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p.s. Hey. I'm very happy to pre-send the blog off into its short winter reruns phase by offering you a guest-post by a true maestro of "the post", writer and d.l. Alan. Please use your eyes to trace and absorb his Egypt-oriented trajectory and say something to him, if you will. Thanks. And thank you so, so much, Alan! Okay, later today I head off to Japan where I'll be for the next two weeks. During that time, you'll get 10 rerun posts and 2 newbies. Let's say that there won't necessarily be p.s.es per say, other than a daily pre-programmed sentence or two intro-ing the post and saying hi and so on. However, I might just pop in unexpectedly a couple of times along the way to catch up with whatever comments you leave here if I end up having an activity-free morning or two or three. In any case, the blog will return to being its usual self with new posts and fresh p.s.es on January 22nd. Oh, and if anyone out there could make and send me any guest-posts in the next couple of weeks, that would really great of you because when I get back, I'll be scrambling to make new posts amidst almost assured bad jet lag. Thus, any help the blog can get from you guys would be fantastic. Thank you for your consideration. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. 'Sad santaness': that's a really nice word and characterization. I can see how it would seem sad, and I guess there's sadness in the novel, but it's ultimately going for hard-fought ecstasy, and we'll see if I can get there. I was just talking about LA as being technically bright courtesy only of the sky. I will pass long your admiration to Fujiko. Zac (my traveling companion) and I will be seeing her and working with her on the Gisele Vienne film that we're all collaborating on. My dad wanted to be a writer when he was young, but he wasn't so good at it. He wrote a memoir that he self-published. His early writer dreams kind of made him feel connected to me in a nice way, but he could also competitive with me too, i.e. 'If I wrote a book, it would be so much better than yours'. Complicated but very interesting guy. Huh, I don't have bad associations with the idea of the universal in combo with the oblique. When I'm writing, I like to put every goal in play, even impossible to achieve ones like universal. It helps me carve myself or something. I don't think I'll be using the word universal in the novel though, or I can't imagine doing so, or not without a ton of countering subtext or something. Thank you about that Santa quote. Do please have the most wonderful next two weeks that you can. ** Empty Frame, My pleasure, man. Thanks, I think I will have a great trip, and you have a great two weeks doing everything you do, okay? ** David Ehrenstein, I can imagine Morrissey pulling off a good novel. Ah, the problem with trying to work with gifs is that, even though I only want, say, a gif featuring dangling legs to be dangling legs in the gif's configuration, there's no way around people recognizing the source and being pulled out of my composition, but I wish that didn't happen. Oh, well. Please have a great next 14 days, sir. ** Misanthrope, I like cold. I don't like heat. So, I guess I'm with you. Hell and Greer were always writers as much as they were musicians, so that's a difference. I hope LPS got home safely -- well, actually I hope you guys made a U-turn -- and that the drive back wasn't too hellish. I guess it's nice that my scrapbook allowed you to get back in touch with your Jeremy Sempter lust. Not my intention, but so it goes, and locking him there was probably just asking for it. Yes, here's another prod to you to get some mileage on your novel while I'm indisposed elsewhere, please? ** Tosh Berman, Thanks, Tosh! I think people seem to think Cave's first novel was better than the second one. I didn't read the second, and I couldn't get through the first one. Musician memoirs are a whole other thing, yeah. Great musician memoirs definitely happen. I'd like to read the Jah Wobble memoir. I'll try to find that. Thanks, T., and have a splendid next 14 days. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Oh, thanks a lot for saying that, man. Really sorry to hear that you're feeling ugh and blah, and I guess it's good timing on the much hyped snow fall. Feel a lot better. Yeah, that Yo La Tengo song is really terrific. I haven't listened to them ages. ** MANCY, Hi, S! Aw, thank you so much! Yeah, ULTRADUSTER rules. I'll do my best to have a great trip, and I'm pretty sure I will, and you do your ultra-best with the next two weeks that time and location have saddled you with, yeah? ** Keaton, Hey. 'I like those little glimpses that can only be seen with bedroom eyes': that's beautiful. Health is definitely a great goal. It's, like, the fundament to all the other pleasures and revelations and all of that. 'Empire ... ': I thought about rereading that pre-this tip, but then I didn't. Best laid daydreams. Yeah, I think this new novel is going to definitely be my best. It sort has to be. Either that or my spectacular disaster. I only know the Disney Peter Pan. I don't even know that film that I swiped all those gifs from. Take care, buddy and see you ere too long happily. ** Antonio Heras, Hi, Antonio! Thank you, man. Well, the novel is essentially about the effect of love -- of feeling it, wanting it, giving it, getting, writing it, etc. -- so that might make it inherently romantic, but ... I used a Badiou quote in the scrapbook where he talk about love as 'a production of truth'. That's kind of more where I'm trying to come from. No, no title for the novel yet. I'm kicking around some possibilities, but nothing has seemed good enough to stick yet. You know, I haven't seen that Peter Pan movie that I took the gifs from. I was just looking for Peter Pan stuff to use in the composition, and the ones from that movie were the most appropriate and interesting re: what I wanted to make. So, I don't know if that movie is any good or not. It's really great to have you back. Sucks that I'm taking my vacation just as you return, but please hang in here while I'm away, and a big hug to you too! ** Kyler, Aw, gosh, thank you, my friend. Yeah, I'll get to spend my birthday on this amazing Japanese 'art' island, Naoshima, and with my favorite person in the world, so it should be a really good one. I was in three rock bands during the early phase of my developing as a writer, and I obviously have a bunch of music references in my novels, and they're as influenced by music as they are by writing, but you sound like you got much further with your musical side/talent than I did. My musical talent was tiny, which I guess was all for the best. Take good care for the next while. ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris! Thanks a lot for saying that, Chris. It means a lot. Super sweet that they want to publish the interview. Wow, that's really cool news. Thank you again so much for doing that. I'm really glad you like 'Wide Eyed'. I love that book a lot. It was a total boon to get to publish it. Trinie is amazing. ‘The Orange Eats Creeps’ is really great too, for sure. I think I've only read or tried to read some fiction I found online by James Franco. I didn't think much of it at all, or not enough to read more than a bit. Of course, not having read more than a bit or bits means I don't really have an informed opinion about it. I guess I would say it seemed like slightly quirky MFA-instructed writing. Nothing about it stood out as promising or anything, or not enough to me to keep investigating it. I'll check out Micael Cera's writing. I had no idea that he wrote. I can't figure out the Labeouf plagiarism thing either. I guess maybe it sort of seems like maybe he did plagiarize, and now he's trying to spin it into a Franco or Joaquim Phoenix kind of performative act by piling on more plagiarism or something? I can't really get sufficiently interested in it to try deconstructing it. I did see the "lean" thing, yeah. Curious to see what this is all about. Take good care and have a super great couple of weeks, Chris! ** Robert-nyc, Thank you so very kindly, Robert. That's so good of you to say. You great, I hope? ** Paul Curran, Thanks a lot, Paul! I head to where you are tonight. Yeah, other than a first day in Tokyo, during I think we'll mostly drift around in jet lag mode, we'll be in Tokyo from the night of the 16th until we head back to Paris on the 21st. You're working during then? Maybe at least we can have a get together for a coffee or something if you have time? I'll write to you from the road just before we head back to Tokyo, and hopefully we can plan a meet up. Oh, Kidzania is a no-go, eh? That's okay. I have a feeling that it's one of those things that's a lot more exciting in concept than in 3D point of fact. So, hopefully I'll see you in person before too long! ** Scunnard, Thanks, Jared. I'm sorry about your funk. Oh, well, there's a quote or two by me in that scrapbook that you can take as some kind of support or hug re: the non-materialization issue. The Cure's 'Pornography' is so good. Definitely my fave of theirs, and I don't think I've ever listened to it not on vinyl. 'Strange Day': my favorite Cure song. That's kind of how I guessed Snakefinger would sound now. I think your description is probably enough for me. Me? You mean re: older musical stuff? Uh, I wasted or used a while yesterday watching this BBC documentary about Peter Green and about the era of Fleetwood Mac when he was their god and they were kind of genius. There are actually characters based on Green and Danny Kirwan from FM in my novel. So, I was getting back into how great that early FM is. That's probably the closest. Be well and be yourself maximally during my break please. ** Thomas Moronic, Thanks so much, T! I will have an amazing time Japan for sure, and you have amazing time in the UK! ** Allesfliesst, Hi, Kai. Antarctica? Let's see ... oh, my friend Zac mentioned that going to Antarctica was one of his big lifelong dreams, and I thought about how bizarre and remarkable it would be to go there, so I said, Let's do it, and we looked into how it was possible, and it was possible but expensively and only in a full-fledged way if you took a ship from Argentina, so we just decided to do it and to go even more extravagant by spending a week in Patagonia beforehand, 'cos, you know, life's short and all of that. It won't be the same without you there in Japan, but we'll probably have fun. Yeah, you've been talking about a trip to Paris ever since we first cyber-met. If there's a penguin university in Antarctica, I'll pick up its brochure, scan it, and send it on to you. Yeah, the novel is kind of a love explosion, but especially the second section, which what I've been scrapbooking lately. It's definitely a challenge, but so far it's been working really well, and I'm kind of amazed by that, but we will see. Thanks a lot, Kai, and have a lovely couple of weeks if I don't interact with you from there. ** Flit, Hi, Flitster. Aw, man, thanks. Yeah, I was kind of thrilled that I could build that legs waterfall and fireworks pool at the bottom. All the quotes by me in the scrapbook page are taken directly from the novel, or at least from the current draft of the novel. Thank you so much. Heavily and intricately rock the time while I'm away please. ** Creative Massacre, Oh, no, being made squeamish is really good for me. I love a challenge, and my squeamishness seems silly to me, so it was very good! My weekend was mostly just getting ready to leave tonight, with some art-seeing and friend-seeing and Parisian Mexican food tossed in, but it was good. Oh, you're in the path of that much ballyhooed cold that we over here in merely chilly Europe keep reading about. I guess try to find it interesting, if you can, and I'm sure you will. Take care of your good self, Misty, and see you soon! ** Etc etc etc, Hi, Casey! It's great to see you! I'm glad I got to see you before I split. You're in Austin with the remains of DFW, cool. That's going to be so incredibly fascinating. Thank you kindly for your great words about the scrapbook page. Yeah, thank you a lot! Oh, please do keep me informed about your DFW discoveries and your no doubt great related ruminations. Enjoy everything! ** Steevee, Hi. No, I'm not worried about that trapped ship thing. It was on an explorative mission into the internal area of Antarctica, and that's why it got stuck on its way out. I think our ship is going to just cruise along the periphery and let us explore only the crust, so it should be okay. The only thing I'm worried about is the voyage there and back in combo with my tendency to get very, very seasick. I hope that all works out smoothly with the repair of your remote. It sounds like it's mostly likely to be fine. And I hope you have an excellent next couple of weeks, my friend. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Thank you. There's a new Pettibon book? Man, there are so many Pettibon books out there, Jesus, not that I'm complaining even the tiniest bit. Yeah, Zac and I saw a new Pettibon show when we were in NYC recently, and it was as dark and genius as hell. Enjoy, and tell me how the Buchloh essay is. I'm curious. I'll enjoy my travels, thank you, man, and I look forward to getting to catch up. I hope your project goes really, really well while I'm off and away. ** Gary gray, Hi, Gary. Christians are the quaintest things on those rare occasions when they're not just awful and determined to ruin everybody else's fun and logic. Very nice reversed intro. Really promising. I'll read it again and more closely once I've run my pre-trip errands and have a more peaceful mind. Thanks for your wish for my fun in Japan. It seems pretty destined. And thank you about my scrapbook page. Be well, write well, until next we get to chew each other's fat, man. ** Bill, Thank you, Bill! Wow, given 'Doctor Faustus's' length, it's trippy to imagine you reading it, ha ha. I'll do my best to make the Japan trip worthy of your envy. See you soon! ** MyNeighbour JohnTurtorro, Thanks a lot, buddy. Means a ton. And thank you for the Japan well wishes. I'll try to report in from there if I can. Have a great couple of next 14 days! ** Okay. Get into Alan's wonderful post now, please. Maybe I'll be checking in from Japan before too long. I'll try. In any case, I hope the upcoming spate of reruns gives you pleasure if you decide to stick around this place for the duration. Best of the best to all of you until we get to be immediate and blabby once again. The blog will see you tomorrow.