Ten Years of Weird

I'm interrupting our regularly scheduled programming for a quick anniversary acknowledgment.  This blog passed its official ten-year anniversary more than a year ago (the first post was on January 2, 2011), but I assert that today is an even more special day.  Exactly ten years ago today, I began my first April A-Z challenge.

Even though that wasn't even my first month-long blog challenge, I still see it as the birth of the true voice of this blog.  Prior to that, I had been focused much more narrowly on the two original topics of the blog: old-school D&D and Hermann Hesse's Glass Bead Game.  I think I even tried to always "pay the Joesky tax" (does anyone even remember what that means?!) on RPG posts, too.  But on April 1, 2012, I began to mentally remove those fetters.  That's when things really started to bloom.

To be clear, there's nothing at all wrong with my original topics.  I keep pondering & writing about them quite a bit.  But I think I really needed the freedom to more completely follow my weird, as they say.  (Note this internal blog link is from December 2011, so I think these juices were stewing prior to that fateful day exactly a decade ago.)

In April 2012, and over the next few years, I met quite a few fascinating people, one of which I count as one of the most important people in my life despite having never met in person.  I've gone through a lot in the last decade -- a new job, moving across the country, loss of a parent, hitting my 50s -- and this blog & its people have been lifelines at times.

I can't promise a return to super-active blogging over the next decade, but I still value this place and the chance it gives me to, well, be Cygnus!

Socially Distant Miscellany

Have I collected some new blogworthy topics in these days of viral isolation?  You bet.  Let's juxtapose them with the tried and true "five things make a post."

(1) C2TH << AF2K ?

My previous post, as well as my lengthier 2015 musings -- both about Rush's classic tune Closer to the Heart -- managed to neglect one important thing: it doesn't exist in isolation.  This song is the first track on side two of its album, and it rhapsodizes about possible solutions to personal and societal problems.  However, it's the first song on side one, A Farewell to Kings, that both lays out those problems...

When they turn the pages of history,
When these days have passed long ago,
Will they read of us with sadness
For the seeds that we let grow?
We turned our gaze
From the castles in the distance.
Eyes cast down
On the path of least resistance.

...and indicates, indirectly, at the end, that solutions may be forthcoming:

Can't we raise our eyes
And make a start?
Can't we find the minds
To lead us closer to the heart?

I have a feeling that these songs are best when played back-to-back, like Queen's inseparable pair of "We" songs.

(2) Grognardia is Back

On my "2020 weird events" bingo card, alongside the tiger kings, murder hornets, and babies named XÆA-12, I didn't think I'd be noting the return of one of the main D&D OSR (Old School Renaissance) bloggers after 8 years of silence. But a few weeks ago, we started seeing posts from James Maliszewski again -- sometimes 2 or 3 in a day now -- like nothing at all happened since that last post from 2012.  I haven't been reading so closely to know if he's talked about the gap, but it's good to see him back again.  I'm kind of surprised that YDIS hasn't mentioned it...

(3) Alpha-Bytes Redux

For a while, I posted a lot about my obsession with weird alphabets.  Recently, when re-watching the classic movie The Fifth Element, I rediscovered a bit of odd linguistics that doesn't get talked about a lot.  Usually, when commenting on this movie's creative use of language, one sees a lot of discussion of the (spoken-only) alien "Divine Language" that director Luc Besson had star Milla Jovovich try to commit to memory.  But there was something interesting happening back on Earth, too.  The police had the word "Police" written in two parallel scripts on their uniforms and equipment.  Some searching found a high-resolution version, and it's possible to search for some phonetic realism in those two sets of characters...

 
For example, are there only 5 letters on the right, thus dispensing with the English oddity of a silent E?  Or do the stacked dot and dash count as two?  Both P and L are backwards, but the order still seems to go from left to right.  I can find no explanation of how or why anyone associated with this movie came up with this alt-alphabet, or if any real-life script inspired it.  Does anyone know anything more about it?

(4) Sci-Fi Reading & Reviews

Last year, I really enjoyed reading through the 1967 Dangerous Visions anthology, and I've been pondering a bit about doing another one.  I've got a copy of 1972's Again Dangerous Visions, but I suspect my reviews wouldn't be very positive.  I recently dug out a set of Fantasy & Science Fiction pulp magazines from the 1980s, and I noted a few favorites in them that I could reread and review, too.  However, I'm not too excited about either of those options.  If I'm going to reread something, I think it will be Neal Stephenson's Anathem.  When it came out in 2008, I breezed through it quickly, mostly on planes... but I think it deserves another go.  We'll see.

(5) Sad News

A few days ago, I learned that one of my personal heroes and mentors, Charles Cameron, has passed away.  I blogged about him several times, and it made my year when I saw that he showed up in the comments!  God speed, Magister Ludi.

She's wayfinding

Long-time readers will remember frequent commenter Suze, whose blogs were the stuff of legends and lore.  She's got a new online home now, and I'm still figuring out how to get it to appear in my Blogger Blogroll of Bloggerifficness.  (I think it's working now...)  Two weeks ago was the launch of her first published book, Kyle Finds Her Way, with Harry Potter publisher Scholastic!

The author herself pegs the recommended age range as 1 to 92.  If you like earnest slices of life from a middle schooler learning how to navigate life's starry expanse, while not getting into too much (or too little) trouble along the way, this book is for you.

I was privileged to read Kyle's story in draft form back in April 2013, back when I got the email saying that

First draft of the first book of my Middle Grade series now complete at 42,989 words.  Pop-Rocks-covered strawberries for everyone, on me -- the next big thing in Junior High libraries the galaxy over.

Never underestimate an author who likes pop-rocks-covered strawberries, people.  And I just realized where my extra copy is going.

I still haven't finished reading the final published version, but I went back to my email archive to find out what I said about that first draft.  I can quote snippets such as "warmed my heart" and "wonderful story" and "Hooray for Devil's Dinner!" (though I'm not sure that part survives into the final book).  I can't find any words from 2013 that really do proper justice to this kind, thoughtful story, but maybe I'll edit this post once I come up with some new ones.

Very Inspiring Blogger Award

Many thanks go out to the Armchair Squid for nominating this little corner of the internet for the Very Inspiring Blogger award.  If you're not reading Squid's insightful thoughts on books, comics, movies, Star Trek, family life, and tennis, then what the heck's wrong with you? by all means go check him out!

Rules!  There are rules, right?

1. Thank the person who nominated you, and link to their blog.  (Yup!)
2. Display the award logo.  (These are easy, right?)
3. Nominate 15 other bloggers (more or less) and provide a link where they may be found.  (Hmm, getting harder...)
4. Go to their blog, leave a comment to let them know they have been nominated.   (Still harder...)
5. Mention three things that inspired you the most during the past few weeks.

Oh, let's do that last one next.

First, there's my lovely wife, Mrs. Cygnus.  While the boy and I have been out in our new, Rocky Mountain Way locale for the last few weeks, she has been back on the east coast, getting the old house ready to sell, finishing up her job, and packing up the remaining stuff to be shipped out very soon.  Inspiring doesn't even begin to cover it.  She'll be rejoining us this weekend.

Second.  I'm teaching 30 undergraduates about outer space this semester.  The room I teach in has an old-style chalkboard (those are getting harder to find these days) and the chalk they give us is quite messy and powdery.  After one class of multiple erasings, it's hard to see the cloudy, almost-whitened board.  They don't seem to regularly wash the things, either, so as the week goes on, it gets cloudier and whiter.  It's kind of a running joke in class.

So what did I find last week when I came in to start teaching?  Three of my students up at the board with sponges and a water bucket they must have "borrowed" from some nearby supply closet.  We had a clean blackboard that day, I tell you!

(Was this strictly "inspiring?"  I don't know, but it sure warmed my heart.)

Third, is something that I'm not allowed to talk about yet.  Sorry!

My nominations:

In recent years, the term "blogging" has seen quite a bit of cognitive drift.  Thus, I'm not sure if many of the places I visit online are officially called blogs or not.  Let me just give you a list of links to some of these fun places, and hopefully they'll make your days better.

• I have no idea what the title Xanthor's Perfect Cromulence means, but it's a Tumblr blog full of retro-awesome science fiction imagery and factoids.
• I know I've blogged about fellow Glass Bead Game enthusiast Ron Hale-Evans before, but I don't think I've pointed you to his Pinboard page, on which he posts daily lists of URLs that he's found interesting.  I usually discover or learn something interesting whenever I catch up on his linking.
• In the "definitely not a blog" department, I've been enchanted by a series of stop-motion animation videos on youtube.  Doctor Puppet gives us new adventures (usually wordless, but narrated) of Doctor Who and his companions, in adorable puppet form.  A must-see for those who, um, put their hand in the hand of the man from Gallifrey.
• Jon Peterson, who runs the blog Playing at the World, is a professional historian of wargames and role-playing games.  He doesn't update the blog often, but each entry is a treasure-strewn dungeon crawl of historical baubles.
• If you're a fan of humor that is sometimes grotesque, usually NSFW, and often head-scratchingly bizarre, please pay a visit to LiarTown, USA.
• A lot of people are already reading io9.com, a blog about "science, culture, and the world of tomorrow," but I thought I'd give them a plug anyway.
• Oh, Porky, where art thou?  For purely selfish reasons, I wish this old-school gaming mogul would start blogging more frequently again.  His insights on games, narratives, philosophy, and cosmic weirdness are beyond compare.

Only seven?  Sorry, that's as many as I can think of right now.  Many of these sites I've never commented on, and I'm probably not going to start because of this award.  Still, by all means visit them and show them some love.

Thanks again for the award, Squid!