Raithe

The Untold Story of Disney’s $307 Million Bomb ‘John Carter': ‘It’s a Disaster’ (thewrap.com)

An Italian born antiquarian working in Cambridge, England, recently unearthed a previously unknown cache of letters between the legendary Elizabethan alchemist, demonologist and cypher specialist to the Crown Doctor John Dee and his colleague and fellow occultist Edward Kelley. Needless to say, he was extremely excited by the find and subjected it to the most intense study. Of particular interest was a document in Dee’s own hand purporting to describe his successful attempt to animate a wooden golem. According to Dee’s account, he had been given the enchantment necessary to accomplish the feat by one of the angels with whom he spoke in the Enochian language he and Field had recorded elsewhere. Anyone, Dee affirmed, could accomplish the same miraculous animation simply by writing the spell on a golem or other wooden figurine. The antiquarian was enthralled by the account, although he realized, of course, that it was pure fantasy. Despite that, it stayed in his mind, reminding him of his long ago childhood, when he had imagined long conversations with a handmade wooden puppet his father, a wood worker in the Tuscan village of San Miniato Basso, had made for him as a gift on his third birthday. The memory of those imaginary conversations stuck in his mind until, finally, he texted his father —now in his early 70s—and asked him to ship the puppet to Cambridge. To his astonishment, his father came personally to Cambridge to deliver the puppet, explaining that he’d always wanted to visit England and that he had decided his son’s odd request for his childhood puppet offered him an excuse to make the trip at last. The antiquarian was touched and thanked him profusely, but was too embarrassed to explain why he’d wanted the puppet in the first place. Instead, he showed his father around Cambridge and introduced him to all his colleagues. But that night, when his father had retired for the evening, he quietly took the puppet to his study and slowly and carefully, with exquisite attention to detail, wrote the angelic spell of Dr. Dee on the puppet. Nothing happened, of course, and he sat back and laughed at his own folly. His father, unable to drop off in a strange bedroom, heard his laughter and followed it to the study, where he found his son and the written-upon puppet. The antiquarian was still a little embarrassed, but he explained what he’d been doing in the expectation that his father would join his laughter. To his amazement, his father did nothing of the sort. He simply examined the puppet closely, then asked his son for a ballpoint. The mystified son handed one over and then sat back, watching in puzzlement as his father carefully followed each stroke of the arcane alphabet in which the spell was written. It took some time, but his father finally finished completely retracing the spell in ballpoint …. at which point the puppet suddenly leapt off the desk and went dancing about the study! The antiquarian gawked in disbelief until, finally, he tore his eyes from the cavorting puppet and looked at his father “How, Papà?” he demanded. “How did you make that work? And why didn’t it work for me?!” “You used pencil, figlio,” his father replied. “What does THAT have to do with it? And how did you know it mattered, anyway?” “It was obvious as soon as you told me who’d written the original spell. Any old school Italian puppet maker knows that you can’t just pencil an animation spell onto a golem. Not in that language! If you want a puppet to come to life you must Pen Enochian on it!”

"Slow Times at Ridgemont Nursing Home..."

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kremlin-arrests-fsb-chiefs-in-fallout-from-ukraine-invasion-chaos-92w0829c5

Russian troops are trogging through the Finnish wilderness at night. Suddently they hear someone yelling from a nearby hilltop "A Finnish soldier beats any Russian soldier any time!". A Russian soldier volunteers to prove otherwise and runs up the hill, but soon falls to a sniper bullet . The voice yells "Ha! One Finnish soldier is better than any two Russian soldiers!". The Russians take cover and an officer sends two scouts around the hill to flank the sniper. After a moment two shots are heard and the same voice yells "One Finnish soldier is better than 10 Russian soldiers!". The Russians send ten men up the hill. More shooting and a grenade explosion later no one comes back and they hear "One Finnish soldier is better than a whole platoon of Russian soldiers!". So the Russians send a whole platoon. After several minutes of gunfire grenade explosions a wounded Russian crawls back to the rest of the troops, grabs an officer by the shirt and says "It was a TRAP! There are TWO of them!"

Got my digital link to In Search of Tomorrow and started watching it. Dang. Five hours of 80's sci-fi documentary. Going year by year with occasional intercuts of related aspects. An assortment of writers, directors, actors, etc. talking about their times, influences, related films. Only watched a bit over an hour of it so far, there's nothing been too deep and revealing, but a lot of light background and nostalgia building all the connections between things. Enjoying it so far, worth a viewing.

BBC - Ukraine: India doctor stranded with a jaguar and panther