Ourobori and more

I. Miracle region:



(From Dzyd Luc)

II. The Hoberboros?

Third Generation's stated thesis is that the Man and the Revolution are a Ouroboros construct—"Capitalism invented terrorism to force the state to protect it better."
—PTSNBN

(From L.G. Thos.)

III. Weekend read: Dzyd Ed in Triple Canopy, on Jeff Krulik and Heavy Metal Parking Lot.

Ouroboros-Fortified Table-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus for January 15, 2009

I. New York magazine gives the nod to Light Industry proprietors (and, most importantly, Dzyds) Ed and L.G. Thos. — as does Artforum! This pic is from Artforum (that's Thomas and Ed on the left...other dudes are Michael Azerrad and Jeff Krulik):

{{{Heyyy—they'll take it!}}}

II. Defunct parks! Pantoums are from Malaysia!
(Via L.G. Thos.)

III. The Atlantic this month should be retitled "THE DIZZIES"??? Hua has the cover story, "The End of White America?"—two quotes for today:

A) “Have I read The Great Gatsby?” Combs said to a London newspaper in 2001. “I am the Great Gatsby."

B) Similarly, Smirnoff struck marketing gold in 2006 with a viral music video titled “Tea Partay,” featuring a trio of strikingly bad, V-neck-sweater-clad white rappers called the Prep Unit. “Haters like to clown our Ivy League educations / But they’re just jealous ’cause our families run the nation,” the trio brayed, as a pair of bottle-blond women in spiffy tennis whites shimmied behind them. There was no nonironic way to enjoy the video; its entire appeal was in its self-aware lampooning of WASP culture: verdant country clubs, “old money,” croquet, popped collars, and the like.

And Dzyd Ta-Nehisi writes on Michelle Obama:

There has been much chatter about Barack Obama as the answer to America’s racial gap, as a biracial black man whose roots stretch from Hawaii to Kenya, with an Ivy League pedigree and the seal of the South Side. But he is not the only one entering the White House who has seen both sides, who intuitively grasps the heroic American narrative of work ethic and family, and how that narrative historically failed black people. He is not the only one who walks in both worlds. Indeed, if you’re looking for a bridge, if you’re looking for someone to connect the heart of black America with the heart of all of America, to allow us all to look at the American dream in the same way, if you’re looking for common ground, then it’s true, we should be talking about Obama. But we should make sure we’re talking about the right one.

III. Have you read enough about Gordon Lish & co. yet? Dzyd Carla weighs in on (former Lish student) Christine Schutt.

IV. Only hyperconnect?

My brain has developed a little differently from most other people’s. Aside from my high-functioning autism, I also suffered from epileptic seizures as a young child. In my book, I propose a link between my brain’s functioning and my creative abilities based on the property of ‘hyper-connectivity’. —Scientific American

V. Hare-o-boros!



And, um....another one.
(Via Erasing)

Monday Ouroboros: You don't mess with the Zoran

Dzyd Ed writes:

Spotted at Alabaster Bookshop—all in Czech with strange alchemical / Zap Comix style illustrations ...

"Speaking of": The greatest transition ever? (aka your Weekend Table-Talk)

I. Jenny's mention of Munchman led to me e-mailing video-game expert Ed, who through a series of mental associations then unearthed the Mighty Mouth copyright infringement case:

This 1983 judgment of the District Court of Nebraska found the defendants liable for copyright and trademark infringement of three Midway coin-operated arcade games: “Pac-Man”, “Galaxian”, and “Rally-X.” Midway sold their games to regional distributors, who then sold them to operators, such as arcade owners. The defendants, who were previous operators of Midway games, purchased 10 “copy games” and 3 “conversion kits” and sold them to other retailers. They called the “Pac-Man” imitator “Mighty Mouth,” the Galaxian imitator “Galactic Invaders,” and did not bother to change the name of their copied “Rally-X” game.

(I like the laziness in that last line.)

II. Speaking of Dzyd Ed, here he is on Jerry Lewis's The Total Filmmaker.

III. Dept. of What Am I Talking About?: Yesterday I thundered/joshed—

“I've been on a mild anti-Doors/JM kick for the last, oh, 15 years or so—amazing that in seven short paragraphs, Klinkenborg can make me interested again.”

—and yet also posted at The Millions on Lewis Shiner's Glimpses, which includes some great sequences involving Jim Morrison! This blog is not to be trusted!

IV. Speaking of The Millions: Just noticed that Dzyd/Envelope Sarah's Millions picks went up right after mine: Bonfiglio's books (which for some odd reason I never cottoned to, I should try again) and on James Laughlin's memoir-dossier-thingie (which I've only longed for in bookstores), of which she writes, "It's a made thing, a crafted thing. It's a rescue from the tedium of what happened."

[V. Speaking of Psychic Envelopes/Sarah/"what happened": "Something Happened" and other PE originals are back up at the Myspace page, complete with an annoying "click" starting off two tracks...not part of the recording, but the work of some Myspace gremlin.]

VI. Speaking of Best Reads of the Year, Rivka (Dzyd status: unknown) at Granta feels the same way I do about James Lasdun's The Horned Man:

I’m trying to overcome the grade school favourite band instinct that makes me not want to let any but the truly ‘deserving’ know about James Lasdun’s 2002 novel, The Horned Man. (I feel I don't deserve to know about it, simply because I didn’t already know about it.) Lasdun’s prose is, well: dappled, counter, spare, original, strange. Narrated by an awkward expat literature professor, one who remains steadfastly unaware of being himself the origins of the very mystery bedevilling him, The Horned Man is the descendent of both Saint Augustine and Buster Keaton. It’s odd, unfathomably beautiful, very (very, very, very) funny, charismatic and a shade miraculous.

Saint Augustine and Buster Keaton—together in one sentence at last!

Table-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus for August 5, 2008

I. Projected Books! (From Dzyd Ed, Light Industrialist)

II. One answer to Dzyd Trivia, 8/4, from Dzyd Kosiya: "Gael Garcia Bernal spoke three languages (French, English, and Spanish) in The Science of Sleep." Others?

III. Literary bits: Tolstoy to Turgenev: "They seem to be happy and I seem to be sad"...Short-story necrology: As noted, Raymond Carver died on August 2; last night I read that Flannery O'Connor died on August 3....Has anyone made this joke before? "I have a pristine copy of the Steve Gutenberg Bible!" (Hmm, OK, yes, someone has...it would be great if Steve was related to Johann!)

IV. Many chewable thoughts in this Guernica interview with Dzyd Luc: "Everything that comes with contradictions is wood for my fire"...and: "Constraint is as ever the mother of invention, and maybe I haven’t yet figured out a suitable set of constraints to impose on myself when blogging."

V. Dzyd David Cairns remembers Sea Monkeys.

VI. Word pictures: Yesterday I saw what I thought was a rendering of the Statue of Liberty on the side of a white van. Then I saw that it was the shadow of a hanging traffic light. Then the shadow looked to me like the outline of Manhattan.

The viper room

Dzyd Ed provides the answer to my question regarding Luc's viperish Quasiboros:

The attached is from T.H. White’s Book of Beasts — which I must have read a thousand times in youth.

Also, from The Medieval Bestiary:
Isidore of Seville [7th century CE] (Etymologies, Book 12, 4:10-11): The viper is so called because it gives birth by force (vi-pariat). When the viper is near to giving birth, her young do not wait for the loosening of nature but bite through her sides and burst out, killing their mother. In mating, the male inserts his head into the mouth of the female and spits out his semen; the female, driven mad by lust, bites off his head. Thus both parents die, the male in mating, the female giving birth.

Let's try this again!

Yesterday I posted the secret alternate Personal Days ad but couldn't make it do the thing it had to do.

Check it out now!





(Thanks to Ed!)

Dizzterical! The Remix

Dzyd Ed writes: "Have you seen this version of the Personal Days ad? I found it online in some hardcore Ed Park fan forums..."



Hmm, it should move...like this?

'The Weekender'

I. What is the oldest continuously occupied village in the U.S.?

II. From Design Observer:

In the late 1950s, [Ernst] Bettler was asked to design a series of posters to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Swiss pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfäfferli+Huber....He created four posters featuring dramatic, angular black and white portraits juxtaposed with sans serif typography. Alone, each poster was an elegant example of international style design. Together, however, a different message emerged, for it turned out the abstract compositions in the posters contained hidden letters....Hung side by side on the streets, they spelled out N-A-Z-I. A public outcry followed, and within six weeks the company was ruined.

(But it gets weirder...)

III. From Dizzyhead Ed—your Weekend Ouroboros! (It's "the clan tag of a comic-booklegger.")

Dizzies Press Release: 'Transitional Objects' and 'Regarding Jeff's People'

Dizzyheads Ed and Thomas will be smarting things up beginning today:


MEDIUM COOL
ART IN GENERAL'S 10th ANNUAL VIDEO MARATHON
January 10-12, 2008
Sixth Floor Galleries
Art in General
79 Walker Street
New York NY 10013
tel. 212 219 0473
www.artingeneral.org
info@artingeneral.org

Thursday January 10, 6.30-8.00pm
Regarding Jeff's People, lecture by Ed Halter
This lecture by writer and curator Ed Halter takes its starting point from the work of Washington, DC-based Jeff Krulik, maker of the legendary video Heavy Metal Parking Lot. In his talk, Halter addresses the utopian hopes and mundane realities of public access television, the question of fandom and subjectivity, underground VHS bootlegging as proto-file-sharing, criticism of art and comedy, and the challenge of defining the term "artist", and in particular, "video artist".

As always, The Dizzies has the "insider scoop": Ed reveals, "I think it may be the first talk ever to quote both the writings of John Dewey and some dude who was a roadie for Redd Kross..."

***

ONGOING IN THE GALLERIES
Thursday January 10, 6.00- 9.00, - Friday & Saturday, January 11 & 12, 12.00- 6.00pm
Transitional Objects, curated by Thomas Beard

The screening Transitional Objects looks back on the past decade of electronic art as a way of thinking about a medium that has remained in flux—politically, aesthetically, and technologically—since its inception. Whether the subject is dime store psychics or the return of the repressed, new loves or old regimes, all works raise the question: where is video going? Artists include Bobby Abate, William E. Jones, Eileen Maxson, Jennifer Montgomery, Michael Robinson, Phil Solomon, and Jennet Thomas.

Hoop dreams, cont'd

Another day, another ouroboros!



Ditmas Ed gives us a lesson in natural history, or rather Natural History. (Two different stories, the first from 1925, the second from 1940.)

One of the most persistent and widespread snake myths in the United States tells of a large serpent which takes its tail in its mouth and rolls like a hoop. It is further reputed to have a poisonous sting in its tail, which is launched at its enemy from the rolling position....My interest in the story was aroused during a stay in Louisiana, where I could gather eyewitness testimony regarding one of the “hoop snakes” (Abastor erythrogrammus) and the “stingin’ snake” of the genus Faranda. It appears that the supposed habit of rolling like a hoop is an elaboration of the more fundamental belief in a snake with a poison sting in its tail....

Bonus: More primo ouroboric content, as always, at Erasing.

Blog post title of the week...

...goes to Ed's "A Thing I Picked Up Off the Street in the East Village in 2002 When 9/11 Was Still Freaking People Out."

Dizzies Newsfeeds™ for Monday, October 1

Time to pick up the October Believer, which features an interview with the great Adrian Tomine (whose graphic novel Shortcomings is just out; he'll be signing at that store in Brooklyn on Wednesday I think?), a conversation between Dizzyhead/Psychic E. singer/Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape author Sarah Manguso and short-short story wizard Amy Hempel, and Dizzyhead Rachel's fascinating piece on dream researcher Allan Hobson...oh and also a short review by me! (on Selah Saterstrom's The Meat and Spirit Plan)...and much, much more™...Levi on The Eustace Diamonds...No Image Available: my novel, Personal Days, has popped up on Amazon (it's not out till May)...For Beatles fans: Let it Be...Dissected! (via Mike Gerber)...Paul Hornschemeier has a blog...DizzyhEd Halter went to the Housing Works sale and unearthed a "gem from 1955: Keen Teens: 101 Ways to Make Money by Stookie Allen (including an early glimpse of SF writer Joanna Russ)...Keep those likes/dislikes coming...

Dizzies Newsfeeds for Monday, September 17

I had a nice time at the Brooklyn Book Festival...there was an odd incident in which a woman walked onto the stage...and patted me on the head; most unnerving. By coincidence, today I listened to "The Poetry Assassination of Kenneth Koch" (a podcast from the Poetry Foundation/NPR)...After the panel I saw an injured rat hobble across the plaza and take shelter underneath a garbage can...

* * *

Ed Halter has (finally!) started a blog. Entitled "My Life and Prophecies," it looks to be graphically (or "graphikally") oriented, with an emphasis on psychics and other odd phenomena of the mind...Most amusing: A teenage Ed took issue with a controversial passage in a Billy Graham book (Deliverance for You). Graham wrote:

Twenty years ago we used to go down to the seaport to watch the ships come in, but now it is the airport to watch the planes come in.

To which an understandably incensed Ed scrawled: "What? Who does this?"

* * *

Dizzyhead Arlo reminds us that F. Scott Fitzgerald (who has been surfacing on The Dizzies lately) spent some formative years in Buffalo, where his father was employed by Procter & Gamble.

At 7, Scott already showed the style that would be his hallmark. So polished was he that his father joked he'd give $5 to hear Scott swear.

Chipster ahoy

Dizzyhead Ed (not me) writes:

I liked your PKD piece — have you ever read Bruce Sterling’s story “Dori Bangs”? It’s great and has a similar premise — a what-if story about Lester Bangs meeting a comic book artist Dori Seda, both of them avoiding their real-life young deaths, and growing old together. If I remember correctly, Bangs in later life writes about computer culture and coins the term “chipster” to describe geek chic. And then at the end, after Lester dies, Dori has a vision of the baby they never had together...a kind of what-if-what-if.

* * *

Who would win—Ed Halter or Ed Park???