I have finally returned...stepping forth from the hoary mists of...uh...vaporized water...much have I
seen (like Run Lola, Run, what a great movie!)...I have journeyed far and long...and then
far again (at one point I got lost and
ended up back in long for a while...but a nice fellow gave me directions back to far)...Now I'm sure that
some of you are wondering what kept me away for so long (and far)...Well, as a king I have myriad
duties to take care of, presiding, throne shopping, looking at contractors' bids for the addition we're
putting on the castle...dirty rotten thieves...$500 per rampart?!? My left buttock...uh, anyway...
The other thing I will tell you is that the mysteriously powerful cannot be rushed...we're going to take
our bloody time about things and, quite frankly, there's nothing you can do about it, because we're
mysteriously powerful, and you're not...nya!
That said, I have returned (from far and long) with an extra-special edition of The Path to Illumination.
You see, this is officially
THE KING KASHUE, EXCEEDINGLY BELATED, MERRY NEW YEAR OF THE RINGS,
MULTIMEDIA EXTRAVAGANZA!!!
Brought to you by BurmaShave™
That's right, King Kashue endorses the entire line of fine BurmaShave products.
A whole buttload of stuff happened during the time I was absent,
Christmas, New Year's, and of course, the release of the Lord of the Rings movie...(if you ask if
Bruce Willis is in it, I will beat you, so help me)...So to celebrate all of these wonderful events, I've
jam-packed this installment with loads of illuminated fun...so, On with the Show!!!
We'll start out with a special contest that ties in with the release of the Lord of the Rings Movie...
Now, I'm sure you all read Ghand's...tribute...to the movie...the (no doubt hallucination induced)
"Chock full o'Dwarf" comic strip...I can't possibly hope to compete with (or comprehend) that masterpiece
of graphic art (Ha! I said that with a straight face, Despot owes me five bucks!), but I do have a contest
for you all...The title to this week's *cough* edition is inspired in some way by Tolkien's Middle Earth,
the person who can tell me where it comes from (in detail) will win their very own .jpg image of a PDX
T-Shirt!!! (offer void in Iowa, and where prohibited by law)...send your guesses here.
On to the illumination!!! We've got some good questions for you today, and during the holidays I
received several new good ones, and should have fuel to burn for a couple more weeks, but I am always
looking for more!!!. So if you've got any new questions send them to me.
Before I get to the first question I need to amend a statement I made in installment #7.
I said the following regarding black holes:
"all of the evidence would be of a negative sort (e.g., no light, no other celestial bodies, no
other matter, etc.)"
I was incorrect to make this statement. As alert reader HearsTheSoul pointed
out to me, there are instances of positive evidence for black holes. Situations exist where something is
"siphoning" stellar matter off of a star, kinda like a little kid slurping spaghetti off of a fork. A possible
explanation of this is that the "something" is a black hole that is close to a star (probably because the
black hole was once part of a binary star system)...this sort of phenomenon could also occur near
other gaseous celestial bodies (such as nebulae)...This of course doesn't change the point of my rant,
nor does this prove that black holes exist...but it is good to remember...as I said, many of theories
have pretty good evidence, and this is one of them...but it's still not fact...
That said, the first question this week comes to us from Simon Foreman. He asked:
In literature, "first-person" and "third-person" perspective are often referred to. It is
well known what these are, but what I want to know is: Is there a second-person perspective? Could
you explain it?
That's actually a pretty logical question, one of those sorts of things that you think about at 2 am when
you can't sleep. The answer is, of course, yes, a "second-person" perspective does exist, and indeed,
I can explain it.
Something written in the second-person tells the story "to you" as a narrator. An example:
You walk down the hall to the door on the left. You turn the knob and open the door.
The room is dark and using your clapper™ you turn on the light. Looking around the room you see a
robotic chicken standing on a nine-legged stool in the corner. "I need that stool for my physician's
appointment tomorrow" you think to yourself as the chicken starts removing its socks...
And so on. As you can might guess, with anything other than very short works this style gets extremely
tedious; fast. Very little serious literature is produced in this style, and it is probably seen most often in
internet writings, so called "fan-fiction"...With the mention of fan-fic, Federal law requires me to post
this warning label:
Now, I'm not knocking anyone who writes fan-fic, and I'm sure that your's doesn't blow chunks, but let's
face it, most of the people producing this stuff aren't Falkners...heck they're not even Hemmingways...no,
that's cruel...most of 'em are better than Hemmingway...
Now, we'll take a pause in THE KING KASHUE, EXCEEDINGLY BELATED, MERRY NEW YEAR OF THE
RINGS, MULTIMEDIA EXTRAVAGANZA!!!, for a word from our sponsors (probably below and to the
right, if the advert is working properly)
Alrighty then, bills are paid, on to the next question. This question comes from Dark Templar, living
on the Isle of Wights. I sure hope he has some clerics around who can turn those undead beasties...
hmmm? Oh, you see, Wights are an evil creature from Dungeons & Dragons, nasty fellows, they...uh...
I uh...no, I really don't know what I meant by that...It's not like I play D&D or anything...can we just get
to the question here?!?
Now what I want to know (because I don't know this one myself) is why was seven so
important to Philo, instead of a nice round 10 or something similar. I don't want the modern reasons,
because there are so many for why we have the seven wonders of modern times but his (or should I
say the HISTORICAL) reason for Philo choosing only to name seven.
Very nice question, and I had to do some serious searching on this one, mainly because I was searching
in the wrong places. You see, the list of the "Seven Wonders of the World" is most often attributed to
the fellow that Dark Templar mentioned, Philo. Philo was an Greek engineer in 2nd century Byzantium,
and he is credited with writing "On The Seven Wonders of the World" around 130 BC (none of that
Politically Correct BCE crap). While Philo seems to have been a pretty good engineer, and may have
written some treatises regarding mechanics, seige works, warfare, and so on, at no point did he write
the work in question. The work was probably written in the 4th century, but even that author stole the
list from Herodotus, who first (at least to our knowledge) listed the wonders in his Histories. For
those unfamiliar, here are the commonly known "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World"
The Great Pyramid at Giza
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
The Statue of Zeus at Olympia
The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus
The Colossus of Rhodes
The Pharos at Alexandria
Now that list was set by Antipater of Sidon, who lived in the 2nd Century BC. As I said, the first list
was provided by Herodotus and over the years the list changed several times. As for the use of the
number seven, it seems to have been influenced by Pythagoras who saw it as lucky. Seven is a
prime number and is not a factor of a number below ten (e.g., 5 is a factor of 10, 3 of 6, etc.) And, as I
mentioned in the intro to installment #7, the Ancients just seemed to have "something" with the number
seven, they really like it for some reason.
Good question my friend (I'm assuming it wasn't a figment of my imagination). For your efforts, I
Salute you...(and mind you watch out for those wights)
We have two smartass questions for your reading pleasure (?) this week, because, quite frankly, there
are a surprising number of these and if I'm going to get them all in, I'm going to need to do more than one
a week.
The first one comes from Annette Duffy, who asked me:
What is the name of the character I play as in BG2? Hint: You cant answer this
For those that don't know, BG2 is short for Baldur's Gate II, a wonderful Computer Role Playing Game (not
that I play D&D!) That explained, let me answer the question...
ahem...Ah ha! That's where you're wrong my pretty, I can answer your question *dramatic music plays
in background* Don't you see your fatal mistake? You said that I "can't" answer this question (actually,
you spelled it without the apostrophe, but I just can't bring myself to do that)...If you did indeed have
a character in the Game, then there would be a chance, however minute, that I could randomly guess
the character's name...but, since you have told me that I cannot answer your question, even by
randomly guessing names (perhaps with the help of Scrabble™ tiles), then there is only one possible
conclusion...Brad has been sleeping with Janet's daughter Magenta, unknown to his evil twin brother
Eddie...no, wait, that's what's happening on As the Kingdom Turns...no, the answer to your
question is...You don't have a character in BG2...that's the only way that I would be unable to answer
your question...ha, though you had me fooled...thought you could use me as a pawn in your sick,
twisted games...no?...well, who was that then? I lost my planner and I can't keep track of anything
without it...
Our second smartass question comes from Chris Baker (Again with the wacky aliases). He asks:
What is the fifth dimension?
This one is far easier than the other one...The Fifth Dimension is a singing group, most famous for the
songs Age of Aquarius and Let the Sun Shine from the musical Hair. Actually, they're
a pretty good band...*pause*
I have another question that would probably fit into the smartass category, were it not for its serious
and contemplative subject. Chuckitoffacliff sent this email:
I gave it a lot of thought (well, it popped into my head this morning) and I've come up
with the question which you cannot answer. Here it is: What happens when you die (and I'm not talking
about what happens to your dead body)? What I mean, as I'm sure you can gather, is what happens to
our "souls" or whatever when we die?
Now this is certainly a relatively important subject...if you believe that there is some unique spiritual
quality that humans possess (and most people tend to, at least in some form), then what happens to
that spiritual element upon death is a huge issue...Now, I may be mysteriously powerful, but even I lack
the ability to move beyond the grave and back, so I can't give a firsthand answer...This is a question
that moves beyond the physical, temporal world in which we live into something else, something beyond
empirical observation...So, since I am unable to provide a objective, empirical answer, I'm going to tell
you my opinion.
I'll start by stating that this is my belief, if you disagree with me, that's fine. If you want to discuss this
with me, feel free to email me, I'll try to answer
any questions you have, or discuss any points you want to bring up. I would like to avoid flame emails,
if we could, I'm just taking an opportunity to state a viewpoint, so if you really don't want to hear me
out, scroll down to the "QUESTION I CANNOT ANSWER™" part. That said, here's the way I see it.
I believe that the Bible is true, and that it explains the spiritual nature of the world. Everything I'm going
to say is from scripture, and I'm giving the verse numbers if you want to look this up. Here we go...
Your soul is eternal, God exists, and he wants to have a personal relationship with you... (the
ubiquitous John 3:16, of football game fame)
Everyone has sinned (do we need proof that humans are screwed up?), and that sin keeps us from a
relationship with God (Romans 3:23)
Jesus Christ was the Son of God, came to Earth, led a sinless life, died (when he didn't have to) and
rose again, so that his sacrifice could be payment for your sins (1 Peter 3:18, Romans 5:8)
If you accept Christ's sacrifice on the cross, your sins are forgiven and you will spend eternity in
Heaven. This is a free gift, we don't have to do anything else to be saved (John 1:12, Ephesians 2:8,9)
Well then, eternal weighty matters out of the way, we move on to the High Point of our program tonight,
the moment we've all been waiting for, the most earth shaking event in the last 31 minutes...
!!!THE QUESTION I CANNOT ANSWER™!!!
If you're keeping track on your scorecards, this is the "Christmas" portion of our program tonight (the
smartass questions were the "New Year's" portion, because, let's face it, people say and do stupid things
on New Year's...probably has something to do with the smell from the new calendars...or the raging
drunkeness...one of the two). This is the Christmas portion of the article because it is sort of a Christmas
present. Let me explain...no, there is no time, let me sum up...The question that was asked cannot be
definitively answered, but it seems like it should be possible. In addition, scientists act like they know
the answer (see rant in Illumination #7), so I figured that this would get back at them...sharp logic, neh?
Without further ado (what is "ado" anyways?) here is the QUESTION I CANNOT ANSWER™, sent in
by OiNutter, a resident of Mega-Chin, which is a magical land ruled by marauding pirates (don't ask, long
story). He asked:
Why are all planets in our known solar system on one plane? In space there are three
dimensions but there seems to be nothing above or below the plane. Why is this?
Very good question...I don't know...this is THE QUESTION I CANNOT ANSWER™ after all...
scientists say it's because when the galaxies formed they spun around
a lot (not having anything else to do, it's not like there was a Blockbuster nearby) and that's why all of
the planets are in one plane...However, they have very little evidence for that, and as far as we know,
it's not true for any other planetary systems, so piss on them...But this seems like a question that we
should be able to answer, physics, rates of travel, gravitational forces, the 1040 tax form, one of these
should be able to answer this question, but I don't understand any of them that well, so OiNutter, here
are your "Mad Props" for asking THE QUESTION I CANNOT ANSWER™...
They don't look nearly as tasty as they sounded...I wouldn't eat them all in one sitting...
Before we move on can I take a second...whew, I didn't know these "extravangazas" were so tiring...maybe I should have just gone
with a "spectacular", though I have heard that those chafe...*pause*...Yes, well on to the quote contest.
We've had a lot of time for people to send in answers to last week's *cough* quote contest, and the
winner is...*sticks hand in hat, pulls out piece of paper*...Phasmatis!...A healthy round of applause goes
to Phas, who correctly identified the speaker of our quoted words as Friederich Nietzsche...
German philosopher, racialist, racist, syphilitically insane...
On to this week's quote contest...With the utter lack of ability to have the quote contest named by
any member of the PDX staff (even Señor Snifflebritches), I have decided to seek help outside the site,
and have hired a consulting firm to come up with the name for me. Now, we originally had allocated
funds to this project, but a recent financial down turn (stinkin' hard eights) has depleted our reserves,
and I was forced to use a less prestigious firm than originally intended. We eventually settled on
Manderley, Navarre, & Simons (and people say that this column has nothing to do with the game...pishaw!)
so, presenting the all new quote contest name:
**INSERT CONTEST NAME HERE**
*stares*...okay, frag it...I'm going home...here's this week's quote...
"I love a good martini, two at the most, three I'm under the table, four I'm under the host."
RSS Feeds
