Month: March 2009

the darkest of the darkest purple

Our Lady of the Metaphor, as discovered by Vandonovan in the truly terrible novel, Silk & Steel:

So, let’s pretend it’s pretty late and you’re doing a little light reading before bed, as you sometimes do. This book is one that you bought used probably fifteen years ago and it has sat on your shelf since then. Now, you’ve decided to read it and within the first page you realize it’s one of those fantasy novels, written by a man who wants to idolize his fantasy princess dream woman. But after he gets past describing her in chapter one you think, okay. Maybe there’s a good story in this book anyway.

Anyway, it’s only 200 pages, so even if it’s awful it’ll be quick.

So it’s late. You’re about halfway finished with the book. The princess has met the faerie king and he’s brought her to the faerie court! She’s met the faerie wives! And you turn the page and come across this:

Also see:

  • explaining the twinkly Mormon plot of Twilight by stoney321
  • “books to make my flist’s heads explode: John Ringo” by hradzka.

    • space bat puts a pang of happy into my heart

    Shuttle-Riding Bat Dies The Most Glorious Death Imaginable:

    On a cool spring eve March 15th, 2009 a bat, crippled and wistful, clung to the Space Shuttle Discovery as it was thrust toward the great beyond. Goodbye and godspeed, my magnificent Spacebat.

    At some point during the countdown, Spacebat—a Free-Tailed Chiroptera—was spotted latched to the foam of the external fuel tank, occasionally moving but never letting go. Wildlife experts deduced that he had injured his wing and shoulder, leaving him with little chance of survival. He remained on the tank until launch. NASA’s cold report?

    The animal likely perished quickly during Discovery’s climb into orbit.

    True! But here’s how it should have read:

    Bereft of his ability to fly and with nowhere to go, a courageous bat climbed aboard our Discovery with stars in his weak little eyes. The launch commenced, and Spacebat trembled as his frail mammalian body was gently pushed skyward. For the last time, he felt the primal joy of flight; for the first, the indescribable feeling of ascending toward his dream—a place far away from piercing screeches and crowded caves, stretching forever into fathomless blackness. Whether he was consumed in the exhaust flames or frozen solid in the stratosphere is of no concern. We know that Spacebat died, but his dream will live on in all of us.

    and it’s root root root for the home team

    A shoal of robotic fish which can detect pollution in the water are set to released into the sea off Spain.

    Does anyone in Portland have a spare couch Jon from the UK could use for a couple of days next week? He’s spent the last few days at my place, an exemplary guest, Vancouver being the first stop in his couch surfing trip down the Pacific coast, all the way to Mexico.

    Extreme Sheep Herding: What happens when you cover sheep in nets of LEDs and play pong with them.

    today: plus ten for attending the lock-picking session. minus several hundred for missing breakfast.

    Matt “blackbelt” Jones is a clever, clever man, enough so that his spiffy keen blog is in my bookmark folder marked Required Reading right next to my favourite traveler, adventurer and corporate anthropologist, Jan Chipchase. Today’s good news: Matt’s wicked design reaction to Keep Calm and Carry On, Get Excited and Make Things, has been turned into a t-shirt!


    For Men. For Women.

    No, I can’t twitter from there. I do not have a mobile phone.


    A new comic in The Secret Knots: “On Spam“

    Morning just wasn’t sporting today. Dinner last night, an improbable feast of only meat, cowboy delivered by sword to each table, led into a punishing bout of intense karaoke that lasted until an unwholesome, head smashing o’clock in the morning. I slept poorly at the hotel in a spare bed on the 19th floor offered by someone who lacks a real name, certain I should have simply tried to stay awake for tradition’s sake, curled up on the 31st floor, quick in a couch, a chatting apostle at the altar of party, until dawn wedged streaky fingers into the surgical gray sky.

    Tonight instead, perhaps. Tomorrow almost certainly. Tonight, though, Dragos may have my house keys, but I’m not going back until later, until after I go home and dye my hair, charge my damned camera battery, and cook dinner with David. (It pained me almost physically to be on the rooftop deck of the Wall Center penthouse and not be able to take pictures.) I need rest. I am yawning at my desk, half baked, certain that I have not been eating enough to keep myself cohesive, and my eyes are trying to lock closed when I blink. No matter the addictive charm or ballistic voltage offered by CanSec, I am not quite caught up with myself for unrestricted thrills.

    Hacker loses finger in motorcycle accident, replaces it with USB drive.

    her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever

    Twitter: Fake Christopher Walken.

    Clicking through ticket after ticket, work is interrupted by cookies and impromptu myths, glad for the heart, subscription hard on the brain. Planning tonight over text messages, chocolate/hazelnut cake Y/N, the a/s/l of bakeries as David hunts on foot, tracking down baked goods downtown as I sit trapped in the office, my company a lemon ginger cup of tea, testing music tracks that have yet to be released, wagers of popularity against winter coats in small sugary solfedge doses.

    This week holds so much relative, discriminating promise as to be nigh unbearable. Already microelectronic moments have begun to develop like rosebuds blushing on the tip of my tongue. Wrapped in the untethered joy of feeling inadequate, (like music you want to play so loud you bleed from the eyes), I am caught by a thread of invitation punctuation I am not in control of, confronted with an arsenal of black t-shirts and faked secret societies in shaken hotel rooms stocked with cryptic, cutting edge commentary in twisted acronym languages I only half recognize. It’s glorious. Comfortable and irreversible, like swimming through a seething bath of sweet, primitive nanobots programmed to overwhelm with fuzzy blankets.

    “We are All Gonna Die: 100 meters of existence

    who’s up for making some noise?

    A composer friend recently took up the pen again after a very long hiatus and is looking for local musicians willing to perform his finished music. I can assure you he’s fun, his work is top notch, and you won’t be disappointed. Here’s the basic info:

    * It’s 149 bars, running at just over 10 minutes in length;
    * The instrumentation is for french horn, violin, viola, ‘cello and baritone/low tenor vocalist (range: F-sharp below Middle C to G one and a half octaves above Middle C). A vocalist with training/experience for singing on the stage is preferred, but not absolutely necessary;
    * The primary key is D major, with a few modulations to A major, E major, B-flat major, and B minor (not necessarily in that order). The time signature is 6/8.

    If you happen to know of anybody who plays any of the above instruments, (including yourselves), and would be willing to give this music a try, please let me know and I’ll put you in touch with him. Thanks in advance!