Ed-er from the Lederrer

Ed Pahjorndice--Editor of Professor Pille's Planetary Panopticon

Our three-hundredth posting on this Interknit site draws close and here on Erde we prepare to celebrate this virtualistic milestone with national festivities, speechifying, and one heck of a cookout at the Institute campgrounds up near Lake Pongo. On "da Urth," alas and alack, the moment shall arrive and pass with all the praise and notice that attends a pebble tumbling into a very deep well in a distant and desolate place. Oh well. We knew that this thing-called-a-blog, if surveyed, planned and constructed to the finest Erden specifications, ran a risk of running aground within the rarefied cultural aether such as our parallel dimensioned Echo World, "da Urth," offers. Oh well, yet again... and again, as our metaphors mix.

On one side of the Peepergate--the sunny side we might insist--all is as it should be. Though half of our efforts fall flat elsewhere, the rewards from this well-illuminated embarkation and surveillance point are more than sufficient: critical approval, public acclaim, an enthusiastic note from the Emperor and Empress, prizes, awards, a wink and nod from Wotan himself, and "free lunch" across most of Narragansett, Mohawk, and surrounding National Districts where our intrepid literary and trans-dimensional explorers are hailed as heroes! Many Institute regulars have become familiar profiles on the Optical Wireless--Dave Dimp even hosts his own Spielshow now, and the Pille sisters have hired an agent to deal with the persistent clamour for their presence. Our comments and observations are translated and reprinted in the national newspapers of places as faraway as Tic-Toc and Lower B'bottomland. What could "da Urth" offer that could possibly top that?

So, we shall strike the mirage-like wall of 300 postings and, with the same stoic persistence against insurmountable odds that the life-force itself often shows, simply "keep on trucking" in the hope that the Panopticon may catch some notice somewhere on this shadowed side of the garden gate. Meanwhile, after much debate, we've found ourselves experimenting with another thing-called-a-blog that caters more to popular "da Urther" tastes--it's our newest bunk-mate of bunkum, The Nohovian. Frankly, for this old editor, it casts its lines and limply rebounds pretty much like the now-tiresome "Onion" of "Urther" fame; it lacks the whimsy, Joycean/Carrollian word-play, and Pillogic that we'd hoped would make this creative effort rise above above the ordinary. Sadly, our "Urther" failure was preordained. The fault--to wax arcanely Shakespearean--was both with their stars and within ourselves. Our lousy marketing department probably didn't help either.

To conclude: at this point, time and effort will be dedicated to some buffing of the past product--a point of personal pride for us all here at the Institute and within the Institute's official organ, the Planetary Panopticon. We wish to leave this work-in-progress as a work of art of sorts, an atypical relic of sour "Urther" times. The Nohovian, on the other hand, once committed, should veer directly into the puerile and sophomoric, with gum-card depictions of politicians as demons, and Red or Blue State-ments pulled from out of the bowels of the outhouse. A bit of nudity smooshed into the mix and success is a given!