Reading, Short And Deep #350
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Ode On The Death Of A Favourite Cat, Drowned In A Tub Of Gold Fishes by Thomas Gray
Here’s a link to a PDF of the poem.
Ode On The Death Of A Favourite Cat, Drowned In A Tub Of Gold Fishes was first published in 1747.
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The SFFaudio Podcast #690 – Jesse, Evan, Will Emmons talk about The Pre-Persons by Philip K. Dick
Talked about on today’s show:
Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1974, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, The Electric Ant, Evan doesn’t seem to hate this story, a hateable story?, an abortion story, politically incorrect, Paul might not have been able to get passed it, Will will try to get passed it, cypress trees, the abortion truck, a “post partum”, through the looking glass, down Alice’s rabbit hole, U.S. Supreme Court blah blah blah, personal life stuff, the way men and women are presented, comment on abortion, a reductio ad absurdum, lines with children (alcohol, voting), ageism of adults oppressing children, a moment of privileged, Will’s presidential year, as youthful as Pete Bootyjudge, communism and Democrats are the same thing, a different book, Dreamsnake by Vonda M. Mcintyre, taking issue with Dick’s arguments against abortion, what a good thing abortion is, abortions are fashionable, a message to Marissa, Marissa was half way through and hated it, shot his wad, emasculating women want to kill everything, submit to Joanna Russ, a feminist bent, all the women are the same, chew up all the fish in the waters of Canada, keep the embryo in a jar to pass around at a wine and cheese event, next level misogynist(ish), a direct response to Roe V. Wade, we have Dick’s notes, Collected Stories, Volume 5, she usually offered to beat up people, special pleading, offending people, drugs, communism, such a Philip K. Dick move, you have to bother, he’s got some ideas, a powerful story, Jesse is in favour of infanticide, infanticide to age 37, gets on the bus with his kid, an reservedly good thing, somebody shoots an arrow into your arm, its necessary, injuries are a bad thing, a remedy, a repair is always a good thing, where the slippage happens, participating in the impregnation, he wants to take responsibility, where at least one of the problems lie, that thing is alive and wants to live, Philip K. Dick wants it to live, the kids are standing around, those aspects of the story, its all talk, a wanna firebomb the abortion clinic and truck, actions are much different than desires, crazy (and normal) people take things outside of the mind, computer games with digital guns, the reason to read this story is to explore Philip K. Dick, Ben Shapiro wrote a short story collection, Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, a rip-off of The Pre-Persons, poor Fleishhacker, one of them steps on a bad bug, that’s the thesis, its kind of about animals, this is how we round up cats (and dogs), declawing cats, murdering male chicks five minutes after they’re hatched, Philip K. Dick is making Evan’s argument, we need more people, a classist argument, Ed, is there a cat in there?, the horrible ice-cream man, reverse-gassed, an honest position, an ice-cream truck, the Good Humour music, you runaway and hide from the ice cream man’s gaze, skinny makes him a stray, glasses means somebody cares for him, Romanian orphanages, a peek behind the iron curtain, pretty vague, international abortions, white saviours to adopt them, adopting some strays, a burden, a convenience, if having children wasn’t a burden, utopian fiction, it’s really expensive to raise a kid, an analogy for gun rights, crossbows, our thinking about abortion is broken, if Paul were here, he may be so pro he may not be able to listen to why some are against, racism, classism, possible ways of engaging, state encouragement, India or China, state policy, a description of Walter’s mom, a soulless robot, maybe Walter was a robot, I’ve reduced your stress threshold, what we do as (parents) adults, how to cope with problems in their lives, unrelated to the topic of particular horror, a reality of human and animal biology, 1874, orphanages were common, what happened?, the foster care system, unwanted births, the parents died, the children are given up (anonymous), Oscar Wilde play, left in a gladstone bag, women being shamed to have had babies out of wedlock, women will possibly think it fashionable to get an abortion, people do all sorts of shit (largely because of what people around you are doing), veganism, university educations, norms (outside the law), prideful abortions, how much advertising we’ve gotten, the hot new show right now, wrong in context, contending with the hatemail, a second abortion, 100% of the women think having an abortion is fashionable, the safe country for babies, he believes what the state says, states say: these people aren’t people, a prison guard, almost nobody in prison in the U.S. had a trial, suddenly faced with these thoughts, your brain and the people around you, our truck driver is a psychopath, perfectly happy returning milk bottles, looking at the shotgun, only had to use it five times, anti-men at that moment, the nature of men, the nature of the state, emasculating women, a perspective character for Dick, a reliable character, he’s also the little boy and the wife, women are not easy to understand by men, special pleading, not an article, delivering exactly what he wants, it has this nuance in it, its not just about abortion, algebra being the test of whether has a soul or not, Jesse you’re in trouble, we’re gonna test you, your parents aren’t there saying “grades don’t matter”, how Jesse good a good mark on his castle, he knows this is a kind of a farce, the woman in this story is kind of a farce, insightful enough, resentful feelings, that’s not the end of the story, our situation on Earth, something that happens to us, am I gonna eat meat?, hard hard things, healthcare is really important, malnourished on the sidewalk, thus we make reforms, the $90 license for the kid, not only about shitting on women, the emotional response to a particular incident, the minority opinion, less abortion, arrows in the street is a bad thing, they have to do it safely, to take back the government, so interesting, the use of the soul, religious anti-abortion people, not an atheist society, a Reagan society, the question of the soul, Thomas Aquinas, after the quickening, birth control become a no-no, subverting the religious argument, a desire to live, abortion laws in Canada, there are no laws about abortion in Canada, a touchy subject, how to do it?, available on demand, harder in Nunavut than Vancouver, the regulatory agency doesn’t exist, abortionists, a legal right, 2 minutes before the baby’s head popped out, he goes on and on and on about Vancouver Island and English Bay, an incident in his life, a mid-life crisis, pretended to be addicted to heroin to get some counseling, a forthright liar, paranoid, the drug writer, a couple LSD experiences, taken from his own life, all the empathizing we do with the little kids, seeing the kids in the back of the truck, more than one kid in there, every kind of argument to justify his feelings of having his kid aborted, or hypothetically, something you would regret, a striving of both males and females to have children, this hot-button topic, the horror from every side, the Church of The Watchers, a coal powered Oldsmobile (or a Ford), weird laws and legislation, during the one child policy in China, fining the parents, forced to go to school, Kamala Harris wanted to have parents arrested for their children’s truancy, the juvenile birthrate, embarrassing, off to the doctor with you, social pressure, people do thing to their bodies for fashion, The Chromium Fence, underground bunkers as a fashion, Foster, You’re Dead, Nanny, raytheon making nannies, dishwashers, planned obsolescence, your refrigerator has a wifi connection, advertising creates fashions, vegans, bottom up fashions, veganism isn’t fashion, alcohol, veganism might be a fashion, a happening, anyone born after 2008 can’t by cigarettes in Australia?, they’re all going to vape anyway, British Columbia Liquor Store, British Columbia Cannabis Stores, minimize harms and maximize gains, a state by state model, restrictions designed to shape behaviors, collective model, the arrow clinic is free at the point of use, smoking is bad, Evan should smoke as much as they want, people need cigarettes to control their bodies, Bob Dole, the kind of horror that gets under your skin, a little boy hiding in the blackberry bushes because he can’t do algebra, kids in cages, Terry Carr was a dude, a guest editorial in Amazing, November 1975, women in science fiction, that Joanna Russ letter, some odd ideas about women, a very clever witty story, as long as we are acknowledging the horrible, but, the not too distant future, executed up to the age of 12, girls too, a protest against the liberalization of abortion laws, a castrating bitch, doesn’t that turn you on, where did the motherly virtues go?, our competitive society, women took exception (men too), since the early days, a feminist topic, that don’t mean men aren’t involved, he’s really upset, the ice cream man, having to hide from people, that fear is real, you don’t know how the world works, what your options are, “put to sleep”, one of the euphemisms we use, Lucy is 15 years old, a little dog, diapers for dogs, a lovely birthday present for Will, pee on the couch to show your dog who’s boss, a decision, the euphemism helps tell you the decision, he’s playing the same game that Philip K. Dick is playing but not as well, how feminist science fiction is or isn’t, Joanna Russ gets an apology, just as fun as returning milk cartons, you wanna take my son to the pound, a hippy slur, is it?, when you don’t use the official words, a bad relationship to begin with, the way Terry Carr is reading the horror, a shrewish horror, the same kind of spring, a post-partum, same kind of trigger, couples wind each other up, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, mood organ, waking up combative, brain chemistry combination, we regulate our brains, the Penfield mood organ, caffeine and marijuana and cigarettes and krotum, reading it uncharitably, Philip K. Dick loved women as well as hating them, we don’t have to come to a consensus, Scott’s view of abortion, Paul’s view, all good with the nuns now, not just the clever things, an intriguing story about ageism, the whole point, societies punch down on children, children are bullied, children are molested, go to school, imprisonment, programming, not far under the surface, a story designed to argue against abortion, abortion should not happen, government enforcing abortions, page 133 of the original, not enough children, its a drag taking care of him, in his most misogynistic mode, gestapo, armed with BARs (Browning Automatic Rifles), what the guy is doing, a ventilated air conditioned truck, not a wagon, its not a prison, a reform area, allowing AOC to cry under Trump and say nothing under Biden, a clever though ridiculous , they show up for Anne Frank, an I’m Spartacus moment, getting the Zyklon-b, politicians love this stuff, divide their base and rally the troops, figuring out what to get upset about, you’re a normal looking kid, the retarded and the deformed ones, we’ll give you a haircut, a shortage of children, Malthusian nonsense, Japanned, a class thing again, a past Malthusian crisis, WWI, whatever rationale was long gone, Vancouver Island being the frontier, trapped in the system, the wife wont let them go, not strong willed enough, very Jordan Peterson-esque, female energy, Ian Best, the ocean going ferries, not ever, too adult men acting like little boys, they wanna get revenge, escaping powerlessness, his driving got funny, crying in a truck, there was nothing left to say, is egalitarian marriage even possible?, somehow marriage controls men, anti-adultery laws in Taiwan, put the veil on, female dominated, maternal, men were the warriors, like Sparta, the planning, men in a submissive role, petitioning the mothers parents, a domination, paternalism, the patriarchy is the problem, everybody wants to be in charge, Margaret Thatcher, keep us in power, a way to get power, political power, “leadership classes” are so fucked up, the reins of power, good luck with that relationship, spheres of domination, Code of Hammurabi, who can get a license, a marriage license, we have to know how to solve these problems, a marriage is a formal contract, obligations you choose to put onto yourself, misogynism is only part of his story, a product of his frustration, when you’re reading Lovecraft, Facts Concerning The Late Arthur Jermyn And His Family, the movie Se7en (1995), to make the audience feel suspense, coming out of a real place, Kevin Spacey, bitter divorces, a life mistake, wasted time, coming out as gay after 20 years of marriage, Philip K. Dick loved too much, what spurs the very interesting thoughts, he ultimately concludes there’s nothing left to say, an hour long, maybe we just have to muddle through, dystopia, coming out of a false reality can be a positive thing, the broader argument, the misogyny is integral to the story, The Crawlers, mutants that were fetus like, bonus points for running them over, brain wipes, ageism, Doctor Futurity, age politics, gerontocracy, societies are oppressive to young people, Philip K. Dick’s mom and dad, raising kids is expensive, she’s taunting him, wouldn’t that make you hot and bothered, deliberately cruel, when your marriage is breaking up, acting out, the fathers, a very very good story, a lot of kid perspective, almost unheard of in science fiction, the power of adults and laws, how to feel and what to do, children are the lowest on the totem pole, things you couldn’t do to adults, trying not to inflict this on kids, trying to teach younger kids, if you want to learn you want to learn, you can’t officially tell the kids, treat school like a salad bar, where Jesse’s anti-mom stuff, being a kid what would I have done, we are in a real bind, to learn this lesson, allies in the system, maybe they work for Raytheon, trying to reduce the number of strikes on children, we have to pay our bills, Jesse is very lucky, Evan is less lucky, kids are learning machines, do parents understand that?, no, tutoring centers, test prep, why Harvard is doing what its doing, racism, a lot of power at the top, Ikea stuff, three weeks at the new place, 7th graders, if the boss walks by, a serious serious serious problem, alternative schools, the way all schools should be, about human flourishing and not make office workers in cubicles, playing computer games or twitter all day while they hate their jobs, Minecraft, Lego, sitting there and drink.
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The SFFaudio Podcast #685 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, Trish E. Matson, and Will Emmons talk about The Star Beast by Robert A. Heinlein
Talked about on today’s show:
1954, serialized in The Magazine Of Fantasy And Science Fiction, Star Lummox, what a lummox, a very 1950s word, clumsy stupid person, Google NGram, 1825 East Anglian slang, lumbering ox, lummoxes, knocks things over, breaks things, Maissa liked it, so simple, a girl with some brains and some power?, uncharacteristic, no female presence at all, Betty is a plot driver, one of six sexes, she as a matter of convenience, a meaningless spectrum, in the context of the Hroshii, what feels like a massive coincidence, she’s on Earth, two plotlines, the UN guys having meetings and firing and quitting, the fun stuff, Lummox on the run, Lummox on trial, the major drama, puts the focus on the coincidence, a microscale and a macroscale, still great Heinlein, simplistic, interesting themes, utopia, they’re trying, Kiku the diplomat is in charge of everything, elected represented is undermined by the deep state, bureaucracy, comedy of errors, contradictions and complexities, Sergei Greenberg, the Watson, tell not show, Farmer In The Sky, boy goes to planet and farms, threats can come out of nowhere, a central government, tiny hints, a WWIV anti-tank gun, the 2nd century, double focus, boy, pet and friend, escaping in the wilderness, galactic maneuverings, immigration, pushing people off Earth, which is dumber?, coincidence and conveniences, there’s a Star Beast with lotsa legs, 4 generations, from any other boy’s point of view, good Heinlein, a boy raised by aliens, the reversal at the end, Lummox has been raising John Thomases, a science fiction idea, the relationships between humans and their pets, sentient aliens (should?) have hands, who can buy who?, if these we are putting the juveniles in reading order (younger to older), Citizen Of The Galaxy, Have Space Suit, Will Travel, diplomatic maneuverings and court stuff, thinking with the brain of an adult, the Godzilla aspect, Clifford The Big Red Star Beast, what kids will like about something, a big purple dinosaur, Barney, conflating for comic effect, I hate all this stuff about the negotiations, they’ll eat it, that reunification scene, all the ashtrays and the smoking, furiously smoking, popping pills on the reg, eat your roughage, a dragon lookin thing with a big smile on its four eyed face, old man sitting around his pool with his lawyers for 18,000 pages, Red Planet, Willis is kinda Lummox, galactic diplomacy and politics, democracy, we’re a republic not a democracy, his elected superior, we are the leading nation, senators from all over the planet, the United States of North And South America, probably set in Colorado or thereabouts, freeways are overgrown, flying cars, a depopulated North America, smoke filled rooms in small towns, not enough worldbuilding, atomic weapons, weird adventures, how the world worked, all the Heinlein haters, hating Heinlein for the wrong reasons, Mr. Kiku is pictured and not a black man, the original serial is slightly abridged (at least), wooly haired, racism?, often times the artist is told what the book is about, that’s capitalism not racism, Lummox is also not pictured, a kids book with no-star beast on the cover?, Johnny and Slugger and flying, two legs and half of a side, a bizarre choice, a commercial production, smiling dinosaur beagle, a train, spindly arms, diplodocus, the voice, the baby girl voice in the Full Cast Audio production, all the other Heinlein girls and boys, John Thomas oblivious to her plans, these gender fashions flip, the girls chasing after boys, Sadie Hawkins dystopia, on leap years girls are allowed to propose to men, Data at Sadie Hawkins dance, Star Trek: 90210, phone rigged up in his attic fort, a box of books boys somehow always get, a box of pornography, Heinlein doesn’t shy away, very strange and weird, the macro/micro, a princess of earth, a reverse of A Princess Of Mars, a Kwisatz Haderach to make the perfect space beast, the breeding of John Thomases, wrestling around, did I ever tell you why I divorced my parents, lean in closer to the book, what the parents did that was so wrong, parental abuse, molestation, those woolen socks, the mother character, how one note she was, very manipulative, not a straw person, selfish, controlling and manipulative, parallels between John’s mom and Betty, make more John Thomases, what did you assume about Betty living in a dorm, Heinlein manipulating us, weirdly controlling, they’re both minors, very skillfully done, she’s studying law, you don’t have to obey police officers unless they have a warrant, the police come to the school and teach a class and then search your locker, the antics in the courtroom, the Rittenhouse trial, bamboozles the court, manipulation and tactics, she’s parallel with Kiku, she was her own lawyer, the police chief, Johnny gets on with the police chief, makin toast and eggs and coffee, don’t get in bed with the cops, Johnny’s a little bit dim, he’s gonna go to college, drag racing and hanging out with his pet, the pet of three females, what did she whisper into Johnny’s ear?, “I wanna get the pill”, “never, “we’re religious!”, argue our way to the truth, to such dark places, mentally beyond them, parochial, leaps and bounds ahead, more sinister, poor tactics, I divorced my parents because I was too smart for them, subversive ideas, “I’m transgender”, the flipping of the gender quite late in the book, Kiku and Greenberg are really dumb, its the same creature, kinda fun for kids, kids can figure it out, they’re looking for a girl and Lummox is a boy, Willis is a girl, “I’m a boy”, not going to be able to breed John Thomases very easily, he always calls her Slugger, she hits people, was she on the baseball team?, he insults her looks, she hits the softball real hard, a term of respect, no hidden agenda inside of Johnny, Johnny just gets stubborn for a while, Farah Mendelson’s The Pleasant Profession Of Robert A. Heinlein, Star Wars, he likes his backpack helicopter, when Mr. Ito’s greenhouse, space skateboards, hoverboards, his horse ate his car, Paul is triggered by Lummox voices, a touchy subject, great to hand to a kid whose parents are divorcing, everybody is independent, she came to him, she emancipated herself, some yummy metal and self-heating cans, entanglements, the star federation, why don’t you just leave everybody alone, the inescapable bureaucracy of civilization, Betty’s parents didn’t stand a chance, leaning into the deep and dark and secret and terrible, a little song that starts, it will burn the ears of the editors, pornography and gays and blacks exist, he wants to share it, the tone, whatever the deep dark secret is it wouldn’t hurt johnny, Sorensen, Heinlein’s always been interested in gender, why he shootin blanks, the most plausible thing, maybe John Thomas knew this, Christine Jorgensen, sex-reassignment surgery, deflates the breeding program, Podkayne Of Mars, birthing machines, ovafusion (lesbian babies), circumstantial, all the flipping and the six genders lummox, Gore Vidal, Myra Breckenridge, Raquel Welch and Mae West and John Huston and Farrah Fawcett, what genders means, gender as a spectrum, best to think of her as a male, we don’t have the acronym for it yet, derailing the story, she has arms, she’s getting boobs!, we’re really lucky dogs don’t have hands, dogs would be so handsy, cats, the human breeding program will result in the ultimate John Thomas in about 10,000 years, high fashion to have human pets, invites a sequel, The Star Beasts are humans, furry animals, Space Lummox, is a komodo dragon a beast?, scorpions aren’t beasts, developing the arms, what is that thing?, a tumor, its normal because its normal, 150 years to learn English, the test for intelligence, Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper, Illegal Alien by Robert J. Sawyer, legally a human, the introduction, the Houyhnhnms section of Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, William H. Patterson, a fantasy disguised as J. Francis McComas, my first beast, the best one, not wholesome like this, good for adults too, less corny than The Rolling Stones, one little conversation, civilization is in crisis because of all these aliens, keeping these Republican norms, the Sorenson whisper, the bureaucrats have to run the machine, cynical vs. optimistic views of democracy, Heinlein’s views on communism, Heinlein’s views on nuclear testing, deep stuff, adults who would like a charming read about a talking animal, Heinlein doing his diversity thing here, Jesse is Maissa’s Betty, the spunky protagonist?, overcoming the fear of the Medusa, the Medusan is also transgender, the passive protagonist?, the makeup thing, unusual patterns, everything is transgender, another gender swap, the deep fear of the snakehead, testes turned into ovaries, hypnotherapy as a crutch, Starship Troopers, hypnosis, an excuse to help you quit smoking, Heinlein is regressive in his pushing of hypnosis, more like Dianetics than it is like rocketry, how you relate to another so different from you, Lummox’s speech, assuming an Italian is illiterate, how can people say Heinlein is turgid?, he’s anti-racist, a slur, a smear, not an awkward bone in this book, two [amicus] groups, the Friends Of Lummox, Keep Earth For Humans, one is adults, one is kids, we like breakfast cereal, Murgatroyd, the Russian edition on ebay, PiggWiggy, having adventures eating cereal, preaching race tolerance, I will not sit down with that puppet, anti-puppet, brinksmanship shit, luckily your Heinlein and writing both sides of the conversation, Heinlein’s worst instinct, c’mon mom, be partisan and be right, we’re on Lummox’s side, nobody complains about the missing dog, deciding not to eat Mr. Ito, this book is really about power, lummox has hands, wipe your own butt or get your own cup, disability, the relationship of power to power, relations between the species for the rest of time, a book about power, a hereditary monarchy with a breeding program, we can’t judge their culture, The [Men] In The Walls by William Tenn, the psychology of the mice, like parents, manipulator, the translator is manipulating both sides, interpreter for hire, Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein, the fair witness, somebody said somebody was a bad person, we can fix our shoddy eyewitness testimony by fixing the sentences we put in our own heads, the truth meter, played for laughs, testifying about her feelings, technology our way out of stuff, the human mind’s way of storing data and making judgements, telepathy transmitters, a visual translation, eyes are wildly fluctuating, John Thomas will say: “Me too”, Star Trek’s computer is judging Captain Kirk, a huge mental mistake, Planet Of The Apes, Heinlein’s not fulfilling Campbell’s request, a Weinbaum story, hang out and get pet for a century, our relationship to puppies, a very compressed youth, an immortal being, petting my John Thomases, Lummox gets bored, what kind of patience, a very human thing to do, tigers just eat smaller animals, arsenic makes them grow, all symbolic, why does she go on a diet at the end?, she’s gotta get hot for her wedding, stop eating candy, stop eating cars, a short lived pet, precious babies or property or chattel, they’re out friends, a lady in Quesnel, BC got her leg licked by a bear, we wanna nuke your planet, give us our queen’s corgi, War Of The Worlds but just combing the Earth, implicit mirroring, whether Lummox can testify or not, wandering princess, hostage negotiation, we don’t engage philosophically with dogs, sufficiently alien aliens, an adult reading a kid’s book, Lummox indulged Johnny, you want have me sit a yard for a year?, after 150 years, there are no Buicks today?, Motortrend, brands are things you sell to other companies, a Toyota that’s a Ford, the Packard’s coming back, a branding exercise, the Lincoln Navigator, imprints survive as IP, all the young men love the classic Buicks, a flight harness, when he takes Johnny to the vet, corgis for everybody, an exclusive brand, a great opening for the surprise sequel, spaceships are disappearing, humans are being disappeared, very cute puppies, a deeply pet book, you’re going to wear this outdoor socky thing on your feets, a single dad, a single mom, the controlling mother, Suddenly (1954), parallels, media with controlling mothers, Philip K. Dick’s mom, people having relationships in the 20th century, shameful but possible, a trope character, off-screen, trip to Hawaii, 17 pickle dishes, Heinlein’s joke, Heinlein is very stupid in hypnotism, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, slim volume hardcovers, Harry Potter, Rick Riordan, no Heinlein boxed set with decent covers, what the fuck is wrong with their brains?, 8 Heinlein juveniles in a boxed set, youthful reading, why is that?, Heinlein is not a giant name, Roald Dahl, James And The Giant Peach, Predestination, there should be boxed sets of Heinlein every generation, broken minded, a legacy organization, it will do material good to minds, the entire Heinlein fiction is the Virginia edition $1,400, riddled with typos, a luxury good, mass market paperback for $9.99, sell like the wheatcakes, I love TITS (Tunnel In The Sky), Jesse was dissing Heinlein and looking at TITS online, pitch for TITS, something goes wrong, Hunger Games style, really good, Paul loves TITS, Lummox triggered, Hi I’m Trish, Boxing Day, put TITS on the schedule, excommunicated from the island, Lord Of The Flies by William Golding, Rite Of Passage by Alexei Panshin, othering Jesse, privileging academics, don’t slur me, 10 degrees is warm (and cold), alien words, actual turban vs. snakes for hair who needs a turban, get him outta bed, not a very good movie, the self-lighting cigarette, trying to quit smoking, maybe a pipe, a serious smoker without a light, H. Beam Piper was a smoking machine, British is weird, a really interesting podcast about those puppies, Rite Gud, solid heads on shoulders despite being modern authors, squeecore, new wave, cyberpunk, The Painful Threshold, “hells yeah”, maudlin mawkish or glib, Whedonesque quips, the character that represents feminism pegs the character that represents the patriarchy, this is what we’re exploring right now, remixing the public domain with vampires or zombies, 10 Years A Slave To The Robot Queen, Ace Galaksi, very Betty of you, so Betty, Betty is a great character, Stranger In A Strange Land, so horrible, pizza, of course it was, raw frozen chicken wings, dog minds, dog diets, a beagle pomeranian, parvo virus, little bag, little mask, little vaccination sticker, too many puppy blogs, why Fauci might get canceled, beagle faces, funding dog torture, when we find out what the aliens sound like in their native language, rethink your whole life, a never ending parent, be your pet’s advocate, catering to dog needs, siri needs to speak dog, a smart telepathic collar, What Is Horror?, Klim’s Journey Under The Ground by Baron Ludvig Holberg, The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham, Children Of The Damned (1964), John Carpenter (1995).
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The SFFaudio Podcast #626 – Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Will Emmons, and Trish E. Matson talk about The Jewel Of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker.
Talked about on today’s show:
1903, 1912, there are 7 movie adaptations (at least), audio drama, no comic book adaptations except for one in Graphic Classics, how influential it is, Dracula, Dracula’s Guest, why excised, is it very similar to Dracula or very different from Dracula?, experimental, aka a lawyer, a school teacher, Lucy’s suitor, cowboy, the doctor, the Dutchman, brides don’t get names, not so much in the format, The Call Of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft, the coziness, they way American television deals with stuff (its a cop show), Odile Thomas from Hypnogoria, Role Playing Game characters, the antiquarian, the daughter from away, the solicitor, the detective named Daw, a module, cause and effect are reversed, lifting from books, H. Rider Haggard, She, common elements, less problematic, less interesting, to chew over, perfectly okay, what filmmakers have done with it, story breaking, most of the people are breaking it from other versions of the movie, most movie makers watch movies and most novelists read novels, re-make, John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Thing From Outer Space (1951), Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, novels are great at a lot of things, tricking you, the toolset is different, Blood From The Mummy’s Tomb (1971), the Hammer adaptation, the gothic style and mid-sixties fashion sense, period pieces, as Mr Jim Moon pointed out, the new woman, participants, Mina vs. Tera, the Dutchman’s journal, the cartouches, wearing men’s clothes, reincarnation is bullshit, the latest Tom Cruise mummy film, The Mummy (1999), Frankenstein, there is no definitive mummy story, what a general audience knows about mummies, they’re back, they’re cursed, and they’re out to get people, she’s wrapped but not embalmed, making prep for a return, I’m blossoming, this mummy was undead, regular mummydom, I have something here, it would have been a series… Dracula II: He’s Back, what’s going on in Tera’s plan, same plan as Dracula’s, a lost chapter, the earlier gods, back to the source gods, its really cool what she wants to do, go back to the beginning, where the magic is, raarrrh!, Silvio the cat, he has his own version of Tera, the vat is wiser than Margaret, what happens at the end of this novel?, fresh in Will’s brain, she’s back!, a less cynical read than Jesse does, a 5,000 year journey, the new woman, is it a threat?, yes, everybody’s a threat, how cops deal with people, resisting being killed, we’re all like that, you have hands, cup a tea or a slash with the knife, where she’s coming from, she’s a magician, a great sorcerer, she exceeded her teachers, look at her history, she murdered a lot of people, a menace, she goes through with the marriage, why?, not so much a takeover as a fulfillment of a plan, kind of like a detective story, he gets out a magnifying glass, it becomes a different kind of book, that skillset is not leaded, physically taken over by the spirit of Tera, Tera was manipulating the dad all along, a character named Winchester, the Egyptologist, Abel’s bedroom is actually a tomb, do not remove any of the items from it, let me lie in state, all the Egyptian tombs were active places of attendance, grave goods, by right of possession, he is the curse of this mummy, he’s got the agent off to get the lamps, all the deaths that happen in the excavations and expeditions are his responsibility, ways of understanding how people are understanding, The Awakening (1980), The Mystery Of Imagination’s Curse Of The Mummy Tomb (1970), they saved money, visually its more interesting, a teleplay, 100% behind, the country house, the train, the electricity, the difference in tone, happy in her domesticity, a happy life at home with her adoring husband, the sinister ending, decked out in the queen’s garments with a predatory expression on her face, the best adaptation, fashion issues, problematic fashion, stylish, the seven fingers, all the covers, sometimes caressing a jewel, Jesse can’t stop noticing, a sixth and seventh digit, the hand does a lot of extracurricular activities, Guy De Maupassant’s The Hand and The Withered Hand, Swinburne, mummy stuff around the house is like having a Tesla, Raiders Of The Lost Ark has no mummy but it does have a jewel, a pretty bad movie, its a horror movie, a suspense story, a supernatural story, The Omen, a certain tone, set before the novel starts, high concept, the whole story (but backwards), The Mummy Resurrected (2014) aka Resurrection Of The Mummy, super-terrible, on Tubi, The Eternal (1998), Christopher Walken, set in Ireland, a female iron age druidical bog mummy, almost like an art film, narrated from two childrens’ points of view, the curse is alcohol, thanks Jorge Luis Borges and Bram Stroker, a typo or not, a license and a rewrite, Lou Gosset Jr. Bram Stoker’s Mummy, very faithful and a complete mess, The Tomb (1986) deliberately and accidentally entertaining, musical sequences for no reason, not a good movie but also quite interesting, The Jewel Of *The* Seven Stars, this is wrongly titled, the happy ending, why is she evil, the Wikipedia summary of the plot, manipulated by evil Queen Tera, wreak her will on the end, she’s a Corbek, confusing, Heston’s amazing, he’s wearing the neckerchief, 18 years previous, a curse movie, when you look at a movie it tells you about its period, 1970s = divorce and marriage breakup, the wife is still alive, they are rhyming with the original story, servicing their own subconsciousnesses and serving the audiences, Bram Stoker loves this setup, one stranger from the United States, in good faith working together to solve the issue, “the great experiment”, this whirlpool, this orbit of this obsessive egyptologist, Silvio, we get to do with it whatever we want, she’s also a time traveler, one of the most famous novels of the 19th century, Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, all the other films that are basically the same story, Lifeforce (1985), The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson, Hailey’s comet, a retelling of Dracula (in space), the disappearance of her body, she’s astrally all over the place, she’s a star rover, she’s cosmically aware, where’d he get his money, smuggler drug dealers, Cornish smugglers, re-setup your tomb, all the stars aligned, why it was a craze, a very meta-situation, its not because the Egyptians were obsessed with death, China has mummies from 2,000 years ago, a Chinese mummy, “Lady Dai”, decanted from a mysterious liquid, melons, you can see her tongue, changing lives, windows into a period of time from so long ago, Tera has weaponized our interest, knowledge of forethought, alive again in a physical body, the treasurer with the spear, she wanted to be excavated, English servant, a lower class (?) man who knows evil when he sees it, an elite functionary in a think tank, a weapon for hire, genuinely fascinated, Mad Mike Hoare, Egyptology instead of killing, he’s our klaxon, Silvio is our klaxon, robbing tombs, assuaging European guilt, revenge from a great Empire from 5,000 years ago, a decadent civilization, her evil is less Catholic, she’s willful, I’ve got this whole other system going, why would it be deleted?, it underscores the more bleak vision, the ambiguous ending (1912), why Silvio has seven claws on one foot, its really Silvio’s story, her familiar, cat vs. snake, a grey cat, a tabby, the only female pharaoh of upper and lower Egypt, was Hatshepsut gender fluid?, the trappings of masculinity, her name was obliterated, when we think about kings and queens in ancient days, do whatever they want, financial freedom, you can be a gladiator!, strucken, the blasphemy of their life, resistance to the priestly class, the priestly class today, flourish, be your true self, two extra digits, upper and lower, a full and healthy life and an extra life, Ayesha was evil, manipulative vs. evil, presidents and speakers of the houses, is it seven?, a description:
He was certainly a magnificent animal. A chinchilla grey Persian with long silky hair; a really lordly animal with a haughty bearing despite his gentleness; and with great paws which spread out as he placed them on the ground.
a Lovecraftian description of a cat, a good command of language, quite engaging, slow paced, only 10 hours, quite respectably good prose, beautifully written, smooth and easy to read, Will disagrees, cut out about a third, how efficient that 1970 TV movie adaptation is, no train ride, the gas mask, compressed scenes, it could have been shortened, he cut it the wrong place, commercial instinct, he was a stage manager at an acting theater (a playhouse), tweaking to improve stories, playing to it, right from the beginning, the opening chapter is a dream, this is how Tera manipulates people
It all seemed so real that I could hardly imagine that it had ever occurred before; and yet each episode came, not as a fresh step in the logic of things, but as something expected. It is in such a wise that memory plays its pranks for good or ill; for pleasure or pain; for weal or woe. It is thus that life is bittersweet, and that which has been done becomes eternal.
ways of reading this,
Again, the light skiff, ceasing to shoot through the lazy water as when the oars flashed and dripped, glided out of the fierce July sunlight into the cool shade of the great drooping willow branches—I standing up in the swaying boat, she sitting still and with deft fingers guarding herself from stray twigs or the freedom of the resilience of moving boughs. Again, the water looked golden-brown under the canopy of translucent green; and the grassy bank was of emerald hue. Again, we sat in the cool shade, with the myriad noises of nature both without and within our bower merging into that drowsy hum in whose sufficing environment the great world with its disturbing trouble, and its more disturbing joys, can be effectually forgotten. Again, in that blissful solitude the young girl lost the convention of her prim, narrow upbringing, and told me in a natural, dreamy way of the loneliness of her new life. With an undertone of sadness she made me feel how in that spacious home each one of the household was isolated by the personal magnificence of her father and herself; that there confidence had no altar, and sympathy no shrine; and that there even her father’s face was as distant as the old country life seemed now. Once more, the wisdom of my manhood and the experience of my years laid themselves at the girl’s feet. It was seemingly their own doing; for the individual “I” had no say in the matter, but only just obeyed imperative orders. And once again the flying seconds multiplied themselves endlessly. For it is in the arcana of dreams that existences merge and renew themselves, change and yet keep the same—like the soul of a musician in a fugue. And so memory swooned, again and again, in sleep.
who is having the dream, an Egyptian river aka the Nile, a brief boating expedition with Miss Trelawny, Tera inserting herself,
It seems that there is never to be any perfect rest. Even in Eden the snake rears its head among the laden boughs of the Tree of Knowledge. The silence of the dreamless night is broken by the roar of the avalanche; the hissing of sudden floods; the clanging of the engine bell marking its sweep through a sleeping American town; the clanking of distant paddles over the sea…. Whatever it is, it is breaking the charm of my Eden. The canopy of greenery above us, starred with diamond-points of light, seems to quiver in the ceaseless beat of paddles; and the restless bell seems as though it would never cease….
coming out of the dream, the doorbell, the knocking, you know about the plow, big dipper, Polaris, north of Egypt, he’s definitely a good writer,
The record of a soul is but a multiple of the story of a moment.
deep time, the Egyptians didn’t have a dualist perspective, Jews tend not to go with dualism, there’s your Ka, your astral thing, your body, your id, your ego, your superego, programs inside, my brain is a computer, my mind is the software running on the computer, glitches and reboots (sleep), how does it technically work for Tera, a takeover?, a new vessel, pour your spirit, the dualist take on it, all part of Tera’s plan, moments of clarity, William Wilson by Edgar Allan Poe, don’t fall asleep because you die and some guy wakes up in the morning with your memories, The Body Snatchers, a worse version of you, let’s share this space, she’s like an immigrant, old and new, the upstairs and the batcave, the upper and lower, bring the foreign into England, central to the Empire, the author wrote the book, he’s the guiding hand, he doesn’t have full access to why he’s doing stuff, inhabited by Tera, giving permission, the old woman who’s the new woman, I’ve killed 9 people in the last 5,000 years, ancient alien metal, aerolite, meteorites, star spawned, a magic sword, star connected, she is in some way divine, a symbol of something, the devil is real in a certain sense, numerology, explained as science, the radium that is so prominent, an astral body, hey pick up that fork, corporeal transference, there need be no bounds, its fun to taste stuff, you don’t want to have a sequel, the wrong scale, the possibilities opened up, Will doing his Farmer impression, what the ka does, the Riverworld series, When The World Shook by H. Rider Haggard, a millionaire socialist, a striking resemblance, reincarnation, a science fiction plan to destroy the world, theosophical adventures start to become science fiction stories, so many valances, gothic or weird stories, that X-Files feel, The Jewel Of Seven Stones by Seabury Quinn, Weird Tales, April 1928, a bad priest and a good princess, less ambiguous, Jules de Grandin, no deep philosophy and stuff, read more Bram Stoker, The Crystal Cup by Bram Stoker, super-obscure, very abstract, souls, what does it mean?, a cup filled with nothing in it, taking the reality of materialism and transmuting it into poetic beauty, a stage play, it could be a short film, there’s no characters except for the cup and the light, A Voyage To Arcturus by David Lindsay, super-cool and very weird, a feature length no budget film adaptation, A Princess Of Mars with LSD, how John Carter gets to Mars, various relationship, the party, the tower, suicidal action, metaphysical, audiobook and readalong available in the feed, Will’s cup of tea, down for more stoker, subtle, she’s got a plan.
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Reading, Short And Deep #237
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Dreadful Dreamer by Margaret St. Clair
Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.
Dreadful Dreamer was first published in Super-Science Stories, July 1949.
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The SFFaudio Podcast #525 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa Vu, Evan Lampe and Terence Blake talk about VALIS by Philip K. Dick
Talked about on today’s show:
1981, science fiction novel?, the long awaited masterwork, you didn’t like it, low expectations, the first half is the best part, it takes place in the head, after the film, the discussion of the film, the Wikipedia, Radio Free Albemuth‘s plot, parallel universe Nixon, state vs. society, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, movement cultures, fighting the Black Iron Prison, this is a political dead end novel, is it science fiction?, the opening, SickMyDuck.narod.ru, quasi-consciousness, gobbledygook,
VALIS (acronym of Vast Active Living Intelligence System, from an American film): A perturbation in the reality field in which a spontaneous self-monitoring negentropic vortex is formed, tending progressively to subsume and incorporate its environment into arrangements of information. Characterized by quasiconsciousness, purpose, intelligence, growth and an armillary coherence.
–Great Soviet Dictionary
Sixth Edition, 1992, used in many others, the copyright details about his other books, A Scanner Darkly, the schizophrenic break, good bits, the autobiographical details, fictionalizing his life, not anything like science, most people don’t have a grasp of what science is, a perturbation in the reality field, progressively subsumed?, a collection of words, he’s eating his own prole feed, he takes as fact, a refutation soon accommodated, this skepticism thing, the same plot as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Book Of The New Sun by Wolfe, the hero can reverse time, that’s there, so much better, weird quest, this 2 year old kid who may or may not be Jesus, more like meta-fiction, reintegrate his brain, Psi-Man heal me, he put’s his hand on Fat’s shoulder, self-hugging, he baptized him with chocolate and a hot dog bun, stuff he’s actually done, not fiction, bullshit people all the time, every now and then this should be science fiction, bullshit with his friends, a rough plot, exegesis, we should be upset, puttering about in a small land, so internal, his other half, Small Holywater, Black WanderingEarth, that’s why its a better novel, it has the satellite, in the beginning was the word,
#36. We should be able to hear this information, or rather narrative, as a neutral voice inside us. But something has gone wrong. All creation is a language and nothing but a language, which for some inexplicable reason we can’t read outside and can’t hear inside.
its important to see why people are attracted to this book, words are data as much as visual data, bear scratching against a tree, i present these words to you and they become reality, dope dope dope 500 times, the word loses its sound and its meaning, words on a page are reality, we have to contend with this, how do you know when this is, it’s tremendous, is that true, dreams, your critical faculties are not in full operation, religious people are presented with evidence, adopted accommodated or ignored, causing a crisis, telegraphed far before, we all have this capacity to generate data, distinguishing it from, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”, untethered to critical no no no no, Fat gained strength, self-criticism, Horselover Fat is the early 60s sociological type, Michel Serres, there’s something broken in his head, he’s a car engine and there’s a serious problem with the mechanics, “The Black Iron Prison”, “The Empire Never Ended”, proved, made up in medieval times, the Roman Empire fell in…, time is not what we think it is, K.W. Jeter, Tim Powers,
“You found your way into the upper realm,” Kevin declared. “Isn’t that how you put it in your journal?”
#48. Two realms there are, upper and lower. The upper, derived from hyperuniverse I or Yang, Form I of Parmeni-des, is sentient and volitional. The lower realm, or Yin, Form II of Parmenides, is mechanical, driven by blind, efficient cause, deterministic and without intelligence, since it emanates from a dead source. In ancient times it was termed “astral determinism.” We are trapped, by and large, in the lower realm, but are, through the sacraments, by means of the plasmate, extricated. Until astral determinism is broken, we are not even aware of it, so occluded are we. “The Empire never ended.”
A small, pretty, dark-haired girl walked silently past Fat and the huge old woman, carrying her shoes. At breakfast time she had tried to smash a window using her shoes and then, having failed, knocked down a six-foot-high black technician. Now the girl had about her the presence of absolute calm.
“The Empire never ended,” Fat quoted to himself. That one sentence appeared over and over again in his exegesis; it had become his tag line. Originally the sentence had been revealed to him in a great dream. In the dream he again was a child, searching dusty used-book stores for rare old science fiction magazines, in particular Astoundings. In the dream he had looked through countless tattered issues, stacks upon stacks, for the priceless serial entitled “The Empire Never Ended.” If he could find it and read it he would know everything; that had been the burden of the dream.
so many comic books, he’s obsessed in a way,
Prior to that, during the interval in which he had experienced the two-world superimposition, had seen not only California, U.S.A., of the year 1974 but also ancient Rome, he had discerned within the superimposition a Gestalt shared by both space-time continua, their common element: a Black Iron Prison. This is what the dream referred to as “the Empire.” He knew it because, upon seeing the Black Iron Prison, he had recognized it. Everyone dwelt in it without realizing it. The Black Iron Prison was their world.
Who had built the prison–and why–he could not say. But he could discern one good thing: the prison lay under attack. An organization of Christians, not regular Christians such as those who attended church every Sunday and prayed, but secret early Christians wearing light gray-colored robes, had started an assault on the prison, and with success. The secret, early Christians were filled with joy.
this is ho you make science fiction this is not science fiction, superimposing the present on the past, James Joyce, 1981 or 1982, Paris, one of the greatest philosopher’s of the 20th century Gilles Deleuze, cinema, a vertical time axis, Marie Louise Von Franz, Jungian theory, a second axis of time, Wolfgang Pauli, tied to a particular experience, a working out of it, dipping into it, this is basically what it is, not that revealing, nonsense, the big words that he’s using, essay writing as a game, write them first, the way Star Trek: The Next Generation technobabble, reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, a black iron prison, does the blackness refer to the iron, its just a phrase that popped into his head and he thinks, this is how religions are birthed, coming straight out of it, so sad, hilarious Philip K. Dick bits, a mental breakdown on the page, a slow decline into depression and isolation, A Scanner Darkly except real, new religious movements, subjective experiences, William James, is there anything not referenced in here, a trained philosopher, Dick doesn’t do any of that stuff, multidimensional, masterful from the beginning, the only sad thing Terence can see, male male male all along, one sided, The Exegesis a fake book, this is a novel, a metafiction novel, its not a fantasy, he perceived those perceptions, its most interesting to him, where it intersects with the stuff in his previous writings, from the beginning, The Cosmic Puppets, much more grounded, breaking himself off from himself, he gets stuck in this loop, I have become a mechanical function of my own idea, a rat trying to get on a rat-proof ship, something mechanically wrong in his brain, the rest of the engine was good, a terrible metaphor, he goes to the therapist and the therapist becomes part of the problem, going back to the themes of the institution vs. the individual, the police steal his stuff, this is not a political book, the society against the state, encouraging movements to do little things, the resistance is always there, in Valis we gotta find Jesus, his interpretation, The Divine Invasion, Shadow And Claw by Gene Wolfe, symbols invent us, the symbol took over his mind, The Transmigration Of Timothy Archer, a cathartic effect, juxtaposing is the problem, that’s the science fiction aspect, its a theory, its unfalsifiable,
9
Wordsworth’s “Ode” carries the sub-title: “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.” In Fat’s case, the “intimations of immortality” were based on recollections of a future life.
In addition, Fat could not write poetry worth shit, despite his best efforts. He loved Wordsworth’s “Ode,” and wished he could come up with its equal. He never did.
Boldness is not virtue, Spiders sail on strands, there was no path back, crouched in basement darkness, on and on, infinitude of time, Mind, now torn away, We humans have been told, We larger ones, What of us we lack the stamina, a summary of the book, cats, the key to decoding it, Phil’s Cat by K.W. Jeter, two of PKD’s cats: Mrs. Tubbs and Harvey (an “elegant but paranoid” black cat), lots of stuff from book, a fatalistic attitude, the thing one most loves can be fatal, “Listen, do you hear something.”, with an open can of catfood, two big yellow eyes, his small mind not comprehending the vertical dimension, his spatial coordinates had been right on target, March 1982, his self destructive urges had been transcended, methodically combing the isles, a little scrap of warmth, ludicrous hope, a faith that believed in faithlessness, in the light of the story, this is what the empathy thing he’s so known for is all about, very beautiful, a lot of empathy for cats, his weird relationship with women, weird resentments, retroactive blaming the women, his empathy for women is his bad side, Sherry with cancer, suffering something so horrible, is that his perception or is that the reality, did she know that she was doing that, how do you know that?, citing citations, does she know she’s doing that, that’s the main problem, confronted with both sense data and actual sentences and both are not subject to critical questioning, Jesse saw a ghost once, Jesse loves the idea of ghosts, part of a letter, Last Wave, Summer 1984, The Shadow Out Of Time, hypnagogic images, conversations with, John W. Campbell, ultimately always better, Gene Wolfe’s similar cosmogony, between Dick and Wolfe, a better thinker, he saw Dianetics was bullshit, it seized on him, religion as a kind of a mania, latching on to their stories, Bishop Pike, if Philip K. Dick had access to the internet, anamnesis, three meanings, obsessing over etymology, etymology is everything, he’s in improv, I’m a toaster, have you eaten your toast?, you always go with it, your sense data or your sentence in front of you Jabberwocky, brillig, his vorpal sword, runcible spoon (a grapefruit spoon), runcible to runciter, something animals don’t really do, its almost like we can fall down a well of only believing this one book from 4000 years ago, writing down experiences they never had with a guy they never met, and he’s wrong, a druid ceremony, not the only story even he’s caught up in it, a half hour of notes, Tractates Cryptica Scriptura, usually it takes whole cultures to make a cosmogony, the appendix is kind of useful, in Evan’s podcast episode on Valis, The Gospel According To Philip K. Dick,
50. The primordial source of all our religions lies with the ancestors of the Dogon tribe, who got their cosmogony and cosmology directly from the three-eyed invaders who visited long ago. The three-eyed invaders are mute and deaf and telepathic, could not breathe our atmosphere, had the elongated misshapen skull of Ikhnaton, and emanated from a planet in the star-system Sirius. Although they had no hands, but had, instead, pincer claws such as a crab has, they were great builders. They covertly influence our history toward a fruitful end.
Kilgore Trout, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, an endless hole, the discovery of planets doesn’t occur for quite a long time, an external place vs. another realm, his citation is it seems to me it must be true, horoscopes, there are no dis-confirming facts (until their is), a giant radical shift, its in the paper, if its published its true, the New York Times and The Washington Post, how we get offended by people’s words, you know I don’t REALLY believe this right, I know I’m nutty, the amount of time you spend on it, something is pulling their brain, a cool fact, bloodtype tells about your personality, you don’t know your blood type?, that’s very o positive, imagine saying that about someone’s race, we can’t conceive of that being a thing, this is destiny, this is how all the religious functions work, auspicious, looking good, Roman birds, suspicious, I don’t think we can trust this, trapped in a world of etymology, etymology as destiny, the fake etymology of embarrassed, Jesse doesn’t want to give it up, magic words, pickaninny, niggardly, the airplane was retarded by the braking process, the sound of it is not offensive, words are presentations of reality, the whole whale language thing, cobol, c++, I saw a ghost, I saw a red hat, red hats are not nice hats, words on a page, in your ear, on a sign, causing a dysfunction within us, that’s this book, that’s why this book has power, the revelation is surprising because almost nobody else ever talks about it, not a universal truth, how he described it to Anne, I’m writing an autobiography about BOTH of my personalities and I’m calling it VALIS, structure it as a self-conscious whatever, so much based on actual events, there is no VALIS film, he did call up somebody in Hollywood, he barely knew Gloria, a friend of his, Sic transit gloria mundi, pathology, sending up, funny bits pointing, making fun, he’s deflating the thing in real time, if he lived in our age, the pot showing up in the film, a fish symbol, the DNA molecule, how it connects to Galactic Pot-Healer, this pot did exist, oh yeah, of course, the jewelry in The Man In The High Castle, a photograph of him leaving the funeral early climbing into a Volkswagen, whose reaction is more authentic, if he were a girl, subject to criticism, ditzy, quite pathetic, pathos, Greek for feeling, how great he is at saying that experience of watching a film, applying the rules of filmwatching, Blade Runner, did they intend this to be the meaning, what about the eyes being lit up, different actors disagreeing, as a piece of fiction I’m allowed to spin up as many theories as I want, things outside of the film, where is the meaning?, the meaning goes out the window, macro-focused in the wrong direction, I didn’t see this the first time, adding Phil to the Skype call right now, at the time vs. now, almost guaranteed, everything in there is searchable, Reading, Short And Deep, looking at the text, breaking past the fourth wall into two different axis, no time is god, the boy can replace his wife who has died, its amazing, how seriously should we take this?, Parsifal,
Parsifal is one of those corkscrew artifacts of culture in which you get the subjective sense that you’ve learned something from it, something valuable or even priceless; but on closer inspection you suddenly begin to scratch your head and say, “Wait a minute. This makes no sense.” I can see Richard Wagner standing at the gates of heaven. “You have to let me in,” he says. “I wrote Parsifal. It has to do with the Grail, Christ, suffering, pity and healing. Right?” And they answered, “Well, we read it and it makes no sense.” SLAM.
which heaven do you go to?, the savior saved?, you’re the gods, the typical Nietzsche thing, glorified stupidity, a similar joke in episode 3 of Watchmen, the world being enduring suffering, Amfortas, three superheroes go to heaven, Nite Owl, did the comedian go to heaven?, how many people did you kill?, super moral, Ozymandias, Dr Manhattan, I’m already there, these things that seem to have great meaning, action set pieces, Harry Potter, ultimately its empty, Lord Of The Rings, the experience is not just a walk with Gandalf, finding meaning in existence, hiding in a secondary world, something deep there, its about the setups, kids go up and stuff happens, Tolkien would go to heaven, Wagner would go to hell, Rowling would go to hell, go to Valhalla for the Ring, you’re in the wrong heaven, sir, Valhalla ends at Ragnarok, a temporary heaven, done with VALIS, I wash my hands of it, where does it get us?, political or psychological, such an honest portrayal of having a psychosis and also be very aware of what’s happening, whatever philosophy he’s trying to get at, this is not a philosophy, pre-philosophy, gnostic beliefs, the Kult RPG, in the center of the city, a role playing game about trying to find reality, this module, the keeper or the dungeon master, exploring the reality, the players are in a Black Iron Prison.
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