Boulet

#GOT

1720 J B Homann Large Original Antique Map of Norway, Scandinavia

Mad Marx Bracket

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.



I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,



Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

- Robert Hayden

Mark Maggiori's The Journey West

The One Thing That Can Save America

Is anything central?

Orchards flung out on the land,

Urban forests, rustic plantations, knee-high hills?

Are place names central?

Elm Grove, Adcock Corner, Story Book Farm?

As they concur with a rush at eye level

Beating themselves into eyes which have had enough

Thank you, no more thank you.

And they come on like scenery mingled with darkness

The damp plains, overgrown suburbs,

Places of known civic pride, of civil obscurity.



These are connected to my version of America

But the juice is elsewhere.

This morning as I walked out of your room

After breakfast crosshatched with

Backward and forward glances, backward into light,

Forward into unfamiliar light,

Was it our doing, and was it

The material, the lumber of life, or of lives

We were measuring, counting?

A mood soon to be forgotten

In crossed girders of light, cool downtown shadow

In this morning that has seized us again?



I know that I braid too much on my own

Snapped-off perceptions of things as they come to me.

They are private and always will be.

Where then are the private turns of event

Destined to bloom later like golden chimes

Released over a city from a highest tower?

The quirky things that happen to me, and I tell you,

And you know instantly what I mean?

What remote orchard reached by winding roads

Hides them? Where are these roots?



It is the lumps and trials

That tell us whether we shall be known

And whether our fate can be exemplary, like a star.

All the rest is waiting

For a letter that never arrives,

Day after day, the exasperation

Until finally you have ripped it open not knowing what it is,

The two envelope halves lying on a plate.

The message was wise, and seemingly

Dictated a long time ago, but its time has still

Not arrived, telling of danger, and the mostly limited

Steps that can be taken against danger

Now and in the future, in cool yards,

In quiet small houses in the country,

Our country, in fenced areas, in cool shady streets.

- John Ashbery

Zork

Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself

At the earliest ending of winter,

In March, a scrawny cry from outside

Seemed like a sound in his mind.



He knew that he heard it,

A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,

In the early March wind.



The sun was rising at six,

No longer a battered panache above snow . . .

It would have been outside.



It was not from the vast ventriloquism

Of sleep’s faded papier-mâché . . .

The sun was coming from outside.



That scrawny cry—it was

A chorister whose c preceded the choir.

It was part of the colossal sun,



Surrounded by its choral rings,

Still far away. It was like

A new knowledge of reality.




BY WALLACE STEVENS

Tones

Analytic dictionary of Chinese and Sino-Japanese

Sinquefield 2017

'Wind Blown Grass Across the Moon' by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858)

Names of the States

Chinese Solar Calendar

Solar Terms	Chinese	Month and Date	Remarks
Start of Spring	lì chūn 立春	Feb 4th	A dubiously premature name, as it's not the beginning of spring in most of China; only in the extreme south.
Rain Water	yǔ shuǐ 雨水	Feb 19th	There is an increase of rainfall from then on.
Awakening of Insects	jīng zhé 惊蛰	Mar 6th	Thunder begins and hibernating insects wake up.
Vernal Equinox	chūn fēn 春分	Mar 21st	With an equal length of day and night.
Clear and Bright	qīng míng 清明	Apr 5th	It is clear and bright (when it's not raining), and the weather becomes noticeably warmer. A misnomer, particularly in southern China.
Grain Rain	gǔ yǔ 谷雨	Apr 20th	The early crops show their shoots.
Start of Summer	lì xià 立夏	May 5th	The beginning of summer (in southern China).
Small Full (Grain)	xiǎo mǎn 小满	May 21st	The seeds of summer crops begin to become plump, but are not yet ripe.
Grain in Ear	máng zhǒng 芒种	Jun 6th	The wheat becomes ripe; and the summer planting starts (in southern China).
Summer Solstice	xià zhì 夏至	Jun 21st	The daytime is the longest and the nighttime is the shortest of the year.
Minor Heat	xiǎo shǔ 小暑	Jul 7th	The beginning of the hottest period.
Major Heat	dà shǔ 大暑	Jul 23rd	It is the time of year when the duration of the sunshine is the longest, the average temperature is the highest, the rainfall is the greatest, and the thunderstorms are the most frequent (in some parts of northern China).
Start of Autumn	lì qiū 立秋	Aug 7th	An anomaly: nowhere is this true. Like the "start of spring" it is about a month premature.
Limit of Heat	chù shǔ 处暑	Aug 23rd	The end of the hot summer.
White Dew	bái lù 白露	Sep 8th	The transition from summer to autumn. The temperature drops sharply, and the autumn rains come.
Autumnal Equinox	qiū fēn 秋分	Sep 23rd	With an equal length of day and night.
Cold Dew	hán lù 寒露	Oct 8th	The weather becomes cold enough to reach dew point, but not cold enough to reach frost point.
Frost Descent	shuāng jiàng 霜降	Oct 23rd	The weather becomes cold and frost begins to form (in North China).
Start of Winter	lì dōng 立冬	Nov 7th	True of northern China, but winter comes later in the south.
Minor Snow	xiǎo xuě 小雪	Nov 22nd	Snow begins to fall, the weather becomes cold.
Major Snow	dà xuě 大雪	Dec 7th	It snows heavily for the first time in the year (in northern China).
Winter Solstice	dōng zhì 冬至	Dec 22nd	The daytime is the shortest and the nighttime is the longest of the year.
Minor Cold	xiǎo hán 小寒	Jan 5th	The weather rapidly reaches its coldest.
Major Cold	dà hán 大寒	Jan 20th	'Major Cold' It is the coldest time of the year.

Clark Ashton Smith

http://www.eldritchdark.com/






The Abominations of Yondo

The sand of the desert of Yondo is not as the sand of other deserts; for Yondo lies nearest of all to the world's rim; and strange winds, blowing from a pit no astronomer may hope to fathom, have sown its ruinous fields with the gray dust of corroding planets, the black ashes of extinguished suns. The dark, orblike mountains which rise from its wrinkled and pitted plain are not all its own, for some are fallen asteroids half-buried in that abysmal sand. Things have crept in from nether space, whose incursion is forbid by the gods of all proper and well-ordered lands; but there are no such gods in Yondo, where live the hoary genii of stars abolished and decrepit demons left homeless by the destruction of antiquated hells.

It was noon of a vernal day when I came forth from that interminable cactus-forest in which the Inquisitors of Ong had left me, and saw at my feet the gray beginnings of Yondo. I repeat, it was noon of a vernal day; but in that fantastic wood I had found no token or memory of a spring; and the swollen, fulvous, dying and half-rotten growths through which I had pushed my way, were like no other cacti, but bore shapes of abomination scarcely to be described. The very air was heavy with stagnant odors of decay; and leprous lichens mottled the black soil and russet vegetation with increasing frequency. Pale-green vipers lifted their heads from prostrate cactus-boles and watched me with eyes of bright ochre that had no lids or pupils. These things had disquieted me for hours past; and I did not like the monstrous fungi, with hueless stems and nodding heads of poisonous mauve, which grew from the sodden lips of fetid tarns; and the sinister ripples spreading and fading on the yellow water at my approach were not reassuring to one whose nerves were still taut from unmentionable tortures. Then, when even the blotched and sickly cacti became more sparse and stunted, and rills of ashen sand crept in among them, I began to suspect how great was the hatred my heresy had aroused in the priests of Ong and to guess the ultimate malignancy of their vengeance.

I will not detail the indiscretions which had led me, a careless stranger from far-off lands, into the power of those dreadful magicians and mysteriarchs who serve the lion-headed Ong. These indiscretions, and the particulars of my arrest, are painful to remember; and least of all do I like to remember the racks of dragon-gut strewn with powdered adamant, on which men are stretched naked; or that unlit room with six-inch windows near the sill, where bloated corpse worms crawled in by hundreds from a neighboring catacomb. Sufficient to say that, after expending the resources of their frightful fantasy, my inquisitors had borne me blindfolded on camel-back for incomputable hours, to leave me at morning twilight in that sinister forest. I was free, they told me, to go whither I would; and in token of the clemency of Ong, they gave me a loaf of coarse bread and a leathern bottle of rank water by way of provision. It was at noon of the same day that I came to the desert of Yondo.

So far, I had not thought of turning back, for all the horror of those rotting cacti, or the evil things that dwelt among them. Now, I paused knowing the abominable legend of the land to which I had come; for Yondo is a place where few have ventured wittingly and of their own accord. Fewer still have returned - babbling of unknown horrors and strange treasure; and the life-long palsy which shakes their withered limbs, together with the mad gleam in their starting eyes beneath whitened brows and lashes, is not an incentive for others to follow. So it was that I hesitated on the verge of those ashen sands, and felt the tremor of a new fear in my wrenched vitals. It was dreadful to go on, and dreadful to go back, for I felt sure that the priests had made provision against the latter contingency. So after a little I went forward, singing at each step in loathly softness, and followed by certain long-legged insects that I had met among the cacti. These insects were the color of a week-old corpse and were as large as tarantulas; but when I turned and trod upon the foremost, a mephitic stench arose that was more nauseous even than their color. So, for the nonce, I ignored them as much as possible.

Indeed, such things were minor horrors in my predicament. Before me, under a huge sun of sickly scarlet, Yondo reached interminable as the land of a hashish-dream against the black heavens. Far-off, on the utmost rim, were those orb-like mountains of which I have told; but in between were awful blanks of gray desolation, and low, treeless hills like the backs of half-buried monsters. Struggling on, I saw great pits where meteors had sunk from sight; and divers-colored jewels that I could not name glared or glistened from the dust. There were fallen cypresses that rotted by crumbling mausoleums, on whose lichen blotted marble fat chameleons crept with royal pearls in their mouths. Hidden by the low ridges, were cities of which no stela remained unbroken - immense and immemorial cities lapsing shard by shard, atom by atom, to feed infinities of desolation. I dragged my torture-weakened limbs over vast rubbish-heaps that had once been mighty temples; and fallen gods frowned in rotting pasammite or leered in riven porphyry at my feet. Over all was an evil silence, broken only by the satanic laughter of hyenas, and the rustling of adders in thickets of dead thorn or antique gardens given to the perishing nettle and fumitory.

Topping one of the many mound-like ridges, I saw the waters of a weird lake, unfathomably dark and green as malachite, and set with bars of profulgent salt. These waters lay far beneath me in a cup-like hollow; but almost at my feet on the wave-worn slopes were heaps of that ancient salt; and I knew that the lake was only the bitter and ebbing dregs of some former sea. Climbing down, I came to the dark waters, and began to lave my hands; but there was a sharp and corrosive sting in that immemorial brine, and I desisted quickly preferring the desert dust that had wrapped me about like a slow shroud. Here I decided to rest for a little; and hunger forced me to consume part of the meager and mocking fare with which I had been provided by the priests. It was my intention to push on if my strength would allow and reach the lands that lie to the north of Yondo. Theses lands are desolate, indeed, but their desolation is of a more usual than that of Yondo; and certain tribes of nomads have been known to visit them occasionally. If fortune favored me, I might fall in with one of these tribes.

The scant fare revived me, and, for the first time in weeks of which I had lost all reckoning, I heard the whisper of a faint hope. The corpse-colored insects had long since ceased to follow me; and so far despite the eeriness of the sepulchral silence and the mounded dust of timeless ruin, I had met nothing half so horrible as those insects. I began to think that the terrors of Yondo were somewhat exaggerated. It was then that I heard a diabolic chuckle on the hillside above me. The sound began with a sharp abruptness that startled me beyond all reason, and continued endlessly, never varying its single note, like the mirth of an idiotic demon. I turned, and saw the mouth of a dark cave fanged with green stalactites, which I had not perceived before. The sound appeared to come from within this cave.

With a fearful intentness I stared at the black opening. The chuckle grew louder, but for awhile I could see nothing. At last I caught a whitish glimmer in the darkness; then, with all the rapidity of nightmare, a monstrous Thing emerged. It had a pale, hairless, egg-shaped body, large as that of a gravid she-goat; and this body was mounted on nine long wavering legs with many flanges, like the legs of some enormous spider. The creature ran past me to the water's edge; and I saw that there were no eyes in its oddly sloping face; but two knife-like ears rose high above its head, and a thin, wrinkled snout hung down across its mouth, whose flabby lips, parted in that eternal chuckle, revealed rows of bats' teeth. It drank acidly of the bitter lake then, with thirst satisfied, it turned and seemed to sense my presence, for the wrinkled snout rose and pointed toward me, sniffing audibly. Whether the creature would have fled, or whether it meant to attack me, I do not know; for I could bear the sight no longer but ran with trembling limbs amid the massive boulders and great bars of salt along the lakeshore.

Utterly breathless I stopped at last, and saw that I was not pursued, I sat down, still trembling, in the shadow of a boulder. But I was to find little respite, for now began the second of those bizarre adventures which forced me to believe all the mad legends I had heard. More startling even than that diabolic chuckle was the scream that rose at my very elbow from the salt-compounded sand - the scream of a woman possessed by some atrocious agony, or helpless in the grip of devils. Turning, I beheld a veritable Venus, naked in a white perfection that could fear no scrutiny, but immersed to her navel in the sand. Her terror-widened eyes implored me and her lotus hands reached out with beseeching gesture. I sprang to her side - and touched a marble statue, whose carven lids were drooped in some enigmatic dream of dead cycles, and whose hands were buried with the lost loveliness of hips and thighs. Again I fled, shaken with a new fear; and again I heard the scream of a woman's agony. But this time I did not turn to see the imploring eyes and hands.

Up the long slope to the north of that accursed lake stumbling over boulders of basanite and ledges that were sharp with verdigris-covered metals; floundering in pits of salt, on terraces wrought by the receding tide in ancient aeons. I fled as a man flies from dream to baleful dream of some cacodemoniacal night. At whiles there was a cold whisper in my ear, which did not come from the wind of my flight; and looking back as I reached one of the upper terraces, I perceived a singular shadow that ran pace by pace with my own. This shadow was not the shadow of man nor ape nor any known beast; the head was too grotesquely elongated, the squat body too gibbous ; and I was unable to determine whether the shadow possessed five legs, or whether what appeared to be the fifth was merely a tail.

Terror lent me new strength, and I had reached the hilltop when I dared to look back again. But still the fantastic shadow kept pace by pace with mine; and now I caught a curious and utterly sickening odor, foul as the odor of bats who have hung in a charnel-house amid the mold of corruption. I ran for leagues, while the red sun slanted above the asteroidal mountains to the west; and the weird shadow lengthened with mine but kept always at the same distance behind me.

An hour before sunset I came to a circle of small pillars that rose miraculously unbroken amid ruins that were like a vast pile of potsherds. As I passed among these pillars I heard a whimper, like the whimper of some fierce animal, between rage and fear, and saw that the shadow had not followed me within the circle. I stopped and waited, conjecturing at once that I had found a sanctuary my unwelcome familiar would not dare to enter; and in this the action of the shadow confirmed me, the Thing hesitated, then ran about the circle of columns pausing often between them; and, whimpering all the while, at last went away and disappeared in the desert toward the setting sun.

For a full half hour I did not dare to move; then, the imminence of night, with all its probabilities of fresh terror, urged me to push on as far as I could to the north. For I was now in the very heart of Yondo where demons or phantoms might dwell who would not respect the sanctuary of the unbroken columns. Now, as I toiled on, the sunlight altered strangely; for the red orb nearing the mounded horizon, sank and smouldered in a belt of miasmal haze, where floating dust from all the shattered fanes and necropoli of Yondo was mixed with evil vapors coiling skyward from black enormous gulfs lying beyond the utmost rim of the world. In that light, the entire waste, the rounded mountains, the serpentine hills, the lost cities, were drenched with phantasmal and darkening scarlet.

Then, out of the north, where shadows mustered, there came a curious figure C a tall man fully caparisoned in chain-mail - or, rather, what I assumed to be a man. As the figure approached me, clanking dismally at each step on the sharded ground, I saw that its armor was of brass mottled with verdigris; and a casque of the same metal furnished with coiling horns and a serrate comb, rose high above its head. I say its head, for the sunset was darkening, and I could not see clearly at any distance; but when the apparition came abreast, I perceived that there was no face beneath the brows of the bizarre helmet whose empty edges were outlined for a moment against the smouldering light. Then the figure passed on, still clanking dismally and vanished.

But on its heels ere the sunset faded, there came a second apparition, striding with incredible strides and halting when it loomed almost upon me in the red twilight - the monstrous mummy of some ancient king still crowned with untarnished gold but turning to my gaze a visage that more than time or the worm had wasted. Broken swathings flapped about the skeleton legs, and above the crown that was set with sapphires and orange rubies, a black something swayed and nodded horribly; but, for an instant, I did not dream what it was. Then, in its middle, two oblique and scarlet eyes opened and glowed like hellish coals, and two ophidian fangs glittered in an ape-like mouth. A squat, furless, shapeless head on a neck of disproportionate extent leaned unspeakably down and whispered in the mummy 's ear. Then, with one stride, the titanic lich took half the distance between us, and from out the folds of the tattered sere-cloth a gaunt arm arose, and fleshless, taloned fingers laden with glowering gems, reached out and fumbled for my throat . . .

Back, back through aeons of madness and dread, in a prone, precipitate flight I ran from those fumbling fingers that hung always on the dusk behind me, back, back forever, unthinking, unhesitating, to all the abominations I had left; back in the thickening twilight toward the nameless and sharded ruins, the haunted lake, the forest of evil cacti, and the cruel and cynical inquisitors of Ong who waited my return.

The Sundog Resurrection Project

http://www.sundogresurrectionproject.com/

“Lying in a Hammock at a Friend’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota,” by James Wright

“Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind Duffy’s empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon … ”

Gef: The Eighth Wonder of the World

"If you knew what I know, you'd know a hell of a lot!" boasted Gef the Talking Mongoose, the miraculous mammal claimed to haunt the Isle of Man during the early 1930s.

But who, or what, was Gef himself? A poltergeist? A cryptid? Or no more than a bizarre Folie à Deux created by a lonely adolescent girl and her father?

Nearly a century later, the tale still fascinates and frustrates researchers and remains unique in the annals of Fortean phenomena.



Doarlish Cashen
The strange saga of Gef the talking mongoose began in Autumn 1931 in an isolated hilltop farmstead on the Isle of Man known as Doarlish Cashen (Manx for 'Cashen's Gap'). The farm was home to 60-yr-old Jim Irving, his wife Margaret, and their 12-yr old daughter Voirrey.


Doarlish Cashen

Jim had been a travelling salesman before taking up farming in his retirement. The farm was not a success. Productivity was dropping and the family struggled to make ends meet. They had no electricity, no phone and no radio. Their nearest neighbours lived over a mile away.


The Thing in the WallsOne dull September evening, the family heard inexplicable "blowing, spitting and growling" sounds coming from behind the wooden paneling lining the farmhouse walls. Jim thought a rat was to blame and tried in vain to drive it from its lair.

The strange noises persisted over the following days. Jim set traps and laid down poison but to no avail. In desperation he even tried to flush the intruder out by growling like a dog. To his surprise, it growled right back at him.
The elusive creature proved to be a talented mimic. It ingratiated itself with Jim by repeating his imitations of various animals and birds. Soon he had only to name an animal and it would promptly respond with the appropriate imitation. At other times it made a gurgling sound like a baby attempting to form its first words. Then it began to talk...


Gef Introduces Himself


Voirrey, Margaret and Jim Irving
By way of experiment Voirrey asked the creature to repeat some nursery rhymes. It obliged in a clear, if very squeaky, voice. Soon it was speaking freely. It introduced itself as Gef (pronounced 'Jeff') and claimed to be "an extra clever mongoose" born in Delhi, India in 1852. (A neighbouring farmer had actually imported Mongeese to the island 20 years earlier, hoping to curb the local rabbit population.)

Gef was soon holding regular conversations with both Voirrey and her father, though he seemed less friendly towards Voirrey's mother, Margaret. He began nesting in a boxed partition in Voirrey's room, which the family dubbed "Gef's sanctum".

Although Jim and Margaret both caught brief glimpses of Gef, only Voirrey was allowed to look at him directly. She described him as being the size of a small rat, with yellowish fur, a flat snout like a hedgehog, and a long bushy tail.


Gef's HabitsGef soon became one of the family. During the day he would roam the island riding on the back axles of buses and cars. In the evening he would return home to share news and gossip he had picked up on his travels. Sometimes he would also read out items from the local newspapers. When he grew tired of chat, he would call out 'Vanished!' and make himself scarce.



Gef's Sanctum
"It announces its presence by calling either myself or my wife by our Christian names," Jim Irving wrote. "It's hearing powers are phenomenal. It is no use whispering. It detects the whisper 15-20 feet away, tells you that you are whispering, and repeats exactly what one has said."

Gef would often bring rabbits home for Margaret to cook, that he apparently strangled with his forepaws. In return he was given tidbits such as biscuits, sweets and chocolate. He was also fond of bacon and sausages. The food would be left out for him on the crossbeams near the ceiling, and he would sneak out and snatch it when no-one was looking.


Singalong with GefGef enjoyed singing as much as talking. His favourite tune was Carolina Moon, which he would croon along to the gramophone. (Sometimes he would bounce a rubber ball up and down in time to the music instead.) He could also sing the Manx national anthem, several hymns and some fragments of a Spanish folksong.

On one occasion he rather offended Voirrey's mother by singing a lewd parody of Home on the Range he had picked up from some bus drivers. "You know Gef, you are no animal!" scolded Margaret. "Of course I am not," retorted Gef. "I am the Holy Ghost!"


Gef's TemperLike many a poltergeist (or adolescent girl) Gef had a short fuse. For example, he once suddenly flew into a rage when he thought Jim was taking too long opening the morning post. "Read it out, you fat-headed gnome!" he squeaked furiously.

Voirrey seems to have been rather afraid of Gef when he first manifested, one night even sleeping in her parent's bedroom to avoid being alone in the dark with the inhuman noises. "I'll follow her wherever you put her," Gef snapped when he overheard the family discussing this. According to Jim, barricading the bedroom door with chairs and boxes only infuriated Gef further:

"Soon we saw the top of the door bulging in as though some terrific force were thrusting against it. But the door held. Then Gef's queer high voice said 'I'm coming in!' A few seconds later a heavy pot of ointment kept in the room crashed against the bedstead."Gef seemed to hugely enjoy deliberately provoking Voirrey's parents. One night he made a nuisance of himself by sighing and groaning loudly for 30 minutes without pause, before confessing, "I did it for devilment!"

On another occasion Margaret found herself being pelted with stones as she walked home. "Is that you, Gef?" she called out. "Yes, Maggie the witch woman, the Zulu Woman, the Honolulu woman!" taunted the impertinent mongoose. Gef also delighted in throwing pebbles and sand up at the windows from outside, sometimes late into the night.


Gef's Fame

Voirrey and Jim Irving with Richard Lambert
The Manx papers ran a series of gently mocking articles about the 'Dalby Spook' (as they dubbed Gef) which led to Voirrey being teased mercilessly at school. Gef's fame spread to the mainland after Jim Irving persuaded the psychic researcher (and inveterate self-publicist) Harry Price to take an interest in the case.

But even as Gef's notoriety grew, his visits to the Irvings became fewer and farther between. By the time Price arrived to investigate in person, the marvellous mongoose was conspicuous only by his absence. (See Investigating Gef Pt 2.)

In 1936, Price published the results of his investigation in The Haunting of Cashen's Gap: A Modern "Miracle" Investigated, a slim book co-authored with journalist Richard Lambert. Although Price did not explicitly accuse the Irvings of perpetrating a hoax, neither did he validate their claims.


Farewell to GefSoon after Price's book was published, the Irvings left Cashen's Gap for the mainland. Gef did not follow them there nor did he introduce himself to the new owner, a Mr Graham.

Intriguingly, in 1947 Graham trapped and killed a strange looking animal that seemed to be neither ferret, stoat nor weasel. "It answers to all descriptions," the puzzled farmer told the local press. Eventually Graham too left Cashen's Gap, and the farmhouse was demolished.

In 1970 a reporter from FATE magazine managed to track Voirrey down to interview her about her strange childhood experiences. She proved reluctant to discuss her former life with Gef. "Yes, there was a little animal who talked and did all those other things," she admitted. "He said he was a mongoose and we should call him Gef... But I do wish he had let us alone."

the Great 78 Project

http://great78.archive.org/

The Great 78 Project is a community project for the preservation, research and discovery of 78rpm records. From about 1898 to the 1950s, an estimated 3 million sides (~3 minute recordings) have been made on 78rpm discs. While the commercially viable recordings will have been restored or remastered onto LP’s or CD, there is still research value in the artifacts and usage evidence in the often rare 78rpm discs and recordings. Already, over 20 collections have been selected by the Internet Archive for physical and digital preservation and access. Started by many volunteer collectors, these new collections have been selected, digitized and preserved by the Internet Archive, George Blood LP, and the Archive of Contemporary Music.

We aim to bring to light the decisions by music collectors over the decades and a digital reference collection of underrepresented artists and genres. The digitization will make this less commonly available music accessible to researchers in a format where it can be manipulated and studied without harming the physical artifacts. We have preserved the often very prominent surface noise and imperfections and included files generated by different sizes and shapes of stylus to facilitate different kinds of analysis.

78s were mostly made from shellac, i.e., beetle resin, and were the brittle predecessors to the LP (microgroove) era. The format is obsolete, and just picking them up can cause them to break apart in your hands. There’s no way to predict if the digital versions of these 78s will outlast the physical items, so we are preserving both to ensure the survival of these cultural materials for future generations to study and enjoy.

Please join this project to:
Share knowledge. Help improve the metadata, curate the collection, contact collectors, do research on the corpus, etc.
Include your digitized collection. If you have already digitized 78s or related books or media, we’d like to include your work in the collection.
Digitize your collection. We’ve worked hard to make digitization safe, fast and affordable, so if you’d like to digitize your collection we can help.
Donate 78s. We have 200,000 78s, but we are always looking for more. We will digitize your collection and preserve the physical discs for the long term.

Think Python: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist

http://greenteapress.com/thinkpython2/html/index.html

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

That's all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel. There's no part in it, no shape in it, that is not out of someone's mind [...] I've noticed that people who have never worked with steel have trouble seeing this—that the motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon. They associate metal with given shapes—pipes, rods, girders, tools, parts—all of them fixed and inviolable., and think of it as primarily physical. But a person who does machining or foundry work or forger work or welding sees "steel" as having no shape at all. Steel can be any shape you want if you are skilled enough, and any shape but the one you want if you are not. Shapes, like this tappet, are what you arrive at, what you give to the steel. Steel has no more shape than this old pile of dirt on the engine here. These shapes are all of someone's mind. That's important to see. The steel? Hell, even the steel is out of someone's mind. There's no steel in nature. Anyone from the Bronze Age could have told you that. All nature has is a potential for steel. There's nothing else there.”


― Robert M. Pirsig,

Chinese Republic 1912 - 1928

Roguelike tutorial

Top 100

1. Europa Universalis IV.
2. Minecraft.
3. Total War: Warhammer.
4. RimWorld.
5. Diablo III.
6. Pride of Nations.
7. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.
8. Victoria II.
9. Civilization IV.
10. Medieval: Total War.
11. Gothic II: Night of the Raven.
12. Uncharted 4: A Thief's End.
13. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.
14. Diablo II.
15. Caesar III.
16. The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt.
17. Half Life 2.
18. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
19. Crusader Kings II.
20. Command Ops: Battles from the Bulge.
21. Distant Worlds: Universe.
22. Company of Heroes.
23. Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy.
24. Starcraft
25. Super Mario 64.
26. Day of the Tentacle.
27. Freespace 2.
28. Sim City 2000.
29. Mario Kart 64.
30. Hearts of Iron II: Darkest Hour.
31. Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.
32. Horizon: Zero Dawn.
33. Civilization III.
34. Sid Meier’s Railway Tycoon.
35. TIE Fighter.
36. Mass Effect 2.
37. Cities: Skylines.
38. Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
39. Doom II: Hell on Earth.
40. Portal.
41. Portal 2.
42. Perfect Dark.
43. Atom Zombie Smasher.
44. Dawn of War: Dark Crusade.
45. Warlords 2.
46. Hegemony: Philip of Macedon.
47. Fallout 4.
48. Banjo Kazooie.
49. Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight.
50. Dark Forces
51. Giants: Citizen Kabuto.
52. Star Wars: Pod Racer.
53. Gary Grigsby’s War in the Pacific: Admiral’s Edition.
54. Demon’s Souls.
55. Tetris.
56. Halo: Combat Evolved.
57. One Must Fall: 2097.
58. Dawn of Discovery.
59. Grand Theft Auto.
60. Tomb Raider (2013).
61. AI War: Fleet Command.
62. Warlords: Battlecry 2.
63. Battle of the Bulge.
64. Armageddon Empires.
65. Heroes of Might and Magic III.
66. Order of Battle: World War II.
67. Unity of Command.
68. Just Cause 2.
69. Age of Mythology.
70. Far Cry.
71. Pool of Radiance.
72. Borderlands.
73. System Shock 2.
74. Warcraft 3.
75. Medal of Honour: Allied Assault.
76. Sid Meier’s Pirates!
77. Limbo.
78. Gary Grigsby’s War in the East.
79. Hearts of Iron IV.
80. Banished
81. Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness.
82. Rise of Nations
83. Command & Conquer: Red Alert.
84. Elite: Dangerous.
85. Painkiller.
86. Silent Hunter IV: Wolves of the Pacific.
87. Sleeping Dogs.
88. State of Decay.
89. Wargame: Red Dragon.
90. XCOM: Enemy Unknown.
91. Caves of Qud.
92. Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI.
93. Tales of the Unknown Volume I: The Bard’s Tale.
94. Ratchet & Clank 3.
95. Unreal.
96. Persona 4.
97. Myth.
98. Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
99. Chip’s Challenge.
100. Plants v Zombies.

Parsifal Overture

in Greggs

Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual

Wagner

http://wagnerheim.com/

Selected Works of Lu Xun

China Heritage - The Wairarapa Academy for New Sinology

http://chinaheritage.net/




New Sinology 後漢學 encourages a multifaceted understanding of China and the Sinophone world, one grounded in an ability to appreciate critically the living past in China’s present. This approach essays a more holistic understanding of ‘things Chinese’ relevant not only to academics, but also to a wider, engaged public. For an overview of New Sinology, and a series of essays on the subject dating from 2005, along with an Archive of earlier relevant material, see the reading list below.

Many scholars and translators with a broad-based foundation in Chinese Studies regret the narrow over-specialisation imposed on students by today’s metric-driven academic institutions. They remember when ‘Sinology’ was wide-ranging and humanistic. All too often modern disciplinary specialisation limits the conception of the Chinese world, a world that has always placed such great faith in the holistic understanding of the full range of interwoven human activities. Today’s corporatised education system too often leaves students of China well versed in the professions, but unable to understand with ease and fluency the wellsprings of what China is today. Deprived of the broader linguistic and cultural context, they are ill-equipped to understand, translate or engage with such daily essentials as online discussions, coded commentaries or sometimes even newspaper headlines, let alone the myriad traditional concepts used by Chinese thinkers, politicians, economists and strategists in articulating China’s sense of itself and its new place in the world. Such a deeper understanding requires at least a passing familiarity with Classical Chinese 古文 and Literary Chinese 文言文 (and the world to which they allow access), something most Chinese pick up from an early age, or have to study at school.

New Sinology responds to this deficiency, based as it is on the understanding of the broader Chinese world, an experience (found in the ‘old’ Sinology) that was built up in particular over the past four centuries of contact with the Chinese world, and that has been renewed by our efforts since 2005, promoted through practice with the creation in 2010 of the Australian Centre on China in the World and by The Wairarapa Academcy from 2016.

New Sinology advocates a multifaceted intellectual engagement with contemporary China, with the modern Chinese-speaking world in all of its complexity, based on strong foundations in both the classical and the modern Chinese language and in deeper studies of China’s past and present, be they done in China, Greater China or internationally.

New Sinology advocates an approach to contemporary China that appreciates the overculture of the dominant Chinese Communist Party and what, through ideology, its policies, the mass media, the education system and its internal and global propaganda efforts the Party promotes as Official China. It also inducts those engaged with Chinal into the particularities of Translated China, that is the versions of China advocated by the Party authorities through their selective approach to and interpretation of the Chinese world, be it in the contemporary con text or that of the tradition or the twentieth century.

New Sinology is vitally engaged with the Other China. That is the multifaceted culture and society that has existed in counter distinction to the orthodoxies 正統 that grew up from the time of the pre-Qin philosophers. The Other China, always a vital part of social reality, re-surfaces in popular and elite culture at times of political anomie and intellectual diversity over the centuries. This Other China has flourished again since the 1980s and exists variously in creative tension or subjugated compliance with Official China. The founders of The Wairarapa Academy have been engaged both with the Other China and Official China from the early 1980s through their translation work and writing, starting with Trees on the Mountain, a special issue of the Hong Kong-based translation journal Renditions devoted to contemporary Chinese culture.

First propounded with the creation of China Heritage Quarterly in 2005, New Sinology is about:


A robust engagement with contemporary China and indeed with the Sinophone world in all of its complexity, be it local, regional or global. It affirms a conversation and intermingling that also emphasizes strong scholastic underpinnings in both the classical and modern Chinese language and studies, at the same time as encouraging an ecumenical attitude in relation to a rich variety of approaches and disciplines, whether they be mainly empirical or more theoretically inflected. In seeking to emphasize innovation within Sinology by recourse to the word ‘new’, it is nonetheless evident that I continue to affirm the distinctiveness of Sinology as a mode of intellectual inquiry.

— from Geremie R. Barmé, On New Sinology