Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Machines that look like little cars Consume the bones and count the scars

Automobile design in 1930s Mitteleuropa was inordinately fond of beetles:


The convergence is inexplicable!

Perhaps it is a manifestation of some historical calamity, one that wreaked such widespread psychic trauma that the painful memories were nigh-universally suppressed. But the repression bubbled up as a cultural neurosis, and residual engrams seeped through the seams of amnesia like blood through a cheap suitcase. This always happens. It must be a tradition, or an old charter or something.

"Let us collate these manifestations," I said.

"Along with other data," Another Kiwi vouchsafed -- "such as the rise in the 1930s of interest in insect-collecting as a hobby." tigris wondered whether to include fictional accounts of transformation into insects. Of course, we said.

"Let us feed everything to the Riddled Ktistec Machine, instructing it to find the problem for which this was the solution... to reconstruct the lineaments of the underlying tragedy."

The analysis reveals that Elekton Earth was invaded by malignant lambent-eyed creatures from Gallas, speaking in Rockwell Slab-Serif, whose sonic weapon drove all who heard it into a madness of self-destruction and fratricide!!


Their coleopteric vehicles were nigh-invulnerable to modern energy cannons, and could only be defeated by human muscles and coordination!!

"What if we dredge up this trauma and it is still too painful, even after the passage of time?" This is not the first time that tigris has been concerned for the mental health of Riddled readers.

"Not to worry," I said. "The protective mechanisms will take over, and they will dismiss the whole thing as a joke."

13 comments:

mikey said...

Oh, hell no.

Not Trigo and Brag.


NOOOOOOoooooooo!!!!!!!

tigris said...

"What if we dredge up this trauma and it is still too painful, even after the passage of time?"

I'm fairly certain I used the word "cyclopean" at least once, and there may have also been an "eldritch" in there.

Smut Clyde said...

"Some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

SAID TIGRIS.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Tharvish medicine might help us contain our rising Medicare costs, he pondered.
~

Substance McGravitas said...

we shall either go mad from the revelation

Ooh, SCARAB.

Substance McGravitas said...

Also, grist for your mill.

Smut Clyde said...

How I visualise ZRM.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Automobile design in 1930s Mitteleuropa was inordinately fond of beetles:

Simply divine!

Funny, "trigo" is Spanish for "wheat"- I think the fall of Trigo is some sort of harvest metaphor, like the wooing of Gerd.

Hamish Mack said...

Lookit ZRM in the model city! He'll be all stamping around and saying "FEAR ME MORTALS" and such.

mikey said...

How I visualize ZRM.

I'm okay with that, but why is he holding a nut-cracker? Is one of his character affectations that he's always eating walnuts.

Because that would be a pretty cool character affectation when you think about it...

Hamish Mack said...

What with eating walnuts and only using blue flannel bedsheets to draw on he is chock full of character traits.

Hamish Mack said...

A warning note to young folks. See what uncontrolled Christmas Ale consumption has done to Trigo and Brag. Return any bottles of Christmas Ale or any alcoholic beverages to the Riddled Beverages Disposal crew. Leave a note if Smut or I are out.

tigris said...

Leave a note if Smut or I are out.

No need for a note, just leave the booze; I am quite sure it will come to no harm.