We wish we could write on top of our presentation page:
"This house may contain artistic nerdity. Do not look if it offends you."
Yesternight we had a rather peculiar dream.
Our mother was driving our sister & ourself to Montreal, where we were supposed to go to an amusement park. Somewhere along the way we got separated & wandered in a touristy shopping district, & all of a sudden all our friends were there. We were just about to buy expensive exported jewelry made from nuts when the clerk said they were about to close. It was taking us forever to count our change, so the clerk eventually got tired & asked us to take care of the transaction ourself, entrusting us with the cash register & even leaving the shop & turning off the lights on his way out. Somewhere along the line our friends thought it was a good idea to leave an art piece in the store, so we plastered the walls with comic book pages with empty speech bubbles. We proceeded to fill the speech bubbles then & there, & then ran in the rain after the shop clerk & assistants, for no apparent reason.
I'd like to see Freud deal with this one.
Misreading Psalms can be (somewhat) funny.
Psalm 119:153, as misread by Ha[Mekashef]:
"Behold my affliction and deliver me,
for I do not forget your claw."
Yesterday night was one of the most interesting concerts to have come to Bandeen Hall. Pieces by several local composers were performed, & if we can find any information on said composers we will likely post it here.
Tonight Doppelgänger Effekt won a (rather low-profile) battle of the bands.
Recording time! Yippee!
Deep inside, you know you want to take our poll.
Stolen from [Adaman]'s diary, here are our superhero scores:
Green Lantern 80%
Batman 80%
Hulk 65%
Spider-Man 60%
(...)
&, more importantly, our villain scores:
The Joker 64%
Poison Ivy 59%
Dark Phoenix 56%
(...)
Green Goblin 46%
Pity. we would have liked to be the Green Goblin. Oh well.
Stolen from [Sunrose], excerpted from a longish survey:
2. You are the first to arrive at the scene of an accident but it turns out that the person hurt is your worst enemy, do you help or walk away?
This almost happened to us. It was an interesting experience; it made us realize that the moral imperative to assist a fellow human takes absolutely nothing away from the feelings of resentment one might have towards a person.
Ultimately we found ourselves doing the right thing for purely deontological reasons. It was extremely painful, but not difficult. It was like surviving a grave illness. When an organism becomes sick, it does not choose between getting better or dying: it puts all its energy on survival. Likewise when a situation presents itself where the life & well-being of another is at stake, the necessity to act morally is no less obvious than gravity. It's not a matter of virtue or compassion; there is no ambiguity -- moral action falls as a matter of course.
Which brings us to think that people who affect others at the fundamental level of life & personaly integrity -- through immoral action or moral inaction (the two are equivalent) -- are not breaking a spiritual law. They are taking liberties with human nature, with the very basis of human understanding. In doing so they risk more than punishment in the hereafter -- they subject themselves, not the to flimsy bogeymen of religion, but to indomitable psychic confusion, & losing their references in proper behaviour they become non-human.
So today we tried very hard to listen to a broadcast of a Pierre Lapointe concert.
For those who don't know (we suppose there should be many out there) Pierre Lapointe is the latest thing in Québec. Critics all agree he is an excellent songwriter, & it just so happens that even the masses like him. We hope our fellow countrymen don't drive this one to suicide.
We say "tried to listen" because we got several phone calls during the aforementionne
The answer to the above is "not", & it came right after the credits, in the form of yet another insipid teen-reality show. We cannot as yet understand how the industry continues to produce such bland, contemptible & unintelligent nonsense.
Another thing we cannot understand is the Internauts' tendency to taunt their fellows. We have witnessed so much gratuitous hate on YouTube we are gradually becoming disgusted with the media. Where is the fun in verbally abusing a stranger whose only crime is to have produced a film you are not even obligated to watch? If your aesthetic ideals are so important & you must take offence, trash the work, not the author!
This planet is depressing.
Happy 5th Day of Hanukkah!
A truncated version of this has entered the Christmas Poetry Competition:
Read on propaganda against gay marriage:
"It's Adam & Eve, not Adam & Steve:
Don't judge me because of my opinions."
We have a few problems with that, actually.
First, it's really Adam and Chava, & besides Chava there might have been others. If you dig deep enough into commentary you'll find at least two more, & possibly a horde of spirits during Adam's solitary wanderings.
Secondly, of course it's not Adam & Steve. It would have had to be Adam & Kether, Steve being the English derivative of the Greek Stephanos. Besides, for the joke to rhyme & still be Biblically accurate, you would have to look for a masculine name that ends in “a”. There are many such names, but most of them are polysyllabic.
Thirdly, the mythological archetype for the first human couple is hardly relevant to contemporary human rights issues. In fact, that mythological archetype has no connection whatsoever to either contemporary or historical reality. The Adam & Chava story fails to exemplify that Ancient Israelite men were polygamists & that their widows would remarry. In the Finnish creation myth, the first man leaves this world a virgin; we would like to see someone try to turn that myth into an argument for universal celibacy.
Fourthly, if we can't judge you “because” of your opinions, what can we judge you on? Your good looks? Your macramé skills?
Don't get us wrong. We would really love to be sympathetic to your cause. We would like to believe the argument against homosexual marriage is based in a sophisticated moral philosophy, constructed through a long process of introspection, & excluding gratuitous doctrinal clichés. We just find that very hard to do when we see the same insipid memes all the time.
Compare, say, “Adam & Eve, not Adam & Steve” to another prevalent piece of propaganda, that one pro gay marriage: “Look into my eyes & tell me how my gay marriage harms you.”
Despite its use of unnecessary sensationalism (we really don't have to look into your eyes, dears) the pro-gay meme is much more efficient in that it actually raises a meaningful point. Legal recognition of gay marriage does not affect heterosexual unions at all. So, what is the issue here?
As we understand it, certain ideological authorities are pulling all the strings they can to make certain people feel bad, & by Jove, it's becoming tiresome. Thankfully, that problem is solved in Canada.
We have written a very silly piece of prose for the Elftown Prose Contest; The Galaxy Lives There.
But you should read [Priscilla Primkin]'s entry:My neighbours, the Zwierszowskis. It doesn't have cosmic squirrels, but it has fairies.
Sometimes, I wish there was a polite way to say "your continued existence challenges the aesthetic value of the deontological precept against murder."
Bad internet! Now we want this shirt:
http://www.caf
Cafepress.com is full of interesting Cthulhu designs. WWCD? (What Would Cthulu Do?) is a brilliant moto. The answer, of course, is "devour everything."
If I believed in propagating senseless memes, I would write something along those lines:
[96% OF ELFTOWNERS ARE GOOD WITH FRACTIONS
REPOST THiS IF YOU'RE ONE OF THE 7% WHO AREN'T]
Last night I dreamt that my friends got together to tell me I needed to voice my emotions more, & the ultimate solution for that was to go talk to a minotaur in a coffee shop. The minotaur, it turns out, looked rather more half-ram than half-bull. He was very old, pale & kept bleating as we spoke. He was evidently exasperated with what I had to say (I can't remember what that was) so I left in a hurry & found the whole world had begun to look like the kind of art people put up in coffee shops; everything was warm, earth-toned & spicy-looking.
Weird.
Fun with plot holes: I stumbled on these while looking up music videos:
http://www.you
http://www.you
We are sending this to Daily Poem - because, selfishly, we like being read. Also it's cathartic.