by on

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the average blogger to correlate all his links. We live on a placid island of ignorance, in the midst of black seas of Wikis, and it was not meant that we should check the references. The Wiki editors, each biased in their own direction, have hitherto harmed us little. But someday, the linking together of barely-associated articles will open up such terrifying vistas of the internet–and of our own frightful pagerank therein–that we will either go mad from the revelation, or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of icanhascheezburger.com (Many apologies, Howard–MM.)

It all started with this post from Thingy–I realized I had never found out the origin of the common phrase “it was a dark and stormy night. So, I followed the link and it turns out, it was from this guy Edward Bulwer-Lytton. He was a prolific writer who also coined the phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword”.

So, I decided to read some of his books. Being a fan of horror, I chose to start off with The Haunted and the Haunters: or, The House and the Brain. It starts off as a fairly generic ghost story, but the end has some very interesting bits of philosophizing. Not a great work, but an enjoyable read, all in all.

He also wrote a book called Vril, the Power of the Coming Race. I tried to read it, but it was pretty dull. The plot did remind me a little of Arthur Machen’s later work The Novel of the Black Seal, which influenced Lovecraft greatly. But apparently, Vril inspired something of a “cult following”, and by that I mean that people actually thought it was true. The book is about a super-race that lives underground and has a powerful substance “Vril”, which allows them to do all sorts of amazing things. Some, notably the theosophists, believed that “Vril” existed.

Which is curious to me, because I know basically three things about theosophists:

  1. In the paragraph immediately after the one I parodied above in Call of Cthulhu, Lovecraft mentions the theosophists briefly.
  2. The Theosophical Society was founded by Helena Blavatsky, who I know about solely because of the lines in the Warren Zevon song “Sacrificial Lambs”: “Madame Blavatsky and her friends/Changed lead into gold, and back again.”
  3. They have one weird logo. Observe:
Theosophical Society emblem, via Wikipedia

I only saw this symbol the other day, when I was reading about the lyrics to the They Might Be Giants song “I Palindrome I”, which includes the lyric “I am a snake head eating the head on the opposite side”. The technical word for this is Ouroboros. That word is also whence the name of the character Borous in the Fallout: New Vegas add-on Old World Blues is derived.

“Hold up, Mysterious Man,” cries the bemused reader. “What the Devil is the point of all this free-association?” Well, I’ll tell you: there was some philosopher I was reading about many months ago who had some sort of reasoning system of free-association, “correlating contents” and looking for subtle inter-connectivities in Nature. It was really interesting, but in recent days I have searched Wikipedia with considerable diligence, but I can’t find his page. I think his first name might have been Charles, but that’s all I can remember. Any information you can furnish me with as to who the guy was would be appreciated.

by on

I saw a guy at the gym yesterday who had some sort of bizarre symbols tattooed all over his arms. I couldn’t tell what they were, and since he was lifting 50 pound dumbbells and wore an expression that suggested he’d punch you for chatting with him, I didn’t ask about their meaning.

I don’t understand tattoos in general, though. I’ve never seen a person, male or female, who looked better with tattoos. Now, I don’t say it’s impossible that there could be, but I’ve never seen one. Plus, you add in the health risks and it seems to me like it’s just a high-risk, low-reward proposition.

However, tattoos seem pretty popular, so I figure there must be some reason for it. I remember seeing an article in Star Wars Insider a long time ago about people with Star Wars tattoos. Here are some pictures, and while I have to admit the Cloud City picture is pretty awesome, I still don’t see how it could be worthwhile.

I’ve also observed it’s popular to get foreign-language tattoos–especially Chinese or Japanese characters. The danger here, though, is that you should really be damn sure about the language you’re getting permanently written on you. I read a story once about a guy who thought he was getting some awesome slogan in Latin, but it didn’t mean what he thought it meant. It was an insult. You can get away with that with a dead language like Latin, but suppose you accidentally got something stupid written in Chinese. There’s at least 1.3 billion people in the world who would laugh at you. You’re bound to bump into one of them eventually.

Actually, there is one reason I’d consider getting a tattoo, but computer technology has fortunately rendered it unnecessary. I would have considered getting the birthdays of my friends and family on the back of my hand or something so that I wouldn’t look like a jerk by forgetting those events. But I have a computer for that, so it’s a moot point.

Still, I figure there must be something exciting about it, at least to some people. And I’m not trying to criticize or judge the people with tattoos here; if a person likes that sort of thing, it doesn’t bother me. It’s just something I don’t understand.

by on

I once compared the Republican party to the rogue droid G0-T0 from KotOR II. Now, having read Gary Kamiya’s Salon article making the case for robo-Romney, I really don’t know why I didn’t go ahead and compare the Republican nominee-in-waiting himself to that deceptive droid. The similarities are many, particularly in the way G0-T0 poses as a human to accomplish his economic and political goals.

(Hat Tip to Eurobrat for the Salon article.)

*From Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

by on

So, in my last post, I expressed some disbelief about the claim this one dude made that the government has time-traveling capability. But he also said they have teleporters, which even though highly unlikely, is at least theoretically possible. Even though I don’t think it’s true, it is fun to think about. So, naturally, I read up on teleportation.

It’s all pretty interesting; especially the part about how if teleportation were made possible for humans, it would mean that when a person steps into the teleporter he effectively “dies” and a clone is created on the other end. All in all, I think I’d prefer to take the bus. Still, it would be useful for moving stuff from place to place.

On the other hand, one of the major life lessons I’ve learned from video games is that teleportation experiments inevitably lead to an invasion of evil monsters from another dimension.

by on

Have you heard about this guy who says he was part of a secret government project that used time travel? I don’t know if this is a hoax or just a guy who’s got a few screws loose. (Would a sonic screwdriver fix that?) In any case, it’s sort of an… interesting story. My favorite part:

“It’s an inexpensive, environmentally friendly means of transportation,” Webre told The Huffington Post. “The Defense Department has had it for 40 years and [former Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld used it to transport troops to battle.”

Rumsfeld.

Used it.

To transport troops.

To battle.

I didn’t think Rumsfeld was a very good Defense Secretary, but somehow I think even he could have managed to win a war if he had access to time machines.

I also love the “environmentally friendly” bit. If they can travel through time; you don’t need to worry about the environment, you can just keep going back in time to when Earth was at its most pristine.

I love conspiracy theories like this. They’re just too funny.

by on

I don’t think I’m going to post anymore of these after this. This one simply takes the cake:

Hi there, simply become alert to your weblog thru Google, and found that it is truly informative. I am gonna watch out for brussels. I’ll appreciate if you happen to proceed this in future. A lot of other people shall be benefited from your writing. Cheers!

The first, third and fourth sentences are just standard spam; they almost make sense, but don’t quite. But that second sentence! “I am gonna watch out for brussels”? What does it mean? What was it supposed to mean? Do you think he’s talking about the capital of Belgium, or the vegetables named after it? Either way, why should he watch out for it?

Seriously, I’ve seen some funny spam, but this one is pretty hard to beat.

by on

Simon Doonan writes in Slate lamenting peoples’ fascination with celebrities who have accomplished nothing. It is an old complaint by now, but still a valid one.

In a lot of ways, I think the interest in celebrities goes back to the days of the aristocracy, when people would be interested in the social goings-on in the upper-classes. We have no aristocracy proper in America, so we use the next best thing.

Doonan mentions how there are no revered philosophers. I guess that’s true, but I will say that the late, great Christopher Hitchens was basically a celebrity intellectual. Maybe you didn’t see his picture on the gossip papers at the supermarket, but he was pretty widely known.

Famous scientists? Well, there’s Stephen Hawking, though I guess he might be famous more for his overcoming adversity than for his actual scientific work.

Actually, come to think of it, both those guys are British. And hey, the British have an aristocracy, too! Dammit, who won that Revolution, anyway?

by on

 

Over at Thingy’s blog, she and Sue J. are discussing the new Three Stooges film. Neither of them are big Stooges fans. I can’t say that I consider them the height of comedy, but I usually do find their little flicks good for a chuckle. The above clip is a good example; it’s four minutes of labored jokes and contrived misunderstandings, but Curly’s last line is pretty funny.

In general, I’ve noticed that men tend to be much more amused by the Stooges’ antics than women are. Maybe women have more sophisticated senses of humor than men do.

I think my favorite Stooges short was “Goofs and Saddles”, a western-themed outing at the conclusion of which Curly knocks a box of bullets into a meat grinder, which miraculously works like a machine gun, and forces their pursuers to retreat. So, not exactly the most understated and urbane humor ever.

Maybe it’s the slapstick violence; after all, I think women in general tend to prefer less violence in their entertainment than do men. Thus, it amuses the male of the species when Moe hits Curly on the head with, for instance, a sledgehammer and the sound of a loud bell is heard, but the female thinks it is just stupid. Or maybe it’s that women know that when kids see the Stooges, their first instinct will be to imitate them. Women know this is unlikely to end well. I hate to resort to stereotypes like that, though, so maybe it’s something else.

That said, I do not intend to see the new Three Stooges flick, which looks moronic without being charming. Frankly, I don’t understand why it was ever made, for almost precisely the same reasons I don’t understand why the movie Game Change was made.

by on

How did I not hear about this sooner?

Curses! They knew my one weakness! Now I’ll have no choice but to vote for Ron Paul. Even if he’s not actually running as an independent come November, I’ll still have to write his name in.

Okay, I’m just kidding. Don’t worry. But really, this is bizarre. It figures to easily surpass Deus Ex as the best video game for Ron Paul fans, I’ll say that much. I don’t know if it’s a joke or not, but in my opinion, it doesn’t really do wonders for the Paul’s image as a “serious” candidate.

Read more about it here.

by on

What should I write a poem about?

That is something I would like to figure out.

There’s lots of folks who could write a decent poem,

And what is more, I’m pleased to say I know ’em:

There’s Shelley and there’s Yeats and there’s Edgar Allan Poe,

But how they wrote their poems is something I don’t know.

What should I write a poem about?

I feel that I’ve attempted ev’ry route.

I tried to write some poems without a form or rhyme

And it came out as pure nonsense ev’ry single time!

I even tried to write in other than my native tongue,

And bless me, what a Götterdämmerung!

What should I write a poem about?

That is something I can’t seem to figure out.