Why on earth did I bookmark that...?

Do you use a program to keep your bookmarks in order, or do you sort them manually?

For my part, while I use Powermarks to find out which sites are still active, I prefer to sort my BOOKMARKS file by hand. It's like shelving my own-interest books (history, photography, military, crime etc.) personally, rather than letting Diane do it when she's in a tidy-things-up mood - or worse, needing to shove things into whatever space is free because we're about to have unexpected guests. One way, I have a much better idea of what went where; the other, and I might not see a particular title for weeks.

I try to go through the unfiled bookmarks once a month, otherwise it can get a bit overwhelming, because I'm an inveterate note-scribbler, cross-referrer and bookmarker (and besides, CTRL-D is so easy.) Any non-fiction Real Book I might be using for reference will sprout a fringe of torn-up bits of paper, and any dip into Wikipedia will generate a rash of open tabs.

In bookmarks.html, this means there's a lot of stuff for work, entertainment and shopping either real or in potentia. Some of the latter is more or less sensible - computer and camera stuff, books and music, hot sauces - and others, like the extraordinary conversation-piece objects made by Jeff de Boer are purely wishful thinking. Do I need a suit of samurai armour for a cat or a mouse? Well, not for the mouse, certainly... But would I give house-room to an "Exoform" sculpture, which takes the basic look of a medieval helm and then does elegant things to it? You bet I would. (Check out all his work: I especially like the hard-wearing ties and the corporate raider's briefcase!)

There are other possible-shopping sites which are rather stranger - such as this one. The historical inspiration is as well-researched as de Boer's, and the work and workmanship are just as well-executed (yup, deliberate choice of word), but the finished product is...different. One of these on a display shelf, especially if its cost was known, would require quite a bit more thought than an Exoform helm before answering the simple question, "Why?" I'll admit to a long-term creepy fascination with the stark functionality of the machine (back in school, I had one of the Aurora plastic kits) but I suspect that willingess to part with $500-plus for such a dangerous toy(?) would tend to shift that creepy aspect from the model to its owner...

And then there are downright peculiar things, their sites bookmarked so I can show people (shades of Anna Russell: "I'm not making this up, you know!") because if I just described what I'd seen, I'd get The Look.

I used to play Call of Cthulhu, and though I was a rather half-hearted gamer, I really enjoyed the fascinating background-information supplements...

I see we're back to research again. Diane has often said that she needs to set a finite date for every project, after which I stop researching and get down to writing the fiction based on it; a single short story (The Longest Ladder in The Magic Toybox from DAW (ed. Denise Little - and yes, that's a plug!) resulted in me learning far more than I could possibly need about period fire-engines, and also getting interested in collecting some of the spectacularly detailed models being sold out there. (I have a bunch of web-shop URLs for them, too.)

Anyway...

Every now and then, I look in on the various bookmarked Call of Cthulhu websites to see what's been made available from the huge library of out-of-print material, and that's when I must have found this. To paraphrase Haldane, or maybe Heisenberg (I'm uncertain which one): "What people will do to their food is not only more peculiar than we imagine, it's more peculiar than we want to imagine."

Even for the Cthulhu Mythos, it's pretty strange, and falls into a lot of old HPL's descriptive categories. All right, it's not squamous, but it could become rugose if cooked in something like a Foreman grill; it's hardly blasphemous unless making graven (and edible) images of cephalopods is a no-no, but possibly forbidden, since D says that you'd probably breach some Southern states' more intrusive by-laws just by owning the thing: it's not what they'd think it is, but it looks as if it might be. Unspeakable depends on whether or not you'd admit to eating it, and indescribable about sums up my expression when I opened the website.

She also said that a little wig of string cheese would be just perfect - which I think brings us right back to indescribable...

For something a lot less foolish, check out The Call of Cthulhu movie site, and watch the trailer. I was vastly impressed, especially by the crafty way the amateur production company covered their lack of a bloated CGI-SFX budget by doing the thing not merely with a period setting, but as a silent, German-expressionist, black-and-white period film. (Someone, of course, has already nicknamed it "The Cabinet of Dr. Calamari"...) This is a classic demonstration that lots of imagination and little money beats lots of money and no imagination every time (do you hear me, George?)

Need I say, I want the DVD and soundtrack for Christmas.