volcano and electric storm!

chaiten with lightning: i can’t get the pictures to embed, i guess they want you to click through — it’s well worth it (cf esp 12/35)

cthulhuedo

the hideously maddening game from World of Lovecraft: … read on …

more reasons (as if anyone needs em) to despise nick broomfield

i: yes this was entirely my fault for sitting down in front of a “michael barrymore: what really happened” documentary…

ii: viz that i (and all viewers) have to endure jacques peretti constantly concluding that “no one can possibly know what really happened” ftb HE THE GREAT JACQUES PERETTI cannot get someone to confess all on-camera after a rigorous interrogation of duration 23 seconds

iii: to be fair the depth of JP’s bad faith is by no means of broomfieldian dimension, and he spent a fair part of the show angst-ing at the awfulness of it all: which if yr generous you can interpret as “i JP am ashamed of myself for plunging this low”

iiia: but basic rule — … read on …

IN SALAD (of all the) NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM(s)

huntin for images of BRANES in pulp culture i came across THIS via boingboing: “In November 2006 Till Nowak created the image SALAD. For this image he created 12 digital vegetable models in 3ds max using photographic references. They were combined to become a tribute to the fantastic biomechanical creations of H.R. Giger and the vegetable portraits of Giuseppe Arcimboldo.”

full size here

alsatian lollardry

there’s this, and then there’s wagner

stendernauts misled: it is to weep

p^nk s lord thingamajig is on the way to london fields lido and crossing hackney’s graham road where it meets mare street in the Easty East of End when a small but full car stops and a woman addresses him thru the window:

woman: excuse me do you know where albert square is?
p^nk s lord t: er d’you mean the real albert square or the one on telly?
woman: YES!
p^nk s lord t: ok but they aren’t the same! the one on telly isn’t a real place — it’s a film-set up in north london somewhere that they film on
anguished voice from deep inside car: what? but we’ve driven all the way from birmingham to visit it!
p^nk s lord t: ok well it is findable but it’s far from here and i don’t know the way
woman (despondently): ok thank you
*car drives off trailing collective thinks-bubble of baffled upset*
p^nk s lord t (thinks to self): oh dear i wonder if they meant fassett square — that’s what albert square is based on and it’s just round the corner

THE FUTURE NEXT WEEK: or LOLLARDS IN SPACE

Lollards is winding down — last show tonight! — but dry yr eyes and defuzz yr lesser thoracic palps bcz we have EXCITING NEWS for our LOYAL LISTENERS, viz 1 x new eight-week series on Resonance FM 104.4 starting next Tuesday, 1 April 10-11pm.

DARE YOU MISS IT?

A Bite of Stars, a Slug of Time, and Thou will delve deep into the science fiction short stories of SF’s Golden and Silver Ages. The pulp and avant-garde writing of c.1935-65 has fallen out of public memory; hosts ELISHA SESSIONS and MARK SINKER and their astounding guests* will return to this forgotten motherlode, once bedrock of the entire field. Eli will read evocative extracts, then quiz Mark and guest on authors, styles, subtexts sexual and political, technique, value, impact and legacy, plus changing fashions and meanings in backdrop, tech and alien allure — and anything else that pops into their pulsating crystalline brain-lobes.

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS! hurrah so we will announce the story in advance, and you can read it if you like.

Episode one:
Extracts from John W. Campbell’s 1938 classic novella WHO GOES THERE?
Guest = “Starry” Sarah Clarke, Hegemon Ambassadrix of the Nebuline Dark-Matter Cluster J-Pop 9

Update:
Sluggards are go! You can hear Episode 1 now, or keep up to date with all the episodes on the Slug of Time page.

*viz Fellow Lollards and more: fans, experts, creators, backroom boffins, visitors and elder beings overground AND underground, squamous AND unnameable…

QUIZ: kidlit is a genre dead as dead can be!

Alicia in Terra Mirabili
Aliciae Per Speculum Transitus (Quaeque Ibi Invenit)
Cattus Petasatus
Ferdinandus Taurus
Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis
Ieremia Piscatore
Maria Poppina
Pinoculus
Quomodo Invidiosulus Nomine Grinchus Christi Natalem Abrogaverit
Virent Ova! Viret Perna!!
Regulus
Tela Charlottae
Walter Canis Inflatus
Winnie Ille Pu

(there are 31 titles listed on amazon in this subsection: i left out all the asterixes as they don’t count) (most of the above are fairly easily guessable — one requires actual real latin vocab and a bit of gumption)

mah jongg attacks!

belatedly reviewing lust, caution, the element i most woke up to was probably the mah jongg, a game my family played a little when i was a teen — we had a very strange set made not of ivory-bamboo or fake plastic equivalent but some curious crumbly black brick composite

as a game it has several evocative elements: problem being their evocativeness is often add-on orientalism introduced into the western version of the game; chinese mah jongg (as we saw in the film) is a fast-played social gambling game; i imagine ang lee had layered in certain plot/atmosphere/subtext elements which will have been lost on all non-players (not that i spotted any) (not that i really consider myself a player, tho i do sorta kinda remember the rules) … read on …

the meme that cannot die

while huntin the net for info on who wrote or drew BLACK MAX i found this link, to a page detailing the first issue ever on LION comic (23 feb 1952), some 20 years before i was a reader — it lists the contents, as follows:

Outlaw Of Space (with Captain Condor)
Sandy Dean’s First Term
Lone Commandos
Brett Barlowe, Detective
Jungle Robot
Rod of the Trading Post
Big Hank, The Soft-Hearted Heavyweight
Jingo Jones And His Invisibiliser
The Lion Birthday Club Page
World-wide Quiz
Sports that roused the Romans
What happens when you dial 999
Inventors are the boys for brainwaves