Consulting the Thirsty Oracle

The modern consultant — that cloying dilettante whose ostensible hunger for wisdom has them conspicuously prostrating themselves before each and every perceived oracle — is not exactly the inquisitive and noble soul they portray themselves to be.
  Blind to their own Petrarchan conceits, they are the incurious who seek validation via placation by external parties telling them what they want to hear.
  Oblivious to their hypophorae, they micturate their empty questions into the mouths of thirsty oracles, awaiting some deep sagacity upon deglutition, but are only rewarded with effluvial splashback.
  They can then delude others with gnostic claims to revelation, but nowhere near as much as they delude themselves.

Menko 24: Nunchi Eopsi

Acoustic Hijinks at the Mapparium

DATELINE: Shawmut City, c. Stratum XX

On furlough, the ’Nuts happened across the headquarters of religious scientists in the high-toned neighbourhood of Back Bay.
  ‘How do you see the world?’ beckoned a sign at the end of a motionless reflecting pool.
  The quartet entered the great stained-glass sphere to view a globe outside-in. A glass walkway transversed the sphere’s interior from an area west of the Galapagos to the Indian Ocean’s Maldives. One could stand at the Earth’s core to see its crust and mantle in the heavens above.
  Jeck and the others stared around in amazement as did a tour group at the far end of the sphere. It dawned on Jeck that acoustic transfer functions within this enclosure would result in aural localisation illusions.
  With the mischievous spirit of Eris, Jeck quietly began the stridulating Song of the Gryllidae. The meek chirp crescendoed into a mezzo-forte trill. Whilst this went unnoticed to those beside him, the acoustic propagation found a focal point at the opposite side of the sphere, confusing the tour group. The flustered tour guide gazed around for an answer to the intrusion resonating within his world.
  “Guess we gotta call the exterminators,” he grumbled, his muted voice carrying around the inverted globe.

Mamonár Hladuje po Hmatateľnom

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