The Pope. The Pope. The Pope is on Fire.
We don’t need no water let the … um… can’t fool me again.
—

Three pop-culture allusions, two lines. Damn, I’m good.

As we slowly creep to the midnight hour, gentle readers, I might mention that on this night in 1775, Paul Revere and some others made their midnight ride. Wiki.

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Translated a blurb for my buddy’s new CD into English. Wanna see the first draft.
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Here‘s an article dealing with so-called “Cargo Cults” and how the “Johnson Cult” wasn’t one at all.

... 'cult' members often try to gain access to Western cargo through magical means, by mimicking European ways. Anthropologist Conrad Kottak notes that: "having observed Europeans' reverent treatment of flags and flagpoles, cult members began to worship flagpoles, believing them to be sacred towers capable of transmitting messages between living and dead. Natives constructed airstrips in order to entice planes bearing canned goods, portable radios, clothing, wristwatches, and motorcycles. Near the airstrip they built effigies of towers, airplanes, and tin-can radios. They talked into these cans in a magical attempt to establish radio contact with the gods".

I love it.

Painted directly onto the dollar bill. Very cool art from

Karmel Proost

I saw a most amazing band from New Jersey last night. Overfilled with three horns, accordian, percussion along rhythm section. Overdressed in sweaty suits and ties and garish party dresses, and over 30 as well. They rocked their asses off. World/Inferno Friendship Society.

If you visited google today, you probably are aware that today is Da Vinci’s birthday. His genius came back into conventional awareness by a popular book that blew the minds of a great many people who probably never heard of Robert Anton Wilson.

I might get around to reading the Da Vinci Codes one day, as I have heard it’s a real barnburner; but I am not in a real hurry to do so after starting it’s previous work, Angels and Demons. Yes, Codes is actually the second book of a series. Angels and Demons has to be the very worst book I have ever read — with the possible exception of Harbou’s Metropolis.

So if you like to cringe, be sure to check that one out.

Those smartass kids at MIT submitted a randomly generated paper titled: Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy to The 9th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics and it got accepted.

They are scrapping together some money and plan to attend the conference to give a randomly computer generated talk. Those punks.

The Gods preserve us from this April 14th, Ruination Day. As remembered by a coupla precocious Nashville archivists: the sexy banjo-alto vocalist and songstress Gillian Welch and her preposition-and-article-filling-in henchman David Rawlings.

Ruination Day.

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Although one of my courses — Mi 6. DS — was scrapped because only 2 had signed up by the deadline, I’ve heard from four others who also signed up afterwards yet had not gotten word that the course was cut? How many others are in the same boat, I wonder. Why, with just another six stragglers the course could possibly be reopened. Then we could ambush a small merchant ship and go a-plunderin’ on the high seas.