At Xenomanes’s insistence, the latest version of the Fluxham decimeter was installed in the stern of the poop deck. The Fluxham was touted for its ability to recycle excretions from the officers’ quarters into the crew’s mess, even in a headwind.
Xenomanes appears courtesy of Panurge.
Xenomanes and Panurge’s narrow escape after they recovered the talisman of Amlak was covered a special issue of Boy’s Life.
Big fiche eat little fiche. By the Canadian river’s shore. Empty vessels beside still waters. Lyman lines in a thaw wind. Blowing down the sonny daughtrace.
This particulate deadlined night, I was juggling the mathematics, trying to renormalize my split infinities. Suddenly I deduced beyond the axiom of a doubt that aliens are on line. Waiting in cusps to beam aboard.
I’d soupercanoed half as much since pitching between forks in the upper bunk. They shoot rapids, don’t they?
Then she let them down by a cord through the window: for her house was upon the town wall, and she dwelt upon the wall. And she said unto them, Get you to the mountain, lest the pursuers meet you; and hide yourselves there three days, until the pursuers be returned: and afterward may ye go your way. — Joshua 2:15
Ah, Caesar! A cipher of cycles, afloat in the flux of history’s flow, his life dances betwixt the words, a tale woven in the warp and weft of Finnegans Wake.
Once upon a time, when Night and Day embraced in eternal tango, Gaius Julius Caesar emerged, sprung forth from the loins of Rome. A scion of power and ambition, he was born to conquer and command.
He, the conquistador of Gaul, a whisperer of war and wielder of words. Through the pageant of prose, his campaigns unfurl, revealing a man both valiant and vulnerable. The Roman Senate, their tongues sharpened as knives, hesitated not to cross the Rubicon with Caesar, for the dice were cast, and the gods themselves whispered of fate’s capricious hand.
As the tale unfolds, we meet Cleopatra, the sovereign serpent of Egypt, entwined in Caesar’s embrace. Together, they navigate the labyrinthine corridors of love and power, their affair a tempestuous tempest in the wake of their collision. But beware the Ides of March, when the dagger’s kiss awaits, a tragic turning point in the grand tapestry.
The tumultuous dance of Caesar’s life mirrors the cyclical rhythms of Joyce’s opus. In the swirling eddies of language, his deeds echo through the ages, immortalized in the spiral dance of letters. The linguistic labyrinth of Finnegans Wake envelops him, spinning a web of allusion and illusion, as Caesar’s existence merges with the cosmic dance of myth and history.
Thus, the biography of Caesar in the manner of Finnegans Wake is a polyphonic symphony, a mélange of voices, a cacophony of references and reverberations. A portrait painted in the fluid strokes of Joyce’s pen, where time blurs and borders dissolve, revealing the interconnectedness of all things.
Caesar, the embodiment of ambition and hubris, the archetypal hero or tragic villain, takes his place amidst the jumble of words, his life interwoven with the fabric of Finnegans Wake. In this literary universe, his story echoes and resonates, a cipher to be deciphered, an enigma to be unraveled, forever entangled in the enigmatic tapestry.
— OpenAI and the GPT-3.5 model, asked to write a brief biography of Caesar in the manner of Finnegans Wake.
I heard a cow chattering like a refrigerator. I saw a raven, or what’s left of it after the owl. I stuck a feather in my botnet, and thought, have I been here before?
I met her on a hammock. Can you picture that? My people consider it a sign of good fortune. But since I have one fist of iron and my head is mostly embalmed in clay, I feel in my element with blue nitrogen and all the higher orbitals.
Not everyone is cut out to be a carpenter. Not every carpenter is cut out to be — wait, here comes everyone now:
He’s got a lice knife style coming out his ears. He’s so clever he knew better than to get his head examined, although they all said that’s what they thought he needed. What might they find? Tendencies toward plagiarism? Disrespect towards the democratic product, as it is now marketed? Uncalled-for flippancy in the face of doom??
It’s not like I’m not busy, what with my translation of the Wake into Urbo-Croatian*, and the impending announcement of the final solution to the mystery of Pantagruelion, but still, I thought it would be kind of nice to take some time out and talk with some other people on the cell blockade.
As a child, Henri was known for horsing around with the chambermaids, and when later a king, for chambering the milkmaids. ’Twas said to be in the Cowichan style.
* I’m stuck on a fragment from episode 4:
And so they went on, the fourbottle men, the analists, ungu-am and nunguam and lunguam again, their anschluss about her whosebefore and his whereafters and how she was lost away away in the fern and how he was founded deap on deep in anear, and the rustlings and the twitterings and the raspings and the snappings and the sighings and the paintings and the ukukuings and the (hist!) the springapartings and the (hast!) the bybyscutt-lings and all the scandalmunkers and the pure craigs that used to be (up) that time living and lying and rating and riding round Nunsbelly Square.
Sol rite babe, we’re here to rescue you.
Whose we? We’s the bee all and the end all to all the endorphins, and to most of the best of the Beelzebubs.
We all got started by the women in the mangrove and the man on Mayday.
But they like the rest of ’em got swamped and slipped away.
I’ve never met a magician who didn’t have a nervous tic, nor a logician who did.
Barthélémy l’Anglais (12..-1272), Livre des propriétés des choses, traduit du latin par Jean Corbechon. Evrard d’Espinque (14..-14..?) enlumineur. Publication date : 1479-1480
Stagolee, Stagolee, what's dat in yo' grip? Nothin' but my Sunday clothes, I'm goin' to take a trip, O dat man, bad man, Stagolee done come. Stagolee, Stagolee, where you been so long? I been out on de battle fiel' shootin' an‚' havin' fun, O dat man, bad man, Stagolee done come. Stagolee was a bully man, an' ev'y body knowed, When dey seed Stagolee comin', to give Stagolee de road, O dat man, bad man, Stagolee done come. Stagolee started out, he give his wife his han‚', "Good-by, darlin', I'm goin‚' to kill a man." O dat man, bad man, Stagolee done come. Stagolee killed a man an' laid him on de flo', What's dat he kill him wid? Dat same ole fohty-fo'. O dat man, bad man, Stagolee done come. Stagolee killed a man an' laid him on his side, What‚'s dat he kill him wid? Dat same ole fohty-five. O dat man, bad man, Stagolee done come. Out of house an' down de street Stagolee did run, In his hand he held a great big smokin' gun. O dat man, bad man, Stagolee done come. Stagolee, Stagolee, I'll tell you what I'll do, If you'll git me out'n dis trouble I'll do as much for you. O dat man, bad man, Stagolee done come. Ain't it a pity, ain't it a shame? Stagolee was shot, but he don't want no name. O dat man, bad man, Stagolee done come. Stagolee, Stagolee, look what you done done, Killed de best ole citerzen; now you'll hav' to be hung. O dat man, bad man, Stagolee done come. Stagolee cried to de jury an' to de judge: Please don't take my life, I have only three little children an' one little lovin' wife. O dat man, bad man, Stagolee done come.