Asking for a friend

What's a romantic way of celebrating a 25th anniversary?



Preferably not involving spending moneys.

Bis Hip-hop in a Tutu

This year when we decorated the chocolate bunnies IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROPHECY we followed a Ballerina theme (because lazy & uninspired).


They are ready for a production of Swan Lagomorph.

Happy 21st Birthday, Doktorling Sonja!

This doesn't mean that we will let you drive the family car.

Even now the Frau Doktorin is festooning the house with balloons and glitter in preparation for your return from university.

Just don't feel obliged to shock us with a new piercing, or with a scanty costume like last time.

No matter where you go... there you are

"Send me a sign, oh nameless gods of the Interlattice!" I beseeched, albeit in a subdued voice, for the Frau Doktorin is unsympathetic whenever she overhears a seech, which she ascribes to my reckless consumption of past-the-use-date seafood. "What should be the topic of the first blogpost of 2016?"

And lo, there were portents and prodigies aplenty. Also omens both good and bad, and a rare sighting of the Lesser Crested Harbinger. Frozen poultry walked backwards across the ceiling, and zucchinis spoke in the voices of Hungarians, and unstrained mercy dripped from heaven, I hope that's mercy. Along with the usual lizard / trebuchet accidents, and the goat-eating lice,

and beach closures due to whales and their engorgement,

and miraculous deluges of multicoloured but unfashionable hats from battles in the clouds,

and the feline fungi, and the naff paint-by-numbers sunset. Same old same old.

And more to the point, we received spam-mail. In this case, soliciting contributions and publication payments for yet another undiscriminatingly all-absorbent jizzmop of a vanity website. From Assistant Editor Kavya M., who affects an initial letter rather than a surname... perhaps in India this form of pseudonymity conveys a sense of rectity and integritude; perhaps surnames are taxed by the letter; perhaps Kavya M. has escaped from the pages of an unpublished Kafka novel. Clearly it was the message.

We are glad to find you here...
We are delighted to introduce our Journal: Clinical Psychology

That is nice. I also am glad to find myself here, though I would be even gladder if spamming skeezy shitweasels stayed someplace else, preferably involving a fire.

Further inquiry reveals that so little effort has gone into customising the spam to the suckers that the 'Clinical Psychology' link leads to a completely nother jizzmop-journal from "Insight Medical Publishing". It is aspirational in nature, and is assembled from plagiarised material apart from the Recommended Conferences section:

Oddly enough, all the recommendable meetings are held under the auspices -- or as it may be, the aegis -- of the OMICS empire of fraud. Or even under the ausgisces. It is almost as if iMedPub is simply a branch or a metastasis of the primary OMICS tumour (and who can blame them for hiding from their egregious reputation for low-rent skeeviness, or Kavya M.* for pseudonymising her surname?).

OMICS used to have a prominent though parasitical niche in the ecology of scholarly malfeasance, allowing crap academics to meet productivity targets by providing journal-shaped dumping-grounds for their exudations, but universities are catching onto the scam. So now all the cool kids are selling attendance at phoney-baloney conferences as the new way for crapademics to meet their targets and pad their CVs, with work-paid tourism on the side, while siphoning funds from their employers' bank accounts to those of the grifters.

Another Kiwi and I recruit a
prestigious Keynote Speaker

Naturally our first thought at the Riddled Research Institute was to ask, "How can we get a turn on the moneyteat?" Clearly it is time to leverage the synergies and extend our International Journal of Open-Access Predatory-Publishing Inquiries, sending out invitations to attend the First International Meeting on Open-Access Predatory-Publishing Inquiries.

The social program includes
an afternoon harbour cruise

Notable players in the racket include WASET -- the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology (in fact a family business, registered in Azerbaijan, based in Turkey, centred on one Cemal Ardil). The company name is clearly designed to violate the useful rule against "Not ever antagonising the Horn". They hijack the names of legitimate conferences, advertise each meeting under multiple titles and disciplines (minimising the risk that an attendee will meet other people from the same discipline), and rotate the same titles (and indeed the same presentations) around multiple sightseeing destinations:

For Sydney is actually at least the 15th 17th International Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational and Systems Biology (ICBCSB 2015)

We can also learn tips from the “International Journal of Arts & Sciences”, which focuses on 'Multidisciplinary conferences in a "study abroad" format', and makes little attempt to mask the recreational non-educational purpose of its products. There is more to be said about IJAS, and its prime mover Professor Joseph Bonnici... but must rush, the 12^th Biweekly International Congress on Dicalcic Phosphate Fertilisers is on tonight at the Old Entomologist.


I want to leave plenty of time to get there in case the traffic is delayed by weird rainbows again.

* Must give OMICS conference organiser Sophia Loren full credit for being so honest about her real name!
 

Can't call the fire brigade / None of them have been paid

BLCKGRD reminded us last week that it was Peter Hammill's 65th birthday.

Quite apart from the prescience of "The Institute of Mental Health (is Burning)", it will make a perfect national anthem for the future low-tax Libertarian Utopia of Texas.

A posable thumb

Congratulations to Doktorling Sonja.

Harsh words would be said about "invasion of privacy" if I posted a recognisable photograph of her, so instead here's a picture of a cat with polydactyly.

By his boots-traps

After an earlier two-dimensional-lifeforms post, helpful commenter Narad called our scholarly attention to a similarly-themed book.  

The Man who Folded Himself is a version of Flat Stanley for a more mature readership. After losing one dimension in a tragic planoforming accident, the narrator fails to find social acceptance in an intolerant three-dimensional world. It is all very coming-of-agey and poignant in an emo way. Eventually he commits origami and turns himself into a giraffe.

Of course two-dimensionality is familiar territory for science-fiction cover artists...

...though usually in the sense of hollowed-out rather than flattened.


HA HA had you going for a while there. In fact Folded revisits the solipsistic SF dream of a world occupied solely by copies of oneself, here accomplished by time-travel rather than cloning. Readers always respond well to stories about "sex with oneself via time travel" and being one's own parents, in which the self-sufficient libertarian ideal of owing nothing to anyone else finally reaches fruition. It is a theme that Disch tried to parody out of existence in 1964 but to no avail. It must be a tradition, or an old charter or something.

It all seems a lot of trouble. You hardly need time travel to find opinionated obnoxious gits who are wrong about everything.

Bonus Boots-traps via Flaming Carrot #16 and #17! Also boots-shooting, boots-stabbing, and vicious man-on-boot shovel action.

***** SPOILER ALERT *****

The town is saved when it rains overnight and the boots all drown.

Starts his day with a rock and roll pose

Sometimes Elvis wondered whether abandoning music and switching to a career as nude yoga instructor had really been as good an idea as it seemed at the time.
"At least this way I meet girls," he consoled himself.

Ronald Searle was dead chiz chiz. Pater is so overcome he burst out blubbing.

Presumably this means that my hoped-for edition of "Empire of the Sun" with Searle illustrations will never eventuate.

Personaly i do not care a d. whether Marley was dead or not it is just that there is something about the xmas Carol which makes paters and grown-ups read with grate XPRESION, and this is very embarassing for all. It is all right for the first part they just roll the r’s a lot but wate till they come to scrooge’s nephew. When he sa Mery Christmas uncle it is like an H-bomb xplosion and so it go on until you get to Tiny Tim chiz chiz chiz he is a weed. When Tiny Tim sa God bless us every one your pater is so overcome he burst out blubbing. By this time boys hav bitten through their ropes and make good their escape so 9000000000 boos to bob cratchit.

Old dead guys can be funny

According to google it's Charles Addams' 100th birthday.

Wake up somewhere else Without a memory

Off to the train station airport.
Call me 'fore you get onto the Night Train.

Bugger

2 5 7 10 0 Days since Head Stuck in Air-conditioning Grill at Old Entomologist.

Also, random strangers on the street can prove to be surprisingly ungracious when approached and asked if they have any personal lubricant they can spare; even if you give them a very nice walking-stick as a trade. Like it never happens to them, the patronising bastidges.

I'm sure my calves used to be more symmetrical. This is another of those side-effects of blogging that no-one warns you about.

A Bit of Balance and Fairness

Now I'm not suggesting that we do anything illegal or anything but I feel that, collectively, we can clean up  we could add a new perspective in  regard to this situation. I'm just saying that a few cross nominations could work to all our advantges if we take turns to furnish the opinions for us all and then put our own names on the bylines.. Could be refreshing
  I would suggest that "Failed entries in defunct web popularity contest" would be a good CV for the Riddled crew and "Senior Canadian Leaping Granny Animator' for SMG. "Butterfly Fancier" for everyone else I think.  
  And what I mean by balance is the antipodean viewpoint of the upside downy shenanigans in that neck of the woods

The Ethics Comittee rang...

Part of the joy of working in the Riddled Research Park is the collegiality of it all. Imagine our surprise when Champion Owl Breeder Evangeline van Holsteren asked for advice in the treatment of inattentiveness in Grand Plumitarge of Devonshire Mount Jintery III or "Gimpy" as his  Hootery name is.
After preliminary investigations we discovered and reported back thusly
1. "Gimpy" is an aggressive little bastard, no end!
2. He is bored
This enabled us to offer a free treatment of our still-in-development-and-not-dangerous Intello Ray. Whilst Gimpy might not be happy in his current part of the Hootery, a smidgen more intelligence might rouse his curiosity and other parts that a chap doesn't talk about.
We coupled the treatment with extract of Liver pills thinking that the extra brain power might need more energy and that would need more muscle tone. And, of course it worked

Although some might say that we overdid the Liver extract pills a tad. Great advances in science are not achieved without some collateral damage and one can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Although that is not an expression we use around here any more.

Skynet Blogger Software one step closer to sentience

Encountered at Chrome Beach.

Memo to the daughter

The words "cute", "little" and "bald spot" do not belong together in a sentence, even if intended as an endearment.

My River Road Trip

Here is the Youtube of when I went up the Whanganui River Road recently. The picture quality is not too fabulous, due to lord-knows-what and the camera work is a little dodgy due to you can't get good help no more. The sound is probably better off after the map has been on except for 4:59 to 5:30 or so when you can hear a Bellbird.
There are gratuitous photo's of wild goats. And ducks.There is beautiful scenery.
There is a poem inna notebook that is being a bit difficult about getting finished.

Surveillance society

We were up in the mountains last night -- Rangiwahia Hut in the Ruahine range -- so I missed Another Kiwi when he staggered briefly into the Riddled office in the wee hours of the morning.
His visit was recorded on security-camera footage.

Announcement

In previous lifetimes in the intertuba I was a regular at a political website which appears to have died. *Dances jig then feels sad then dances jig*
At this site various other posters impressed me or made me think that there were Orcs in the world. One who consistently made me laugh has joined the Authors of Riddled. Despite his affection for Manchester United and negative stereotyping of Hobbits I am welcoming Brett to the building. I lied to him about there being no lawn mowing involved so his first missives will probably be a bit grass stained.
I think that we can all learn that time spent reading the fine print is time spent wisely.

Hungover again

"What feckin' time is it?" Smut complained.