Rough Beast

SomeBODY once told me about a bird that’s turnin’
And turnin’ in a widening gyre
It was lookin’ kinda lost cause it couldn’t hear its boss
As it soared ever higher and higher

Well, things fall apart and the centre’s not holdin’,
Anarchy’s loose and there’s no controllin’,
Innocence drowned in a blood-dimmed tide,
The worst get intense while the best just hide

So much to do, so much to see
Images out of Spiritus Mundi
You’ve gotta move those slow thighs
Open up your pitiless eyes

Hey now
Lion body
With a man’s head
Go play

Hey now
You’re a rough beast
Get the show on
Get paid

Your hour’s come round once more
Slouching towards Bethlehem to be bo-orn

Behoof

An archaic word, if it’s not too absurd,
Gives the air of an all-knowing Mentor.
But no-one approves when you write “it behooves”,
Unless you’re an irl centaur.

Doggerel on seeing yet another display ad in a mall

I wish they’d stop calling food
“Nude”.
It’s as if they’ve conflated
Unclad with unadulterated.

Not Stevens

The only artisan is the artisan of ice-cream.

The only emperor penguin is the emperor penguin of ice-cream.

The only Ute Lemper is the Ute Lemper of ice-cream.

The only God-Emperor is the God-Emperor of House Atreides Dune™ Melange-Ripple Ice-Cream.

Materiality #2 – Time

The second issue of Materiality: TIME is now for sale at Pinknantucket Press, with a host of stories, articles and poems about time and material culture, including my exploration of the brief life of the luminiferous æther and the advent of relativity.

The print edition includes a bonus zine containing several illustrated stanzas from my long poem The Stepwise Palace, published on @FSVO earlier this year.

The Stepwise Palace

I’ve started posting a new sequence of things on @FSVO, not as easily summarised as the periodic table or star catalogue. They have something to do with Erasmus Darwin and a few of my other obsessions — permutations, outdated terminology and formal verse — and they don’t really fit into tweets, but that’s OK. You may like them.

Hughes, again

On Hughes’ literary ancestors: I’ve read more than one post attributing his  style to his Catholic education. I think he owed much more to the English satirists and essayists of the 18th century. His SoHoiad, a transposition of the Dunciad to the 1980s NYC art scene, is a brilliant exception to the rule that no Jesuit can become Pope.

Failhalla

In the great hall of Failhalla
Each griefer made his brag.
“I burglarised a hundred n00bs
And made off with their swag.”

A leering ogre snickered
As he raised his mug with pride.
“That’s nothing,” said the cyborg lord
Who feasted at his side.

“My suicidal spacefleets
Have utterly destroyed
The galaxy’s economy:
Boy, were they annoyed!

“And now, our newest guest,” he asked,
“What crimes have you achieved?
What innocents have you pissed off?
What treasures have you thieved?”

“I vandalised a website
Where a clique of horrid nerds
Kept getting higher scores than me
For using silly words!”

The other griefers sat there
And they stared into their food,
Till someone broke the silence:
“That sounds… a little… rude?”

Happy Valentine’s Day

Roses are rose,
Violets are violet.
If its name be a colour
Then that’s how I style it.

Plums are plum
And oranges, orange—
Oh, I should have started
With oranges. Bum.

 

Computus 2011

Rough Maths 5

Last year I posted a rough versification of the computus, the algorithm used to calculate the date of Easter Sunday for a given year. Possibly influenced by the date of the post, or an underestimation of how far I’ll take a daft idea, at least one person thought I’d made it all up, when in fact I’d used Augustus De Morgan’s Easter chapter in his Budget of Paradoxes.

The computus is one of the earliest examples in European culture of an algorithm: a step-by-step set of instructions for performing a calculation. It’s a massive hack, by which I mean that it’s an inelegant and hairy solution to a fairly ridiculous problem posed by the untidy arrangements of the Earth, the Sun and the Moon.

Here is the table, with workings in the third column: this spoils the layout, which is clearer in the 2010 version.

In calculating the values for 2011, I found two errors in my first version. Programming is an exercise in humility.

I	Add one to the year you are given.	2011 + 1	= 2012
II	Divide the year by four, rounded down.	2011 / 4	= 502
III	From the centuries, take sixteen (if you can)	20 – 16	= 4
IV	And divide that by four, rounded down.	4 / 4	= 1
V	Add I, II and IV, then take away III,	2011 + 502 + 1 – 4	= 2511
VI	Then take that value modulo seven	2551 mod 7	= 5
	(Divide by seven and keep the remainder)
	Subtracting from seven again:	7 – 5	= 2
VII	The year’s dominical letter.	2	= B
	(We’ll use it as if it’s a number.)
VIII	Take I mod nineteen (if it’s zero, nineteen)	2012 mod 19	= 17
	This is the year’s golden number.
	Now take seventeen from the centuries,	20 – 17	= 3
IX	Over twenty-five (chuck the remainder)	3 / 5	= 0
	Take IX and 15 from the centuries	20 – 0 – 15	= 5
X	Over three (and chuck the remainder)	5 / 3	= 1
	To VIII, add ten times (VIII minus one)	17 + 10 * 16	= 177
XI	Take that sum modulo thirty	177 mod 30	= 27
	Add XI, X and IV and then take away III,	(27 + 1 + 1 – 4)	= 25
	(If it’s large enough, modulo thirty)	25 mod 30	= 25
	If it be twenty-four, make it twenty-five;
	If twenty-five, and if VIII is more than eleven	(17 > 11)
	Make it twenty-six instead;	25	= 26
	If it’s zero, set it to thirty.
XII	The result is the epact; a good Scrabble word,		26
	The age of the moon on New Years’ Day.
	If the epact is less than twenty-four,	(no)
XIII(b)	Subtract it from forty-five (write that down)
	Then subtract the epact from twenty-seven
	Divide that by seven and keep the remainder:
XIV(b)	If it’s zero, change it to seven.
	If the epact is higher than twenty-three,	(26 > 23)
XIII(b)	Subtract it from seventy-five instead	75 – 26	= 49
	Then subtract the epact from fifty-seven,	57 – 26	= 31
	Divide that by seven and keep the remainder:	31 mod 7	= 3
XIV(b)	If it’s zero, change it to seven.		= 3
	Then add XIII to VII (the dominical number).	49 + 2	= 51
	If XIV’s more than VII, add seven more.	(3 > 2) 51 + 7	= 58
XV	And then take away what you got for XIV.	58 – 3	= 55
	If the result is below thirty-two,	(no)
	Easter Sunday’s in March, and that’s the date,
	Otherwise, it’s in April – subtract thirty-one.	55 – 31	= 24 April

PS This one got in the way of the promised next post about division. It’s coming.