Fantasist's Scroll

This is a test of the auto-poster! It’s not real fancy, but it works. And, it let me play with PERL some more. See, I use a PERL script to redirect incoming e-mail to the blog and to send the e-mail. I have to do some goofy things to send the e-mail or it will pick up MIME headers which look all wonky in the blog. But, as I mentioned, this works. Cool.

[ Posted by mail via mail2mt.pl ]

Snow blinks on my screen,
red lights on the router say,
“The end is here… Now.”

Now that I finished Zohar, I’ve started All Tomorrow’s Parties, by William Gibson.

This is a sequel, of sorts, to Idoru. Idoru is about just that, a Japanese pop idol (an “idoru”), who is a completely generated character. She simply doesn’t exist, except for being bits and bytes in RAM. The story is about finding this out, and what’s behind it, and a lot more complicated stuff than that. It is, of course, classic Gibson.
All Tomorrow’s Parties is what happens after all that. My wife told me that it is an engrossing and quick read. So far, she’s right. I fear it will all be over before it registers that I’ve started. Gibson is like that. And, it’s the standard which I use to judge all other literature.

We also have his latest, Pattern Recognition, which looks like it’s a fun one, too. I’ll post something when I start that one. Though, it might be awhile. I have a lot of other stuff to read before I get caught up to that!

Well, I’ve just finished Zohar: The Book of Splendor: Basic Readings from the Kabbalah edited by Gershom Scholem.

It was an intense book and was frightfully challenging at times. Part of the challenge was due to a lack of cultural relevance. The book makes reference to all kinds of Jewish history and culture without any explanations. It felt as though I were missing huge chunks of important references.
But, that being said, what I was able to grasp was enormous. This book really put a new spin on the Old Testament for me. It made me think about allegory and allusion in a whole new light. The layers and layers of mythic and mystic knowledge that it hints at being concealed in the various Scriptures is both tantalizing and invigorating. And, perhaps most importantly of all, it has left me wanting more.

Right now, I’m reading Zohar: The Book of Splendor: Basic Readings from the Kabbalah edited by Gershom Scholem.

It’s a relatively short book, actually, but fairly challenging. It looks at the Kabbalah in brief and tantalizing detail. As a non-Jew, it’s an interesting look at the more hidden meanings behind Jewish scripture. Though, to be honest, I think there are many Jews who don’t know much about the Kabbalah, much the same way many Christians don’t know much about the Book of Revelations.
The allegorical meanings of seemingly simple verses open whole new worlds of thought for me. The explanation of the creation story in mythic terms reveals whole new vistas of meaning and nuance. And, of equal importance, new ideas for fiction have been stirred!
Creation stories are very important to the invented mythology of a created culture, so new ideas, for me, about Creation spur new ideas for fictional worlds. Imagine, for instance, a fire-based religion who believes that the universe was born out of a great, mystical fire who is the Creator. A cosmic “Big Bang”, as it were. It would make a neat explanation and could generate an interesting culture and religion.

In any case, it’s slow going due to the weight of the content, but it’s all worth it.

Well, I’ve finally updatd the Language Generator.

I added several new base language files. Several of them are mashed together from a couple of different sources to get meta-language base files. Things like several East Asian languages together to form a NeoAsian base. And several of the Near, or Middle, Eastern languages mashed together to form a Middle Eastern base. Of course, I also added an Egyptian file, an Albanian file, a very large Japanese file, a Polish file, and a Turkish file as well.
My favorite, though, is a combonation of Latin and Tsolyani. It makes some really interesting output.

Enjoy!