The Apocalypse of the Interdome

After three years and a couple of steps away from 400 posts, I've decided to retire Welcome to the Interdome.

I started this blog as an Internet clearhouse as I was leaving grad school, and it has tracked my motions from Iran commentary, to semiotics, from cartoon nostalgia to economic breakdown, from instant soups to atemporality. Over the years the content and color scheme has changed, but it has been basically what a blog is supposed to be: a updated journal of online and offline activity. With only the most generic of layout style, and too many links, and irrelevant tags.

It's been good times. I've met some good folks out there on the web via the links, and got some good blogging relationships going. I've enjoyed having a few dedicated readers who are interested enough in the post-structural anarchist perspective on consumer electronics to stick me in their RSS feed reader. Self-publishing is an important exercise, and I've really appreciated you all making it a rewarding one.

But every website is dated from the day its put online, and I think the time has come for ole Interdome. You start writing for the same provenience every time, and everything begins to feel a bit the same. You get into a comfortable place, and you get some familiar cheers and slogans, some typical topics and tropes, and after awhile you get the itch to get moving. You don't want to deviate off-topic, but on-topic seems off-topic from what's interesting. You start to think about format changes, new tools to make it better, but the idea of re-formatting what already exists seems insurmountable, and the idea of cramming what is new into what is there seems inexcusable.

I've also decided to close my self-publishing site, Brute Press, for the same reasons. I stopped putting work online because I was worried too much about what was right to put online, and ended up only putting old things online, and then being dissatisfied. The time span was stretched from the weekly time cycle of blogging, but it was about the same emotion. Putting my name to stuff that I didn't feel good having my name put to. Not that I didn't like the work, but I wasn't inspiring myself the way I was when I started.

And so, it's onward. Starting a new project now, called P.O.S.Z.U. There's a little bit of material recycled from the old sites to get it started, and new stuff I've been adding as I test it out. I guess you can consider it now open for beta testing. No sign up needed. Let me know what you think.

I would love to launch P.O.S.Z.U. with a grand manifesto (this being the age of grand manifestos and not grand narratives) but there really isn't one. Here are some tags I plan on using: Economics, Desire, Theory, Metaphysics, Technology, Semiotics, Politics, Sex, Product, Words, Symbols, Light, Sound, Motion, Time, Eschatology, Food, Epistemology, Art, Death drive, Nature, World. If you could imagine a graduate seminar in which half the people are watching unrelated videos, the other half are reading the Internet, and meanwhile these two groups are getting drunk and making out with each other, yeah well I guess that's the general idea, but I can't promise you'll get to second base or anything. The title is an acronym, and it really sums it up pretty well, but it's totally a secret, and not the kind that I put down somewhere obscure that you have to click through to find. I'll never tell.

Well, thanks again. See you around. I'll still be twittering as @interdome, just because that's not the sort of thing you really want to reset.

Man vs. Nature: This Time, it's Robotics!

I want you to watch this video, for one reason, and one reason only.



No, not for the booming, 90s club techno soundtrack. For the part where the snake climbs up the guy's leg.

If this does not strike fear into your human's animal heart, I do not know what will.

We've reached a new uncanny here. The famous "uncanny valley" is an uncomfortable element of robotics, in that mirror stage, "I wonder if my pleasure bot is ethical" sort of way. This, on the other hand, is an uncanny of motion, an uncanny of physicality that is distinctly primary narcissism, "the womb which I held dear now rises against Me to strangle me with that lonely umbilical which was my only Love."

What? You want me to explain? Okay, check this, which you might have seen.



Why is it when we see these sorts of robots, the thing many of us automatically think of is being pursued by a pack of these robotic "animals", who hunt us down, clawing us to death with their efficient metal grippers, as their servos yap merrily, and without so much as a face to show us their merciless hate/desire/pack instinct? Other than them being sponsored by DARPA, that is?

Because they don't have human faces! Because they move like animals, and are so resolutely unhuman, that they move and appear like animals. This is not the technology, with which we have mastered the world. This is nature--the unknown, which will eventually kill us, no matter what weapon we use, or how fast we run.

The Terminator is killable. You can stab out his eye, or pull off his arm, crush his legs, and eventually burn his torso. Even the T-1000 is a fluid, a bodily essence that only has to be purged with fire. The car assembly robots of the last generation are human machines; they have arms, legs, fingers, heads, and most importantly, brains and nervous systems. But how do you kill something without a body, or can self-assemble and re-assemble, and even, perhaps, replicate?



A paranoia begins to rise in us. It is a fear that is constant, equivocal across the terrain, because these things do not even return to the dark of the woods when the sun comes up. They are as numerous and ubiquitous as the air we breath, as the molecules of which we are made. We are no longer afraid of animals--but we are afraid of germs.

This is a revolution in robot design. Because we are afraid of them, we are truly approaching a level of ubiquity when a robot can actually insinuate itself into an environment, and be part of it. They are no longer an assembly line, or a museum exhibit, but they are learning how to move and live in our nature.

I ranted before about the droids in Star Wars. These are possibly one of the greatest sci-fi blunders, and what makes Star Wars fall resolutely into fantasy for me, rather than actually science fiction. The issue: who the hell designs a humanoid robot?

Humans, and their bipedal form, have been designed over a long period of time, due to the fate/probability pathways, over which they have managed to survive. The bipedal form is not "good" for anything; it has merely been the way things have worked out (check out constructural law, if you've never had the pleasure) no different than the branching of a river delta. This has worked pretty well for us. But, we are designing robots to be better than us, not to imitate us. We want robots to do the tasks we are not designed for. So, for running a bipedal 100M dash we have athletes, for creating brilliant art work we have artists, but for chasing human beings like the little bits of fleshy prey that we are, we will build robots.

Look at C-3PO. In every battle scene, of which the droid is somehow constantly ending up in the midst, he is falling all over the place, because he is a flat-footed, heavy thing that cannot even bend his legs and arms correctly. R2D2 is a bit better--he looks like the water cooler/electronics controller that he is. Give him some wheels perhaps, but even these fail when he is expected to get across rough terrain.

In the three prequel films, there is a massive droid army, that everyone is supposed to cower before. Give me a break! What idiot droid designer decided to make a battle droid that is disabled if you knock its head off? What manager approved that design? What testing facility gave it the OK? And you have to arm them separately by handing it a blaster? Of which it can then be disarmed? How many facilities are needed to manufacture both of these things? Is this a government sponsored plan?

You want to know my design for the perfect battle droid? A metal sphere with blasters bristling out of every direction. A giant gun with legs. A guided missile. All of these make sense, because they are robots designed with their task in mind. It is pretty ridiculous that the Star Wars vehicles fire unguided rockets, and yet send hordes of robots into battle with arms thinner than their hand guns.

Don't even get me started on the fact that robots have "chain of command". That's human crap.

Naturally, what we design is limited by what we can imagine. We can imagine a hive, or a pack, or even the distributed chemical diffusion of bacteria, reacting in feedback loops to the secretions of their clones. All of these, as nature has shown, react amazingly well to certain environments, and certain tasks--often much better than reasoning, bipedal, heat engines like humans. These sorts of "animal" robots, robots designed to swim and crawl, but not giving a damn about Turing tests or displaying Honda emotions, are the future, just as the vast distribution of nature has been the past, for distinct, evolutionary reasons.

And just as naturally, these robots will cause fear in humans, the same way fear towards that which moves fast without legs, that which sees without eyes, and that which can think and decide without a brain has evolved to feel uncomfortable when we apprehend it. But, we can also overcome this fear, in the same way we've learned to harvest bacteria as protein synthesizers, install symbiotic species inside our own bodies, create harmonies with species like dogs, and even more importantly, introduce technology into our physiology. Can you even imagine running without shoes? How about eating without a stove? Speaking without a language? We'll incorporate nature into our technology, and with good purpose, just as we always have. Because at the root of it, all our technology is natural, from the ion pump to the lever.

But in the meantime, let's relish this horror, eh? What is nature, if not the primal hunting ground of our unconscious? Hey, our psychical technology needs exercise too!

I'm imagining an epic horror/sci-fi film, in which technology is hunting us. Our every day devices form into lethal killing machines. A chain of mating toasters pursues people down the street, climbing their still running legs to strangle them. The components of a car divide and let the passengers fall to the speeding asphalt below. Alone in a consumer electronics store, a character feels stalked by predators. This is no Transformers, no Gremlins, and no self-aware Cyberdyne network. The technology has been shrunk down to tiny components, which work together in an organic system. Until it evolves... until nature takes technology back. Scientists try and reprogram the devices to fight for us, but they can't discover what is making them turn against us. They look, but their devices conspire against them, and they cannot observe the nature of the problem. They can't look past the flat earth of the technological/nature divide, and they can't get around the heliocentrism of being human. Looking at nature from the human perspective, after all, is science's only power. There is no bug, no virus, and no communications link to sever. It is merely the course of evolution. Nature is killing us, just like it always has. But this time, nature has the weapons, because the weapons have become nature.

On the Efficacy of Free Novellas...:An Author's Note

I feel like the novella gets shit on... a lot. Sure, maybe it is unpublishable by itself, unless you are Melville House. (Isn't that the most retarded name for a publisher you have ever heard? Yeah, I get it. It's stupid.) But there is also all this, "it's not a short story, it's not a novel, so what the hell is it?" bullshit. What is that supposed to mean? What is anything? Is a mini-van a car or a bus? It has to be one of them!

I think a good 75% of what I know about writing short stories comes from Philip K. Dick. I'm not going to dig out the introduction to something-or-other in which he said, this, so I am going to paraphrase. And maybe he didn't even say it. But that doesn't matter, because I think he said it, and also it holds true for his stories.

He said, (so I say): "A novel is a story in which you get to know a bunch of character's involved in a situation, and watch them play it out. A short story is a story so short you barely have time to get to know one character, and kind of figure out his situation."

Great! So what do you do if you have a few characters, and you have maybe half of a situation you want them to play out? You write a novella. Isn't it obvious? There are some ideas that are too long for a short story, and hence, are not short stories. If you have multiple characters, or a character doing a whole sequence of things, you do not have a short story. But if the plot is not a clear narrative, or if there is only one and a half characters, or if there are any sort of complications in the typical "a bunch of people do stuff and change" novel format, then you sure as shit don't have a novel. What do you have? You have Salinger's later writing. You have many of Kafka's works. You have Dostoyevsky's The Double. You have Thus Spake Zarathustra, if Nietzsche had known when to stop writing. You have real good literature, not selling itself short, or with delusions of gradeur.

Not to say that Open-faced Mushroom Blastocyst is anything close to these works. (Okay, I think it's a better read than Zarathustra. It had better be!) But I think there is a lot of life in the novella as a form of literature; and furthermore, there are some stories that simply are novellas, despite their attempts to be anything else. My other novella I have finished (I'm actually editing a third), Scab Suite, is actually four short stories, involving the same two characters. Maybe it should even be only one or two short stories, but it is a suite, and they would not work individually with the others.

OFMB was always a novella, however. From the very point of inception. You have a character who is no more than a channel for all the mythology, angst, desire, and paranoia necessary for the founding of a eschatological religion, a love interest whose main role is to play the archetypical love interest, and a entire epic's worth of hallucination and death drive imagery. You sure don't have a short story or a novel. Bingo--your seventy-some pages are pretty much a tailor made novella.

I had a lot of fun writing this. It came very easily. The plot was hashed out at the very beginning, and the gaps just kind of came together as I was writing. Of course, it is not the most readable thing ever. There are parts of it that should not be easy to read--such an experience as the one the character is undergoing are not easy to get through. Hopefully, if I did it right, it will be just hard enough for the reader so that s/he reacts to the text correctly. Well, we'll see.

I decided to release this story in versions--inspired by the "unbook" hypothesis, and others around the Internet who are writing about new POD models and forms. I'm not sure what the response will be to this book, or if there will be one. But because it is sort of an unconventional strategy for a piece of writing (novella form aside, large-scale hallucination is not something as easy to write as it would seem to be), I thought I would try and experiment towards the version direction on the publishing side of things. And that's why I'm giving the book away free. Yes! Hopefully to get as much feedback as possible, I printed up a number of copies at my own expense, and I am giving them away. So far no one has asked for one. That's okay, I guess. There is an awful lot of writing available for free at the present. But hey! They're still here.

I also drew the cover. This is the second cover, for the second novella, both of which I sat down without knowing what to draw. And both of them came out really well, I think. Want to see it closer? Send me your address--I'll send you a copy for free!

This ended up being a note more about the form of the work than it's content, which is cool, because this is probably more important to note than what occurs in the book. However, if you are still on the fence about whether you want to read it, here's a bit about it:

OFMB is an unfolding apocalypse; it is a narrative of specialist, revealed knowledge about the construction of the cosmos and those who dwell with in it, fighting for control. It is a timeless description of orgiastic, organic brith trauma, told through the drug-addled, self-forgotten, fated romance of young persons who don't know a goddamn thing about breeding. They are the prophets of an age that has lost all powers of theological inscription, and must instead start the painful process of learning again to carve the battle messages of the ghostly forces writhing within the unconscious upon their brains and bodies, with their dripping flow of paranoiac ink. Is it a game? Or is it a dream? Neither. It's just a story.

Cool? Cool. Find it, and the other two short stories at www.brutepress.com.

Fancy a Cup

Last week I read this post written by an author describing his favorite cups of coffee on the Penguin blog and quite enjoyed it. I love coffee, being the only substance I really imbibe in any large quantity that has literary capacities. (Did I really just type that sentence?) Authors certainly have a way with alcohol, or perhaps it is vice versa. But one can't really write about alcohol in a way characteristic of its consumption. One can write about about feelings, yes--or depression, or love, or that no good bastard/tramp who did this to me. But one can't really get shit-faced and write about getting shit-faced, as an example. (Prove me wrong?) The alcohol puts the consciousness into the extremities, letting you feel like vomit or weave your way through thoughts like a drunk on a bicycle, but yet not be able to describe these processes with any real good grasp.

Caffeine, on the other hand, pulls you way back, and then hands you a pair of Zeiss binoculars. Of course, stimulants can also make complete shit flow out of the pen without stopping for air. But if you really hit that stride, pages will fly by, which, with a bit of proper editing, can be absolutely brilliant. You can write about anything all stimmed up, and it will all read like the truest words ever spoken. Whether they actually are or not is something to look at later. But despite the bullshit that might occur, you also have a good chance of describing something in a way you never would have thought about without your corneas vibrating.

So coffee, and writing about coffee: good good good. But I had this problem with the five "classic" cups of coffee described--none of them were mine. Coffee, as a stimulant, is directly tied to your sense of conscious lucidity (a reason for its effect on writing, in my opinion) and as such, consumption of it is tied to other cycles of the consciousness throughout the day--eating schedule, sleeping cycles, Circadian rhthym, etc. Benjamin Obler, the author of the piece, seems to be a strictly 8:00-22:00, person, or thereabouts. I am not. I lead this strange (not so strange, in this day and age, really) double life (okay, more of a 1.5x life) in which I work a day job with a shifting schedule, and also write at night. In addition, my partner works a night shift on a 4-on-3-off cycle, so between our strange overlaps of homelife, and the grinding sleep-transmission clutch-popping of the weekends, I don't know if I've eaten a dinner that wasn't at least half breakfast in the past year and a half, ranging anywhere from 16:00 to 4:00 local.

But I love the idea--because each cup of coffee does have a certain character to it, related to time, place, activity, quantity of day light, and of course, the ever-important current level of conscious wheel-spinning. So, I'm going to write my own favorite five cups, in no particular order. Does this count as a literary remix? A re-do? A reset? I don't know. But I'm going to get to it before my introduction totally dwarfs my actual piece.

First Cup
The Worker's Cup

There are at least ten ways to avoid this cup, all of which are significantly kinder to the beverage, as if there was somewhere an avatar of the drink like a minor goddess, lounging a small marble coupola, scowling into her bronzen bowl, Clash of the Titans-style view-screen of reflective black liquid at anything packed into a round metal tin, or (shudders with greco-indignation) "pre-ground". One could brew it at home, drop past the local coffee shop, or even go through the Starbucks drive-through, if necessary. But no--instead, as you hit the snooze button for the fourth time, you doomed yourself to both the goddess' ire and the horrible grittiness of the "shop cup".
The urn looks professional enough, clad in stainless steel. But one must remember--it is called an urn for a reason. The plastic lid seals the process from eyes that would be really better off not knowing that the same guy who always turns in his forms sloppily-written and smeared also was in charge of rinsing the pot the night before. Hopefully no one has found your mug in its hiding place behind your computer tower and your speaker, because the same rusted sediment in the bottom which you face every day is the only standard of hygiene you can rely on.
But the coffee--oh the coffee--from its watery lows to its highs of 5W20 viscosity, is really what matters here. If you think you would be better off without this ghastly morning ritual, the morning someone forgot to order more coffee should be the only proof you need of this process' spastic veracity. This cup is the source of the grit you keep in your teeth all day as you selflessly shoulder your boss' load; it is the fire burning caustic holes in the retaining walls of your stomach so you do not fall asleep and catch your face in the press; it is the antidote to the zombification that would otherwise see your co-workers colliding into each other with all the slow-moving deadly force of boxcars in the yard, just waiting to pierce men through and amputate limbs. This horrible excuse for coffee is the single thread between insanity and insanity wrapped in a straight-jacket.
And why? If the stimulant content is mixed, the quality and taste all over the map, and the consistency spelled "conk-cyst-an-sea", what does this cup have to offer to us poor working souls?
Heat. Pure, roof-of-mouth scalding, fresh-from-the-fissure-in-the-earth heat. If you burn three layers of skin off of the tongue, you are probably able to drink at least three cups of the swill while tasting next to nothing. The heat will open up the pores of your mind like hot water loosening the feathers out of a chicken carcass. You'll be ready to belch wooden-puppets from your entrails as if you were Monstro himself. So go, pour yourself another cup, and get those bile-dripping, flaming puppets dancing across your workspace, because you know you're going to be here for at least another eight hours. And this is why I will pray to this goddess until the day I die (or quit my day job).

Second Cup
The Apocalypse Cup

This cup, in many ways, is the opposite of the worker's cup. Rather than symbolizing an every day collision with the horrible routines of life, this cup is the conscious description of the breaking with the routine. In this way it isn't, as you might of thought, a cup to end all cups, the drinking of which will cause the fabric of the universe to rip and fray from the seams. No angelic wheels, vials, or whores of Babylon here. (Though if you are able to brew this sort of cup, let me know what roast and seep method, so far my experiments are getting me nowhere.) This is more akin to the literal meaning of apocalypse: that sort of textual encounter that reveals eschatological and cosmic knowledge through its symbolism and historic descriptions.
How, you ask, does a cup of coffee manage this? Well, it has to do with the context of the consumption. The previous cup is one marked by the daily return to the place of work, and all the unsavory connotations of that particular point in your experiential space-time. This cup is taken at a totally different time and place--one that we don't dread, so much as do not expect, and are always a little bit awed by result.
The sip of good coffee provides a point of reflection--a pause in which the mind accelerates. From the entrance of the aroma into the nose, until the point at which the caffeine actually reaches the brain, the mind is re-acquainting itself with the experience of accelerated thought via the stimulant. There is a pause, as the mind relishes the empty space between sensations at the base rate, before it picks up and tunes in to the new time signature. Similar to when you slow down a tape, and then realize how awfully long the pause is between tracks--like minutes. This is what your brain is doing with time-space in those first minutes.
What is a shame is that this period of acceleration is normally occupied by other things, so there isn't much noticed. For instance, you are waking up, or making breakfast, or talking with friends, or reading the Internet before it is time to get down to work. The distraction takes away from the lengthening of time's harmonic period, and you miss the opportunity for consciousness-bending experience.
Not as if this is the place where all the missing god particles fly out of the space between space in the delicious black liquid, negatizing your concepts and turning your signifiers inside out as it will be in the end. No, that's salvia divnorum.(Actually the experience is somewhat akin... but let's turn away from that for now.) Nor is it a zone for optimal creativity, as I am apt to call certain opportunities for gnosis in everyday life.
But if you are doing the right sort of thing, you might feel a sensation of change. This normally happens to me when I am heading out of the house for a three AM drive, or going on a walk in a deserted area, and I decide to quickly drink a cup of coffee to highten the perceptions a bit, or gain a little bit of wakefulness. Or, even when I'm getting ready for a night of drinking, and I get a double shot of espresso to carry me through. As I set out on this mini-adventure, whatever it is, ready to see what there is to see in the world about me, I get the sense that things are changing. I'm not presented with anything specific, but all of a sudden I realize things seem a bit brighter, music sounds a bit better, and I can speak a bit more directly. The world has a large possibility of change all the time, and if you get out a bit, you can realize it. Not so much the end of the world, as looking outside your interior monologue, and seeing there was a world around you the whole time. Like Enoch visiting the houses of the winds and stars. Or something like that, but coffee. It's awesome.


Third Cup
The Bezerker Cup

There are certain times, friends--certain times that call for certain measures. There are occasions when you need a little extra something, a little bit of a performance boost. And I'm not talking about Official Bezerker Corps Blood-Washed PCP Cough Drops, now with MDMA! Oh wait, yes I am. There are times when you need these, so you can rip the heads off goblins as you make your way to the throne room, wielding your 55-gallon revolvers.
But there are other times that are not those times, like when you have a job interview, a class presentation, or an important meeting in which you are going to say things to people that they do not want to hear to get them to agree to do something they don't want to do. In these times, even a little edge can totally make the different.
In grad school, every single time I was going to lead seminar discussion, half an hour before I would go around the corner to the coffee shop, which was such a coffee shop so that I was assured of the quality of their brew. I would get, what is not really an official coffee drink, but which goes by various "street" terms in the dark, student infested coffee shops of large towns, maybe even your own. They don't have it on the menu--oh no. You have to whisper it quietly to the barista, so the kids sipping they're caramel mocha crap don't hear you. Ask for a "red eye", or maybe a "depth charge", or an "all-nighter". What it is: a double shot of espresso dumped into a large coffee. No cream. No sugar.
It's delicious, by the way. But it also does not have any of the milk products, the fat of which counteracts and slows the stimulant, in my opinion. Nor any of the sugar; Red Bull may give you wings, but only for about twenty minutes, because half the rush is sugar. I would be able to drink most of this beverage in the thirty minutes before class, having the last bit as something to sip on while speaking. The rush is strong, fast, and continuous, totally pulling me through a three-hour session.
Now, you can't be chugging coffee all day and expect a bezerker cup to have the proper effect. You have to plan ahead. The heat is a factor, as I've said before. The warmth of a large cup of coffee (talking 16-20oz here, I'm not sure what the corporates are selling you as a large these days) will set the proper core temperature for full coffee absorption. This is why you need both the coffee and the espresso. And if you are the sort that right now is thinking to yourself, "that's nothing, I regularly drink a quadruple shot of espresso and then take a nap!" then heaven help you, because your heart is going to explode... RIGHT NOW. Did that scare you? Stop drinking too much espresso.
This cup is perhaps the most proper, judicious, and social use of coffee, and it is why I love it. It is harnessing that stimulus rush for a good cause, being, conversing. There are no awkward pauses, no stammering for a word, no leading down a illogical pathway only to have to turn around and come back. Of course, you have to watch your speed (I was told three times while presenting on Heidegger to slow the f--- down) but on the other hand, I had no problem getting through my eight to ten pages of notes for my opening statement (okay, I also have a consumption problem in no way related to caffeine). If you want to try this in a non-pressure situation, try grabbing a friend with whom you have a similar, properly technical interest, and treat him/her to coffee. By the end of two hours, you'll have a business plan in an industry that hasn't been invented yet. Just don't name it then. Sit on that one for awhile.


Fourth Cup
The Mistake Cup

Man, I hate this cup. I love it too. There are times when one has to sleep. I am well aware of the need for sleep, thanks to my bizarre, shifting labyrinth of a daily schedule, as already discussed. Because of this schedule, opportunities for uninterrupted sleep are visable ahead of time. Okay: get home from work, sleep for four hours, wake up, have dinner, and write until 5:00, see Megan, sleep for three more, and then wake up. Ready, break.
Until Megan says, upon me arriving home from work, tired as shit from only sleeping four and a half the night before, "hey, want to make some coffee in the french press?" Shit. "Oh, I was going to, but... fuck yeah, I want some coffee from the french press!" And my carefully planned world falls apart.
I'm a sucker for coffee from the press. We have three machines: drip, Bialetti stove top espresso, and the press. I can't afford the espresso machine I really want, so for now I rent the skills of the local barista when needed. The Bialetti is alright--it makes great coffee, but there is always a little taste of aluminum there, and I don't like milk. The drip is solid. I have a good gold filter, and when making a full pot it doesn't let me down. It also stays warm without reheating, which the press won't do. And I love the press. It's so tasty, thick, and lucious. So I save it for special occasions: bezerkers, apocalypses, and the like. Megan drinks her coffee in small portions, mixed half with foamed milk, because caffeine hits her really strong.
I would like to get into turkish/greek coffee. Almost bought one of the little copper pots when I was is Greece, but I've never learned how to make it, so I didn't want to just get one without some idea of what I was doing. Also, I like that sort of coffee only sometimes; for me, coffee is a beverage, and I like to drink it, not just sip. But a good, Greek coffee... the oh-so-bitter sludge in the bottom just daring you to take one more sip....
You see, this is the problem. I love coffee, and I love making coffee--the aroma in the air at the mere idea of a brew, the warm look of the beans in the jar on the shelf, the way they sound falling into the grinder, healthy just-green light roast, or the dark roast burnt so dark the beans look as if they will explode into dust if they clatter onto the hard stone of the counter, the purr of the grinder when you know those lovely granules are just the right combination of substance and powder, the steam filling the kitchen while you try not to watch so the process will hurry, and finally--the swoosh of hot coffee filling that good stoneware mug, blowing off a bit of magical steam across the top of the perfectly dark liquid like spray off the ocean.
Not to mention the first sip. How can you turn that down? Tell me: how? And so, I write for five hours, watch a film, get four hours of sleep, and then feel like crap the next day at work. Until I have a cup of coffee.


Fifth Cup
The Writer's Cup

Here it is--the cup, which for me, is the raison de etre. It is almost mystical. Shit, it is mystical; it's almost actual mana from heaven, with a legion of seraphim presenting a signed scroll of authenticity.
I like to sleep first. This makes sure I'm actually rested, not just propped up with stimulant. A two-hour nap at least normally fits the bill. As I wake, my body still desperately struggling for something, anything to set its internal clock by, I go about the business of making the coffee. If it is going to be a night of writing, I go for the pot. An afternoon, or only five hours, I do the press. Sometimes, if I really want it to go well, I do a cup in the press as a teaser while the pot brews.
The coffee is always sensational. If it isn't, and I've somehow screwed it up, I throw it out and start again. No sense being hasty and starting on the wrong foot. While I drink the first cup, I read. Typically I read something along the lines of what I plan to write, to get my head in the right place, and to get the word factory tuned. Not too close, because that will screw it up. But in the neighborhood, something that might form a good harmony.
About the time of the second cup is when I start. The second cup is drunk pretty steadily, keeping me occupied while I think, and giving me something warm to sip. By the third cup it is cooling off most of the way before it gets finished, because I've picked up the pace and can't get my fingers off the keys or my attention away. I often leave about 3/4 of an inch in the bottom of the cup, over top of which I pour my refills. A refill or a bathroom break every hour or so provides good thinking opportunities. By the time the auto-off has taken effect on the pot warmer, I've either finished the pot or don't need anymore.
It isn't magical, however. It doesn't always work. Sometimes the writing just won't come, because its like that. I also don't do the coffee all the time. I started this little piece on two cups in the morning, and I am finishing it now at night, when I'm desperately wanting a cup (especially after thinking about coffee so much) but avoiding it so I can get up and go to work tomorrow. (Tomorrow's sleep schedule is going to include some major shifting, so I want to make sure I fairly baseline so the stim can do its work.) Can you tell a difference in my writing between the intro and the first two cups as opposed to the last two? Maybe I'm a bit wittier and quick-moving in the beginning, but all my essays seem to slow the pace at the end, as I put the thing to bed.
Other than this essay, I can think of only one piece in which I've written about coffee specifically. It is a piece about a diner, involving a character very aware of the things around him, but not aware of himself. The narrator's omniscient description of his first sip of coffee is quite good, I think. I don't think I put much of it in this essay, which is good. I've recently discovered myself repeating myself. Self-plagarism--not good if it happens without you wanting it. When I wrote that bit in the story (it is a short story, by the way) I wrote it while drinking a fresh cup of coffee. This worked pretty well. I think you have to have memories of things if you want to be able to describe them. Even for speculative writing--the only way to understand an idea is to present it in terms of things that make sense (either explicitly, or surrepticiously). The trick is presenting the memories as if they are not your own, because that memory is something you already have, and words are something different. It would be difficult to write about anything else while doing it, for practical reasons as well as thematic. You could take notes perhaps, but actually composing while running a mile or meeting a future lover would be difficult. In addition, coffee-drinking, in the way that I think of it, which you might have gotten a bit of a taste of over the course of the last couple thousand words, is an experience of presence, because it alters the way one experiences everything. Not by much, of course, but still in a way to which the mind reacts and can sense. As one feels this sort of a change in perception, one might be inclined to attempt to describe it, to make sense of it. Or, one could just try and go along with it, and enjoy it. I suppose it depends on what one finds enjoyable. Here I am, finishing an essay about writing and coffee, so I suppose you already know what I think.

What's a Tautology?

Oliveslav posted this, and while I will also redirect you, the picture is so apt I had to simply re-publish:

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-700 million

This post brought to you by the number:

12




What's going on today? Let's look through Adam's shared RSS feed!

"Normally, this is a process that would take months — years."

Instead, the law is being worked out, live on television, over the course of a few days.

— NPR, quoting the chief lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable, Scott Talbott

And here are some other delicious quotes about the wisdom of this bullshit bailout. I can't believe this shit. And once again the democrats are lining up. These truly are incredible times; I know, because I find myself agreeing with the republicans on the matter. Wall Street? Can it! They want the free market, now they got it. Of course, it hasn't been truly free for a long time now.

Seriously though, any elected official who votes for this bailout, any official who in any way sends any further money to these jokers, is on my list. As I paraphrase from an economist, (whose name and literal words I am unable to find at the moment) 'this is not a plan to help the financial organizations, this is a plan to help the poorly run financial organizations.' Credit is our new great commodity, and it is the tool by which Americans are oppressed daily. If those who invented such commodity derivatives were unable to see when they pushed their vectors too far, then that is their problem.

I promise, that any elected official who votes to support this bailout will never receive my vote again. Not for school board, not for dog catcher. This is the Iraq War all over again. People who knew warned that it was a bad idea; and then it was voted into existence anyway. Then later, when it fails, it's, "oh, we were misled! We had false information! The people who would benefit by what we did lied to us!" Bullshit. You are responsible. I guess I can take heart in the fact that this $ 700 Billion isn't could to be used to explicitly murder people, but the money is gone. Meanwhile, the nations highways and dams are falling apart. But for god's sake, let's preserve our financial (i.e. fake, derivative, oppressive) infrastructure! And don't give me that crap that without credit, nothing would get built. You give me $700 billion, I'll build you a road. You give it to failing banks, we'll still have potholes.

Anyway, on the lighter side of things, here is a very nice MA thesis about what sort of cosmic singularities you can expect on December 21, 2012, in the views of people who have experimented with heavy doses of psychedelic drugs.

I've found the subject fascinating for awhile from many perspectives: the history of astrology and calendar systems, the millennial and apocalyptic theories, and the multitude of different, yet very similar "prophetic" visions that people experience while under heavy doses of plant matter that occur naturally on the earth. The article sums up the theories in one, mostly unbiased article that seeks to inform rather than proselytize. A bit long for someone who doesn't have any interest in the subject perhaps, but hey, at least its not about credit markets!

And lastly, the number twelve. As in the number of months in the year, the number of eggs in a dozen, and as in the high score of the most educational pinball game around. In the course of my job I often end up counting the same number over and over again. Counting into stacks of tens, or twenty-fives, etc. I've gotten pretty good at it--so good, in fact, that I can sing the 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12 song in my head while still counting correctly to another number entirely. I love that Seasame Street bit; what a truly brilliant show. I consider that bit no small part of how I was able to adapt so easily to base-12 math in Europe, (where the times-table goes up to 12 x 12, rather than 10 x 10 like in the States). And the best part is, twelve is a number that is not 700 billion.

Scroll back up to the top and watch it again, it all its seizure and psychedelic-apocalypse inducing glory.

When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the post

For some reason this weekend I've thought of a whole slew of topics about which to write. I have three different drafts saved with ideas for future posts, involving science, secrets, SF, and also stupid artists.

But the one I'm going to write about today involves music, and musicians. Specifically, musicians playing other musicians music. Otherwise known as a cover song, it poses an interesting concept for the music fan.

I bought a bunch of cassette tapes, and today I'm dubbing some LPs and mp3s to tape, so that I may listen to them in my car, in which the CD player is broken, and only has a working deck. I'm using 90 minute tapes, which is perfect for one LP per side. The mp3s are much more flexible, but I'm taking the opportunity to dub collections of 7" singles, and various disparate recordings, so that I can have some ready made playlists available for my commute.

While it is perhaps to cliche to discuss the art of the mix tape after such romanticized popular culture depictions like High Fidelity, it certainly exists. You only have to listen to a poorly made tape or mix to figure it out. Although the skill necessary to punch clunky cassette deck buttons in the proper sequence is now retro-chic thanks to the ease of the CD-burn, (I remember when MiniDiscs were considered awesomely new), there are also levels to think about, the importance of track timing so that one does not record over leader strip at the beginning and end of a side, the difference between side A and side B (aesthetically), and of course, the always important placement of thematic tracks to segue the mood.

But maybe this is just an attempt for the music fan to consider him/herself half as artistic in the playing of the song as the artist that originally recorded it. A bit of idolization and repetition, perhaps. As my father and grandfather have said, the only thing they can play is the radio.

But what makes a musician attempt to play another musicians song? Of course, it is nothing new for an artist to record a song not written by him/herself; the singer/songwriter is a pretty new phenomenon in the history of recorded music. But to record a new version of a song that was already popularized by another artist... why? Maybe to gain some fame from the recording of a recognizable track. Surely hiphop and DJ remix genres have benefited from this aspect as much as anyone else, almost to the extent that it resembles the fan's mix tape. Oh, Will Smith likes Stevie Wonder? How artistic!

Not so long ago I wrote about Softcell's cover of Gloria Jones' original recording of "Tainted Love". While their version of the song has again been covered by many groups, I speculated that their cover had some historical significance because of the timeliness of their release during the outbreak of AIDS, as did the original release during a pivotal year in the fight for racial civil rights. This makes the cover very interesting, and evocative.

I think there are two main justifications for covering a song, and thereby deeming it a "good cover".

1- To try to play the song as well or better than the original recording, as an homage to the original.

An example of this is of all-cover bands. These are bands that like the original band enough to celebrate their music by forming a group solely devoted to playing that group's oeuvre. Whether or not they succeed or their attempts are even enjoyable, are up to the listener.

2- To try and artistically interpret the song, making one's own take on the song and thereby deepening the artistic value of the piece, or updating it for a new era/style.

Softcell's "Tainted Love" would fall into this category. Hiphop also scores big here, with samples from the soul era, or even covers of early rap like the numerous re-makes and re-hashings of Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick's "La Di Da Di".

While I was making some tapes, I thought about a particular manner of this song remaking, when the lyrics are changed ever so slightly. I think I noted in the post on Softcell how Gloria Jones' line, "I've given you all a girl can give," is changed by Marc Almond to "I've given you all a boy can give." Now, of course it would make more sense for Almond to say "boy" than "girl" because of his anatomy. But, as history would have it, it also gives a large amount of significance to the re-recording because of his sexuality, the sexuality depicted throughout the entire album, and the cultural links between all of these back in 1981.

When dubbing a copy of Siouxsie and the Banshee's 1978 album, The Scream, I was struck by their cover of "Helter Skelter". Of course, the sound is already quite different than the Beatles' original version, although it contains a lot of the same manic energy as the original, perhaps the sort of manic energy that would drive borderline psychotics like Charles Manson to predict the coming race-war apocalypse. (Conspiracy note: The Beatles come to America in 1964, the same year as Gloria Jones' "Tainted Love" was released.)

But anyway, the lyrics are all the same, except for the second time through the chorus, Siouxsie Sioux, rather than "You may be a lover but you ain't no dancer," sings "You may be a lover but you ain't no fucking dancer."

Now, what is the significance of this change in the song? Is it just part of the aesthetic of the punk movement, a big middle finger up in the air to the sort of people who liked the Beatles? But then why cover the song at all? Or is it that in 1978, ten years after the release of the White Album, things had not gotten better than 1968, but had gotten worse, so that this was not a whimsical reminisce of the "60s" but a rebirth of that manic energy that was somewhat, although perhaps in an un-dead sense, alive in those days?

Or maybe it's nothing but a coincidence. After all, Cake's cover of Gloria Gaynor's disco hit "I Will Survive" changes the lyric, "I would have changed that stupid lock," to "I would have changed my fucking lock." And I have no reason to find anything significant about that.

That's the thing about history and culture. Any significance is merely what you happen to find. And with that, I will go back to making significant progress in my mix tapes.

These Truely Are The Last Days

Interrupting the tale of my journeys for some beautiful song lyrics, courtesy of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Sorry, I know if you don't dig, it's probably a bit tedious. But, I'm in a mood.

The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
And a dark wind blows
The government is corrupt
And we're on so many drugs
With the radio on and the curtains drawn

We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death

The sun has fallen down
And the billboards are all leering
And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles

It went like this

The buildings tumbled in on themselves
Mothers clutching babies picked through the rubble and pulled out their hair

The skyline was beautiful on fire
All twisted metal stretching upwards
Everything washed in a thin orange haze

I said, "Kiss me, you're beautiful..
These are truly the last days"

You grabbed my hand and we fell into it
Like a daydream or a fever

We woke up one morning and fell a little further down
For sure it's the valley of death

I open up my wallet
And it's full of blood

Post-Apocalyptic Subway Disco

Last night I was riding a nearly empty 3 train uptown back to Harlem, and listening to Sally Shapiro's "I'll Be by Your Side" on my headphones. As the train goes through the tunnel underneath Central Park passing from 96th Street to Central Park North, it slows down a bit and heads into a stretch with lots of lights in the tunnel in close proximity to the train, because the tunnel is so narrow. Sitting at the end of the car (coincidentally at the end of the train), I saw a peculiar phenomenon. As the lights from the tunnel passed down the train through the windows, their glare reflected in the chrome hand-hold bars in the center of the car. The motion of the reflection spun the lights around the round poles, and combined with the stuttering produced by the windows, bathed the empty car in a strobe-light disco ball effect.

At that point, the ethereal warmness of Sally Shapiro's synths instilled in me a vision of some sort of cyborg vigilante riding on top of an abandoned train across a post-apocalyptic city-scape plain in some alternative future, his existential tears running into sparks as they flow down his face in the poisoned wind. Think Mad Max/Blade Runner/Robocop, but a club remix rather than Vangelis' original Blade Runner soundtrack. I had to listen to the song three times in a row.

Yeah, I like the subway. People talk shit about how everyone in the city has headphones on, but sometimes the mundane can be quite beautiful if it is enhanced with the right soundtrack. And how else would I be inspired with ideas for depressimistic sci-fi short stories? Go ahead, you tell me how. That's what I thought. Cyborgs will always be by my side.