I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that’s my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again… the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.

-J.G. Ballard

Thanks for the quote, Nadya!

Illustration from Don Quixote by Gustave Doré

Arte - Pinturas - Gustave Dore - Quijote [PENUMBRA] : kagami

Anyone who follows Eliza on Twitter is well aware of her penchant for proselytizing. The fervor with which she applies herself to her evangelical pursuits is laudable though, a tad overzealous. At times her feed reads like the wails of a thousand banshees.

Reading the description for MS. ELIYZABETH YANNE STRONG-ANDERSON’S 648 page screed, written entirely in block caps, it struck me that here is the book Ms. Gauger would have written, nay, has been writing this entire time, in 140 character bursts. MS. ELIYZABETH YANNE STRONG-ANDERSON seems to merely have beaten her to the printer:

THIS IS A HOLYSPIRIT MANUSCRIPT BOOK: WHEN YOU BUY THIS BOOK YOU WILL BE READING A HOLYSPIRIT DIRECTED BOOK FROM GOD; & *CHRIST JESUS. THIS BOOK IS GODS HOLYSPIRIT VOICE: THE CALL FOR ALL CHRISTIANS & CHURCHES TO REPENT FROM ALL THEIR SINS: EVEN FROM FALSE CHRIST TEACHINGS. BIRTH CONTROL SINS HAVE CURSE THE CHURCH WITH SPIRITUAL WHOREDOM & FALSE WORSHIP. RESULTING IN THE PERSECUTIONS: AGAINST THE HOLY PEOPLE. THIS BOOK MAY BE REVISED: BECAUSE OF COMPUTER DICTATORS: MANY WORDS IN THIS BOOK: MADE HAVE BEEN CHANGED: TO>>DISCREDIT: THE AUTHOR. BUT IN TRUTH: I AM A HOLYSPIRIT CHOSEN ANOINTED DISCIPLE FOR GOD & CHRIST JESUS. EVEN FOR JEWS, MUSLIMS & GENTILE SINNERS. MANY PEOPLE WILL LEARN HOW TO> BECOME REAL BORN AGAIN CHRISTIAN: THROUGH THIS HOLYSPIRIT BOOK & THROUGH THE PROTECTION & SUPPORT OF MY HOLYSPIRIT LIFE!! […] REMEMBER: GOD HAS MADE ME A HOLYSPIRIT VOICE FOR THE BRIDE OF GOD & CHRIST JESUS IN 1996 GOD TOLD ME TO TEACH THE GOSPEL ON CABLE TELEVISION IN TUCSON ARIZONA.

For those more interested in the Cliff’s Notes version — or simply don’t have the $135.00 handy to purchase this magnificent tome — a reviewer named David has your back:

That’s right kids.

Don’t be doing the sex thing.

But if you are be doing the sex thing, don’t be taking no pills or putting no rubber things on your ding dong to prevent god’s babies.

After all, we need more crazy people to write more nonsense like this.

BIRTH CONTROL IS SINFUL IN THE CHRISTIAN MARRIAGES and also ROBBING GOD OF PRIESTHOOD CHILDREN!! (Paperback) [Amazon] : Cynical-C

Alice’s Adventures in Steamland, Guillaume Dubois

Steampunk Myths and Legends Entry: Guillaume Dubois [CGSociety] : Super Punch

Christopher Robin Milne and Winnipeg “Winnie” the Bear at London Zoo, c1926.

Winnipeg the Bear [Wikipedia]

From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.

John Updike

John Updike, Author, Dies at 76 [New York Times]

We here at Ectomo are devout admirers of Edward Gorey, so much so that there is a small shrine to the man located in a former supply closet off of Eliza’s office. It provides a safe, quiet sanctuary to meditate or spout surrealist nonsense, albeit in a hushed, reverent tone. It also means that our supplies are strewn willy-nilly all over the rest of our workspace. As I write this I pause on occasion to eye the teetering stack of typewriter ribbons that casts a long, swaying shadow over my desk. To my knowledge we don’t even possess a typewriter, and yet someone, obviously, has been stockpiling them like so many cans of beans. I can only assume that at least one among us expects the post-apocalypse to be…verbose.

But enough about the strange hoarding practices of bloggers, this is about Edward Gorey. Many of you surely know his work as we do and yet the full breath of his output must still remain unknown to me for I was completely unaware of this gem of a title. In short The Recently Deflowered Girl: The Right Thing To Say On Every Dubious Occasion is a book containing advice for the modern young woman of 1965 should she find herself in an awkward situations following the loss of her virginity; advice that remains surprisingly relevant today. Said pearls of wisdom have been dispensed, the Editor’s Note informs us, by one Miss Hyacinthe Phypps; a maven in matters pertaining to correct feminine behavior.

What follows is Gorey at his best, a collection of the most absurd, nonsensical situation ever to befall a young woman entering into the strange, new world of bodily fluid exchange. They range from the humorous to the downright creepy, and many times overlapping — like the one after the jump— an ability the Gorey is well-known for. I confess the urge to simply post every single page but really LiveJournal user Bo-Bailey deserves the click-through for taking the time to scan the volume in its entirety. It is most certainly worth a read.

Continue Reading…

“Nathaniel Hawthorne’s reputation as a writer is a very pleasing act, because his writing is not good for anything, and this is a tribute to the man”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“They’re Little Girls And Boys!” by Sidney Sime for the poem “Zagabog” from the book Fancy Free by Eden Phillpotts. Sime was most famous for the illustrations he did for the Irish fantasy writer Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, or Lord Dunsany. H.P. Lovecraft was a great fan of both Dunsany and Sime, whose influences show themselves often in his work.

Sidney Sime - Zagabog Illustration, 1901 [MONSTER BRAINS] :
The Sidney Sime Page : Golden Age Comic Book Stories

I am a self-professed “Dickhead”, dedicating two full shelves of bookcase space to the work of Philip K. Dick, one of science fiction’s most prolific and insane authors. The ebb and flow of his popularity has been an interesting phenomenon to watch; his status remains that of a cult figure and yet, every few years, an article will pop up in, say, the New York Times expounding on his genius or someone will make a film based on one of his stories and then he will again sink underground, so to speak.

This is all very unsurprising seeing as how, from a purely literary perspective, Dick was not necessarily what one would call an accomplished writer. His characters are generally flat, the women always leeching shrews, the men are wimpy schlubs, usually somewhere in the vicinity of their life’s nadir. His dialogue is generally stilted and overwrought.

Yet despite these shortcomings, Dick embodies everything that I like about sci-fi, for while his characters and their interactions may be lacking, the worlds in which they dwell and the societies that run them are superbly realized. The conflicts which arise in these worlds are fantastic, oftentimes absurd, and yet they mesh flawlessly with the reality that he created. It was these aspects that defined the genre for Dick and, in turn, it was these aspects that he poured most of his efforts.

Which brings us, finally, to the documentary at hand. Philip K. Dick: A Day in the Afterlife was produced for the BBC and focuses on the man himself, in all his crazy, drug-addled, paranoid glory. The mind behind some of my favorite books is fascinated by the constant bombardment of advertising, the effects of giant media conglomerates, and the overwhelming feeling that the world in which we live exists only in the glowing vacuum tubes of countless television sets. It is an ode to one of the most creative minds in science fiction, and another step in the crusade for a wider recognition of his accomplishments.

Philip K. Dick: A Day in the Afterlife [YouTube] : Hugo Strikes Back

Uzbek director Nazim Tulyakhodzhayev’s short, animated adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s short story of the same name. The tale of a robotic house mindlessly continuing its tasks even after the human residents have been wiped out by nuclear war.

There Will Come Soft Rains [YouTube] : DIGITAL DJ

Gentlemen: An instruction manual for the Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer, distributed by Densmore, Yost & Co. The Sholes and Glidden was the first of its kind to be commercially successful, and coined the term “typewriter”. Included in the manual is a handy QWERTY layout which allows future typists to practice, as well as testimonials from the likes of R.H. Badcock, a blind man from Kalamazoo, Edward H. Magill, president of Swathmore College, and this guy:

What “Mark Twain” says About it.
Hartford, March 19, 1875.

Gentlemen: Please do not use my name in any way. Please do not even divulge the fact that I own a machine. I have stopped using the Type Writer, for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybody without receiving a request by return mail that I not only describe the machine, but state what progress I had made in the use of it, etc., etc. I don’t like to write letters and so I don’t want people to know I own this curiosity-breeding little joker.

Yours truly,
Saml. L. Clemens.

It must be noted that, seeing his explicit instructions ignored, Twain’s revenge was swift and brutal. No one knows exactly what transpired that day at the offices of Densmore, Yost & Co., but it must have been horrific, as many of the bodies were beyond recognition. Needless to say few, if any, fucked with Clemens again.

Instructional manual [Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities]

In his new book, Excavating Kafka, author James Hawes publishes a sampling of the late author’s secret collection of mail order pornography, copies of which Hawes stumbled upon while performing unrelated research in the British Library in London and the Bodleian in Oxford leading one to the conclusion that someone knew about Kafka’s erotic peccadilloes. Why then are they only coming to light now? Well, it could be that they are filthy:

Even today, the pornography would be “on the top shelf”, Dr Hawes said, noting that his American publisher did not want him to publish it at first. “These are not naughty postcards from the beach. They are undoubtedly porn, pure and simple. Some of it is quite dark, with animals committing fellatio and girl-on-girl action… It’s quite unpleasant.”

So there it is. It seems that Kafka scholars, unable to bear the idea of the mind behind The Trial and The Metamorphosis being titillated by the forbidden fruit of bestiality, have done their best to ignore it.

I think I speak for all of Ectomo when I say that this is a fantastic discovery. Mr. Hawes and I may have differing opinions on the photographic depiction of erotic lesbian encounters — which I would maintain is one of Nature’s great wonders and should be recorded at every opportunity, particularly if both parties are in heels — but I share his excitement over this discovery. I for one look forward to describing pornography featuring barnyard animals as being “Kafkaesque”.

Update: Sven KaoZ maintains, in the comments, that this is a stunt by Hawes to sell his book and that the magazines in question were published by Kafka collaborator, Franz Blei. The Wikipedia entry for Blei makes mention of this as well.

Franz Kafka’s porn brought out of the closet [Times Online] : boing boing

Newsweek has a letter, written by Kurt Vonnegut and dated May 29, 1945, from a new collection of the late authors writings entitled Armageddon in Retrospect. The letter details his time as a P.O.W., which would become the basis for his most famous work: Slaughterhouse-Five; or, The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death.

On about February 14th the Americans came over, followed by the R.A.F. Their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden—possibly the world’s most beautiful city. But not me.

After that we were put to work carrying corpses from Air-Raid shelters; women, children, old men; dead from concussion, fire or suffocation. Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge funeral pyres in the city.

Reading the letter in its entirety it was interesting to note that, even in his personal correspondences, he employed the repeating “tics” that can be called a hallmark of his work.

Slaughterhouse 1945 [Newsweek] : growabrain

A BBC Radio documentary originally aired in 2006 covering the life and work of the late, great Howard Phillips Lovecraft; featuring interviews with Neil Gaiman, S.T. Joshi, Kelly Link, Peter Straub, China Mieville among others.

The Strange Life of H.P. Lovecraft [YouTube] : Under Vhoorl’s Shadow