Weekly Wikipedia Find: Jack Parsons

Jack Parsons is a badass modern renaissance man. That's right, I said is. He's so badass to transcend both death and the past tense. First off, his birth name was Marvel Whiteside Parsons. Like what the fuck? Did he eat his mom's pussy on the way out too?

Jack Parsons died of a mercury fulminate explosion in his home laboratory in 1952 at the age of 37. Let's stop for a second and calculate the badass rating of that sentence. Home laboratory? Check. Explosion? Check. Nineteen fifties? Check. Dead before age forty? Check. Jack Parsons? Check.

I should also mention that Jack Parsons was a rocket scientist. And he helped found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Oh, and he was a noted occultist who knew and socialized with both Aleister Crowley and one Lafayette Ronald Hubbard.

Not to go too deep into Parsons and Hubbard's magickal adventures, but they attempted to summon a living goddess, Parsons tried to sire a Moonchild, they co-owned a boat company and Hubbard stole Parsons' wife.

Here's a photo of Parsons from the cover of his book of essays. Badass:

Wikipedia by Week

Week Twenty-One: The Wold Newton Universe
Week Twenty: Anonymous
Week Nineteen: Monty Hall problem
Week Eighteen: Brown Booby
Week Seventeen: Dieter Dengler
Week Sixteen: New Jerusalem
Week Fifteen: Technological Singularity
Week Fourteen: Numbers Station
Week Thirteen: Culper Ring
Week Twelve: Mary Sue
Week Eleven: Byford dolphin diving bell accident
Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

Prince owns us all

Sometimes you see Heaven, sometimes Heavens sees you. And gives you Prince covering Radiohead.

Man in the Mirror: Shameless

So I have this friend, let's call him Lions Can Maul. Yeah, I feel like I'm writing into Ann Landers or Dear Abby or Dan Savage. So Lions, he pretty much would like to fuck all his female friends. This is a fact.

At first thought, it was kind of despicable. I thought this, despite not having any morals of my own. Okay, that's not true, just not any traditional morals. But then you know I started to agree with it. For myself, that is. As the days go by, and the more and more female friends I make, and the ones I actively try be with friends with, are the ones I want to. I've resolved to be a horrible person, yes. But I'd rather be an interesting man than a kind man.

Certificate Redeemed

This is a follow-up to this post from last Thursday.

So I ended up going with the Jane Jacobs. Now I may have read your comment, Anonymous, before my purchase, but honestly it had no bearing on my decision. I swear. Won't you reveal yourself, oh mysterious one?... with your tantalizing personal details... I can't believe you cut off all your hair.

Also, I bought the Voltaire too. Because I hate myself. So I have a Dover Thrift edition of Candide that I'm giving away for free.

Now let us never mention books again.

Certificate for a Fix

Work has long been an enabler for my book addiction, but never quite so literally. On Tuesday, I received a gift certificate for Chapters Indigo worth 10 dollars as a goodbye present for my contributions to the team (generic contributions, we all got one).

What to buy? I want to spend it soon; it's burning a hole in my pocket as well as my soul.

Suggestions are absolutely welcome. Here's some candidates from my usual scope and loiter at the book shops:

Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard

Candide by Voltaire (which I already own in cheapo version-- but look an edition with Chris Ware cover and French flaps!-- meaning I'd have a copy to give away afterwards)

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (the current frontrunner)

Weekly Wikipedia Find: The Wold Newton Universe

It must be literature week here at The Genius Defines. Just kill me now, eh? Am I right, guys? Am I right or am I right?

The Wold Newton Universe takes noted science fiction author Philip José Farmer's notion that famous literary characters were all members of the same bloodline (the Wold Newton Family) and runs with it. This bloodline includes Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Doc Savage, Solomon Kane, The Time Traveller, Allan Quatermain, Fu Manchu, Philip Marlowe, James Bond, etc. (OMG tag heaven!!1!). Of course, this is no ordinary bloodline to include all these exceptional individuals. Rather, it has been effected by the meteorite that struck the village of Wold Newton in 1795. That's the real-life meteorite which struck the real-life village of Wold Newton in the real-life 1795. The town's descendants then are gifted with extra endowed with intelligence and strength becoming of their fictional statures. Also, a community does not make a bloodline.

Onto the actual expansion of this idea is the sense that these now connected characters can infinitely extracted upon and within each other, looping and looping, so that 90% of all fiction (EVAR!) takes place in Farmer's mind as he shakes a snow globe. It's intertextuality, people; when will you learn (I might remind you that Spock is a descendant of Sherlock Holmes).

Wikipedia by Week

Week Twenty: Anonymous
Week Nineteen: Monty Hall problem
Week Eighteen: Brown Booby
Week Seventeen: Dieter Dengler
Week Sixteen: New Jerusalem
Week Fifteen: Technological Singularity
Week Fourteen: Numbers Station
Week Thirteen: Culper Ring
Week Twelve: Mary Sue
Week Eleven: Byford dolphin diving bell accident
Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

Book Covers: Penguin & George Orwell

I almost wish I didn't already own these. I'm almost tempted to buy them over again. Almost.

Designs by noted plagiarismo Shepard Fairey.



Source: The Penguin Blog

Sartre & Me II: Dancing

'I can dance when I'm blind-tight,' said Ivich. 'I can dance all night, it never tires me.'

- The Age of Reason, 1945


You and me both, Ivich.

Kids Today

From "TTC deal a relief for riders" (Source: The Toronto Star)

"If there was a strike, it would have been horrible. I would have had to walk and my legs would become sore and stuff," said Kashfi.

I hate kids today.

What I Bought Today

The Double Hook by Sheila Watson

Used. $2.50.

I get credit (i.e. bonus points) for seeking out Canadian Literature for once.


Cover may appear similar, but different in person. Uncanny.

Object Fetishism: McSweeney's 24

McSweeney's Quarterly Concern Issue N°. 24, Fall 2007.


Dos-à-dos binding.


Two title pages.


Sprawling endpaper artwork can be formed into endless Möbius strip.

Stupid Sexy Bookstores

... and their stupid sexy books.

Latest buys:


and


I buy books faster than I can read them.

Weekly Wikipedia Find: Anonymous

This one's for you, Phil.

What is anonymous?

Anonymous are hackers on steroids who treat the web like a real life video game, sacking websites, invading myspace accounts, and disrupting innocent people's lives. If you fight back, watch out. They steal your passwords, all seven different ones so far. They attack innocent people like an internet hate machine. They are strong, do not forgive, and do not forget.

Criticisms of Anonymous include death threats, threats to bomb sports stadiums, domestic terrorists [demonstration of exploding van].

Their name comes from their secret websites, which requires of anyone posting on the site to remain anonymous.

oh no naked guys

Anonymous brings chaos and disorder and destroy people's lives. They get laughs, they enjoy doing this, they get LULZ (that's right: a corruption of LOL which stands for Laugh Out Loud). Pranks are always posted on the internet. Truly epic LULZ come from raids and invasions like trying to spoil the Harry Potter 7 ending.

LULZ killers try to ruin the fun of Anonymous.

I hate to be a LULZ killer, but I'm going to have to cut the synopsis short. This length is all my good media skills can handle. And I didn't even touch on Project Chanology versus Scientology.

Wikipedia by Week

Week Nineteen: Monty Hall problem
Week Eighteen: Brown Booby
Week Seventeen: Dieter Dengler
Week Sixteen: New Jerusalem
Week Fifteen: Technological Singularity
Week Fourteen: Numbers Station
Week Thirteen: Culper Ring
Week Twelve: Mary Sue
Week Eleven: Byford dolphin diving bell accident
Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

Life Review: TTC

She Said,

"So you never take the TTC? You walk everywhere? What if you had to go to Scarborough? How would you get there? The bus to Scarborough. Would you finally take the bus then?"

Actual Response:

"Why would I ever need to go to Scarborough?"

Ideal Response:

"So when are you going to invite me to Scarborough?"

* * *

If only real life had mulligans.

Consider This!: My Face

So I have this face wound on my upper lip, and so today I got to make a battered wife joke.

"Hey Justin, what happened to your face?"

"What? Oh... uh this... I uh walked into a uh... a door."

It was awesome. No one laughed.

Or at least it would have been awesome had anybody been considerate enough to ask and had any of this actually happened.

Mr. Kubrick's Gaze

From IMDb's trivia page for Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller:

At the beginning of the film, there is a shot of McCabe lighting a cigarette before crossing the bridge. According to Robert Altman, Stanley Kubrick loved that shot and called him up asking him: "How did you know you had it?"

Sartre & Me I: Abortion

'I agree, abortion is not infanticide, it is "metaphysical" murder. [...] I have no objections to metaphysical murder, any more than to any perfect crime.

- The Age of Reason, 1945

Weekly Wikipedia Find: Monty Hall problem

I've been accumulating a lot of cool Wikipedia finds lately, oh boy, oh boy. So instead of presenting you with one of those, I thought I'd bring back an old standby: the thought experiment! Door number three, Monty.

That's right, the Monty Hall problem. This one I actually specifically sought out as I had a bit of inspiration while I was at work. You see, the men's washroom has no urinals. Just three toilets. So when you enter the washroom, all you see is three stall doors. So it's always a bit of a crap shoot choosing. Zing!

So the problem (or "the Monty Hall") is a probability puzzle based on the Monty Hall-hosted game show Let's Make a Deal. It exists in a weird alternate reality where instead of all the doors having an equal probability of 1/3 of containing the choice prize (versus the booby prizes), once you initially choose a door, the knowing host eliminates a dud door, thus creating an existential paradox where you, the contestant, will have a greater probability of winning the prize by switching your choice of doors (the remaining door has 2/3 of containing the choice prize now). The alternate reality in question: ours! Dun dun dun.

Next week: Monsters! of the Deep Sea!

Wikipedia by Week

Week Eighteen: Brown Booby
Week Seventeen: Dieter Dengler
Week Sixteen: New Jerusalem
Week Fifteen: Technological Singularity
Week Fourteen: Numbers Station
Week Thirteen: Culper Ring
Week Twelve: Mary Sue
Week Eleven: Byford dolphin diving bell accident
Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

Privileged II

The best part of upgrading that background application Dell Support Center to version to 2.0 (which I never use but kept pestering me to upgrade and I would probably uninstall it anyways except what if...) was it trying to shame me for using an unsecured wireless network with a manufacturer-default SSID. And telling me that was a "Problem."

And when it told me how to troubleshoot the problem, the solution was to merely turn the alert off. Shiny.

Go Straight to Hell, Boys

"Go Straight to Hell, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200"

Man, I'm really enjoying this Dante's Inferno version of Monopoly.

Anonymous

Comments have been anonymized.

You're welcome.

Pam Grier

Pam Grier's got really purdy hair.


I just rewatched Jackie Brown for the first time in a long time. Underrated. A little long, but so well-crafted with a sense of pace and tone.

Deer in the Headlights

So I walking home after an afternoon of buying books (stupid, sexy bookstores and their stupid, sexy books) and groceries, and as I'm waiting at some lights to cross the street, there's something so insane and inane involving an old man and a car. On the opposite crosswalk, as people cross the street a car waits to make a left turn. So this car starts to make the turn expecting the people crossing be where they are when he reaches that point instead of out of the way before he starts this turn (This Is Toronto, afterall, and Toronto driving). And bringing up the rear of people crossing the street is this senior citizen, already slow as his body has no doubt been ravaged by age and a sense of self-aggrandizement for being part of "The Greatest Generation." So he's sees this car turning, and he freezes. Like he's caught in the headlights. So this car is waiting to turn, blocking the oncoming lane (luckily no cars coming). And this old man just stands there (and he's not as decrepit as I've made him sound). Finally, he moves out the way, but come on? Caught in the headlights? Nevermind the fact that it's fifteen degrees out and sunny as hell. And he's wearing sunglasses.

Literary Influences I

I found it. I truly did.
L'Étranger. A novel by Albert Camus. I don't know what it's about. I had been looking for it, though. I read the blurb on the back when I found it. I've already put it out of mind. An act of violence. All I remember, that I had known previous, is that it revolves around the protagonist doing that, making the choice to. I can't help but be in touch with this theme. An act of violence. I like to say my favourite book, thematically, is Crime and Punishment. I like to say that. Then I heard of the plot of Camus' novel here. I knew I couldn't write until I'd absorbed this Camus. I'm trying to avoid stepping on anybody's toes. I know that's an impossible task, but I can at least avoid the masters. So many books to read.

All this time I had been looking The Stranger until today when Penguin offers me The Outsider.
Here's one step closer to settling down and writing. Now I just have to read it.

Film Review: Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

Directed by Sam Peckinpah. Written by Rudy Wurlitzer.

Starring James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan, Rita Coolidge, Harry Dean Stanton, and Slim Pickens.

1973.

I don't even want to review this film; I don't know what to say.

I just know I love it.

There's something so pure and iconic about it.
The West ain't what it used to be.

CBC.ca readers racist, ignorant

CBC.ca has been really going downhill since they enabled comments. Does the fact that its a public broadcaster bring out the "Conservative" (note the capital-C) in people? Like I imagine the same type who watch CBC. I mean I completely support the notion of the CBC, but I barely ever find myself interested to tune in (exceptions include Degrassi High and Jr. High reruns, Kenny vs. Spenny, The Passionate Eye repackaged documentary series, Street Cents, that weird afterschool quiz show, the rare Hockey Night in Canada, and classic movie airings).

But back to their website. If the story is about some kind of minority, you can guarantee a certain kind of comments. Some prime examples have been recents news stories containing Sikhs. Nevermind that nowhere in the article does it mention where the men were born (i.e. if they were foreign-born at all), most of the reader comments are a variation on "go back to your own country if you don't like our rules." Enlightened. Again, this is not some freak incident; this is a guarantee.

Thanks Public Broadcaster.

Bonus CBC thought:

Recently, there was news about a group of kid conspirators planning to "harm" their teacher. Creepy as hell, sure, but the thing that sells it, sending it over-the-top, is the photo of the kids' fun bag. Jesus Christ. When I was in school, when we were mad at a teacher, we would make bad puns at the expense of their names. Eat my cunning wordplay, Mr. Booger. Kids today: it's all bind, torture, kill. Where's the fun?What is that? A mitten?

Black Is...

Girl,

Black is.

Black is something to laugh about.

Black is something to cry about.

Black is serious.

Black is a feeling.

Black is us, the beautiful people.

Woman,

That was when some of them bad niggas made beauty moving juju changes the drum music hum!

Mojo vibrated and high johns screamed through the bloods til no one hears the blood sounds.

No more folk intercourses and all the niggas listening acted visionaries too dig my people they acted.

The rhythms pulling their minds was one and move move move.

Universe earth spirit firing the soils to destroy the evil unimage.

Cleanse the waste from the cold lands until the cosmos was whole again and the worlds had become nude.

Man,

Three-thirty in the morning with not a soul in sight, we sat four deep at a traffic light talking about how dumb and brainwashed some of our brothers and sisters are while we wait for a green light to tell us when to go.

Man in the Mirror: Hyperreal II

What is it when "I like brown girls" becomes I act like "I only like brown girls?" Parody?!

Weekly Wikipedia Find: Brown Booby

So I was Wikipedia-ing Christmas Island as research for a miscellaneous joke video I'm working on, and what should catch my eye but brown booby. Damn, I got excited there for a moment.

But the Brown Booby it refer to is this:


And not this:


But a man can dream.

That said, these birds do please me aesthetically. Plus, they look delicious. Further factoid: "they are particularly clumsy in takeoffs and landings."

Wikipedia by Week

Week Seventeen: Dieter Dengler
Week Sixteen: New Jerusalem
Week Fifteen: Technological Singularity
Week Fourteen: Numbers Station
Week Thirteen: Culper Ring
Week Twelve: Mary Sue
Week Eleven: Byford dolphin diving bell accident
Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

Bob Dylan Is a Cylon

I finished Battlestar Galactica Season 3 over the weekend, and wow-wee, what is there to say? Shocking! Sensational! Surprising! Unexpected! Laughable! Extreme! To the Max! eXtreme! X-treme to the MAX!

Who saw that twist coming? The season's being lead up to a reveal of some the remaining cylons for a while now. And the whole reveal was held until the season finale. And what'd you know SPOILER ALERT! Bob Dylan is a Cylon. He's a robotic socially conscious folk singer/robot. One day, you just think you're human (just like every other day, am I right?) and then a flip switches in your head, 0 to 1, and you hear the music. And you know. A Cylon folk tune: "All Along the Watchtower."

And you know the words, oh you the know the words, like second nature to you, not even thinking, it spews forth like vomit.

There must be some way out of here

Uh huh

Said the joker to the thief

Um yeah

There's too much confusion

Ohm uhm

I can't get no relief.

Baby

Robert Allen Zimmernumber 12. I knew it! All along, I swear.