And You Can Send Me Dead Flowers Every Morning

I came across a neat little Flash app whilst browsing around the web:  OrganicHTML.  Basically, you give it a webpage address, and it then proceeds to "grow" a plant based on the HTML found there.  It's only got one small problem: it doesn't handle CSS all that well.  Or, rather, it handles CSS just fine so long as the style information is located within a style block in the HTML markup.  If the CSS is in a separate file, specified via a link tag, then it just ignores it.

Anyways, here's what the main page looked like prior to this entry going up (you can mouse over it to get what the image looked like once I temporarily moved the CSS info from the two files, and into a style block):

The Reward

(From Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany.  Originally published by Elkin Matthews, London, 1915.)

One's spirit goes further in dreams than it does by day. Wandering once by night from a factory city I came to the edge of Hell.

The place was foul with cinders and cast-off things, and jagged, half-buried things with shapeless edges, and there was a huge angel with a hammer building in plaster and steel. I wondered what he did in that dreadful place. I hesitated, then asked him what he was building. "We are adding to Hell," he said, "to keep pace with the times." "Don't be too hard on them," I said, for I had just come out of a compromising age and a weakening country. The angel did not answer. "It won't be as bad as the old hell, will it?" I said. "Worse," said the angel.

"How can you reconcile it with your conscience as a Minister of Grace," I said, "to inflict such a punishment?" (They talked like this in the city whence I had come and I could not avoid the habit of it.)

"They have invented a new cheap yeast," said the angel.

I looked at the legend on the walls of the hell that the angel was building, the words were written in flame, every fifteen seconds they changed their color, "Yeasto, the great new yeast, it builds up body and brain, and something more."

"They shall look at it for ever," the angel said.

"But they drove a perfectly legitimate trade," I said, "the law allowed it."

The angel went on hammering into place the huge steel uprights.

"You are very revengeful," I said. "Do you never rest from doing this terrible work?"

"I rested one Christmas Day," the angel said, "and looked and saw little children dying of cancer. I shall go on now until the fires are lit."

"It is very hard to prove," I said, "that the yeast is as bad as you think."

"After all," I said, "they must live."

And the angel made no answer but went on building his hell.

Do Not Run, Tasty Children

"The things one finds wandering in a landscape: familiar things and utterly unknown, like a flower one has never seen before, or, as Columbus discovered, an inexplicable continent;
and then, behind a hill, as if knitted by giant grandmothers, lies this vast rabbit, to make you feel as small as a daisy.
The toilet-paper-pink creature lies on its back: a rabbit-mountain like Gulliver in Lilliput. Happy you feel as you climb up along its ears, almost falling into its cavernous mouth, to the belly-summit and look out over the pink woolen landscape of the rabbit's body, a country dropped from the sky;
ears and limbs sneaking into the distance; from its side flowing heart, liver and intestines.
Happily in love you step down the decaying corpse, through the wound, now small like a maggot, over woolen kidney and bowel.
Happy you leave like the larva that gets its wings from an innocent carcass at the roadside.
Such is the happiness which made this rabbit.
i love the rabbit the rabbit loves me."

Ok, so what was that?  Well, it's a press release for an art installation called Hase (translated: Rabbit) that a Viennese art group called Gelatin erected on an Italian mountainside.  It's planned to stay there until 2025, is 200 feet long, taller than a person, and bright pink.  The entire point?  Well, besides being just a random piece of strangeness in the world, the group is also hoping that mountain climbers and hikers will climb on it, and maybe fall asleep on its stomach.

You can find more pictures of it here, and plenty of news stories by googling around.

All in all, I'd have to say that I approve.

Posted by g026r at 13:57 | 2 comments | Most recent by g026r

Occasionally, I Post a Celebrity-Centric Entry

So I was introduced to Go Fug Yourself over the weekend, and much browsing through the archives and laughing ensued.  However, while going through the pictures something struck me:  Stacy Ferguson (aka Fergie) looks suspiciously like Kirstie Alley.  Don't believe me?  Compare the second  pic here with this one.

And now let us never mention the Black Eyed Peas again.  (Although, looking at the comments for the first time, I see that I'm not the first person to spot the resemblence.)

The Sphinx In Thebes (Massachusetts)

(From Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany.  Originally published by Elkin Matthews, London, 1915.)

There was a woman in a steel-built city who had all that money could buy, she had gold and dividends and trains and houses, and she had pets to play with, but she had no sphinx.

So she besought them to bring her a live sphinx; and therefore they went to the menageries, and then to the forests and the desert places, and yet could find no sphinx.

And she would have been content with a little lion but that one was already owned by a woman she knew; so they had to search the world again for a sphinx.

And still there was none.

But they were not men that it is easy to baffle, and at last they found a sphinx in a desert at evening watching a ruined temple whose gods she had eaten hundreds of years ago when her hunger was on her. And they cast chains on her, who was still with an ominous stillness, and took her westwards with them and brought her home.

And so the sphinx came to the steel-built city.

And the woman was very glad that she owned a sphinx: but the sphinx stared long into her eyes one day, and softly asked a riddle of the woman.

And the woman could not answer, and she died.

And the sphinx is silent again and none knows what she will do.

It's Official: There Is A God

…and he hates us.

Now, what could possibly cause such a response from me?  Well, there's a remake of The Evil Dead in the works.  That, in and of itself, isn't necessarily bad news; Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert,  and Bruce Campbell are all  involved with the project, reprising their roles as producers (although Raimi isn't going to direct, and Campbell isn't going to star).  Nope, that's not the problem I'm having with this.  The problem is the only actor that's currently been announced as being in the film (and is rumoured to have the part of Ash).

Want to know who it is?  Take a look for yourself.

You'd Do It For Randolph Scott

Today's Globe & Mail is carrying an article called "Hollywood's not-so-True North" about the Golden-Age of Canadian-themed cinema (1940  to 1960) down South.

It's a fun little read, highlighting the best of the genre, along with all their more notable blunders.   (e.g. Saskatchewan sprouts mountains in both the eponymous 1954 film and 1942's Pierre of the Plains.)  If nothing else, some of the movie posters have to be seen to be believed.  (Love the toque, John.)

Edit: I suppose it helps if I actually include the link to the article, doesn't it?

The Lonely Idol

(From Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany.  Originally published by Elkin Matthews, London, 1915.)

I had from a friend an old outlandish stone, a little swine-faced idol to whom no one prayed.

And when I saw his melancholy case as he sat cross-legged at receipt of prayer, holding a little scourge that the years had broken (and no one heeded the scourge and no one prayed and no one came with squealing sacrifice; and he had been a god), then I took pity on the little forgotten thing and prayed to it as perhaps they prayed long since, before the coming of the strange dark ships, and humbled myself and said:

"O idol, idol of the hard pale stone, invincible to the years, O scourge-holder, give ear for behold I pray.

"O little pale-green image whose wanderings are from far, know thou that here in Europe and in other lands near by, too soon there pass from us the sweets and song and the lion strength of youth: too soon do their cheeks fade, their hair grow grey and our beloved die; too brittle is beauty, too far off is fame and the years are gathered too soon; there are leaves, leaves falling, everywhere falling; there is autumn among men, autumn and reaping; failure there is, struggle, dying and weeping, and all that is beautiful hath not remained but is even as the glory of morning upon the water.

"Even our memories are gathered too with the sound of the ancient voices, the pleasant ancient voices that come to our ears no more; the very gardens of our childhood fade, and there dims with the speed of the years even the mind's own eye.

"O be not any more the friend of Time, for the silent hurry of his malevolent feet have trodden down what's fairest; I almost hear the whimper of the years running behind him hound-like, and it takes few to tear us.

"All that is beautiful he crushes down as a big man tramples daises, all that is fairest. How very fair are the little children of men. It is autumn with all the world, and the stars weep to see it.

"Therefore no longer be the friend of Time, who will not let us be, and be not good to him but pity us, and let lovely things live on for the sake of our tears."

Thus prayed I out of compassion one windy day to the snout-faced idol to whom no one kneeled.

Posted by g026r at 00:00 | 2 comments | Most recent by g026r

Today She Took a Train to the West

This is what happens when I get bored and restless:

It also means I'm clean-shaven for the first time in who knows how long, as the blondish facial hair didn't quite match.  Still, it's less permanent^* than the last time, when I ended up with a lip ring.

God damn, I look way too thin.  (And a big "hello" to the few people who I know read this but have never seen/met me before.)

* By less permanent, I mean won't leave a scar — seeing as I haven't had the lip ring for several years, that could hardly have been called permanent.

Posted by g026r at 17:38 | 2 comments | Most recent by g026r

Ah, Yes: Ghardak!

I never knew this existed until now, but now I find it neat:  SF Citations for OED.  Basically, it's a project run by the editor at large for the One True Dictionary in order to track down the origins of words and definitions that first gained widespread credence in the Science Fiction community.  (The entire project was apparently made open to the public following a search for the earliest known usage of the word 'mutant' to refer to a person who's undergone some horrible physical transformation.  Current date on that one: 1938, although the word is believed to have been in use prior to that.)

Anyways, if you've ever wanted to know the first known written occurrence of fanzine (1940), slash (1984), avatar (1986), or android (1727), then this is the place for you.  It also answers the question: which came first, trekkie or trekker?  (The answer?  Trekkie, by 8 words.)

And on a final note:  page 87 of the 1728 edition of Chambers's Cyclopaedia, or, An universal dictionary of arts and sciences : containing the definitions of the terms, and accounts of the things signify'd thereby, in the several arts, both liberal and mechanical, and the several sciences, human and divine : the figures, kinds, properties, productions, preparations, and uses, of things natural and artificial : the rise, progress, and state of things ecclesiastical, civil, military, and commercial : with the several systems, sects, opinions, &c : among philosophers, divines, mathematicians, physicians, antiquaries, criticks, &c : the whole intended as a course of antient and modern learning (First volume).  The word in question is the very last definition in the left hand column.

No one better think of scolding me for any possible misspelling in the title.  Oh, and the anatomy drawings are kind of neat.

The Food Of Death

(From Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany.  Originally published by Elkin Matthews, London, 1915.)

Death was sick. But they brought him bread that the modern bakers make, whitened with alum, and the tinned meats of Chicago, with a pinch of our modern substitute for salt. They carried him into the dining-room of a great hotel (in that close atmosphere Death breathed more freely), and there they gave him their cheap Indian tea. They brought him a bottle of wine that they called champagne. Death drank it up. They brought a newspaper and looked up the patent medicines; they gave him the foods that it recommended for invalids, and a little medicine as prescribed in the paper. They gave him some milk and borax, such as children drink in England.

Death arose ravening, strong, and strode again through the cities.

Dogs and Cats Living Together

Out of curiousity, I took a look at the latest Rapture Index update earlier today.  It would appear that the +2 rise versus last week's score was made prior to the levee break in New Orleans.  Given that Floods is already at a score of 4/5, and Wild Weather and Oil Supply/Price are both at 5, I've been wondering just what scores are going to be raised come next week.  ( I personally can't see the guy behind it raising the index by only 1.)

Therefore, I'm taking guesses as to what other categories he raises.  Scoring will be based on the number of correct guesses, minus the number of incorrect guesses.  (How much you think it will raise is beside the point, just that you get the categories right.)  The winner gets something of immaterial value —  kudos, bragging rights, &c.  Just make your guess in the comments, although I have the feeling that I'll be the only one with a guess, since I'm pretty sure that I'm the only one who gets so much amusement out of the Index.

Anyways, here's mine:  Floods (obviously), along with Civil Rights (seeing as martial law has been declared), Plagues (based on the disease risk), and possibly Moral Standards (based on the looting, and what not).

Posted by g026r at 15:50 | 1 comment | Most recent by g026r