First image: “Galumphing Beamishly Back”. Second image: A Father Antelope mask designed by Alice Aroumbeyski. Third image: The Pillinja Bat, a decorative motif that supposedly represents a four-limbed life form, designed by Alassi Pillinja in 1873. The designer stated that he had no particular plant or animal in mind when he created it. He said he labeled it as a bat only for convenience (inconveniently, most people think it looks like a housefly, despite the deficient number of legs, or a thistle). The Pillinja Bat is infamous for its ubiquity in Jackalopian graphic design during the first half of the twentieth century, and the widespread disparagement of its use in the second half.
So far in my search, I can find only two examples where Yost uses the Pillinja Bat in Geranium Lake Properties. The first one involves a depiction of a kiGamnch board for the game Galumph and Beamish, which was a wildly popular diversion for jackalopes in the latter part of the nineteenth century, but then was almost totally forgotten by the time of the first World War.
Somehow, Yost managed to acquire a photograph of a damaged photograph of a rare Galumph and Beamish board. Or it might be a photograph of a photograph of a damaged board, I’m not sure about that. Whichever it was, it was enough for Yost to reconstruct what a near-pristine board looked like:
This is the first day of our last month of Beantoss Mandala Time for 2022 (which ends on June 30th). It is not a big holiday for the Inultaru, but I imagine jackalopes are a bit peeved that today is also Memorial Day. Jackalopes try to celebrate as many holidays each year as they can possibly (or impossibly) manage, so they can’t help but feel like they’ve been cheated when two holidays happen to fall on the same day.
The first day of the last month of Beantoss Mandala Time does not have an official holiday name, although you might hear some people call it Jarjella or Jelly Jar Day, while others might call it Kafkugannee. I have heard several different explanations from several different people for these names, and none of their reasons were convincing, so I won’t be sharing their stories here. I don’t want to give them any kind of credibility, not even the fugacious credit of my dubious authority.
There is, however, a traditional greeting for this holiday. “Birayon Kuchazi Jalleka” is a wish you might make for your family, friends, or anyone you meet today. It has been translated for me as “I wish for you many Happy Accidents This Last Month Before!”
The Philosophy of Happy Accidents is a school of practices and theories that belongs to an association of ideas, beliefs, lore, viewpoints, principles and disciplines gathered by the Inultaru under the very broad umbrella of the Latitudinarian School of Idle White Dudes. The unofficial motto of the students of the Latitudinarian School is “Let us be Nietzschean, but not too Nietzschean.” (The wardrobe of the younger students will necessarily include a t-shirt with “Imagine Sisyphus Happy” printed on it.) The official motto of the Latitudinarian School is “No matter where you go, there you are.” The Five Tenets of the Latitudinarian School are:
If it ain’t one thing, it’s somethin’ else. No one cares if you walked through a mountain in Texas. Why is there a watermelon there? Don’t tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to. Don’t be mean.
In November of 1997, Yost completed his eight-year contract with his distributor (The-Media-Syndicate-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named-For-Fear-Of-Receiving-A-Cease-And-Desist-Letter) (Yes-I-Do-Believe-They-Are-Headquartered-In-Italy) and he refused to sign a new contract. He finished Jack Loki’s last adventure with a satisfying ending, then decided to take something of a break from the universe of Geranium Lake Properties. The aforementioned media syndicate had contractual obligations to provide GLP comics to newspapers until October 2001, so everyone had to muddle through with reprints.
The GLP panels illustrating today’s post are two of the comics Yost derived from the Purushartha corners for Dharma and Moksha in Counting Samsara, the kiGamnch board game. The last panel was a misprint made by the Sacramento Bee on January 27th, 2000. By that time, Yost had been missing for over nine months.
I have no great opinion of my own talents as chief archivist of artifacts from the universe of Geranium Lake Properties. I have never been an organized person; I have made my way this far in life (64 years, that’s pretty far) through a series of slapdash improvisations. So it was a bit of a surprise this morning when I found the nicely colored image of this kiGamnch game board.
The pattern of wear on this example seems typical for a Counting Samsara game board, caused by the repetitious movement of numerous game pieces in a seemingly infinite variety of configurations.
Another seemingly infinite variety of configurations is this series, which keeps on manifesting:
The Boss Fish and Spillikin Tavern* in Whittlespear Beach** has a floor tiled in a kiGamnch pattern that makes it an ideal surface for playing pitchpenny games. The pattern is called “The Orchard of Babayang Panbyas Jin” and is traditionally believed to have been designed for gambling games by a woman named Panquavel Oltair. Who was born in the fifteenth century (as the legend goes) on Mount Orhy in the Pyrenees, and died in La Luz, New Mexico, in the nineteenth century.
The floor tiles have grown greener over the years because of the copper in the glaze.
*In the native vernacular of Whittlespear Beach, the word “tavern” is synonymous with “a coffeehouse that also serves beer and batter-fried mushrooms”.
**A small town (population: 9,163) situated a half-hour’s drive south of the middle point on the coast of California. The setting for the imaginary novel, The Boy in the Yellow Leatherette Portmanteau, in which Yost appears as a fictional protagonist.
Jackalopes, as Yosts writes them, are all atheists. They are not at all fervent about their non-belief in God, they are not interested in disproving the existence of God. They recognize that religions are established for political reasons, and that faith in them has both benefits and drawbacks for the societies that support them. By participating in spiritual rituals as atheists, the Inultaru feel they can reap the benefits of religion without its nasty baggage. Also, all the holidays! Jackalopes can never have too many holidays.
Today’s ritual of Twelfth Night, chalking the door, evokes one of the most common entities in a Jackalopian household, a force of nature the Inultaru call klarion onginahiak, which can be translated as the benevolence, or kindness, of chalk. Jackalopes are inclined to the belief that objects, plants, creatures, places, forces of nature and energies of the universe, all possess their own distinct essences and powers. These essences can be called spirits or souls or energy as a convenient metaphor, but the Inultaru believe all things have their own purpose for existence, their own agency. They insist that this belief in Animism is universal to all people on this planet. If you have language, you have this belief, whether you acknowledge it or not, regardless of your religion or your secularism.
I know I have a good color image of this old kiGamnch board for playing Counting Samsara, but I could only find this mnemonic Yost made for remembering the locations of the Purushartha corners. Yost made four GLP comics from the corner designs on this particular board; he used the Artha corner for the background of today’s panel.
The Procession of Entropy, which began on October 15th, ends tonight at one minute before midnight, in whatever time zone you may find yourself at that moment. The Inultaru call that last minute “the death of the new year”, a reminder that the moment of birth and the moment of death are the same thing: a point between nothingness and existence. In that last minute, it is customary for jackalopes to say Kwenche kantabeth tredsegmen scrysori to each other, as a greeting or a blessing. The more boisterous celebrants and partygoers will shout it jubilantly, or perhaps defiantly, to the world at large. The translation? “You cannot avoid the traipse of the redivider.”
The kiGamnch board game, Counting Samsara, was Yost’s inspiration behind the design for today’s GLP comic. It is one of the easiest kiGamnch games to learn – too easy according to some people’s standards, since the constant reckoning and karmic tallies can become tedious.
The note attached to today’s comic reminds me that Martians love the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee, and that May 15, 1985 was an earth date for the vernal equinox of Mars.
It has been a while since I posted a GLP comic with Martian context, although I have posted a wealth of kiGamnch material lately, and Martians are as enthusiastic about kiGamnch traditions as jackalopes, and have adopted many of the traditions as their own. There is a theory (favored by Michael Veerduer, GLP historian, and Algernon and Agatha Dawe-Saffery, GLP fans extraordinaire) that kiGamnch concepts originated on Mars and were exported to earth through the buoyant cultural exchange between Martians and jackalopes. This exchange probably dates back to the nineteenth century, maybe even earlier, and was definitely an elaborate and thriving affiliation by the time Edgar Rice Burroughs published A Princess of Mars in 1912.
(Some people think this is a cover from a popular Martian comics version of A Princess of Mars.)
Today is Kopje Modder Dag on the Official Geranium Lake Properties Calendar. Cup of Mud Day. Cup of Java. Cup of Joe. Today we can celebrate coffee, the rocket fuel of the modern world. Martians do not drink coffee, they brew it, with their terribly precious water, for the aroma of the fresh pot. A Martian’s sense of smell is not like ours, which is not surprising, considering that they have no mouth, no nose. They do not even have a head! Which is weird, because they still love to wear hats, so it is accepted knowledge that Martians once had heads.
I understand there might be some of you who have met Martians and will insist that they have heads, but either the person you met was not actually a Martian (a Venusian perhaps, I think they have heads) or you were not aware that Martians don elaborate gear that gives them the illusion of “headness”. Martians have their own word for the quality of headness, but since we have no biological capacity to speak Martian, they have politely rendered it into a word for human use, “umnaalom”. They think umnaalom makes humans more comfortable with their presence, plus it allows them to wear hats.
“This could be your name, no. 189”, with six variations. It could also be an asemic writing version of “umnaalom”.
I believe that the sensory information Martians receive from the scent of freshly brewed coffee includes experiences that equate to visual and auditory hallucinations for humans. Whatever the experience is for Martians, it must be phenomenal, for them to use their horribly limited supply of liquid, pure water for such an extravagant use. Yet Martians are by nature extravagant, very charmingly so. To be in their company is such a joy that a human sense of delight can become quite exhausted after a few hours. Jackalopes have more stamina for marvelous events, which must be beneficial in their successful associations with the denizens of the red planet.
I thought I had jotted down some ideas about how to play “Aggie Drewsticks”, a kiGamnch board game that is a favorite pastime for jackalopes at family gatherings during the winter holidays. The only memo I have found is not much help, simply noting that each player needs a set of eight colored toothpicks (two each of blue, green, orange or red, and yellow) and eight rubber fingertips.
I have chalked my door for good luck in the Twelfth Night tradition, using white chalk on my white door. I used a sage green pastel pencil to add asemic invocations on either side of the standard form of the blessing.
Asemic writing is twisted up inside a paper spill, bound with a toothpick cross, hanging from the screw that held the Christmas wreath in its place on the front door. The sunburst is from a string of solar-powered fairy lights that hangs all year along the eaves of the front porch. Each light has its own tiny metal sunburst, and a few of them have escaped the string.
If the paper spill outlasts the weather in the time between now and April, I can burn it on the eve of Fool’s Day.
Most jackalopes follow the tradition of ending Advent on Twelfth Night, on the evening and night of January 5th. Twelfth Night is a holiday not much observed in the United States, but it is an important part of Jackalopian Christmas celebrations, which end on Three Kings Day (Epiphany). This means that for most jackalopes, Advent does not begin until December 13th. Last night, in Jackalopian households across all the deserts of the world, the kiGamnch board for Advent was unpacked and set up with its pieces on a flat surface where it will be undisturbed until the last day of Advent. The pieces can be referred to as nuts, beans, stones or acorns, and some people use actual nuts, beans, stones and acorns.
To set up the board properly, the members of the household participate in two draws, one for giving gifts, and one for receiving gifts. Most kiGamnch boards come with twenty-four small tiles printed with a symbol for each day of Advent. The tiles can be quite small and flimsy, and are often lost or damaged over the years. If you have bought a board at a yard sale or thrift store, the tiles are usually not included. In that case, the family writes the symbols on twenty-four scraps of paper, which go into a “hat” (which could be a bowl or a basket or an actual hat). A player will place their tokens – their nuts, beans, stones or acorns – on the board on the days they have drawn from the hat. When the draws are finished, each day on the kiGamnch board will have two tokens, except for the Remainder Days.
When Jack Loki was nine years old, his household included eight people: himself, his mom, a brother and a sister, an unmarried aunt, an unmarried uncle, and two foster children (both girls were distantly related – jackalopes figure all jackalopes are family in one way or another). The twenty-four days of Advent were divided neatly in Jack Loki’s family, with three days of giving and three days of receiving for each family member. In households where the math is not solved so easily, for example, in a household with five members, twenty days are put into the draws, and each player ends up with four days of giving gifts and four days of receiving gifts. The four days left over, without anyone to sponsor them, are called Remainder Days. Each household has its own Remainder Day traditions. Usually a gift on a Remainder Day is given to the whole household, often this is a gift of food, and everybody participates in the cost or labor. A Remainder Day gift can also be a contribution to a charity; food banks are common receivers of Remainder Day gifts.
Players cannot give gifts to themselves. If a person draws the same day for giving and receiving, they are obligated to trade with another player. Families decide their own rules, if any, about trading.
This GLP comic appeared in various publications around the world on June 23, 1986. In a recent e-mail to me, Ha Kim Ngoc brought my attention to another GLP comic with the same date, a panel that was never published.
There are a few GLP panels that bear duplicate dates, and more than a few GLP comics bear a date that seems to have no relation to the day they were published. There are several theories floating around the GLP fandom for this. One theory is that time itself for Jackalopes is less linear and more malleable than it is for humans. Another theory is that the numbers Yost put in the top right-hand corners of GLP comics do not represent the date at all, even though most seem to correspond to it.
The only representation we have of the never-published comic is a damaged slide. It depicts a part of the Camelford Prosimetrum:
We can now recognize the Camelford Prosimetrum as an undeciphered kiGamnch artifact, and can guess it is some kind of document that was printed or painted on a piece of tapa cloth. The document was originally (and fancifully) named the Eidsvoll Maqamat by the second Baron Camelford, who discovered the artifact in Malacca or Sri Lanka. While the artifact was in the possession of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, it was simply identified as “ceremonial bark cloth”, 132 x 180 inches, from 19th century Fiji. The bark cloth disappeared from the museum in 1978, with not even a photograph left behind in the record of its existence. The image for this print here was recreated from a sketch made by an unknown art student from the College of the Pacific, Stockton.
Four years after Jack Loki first met the Friendly Neighborhood Haruspices, Wm. Yost began a series about Jack’s prophetic journey through the Valley of Gheionnim. The series began with a haruspication made by an entity named Tiamat Choureau, who used a kiGamnch gutboard.
The Utilapu Benison (bottom image)
No well-brought-up jackalope would dream of beginning a quest without formal permission for departure from their loved ones. This set of paglakaw nga mga papel was drawn up by Jack’s fiancée, Alice Aroumbeyski.
Circa 1963, if you were going on a long trip with a carful of jackalopes, you needed a set of kiGamnch road trip games. Here are two cards you were likely to find in a typical “family pack” that you could buy in roadside diners and Mom-and-Pop grocery stores. Top card: The snappy title of this game was “Sacrifice of Sovereignty”. Fun name, right? We just called it “Tadpoles”. The bottom one was called “The Quagga in the Rose Garden”.
Many jackalope families play Illuminated Cruces on Easter, but it is not a universal or longstanding tradition of jackalope culture (Jack Loki’s family did not play Illuminated Cruces until he was a teenager, after his mother moved the family to Cloudcroft, New Mexico). Chocolate Hanukkah coins, gelt, are often used as game pieces, a practice that confuses many people, even jackalopes, about which holiday is traditional.
Today’s comic is a kiGamnch Dart-and-Tile Board, used for various tabletop games that are a popular form of kiGamnch.
The “darts” are not sharp, they are shaped like lima beans, with six short rubber spikes. They are more like jacks than darts. Some people play kiGamnch with jacks instead of kiGamnch darts, but if you have an expensive inlaid kiGamnch table, metal jacks would marr the finish. You can slide, roll and toss the darts across the board. Your opponent has the option of using his darts to displace yours.
The tiles are similiar to mah jongg tiles, and there is even a form of kiGamnch you can play with mah jongg tiles. The most familiar kiGamnch tile is made of Catalin (a plastic similiar to Bakelite), but some players prefer bone, ivory or wood. For me, nothing else has that most satisfying “clack” of a Catalin kiGamnch tile. The tiles can also be triangular or pentagonal.
kiGamnch tiles made of scented soap are a popular gift among game enthusiasts, but they don’t use them in play. They are most often seen as a decorative item for the bathroom, packaged in attractive glass jars.
Bottom image: A double kiGamanch gameboard inlay for a tabletop, 36″ X 60″. This kind of table can be found in bars, diners and coffeehouses frequented by jackalopes.
Asemic comics are supposed to be published here three times a week, on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, but I missed last Thursday because of minor life issues. My ISP has been having connection problems, and we’re having a heat-wave that is so out-of-proportion to our usual weather I find myself inclined to the attitude of “It’s too darn hot, I can’t be bothered” for even the slightest challenge.
Yost also described Three-Card Doubt as “a combination of fortune telling, soap opera, choose-your-own-adventure, origami, geometry, and Solitaire. Also can be played professionally in groups of five contestants for large amounts of material wealth.”
Vraicking 