Staggerlee

Get ready for a foul-playing weekend with Tony Furtado.

 

A 2nd Century space opera

The above video discusses the satirist Lucian of Samosata's work A True Story. In it, his protagonists get caught up in a whirlwind and get carried to the moon, where they get involved in a war between the Moon and the Sun over Venus. 

Because it takes place in outer space, a lot of people call it the first science fiction story. I don't think that is accurate. I think he is actually lampooning old-timey travel books which had a tendency to add all sort of fanciful nonsense to the tales to boost interest and sales.    

He also threw barbs at his contemporaries. One of his lines is "Plato was not there. It is said that he was living in an imaginary city under the constitution and laws that he himself wrote." So, it fits much more under the label of travel-writing satire and general lampoonery than science fiction. Still, it is interesting.

By the way, there are no women on the moon, so maybe it is actually a tragedy.

 

Paintings of whale hunts

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My regular readers may recall that on my last vacation/fishing trip I had planned to do some whale hunting. Alas, my scheme was foiled by the TSA when they refused to allow me to board the airplane with my harpoon. Stupid bureaucrats. This post, in honor of my dream, shows artwork depicting whale hunts. Oh, what might have been.

From Moby Dick:

Now, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon waned away; for in a whaler wonders soon wane. Besides, now and then such unaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from the unknown nooks and ash-holes of the earth to man these floating outlaws of whalers; and the ships themselves often pick up such queer castaway creatures found tossing about the open sea on planks, bits of wreck, oars, whale-boats, canoes, blown-off Japanese junks, and what not; that Beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down into the cabin to chat with the captain, and it would not create any unsubduable excitement in the forecastle.

Bad Moon Rising

Get ready for a minatory weekend with Craw NeQuent. 

 

Another year is in the books

Happy New Year

New Year's Eve is upon us so 2025 is disappearing over the horizon. It wasn't a bad year for me, but it was expensive. A lot of home maintenance costs tried their best to drain my wallet. I hope your year was fine as well.

And here's hoping 2026 works out for all of us. Enjoy any parties to attend and fireworks you may see, and enjoy your misplaced optimism while making New Year resolutions. You probably won't keep them anyway, but hope springs eternal. 

 

Nikolay Dubovskoy paintings

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Nikolay Dubovskoy (1859-1918) was a Russian romantic landscape painter. He traveled extensively and painted landscapes of different regions. He also was active in artist salons and academia. While well known in his day, the Soviets ignored him and his works were forgotten for a period.  

Portrait of Nikolay Dubovskoy by Vladimir Makovsky

Tocarte

Get ready for a tactilized weekend with Jorge Drexler and C. Tangana.