Because you are bored?

Thanks to all you crazy mumzies out there who screamed in deafening tones inaudible to human ears, but really quite piercing and annoying to both muskrats and centipedes—several of which subsequently contacted one of our many famously drunken field agents—I will now regale my personal slice of internet void with another Totally True Tale, stolen once more from other, more qualified and experienced plumbers, each with an English Major.

~~

Yesterday, several events transpired which were barely notable, but which, at this point, serve to do little more than act as a setup to a stupid joke, which I will bury here for you to find.*(Hint: It's in pretty much every single thing I ever wrote.)

~~

So, last time Dan Harbaugh ate a tea cup, it was on account of the fascinating crunch the porcelain made as it shattered with every bite. Little pieces crumbled and flaked to the floor. It wasn't easy to chew, so he tried to make every bite small enough to swallow with as little chewing as possible.

This time, the tea cup was made of an edible sugar-based enamel, and not only tasted better, but lacked the satisfying crunch he found so fascinating. Also, it melted pretty fast, resulting in the handle breaking off and dumping the steaming hot tea all over both Dan and the floor.

The linoleum floor was scarred with age, and curled up in reaction to the hot tea. It was now sticky and stained, which was just about normal for linoleum.

At this point, Dan realized his dream of marketing edible tea cups crumbled with his prototype.

Speaking of dreams, some random girl across the galaxy was recounting one which she had dreamt the previous evening, and the poor sap whose ear she had assaulted with her monotonous droning for the better part of an hour was lulled off into one of his own.

In this dream the girl was recounting, she had met Dan Harbough, tea cup eating genius, and his giant collection of little robots he had purchased with the proceeds of his hugely successful edible tea cup fortune.

His robots were brilliantly coloured and clicked around merrily, and were completely oblivious to the fact that they each had an exactly opposite evil cousin somewhere. They went about their silly little tasks: stacking blocks, posting on internet forums, and an spreading cheese on crackers while Dan watched football and consumed tea cups filled with beer.

Meanwhile, their evil brothers, not quite as brilliant, and not quite as silly, constructed dreams in a giant dirty factory, with smoke billowing from the tops of twisted little smoke stacks.

These dreams were packaged up neatly, and then shot out of a huge cannon in a pretty parabolic arc into the heads of little children while they slept. This, not surprisingly, was designed to make them want to purchase sub-par toys constructed by the world's worst toy company, the Kakos Corporation. All the toys made by this toy company were not only incredibly cheap, but were mostly broken before they even left the factory.

The aforementioned girl, heretofore and thusly etc. shall henceforth be known as "Lottie", after much deliberation, contacted Dan, and discovered that he did not yet have a successful business constructing and selling edible tea cups, and his robot collection was minuscule. Her dream did not reflect reality as it was currently known.

Excepting that those evil robots were actually really busy at work constructing dreams, but that's another story.

~~

* You won't find it down here.

All things go

Someone mashed together some Sufjan Stevens with Coldplay, and the results are quite good.

All credit to the original frood.

Zoom zoom zoom

To soar on the wings of an eagle, or make extreme 10g turns out of a 150mph dive in the guise of a falcon! Or fly twixt the trees as a feathered hawk?

Round 2

Q: How awesome is this?

A: Scary awesome!

Sgt. Jack Ramsay is standing by in case things get out of control

Q&A

Q:How amazing is this?

A: Pretty amazing.

It was a dark and stormy night

When the eccentric Count Rourke disappeared several years ago, the local village hoped for the best, that he had died, and that someone else would take over the Rourke Castle which was rotting way and cast a serious shadow of evil over an otherwise picture-perfect, innocent looking little farm village.

The castle had a number of odd little towers which leaned precariously over the ivy covered walls, and little piles of shattered rocks testified to the incredibly unstable nature of this stone beast.

Rows of huge black birds crenelated the walls, and large black cables snaked around everything like strangling vines, humming with diabolic power.

Unfortunately for the local optimists, the Count returned one dark, stormy day, and it became obvious to all that he had finally gone round the bend, no longer eccentric, he was now fully insane. His typically unkempt hair had gone completely white, and he rode the largest hound any had ever seen.

He rode through the village, returning from parts unknown, and once again, took up residence in his black abode, crumbling though it was.

Rumor was quick to fill the town with gossip, telling fantastic stories about the Count's adventures, each more outlandish than the last, but none of them found any doubters. The Count was just the sort of man one would imagine in such ridiculous exploits as were retold over every pint of foamy beer, or hinted at over every cup of black and boiling tea.

While the town muddled their heads with these tales of high adventure and dark deeds, the Count never once appeared again outside the walls of his castle.

Inside, he began construction on a vast machine which extended from the basement to the highest spire atop the highest tower. None but he knew the purpose for this machine, and none but he ever touched it, those unfortunate few who delivered him his supplies never ventured beyond the entrance, and could learn nothing of value.

One day, late in the fall season, after the harvest, another storm gathered, similar to the one which carried the Count back home not long ago. This storm stopped directly over the castle, and seemed to wait there for something.

Inside, the Count was muttering in an unknown tongue, something written inside an ancient tome, pages and pages of mysterious text and pictures which appeared to move in the dim light which filled the room.

Now the Count poured a vial of a thick red liquid into a glass tube, and the machine rumbled to life.

Most of the village sheltered from the storm, the castle and whatever went on inside were the last things on the minds of the inhabitants, but one. He was driving his sheep to safety from the storm, and noticed that the storm appeared to halt directly above the castle, so after the wooly sheep were taken care of, he returned to his cottage, and ate a loaf of bread with some cheese, while he watched the storm tumble and rage over the castle.

As he watched, fingers of lightning seemed to reach down, and grasp the castle itself. The ground rumbled and shook, and before his very eyes, the castle began to rise into the air, and stand on stony feet.

"What devilry is this?" The shepherd thought, he shook his head, rubbed his eyes, and stared. Sure enough, the castle stretched out arms, legs, even stony fingers extended from the structure. Two lights on the top shone like eyes in the darkness. The castle shook several boulders free, with vines and cables dragging, the strange castle walked away into the darkness, and the boiling storm followed.

The next morning, the villagers stood around and stared at the hilltop where the castle should have been, but this bright morn, naught was left but the ancient foundations, surrounded by piles of what had been walls.

When the shepherd told his story, none believed him. The Count may have been the devil himself, but there was no possible way a castle could come to life and simply walk away.

A hundred years passed since that day when the Castle Rourke blew away in that frightful storm, and the Count had no doubt long since given up the ghost, but Rumor has told me stories of huge buildings which appear out of nowhere, and leave just as mysteriously and quickly. They are typically said to haunted, and in one particularly unbelievable story, one stands up and fights off an invading army, as if it were alive.

Woohoo

I'm about to reveal a huge secret, heretofore unknown to the general public.

Wait for it...

I'm a giant nerd. Not hugely giant, mind you, but fairly giant. Thus, I present leaked(?) photos from the upcoming Captain America movie, for which I previously had no expectations.

(source: (and more picses) @DigitalTrends.com)

Bonkers! The fruit that bonks you out

Here's a quick Monty Python-esque short that made me chuckle:

Animated Short no.1 from Yum Yum London on Vimeo.

Complain at your leisure

Anonymous wrote:

"I would like to see reviews of ancient greek restaurants, explorations of comparative mythology with a view to relating the roots of Western mythology to the giants of Genesis, maybe Ovid re-told for today's add folks..."

They are clearly insane. Epicurus or Ἐπίκουρος, wrote the definitive guide to ancient Greek restaurants years ago, though I admire Anonymous's ability to spell 'restaurant' correctly, something I cannot do.

As to 'comparative mythology', I can't venture to do more than make things up entirely and post essays from other people and claim them as my own.

I do find it interesting though, that modern man believes everyone in the past to be morons, that we must have evolved from ape-like knuckle-dragging dolts, mouth breathing imbeciles too stupid to do more than hit his own useless fingers with his recently invented hammer, while the ancients believed their predecessors must have been descended from gods.

Whether this is because of insane pride on the part of ancients or modern man is hard to say (it is entirely because of pride), imagine Aristotle and Richard 'The Mouth' Dawkins picking up a fossilized bone and think of the difference in their interpretation. Also, which one is more arrogant?

We, of course, have the 'advantage' of genetic science, so we know that we share a lot of DNA with sea-sponges and thus, must be related to Brillo pads.

I suppose many might say that myths are fairy tales that the uneducated believed, that intelligent ancients didn't believe them anymore than intelligent modern man believes in the tooth fairy. Perhaps. That didn't stop the ancient intelligent minds from giving lip service to these myths at least, showing that they found value in establishing an ideal for society to live up to. It is a useful thing to be able to say 'if granddad fought a hydra once, you can pick up a gecko, dummy.'

Forgot this title thing

While I patiently wait for the imaginary readers or possibly future archaeologists who might stumble across this blog, buried in burnt-out hard drive platters scattered across the post-apocalyptic desert after the great internet flame wars end in a planet scouring explosion of bile and nuclear fission, I thought I'd share the following.

I was recently listening to a little historic background on Vergil's "Aeneid", and a couple of Mark Anthony and Cleopatra's kids were mentioned, Alexander Helios, and Cleopatra Selene. Helios and Selene translate to 'Sun' and 'Moon' respectively. Perhaps slightly hippie sounding at first, I immediately recalled a story by George MacDonald. You can read it here.

George MacDonald plays a few word games of his own in the story: Photogen, Nycteris, Aurora, and Vesper, for instance, have meanings of their own which add color and depth to the story.

Be careful what you ask for

Please submit ideas for publication on this blog, but remember I refuse to stoop to pictures of dancing babies, because I've already gone that low, and it felt dirty.