Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Casimir Illig, Priv. Doz., Ph.D., J.D.

Image
Doc Illig, sometime celebrity science popularizer and streaming personality, best-selling writer, deep sea explorer, controversial treasure-hunter, mesmerist... Doc Illig has quiet quit from the intellectual influencer game, with rumors of substantial financing, both crowdfunded and donations from Silicon Valley futurists. The good Doktor observes exquisite data hygiene and operational security, but each of his monthly videos features intriguing objects placed oh so casually by his elbow or shoulder: a mastodon tooth and a picture frame incorporated bowhead whale teeth strongly suggest the Alaskan panhandle or islands of British Columbia. It is indeed a luxury mad scientist base, tidewater adjacent for interactions with deep ones, who are entirely blasé about their transactions with Illig. They borrow his cars without asking, apparently going for joyrides or private errand; they tinker with his observatory equipment at will, installing biological objects still dripping saltwater and m...
Read more

Ogden Nash—"What's in a Name? Some Letter I Always Forget"

back in the long middle stretch of the twentieth century, comic poetry was something you could make a living off of. i grew up with multiple books by Ogden Nash on various family member's bookshelves, including one containing short animal poems that was my very own. ("A most peculiar bird is the pelican / Its beak can hold more than its belly can", etc.) the following poem does not appear to be online in text anywhere a few casual moments turned up. following a brief but heated exchange over how many Ls in someone's name necessitate retaliation with lethal force, my conscience compelled me to locate the poem in a scanned book and make the text available before god and the internet. et violà, behold! WHAT'S IN A NAME?  SOME LETTER I ALWAYS FORGET  Not only can I not remember anecdotes that are racy,   But I also can't remember whether the names of my Scottish friends begin with M-c or M-a-c,   And I can't speak for you, but for myself there is one dilemma...
Read more

Napoleon was more like Godzilla

Image
So what follows started one day in '22 when I was looking for images of the world-tree, the ash Yggdrasil, like you do. This beauty was engraved 1886 by Friedrich Wilhelm Heine. I looked through Heine's art on wikimedia commons and was struck by his powerful depictions of European towns shattered by combat. Instantly I assumed he became a war correspondent for the Great War, then actually looked at the dates: it was the Franco-Prussian war, one I know mostly for the effect on French and German politics: the Commune massacred, Prussia levels up to Reich, Napoleon III decides he's more a London kind of jerk, it all gets blamed on Dreyfus. But I know nothing of it as a war, of its death and weapons: I guess I don't take western European warfare seriously between Waterloo and the Marne. (Imperialist warfare is another matter.)   But my God, my Life, look at these fresh ruins: artillery is a machine beyond comprehension, it landscapes Earth into Hades, it makes the stone, st...
Read more