In the city where I live, most of the once excellent pavements have been taken up and replaced by a vile substance called bit-mack. This material is black in appearance, with a staccato scattering of white stones embedded in its surface.
On certain stretches these random white punctuations increase in intensity and are joined by masses of variously shaped blobs of chewing gum. The result is a dense pattern that is widely available as a ready made canvas for The Pavement Chewing Gum Psychology Artist (i.e. me)
I propose to create a series of pavement Rorschach images, over a number of nights, surreptitiously under the guise of a maintenance crew. By carefully blotting out enough of the pre-existing white highlights, using blobs of black and grey paint, a symetrical "ink blot" will emerge. (see link)
It won't be very obvious, to begin with, but eventually the mysterious images will gain notoriety. In time, as more gum is added to the patterns, they will change and evolve into other forms, revealing the hidden psychology of an entire community.
"I see the Pope spreading his cloak over the whole world" - "No way! - there's No Pope Here, I see a bat opening its leathery wings" (contains a hidden clue as to where I live)-- xenzag, May 12 2006 Bat/Pope/? http://commons.wiki..._black_on_white.pngRorschach Homeland Test [xenzag, May 12 2006] What I see. http://www.algonet....ow/metroid/dess.gif [notmarkflynn, May 12 2006] Do you live in Anglican England? There's no pope to speak of there.-- notmarkflynn, May 12 2006 nope-- xenzag, May 12 2006 Norway?
And looking at your BatPope link, I see that enemy from the Ridley's Hideout area of Metroid that jumps form the top of the screen to the bottom. Those things were annoying.-- notmarkflynn, May 12 2006 noway ! whale hunting scum-- xenzag, May 12 2006 Am I the only one who sees Unabubba giving me the finger with both hands?-- Canuck, May 13 2006 I have never seen UnaBubba. But now I know he is a hook-mouthed horror from the depths of hell.-- notmarkflynn, May 14 2006 I am an active unamerican.-- xenzag, May 14 2006 Now, I know that Australia can be an inhospitable place. But I don't think you need to go calling it the //depths of hell//.-- methinksnot, May 14 2006 Can we agree that he's hook-mouthed?
Alright. Time for some Batman-style deduction: "No Pope Here" is capitalized, so, NPH is a clue... NPH, NPH,... Neil Patrick Harris, star of T.V.'s "Doogie Howser!" Neil Patrick Harris... Hmmm.
Harris is currently playing Barney on the sitcom "How I Met Your Mother." Barney sounds like Blarney, so, you're in Ireland! Ha!
I did it, I did it!-- notmarkflynn, May 15 2006 not quite MF ... but nearly-- xenzag, May 16 2006 Well I'm just guessing here, and this probably isn't using your hidden clue but here goes.
There's only a handful of results on Google for this "bit mack" substance (presumably it has another name which might make this an irrelevance). The principal result being a request for the removal of this substance in an area called Bill Quay, which is in the east side of Gateshead.
Interestingly enough, "No Pope Here" in an well known piece of grafitti in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Underneath it someone else apparently wrote "Lucky Old Pope". That would have made me think of there if [xenzag] hadn't already discounted Ireland as the answer.-- hidden truths, May 16 2006 According to some people in Northern Ireland and Scotland, there is no Pope in Rome, which is, on a purely pedantic level, entirely correct. That's not my guess though. My guess is Addis Ababa, where Mwengwe lives.-- calum, May 16 2006 random, halfbakery