Roman legion geeks

This morning, for some reason, I woke up thinking about Doonesbury and how Garry Trudeau depicts each president with some kind of icon. In Bush's case, it's a Roman helmet, signifying his empire-like approach to foreign policy. The helmet is topped by a crest that has grown increasingly threadbare over time as Bush's policies are seen as failed. Anyway, I couldn't think of the word for the crest for some reason, so after I got up I did a little searching and discovered this page, which tells you how to make your own helmet crest.

And why would you want to? It turns out to be only one page in an extensive website of a group of mid-Atlantic geeks who like to dress up as first-century Romans. According to their newsletter -- which appears to have been produced with unbelievable consistency for over seven years -- December is a busy time, as the group is invited to appear in Christmas pageants (Easter time must be even busier) as well as the opening of a museum exhibit on Pompeii.

Just one of those strange things on the internet. Because much of the personal internet -- the blogs, personal websites, etc., the vox populi if you will -- has become somewhat tamed, it's refreshing to discover some real geeks who not only have their own weird thing going but seem to be coding their website using the WYSIWYG editing feature of Mozilla, resulting in an old-school default-font look. No Verdana to be seen!