Category Archives: arts

pseudohistorical linguistics

I can’t remember how much I knew of Elvish languages before The Silmarillion, with a glossary, appeared in 1978. Can you tell from the text of The Lord of the Rings (not counting the Appendices) that Quenya and Sindarin are … Continue reading

Posted in fandom, language, prose | 3 Comments

sic transiverunt webcomics

About a dozen years ago I made a page of links to my favorite webcomics. Looking at that list now, I find that twelve that are still going (though a few are very sporadic), ten have stopped but remain accessible … Continue reading

Posted in cartoons | 2 Comments

ringy-dingy

My new telephone has dozens of ringtones and I hate them all: Newagey lo-fi orchestral crap, mostly laden with snare drums for some reason. My last phone played the sound of an old-fashioned mechanical bell; the one before that, a … Continue reading

Posted in music+verse, technology | 1 Comment

were-worms?!

Watched The Battle of the Five Armies. How many ways would the author be appalled? Puppy-love between a canonical Dwarf and a non-canonical Elf. Their pheromones cannot be compatible. There’s a Laketowner named Percy, a family name from France. (The … Continue reading

Posted in cinema | 2 Comments

adrift in a sea of time

In Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (1992), the narrator says or implies that the events happened many years ago; so I’ve been watching for details that date it. Oprah Winfrey, whose show premiered in 1986, is mentioned; I think that’s … Continue reading

Posted in prose | Leave a comment

Awake how often?

The protagonist of the TV series Awake lives in two worlds: one in which his wife died in a car crash, and one in which their son died instead. As we see it, he spends a day in Hannah’s timeline … Continue reading

Posted in cinema | 3 Comments

need a pun here about music and cryptography

Given a piece of music written for just intonation, clearly you could derive another piece by replacing all factors of 3 with factors of 5 and vice versa (or pick some other pair of primes). Sometimes the result might even … Continue reading

Posted in music+verse | 1 Comment