*wanders in blinking, looking a bit dazed… flops down on couch*

I had the Spy open and was watching you guys talk about Yanuk and where he might be going, then JAH mentioned Tblisi and, wondering what it looks like, I decided to check out it’s Wiki page.

It’s a very unusual looking place, which made me even more curious—for me this was the equivalent of seeing the white rabbit with his watch run past. RABBIT!—*ZOOM!*—I jumped up and gave chase without a second thought, and immediately went tumbling down the rabbit hole.

Let’s just say that within 20 minutes I found myself gaping bug-eyed at stories about Indo-European wolf cults and their relationship to the Slavic & Baltic concept of werewolves, at which point I looked up, *blinked*, and mumbled to myself “WTF? How in the hell did I end up here??”

It went something like this:

Tblisi > Cool looking. Let me go check Google Images for more… Wait, WTF is that?? It looks like Persian architecture. I know it’s not far away, but Georgians are mostly Christian. Hmm, it says Abanotubani, so I guess I should go back to Wikipedia and check it out…

Abanotubani > The King of Iberia, Vakhtang Gorgasali? What? There was an Iberia in the Caucasus? And Vakhtang? That’s a very Iranian sounding name… Oh look, it was an Iranian name:

Vakhtang I of Iberia: Name

According to the Life of Vakhtang Gorgasali, the king was given at his birth an Iranian name Varazkhosrovtang, rendered in Georgian as Vakhtang. The name may indeed be derived from Iranian *warx-tang (vahrka-tanū)—“wolf-bodied”, a possible reflection of the wolf cult in ancient Georgia.

Wolf cult? Wow, time to go back to Google…

There he is—King Vakhtang!—in Google Books in section 2.1.1.5 of Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans: A Reconstruction and Historical Analysis of a Proto-Language and Proto-Culture . Sheesh, is that title a mouthful or what?

Anyway, I go back to the beginning of Chapter 2 so I can read everything and that’s where I found mention of werewovles and all kinds of other interesting stuff. Honest to God, I don’t know how some people are xenophobic—I find other cultures endlessly fascinating and I think the world would be soul crushingly boring if we were all looked, spoke, behaved & believed the same.

I really love the internet today. How did I ever live without it?

*gets up off couch*

Yeah, y’all can send me the bill for the therapy. //