wanna go to hell dood? It’s right down there,’ he pointed towards the door, ‘might be cool to put on your college app.’
“As I had nothing better to do, I decided to oblige the great mystic in my bedroom, after all, Netflix only distracted me for so long.
“He led me out the door to a platform where, just beyond the edge, was a great black chasm. The jagged edges of the chasm were decorated with graduation caps with the tassels torn off and old forgotten football helmets of formerly glorious players. Marsalis looked to me and shrugged a quick shrug, pursed his lips, and raised his eyebrows skyward. He motioned me to the edge of the platform, where a seemingly endless flight of stairs led into the pit.” [. . .] -Cole Murphy’s writing, posted by Elliot Quartz, The Current, January 21, 2015.
Continue reading Cole’s perilous journey applying to colleges at The Current, Malibu High School’s Student Newspaper.
You can read more posts by Elliot Quartz here.
“Developing a unique selling proposition (USP) can be one of the most difficult brand messaging challenges you’ll ever tackle. In fact, it can be downright hellish.
That’s because your USP needs to accomplish an enormous task with incredible economy: it has to clearly articulate why buyers should choose your product or service over every other option they have—and it has to do so in the fewest words possible. Writing a USP is so difficult, in fact, that American companies are largely ambivalent about their USPs. They rate their confidence in the strength of their own USPs just 6.2 out of 10, on average, according to research from B2B International.
This raises an interesting question: If companies are generally lukewarm about their USPs, should you even go to the trouble of creating one for your company?” [. . .] –Michael Civiello, LinkedIn, December 1, 2015.
To read more about USPs and Hell, check out Civiello’s full article on LinkedIn.
“’You know, the minute I drove into the east avenue Wegmans parking lot, I knew it was a match made in hell. Seriously, it has to be one of the most disorganized, chaotic messes I’ve ever seen or had to be apart of! This is coming from a guy who single-handedly created the bubonic plague! I mean I love Wegmans, don’t get me wrong, but were they trying to create a new circle of hell for me? It feels like it, you know I thought the circle of gluttony and lust was a pretty raw deal, but I can’t wait to see the face on some of the newcomers when they realize they’re stuck in a never-ending bumper to bumper of the Wegmans parking lot. Very excited for this new addition and I can’t wait to hear some of the feedback from the regulars’” [. . .] —The Inner Loop, February 13, 2017.
Covering the failed attempt to topple British PM Theresa May in a no-confidence vote on Dec. 12, 2018, John Crace compared the chaos over May’s Brexit deal to Dante’s hell. In the digital edition of the paper, the photo of the prime minister (below) was captioned: “Just another day in Brexitland hell for Theresa May.”
At the end of the piece, Crace comments, “The reality was that nothing had changed. Nothing had changed. May’s Brexit deal was no more likely to get through the Commons than it had been before the vote. If anything positions had hardened. The EU would not be coming to her rescue. All the future offered was more deadlock, more division. Dante was wrong. There was a tenth circle of hell and we were in it. Government as mindless light entertainment.” — John Crace, “Tory headbangers save the Maybot – for the time being at least,” The Guardian, Dec. 12, 2018
Contributed by Nick Havely
“In a rare and revealing interview with the Ulster Fry, the Devil has admitted that he has created a Tenth Circle of Hell – in the form of a Bank Holiday shopping trip to IKEA.
“The former Argos delivery driver told us that he’d been attempting some home improvements at his bachelor pad in the Ninth Circle district, when he stumbled upon the new form of torture. ‘I was doing up the bedroom when it occurred to me that I could do with some storage for my CD collection,’ he said, ‘so I thought I’d pop down to IKEA and pick something up. Say what you like about IKEA, but they do have an impressive range of storage solutions.’
“’When I got there, I ended up wandering around aimlessly for hours, and instead of just getting some CD shelving I soon found that I had a trolley full of shite I never wanted in the first place. That’s when it hit me – I could build an extension onto Hell where the truly evil could be condemned to an eternity looking for a non-existent item in IKEA on a Bank Holiday.’
“’As soon as I got home I put my evil minions to work, although it took ages as it came in a flat pack from Sweden and we lost the wee hexagonal yoke you need to put it together.’” [. . .] —The Ulster Fry, August 31, 2015.
Read the full post and check out more from The Ulster Fry on their website.
