Here’s one of my favorites. Stéphane Mallarmé is of course my guide and mentor in all things (although I hope I’ve improved on his notoriously bad bathing record); therefore, it is no surprise that this luscious work of loch delights me to no end. “Un coup de Dés…” (PDF Version)

Tangent: this is our 200th post, if WordPress is to be believed.

Wild rumors plague the fallen ESB.

Mild digging produces the following summary of 2007–2010, courtesy of Hamish:

(These years intentionally left blank. Seriously, nothing really happened.)

Thermoplyae was quick to add: “clique came, clique went.” Whether or not he meant anything especially profound, I believe this is the best of all possible summaries for the past three or four years. CLIQUE brought the void; CLIQUE was the void.

Just remember, persons, that the void is always somewhere.

Meanwhile, Treellama needs your help keeping the Meatserver Carnival running at 100%. I will make art for donors, should they so desire. You know you want it.

Here’s our progress on the $50 (five-year domain registration) project:

Definitely not a Pfhorums stimulator. This morning I finished playing Pfhorums.nits, pictured below:

Its most remarkable feature is its realism. Finish off a major conflict and then an angry Dugit appears, sputtering something incoherent and draining away the last of your stamina. Get cornered by Slave and tl and they’ll knock you out inside of a few turns.

There’s been musing about expansions already — I myselfs were surprised to find that there weren’t any dungeons in this installment. Hopefully there’ll be even more NitsLoch to look forward to in the future.

(07:45:44 PM) pfhortipfhy: Hey, do you live in the midwest?
(07:49:38 PM) pfhortipfhy: I met a friend of yours at a wedding in St. Louis.
(07:49:48 PM) pfhortipfhy: I have his email around here somewhere.
(07:49:58 PM) thermo: what, who
(07:50:20 PM) pfhortipfhy: I think he was a roommate of yours? You got him into marathon as well?
(07:53:00 PM) pfhortipfhy: j—@gmail.com
(07:53:08 PM) thermo: oh shit, really?
(07:53:22 PM) pfhortipfhy: Yeah dude. We talked about programming for a while.
(07:53:25 PM) thermo: a— and k—’s?
(07:53:33 PM) pfhortipfhy: Hell yeah! K—’s my cousin.
(07:53:39 PM) thermo: hahaha, that’s crazy
(07:53:58 PM) thermo: i went to high school with j— and a—, and i lived with j— for like four years :)
(07:53:59 PM) pfhortipfhy: Yeah, I know, right. I couldn’t believe it when he first said “Pfhorums”.
(07:54:15 PM) pfhortipfhy: Haha, yeah, he said you guys were wicked tight.
(07:54:37 PM) thermo: that’s nuts man
(07:55:14 PM) pfhortipfhy: Yeah. Small world, eh?
(07:55:27 PM) thermo: extremely, i can’t imagine the odds of that
(07:57:01 PM) pfhortipfhy: So, you know K—?
(07:57:16 PM) thermo: a little, she came over a few times to jog or to drink
(07:57:34 PM) pfhortipfhy: Nice. Yeah, I heard the whole story about the CUBE.^†
(07:58:57 PM) thermo: this is unbelievable, i need like half an hour to recuperate
(08:01:19 PM) pfhortipfhy: Hahaha. It was great, we were talking about games, and he asks me what games I like, and I talk about what I’ve been playing, and I say “But, my favorite game of all time has to be Marathon. It’s this old game by Bungie-” “You play Marathon?” “Yeah!” “Did you know that it’s gone open source? The new engine’s called-” “Aleph One, yeah, I know.” “Really? Did you ever go on the Pfhorums?”^‡ “WHOA, YOU’RE ON THE PFHORUMS?”

^† - incontrovertible proof that he did actually meet the guy
^‡ - I can hear J—’s tone here, using this question to test whether or not P-fail was a cool guy. Doesn’t sound like he passed.

Courtesy of Underworld :mSpnkr:

To make up for my previous shameless commercial exploitation of JFO’s hard-earned reputation, I will make a post that is relevant to this blog.

CLIQUE-watchers, please subscribe to my re-re-re-relaunched blog over at http://nothorns.org/.

As often as I went into the community I came out a lesser man.
–Conze, channelling à Kempis

The best deed of a great man is to forgive and 4GET.
–Nahj al-Balagha: sayings 203

ya ali; ya iconodulism

I recall being miffed early in life about the paucity of admirable venerables sharing my birthday; quite rightly I soon found myself under the censure of the sixth Imam{1}.  Over the years I slowly read myself out of the cloud of unknowing, and I became acquainted with two worthy{3} men who on this day 4GOT their mothers’ wombs–Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib and Edward Conze, commander and curmudgeon of the faithful, respectively.

The first Imam was, as any pious Shi’a can tell you, devoiced by the CORRUPT admin Abu ’steve’ Bakr and subsequently martyred whilst leading afternoon prayers at the j’fo masjid{4}.  Eternal memory.

Prajñāpāramitā: Hot Sister of all the Buddhas.

Edward Conze, translator of a certain mystical genre of mahāyāna literature and noted enemy of modernity, often wrote with the vitriol I find flowing through my own veins–at least on the subject of military flyovers.  It is always a pleasure to find a  man of similar bent.  Conze, of course, would have said that the stars were right.

My commitment to tru7h necessitates the mention of the tedious factoid that the good doctor was actually born on the eighteenth{5}, but we were always of one mind, one way-

ash-hadu ala ilaha illallah

wash-hadu anna Muhammadar rasulallah

wash-hadu anna Aliyyun waliyullah

wash-hadu anna Hotmodal wajh allah

——————————–

Nits

{1} {2}جعفر بن محمد الصادق

{2} Some manners of the ignorant are: the answer before he hears, the opposition before he understands, and the judgement with what he does not know.

{3} Certainly more worthy of our readers’ attention than the lecherous author of this post.

{4} [?alcohol-free bar]

{5} Which dovetails in a lovely way with the lateness of this entry.  I spent the more-apropos day contemplating the sacred mysteries atop a local peack/innovating at the laboratory:

Biblochgraphy

Nahjul Balagha. Askari Jafri (trans.), Peack of Eloquence (New York, 1983).

Conze, Edward, Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic (Sherborne, 1979).

Corbin, Henry, Histoire de la philosophie islamique (Paris, 1964).

Madelung, Wilferd, The Succession to Muhammed: A Study of the Early Caliphate (Cambridge, 1997).

It all makes sense now. But that doesn’t keep it from hurting like hell.

:C