This Only Way This Prank Could Be More Epic Would Be if Virginia Woolf Were a Co-Conspirator Oh, Wait.

It's the early 1900s, and the most powerful ship of its day, HMS Dreadnought, is visited by an Abyssinian Prince and his entourage.

Only it wasn't an Abyssinian Prince and his entourage, it was a bunch of pranksters from Cambridge University. 

One of the participants was one Virginia Stephen, better known by here married name of Woolf, who later observed that she was treated with more respect when she was disguised as a black man than she was as a white woman, which likely informed some of her later feminist writings.

In any case, the prank, and it's stupid macho aftermath, is well worth learning about.

Meanwhile in Argentina

It appears that many Argentines are unimpressed with Peter Thiel decamping to the Pampas.

Some of them are protesting, and they have done some research, and know that the literal vampire is a big fan of the works of JRR Tolkien, so they protested while dressed as Gandalf the Gray.

I approve. 

One does not simply walk into Argentina. Despite his significant influence over the Trump administration, tech billionaire and Antichrist enthusiast Peter Thiel has been putting down roots in Javier Milei’s far-right, anarcho-capitalist Argentina, apparently worried that things might go sideways in the States. At least some Argentinians would prefer he go back home, and they decided to send him a message by protesting outside of Thiel’s residence while dressed as Gandalf the Grey.

According to Argentinian newspaper Clarín, the demonstration took place on Monday and featured a dozen or so people draped in long cloaks, wizard hats, and faux beards who made their way to Thiel’s neighborhood with signs bearing slogans like “You shall not pass, you son of a bitch.” Per Clarín, the group also jumped up and down while chanting, “Whoever doesn’t jump owns Palantir and won’t be able to live in Argentina.”

The group’s inclination that Thiel take a hike comes as the billionaire continues to dig his claws into Argentina. Per the New York Times, the scariest member of the PayPal mafia has already met with Milei and his ministers, who were apparently thrilled to have him. Milei described their meeting as “wonderful,” according to the Buenos Aires Times.

Gondor Calls For Aid! 

OK, There is Some Good AI Slop Out There

This is fan-f%$#ing-tastic.

This is wicked smaht!

F%$#! I May Have to Read Jane Austen Again

Youtuber Farm to Taber has a fascinating video about how Jane Austen explains how the issues of rural America are really issues of not particularly competent landed gentry, and not corporate agriculture.

I had to read Pride and Prejudice in high school, and I hated every page. 

I had little interest in the topic, which at the time I saw as little more than a Regency romance.

She makes a compelling case that the novel is a trenchant critique of the society of the time which can be applied to rural areas today. 

I am now thinking that I may have to reread that book 46 years after I nearly threw it out the window.

Stephen Colbert Must Be Ecstatic About His

For those of you who are not aware, comedian Stephen Colbert is a devout Catholic.

Also, it could be argued that he is the biggest Tolkien/Lord of the Rings geek ever. 

I can only imagine the glee he must have felt when Pope Leo XIV released an encyclical on artificial intelligence that quoted Gandalf

………

In sounding this call to both disarm and to build, Leo turns to “twentieth-century Catholic author” JRR Tolkien. Though he can’t quite bring himself to say that he’s quoting Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, that’s exactly what’s happening.

(The encyclical says only that the quote comes from “the words of a protagonist in one of [Tolkien’s] novels.” Though Pope Francis previously spoke of Tolkien’s work, this appears to be the first time that Tolkien has ever been quoted in the highest levels of the church’s official doctrinal publications.)

Gandalf says, in what is very much a theme of the entire Lord of the Rings:

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.

The moral and local action envisioned here, along with Tolkien’s suspicion of the dehumanizing effects of technology, clearly appealed to Leo.

 

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write to a famous author & ask for advice.

KURT VONNEGUT (who left us 19yrs ago today) was the only one to respond.

His reply was a doozy. pic.twitter.com/r9vE8uNEk6

— Michael Warburton (@For_Film_Fans) April 11, 2026

This is remarkable.

I'm not a fan of Kurt Vonnegut's writing, it's never done much for me, but I love his attitude.

I've confirmed this story, and here is his letter as text, which I find more convenient than an image. 

Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!" 

~Kurt Vonnegut 

Color me impressed. 

This is a Complete Mind-F%$#

I saw this on Zuck's monster.



I saw this movie with my pre-teen kids.

It's kind of shocking, and then I remember the specifics of the unexpurgated versions of Grimms' Fairy Tales, Snow White's stepmother is made to dance in red hot iron shoes until she drops dead, for example, and I realize that this is the norm, not the exception.

Project Scoop

This is a reference to a Michael Crichton novel The Andromeda Strain, of course, involving a lethal pathogen brought back to earth by a satellite operated as a part of a government program called Project Scoop..

Project Scoop was a program to bring back potential candidates for germ warfare from the upper atmosphere.

Well, I just read an article about an experiment where viruses were sent into space, and while no one was harmed as a result, some profoundly weird shit happened.  (Take off the tinfoil hat.  The emergency evacuation of some crew from the ISS is entirely unrelated., the E. coli and the bacteria phage viruses used are completely harmless)

When scientists sent bacteria-infecting viruses to the International Space Station, the microbes did not behave the same way they do on Earth. In microgravity, infections still occurred, but both viruses and bacteria evolved differently over time. Genetic changes emerged that altered how viruses attach to bacteria and how bacteria defend themselves. The findings could help improve phage therapies against drug-resistant infections. 

It gave me a big of a literary flashback to the Crichton book. 

Shut Up and Take My Money!

I just came across a fascinating new book, Lessons from Cats for Surviving Fascism, available from Hachette and other book sellers.

Stewart "Brittlestar" Reynolds is a Canadian humorist.

I do really want to read this book. 

A Great Holiday Gift Choice

Penguin Random House released an Avatar: The Last Airbender picture book, My Cabbages!

It's intended to be for children aged 4 to 8 years old, but if you know an Avatar fan, they would appreciate it as well.

I am stoked about this.

Please, if there is, "My Cabbages guy," slash fic out there, do not not tell me.

I do not want to know. 

It Ain't Proust and Madeleine, ⃰ But It's Comfortable

I am eating a snack that I have not had in decades, peanut butter and Rice Chex.  (More specifically the Wegmans brand version of the cereal.)

It brought back memories of my mom, and when we would snack together on this at our kitchen table in Charlottesville, Virginia.

My mom died way too young. 

^*Marcel Proust, Rememberance of Things Past. He has the cookie as an adult, and it brought back memories of his time with his doeager unt as a child.

Don't Tug on Superman's Cape, Don't Spit Into the Wind

Do not piss off Joyce Carol Oates.

It appears that the prize winning author and academic offered some very trenchant thoughts regarding the trillion dollar payout that Elon Musk has recently awarded himself:

So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates— scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team;  references to history.  In fact he seems totally uneducated , uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the “most wealthy person in the world.”

During the exchanges that followed, another participant wondered why, "Wherever he goes, he wants to leave."  Oates replied with the following:

"Wherever he goes, he wants to leave"-- That's because when he gets there, he has brought his own self along; and whatever club he's invited to join has been devalued by the invitation.

2 things to note:

• I am not profoundly embarrassed that I have never read any Oates. Given her prodigious output, is there anything that my reader(s) would suggest that I read?  Preferably a short story or a novella, I don't think that I am ready to dive into the deep end. (My taste in literature tends toward the pulp)
• Part of me thinks, "Do not offend this woman," it could be as bad as making an enemy of a murder of crows.  Another part of me thinks, "If I were the recipient of such a righteous burn, I would be participating in a work of art of the highest order.

In any case, I'm not going to try to offend her. 

For All You Writers/Gamers Out There, Fake Religion Advice

Dr. Andrew Henry, is a scholar of religious studies, and he put out a very good video about how religions in fantasy world get stuff wrong. 

I find it fascinating.

It doesn't matter if you have mythical creatures dragons, unicorns, sentient luggage, or ethical politicians, people are still people, and religion needs to provide for the same needs in a fantasy as they do in the real world.

South Carolina Bans Bible

It appears that in an attempt to ban work and sexually explicit books, the state schoolboard has banned the bible and Shakespaere.

It was only a matter of time, and I thought that it would be Texas or Florida that went first, but it's the birthplace of Stephen Colbert:

We’ve mostly steered clear of S.C. Education Superintendent Ellen Weaver’s effort to take over decisions about what books can and can’t be available in public schools, because we agree that schools shouldn’t offer books that are essentially how-to manuals for having sex.

And yes, a few such books actually have showed up in our schools — although schools generally have removed them as soon as they were made aware of them.

But as complaints have mounted about what critics call an unclear new regulation, and as state officials have refused to clarify any of the text, we’ve looked more closely at the rules that took effect Aug. 1 — and we’ve become concerned. Our concern isn’t that the regulation is unclear. It’s that at least parts of it are quite clear — and quite broad.

What’s unclear is whether the Board of Education intends to enforce its regulation as written, or if it will treat it as though it means what most people would assume it means if they read only the regulation — and not the sweeping definition in state law that it incorporates by reference but doesn't quote.

Teachers have been asking what seem like ridiculous questions designed simply to make a point: Can they still teach the works of William Shakespeare, or even include them in their libraries? What about the Bible? Can it be available in the library?

By our reading, the answers to those questions would be no. And that’s ridiculous.

As the Japanese say, "バカにつける薬はない".

Getting Your Archeology and Literature Freak On

Researchers at the University of Colorado have concluded that papyrus fragments that appear to be a previously unknown sections of a tragedy by Euripides.

This is awesome:

After months of intense scrutiny, two University of Colorado Boulder scholars have deciphered and interpreted what they believe to be the most significant new fragments of works by classical Greek tragedian Euripides in more than half a century.

In November 2022, Basem Gehad, an archaeologist with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, sent a papyrus unearthed at the ancient site of Philadelphia in Egypt to Yvona Trnka-Amrhein, assistant professor of classics. The two scholars have also recently discovered the upper half of a colossal statue of the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II in their joint excavation project at Hermopolis Magna.

She began to pore over the high-resolution photo of the papyrus (Egyptian law prohibits physically removing any artifact from the country), scrutinizing its 98 lines.

“It was very clearly tragedy,” she says.

Using the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, a comprehensive, digitized database of ancient Greek texts maintained by the University of California, Irvine, Trnka-Amrhein confirmed she was looking at previously unknown excerpts from mostly lost Euripidean plays.

………

Working together, Trnka-Amrhein and renowned classics Professor John Gibert embarked on many months of grueling work, meticulously poring over a high-resolution photo of the 10.5-square-inch papyrus. They made out words and ensured that the words they thought they were seeing fit the norms of tragic style and meter.

Eventually, they became confident that they were working with new material from two fragmentary Euripides plays, Polyidus and Ino. Twenty-two of the lines were previously known in slightly varied versions, but “80 percent was brand-new stuff,” Gibert says.

I can hear Mickey Rooney saying, "Hey, my dad found some lost papyri, let's put on a musical!"

We Have Lost a Giant

A ClassicRichard Samet "Kinky" Friedman, has died at age 79 of Parkinson's Disease.

Singer, songwriter, author, and the best candidate for Governor of Texas this century.

He is best known from his work with his band, The Texas Jewboys.

His music and writing were very much in in the vein of Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift, and I had a cassette tape of his single, "We Reserve The Right to Refuse Service to You," back in the day.

Channeling Theodore Seuss Geisel

Rod Blagojevich is upset that, because he was impeached for corruption, he can not stand for any elected position in Illinois, so he filed suit.

The court was unamused, and quoted Dr. Seuss in the ruling dismissing the suit:

As a general rule, it’s never good when a federal judge feels compelled to address your case with a quote from Dr. Seuss.

But that’s exactly what happened Thursday to disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whose lawsuit challenging the state resolution prohibiting him from running for any state or local office in Illinois was excoriated by a judge as a publicity stunt and an “Issue-Spotting Wonderland.”

In dismissing Blagojevich’s 2021 suit, U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger accused the former governor of using the federal courthouse as a megaphone in an ill-advised attempt to get back in the political game following the commutation of his 14-year prison sentence by then-President Donald Trump.

He quoted from Dr. Seuss’ 1972 book “Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!” which reads: “The time has come. The time is now. Just Go. Go. GO! I don’t care how. You can go by foot. You can go by cow. Marvin K. Mooney, will you please go now!””

I'm wondering what children's book should be quoted in the plethora of cases against Donald Trump.

Part of My Youth Gone

Babar author Laurent de Brunhoff, has died at the age of 98.

I have fond memories of my mom reading me the Babar stories, both by Laurent and his father Jean.

It's been years since I've thought of the eponymous elephant, but notice of his death reminds me a simpler time in my life.

Why Terry Pratchett Dumped His German Publisher

By all accounts, the author best known for his Diskworld series was not particularly difficult to work with from a publisher perspective, so when he dropped his German publisher, Hayne, for another.

There was in issue with the accuracy of the translations of the German version.

Perhaps, "Issues with translation," is not a strong enough term.

What Pratchett objected to was that his publisher was splicing advertisements for Maggi soup into the text.

No, we are not talking about something on the back cover, or something on the inside back cover, nor was it in the frontispiece.

It was placed in the body of the book, inline with the text:

Back in the 90s (starting with Moving Pictures) Terry Pratchett (yet to be knighted) changed his German publisher. A rather radical move in the market for someone who had been published by Heyne for a dozen books to raising sales. I remember reading it in the Jahrbuch der Science Fiction and Fantasy 1994 (Annual of Science Fiction and Fantasy): It stated in a rather laconic tone that his books would now be published by Goldmann instead of Heyne. The brisk tone of the notice (where most others would have had a small quip with amazing insider info on different deals) might have been connected with the fact that the editor of the Jahrbuch was also the chief editor of Heyne, and he was reporting about himself losing a bestselling author.

The reason for the change was… well… the Heyne publishing house put in a soup advert in one of his books without asking, and would not promise to not do it again. As Pterry said himself:

There were a number of reasons for switching to Goldmann, but a deeply personal one for me was the way Heyne (in Sourcery, I think, although it may have been in other books) inserted a soup advert in the text … a few black lines and then something like ‘Around about now our heroes must be pretty hungry and what better than a nourishing bowl’… etc, etc. My editor was pretty sick about it, but the company wouldn’t promise not to do it again, so that made it very easy to leave them. They did it to Iain Banks, too, and apparently at a con he tore out the offending page and ate it. Without croutons.

Apart from the obvious question for Mr. Banks, does publisher rat-fuckery go with a red or a white wine, this appears to be to be a very good reason to fire your publisher ……… Out of a cannon ……… And into the sun.

An ad for cuppa soup?  Really.

Mind Officially Blown

I have always enjoyed th works of Roald Dahl, but I have for some time been aware of the fact that he held antisemitic beliefs, and his works chock full of bigoted stereotypes.

It's one of the things that comes from a British author born in 1916, and whether or not to read his works is up to the reader.

That being said, I was gobsmacked when I discovered that Dahl originally intended for the character Charlie of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to be black.

He was convinced to change this by his agent and publisher, who believed that having a black hero would tank sales:

Roald Dahl originally wanted the eponymous hero of his much-loved children’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to be black, his widow has said.

In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme for Roald Dahl day on Wednesday, Liccy Dahl said: “His first Charlie that he wrote about was a little black boy.”

Asked why it was changed, she replied: “I don’t know. It’s a great pity.”

Her husband’s biographer Donald Sturrock, who was also being interviewed, said the change to a white character was driven by Dahl’s agent, who thought a black Charlie would not appeal to readers.

“I can tell you that it was his agent who thought it was a bad idea, when the book was first published, to have a black hero,” said Sturrock. “She said people would ask: ‘Why?’”

The revelation about Dahl’s original wish for Charlie may surprise those who accused the author of racism in relation to the book. The allegation stemmed from the fact that the Oompa Loompas in the original version were black pygmies from Africa.

I read the first edition, and never realized that it had changed in the 2nd edition.

You can also read an interesting literary analysis of the original work, which was quite different, here, where Professor Catherine Keyser suggests that the original was intended to be about racism and inequality.

I would not go that far, but it is something to muse on.