Skinner's Room

Its been awhile since I mentioned reading for pleasure, so I'm going to throw down a brief review of a brief story by one of cyberpunk's brain-daddy's, William Gibson. Forgive me in advance if I become pedantic.

First off, let it be known that I love cyberpunk as a genre. I love what imagined future societies can reveal about what we turn a blind eye on in our own society. I love the predictive nature of cyberpunk fiction--how it seems, like science fiction in general, not only to be able to predict technological trends, but also social, political, and economic trends.

Indeed, societal factors feature prominently in much of cyberpunk fiction, allowing for an entire genre--more than any other genre since the satire (Irish babies, anyone?)-- that provides starkly revealing (but at the same time entertaining) looks at the world we are building for ourselves.

"Skinner's Room" (1991) follows this model.   It tells of a massive, physics-defying slum built skywards on San Francisco's Bay Bridge. Getting into the story, I was reminded once again of how absolutely drool-worthy Gibson's prose is. My imagination was captured by descriptions of the bridge's "riot of secondary construction", its "makeshift ligatures of taut and rusting wires", "borrowed neon" , "surfaces of plywood, marble, corrugated plastic, polished brass, sequins, Styrofoam, tropical hardwoods, mirror, etched Victorian glass, chrome gone dull in the sea air." Somehow, the descriptions brought up memories of Studio Ghibli films, which often feature maze-like, hacked together, impoverished settings that still maintain the sense of freedom and mystique that Gibson's bridge slum has in this story. (I can't speak for the other Bridge stories. Apparently the notion of this slum later became a trilogy)

So, being set in a slum, the social commentary element is obviously there, though not exactly spoken to directly. What is spoken to directly his the slum's history. This is partly due to the age of the title character, who appears to be quite old, and who has, to the best of anyone's memory (though memory in this story is not very good, reality getting mixed up in dreams) grown up with the slum from its inception. The girl who looks after Skinner (known only as "the girl") is as mysterious as Skinner himself. While his past is nearly forgotten, her past is barely mentioned (perhaps something she *wants* to forget), and yet she seems to have a thirst to know more about the city and society as it was before traffic bridges were shut down and taken forcefully for makeshift housing in an obviously overpopulated and polluted world.


Indeed, the story hardly tells us anything definite at all about any of its characters. In typical Gibson/cyberpunk style, the story is more in what is *not* being said, than what is. He gives us a few facts, some deliciously described memories, peppered with absolutely inconsequential dialogue, and manages to paint an entire world that the reader thirsts to know more about. The reader is almost forced to write a secondary story to parallel and fill in the blanks of Gibson's narrative, and this literary tantalization of the imagination is part of what makes Gibson one of science fiction's greats.

Words and phrases from fiction we need to use in daily life

Totally going to let my inner geek free here today and list off some of my favorite words and phrases from science fiction and fantasy which I think should be applied in daily life. What got me thinking about this was the new Syfy show Defiance, which makes use of a number of loanwords transferred from alien tongues into English.

So, lets begin with Defiance:
Jaja - money
Shtako - Shit
Uses: "Keep your jaja, I don't need that shtako"

Rhapsody Trilogy:
Hrekin - Shit (exclamatory)
Uses: "Hrekin!" *spits*

Firefly:
Shiny - Little harder to define, but I'ma go with "cool" or "good" or "just fine". Others have defined it as meaning "valuable".
Uses: "Everything's just shiny here"

Wheel of Time Series:
Blood 'n Ashes - generalized curse-phrase
Uses: "Blood 'n Ashes, we'll never get there on time"
Light - Another generalized exclamatory, akin with "God!"
Uses: "Light will it, we will be home for dinner"

Harry Potter Series:
Merlin's beard - An exclamation of surprise
Uses: "Merlin's beard! I've lost my Knuts"

Warehouse 13:
Whammied - An expression for what happens when an artifact is used on you/backfires on you.
Uses: "I just got whammied; the top came off my blender"

Doctor Who:
Wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff - a phrase denoting something which is too complicated to be easily explained at that time.
Uses: "Daddy, what are you doing with the engine?" "Wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff, son"

That's all I got. Can anyone donate more?

Just So Stories

Oddly, this mildly offensive little piece by Rudyard Kipling, one of his "Just So Stories" ,was one of my favorites as a child. I know we had a version of it in an old children's book, belonging to someone around my dad's age, on my dad's side of the family, but I have no idea which book that was, or what happened to it.

As to it being mildly offensive. I can't even quite put my finger on *why* its offensive, apart from a general sort of racial insensitivity. However, I feel like this is somewhat forgivable, given that it was originally published in 1902, and Kipling was very much a product of his time.

Anyway, should you want some children's stories to brighten your dreary Wednesday (and it is dreary, in Montreal, at least), here are some more:

Just So Stories

Me Reading "The Gunslingers Invitation"

Because I realize some people "get" poetry better when it is read aloud, here it is, read aloud. Also, I was bored. Apologies for the dead space at the end. That was courtesy of my sweaty hands negotiating my touchpad.

The Gunslinger's Invitation

I have seen into the belly of the beast

and it is ugly 

I am Charon.

The el train from hell

is the ferry, midworld

 the river Styx

(and we are crossing it

fast, fast, so incredibly fast)

Flash fire on the tracks

ozone and brimstone.

There is char on

the el train from hell. 

Welcome home, love.

I have seen into the belly of the beast

and it is hungry 

This is the same 

rotting world

I brought you to before.

Before the cracks

had widened

Before their tricks

had started devils dancing

in your mind

Midworld is the river

and this is hell.

Welcome home, love. 

I have put paid to the beast

twin guns roaring thunder

in the mountains

on the plains

in the desert

on sandy beaches

in the forest

on your world

in my mind

on your conscience

in good time

I have put paid to the beast

but it will not die.

You do not need

to give me gold

All I need 

is your soul. 

We will cross the river Styx

Ozone and brimstone

speed on

the el train from hell

towards that black

bloodied 

horizon.

Welcome home, love. 

The Hollow Men

Sharing with you one of my favorite poems, which I just re-read for the first time in a year. If you hadn't guessed, I'm a massive T.S. Eliot fan. I am so very in love with the depth of his imagery, the breadth of the references he makes, and the sometimes harsh brutality of his language. Eliot's poetry (contrary to how we typically think of poetry, I think), is a cold hard smack in the face, forcing us to look honestly at our own human flaws through the lens of metaphor. The Hollow Men is, for me, a poem about the rampant loss of affect and meaning in the modern era. The speaker, who speaks for all of us, seems caught in the grip of a bone-chilling nightmare state, where he realizes the nothingness of his own existence and yearns for something more, some deeper feeling or meaning. However, he cannot possibly put up a fight against the encroaching forces of ennui, forces so strong they have turned society towards the dystopian. Ultimately, he folds ending "not with a bang, but with a whimper" . . . probably one of the most famous lines from a poem ever, oft quoted but rarely read within the context of the larger text. So here it is, the larger text. Now read it. Nyah! 

Mistah Kurtz-he dead
            A penny for the Old Guy


                       I

    We are the hollow men
    We are the stuffed men
    Leaning together
    Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
    Our dried voices, when
    We whisper together
    Are quiet and meaningless
    As wind in dry grass
    Or rats' feet over broken glass
    In our dry cellar
    
    Shape without form, shade without colour,
    Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
    
    Those who have crossed
    With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
    Remember us-if at all-not as lost
    Violent souls, but only
    As the hollow men
    The stuffed men.

    
                              II

    Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
    In death's dream kingdom
    These do not appear:
    There, the eyes are
    Sunlight on a broken column
    There, is a tree swinging
    And voices are
    In the wind's singing
    More distant and more solemn
    Than a fading star.
    
    Let me be no nearer
    In death's dream kingdom
    Let me also wear
    Such deliberate disguises
    Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
    In a field
    Behaving as the wind behaves
    No nearer-
    
    Not that final meeting
    In the twilight kingdom

    
                   III

    This is the dead land
    This is cactus land
    Here the stone images
    Are raised, here they receive
    The supplication of a dead man's hand
    Under the twinkle of a fading star.
    
    Is it like this
    In death's other kingdom
    Waking alone
    At the hour when we are
    Trembling with tenderness
    Lips that would kiss
    Form prayers to broken stone.

    
                     IV

    The eyes are not here
    There are no eyes here
    In this valley of dying stars
    In this hollow valley
    This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
    
    In this last of meeting places
    We grope together
    And avoid speech
    Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
    
    Sightless, unless
    The eyes reappear
    As the perpetual star
    Multifoliate rose
    Of death's twilight kingdom
    The hope only
    Of empty men.

    
                           V

    Here we go round the prickly pear
    Prickly pear prickly pear
    Here we go round the prickly pear
    At five o'clock in the morning.
    
    Between the idea
    And the reality
    Between the motion
    And the act
    Falls the Shadow
                                   For Thine is the Kingdom
    
    Between the conception
    And the creation
    Between the emotion
    And the response
    Falls the Shadow
                                   Life is very long
    
    Between the desire
    And the spasm
    Between the potency
    And the existence
    Between the essence
    And the descent
    Falls the Shadow
                                   For Thine is the Kingdom
    
    For Thine is
    Life is
    For Thine is the
    
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    Not with a bang but a whimper.

The Hungry Thing

Was thinking today of what my favorite "monster" book was as a child, and The Hungry Thing by Jan Slepian and Ann Seidler came to mind. Its the story of this gluttonous monster with a speaking impediment who strolls into town and asks for things like "Gollypops" instead of "Lollipops", and generally causes good-natured confusion and befuddlement in the townspeople, save for one little boy who comes to act as interpreter in the quest to feed the bottomless pit on legs. (synopsis in a sentence). Now that I think about it, this critter is like a less creepy version of the gooey Noh monster in Spirited away. 

Did anyone else read this book as a child? What were your favorite childhood monsters? I think I mostly liked this book for the same reason I liked the Redwall books a little later on . . .for the food. . .

STFU I like to eat! 

S.J. Perelman, Pt. 5

"For Goddness' sake, has everybody gone stark, staring Wang?" -- for Kyle

"Then he forgot all about it, except to lie awake three nights and stay indoors waiting for the telephone to ring" (haven't we all been there?)

"In a few badly chosen words, the producer explained his predicament . . . 'I'll tell you the meat of the story .. . Its got plenty of spontinuity when you maul it over in your mind, only just this one little thing you got to figure out'"

"When I was growing up in New Guinea, or coming of age in Samoa, or whatever the hell I was doing about the age of thirteen. . ."

"At ten o'clock this morning, fortified with a bottle of Benzedrine and a stoup of black coffee, I kissed my newsdealer good-bye and set out to read through the Christmas-party suggestions in Mademoiselle, Vogue, and House & Garden. "

" 'Dip tips of twisted cotton strips into India ink and trim your tree entirely with 'ermine tails'' he orders. 'Pin a fresh mauve orchid to the treetop.' Arresting as the effect might be, the actual execution seems a bit less simple. 'Well, what do we do next?' I can hear a Mr. Kapustin asking his wife as he finishes tacking up the last holly wreath. Mrs. Kapustin peers uncertainly at her copy of Mademoiselle. ''Tip dips of twisted crotton sips'--' she begins. 'No, wait a minute. 'Sip dips of cristed totton tips--'' Obviously, such an enterprise can only end in disaster. Either Mr. Kapustin, who is extremely short tempered, snatches the magazine from his wife, provoking a free-for-all, or the dawn discloses two pallid house-holders on the verge of a breakdown, mumbling, 'Dip, dip, dip'. "

Perelman shows another example of clairvoyance when he outlines a skit, in which brand names are constantly dropped. He calls this a "blueprint for a new department-store dramaturgy", which has certainly come to pass in the form of inescapable product placements on the big screen now.

"Available in nineteen different shades -- among them wine, russet, beige, peach, grackle, stone, liver, lover, blubber, blabber and clabber." 

"In pulp fiction, it is a rigid convention that the hero's shoulders and the heroine's balcon constantly  threatens to burst their bonds, a possibility which keeps the audience in a state of tense expectancy."

And, ending the book, words from the introduction:

"Like Attila's horse, of whom it was said that grass would never grow again where once it trod, Perelman leaves behind him a spoor of crushed and bleeding prose  that will never flower again. A plague on all his Grouses!"

Future Fashions, S.J. Perelman, Pt. 4

AM GOAN FINISH THIS BOOK TODAY IF IT KILLS ME!

some background on the following few quotes: they are from a scenario in which the author reads a vogue magazine (probably circa 1947) which envisions the fashions of the future, AKA the 21st century, AKA now. Interesting to read, and definitely funny both from the perspective of then, and [now.]

" 'These materials,' explains Mr. Teague of his fabrics of the future, 'will be of chemical origin, and many will be either transparent or translucent, with an individual life of their own.' [proliferation of synthetic fibers, anyone?] I hope this last phrase of Mr. Teague's is purely figurative; offhand, the thought of clothes leading an existence independent of their owner is a little on the spooky side. How are you going to remain cool and poised on that future day when you demand hotly of your wife, 'Where in the hell are those pants I threw over the chair last night?' only to get the answer, 'Oh, they went up to Pride's Crossing for the weekend with my girdle. They'll be back Tuesday morning'?"

"They wrap her (the woman of the future) in aluminum foil, woollens interwoven with electric wire, and as yet undiscovered fabrics, to quote . . . 'of microscopic cellular construction made of a contracting and expanding fibre.' What is this awful preoccupation with having your clothes twitch around in a horrid little life of their own? Did I miss something? I have the strange feeling that I have been asleep for twenty years and that everybody is jeering at my unkempt hair and rusty fowling piece." 

woolens interwoven with electric wire

"contracting and expanding fibre."

" ' She may wear in her hair a headlight,' .  . . The least her escort could do under the circumstances is carry an old fashioned stem-winding watch and whistle at the grade crossings."

That last quote predicts raver and steampunk

aesthetic quite nicely, don't you think?

"'These sequins are really . . .traffic reflectors of Lucite, made by the Signal Service Corporation. They are warranted to pick up and reflect the light from an automobile headlight a mile distant,' which certainly ought to prove a boon to the innumerable brides who are members of the united states army signal corps"

sequin belt

"Mr. Dreyfuss provides his miss with a combination electric fan and vanity case, described as follows: 'Nothing coquettish about it, for it will get its current by radio waves through he ether, nad will cool this girl, as well as clip the noses of any unwelcome suitors . . .I do not speak with bitterness, Mr. Dreyfuss, but to clothe a young lady in skin-tight black net and then hand her a gadget for clipping unwelcome suitors' noses is no way to creep into my heart"

Perhaps something like what
Mr. Dreyfuss envisioned 

"Mr. Rohde envisions the man of the twenty-first century in a ski suit. . .whose color can be changed. . .'The gentleman, for example, may start to the office in a rich gun-metal Solo-suit, drab in color, but scintillating with life (there's that same dreadful insistence on the material's moiling and churning"

Not quite what Rohde had envisioned, but UV color
changing t-shirts. 

"On this man's head, Mr. Rohde places an 'Antenna Hat," rather similar in design to the coils of a copper still: 'It snatches the radio and Omega waves out of he ether-here, at last, is man's opportunity to escape from the deadly monotony of the twentieth century male hat' The prospect of having Guy Lombardo playing about your head and ears is enough to stir the pulse of the most apathetic."

Not quite a hat, but the gist is right -- bluetooth

"The feet. . ..are to be encased in nothing more or less than congress gaiters 'with breather pores just large enough for air, but too small for water."

yup.

Perelman finishes: 

"For two days now I have been crouching in a corner of this coal bin, enjoying a peace I never thought possible. OF course, the grit gets in your teeth and there is a leak in that pipe overhead, but on the other hand its just a trifle too dark for reading. Why, you couldn't even see your hand before your face, particularly if it were holding a copy of Vogue. And goodness knows, it'll be a long time before its steady enough for that. "

Guess he wouldn't like living now much.

S.J. Perelman, Pt. 3

"Alaunia Alaunovna dropped a small curtsy. The young man, a pitying expression on his face, picked it up and quickly returned it to her. She gave him a grateful glance named Joe."

"For years I have let dentests ride rough-shod over my teeth; I have been sawed, hacked, chopped, whittled, bewitched,, bewildered, tattooed, and signed on again; but this is cuspid's last stand"

"We became good friends and it came as something of a blow when I heard the next morning that he had fallen of the train during the night. The fireman said that we had circled about for an hour trying to find him, but that it had been impossible to lower a boat because we did not carry a boat."

"My brokers, Whitelipped & Trembling were beside themselves"

"The basket of slave bracelets and marzipan awaiting me on my return home made me realize to what lengths Diana would go."

"Diana turned on her radio. With a savage snarl, the radio turned on her."

S.J. Perelman, Pt. 2 : Some things never change

Some recent giggles from "The Best of S.J. Perelman", to do with advertising and lifestyle magazines. It seems like the nature of the advertising business hasn't changed much since the forties. Perelman has an uncanny gift for pointing out the ridiculous in the everyday, which is so obvious it often goes entirely unobserved.

"God knows how the convention ever got started, but if it is true that the camera never lies, a foundation garment or a girdle stimulates the fair sex to a point just this side of madness. The little ladies are always represented with their heads thrown back in an attitude of fierce desire, arms upflung to an unseen deity as though swept along in some Dionysian revel."

"Perhaps the most curious mutation of the corset advertisement is the transformation, or clinical type, consisting of two photographs. The first shows a rather bedraggled young matron in a gaping, misshapen girdle at least half a dozen sizes too large for her, cringing under the cool inspection of a trained nurse and several friends. Judging from the flowers and tea service, the hostess has invited her neighbors in to deride her physique, for they are exclaiming in unison, "Ugh, my dear--you've got lordosis [unlovely bulge and sagging backline]!" The second photograph, naturally, depicts the miracles wrought by the proper girdle, which, in addition to the benefits promised in the text, seems to have removed the crow's feet from under the subject's eyes, marcelled her hair, reupholstered the divan, and papered the walls."

"If a perfectly strange lady came up to you on the street and demanded, "Why don't you travel with a little raspberry colored cashmere blanket to throw over yourself in hotels and trains?" the chances are that you would turn on your heel with dignity and hit her with a bottle. Yet that is exactly what has been happening for the past twenty months in the pages of a little raspberry-colored magazine called Harper's Bazaar."


"Don't think it does any good to pretend there is no magazine called Harper's Bazaar. I've tried that, too, and all I get is something called "circular insanity." Imagine having both circular insanity, and Harper's Bazaar!"

"Without any preamble came the stinging query, "Why don't you rinse your blonde child's hair in dead champagne, as they do in France? Or pat her face gently with cream before she goes to bed, as they do in England?" After a quick look into the nursery, I decided to let my blonde child go to hell her own way, as they do in America"

"'Why don't you,' continued the author, spitting on her hands, "twist her pigtails around her ears like macaroons?" . . . I slept across the foot of the crib with a loaded horse pistol until the next issue appeared"

"Why don't you try the effect of diamond roses and ribbons flat on your head?" . . . and, as it happened to be my day to go to the post office (ordinarily the post office comes to me), I welcomed this chance to vary the monotony. Piling my head high with diamond roses and ribbons, I pulled on a pair of my stoutest espadrilles and set off, my cat frisking ahead of me with many a warning cry of "Here comes my master, the Marquis of Carabas!" When I walked in [the postmaster] was in process of spitting into the top drawer, where he keeps the money-order blanks. One look at Boxholder 14 and he went out the window without bothering to raise the sash. A second later, I heard a frightened voice directing a small boy to run for the hex doctor next door to the Riegels'. I spent the night behind some willows near the Delaware, and managed to work my way back to the farm without being detected, but it was a matter of months before I was able to convince the countryside that I had a twin brother, enormously wealthy but quite mad, who had eluded his guards and paid me a visit ."

" "Why Don't you build beside the sea, or in the center of your garden, a white summer dining room shaped like a tent, raped with wooden swags, with walls of screen and Venetian blinds, so you will be safe from bugs and drafts?" I recoiled, clawing the air. "No, no!" I screamed "I won't! I can't!"

Do you ever get this feeling leafing through a lifestyle magazine? Or more recently, Pinterest? My God, the more things change.  . .

S. J. Perelman, Part 1

S. J. Perelman was an American humourist, author, and screenwriter, whose works most frequently appeared in The New Yorker, and who was most famous for his scripts for the Marx Brother films. I just discovered this dude today, and intrigued, I took "The Best of S. J. Perelman" out of the library to read.

Omg, this guy is too funny. Rather than wax literary about *why* exactly he's funny, I think I am just going to throw down a few of the insanely random quotes that really make me giggle as I go along.

"She had the rippling muscles of a panther, the stolidity of a water buffalo, the lazy insolence of a shoe salesman. . ..as she bent down to lift her suitcase, she picked up the car by mistake and had it halfway down the slope before I pointed out her mistake."

"That Philomene was a manic-depressive in the downhill phase was, of course, instantly apparent to a boy of five Several boys of five, who happened to be standing aroud and were by way of being students of psychopathology, stated their belief to me in just those words"

"She was as dead as a stuffed mongoose"

" 'Soda?' offered Snubbers. I took it to please him, for Gabriel's cellar was reputedly excellent. A second later, I wished that I had drunk the cellar instead. Baking soda is hardly the thing after a three-hour bicycle trip"

"The outcome of the necking bee was as follows: Canadians 12, Visitors 6."

"Living almost entirely on cameo brooches and the few ptarmigan which fell to the ptrigger of his pfowlingpiece."

"If I ever see a postman trudging toward my house with a copy of the American Bee Journal, I'm going to lodge myself in the dead-air space between the walls, and no amount of small boys smeared with honey will ever get me out."

Pied Piper

The International Children's Digital Library is a fascinating project, whose intent is to make accessible to children from all over the world samples of children's literature. Thousands of children's books have been digitized and posted to their website in this way.

What is even more interesting about this website, is the fact that extensive studies and workshops were conducted in its design, in which researchers worked closely with young children to determine an interface that best suited a child's particular interests and searching needs.

For example, many children reported that they liked picking books based on the color of the cover, or whether the content could be named "happy" or "sad", and so these are filtering options available to browsers of the website.

As an example of what goes on at the International Children's Digital Library, I give you a classic tale: The Pied Piper, as written by Robert Browning. Obviously a digital copy of a very old version of the book.

http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/BookPage?bookid=bropied_00150050&pnum1=52&twoPage=false&route=simple_0_0_Rat_English_0&size=0&fullscreen=false&lang=English&ilang=English

Japan day?

So, apart from kicking around with homework, I spent the day indulging in two of my old vices: Japanese literature, and anime.

Reread some Mishima. This was a book we took in one of my upper year Asian cultural history classes, which was taught by my favourite history professor of all time.

If you can get your hands on this collection of short stories, I'd highly suggest it. Mishima can be a little slow at times, but what he lacks in fast paced action, he makes up for in the unspoken depths of his characters, and in his minute attention to detail. Where Mishima is truly strong, is in his creation of a setting, the way he paints an image, which comes through with vivid clarity even in an English translation.

As for the anime, I imbibed in a rather confusing little number, a series made up of eight "movies" called Kara no Kyoukai. As with most anime I watch these days (yeah, I'm getting too old for it, but I'm also too old for The Princess Bride and I watch that on a biyearly basis, so bite me) I am of mixed feelings. 

Production quality seems high enough. The musical score is quite good, though at times a little disjointed in a way that reflects the plot. The story is told in reverse order, with a series of flashbacks working up to where we began in the first episode.

When I say the plot is disjointed, I am not pointing out a flaw. It is intentionally confusing. The main character is a schizophrenic sociopath with a split personality disorder, and the only people keeping her grounded are a chainsmoking "sorceress" and a very sweet young man named Kokuto. 

I think my biggest bone is with the main character, Shiki, herself. She has an unfortunate habit of wearing a red leather jacket over top of a traditional kimono, and although she is constantly dubbed "beautiful" by the other characters, I'm just not seeing it. She mostly just seems kind of bitchy, especially to poor Kokuto, who is so enamoured with being rejected by her that he came every day for two years to visit her when she was in a coma (all the better to ignore him, I suppose).

Am I being cynical? Probably

(but seriously? you can't tell me that that doesn't look a little dumb)