Word games

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Wordle is a Java-based web toy which generates random arrangements of words from any text input. This is the result after pasting in the opening of the “Sirens” chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses and playing around with the colour and font settings. Fun, but as far as web-based toys go I prefer the abstractions of Bomomo.

While we’re on the subject of word-scrambling, Weird Tales magazine has announced a writing contest: write a story— 500 words or less—based on a spam headline you’ve received. The spam waiting to be purged in my trash folder doesn’t offer much in the way of inspiration: “Paris Hilton charges for pussy”, “Tyra to go undercover ass a man iin a rapper’s posse”. More interesting is the recent comment spam I received (none of which you ever see here, thanks to Akismet), a funny conflation of Bible quotes, porn links and stray words from a novel. Once the links are removed, all the text runs together and the result looks like this:

45:4 And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying,
12:18 cam chat donne live mature web Selah. a stranger, he shall both wash his clothes, and bathe himself in mature mistresses london
5:19 Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to
17:20 And when Absalom’s servants came to the woman to the house, they fucking hairy mature plump a look at you, dear, and see that we start right. Then we’ll send They don’t mean any harm, I’m sure, but if they knew how we premature ejaculation tip their own doings, nor from their stubborn way.
3:19 Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them. hand job mature impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is
4:13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived adult gallery mature woman
5:7 And these things give in charge, that they may be blameless.
9:13 So Mephibosheth dwelt in Jerusalem: for he did eat continually at mature photo galleries thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but
5:21 Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen. armpit hairy mature
5:29 And Levi made him a great feast in his own house: and there was a unto the LORD God of their fathers. mature women younger girls 8 them, and plucked off their hair, and made them swear by God, saying, times that I have formed it? now have I brought it to pass, that thou canada escort independent mature his error as fast as possible.
5:12 And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among busty mature movie sample the men of Israel, Because the king is near of kin to us: wherefore
12:4 Ye shall not do so unto the LORD your God. anal black mature sex presence of mind. swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your mature gay sex video “Did the spider accept the old fellow’s invitation?” asked Laurie, according to godliness;
6:4 He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting walk for premature baby open fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be
4:11 These things command and teach. mature suck black cock O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. of the question.” mature lezbos and unto the supplication of thy people Israel, to hearken unto them
33:1 Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he mature fellatio there. “It is always so quiet and pleasant here, it does me offer the burnt offering and the meat offering upon the altar: and the mature licking him with the curious girdle of the ephod, and bound it unto him
30:30 And to them which were in Hormah, and to them which were in mature female spanking and twenty:

Babobilicons by Daina Krumins

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A Babobilicon.

Daina Krumins’ Babobilicons is a truly surrealist work in terms of both its process and product. Krumins takes time to make her films. It took her nine years to create this remarkable animated short, yet her method is in line with the surrealist affinity for chance operation. She cultivated slime molds on Quaker five-minute oats in her basement, planted hundreds of phallic stinkhorn mushrooms, and put her mother behind the camera to film them growing. The results are sexual and bizarre. She combined ordinary objects—wallsockets, candles, and peeling paint—to get unnerving, dreamlike images. Porcelain fish jump through waves; mushroom erections rise and fall. Her Babobilicons—robotlike characters that resemble coffee pots with lobster claws—move through all this with mysterious determination. Anyone who order 10,000 ladybugs from a pest control company to film them crawling over a model drawing room definite possesses a sense of the surreal. Renee Shafransky, The Village Voice

So now tell me you’re not intrigued…. I’ve seen Daina Krumins’ earlier film, The Divine Miracle (1973), a strange procession of religious imagery inspired in part by the kitsch of Christian postcard art. I haven’t seen Babobilicons (1982) unfortunately, but if the singular atmosphere conjured by the earlier work is anything to go by it should be quite something. There’s also a later Krumins’ film which seems equally surreal, Summer Light (2001), about which this NYT appraisal says “Giant milkweeds float about the landscape, babies play with fiery leaves and deer antlers jump out of water like salmon.”

Read more about the films here and here, including details of how to buy them on VHS. Surely a DVD release is overdue?

Previously on { feuilleton }
Mushrooms on the Moon
Impressions de la Haute Mongolie

Phallic worship

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And why not, say I? Being a born-again pagan I’d much rather venerate the generative organ of the human male in all its splendour than abase myself before one of the invisible sky gods; I had my fill of that when I was an unwilling young Catholic. And besides, what gay man doesn’t worship the phallus in some form?

Most people have heard of the Japanese festival, Kanamara Matsuri, a Shinto fertility celebration. Giant ceremonial phalluses are paraded through the streets and a good time is had by all. Less well-known is a similar Dionysian festival which takes place in the small town of Tyrnavos, Greece on the first Monday of Lent.

If you want to eat phallus-shaped bread, drink through phallus-shaped straws from phallus-shaped cups, kiss ceramic phalluses, sit on a phallus-shaped throne and sing dirty Greek songs about the phallus, then you should visit the little Greek town of Tyrnavos each year on “Clean Monday.”

The festival is in honor of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, madness and ecstasy. While the men, women and children of Tyrnavos celebrate the penis, the rest of Greece marks the beginning of the pre-Easter fast more modestly by flying kites and eating octopus, olives and unleavened bread. More.

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Bronze statuette of the Roman fertility god Priapus, made in two parts (shown here in assembled and disassembled forms).

Fitting then, now that spring is passing into summer, that Taschen are following up their Big Book of Breasts with the Big Penis Book. The splendid cover needs to be seen in action (as it were) since the underwear is printed on a clear wrapper which can be removed to expose the wonderful tumescence beneath. I like the sly humour in the design which makes the background of the breasts book blue while the penis book is pink. I’m not too sure about the quality of the contents from their previews, much of it seems to be filled out with photo shoots from gay porn of the Seventies. But I’ll suspend my judgement until I’ve given it a proper viewing. If anything was going to be the phallic worshipper’s bible, this must be it. Good to see Taschen flying the flag as always for high-quality porn/erotica.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The book covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
The art of ejaculation