I’ve added my site and subscribed to the Localfeeds: Christchurch RSS feed. This uses the location information in the header HTML of my blog page to generate a list of recent posts from all the other people in Christchurch who’ve added their blogs to the service.

So hello to both of you.

The twelfth of November is the anniversary of the birth of Bahá’u'lláh. But Bahá’ís mark the beginning of the day at sunset, so we actually held the celebration last night.

The festivities centred around a story told by Bahá’u'lláh of a puppet show he saw as a child. I don’t believe that history records the actual content of the puppet show, except that it was set in a royal court, and that it impressed upon the young Bahá’u'lláh the ephemeral nature of earthly existence. The lack of records did not, however, prevent my father from appearing as the king in what I am pretty sure was not the original version, which conclusion I base on the degree to which the plot of this version centred on the invention of a royal hand-waving machine. Still, I think the point was made.

We Bahá’ís don’t go in much for special rituals on our holy days.

I’ve had the go-ahead from Dylan Horrocks to do one of the stories I pitched him for Atlas. This is going to be a challenge. Dylan is a Famous Guy. And the guest artist in the first issue of Atlas was James Kochalka. You know James Kochalka. He wrote Monkey Versus Robot. That guy. If he wears shoes, I’m sure they’re big ones to fill. And Dylan - I’ve seen him wearing shoes. I think my feet are bigger than his, but only literally.

My other story idea was, as I expected, politely rejected on the grounds that it was set in Dylan’s fictional nation of Cornucopia (which I suspect is based on the country in King Ottokar’s Sceptre) and it would almost certainly end up being inconsistent with Dylan’s main story, which is also set there. It would have involved two young Cornucopians in the mid 1980s deciding to become revolutionaries after hearing a Sex Pistols album, and publishing underground samizdat comics. I think I’ll hang onto that idea - maybe later on I could make it fit into Dylan’s conception of the history of Cornucopia.

The one I’ll be doing is about an expedition to explore the Hicksville library, which contains unpublished comics from all over the world. In preparation for this endeavour, I shall be reading all I can of Dylan’s work, and some Borges for good measure.

In other comics-related news, Grant tells me he has sent away a couple of the Inspector Fu proposal documents, and is on the trail of several other addresses.

After every major release of Mac OS X, John Siracusa at Ars Technica posts a lengthy, detailed and erudite critique. His review of Panther (Mac OS 10.3) is up today. It’s a jolly good read if you’re a Mac user. And if you’re a rabid anti-Mac partisan, it contains actual valid criticism you could put to good use.

Because what the world really really needs now is nuclear weapons in Saudi Arabia.

Somewhere along the line I was planning to have some dinner, but it doesn’t seem to have happened. And I was going to see a movie about now, but that doesn’t seem to be happening to me either. Apparently I do not have the power to alter reality to my tastes at the merest thought.

I must make a note of that.

Raise the double standard.
Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury, Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy

This is a very nice piece of theatre. It’s full of gimmicks, such as acknowledging the presence of the audience and feeding them asparagus rolls, but the story stands up perfectly well in its own right, and the characters, Irish immigrants in Australia, are very well developed.

Milo reminded me a little of my uncle, who happens to also be a first generation immigrant in Australia.

I’m about to install a new plugin to my site that will allow for threaded comments, so that you can post a comment that’s a reply to someone else’s comment and have it recognised as such.

So if everything’s all doolally for a bit, that’s why. People reading this from LiveJournal shouldn’t notice anything strange. Except for this message, which they won’t need to read anyway.

It seems I have agreed to take over as manager of the schools’ theatresports teams. Tomorrow I meet my minions.

One microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan, designed and directed by his red right hand.
Red Right Hand, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Some of my students have realised that I have a website, and I have set them the challenge of finding out what the URL is. So hello to William, Daniel and Alex, if you’ve succeeded in finding this site. I managed to find yours in a few minutes during lunchtime.

Now don’t forget you have an algebra test tomorrow.