In Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, the Argentine writer, Jorge Louis Borges, makes an absurd list of animals. It’s a great play on how humans classify.
It contains:
- Those that belong to the emperor
- Embalmed ones
- Those that are trained
- Suckling pigs
- Mermaids (or Sirens)
- Fabulous ones
- Stray dogs
- Those that are included in this classification
- Those that tremble as if they were mad
- Innumerable ones
- Those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush
- Et cetera
- Those that have just broken the flower vase
- Those that, at a distance, resemble flies
Had this essay not been written in 1942, one could be forgiven for wondering whether Borges hadn’t simply spent a day or two in Second Life.
Because one could make a similar list of creatures seen at Furillen:
- horses, ridden and disco dancing
- dragons, both ridden and those breathing fire
- giant penises, flying and jumping
- dogs, long and with sunken eyes
- wolves, that are really huskies
- pineapples, merrily dancing
- foxes, walked and worn down
- dolls, mechanical and battery powered
- bananas, griefing and joyless
- fairies, glittering and wingless
- birds, huge, large and merely talking
- hybrid bat mythical creature thing
- cyber men, rusty and contemplative
- weasels, belonging to a blogger
- goats, with ragged dog pack
- tree, animated and floating
- cats, prowling pointlessly
- snow creatures, ghastly-looking
- janitors, bearded and unkempt
- gods, afk
- dancing snowmen, tasteless and crated
- zombies, bloody and venomous
- martian, lanky with taser
Anyone care to add to this list? Or throw in some pictures of anything you might have seen but haven’t posted?
Here are some I found in Furillen’s flickr stream – which, incidentally, passed 2500 pictures yesterday, while the visit counter for the sim itself went through the 16,000 mark!
I also wondered about starting a new flickr stream on the “Creatures of Furillen” theme – perhaps to run alongside one containing some of the great images we already have of people of Furillen.
Feedback, as always, is welcome.
If I recall it correctly, Borges pretend detaining this funny classification from an apocrypha chinese text. He is usually playing with his readers, provoking them in many ways. That reminds me of his “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”:)
The absurd of SL … that could be a good field for sociological and philosophical reflection:))
About the “Creatures of Furillen” theme, that’s a great idea !
LikeLiked by 1 person
yes, as always he was playing with our capacity to suspend disbelief while getting is to think about the relationship between language and the world – just as in the Quixote piece, which is one of my favourites. as for the absurd in SL, I think it is one of its very best features!
LikeLike
Love your sim, love your mind… ty! ♥
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you !!
LikeLike
indeed sometimes, it’s Furryllen 🙂
https://flic.kr/p/CELwrv
LikeLiked by 1 person
fantastic addition! can you remember the name of the ava?
LikeLike