Ghost of a flea: Goth Like Me

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August 16, 2006

Goth Like Me

Some may imagine it is all black lipstick and ennui treading the boards at Savage or Funhaus. But just try walking a mile in my pointy shoes (especially in a Canadian winter). And yet there are compensations. As a for instance, I have been listening to Abney Park's "Stigmata Martyr" over and over again. That is Magdalene Veen, "last of the Kuiper Bedouins," pictured above, btw. Long has it been since I first traveled the farflung regions of the Kuiper Belt, teaching the locals my weirding way such that I might find Sanctuary (before it was replaced by a Starbucks). Their headman named me "Usul" which was cool once I realized I had misheard him.

Liber Logaeth Update: Please feel free to click over to the other Flea and lend an ear to my second latest musical effort. "Al Azif" is built up from cicada samples plus one June Bug. It turns out conducting insects is much simpler than cat herding.

Non-transneptunian Update: And then there were twelve. I can live with the new definition of "planet" but only if the name Xena sticks. Otherwise, it is back to Anaximander for me.

For going on two centuries, astronomers have debated what exactly a planet is and which celestial bodies should qualify. The question was finally forced a year ago by the discovery of 2003 UB313, tentatively named Xena, a body larger than Pluto residing in an even more distant orbit. If Pluto is a planet, then Xena must be one, too -- along with lots of other bodies in the outer reaches of the solar system. But if you don't want to open the floodgates to so many new planets, you have to relegate Pluto to some lesser status. In either case, tradition must give way.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at August 16, 2006 08:57 AM

Comments

You paint too rosy a picture. You know as well as I do that Skanktuary was never, even on its best day, filled with the likes of Magdalene Veen. It was more like a few hundred skinny boys with greasy hair competing for the attention of fifty zaftig girls in somewhat dilapidated fishnet.

Its main selling point was incredibly cheap pitchers of beer (cockroaches optional when seasonally available).

Posted by: Chris Taylor at August 16, 2006 09:56 AM

Well, I will admit to a non-zaftig bias at the Flea. Though my hair, when I had hair, was never greasy!

Posted by: Ghost of a flea at August 16, 2006 10:14 AM

The new planetary definition is teh suxxor. There are eight planets, plus who knows how many trans-Neptunian icewads.

Unless Magdalene Veen disagrees, in which case there are as many she says there are. Magdalene Veen: the blogosphere's own International Astronomical Union.

Posted by: utron at August 16, 2006 02:40 PM

One of the linked comments suggests we have four terrestrial planets, four jovian planets and then the rest. This sounds sensible to me.

Though I confess I too would most probably agree to a definition emerging from the Kuiper Belt.

Posted by: Ghost of a flea at August 16, 2006 02:43 PM