Quick Pointing to Other Place

I should probably say more but if I spend too long Rossamünd will get eaten by a very large s.... ah but that would be telling.

Just quickly Jack is asking over at the Unofficial MBT Forum if folks want a Q&A section to it. Given that I do tend to miss a lot of questions here I certainly am all for it - would make it very clear what I had and had not responded too (I hope). So, please please, head on over and give us your thought - if you don't mind, that is.

Cheers.

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A New Button to Push!

Folks might notice my rather enthusiastic response to Jack so excellently putting up an Unofficial Forum in the form a snazzy link image to that very same place! Thank you very much, sir!/... I guess that answers the poll question then...

Plus: Carlita's expectoratingly insightful question: "If anything, happens if a leer catches a cold and still uses his sthenicon. And what would happen if a wit or a fulgar caught a cold? Would they just be miserable, or would their transplanted organs cause them trouble?"

Any of the H-c's more knowledgeable physicians would heartily recommend to any leer with a strong head cold to leave off using the sthenicon or olfactologue until the malady had passed. To ignore this advice can be both very messy (can you imagine a snotty sneeze inside a box), painful and will very likely extend the duration if not increase the severity of a cold. I guess that means, too, that hay fever suffers with dreams of leering best find themselves a new dream.

As to lahzars with colds, they suffer no more or less than everymen, though an exceptional fever might increase the risk of their mimeotes (inserted organs) vaoriating (spasming) - so again, a transmogrifier would suggest bed rest and avoidance of the use of one's potencies until better.

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Lebanese Tattoo by Moe Barjawi

Alan spotted this photo of what appears to be Kanji tattoo by Moe Barjawi in BMEzine's gallery:


http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A80922/high/n0t6-lebanese-tattoo-moe.jpg

Alan emailed me this after seeing it:

Let me see if I got this right. Some tattooist named “Moe” tattoos himself with his name in the “Gibberish Font” and, thinking this will be good advertising for his tattoo shop named “Lebanese Tattoo,” posts a picture of it on BMEzine.com… They never learn, do they?

What is even more astonishing is that someone has evidently tried to “improve” the original horrible calligraphy (especially on the partial 辶). Did they really think that bad calligraphy was the only problem? The mind boggles.

What is even more entertaining is definition for the term "Lebanese tattoo" in UrbanDictionary.com is the following:

A badly drawn tattoo, done at a 'professional' tattoo studio. The term first surfaced on the facebook group 'Actually, I think your tattoo is hideous'.

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A Forum for Horses

So, I am thinking I shall keep up with this blog (indeed, that was my hope and intention) - I very much look forward to a forum happening though (hint hint - am I allowed to do that...?) - probably a powerful benefit I see is having some kind of section where questions are asked of me so I can clearly see what I have and have not answered.

I am afraid to think of the number of questions that have gone unanswered here at Monster Blog Tattoo because I lose track of them in all the comments. Sorry to anyone who feels a bit snubbed by such an oversight, please, if you dare, ask again.

In light of this contrition I shall now attempt to answer a question.

Dear portals was axing a quekstion... "So far all the Haacobin Empire's armies seem to all be made up of foot soldiers and suchlike. from what I know about history, cavalry always seems to be a great asset to any army, so why does the Empire have none.Sorry if they do have some, but with the definition for the Armies of the Empire, the Battle of the Gates, and the different city states in the Explicarium, nothing was mentioned about cavalry."

An excellent inquiry. If you look in the Explicarium of Book 1, under the entry for equiteer you shall find the very reason why cavalries are so little used. The long and the short of it is many monsters find our equine friends rather toothsome making the fielding of a substantial force of cavalry a sure way to attract a monster or three right into the fray of battle. That is why horses go out shabraqued and covered in nullodour but this makes a large force of them even more expensive and high maintenance. In Book 3 (ie, Factotum) I introduce the concept of cabaline lands - regions tamed (cicurated) for so long that they are considered generally safe for horses. If battles occur in such regions you could well expect to see a greater use of equiteers, indeed, perhaps this is why the lords of the H-c like stouching with each other in their boutique wars, a chance to crack out the cavalry and give it a good run.

Oh, and there was an excellent article/interview over at the Galaxy Express about steam-punk, where good ol' MBT gets a wee plug - nice to have a home, though I still don't think I'm strictly true steam-punk (due largely to the absence of steam in the H-c)... but now I am being picky.

And for those a French-speaking persuasion I was gratified to find not one but two positive reviews of the French edition of MBT, Terre de Monstres ("GROUND OF THE MONSTERS") - if my understanding of the tongue of France is correct, though in correction to the first review: En fait, l'auteur a dessiné les illustrations internes.

For breakfast I had honied flakey things, Irish Breakfast tea and a good pray.

I nearly forgot the most shattering news of all! Today I shaved off my beard! Dun dun dunnnnnn....

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New Post, New Poll

So, to the question of a forum.

Do I? Don't I?

I shall be running a poll regarding this for the rest of the year. Just so folks know I will be unlikely to be able both blog and moderate a forum, and given the choice I would rather stay with the blogging (I wonder if I will have to eat my hat with that statement later...?) So if a forum did go up it would most likely be moderated by another party, with me appearing a little less frequently.

Looking forward to people's answers.

(And I blame MooseGuy for this... ;)

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Did someone say 'Release Date'?

Should I tell you..?

Do you really want to know?

...Want to know just how long you will have to wait?

Well... Monster-Blood Tattoo Book 3: Factotum (English language editions) will be released ~

MAY 2010

Please don't be too dismayed or beat up on me; it is a bit of a wait yes, but it will be worth it... he says in faith... =/

In the meantime I found this very cool bit of "fan art" - if I may call it that - by a young soul by the name of ponkkaa. I hope they do not mind me send folks their way.

Also there is the wonderful work of our very own E.N.Reinmuth - both MBT and non; I dig you work very much ma'am! - and yes, I shall attempt to put up just how a vialimn works some day soon (certainly between now and the release of Book 3).

Anyone else got a bit of MBT related (or not) stuff they want to show off?

Last but not least, a new poll, in an oblique response to portal's excellent question. (please be seeing the text to the right)

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The Handsome Grackle ... or, Spring is sprung and I missed it!

(Following to be read with some strange accent in mind - I have no idea why, just cause...)
Please being 'Hello!' to my good friend, the Handsome Grackle.
(Cease with accent, please.)

He is what is called nadderer - a sea-nicker, a water-dwelling monster - with neither head nor tail, but both at once, being able to walk on either end when he/she/it ventures on land. A very very robust creature, it recovers quickly from hurts, so much so that he has been swallowed more than once by much larger sea-beasts, travelled the length of their alimentary canals before being "poo-ed" (if I may use that word...) out again, relatively unharmed to get about his/her/its business. Oh what fun...

There have been many excellent questions put to me here over the last couple of posts. Unfortunately I do not have time right now to address many of them - but I hope a couple of answers might suffice for the mo...?

Portals was wondering, "I have questions about lahzars' weapons. Is a fulgar's fuse used as a kind of spear, or more like a lightsaber from Star Wars? Do wits have any kind of weapon that they use? Thanks"

A fuse is used more as a quarterstaff than anything else, a way to extend reach (though with a the wire wrapped about a pole of cane or wood I am actually not so sure a magnetic field would occur as has been suggested elsewhere - sorry whoever posted, I thought the wire needed to be coiled about metal to achieve this - but please correct me if I am wrong, physics at high school was my weakness).

Wits would generally see it as being beneath them to resort to weapons, the control and manipulation of frission is everything to them. Saying that a pure wit would probably look down on a bane, and in turn a bane would probably see a purist wit as lacking versatility.

Another question was regarding the status of the Gottlands, which are in fact not a part of the Haacobin Empire but an empire to itself - a hegemony of kingdoms, duchies and the like allied and treatied to the Sigismundian dynasty that currently rules the Gottskylds. They are protected from the Haacobins by the great big threwdish swamp of the Ichormeer, though battles have been fought between the two giants, with little gain for either side. The Haacobins regard the Sigismunds with sullen respect.

I shall get to the problem of lamps as soon as I might, honest - time is really crimping me now...

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Name-dropping in American Philosophical Society's Publication

Reader Bryan points me to the latest issue of American Philosophical Society's publication, where this humble little site was mentioned on page 54.

The main article is titled "How Maya Hieroglyphs Got Their Name: Egypt, Mexico, and China in Western Grammatology since the Fifteenth Century" by Byron Ellsworth Hamann from
Department of Anthropology and Department of History, The University of Chicago.


http://www.aps-pub.com/proceedings/1521/1520101.pdf

The illustration shown above had this caption:

Car ornamentation with “Chinese” characters, photographed in Almería, Spain, in August 2006. The third character from the left is dao (“way” or “path”); the rest are nonsensical (or, as James Mathien put it, “Fakenese”). Mayanists might refer to these as “pseudo-glyphs.” Photograph by the author [Hamann].

The article is sixty-eight pages long, so be patient or get a few liters of beer in you before proceeding.

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