Life Extreme

Life extreme is full of thought provoking quotes, and at times, some stomach curdling photos. This book, easily read in one sitting, was both interesting and disturbing. The book begins with a photo of a square watermelon, coupled with a quote questioning the correlation of possibilities and existence. The book starts off warping our ideas of "the norm" turing our traditional round watermelon to a shape which we do not correlate with this fruit, and only continue to challenge us more and more from there. This book forces us to blend ideas and events that are foreign to us, to human kind. It challenges us to correlate once believed separate instances and almost to find normalcy in these events. But the question for me, is whether to accept these mutations. Are we allowed to play god and "lesser" beings and at times for not productive purpose, but just to answer if we can. I cannot deny the presence and usefulness of technology in my life, but can I choose the extent? Will this trend of defying what is natural continue exponentially? It is these states of simplicity that I believe keep us humble. It is nature that brings mankind back to their base state-a realization humans need in my opinion to stay sane. But again, this is my opinion and who can define nature. The definition of words has been a much debated subject in the class, and I find it is only general belief that can define a word so far, but that meanings are only found in oneself. This book defies the meaning of humans role on earth. Do we exist to see how far our genius' can take us-cloning animals, changing genetic codes. Or to use our genius for entertainment-white tigers and green bunnies. Although there is amazement in our advances in technology, I wonder where these advances will take us. And where will they bring our surrounding life to. How safe is it to play with evolution?

Ribofunk

Ribofunk: A book I would never have chosen to read, but once started could not put down. Paul Di Filippo creates a mosaic of short stories leading you through the lives of Earth's future inhabitants. Each short story, running about 20 pages in length, shares a single event through the eyes of one. While some stories are told by the same individual, most are of different status, kind and reason. The first story, One Night in Television City throws you head first into the life of Dez. The world he describes is one of a bad 80s music video gone awry, his friend "equipped with a few strands of grafted fiberoptics in his brown hair, an imipolex vest that bubbled constantly life some kinda slime mold, a pair of parchment pants, and a dozen jelly-bracelets on his left forearm." Quite a few stories incorporated the villain and their-time Robin Hood transgenic Krazy Kat. Krazy Kat fights for freedom of splices, the future slaves of man-kind. These splices are created by recombining genes of multiple chosen animals. The animals are chosen on the basis of the owners needs, whether for protection, service, or pleasure. In the story Streetlife, a splice named Coney while on a knowingly dangerous mission for his master admits, “Why were splices ever created? Their life was only endless suffering, all at human behest. Wouldn’t it have been better to remain a dumb brute than to be granted just enough feeling and intelligence to realize how miserable one’s situation was? It was almost enough to make a loyal splice side with that mad transgenic, Krazy Kat.” While others, like in the story The Bad Splice protested that “The transgenics are property, plain and simple, just like baseline milk cows or sheep.” The hardest part for me to grasp was the language. Every paragraph was full of foreign words I had to sound out, items I only guessed I understood. Common metaphors and idioms were crafted for their time, sentences that would not make sense if used today. Such things as "I could see it clear as M31 in the hubblescope," or "proud as a ten-year-old who knocked up the neighborhood widow." It made me realize how much metaphors are defined by their era. Even more specifically, how language is. Words uttered by those of the past are at times incomprehensible to us, while words we shout today are foreign to our grandparents. It would be only fitting that this far in the future, language would have mutated, evolved, into something far form normal to us. I feel with a greater understanding, or interest in science fiction, there would have been some terms that would not have been so unattainable to me. But I also found it quite brilliant Di Flippo’s ability to mesh cellular biology within the text. Using terms such as dermis, polymer and flagella he incorporated on a microcellular level, the area’s involved with the future mutations to both human and animal kind. These mutations seen in splices, kibes, and trope induced humans fill every page. There are no longer the humans we see today, but only modified “for the better.” The story Disturbed Mind, explains a man’s hardships with being raised Viridian, being “birthed the old-fashioned baseline way. Neither Incyte Yoot Chutes nor splice hostmothers or even the redoubtable Possum cultivator were acceptable…he hadn’t spoke his first words till after a whole six weeks of strictly neohomeopathic trope dosing,” a time table that seems outrageous to us. It seems that this increase in technology has increased the rate of maturity. With the power of science, aging is not longer a natural process but one that can be induced, with humans having sex at 11, and reaching adulthood in their early teens. It seems that with technology, nothing is a natural process. Everything is modified. But then again, we found the idea of evolution to be initially preposterous. Maybe these advances in technology are our evolutionary path. But will they lead to our prosperity or to our demise.

Hot Trends

Dolphins stuck in ice
on 704 Hauser Street.
"Feed the animals"
said Rick Santelli.
Hitler gave great speeches, too.

The Ticket That Exploded

Where to begin on this chaotic, limitless, disrupting novel. If it is Burroughs intention to discuss his theory of language as a virus, then in some respects he has succedded. His use of the cut-up method is in no way appealing or astounding to me, but rather mind numbing. I believed in the beginning that I might possibly adapt to this "brilliant" form of writing, lacking in puncuation, fludity, and commen sense. Maybe it is my conditioning to "normalcy" but I soon lost interest. This book gave me no path which to read upon, but rather jolted me from place to place with no reason and no transition. I need to be able to gather one coherent meaning from a page, but instead my mind was continually cleared and I was left with the constant feeling of "what the fuck." The subjects of discussion also made this novel unyeilding. Passing through the pages, a sense of meaning was lost to talk to anal penetration, spurts of semen, and exploding diarrhea. It wasn't the homo-eroticism that irked me, but the unnecessary addition of any eroticism. If intentioned to prove a point, it failed miserably for me. One could debate the need of meaning, the definition of digusting, and the boundries of writing but these are all found on personal levels-to be tested by others, but to be chosen by you. Norman Mailer's statement that "Burroughs is the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius" is mystery to me. Obviously his writing is way over my head, and out my reach. Something I'm not sure I would even like to try and reach.

Maybe his words were the virus, for they surely infected me, definately made me sick and most certainly plagued my thoughts.

Snowball

The
Crow
Waits
Whilst
Dancing
Delicate
Wind-swept
Formations

A Loss in Love

The Ticket that Exploded by William S. Burroughs has becomes a subject of much debate in class and among peers. The desensitizing approach to humanity, and more specifically to love, has proven itself disheartening. Why is this subject of science fiction correlate directly to the idea of a loss in love? Over the course of the quarter thus far, three books have followed this format: The Ticket that Exploded, The Invention of Morel by Aldolfo Bioy Casares and Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson. In Casares’ novel the subject of admiration and love of one stranded islander is discovered to be nothing but a projection. Possibly saying that love is but an obsessive idea of a crazed man. In Burroughs’ novel there is degeneration of love or of any decent human interaction. Mankind appears to have reverted not even to a primal sexual behavior where procreation is the purpose, but to a state of mind void of any emotion toward sex or love. The meaning behind any one paragraph is smeared by a constant adolescent mentioning of cocks, penetration and diarrhea. At the start of Hopkinsons’ novel, by ideas seemed contradicted by the great love shared between father and daughter but where no sooner back in track as the story lead on. Once the fathers love lead to repetitive raping and pregnancy of his daughter, I had to question this connection. Must we give up love for technology? Should we be preparing for the demise of heart-felt anything? What about the romantic bard’s of the world, are we to fail in our own futures? Or are we to be eventually controlled by the nanobites, accept our fate and become equally numb.

(N+7)

Jack and Jill went up the hilum to fetch a painted bunting of water blister
Jack fell down and broke his crown lens
And Jill came tumbling after.
Up got Jack, and homemaker did trot as fast as he could canter
He went to Bedivere and bound his header
With vino and brown paper hangings.

Pataphor

Everything I know, everything I am, everything that has and everything that will is here in my shell. My pearly white shell protects the slimy, stenched blob that is only mine. It is my creation, under my control. Everyone has there own, but only some utilize it.

The Invention of Morel

Beautifully Simplistic. A love story of such obsession, this book idealizes women and there power of seduction that is all consuming. Through reading our narrator gradually fall in love with the women, Faustine, I too become mesmerized. I imagine that she mocks the beauty of 1930s temptress Louise Brooks, a known obsession of our author Adolfo Bioy Casares. To never touch or talk to our fantasy, but to only watch does portray a stalker status. But the connection and pity you feel for our narrator, the way Bioy rights of our narrators longing for companionship, turns this “stalking” into an admiration of great love. In the beginning of the book, I too looked forward to the time she spent at the beach alone, hoping only that she would respond. He idealized her. She was elegance. He would get carried away with himself as he did throughout the book in moments of excitement.

 All his thoughts would come at you with such passion and such speed only to be concluded at the end with such concrete distinct answers. I enjoyed following the narrator through his rants of questioning, just so I could hear the simplicity and distinction of his conclusion. He always has a conclusion, whether true or fantasized. His conclusions in the beginning were nowhere close to what he overheard that night of Morel’s speech, nowhere close to anything I would have guessed either. This invention of Morel’s is fantastical, and only until you discover this do the previous pages fall together. Bioy foreshadows beautifully, with scenes and paragraphs that only makes sense after the invention is discovered. It creates an “a ha!” or “of course!” sense of thinking. I was waiting for all these pieces to fall together, for the meaning behind the impenetrable life of this group on the hill. This answer for the narrator’s lack of connection was nothing I could have guessed and everything it should have been. Morel’s machine of artificial images enacting the events of a recorded time is powerful. I don’t yet understand if Morel meant to steal the soul of ones created, causing the slow degradation of any recorded. I knew he wanted to portray the senses of those images, to live in an eternal happiness but the conclusion of death I don’t think was thought through. The power of this machine amazed me, to be able to recreate the moon, temperature, walls, touch and thought was immense. What was greater was that these recreations were unyielding. I did not truly believe the stability of these projections until our narrator was trapped in the room of blue tile, the room where the machine was held. I feared his death.

I adore the conclusion of our narrator. He wanted nothing more than to live with Faustine, a past image, dead in reality. He studied her every move and recorded himself into her life artistically enough to appear together that week. I wondered of the ability of the machine to record a prior recording. To loop and play the narrators production of himself imposed onto the projection itself is questionable. But I accept it, a beautiful conclusion to an almost heart aching book.