In Nethack, lizards are also handy to carry around for other reasons. They're the only edible corpse that never goes bad, so they're good emergency rations if you can't find real food to carry. Additionally, eating a lizard corpse while confused will reduce the number of turns it takes to snap out of it. Also, they never "expire" as far as sacrificing on an altar goes - most corpses must be sacrificed within 100-150 or so turns to gain you any benefit with your god, but a lizard can be sacrificed to good effect no matter how long ago it died.

Lizard is the name of an album that King Crimson released in 1971. This was their second-to-last album with lyricist Peter Sinfield; the last was Islands. Back in those days, King Crimson worked with lyricists who didn't play instruments.

It's a weird record, an expansive chaos. There's a harsh, splenetic strangeness there that's hard not to like, but they were trying to do "fusion" on some tracks and that part is annoying. Even on the more coherent ones, it's a mighty disorienting listen when you're a bit groggy: Harmonically it ranges from odd to bizarre, instruments drift in and out, Fripp does disturbing things with a mellotron (yes, he was still in his mellotron phase, and yes, a mellotron can sound awful disturbing if you unleash Fripp on it) etc. None of the songs seems to hang together very tightly. The singer, bassist Gordon Haskell, is a bit strange too. The closest thing to an "accessible" song is "Prince Rupert Awakes", sung by Jon Anderson from Yes, and even that's a bit peculiar: There's lots of billowing mellotron grooviness, but it's billowing around something not quite normal. Was Fripp trying to write "In the Court of the Crimson King" again with that song? Maybe so. It's good to have Peter Sinfield on board. His successor, Richard W. Palmer-James, never did much for me.

The whole band seems to be in a capricious and very negative mood.

The drums are cut off at the knees: All you can hear is the snare and the cymbals. It doesn't help with the disorientation, not to have an anchor like that.

Still, it's an engaging and intresting record, and it's hard to have too much mellotron.

My copy is a "Promotional DJ Copy" from when it was first released; I found it in a used record store at some point. I'm not sure when. The cover is very nice, sort of a Book-of-Kells-ified illuminated manuscript thing, with little cartoon decadent rock stars hiding in the middles of the letters: You'd really miss the effect if it were shrunk down to CD size. It's a gatefold, of course (and the CD reissue as of August, 2000 has a little gatefold thing as well), with the lyrics on the inside of the gatefold in a ten or twelve point italic Baskerville; those weird angles on the capital letters are always a treat. On the front, on the "Promotional DJ Copy Not for Sale" sticker, it says: "Suggested Cuts for Air Play: 1. Prince Rupert Awakes, 2. Happy Family". I wonder if that "suggestion" seemed as howlingly arbitrary then as it does now. Maybe not; FM radio was something different in 1971. Still, these are not songs that anybody ever could have expected to be "hits" in any year, at least on this planet.

sensei tells me that "Happy Family" was about the Beatles, which makes sense.

Ahhh, prog rock . . . Enough was enough.

Tracks:

Side A:

  1. Cirkus (Including Entry of the Chameleons) (6:28)
  2. Indoor Games (5:35)
  3. Happy Family (4:15)
  4. Lady of the Dancing Water (2:43)

Side B:

  1. Prince Rupert Awakes (4:34)
  2. Bolero -- the Peacock's Tale (6:30) (instrumental)
  3. The Battle of Glass Tears (10:55)

The Lizard is a peninsula on the south coast of Cornwall, and its southernmost point, Lizard Point, is the most southerly tip of England. It is an area of spectacular natural beauty, with high cliffs and rugged coves. The name comes from the Cornish lys ardh 'high point', not from the animal.

It is bounded on the north by the Helford River, a wide tidal inlet or ria. In the centre of the Lizard is Goonhilly Downs with its large space tracking station. On the west coast the highlight is Kynance Cove, a National Trust property of huge beautiful rocks emerging from the sea. On the east coast is the village of Cadgwith, the perfectly idyllic and picturesque Cornish fishing village, with boats drawn up on the shingle, and thatched cottages. At Lizard Point itself is a lighthouse, dating from 1752, and the town of Lizard seems to live by selling serpentine souvenirs to tourists. The geology of the peninsula is unique in England, in that it is composed of serpentine, which occurs nowhere else in the country.

From Poldhu the first trans-Atlantic radio message (the Morse code ... or S) was transmitted in 1901, to Marconi in Newfoundland.

 

There are three wooden steps

from the porch to the ground

he shines like a coin

he rests on my porch

like a star on a tree

the wood creaks

when I step on the porch

the sunlight catches

the flash of his tail

he comes to my porch

he shines like the edge

of a moon made of steel

there are three wooden steps

from the porch to the ground

and I marvel

at the effort he makes

at the struggle it takes

to rest at the top

like a lord or a king

the wood creaks

he leaves like the summer

and I must confess

I’ve said I’m sorry

to the flash of his tail

there are light-years

from the porch to the ground

and I am a second-comer

at best.

Liz"ard (?), n. [OE. lesarde, OF. lesarde, F. l'ezard, L. lacerta, lacertus. Cf. Alligator, Lacerta.]

1. Zool.

Any one of the numerous species of reptiles belonging to the order Lacertilia; sometimes, also applied to reptiles of other orders, as the Hatteria.

⇒ Most lizards have an elongated body, with four legs, and a long tail; but there are some without legs, and some with a short, thick tail. Most have scales, but some are naked; most have eyelids, but some do not. The tongue is varied in form and structure. In some it is forked, in others, as the chameleons, club-shaped, and very extensible. See Amphisbaena, Chameleon, Gecko, Gila monster, Horned toad, Iguana, and Dragon, 6.

2. Naut.

A piece of rope with thimble or block spliced into one or both of the ends.

R. H. Dana, Ir.

3.

A piece of timber with a forked end, used in dragging a heavy stone, a log, or the like, from a field.

Lizard fish Zool., a marine scopeloid fish of the genus Synodus, or Saurus, esp. S. fetens of the Southern United States and West Indies; -- called also sand pike. -- Lizard snake Zool., the garter snake (Eutaenia sirtalis). -- Lizard stone Min., a kind of serpentine from near Lizard Point, Cornwall, England, -- used for ornamental purposes.

 

© Webster 1913.

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