The Gamer's Quarter

dhex · Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 1:49 pm Post subject:

it's time to get sirius, baby!

i love this robert anton wilson bit - which can be found in the first volumes of his memoirs with the terrible title that shall not be named - of him and pkd getting to know each other because each of them had these intense bouts of unreality/contact experiences/sykkkhotic* breaks/religious experiences. they were trying to suss out who was crazier, and if neither were crazy, then maybe both of them were sane, or at least ok enough.

[stupid word filter*]

these days, genuine religiosity is often classified/dismissed as mental illness. this is an unfortunate turn, at least for this apagnostic.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Ok, well let me get this straight again... PKD is writing VALIS under veil of a veil of truth, and really is Horselover Fat? Because that was the assumption under which I have been reading it.

So, what the shit is with the name?

Also, J. are you stating that he was literally Schizophrenic, or just the slang of schizo, which isn't quite accurate to the tech/medical definition?
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

dhex · Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 2:28 pm Post subject:

horselover fat is like, some german thing. at least, that's what i was told. i'd say check wikipedia, but you don't want to fuck things up for yourself just yet.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

Well, it's not like that's unprecedented.

In the middle ages, people who had psychological problems were often viewed as being set upon by demons. These people were then sometimes subjected to trepanation. The odd thing is that sometimes it worked, aparently.

So, which is worse, taking something spiritual and assuming that it is psychological or physiological, or vice-versa?
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Gamertag - FalcomAdol -- Don't Click Here 触手
Playing - Ninety-Nine Nights - Xbox 360

J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

dhex · Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 9:36 pm Post subject:

J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

To be clear, I wouldn't use schizo unless I meant literaly schizophrenic, or at least exhibiting the traits of a person who was literally schizophrenic.
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Gamertag - FalcomAdol -- Don't Click Here 触手
Playing - Ninety-Nine Nights - Xbox 360

dhex · Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 10:05 pm Post subject:

no argument here. motherfucker definitely found himself inside a gateless gate.
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GSL · Posted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 1:42 am Post subject:

Um, sorry to take this briefly offtopic, but dhex: did your avatar always have the "Hail Satan" on it? I could have sworn it wasn't there before, but now I'm just seeing it for the first time and I'm not sure this is the time of night for me to be seeing things that don't exist.

dhex · Posted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 8:24 am Post subject:

the dark lord works in mysterious ways.

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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

I'm digging Valis

It got its hooks in me last night. I guess that part of it was that I was waiting for him to get to the "other part" and there is none. He frequently spends a couple paragraphs at the beginning as a sort of red herring about what the rest of the book will be only to switch into a different gear around chapter 3 which is the direction the rest of the book will take.

Still, it is not at all what I expected.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

I put up a Philip K. Dick entry in my Live Journal. It involves me putting together a list of his work and what I have read of it, as well as me stating my intent to read his entire body of work.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

GSL · Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 2:17 pm Post subject:

Finished re-reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Pretty much everything positive that's needed to be said about the book has already been said, so I won't bother gushing over it. Thompson completely cracks me up, and I loved the inclusion of the chapter that was lifted entirely verbatim (as much as possible) from the damaged audio tape. This is one of the five or so books that I love so much, I just have to read them on a yearly basis.

I still need to read The Rum Diary and The Great Shark Hunt, and I only hope that someday Prince Jellyfish will somehow find publication.

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '74 is probably the best thing HST has ever done.

TheRumblefish · . Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 258 Location: Florida

I put down Notes From The Underground for now, and decided to move on to Naked Lunch. Not the wisest choice, I'm trying to deal with the book and surprisingly enough it's an easy read, but it makes me cringe. I don't know what to say here. (Is it wrong to laugh during some of the lines of dialogue?)

On another note, I'm just about finished with "Rotten" The authorized auto-biography of Sex Pistols lead singer, John Lydon. It's not just about him, or The Sex Pistols, but rather a definiton on what the epitome of "Punk" truly was. Good stuff, and highly enjoyable.
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dhex · Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 1:47 pm Post subject:

naked lunch is a satire. it's supposed to be funny.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

It's also supposed to be confusing.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

dhex · Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 2:23 pm Post subject:

well, it's a bit haphazard, but it has a flow and makes sense, i think, in light of his mythology. especially if you consider it the opening salvo in a huge, multi thousand page body of work.

junkie, however, is an interesting document. queer, less so, but i think because by the time it came out it was really a rather common narrative in gay literature.
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helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

dhex · Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 2:57 pm Post subject:

because the theme of one person pursuing another person of the same gender and getting stuck in a trap of self-loathing and other baditude is rather specific to a particular genre? for the sake of clarity, it is a rather common narrative strain, for really obvious reasons, and its existence as a tragic tale feels especially dated coming from a post-1990s pov.

i mean, burroughs himself woudn't have been cool with the term, and for the most part, queer theorists don't particularly care for burroughs, and every gay guy i've ever loaned naked lunch to has thought less of me for it and won't tell me why (all two of them) but i still dig it and that's good enough for me.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

GSL · Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 3:56 pm Post subject:

Thank God for slow, late-night jobs--my book consumption this summer is the highest it's been in... well, a long time. I finished Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby last night, and I think I love it more than the first time I read it. There's just something in the way the story's writing, this idea of being a simple and sane person in the center of constant, gay and decadent revelry that really emphasizes the loneliness of the story. The funeral scene at the end, in which only three people are present for a man who constantly surrounded himself with the most fashionable, is especially poignant, and extremely depressing: the Americal Dream, after you've spent your life chasing it, leaves you dead with no friends and little to remember you by. All the more relevant to life today, methinks.

Now, on with All Tomorrow's Parties...

Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

I read half of Antoine De Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince in a Coffee Shop the other day!

(I should really read more books for adults.)

dhex · Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 10:03 pm Post subject:

i finished midnight's children. i'm halfway through game over thanks to mr. moyers, but i have to read the gorgias for class. it's pretty snappy.
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Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

Mr. Moyles, please. Mr. Moyers is the dude on PBS fer chrissakes.

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

GSL · Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 3:57 am Post subject:

So, All Tomorrow's Parties. William Gibson is most well-known (and reviled, depending on the camp you hail from) for his seminal work Neuromancer, and while it DOES happen to be my most favoritest book of all ever, I really think he hits his stride with the Bridge Trilogy--or more specifically with the second installment, Idoru. He then went on to tighten things up with Parties and Pattern Recognition. Gibson has the whole 'father of cyberpunk' reputation going on, but I think he's better viewed as some sort of high-tech prognosticator, someone who pays attention to the changing shape of technological culture, media, and the concept of celebrity, and is able to extrapolate from them these tales of a future not so far off nor farfetched. I mean, that whole 'mysterious/viral video footage' thing in Pattern Recognition is SO Youtube, especially when you look at things like this recent LonelyGirl15 hype (alternatively, Halo 2's ilovebees campaign would also fit the bill). That's what I really enjoy about Gibson, I suppose, is that he writes about a future you can watch happen, if you know how to look.

dhex · Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 7:24 am Post subject:

dhex · Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 8:37 am Post subject:

hey, an individualist anarchist birdie sent me this link:

Education: Free and Compulsory by murray rothbard.
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dessgeega · Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 8:42 am Post subject:

i read queer once. eh.

i'm currently reading the invisibles. that's a comic book.

i have a few used books en-route, but they're written towards practical ends. i scarcely read fiction.

i'm curious about house of leaves, though.

this has been me checking in with this thread.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

The Invisibles is a complete pile of referential wank. I mean that in a good way. Morrison is succesful in his attempts to make a hyper-sigil, but there isn't that much of a story to it in the end.

dessgeega, if you like his stuff, you should definitely read WE3 and the still on-going All-Star Superman.

WE3 is Plague Dogs with guns. It's also the most successful attempt at a "Western Manga" I've found, because it doesn't try to pathetically imitate the style of common-denominator manga (Not to mention drawing styles in manga are just as varied as in comics), but because it understands the kinetic pacing and framing mostly found in the genre. It's a visual treat, experiments with the format itself on ways which are truly dynamic and the story itself is damn good. It's a 3 issue mini-series, and I find myself re-reading it every two weeks or so. I also genuinely couldn't have guessed how it would have ended, considering how much of disaster scenario it was.

All-Star Superman is going for 12 issues, perhaps more, and tells the story of Superman catching cancer, as planned by Lex Luthor. I don't even like Superman, but it brilliantly uses Silver Age ideas and Supes stories, merging them with modern era tales in a surrealistic sci-fi manner à la K. Dick. It's genuinely interesting stuff and even if you loathe capes comics, this one comes highly recommended.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

dhex · Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 9:24 am Post subject:

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

Is other stuff is worth the effort. Avoid the capes stuff for the most part and you should be okay. I suggest The Filth, Sebastian O, Marvel Boy and Flex Mentallo (Although hard to find as it's never been collected in TPB format. Perhaps I'll upload it later.) along with the previously mentioned WE3 and All-Star Superman.

The Mystery Play is also quite good, Seaguy is good for a confused laugh, Vimanarama is a pretty fun take on the Mahabharata (i.e. Indian Gods as superheroes, also British politicans stripped naked and killed by angry flamethrower-wielding demons) and New X-Men is the only time I found that such a turgid superhero concept felt human and interesting.

I'm embarassed to admit not having much knowledge of magick at all.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

dhex · Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 10:11 am Post subject:

i'll check out vimarama and the filth. they seem up my alley.

sad news:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-krassner/robert-anton-wilson_b_23608.html

aw fuck.

edit: more random selections for what is now free text friday!

http://www.econlib.org/LIBRARY/Smith/smMS.html
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Swimmy · . Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 990 Location: Fairfax, VA

I like Free Text Friday. If we're linking economists, you can't do much better than Menger's Principles. The best of the original marginalists (represent).

Also, sending The Great Gatsby in an email is far superior to flaming.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

I still think Andy Kaufman's most brilliant moment was when he read from The Great Gatsby as a response to fans who wanted him to do his 'foreign man' character.

I just ready As I Lay Dying for the second and third times this week (I didn't have too much going on). It is a brilliantly twisted work and I look forward to writing a paper on its contrived geometry.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

dhex · Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 12:35 pm Post subject:

i once got drunk at a party and told a guy who was obsessed with fitzgerald that zelda wrote all of his books just to see if i could get him to take a swing at me.

it failed! i was forlorn.
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Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

You best pick-up WE3 too if you know what's good for you.

I mean, how can you not love this?

I've taken the liberty of uploading the previously mentioned Flex Mentallo. A similar tale to The Singing Detective, it follows the incoherent babblings of a man on a suicide prevention line, instants after he's consumed a deadly cocktail of drugs in a depressive fit. While he prattles about his childhood love of comics, somewhere else, Flex Mentallo, Man of Muscle Mystery, a superhero with the ability to warp reality with every muscle flex, searches for one of his old partners, The Fact, leading him through the history of the superhero genre as he goes, from Golden Age to Dark Age, blithe and glib, black versus white to grim n' gritty "mature" deconstruction. It's a humanist tale and definitely shows knowledge and love of the genre, but the references aren't consequential enough to prevent understanding the story. If you're at loss, though, you can find annotations here.

It's damn hard to find these days as it never got released in TPB as a result of the Charles Atlas Company getting pissy.

You'll need CDisplay to read it, although you could always unzip the files.

Also, annotations for The Invisibles and screenplays for the first two episodes of the unproduced BBC series.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

I got about 2 chapters into House of Leaves before I had to stop because all my readin' time is before I go to sleep and it was messing with me a little too much.

Early impressions made it seem like some sort of strange crossover of Stephen King and Borges.

simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

It's certainly a project, best approached slowly and carefully.

I know Borges is an influence, but I'd say it never stoops to King's level of obvious horror. I found the most interesting parts to be all the framing devices and the care of physical description in juxtaposition with mental states.

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

It was described to me as Nabokov having a go at Borges by writing the kind of books he'd bring up in his shorts.

Optionally, Borges at knifepoint.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Is that good or bad?
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

Good.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

dhex · Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 8:18 pm Post subject:

hmmm, that kinda sells me. i never checked it out because the only person i knew who was personally into it was of questionable judgment in matters of the written word.

i may go on a half.com spree and pick up the invisibles collections and the filth, and vimarama.

after finishing the dale carnegie book, i must say it is the most lucid grimoire of lesser black magick i have ever come across. were i to run a high school, it would be one of the two required texts. (the prince being the other.) in fact, were i a publisher i would print them in a back to back edition like the potboiler sex crime paperbacks of the 40s. these two works compliment each other on so many levels.

i was somewhat ashamed to be reading it on the train, however. that hasn't happened since i read g strings and sympathy.
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