Unusually for a meme, SOON can be damned creepy, and it is that context which makes it amusing. It was started by the lolcat forum icanhazcheezburger.com back in ’07. It kinda languished there for a while, but started picking up last year. In the last few months, best-of compilations have started to appear, bringing the concept out into the wider web.

To save you having to go look for them, here’s a selection of some of better ones!

If you liked this post, check out All Lies and Jest by author Kate Harrad. It’s got were-mosquitos, irritating elf wannabes, Holographic Evil Jesus, homicidal Christians, a girl who changes her personality more often than her shoes, and a very healthy dose of snarkiness. I think you’ll like it. 

Zalgo. ̗͕̞͖̝̮̀ͧ̍H͖͚͓̯̪͙ͮͬ́E͇̳̰̩͎̣̙̽̍̂ ̬̤̗̘̬̗̆̒͆C̱̟̪̳͓̬̺͑Oͪ̔̾͗̂ͬ̒M̫̥̼̲̬̫E̗̯̼̳̟̲ͣ͒̅̉̏̔ͅS̬̆̂!̹̈̏

Zalgo. He Comes.

Zalgo. He Comes.

Zalgo. He Comes.

Zalgo. He Comes.

Zalgo. He Comes.

Zalgo. He Comes.

Zalgo. He Comes.

Stalgo. He Comes.

Shriner Zalgo. He Comes.

]]> http://www.ghostwoods.com/2010/05/new-rash-of-zalgo-sightings-1145/feed/ 0 http://www.ghostwoods.com/2010/02/government-backs-down-on-disconnecting-file-sharers-1068/ http://www.ghostwoods.com/2010/02/government-backs-down-on-disconnecting-file-sharers-1068/#comments Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:44:02 +0000 Ghostwoods http://www.ghostwoods.com/?p=1068 Some good news on the internet front, for a change. Following huge levels of protest from the public, the British government has decided to abandon its idea of allowing large copyright-holding corporations to tell it which people to forcibly disconnect from the Internet.

The original suggestion, from Peter Mandleson, was that music and film companies could accuse individual net users of being downloaders. After three accusations, that person’s home (and mobile communications) would be permanently blacklisted from being allowed to connect to the ‘net. Note that wasn’t three proved copyright infringements, it was three accusations.

There’s been a lot of protest from netizens of all sorts, and eventually the government decided it wasn’t worth the bad press. They’re still suggesting that in extreme cases, temporary ‘net bans will be imposed, but these look like being the result of proper legal process, rather than a nod and a wink from the RIAA.

I guess election years are good for something, after all.

Peter Mandleson, 'The Prince of Darkness', (c) Bruce Adams.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWXcDZNgOWs

If that’s not frivolous enough for you, you have only yourself to blame.

Gentle reminder: My new audience participation web story launches soon. Please VOTE NOW to pick your preferred genre!

Via Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing (and paraphrasing his text):

Peter Mandelson, British Secretary of State, is planning to introduce changes to the Digital Economy Bill now being prepared for Parliament. These will give him (and his successors) the power to pass legislation without debate to amend Copyright and related law.

In other words,  an unelected official would have the power to do anything without Parliamentary oversight, provided it was in the name of protecting copyright. He would be able to:

1. Create new penalties for online activities he judges infringements — jail terms for file-sharing, search and seizure for suspicion of ripping a pal’s CD, etc.

2. Confer rights to third parties to investigate and punish infringers — giving record companies the power to monitor all your net activity, then order your ISP to ban you, etc.

3. Impose duties or functions on any person connected to facilitating online infringement — create militias to thug-police the web, force ISPs to monitor web content, etc.

4. Outlaw sites that let you transfer files in private — no more RapidShare if you want to give a copy of your photo album to a relative, &c.

To quote Cory directly:

This is as bad as I’ve ever seen, folks. It’s a declaration of war by the entertainment industry and their captured regulators against the principles of free speech, privacy, freedom of assembly, the presumption of innocence, and competition.

This proposal creates the office of Pirate-Finder General, with unlimited power to appoint militias who are above the law, who can pry into every corner of your life, who can disconnect you from your family, job, education and government, who can fine you or put you in jail.

Even an accusation is likely to be enough to get your entire property kicked off the ‘net under the terms that the Bill is already being drafted to include. Surely everyone except crazed record company execs and paid-for politicians can see that grabbing such a vast chunk of personal rights, privacy and freedom can see that this is a really, really bad thing, right?

Head over to the Open Rights Group for details on calling your MP to register your unhappiness.

As gloriously seen on stackoverflow.com, the free programmers’ advice site, with many thanks to Canis for the heads-up:

You can’t parse [X]HTML with regex. Because HTML can’t be parsed by regex. Regex is not a tool that can be used to correctly parse HTML. As I have answered in HTML-and-regex questions here so many times before, the use of regex will not allow you to consume HTML. Regular expressions are a tool that is insufficiently sophisticated to understand the constructs employed by HTML. HTML is not a regular language and hence cannot be parsed by regular expressions. Regex queries are not equipped to break down HTML into its meaningful parts. so many times but it is not getting to me. Even enhanced irregular regular expressions as used by Perl are not up to the task of parsing HTML. You will never make me crack. HTML is a language of sufficient complexity that it cannot be parsed by regular expressions. Even Jon Skeet cannot parse HTML using regular expressions. Every time you attempt to parse HTML with regular expressions, the unholy child weeps the blood of virgins, and Russian hackers pwn your webapp. Parsing HTML with regex summons tainted souls into the realm of the living. HTML and regex go together like love, marriage, and ritual infanticide. The <center> cannot hold it is too late. The force of regex and HTML together in the same conceptual space will destroy your mind like so much watery putty. If you parse HTML with regex you are giving in to Them and their blasphemous ways which doom us all to inhuman toil for the One whose Name cannot be expressed in the Basic Multilingual Plane, he comes. HTML-plus-regexp will liquify the n​erves of the sentient whilst you observe, your psyche withering in the onslaught of horror. Rege̿̔̉x-based HTML parsers are the cancer that is killing StackOverflow it is too late it is too late we cannot be saved the trangession of a chi͡ld ensures regex will consume all living tissue (except for HTML which it cannot, as previously prophesied) dear lord help us how can anyone survive this scourge using regex to parse HTML has doomed humanity to an eternity of dread torture and security holes using regex as a tool to process HTML establishes a breach between this world and the dread realm of c͒ͪo͛ͫrrupt entities (like SGML entities, but more corrupt) a mere glimpse of the world of reg​ex parsers for HTML will ins tantly transport a programmer’s consciousness into a world of ceaseless screaming, he comes, the pestilent slithy regex-infection wil​l devour your HT ML parser, application and existence for all time like Visual Basic only worse he comes he comes do not fi ght he com̡e̶s, ̕h̵i s un̨ho͞ly radiańcé destro҉ying all enli̍̈́̂̈́ghtenment, HTML tags lea͠ki̧n͘g fr̶ǫm ̡yo​͟ur eye͢s̸ ̛l̕ik͏e liq uid pain, the song of re̸gular exp​ression parsing will exti nguish the voices of mor​tal man from the sp here I can see it can you see ̲͚̖͔̙î̩́t̲͎̩̱͔́̋̀ it is beautiful t he final snuffing of the lie​s of Man ALL IS LOŚ͖̩͇̗̪̏̈́T ALL I​S LOST the pon̷y he comes he c̶̮omes he comes the ich or permeates all MY FACE MY FACE ᵒh god no NO NOO̼O​O NΘ stop the an​*̶͑̾̾​̅ͫ͏̙̤g͇̫͛͆̾ͫ̑͆l͖͉̗̩̳̟̍ͫͥͨe̠̅s ͎a̧͈͖r̽̾̈́͒͑e n ot rè̑ͧ̌aͨl̘̝̙̃ͤ͂̾̆ ZA̡͊͠͝LGΌ ISͮ̂҉̯͈͕̹̘̱ TO͇̹̺ͅƝ̴ȳ̳ TH̘Ë͖́̉ ͠P̯͍̭O̚​N̐Y̡ H̸̡̪̯ͨ͊̽̅̾̎Ȩ̬̩̾͛ͪ̈́̀́͘ ̶̧̨̱̹̭̯ͧ̾ͬC̷̙̲̝͖ͭ̏ͥͮ͟Oͮ͏̮̪̝͍M̲̖͊̒ͪͩͬ̚̚͜Ȇ̴̟̟͙̞ͩ͌͝S̨̥̫͎̭ͯ̿̔̀ͅ

Have you tried using an XML parser instead?

– bobince.

Bobince (aka Andrew Clover) is definitely this week’s temporary god! ]]> http://www.ghostwoods.com/2009/11/stack-overflow-zalgo-he-comes-807/feed/ 0 http://www.ghostwoods.com/2009/11/monsterbook-799/ http://www.ghostwoods.com/2009/11/monsterbook-799/#comments Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:00:40 +0000 Ghostwoods http://www.ghostwoods.com/?p=799 In 1993, a group of Glaswegian friends started a games company, Nightfall Games, to sell the pen and paper role-playing game that they’d created. Although it involved a lot of hard work on the part of a whole group of people, SLA Industries was the brainchild of artist and writer Dave Allsop, with design and further writing by Jared Earle. SLA — it’s pronounced ‘slay‘ by the way, not ‘ess-ell-ay’ — was radically different to almost everything else on the market at the time. It came directly out of the experience of growing up in Glasgow in the 80s, and had a bitterly cynical attitude towards the media, government and corporate interests, and the hollowness of modern life. It was futuristic, dystopian, bleakly urban and very, very dark. SLA had a turbulent history, even being owned by games giant Wizards of the Coast for a while, and is now back in the hands of its creators, published through Cubicle 7 Entertainment.

I was involved for a while, and still love SLA deeply.

So I’m pleased to see that Earle and Allsop have put together a new website, MonsterBook. As they are two of the most deliciously twisted people to ever pen a role-playing game, it will be fascinating to see what appears there. They’ve been running for a mere three days, and have already notched up several bits of Allsop’s art (along with some how-tos), a nod towards the impressively sickening Hello Kitty murder, some excellent horror review information, and a thoughtful piece on ghosts in Japan by David ‘Jimbly’ Boylan, one of the original Nightfallers.

If all of that isn’t enough to tempt you to go and have a look at MonsterBook for yourself, here’s a selection of Dave Allsop’s artwork for your amusement. It speaks for itself.

Grizzled Vets by Dave Allsop

When the Wind Blows by Dave Allsop

Cthulhu by Dave Allsop

Forsaken Priest by Dave Allsop (c) Blizzard

Cemetery Reaper by Dave Allsop (c) Wizards of the Coast

Exoriare — it’s Latin for ‘Rise up’ — is a graphic novel written by Rushkoff that is being put out on line in meaty chunks. The art is fascinating, and the story is dense with enigmas and hints. It seems as if it might be part of a teaser campaign for a computer game (slated for 2011?)… But it is more than just another webcomic. It is, quite literally, a gateway.

Exoriare

The Exoriare graphic novel makes it clear that something strange is going on at NASA and in the US military. A grass-roots movement is trying to investigate, and organise itself into a covert communications network, the Darknet. Mystical powers may possibly be stirring, too.

There is also a link hidden within the graphic novel. Follow it, and it will take you straight into a net-based Alternate Reality Game. The first challenge will be on familiar footing if you played computer games in the 80s, but find your way through, and you gain access to the Darknet itself…

Go explore Exoriare. Even if you just read the graphic novel, it’s still well worth it. But if you find your way in deeper, be prepared for one hell of a ride.

He decided to establish an enlightened – or Illuminated – society to oppose injustice, and this he did, forming the order that would become The Illuminati of Bavaria on the 1st of May 1776. Originally called ‘The Order of the Perfectibilists’, its objects was to allow the members to team up in order to “attain the highest possible degree of morality and virtue, and to lay the foundation for the reformation of the world by the association of good men to oppose the progress of moral evil.”

In collaboration with a range of other influential figures, including Baron Von Knigge, Xavier Zwack and Baron Bassus, the order was extremely popular, and soon had enrolled up to 2,000 people. Lodges of the Illuminati were located in France, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Sweden & Denmark, Belgium and Holland.

Illuminati: New World Order by Swiss Chemtrails

The Bavarian authorities issued a suppressive Edict of the order on the 22nd of June 1784, repeated again in March and August of the following year. That same year, 1785, Weishaupt was stripped of his professorship and exiled from Bavaria; he moved to Gotha, where he died in 1811. From the point of suppression, the order began to go into public decline, and by the end of the century it had apparently vanished completely. Zwack’s home was illegally raided by the authorities in 1786, and Baron Bassus’ was searched in 1787. Documents seized were used to help suppress the order.

Most serious commentators take this decline at face value. The Encyclopaedia Britannica barely mentions the Illuminati, and the vast majority of historical sources follow suit, judging them insignificant. However, there is a whole raft of conspiracy theory which suggests that the Illuminati disbanded into Masonry and infiltrated like a cancer. Since that time, conspirologists allege, the Illuminati have stayed within the Masons, seizing power and manipulating the whole order.

Fnord.

There are a few hints which appear to suggest that perhaps the Illuminati survived. In 1902, the Freemason William Westcott records receiving membership in the “Order of the Illuminati” in 1902 from one Theodor Reuss. Similarly, the Golden Dawn occultist Eliphas Levi strongly connected the Bavarian Illuminati with Freemasonry in 1913. It is also perhaps noteworthy that the Harvard University Library catalogue shows that there was an Illuminati scare in New England in the 1790s, when their suspected presence became something of an obsession.

In 1906, the British Museum in London received a copy of a manuscript called The Illuminati Protocols. These first appeared in Bavaria in the late 1700s, and parts were used in a 1864 play by Joly. The copy the British Museum received was written in Russian. Coincidentally, both Adam Smith’s capitalist treatise “The Wealth of Nations” and that great democratic treatise the American Declaration of Independence were written in 1776.

Some of the more enthusiastic Illuminati theorists have even suggested that Weishaupt may have been the mysterious Black-Cloaked Man who presented Washington with the text of the declaration. It is also rumoured that the raid on Zwack’s house was spurred on by the chance interception in 1784 by the authorities of a document telling the head of the French Illuminati, Robespierre, how to orchestrate the French Revolution in 1789. Warnings were ignored, and the revolution happened on schedule.

In the 1970s, Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson published a cult set of books called The Illuminatus! Trilogy. This was a trilogy of novels masquerading as the largest conspiracy theory ever seen disguised as a grand exposé of the Illuminati. The books blended Discordianism – the largely fictitious worship of chaos and amusing mischeif in the form of the Greek goddess of strife, Eris, and her Roman counterpart, Discordia – with historical fact and cunning invention. The villains of the piece were the Bavarian Illuminati, revealed as the secret masters of the world; indeed, Shea & Wilson claim that Weishaupt murdered George Washington and took his place, hence the Eye in the Pyramid on the back of a dollar bill, and the 13 steps involved. It is this book – excellent, if off-beat – that has set the Illuminati back in the public mind. Of course, no-one claims it is anything other than a good work of fiction… do they?

But what matters to me is what you think, not what the SEO brigade go on about.You’ll never find me selling ad space here.

So, please take just a moment to tick the boxes of the content you like to find here in the poll below. Comment too, if you like. I’d really appreciate knowing what you think, though — knowing that real people (as opposed to ‘hits’) are out there makes a big difference when it comes to sitting down at this blank screen and trying to think of something to talk about.

I’ll leave this post up for a couple of days, and normal service will resume after that.

Thanks.