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Lewis Carroll, chip music, grid puzzling, demo art, WFMU hunt [links or contact]

To tide you over this fine Sunday, I have a tidbit of Kafka: SciFi's Seeing Ear Theatre presents The Country Doctor. [The old Kafka story... starring Mark Hamill! Ow.]

My overt issue with this link is, I could not find a translated online text of this particular Kafka short composition collection. Here's Ein Landarzt for any German-speaking folk.

I would have picked Before the Law [later printed as a sermon in The Trial] or Eleven Sons for reading, but I suppose there's not much physical action for those. [Nor any etext.]

However, I also take issue with this particular production. There's nothing wrong with Mark Hamill's vocal interpretation, but this Phillip B. Smith fellow who adapted and produced it chose to not follow the standard Muir translation. You're going to have to take my word for this unless you can read German, but a good deal of the urgency in this story arises from a masterful use of varying tense. The narrative starts out in past tense, and nearing the end it it veers into the present, giving a sense of acceleration and immediacy. In this altered version, if you listen closely, we're carried permanently into the present right near the beginning of the story; before the doctor even leaves his house!

Lewis Carroll tomorrow, and that'll be two issues in the space of a week. Scary.

Working three jobs for the price of one = bad. Power supply suddenly emitting intense burning smell whilst computer is running = bad. A squeeze-tube of yogurt = priceless.

It's late Friday, and this log is going to be plenty punchy. You have been warned.

"Dry ice and erlenmeyer flasks for everyone!"

Would you too like to be cured by sound induced mental anomaly?

"Remember, the bleeding goes away after just a few weeks, but the feeling that nothing is wrong lasts a lifetime."

Order now!

After the (relatively) serious posts on Christianity, the scale needs balancing. Reader beware, this next bit may turn you into a blaspheming baby-snatcher. (remember that meme?)

"Lord I rebuke Satan and his power over this home page. One day every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. That is my prayer! Also, that your name will be glorified and seen somehow through this awful page. I pray that this will be discontinued for your glory and the truth shall be know not the lies of the true deciever, Satan."

Is your laptop or desktop computer a vague beige annoyance? Make it a glaring eyesore with some custom casing!

No-one will suspect you're carrying anything expensive in that titanium briefcase.

Gaudy much! Dig the black and gold marble one.

Mmmm. Grape goo.

This clear build is something I'd like to try, if I could muster enough faith to follow the schematic. Most likely, I'd end up with something that would fall over and shatter in my eye.

Poe in Pi was a groovy link for the pool, but you must visit Poe in Pi in AANVVV to truly experience confusion. Oh, brother!

Also, I have a comment to make on the brain-wave machine:

FOR i=1 to 50
   OUT 888, 255
   FOR x=1 to 500
   NEXT x
   OUT 888,0
   FOR x=1 to 500
   NEXT x
NEXT i

Improve your brain... WITH BASIC.
Blee hee hee ho ho! BASIC into your brain. I just can't get enough of that.

Hermenaut is an interesting zine.

Philip K Dick retrospective: "If God manifested Himself to us here He would do so in the form of a spraycan advertised on TV."

Some anonymous robot (spammer?) sent me this link to an expensive pair of TV glasses.

Following up on yesterday's subtle linguistics battle over the grounds of Christian religion, chew on some White. Andrew D. White, to be precise: entire text of A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom.

Brent of Pitchfork tears into Antartica, but they end up with a 5.

I won't dispute the fact that the record steals a page from Underworld. I won't dispute the fact that it's mediocre. However, I can guarantee you that he has never actually seen Antarctica perform.

They set up in that basement very swiftly, and without a sound check or an introduction launched a wall of sound I didn't ever expect to recover from. The shifting static burned the remnants of guitar picking to shreds; feedback into fuzz, and still that odd sense of un-melody.

Elbows on the keyboard, altering the tone by pedal and loudspeaker distortion. I stood within arms reach of the singing man, but a thick carpet of pure undirected, unclassified emotion lay between. Trying to make out the words by watching his mouth open and close, muted completely by that song of the wind.

That'd be my pick (in hindsight) for the best show I have ever seen. Unfortunately, neither of their releases attempts to capture a living, raw sound. Maybe they became wimp rock since they visited limbo in that basement.

John of the Meta's logging IRC chat idea turned out nicely, despite the odd issue with EFnet. I felt like a moron because I had nothing useful to contribute to the conversation. If it happens again, I will post where, when, and how.

New Michael Kupperman: "Dead End Alley"
It will make you chuckle. Then it will make you think. Then you might get sad. Remember, how real can a comic strip be?

After determining he's also known as P. Revess, I was able to track down more of his drawings.

"Snake and Bacon" is still my fav-o-rite.

Here's a comic titled Modern Urban Fable - it's definitely in the format of a fable, and it's modern. I guess the ever so slightly violent content makes it urban.

Visit Hype.net directly for more possibly offensive, but undoubtedly hilarious content.

I've been crafting post-holiday thank you notes, web-style.

Craw is kneeling inside my brain.

"I fought the false teachers who chose the way of Herod
A nigh unto naked boy holds a bowl of grapes
Smell the ozone when he speaks
Taste the fatted calf when he speaks
Every time a suctioner dies
Another one gets his wings...

I was called here to tread out the winepress
And as I was cutting my hair afterward
I heard a voice say,
'She'll feel it in her heart
And in her spine with every remaining breath'
And another said,
'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani'"

There seems to be a bit of a controversy over how to explain away Christ's supposed last words.

Phew... that's finally behind me.

Designing with CSS is a chore and then some. It's hardly even worth attempting to work around Netscape's known issues.

Just worried about making the page readable at this point. Is the only solution to use Javascript and write out different CSS for each browser? I'm trying to use relative em units for everything; isn't that good enough? Sheesh. And yes, I got rid of the FONT tags.