category: other worlds
I just stumbled upon a great essay by Philip K. Dick, written in 1978, a few years before he die: How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later. It is longish, but an entertaining read. Here are some excerpts:
It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel after another. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall apart two days later. Or at least that is what my editors hope. However, I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it. Do not believe — and I am dead serious when I say this — do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish. This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of the script of life. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new.
…In Plato’s Timaeus, God does not create the universe, as does the Christian God; He simply finds it one day. It is in a state of total chaos. God sets to work to transform the chaos into order. That idea appeals to me, and I have adapted it to fit my own intellectual needs: What if our universe started out as not quite real, a sort of illusion, as the Hindu religion teaches, and God, out of love and kindness for us, is slowly transmuting it, slowly and secretly, into something real?
…Just about the time that Supreme Court was ruling that the Nixon tapes had to be turned over to the special prosecutor, I was eating at a Chinese restaurant in Yorba Linda, the town in California where Nixon went to school — where he grew up, worked at a grocery store, where there is a park named after him, and of course the Nixon house, simple clapboard and all that. In my fortune cookie, I got the following fortune:
DEEDS DONE IN SECRET HAVE A
WAY OF BECOMING FOUND OUT.
I mailed the slip of paper to the White House, mentioning that the Chinese restaurant was located within a mile of Nixon’s original house, and I said, “I think a mistake has been made; by accident I got Mr. Nixon’s fortune. Does he have mine?” The White House did not answer.
…The summation of much pre-Socratic theology and philosophy can be stated as follows: The kosmos is not as it appears to be, and what it probably is, at its deepest level, is exactly that which the human being is at his deepest level — call it mind or soul, it is something unitary which lives and thinks, and only appears to be plural and material. Much of this view reaches us through the Logos doctrine regarding Christ. The Logos was both that which thought, and the thing which it thought: thinker and thought together. The universe, then, is thinker and thought, and since we are part of it, we as humans are, in the final analysis, thoughts of and thinkers of those thoughts.
Here’s a great shot from English Russia (click the pic to enlarge):
Says English Russia, which posted a series of pictures and a video of this smokestack collapse:
After the Soviet Era too much of objects stay abandoned in Russia and with the modern rise of development of new business and residential areas more and more are need to be removed from the terrain. Many controlled demolition companies act on this market, sometimes they have some nice objects to remove like those two old factory chimneys.
Arts & Architecture was a great arts/architecture/music/culture magazine published in the United States from 1945-1967. The magazine always had a great cover that reflected the art and design aesthetics fo the era, and now you can see images of all the covers together on the Arts & Architecture website. Here is a taste:
But that’s not all. You can click on every cover and download a PDF with excerpts from each issue.
Thanks to Grain Edit, a cool blog devoted to art and design from the same era as these magazines, for steering me to them.
This image of “Nano-Explosions” won first prize in at the November 2007 Materials Research Society (MRS) “Science As Art” competition.
“Nano-Explosions Color-enhanced scanning electron micrograph of an overflowed electrodeposited magnetic nanowire array (CoFeB), where the template has been subsequently completely etched. It’s a reminder that nanoscale research can have unpredicted consequences at a high level. (Image: Fanny Beron, École Polytechnique de Montréal, Montréal, Canada)”
From SF Gate’s Day In Pictures today:
“Hajj overflow: A parking lot in Arafat, Saudi Arabia, is packed with empty pilgrim buses as more than 2 million Muslim faithful gather at nearby Mecca, the site of Prophet Muhammad’s last sermon 14 centuries ago.”
Macedonian poet Bogomil Gjuzel: Selected poetry (1962-2002).
Professional Poet
The last word, the last hasty swallow
you get up from the table, after your working day
and catch the first bus to the kitchen
you tear off a hunk of bread, inhale the good oven odors
Your body, leaden with weariness, the mold
you cram with rich food
Switch on the set
and inspect the backyard
through another screen
with a wet linger
you flip the pages of the sky.
Nothing will come of nothing.
Clematis tendrils
float in the void … THEY MUST BE TRAINED ON A TRELLIS
your daughter brings you a chair
The table is set, your wife calls
through the window of a parallel world.
After dinner, you walk in the garden
alone in your pressurized space-suit,
stars all around you
even beneath you. Your antennae must be redirected.
the pear tree, newly pruned, requires manure.
Back to the module:
Daddy, what does it mean
to be a monster?
Suddenly, the chain of command dissolves
bits of paper whirling in free fall
untouched paper
and your pencil, ominous as a revolver.
Too much coffee today? The Wikipedia entry on caffeine has a great picture showing what can result from sharing your morning cup with a drowsy spider:
Think about this next time you reach for another pot of joe to help you muddle through a particularly complex problem.
Of course, people are different from spiders, so the worst you might experience from coffee is
…restlessness, nervousness, excitement, insomnia, flushed face, diuresis, muscle twitching, rambling flow of thought and speech, cardiac arrhythmia or tachycardia, and psychomotor agitation, gastrointestinal complaints, increased blood pressure, rapid pulse, vasoconstriction (tightening or constricting of superficial blood vessels) sometimes resulting in cold hands or fingers, increased amounts of fatty acids in the blood, an increased production of gastric acid…mania, depression, lapses in judgment, disorientation, loss of social inhibition, delusions, hallucinations and psychosis….”
Then again, how bad can it be for you if your company brews it and your boss encourages you to consume all the free coffee you want?
Drink up!
From a recent column in the SF Chronicle by John Flinn, Culture shock still souvenir of Japan, comes the following excellent examples of Japanese T-shirt English, which I have made bold:
About the only place I saw English used consistently was on T-shirts worn by young people, and (as Japanophiles here are well aware) this was a weird, jabberwocky form of English. “Don’t mess with juicy,” read one shirt. “Hurry up the cakes,” read another.
After a while, I began to collect these slogans in my journal. They were, I thought, a peculiarly addictive form of poetry:
“Why waste lucky?”
“Oh my goodness. Don’t scully me.”
“Mischievous blue rabbit skunk.”
“Oranges now!”
(My guess is that if a Japanese speaker saw the kanji characters tattooed on ankles and shoulder blades all over America, he’d find them equally nonsensical.)
For years now I’ve had the idea for a great restaurant that I wanted to call WC, where all the chairs were actually toilets that patrons sat on (working, available for business WHILE you ate), the bar was supported by urinals, and the whole place was covered in white bathroom tile with a handy drain in the middle. In fact, the bar would be named Urinal, so it’s tagline could be, Step Up to the Urinal. And when the hostes showed you to your table, she could say, “Please take a seat.” Entertainment would feature live “scat singing” accompanied by the gentle murmur of many simultaneously flushing toilets. And appetizers could be called “Stool Samples.” Well, you get the point.
I thought such a restaurant would be outrageous, impossible to find backers for, but once it opened it would be a huge hit, the crowds to get in so great that the newspapers would have to report, “WC backed up and overflowing.”
Such are my idle fantasies. But surely this is one that would never be realized. I was just some sicko with an idea that nobody else on the planet could ever imagine. Wrong again. Check out Marton Theme Restaurant in Taiwan:
Its unusual theme is proving a draw for customers eager to eat food off of plates and bowls shaped like western toilet seats as well as Japanese “squat toilets.”
Marton Theme Restaurant, named after the Chinese word “matong” for toilet, has become a hit in Taiwan’s second largest city since its opening in May 2004.
Though bathroom decor seems a bizarre way to whet the appetites of diners, the idea has been so successful owner Eric Wang opened a second and bigger branch just seven months later.
Not only that, but the food is made to look like the stuff that gets deposited in traditional toilets, an idea too sick for even me to think of:
“We not only sell food but also laughter. The food is just as good as any restaurant but we offer additional fun,” says 26-year-old Wang, who gave up a career in banking to launch the business.
“Most customers think the more disgusting and exaggerated (the restaurant is), the funnier the dining experience is,” he says.
The top orders are curry hot pot, curry chicken rice and chocolate ice cream because, well, “they look most like the real thing,” Wang says.
And the rest of the decor?
Customers, however, flock to Marton Theme Restaurant mainly for its quirky dining wares and interior decor.
“This is such a funny and strange restaurant,” says patron Chen Bi-fang while sitting atop a colorful toilet seat — the standard chair at the restaurant.
She sits by a table converted from a bathtub with a glass cover while looking at a wall decorated with neon-lit faucets and urinals turned into lamps.
Where did Mr. Wang get this great idea, if not by rigging up my microwave oven to tap into my brain’s alpha wavestream? From the same place all great ideas come from, of course: a Japanese comic book!
To make sure his investment wouldn’t go down the pan, Wang first tested the water for the toilet food gimmick by peddling ice cream in toilet-shaped cones in street booths four months before opening his restaurant. It was an instant hit …. His idea came from a popular Japanese comic featuring a robot doll fond of eating excrement in ice cream cones.
Ah, to be a young Japanese robot doll again, without a care in the world. Those were the good old days. And now I have to just flush another great idea down the crapper, now that somebody else has plunged right in and beaten me to it.
Check out these cool Antarctica photos
There’s a handy Croatian Heritage Guide guide at croatians.com, a must for every reference collection.
A (carcinogenic?) San Jose, California disk drive factory, circa 1956.
A funny bit from a Croatian tourist leaflet in a Jon Carroll column from 1999:
IN OTHER NEWS: Reader Bill Coffin shared with me a lovely advertising leaflet from Croatia. It began with a quote from Alain Dover, a person known neither to Coffin nor me:
“During the day, into an incomparable marine scenery, which is a live and genuine ‘pastime’. When the stars come closer by, a sweet fragrance is gently touched by the saltish of the surrounding seawaters: ‘lovers do vibrate’ while the mermaids lull a song into this marvelous ancient sea.”
Almost Prufrockian, isn’t it? But there’s more:
“As the Alain Dover’s rhyme says (the artists wanted to stop at the legendary ‘Capri’ restaurant). An ambiance genuine plus full of life. Among the joyful people’s whispers, large and equipped rooms, verandah by the sea within restaurant, fragrances and flavours made of an enchanting cuisine and pizzeria . . . (Not to be forgotten, prices are contained toward rigorous quality, thanks to a smart management) . . .
“At the evening, a slender smooth music discreetly is played when the moonlight beams out. Saturday night ‘dance.’ Trustfully recognized under every profile.”
Slender music! Fragrant stars! I’m so there.
One can only imagine the ambiance of the joyful people’s whispers at the Saturday night “dance.”
