increpare games

While I was in Egypt, I bought a book of letters by Florence Nightingale that she wrote when she was touring about.

Pablo, darling!

Greeting from Thebes; I cam across this, like, totally sweet anecdote; it’s maybe not really your cup of tea (great observer of geometry that you are), but I simply must communicate it to someone or else I will burst!

So, I was walking through the literature souk (on the banks of the nil, oh how very pre-romantic!), and came across a delightful volume of correspondence between Pharoah Rameses the Third and Albrecht Durer (Oh just imagine it! Having your personal letters published for all the world (or it’s literate portion, at any rate) to peruse!), that are curious in several respects.

So, it seems that in this episode with the volume covers, the Pharoah had developed an interest in engravers of the northern-renaissance and, consequently, had decided to write to Durer, secretly hoping to kindle up a relationship so that he might be able to commission some naughty little engravings of tearful clowns or the like from him at a later date.

Albrecht, needless to say, was quite excited at receiving such royal (arguably divine) correspondance, and enclosed with his reply a copy of his recently published treatise on perspective.

Rameses was delighted to receive such a delightful work of science, and studied this book intently

One thing, in particular, that took his attention, was a section illustrating a particularly practical (and rather simple) application of perpspective and projective geometry; he was saying that if you want to write on the side of a building, that it really makes sense to have the letters higher up be smaller than the ones lower down, so that they all appear roughly the same size. This was not rocket-science, nor, indeed, did it involve wheels, but it was remarkable nonetheless, and it was something he could work with. He was something of a trickster, you see, and he thought of an excellent joke to play on Albrecht – not the sort of joke that would be at Durer’s expense, but rather one that he was sure to appreciate.

He thought of a new type of structure – one that would be enormously tall, towering many stories high, and tapering at the top to about half the size of its base: this was the first obelisk. The trick was though, to keep the writing the same size all the way up. Thus, the writing occupies half of the faces lower down, but, as the obelisk narrows upwards, it grows to fill its full width.

And, it seemed, this did indeed win Durer’s eternal affections; he, upon completion of this monument, sent out a convoy to find Durer and bring him to Egypt, without telling him exactly what the reason for this was excepting that it did not involve him being put in to slavery. After a month’s travel, he was arrived in Cairo, the cart stopped directly on front of the obelisk. Nothing, apparently, could exceed his amusement; what delightful humour this Pharaoh had!

And they all, essentially, lived happily ever after. Further collaboration, stretching the notions of perspective to extremes, resulted in the pyramids, designed, in some or hyper-Georgian manner, to seem to be stretching up to infinity.

And, well, it seems like such a delightful story I simply must share it with you.

I heard you have been terribly ill; I will kiss everything better when I get back;

Yours,

xxx

Florence

This got me thinking about a particular chapter of invisible cities, where there is a city whose buildings are built according to the arrangements of the stars, and they keep on adding on more and more stories in the hope that they will some day be able to reach them, and the fact that the pyramids around Giza are laid out to resemble the Orion constellation, that Giza might be an artist’s construction of what such a city might look like if completed.

Hmm. Okay. Here’s a part where I try to do somehing like preface what’re going to be a series of very short stories (10, I think, which translates to a solid 3 weeks worth of material which is, I think, not to be sniffed at, given my absence over the summertime) with something of an apology/explanation.

I had this small idea over the weekend of trying to write a sequence of geometrically inspired (very) short stories with themes of claustrophobia/agoraphobia (in, respectively, geometrical/incorrectly eometrical senses). Anyway, they’re definitely not toooooooo good, but, so far as I’ve thought of them, there’s a different phonomon at play in each one, so none of them will be entirely without meaning/point; but some are terribly weak.

As to why, this follows from a conversation that I had with someone last friday, with a mention (on my part) of this drawing by Fomenko,

,

one I am particularly fond of, depicting the contraction of a space onto a subspace of parallelepipeds in some intuitive/surreal way.

So, I made a funny a few weeks ago

Friend:’A friend of mine used to go to burger king on a semi-regular basis and he always used to get really annoyed because they’d put the burger box (with the burger inside it) on to his tray upside down. And, one time when I was there with him he had just got given his tray – he opened the burger box thing, to find it was upside down, and he said to the dude who had given it to him “Dude, what do you think I am, left-handed?”‘

And we all laughed, and I was, like, “Well, what if it was a pseudo-burger?”

Some people laughed anyway. At least I did.

Restaurants and mobile telephones. No person of any class or breeding will ever leave their mobile telephone active while sharing a repast with somebody in one of our city’s fine establishments; it’s one of the big etiquette no-nos.

However, those of us who like to torment are not interested in these social conventions except as a means to irk and perpetually torment those nearest and dearest to us. So let me offer a suggestion how best to capitalize on this rule:

Either before you enter the restaurant, or just when you do arrive at the said establishment, your partner should in some way discretely turn off their phone. Check for this, and when they do, make some show of sending a text message from yours, and then comment to them that you hope they will reply quickly.

Now, you should spend a good deal of the first course completely occupied with the operation of your phone, sending text messages and completely ignoring your partner, and not touching your food for the most part – this works better if they are paying, but is satisfactory by other arrangements as well. This should leave them feeling rather tired with your behaviour before they’ve even gotten to the main course. And, of course, be sure to hold the phone as follows: both elbows on table, phone, held in both hands, raised to your eye level.

Now, in the wait between courses you should send a message to a family member asking them to call you when they are free to, somebody who you expect will reply to your request within the next ten minutes. Then put your phone away, and begin to talk to them in some seemingly earnest way, apologizing profusely for your ignoring of them.

Then your phone rings (Oh, make sure that your ring-tone is truly obnoxious). Now, you do all the things that you feel might annoy him – talk loudly, say that you are in a restaurant, indeed feel free to complain about the food. Now, and this is the piece de resistance: ask the person who called you if they would like to speak to your partner, and that you are sure they would like to talk to them. Then thrust the contraption in their faces and say to them, “Here, so and so wants to talk to you”.

Works a treat.

If you’re stuck for something to try during dessert, if things get that far, I can heartily recommend a course of constant mobile-phone photograph taking. Especially if you have the anti-pervert camera shutter sound on your phone.

(Also ideal for teachers, parents, or anyone whose approval carries weight).

Playing favourites — it’s one of the oldest ways of tormenting those under your command, and one of the best. Deserved or undeserved, so long as those in your employ are honest workers who take pride in their job, it’s sure to breed malaise in the work-environment as well as any other method of wickedness.

But it can get a little boring, you know? Year in year out, the same sausages on the plate; sometimes you just want to spice things up a little! So, here’s an elaboration of the classic-to-beat-all-classics, perfect for the winter 06/07 season:

Say you are managing a project involving two workers, both kind honestly people. Pick on one of them, the weaker of the two. Don’t be directly destructive in their criticism, but take every opportunity you can to take over or suggest obvious ways of doing even the simplest of tasks, as if you do not trust them in any way; be overwhelming in your control and never utter a positive word their way. Pay not much attention to the other worker.

Now, eventually, and here’s what you’re pushing for, the other worker will say something to you in a very direct manor saying that the other is capable of doing work without your constant interference in the presence of the other party (if they say it to you in private, simply ignore it).

This is your cue: from that moment, do nothing but praise the fellow you initially harassed so much; laud his diligence, eulogize his adroitness – whatever you can. And don’t for a moment make mention of his co-worker, who did stand up for him.

The torments in this strategy are manifold. For one, the worker you plagued so much at the start will not in any way believe your criticism. More than this, if he comes to you privately asking that the other have his efforts acknowledged, you should ignore him; he will not say it in front of his co-worker for implicit in such a strategy would be the assuming of a position of superiority, something which he will not want to do. But he will consider doing so, and that will be an extra little torment.

The other fellow, well, he is the victim of the torment of playing favourites, but the additional fact that it seems to be punishment for backing up a coworker will damage his spirit in a far more general and long-lasting way.