Driftwork

Sleepless in Seattle

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:31:34 +0100

Sleepless in Seattle

Deal

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:18:03 +0100

“You’re a good guy,” she said. “You ought to get somebody good. But Pierce.” She waited till he looked at her. “You got to make a deal, and make it stick. You and her. You got to know what deal you’ve made, and it’s got to have something for you, and something for her. You got to deal. Even I know that.” (33)

John Crowley, Endless Things

Indigo Prophecy

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:33:22 +0100

The game came out so so - but how cool is that title?! I mean, really.

A different perspective

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:42:06 +0100

A different perspective

Pajiba

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:58:00 +0100

This is the way movie reviews should be written. Or any kind of reviews. In fact, why don’t you go on and check out the entire website - it’s ferociously funny, addictively informative and scary-smart to boot. All of which information is courtesy of Iceblink. Including what follows. Thank you. You can go back to your drinks now.

This is for you

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:19:00 +0100

Standing at the punch table swallowing punch
can’t pay attention to the sound of anyone
a little more stupid, a little more scared
every minute more unprepared

I made a mistake in my life today
everything I love gets lost in drawers
I want to start over, I want to be winning
way out of sync from the beginning

I wanna hurry home to you
put on a slow, dumb show for you
and crack you up
so you can put a blue ribbon on my brain
god I’m very, very frightened
I’ll overdo it

Looking for somewhere to stand and stay
I leaned on the wall and the wall leaned away
Can I get a minute of not being nervous
and not thinking of my dick
My leg is sparkles, my leg is pins
I better get my shit together, better gather my shit in
You could drive a car through my head in five minutes
from one side of it to the other

I wanna hurry home to you
put on a slow, dumb show for you
and crack you up
so you can put a blue ribbon on my brain
god I’m very, very frightened
I’ll overdo it

You know I dreamed about you
for twenty-nine years before I saw you
You know I dreamed about you
I missed you for
for twenty-nine years

You know I dreamed about you
for twenty-nine years before I saw you
You know I dreamed about you
I missed you for
for twenty-nine years

Another of my many obsessions (click through for a larger image)...

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:34:00 +0100

Another of my many obsessions (click through for a larger image) - from the bottom: the Polish DVD (don’t even ask about the aptness of the translation), the American DVD, the American Blu-ray, and the unreleased Cannes cut (yup, they booed Kelly out there - basteds!).

The big sleep

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:12:00 +0100

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.

Love in the times of the virus

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:52:20 +0100

At the heart of Synners there is love. Genuine love. Not a synthetic jacking (into the Matrix, that is), not slick cybersex (even though there is a bit of that, too), not a candy-sweet affair. The man with a different world in his eyes may be gone into the big blue of his virtual beach (or should we say, Big Blue?), but in this world, right now, right here, there is a marked (Mark-ed?) – dreadlocked and black – woman. Gina. One that was always there for Mark, one that made looking for him, lost in the revel without a pause (software does not have the “pause” function, you know), her way of life. It is her anger (remember that punch she launches on Gabe just as he left some change in the machines?), her confusion (no, she’s no angel), her resigned affection for the man made of noise and light and her growing attachment for another man (this one made very much of flesh that can be punched) that make Synners so warm, so human, so recognizable for all those who have been places Gina has. The cover blurb for Steve Erickson’s (no, not fantasy’s Steven Erikson) The Sea Came In At Midnight says: “lyrical, aching with loss, […] most haunting exploration of the mysteries of desire and redemption.” Scratch Erickson (just for a second, that is – we can’t get him off the radar at all other times) – this is the blurb for Synners.

It is Gina’s “who do you love?” that echoes throughout the novel, driving it from stem to stem. Reverberating through the scenes of noise and fury in which the world is collapsing (in fact, it is only the GridLid that is collapsing after Mark’s stroke is released onto the nets, but for many there is no difference), “who do you love?” says more about the novel than any other phrase or sentence. It is also Cadigan’s declaration of independence that stands in M/m-arked opposition to Case’s “Who do I hate?” in Neuromancer’s conclusion. The uber-cyberpunk hero fuels the Kuang virus with self-loathing, “old alchemy of the brain and its vast pharmacy.” Definitely Gina, certainly Gabe, possibly Sam, maybe a few others – they are fueled by what stands on another shelf in that same pharmacy. Love.

iceblink: also, do yourself a favor and watch this in HD, preferably full screen [Sits in a dark...

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:57:00 +0100

iceblink:

also, do yourself a favor and watch this in HD, preferably full screen

[Sits in a dark room with his mouth agape, watching it looping endlessly.]

You are God

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:06:00 +0100

God, he thought, and felt ill. Was this what Tanya Lee had called the “aquatic horror” shape? It had no shape. Nor pseudopodia, either flesh or metal. It was, in a sense, not there at all; when he managed to look directly at it, the shape vanished; he saw through it, saw the people on the far side — but not it. Yet if he turned his head, caught it out of a sidelong glance, he could determine its boundaries.

It was terrible; it blasted him with its awareness. As it moved it drained the life from each person in turn; it ate the people who had assembled, passed on, ate again, ate more with an endless appetite. It hated; he felt its hate. It loathed; he felt its loathing for everyone present — in fact he shared its loathing. All at once he and everyone else in the big villa were each a twisted slug, and over the fallen slug carcasses the creature savored, lingered, but all the time coming directly toward him — or was that an illusion? If this is a hallucination, Chien thought, it is the worst I have ever had; if it is not, then it is evil reality; it’s an evil thing that kills and injures. He saw the trail of stepped-on, mashed men and women remnants behind it; he saw them trying to reassemble, to operate their crippled bodies; he heard them attempting speech.

I know who you are, Tung Chien thought to himself. You, the supreme head of the worldwide Party structure. You, who destroy whatever living object you touch; I see that Arabic poem, the searching for the flowers of life to eat them — I see you astride the plain which to you is Earth, plain without hills, without valleys. You go anywhere, appear any time, devour anything; you engineer life and then guzzle it, and you enjoy that.

from PKD “Faith of Our Fathers”

Are You Shivering?

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:00:00 +0100

Are you shivering? Are you cold?
Are you bathed in silver or drowned in gold?
This dream’s vitality
With filaments as fine as a spider’s web
Pour through your mouth
They pour through your mouth
O river of silver, O river of flowers
I lie down and shiver in your silver river
Out drips the last drop of this vital fluid

Our life has grown weary
The stars have grown old
Are you still shivering?
Are you still cold?
Are you loathsome tonight?
Does your madness shine bright?
Are you loathsome tonight?

In the oceans of the moon
Swimming squidlike and squalid
This bright moon is a liquid
The dark earth is a solid

This is moon music in the light of the moon

Recoil - Breath Control

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:46:27 +0100

Recoil - Breath Control

Photo

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:38:06 +0100

"… I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot."

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:14:00 +0100

“… I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.”

Babylon

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:46:51 +0100

Contemporary memory is deficient in that we do not really remember anything directly; we merely work backwards and extrapolate any event connected by circumstancial evidence - such as when we find a trout in the milk.

We are not truly connected to our past save for moments of intense crisis, emotion, danger, and so on. We are merely replaying tattered jerky films coated in dust.

We only truly remember when we are truly conscious. Which is a state which is becoming stranger and stranger to most people on the planet, as it slowly submerges itself under a thick heavy suffocating blanket of lies, jealousy, festering dreams, refracted vision, mutton dressed as lamb, and smaller and smaller cells for everyone to hide their imagined riches which fade away in countless silent drifts of static, rust and dust.

Effort is our money. We must pay the unpayable.

In Russian, the word “Will” means the same as “Freedom”.

The Harvest is Plentiful, But the Reapers are Few.

Pity.

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:15:37 +0100

Pity.

Red Right Hand

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:37:00 +0100

Take a little walk to the edge of town, go across the tracks
Where the viaduct looms like a bird of doom, as it shifts and cracks
Where secrets lie in the border fires, in the humming wires,
Hey man you know you’re never coming back
Past the square, past the bridge, past the mills past the stacks
On a gathering storm comes a tall handsome man
In a dusty black coat with a red right hand.

He’ll wrap you in his arms tell you that you’ve been a good boy
He’ll rekindle all the dreams it took you a lifetime to destroy.
He’ll reach deep into your soul, steal your shrinking soul
but there wont be a single thing that you can do
He’s a god, he’s a man, he’s a ghost, he’s a guru
They’re whispering his name though this disapearing land
But hidden in his coat is a red right hand

You dont own no money? He’ll get you some
You don’t have no car? he’ll get you one
You dont have no self respect you feel like an insect,
Well dont you worry buddy coz here he comes
Through the ghettos and the barrio and the bowery and the slums
A shadow is cast whereever he stands
Stacks of green paper in his red right hand

You’ll see him in your nightmares, you’ll see him in your dreams
He’ll appear out of no where but he aint what he seems
You’ll see him in your head, on the TV screen
And hey buddy, Im warning you to turn it off
He’s a ghost, he’s a god, he’s a man, he’s a guru
You’re one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan
designed and directed by his red right hand.

[The emphasis mine - this song/lyric rules so massively on so many levels that I could shift into a 3-hour lecture on the ontology, intertext and politics of this vision at the slightest hint of interest - so don’t tempt me.]

The film that makes almost all other contemporary films seem...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:33:00 +0100

The film that makes almost all other contemporary films seem inadequate, irrelevant and antiquated.

The silhouette is unmistakable. What a great show that was!

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:26:00 +0100

The silhouette is unmistakable. What a great show that was!