On Skrillex

I actually don’t mind a bit of dubstep 🙂

I do not feel required to believe that Skrillex is a human being. My top three theories to explain the existence of such a thing are as follows…

1: Skrillex is the name of a program designed by a post-grad computer engineering student to simulate industrial workplace noise. After a night of heavy drinking said student inadvertently messed up some of the audio filters and induced a series of overlapping sound loops, then realised that the resulting cacophony might go down well at next weekend’s beer and ecstasy mixer.

2: Skrillex is an ancient fax-modem, forgotten about in a storage cupboard but still connected to the net, which has achieved sentience and a recording contract.

3: Skrillex is a member of an unknown, sapient, deep-sea dwelling species that is attempting to communicate with us by modulating its vocalisations for propagation through air rather than water. It’s not very good at it.

The History of the Ambar Dynasty

1400 – Establishment of the Royal House of Hutz-Ambar by King Eddercrumb the 1st – an indigent Pure Finder blessed with Royal Blood by a magical wizard.

1412 – King Eddercrumb constructs the Castle of Rinds

1414 – The Castle of Rinds is sacked by the evil Communards of Pikkle, sparking off a three year vendetta between the city of Rinds and the neighboring valley of Blort

1420 – King Eddercrumb is killed in Battle by the Black Knight of Blort. He assumes the throne as King Rupert the 1st and unites the people of Rinds and Blort

1423 – Something important happened but no one can remember exactly what. A pig might have been involved, but no one’s really that sure. It was a long time ago.

1424 – The son of King Rupert – Crown Prince Muntjak – ascends the throne after his father’s death during a toadstool hunt. He reigns wisely for many years, thus removing the necessity to detail them in any fashion.

1452 – King Wilbert II is sent into exile after he is discovered wearing underclothes made of two different types of yarn.

1453 – Thanks to Archbishop Mazimillian tripping over during a critical part of the coronation ceremony, King Footstool the 1st takes the throne. The eight months of his reign (the time it takes to organise a new coronation) are regarded as some of the most peaceful and prosperous in Ambarian history

1454 – Coronation of King Hutzpah Footstool-Slayer.

1458 – King Hutzpah Footstool-Slayer is killed in a crossbow-reloading accident. Speculation about how he managed to shoot himself in the spine is suppressed as treasonous slander again the late King’s shooting skills.

1459 – Crown Prince Humpty ascends the throne. He wins the loyalty of the noble houses of Runetown, Hopton, Greeblyville and Milton-Keynes in a series of high stakes poker matches.

1461 – King Humpty marries Eleanor the Gump of the House of Gump, thus gaining command of Gump, the Lesser Gump Principality and the Isles of Gump

1468 – King Humpty sets out on a fishing trip and never returns. His chamber pot is declared a holy relic.

1469 – The Year of the Twelve Emperors. No one remembers what this was about at all.

1476 – The royal line is restored with the coronation of King Hazeltine II. He ushers in an age of peace and prosperity lasting for about eight and a half minutes before the outbreak of the Metonic Uprising

1481 – The Metonic Uprising is crushed with the sacking of Palukavil. Speculation about the toiletry habits of the royal family is banned.

1484-1505 – Nothing happened.

1506 – Peasants in the imperial capital of Runetown develop a nasty, hacking cough for a few weeks. The event is recorded as the Great Plague of Ambrosius, after the most obnoxiously outspoken of said Peasants.

1509 – Scandal erupts after Queen Whitney is accused of an affair with a mysterious figure called Charles the Python. The rumours are eventually traced to a half-deaf bootblack who overheard the Queen discussing her recent visit to the Royal Menagerie.

1510 – King Ecommerse defeats a coalition of the Whigers, Tronces, Mon Keeps and Viesonbars.

1512 – King Ecommerse defeats a coalition of the Whigers, Tronces, Mon Keeps and Viesonbars, who apparently didn’t learn their lesson the first time.

1513 – The Whigers, Tronces, Mon Keeps and Viesonbars are revealed to be nothing but opium induced figments of King Ecommerse’s imagination.

1514 – Prince Larrae Emdur deposes King Ecommerse, swearing an oath to “end all this Whiger nonsense”.

1516 – King Emdur is killed by an assassin sent by the Whigers, who turn out to be real after all, ending the Ambar Dynasty.

Introducing Corvus Jyones

Introducing Corvus Jyones

I’ve recently – for my sins – become involved with a play-by-post role playing game on one of the forums I frequent. It’s a science fiction game and we had to write a passage to introduce our characters. This is mine, introducing Corvus Jyones, maverick engineer…

(Note: Contains adult language)

Corvus Jyones, recently engaged engineer of the freighter Gaunt’s Promise was finalising the post-touchdown system checks when the Captain entered the engine room.

“Corvus, have you got a minute?”

“Sure thing Cap!” Corvus sharply saluted and put down his clipboard.

The Captain awkwardly returned the salute “Look, there’s no easy way to say this. You’re a great engineer and you’ve kept the ship running like a dream, but the crew have had a meeting, and they’ve decided – well – they’ve decided that they don’t want you on the next trip. Or any trip, actually.”

“You’re firing me?”

“I’m sorry Corvus”

Jyones turned away. He picked up his clipboard, then put it back down. He picked it up again, turned it around a few times, and put it down again. He picked it up and turned back to the Captain.

“Is it the razor thing?”

“Partially…”

“I told him, don’t use it for more than two minutes straight or it’ll overheat”

“It exploded!”

“Technically they’re the same same thing…”

“It’s also the food”

“I needed parts to fix the razor”

“And they had to come from the refrigeration system?”

“Hey, who’s the engineer here? I made sure there were plenty of non-perishables…”

“Doctor Goodhealth’s Complete Nutrition Paste?”

“Nothing wrong with nutrition paste! It’s nutritious! And delicious!”

“The crew beg to differ. Look, just leave without a fuss, please?”

“At least let me get my stuff”

“Your boiler suits? They’re out on the tarmac.”

“What? How you can you treat them like that? The boiler suit is pinnacle of human sartorial development!”

“So you keep insisting…”

“So, that’s it? Six months of loyal service and all because of one minor, disfiguring explosion I’m cast adrift into an uncaring galaxy without so much as a penny to my name?”

“You were paid yesterday”

“And how do you know I haven’t spent it all on comic slates and moon pies?”

“You haven’t been off the ship yet!”

“I could have been. You don’t know everything I do!”

The Captain sighed heavily and buried his face in his hands,

“Corvus…”

“Can I at least say goodbye to the crew?”

“They’ve already said all they want to say”

“When?”

“All over your boiler suits”

Fuckers

“Just, go. Please.”

Corvus set down the clipboard.

“All right, if that’s the way it’s got to be. But I’m not going to go quietly!” He lunged for the nearby intercom panel, mashing the ‘All Channels’ button with his fist.

I’M A FARMER DADDY!! I’M A FARMER!! DADDY, I’M A FARMER!!

GIVE ME THAT YOU INSANE BASTARD!

I’M A FARMER!! I’M A- GET OFF! GET! Oh fuck it, have it your way…”

Five minutes later Corvus Jyones stood alone on the spaceport tarmac – except for a pile of soiled boiler suits. The lights of the colony beckoned, promising excitement, adventure and (hopefully) dry cleaning.

With Apologies to Heywood Banks

All across the country from west to east,
People always ask me what I like to eat,
I don’t wanna brag, or be indiscrete,
I always tell them, I like meat…
YEAH MEAT!!!!!!!!
YEAH MEAT!!!!!!!!

I get up in the morning ’bout six am,
Get myself some bacon, get myself a pan,
Pick me out a rasher, put it on the griddle,
Turn up the dial till the fat starts to sizzle,
I cook meat…
YEAH MEAT!!!!!!!!
YEAH MEAT!!!!!!!!

When the first caveman got up on his feet,
Didn’t know what kind of things he could eat,
Must have been a genius, cause he got an idea,
Get a stick and a rock, fashion up a spear,
To hunt meat…
YEAH MEAT!!!!!!!!
YEAH MEAT!!!!!!!!

There’s no secret to carnivore perfection,
Go talk to your butcher and make a selection,
Roast it in the oven or fry it on the grill,
Or serve it on a spike like they do in Brazil ,
With their meat…
YEAH MEAT!!!!!!!!
YEAH MEAT!!!!!!!!

(The inevitable result of email discussions with the guys about planning a return visit to that Brazilian barbecue place. Puzzled? Click here…)

Urban Folklore

Here be dragons

This comic from Subnormality pretty much says it all.

They say maybe these are just good stories, as opposed to good facts. Just versions of old themes. But maybe those themes are old for a reason. Maybe there’s always been a city, and it’s always been kind of a drag at times, mundane and predictable, and as your comically brief window of existence ebbs away maybe it’s always kind of helped to pretend. To think about good stories as reality lumbers past, its cards all showing, its hills all flagged before you were born, its every expanse and signed and bathed in ceaseless light, nothing undiscovered.

That’s how I feel a lot of the time. I want there to be mysterious places, unsolved mysteries and strange phenomenon hiding just out of sight in the everyday landscape. I want there to be dragons, serpents and secrets just round the corner. And if there aren’t any, I’ll damn well make some up.

This was the impetus behind a project I came up with many years ago called The Secret History of Perth. It was to be a book full of completely made up rumours tied into the history of the city. Roman coins found during the construction of St Mary’s cathedral, strange cyclopean tunnels that put paid to attempts to build an underground railway system in the 1920s, Phoenician carvings in Bedfordale, a Japanese Midget Submarine in Melville Water and – oddly enough given the first panel of the comic – an illegal nightclub operating in the city’s storm drains in the 1970s.

As with many of my projects it never came to fruition. But there are actually a quite a few mysteries and urban myths around Perth without me making any up…

Platypuses – Platypuses are of course not native to Western Australia, but every now and then someone will claim to have spotted one in the streams up in the hills. Conventional wisdom is that they’ve just seen a native water rat, but rumours have persisted for years that at some indeterminate point in the past some indeterminate person released an indeterminate number of platypuses up there for indeterminate purposes.

Funnily enough, a few years back someone actually did the research and discovered that a breeding pair of platypuses were released into the hills back in the (I think) 1930s as part of some kind of deranged ecological ‘improvement’ scheme. One of them turned up dead a week or so later however, so it’s unlikely that they produced any offspring. As a result, the rumours now focus on some mysterious earlier release (possibly in the Victorian era) or subsequent, undocumented releases in the same program.

Japanese Sea Planes – During World War II rumours were rife that Japanese sea planes were using the dams up in the hills to pick up and drop off spies. Mysterious planes buzzing the hills at night were the black helicopters of the day. It’s almost certainly untrue, but it’s not completely outside the realms of possibility.

Secret Tunnels – It’s claimed by some that there are underground tunnels linking the Supreme Court building in the city to the Old Perth Mint. As the buildings are almost a kilometre apart this seems unlikely, but the rumours persist. Slightly more likely are stories of tunnels linking to the old Treasury Building across the road from the Court. There may also be a 1920s style public toilet entombed under the intersection just outside the Court – an underground toilet certainly existed there once, the question is whether it was demolished or simply sealed up when the authorities decided to close it.

The Boya Quarry – The old Boya Quarry up in the hills was supposed to be the site of all kinds of satanic rituals. These days it’s a rock climbing centre, but when I first visited it back in the 1990s it was full of junk and heavily gratified with pentagrams and the number 666. How much of that was down to genuine cult activity and how much to people who’d heard the rumours is open to debate.

The QV1 Building – Perth claims to be the most isolated large city in the world (it really depends on how you define ‘large city’). We have a population of 1.6 million and the nearest population centre with even 500,000 is a good 1,300 miles away. In the 1990s the QV1 skyscraper was constructed in the central city as a hub for telecommunications and internet firms and – so the rumours say – every communication link to the outside world was routed through it. Result? Blow up or otherwise disable QV1 and Perth would be completely cut off from the rest of the planet.

There’s another rumour about QV1, which is that its architecture is a tribute to Marilyn Monroe. The main north and south entrances resemble the skirt scene from The 7 Year Itch, and the building’s footprint seen from above resembles a pair of pouting lips.

Trilobites – Back in the 80s it was claimed that living, giant trilobites had been discovered in the city’s storm drains. It turned out to be a weird combination of rumour, hoax, and very hot summer with no other real news to report. An old tyre cut up to look like a giant bug was alleged to be involved.

So there it is. Perth has it’s own dragons.

The Holder of the Sovereignty

Any mug can do it when the yards are full…

(Thought I’d give this a shot…)

In any city, in any country, go to any mental institution or halfway house you can get yourself to. When you reach the front desk, ask to visit someone who calls himself “The Holder of the Sovereignty”. Should a disturbing look of eagerness come over the worker’s face you will be taken to and left at a metal door in a brick outbuilding.

Knock three times on the door. A muffled voice should answer. If not, turn around and walk away. You may return and try again another day. If the voice answers, DO NOT say anything. Instead wait until the voice ceases, then knock three times again. The voice will again answer and again you MUST NOT speak. Wait until the voice ceases and knock three times once more. The voice will answer, and if you again remain silent the door will unlock. You MUST NOT speak during any of this, for reasons that it is not safe to explain.

Open the door and walk through. You will be in a small, windowless, brick room with an wrought-iron spiral staircase descending into the floor. The staircase will be covered in dust and cobwebs.

Descend the staircase. It will go far deeper than seems possible but do not turn around, no matter how much you may want to.

At the bottom of the staircase is a dusty hallway leading to a green door. If you are truly committed, open the door and go through. Otherwise ascend the staircase and leave. NEVER return.

Behind the door is a dusty storeroom filled with metal shelves and boxes. Search the room for a black, velvet covered box. Open it. Inside will be dozens of tiny fragments of bone, shaped like puzzle pieces. Fit them together (DO NOT sleep in this room, no matter how long it takes to assemble the puzzle).

When the pieces are properly assembled they form a human skull. This is the Holder of the Sovereignty.

Hold the skull to your ear. It will instruct you to carry out a task of minor betrayal against an acquaintance. If you do not complete this task within one year, you will die.

Once the task is complete, return to the room and hold the skull to your ear again. It will instruct you to carry out a task of substantial betrayal against a friend or loved one. If you do not complete this task within one month, you will die.

Once the task is complete, return to the room and hold the skull to your ear again. It will instruct you to carry out a task of ultimate betrayal against the person you care about the most. If you do not complete this task within one week, you will die.

Once the task is complete, return to the room and hold the skull to your ear again. It will tell you the secret known to the greatest traitors and turncoats in history. Used wisely this secret will make you the richest of the rich, and the most powerful of the powerful. Used unwisely it will cost you everything you own including your soul.

This secret is Object 227 of 538. It must never be shared with anyone.

(Yeah, thought so. Easy :))

Imaginary Language Relay Number One

The Fable of the Ships
(After 8 rounds of translation)

A newly wed Bride went to visit a Wizard.

“Why do we call down the stars upon our ships?” she asked

“We put the stars on our great sails as lanterns to guide our ships to safe harbour” he answered.

“What about those that sink?” she asked

“When an evil sorceror climbs to a high point to cast a spell, he throws a burning brand into the sea” explained the wizard

“Can this magic only be done at night?” asked the Bride

“If I had only a little more knowledge I would turn you into a frog!” answered the Wizard

“That would be good” said the Bride


The Great Fleet

(Original Text)

A young girl was speaking with her Great-Father.

“Why do we call the stars the Great Fleet?”

“The stars are the mast-lanterns of the Great-Parents. They shine in the night to guide our spirits home.”

“And what of falling stars?”

“Sometimes when one of the Great-Parents climbs the mast to light the lantern they drop their taper and it falls into the ocean.”

“Then why don’t falling stars appear only at dusk?”

“Don’t be too clever little one, or the Great-Parents will turn you into a seal-pup!”

“I’ll be good!”

Foolish Story Ideas No. 1

Fffffffffffffffffffffrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidddddddddddddddddddddddddaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Anthropologist records complex, ancient, multi-instrumental and multi-vocal religious chants from obscure South East Asian tribe. Accidentally messes up playback, speeding chants up by factor of eight. Chants are transformed into insipid modern pop song, complete with good approximation of modern instrumentation and English lyrics.

Considerations…
How did insipid modern pop song end up thousands of years in the past?
How did insipid modern pop song thousands of years in the past end up slowed down by eight?
How did insipid modern pop song thousands of years in the past and slowed down by eight become religiously significant enough to be repeated and preserved for thousands of years?
What is effect of this revelation on culture and religion of tribe?

Discuss.

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