*
[Quote here from a credible, authentic source (next blurb is counterfeit, too). Something about the origin of magic. Or lungs. What did James Merrick’s doktor/benefactor think about lungs?]
*
To spend most of one’s time waiting for comic book superheroes to transform from everymen into their respective Unleashed Ids, Doppelgängers, Chaosophreaks, etc. Everything leading up to those transformations can be equated with contravened attempts at masturbation in below zero weather. Post-transformation ain’t much better. These overmen, and the special effekts used to represent them, promise impossible feats of strength, discourse, violence, agency, etc. But the promise always fails, i.e., one never leaves a Moth(ra) Man with an empty stomach. Hence a revision of my former claim: To leave a Moth(ra) Man with a deflated stomach so that one can fully enjoy the scenic chairlift to the next meal.
*
“I want to take this opportunity to cite […], who, appropriating the language of […], who himself tweaked and refined the patois of […], claimed that […] misquoted the […] who uttered the original Nadsat soliloquy that […] articulated before realizing that the dictionary of Nadsat he had downloaded into his lexicon had been tampered with, i.e., somebody had mixed and matched the definitions in such a way that most of them did not correspond with their lawful terms (e.g. viddy = to talk, i.e., govoreet, instead of to see). Hence […]’s discourse was bezoomny and full of cal. Nonetheless somehow he succeeded in conveying a message that was not only valid and sensible but utterly ethnomethodological, as it were. In any event, […] writes: ‘…’ (498). Afterwards there was a fist fight.” Anonymous Pre-AR Document Recovered from the Third Basement under the Tomb of […] in Père-Lachaise Cemetery.
*
“At the end of time, a moment will come when just one man remains. Then the moment will pass. Man will be gone. There will be nothing to show that we were ever here…but stardust. The last man, alone with God…Am I that man?” Capt. Pinbacker, perf. Mark Strong, Sunshine (2007). Silhouette of a dark, disintegrating stick figure set against a cosmic wall of fire…Ref. Sgt. Pinback in Dark Star (1974).
*
“What’s her name? Linnea. Tell that chick to get naked. All the way. I wanna see bush.” Dan O’Bannon, set of The Return of the Living Dead (1985).
*
“Portrait of ultraviolence…” (0.000000037 AR).
*
“The psychophysical process of attack is not a fundament of this physio-nietzschean martial art. Nor is the art of defense. The enlightened scikungfi fighter will have transcended these useless tactics. Neither aggression nor protection informs her character. Or rather, these things inform her character to such a degree that they meta-entropically implode into nothingness. I stand here. I blink, I breathe. I exist. And I fucking kill you and eat your gore. That is the True Way of scikungfi. Many like to think they follow and practice the True Way. But the mass man is nothing but a hack bodhisattva. He always will be.” Dr Shirley Mai-Pong Gak, Blackbelt, Tao of Scikungfi, 8th Ed. (circa Ticky Tacky 2.56 AR).
*
“Making something new is merely the process of disguising something old in a seemingly creative way. The disguise is the thing―not the thing itself.” D. Harlan Wilson, Dr Identity, or, Farewell to Plaquedemia (2007).
*
(NOTE: Faulker did the same shit in “The Bear.” See the third chapter. High modernist mxyzptlk. The stuff of artistes who fork over everlasting viscera to pursue MFA degrees rather than mxyzptlking their own hackneyed BwOs.)
*
“0101010100010010010010101000101111101010101100110101010110101001101101010101010101010110101010101010100101010101010101011010001101010001010101010111011001010110101010101101010100101010101010111010101010001001001001010100010111110101010110011010101011010100110110101010101010101011010101010101010010101010101010101101000110101000101010101011101100101011010101010110101010010101010101001010101000100100100101010001011111010101011001101010101101010011011010101010101010101101010101010101001010101010101010110100011010100010101010101110110010101101010101011010101001010101010101110101010100010010010010101000101111101010101100110101010110101001101101010101010101010110101010101010100101010101010101011010001101010001010101010111011001010110101010101101010100101010101010010101010101010111101010101010101010101011010111010110101111010101011101011010010010100010010010010101000101111101010101100110101010110101001101101010101010101010110101010101010100101010101010101011010001101010001010101010111011002671010110101010101101010100101010101010111010101010001001001001010100010111110101010110011010101011010100110110101010101010101011010101010101010010101010101010101101000110101000101010101011101100101011010101010110101010010101010101001010101000100100100101010001011111010101011001101010101101010011011010101010101010101101010101010101001010101010101010110100011010100010101010101110110010101101010101011010101001010101010101110101010100010010010010101000101111101010101100110101010110101001101101010101010101010110101010101010100101010101010101011010001101010001010101010111011001010110101010101101010100101010101010110111.” Binary Code
*
The Said vs. the Unsaid.
Vs.
*
“Usurper.” James Joyce, Ulysses (1922). Is this grand narrational shiznitosnits-vansamson any different than Snoop Doggy Dogg’s 1993 album Doggy Style? Equal measures of micturation, excretion, gangstaism and verbomania communicated with equal measures of True Grit.
*
Cluster of biological salesmen. “AMAZING 2 YEAR GUARANTEE: If you need to start over for any reason we will replace both water-purifier and Sea-Monkey® egg pouches (worth $6.00) plus a free copy of the original. It’s fun to raise pet Sea-Monkeys®. Official Sea-Monkey® handbook. A $3.00 value. Free! To enter a claim, send us $3.00 for processing and a stamped, self-addressed envelope to: Sea-Monkey Guarantee, PO Box 809, Bryans Road, MD 20616-0809.” Back of Sea-Monkey® Magic Castle Box.
*
“Expression is not developed through the practice of form, yet form is a part of expression. The greater (expression) is not found in the lesser (expression) but the lesser is found within the greater. Having ‘no form,’ then, does not mean having no ‘form.’ Having ‘no form’ evolves from having form. ‘No form’ is the higher, individual expression.…A Jeet Kune Do man faces reality and not crystallization of form. The tool is a tool of formless form.” Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do (1975). To inject Lee’s raison d’être (and corporeal physique) into the corpse of literature itself.
*
“iFFFFPFP.”[15] Proto-Indo-European, Obersalzberg (4,000 BC).
*
Top 100 science fiction clichés:…45) anthropologic aliens; 46) protagonists who manifest as Jesus; 47) antagonists who manifest as Hitler; 48) arch-antagonists who manifest as Teufelsdröckhian failed gourmevangelists and pull the strings of antagonists who manifest as Hitler/John Keats/Daikaiju; 49) black holes with speaking voices; 50) intelligent women with immeasurable breasts; 51) first sentences or voice-overs that begin with the phrase: “In an uncompromising future”; 52) infinite stor(i)es of ammunition; 53) endless fucking geekspeak…
*
“There are no landscapes; there are only selves expressing experiential spaces, and the weird, not the normal, constitutes their true vocabulary.” Darin Bradley, “The Self-Weird World: Problems of Being as the Fantastic Invasion in Small Press Speculative Fiction,” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts (2007).
*
“Every word…becomes a spear turned against the speaker. Most especially a remark like this. And so ad infinitum. The only consolation would be: it happens whether you like it or no. And what you like is of infinitesimally little help. More than consolation is: You too have weapons.” Franz Kafka, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir, Final Diary Entry (1923).
*
To come to terms with the phrase “in terms of.” Mediation as a form of crapola. So…connect the dots. Compress the Kevin Bacons from Six to Double Negative Infinity Zero Degrees of Meaning…
*
“Tr
ying to trace the origin of this idea one must assume some misunderstanding of the symbolic meaning of the act of defecation, namely that he who entered into a special relationship with divine rays as I have is to a certain extent entitled to shit on all the world.” Daniel Paul Schreber, trans. Ida Macalpine, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (1901).
*
“…City of Ur…” Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane, “The Urstaat,” Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972). Arcologies against the green vastness. Futurespeak. Cold coffee in an expensive shot glass. Timelapse of storm clouds…
*
“Not wholly as a Spectre does Teufelsdröckh now storm through the world; at worst as a spectre-fighting Man, nay who will one day be a Spectre-queller. If pilgriming restlessly to so many ‘Saints’ Wells,’ and ever without quenching of his thirst, he nevertheless finds little secular wells, whereby from time to time some alleviation is ministered. In a word, he is now, if not ceasing, yet intermitting to ‘eat his own heart’; and clutches round him outwardly on the NOT-ME for wholesomer food. Does not the following glimpse exhibit him in a much more natural state?” Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (1830-31).[16]
[3] Sig. Stanley Ashenbach.
[4] According to Kevin Taylor’s KA-BOOM!: A Dictionary of Comic Book Words, Symbols & Onomatopoeia (2007), “The sound of a tuba player sucking in air” (39).
[5] Definite article placed before a noun designating that noun with a certain specificity.
[6] Synonym for difficulty or conundrum.
[7] Preposition denoting an act of accompaniment.
[8] The temporal, spatial and psychic realm inhabited by organisms. Alternately a “thing” or a “game.”
[9] Verb—present tense of was.
[10] See note 5.
[11] Made-up compound word denoting the opposite of cleared.
[12] Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski.
[13] Conjunction unlike and or but that connects two or more alteries in a similar context.
[14] Improvised, clipped, personified, nominalized version of aberration.
[15] See note 4.
[16] Unless specified otherwise, passages originally written in French, German and Nadsat have been translated by Stanley Ashenbach.
32
Houses of If II: The Sequel
Chapter 08 happens again exactly as it happened the first time with one small difference: instead of Styx’s “Mr Roboto,” they played Mr Mister’s “Broken Wings”…
33
Elevator Pitch
Imagine these words rolling across the page in green clock/radio blips. Behind the words, unrelated sepia-toned action sequences…
Get a bunch of dipshits to live in the same hellhole and provide them with a series of insignificant competitions to keep their minds off the certainty of death. Shoot footage for two months. Insert a lifelike mannequin with hair and clothes and everything and see how people react; nail its feet to the floorboards in the living room so nobody steals it. Shoot footage for six months. Zombify the mannequin and equip it with sentience and superhuman strength. Shoot footage until everybody dies. FADE OUT. Image of a scuba diver machinegunning sharks in a filmosophic aquarium surrounded by thousands of idle spectators. A softcore sex scene; the woman wears gaudy lingerie and hasn’t shaved her armpits. FADE IN on the mannequin standing on a street corner in futuristic Prague. The mannequin is much taller than the faceless pedestrians that course beneath it. One man, however, about the same height as the mannequin, stops abruptly, circles it a few times, and looks into its eyes. He places a hand on the mannequin’s chest in search of a heartbeat. The wind gets loud, louder…SHRIEK-CUT TO a long-range shot of Alaskan tundra. Tall, thin city on the horizon. Shoot footage indefinitely. At some point the silhouette of a man trudges onscreen. We can hear his scarves and coattails flap in the wind. He makes it halfway across the screen and falls down. FIN.
If this doesn’t work, resort to the plot of every single episode of The Incredible Hulk (1978-82): protag hitchhikes into small redneck town, smalltown rednecks fuck with protag, protag turns green and beats up smalltown rednecks in slow motion, protag hitchhikes out of small redneck town…
If this doesn’t work, diverge from machinic plots containing changelings and focus on static bodies, i.e., do an Amerikan pastoral featuring an everyman who can change into the city of Kyoto but maintains an anthropomorphous endoskeleton from beginning to…
…scene in which two gentlemen discuss whether or not their peer is a human or an android. “The only way to tell is to cut him open,” says Gentleman #1. Gentleman #2 agrees. They cut Gentleman #3 in half with a chainsaw and he bleeds paper drink umbrellas. “He’s human,” says Gentleman #2. “Only androids bleed real-looking blood.” Gentleman #1 says, “Oh no. We are guilty of murder.” They study the severed halves of their peer. “Let’s just tell the jury it happened on TV,” says Gentleman #1. Gentleman #2 agrees…
42
Houses of If III: The Interquel
(a.k.a. Revenge of the Scikungfighter)
Prague paid for another ride on the time machine and took it to the end of chapter 08. He accepted a box of cigarettes from Cdre Rabelais, punched Cdre Rabelais, and set the time machine’s controls for the end of chapter 17. He went too far and ended up back in chapter 32, where he exacted revenge on Armand Dorleac and Doktor Ray B Flechsig by way of prehistorically cruel and unusual acts of disembowelment. At last he reached his destination, six paragraphs from the end of chapter 17.
…“Ekphrasis!” said Codename Prague. He stormed down the aisle…
…“I know the difference,” snapped the doktor. “Difference is the payload of identity…”
44B
Daikaiju Blues in the Bruce Lee Funpark
CNP = Codename Prague. BL = Bruce Lee. TSM = The Sans Merci a.k.a. the Hitler/Keats Hybrid + Daikaiju Monster. DK = Daikaiju. And = &. Etc. = etc. Etc.…
*
Somebody cut off CNP’s hand as he exited the back door of the theater. A stale martini gushed into the alleyway. He made a pit stop at the Hotel Prague. In the Galactic Pot-Healer Suite, Mädchen “The Prague” Prague and her brother Henrí waited for him, arm in arm. He punched them out. He retrieved a replacement mitt from the briefcase & the mitt welded itself to his wrist. He took off his clothes & put on the trendiest organic exoskeleton in the closet. He drank half a glass of water, handcuffed himself to the briefcase, & left.
“Herr Amboßmann,” wheezed “The Prague,” groping for him…
On the sidewalk in front of the Hotel Prague a doorman had either been strangled or trampled by a passerby. “There are no marks on his neck,” observed one of several bystanders who had gathered around the victim. “And yet there he lays, gasping for breath.”
Codename Prague Page 13