Yale: The size of a horse or a hippopotamus, with the tail of an elephant, and a black color. The horns are about 2 feet long. – images & text from Dave’s Mythicals
It’s funny – once you start digging into it – how many “mythical” creatures look a lot like normal animals, as if seen by someone busy running away in terror.
We’re all familiar with Real Dolls at this point, right?
It’s got to be a sign of the decline of civilization – crazy technology, letting us do crazy things like build constructs to have sexual relations with.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f59N37xH0Ng]
I do, however, remember hearing – back in the old, pre-Real Doll, days – a story about a fellow who actually went about BUILDING his own pseudo-woman.
He had a social issue, not being a fan of females in general, but he still felt all of the old familiar urges, so, like most socially inept geeks, he took up a hobby to keep his hands busy; in his case, it was sculpting.
Pygmalion loathing their lascivious life,
Abhorr’d all womankind, but most a wife:
So single chose to live, and shunn’d to wed,
Well pleas’d to want a consort of his bed.
Yet fearing idleness, the nurse of ill,
In sculpture exercis’d his happy skill;
I should mention, this was before we had rubber and latex, so his groping was straight on hard marble.
Art hid with art, so well perform’d the cheat,
It caught the carver with his own deceit:
He knows ’tis madness, yet he must adore,
And still the more he knows it, loves the more:
The flesh, or what so seems, he touches oft,
Which feels so smooth, that he believes it soft.
Fir’d with this thought, at once he strain’d the breast,
And on the lips a burning kiss impress’d.
Like a lot of people courting an inanimate object, he spent a lot of time playing dress-up. Still, his general preference was to have her naughty bits hanging out.
Thus like a queen array’d, so richly dress’d,
Beauteous she shew’d, but naked shew’d the best.
What makes Pyg’s tale so different from that of the modern marionette-fancier is that, one day, while getting another round of flesh-on-mineral heavy-petting in, he was visited by his own version of the Blue Fairy, and his stonework bride became real:
He kisses her white lips, renews the bliss,
And looks, and thinks they redden at the kiss;
He thought them warm before: nor longer stays,
But next his hand on her hard bosom lays:
Hard as it was, beginning to relent,
It seem’d, the breast beneath his fingers bent;
He felt again, his fingers made a print;
‘Twas flesh, but flesh so firm, it rose against the dint:
The pleasing task he fails not to renew;
Soft, and more soft at ev’ry touch it grew;[…]
At this the waken’d image op’d her eyes,
And view’d at once the light, and lover with surprize.
This, of course, will never happen for the Real Doll groupies – not, at least, without another half-decade’s worth of artificial intelligence advancements, and some minor robotics research.
(All quotes are from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, published in 8 AD.)
This post owes its existence entirely to a suggestion made by Barry, of bmj2k.com.
* * *
The horizon crackled with the light of flame.
Gathered on a hill overlooking Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, a crowd – many with blankets draped over their shoulders to fend off the October chill – were waiting to see if the world might end.
The loudspeakers rigged at the edges of the mob sometimes brought the flat tone of a newsman, and sometimes the sharp bark of military communications.
Across the empty fields, a massive, unearthly, machine strode over the autumn grasses.
Finally, after all others seemed to have uttered their strangled death rattles into their mics, a single voice continued on, chronicling the last moments of the invasion.
The alien tripod stumbled, leaned drunkenly, then collapsed.
Orson Welles, dead a hundred years, gave a cheery warning that the production was meant only as Halloween tomfoolery, and the holographic projectors began to cycle down.
The defeated extraterrestrials shimmered into non-existence.
With the flaming country-side once again dark, the crowd began to disperse.
The War of the Worlds (October 30, 1938)
My favourite roboticist firm, Boston Dynamics, has found a new way to bring on our terrifying future.
BigDog’s makers are working on a new quadruped that moves faster than any human and is agile enough to “chase and evade.”
Boston Dynamics, maker of the Army’s robotic mule BigDog announced today that Darpa has awarded it a contract to build a much faster and more fearsome animal-like robot, Cheetah. – Danger Room
As a reminder, here’s BD’s lastest youtube video of Big Dog – from a year ago.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNZPRsrwumQ]
This project is definitely worth keeping an eye on, although the image at top leaves me thinking in terms of the old Transformers character, Ravage.
I’m still sick, but stick with me here;
I find the concept of reverse mortgages pretty depressing.
A reverse mortgage (or lifetime mortgage) is a loan available to seniors aged 62 or older, per HUD, and is used to release the home equity in the property as one lump sum or multiple payments. The homeowner’s obligation to repay the loan is deferred until the owner dies, the home is sold, or the owner leaves, they can be out of the home for up to 364 consecutive days.
This is essentially selling your house, cheap, so that you can afford to live in it – it’s gambling against the fact that you’re going to die before you can spend it all.
I don’t bring it up to curmudgeon-on about financial instruments available to the elderly, however. I wanted to mention it because Fred Thompson, former presidential candidate, and ex-Law & Order actor, stands as a fantastic example of the odd blurring of celebrity that we’ve found ourselves in.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkg8IH7e_6U]
Ten or twenty years ago it was a novelty to have someone well known in the entertainment industry make the jump to politics, (President Reagan, or Governor Jesse “The Body” Ventura, come to mind,) but we’re now at a point where there’s a porous exchange – barely an eyebrow is raised when Sarah Palin embarks on a reality show, or former RNC Chairman Michael Steele guest-hosts a talk radio show.
Political junkies always point to the televised Nixon/Kennedy debate as the birth of “modern politics”, with sweaty Nixon losing out to a crisp young Kennedy, but I’d argue that the incestuous union between the political machine and the mass media is an ongoing affair, one that has yet to settle into its final format.
Consider: if winning votes is just a matter of winning hearts & minds, then there was a time when David Schwimmer might have been a valid candidate for the executive office.
There will come a day when, like Justin Bieber, a leader of the free world will be selected based on their youtube videos. This person, having run for the position largely for the associated fame, will complete the bread & circuses cycle – they will, in fact, be the circus.
Unfortunately, it’ll likely be a grandchild of Keyboard Cat, and she’ll soon turn around and attempt to sell us Whiskas.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J—aiyznGQ]
Will there come a day when we grow nostalgic over how bad search engines used to be?
Will perfect results destroy the sort of lateral trail that leads you through a chain of poorly designed angelfire sites, focused largely on kittens, only to bring you suddenly face-to-face with the exciting niche-hobby of kite fighting?
From an article on Gudiparan bazi
Before the war began, It was a form of sport that many took to the status of art. From the designs and sizes of kites to the making of unbreakable tar (wire), for many this became a matter of honor to compete in who’s who among the best kite fighters in their neigborhood. This addicting sport absorbed many young Afghans, even during the war.
[…]
The Fight (Jang) – In order to have a kite fight, 2 kites had to be airborne simultaneously at a close proximity. As soon as the wire of these two kites contacted each other, the fight had began.
I, for one, will miss the days when an image search for pulp magazine covers turns up a guy in a Nintendo power glove giving me the finger, and a picture of a chihuahua as the king of the rubber wrestlers.
I’d never heard of this film till today, but maybe that’s due to the poster’s punctuation?
Does he kill babies who cry, or are they trying to raise a warning about an approaching baby killer? Do they mean he blubbers as he kills?
Wait – are they trying to taunt an infant murderer? (“Baby-killer gonna cry? Cry baby-killer, cry!”)
Whatever the case, at least he’s keeping the mad-dog population down – going from a teenage rebel to an animal control technician may not seem like that great of a film plot, but Corman was working with tight budgets back in the late-’50s.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pisNkBfDvHE]
This isn’t the newest version of this gold buyer’s commercial, but it’s all I could find on youtube.
What I wanted to discuss was item #3 on their list, “private, confidential meetings,” as it’s actually the final selling point in the newest iteration of their pitch.
While they attempt to class it up a bit by having a woman in a suit play the customer, it seems to me that if you’re going to a gold buyer for a “private, confidential meeting”, it’s likely less a case of “I don’t want to be seen selling over the counter with the rest of the riffraff”, and more a case of: “I’ve stolen this from my ailing grandmother, and want to know if you’ll buy it without my having to risk a call to the police”. 
Have you ever heard of Stendahl’s Syndrome?
Stendhal syndrome, Stendhal’s syndrome, hyperkulturemia, or Florence syndrome is a psychosomatic illness that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to art, usually when the art is particularly beautiful or a large amount of art is in a single place.
I don’t mean to be insensitive to anyone’s condition, but this strikes me as the kind of thing Hipsters pretend to suffer from, just to prove how intensely into some avant-garde piece they are.
Also, what counts as “fine” art? Do a few hundred hallucinating Grateful Dead fans, under the influence of heavy narcotics, count as cases of pseudo-Stendhal’s?
Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam addressed the public via state TV, speaking about a “plot against Libya” led by Islamists. He also said most protesters were drunk and/or high and that the death count had been grossly exaggerated.
Although I’ve been watching things intently, I don’t have much to say on the current spat of uprisings in the Middle East – I’d love to show up and do my usual “Rah Rah, Technology!” bit, but it’s tough to be enthused when people are being gunned down in the street.
However, I did want to briefly discuss Saif Qaddafi, son of Muammar, long considered the most liberal aspect of the Libyan dictatorship.
(Which, frankly, is something like saying “the friendliest of the rabid bears”.)
Look at the picture above – a still from a recent television address regarding the protests.
If the people gathering in the squares, signs in hand, are the young and bright seeking a better tomorrow, than Saif, in every aspect, appears to be a middle-management drone, who’s come to tell us we’ll need to work next Saturday, for our own good. To me, he rings of that fellow you know who goes on at length about entrepreneurship, but has never run a successful business.
I find this interesting in two ways: