And as you have almost certainly realised, the title of it derives from W.B. Yeats’ classic poem, The Second Coming. For those of you not familiar with it, the relevant section runs:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand…
I can’t promise a revelation – but if I hear of one, I’ll be sure to let you know.
So this isn’t really a personal blog – I have a LiveJournal for that – it’s more a collection of loosely grouped essays and random weirdness, divided into several categories and delivered on a somewhat regular basis:
a great chain of crossovers between various fictional worlds, primarily from a roleplaying point of view, interspersed with other, more random crossovers.
Ad hoc
These categories will pop up less often, usually only as I think of something to write about in them. They may, on occasion, displace a weekly feature from its slot, but more often than not, they’ll simply show up on Thursdays or Saturdays.
long form blog essays (Or ‘Blessays” as Stephen Fry calls them) about all kinds of things. Often consisting of me ranting about whatever’s annoying me on that day.
you know how sometimes you listen to a song, and it seems to make no sense – and then later on, you discover that you misheard the words? This isn’t about that. This is a listing and analysis of all the lyrics that make no bloody sense whatsover even when heard correctly.
And sometimes, when I feel so inclined, it’s also a place to put filk lyrics. Sorry about that.
assorted announcements, maintenance and changes news. Used only when needed, and usually in addition to whatever other posts there may be that day.
I’m always happen to entertain suggestions for topics you’d like to see covered in The Campaign for Symmetrical English, Daft Lyrics Database or Crossing Over. If there’s a word, a song or a crossover you’d particularly enjoy watching me tackle, by all means let me know.
Other Content:
In addition, there’s some other content of a more (though not entirely) static nature, to be found in the Pages sections:
Alice was written in 1865, three years after the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson first devised the story to entertain the real Alice and her sisters. He had originally told the tale to Alice and her sisters while he and the Reverend Robinson Duckworth rowed in a boat up the River Thames with three little girls: Lorina, Alice and Edith Liddell.
The girls loved it, and Alice asked Dodgson to write it down for her. After a lengthy delay — over two years — he eventually did so and on 26 November 1864 gave Alice the handwritten manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, with illustrations by Dodgson himself.
But before Alice received her copy, Dodgson was already preparing it for publication and expanding the 18,000-word original to 35,000 words, most notably adding the episodes about the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Tea-Party. In 1865, Dodgson’s tale was published as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by “Lewis Carroll” with illustrations by John Tenniel.
Referenced in:
Alice – Stevie Nicks
Alice in Wonderland – Lisa Mitchell
And thanks, ‘cos when I first saw your post, I thought you were about to dump yet another headache on me. And I’m pretty sure that one more is the magic number that will make my head explode.
Morrison died on July 3, 1971, at age 27. In the official account of his death, he was found in a Paris apartment bathtub by Courson. Pursuant to French law, no autopsy was performed because the medical examiner claimed to have found no evidence of foul play. The absence of an official autopsy has left many questions regarding Morrison’s cause of death.
Many believed that Morrison had in fact faked his death, as he had occasionally talked of doing over the preceding few years, but if so, he has yet to reappear. And it’s hard to believe that a man with Morrison’s ego and drug use could have stayed anonymous for nearly 40 years now…
The Battle of Marston Moor, which is located near York in northern England, was a decisive engagement in the English Civil War. The Royalist side was soundly defeated by a combined force of Scots Covenanters and Parliamentarians. It was a serious blow to the Royalist side, which more or less abandoned the northern part of the country thereafter.
Oliver Cromwell, at the time little-known, distinguished himself in this battle. He commanded the Ironsides Cavalry, and his leadership and the discipline of his troops were both acknowledged as key factors in the victory. From here, Cromwell’s star would only rise.
I don’t think we have a leak, but of course, we’d be the last to know. Certainly Hailey blurting everything out to the whole company was ill-advised if we do – I think she needs a spanking for that, and she’ll pay more attention if it comes from you than she will if it comes from me. I might be her boss, but you’re The Boss
Aside from that, I’m really not sure how we’d go about finding a leaker – I assume we’d have to hire someone from outside the company, but I don’t know who. I wish I did, but I’ve just never had this situation come up before. One thing I know: we’ll need whoever it is to have a light step. People round here are likely to be touchy if their loyalty is impugned – after all, these are exactly the guys who sided with me against Hargraeves in the first place.
Naked Lunch – no The – was first published in Paris in 1959. (US publication would wait until three years later.) It was a breakthrough novel for William S. Burroughs, who had spent five years writing it, mostly in Tangier, and mostly under the influence of a variety of drugs, or withdrawal from the same. As a text, it is a challenging work, with Burroughs’ hallucinatory prose further made confusing by the application of the Cut Up Method. Classifying it into a genre is nigh impossible, although it could be argued that the work prefigures both magic realism and gonzo journalism.
The book was not well received in the US upon its publication. In Burroughs’ own words:
When I started writing Naked Lunch, people offered their opinions: “Disgusting,” they said. “Pornographic, un-American trash!” “Unpublishable.” Well, it came out in 1959, and it found an audience: town meetings, book burnings and an inquiry by the state Supreme Court. That book made quite a little impression…
So, this time around it’s farewell to the DC Universe – though I’m sure we’ll be back someday – and hello to GURPS Banestorm (previously known as GURPS Yrth and GURPS Fantasy).
And while we’re at it, I want to make a pledge to you regarding this chain of crossovers: I will never cross two GURPS books over with each other. Well, not unless I know for a fact that no one else has already done so
On June 30, 1908, something – we still don’t know what – streaked across the skies of Siberia, and exploded in the vicinity of Tunguska. At that time, Siberia was even more wild and uninhabited than it now is. The nearest witnesses were miles away, and most of the world remained blissfully unaware that anything had happened there.
But in 1920, Russian scientists began an investigation of the site that is still going on. They have discovered that the event was mostly likely a meteor that detonated in the air above Tunguska, devastating the taiga for miles in every direction in a manner very similar to that of a large thermonuclear explosion. If the course of the object had varied by only a few degrees, it might easily have hit somewhere else, where the damage and loss of life would have been considerably greater. As it is, there were no known deaths – although records, particularly of the nomadic Evenki people who lived in the region at that time, were not well-maintained.
Theories abound as to what might have caused the enormous explosion, and it says something that the crash-landing of alien spaceship is one of the tamer ones.
Referenced in:
Tunguska – Darkest Hour
Return to Tunguska – Alan Parsons Project
I Saw The Sky In The North Open To The Ground And Fire Poured Out – The Red Sparowes
I’ve been reading through the funkspek, and I’m a little unclear on what it is we’re supposed to do with the forced aging and limited lilfespan (section a.a.a). You’re the expert in gerontology – can you explain it to me?
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