I begin this again 'cause a medical professional asked me to.

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Answers have been added to the music lyrics meme post, my beloved minions. I'd have been amazed if you had got them all between you, but you didn't. Nowhere close. Which quite surprises me.

Eclectic music tastes (or philistine friends? ;) for the win...

WHAT THE PIPER?

So much wrong with that. Gaah. Gaah. Gaah.

If anyone has a couple of free minutes, please could you have a look at the short story-thingie I just put up? And then come back here and answer a question about it?

(It has a couple of naughty words; sorry about that.)

Here's the story. I'll wait here. The question's slightly spoilerish in itself, you see...

Ah, some of you are back. Thanks. So: could you tell what the protagonist was, by the end? Too obvious/not obvious enough?

Catching up with my backlog on the poem-a-week project, here first of all is Zenbunny's 'prize' poem, which I offered a while back to the first person to spot the hidden secret in Tactical Cat-Tricks.

Zen correctly spotted that every line contains the syllable "pi" or "per" alternating—and the poem is about a cat named Piper. (Read Zen's comment carefully.) I hope the following is prizelike enough for that startling bit of detectivework.

Old Book

written 18 Mar 2008

I

Eyesight be damned: it's your spine that you'll miss.
Worst of infirmities coming with age.
(Cliché; one never believes them, and now...)
Joinings that stiffen and crackle on flexing
An effortful venture, the turn of a page.

II

My offspring—I've many, by numerous authors;
A marriage of minds, evolution of memes
(Barring the reprints, the spit of their dad)—
Slight disappointments, the lot of them. Written
In language so modern it dates within minutes.
A paperback culture. Disposable reams.

I unashamedly stole the structure from one of my old, old poems. This reads as awfully brief, but I can't make myself go back and pad it. Someone tell me if it sucks, please; I'm at the "can't look at it" stage.

I had a few thoughts about the other theme Zen suggested, so we may see a pumpkin poem showing up; no promises...

And the next one is for Cerhn.

Mountain lion (source)

Mountainbank

completed 24 March 2008

From the wonderful wavering glass-bottled range
Of Montgomery P. Concolore,
Can discerning enquirers discreetly exchange
For their myriad ailments, a cure.

He has patented nostrums for fever and gout,
For neuralgia and asthma and mumps,
He's electrical girdles in case you are stout
And an ointment to spread on your lumps.

Just confide in this cat the amount of your ill
And elixirs he'll grant without fail—
And present you a neat little itemised bill
Which he'll sign with the tip of his tail.

Monty's fishberry tonic refreshes the brain
Though with adverse effects on the breath,
While his ligament liniment soothes every sprain—
And he claims he can cure even death.

Gingivitis and ulcers Montgomery treats
With a poultice of olives and tar;
Disquisitions he'll give upon sugary sweets—
They have called him the feline Fauchard.

In a drab-coloured coat stands this pantherine sage;
He is white round the muzzle and ears.
But his youthful performance belies his great age
For he boasts over two hundred years.

He has troches for tetanus, bitters for boils
And some gauze for your knee, should you skin it.
Monty makes this great claim of his copious toils:
That a succour is born every minute.

How This One Came About:
Mutt mugged the lovely Cerhn and asked him to gissa theme.
"Mountain lion mountebanks?" suggested Cerhn.
"Catamount quackery! I'll give it a shot," said Mutt.
And there was much disbelief.

Writing this one was like pulling teeth, but I think it turned out ok in the end. I HAD to force "cat amount" in there somewhere, which was a nigh-impossible job given my structure. (Anapestic tetra/trimeter. I deliberately went for You are Old, Father William, only more strict with the line beginnings.)

Meme from Snoggie and others. If Charlycrash isn't first in with two of these in particular, I will grin and poke him. ;)

1. On your current playlist, hit shuffle and pick the first twenty-five songs on the list (no matter how cheesy or embarrassing, but excluding instrumentals).
2. Write down one or two line(s) of the song. Try to avoid dead giveaways, like lines that include the title.
3. Wait for your friends to comment and identify the songs. If they cheat with Google, they are stinkybutts.
4. When someone guesses correctly, strike out the lyric and list the correct name of the song next to it.

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I came across the site of an artist, Håkan Ackegård, whom I bet Anke likes or would like. Style-wise, that is, if not all the random naked chicks... All the following links are nudity-safe unless stated.

Vampy, satyr (which is how I found his site originally), horsieman, hunk, er... gnome.

Now for the real reason I'm posting this stuff - Unicorn knight, which amuses me for my own particular reasons.

Rather cute demoness (scantily clad but decent, just). I'd rather see bare feet than stupid shoes (scantily clad and a bit ridiculous); maybe that's just me...

Neil Gaiman's The Problem of Susan. WTF? WTFF? Discuss.

You can read the story—which contains adult themes and I am not joking about that—in image format (scans of a book) or a text version with typos.

I loathe much of the message behind the Narnia series (despite enjoying the books reasonably much) and have the self-same gripe about Susan (heard, and do not rate, the usual apologist counterarguments) and I still thought that ending was gratuitous. Fail, Gaiman.

A link found from a Loki community, and I warn you up front that this may cause you to stare, optionally weep and probably say "what the hel" a lot: http://www.amazon.com/dp/097674418X/

When my brain recovered from a fit of screaming "Dear entropy, NO!", other parts of it then volunteered some theories about mistletoe and the death of Baldur upon which I shall not elaborate.

I wonder if old Salmon Breath himself would laugh or throw a hissy fit. He, er... Sleipnir, after all.

On Saturday we saw the Bodyworlds exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry. It was a birthday outing for mum, who wanted to see it. Cool, ghoulish mother we have, huh?

The exhibition was fine. Blatantly sensationalist. Very informative. The comments in the visitor book focused on two things: the gorilla and the cocks. Good to know the great British public is as predictable as ever. I was not seized with an overwhelming urge to donate my body to plastination. However, I do like the word plastination. Very '60s sci-fi sort of word.

In the evening we came home, after not finding anything interesting to do in town by way of cinema showings or restaurants. We got takeaway curry and watched The History Boys, an Alan Bennett film. Which was entertaining, intelligent and funny. However, I did not like the central 'inspirational' character we were supposed to like and find inspirational. I found him tragic—not nobly tragic, not tragic as a flipside of greatness, not humanisingly tragic, just downright pitiful all round—and found the characters who turned out like him tragic.

Today I've read most of The City and the Stars, which I'll almost certainly finish tonight, and also watched the whole series so far of Ashes to Ashes (or all the ones we've managed to get on the PVR). Unfortunately, Ashes is suffering from generic sequel syndrome, which is a shame, because the original two series, called Life on Mars, were very good. The main character of Ashes is a canon_sues post waiting to happen; bloomin' ridiculous canon-warping skirt...

Name your top 10 most played bands on Last.fm:

(I'm not sure if this is my most played list or most tagged list. 0,o But it's some kind of list. And there are few surprises on it.)

1 Angra
2 Falconer
3 Blind Grauniad
4 Stratovarius
5 DragonForce
6 Rhapsody
7 Nightwish
8 Edguy
9 Sonata Arctica
10 Avantasia

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What do I wake up with on the first day of my two-week holiday? That's right, of course. The lurgy.

Or a bad sore throat, anyway. I guess, if we discount the ongoing neurological-type symptoms, it proves how infrequently I get ill that I had forgotten what you do about a sore throat.

My voice is nicely deep. Now I'm nicely numbed by lemon and lime somethingorother manufactured in the US containing maltose, E-number colourings and secret sauce, I'm enjoying this. It's pathetic, but for me this makes it so worth it.

(If the symptoms extend to heartburn, guess what I won't be taking. ROFL.)

Lots of random links and news from my afternoon trawl update... and a meme from Animist, because dogs. DOGS!

Can different species 'talk'?

Non-news link: Deadpool fans... uh, yeah, don't look here.

(The joke is that Deadpool, a fictional comic book character, thinks the real-life actress Bea Arthur is wonderful. Bea Arthur is one of the 'Golden Girls' depicted there. (OK, yes, uncalled-for minor geekery, but I have only recently finished reading the last Cable & Deadpool and am still cheesed that one of the titular protags somehow got co-opted out of his own finale. Whut. (Still, Deadpool always was carrying the show.)))

Raven spotted.

I forgot it's Pi Day. Silly people putting the day before the month. :)

Europe develops Moon rover plan

I saw Peter and the Wolf. Didn't think it was all that good. You couldn't tell what was going on, and this is from someone who heard it plenty of times as a pup.

Yahoo makes semantic search shift

New human interface devices

(You can put in a fake email address.)

Labrador Retriever
The Caretaker

Your family is what makes you tick, and you never "flea" from an opportunity to hang out with the whole gang. A family picnic complete with hot dogs, deviled eggs and a refreshing swim in the lake is hard for you to stray from. Your sparky temperament and dogged intelligence mean you are not only a blast to hang out with, but great to work with as well. Your close pals appreciate your patience and forgiveness, knowing you'd rather let sleeping dogs lie than dwell on the mishaps of the past. Your dashing good looks may one day lead to a modelling career, if only you can tame the unfortunate clumsiness that sometimes causes you to go flailing from the catwalk.

"Tick"/"flea". Wise Dog sees what you did there.

Seeing as my sisters were Golden Retrievers, I can't say I'm surprised. The blurb is so much nonsense, of course.

A little girl has been found alive.

More on the great heartburn conspiracy from earlier today.

£30k iPod on display

It's a Shuffle, looks like, so it's only 1Gb or possibly 2. Epic fail.

Notice the video player? It's called the EMP. We pioneered that on our Passion site! One day before the rest of bbc.co.uk had it! </flag-waving>

And another EMP clip:

Teaching a speech machine. It spelled Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious right, and caught the glottal stop in Slartibartfast. Not bad!

Best story EVER of the day: Bear convicted for theft of honey

and now I really want to listen to some Serbian turbo-folk. Any recommendations, guys? Guys?

Scammers posing as Army commander and jolly convincing it is too. "Demised persons" sounds just right.

India wedding guests 'kill boy' - warning, WTFery.

Computer games are put to the test

A proper control group would spend the same length of time doing something else, like a crossword or sudoku.

I love this. Just the idea of Ruthlessly Cornering the Market on heartburn medicine.

There is a CONSPIRACY to equate gays with Holocaust survivors—and only the Bishop of Motherwell can see it!! Curse you, Bishop!!! We would have got away with it if it weren't for your delusional ramblings!!!! Well, you may have broken our one-man Manchester asexual cadre, but you will never stop the revolution!!!!!

[audio] Scottish rescue dogs put to the test. Is anyone really surprised that humans work better with added dog? We've spent however many hundreds of thousands of years together, and we're still (re)discovering what our partners can do better than us.

Fourth rare loggerhead found dead

[video] Pratchett speaks about his Alzheimer's. It's heartbreaking. What a legend this dude is.

UK Pledge of Allegiance ideas

Iceland whaling go-ahead 'likely'. Eat what's on your plate before asking for more, children.

Audio slideshow (Flash): Perfume Pagoda festival. Really nice presentation.

Fiction storyplex: The evolution of trickster stories among the dogs of North Park after the Change

Found through one of the links on the Dream Cafe blog. Read it quickly: it'll be disappearing for a few months after the Nebula Awards voting, because it's being printed in an anthology.

I once thought of writing something a little like this in scope, but eventually decided it had been done and I wouldn't be able to get it right. Certainly I couldn't have written that. It would have turned darker and lighter.

*sends author an appreciative email*

Timeline. Yeah, forget the content, isn't the software nifty?

Actually, don't forget the content entirely. I spent ages sifting through and picking out interesting links, not to mention cropping the little pics and encoding extra audio and stuff 'n' things.

Design? Well. I'm still not convinced by the scroll ends. We were doing reasonably well at not being all parchment-and-sand clichéd with the site, and we agonised long and hard when the designer offered us those before concluding that we couldn't think of anything better.

If I don't completely misunderstand what Brust is saying here, he's making a good point. A good point to be taken with caution, and it fails the test of universality.

Ah well. I ramble a little bit in that entry's comment number........ well, guess.