Author: Purple Wyrm

The Devil and Rosie Beaton

Ill concieved ramblings about various unimportant things

I said everyone’s dying! Now Peter Brock has joined in. What is going on?!

There was an extremely annoying woman on the bus to Subiaco the other day. She sat right behind the driver and for the entire duration of the trip talked at him non-stop in an incredibly loud voice about… well anything that popped into her head seemingly. I was seated halfway up the bus and could clearly hear every single word she uttered about football, the healthcare system, mobile phones, and a dozen other subjects. I was dearly tempted to stand up and berate her, sweeping my coat around dramatically perhaps and declaiming (in my best Shakespearean tones) “Hold thy tongue thou garrulous crone! Mine very ears do bleed from thy intemperate prattle!!”, but I didn’t of course – I’m too polite :). It was certainly a relief to reach Subi though.

While I’m on the subject of annoying things there’s a very annoying song around at the moment. It’s called The Devil was in My Yard and it’s by Perth’s own Sleepy Jackson. It’s annoying in two specific ways – the music, and the singing (which frankly doesn’t leave much does it?). The music is a horrible smushed up mass of instruments, smeared together into not so much a wall of sound as a kind of upright, linear, auditory bog. It’s like white noise but more annoying. And the singing, well… I am reliably informed that the lyrics of the first verse go,

The Devil! The Devil was in my yard! But the Devil! Ain’t in my yard no more!

Unfortunately the singer doesn’t feel constrained by the lyric sheet, or indeed the English language, and – well sings isn’t the verb, bawls would be closer to the mark – bawls the following in a nasal voice,

Yeeeewoooooww! Yeeeaaaarrrevilzinnnnn-maaaAAAAaaaAAAAAdddeh! Buuuuuhhhrruhhrrevil! Aaaayeffffmyaaard-naaawwwaaah!

It’s absolutely awful! And naturally doing quite well in the charts (funnily enough however the video clip ain’t bad.)

On the subject of video clips (see how hard I’m working on my segues today?) I’m watching JTV Saturday at the moment which is Triple J’s fairly new foray into television. Basically it’s a clip show – but they count down the 20 most requested songs from Super Request from the previous week – so there’s actually the possibility of something worthwhile getting in at number one.

In any case the host of JTV Saturday is the host of Super Request, Rosie Beaton. And while I have absolutely nothing against her, I’m finding her irritating almost beyond belief.

Why you ask? Well, after much thought I’ve reached the conclusion it’s because she’s used to radio rather than TV. You see, on radio all you have is your voice. You can’t communicate with your face, or with body language, so you need to put everything into your voice. You need to ramp up the emotion, ramp up the expression and basically say with your voice everything you’d normally say with your face. Rosie does this very well, and listening to her on the radio is quite enjoyable.

The problem is she speaks exactly the same way on camera – and it just doesn’t work.

She talks so loudly, and with so much forcefulness that she comes across as some kind of crazy person – the kind who comes up to you on the train and starts babbling out their life story, or why they like Steve Earl, or how the aliens took their knees. Or alternatively like she’s trying to sell you a used car. Now, if you look away from the screen and just listen, she’s fine – it’s just that normal people don’t talk like that face to face, and it’s damn disconcerting.

So Rosie – in the unlikely event that you’re reading this – you’re great on the radio, but chill a bit on the TV, OK?

Apart from Rosie Beaton freaking the life out of me JTV Saturday is pretty good. And educational! For instance this week we learned…

  • The video clip for Here it Goes Again by OK Go features the best treadmill dancing ever!
  • Kick Push by Lupe Fiasco is almost as annoying as the Sleepy Jackson.
  • Muse should do an album of Coldplay covers on a container ship.
  • For all her freaky-speaking, when Rosie Beaton straightens her hair she bears a notable resemblance to Lauren Graham.

So, if you have some time to kill on Saturday mornings, tune in.

Abandoning clever segues for the moment, my new tooth is performing quite well. It hasn’t fallen apart and I’m getting used to the fact that it’s not quite as pointy as the old one was. Presumably there’s also slightly less mercury seeping into my system now, which is probably a good thing. I intended to mention this last week with all the other tooth related stuff, but the dentist was very impressed with my teeth. She said they were in absolutely excellent condition, which is nice to know (in light of this information I like to think that in 1000 years a distant descendent of Dr Alice Roberts will dig them up and completely underestimate my age at death).

Teeth of course used for eating, and on the subject of eating (now that one was just forced wasn’t it?) I went out to dinner with Rebecca and Dom last night after work. We hit up Wagamama in Subiaco where we had quite a good time despite the appalling noise levels, rampaging children, problems with the loyalty card system and a server apparently named “Trial” who forgot to bring the wine (not that I minded too much about that :). We decided to splash out and be daring and tried a side of the steamed soya-beans, which were actually much nicer than you might think. Afterwards we walked up to the Gelare place at the Regal, and mocked the Nova FM DJ visible through the window on the other side of the street. So a good night had by all really (apart from maybe “Trial”).

Anyway, I have things to do today (probably) so I’d better go and do them (or not).

Everyone’s Dying!

Vale Steve Iriwn, and the madness of New Zealand

Dying seems to be the in thing for Australians this week. First Don Chipp, founder of the Australian Democrats, then yesterday author of Storm Boy Colin Thiele and of course the (in the words of Tripod) “mighty skivvy wearing hunter man” Steve Irwin.

It’s weird about Steve Irwin. I was never much of a fan of his work – which to me seemed mostly to consist of poking dangerous animals with sticks while giving Americans a completely inaccurate idea of Australia and Australians – but now he’s gone things just don’t seem right. He was such an instantly recognisable character that it seems impossible that he’s not around any more. It’s as if there’s suddenly a gaping Crocodile-Hunter-shaped hole in the world – a hole that is never going to be filled because he’s the only one who could fill it. Other zany wildlife enthusiasts may come and may go, but there’ll never be another Steve Irwin, and although I couldn’t stand his shows and mocked the guy mercilessly, the world is a little bit poorer at his passing.

On a somewhat cheerier note I received a bizare email to my work address yesterday from someone in New Zealand. First up it’s huge. And when I say huge I mean over 11,000 lines long. I haven’t read all of it (obviously) but it seems to be a highly paranoid rant about some of the following points…

  1. There’s no central heating in New Zealand, despite it being a cold country
  2. The author knows this because a Canadian told her so
  3. All the space heaters she buys die when turned up on full
  4. On investigation, all space heaters in New Zealand turn out to be produced by companies that are front companies for companies in Canada
  5. The American National Football League harassed her so much that she had to leave the United States and move to New Zealand
  6. The State of Texas also harassed her
  7. The NFL routinely murder men, women and children
  8. The State of Texas is in league with the NFL
  9. She heard that there was a shooting in a McDonalds in Texas – but McDonalds wouldn’t provide her with any information about it
  10. Obviously McDonalds are in league with the NFL and the State of Texas
  11. Any and all Asian restaurants are also involved
  12. All this has something to do with September 11

I have no idea if this is some kind of joke, some kind of conceptual art project, a cleverly encrypted message from some security or terrorist organisation, or if a paranoid maniac (with much better spelling and grammar than the average paranoid maniac) has got access to an email program. It certainly boggles the mind in any case. I’ll paste in a bit of it so you can make your own judgement…

Soon after reaching that state, listening to a TV news broadcast revealed that another football player had again been arrested for killing a woman. This time the player was still active, and played for the Carolina Panthers, a team whose head coach was George Seifert, who’d previously coached the San Francisco Forty Niners, the team that O.J. Simpson had once played for, in his home town of San Francisco. However, I do not know if George Seifert, who is said to have spent many of his working years in San Francisco ever coached O. J. Simpson directly. Simpson, who shares the same last name as a former Physics teacher of mine at Kenya High School, later left the Forty Niners to play in the city of Buffalo for the Buffalo Bills who are located near the border with Canada. As for the player from the Carolina Panthers, the woman he was accused of having killed was apparently a partner or former partner. By that time, my own tribulations with the National Football League were so intense, I did not have the resources to follow up on that case, and as a result, do not know if the player was ever tried and/or convicted. While coaching the San Francisco Forty Niners, George Seifert had coached Steve Young, one of the antagonists mentioned to me by Texans in Fort Worth and Dallas. The other was Troy Aikman who played for a team known as the Dallas Cowboys in Texas. During my own high school years in in the seventiesKenya, the study of politics was very important, even though we were very young. One of a guest speakers was Dr. Anyang’ Nyong’o, the elder brother of a classmate of mine called Risper Nyagoy Nyong’o. The Nyong’o’s had just returned from Chicago in the state of Illinois in the United States of America, where recently, another Kenyan born politician named Barrack Obama has recently campaigned for political office. Mr. Obama has thesame last name as another former schoolmate of mine, Rita Obama, with whom I studied first at Kilimani Primary School, and later at Kenya High School where our headmistress was a native of New Zealand named Miss Barnes, and where one of our English teachers was also from New Zealand. Her name was Mrs. Barns, and the differences in the title and spelling were often emphasized, so that we could fully understand that they were different teachers. (Yet a third teacher was called Mrs. Barnes, with a different title from the headmistress but the same spelling. Mrs. Barnes was from Britain, and although she was English, taught French. The other Frenchteachers were a Canadian nun named Sister (or Soeur) Lise Rousson who was from the French Canadian Province of Quebec, and another English woman who never taught me personally and whose name I do not remember). Dr. Anyang’ Nyong’o is now an Assistant Minister in the current Kenyan Government. He was nominated by thecurrent president, Mr. Mwai Kibaki. When he returned to Kenya in the mid-seventies, the United States’ Congress had just impeached President Milhouse Nixon, and President Gerald Ford had been appointed to complete that elective term. During that decade, the government of that country had another controversial politician, Mr. Henry Kissinger, who’d been born in Germany, but had migrated with his family to the United States of America at a very young age. (While I was in Texas, the United States of America repeated that pattern when President Bill Clinton was impeached by the Congress. He retained his office and appointed an European born Secretary of State called Madeleine Albright, to whom I’ve written regarding the events of Texas. I’ve alsowritten to former President Clinton and to former Vice President Al Gore). According to his biography in the internet, when Henry Kissinger left Germany, he’d just left behind the massacre of Jews accross Europe. Later in his adulthood, he’d participated in the war in Cambodia in South-East Asia. Former Vice President Al Gore was also mentioned as having fought in South East Asia, in the Viet Nam War. He is from the state of Tennessee. Here in Auckland, where many of the food establishments and supermarkets are operated by South East Asians, I have met a Cambodian woman who operated a bakery in Orewa on the North Shore in Rodney District. My firstemployer her in New Zealand was a Canadian company known as Apotex New Zealand Limited, where I worked from June 2002 until December 2004. The managing director of Apotex New Zealand Ltd. was named Colin James Robertson, a New Zealander who’d been trained at the Canadian head office…

And it goes on like that for 11,000 lines!!!!!

Hatak! Hatak! D

Frozen chocolate and Doctor Who are a dangerous mix!

So, there I was settling down to watch Doctor Who last night. The lights were down, the phone was off the hook (look, I really enjoy the show and on more occasions than I care to remember people have called me right in the middle of it, so these days I don’t take chances OK?) and I had a nice big chunk of chocolate to nibble on. This chocolate had (of course) spent the previous few days in the freezer – since the only really civilised way to enjoy chocolate is frozen solid.

So, there I was happily crunching away on a piece of chocolate – one with malt chips to be precise since the supermarket was out of cashew nut – when I suddenly hit a really crunchy bit. Really crunchy. “That’s odd” I thought, and continued chewing. Then I hit another bit. “Right” I thought “I’d better check this out”, thoughts of food contamination and the possibility of monetary or chocoloform compensation floating through my head. I continued to chew very carefully, and when I shortly his another cruchy bit I isolated it and spat it out. To my suprise it didn’t look like glass or grit, it actually resembled a small shard of white china…

“Oh no..” I though and started poking around with my tongue – sure enough it wasn’t china. It was tooth!! One of my teeth!! My first molar, lower jaw, right hand side had spontaneously shed about a quarter of it’s mass, leaving a big, gaping, sharp edged cavity! And since there was no sign of the missing piece (short of the tiny shard in my hand) I’d apparently managed to chew it up and swallow it!! A sonde ka!

Needless to say I didn’t enjoy Doctor Who as much as I’d anticipated.

So that’s the bad news. The good news I suppose is that it could have been worse. Most of the tooth is still intact and it doesn’t hurt – apart from when exposed to particularly hot or cold foods. This is a good thing because the earliest I’ll even be able to make a dentist’s appointment is Monday morning. Hopefully they’ll be able to fit me in and get something done about it ASAP. In the meantime it’s all I can do to keep myself from continually poking at it with my tongue, which can’t be good for it 🙁

I was going to write a bit about the revised Planet definition (“cleared its local area”? what the heck does that mean?) but the hole is in such a position that my tongue continually presses against it. As its edge is rather sharp this is very uncomfortable – so I’m not in the mood for writing or even being civil to other human beings at the moment >:|

I’ll go now and wallow in self-pity.

PS: What does Hatak! Hatak! D

Spnews! (Space News)

Mars growing to the size of the full moon, and Stargate shrinking to a tiny cultural blip.

Continuing on from my astronomy related ranting from the other day, there’s apparently some emails floating around saying that on the 27th (this coming Sunday) Mars is going to be visible in the night sky at “the size of the full moon“. The fact that people would not only believe this but email it on to their friends with nary a logical thought about the matter only re-enforces my point about the absolutely woeful state of astronomical knowledge in the general community.

Mars is not going to be the size of the full moon on Sunday night. In fact Mars is hardly going to be visible at all on Sunday night, since it’s on the other side of the sun at the moment. If Mars ever was the size of the full moon as seen from Earth, then keeping an eye out for it on Sunday night would be the least of our concerns – we’d be too busy dealing with the earthquakes, tsunamis and tidal surges resultant from such a Velikovskian re-ordering of the solar system.

What’s even sillier about the idea is the implication that Mars would be this size for One Night Only! That’s right, just for Sunday night the entire planet would swoop billions of miles across the solar system to give us a show, then fly back into place before sundown on Monday. If Mars was going to be that big on Sunday it would have been getting steadily bigger over the last four or five years at least – it’d already be pretty much the size of the full moon now people.

The confusion has arisen from some badly formatted information about the close approach of Mars back in August 1993. Someone wrote an article saying that when viewed through 75x magnification the planet would be the size of the full moon. Unfortunately someone stuck a paragraph break after the magnification bit, and so the story was born. What’s really annoying is that this misinformation has been trotted out every August since.

It’s a real shame the public seem to lack the ability to think before hitting “forward” on their email programs. *sigh*

In other news it appears that Stargate-SG1 has been axed. This is sad, but probably a long time coming. Most of the original cast are gone, and (not having seen it it several years admittedly) I believe the plot has been floundering around distractedly for quite some time. In its heydey SG1 was smart, groundbreaking Science Fiction, but those days are gone now and it’s finally time to say farewell to our old friend. Vale Stargate! We’ll miss you and what you used to be.

(I’m at work, writing in my lunchbreak so my time is limited. I may get around to writing a proper Eulogy for SG1 at some point over the next few days. Maybe)

Feet First into the 21st Century

My very first podcast.

Had some fun yesterday helping Ryan set up a test podcast. He’s been wanting to do one for ages and has finally come up with a decent premise (to do with an environmental project he’s involved with), so we recorded some test “shows” and hooked them up with a test website I threw together. It works beautifuly – I was able to subscribe to it through Juice, and when he got back to his place Ryan was able to subscribe through iTunes – so once he arranges proper hosting (it’s parasiting off Wyrmworld at the moment) and records some proper shows it’s all systems go.

Now at this point you’re probably expecting a link to the podcast. This is not going to happen. Firstly the location is very temporary, so you’d have to re-subscribe from the correct location once it goes live for real. Secondly there are only two “shows”, neither is longer than 90 seconds, and the second one features some questionable content about prostitutes and syphilis (in a suitably 19th century context I hasten to add). Oh, and one of them claims Coca-Cola as a sponsor, which is the kind of thing that could get us locked up. So no podcast for you!.

I’ll provide a link to the real thing once they get up it and running.

In other extremely geeky news my Dad discovered a huge pile of White Dwarfs from the mid 90’s in a local charity shop and grabbed them for me. They’re all in excellent condition and buried in the middle were several Necromunda rule and source books, a game I’ve been meaning to check out for years. 48 magazines/books in total – not bad for $40.

Right, better go now. People to email, podcasts to catch up on, magazines to read…

Welcome Back Ceres

Celestial bodies and ugly heads

Wow, not only has Howard had his ‘border-protection’ bill defeated in the Senate, he’s decided to allow a conscience vote on stem cell research. And Attorney General Ruddock has said that if the Americans don’t charge David Hicks soon he’ll get him sent home. I’m not complaining, but who are these people and what have they done with the Government?

Anyway, lots of news this week about the proposed re-definition (well really just definition, since there hasn’t been one previously) of planet. If accepted, this will upgrade Charon, Ceres and “Xena” to planets immediately – giving us 12 planets in the solar system – and stick a bunch more on a watch list for later inclusion if they match the criteria.

A lot of people seem rather upset about this, but I for one welcome our new celestial companions! To my mind the criteria are (if you’ll pardon my French) bloody sensible – they’re short, easy to understand and consistant. There’s a few minor bugs to be worked out (like what about brown dwarfs?) but apart from that they’re pretty much the criteria I would have devised (which is, of course, high praise indeed ;D)

I think most of the uproar over the proposal is being caused by people with basically nil knowledge of astronomy. They learned the nine planets by rote in primary/elementary school, and now find that sacred knowledge threatened by meddling scientists. “Why can’t they leave things alone?!” they wail. They probably imagine that the solar system is a clean, pristene place with the nine planets floating around in serene majesty, and that now these scientists have invented things like “Ceres” and “Charon” just to mess things up. Well, I mean frankly, if you’ve never heard of Ceres then what use are you?

People are also complaining that under this proposal we could end up with dozens of planets. Well yes, and your point is? There are probably about 60 round things in orbit around the sun. What? Are we supposed to ignore the ones we don’t like? They’re there people! Accept it and deal. No one will be expecting little Timmy to memorise all of them for his science test, so grow up and stop whinging!

(Oh, I just thought, there’s probably people out there who are complaining because the new planets will mess up their horoscopes. Given that astrology is either a: a highly intuitive system of knowledge that uses the planets as a convenient source of random data for interpretation, or b: a load of complete bollocks – this can only be a good thing).

Anyway if this proposal goes through (and we all pray it will) “Xena” will become the 12th planet (although with the eccentric orbits of plutons such exact numbering might be tricky). I say “Xena” of course because “Xena” is just an unofficial nickname – it hasn’t got a real name yet. So we’ll need to come up with one. Now, as good as Lucy Lawless was in that episode of Battlestar Galactica, naming a planet after her might be a bit excessive – we’ll probably want to go back to classical mythology. With this in mind I think the best suggestion is Persephone.

Persephone was the wife of Hades (the Greek name for Pluto). She spent six months a year with him, and six months with her mother Demeter, causing the cycle of the seasons (Demeter was a nature goddess, and got too depressed to do her job when Persephone was away – hence winter). Given that “Xena” is so similar to Pluto, and spends roughly half it’s orbit close to Pluto and half away (or so I’ve read) this would be an ideal name.

Unfortunately there’s already an asteroid called Persephone. I propose we rename it. We can call it “Persephonis” or “Persephonae” or “Persephony” or something. Hell, we can even call it “Xena” if necessary. This would neatly free up the name, and set a very useful precedent for any other Kuiper Belt Objects we need titles for 😉

(The fact that there’s a planet named Persephone in Firefly has nothing to do with my preference at all. Honestly. Anyway we’ve already got moons named Ariel and Miranda so the solar system is pretty shiny as is 🙂

OK, so the 12th planet is now called Persephone. So what to call it’s moon? (yes, it has a moon). This is currently – for obvious reasons – nicknamed “Gabrielle”. Now if we’re not naming planets after Lucy Lawless we can hardly name them after Renee O’Connor so the name has to change. And I reckon we can be really clever with this one, and rename it “Gabriel”. This is suitably mythic sounding and goes nicely with the moons of Uranus, Ariel and Umbriel.

So, that’s the deal with planets. I have spoken! ;D

On a completely different subject, Channel Ten premiered David Tench Tonight this week, which is a half hour of celebrities being interviewed by a giant, computer generated head (which from certain angles happens to bear a startling resemblance to my friend Ryan). Judging by the huge amount of advertising they’ve been running for it they’re trying to make it a flagship program, which just goes to show how idiotic TV execs can be.

Based on Thursday’s episode, the show has absolutely nothing going for it. The interviews were dull, the jokes were extremely lame, and the only thing that made it even worth looking at was the novelty value of seeing people talking to a large computer generated head. Unless the quality improves sharply it’s going to sink like a depth-charged u-boat. And I don’t see how it can really improve.

You see it’s an interview show, and interview shows are only good when you’ve got a good interviewer. Someone who asks good questions, encourages the interviewee’s answers and make them feel comfortable. Andrew Denton (ironically one of the people behind Tench) and Michael Parkinson are good examples. David Tench is not a good interviewer. He doesn’t exist. He’s a model inside a computer and a guy making lame jokes in a funny voice. The interviews are carried out by someone making exagerated gestures in a video capture suit, with the interviewees having to pretend they’re talking and reacting to the computer generated grotesquerie that gets added in the video mixer – there’s no way anyone could feel comfortable and relaxed enough to give a good interview in those circumstances. The concept of interviews conducted by a non-existant interviewer is one that’s doomed right from the start – just because we now have the computing power to do it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

The novelty value will keep the show running for a little while, and convincing some big names to take part will eke things out a little further (although they seem to have run out of big names on the first night – no offense to Ella Hooper but she’s B-list at best) but it’s a losing proposition. Ten should cut their loses and run (either that or marry Tench off to Yasmin and be done with it 😉

Once again I have spoken! ;D

PS: The video clip for the Scissor Sisters’ latest, I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’ is brilliantly silly. And it’s not a bad song either.

That’s a bad day, even for a horse!

Ill directed ramblings

Well how about that, Howard’s actually had a defeat in the Senate. Maybe there’s hope for civilisation yet.

Anyway I’m going through various personal crises (dagnabit, is that the plural of crisis? That’s what I mean anyway) which is why there haven’t been a whole load of updates recently. But I thought I’d better keep the side up a bit with a few observations.

Like Helen’s birthday for instance. Happy birthday! 🙂 We had a fairly shambolic webcam conference for her party yesterday – apparently the technology isn’t quite reliable yet. But at least I was able to watch her brother John eat an apple. That sounds ridiculous but think about it. Twenty years ago if you said you’d be able to use a common household appliance to watch someone on the other side of the planet eat an apple in real time they’d think you were crazy, wouldn’t they?

Or the Killers. The boys from Vegas have released a single from their upcoming second album called When You Were Young. This is not in itself a great song, but it punches well above its weight with absolutely spectacular construction. There’s a driving beat, a catchy riff, synth strings, female backing vocalists, a quiet bit in the middle and the lyrics mention both Jesus and the Devil – and they’re all put together with esquisite timing. It’s the best pop-rock song I’ve heard in years – I could easily listen to it at least five times in a row without getting sick of it at all 🙂

In other music news I never realised what a (OK, hideously unfashionable opinion coming up here 🙂 fantastic song Moonlight Shadow by Mike Oldfield and Maggy Reilly is. Again it’s really well constructed and there’s a fair bit of Dire Straits style guitar work going on so I was pretty much guaranteed to like it anyway.

Another couple of recent musical discoverys are A New England by Billy Bragg and Another Sunny Day by Belle and Sebastian. The former has some really clever lyrics, my favourite being “it’s wrong to wish on space hardware”. The second sounds really happy and catchy, but is actually rather melancholy – I listened to it too much over the weekend and ended up rather depressed, so be warned 🙂

Oh, that’s right, Channel Ten’s fantastic new reality show Yasmine’s Getting Married lasted all of four episodes before getting axed (ha!). But what’s better is they’ve replaced it with Futurama! That’s right! Futurama in prime time! It’s a miracle! Of course it’ll only last until they get the next season of The Biggest Loser or something together, but we can enjoy it in the meantime.

OK, that’s all rather incoherant isn’t it? I’d probably better go to bed before it gets worse 🙂

Ontological Neologisms

A modest proposal for a new word

OK, a few weeks ago I commented on wanting to write something about time-travel generated paradoxical information loops. So I figured I’d probably better follow through before the Hounds of Tindalos track me down (OK, I’ve been doing way too much Lovecraft recently 🙂

In Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency it becomes critical for the existance of humanity that the ‘second half’ of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kublah Khan is never written. To this end the characters travel back in time, and Dirk himself goes knocking on the door of Coleridge’s cottage just as he’s writing the poem (which he composed in a laudanum dream) down. Dirk keeps him talking for about half an hour, at the end of which he is unable to remember the rest of it.

(This is all based on fact – Coleridge was feverishly writing down the poem when someone – the infamous ‘Person from Porlock’ – came knocking on his door and distracted him, resulting in the poem remaining forever incomplete)

The important part of this for our purposes is Dirk’s description of his coversation with Coleridge…

“…I asked him at the end about the albatross and he said what albatross? So I said, oh it wasn’t important. The albtross did not signify. He said what albatross did not signify, and I said never mind the albatross, it didn’t matter. And he said it did matter – someone comes to his house in the middle of the night raving about albatrosses, he wanted to know why. I said blast the bloody albatross and he said he had a good mind to and he wasn’t certain that that didn’t give him an idea for a poem he was working on. Much better, he said, than being hit by an asteroid, which he thought was stretching credulity a bit…”

The albatross in question of course is from Coleridge’s other famous poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in which it plays a major part.

Now, according to Adams’ story Dirk knows about the albatross because he’s familiar with the poem. However, Coleridge only put the albatross in the poem because Dirk told him about it. So where did the concept of the albatross come from? Because of the way the information loop is set up there is no actual origin for the albatross information – and yet it exists. Moreso you can point to a time when the information didn’t exist, and then to a moment when it did. But there’s no actual moment of creation. It’s an ontological paradox.

There are plenty of other examples from science fiction. The skynet chip in the Terminator series. The song Johny B. Goode in Back to the Future. Transparent Aluminium in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. I could probably list them all day (but why bother when Wikipedia does such a good job?). But that’s not what I’m writing this for. I’m writing this to propose a name for such information. I suggest that a unit of information that (due to an ontological paradox) has no point of origin should be called a cjelli – pronounced “suh-jelly” (this of course comes from one of Dirk Gently’s several names Svlad Cjelli).

So, that’s my neologism for the week!

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