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What Is Magellan's Log?
     You round a corner and there is a flower seller, reading. He looks up, smiles, and goes back to reading. You admire the many kinds of flowers, examine some more closely, and notice there are no price tags. You ask and the flower seller says they're free for the taking (except for a few special boquets). That is Magellan's Log. (We've gathered some of the flowers and sell those as books--if you can imagine such a thing; but you don't really need to buy them because everything that's in the books is available here, online, free.)
     Magellan's Log is also a unique work of Internet performance art.* The many writers you'll find on the masthead (see "About Us" above) are actually fictitious, the noms de net of Douglas Milburn who in 1999 created this rambunctious cast of characters, each with his or her abilities, interests, biases, and limitations, and set them loose to voice their opinions in whatever way they chose--words, images, music; serious, funny, thoughtful, silly. Which they have done, sometimes briefly and occasionally at great length.
     Result: Magellan's Log, a variegated collection of gently admonitory flowers collected on a long voyage to a place of improbable beauty... and equally improbable hilarity.

*We used to call Magellan's Log "The world's biggest Internet magazine of low-bandwidth Texas mysticism," but then we discovered the wold "mysticism scares a lot of people off, so we stopped. If you're curious about why we would have used such a loaded word, you can read our skewed explanation here.

SITE MAP

"Is the voyage worth making that does not enhance awareness of our shared humanity?"
--D. Milburn.

Special Issues:
Balmorhea Prophecies
Blütenstaub 2007
Chiliastic Hideon
Distant Applause
Ego Altar
Fiction
Fragmente
Helios Cycle
Les Heures du Mal
Ideas
Iris Murdoch
Mnemonicae
Monochrome Issue
Montages de l'Empire
Movie Pitches
Music Issue
Myra Breckinridge
Negativity Issue
9-11-01
Peaks of Otter
P - - - - y
Saltlick
Tree Talks
Texas vs. China
Texas Zen Hymnbook
Text Effects
Wordless Issue
Wusser Britches

Letters

Email us.

Copyright ©
1999-2006

The Texas
Chapbook
Press

Masthead
Staff Biographies

"Giving well is the best revenge."

All Issues:
2008:
123  124
120  121   122
2007:
117  118   119
114  115   116
111  112  113
108  109  110
2006:
106  107
103  104  105
100  101  102
96  97  98  99
2005:
97  98  99  100
93  94  95
89  90  91  92
2004:
85  86  87  88
81  82  83  84
77  78  79  80
2003:
73  74  75  76
69  70  71  72
65  66  67  68
62  63  64
2002:
58  59  60  61
54  55  56  57
50  51  52  53
48  49
2001:
45  46  47
41  42  43  44
37  38  39  40
33  34  35  36
31  32
2000:
29  30 
25  26  27  28
21  22  23  24
17  18  19  20
13  14  15  16
1999:
09  10  11  12
05  06  07  08
      02  03  04

The Rainbow Bird
Dire decades need strong songs. An audio-visual clearing in the information wilderness. A musical breath of smog-free air. Enough of metaphors. Just listen to the song: slideshow with midi (6:22).

Mind Meteors Douglas Milburn takes another whack at scientific orthodoxy re certain puzzling ripples in the history of consciousness.

The Wry Above, the Mud Below: An Appreciation of Dave White's Exile in Guyville. Temple Duciel goes ga-ga over the hilarity of a Texas boy's (mis)adventures in West Hollywood (and environs).

The One-percent Dissolution
Glenn Gould, George W. Bush and Me
Yes, for the first time in history the words "Glenn Gould" and "George W. Bush" appear together. Editor Doc Cuddy has pulled off this little trick here.

Ten Tips for Tumultuous Times
Ora's back! After months of silence involving finding just the right dosage to deal with her midlife depression, our ever-popular token Republican returns with ten suggestions for dealing with life in this difficult 21st century.

MMVIII
Thirty-four wee thoughts from Astraeu Chakar, our rarely heard-from ontology editor. Alert to the closed-minded: Confusion and a possible headache await.

The Poisoning
of America
It's not your father's America. It's not your America any longer. It's their America, and they're killing it. We stopped writing funny stuff months ago. Why? Because this government has taken us way, way beyond laughter into the territory of tyranny.

Noir and American Truth:
Lines After Reading Megan Abbott. Elinor Hoefs stumbles across a young, unknown author of genre fiction and leaps to a bigtime conclusion about the good ol' US of A.

M.I.Q.
Maurice Fitznuggly, our under-appreciated cultures-studies guy, is back, smacking of, well, heresy, epistomology-wise.

Oops! The Eternal Adolescence of the American Mind. Oh boy. Here goes our rambunctious editor again, out on a limb, up on cloud nine, thinking to explain America, which everybody except our editor now realizes is simply inexplicable.

In the Shallows
Further notes on neo-speciation and the possible order behind current chaos.

The Blooming Grove
Bronze Tablet
In 1936 R.G. Rutherford found this folding bronze tablet in a field near Blooming Grove, Texas.

Progress: 500 years for the Romans to come up with Caligula. 200 years for the Americans to come up with George W. Bush.

The Healing of America
In here, despair? Well. Out yonder--and nowhere else-- lies hope.

Human Sexuality: The Problem
Why the second coming is never enough. Or the third. Or the fourth.

Millennium No. 3: Babies, Bathwaters, and Poets
Our culture-studies guy is back, making a list of important things missing so far in the 21st century. Nonsense, surely. What could we be lacking? Hint: he starts his list in the aisles of Toys R Us.

Timothy Leary--Warts and All
Here goes our ontologist-in-residence, Astraeu Chakar, getting after the blindered reviews of the first biography of the so-called Pied Piper of the drug culture.

Wrong Thinking
and the Current American Mess
Doc Cuddy mulls over the turbulent American (and therefore, world) atmosphere and ponders about what it all means for the last years of the Bush-Cheney mis-administration.

Pseudo-Texans and Other Fake Cowboys I Have Known. Doc Cuddy on faux cowboys running amok.

The 17the Hole at Sawgrass. Political Editor Lulu Dilworth, using golf as metaphor, finds surprising hope re the much-abused American electorate in these troubled times.

The Age of Arrogance. In his own act of unapologetic arrogance, our editor in chief gives the new century a name and immodestly explains why it must be so.

Bye-bye, Best Products.
Diebold Essen fondly recalls one of the iconic buildings of the second half of the 20th century, then makes a visit to see how it's doing. Story plus panoramic photo.

On Disappearance
To disappear or not to disappear... That is most definitely NOT the question, says Reppy Duart. What then is the question? Aye, there's the rub.

Reverse-engineering Militant Islam. Catherine Ozanic ponders that fact that beneath the surface of violence that fills our screens daily, there beats a quiet, more powerful Islamic heart.

Brave New Millennium
In which Edward Hothi explains (or at least tries to) what went wrong in the 20th century (not to mention the 19th, 18th, 17th, etc.) and what's likely to go wrong in the 21st.

TRIPPING
Four centuries ago, our namesake, Magellan did his part to expand the concept of "tripping." Charles Hayes has now done his part, gathering 50 first-person reports from a wide range of psychedelic travelers. Book review by Reppy Duart, D.D.

North Dakota Wants to Know. Chardo Blue Plains, our itinerent mystic who spends a lot of time wandering the Interstate Highways, has a question.

Germans R Us. Temple Duciel casts a thoughtful eye on a troubled and troubling Germany, and wonders if anybody's paid attention to what happened after 1945.

We all know the number of U.S. deaths in Iraq, over 3,000. But how many have been wounded? And how many of that number are so severely wounded that they will require round-the-clock care for the rest of their lives?   *Answer at the bottom of this column.

Easy Choices/Hard Choices
Harriet Lobdell, our epidermal semiotics editor, puts in a rare appearance. She has found a small, overlooked movie that carries her on gossamerest wings into unexpected realms of appreciation.

Let It Scroll No. 96,412. Jason Twinhaft's thought for the day. Or the century. Or the millennium.

The Fly-bottle and I.
Douglas Milburn, soberly and with dangerously little irony, re-visits his distant home on the metaphyical range, where words end. Sort of.

John Fowles on Men, Women, and War.
A few choice lines from The Magus about Waterloo Gettysburg Ypres Iwo Jima Dien Bien Phu Baghdad.

Delight in Death.
Tip-toeing along the edge of the abyss. Misadventures from a government run by a whole bunch of Dr. Strangeloves.

Mocking America.
Douglas Milburn crafts a reply to American tyranny.

Lethe Lite.
Cassandra's back! Our prophet who gets out on the wrong side of bed EVERY morning this time lets fly at television. It may be in hi-rez color with surround sound, but, she says, it's still not a pretty picture.

Monsters, Inc.
Lulu Dilworth. First Robespierre, then James Baker. Now what?

Revolution No. 2?
Anna-Marie Quave tries to see a peaceful, positive way out of the present political mess.

Cars & Crystal Balls.
Pedkop Bumbera. Reading the future by looking at cars.

Demonocracy.
Jack Xamis, Ph.D. A new word for the disease eating at the heart of America.

Chaos and Comity.
Douglas Milburn speculates fairly wildly in the direction of what he, either far-sighted or myopic, calls a meteorology of consciousness.

C.R.A.B.S.
Wire-service report on first scientific identification of new virulent social disease.

The Cyber-puritan Manifesto.
How to Change the 21st Century in 20 Easy Steps.

The D-words.
What happens when Chike Boggus stops for food on I-10.
          More Stuff to Think About >>

Toxicity.
There’s a poison loose in the land, call it BCRS: the Bush-Cheney-Rove Syndrome.

American Dementia.
Jack Xamis on Dr. Strangelove then and the US government now.

America the Disjunctive: Musings on Alienated Children,
by Jason Twinhaft.

The Divine Right of Texas Daddies.
Political Editor Joel Fluker reveals the unsettling truth behind Dubya's fake sangfroid--and the people who made Dubya what he is today.

The American Empire: How Long, How Long?
Joel Fluker on why it's gonna be a short, short ride.

Application for Membership in the American Empire.
Another of our world scoops, freshly smuggled out of the Pentagon.

Big D and the Texas Syndrome.
Doc Cuddy on the danger of denial, in Texas in 1980 and in America now.

Geneflection Now!
Magellan's Log is proud to honor, nay, to immortalize the leaders of the new American Empire in sculpture and painting. Slideshow with midi (1:36).
       More Imperial Musings >>

Augment laughter.
Alleviate despair.
Send this page to a friend.

We love to get mail
from our readers!

*45,000 wounded, 3,000 requiring constant care.

The Relentless Pursuit of Ragged Perfection
Five notes on the lack of genius in the current age, by Ceci Lumley. Our cartography editor has a go at false gods of false greatness and other impeities of the present era.

The Balmorhea Prophecies
Sixty-three quatrains on twelve sheets of vellum dated 1878 found at the bottom of San Solomon Spring, Balmorhea, Texas, in 2007.

Unseen Resonances
Another of our famous little audio-visual excursions in (literally) the wild and cloudy blue yonder. Slideshow with midi (4:45).

And Now
for My Next Trick... Pedro Bofecillos, our surprisingly shy teleology editor, comes out of hiding with a few ideas about just how smart we are. Or aren't.

Tasteless But Extremely
Well-wrought Limericks
If there's a more finely crafted--or funnier--collection of five-liners anywhere, we haven't found it.

The MLMPI. In our on-going effort to improve things sanity-wise, it occurred to us it's way past time for an updated, streamlined version of the creaky old Minnesota Multi-phasic Personality Inventory test, which we now present: the Magellan's Log Multi-phasic Personality Inventory Test. Some may call it satire, but that only shows how great the need is for our new version.

Is Masturbation a Crime Against God?
Read the first draft of a Christian advice-giver's thoughts on self-abuse and then decide.

Alien Graffiti
Discovered in Mexico!!! A Magellan's Log World Scoop
An anonymous correspondent sends us a shocking, offensive, heretical photograph which, he alleges, shows huge UFO graffiti on a high Rio Grande cliff.

WHERE THE UNIVERSE ENDS!!!
Magellan's Log is thrilled to confirm comedian Lewis Black's epochal discovery of the very place where existence as we know it STOPS. See our photographic proof here!

Imperial I.D. Card.
Our own modest proposal to aid the War on Terrorism.

Problems of Modern Sexuality. 24 photos indicating that erectile dysfunction may be the least of our sexual problems.

The Solution
Yes, we've done it. We have found the solution. To everything. Where? On the streets of (you ready?) Bratislava. Don't believe us? Take a look.

Is Your Nation's Leader an Extra-terrestrial in Disguise? Maurice Fitznuggly offer suggestions..

2028 and All That.
A calendar celebrating the 25th anniversary of the American Empire.

The Magellan's Log Universal Prayer.
No matter the situation--in the weekly worship service, preparing the boys for war, or just asking for blessings before a meal, you never need be at a loss for words again. Just fill in the blanks in our one-size-fits-all prayer and a direct line to [insert residence of your deity] ______ will open for you and yours!

Problems, Problems, Problems. Humor editor Jerden Purmort has been out scouring the Internet once again for photos to make you laugh (or cry). He's found 39.

Tasteless Jokes 110
The world has been too much with us. But our attention has turned once again to the collecting and polishing of truly off-color jokes.
      More Stuff to Laugh About >>

A Note re Music
Several hundred of our pages contain embedded music files (you are always warned). Low-tech and low-bandwidth prodcution that we are, most of those pages still require Internet Explorer to hear the music. We are slowly changing the coding so they'll work with all browers. Please forgive us our Microsoft trespasses...

The New Musics: Celebratory Field Notes Toward a Better World.
Douglas Milburn explores the wide world of web-label music. It's all free and legal. As with any human endeavor, 99% of it is garbage. But the other 1% has our editor shouting for joy.

Ballade for a Piano. How two miracle- workers in Pasadena, Texas, gave a gift of music to the 21st century--and beyond. With photographs.

Cockleburr Kin
Notes toward an autobiography. Douglas Milburn. With midi.

The Franz Liszt Jukebox.
                      More Music >>

Now we've really done it. A bored staff revolts, demanding CREATIVE assignments from the editor. Result: 19 movie pitches.

Three Poems
Rarely, rarely do we accept reader submissions. Even more rarely, anonymous reader submissions. Here's an instance.

The Rainbow Bird
A friend was called to Iowa. Her father had had a heart attack. Two days later she called. He had died. An hour later I had "The Rainbow Bird" (a midi file starts when you open the page).

Today's Brainteaser
How desperate are we? Figure out this little conundrum and find out.

Zen Centerfold 112
Another of our lovely little skirmishes with the mind-body problem. Slideshow with midi (3:43).

The Magellan's Log Cyber-Delphic Oracle and Feel-good Machine.

In (almost) every issue:
Hot Links 104. Our latest collection of noteworthy sites.
Brainteasers.
Kulchur Kwotient. Trivia quiz.
Jokes. 5-star tasteless jokes.
ESL/English Practice.
Roll of the Dice. Click here to be whisked to a random page in the archives.
                      More Play >>

Island Revisited.
Forty years after its first appearance, we return to Aldous Huxley's utopia. Fragile and idealistic, it is, given what humanity's been up to lately, aging well.

The Texas Zen Hymnbook.
That old-, old-, old-time religion. Sort of. 38 hymns, with midis and words that a lot of "Christians" won't like but others will.

SALTLICK.
Douglas Milburn takes us on a mind trip, using good words from across the ages to get at a certain stillness which, he argues, we all carry with us all the time but which we often forget about. It's a turn-of-the-millennium approach to meditation that we haven't seen the likes of anywhere: Saltlick.

La vida un sueńo.
Zen Centerfold 98.
You gotta s-m-i-l-e.
The World's Fastest Bach.
Pasquinade.
Pack Up Your Troubles.
One Path? Many Paths?
Miserere.

Rubaiyat Redux.
Edward FitzGerald's effective, if highly ambiguous, antidote to the madness of whatever era you happen to find yourself in.

Texas Zen Hymnbook.
Take some great old hymn tunes, put new words with them, and out comes a gusher of hope.

Against Sepsis in a Time of Contagion
The doctor says, "Take twelve minutes of Bach and a hundred square meters of stained glass and call me in the morning..."

"Nobody with a good car ever has to justify himself."
       --Flannery O'Conner, Wise Blood.
             More Sustenance >>

The Truth About Magellan's Log
In which an unnamed staffer comes pretty close to spilling the beans.

How Far Is It to the Next Lascaux?
Old art, new art, and future art...

The 10 11 12 13 14 15 Best Things to Do in America (and the 10 Worst Also).
Ceci Lumley's guide to America for the discriminating traveller.

1. Penises on Parade. (Go figure.)
2. Germans R Us.
3. Filicide.
4. Best Midi's.
5. Saltlick.
6. Johnny Got His Gun.
7. Ora Shay, Token Republican.
8. Bye-bye, Best Products.
9. Myra Lives!
10. Is Masturbation a Sin Against God?

Time Travel! Read shocking fragments from a 42nd-century encyclopedia.
Montages de l'Empire. 25 good ol' songs and images.
Myra Breckinridge.
The Texas Tao.
Ten Words. Anyone for fiction?
MLMPI. The Magellan's Log Multi-phasic Personality Inventory Test.

On Reading
Magellan’s Log
1. For new stuff, click here for a list of the most recent articles.
2. If you’re just browsing, try the topic index above or the Site Map.
3. If you’re looking for something specific, use the site search at the upper-right corner of the page.
4. Those of a more academic or historicist bent might choose to read chronologically, by issue or even by article (click here to go to a listing of all articles in reverse chronological order).
5. The wheat is separated from the chaff on our best-of pages (3 buttons at the top of the page).
6. Finally, you can read randomly. Click here and you’re whisked to a page chosen by the cyber   gods of chance.
               --The Editors.

Missa Longa, Vita Brevis
Lo, our non-inerrant doctor of divinity, Reppy Duart, comes forth with what he modestly calls "a simple solution to the Christian problem."

Apposite Apothegms
Apposite? Apothegms? Find out here. Where else except Magellan's Log are you going to find Dan Neil, Gandhi, and J.G. Ballard on the same page?

Thanatotic Bloopers
Elinor Hoefs lets fly at what she calls the deathbook industry. Not stuff for the faint of heart nor the myopic of faith.

GrandObsession/
Grand Possession
Buy a piano and the next thing you know, it takes over your life. A review of Perri Knize's unique, inspiring Grand Obsession.

Ghiberti Gawkers
Observations in the midst of a madding crowd of impatient loiterers just outside Eden with neither apple tree nor serpent nor spluttering deity anywhere in sight. Approach therefore with caution.

Meanwhile, Back at the Louvre...
One of our roving correspondents checks checks in with an update from the world of Extremely High Art. Slideshow with midi (1:59).

The Funniest Book of the 21st Century... So Far
Is It Empire Yet?
The Official Magellan’s Log Workbook and Guide to Success in the New World Order.

ISBN 0-9767821-3-8. Paperback 8.5 x 11", 128 pp. Illus. $21.95.

Or at amazon.com:
Is It Empire Yet?

OUR GUARANTEE:
How sure are we that this is a really funny book? If you don't get more laughs per dollar from Is It Empire Yet? than from any other purchase you've made this year, just let us know and we'll cheerfully refund your money (you don't even have to send the book back!).

The Adventures of Wusser Britches, The World’s Most Independent Cat
The unvarnished truth behind feline Realpolitik, revealed at last.

What's Going on Here?
Our wee contribution to the ever-popular on-going discussion of the question, "Is it purpose that gives life meaning?" (Thanks to Albrecht Altdorfer et al.)

On Erring
Wherein we try to sort out this whole business of erring and forgiving in couple of sentences.

Cassandra, our in-house prophet, has her voice back and lets the Boomers know they may be fooling each other but they're not fooling their kids.

Certificate of Merit
A special award, suitable for framing, for our most devoted readers. Download and admire at will.

I N F E R E N C E S
We all went through reading readiness. Whatever happened to ADVANCED reading readiness? Pattern, pattern, who's got the pattern? (Graphic with midi).

Rapunzel Redux
A pianistic shaman from the Ukraine
brings hope in troubled times. If your heart needs mending, or maybe a bit of potent sustenance, we've got just the musical fixer-upper for you from the fingers of Valentina Lisitsa...

Les Heures du Mal
Centuries ago people had artists create small "books of hours" filled with words and pictures of hope and sustenance. We've digitally updated the idea. Free of charge.

Only for the truly metaphysically needy, who after all have the attention span that comes with years of seeking: Saltlick (a guide to meditation), The Texas Zen Hymnbook (a multi-media source of considerable sustenance), Montages de l'empire (a multi-media summation of America), Les Heures du mal (a book of hours for the 21st century), Tree Talks (p----y and then some).

Fragmente
Or, as the French say, pensées. Or, as Novalis said, Blütenstaub.

3 x 3 x 50
We set our image-viewer on random and let it run through the thousands of pictures in our archive. Slideshow with midi (5:17). Definitely NOT safe for work.

Tip for Would-be Paradigm Shifters. Our little winter solstice gift for those intent on changing the world as we know it.

Tasteless Jokes 106.
The staff has been busy busy busy trying once again to raise the level of Internet discourse. For the truly desperate: Click here to see the index to ALL our tasteless jokes (possible the biggest collection of really well-written outré humor on the Internet).

The Peaks of Otter
Our editor recently went out driving. Again. Bigtime. The entire October issue was devoted to his daily reports (and pix) from the road...

Palimpsest
What happens when our media dept. puts some 300-year-old music together with some succinct comments re America from the editorial dept. Slideshow with midi (6:48).

Suddenly, Next Summer
Cassandra, our prophetess doomed to make accurate predictions that are never heeded, returns for a few words re the post-Bush era.

21st Century Sexuality: An Informal Update.
Our staff, ever with their fingers on the pulse of the times so to speak, has assembled 36 Internet photos that reveal how things are hanging so to speak sex-wise in these early days of the 3rd millennium so to speak.

Anthropology 452: Puzzling Sexual Practices.

How Long Is It Anyway?
Piongo Pisgah's paradigm-breaking formula for calculating the length of you-know-what before you commit yourself.

Penises on Parade.
The staff passes on its trove of tasteless "phallic-humor" photos from the Internet. Sigh. Penises on Parade, Part the Second. 20 more photos of phallic humor.
                                    More Sex >>

Home Sweet Home.
Ora Shay, our token Republican, on the restoration of the George W. Bush boyhood home in Midland, Texas.

Ora Shay explains her optimism in her own inimitable, take-no-prisoners Midland-Texas fashion. Or, as she might say, it's a real sidewinder.

Watch out!
Ora Shaysounds off patriotically with a piece that she calls "S.A.A.F.J: A Tale of Henry Kissinger and My Favorite Fly Swatter."

Funny:
Ah Swan! How Southern Are You Anyway?
Ceci Lumley.

How 21st Century Are You?
Maurice Fitznuggly's checklist for the cyber-insecure.

S.U.V. Driving Test.
Pedkop Bumbera.

Serious:
You Are What You Believe.
Maurice Fitznuggly's self-help test re systems of belief.

Thunderclaps.
Chardo Blue Plains. Timely tips on disappearing.

Blue Red.
Three wee sentences to help with today's synaptic re-wiring. You're welcome.
                      More Self-help >>

A Day in Pennsylvania: Fallingwater/Shanksville.
Nicholas Momurray's Frank Lloyd Wright pilgrimage has an unexpected ending. Commentary with 2 slide shows.

Interstate Highways
We Rate 'Em.

Me and the U.P.
Izora Firelands explores the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

The Peaks of Otter.
A 23-part report from a meandering trip to a little bit of Eden in the mountains of Virginia.
                      More Travel >>

Special Offering
A limited print-run of signed images from Issue 70, Montages de l'empire, is now available. Click here for more information about this unique opportunity for far-sighted collectors of cyber-art.

Publisher's Note:
Against my best money-making advice, staff members persist in occasional outbursts of what they refer to as "p----y" (even they can't call it by name). I keep telling them: The path to penury is paved with p----y. Do they listen? No. All I can do is alert the unwary reader with the little death's head, which in this context means: Warning! P----y Ahead!  Here, for example.

Magellan's Log: The World's Biggest Internet Magazine of Extremely Low-bandwidth Ragtag Texas Mysticism

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