Cyber salad
Wednesday, 07 December, 2005
- Gift wrapping ideas from Knitty;
- Knecklace;
- Toasty Pocket Creatures;
- Cthulhu Plush Slippers (via Guan);
- “How the World was Saved” (Cyberiad short story).
An exercept from The Cyberiard. In this particular story, there is a guy named Trurl who built a poetry machine and he invited his friend, Klapaucius, over to try to it out:
“Just a minute,” said Klapaucius, annoyed. He was trying to think of a request as difficult as possible, aware that any argument on the quality of the verse the machine might be able to produce would be hard if not impossible to settle either way. Suddenly he brightened and said:
“Have it compose a poem—a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the less s!!”
“And why not throw in a full exposition of the general theory of nonlinear automata while you're at it?” growled Trurl. “You can't give it such idiotic—”
But he didn't finish. A melodious voice filled the hall with the following:
Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.
(Stanislaw Lem, “The First Sally (A)”, The Cyberiad, translated from the Polish by Michael Kandel, Secker and Warburg, London, 1975, pp.50-51. Originally published in Polish under the title Cyberiada by Wydawnictwo Literackie, Krackow, 1967.)
Blinks:
A way of funding writing in the future: pitch and idea and get people to support it.
Place where you can hire play equipment for parties, etc.
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
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ah, those cthulu slippers! i saw them on Boing Boing, one of my favourite blogs.
Knitty’s pocket animals are quite cute. I saw them earlier this week. Might do a family of them. Two nice pairs of socks in this edition too, although I am currently making some footlets froma 1938 pattern.
Did you know Tapestry Craft will have another sale around Christmas time? Sales lady told me this as I was enviously stroking a set of rosewoood doublepointed needles. Smooth as silk.
Jan
Wow!! Thanks for the tip, Jan!