Wish they all could be California rolls

I always do the ABC's pre-election "Where do you fall?" survey. I'm normally closer in alignment to the policies of the Greens than this. I guess it depends what they ask and how I interpret/answer it on a given day...

Zine there, done that

My city's annual writers festival always features something zine-related. This year, there was a panel, a how-to workshop and a zine market. I checked out the market. There were only four zinesters selling their wares when I arrived. They were friendly, though, as were all of the festival staff I encountered. The contents of two of the tables weren't for me - well made, but above my cuteness limit. I bought a zine containing six tiny games printed on plastic "credit cards" by six different Australian creators. The seller threw in a game card they said I'd need. Also grabbed an arts mag based in The Gong. That came with a shiny sticker which doesn't look shiny in my photo. Enjoyed reading both purchases when I got home. It was worth going to learn that Newcastle Library boasts an extensive zine collection! I had no idea!

Bricks, food, tools, wine, cloth, beer and pretzels

While the Matildas were playing South Korea (1-0 our way, yay!), I was playing a boardgame with the gang. Specifically, "Concordia", a mostly peaceful game of economic expansion in the ancient world. We used the Roman Italy side of the board. It was a close one! At the end, only about 20 points separated the five of us. I didn't win. I usually don't. But I was keen to play again and modify my strategies - the sign of a fab b/g.

Excerpt from a book review in the latest "SFX"

I've been pondering this on and off since I read it. It's made me think about many things to do with manipulating output, including Eno and Schmidt's Oblique Strategies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies

Hard to find a cooler uni motto than this ->

Nuke Uni's is "I look ahead". When I was there, the party-hearty Engineering Fraternity used a modified version for their logo: "I look dead".

As a mature-age student at UNSW, I never bothered learning the motto. I remember my mate RS once asking me what it was, to which I jokingly replied, " 'Same shit, different day'." (In reality, it's "Knowledge by heart, hand and mind".)

Bogus slogans bring to mind those college-style T-shirts for nonexistent institutions... "Toothickfor University", "School Of Hard Knocks", "Whatsamatta U", "Beach Bum College", etc.

Hard to find a cooler example than this ->

Current listening on my walks

This stuff is catnip to me! (In a similar linguistic-archaeological vein, I recommend "The Keys Of Egypt" by Lesley & Roy Adkins, which my buddy CM and I both dug - geddit? - back in the early '00s.)

Publisher's blurb:

It was one of history’s great vanishing acts.

Around 3,400 BCE—as humans were gathering in complex urban settlements—a scribe in the mud-walled city-state of Uruk picked up a reed stylus to press tiny symbols into clay. For three millennia, wedge shape cuneiform script would record the military conquests, scientific discoveries, and epic literature of the great Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumer, Assyria, and Babylon and of Persia’s mighty Achaemenid Empire, along with precious minutiae about everyday life in the cradle of civilization. And then…the meaning of the characters was lost.

London, 1857. In an era obsessed with human progress, mysterious palaces emerging from the desert sands had captured the Victorian public’s imagination. Yet Europe’s best philologists struggled to decipher the bizarre inscriptions excavators were digging up.

Enter a swashbuckling archaeologist, a suave British military officer turned diplomat, and a cloistered Irish rector, all vying for glory in a race to decipher this script that would enable them to peek farther back into human history than ever before.

From the ruins of Persepolis to lawless outposts of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, The Mesopotamian Riddle whisks you on a wild adventure through the golden age of archaeology in an epic quest to understand our past.

Heart Strings XIV

Marina Diamandis (formerly billed as Marina And The Diamonds, now MARINA) in the clip for "Cupid's Girl".

"Diana Hunting" by Guillaume Seignac.

Frost Archer Ashe ("League Of Legends") statue.

Olympic archery champ Chang Hyejin for "Vogue" magazine. Love this image.

Her fellow South Korean Myboo_cosplay as an elf archer. An original creation, I believe.

Greyhound bus service advert from 1946.

I looked through the pics from the previous 13 H/S posts again - a damn fine collection. Shame I don't use tags. Youse will have to go digging. Or not.

Neckbeard's ghost

COMIC COVER OF THE WEEK 

By Jae Lee. Stylishly cute, yet totally effed up. Which is obviously appropriate to the subject matter...

SONG OF THE WEEK

"Gun Powder" by Arabian Alien. No newies grabbing me so far this week. Instead, a month-old track to which I keep returning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJEhb6xTTqw