“Art is neither a system for transmitting information nor a mode of self-expression. It does these things no better than any number of activities. Art is the seizure of a vision that exceeds language. It captures a slice of the Real and preserves it in an artifact. The work of art is fractal and open—an […]
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The first experience I had of rotting bodies had been at Serre, where, as a battalion, we dealt with the best part of a thousand dead who came to pieces in our hands. As you lifted a body by its arms and legs they detached themselves from the torso, and this was not the worst […]
“I give and bequeath the annual sum of ten pounds, to be paid in perpetuity out of my estate, to the following purpose. It is my will and pleasure that this sum shall be spent in the purchase of a certain quantity of the liquor vulgarly called whisky, and it shall be publicly given out […]
Tried getting in to Black Mirror but… I dunno. These near future sf morality plays… seem easy. “Woman locates God’s Vine page. Vomits.” “The man who put his penis in google.” “When a chap’s google class splinters into his brain, he can’t stop watching racist child vloggers.” “Friendster rises from the grave. Bites the new […]
Do Hannibal and Will love each other? “We have both been his bride”, after all. No, of course not. Will’s empathy is so highly tuned he’s probably in love with ten people at once. Hannibal is a malignant narcissist. The show likes to pretend he’s some sort of super human but, as we’ve discussed, Hannibal […]
“Oh, you mean what drove me as a person; two things, my childhood in the Lower East Side, and the war.” […] He grabbed a book, opened it up and showed me a picture I recognized as the planet Apokolips, from the New Gods series. “That’s where I grew up. No one lives in that […]
I watched a television show this evening. I like to work with the television on. It just works better for me than music some times. Just a show with people talking is good. This show was called Mr. Robot. Unwisely recommended to me because ‘it’s political’. About an anarchist hacker who destroys the lives of […]
In Alan Moore’s memorable phrase, ‘serial killers are dreadful little men with perms.’ They are indeed. Boring failures. Killing people is no great skill. ‘Anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death,’ as William Burroughs put it. Torturing people, mainly women, there’s nothing interesting there. But Hannibal Lecter isn’t a serial killer. He’s […]
In the 18th to the early 20th century, horror fiction was Gothic fiction. From England to Russia, Gothic was king. Romanticism, which was know for it’s powerful emphasis on aesthetics, beauty, wonder, and it’s embrace of emotions, was the big thing back then. Weld that to morbidity, gloom, fear, doubt, dread and you’ve got a […]
“…Today… nobody seriously considers possible alternatives to capitalism any longer, whereas popular imagination is persecuted by the visions of the forthcoming ‘breakdown of nature’, the stoppage of all life on earth– it seems easier to imagine the ‘end of the world’ than a far more modest change in the mode of production, as if liberal […]