Octopus Genesus

When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then the Lord said, “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days — and also afterward — when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.

Genesis 6:1–4

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There is this form of expression I recently thought of calling “corporate art”.

Normally when folks hear a term like this I suspect they think of abstract paintings in hotel lobbies and hallways, or strong looking works of sculpture, or maybe those inspiration posters, or something similar. I remember loki at one point in college mentioned he was sort of fascinated with that kind of thing, or at least the lobby-paintings aspect of it. If I recall this is what inspired the Red Room exhibit (of ’97 or ’98 probably).

Anyway, fascinating though this stuff may be, this isn’t what I mean by “corporate art”.

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Hey people,
I'm the Wizard
of Quiz
I know all the answers
to make you 
flip your lids.
Smoking toadstools
or drinking dry limes
I'm the Quizard 
who quizes
your rotting minds.
Non-stop,
my questions
for fetid thought
under the bazar,
Ooo!  Look!
What's that trinket
on the blanket
to be bought? 
But please
take care
and do beware:
for this is 
just one fun 
question of mine,
among 10 zillion 
for the brain's
fizz cauldron.

I really shouldn’t waste a post on this, but what the heck. As you can see, we’ve added a new header graphic to the page. I wish I could have used .pngs for the word “protozoic” and the alien, but I can’t because of GOD DAMN INTERNET EXPLORER! The .pngs looked better than the current .gifs, but oh well. If you have any issues viewing, leave a comment, I’d like to fix it.

Squidicus Leviticus
stayed up
too late 
looking at the clock
one eyed
when rather lurid
he decided
the clock
was a plate.

Then he slept,
and while he did,
all the roman 
numerals loosened
and trickled
Leviticus past,
I, III, V,
just about that fast.

Till from 
his slumber
he jarred
eyed wide
to stop his watch
in a tear cried, 
"This plate is Death,
for goodness sakes!"

I M
L RON
from 
ancient
stars,
now may
I borrow
your
IRON
for my
new blue shirt,
I am
serious
not
IRON IC (SIC)
for
I 
dream
from
B-YOND
B-WARE
what
the seer
sees
in
false
light,
for
the
Solar 
System
is 
Solar
Powered.

With Dragon’s most recent post about eggs, I thought I would briefly plug a sort of “egg experiment” that I myself was involved in.

While I living in Essex, my friend Russ (Rebelli0n) told me about a feast he and his friends used to make called Egg Mountain. I was so utterly intrigued by the monstrosity that he described to me, I made him swear that he would show me the art of cooking it. One evening he did, and the now infamous Egg Mountain movie resulted. The video, if I recall correctly, was rather fittingly shot over Easter vacation. Russ’s girlfriend (Caroline) and our friend Tamara helped out with the cooking.

We’ve posted the video on our site in a small format, but it can also be download on Russ’s site, in a larger avi format. Regardless of where you download the video from, I encourage all to check out Russ’s site, Tactical Syntax, which always has insightful commentaries (most recently about the newest incarnations of Dr. Who and Capt. Scarlet) and features the many projects that Russ is involved with. Russ has indicated that he will soon be posting his movie Eldridge (2004), which when he does, I encourage anyone at all interested in independent movie productions and science fiction to watch. It is stellar in every sense of the word.

Finally, for those who watch Egg Mountain, pay close attention to the end of the video where a picture of Dick Van Dyke and a cartoon version of Van Dyke are featured. Russ explained to me that he did not place Dick Van Dyke into the video to be funny and campy. Nor is it a coincidence that both a real picture of Van Dyke and cartoon picture appear. Rather, Van Dyke, and what might be labeled as the meta-Van Dyke, are placed in the video to alert others to what might be Van Dyke’s more problematic connection to the advent of the DVD. At some point, I hope that Russ will elaborate more just what this connection is.

In other words, check his site regularly.

Download mp4 of Egg Mountain here.

As per bear’s request, I checked out the possibility of converting NSFs to Midi format, specifically the Spelunker theme for his cell phone. After quick consulting with my Minibosses friends I found there is quite a nice app for that called nsf2midi that not only does a great job of aproximating the sound from the NSFs, but also lets you tweak everything from there. For example, when converting the Spelunker theme it set a closed high-hat or something instead of a snare, but I was able to just change all that with a drop-down menu. So, if anyone needs a conversion, it looks like I’m open for business.

Get spelunker.mid here

For a long time now, probably since I got out of college, I’ve been cooking eggs occasionally. And, except for those already cracked before the package was opened, I have yet to find a bad egg no matter how old the container. Or at least I haven’t found one that actually had “the smell of rotten eggs”.

Over time this has spawned the Good Egg Hypothesis, which is something to the extent that: An unbroken, properly refrigerated egg never goes bad.

Today I did an experiment that put this hypothesis to the most extreme test I’ve ever administered it. I had a taste for hard boiled eggs and there were two left in the carton so I slipped them in to boil. In the past I’ve noticed eggs usually sink to the bottom of the pot, but these eggs floated right at the top. The one even floated nearly a quarter out of the water.

I figured this was probably a bad sign so I checked out the internet for info and found these instructions on how to hard boil eggs. Among other things the instructions say that older eggs almost float and are better, but that eggs which actually do float are too old and shouldn’t be used.

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So generally I spend most of my free time messing around with pen-and-paper roleplaying games. Although I don’t know if “messing around” is exactly the right phrase to describe what I do. Maybe it would be more accurate to say “wallowing in them and obsessing over them like a junkie with his drug of choice”. There are a lot of people who suffer from this particular habit apparently and I usually get encouragement in my addiction from the good people over at rpg.net.

Some of these people do actually seem to be decent, well balanced folks. But when I say “good people” here I am of course using this phrase ironically or at least as flattery. I mean “good people” in the same sense that western Europeans of centuries past referred to the fairies as “the good people”. Basically in that many are wise or impressive, but also strange or unkenable and likely as not alien to the narrator’s cosmology and morality. The sort of creatures that should be referred to as “good” out of politeness lest they take a malign interest in the you and curdle your milk or worse.

These good people keep me engaged with their threads on roleplaying matters. But after awhile the really compelling threads stop coming so I’m forced to turn to my own devices and get back to the actual RPG design that I claim to be some kind of minor expert in.

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