Crisis actors of Busytown

Collateral impact

One of our duties here at the Riddled Research Laboratory and Reality Maintenance Studio is removing on-line copies of the First Encyclopedia of Tlön [Orbis Tertius]. The Library Pixies handle this responsibility, in their own way. sometimes with collateral impact on those persons who ill-advisedly uploaded the Encyclopedia.

The concern, of course, is that W*k*pedia editors would amplify their Wikientries with passages copy-pasted from the Encyclopedia, soon to be followed by the uncredited appearances of those passages in blogs and discussion boards and Pinterest pages, providing those Wikientries with independent sources of corroboration. Each iteration of copy-pasta nudges the Encyclopedia contents one rung up the Ladder of Ontological Status towards the happy state of 'Stuff that Everyone Knows', and then we would be over-run with invisible tigers and towers of blood and Hrönir of the third and thirteenth order, and small cones of an unknown metal of preternatural density, and schools would be invaded by the (conjectural) "primitive language" of Tlön.

Diligently following a camel around

In a related partial irruption from an alternative existence into our own, my campaign against the "Camel-poop-cures-dysentery" hoax has developed not necessarily to my advantage. Academic authors were already retailing the fable by the time that W*k*pedia dropped its wholesale distribution. It turns out that academics are loath to listen when you inform them that they credulously fell for a hoax, and the chances of squeezing that particular genie back into the toothpaste tube have, like Murphy's conarium, "shrunk to nothing".

The camel-poop invention links in turn (via click-bait churnalism) to the 'camel poop bomb' story dreamed up by Jasper Maskelyne ("war magician" and self-promoting fabulist), as fodder for click-bait churnalists.

Camel "apples" became a good luck charm for the German military. The Allies discovered their habit of intentionally running tanks over piles of the droppings for good luck. So the Allies developed and planted land mines that looked like camel dung! When the Germans caught on to the trick, they began to avoid fresh piles of camel manure. In turn, the Allies caught on and began to make mines that looked like camel dung that had already been run over by a tank and therefore seemed safe enough to a Nazi driver. Genius.

Maskelyne contributed more to the Allied war effort in North Africa than any other man including Monty (in his account), or was a skiving credit-grabbing waste of a pair of boots (according to everyone else). Also a waste of a name that was clearly intended for a Jack Vance character. So the movie...

Possible film adaptations[edit]

In 2003, director Peter Weir and actor Tom Cruise were working on a film based on The War Magician.^[21] When questions rose about how much of The War Magician was factual and how much was invented by the author, the project was dropped while still in pre-production.^[21]

In 2015 Benedict Cumberbatch was reported as signing on to play the lead role in a Maskelyne film.^[22] At the time, the project was pending the selection of a director.^[22]

Benedict Cumberbatch has been cast as ‘WAR MAGICIAN’ with Colin Trevorrow set to direct.

The film follows an international “magic gang” who conspired with a British illusionist and a female military intelligence officer to defeat the Nazis.

(Source: Deadline) pic.twitter.com/fSgGquNstR

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) March 16, 2021

Excuse me for the interruption. Any movie could become a gullible parade through Maskelyne's Munchausen memoires, or a more interesting parallax-view contrast between his Walter-Mitty fantasies and consensus reality. The absence of Terry Gilliam and Werner Herzog from the director's chair does not fill me with anticipation.

I also fess up to skepticism about the presence of an anthropomorphic hyaena photographer, Ngorongoro Crater, as a denizen of Richard Scarry's "Busytown". Let alone a terrier named after a Disney animator.

John Parr Miller: A terrier at the town party, apparently a chef, named after a Disney animator who then moved into illustration of children's books.

Ngorongoro Crater: A hyena who is a photographer and whose camera gets a parking ticket.

Both made their way into the 'Minor Characters' subsection of the Whackyweedia Busytown entry on 11 July 2018, when fine upstanding Wikicitizen 'Swiss Frank' added one-line encapsulations of these previously-overlooked characters. The existence of Ngorongoro Crater was subsequently attested by wikisourced copy-paste affixed to Busytown-related Pinterest entries, albeit unaccompanied by corroboratory images, so I remain a Busytown Truther. But no-one ever listens to Uncle Smut.

That should probably become a blogpost label.