Tell Him About the Twinkie

In time for Hallowe'en, the Globe and Mail is running an article on a spirit photography exhibition, The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult, that's running at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The article itself (It's oh so ectoplasmic) is a fun read, going into some of the methods used by hoaxers, but suffers from a lack of photos.  Only  Eugène Thiébault's Henri Robin and a Specter is pictured.  The site for the exhibit contains a few more photos (including one of the infamous Cottingley Fairies), but is equally disappointing.  (Of course, why would they put lots of photos on the web?  They do want people to come and look at the exhibition in person.)

Perhaps what's most interesting is the lengths some people went to to make believable looking photos—as opposed to so much modern spirit photography, which seems to consist consists solely of reflections of dust particles orbs, or this type of ectoplasm.  (Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! candle in the lower left of the picture!)

For Yooooooooooooooooooooooou!

Since I may as well post it, what follows is a picture of my Hallowe'en costume.  Unfortunately, I probably don't look as good as some other people who were at the party, but what can you do?

 Continue reading For Yooooooooooooooooooooooou!

The Return Of The Exiles

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

The old man with a hammer and the one-eyed man with a spear were seated by the roadside talking as I came up the hill.

"It isn't as though they hadn't asked us," the one with the hammer said.

"There ain't no more than twenty as knows about it," said the other.

"Twenty's twenty," said the first.

"After all these years," said the one-eyed man with the spear. "After all these years. We might go back just once."

"O' course we might," said the other.

 Continue reading The Return Of The Exiles

Oops! I Forgot to Tell a Joke!

Bruce Tinsley may want to check his facts on this one:

While the name that we know it by (a contraction of All Hallow Even) may be Christian in origin, it's fairly safe to call it just another case of the church (more specifically, Pope Gregory III)  co-opting pagan celebrations as their own—and therefore is not exactly Christian in origin.    (Then again, since when has Tinsley ever let small things like the facts get in the way of his righteous indignation?)

Lobster Salad

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

I was climbing round the perilous outside of the Palace of Colquonhombros. So far below me that in the tranquil twilight and clear air of those lands I could only barely see them lay the craggy tops of the mountains.

It was along no battlements or terrace edge I was climbing, but on the sheer face of the wall itself, getting what foothold I could where the boulders joined.

Had my feet been bare I was done, but though I was in my night-shirt I had on stout leather boots, and their edges somehow held in those narrow cracks. My fingers and wrists were aching.

Had it been possible to stop for a moment I might have been lured to give a second look at the fearful peaks of the mountains down there in the twilight, and this must have been fatal.

That the thing was all a dream is beside the point. We have fallen in dreams before, but it is well known that if in one of those falls you ever hit the ground—you die: I had looked at those menacing mountaintops and knew well that such a fall as the one I feared must have such a termination. Then I went on.

 Continue reading Lobster Salad

The Alpha and the Omega

Short link dump time (by which I mean two links).

First off, a collection of creation myth links.  I personally like the Tahitian one.  "Taaroa calls the four corners of the universe; nothing replies."

Then, zooming to the other end of time, we have a brief history of the apocalypse; which isn't actually a collection of end of the world myths, but rather a summary of just how long people have been doing the equivalent of walking around cities with "The End is Nigh" placards.  According to the Assyrians, we're at least 4800 years overdue.

(He Can Talk! He Can Talk!)

Taken from The Globe & Mail's daily Social Studies column:

"In Britain, 20 popular authors have agreed to write specially commissioned stories in an attempt to persuade the country's 12 million non-readers to pick up a book, reports The Sunday Telegraph. Ruth Rendell, Maeve Binchy, Andy McNab and others will produce books of no more than 20,000 words, with sentences that average 15 words long and contain words with no more than two syllables."

I wish I could say that this is shocking that they feel the need to insult the intelligence of the average person with such a plan, but then I stop and think and it's not shocking at all—merely disappointing.  Anybody seen any particularly intelligent apes wandering about lately?

Edit:  You can find the full Telegraph article here.

When You Wake You're Still in a Dream

I hate linking to things found off of Boing Boing and the like, but I just have to do this one:  Expirable copyright makes giant-sized Little Nemo possible.  Given their beliefs about IP, Boing Boing pushes the point about public domain, however that's not what interests me here.  What interests me is this:  full-sized, full-colour Little Nemo in Slumberland strips.

For those who've never heard of it:  Little Nemo in Slumberland was a strip created by Windsor McKay that ran from 1905 to 1911 (and then 1911 to 1913 under the title In the Land of Wonderful Dreams).  It chronicled the adventures of a boy (Nemo) through the land of dreams (Slumberland).  The strips followed a fairly set sequence, with the majority of the strip devoted to Nemo's adventures in Slumberland, with the final panel showing Nemo awakening (usually somehow connected to whatever tht week's adventures were).  It appeared every Sunday, and is just an amazing piece of work: it took up the full-page, and was full of wonderful colours—and that's where the problems with most of the Nemo reprints come in.  Most of the available reprints (of which, only Little Nemo in the Palace of Ice, and Further Adventures appears to still be in print) tend to shrink the pages down, making the text hard to read, and the illustrations less detailed.  (Palace of Ice is about 10"x14", compared to the original 16"x22" page sizes.)

Little Nemo in Slumberland - So Many Splendid Sundays restores the prints to their original sizes, and as close to the original colours as possible.  I've actually known about it for a few weeks now, but the NY Times have only just published an article on it.  Unfortunately, 120USD (plus shipping) is more than I can afford to spend on a book, no matter how amazing it may be.  I may have to stick to trying to find the (slightly shrunk) calendar instead.

Furrow-Maker

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

He was all in black, but his friend was dressed in brown, members of two old families.

"Is there any change in the way you build your houses?" said he in black.

"No change," said the other. "And you?"

"We change not," he said.

A man went by in the distance riding a bicycle.

"He is always changing," said the one in black, "of late almost every century. He is uneasy. Always changing."

 Continue reading Furrow-Maker

And You, You Can Read Me Anything

Here're the answers to last week's post:

1. "What's it going to be then, eh?" — Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
2. There once was a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself—not just sometimes, but always. — Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth  (guessed by Nancy)
3. I knew she was a virgin because she was able to ruffle the silken mane of my unicorn. — Harlan Ellison's "On the Downhill Side", the first story in the recent collection Troublemakers.  However, since it's a short story collection, and therefore doesn't have chapters, the alternate first line is taken from "That Kid's Gonna Wind Up In Jail!", which is the title of Ellison's introduction to the collection.
4. It was love at first sight. — Joseph Heller, Catch-22
5. In the mists before the Beginning, Fate and Chance cast lots to decide whose the Game should be; and he that won strode through the mists to MĀNA-YOOD-SUSHĀĪ and said: "Now make gods for Me, for I have won the cast and the Game is to be mine." — Lord Dunsany, The Gods of Pegāna
6. All this happened, more or less. — Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (guessed by happiestsadist)
7. It was a nice day. — Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchet, Good Omens  (guessed by Nancy)
8. Once a guy stood all day shaking bugs from his hair. — Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly
9. Mother died today. — Albert Camus, The Outsider (guessed by some alex)
10. In my younger and more vulnerable years father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Tales to Astound

I found out today that scifi.com has a small online archive of short S-F stories.  (You may take that to mean Science Fiction, or Speculative Fiction;  there's some of both.)  The selection isn't great, but there are some decent ones there.  For example:  Howard Waldrop's The Ugly Chickens, an alternate history of the dodo, is amusing, and Elizabeth A. Lynn's The White King's Dream, which doesn't even feel like science or speculative fiction, is also worth reading.  I also seem to recall that Samuel R. Delany's Aye, and Gomorrah was also good—although it has been a while since I read Dangerous Visions.  (The other two Dangerous Visions stories that I recognised — Auto-da-Fé and Carcinoma Angels — I recall as being not quite so good, with Auto being one of my least favourite in the collection.)

Aside from that classic (that is, previously published elsewhere) stories, they've also got originals—stories that were published for the first time on their site.  I haven't really had a chance to go through these, but the one story I've read (Andy Duncan's The Pottawatomie Giant—about former heavyweight champion Jess Willard, and Harry Houdini) was enjoyable.  On the other hand, they've also got stories by Cory Doctorow (love BoingBoing, hate his fiction), and Brian Herbert; I'd say that the selection definitely appears to be a matter of taste.

Question, worth 20% of your mark:  who is riding on their dead father's fame more: Brian Herbert or Christopher Tolkien?  Answers should be in the form of a short essay.

La La La La La La

It's been going around the 'net, but I figure anyone who hasn't seen the article yet deserves to:  UNICEF bombs the Smurfs (Link via Boing Boing).

Of course, none of these links carry the actual piece in question, so I feel the need to comply: video, swiped from a Belgian website, in either Windows Media or Quicktime.

The Mist

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

The mist said unto the mist: "Let us go up into the Downs." And the mist came up weeping.

And the mist went into the high places and the hollows.

And clumps of trees in the distance stood ghostly in the haze.

But I went to a prophet, one who loved the Downs, and I said to him: "Why does the mist come up weeping into the Downs when it goes into the high places and the hollows?"

And he answered: "The mist is the company of a multitude of souls who never saw the Downs, and now are dead. Therefore they come up weeping into the Downs, who are dead and never saw them."

All of God's Creatures, They All Gotta Die

Let it be noted that dead snails have two problems: 1) it's hard to tell that they're dead, since they didn't move much when alive, and 2) they stink.

In other words:  I spent several hours last night trying to get the smell of rotting mollusk out of my room after I picked up the snail during a tank cleaning, and all its insides fell out of his shell.  That said, wikipedia tells me that the average lifespan of an apple snail is 1 year and, given this specimen's size (and the fact that I got it already full-grown and at least 2 years ago), I think it's safe to say that it lived a long and happy life.

This is Just a Perpendicular Line to the Grain

In an update to my prior posting dealing with the BBC's series of articles on award winning photos:  the fifth and final article, Tiananmen stand-off, went up around noon today.

It's Full of Charts, and Facts, and Figures, and Instructions for Dancing

Yes, this is a meme (and an old one at that) but I've been debating doing it for some time, as it's fun.  As always: I promise not to make a habit out of this.  So, here we go:

1. Choose ten of your all time favorite books.
2. Take the first sentence of the first chapter and make a list in your journal.
3. Don't reveal the author or the title of the book.
4. Now everyone try to guess.

Now, in no particular order:

1. "What's it going to be then, eh?"
2. There once was a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself—not just sometimes, but always. — Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth  (guessed by Nancy)
3. I knew she was a virgin because she was able to ruffle the silken mane of my unicorn. ^*
4. It was love at first sight.
5. In the mists before the Beginning, Fate and Chance cast lots to decide whose the Game should be; and he that won strode through the mists to MĀNA-YOOD-SUSHĀĪ and said: "Now make gods for Me, for I have won the cast and the Game is to be mine."
6. All this happened, more or less. — Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (guessed by happiestsadist)
7. It was a nice day. — Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchet, Good Omens  (guessed by Nancy)
8. Once a guy stood all day shaking bugs from his hair.
9. Mother died today. — Albert Camus, The Outsider (guessed by some alex)
10. In my younger and more vulnerable years father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

* Since the meme isn't too clear on what to do with this particular case, the following text could also be used:
No use pretending: too many of the "young people" (whatever that means, 4-6 year olds, 10-13, 15-20ish?) I'm thrown into contact these days are, in the words of Daffy Duck, maroons . . . ultramaroons.

Posted by g026r at 09:15 | 10 comments | Most recent by g026r | 1 Trackback

And These Are Not The Elysian Fields

Courtesy of my brother:  In pictures: 50 years of photojournalism.

There's also "Picture power" — a series of articles detailing the stories behind some of the World Press Photo award winning photos.  Currently only four of the five articles appear to be up:

• Casualties of war
• Tragedy of Omayra Sanchez
• Fire-escape drama
• Afghan burial

Actually, that last article claims to be the final of the five pieces, but I can't seem to find the fourth.  It's not showing up on a search of BBC's website.  I'm wondering if it's meant to be only a series of four, given that the last series only had four articles (Tragedy in Oklahoma, Vietnam napalm attack, Misery in Darfur, and Death of an Iraqi soldier)

The Trouble In Leafy Green Street

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

She went to the idol-shop in Moleshill Street, where the old man mumbles, and said: "I want a god to worship when it is wet."

The old man reminded her of the heavy penalties that rightly attach to idolatry and, when he had enumerated all, she answered him as was meet: "Give me a god to worship when it is wet."

And he went to the back places of his shop and sought out and brought her a god. The same was carved of grey stone and wore a propitious look and was named, as the old man mumbled, The God of Rainy Cheerfulness.

Now it may be that long confinement to the house affects adversely the liver, or these things may be of the soul, but certain it is that on a rainy day her spirits so far descended that those cheerful creatures came within sight of the Pit, and, having tried cigarettes to no good end, she bethought her of Moleshill Street and the mumbling man.

He brought the grey idol forth and mumbled of guarantees, although he put nothing on paper, and she paid him there and then his preposterous price and took the idol away.

And on the next wet day that there ever was she prayed to the grey-stone idol that she had bought, the God of Rainy Cheerfulness (who knows with what ceremony or what lack of it?), and so brought down on her in Leafy Green Street, in the preposterous house at the corner, that doom of which all men speak.