Month: May 2008

Sumer Is Damn Well Icumen In

Do Not Touch!

So, some brainless dickheads have apparently decided that the preservation of one of the world’s most amazing ancient monuments is less important than having a chunk of said monument to put on their mantelpiece, or possibly hang around their weedy necks.

Jerks with Screwdriver prove they’re Jerks by Vandalising Stonehenge

As I see it, the only reasonable punishment for such an act is to (once the perpetrators are caught) call in the Druids, and re-enact the finale of the Wicker Man. Evil will be punished, it’ll discourage further souvenir hunting, and the Druids will finally be able to get back to that old time religion they haven’t been able to practice since the Roman invasion. Everyone wins!

PS: Yes, I’m well aware that the historical Druids had nothing to do with the construction of Stonehenge, but their modern counterparts are always hanging round the place so why not put them to some use?

PPS:Ten years. Hardly seems possible.

Good news Everyone!

#We’ll steal the show, Jolly Rogers go! We are the wolves of the sea!#

Phoenix has successfully landed on Mars, and Sir Ian McKellen is signed up to the Hobbit movies. It’s a great time to be alive!

No updates over the weekend – I was busy working on other projects and watching Eurovision. You can expect a detailed summary later but it can be best summed up as Russia’s fairly dull effort winning through political voting, the best acts (involving pirates and old men yelling at the audience while scratching gramophone records) getting nowhere, and the UK coming equal last despite having a pretty good song. Next year in Moscow!

I was also supposed to catch up with Rebecca and Dom for lunch, but Rebecca got sick so we had to call it off. Hope you feel better soon Rebecca!

Better go. I have work to do.

Actually it’s the other Salem

The law wants to be free!

There’s a fair bit of hooha brewing at the moment in the Pacific northwest of the United States. The government of Oregon (which I’d always considered one of the better US states, what with the Decemberists, Boring, Cascadia and Miranda – although technically she was from Washington 😉 is trying to convince all and sundry that it owns copyright in the state’s laws. This apparently goes against years of legal precedents, and people are getting quite riled up about it.

Now, I’m not a lawyer – let alone an American lawyer – but it seems to me that there are two very important reasons that laws should be in the public domain.

The first is that laws define a code of behaviour that citizens of a state are expected to conform to. Placing restrictions on how citizens can access and distribute laws – say, by instance, copyrighting them – impedes citizens’ ability to know and understand their legal obligations. Worse, it makes it harder for citizens to know and claim their legal rights, which can lead to very dangerous situations (eternal vigilance et al.).

The second reason goes right to the heart of democratic government. The idea behind representative democracy is that the people elect representatives to act on their behalf in the governing of the state. Members of government are there to govern for the people – they write and approve laws for the people and on behalf of the people. This means that (by the purest principles of democracy) the laws already belong to the people. Copyrighting them is theft.

So that’s my view on the matter. Let’s hope the government of Oregon remembers who it works for sometime soon.

Do the chickens have large talons?

Ligers do not in fact have magical skills

Yesterday I finally got around to watching a film I’ve been meaning to for ages – Napoleon Dynamite (it was on special at JB’s and I needed something else to buy so it didn’t look like I’d gone in there just to get season four of Gilmore Girls :))

Well what, I ask you is there about this film not to like? Creepy Uncle Rico, ligers, time machines, llamas, holy statues protecting the school hallways and truly awful portraiture. It’s an exuberant paean to sheer, small town pointlessness, and probably the best thing I’ve watched all year to date.

I’m off now to brush up on my computer hacking skills!

A Drop of Wyvern’s Blood

How to win friends and poison them with mocktails.

Quite a while ago the Dragon’s Landing (which is currently on hiatus) put the call out for beverages to serve in the bar of their (completely fictional) inn. I don’t think they had much of a response, but due to a combination of boredom and caffeine craving over my two weeks off I managed to come up with one – a cocktail (or mocktail?) that I have decided to name the “Gary Gygax Wyvern’s Blood”.

(Call it my own little tribute to the master – it’ll have to do until we can get the Tomb of Horrors built for him).

The recipe is as follows…

  • 2/5ths your favourite cola beverage
  • 2/5th dark apple juice
  • 1/5th water (without this it’s way too sweet)

(If you want to go alcoholic you could possibly replace the water with some kind of spirit – in this case it should be called Dragon’s Blood)

Voila!

It’s probably only my deranged tastebuds that will ever actually like this bizarre combination, but I throw it out there in case anyone has a party coming up and needs dare/torture material.

On a similar theme Ryan alerted me to the “Skin Disease or D&D Character?” online quiz. I got 94% – I would have done better except I presumed no one would be stupid enough to name a character after an infectious plague (I was wrong :)).

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