January 2012
10 posts
Pirates
Barbossa: “The world used to be a bigger place.”
Jack Sparrow: “The world’s still the same. There’s just… less in it.”
“It’s a country that does things in lurches. Born in radicalism, then...”
– Steve Erickson These Dreams of You, 12.
Eternally skeptical and distrustful of power
The truly educated become conscious. They become self-aware. They do not lie to themselves. They do not pretend that fraud is moral or that corporate greed is good. They do not claim that the demands of the marketplace can morally justify the hunger of children or denial of medical care to the sick. They do not throw 6 million families from their homes as the cost of doing business. Thought is a...
PF = Post-Fiction
Over the next 12 months, I have committed to write no fewer than 7 articles and chapters of 6,000 to 10,000 words as well as 5 pieces of 1,000 to 2,000 words (this does not include the main work in progress), none of which is about literature.
A privilege
I am NEVER bored.
Some thoughts after Mission Impossible: Ghost...
Everyone likes to bitch about the mindlessness of Hollywood blockbusters - from Transformers 3 to the latest Mission Impossible - and how they only provide explosions, chases, and CGI, which is now officially 100% indistinguishable from live action sequences, at the expense of plot development and complex narrative. I myself have done a fair bit of such bitching. But perhaps this is a wrong way to...
“Those first years when you can’t blow your own nose, when your father picked you...”
– A.A. Gill, “Fatherhood” - from Is Further Away (via winesburgohio)
New
2011 was a great year for me - possibly the best in a number of years. 2012 promises to be even better on all fronts and in all departments. Whatever it brings, I want to remember, with all humility, that my life is so much safer and more comfortable than that of painfully large masses of people on this planet and that this obliges. To maintain the clarity of vision while being open to the...
December 2011
18 posts
Ifttt →
Actually - pretty amazing.
Watch
iceblink:
The first rule of Thesaurus Club is, you don’t talk about, bring up, mention, speak of, discuss or chat about Thesaurus Club.
Can I officially submit my application to join the Thesaurus Club?
Mesmerizing
Now, apart from the utopian goal of the whole project, or an array of projects, more like it, this is truly mesmerizing - statistical sublime at its best.
Please read
Kim Stanley Robinson on utopia, ecology, and what we need to do.
“The implosion of Lost was like a dirty bomb that made the world unsafe for serial dramas to this day.” I don’t agree with the article’s “I-want-my-tv-meticulous-and-rational-in-their-mysteries-and-nothing-else-counts” judgement of Lost, but it’s still a cool sentence. And if you change “implosion” to “explosion,” it is true,...
China on Howard
China Mieville on the World Fantasy Award, which is, technically, a head of H.P. Lovecraft, a writer known for his noxious racist views:
So where does that leave the World Fantasy Award? Well, in my case, I have always done something very specific and simple. I consider the award inextricable from but not reducible to Lovecraft himself. Therefore, I was very honoured to receive the award as...
Hugo
There are many good things and probably a few not-so-good things I could say about it, but one thing is certain - it is a loving testimony to the magic of cinema. It was touching. And all three of us (Melissa, Rob, moi) were fooled - that actress is NOT Sigourney Weaver.
Feist - "The Bad In Each Other"
Speak plain he said But didn’t see He acted that way And held me like a cup Fill me up then pour me out Therein lies the doubt. We had the same feelings At opposite times. When a good man and a good woman Can’t find the good in each other Then a good man and a good woman Will bring out the worst in the other The bad in each other But what and how To find us now When we’ve become...
Viewing
Several days ago, I watched Sophie Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006), Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), and Lech Majewski’s The Mill and the Cross (2011) on the same day - each mind-blowing and impressive in their own way (not to mention weird casting overlaps between all three).
Time machines.
November 2011
14 posts
Academic (almost) epiphany
Last night, at about 1:13AM, after reading Espen Aarseth’s essay in First Person, the missing pieces fell into place and I had a massive kaleidoscopic shift of ideas on how to link video games and science fiction. The detailed explanation is too, ehem, detailed for here, but suffice it to say, I lost the last vestiges of my narratological faith. And now I have even more to say about video...
The Familiar →
If you’re into House of Leaves, you will probably want to read this - some new and mind-blowing (do I use that word a lot?) information about The Familiar.
The evolution of video game controllers →
More cool stuff like that here.
Homage
My undying love for Southland Tales and cultural apophenia leave me no choice but to conclude that the safe-pulling episode in Fast Five, which I have just watched courtesy of Netflix (they really pushed it to the top of my queue without my knowledge!), is an intertextual tribute to the ATM-pulling scene from Kelly’s Meisterwerk. And Dwayne Johnson’s presence in both movies only...
Heinrich Khunrath →
I love it when 16th-century alchemical images become a key to my current research.
And yet again ...
I go to the desert to remember how to live IN the moment.
The Desert
From the mind-blowing book by an art historian who saw the light (of the desert):
In sublimity - the superlative degree of beauty - what land can equal the desert with its wide plains, its grim mountains, and its expanding canopy of sky! You shall never see elsewhere as here the dome, the pinnacle, the minaret fretted with golden fire at sunrise and sunset; you shall never see elsewhere as here...
In the desert of the real.
Drive
Valhalla Rising (2009) was stunning, but Drive, Refn’s latest, is mind-blowing! Do yourself a favor and see it - whoever wherever whenever you are.
Hard core
For the last week or so been reading up on the hard-core art history/visual culture theory that I need for my book project. Some of it is REALLY hard-core and makes the neurobiology of seeing from several days ago seem easy. Here’s a sample:
“More exactly, pictorial nominalism or the constitution of a picture of aspects visually pertaining to all the depicted objects subsists in...
October 2011
22 posts
The best film you have never even heard about
It was made in 2005. It was directed by John Maybury, who made 24 films and you probably never heard about a single one. (I didn’t.) It was scored by Brian Eno. It stars Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley, Kris Kristofferson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kelly Lynch, and Daniel Craig. It is intelligent without being pretentious. And it’s called The Jacket.
O fejsiu
Tutaj - jeśli ktoś ma dużo czasu i ma ochotę poczytać moje tzw. żale nt. “fejsia”.
Findings
From the ever curious Steven Johnson - read about it here and register here.
“Storm the Reality Studio. And retake the universe.”
– WSB Nova Express (59).
WatchTreat your ears right. Listen to this track.