The Lie of the Land*

Behold Wellington's latest public sculpture.**
Homoeroticism!

Rear view!

Opinions are divided as to its geological accuracy. Speaking to Riddled on the condition of confidentiality, a geomorphologist informed us that neither Thomas Gold's "abiotic genesis of rugby players" theory nor the "rapidly-petrifying-human-beings" model of orogeny currently enjoy wide support within the profession.

Also outdated: "Black-
robots-with-petrifying-
beam" model

HA HA had you going for a minute there. It is in fact a subtle allegory disguising the concept of "Rugby". It was commissioned from the busy elves of Weta Workshop, who usually focus on authorised collectible scale models of Sméagol and Barad-dûr, but here they were invited to lend their admirably literal illustrative skills to the theme of "popular ball game" and given $350000 to play with.

We do have an established system for commissioning public art, but the Sculpture Trust has been know to allow aesthetic sensibilities to influence their decisions, diluting their purchases' value as branding statements. Also if a single artist is good, think how much better an entire design committee must be! In this case, therefore, the Trust was bypassed and the Council of the day called for tenders. Evidently the Franklin Mint did not present their submission in time and the bid from Weta Workshop was accepted instead, without asking them for a model of the intended construction. I am not making this up.

When the rugby cup is over and the embarrassment grows too much, they can always replace the shiny ball with an IED and rebrand it as a War Memorial to NZ's involvement in Afghanistan.

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* Totally stolen title.
** A funnier person notes "its resemblance to a provincial junior rugby trophy, a knick-knack gift for a rugby-loving uncle, and a vagina."

It was a slow day and the sun was beating...

"So" said Editor-in-Chief Smut Clyde " I see that the shoe box labelled "Politics with an AK' is empty" he held out the shoe box, took the lid off and turned it upside down. Aside from the gasps of comprehension from the other side of the world and an Apricot and Octopus spring roll,  nothing resulted.
"No chief" said ace reporter "Scoop (not in terms of "put in a scoop") Another Kiwi" he took his Press card from his hatband and read from the back of the card "it is a slow newsday". He looked vaguely surprised and put the card back.
Hardened newsman Clyde clenched his fists, elbows, knees and toes, "Not my problem, bucko" he said and pointed to the sign on the door. "It says News" he intoned "and news is what we sell. Find some" He spun on his heel and walked into the broom cupboard. Muffled clanking sounds signified that he had found the Role Play costume that Greenish Hugh had hidden there after the "Lifestyle" column had rejected his "Dress up like a horse" day idea.
Still puzzling over how an exit sign could be read as saying News, Scoop AK logged into the Earthquake rebuilding site. After scrolling through the pages of contracts being awarded to relatives of The Minister for Rebuilding, he found the New Contracts page and felt the quickening of pulse he always felt. Only to see that his idea of rebuilding Christchurch as the "Venice of the South" had been turned down again. People seemed to be scared of controlled flooding projects.
"News" he thought "News, pews, screws, views, clues. Ah hah, I wonder what that Alaskan screechy woman is doing, I think she turned down an Oscar or something"
But no! Checking on the website of her Grizzliness, AK discovered that she had withdrawn from the Pestilential  race. Reading further he discovered two more amazing facts.

Sarah Palin has fought for conservatism long before anyone ever imagined that she will be thrust upon the national stage

and from the comments:

yeah it's true!  america is so much better than england or portugal!  we're number one and we always will be until the rapture, thanks to sarah!

and don't forget France! lots betta than France! Even after the rapture we'll still be #1! Which of the candidates do you think will get sucked up to heaven? Sara sure will!!!!

  AK's noble brow furrowed in deep thought. "How could it be" he thought "that when Michael J. Fox got back from the past, there was no substitute Marty McFly there? No wait, the Palming lady! this is news. She is going to be enraptured and set up a new kingdom that is better than england and portugal, which are so awful that they don't even have a capital letters"
Hurriedly he consulted Olde Persnickerty's Random Almanac. "The next Rapture is in September 2012. I wonder if there is time to get internationally recognised as a leading and authoritative newsman, go to Alaska and split up the Palmetto's marriage, so that she marries me and I get some of the kingdom?"
 "Bugger, it is Parasegmental appendage allocation in annelids and arthropods and Rockquiz week at the Old Entomologist, next month. I can't start until after that."
Hurriedly he cut and pasted an article together about the coming New Kingdom and walked over to the broom cupboard. He knocked and said "Politics column here, chief"
"Call me Chief Dobbin from now on, lad" came the muffled reply and put the copy on my desk, in the IN Skull. I'll be out soonish"
"Righto, Dobbin" he replied.

The reason why the five factors are no more than five is a pretty reason. Because they are not six? Yes, indeed: thou wouldst make a good fool.

Study finds ‘magic mushrooms’ may improve personality long-term

Contrary to this headline (thx ITTDGY!), a cold eye cast upon the original paper reveals a lack of objective measurements of actual personality. Nor is there any bollocks about "improvement". Rather, it is essentially a study of how subjects scored themselves in a checklist of traits.

Doors of Perception [before cleansing]

The authors report that subjects tended to rate themselves as more "open" after whopping great doses of 'shroom active ingredient had cleansed the doors of perception, replaced the putty around the window panes, oiled the hinges, and set them swinging like a shithouse door in a hurricane. And this, despite the use of a double-blind design to prevent subjects knowing who received an inactive placebo vs. who wandered away in the long grass and might have had expectations about personal growth!

Surprised Smut is surprised. Well cover me in peanut butter and throw me to the labradors; and other jocose expressions of astonishment!

In our own experiments, subjects exposed repeatedly to hallucinogenic mushrooms came to rate themselves as basidiomycetes rather than ascomycetes. They scored highly on the Mycorrhiza scale and preferred a tetrapolar mating system.

Here there was going to be an extended rant about "Openness", and the other four factors of the Five-Factor model of personality, which together are supposed to render the rich tapestry of human variation down to five scores (measured by the NEO Personality Inventory). Most psychologists accept that the NEO-PI is a load of cobblers with little value except for predicting how people will perform on future NEO-PI tests. It is the "Looking-for-lost-keys-under-the-streetlight-because-there-is-more-light-there-than-in-the-dark-alley-where-one-lost-them" school of thought. When you hang around under streetlights in the neighbourhood of the Riddled offices you are hassled by the constabulary for soliciting -- or so I hear from a friend -- so I can't see why it should be any more acceptable in academia. Still, if people find it convenient to confuse the territory with the method of cartography, then who am I to cavil?

Anyway, TL;DW. But I still maintain that if we want a framework for discussing personalities that is arbitrary but sufficiently familiar to be convenient, it should have at least 12 basic types, or 13 if you include Ophiuchus as part of the zodiac.

Riddled Management apologises for the lack of a smooth segue between the start of this post and the next paragraph. Please accept this smooth Sigue as a substitute.

John Allegro -- one of the Beethoven Allegros, I believe -- reckoned that when the name 'Boanerges' or "Sons of Thunder" was given to two of the New Testament disciples, it was a coded reference to psychoactive mushrooms and the way they appear after thunderstorms. Also, Santa Claus! He did not report whether the sons of lightning will get you if the sons of thunder fail in that task.

Pipers at the gates of yawn

This is wrong on more levels than the M. C. Escher Memorial Highrise Carpark.*

Just saying, there's more to turning bagpipe music into 'metal' than simply casting a set of bagpipes out of bronze.


* Riddled is offering a free Liquorice-and-Vatgrown-Chicken Pie from Mrs Miggins for the first person to call themselves MC Escher and provide a Tessellation Rap video.

Through the rabbit-hole

It is always the same. Something catches one's eye... it might be the fish in the aquarium recently installed behind the bar at the Old Entomologist (as a substitute for a big TV screen showing live sports, which chief barmaid Evangeline von Holsteren reckons will "bring in the wrong crowd" and the money doesn't enter into it). What a relief that it is not actually a mirror as some less astute people might initially have thought. So one brings out the handy pocket lithography plate and sketches an impression of their amusing antics.

Not until the negatives come back from the lab does one realise that the view is full of orbs. Are they in cahoots with the fish? We're down the looking-glass now, people.

Riddled Radio Rugby Round-up with Roger Rogerson

RR: Good evening, sports fans.
I can't hear you. Did you say "Heckuva job, Roge? Why yes, yes you did!"
This evening we are privileged to have one the finest minds in rugby analysis with us, a man who has been to that place upstairs from the Thai takeaways where they do the frame by frame looking at the video. Another Kiwi, how they hanging AK?"
[CRASH] AK: The chair is all wrong!
RR: Help him up Clarence. You Ok AK, Hah hah
AK: Yeah, yeah Ok, Don't anyone worry about me.
RR: So AK, What about that World Cup?
AK: I don't like the muffins you have here, They are too sticky and squish up in your pockets.
RR: Fascinating, Now the World Cup?
AK: Ooooo sorry Rogered, I didn't mean to not talk about the World Cup
RR: It's Roger and you are supposed to talk about it. Have you seen any of it?
AK: Oh yes, I've seen it, hours and hours of it, people onna teevee running around like mad things.
RR: Well....analysis?
AK: Russia is gone Roge, out of the park, toodle-oo, so long. Bye bye. As are many teams, I think you'll find, Roger, the pools of death have spoken and there has been a great unbuttoning and loosing off of minnows, which is a type of fish and not in ruggedbury at all. Now it is down the serious stuff with the points and such.
RR: And what do you make of the Carter injury?
AK: It is in the groinal region Roger so I don't know what you are implying I would make of it. Insituations! Smut said I should watch out for this. He said "They are snakes-in-the-grass those people, AK, have some anti snake bite elixir" He is very kind...unlike some who I could name!
But New Zealand must resist the urge to wallow in Dan Carters groin! Forward, Esperanto! You people, mind how you go!
RR: How big an effect will the win over France have on team morale?
AK: Roger, Roger, Roger, they don't eat Morels! They eat Kiwi Big Brown Ugly Mushrooms that grow in the dark and eat shit. None of your fancy Morels here, mate. WAH
[CRASH] This chair is fecking dangerous, man. I'm going
[DOOR SLAMS] Owww, it was shut,
RR: Thanks for that AK, we'll hold you to those predictions

Relevant to my interests.

In the ideal world, a journal with a name like Vox Sanguinis would ccupy its pages with Magritte paintings and fin-du-cycle symbolist / decadent poems entitled Fungi from Yuggoth or The Star-Treader or Negations. Instead there are enthralling forum reports on testing for rare blood antigens. World, be more funny!!

Any fule know that blood antigens are linked to personality types,* but do the editors do accept manuscripts on the subject? DO THEY BOGROLL.

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* In the earlier Riddled report on the subject we touched on the Myers-Briggs personality typology as something even sillier than blood-group quackery. Then there is the Big-Five typology which is possibly sillier still. Blogging on the Big-Five model will ensue as soon as I think of an appropriate segue.

Not an appropriate segway. Nuns who spend most of their natural lives riding segways over the rocky roadsteads of the parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their segways as a result of the interchanging of the mollycules of each of them, and you would be surprised at the number of nuns in country parts who are nearly half nun and half segway.

"What's a segway?" wondered Chapman.
"About 15 kilograms," Keats promptly replied.

Always with the triggerings

Hits on Riddled yesterday

Some site called google.correct had it's merry way with us yesterday. This morning there is manacles, whips and chains all over the place. Plus treacle. 

Some things I don't want to know about.

Inclusiveness

Normally a good thing, but when public toilets provide special urinals designed for the three-pronged genitalia of the Greys, I say it is political madness gone correct.


Unless they are a conceptual-urinal art statement, in which case I apologise to the owners of the gallery, but really they should provide better signage if they want to avoid similar contretemps in the future.

Also I blame Marcel Duchamp.

Bonus novelty teapot!!

UPDATE: Dibs on the name "Urea Heep" for my tribute band.

UPDATE²: Also relevant: