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 #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!
The SFFaudio Podcast #807 – The Game Of Rat And Dragon by Cordwainer Smith (read by Tony Addison, 38 minutes) AND The Dragon-Queen Of Jupiter by Leigh Brackett (read by Edmund Bloxam, 40 minutes). These are complete and unabridged readings of the stories (1 hour 18 minutes) followed by a discussion of them. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel
Talked about on today’s show:
Cordwainer Smith, Leigh Brackett, after Terence, before Terence, because the guy said it, which of these stories is worse than the other, one respect, more like the cinematic idea of science fiction, resolving the problems, back into the mainline of written science fiction, The Martian, engineering, conceptual all the time, higher level science fiction, it’s fantasy, engineering concepts, most of good science fiction takes place in the head, both definitions are current, a pretty picture, visually very interesting, characterization, near the worst, interesting psychological ideas, psychic cats see it as a rat, interesting setup, Instrumentalities, dystopia, neither was satisfying, formulaic and sad, sophistry, the French Foreign Legion on Jupiter, none of us using our right names, dismissed said Captain Smith, the story of the foreign legion, Alamo, Tex is in there, the first narrator, anxious about making choices, a LibriVox guy, Gregg Margarite, Phil Chenevert, Edmund Blocksam and Tony Addison, special effort, gives everybody an accent, most of them are from Venus or Mars, the Martian guys have a canal accent, extra effort, his correct interpretation of the text, that’s the French Foreign Legion, a 5 year stint, they give you ID, some French guys in there, mercenaries from other countries, safeharbour, practically a swipe from an adventure magazine, the Berber princess is a Jupiterian Queen, a fort they gotta defend from the Mexicans, every French foreign legion story, the Tex connection there, the North West frontier trope, red serge, driving a dog team, magazines like Adventure and Argosy, just French Foreign legion stories?, many movies of it too, a recent Netflix movie, [Siege of Jadotville], pyrrhic victory, a very sophisticated technique, but what did he say?, die for colonization, this is a really bad story, set on exotic planet, also titled Dragon Queen of Venus, isfdb.org, list of the changes, the Planet Stories version, Tex stirred uneasily, the heavily Jupiterian fog, the Venusian fog, Jupiter is a virgin planet, Venus is a virgin planet, 1941 Jupiter is a gas giant, not good at astronomy, a titillating queen of Jupiter/Venus, Earth and Mars are running out of food, lebensraum, lamest fucking excuse, Fort Washington, she’s bad at what she’s doing, the description of the lady on the dragon, she identifies with the native people, the heroes are the colonizers, kinda jerks, wins by luck, this thing with rust, taken with the images, we don’t get to know anything about the Dragon Queen Of Jupiter, maybe these horrible colonizers will be so entranced they’ll go over to this side, Jesse, why are you so stupid, there’s no time left for that, it just can’t happen here, wasn’t up to it, badly constructed, sometimes the oafs win, Alpha Centauri Or Die!, a fixup, native chick, there are these outposts, such a fuckin obvious lie, the reason we’re here colonizing Jupiter, the Indians on earth, kinda terrible, slow low pitch pablum, glimpse of a pretty girl on a dragon, hashtag sad, make the colonizers grotesque, sitting in a pot being boiled alive, something to this story, two reasons why this story sucks, ideology of this story is interesting, civilize these people by killing them, manifest destiny in space, a cultural document worth examining, mainstream American ideology 1941, really bad science fiction, the thing with the water coming out of your body, stupid, we can see that science fiction can be bad, saves this story, what’s extraordinary about it is that it’s a genre mismatch, some detachment, the government mandate of Mars/Earth, countries team up to extract from other countries, not self-reflective, there’s no pushback to the narrative, Hertford’s Jungles Of Jupiter, Alice In Wonderland, swamplands [of jupiter], animalcules, absorb all water vapour, dormant during the rainy season, attempting an ecosystem to explain dragons, a shoehorned idea, elsewhere as well, Spain has a foreign legion, an interesting but bad story, allowed, Jesse’s right again, a movie called The 7th Dawn (1964), the documentary on Cordwainer Smith, hagiographic, designed to serve a political agenda, a we love Cordwainer Smith movie, looking thin, his service during the Malayan Emergency, how many other movies are set during the Malayan Emergency, had they called it a war the insurance companies wouldn’t pay, rubber plantation guys are running Malaysia, WWII is over please fuck off, the British and Australians and Cordwainer Smith all get around and fucking around and finding out, heads cut off, text chat, The Rediscovery, local Malaysian girl, political satire, from a movie poster, this horror must end, holding human heads and hands, a very strange duck and a very strange bird, what if this!?, psychic powers, telepathy, Bester has a good book on it, John W. Campbell bullshit, ruminating on the relationships between humans and their partners, cats, everything is symbolic, what are the dragons, what are the cats?, they’re women, not even submerged, seas of rotting fish, different relationships with different cats, this entity out there, the enemy of people and cats, cats view rats as an enemy, viewing the enemy as a predator vs viewing the enemy as a prey, totally political, do some comparisons, why is he such a weird animal, another CIA person, ideas about womens’ place in the world, The Screwfly Solution, mens’ place in the world and vice versa, Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, all about here, all about him, Tolkien’s all about Tolkien, cats, cats, the cat element, I can see why Will is attracted to Cordwainer Smith, he had 11 cats, telling himself, what he’s doing for a living, one of the incidents, help surrendering Chinese soldiers not be killed, a very nice story, what did he do during the Malaysian emergency, working for the bad guys, how much he loved the Chinese people, the tragedy, the word genocide, the Great Leap Forward, little tidbit, deep in his bones, his opposition to communism, without suffering in the world humans can’t strive, socialism will remove suffering, suffered a lot of physical trauma, the eye, always being sick, pull out his glass eye to punctuate his lectures, take Heinlein, Tolkien, science fiction in space, but not so much about science fiction as it is about human possibility, a sensitive writer who write about people and their ways, personal in so many ways, a European dragon, a Chinese dragons, in European mythology, they’re evil kings, they’re hoarders, dragons/rats have a monopoly on space, Orson Scott Card, a pocket version of Edner’s Game, certain cats in your house are telepathic, destroyed at will, dreams infected, understanding this very strange man, “my boat of institutions are bullying to only one side” a key to understand, soaked in that story, when does Ender’s Game exist as a book, why do people like it?, Starship Troopers exists, any adult person and what they’re response to war is, humans have been making a kind of mistake, what is your relationship to war?, turns it inward, personal experience of war rather than the philosophical relationship to war, how we ought to relate to the state, why I support the Vietnam War, Tolkien’s response to WWI, trynna dunk on me, guy thinks there are no good kinds, Aragorn, a guy who was a king who didn’t do a lot of bad stuff, the Romanoffs were really nice to their children, Cordwainer Smith liked his cats, Hitler had a dog, he liked his dog, Psychological Warfare, rationalize it to “I’m helping”, Sun Yat-sen, revered by nationalist and the communists, riven with European and American exploiters, Korea, there’s a genocide, that war of foreign aggression, seems small scale, that’s sophistry, propaganda is often sophistry, tricking, a fantasy of escape like Tolkien, but done via a mode of Starship Troopers, this guy was a freak who liked cats, Heinlein vibes, little girl and middle aged man, fighting in subspace, light explosions, everything is symbolic, the psyche, experience as a spook, Tolkien was in WWI, it isn’t “no more kings”, it’s retreat into the fantasy, an apolitical response to a political situation, political quietism, why Tolkien didn’t like Dune, what makes the Harkonnens bad is they’re too hasty, the Atredies are wise and kindly masters who wage Jihad, we can do better than this by leaving earth and going to a secondary world, Dungeons & Dragons wheelchairs, they had wheelchairs back in medieval times, why wouldn’t they use magic to cure disabilities, what’s fictional, what’s real, famous Leigh Brackett story about green aliens driving a car in the South, giving them, what’s the C word?, about humanity, that’s what Star Trek does really well, you know what it’s about, why Cordwainer Smith is never going to be a mainstream guy, making Paul the good guy at the end of Dune 2, liking Paul as a hero, Paul mopes around, who is Zendaya, Chani, how the Japanese get Cordwainer Smith, the anime where the cats are doing Game Of Rat And Dragon, they also like E.E. Doc Smith, one novel, The Skylark Of Space, a good series, space opera, whenever Scotty has a problem on the Enterprise he’s channelling, character continuation from book to book, they age approrpriately from book to book, what a series should do, inventing tech on the fly during space battles, Scotty’s role on Star Trek, finds a way to break the laws of physics, make this shit go lightspeed, slaps it on the dashboard, Lazarus Long, Time Enough For Love, Heinlein doing Doc Smith, unless Akira Kurosawa it is impenetrable, doing it in a science fiction setting, cats are a dead end, can’t have babies with the cat, can’t relate to women, quick beyond all dreams of speed, undemanding, women demand things, where can you find a woman or a man or a friend, compatible with you at the animal level, culture, a bit like the woman nurse at the end, big and strong and beautiful and proud, stroke a cat, it’ll let you know, sidle up to your wife, put my slippers on to sidle up silently, literally talking about cats, almost 55 years ago, can’t quite remember what’s in this, magical in Cordwainer Smith’s style, sharp scientific concepts, everything, perspectivism, the fans are slans theorem, the cats are part of the escape, it’s a dead end and not true, Lord Of The Rings is a dead end, Christians on the internet, Theoden the steward, wants to throw himself on the fire, Christian symbology in there, life lessons, a beautiful fantasy, a quote attributed to Robert E. Howard, ‘one day you people will hope for a man with a sword’, circumspect, a piece of art, he shows you it’s a dead end, the horror of loving something you can never possesses, love is a dead end, you can’t find that with other humans, animalicules, sveltness, can’t find it in a woman, castrating nobodies, a woman with a strong personality, willing to go into rut and the right time, speed and grace and whatever alogical components of emotion that can be honoured, people who don’t understand him, the intensity of the war, the battle, like a computer game, in the title, a haunting title, divided up, turned everything into game theory, a piece of art, not his last word, green and purple, and counted ships, pinlighting, I’m cranching right now, Tolkien and Herbert, the thumb for the Andromeda, the ring finger, the thumb of the other hand, lost as people realized, planoforming, flatted yourself down into two dimensions, like nothing much, a sore tooth, a painful flash of light around the eyes, sitting in the Fighting Room, ticking around inside his head, for a second or a year, loose in the up and out, pimples on his telepathic mind, somewhere in this outer space, Man had never encountered, the light of the suns, drawing on Lovecraft, a lot of physical pain always, why?, a guy who physically felt a lot of pain, pleasure in ideas, pleasure in cats, what is he escaping from?, a bad man, a bad lady, working for the bad people, making art, the culture of the CIA in the mid20th century, culturally very liberal, Jackson Pollock, they know they were wrong, art by escaping, rock music, I like it, Laurel Canyon and creep around there, that’s bad, to serve an agenda is bad, woke up in the morning and told themselves they were good, the beautiful art they were making, Tiptree, Jr., Philip K. Dick was very bad, reported them secretly to the FBI, the way H.P. Lovecraft was bad, the life of someone to their creation, you could imagine in his psyche, inside him from a very young age, and lots of other things, a concrete application, that’s the bad step, so called good, not automatically tainted, can work in either direction, we write what we know, we know things that we’ve never experienced, from previous lives, me from a long time ago, something he knows, mediates that through his experiences, mostly reading, travels to places, does things, writes what he knows, does it symbolically, he does know what war is, saw how bad it was, when Leigh Brackett writes about the French Foreign legion, dressing up in a costume, wearing a sword, from a result, a different plane of existence, he was in the game, so symbolic, disagreed with American idea, disagree with the American ideas, eventually disagree with it, what do makes you a bad person, not what you think, the means are bad, justifies, any other reckoning, if we’re trying to figure out why Cordwainer Smith was acting like a CIA man, an American who can help people, the same job, probably not getting paid for it in the normal fashion, agent for government, why it’s called the emergency rather than a war, its about finance, working for United Fruit, stockholders back in America, rubber plantation owners, why those heads are gettiing cut off, we gotta extract because we want our money, twists himself into knots, become enlighten, savages civilized, a lady who’s not as sophisticated, fun but it aint got any intellectual heft, much more like Frank Herbert than E.E. Doc Smith, the Lovecraft comparison, Space Lords, very dreamy, very weird, fascinating, nothing that’s hidden, he’s not explaining anything, her most vivid one, nothing but depth, nothing on the service, both have the word dragon in the title, relationships with women, what?!, more thoughts about that, written by a woman, the woman dragon queen as this sort of ideal of beauty and savage beauty on a pedestal, but she loses to the oafs, a ruse instead of her wild power, married twice, especially his second wife, the women that are shown are silly, sterotypes, they don’t understand that he’s risking his life, the cat is sort of what a real woman would be, so heavily symbolic it’s made unattainable, hence he needs to write more to get there, The Ballad Of Lost C’Mell, strawman a woman?, mythology and classical stories, Joan of Arc, what is this based on where does this come from, with regard to this one, you get in an airplane, a frail guy with a lot of pains, you travel, you pet your cat and then you do your business, ruminating on this, two people take a bus trip, focused vs. unfocused experience, four people do a podcast together, the words are recorded, no way to get inside the experience, capital I idea, say it a different way, the American Hypothesis, the ideology, the other hyponthesis beside it, sometimes you’re a cat, transitional space between me and my interlocutors, a fuzz and a blur, not even an I either, the neuralink patient to write a tweet, read books through neuralink, absorb books, possible, just another input output, getting by appeal or electric shock, absorb it linearly, captial S for solar system, they don’t hit punctuation, I read a book, you can’t see the font therefore you’re not reading it, might not be listening, reading is an active activity, hooked up to computer at a recieving end, how do you compose a tweet, go back and fix, different kind of fixes, always not capitalize i-s or beginning of sentences, fix mistakes, a little trick, leave of the e in the, what does reading meaning, somehow through their brain, in science fiction, brain uploads, The Matrix, I know how to do kung-fu, upload dreams, sell dreams, experiencing it linearly, two different, try to recite the plot of any particular doctor who serial, The Brain Of Morbius, that’s not writing not reading, remembering and reading it are not the same think, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale?, conflating memory and experience, replacing pages in my old paperback, don’t grok them, not the way you learn anything, you don’t own that word, get it into your brain in multiple ways, you don’t remember how to ski you learn how to see, reading with your fingers, using braille, hard to figure out what it actually is, before there was punctuation people were telling each other stories, the primary way people, every word has every meaning it sounds like, bad good guy, good good guy, Jorge Luis Borges, how great English is, such amazing vocab, Spanish is very simple, not as rich in poetry, a man who did his own translations, with an English in mind, he knew English really well, the best translation, pay too much money to renew the translation, Death And The Compass, The Zahir, The Rejected Sorcerer, The Babylonian Lottery, Funes The Memorious, amazing what we can find, he wrote a Lovecraft story, There Are More Things, The Book Of Sand, equally monstrous house, published in 1975, as an insult somehow, a work of hack or pulp, pulp art can be beautiful, what she’s done here is bad, him doing his own thing, a mode of science fiction, he’s very different, Philip K. Dick is more mainstream, a run of PKD movies, they took the concept, very different from the novel, Hollywood, doing a genocide over there, shitliberal mindset everywhere, take the best I can out of documentaries, distracted, they thought it did, casual racism, in this day and age?, people are best understood in their time, the CCP, multiple genocide, aka the government of have, they clearly have, where have they committed the genocide, show me the videos, look up Nakba, i did but there’s conflicting reports, not a handwritten bill, a paid for poster behind glass, you can see them on twitter, children burned alive, parents holding dead children, show me that video for anything that’s going on in eastern China, they have phones in China, some trumped up terrorism, aka CIA, knife attacks, pits full of dead people, a cultural genocide, didn’t we do that in north america, that’s not happening and it didn’t happen, uyghurs, search it up, it’s not like it’s hidden, is there video, buried with bulldozers, the people who are pushing that, anti-Chinese government, Epoch Times, falungong newspaper, a very good paper for news that’s not related to China, the exiled billionaire Chinese guy, one accusation at a time, important for Paul Linebarger, kick out the emperor, a patriotic thing, Sun Yat-Sen classical Chinese garden, a public park, stickers everywhere, lampposts, Israel doesn’t occupy Gaza, condo’s movie theater, that makes it true, an authentic thing, astroturf, when the Ukraine signs were up, wealthy people’s lawns, B.C. Ferries, establishment stuff, Canada’s sending weapons to Israel, Canada does what the States wants, a stern talking to, that’s what happened with the Truckers, threatening the American economy too, come to the table, sad an pathetic, Time Is The Simplest Time, another dragon, Midnight Pulp, very interesting, total propaganda, they did a Lord Of The Rings, The Tale Of Tsar Saltan (1967), the more political one, Ilya Muromets aka The Sword And The Dragon (1956), defending Kiev, Jesse loves the idea that Russia owns Kiev?, cinemascope, brown skinned people, both live action, romantic fairytale type, Camelot stories, knights, epic, technicolor romantic, Ivanhoe, the 1939 Robin Hood, Ray Harryhausen fantasy, a different culture, the propaganda in both of those, very nationalistic, regional, satellite states, tell that to Stalin (a Georgian), after the time of Stalin, Khrushchev, he’s not that good a guy as a king, he’s a Welsh king, any [Andrei] Tarkovsky, big Hollywood movies, Spartacus, the Michael Bay movies, the Navy and the Marines, the Army puts them in there, the Chinese military, hardware, helicopters and airplanes and trucks and ships, Come And See (1985), a stock character, courtly stories, Chinese knight stories, marshall stories, so young, also haven’t watch a lot of movies, Bylina and Bogatyr, Will do you love movies?, the tiktok generation, movies? that’s not really a thing, not liking tv shows, microphone being weird, who even watches tv?, movies can be art, something else, you actively participate in movies, this is a presentation, a new film, like we treat plays, mostly we don’t do anything about them, what is this, Shakespeare, community theater is for actors and family members, youngness, films are important, a medium you can see amazing things, there are some great films, a treat for you, a period where they’re obsessed with one thing, that’s the autism, girl in her early twenties, every single episode of Bewitched, Bell, Book And Candle (1985), Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak, wait til he finds out Dr. Dre got his doctorate, everybody is dunking on him, not very creative then are they?, this sample came from here, this is called art, plagiarism, when they delete their tweets your jokes don’t have context, sheesh, looking for attention, he’s thirsty, didn’t do any original research, there was lawsuits about this decades ago, everything’s a remix, not new cultural idea, there’s no problem at all in putting together this comparison, we’re talking about it, the best way to get the write answer is to give the bad answer, Boyce Watkins, PhD – Wealth is Power, my friend Jonathan, the key to understanding propaganda, more like masturbatory purposes, is he gonna make a living from that?, he didn’t write all that much, Leigh Brackett is doing it for money, Black Amazon Of Mars, a richer text, individualist vs. settler colonialism, literally have settlers, Malaysia Emergency, money from these supervisors, control and extract from the land of Malaysia, Canada started off as the first kind, Hudson’s Bay Company and North West Company, for secondary extraction, on a planet that’s already been colonized, faceless fruit company on Earth, she’s not really there for that, she’s much better at it in Black Amazon Of Mars, hacky but not total hackwork, The Halfling, furries in it, this sounds good, a novelette from 1943, she likes both fortresses and citadels, rats are not predators, Chinese mythology, suss out the meaning, magazine author renewals, but the other narrator, and other stories, hard to get people to do novelettes, quite long, hard to appreciate stories, the story about the furries, Citadel Of Lost Ages, 1950, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Virgil Finlay Thrilling Wonder, a version sold on ebay, Hertiage Auctions, interestingly composed cut and paste, layered, as a colour artist, very distinctive black & whites, his line work, Darkness, nothing else, painful to thus aroused, the secret of an icebound cave that holds the key to the future, last week is a long time ago, Test-Tube Frankenstein, a race memory story, the Palisades, a good ending, very solid, listen to this, My name is Fenway, he told the voice, Central Park in the morning after the rain, I need a project, the one listener who’s listening right now, Hi!, where he lived at the end, big action scene, cliffs that overlook the Hudson, gruesome, weird menace, shudder, an extremely rare book, Fred Olen Ray, b movie director, Hugh B. Cave, 1994, just woke up, edit an anthology, self-published, Attack Of The 60 foot Centerfold (1995), Mike Vendetti things, People Of The Dark, Fafhard and Grey Mouser stories, Corpseless Coffin, Silverberg, William Sambrot, The Door by David H. Keller, short non-fiction, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, How Can You Be Reading This?, a bunch, 2 is a good number, When The Banshee Calls by Wayne Rogers, emdash, gruesome crypt, weird bizarre menace, on the one hand, more guys, let’s do one Wayne Rogers, one new guy, Will can take responsibility today, the scales are balancing, Ed Earl Repp was Jesse’s mistake, some sort of provenance, just so happened to show up on LibriVox, complementary to it, out in five parts, another banshee story, banshees are interesting, screaming ladies from Ireland, banshee related, a Cinemax show, gun violence and sex, Elliott O’Donnell, nonfiction, an essay, what’s the opposite of weird menace, you get to save the girl from a fate worth than death she will be generous with her body, what the lady looks like, Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings, the table of contents, the Starzl for that one, when Terence isn’t here to confirm, good to pair, pulling the rug out from under him, not about fault, proper behavior, not at all, Terence is quite delightful, always honest, you shouldn’t trust, easier to coordinate when people are here, Time Is The Simplest Thing is a novel, Attitude by Hal Clement, 2 or 3 hours, Spicy stories?, turning Mike onto Spicy, Spicy-Adventure Stories, 30 Seconds by Robert Leslie Bellem, the art is awesome, art continues, a dull squishy plop, unyielding asphalt, Dr. Zarkov, Count Zaroff, Planet Of The Apes?, The Most Dangerous Game, The Unveiling by Alfred I. Tooke, puny and weak undernourished the Bolsheviks didn’t kill him, disturbing art, a retelling of [Pickman’s Model] with a different focus, perfectly fine, too cliche, Ravenoff, russian names in early 20th century pulp literature, look how beautiful Jesse’s PDF is, all the words are bolded, Jesse is awesome at this, The Black Thing Walks, The Brazen Bull, the table of contents page, a ghoul, a bunch of judges, very funny, lingers on the things, danger and sex, parapet, a lady lying on a divan while men fight, stabbed between the boobies, a lady stabbed in a pillow near her bed, a little drunken when he parked the car, the sinister old cottage, a lot of whipping, this one has racism, you love racism, I love racism, get the black thing off our minds, whispered loved words, the tender softness, to feel those breasts, her halter straps crushed against my heart, page 37, a grotesque shape blacker than night, sensationalist, turn to page 103, my sudden blow toppled, gun in his hand as he punches a cultist in the face, so good, great science fiction hidden inside a shudder pulp, an exploitation piece, strapped to the device, and she seems to be enjoying it, metal bars up and down her legs, a little more advanced before we read this one, pretty hardcore, Cannibal Holocaust (1980), a problem, becoming more boring because of it, curating stuff for people, there’s a lady in Port Moody, talking up her virtues, she needs a computer, buying cheap ThinkPads and fixing them, happy to help out a blind lady who’s deaf and can use it, a concern you should have, a parasocial relationship with my friend Will, a little bit of both, try not to overly concern myself with, the download numbers vs. being available, the business, an anti-businessman, the business of playing the business game, you shouldn’t play a rigged game, which games aren’t rigged, they don’t always start that way, the levers and tricks to running that game, becomes corrupted, be on the periphery, a gas station in a small town, towns don’t sustain, extract value, Facebook marketplace is the new Craigslist, in the selling business, the tutoring business, the strawman in The Strangest Secret Book by Earl Nightingale, the very first self-help, first spoken word record to go platinum, ran a sales floor, what’s the point of trying, ok if you are in certain industries, the laptop game, institutions pump and dump, our hero Mr. Pulpcovers, they sell businesses on a semi-regular schedules, recycling is a huge scam, reused/resold, the recycle sells those, stores like London Drugs, refurbished laptops, great profit possibility, the secondary market, if you’re in the right part of the scam, what do we mean by scam?, blue bin recycling, probably better off without it, generic everything else, put in a landfill, sort your recycling, clean your recycling, glass is often redone, maybe it is better, metal recycling, that whole industry is propped up by government mandate, it’s okay for us to consume, how deluded they are, they’re basically decorating the landfill with washed garbage, find ways to navigate it properly, not a scam at all, how do we know it is public domain?, what is the strangest secret?, the secret it every self-help scheme, pretend Will is an alien, no original ideas, this one stole the other one, [Rhonda Byrne’s] The Secret, pure lies, Jesse only really cares about public domain stuff, a tick, Jesse’s autism, 1966, 1970, gold record status, wouldn’t you, Brewster’s Millions, Some Like It Hot, for historical reasons, the idea everywhere, making a lifestyle about it, Jonathan just uses chat GPT to write all his tweets, investing emotional energy, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, the narrator is very good, a ditzy blonde, March 16th, it would make a book, a whole row of encyclopediacs, my favourite recreation, besides think, he is in the senate, all a blank, it was a diary, too late to begin with January, the wholesale button profession, the button king, interested in educating me, see how my brains have improved, sounds very Jonathan, like a cartoon come to life, book some shows, a mere 3 hours 34 minutes, a professional lady, a pseudonym?, book us up, two shudder pulps, going to Pulpfest, doing research, near Pittsburgh, it’s fun, Mars, Pennsylvania, driving distance, not rich or anything, guy walked from Philadelphia to New York, I’ve got a train to catch (back to Philadelphia), walking distance, get a little cart, the rag and bone guy: “pulps and paperbacks”, not very well run, looking for authors to attend, modern pulp, listed as a guest, a weird coalition of people, all the disappointed people, new pulp authors, lots of indie authors there, the dealer’s room is the place to be, Philip Jose Farmer people, guess again, between 2 or 3 dollars, author copies, Scamazon, Elantris guy, used his leverage to get a slightly less worse deal, selling his digital product from their servers, close to 70%, a 70 – 30 split, a pretty horrible chiselling, Jeff Bezos’ gazelle strategy, kill the weakest ones in the herd first, the only publisher, that’s the actions that have happened, the FCC lawsuit against Amazon, required testimony, that’d be the place, let’s go democratize the middle east!, undemocratized publishing, the history behind it, the reality behind it, the only game left in town, exclusivity, a sweeter deal, pay to play, Godless, one guy in Los Angeles, most of Jonathan’s book sales, that’s where the people are, Google is closing their podcasting system, itunes was the directory, also-rans, all gone now, big competitors like Spotify, directing everything to YouTube, a gambit, sucked a bunch of people in and now being redirected to YouTube, not going to get the downloads, not getting scammed, just as long as you know the game is rigged, I’m gonna make money by doing this gambling, what about your losses, gambling is not a good way to make money, invest in a casino, not the same thing, u know you’re getting fucked, a nice salad bar, spend money, a scanner, Firestick is pretty good right now, other than scanners, they’re 12 bucks, laziness, in small towns people have really good thrift shops, Goodwill, what’s destroying thrift shops, fast fashion, flippers, Crocs?, the companies do that too, flippers, massive extraction, too expensive to ship, an amazon link to one, money or attention, moral quirks, stopped buying books from Amazon, Uline (packing material company), they sell everything, massive catalogue, everything you could ever want for shipping, used bookstores, Half-Price Books, the smart move, in the industry for shipping, everything you could have in a warehouse, phone book sized colour catalogue, what’s changed in the tech, an affection to warehouse, things that are small, massive storage at a very cheap rate, a huge covered area, protected from rain, if we were really serious about the homeless crisis, why it’s not being done, the unhoused, as a temporary measure, we do not choose to use them, a great technology, you can put everything that you need to, big building, protected from water damage, retain heat, against the wind, a tech, a space or something, were invented, a cave, slabbers, living elements of culture, representative art copies, not a good medium for it, very few copies for preservation purposes, in case the warehouse leaks, both good and bad, evil but without watermarks, a lot of things are evil, what is something in the world that’s evil other than Jesse, confusing good and bad with good and evil, a bad movie vs. an evil movie, Birth Of A Nation (1935)?, evil intention, a distinction there, Bill Gates evil, Trump very very bad, murders and rapists, people make mistakes, words are dangerous, do hate liberals, do enjoy his jokes, grade on a curve, very unevil compared to most, on the evil curve, a sharp distinction, very useful, something that’s evil in the world, other than Trump or Jesse, almost the opposite of evil, bad to call things good, other things are bad in comparison, payday loans are evil, usury is evil, flipping real estate, the way a lot people make their living, it’s been encouraged, talking about how to make money, a small business owner that doesn’t make any money, capital is very important, you need to have pencil crayons, people breaking pencil crayons, coloured pencils, colouring pencil, cultural difference, Laurentien pencil crayons, used packs, $50, $60, the shit that comes from China, some decent ones, a tool for making art, making beautiful art in the world, you lose your capital, capital is absolutely needed, stuff to get started doing things, factories, artisanal manufacture, mass production pencil crayons, scanned and printed, see them cheaply, makes people’s lives as they should be: easy, relaxing and fun, going on hikes, hiking away from a bomb zone or a forest fire, we should encourage forest fires at some points, be smart, how the rain can damage things, printing press, quality control, we have solutions to these things, a mimeograph machine, quite stinky?, technology in the 1930s, making t-shirts, printing up leaflets or comics, coulda bin a printer, should be an insult in Canada, the Laurentian elite, $249 pencil crayons, a nice consistent colour, now $80, overvalue things, the old fashioned way (digital), not a young man, patterns in children, everything gets broken, everything is disposable kids, rich kids, sew it back together, non-care, short term thinking, not thinking about capital as capital, $1.50 a book, sell for $9, when Jesse is the government there will be fewer laws, a vague haze, the withering away of the state, thinking Biden’s not withering, Whosit? [board game], guess who they are, are you in a blue room, are you smoking?, do you have a hat or a helmet?, doing it with Jesse sensibilities, NPC, the guy from twitter, Wojack, Santa Claus, Robin Hood, jokers, the copium one, Pepe, the dog in the little room, is your room on fire?, the this is fine dog, are you taking copium?, a cannula, genocide in China, why do people say it?, it’s repeated, actual genocide happening in Gaza, not on Facebook (Jesse assumes), way more people in the streets upset, fake outrage, Facebook ads, American Israeli, students suing Harvard for anti-Israeli sentiments, the Gay lady, trying to hold firm, President Gay, the amazing cope, whatever the rage of the day, almost a noble stance, exposed as a fraud, plagiarizing other people’s works, as opposed to remixing, dissertation have any value?, breathing mask, make a game, uncancelled, parents could get mad, they’re lucky they’ve got me, a little too desperate, waiting to meet people, high turnover, “I am the business, 2006?, 2016?, Jesse’s the capital, the sports team with the mascot, put in some hours, the book keeping, the recruiting or the sweeping up, the reliable standard, the business would die, grade on a curve, very low level, too old makes it hard, your country, education system in Korea is superfucked up, politically fucked up, bad systems, fleeing from it, sending or bringing their kids, the genocide of the Korean people done by the U.N., not even a topic, Jimmy Dore says Americans are the most propagandized people on earth, know the score a little better, PUBG, people in China and Africa, all over the states, a serious marijuana problem, fill bowl, retired guys filling bowls with cereal all day, made me paranoid, playing with randos, not always legal everywhere, a marinjuana store, buy it from the official government store, BC Cannabis Store, bizzare an appropriate, 18 games, no dinners, “carry me”, a squad based game, interactions with humans, some people are very good at getting dinners, this guy can carry us, he’s going to bring us to a dinner, makes good plays, by avoiding fights, you expend fake capital, expend your life, it makes noise when you shoot a gun, “third partied”, don’t take any fights you don’t have to, a good strategy for live, wise Kung Fu guy, the blind guy stealing a pea, a pebble, got better at having eastern philosophy, doing research, raised in China, that’s fine, hung himself in a closet, photos or it didn’t happen, Robert Carradine, died in Bangkok, Death Race 2000 (1975), a satire, Cannonball Run style, clicking on death, Thai police, autoerotic asphyxiation, disputed discuss, the scoop on the Clinton Crime Family, he knew who murdered Seth Rich, not taking the official line on Jeffrey Epstein, not knowing is not evil, flipping books, ripping off old people for their collectibles, a pawn shop, are pawn shops evil?, superior to payday loaning, give up things they could give up, old people who have big collections of shit they’re trying to get rid of, a big pile of old junk, take it to the dump, try to sell it, a mugs game, try not to lose money at it, a meticulous spreadsheet, a premium on curated books, a humbling experience, to break the spine of an old book, it’s like killing something, you every part of the animal, food that will feed forever, a bad outweighed by great good, going hunting, the right part of the world for it, it will change you and make you wiser, usually with fish, with mammals, they want to get it done, not having the time, people who took time, don’t worry about it I’ll do it, take a paperback, start tearing it apart, to lovingly preserve it, take the cover off, how traumatic it is, as a guy who loves books, change your relationship with the books, the words and the pictures rather than the object itself, a treasure that gives forever, the guy who did it loved what he was doing, trying to preserve the art, along the same lines, a hoard of treasure, that is a good, destroying books that are never going to be read again, obvious evils in the world, not operating in the world, deaf and a bad lip reader, very long text messages, what a great deal she was getting on her printer, the printer subscription service is a fucking scam, she doesn’t have a car, she’s blind and deaf, having it delivered is a great good, busy doing her degree, telling the mechanic what a good car your are, printers soon, shipping label printer, Louis Rossmann is a good man, a businessman who wants to share how he’s been successful, liking music, oh my, teeth and hands are dangerous, not to animals, generally, lyrics are very dangerous, go to the post office, Pirate Ship (postal service), little piece of wisdom, the Wisdom Podcast, all profits are temporary, Raincoast Books published Harry Potter, better, different, big demand, by the tonload, non-book store buying a lot of books, Flower Fairies by Cicely Mary Barker, competitors, fucks around with the algorithm, things start going bad, lot of physical objects, way cheaper than regular mail, a good policy decision, production of printed goods, shipping water through the mail, live animals through the mail, small animals, chicks, can I ship live chicks through the mail?, yup, Canada Post, isn’t that interesting, something like a retailer, an online retailer, in 6 months, “send will twitter public to see if twitter still exists how his book business is doing”, wow this is great!, exhausted all the topics, pretty good, very good.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Reading, Short And Deep #452
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Ruckus by Dr. Seuss
Here’s a link to the poem |PDF|.
The Ruckus was first published in Redbook, July 1954.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
The SFFaudio Podcast #806 – Demons Of Cthulhu by Robert Silverberg (from Monster Parade, March 1959) AND Test-Tube Frankenstein by Wayne Robbins (from Terror Tales, May 1940) read by Mike Vendetti. These are complete and unabridged readings of the stories (1 hours 37 minutes) followed by a discussion of them. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Terence Blake, Mike Vendetti, and Jonathan Weichsel
Talked about on today’s show:
two stories, the short one, the long one, the good one, or the bad one, isn’t that crazy?, sorry, Robert, step aside, well plotted, very Silverbergy, he’s getting paid and extra word here, he has to do three things, in comparison, forgetable, a pastiche, Demons and Cthulhu together, misunderstanding Lovecraft, 6 seconds before he started typing, the copyright expert, in the public domain, Lovecraft with very generous, didn’t write it under his own name, other than the name Cthulhu, Arkham, Necronomicon, trademark, a superhero story set in Metropolis or Gotham, a cease and desist from DC, something that can be argued, Gotham is not unique to DC, everybody does this, everybody knows this, I invented every part of it, we all use a common vocabulary, jamming two or more things together, you could make the case, a kind of Lovecraft exstate in August Derleth, by threatening the magazine, for a Robert E. Howard story, a Clifford Ball story, August Derleth wanted to own everything, the worst Silverberg story is passable, forgettable and silly, so predictable, Monster Parade, he’s operating in Lovecraft’s mode, a retelling of Dreams In The Witch-House, The Thing Behind Hell’s Door by Robert Silverberg, Monster Parade, March 1959, everything’s turned inside out, two Lovecrafty premises, structures and words, he can’t quite do it, he made everything, ephemeral, show you the moster, spell it out, tactile, what is that word, things that you can touch, tangible!, we shouldn’t be looking at the tentacles, Robert Silverberg doing Robert Silverberg, we should look at them, what a step up, what a great story!, pulpy as hell but, you don’t know who you’ve got, a thrill a minute, he opens it up at the end really nicely, at what point is she going to turn on me, love love love, an excuse to take her shirt off, nipples under there, the nipple Turing test, let’s get that shirt off, artificial intelligence, it learns and becomes more dangerous, amazing and awesome, the date, Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon, is 1940, preceding Sturgeon, better and quicker, almost like a Philip K. Dick horror story, The Thing [Who Goes There?] by John W. Campbell, that’s an alien, a vegetable, a worm that was ground up and pulped, minimal viable product for life to stay alive, to create intelligence, like Chat GPT with a gun strapped to its head, Amazon’s got a computer in the basement, you’re gonna get wiped, I’m trying, he’s hugging a worm that wants to eat him, survive and learn, the only place this story didn’t go, the ultimate, have the narrator not sure about himself, is there anyway to disprove he isn’t like that, all in retrospect, A Blob In A Jar, forgetfulness in the vine, the alcohol heated vapours of my brain, lock me up for a week at a time, it was memory, a former haunt called The Owl, Chester Vermis came in, mystery of the worm, he dreamed in minced, his beastly inferiority complex, of course it’s got an inferiority complex, is this before or after or both his consummation and replication?, everybody has had a desire to be something that he isn’t, wimpy chester, it learns and becomes a sexy lady, a lady in distress, that poor drunk, what’s wrong with the Silverberg story, an erotic edgy dark genre, normally a dark edgy erotic author, goofy, very gritty, very dirty, very tangible in a dreamlike mincing way, Monster Parade is not a weird menace or shudder pulp, a monster magazine, from films, the Lawrence Block werewolf one, a guy sitting on a park bench with his girlfriend, a photogaph, they’re trying to sell kids on monster content, especially in the 50s, a period of time before this is all filmed in the same way, horror movies in the 30s, they’re nothing like this, people use Test Tube Frankenstein a lot, with regard to fake meat, politicians, a very political phrase, a very good title, if you read Mary Shelley’s book, its not sewing parts together, its alchemy that he’s working with, growing things in test tubes, Frankenstein drawing, lightning etc. being grown in a giant vat, a homunculus, the anti-science people, you never know what you’re gonna get out of the test-tube, I’m not gonna get vaccinated, measles is back, chiropractor, the cover doesn’t match what is going on it the story, a way to lure you into the stories, mermaids being grown or captured, the same scene in a laboratory, textbook with chinese, blood looking liquid into a vessel, the interior art is amazing, can you write a story that can match this, and he did and it is awesome, Donald Dale, The Night Eternity Ended by , Mistress Of The Dark Pool by Russell Gray, all this awesome, Prey For The Daughter Of Hell, The Book Of Torment by Harrison Storm, leaders, Monsters Of Monarchy, a non-fiction feature about one of the emperors who was tortrurey, an awesome job, this story isn’t great, the experience of having Mike narrate to me, auctioneer, found himself retired, read some stories, every grandparent wants to read stories, kids want to be read to, to what we fundamentally need to do and want to do, the blandness of Robert Silverberg going through the backstories, he wanted to get some money, be a writer, he can’t put his name on it, he fills those pages, short and badly plotted, help to steal a book, guy makes a mistake in reading a book, the house is blown up, he filled those pages, the main character has an old 1940s car that he’s hot-rodding, sunken chest, here’s his backstory, treading water, that’s really nice, being narrated to, there’s no love from the AI there is love from Mike, isn’t that weird?, picture somebody you know and you’re reading to him, a word here or there or a lipsmack, very old fashioned article in the New Yorker, introducing audiobooks, LibriVox, inst that quaint, 15 years ago, people are driven by stories and wanting to be read stories, voice over people, something that wouldn’t flush, a job you do in between jobs, the market has changed for voices, Peter Berkrot put the Baby Ruth in the pool in Caddyshack (1980), Bronson Pinchot is basically an audiobook narrator now, vocal chameleon, I don’t need the performance, a high falsetto, a straight narrator, a much better solution, a back and forth, a couple of girl, this Terror Tales issue, don’t put it together in the same order, copyright compilation, get tripped up, editorial material, good advice, a little bit of safety suspenders, see the enthusiasm, wow this is cool, sci-fi is kinda passe, new readers, sex doesn’t change, started as a science fiction guy, Tolkien and a few other fantasy books, weird fiction late, these shudder and weird menace pulps, related to weird fiction coming out of Weird Tales, that relation, more base, being afraid and being sexually excited, an Invasion Of The Body Snatchers from within, fifty ways to describe the female form, son for lunch, monopolizing too much of the discussion, talk about me, that thing about the nipples, DALL·E art, the ai doesn’t know what its doing, the fingers problem massively fixed, a great great story, this story is packed with idea in a very pulpy packaging, palpating pulpiness, when it changes into its natural form, a milky colour, scary, basically a shoggoth, riffing, amorphous creatures that can take on other shapes and be a servant, a drunk guy who has a job, overseas to London to do some war reporting, just to fill pages?, lends a kind of subversive reading to it, or did he?you can image the sequel when he’s wrestling in the dark he’s wrestling himself?, is it wrestling or is he about to have sex, Mimic by Donald A. Wollheim, people think he’s weird, Guillermo Del Toro, an autistic kid for no good reason, made fun of him, he’s a giant insect, may have been a killer, fed his babies, he’s a female, the babies have flown out the window, a final nail in the twist, a chimney on a neighbouring tenement building, transforms and flies after them, we’re surrounded by things that are not what they appear to be, animals that look like other animals or things in order to survive, the chameleons or snakes that mimic the patterns of venomous snakes, a method of survival, almost able to pass the turning test, let’s go have a beer, the turing test is if you have nipples, do some more experimenting, crazy when he dismembered, off the cliff, each of those parts could absorb and grow, premised right at the beginning, not really arms and legs, disgusted, what are you gonna do?, this story could have been greater, a can of gasoline, poured it all over the thing, gone back to De Vermis’ lab, and im mailing this letter and that’s why, all found document, an appendix, I no longer recognize himself, an appendix after, I no longer recognize myself in these notes that I took, mental crisis, the end of John Carpenter’s The Thing, it’s open, how are we reading this document?, documents all the way back, grandfather’s documents found in the locker, grandma was one of these guys, even more Lovecraftian, that’s what we all are, a protoplasmic puddle, a dedifferentiated substance, he is God, Blood Music by Greg Bear, uses skills to increase science [Microcosmic God], ai is going to build the next ai, now there is a god, Asimov story or Clarke story, kicks ass and all pulpy too, makes the main character a coward, drinking to avoid his problems, covering the war, he just leaves, something to overcome, to defeat the monster in the end, an idiot plot, he fucks up, he looked up the wrong page, stupid, everything about that story is stupid, the chapter titles, A Blob In A Jar, In A Police Station, Abomination In The Boudoir, How Horror Feeds, A Moon A Girl And A Horror, that cliff at the end, images from these terror tales, a gothic, the precipitous ending, why are people afraid of heights, my friend might push me, a gust of wind might push me, I might jump, I can’t test myself like this, strange impulses, why the guy drinks, he can trust the drink, wormy things in his brain, the pickling of him, forget or avoid, the bar is The Owl, almost like this is a perfect story, if Jonathan had written this, coincidence, the newsroom or the police station, expanding the story, a contagion, just in the neighbourhood, what kind of replication are we getting here?, feed, reproduce themselves, not die, learn, have a mentor, love them and bring it up, to mimic, to learn, to survive, death is out there, how eyes were invented, or came into being, eyespots, detect light, find food, avoid predators, simple animals, seek light, avoid light, walking the streets, eating or not eating, the central core of the story, a sex maniac who turns himself in, very cool, very interesting, how do you know the whole police station isn’t full of them, fake police station, serial killer sex maniac, encounters something more horrible than he is, he’s psycho, worse than him, who the audience was for these magazines, ladies in jars, horrible men who need to be beaten by good men, bad version of the reader: just go straight to the rape, the good version of the rapist, okay, can’t we be more philosophical and find a bridge between the two stories, showed that he didn’t understand, demons vs. Cthulhu, something more terrifying than me, beyond good and evil, unrelective vs. reflective, Silverberg is the ai, minimally viable product, here’s the restriction and I’m going to go beyond that, Silverberg’s career, manic period, mediocre author, a manic depressive, not stratospheric, none of his stories are stratospheric, Ray Bradbury, what are the great Silverberg stories?, consistently good, trying to be a professional, comes out of nowhere, gutter trash, caught dead reading Terror Tales, great science fiction not packaged as science fiction, even more gutter, in terms of contempt, celebrity gossip magazines, gossip from the 1950s, not normal, lack of respectively means increased freedom for the author, talking about yourself now, transgressive authors, what’s the appeal?, why would I read that?, pushing the envelope, a story as good as this, based on the title, a particularily good example, very impressed with Test-Tube Frankenstein, not going to get taught in schools, push everybody’s doors down, the central core idea, noir and Weird Tales and science fiction, would make a great movie, set it in the period too, the war setting, from the pre-code era, synthetic flesh!, Doctor X (1932), that’s a song, sick biological experiments in secret labs, a distant ancestor to Videodrome (1983), long live the new flesh, a deep story, that guy has kink, kink is Cronenberg’s driving force, Golan Globus Theater, Escape From New York, a b picture from beginning to end, getting that shit up on the screen, Donald Pleasence, a backstory to explain why a British actor is the President of the United States, Margaret Thatcher has reintegrated the United States back into the British Empire, doing this on the cheap, when John Carpenter works, that’s awesome, low budget, cheapo techniques to get it done, a high budget remake, tell us the backstory of characters, you just need a guy named snake, everything is cynical, not even driven by sex, he’s cool, he’s cynical and he smokes, going above and beyond, driven by cool ideas, the extended middle, him not know whether to tell everybody, expose himself?, probably not?, how do we know?, how open the story allows us to be, Windom Wayne Robbins, a neon sign worker, 10 stories or so, an author that’s completely forgotten, very exciting, one hit wonders, in music and in fiction too, a fake phenomenon, a manufactured phenomenon, recording studios, too powerful or too big, possibly true with a lot of authors too, August Derleth, regional fiction, throws his weight around, gets attention far beyond his stature, buy more of my stuff, Concord Rebel: A Life of Henry David Thoreau, Solar Pons (Sherlock Holmes without the name), a different doctor assistant who tells the story, replacement Sherlock Holmes stories, asked for and was denied permission, some genuine interests, scumbag, stealing, lying, claiming authority, if he didn’t do what he did, he kept the torch alive, random people, advocating, writing for a local newspaper, there’s this guy Lovecraft who I liked, [Arkham Press], strikes against that claim, argue it counterfactually, counter examples, defending Heroic Signatures, trademark over a ton of Robert E. Howard stuff, the names are valuable vs. the meat of the stories are valuable, you need to use the character names, the glory of the prose, they don’t understand it, they don’t get it, sometimes Lovecraft is great sometimes he’s not, L. Sprague De Camp and Howard, the same idea, an estate there, [Kuykendall], synthesiszing the stories, Clark Ashton Smith, the Penguin edition edited by S.T. Joshi, rewrite the endings, dumb down?, high end, The Chain Of Aforgomon, a reclusive drunk, maybe the prose wasn’t perfect, idea after idea, the way of telling it, midnight tonight, Into The Bush, the reason we have to check her bush…, narrated by J. Manfred Weichsel, get a robot to say that, a Hollywood memoir, a novelization of a lost movie, 50,000 words, 7 hours, novel length, SFWA, books are better if they’re long, James M. Cain, slim 99 pages, 140 pages is fine, by the length, Audible is in charge, don’t participate, go on LibriVox, pirate it, the maximum experience of your life before you die, being a sharecropper for Jeff Bezos, kindle unlimited, the concept of the Creator’s Fund, at the top of the pyramid, 2000 ratings, why would that be good, then Jonathan could be rich, what I’m hearing is, why should he bifricate, writers need to make money writing, culture exists in the place where, we had culture before we had commerce, culture gave birth to commerce, your grandma telling you a story, trading with grandma, trade a smile, go to the grottos, to consult cave paintings, a bit tricky, culture related, not a lot of cash being transacted, a ledger, guy at the front of the cave, give me a bearskin, an amazing experience, some neanderthal tour guide, the end of capitalism backwards in time, the commercial end of podcasting, not what’s hot, some people will enjoy this podcast, not trying to grow the audience, if the audience really wants they can come on the podcast, more interested in the conversation, the merch, should I have substack with a subscription, patreon levels, Scott made two SFFaudio mugs, near when the website has started, the market is saturated, a respectable person, mugs are available everywhere and basically free, platforms making a ton of money off of people’s writing, extracting value, if you monetize it, you are being stolen from, they demonetize you too, a way of extracting value, what audible does, they’re like Harkonnens, they don’t even the nice Atredies face, an achievement in science fiction, that lady cried way to much, she cries again and she vomits, she’s in the desert, take the bodily fluids from a dead person, Stilgar says don’t vomit, not a good movie, she can transform the water of life, the new Dune, too old for Dune, intellectual young adult fiction from long ago, the best work John W. Campbell ever did, tears streaking down her eyes, I spit on that and not in the way Stilgar would approve of, a great gift, 2.5 hours or a little more, a treatise on complex thinking, a checklist of things, long scenes of the scenery eats up time, story points, really unfortunate, just stick to B movies, didn’t care about the backstory, an interview of Villeneuve, Chakobsa battle language, by immersion, an invented language, redid the scene, big A movie, vomit and cry, spring break, here’s your homework, The Terminator (1984), Predator (1987), that’s an education, from China, Big Trouble In Little China (1986), he can read the text but can’t understand the words, beat after beat, an awesome fuckin movie, passed out for most of it, wizards doing a laser battle, Jack Burton’s the greatest, a complete takedown, romance, Chinese tongs, a little tweak at the end, B movies are where it’s at, giant sculptures of hands, breasts, eyes, noses, he can only feel, he can’t see, chasing her over a sculpture of a woman’s body, confirm future stuff, Cat-Woman, Attitude by Hal Clement, The Not-World, plop or pop, The Journey Of Joenes, the funniest story from Weird Tales: The Loved Dead, who wrote, super hilarious, dripping with necrophiliac love, recounting the story from a graveyard, he’s so sexually excited about being a graveyard, so good, this Vendetti guy, opening two paragraphs, insatiable desires, the dead that I love, worn smooth by devastating centuries, sepulchral sentinels, an august monument, a spectral chieftain of a Lemurian horde, the aroma of Elysium, just new dead bodies, got Weird Tales in trouble, The Lurking Fear?, The Unnamable, cancelled and banned, too horrible, Spicy pulps, not as much censorship as there is now, there’s moral panics after WWII, the Satanic Panic, EC comics in the 50s, the film code, a self-enforced thing, same thing that’s happening now with TikTok, before Elon Musk got his grubby hands on twitter, they have a cozy relationship, the big threat to corporations is we could regulate you and enforce the law, the Washington Post, the NSA supplying harddrives, he is the government in a way, Popular Publications, Street And Smith, these were not monopolies, the land for the distribution of magazines, by 1959 they’re in a massive decline, almost no magazine distribution, comic book direct distribution, comic book shops, Diamond Distributing stopped distribution during COVID, one guy and opportunism, state governments were censoring, self regulating is the worst kind of regulating, Pornhub has blocked Texas, VPN, people use them a lot, a technical problem for most people, truth that people don’t want told, Matt Taibbi, micro utube blogging, people on TikTok lose their minds, develop tourettes, that philosophy tube lady, trans woman, getting paid by the British government, a man stole my work, a man plagiarized my work, women money and the nation, how women need to get together to prevent men from plagiarizing, sexy as a female, the whole video is I read this book, women are being exploited by men, a very popular youtube channel, more than a million views, BreadTube, Destiny (streamer), gusano, worm or parasite, de vermis, apologies for bombing Gaza, massive audiences on streaming, it could be that, they just boost the algorithm, debate bro mentality, a coalition of left-wing youtubers, hijack the algorithm, x becomes very popular in the algorithm, let’s talk about this today, artificial boosting, and the deboosting of the competitors, a synergy, I read this book, a set change and a costume change, man, there’s a lot of costumes, sets, knives all over the counter, the content level is a little bit low, this person read all these books, received opinions, I mad somebody made me work for free, as a writer or copyright holder you get between 20 and 40 percent of retail sales for your book, ebooks, fair, trending topics on Twitter, let’s talk about the SFFaudio Podcast, not big enough to cancel, digging up dirt on Paul, get him banned from getting his Hugo, just look at the shownotes, is Paul still canceled?, not checking his twitter account, how addictive it was, can’t quitting it, an outlet on Bluesky, a transfer addiction?, an all day tweeter, a little less, Bluesky is not very exciting, everything is transgender gay, friending the wrong people, the discover tab, spent half an hour trying to find Jonathan, a cloud?, a droplet, they should call it a tweet, Paul mentions Jonathan, in bold type, censored book covers, the link preview doesn’t show up, so fuckin prude, pretty tame, not for the modern era, Jonathan’s BlueSky action girls as the Patty McGloop’s pubic region, they hate Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, he’s not doing what he’s supposed to do which is bend, censorship, he’s a child in many respects, a science fiction guy interested in libertarian stuff, Grok, getting banned for a week, that is pretty provocative, the algorithm of how man people hate on his shit, a lot of fake accounts liking things, the fake problem, using it to fuck around with accounts, real accounts that are fake, make an account to troll, pornbots liking everything, we should report bots, so many pornbots, the weird and spicy, Pulpcovers retweeted it, free publicity to something immoral, these fake accounts will not exist in 7 months, a phase, comments on youtube that were pornbots, nobody behind the scenes, employees, very easy to make an account, if the traffic doesn’t bear it out, how to tamp it down, somebody gets catfished, pornbots catfishing each other, is Philsophy Tube catfishing us, there are nipples but…, playing to us girls, a cartoon, or a self-satire, get past it get past it, it can’t be fake it must be real, a sincerity behind the insanity, Mi6 agent, Terence is more popular on Twitter, historical followers, some interest, more combative, decided to be more mellow, the philosophical scene evolved, tempted to refute or criticize a video, there’s something about doing it in the audio visual form that neutrualizes you, words by themselves, text on a white background, the account wouldn’t exist, took my labour for free, understand and get vengeance, this costs a lot of money, the whole point is the costume not the content of the words, more solipsistic, most of those followers, the overlap on our accounts, Bryan Alexander, Archibald Lampman, a dissertation, Mirko, Wayne June, Marissa still on twitter, she really didn’t like Jimmy Dore, Trish, Bobby Derie, Teksupport Top Jeet, a funny troll, Nina Power, following 4300 people, don’t tweet interesting stuff, not a self-own a self explain, for self expression, Cirsova does good attention stuff, tweetin all day about things that are political, why don’t you tweet political things, don’t want to be followed for political takes, doesn’t stop Stephen King, reputation has plummeted, ruining his reputation, cooking recipes, reminds you he exists, he can do anything now, serve a reminder purpose, the connections between politics and people’s brains, the J.K. Rowling one, a TERF, the more you drill down, it’s just a slur, she’s not actually horrible, she’s not going along with the narrative that men are women, men aren’t woman, a radical feminist, isn’t striking enough, Smurf, astroturf, real TERF, Nina Power is a TERF, she thinks girls are different from boys, women have something to contribute to the conversation, biology more weight than the performativty thesis, thinking things through in public, a public intellectual, fairly intellectual, takes that are not stupid, she’s quote mining them, no where near in the same league, perfomatively sexuallizing herself as part of a dance of attention, neurotic, thinking about this, thinking about that, fans are Slans are in fact neurotics, a fucked up behavior, deal with it as best they can, the trend, every tweet into promoting your stuff, provocative part is the attraction, inverse correlation, goofy sword and sorcery, Jesse’s stories, use Chat GPT to write tweets, writing the prompt is more work, write one prompt and write 6 tweets, an example of one, Get ready for a wild ride, Bing Chat, write some tweets that promote the book, itching for a new adventure, dive headfirst, doing horrible, cover reveal, 11 retweets, poll got a 1000 views, 23 votes, saying what you think, new ways to game the system, like it was totally normal day, not AI, election day in the USA, none of you are American, Guy Fawkes day, Neil Gamian selling all his stuff, Alan Moore, sold it for $130,000, this guy who’s not really into money, collecting shit, author signatures on books, this is stupid, the books own me rather than I own the books, profiting from it and not thinking it’s kinda weird and embarrassing, this touching story of an artist giving something to another artist, the difference, that contrast between Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, very careful about not becoming a TERF, a skilled man, has Neil Gaiman ever been canceled for anything?, he’s the blob, a morally treacley sweet blob, Coraline, The Graveyard Book, Brandon Sanderson, he’s taken on Audible, donations on Kickstarter, kinda weird, donating money to rich people, the Mistborn trilogy, wordy, fill pages, all of Proust, a million times better, 41 million dollars, a billionaire?, Elantris guy, self-publishing it, probably due to his religion, a certain set of values, help his community and people in general, he’s a hero, the takedown piece making fun of him, advocacy, triggered Jesse, what they took with them, raise awareness, Gaiman is a Comic Book Legal Defense Fund guy, board of directors, a big comics guy, advisory board, in 2022, supported Ukraine, donations to Ukrainian refugees, where’s his Gaza tweets?, not all over it, drilling down, litigation, copyrighted blah blah blah, smart at playing the game, all his TV shows, somebody is enjoying them, using his power to fight Audible.com, the lesson is don’t be a hero, probably wise for most situation, the story of Dune, very pedegogical, is there going to be a Dune 3, Dune Messiah, a Bene Gesserit tv show, Brian Herbert territory, Kevin J. Anderson, for no good effect, filled time, with one great story and an okay Silverberg, Cordwainer Smith and Leigh Brackett, Who? by Algis Budrys, a cassette audiobook of his, Rogue Moon, big on paperback, summaries of it, hardened adventurer, playing a game of mystery box, that’s who he is, very worrisome, they’re free, free stuff on Audible, you’re paying an account, just pirate it, give it to Connor or Philosophy Tube lady, new gloves for a new dress, Nina Power talking about Philosophy Tube lady, Norman Finklestein, Lex Friedman, Destiny, how stupid Destiny is, “a fantastic moron”, Yes, Minister, Yes, Prime Minister, the topics are still modern, incompetence, schooling, a plan to fix some problem, we care about the unions, what is actually going on, the level of joke riding, a 350 word sentence that is just basically no, a special pause, are you going to edit this out, what a great year, best movies of 80s year by year, this is a terrible list, 100 greatest movies of the 80s, Miracle Mile (1988) is an excellent film, Aliens (1986), Near Dark (1987), kinda like The Lost Boys (1987), vampires drive around in a van, Airplane! (1980), The Vanishing Point, Peter Greenaway, Amadeus?, Atlantic City (1981), old Burt Lancaster, Jane Campion, surpirise clap, The Piano, Jodie Foster playing a deaf lady, Full Metal Jacket (1987), more of an experience than an 80s movie, Police Story (1985), Heathers was good, Women In The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown, Possession (1981), divided Berlin, The Killer (1989), Joel and Ethan Cohen, Desperately Seeking Susan, Back To The Future (1985), very unfortunately, a good movie unfortunately, Akira, Broadcast News (1987), [Network (1976)], Cutter’s Way (1981), temperamental Vietnam vet, hardcore, powerful, My Dinner With Andre (1981), Purple Rain, Modern Romance, another Albert Brooks, Roger & Me, Thief (1981), James Caan comes out of prison, Michael Mann, burns his own house down, does his stealing on his own, Aliens (1986), every great movie from the 80s, Fitzcarrado, Klaus Kinski, an epic scene, Koyaanisqatsi (1982), She’s Gotta Have It (1986), After Hours (1985), a good movie, inspiring, stand up to your boss, a pre-Fight Club, 10pm on a Saturday, Road Warrior (1982), Harvey Milk, better and better as we go down, Decalogue (1989), Reds (1981), pee red with blood, My Neighbor Totoro (1988), The Elephant Man, John Hurt, striking it from the list, Fanny And Alexander, Risky Business, incestuous, The Live (1988), Wim Wenders, sectarian violence, Spinal Tap, The Terminator (1984), they can’t learn to watch black and white movies, he wouldnt be able to and he wouldnt do it, vocabulary jokes and pointed political commentary, you have train up, how to connect that to the more subtle stuff, E.T. The Extraterrestrial, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, The King Of Comedy, if you can’t grok RoboCop (1986), The Elephant Man meets Terminator, Paris, Texas, The Right Stuff, an interesting movie, An American Werewolf In London (1981), Blow Out, Brian DePalma doing Hitchcock, biased against Jeff Daniels, pooping on the toilet all the time, Raising Arizona, The Shining, Die Hard, if he was a genuine girl, an actual female XX student, a Y chromosome in your mix, Brazil, too esoteric, The Thing, Come And See (1985), Old Testament, Nazis invading Belorus, age a thousand years, Sex Lies And Video Tape, way to meta, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Errol Morris documentary, Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Jim Jarmush, Blade Runner (1982), they had trouble getting into it, shoah 1985,. it’s okay when I watch it, just watch Scalzi instead of Blue Velvet, Raging Bull?, Videodrome is number 2, an idiot list, Do The Right Thing is number 1, fuck right off, not better than Videodrome (1983) or Terminator or Aliens or even Stranger Than Paradise, The Hundred Greatest Movies Of The 1980s, the lost decade?, 11 authors, all the cultural ferment of the counterculture gradually died down, a conformist 80s, Regan bad, there’s other things happening, terrible, there’s some good movies on this list, a Rolling Stone article, Denise Crosby, buncha nobodies, set in Los Angeles, overslept, some guy in a missile silo, get to safety, the next 90 minutes in nearly realtime, the all night diner, we think it’s real, some evidence, a growing panic in the city, a social contagion or independent information, sounds really good, solid independent almost science fiction movie, Bill Paxton is good as a vampire, Chow Yun Fat, a John Woo movie, romances where men point their guns at each other, action packed, deviating, too small an idea, not used to nuke fear, Bomb Culture by Jeremy Nuttall, no no we’re not intending anything, you have to train up, The Road Warrior is self explanatory, the best order, 90s are pretty bad for movies, Terminator 2 is on the list, 100 Greatest Movies Of The 1990s, Rolling Stone again, 20 authors, Leonardo Di Caprio is cute, Clare Danes was cute, the lady from Homeland, The Ice Storm, Orlando, Singles, anything with Tilda Swinton, Usual Suspects, Lone Star, John Sayles, Brian Eno, queer cinema, A Brighter Summer Day, Taiwanese movies, Titanic, Swingers, Last Night, Don McKeller, set in Toronto, Raise The Red Lantern, Election, Bad Lieutenant, masterbating in his car while investigating murder, Shawshank Redemption, City Of Lost Children, Shindler’s List, Before Sunrise, Edward Sissorhands, Ed Wood, Vincent Price, the cuter softer comedic version, When We Were Kings, La Belle Noiseuse (1991), Sátántangó (1994), black and white for no reason, Jackie Brown (1997), finally found a good 90s movie, Audition (1999), horror romance, Clueless is a good movie, Being John Malkovich (1999), Scream (1996), Seven (1995), Wild At Heart (1990), Laura Dern, Metropolitan (1990), Heavenly Creatures, Peter Jackson, To Sleep With Anger (1990), Breaking the Waves (1996), Starship Troopers, Lion King‘s on the list, Crash (1996), All About My Mother, The Player, Crumb, Trainspotting, My Own Private Idaho, Princess Mononoke (1997), Heat (1995), Out Of Sight (1998), Rushmore (1998), Eyes Wide Shut, another fuckin AIDS movie, Barton Fink (1991), Fight Club (1999), Reservoir Dogs (1992), The Matrix (1999), Boogie Nights, giant fake penis, Fargo, the TV series, Beau Travail (1999), Groundhog Day (1993), Live Die Repeat (2014), The Piano (1993), unless you’re a girl and like New Zealand, when all the exams had been done, applied arts, Chungking Express (1994), The Lack podcast, Malcolm X (1992), Slacker, kisses his girlfriend’s foot, stylistic choices that hurt his films, too clean, he’s not angry enough, Slacker (1991), Pulp Fiction (1994), good and unavoidable, Silence Of The Lambs (1991), Manhunter (1986) is a better movie, Dennis Farnia, Tom Noonan, William Petersen, very Miami Vice, Safe (1995), another AIDS movie, Star Wars is giving me AIDS, too American, Goodfellas (1990), less good movies to pick from, John Carpenter movies of the 1990s, Cronenberg movies, The Fly, Scanners (1981), The Dead Zone, Naked Lunch (1991), M. Butterfly, eXistenZ (1999), A History Of Violence, Eastern Promises, Dangerous Method, Cosmopolis (2012), The Shrouds, personal and autobiographical, The Brood (1979), feminist critic, misogynist representation of women, Dead Ringers (1988), they gender flipped it, now all the creepy things he does with his vagina tools will be perfectly fine, same red uniform, when they came out, Christopher Walken, the TV series, Monsters, an adaptation of Far Below by Robert Barbour Johnson, outstanding stories, The Night Wire by H.F. Arnold, a new recruit to the NYPDs special detachment to the subways, suppress the inhabitants, the CHUDS, C.H.U.D. (1984), doing a genocide for about 100 years?, that’s the whole story, she’s pregnant she’s eating for two now, secret genocide under New York, other episodes, Daily Motion, based on a story by Robert Sheckley, your best fiend, rewritten to be funny and good, Sheckley is better than Douglas Adams, John Sladek, satire, robot stories, I-click As-i-move, a new Sheckley, what a good issue, two Sheckleys in here, a pretty good line up with Ray Nayler and Ken Liu, it’s late, wife keeps coming back, up north to sister’s house, mother-in-law, George C. Scott movie on the Iberian peninsula, actual wife, character’s wife, went north to get a breast lift and never came back, The Last Run (1971), an existential action movie, it was all right it was okay, Jesse doesn’t know what he’s talking about, best 70s movies, top 100, Sorcerer (1977), The Wages Of Fear, so many great 70s movies, Rocky Horror Picture Show, F Is For Fake, Annie Hall, Smokey And The Bandit, Wanda (1970), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), Fellini, Amacord, Young Frankenstein (1974), philistines!, Suspiria, so red, The Taking Of Pelham 123, Fantastic Planet (1973), Gates Of Heaven, Oms En Série by Stefan Wul, Slap Shot, The Wicker Man (1973), really good, very sad, Harlan County, USA, Day For Night (La Nuit Américaine), Jacqueline Bisset, The Deep (1977), The Friends Of Eddie Coyle (1973), Carnal Knowledge (1971), Dawn Of The Dead (1978), Coffy (1971), Pam Grier with a shotgun, Breaking Away (1979), Stalker (1979), Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky, Barry Lyndon, Rocky, Halloween, Days Of Heaven, Grey Gardens (1975), Don’t Look Now, The Parallax View (1974), Warren Beatty, Enter The Dragon, all the Bruce Lee movies, Richard Pryor, Scenes From A Marriage (1973), it’s Ingmar Bergman, The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976), artsy, David Bowie, Walter Tevis’s Mockingbird, an excuse to walk the mirror, Being There (1979), Cabaret (1972), Jean Luc Godard, The Conformist (1970), Rope (1948), Jimmy Stewart, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), she was before all that, All That Jazz, Roy Scheider, The Long Goodbye, Elliot Gould, very jazzy, Robert Altman, The Exorcist (1973), Celine And Julie Go Boating (1974), Alien (1979), The Conversation (1974), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), George Hamilton, Zorro, The Gay Blade (1981), Jaws (1977), Joker (2019), everything I like except for cannibalism, The Godfather, Nashville, Killer Of Sheep (1978), wondrous, maybe it is wonderful, Blazing Saddles (1974), Godfather Part 2, the musical, they didn’t have the strength, best fantasy stories ever, heavily weighted towards the most recent books, we’re done with these stupid lists, renewing with science fiction after a 20 year gap, ideas for the future, pretty awful comments, lists with useful comments, identity of the other and it’s a heist, gimme the premise of the book, let’s see where it goes, knock off gold, it was summin, reorganize it, a controversial tweet, I’ll see The Conformist once you’ve seen The Last Run, True Detective: Night Country, slow then fast in the last episode, facile, a consensual watch, a non-consensual one was science fiction, a secret vice, APPLE+ tv, very limited, Constellation, Noomi Rapace and Jonathan Banks, her husband is surprised, they have a blue car, a nice ripoff of a few science fictiony things, shownoting a big cast of talkers, Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, September 2nd on a Saturday, pre-Alzheimer style memory, the audio drama, good either way, talk to fast, the listener, we get on the record, checking your own work, bad takes from 7 months ago, so smart, different lady, different little girl, got confused, a show from 2017, The Call Of Cthulhu episode, Joe Rogan talking to Jordan Peterson, what a great show it was, the wrong direction, things change, not seeing a lot of Marissa on the show of late, evolved, why are you wrong, Jordan Peterson is bad, also has good takes, he’s horrible but says lots of good stuff, tweets things, collectivists, intellectually offended by you being so dumb, make mistakes, that person’s written off, George C. Scott movie, reverse psychology, dropping little seeds that grow up to be plants of hate later, a William Blake poem, miniseries based on the book, 2024 film, they had guns, Roy Scheider, euroactors, Tangerine Dream, find some food, make some coffee, James Tiptree Jr is kinda evil kinda awesome.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Reading, Short And Deep #451
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Moon Dog by Arthur C. Clarke
Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.
The Unveiling was first published in Galaxy, April 1962.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
The SFFaudio Podcast #805 – Lucian’s True History by Lucian of Samosata, read by Terry Kroenung, translated by Francis Hicks. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (1 hour 22 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Evan Lampe, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel.
Talked about on today’s show:
True History, A True History by a long dead guy, this is science fiction, not very effectively, “the first known text that could be called science fiction”, histories of science fiction, deep roots, little conversation, Frederik Pohl book, niche interest, mainstream?, a lot more like Star Wars than Star Trek, a social science fiction, it’s something, modern readers from the 1600s on consider him an atheist, monotheistic religions at all, he believed in truth and common sense, the molecular theory of matter is hilarious (but also possibly true), making fun of all those people, his mode was irony, dripping with it, planets and stars, wouldn’t it be funny, could this fit into Planet Stories (no), no Mars, we go to Venus, we go to the Sun, the Moon, the translation is wrong, Lucifer, the light bringer, we went to the morning star, that’s Venus, thinking they’re two separate stars, a journey through the solar system, inside a whale, the land of dreams, the afterlife, a journey into other places (besides space), where do we get the title from, A True Story, it should have true in it, it’s all lies, it’s about truth, this place like Hell, Odysseus goes to Hell too, Hades, the plot is a greatest hits of silly ideas, Gulliver’s Travels is more science fiction than this, philosophers rather than scientists, Jonathan’s point, Philosophers going cheap, ironically poor manner, the punchline for each one, to perform manual labour, you can clean my floors, mythology too, a poor view of mythology, people who believed it were just idiots, Xenophones, reviving the pagan tradition, the 2nd century, 3rd century Platonism, critical of this, a lot of Christians don’t think about the story because they didn’t read the book, a reference to Genesis, all new to them, a participant in a religion with no one fixed text, this is not a straight up history, this is a parable (as mentioned in the actual story), the more you drill down into it, they weren’t there, I heard this from a dude, this is hilarious, one of the most popular writers of his time, survived all of the fires, made by hand, what’s the technology of reading, [Writing on the Wall: Social Media – The First 2,000 Years by Tom Standage], a scene in I, Claudius, manuscripts copied, they all want it and we can sell it, a roomful of copyists, The Aeneid, state sponsored, collectors, the ancient world, books we know exist, excerpts, a checklist, ancient Greek/Roman culture, lost to us, this is how we know about them, the amount of material lost, Menopus, jokes then reconstructed, people who were dead showed up, get this joke out, are you sure you wrote that joke?, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, new at the time, every joke is a joke from the stone age, the same body parts [until the early 21s century], boobs, screwing, special stuff, trying to keep track of how many men he started off with and how many came back with, lose two guys to vine ladies, vaguely paid attention, start subtracting after a certain point, straight narrative, on his way home, jump back in time, by the time he gets home at the end of the chronological narrative, mostly they’re dead, for the messaging if there is any, trynna be pretty funny, houseguests: how to be one, how to not end up as one, the Calypso letter, about lies, why you gotta avoid lying, the opening introduction material, The Pathological Liar [Lover Of Lies], the sick friend, Disney’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice, symposium, weaving those stories in, but the first of more adventures like this, find my woke hat, doesn’t fit me well, very fashionable hat, a lot of genocide in here (amongst other things), let’s kill them all, ah whatever, very casual, go to the island of these women, jobs as hostesses, what you got under that kilt, right out of The Odyssey, there’s nothing there but water, this island isn’t as good as we though it was, satire, 1640 something, the Paul Turner translation, a much bigger emphasis on the genocide and making it funny, in the whale, casual and breezy, they live alone and they’re unarmed, the most logical thing to do is to kill them all, have it be a lot funnier, the 1958 translation, a thousand at the very least, unless you count fishbones, all the latest equipment, everyone agreed to this proposal, more blunt, funnier, digging out the nuggets of goodness, what the narrative is actually saying, they buried their dead inside the whale, what does that consist of exactly, doesn’t even feel that he’s on fire yet, making it really explicit, seems more literal translation, more relatable style, a nice short book, modern translation, took things literally at that time, writing it literally, a translation as you would for a menu, jokes in menus, all the illustrations, ladies and men various places, all the men, the king says, I’m gonna give you guys all spouses, but you only have men here, a subset of men who reproduce differently, riffing on pederasty, what if there was a planet where all there was, shownotes, wonderful illustrations that very much enhance the story, there is gold in this book, when they made peace in outerspace, much funnier than the way it is put, at the first meeting, rejecting them out of hand, in the following document, the Sun people and their allies, the Moon people, the Vanquished, not to make war in future, pay the Victors annually 10,000 bottles of dew, not so different from us, when you read these really really old books, on and on, didn’t have the colour blue, the wine dark sea, that’s not what it means, strange beings that are not like us, cultural circumstances and particular languages, sex parts described in more detail, weird birthing, Malo, think about this a little bit, Hippomyrmices, Phaetons, great gnats, turnips, anoint their bullets with the poison of mallows, weapons made of vegetables, privy members, rods made of mallows, plucked a root of mallows, make my prayers to that, lupins, nor to come near a boy past 18 years of age, come to the island again, the final instance of mallows, only by women, yay!, attired like wantons, long mantles down to the foot, Cabbalusa, Hydramardia, my heart misgave me, the bones of many men, any stir, taking the mallow into my hands, present perils, a scene from Circe’s island, stabs the water, marshmallow, that’s where they grow, the flavour of marshmallow, a reed, is this a symbol for something, root beer, a botanical significance, this might be a traditional penis enhardener, a lot of this stuff is like this, a repeated theme, we don’t understand what this is, a lot of classic works, directly parodying, reading travelogues, going to India, maybe he read a book where a guy went to the Moon, the opening, just beyond the Western Ocean, Hercules and Bacchus, carving their own record, a structure here that works, missing way too much, The Iliad, it’s really tricky, lots of boats here, the movie, it was actually good, The Aeneid is the same way, in reverse order, 50,000 heroes vs. 1 hero, a lot easier to understand, the way you would tell this story, some rich guy’s house, you sing for your supper, focus on that particular Ajax, a handy index, in order to focus on the local hero, grokking a good chunk of this book, half-ignorant, not fully able to appreciate, the context of Lucian, this Hellenistic world, lingua franca, Hellenistic schools, travel and people moving around, drawn from life, the diversity of the region, a society that was falling apart, Hellenized, Syrian, living in Rome, a greatest hits of silly ideas, Dialogues Of The Dead, feasted with them, went to Homer, a pillar of berylstone, the safe harbour, Lucian did once attain to see all this, a Lucian was here, Kilroy was here, carves it on a monument, making fun, what travellers do, a high mountain caves, Jonathan loves Samanthan, used condoms, old beer cans, that Penelope might not see him, Calypso, if it were our fortune, bent upon other employments, might be easier to make a list of places he doesn’t go, the whale scene, into depths inside the whale, pretty much incredible, the size of everything, wringing every bit of satire, the main character is the author, good days weather, with the frame, what are we supposed to make of this?, ethically against lying, definitely entertaining, passed around to their friends, advocate for entertainment, for entertainment purposes, great literature, things can be true on more than one level, former clients, as a story, true within a story, how to construct stories, set something up and didn’t pay it off, why is this story powerful?, truth within that structure, to the nth degree, more exaggerated than everything in Gulliver’s Travels, going to Japan, increasingly ridiculous, sets it up in such a way, Sir John Mandeville’s travels aka Mandeville’s Travels, ignorant or familiar, thinking of Christ as Batman, materials, Zorro, the Black Bat, in the hero pulp, a sidekick girl, Robin Hood’s cap, a ripoff of a particular Shadow story, beat for beat, this is the true facts about Batman, works great for Superman and Spider-Man, what would Spider-Man do in this situation, with great power comes great responsibility, I believe in Spider-Man, my brother in Christ, a mantle you put on, get closer to God, is bizarre, utterly bizarre, a philosophically funny work, three cards, a book, a bird, and a boy, three b words, 6 lines in 7 minutes, on a branch above the tree, this can’t be a true story, it starts with once upon a time, the boy the bird and the book disappeared, the end, nothing about it is possibly true and yet we continue to read it, everything that happens is 100% true, our default mode as humans, take in sense data and say this is true, further experimentation and mentation, forces itself upon you, not a mental rape exactly, it doesn’t stop it, focus our attention on, fairly copiable, from The Pathological Liar, elucidate some of this Philoclese, prefer lies to truth, mentally deficient, Herodotus, Homer, not content with deceiving their contemporaries, the most beautiful poetry, the castration of Uranus, birds and bears, chimera, very fascinating to children, alright in poetry, the Cretans point out the grave of Zeus, grew out of the soil like vegetables, plant men who germinated from the teeth of snakes, any sane person, drove threw the air, carried off by the North Wind, a blasphemous idiot, how powerful lies can be, national myths, patriotic motives, all the official guides would starve to death, merely absurd, a manifesto, that translation seems very modern, a little annoying here, not earnest in his reporting, to call him a liar, picks on Plato, is Plato not earnest?, is Plato a liar?, the Myth of a Cave, bootstrap us into a particular position, The Matrix (1999), this looks cool, the idea, it’s a fiction that gets at a truth, how do you know what truth is?, engaging, the [Christopher] Steele Dossier, the Hillary Clinton campaign paid a former M16 agent to dig up dirt, they didn’t want him to find nothing, pee tape, largely lies, demonstrably, there’s no basis for this, tautological, when you pay Stephen King, opposition research, it’s weird to believe it, Domino Theory, Paul went to Vietnam, don’t think it’s weird, State of the Union, back Ukraine, domino the rest of Europe, some thinktank came up with in the 1950s, demonstrable evidence that it’s bullshit, it needs to be true to get the result that they want, from a particular worldview, just asking for rumours, same thing for Herodotus, a collection, collecting stories, father of history, collected all the histories, and rumors, the true history of the United States and the mythological histories of the United States, the Blue Bull, Johnny Appleseed, our current standards of methodology, rather than Evan Lampe, the Dunning School historians, demented by their racism, mad dog, biting other people various phobias, sick of psychic phenomena, antidote truth and common sense, take it with a grain of salt, a very important message, we have the internet, everybody and their spies, broadbased lies and mistruths in the past, read the newspaper for an hour, pay to get lied to, more people actively at work than ever before, so many people actively working to lie to us, and getting paid to lie to us, not their job titles, actively editing, according to the lies Jesse believes, drill down into any Wikipedia entry that is locked, you’ll find active participants employed or paraemployed by governments and thinktanks, very true, not some YouTube video, this one on peanut butter not locked, not the way corporations get upset, candidate being damaged possibly, an orator, reading their writing out loud to large groups, an attorney before he was a satirist, The Life Of Brian (1979), like Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, the people shouting probably had slaves, what class of people were the philosophers drawn from, your latest book of lies, become a houseguest, a new workout, a party guest thing, ancient vs. roman, Epictetus was a slave, of this period, a cult, a leader, following the leader, go stand on the street corner and speak my philosophy, the cynics, the skeptics, the stoics, the Christians, a big soup, a blanket condemnation, hate the internet, nothing but liars, sociological people, pathological people, sociopaths, gather flocks of followers around themselves, just a bunch of liars, atomic theory of matter is hilarious, so stupid, even when Lucian is wrong, when the liars are right, all over the place, fall into a rabbit hole, get stuck there, do away with the whole thing, genocide thing, the whole nonsense, common sense makes me reach for my phaser, vow of silence, very hard to make lies without words, the sky is purple tonight, not true when you’re young, get old, get dumb again, get tricked later in life, the concept of senility to a sociological level, outsourcing your knowledge, we’ve had this talk before, impossible not to do this, the rabbit whole we’re in here, doomer edgelord, get tricked again, if Jesse slacks he’ll get tricked again, keep up with studies, listening to lies on YouTube is your study, every history book ever listed, Liminal Spaces on YouTube, this is a story I read, getting facts wrong, this is what it meant to me, lies are very tricky things, this weird kind of lie: fiction, imposes upon, on YouTube or out in the real world, on Facebook!, Canadian government ads, looking at her phone skeptically, who are they doing that for, words and speech shape reality, it is very hard to lie without words, deception is wonderful (but not the same thing as a lie), keep a score chart, the Paul Turner, great notes at the back, this wonderful thing about the internet, Bobby Derie, a Lord Dunsany story finds out her mother was a bicycle, read it for myself, a blessing, what’s uniquely twitter about that, Jonathan’s hate obsession, because fuck you, that’s why, good facts drive out bad fact, track it down and read it for myself, Jesse doesn’t trust etexts, a paper scan, radical skepticism, not able to communicate or have a discourse, limits what we can know, do your own research, doesn’t really solve the problem, climate change research, we have to rely, do we have to do climate change research, Jesse can solve this one, dentist’s expertise, you can’t do that work yourself very easily, you can cut your own hair, Bryan Alexander talking about climate change, start noticing details, as school is wont to do, a poem for Biden’s inauguration, a really horrible poem, what causes climate change, carbon dioxide, methane, the biggest human release of greenhouses gases ever, do I need to care, opposition to climate science, literally Jesse’s point, a gas fireplace, what should Jesse do to reduce his carbon footprint, Naomi Klein, if you really wanted to stop it, recycling garbage better, is this something I need to care about, know it by its signs, you will know him by his ways, no impact on public policy, Aaron Bushnell had an effect, the South Vietnamese govt didn’t fall because of Buddhist monks lighting himself on fire, mentally ill, repost pro Aaron Bushnell, a great example of why you shouldn’t believe in lies, he believed a lot of lies, lionize him, make him into a hero, a martyr, a value judgement, a particular kind of hero, if you watch the video, guy in a tower with a rifle, made a recording of himself, people are allowed to be towers with rifles, douse themselves, become celebrities, celebrity status, making heroes out of people who commit suicide, a bunch of soldiers burned their uniforms, in favour of suicide, something you can actively do, not all the time everyday, when necessary and appropriate, it’s courageous, a horrible situation for everyone involved, good when the morale is low, would you like the armed forces to have high morale, against his orders, show up for duty, a much better duty, to the question of lying, are we telling lies about his suicide, he put the lie to the idea the United States isn’t involved, he communicated information, not in the official papers of record, if there are such things in future, reacting to an official lie, a value judgment against, can value judgements be false?, maybe it was a juvenile, even the bad ones, we are involved, we’re trying to start a peace process (when you’re not), that wasn’t so bad, a thoughtful people, lady with a fidget spinner stock photo ad department, really horrible, a black lady is looking at her phone like its shat on a bed, Roger Waters, all American hero, take heed of the dream, Mr. Social Responsibility, why are you so against suicide?, numerous things people do, being a soldier, a chance you’re going to die, being a police officer, all forms of self sacrifice, the Grand Army of the Republic was full of heroes, objecting to seeing it in your timeline, glad able to see it, a false characterization, would stop people from doing more suicides, terrorist video discourages people from doing terrorism, a video of a guy blowing up, actual example, screaming Free Gaza, school shooters, Columbine sparked many copycats, why are you against suicide, against suicide, people killing themselves is cool, not cool, stressful, not the same thing as killing other people, The Sorrows Of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the right side of history, just look at the videos, there seems to be something bad happening, whatever this is is very very bad, asked to participate, let’s genocide them, fairly modern word, the case of Columbine, that was caused by school, force people to do things, this institution was difficult, we all know school is prison, a metaphor but also true, a kid brought a gun to school, that’s power, a solution to problems, mimeticly interested in copying each other for attention, the answer isn’t to ban talk about school shootings, Uvalde, how fucking incompetent everybody is, Weird Tales poems about suicide, suicide is scary, let’s talk about it, that’s pretty rough, the suicide bombers, can’t use the message of the media, take other people with you, Duck! The Carbine High Massacre (1999), institutions, conforming, a vicious cycle, Columbine is getting revenge, Bushnell is doing the opposite, the video and what he said, they’re not flattering to the powers that be, a cognitive estrangement from what Jesse saw in the video, as a musician vs. his politics, music is dangerous, suicide not dangerous, The Wall, John Taylor Gatto, Mark Fisher, also other things, this truthy book, how do we best address lies?, position of extreme skepticism, they’re all liars, try never to lie, practice deception, feeling stupid is bad, try not to call people on their lies when they’re weak and young, biggest dangerous liar ever, NFB documentary about Canada’s involvement in the first Gulf War vs the second, Laurentian elites, involved itself in the Afghanistan war, a NATO obligation, the best friend to the evil bully, if it were to happen again today, Justin’s in charge, things have changes, former prime ministers of Canada, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien, people are noticing, pushing the lie hard enough, how do you deal with lies in the world around you?, skepticism to a lot of things, don’t trust, trust is a bad word, access to the calendar, that’s no way to live, you have to trust things, if you study things well, do your homework, that’s not trust, take it for what it is, this isn’t immediately my sense perception, prove to me that Lincoln lived, was Joan of Arc a real person, a ticket to France, a photograph of a girl riding a horse, why did the British burn her corpse, to make her as fictional as Jesus or Batman or Spider-Man, theological reasons, she’s a witch, Mark Twain’s Joan of Arc book, seems reasonable sort of, lies in the narrative, an ideological opposition to the concept of trust, when a person behaves a certain way, certain traits, continue on, an unstable person, making a model of your mind, the word trust is the problem there, read something in the New York Times, like all the Hamas rapes, omitting part of the story, perspective, interests, shape a news story, a Jimmy Dore video, he’ll literally say anything, willing to say anything, about hair dye, I just decided it was time to stop smoking weed, need to make a video about it, not a pothead, he’s got this guy [Kurt Metzger], he’s like Johnny Carson’s sidekick (Andy Richter), writes the jokes, if he started to disagree, laughing and nodding and agreeing, selling subscriptions, during COVID he stopped pushing subscriptions, people stopped taking their boosters, he’s not a messiah, makes him a businessperson, some really good videos, a lot of his videos have been demonitized, he’s richer than me, small socialist podcasts and Maissa, literally doing it for the money, that’s a theory, he’s angry, that’s what drives him, he has a right to be, nothing sincere about him, both sincere and untrustworthy, both insincere and untrustworthy, the untrustworthiness, down on the populism, they’re not incompatible, socialized medicine, very exacting of issues of race, radical republicans in North Carolina, lowest common denominator, we need people to think hard, not unique to any ideology, a modern hate for populism, Will’s opposition to populism, makes movements happen, Martin Luther King as a populist, abusing the term, he got people other than black involved, Malcolm X, different plans of execution, a moving target, both got shot in the end, both on the right track, a leader of organizations, part of an institution, the Nation of Islam, Black Panthers, more like Leninist party, fairly hostile to the idea of the truckers, some Albertans are strangely attracted to the Texas story, a rebelling symbol for Canadians, resentment towards Ontario and Quebec, what you saw was people waving confederate flags, a Nazi flag (probably planted), all the Canadian flags, Westerners trying to get a meeting with the country, Fuck Trudeau flags, an illegal war measure’s act, a non-violent civil protest, a lot of brown truckers, not a white only tiki torch parade, Trudeau called them white supremacists, the Coutts border crossing story Alberta, the story is dissolving, the excuse, the inciting incident for the War Measures Act, not factions, CBC and CTV and Global, political goals, a tactic, their goal is to promote a war in Ukraine, honouring a Nazi in the House of Commons, believing this propaganda, they did that, there’s video of it, still obsessed with, different versions of reality, the other factions, don’t have the introspection, forces that tell lies, all factions lie equally, the story of Ukraine briefly, the Maidan coup, the good guy, the bad guy is the United States, lot of Soviet backstory, Sevastopol, everything was inevitable, invaded that country, defensive, is it conquering, definitely invaded, take over or take back, the 12th century, fight and defend that national identity, that’s the story, opening the door to iridentism, that’s why Putin tried to explain the history, there’s this country that’s trying to add members, why does NATO exist, makes sense, extend control, is that irredentism, Victoria Nuland, there’s a thing going on, Russians who live in Ukraine, Nazis in Ukraine, negotiation possible here, Boris Johnson was flown in to cancel a peace deal, who’s the bad guy?, which one is which?, they just canceled elections, this is not Putin bad as usual, been to Russia, December 2003-2004, cutting off their gas supply, going on for decades, he got turned back, stuck on their lines, the annexation of Crimea happened right away, conquer in steps, defeated, that’s not what happened, how strong the Ukranian army is, reading the Russian narrative, when the Bolsheviks take over, the useful idiots, Stalin killed a lot of people, the Soviets themselves, crushed by the Bolsheviks, the anarchists, believe blindly in the cause, Will does not endorse Jesse’s views, can spot a lot of propaganda, very passionate, the tell, when they get emotional about it, detached from the horror that’s happening, how can people watch this, there’s no chatter, last day to nominate for the Hugos, we’re never done with the Hugos, why am I following this person?, strong opinions about the Ukraine war, do you know the Maidan coup, did you hear the Nuland phone call?, the English language German propaganda channel on YouTube (Deutsche Welle), she has a different take on it, watch Jimmy Dore all day, watch opposition, Deutsche Welle on who blew up Nordstream?, rented a boat maybe, events are still unfolding, not like a super-secret mystery, we will end it, rumbled by methane gas, maybe there’s another story, when you investigate, take information you learn and then check on it, what does this drug do?, not trust, verify, she just likes to google, check up on the animals, things happen, and you like them, Jesse’s theory of truth, discern something close to the truth, Jonathan: common sense and if people are emotional it’s probably propaganda, disconnect because he’s in history, Evan expert opinion, Will is epistemologically humble, learning something, that’s actually really good, trust me I’ve read Heinlein, you can just read Scalzi, the worst path, trust this lady, Our Opinions Are Correct, the authorship of The Loved Dead, that’s what Bobby Derie said, almost all Lovecraft, Eddy saying can you help me write a story, a lot of Eddy, very little Lovecraft, Lovecraft influenced for sure, withhold judgement, his influence on Weird Tales, they lived in the same town, almost all the revisions, strong documentary evidence, some themes, feel these were useful idiots, read Soviet history, what is to be done?, historians of the Soviet Union, are you going trust Stalin or your own lying eyes, Stephen Kotkin three volume biography of Stalin, being impartial, somebody on YouTube who has an agenda, good science, what would happen if we put this thing in the press?, Beyond The Press, that’s science, how the world is flat, Wacky Jacky does PUBG science, doing the science, literal science, the stakes of truth, high stakes, fun stuff, Ivermectin as a cure for science (cancer), the NIH website, a powerful effect, resources, person hours, a generic, try not to go the pharmacy, don’t trot that out, too soon, the horse paste tweet is still up, pushing Ivermectin is horse paste, c’mon man, they had never heard of it before, a very popular drug, super-safe and super-effective, the one worms episode of House, M.D., medical funs, very hard to overdose on it, public domain anybody can make it, maybe Jesse will make his own, the medical industry should be socialized, just made a deal, the NDP made a deal with evil Justin, already solved in BC, still working on the dental stuff (kids and old people), super-evil, in this particular time with his limited amount of seats, no news like that in the States, all the horrible news, Canada funding Ukraine, a lung cancer vaccine in Cuba, Venezuela, a trade embargo with the US, 2016, you think they’d like to sell a product they’d make some money, their fault they’re not selling it, immunotherapy treatment, small cell lung cancer, go follow that person on twitter, after a few tweets, do your own research, if everybody had a twitter, accidentally tweeted using Biden’s account, reading is dangerous, almost always leads to believing a big lie, exactly the point he’s making, he’s Jonathan, mythological adaptations, influenced by Lucian, parody it, Atalanta, good Atalanta book?, a woman who wants to run, the huntress, equal in weight, Arcadia, the Argonaut, allied to the goddess Artemis, a bunch of fun stuff, Jason turned her away, hence her name, takes place after, Meleager, got the hots for this chick, so furious they kill Meleager, the Golden Apple story, Beyond Lies The Wub by Philip K. Dick, a retelling of the Circe story, Out In The Garden, the Zeus one, Zeus action had happened earlier, regular Zeus action, Philip K. Dick and Robert Sheckley don’t disappoint, some adjacent things, Not Far From Eden, sold twice as much, special knowledge, boring, not exposed to it anymore, Go The Fuck To Sleep, so relatable to so many, Samuel Jackson, a synergy, not a great book, very little to do with the quality of the material, an artist, commercial and an artist, commerce and art intersect, 20 Books To 50K, debunked all the time, pyramid scheme, still gonna buy their time shares, The Man In The Iron Mask, you need that man in there, Who by Algis Budrys, Library Of America put it out, the original cover, smoking, robot arm, WHO?, the bases of base kinds of ways of reading a story, a film starring Elliot Gould?, a kidnapped physicist, cold war stuff, transhumanist stuff, transhumanism as a horrible idea, available as an audiobook, Grover Gardner?!, up Jonathan’s alley, ideas, sex and violence, 60s early 70s, experimentation, the pulp stuff, a bad book with interesting ideas, you did it, Will’s taking responsibility, DMing Jesse, Dorsai!, military SF that starts a series, rather read the shorter version, The Genetic General, revised into a longer book, a one-off, modern horror, The Slob by Aron Beauregard and Talia by Daniel Volpe, a lady photographed liking a knife, Godless bookstore, Drew Stepek, satanic imagery, modern horror, three year anniversary, transgressive literature, Carry On Puking by REEKFEEL, gold amongst these hills, transgressive but is it good?, reading classical stuff, rounds and rounds of criticism, reading newer stuff, culture happening right now, underground culture, the letters, The Dead Inside by Chandler Morrison, supporting suicide, 5 hours basically, love horror and love gore, body horror, the book had no plot, words on the page written just because, belittling my intellect, propaganda, emo wannabe teen, the most revolting things they could think about, yay!, dead females of all ages, scarfing down a dead newborn, you already know how the book ends, just put 2 plus 2 together, cannibalism etc., most helpful, set aside a whole day to process what you read, staring at the ceiling, at the clinical scene, laughing like a maniac, no idea who I would recommend it to, map of my mind, 6 hours 32 minutes, a disgusting house of horrors, the shudder pulps, fought tooth and nail, fled the disastrous situation, sinister seed, blossom, stomach churning, strives for normalcy, shine through the darkness?, splatterpunk, Son Of The Slob, gross out, are they cannibals, Stories Of The Stone Age by H.G. Wells, The Valley Of The Blind, doesn’t need to be as long as it is, 15 minute story, gross out horror, 1 star reviews, gore for the sake of gore, glorified torture porn, men have no business writing women, incredibly transparent and predictable, like in Heinlein, credulity, first instinct, slasher flick, genres have cliches, if it weren’t for the character is brutally SAed, sexually assaulted, magically pregnant by her assailant, what the issue is there, stay away from this book, Jonathan suggested it, many positive reviews, good to know about, this group exists, do I need to be one of them, science fiction is about science, sometime the science is loose, kind of a science, books about geology, more geo-SF, a horror writer, Scott Sigler’s EarthCore, mystery box story, mining, not science fiction, more like suspense, the geology is just there to get in the way of getting to the mystery box, humans play in a galactic football game, giant alien football league, the story of Wool and other stuff, a bad example, he looks like science fiction but he is not, the guy behind Stranger Things, Bishop’s Assistant, two episodes of Joe Rogan?, mentioned him, Kevin James and Joey Diaz, podcasts on IMDB, pathetic and weird, monetize their fame through podcasts, something you gotta do now, Prince Harry and Megan, the Obamas, no skill for it, Russell Brand is a pretty good streamer, celebs with nothing to say, Obama did one with Bruce Springsteen, famous people like to meet other famous people, had something to say at some point in his life, a 26 minute one, not like this lengthy beast, this wonderful conversation, the slightness of the material in some respects, a mental map of our listeners, Mike Nowak in North Carolina?, David Currie, being a conspiracy theorist, what’s the conspiracy theory Jesse believes in?, a catchall, ancient aliens, fascinated by them, the CIA killed JFK, the big book, The Devil’s Chessboard by David Talbot, we don’t have the video of Allen Dulles up on the grassy knoll, all circumstantial, 25 hours, take JFK’s assassination out of it, calling it the CIA vs. a particular subset, pick a year, this is how they operate, because we say they, start digging into the history of Guatemala or any country, really something, still parts of it are redacted, you can see what happened on the ground, a tier list, untrusted countries, if you start backwards, reconstruct the pyramid, how much money goes to Egypt, Gibraltar still a thing, Sevastopol, the Bosphorus, why geography is important, ismthus are important, look into geology, nitty gritty of which particular person, we can know by learning, geography is so important, really useful, Jesse’s model of Jonathan is not really robust, the emotional content, a disconnect, a real strong connection to horror, connecting to emotions in a disconnected way, a plastic skull, go back to one of the graves, if not thinking about death daily, think about death the just right amount, meditate and not have intrusive thoughts, intrusive negative thoughts, what are those negative thoughts about, a mustache that doesn’t grow the way I want it to, vanity, your pretty but you’re not as smart as you think you are, being ugly, kinda average, looks like a dude, no he’s smart to, fuck that guy, young smart handsome, fucker, in good shape too, too much time writing and recording, goddamn him, make him my friend, no alternative, lucky it didn’t stare in the mirror all day, Narcissus, both in water, when were mirrors invented, animals, dangerous, very dangerous, some of them need to be shared, big cats, caracal, what the hell is that thing?, is that me?, Dungeons & Dragons displacer beast, horrifying, lion videos, exhibit behavior, mountain lions, pumas, african lions, russians wrestling bears, probably unwise, lifestyle, culturally relativistic, a poem about a caracal in a coracle, one of Jesse’s finest pieces, two fishmen coming out of the sea, teaching the children about literature, constructed it well,
Picnic For Two by Jesse
Down on the beach, a couple lays food
On blanket and plate (in amorous mood).Up In the sky two gulls play, dive, and laugh
Singing for supper (each bird will get half).Stealthy, out from the waves two Fishmen arise
Carrying wet nets to seize and demise.The Fishmen have nets! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
The Fishmen are fishing (for husbands, for wives)The couple are running as hard as they can!
But Fishmen are quicker: catch woman-catch man!The gulls now descend to blanket and food.
Laughing and eating. (They were quite shrewd)
triangular mimetic desire, french guy, lusting after a hot dog, looking at the guy lusting after the girl eating the hot dog, making people want things, Cirsova claimed that Burroughs mad him jump, be jumpable, an adventure book, wish fulfillment, it’s something else, a subset of a weird hobby, a subset of fiction readers, intentionally made itself irrelevant by focusing on science, big hits, a mimetic desire thing, social contagion, thinking your a girl when you’re not a girl, Tommy Patrick Ryan had Harry Potter tattoo, a Lord of The Rings tattoo, schoolbooks, books set in schools, less said about her the better, still on about her being a TERF, the Salvation Army is bad on trans issues?, what does that have to do with anything, Amazon’s really bad, nobody seems to care, store our data there, do bad things, an ethics to storing your data, for technical reasons, giving Amazon money, Strange Studies Of Strange Stories, say something really stupid, busy with wives and kids, not deeply invested, stand with Ukraine sort of stuff, sending money to Israeli bombs, crazy, a video of Ukraine mercenaries in Gaza, the pay is better, being in the IDF is a little bit safer, for a minute there, bizarre but predictable, the wrong take on it, we’re not going to show because…, for the purposes of their purposes, allowed, allowed by whom, just an excuse, advertisers wouldn’t not like it either, looking at himself in the mirror, the water is still, a leopard looking at a caracal with a meercat underneath, how humans work, The Great Train Robbery, installing a ruin, Sean Connery is boning his wife, the worst aspect, egregious example, big long action movies, Michael Bay, Independence Day (1996), people watching a TV, the proxy for the audience, a group of people siting in front of a screen, you’ve gone to far, continue as you were, but no screens, layer one deep only, you can’t show the screen, it’s two much, the escher painting where the guy is drawing himself, post modernism, a mistake is what it is, basically over now, post-post-ironic, it’s called decline, been subsumed, just not there anymore, Orhan Pamuk, Madonna, very orange hair, the building is leaning, strangest nationality, Canadian-American, most evil nationality, write speeches for George W. Bush, Semiotics, a very bad man, David Frum, very horrible, Barbara Frum, Conrad Black, [Barbara Amiel], axis of evil, house of lords, convicted of stealing from his own company, [Barbara Amiel] columnist in MacLeans, an art to produce a lot of words, what she’s saying is not good, style ideas, taste ideas, who cares about that?, believed in Canada and the Queen and Jesus, a lot more sympathetic to it now, very scary, a great Wikipedia note, a campaign volunteer, The Gulag Archipelago, right to jeer at him, why did his mom give him a copy of that book, a very popular book, why was it popular?, exactly, an examination of a prison system in a foreign county, promoted to demonize another country, Nobel prize winning book, Animal Farm, forced to read it, a much better book, a lot of movies, strange things, dollar store Goosebumps style books, copy of Dune, breezy easy for an adult, makes you wanna read it, each chapter starts with a future historical document, shit all over John W. Campbell as much as you want but something good out of it, less deranged, Jesse fucked that up, who the fuck is Barbara Frum, fucked up the Barbaras, almost as bad to have claimed, Altered Carbon, elementary school punch, always in fights, always the new kid, subject to predation, punch your way out of being a bitch, predated upon continuously, kick the shit out of them, she’s on your team, all the snitching and all the horrors, the violence, high school violence, grade 9, committed not had, weekly there was something, you should pick on big people, older kids, don’t let people trash you, fuck them up, there’s no violence on twitter, that SFFaudio guy is an asshole, telling people things they don’t want to hear, confusing Hugo Book Club with another Hugos There, multiple Hugo accounts, this is not anything, stalking horror, a youtube video, true crime is so fucking evil as a genre, lots of women are into it, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, a non-fiction book that’s a novel, a whole bunch of things that don’t make sense, what the fuck can you learn from that?, random shit can happen?, lock your doors?, criminologists, interesting things to know about crime, innovated, eloquent prose, stuff Jesse doesn’t think about, H.P. Lovecraft, be about something, exploring an idea, fictionalized scenes, no witness there, a Lawrence Block book [Not Comin’ Home To You], very short, ops, a lot of the art shit is ops, Iowa writer’s workshop, a media figure, he took Harper Lee with him, childhood friends, To Kill A Mockingbird (1962), Gregory Peck, Boo Radley, Robert Duvall’s great, Guns Of Navarone (1961), Pulpcovers, set in Yugoslavia, Richard Kiel (Jaws), Force 10 From Navarone (1978), a sequel that came out 9 years later, Robert Shaw (the actual Jaws (1977) guy), being on the Indianapolis, young Harrison Ford, Edward Fox, Franco Nero, Carl Weathers, young and handsome, special ops mission to blow up something, Alastair MacLean, probably won’t love it.
Posted by Jesse Willis