Classical-clock-punk

In the land before time, when dinosaurs and Romans and a young John S. McCain roamed the Earth, there was a nation whom unto others was like a shining white city upon a hill, and yea, in that blessed land there were olive trees and grapevines and a slow lazy sun overhead, and the Oracle up in her Delphic mountains did look down upon the people of Helen, and did mutter, rant and gabble gibberish under the influence of vapours, and she did feel satisfied.  Her Hellenic people were the Greeks; the City was Athens, and the Time was 212 years Before Christ.  Even back in those early days, they had seen it all before; they had been there, and done that.

Our own era has stoked our ego as an old lady does a cat, and purr in our own hubris, but we are pur-blind to believe that we know more than the ancient Greeks and the Coptic scholars.  Charles Babbage and his first vaunted computer are mere plagiarizing whipper-snappers, to say nothing of the Great Mimic Turing.  The real inventor of the computer:  why, it was Archimedes, of course.

Wheel of Fortuna

poq draws your attention to the legendary Antikythera Mechanism, which does – well, we don’t quite know what exactly.  But under the guidance of Ptolemy, it was said to read the stars and predict the solar eclipses.   Perhaps there were many dozens of these.  Perhaps together, they would make voices that would rise up in an intangible, smoke-like mass, in a great Babylon of noises and times and thoughts, in, one might even call it, an ancient Greek Cloud.

A Cautionary Tale

Once upon a deep blue dale,

Cuts of clothe did flutter and flail

And out at sea the men did sail,

Against their fate the crew did rail,

But all were drowned in a dreadful gale.

The Oil Sea?

“America!  America!

God shed his grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood,

From sea to shining sea!” – Katherine Lee Bates, 1893

Flabbergastronomy

Flabbergasting food!  Are you harbouring a concupiscence for conucopia?  Step up to the plate of wonder!

- Taste the miracle berries, brought fresh from West Africa aboard old slave steamers!  They’ll tickle your taste buds, we promise – no, they won’t quite turn water to wine, but they’ll sure make sugar from lime!

- Sup on a salamander from Japan, baked or fried on wilted winter lettuce!  But be careful when preparing this dish!  The salamander has an affinity with fire, so they don’t cook quickly.  And another thing: they regrow their limbs, so if you buy a single salamander you can eat this delicacy all year round!

- Chocolate frogs! Another amphibious snack, the chocolate frog hops straight into your mouth! Flibbergibbet!

- The Dish of the Day at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.  A galactic gobbet of guilt-removing pleasure, this cosmic cow wants to be eaten, and will happily kill itself for your pleasure.  One conscience-lite heavenly delight, coming right up!  Truly, a gAstronomical treat to eat!

Viva Vaudeville

Oh, passerby, take a moment, will you?  Stay, stay – I’ll give you a show, something to think about, a little glimpse at what might have been.  I’d call it magic, but we don’t believe in that any more, do we?  No, no, this is about something else, about the ingenuity of man.  We have remade the world.  We have subverted it.

Why don’t you come see?

Come, cast your eyes on Antiquity!  Here is a bauble for Hero, the long-rumoured aeolipile!  See how it spins!  It is a heart to pump the wind; why, it is done through steam of course!  A breath of air, a smear of water, and the wind moves the metal!  A marvellous trinket, you’ll agree, but listen here – it was the first steam engine no less, and on the back of its descendants rest the foundations of our modern world.

Our trains, of course, are thrown forwards on piston-legs of steel and steam.  Our clocks calculate the circumference of each second on brass weights, fused copper drawn from the deepest wells of the earth.  Difference engines are enabling our engineers and mechanics to build ever more complex contraptions, and our dirigibles have taken to the sky; my friend, surely you can see that we are in a new age.

The old one was governed by the rural chains of feudalism – well, we are over with that now.  Now we are making the world into images of ourselves, and we are welding the water and the fire together to do it.  We are making engines of steam to rebel against the natural laws of the world and the limits of man.  We are refusing to obey, we are rising like steam; yes, yes, don’t you see?

We are steam punks.

Old King Coal

You want to know about Old King Coal?  Most don’t come asking about him around here anymore.  They’re all heated up at the thought of Slick Oil, or cat-cool Hip Hydrogen.  But Old King Coal, well, he’s been around the block a few times.  He lived in a different age, you know?

He lives in the apartment below, alone now – ever since Sammy Steam died – and what a noise he makes!  Tromping around with that great big bag of charcoal and belchin’ and fartin’ black smoke like a dragon.  Even in my grandfather’s day he was never any better – cantankerous and arrogant, a true and loyal friend, and a with look that lights up real quick at the wrong sort of word.

Watch it if you go down there to meet him, son.  Old King Coal’s not crazy, but he’ll bear a grudge for five thousand years.  Spark a fight with him and he’ll smoulder for a long, long time.  He’ll nurse his feuds, he forgets nothing: he slow-burns.

I tell you what, though, he’s still worth talking to.  He’s seen it all, and he’s still the King.  Take it from me, son, Old King Coal’s yet got a few tricks up his sleeve.  Convince him to change his ways, well, and you’ll be on your way with a whistle and done a world of good for us all.  He’s nothing fancy, but he’s a good man, that old King o’ Coal.

The End of Arctic

“Never on land or by sea will you find,

the marvelous road to the feast of the Hyperborea.” – Pindar (a Roman)

Well, it was not for lack of trying that we failed.  The fabled land of Hyperborea – North, North of the North Wind – was always rumoured to guard feasts for the hungry, and so it was no suprise when we discovered that gold ran in a lucky streak from California to the Cascades, and even further north to the Yukon, where compasses shivered and the light froze blue-green in the sky.  Prospectors and no-hopers, we came in floods to the half-lit lands, looking for fur, whale-bone, timber, amber and gold, always gold.

We came by water too, but by the score our ships foundered on the spires of ice, always failing to find the Northwestern Passage.

Pindar was right – no matter how frantic our search, we were left stymied and unsatisfied.  In time, we took what we could of the North’s gold to gild our cities, and we turned our avararice elsewhere, and

In time the North was forgotten.

And yet, “while history doesn’t repeat itself, it does rhyme.” – Mark Twain

There was more than one treasure lying beneath the permafrost.  There is more than one colour of gold.

We are echoes of our ancestors:  just like they did, we search for Hyperborea.  The Artic markets are heating up again – and this time, the ice is melting.

We are switching myths.  Soon the polar bears will be mere legends, like dinosaurs and dodos, but the Northwestern Passage will be real, and once more we shall feast in the lands of Hyperborea.

ANWR is ready for drilling, and poq mourns

the passing myth of the North.