Not quite confirmed yet, but all of his details are wrong.

It looks good. He's going down.

Robert Langdon grinned to himself as he considered the French word poseur was inextricably intertwined with the English word "pose," meaning "to pretend or hold an artificial position." This really shouldn't have caused him to grin, because it was pretty friggin' obvious, but he loved grinning at stuff he knew. It made him feel smart.

Posted by: Ace at 01:23 PM | Comments (21)
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They just loved his new pitch! It's got Christians as crazy, backward-thinking villains! It's gonna be huge-- Da Vinci huge!

So, the guy whose last movie basically justified Middle Eastern terrorism is now going to instruct us that there is no Middle Eastern terrorism, so we should all just stop being silly and chalk up the occasional suicide-bombing to "cultural exuberrance."

Robert Langdon was frequently surprised that most Christians were unaware that the term "complete f'n' douche-bag" was made up of four parts -- "complete," meaning "total" or "utterly," "f'n'," a made-up word whose origins cannot be guessed at, "douche," from the Latin ducere, meaning "to shower or spritz," and "bag," meaning "something you carry around douche-fluid in." This guy doesn't realize what a complete f'n' douche-bag he is, he grinned to himself, and then wondered if he would get to sit next to Dan Brown at next year's Oscars.

Posted by: Ace at 01:15 PM | Comments (10)
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Finally, a left-leaning organization that's brave enough to take a stand against importing sheep from Australia.

Robert Langon was surprised that few people knew that the continent of Australia was located to the south of the China in a body of water those "in the know" referred to as the "Southern Pacific."

Australia was the glittering, high-tech headquarters of Opus Dei, the fanatically conservative Catholic group which had the crazy idea that God should be worshipped in manners other than blowing a load into a stranger in a white mask.

The continent of Australia had been designed by the engineers of Magarathea, and was impressive in its size. Sixty three million Washington Monuments would fit conformtably inside the spacious offices, which included the Sydney Complex, the Melbourne Complex, the Canberra Complex, and the multi-million-dollar Outback Gymnasium/Solarium. The continent/office building called Australia also featured a state-of-the-art wave-generation system perfect for surfing -- and thus, attracting new recruits to the faith through some truly tasty waves.

From his perch at the secret top floor of the Sydney Opera House, Biship Agrinossa tented his fingers in a way that slient-movie villains were given to doing. It's all coming together now, he thought, gripping his suitcase full of bearer bonds issued by the Vatican bank. I just need to get that Crocodile Hunter Guy to convert to Opus Dei Catholicism, and then, somehow, I will end up ruling the world.

He frowned with the sort of scowl that indicated annoyance. Perhaps he's not available, he thought. But maybe Paul Hogan might be. Or even--

He grinned to himself as his paused in his thoughts, which never really happens, but just go with it. Yessss, he thought to himself, actually thinking out that drawn-out sibilant like Gollum. If not the Crocodile Hunter or Paul Hogan, than Yahoo Serious will be the perfect dupe to lead Opus Dei into worldwide domination, he grinned. I know he was already grinning, but now he was grinning even more, like, you know, crazy-grinning.

Meanwile, in Shanghai, Silas the Albino Monk-Assassin rolled up a character in a fantasy roll-playing game, hoping to escape the pain and alienation of being an albino monk-assassin.

He rolled his ability scores and his background, and through pure chance, created a character who was, alas, also an Albino Monk-Assassin. Mother F---ker, he cursed to himself, not so much grinning as grimacing.

God is the ultimate Dungeon Master, he realized sadly, whose cunningly-crafted "adventure modules" we simply cannot escape. Then he went back to beating his testicles with a frozen scrod.

Posted by: Ace at 12:41 PM | Comments (13)
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The liberal political advocates/part-time Jesuits must be tighting their cilices.

Dan Brown was always surprised at how few people knew the term "ovation" derived from the Roman tradition of honoring war heroes with a parade in the central streets of the capital. Actually, a lot of people knew that, but Dan Brown was frequently surprised at how he was frequently surpised by things people didn't know but actually did.

It just made him feel important to know things that only a few people knew (a "few" meaning several hundred milliion), and, by suggesting that such knowledge was esoteric or occult ("occult" from the Greek for "obscured," as evidenced in the term "occluded moon"), he could flatter all of his readers and make them enjoy his godawful books by pretending that they were part of the smart set who knew not-terribly-obscure things like the etymology for fairly basic words.

In other words, Dan Brown was an idiot. He had just been named as one of Boston's "Most Intriguing Cretins" by Boston Magazine. Few people seemed to realize that the word "cretin," meaning imbecile, was in fact evolved from the word "Cretans," or "inhabitants of the Isle of Crete." The earliest inhabitants of the Isle of Crete were thought to have evolved from a tribe called Total Fucking Morons, and thus had a reputation for being slow on the uptake or easily duped, as were, for example, Dan Brown's millions of fans.

Posted by: Ace at 12:00 PM | Comments (21)
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Nothing to see here, folks. He's a Democrat.

Robert Langdon was always surprised at how few Christians realized that paper money was an invention of the bankers of the Hanseatic League, who were the inheritors of the proto-banking system devised by the Knights Templar, created to settle large transactions between nations and the wealthiest of noblemen, and thus has always been a symbolic signifier of wealth.

And also, a symbolic signifier of money. Strangely enough, few Christians grasped that the innocent exchange of paper money was actually a symbolic transference of real value from one person to another.

In fact, Robert Langdon was frequently surprised at how dumb-stupid all Christians were, who seemed to know so little about their own false religion, and failed to grasp that the One True Religion consisted of worshipping the picture of a nude Aphrodite on page 84 of Deities & Demigods. Hubba-hubba! What a rack on her! And a belly-button you could eat Cheetos out of.

Thanks to Brad, who's wondering if anyone bothers to knock anymore as he gazes at that picture in his bathroom.

Posted by: Ace at 11:44 AM | Comments (17)
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Or at least a Happy Birthday to a guy who was halfway decent at writing lurid pulp, Arthur Conan Doyle.

Robert Langdon was always surprised at how few Christians realized that pulp-writer Robert E. Howard borrowed Doye's middle name for his pre-historic ur-barbarian Conan. The name was rich with symbolic significance, indicating a character who lived by wits, guile, and deception -- a "con-man," if you will, minus the "M," which is of course a sign for the sacred feminine and chalice-goddess Mary Magdalene -- which doesn't really describe Conan the Barbarian at all, but the importance of this symbolism cannot yet be doubted. Real historians write about it all the time.

I'm just finishing the Sign of the Four and plan to read Valley of Fear next, mainly because it has Moriarity in it, and while I'm forever seeing Moriarity in movies, I don't think I've actually read a single Holmes story that actually featured the Napoleon of Crime.

Langdon was always suprised to discover how few Christians realized the honorific "The Napoleon of Crime" referred not to the Emperor Napoleon, but rather to a sort of candy available at the time, suggesting that Moriarity was really friggin' sweet when it came to masterminding complex schemes.

He was also surprised how few Christians realized that Christ was, in fact, a Jew. Langdon was a notorious anti-semite, of course, having been called Boston's Most Intriguing Jew-Hater by Boston Magazine, a "Josef Goebbels in an Armani blazer," and he immediately ditched Sophie upon learning the REAL secret of the Holy Grail-- his love interest was one two-hundred-and-thrity-second part Jewish. He might have done her for a little while if she had only one five-hundred-seventy-sixth of that dirty Jew-blood in her, but really, he couldn't go above that.

Weird: From anonymous geek, a case Sherlock would have enjoyed.

Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts got a rare glimpse into the private world of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as thousands of personal papers — from his passport to his jotted-down story ideas — went on display Friday.

At the same time, the archive has become entwined in a mystery worthy of Conan DoyleÂ’s celebrated fictional detective: the bizarre death of a leading Holmes scholar.

The papers are to be auctioned off Wednesday, perhaps to disappear again into the obscurity of private ownership, a fate that had obsessed Richard Lancelyn Green, a former chairman of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London.

Green, 50, was found dead in his bed on March 27, garroted with a shoelace tightened by a wooden spoon, and surrounded by stuffed toys.

At an inquest last month, Coroner Paul Knapman said suicide was the most likely explanation, but he acknowledged there was no note, that garroting was a painful way to kill oneself, and that it therefore had been a “very unusual death.” He said the deceased had been acting paranoid, but that people assumed it was baseless.

"Why there's nothing mysterious about it," Holmes said. "So often strangeness is confused with mystery. Had this man been found simply dead in the street, the victim of an apparent beating or carriage-trampling, that would indeed be a mystery, as his death was so common, and provided such scant clues. But here the very particularity and oddness of the murder suggests the solution very nearly immediately. Quickly, Watson! We fly to Paddington Station. There's a jackass there named Dan Brown attempting to sully the pulp-detective tradition, and we must stop him before he further butchers the English language!!"

Posted by: Ace at 11:00 AM | Comments (19)
Post contains 591 words, total size 4 kb.

I'm trying this technique now to fight off the depression-inducing scowl I got from Dan Brown.

Posted by: Ace at 10:55 AM | Comments (1)
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'Ello,Vicar!

The Reverend John Hawdon was standing in for the regular vicar at Longforgan Parish Church in Perthshire.
But when nature called, his microphone broadcast his every splash and sigh to the congregation.

Posted by: LauraW. at 08:30 AM | Comments (15)
Post contains 55 words, total size 1 kb.

Updated: Added an observation that the book is not so much a novel as a prose-form mix-tape designed to seduce college co-eds, and I attack the idea that this is a "fast read." It's a "fast read" only because the reader does a lot of editing himself that Brown should have done, skimming and skipping entire pointless chapters of the book.

So, I read it. I had avoided the book for years but broke down to see what the fuss is about.

1, he's an awful writer. 2, his word-games and anagrams are eh -- some of them are pretty easy; some are decent. 3, it's a gonzo-Wicca bit of sexual-leftist agitprop. more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:12 AM | Comments (111)
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Hi ho everybody!

I'll be doing some maintenance on this blog later tonight (Pixy time). If I worked it out right, it should be about 6AM to 7AM EDT. The blog will be down for a few minutes, and then will come back up on another server at the mu.nu hosting farm.

Following the move, there will be a short period where you might land on the old version of the blog. If that happens, any comments you post won't show up, but they will be saved in the database, so they'll eventually turn up on the new version and embarass you because you clicked on the "Post" button eleven times.

So don't do that.

This post will self-destruct in, oh, about fifteen hours.

Update: Or I could get home and find that my internet access has gone down. Again. Leaving me with this broken wireless modem as my only backup.

Blog maintenance is on hold until the NOC monkeys work out why their Radius server has fallen over. Judging from past performance, that may take a while.

Update: Okay, the NOC monkeys were on the ball today (actually, I think the problem fixed itself) and I'm just doing a backup now prior to punting the blog across the paddock. See you shortly.

Update: Backup done. And awayyyy we go!

Update: Here we are again, happy as can be... If you can see this, you are in the right place.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:20 PM | Comments (25)
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