Ansuz

Status update

Just a note for long-time readers: as you can see, I've been gradually posting material copied over from the old site. I don't have a clear handle on what does or doesn't appear in the RSS feeds, nor what RSS readers (and syndicators such as Facebook and Livejournal) do with backdated entries. I'm going to post some old material as new postings, with or without notes at the top mentioning that it's reposted; other old material will be posted under its original date, and in that case it most likely won't appear in your reader. The "archive" links don't seem to work for old material, but that may be fixed at some point, and it remains accessible through the page-by-page and tag-based navigation as well as the search.

I'd like to remind you that I've also created a Japanese-language section. Items from that will not appear in the main RSS feed through which you're reading this entry; if you want to subscribe to it, you have to subscribe that page's RSS feed separately. The two share the search feature and tag cloud, but most other things are separated. I expect traffic on the Japanese side to be low but nonzero; subject matter will be determined by my language skill as it advances, but at the moment it'll be pretty elementary. Some day I'd like to be able to translate a lot of my "greatest hits" material, but my writing style in English leans heavily on technical skill in the language. It would be hard even for a native speaker to translate my work and have it still sound like my work, and it'll be a long time before I reach the level where I can do that myself.

Why astrology?

Revised version of a Livejournal posting of 27 August 2005.

I consider astrology to be primarily a form of art.  It's a way for us to express our creative powers.  From that point of view, asking whether celestial forces influence the tenor of our lives becomes somewhat like asking whether The Starry Night is an accurate portrayal of how some real starry night physically appeared, such as might be produced by a skilled but not particularly artistic photographer.  It's just not an interesting question.

Desdemona

Desdemona, agent's daughter
Never would you cross the water
For the men who sought to take
Your quiet voice, your hidden face
Des, you held a thousand heroes
Peaceful in your arms.

John he said

Walked on the beach today
Met John all a talk-talk
All a comfort my mind.

Technical analysis

No chance in Hell I'd sell my gold for mud
And give up hope of wiping off the stain.
She tapped in vain and never tasted blood
The toxic arrow lost into the sky.
Now chance repeats the lesson; have I learned
This random mapping on the complex plane?
I stalked the archer, saw the fire, was burned;
Devoured the pseudoscientific lie.
One day defines the gap from thee to thee
One speck of dust can tip the cloud to rain
In one night both of you could take from me
The difference I can't plausibly deny.
Corroborate the price at which I'll sell;
Dial in the bids, and ring the opening bell.

Time travel chaos game

Re-posting of an article first posted in May 2007.

Okay, here's a game sketch.  This idea is supposed to be a game that could live on a Web site somewhere, support a large number of players, but be fun to participate in even if you are brand new, or only connect occasionally, or if there are few or no other players.  Kind of like Wikipedia - except that my idea would actually know it's a game, unlike Wikipedia which thinks it's an encyclopedia.  I'm posting this here to make it harder for anyone to patent.

Mistakenly thought to be djinn

First appeared in talk.bizarre, July 1997

A great many unusual people may be seen in the marketplace of Damascus on any hot summer day, but the Adept was definitely out of the ordinary.  She strode, alone and proud, though the crowd which parted unconsciously.  Foreigners have written that one veiled woman looks like any other, but even the quality of the material of Fatima's veil distinguished her from the rest.  The locals, accustomed to making the most of whatever they could get, stared outright, all as if they'd never seen a woman before.  They undressed her in their minds as she passed by.  The year, in your infidel's reckoning, was 738.

Counting coup

First posted 21 June 2004.

Forgive me, I did not return your call
But through no fault of yours, your offer stings
I know it is not about me at all
You'd count me coup and gain a feather more
What are you saving up to, will you say?
How long until you earn your angel wings?
Or are you weaving head-dress for the day
You'll lead your painted soldiers off to war?
You say you're guilty, and you've cause to be
You say I've been deprived of many things
You'd pay your debts to someone, maybe me
But charity like that I would abhor
Please understand, no matter what was said
Your pen was dipped in blood I never shed

Rootbeerman don't care

First posted 21 April 2000.

Rootbeerman at the back of the McDonald's hunched over he chicken nuggets. He always super size it, and he always eat a cherry pie cause he don't care. Donuts for breakfast, Pizza Pops for dinner, Rootbeerman drink root beer at every meal and that how he got his name.

The UFP and the Filthy Humans

Re-posting of an article first posted in September 2008.

You are an officer, say a commodore, in the military-diplomatic-exploration organization of an interplanetary nation with United Federation of Planets (UFP) membership. You've been tasked with asserting your nation's interests with respect to a certain out-of-the-way planet that happens to be rich in natural resources. Unfortunately, it's already inhabited, by a race of disgusting natives we will call the Filthy Humans.

Race

This is a re-posting of an item that first appeared in Livejournal, in October 2004.

One day the Fox met the Bunny, eating grass at the edge of a big field.  "Hey," he said, for no particular reason, "let's race to the other side of this field." "Okay," said the Bunny.  So she hopped and he ran, and the Fox made it across the field just a little bit ahead of the Bunny.  "I win!" he said, and went on his way.  "Bye!" called the Bunny happily, and went back to eating grass.  The Turtle had been watching them, and he said, "I want to do that, too."

Madonna, Bourdin, and Robin

In May 2004, pop star Madonna paid an undisclosed amount to settle a lawsuit with the estate of French erotic photographer Guy Bourdin. The Smoking Gun archived some court papers and a side-by-side comparison of stills from Madonna and Bourdin videos. The similarities are pretty significant; it looks like plagiarism.

The interesting part from my point of view is that Madonna seems to have been the victim of similar plagiarism herself in the matter of the 90-second opening sequence to the 2002 anime series Witch Hunter Robin. The Livejournal posting that everybody linked to when this story first came out, lost its image hosting after a few years and by now has also become locked. But I archived the images, and you can see them below. These are stills from the opening of WHR, stacked up next to stills from a Madonna video called "Take a bow." They're about as close as those other Madonna screenshots were to the Bourdin photos, so if that situation was plagiarism, this one should be as well. To my knowledge, however, there's been no court case here, and it's been enough years now that there probably never will be one.

Edited to clarify: as far as I know, there's been no suggestion that the video "Take a bow" in particular was one of the ones involved in the Madonna/Bourdin case. The claim is not that the WHR opening came from Bourdin by way of Madonna, but only that Madonna's general body of work seems to have suffered the same fate as Bourdin's. The stills at the Smoking Gun link, from videos in the Madonna/Bourdin case, are from other videos and don't much resemble images from WHR.