the daily snivel

It's funny that now that I have a serious itch to update my blog (since I'm procrastinating studying for my exams, I have a ton of energy for all those little projects and good intentions that otherwise get set aside), Blogger has been behaving quite badly, sending up all kinds of error messages, stalling on updates, and refusing to even let me access the posting facility. That's free technology for you.

My plea to Google: Stop adding features to Blogger. Just make it work first!

Anyway, in my rambling perusal of the internets [sic -- George W. Bush], I came across a great blog that, unintentionally, captures the style and wit of one of my favourite children's books, The Magic Pudding. The e-text can be downloaded at that link through the Gutenberg project, though you can also buy it at most good bookstores, and it really does need to be experienced with the original illustrations in my opinion. Anyway, the book was written at the turn of the last century, and is set in Australia. It features a surly magic pudding that walks around and insults people, but also demands to be eaten as it is endless and always renewing itself. It is accompanied by a well-spoken wombat, a penguin, and a crusty old seaman. I could never do it justice with a description, since it defies one. But give it a read. The language is wonderful, with this fantastic, free-flowing dialogue that reads the way people do talk (albeit the way they talked 100 years ago), and is witty and charming. There's a great passage when Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff are telling the story of how they came to be in the possession of the Puddin' (as it is called) and are a little vague on the details, suggesting at first that the original owner had an unfortunate accident, when the Puddin' interjects and says something to the effect of, "As I recall, you hit him on the head and threw him off the iceberg!"

Anyway, Fafblog is both witty and has similarly archaic and folksy language, but is also an excellent and endless source of biting commentary. Here's their analysis of the state of science in the USA of late (my favourite is "conservationism," which I've marked with bold):

Yknow science hasn't been real popular lately. What with Congress cuttin the National Science Foundation budget an nobody believin in evolution anymore an the president not carin about global warming, maybe it's time we switched to a New Science that everyone will like better!

FAFBLOG PRESENTS: NEW SCIENCE! New Science is way better than borin ol Old Science! With Old Science you hadda putter around lookin for facts an evidence to back up hypotheses, an use the hypotheses to come up with a scientific theory. An when you get new evidence you gotta change everything all over again! Well not with New Science! With New Science you get to pick the conclusion an work backwards to the pick the right facts! It's quicker an easier an more efficient - you don't even have to leave your house! This is just a preview of what New Science can do for you:

• BIOLOGY! New Biologists have done extensive testing an found that since we come from dust an to dust we shall return, we are primarily composed of dust, although the other four elements, air, water, fire, and funk, all play their own important roles as well. When you're feelin hungry an there's nothin to eat around, try scoopin up some dust (or dirt, if dust is scarce).
  
  
• ASTRONOMY! In older times scientists thought that the stars an planets rotated around the earth on fixed spheres in the sky. Silly scientists! Now New Scientists know the stars an planets rotate around the earth on fixed spheres in the sky pushed by angels. The rotation of these stars an planets determines critical elements of your destiny, such as whether today is a lucky day for love, or whether you will attract interest in yourself and your ideas.
  
  
• CLIMATOLOGY! Is the earth gettin warmer? Maybe but it sure isn't the fault a greenhouse gases! The earth just has a fever caused by an imbalance of the four humours. Pump a little more yellow bile into the atmosphere an it should be all set.
  
  
• CONSERVATIONISM! Rare animals are fantastical an legendary. When they go missin it's not cause they're endangered or cause they're gettin poisoned to death or anythin. It's cause they have snuck off to a fantastical an legendary land Wherre Therr Be Dragonnes! File em away in Doctor Fafnir's Bestiary of Fearsomme & Terreble Besttes, like the griffin or the manticore or the whooping crane!
  
  
• GODOLOGY! Why believe in God on crummy ol faith when New Science proves for a fact that he absolutely has to exist? Trained Godologists have determined that God orbits the earth in the celestial empyrean beyond the ninth sphere of the primum mobile. He is composed of 23% copper, 12% zinc, 4% nickel, and 61% Godmium, a special metal only used in the processin an manufacture of God. NASA Godnichians are hard at work buildin a space probe to launch into God by 2015!