Category Archives: Literary

Narnia Rap Battle: The Roundup

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You’ve read the books, you’ve seen the movie, Narnia Lucy and Tumnusyou’ve heard the stories. You’re probably still hoping, somewhere in your heart of hearts, that Susan is saving herself for you.

But you have no fucking idea about the Narnia Rap Battle.

Behold:

See, once upon a time about three months ago

SNL started something. SNL! Yeah, I know!

But this thing, it went viral; all the kids were emailing.

It was outta control, yeah this thing was just wailing!

Narnia Lion the Witch and the WardrobeNBC drones found out, shut it down like a flash.

Way too late: got on YouTube, we all started to thrash.

There was LA, and Muncie, two young dudes from Chi-town.

Ain’t no point, NBC, in this “Hey, shut ’em down!”

Now Cambridge steps up; Oxford isn’t around.

C.S. Lewis, poor dead guy, spinning down in the ground.

It’s a Narnia rap, what we all want to play.

Don’t get all literal: allegory? No way.

Take a Narnia word, take a Narnia sound,

Give it harsh attitude, then you kick it around,

And that’s all it takes, just a matter of class

and if that’s not enough I’ll kick you in the ass.

Tea, motherfuckerfucker! Tea, motherfucker!

Narnia Kids Train Station

The original, Lazy Sunday, as interpreted legally and protected by Right to Satirize legislation by two eleven-year-old Chicagoans:

The West Coast response, Lazy Monday:

The Midwestern entry, Lazy Muncie. Can’t beat a dance at the Elk’s Lodge:

And finally, the UK Narnia Rap. I dunno what’s up with Oxford, but Cambridge stole a march on them, and on their home turf at that! How mortifying!

Lawsuit of the Day: Elder Gods vs Microsoft

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Welcome Squid Overlords!This was apparently filed over ten years ago, but you know how long these things take. The lawyers for the big guys always try to drag out lawsuits to bankrupt the little guy. Microsoft, the little guys. Wrap your head around that if you can.

And, no doubt, the Big Guys have tried and tried to drag it out and will continue to do so until Microsoft, crushed by the opposition's relentless attack, capitulates. The plaintiffs in this case have an additional advantage:

They are immortal.

To:  Microsoft Lawyers, Inc. 
From:  Azathoth, Nyarlathotep and Hastur, Elder Attorneys.

Sirs:

Our agents among the mortal herd have brought to Our attention your recent product entitled Windows '95.  Therefore We now give you statutory notice of intent of proceedings to be taken against Microsoft by the Many-Angled Ones.

With this suit We will show that Windows '95, and to a lesser extent all of the Microsoft range of products, infringe upon the recognised "look-and-feel" of the Elder Gods, for the following reasons:

o Windows '95 is a crawling abomination from the darkest pits of Hell;

o No man can be in it's presence for too long without being driven into gibbering insanity;

o A cult who worship it exist in secret amongst the mortal herd;

o Those who associate with it for too long develop common physical characteristics, to wit:  pale, clammy skin, bulging eyes, generally unkempt physical appearance, tendency towards nocturnal living, change in diet to that which normal men do not eat (in your case tacos, burgers and Jolt Coke; in Ours, human flesh, Fungi of Yuggoth and the blood of Alien Gods);

o Mysterious tomes that purport to explain this phenomenon are reputed to exist; they are bound in an unnatural substance and only available
at a terrible cost to the user.

o The Microsoft range of products seek to utterly dominate the world, and force all who dwell there to live in eternal damnation.

As you can see, Our case is very strong, especially when you consider that most judges prefer not to have chittering things with tentacles for faces scoop out their brains and eat them.

We hope that you will consider these points carefully and settle out of court, since it is not Our intention to have your senior partners spend
the rest of their mercifully short lives under heavy sedation in a maximum security psychiatric hospital.  After all, it was the Lords of the Outer Planes who gave humanity lawyers in the first place.

Respectfully yours,

pp.  J.  Arthur Hastur, LL.B., B.C.L, B.D

From: surfbaud at NO-SPAM dot waverider dot co dot uk (Dave Hemming)
This is original from me. It was originally an answer I wrote for the Internet Oracle – I've reworked it as a standalone.

The State of the Blogosphere (IP) Address

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Okay, it's a cheap pun. But I'm not afraid to own it.

Bloggers in Context

David Sifry, Mr. Technoratus, has posted an analysis of the state of the Blogosphere. And there's more to come, apparently.

It looks like people who start blogs are more likely to keep them going than they were a few years ago, possibly a function of the lower barrier to entry. With automatic tools to do most of our formatting, we really don't need to know HTML THANK THE GOOD LORD! Because until that little snag was overcome we had to be content with very limited templates, or we had to go over to the dark side. And if you knew HTML, what in god's name were you doing with a dinky little blog anyway? You could have a website, man. It's like having a bicycle when you could have a jet-enabled Transformer. Blogs are for the civilians.

There are no shortage of techie bloggers, though. Does this mean I'm wrong? Oh, perish the thought, bitches. It means that even techies get tired of having their whole posts go POOF cuz they forgot one single "/" or something. They are able to recognize something damn useful just as quick as anybody else, and they jumped on it. As previously posted on this blog (I'll find the link when I'm less lazy) technical blogging, while still dominant, is in decline. Again, this is a barrier to entry thing; before, only techies and those willing to put up with a great deal of crap and/or learn a completely new and artificial language could blog with any degree of proficiency. Now, anybody who can type (and many people who can merely type, rather than spell or think) can blog. So the techies are being diluted. As well, at a certain point you don't neccessarily want to pontificate, you want to communicate; the livejournalers go to chat, the techies go to IM. And, increasingly, to meatspace.

Imagine that: Facetime! It's the new hotness.

In summary:

  • Technorati now tracks over 35.3 Million blogs
  • The blogosphere is doubling in size every 6 months
  • It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
  • On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
  • 19.4 million bloggers (55%) are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created
  • Technorati tracks about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour

Some Jokes Just Never Get Old

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Particularly if you can't make head or tail of them. If you get this, please comment for the benefit of those of us who only got A's on our algebra exams. I mean, I get the arc, I get the punchline, it's the syntax that sort of throws me. Like when you're travelling and your only words in the language are "restaurant" "washroom" and "police" and yet you still end up safe and sound and fed and where you meant to go in the first place. Yeah, like that.

Giving it an Allegory tag anyway, what the hell and for the sake of Operation Global Media Domination (I believe this is the only blog on WordPress with an Allegory tag; they're sure to jump on the bandwagon once Narnia goes to DVD though).

                a = b
              a^2 = ab
          a^2-b^2 = ab-b^2
       (a+b)(a-b) = b(a-b)
              a+b = b
               2b = b
                2 = 1

                x = (Pi+3)/2
               2x = Pi+3
         2x(Pi-3) = (Pi+3)(Pi-3)
          2Pix-6x = Pi^2-9
             9-6x = Pi^2-2Pix
         9-6x+x^2 = Pi^2-2Pix+x^2
          (3-x)^2 = (Pi-x)^2
              3-x = Pi-x
               Pi = 3   

               -1 = -1
             -1/1 = -1/1
             -1/1 = 1/-1
       sqrt(-1/1) = sqrt(1/-1)
              i/1 = 1/i
                i = 1/i
            i * i = 1
               -1 = 1

Pope h8s Judas

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Battle Pope!Pope Rat lays one down on Judas, who is dead and thus unable to defend himself effectively.

"The money was more important than communion with Jesus, more important than God and his love," he told a congregation in the Basilica of St John Lateran. The Pope said the renegade apostle's lies had cast him into a hopeless, downward spiral. "He became hardened, incapable of conversion, of the trusting return of the prodigal son, and threw away his ruined life." Vittorio Messori, who wrote a book with the Pope, said the pontiff's approach was "the strictest interpretation of the mystery of the betrayal". Even his predecessor, John Paul II, had seen some hope for Judas in his book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, published in 1994.

As any decent theologian knows, the abandonment of hope is a definitively anti-Christian act, and specifically condemned by prophets from the Old Testament to the church next door. Da pope better watch his back.

Slightly OT: Anyone looking for cheap, vicarious religious thrillsBuddy Christ! Duuuuuude, what would I do? (and aren't they the best kind?) should rent the movie Dogma and show it in a room full of Catholic theologians. When I showed it to Carinthia (doctorate in theology, Trinity College Dublin) she watched the first act with amusement, pointing out obscure transgressions and citing relevant passages from the Old Testament, but when it came to the central theme of the movie, she leapt out of her armchair, cocktail flying. Pointing at the screen as they once must have pointed at Hester Prynne, she postively bellowed.

"The Plenary Indulgence! That goddam Plenary Indulgence! I knew it was nothing but trouble! NOTHING but trouble."

She then went on to slander, in baroque and glorious terms, the pope who came up with the stupid scheme and every band of roving cardinals who'd ever supported it. By name. Quite impressive. Even though I had spent a pretty penny on the brandy for that Sidecar, it was still worth it. Nothing like watching people Godspell, everybody's favorite Crucifixion Musicalget all riled up over obscure metaphysical references. I am reminded of a letter to Miss Manners; she was asked what she would have done at a dinner party given by the writer…it seems that several people got into heated discussion of whether or not the existence of angels depended upon the existence of God, to which Miss Manners, ever sensible, replied, "Where was this dinner party and why was Miss Manners not invited? She always ends up sitting between people who live to discuss the price they got for their condos, or the price they paid for their cars."

Word.