robot-alert!

I stumbled across an interesting fact today: there is more than one town in the US called Poughkeepsie.

The one I'm familiar with is in the Hudson Valley and my alma mater is there. But there's another one in Arkansas, which contains, well, not very much by the look of it.


Street map of Poughkeepsie, AR
The environs of Poughkeepsie, AR
The real Poughkeepsie

We were walking in the park on Saturday when a bunch of kids started throwing rocks at us - a small one hit Anna in the back and one hit me in the face. I had to have four stitches on my right cheek and there's also a bit of a black eye around my eye, although disappointingly, it hasn't gone green and yellow as the medical manual promised.

The blow also caused my brain to fall out of my ear, which is annoying as I have to keep putting it back in. The cops know who the kids are and are going to punish them, they say.

I just had to draw the curtains - the sun was so bright I couldn't see the computer screen. First time I've had to do that since summer... whoopee!

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I remember reading about this in the paper a while back. In a way I'm kind of glad there was 'no theatre available' here in the UK.

"Mirvish Productions is hosting the world opening of The Lord of the Rings musical in Toronto in March 2006. Originally planned for London, UK and to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the publication the trilogy, the musical was moved to Toronto when no theatre was available." From the article: "With a cast of 50 and elaborate staging, the audience will be "plunged into the events as they happen...We have not attempted to pull the novel towards the standard conventions of musical theatre, but rather to expand those conventions so that they will accommodate Tolkien's material." A look is also available at the BBC.

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This makes me think there are a lot of saddoes in the world. It does sound kind of nifty though.

RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons are traditionally played on a tabletop using miniatures. The problem is that the players are only supposed to see those parts of the map that they have explored. Gamemasters are reduced to drawing explored sections of the map on the playing surface with dry-erase markers or using cardboard tiles representing stretches of corridor. Some fellows have an expensive but elegant solution. They map out the playing area in a laptop using software such as Tabletop Mapper, which allows to game master to dynamically hide and reveal sections of the map. The laptop is attached to a 1600 lumen DLP projector mounted on the ceiling and projecting an image of the visible map onto the tabletop. The miniatures can then be moved on a dynamic map. The eye candy factor is vastly increased, gamemaster labor is reduced, and the players have more fun. The elegance is that this is an intuitive enhancement of the traditional gaming experience, instead of an unfamiliar new user interface to be mastered.

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(Israeli) Army frowns on Dungeons and Dragons

Does the Israel Defense Forces believe incoming recruits and soldiers who play Dungeons and Dragons are unfit for elite units? Ynet has learned that 18-year-olds who tell recruiters they play the popular fantasy game are automatically given low security clearance.

“They're detached from reality and suscepitble to influence,” the army says.

Fans of the popular roleplaying game had spoken of rumors of this strange policy by the IDF, but now the army has confirmed that it has a negative image of teens who play the game and labels them as problematic in regard to their draft status.

So if you like fantasy games, go see the military psychologist.

Dungeons and Dragons (also known as D&D) has been a popular roleplaying game for decades and is based on a fantasy world.

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I saw a trailer for it this afternoon. Chee it looks swell. They seem to have got the sense of humour right, from what one can see. Haven't messed around with it too much like with the movie of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for example. That schmoe from The Office is playing Arthur Dent, perfect casting. Having tried to watch the 1980s TV version recently, and been turned off by it, this looks a lot more watchable.

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I was tidying up some old files when I came across this. I have been looking for it for ages. I had such fun writing this back in 2000 that I tried to model my first graphic novel on its tone. It's basically a straightforward parody of 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas', based on the fact that Comdex, the biggest US ICT trade show, happens in vegas, and that the character who was being parodied was a bit of a freak.

It's ironic that this should surface now, just a few days after Hunter S Thompson's demise.

I was awakened by somebody pounding on the door five thousand feet over Las Vegas. I'd locked myself in the airplane toilet for the duration of the 14-hour flight, along with a menagerie of stuffed promotional chameleons, an American flag, a maze of networking cables and a trunk full of illegal substances. I was dressed only in Virgin Atlantic-branded slippers and an in-flight blanked formed into a loose garment. We hadn't even touched down yet at the biggest high-technology event in Western civilisation and already I was sensing imminent strangeness all around.

I must have been in a horrifying post-debauched state -- the stewardess went pale when she finally got the door open. "Stand to one side, I'm a journalist!" I commanded, and started hauling the debris back to my economy-class seat. We were headed down into the very maw of the New Economy, and I knew much preparation would be needed.

I hauled open the curtains of my absurdly plush hotel room to display a glowing Manhattan skyline etched out over the desert landscape. Everything I needed was in the trunk -- that and a simple pad of paper, a pen, a portable MiniDisc recorder, a CD burner, an MP3 player, a networking hub, a broadband connection to the Internet, an outrageously powerful Pentium laptop computer and various other attachments, as well as a new pair of sunglasses, brightly-coloured three-quarter-length shorts, sandals, a pair of socks and a deluxe trim of the fair locks, all of which were easily purchased on my American Express Corporate Card from within the four-star hotel. The next morning at 9 am I was due for an appointment with one of the most powerful men in the computer industry, a man whose slick facade it would take all my ingenuity and research skills to crack. I powered up the various pieces of freshly-unpacked equipment, laid out the substances that would keep me going through the gruelling ordeal and set to work.

Some time later I found myself witnessing the strange sight of a pack of what seemed to be enormous, forty-foot high rhinoceri stampeding through a dimly-lit casino, scattering poker chips, blackjack cards and tourists carelessly in their wake. A voice was screaming, "My God, the beasts have broken loose!"

Then those mysterious creatures vanished and a fat tourist turned around to stare at me, before saying something to her equally corpulent husband. He replied under his breath, "Don't pay any attention to him, honey, them's all here for that technology convention."

These words reminded me of something that had slipped my mind, something more urgent than I could have possibly imagined. My watch told me it was 9:45, a degree of lateness that could not be smoothed over by even my vast library of excuses. Sprinting through the streets of garish carnival madness I came to the prefabricated temporary offices of one of the two most key companies driving the world economy over the past decade. In my substance-addled, sleep-deprived brain was just one thought, that I must take this company down, make them reveal their true, beastly underbelly.

Charging through several ranks of immaculately-garbed functionaries and PR managers, assisted by well-timed displays of the ten-inch rabbit-skinning knife I had acquired during the course of the night, I eventually reached the inner sanctum, where a stocky, balding man minced his words to a youthful, preening hack. I knew I would have only a few moments before the bodyguards battered the door down, precious seconds in which I would have to suavely win over the confidences of everyone in the room, carry on a bit of light conversation, and finally unleash the full penetrating force of my journalistic skills to break through this automaton's tough exoskeleton of apparent respectability.

Unfortunately, all that came out of my parched throat, as I swung the skinning knife drunkenly from side to side, was a prolonged rasping gurgle. Then I was overwhelmed by expensive grey suits, bundled outside and thrust unceremoniously into an industrial rubbish skip. I could hear the lid being locked above me. A lone ray of Nevada sunlight fell across the heaps of McDonald's leftovers, old sport-utility-vehicle tyres, luxury bedsprings, bananna peels, Starbucks' coffee grounds and all the other detrius.

It was then, lying amidst the cast-offs of the peak of Western civilisation, eyes madly bloodshot, hair streaked with pancake batter and luxury hotel perfume, frothing at the mouth, where I'd probably remain for the rest of the conference, that I realised I'd found what I was looking for. The heart of the New Economy, the typical denizen of the new world order created by the eruption of advanced information technology into everyday life: He was lying right here in the skip with me. He was, in fact, me.

I was writing an SOS email on my two-way pager when the garbage-collectors let me out. I was only half an hour late for my next interview.

This has its experimental, delirious moments, but you can get the drift of it. I like the satirical edge.

'What Washington? What orders?' (1971)
From Exterminator!

Old Sarge: 'All right you Limey has-beens, I'm going to say it country simple: you have been taken over like a banana republic. Your royal family is nothing but a holograph picture projected by the CIA. What is its purpose? Well what is the purpose of the Pope for you Catholics good and bad, standing with John 23 like a good soldier in the presence of your captain. Any way you slice it it's a grovel operation, the way we like to see them. I mean what we are doing while the Pope and the other Holies keep the marks paralyzed with grovel rays is one of the mysteries you cannot understand, the mercy of God... we don't intend to be here when this shithouse goes up. Maybe I'm talking too much about private things, family matters you might say - and that's what we call the good old CIA: the Family.

'(When the prodical son creeps back from Peking - _Information known. Expel barbarian._ - well, the Family will forgive him, if he is sincere in his heart on a lie detector: "Well, we're going to take you back." The old ham fixes him with blue eyes like steel in sunlight. "Just don't ever let us down again.")

'From here to eternity, the old game of war. Where would the Family be without it? So we can whittle off a little something to keep the royal family projected in Limey Land, can't we now? So the Queen needs more money? Well humm... call a story conference.'

'Just how are we slanting this, B.J.?'

B.J. (doodling muscle boys): 'Nothing new. Just keep it going. They do need more money, otherwise they will go down in the same spiral as everybody else and they wouldn't be the royal family anymore, could wind up in a semi-detatched in Darlington. They are supposed to be a supernatural family, religious figures in fact, and the more potent in that they are not acknowledged as such. Just ask an upper-class English about the royal family and he goes all huffy and vague:

' " It's not important..."

' "Who _cares_ about Philip." '

'But you want the royal family to continue as such?'

(B.J. bulges a jockstrap.) 'Well uh yes, we are a _monarchy_... excuse me.'

'We're all together in this... couldn't abolish titles and keep the royal family.'

'We've had to take cuts... why shouldn't they take a cut too?'

'Mutiny in the ranks?'

(He doodles a boy peeling off plastic tits.)

'It could come to that...'

(He doodles a boy looking at another boy's ass. A light bulb attached to his head lights up.)

'So why not put the royal family in a Darlington semi-detatched on a middle-class income and let them prove themselves in a TV serial?

'(Philip and the Queen are doing all right. She is known as 'Queenie' to all the nabors where she runs a small grocery shop. Every customer receives the same gracious smile and quick inquiry as to the family, she is good at remembering things like that and keeping a line moving at the same time... she learned that shaking millions of hands. Philip sells ecology equipment to factories. Good at his work and believes in it... strong middle-class message there. Charles is a successful pop singer...)

'Why, they all get knighted in the end one way or another, and the wind-up is, back in Buckingham stronger than ever.'

CIA black: 'Don't you think there is some limit somewhere to what people will stand for? Suppose the ecology equipment doesn't work? Suppose the Queen's gracious smile is reserved for her white custoemrs, she has eyes for Enoch Powell and flying saucers? Suppose Bonny Prince Charlie--?'

'For Chrissakes, we're building them _up_, not down... the Family...'

'All right, call in the special effects boys and give them supernatural powers.'

' "Never go too far in any direction" is the basic rule on which Limey Land is built. The Queen stabilizes the whole sinking shithouse.'

'I tell you, anything that is not going forward is going out. You know what we can do with special effects and electric brain stimulation: some joker gets out of line, we press a button and he shits in his pants at sight of her. That at least would be a step in some direction.'

'For Godsake, not at this point. If the Queen tries to grab more than she's got, imagewise, she will lose it all... uh I mean _we_ will... All the others are hopeless. Any of you jokers like to try propping up the queen of Denmark? I say leave it just where it is. It will stagger on for another five or ten years and that's enough. We get smart at this point, and the English Repubican Party will jump out at us... ERP ERP ERP...'

'The Queen is an alien symbol, basically Germanic in origin. The Queen is also a _white_ symbol. The White Goddess, in fact. Young people want that? Black people want that? Who wants a grovel symbol? Those who need such symbols to keep positions of wealth and privilege. Look at them. Look at Jennifer's Diary...'

'I mean, ERP could be dangerous.'

'That's right. We got a good strong thing here, why muck about with it?'

'Why, the whole stinking thing could blow up in our faces.'

'Brings on my ulcers to think about it.'

'_We_ could organize ERP... that way, we'd be ready to jump in either direction.'

'The word that made a man out of an ape and killed the ape in the process keeps man an animal, the way we like to see him. And the Queen is just another prop to hold up the word. You all know what we can do with the word. Talk about the power in an atom! All hate all fear all pain all death all sex is in the word. The word was a killer virus once. It could become a killer virus again. The word is too hot to handle - so we sit on our asses, waiting for the pension. But somebody is going to pick up that virus and use it: _Virus B-23..._'

'Aw, we got the Shines cooled back with Che Guevara in a nineteenth-century set...'

'Is that right? And you got the Tiddlywinks cooled too? You can cool anybody else who gets ideas? You going to cool this powder keg with your moth-eaten Queen? I tell you, anybody could turn it loose. You all know how basically simple it is: sex word and image cut in with death word and image...'

'Yeah, _we_ could do it.'

'But what about Washington? Our orders?'

'Just one test tube and SPUT... "_What_ Washington? _What_ orders?" '

(the end)

William S Burroughs is mainly known for writing about weird excrescences and drugs and metaphysical aliens but he's also a great satirist. Some of his writing is hilarious. I liked this bit introducing one of his books where he talks about his development as a writer...

As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle.

(He goes on to parody some of his youthful writings from the 1930s, including a story about the evils of dope....)

"Kid, I got a pinch of something here make you forget about that old dead dog..."

That's how it started. Then he fell into the hands of a sinister hypnotist who plied him with injections of marijuana.

"Kill, kill, kill." The words turned relentlessly in his brain, and he walked up to a young cop and said "If you don't lock me up I shall kill you." The cop sapped him without a word. But a wise old detective in the pricinct takes a like to the boy, sets him straight and gets him off the snow. It was a hard fight but he made it. He now works in a hardware store in Ottawa, Illinois . . . the porch noise, home from work . . . "And if any kind stranger ever offers me some pills that will drive my blues away, I will simply call a policeman."

'He's a good collector'... From the NY Times

For more than a century, successive generations of Wall Street titans have lavished their riches on art, hoping that a Monet or a Cézanne might add a bit of polish to the rough edges of their deal making. Now, young, little-known billionaires who manage hedge funds are roiling the art market, using the vast pools of capital they have accumulated to snatch up some of the world's most recognizable images.

Leading the way has been Steven A. Cohen, a publicity-shy hedge fund magnate living in Greenwich, Conn., who took home $350 million in 2003 and even more last year, according to people close to him.

Over the last five years, Mr. Cohen, 48, has spent more than $300 million - amassing a collection that includes one of Jackson Pollock's iconic drip paintings, a Manet self-portrait, a Monet waterlilies painting and other trophy works including a Degas sculpture of a young dancer and well-known Pop works like Andy Warhol's "Superman" and Roy Lichtenstein's "Popeye."

And most recently, in what may be a wink at his reputation for being one of Wall Street's predatory traders, he paid $8 million for the British artist Damien Hirst's 14-foot tiger shark, submerged in a tank of formaldehyde.

"He is a significant collector," said Donald B. Marron, the chairman of Lightyear Capital and former chief executive of PaineWebber, who is also a trustee at the Museum of Modern Art and has seen Mr. Cohen's collection. "It's a very personal collection, too. He is emotionally involved, has a good eye and knows the works in their context. Those are the ingredients that make a good collector."

Along with just a few other collectors, Mr. Cohen is willing to pay top dollar - often what some specialists say is too much - to get what he wants. Each time word circulates that Mr. Cohen has bought a Pollock for $52 million or a Warhol for $25 million, dealers and collectors from Los Angeles to São Paulo cannot stop talking about the prices being paid.

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I've developed nearly symmetrical pimples on either side of my forehead. Possibly I'm developing antlers... we'll see...

News.com writes:

The robot, designed by Tatsuya Matsui of Flower Robotics, can strike glamorous poses aimed at making clothing more appealing to consumers. It can also identify bags shoppers are carrying and pass the information along to stores for marketing purposes.

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See robots and comics on parade in France. Ofoto isn't very blog friendly but the link below may work.

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