tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3286891156218405492024-03-13T20:27:10.578-07:00The Noon Blue ApplesAnd in Arcadia I...Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328689115621840549.post-68428779907315964912015-03-01T03:36:00.001-08:002015-03-01T03:36:37.121-08:00Welcome Back<p dir=ltr>In early 2013 l wrote the first draft of a novel. With the working title of "Fighter, Mage, Thief", it comprised 5 handwritten notebooks of text, or about 130,000 words. I've reeotto become interested in expanding the story, and to that end I've created a new world map, and I've started creating not 1 but 4 contangs.</p>
<p dir=ltr>Because Betemause going back to university I don't think that the 2nd draft will be completed any time this year. But I'm happy to begin afresh, They do say that you should let your first draft sit and stew before returning to it. Well, 2 years seems like a good stewing tine to me<u>•</u></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-EFj08caLoR0ZHXDpW11-c_-0QMiAMzq2ifSQNE1Z5GAg_rYWQuUY9c1Fnh_eRfyD4Adi9CqM2AxaP2DRgeahAwWJO91eO_4IPjdsl-W4UNbGgCrijv5uuY7riOMRtVq7LGKBMyTJ81Rt/s1600/Sketch231204732.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-EFj08caLoR0ZHXDpW11-c_-0QMiAMzq2ifSQNE1Z5GAg_rYWQuUY9c1Fnh_eRfyD4Adi9CqM2AxaP2DRgeahAwWJO91eO_4IPjdsl-W4UNbGgCrijv5uuY7riOMRtVq7LGKBMyTJ81Rt/s640/Sketch231204732.png"> </a> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328689115621840549.post-65361623908159661282010-09-04T04:12:00.001-07:002010-09-04T04:12:48.234-07:00Del Toro casts Tom Cruise in At the Mountains of MadnessAt first I was like: hmmm. But then I was like: okay, whatever.<br /><br />Tom Cruise is not an inherently bad actor, and update films staring him are not inherently bad. <i>War of the Worlds</i> was actually okay. The <i>Mission Impossible</i> films were also pretty cool. I think the problem here is two-fold: (1) Fark Movie-goers<sup>tm</sup> don't see that Cruise's personal lifes craziness <i>never</i> compromises his competency as an actor; and (2) you need to let go of the notion that <i>At the Mountains of Madness</i> is going to be a pure adaptation of the original.<br /><br /><i>MoM</i> was written almost a century ago, at a time when the geography of the antartic was almost completely unknown. A lot of HPL's atmosphere of dread was extrapolated from that fact alone. In 2010, we have not only mapped the whole surface of the continent, we have penetrated the ice with ultrasound and radar images from space. It's not an unknown place to us. In as far as we still find it scary, the reason is because it's uninhabited and oh-so-cold. Dead cities and shoggoths? Sadly, no possibility.<br /><br />If I were Del Toro, I'd be making this a history piece, kind of like Jackson's <i>King Kong</i>. Sure, we know this place doesn't exist in the real world, but we'd be happy to watch Cruise in a waist coat and woolen overcoat autopsy the Old Ones and follow the shrill cry of the shoggoths to the valley beyond mount Erebus. And there I would diverge from the original tale.<br /><br />See, <i>MoM</i> didn't have a lot to film. You could make a short film of maybe 45 minutes about it, but no way could you fill a feature length pic with two geologists wandering around cold and ancient stone passageways studying heiroglyphs. At least, you couldn't do it in a way that would get enough bums on seats to turn a profit on the investment. No, my bet is that we'll see not only shoggoths, but also deep ones (who don't belong), and Old Ones capturing some hot yound chick from the party, just to give the protagonists something to go after. And the shoggoth will be different.<br /><br />At the end of <i>MoM</i>, we finally read about a living shoggoth, barrelling up an ancient hallway, pulverising albino penguins in its wake. It's really the one true monster horror of the whole story. You can't pull that off in film, even if you're Del Toro. Expect a pseudo intellectual action flick with shoggoths and lots of snow. Expect a three act structure with conflict between party members and a girl who needs saving. Expect more than just the one shoggoth. Just don't expect a retelling of the <i>MoM</i> story that is even 10% as faithfull as the <i>Lord of the Rings</i> movies.<br /><br />In my opinion, if I wanted to see <i>MoM</i> as HPL intended, I'd just re-read <i>MoM</i>. If I want my wife to get a foothold in the Mythos (and I do, but she reads too much bloody Jodi Picoult), then I'd take her to Del Toro's version of <i>MoM</i>.<br /><br />And I'll enjoy it too.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328689115621840549.post-79606433549777173022009-04-23T05:32:00.000-07:002009-04-23T06:19:15.005-07:00The Webby Awards: My PicksThe om-nom-nominees for this years <a href="http://www.webbyawards.com/">Webby Awards</a> have been announced, and in the great tradition of all last-minute journalist I present my favorites for the interestingnets night of nights.<br /><br />Category: Activism<br />My pick: <a href="http://www.rockthevote.com/">Rock the Vote</a><br />Reason: It's been a long while since I thought of myself as a "<a href="http://www.qof.northeastessex.nhs.uk/images/image/Young%20People.jpg">young person</a>", but I support the idea of a website that encourages "<a href="http://www.kent.police.uk/Advice/Young%20people/pics/Group%20of%20four.jpg">young people</a>" to vote in USA elections. They have recently proven their ability to upset the <a href="http://www.statusquo.co.uk/gallery/ccphotart08_1/img/ccphotart0820.jpg">status quo</a> in electing Barack Obama, who I would have voted for if I were a "<a href="http://www.bardaglea.org.uk/care-web/images/kids.gif">young person</a>" in the USA.<br /><br />Category: Art<br />My pick: <a href="http://www.livehopelove.com/">Live Hope Love</a><br />Reason: Basically, this was the one site I found <a href="http://www.20x200.com/">least</a> <a href="http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2008/colorchart/">annoying</a> <a href="http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/">to</a> <a href="http://www.keithtyson.com/#/home/">view</a>. It's Jamaican, it's photographic, there are poems about holding your dick in your hand.<br /><br />There are a million categories. I'll cut a long story short.<br /><br />Category: Games Related<br />My pick: <a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/">The Escapist</a><br />Reason: <a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation">Yahtzee</a>. That is all.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.fark.com/">fark.com</a> wasn't nominated, though that was the website I spent the most time on in '08/'09. A moral win there.<br /><br />Don't forget to vote. I did.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328689115621840549.post-13851562500944454942009-04-08T05:10:00.000-07:002009-04-08T06:23:14.294-07:00Movie Review: The Call of Cthulhu (2005)H P Lovecraft could reasonably claim to be the founding father of the 20th century horror story. His writings have influenced artists like Stephen King, Umberto Eco, Neil Gaiman and rock band Metallica. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Call of Cthulhu</span>, first published in 1928 and arguably his most famous story, has been lovingly adapted for the screen by the H P Lovecraft Historical Society. The movie, clocking in at a frugal 47 minutes, was made by fans for fans. Long considered to be "unfilmable" by Hollywood (the same thing was said about <span style="font-style: italic;">Watchmen</span>), this microbudget adaptation contains some fantastic performances and one of the boldest filmmaking descisions I've seen in a 21st century production. 2005s <span style="font-style: italic;">The Call of Cthulhu</span> is a silent picture.<br /><br />A young paleontologist becomes the executor to his great uncles will, and begins to read the dead man's files about a series of mysteries that happened in mach of 1925. First, an artist has disturbing dreams about a sunken city of alien architecture, and then he goes mad and gets committed. Then the story skips back 20 years, to a chance encounter with a police man who raided a strange cult in the bayous of Louisiana, seizing from them an idol of a winged god with an octopus for a head. By chance, the protagonist reads on a scrap of newspaper about a ship foundering in the south Pacific, one crew member having gone mad and another dead, the rest missing. Taking matters into his own hands and presumably blowing his life savings, the protagonist travels to Norway to speak with the widow of the mad sailor and finds the final piece of the puzzle, a diary about a chance landing on the shores of R'Lyeh (think Atlantis from the Dark Side), and the realease of the titular Great Old One from His tomb of aeons.<br /><br />The movie shines with good cinematography and great make up that sells the idea that this was made shortly after the story was written, then some how got lost for more than 80 years. It never strays far from the source material, making it the most faithful adaptation of any work of Lovecraft's. It never actually <span style="font-style: italic;">scares</span>, but then the Cthulhu mythos stories were never about thrills, instead aiming for an intellectual horror stemming from a high concept question: if vastly powerful alien beings once walked the Earth, how would the puny minds of humans deal with it? the answer is a pessimistic "we'd go crazy and our brains would asplode."<br /><br />The central gimmick of a silent picture helps <span style="font-style: italic;">The Call of Cthulhu</span> immensly. Whatever Lovecraft's strengths as a writer may have been, dialouge wasn't one of them. Mealy mouthed snippits of ancient lore like:<br /><dl><dd>That is not dead which can eternal lie,</dd><dd>And with strange aeons even death may die. . .</dd></dl>... could <span style="font-style: italic;">only</span> work if you read it straight off a title card. Hearing an actor saying these words would, at best, make the movie unbearable. At worst it'd be like watching some one else play <span style="font-style: italic;">Dungeons and Dragons.</span><br /><br />The no name cast of actors work well in the silent format, emoting well and helping further to sell the idea of a lost classic from a Hollywood silver age that never was.<br /><br />The special effects are competent most of the way through with creative, if anachronistic, use of matte chroma key to re-create a 1920s era Rhode Island. The swamp scene with the cultist is one of the best set pieces, with the sound, talent and exquisite scale model sets working together to evoke something remeniscent of the oiginal <span style="font-style: italic;">King Kong</span>. But it is rather let down when the true star of the picture finally hauls his green rubbery butt out of his cthonian tomb. While I don't begrudge the filmmaker's descion to bring Cthulhu to the screen using stop motion, I do wish the model maker hadn't made Him so tubby about the waist. They have heard of "less is more," but in this instance I think they should of gone for "even less is more better". The matte chroma key also suffers from some bad lighting during production, so that when the image is composited the actors have a weird buzzing aura and an obviously fake prescence that detracts severely from what would other wise have been a truely stirring R'Lyeh sequence.<br /><br />To sum up, if you like anything about the Cthulhu mythos (indeed, if you've even heard of it), then you should give <span style="font-style: italic;">The Call of Cthulhu</span> a go. It's only a little bit longer than most of the dross on TV and on the whole is entertaining. Obviously if you are a rabid fan of Lovecraft already then this movie is essential for you o own; indeed, you probably already own it and honestly I don't understand why you're bothering to read this review.<br /><br />I award <span style="font-style: italic;">The Call of Cthulhu</span> 10 shuddering tentacles.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328689115621840549.post-2518801630113543452009-04-03T05:13:00.000-07:002009-04-03T05:58:21.843-07:00SO ANYWAYReview of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482606/">The Strangers</a> (2008)<br /><br />If you say that your film is based on true events it does a lot toward building an atmosphere, and you don't have to do much to prove that any of it is actually true. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Amityville Horror</span> did it, <span style="font-style: italic;">Texas Chainsaw Massacre </span>did it, and in the wake of two mediocre remakes of the aforementioned at least last years creep fest <span style="font-style: italic;">The Strangers</span> did it; with an original script by writer/director Bryan Bertino. I wracked my mighty brain thinking of a horrid murder than might come within an acre of the gruesome encounter depicted in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Strangers</span> and the nearest I came was the Helter Skelter killing of Sharon Tate at the hands of the Manson Family in 1969, and even then the only similarity I could think of was the writing-on-the-wall gimmick and the fact that it was and utterly sensless crime for which the perpretrators give no satisfying explaniation.<br /><br />There all similarities to reality end and <span style="font-style: italic;">The Strangers</span> forges ahead in the virgin waters of its own reality, with a kitchen knife at its prow. We are quickly introduced to the akward couple we are to root for, in the guises of James (Scott Speedman) and Kristen (Liv Tyler); Poor old Jimmy has proposed to Kristen and been turned down, the poor sod, and while we watch them try to work out whether that spells doom for their relationship (coitus interuptus), a weird chick knocks on the door and heralds a night of terror for the couple that predicably ends with Tyler professing her love for the bloodied up Speedman.<br /><br />Everything that follows is a perfectly executed exercise in terror, grabbing the "home invasion" gland of the brain and waggling it until it breaks. I think it is most bold in that it never attempts to give us an explanation to the murders; indeed, you never get to glimpse the faces behind those creepy masks. Hollywood spends so much time feeding us answers from the baby food pot of plot, my only fear is that Universal will commision a sequel to answer our questions. I hope the film is never so succesful, because on its on, by its own rules, it is perfect.<span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><br />I look forward to the stageplay version.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328689115621840549.post-35328430816484503082008-10-28T07:19:00.000-07:002008-10-28T08:02:25.721-07:00When We Were YoungI grew up when computer data was measured in bits and bytes. The mobile phone I currently use has more memory than my first computer (a Commodore 64), which in turn was more powerful than the computers that plotted the trajectories of the Apollo missions to the moon. Let me take you back...<br /><br />In 1988 I was living with my mum and her partner in a suburb of Brisbane called McDowell. we were renting the place, a fact that my friends never let us forget. I had friends from up the street, two boys my own age, who thought they could take my bike and ride it whenever they wanted, because "renting" to them meant we didn't own anything. I wonder at the elitist bullshit their parents let slip to give their kids such an elitist view. They'd probably voted for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joh_Bjelke-Petersen">Sir Joh</a>.<br /><br />My dad worked for Telecom, which would become Tesltra in later years when the government sold it off. He drove around and picked us up once a fortnight and we spent a weekend with him. On my birthday in that year he brought us a Commodore 64 and a handfull of games to play on it. There were cartriges that plugged into the back of the unit like the game cartriges of later consoles like the Sega Mastersystem, and there was a cassette drive that read bits and bytes recorded on an ordinary cassette and decoded them into computer programs that woulod run in the machines 64 k RAm drive. It was an 8 bit system with one advantage over the consoles of the early nineties: you could use it to program your own games, if you had the know how.<br /><br />BASIC was the programming language built into the C64. The first program I wrote for the machin ran exactly as follows:<br /><br />10 PRINT "MY NAME IS DAVID"<br />20 GOTO 10<br /><br />This program resulted in the following screen printout in cyanon dark blue:<br /><br />MY NAME IS DAVID<br />MY NAME IS DAVID<br />MY NAME IS DAVID<br />MY NAME IS DAVID<br />MY NAME IS DAVID<br />MY NAME IS DAVID<br />MY NAME IS DAVID<br /><br />... and onward ad infinitum. It was an infinite loop you could stop by tapping the "Run Stop" key. I had a lot of fun trying different sentences with the same programming syntax. when my parents weren't home, I programmed vulgar things. If you put a semicolon at the end of the PRINT command, it would fill the whole screen. That was how I ended up with:<br /><br />SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT<br /><br />... onwards and onwards. I was only eight, after all.<br /><br />The games I played were simple by todays standards, my favorites being "Wizard of Wor" in which you shot demons in a maze of ever elabourating difficulty, and such clasics as "Frogger" and "Dig Dug". Recently I completed "Assasins Creed" on the XBox 360. There was nothing so complicated back when I was a kid. The most elaborate game I ever played on the C64 was called "Echelon", about exploring the tenth planet of the solar system, called Isis, in a space ship. Todays "sandbox" games of total freedom like Grand Theft Auto and Spiderman 2 are probably the closest analogisms to Echelon. You flew about on this alien planet with wire frame graphics (this was long before the filled in polygons of the VGA rennaissence), shooting space pirates and solving cyphers. It seemed so deep at the time. give it to me now, I'd finish it in an afternoon.<br /><br />I played "Samantha Foxx Strip Poker" in 1991, when I was in Norway. I was eleven then. Samantha was redered in 8 bit map, starting out dressed in a heavy coat, with a hat, and sunglasses, and you played five card stud to get her nekkid. The game was unrated. In 1991, they didn't rate toys like video games. games like "Samantha Foxx Strip Poker" slowly filtered into the awareness of governors, and a rating and classification system was set up. The average age of computer users was probably below 20ish.<br /><br />I have the internet now. If I do a google video search for "Strip Poker" i end us with more mind blowing stuff than was ever rendered in 2 bit, or even could be. I dare say the average 11 year old today can run such a search, can probably work out his parents password to unblock the family filter as well. Shit, i daresay any kid could find shit that would make ME blush, and I've frelling DONE that shit.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,24557859-5014239,00.html">The attorney general of SA thinks we don't need an R18+ classification for video games</a>. I say we've always needed one, but it is only now with the latest crop of games that the need has become unignorable. Cr Atkinson should snap out of it. It isn't 1988 anymore.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328689115621840549.post-13492514964130772822008-05-28T05:13:00.000-07:002008-05-29T05:54:19.497-07:00Warning: Images<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/18/Bill_Henson/1098/40913/"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/18/Bill_Henson/1098/40913/" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/18/Bill_Henson/1098/40913/"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/18/Bill_Henson/1098/40913/" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote>Henson is esteemed for his consistency of vision and artistic sincerity, never deviating from his poetic invention through the several tides of fashionable theory that have washed away the integrity of visual language in contemporary art.<br /></blockquote><blockquote><br />The Age, Entertainment, April 27 2005 (<a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/Reviews/Bill-Henson/2005/04/26/1114462034805.html">link</a>)</blockquote><blockquote>DETECTIVES converged on a Sydney art gallery today as they investigated whether photographs of naked children, which were to go on display last night, contravene any laws.<br /><br />News.com.au, News Limited, May 23 2008 (<a href="http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23745900-29277,00.html">link</a>)<br /><br /><strong>PHOTOGRAPHS of naked underage girls at a Sydney art exhibition shut down by police are revolting and have no artistic merit, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says.<br /><br />The Australian, May 23 2008 (<a href="http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23745330-26103,00.html">link</a>)<br /><br /></strong><p class="intro"><strong>KEVIN Rudd's handpicked arts mentor Cate Blanchett yesterday co-signed an open letter urging the Prime Minister to rethink his public comments about artist Bill Henson's work.</strong></p> <p>Blanchett, co-chair of the Creative Australia group at last month's 2020 Summit, was joined by other summiteers including Nobel Prize-winning writer John Coetzee, Museum of Contemporary Art director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor and economist Saul Eslake in expressing dismay at last Friday's raid on Henson's exhibition at the Roslyn Oxley9 Sydney gallery. </p><p>The Australian, May 28 2008 (<a href="http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23770698-2702,00.html">link</a>)</p><br /><p><a href="http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/18/Bill_Henson/"><blockquote></blockquote>Bill Henson<blockquote></blockquote></a><br /></p></blockquote><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://images.theage.com.au/ftage/ffximage/2008/05/24/svHENSON_narrowweb__300x443,0.jpg"><br /><br /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328689115621840549.post-69227691965578079482008-05-27T08:58:00.000-07:002008-05-28T03:17:06.314-07:00Towards a Retroactive Future Australian Commonwealth Republic EmpireI can guarantee this article contains no annoying hyperlinks to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a>.<br /><br />Step into my swirling machine with the flashing lights now as I take you back to the long ago year of 1999, when men were men and marriage was sacred and unpopular. As we descend toward Brisbane we find a younger me in the to-be-demolished Festival Hall (where I first learned to love live music), moshing in a very different mosh pit. Twas the first referendum in god knows how many years, and I had an opinion to vent.<br /><br />My apologies. The machine has settled in the toilet stalls. Follow me now out through the antiseptic haze of scents into the main arena where the tangy waft of stale atmosphere still holds the odor of last nights fight between Costa and Fennick. Wait, let me disengage the Extrapolator. Okay, now we have a more accurate reading. This massive space just stinks of stale air and thousands of voters still reeling from the oh-so-wonderful-and-can't-ever-see-such-a-landslide-victory-ever-ever-occurring-ever-ever-again liberal voters shuffling in ques of jurisdictions, and in the morass, me almost a decade younger.<br /><br />Our mission, my absent audience, is to slay this young tool.<br /><br />There I am, at the voting poll now. I am deciding not to go with the republic, basically because I don't agree with the the preamble to the Constitution which talks about "Mate ship" and other "Australian" shit like that.<br /><br />I'm behind me now. Ready to slide the knife between my ribs...<br /><br />And now here I am with my shiny, spinning machine. Shit, grandfather paradox.<br /><br />Okay, I'll have to take some time to reconfigure the machine to go to the future. Hopefully, I'll only need a few months. I just need to make sure that the debate about a change of governing style, from a constitutional monarchy to a constitutional republic, isn't confused by a stupid debate about the continuation of the Australian flag. That we don't care about our long and wonderful history as a penal settlement of Fantasy Island, sorry, Great Britain. That we actually do what's right as opposed to what we've always done, and that we realise it doesn't mean we can't still beat every one at the commonwealth games.<br /><br />I'm off to the future now, and I'll let you know how it all went in just a second...<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Censored By The Department Of Chronological Conservation</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328689115621840549.post-38808266405734437042008-05-10T08:15:00.000-07:002008-05-10T09:48:42.786-07:00Book Reveiw: The Algebraist by Iain M banksThe <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera">space opera</a> is a genre that's hard to get into if you aren't already an enthusiast. The stories are often long and character driven, and some times seem as long and involved as a version of <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/War-Peace-Penguin-Classics-Deluxe/dp/0143039997/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210437138&sr=8-3">War and Peace</a> </span>set in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Kuiper</span> belt</a> of some star system thousands of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_years">light years</a> away. Critics call them 'escapist', as if any form of literature isn't. But can a space opera be grounded in real characters who the reader might know, or want to know?<br /><br />Even if these people are nine meter tall aliens that live on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter">gas giants</a>?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Algebraist-Iain-Banks/dp/1841492396/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210437494&sr=1-2">The Algebraist</a> </span>is a great place for some one new to science fiction to get a taste of the space opera. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_M_Banks">Iain M Banks</a>, the science fiction writer who by night fights for democracy and for Scotland as the mainstream literary writer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_M_Banks">Iain Banks</a> (his disguise is dropping his middle initial), has forged a reputation as a master of the genre with his novels of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture">the Culture</a>. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Algebraist</span> is a departure from the universe of the Culture, being a stand alone novel where most of the rules are <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">different</span>.<br /><br />In the novel it is the year 4034 AD, and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Fassin</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Taak</span> is a "slow seer" cultural ambassador to the mysterious Dwellers of the gas giant <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Nasqueron</span>, many light years away from Earth in the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Ulubis</span> system. After the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole">worm hole</a> link to the rest of the civilized galaxy is destroyed, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Ulubis</span> is cut off, stranded by one hundred light years of empty space, and it becomes a target for conquest by the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Stravling</span> Cult, led by the psychotic <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Archmandrite</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Lusiferous</span>. Speeding toward <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Ulubis</span> on a rescue mission is the Summed Fleet of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Mercatoria</span>, the galaxy spanning civilization of "quick" or short-lived races, differentiated by the "Slow", ancient races to which the Dwellers belong with life spans measured in billions of years. The reason all these forces are rushing toward <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Ulubis</span> is that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Nasqueron</span> holds the key to the Dweller List, the alleged location of a secret worm hole network known only to the Dwellers, linking more than two million systems and, apparently, connecting our galaxy to another. By order of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Mercatoria</span>, Seer <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Taak</span> has to go into the clouds and heavy gravity of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Nasqueron</span> to talk to the Dwellers to get the legendary List.<br /><br /><br />Banks writes hyper intelligent species with a lot of humanising wit, charm, and ridiculousness. Anyone familiar with the Culture novels know that the Minds, artificial intelligences with god-like powers, love to prank and interfere with less intelligent humans, basically only to amuse themselves. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Algebraist</span> is <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">different</span>, in that the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Mercatoria</span> pan-species civilisation long ago fought against <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI">AI</a>s in a great and terrible "Machine War", similar to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Butlerian</span> Jihad</a> from that classic of the space opera genre, Frank Herbert's <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dune-Frank-Herbert/dp/044100590X/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210437891&sr=1-1">Dune</a>. </span>AIs are routinely fought with by the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Mercatoria</span> in a war similar to the "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing">ethnic cleansing</a>" we are so familiar with here on Earth, but the machines are good at hiding, and <span style="font-style: italic;">The Algebraist</span> asks us to validate these <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">proto</span>-Minds as personalities or beings possessed of the same right to exist as biological intelligences.<br /><br />Great age is a theme in <span style="font-style: italic;">The <span style="font-style: italic;">Algebraist</span></span>. The Dwellers and other slow species (including a memorable character of a sentient gas cloud many light-years across whose thoughts take days to manifest) are nearly immortal, their civilisations beginning when the universe was still cooling down after the big bang. For the quick species, three forms of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">longevity</span> are explored. All the main characters are above the 200 year age range. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Fassin</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Taak</span>, as a slow seer, lives his life on the same time scale as the Dwellers he frequently interacts with. His friend, the wealthy industrialist <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Saluus</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">Kehar</span>, gets there through gene manipulation procedures. And their mutual friend <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">Tanice</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">Yarabokin</span>, a captain of the Summed Fleet, spends most of her time travelling near to the speed of light, where time runs slower. This age bracket is <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">necessary</span> because the rules of physics apply in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Algebraist</span>. The speed of light cannot be exceeded, so travel to distant suns can take hundreds of years. As a civilisation, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">Mercatoria</span> need a glue.<br /><br />Banks introduces a pan-religion called The Truth, which essentially holds the disparate systems of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">Mercatoria</span> together even when the worm hole network is destroyed (which is frequently done by the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">Beyonders</span>, branded as evil because the ally themselves with AIs, as <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">terrorists</span> are considered evil in our world). The Truth is a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">philosophy</span> or statistical truth that holds the universe as a computer simulation. The more people who hold in their hearts "the truth", the less reason the runners of the simulation have to keep it running, and so the will release the prisoners of the simulation out into the "real" world. It is exactly this universe spanning <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism">solipsism</a> that the Culture novels are often about <span style="font-style: italic;">disproving</span>, which makes me as a reader <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">believe</span> that <span style="font-style: italic;">The Algebraist</span> is actually a simulation run by one of the Culture Minds, just <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession">for fun</a>.<br /><br />The best thing about <span style="font-style: italic;">The Algebraist</span> is the Dwellers. They are built up for a quarter of the novel as this ancient and infinitely wise, though infinitely frustrating super power, who then for the next 200 or so pages appear as complete buffoons unable to settle a debate about the common galactic language that for all other species in the novel was decided a billion years ago. Banks shines in his <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">dialogue</span> with the conversations between <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37">Fassin</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38">Y'Sul</span>, his Dweller contact, and give human perception on the Dwellers through Col. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39">Hatherance</span>, also evolved on a gas giant, but only a dweller, lacking the capital "d". Towards the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_40">denouement</span>, the Dwellers seem much less silly.<br /><br />I <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_41">recommend</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">The Algebraist</span> to people who haven't read space opera, or who haven't read Iain M. Banks. I envy those who first came to Banks through this book and then moved on to the Culture novels. As a final aside, his next book, <span style="font-style: italic;">Matter</span>, is almost exactly the opposite to <span style="font-style: italic;">The Algebraist.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span>I give this book 20 Kudos.<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span></span></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328689115621840549.post-67525621382078898362008-05-08T06:27:00.000-07:002008-05-08T07:21:47.923-07:00In the Year of Our FollyThe future I see is <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">different</span> than the one I grew up with.<br /><br />A family man leaves for work in the winter time, wearing a woolen tunic with wooden toggles, woven pantaloons his wife patches with scraps of leather, carrying a vinyl <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">briefcase</span> he inherited from his grandfather, dating from a time when such things could be made. On the way out of the living room he stumbles on the wooden models of soldiers his young boy likes to play with, kicking one aside so that it fetches up against the foot of the hulking, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">crystalline</span> computer nerve centre that dominates the room like a grandfather clock. It shows the time to be 9 am, and the outside temperature is 5 degrees. On his way out the door he pulls on a heavy woolen great coat.<br /><br />This family lives with three thousand others, all working in a kind of rota system. The family man in on his way to the office, to work on administration. In summer he works in the feilds. But now, there is a new shipment of grains and meat arriving from the north, as well as some luxury items like coffee, sugar, and rice. Unfortunately they have a shortfall in kilowatt hours, the basic unit of currency, which old fashioned dollars have become a symbol of. The recent wind harvest has been poor. There have been a lot of foggy days, and they haven't seen a shipment of enriched uranium for the power plant in more than one hundred days. They owe the grid power. The man has to find somewhere to cut costs.<br /><br />The state is a nine hour walk from one side to the other. They have 90 horses, 20 plows, one micro-nuclear reactor and 200 wind turbines scattered throughout, perched on roof tops or out in fields. One good days they hum loudly, a welcome sound, because it means more for the local economy. On days like this, with the air thick as cold soup, the triple bladed turbines are silent, and missed.<br /><br />This is a city state, one that isn't doing so well as the summers grow shorter, the winters get colder, and the rains still fail to fall. This used to be a part of a great sprawling city of three million, built on a river flowing into a wide bay. The only ships that visit these days are powered by the wind and the sun. The only news that comes from the more livable north arrives by horse and carriage. Sometimes, it doesn't come at all, because as cities break up into smaller, more insular city-states, the spaces in between become badlands, stalked by highwaymen and killers. Our family man once won an award for his design of the local walls, which are made of wood and stone cut from the quarry, strengthened by tar mined from the old bitumen roads.<br /><br />There was no war here. There are still some old cars around, and on festival days during the festival days over <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Christmas</span> they <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">charge</span> the old hybrids up with a few kilowatts so they can crawl down the dusty main street towing floats from which the beautiful girls wave at the happy children. And at least they are still connected to the grid, fed by the great solar and nuclear generators in the north, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">megawatt</span> hours and lights sparkling in binary code through the glass arteries of the fibre network. Here on the east coast, at least, they still have news. Occasionally they hear about other <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">countries</span> doing better, when a ship with tall sails makes it over the vast, isolating oceans. Mostly, they hear about other countries doing worse, as reports from the western front filter back about yet another attack on the battered, half-lost North Western Coast. No war at all, not here at least, but civilization has reverted to a feudal system none the less.<br /><br />There was a man, a few decades back now, who did a census of the entire planet, riding from place to place on a slow solar cart with a pedal system for those days when the sun wasn't out. At the time, he <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">enumerated</span> a 30% drop in the human population, from 7 billion back to 4 billion, the same level of one century ago. Worst hit, he said, were the so called "First World", where <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">dependence</span> on the old fuels was greatest. He gave a prediction, then, that we would go with a whisper after all.<br /><br />Our family man still thinks about space travel. As a hobby, at night, he writes science fiction stories. His wife laughs at him, but who does it harm? she asks. He <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">scribbles</span> by candle light as she reads the news tickling through the crystal set, breast feeding the infant girl, while the boy slumbers in her lap. Our family man writes about still <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">un</span>discovered fuel reserves deep in the Atlantic which might allow us to once again revive plans for a space elevator, so we can escape our prison with bars of gravity, to venture forth to the stars in space craft made of hollowed out asteroids, and meet those other people out there who surely overcame the same <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">obstacle</span> of not enough fuel to sustain our bad habits...<br /><br />... and at the same time our dreams.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328689115621840549.post-81126545801756212262008-05-04T06:13:00.000-07:002008-05-04T07:01:30.886-07:00A Handfull of Pins and All Out of GrenadesAs mentioned <a href="http://thenoonblueapples.blogspot.com/2008/01/confessions-of-juggler.html">previously</a>, I have a natural talent for handling balls.<br /><br />I am also a <a href="http://discordiansociety.org/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Discordian</span></a>, which I haven't explicitly mentioned yet, but which may have become apparent to all you silent millions that have read these posts.<br /><br />Which was comfortably confluent on Friday night when, as a work function or <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9b/LordOfTheFliesBookCover.jpg">'team building'</a> exercise, I went bowling with some of those I work with. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">ANZ</span> paid for everything, including the drinks and the taxi ride home.<br /><br />All bowling alleys are shrines to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Discordians</span>, because the revelation of the Sacred <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Chao</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">occurred</span> in one in the San <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Fransisco</span> bay area in the mid-60s. They serve <a href="http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/HotDogJuly.jpg">hotdog buns</a> in bowling alleys, but because I am a devout <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Discordianist</span> I <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">refrained</span> from partaking of one, in accordance to the <a href="http://www.ology.org/principia/body.html"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">penta</span>barf</a>.<br /><br />Bowling involves a kind of one-step, two-step, three-step <span style="font-style: italic;">throw </span>dance, one that drastically upsets the centre of gravity. It is also a form of exercise very much in favour of the dominant arm. I recommend it to every one who wants to develop <a href="http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/comments/0,23836,22651341-952,00.html">barmaid's breast.</a><br /><br />On the face of things you would be forgiven for missing the close correlation between the sport of bowling and the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">performance</span> art of juggling. It is very subtle. The key is in willing the ball where to go. You need to visualise the end result of your roll. If the results don't match what you visualised, your muscles will compensate. That's the great thing about having a brain like ours. It learns on its own.<br /><br />So anyway, I lost the game.<br /><br />I need to go to <a href="http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20031016/edit.htm#6">church</a> more often.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328689115621840549.post-46819135205102131502008-04-30T05:02:00.000-07:002008-04-30T05:34:00.269-07:00Blue ApplesWhy call my blog <span style="font-style: italic;">The Noon Blue Apples?<br /><br /></span>The explanation is tied up with my long ago fascination with the mystery of <a href="http://www.crystalinks.com/rennes.html"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Rennes</span> Le Chateau</a>, probably one of the greatest hoaxes of the twentieth century. The reference comes from a cypher written in french which translates as follows:<br /><br /><blockquote>"<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Shepardess</span> no temptation that Poussin <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Teniers</span> hold the key peace 681 by the cross and the horse of God I complete this Daemon guardian at noon blue apples."</blockquote><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Anton_Wilson">Robert Anton Wilson</a>, who first noticed the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_Enigma">23 Enigma</a>, drew my attention to "noon blue apples"<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span> in the encyclopedic <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Under-Control-Conspiracies-Cover-ups/dp/0062734172/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209558336&sr=8-1">Everything is Under Control</a>. </span>The phrase is tied up with the fictional novel <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Holy-Blood-Grail/dp/0099503093/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209558430&sr=1-2">Holy Blood and the Holy Grail</a>,</span> which was the subject of a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">plagiarism</span> suit involving <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Brown">Dan Brown</a> in 2006. The original authors of the ideas lost their suit because they had originally given <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">the</span> ideas out as non-fiction.<br /><br />Blue Apples to me is the key to understanding nonsense for the sake of nonsense. The cypher allows us to take two tracks; believe it or don't. If the mystery of <span style="font-style: italic;"></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosslyn_Chapel"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Rosslyn</span> Chapel</a> and other hallmarks of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priory_of_Sion">Priory of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Sion</span></a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory">conspiracy theory</a> are real, then we live in an insane world. I prefer to treat it as nonsense.<br /><br />There is a 2002 movie called <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303287/">Noon Blue Apples</a>. I will <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">endeavour</span> to track it down and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">review</span> it.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328689115621840549.post-33923675602100326242008-04-29T04:59:00.000-07:002008-04-29T05:44:58.769-07:00Hiatus/<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">haiytess</span>/ <span style="font-weight: bold;">noun</span> (pl. <span style="font-weight: bold;">hiatuses</span>) a pause or gap in continuity<br />ORIGIN Latin, 'gaping'.<br /><br />I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. While I've been away, the power struggle which has gripped the Crab nebula for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">millenia</span> finally tipped into the favour of the freedom fighters, and a new generation of methane-breathers now live in an age of hardship led by a libertarian for a change. Andromeda has accepted sweeping reforms; it is now illegal to eat your young there. Never before has a single law <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">polarised</span> an entire galaxy. Closer to home, the android Klaxon Bell has taken his 100,000,000<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">th</span> victim, baffling police with his ability to shift between alternative universes at will. Several Humans from our planet are <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">currently</span> helping <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Zeta</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Rectuli</span> 'Grey' law enforcement agents with their enquiries, but the investigation seems to have hit a stone wall as few of our species keep our memory glands in our anuses.<br /><br />I was away from the Solar System for only a few hours while I saw all this, but back on Earth a few months passed. Our carer civilization, the one that makes sure no big rocks sweep in and smash us while we're not looking, still hasn't found a way to accelerate our water-laden bodies past light-speed. I've spent the last day or so catching up on current affairs, so to have something relevant to blog about. I know how uninteresting interstellar wars are to you all.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1. Overlord Rudd</span><br /><br />Using new technology to rewind time, <a href="http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23615132-421,00.html">Kevin Rudd has found prohibition is unpopular<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />2. Little People Still Rock our Socks Off</span><br /><br />Mutants prevail on prime time TV because <a href="http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,26278,23616886-10388,00.html">midgets are allowed to be belly dancers</a>. You'll have to search for those photos yourself, you dirty, dirty man.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3. Cthulhu Lives!<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span><br /><br />That is <a href="http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,23615406-5014115,00.html">not dead which can eternal lie</a>, and with stranger aeons even death may die.<br /><br /><br />Eat me <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu">Emperor Xenu</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328689115621840549.post-36687760661952991542008-01-23T02:44:00.000-08:002008-01-23T02:52:12.336-08:00A Strange NotionJust a quick glass of wine before bed. It's early, but I am very tired, and it <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">occurred</span> to me that the illusion of continuity every one gets by on day after day most breaks down when we're tired.<br /><br />Continuity of self is the feeling that we have been here all along and that we will must likely continue being here, at least in the immediate future. I'm not talking about the whole of the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">human</span> race, just me, personally. I was playing an X box game which I'd last played just yesterday, and was then beating comprehensively, but <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">today</span> the button combinations just weren't working for me, which was making me very frustrated. I wondered, in a moment of clarity, if it was possible that my memories had <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">been</span> implanted into a clone body, one fresh out of the tank: a body which had never seen or played with an X box before, but had a perfect memory of doing so, just yesterday.<br /><br />I probably won't feel this way <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">tomorrow</span>. I expect my memories will be re-inserted in my original body while I sleep.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328689115621840549.post-43974083459691137662008-01-22T03:44:00.000-08:002008-01-22T04:47:04.006-08:00What's on Wiki?This is the first of a weekly round up of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">feuds</span> and debates going on in the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">discussions</span> pages of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Wikipedia</span><br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">TheHYPO</span> questioned the statement "Darth Vader and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Anakin</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Skywalker</span> are the same person, in different states of mind" in the Stars Wars article on the 23rd of December, arguing that "There is no way to assess a characters "state of mind". (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Star_Wars">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Star_Wars</a>).<br />In the opinion of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">TheHYPO</span>, the table of appearances on the main article is <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">unnecessary</span>. "I agree. The whole table thing really is stupid and pointless", said another Wiki editor, <a title="User:Padawan Animator" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Padawan_Animator"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Padawan</span> Animator</a>. There are fears that this might lead to mass pruning of tables in articles. (citation needed)<br /><br />Our main story, however, comes from the discussion page of X-Men 3 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:X-Men:_The_Last_Stand">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:X-Men:_The_Last_Stand</a>). <a title="User:Tenebrae" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tenebrae"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Tenebrae</span></a> and <a title="User:Rglong" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rglong"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Rglong</span></a> engaged in a war of words around a possible mistake in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">the</span> credit roll <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">about</span> a character who may or may not be Quill. According to the Quill article on Wiki, there have been four characters with the name of Quill in the Marvel universe, but as the character in the film version of X-Men 3 is female, the only female character called Quill is most likely the subject of the heady discussion. The argument became <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">truly</span> epic, climaxing on the 16<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">th</span> of October when <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Rglong</span> posted a transcription of the DVD commentary where director Brett <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Rattner</span> and writers Zak Penn and Simon <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Hinberg</span> confirm his <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">argument</span>. Happily the whole conflict was defused when <a title="User:ThuranX" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ThuranX"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">ThuranX</span></a> intervened, asking the participants to "cool down" and pointing out that "This is just <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Wikipedia</span>." His advice was to "Take it seriously, but not so seriously you blow a gasket doing so." Words of wisdom indeed. It is a good thing that the X-Men 3 article on Wiki is being so sensibly administered.<br /><br />In finishing, the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">discussion</span> page for the article on Curling (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Curling">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Curling</a>) is a prime example of what these pages are for. The most recent, nay controversial <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">discussion</span> on the table is a Minor Clean-up conducted in an orderly fashion by an anonymous Wiki editor: "I removed many "(See ________ below)" from the "Basics of the Game" section, as they really broke up sentence flow and made it harder to read" A modern day Superman? This reporter hopes so.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328689115621840549.post-64249616804278271452008-01-21T05:06:00.000-08:002008-01-21T06:18:47.711-08:00The Confessions of a JugglerIn 2005 I juggled potatoes, on Fitzroy Street St Kilda, for a cheese burger meal from McDonalds.<br /><br />Two years before, during my first year at uni, I had sought a distraction from the tiring task of study. I picked up a golf ball, a conch shell, and a Lego man, and within three hours I'd taught myself the art of juggling. Three weeks later I'd amassed the meagre pittance required of me to purchase proper juggling balls, and I perfected my talents.<br /><br />While I completed my studies in Witchcraft and Demonology (at the University of Queensland), all the while I continued practising. I changed from job to job and moved from place to place, and soon amassed a variety of props to juggle with. I had a punch bowl full of wax fruit from which I plucked pineapples, oranges and grapes; from a bucket of Lego I constructed cars I that I tossed from hand to hand, and, yes, there was an endless proliferation of balls.<br /><br />For some reason I never demonstrated my skills in public. It was as if they could only be used to benefit me, and if they should ever be employed in the task of entertaining others, I would loose every gift I had with the objects in mid air.<br /><br />So, everything changed when I came to Melbourne.<br /><br />I arrived a penniless wreckage. The clothes I wore were so 1997 that I couldn't be seen by ordinary mortals. My rent was up and like all ways I was out of money. All I could afford was three potatoes from Safeway. I took those potatoes and I went up onto Fitzroy street, just down the block from the Elephant and Wheelbarrow. There, next to the el-cheapo mobile phone shop, I juggles my potatoes.<br /><br />I hadn't had any time to clean them, so the dirt flew out over the crowd. Kids anchored their parents in front of me for a minute or so, while I whirled those root vegetables around in the air in front of them. I tossed them under my leg and I spun around and caught them behind my back. For the crescendo I caught one in my mouth and stuck the other two in my eye sockets, casting my arms wide,begging for applause.<br /><br />I made enough money to buy a cheese burger meal. I'd've been better fed if I'd cooked the potatoes and et them.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328689115621840549.post-41669209555943964342008-01-17T05:31:00.000-08:002008-01-17T06:15:08.992-08:00Telstra and ANZ... Not Close ChumsTelstra began three quarters of a century ago, when Australia was brand new. They delivered letters mostly, and sent telegrams, and their mobile phone coverage was rubbish. They were called Austalia Post in those days. Later they became known as Telecom, but there were too many 'Telecoms' on the international market, and the government didn't like having to run the behemouth it had become, so they made 'Telecom Australia' into 'Telstra' and sold just under half of it to outside investors.<br /><br />ANZ is over a century old. They used to transfer funds from one account to another, and still do. They have big vaults somewhere, probably underground, but they don't tell any one where they are. Clues to the location of this treasure are hidden in the documents of Edmund Barton. The acronym stands for 'Australian and New Zealand (Bank of)'. ANZ has always been an incorporated company. In this way, it traces its origins back to the Dutch East India company, which everyone knows was founded by pirates on a dare.<br /><br />Telstra gave up on Australia Post during the second War of the Worlds, instead concentrating on its network of messenger pigeons to provide mobile coverage to every Australian. The scheme was put to an end when, in nineteen fifty three, passanger pigeons in the United States unionized and created an Extinction Level Event for the telecomunications industry.<br /><br />In 1987 ANZ, along with most other banks in the world, suffered from "Black Wednesday"; on August 13, every orbital stock broker super computer crashed. The sudden rain of firey debris raised ocean temperatures by an average of 4.3 degrees Celsius.<br /><br />In '96 the War of Independance created two factions in Telstra, the loyalists, and those who supported 'Optus', or 'The Option' of an alternate telecomunications company. At this point, most comunications were carried out with experts using smoke signils. The time of the fire ant had not yet come.<br /><br />ANZ took 'the Option' and uses Optus for its magic fire ant communications systems.<br /><br />That's why Telstra and ANZ are not close chums.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328689115621840549.post-72613916513090369862008-01-16T05:02:00.000-08:002008-01-16T05:08:34.418-08:00Times and LivesI work for a bank. I have done so for three days. Before I worked for a bank, I worked for the telephone company. THE telephone company. Where I come from there is only one. I can convince you to buy something. I can make you buy a mobile phone. It's a mutant ability. I can make you spend $1000 on adverising. I am an okay salesman. There are better.<br /><br />That's how I pay my rent.<br /><br />I write for my soul. I read for it too. I get called 'Adam' a lot. Apparently it's just random. The people who call me that have never met each other.<br /><br />I like not being nice.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0