Come See the Violence Inherent in the System!

I suppose I should explain this:

I've been reading Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur lately (and Shan, you're right, they are all dicks).  One of the things about Malory, compared to some¹ of the other Arthurian romances, is that the Lady of the Lake has been split into multiple characters.

The one most people associate with the Lady of the Lake (the one who gives Arthur his sword, Excalibur²), gets her head chopped off about five chapters after she first shows up.  (By Sir Balin, for those keeping track.)  However there's another one, sometimes referred to by Malory as the Lady of the Lake, sometimes the Damosel of the Lake, (or sometimes "the chief lady of the lake," or "one of the damosels/ladies of the lake"), who is better known as Nimue.  (She of the sealing Merlin in a cave/glass tower/whatever-the-author-you're-reading-has-decided-is-best; Malory prefers caves.)

Of course, Malory is rather strange in his manner of referring to her.  Sometimes there's just a reference to "the damosel of the lake," or "one of the damosels/ladies of the lake," whilst at other times he goes out of his way to ensure that you know that this particular aquatic female is Nimue — despite the fact that the other, unnamed Lady of the Lake left her head on the floor of Camelot several books earlier, and therefore could not possibly be appearing again.

If one were wont to be silly (and when am I not?), it would be a simple matter to take this further and read these passages as indicating that there must be further women who hang around large freshwater pools.  From this arose the joke that surely they must have unionised by now and, combined with a dash of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we get the idea of the Watery Tarts Local.

Since I want to experiment with some DIY screenprinting instructions I've found, I promised that I'd make a shirt with those words on it (not for me, obviously).  Of course, if you have words, why not add a picture as well?  Combine Aubrey Beardsley, a gear, and some fiddling in Illustrator, and you get the sample images below.  I'm posting them here for comments, so feel free to say whatever you want.  (I have no idea how much detail will have to be removed from the centre image to get it to print properly.  That will be one of the things that I shall be finding out on a cheap, thrift-store shirt before I try making a real one.)

I'm personally fonder of the non-small caps one, as I feel that the As look too much like Us in the other.

And, as a final note, the number 1470 is a further joke, as Malory notes that he finished the book in "the ninth year of the reign of King Edward the Fourth," or 1470 CE.

Edit: I forgot, there's also a black version.

1.  I say some, as many of the early Arthurian romances don't agree with each other.  In some the Lady of the Lake who gives Arthur Excalibur, and the one who seals Merlin away, are the same person, whilst in others (e.g. Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniæ) there is no Lady of the Lake (and hence no Lancelot).

2.  If I may be blunt, Malory didn't do the best job at making the various conflicting narratives into one coherent one.  Arthur's sword, the one he drew forth from the stone, is referred to as Excalibur in Book I, Chapter IX (to use Caxton's book/chapter divisions).  However, this sword is then noted as breaking in battle with King Pellinore (Chapter XXIII of the same book), at which point Merlin takes Arthur to the Lady of the Lake, and she gives him Excalibur (Chapter XXV).  So, in reference to the question of whether Arthur got Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, or whether it was the sword in the stone, Malory says that the answer is yes.

Able Was I Ere I Saw Elba

Whilst I don't overly care for the Globe & Mail's cartoonist, this cartoon makes me giggle.  I think the fact that I find it funny largely because of the historical reference likely makes me a complete dork.

(For the confused: Wikipedia holds the key.)

In "Honour" of the Long-Weekend

I present the following definition:

tofore (also to fore, to-fore, toforn), preposition and adverb:
Before. (Archaic)

"Toforn hym gooth the loude mynstralcye" -Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (Late 14th cent.)
"where thorow the kynges enemyes durste not ryde as they dyd to fore to aspye" -Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur (1485)
"O, would thou wert as thou tofore hast been!" -William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus (1594?)

Origin: From Old English toforan

And now, I believe it's probably time for me to apologise to anyone who actually got the terrible terrible pun.

I Don't Think He's Running For President, But He Might Be Running For Arch-Druid

Move over EnviroTruth, ExxonMobil's got a new blatant anti-environmental campaign.  (Thanks, Dmitri)

"CO2: they call it pollution; we call it life," says a pair of ads by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (recipient of over $400,000 worth of funding from ExxonMobil in 2002).  They're being put out in 14 major US cities in order to counter the launch of the new Al Gore environmental film An Inconvenient Truth.

You can watch both of them at the CEI's website (and note that both of them contain at least one brief glimpse of what I believe to be an oil refinery in their montages).  I especially recommend the first one — the announcer's enunciation is just off-putting.  Close your eyes and listen, and try not to imagine the commercial playing continuously on a giant screen, in a grimy, rainy, dystopian, Blade Runner-esque city.  Of course, the fact that this is the fourth straight day that it's been raining here probably doesn't help.

You can find the quote in the title over at the Reuters article on the ads.

Edit: RealClimate weighs in on the claims in the second ad.

Conspiracy Theory Time

One of my favourite guilty pleasures is conspiracy theories.  Not just any conspiracy theories though, but the ones often put forward by members of the Christian Patriot militia movement in the United States.  Of these theories, my favourite is the "That's not how you spell my name!" argument, that insists that "JOHN DOE," "John Doe,&quot "DOE, JOHN," and "Doe, John" all refer to different people.  (Ofttimes this is combined with the claim that a name all-in-caps represents a corporation.)  Second to that in my list of favourite conspiracy theories, and the one I'm addressing today, is the "That's not my flag!" argument.

Snipped from a piece of drivel that's gone 'round the 'net:

"The flags displayed in State courts and courts of the United States have gold or yellow fringes. That is your WARNING that you are entering into a foreign enclave, the same as if you are stepping into a foreign embassy and you will be under the jurisdiction of that flag. The flag with the gold or yellow fringe has no constitution, no laws, and no rules of court, and is not recognized by any nation on the earth, and is foreign to you and the United States of America."

From this point, the exact details of the claim start to diverge.  Although not the most common, some of the claims are based around the fact that the fringe represents a mutilation, as defined in Title 4, Chapter 1, § 3 of the U.S. Code (4 USC 1 § 3).  We'll get around to this argument in a moment, but first a far more common one:  the yellow/gold fringe on the flag represents a military flag, and therefore any court displaying it is an admiralty or military court, and any person present in said court is therefore subject to admiralty or martial law (or sometimes both are used interchangeably, ignoring the fact that the two are not the same).

(It's ok.  I'll wait for you to stop laughing.  Better now?  Ok, then on we go.)

 Continue reading Conspiracy Theory Time

MARSHA ATE GINA

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I've come to the point where I believe that every word that comes out of a Sony PR rep's mouth must either be a lie or spin.  With regards to their decision not to show a major expected-blockbuster film to theatre owners until a week prior to its release date (a virtual last-minute showing, in terms of allowing theatres to decide whether or not to show a film):

"The strategy, studio representatives say, is to preserve a climate of mystery and excitement around the movie […]" (Source.)

Right, so that sounds good enough.  Except for one thing: the movie in question is The Da Vinci Code.  You know, that book that everybody's been talking about since it was released almost 3 years ago?  Yeah.  That one.  The one that's had constant media attention to the point that it's highly unlikely that there's a large group of people who would be interested and intrigued by the movie, and yet still not know what the plot of the book is (even if they haven't read it).  (Hint, for those who haven't: it's like Holy Blood, Holy Grail, only with more anagrams.)  Ok, so they supposedly changed around the film's final act according to reports from Cannes — changes that caused laughter to erupt among viewers at the festival.

Which leads me to my point: basically, I can't help but wonder if this secrecy isn't to preserve the mystery and excitement, but rather to do two things.  The first is to keep the public from knowing that this is (from early reports) a dull and wooden movie until after they've made some of their money back over opening weekend.  The second is actually to create, rather than preserve, an air of mystery about a film whose plot has been hashed, rehashed, and debated to death in the media for the past 3 years.

And Now, A Brief Interruption

All I have to say is "Squeeeeeeeeeeee!".  Right now, there are generally several vehicles per day that go by and cause my balcony to vibrate.  (Or, if I'm in my room, drown out my speakers.)

It's about damn time.

My Garden Has Crabs!

Quit laughing! I'm being serious.

I have absolutely no idea why there were so many claws in the bags of dirt I bought.

Posted by g026r at 18:55 | 2 comments | Most recent by g026r

When I Don't Hear Any Complaints, I Take It To Mean Everything's Fine

As you can see, the majority of the site has been switched over to a new stylesheet.  Only a few pages are missing at the moment (the comment preview and error pages, along with a few other pages that I'm not even sure get used anymore).

As always, let me know if anything seems extremely broken.  If you can't leave a comment, then I believe that most of you have my MSN/ICQ/GoogleTalk contact info.  If not, you can always email me; just stick any username in front of leftblank.org, and the various catch-all rules will forward them on to me.

Book-Related Request

Edit:  Got a copy.  Thanks, everyone.

Now here's a random question, directed at anyone who might be around Fredericton this summer: you wouldn't happen to have a copy of the children's novel The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, by any chance?

Basically, it works like this: in a discussion earlier today, someone brought up The Dark is Rising, and my first reaction was "Have I even read that?"  The title is familiar (although that may just because it shares it with the first track of an album that I'm rather familiar with), and the cover of the version on Amazon (which eBay confirms was being used in the early/mid-80s) also looks familiar, but I can't recall if I've actually read it.  The Wikipedia entry certainly doesn't help, being as it is (in my opinion) a piece of crap, but what bits about the books (and that aren't just a list of characters) that are there don't ring that much of a bell.

So, I'm kind of curious to get ahold of a copy to see whether or not I did read it, however I'm not really that willing to shell out money for it.  Hence, why I'm curious if anyone has a copy that I might be able to borrow for a day or so.  (I don't expect that it would take me any amount of time to read.)

Well, do you?

Posted by g026r at 16:42 | 4 comments | Most recent by g026r

(Insert Fantastic Fables Reference Here)

In reference to a previous entry:

"They just understand business, they understand budgets, they understand their pocketbook, they understand life going on. That's the only thing people out there really care about. Rules? What are rules?"

(Source: CBC.)

Damn, I wish I could take that approach with my life:  "Uh, Andrew, you can't do that because <insert explanation here>"  "Bah!  That's just because the rules say so!"

(With every news story I expect less and less from the Lord government, and with every news story they never fail to surprise me.)

Nyce bootes. Wanna swyve?

Sticking with the topic of language, here's a story from the LA Times that I spotted a while back: An Alert Unlike Any Other.

In short, the story is about the difficulties that are faced in attempting to place warnings around the site of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) — otherwise known as the big underground nuclear waste dump out in New Mexico.  The problem is that the warnings are going to have to last for thousands of years, and no one can say for certain what language the people who discover the warnings will be speaking, or even what they will be like.  The solution?  Brainstorm like crazy, and toss out the wildest ideas possible, including but not limited to: "feminist corporations that disbelieve WIPP warnings because they were written by men," "an energy-poor government, company or gasoline-addicted tribe in a ruined society, like those depicted in the film "The Road Warrior," [that] could adopt a "drill first, ask questions later" policy," and "self-guided robotic "mole miners" […] infected with a computer virus that compels them to override their safety programming as they compulsively drill and construct mine shafts."  (They pay people to sit around and think up these things?)

That in itself may sound like an interesting enough article, but what (in my mind) really sets it apart are some choice quotes from both the article's author, and people interviewed for it.  For example: "To future generations, warnings about Nelson's dump may seem as impenetrable as the 600-year-old "Canterbury Tales" are for all but a few scholars today," and "I understand those cave drawings and I don't speak Neanderthal…. He's killing a bison, 'bison — food!'"

There're also several interesting anecdotes and points contained in the article itself.  A partial history of the swastika is given, to describe how the meaning of symbols can change over time.  There's also an amusing story about South African miners and a series of pictographs instructing them to clear rock that was misinterpreted, and which I can't help but think may just be an urban legend.  (I have difficulty coming up with a series of pictographs that clearly indicates the proper chain of events in one direction, but could still give an alternate and coherent connotation in the opposite direction.)

All in all, while the idea is interesting, and the challenge is something that will be amazing if overcome, I can't help but agree with part of the statement of Gregory Benford, one of the former project advisors when he comments that "Any monument would become a tourist attraction."

That said, regardless of the author's strange ideas on Middle English, any article which manages to reference Project Gnome is fine by me.  (And speaking of Chaucer: Geoffrey Chaucer Hath A Blog.  "Galfridus Chauceres Lynes Of Picke-Vppe" are particularly amusing: Art thou a disastrous poll tax? Bycause I feele a risynge comynge on.)

An Impassioned — But Likely Hopeless — Plea

It's spelt/pronounced geniuses, people.  G-E-N-I-U-S-E-S.  The only permissible time at which you should pluralise it as genii is if you're using it in the slightly archaic meaning of "(in some mythologies) a spirit associated with a person, place, or institution"¹ — from which we get the word genie.

"But I was told that in Latin you could pluralise words ending in -us by replacing it with an -i."  That would be fine — if you were using Latin.  (And, if you were, you'd only be using the word in its spirit meaning.)  You are not using Latin, you are using English, and in English genii and geniuses have different meanings.  (Seriously, this -i business is getting out of hand.  Virii?  That would be nice, except that the Latin word viri is actually the plural of vir, meaning men.²  So, if you're saying virii, what you're actually saying is grammatically incorrect Latin whose closest English equivalent would possibly be mens.  In fact, about the only -i ending English plural that won't send me searching for a dictionary to smash you over the head with is octopi, if only because it's fairly well established (as in: decades, possibly longer); however even that is technically incorrect: octopus is actually Greek in origin, meaning that the grammatically correct plural using the word's language of origin is actually octopodes³.)

So, let's review: multiple highly intelligent people?  Geniuses.  Multiple supernatural beings?  Genii or genies.

1. Compact Oxford English Dictionary entry: genius
2. University of Notre Dame Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid, vir stem + i ending
3. Compact Oxford English Dictionary entry: octopus

Posted by g026r at 22:55 | 3 comments | Most recent by g026r

You're Asking Me To Believe In Thinking Meat?

Quick link before I go to sleep: a short-film of Terry Bisson's one act radio play They're Made Out of Meat.  (WMV only, sorry.)

Original text to the play available from Bisson's official site.

Edit: A prize-winning short-film, too.

Posted by g026r at 03:12 | 3 comments | Most recent by g026r