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

We don't do Taco Tuesday

We do, however, do Sushi Monday most weeks. There's a beaut place at the end of our street, run by a couple of nice Korean families. It's actually a combination sushi bar/European cafe. One of the owners is a classically trained pastry chef. Yeah, we lucked out. I think my friend PB would approve of the lunch combo below. Note: The fork is only for the pickled ginger. (Nothing against tacos, either. We just don't eat 'em on the reg.)

"I'll be fine solo"

The conclusion of Season 2 of "Solo Leveling" [Crunchyroll] was magnificent. Some artistic shortcuts, but magnificent. If you're into real-world/fantasy crossovers* where the protagonist goes from less than zero to superhero, there are none better.

*It isn't technically an isekai.

Blumps of Doober!

Book 6 done'n'dusted, Book 7 under way. Failed to finish this series as a younger man. I reckon I will succeed this time. I own them all. The majority were purchased in the early '90s from Witchcraft Antiques in Nightcliff (Darwin). Google has never heard of said establishment. Gone the way of the dodo trainer now, surely. Filled in the gaps via AbeBooks.

Four books in the hand is worth three at the Bush gig (possibly)

The charity stores in my area are becoming increasingly picky about donated books. Sometimes they only take them in perfect (i.e. unread) condition. Sometimes they simply won't accept any. For a change, I lugged a pile of tomes I wanted to offload to a book nook inside a nearby shopping centre. I'm so glad I did! The spot was alive with users. One person was scouring the shelves and had four novels under their arm. Another was contentedly reading in a comfy chair. Two more patrons arrived, talking excitedly, while I was there. I'll definitely be returning to the nook with more choice titles.

Tomorrow, I'm going to a Kate Bush tribute show with JS and SS. Because I socialise so rarely post-Pandemic, it's fair to say I'm feeling trepidation. The outing will also involve a long drive - two long drives, actually - and finding a feed in an unfamiliar suburb. I KNOW it will be enjoyable and memorable and good for me. However, a small part of my brain is wishing I could stay home, eat fish'n'chips and watch the footy on TV instead. There was a time when I was out most nights...movies, gigs, launches, lectures, sporting events, pubbing, clubbing, restaurant-ing. Covid made me a shut-in.