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My friends and I occasionally engage in a form of madness known as Penkwe. The name “penkwe” is the reconstructed proto-Indo-European root word meaning “five.” This name refers to the extreme fiveness of the practice, in ways that will become apparent below.

I cannot tell you where this…let’s call it a “game”…comes from. It came to me from a dear friend of a dear friend, but if you can enlighten as to the origin or history of this particular form, please let me know.

But I can tell you what it is, at least as we play it. In the game of Penkwe, five people write five things each, using each time a given list of five words. The written pieces can be any piece of creative writing, either poetry or prose. Each can be a novella, a sonnet, a limerick, a haiku (if you happened to get five rather short words, a recipie, a catalog entry, a travel brochure, a short story, a eulogy, or indeed any of 308,358,830 other genres and forms.

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I was bitten by a radioactive Jesus

A novel in blog form? Possibly. A neurological disorder in http form? I hope not. Should I stop? Probably. Will I stop? Not anytime soon.

Unless you are one of the forlorn few who are regularly subjected to my roleplaying games, please ignore this posting. If you are part of that doom-laden company, know that there are bloggy tidbits up on the Web related to the ancient Periheliad, as well as Read more

I won’t be able to persuade my wife that I need one of the Weta ones, so I may have to begin building my own. I’m not sure how I’ll explain to my daughter why even though I won’t let her have war toys it’s ok for me to make these… Hmmm. More thought is required. But meanwhile, behold!

• Dr. Grordbort’s Infallible Aether Oscillators & Other Marvelous Contraptions, Featuring Ray Guns (Don’t miss the Promotional Transmission)
• Lockwasher’s rayguns (intergalactic self-defense mechanisms)
• Clayton Bailey’s Ray Gun Gallery
• The Art of Greg Brotherton [includes some rayguns]
• Rayguns made from cameras
• Miscellaneous Works in Titanium [includes a couple of rayguns]
• Rayguns R Us
• Squidge-Pa’s rayguns
• 80grit Blasters
• Hand-blown glass rayguns

From time to time I find myself reading a book and thinking “well, this is the best book ever!” Similarly, several times a month I read magazines that fill me with the conviction that “this is the best magazine there ever was!” Those that can do this month after month are wondrous things to me, reading matter so compelling as to temporarily and enjoyably overwhelm my sense of proportion. Here are some that come to mind…

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It cuts paper. It will detect registration marks, then cut complex shapes for paper toys, mechanically-executed archigami, paper automata, etc. Just think of the mayhem I could cause! See it…adore it… (link is a Youtube movie by paper automata mogul Rob Ives)

The happy corner of my cubicle:

The less happy corner of my cubicle:

The sum: a fairly happy cubicle, where I can serve my alien overlords cruel corporate masters with relative equanimity.

The spam subject line that serves as a title for this post is one of those things that’s somehow both a bit creepy and a bit amusing to me, but that I’m pretty sure will be neither for others.

That’s not the case with this week’s Auspicious Spam Award winner: “Solemn Naginata-do Trick Shot.” This one made me think of my old friend Conrad, somehow, but also filled me with a kind of regret. “Man,” I thought, “it’s too bad they’re just pimping erectile dysfunction drugs, because I really, really would like to learn a solemn naginata-do trick shot or two. That would solve all of my problems, I’m pretty sure.”

Ok, apart from the whole being dead thing, I guess. There are lots of fine sites about him (see a couple of starting points below, but I especially like the Kircher Society, who seek to work in his spirit, so to speak.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius_Kircher
• http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/mineralogie/kircher/kircher.html
• http://www.strangescience.net/kircher.htm

Some of my favorite recent Dadaist spam subject lines:

• get it straight cortex demon
• something is fool
• a run is majorette cryptogram

A fine recent spam return-address:

• blackseamonkeyprincess@hotmail.com

Why even pay attention to the noxious fumes of unwanted byte-sized memes spewing over my e-transom? Spamomancy, that’s why.

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