today in “People Who Are Better Than You” news…

Seriously, seriously, I thought I was doing well. I mean, not great. Not epic. But, well, well.

Well, enough.

I got two paying blogging gigs. I get enough blogging students to get by. The immoveable object in my living room appears to be moving towards movement, or making a move towards moving towards movement, which is what at least a nanophysicist would call progress, of a sort and if only relative.

And he’s not even a relative.

But there are always those, according to various Desiderati, who do it better.

Better. Stronger. Faster.

And now, it appears, there are even those who do it for a larger and more loyal audience despite being dead six months.

Writer/artist Theresa Duncan, subject of a January Vanity Fair cover story (among plenty of other coverage), is updating her blog from beyond the grave. Cries for help: now available months after they’d be useful. Duncan—whose intentional overdose on pills last July led to the suicide of her partner Jeremy Blake a week later—had become, according to acquaintances and friends interviewed by Vanity Fair, increasingly erratic, paranoid, haggard, hard-drinking, and depressed in her last year or two. She was convinced that Scientologists were harassing her and Blake, trying to sabotage her stalling career (movie and TV projects that never got off the ground, including one that was supposed to star erstwhile friend of the couple and famed Scientologist musician Beck) and his ascending one (a scheduled retrospective of Blake’s work at Washington DC’s Corcoran Gallery ended up going on posthumously). So: what does a dead woman blog about? Dick Cavett, Sherlock Holmes, and T.S. Eliot.

So, pretty much no change there, if she were a book-blogging Typepad type, of which she was only 50%. Come to think of it, this isn’t the first time we at the ol’ raincoaster blog have been out-blogged by a dead woman, although the circumstances of the last time were quite different.
The last post that appeared when Theresa Duncan was alive posted on my birthday. Aw, thankies! Since then, she’d set two autoposts: a spooky, Basil Rathbone one for two days before Halloween, and one for New Year’s Eve. Perhaps she’d miscalculated the date of All Saint’s Eve, or maybe her calendar simply had a faulty October? Or maybe there’s a deeper meaning (there always is, with conspiracy theorists).

October 29th is Saint Narcissus’s Day.

Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake

Happy New Year, DB Cooper!

DB Cooper

It’s nice to be wanted.

At this time of the year, singletons particularly are prone to feeling a little self-pity. Indeed, wallowing in loneliness and eggnog hangovers, thousands sit in their darkened apartments, watching Sleepless in Seattle and sobbing themselves to sleep at night.

No more will DB Cooper be among them.

No, unlike Osama bin Laden, the mysterious hijacker known as DB Cooper is now officially a wanted man.

The FBI is resurrecting the mysterious case of D.B. Cooper, who 36 years ago hijacked a plane and parachuted near Portland with $200,000 in stolen loot…

The hijacker who identified himself as Cooper was never seen again. Some of the money was recovered in a mountain area.

Anyone with information on the unsolved mystery may contact the FBI at fbise@leo.gov.

quiz: which Star Trek species are you?

Yeah, baby! Boneheaded spelling errors aside, this quiz has nailed it! I’m teh kewlest!

What Star Trek Species Are You?

created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as RomulanYou Are Romulan, You enjoy structure as long as you’re on top. You sit and wait for people to tell you something. But you are very conceited. You’d rather be with yourself then with your friends, You never know when they’ll stab you in the back.

Romulan
85%
Klingon
75%
Federation
75%
Vulcan
65%
Cardassian
55%
Borg
50%
Ferengi
40%
Dominion
35%

Stolen from museditions

A Cthristmas Cthlassic

The Last Christmas

Do you, too, remember this golden Cthristmas Cthlassic from your Cthildhood? I can remember the plot to this very day…

It was a dark and stormy night. In his house at Rlyeh, Great Cthulhu was Fhtagning.

Fhtagn, Cthulhu, Fhtagn.

But though dreaming, he was not dead. He merely seemed dead. In reality, his malign consciousness was free: free to roam the galaxy, seeking ingress to the minds of the weak, the stunted, the insane. Finally, after torturous aeons of fruitless fumblings, he had found his entry point.

Television.

“Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the haunt, Not a tentacle was stirring, not even the night gaunt. The brains were hung by the intestines with care, In hopes that St. Cthulhu soon would be there.”

Infiltrating the airwaves with his inhuman, eldritch thought-patterns the sinister Great Old One was able to connect with those who had remained loyal to him throughout all the dark aeons of his silence. A little “shipyard accident” here, a little “missing in Arabia” there and poof! The stage was set for the Greatest of the Great Old Ones to rise again, striking fear into the hearts of all puny humans.

The stars (m)aligned. The Great Cthulhu rose, slavering for victims.

But how to get to all of them? Why, look to the Ancient Masters for instruction, of course. Who has free access and welcome into all households? Who has profound, unthinkable powers of transportation, manifestation, and time-manipulation? One, and only one being, my friends.

Santa Claus.

Yes, the old man had to be gotten out of the way. Thus began the battle between The Old Man and the Sea Creature from Beyond the Abyss of the Star Spaces and the Clamoring Chaos Which is the End of All Things, by Asenath Waite.

I won’t go into the details of the battle (too gruesome for a wholesome, all-ages blog such as this one) but rest assured, there was much mucous involved.

That accomplished, Cthulhu settled down by the fire with a nice, wholesome snack, and waited for breakfast delivery.

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Fairy found alive in South Africa!

Fairies Oberon and Titania

Long has the mystery of the elusive and entrancing fairy perplexed some of the greatest minds in the Western World.

Whether known as fairies, Little People, sidhe, elves, or Faerie(ii or y, for teenage Livejournalers only), they have fascinated our preeminent literary figures as well as those whose interests lie in the purely scientific, theists of the most extreme sort, and atheists likewise.

Truly, there is no corner of the human imagination into which they have not penetrated.

Various proofs were brought forward and each, in turn, mocked. Fossilized fairies. Mummified fairies. Even, in the ultimate legitimization that Western society offers, Retailed Fairies (free shipping to Neverland).

Each fell before the catcalls of the disbelievers.

Now, at last, positive photographic proof of the existence of fairies has emerged from the Dark Continent. This crystal-clear shot of a fairy conducting a conversation with two friendly meerkats is the first hint we’ve had of the so-called “Special Relationship” between the two species. Long have the inscrutable meerkat race been suspected of magical qualities, and now we have conclusive proof of the nature of that intercourse with the spiritual world within our own.

Let the naysayers mock if they dare!

Fairy and Meerkats

This remarkable scientific document deservedly won special commendation in the behaviour (mammals) category in the prestigious Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, hosted by the UK’s Natural History Museum, and it comes to us direct from the not-at-all-given-to-mere-sentimentality-except-Polly-Toynbee-who-can’t-think-anyway Guardian newspaper. It was taken by Shem Compion on South Africa’s Tswalu Kalahari reserve, which is no doubt shortly to become a mecca for sidhezoologists from around the globe. Book your flight now: airplane optional!

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