original img from hkarmy: http://hollywoodhk.com/

or as it’s called in china, metal rabbit.

but METAL CAT sounds so much better, considering that we just left METAL TIGER behind.

Global Astrology: 2011 – Year of the Metal Rabbit /Cat Pt. 1.

Springs weekend update: Police use Taser on woman after naked outburst involving pastor – The Denver Post.

sample Ol' Time Religionists.

DomPart says:

i would be a lot more likely to get into religion if it involved more crazy naked woman hijinks.

me [...]]]> i mean Ol’ Time as in 2500 B.C.E.

Springs weekend update: Police use Taser on woman after naked outburst involving pastor – The Denver Post.

sample Ol' Time Religionists.

DomPart says:

i would be a lot more likely to get into religion if it involved more crazy naked woman hijinks.

me too!

by Matt Buck, Illustrator of Ill Repute.

that’s right, i have a soft spot for maenads.

i got here from half-uncial. i don’t know how i got there, since previously i had been reading about the history of the potato.

before that, i was reading an article on garum, which led me to worcestershire sauce. (my Erstwhile Helpmeet feels like fish sauces in general may very [...]]]> Insular script.

i got here from half-uncial. i don’t know how i got there, since previously i had been reading about the history of the potato.

before that, i was reading an article on garum, which led me to worcestershire sauce. (my Erstwhile Helpmeet feels like fish sauces in general may very well be some kind of teutonic plot, but i think they may have ultimately originated in china and am not sure how that factors in.*)

how i got to garum from an article on baal-zebul as a historic title of carthaginian hercules-melkarth, i don’t know, just like i don’t remember how i got there from vainly trying to find an article about the intersection of creative synthesis and humor. (which is a cosmic shit-ton of frustrating, because I KNOW i saw just such an article earlier this year, and i can’t seem to find it on my stumble, delicious, or reddit, and it doesn’t seem to have been a TED talk.)

i’m not easily distracted. i’m just interested in a lot of different things. all together, and all at once.

*probably doesn’t.

russians.

back to the drawing board.

i’mma quote from Neatorama here because i… just am not sure how i feel about this.

I’m not sure if this should be called a set of motorized skates, a motorized unicycle, or something else. At any rate, the FlyRad pulls the user around while wearing roller skates. It can reach speeds [...]]]>

i’mma quote from Neatorama here because i… just am not sure how i feel about this.

I’m not sure if this should be called a set of motorized skates, a motorized unicycle, or something else. At any rate, the FlyRad pulls the user around while wearing roller skates. It can reach speeds of 25 MPH and travel 31 miles on a single charge.

and the website text:

Users can “ride” the vehicle in a number of ways including sitting, standing, squatting or hands free. Riders can even switch positions on the go. In standing mode the device is held much like a jackhammer which tows the rider along, while in sitting mode the rider sits on the saddle with a pair of skates acting as the vehicle’s front wheels.

Since steering is controlled by the skates, the rider can let go of the handle bars altogether to give the sensation of flying that presumably gives the FlyRad its name. When ridden in this way the FlyRad stays in place by transferring the rider’s weight onto a couple of pads attached to the bottom of the handlebars that push down onto the rider’s upper legs.

why can’t i wrap my brain around this? oh Germany, you so crazeh.

Motorized Skates. actual website.

in other news, i like this template, but it needs a significant amount of php fixing to suit my standards, so i’ll be doing that and some widgetty stuff over the next few. at any rate, the site is safe to look at without fear of needing eye and/or brain bleach, now.  i don’t know how long i’ll keep it: i’ve got a good idea for a deep winter theme. we’ll see.

i’m afraid i’m on the Trod right now, and cannot pick up the Internet. I’m probably at gymkhana or riding up in the mountains or dancing with the rest of the Lost Fleet or possibly abducting some innocent creature, but one may definitely be assured that i am fomenting Wild Rumpus [...]]]> it’s rally weekend!

i’m afraid i’m on the Trod right now, and cannot pick up the Internet. I’m probably at gymkhana or riding up in the mountains or dancing with the rest of the Lost Fleet or possibly abducting some innocent creature, but one may definitely be assured that i am fomenting Wild Rumpus and perpetrating havoc will ye or nil ye.

at any rate, please leave a message after the beep, and i’ll return your Internet as soon as possible, or else when i feel like it, or whatever.

Colorado Chaos Scooter Rally – Denver, Colorado.

The remarkable-but internationally misguided- George Barris Rick Shaw was created for the 1970 World’s Fair in Osaka, Japan. The engine was a 400 cubic inch Chevrolet with a power glide transmission complete and a Hurst shifter. The radiator shell was designed as a “coolie” hat cover while the exhaust headers are [...]]]>

The remarkable-but internationally misguided- George Barris Rick Shaw was created for the 1970 World’s Fair in Osaka, Japan. The engine was a 400 cubic inch Chevrolet with a power glide transmission complete and a Hurst shifter. The radiator shell was designed as a “coolie” hat cover while the exhaust headers are simulated Oriental “chop suey” type with full funnel bells. At the rear of the body is a sacred Buddha watching over the vehicle as it was being exhibited. Valued a $15,000 (in 1970′s money) it took over 5 months to construct.

Ride the Machine..

Rally organizer Ian Tootill said about 75 to 100 people showed up to draw attention to a city policy that requires all motorcyclists [...]]]> More than two blocks of parking along Vancouver's Robson Street were occupied by a chain of motorcycles and scooters Saturday to protest parking policies that riders say are a waste of space.

Rally organizer Ian Tootill said about 75 to 100 people showed up to draw attention to a city policy that requires all motorcyclists and scooter drivers to occupy an entire parking stall.

via Protest leaves no room to park.

and here i thought our noble and generous-hearted neighbors to the north were mostly sane and sensible. i guess the collection of sputtering retards in the Vancouver City Staff are the exception that proves the general rule.

but then, paycheck-justifying, paper-pushing bureaucrats are all pretty much of one spineless and mealy-mouthed breed, all the world around.

*twinkles*

firstly. i admire what you guys are trying to do. i respect the spirit in which it is intended.

but i think it’s amusingly stupid, and i will tell you why.

the WBC are professional trolls. they are a rather inbred clan of lawyers, supported [...]]]> Facebook | Counter-Protest Westboro Baptist Church in Denver and Boulder!.

firstly. i admire what you guys are trying to do. i respect the spirit in which it is intended.

but i think it’s amusingly stupid, and i will tell you why.

the WBC are professional trolls. they are a rather inbred clan of lawyers, supported by a small staff of adherents (who are complete crazies and may be discounted), in essence. and they make money hand over fist from the countersuits they engage in due to their street-theater activities. this is their business model. it is a profit venture. it is not a church. it is a corporate entity mainly engaged in street theater, organized as a church for tax-evasion purposes. they are professional trolls, in real life. and they are very good at it.

boiled down to basics, what this very clever family of lawyers is doing is running the second-biggest continuing con job in the nation. right in front of god and everybody. not only that: they are actually enlisting participants in the outrage machine to assist and abet them in conning themselves, which gives it an element of sublimity not unlike spiritual beauty.

i am aware that i have a streak of larceny in my nature. it enables me to appreciate things like this for what it is: a beautiful, efficient machine. some grifts *do* have beauty, you know. and this one has elegance. it is audacious! and it is very successful.

yet an elaborate grift is all it is. the sheer theater is outrageous enough to fool most people, and it is the more successful in this because most people are pure-intentioned, and basically good, and it simply never enters their minds that anyone could possibly stand to be so hateful without really meaning it.

but the platform  of the WBC is not their ideology. the signs, the calculated appearances –well-publicized in advance! — the uber-pop hatefulness: these are stage and props. elegant, in their mobility, in their recognizable continuity of visual branding, in their utter accessibility. it reeks of calculated mass consumption, of consummate conspicuousness. the counterprotestors: utterly sincere, near-fanatically dedicated extras — at no charge! — in their media-fuelled psychodrama. all for the cost of a little willingness to behave outrageously and a few permits from whatever local yokels they’re visiting at the time. the most powerful nation on earth for marks. and the human race for an audience.

you are all marks. even I, who can look at these conspicuous antics and name that grift at twenty paces, am a mark, just for bending my amused contempt enough to mention it, although i may excuse myself because i’m outing it. anyone who participates in this wild game by allotting it time or attention or energy in any way or form is feeding the fire. recall, o reader, wherein i mentioned that these are professional trolls. everything feeds a true troll’s fire: any attention, indirect or negative not excepted. all together now: There is no such thing as bad press. this is not a game to these people: it’s business.

the money is in the litigation between protests. and they do a lot of it. and they nearly always win their countersuits. very rarely do they ever lose one, o reader. recall above where i mentioned that they are an entire family of lawyers.  and they never sue first. they never have to: their theater is outrageous enough to ensure that.

if i sound less than hysterically, foam-at-the-mouth, offended, it’s because i do admire the streamlined, devil-may-care beauty of the con. due to that sheer panache, i am even tempted to participate just out sheer celebration of it, just to be able to say i once took part in the second-biggest con of the century. and let’s face it: hateful as the presentation and the theatrical framing may be, it isn’t banal, is it? it adds a little it of wild madness to the world: so, hateful as it may be, it is still a legitimate part of the crusade against creeping banality, which is the true hidden enemy of the wide world and all the free creatures which inhabit it.

yet i have a personal distaste for humans who willingly so abase themselves before the altar of profit as to renounce their own human dignity. and of course, the first thing anyone who knows me learns is that i find all intolerance and all manifestations of intolerance and all promulgations of intolerance disgusting.

therefore the best thing i see to do personally is to name this westboro baptist con artist gang for what they are. let ‘em walk in the sunlight of transparency, which is the best disinfectant, of course. but do stop asking me and inviting me to participate. it is beneath me to shill for these people. it should be beneath you, too. but one must do as one is compelled by principle to do, of course. i will continue to honor the spirit of the intention, even as i chuckle.

[incidental: someone really ought to make sure this issue gets cleared up before it becomes an Issue. people underestimate how necessary these permits are. well, not everyone: the WBC sure doesn't. but then ... they are professionals.]

FLY, YOU FOOLS!

this is a tolkien-derived geekout. if you do not know already that i am a towering tolkien geek of some 20+ years, you may want to leave, unless geekouts fascinate you in a morbid fashion. it’s not too long i lied. it’s long and you won’t understand most of [...]]]>

FLY, YOU FOOLS!

this is a tolkien-derived geekout. if you do not know already that i am a towering tolkien geek of some 20+ years, you may want to leave, unless geekouts fascinate you in a morbid fashion. it’s not too long i lied. it’s long and you won’t understand most of it unless you (a) are another tolkien geek, (b) have a significant and serious history of vocal theory and performance (c) both (in which case, see me after class).

i’m pleased to report that my thoughtful and diligent #him has gone the extra mile and gotten me the 12-disc extended edition set of the rings trilogy. which is, you know, beyond nice and into “OMG” territory.

so anyway, i’m enjoying it, a lot, and there is so much extra footage, and the commentary is both thoughtful and hysterical by turns; and i have been listening to the complete soundtrack recordings also for the diegetic music, which is all so precisely pitch-perfect, in a cultural sense – plan 9 really did  much better job than i realized, as is typical.

now, i am usually a big consumer of chant and polyphonia and motets and partsong in general. i like things like anonymous 4 and medieval baebes and anuna and so on, and my ear is pretty jaded.

and so to cut what could be a longish story about my musical history short, i just cannot stop listening to this version of the diegetic “a! Elbereth” plan 9 has come up with for this ‘passing of the elves’ scene in FOTR. i mean i heard it and i seriously got a tear. a couple of tears. it’s just gorgeous. simultaneously simplistic, hair-raisingly ethereal, and utterly lush. i cannot explain how a nobody-in-particular musical ensemble from the hinterland of the earth managed to come up with something like it, outside of direct and particular divine intervention. it’s that gorgeous.

well, now, it’s a direct translation – by Salo, who did most of the quenya and sindarin translation for the movies (Salo is a linguist specializing in tocharian, although he apparently started out with tolkienist languages in his youth) – of tolkien’s original snow-white! snow-white! O lady clear! english version of A Elbereth. and if i’m going to be honest, the translation is drab (which i would get into here, but it would be a long and nitpicky complaint, really), and he takes some strange liberties with elision (lu’aladhath? really? when did this kind of elision become, you know, EVER USED? and i don’t mean like the elided/diminshed ‘ng’ in “primitive’ words like ‘ngoldo’, either – although he includes it in, of all things, such a commonplace word as ‘[n]gilith’ (i mean if you’re going to go that far, you might as well go for “Ngilthoniel,” too. see how arbitrary and weird? and what happened to the magical disappearing initial in “gwaewib”? there are lots of examples i’m not quoting, but you get the idea). it’s just… random and spurious and frankly, a little fatuous, to include such flourishes in such a boringly workmanlike, precise prose-stream equivalent translation of what is supposed to be distilled poetic language, and now i will stop).

anyway, i keep finding myself wondering who exactly was responsible for dialectic pronunciation coaching for plan 9, or whether they just read the pronunciation notes in the silmarillion, or what. but they did a really good job, with virtually everything but that palatalized welsh Y that tolkien uses, which is hard to deal with anyway, and the total effect is just … awesome.

so i have been sitting here for several days realizing that this is one of the only really S1/S2-heavy polyphonic pieces i’ve heard in practically forever (that *isn’t* a female-only piece) that works really well and isn’t OMG TEH SHRILL. i mean, it’s not howard shore, so there’s no score available for it, so i’m sitting here hearing it out. and i think there are at least three S1/S2 lines in the thing, and at least two A1/A2 lines (another awesome thing! it’s A-dominant. A1 carries the melody! very exciting), and one hell of a droning profundo bass. i mean it is top-heavy, like woah.  there might be more S/A lines in there than i can really hear out adequately due to the density – the thing is interwoven in a complex fashion for such a deceptively minimalist piece of chant – it’s — well, it’s interwoven densely, a la galadhremmin ennorath. frustrating that the most arresting vocal piece in the whole saga has no sheet equivalent at all. it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they composed it do-chennib like a bunch of sly seanachies sitting around there in the studio.

frustrating, so i think i might do what i always seem to end up having to do when i get fascinated with something (alas! the life of a shallow, ADD-prone dilettante! it’s hard out there for a pimp, et c.) and make my own. i have no idea whether the parts of my brainymeats that once dealt regularly with musical transcription are actually still there.

but if i manage it, i guess i’ll… well? what? *L* give it away for free to ensembles that want to try it out? oi. i guess so.

well, who cares. good exercise, amirite amirite? i can use the practice, anyway.

we still remember, we who dwell
in this far land, beneath the trees,
thy starlight on the western seas.

[edit: oh, sorry. you want to hear it? first you'll need to go view the relevant scene which was cut from the theatrical release. it's quite short.

here is the full chant. enjoy.]