The SFFaudio Podcast #832 – READALONG: The Futurological Congress by Stanisław Lem

Jesse, Will Emmons, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about The Futurological Congress by Stanisław Lem

Talked about on today’s show:
on psychotropic drugs, identify, Jonathan’s in the park, 60s?, the English translation, late 60s vibe, we didn’t know what was going to come after, older than Jesse but younger than Terence, one sentence review, not quite a great book but I licked it, in the shower, really ate this book all up, swallowed every page, everything came around at the end, getting disapointed, Mindswap but note as awesome, had this book been twice as long, breaks the rules, one big information dump with a little dialog, abundantly inventive, a pleasure, Olaf Stapledon, very Sheckley, Michael Crichton’s Drug Of Choice, early John Lange novel, he didn’t rip it off he’s doing the same thing, a thriller version of a lot of the plot and premise of this book, a Philip K. Dick style idea, vacation with drugs in the food and the water, false reality, losing weight, everybody’s beautiful, a lot of sex, dreary hotel room, jack you off, fake tennis injuries, you’re on drugs, came to this independently, go to a hotel, you can’t get an egg, that far away from the kitchen, many kids in the park, very good book, won’t remember it very well, one damned thing after another revelation, remember the opening, the twist or the twist back, based on a mistake, Malthusianism, still making this mistake, popular in the 70s, Soylent Green (1973), so many, takes some childaway to make the podcast quieter, really enjoyed it, satire, inventive, each more insane from the last, some points, why he had done everything he did, the hero, a society like the one he imagines he travels to, come into being, the terrorists attack and drug them all, imaginary society, jut another hallucination from the drugs, what happens at the end, they’re in the sewer, it has to be a theory, we don’t get them coming out of the sewer, the Plato’s Cave of the sewer, checking on their notes, nothing, still nothing, something?, nicely experimental, Alfred Bester, a stream of consciousness when you’re unconscious, the layer theory, disintoxicates you, the sewer is his baseline, compatible with the book, still a hallucination, what is officially stated, the authorial voice, this Tiko guy, reoccuring character, the series would have no place to go, a stand-in for Lem, Cordwainer Smith, condemned, reality, didn’t go to the future, the sewer experience is his base level in the book, Terence is like a philosopher, how do we even know about reality, an epistemological novel, all these arguments, we live in a simulation, The Matrix (1999), They Live (1988), R.A. Lafferty, creatively absurd conclusions, the hallucinated future world, the problem of real reality, the frame of the whole story, throws out ideas, layers of reality, real reality, other hallucinations, handled that correctly, coffee, cigar, relaxation, drugs in various states of refinement, a bunch of drugs, interacting with LSD coming into the world, Poland in the 60s, conversant with both sides of the world, what’s the state of big pharma, alcohol, everybody’s favourite, socialist block, Russians, mood altering pharmaceuticals, Rolling Stones, Mama’s Little Helper, something in the 60s, in an absurd way, crazy heights, so specialized, so localized, specific experiences, individual brain chemistry, satire, word magic, shoes, etymologically creates new words, these concepts release future ideas, extant, does this word exist, looking it up, a real phenomenon, one million percent true, a billion percent certain, old words to develop a name for it, old science fiction, Alan Moore, I am a wizard, the reason you read this book, a magic effect upon you, most of it is allusion, an impression of reality, hate to be political David Currie, everything is political, the drug is propaganda, psychically laminated by propaganda, its magical effect, benevolent, the world is dying, this nice illusion, palliative care, pump them up with morphine, 1968, you’ll know what book it is, a merry little surge of electricity, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, multicolored pajamas, unmerry eyes, bitter sharpness, bent over her, you’ll be glad you’re awake, at setting c, well disposed towards the world, crude cop’s hand, something to look forward to, same thing, the earth is falling apart, everything’s shit, Philip K. Dick was informing on Stanislaw Lem to the FBI, a typo, Faith Of Our Fathers, set in a future in which people discover there are drugs in the water, see a false reality, an anti-hallucinogen, our masters who run society, the communist leaders who control the world, Stalin or Mao, you see one of five images, a clanker, an amrophous blob, another reality, putting the sunglasses on from They Live, nobody see the exact same reality, classes of reality, a little bit close to that, keep taking the veils off, putting on more sunglasses, once out of Plato’s Cave, what’s going on in the real world, fight for 7 minutes in a back alley, a duty, why that film is good, show them the pictures of kids with no heads, while trying to make a sandwich, a duty to say this is wrong, make people aware, a duty to reality, not the takeaway from this book, much like a Sheckley, hidden message, doesn’t strike a moral duty anywhere, opposite message, A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg, see reality vs. hide reality, reacting against, cheapness, how much does a car cost?, ridiculous and horrific, the guy as he is, wrought upon, the humour high point, covered in human bodies expanding out at the speed of light, seized people, the only thing comparable, a futurological thing, a prediction about the future, climate change, the earth is warming up and humans are responsible, cut emissions, marginalized and fringed, members of one of the major political parties, both are frakking, money, be realistic, liberals support frakking, nuclear power plants, not in my neighbourhood, my position hasn’t changed we’re going to do more frakking, Pennsylvania, seems incoherent, the official line, a disaster that we are doing, just live in Canada, climate alarmists, Campbells soup cans on the Mona Lisa, Andy Warhol, an interesting mix, like self-immolation, my favourite thing, performance art, hoisting on a nice petard, protective glass in front of the works of art, David’s toes, humans create art, destroy humanity, stated, paint or soup, terrorism, making a political point by hurting the civilian possibility, terrorizing the paintings, guy reacting against his buying slabbed comics, a little naive, I guess I enjoy the ones that I have, just like wow, fulfilled Jesse’s prophecy, open them up, capital has no way to go, slabbing VHS tapes, multi-use, warehouse society, jars of screws and bolts, not exactly hoarding, when repairing things, keeping them out of the rain, a less usable state, we warehouse our children, a sad state, warehousing other things in that garage, the capital we want to keep from disintegrating, taking drugs all the time, twisted and humourous logic, why drugs are bad, the undercooked but very good part of the book, words do the same thing, people can’t have conversations about topics because they’ve been magiced, structurally, Return From The Stars, visual scene, more than you can even process, big opening, betrization, unconscious aggression, a second set of drugs, normally or nicely, smiling, a defrostee, flagellating them, sending them, infuriol, a meditation on one particular major drug, everything being a drug, you can’t get rid of the shadow, do you want to pay the price?, it gets worse, give into it in a totally hallucinated form so as not to act out on it, tonally different, somber and serious, interesting imagery, needing to box, very Sheckley very light, they’re the same writer, very different books, what’s the gap separating them, ten years, more mature, some more Lem, Memoirs Found In A Bathtub, too silly too funny, jealous, just write such crazy stuff, idea after idea, active imagination, Olaf Stapledon like, for Will’s birthday, Odd John, Sirius the dog book, notionally a Will birthday episode, Will is the 19th, fifty years ago, before Terence came to France, 44 years ago (or a little more), the big news in science fiction this week, a former member of this show, Andrew Jones blurb, big new, Paul Weimer, usually on the cover, got the front cover, fantasy novel, terminal cancer, a few months left to live, 2nd to last book ever, Lord Of A Shattered Land, not earth shattering news, people who don’t like Paul, the friend died, not sexual pictures, Cirsova saying something about this, illegitimate, fuckin normal, you take pictures of kids, because you love your kid, as a blurber, Paul makes it so easy to bully him, he cares what he thinks about him, the appropriate response, Ender’s response, new kid in town, getting bullied, you can’t trust your teachers, you can’t trust your parents, you can trust your left and right fists, your best friends, bullying on the internet, harder to go and hit people, Paul refuses to disown some StealthyGeek, Patrick Tomlinson, minor science fiction author, people who are mad at him, behaves very poorly, honey, is he southern, derogatorily, why do we care?, do one of his books, even Terence has limits, he’s this he’s that, lying about being swatted, a guy who’s triggered by Trump, whether Briana Wu is trans, is she on tv, married a famous doctor?, raise money on kickstarter, make a game, didn’t make a game, ran for congress, gamergate, the puppy stuff, why are we involved, back to grievances, on the podcast for 10 years, almost every week, psychological problems, Trumpers, all of this is just bizarre bullying, teams up with the wrong people, member, will defect, Will will defect, a pickup basketball game with books, defect from myself, I swallow you, do not imbibed, spouting? spitting?, sitting on the park bench, many asian people who come to this park to meditate, walk barefoot through the trails, a shinto practice, Korean, how they do it, back in touch with the reality, forest bathing, everyday, very cheap hobby, wholesome, Will does two things: does toothaches, toothaches happen, justify this sentence, refuse to do, why do that?, could have gone to a football, mood organ set to toothache, every human experience, edifying quality, Christian tradition, the French movie Martyrs (2008), prove the existence of God, extremely disturbing and hard to watch, why it exists, very disturbing, the American remake, Disney ducks, unauthorized, the newphews kidnap Donald, converted to this religion, Scrooge, worships at the altar of mammon, other altars, calling this movie cheap sick and pretentious, quite choice, everybody gets to have a Nobel prize, Palestinian journalists, prize for peace, trying to get some cred back, do this by proxy, it would be really nice if, nobody is forced to accept these prizes, the tipping point, Barack Obama, you probably should have waited to give me this Nobel Peace Prize, about like Ronald Reagan, five new wars, African ones, made Putin invade Syria, prop up that dictator, drone strikes, Yemen, Somalia, Lybia, military interventions, has been a declaration of war since WWII, actions under NATO, AUMF, one third of Syria occupied by, blame Russia, the Syrians blame Russia, terrorist blame Russia, ISIS in Syria, president of Belorus, does not speak Belorussian, speaks Russian, learn Russian, Russian tourists on the French Riviera, Alexander Lukashenko, Haitian Creole, the Springfield, Ohio, seal the border, did you read the whole tweet, the same imperial force, Haitians really eating the pets, humans have likely eaten pets, the answer is yes, taking the pets and putting them in the van, the Haitians told him, in a thread, stopping US imperialism, seems very reasonable, sealed borders, your germanic forest, burn your father’s mill down, impress you into their army, that would be bad, hire cheap labour, work visas, do jobs at a factory, a mismatch, what’s actually going on, island borders are natural, Shogun, the Portuguese and the Spanish divided the world up, up to a certain point, Catholic countries, dispensation, we belong to Portugal, the best way to get out of this game is to become an imperial power, have your north African natuion destroyed by NATO, Gaddafi’s problem, refugees from a hurricane, Kenyan mercenaries, $2000 a month, Ukrainian mercenaries from Venezuela, a show going on, ducks being eaten, nobodies father’s mill is getting burned down, fathers mills being burned down in Venezuela, Haiti should have nuclear weapons, multi-level layered theory, an island divided in half, Dominican Republic, factories, mills, Patterson, New Jersey, a waterfall, technology changed, Cuba, posing as legitimate job recruiters, arrested 17 Russians, [Narendra] Modi, unwillingly fighting, impressed into service, misled, you don’t support our troops, bogged down in the granular details about what cat got eaten, the PM of Canada, do strikes deep into Russia, a great idea, Russia can shoot missiles into Ukraine, with impunity, if Ukraine had nuclear weapons, we are disciplined, we’re the best friend of the worst bully on the planet, NATO is a defensive organization, taking so much Palitol, the Christian theory of revenge, plunge Europe into a war, sealed the borders of Ukraine, stop imperialism, rather naive, tit for tat, the pawn of the United States, rather strange, the real actors are not being discussed, Goliath attacking David, standing on top of another giant, into the arms of Goliath, Finland and Sweden resisted joining NATO, for protection against Russia, Eric Weinstein, public intellectual on Joe Rogan, like Graham Hancock, the incongruity of that statement, a lot less public, Jesse Rogan, I don’t understand what we are doing in Ukraine, a giant CIA base posing as a sovereign nation, an offshore proxy, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, money laundering and racketeering organization, amid the chaos, Victoria Nuland, color revolution in 2014, a redline for Putin, too many times before, using Ukraine as a laundromat, bioweapon development, if the public new the truth, war propaganda, war to Putin’s doorstep, NATO off his border, gene-specific biological weapons, the CIA the CIA the CIA, those are not facts, take out the deep state, the yawn factor, David Currie likes the CIA, drinking the kool-aid or water, Jesse’s insane, Canada is not a sovereign country either, crazy rambling, well argued, lots of specific details, something bad to happen in Europe, tiny little details, proof that no country is sovereign, autonomous, China, Switzerland, Emmanuel Macron is an American puppet, a transnational class of people, fairly close contact, citizen of Earth, people work or them, for the good of everybody, they don’t have countries, the election system in Canada, the working men, anti-semitic, as a jew, fuck off, anti-zonist, the Rothschild family, other than zionists pupeteering the United States, whoever this was, WarClandestine, not hyperbolic, just a layout of the facts, always there to help Joe Rogan to understand, university professor who got into trouble in Oregon, he’s soaking in it, ingesting into you, the drug is social media, the drug is the war, a war very far from them, watch it on tv, the equivalent of the drug, people get siloed, talking with Cora, some magazine has Jesse blocked on twitter, businesses or bots, if you silo yourself, I’m not following anybody on this list, why does David Currie follow me, I had too much to drink, very British, self-reflective, why do people not silo themselves?, open the window and see, the Ray Bradbury 4 television screen walls, how do you know when you’re taking in these drugs of words, deeply talking about, enragol, all metaphor, the words themselves are the things that get, Trump is a very bad person, show me the books, how many ducks were eaten in that park, was the pet tasty?, tricks designed to make you hate people, what’s the justification for destroying Libya, highest standard of living in Africa, going against the agenda, threatening the French, what if you have to negotiate, having to pay more would be bad, NATO and France don’t get along this well, throwing so much out, a settlement that nobody is happy with, I’m a moderate, a radical centrist, regions that want self-determination, perfect elections under war conditions, an independence referendum, why isn’t it a real election, people with guns, herding people to polling stations, not there or dead, fled, really vague to say, people in Donbas, all things being equal, taking the words of the statement a little to literally, they blocked off this road, they do do that, they do make those arguments, decades, bad democracy, Terence is basically right, a little man being flung at a giant, American companies that make weapons, neither side is able to get the armies that they want, going to North Korea, not good, against it, the sealed borders, The Cat’s Advice, we’re born where we’re born and we don’t know what to do, the opposite of a natural border, can’t get media male, invading Canada and liberate it, why isn’t that under NAFTA, the Chinese postal service is premium, trying to privatize Canada Post, the US Postal Service, we’re doing this, a nice interlude, many different language, a baby language, this is grounding us, no one is getting hurt, no ducks being eaten, a famous immigration attorney, the ideology, the New Colossus, a parade day, 4th of July, a speech about immigration, shaped the town, people from all around the world, from Korea, India, South America, a melting pot, pushed out or forced into armies, Jesse loves Putin, such beautiful suits, when he rides horseback with no shirt on, Putin come closer, Biden backing off, he’s competent, what’s you’re definition of competent, Justin Trudeau’s career, held a few jobs, the Liberal party said this is our man, he can study, and corrupt too, spiraling out of control, Trucker protests, compromise, I’m nobody’s master, not even the President, whoever’s running the United States tells Canada what to do, paranoid, one of the members of NATO, weapons and money, official government signs, support Ukraine, Kamala doesn’t study, very well prepared, the definition of study, not well versed in geography, the one rhetorical trick, the debate, hated it, obviously, Trump really loves Joe Biden and misses him, not excited any more, very low energy, so still during the debate, he was like a lizard, the aspect of a lizard, on the defense from the beginning, he gets excited, when he’s losing he gets really depressed, she’s right, undecided voters, things that will help them, a list of things, baby tax credit, she did a good job, this man is a liar, Russia had a nuclear arsenal, the Afghanistan stuff, did she study?, some idea that you have, the Trumposphere, describe the situation in Ukraine, as if you were explaining it to a child, rhetorical flourishes, the significance of the passage of time, fall out of a coconut tree, let me be clear, looked up, smirked her head, laugh, condescending or superior, a turn-off to many people, the polls after that debate, the substance of this, an actor who doesn’t study her lines, reality tv men, he seems to study, extemporizing, when you think about, there’s just great significance, not wanting to use a teleprompter, politician actors use teleprompter, remind yourself with notes, a high end politician, when he makes mistake they’re mistakes based on his ignorance, clapping for a Ukrainian Nazi, we should have competent people, Xi, Deng, a lot less poor, master the forces they’ve unleashed, work, health, homes, consumer goods, combined and uneven development, the infrastructure is collapsing, the middle class is gone, some public jobs, when my boss isn’t somebody’s boss, putting out the fires locally rather than importing fires, why is Canada involved in Ukraine, we’re told to, why we should be against, to who’s running your country, stemming the problem, coup’d government, other than memes, Xi memes, the mayor of Englewood, New Jersey, more in remittances, happening for the Philippines, whole towns in Mexico, get to see your family once in a while, most people would rather not move, $5.25 a day, the elites will use immigration, go to America and send money back, a brain drain, a young people drain, within the United States, everybody wants to leave Kentucky, seal the borders of Kentucky, encourage the production of captial, under the US constitution, reforms are impossible, race to the bottom, Twitter to Austin, the film industry, huge tax breaks, North Carolina, use the power of government in the clever way to make capital do whay you want it to do, clean and safe, before [Rudy] Giuliani, to descend into chaos once again, closed storefronts forever and ever, needles everywhere, injecting drugs into yourself, not thinking about your capital, transhumanism, transgenderism, or is he a black woman suddenly, our final reveal, headwound, mechanical legs, everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, we’re on that path, the first future, their job is to be soothsayers, he does see the first stage in that development, everybody in the congress misses this, ridiculous buildings, what’s right in front of their eyes, that irony, even the people involved, point to the tile, conference, second meaning, fucking, funny even before things start going, refering to page number, 8, 18, 72, as far down as we go in that [Star Trek] TNG episode Darmok, Anglic roots, greek ones for the drugs, just rohypnol, why you bugging, laxative, chocolate flavoured, stuck up in our words, build castles in the air, Bryan Alexander, a futurologist, ripped a fart, motorcycle, he lieks the Soviets, he’s a Russian fan, student of Eric’s, The Hopkins Manuscript, Sixth Column, futurist, for his job, consultant, a wikipedia entry, how handy, a close connection with its subject, require cleanup, Georgetown University Senior Scholar, what will be happening in the future of higher education, Qatar, branch plant universities, education, overseas, Canadian universities, some prestige involved, thanked in Polish, something he would enjoy, an interesting follow, what he’s doing for work, love of science fiction, the connection to his futurism job, these corproations have a budget, ways to spend it, 100% correct, not the ideal job, maybe he loves it, too much flying around too much talking about Amtrak, flying around, rural Vermont, “prepper”, an axe wielding futurist, vegan, really rough, processed foods, growing your stuff, seasonal, ferment stuff, protein eaters, cook meat, fruit, these humans, omnivore, like bears, on the flip side, the inuit had been doing it for thousands of years, deep five on motivations for ukraine, the grain belt, get the glyphosate on it, the bread basket of Europe, Bayer, where your headquarters was where you’re from now, Waterspider by Philip K. Dick, Special Deliverance by Clifford D. Simak, combo, Fury is of interest, Simak is of interest, philosophical, silly too, a journey of discovery and self-discovery, warlike, artsy, hippie, self-referential, convinced, get transported by a talking slot-machine, a robot in it, read it twice, a wishfulfilment thing like Heinlein did at the end, anti-feminist, Mistress Of The Dark Pool by Russell Gray, The Cold Female, titillating male romance, males get to save girls, both read by Mike Vendetti, Mistress Of Satan’s Hounds, unless you object to female form, in tubes on the cover, Dark Pool proper, the male gaze on the female form, nude, a knife, head is a skull, Cara and I had been married three years, the dark mountain pool, some insight into reality, hairy chest might be blood, a man’s magazine, a “sweats”, low rent Playboy, men’s adventure magazine, rainstorm, how they’re connected, a theory with regard to what men want, tapping into, baristas and barmen, cozy fantasy novels with green muscles mommies, the baker mouse, mice and baking, skip this, there is Cora, Tommy, The Noseless Horror by Robert E. Howard, distracted by other things, see you soon, who hasn’t Jonathan been on with, on with Scott, Connor, a video in Boston, a counselor, the Brattle bookstore, a booktuber meetup, Salem, the pope doesn’t know who you should vote for, choose the lesser of two evils, this is very important, didn’t endorse anybody, brutal, “serial leftist”, use communism as a slur, Kamala Harris’ dad was a marxist, not a heritable gene, far right, they are defining it differently, what they mean is dictator, 1984, you can talk to them a lot better, not even by his own definition, he hates Donald Trump, leftist and liberal, a slur, Paul’s pants are cranberry red, the glasses are hey man, never not wear them, red shorts, succeed in hijack, a tweet from 2015, what is this article about, a new article from today, obsessed with him, serial leftist troll, giant mistake from Baen books, Jon Del Arroz, “establishment mob”, “gatekeep”, social justice crusade, half-slur, near relentless attacks on Baen books authors, trying to make Paul’s world narrower, the ire of the woke mob, fun science fiction, poorly written choices, sad puppies again, extreme leftist politics, you have to be a girl, you have to be trans, time for black women to get awards, awards are stupid, If You Are A Dinosaur, My Love, industry clout, smear Larry Correia and other, that’s called racist, modern books, mostly a white audience, why is white in here, raging bald guys, all old guys, not raging about their whiteness, stack of books, swaying you to his position, two minutes ago, no justification, insulting, you’re a liar, you’re lying, the truth is the most valuable thing, the article is swaying you, if you talk about race all the time it makes you racist, race is a fiction, just like a pill, there’s no science behind it, not something you find in nature, no race of border collies, a legal concept, the law has real consequence, is there racism in law today, the first black president, how black was he, not black, the one drop rule, his mom didn’t have to pass, his dad from Africa, rhetorically get rid of it, plays god in movies, Morgan Freeman interview on 60 Minutes, Black History Month, a Jewish History Month, a White History Month, stop talking about it, actively not participate in that game, used to hurt people, hippocrites, bringing them into the van, racial animus, the races are already equal, Chinese, Korean, good question, why are they just now starting to, the Tsleil-Waututh, there’s a mall on Indian territory, at the mouth of a river that has a pipeline passing through it, transit tax, mineral wealth, Jesse’s view, redefined the word, 7 times a day, an arbitrary rule, affirmative action is very racist, ever popular, first member of the family to attend college, white politicians, first member of my family to attend college, you need to have more girls on the podcast, more fun, more low, chica, baby hens or roosters, Jenny’s dead, Cora we still get, Maissa sometimes, a more male activity, looking at old science fiction books, Cora’s unusual, she says everything that comes to mind, a virtue and a vice, neighbour who lived across the street and liked East Germany, solved racism, you are what you do, if you eat humans you’re a cannibal, misunderstand Canada, tax credit stuff, some sort of scam, lying about what’s going on, any substance to this, file 770, banned from origin game fair, getting people banned from things, why aren’t the police involved, all we hear, out of context, SFWA, in 2021, kopf means head, promptly removed her, another woke-mob, bragged in the comments, seemed gleeful, a tell, no longer guest of honor, reaction posts, people trolling each other for fun, we enjoy drama, sorry Brad Torgeson, weasel writing, Conan Attacks Fans, the Conan Properties International, good headlines, hatchet piece, political hitjob, Jason Sanford, Baen’s Bar, Genre Grapevine, dangerous domestic terrorists, trying to ruin Sanford, Baen’s top author, an executive there, the Baenistas, twisted vile shit, not willing to fight, bullshirt, be less polite, perfidy, a search of Paul’s account, his hobby, engagement farming, Kiwifarms, siderailed, lolcow, lascivious, don’t read these books, don’t know these people, boring stuff, Jonathan’s fans, written reviews, to be a fan, not racism level of heat, fan or a consumer, a dead person who wrote a book 500 years ago, laugh with them, Lawrence Block is anti-Trump, most people are totally disengaged, a lot of age involved too, trapped in an old ecosystem, promising making America great again, confused about what young people are interested in, MAGA communism, a small meme, a lot of bots, some of the tweets they tweet, Jackson Hinkle making being gay illegal, a nice walk, vitamin d and the podcast, drinking coffee, a little low energy, walking while on coffee, the road seems a little cleaner, finding this tweet right now, open borders, no nations, world government, under who tho, no government, local guy who picks up the garbage, wherever you’re born in the world, opportunities, travel all over the world, settled in London, England, happened to marry a guy over there, like a baby, toddler, not a pedophile, people are weird about children, fuck right off you idiot, concern trolling, the casual willy nilly throwing around of pedophile is a big deal, attack this person, ideological opposition to capitalism, somewhat better maybe, run of the mill liberal, a go along, an Assad is bad sort of guy, right wing left wing terms, are Democrats leftists, a war party for a long time, both war parties, they switch back and forth, foreign wars, the Pope’s right, escalate the Israel stuff, give them more stuff, might stop the Russia stuff, assassinated again, it’s illegal to be gay in 67 countries, pride parade, Alexander Dugin, repeat the fate of Sodom and Gammorah, an advisor to Putin, Liger, can’t stop attacking, identity politics, Communist Party of China, normal to be gay in China, not officially supporter, presume some censorship, funny and sad, bar/bets mitzvah, transgrandchildren, a major talkshow host, product of western colonialism, in British Columbia, provincial election, the corporations, and crown corporations change their logos for pride month, rainbow capitalism, a really bad tweet by the provincial NDP, that’s the insane thing, signing up for other people’s ideas, they’re wrong, who are these people what are they doing, look we’re tying to do stuff about housing, tax credits?, tax cuts, and frakking Pennsylvania, work for a cease fire, good at tax cuts, Republican guy, all money printing now, that’s why that guy’s not relevant, the promisekeepers, they need an external affirmation, meanwhile, Mike Pence, people got into it, I’m the guy who shakes my wife’s hand, very young, a wrestler, joined hands with Jackson Hinkle, Haz, streamers, everybody needs to read Dugin, do we need a new kind of red fascism, a scary word for sure, lost the war, Vaush, one of these gen x guys, are you joking, based, I can’t breathe, expose yourself, blackredguard, if Lenin Mao etc., Bernie Warren Staffer, common socialist attack, here’s what the reading says, nobody cites the source, a bad argument, an appeal to an authority, the undertweet, she like Mao does have a radical housing plan, doing fed work, accusing people of being feds, fed racketing, they do do that, he claims to be a socialist, you shall judge them by their deeds, the crossover between gaming, he has a sword and rug, agree on swords, swords are cool, kill your enemies and kill yourself, saber, light saber makes no fuckin sense, CIA leftism, Twitch, people provide subscriptions, donating money, digital panhandling, like Audible, credits to streamers, rough understand of how this works, suspect, pay them for the evil descent that they’re doing, NED, not hidden, not fake, not a conspiracy, why wouldn’t they be doing that, some other cutout, Bezos is so intimately tied, sow division, promote things we like, dispromote things we don’t like, three drinks, go talk to a doctor, self-harming, had too much to drink, three drinks is drunk, the way that platform works, certain things you can’t say, blood is green, Fortnite, a puff of green sparkly smoke, mom can’t handle that, why Minecraft is so popular, particularly reactionary, satanic panics fucked up my D&D games, just weird, congratulations on making it a Nazi bar, kids heads being exploded, flopping open, bluesky, this is horrible, watercooler talk for “creatives”, Jason Thompson, come out of the baby brain, cleaning them, a decrease in the number of people on twitter?, I’m over on bluesky, twitter was always political, find your way to everything, duck duck go doesn’t work, what’s left, get to the source as best you can, zionist lady from the New York Times, [an Assad toady], substack, huge following, biggest blogging service, Mehdi Hasan, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, something he never brings up, ever wonder about that last name?, a poll, every accusation is a confession, not a million percent true, a useful heuristic, a pretty rare deviance, true for politicians, blaming Trump for being in bed with Russia, uranium deal, baby level of psyop, I’m rubber you’re glue, primitive, juvenile accusation, calling the truckers Nazis, agents in with Nazi flags, just because they planted a Nazi flag, the government of Israel, anything you say about Hamas, being paid to be Hamas, you raped a bunch of people, massive rape in Israeli prisons, nothing on the other side, j’accuse all the time, boxes you in, what if you wanna learn some other thing, change your identity, people switch parties, RFK Jr., tied hisself to his Democratic identity, rejected and cheated, pick a team and stick with it, picked a team, tied to Kamala, speculating, reform the party, not what he spends his time thinking about, reading, socializing, a party in person, coffee, important to do it publicly, on the record, absent, not cool, not if it is public, on dangerous fuckin ground, lying is sinful, a mistake, barking down the wrong path, monsters at the other end, make jokes, the best way to do it, direct message twice, worry for seven months, forget about for seven months, not be mean to people, not a suspect character, the author write, wholly balloon, spicy, make sure you see this, clip from Futurama, pan-bi guy, a special issue of a fanzine about labour, a choice little section of Futurama dealing with unions, employee misclassification, the roasting machine for the coffee, read that zine, about Simak in particular, Joachim Boaz, 60s covers, I think we fundamentally disagree, got off twitter, siloing yourself, The Black Star Passes by John W. Campbell, piracy in it, Piracy Preferred, the Gernsback magazines, into describing gadgetry, rich guy, unsold me, this airpirate, cash and securities in physical format, gassing the planes, cures their cancer, a pirate with a heart, very super-sciencey, insane, further adventures, Don A. Stuart, Who Goes There?, Brian Collins, really bad takes (not taste), a bad ratio, young people read old sff, Journey Planet, Exiting The Vampire’s Castle by Mark Fisher, fucking wow tier, Russell Brand, the devil’s in the details,

We need to learn, or re-learn, how to build comradeship and solidarity instead of doing capital’s work for it by condemning and abusing each other. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we must always agree – on the contrary, we must create conditions where disagreement can take place without fear of exclusion and excommunication.

badly written, wow, fucking, wow, an atmosphere of snarky resentment, a columnist in the UK, anticommunist takes all day, anarchist, bad take after bad take, among other bullshit, independence under who?, Dalai Lama be a dictator, now that likes are hidden, to protect people from accountability, as evidence of this your that, worried about twitter being a center of things, staunch a flow of attack vectors, a feature, Abraham Lincoln was probably bisexual, journalism his thoughts, populism updates, piracy is not good, it is necessary, Herman Melville, 39 views, deep down the hole, really famous, because Pulpcovers has retweeted, scan the cover, fotoshop, too many hours, make things attractive and interesting, should be their culture and are not, take the hit, a very good hobby, everybody benefits, a joyful garbage man, a really good audiobook going, floor ceiling walls, tired in the shoulders, almost falling asleep, on cassette, might have been an Isaac Asimov collection, their drugs for your brain man, weird fiction, off track, not writing about it, getting something about it, Horrorbabble, Ian something, all the classics, almost all weird fiction, Scott Miller’s podcast [Lost Sci-Fi], lag spikes, The Bell Tower by Herman Melville, one of his best stories, train you up to max level right away, Clark Ashton Smith, such a premium story, Mars Is Heaven, a genius wrote that, Lazarus Come Forth, Oliver Onions, lady ghosts, The Red Room by H.G. Wells, I’m going to put this to bed, Christmas ghost stories, The Valley Of The Spiders, he’s so cynically correct, what would you do if you were mother to an aepyornis?, The Valley Of The Blind, so H.G. Wellsy, The Pearl Of Love, something irritating, why a pearl is in an oyster, this final beauteous creation, the coffin of his beloved, H.G. Wells fuckin kicking asses all day, why you so good?, an Indian man from India, a sex weekend, bump into their spouses, that’s the whole story, we know what’s going on with you, just so happens, I, Vampire by Henry Kuttner, after you’ve read Dracula, more entertaining than edifying, The Spider Woman by Maria Moravsky, Hounds Of Tindalos, watch out for the corners, straddles fantasy and science fiction, structured like a Lovecraft story, Jellyfish by David H. Keller, random guy thinks he’s the shit, so random, psychiatrist, not a great story, something to it, standard weird tales line about promethean science, done differently, in three parts, the last man, make mankind come about again, fails three different times, poetically written, drags, an audio movie version, Ziggurat Productions, these were fun, A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum, Metropolis, C3P0 but a lady, full of great images, don’t know, don’t beleive, A Hitch In Space by Fritz Leiber, psychotic space partner, Kaleidoscope, House Party At Smoky Island by L.M. Montgomery, her only contribution to Weird Tales, another ghost story, The Powder Of Hyperborea, assume it is awesome, sword & sorcery story, temple prostitute golden girdles, An Inhabitant Of Carcosa, super dreamy, pretty good, pretty minimal, spawns a big chunk of Robert W. Chambers, True Detective, this is California, a bobcat, Ambrose Bierce, he’s like perverse, I’m writing this for me, An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, intently trying to fuck around, A Bottomless Grave, very not possible, almost all reprints, my father a drunkard, only moderately wealthy, litigation with rogues guilty of infringement, neglected all my brothers and sisters, compelled to teach school, savage every direction, better than gold, at the dinner table, a patent had been granted him, the mos ingenious invention, a deep disappointment to him, until after they finished eating, my children, the uncommon occurrence, of courses it is better that he is dead, very terrible to us, cut off the baby’s ear, John you surprise me, mother forgive me for surprising you, the one eared baby, 7 pages of text, a show with Eric, a little bit scant, supposed to be half hour, we’re not on earth, this is too cynical to be any kind of reality, earth inverted, drawn before the court, one million percent corrupt, a love of a mother for her children is corrupted, the mother murdered her husband, is this another world other than our earth?, that is power, so perversely, “One Does Not Always Eat What is on the Table” , a corners’ inquest, bizare, nobody’s like that, The Terror by Guy De Maupassant, Fitz-James O’Brien, he’s great, The Diamond Lens, The Lost Room, What Was It?, casual opium use, things start rotting, things are more concrete now are they, killed in the Civil War, bastard son, even Jonathan has read, doesn’t follow the threads, looking through his bookshelf, son of in Anglo Norman, Michael Fitz-James O’Brien, racist, guy steals a diamond lens from a jewish, falls in love with a girl in a drop of water, Francis Stevens, The Elf-Trap, a lady, The Girl In A Golden Atom, certainly is weird, cool story, a little person, a Homunculus perhaps, a dream written down, prejudiced, American Writers podcast, educated in this idea of American literature, any club that excludes H.G. Wells, you can’t really talk about it, taking Lem in, from a guy from Poland, great ideas down in books, more importantly, those borders shouldn’t be sealed, via media mail, very important, because of scans, getting them to the scanners, a huge barrier, the shipping from the states, just stupid, how can you walk around the streets and not feel the oppressive evil, letting things slide, recycling, the compost recycling, seems silly, all subject to the same kind of scam, sell it as potting soil, thanks for all that work that we’re paying for, scam everywhere up and down, I hope that’s not true, puppies milking their mom is not horror, seems cute, lick up their poops and lick up their pee, works for her, they should be when they’re healthy, keeping themselves clean, petting is you’re grooming them, loving touch, cleaning is beneficial, the parts you allow and present, create an odor together, odoriferous glands, your hand is you mouth, some kind of defective cat, not super-judgey, my cat Mama, that’s how it happened, you remind me of my mother, Momala, Dark Brandon and Demented Brandon, disabled, Strange Brandon, had a limp for a while, Roommate Brandon, an aggressive way, Hubby, take out the garbage, a producer for a radio drama airing on XFM, Blue Hours, really in to running and desert walks, really good stories, including a Margaret St. Clair, retweeting request for pet owners to come get a pet that’s going to be executed, put your heart out, in xyz location, enough animals, word ban, innocent creatures, we want to help them, saddled with so many animals, mammals that like other mammals, reptiles are affectionate, evolved from reptiles, giving a rattlesnake a drink, giving a cobra some water, attack the hose, Steve Irwin died, looks a little bit like the cobra, neck pouches go down, something I like, caressed snakes, usually scared, the most dangerous animals, mouths and feets and machines and choppers, people love their snakes, if it tolerates you it might be love, eyebrow muscles, when you talk to a dog, when you talk to a wolf, a thing to be noted, not a thing to be followed like a mom from a child, expressions, wolves will growl, are you saying the word walk, was it walk?, cat expressions, glowering, dogs are training dogs, understand them better, understand us better, it will be smiling up at me, we’re on a team, such a pleasure, furry creatures, fur babies is too far, weirder than it needs to be, the poopy cleanup phase, open doorhandles, should be impossible, not even a latch handle, 7 boys, 1 of them a lady, prefers females, male dogs might try to hump you, scary, icked out, male humans and male dogs, once the babies pop out the males don’t have much to do for a while, not convenient, don’t even have to be the same species, cats too, dugs, what are cat breasts called?, cat breast podcast, mammaries, NIH website, a poem chat GPT write, you asking the perfect thing that it can do, one little error, ai art, A Witch Shall Be Born, tweeting about it, people are doing ai, a nice piece of ai art, we are not artists, we shouldn’t use living ai artists in our prompts, maximize his money, maximize public domain, when is he gonna die, Gutenberg was just following the law, the last hesitant on this, only met him one time, lots of people have met Robert Silverberg, a tool just like a camera, photos of trees and forests, lasted about ten seconds, is the guy behind the camera an artist, some people with a camera, black lady getting interviewed by a white lady, didn’t know what a musician was, identifying what an artist is, okay sure, Ansel Adams, Walker Evans, putting portraitists out of work, a tool, once you see it is a tool, a part of the resultant thing, who made the art if not the guy who gave the prompt, please write a poem to a woman named Samantha, in the style of Rupert Brooke’s Tiare Tahiti, ai art is stupider, a poem for hire, arguable, the famous poems written by Shakespeare, gay poems, by living on earth, Sonnet 18, a poem about poems, this is a trick, gifts in a gift shop, gift cards, birthday cards, a generational thing, invited to a lot of weddings, a whole scam, for wedding cards, it would always work, what should you write in the card, semi-interested, you will always be each other’s greatest gift, up and down, spring comes, sometimes you get to hot, the last three lines, so long lives this, the point of poems, that play with the guy with the big nose, Cyrano de Bergerac, the movie version is Roxanne (1987), a rap battle with another suitor, he’s a sorcerer, Father Of The Bride (1991), imprinted on The Jerk (1979), claim is a rapist, Gérard Depardieu, Peter Dinklage, The Station Agent (2003), Clarkson’s Farm, a reality show, Jeremy Clarkson, doing a show on his farm, learning how to be a farmer, Lamborghini, a tractor company, unreliable, there are versions of reality television that are pretty good, standard comedy results, Ricky Gervais, The Office, Karl Pilkington, too depressing, pretty bleak, an office job, An Idiot Abroad, tortures his friend, something wrong with him, adventures, a guy being miserable, a good lunch, Nathan For You, a business expert, very popular on comedy central, the economics of TV, Bronson Pinchot, bought a small town, fixing up all the buildings in it, a home improvement show, the role that made him famous, The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, rural Harford, you pitch a show for the home improvement network, a budget, a pitch, a hobby, The Old House, finishing projects, chicken coop, giving to chickens, a yard that had chickens in it, stay at home guy, very easy work, hens, a nest box, get those eggs out, keep their food in the pen, raccoons, bugs and greens, roost, wake up with the sun, if capitalism wasn’t forcing us, a cave or a cask, giant cask of amontillado, a shipping container, modular, in the hospital, putting a pacemaker in him, routine, heart fuckups, what toxins are put in our food, can’t get away from it almost, RFK’s MAHA, growth hormone and do pushups with RFK, pretty elderly, 68?, siblings, half brother, six years older, working on his body, playing golf, going out in the sun, a stupid sport, bad movements of your body, archery is probably better, the skill curve, I’m getting better, a good day, playing against yourself, go out and walk around, peck away, pretty addictive, what’s going to keep the cats from killing them and eating them, roosters will be very aggressive to any threats to their ladies, eat their babies, fertilized, a productive cycle, trial eggs, programmed into them, fun animals, landlord needs to fix our fence, when you have production you didn’t pay for the gift must be accepted, how the potlatch works, reciprocal debt is the economy, I owe you and you owe me, a polish chicken, when you lose a chicken, ploof on the top of the head, very decorous animals, colourful, wholy melanasiac, sex-linked, if producing eggs for consumption, she’s busy, once you have cattle and chickens, just have to feed em, a lot of capital expense, the fencing, student over to the island, you gotta feel this lady, she’s so muscular, this is not an animal you can push around, big pile of meat and very hungry, a dairy farmer, tobacco, lost his shirt, a trucker driver, rural mail carrier, drive your own car, ergonomic reasons, stable, health insurance, cousin’s wife, goats, five dogs, big dogs, vicarious pricing, very high end chicken coop, made of wood, $539 canadian dollars, a little ramp, keep the predators from eating your chickens, they tend to stick together, they’re always looking for food, socially gregarious, held and stroked, people have them as pets, fuel for your garden, five cows on a little farm, smells like nature, other projects, important cultural work, spread their gospel, passed it on to somebody with a yard, pass it on to Meg, there are cats on farms, mice, rats, they love birds, you wouldn’t see a raven, a sparrow, spend time with it, bears smushem, bears are coming, with torches, a ton of construction, new housing going in, wild animals are moving into the neighbourhoods, very cute, they sort themselves out, a pecking order, a little girl holding a hen, a painting of a little kid going in a bathtub, dude!, fuck off, you’re not being serious right now, tasty too, a sack of cracked corn, all the scraps, they eat grass, they eat weeds, they love bugs, spiders with a skull on them, she’s like yah, getem, a mosquito, interested in insects, up in the clouds, down in the dirt, the big parts, cicadas, mostly crunchy, break the neck of a bird and leave it in the sun room, editing up a podcast, make some coffee, too late in the day, slow season for work.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #829 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos

The SFFaudio Podcast #829 – Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, read by Jenn Broda for (LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged audiobook (3 hours 31 minutes), followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
Jonathan got to go first, 1925 book, epistolary novel, letters, a diary, The Illuminating Diary Of A Professional Lady, great narrator, great book, Jonathan will love this book, how can I count the ways, a movie adaptation, second to last musical sequence, Marilyn Monroe sings about diamonds, got lazy, cut the opening to it, make the case, the book is pretty great, the movie is very dangerous and has caused a lot of problems, how meanspirited the book is, a scathing social satire, very mean, mean to the reader too, ridicules these values, the movie is extoling those values, what the target of the book’s satire is, a speech at the end of the movie, daddy in law, being rich is just like being pretty, super evil, very compellingly put together, Howard Hawks, his most evil creation, a really good propagandist, the cult of Marilyn Monroe in L.A. today, their model is her in this movie, make you watch this movie, understand and miss, pretending to be dumb to get ahead, in the film, she’s pretending to be lazy to get ahead too, that’s what women like, they don’t have to do anything to get ahead, be sexpots, become lazy to emulate Marilyn Monroe, to sing like that, to talk like that, the product of hard work and dedication to her craft, effortlessly, a very dangerous film, luckily not a girl, problems it engenders, Jane Russell is good too, blown off the screen, Dorothy is a fun character, her diary, she’s the one who gets it, quite different, set 20 (or more) years apart, given even billing, in the book everything revolves around the plans of Lorelei, she’s a murderer, fucking genius, really smart, reading subversively, she has another layer on, if you look at the way she constructs sentences, baby sentences written by a baby: “A gentleman friend and I were dining at the Ritz last evening and he said that if I took a pencil and a paper and put down all of my thoughts it would make a book.”, he’s tired of her, or she’s so smart, this almost made me smile, a wole row of encyclopediacs, the spelling throuought, she’s a “Christian Science”, how stupid is she?, money, language, geograohy, she gets everything she wants all the time, she always comes out on top, stupidly uneducated, the books stacked up around her apartment, a woman intelligence about how men work, a very strange phenomenon, not a blonde, a screenwriter, a movie actress, men lose their fucking minds over women, all the men are married in the book, a little bored, an opporutnity to cheat on their wives, she knows what’s going on, how smart she is is very well hidden, underestimate how stupid she is, looking at the results, what’s so great about this character, seeing the world, we like her, a curse on Marilyn Monroe, the character is a parody of a real kind of person, lady looking for sugardaddies, before she takes her trip, Helen Of Troy, of Greek extraction, Mr. Popadopolis, a shopper, and he even speaks Greek to waiters, very hard to tell, intuition, doesn’t think things ahead very well, she makes plans, they always fail, the way the society she wins is constructed, shot him through the lungs, they want her to do well, they are invested in her, except for Dorothy and Lulu, the Jewish one who is educating her, hard to understand, movie Emmanuelle (1974), books by Joseph Conrad, every part of this book is spectacular, the layers of sickness/awesomeness, as a book it is a very good thing, the film takes it at face value and does that twist at the end, a limited perspective, her vision of the world is very small and narrow, a teeny piece of this bigger world, because it is a movie, the fly on the wall perspective, when looking at the movie, we see the glamorous Marilyn, actual life, small town, her looks propelled her, a tragedy, a box she’s put herself into, abuse by being so beautiful, another paragraph, March 19,

So the reason I thought I would take luncheon at the Ritz was because Mr. Chaplin is at the Ritz and I always like to renew old acquaintances, because I met Mr. Chaplin once when we were both working on the same lot in Hollywood and I am sure he would remember me. Gentlemen always seem to remember blondes. I mean the only career I would like to be besides an authoress is a cinema star and I was doing quite well in the cinema when Mr. Eisman made me give it all up. Because of course when a gentleman takes such a friendly interest in educating a girl as Mr. Eisman does, you like to show that you appreciate it, and he is against a girl being in the cinema because his mother is authrodox.

she doesn’t know what these words are, writing them down verbatim, falling in love, share these diaries with him, I would never put that in my diary, stuff being hidden from us, he wants to keep her as a pet, he’s busy, he wants her to “educate herself”, control her loose morals, giving him sex, she’s not a prostitute, a kept woman, literary men around, real people, inviting other women, bring their own alcohol, getting the chandelier fixed, the setting is Prohibition, she allows alcohol, the bootlegger, how wonderful she is, she supplied alcohol, supplies other attractive women too, almost wholesome, a layer of conniving gold digging, we like her so much, in the bad books of Dorothy, so well written, at your wedding I had to read about the Armenian genocide in order to not laugh, plying the mother in law, got her so drunk she wheeled her away, she drunkens men on her beauty and flirtatiousness, she drunkens women on alcohol, what people do, a hunter, animalistic, very natural, what religion she is, into health, you’ve had champagne, I partied too hard, the best way to read this, Anita Loos is making fun of a character that’s she’s created or met, Marilyn Monroe precursors, Mae West, plays a smarter woman, her whole shtick, the insidious part, quite depressed this morning, decided not to read the book, a cup by Cellini, a famous dish, Sam, a professor, life of Mr. Cellini, finds it boring, quite amusing in spots, riskay, not so close together, for the spots I am looking for, amusing also spelled wrong, Lord Jim, improve my mind, nearly made a mistake, The Nigger Of The Narcissus, negro instead of nigger, they have their feelings just the same as we have, this kind of mentality, she gets older, I’m not racist, get my servant to do the work for me, can’t we just, powerful people today, euphemism treadmilled, stuck with that, indians, especially in academia, politics, the white man’s language, BIPOC, long story short, it’s funny here, horror in real life, the problem with the movie, dance numbers and visuals, based on a musical play, removed more times than that, very separated, the tiara bit, done differently, the movie is very well done, young Mr. Spofford, little kid actor, if he was just a little bit older, 10 or something, under the surface it could be considered menacing or threatening, too propagandistly successful, subversive too, mocking, the reader, agrees that those are horrible things, most people think those things are good, confuse you, subversive in opposite ways, opposite points of views, diversions, a book of [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich] Hegel, a fun entertainment, they enjoy the book, out to dinner, an open friendly way, just too much the character, an iconic way of being, embodying a certain kind of womanhood, I have to be this, a fantasy for men, a fantasy for women, she’s very expensive, you need to buy her diamonds, the character of Lorelei vs. the public character of Marilyn Monroe, type defining, watching Elvis in a movie, he’s always Elvis, Some Like It Hot (1959), The Seven Year Itch (1955), more surreal than interesting, Just Imagine (1930), Futurama, XYZBrenda, just a musical set in the future, skype phones, flying cars, our vision of the Jetsons in black and white and a musical, an excuse, they don’t ever die, on the wane, rock operas, on rollerskates, Xanadu (1980), The Producers (1967), Busby Berkeley musicals, she goes to the Follies, cabaret dancers, partners, kept women, “a professional lady”, what does she do to earn her crust of bread, jewels, not exactly a prostitute, formal transaction, venmo or whatever, an old book for women, Sex And The Single Girl, a niggling feeling, her pimp, introduces her to people, a pimp will also have sex with his hookers, likes being cucked?, making the whole button factory up, a hobby, everything must be read subversively, through her pen, how does she pay Lulu, a budget, whenever he’s in town, an excuse to him, educating this girl, open a button factory, holidays on the saint days, relatives that are starving, really fat, ruining his business, palm her off on another man, in a lifestyle to which she’s become accustomed, the care and feeding of this pet, we’re doing all this work to figure out what actually happened, aspiring actresses in L.A., Amazon wishlists, meet guys on Facebook, she sells it on ebay, a fiction they create together, the streaming service for sex?, OnlyFans, I can’t beleive how great your camera setup is, what’s a twitch, she’s OnlyFansing, private dances, private shows, she’s doing it in person, a Patreon to support her acting career, a scary new AI thing, virtual girlfriend, a Jeff Bezos style character raking in the cash from virtual gifts, an escort, hired to be a date, nice to be on the arm of a beautiful woman, the Girlfriend Experience, different price points, taking her shopping, “falling in love”, made more plain in the film, easier to love him when he has money, evil insidious, a counter to the other narrative that’s also in the air, the story by O. Henry, two young people deeply in love, The Gift Of The Magi, anti-material stuff, the reality is women want a certain amount of security, burdened with a baby at some point, on the verge of marriage, a double marriage, a fanfare and a tiara, she doesn’t think you should like the guy you are dating, causes problems with your business, upset with herself, the problem is he’s married, a meal at a very homey placed, a big potato and a steak, they go in a hansom cab around the park, I’d like to divorce my wife but I can’t, I really don’t like this, that’s bad for her business, The Ritz, only staying at this one hotel chain, Anita Loos is hilarious, every place you go to has a McDonalds, cruise ships, the supposed destination, a stroll through the marketplace, meal on the ship, only one little store, the shopping in Paris, the Tower of London is terrible, the central of Europe, the men sit there and drink beer, parallel with that, Vienna opera, underneath the dust is tripe, a beerhall, she’s cracking a hardboiled egg, the whole place smells like sausages, everybody in England is a rich person trying to sell things, a portrait by Whistler, the number of allusions per page, Mr Chaplin, when she was in the movies, a scenario writer, drawn from life, hyperbolized, Pennsylvania, the naughty parts of the movies, to protect the morals of the poor people, just the naughty bits, without the good bits, parallels, the whole message, stringcheese commercials, the best part of the pizza without the pizza, the best part of the movie without the movie, pornographic movies had plots, scenarios, batwoman fucking some other batgirl, the extent of the script, all the celebrities going to Deep Throat (1972) in a New York premiere, quite a film, Sorceress (1983), boobs!, silly plot, a goat guy, like Pan, goat sounds come out, do you want to take a swim?, what’s that thing between his legs?, is it a weapon?, good quality on YouTube, whenever possible they take their shirts off, a naked person in a Hollywood theatrical film, Oppenheimer (2023)’s sex scene, Return To Nuke Em High Part 2 (2017), prudence, sex and nudity, current Game Of Thrones, so much nudity in it, do we even get a nipple?, an official censoring, Marvel movies are supposedly for a general audience, older people, Marvel movie fans, not even swearing, has to do with class, lower class people it is dangerous, they might get the idea of breeding, classicism, foreign distribution, self-censorship for China, art films, all connected, outsources everything, Howard Hawks is pretty terrific, an effective movie, insubstantial, presenting us with a Marilyn Monroe that damages the 20th century and beyond, subtext, after reading the book, these things are in it, a weird role model for women, a weird sex symbol for men, the reasons why, Dorothy comes across very slightly, pawn off her man on someone else, tell him how much money I’m spending on these jewels, making up the stories, throw the jewels into the East River, she’s the one who exemplifies the alternative, the deeper voice, smokes cigarettes, she’s after the whole Olympic team, diving into the pool, an actual folly that happened, the opposite of Marilyn Monroe’s one at a time thing, an even more substantial role to play, she’s in a wig, the little beauty mark is in the original book, her beauty mark moves around, added to give that weight, Marilyn Monroe has been typecast as this silly girl, Jane Russell’s role, people do comment, she’s better, she’s more dynamic, she acts like Marilyn Monroe in the film, a doubletake, the same blonde hair, the face is slightly different, a sequel book, But They Marry Brunettes, a third book?, Gentlemen Prefer Gentlemen, the interview abruptly ended, a very heterosexual world, the sister-in-law who wears a tie and spends all her time with horses, WWI, she never went back to the mean line, he had to marry her because she was a suffragette, these Hollywood movies, made by homosexual men, homo eroticism, one tiny white girl surrounded by 8 black men, gangbang, muscular men, chorus dancing, Marilyn surrounded by guys holding hearts, fake grey hair, indistinguishable, men are all chasing her, she’s chasing all the men, the men are interested in each other and lifting weights and looking at their muscles, as a woman she probably doesn’t have as much experience with this stuff, only 3.5 hours, [Jenn Broda] narrated it perfectly, the Central of Europe, a really great job with it, that’s not her name, mentioned at the trial, a literary character, a lady who sat on a rock, a German siren, a place on the Rhine, she’s like a mermaid, German operas, seduced the navigators, she’s using a fake name, they don’t use their real names, Norma Jean, very realistic even though it is a farce, she’s in New York and England but she comes from L.A., probably set in 1925, screenwriter, a job for women, the man is the director the woman is the writer, the scripts can be revised all the way to the end, what characters were saying, how comics were put together, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, revising what was said right up to the end, how Curb Your Enthusiasm was produced, nobody has dialogue written, you’re angry about me having borrowed your car and I have this hat, she doesn’t have good plans, the sequence in England, both on the con, they have different problems, all the rich people are poor, also true, stereotypes that are very funny, she’s completely fake, is she even a blonde?, a really good book, when it came out on LibriVox, this is awesome, take the whole text, wordcounter.net, throw your text in there, if we threw this text into that, it is written in a style where she repeats words and over and over again, half the sentence start with “so”, no matter who they are, Mr. Ginsberg, some relation to the King, Mountbatten, Mr. Mountginz, his face became so read it was almost a picture, Major Falcon, written as if her grade level is really really low, super compelling, imitating the writing of the dumb blonde girl thinks she’s smart, really good, very solid, not everybody can appreciate this subtlety, ask Cora at another date, upcoming book, Dan Fante, the son of the famous novelist John Fante, similar to his father’s books, a very underground literary star, an anti-literary style, gritty books, dirty, street books, 86’d, struggling telemarketing, a chauffeur’s job, thribing limo service, he must remain sober, his own madness, familiar demons, a story from Saturn, March 1958, pretty connected, Never Marry A Venerian by Charles L. Fontenay, this charming young lady, he knew more about Venus, he was brilliant and understanding, the party tonight, a faint reproach, Hal is a robot, on Venus robots have equal writes to humans, built on Luna, plug him in every night to recharge his generators, colorful sand hills, most women are all body and no brains, your face and body are perfect, she asked him to marry her, not just a strong handsome body, his muscles were like iron, most brilliant and talented, tearful objections, Rico was from Earth, don’t you know, went off like clockwork, real terrestrial rice, Toby was tired, they retired to the bridal suite, how many brides she wondered, I don’t really know the man I’ve married at all, Toby had removed his shirt, the plug end of an electric cable, she saw the socket between her shoulder blades, how early could you see this coming?, right away, clued in, hints here and there, a little surprise ending, a nice compliment to the book, a rich girl looking for a beautiful husband while on vacation, tiny joke stories, O. Henry, twist ending, an O. Henry twist, at least 2000 words, for Weird Tales, long stories, novelettes, novellas, serials, short stories, always a need for to fill 3 pages, poems, a fixed length every month, this kind of story is good, crackerjack, WWI fighter pilot comes back home traumatized from the war, can’t sleep, like The Yellow Wallpaper but with a dude, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, people now are really trained just for plot, in the olden days, a series of song and dance routines, the comedic bit, romance bits, lovey dovey things, audiences are so trained, the attention span for the version with the songs cut out, everybody requires training, easier for kids, the amount of detail, the number of clothing items, less intricate, Quincy, M.D., Yes, Minister, a dog that likes to eat treats, at age 7, in order to grok it, required training, making things too easy, Scooby Doo, a 5 college consortium in Massachusetts, not a conspiracy theory, Shaggy is the stoner, based on Hampshire College, Smith and Mount Holyoke College, short dumpy fat lesbian, the tall skinny one, Velma, the jock school, Fred, the preppy guy, the dog is the jock, Amhurst is preppy, upscale and preppy, Daphne, University Of Massachusetts is the jock one, based on the personality of one of the schools, 2 girls and 2 boys and dog, the fat woman, the skinny woman, the thing that ties him all together, east coast, a New England state, tiki adventures, Providence, who’s theory is this?, keeping in mind that artificial intelligence is not accurate, reliable or trustworthy, cute, Golan Globus Theatre podcast, Scarab (1983), Robert Ginty, uncharismatic movie star, The Exterminator (1980), there’s no part one, the bad guy is Rip Torn, some sort of chemist professor, he’s decided to become Nyarlathotep, South America or Spain, improvising all his scenes, whenever he’s on screen, strange movements, Egyptian staff, boobs are shown, women behind him showing their boobs, unpredictable and strange, the anti-hero is the hero, rooting for Ginty to die, the description on YouTube, direct to video, a former Nazi seeking to gain new power attempts to resurrect an Egyptian god, Weird Tales style stories, a Weird Tales style plot, playing for weird, definitively a bad movie, I’m watching for these scenes, on screen antics, blackmail materials?, pictures of you with Anita Loos, it is stunning he has a movie career, attractive to women, you can get trained up to be able to appreciate crappy, the plot is less important than those scenes, a fake Mentos commercial, he spits venom, really good sound effects, dissatisfied with Midnight Pulp, curate your own shit, their programmer left, their programming hasn’t been the same, reward yourself, The Barbarians (1987), they show up on VHS and then they’re gone after 5 years, a new heydey for old stuff, giant books of movie reviews, as thick as your hand, stop at the video stores and buy whatever was in the bin with a good review, those were the days, a lady in New Orleans who’s opened up a VHS store, hobby/lifestyle, video stores are our versions of the pulps stands, a comic book store or the video store, pulp covers on the VHS tapes, waiting online at the grocery store, right by the checkout, Analog, F&SF, and crossword puzzles, discovered Heinlein at the museum shop, Rocket Ship Galileo, messed up, editorial director, hire this other editor, two editors, dissonance, Barnes & Noble, thoroughly decimated, Hudson News, bus stops and airports, the price is insane, you can still get these things if you travel fare enough, it used to be in every small town, a lot of this is technology, real estate stuff, a precipitous drop off after certain period of time, out of the land owning business, a similar one happened during COVID, Diamond Comic Distributors, three baskets, anti-ebook talk, the distribution method for ebooks, Amazon’s paid advertising, pay to play, how much the author/publisher is willing to pay, they’re squeezing, the way information and knowledge is distributed right now, the solution is to make it profitable, or make it less profitable, that’s how we got here, make it subversively searchable, individual education vs. advertising, some are available for free, showing movies every week, a sale, $30 for the year, ongoing, different price points, getting on the system, once you’re tied into stuff you become a manager, banking, all the boring parts, reading stories, watching movies, Tubi movies, Plex, sign in for that, finding the time for anything, Netflix, the new Black Mirror, The Boys, bad writing, wait fifty years, 99 years so old, so topical, fun to read, perpetual smile, almost the entire listen, easier to block ads, subtle, did this mean that?, just phenomenal, so many references, Anita Loos read that [Benvenuto] Cellini book, a real person, alluded to, Sam something, sounds like a real Hollywood person, Midnight Vampire, Will just had trouble with the subtlety of this book, how could you put that in your book, not successfully modeled Will’s mind, chemist/cultist Rip Torn, a book written by a dumb bitch, you really have not modeled his mind, Will is a very soft touch, more of a fantasy, we’ll have to ask him next show, A Witch Shall Be Born, The Aeneid, a holiday weekend, Scott booked these, its good, the timing, a good one, a good show, a great book, sometimes good books make good shows, suggest a book, the books you don’t like, if there is a disagreement, things were learned, we agreed pretty much about everything, what did I learn about Treasure Island with Alex last week, The Green Queen was a better show, a broken book with better ideas, women point of view, drugs and consumerism, that was as good as some of Philip K. Dick’s novels, he’s got some good novels too, the ideas were good in it, very obvious ideas, they were not original ideas, done poorly, she couldn’t decide, exaggerate these things, just describe them, about advertising, about Madison Ave., what the metaphor was, not a good novel, the veridical mask, The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, they spark some shit up, a fun book and a funny book, C.M. Kornbluth can hit knockouts, The Advent On Channel 12 by C.M. Kornbluth, money was tight in the land, let Poopy Panda up periscope and fire all bow tubes, Walt Disney creating Jesus Christ out of Mickey Mouse in 4 pages, he does not baby it for you, reading Connie Willis, oh god get on with the fucking plot, a little like Alfred Bester, all these bad ideas, the diamond industry, diamond retailers, so much money, tiaras and necklaces, the intention, feels like a movie from 30s, a throwback, Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961), get that ice, unless no dice, those louses go back to their spouses, if the tone were different, look at the rhymes, fun silly rhymes, so bright, her dress is so red, very cartoonish, the fantasy for men is having a lot of money to attract women, this a fantasy for married men, more a fantasy for women than for men, one of his least movies, Happy Birhday, Mr. President, that scene practically happens in the movie, she’s playing herself from that movie, Madonna’s video Material Girl, the same song, the same dance routine, a better singer, she’s playing Marilyn Monroe, it looks like her eyes are closed, weird daddy stuff, baby and daddy, so childish, in the book too, that’s why they’re called sugar daddies, the opening song, Little Rock, Dorothy understands what’s going on, she’s the stupid one, she also knows what she’s doing, she can use her one trick, she’s a bad person, lying to people all the time, she has no morals, she doesn’t understand, when the murder happens, she reveals the murder, admire Anita Loos, she has no morals, the fake one so she can keep milking money, you’re like a radio, she doesn’t get that joke, a monkey at a typewriter, it is magical, how the book came into existence, you’re quite a philosopher, it doesn’t go on for 30 hours, what a great book.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes art by Earle Bergey

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #470 – Evolution by Langdon Smith

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #470

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Evolution by Langdon Smith

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

Evolution was first published in The New York Herald, September 22, 1895

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #823 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Loved Dead by C.M. Eddy and H.P. Lovecraft

The SFFaudio Podcast #823 – The Loved Dead by C.M. Eddy and H.P. Lovecraft – read by Mr Jim Moon. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (33 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Mr Jim Moon, and Jonathan Weichsel.

Talked about on today’s show:
only credited to Eddy in Weird Tales, a letter, controversial, banned, Washington, D.C., Everil Worrell, a reading club called The Outsiders, censorship issue, one state, a different version, the Spicy magazines, if it had a star on the cover, naked ladies inside, a horror show, a really fun story, this is a comedy piece, a very dark parody of Edgar Allan Poe, monomania, a Poe like character, a very Lovecraft-like character, Eddy had some hand in it, not a lovecraftian premise, hiding or repressing the truth about reality, stylometery PDF, the curlicues, shook the story, the adjectives fell out, making the serifs more beautiful, a friend of Lovecraft, by Lovecraft?, drips with his style and vocabulary, moreso than the Eddy stories, structure and storyline, rewrote from start to finish in his own house style, the narrator’s school days, teased, sickly, autobiographical notes, The Unnameable, flushing the Poe out of his typewriter, looser feelings, The Picture In The House, blackly comic, massively over the top, Poe’s lyrical shrieking, ghoulishly, qually interested in male and female corpses, he’s necrosexual, dead is his gender, the transrainbow flag, leaves a lot to the imagination, it doesn’t tell you he is having sex with them, he’s hugging them, a vampiric addiction, alive and not listless when around dead people, the silly and fun part, unbased in anything, locked in a coffin for six months, grandfather’s funeral, he comes alive, no goth origin scene, so silly, writing the story on the back of a grave [stone], till he himself becomes one of them, I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, targeted within, they’re hunting me for my murders, The Haunter Of The Dark, writing to the point of death, pungent phrases, the brand of hell, I can write no more…, fantastic, recording this last year, a gift for a narrator, the literary equivalent of heavy metal, pick a random sentence, a lot of ss, crafting it, narrated by someone else, a sillier story in a different way, Pickman’s Model, the language is dialed down, turned up to 11 right from the start, operatic rather than realistic, pointing to the language, some of them are okay, pistol in his pocket, good weird tales, we get the word, tentacles, my thirst for the noxious, delicious, treading on dangerous ground, demoniac desire gripped me, Lovecraft pastiche, asexual, where this story diverts from Lovecraft, his stories are never about sexual desire, The Thing On The Doorstep, having sex with an ancient Lich, Suitable Flesh (2023), Dennis Paoli, Bobby Derie, a sense of humour, dry, dark ghoulish black humour, in The Shunned House, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Lurking Fear, rape, blooming forest, mushrooms with penis shapes, on board with this, sexual fetish, ancestry, drawn to an ancestor, 17th century gentleman, feeling displaced, The Outsider is not about sex, seen holding a corpse, take a vacation, you’ve been working too hard, fallen asleep on the slab, the guy who runs the place has encountered this before, a new twist on a Poe thing, The Premature Burial, molested then buried, further my acquisition of these corpses, he murders you then he caresses you, Re-Animator, sentence by sentence, wasn’t Eddy a neighbourhood kid, six years younger than Lovecraft, same neighbourhood, younger people, that grandpa thing, why The Outsider appeals, I’m not like other kids!, prose poetry maximized, I can give this a gloss and polished, even if entirely Eddy, Clifford Martin Eddy, born in Providence, Swann Point Cemetery, weird legal thing with his heirs, out of the public domain and into copyright, 1918, 1923, Muriel Eddy, women’s suffrage, my son is going to be a writer, The Ghost Eater, a 1924 werewolf story, sandwiches and a revolver, cosplay before Dungeons & Dragons, mary sue style adventures, as mature, Deaf, Dumb And Blind, also a revision, Ashes, With Weapons Of Stone, Theodore Sturgeon, one million percent memorable, in a different league to the other Eddy stories, so gross, pretty good for a story over 100 years old, another necrophiliac story, Pity Me! by Bertha Russell, a dead Spanish lady, from the same period, molesting the corpse, she comes alive, overcome by the lust for the body, boss comes in, you’ve had a shock haven’t you, Pity me, reader, pity me, finished the job, I know I screamed, something fleshy, the boss, convalescing from a nervous breakdown, fear laden screams, awful awful, refused to believe me, strenuous work, not on the table of contents, age 15, so delightful and interesting, the imagination and enthusiasm, the gay lady who went to church, the worms crawled out, the worms crawled in, The Eyrie, necrophiliac stories, the entire subject, vampire stories, necrophiliac adjacent, long running dead wife obsession, out and proud, takes a lot of heat, a movie, a female mortician, Kissed (1996), fairly tastefully done, Molly Parker, a corpse has a major role, kind of an art movie, Lynne Stopkewich, Annabel Lee, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, incest adjacent, a maiden there lived, by the side of my bride, penetration, old man having sex with a dead child girl, pretty fucked up, an extraordinary story, builds back to the opening, no ghost element, quite the opposite, looking forward to being with them, more weird menace, using science, I want to have sex with the dead, it’s love, lust too, he loves them, so funny, I really like girls but they’re embarrassing, guys girls whatever, bizarre and silly, this is hilarious, pick some thing to be obsessed with, my bride’s teeth, serial killer confession, Maniac (1980), Maniac (2012), The Evil Dead (1981), Bad Taste (1987), cartoonish, gross or distasteful, so funny, look at me in this festering graveyard, no women, eat people, here to harvest humans, intergalactic taste sensation, Peter Jackson, The Lord Of The Rings wrecked him, The Stuff (1985), Larry Cohen, poorly put together and rushed here and there, satire of consumer culture, the menace from within, God Told Me To (1976), aliens pretending to be god, It’s Alive (1974), monster baby, Maniac Cop series, Bill Lustig, film festival in New Orleans, enormously fat, his legs, an eating vacation, a culinary place, dishes are huge, cajun cuisine, he would order three, a big spoon, three courses in one meal, an amazing eater, Bruce Campbell was cast to be the mirror of Robert Z’dar, his jaw grows too many teeth, played bad guys, the first one is good, people who survive the first one die, a new hero, he dies, playing with its rule, is he a zombie?, he’s dead, they didn’t think about it, it doesn’t make any sense, but the threat is real, the action is good, very legit, pulp fiction, the video store, get movies, carry a guide book, old movies on for cheap rental or purchase, you get a cover, about 90 minutes, a short story, not a novel, the same actors, the same images, a sex thriller, a continuation of the pulp genre in the video series, a Saw parody called Slaw, the devolved end of pulp, Strange Tales, mockbusters, Asylum’s whole business model, they made a hobbit movie?, Sharknado type monster movies, their movies are no fun, a tribute series to our guy Corman, his productions, puts value for money on screen, crappy concept of the week, satellites are in!, Death Race 2000 (1975), Rollerball (1975), Jaws (1975) spawns Piranha (1978), Transmorphers vs. Transformers, tricking audiences, VHS era, Smokey And This That And The Other, Emmanuelle series of movies, good movie vs. interesting movie, Frankenstein and his gimp suit, a comedic per-version of The Running Man (1987), sports are fascist, degeneration and television is controlling people, get points by killing pedestrians, the least good stuff in it, the kayfabe of the race, loving it, too loose, part of the fun of a b movie, intellectually the heft that it has is all in the details, an intellectual film, [Whitman, Price, and Haddad], Battle Royale, could the Loved dead be filmed?, use narration, an exploitation film, nudity, weird sex, bizarre stuff going on, a human love interest, a comedy no matter what, Stuart Gordon, Dagon (2001), Spain, feels broken, we have to film it there, Bleeders (1997) aka Hemoglobin, Rutger Hauer, changes, Nova Scotia, a Lovecraft story in California, jarring, valley girls vs. Cthulhu, ancestral home, what’s this drunk talking about, he’s got a Spanish accent, distracts, a limitation, the villain, The Temple, written by Dan O’Bannon, responsible for a good chunk of 80s and 90s science fiction, Alien (1979), Dead & Buried (1981), lent his name, as much weight as a writer’s name could carry, Lifeforce (1985), Total Recall (1990), Screamers, Terminator world, had a hand in, consistent, Blue Thunder (1983), it works, Peter Weller, infiltrators, claws, robotic drones, killing all humans, Jon’s World and Second Variety, one word titles, Twister (1996), a Michael Crichton project, a junker, a Burt Reynolds tv movie, Coma (1978), Robin Cook, Westworld (1973) was a novel he didn’t write, the all star cast, STEPHEN KING, star power, social media, from a communist point of view, redistribute, land reform, charisma or appeal, the same stars, the Ken doll, Ryan Gosling, Zendaya, Kyle Gallner, Red Letter Media Kyle Gallner specials, Dinner In America (2020), set in the 80s, where America is at, we know where we are, probably autistic, a quasi retarded girl romance, a ski mask, a lovely cute little romance with a lot of style, I remember loving movies, Netflix, get Marvel action star to make an action movie, a movie with heart, The Menu (2022), The Whale (2022), renting a movie online, too restrictive, sail the high seas, bro, 70s Spanish horror, mainly older stuff, the streaming services are quite bad, Tubi, Prime, Plex, links where you can find it, 1940, 1960, 4 movies from the 1980s, television shows, there used to be a countable number of television shows, there’s now an infinite number of television shows, how did that happen?, go down rabbit holes, the boutique DVD labels, Arrow, Vinegar Syndrome, rare and bizarre, pan and scan, so much better when properly restored, it has to be 88 minutes, silent movies, a hard sell, no silent film streaming service, a 70s action film, The French Connection (1971), let’s watch that, not what we’re being presented with, 80s blockbusters, Gremlins (1984), Karate Kid, long takes, a kid friendly version of weird menace, an end of the world movie, The Parallax View (1974), very modern sensibility, maybe the government isn’t working in our best interests, an election in the UK, Labour has the biggest majority since 1830, getting rid of the antisemitism of Jeremy Corbyn, always do the wrong thing, more of that is coming, a really terrific story to revisit, if it didn’t have Eddy’s name attached, all the Lovecraft stories in 3 paperback omnibuses, it did not disappoint, not a sentence wasted, beautifully structured, a great story to record, creep and gross people out 100 years later, literally beautiful, what Clark Ashton Smith calls Prose Pastels, it is a he, explicitly a he, does it have to be, mortician jobs, not a conventional job for women, he gets rid of his parent pretty quick, not an unreliable narrator, he’s hiding nothing, how much glee he’s having, silly fluff, the very tight structure, not a misstep, precious and very rare and very funny, well written, well structured, over the top-80s, RoboCop (1987)’s ads, hyper reality of 1980s cynicism, They Live (1988), you like Poe stories, you like Weird Tales, here’s one, you’ll love this one… to death, the subject matter, Kissed (1996) was done tastefully, Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens Of Titan as a play by Stuart Gordon, Robot Jox (1989), doesn’t quite gel together, worth a watch, flawed, The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1998), based on a Ray Bradbury play, magic realism, fluorescent white, spilling tacos, delightful and beautiful, Fortress (1992), Christopher Lambert, what makes Highlander (1986) good, a sequel, Stuck (2007), why trash bitch, I’m in trouble I hit a guy, The Pit And The Pendulum (1992), Castle Freak (1995), The Unnameable (1988), and the sequel, The Unnamable II (1992), play well back to back, a sequel that doesn’t suck, space prison, a lot of fun, Escape From New York in space prison, Lockout (2012), Luc Besson, collar around his head blows up, The Running Man (1987), a funny and fun but not good Rutger Hauer movie, Wedlock (1991) aka Deadlock, he’s The Hitcher (1986) he can’t be a nebbish, Mimi Rogers, forced meet cute, why would they set it up that way, a bad sequel, set in future California, two likeable actors with an interesting script, run for 90 minutes, a checklist, Jack Nicholson and Boris Karloff, The Terror (1966), Little Shop Of Horrors (1960), very moody, just that simple, all men on an island, No Escape (1993), Ray Liotta, sent to tropical island Hawaiian prison, rival gangs, does explosions, Benghazi, fights back against the discipline, Lord Of The Flies but an action film, my theory that humans are doomed to do the worst things possible, black and white ones, the Puerto Rican trilogy, Hell In The Pacific (1968), snaps, set in Cuba, a satire, the monster is fake, The Last Woman On Earth (1960), Richard Matheson, Creature From The Haunted Sea (1961), Battle Of Blood Island (1960), Poe adaptations, The Masque Of The Red Death (1964), Cormania, somebody famous dies, 500 movies, A Bucket Of Blood (1959), a dim witted busboy, satire of art, great artist, same sort of vibe, a ridiculous premise and run with it, The Wasp Woman (1959), bees make royal jelly, wasp royal jelly, turns you into a wereladywasp, a really good job, fun funereal words, here at this farm, dogs, chickens, cows, throwin hay all day, rooster in the background, since Christmas or New Years, a four hour trip, all rural, not students in need of tutoring, farmlife, see you on the internet, Sunday afternoon, get two edits done, WHO? by Algis Budrys, Rogue Moon, science fiction version of The Man In The Iron Mask.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #453 – The Idiot by Paul Dallas

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #453

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Idiot by Paul Dallas

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

The Idiot was first published in Amazing Stories, November 1956.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

Reading, Short And Deep #444 – The Special Exhibit by Robert Sheckley

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #444

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Special Exhibit by Robert Sheckley

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

The Special Exhibit was first published in Esquire, October 1953.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!