The Letters Are Crawling Off My Screen

I made a fool of myself and thoroughly confused some coworkers at the Christmas lunch today - I was pointing out a bottle of oil, or similar, which had lots of dark droplets crawling up and down inside, and wondering why they couldn't see it. And trying to work out why the drops were moving - oil and water repelling each other? Heat?

Turns out that I'm hallucinating.

 Text has been moving for me all day - it's really weird. But this morning, it was just around the edges of my vision, now I can stare straight at the screen and watch every other letter in each word floating up and down. If I put my nos eup close, they stand still. But if I'm more than about an arm's length away (or it's really tiny), the text or the dots on the wall, or whatever else, all crawl about.
I think it's a visual aura - possibly Autokinesis. Which is basically the illusory movement of things that aren't actually moving, and a sign of impending migraines. And ...wow. The little dots over the eyes are dancing around and around and tumbling down...

It's caused by spasming blood vessels in the brain, causing bloodflow changes in the region and, hence, visual weirdities. Consistently, it only appears when focussing on small things. It's probably brought on by the all-nighter staring at the computer screen, doing an assignment. I figured it was just my lazy eye being tired this morning... maybe I should have taken the headache as a warning. But then, I don't usually get migraines (I did have one once when I was ten - we were sitting on the floor singing Edelwiess, and suddenly I couldn't read the beginning of each sentence, my eyes just couldn't see that side. And I asked the teacher if something was wrong with the projector and she sent me to sickbay - I couldn't figure out why, until later when it got worse!)

A Guide To The Unicorns of the Internet

A Round-Up of Evil, Robotic, Rainbow, Sparkly, Geeky and Dismembered Unicorns

Unicorns are classic mythological horned horses/deer/kirin/dainty cloven hooved things, beloved by two audiences. Little girls are enthralled with the pretty, dainty, magical horses - as a quick search for Unicorns on Zazzle and Amazon will show in a scary way.

The other unicorn-loving audience does have its "Pretty horse" lovers, true, but the major part of it has recognised the most important bit of the unicorn. It has a bloody great horn and can stab things. Who is this enlightened audience? Why - the internet, of course!

The internet loves unicorns. They're everywhere. From happy sparkly unicorns being ridden by sparkly, doe eyed, beautiful yaoi boys, to beefed-up, psychotic, robotic killers, unicorns appear everywhere! We love them so much, we want to play with them, eat them, draw them, wear them!


I got an email from ArchMage today about ThinkGeek's tinned unicorn meat - apparently if you want to import it into Germany, you better not write Unicorn on the package. Or meat. Or else label it 'JOKE. Not Real!" ... or include a Deutsch-English dictionary with 'Unicorn: fictional" bookmarked and highlighted!
"Canned Unicorn Meat" Gift Delayed at German Border as Rare Meat

And then this evening, someone on Squidoo posted in the forums about the joke 'prize' (of the same unicorn meat) that you get awarded at a certain level.

This reminded me of how many unicorns I've been encountering and writing about lately (mostly amusing), so I figured I'd make a Unicornic Blog!

There's the ThinkGeek unicorn meat, of course - which started as an April Fool's Joke, but is now sold as 'real' canned meat with mixed-up sparkles. Actually, it's a dismembered toy unicorn in a can - reminiscient of the dismemberable Black Knight plushie!

The Sisters at Radiant Farms have dedicated their lives to nursing these elegant creatures through their final days. Taking a cue from the Kobe beef industry, they massage each unicorn’s coat with Guinness daily and fatten them on a diet comprised entirely of candy corn.


If you like the look of the tasty meat and want to serve up your own, well, there's a spin-off ThinkGeek Prime Cuts of Unicorn t-shirt that you can buy - ideal as a guide for serving up a nice serving of prime love-filled unicorn steak and avoiding the slightly tasteless, chewier cuts of superglue meat. There's a (rip off?) version on Zazzle, too.

Next up is the flash game, Robot Unicorn Attack. Robot Unicorn Attack is as addictive, annoying and happy and harmonious and harmony, harmony oh looove...

...

Wait, where was I? Oh yes, it's as always want to be with yo-aargh!. Addictive. Yes. Happy rainbow flash game of doom. You can basically sum it up with this graph.




I wrote a lens on it, and that's doing very well, I'm happy to say. Which is how I know that there's now a heavy metal AND a Christmas version coming out/available for iPhones. Basically the same game, just with different endless songs and appearances. There's a Chase Your Dreams t-shirt and a 'loading screen' Robot Unicorn Attack T-Shirt from ThinkGeek out finally/already. There are also a couple of AdultSwim designs available.

The Robot Unicorn was probably based off Starlite - the happy, sparkly, rainbow maned flying horse from the Rainbow Brite cartoon. The pretty horsey with the colourful mane has also been lovingly recreated by artists across the internet.

Rainbow Brite's Horse Starlite
Yeah... join with me in a resounding collective "Stereotypicaooooh pretty...."

The designs of Starlite and the rest of the characters were revamped recently, from the pudgy cute little round 1980 cartoon characters, to sleeker, older, prettier, more manga-influenced characters.

OLD

NEW

On the topic of 'pretty horsies', The Last Unicorn has been loved for years, as a beautiful, classic animated film in a time when there weren't so many, and fan art and references to Almathea abound across the net. I've done my part by adding Almathea/Disney femslash to the Disney femslash collection *cackles*

Sadly, I haven't actually seen this famous film, apart from YouTube excerpts and for years thought it was the book The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge (because I could not fathom a famous book that I hadn't read, much les not even heard of!)

The AVENGING UNICORN PLAY SET is well up there in awesomeness - the Avenging Narwhal is even more awesome, as it impales endanged species (the unicorn less imaginately is impaling people), but sadly no longer available.

There's this awesome animated screensaver from The Truth about the death rate of smokers, which I downloaded many years ago and spent hours looking for recently. All I found were a couple of screenshots, and the original download site... which doesn't always actually work for me! I did finally get it to download (weird browser issues? The site itself? Dunno. But I finally have it again!)

It features badly drawn but apparently content unicorns, that jump back and forth between two clouds, floating in a pale pink sky with a giant rainbow arcing down across it...

... and 30% (or some similar smoking death statistic) miss, and either fall to their deaths, get struck by lightning or crash into the cloud. The corpse then falls to the ground and burns or decays into a skeleton. The longer it runs, the larger the pile of skeletons below...

And on this topic of horrible medical conditions, let us segue into the internet classic, Charlie the Unicorn.




And then there's this mysterious cutie

HELLO my name is the Unicorn of your dreams

And to round off, have some general unicorn art and linkage

• Patrick Rothfuss' lesbian unicorn was briefly hilarious (also, I love his books).

• Two of my favourite rainbow/ robot unicorns, for originality and execution.

Rainbow Stallion by Unicorn_Dream
View more Rainbow Posters


Steampunk Unicorn Damask Poster by redrevvy
Shop the other art at zazzle

The steampunk unicorn actually reminds me of the young adult series by Tanith Lee , which features giant mechanical unicorns.

• My contribution to the Unicorns of the Internet is my quick sketch-painting and story of the bloody My Little Pony duel.
  
  And of course, the pointy horse t-shirts!

• 
  A Unicorn is a horse that... T-Shirt by Flynn_the_Cat
  Make a custom t shirt on zazzle

And I've been writing this for about three hours (admittedly, while being distracted by Eufloria) so I'm going to suddenly stop, with no real conclusion now.

edit: And now, of course, there are the unicorns of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

Twilight Sparkle and Rarity.

A Story Concept: The Abandoned AI

A spaceship has been floating in space. It's derelict - a survey ship. The crew is long dead, and all that remains is the AI. The AI ran the ship and is basically a self-aware computer system. She now thinks she is human, through long loneliness, and because the crew interacted with her as a real person.

A large ship finds it, and sends people to look it over. They find the AI.

She can project some form of avatar out to interact with the boarders. Do they recognise her as an AI immediately? Do they slowly realise? Or does she manage to pretend to be human, stranded there?

How do they react to her? As a person to be rescued, an inconvenience, a tool, a danger?

What form does her avatar take? Holographic images? Some form of solid hologram? A robot with a computer brain that connects to the ship? Electrical illusions induced in the viewer's mind? A synthorganic lifeform created for that purpose, or grown by the AI? Can her appearance change?

What happens when she is touched? Is she tangible? Can she feel? Eat? Speak normally? Have sex? Lift things? Escape from the 'body'? Does it interfere with her integration and management of the ship's main systems?

Is she insane or normal, or smart or just a bit weird? Is she curious or afraid? Grateful to be rescued or angry at being invaded?

How long has she been floating? Is she eons out of date, or high-tech and advanced? How does this affect what the people who find her can interact with or detect her?

How did her 'people' die? Disaster? Disease? How many were there? How close was she to them? Does she remember them?

The Night The Reindeer Died (Venison Pie)

To be sung in the tune of 'American Pie' by Don McLean. Video at end. Randomly inspired by forum thread - apparently 'The Night The Reindeer Died' is a tv show previewed in the comedy movie Scrooged.

A long winter ago...
I can still remember
How the reindeer used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those reindeer prance
...And, maybe, they’d fly faster for a while.

The sleighbells make me shiver
with every present they deliver
Bad news down the chimney
Coming straight towards me

......I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his stuffed, skinned hide
But something touched me deep inside
the night... the reindeer died

So bye-bye, my reindeer in the sky.
Flew my old sleigh to the rooftop,
But the roof it was dry.
And that good old deer was eatin’ carrots and rye
Now knowin', "this’ll be the day he'll die.
..."this’ll be the day that he dies."

Did you write to Santa Claus,
And do you have faith he'll bring rewards,
If your parents tell you so?
Do you believe in the sleigh's flight,
Can reindeer bring your gifts tonight,
...And can you teach me how to stop getting coal?

Well, I know that you wanted to eat him
`cause I saw you watch salivating
You watched and licked your lips
Whispered 'venison' when his hoof slips

He was a lonely teenage broncin’ buck
With a great red nose and not a lotta luck
Until the day he was hit by a truck
The day the reindeer died.

I started thinkin',
"bye-bye, my venison pie."
Flew my old sleigh to the vet's roof,
But the roof it was dry.
And that good old deer was bringing tears to my eye
Now knowin', "this’ll be the day he'll die.
..."this’ll be the day that he dies."

Now for ten years we’ve been on our own
And moss grows fat on a sleigh of stone,
But that’s not how it used to be.
When the reindeer led us safe through the mist
With a nose so bright and flight so swift
And presents that came for you and me,

Oh, and while the judge was looking down,
The lawyers stole his weighty frown.
The courtroom was adjourned;
No verdict was returned.
Though witnesses sang like angry larks
The team flew off over the park,
Sleighbells rang dirges in the dark
The day the reindeer died.

And they were singing,
"bye-bye, my venison pie."
Flew my old sleigh to the vet's roof,
But the roof it was dry.
And that good old deer was bringing tears to my eye
Singin', "this’ll be the day he'll die.

Helter skelter in a winter swelter.
The deer flew off without any shelter,
Eight miles high and falling fast.
He landed foul on the grass.
The driver behind him tried to pass,
While the sleigh crashed on the pavement with a blast.

Now the winter air was sweet perfume
While the sleighbells crashed a rambling tune.
He stood his ground with a prance,
Oh, but to help there was no chance!
`cause the carhorns honked and tires squealed;
The idiot deer refused to yield.
Do you recall what was revealed
The day the reindeer died?

And they were singing,
"bye-bye, my venison pie."
Flew my old sleigh to the vet's roof,
But the roof it was dry.
And that good old deer was bringing tears to my eye
Singin', "this’ll be the day he'll die.

Oh, and there we were all in one place,
A team of reindeer lost in space
With no time left to start again.
So come on: deer be nimble, deer be quick!
Rudolph's leg broke like a stick
And roadkill is a terrible way to end

Oh, and as I watched him turn the page
My hands were clenched in fists of rage.
No person meaning well
Could foil that roasting smell.
And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite,
I saw children laughing with delight
The day the reindeer died

And they were singing,
"bye-bye, my venison pie."
Flew my old sleigh to the vet's roof,
But the roof it was dry.
And that good old deer was bringing tears to my eye
Singin', "this’ll be the day he'll die.

I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some carols too,
But she just smiled and turned away.
I hauled open the old barn door
Where I’d seen reindeer years before,
But the man there said the reindeer wouldn’t fly.

And in the streets: the children screamed,
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed.
But not a word was spoken;
The sleigh bells all were broken.
And the three gifts I wanted most:
Faded from my stocking like a ghost,
They'd been on the last sleigh for the coast
The day the reindeer died.

And they were singing,
"bye-bye, my venison pie."
Flew my old sleigh to the vet's roof,
But the roof it was dry.
And that good old deer was bringing tears to my eye
Singin', "this’ll be the day he'll die.

And they were singing,
"bye-bye, my venison pie."
Flew my old sleigh to the vet's roof,
But the roof it was dry.
And that good old deer was bringing tears to my eye
Singin', "this’ll be the day he'll die.
..."this’ll be the day that he dies

The Great Zazzle Overseas Shipping Rip-Off: Which domain should you order from?

Bah. I posted about this in the Zazzle forums and it was promptly deleted, by which I assume my calculations are accurate, and my concerns valid, as if I was mistaken it would have been easier to correct me. If they'd left it up, I wouldn't have bothered posting here, but now they've deleted it - and I was hoping for an actual response - I'm writing it up for the world.



There's a free shipping deal running on the Zazzle.co.nz site until December 6th; I was planning to take rampant advantage. There are also a LOT of deals - often up to 50% - running on the main .com site

I just checked the differences on a keychain to take advantage of the free shipping - turns out that the total cost including shipping to NZ costs nearly twice as much.


Here are my calculations (I had two tabs open, and was testing on one off my own keychains, so default price; conversions are rounded and exact exchange rate varies anyway so pfft)

NZ
keychain = $5.54 (US$4.12)
Shipping = $9.35 (US$6.95 )
Total= $14.89 ($11.07 USD)

US
keychain = $2.95 ($3.97 NZD)
Shipping = $3.99 ($5.36 NZD)
Total= $6.94 ($9.34 NZD)

The actual product is almost the same price, allowing for slight variations in conversion rate. The difference gets a lot more marked at higher prices (a $42 iPhone = $54ish NZ, while on the NZ site, it's $63) by the shipping is very different.

The total cost is $6.94 on the US site, and $11.07 on the NZ site.

There is NO REASON for the shipping to be marked up like that! The item itself is marked up, allegedly to cover import taxes and local market value, which is partly bull, depending on where you live and how much you order. And the internet is global now - creating artificial country divisions doesn't work with anyone halfway internet savvy.



After playing around a bit more, I found that I could use one of the coupons that was active at the moment - 50% off keychains, hence my experiment - to place an order for $23 NZ, that would have cost $49.86 NZ, with the free shipping. The US deals are way better, frankly.

I also found that the point at which the bulk discount on products kicks in is the point it jumps up to the next tier in shipping, so it's worth playing around with your cart, and possibly placing two orders (e.g. 2x9 keychains at $3.99 shipping, rather than 18 keychains, with a 17% discount, and $12.99 shipping).

The bulk shipping is probably one reason for the 'high' shipping prices - you are much better off shipping in bulk than singly. The fact that different products ship separately is real pain, though. That's the one place where the free shipping would be worth it. That, or just stalking the deals and placing separate orders.


What does it mean? It means be really careful, doublecheck what you are about to pay, don't be afraid to order from overseas - and check if there's a better deal on that site.

And if you're selling... well, take the time to go through and find out what shipping will cost and how many you can buy before the shipping increases. Have a look at the exchange rates, and remember that the .com site usually has the best and the most. Having to faff around figuring out what would cost what is one of the things that's put me off so long.

I did order some keychains, though. From the US domain, with the 50% off code. I'll order some more stuff, probably, while the deals are going. The NZ free shipping doesn't expire until Monday, after all... and it came out of my pending Zazzle earnings for this month anyway, so it would only have sat in my Paypal until I spent it.


Update: my keychains arrived, and my cat approved.