neverhappened

Sweetcorn

As a child I wanted to be a car stereo.
My parents encouraged me.
They let me sit in the car at night.
Hours, shivering, smiling.
I would ease my fingers inside the cassette deck and just sit there.
I was willing myself on but nothing happened.
To me, anything was possible, it was simply a question of desire.
I thought that perhaps I wasn’t sufficiently motivated.
At twelve, I wedged myself into the idea that I would become a staple gun.
My two front teeth hung bunny low.
My mother told me that the world already had staple guns.
She said many staple guns were unsold and unloved.
The same thing applied to car stereos, but that never seemed to bother her.
I bit into two sheets of paper at every opportunity.
To my surprise, staples would occasionally fire out.
They never quite held anything together though.
The staples remained half open.
I blamed my bottom set of teeth.
They told me that they worked fine.
They added that it was the top set that was slightly off centre.
A scuffle broke out.
I lost some teeth.
I found some teeth.
They didn‘t fit in my mouth.
I threw them away.
Years later I thought I’d found them.
I hadn’t.

by michael crowe

Link

How I Misspent My Summer Vacation

By Geoff Dyer (Author of Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It, which I recommended to my brother, to his annoyance)

     Where are the best places in the world to take drugs? Well, it depends on the drugs, of course, but generally speaking, somewhere hot with clear blue skies — where there is not too much chance of getting into trouble — works nicely. Grozny in January would be a very bad place to take drugs of any kind. Saudi Arabia, though sunny, puts you at the risk of becoming paranoid. Many people speak highly of Ibiza, and Amsterdam remains an enduringly popular destination for those who enjoy a weekend binge on mushrooms or a wide choice of marijuana. For the more adventurous, site- and substance-specific expeditions — Iboga in Gabon, Ayahuasca in the Amazon — are becoming increasingly popular choices. Trips like these, however, are not for the faint of heart. What about the moderate psycho-active traveler,the kind of person who likes smoking grass and is not averse, if the circumstances are propitious, to doing an occasional hit of acid; the kind of person for whom snorkeling in the clear turquoise waters of the Bahamas is extremely nice — but for whom stoned snorkeling in the clear turquoise waters of the Bahamas is one of life’s supreme pleasures?  

(Shamelessly stolen without any permission whatsover in the most irresposible way possible from Colors Magazine, which has an online archive that is really quite brilliant)

*Disclaimer: Kids, ask your parents before taking Ayahuasca

Rain

           I can hear you
           making small holes
           in the silence
           rain

           If I were deaf
           the pores of my skin
           would open to you
           and shut

           And I
           should know you
           by the lick of you
           if I were blind

           the something
           special smell of you
           when the sun cakes
           the ground

           the steady
           drum-roll sound
           you make
           when the wind drops

           But if I
           should not hear
           smell or feel or see
           you

           you would still
           define me
           disperse me
           wash over me
           rain

Hone Tuwhare

Jesse Ball, Poet

Appealing insanity from pamphleteer and retired spy Jesse Ball.  Here's what I'm talking about:

      ANYONE desiring the presence of JESSE BALL in the office of poet can solicit it elegantly by email.

AS REGARDS the COMPLICATED BUSINESS of COMMISSIONS, Ball eagerly consents to be commissioned in various possibilities.

These are as follows: Ball will undertake an artistic commission (that is, a commission involving the creation of a work of theoretical or actual art, verse or prose) and deliver himself of that commission within an agreed upon period of time. Ball will undertake a physical commission (that is, a commission involving the physical doing of a deed, ie. the delivery of a turnip to nebraska on motorcycle in three days time). Such commissions may or may not be costly. The cost varies with the task involved, its difficulty, and its appealing or unappealing nature. Generally the stranger or the farther afield, the better. A commission to photograph Cape Horn with a pinhole camera, for instance, would be seriously entertained.

The schedule is as follows:
     1. You are to write to Jesse Ball, either by e-mail or physical-post.
2. In this letter, you specify the type of commission, and amount of money that is to be paid. In the case of certain commissions, Ball charges only traveling costs, and a small purse with which to sustain those small appetites that occur to the spirited traveler when pleased by the moment.
3. The abovementioned specification should take the form of an itinerary, listing in particular, the places to which Ball will be required to go, the actions that he will be required to take in those places, the goods or documents he is to transport, and the obstacles, be they man, beast or the unknown.
4. As well, it is crucial that the chronology be precise. Ball must know the exact day upon which the task ought to be completed. In the case of tasks where such a day cannot be surmised, that date will necessarily and acceptably be absent.
5. Payment schedule -- payment is to be made promptly by cash, check, money order, or trade. Trade can be made with goods, services, or pieces of art (as in the Holland of old).
6. Once the letter reaches Ball, the proposal will be either rejected, accepted, or put into consideration. In the third situation, the proposer may find his or herself the recipient of a counterproposal. Such a counterproposal may then be in turn be met with another counter-proposal. At this point, the negotiations move into a different realm, and a physical meeting is even possible, in order to alleviate the difficulties of bartering.
7. In the proposal, the proposer or querent should write what category the proposal falls under. These are as follows: a. construction of a situation or spectacle; b. delivery of goods; c. chronicling of an event; d. transmission of news; e. the writing of a work; f. the taking of an animal or human being from one place to another.
8. In the latter case, the animal or human being in question will be screened by Jesse Ball or an associate of Jesse Ball that a decision regarding suitability can be reached prior to the definitive signing of a contract.
9. All contracts will be legally binding and will be made in the presence of a witness, and on a Tuesday between the hours of 8 and 9 o'clock. Other times are patently unacceptable and can only be tolerated in the direst need.
10. It should be specified in the proposal whether or not Ball will be traveling under a true or assumed name. Should the latter prove the case, it will generally fall to Jesse Ball to determine what that name will be. The client will or will not be appraised of that information prior to Ball's acting upon the commission. Should the client be informed, he or she may be required to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Link

Buy 'March Book' from Amazon

Year of Aching Bones

    

our emissions' stench unnoticed now but for a novel trail

this climacteric age, it's called,
the passing of decades
the half-century turning signal
turning yellow yellow
not green or red
approached
passed
ignored with our voices,
nightmare in our guts
deceit in our eyes
Hey everything is cool

clashing aches squabbling joints
the colors of the pills, like
seasons' imprints
shift.
Sizes,
like our swellings,
alter, fade, then gush
to a leak just damp

whines sighs shivers
dull, nearly mute moans
spread across our too-early evenings

I asked you what was wrong,
you mouthed "nothing," dismissing
my false alarm
with a withering of wrist

I was then reminded of your father's hands
and realized, in red, that

I never liked your father.

Valor not a virtue here,
the ride may hold interest still.

Frances LeMoine

Other Cities: Jouiselle-aux-Chantes

By Benjamin Rosenbaum        

20 May 2002

Ninth in a monthly series of excerpts from The Book of All Cities.

Jouiselle-aux-Chantes is the city of erotic forgetting.

The spores of a certain mushroom produce dementia in those who find themselves in Jouiselle-aux-Chantes in the spring. Those who have grown up there are somewhat resistant: they treat the spring as a time to be very careful doing business, a time when everyone is slightly drunk. But visitors to Jouiselle-aux-Chantes in the spring display all the symptoms of senility: they do not recognize their own wives and husbands; they forget their names, professions, and histories.

The wise city fathers of Jouiselle-aux-Chantes, rather than treating the spores as a calamity, have marketed their city as an erotic paradise. Couples coming to Jouiselle-aux-Chantes forget their rivalries and resentments, and frolic and cuddle as if meeting again for the first time. Businesswomen's hearts race like schoolgirls'; sailors blush; kisses are clumsy but full of promise. If a debutante propositions the gardener working in her parents' garden, it can produce no scandal; if a priest forgets his vows, it is no sin.

In the fall, the mushrooms die, and the cool air clears everyone's head. Most of the tourists go home -- confused, but treasuring snatches of memory of the high life they lived in Jouiselle-aux-Chantes. But there are always those for whom the season of forgetfulness is their undoing, for whom the return of memory is cruel.

In the fall, the grave diggers always have plenty to do.

Originally published at strangehorizons.com

Other Cities: Maxis

illustration: Adrift, oil on panel, 16 x 20"   2005 by Amy Bennett

Other Cities: Maxis
By Benjamin Rosenbaum        

15 April 2002

Eighth in a series of excerpts from The Book of All Cities.

Unfortunately, the city is real. You wouldn't have set the level of Natural Disasters to High, if you'd known. When the fires raged through town, real children died. You saw only pixels.

At least the game is relatively benign. You set the taxes, you build the highways. The citizens may fear and despise the alien intelligence that rules them, and wonder why. But they know it could be worse. They could be playing Doom.

Originally published at strangehorizons.com

The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick wrote When Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which was made into the movie Bladerunner.  This is a comic by Robert Crumb telling the story of what sounds like a schizophrenic episode near the end of Philip K. Dick's life. 

Link

Social Fiction

I'm not sure how to describe this.  Here's a start: SocialFiction.org is a nexus of BacterioPoetics, or automatic writing.  It's a hallucinogenic experience jumping around the site digesting bits of it - something like William S. Burroughs genetically bonded with open source Dadaism.  Admittedly it's not an easy read...  The following are some of the bits that made some sense to me, to varying degrees:

On Automatic Writing
CrystalPunk Manifesto
Roomology
On the Cut-Up
Graffiti and the Obelisk

Link

A Post In The Tradition Of Talking About Yourself In Your Blog Because No One Really Gives A Fuck In Real Life And You Can

You are supposed to start posts like this by saying "sorry for being a bit slow on the old posting lately, but I've been pretty busy at work over the last week or so."  What I wanted to ask you guys though, rather than making lame excuses that are just, well, lame, was if you find the world kind of leaping at you in waves? 

For me, when I am inspired or whatever (bipolar? a bit? can you be a bit bipolar?), you'll see me post a bunch of stuff all at once cause it seems that the world has got inspired at the same time.  Like it's just smoked a big J and has sat down and started looking at its own feet in a new way.  It's not just posting that leaps at these times.  It's everything.  The world is full and there's not enough time to live it.

If I sit down when I'm feeling like that, I take a spin through my favourite webmongers, you know, Bezembinder (don't go there, it's too good and you'll figure out where I steal all my links from and never come back here)... or Art BBQ, which I just found, or Metafilter, which just kind of sucks you in to a whirlpool of random shit from everywhere all at the same time.  ( I also always check out Wooster Collective, and Pixel Surgeon, and then there are the MP3 blog guys who are really some of the coolest people to lurk around - I'm talking about Stereogum, and My Old Kentucky Blog, and Gorilla Vs Bear, and a bunch of others.)

If I'm having a wave day I know it as soon as I check out my regular online haunts.  I can't post fast enough... my fingers trip over themselves on the keyboard trying to get it all out there for you.  But if I'm not having a wave day then the entire internet is the most boring fucking thing imaginable, much to my disappointment and horror.

That's the end of that particular wave, I'm bored again now...

At the end of these posts you are supposed to say "if anybody agrees, disagrees, wants to tell me somewhere else I should be checking out online, or just wants me to shut up and post, please comment."