Setting Things Straight in Owenia

I recently received feedback on one of my PhD papers I'd submitted to a journal. The paper was about my simulation environment, which I discussed in an earlier post. One of the problems that the reviewer had identified with my model was a rule in my simulation which implied cannibalism. Basically, when an agent in my simulation dies it's health is recycled back into the local ecosystem to be reused as an energy source. My thinking was that this implies cannibalism in the same way that eating food fertilised with manure implies eating shit.

Anyway, I was thinking about this problem in my simulation late into the night. Long after Jodi and Gypsy had gone to sleep I saw strange lights shining though the window from outside the house. I went to investigate and there was Windy Pop, my friend from the planet Flatulon-Nine, whom I'd thought I'd only dreamt. Windy Pop told me of this place he visited called Owenia. I have no way of accounting for it, but it would seem that by some strange cosmic phenomena the world which I created in my simulation had become actualised as a real world, some twenty thousand light years on the far side of galactic central point. The occupants of Owenia, the Owenians, celebrated effigies of me, referring to me as the Designer. Now, I'd be inclined to say that this type of thing is an inevitable consequence of living in an infinite universe, something we all just have to accept and deal with, but the stories Windy Pop told demanded affirmative action. I had designed the inhabitants of Owenia to be capable of competition and reproduction, thereby evolve-ability. Although they were capable of evolving certain forms of biological altruism, such as aging, they weren't able to act in a cohesively social manner - apparently they just weren't made of the right type of stuff. The horrors Windy Pop recounted to me included the sins of necrophilia and cannibalism. Clearly it was my duty to visit this world I was responsible for creating, so that I may provide some higher order moral guidance.

Initially, Windy Pop's main method of transportation around the universe was via space taxi, but this proved problematic as it is very hard to find a space taxi without an air-freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, which, as any Flatulonian will tell you, is the root of all evil. But thanks to invaluable advice from a wise sage about the magical properties of Santa's reindeer wee, Windy Pop devised a method of interstellar astral travel between planets by consuming copious quantities of reindeer wee. Unfortunately this had an unpleasant side effect of dizziness, so I only vaguely remember the trip. I do remember first seeing the torus shape of Owenia in the distance. (A torus is a ringed doughnut shape. This seemed like a convenient shape for my simulation world, which is essentially a square grid with the edges wrapped around and connected. Try it yourself with a piece of paper).

Once I got to Owenia I refrained from revealing myself to the Owenians. Instead I selected a special group of people, who were currently enslaved by a selfish group of Owenians, to be holy agents. I also selected, from among them, a special one, named Mooses, who I spoke to in the form of a burning bush and told to lead the holy agents into an empty cell patch called the promised land. I gave Mooses special powers allowing him to part the seas, which defined the borders of the cell patches, permitting the holy agents to pass. After the holy agents were freed of their captors, I called Mooses up to a nice grassy knoll where we had a nice picnic of baguette and dessert wine, and I gave him the rules by which to live in the promised land - the Ten Commandments:

The Pixie Princess and the Boy Who Cried for No Reason. Part Four.

Finally the night of the ice cream feast to be held in honour of the hero of Batmania, the Boy Who Cried for No Reason, had arrived. It also happened that it was New Year's Eve. The Boy Who Cried and the Gyppopotamus arrived at the castle of the King of Batmania, which was only accessible via a drawbridge over a moat filled with a ferocious herd of moo-moo cows. The King wasn't married, which was why his castle was a bit of a bachelor pad. On one wall the King had framed and hung all his Swindleburn University degrees and diplomas, in order to impress any visiting princesses. He also had a disco ball and a high speed internet connection which he used to read interesting blogs and look at pictures of pretty Batmanian women who didn't feel the need to wear pants.

By the time the Boy Who Cried had arrived the party was in full swing. He didn't know that the Pixie Princess and the Golden Dragon were stuck in the kitchen trying to organise a late delivery of goblin testicles, which needed to be freshly picked before being added to the ice cream. Outside in the party room all the waiters and waitresses for the feast were dressed in Conan and Barbarella outfits respectively. The music was handled by my sister Alice, a band of 80's minstrels, Fi and the Flatulonian choir group, who were lead by Windy Pop and Ludicrousity. God and Darwin were having a heated argument in the corner with the Mormons, Rev. Qelqoth, Santa and Dboy eagerly watching on. An effeminate poet and librarian, having just finished on the twee porno set, were kicking back having a few milk drinks at the milk bar with Cassandra, Inigo Montoya, Goldmourn, Cass and Ben. The Internet Pixies, Wire, Donald Duck, Dave, Kenneth Branagh and the workers of the panty vending machine sweatshop were running around without any pants on, having a pillow fight. Daniel Kitson, Adam, the Pixie Prince and Leighton were having an involved, graphic, conversation about masturbation. There was a crazy constipated person waving a dildo-cam at Meg, L.S.T. and Jasper (or whatever his name may be). The Gyppopotamus, who was a little shy after the golden sock incident, decided it would be best if she hid in shadows with Frankie and all the readers who hadn't yet identified themselves in comments. Jodi, Gypsy and I were also there. In fact, Jodi and I were also celebrating the third anniversary of our meeting and not quite getting together. I was very excited about the prospect of having a deep philosophical conversation with my character creations, but Jodi pointed out to me that it was the Boy Who Cried's special day and that it would be unfair to cause him an existential crisis.

When the Boy Who Cried's arrival was announced everybody went to meet the hero and to give him a hug and congratulate him on the golden sock quest. The King, who was very excited, asked the Boy Who Cried if he would re-enact his adventures in the Gyppopotamus lair for everyone. The King even agreed to play the part of the Gyppopotamus, who still didn't want to come out from hiding in the shadows. Everyone agreed that a re-enactment would be spiffing and they all cajoled the Boy Who Cried onto the stage, took a seat and were quiet. But the Boy Who Cried was overwhelmed and didn't know what to do. He worried that he might start crying again. The King lay on the stage with the golden sock in his mouth and pretended to be the Gyppopotamus monster, asleep. But the Gyppopotamus decided that the King was doing it all wrong and pushed the King off the stage and stole the golden sock back. The Boy Who Cried and the Gyppopotamus then staged an epic battle, tooing and froing across the stage and around the room, clambering over the audience, who divided into those who were supporting the Boy Who Cried and those who were supporting the Gyppopotamus, cheering them on. Eventually the Boy Who Cried disarmed the Gyppopotamus of her magic sharp stick and retrieved the golden sock. The audience were so impressed by the performance that they all stood up and applauded, calling for an encore. The Boy Who Cried and Gyppopotamus both bowed, and the Gyppopotamus was so happy and excited that she couldn't help but wee a little on the stage. The Gyppopotamus' bravery inspired the readers who hadn't yet identified themselves in comments, to at least say Happy New Year at the next opportunity.

Everybody was so happy eating ice cream and dancing that they almost missed the countdown to the New Year. They all paused, charged their ice cream bowls and got ready to start the count down. TEN ... The Pixie Princess quickly came out of the kitchen to join the party for the countdown ... NINE ... and the Boy Who Cried saw the Pixie Princess ... EIGHT ... for the first time ... SEVEN ... and this made the Boy Who Cried for No Reason start to cry ... SIX ... but it didn't feel like the normal crying for no reason ... FIVE ... it was as if every time he'd cried for no reason ... FOUR ... was because he was crying in anticipation of this moment ... THREE ... and the pixie princess saw the Boy Who Cried crying ... TWO ... and she wanted to ... ONE ... give him a big hug ... HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Frankie

In my studies I conduct evolutionary ethics experiments on artificial agents in ALife simulations, because, surely, such experiments conducted on real people would be unethical. Recall, in an earlier post I talked about the evolution of a necrophilia bug in my simulations. Such monstrosities are usually easily eradicated by pulling the plug on the simulation, and whatever virtual presence my agents had is slowly erased as their computer world starts to reuse the space they occupied for other purposes - in other words, genocide! I thought that I would share the story of the agent that got away, so that others may learn of the follies of science, and not meddle in matters reserved for God.

Although it may be useful for metaphorical purposes to leave the agent nameless, I feel that it will avoid much confusion if I give it a name. I imagine that if I rely on others to refer to it as my monster (i.e. Owen's monster) this will inevitably lead to people confusing the monster with the creator and calling the monster Owen (although, perhaps, it is really me who is the monster). Instead I'll call my monster Frankie.

Now, Frankie had a penchant for copulating with the dead. I couldn't allow such an abomination to continue in my simulation, so I quickly made to hit the reset button... but Frankie slipped through. So it was that Frankie ended up wandering aimlessly, and pantsless, though the wilderness knowing nothing other than the instincts instilled in him to graze on the AFood and to mate with the ADead. Eventually Frankie came upon a kind old blind hermit, who didn't judge him, and took Frankie into his home and taught him to speak English and to read. Frankie even learned how to play the recorder. For a while Frankie was truly happy. Once he became proficient enough with his reading to decipher my bad grammar he attempted to read my online publications. He became troubled by questions - why had I deserted him and left him for dead?

Anyway, after accidentally killing the hermit and throwing Kenneth Branagh into a lake, it became clear that, although Frankie had many similarities to humans (i.e. he was a self replicating, survival machine), he didn't have a soul. Enraged and all alone, Frankie sought me out so that he could demand that I create him another, a partner, a bride...

And so it was that I discovered the existence of my creation. Initially I just wanted him to leave me alone, so that I could hide from my past mistakes. I outright refused to further my sins by creating another, as he demanded. But Frankie tricked me by destroying my computer, and thus my results, so that I had to rerun my experiments in a desperate attempt to submit my PhD before my scholarship money ran out. But both Frankie and I were denied, as the inbuilt evolving expiry age caused the newly born agent to terminate itself before reproduction could occur.

After that there was some windmill burning incident, with farmers with torches and pitchforks angry about the death of the kind old blind hermit. Or maybe it was something to do with the north pole. Or perhaps it was just the high rate of accidental deaths in my simulation. Regardless, whatever happened to Frankie remains a mystery, leaving open the possibility of a come back in one of my future posts or in a horrid Hollywood film, such as Van Helsing, milking and destroying popular fictional characters.

Santa Spoiler Warning

It is a well established fact that once someone becomes a father he also becomes a veritable fountain of embarrassing crap jokes (in fact, I've heard talk that this could be used as an early indicator of pregnancy). We all develop an instinct for when a Dad joke is about to be told. Perhaps it is the way your father clears his throat, waiting for an appropriate moment to interject with his witticism. Whilst eating at the local Chinese restaurant, whenever questioned about his fortune cookie message, my father will reliably answer, "This insert has a protective coating". I have a theory about the production of Christmas Cracker jokes - I imagine Christmas Cracker factories where children with new haircuts, waiters dropping dishes and people wearing bad ties are paraded before father-son pairs and the ensuing monologue is recorded. The child's embarrassment levels are measured, via electrodes attached to the forehead, to test for quality assurance.

The internet must be like prospecting for gold for most fathers. My father subscribes to a number of mailing lists, which run hot with Santa jokes in the weeks preceding Christmas. This leads to the eternal conflict every father must continuously face: to protect the sacred innocence of the childhood myth of Santa, or to tell the Dad Joke? As an aside, I'm a little confused about the whole Santa thing. A phenomenon I've noticed for myself, which I can only presume extends to others, is a reverse in the direction of the Santa myth. Originally intended as a story parents will tell their children, it seems to me that Santa is a pretence that children will hold for their parents sake. I remember feeling very embarrassed for my parents whenever I became aware of a transparency in the Santa myth. For example, when I noticed that my parents were becoming careless in the hiding of the Santa presents, I'd attempt to hide them better, by putting something over them. Perhaps this is something particular to being an eldest child, (i.e. protecting the younger siblings). I asked my 11 year old brother the other day what he thought about the whole Santa thing. He answered that it depended on who was asking, because if it was our parents the answer would be that he was a believer. His logic was that as long as he continued the pretence of naivety then he'd continue to cash in on the extra presents (talk about mixed messages). I recall the Christmas that my father had the Santa discussion with me. The motive behind this advent was a little confused, as not only did I stop receiving presents from Santa, my father started sharing his internet Santa jokes with me (actually, they were probably BBS jokes, as this was before the internet). I recall the joke that my father shared with me on this occasion, probably because of it's aptness, as it was about the scientific impossibilities of Santa. I was unable to find the original publication (which, to the best of my knowledge, was, the now defunct, Spy Magazine), but found numerous reproductions across the internet. Here it is reproduced, yet again:

Is there a Santa Claus?

Consider the following:

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man- made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that 'flying reindeer' (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.

Anybody else have any Dad Jokes they care to share?

The Pixie Princess and the Boy Who Cried for No Reason. Part Three.

When we last heard about the Pixie Princess she had been exiled from the pixie kingdom and cursed with the hairy legs of a goat. The Pixie Princess quickly forgot how to climb trees and became a recluse because she didn't want anybody to know about her hairy legs. She found some work as an IP (Internet Pixie), because there wasn't much demand for her stink bomb expertise among the big people, who didn't seem to mind the mandarin trees. She lived in a cave with a big round green door. One day there was a knock on the door. When the Pixie Princess went to answer it she found a Golden Dragon on the doorstep. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Dungeons and Dragons Monstrous Compendium - there are many different types of dragons, usually identifiable by their color. Red dragons, the best known of dragons, breathe fire and are very evil. Golden dragons are quite the opposite and are very nice. Although, they will get angry if you try to poke them with a sharp stick, and will most probably eat you. Even if the sharp stick has a magical enhancement of +1! Another type of monster is the parenthesis beast, which can contain many sentences and, occasionally, multiple jokes).

The Golden Dragon was looking into all the caves in the neighbourhood trying to find a deserted one to live in. He was a refugee from the woods of the kingdom of Batmania, where he lived next door to the Gyppopotamus monster. The Gyppopotamus often wanted to play with the Golden Dragon, but the Golden Dragon knew that the Gyppopotamus could be a bit rough. The Golden Dragon tried flying up into trees where the Gyppopotamus couldn't reach him, but the Gyppopotamus would sit and wait, staring at the Golden Dragon, wondering when she'd be able to feast on the goo within. When the Golden Dragon realised that the Pixie Princess was already living in the cave, he was sad and apologised profusely. But the Pixie Princess, who understood what it felt like to have no home, told the Golden Dragon to stay for a while, until he felt ready to start looking again. The Golden Dragon stayed for a day. And then another day. And then another...

Before they knew it the Golden Dragon and the Pixie Princess had lived together for many, many years and had become fast friends. The two of them were business partners in a joint entrepreneurial venture. After discovering the Pixie Princess's talents for designing stink bomb recipes, the Golden Dragon told the Pixie Princess about the Batmanian's passion for different types of ice cream. The Pixie Princess got a whole load of really cool ideas for ice cream flavours, some of the Golden Dragon's favourite flavours were Toe Jam Crunch, Snot-o-Rama and Ice Cream Number Twos. Apparently, there was quite a market for gourmet ice creams among the Batmanian social elite, who would often hold ice cream tasting parties where the participants would smell, taste and then spit out the ice cream, before making various wanky remarks on the vintage and taste. Sometimes, a Batmanian would accidentally swallow a bit of the ice cream and get sick, and sometimes, if it was one of the Pixie Princess's finest, they would get a little sick after taking a good whiff.

The Golden Dragon's part in the ice cream venture was to transport the ice cream across the sea to the Batmanians. It was on one such trip that the Golden Dragon received a personal correspondence from the King addressed to the Pixie Princess. The letter told them that the King, who was quite a gourmand and often frequented ice cream tasting parties, was very impressed with the Pixie Princess's ice creams and wanted her to present them at a feast to be held in honour of a hero who had retrieved his golden sock. The Pixie Princess was very shy around people and was unsure if she wanted to go. But the Golden Dragon saw that it was a real honour for the Pixie Princess to be invited to the feast, and told her that she had to go or she'd regret it for the rest of her life. So, they found a nice outfit for her to wear to the party (one with long pants) and the Golden Dragon got the Pixie Princess to sit on his back and they flew to the ice cream feast together.

My Recent Adventures on Flatulon-Nine

I've recently returned from a wondrous journey though the blogosphere. I have just updated to the new blogger in beta. As some of you may have noticed, things have changed around a little bit here. I've tried to keep things similar to the way they were before. Most of the big changes have occurred where you can't see them, with the provision of tools, making the whole blogging thing a bit easier (although, totally screwing up all my little HTML hacks). So, this is probably a good time for all you lazy MySpacers to do the transition into the more serious (i.e. more snobbish) blog world. I'd be happy to help anybody get started on blog spot (which is free), to get over the slight HTML hurdle (although, I'm no expert). Maybe a pot of tea and a chat at my place to get you on your merry way.

I thought I might tell you a story about one of my many adventures during my journey though the blogosphere, about this place I visited, called Flatulon-Nine. I told Jodi about it this morning, and she said that it was surely a dream. This might make sense considering that Jodi has been very gassy of late. Although, she insists that it's actually Gypsy who is the gassy one, but she's been really good since we got her off the canned food (no such luck with Jodi). Anyway, it's a special type of gas which helps me to sleep and induces interesting dreams...

The occupants of Flatulon-Nine are the Flatulonians. The Flatulonians are very similar the people of Earth, except their heads are located where their bottoms should be, and their bottoms are located where their heads should be. They also walk around on their hands, so nobody bothers washing their hands after they've been to the toilet. The Flatulonians communicate by farting at each other. It is considered rude if you fart whilst you are facing someone, because that would mean you're talking in the opposite direction. Sometimes the Flatulonians get confused about who is talking to who, because they often can't see who they are talking to. Sometimes, conversations simply tail off, if they get distracted by marauding air fresheners, and forget about the Flatulonian they are talking to behind them. This is mostly OK, because the Flatulonians are a very understanding people. In fact, one of their favourite things to do is to say "I love you" to each other. Flatulonians say "I love you" by farting (the louder the better) directly in the recipient's face (small cute pop farts translate as a small cute "I wuv you"). This requires a certain amount of co-ordination if they want to surprise each other during marriage proposals (in fact, many Flatulonians accidentally propose to the wrong person, but are happy regardless). When Mummy and Daddy Flatulonians love each other very much, they sometimes make fart love, which looks a bit like 69 rimming, and this is how baby Flatulonians are created.

Whilst I was staying at Flatulon-Nine I made a friend called Windy Pop. Windy Pop was considered very attractive to the Flatulonian girls (who thought his fart smells were very rock n' roll). In spite of this, he was very lonely. The problem was that he thought about things too much. He'd met a girl that he liked very much, but every time he tried to say that he loved the girl, he'd hesitate, worrying that he might be too hasty, or not able to perform, or that a bit of pooh might accidentally come out. As it was, by the time he'd farted out his declaration of love and turned around to see if it would be reciprocated, the girl Flatulonian had already left.

The Pixie Princess and the Boy Who Cried for No Reason. Part Two.

Previously, we heard the story of the Pixie Princess, and so I think it only fair that this part of the story be mostly devoted to the Boy Who Cried for No Reason (which is a rather inconveniently long title to write out every time, and therefore I will henceforth refer to him simply as the Boy Who Cried). In fact, the Pixie Princess spends the entirety of this part of the story gazing up at the stars, wondering about what infinity smells like, and other appropriately profound thoughts.

At the end of the last episode the Boy Who Cried had just been born. And he cried. He didn't cry for any reason, which was why he was called the Boy Who Cried for No Reason. His mother and father were fearsome pirates (who were quite nice, really), and it was expected that he would follow in their footsteps. The Boy Who Cried very much loved growing up on the sea and he became very good at talking like a pirate, saying things like "shiver my timbers!" and calling the various people he met "scurvy bilge rats" or "land lubbers" depending on the circumstances. When he was old enough, his parents wanted him to join the boarding parties when they invaded other ships (which was really just a bit of fun to give the others a bit of a scare). But the problem was that Boy Who Cried for No Reason also could have been known as the Boy Who Cried at Inopportune Moments, and all his sooking during the boardings had the effect of ruining the game. His mother started to worry that he might be gay, even though he claimed he was just a little bit poofy. And so it was that once he had turned 11, he left the pirate life to seek his fortunes in the kingdom of Batmania.

Batmania was a wonderful place where nobody ate animals or vegetables. The favourite meal of the Batmanians was ice-cream, which they had for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The King of Batmania, who was very fat, had recently lost one of his favourite golden socks, which had been taken by a formidable monster who lived in the woods. Everybody was scared of the monster and would run away when they knew it was coming. They could tell it was about to leave its lair because it would always ring a bell when it wanted to go outside. The King, who was upset about his golden sock, had put up reward posters all over the kingdom, seeking a hero who could retrieve his sock. The reward was an invitation to a feast at the King's castle, where the hero would eat as much ice-cream with chocolate topping as he could.

The Boy Who Cried had never had ice-cream. According to his parents, pirates didn't eat ice-cream. But he was curious and set upon the quest to retrieve the golden sock. The Boy Who Cried was searching in the woods when he came upon a cave which had a sign over the entrance which read:


And so the Boy Who Cried crept into the cave. Inside, the floor was strewn with the remnants of slain Kleenex tissues. In the middle of this tissue carnage was the sleeping form of the Gyppopotamus monster and in her jaws was the King's golden sock. The Boy Who Cried very carefully retrieved the golden sock without waking the Gyppopotamus and was about to get away when he started crying again. He tried his hardest to be quiet, but he wasn't able to stop himself from waking the Gyppopotamus. When the Gyppopotamus stirred and got up, the Boy Who Cried shut his eyes, waiting... But the Gyppopotamus was actually a friendly monster and she just wanted to play with the Boy Who Cried because she was lonely. The Boy Who Cried liked the Gyppopotamus and they decided to be friends. So the two of them went to return the golden sock to the King so they could attend the ice-cream feast together...

On the way there they camped out under the stars, and the Boy Who Cried told the Gyppopotamus all the things he knew about them from his seafaring days. Little did they know that they were looking at exactly the same stars as the Pixie Princess who had just got a good idea for an infinity stink bomb.

The Pixie Princess and the Boy Who Cried for No Reason. Part One.

Jodi and Gypsy often pester me to make up stories for them. I should note here that Jodi is very much into children's literature, it being the topic of her honours thesis. Past stories I've made up for them have included "Gypsy Maude Investigates", "A Tree and a Rock: A Love Story" and "How Magic Stick got his Stickiness Back". She got all excited when I said that I'd write the next one on this blog. I hope that you also enjoy it. If not, too bad...

The Pixie Princess and the Boy Who Cried for No Reason.
Part One.

In this first part of the story there is only the pixie princess. The boy who cried for no reason wasn't born yet. In fact, the boy who cries is only born at the very end of this first part of the saga, so don't hold your breath waiting for him. The set up is fairly typical for a pixie princess: you know - an evil pixie stepmother queen and a boorish pixie prince to whom the evil pixie queen was forcing the pixie princess to be married. But the problem was that the pixie princess was not too much into the pixie prince. The pixie princess felt that the pixie prince's kisses could be likened to having a bucket of warm saliva thrown in her face. (Although, in the years to come, the pixie princess realised that the pixie prince wasn't all that bad and regretted describing him thus).

The pixie princess' real passion was in the research and development of increasingly technologically advanced stink bombs (to be used in the war efforts against the mandarin trees, which the pixies hated with a passion). Here is the ingredients of one of the recipes she won the prestigious "stinky logie" (pronounced 'loo-gee') award for:

4 brussel sprouts
3 blow flies (deceased)
1 1/2 goblin testicles
1 jar of pickled leeches
1 pint of pixie wee
2 pieces of Gypsy pooh
5 slices of devon sausage

The pixie princess lived in a tree-house built in a beautiful oak tree called Roger. The tree, Roger, was decorated with hundreds of bells and every time a strong wind blew, the bells rang with a sound like that of a school orchestra where everybody wants to play the triangle.

One day, after a particularly unsuccessful (or rather, overly successful) stink bomb experiment, the pixie princess heard sounds coming from the ground below her tree-house. She peered out of the tree-house to see a band of '80s minstrels - boys wearing eyeliner, and girls in colourful ra-ra skirts. The sounds of electronic keyboards, synthesisers and saxophone solos mixed with the sound of Roger's bells.

After witnessing this magical display, the pixie princess became convinced that her calling was amongst the big people that inhabited the ground. But the evil pixie stepmother queen had expected that the whimsical princess might try to leave the pixie kingdom and had put a curse on her. And so it was, that when she reached the ground, the pixie princess realised that the evil pixie stepmother queen had cursed her with the hairy, hooved legs of a goat and that she could never return to the pixie kingdom...

It was at this time that the boy who cried for no reason was born, and he cried for no reason.

Tweemo

As if the individual music genre terms of "twee" and "emo" weren't confusing enough, Adam and John had to coin the amalgamated concept of "tweemo". Twee, originally intending something excessively or affectedly quaint, and emo, short for emotional. Twee was originally derogatory and emo has become derogatory. Perhaps this photo, taken on a recent trip to the beach, of the two masterminds behind the word demonstrates its necessity:


A large part of the weekend involved the invention of twee porn titles (e.g. barely eightween). The story line, repeated across the genre, with minor variation by unimaginative twee porno directors, goes: a boy and girl, both wearing cardigans, meet (perhaps he's an effeminate poet and she's a librarian). They sit, mostly turned away from the camera, looking over a beautiful dandelion meadow (Belle & Sebastian is playing). The girl's cardigan slides, ever so slightly, down her shoulder. The boy reaches out to take the girls hand in his own. They turn to face each other, and stare into each others eyes as the sun sinks below the horizon between them and they slowly get old together. THE END.

I like twee music. Although, I have to admit the origin of the term is a bit off putting. It figures though, because I'm slightly effeminate and my girlfriend's a librarian. I made her a twee CD, here is the track list:

Music Is My Boyfriend - The Hidden Cameras
I Don't Know Why I Love You - The House Of Love
Bachelor Kisses - The Go-Betweens
The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get - Morrissey
Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby - Islands
The Luckiest Guy On The Lower East Side - The Magnetic Fields
Lovefool - The Cardigans
Let's Get Out Of This Country - Camera Obscura
Sort Of Mine - Heavenly
Build - The Housemartins
Our Lady In Havana - Essex Green
Sleep Tonight - Stars
The Leanover - Life Without Buildings
Wishbone - Architecture in Helsinki
My British Tour Diary - Of Montreal
Just Like Fred Astaire - James
Camera-Shy - The Lucksmiths
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out - The Smiths
Beautiful - Belle & Sebastian
On The Bus Mall - The Decemberists
Listen To My Heart - Steinbecks

Of course, a close inspection of this list will lead some to exclaim "but that's not twee..." when questioned further their main reason will be because they like it. I think that this is, probably, a problem with the original definition, which being negative, implies that all twee must be negative, but if it was then no one would like it.

I don't know about emo. I researched to try and find out which bands constitute emo music. But, I haven't heard of any of them, apart from more recent, post emo (i.e. post decrease in popularity), bands like death cab, which I imagine wouldn't call themselves emo. People seem a little crazy on the whole emo hate thing. I suspect that many of them wouldn't actually be able to list many emo bands. And why does JB have an emo section? Well, what I know is that James Blunt isn't in the emo section so someone else is to blame for his music (which sounds like a cat being tortured). Lets regain our focus, rally the troops and work on the real evil here.