The Dark Balloon

A weblog by Hao Lian.
A terrible secret guarded by golems.
A note that thanks you for being born, all those years ago.

§
Scrabsolute domination.

This is my winning Scrabble against a level 6 Scrabulous robut. As you can see, I won by 150 points, and the robut—already dyslexic and anorexic and all sorts of other ic’s—committed suicide. Highlights: I played “quine + here”, “quine” again for the extra sexy, “pond (triple) + to + pin”, and “ere + ley (triple)”.

It’s the final round. I have four As, an O, and a Z. Impossible to clear my voluptuous rack, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. I played “ag” and then “aga” and then “zag” and then “za” and then “of + ou.”

International Scrabble association, I’ll take my gold trophies now please.

[(2008 July 31, 2!) .]

§
Palpitations.

The little boy sat over the anthill with a magnifying glass, waiting for the inevitable fire. His nose dribbled a little, and he wiped it with the wrist not holding the bringer-weapon of fire. Nothing was catching fire, and his lazy summer was glacially drifting toward boredom, the worst island in the emotion archipelago. He peered through the magnifier. He saw one ant holding a tiny gun, point it at him. The ant took off the safety and shot. The tiny bullet, born from a tiny puff of smoke, shot toward the little boy as it grew larger and larger before piercing the magnifying glass at its regular size. That’s just how magnifying glasses work. The little boy sat or splayed on the sidewalk with the glass shards in him, on him, and around him. They formed a halo around his blonde head. He was a crimson red and blond angel of death killed by Badass Jones, the most badass and gun-toting ant of them all. Badass Jones!

Hey GUYS, Ethan Sherbondy of Too Epic notoreity hit upon the EXCELLENT idea of taking an entire-page screenshot of The Funnelwhich. If you are a true lover of The Funnelwhich, you will go to your Kinko’s and demand they print out this image on a gigantic sheet of paper. Then, take a photograph and send it to me. Upon RECEIVING THIS BOUNTY, I will talk about you in a highly positive manner on this website.

[(2008 July 23) .]

§
And now it’s time once again for Ask a Deity.

  • Q: Deity, how do I know if my homemade movie is any good?
  • A: If it has precisely 13,337 frames.
Screenshot
[(2008 April 26, 4!) .]