A natural Segway

History has ultimately smiled on the reality of Bouvet Island and assigned it '.bv' as an Internet top-domain code, while frowning on Dougherty and the Aurora Islands (though '.du' and '.av' remain in the system in the hope of eventual adoption by pr0n sites that find it convenient to lack a physical location). This was not a foregone conclusion, however, and in 1816 the bookies were offering 7:2 odds on the eventual vindication of the Auroras as realer than the others. Fortunately the notion of misusing the Riddled time machine to profit from gambling has never crossed our minds.
There is an illustration in Rupert T. Gould's Oddities,* published in 1928, which as you have not seen I will proceed to reprint:
1928 was a good year for the temporary-island theme since it also saw the publication of
(1) The Call of Cthulhu; and
(2) Book 3 of De Selby's Golden Hours. In a lengthy footnote added in proof, the sage notes that no two of these islands were ever sighted at the same time. Applying Ockham's Razor with the alacrity of Sweeney Todd, he proposes that the various sightings were therefore all the same island, migrating around the Earth's surface -- or alternatively remaining fixed despite the planet's irregular shifts -- in the manner of the eye of a flatfish, or analogous to the uterus in a bad case of geophysical hysteria. The argument is not without merit if one accepts De Selby's earlier claim that the purported dimension of "longitude" is a mere hallucination and the true shape of the Earth is elongated and sausage-like.
Let us pass discreetly over the recent Certain Islands series of photographs from Megan Jenkinson:
A series of lenticular photographs [...] is based on imaginary Antarctic islands that were charted on the maps but never existed and were presumably fata morgana or mirages hallucinated by explorers under dodgy optical conditions. Depending on your angle of view, you might see a ghostly island looking like a rock or a cloud bank, and then it disappears.It would be as unfair (as well as dangerous) to accuse the artist of really owing fealty to Cthulhu.


One of these photographs is not by Megan Jenkinson
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9 comments:
Meanwhile...
the river monkeys ride a raft
with a Spaniard who's gone daft.
Fortunately the notion of misusing the Riddled time machine to profit from gambling has never crossed our minds.
Indeed. So, erm, next fifty rounds on me, eh?
I see what you do there mr BBBB.
DUMBLEDORE
Rupert Thomas Gould (16 November 1890 - 5 October 1948), was a Lieutenant Commander in the British Royal Navy noted for his contributions to horology...
AHEM! I say!
~
Nuncop chases down the seagull perps.
~
ITTDGY's response is nuncopatory.
What is depicted in the painting is a nunatak.
noted for his contributions to horology
Was he the one who restored to the zodiac Ophiuchus, the Appalachian Pentecostal?
A good name for these on-again off-again islands would be "the Sporadics" but that's already been taken.
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