Thorn Wilde

Happy Birthday, Louis!!

Indeed. I think the last thing old Leo would have wanted to see is his inventions used for warfare.

A bizarre instrument combining a piano and cello has finally been played to an audience more than 500 years after it was dreamt up Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci, the Italian Renaissance genius who painted the Mona Lisa, invented the ‘‘viola organista’’ - which looks like a baby grand piano – but never built it, experts say. The viola organista has now come to life, thanks to a Polish concert pianist with a flair for instrument-making and the patience and passion to interpret da Vinci’s plans. Full of steel strings and spinning wheels, Slawomir Zubrzycki’s creation is a musical and mechanical work of art. ‘‘This instrument has the characteristics of three we know: the harpsichord, the organ and the viola da gamba,’’ Zubrzycki said as he debuted the instrument at the Academy of Music in the southern Polish city of Krakow. The instrument’s exterior is painted in a rich midnight blue, adorned with golden swirls painted on the side. The inside of its lid is a deep raspberry inscribed with a Latin quote in gold leaf by 12th-century German nun, mystic and philosopher, Saint Hildegard. ‘‘Holy prophets and scholars immersed in the sea of arts both human and divine, dreamt up a multitude of instruments to delight the soul,’’ it says. The flat bed of its interior is lined with golden spruce. Sixty-one gleaming steel strings run across it, similar to the inside of a baby grand. Each is connected to the keyboard, complete with smaller black keys for sharp and flat notes. But unlike a piano, it has no hammered dulcimers. Instead, there are four spinning wheels wrapped in horse-tail hair, like violin bows. To turn them, Zubrzycki pumps a pedal below the keyboard connected to a crankshaft. As he tinkles the keys, they press the strings down onto the wheels, emitting rich, sonorous tones reminiscent of a cello, an organ and even an accordion. The effect is a sound that da Vinci dreamt of, but never heard; there are no historical records suggesting he or anyone else of his time built the instrument he designed. A sketch and notes in da Vinci’s characteristic inverted script is found in his Codex Atlanticus, a 12-volume collection of his manuscripts and designs for everything from weaponry to flight. ‘‘I have no idea what Leonardo da Vinci might think of the instrument I’ve made, but I’d hope he’d be pleased,’’ said Zubrzycki, who spend three years and 5000 hours bringing da Vinci’s creation to life.

This video gives me a total nerdgasm.

Penis friday isn't so much people showing their penises as it's people posting a lot of gay porn gifs and erotic artwork.

I was a troubled kid. I always had a temper, which I inherited from both my parents. Back when they lived together they fought a lot (not physically, just shouting) and this obviously did stuff to me and the way I handled anger. Additionally, I was raised as an only child, as all my brothers were mostly grown up by the time I was born, so I was used to dealing with adults rather than other children, and my vocabulary was way beyond my years when I started socialising with kids my age. So, I was bullied, because I was so different. Half the time they didn't even understand what I was on about. I was small and scrawny and no match for the big boys, either. This contributed to my temper. So did the feeling of not belonging, As I grew older, nothing really seemed to get any better. I just found new ways in which to be angry. Less tantrums, more violence. When my parents split up, my mum was left alone to deal with my shit most of the time, and I'm pretty sure there were times when she wanted to give up on me. She never did, though. When my dad passed away when I was 11, my issues became even greater. I developed insomnia (which I still suffer from today) and got occasional panic attacks that my teachers interpreted as violent temper tantrums. It wasn't until I reached my teens that my moods started to even out (and how many people does that happen to, isn't the teens when you're supposed to get more moody?) as I started to figure out my place in the world and, for almost the first time, started making proper friendships. Once I found people who were just as fucked up as I was, I started to feel like I belonged. I haven't got anger issues anymore. I mean, I still get angry, and I enjoy a good rant, but all my violent instincts are gone. I can't imagine what would have happened if my parents had given up on me. For many years I must have seemed like I was beyond help. But people heal with time, they can get better on their own, and growing up does a lot. I would never, ever give up on a 9-year-old. If I was at the end of my tether I would seek help, but I would never give up on my child, because I know that this shit gets better. Extreme emotional states are caused by chemical or hormonal imbalances, and these change between childhood and adulthood. Children are people. People can, almost always, get better.

A cinema in Oslo is showing the 50th anniversary special. The tickets were sold out less than an hour after they were released, for both shows on the 23rd. So they put up extra shows on the 25th so Magpie and I are going and get to see it in 3D! Watching it on the 23rd as well, of course. BBC iPlayer with Hola Unblocker, baby. Hope the stream won't be super slow from all the people tuning in...

All right, I'll take Black Christmas, then. I have an awesome idea, I think.

I use the word fag exclusively to mean cigarettes, and a lot of my characters smoke, so there are a lot of fags going around. There's some joke that I think an English comedian or musician or something told, where he said it was weird to perform in California because 'You ask for a fag, half the crowd comes up on stage.'

On Tumblr, we have Penis Friday. That's almost the same thing, only it's no anything-Friday, I guess...

I am not ignorant of my privilege. But the way I see it, any word can be used to be insulting, or it can be used in a neutral or positive way. It's like when you call your friend a bitch, or you admiringly call someone a clever bastard (or, if you're Scottish, a clever c**t; this word can be a term of endearment in certain contexts). Likewise, an utterly benign word can be uttered in the most hateful way. One that comes to mind is 'Arab'. Just the name of an ethnic group, but the way some people are spitting it out these days you'd think it was some kind of curse. Or, a bit closer to home, 'That's so gay!'. We don't abandon these words just because some people use them negatively. Just my opinion, of course.

I like the title Black Christmas, but I was wondering if we're supposed to retell the original story, or can we just take the title and run wild? In case of the latter, I'd very much like Black Christmas.

Happy birthday!!

I guess there's a cultural difference there... Where I'm from and in the lingo I'm used to, queer is a perfectly acceptable term for both LGBT and straight people to use, and it's the intent behind it that matters rather than the word itself. But I guess it's different in different places. In Norwegian, the equivalent word, 'skeiv' (which means 'bent', technically), has been so successfully re-empowered that it's the primary word used for the LGBT movement. The Oslo pride festival is called 'Skeive dager' or 'Queer days'. I much prefer to think of myself as queer rather than any other, more narrow label I can place on myself, and I think the more we use it the less people can use it against us. I completely understand where you're coming from, though. I've never had the word directed at me as a slur, and if I have I probably didn't notice.

The misogyny of gay culture has always bothered me greatly. Whenever I discuss these kinds of topics I tend to specify LGBT or even LGBTQ (I think queer is such a wonderful all-encompassing word, and I like queer culture much better than gay culture). I've never been one for the club scene, I've always preferred a quiet drink in a pub with my friends. Now, the vast majority of my friends self-identify as bisexual, even if most of them are in straight relationships. I was accepted into a very open and accepting circle back when I was 15. It's grown and shrunk again many times since then, but the core members mostly remain, and it's always been okay to be who you are and love whom you want, and as such I never really needed any other culture, as that's not really my scene anyway. Outside of Pride, which I attend every year, I don't really deal much with gay culture. But when I do, I notice. First the T is dropped, then the B and then the L. In that order. I mentioned in another thread that there's a lot of prejudice against bisexual people in the so-called LGBT community. We're just being greedy, or we need to make up our minds, or we're cowards, just trying to hold onto some sense of normalcy and belonging in mainstream society by not identifying as gay. I think this leads a lot of people to identify as gay even though they're actually bisexual, because then at least you belong. And then there's women. 'Don't be such a lesbian.' 'Oh, never mind her, she's just my hag.' In my experience, there are few groups quite as judgmental as certain groups of gay men. I realise that I'm lucky. I live in an extremely socially liberal country, I became comfortable with my sexuality early on (I think I must have been about 7 or 8 the first time I had a crush on someone of the same sex), and I found a group of friends that's quirky, open-minded, diverse and largely queer in one way or another. But I cannot understand people who, because they have been marginalised, feel that they have the right to marginalise others. I recently read an article in a Norwegian newspaper that cited a study claiming that bisexual women have the highest rate of suicide, depression, and general difficulty finding a sense of belonging. It's not really difficult to see why.

It's good to have you back. Since I have you neither on Skype nor Facebook, I have to admit I was a little bit worried... Glad to know you're okay and getting on with things.

Welcome, Gee and A.Morell!

So, I finally got round to reading this, and I have to say the incest somehow didn't bother me at all. I thought it would, having grown up with several brothers, but it didn't. To me this was just a love story, and I found myself cheering for Bray and Rei every step of the way. Their uncle was utterly disgusting and horrible, and their mum made me really sad... Well done, Sash! You are, as always, a wonderful writer!

Never PM'd me herself.

I am of the opinion that being embarrassed over perfectly natural bodily functions that we all have is very silly and a waste of time. Better to lay it all out in the open. EDIT: Magpie does not agree with this and professes to the philosophy that the human body is unnatural and icky.

A friend of mine told me she once farted in the car when she was on a road trip with her dad and her dad's girlfriend. The girlfriend blamed the dad, even as my friend said, 'No, really, it was me,' because girls don't do that sort of thing. Silly, archaic way of thinking. If we didn't all fart, we'd look like balloons, and people who fart less burp more. I burp very little, so I fart more. Personally, I think a fart is more discrete.

Norway also does it the 'right' way, in today being 12.11.13, or if you like 12/11-13. I found the Swedish way very confusing when I lived there... All backwards.

Oh, yeah. Almost forgot. Also the sauna. Do not ever fart in the sauna.

I fart in front of Magpie all the time. He never farts in front of me. I'm not as refined as his bourgoise arse. If I'm in public, I'll try to do it quietly. I'll usually own up to it if anyone asks though. Cause that's just polite. Only place I think it's unforgivable to fart is in the car. You know, when you're going on a long trip and you're on the motorway, and it's cold outside so you can't really open the windows either. Not cool. EDIT: Oh, and girls fart. Trust me.

Cheers very much, Zombie.