Author: Purple Wyrm

Photographic Numerology

The numbers! They all line up!

I’m slowly working my way through the photos I took on my trip to the UK and posting the best ones (or at least some ones) to my Flickr account. This isn’t as easy as it might sound because in a fit of abstraction I forgot to reset the time on my camera on arriving at Heathrow, and as a result all my photos are timestamped seven hours later than they were actually taken.

(Hmm, did I blog about this before? Mind like a…. one of those… straining…. things)

Anyway I’ve had to go through them picture by picture correcting the EXIF data which is annoying in the extreme and taking quite a long time.

The reason I mention this is I’ve spent this afternoon fixing up the photos I took in and around Avebury on September 9th. That is to say the 9th of the 9th 2004. And what’s today’s date? the 4th of the 4th 2009. Spooky! 😀

In other news I happened to run into Lyndah on the train yesterday. For those coming in late Lyndah is a friend (or possibly ex-friend – long story) of my brother’s who I had a devastating crush on for years and years (I’m much better now, thanks for asking). Anyway we had a semi-decent chat (I’m not great at small talk, we don’t have a great deal in common, my hearing is dreadful in noisy environments – particularly in my right ear, and her left ear was blocked after going swimming) and, well, that’s about it. We had a chat. I guess this is notable because back a few years ago I would have been a gibbering mess in her presence. Hooray for personal development! 🙂

OK, I’m going to bed now. I’ve got a new mattress which – although it stinks a bit, presumably still outgassing from the factory – should vastly improve my posture. Or something. Well, it certainly won’t hurt it anyway.

Oh Quornimal! Oh Quornimal!

The only animal made exclusively of mycoprotein!

Recently Helen mentioned on her blog a previously unknown form of fauna – the quornimal.

The quornimal is apparently…

“…a sort of dog-sized version of Highland Cattle but with the horn of a unicorn…”

Now this is all well and good, but it does raise at least one extremely important question. Does the quornimal have the horns of a highland cow, plus a unicorn’s horn? Or does it have the unicorn’s horn exclusively?

Perhaps there are even two species of quornimal – the mono-horned quornimal and the triple-horned quornimal. And if there are, do they taste different?

And can you find quornimal in Warrnambool?

Western Australian Pronunciation

Prescriptivism R Us!

The first syllable of Albany rhymes with pal, Sal or Mal. Not Paul, ball or Saul.

Castle rhymes with parcel not hassle (ok, you can probably debate that one, but the way some people – mostly Eastern-Staters – pronounce it makes me grind my teeth ;))

The first syllable of Derby rhymes with her or sir, not car or bar. This doesn’t just apply to the town, it extends to sporting events (such as the Western Derby) and probably even to the hats – if anyone had any reason to discuss them.

Exmouth is pronounced Ex-mouth not Exmuth as it would be in England.

Fremantle can be pronounced as either FREE-man-tle or fre-MAN-tle but is often just FREE-oh.

Joondalup is JOON-da-lup not joon-DAR-lup.

Mandurah is MAN-ju-ra not man-JUR-ra.

(Yes, the pronunciations would be much more precise if I used the IPA, but this post is a rough guide aimed at the general public who wouldn’t recognise the IPA if it danced around in front of them wearing a shirt reading “Hi! I’m the IPA!”. So there! :))

(Also: Woooo!!! Post 600!!! :))

Charles Walker and the H. H. Holmes Combo

Serial killers in short supply. Ugly musicians not so much…

So! It is to be war between us! If these demands are not met, a disaster beyond your imagination shall…

Oh, sorry, I seem to have been channelling the Phantom of the Opera there.

It occurred to me the other day that they haven’t played Musician or Serial Killer on Spicks and Specks for a while. For the uninitiated this is where they display a grainy, black and white mugshot and challenge the players to determine (as you’d expect from the name) if they’re a musician or a serial killer.

My initial thought was that they might have run out of scary/creepy looking musicians.

A few seconds later I realised that this was stupid, and they’d have been much more likely to have run out of serial killers 😉

(For the record this is my 599th post…)

Foolish Ideas: The Return

Getting other people to do all the hard work…

I’ve been boning up lately (oh stop laughing, that’s a perfectly legitimate phrase!) on the world of Hellboy, having used some tax return money and birthday book vouchers to buy Darkness Calls, Abe Sapien: The Drowning, BPRD: Killing Ground, The Hellboy Companion and the special edition of The Golden Army. As a result the nebulous mental space I use to store details of whatever fictional world I’m currently mainlining is stuffed to the gills with the big red guy and his colleagues.

This explains why when I read that an open source version of that old classic Wolfenstein 3D has been ported to the iPhone my immediate thought was “Hey! A Wolfenstein mod would make a pretty good Hellboy game!”

(Here comes the madness…)

You see, the history of Hellboy computer games has been plagued with bug ridden piles of garbage and adequate though hardly inspired beat-em-ups. So how better to fix the problem than to make some modifications to one of the most consistently popular and influential games of all time?

I mean think about it. Wolfenstein is all about running around a mysterious castle, shooting Nazis and stopping their fiendish attempts to raise a robotic zombie army. Could you come up with a more archetypal Hellboy adventure? All you need to do is swap out some of the graphics and bingo!

As for the plot? Well the BPRD sends Hellboy in to investigate reports of strange activity in the ruins of Castle Wolfenstein – rumoured to have been the site of experiments associated with Project Ragna-Rok back in World War II. He discovers an abandoned laboratory full strange equipment and inadvertently activates a primitive time travel device which throws him back to 1943. He has to fight his way through the castle back to the laboratory and get back to the present day.

Replace the faces in the health meter, add the Right Hand of Doom as a weapon, make the zombies look like the ones in the basement of Hunte Castle, swap out the bosses with Rasputin, Von Klempt and Kroenen and there you go! Hours of Nazi-smashing fun!

(You’d leave robo-Hitler in there untouched, obviously)

If I had the time I’d take a shot at it myself. Of course I don’t have the time, so I’m releasing the idea into the wild in the hopes someone out there is similarly enthused. Which they probably won’t be. But hey, at least I’m making an effort 😀

Hellboy in Wolfenstein? (Click to Enlarge)

Fading

Spawn of the Dark Lord

I did carry on a bit about Lady Sovereign on Monday didn’t I? Well here’s the sequel, as the whole So Human palarva reminded me of another controversial song…

If you ears can stand it, take a listen to this…

One Word – Kelly Osbourne

Doesn’t it sound a bit… familiar?

(Those of you who aren’t officianados of the 1980s may want to check this.)

Happily all ended well in this case. Kelly Osbourne’s song writers got their arses sued off and profits from One Word are now shared with the original writers.

Of course this doesn’t have a lot to do with So Human as Close to Me was used with permission. It just reminded me, that’s all.

The Only Good Bikie…

You know what I’m saying.

Well it looks like the Bikies are at it again. Well hooray.

It’s tempting to think “good, maybe they’ll all wipe each other out” but the problem is that ordinary people inevitably get caught in the crossfire.

What we really need is to round them all up, dump them somewhere desolate and uninhabited (the top of Mount Everest say) and let them sort it all out there once and for all.

The Human Cure

I also like mashups!

I’m going to stick my neck out and plant my feet (now there’s an image) firmly in the pro-So Human camp. As far as I’m concerned it’s an enjoyable and fairly creative re-working of Close to Me, and detracts nothing from the original track.

So there!

(Yes, after a very rough week I’m back baby!)

Later…

OK, after trawling around the web a bit it’s become apparent to me that there’s not a decent copy of the lyrics anywhere (or at least not anywhere accessible from the front page of Google). The only lyrics available appear to have been transcribed by someone unfamiliar with an English accent, and who frankly didn’t care very much anyway (how else to explain the fact that large chunks are gibberish and even the bits copied from the Cure are wrong?). This severely faulty version has then been copied verbatim by every lazy bastard out there who’d rather just cut, paste and submit rather than reading through what it is they’re pasting in.

Well no more! I’ve just spent half an hour transcribing the song and while my version has a few holes (indicated with italics) it’s a hell of a lot more accurate. Enjoy!

So Human – Lady Sovereign

Me you, yeah yeah, everyone we’ve had one of them days, but listen me you cannot relate,
I’m a star, I’m an individual, uneducated¹ example of intelligence, I’m considered t’be cool,
Hot bodies, offended people, the mood offstage (bitten down a steeple??²),
Anyways, things change, always at the hotel, always, I’ll be gone again in four days,

I’ve been waiting hours for this,
I’ve made myself so sick,
I wish I’d stayed, asleep today, yeah,
I’m so human (yeah yeah),
It’s OK (yeah yeah),
For me to,
Feel this way (yeah yeah),
I’m still human (yeah yeah),
It’s OK (yeah yeah),
For me to,
Feel this way (yeah yeah),

Yeah… Yeah… Yeah…

Yeah, you me everyone, I got a little temper but I’m a funny one,
(da-da da-da??) the beat went on and I really fucking had enough,
You shoulda seen me runnin’ out the studio like Forest Gump,
(Drop shop??³) shut up, taxi, get away,
Trapped in the U.S. and my accent is my giveaway,
I need a bag of green to make it go away,
And this is another day of my life, and so I say,

I’ve been waiting hours for this,
I’ve made myself so sick,
I wish I’d stayed, asleep today, yeah,
I’m so human (yeah yeah),
It’s OK (yeah yeah),
For me to,
Feel this way (yeah yeah),
I’m still human (yeah yeah),
It’s OK (yeah yeah),
For me to,
Feel this way (yeah yeah),

Yea-ah yeay…
Yea-ah yeay…
Yea-ah yeay…

Doesn’t it feel much better, aha? When you’ve had a better day than yesterday?
Doesn’t it feel much better, aha? When you’ve had a better day than yesterday?
Doesn’t it feel much better, aha? When you’ve had a better day than yesterday?
Doesn’t it feel much better, aha? When you’ve had a better day than yesterday?
Yesterday, Yesterday, Yesterday, Yesterday,
(Yesterday, Yesterday, Yesterday, Yesterday)

I’m so human (yeah yeah),
It’s OK (yeah yeah),
For me to,
Feel this way (yeah yeah),
I’m still human (yeah yeah),
It’s OK (yeah yeah),
For me to,
Feel this way (yeah yeah),

Notes:
1: Could be “an educated” but I think “uneducated” makes more sense in context.
2: “Ridden down a steeple”? I really have no idea.
3: I honestly don’t have the foggiest.

You Load Sixteen Tons…

woooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrkkkkkkkk

Just worked a 10 hour day, and I’ve got another one lined up tomorrow. Just to make the point that I’m not abandoning the “try and write something every day” thing.

In the meantime, try this… (not by me by the way – just so that’s clear)


FRIEND OR FOE?
RISE OF THE MAC-
HINE OR BEGGINING
OF THE ANIMAL
FARM

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