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Teen drove into ditch, vanished as parents searched
by Alexis Weed

It was the last day of classes, and Brandon Swanson, a 19-year-old freshman at Minnesota West Community and Technical College, was celebrating with his friends.

Swanson called home shortly after midnight May 14, 2008, telling his parents he needed a ride because he had driven into a ditch in the neighboring town of Lynd, Minnesota. Annette and Brian Swanson immediately set out in their pickup to look for their son and his green Chevy Lumina sedan.

"We got in the pickup to go to this spot where he felt he was," Brian Swanson recalled. He thought he knew exactly where his son was, about 10 minutes from their home in Marshall.

"He was absolutely positive he knew where he was," Brian Swanson said. The parents stayed on the phone, talking to their son as they headed to pick him up.

But when they arrived, there was no car and no Brandon. They turned around and flashed the lights on their truck.

"We were saying, 'We're flashing our lights!' " Annette Swanson said. Over the phone, they could hear their son working the light switch in his car. Click-click, click-click.

"Don't you see me?" he asked.

"There was nothing," his father said, "absolutely nothing."

Everyone grew frustrated.

"At one point, he hung up on me, so I called him back and apologized," his mother said.

Swanson told his parents he would walk back to his friend's house in Lynd. His father drove home to drop Annette off and then headed back to look for the teen. They exchanged calls just before 2 a.m. and eventually carried on a long conversation while the younger Swanson was walking, trying to direct his father to where he was.

He told his father to look for him at a nightclub parking lot that was a popular meeting spot in Lynd. But at the 47-minute mark, the call ended abruptly. The teen shouted an expletive, and the phone went dead.

It was the last time anyone heard from him.

"We called at least five or six more times," his father said. "He never picked up the phone again."

The Swansons turned to their son's friends for help. They searched all night, driving down dirt roads and through farmland. There was no sign of him.

At 6:30 a.m., Annette Swanson called the Lynd Police Department to report Brandon missing, and officers eventually joined the search. They, too, came up with nothing, and a countywide request was dispatched to expand the search.

The response was delayed because, officers pointed out, it was not that unusual for a 19-year-old to stay out all night after finishing college classes, Annette Swanson said.

Phone records later showed that the teen was nowhere near Lynd, where he told his parents he was. His cell phone calls were traced to a tower 20 miles away in Minnesota.

That afternoon, Lyon County police found Swanson's vehicle in Porter, approximately 25 miles from Lynd.

"It was off the side of a field approach, and the vehicle was hung up," Lincoln County Sheriff Jack Vizecky said. "It's sort of a sharp incline, nothing major but enough that the car would get hung up so the wheels are too high off the ground to get any traction."

Nothing else unusual was found at the site, and officers could not determine which direction the teen had headed after he left the vehicle.

"There's grass in the ditch and gravel on the road, so it's possible to leave that vehicle and not leave any tracks," Vizecky said.

Investigators brought in search dogs, and they led investigators to woods by the bank of the Yellow Medicine River. The river's depth ranges from knee high in certain areas to 15 feet in others. At the time Swanson went missing, it was flowing high and fast.

"There are two miles of the river in that area, and it took six hours to walk it," Vizecky said. He said he personally walked the river every day for 30 days.

"At the time, the dogs indicated, and it was believed, that he must have fallen in the river in that area," he added. "So we searched that area, on the premise that he'd be washed downstream."
But investigators are not convinced that the teen fell into the river. Vizecky said Swanson should have been found in the river or downstream, had he fallen in.

Annette Swanson said she is not convinced her son drowned, either.

"There really is nothing to indicate that he's in the river," she said. According to her, one bloodhound followed a scent from the stranded car down a gravel road to an abandoned farm.

"It was a long trail ... about three miles," she added. The new trail path also led to the Yellow Medicine River. "The dog actually jumped in the river, jumped back out, worked the trail up to another gravel road and then lost the scent," she said.

Cadaver dogs and searchers, he explained, should have found a body or some evidence if Swanson had succumbed to the elements.

"I can't explain why clothing, belongings wouldn't surface," Vizecky said. "I can't explain why after searching for three weeks, [the dogs] could not smell anything."





*

p.s. Hey. They still have never found him, if you're curious. Hope you're all doing really well.

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Maurizio Cattelan 'Not Afraid of Love'
Maurizio Cattelan 'untitled'
Maurizio Cattelan 'Him'





Geza Szollosi 'untitled'





Scott Treleaven 'Skulls'





Gregor Schneider 'END'





Steven Katzman 'untitled'









Liz Craft 'Death Rider'
Liz Craft 'Dancing Skeletons'
Liz Craft 'The Pony'





David Altmejd 'Werewolf'





Sue De Beer 'Two Girls'





Paul McCarthy 'Sauce'





Gottfried Helnwein 'untitled'






Richard Hawkins 'Bordello on rue St. Lazare'
Richard Hawkins 'Stairwell Down'





Kris Kuksi 'The Guardian'









Nayland Blake 'Restraint Chair'
Nayland Blake 'untitled'
Nayland Blake 'The Big One'







Wim Delvoye 'untitled'
Wim Delvoye 'untitled'





Chapman Brothers 'Zygotic'













Anonymous 'Untitled'
Anonymous 'Untitled'
Anonymous 'Untitled'
Anonymous 'Untitled'
Anonymous 'Untitled'





J. Smith 'Top Hat'







Pete Glover 'Pacman Skull'
Pete Glover 'Homer Simpson's Rotted Corpse' (detail)





Cameron Jamie/The Melvins 'Luxor IFFR' (2:00)









Yoshiko Hori 'Flesh Dolls' *
* 'Hori's dolls are created by using real human corpse skin and hair. If you were to look closely at the pictures, you will notice some red blood lines around the nose, eyes and mouth area. This is because Hori uses real faces from the corpses of deceased children and teenagers for the 'faces' of her dolls.' -- hys.art.coocan.jp



_____________

Coming soon on October 31, 2009 to DC's:







*

p.s. Hey. Today visual art gets into the Halloween act. Or got, I guess, given the post's vintage. Or got and gets, I guess, to be most accurate. Enjoy this post and the rest of your day if you possibly can.

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BRIAN JONES
by Jack Skelley

















MISTER SHAMPOO


"It's going to happen, I tell you," Brian lisped insistently. "It's going to happen soon." Then he turned away from Mick and Keith. Brian slipped a shilling into the meter which turned on the gas fire -- a few precious minutes of heat -- and shook his wet hair over it.

Mick was in another of his this-isn't-working-out-and-I-should-return-to-accounting-school moods. Yes, since Brian got the group together last year he had booked a trickle of gigs around London. But the only attention the Rolling Stones were getting was from the "jazz snobs," as Brian called them, or from the mods, rockers and art students whose bloody rows usually got the shows closed anyway. And now it was winter, the worst winter in 100 years. And Brian and Mick and Keith were crowded in a piss-cold, two-room flat with a single light bulb that hung Bohemian-style from the ceiling.

Mick was standing under it now, in a periwinkle ladies' housecoat.

"I mean we've only played one show this month, Brian," he said. "And we still haven't got paid for that. It just doesn't add up, does it?"

But Brian wasn't worried. Keith's guitar parts were starting to kick in. And they had a great new version of "Not Fade Away" that didn't so much toughen Buddy Holly's hit as demoralize it. Keith imposed a Bo Diddley stomp over it, while Mick snarled his commands and Brian slurped mocking asides on harp. What's more, Brian was on the verge of closing a management deal with Andrew Loog Oldham. Brian hated Loog; he was just a cheeky publicist looking to get rich off the blues. But as the Stones' manager he could get them more gigs. And he could get Brian an extra five pounds a month salary. Five pounds his flatmates didn't have to know about.

A shilling's worth of gas spent, Brian began his brushing. One hundred strokes will catch the blokes, he remembers his mother once said. And Brian's blond mop was glazed to a sheen.

Mick was still bitching.

"I mean what do you think?" he turned to Keith.

Keith was in a cross-legged pose, plunking on Brian's Gibson, his fingers stiff with cold. Brian finished brushing, then smoothed his new tab-collar shirt in the loo mirror.

"I'd like to know who filched my piece of chicken," said Keith.

Too late. Brian was already out the door.

Mick crossed his arms and glared, first at Keith, who shrugged and returned to riffing, then at the door as it slammed shut. He heard Brian bound down the stairs.

"Mister Shampoo!" Mick sneered. "And where did he get that shilling?"


*


THE BLACK BEETLES, THE BLOND MEDUSA


It was in Munich that Brian met Anita. It had been a rough show -- there's always some crazy Kraut who throws a beer stein at the stage. Brian barely dodged one and it got him a bit twitchy. And afterwards Mick and Keith were baiting Brian again as he hunched in a corner of the dressing room.

"What's the matter, Brian? Did you see the black beetles again?" Mick laughed. Then Keith laughed, and so Loog laughed. And they all laughed.

"The black beetles, ha ha ha."

Huge swarms of black beetles were what Brian had hallucinated coming out of the wall at Keith's house back in London. And Mick and Keith always seemed to bring up Brian's bad trip just when he felt the most vulnerable to their taunts.

But now someone stopped them in their tracks.

"Hello. Who's this rare bird?" said Mick.

There she was. Anita Pallenberg. An aristocratic beauty, with hair the exact color of Brian's. She even wore a floppy hat and French jacket similar to his. Able to slink past roadies and promoters with the stony gaze of a model, Anita arrived backstage and homed-in not on Mick or Keith, but on Brian.

"I said, who's this?' Mick repeated. But Anita cut him off with a scowl. She sidled next to Brian and, between her fishnets, flashed him a glimpse of her hash and amyl nitrite.

That night, Anita took Brian to her bed. She put on Aftermath.

"It's my favorite. I've completely worn out the grooves," she said.

Her muslin fabrics were just like the ones Brian draped around his bedposts. He boffed her, burying himself in her limbs, her hair. Then he cried in her arms... partly in joy, partly in relief, because now he sensed a way out. He pictured her wicked mane gleaming through the window of his Silver Cloud Rolls as it swooped through London. They would be magazine demigods, and Mick would envy every glossy spread, and every journalist's rave for how Brian's sitar fired up "Paint It Black," or how his flute forged a magical Elizabethan blues on "Ruby Tuesday." Best of all, Mick would be stuck with Chrissie Shrimpton -- that stupid girl, the mere sister of a model -- while Brian would have this empress of decadence, this Teutonic Medusa.

Anita drifted into sleep.

Brian whispered, "I need you."

On the turntable the needle clicked, clicked, clicked.


*


THE BENTLEY


Keith's Bentley purred as it swerved around a herd of goats. An old Frenchman made a rude gesture, but inside all you could hear was Tom, their Cockney chauffeur, yapping about his paratroop days. Brian and Anita were on holiday with Keith, motoring from Paris to Tangier, which had become the Stones' sanctuary ever since London's police were hounding them.

Though Anita nestled with him in the back seat, and his asthma medication was never out of reach, Brian's anxiety was rising with each kilometer.

By now the Stones' social life was a game of superstar chess. Outclassed by Anita, Mick had dumped Chrissie Shrimpton with a vengeance, swooping up Marianne Faithful, whose pale hair and pedigree rivaled Anita's. This made Keith, still lacking a socialite girlfriend, the odd Stone out. So he renewed his bond with Brian who was relieved to have Keith back in his camp. But what were Keith's real intentions? And why were Keith and Anita glancing at each other?

By the time they reached Toulon, Brian was wheezing severely. Anita felt his forehead.

"Brian, you're burning up! Tom, find a hospital!"

Brian was admitted, and though she offered to stay with him, something made Brian urge Anita to continue south with the others. That night, while Brian writhed in a French clinic, Keith and Anita were screwing in a Spanish hotel.

For three days Brian fired off message after panicked message, all of which went ignored until the Bentley arrived in Tangier. By the time he rejoined the Stones' party, which now included Mick, Marianne, and a whole entourage, Brian was certain something was up between Anita and Keith.

The others could sense it too. Tension was thick on the 10th floor of Tangier's Hotel El Minzah, and the all-night acid parties only made things weirder. Brian balled himself into a corner, a Scotch and Coke glued to his fist, and watched. By the time the party got rowdy -- Tom the chauffeur tobogganing down the hallway on room-service carts -- Brian had crept into town by himself. He returned to his and Anita's suite with a local prostitute -- ornate tattoos were burned into her neck and cheeks -- and he insisted on a ménage à trois. But Anita was not in the mood.

Then came the barrage.

"You fucking bitch!" he screamed. He picked up a platter of couscous and Frisbee'd it at Anita's head.

The beatings and the cries went on into the night and were heard down the hall, clearly bumming everyone's trip.

In the afternoon, Anita appeared on the patio, her face caked with foundation and concealer. Keith bobbed in the pool before Anita and she stared back, a mixture of passion and pleading.

A few tables over, Mick whispered to Marianne, "Things are getting fuckin' heavy around here. Somebody's got to do something about Brian.

And so Brian was escorted to the central square to record Moroccan music, and when he returned to the hotel the desk clerk gave him the news: Keith had thrown Anita into his Bentley and driven off hours ago. The entire Stones entourage had flown back to London without even telling him.

Brian raced up to his room.

"Judas !" he screamed, and flung a potted plant out the window.


*


FRINGE


The children flocked around Brian who was seated on a donkey as he entered the ancient village of Jajouka.

"See the man with the big hair ! See the man with the big hair !" They trailed him, showering him with fig leaves.

The artist Brion Gysin was taking Brian and Brian's new girlfriend Suki -- the latest stand-in for Anita Pallenberg -- into the remote Rif mountains of Morocco to document the pre-Islamic rites of Pan.

Brian squatted with the the master musicians of Jajouka, smoked from their pipes, picked up their instruments and began wailing, just as he did back in '62 when he learned to play the blues harp in one day. He played along with them a bit more, then supervised the recording. Headphones pressed to his ears, he stalked around the musicians, whirling the microphone in arcs and figure-eights, swaying with the twining of the pipes. Brian knew that one day the rest of the world, too, would purify itself in these waves of sound.

Then, towards dawn, the Jajoukans prepared the sacrifice. An elder in a white kaftan carried a goat the color of desert sand to a flat rock. Brian fixated on this goat. The animal stared back through its shaggy fringe.

The blade swooped down and the scream ripped through the air.

"That's me," choked Brian. "That's me."


*


INHALER


It has only been a month since Mick, Keith and Charlie drove out to Brian's farm, offering him 100,000 pounds to leave the Rolling Stones.

After the meeting, Brian laid his head on the table and wept. But now, on the night of July 2, Brian is relaxing, watching Doctor in the House on the BBC with three friends.

It's been a warm week, the pollen count is high and Brian hits his asthma inhaler between shots of brandy. After the program, Brian takes his guests outside for a swim. He staggers on the diving board, but Brian is a good swimmer and slices through the deep end. After 11 p.m., one by one, all three of Brian's guests remove themselves to the house.

Brian swims alone.

It's a watery blues that Brian hears now. A frantic alto sax gurgles bop from a muddy delta. There it yoo-hoos on sitar, soars above the hills of Wales, then plunges to the mountains of Jajouka, where African reed instruments, the texture of raised tattoos, bleat like goats with circular breathing, gasp infinity, then smudge away in the smoke.

Twin Renaissance recorders harmonize bitterly but resolve to a plunked marimba.

Deep down in the mix, a blues harp heaves, trailing clouds of echo.

And a metal tube slithers on steel strings, falling down frets to the bottom of the scale, where -- bump, by bump, by bony bump -- at last it settles, with a perfect twang.














*

p.s. Hey. Well, I finally found some time to do a p.s., albeit a very swift one. Our trip is going spectacularly well, if you're curious, and there's way too much to tell you about, but I'll try to gather some evidence and make a related post at some near-future point. Also, if you're curious, I can now tell you that the blog will return live with new posts and p.s.es starting on November 1st, so in just under a week from today. As for today's rerun, Jack Skelley is such a good writer. He should be a million times better known. He should be a million times more prolific. Find out, please. Okay, I'll do my best to catch up with your comments quickly in the time that I have this morning. ** Oct. 12 ** Thomas Moronic, So true it was and is maybe. ** Steevee, Hi. No, I haven't heard the Pusha T or Danny Brown albums. I'll try them. I'm hardly drawn to Rap or Hip Hop naturally much at all unless someone like you recommends something, so thanks! ** Misanthrope, Hi, George. How's your mom doing right now? I've been thinking about you and her and really hoping for the best. ** Kiddiepunk, RAWR!!!!!! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David! ** Rewritedept, Hi. We were through Vegas at one point, but it was super swift. Did the Strip, some rides, this and that, and then we were headed back into nature. No, I'm not ready to go home 'cos the trip has been amazing, but home will feel nice, I think. ** Oct. 14 ** Kyler, Hey, buddy! Thanks again for the awesome Halloween post. ** David Ehrenstein, Happy LA morning. ** Cap'm, Hey, man. A big pleasure to see you! Very cool stories, sir. How are you doing? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben! Oh, weird mix up on the address. No, my mailing address is: c/o Centre International des Recollets, 150 rue du Faubourg St. Martin, 75010 Paris, France. ** Randomwater, Hi, pal. I know, I know, I know, right? ** Torn porter, Hi. How's it? Mm, the 1937 'A Star is Born'? I don't think so, but, hm, maybe on some late night on TV in my childhood? Oh, yeah, that death by orgasming boy was a crazy story. It smacks of fake, but I guess it's not? ** Oct. 15 ** David Ehrenstein, No, I wasn't in town when you called, but Joel told me you did. I don't remember where I was at that time? Mm, Page, Arizona maybe? ** Steevee, Ha ha. ** Lee, Hi, Lee! Oh, yeah, I've barely looked at my email in two weeks. Okay, I'll go find the email in question. Sorry to have been so offline. I'll respond asap. You good? ** Kyler, Howdy. ** Rewritedept, How were Fucked Up? Massive, right? ** Oct. 16 ** _Black_Acrylic, Sweet jury duty avoidance story, man. How are you spending your freed up time? ** Bill, Hi, Bill! You saw your rerun, cool. Where are you these days? I feel like you're as on the road as I am. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Oh, before I forget, your lovely post will launch here on Saturday, November 2nd. I saw a video of what was maybe the first NIN concert of the current incarnation in Japan, I think? I'm not into them, but the show looked huge and intense in a really dynamic way. Glad you liked it so much. I'm hoping your stomach bug is long gone. ** Alan Randolf, Wow, if you're spam, and I think you must be, you are pretty cool spam. ** Oct. 17 ** Kyler, Morning, K. ** David Ehrenstein, Thanks again for suggesting I rerun your great Chereau post. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. My travels are a knock-out, thanks. Back to work. Everything the same? So, did your nephew move back, I hope, I hope? ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi Jeff! Yeah, the trip is going really great. Highlights? Wow, so many. ATV adventures in the desert, hot air ballooning over Canyonlands. jet-skiing on Lake Powell, tons of nature/hiking, ... It's wound up being more about nature adventuring than Halloween, although there's been some great spookiness too. Have you sorted the novel-in-progress problems at all? No, I haven't had time to work on the novel, or not more than some brief fiddling. ** S., Hi, man! Halloween stories, awesome! I'll read them as soon as I get some internet time going on. Or, oh wait, there's only one left. Then that one. Everyone, go read Halloween Story 2 (A Bar Story) with your highlighting option by S. asap because it's obviously going to be great. ** Oct. 18 ** David Ehrenstein, Oh, yeah, I saw the Morrissey autobio is finally out. ** David Estornell, Thank you, David. How are you? ** Oct. 19 ** Bill, Hi, B. Oh, you're in SF then. You great? ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Excited to read that Gaddis piece, and I will asap. ** David Estornell, Hey. Oh, I will listen to your music, as soon as I get back to Paris, if not before. Thank you! ** Steevee, I haven't heard the new James Ferraro yet, but the new Tim Hecker is great. It's been one of the big hits of our road trip playlist along with the new Ohnetrix Point Never, the new Forest Swords, and the new Four Tet. ** Creative Massacre, Hey. Oh, I'm so, so sorry to hear that, Misty. I send you so much love, and I hope you're hanging in there okay. How are you doing? Hugs galore, my dear friend. ** Oct. 21 ** David Ehrenstein, That was an impressive win list re: Alan's post. Wow. ** Bill, Hi. Who made the noise at that gig? ** _Black_Acrylic, Greetings from afar, Ben. ** Torn porter, Hi! ** Oct. 22 ** David Ehrenstein, Slurp. ** David Estornell, Whatever that means, I agree. ** Bill, Yep, having a blast, Bill, thanks! You too, I hope? ** Rewritedept, Hi. I got your blog day. It's super sweet. Let's see ... it'll launch on Thursday, November 7th. Thanks a million, buddy. ** S., Wow, nice paragraph. ** Misanthrope, The fuck, you say? ** Oct. 23 ** David Ehrenstein, It was/is indeed. ** S., New Emo stack at long last! Everyone, new Emo stack by S. at long last! ** _Black_Acrylic, I'm so curious about the video, Ben. Please do spill when appropriate. ** Steevee, I'll go read your reiew asap. Everyone, please go read a review of the film 'Blue is the Warmest Color' the big brained tastemaker Steevee right here. ** Delilah Hannu, Hi! Welcome to the blog. Thanks for being here, and, yeah, sad. Please come back any time. ** Oct. 24 ** David Ehrenstein, Sorta, yeah. ** Heliotrope, Hi, Mark from wherever I am! Sorry about the Dodgers, grr. Big love to you! ** Steevee, Hey. ** S., Wow, a whole different kind of stack. Lookin' good, man. Everyone, a break from tradition stack with a distinct Halloween thematic that you gotta see from the stack impeccabilist S. is titled The Girls of Halloween, and it's here. ** Grant maierhofer, Hi, Grant. Life is good, man. I used to always show my novels to my friend the poet Amy Gerstler first to get her feedback, but not until I thought they were polished and finished. Since I 'moved' to Paris, I haven't had her eyes and ears, so I haven't shown the recent ones to anybody before I send them off to my agent with fingers crossed. I never show my stuff to anyone before it's finished. I'm superstitious about that or something. Cool, I'll watch that video. Sounds super interesting. Everyone, here's Grant Maierhofer with a tip, and please listen up. Grant: 'the band the body just put out this video for their song 'to attempt openness' and their work is something i'm fucking obsessed with right now. something akin to sunn o))) in many ways, though more as if that aesthetic melded with crass and was forced out of amps and drums by only two individuals. i dunno. i think you'd enjoy this video, so i'll post it here. anybody else, please do check it out.' Take care, buddy. ** Bill, You're in Tokyo? Wow. Doing? Am I forgetting? ** Okay, we're caught up at least technically. Not sure if or when I'll see you p.s.-wise again before the official return on November 1st, but, if I don't, enjoy everything.

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*

p.s. Hey. Okay, now we're into the serious Halloween countdown final days. Visit your local spooky house before it's too late. Wherever I am right now, I know that's what I'll be doing among other things. Enjoy your last anticipation filled weekend, folks. You, especially, Misanthrope.

Coeur d'Alene Press: 'Authorities in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho said some teenagers out for a Halloween scare got a lot more fright than they bargained for. According to Kootenai County sheriff's detectives, the group had been at a Halloween party Friday night when they noticed a house under construction. According to the group's sole survivor, Kevin Bester, 16, they thought it would be scary to explore the unfinished building, so they went in.

'Bester told investigators that when they saw what looked like one or more bags hanging from the rafters of the basement, they shot some B-B guns and threw hunks of wood at it. Then they left and came back with a flashlight to discover it was the body of a man who had hanged himself.

'Bester told authorities that when they went back to the party, nobody believed them, so they got someone to go back to the house with them. When they arrived the owner, 65-year-old Norman Giddings, met them with a machete and told them to get down on the ground while he summoned authorities. When after a few minutes, the man had made no motion to phone the police, Bester said he and the other youths began taunting him and started to get to their feet. This enraged Giddings who suddenly began hacking off their legs with the machete.

'Bester managed to get away, but he said the others seemed too paralyzed with fear and shock to move. As he ran off, Bester said he heard Giddings yelling and cursing that all he had wanted to do was get them to leave but now he had 'f**kd' himself' and he shouldn't have 'gotten so drunk'.

'When the authorities arrived, they found Giddings asleep and snoring beside the severely wounded teenagers. Curt Baxter, 16, and Robert Pennington, 17, were pronounced dead at the scene due to blood loss. 15 year old Malcom Bridge survived, but an operation to reattach his legs was unsuccessful. Giddings is currently awaiting trial on second degree murder charges. The body found in the basement of the construction site remains unidentified.'






Yorkshire Post: 'An arachnophobia victim is calling for a ban on rubber spiders being displayed in shops for Halloween – claiming even toy versions could give him heart failure. John Stafford, 54, of Scarborough, says doctors have warned him that even joke store spiders could trigger a fatal collapse – and he has already had one brush with death this month.

'After seeing some plastic spiders in a shop window in the town he collapsed and had to be supported by his wife, who thought that he had died in her arms.

'Mr Stafford, who is so scared of spying a spider that he spends October 31 cowering in a sleeping sack in a closet of his basement, said: "When I tell shop owners about it they think it's funny, but it's not a laughing matter. I stop breathing and pass out, it's just terrifying. My doctor said that my heart is so badly bruised now that a bad attack could be fatal."

'Mr Stafford wants shopkeepers to be banned from putting spider displays in their windows. "It's just thoughtless – they don't realise the effect they can have on people," he said. His wife Maria, 44, added: "The other day we saw a window in Eastborough that had some spiders and I thought I'd nearly lost him. He just slumped and fell against me – I had to hit him with my keys to bring him round."'







Theme Parks Central: 'On May 11, 1984, eight teenage visitors were trapped and killed when the Haunted Castle at Six Flags Great Adventure attraction in Jackson Township, New Jersey was destroyed by fire.

'The purpose of the Haunted Castle walk-through dark ride was to entertain its customers by frightening them. Exterior decorations included plastic monsters, skulls and other features meant to create a frightening atmosphere. A facade of false turrets and towers lent the illusion of height to the one-story structure, completing the look of a forbidding medieval castle. After crossing a drawbridge over the surrounding moat, visitors entered the castle and felt their way along a 450-foot (140 m)-long convoluted path of dim corridors, occasionally being startled when employee actors dressed as Dracula, Frankenstein and other creatures jumped from hiding. Various theatrical props and exhibits were in view, including coffins, ghoulish mannequins, hanging spider webs and skeletons. Strobe lights and eerie sounds completed the scene.

'The fire started at 6:35 p.m. on a Friday evening. Fanned by outside air conditioners that continued to push air up through the floor vents, it spread rapidly due to the use of flammable building materials. One witness, whose group entered the attraction three to five minutes behind the victim group, later testified that when she reached a display called the Hunchback, she saw flames coming from around a bend beyond the display. She thought it was part of the show, but then smelled smoke and realized the flames were real. Her group started yelling "fire!" and ran back to the entrance, bumping into walls.

'Firefighters from 11 surrounding communities responded, and the fire was declared under control at 7:45 p.m. The park remained open during the fire, and closed at 8 p.m., two hours early. No one realized that lives had been lost until later that night, when firefighters searching one of the burnt-out trailers discovered the bodies, thought at first to be mannequins. At one point a seasonal supervisor was instructed to take a van to the costume warehouse (on the other side of the park) and retrieve as many bolts of white fabric as he could find. These were needed by responders as darkness fell (worklights were brought in to the scene) in order to have a bright background on which to lay out both the remains of the victims as well as damaged mannequins to differentiate the two.'







Michigan Daily News: 'Caleb Rebh, 14, of Sparta Township in Kent County died Saturday night at a Halloween-themed hayrides. Kathy Rebh, a teacher and counselor at Englishville High School in the Sparta school system, said she took her son over to the hayride attraction in Alpine Ridge on Saturday and spoke with the manager about a possible job. The manager told her that he had all the workers he needed that night and to check back on Sunday, she said.

'"I went back and told Caleb that, and he said, "Well, can I just stay and hang around?" He said, "I'll work for free. I don"t have to be paid," his mother said. "I mean, he wanted to do this." Caleb stayed and later telephoned her twice: to say he had been allowed to take part and to tell her that he wanted to be scarier to passers-by. "When the wagon went by, he didn"t know what to do, so he just turned and looked at it and said boo," she said.

'He started the evening by working at a post featuring a coffin, then switched with another worker who had been at a station with a skeleton hanging from a noose tied to a small tree, she said. Caleb spoke with another teen about replacing the skeleton with himself, Kathy Rebh said. During the hayride, about 40 people are driven past a number of Halloween fright exhibits.

'The tractor driver pulling the hayride wagon said he became concerned when Caleb failed to give a speech he normally made as the wagon passed. Still, he thought Caleb might be improvising or bored, and it wasn't until after the seventeenth wagon of the evening had passed the dead hanging youth that he thought to stop the ride long enough to check. Hayride employees and participants tried to resuscitate, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.'







Foreign Policy: 'Russia is opening a new front in its battle with the West over last month's fighting in neighboring Georgia: a move to ban the Western holiday of Halloween as a bad influence on the nation's youth. The State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, will consider a measure this month to guard students from what the government considers destructive Western influences.

'The proposal also sets its sights on teenage subcultures such as emo, a style of hardcore punk, and goth, which lawmakers accuse of "cultivating bisexuality." Both styles, the legislation implies, are social scourges on a par with the skinhead movement, and must be eliminated from the social landscape. In addition to banning Halloween, the measure would ban tattoos, body piercings, the public broadcast of music that could be defined as punk, goth, or emo. It would also ban the sale in Russia of clothing and make-up associated with any of these subcultures.

'Maxim Mishchenko, a Duma member, says he is pushing the bill to guard the "moral and spiritual upbringing" of the nation's youth and to promote traditional Russian culture and values rather than those imported from the West. "If the state won't interfere, they (Russia's youth) will behave like little monkeys, copying what doesn't fit with the soul of our culture," Mishchenko says.

'A spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church, which is believed to be asserting tremendous pressure on the government to band the holiday, said Halloween was "more than strange. When people turn to evil forces by way of a joke, when they praise them and flirt with them, it reflects on the fate of the person, because it teaches him that evil is acceptable," Vsevolod Chaplin told the Interfax news agency.'







The Melbourne Report: 'An Australian boy who liked to watch what the the police describe as 'films which portrayed live executions, killings, autopsies, and suicides' shot a 15-year-old boy nine times and killed him on Halloween night 2006.

'Matthew O'Grady, 16, told a court that a voice in his head told him to kill Christopher Brown. He said he convinced Brown to go with him to Halloween party with the younger boy dressed as a blood smeared girl cheerleader and O'Grady wearing a Freddie Kruger costume.

'After the party, O'Grady persuaded Brown to go into the bushes, claiming the two could steal marijuana plants there. On the way, he stopped at his house to collect a hunting knife, a rifle and silencer and to load the weapon. The two then went into the bush, leaving a 14-year-old girl who was in their company wait for them. After O'Grady hit Brown on the head with the butt of the gun, he removed the panties of the cheerleader costume, carved an impromptu vagina into the boy's perineum and raped him before shooting him in the head. Having abandoned the weapon, he returned to the girl and had sex with her in the bushes.

'O'Grady confessed the next morning. In court, the defence called doctors who claimed that O'Grady was in a state akin to sleep-walking during the murder. Another doctor said the teenager was having an epileptic fit at the time.'







Campus Times: 'On the night of Monday, Oct. 18, the life of Brandon Ketsdever, a 17-year-old boy, was taken when he was shot in the head after he and two friends stole Halloween decorations from the Buena Park home of Peter Solomona.

'According to Ketsdever's friend, Frank Nelson, Solomona came up to the car in which the boys were sitting and fired his .357 Magnum at Ketsdever's head from point-blank range, before being restrained by his wife and daughter.

'Solomona was not protecting himself or his family. He was not even attempting to prevent the theft of his car. He shot and killed a boy because the boy and his friends stole an orange trash bag with a jack-o'-lantern face on it.

'According to the Orange County District Attorney's Office, Solomona was informed by neighbors that the boys had stolen the decoration and he drove around the neighborhood searching for them. Neighbors describe Solomona as gentle and religious. He is not the type, they say, who would intentionally gun down someone over something so trivial.'







Minnesota Public Radio: 'Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan has publicly apologized to the parents of a University of Minnesota student whose Halloween 2002 death was first determined to be either an accident or suicide but is now considered a homicide. Police say a witness has provided some details about the death of Chris Jenkins. Officials believe Jenkins was thrown from a bridge into the Mississippi River but say little information can be disclosed while the investigation is pending.

'Chris Jenkins was last seen leaving a downtown Minneapolis bar on Halloween night four years ago wearing An American Indian Halloween costume. The bar, The Lone Tree, is owned and frequented by members of the city's Native American population. Jenkins' body was discovered four months later along the Mississippi River, still clad in his Halloween costume. A police lieutenant says the cause of death was listed as drowning. The manner of death was listed as unknown but was thought to be an accident or suicide and the case was closed.

'"Chris was a fool," is how Jenkins' former girlfriend Kathy Misser sees it. "He dresses in a culturally insensitive manner, then gets loaded and kicked out of a bar, then walks around a city where people of the culture he chose to mock live. I have little doubt he was murdered, but my guess it was by some pissed off Natives, who can hardly be blamed."'







Houston Chronicle: 'Timothy O'Bryan's name may have faded from popular memory, but 30 years ago this Sunday his death shocked the country and earned the culprit the nickname "The Man Who Killed Halloween." The 8-year-old Deer Park boy died Oct. 31, 1974, after eating trick-or-treat candy laced with cyanide. Within days, his father, Ronald Clark O'Bryan, stood accused of staging the crime as part of a life insurance scheme.

'The O'Bryan family had spent Halloween 1974 at a friend's home in Pasadena, where Ronald O'Bryan volunteered to escort the children on their candy-collecting rounds. He later told police that someone at a darkened home, who only opened the door a crack, had handed him five Pixy Stix — oversized plastic tubes filled with candy powder — for the children in his group.

'It was crucial to O'Bryan's plan, detectives said, that only his son eat the tainted treats. Back at the friend's house, investigators said, O'Bryan leaped over a coffee table to prevent his friend's 8-year-old son from eating one of the candies. After returning to their home in Deer Park, O'Bryan told Timothy he could choose a single piece of candy before bedtime. Prosecutors said he urged his son to try the Pixy Stix. The boy gulped down a mouthful of the powder, then went to bed after complaining that it tasted bitter. Minutes later, Timothy ran to the bathroom and began vomiting, police said. By the time he got to the hospital, he was dead.

'With his wife testifying for the prosecution, O'Bryan was convicted and sentenced to death. Dubbed the "Candy Man" by fellow prisoners, he was executed by lethal injection in 1984.'







Los Angeles Times: 'A 75-year-old dead man sat decomposing on his Marina del Rey balcony for days because neighbors thought the body was part of a Halloween display and didn’t call police.

'Mostafa Mahmoud Zayed had apparently been dead since Monday with a single gunshot wound to one eye. He was slumped over a chair on the third-floor balcony of his apartment on Bora Bora Way, said cameraman Austin Raishbrook, who owns RMG News and was on scene Thursday when authorities found the body.

'Neighbors on the 13900 block of Bora Bora Way told Raishbrook that they noticed the body Monday “but didn’t bother calling authorities because it looked like a Halloween dummy," he said.

'"The body was in plain view of the entire apartment complex [and] they all didn’t do anything,” Raishbrook said. “It’s very strange. It did look unreal, to be honest.”'
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*

p.s. Hey. I think I must have popped in here with a p.s. or more since I've been gone. If not, sorry. I guess I'm too distracted by the way Halloween is being celebrated wherever I am among no doubt other things. Anyway, I'll be back at the end of the week. In the meantime, here's more Halloween-appropriateness.

* borrowed from Taddle Creek
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costume by Ian Phillips

A is for All Hallows Eve, or Halloween. All Hallows, also known as All Saints’ Day, takes place on November 1st. It is a day when Catholics celebrate those who have been beatified. All Souls’ Day is the day after All Saints’. The church decreed it a day to pray for those poor souls in purgatory—spirits suspended between heaven and hell. In the Middle Ages, the days were known collectively as Hallowtide. On the eve of All Souls’, churches would ring bells to scare away the dead. Some churches rang bells all night long.

B is for Robert Burns, the Scottish poet. Burns wrote “Halloween” in 1785. “Some merry, friendly, countra-folks / Together did convene, / To burn their nits, an’ pou their stocks, / An’ haud their Halloween / Fu’ blythe that night.” The poem refers to the Celtic Halloween custom of fortune-telling with nuts and apple peelings. Emigrating Scots brought the custom to Canada. Other Halloween customs carried here by Scots and Irish: bonfires, begging for food door to door, playing pranks on those who would not furnish food.

C is for Caledonian Society. Founded in Canada, in 1855, by affluent Scottish-Canadians, the Caledonian Society held banquets across Canada on Halloween. “We are not divining the future, or burning nuts, or catching the ‘snap apple,’ but [we are] celebrating Scottishness,” a speaker told Caledonians in Montreal, in 1885. In Toronto, George Brown was active in the Caledonians. Halloween here was a night of feasts: besides the Caledonian Society, different regiments of the military held a Halloween dinner, as did colleges at the University of Toronto. A meat market ran this ad on October 29, 1903: “HALLOWE'EN POULTRY. We are having heavy enquiries already.”

D is for Dennison Manufacturing Company. “You would be surprised,” said a young lady in Bookseller and Stationer magazine, in 1924, “how many people give Hallowe’en parties the last two weeks of October.” The young lady worked at a Toronto store. She supervised the crêpe-paper department. Dennison Manufacturing, of Framingham, Massachusetts, was the country’s main maker of crêpe paper. Dennison had a Toronto office in the early nineteen-hundreds. It was located on Wellington Street West. They were the first to sell yellow, orange, and black crêpe paper. They sold crêpe paper printed with owls, bats, jack-o’-lanterns, black cats with arched backs. They published The Bogie Book, the Bible of Halloween party guides. Place cards, Spanish moss, blindfolds, costumes—The Bogie Book told how to make them all from Dennison crêpe paper. Crêpe paper is combustible. The parties were firetraps.

E is for Eaton’s. “Don’t Miss The Hallowe’en Parade,” read an Eaton’s ad in the Toronto Daily Star, in 1929. The Eaton’s Santa Claus Parade involved several floats and many paraders. The Hallowe’en Parade? “A big pompous general will lead Felix, Bluebeard—A gypsy, a Zulu, and other familiar folk in a march around Toyland.”

F is for Frankenstein. Billy Pratt was a British lad. In 1909, he was flunking out of King’s College London. He was studying Chinese customs and languages; he wanted to act. He travelled to Canada and wound his way to Toronto. The Canada Company office found him work in Hamilton. Pratt became a farmer, but after three months, he drifted westward, working as a ditch digger, a tree cutter. Soon he convinced a stock company in Kamloops, British Columbia, to let him join the troupe. He changed his name to Boris Karloff. Karloff was a surname of some of his relatives; Boris was a name he said he “plucked out of the cold Canadian air.” Karloff toured Alberta and Saskatchewan, then he headed to Hollywood. His role as the monster in Frankenstein made him a star.





H is for Dr. H. H. Holmes. Holmes built himself a hotel in 1893, in Chicago, that boasted, in the words of the crime writer Connie Fillipelli, “iron-plated rooms, secret passages, hidden chutes that ended in the basement directly above zinc-lined tanks, sealed rooms with gas jets, stairways that led nowhere . . . trapdoors, a dissecting table, surgeons’ tools.” The building was a blueprint for every carnival and amusement park haunted house to come. It’s believed Holmes murdered more than a hundred people there. Then he went on the lam, landing in Toronto. He buried more bodies in the basement of a house near Barrie, Ontario. Pinkerton detectives shadowed him. Again he fled. They nabbed him in Boston, tried him in Philadelphia. In 1896 he was hanged.

I is for Isabel Grace Mackenzie. She died in 1917 and was survived by her son, William Lyon Mackenzie King. Mackenzie King became the prime minister of Canada. He hung a portrait of Isabel in his study, and kept it lit night and day. He spoke to her through a Ouija board and a crystal ball. He contacted her during séances. On October 6, 1935, his dead mother communicated the following to him: “Long ago I dreamt that you would succeed Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Long ago I knew God meant you to be prime minister. Long ago I [more than] knew that God meant that you would serve His holy will. Good night.” King was buried beside his mother in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.





K is for kisses. “Ducking for apples is rather out of late,” said the Everywoman’s Column of the Toronto Daily Star, in 1913. The topic: suggestions for Halloween parties. What did the column recommend? A taffy pull. “For the taffy pull, pull the taffy from buttered plates and save mother’s busy hands next day.” A taffy pull fulfilled two functions: it provided entertainment, and it provided eats. For hosts who didn’t have time to cook candy, stores sold it. At Halloween, a confectioner called Hunt’s sold a “Taffy Sucker, Face on Stand” for a nickel. In 1925, Eaton’s advertised a variety of taffies for Halloween: “peanut crisp, cocoanut and peanut, peanut and butterscotch.” During the Depression, the molasses kiss grew in popularity. No one seems to know why. Maybe molasses was cheaper than the ingredients for taffy? “Just In Time For Hallowe’en Parties,” read an ad from Loblaw’s, in 1933, “HALLOWEEN KISSES.” Fifteen cents bought a one-pound bag.





M is for David Manners, who played the handsome John Harker in Dracula. Manners was born in Halifax. His real name: Rauff de Ryther Daun Acklom. He studied forestry at the University of Toronto, and acted at Hart House Theatre. He hightailed it to Hollywood, where James Whale spotted him at a party. Whale cast him in his directorial debut, Journey’s End. Manners went on to work with directors Frank Capra and George Cukor. Tod Browning cast him in Dracula. In The Mummy, Manners played opposite Boris Karloff. In The Black Cat he starred with both Bela Lugosi and Karloff. He eventually abandoned the movies. Some suggest he quit, in part, because his studio suggested he marry a woman (Manners was gay). Retiring from acting, he retreated to the California desert. He wrote novels, and died in 1998. Horror movies, he once said, were his “only claim to movie fame.”

N is for noise. Making noise was at the heart of Halloween in its early days. Revellers tossed rocks and mud at windows and doors. They crafted noisemakers from tin cans, wooden spools, roofing tiles. A mid-century Halloween package produced for Canadian schoolteachers included instructions for making a Halloween megaphone. As early as 1900, Halloween noisemakers were being produced in Germany and exported to the United States. Styles for sale included horns, rattles, cranks, snappers, and clappers. “Weird Spirits a-gamboling,” said a 1913 ad for Mason and Risch Limited, of Toronto. “Witch Caps—Pumpkin Heads—Dominoes—Flowing Robes—Holed-Out Eyes. Strange phantasies they are! Yet, who and WHAT are they? Listen, then, they are the phantom witcheries of Hallowe’en!” The ad was peddling the Victor Victrola. “To sit snugly around the open fire, revelling in all the mystic rhythms of this bewitching fairyland of Hallowe’en, conjured up so wonderfully by the little Victrola, will make the evening’s frolics complete!” Which mystic rhythms did the store recommend? “The Dance o’ the Fairies,” “Peer Gynt,” and “Will-of-the-Wisp.”

P is for Philip Morris. In the nineteen-fifties he toured across Canada performing in a ghost show—a magic show with supernatural and horrific effects. His stage name: Dr. Evil. To garner publicity, he’d arrive early in a town and pull stunts. Drive a car blindfolded. Raffle off a “dead body.” The dead body was a frozen chicken. The R.C.M.P. once arrested him for dressing as a gorilla in public. Years later he invented an artificial spiderweb made of cloth. He made a killing.

Q is for Kew Beach. In 1945, Halloween hooligans burnt bonfires on Queen Street East. To feed the fire, they tore down fences and gates. Police were called. When they rode up on horses, they were pelted with stones and bricks. Hooligans blocked fire trucks with piles of concrete blocks. Thirteen troublemakers were taken in. A mob of seven thousand marched on the Main Street police station, hell-bent on springing the hooligans. Police cruisers rushed to the scene with tear gas. Water cannons dispersed the rioters. Five firemen were injured, as were a couple of cops.

R is for rides. Leon Cassidy needed a “dark ride.” In 1928, Cassidy was the co-owner of a small amusement park in New Jersey. Lots of amusement parks had an “old mill” ride: boats floated riders down canals decorated with scary scenery. Cassidy couldn’t afford to build a boat ride. So he put dodgem cars on a twisted track in a darkened pavilion. The Pretzel, he called it. It was a sensation. He started the Pretzel Amusement Ride Company to provide Pretzel rides to amusement parks across the continent. In 1930, he came to Canada. He put down a floor base at the Canadian National Exhibition. He laid tracks on the base, then covered them in a black tent, covered by another tent. It was probably the first cartable dark ride on a midway anywhere.

S is for slogans. “Trick or treat!” It’s what children scream on Halloween. But “trick or treat” didn’t become the customary catchphrase in Toronto until sometime around the Second World War. Before then, kids yelled, “Shell out!” “HALLOWE'EN” said an ad for a grocery store chain, in 1929, “with its joyous merriment. . . . SHELLIN' OUT to the district cut-ups, guessing who the strange figure is who knocks on your door.” From a Loblaw’s ad during the Depression: “When You Hear the Ultimatum! SHELL OUT. Be Ready with LOBLAW'S HALLOWE'EN KISSES.”

T is for Bill Tracy, a sculptor and engineer from New Jersey. In the nineteen-fifties, he revolutionized carnival dark rides by adding supernatural back-glows, glow-in-the dark stunts, trompe l’oeil to the decor. He created themed rides like the western ghost town and the haunted pirate ship. Sadly, he never invented safety features, like fire escapes. Wiring was makeshift. His rides tended to go up in flames. Very few still stand. The dark ride at Toronto’s Centreville Amusement Park—the Haunted Barrel Works—is decorated in a distinctly Tracy mode. And it is safe.

U is for University of Toronto. According to the historian Keith Walden, spontaneous Halloween celebrations erupted on campus in 1884. Students marched into the downtown core, singing, shattering lampposts, egging Eaton’s. Police dispersed them. Torontonians complained. The parade became an annual event. In 1899 students barged into the peanut gallery at Massey Hall, disrupting the evening’s performance. Veterinary students dangled dead horse parts over the balcony. Medical students banged human arm and leg bones. Some students slit open a political effigy, showering the audience below with chaff, hay, and excelsior. Hector Charlesworth, the future editor of Saturday Night, was sitting in the pit. His suit was ruined.





W is for whoopee cushion. In the early twentieth century, an American named S. S. Adams invented a plethora of classic pranks: dribble glasses, joy buzzers, sneezing powder. In 1930, a Canadian “rubber concern” approached him with a new novelty—a bladder that made a farting sound when someone sat on it. The rubber concern? The Jem Rubber Company, headquartered in Toronto, on Dundas Street West. It produced parts for printing companies. Adams turned down the fart cushion, so Jem manufactured it on its own. It was green, with a wooden nozzle. Stamped on the face was a picture of a Scottish lad. He sported spurs and a sporran, and carried a rifle. Wouldn’t bagpipes have been the obvious visual pun? The whoopee cushion was a sensation, even during the Depression. Adams ended up coming out with a copy of the Canadian cushion—the razzberry cushion, he called it.

X is for XEPN, a Mexican border-blaster radio station near the Rio Grande. In the late nineteen-twenties and early thirties, Bob Nelson and his brother Larry hosted an astrology show on the station. Listeners sent in a dollar and, in return, the Nelsons sent them a mimeographed horoscope. The Nelsons also operated Nelson Enterprises, of Columbus, Ohio, which supplied mediums and mentalists with fake fortune-telling equipment—mind-reading codes, mechanical crystal balls, two-way radios that could be concealed under capes or in turbans. “Be it distinctly understood,” said their 1931 mail-order catalogue, “that all effects described in this catalogue are accomplished by normal means, and are entirely divorced from any supernatural or supernormal powers.”

Y is for yellow. “Green and red have come [to] be the Christmas colors,” said a newspaper article from 1925, “just as black and yellow tell us of Hallowe’en.” An article in Bookseller and Stationer, from 1925, advised those celebrating Halloween to obtain “yellow and black crêpe paper for decorative purposes.” In 1927, an ad for crêpe paper in that same magazine recommended “Orange and Black for Hallowe’en.” In coming years, orange and black would come to be considered the Halloween palette par excellence. What changed? Why did yellow fade out and orange fill in?
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p.s. Hey. The great, great writer Derek McCormack edges us ever closer to Halloween Day itself in his always sublime fashion. Enjoy, enjoy.

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milkingforcetie, 20
isnt it realy fun to play with vergin...like iam.... m so amuture...my ass want to give pleasure to so minny ppl......it never say no whn i lie on bed once.....its realy osome........pls prefer it ......i always be with u.........





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wheelchairteenboy, 19
Hi. If I can string together a coherent sentence I'm a disabled boy seeing who's around. Chances are I'll do what you're into.





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MakeaMess, 24
This slave is available for ownership. My Master instructed me it to place this notice that he is giving me it away to a new Master. Master will tell you where to pick me it up.

The reason I am giving him away is that I am retiring from slave ownership because my wife does not understand my ownership of this property.

Slave was castrated on August 28, 2013.
Had some men over to help destroy him on September 14, 2013.
Was going to sn*ff him on September 21, 2013 but someone finally took him.





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PAIN_DESTROYS_PAIN, 19
kik me mindlessbrangard hxbshjsjzndhxbbshdbd jbshdbchhdjdjhxjxjxjfjjdjx jcjkdnsujsjdnxjjehdbvvjdj vxjkskndjxjndxnjjdjcngddj tghhhhgggggggggid fhhsggfhggfg





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DoctorJamesAlexander, 23
Hello I am the nurse slave of Dr James Alexander.

Dr Alexander is taking appointments for sessions in the clinic. Dr Alexander will give you the once over physical check and then explore different parts of your body.

Medical services on offer include

Full anal investigation
Anal stretching
Anal cleansing and enema
Erectile dysfunction tests
Skin sensitivity tests
Muscle strength tests using bondage

You must be willing to submit to the will of Dr Alexander. Cum talk to the doctor. If there is something that you would really like to try, the Doctor will see you now.






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Coughcough, 21
Mechaphile guy in the Nottingham area uk with fetish for diesel exhaust smoke, looking for truck drivers, pedal pumpers, farmers, bikers, construction/operators of heavy equipment, white van men, or even owners of an old banger diesel motor ect to SMOKE ME OUT!

Caution: after sex please dont fall in sex with me.





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nogun, 20
Hi, my name is gun. Since i lost my parent i found an Asian DOM who made me realized that am destined to be a slave so he decide to train me and i serve him to his taste since i was 14yrs old but when i was 19yrs old the master was dead.





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littleboyjakey, 21
Hi, my names Jake. I'm a 21 year old guy who likes roleplaying as a 4-6 year old little boy. I like using sippy cups and wearing clothes appropriate to my little boy persona. I'm looking for someone my age to chloro me and auction/sell me to pedophiles and make some money on me. It doesn't have to be real chloro or money or pedophiles.





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Fail_at_everything, 22
object is available for 24/7 no rights sadistic captive ownership by an owner that enjoys inflicting real long term pain that can keep it from thinking of anything else except suffering. A sadist or group that can mold/create the object using fear and behavioural modification that includes brandings, tattoos, cuts, welts, burns and bruises by the application of slow, delibrate and constant torture and isolation.

object has come to realize that it is not human.

it has been out of captivity far too long from previous owners and in denial that it can survive on the outside. No family, friends or obligations other than day to day survival. it's previous denial of it's destiny has recently left it with current bad habits and in dire need.

it humbly begs that any future owners that once acquired, wherever in this world, that it never be allowed back into the outside where it would be of danger to itself. Freely consent to being sold, given to next owner or whatever destiny owner feels is best for the object.

Viewers of object's profile are requested and encouraged to pass on any info needed to anyone who is interesting in owning a 24/7 suffering serving caged object. Object should never know the identity of it's future owners.





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Giveittome4, 20
Hey, i'm 20 and straight, drywall finisher that works about 60 hours a week, so not interested in sex. But im very interested in other things: I want a master that its available to do anything that i want, and most important, accept my experiments with hypnosis and others things, no matter how, no matter what.

Why do i bother fucking writing that when 95% of you don't care? I got about 5 interesting mails from nice goodlooking guys, and the rest were fat ugly old disgusting pricks... are you retarded????








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Fuckmeup, 21
I am... Who really knows who we are. I know so many people are so confused about that person in the mirror staring back. We do what we need and sometimes what we want. Rarely, either, is chosen with morals. So anyways... I wanna see how low I can go.

I like

Chems
Sleaze
Raw
Very violent (THIS IS SOMETHING THAT I WANT MORE THEN ANYTHING AND WILL WORK VERY HARD FOR IT.)
Snuffed (TURNS ME ON SO FUCKING MUCH.)

I don't like

Chatting
Friendliness
Being alive

While I enjoy the various compliments and requests, I'm specifically looking for people more-or-less under the age of 30. I apologize to older community; while I'm sure experience is very important, age is a something I'm not willing to compromise on.






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holeforwrecking, 25
Hey hot shots. First of all none of this is true unless I parTy. I'm a 25 year old college student at URI. Have my own place so we can party when evs. Wreck my hole! Make it stay open when I bend over in the gym in a marked up jockstrap that advertises the fact that I can't get enough hole wrecking, make all the guys gay or straight in the gym, public showers, open fitting rooms etc, stop, stare and talk about my gaping hole. I'm into just about anyone except bears -_- #gross. I'm a relaxed, chill pig here. Wreck my hole!







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Bearfan, 18
I'm in hs at a boarding school here in Durham.
18yo as of aug 26 so I cant go live with someone
Have been looking for the right Bear for me.
There has to be a BEAR for me.
Available in saturdays all day, sundays til 8, and fridays after 4.







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queertheory, 22
-perpetual student-wanna be academic-theory head-queer-ftm-proud slut-fem-politico/queer politico-submissive/bottom-shy-likes it rough for someone who knows what they want sexually-direction-queerness (as in working against heteronormativity)-older men-communication-learning-





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fuckmymalecunt, 22
demonic goth with no experience at all on these things, not even ever been in the gay scene or put a foot on a gym.

i tend to be feminine with my tone of voice, gesture etc. but all in all that does not reach irritating/ unlikeable levels.

i would like being gagged. the less i can speak, the better it is.
i enjoy being unable to see too.
death is my lifelong friend.
i'm a cutter, yes a cutter.

NO FISTING, no way, no no. My arse is too tight for that.
NO DIRTY, you want to piss, then enjoy your visit to the toilet mate.





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no_more_me, 24
I want to sleep on your side and do your shopping and carry your bags and say I like to be with you but they still make me do silly you. And I want to play hide and seek and give you my clothes and say I like your shoes and sit on the steps while you take your bath and massage your neck and kiss your feet and will keep you hand and go out to dinner without me upset when you eat on my plate and find you at Rudy's and talk to you about the day and type your letters and carry your things and you laugh at your paranoia and give you tapes you do not listen not and watch great movies and watch movies and zero complain about the radio and take pictures of you when you sleep and get up to go get you coffee and bagels and pastries and go to Florent drink coffee at midnight and let you steal my cigarettes and never be damned to find a match and talk about the program I saw on TV the night before and take you to the eye clinic and do not laugh at your jokes and you might want to you in the morning but let you sleep and kiss your back and stroke your ass and tell you how I love your hair, your eyes, your lips, your neck your breasts your ass your

and sitting on the steps smoking till your neighbor comes and smoking sitting on the steps until you get home and worry when you're late and amaze me when you're early and give you sunflowers go to the party and to dance to become blue and find me sorry when I'm in the wrong and happy when you forgive me and look at your photos and wish you have always known and hear your voice in my ear and feel your skin against my skin and be afraid of your anger when you find yourself with an eye all red and the other blue hair well on the left and your face takes an oriental air and tell you that you are beautiful and hold you against me when you are anxious and hug you when you're hurting and you want nothing to smell you and hurt you when I touch you and whimper when I'm by your side and moan when I 'm not and bavoter on your breasts and you cover at night and get cold when you pull the blanket and hot when you do not do it and I soften and melt when you smile when you laugh and not understand why you think I reject you when I'm not rejecting you and wonder how you can think that it might one day come and ask me who you are but accept you anyway and tell you about the boy angel tree and both the enchanted forest who crossed the ocean because that he loved you and write poems, and you wonder why you do not believe me and experience a profound feeling that I can not find words to express it and get the idea to buy you a kitten and j ' 'd be jealous because you take good care of him more than me and keep you in bed when you gotta go and cry like a baby when you finally do and get rid of the roaches and buy you gifts you do not want and I pack as usual and ask you to marry for you to tell me not as usual and that despite everything because I start if you think I do not wish for good is exactly what I want from my first request and roam the city by finding that it's empty without you and want what you want and tell me I 'm lost but knowing with you I am safe and you tell what I worst and give you what I've got better because you do not deserve less and answer your questions when I 'd rather not and tell you the truth when I really do not want and try to be honest because I know you like and tell me it's all over but still hold before you get me out of your life ten short minutes and forget who I am and get closer to you because it is beautiful to get to know you and it deserves an effort and speak to you in a bad German and Hebrew is even worse and make love with you at three in the morning and no matter no matter no matter how but communicate some / irresistible invincible immortal unconditional full real emotional spiritual multi- multi - all true everlasting love I have for you.


Lack of Sarah Kane. (excerpt )






_____________________

Buryme, 19
I'm a outrageous teen slave in London, small dick, starting to get a belly, craves to be a naked thing to point and laugh at. Looking for a master now no games. I am quite loud at times but I can be really quiet. Wanna know if I'm into it, unless your gonna kill me, the answer is Yes.





_______________________

JamesBONDage, 24
I'm inexistent,but in the eyes of those who understand, I exist.






*

p.s. Hey. Here's your third and last brand new vacation post and a brief respite from the blog's Halloween smothering act, or maybe not? Please take advantage of your array of unavailable slaves today, thank you. I fly back to Paris this afternoon, btw, and I'll see you "live" with p.s. and blog newness on Friday.

-----



I’ve tried many times to have a truly great Halloween night. One year my friend’s band was set to play and I made films for their live performance. I had my laptop set on stage linked to a projector at the end of the venue. 15mins before we were set to come on I turned on the smoke machine. We came on wearing our masks and in costume. I hit play and you couldn’t see the films through the mist of smoke. It was like headlights in the fog. I had just smoked the place out too much. It was all very Spinal Tap. After 5mins I gave up and walked off stage. I spent the rest of night being consoled and explaining what went wrong to friends and family who were in attendance

.

Last year I was meant to see Om, Shellac, Le Savy Fav, Lightning Bolt and Wooden Ships play at a special Halloween night concert. I got to the door and my name should have been on the guest list. It wasn’t. The event was long since sold out. I rang the guy who was meant to have my name on the list - his voicemail says he’s not in London, he’s flown to LA. He left his US cell number so I bought an international call card and spent the next hour calling him trying to get him to pull some strings and get me inside. He couldn’t get through to anyone. Eventually I gave up and walked home.

This year we're having a Halloween party. My friend lives in a big old house. We're filling the place with candles, jack o' lanterns, plastic skulls, smoke and as many cheap decorations as we can. I’ve got my costume my mp3 player is loaded with a hour party mix. It’s gonna be awesome.

It’s a real privilege to be able to curate this.

Below is pretty much everything I love about Halloween: pumpkins, noise, metal, horror movies, smoke machines, the woods, old houses, creepiness, nightmares, scary stories, crappy costumes and friends getting together and partying.

Hope you readers have a great Halloween - third time's a charm.









Note: Click the Arrow Icon on the sidebar to download

Go out into the streets at night or walk into the woods and listen to this:


















Three new specially made films



















1. Fuck you Captain Howdy!

More than any other film The Exorcist always freaked me the fuck out. The whole movie just has this tone and vibe which really gets under my skin and into my head. But it wasn’t the scenes of the possession, it was little things that I found to be so weird and unsettling.

The whole opening in Iraq, that digger with the weird eye, the dog fight. That horrible muffled sound they keep hearing in the house that sounds like it's coming from the attic. The party where Burke gets drunk. Regan pissing herself and the tests she has in the hospital. Ugghhhh! It all just creeps me out.

Even the magazine Regan is seen reading in bed has some eerie looking dude in big sunglasses on the front. I guess it’s all the signs of a great horror movie a film that really goes to work on you. But more than anything the face of Captain Howdy scares me.

I’ve decided to never watch it again but if you choose to look out for this stuff:


As fans of the film know, The Exorcist is littered with many subliminal images.

NOTE: The DVD time is relevant to The Version you’ve Never Seen edition.





DVD TIME

0:31:29

Scene description:

Regan’s medical examination. Her eyes open wide as she lays on the bed and this image of Captain Howdy flashes up on the screen for three frames.





DVD TIME

0:45:01

Scene description:

Father Karras’ dream sequence is where the first subliminal appeared in the 1973 original. Also look for many other great images that aid the story including the stopped clock from Iraq and the running dog, representing the dog fight Father Merrin sees when he goes to the Pazuzu statue.





DVD TIME

0:56:03

Scene description:

To the right of screen next to Chris’ face in the kitchen. The lights flicker on and Howdy can be seen.





DVD TIME

0:56:13

Scene description:

Chris is about to open the door to Regan’s bedroom. The face of the Pazuzu statue can be seen against the black just before she opens it. It is very quick and bright, so don’t blink or you’ll miss it!





DVD TIME

1:00:05

Scene description:

This cross-fade subliminal was very cleverly added for The Version you’ve Never Seen. When Regan is hypnotized and gets angry, an angry face of Captain Howdy blends in with hers on a close-up.





DVD TIME

1:43:13

Scene description:

Regan is being exorcised. The lights are flickering on and off, and Regan is flinging her head from side to side. At one point, when the lights go down and Regan is turning her head to face us, it is Captain Howdy.





DVD TIME




Note: The sound on this video is out of snyc. Vimeo has an audio synch bug at the moment. I've tried for 3 days to get them to fix the problem but nothing has worked. I spent a long time making this so I'm gonna share it bad sound n' all.






Polaroid Scrapbook















































*

p.s. Hey. I thought, since we're in rerun mode, I would rerun long lost d.l. Lux's Halloween extravaganza from a few years back. It still works wonderfully, I think. Happy Halloween! And I will be back to catch up with you and feed you new posts and etc., etc. starting tomorrow. See you then!

This is my first-full length collection of poetry. I am grateful to have been so enthusiastically accepted by my publisher Sibling Rivalry Press. Please check out more of the titles they publish, if you find the time, at http://siblingrivalrypress.com/. And I am equally grateful to Dennis for taking the time to post all of this stuff I pulled together for a blog post about my book. I got my MFA from the New School back in 1999 and then I took years to get my shit together, getting published in journals here and there during that time. As time went by, I started to think that I would never get a full-length collection of my work published, but here I am. The poems in the book were written anywhere in the past twelve or thirteen years of my life. I took a few poems from each year and put them together in this collection. That's it. The poems are me and my obsessions, what I have seen in everyday life and how I interpreted the world around me. My purpose is to affect my readers anyway possible, whether I blow the top of their heads off, make them uncomfortable, or cause some sort of emotional reaction to take place. And if you're wondering what "devil piss" is, you'll have to read the title poem in the book. Enjoy.



Bio:

ROBERT SIEK is a poet who lives in Brooklyn and works as a production editor at a large publishing house in Manhattan. His poems have appeared in journals such as The Columbia Poetry Review, Lodestar Quarterly, Court Green, Mary, Assaracus, and Chelsea Station. The New School published his chapbook Clubbed Kid, and his short story “Sixteen” appeared in Userlands: New Fiction Writers from the Blogging Underground. Purpose and Devil Piss is his first full-length collection of poetry, released by Sibling Rivalry Press on October 8, 2013.



Praise for Purpose and Devil Piss

“Robert Siek’s poems have this rich, layered dailiness about them that seems to both gobble up and perfectly attenuate everything he touches on, and he knows just how and where and what and who to touch. I’ve been his work’s dedicated reader and fan for ages, and, even so, the beauty, feeling, and tech on display in Purpose and Devil Piss has knocked me for a loop.”
—Dennis Cooper

“I applaud Robert Siek’s candor, his eschewal of embellishment, his hardscrabble rhythms, his documentary fidelity to everyday life’s seamy texture. Whether oriented toward erotic bliss or toward bummed-out isolation, he writes for survival’s sake. He makes poetry seem important again; unacknowledged legislator, he reinvents verse’s divine mandate. I feel at home in Siek’s universe, especially when his lines put out the welcome mat for sordid customers.”
—Wayne Koestenbaum

“If you enjoy poems that are fresh, fun, and fuckin’ fabulous, urine luck! Robert Siek’s Purpose and Devil Piss will leave you feeling just a little bit dirty and totally purified with his fearless word flow.”

—Emanuel Xavier



Here is a sneak peek of the book in ten images:

































Some poems from the book:

Good Morning America

I overhear the U.S. secretary of defense
discuss weapons in Iraq with a TV news journalist,
mumbling comments about soldiers stationed in Baghdad,
sounding like a heavy breather hiding in my wardrobe,
pinching his nipples and licking the doorknob
of the chain-locked door outside of my bathroom,
leading to the house connected to my apartment,
where televised voices mix with laughter,
soundtrack to a short film shot by a student,
montage of a beaten woman sitting in a hallway.
It’s the landlord’s wife on the other side,
chatting loud and knotting telephone wires.
Scenes haunt me in front of the vanity,
while I trim my pubes over a trash can.
I think about running late for work and wonder
if she’s on the phone or drunk at nine in the morning,
like five months previous, when she drove up the highway,
drinking a bottle of Southern Comfort.
She hit a curb in Allendale and told me all about it
while eating a peach and smoking a cigarette,
sharing that she’s a recently relapsed alcoholic.
I told her I had been clean for three years. It seemed
necessary, like flushing the toilet after moving your bowels.
I place my scissors on the sink and listen to footsteps
banging up the next-door staircase. My landlord’s voice
masks Good Morning America. The last news I catch
concerns Mr. Rogers, the longtime host of a children’s program.
And I imagine the landlord’s wife hanging up the telephone
because her husband is yelling like she’s an untrained dog
peeing on the sofa. She gags on her words
like choking on water, when people say
that they drank wrong or it went down the wrong pipe.
It reminds me of tape recordings played backward.
I walk into my living room and turn on the television.
A news report flashes a Middle Eastern woman screaming;
a tank rolls by in the background. I question if war is needed,
sit on my couch naked, and notice the volume is high enough
to fill my head with weather reports, who won some basketball game.
I forget the peach-eating drunk defending the right to drive bombed.
The anchorman announces that it’s a sad day in the neighborhood
because Mr. Rogers has died, and I picture his puppets
in the Land of Make Believe, watching his program as a child
on channel 13. He always smiled while changing his shoes.



All the Life Forms

Locker doors missing, some hanging by one hinge,
roid rage perhaps, zits on a back, too strong for his own good,
a monster at the gym pulled hard like a Frankenstein hug,
schoolchildren squeezed until spines crack and blood vessels
turn connect the dots on faces; it’s this underground scene,
more mainstream but in the dark for gym-joining first-timers.
And oh the pants dropped, somewhat whipped down
with the thrust of a stripper, the sit back, here it comes,
the quick removal of Velcro-held-on pants, like flapping
a sheet out of its folded tidy, Chinese yo-yos crisscrossing
in swarms. A stranger’s hairy ass exposed; maybe gone
commando, or underwear were taken in his power swipe,
the fastest clothes changer on the East Coast. My eyes
find the tissue box by the mirror and built-in blow dryer.
I’m avoiding long stares at the bare bodies sprinkled in corners,
decorations dressing up the benches and fine-wood lockers,
occasional white towels worn wrap-around on big-thighed boys,
wooly mammoth trunks, these muscles shaped, built from earth,
colors vary, like ground levels at a dig—we found another artifact,
a pair of prehistoric mammal femurs, I’d like to pound the dirt
with them: all fours and shit, just look at the differences
in hair patterns, genetics. It’s easy to dwell on bare feet
traveling this carpet, over wet spots where others dripped
exiting the shower stalls, another big bang is useless—
multiple life forms breed right here, in their flesh
or under the scene, some secret world
more of them should discuss, boneheaded gods,
all naked or half-dressed taking too long.
They’re alive all right, like the good doctor said.
I’m an amateur at this, holding my tweezers,
my sifting pan. Who tore the door off this locker?
I plan on using the one next to it to hang my coat
and sweater. I’m already dressed for the gym,
the quicker to get out of here. I avoid folding.
It’s troubling to decide if I’m disgusted or horny.
I blow my nose before leaving—all human
and timeworn—Chinese yo-yos shake in my head.



You can buy Purpose and Devil Piss on the Sibling Rivalry Press website or on Amazon.


Visit Robert's blog at http://hideandsiek.blogspot.com/.




*

p.s. Hey. Today the blog gets restarted in its usual form with this celebration and post-shaped announcement of poet supreme and longtime d.l. Robert Siek's new book of poetry. It's a doozy, and please spend your day acquainting yourself with its illustrated basics then talk to Mr. Siek re: your initial impressions and click the 'buy' link if you can and will. Thanks! And thanks, Robert, for letting us participate in the heralding. In general, Halloween is over, and the blog and I are officially back into our routine of daily newness and correspondence. Good to see you. The US trip was truly spectacular in every respect, and I'll be sharing details as the occasion suits and as your stated interest warrants. And, with that, I'll catch up. ** October 25 ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. The world would be a far more brilliant and funny, etc. place if Mr. Skelley spilled more of his genius's beans, that's for sure. ** David Ehrenstein, Morning, sir. Thanks for the VK link. His place looks nothing like I would have imagined if I had imagined it. ** Etc etc etc, Hey. Welcome to here, and thank you a lot for the kind words. Please consider this place and its commenting arena one of your homes away from home, if you like. Yeah, the heady days of Grove Press when it was its full, original self were massively impactful, and being able to do books there was huge for the likes of writers like me. There's still some pretty edgy new fiction being supported and published, and maybe more as of the last couple of years than for a long time, but it's scattered over a number of indie publishing ventures that are open and adventurous but not as concentrated on that particular kind of danger as, say, Grove was in its time, and they're harder to hear about and find initially because of that. I can recommend some books if you want. I hope to get LHotB back up and running again soon. I just need to find the time to support it adequately. Is there anywhere I could read your work? That would be great. Take care and, like I said, please come back anytime. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben! Cool re: the photos of YnY's DLF presence. I'll go peruse a bit later. Everyone, Yuck n Yum made its presence known at the Dundee Literary Festival while I was away, and guaranteed fun behind-the-scenes evidence is here. ** S., Hi, buddy. What little of LA that I got to see was sweet. And the haunted houses had moments of genius, especially 'Big Worm's Sherwood Scare', which I propped back in the LA spooky house round-up post, and ditto on 'Backwoods Maze'. Your art is happening. That's not news, man, or is it? How was Halloween itself? ** Bill, Hey! Because my brain seems to have some weird, selective kind focus/ memory thing going on. Enjoy being home for a bit. How/what was your Halloween like? ** Les mots dans le nom, Hi! I guess it was longish traveling. It felt short to us just like successful, jam-packed traveling always does, I guess. We did do some great Halloween stuff, but ended up being being more focused on nature and semi-rugged scenic-ness, I suppose. ** Torn porter, Hi, man. Nice to see you. So, was Halloween week the 7 most exciting days in a row that you expected? What's the link to your Kickstarter thing? That's cool, as is the 6 month England residency. Things are quite good with you, yes? ** October 26 ** Misanthrope, Hi, G! So, as of the most recent comment of yours, it sounds like things with your mom are a relative huge relief, no? I am of course very, very relieved to hear that, and I hope the trouble in her side is due to minor stuff. Little Show is stuck down south after all? Sucks. Well, it doesn't seen like anything to do with his mom can be considered permanent or ever semi-permanent. ** David Ehrenstein, Thanks, D! Lou Reed, Jesus, that was a real blow. What a major, major artist. And so sad about Doug Ireland. I didn't realize he was ill. Another big loss. ** Delilah Hannu, Hey! Oh, you're Dovey! Hi, Dovey! I know, I know. Halloween always seemed to offer an occasion when Antonio's incredible genius would erupt in the most amazing ways. I hope you're doing really well. It's so nice to see you! Lots of love from me and from here to you! ** S., Hi. 'To the Boy I Love' seems to be gone. I missed it. Damn. ** Heliotrope, Mark! I know, RIP: Lou Reed, ugh. He was huge, is huge. I didn't know that story about you and 'Sister Ray', wow. How are you? I was in and out of LA so quickly that I didn't end up getting to see anybody, just things I needed to see for reasons of ongoing projects and re: scratching my Halloween itch. Sucks. Tons of love to you, my man. ** _Black_Acrylic, Great, great to hear about the progress on your Yourtube channel project! What's the latest? Are you fully into the planning and getting-it-done phase now? ** October 28 ** David Ehrenstein, I saw one of those in a haunted house I visited on my trip, weirdly enough. Beautiful remembrance of Doug Ireland. Everyone, Mr. Ehrenstein remembers the noble and much missed Doug Ireland on his Fablog, and I recommend you go read it. Here. ** Steevee, Hi, Steve! Very cool initial report about your new doctor. ** Misanthrope, I jumped the gun and responded to this comment early and back just a few lines. Very, very good news, man. ** October 29 ** David Ehrenstein, Yes. ** Rewritedept, Hi, Chris! No doubt re: Fucked Up's greatness. Are you sure that was me getting a shout out? There's some mayor or sheriff or something with my name in Florida that people sometimes think is me or something. Cool about the edits, but, if you have them, send them asap, okay? Great to see you! ** Sypha, Hi, James. All is very well, thanks. And with you? ** MANCY, Hi! I am and was and still am good albeit with a jet lag overlay of as-yet unknown strength. The Mexican food was a boon, and most of the Halloween-ness filled and even upended the bill. How was your big H? ** Steevee, How was that Jackass thing? I'm very suspicious of it for some reason, although I do like the Jackass films and imprint pretty well. ** S., Another stack (?) that I seem to have missed out on. Jeez. ** October 30 ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. Aw, how lovely: your slave paeans. Nailed and nailed. Thank you so much! ** David Ehrenstein, Indeed, right? Interesting looking piece re: '12 Years ... '. I'll have a read in a bit. Everyone, Mr. Ehrenstein has written what looks to be a very, very interesting think-piece on and around and behind Steve McQueen's much ballyhooed new film '12 Years A Slave' on Fandor, and you should give it your attention, I think. ** Bill, They were kind of enigmatic last month, yeah. Weirdly, or maybe not so weirdly, I also watched 'Now You See Me' on my international flight. Yeah, it passed the time, and the magic trick thing is always something I'm easy with. Next time you're flying, I recommend that you do not choose the movie selection entitled 'Jack the Giant Slayer' however. Stinker. ** DOVEY, Hi, Dovey! Oh, that's so amazing! Thank you so, so much! Incredible! Everyone, DOVEY has incredibly generously unearthed and shared some unseen art by her son -- the very, very, very great and incredibly missed genius artist and d.l. Antonio. I so highly recommend that you go take this amazing opportunity and have a long look. Here's DOVEY to introduce and explain: 'In honor of Antonio Urdiales for Halloween and day of the dead a few pieces of his unseen art work I have stored away. btw great blog about the slave boys for some reason I know Antonio would have given a loving comment about the blog :) Love Dovey' Love to you, Dovey! ** Jon Reiss, Wow, hi, Jon! It's so good to see you! Thanks a lot about the post(s), man. How are you? What's going on? How's your work going and everything else? ** Steevee, Yes, I would be too, ha ha. Thanks for the link. I'll go have a look. Everyone, here's Steevee with a tip/gift: 'Russian-themed pro-LGBT artwork.' ** Robert-nyc, Hey, Robert! Thank you again and directly so much for giving us the chance to help birth your book! I'll go look for your FB photos. Uh, the package probably arrived while I was gone, and I was too brain dead upon arrival yesterday to see what had shown up in my absence. I'll check today. I want to see 'EfT', yeah, and I'll look for a Paris engagement. Take care! ** S., Hi. Uh, hard to tell about the jet lag so far. I'm not murdered this morning, but it always takes a day/night or two to discern its true strength. Costume shop near the Grevin ... ? Mm, maybe I don't know about that. I know of the one near Republique, but, mm, no. Is it cool? ** _Black_Acrylic, My Halloween was no Halloween, of course. I was flying across the world and then I was sleepy. I hope you have fun with your folks. Thanks for clueing me/us in on the spooky acid house track. I'll go use it to help raise my consciousness level shortly. Everyone, vis-a-vis Halloween, d.l. _Black_Acrylic recommends 'a rather spooky acid house track: Robert Armani - Ghost'. ** October 31 ** Thomas Moronic, Happy belated Halloween to you! 'Lovely new man': congrats, my pal. I hope the movie felt spooky and that everything on your side of the screen wasn't spooky other than in the greatest way. ** David Ehrenstein, I can't think of any representation of Satan that isn't corny, even when it's 'effective'. I think Tim Curry's get-up in 'Legend' is still my favorite of Satan's surfaces brought to light. ** Keaton, Hi. Oh, it's you, S. New name, cool. Keaton. Like Buster or Michael or Diane or ... ? I don't do Twitter, but ... Everyone, d.l. Keaton, formerly known around here as S., has a new Twitter, if you like. It's @Keaton08269892. Just as important if not far more so even maybe, he has launched some great Halloween-related writing of a prose- and poetry- and imagistic nature, and that's a must. You can start your discovery here and then click back through the archive. And I recommend you do that now or asap 'cos Keaton/S. is a diehard deleter. Looks exciting, man! Wow, ha ha, and not ha ha too, those King Diamond album descriptions are awesome! Thanks a ton, pal. ** Rewritedept, Hey. It was Halloween, yes, not that I would have known it. Vacation was amazing. It was both a vacation and work-related. We did investigations of a personal and 'professional' nature, often simultaneously. You saw a lot of shows. cool. Wow, Suicidal Tendencies are still at it? That's trippy. No, I didn't hear about that Chris Richards review. I'll go find it. I haven't heard the new Arcade Fire. I guess I will, just to see what it is. I liked their first album, but I've been pretty whatever about them ever since. I did read 'Home', and it's fucking incredible! Peter's text is just amazing, and of course Kiddiepunk's visuals are a knock out. Amazing book, yes, for totally sure. ** Gary gray, Hi, Gary! Happy yesterday right back at you! Whoa, did you get photos taken of you dressed up as Stephen? Please say yes and then alert me to them 'cos I'm sure Stephen would be mind blown to see that. Oh, I think your costume and sound idea are kind of genius, of course. Accept my love and positive energy in return, man. ** Creative Massacre, Hi, Misty! I'm very good, thank you for asking. Well, my Halloween was even more low-key than yours, if that helps. Just a nightmarishly long, cramped jet flight to speak of. Oh, that's okay about the Day. Don't sweat it at all. You just concentrate on taking care of yourself, my friend, and only do the post when it feels like part of that process. You take care too, and much love to you! ** Bill, Hi! I did enjoy that, thank you. I know it's just the quality of those old photographs that makes Halloween seem like it was lot more fucked up and scary back then, but still. The flight was ... I guess ok is the right way to put it. ** Steevee, Not a single horror movie amongst my in-flight entertainment options unless 'Lone Ranger' counts, and I begged off that one. ** Wow, we're caught up. Now we can get back to the usual business again. Please start by giving your attention to Robert Siek's brand new book. Thanks a lot. See you tomorrow.

1. In the beginning there were two 5th dimensional twinks. One day these two twinks decided to engage in sexual intercourse.





2. One of the twinks ejaculated:





3. Into the other twink’s cosmic asshole, otherwise known as Ginnungagap:





4. The semen of the first twink filled the void of Ginnungagap. The second twink farted, causing a Big Bang:





5. And thus was the Monad formed, and beneath it, the universe:





6. The Monad was populated by 4th dimensional beings known as the Aeons:





7. And they all lived in a heavenly palace:





8. One of these Aeons was named Sophia:





9. Sophia, desiring to emulate the twinks, tried to create a universe of her own, but ended up aborting a Demiurge:





10. The Demiurge descended down from the Monad, into the chaos of the universe:





11. There, it created a planet, with the idea it would resemble a giant turtle supported by a number of elephants:





12. but it kind of botched the job:





13. The Demiurge, its own origin unknown to it, declared itself the only god, and thus became known as the Eldritch Patriarch:





14. The Eldritch Patriarch created a paradise known as the Garden of Eden:





15. He then created the first man, named Adam:





16. And the first woman, named Eve:





17. The Eldritch Patriarch also created angels known as Archons to keep Adam and Eve ignorant:





18. Adam and Eve lived a blissful yet ignorant existence in this artificial paradise:





19. Sophia, wishing to liberate Adam and Eve from the blindness forced upon them by the Eldritch Patriarch formerly known as the Demiurge, sent down one of her own angels, Lucifer the Lightbringer, who thus urged Adam and Eve to read from the forbidden Book of Knowledge:





20. One of the archons tried to stop Adam and Eve from doing this:





21. But in the end, first Eve, then Adam read from the forbidden Book of Knowledge:





22. In anger, the Eldritch Patriarch cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden. This event became known as The Fall:





23. Entropy was thus ushered into the world:





24. Along with the arrival of death:





25. And Man became aware, for the first time, of his mortality:





26. Adam and Eve, now exiled, gave birth to two sons, the first being named Cain:





27. The second son was named Abel:





28. Cain and Abel were secretly lovers. However, the Eldritch Patriarch lusted after Abel and desired to make him his own personal catamite. In despair, Abel begged Cain to kill him, to prevent that fate from occurring. Cain regretfully killed his brother. For that crime, he was banished by the Demiurge to the underworld realm known as Arka, where he claimed the title Rex Mundi: Lord of the Earth.





29. To punish those who disobeyed him, the Eldritch Patriarch created a Hell to serve as a sort of spiritual prison:





30. This was what the gateway to Hell looked like:





31. At all times, the Eldritch Patriarch kept a gimlet eye on the actions of his creations:





32. The archons were entrusted with snaring the souls of departed humans and sending them back down to Earth, to prevent them from ascending to the Monad:





33. Some of the hornier archons began to have sex with the humans now populating the planet. This led to strange mutations:





34. The Eldritch Patriarch, annoyed by these aberrations, opened up the Doomsday Door:





35. A miniature apocalypse flooded the cosmos, as strange demons began preying on the populace of the planet:





36. By this point, humanity had begun to entertain serious doubts about the validity of the Eldritch Patriarch as a just and loving god:





37. All this occurred under the all-seeing eye of the Eldritch Patriarch:





38. The Eldritch Patriarch, disgusted with his botched creation, killed himself, plunging the world into a new Dark Age:





39. Completely unrelated to this narrative, here is an illustration of a kappa that I think is cute:





40. Humanity, having forgotten its origins, moved on. Until some of its shamans began experimenting with weird drugs:





41. These weird drugs gave the shamans visions of the Nether Realms of Chaos that predated Earth:





42. And the demons that populated the Nether Realms, dark energies known as the Deadlights:





43. Along with other Eldritch Abominations too horrible to name:





44. Humanity, mistaken the Nether Realms for the highest reality, fell into a cult of despair:





45. Another example:





46. Morbid art began to flourish:





47. This being the rational for such thinking:





48. Odd cults began to flourish as well:





49. Everything seemed so… meaningless:





50. People began to kill themselves in droves:





51. Though some prayed for salvation:





52. And this was their holy symbol:





53. In her infinite mercy, Sophia sent to the planet a savior, known as the Ithorian Messiah, who taught the people of the Monad and the 5th-dimensional twinks:





54. Humanity rejoiced:





55. And then it happened: the evolution into a higher race of life forms: the birth of the first starchild:





56. The End.







*

p.s. Hey. I don't need to tell you how lucky we are to have this great pictorial narrative by Sypha to tweak us through the weekend, but I just did anyway. Luxuriate, decipher, connect the dots, etc., and speak to the creator between now and Monday, please? Thanks, everybody, and huge thanks to you, masterful Sypha. ** Torn porter, Hi. Thanks, man. Halloween barely exists in France. A few goth themed nightclub events, and that's really about it. They don't even program horror movies on TV or release horror movies in a timely fashion here or anything. We didn't end up going to the Winchester House on the trip, sadly. Due to time constraints, we had to make a choice between exploring a spectacular curve of Utah desert and wending northwest, and we chose the former. I haven't been to the Winchester Halloween event, but the place itself is very, very worth checking out at any time of the year. Susan Boyle? That's a nice, out of the blue choice. Pix? Cool, def. hit me/us up with the Kickstarter link, and I hope you guys had a great, curled up night. ** Keaton, Hi. I just fuck around too, but obsessively and diligently, I guess? I like your Halloween recounting. It veered very well, like the best things. The jet lag seems to be okayish, I think, knock on wood, weirdly, maybe. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. Glad your Halloween had the holiday down and coming and going. Blog guest-things would be super awesome, man, thank you a ton. ** David Ehrenstein, Hey. Yeah, the Bob Mizer/Tom of Finland show(s) at MoCA sound like a must see kind of thing. You gonna go? Thanks much for the Cairns/Welles link. I'll be all over that. Everyone, Mr, Ehrenstein has an awesome tip. Here he is to tell you about it: 'The estimable David Cairns has written a most interesting piece on Orson Welles' Too Much Johnson. This was a film not meant ot be seen by itself but part of a theater piece -- looking forward in some ways to the "Happenings" of the 60's. Thought lost this film sequence doesn't appear to be finished at all but is rather a rough cut. It's silent footage of Joseph Cotton being chased over rooftops. Fascinating. I hope we get to see it here in the U.S. one way or another.' ** Steevee, Your 'Bad Grandpa' report confirms precisely what I expected it to be. Big skip on that one. Thank you. I'll go read your 'GS' review, thank you for that too. Everyone, here's Steevee's review of 'the Cambodian cinema documentary GOLDEN SLUMBERS.' ** Heliotrope, Hi, Mark! Oh, the trip was probably too big and roamy and jam-packed and awesome to recount well, but I might do a slideshow or something if I can. Happy anniversary, you two lovebirds and embodiments of awesomeness! A lodger? Someone you know? I want to see your roses. Any chance? Big love, bud. ** DOVEY, Hi! Oh, I was going to compliment you on that screen name, and now I get to compliment both and Antonio simultaneously. Wow, you guys did Second Life? I never even went in there. Does it still exist? I never seem to hear anything about it anymore. Yeah, that bio is going to be all things originally to all people, for sure, just like he was. Excited! How is it going? A big bunch of love right back to you. ** _Black_Acrylic, Wow, that's soon. I mean November. That's fantastic! Very happily, Zac and I hung out with Ryan Trecartin a little bit while on our recent trip. He also snuck us into nearly finished versions of a few of his upcoming videos/films, and they're completely great, no surprise. Interesting about RM getting that nomination. Makes complete sense. ** Lee, Lee! Thanks, man. I did have a serious, major blast. Yeah, granted I'm a little lagged/zonked, but I looked and didn't find Ian's email. Did he send it under another name or something? If you want to resend it, and if you don't mind, that might be good, and apologies if my eyes are merely fogged up or something. Vocal improv, Tate, ... what what what? Explain, please. Nice. How did it go? ** Bill, Thanks, B. Leonora Carrington is a sweet writer. I should read her again and soon, I think. Enjoy that, and rock or noise your weekend. ** Creative Massacre, Hi. That's kind of sweet or something that your town gave Halloween a rain delay. I'm really glad that things in your world are starting to calm down, and of course that you're taking that extra time. Very important, my friend. More love still to you, and have the best weekend possible! ** Robert-nyc, Oh, gosh, thank you! I'm the lucky stiff in that equation. How have your publication-timed readings and stuff been going? ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. It's so good that you got her to go to the doctor and get those tests and get on the cholesterol med. Any chance that she will eat better? Or at least take supplements or something? Little Show must be so hyped. Like I said, we had such a huge trip, it's hard to know how to lay it out without going on and on. I'll try to share some pix and videos or something if I can sort that out and swipe some evidence from Zac, who was the official chronicler. One cool thing is that we did a lot of good, fun research for an upcoming Gisele project. She's going to direct her first film, and Zac and I are co-writing it. It'll be shot in LA at Halloween next year, if all goes well, and it theoretically involves two guys/characters, one a ventriloquist, one a worker in a factory that makes artificial fog production machinery, who collaboratively make a haunted house attraction set in a fucked-up ballet school, to greatly simplify the story. So, on our trip, we investigated haunted houses, artificial fog factories, puppet makers, and so on, and that was really interesting and big fun. ** Rewritedept, It's always so strange to me that my books scare people. That probably sounds disingenuous, but it isn't. I'm just so not trying to scare people, it's weird. I hope your sandwich fulfilled your mouth's wildest dreams. ** Okay, that's it. Be amazed by Sypha's creation, please. Have strong weekends. I'll see you back here on Monday.

Hard Rock Cafe, Dubai





The Fly, London





Aardvark and Snails Place, Cornwall








Overclockers, South Yarra, Australia





Las Palmas, Midland, Texas








Aces & Spades, Salton Sea





Hillbilly Ranch, Boston





Unknown, Mansfield











Faces, Cambridge, Massachusetts







KTV, Shenzhen, China





Spirit of the Water, Swedish forest









Batman Club, Pattaya, Thailand





Copacabana, Tehran





Marco Polo Club, Hong Kong








Majestyk Nightclub, Leeds






Starlight Music Theatre, New York





Katie Daly's Nightclub, Killaloe







Diskothek Schatzi, Hagenbrunn, Austria





The Palace, Atlanta






Unknown, London












Disco Cheyenne, Guardamar del Segura, Mexico







The original Hard Rock Cafe, Orlando










Millennium Complex, Plymouth






Elliott's Nightclub, Essex






The Shelter, Shanghai







Heaven Disco, Ölüdeniz, Turkey







Shooters, Providence, R.I.











Amadeus Nightclub, Aberdeen





The Asylum, Springfield, MA









underwater strip club, Bahamas










Lazerz, Dallas




*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Cool. Barker has read at least some Bataille. He and I talked about Bataille when I interviewed him for the Weekly ages ago, but I don't think the Bataille talk ended up in the final cut. ** Kyler, Hi, K. Nice to be back, thanks. Oh, I knew you didn't mean about the blog. No prob. Well, best of the best with your proximate stud, man. ** Keaton, Trance-iness can be a great, charisma-inducing tone/style for fiction, and it's fun/dicey to fool around with story and characters, etc. inside it. Stendhal is weird 'cos he seems all rough hewn at first and then the roughness starts to lull and chomp at the same time. It's a really good trick. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, man. ** L@rstonovich, Hey, L! It's great to see you! How are you doing? What's up? ** Sypha, My supreme honor, James. It was and is a very awesome thing. How is 'Dracula'? I don't think I ever actually read that. Sweet that you and Kevin K. will get to meet! Do you by chance know of/ recognize that RI abandoned, or I guess destroyed (?), nightclub up above? ** MANCY, Hi, bud! ** MyNeighbour JohnTurtorro, Hi, good to see you! I should be back here, i.e. the blog for a while. I have a couple of brief trips, one next week to Poitiers to perform this dance/performance piece 'Them', but I think I can do the p.s. while there, and another 'business' trip-ette to Berlin, where I might not be able to do the p.s., but that's probably it until January. I was traveling and adventuring around the western States, here and there, and a little in LA. Ah, the Pitchfork Festival. Sad story. It was kind of crazy in retrospect for Zac and I to have planned to get off a long jet flight with a 9 hour time change effect and then go to the Festival. Anyway, we got back, napped, and then between a dysfunctioning alarm and general brain zonk, we didn't end up making it there for the first day. I didn't go to the second day either due to lag/ennui, but I think Zac might have gone, and, if so, I'll ask him for a report when I see him. So, yeah. Awesome that you saw Orcutt. I just got his new one. And thanks a bunch for the Gnod link. I'll use that with pleasure, I'm sure, this afternoon. ** Etc etc etc, Hey! Glad you came back! Yeah, TDR and NYTyrant are very good presses. Yeah, let me sit down today and make a list of books to recommend to you. I'll have it for you next time. I hope to get LHotB up and running soon. It's hard 'cos I have, like, six projects I'm working on right now, but I'll find a way. Thanks a lot for the links to your works. I read the first three yesterday, and I admire them all a lot. I really like the way you construct and use and combine sentences. They're super energized but weighted/thought out at the same time, and the balance between things happening fiction- and content-wise and totally prose-based thrills is really sharp. A great pleasure. I'll bookmark the longer work and earmark it for reading asap. Everyone, I strongly advise and highly recommend that you go check out some short fiction works by the writer and new d.l. Etc etc etc aka Casey Michael Henry because they're really excellent and it's obviously a good way to greet him and get to know what he's up to. Here's 'Expose' @ Fanzine, and here's 'Like Making Love to a Warm Wet Towel' @ Thought Catalog, and here's 'Dinette' @ Fanzine. I did read 'Almost Transparent Blue', yeah. I think that's my favorite book of his. Next time I get to NYC, I'll give advance warning. It would be great to meet up. Have an awesome Monday, and, again, kudos and respect on your writing. I look forward to reading much more. ** Misanthrope, Good work re: your mom, and really great if it's getting you on a healthier intake track at the same time. Back to the UK/Europe, eh? Sweet. Hopefully I'll be around. What with my new adventure-prone life these, its hard to say right now, but fingers crossed. ** Robert-nyc, Hi, R. I'm happy that your book's birth is happy time. That time can be so stressful. Bluestockings, nice, nice store. The novel I'm working is coming along very well so far. I fiddled with it and wrote a bit now and then on the trip, but we were pretty busy and on the move all the time. I'm going to settle into working hard and diligently on it this week. Excellent day/week ahead to you, sir. ** Randomwater, Hey, man! I really like that new poem on your blog a lot. It's a serious beauty. Everyone, go read a superb new poem by Randomwater over on his 'Our Lady of the Teratoma' blog, won't you? The poem's called 'Vicious'. ** Delilah Hannu, Hi, Dovey! Of course now I want to enter Second Life and try to find you, ha ha. Wonderful that the book is going well. Slow but evolving is the story of my writing's life too. Your plan for the book's initial publication sounds good to me. You can bet that I'll be singing and shouting about its world arrival with all my might to whoever I can reach, and obviously I'll be far from alone in that endeavor. Love to you! ** James, Hi, James! I was in the States the whole time, and I was in LA for a busy bit. We checked out a slew of haunted houses in a kind of rushed marathon, for fun and for research for a project, and a few of them were spectacular. Yeah, I think we missed the LAX shooting by a day or something. And we'd been in the next door terminal. Really good news about the move. I saw an email in my box from you, and I'll get to it today. Sorry for the slowness, I'm really behind on stuff. Love to you! ** Steevee, Like I said to David, Barker has read Bataille, 'Story of the Eye' certainly, but I can't remember what other Bataille books we talked about. 'Blue of Noon' would be a good bet. That's really sad and worrying about St. Marks Bookshop. I thought they had gotten their problems sorted out enough to move/survive. That would be a very sad loss. I so hope they make it. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Have fun with the Australians. I hope the weekend was packed like a school lunch. I like school lunches, or at least 'school lunches'. How was the gig? What was its nature and content? ** Lee, Hey, Lee. Wow, that vocal thing sounds like a blast. I had imagined you singing Brahms or something like a songbird, I don't know why. But that's much better. The name Jenny Moore sounds familiar, but I'm probably tripping. ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks re: the 'Dazed' interview. It seems to be back up now. Oh, I guess I should ... Everyone, there's an interview with me in the new issue of 'Dazed and Confused', and it's online, and if you want to read it, it's here. Best to you, Benster. ** Casey McKinney, Hey, Casey! How's it, man? Really cool that you're publishing Casey Michael Henry's work at Fanzine. That's really, really good work. Love to you, C. ** Rewritedept, Hi. Yeah, like I said, Pitchfork and I never met up, sadly. Deerhunter cancelled out about a month ago, so I wouldn't have seen them even if I went. Thumbs up on the insurance check and its happy fallout. I love secret projects, and I like its unsecret name. Keep me informed when the time's right. Studio time, art show ... you're rolling, man. Nice. ** Kevin Killian, Kevin! Such an avalanching pleasure to see you! Thanks a lot about the blog's recent output. Input? Input/output? A blog's relationship to whoever else is so, uh, unique or something? Take a whole bunch of love. ** Okay. I had this day or so recently when I was fixated or fascinated or something by abandoned nightclubs, and, before my fascination moved on to wherever it has gone, I used it to make this post. See you tomorrow.

"Those who write about fairy tales are often accused of casting evil spells on the world of fantasy or, worse yet, of breaking magic spells. We are entitled to search for the hidden meanings of literary texts, but fairy tales count as sacred stories meant to enchant rather than to signify. Analysis at its best leads to demystification, and who would want to remove the magic from a fairy tale, especially since there may be nothing left once the magic is banished?" -- Maria Tatar

"From sentence to sentence, in fairy tales there is no reality that is subordinated to any other. Just as, outside the pages there is no reality." -- Kate Bernheimer

"For me, flatness is the most magical aspect of fairy tales, a transformative spell played out within the level of the sentence. Like snow, flatness blankets the surface of language—it covers the sinister and the good with an equalizing coat of paint, and the game then comes in the act of reading when we have to scratch away and reveal, through context, the emotion beneath the sentence’s calm surface." -- Alissa Nutting








"Singer tried to think of the time before he had ever known his friend. He tried to recount to himself certain things that had happened when he was young. But none of these things he tried to remember seemed real." -- Carson McCullers

"At the school he was thought very intelligent. He learned the lessons before the rest of the pupils. But he could never become used to speaking with his lips. It was not natural to him, and his tongue felt like a whale in his mouth. From the blank expression on people's faces to whom he talked in this way he felt that his voice must be like the sound of some animal or that there was something disgusting in his speech. It was painful for him to try to talk with his mouth, but his hands were always ready to shape the words he wished to say. When he met Antonapoulos, he had never spoken with his mouth again, because with his friend there was no need for this." -- Carson McCullers








"There is not enough love and goodness in the world for us to be permitted to give any of it away to imaginary things." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

“Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.” -- Friedrich Nietzsche









"The poem is lonely. It is lonely and en route. Its author stays with it. Does this very fact not place the poem already here, at its inception, in the encounter, in the mystery of encounter?" -- Paul Celan










“What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written.” -- Jacques Derrida

“I always dream of a pen that would be a syringe.” -- Jacques Derrida









"Of all the gods only death does not desire gifts." -- Aeschylus








“To know that one does not write for the other, to know that these things I am going to write will never cause me to be loved by the one I love (the other), to know that writing compensates for nothing, sublimates nothing, that it is precisely there where you are not--this is the beginning of writing.” -- Roland Barthes

“To try to write love is to confront the muck of language; that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive (by the limitless expansion of the ego, by emotive submersion) and impoverished (by the codes on which love diminishes and levels it).” -- Roland Barthes










"Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You become what you think about all day long.” -- Ralph Waldo Emerson









"A complete image with reference to a world devoid of image which imagines me in the absence of any imaginable figure. The being of a nonbeing of which I am the infinitely small negation which it instigates as its profound harmony." -- Maurice Blanchot

“When I beheld you, suddenly - for perhaps a second - I had the strength to reject everything that wasn't you." -- Jean Genet











"For years, he lived serenely in a cabin near the town of Klampenborg that had been passed down to him through many generations of his family, all poets, but none so successful at their craft as he, or should I rather say revered since even the greatest Danish poets had died obscure and penniless until he broke the pattern. When he was barely old enough to store a cogent memory and his poems were wobbly crayon lines that only he could read, he daydreamed of the sad occasion that would make this scenic cabin his abode. But by the time his father died, the gorgeous trees and unspoiled view where he’d imagined wandering with pen in hand had been truncated to a copse, and even it was culled through constant trimming and defoliating into atmospheric details along the pathways in a large amusement park whose southern fence came up nearly to his door." -- DC/Hans Christian Anderson

"To make a long story short, the amusement park expanded. To do this, they used some loophole in the law to buy the land around and underneath his cabin where they planned to build the sassiest roller coaster in the northern hemisphere. But using another loophole, the poet refused to move, and this second loophole proved his being stubborn was a legal right as well. So what had happened is the amusement park simply built the roller coaster all around his cabin, which became an atmospheric detail in the ride, now renamed The Homewrecker, and he had lived for several years enveloped by this most unnatural machine." -- DC/Hans Christian Anderson







“Maybe when people longed for a thing that bad the longing made them trust in anything that might give it to them.” -- Carson McCullers

“Owing to the fact he was a mute they were able to give him all the qualities they wanted him to have.” -- Carson McCullers

“When a person knows and can't make the others understand, what does he do?” -- Carson McCullers













“It is only people who are lacking, or bad, or inferior, who have to be good at things. You have always been full and perfect, so you had nothing to make up for.” -- T.H. White











"I no longer have any secrets, having lost my face, form, and matter. I am now no more than a line. I have become capable of loving, not with an abstract, universal love, but a love I shall choose, and that shall choose me, blindly, my double, just as selfless as I." -- Gilles Deleuze

"Something comes through or it doesn’t. There’s nothing to explain, nothing to understand, nothing to interpret. It’s like plugging in to an electric circuit. This way of reading relates a book directly to what’s Outside. A book is a little cog in much more complicated external machinery. This intensive way of reading, in contact with what’s outside the book, as a flow meeting other flows, one machine among others, as a series of experiments for each reader in the midst of events that have nothing to do with books, as tearing the book into pieces, getting it to interact with other things, absolutely anything. . . is reading with love.” -- Gilles Deleuze








“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.” -- Charles Dickens












*

p.s. Hey. ** Torn porter, Hi. Thanks about the post. No, I have no clue as to whether any of the nightclubs were gay oriented or not. I would guess not in at least the majority of cases, but I don't know. That story and photo of the abandoned hotel in Shodoshima were very titillating, thank you. The US trip was mostly for fun, but we used our proximity to the setting of the movie project to do a bunch of work-research too. Southern Utah, mostly the area all around Highway 12 that goes in a loose semi-circle from Zion National Park up to Moab/ Canyonlands/ Arches. The most amazing part of the US, in my opinion. We were going to do the Narrows trail in Zion where you hike up and mostly in the main river/canyon that runs through the park, but doing that properly takes a minimum of 6 to 8 hours, and we got a late start, and it was pretty cold out, so we couldn't do it. That Ratty-related photo gives a good impression of the locale. I'll say more about the porn movie when/if it gets more cemented. We might be cementing a deal to get it made right now, but I won't know for sure for a bit. Good ... morning, afternoon (?) to you, sir. ** David Estornell, Thanks, David, so glad you dug it, love, me. ** Martin Bladh, Hi, Martin! No, I haven't had a chance to yet due to the trip and related busyness, but I plan to look everything over and get to your questions this week. Sorry for the slowness. ** David Ehrenstein, Morning. Yeah, here's hoping about St. Marks Bookshop. It folding would be a real tragedy. ** Keaton, Oh, cool, so happy that you dug the post. I almost never go to nightclubs. I never did all that much other than during rare, short lived very social and drug/alcohol imbibing periods or when they're venues for music gigs. The second was a nightclub, yowzer. No water inside the underwater strip club, no. I'm not sure how that worked. 'Try' is mature? Really? That's weird/cool. Hope you did some writing. ** MyNeighbour JohnTurtorro, Hi. I did like the Gnod link, yeah, for sure. I've only imbibed once so far, but I like what they're up to now. Productivity is good, for sure. Just have to organize time so that everything I want and plan to do can get done without them smashing and crowding each other to bits. What are you up to? ** Bill, Thanks, Bill. Ooh, a videoclip look/see, cool. Uh, 'leader', yeah, maybe? 'Mythologizer'? Hm. ** Unknown, Hi, Pascal, assuming this Unknown is your Unknown. How's it? ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh, gracias. I think there's some complicated story behind St. Marks Bookshop's problems. Something to do with Cooper Union, I think? Like they own the property and won't let the shop have a survival rent rate or something? Ugh. Yeah, in my brief time in LA last week, I couldn't believe how many vinyl stores were everywhere, at least in our (Silverlake/Los Feliz) area. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi! Good to see you. I don't know why the underwater club failed, but then again it must have been a pretty specialized thing to begin with? Nice about the Ken Price show. I saw his retrospective at LACMA in LA a couple of trips home ago, and it was a beauty. I hope all goes very well with you. ** Gary gray, Hi! You did it? So cool. I told Gisele, and she was excited and inquisitive about the costume too, so, yeah, pass along images when there are any, thanks! I did check out Backwoods Maze, and it was stellar. The best haunted house by far, backyard/ homemade or otherwise, was Big Worm's Sherwood Scare in Northridge. Amazing. David Byrne? Interesting. I wonder why. Hunh. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. The Orbit looks/sounds really cool. I wish I had found it for the post. Everyone, _Black_Acrylic contributes a dead nightclub to the array yesterday. Here he is: 'On a related note, the other week I dedicated a blog post to the legendary Leeds techno club The Orbit, which I'd count as among my formative aesthetic experiences. That was my first proper night out and I'd never encountered anything so radically intense. The place closed down 10 years ago, so it may well now resemble one of today's abandoned nightclub photos. Ah, memories.' ** Etc etc etc, Hey! First, I apologize because I didn't get that book list together by this morning as planned and promised. Yesterday ended up sweeping me me away unexpectedly. I'll do that today, sorry. The Sutro Baths ruins, yeah, for sure. When I go to SF, I always try to stop by them, have an omelette at Cliff House and then take a wander through or rather atop of the baths' remains. Thanks for the great photos and the alert. I am a real fan of Tao Lin's, yeah. With the 'Gchat' fiction, I like some of it pretty well and some not so much, expectedly, I guess. The form itself and the co-optation is an interesting idea, and some writers have wrung a quite interesting, fresh poetic and cool structure play out of it, but there are a lot of writers are working in it, and the sameness is an issue, and I'm not sure how rangy the area really is. Thank you for the good words about 'Closer'. Really proud and chuffed if it managed to help you in your work at all. Pynchon territory, ha ha, yeah, there is a threat there, but all is smooth so far. Have an excellent day. ** Steevee, I think 'Ender's Game' either just opened here or is about to because the metro is plastered with huge posters for it right now. That guy's Eminem comment sounds purely ridiculous. I'll be surprised if the movie causes any fuss about politics over here. ** Delilah Hannu, Hi, Dovey. Okay, I think I really do need to take a look inside SL after what you wrote. Goodness gracious, so interesting. But I need another time consuming online activity like I need the veritable hole in my head, so I'll start a timer before I go inside, and I will act invisible. I understand about the book's title change. I change my titles frequently when I'm writing a book. It's interesting how a book will outgrow its title and keep outgrowing replacement titles too. Oh, sure, you can have and use the abandoned place images as you like. I mean, I took them from other places myself. Love to you. ** Ultra VGA, Hi! Wow, nice to see you! How have you been? What's going on? ** Sypha, Hi, James. That's what I'd heard about 'Dracula', i.e. that it's a slog, and it has been a red light of a book ever since. No, I hadn't heard of that game. I just skimmed the Wiki thing, and it does sound very interesting. I'll read up on it and look for pix, etc. Thanks! ** Joseph, Joseph! Holy shit, man, it's really awesome to see you! It's been ages! This is great! I'm good, really good, and I'm glad we're all still existent and functioning, yeah. The lead up to Halloween was good 'cos I was in the States and hit up a bunch of spooky houses, but the day itself was spent on a 10 hour jet ride, and the night was spent trying to keep my eyelids as far apart as possible, which wasn't very far. So, the lying low is suiting you? If so, more power to it, although I'm glad you snuck out to say hey, and I certainly wouldn't mind if you end up adding this place to your hiding places. I've missed you too! Take care, enjoy everything, and come back as soon as you feel like it, please. ** Misanthrope, Thanks for thinking that I would understand that you were kidding, and I did! Dude, headaches, not good. Do something about that immediately. The Big Dawg, ha ha ha, awwwww. Oh, that guy who was terrified of me and threw trash at me? He moved out of the Recollets a couple of years ago. No trace. There was this guy a month or so ago who was kind of stalking me. He followed me all over Paris one day, it was really weird. Then I was out having my early morning cigarette in the Recollets courtyard one day, and he was standing in front of the gate taking photos of me. I yelled, 'What the fuck are you doing?', and he threw something over the gate at me that turned out to be a CD by this Portland 'indie' band called Imagine Dragons, and then he ran away. I listened to bits of the CD looking for clues or something, but I couldn't find anything. And I haven't noticed him around me since, so I don't know. That was really weird. ** Creative Massacre, Thanks, pal. Those abandoned buildings in your town sound so atmospheric. I hope you get to sneak into that abandoned hospital, but don't get Staph, obviously. That photo of the building in-between being what it used to be and rubble was very cool. And grim. And cool. Thanks! ** Rewritedept, Hi. I love opaque projectors. I miss them. No, the post yesterday wasn't related to anything but itself and to my fetish. God knows about American dates re: the new Gisele pieces. I would guess that the movie will have a much better chance at getting over there since it has no transportation costs. It's nice being home, sure. Talk soon indeed. ** Finis. Today you get another scrapbook page re: the novel I'm working on. As always with these posts, feel free to enjoy or ignore or ask questions or whatever you want. See you tomorrow.

Alterface offers a radically new solution for Dark Rides, based on a technique of intelligent vision sensors rather than static. With this system it is possible to program recognition in many ways: point LED color on a wall, animatronic as a whole or any of its details, the decor accessory physics, etc.. This is a key development for the Interactive Dark Rides. Simply insert into the system the location of the target, what is its form, how many points it relates and / or any special effect triggers when it is reached.

More flexible, less expensive systems are also available thanks to our IDR technology. They are also within the reach of smaller parks and entertainment centers in urban areas. Alterface can finally make Interactive Dark Rides of which were not, since you have to mount the modules without the gondolas son then install targets and cameras!

We are also the one and only provider using interactive video mapping ! Just imagine a scenery reacting to the shoot, a magical set up build by lights and physical effects! Every frame, prop, window becomes a target in a very realistic way. That's the Target Wall, the very high end of the Interactive Dark Ride technology, unmatched!








Castle of Chaos
With the opening of Castle of Chaos at Pigeon Forge in Tennessee, Alterface confirms the success of its interactive haunted house In a Room. It is in fact the second time that this attraction opens to the public within an entertainment complex connected to a Hollywood Wax Museum. The amusement theme of Pigeon Forge enjoys, moreover, latest innovations developed by Alterface. Contents which mixes video in relief and images generated by computer in real time, a wall of physical targets which makes the thematisation also interactive, a platform even more dynamic,… and still so many other evolutions which make the Castle of Chaos an attraction which, really, makes people turn their heads… And the business!





Alien Invasion 3D
Alterface was hired to provide the interactivity in this next generation interactive dark ride open in September 2012 at Warner Bros. Movie World on the Australian Gold Coast. Sally Corporation imagined this adventure based on the famous characters of DC Comics: Batman, Superman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Supergirl, Wonder Woman, Cyborg. Justice League must fight Starro who undertook to invade the ground by controlling its inhabitants using mutant starfishes which control humans mentally. Armed with a laser, the visitors are asked to lend a strong hand to the forces of the Good and to liberate the city from the claws of Starro.





Nightmare
Imagine the concentration, in a single place and in only one room, of an experience which combines the benefits of a dark haunted ride and an interactive cinema! The installation consists of a circular mobile platform around which several scenes are set out where giant screens and elements of real* sets run alongside. The players are installed on this platform, sitting on individual seats equipped with interactive guns and a multiplicity of sensory effects (vibrations, jolts, blowing of air, fountains, light tickling, etc). The continuation is an out of breath scenario wherein is mixed visual effects in high definition 3D, alarming special effects which emerge from the walls and the ceiling, spellbinding sound atmosphere and much more still… The possibilities of astonishing the players are many and amazing!










Pufferfish design and develop new platforms for the display of digital content outside of the confines of traditional flat screen media. Pufferfish specialise in internally projected video spheres. Our range of PufferSphere® spherical display systems let you deliver 360 video simply and quickly across a range of commercial and artistic projects.
























Whoever builds equipment for moving people has to comply with highest standards throughout the world. Whoever has the technical know-how has good chances to be successful in this niche. Engineering skills and their implementation in uncompromising quality and customer service are capabilities, which are available in highly developed countries like Germany and Switzerland. A continuous development process will be adapted to custo- mer requirements and shall highlight our quality in the years to come. Swiss Rides' new service department will improve the economics of our installation in a sound way. As a machine construction company, we use the synergies available from our core businesses. It helps us to adapt to new technologies. Whether we move people on a rope or in the water is subject to the same principles. We want to have the highest availability and the highest safety standard.
























Not all clients have the capital and investment budget to build a park from scratch but if this is the case then the park design and layout are crucial in creating the correct atmosphere, manageability and efficient infrastructure for your employees and more importantly the park guests.

Obviously the primary specialty of One World Studios focuses on aesthetic and themed design of your park or attraction, however our designers pride themselves on being able to consider all facets of the park industry, from customer flow, Attraction Portfolio, Strategically placed retail developments, Gastronomy and placement of public facilities to ensure all avenues of the design have been calculated.


Rolox Kiddie Conveyor System
ROLOX is an exciting new conveyor system ride for any Amusement Park or FEC keen on entertaining kids, teens and their families. A great joy ride for everyone! It is a twisty, colourful, flexible, cost effective and extremely customizable Slide-Ride-Conveyor-System with a twist. Build a track for your venue now and let the good times roll. To download more information and details on this new attraction click here.






The Horao Tower 3D
Within the amusement industry the HORAO TOWER 3D is truly a new innovative concept for giant-screen panorama projection. For the first time ever a stationary building is combined with a prototype viewing tower and HD 3D projection on a 360° screen, offering a stunning new ride experience.











PerfectSwell is a patent pending travelling wave generator, as is common in waterparks and more generically called “wave pools” or “surf pools”. The wave is created at one end and travels and breaks in the pool. Surfers and bodyboarders must learn to paddle in and pop up. Length of ride is determined in part by the length of the pool. Though wave generators have many old and some new developments we discovered that the fundamental property of ocean waves was missing in the technology of all the current suppliers. It’s like the difference between a tidal bore wave and a wind generated wave. Wind generated waves are what we surf on in the ocean. We invented a wind over water “horn” alongside our submerged PerfectSwell generator which is on permanent operating display at Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific in Southern California. When we developed the idea in larger scale we found that the quality of wave in the pool improved dramatically without increasing the cost profiles of the equipment or the pool. We can make good waves in systems without as much power and cost as the common systems.
















After 20 years of experience in the field, Gosetto brothers decided to set up the Gosetto company in 1977, which specializes in studying and building rides for the showmen ,the amusement park and carnival industries. Gosetto is world renowned for its Adult and Mini-Sized Bumper Car Building, Merry-Go-Round, Convoy, Rodeo, Gasoline and Floor Pick–Up System Go-Kart Track, Dark Ride, Fun House, Bumper Car and Mini Bumper Car Pick-Up Floor, Magic Tree, Baby Kart, Music Express, Baby Tractor, TagaJ, Dream Farm, etc. etc. all of which are available in a huge variety of types and sizes, with several possibilities of optional, variants and personalization. These elements have allowed Gosetto to satisfy all clients' needs on a continual basis. All the rides are fully customized: Gosetto has all the capabilities to integrate all the possible specific requests in each kind of concept!


Dark Ride
Dark Ride is an indoor attraction, where riders are guided with different kind of vehicles, through scenes that can scary the guests or could tell a story and contain animations, sound, music, and special effects. Gosetto's Dark Rides cover all the requests from the market: vehicles from no.2 seats up to no.12 seats, griund vehicles, suspended vehicles, rotating, with interactivity (guns or educational), with on-board effects, uphill, downhill, etc etc. ... and if someone has new ideas, Gosetto team is able to design and realize also what is not thinkable! Of course everything is always fully customizable. Gosetto: the TAILOR of the Dark Rides!






















In your waterpark, amusement park, museum or indoor ski facility you treat your guests to a great day out. With our high-tech, easy-to-handle locker systems we contribute to the desired level of safety, ease and comfort of your visitors and to your profitable edge. Eurolockers’ carefree locker solutions help you maximize your revenues by providing a service, increasingly asked for.

Eurolockers produces and distributes state of the art electronic lockers / standard steel key and coin lockers. Our electronic locker product lines are designed and manufactured in Holland to ensure the highest quality and fast delivery. Eurolockers is currently active in over 8 countries. Aside from our direct purchase options we are proud to offer a unique concept: free placement of our lockers at your specified location while giving you a share of the profit generated at the venues. With support centers in Europe and Asia are available around the clock for support 7 days a week.














Emiliana Luna Park’s commitment to quality is most evident in our 45 years in the attraction business. From technologic research and artistic solutions to manufacturing process, we are committed to exceeding your expectations.

There may be quicker, more economical ways of constructing an amusement ride. But as one look at our products should indicate, those were never our top priority. Our commitment to quality extends to rigorous factory testings for quality assurance and after-sale services.

At Emiliana Luna Park quality, safety and reliability are our business. Emiliana Luna Park is a member of the International Association Of Amusement Parks and Attractions since 1981.





POLYP - OCTOPUS ride is a family ride.The underwater theming makes it suitable for both dry and water parks. Rotation on its axis, revolution of each car, rotation of 4 cars on their own axis:the Polyp lifts you, it lets you spin and turn and twirl round and round and round...








Tagadisko is a classical, successful ride for teen-agers. Shaking and spinning movements combined with music and tens of lights effects. A true people catcher. Tagadisko is also available on trailer or semi-trailer having 2 axles on twin tyres. Its peculiarity is that all the equipments and accessories, including compressor, scenery, operator booth are loaded on just one trailer or semi-trailer. Dimensions in road arrangement: m 14,50 x m 2,50 x m 4,00. Hydraulic lifting of the platforms and hydraulic leveling.








Dark Ride is a flexible ride that we can manufacture in tens of different dimensions and layouts. The track layout and length, the theme, the number and model of the cars can be customized to any location and building, developed on 1 or more floors. The themes for the Dark ride can be many: from the traditional horror theme with monsters, zombies that jump out from their coffins, giant spiders and devils to fairy-tale castles or abandoned far west cities filled with ghosts of gold-seekers.We can offer a wide range of possibilities for every range of budget, from sceneries manufactured in aluminium and hand- painted to fiberglass sceneries.The picture shows a far west theme, an abandoned gold-mining city.








The story behind the MADHOUSE U-BOOT 510 SUBMARINE experience is that of an old and rusty submarine sailing placidly the Pacific ocean when suddenly it is attacked by a giant octopus. The submarine rotates on itself and is now upside down in the deepest of the seas. The biggest squid you’ve ever seen hits the engine room, the crew members prepare to abandon the ship in lifeboats, the captain asks for help from the ships above! The submarine escapes though partly submerged and shall be towed back to port for repairs but everyone make it back to land alive…













Walltopia is a world leader in the manufacture of climbing walls. The company has completed projects in 50 countries on four continents. In addition to its Head Office in Bulgaria, Walltopia has offices in USA, Canada, Austria, UK, Germany, The Netherlands, Russia and Pacific Asia. Among its customers are climbing gyms, schools, shopping centers, kinder gardens, amusement and water parks, recreation and entertainment centers, hotels, shopping malls, military, and police and fire-brigade departments. Walltopia was founded in Bulgaria in 1996 as a manufacturer of artificial climbing walls and climbing holds by two climbers - Ivaylo Penchev and Metin Musov. The company grew into two independent, highly specialized companies - Walltopia and HRT.

In 2011 Walltopia won first place award in the "Business Development" category by Forbes magazine Bulgaria. In 2012 Walltopia has been awarded for most innovative company at the 8th National Innovation Forum, organized by the Enterprise Europe Network. In 2013 Walltopia was given Class A investor status by the Bulgarian authorities for its commitment to invest more than 7m BGN in a research and development facility in Bulgaria's first Sofia Tech Park.





















Great Coasters International, Inc. offers the smoothest, most twisted and highest quality wooden roller coaster attractions in the world. Our staff of engineers, project coordinators, and field construction supervisors has earned the reputation of being the most conscientious in the business. Our attention to detail makes the addition of a GCII wooden coaster a solid investment. It is an investment with a company that views itself as your partner, offering a lifetime of service and support after the attraction is open.

Although we are capable of designing and building any type of wooden coaster, Great Coasters International specializes in "twister" type rides. These convoluted designs, coupled with our own Millennium Flyer articulating coaster trains, create an experience that emulates the acrobatic thrills of a modern roller coaster while retaining the nostalgic look and feel of a timeless, classic attraction.

Though wildly popular with guests of all ages, the GCII coaster is also built with the operator in mind. The art and craftsmanship of constructing the track to exact specifications ensures a smooth ride for the guest, and minimal maintenance for the operator. Our experience with over 50 coasters worldwide has also brought park owners to us for maintenance and repair work on existing coasters, both old and new. We will always welcome the opportunity to consult and work with your maintenance staff to keep your wooden coaster running in top condition.





















*

p.s. Hey. ** MyNeighbourJohnTurtorro, Hi. Yeah, there's a new novel happening that the scrapbook pages are attached to. And there are two projects-in-progress with Gisele, one of them being a film that she will direct and that I'm writing in collaboration with Zac. That 'Frisk' movie is a piece of shit, so no worries on not digging it. The porn film seems to be finally coming to fruition after a long dormancy, but I don't want to say too much about that until/if it becomes official, hopefully soon. You're moving to Glasgow, cool. Why there? I was there once for performances one of Gisele's and my theater pieces. I didn't get much of a feel for it because I spent most of the time in a black box, but it seemed interesting, kind of lonely looking maybe? I have a bunch of new pieces and things in progress. Which one do you mean? Oh, the theater one with Gisele? It's early on, but it'll feature eight ventriloquists. More as it develops. Bon day, man. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. The Santa images have to do both with the content in a literal sense, i.e. SC is 'in' the novel, and are associative as well. Thanks about the 'Dazed' interview. The six projects-in-progress are: the novel, the porn film, two projects with Gisele (a theater piece and a movie), the Scandinavia theme park-related book, and a documentary-like film about the work of the fog sculptor Fujiko Nakaya. The porn film, the Gisele film, the Scandinavia book, and the Nakaya film are collaborations with Zac. Best of the best of luck with the NYC theater work. I'm so very intrigued by 'The Dream of the Red Chamber' and excited to learn more about it. Obviously, based on the premise and concept, etc., as I know of them, it sounds truly amazing. Great news about the novel having started to organize itself. My brain is yours to be picked whenever you like. I would love that. I would love to have the Megan McShea interview guest post, yes, very much, if that works out. Safe, ultra-fruitful trip! ** Matty B, Hey, Matty! Cool, you hit Frighttown. A mixed blessing, eh? That's pretty much par for the course re: the Halloween haunted house form in general, barring rare exceptions. Nice, I'm envious. Chandelier! I want to see! The 'Close Encounters' associative thinking is a fascinating thing to try to parse. Hunh. Great! Yeah, blurbage finally coming up this week. ** David Ehrenstein, Wow, 'Death May Be Your Santa Claus'! I've always wanted to see that. Thanks a bunch! ** Tosh Berman, Oh, gosh, thanks so much, Tosh. I think all of the scrapbook posts have used quotations as their text element unless I'm forgetting, which I could well be. Anyway, yeah, thank you kindly, man. ** Empty Frame, Hey there, man! Richness to see you. I'm doing very well, thank you. Yeah, I'm a traveling sort of guy these days. Utah desert: you gotta find a way to go. So spectacular. Cyprus relocation re:/for study. Very interesting. Why there? I did read 'Satantango', and it's fantastic, yeah. Envy on the Tim Hecker. I love his new album a lot. Is Ikeda doing a music gig or an installation or both? Mm, I don't think you told me that you got your studio back. I think you were sad about not having it the last time you were here. I haven't seen 'Berberian Sound Studio', but it's definitely on my track down/must-see list. Take some love all the way from a rather freezing, rainy, but good hearted Paris. ** Stephen Tully Dierks, Hi, Stephen! It's a real pleasure and honor to have you here. Thanks a lot for the visit and for the kind words. Oh, I really liked 'Mari in a Rice Field', which I read about a week ago. Kudos! And, if I didn't already say something a while back, the 4th Pop Serial issue was and is a knock out! Take care. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Thanks. There's a thing in the novel where Santa manifests himself as a red backpack for complicated reasons, which is a vague and weird thing to say, but I think it'll make sense. NYC is at its best as Xmas time, if you ask me. I hope you get to be there. It's so unfair that writers don't get to find out what happens to their work after they die. That's when you get to find out what it all really meant if anything because the input from your presence in the world gets erased. Of course to know what your work ultimately meant before you die would be scary and daunting and probably very depressing. What a dilemma. ** Etc etc etc, Hey. List is still in progress. I realized that most of what I was listing were books you probably already know about, so I'm trying to check my memory's supplemental margins. Dissertation reading. That sounds ... not fun, but I guess it depends on the dissertation or something, right? I never did one, as you can now guess. Oh, wait, you're writing on DFW? Great. Yeah, I think that, on the level of prose/sentence construction, nobody of recent ages can touch David's genius. That new Ryan Trecartin video is fantastic, yeah. Another genius, that guy. I think I already mentioned this, but I hung out with him a tiny bit while in LA. He lives four blocks from my LA pad, which is crazy close-by by LA standards. Talk soon, for sure. ** Steevee, Man, I hope it's just a small thing and not gout, not that I actually know what gout is, but the name is intimidating. I guess you don't want to say who this Twitter actor is? In any case, what's wrong with fanboy behavior? I turn into a big fanboy all the time. ** Creative Massacre, Hi, Misty. Thanks a lot, pal. Oh, what's the deal with that coffin? You make them or paint and adorn them, or ... ? ** Keaton, Hi. Is 'Try' the easiest of my books to read? That's interesting. I never thought about it. Ziggy is very porno? That's interesting too. I never thought about him that way, or ... I don't remember doing so, but I think about so many different things while I'm writing novels that I forget a lot. 'Confusing and senseless', ha ha. Those two things are music to my ears or whatever, especially when combined, you know. What is Oliver Onions? ** Martin Bladh, Hey. I will as soon as I am able. Take care. ** Statictick, Hi, N! Very good to see you. You getting that off your chest is definitely not a bummer, or it's a good bummer or something. Yeah, I'm so, so sorry about Jack. That's just so incredibly sad. I'm so sorry. Hugs and whatever else you need that I can provide. Be yourself here and elsewhere as you need to be, man, okay? Love, me. ** Gary gray, Cool, excited to see them! Life is a mystery, that's for absolutely fucking sure. I hope your dose was really fruitful. Yum. ** Rewritedept, Hey. Thanks about the scrapbook. Get to Zion. It's amazing, and it's so close to you. There's both a new theater piece with Gisele and a film project in the works. I have an opaque projector love thing mostly 'cos I used to do psychedelic light shows with them when I was a young teen and when psychedelic light shows were cutting edge CGI. So, you were a devilish kid. I guess that's not a total surprise, ha ha. Concerts ... I need to check the local listings and see what's coming, actually. What's the Rimbaud collection? Is it the Paul Schmidt translation? That one gets a bunch of stuff wrong, in my humble opinion. Anyway, nice book shopping trip scores. I'm way behind on my reading. I'm trying to get back into reading and catch up this week. My week should be good, I guess. My friend/collaborator Ishmael comes to Paris today, I think. Tonight is the premiere of the final 'Jerk' run of performances. I go to Poitiers on Sunday to do what will likely be the final performances of 'Them'. Other stuff. Your week? ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul! Thank you a lot about the scrapbook thing, man. How's your new one going at the moment? Great to see you! ** Misanthrope, Oh, man, hugs and sorrow about your bird's passing. I remember you were concerned that that might happen a few weeks ago. Yeah, very sad, G. Imagine Dragons are a biggish band over there? Weird. Or not weird, I don't know. They sounded very mediocre based on my skimmy listen. I haven't seen the stalker guy since. I think maybe the long trip to the States broke his spell or something, I guess, I hope. Man, maybe see your doc about the headaches? I mean, I know, moolah and all of that, but that sounds kind of intensive. ** Sypha, Hi. I didn't find 'IJ' hard to read at all, but you know the kind of stuff I love to read. I still have never even seen a trailer for 'Game of Thrones'. I have almost no clue what it is. I love Wes Anderson's films to death, as you know, and 'Bottle Rocket' is the only one I was so-so about, but I need to watch it again. ** Bill Porter, Hi, Bill. Thanks a lot! That's interesting about the Nietzsche quote, Hunh. I'll think about that. Anyway, you're very kind. How is your work going? Canyonlands is totally amazing. You've really got to set aside about a week to see it, though, 'cos it's so remote and huge, and it can take up to six hours just to travel between the different parts of it. ** Torn porter, Thank you! I've always, always wanted to go to Arcosanti. It sounds really scary and ridiculous at the same time. I really need to do that. Ratty should write those stories out, if she hasn't. I know I would love to read/hear them. Back to Naoshima? I'm going back there in January, if plans pan out as expected. I've never been to Dublin. In fact, I realize now that I really know almost nothing about it. What draws you there? I have seen the 1982 'The Thing'. I need to see it again. I only saw it once way back when, and I haven't really understood the big hoo-hah about it, but I was probably not looking in the right places when I watched it originally. Everything is good here. Uh, I'm mostly working on the novel right now and getting ready to work on the Gisele film, the porn film, and the Scandinavia book starting next week. All the best! ** Bollo, Hi, Jonathan! Great to see you! It's been too long a while! You sound way busy. Have you been to make art at all? Really good to see you, and I hope to again really soon. ** End. You know I love amusement parks, and you might remember that I went to the big European theme park annual expo/convention a couple of months ago, and I made this post about some of the stuff I saw there, and it's taken me this long to get it launched for some weird reason. Enjoy it, if you do. See you tomorrow.

a brief explanation: as i write this, it’s tuesday, 22 Oct, 2013. yesterday was the tenth anniversary of elliott smith’s death. as those of you who read regularly may or may not know, elliott smith is a favorite songwriter of mine and so i predicted i would be in a fairly glum mood all day, which wasn’t entirely the case. i had been considering working up some sort of sad ‘what does it all mean and i’m sad because i feel old and blah blah blah...’ sort of post to commemorate the day, but it seemed like too much of a downer and i mostly just wanted to share with everyone the songs that i like to play in the car or on youtube to embarrass my little sister in front of her friends (you know, because she’s ashamed of how terminally uncool her older brother is). and hoped perhaps it would foment some discussion. maybe we could all talk about songs that we know, in the part of our brain that cares about such things, just shouldn’t be loved or spoken of without irony, but that are impossible to love ironically. some of these songs are stupid. you probably won’t like all of them. you might, in fact, hate most of them, as i’m sure most sane and level-headed people do. but these are some songs that i adore, and i don’t care how uncool that makes me.




eddie murphy – party all the time.

remember when eddie murphy was cool? when coming to america was the funniest movie of 1988? back when, had google existed, you looked up rick james and only got pictures of rick james because no one knew who dave chappelle was? this song is like that all the time. in fact, as long as this song is playing, it is that time, all the time. so play it loud and pretend eddie murphy’s made a movie worth watching since ‘bowfinger.’




sir mix-a-lot – put ‘em on the glass.

everyone knows about ‘baby’s got back.’ there’s even a shitty metalcore version of ‘baby got back,’ that i won’t link here, because it’s seriously terrible. i don’t even remember what band did it, so i can’t tell you to google it on yr own time and see how truly awful it is. this is a less known, superior song from his follow up to ‘mack daddy,’ ‘chief boot knocka.’




biz markie – just a friend.

this is one of those hip-hop songs that all white people everywhere seem to know. the only song i can think of with a similar level of ubiquity is the theme song from ‘fresh prince of bel air,’ but that’s more like one of those songs that everyone who was born before 1990 knows the words to, regardless of race (my mom included). this is from that golden era of hip-hop around the late-80’s and early-90’s where the really great stuff usually had a goofy fun element to it, back before death row and bad boy made it so that all rappers had to look either really rich or potentially violent, if not both.




notorious BIG ft. mase and puff daddy – mo’ money, mo’ problems.

speaking of bad boy records, growing up i always preferred death row and wu-tang immensely to bad boy. the bad boy records crew always seemed soft, with the exception of biggie. like, if you invited dre and snoop to yr party, you’d probably get really stoned, drink a lot of tanqueray and maybe raw dog some randoms. if you invited wu-tang to yr party, you might end up smoking some crack, but that’s a different story altogether. it always seemed like if you invited bad boy to yr party, especially after biggie died, it would be kinda like the garden party on the first episode of the boondocks, but with less white people. you know: fancy cheese, wine, a buncha dudes wearing gucci shades. that’s not a hip-hop party. unless puffy brings his speedboat. then they can come. remember, too, this was back before DMX and the ruff ryder crew came on the scene and made everyone look weak. i probably wouldn’t invite DMX to my party, because i don’t like dogfighting.

anyway. even though i always thought the bad boy records crew were a bunch of pussies, this song has a pretty awesome hook. and for mid-late-90’s hip-hop, that’s pretty exceptional.




electric light orchestra – telephone line.

i get shit from friends and acquaintances all the time for being totally into ELO. this song’s not as interestingly written as something like ‘mr blue sky’ or ‘strange magic,’ and it was featured in ‘billy madison,’ an early adam sandler movie. so it’s got, i dunno, like, a million cool points already demerited. but when that chorus kicks in with the multi-tracked phased vocals that bands used to spend weeks of time tracking instead of just having a computer simulate them the way shitty pop groups like fun. do all the time now, you just can’t help but smile. same goes for queen. i’d probably be into more bands that did complex vocal arrangements if i knew they were actually doing it with real voices instead of protools and antares. fuck autotune.

while we’re on the subject, i don’t care how stupid either one is, i still laugh my ass off at both ‘billy madison’ and ‘happy gilmore,’ the movie where adam sandler plays a failed hockey player on the PGA tour and carl weathers pretends to have one hand.




the cars – drive.

i love the cars. this is another band, kinda like ELO, where, if they didn’t sound so obviously dated, they would probably be cooler. the tones and recording methods utilised on their albums sound so quintessentially ‘eighties,’ especially on their later albums (because really, if you get right down to it, their self-titled album is just a pretty perfectly recorded power-pop LP), that it can be a turn-off. especially to listeners raised mostly on punk and heavier music, like i was. what works to their advantage is that ric ocasek is a phenomenal songwriter and arranger, and the band’s composed of amazing musicians.




duran duran – hungry like the wolf.

as a young MTV-viewer, i probably saw this music video at least a hundred times before i was even in kindergarten. i’ve always wanted to get a big band together to do a lounge version of this song, but that seems like a lot of work just to record one song that would be mostly just a novelty for my own enjoyment. this video was cool because it was duran duran looking like normal dudes instead of like pirates or whatever the fuck that new romantic shit was they were doing early on. i almost put that song ‘ordinary world,’ from their mid-90’s self-titled one (the wedding album), but hearing it always gives me bad flashbacks to the galleria at sunset mall c. 1996. and, let’s be honest, this song is so much better in all ways.




bruce springsteen – dancing in the dark.

80’s-era springsteen is much maligned among even springsteen fans, and with good reason: most of it sucks. but this song’s pretty good. the synth part almost pushes it into 80’s mall-pop-schlock, but the lyrics are as good as any of the lyrics on his ’82 masterpiece ‘nebraska,’ and the chorus is so goddamn catchy. this and that track ‘i’m on fire’ are probably the only good songs springsteen did from like 1984 until sometime in the mid-90’s, but this one goes on the list because the lyrics for ‘i’m on fire’ read a little too rape-y.




blackstreet – no diggity.

as i get older, i find myself going back to the hip-hop and r&b stuff that i hated in the late-90’s because i was pretty strictly a rocker kid, and really enjoying a lot of it. like, if i’m at a bad dance club (which only happens like maybe once a year for me) and they start playing stuff that was on top 40 radio when i was in 5th grade or thereabouts, i get so happy. and i surprise myself when i end up knowing all the words to a bunch of songs i hated close-to-two decades ago. this is one of those songs.




billy ocean – get out of my dreams, get into my car.

this may well be the best song about hookers ever written. just listen to that key change in the last chorus. the stones didn’t pull off anything that harmonically accomplished in ‘honky tonk women.’ shit, that was just a re-write of a tossed off country song from the last album they credited bryan jones on, despite his not playing on more than one or two songs. ok, maybe second best song about hookers behind, like, every other stooges song ever. still a good one.




iggy pop and kate pierson – candy.

now, i know. iggy pop is awesome. he was in the fucking stooges for fuck’s sake. david bowie and lou reed both stole considerable elements of their respective stage personae in the 70’s from iggy. basically anything that any moderately talented frontman with even an ounce of stage presence does in performance was probably ripped off from iggy (or roger daltrey, but fuck that guy). but listen to this song. it’s like that tom waits song that rod stewart ruined, except sung by someone who can’t really sing (kinda like tom waits, harhar). but just wait for that chorus. it’s like all the good things about late-80’s pop-rock in one song: kate pierson; don was production (not going to link it here, but was not was’ lone hit single, ‘walk the dinosaur,’ is pretty classic novelty stuff); palm muted guitars on the verse bursting into a soaring melodic chorus (and people try to credit the pixies with inventing that). this is one of those songs that i listened to probably fifty times in a row the first time i heard it.



that feels like enough potential embarassment. but how about everyone else? are there genres of music or specific songs that you know, in the much cooler parts of yr brain that you hope are on display to most of the world most of the time, you really shouldn’t like as much you actually do?




*

p.s. Hey. Today, music maker, writer, myriad constructor, and d.l. Rewritedept puts his dignity on the line for you, and maybe that behooves you to cop to some secret, questionable music-oriented gravitational pull and name naming of your own, I don't know? Up to you, as always. In any case, thank you in advance for your attention and for any comments that result, and thanks and hugs to our brave guest-host. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D. Cool picks. You are an old fashioned porn boy. I'll see what I can do to get our porn, if it happens, struck in a 16mm print. ** Zach, Hey, man! It's awfully nice to see you! You good these days, despite or because of these days being but realizations? I love your Nijmegen story a lot, probably no surprise. There's an amusement park in Nijmegen? Wow, I have to look into that. Yeah, thanks for being here, and fill me in on you of late, if you don't mind. ** Boxofmirrors, Hey! Wow! It's been ... I can't even believe how long since I've had the pleasure. It's so awesome to see you, and to know that you're still sparing this place your time. Weird that this place is still happening, no? Weird to me anyway. I've always wanted to go to Alton Towers badly. Yeah, I took a tour of Scandinavian theme parks a while back, and there's a related book in the pipe. My faves among them were Bon Bon Land, which is incredible, and Kongenparken, ditto. Must visits if you're ever up that way. Novel goes well, yeah, and maybe just maybe the porn film will finally get realized. I should know soon. So, yeah, how are you? Catch me up, if you have the time and feel like it. All the super best to you, sir! ** Steevee, I was glad to see that your evil toe's evil turned out to be a relatively minor thing. So, you're stuck at home for a few days? ** Creative Massacre, Oh, wow, of course, about the coffin. I wasn't thinking. I don't know where my brain was. I'm sorry. Thank you for letting me see the 'before and after' pix. It really makes a difference, doesn't it? Strange. Thanks, M! ** Keaton, Hey. Dude, you only said that about Blanchot's fiction to rile me up, right? Holy shit, what a thing to say. 'Death Sentence' is my all-time favorite novel, I'll have you know. Goodness gracious, sir. Anyway, yeah, there's no right or wrong when it comes to brain food. Mine likes its thinking aloud with a heavy French slant is all. With me, I don't look like I'm confused but I am. We're like the opposite of twinsies. Ghost stories, oh, okay, sounds good. ** Rewritedept, Dude, thank you a ton for today. It's fun, and you're a brave man. I was mostly with you except for the Eddie Murphy song which I can not make any kind of case for in any way, shape, or form, and Duran Duran, who always make my previous meal reenter my throat, but that's some kind of memory based reaction or something. And that's showbiz. My teen pals and I used an opaque and an overhead projector in our light shows. And a super8 projector. Nice combo. Very big luck with the move and all of that. ** _Black_Acrylic, I guess that was me making a blog post from theme park heaven. Greetings, mortal. Wish I could be there on Saturday, but I'll await evidence. So exciting about your youtube project. I'm so curious about that. The experimental video event looked like smart fun, for sure. Nice pix. I like the way you point and orient a camera, B. Oh, no problem, no sweat, no anything re: the goody bag. I'm just grateful and am your humble whenever recipient. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul! That sounds really, really beautiful. I mean: 'writing the whole thing out as a series of single images, the narrator describing these composite visual-only distillations, one per scene, in present simple and continuous without dialogue, like a silent Technicolor movie, or a stack of photos or paintings with just some minor movement or other senses that I'll apply later, like the point where a gif sticks before replaying, so you get an overlay of text and subtext that's directly accessible through simple prose.' That sounds incredible! Very excited over here! Oh, thank you a lot about the DC/Anderson texts. Well, for the Scandinavia theme park book that I'm doing with Zac, I'm doing cut-ups and heavy rewrites of Anderson fairytales to reorient them into a theme park context and, specifically, into the parks we had visited and that we are using as the material for the book. Those were two paragraphs from one of the Scandinavia book texts. And I like doing that enough and am happy enough about what's turning out that I decided to do a similar kind of thing within my novel, which I think is working out really well, fingers crossed. It's a bit like the experiments for 'Closer', but much, much more successful for whatever reason, probably because I'm a better or more confident writer now. Anyway, I'm so happy that they intrigued you, P. ** Grant maierhofer, Hi, G. Things are great here, thank you. A lot of clouds and fair amount of rain here, but no soundtrack. I should try that. Man, I haven't creased Crass's oeuvre in a long time. Cool. I'm actually heading off to what I think is Foucault's birthplace, Poitiers, on Sunday to do some performances. That Artaud story is fascinating. Maybe I'll pick up that Miller book. Being confused between writing projects is the best way to be, if you ask me. Confusion is, like, the best palate cleanser ever maybe. So, that sounds good, actually. Best from me to you too, man. ** Misanthrope, Yeah, just sad and nothing but about Pretty Boy. Your multiple use of the word 'little' was moving. Interesting. And moving. Well, I thought maybe the Imagine Dragons CD contained clues as to the stalker guy's motivation, so I was listening and looking for secret, coded messages, and I found none that wouldn't require a conspiracy theory to believe in. Sleep is good. ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris! Oh, man, I'm going to finish answering that interview this week. I'm so sorry. It's been so crazy, and I've been so not in one place, i.e. here at my computer, for long enough to think/type appropriately. But I will. Sorry. The trip was amazing, yeah, thanks. I love those eurolockers. I think they were my favorite things at the expo. I want them. I want a reason to have them and a place to put them. Mm, I think due to my ongoing and never diminishing love of theme park, I don't have age-spcific associations or memories attached to them. I think I've always loved them to the same high degree, so I'm always a wide-open minded and -hearted partaker or something. That's too bad that Nightmare on the Bayou wasn't genius. Based on the promo materials and hype, it seemed like it could be genius-y, but it's the rare haunted house that fully satisfies in all in all of its parts and details. Super rare. I'm glad you went. I'm glad it fulfilled your basic haunted house-oriented needs in bits and pieces at least. Exciting about your interviews. I'll read them today. Thanks! Everyone, the mighty Chris Dankland has interviewed the very interesting Gene Morgan and  Bianca Shipton over on his crucial Neato Mosquito site, and I implore you to do the right thing for yourselves by going over there today and reading said interviews, won't you? I want to see the Shrader film on Mishima, always have. Um, yeah, I was pretty into Mishima for a while a long time ago. I even read his big trilogy. I haven't read him in really a long time, though. Are you reading him now? If so, what? ** Bill Porter, Hi, Bill. Yeah, roller coasters, sure, totally. I rode a slew on my last trip. Wooden ones are special and hard to get amazing, but, when they're aced, they kind of totally rule. But I do like getting fucked up by the twisty metal ones. Has George Saunders gone soft? Actually, I think I've only read maybe three isolated stories by him. They were cool. I saw him do a reading once. He was genial. Of course it would be super to get to share in your new piece, man. Say the word, name the way. ** Sypha, No, I can't remember slogging at any points in 'IJ', but I'm weird, like I said, and I'm so in awe of his sentences that they can pretty much take me anywhere or even nowhere. ** Pretty Addicted, Dom! Hey! You have a new screen name! How are you doing, man? Good, so good that things are continuing to go well with you. I'm so happy to hear that. Paris at the New Year? Let me know if you do. I think I'll actually be here for that, and it would be really great to see you. Your "The Children of Cain" scrapbook is fucking gorgeous. I'm seriously humbled. Man, nice work. I only just glanced, but they look like they request a very close study, and I will be the grateful enacter of that request later today. Everyone, the awesome writer and d.l. and everything else Dom Lyne is making an online novel project-related scrapbook that is really, really fantastic and something to really see. It's here, and do go take a careful look. Awesome! Love and hugs back to you, man. ** Bill, Thanks, re: the scrapbook. Ooh, great, a brief reconstruction. I'm so completely all over that in about three minutes. Thank you! Everyone, go here and watch a short Vimeo-based reconstruction of a recent work/gig by the very great Bill Hsu. Yes, of course, I would nothing but hugely honored if you want to use that 'Them' text. Thank you so much! ** Bollo, Hi, J. Great about the group show. Curious to hear what Martin Creed does, hunh. Top of the late morning to you, man! ** Randomwater, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disneyland is one of the true, rare wonders of the world. An absolutely perfect thing. You must go. You quit the HoP job? Wow, but that's good, and now Luke's there, wow, that's good too, I imagine. For Halloween, I sat on a 10 hour jet flight and then napped and then stared wearily into space until bedtime. Kind of spooky, but in the wrong way. ** Okay. Be with Rewritedept's taste today, and spare some of your own, if you will. Bye. See you tomorrow.

'"I have a very small cult reputation to protect," Jean-Jacques Schuhl protested to me a few months ago in Paris when he learned that he'd been nominated for the Prix Goncourt (and the four other top French literary prizes) for his first book in twenty-three years. Now that he's won the Goncourt, this avatar of Duchampian wit and encyclopedic misanthropy will just have to live with a much bigger cult. Ingrid Caven, his novel, is named for the celebrated singer he lives with, the former wife of Rainer Fassbinder and muse of Yves Saint Laurent; La Caven returned to the concert stage in November, at the Theatre de I'Odeon, in postmodern triumph, as a fictional character who sings. Ingrid Caven is not her biography, however, but a phantasmagorical riff on the social, political, and artistic history of our times, filtered through a meditation on stagecraft, the voice and attitude of the singer, the diva, the personae of history's actors.' -- Gary Indiana





'Jean-Jacques Schuhl est né en 1941 à Marseille. En 1972, il publie chez Gallimard Rose poussière, mêlant collages pop (extraits de journaux, partitions…) et fulgurances descriptives sur des personnages réels (Mao, Marlene Dietrich, les Stones…), élevés au rang de mythes uniques et pourtant tous interchangeables. Rose Poussière deviendra le livre fétiche de toute une génération. Et de celle d’après. Son deuxième texte, Télex n°1 (1976), reste longtemps introuvable avant sa réédition ce printemps chez L’Imaginaire. En 2000, Schuhl signe, après 24 ans d’absence, son grand retour sur la scène littéraire : il reçoit le prix Goncourt pour son roman Ingrid Caven, autour de la vie de sa compagne, chanteuse et actrice allemande dans les années 1960-70. Son dernier livre paru, Entrée des fantômes, est sorti en 2010, toujours chez Gallimard, à L’infini, la collection de son ami Philippe Sollers.

'Jean-Jacques Schuhl est un esthète qui perçoit les mutations de la société avec une distance délicieusement feinte, à la périphérie, celle du demi-monde. Son goût pour l’observation des décadences majestueuses ainsi que son écriture, élégiaque ou lumineuse, toujours ciselée, ont fait de lui un des auteurs français les plus précieux (au sens de sacré). Et rare. Donc précieux. On se garde bien de le lui dire, craignant de passer, comme son alter-ego face à Fred Hughes dans la nouvelle de Vanity Fair, pour « un mémorialiste complaisant » (passage qui sera coupé au fil des nombreuses discussions et corrections qui émailleront l’élaboration du texte.) On évoque ses lectures du moment : Reverdy donc, et Proust, régulièrement. Il suggère, face à notre réticence avouée, que la meilleure façon d’aborder l’œuvre de l’auteur d’Un amour de Swann consiste à laisser de côté toutes les analyses sociologiques et théoriques « assez ennuyeuses, il faut le dire », au profit des descriptions d’ambiances, des portraits et des éblouissantes associations d’idées.' -- Jean Perrier





'Jean-Jacques Schuhl was only 50 francs (about £5) better off yesterday after winning France's top book award, the Prix Goncourt, for a difficult and experimental novel based on the life of his lover. But his back manager will not be worried: Schuhl can expect to sell up to 500,000 copies of his book, Ingrid Caven, such is the prestige of the award. And the real Ingrid Caven, a German singer and actor, will not do too badly as a result of the book's success, either. She tells this morning's Le Monde that she has received several film offers as a result of its publication earlier this month.

'Schuhl, 59, is hardly a well-known writer in France, not least because Ingrid Caven is his first novel for nearly 25 years. "It's been a long time since I've written, and it's a dramatic turn of events," he told France-2 television after winning the award. "I didn't expect it." Caven was married to the film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and starred in many of his pictures. She was later a lover of Yves Saint Laurent. Caven was last seen in Britain in Raoul Ruiz's movie adaptation of Proust, Time Regained.

'The choice of Schuhl's novel is certainly a vote for French literary iconoclasm at a time when the country's literary prizes in general, and the Goncourt in particular, have been widely criticised for not rewarding literary merit but bowing to the pressures of leading publishers. But Schuhl's award was described as the "a vote for quality" by Michel Tournier, one of the judges and a previous winner of the prize. "Jean-Jacques Schuhl's novel isn't a commercial book and it won't be displayed prominently in bookshop windows," he said. That last point may well be an exaggeration, since the award of the Prix Goncourt usually guarantees huge sale, the winner's book often bought as a Christmas gift in France.' -- Stuart Jeffries






au fond, jean-jacques schuhl, c'est moi


Interview #1
from Telerama




Vous citez Kleist, l'expressionnisme allemand. Quel rapport entretenez-vous avec l'Allemagne, la culture allemande, qu'on connaît mal en France?

Il se trouve que je vis depuis trente ans avec une musicienne et interprète allemande, Ingrid Caven. A travers elle, ses amis, j'ai un accès concret, physique, vivant à la langue allemande : je l'entends, même si je ne la parle pas. Mais cela fait bien plus longtemps que je suis sensible au romantisme, au cinéma expressionniste allemands. Comme l'ont été, à leur époque, les surréalistes, héritiers directs du romantisme allemand. En matière cinématographique, les surréalistes aimaient Chaplin, à cause de son côté mécanique et burlesque – de nouveau, on n'est pas loin de la question du mannequin, de la marionnette –, et la noirceur du romantisme allemand. Moi aussi, j'aime les deux, et j'espère que cela passe dans mon dernier livre. Ce que je voudrais faire, c'est parvenir à entre-tisser d'un côté Broadway, les Chorus Girls des Ziegfeld Follies et Charlot, et de l'autre la noirceur de Caligari.

Un drôle de mélange des genres...

Je regrette que, dans la littérature française contemporaine, il n'y ait pas justement davantage de métissage, d'alternance. Prenez, au cinéma, Chaplin ou Godard : ils alternent le comique et le tragique, le burlesque et le drame, ils mélangent les genres. C'est un peu la définition du baroque. Mais le baroque nous est tellement étranger en France ! On préfère la linéarité, on refuse les ruptures de ton, les changements de registre. Personnellement, je n'aime pas les développements : ni d'une histoire, ni d'un style, ni d'un ton. Lorsque j'écris, j'ai besoin de passer très vite d'un registre à un autre, besoin d'une brisure. Tout en gardant le fil, bien sûr. Car autant j'aime la variété, autant je ne supporte pas le pot-pourri, les mauvais collages. Il faut un fil, que les divers éléments soient reliés à ce fil et, par là, reliés entre eux. Cette idée renvoie à Baudelaire, qui écrivait : « L'imagination est la reine des facultés. Mais l'imagination n'est pas la fantaisie, elle n'est pas non plus la sensibilité [...]. Elle est une faculté quasi divine qui perçoit les rapports intimes et secrets des choses, les correspondances et les analogies. » Vous voyez, on est loin de l'imagination telle qu'on l'entend trop souvent, comme quelque chose de flou, de vague. Il faut que les choses aient un rapport entre elles.

Cette idée renvoie aussi à la technique du « sample », que vous dites pratiquer en construisant vos livres. Qu'est-ce donc ?

« Sample », littéralement, cela signifie échantillon. Le sample, ce sont les bandes-son de Jim Jarmusch, dans lesquelles il fait coexister un rap, un lied de Mahler, un flamenco et de la musique électronique : c'est plein de ruptures de ton, et en même temps cela va ensemble, parce qu'il y a un fil. Le sample, c'est un tableau de Rauschenberg, où cohabitent un fragment d'un Napoléon peint par David, un morceau de une du New York Times et un bout de radiographie ; tout cela assemblé avec une sorte de grâce, car cela tient bien ensemble, on sent qu'il y a un rapport. C'est cela, le bon sample. Et j'essaie, à ma mesure, de faire cela quand j'écris, c'est même ce qui me plaît vraiment dans l'écriture, ce montage d'éléments divers, avec toujours ce fil qui tient l'ensemble. Ce fil, c'est l'artiste, ou l'écrivain, sa pensée, sa sensibilité.

Pourquoi diagnostiquez-vous notre époque comme nihiliste?

Je ne suis ni historien ni sociologue, mais romancier, peut-être un peu poète, donc je ne suis pas là pour établir des considérations générales sur l'époque. J'espère que ma façon de percevoir le présent passe, dans mes livres, à travers des détails, mais pas de développement relevant de la sociologie de comptoir. Cela dit, j'ai risqué un jour cette approximation : il me semble qu'au tournant des années 80 on est entrés dans une nouvelle ère, que j'appelle, peut-être abusivement, la nouvelle ère glaciaire. Pas seulement un changement de période, ou de siècle, mais véritablement une nouvelle ère, marquée par la disparition des mots, la toute-puissance des technologies, la communication, la mondialisation. Mais je n'ai aucun outil pour analyser cela, aller plus loin que cette simple impression.


Interview #2







Jean-Jacques Schuhl Ready-made & cut-up: on William S. Burroughs (1975)

Le cut-up existe sans Burroughs. c'est le journal. Les dépêches d'agence ont été déchirées, puis montrées. Il suffit alors de lire son quotidien sans se plier aux renvois en page intérieure (la suite, c'est ce qu'il y a à côté), c'est-à-dire comme un livre, en balayant toute la page, et en connectant les diverses rubriques. C'est un ready-made-cut-up. Pour ma part, je travaille à partir des journaux qui sont ce que reflète le mieux le discours officiel - surtout France Soir. Mais plutôt que de casser le sens, comme fait Burroughs, je préfère le miner de l'intérieur, le trahir, feindre de jouer son jeu, et le brouiller. Je prends donc une coupure de journal qui me séduit comme un beau symptôme, et la met en relation avec d'autres coupures, ou d'autres coupures (all around), ou avec ce qui se trouve au verso de la page (je découpe au ciseau la page et regarde ensuite ce qui se trouve au dos, matériellement ce qui est en rapport avec ce que j'ai voulu découper), ou en transparence à la lumière d'une lampe, pour obtenir un texte spectral (see-through). On peut dire qu'il s'agit d'une recomposition du journal, d'une redistribution de ses éléments, avec de minces jeux, des citations à peine déplacées, de légers décalages, des glissements, des transparences, des télescopages, mine de rien, d'une rubrique "sérieuse" (politique) et d'une rubrique "frivole" (turf, jeu des 7 erreurs). il faudrait qu'on y voit presque que du feu, que ce soir presque nneutre.

Le cut-up de Burroughs casse les circuits de la pensée. je préfère essayer de les pervertir doucement, de façon non-réparable.

Le réserve que je fais quant au cut-up est que c'est un peu trop cut, je préfère un démontage plus sournois où l'on mime le récit traditionnel et le mine. Glissements, court-circuits, décalages, blancs, petits grincements à l'intérieur du discours académique, plutôt que de cassures (il faut que ça ne casse rien). Exemple à suivre : Lautréamont. J'aimerais qu'on se dise : c'est ça, c'est bien ça, ce n'est que de la gentille actualité, et pourtant ! et pourtant ! Mais on ne sait pas dire ce qui se passe, d'où vient le trouble. Quelque chose comme la voix ou le geste d'un travesti, d'un robot synthétique, ou de W. Burroughs en faux clergyman anglican. J'aimerais arriver à écrire un livre avec un seul journal, à ce que ce soit une histoire qui n'a l'air de rien, qui provienne des rubriques recomposées du journal : il y a quelque chose qui cloche, mais quoi ? Évidemment, l'idéal serait de s'introduire la nuit au marbre de France Soir, et d'opérer en douce une recomposition qui, le matin, ferait dire à la ville, un peu gênée : "Il y a quelque chose qui cloche, mais quoi ?"

Mais il existe d'autre trahisons...




'A novel about the life of German cabaret singer and film actress Ingrid Caven, who was once director Rainer Werner Fassbinder's star, and his wife, muse to Yves Saint Laurent, and a protege of Pierre Berge. Consisting of memories, mixing real and invented people and events, Ingrid Caven reveals the cold heart of the European counterculture of the 1970s, an era of celebrity glitz, cocaine-fueled excess, gay bathhouses, and young idealists-turned-terrorists. Ingrid Caven was an immediate bestseller in France, where it sold over 235,000 copies in its first year of publication. It has been translated into 18 languages.Jean-Jacques Schuhl is a Parisian dandy who lives with Ingrid Caven and who had not published a book for twenty years until this one.' -- City Lights

'Singing for the Führer’s troops at age five makes material for Ingrid Caven’s lifelong running gag—and the definitive event novelist Schuhl returns to again and again in recounting her life. Ingrid is a plucky girl from Saarland with a terrible skin problem and a wondrous voice, which propels her through classical training and on to accolades on the Munich stage (that’s when she meets a lonely boy in black leather who wants to make films—the Wunderkind of German film). Over the years, Ingrid will mingle with the likes of Andy Warhol and Yves Saint Laurent, and even become embroiled with the Baader Meinhof Gang. A sensational Paris debut and suddenly the “little hurting girl in borrowed clothes” becomes really famous, meeting Bette Davis and Satie, flying about the world as the wife of Fassbinder, who turns out to be a drug-using homosexual. In telling Ingrid’s story, Charles is a kind of misanthropic alter ego: he follows the singer around, has affairs of his own, reports a lot of hearsay and snatched dialogue, but provides little sense of interior life. The climax comes at Fassbinder’s untimely funeral (he was 38), when, with all his actresses linked up front as if at a premiere, a posthumous piece of paper is discovered detailing Fassbinder’s outline for a script about the life of Ingrid Caven, “the woman he loved.”' -- Kirkus

'Adolf Hitler, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Yves Saint Laurent -- German-born cabaret singer Ingrid Caven's life flowed around these icons of 20th century European counterculture. Caven was married to Fassbinder and starred in many of his movies; she was Saint Laurent's model and muse. At 4 1/2, she sang "Silent Night" in the barracks for the German troops. This novel, by her current lover and based on her life, is a collage of that strange postwar period in Europe of high artifice, drugs, terrorism, leather jackets and cinema. Behind the glamorous backdrop of hotel rooms, the Brasserie Lipp, the Rue de Bac, the clothing by Saint Laurent, Issey Miyake and others, you can still smell cities burning, lives decaying. Artists drape themselves over rich American producers and patrons. The "era of Potsdam and Sans-Souci ... matching plates and Meissen dancers" is over. But so is the era of cabaret, and Caven finds herself a relic: "The time of stars and divas was long gone, and haute couture was disappearing, too.... Why go on singing when all the voices have been flattened, standardized, synthesized?"' -- Los Angeles Times





Excerpt #1

The sheet of paper was 8 ×11, crumpled, spotted with splashes of coffee, wine, maybe nicotine; they found it on the ground by the side of the dead man’s bed, lying there to be picked up by anybody, the cop, the maid, the doctor. The writing that covered it was like a speech given in a single breath, no punctuation, only one real erasure, two words now illegible at the end of a correction and a little arrow for cross reference. Eighteen paragraphs in the sequence, as though he had the whole text already written in his mind, all he had to do was write it out, the words had been etched in him forever and he had only to read and copy them; but the writing was just phrases, telegraphic, not exactly literary stuff. He had jabbed the paper, gashed it, raised welts and sores, made hard signs as though with a stiletto and not a ballpoint: it was something raw and brutal. The writing was firm, but still it shook like the needle of a seismograph, shaken up, rickety, words on the slant: like a child’s writing, like an old man’s writing, each letter formed with force and great attention, as though writing was slipping away just as life was and he tried to trace the letters, especially the capitals. The words blew about, had their own life, and none of the phrases lined up neatly; these were words thrown onto paper, as you write a note when you’re in danger, page torn from a notebook, no time to punctuate or take a breath, someone is after you… Numbered 1 to 18, the paragraphs were the stages, the chapters, images, scenes, synopsis, who knows—there was no title—of the life of Ingrid Caven. What follows is a literal translation, with the punctuation and the syntax of the original:

1 Birth + hatred of mother + start of allergy (Germany needs canon fodder)

2 First song, silent night holy night

3 Allergy much loved

4 University + worsening of allergy, decision for psychiatry you need courage to live

5 End of allergy, love with psychiatrist, high-class woman in rosewood, end of love

6 Flight skilful very disheartened for the terrible chic Revolution [sic]

7 Short life alone with many stories of men

8 Plays theatre, lives in commune, electronic love (GVH)

9 Marriage, fear of marriage, divorce

10 Africa

11 Second strategy

12 First appearance at Pigall’s

13 Jean-Jacques Schuhl + some bad films

14 Catastrophe with Musical, end with Jean-Jacques

15 Time of loneliness, appeal of suicide, drugs, schnapps and boys and cockroaches in the Chelsea H

16 Attack in waiting room, knowledge of great love

17 Sex and crime and black eyes

18 Dispute fight love hate happiness tears pills death +a smile

Just a wretched scrap of paper, found and kept by sheer chance, someone might have thrown it out despite the lines scrawled on the back. On the other side of page, the ‘right’ side, there is dialogue in neat electronic typing from the script of some movie Rainer had already made—big budget, six, seven, eight million dollars, big historical reconstruction, period sets and costumes, the Second World War—he must have used this particular piece of paper because he had nothing else available in a sudden emergency, he didn’t have the strength to get up and he lived very much alone at the end. On the reverse of this big historical movie, Rainer wrote his last words: the story of his wife, real, imagined.

The big budget project was pushed to the shadow side of the page, hidden away, the kind of production that he complained at the end was keeping him prisoner: and on the new ‘right’ side, these words he had scrawled, almost cut into the paper with such force and application, the life of the woman he loved. It was almost nothing, but only almost: a simple sheet of paper… just like fifteen years earlier and the cut of the Yves Saint Laurent dress, Ingrid Caven claimed the ‘wrong’ side, the second side, the reverse of the black satin cloth and now the paper, its secret side turned round, the dark, forgotten, secondary, shadow side of things turned to the front. That was where he wrote her ‘life’ and where she too had ‘written’ her life, not on the grand, fixed side of things but rather on the rootless side which she made grand with her songs.

Once again it was like the cloth you turn over because it’s the back side that counts, and you don’t know any more which is front and which is back, the Moebius strip, everything changes and comes back, what’s noble becomes vulgar and comes back, cloth that shows its lining, flags that beat in the wind. On what was once, and is no longer the ‘right’ side of the page, this scrap of dialogue: But, tonight, in front of the men, it will work, I am sure, and then I will realize something you desire. Something that you desire…

It was a troubling page because episodes 1 to 13 referred to facts and events, but 14 to 18 were entirely from his imagination. He saw her life as tragedy, a melodrama from an airport novel, and he had finished it. He did it as if she, too, were finished, deciding even her violent, scandalous, ignominious ending,; but Rainer was the one dying that way, sometimes he was found alone, outside, stark naked in front of his door on the landing, asleep in his shit, full of alcohol, drugs, sleeping pills, and at the height of his fame. In 14 to 18, was he taking revenge or playing tricks or just assembling the threads like a skilled writer for the screen? Or like a fate that he was trying to ward off with his words? She had got away, and on his deathbed he invoked her, he evoked her, took her back with words, with this skeleton story of her life. It was extraordinary: he wrote the life of the woman he loved, part real, part imagined, part elliptical, and on the way he made a picture of himself, and then he died.

Fascinating, worrisome, even very worrisome: you think about it, it couldn’t possibly be a film project. How could he shoot Ingrid’s disastrous end, her terrible fall and ignominious death while she was still living, and more alive than many others? He could have filmed 1 to 13, but not 14 to 18. Never. So what was this thing? A malevolent prediction, tempting fate like the voodoo priest pricks the doll with needles; but Rainer’s needle was a ballpoint pen.





Excerpt #2

It wasn’t the sight of the saucepans, it was the noise they made that seemed so unholy, such a vulgar noise for a singer and such a seedy noise, too, as though her whole past was dragging behind her, and above all the sound was so entirely out of place, nothing at all to do with the luxurious and old-style setting – carpets, wall hangings, such well trained staff: the hotel was like a ventriloquist’s dummy, letting out a cry that didn’t belong to it, something irritating, agonising, making the brain falter. Maybe Ingrid also remembered Sundays at home, her mother cooking in the kitchen with a clatter of pans that mixed with the Liszt, ‘Hungarian Rhapsody,’ that her father used to play over and over in the next-door drawing room. That, too was in her mind, making it tilt like a pinball machine. A saucepan bumped up against one of the metal bars on the stairs, and came to rest, dumb.

There’s a photograph of Marlene Dietrich, which she once gave to Hemingway (1): She’s all legs, sitting, like in those famous shots for the Blackglama furs, her head is down, so all you can see is the line of nose, mouth, chin: enough to identify her at once like a logo, a Chinese pictogram, a coat of arms, and, alongside those long, bare famous legs that were insured for $5 million at Lloyds, she’s written: ‘I cook, too.’ Were they lovers, friends, loving friends? The old story keeps the crowds agog: the writer and the actress, or the singer, D’Annunzio and la Duse, Miller and Monroe, Romain Gary and Jean Seberg, Sam Shepard and Jessica Lange, Phillip ‘Portnoy’ Roth and Claire ‘Limelight’ Bloom, the marriage of word and flesh, intriguing, puzzling, riotous.

Hemingway? Maybe, if it comes down to it, the picture wasn’t dedicated to him at all but to one of her other men – Erich Maria Remarque, or Alexander Fleming who discovered penicillin? Jean Gabin, perhaps? Or to Mercedes d’Acosta, that exotic lesbian? Or just to some nameless fan? Doesn’t matter, it’s all ancient history, the young woman with the saucepan is also a chain smoker, but she uses a common black plastic cigarette holder, Denicotea, only twenty-five francs from your neighbourhood tobacconist.

She’s still laughing in the elevator and when, with the manager going ahead, she enters her suite, she’s amazed by what she sees: white lilies, on the night table, on the desk, the vanity, in the bathroom, in the entrance hall, everywhere white lilies. Yves paid tribute to his queen with a suite in white. After saucepans, lilies, after the hausfrau, the vamp. Pans and lilies – a good title if one day she wrote her memoirs; Eva Gabor, sister of the more famous Zsa Zsa, called her book Orchids and Salami.

From the ridiculous to the sublime, could be one of those surprising productions of her friend Werner Schröter whose nickname – but why on earth? – was ‘The Baron’: Oscar Wilde’s Salomé, The Death of Maria Malibran ... she was bound to arrive in Paris under this particular sign, because, truth to tell, her real range of mind is more from lilies to saucepans, if you see what I mean, just as at the end of some exquisitely turned sentence – like this one – you need a break, but even the break is still too exquisite, those lovely rhetorical cadences I never quite escape. On stage with a flourish of her hand followed by a broken wrist, a back kick in the air that was a wink at flamenco, she knew just how to break up all that virtuosity, that panache, to do it neatly and dryly, to cut things short, never to make them too rich, yes, that was it, heading for the world of lilies and orchids, then turning back abruptly to saucepans and salami. Lupe Velez was engaged to Johnny Weismuller, but she fell out with Tarzan, wanted to kill herself, but looking lovely, image before everything, even when dying, hours and hours of fixing her makeup and her hair. She had no luck at all, pills and booze upset her guts and so it was that they found her, in her loveliest frock, immaculately styled, powdered, bejewelled, virtually embalmed, but stifled on her own vomit with her head down the toilet. That’s the art of breaking a mood, a right-angle turn of mood, art upside down, the leftovers restored, and anyway a kitchen utensil is always handy: John Cage wrote a concerto for mincer and beater.



4 Ingrid Caven songs in one video


Ingrid Caven 'Alabama Song'


Ingrid Caven 'Polaroid Cocaine'


Ingrid Caven 'The Wonderful Widow of 18 Springs'


Further

Jean-Jacques Schuhl Website
Buy J-J Schulh's 'Ingrid Caven'
'Jean-Jacques Schuhl, mythe majestueux'
'Telex n°1, come-back du mythe signé Jean Jacques Schuhl'
'Profonde superficialité'
J-J Schuhl 'Apparition de Werner Schroeter'
J-J Schuhl 'JLG, rapports secrets'
Video: 'Jean-Jacques Schuhl - "Entrée des Fantômes"'
'Laure Adler reçoit Jean-Jacques Schuhl, écrivain'
Jean-Jacques Schuhl Facebook page







*

p.s. Hey. ** L@rstonovich, Hi, Larsty! It's weird you dreamt that because I was just singing the praises of driving over cliffs for relaxation the other day. Nah. It gave me spooky house construction ideas, though.Which I need. Which is good. Sweetness itself to see you, buddy. ** _Black_Acrylic, I have a friend who has this whole really thought out theory/argument about the genius of Pat Benatar. I didn't recognize a single track on your 90s playlist. Wow, where was I? Probably wallowing in some self-imposed lo-fi heaven or something. ** David Ehrenstein, Ha ha, I knew you were going to pick that song, it's weird. ** Steevee, Oh, right, Slipknot's 'Snuff', that was good or 'good' or both. I can't get with Rush. Some of these things seem like they're generational specific or something. Look forward to your Wiseman review, cool. Everyone, here's the critically impeccable Steevee writing on/about the new Frederick Wiseman film 'At Berkeley' ** Lee, Your link lead me to an announcement that whatever you linked to does not exist. Non-existence is a great guilty pleasure if ever there was one. I saw the email, and I'll get to it today, thank you! That was a beautiful mental image of you with tiny lungs. ** Tosh Berman, Is 'Get Lucky' a guilty pleasure? I unashamedly think it was pretty terrific single. I'm still avoiding the new Arcade Fire thing as far as I know. It's supposed to be sort faux-Glam or something, isn't it? ** Keaton, Dude, I'm not going to fall for your attempt to rile me twice. I'm just going to be 'Death Sentence's' silent bodyguard. Or, okay, I'll move my lips just enough to say that nothing is the point, and now, handshake, let's proceed. I'm always confused, I think. Sometimes I'm confusion's excellent choreographer, and sometimes I'm its stress bunny. I guess when I'm here doing the p.s., I'm mostly its choreographer. I guess that's why I seem unconfused maybe. Leaving out so much stuff: oh, yum. Sounds like my kind of guy/thing/what-have-you. ** Sypha, Ha ha. ** Bill Porter, Oh, wow, you made my brain do an unsuccessful backwards flip and break my neck with that Sting choice. That is some serious, serious guilt-swamped pleasure you've got going on there, ha ha. Yeah, Saunders, it's weird to me that he has become such a huge god to so many people or writers or whatever. I saw an email from you, and I'll get to it today. It's your new piece, cool! Is it just for me, or should I share it with the masses via the blog in some fashion? Thank you! ** Rewritedept, 'Coming to America', the movie? I don't know. When I saw way, way back when it was brand new, I thought it was meh bordering on really bad, but I literally don't have a single memory of it, so who knows. Thanks again for the popular, provocative post yesterday, man. Sweet. ** Boxofmirrors, Hi, James, you're back, cool! Nice confessional list. I think a case could be made for 'Smooth Operator' being a legitimately great track maybe. 7 years old, really? God, I guess so. That's so weird. It's kind of scary to think about for some reason. Bon Bon Land is super unique and uniquely fulfilling. I don't know, I think that sounds great about you as an impending high school teacher. Are you still writing? I guess you still really like London? ** Dom Lyne, Ah, I see about the name. Cool, re: the definite if as yet untimed Paris sojourn. I really, really liked looking through your scrapbook yesterday. It's really, really good. I say that as a scrapbook attempter myself. It gave me ideas and new ambitions. That's great about the book and publisher. For sure let me know the progress about its birth, please. Love from me. ** Etc etc etc, Hey. Wow, that Len track, whoa. I get the sneaky addictive thing though. Oh, man, the LB w/LB thing is seriously grim. I've heard some things and pieces from the new Kanye West. I'm not really that on board with his stuff. I think he's canny and clever and makes dynamic quilts. I think he's good at giving the impression that he's ahead of the curve, but what's at the center of his work doesn't interest me or seem out of the ordinary, so it's hard for me to listen to him without rebelling against the lionizing of his stuff. I love Death Grips, though. I totally believe in them and think they're probably going to keep ending up in very exciting places. ** Paul Curran, Keep your eye on the ball of that year-end surge, man, for sure, please. Thanks about the experiment. Yeah, something very interesting to work with is happening with the HCA/me meld. There's something in his stiff, awkward writing that I'm excited to respect and destroy, and the fairytale mode is one I've never entered before, and it's riveting to maybe have found my way inside it, I don't know. And it's interesting to find a way to proceed with and develop the discursive thing I was working with in 'TMS' without that lushness. Anyway, yeah, thanks, Paul! Do please report on your thinking and progress whenever the jones to report surfaces. ** Chris Dankland, Kenny Loggins, man oh man, my head hurts just filling in the blank of those two words. He played at my high school prom back when he was in Loggins & Messina. If you say you love 'House at Pooh Corners' I think I will literally jump out the window, and I'm on the second floor, so it wouldn't kill me, just cause damage, so profess love for that song, if you have any, with foresight. KL did write 'What a Fool Believes', which is a great guilty pleasure song. The interviews were really, really good, man. Have a great ... what is it ... Friday. ** Creative Massacre, A guest bed, yeah, nice. I'm working on this new theater piece for Gisele that'll feature eight real ventriloquists, and I'm thinking up the puppets for them to use, and Gisele wants me to do one that is a dead person in a coffin. I'm well, thanks, and I hope you are too! ** Misanthrope, 'Radioactive' ... I don't know that song, do I? What is it? Do I even want to know? I hope you slept straight through the night and woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed. ** Bill, The first Cars album is really good. Is that a guilty pleasure? I'm way more than okay with you using my text. It's very exciting. Oh, I love that Vimeo taste of your new piece. That guy's music is really nice too. I'm going to imbed it in an upcoming post, if you don't mind. Basil Twist ... that name sounds so familiar. I'm going to google it. Awesome day to ya, B. ** Right. Oh, the post today started out as a rerun intended for my vacation stint, but I ended up changing and enlarging the original post so thoroughly that it ended up being a new thing. So, there you go. See you tomorrow.

"Ball-jointed doll" is a descriptor that can be applied to any doll, past or present, made with balls inserted into the joint sockets for human-like movement. However, today the acronym BJD (sometimes ABJD) tends to refer to ball-jointed dolls produced in Asia, or those made in a similar style to such dolls. These dolls often function as heavily customizable art objects for rather than toys. BJDs come in a variety of styles - realistic, anime, anthropomorphic - and sizes, from a tiny 4 inches (12 cm) to 27.5 inches (70 cm) and up. Since they are handcrafted, BJDs can be expensive, ranging from $200 to $500 and more, even before including clothing, hair, and costs like custom face design ("face-ups"), which are occasionally available as add-ons from the company or can be purchased separately. Big-name BJD companies include Volks, SOOM, LUTS, DollZone, and Iple House.


My introduction to BJDs was through following a Tumblr user called puppet who has been sharing photos of a variety of dolls since 2008. Being a fan of the big-eyed Blythe is what originally had brought me to puppet's site, but soon I was also intrigued by these other types of realistic-looking dolls that I had never seen anywhere before. It didn't fully occur to me that there were male BJDs available as well as the female dolls I was used to seeing until browsing around last year and finding ~Deleted Dollshe*'s site, where the dolls look like male fashion models and are photographed well in very human poses and natural environments.


The idea of waify, ethereally pretty boy-dolls that I could customize to my liking really appealed to my own aesthetic viewpoint, the more that I thought about it. I thought back to how I had wished as a kid to have a guy doll that actually looked cute to me, that didn't look like Barbie's Ken. Before long, I was conducting research on the Den of Angels forums and saving up for a Dollshe BJD, making my purchase in June and, over the past few months, slowly assembling a wardrobe for "Raphael", my Dollshe Hound. Now that I have my own, I appreciate ever-more the painstaking process that certain other BJD owners go through for their photo sessions and crafting just the doll they are seeking.


Here I have gathered 25 of my favorite male BJD pictures. There are some people, even within the hobby, that find certain dolls a little uncanny; I have chosen to deliberately emphasize this unsettling aspect with many of the photos I selected. There is quite a diverse range of looks for these dolls and a number of eerie looks and settings, along with the more conventionally attractive, represented. All photos are Creative Commons, linked and attributed to the source.




1 '8' by Jimena del Rio Torres




2 'took him outside' by Helter Skelter




3 'Being Dramatic' by Roxy the Killer





4 'hey)))' by Ekaterina





5 'mopey boytoys' by Joanídea Sodret




6 'skull' by Ekaterina




7 'Blaine' by Amanda Hatfield




8 'Untitled' by Ms. Stein




9 'new boy at home' (?) by Bloody Mordred




10 'A S F I X I A' by RÅPSΦĐIÅ




11 '.' by ♕ A l v i s 0 0 2 ♕




12 'A sweet skin' by Alléagorie




13 'IMG_6834' by Sleep Owl




14 'Life in a Box' by Creative Torpor




15 'Jared' by Agathe'




16 '❤ by T.Joe'




17 'Wahoko&Kohoko_2013_001' by Neocrinus




18 '.' by Fernanda




19 'My boy.' by Ran





20 '☥' by T.Joe




21 'Pair of Dollshe lads' by Tenuki Handcrafts




22 'J' by HolyGenius




23 'Hiroshii' by Charlieishness




24 'how long am I going to stay on my knee?' by Shari Chankhamma




25 'Damien, the first of three demon BJDs' by Erin




*

p.s. Hey. This weekend, the very cool, smart, generous Marilyn Roxie returns to the guest-hosting workplace to give us a fantastic look at those amazing dolls up there. Enjoy both them and Marilyn's filtering of them, and please express your enjoyment and/or curiosity, questions, resistance, or whatever in wordage if you will and if you don't mind, and thanks. And, wow, thank you so much for this, Marilyn! So, tomorrow I'm heading somewhat south of Paris to this city called Poitiers to perform in 'Them', the dance/theater piece I made with Ishmael Houston-Jones and Chris Cochrane, and I'll be back in Paris on Wednesday night. As far as I can tell, I should be able to do the p.s. as usual while I'm there, but if some form of internet impairment awaits me unexpectedly, I'll let you know by some means or other. ** Zach, Hi, Zach. Really lustrous Mr. Toad's Wild Ride memory. I'm so into its formal genius that I forget it can be believable. I'd love to write a novel set entirely inside the ride. I feel like it could kick Hyrule's and Oz's asses. Don't think I'll ever do it though. What is the ... nature (?), subject of your thesis? Something related to those books you're reading? They are a curious trio. But there is something connective there somehow, maybe, hm, but I can't find it quickly. Great weekend to you, sir! ** MyNeighbourJohnTurtorro, Hi. The Gisele film is exciting, yeah, to me anyway. A lot of really cool possibilities. And it's the first time I'll be collaborating on a text for her, and my collaborator is kind of a visionary, so it's thrilling and challenging in bunch of new, great ways. Thanks about 'Kindertotenlieder'. That's my favorite work I've ever made with Gisele. The 'Sinking Belle' part is great, yeah. The Glasgow move sounds really, really good then. It's interesting that the art/music scene is better there than in Edinburgh. I didn't know that. At what venue does your boyfriend work? I think 'Ktl' went well in Glasgow, or it felt like it did, but, then again, the venue never asked us back, so who knows, ha ha. Bon weekend! ** David Ehrenstein, Cool that you interviewed Caven. She seems really regal in the clips. Yes, email, I'll write back to you today. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. 'IC' is really good. Yeah, I recommend it. I hope more of his stuff gets translated. There's a terrific piece by Schuhl in the new issue of Hedi's magazine 'Animal Shelter'. In fact, that whole new issue is really great and a must-acquire/read. I guess I don't know enough about Arcade Fire to have picked up on their attitude. Overly serious, yeah, okay, that comes across. That quality is one of the things that bug me about the so much beloved Radiohead, and in fact I've probably brought down a lot of Radiohead defending on my head just by saying that, oops. ** Torn porter, Hi, man. Thanks a lot for the links to Ratty's stuff. I'll have my way with it this weekend, cool. Freaking out? In the good or bad way? 'Videodrome, sure. I haven't watched it in ages, but, yeah, I loved it. It's probably my favorite Cronenberg, push come to shove. Do/did you love it? ** Steevee, I can see all of that about Rush and why that would make them intriguing. I was into glam and art rock and punk, etc. when they were in their young prime, and their post-prog or prog-continuance stuff was really, really not cool, and I suppose I still have that attitude's hangover, I don't know. ** Bill Porter, Hi, Bill. Oh, thanks a lot, very cool about my blog's impact on your reading. That's a huge compliment. That's so interesting that you grew up listening to Etheridge, kd Lang, and all of that. My memory says that Joe Jackson was actually pretty good and consequently underrated, but I'm trusting my memory there. Yeah, during that time I was way into the more experimental or underground stuff, so I wasn't so into sincerity's representation. Sting is a lifelong ugh for me. I even hated the Police. Life's so weird and interesting. Oh, great about sharing your piece on here! We haven't had a writers workshop weekend here in ages. Fantastic! I'll set it up for next Saturday, a week from today. Really, thank you! And I've got the story scheduled for a reading by moi on my train trip to Poitiers tomorrow. Great, Bill. You have the best weekend there could possibly be, okay? ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Glad you liked it. 'University' is a nice word, isn't it? Hunh. 'Like a mystic mountain': that's really nice. I was in your dream? Wow. Yeah, 'Relax' does sound like something I would say under those circumstances. Well, hopefully in a more nuanced way or something. Cool. You have a fine weekend too. ** Misanthrope, You think? Shame on me? That makes sense. I'm cowering. Can you tell? Am I telling the truth? Am I lying? You will never know. Words are weird. Oh, it's an Imagine Dragons song? Maybe that was the stalker's secret message, i.e, that ... well, that ... no, I can get any secret meaning out of that song. Maybe he knew that I'm into deconstructing things for secret clues and meaning and he picked Imagine Dragons because they are so subtext-free and he was just trying to drive me crazy. Watching porn late at night is like drinking a double expresso after 10 pm or something? ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Oh, that's interesting because I especially liked that Icarus track on that recent Wire Tapper. I should know Basil Twist given that I'm working on two Gisele pieces in which ventriloquism heavily figure, so I feel shame, and I will acquire expertise on Mr. Twist to best of my and the internet's asap. Thanks! You may just have saved my neck. Be a consummate weekender until Monday, okay? ** That seems to be it aka that seems to be all of you. Marilyn Roxie has you incredibly covered, blog-wise, for the next 48 hours. Please make the best of a very awesome situation. See you almost for sure on Monday.

'Given that music preference may be indicative of emotional vulnerability, could this notion be extended to suggest that music preference can be a diagnostic indicator of emotional disturbance? It has already been noted that a high incidence of adolescents with preference for heavy metal music are hospitalized for psychiatric problems. Furthermore, adolescents diagnosed with mood disorder tended to like rap, classic rock, hard rock, heavy metal and alternative music, while those with oppositional defiant disorders tended to prefer rap and some techno. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry already recommends psychiatric assessment for adolescents who show a preoccupation with music containing destructive themes such as suicide.

'Exploring music preferences as a reflection of at-risk status is feasible and relevant to those working with adolescents, particularly as many adolescents (e.g. those at risk of suicide) are unlikely to seek out assistance when needed. Understanding the link between music preference and mental illness also has implications for treatment. Therapy may include discussions on the themes of adolescents’ preferred music and may be an indicator of progress or deterioration in mental state.

'A research agenda is needed in order to clarify a number of key associations before any causal explanations can be established between the experience of music and positive or negative mental health. To date, no such study has attempted to link music preferences with mental illness diagnosis. Such questions include: whether vulnerable youth prefer music selections in particular genres; whether there is a dose response relationship; do vulnerable adolescents understand the lyrics and messages that these songs are representing or are they more focused on the music itself; does the music they listen to change how they feel and act, and are these changes positive or negative; do adolescents with mental health problems listen to substantially more music than the average adolescent, and in what contexts do they listen to their music? All the above questions need to compare young people with mental health problems with the normal population. If many of the above associations do exist in contemporary culture and are related to adverse outcomes, then ways to reduce the exposure to particular music genres need to be advanced.' -- Felicity Baker and William Bor, Can music preference indicate mental health status in young people?








_____________
Lou Reed The Bed
'Sometimes called the most depressing album ever made, "Berlin" is the story of Caroline and Jim, a lowlife couple in the title city — she is promiscuous, he beats her, and they both do lots of drugs — and the tragic dissolution of their relationship. The demimonde of drugs and sadomasochism glamorized in songs by the Velvet Underground, Reed's visionary 1960s avant-rock band, is shown with miserable consequences, as in "The Bed," when Caroline commits suicide and Jim remains bitterly numb: This is the place where she lay her head/ When she went to bed at night/ And this is the place where she cut her wrists/ That odd and fateful night/ And I said oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, what a feeling'. -- NYT






_______________
King Krule Cementality
'"See, the cement has never meant so much/ My hot head cools to the stone cold touch/ I look to settle my seat with the dust/ Brain, leave me be/ Can't you see that these eyes are shut?" This song finds Krule considering the pros and cons of throwing himself out of a window. "It's about killing myself," he told The Guardian. "Becoming one with the cement."'-- collaged






___________________
Lydia Lunch Gloomy Sunday
'Dubbed the ‘Hungarian Suicide Song’, Gloomy Sunday appears to live up to its name. Written in 1933, the piece was written by Hungarian composer Rezso Seress. Seress committed suicide in 1968, first by jumping from his apartment window, surviving and later strangling himself with a wire in his hospital room. Over the years, supposedly, hundreds of love-lorn men and women have listened to Gloomy Sunday and decided to end their lives, often leaving suicide notes containing references and quoted lyrics from the song. Hardly surprising then that, during what could certainly be described as ‘our darkest hour’, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) banned the song from the airwaves during WWII.'-- humanities360.com






_________________
Xasthur Suicide in Dark Serenity
'If there’s any metal genre that’s written the book on songs about suicide, it’s depressive black metal. Xasthur, impossibly hailing from sunny Southern California, opens a particularly bleak vein with this track, which sounds literally like someone circling a drain. Xasthur re-recorded the track for the 2003 Suicide in Dark Serenity EP, but it sounds swaddled and anesthetized by comparison.' -- Invisible Oranges






___________________
Guided by Voices My Impression Now
'You told me you'd give your soul to the crowd/ You run to the edge of the warzone/ You're finding out that it's way too late/ To be happy around your friends/ You changed your head/ And made your bed/ Through time, circumstances and medicines/ You lied a lot/ Created a plot/ To escort you safely away/ My impression now/ My impression now/ Stand on the edge of the ledge/ Jump off cause nobody cares.'-- Robert Pollard






____________________
Leonard Cohen Dress Rehearsal Rag
'Songs of Love and Hate is Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen's third album. It was mainly recorded in Columbia Studio A in Nashville from September 22–26, 1970. "Sing Another Song, Boys" was recorded at the Isle of Wight Festival on August 30, 1970. The album title is descriptive, outlining its main themes. The songs contain emotive language and are frankly personal; "Famous Blue Raincoat" ends with the line "Sincerely, L. Cohen". With the exception of "Last Year's Man", Cohen has performed every song live. Because of its depressing content, he has played "Dress Rehearsal Rag" in concert on only two occasions, two years before Songs of Love and Hate.'-- collaged






_____________
White Faces Nots
'Milk 'n' Cookies actually sounded like the New York Dolls at times, but this group didn't exactly want a fix with their kiss. (What did they want instead? Milk 'n' cookies!) Still, singer Justin Strauss is not without his elements of danger, and he's got no time for homework. He's devoted to his girlfriend, but maybe a bit too much: "I want love/I don't want nothing else/If I can't/I'm gonna kill myself" (after which the band dramatically cuts out and the guitarist lays down a savage gauntlet riff). New post-glam band White Faces pay tribute with a roughed up cover of M 'n' C's brightest, bleakest song 'Nots'.' -- collaged






__________________
The Mountain Goats Shadow Song
'if you get there before me, will you save me a seat?/ if you get there before me, would you save me a seat?/ but if i never get there at all,/ would you leave the seat empty?// if you get there before me, will you light us a fire?/ if you get there before me, will you light us a fire?/ but if i never show,/ will you watch the embers glow?/ would you keep the fire burning?// this is a song for you, in case i never make it through to where you are.// this is a song for you, in case i never make it through to where you are'.-- John Darnielle






_____________________
Hatsune Miku Crime and Punishment
'The song is about Miku who has a crush on someone who self harms. He wont notice her unless she self harms with him so she does. The guy finally asks her to die with him but she doesn't because her love for him already died. I think the doll is playing the part of her crush.'-- Yabai Bunny






_________________
The Replacements The Ledge
'This is yet another song Paul Westerberg wrote about suicide. The band received a lot of flak because the song's release was around the same time a group of new Jersey teens took part in a suicide pact. Westerberg angrily defended the song, stating that it wasn't some cynical attempt to cash in on a tragedy, but more of an expression of empathy for the type of person that would consider such a desperate act. Suicide is one of his most frequent subjects and he has been treated for chronic depression in the past. The fading scream heard at the end of the song is one of the most chilling rock moments ever, as the listener realizes the subject of the song carried out his intentions.'-- Songfacts.com






___________________
Elliott Smith Needle in the Hay
'Not only is this song about suicide, it was used to soundtrack a suicide attempt. The song is probably most well-known for its appearance in Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums, during Luke Wilson's suicide attempt scene. The song is made even sadder by Smith's apparent suicide a few years later.'-- mademan.com






________________
Cheap Trick Oh Candy
'From Cheap Trick's legendary debut album entitled simply Cheap Trick. This was their first official single. The song was written by Rick Nielsen as was most of their early material. "Oh Candy" was inspired by Marshall Mintz, who was a photographer friend of the band who committed suicide. His nickname was "Candy" because of his initials MM - like M&Ms candy.'-- Songfacts.com






_______________
larva229 suicide song
'hello again this is a song that has a hidden meaning witch i explain in the video'.-- larva229






__________________
The Faint Agenda Suicide
'"Agenda Suicide" is the first single released from the album, Danse Macabre by The Faint. It was released only in the UK, February 26, 2002 on City Slang. The song is about the overwork of people to get "pretty little homes". The music video, by animation studio MK12, shows bosses bullying employees, while they continue to work. It includes one employee who takes pills with coffee in the beginning of the day. Throughout the video it shows people in business suits throwing themselves in front of subway trains. At the end of the video, the main character throws himself into the path of a train, while others look down into the track where he jumped.The music video was banned from MTV.'-- collaged






______________________
Loudon Wainwright III Suicide Song (Medley)
'When you get the blues & you want shoot yourself in the head/ It's alright, it's alright.../ Go ahead!// Do the monkey, do the pony/ Do the slop, do the boogaloo twist/ Cut your throat, Cut your throat... Cut your wrist// When you tire of worldly toil/ Shuffle off this mortal coil/ Turn your body back to soil/ It's OK, It's OK// When you get hung up/ Hang yourself up by the neck/ What the hell, what the hell, what the heck'.-- LWIII






____________
Bikini Kill R.I.P.
'I can't say everything about it/ In just one single song/ I can't put how i feel in a package/ And sell it back to everyone/ But wait/ There's another boy genius whose fucking gone/ I hope the food tastes better in heaven/ I know there's lots of rad queer boys up there/ I hope everytime they talk to you/ They know that they're lucky to be your friend'. -- BK






__________________
Neil Young Sleeps with Angels
'Nick Kent: Sleeps With Angels seems deeply haunted by the spectre of Kurt Cobain and his sad end... Neil Young: Sleeps With Angels has a lot of overtones to it, from different situations that were described in it. A lot of sad scenes (pause), I've never really spoken about why I made that song. I don't want to start now. NK: Has it anything to do with the similarity of Kurt Cobain's death to Crazy Horse Danny Whitten's death in 1972? They both looked so much alike... NY: I just don't want to talk about that. That's my decision. I've made a choice not to talk about it and I'm sticking to it.' -- MOJO Magazine







*

p.s. Hey. ** Keaton, Hi. Confusion is a really weird thing. The best things are confusing, and so are the scary things. At least for me. Or at least that's the filter I seem to fall back on. It was my survival instinct when I was a kid, and now it's ... I don't know. I feel like my writing is distilled confusion. Maybe I am too. I don't know. I'm so strange, but I mean well when I do my strange things. I'm always so surprised when anyone likes me. It's confusing, ha ha. Wow, really nice, honoring sentence/take on my dead friends reading. I'm practicing. Thanks, man. ** James, Hi. What made 2000 your favorite year? That's interesting. I always forget what happened what year. Oh, I tricked you, weird. I guess it was inadvertent and due to that post being a revamp. It was still old inside its spruced up shape or something. France wasn't very enraged about the Houellebecq Goncourt thing. When you don't live in France, it's easy to take one or two foreign reporter's hype as representative or something. Uh, no, I don't think people getting emotionally attached to things is a bad thing. Maybe I even kind of really like that people do that and do it myself, I'm not sure. I admire people who can live with a minimal amount stuff. I think I do sometimes, but mostly I imagine doing that, and it seems really peaceful. ** Etc etc etc, Hey! Oh, cool, thank you a lot for the link to your piece! Awesome! I'll read it during a rehearsal lull today. Everyone, writer and d.l. Etc etc etc has linked us up to a recent piece he wrote called 'The Devil' published in some curious fashion magazine Rimbaudishly entitled 'Riot of Perfume', and he's great, so you should totally go read it and, hence, get some extra pleasure in your today, okay? Thanks re: the theater thing. We'll see. The stage is way too big for the piece, but we'll hopefully make it work. Mm, I think the only 'Them' thing online is a trailer for it. Maybe there's a vid of the whole thing somewhere that requires a password. Sometimes that happens 'cos it's needed to sell pieces to venues. I'll ask the manager guy today. Take care. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David. Oh, that film is good? I was wondering. Cool, I assume it'll get over here. Thanks. ** Steevee, You played drums in high school? Wow, that's cool. Any video or audio evidence of that anywhere? No, I didn't know that Nick Drake's mom made music, much less that it has been released. I will definitely find a way to hear that. Fascinating. Thank you! ** Bill, Hi. When I originally saw 'Existenz' in the theater, I thought it was an example of Cronenberg relying way too heavily on his standard tropes, and I thought it was kind of self-cannibalizing and weak, but then I saw it again a few years later, and I liked it a lot. I guess that happens a lot with stuff by artists who work from their obsessions. ** MyNeighbourJohnTurtorro, Hi, man. Yeah, Zac, no 'h'. He's kind of not into there not being too much on the internet about him, so I'll only say he's an amazing, brilliant artist who works with visuals, and it's a huge, inspiring thrill to collaborate with him, and, yeah, I hope he and I will continue collaborating for a long, long time. We performed 'Ktl' at Tramway. My weekend was good. I hope yours was at the very least very good. ** _Black_Acrylic, Great, man, about AGK going down extremely well. Great evidential pix. Everyone, go look at this year's Yuck n Yum sponsored AGK in picture form, won't you? It's a nice thing to do. As would be listening to the AGK Ambience DJ set overlaid onto the event by Ben 'Jack Your Body' Robinson aka _B_A himself. It's here. Yeah, an alert when that video goes up on your site would be a boon. ** Marilyn Roxie, Hi, Marilyn! So awesome of you to come talk to the folks. It was such a great post. Thank you again so very much! ** Torn porter, Hi. I started reading Ratty's thing and, yeah, it's really super. I'm going to try to finish reading it today sometime when I get a rehearsal break. A bad way? Oh, sorry. I hope that freak-out burns itself out any second now. Interesting: 'bodily cinema'. Hm, I think I get full-body effected by the most unlikely things, like Bresson films reduce me to a fully shaken form, but I don't think that would happen to most people watching them. Intensely bleak, emotional films do it for me, but I think that effect is so particular to me that it wouldn't make sense in a list or something. I don't know. Let me think about the question. ** Bill Porter, Hi, Bill. I get you, yeah, about how Sting/The Police could have done that to you. I'm sure I have plenty of examples that I'm too embarrassed to remember. Erudite rock, yeah. I always think of this 80s band Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. Their songs were kind of like musical NPR book reviews or something. I'm excited about the workshop too! I didn't end up reading on the train as hoped. Long story. But I will get to read the intended stuff while waiting around for the tech guys to do their stage dressing stuff today. Yeah, that was my voice in the 'Them' trailer. I perform in the piece, reading texts onstage throughout. I wish you could see 'Them' too, but I think these will be the last ever performances. You never know, but I think we're done after this. ** Tender prey, Hey, Marc! Wow, it's really, really, really good to see you! I've missed you! Aw, thanks a lot about the scrapbook pages. I see what you mean about 'Period'. That's interesting. It's probably true, but it came through a different route, or through the influence of other mediums and works that might well have been more directly effected by the fairytale's formal proposals. But, yeah, that makes sense. It's interesting to try to work directly from the fairytale source. It feels really new, even if the result ends up relating to, say,'Period', although I think it will read and feel very different, I don't know. Gosh, really, it's so good to see you! How are things with you? What have you been working on and doing? ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. I don't remember what would have driven me crazy anymore, but you're surely right since you know me like the back of your hand, except that I don't think people know the backs and their hands very well at all, do they? I don't know shit about mine. I would never pick them out in a police line up or anything. Cool, cool, cool about the Little Show stuff. ** Okay. I'm going to catch the tail end of my hotel's free breakfast thing and then go to the theater. I think I was in a low mood when I made this gig, but I'm fine now, I think. I turn it over to you. See you tomorrow.

Back in in the early 00s, a fine gentleman and writer named Don Waters, who has been known to comment occasionally on this blog, masterminded a project wherein a number of music artists whom he and/or I liked were solicited to contribute songs and pieces of music inspired by my books that would be gathered together on a limited edition CD.

It took a few years for the project to come to fruition, but in 2006 the CD, entitled DENNIS: story - song, was released in an edition of 500 copies, 42 of which were signed by me and numbered. The package featured cover art and internal images by the LA sculptor/artist Amy Sarkisian, who is a great favorite of mine, and it included a booklet containing what was at that time a brand new short story by me called 'The Ash Gray Proclamation'.

The edition sold out quickly, and it has been nigh on impossible to buy or even hear since that time because the music on the CD has never been uploaded onto the internet as far as I know. Among the artists who have songs and/or music pieces on the CD are Robert Pollard, Xiu Xiu, Richard Hell, Fentin Quentin, Pig Destroyer, Eddie Ruscha (Secret Circuit, Medicine), Stephen Prina (w/ lyrics by me), Peter Rehberg (w/ spoken word by me), Jeremy Gloff, and others. In some cases, their contributions have never been released anywhere else. So, that's the CD in a nutshell. You can see images of it above and below.

When I was in LA recently, I happened to find a small number of copies from the signed, numbered edition, and I thought it would be fun or cool to share one of them with the readers and contributors of this blog. So, I'm holding a little contest, and the winner will receive a copy of DENNIS. Here's what you have to do: You should have a pretty good handle on my interests and enthusiasms from the blog posts that I choose to make, and of course from reading my work. To win the CD, I ask you to either imbed or copy and paste a link to something or some place that you think would really excite or interest or delight me into your comment today or tomorrow. Only one link suggestion per commenter, please. Anyone is welcome to enter the contest, whether you comment here regularly or have never commented here before.

A friend of mine will copy and paste the links you choose sans attributions into a document so I can click them without knowing who suggested them. The link that leads me to the most exciting or rewarding or whatever site, page, place, or thing will win the CD. The deadline is your bedtime in your time zone tomorrow (November 13th) night. Once the 'entries' are all in, I'll investigate them and announce the winner, probably on this coming Friday. Is all of that clear? If not, feel free to ask for clarification. May the canniest or luckiest reader and/or d.l. win.










*

p.s. Hey. So, yeah, are you game? I can't imagine that anyone reading this lives in Poitiers, France, but if you do, the first 'Them' performance is tonight at 8:30 at TAP, and, if you live here, I guess you know where that is. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Ha ha, yeah, I had a mental list of artists I decided to try to not include because they were so obviously appropriate, incl. Nico, Joy Division, and a few others, and a couple of them slipped into the list anyway, but not Nico. I figured someone would compensate and add her from the comments arena, and viola! Thanks for the Ray Davies link. Always a pleasure. ** _Black_Acrylic, I actually looked for a suicidal disco song to include as a challenge to myself, and no luck on my end, and kudos/thanks to your end. Cool, excited to watch the video! Everyone, here's _B_A with a boon for you in general and an add to yesterday's gig: 'Lewis Den Hertog's 2013 AGK-winning video seems quite apt: "The Future" by Leonard Cohen is here.' ** Sypha, Hi. I don't know that Madonna song, I don't think, but I'll wander into it, thank you. ** Bill Porter, Hi. I came a hair's breadth from including that Silverchair song. I'm actually a big fan of theirs, but not of the early 'Frogstomp' era so much, though. Daniel Johns was, at one point, going to write the score for a film based on a short story of mine that never happened. I was excited and then crushed. I like Jason Molina. I don't know his work thoroughly, but I've always quite liked what I've heard, and his death was very sad. If I know 'Blue Factory Flame', I've forgotten the title. I'll go find out. Thanks, man. No it's not too long at all, no. I just keep overestimating the amount of time I have here to not be working on the performance piece. I should be fully up to speed, i.e. to the end by tomorrow, I guesstimate. Uh, my description made you want check out Lloyd Cole? That was an accident, ha ha. But, no, yeah, see what you think. ** Misanthrope, It was Veterans Day yesterday over there? That's weird 'cos it was Remembrance Day over here in France. Must be a WWII-based thing or something? ** Zach, Hi. Yeah, Suicide was on that mental list I mentioned to DE of people I tried not to program in the gig as a challenge to myself. But yeah, for sure, duh, totally. Your thesis sounds really fascinating. 'The panoramic novel', wow, yeah, nice. That's a really cool category. I'm going to spend some time reading up on that. The GM novel is really good, and he's a really good guy. Need I even ask how amazing MBV was last night? Talk about guaranteed mind blows. ** Steevee, If you ever successfully rescue those tapes, do let me in on the results. I don't really like Metallica, so I guess that's why I didn't think of them. I'll check out that Geto Boys track. I don't think I know it. Cool. ** Keaton, Me too, on the confusion thing. Oh, good, you get my strangeness. That's good. Better to know than not. How'd the story go? ** Etc etc etc, Hi. I didn't get to read your piece yesterday due to performance prep busyness, but today should be open-ish. Excited. Gotcha about Rimbaud. So much baggage and off shooting and stuff. He is as great as they/we say though, I say. Completely changed my teenaged and then forever life anyway. It is true, I think: what you say about the openness of the non-literary periodicals, relatively speaking. Or, yeah, maybe it was. The whole periodical context has been so upended and reoriented by the internet's cornering and both diminishing and enlarging of the nature of the periodical. In a way, I think the online context encourages and allows for more experimentation 'cos the volume of the volumes is so open, like what happened to music albums post-vinyl. First performance is tonight, so we'll see. We haven't done this piece in a year, so the doing of it and the response feel more unexpected in advance. And thanks about the scrapbooks. Wolves in the Throne Room is a nice add, thanks. Yeah, they didn't come to mind when I was curating the gig, and that track is a dead ringer. Good day to you. ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris. Oh, man, I'm so sorry. I didn't know that Victoria Selavy had died. I think I read work of hers, and, no I know I did, and followed her a bit. God, that's terrible, I'm so sorry. Yeah, I mean, suicide ... or the possibility of it in her case ... you know, there's hardly a day that I don't think about George Miles. And there've a lot of suicides in my life by people I've known well and in many cases loved. It's just unspeakably confusing and hard. Hugs, my friend. ** Torn porter, Hi. That video you threw into the mix is 'not available in (my) country', damn. What was it, for the record? And I'll investigate that ARF link when I get this done and have more time. Give Ratty my major kudos! The first of the two performances is tonight, so we will see. I'll let you know. Getting ready for that is pretty what's going on with me at the moment. Lots of projects and stuff waiting for me to get back to them. Oh, I see, yeah, I probably can understand that liason-related freak out, emotionally or psychologically or something. I'm glad you're entering the clear, at least. Best to you, and peace too. ** Okay. So, now, if you feel like trying the contest, I hope that doing so will be, you know, interesting. Thanks. I will see you back here tomorrow.

How to synchronize metronomes











Altars of Madness





















The Sunset Strip in the Mid-1960s







We are now at Clark and Sunset, the world-famous friggin' Whisky A-Go-Go. This is it. When I first came here, the building was red, and there were little awnings up there all over the windows, and it looked like a French discotheque. Mario used to stand there, forever---always a fixture. The first time I was in the Whisky, I was hanging out right here; it was raining. It was either Moby Grape or Janis Joplin---somebody like that was playing inside---and I didn't have the money, and I was huddled here listening. And Mario was over there and he yelled at me, "What's the matter, don't you have any money?" I go no. He goes "Get inside." That was Mario for ya. Great guy. People say Bill Gazzari was the godfather of rock, but I think Mario was the godfather. He watched us all grow up here. I remember nights I'd come here, he'd grab me and say, "You look like shit. What are you on? You haven't eaten in a week!" Drag me over to the bar and say, "Give him a hamburger ---and you sit down and eat it!" The best. Nobody does that---who does that anymore?





Home














cool theme song i had stuck in my head, so i decided to try it out.







Whatever I wrote was surrounded by rays of light. I used to close the curtains, for I was afraid that the shining rays emanating from my pen might escape into the outside world through even the smallest chink; I wanted suddenly to throw back the screen and light up the world.





Anywhere, anywhere out of this world















the sleeping mechanical bird clamours for a kind of blue







I actually work with mood modeling sideways :-). Many improvisers I've worked with prefer not to make a lot of direct references to affect/mood, since it can be pretty subjective. We tend to talk about musical materials in a more abstract way, but still try to be sensitive about the non-musical references that may be evoked in listeners (or performers). I've studied some mood modeling research papers, and basically pulled some concrete musical aspects of their results to use in my work. For example, I work explicitly with tempo, loudness and timbre, which are the 3 main musical parameter classes that are used in mood modeling. But I don't go beyond that to try to come up with a description of the mood of specific musical materials. That can be tricky especially for music that does not sound much like pop or traditional classical music. For example, my father said after one of my gigs that we sounded "so angry", when that was not how we felt at all!





Abandoned Ukrainian sanatorium, once so famous















Artist turns his dead pet into flying helicopter after it is killed by a car







The Orvillecopter, half cat, half machine. Named after the famous aviator Orville Wright. He was killed by a car. After that he received his propellers posthumously. This is Orvillecopter's first test flight, Soon to be flying with the birds. Oh how he loved birds. He will receive more powerful engines and larger props for his birthday. So this hopping will soon change into steady flight. For the catlovers: it is a tanned hide, just like the shoes you're wearing. For the RC lovers: it's a Lotus T580 (still).





Is Kieron Britain’s most exciting painter?













An Argentinian town has re-emerged after being underwater for 25 years







The unbuilt is characteristic of those arts whose realization requires the remunerated work of many people, the purchase of materials, the use of expensive equipment, etc. Cinema is the paradigmatic case: anyone can have an idea for a film, but then you need expertise, finance, personnel, and these obstacles mean that ninety-nine times out of a hundred the film doesn't get made. Which might make you wonder if the prodigious bother of it all–which technological advances have exacerbated if anything–isn't actually an essential part of cinema's charm, since, paradoxically, it gives everyone access to movie-making, in the form of pure daydreaming. It's the same in the other arts, to a greater or lesser extent. And yet it is possible to imagine an art in which the limitations of reality would be minimized, in which the made and the unmade would be indistinct, an art that would be instantaneously real, without ghosts. And perhaps that art exists, under the name of literature.





Puppet Heap











Floating Record Player







Korean designer Rhea Jeong says she's been astounded by the amount of interest in her conceptual Void LP record player. One look at the design and you can see why it's made so much noise without even uttering a sound. Close your eyes and imagine a little red globe spinning around on top of a vinyl record emitting sound from speakers inside it. The record itself is suspended in mid-air above a simple black base unit - no strings attached, no wires holding it up and definitely no safety net. The imagery is quite simply jaw-dropping. But can such a thing really work?





Making a future with Robot















Keep Mellow Pages Library alive







Getting here, let's say, at 11. Or, if we are particularly hung over, at noon. We usually have a package waiting for us, which is a result of the attention the bookstore has received. A lot of people who read about us have either published work for small press or run a small press. We come in, process our new inventory, take a picture, and post it on our Facebook and Tumblr. During the day I think it all depends on work schedules, so for people who don't have 9 to 5 jobs, they'll stop by. A couple of friends will come and hang out for a while. A lot of people who come to this building don't necessarily come for the library—it's a pretty well known art studio, so they'll poke their head in, assuming we're another studio. We could get one person a day or 25. It really swings.





The End




















It's Cool, I'm Good







As a performer, I think our ability to laugh at a thing is connected to our ability to cry about a thing. Humour requires a certain amount of empathy (or as Freud would argue, embarrassment and shame.) I learned quickly that if you give an audience permission to laugh right up front, they become more open to heavier material later. When pathos and humour come together, an alchemical kind of comprehension is possible for me; it’s psychic, visceral and intellectual all at once. It’s the most powerful and poignant way I’m able to understand the world. Improvisation is like another chemical element. Improvisation is where we dip into a more unconscious place while being intently present. It’s the trap door that can open and let in the unknown. And when the viewer/ audience know it’s unplanned, another layer of bonding happens: we’re all in this together. This isn’t all purely cerebral and calculated. That’s the thing about comedy. You’re either funny or you’re not. Like Jerry Lewis said, you either have funny bones or you don’t. I move through the world finding humour in situations and that helps me manage shitty-ness, and also gives me a lot of pleasure.





Gil the Nihilist: a Sitcom











POETRY IS NOT DEAD







Her sleep in those days was generous to a fault. But she would wake up and feel herself felled by the clarities and definitudes of the new day. Then to work, in the afternoons, in a windowless basement office in an overchilled building on the outskirts of town. There would sometimes be too rational a cast to her mind, and then sometimes she nodded off, but it was an ungiving, dream-free species of sleep and did not want her in it. There was nothing to be made of it, either. It left no residue.





Those eyes in the end! Every once in a while I come back just to look into them, like looking into an endless depth....





















Indiana Man Turns Backyard Into Mini-Roller Coaster Park






The title ‘Amusement Park’ contains of two words- ‘Amusement’ and ‘Park’. The word amusement is derived from the key word ‘amuse’. And the ‘park’ itself is the key word. These verbs refer to actions that provide pleasure, especially as a means of passing time. Amuse, the least specific, implies directing attention away from serious matters. Amusement is the state of experiencing humorous and usually entertaining events or situations, and is associated with enjoyment, happiness, laughter and pleasure. Amusement may also be experienced through the recollection of events which have given rise to amusement in the past. Park is an area of land set aside for public use, as: a. A piece of land with few or no buildings within or adjoining a town, maintained for recreational and ornamental purposes. b. A landscaped city square. c. A large tract of rural land kept in its natural state and usually reserved for the enjoyment and recreation of visitors.





Amusement Park Rides as Closed Queueing Networks












Rare footage of Frank O’Hara, Allen Ginsberg, and Amiri Baraka reading in 1959







the candle end of a miser,/ For a flat-headed drawing pin on its own/ With its point in the air; — in Switzerland, at the bazaar, for an eyelash,/ Curved escapee from a soft eye, the black horn/ Of a chamois; — a warming pan after it’s been hung on its nail,/ For a motionless pendulum, called back to life;/ — In a rickshaw just as it's being readied,/ The puller’s degrading harness, for a pair of braces;/ — At a lewd woman's house, a pleasant lace-fringed pillow,/ For an unused pincushion with a merry flounce;/ — A mask put aside by a tired fencer,/ For an eye protector to be placed over the glasses/ Of a stonebreaker; — the clearly wrinkled temple/ Of an old man, for the upper part of the underside of a fist;/ — For the hair-touselling black cloth of a photographer,/ That with which, generating a breeze, four people cover/ A coffin; — an album of portraits, if, to open it,/ You have to overcome one or two fasteners, for a parish register;/ — For a lowly button hook, the hook, almost a part of his body,/ Whose noble fate is to stand in for the five fingers of an armless man;/ — An arm sling, for the scarf in which a much enlarged/ Cheek is hidden on a day when it's inflamed;/ — When he's making iron hot enough to be bent,/ For a pair of/ hearth bellows, the bellows used in a forge;/ — For that which someone with a cough shows to a throat-doctor,/ An arched cavern, reddened by the setting sun,/ With a solitary stalactite; — a lake of blood that appears/ In a dangerous district, for the treacherous spittle/ Of a consumptive; — at a saddler’s, the tether/ From which an empty stirrup gleams, for the broken fastener/ Of a yellow umbrella; — for the perfidious, sworn-at bit of shot/ That an eater of game spits aside, cursing it to the devil,/ A cannonball cleaving the air…





Kindertrauma












Ten Skies







I have an interest in exploring space-time relationships through film. There’s real time, and there’s how we perceive time. Time affects the way we perceive place. That’s where I get this idea of “looking and listening”. In my films, I’m very aware of recording place over time, and the way that makes you understand place. Once you’ve been watching something for a while, you become aware of it differently. I could show you a photograph of the place, but that doesn’t convince you, it’s not the same as seeing it in time. I’m very interested, now, in how much time is necessary to understand place. In my films, I tend to work with 100-foot rolls, which is about 2.5 minutes. That way I can have a little control over the window on the place that I record. I’m not convinced that 2.5 minutes is the proper amount of time necessary to understand landscapes but it is a manageable amount of time. I like to think I’m being democratic – each shot gets the same amount of time. It’s just a strategy. It’s important to watch for a period to choose the right time. I think that length is a manageable time for audiences. I also feel that it’s a bit like going back to the beginning of cinema, using the whole roll.





Martin Manufacturing



















One man Black Metal bands




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p.s. Hey. Anyone who wants to enter the contest and hasn't yet, remember that the deadline is your bedtime in your time zone tonight. I'm in a really low mood today, and that'll surely effect the p.s., and I apologize in advance. ** Timmy Reed, Hi, nice to meet you. Thank you for coming in here and for the entry. ** kidinawell, Greetings, welcome, and thank you a lot. ** Gary gray, Thanks for the entry. Sucks about the Halloween photos, but it's well worth waiting for. Acid's ambitions are always too much to live up to in some way, usually a big way, or they were for me. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David. ** Kevin Killian, Hi, my pal. It's always a boon when you choose here. Alec, yes, a truly lovely and super smart guy. I'm glad you and Sypha will be meeting. Take care, K. ** Matty B, Thank you, Matty. ** Cassandra Troyan, Hey, Cassandra. Thanks for giving the contest a try, and it's really nice to see you. ** Don w, Ah, Don. I owe you a huge bunch. That project was so great and humbling. Thank you so much! ** Angela, Angela! It's cool how the contest is pulling people in here whom I miss, like especially you. I hope you're doing great. ** Scunnard, Hi, man. I had to make my eyes do a trick to not see what your link was, and I think I did so successfully. Thank you. ** Sypha, Hi, James. One of the dancers played the new Gaga album during warm ups yesterday. There was nothing more than a handful of very mildly interesting moments there for me, sorry. ** Thomas Moronic, Thanks, T. ** Bollo, And thank you, Jonathan. ** Bill, Probably not, and thanks a lot. ** Torn porter, I'll look around see if I can find a video for 'Shivers' that isn't blocked. I think the performance went well. The response had all the earmarks of appreciation, I think. ** Marilyn Roxie, Thanks a lot, Marilyn. ** Etc etc etc, Yeah, the packaging is sweet. Thanks for the contest entry. I think it came off last night as hoped, as far as we can tell. ** Chris Goode, Hi, Chris! It's so nice to see you, my friend! And thanks a whole bunch for wading into the contest. I look forward very much to hearing how you're doing and what you've been up to. ** gucciCODYprada, Thank you a lot. I wonder if you're who I think you might be. ** Misanthrope, I'm spared the pleasure/shock going to some dark, crazy place, eh? Oh, maybe the holidays are coordinated. That's interesting. ** Steevee, I'll check it out for sure, thanks. ** Zach, Thanks a lot for the link to the Ian Duncan thing. I'm pretty sure I don't know that. That'll hit the spot today, thank you, man. Happy to hear that MBV did their incontestable number on you. I did a skid/stop on your second comment lest I attach your name to the link when I look at it. Successfully. That Jake Evans thing looks totally bizarre or very interesting or both. I didn't know anything about it. Thanks. The second link didn't work, but the internet where I'm staying is very dodgy and temperamental. I'll try it again in a bit. ** Chris Dankland, Thank you very much, Chris. Sure, of course, about the hugs. It's really, really, really hard. Obviously, I'm so glad that you're listening to and enjoying GbV. That's really sweet to know. ** Bill Porter, Silverchair's later album 'Diorama' is kind of a masterpiece. Beckett, yeah, insanely good. Intimidatingly good. Thank you for the entry. ** J. J. Morr, Thank you very much for taking the time to come in here and entering the contest. It's good to meet you. ** Mark Murphy, Hi, Mark. Thank you very, very much! ** Okay. I haven't done a Varioso post in well over a year. It's weird. I hope there's something of interest in it for you. See you tomorrow.

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p.s. Hey. Thanks for all the contest entries. The detached links and I will be sequestered today, and I'll announce the winner tomorrow. Oh, and I want to give you a slightly early heads up that the blog will be holding one of its occasional Writers Workshop posts on this coming Saturday. Please plan ahead, if needed, to devote some time to reading the short work that will be presented to you in the workshop and then giving the author, Bill Porter in this case, your feedback, whether it be a brief reaction or much more. Thank you! ** Scunnard, Hey. Your trick resulted in nothing but an eyeful of education, so no problem to say the least. I'm good. Busy doing what? ** Gary gray, That new Sean Patrick is terrific. He's terrific. I hope you can figure out how to make that sigil writing experiment payoff in transcendent story form. I worked my ass off trying to make a similar experiment work at one point, and I still can't tell if it did. Tricky trick. Your description was really juicy, nice. Yeah, I saw that the new Death Grips has arrived in the world when I first woke up this morning, and I'm about to go give myself the gift of it. Exciting! They're so great. Thanks! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Glad you enjoyed that footage. That was definitely a cool find by someone. Thanks for the entry. We will all know if you've won by tomorrow. Best of luck until then. ** Kyler, Hi. Was it astrological? My tendency is to blame myself. Maybe it was a combination. Thank you for the entry. ** Lee, Hi, Lee. That is a pretty Borges story, it's true. Hunh. Nice, thanks, man. ** MANCY, Thanks a bunch for the link. Hope you're good. ** Bollo, My blog is so phone unfriendly. Does that mean it's old fashioned. Maybe. Weird. The announcement for that show is beautiful. I hope it gets photoed. Have fun, and let me know what Creed decided to do. The artist, not the band. ** Angela, Hi, Angela! Uh, when my particular sprits dip, I just think everything I do or try to do is worthless because I am, so my concentration feels like decadence or something. Thanks for the well wishes. I'm shaking it off. And thanks for the sweet stuff about the blog. You rule. I hope I'll get to you again soon somehow. Love, me. ** Zach, Hi. That Wikipedia thing was very interesting indeed. I am interested to see the article, yes, definitely, if it's easy to hook me up and if you don't mind. Big thanks for intro-ing me to that. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. I'm glad you approve of the Varioso's return and of the form it took. What's your friend's show? I hope your pals get to meet your new pal. You sound good. It's a cool sound. ** Torn porter, The Shivers ... mm, I don't know, maybe I don't know them. But that's one of those names that blurs into other names so easily. I'll google and listen and find out. How did the pix-taking session work out? Do you have particular strategy for shooting bands amidst their sets? That always seems like it would be a challenging gig. ** _Black_Acrylic, It's your birthday tomorrow? Wow, an early happy happy! 34 is a great age, don't sweat it. Those disco lyrics are kind of really good, yeah. I'll follow them. ** Kiddiepunk, Hey, M! Thanks, buddy. I hope to see you straight away. ** Etc etc etc, Hi. Yeah, that Silverblatt transgression essay is really nice. One of the very best early attempts to define transgressive lit. He is a super smart guy, that Michael. Thanks a lot for dipping me back into it. Best to you! ** Chris Goode, Chris! Thanks and thanks again. I want a catch up, etc. from you at some point of your choosing in the not too distant future, remember. Lots of love from the place I call home. ** Steevee, Oh, right, I can imagine the load yesterday was a drag given that I was using so many different types of time-requiring things. I like what I know of DJ Rashad, yeah, but I haven't heard the new one. I will. Thanks, Steve. ** Sypha, Yeah, I don't know, I think you have to already be on Gaga's train to think the station she's stopped it in this time is all that different from the last station. But what do I know? Nada. ** Misanthrope, I think maybe she's playing with her wad the way a little will play with his food hoping he can make it look more delicious but he forgets that it's also getting cold while he plays. But multi-millions of buyers and/or fans can't be wrong or whatever they say. Thanks for the good wishes, but don't worry about me. I'm fine. Were those links your contest entry? I can only accept one as per the rules. I guess the first one since it was the first. But I'll look at them all. Am I going to get fucked up? Probably, right? But that's good, right? ** Bill Porter, Hi, Bill. Excited for the weekend! Another vote for an astrology-based explanation for the mood thing. God, maybe, right? Who's to know, ultimately? It seems to be waning, in any case, which is very good. Long story short, thank you. ** Bill, Hi. You're performing a lot these days. That's so awesome. So happy/proud to have had your wonderful piece in the array. When I made that post, I didn't know that 'Home' was already sold out. Urgh. No, I don't know the Another Timbre label's Anonymous Zone. I will go look at that as soon as I click the Publish button today. Thank you, Bill. ** Chris Dankland, You're really into Stanya Kahn! Awesome! She's so great, that's very cool. Thanks, great, that you liked a bunch of the Varioso's stuff. Oh, ha ha, the match up of the teenaged mugshots and the robots link was kind of a spontaneous poetic association that made intuitive sense to me only or something. Maybe it was also a little bit of a test to see if anyone was paying detailed attention to the post too. So, yeah, no connection other than poetically. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Thanks for the commiseration. I'm okay. It was just some weird conspiracy of something bad or other that got ahold of me or something, but I'm easing back up. You feel better. ** Okay. What's today ... oh, image stack. Hope you like it. See you tomorrow with the contest winner's identity in tow.