wildcattag:www.negativespace.net,2008:/wildcat/52008-08-20T03:01:41ZMovable Type 3.33WETWORKtag:www.negativespace.net,2008:/wildcat//5.66212008-08-20T02:57:07Z2008-08-20T03:01:41ZHis sweat is engineered chemicals that tell him what to do. His body has been redesigned to deliver specific information to his conscious mind through the taste of his sweat. Entire encyclopedias can be stored in average bodily secretions now;...http://rantbook.diaryland.com The shower stops but for the soft drip-drip-drip of a hotel faucet. Simone paces back and forth in the bathroom. He licked her, during, and tasted no stories or information. Oh, to have normal sweat glands again. She almost tasted...
Simone stands at the foot of the bed, fully clothed. Fortunate that she doesn't expect some post-coital spooning or emotion. It occurs to him that he's having trouble moving—is he sore? Did she do something to his back, midway through? "My saliva," she says. "Slow-acting paralytic." She gives a curt laugh, an act, an impersonation of an evil villain. Is this really happening? But her sweat! "I suppose you'd expect my sweat to do the talking for me, but I prefer to give nothing away."
He tries to ask what she wants, although he clearly remembers her licking at his collarbone. Damn. Should have checked her tongue, but some days you don't want to have to check every possible sex partner's tongue for adaptations.
"Your sweat," she says, while she slides her feet into those long leather boots. "It screamed. Talked immediately. I didn't even have to torture it for hours." She smiles. Ugly. They were...they were doing it and she was reading him! Like a book! In the middle! "Don't worry," she says while she grabs her jacket and pulls it on, heading for the door. "You'll be able to move again in roughly two hours. If I'd wanted to kill you, we would have gone bareback."
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Realism is for pansies, or, what kind of a Batman movie I'd make.tag:www.negativespace.net,2008:/wildcat//5.66142008-08-12T06:12:05Z2008-08-12T06:55:12ZI started to write a long-winded and whiny review of The Dark Knight, which basically boils down to (a) I'm tired of "realism" being equated to inelegant design and knives being shoved into mouths like a bad prison blowjob routine,...http://rantbook.diaryland.com
The Dark Knight, which basically boils down to (a) I'm tired of "realism" being equated to inelegant design and knives being shoved into mouths like a bad prison blowjob routine, (b) women are people too, (c) Michael Caine and Gary Oldman were awesome and (d) fuck, hire a script editor already. But I can't get the energy together and the negativity just doesn't do it for me, so I'd rather talk about how I'd approach doing my own hypothetical Batman movie. Assume that the ghost of Bill Finger has risen from the dead to haunt AOL-Time-Warner and force them to give Batman a Creative Commons copyright as revenge for stripping his name off of Batman for such a long, long time, and prepare to get dirty in the nerdy:
1. If it's going to be a Joker story, I'm watching every single Marx Brothers movie ever made for research. I would do a Joker story as a Marx Brothers flick with knives, guns, bombs, rictus-inducing poison gas, and silk stockings.
2. I would choose a sexy, sleek Batmobile, a Batmobile that oozes charisma and elegance. None of this tank business, none of this stealing equipment off of G.I. Joe when they're off fighting Cobra. Tim Burton had the right idea with his car-as-gothic-phallus, sure, but I'm not Tim Burton. To whit:
3. One goddamn super-villain. Or, alternatively, seven or eight of them, but only one important one, the others being reduced to the status of punch-their-lights-out on the way to the main event. An average night in Gotham should involve multiple cases. I'd also go full bore and use all the ridiculous one-off deals. Have Batman kick the crap out of the Royal Flush Gang, or the Mad Hatter.
4. Three words: Credible Love Interest. In terms of narrative punch and strength of character, Catwoman kicks ass and you can pull in that punch-tights-as-sex angle. A Batman movie has to be horny, all the way through, but it has to feel guilty and icky and ashamed about it -- all desire has to be sublimated. If you want a Gothic Gotham, you have to remember the Gothic Horror Credo: Sex is Bad. If I wasn't going to go with Catwoman, if I wanted a civilian love affair, they'd have to be played by a credible actress who can bring a lot of power to the role. All the memorable leading ladies Batman's dated -- I'm thinking Silver St. Cloud, Jezebel Jet, Talia, et cetera, could go toe-to-toe with Batman, personality-wise.
5. Sidekicks. I don't given a shit that you think Robin's lame, you haven't got a grip on Robin. Robin's cool. Robin refuses to be inky. He's a daredevil. He's mad as hell. He's smart. He thinks he wants to be Batman when he grows up. Robin's presence also prevents "realism," which is for pansies. Even Frank Miller's old fart Bat-Dad in The Dark Knight Returns had a Robin, and a Robin that worked. I'd pick the third Robin, Tim Drake, who got to be Robin purely because he was the first person to deduce who Batman was purely on his own. And Batgirl's even cooler than Robin, and I'd have to include her simply to punch up the dynamic with Jim Gordon. Batman's in a lonely crusade on crime, but that just means he has to build a family. Also, his butler can beat up your butler.
6. Opera. Every fight scene needs to be a modern art piece, a dance number, a punch-drunk ballet sequence with all that sexual frustration running through it.
7. Batman/Bruce Wayne. Delineated by wardrobe choices and actual voice. None of this Chris Nolan hiring a robot to play Batman, plying him on booze and cigarettes. If you can't find an actor who can credibly adjust his voice to be deeper and darker sounding, send him away. Bruce Wayne should be just as much of a nutjob as his enemies, and he should be in the movie a lot. Batman should be three people: the Bat, billionaire idiot Bruce Wayne, and emotionally crippled private Bruce Wayne. Which is why he needs to build himself a family, because all that private Emo time with his parents being dead impedes his war on crime. It leads to self-indulgence.
8. Flashbacks and back story, as Treava pointed out. Sparingly, sure, but they serve an important function: Bruce Wayne is all origin. Batman is defined by that tragic origin, everything springs from it. Which is why he works against the Joker, and this something Nolan successfully didn't fuck up -- the Joker lies constantly, has no origin, too many origins, he works best when you don't know what his back story is and have to wonder constantly at how he became untethered. If you emphasize that Batman is tied up in his origins, petrified and tangled in them, then Joker is that much more terrifying, because he's free. He's utterly, utterly free.
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Kitchen Oracletag:www.negativespace.net,2008:/wildcat//5.66102008-08-05T07:31:04Z2008-08-15T19:44:31ZThey kept the oracle in the fridge; if not properly refrigerated, it would have gone off, gone sour, begun to show signs of mould and decay. You don't leave an oracle out beside the fruit bowl to make your avocados...http://rantbook.diaryland.com It went on like this for a while. This was the oracle's life: sit in darkness, twitch nervously, while futures play out across eyelids. Try not to smell the baking soda open at the back of the fridge. Say nothing when they open the door, the lights come on, and they rifle through for a snack, or ingredients for a proper meal. Ignore the leftovers that heap up occasionally.
If one has an oracle, the novelty wears off quickly.
But, occasionally. The door opened, the lightbulb ignited, and the girl stood, bent at the waist to peer at the oracle. Not at the vegetables in the crisper, not at the milk, or the half-eaten tortilla salad in the plastic container. At the oracle. The oracle opened its eyes as was expected of it. "Hello, Mistress," the oracle sang. No other prompting necessary -- let's face it, it would have been a terrible oracle if it didn't know when it was wanted.
"Hello." The girl huffed. "Hello, you horrible thing." She didn't buy the oracle, that was her father, he was the one to pick it up at a no-good flea market ten minutes outside town. He was a man always on the lookout for a bargain. Knowing the future, he'd said, is a major bargain. The girl was easy to read. She didn't like the wet-blue skin stretched across the oracle, how it was little more than a mouth and a chin, and she wondered often who'd been butchered to make it. But she never asked, and the oracle wasn't about to answer an unasked question. Letter of the law.
"What knowledge do you seek, Mistress?"
"Only, see," said the girl. Inwardly, the oracle sighed. She had a habit of starting in the middle of a sentence. How on Earth did she get her point across to people who didn't have access to any and every secret on Earth? The girl straightened up, grabbing a can of orange pop and flicking the tab open as she did. "I was at this party last night, right, and there's this guy -- I'm not saying I'm interested or anything, but." The oracle waited. It was good at waiting. It waited for the girl to finish her question. It already knew the question and it knew the answer, but again: rules. "But he starts talking about it being impossible to meet suitable single women and then he says. He says there's always me, but, I'm unavailable? What the hell does that mean?"
The oracle gnawed at its lips while it took in the question, turquoise tongue licking at them irritably. The oracle was grown to preside over nations, advise kings, lead heroic women and men on great adventures. It knew that the girl's father was having an affair behind her mother's back; it knew the names of meteors destined to one day hit the planet and end all civilization. It was not meant to answer pointless questions of romantic entanglement that would lead nowhere, ever, no matter what the girl thought.
"...hello?" She waved a hand in front of the oracle and then took a long, desperate sip of her orange pop. "Do I have to bow down before you in supplication or whatever? Look, the party was this terrible Noel Coward affair, you know. I want to know what he meant, Oracle, I want to know what he meant by saying I was unavailable."
The problem was, the family rarely wanted to hear what the oracle had to say. It pried its lips apart and began to speak. They wanted a mute therapist, or someone to remind them of appointments. They wanted traffic reports. They did not want to know the truth, the future, or anything similar. It was tiresome. It was a waste. But it was something the oracle knew. "Men suck, Mistress," the oracle said, after a moment.
Well, it was the difference between the fridge and the trashcan, wasn't it?
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Street on Firetag:www.negativespace.net,2008:/wildcat//5.66012008-07-28T04:07:02Z2008-08-07T01:11:53Z[Borrowed Michael's camera for about five minutes last night at the Luminara Festival in Beacon Hill Park. Took a couple shots. Shot across one of the ponds, looking over at Douglas Street. Typically, all the actual festival stuff was going...http://rantbook.diaryland.com
[Borrowed Michael's camera for about five minutes last night at the Luminara Festival in Beacon Hill Park. Took a couple shots. Shot across one of the ponds, looking over at Douglas Street. Typically, all the actual festival stuff was going on behind me.]
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A Meeting of the Minds, with Killer Whaletag:www.negativespace.net,2008:/wildcat//5.65912008-07-21T01:42:26Z2008-07-30T19:12:02ZDead killer whale, belly-up on top of a broken cottage—beautiful, perfect cover image, they'd win a Pulitzer for sure. Lara already had her pocket voice recorder switched on when the three of them met in front of the ruins, seawater...http://rantbook.diaryland.com Stormy would have gone over in a strong gust, to be honest. He scratched at the freckle to the right of his right eye. "I don't see why Edna had to send you out here to help on this. I've been here for two days interviewing people, I don't need more bodies mucking things up." Two days of traipsing through a town half a mile wide, maybe, with grime in his hair and people holed up in the community center. They wanted help from the government, not strange reporters from some nobody magazine.
"You handle the human side." Lara ran a hand over a dead flipper. "Do we know whose house this is?"
"Beatrice Goode." Stormy took a few water-addled steps in the opposite direction, to roughly the front door. "She's still under there, apparently—they think this other guy, Roger Fiddle, was with her. The busybodies are already talking, you know what I mean? Gossip doesn't die."
"Well," said Sam, from five feet away. "The composition's going to be terrible, I can tell you that. I hate working with milky light." She scraped at the back of her shaved head and lined up another shot, clicking repeatedly from slightly shifted angles. "I would have brought a tripod, but this water's impossible." Junior photographer under Billsy, who knew what drew her to the Word in the first place. Edna was very careful about who had access to the personnel files, not that this usually stopped Lara when she really needed some information. They'd worked together once before, six months before, Sam taking pictures while Lara tracked a homicidal maniac with a playing card fetish and a habit for not dying. It was all a bit comic book, but Sam had been eminently trustworthy even if she did turn into a terrible drunk if you said the word "beer" to her. "But you'll get your dream cover, Lara, and I expect to be showered in awards and champagne for this." Better than salt crusting in one's toes and the constant smell of brine.
Lara cleared her throat and fussed pointlessly with the voice recorder. "I love that a possibly major act of God—I mean, have we figured out if anyone's randomly building an arc in these parts?—can't stop little old ladies from arguing over whether or not some old codgers were boinking behind people's backs." A dead eel floated past her, and she knew for certain that she'd never be able to go to a sushi restaurant again. "Have you got enough to put together some human interest sidebar crap for this, Stormy? What the survivors are doing to repair?" Edna expected half an issue's contents ready in three days' time, but she was like that. There'd be at least one drunken phone conversation in Lara's future, with screaming, cursing, and begging for deadline reprieve. Part of the process.
"I can throw something together. Do we know where all the water came from?"
"I talked to an old friend of mine, marine biologist, he happened to mention the Pacific Ocean's been—well—fluctuating lately, could be what caused it." At least nobody had said the A-word yet. Lara didn't really feel like doing a UFO exposé right now. "The science never makes sense anyway, and you know how much Edna hates big words—though if we can throw around teleportation she might get that glazed, nostalgic look. Easy to get a better Christmas bonus when she's like that."
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Fishfalltag:www.negativespace.net,2008:/wildcat//5.65802008-07-15T08:11:17Z2008-07-25T01:50:15ZLobsters dive-bombed. Old Roger Fiddle, standing wretched in his little red vest, banged at Biddy Goode's door while heaps of fish and seawater fell from the heavens—muck working its way into his boots to lick at arthritic toes. Green-slicked mud...http://rantbook.diaryland.com The door slipped inward with Biddy Goode's fingers wrapped along its edge, and then her eye and ear appeared within the darkened hallway. "Roger—" She yelped as he pushed her in, then shut the door behind them. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" She smelled of radishes, almost pleasant after the fish market clinging to the outside world. She turned to her hand, briefly, then slapped him across the face like an afterthought. So it was going to be like that, was it?
Roger pried open the blue lace curtain drawn across the door's inset window. "We're having one of them biblical plagues," he said, and jabbed at the glass. "Or flood's a-coming. My knee's been acting up something fierce." Crabs exploded against cobbles. "Might be the end of the world." Water arced against the pane and Biddy Goode dug her fingers into his arm. Thump-thump-thump, fish hitting the roof. Thump-thump-thump.
"Nonsense. The world hasn't ended since I was a very little girl." And the girl! To have been there. Little blonde ringlets, appled cheeks, scraped knees. Climbing all over her mother. The smell of fine herbs drifted by to mix with the radishes. They stepped, side-by-side, into the sitting room. Biddy Goode had been having tea—a little china cup beside a little china teapot. Not expecting company, she'd foregone the doilies. "You've got a starfish tangled in your hair." She patted at his grey hair, pulling and teasing until the offender came loose.
"You don't think it's the flood?"
Biddy Goode waddled over to the teapot and set the starfish done, clapping her hands together and not once looking up at the constant noise of things hitting the roof. The noise was happening more loudly, and much quicker. Spooshes and splashes rose up from outside. "You really are an idiot, Roger. Come here—some jasmine tea will calm you down. I swear, you've been in the most ridiculous state since Martha..." She closed her mouth and poured tea, pressing the cup into his hands afterward.
"Don't you Martha me," he sneered. This had nothing to do with Martha, he wanted to say. The starfish sprawled beside the teapot and he poked at it with the silver sugar tongs laid out. Water spilled in bursts down the chimney. "It doesn't just rain an ocean's contents, woman. Fish don't fall. This is the end of the—"
I'm not sure I could answer correctly with what this is, beyond the first scene of something new I'm working on. I already have the second scene on the go and this feels like it might be a longer piece. Think of this as a prologue.
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FUTUROPOLIS: Continuity Shocktag:www.negativespace.net,2008:/wildcat//5.65722008-07-09T07:37:11Z2008-07-20T19:03:04ZThere is a museum in the future. It's a museum of the future, a dynamic educational centre, and when you step out of the jump station fresh from eons in the past, from the twenty-first century or whenever... they ask...http://rantbook.diaryland.com
of the future, a dynamic educational centre, and when you step out of the jump station fresh from eons in the past, from the twenty-first century or whenever... they ask you step on through and have a look. Acclimatize. Give yourself a moment to just breathe and see what the future's really like, moderated, before you step outside and everything really hits. The signs are done in real neon! Crafted deco-style because Art Deco was in style about ten minutes ago and things in the Museum like to be current.
When Joy first arrived in the future, when she first shuffled through the shining doorway and stepped out onto pale pink floors holding up pale blue ones, they gave her pamphlets. They understood that pamphlets would be familiar. Then they ushered her in the museum's direction.
And she went because it was procedure, she understood museums, and it would give her a couple minutes to figure her head out. She wasn't expecting living, human exhibits. Out past the weird Marilyn Monroes and the rocket ships, the glass seed pods. Living exhibits. Well, "human." They glowed blue in the dim lights, caught behind glass. She fidgeted with her Che Gueverra hat and clutched at her purse look a tourist. Only she was here to live, right?
The people behind glass were -- according to the legend hovering beside them -- people spliced with bioluminescent algae. They sprawled along the walls of their "cage." They held onto each other. They were women, obviously, but lacked cleavage -- just one glorious, fucked up monoboob on each. The hell? They looked like goddesses, like multiple Kalis. Tall like Steph was -- had been. Steph. Joy saw her just the night before! With that new man of hers, at the party, with the hours of drinking. They'd smoked cigarette after cigarette and posed for Michael's camera. Only Steph was dead and had been for a long time, right? The algae muses failed to see her problem, and she started to search through her purse for a cigarette. There had to be one, right? She hadn't left the twenty-first century without one, had she? It would. It would calm her down or whatever. Michael's camera was gone, broken down by now in a landfill somewhere. If they even had landfills.
"Greetings, sweetheart." Joy tried to compose herself even with the heavy breathing and where were her cigarettes? Hell, where was her lighter? Didn't she have them when she went through? The woman speaking to her was tall and bald, with copper-painted skin. She was naked as well, like the algae muses, but she had actual breasts and she even had a navel, which was something. Joy kept her eyes on the woman's face. Apparently the future was all naked Amazons. Wasn't Camille Paglia going to be just thrilled. "You're very new, and you're probably having a panic attack. I can tell, your levels are all over the place. This is normal." The woman held out a hand and Joy found herself taking it. "Acute continuity shock. You'll also be reacting to how clean our air is." Without even a trace of snark.
"Can I. I seem to have lost my cigarettes."
"I can find you some, but they won't be what you're familiar with. I could probably put you in touch with a school of bongfish if you were really desperate, but I wouldn't advise it." The woman tilted her head for a moment, as if listening to something Joy couldn't hear.
Joy tried to remember the lyrics to Nina Simone's song "Four Women," what the last woman's name was. Then she switched to trying to remember her phone number. Telus was a distant dream, surely. The algae women convulsed violently against the glass. "I wasn't expecting any of this. They gave me pamphlets..."
The woman nodded. "Your name is Joy Waller, according to the standard census. This is correct? We've had a few glitches in the last week. A clone of Emma Goldman with Alzheimer's infected part of the network."
"Yeah...it's Joy." She wanted a drink. Somewhere horrible with bras on the ceiling. Actually, who knew what bars were like in the future? And how did the woman know all about her?
"I'm Galatea."
"You wouldn't happen to know where I, uh, could get a drink? With alcohol. If people still drink."
"I know the perfect place. Popular with the immigrants. It's very nurturing. It's called the Womb..."
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Thoughts for the day.tag:www.negativespace.net,2008:/wildcat//5.65452008-06-27T19:44:01Z2008-07-08T00:06:59Z1. I have seen too many creepy, creepy children in the library. It's not even noon but the Children of the Corn are up and demanding their fucked up Saturday morning cartoons. Too bad it's Friday and they'll have to...http://rantbook.diaryland.com 2. I do not like when people leave teddy-bear order forms in the printer, particularly when the order forms include the options "dressed bear" and "undressed bear." I do not want to think about the teddy-murder porn you're making with stop-motion animation in the basement. The lighting by the water heater is inadequate down there.
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Breeding pairstag:www.negativespace.net,2008:/wildcat//5.65342008-06-23T04:36:03Z2008-07-03T17:47:14ZIt didn't move like Harry's husband. It looked like him, sure, if a little more abstract. Less like a person and more the idea of a person. It moved awkwardly -- not stiffly, more jaggedly. It hadn't worked out yet,...http://rantbook.diaryland.com On the way out, Harry stopped and placed a chaste kiss on the thing's cheek, more out of habit than anything deeper. The thing was not his husband, but he was expected to go through the charade. They'd only been going through the motions for six months now -- according to most studies it might take as long as a year before things felt like normal again. Ha. The very notion. The thing waved at him from the front door and then shut it once he was in the driver's seat with the keys in the ignition. He had to sit through seven hours of work plus an hour's lunch. The thing didn't work. His husband worked, before, at a publishing firm downtown. His husband had been ostensibly good at his job, but the thing felt no need to continue his work.
What did the thing do while he was off at work? The topic never came up at dinner, when the thing was more interested in Harry's day, what had come up at the office. The thing kept the house clean and cooked -- a kind of barter, he supposed -- so he wasn't expected to complain. Even when the thing made strange, "exotic" things for supper, Maybe the thing went and met up with other things during the day, stockpiling more seed-pods and negotiating with the people in power.
He tried not to think about it.
Harry tried to make it through traffic without running into anybody while his mother droned on over the speaker-phone, wondering when they were coming for dinner next. She seemed to get along with the thing just fine, even referred to it by his husband's name like it was his husband and not a thing. "I'll have to check our schedules and confirm with him," he said, changing lanes with barely a pause to look over his shoulder at his blind spot. "I'm on my way to work, Mum, I'll have to call you back later." She told him she loved him and he said the same, hitting the end-call button on the steering wheel.
The office was typical, boring, repetitive. Everybody wandered around with the same haggard, dismal look upon their faces, though some were better at emoting than others. Everybody had a thing at home. Single adult stats were way, way down. Breeding -- inter-breeding -- was suddenly very important, like it was wartime, and maybe war was coming. The government was very careful about what information was available regarding the naturalization programs or what was going on outside the country.
They hadn't wanted children, not really. Talked about it, sure, and his husband had been adamant that they adopt if they wanted one. He didn't really want to think about the thing breeding with him. But all the posters said FOR THE GOOD OF THE NATION, although most people looked a little confused about which nation was under discussion, these days. Harry stopped by Accounting on his way upstairs to flirt with Kenneth, who looked good in spite of the orange tie his thing had picked out for him. Harmless flirting kept him going some days, because at least Kenneth could make a full range of facial expressions and had normal body language and it sounded good when he laughed. Not like the thing's hollow chuckle. After that, he made it the two floors up and ran into Jane coming out of the women's washroom. They made lunch plans. Nice to have a meal with a person. Jane referred to the thing back at her apartment by her boyfriend's name, Jack, because they'd made it to a year and a half now. She wasn't very convincing, but it was prescribed by relationship therapists.
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TAKING NAMEStag:www.negativespace.net,2008:/wildcat//5.65202008-06-18T03:14:03Z2008-06-27T20:29:04ZMiss Evans looks like a good girl, sure, like Shirley Maclaine's lost youth, but she's stalking nuns. She's standing on the other side of the street, watching them, watching the sisters from down Saint Ann's way, clustering together and gibbering...http://rantbook.diaryland.com Which is true; the mad scientist back in Delhi had her hermetically sealed. She doesn't even eat anymore. It surprised Miss Evans, exactly how little she misses either activity. Carmine finally snorts and speaks into the phone. "Sorry, Evans. Trying to fill out dental coverage forms and monitor your creepy operation at the same time. Did I ever tell you I went to Catholic school?"
"No. But I've read your files." Miss Evans feels it necessary to read up on her partners. She knew, for example, that he lived in perpetual existential crisis and as a result was very good at undercover work. Have to respect that, she's terrible at infiltration, even if she doesn't want to hear him having an episode over the phone, muttering about dear, sweet Gus or that fuck-up, Jackie-the-Chin.
"Well, Sister Mary Katherine would have tanned your ass for following them around."
"No, she wouldn't have." Traffic's starting to pick up, approaching rush hour.
"I don't even know what name I'm supposed to fill in," he says after about thirty seconds of nuns gesturing at each other and pedestrians stepping off the curb to go around them. Standard routine, based on witnesses, is half-hour of hanging out in front of Hamish's like a bunch of hoodlums before they walk back to Saint Ann's for afternoon calisthenics. Nuns probably don't normally do calisthenics, do they?
Miss Evans smooths out her knee-length skirt and opens the newspaper she's been keeping under her arm, scanning listlessly and pretending like she's not watching the nuns. Everybody watches the nuns, it's not like she's obvious. "At least you've got first names to keep track of, kiddo. They took mine away from me." It was a different time then, and practically all Carmine has is names, at this point.
The scuffing in her ear suggests Carmine has stopped to adjust himself, twist around in his chair, crack his neck muscles. He has very predictable patterns of unrest. "Dental benefits are shitty, anyway. Four hundred bucks coverage per year? Heaven help me if I need a root canal." Ha. This whole operation cost twenty bucks, maybe, and the cost of the newspaper. And then he remembers what he's supposed to be doing. "What are they up to now?"
"Nothing yet." Across the street, the sisters continue to make unnatural conversation in a dialect that certainly wasn't English, Italian, Latin, or any other recognizable language. They've spoken their own weird tongue for as far back as eighty years, according to independent sources. And occasionally they "find" dead bodies in back alleyways, like those five runaways last week -- there's quite the lengthy article about it in the paper, right next to two columns worth of talk about the fifth sneaker to wash up at the docks with a foot still inside. The nuns clutch their crucifixes and praise God in pig-latin. "The youngest is about eighty if she's a day, Carmine. I know they eat people's livers and the local kids say they have shark-teeth behind their people-teeth, but what's choking a ninety-five-year-old with her own rosary beads going to do for my C.V.?"
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The old man blues.tag:www.negativespace.net,2008:/wildcat//5.65142008-06-15T19:31:09Z2008-06-25T18:05:27ZIt occurs to me today, on Father's Day, that the old man forgot to give me his new number when he moved to William's Lake. So, in the interests of pinging the universe for response, a call out to the...http://rantbook.diaryland.com
O Brother Where Art Thou?). Happy Father's Day.]]>
FUTUROPOLIS: SO THEY SHOT HIM UNTIL HE WAS DEAD.tag:www.negativespace.net,2008:/wildcat//5.65052008-06-09T04:06:37Z2008-06-18T23:44:36Z"Kk," said Elvis Presley in his Spaghetti Western outfit. "I've been so lonely, baby." He shivered for a moment, and then fell silent; after that, his head came right off and slopped to the floor. Within ten seconds, Elvis Presley...http://rantbook.diaryland.com The Marilyn Monrobots stood unevenly, four of them, in the corner. He hated them a little bit but of all the silkscreens, they'd lasted the longest; each one in a different colour scheme, shoulders almost touching, waving their hands in slow, disjointed gestures. Silkscreens did not, as a rule, speak. He could have probably done something about that. Why had the Marilyns lasted so long? Edie had dissolved after a paltry two minutes, as had Anastasia. The self-portraits went after an hour, each of them, after shadowing him around the studio and getting into the paint. The Marilyns, though, the Marilyns stayed together and didn't decompose. They each wore an Andy Warhol promotional T-shirt he'd fabricated with the printer, and Rasputin baseball caps.
Presently, the door at the far end of the studio opened. "This is Russia's greatest love-machine?" A schlub of a man in a sharkskin suit stood with his hands held behind his back, sneering into Andy-Grigori's space. The Marilyns turned, as one, to stare back. If he'd been smart, he would have replicated them with machine-gun breasts. Won his freedom that way. Beside the schlub stood Andy-Grigori's hostess, a woman wrought in perfect copper. Woman was something of a misnomer. If it weren't for the imprisonment, he might have liked Galatea, though. "More successful than the Pynchon-Feynman atrocity, I hope." The schlub was terribly nasal. Andy-Grigori fought back the urge to shrink into the corner.
Galatea betrayed no emotion when the "atrocity" was mentioned. She had perfect posture, and Andy-Grigori felt the familiar flush of his own hunched shoulders and bedraggled white hair, his long black beard. "Number 9," she said, after a moment—like a well-timed tour guide voiceover. "Number 9 exhibits better cohesion and integration than the previous eight. He/they exhibit none of the flaws like gunshot stigmata, psychosomatic castration, or DIY plastic surgery, that cropped up in earlier models." He'd once aked Galatea to sit for him, to let him commit her portrait to the machine. She'd laughed, haughtily, a pre-designed laugh. She was born mass-produced, she'd said. Didn't need to experience it any further. "He exhibits the hoped for characteristics of doubled genius, you'll be happy to hear."
"Edie was the real genius," said Andy-Grigori without thinking about it. He stood, jumbled up, clutching himself, watching the schlub watch him, the Marilyns rolling up behind Andy-Grigori like a posse, saying nothing but being present.
"Andy-Grigori," Galatea motioned to him, first, then to the schlub. "This is Mister Bendix. He is one of the project's benefactors." Was Bendix a man of God, he wondered? They didn't seem to have God anymore. Or everything was God. Bendix ran a hand through greased black hair, and Andy-Grigori fought the impulse to reach up and grasp at his own wig. Mimicry was a passing flaw in his design, he couldn't help it, though Galatea had remarked more than once that it was probably appropriate.
Bendix huffed, bit at his fingernails—as he pulled them from his mouth the nails were already growing back to their preferred length, time-lapsed, and Andy-Grigori immediately wanted to replicate himself a movie camera, one of the old Super8 deals. By then Bendix's eyes wandered back to the Marilyns flanking Andy-Grigori. "Christina Aguilera, isn't it? Charming." Oh, he could have slapped him. Bloody peasant. Bloody wretched nobleman, bloody-bloody-bloody—Andy-Grigori slapped the side of his head and reset. "And he's confined to these quarters, I'm to understand? No outside intervention beyond yourself, Galatea? He hasn't been given access to too much outside media, for example?"
"Only a light consumer-advocate blend recommended by my employers, Mister Bendix—Board-approved, of course." He and Galatea had spoken once of being superstars, but she didn't seem to understand the concept, and had regarded Marilyn Monroe like the Mona Lisa. Though, to be honest, maybe he had, too. She'd tilted her head when he hit himself a moment ago, and was probably recording all the minute details of his nervous system right now. She did that. He would have loved to have the opportunity. Maybe he was demonstrating a new flaw that would require a new version be brought out. Edie. He missed Edie, even if he couldn't quite remember all of their moments together, Sienna Miller surreptiously spliced in. "There are the typical recall problems, of course. Much it depends on extrapolation of known neurology."
Bendix hovered for a moment and then wandered around Andy-Grigori and the Marilyns to run a finger over the 3D printer. "There was no mention of Future Shock in your report to the Board, Galatea. He's adjusted to the new technology?"
"He/they were bred with specific adjustments made to ensure smoothness of development in our new world. He/they even predicted the existence of time-butterflies based on the minimal information I gave him about jump stations and his own origins. Rasputin was a mystic, after all. He had no problems understanding." Strange to hear Galatea modulate her tone like that; she didn't bother with him, knowing full well that her artificial nature meant nothing to him, was a comfort in many ways. A reminder of the good old days. But she was very complex, and knew exactly how to modulate her voice to impart control over people she had to deal with. He knew offhandedly that Galatea did not particularly like the Board.
"Excellent," said Bendix while he stepped over and ran a hand down magenta-haired dayglo-green Marilyn's orange ballgown. She turned to face him, always in silent communication with her sisters. "I believe it's time we moved him along and cleared out this space for something new. I want him hooked up into a deep-culture tank, I believe he's ready for immersion into the network. Box one of these Christina-drones and fire it off to the—"
"Marilyn." Andy-Grigori cleared his throat. He was at least a foot taller than Bendix. Why, he wondered, was Bendix such a schlub? Galatea had explained that genetics were so much easier to manipulate now. "Her name is Marilyn."
"...museum," concluded Bendix without bothering to look at him. He snorted once, and then returned his squirtsome attentions to Galatea. "Everything else can be pulped and converted to building materials for the Swedish Overlords."
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"I had a lot of dates but I decided to stay home and dye my eyebrows. " (Andy Warhol)tag:www.negativespace.net,2008:/wildcat//5.65042008-06-09T00:09:19Z2008-06-18T17:29:42ZReturned about an hour ago from seeing the Andy Warhol exhibit at the art gallery; the initial encounter was Elvis Presley brandishing a gun at me ("Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there...http://rantbook.diaryland.com
superimposed over himself. Oh, Elvis. Last of the great robot cowboys. I suppose it's odd of me, having a preference of Chairman Mao portrait? There's one with peachy lips that looks like an aging drag queen has just taken off his wig to run a country.
And Marilyn. Actually, between Warhol's silkscreen portraits of her and watching Mars Attacks the other night, I keep bouncing back and forth between Marilyn and the creepy Martian spy-escort who seduced Martin Short.
I keep imagining, mostly because I'm still stuck on the idea of android doubles, hive-minded Warhol Monrobots shifting, as if on roller-skates, over textured carpeting -- each one with a different colour scheme, communicating with gestures and hip movements. I imagine high-society Factory parties in the futur nouveau, Andy Warhol with his 3D silkscreen printer building robots mid-celebration to mingle and shuffle strangely between party guests. Imagine having your portrait done at a party and then the portrait can circulate by the drinks table, maybe intercept your wife while you duck into the washrooms with a turquoise-haired Edie Sedgewick silkscreen to have a tryst before the meta-narcotics wear off. Imagine four colour-coded Conrad Blacks arguing with an equal assortment of Queen Elizabeth 2s through mime. Is that Andy Warhol you've been following for the past half-hour, always a few steps behind, in between the Mick Jaggers and Jackie Os, is that Andy? Or is that a self-portrait? Is that Andy's paid double, or is it Andy in body paint?
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The Old Poisoned Water Supply Bit.tag:www.negativespace.net,2008:/wildcat//5.64962008-06-03T22:32:02Z2008-06-16T05:22:02ZAnother pervert suit operation, poisoning the city's precious, precious water supply. Drive them crazy with dangerous narcotic hallucinogens, sending a few of them tumbling off roofs in drug-addled situationist nightmares. Did it really mean anything, though, or was he just...http://rantbook.diaryland.com Red feather boa rustled in the breeze while he worked away at the trigger mechanism for the last poison-tank. Designed to drain directly into the reservoir at the appointed hour, which he'd probably set for midnight. Dramatic purposes. He brushed the long boa out of his face and fussed with the wiring. Almost impossible to do cleanly with the stupid gloves on. The poison would mix evenly into the water for the appropriate effects thanks to the schools of mechano-fish he'd dump in earlier.
She was going to come, of course. His opponent. He'd left enough clues, as was part of their dance. She was a smart woman, she'd follow the trail, she'd track him down, and then they'd have to deal with each other. She'd coming stalking from the skies in that sexy little jetpack number of hers.
His mask itched, and he worked a finger underneath to scratch at the blob of spirit gum holding it on. He could have been spending the evening guzzling martinis and yelling at his henchmen while assembling giant robot duplicates of himself back at the warehouse. Not programming finicky triggers that she'd just smash anyway, no matter the cost. Only they were caught in this ridiculous routine and he had a megalomania to feed...
Here she came. He didn't have to look up; there was the thrum of engines and the stink of gasoline. He couldn't help the cold sweat. She'd dump him in jail almost immediately, and he'd have to escape again. At least a month spent calculating prison guard shifts and amassing secret weapons. "The old poisoned water supply bit?" She scraped something off the heel of her boot and circled him. "It is a classic, I admit." He hated himself for it, but he was going to be bloodied by morning and smiling with a fat lip all day. He prepared something suitably evil to say.
