Well, That's Interesting: Japanese Mythology

I found an interesting - if somewhat unorganized - page on one aspect of Japanese culture:

• "Japanese Mythology"

(Mythology as: "myths collectively; the body of stories associated with a culture or institution or person" (Princeton's WordNet)

I'm a bit curious about how the page was written. One paragraph ends with this fragment:

"Standing on the floating bridge of heaven, Izanagi and Izanami stirred the primeval ocean with a"

And that's where it ends. I've no idea what Izanagi and Izanami were stirring the ocean with. Oh, well. Maybe it's the jeweled spear that drops abruptly into the next paragraph.

There's an interesting account of Izanagi and Izanami, after Izanagi's departure to the netherworld, that has a sort of parallel in the story of Persephone.

"And Make it Look Like an Accident" - Plausible Settings for Epic Science Fiction

While preparing tomorrow morning's posts for another blog, I ran into an article about a huge cloud of hydrogen and helium in our neighborhood - 'neighborhood' on a galactic scale, anyway. Barring unforeseen circumstances and gremlins, it'll be on Apathetic Lemming of the North in about 17 hours. Look for a post titled "Our Sun and The Fluff."

There were a few intriguing points about the article I was micro-reviewing for that post, and while checking some of them out I ran into references to the Local Bubble, the Gum Nebula, and other fairly large-scale features within fifteen thousand light-years of us.

The best illustration I've found yet, as a one-stop introduction to the area immediately around our sun isn't at its original URL any more. Either that, or their server is down at the moment. I did, however, find a copy of it, with a pretty good description, here:

• "Astronomy Picture of the Day"
  a service of LHEA at NASA/GSFC & Michigan Tech. U. (February 17, 2002)
• "The Local Bubble and the Galactic Neighborhood"
  NASA Images - a service of the Internet Archive (Linda Huff (American Scientist) (April 12, 2000?)
  • This one's a zoomable version of the illustration, with links

I'm still digging around, to see if I can find a moderately large-scale event roughly 10 to 30 million years back, that left a mark like the Gum Nebula or Local Bubble: that I can make look like a serious industrial accident.

---

Update (December 28, 2009)

I may be on to something here:

• "The History of the Local ISM: The Last 50 Million Years"
  Goyette, J.; Bruhweiler, F. C.; Pitts, M.; Gabel, J. - American Astronomical Society, 198th AAS Meeting, #65.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 33, p.884

And Now for Something Completely Different: A Different sort of Christmas Rhyme

Clement Clarke Moore's "Twas the Night before Christmas" - or "A Visit from St. Nicholas" - is a well-known poem. And often parodied.

I think the simple rhyme scheme and meter help.

I had 250 words to post for another blog today, an illustration that I'd given the working title of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" - and no terribly good ideas. So, Thursday, I sat down and set a sequence of events I'd been playing with into a rhyme that mimicked Moore's best-known work:

• "Not Your Usual Fluffy Christmas Rhyme"
  (December 25, 2009)

Oh, what the hey. I'll repeat the thing, here.

Pip

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the shop
Nothing was stirring, you could hear a pin drop.
The sleigh was not ready, the toys were not packed,
Santa was fuming and quite lacking in tact.

"Pip!" he called out to the foreman on duty,
Where is your crew? And don't act so snooty!
Pip's feelings were hurt, but he wondered the same
Were they lost? Had they left? Were they playing a game?

"Never mind!" thundered Santa, while grabbing his sack,
"We'll do it ourselves: There are toys in the back."
So into the warehouse like madmen they flew.
Santa and Pip had much packing to do.

And then, down a corridor seldom in use,
They heard something like an hysterical goose.
But no, there were words in that hideous shriek,
It was music: now Santa was prone to critique.

Santa strode to the source of that hideous din,
Closely followed by Pip, who beheld with chagrin:
Three elves and four bottles and, there on a chair,
A boom box whose music was filling the air.

Santa stood for a moment, transfixed by the sight
Then he bellowed so loudly that Pip shook with fright.
"You! Chuckles! And Bubbles! And you, mister Suds!"
Why are you carousing while in your work duds?"

The fate of that threesome Pip would not relate,
Except to recall that the hour was late:
And Santa was anxious to fly in his sleigh,
And dealt with loose ends on the following day.