I Made a Bunch of AI Garbage, and I'm Glad It's Over

I made a bunch of shitty Sora art. That era has passed.

From what the machine is telling me, this is one of the fastest turnarounds in digital media. AI video generation has grown so rapidly that comparable fields, such as the birth of filmmaking or the history of computer graphics, seem hardly competitive. 

One of the downstream effects of this rapid growth is that the tools for artists are rapidly changing. You might find a platform which gives you free generations to make garbage art, and then generate two hours of video, and then chop that up to create little weird videos.

And then the megacorporation ends its seemingly fantastically generous promotion.

The feeling at that point for me was not one of disappointment, but rather of relief. I think that happened because I could stop managing all the video files, delete the failed experiments, and just publish my half-finished projects and move on to something else.

I had a good time making a series of AI music videos which reveled in grotesquery: fat versions of myself, lasers shooting out of my eyes, dancing, (a lot of dancing), and then AI-generated music behind it.

The AI-generated music stayed terrible the entire time because it was my desire to match the grotesque energy of the generations. Because I have a natural desire to bring out the truth of the materials that I use, because I'm an experienced artist.

One of the most interesting features of Sora was the face morphing: features of characters in this generation slowly evolve. Several times this seemed to me to create images of my friends in the clips. At those times, it was as if I had commanded the machine to create a non-consensual replica. That, at least, was a recurring paranoia.

***

I heard Alan Resnick said in Save It To Your Desktop that the previous AI era for image generation was better because it was more hallucinogenic. My counterargument has always been that, well, you can just use older models on your computer.

But I do concede that the ease and corporate access of this current AI generation just sucks everything in. 

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It turns out there actually is good AI poetry. The AI Poetry Review has a bunch of poetry which manages to be good, and Sam Riviere's *Conflicted Copy* showed up at my door today.

Sam Riviere's AI poems are also really good, I'm glad to report, after opening the book just now.

reviews of some switch games and poetry

Celeste

I keep on thinking "SJW"s "SJW"s in my head playing this game. How coked am I to use the phrase "SJW"? A lotta 4chan lingo seems to beat the path around the political spectrum, you can't feel too bad... anytway... game is very positive... with a diverse cast of characters and some gender-ish commentary, discusses helpful/non-helpful relationships, the main character has panic attacks, the living embodiment of the panic attacks is the main antagonist.

All and all, the story kinda sucks bc of the preponderance on healthy relationships (with the self mostly) leads to dialogue which is boring feelings-exposition. "I had a lot of time to think, climbing out of this cave [...] That Part of Me was right, I can't do this." Not a bad theme but one that is too literally realized, and cliched, to be interesting.

The art in video games is usually entirely tied to the gameplay and Celeste has enough precision in its movement and fast enough load times to make the glittering, cutesy, sometimes kinda threatening pixel art fit. There's no argument that the gameplay is not excellent and the art not well drawn; but there's not a lot of surprises (in the art). There's one horror bit but it's mostly sparkly colorful stuff which doesn't do much for my desire for mystery. (why not? the core struggle of the game might not be what i'm looking for. yeah there's the weird beasts floating around sometimes, what are they doing there, the mountain has some complexity, even some horror... hollow knight also at its most central concerns was missing something, I think, that for comparison blue velvet has. I might just default to say skin on the table; blue velvet's concerns are human and ironic, pessimistic and strange. hollow knight's concerns are mostly, ancient for the sake of being ancient, or really, about the life cycle, celeste's concerns are psycholgical and personal and wholly optimistic. I'm not up for an optimistic story of personal/psychological achievement when it's not that well written and adorned with sparkly colorful imagery.

BUT the gameplay is good, punishing and rewarding, and makes some genuine innovations: most of the gameplay rewards, the strawberries, are entirely optional and, self-consciously, do nothing. But you will likely pursue them anyway and be frustrated doing it... also while almost all of the levels feel like tests of reflex, many of them are actually intellectual platforming puzzles well-laid. The sense of achievement u get beating this game, adjusted to fit yr own level of achievement via optionalness, is real video gamey storystuff.


Into the Breach

UNLESS there's some mystery inner-story I forgot to unlock then the NIHILISM OF TIME TRAVEL expressed within Into the Breach FAILS TO BE FULLY EXPRESSED. "FTL", the studio's previous game had some, like, optional hidden mysteries within the mechanics, like, you could have a subquest involving a cyborg-infecting virus. Not so with ITTB...

ITTB has bits and pieces of intense cynicism in its expanded-mobile-game length which normally means a secret is there somewhere; Hollow Knight had its share of secrets. ITTB tho doesn't include any hidden content.

The result is a game which uses cynicism to construct a mood rather than a solveable mystery. Bits and pieces will flow out through sentence-length dialogue... minimalism which feels mobile...


Captain Toad: Treasure Trackers

What's notable and IMPORTANT to note is that CT:TT does get hard, and pretty quick. Nintendo games kinda like Pixar often good at presenting simultaneous kid-and-adult experiences. But the thing about all modern Mario games is that hard levels are presented as demonic puzzle cubes and nothing more, as Toad slips deeper and deeper into the bounds of hell.

DOOM (2016 ps 2018 switch)

Released for the switch, DOOM 2018 has the best possible character protagonist; self-conscious and nonplussed. Doomguy is an immortal player who seeks to kill demons, so the game is not ambitious beyond its schedule, SCHEDULE: KILL KILL KILL KILL.

Overall tho the game is just that much uglier for bowing to 3d modern shooter requirements; ammo pickups cynically burst out of enemies and are cynically vacuumed up into your suit, bc the developers knew they had to create interesting gameplay and here's our bandaged-on solution: chainsaw gives ammo, execution mode gives health. The language of this is flickering orange or blue overlays, whereas previous DOOM games afaik didnt stray from steel or demonflesh, so DOOM 2016/8 loses some on visual tone I guess.

Douglas Oliver's "Androissements"

Only notable thing is the book-length poem "Video Hall of Fame" which is Oliver's notable and COMPLETELY SUCCESSFUL, AMAZING ACHIEVEMENT with video-game poetry. The dude was 2 years from old age death when he wrote it in 1998, (book published in 2003, Oliver died in 2000, unknown [unresearched ] when he wrote it -ed)  but the interaction with video game concepts is as varied, clear, and familiar and poetic as it can be. There's a fuckton of it too, and what Oliver does really well is draw out commonalities in level design (industrial zones, damsels in distress, stereotypes, class distinctions, etc.) and considers the subconscious areas these cliches provide.

Pay attention, you druggies,
seekers of the mystic:
when inanition or when
manifold indignities
wreck or minds, the gates
to your temples, though broken,
are guarded by demons.

One thing I really deeply need with video game critical thinking is a deep consideration of games from the experience of playing them, as some of my favorite internet artists do, often to consider the ritual of gaming to be an intense and nihilistic commitment of time, fer example. Douglas Oliver however did it as a member of a generation who didnt grow up with vggames (I think). D.O.'s "video hall of fame" gets the peter webb seal of approval for most considerate and well-formed work of vg-pop-culture poetry known to peter, all of the artists trying to do the same should read this work

INSTADEATH NIGHTS:

commentary on: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/03/08/into-the-breach-story/

Into the Breach's  mechanics and everythin correctly transmit a vision of the world wherein u are constantly on the knife's edge of the End Of The World, better than probably any other game does: a single uncorrected mistake in the game will lead to a complete game over, 1, and 2, every game over is correctly and definitively surmised by the time traveler theme to be an actual end-of-the-world, in one particular timeline, at least.

Time travel and video games have shared that commonality for a while, the idea of retrying a bunch of times as a source of patient horror, as the most common video game story is of a time traveller finally getting it right after thousands of dead timelines like the bodies in hotline miami.

Into the Breach, taking the extra care to make this timedeath story a central theme, and then also not commenting on it too much, ends up not being cliche, a success. Yet like I said some kind of ultra-horrible middle note, a deeper mystery within, would have bit me out.

But. Anyway. I don't feel the anxiety of timelines less travelled, although I acknowledge that creating timelines where things did go right is ultimately futile, probably, although I can see how an organization such as the Rift Walkers could exist where they're doing this. Like maybe the successful timelines become partners in a timelines-spanning organization. Tachyons, baby!

BONUS CONTENT: Stephen's Sausage Roll as well didn't commit to internal memory, a secret, just as Yume Nikki may or may not have an actual coherent secret left to find. You think there might be one, waiting somewhere in the code, but the gamers cry, there is none, there is none... No challenge, no internal meaning, just a yearning for "the email which will close the laptop of my [living]."

Possibility threatens a co-extant, co-strangling sense of pain, red lines, flickering into view. Shuttered memories of past gameplay conversations, definite misses, con visits: all these equate into a nothingness, water in the tank. Shattered memories of expectations, as a young kid, that the gameplay would prove something more, the first tastes of aesthetic.

The way the mind reels around a certain prerender, texture, the sense of a brain spinning, content. That this embodies an internal meaning, sure, circumspect.

review of the carnegie international, 57th edition, 2018

Alex Da Corte's "Rubber Pencil Devil."

My brain might have to actually be different to find or read a book of poetry I actually enjoy. Maybe it's the friends I didn't keep up with or never made; maybe it's my own lack of discipline one way or another. I had a moment a few years ago where I thought I found some sympathetic poets, those connected to the Alt Lit movement, but shortly thereafter that whole establishment ripped itself apart.

Not 100% sure I would enjoy Alt Lit books now if I found them? Think for me that poetry has always been about something else, whether an idea of the "moment", like for the beats or contemporary writers, or for personal connections, or similar. Of course I've seen not a few pretty good live poets who do a good job; and I've seen a bunch of genuine good publications. But boy howdy I'm not feeling the energy to pick up anyone's book right now and get something out of it, I have to look for more online magazines that might be good...

Course with poetry it's like, one good poem can wear you out anyway. Went to the carnegie international today ended up not liking much of anything except "Rubber Pencil Devil" which lured me in. What I'm really into is surprisingly literary texts, things like comment replies, reviews, sports journalism, and yeah poetry which are short enough to shock and have something good in them. Fragments that are colorful. Video game writing like this, RPG writing, 'course for VGs it's all the critical work which is important, not the games...

... and finding something like "good writing in video games" is xtrmly difficult. Feels basically that I am in touch with all writers everywhere and no one's producing anything good, or maybe just frustrated that those networks are closed off to me, the individuals hidden... a sort of dark presence like a roving eyeball, deep hands, pouring over the flat 'net... always remember that the best writing online is blog posts by grad students or dropouts...

comparing rpg and poetry workflows

Was talking with my friends last night about how my workflow for rpgs is so much better than my workflow for poetry ever was.

that's a workflow.

trpg workflow:

1. draw on the osr/diy dnd community for good texts like books and blogposts
2. schedule gaming with any interested friends
3. generate fragmentary prep. post some of this on blog
4. run the game with resources from step 1 and 3 and improvise.
5. depending on what players did, set some prep goals. goto 1

steps 1, 3, and 4 will generate a constantly growing pile of resources which can be published via blog or used in future games, step 5 will generate weekly creative goals

example:
1. read patrick stuart's "veins of the earth"
2. over like a month period got a group together
3. wrote up a bunch of veins stuff inspired by the book, mainly a starting locale
4. during our first game the players buzzed past the starting locale into some unknown tunnels, I used the veins random tables to fill these in
5. write up the tunnels proper for next week

I'm doing research, writing my own stuff, organizing it, sharing it with my friends, and contributing to the community; and I have little weekly goals.

my workflow for poetry is more like:

1. see someone else's shitty poetry
2. think "I can do better"
3. get on a writing kick and produce some stuff
4. potentially share the poetry at a pittsburgh reading
5. try to edit the poems a little. either produce a finished piece or move on

comparing the two, the biggest missing elements from my poetry workflow are:
1. a constant stream of writing that I actually like
2. a regular space and time to share the writing with friends, irl
3. regular writing goals
4. a welcoming community I can self-publish to (he has several of these, they just don't produce work he likes all that often -ed)
5. an organized space to amass all my writing
(6. the poetry workflow is completely meanspirited. -e)

#1 and #4 are pretty hard to find, I've been looking for years. #2 can be more readily arranged and like as I wrote this I put out feelers on facebook for a poetry group. but I know just like you know that knowing where to find good writing is pretty essential for an artist of any kind...

the other thing to immediately note is how important social media is. it can provide a constant stream of good writing to read, a community to self-publish to, and like google hangouts edges into a regular space/time to share the writing with friends.

there's also a lot of synergy with social media: sharing is the same thing as organizing and documenting. A constant stream of writing that I actually like is (in many cases -ed) the welcoming community I can self-publish to. etc

it would be good to find a social media community that did poetry I liked. but maybe I just don't like (other people's) poetry that much! who knows

thirty-four reviews

eric andre.

boiling point (1990)

/psychological realism doesn't have much credo and yet I find a definite gap between some director's ambitions and other's. Credit to the filmmaking practices which honor "the dreamy look" or heighten the everyday boredom we all face.

old forester bourbon

originally I thought it had a nutty taste but now I'm not so sure. all whiskey starting to taste like soda to me. tried "angel's envy" at my friend's wedding and it was like, not top shelf? but it had that tasty burn with the flavor in the high notes

dead man, jim jarmusch

my friend (roommate) kept going gaga over the textures in this film, her friend too, talking about how black and white movies often the filmmakers want to bring out the textures, three or four textures in this film, linear, floral, feathers/hair, and a weird beehive one she couldn't place

edward saint albee's "alice"

I just bought this because it was cheap and signed by the author. the bookstore I bought it from was the fence for theft from the library system I work at.

heaven can wait 1948

old style of gentleman which was a sexuality in this face and lips, delicate and gentle. kind of winning presence you immediately feel like you could trust. don ameche takes this trust and abuses it

the paintings of zak smith

I mentioned this in my "frostbitten and mutilated" review but I don't care for portraits drawn from photographs. it's dumb to say that considering how do I know what is, and what isnt, drawn from a photograph. I usually miss the appeal w.e.

squidbillies-- seasons 2&3 are good

tommy tone "bad to to the tone"

listened to this uhh twenty three times

wigle's rye whiskey

rye tastes like flowers and shit but wigle's is good enough to stay appealing. although I hate rye I can get it

stonecutter volume 5

good

kero blaster

bosses are good played 1/2

bayonetta

hate how the scope of the game narrows to be about this generic classical architecture + industrial setting especially since at the beginning it promises to be world-hopping

simpleflips

what's the appeal of simpleflips? he's sorta rotten at the core and always on the verge of falling over. he's not that good despite being talented. watching him is like someone trying to renovate a too-old skyscraper

tfue (a twitch streamer- simpleflips too -ed)

I keep thinking of david foster wallace's tennis youth in "infnite jest" who have nicknames and have a sort of pecking order eaten away by sheer athleticism, that there's something worth pursuing... comradely sort

communism

talked to some maoists who might see this. afai can tell viewing the cultural revolution in a mostly positive lens is bleh, seeing anything but all the usual negative patterns of communism in the great leap forward is eye-and-ear shutting. plus all the stuff about stalin and like, didn't the bolsheviks establish a secret police almost immediately??

did some research on the movement, learned maybe for the first time that some topics are wide enough to encompass several international views. that being said I feel 48% confident that these maoists are relying on conspiracy theories to wipe clean the slates of their heroes

anarchist coffee down the street

it's actually called "artisan's coffee house". zeke is friendly but the coffee's never been good, and even the good stuff, although the chai is to die for I've heard

kraynick's

best bicycle shop in pittsburgh epicenter I wonder if it's the case that as an artist your job is to go find a budding community and sit over it like a fat toad sharing criticism and free talent

barry lyndon

not actually all shot in natural lighting kinda ruins the movie once my friend john told me this. that being said though:

--the scene with the german farm wife
--the scene where barry throws the glass at leonard rossiter
--leonard rossiter is so hype
--the natural-lit scene with the english flag, like the second scene
--steven berkoff


the duelists 1977

fantastic but the ending sucks

johnny depp

johnny always gives the movie something to work with albeit it's often wasted. that's all there is to say

drive (the movie)

I didn't have much appreciation for the film outside the kissing scene and the opening, however in retrospect I like some of the settings, like the pizza shop, I like bryan cranston although he's underused, and I retroactively like oscar isaac because he's my crush

annihilation (the movie)

there's only two good parts, the first scene where natalie portman is grieving, and then the videotape near the end where oscar isaac is talking to his double. I like the interior of the lighthouse, I like jennifer jason leigh although she didn't save the end

the hateful eight

"quentin taratino can just shit out good movies" - the red letter media guys, paraphrased

el topo (already reviewd, albeit this review was written before the previously published review -ed)

quite excellent and jodorowsky gives a fucking excellent performance especially in the last 1/4

fellini satyricon

I watched the opening of this movie like the first forty minutes that my free trial of wondershare file converter managed to convert every third day for about a month

impressionism about anthropology and history is the way to go!!!!!!!!!!!!

the cook the thief the wife and her lover

I watched the first forty minutes of this film an awful lot, too. fellini satyricon just stays really fucking good the whole movie though and this film only knows how to do 2 scenes

the rum diaries (2011)

this movie only knows how to do three scenes and it just vacillitates between three: johnny depp is doing something, aaron eckhart says "sea of money", amber heard blue balls johnny

aaron eckhart

kind of our george clooney if george clooney had to retire

ex machina (2014)

think about this all the time. not bcause of technology but bcause of oscar isaac weird sexiness he imposes on "domhnall". "I put a port in her and if you fucked her she'd like it". modern male tech sexuality dominance stuff like who else doin that???

the tech industry's full of nerds

guardians of the galaxy vol 1-- bad

a woman under the influence (1974)

a bunch of good scenes and can't give enough credit to how it was filmed, handheld with an attention to and somewhat sloppy focus. think about gena rowlands gesticulations. stopped at the 2/3 point never got around to the end

eric andre show

in the eric andre show, isn't he filming himself grabbing at people's genitals or getting his staff to do that? if you watch the series as I have there's a lot of eric reaching for people's genitals or his staff doing that to irritate the guests/people.

lamentations of the flame princess- good but my developing dm style, the harsh stuff, is drawing criticism... is an instadeath trap so inappropriate?

luke kennard's "cain"
Luke Kennard is FUCKING AROUND with this one. "31 anagram poems [of] Genesis 4:9-12". around each of these is a frame of red text transcribing a fictional DVD commentary. can't figure these out

wuvable oaf: blood & metal

wuvable oaf is good and queer baby

marquis de sade's "juliette"

somewhere within this tome is the chapter wherein juliette goes to visit kinda a bluebeard guy who has a castle full of human furniture. read that excerpt in andre breton's anthology of black humor. can't find that part

eighth post

thirty reviews


fury (2014)

weak tea saving private ryan... biggest obstacle was the music score, really terribly obvious german marches and like strings amping up for the big fight... I prefer my war films to be nonplussed but this one had all the gore and some of the randomness of s.p.r. but also some pro-cynical warrior stuff incl. a hasty last stand/blaze of glory... biggest challenge was reconciling brad pitt's human rights abuses, a goal which is forgotten by the end of the film. Biggest and best scene is the middle one which is like 10+ minutes of an awkward/traumaticdinner between tom cruise and his kid and two captured german woman, basically the closest scene to being real social commentary, although this too sort of "trips over its own dick" when the kid and one german woman have sex and brad pitt is like "let them, they're young and alive" like that's supposed to be super salient. Did not watch end of film past "setting up for the blaze of glory by deciding we're all gonna die" scene.

shadow of the colossus

I first thought this game was, itself, an internal representation of the PS2 hardware. it is like a tech demo. You get the feel with wide open tracts of space with no functionality that this is like a tech demo, and the fact that there are little lizards you can shoot kind of adds to that feeling of limited or "test" functionality. By completely skipping over all the modern design trends of 1,000,000 little things to do we're instead left with an anthropology piece, the details of a culture long dead which are exposable only by conjecture. I felt like I was physically inside a realm of data.


the lobster (2015)

salient point here is that all the characters talk and act like they’re middler schoolers in a recital. Connects with metaphysical nature of the movie as parable about modern dating-- except existential bcause all relevant actors in the morality play spin off to their own consequences. At least the play seems half-interested in preserving its own moral lessons, hopefully to preserve the existential void at the center of it which bespeaks the childlike innocence of pursuing love, both deadly and salvative-- this why the middle-schooler-y speech(?)

top gun-

hellish bcuz trapped in military scenario, not real air force but an air force school, where the psychosocial tensions of the various characters get played out by cat-and-mouse games involving targeting reticule shots and bouncing and incomprehensible real fighter jet photography. Only comprehensible shot thereof is famous “middle finger” scene where Tom Cruise is flipping off opposing Russian fighter pilot while inverted above his cockpit. Also Tom Cruise pursues Kelly McGillis into a ladies bathroom to pressure her for sex.

apocalypse world (rpg)

combat is always bad bcuz designer Vincent Baker refuses to recognize combat-as-sport while all players everywhere know of literally no other mode of play. A.W. is good at builiding little post-apocalypse socities and then breaking them apart. However as the destruction is waged so too do the rules break, along the lines of “Fronts” and nefarious player advancement. Mbasically you get a cool little custom character sheet with checkboxes to fill out and then the GM asks you a bunch of questions about your sex life. Would be better if the MC (the GM) themself would get more hostile as play preceded (?)

space channel 5

Really good rhythm game, gogo eighties, immaculate aesthetic, taught me how to shame-walk-dance

tomb raider original version

achieves same sense of “quiet time” that 1.000.000 modern AAA games break apart with literal arrows on screen showing you where to go. Is much better once you find the “walk” button (you must depress this to walk and not tumble off edges). Is in MoMA, I’m pretty sure.

Basically all the simplicity of Doom or Quake levels, the library thereof being entirely compended by the common, “map design” being once a commoner’s art akin to shoemaking or coopery. You can see the sense of “place” in all these places, composed as they were mostly by a few polygons and some textures, even as they are death/doom metal alien traps. You wander through a winter cave for a while and it’s silent. Keen sense of exploration weirdly offset by 90’s obscene videogame “sex-crime” fiction aesthetic of cutscenes, glowing 3d-rendered bulbous adolescent fantasy.

the chronicles of amber

sex fantasy books from my youth. surprisingly did or did not hold up? at one point the author comments on what is obviously an ex-girlfriend of his, describing someone who gets crazy and cult-following after dating the main character.

Not really at all as powerful as Orson Scott Card’s “maps in a mirror” short story oddysy which is EXTREMELY HOT and BIZARRELY TERRIBLE, AS IN “PUBERTY AWAKENING” t.m.i

dan hoy: the deathbed editions

dan hoy poems: obviously an act of theory, more than practice, as like how would you get off on these? not super credible. But! The presentation of the book itself is so cool, perfect heft etc.

porpentine's "girl detective"

realllyy good that the girl detective dies. begins to resemble fantasia where characters are intermixed and played off each other. all for the description of the sensorium which porpentine seeks to oblige (?) porp said she was comfortable if everything she did was termed as porn, so…. this it, especially admiring guro or filth/sewage aesthetic.

house (1977)

another one of my “adolescent horror/sex” pieces, “house” is notable for being widely panned by its Japanese critics upon release. It’s there in the canon though bc the children of Nippon widely turned out to see it, an unprecedented cinematic achievement. As for being for children, the movie follows six young japanese teens who eventually get messily dismembered by a haunted house. Notable bcuz like most children’s movies there’s an element of “picnic” to it, every significant piece clashes against all the others, very punk aesthetic as well bcuz as the creator said it’s supposed to be a “cinematic reality” where the special effects aren’t designed to seem real so much as to “highlight the hard work of the crew”. So like during the martial arts scene you can see the strings lowering the hat; or like during the piano chomping scene; just google “house 1977 piano”.

the plot against america

phillip roth goes as far as to actually simulate via novel how potentially the united states could have gone fascist in 1942. Well, he almost simulates it, at the very last moment (after years of build-up) he backs off and has the Lindburgh presidential family de-escalate and America joins the war after all (on the right side). This book is immensely disappointing even for probably subtly translating the american jewish family experience on the wider immensely tragic tensions of the time-- behind every scene in the book is the reader’s knowledge of the then-unknown holocaust.  

ghost in the shell original edition vs. new?/

original edition ghost in the shell is kind of a cult film for even it’s sorta-excellent animation. “cult” because the quality isn’t consistent and the timing is sort of off and it’s clearly just the first part of a larger story. I mean american made ghost in the shell will fully abandon the plot in favor of whatever, I hope takeshi kitano’s o.k.

nicolas winding refn

people have ideas about “drive” so it’s like the intelligence of refn sorta applied well which takes a big miss on “the neon demon” and shows its own kinda joie nihilism in “only god forgives”. I mean the visual style of each film is really _not_ breathtaking except of course yeah the first scene from “drive”, many of the subsequent scenes, but like the message I keep getting (the credit sequence from demon was also _really_ good) is that there’s sort of base primality of man he wants to expose, the gravity of which I miss completely. Sure there’s x, y, and z but there’s also Ryan Gosling dragging a dude by his head, his fingers scooped in the maxilla, the image of which is enough. It’s about positioning the reader’s emotions or WHATEVER but it’s just the placid generation of these images, which is enough.

Although followup: the scenes of models bathing in blood in “demon” isn’t really awesome so I guess there is an ability to distinguish between the images that doesn’t seem contained in the films--- you see a photo album and you like some.

blood meridian

one of those important realms of history is ultraviolence and seeing the limits of horror practiced as a way of answering the dead part of your brain which requires those ideas. I sound emo here but understanding the role of the american army as a territorializing (controlling justice) force in 1887 makes america make _sense_ in a way it didn’t to me before. Like if you need to interrogate the role of mass violence and guns, as I do, plus some application to my dnd games which often become about similar acts of horrific terror.

we did porn

zak sabbath of OSR fame, who made several rpg tabletop books that I enjoy a lot, describes his experiences in the porn industry as an actor. Zak is a total knob-end (note: this review reflects my opinion at the time written and may no longer reflect my current opinion, in which I am not so settled on zak's status as a "total knob-end" pw 9/15/18 nope, he's a knob end 2/22/19) in a way such as that I the reader have to deconstruct his knob-end-ness a lot because I can’t rely on the usual labels (=sexist, racist) (sexist -pw2) to describe his male knob-end-ness. There is a lot of fatphobia in the book though, people are regularly criticized and characterized as monsters by their weight, so uh, point for me I guess.

Zak is continuously trying to do a Hunter S. Thompson   thing which does not profit bcuz unlike Thompson Zak  does not obliterate his own ego. To wit; Thompson stands in his own horror fearlessly calling out his paranoid/schizo responses to everything while Zak usually is the hero of his own narrative. But however at the end Zak admits some of his own deep-set fears about the morbid danger many of his friends are in, people who glance off society, and in that bit we get some of that rare “authorial humanity.” Other than though there is a whole lot of moralizing and advice-giving which turned me off.

turns out I was right! - 2/22/19

The Story of The Eye

essential Georges Bataille “erotic” adolescent death ficiton, at times mostly exploring a few fetish ideas. Widely banned or whatever but fuses that triggering youth pain experience with craziness and legit erotic fiction. Kind of like playing around at the edges of what porn scenes can be, the feeling is of everything being especially set up to be an erotic tale but is also legitmately tripping on its own pathos.

Kathy Acker

“blood and guts in high school” was good again because it had awful youth sex stuff. I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with this; oh wait, yes I do, it’s because kids ,like in the movie “Kids” (1995), flip society on its back, have incestual relationships at least in fiction that EXPLAIN everyone’s trauma and expose for me a world I always wondered about. You can’t get to the real meaning of your high school aquaintences until you know a lot of them were drinking every morning. Or like just getting away from society’s prescribed noitons, you knowww??? That’s ART!!!

That’s what “Blood and guts in high school” is mostly about except for the poetry which “was bad”.

Delta of Venus

related to above but erotica from Anais Nin who was able to fashion up some west-bank fiction which explores ppl’s sexualities back in those days. Really powerful or whatever. Mostly as a sort of short story collection, notable for me as a flip book for sex scenes, kind of dangerously written. IDK

Eunoia

Christian Bök’s book of chapter-length poems each of which makes use of exactly one vowel each is exactly what it sounds like. The execution is chilling and I wanna prescribe to Christian’s dead-seeming personality (from what I’ve heard). More or less without moral.

The Red Pony

John Steinbeck writes a scene where Jody, a 10 year old, has to watch his steed executed, and then later has to watch a mare executed by brain-hammer so it can successfully deliver Jody’s new baby horse. Later in the book there’s a parable about education wherein a hermit coded-gay man raises a child that in his hermit-ness leads his fellow schoolchildren into new realms of imagination, later to have his and his hermit father’s life destroyed by the PTA.

The Cornelius Quartet

WEIRD Michael Moorcock four-books I got through two- about an enigmatic James Bond-type who trolls reality constantly in search of his dead incest-sister. Basically notable because the metatextual elements come in without explanation to interrupt the first novel’s normalish spy story, there’s a lot of querulous free love, and a lot of seventies tabloid moralizing. In the last book apparently it all turned out to be the fantasy lives of some London doxies, so as to create the “vertiginous imagination” of the common folk or whatever.

Almost Transparent Blue

Ok, TAO LIN wrote a review of this book, the review thereof, and especially his other review of KOKO THE TALKING GORILLA, influenced me in writing and what could be possible in a critical piece. A.T.B. is the story of some japanese hedonists not dissimilar from the characters in Story of the Eye except they’re older. They host an orgy for money, beat each other up. Mostly notable for the fact that the perspective is punk rock moral-less and sensorium-diving set of descriptions. For that reason and for the post-script which tries to reconnect with the characters (the book is auto-biography(?)) you get the sense of the sincere hedonist and thus the cnxn to everyday life, human universality etc. Also new perspective on Japanese life near a military base.

how to write a thesis

Umberto Eco lays down the rules for actual graduate study, hopelessly inapplicable to real such study, but notable because he urges people who don’t want to do the work and just get the certification to plagarism.

coeur du lion

“Ariana Reines” collection of sorta ex-boyfriend-y poems. Notable bcuz they seem pathetic, as in deserving real pity*, like she inspects her own sincere desire for the return of this asshole-y guy. A person who seems exactly like the kind of man-child widely maligned by feminist ppl today, me included(?). Sort of this inner life.

taipei

TAO LIN’s novel which is starkly boring. Notable also that TAO LIN was abusive to his ex- which is part of why Alt Lit “was violently dismantled”. His ex- isn’t in this novel, it’s more of the Megan Boyle relationship, but uh mostly notable bcuz it follows a strange kink where it bends at the end. The first part is all ceaseless reptition of drugs and emotionless descriptions of other people’s emotions but then it gets halfway emotional at the end? Why would someone want to read this (review)??

Walter benjamin: The Arcades Project

a collection of the deceased philospher’s notes preceding a never-completed magnum opus re: the paris arcades, essentially proto-malls with brothels added. Totally worth buying a copy and fer instance paging thru the chapter on gambling and prostitution which is full of wise witicisms on both, along with quoted paragraphs (also wise). Mainly a sort of library text, available as pirated .pdf . I used to be able to turn to any page and find something cool but now I strangely have lost that ability… I think it’s due to the lighting in my apartment.

Borgman (2013)

film about an “alp” which strangely enough “Alf” of “ALF” fame was also I am assuming based on-- it’s that distinctive nose, and the fur**. This “alp” is a dude like a German homeless guy who slowly insinuates a family with his evil nonsense presence. It’s sorta cool but sort of a big jerk-off because the big reveal of “Borgman”’s character really is that he’s just an “alf”. I mean I had to google what an “alf” was after the film, trying to figure out what the movie was about, and it turns out it’s just straightforward “alf”-ness.

holy motors (2012)

“Leos Carax”: vignettes following incomprehensible French logic; each vignette is good, some are stunning. Why? Mostly bcuz they are little insights into aspects of film narrative, stories that are told into the real physical actors in additon to projected thru the screen into the audience’s brains. Like this implication that the author follows the work except told longform as a movie.

it follows (2014)

MY FAVORITE CHILD/SEX/DEATH movie out since 2014!!! Why is this such a theme??! I think it’s because we’re all hung up on teenagers, our teenage years. Anyway this film is a serious attempt at rendering the fears of adolescence into a monster movie, but done with the postmodern modesty that I need wherein the characters are embodied in actual persons so the costs feel real and not horror-movie-scripted. The mysterious monster is such so we can have that half-morality play feel that “the lobster” has. This movie trades off on frenetic orgasm-end for instead a mysterious and settled dread, like a married couple has.

*not condescending pity if that makes sense

**took a look at this, I’m maybe just making it up.

sixth post

I don't really care about poems anymore to the point where I can't get through most poems, e.g. "cranial guitar" by bob kaufman

yet when I cruise up on kaufman's website which has a few brief images of his work, and like a description of his life, I get excited about poetry again

when I go to a d.i.y. poetry reading that has a lot of college age poets, surrounded by twenty supportive college age people, in a fire hazard basement, that's good poetry too even though I would hardly stop to read any of these poems written in a journal

basically NO journal holds any appeal for me, and like as I page through them or e.g. a book of poetry I continuously get the sense of "the joke"

I really wholeheartedly believe that for me at least there is no point in conventional publishing, and for the most part most poets and most especially print publications seem unenterable

there are exceptions, rare and few, and even these don't hold indefinitely--

I'm finding that the holding off on poetry that happens in my life is wise, real wisdom, connection to reality, it's always been that way... and I'm finding that the connections that I do have with poets and poems are often spurred on by nepotism

but even nepotism can't win every battle... unable to wage through my friends proof... continuous question of giving

but even like the idea of a rich tradition or history of like online lit or chapbooks seems ugh, gross considering they'll all be full of head-turners

I am still able to recognize and at minimum share in those moments where a poem happens and a small group of people create the appropriate social atmosphere to receive it

Poetry is about callowly manipulating an audience like any medium, but um I was impressed last night at the d.i.y. show when an artist was able to turn what I thought was a callow sarcastic tone into like a real, legitimate one

(I still get high off my own "callow sarcastic tone")

this person had like what I consider "harry potter tumblr"-tone new york connotations all the bad things filtering into my head

I was twisting my scarf at intervals to measure how much my predictions were being borne out by the poem

halfway through the first poem I stopped twisting the scarf and got confused

I was like, some magical thing happening? Then I got real anxious, couldn't tell if it was the self-harm theme, or like the very forward, pressing insistence of the writer

wanted to be in another room, I imagined an old big wooden classroom, by myself, listening to this poem through an intercom on my desk

then got pulled back in by the writer during a poem about pulse

seemingly sarcastic... but not at all... totally infront of us, performance artificial seeming but very real... mentions of new york

***

second post

poetry and image-making

dan hoy wrote a good article comparing poetry to Duran Duran,
the link being The Pin-Up Stakes,
these stakes more or less being the stakes you put into art.

The connection between image and poetry can be this stake, like,
the things you say, the things you're willing to show.
You put your face (an image) on your words.

I'm willing to market poetry with an image,
indeed, with the advent of online,
images-of-text have become an efficient way to share text.

An image of text with a picture behind it,
considerably, a meme.
Image memes, with text.

It's not that fair to call a meme poetry, though.
If you put a poem on it, maybe, but how many "poem memes" do you see?
Dan Hoy actually has a tendency to make short poems that could fit on a meme.

These, he contains in short videos.

I find the effect of these videos as dialogical, more than the usual entrancing effect of youtube.

That is, they're still entrancing, but only for a brief period.
So it's more of a verb or noun.
One complete idea-- a meme.

At the same time, they fail to, as memes, go viral.
They're mostly used in Dan's essays as a kind of word.
They don't self-sustain.

Poetry memes are supposed to self-sustain.
Hopefully they'd go viral.
Here we get into tumblr poetry, which is usually something like this:

This is a quote, possibly a part of a larger poem, self-attributed by the author.

It's sort of a distillation of popular poetry:

one moment, with attribution.

They're really not that different from Dan's written poems, which are like:

The day
is a measure

of what it
takes the Sun

to forget us.

These fit pretty well into the tradition of, you know, short poems.
Dan's kinda have more self-sufficiency for being self-consciously short and well-stated.

You would say for Lukas W.'s poem above, that the impetus to be a quote has kinda overtaken the poem.
Then again, there's no line breaks, it's just a quote.
So a poem it will be, and a text/picture one too.

*

Lukas W.'s poem also is noticeably trim for being viral:
it contains one significant, appealing idea.
Rebloggable by romantics.

For me, though, searching on tumblr for "poetry",
it's this kinda stuff I don't like. Because it's saccharine.
Or it just brazenly puts forward this idea of poetry I don't like at all.

I deduce it was the case that quotes of poetry became more salable than full poems,
and thus eventually poems were written to be quotes.
That's popular poetry, on tumblr.

Not exactly challenging,
although it does challenge, by format,
the standard kind of poetry you'd see in a book (which wouldn't be a quote).

*

I'm more of a fan of blogs.
I really love Dan's blog posts.
These great compelling works of criticism--

The Pin-Up Stakes, which is a primer
on how to be a poet. An alternate world.
With lofty goals. And the promise of fame.

The criticism itself slips slowly, through a kind of academic coil,
into poetry at parts. So it's distanced
from a needs-to-work kinda vein (it's idealistic)

You can see my own idealism in this piece,
to develop a criticism/poetry,
use poetry for something critical; criticism.

*

The viral poem-image
of our time probably was the self-conscious one
the vegan hotdog one:

"seven syllables of a haiku obscured by a vegan hotdog"
which is a joke, an image,
and a poem, all in one.

It went viral! It's on imgur.
It got posted to my feed, multiple times.
You know how it is.

*

I have an idea for popular image-making
which I'll try to implement in Pittsburgh
in a couple weeks to a month
once I get the plan for it.
I have a few collaborators.
I've told a few in the city about it already.
It's a bit offensive.
This is how I usually am.
~