Blaugust 6/31: Dr. Dolittle's Circus

Thursday's are the day that I've left open and free-form for Blaugust, in the hopes of inspiring something new and exciting instead. In the absence of that, though, let me show you a political cartoons I made this week.

(Warning: This post contains Australian politics and racy language. The two often go hand-in-hand for some reason.)

If you don't follow Australian politics, you're missing out, as the last few weeks have been completely focused on the important business of finding out which of our national politicans has most profitably misused their parliamentary travel allowance. There have been many interesting cartoons, and a seemingly infinite number of helicopter memes, made out of the ensuing scandal, and as the dust settles our government again has egg on its face and the Speaker of the House has resigned having collected enough of them to make a record-breaking omelette. If you're a Usonian or otherwise unfamiliar with Australian politics, you might think that the Speaker is a powerful person: the head of their party, or third in line for the Prime Ministership or some nonsense like that, but that's not how our system works. In Australia the speaker is a largely ceremonial role whose job is to manage the house in session, which appears to the public to involve mostly throwing out people that you don't like, so it could easily, and perhaps more happily, filled by a bit player or even a non-entity, and given the current climate, that might be exactly what the government goes looking for.

This means that we need a new speaker, and the man tipped for the job is none only than the local member for us here at Parliament House, Dr. Andrew Southcott, who is known far and wide (mostly amongst his political opponents, for some reason) as Dr. Dolittle, as the man has an incredibly low profile for someone who's been in the for almost 20 years now. Since it's an obvious joke that I'm sure all the real cartoonists with actual skill will be making some better variant of soon enough if and when he is announced as the man to fill Bronwyn Bishop's comfortable chair, I thought I'd better get this little number up now, just in case.

We have a great tradition of political cartoons in Australia, and the working cartoonists of the country go a long way to building a language that even those of us with no artistic skill at all can use to make their idea (relatively) clear to a pre-prepared audience. By this point, I hope that most Australians that have been anywhere near the zeitgeist could tell that Hercules the strongman here is dressed as Prime Minister Tony Abbot, I mean, he's a man in a blue tie, with a surf-life saving cap on. The low-profile Andrew Southcott (as played by Dr. Dolittle himself) is more obscure, of course (I've never seen another cartoon with him in it), but I suspect that will no longer be the case if he gets the nod early next week.

I know it doesn't count as a real cartoon, but in a field where the below image is still considered a work of high art, maybe I have a shot. All in all, I'm rather proud of it!

Fare well until tomorrow, gentle readers.

Dead Man Switch

If you're reading this, I have failed at Blaugust, and am even now looking for a swiftly flowing stream...

This is a Naruto / Hikaru No Go plot bunny that came to me in the middle of the night and just wouldn't go away until I wrote it down. I am sharing it with you all because I am a terrible person, and also because I'm perversely proud of it. If you haven't read Hikaru No Go, do yourself a favour and borrow it from your local library, it's the best manga about a Go-playing ghost around. If you haven't read Naruto, congratulations. If you've read neither, this will probably not make that much sense to you.

I'm basically going to try and tell the story of Hikaru No Go if it happened in the Naruto universe, with Hikaru's quest to become a go pro being replaced with a quest to become a ninja, Hikaru replacing Naruto wholesale and Sasuke replacing Akira. Yes, I expect it to be a terrible schmozzle, but I was having fun, so what the heck. I don't expect to get that far before I get bored of the premise, but let's run with it for now.

The basic idea is that the first chapters of Hikago will form a kind of prologue to Naruto, the insei chapters will correspond with Naruto's passage through the ninja academy, and then the Pro exam will be approximately equivalent to the Chunin exam. By this point I expect the universe to be so hideously malformed that it will collapse in on itself and explode, but if that ever happens we'll blame it on the 'Eye of the Moon' plan.

<-->

The sun set on a regular peaceful day like any other in Kohonagakure. Trainee ninja terrorised escaped family pets, friends casually attacked each other with lethal weapons; and in the civilian quarter, two teenagers explored a storage shed.
"Hikaru, are you sure about this?"
"Grandpa won't mind, he never even comes out here, he won't notice if we borrow some old junk."
Sure, Hikaru didn't plan on ever returning them, but Akari didn't need to know that. There was a lot of  junk in his grandfather's shed, back-issues of magazines piled to the attic roof, old sports equipment littered the floor, he'd never find out if Hikaru acquired a few things. A boy had to live, after all.
Once he edged carefully past the piles near the door, Hikaru found the good stuff, some antique-looking gobans (too heavy to move easily), a set of illustrated hard-bound novels by someone called "The Great Jaraiya-Sama" (too embarrassing to properly examine in front of Akari), and a non-descript, but obviously ancient, scabbard.
"Hey Akari, check this out! Man, my grandpa must have been a total bad-ass when he was younger" he called out as he drew a sword almost as tall as himself out of the scabbard. Even in the dingy half-light of the shed, it was clear that the sword had a razor edge.
"Hikaru! Be careful with that! You could put your eye out!"
"Weird, it's got this strange stain on it, have a look..."
"Don't point it at me! All I can see is a huge sword waving in my face!" 
"Look, it's right there. It's looks like dried blood or something..."
You can see the stain?
"Whoa! Who is it? If you're a burglar you'd better watch out! I'm armed... and dangerous!"
"Keep that thing away from me! If you screw up my haircut, Hikaru, I'll never forgive you!"
Can you hear my voice?
"I mean it! Show yourself!"
"I'm out of here before you poke your eye out or something and try to blame me!" Akari disappeared out of the shed, leaving her friend alone to wonder if he'd just imagined the mysterious voice. He didn't have to wonder for long.
Hikaru felt bewilderment and fear rising up in him as a humanoid shape appeared out of nowhere in front of him, filling his vision. He struggled to keep on top of his emotions, but he didn't do anything dumb and girly like fainting away. Even if neither he nor anyone he knew was a ninja, people appearing out of thin air was a common occurrence in the Village Hidden in the Leaves, it was practically a leaf ninja signature move, after all. Besides, he had a sword.
Thankyou, kami-sama. I will now return to the living world.
Hikaru might have been confronted in his grandfather's shed by the sudden appearance of a strangely-dressed woman (or man?), but he was still an inquisitive twelve-year-old boy. Encouraged by the comforting weight of the sword in his hand, he asked the first thing that popped into his head.
"The living world? Where were you before?"
I was...elsewhere. It is a long story.
"We've got time, you're not going anywhere until you tell me what you're going here."
Oh? It would obvious to anyone that follows the way of the sword that you have no idea what you are doing with that. And even if you did..."/ the man moved towards him passing straight through the sword and Hikaru to the other side, /"...I am a spirit. An earthly sword will not harm me.
"You're a...a spirit...a ghost?"
Please allow to me introduce myself. I am Fujiwara No Sai. When I lived, long, long ago, I was a tutor to the Emperor in swordsmanship and martial arts...

<---->

Hikaru sat in history class and tried not to look too bored.
So, Sai, you were so sad when you couldn't teach any more that you killed yourself? You really like martial arts that much, huh?
Of course I do. When you're facing an opponent in combat, a rival, there's nothing else, just you and he. It's simple and beautiful, like Go.
Go? That old man's game with the black and white stones? Talk about boring.
A game of the mind that is a reflection of battle. Strategy is the key to both.
Bah! They're both boring. I'm not going to play go, and I'm definitely not going to do any fighting. Martial arts is for losers and wannabe ninjas... Suddenly, Hikaru doubled over with a terrible pain in his stomach, like that time he hadn't noticed that he'd drunk week-old milk.
What the hell? I think I'm going to be sick! Sai, is that you?
Sorry! Sometimes when I feel strong emotions they flow over into my host.
Whoa. You were so sad about not being able to fight that you felt like you were going to chuck? You must really love martial arts.
I really do, Hikaru.
I thought you were taking over my body or something. Like a horror movie, you know.
I would never do that without your consent!
But you could, though, right?
I could, but only if you were willing for me to do so. I'm not strong enough to overcome your conscious control of your body.
This is weird. You've done this before, haven't you, Sai? Like, you've had other hosts before?
Once before. Hundreds of years ago now. There was a man called Bennosuke. I found him when he was very young, and we travelled all over Japan, fighting in many duels and battles. In his body, I met and fought many strong opponents...

<---->

"Shindo. Are you daydreaming again?" His teacher's voice interrupted their conversation. 
"Ah...sorry. What were we doing again?"
"You were writing about the Heian period. And if you're not nearly done you're going to fail. Again."
"Don't worry, sensei! I'm on it!"
Hey Sai, what do you know about the Heian period?
The Heian period? But that was when I was alive. What do you want to know?
Great! How about you try taking over for a bit and write in the answers for me?
Hikaru, are you sure?
Hey, I can't do this myself, I never listen to this guy, he's really boring. It'd be nice to surprise my grandpa by actually passing history for once. I'll get my body back when I want it, right?
Of course. Very well, this will feel a little strange.
A sensation like an ice-pack being slipped inside his shirt filled Hikaru's whole body, and all of a sudden he was outside his own body, watching the back of his head from where Sai had been just moments earlier.
Weird. Really weird.
Do you want to switch back, Hikaru?
No, I'm ok, I think. Besides, I have to get something handed up at the end of this lesson.
It took him a little while, but eventually he got more used to it, and settled down to watch Sai fill in his assignment with flowing and intricate calligraphy that was so foreign to Hikaru's habitual scrawl that it might have been another language altogether. Something about the Emperor and his concubines... Hehe. His teacher and his grandpa wouldn't know what hit them.

<---->

Hikaru's teacher had been putting off the chore of marking the last paper in the stack for an hour now. It wasn't that Hikaru was a bad student, exactly, he was just easily distracted, and one more graphic description of a soccer match allegedly occurring between rival armies might be enough to ensure a fail mark for the term, or give his teacher a mental breakdown. Taking a deep breath and steeling himself for the worst, he turned it over and began to read...
*thump*
The sound of chair and body hitting the ground brought the teachers from the nearby offices running.

<---->

Walking home took a lot longer than usual, since Sai had never been in a ninja village before and had stop to examine every little thing, from the televisions in shop windows to the display of ornamental kunai. Hikaru kept having to wait for him, causing the nearby shopkeepers to eye him suspiciously.
As he doubled back to look for whatever had distracted Sai this time, he found the spirit lurking in a tree looking over the old Uchiha compound. Everyone in the village, ninja and civilian, knew what had happened to the Uchiha.
Hikaru! Hikaru! Look at this!
Whoa. Sai, come down from there. People don't go near the compound! There's like a family of ghost ninjas haunting it and they might kill you or something.
But Hikaru, I'm already dead! And look, that boy seems to be alive.
Hikaru climbed up beside Sai to see what he was looking at. In a small maintained area in an otherwise overground training ground, Uchiha Sasuke was performing a kata at ever-increasing speeds, flinging his body around as he dispatched hordes of imaginary attackers.
Oh, yeah. That's the last Uchiha. His brother went mad a few years back and killed everyone else in his whole clan.
Look in his eyes! Like a hawk ready to pounce on its prey! For one so young to be so committed to the arts of war...ooh!
He's a ninja! Bred and trained from birth as a killing machine. And you want to fight him?!
Yes! Oh, can I?
If you get beat up, won't it hurt me?
Hikaru! Trust me. I'll look after your body, just let me fight him!
Well, if you can do my history homework for me, I guess I can at least let you have one little spar. Just be careful with my body, OK?
Of course.
Hikaru leapt down from the tree and fought his way through the undergrowth to the training ground.
"Hey, Uchiha. Fight me!"

<-->

Talk about out of practice. All I can say is that most thirteen year-olds write better than I do, and I'm sure that I wrote better when I was thirteen too. I am truly sorry.

Bench Press

Don't ask about the pizza oven

We love our little Parliament House. It's just nice for us, even if it is a little bigger than we really need for just two we fill it up with visitors and art projects often enough. In the last few years we've made it our own in lots of little ways, mostly involving piling our junk up in every nook any cranny of the place. But since we've been here, it's become very apparent that more than anything else, what we're missing here is kitchen bench space. For more than a year, we kept a little dinner table in the kitchen, a very permanent temporary solution to the problem.

Last Christmas, my parents were kind enough to offer us the gift of a new kitchen bench, since we'd been talking to them about how we'd probably like to one day get around to adding an island bench to replace our temporary table. Problem solved.

Except, of course, that would require us to decide what we actually want and go out and get it. Getting things done is not exactly our best skill. It's like all our decision making ability was sapped by that decision to buy the place or something. So for the last...8 months, as far as we've got along this path of improvement is to replace our nice sturdy kitchen table with this monstrosity.

This is our coffee table stacked high with whatever books and boxes we could find at the time that happened to be approximately the right size, topped by a piece of fibreboard. This has been useful for working out what size of bench we want and for providing a conversation piece whenever bemused friends come visiting, but in it's turn it has also become moderately permanent. Permanent enough that there's a look of fear every time I ask someone to help cut the veggies for dinner, and permanent enough that on multiple occasions I've had to change the books holding it up as I needed some of the ones that were inaccessible, but not permanent enough, for example, for Mrs. Owl to bump into it in the middle of the night and not smash every piece of crockery and glassware placed on it.

So, time for a change.

We've decided we want to match it as closely to our current kitchen as we can, even though our bench tops are this strange kind of surface that always looks dirty, even when it's clean, a rare occurrence in our house. We also need at least one more drawer, since we need somewhere to put our knives, and we need some storage space for large items like our electric saucepan. We know what we want, where we want it, and what it should look like...and we've got someone else to pay. We suddenly realised that that's all the constituent parts, roll on making an actual grown-up decision for once.

The call is made, the kitchen is coming... So's christmas.

In that photo you can also see part of my project for the rest of the afternoon, someone has to do the dishes, after all.

The Game that Ruins Friendships

There was movement in old Europe, for the word had passed around

that Diplomacy once more was up for play.

So they mustered up their forces, in for penny, in for pound,

'til all the hacks had gathered for the fray.

All the tried and noted stabbers from the nations near and far

had gathered round the game board for the fight.

For the rulers love hard talking, from the Archduke to the Tsar, 

and the Sultan snuffs the battle with delight.

There was Kaiser John, who wore with style his Pickelhaulbe hat.

King Max's knife was itching in the dark.

But few were nicer Archdukes than when Sam was titled that.

The Old Man was personified by Mark.

Then Hywel the newly-minted pope turned up to try his hand,

no sooner he than Nick the Frog, he came,

and numbers were completed by Kevin of Russian land.

As finer bunch as ever played the game.

...

Just when you thought that my horrible massacring of rhyme and meter over the year couldn't get any worse, I'm back at it, warming up for Raptember with a little take off of the Banjo to commemorate the new email Diplomacy game that I've just starting up with some fellow Blaugustines and other members of EVAC. If all goes to plan, I'll be running this game for the next three or four months, giving me lots of gaming content to fill up the always difficult Thursday slot and lots of opportunities to turn my hand to the making of ditties.

It should be a nice chance for me to share my love of diplomacy with others without feeling conflicted about wanting to destroy them in order to win the game for myself, so I'll greatly enjoy watching all the diplomacy take place from the safety of the sidelines. And of course, since this is Diplomacy we're talking about, I'll probably spend a lot of time trying to soften the blows to shattered egos and attempting to reduce the number of international conflicts being solved by assassination.

I don't have much more to say, so let me leave you with the opening lines of the textbook on the game, Richard Sharp's The Game of Diplomacy:

In a changing world, some things do not change. It may be fashionable to decry the simple Virtues, but we still like to find them in our friends. Loyalty, honesty, frankness, gratitude, chivalry, magnanimity - these are the hallmarks of the good friend, the good husband and father, the nice guy we all hope our daughters will marry.

In the amoral world of Diplomacy, however, they are the hallmarks of the born loser. If a fallen enemy reaches out a hand for assistance, the wise man lops it off. If a friend does you a good turn when you’re down, wait until he’s down, then beat him to death. If an ally asks for your help in planning the next season’s moves, give it freely and copiously, then do the reverse of what you agreed and let him take the counter-attack. Try to surround yourself with people who trust you, then let them down; find an ally who will gladly die for you and see that he does just that.

I love this game.

Two Disturbing Pictures

There's probably a taboo against posting this sort of thing in a public place but...


There's definitely a taboo against posting this kind of photo in a public place, it's a strange and unusual punishment of the worst kind and liable to cause public panic, but a guy can't help the face he's born with.

Crossword Time: Anagrams

For the benefit of Mr. 5000, there will be a show tonight on crossword theory. Though the gentleman (and others) insist that they understand how the game works, I like messing about with crosswords and pretending that I know more that people about things, so it's time for a lecture on cryptics.

Returning to our grid from last week, let's start with the basic explanation that I'm sure none of you need. A cryptic crossword clue is a little puzzle, and each little puzzle fits with the others to form the grid. Each puzzle is one of only a few different types of puzzle, the idea behing each is easily learned even by mere humans like you and me, and once we work out what kind of puzzle it is, the answer is just a short jump away. In (almost) all these types of puzzles, the clue has two parts, a 'straight' section that is the word's definition just as in a regular crossword, and a wordplay section where things get a little bit crazy. The best way to understand this is to jump right in, so what are you waiting for?



First up is 20 down, the clue that Alethea says that she's solved (and indeed those of us familiar with her formidable intellect and puzzling bent have no reason to doubt her). Which reads:

"Resets Doom's infamous city... (5)"

Being the computer game fan that you are, you naturally are aware that Doom takes place on the moons of Mars rather than in any particular city, infamous or not, so instantly your spider-demon senses are tingling. This crossword can't possibly be asking for a city that's not named, so what is it asking for? Which part of this clue is the 'straight' part, and which is the wordplay? This clue is looking for a synonym of 'resets', or for a city that may or not be infamous (we know that the 'straight' part of this clue has to be at the beginning or end, because them's the rules, and no self-respecting cruciverbalist would break the rules, right?), though it's hard to say which.

But...the word 'resets' is enough to have any cryptic crossword fan swinging from building to building, as it is an anagram indicator, a word which transmits enough muddling, transforming morphic energy to power a teleport gate to hell itself. After all, at wouldn't be fair of the setter to just throw in a clue like:

Dog deity (3)

...and expect you to realise that you need to shuffle some letters around, so we drop little hints that someone needs to re-deal the letters. A more reasonable clue for the same might be:

Rabid dog deity (3)

...where 'rabid', with its connotations of madness and befuddlement, is the anagram indicator which, when applied to a canine, leads us naturally to a devine conclusion. In the same vein, 'resets' is an anagram indicator, probably re-setting the letters of "Doom's" to give us an infamous city. There are plenty of different words that could be anagram indicators, shaken, stirred, fried... anything that gives a feeling of disorder, but since "Doom's" has 5 letters and so does the infamous city we're looking for, we're beginning to see the light at the end of this particularly mad little tunnel.

A quick dip into the back-end of Genesis (actually it disappears in chapter 18, but why let biblical accuracy ruin a terrible pun?), reveals SODOM, a city that along with her sister Gomorrah, according to Biblical tradition, pretty much set the mould for infamy (and happens to share the same letter as the pluralised form of a popular first-person shooter).

Whoolah! We've done it, cracked the first part of the puzzle and all it took was a little re-arranging of some letters and a bit of general knowledge. Inspired by our early success, we knuckle down again, looking for some more of those tell-tale anagram indicators...but which clue do we tackle next?

Vignette: Marriage

A young couple are walking back to their car after dinner in town, pleasantly ignorant of the world moving around them as only young couples can be, when arising out of the dark comes a hulking figure, gaunt and unshaven and smelling never-so-slightly of alcohol.

"Arg, why don't you two just get married?"

The lonely figure disappears into the darkness again, no doubt in search of other people to accost, leaving our two young heroes to their thoughts. After a short moment, the gentleman turns to his partner:

"Laura, hang on a sec...ah..."

The look on her face was just priceless.

Filk Fiction

As I was reading through the archives of the newly-discovered blog of a dear friend of mine recently, I stumbled across a meme that she'd filled out. Ever keen to learn more about a friend, and partial to a little meme myself, I perused her answers, until I found that she'd refused to put an answer down for "Favourite Fan-Fic".

Now not being much of a fan-fic man myself, I can sympathise, but I wondered if her lack of response was down to not having a good answer, or just being too embarrassed to share it with the rest of the world. Well, just in case the second option happens to be true, but mostly because I'm feeling inordinately punny at the moment, here's a snippet of one of my favourite fan-fics for you all.

I'm not a big fan of fandom in general, the fascination with sex and sexuality is something that I just don't understand or approve of (and this particular peice is no exception, so look away now if you're particularly easily offended), but occasionally you run across a little gem, as I did when I was listening to "Death Sheep Radio" the other night.

So without further ado, here's an excerpt Tom "The World's Fastest Filker" Smith's seminal musical work "Hey, It's Can(n)on":

Ye've read the Harry Potter books, ye think ye know 'em through
But there's something that ye may not know, and here's a little clue:
The female of the Trio has her birthday on
Talk Like A Pirate Day. So heads up, Harry and Ron!

When she found out, her eyes she rolled, she went on knittin' socks,
But Harry said, "I've got the gold, let's head down to the docks,"
They traded lots o' Galleons for a lovely brigantine,
And now they're her young scallions and she's a pirate queen!

...

Now here's the part we talk about: with whom she's lockin' lips,
'Cause after all, a pirate queen has got to have her 'ships.
Some say Harry's her true love, or Ron she will betroth,
She finally cried, "I can't decide, I'll have to have 'em both!"

Who's the sassy bossy witch that all the boys pursue?
Grander than the Golden Snitch and more elusive too.
One may Seek'er, one may Keep'er, both know how to score, with
Hermione Granger, the Pirate Queen, the pride of Gryffindor!

Sorry about that. Sometimes I can't resist.