No rules have been broken here

Once Luca convinced me that I needed a blog, I (silently) outlined certain rules for myself.

I’d never, ever write about what I do for a living. ("Church and State" reasoning.)

I’d portray things in their best light. (For example, if I went to a restaurant and didn’t like the food, I’d just not mention the incident at all.)

I’d never make what someone else wrote count as my own entry. I don’t mind it when other people do it. It’s just that one of the reasons I decided to blog in the first place was discipline: the point is to sit down and write something – not for pay, not for work, not for friends, just for me – at least once a week.

Posting what someone else says, no matter how meaningful, remains, within my own strict, closed-circuit universe, a cop-out.

All this to tell you that my friend Chris sent me to Stephen Frug’s blog, who in turn speaks about a Codex Seraphinianus. This Codex was created in 1978 by Italian artist Luigi Serafini. The whole thing has been posted online as a Flickr set. (And, it might not remain there for long.) I don't know about you, but I'd never heard about it.

I urge you to go see it.

Please start by clicking on “Attempts”, Stephen’s blog. Read Stephen’s entry and his trail to Wikipedia and finally to the code itself.

I’m mesmerized by it.

And, for the record, I wrote my entry for this week yesterday – so I’m not even counting this one. My rules remain, for the most part, pristine and unbroken.

At least, the ones that pertain to blogging.