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31141.1555
"It is our despair at the textural inadequacies of
language that drives us to heighten the structural ones toward"
From the back cover:
"THE SUN HAS GROWN DEADLY...
THE WORLD HAS GONE MAD, SOCIETY HAS
PERISHED, SAVAGERY RULES
OVER ALL. ALL THAT WAS KNOWN
IS OVER, ALL THAT WAS FAMILIAR IS
STRANGE AND TERRIBLE. TODAY
AND YESTERDAY COLLIDE WITH TOMORROW.
IN THESE DYING DAYS OF EARTH,
A YOUNG DRIFTER ENTERS THE CITY"
The book William Gibson wrote an introduction for and admitted he didn't understand. If Cormac McCarthyism has a counterpart in science-fiction, it is Dhalgren, the most absurdly accurate 'apocalypse' set in some form of earth, in a time-frame no one is exactly sure about. And hallucinations occur sometimes in words that no longer exist (you'll have to read it to see what I mean). It might be a work that outlives us and tells future generations what we really knew about the decay of knowledge and the oral histories that will travel along our children's, children's children. Memories barely of the beginings of the end: "the riot began with a murder, some say it was a plane that crashed. No one really knows. That was the time of fear." The hero is an amnesiac who is labelled "The Kid" and enters the soon to be mythic city of Bellona, only now its inhabitants live mostly in memories, and whatever fragments of life can be scraped by on - temporarily, since cities have no purpose except to store mass memories and here, there are few being made. Just living from cans, having sex, and fighting and sometimes group socialization. Oh, wait, it sounds like our present day cities, only without electricity, cars, running water... Maybe the memories will have meaning. The following chapter-heading paragraphs transition to third-person immediately afterwards.
"2 It is not that I have no past. Rather, it continually fragments on the terrible and vivid ephemera of now. In the long country, cut with rain, somehow there is nowhere to begin. Loping and limping in the ruts, it would be easier not to think about what she did (was done to her, done to her, done), trying instead to reconstruct what it is at a distance. Oh, but it would not be so terrible had one calf not borne (if I'd look close, it would have been a chain of tiny wounds with moments of flesh between; I've done that myself with a swipe in a garden past a rose) that scratch.
II Here I am and am no I. The circle in all, this change changing in winteress, a dawn circle with an image of, the autumn change with a change of mist. Mistake two pictures, one and another. No. Only in seasons of shortlight, only on dead afternoons. I will not be sick again. I will not. You are here.
..How can I say that that is my prize possession? (They do not fade, neither those buildings or these.) Rather what we know as real is burned away at invisible heat. What we are concerned with is more insubstantial. I do not know. It is as simple as that. For the hundreth time, I do not know and cannot remember. I do not want to be sick again. I do not want to be sick."
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31113.1151
Rap's unfulfilled promise was its potential ability to transform language, specifically English. Though posed continuously on the verge of a revolution, only ODB was able to take rap into a next-layer, and only for brief seconds (here in Shimmy Shimmy Ya, he wordplays backwards in its verse two). Now in 2011, no lyrical-musical form has the reign on the next stages of motion-languages, our pop forms are back to leaden poetry and musical 'scapes that fail to transcend both realms. The role of revolutionary falls squarely back onto film and videogame. ODB R.I.P.
[Intro:]
Oooh baby I like it raw
Yeah baby I like it rawww
Oooh baby I like it raw
Yeah baby I like it rawww
[Verse One:]
Shimmy shimmy ya shimmy yam shimmy ya
gimme the mic so I can take it away
off on a natural charge bom-voyage
yeah from the home of the doge brooklyn scwad
Wu-Tang killer bee's on a swarm
rain on your collage ass disco dorm
for you to even touch my skill
you gotta put the one killer bee and he ain't gonna kill
now chop that downpass it all around
lyrics get hard quick cement to the ground
for any em-cee in any fifty two states
I get psycho, killer, Norman Bates
my producer slam my flow is like bamm
jump on stage ah then I dip doown
(I like the way you talk)
[Chorus: repeat 2X]
Oooh baby I like it raw
Yeah baby I like it rawww
Oooh baby I like it raw
Yeah baby I like it rawww
[backwards verse incorporating part of Verse Two]
[Verse Two: (additional extended verse)]
See, when a nigga say he likes it raw
He means dirty, down to the floor
see my name is the Ol'DB and I'll beat your ass
for the ladies who know me tell them who the fuck I be
for the niggas who know me tell them who the fuck I be
my style comes down on ya'll like rocks
by the doc
umm by the flock
by the creak by the flock
got east coast locked down padlocked
my sulu be all all down by the flock
[Chorus: repeat 2X]
[Verse One: repeat]
Yo ya'll know the lyrics come on sing with me
[Chorus: repeat 2X] -
312338.0044
The fuss over Inception will seem like pop-gun shots underwater once you realize one very specific spoiler:
the entire film is an in-flight dream of Mr. Cobb's. One viewing is all you need, just notice the absence of the machine on landing and the absence of Miles's concern at greeting and you see, he dreamed it all and used his anonymous cabin-mates as puppets, adding names and roles to their bland exteriors (the names being metaphors from Cobb's interior, not our exterior). The sad thing is the whole plot is unecessary since there was never any peril, thus, the dream logic is likewise pointless (and spotty). The token's spinning remains meaningful only as a joke on us, Cobb knows he's home, the top reminds him about the dream. Put away all those diagrams they're valueless. For more details, click the above link. And leave that Blu-Ray where it belongs. In the warehouse.
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312229.1358
Bioshock's Rapture locale, soon Columbia.
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312161.0811
Barrelhouses were mostly illegal houses of gambling with skewed odds, prostitution, cheap corn liquor and a house pianist. As the barrelhouse became the only place men could romance women somewhat without fear of retribution, its popularity rose steadily and a circuit was established for travelling musicians - soon this began rivalling gambling as the main attraction. Barrelhouses were usually staked by farmowners hoping to sieve their workers' wages back rather than letting them spend it up north in the barrelhouses of Beale Street (Memphis).
