The essence of the discipline is the comprehension of the underlying reasons for a thing's absurdity

I have just discovered the worst cough drops in the world. They taste exactly like bath salts. Now I need new cough drops.

Google Blog Search is the devil's playground.

Pace Ernest Thesiger, I think this is my new favorite image: Louis Daguerre's "Boulevard du Temple" (1838 / 1839). It looks so much less like the early photograph it is than some silver-etched Boschian take on Paris, with ghosts and deserted streets and the buildings blurring off into the sky . . .

( Les miroirs sont les portes par lesquelles la mort vient et va. )

palecast, this is Paradys.

And if you want another kind of love, I'll wear a mask for you

Today was spent almost entirely with rushthatspeaks and nineweaving and the Archers, and managed simultaneously to be a good writing day; if not in wordcount, at least, then in returns.

Sirenia Digest #14 is now available. I am reasonably pleased with how "A Voice in Caves" came out, and greygirlbeast's "The Sphinx's Kiss" is a superlative piece even by the digest's usual standards—think Oscar Wilde's Salomé as reinterpreted by Tom Waits. Check it out for yourself if you don't believe me. greygirlbeast's offer still holds.

On the print-and-ink front, I am now also in possession of Midrash, the latest Not One of Us Special Publication. In its pages can be found my poems "Perdidit Spolia" and "Orpheus at the Bimah," as well as rushthatspeaks' "The Finland Woman," hans_the_bold's "Ilium," and other slant and strange retellings. Since the untimely demise of Project Pulp, I have no handy link to point to for its purchase, but I'm sure some accommodation can be reached.

My flash "Pisces" has been accepted by Full Unit Hookup. The piece was inspired by a Roman mosaic I saw several years ago in a museum in Italy—I failed entirely to note down where it came from, or even where it is currently on display, but it did depict dolphins and flatfish and crabs. There is no actual zodiac in this story.

Watch this space for thoughts on The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. I love Anton Walbrook.