Baron Von Linkenstein

CS alerted me to this smart, slightly offbeat, "Star Wars"-spoofing web series -

http://bit.ly/hYdTB0

MR justifiably raved about the human robotics in this clip by Genki Sudo's World Order -

http://bit.ly/gdDjaB

(If you quit that video before the end, we can never be friends.)

Thirdly, Transmission X offers an array of gorgeous comics in bite-size chunks -

http://bit.ly/wsMuQ

Suspect profile

"As far as we know, Paul Varelans is the only professional mixed martial artist to represent the art of trap fighting – whatever that is. Varelans fought 18 pro bouts over the course of his career, so we had plenty of opportunities to figure it out, but it was never clear what exactly was supposed to be trapped. As best as anybody could tell, trap fighting involved being absolutely enormous, and getting pasted by any and every name fighter you come up against. Varelans' size and ability to take a beating were his calling cards, and while that didn't exactly translate into MMA success, it did earn him a relatively high-profile shoot-style professional wrestling bout against Peter 'Taz' Senerchia, who worked a pseudo-MMA gimmick. According to the incredibly lurid biography of wrestling personality Missy Hyatt, Varelans was induced to lose the bout when Hyatt promised him a blow job. Afterward, in an impressive bit of wordplay, she then informed him that she didn't blow *jobbers*... Varelans then apparently went berserk and trap fought the backstage area into complete disarray."

Jonathan Snowden and Kendall Shields make sport of PV in "The MMA Encyclopedia" (2010). While their write-up is cruelly funny, the bloke was actually something of a pioneer, fighting way back in 1995-98 and winning as often as he lost.

Peri gets some decent dialogue

"Do you ever look back and ask yourself what got you to a particular place, and what you might have done differently? ... I was a straight-A student at high school, went on to be top of my year in botany. I wanted to go to the Amazon and discover new plant species. Maybe even have a flower named after me. And now, now I'm on a space station, serving drinks. ... I feel like a dinosaur. Time has moved on and left my past behind. An evolutionary dead end. It's like I never got the choice. Things just happened. Small things. And when they got added up together, I ended up here. There was never a chance to say, 'No, I want to go a different way.' Not a single moment where things changed."

From the audioplay "Doctor Who - The Lost Stories: Paradise 5" (2010) by PJ Hammond and Andy Lane. Although I suspect it's the latter who deserves the credit for these lines.

Live nude food

Lunched at Elysium, near the Ritz Cinema. Huge premises; unremarkable decor. Bit open to the elements for today's grey, windy weather. Rolling Stones on the stereo, then Powderfinger, then Joss Stone. Waited on by English lass with short hair and spark. Treated my tastebuds to:

* Hahn Light
* Grilled ciabatta bread with smoked salmon slices, capers, sliced red onion and lime aioli
* Fried zucchini flowers with pecorino stuffing, rocket salad and truffled honey dressing
* Five Geese Shiraz
* Home-made duck pie with mushroom and pinot noir sauce, hand-cut chunky chips and spicy tomato chutney
* Banana and toasted peanut Bombe Alaska with toffee ice-cream
* Tokay (sorry, CM, it wasn't Imperial Tokay)

Quite an indulgence, eh? To quote Alan Partridge, "I'd have that three times a day if I could...but I'd be dead." And dead broke. I hope Elysium sticks around, though. The waitress told me they've been trading for seven weeks. The quality's there, but they must pay a hell of a rent.

A little disrespect

"Erasure poetry" is taking an existing poem and selectively deleting words from it until a new work is formed. Unethical? Possibly. Illegal? That depends on your base material. Challenging and fun? Yup, yup. Here's what I did to Shelley's sonnet "Ozymandias" -

Man A

A traveller
Two legs
Stand in desert
Half a frown
And wrinkled lip
Well read
Yet lifeless
Mocked heart
These words:
"My name is
...despair!"
Nothing remains
Of that
Far away

I think you'll agree that was truly awful :-) "Ozymandias" seemed an appropriate candidate for partial burial, but even I'm not sure what "Man A" is on about. DGNers are encouraged to submit their undoubtedly superior poetic erasings in the comments section.

Scroll-burners of Gor

I've never sampled one of John Norman's "Gor" novels, nor do I have any intention of doing so in this go-round. However, I found io9.com's interview with the controversial fantasy author, real name John Lange, compelling. Initially it was his antiquated, scholarly prose - count the uses of "and such", try to remember when you last encountered "redounded" - that took my fancy. It's a writing style that is understandable given his age (79) and day job (philosophy professor). But what drew me on to the end of the 5000-word Q&A was the feeling that here was a man who was (a) broadly, deeply intelligent, (b) possessed of a keen sense of humour, and yet (c) a crackpot.

http://on.io9.com/heY7hC (If link fails, hit refresh.)

An example of why Terry Durack is my favourite Aussie restaurant critic

http://bit.ly/fkSKcN

I especially like this paragraph:

"I suppose I have to have a burger. Everyone else is eating burgers. I'll be called a food snob if I don't have a burger. It's just that having a burger feels like giving up. It's so repetitive. Bread, meat, pickles. Bread, meat, pickles. Oh, look, another burger. More bread, meat, pickles."

Check out his 2000 collection "Hunger" if you haven't already.

Two days in the (Hunter) Valley

I must start blogging properly again RSN. Could have done a beauty on the Hawkwind concert - theremins ahoy!, fan wheeling oxygen supply, being offered magic mushies in front of the stage, "Spirit Of The Age" showstealer, stilt dancers with alien headdresses and glowing fingertips, cheesy PS1 graphics, nice merchandise, "Silver Machine" encore, etc., etc. - but the moment has passed. The chronic lack of chronicling's unlikely to be rectified this weekend, either, as I'm travelling to the H/V to catch up with my oldies as well as my Brisbane sister and bro'-in-law (who are expecting twins!). If I can manage it, I may even drag a chum to a nearby club on Sunday arvo to watch UFC 128. WAR "SHOGUN"!

10 titles in search of an entry

* Overnight sensations

* "Get Brett Weir, I said!"

* Gallifreyan XI

* But if I tell you the time, I will spill my beer

* Lady Johanna Constantine

* Base 60 is better

* "And I killed the captain, sank the fleet. To liberate the heartbeat..."

* Convincing John (wembler)

* Roll for psionics

* Opprobrium

William Roberts on book borrowers

(From his 1895 guide, "The Book-Hunter In London")

"The book-borrower is, perhaps, a greater curse than the thief, for he simulates a virtue to which the latter makes no pretension. The book-plate of a certain French collector bore this text from the 'Parable Of The Ten Virgins': 'Go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.' 'Sir,' said a man of wit to an acquaintance who lamented the difficulty which he found in persuading his friends to return the volumes that he had lent them, 'Sir, your acquaintances find, I suppose, that it is much more easy to retain the books themselves than what is contained in them.' A certain wise physician took a gentle way of reminding the borrower who dog-eared or tore the pages of his books: pasted on the fly-leaf of each ... a printed tag, bearing this legend: 'Library of Galen, MD. "And if a man borrow aught of his neighbour and it be hurt, he shall surely make it good," Exodus xxii. 14.' A much more effective plan is that described some time ago in 'The Graphic' by Mr Ashby Sterry. In all the books of a certain cunning bibliophile he had the price written in plain figures; when anyone asked him for the loan of a book he invariably replied, 'Yes, with pleasure,' and, looking in the volume, further added, 'I see the price of this work is £2 17s 6d' — or whatever the value might happen to be — 'you may take it at this figure, which will, of course, be refunded when the volume is returned.'"

Charlie Brooker on "Blake's 7"

(From episode five of "How TV Ruined Your Life")

"A grit-toothed, we're-all-gonna-die space opera from Dalek creator Terry Nation. This was an epic tale of political exiles perpetually on the run from the evil Federation. It was a miserable existence. Space itself was a washed-out dystopia of brown and grey hexagons where the highlight of your day was finding a war memorial in a quarry... The crew were constantly being shot at and shaken around like despised stepkids each time the Liberator hit a cosmic pothole. It didn't even have a happy ending. The entire cast were gunned down in a final episode so devoid of hope it seemed to have been filmed on a camera made of frozen widows' tears. The dying was probably a sweet relief, really, since during their brief lives they'd been continually tortured by the technology that was supposedly assisting them. The chief source of their torment was Orac, a whirring, winking, smart-arse in a box who loved himself almost but not quite as much as an iPhone, and who treated his human companions with the haughty condescension of a professor of Latin snorting at an especially stupid peg."

Dettol huffer

I'd be in Newcastle celebrating Dad's birthday but for a throat frog. Not that I'm complaining. When you see entire communities destroyed by mudslides in Bolivia, it puts a piffling ailment into perspective. I'll visit him and Mum soon enough. Meanwhile, I have a new toy with which to entertain myself: a PS3. Went for the 320-gigabitch version, which came with four games. They threw in a fifth with the extended warranty (instant collection!), then I picked up a sixth at work after accepting responsibility for the games page. As I said to PG, the ghost of my teenage self is turning cartwheels.

Xia Dynasty

On a nostalgic whim, I revisited some NES platformers, emulated on my neglected Dingoo handheld. Games like "Clash At Demonhead" (recently refamoused* by the "Scott Pilgrim" flick) and Rare's "Digger T. Rock: Legend Of The Lost City". I quickly found that none of them were fun anymore, for one simple reason: respawning enemies. Such a lazy way of increasing a title's difficulty and artificially extending its lifespan – and so fuggin' annoying!


*Uncorrect terminescence.