mmmmmmmmmmm

awk awk,capariae, that southernmost nekromanter, washing out the cooler air and singing swoof songs to the recently enlisted dead… circling round about the crofts and loosewinds, sterring past the cradling and or rather crumbling mausoleum and crag. forget the hittites, they’ve been playing foolscap for a garber nigh on 12 cents from now. or pasternoster writing. scribbled out on foundenwork that floats about the guttersnipes and walows in the sewage. pullman, pullman, where have yor druppy crars gone? that burnished auburn lamplighters coursing out the tripsanddrams of shotten nuffaloes. harcass! boiling bubbies of bloody hornhanks and shipshaves, ya. and so hear the shuffling toetaps of clowns and vagabonds, those soothsayers and crabcakers (crak!crak!)…spooning out the soft unnerbelly, stringing out froom tooth to tooth. har’s that grin agin. that varnishing grin, that cat-eclipsing grin.

gargling jello

in olde spite of self,
that crattling nip or tuck that wanders out the door. yes, i’ve seen the old man of the sea, or maybe the old man in the mountain. there’s too too many old men, roundabout the hearth and home and lurking behind the eyebrows. just waiting, given time, give him time, to jump out, take the forefront, bow to the floor….
—or he would, youknow, only the arthriticals keep him solid, like a block of wood roasting on a furnace. mmm. feel that burning onceler. feed him mashed up taters and saucy sauce. (saucy sauce? sigh)

i’m remembering a certain logan and his certain run and the cranky old man daguerrotyping, i mean, lambobbling, i mean, um, roustabouting, no rather, fillibustering in that cracked, unhallowed hall. wobbly and false, he was, with his pasteon white beard and his faux theatrics and monologicals.

but that’s enough of the reminiscing. there’s nothing so sad as a mockelder. made my living, in younger years, playing mock old, fat men. with the pasteon wrinkles and the occasional pasteon beard. and the pasteonbelly. wheee! who’s the man in the fat suit dancing down the stairs? chances are, if it was THAT time, it was yours truly.

so, when i’m staring at the picture of my heart, going pa-TOOM pa-TOOM, right in fronna me, watching those flaps and valves and dowhats, dojiggers, or -hickeys or whathaveyou, watching it skip its beat (and were those red and blue pixelations the blood moving back and forth? don’t even know for sure…) but while watching, the faintest dizziness: this thing has been going going going for how long now? and for how long from now? that old mortal coil seemed loose, then, like some quick jerk could send it off, posthaste, for the fruit of heaven–ambrosia, i think it was. that was a weird feeling, that sense. like, what purpose is this serving, doc? except to highlight (in electronickal display in that darkened room) that very mechanickalness of everything. even those things we think of as fleshy, fleshpots, are only just scaffolding and repairwork, hastily painted over with whitewash and shored up here and there, against that inevitable crumbling…

my mind, for the nonce, keeps strolling back there, like a tongue-wag against some loose tooth. or that finger, with its torn cuticle, catching on this that and the other (lemon juice, ow!)

so, here’s the heart. the flexing, pumping muscle-thing: heard it all my life, going pa-TOOM pa-TOOM in those quiet moments. those still moments, when the night creeps around on little sock feet. (stealing a bit) and but then, here’s some unwieldy contraption with unguents and wants and whatnot, sending some crazed image of that gurgling thing. and, what’s this? whooshing, thumping noise? microscope, microscope, where do you rest your saucy gaze?

Night Watch

I finished this one back in December: The intro to this interview with Pratchett says it well:

“Terry Pratchett sells more books than… well… a lot of people. In the United Kingdom, where he was born and now lives and works, Pratchett sells — to put it bluntly — more books than God.”

Here’s a long list of all the Discworld ones anyway.

What is the Discworld, you may ask, not having steeped yourself (overlong, like a bitter cup of tea?) in Pratchett’s prosody?

Most of Pratchett’s books are set in a fantastical world, which is flat, like a pancake, and which rests on the backs of some elephants, which in turn stroll around on the back of a giant turtle which swims through the universe… Things are quirky on the Discworld. Light gets puddled up in valleys and everyone gets a personal chat with Death when they kick it.

Now, I wouldn’t necessarily start out with reading Night Watch, if you’re interested in starting up in the Discworld thing. There are recurring characters and running gags and little bits of continuity which make more sense if you read them in some semblance of order.

I’d recommend starting out with Mort or Small Gods, if not the first and second ones: The Light Fantastic and The Colour of Magic

Other stuff:
A nice fansite with lots of links to pictures and things.
Pratchett interview regarding Night Watch
Ye olde Amazon link.

Album Zutique #1

Album Zutique #1 is a tiny collection of “surreal and decadent” short stories, edited by Jeff Vandermeer. (A little while ago, I read City of Saints and Madmen:The Book of Ambergris by Vandermeer, a fantastic book of short stories that I meant to write about, but I don’t believe that I ever did… More’s the pity. It was one of the best things that I read last year…)

Vandermeer seems to be a high mucky-muck for the Ministry of Whimsy, a press which seems to specialize in bizarrely (mostly) non-whimsical fiction. The whimsy being more of a chin-wagging, eye-winking ironic something or other.

So, and but, the Album Zutique stories which made me go, wowza! (if’n you ever get a change to read it):
“The Toes of the Sun”–reminded me of innumerable love-a-lee Italian folkstories as compiled by ye olde Calvino;

“Dr. Black in Rome”–adventures in adultery and post-structuralism: hey, when Dr. Black dives for the garbagetruck, I’m laughing my head off;

“The Catgirl Manifesto: An Introduction”–I’m very very fond of fiction which disguises itself as non-fiction: introductions, footnotes, errata, pamphlets, manuals or travel guides.

Basically, I have not been disappointed by anything that Vandermeer or his Ministry O Whimsy have put out. It’s good stuff!

An interview with Jeff Vandermeer. Or is it VanderMeer?

*

Howard Dean is not a bar of soap…

So why should he market himself like one? On the television?

It’s a good little essay about internetty versus televizzy, re. this whole politico thing. Plus, it made me laugh thinking of Howard Dean being made of soap…

“For the love of god, don’t go out into that rain!”

It reminds me of that Asimov short story. The one with the people who are made out of sugar.