The Flatland Chronicles

A Depressed Canadian Duck by Judy Malley

"I dunno, it just doesn't seem worth the effort of coming back here every summer.  I look forward to it all winter and it never lives up to expectation, you know? No, it never does.  Every day, it's just pandering to tourists for bits of bread, sucking up pond scum, and then there's all the quacking---my God, the frickin' quacking!  I'm thinking of staying in Florida permanently, maybe Key West.  Gonna hang out on the beach with the gulls---maybe, like, get a tattoo: "Born to be aquatic."   I dunno, man.  I dunno."

Boemerang: Laughter Kills the Talk Show Career

I admit it:  I thought this sketch was real when I watched it on YouTube.  Thank God for Wikipedia.  Apparently, it's from a Flemish television show called "In De Gloria." According to Wikipedia. "In De Gloria was a satire on reality television and human interest programs featuring ordinary people, portrayed by the cast."  Man, I need to watch more Flemish comedy.

In this sketch a TV presenter is looking back on the episode that caused him to be fired.  The presenter, Eric Hartman (played by Tom Van Dyck), interviews a man whose vocal cords have been damaged during a tonsillectomy so that he sounds as if he's been inhaling helium.  The presenter lets out one startled chuckle, then---after an awkward apology---is completely unable to control himself.  He laughs and laughs and laughs while the audience stares at him stonily.  It's like being inside someone's anxiety nightmare, only funny.  Yes, I laughed and laughed and laughed.   I felt bad about it, but I laughed anyway.   And that's when I thought it was real.

But I wasn't the only one.  According to Wikipedia, "The clip is often mistaken for being real, and was showcased on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Star Channel news as being so."  I'm glad it isn't real.  I don't feel so bad about laughing till I fell off the couch now I know I was supposed to.   I suppose what Colette said was true:  we are each of us innately hostile to our kind. 

A Beetle-Browed Bunny Rebukes the Internets

The large, cross bunny whose portrait appears below was featured here at Cute Overload. Normally I would just link to the picture, but this time I  had to have the bunny (generously made available to all  via Creative Commons) at my very own blog.  I would like a giant poster-sized version of this bunny to put on my office door on days when I don't want to be disturbed.

THE DISAPPROVING BUNNY:

Random Link[s] O' the Day: The World's 10 Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts/"Out of Place Artifacts"

<Get "Ancient Lamps" by Damozel | First, check out "The 10 Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts."  The one that interested me most was a stone discovered near Ica, Peru.   The stone included with the article shows---quite, quite clearly---a man riding a triceratops.  Yes, I know: nonsense.  Nevertheless, my husband, not the most patient man, sat entranced while I read them aloud.

Random Link O' the Day. The Barnum Effect, the Mystery behind the Commonplace, and one Blogger's Tarot (recommended).

First, go to this link.  Then take this personality test.  Marvel at its amazing accuracy (using almost no data whatsoever). 

Random Link[s] O' the Day for 30 March 2007. At Home with the Geico Cavemen

I think we all love the sensitive Geico Cavemen, perpetually grieved by the political incorrectness and willful ignorance of their later derivatives.  If you, like me, appreciate their comic timing and highbrow inclinations, you'll want to see what it's like at home at the Cavemen's Crib.  We should all live in such well-appointed technically advanced surroundings. 

And if you're hoping they get their own spin-off television series, check out this article by Seth Stevenson at Slate (in which dedicated caveman followers can watch a couple of the ads over and over). 

[quote begins from Slate, Seth Stevenson, Can the Geico Cavemen Make It in Prime Time?]

At the campaign's ancillary Web site, CavemensCrib.com (it lets you poke around their apartment), we learn that the cavemen are into (among other things): blogging, Tolstoy, yoga, smoked Hungarian paprikash, and Paddy Chayefsky movies. They have poetry magnets on their fridge … in Esperanto.

Link O' the Day for 27 March 2007. "Right now."

Here's a meditation/affirmation/relaxation silent movie sort of thing that's actually pretty good (and read on before you sneer and dismiss it, at least till I've sneered and dismissed it, then retracted my sneering and dismissal).  I am sort of embarrassed that I liked it, because I make a point of not liking things like that.

I watched it the first time because I was highly amused that it started out by asking:  "look all round you; what do you see?" or words to that effect, since most people using it are going to answer, "My living room." 

But this amusement conceals the fact that New Age-y stuff of any kind generally embarrasses me:  the tinkling music of a billion waterfalls, the soft, encouraging voices of the yoga instructors and the meditation masters, the whole navel-gazing aspect.  Which is very stupid of me. 

I studied Taoism and the I Ching; I believe---though I'm incapable of following---the philosophy of keeping still and restraint.   What riles me----truthfully----is the way so many practitioners lump everything together:  eastern philosophy, pagan religion (most of which they make up), the mythology of crystals, and a lot of other bits and pieces, and then try to market to you as a package.

At a store I once visited, you could buy a "peace package" containing, I don't know, incense, special scented soap to balance your chakras, a mat for sitting on to meditate, a videotape of waterfalls,  a relaxation CD, and other suchlike stuff.   Which I bought.  I particularly enjoyed the CD, and used to listen to it in my bath, till once I actually fell asleep and nearly drowned. 

Can you tell I'm ambivalent about all of it?  Because I am ambivalent.  I am a deeply spiritual person---no, really; click on THE MARGINAL CHRISTIAN'S HANDBOOK in the left sidebar if you don't believe me--- who finds all spiritual practices that you have to pay to learn inherently embarrassing and offensive.  But I'm also embarrassed and offended by the ones you don't have to pay for.  None of it ought to be true, but a lot of it is.  That's the embarrassing part; that I don't want to believe, my friends mock me for believing, and yet....I think a lot of it is probably true or the reflection of it. 

Anyway, this site.  I  really liked it.   Actually I think its messages are true; I suppose it must be post-modern irony and trendy cynicism and so on that make me squirm when people write or say things that I deeply believe.  I think most of the platitudes this site flashes on the screen are profoundly true and that it's important to remember them.  The photographs were beautiful.  The silence was soothing and in my imagination, filled with the sounds appropriate to each of the pictures, though I wouldn't actually have minded if they'd included appropriate sound effects.. 

You can have it with annoying new-age music in one of two versions.  I highly recommend the silent version.  You can fill in the silence for yourself.    Okay so here's the site.   Go on; try it; life is hard and you know you want to.  I'm off to bed, where I will soothe myself to sleep with the sound of New Age crickets chirping on a New Age Summer night by a New Age babbling brook.  What?

Random Link O' the Day: Electronic Voice Phenomena.

You look at strange phenomena and say "No way."  I look at strange phenomena and say, "Maybe not, but wouldn't it rock if it were true?"

Nick and I rented the DVD for a film called White Noise which we both very much disliked (except, of course, for Ian McNeice, better known as the newsreader in  the HBO series Rome).  I did enjoy one of the bonus features in the film, a mini-docko made by a couple who have spent years investigating "electronic voice phenomena."  Those people put together this website.  As you can see, they've appeared in or on other programs as well.   

What are "electronic voice phenonemena," you ask.  I will let the experts tell you.  The following is a quotation from the website of the "American Association--Electronic Voice Phenomenon" (a name I have issues with because it doesn't make a lot of sense as a name, but never mind that).  Here is their explanation:

[quote begins from AA-EVP webiste:]

Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) concerns unexpected voices found in recording media.  It is a form of after death communication. ITC is a newer term that includes all of the ways these unexpected voices and images are collected through technology, including EVP.  Of the many hypotheses designed to explain these phenomena, the Survival Hypothesis has been found to be most effective in answering the evidence....

Random Link O' the Day for 19 March 2007. Visit Heaven and Hell (and Purgatory) online!

Now you can pop right in and visit Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory---online.  This site, Danteworlds, describes itself as

an integrated   multimedia journey--combining artistic images, textual commentary, and audio recordings--through the   three realms of the afterlife (Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise) presented in   Dante's Divine Comedy. The site is structured around a visual representation of   Dante's worlds: it shows who and what appear where. Click on regions within each realm   (circles of Hell, terraces of Purgatory, spheres of Paradise) to open new pages featuring   people and creatures whom the character Dante meets during his journey. Click on   individual figures in the regions to view larger images in pop-up windows. Available for   each region are explanatory notes, a gallery of artistic images, recordings of significant   Italian verses, and study questions--all aimed at enriching the experience of reading   Dante's poetic vision of a voyage literally out of this world.

Since many people seem to envision these planes on lines inspired by Dante's works, I feel they should take the opportunity to get familiar with them...

All I can say is:  Thank God I'm just a marginal Christian; I wouldn't like any of them. 

Pictures from the Earth: More pretty, pretty Crop Circles.

Somebody googled a quickie note I wrote on crop circles and the search produced all these excellent photographs.  I thought I'd post some links, for my own and anyone else's interest and enjoyment.  Naturally I believe them to be the work of the various crop circle societies to which my note refers, but this doesn't affect my enjoyment (though it must be very, very irritating to the owners of the fields). 

At Karar's Wordpress, the author published a crop circle based on the Firefox browser.  Apparently 12 people did the work in under 24 hours.   I love Firefox myself, so this one might be my favorite of all. 

Here's a note on the crop-circle makers of Greenpeace.

Here's a close-up photograph of a lovely crop circle.  The same site published this beauty.  The page (part of France's Paranormal Network) describes characteristics of crop circles, but you need to be able to read French. 

At The Tribal Messenger, on the linked page, you an see a variety of crop circles (and read the author's music on the subject).   You can also see the beautiful dove crop circle  here; as well as a  six-pointed star in a circle, forming a mandala. 

This site, "Great Dreams:  The Opening Eye of the Aperture,"  also speculates about the mystical significance of crop circles and their increasing complexity.  The one on their page I like best is this.

In this picture gallery, you'll see an artificially enhanced version of one of England's crop circles that I thought was particularly beautiful. 

And at this location, X-Primo, there's a whole poster of crop circles.