(Non-Canon) Miscellaneous Business Day!

Posted on December 22, 2005 by Jenna

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It’s a miscellaneous business day!

First, the final draft of the technical paper is now up on merin. Thank you for payment and commentary; I hope you enjoy it!

Second, I have a bonus story to share. I’m very pleased with it. (It’s critical of the Pope’s stance on homosexuality, though, so if that criticism will bother you, please skip ahead to “Third.”) It’s Hitherby-sized but it’s not suitable for Gibbelins’ Tower, so I’ll make it available on merin or something—for a price!

What price? I don’t know. Impress me.

Donate!

Buy me Pepper’s book on world hypotheses or Dance Dance Revolution from my wish list!

Disseminate glowing reviews of Hitherby and selections of suitable entries to people!

Improve my wikipedia entry! Submit fan art! Do something else that I’ll find crazy cool!

When enough cool has been done, I’ll post. ^_^

Third, this is also a letters column—I’m responding to the last (Audience) post.

Enjoy!

**

man… my life story in ~400 words?
— GoldenH

That’s just one word!

Admittedly, there might be 400 possible intonations.

**

Silly Galactus! He forgot that Alpheratz is a magnitude 2.2 blue-white binary star. Even world devourers shouldn’t try to swallow two stars at once. He should have listened to his mother! Unfortunately for Galactus, Alpheratz’s close-orbiting stars can only be distinguished by careful spectral analysis. Galactus should be more careful next time!
…
[The Qwik Club would like to thank Wikipedia for help with this story.]
— Jonathan Walton

Sadly, this is an urban legend, and has since been thoroughly debunked by the Devourer Institute (see here for contact information.) There are no close-orbiting stars that can only be distinguished by careful spectral analysis, and this action of the Qwik Club’s has only contributed to Galactus’ dedication to bring a class action suit against Wikipedia for disseminating information on distant stars without first dispatching a tasty spaceship.

Paid for by the Don’t Laugh at Galactus Foundation.

**

The fact that Luke does not know any mathematical martial arts does not help his situation!
— William

Technically, Luke is a waveform with a finite nonzero probability of knowing mathematical martial arts, that probability driven by the distinction between the definitions of mathematics used by the reader and the author, the likelihood that the narrator is reliable, and the root probability for creatures in Luke’s situation as spelled out thus far (that is, a man jumping from roof to roof pursued by ninjas) to know such martial arts. I calculate that at any given moment in the first section of the story there is a 13% chance that Luke knows such arts, dropping sharply to 1.8% at the time this declaration is made. Question for the class: how does Foucault’s statement that the author is dead relate to this probability? Does poststructuralist theory increase or decrease these odds?

He says, “Sorry to interrupt, but we couldn’t help but hear the ‘clank’ sound you made as you hit the ground. Just so we’re totally clear — you’re not a robot with insurpassable fighting prowess, are you?”
— William

Here, from my perspective, is where the odds jumped phenomenally, rising to 8 +/- 1.38%. Can a robot capable of surpassing mathematical martial arts really be said not to know them? Aren’t those martial arts at minimum contained within the robot’s own fighting style in a kind of negative too-sexy-for-that-kung-fu space?

“I’m two.” In an instant, Lu detaches from Ke and they strike, together, with calculated precision.
— William

Here, we learn that the man regarding which we make these postulates does not exist even in fiction.

Luke asks, “Ninja Tathagata, since I am a robot, does my freedom from the attatchment to material existence count as enlightenment? And if so, does that mean that all robots are Robot Buddhas?”
— William

Ironically, we can fairly say that the Luke we recognize does not exist is enlightened, for he is found nowhere within the cycle of reincarnation; but the Luke that we imagine to exist, because our own imagination is tainted by the skandhas, is susceptible to ignorance and desire and therefore unenlightened. To see the Buddha is to lose sight of the Buddha; to read the story of a robot Buddha is to read the story of a robot who is not the Buddha.

**

Player3: “Yes! We can destroy civilization!”

Player2: “But I like civilization” ;_;
— GoldenH

Civilization is like a robot Buddha—when you look too closely at it, someone blows it up with the Five-Metal Shrike. This is known as “the Mahasuchi enlightenment.”

ST: “Suddenly, the caravan bursts into flames! Hundreds of Gunzosha warriors, hidden inside the caravans, burst through the roof of the floating carts and land on the outside of the Shrike!”

Player2: “OMG!!!”
— GoldenH

I like to think that the sacred sound OM adds one letter each time the universe is born, and next time, it’ll be OMG. Eventually it’ll be OMGWTFBBQ, and you’ll have a large number of rishi sitting around humming that, before, you know, going on their WoW raids.

**

“From the east, a howling mass of beastmen and half-human things, countless beyond number, and Ma Ha Suchi at their head.”
— ADamiani

“Ostrich beastmen—form legs and body!”

“Snake beastmen—form left arm!”

“Wildebeest men—form right arm!”

“And I’ll be … at your head!”

This is why no one’s ever beaten Ma-Ha-Suchi. It’s not the Charms. It’s not the stunts. It’s not even the enlightenment, because nobody loves a glowing Lunar.

It’s his stock footage!

**
Thank you all for posting! I really appreciate your contributions to the Audience days. ^_^ The stories were fun!

Rebecca

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