Et tu, Shatner?

Proof positive that rap is nothing more and nothing less than verse delivered in a particularly emphatic style. If you read some of the best ancient Greek verse in the original you can see that it would fall naturally into these kinds of rhythms. And here we have a selection from Shakespeare that seems to work pretty darn well. But really, whodathunk that the evidence for this scholarly theory would come from Great Canadian Celebrity the Shat?

Your HandyDandy Rapalong Guide

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones
;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

Harry Potter and the Titles of Doom

Emo Harry PotterThe Harry Potter that never was…yet.

Cap'n Wacky lists Titles of Harry Potter Fanfics We'd Rather Not Read. Grabbed via the unusually good today BoingBoing.

I think I like the last one best. But, really, replace "Harry Potter" with "Aragorn" and I think I not only read them, I was asked to proof and edit them. Sigh. Good times, good times.

Actually, everyone I know who writes fanfic writes absolutely 18+ V,VNSFW stuff, so perhaps its' best they don't tackle Potter. So to speak.

Harry Potter and the Uneventful Year When No One Tried to Kill Him

Harry Potter and the New Love Interest Who Happens to Have the Same Name as the 15-Year-Old Girl Writing this Fanfic

Harry Potter and the New Love Interest Who Happens to Have the Same Name as the 15-Year-Old Boy Writing this Fanfic

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Sucrets

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Kidney Stone

Harry Potter and the Uncomforatble Oversexualization of Minors

Harry Potter and the Socerer are Stoned

Harry Potter and the Burning Sensation

Harry Potter and the Camping Weekend With Ron That Will Never Be Spoken Of Again

Harry Potter and the Summer Internship

Harry Potter and the E Street Band

Harry Potter and the Things You Have to do to Get By in Prison

Harry Potter and the It Was All Only A Dream

Harry Potter and the Chamber Pot of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Prisoner Detainees of Azerbaijan

Harry Potter and the Wand of Franchise Extension

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood, the Quadroon, and the Octaroon

Harold and His Big Purple Crayon of Adolescent Yearning

Hal Pot and the Intellectuals of Cambodia

Harry Putter's Magic Golf Game in 21 Weeks

Hairy Potter and the Bears of San Francisco

Harry Potter Fanfic Notes

Harry Potter and the shameless Tom Clancy Crossover

Harry Potter and the 2000 Election

Harry Potter and the HufflePuff Orgy

Harry Potter and the Weapons of Magic Destruction

Harry Potter and the Order of the Pizza

Hermione Granger and the Cryptofascist Misogynist Conspiracy of Hogwarts

Harry Potter and the Bizarro Harry Potter

Harry Potter and the Lil Bratz

Harry Potter and the Street Fighter II Tournament

Harry Potter and the King of Pop

Harry Potter and the Birth of Christ

Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stones in His Mouth

Harry Potter and the Jews and Crusaders

Harry Potter the Geopolitical Realities of the Post-Nuclear Age

Harry Potter and Whoever Alan Rickman's Character is are Totally Doing It

Harry Potter and the Cusp of Manhood

Harry Potter and the Gauntlet of Mucous

Harry Potter and Ma$e feat. Lil' Jon and The Ruff Ryders

Harry Potter and the Insidious Compact Disc Root Kit Installation

Harry Potter and the Gargoyle of Reacharounds

Harry Potter and the Sandwich of Crotchmeat

Harry Potter and the Website of Jokes

Harry Potter and the Incredibly Long Run-On Sentence That ALmost Makes It Look As If The First Three Paragraphs Of The Story Are Actually More Like The First Three Sentences And Then Hermione Says Harry That Dragon Is Attacking You and Ron Is In Danger So Harry Potter Reaches Into His Magic Bag And Removes A Magic Card That He Says Makeus Enlargitus and The Creature On The Card Which Is A Griffin With The Body Of A Zebra But Claws Of A Lion Comes Out Of It And When It (The Dragon) s Defeated Harry Says It Was Voldemort and Hermione Says How Do You Know And Harry Says I Just Know and Ron Goes Gulp!

Harry Potter and the Hendersons

Harry Potter and the Titles of Harry Potter Fanfic We'd Rather Not Read

How about ANY OF THEM?

Harry Potter and the Gang Fan art

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.

At last I have found you!

This was the very first video I ever saw on the web, and it has haunted my nightmares ever since. So I thought I'd share the pain. And no worries about the owner asserting his copyright and taking it down; can you imagine laying claim to this?

Leonard Nimoy performs the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins.

One minute and thirty-six seconds of absolute horror.

 

And look, a cover version. Some High Schoolers did a claymation Ballad of Bilbo Baggins, which sucks far less