They’re Made out of Meat. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, meat…

Another from BoingBoing today. This is the single best thing I've ever seen on YouTube; this is Art. And this is the whole short story by Terry Bisson on which it is based.

“You’re not understanding, are you? You’re refusing to deal with what I’m telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat.”

“Thinking meat! You’re asking me to believe in thinking meat!”

“Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?”

“Omigod. You’re serious then. They’re made out of meat.”

Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?And by the way, unless my memory very much deceives me, which it does not in cases of esoteric trivia such as this, the diner is exactly the same one used for the Twilight Zone episode Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up, and the backup players correspond more or less directly with the bit players in that ep. Written, as all the best ones were, by Rod Serling.

Narrator: "Wintry February night, the present. Order of events: a phone call from a frightened woman notating the arrival of an unidentified flying object, and the check-out you've just witnessed with two state troopers verifying the event, but with nothing more enlightening to add beyond evidence of some tracks leading across the highway to a diner. You've heard of trying to find a needle in a haystack? Well, stay with us now and you'll be a part of an investigating team whose mission is not to find that proverbial needle, no, their task is even harder. They've got to find a Martian in a diner, and in just a moment you'll search with them, because you've just landed in the Twilight Zone."

Today in Artistic Interpretations of the Elder Gods news

Dale Chihuly is world-famous as an artist. The Benvenuto Cellini of blown glass, his mysterious and compelling aquatic forms have mesmerized art lovers on all continents. But these photographs of unearthly beauty from Shelley Powers provide shocking proof that he hides a terrible secret.

Does Dale Chihuly Worship the Great Old Ones?

The Call of Chihuly

In the guise of a foul-tempered, eyepatched, befrizzed and corpulent artiste, Dale Chihuly walks among us. Or is that hops? Could this all be an elaborate disguise? Could that vast body conceal the chitinous shell of the Fungi from Yuggoth? Perhaps when he moves he shows traces of the odd hopping gait of the Deep Ones. Then again; perhaps this is all perfectly normal…

The Onions from Out of Time

Could his art really be a complex plan to seduce the will of the free peoples of the world and bend them to the will of the slavering god Cthulhu?

Gaze upon his creations and resist…if you can. For how many have heard, and responded to, The Call of Chihuly?

They are coming!!! Ia! Ia!

The Shebeen Club Presents: Edgar Allan Poe’s 170th Wedding Anniversary!

Shebeen For immediate release: post/forward at will!

Who: The Shebeen Club, Vancouver's monthly literary gathering

What: Edgar Allan Poe's 170th Wedding Anniversary!

When: 7-9pm Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 (3rd Tuesday ea month)

Where: The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 217 Carrall

Why:  To honour the master of horrors, on this, the day of his ultimate horror. Although I'm sure the bride could say the same.

How (much)? $20 before May 12th, $25 thereafter; reservations and media inquiries: lorraine DOT murphy AT gmail DOT com.

Admission includes a Poe-tastic dinner/drink combo specially selected for appropriate thrills, plus door prizes embodying the grandeur of fallen gentility, a Poe-themed presentation, and a horribly good time!

Dress: Anything antique, anything Goth, anything shabby-genteel.
Bonus prize for anyone who turns up with an actual raven, dead or alive. That is to say that one or more of "the raven and the guest" must be alive.

Background: The Shebeen Club, a History in Press Releases

Come with us, our clothes all tatty, we're Vancouver's literati,
Writing many a quaint and curious volume of best-selling(?) lore,

As we celebrate Poe's wedding, you can join us; they're both deading,
As they both croaked long ago, long ago, in days of yore.

"Bride and Groom, long dead," Sean mutters, "long ago, in days of yore;
Missed the party, ever more."

And two ravens, never flitting, still are sitting, still are sitting
On the old Blood Alley railings just beyond the Shebeen's door;

And their eyes have all the seeming of some ghostlings that are dreaming.
And the streetlamp o'er them streaming shows their shadows on the floor;

And the Shebeen Club, under their gaze that steals in from outdoors
Shall be uplifted—evermore!

Meet & Mingle 7-7:30
Listen & Learn 7:30-8
Whispered tales of undying madness and horror, like the mortifying time you confused August Derleth with Lord Dunsany 8-whenever Berenice comes for us.

Operation Global Media Domination: Hit me again, I can take it, I’m Irish

TIABehold, the chart which means more to me than an ECG, more than a roundel of feed stats, more than a breakdown of paycheque deductions (I think that's what it's called…paycheque… so hard to remember).

The Blog Hits Chart:

Blog Stats May 4 2006

Should I worry that the original size of this chart was 1040x666? Naaaaaaaaaaah.

In unrelated news, a friend of mine set me an intriguing test a couple of years ago. Can you name the seven deadly sins, WITHOUT consulting so much as your cat, much less Google or an actual Bible? Bet you can't, and I bet I know the one you leave off…everyone does. But not as completely or as well as I do.

Where was I? Ah yes, blog stats.

I have to say, when I went to bed last night things were looking good. I had already hit my "feel smug" baseline, which is 200. Now, you readers and I know quite well that if it weren't for a certain pair of nesting bald eagles and another pair of nesting bald eagles and my tendency to post the URL of relevant blog passages on the Guardian newsblogs (which are otherwise starved both of relevance and passagity, or is that passagassity?) I'd never see 200 hits in a day even if I caught Stephen Harper eating a baby on YouTube and you and I both know he's too smart for that: he has them brought to him pureed, in smoothies. Well, he must; he's never been photographed eating a baby, but who can tell what's in those cups eh? EH? Answer me that, me lad!

Where was I? Oh yeah, smug.

And when I got to the compy in the late PM, just before the statcounter clicked over from Today to Tomorrow, I was dumbfounded, for lo, I had done almost double the hits of my previous best day ever.

All because of bald eagles, ball-chasing Boris, and Beautiful Agonies.

And I, consumed in the glow of the ascendant short-tailer or is that bodian as opposed to long-tailer, clicked away for a moment, beaming with the irreproducable joy of having seen that graph approach the very top of the box.

FOOL THAT I WAS! FOOL, I SAY!

For lo, when I clicked back WordPress had analyzed the hit trend and decided to bump me back to the bottom of the graph; they have put the top bar at Eight Fucking Hundred and Ten Goddam Hits!

You know, in Fisherman's Wharf there are barrels and barrels of crabs and the fishmongers don't put any lids on them; they don't need to. When a crab makes a break for it and tries to crawl out, the others reach out and pull him back to the bottom.

Not that I'm bitter. Continue reading

Free Katie!

Free Katie!Another from the brazilliant Defamer.