Month: August 2003

Staggering past the munchkins arrayed in great splendour–we really must come up with a more fluid and reprehensible method of governing–Ogilvie Transistorsides wondered again what had gotten into him. He meant, of course, the three quarts of spoilt milk which he had, so to speak, token.

Not normally known for his deviation from the standardized set of mind-altering chemicals, Ogilvie Transistorsides had been seduced into the spoilt milk by the gregarious and vaguely altruistic charms of Googoorian Veld, he of the spangled hat and dusty drawers. When Googoorian Veld was on the prowl, meting out his canisters of spoilt milk, well, no one was safe from his honeyed, yet dare we say forked, tongue: not the bashful schoolgirl nor the bespectacled wayward minister (he means well!) nor the subway car driver nor the washer of great greens nor, it seems, our finicky protaganist, Ogilvie Transistorsides. This in spite of his gutteral and frangled reaction to the eyeball–one might even call it an obsessive phobia, were one inclined–upon which the spoilt milk was placed for which the full efficacy was achieved.

So, this staggering about, this wanton disregard of limbs and flagpoles, wasn’t even yet about the activation or the tunnellizing into a newly (drug-induced) reality, but instead was simply the result of milk-filmed eyeballs and the trouble Ogilvie Transistorsides had seeing through it and his posterboard sunglasses–each with a cranky sun pasted on: the cranky grin, the cranky frown. He only hoped no policer was on the prowl.

Any hope of lingering with (or lingerieing, grinning) some curly hatchensnap was puffing away like so much dandelion soap. A great milky tear froozed out and from behind the sun-shadowed specks of Ogilvie Transistorsides and crept shyly down his newly shaven dew-feathered chin. It left a clear white shriek down his cheek, much to like those milk-mustachioed billboard riders, lurking everywhere these days. O, what low! when even a not-so-curvy nastachio would satisfy his jointed lustings.

the toys: they are all mine!
[wobble wobble]

great gobs of gabbling, ya. it’s all there and everything finds itself on the interwebbing these days…

While on my vacation last week, I finishedPattern Recognition by William Gibson. I think it could be his best book. Or, at least, the one I’ve enjoyed the most, so far.

Someone somewhere on the internet–and, I know, shame on me for not remembering–wrote that the present that we’re living in right now is the future and that writers who take advantage of this (eg, Bruce Sterling’s Zeitgeist and WG’s Pattern Recognition) write books that are more like science fiction than most science fiction books.

I’ll admit that I feel pretty strongly that the world gets stranger and stranger all the time. Things change faster than people can really keep track of. Who had email ten years ago? Where was the internet ten years ago? Who had cameras in their cellphones ten years ago?

And those are just the technological changes. Who can say yet how these things will shake out to effect the day to day?

Here’s an example: A few years ago, I didn’t have a cell phone. Every year or so (sometimes more) I travel down to my home town to visit old friends and family and all that jazz. When I have done so in the past, I had to arrange things very carefully or risk getting stranded somewhere with nothing to do, waiting for another friend to contact me or become available. This time around, I had a cellphone with me and there was no dead time, unless I wanted there to be. If I wanted to get a hold of someone or let someone know that I was available, I didn’t have to travel all the way back to my “homebase” there. Now maybe I’m writing about something which is totally obvious and which people take for granted, but it is one very tiny thing that has completely altered (for the better!) the way that travelling has worked out for me. (Not to mention, avoiding the scraps-of-paper telephone record-keeping approach…)

Anyway, you can find Gibson’s book here too.

Also, you should check out William Gibson’s website. It’s groovy.

The Golden Path has some Movabletype tricks that I’ll probably check back on later.

Wow. I didn’t think many people knew about Raymond Roussel, but Tate whatsit at obscurantist.net linked to this Roussel link here.

Raymond Roussel’s Locus Solus is perhaps the most amazing book I’ve read in the last couple of years. I looked for months for a copy to buy, but then finally broke down and photocopied an entire Inter-Library Loan book. I’ve described this book to quite a few people, probably most of whom think I’m an absolute raving. It doesn’t help that the book is in French, and I speak nor read none.

i’m pretty scuppered from the hottentotting i’ve been doing. sleeping around the coast and dangling from great heights with salted peanuts and vaguely insubstantial party-favors.

went here for a spell and listened to the reedy voiced guide voice things about things. old furniture and old curtain grinders (i mean sausage boxes) and wooden girders and stanchions and just about all the

household things from long ago. i’m thinking there’s some kind of hiker and she’s… and it’s funny how the eye frames a thing and makes it so. or maybe contrariwise, what’s with all those light bulb arrows flappering in to the brain? it’s passive/active and makes the work so crunchy.

luckily, there was a time later when we had time to …., because or otherwise something like a self-consuming might have overwhelmed and listening to that pacific theme music crashing in the distance or clampering over the rocks and daisyfruits (i mean icicle plants) while the sunmirror shines its cool light down upon and all the light on water seems like a (nearly) cheap digital effect in some badly dubbed 1960s italian (or russian) cinematick. but that’s okay. and though rocks are hard and crunchy, yet we are soft and feel those fingers…

even now, that dance of fingers crashing makes my helmet crumble and feel that sconce. or, even that day when a pink delight approaches. sheesh. shall the heatsweat of summer be amelting me? can i even bear another hour of closet isolation in this gray bespeckled booth?

…

but to put it differently, there was a great playing of games. a great hotchpotch of ’em. and all the time, whittling or whistling with my old uns, those favored amigos from days past. who can say how old they are? or how long since they’ve occupied? it’s a curious thing. a kind of thing which makes us smirk around the edges and wobble as though the electronickal cloud vizzes just a bit. then we’re solid all again. and even the meself begotten once in the hotseat there, questioning all t’others: what is it about pianos with you people!??

and then, with a great munkey, i’m playing another game with myself…. trying on for size, some other type o’ thing. it’s all wrong from the getgo. even with those magnetic soles and mattress which might be floating on air, given half the chance. it’s the worst dreamlike state and that nightmare cloud just draws out lengthwise into a drawling span of spittle. and there’s no nightmare people, it’s just so so so… dull. i’m bored and i’m never bored. it’s a chemickally induced boredom, how sad. and all i’m thinking is what a doom is this? watching the brain crumble and poke along through the ravelling spic of time. it’s the lowpoint, sure, but we all have ’em. the only regret: what a waste of time, and i’m no humptyfriend, then.

all in all, in spite of the lowp, it was grand grand mellons all the way round. forever and ever and none of us wanted to come home again, through we did anyhow, in spite of some slack efforts by the universe, its agents.

where all the world’s gone hazy…
can it all be a a dream?

those earbiting monkeytypes

creepy crawly spiders…
it’s a big honker for you slow-trawlers….