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C h i e f E d i t o r s :Ashley d’Avignon Goodwin :Marc Saleme C r e a t i v e D i r e c t o r :Ashley d’Avignon Goodwin D e s i g n a n d L a y o u t :John Skinner I l l u s t r a t i o n s :Cessa Cantrell :Ashley d’Avignon Goodwin C o n t r i b u t o r s :Cessa Cantrell :Wes Unruh and Ed Wilson :RPDDG :Anne Gabriel :Daniel Kissner :Ashley d’Avignon Goodwin :Carson Moreno :Andrew Harner

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Table of Contents iv How Beat (@Pie Town, October, 1940) Cessa Cantrell xi-xiii Talismatic Texts Wes Unruh and Ed Wilson xiv-xxi Smells Like Gossip Anne Gabriel xxiii-xxix Photographs by Ashley d.G. xxx Tommasi, Rafael, Valpolicella Classico Superiore, 2005 RPDDG xxxi “Son, Here’s Some Summer’ - From the Gates, Souvenir Place Across the Highway Cessa Cantrell xxxii-xxxiv Italian Cinema Dario Argento xxxvi-xxxix Ecrive Honnete Carson Moreno xl-xlvii Digital Humanities Andrew Harner et al.

Hey, Succulent Baby, I need to stay warm So, come shake my hand. I’m stuck in a snow pile, and My lights ‘a gone down?Shoved pluck, sweaty, and spiked in my car With a sweet gin crown on my tooth?(Lickin’ my lips ‘an waitin’ for the choir). Crimes, Saratoga? Maybe? Got to go ride the train home; Have my ticket in the drawer And a nick of time ‘s I’d ‘a bemoan. I’ve got a penchant, this I can see With a good aim to use it?Ah’ put you in my museum, So I can see ya at the bread-line in the cities; (yer waitin’ for free soup) An’ crackers. It’s a swill modern; It’s a circular Asian; It’s a talky persuasion. Yer my strange-eyed relation.

HOW BEAT (@ PIE TOWN, OCTOBER 1940).

Cessa Cantrell

selection from the upcoming book: The Art of Memetics; originally published on Key64.net

Talismatic Texts

Your preconscious mind needs precise goals which it interprets literally, and those goals should be upgraded regularly. Your preconscious mind also retains memetic content indefinitely, and so once a meme is embedded it will continue influencing you until it is deliberately altered or removed. Likewise, once a meme is dissolved from your preconscious mind you will no longer have the result of that meme present in your life. By keeping a record (be it journal, collage, series of tattoos, etc.) you can track the directions of the preconscious motivators. The preconscious mind is driven by emotional energy to move along specific pathways, acting on the dominant memetic structures. Those structures are put into place through repetition, which is a replication of action. What you believe determines how you imagine, and what symbolic structures you access while imagining. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve already discussed how the preconscious mind isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t effected by the passage of time (when you picked up a meme), but rather by the intensity or resolution of a meme. As your beliefs are the very currency of a memetic economy, and belief constrains the patterns imagination can take, monitoring your imagination and critically thinking about why your imagination follows specific vectors consistently will help you identify the belief structures that limit your creativity. Previous experiences will always be repeated unless the imagination is properly engaged, because those patterns are already in existence internally. Once the imagination is engaged without the constraints of belief, you can begin to be selective about adopting or generating new meme structures. Once engaged, new memes require an incubation period to properly unfold and become dominant, during which time problem solving and goal achievement is being preconsciously calculated. This programming of the preconscious mind is very straightforward, and throughout this text weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been exploring the various methods that can be used as well as the theory behind these practices. The best results will come from clearly believable and attainable goals which elicit a strong emotional reaction. Begin by specifying all the details of the goal in clear and unambiguous language. The end results should be clearly visualized, and creating a tangible representation of this end result to be a focus for visualization is incredibly useful.

Daily visualization that resolves around having the goal (as opposed to needing the goal) creates a resonance with the subconscious mind and triggers events that will lead you to your desired result. Celebrating successes along the way is a reinforcement even more powerful than using positive affirmations, as affirmations can trigger unconscious resistance to the statements unintentionally. Over time, the visualization

should be made more and more immediate through sigilization techniques. During visualization, isolate and identify beliefs or meme structures that interfere with the stated goal. This has a two-fold effect, establishing confidence toward achieving the goal while also debugging the memeplex you are intentionally installing in your preconscious mind. Chaos magic has presented itself as largely a matter of misdirection, especially with the innovation of what is called ‘Sleight of Mind’ techniques. This is a way of encrypting a signal so your deep mind gets the message without the conscious mind blocking or interfering with the message’s content. Fiction also offers many ways to encipher information or intent, but is a very limited view of what narrative magic can be. For a fuller view of the power of narrative magic, it helps to return to the idea of a character within a fictional context with you as the writer. Characters have minds of their own. Whether they are a part of the author or something entirely separate is nearly impossible to determine, however as they have a mind of their own it is perfectly reasonable to develop a working relationship with them as a writer. Put them through the ringer, make them encounter situations that allow them to develop so you can learn from their reactions and experiences. As a writer, you have control of their environment and the situations they face, but you should also allow the characters to respond naturally through your fiction. By learning how fiction and story can drive changes in a character, you can also learn to apply these same story techniques to your own experience. One’s life is, after all, made up of the stories we tell ourselves. A story is a structure overlain on the chaos of fragmentary events. Even though the passage of time appears to us as linear, we apportion meaning by means of association. Once we see the similarity between narrative and life, we have the opportunity for affecting sorcerous change. The text is a focus for causing an event, in the same way a poppet or a voodoo doll is a focus for an individual. However, a text can be manipulated in ways that a poppet never could. Writing is just the generation of words, like life generates memories. Editing is the main event, it’s the sorcery that gives the writing form and meaning. A reporter writes a tale meant to be a picture of an event, and one’s readership takes the text at face value as a depiction of what has occurred. A reporter who writes a tale of an event that never happened or that distorts the event has changed what happened. As far as anyone who wasn’t present at the event is concerned, the article is what happened, unless some contradictory evidence should appear to challenge the article. Even people who were present at the event may easily remember the event differently in reaction to the article.

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Life is not a static thing, but a published text is static. As long as the writer is playing with the material, as long as the text is being written and edited, there is a relationship between the writer and the text. The magic and influence of the text is in this relational stage, where the text can influence the writer in direct proportion to the emotional investment the writer has in the text. Once the text is done, and static, it goes on to influence the readers but for the writer the magic ritual is complete and the text is a talisman resonating with the energy the writer has instilled into it.

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Smells like Gossip

Smells like Gossip I DON’T KNOW ANYONE’S NAME.

I DON’T PLAN TO TALK TO ANYBODY SO IT DOESN’T MATTER. I will, however, assign them names for easy reading.

I was issued scrubs. The man doling them out was in his 50’s; he had aged well. He asked me what size. I held out my arms and said whatever he thought would be fine. He said, “You look like a small on the bottom… but I think a large on top. Yes, I just asked the man to check out my boobs, and my nipple rings show right through. He gave me a couple of sideways grins throughout the day. It was lunchtime on day one when I decided I would keep to myself. It is my natural tendency but I usually consider giving people a try. Nobody appealed. By breakfast the next morning the self enforced seating assignments were made and I had lost my chance. Everybody knows that the lunchroom is the ultimate deciding factor for socialization. After breakfast I retreated to my bunk and built a fort. I put sheets under the mattress of the top bunk to surround the perimeter and stole a few pillows off of other beds. I kicked off my slippers and removed my tent sized scrub top. I will emerge again only for lunch and dinner. Lori seems like a mom on vacation. She’d rather be here than at home. I don’t yet share that sentiment. She seems to be a loner too, or just shy. She usually sits with me at mealtime but we don’t talk. It’s funny, I’m driven to sit with her now, partly because of the selfimposed seating assignments and partly because I feel it would be rude if I didn’t. I doubt she would care. Chad is too happy, too smiley, to be straight despite the fact that he’s married to a woman. She’s a personal trainer. But she only has three clients, “She’s very selective. She doesn’t work that much, she doesn’t have to.” Last summer they went to the Mexican Riviera and zip-lined between mountains. “She’s in great shape,” he says with an awfully gay grin and nod. He and his brother Mel are trying to build a company. They found a plant extraction that will help build muscle, is legal, and has no druggy after effects. They’re trying to patent this. “Medical companies are dying to get their hands on it.” Chad’s wife takes it. Despite her healthy lifestyle one day she started noticing some fibromyalgia type symptoms…random pains. This plant drug did the trick…and helped her build muscle.

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Another interesting piece I’ve picked up on this guy is his excessive friendliness, although not to me. He says, “How are ya?” to each and every nurse, cook and doctor in the place like it’s his duty to brighten everyone’s day. You can see his oozing self-satisfaction every time he does it. I guess he’s on some path to personal happiness (as if the rest of us were on some different path). He talks about how people can’t actually make choices unless they are “well.” “It’s about taking care of yourself.” Thanks, Chad. It’s not that I disagree I’m just annoyed at how this line of thinking manifests into an always happy personality type. It seems too forced to be genuine. I guess he knows a lot about science, or claims to. He was talking to a woman with really high triglyceriedes…or low, I don’t remember. He told her she needed some vitamin D and suggested that she spend 5-10 minutes a day staring up at the sun with her eyes closed. In his free time he sits on the computer. If he’s not schmoozing he’s computing. He hasn’t left the same table for two days. Allen. He is by all standard definitions, a creep. When I first saw him he was wearing sweats over jeans, a flannel, tortoise shell glasses, highlighter green Crocs and greasy, wavy hair down to his shoulders; scrawny. For the first 8 hours of our stay he was working on his MySpace profile. Tom is his only friend. His profile picture is a unicorn…his background is a lovely shade of magenta. I sat next to him while he was typing in the “who you’d like to meet” section. He was writing about a romantic meeting. He’s looking for someone fun and lighthearted seeking spiritual serenity, something like that. In the “about me” section he wrote that he is a collector of stories. He requested that anyone who had a story that no one believed…as in, an encounter with an angel or spirit of some kind “SEND ME AN EMAIL.” Perhaps he had some sort of experience that has led him to be so damn weird looking. I heard him speak. Seems normal, not anxious or socially awkward at all. He does carry around a fantasy book. So, he’s not a creep necessarily, he just dresses like one. Eryn. I first took her to be an anime kid. Likely, in part, because of her Asian boyfriend, Kim. They brought a Wii in with them…and a huge flat screen computer – the kind with the computer bits in the screen. Her clothes only match now that they are scrubs. Grateful Dead bear patterned shirt, peasant skirt with sequins, bright circle patterned mod socks and the ever-classic Chuck Taylor shoe with highlighter green laces. Not to mention the great tattoo across her chest – a bird that looks like it belongs at the top of a totem pole – hyper colorful. While all these superficial things do point to anime kid apparently she’s one of those jam band following types. Not a hippie like my parents were hippies, but the neo hippie; the yippie. Yes, she was wearing Grateful Dead…but that stuff is colorful and excessively patterned and could easily go either way. She definitely has the yippie, no makeup, bland

hair thing going. So, I’m actually going to peg her as a postmodern blend of anime, yippie and, oh yeah, circus performer. More akin to that kind of vaudeville – more performance, less freak show. She carries around with her these things that look like squash sized balls in red and white striped socks. She twirls them around…around her head and around each other. I can imagine them as glowsticks at a rave. Maybe she’s that kid too. A little too “look at me,” if you know what I mean. She was playing her music really loud this morning and singing along…looking around the room to see who was watching her…watching her sing unknown songs. Oh gee, what vast musical knowledge you have. Eat it. “I love dream world,” creepy nod. Sleep is one of her favorite pastimes, she says, although I imagine it’s an exaggeration. We all say that – we discuss how much we love sleep. It’s sort of a biological need, translate it as love if you like. When she said it though I immediately thought of the movie Paprika, a Japanese anime film in which dreams and reality come together. So, depending on who you are your love of sleep could be interesting or horribly normal…and boring. She was sent home first…for smoking. I’m bumped up a spot. This analysis is important because it gives me something to do in the company of these people because I don’t want to accompany them for their own worth. It keeps me entertained. People are worthless. Nobody has any value or use. I guess I would like if somebody had anything interesting to say. Nobody panders positively to my ego identity right now. I’m stranded. Everybody’s really selfish too. They would all stab you in the back in a heartbeat, given the chance, and since people don’t care about others, or me, I don’t care about them. Nobody cares about me, nobody loves me, and I’m upset about it. People are nothing more than sorry sacks of lies. Kim. If I had to guess I would say…Japanese. I would also guess second generation as he lacks any trace of an accent but appears full-blooded. I find it interesting that he dates a moderately J pop looking girl even though I assume he’s never lived in Japan. I wonder if he’s intentionally trying to identify with a culture that was never really his except in lineage or just has that tendency. If he is, in fact, second generation that means he still has grandparents in Asia somewhere and likely visits them so he certainly has access to that culture and scenery. He’s relatively quiet and not too bright…I have little information on this character. Kim on Mia: “She’s young.” Nate notes that she seems very freespirited. Kim agrees, “yeah but…” “It’s a catch-22,” Nate says. Kim talks about her constant need to attend jam festivals and parties. It seems he doesn’t approve. I gather she’s probably very flirty, flitting around the room, seeking approval all around.

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Tyrone watches basketball. He goes to the empty room to watch it by himself. The older women were watching Doctor Zhivago in the other room last night but he was by himself again this morning. I think he may be the biggest stereotype in the joint. He’s too cool to wear scrubs. He refuses to take off his black t-shirt or his gold chain. He has beautifully corn-rowed hair, very intricate and neat. When we first had to take urine samples, he set the cup on the back of the toilet and peed into the toilet. He had to down water for a half hour before trying again. At lunch the nurse called his name and he said, “here I go.” He was going up to eat. He had to say it twice as the nurse called his name twice because he was walking so slowly she hadn’t identified him yet. On the news we heard about a man who ran from the cops and got shot in the back. Apparently he had a shotgun and a warrant out for his arrest. “Fool, you runnin’ from the cops with a gun and a warrant, you askin’ for it, course the cops gonna shoot at you.” Everybody laughed. ? He said this with such authority on the matter. Apparently he knows not to run from the cops under these conditions. Thank you, Captain Obvious. I see him eyeball one of the nurses a couple times as she walks by. He tries to talk her up, she smiles and is polite but seems disinterested. Tonight: more basketball. Tomorrow: He asks me if I have any extra books. I lent him This is your Brain on Music. I wonder if he’s reading it. He assured me he would take care of it like his own. He reads the tagline, “something something national obsession.” He insists that, “it is, like an obsession, you know. Eveybody listens, you can feel lots of diffent emotions: happy, sad, you know. You know, when I’m angry I like to listen to a little jazz, it calms me down.” Now he’s playing poker with the post-menopausals. He’s the first person to really confront me with any sort of conversation. Dennis. If I saw him in an alley at night I would hold my breath as I walked by. He has neck tattoos, three tear tattoos under his eye (doesn’t that mean he’s killed three people and those are prison tats?), a little protruding chin beard and a black snow hat. His blood pressure is high and his respiratory rate is accelerated. He loved TV and only talks to his girlfriend. I noticed the other brother wouldn’t sit by him at mealtime. Christina has a lot of babies it seems. She is dating Dennis. I wonder if any of the babies are his. When she showed up she was wearing a Hello Kitty shirt “being this cute is exhausting,” a Betty Boop watch, and carried a duffel bag with a Playboy Bunny logo. She’s never paying attention to the nursing staff. She’s always on her phone. I’ve heard

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Cessa Cantrell

xviii Ashley d.G.

her talking about the babies “who’s gonna be watchin’ them while you workin’?” I’ve also heard the same story three times: she and Terrance had to “hussle” together the gas money to get somewhere…maybe here. I wonder who she talks to. Her friends, her mother? I assume each of them are hardly employed as someone is always available to talk to her for hours at a time…8 am, 10 pm…it doesn’t matter. I was going to the bathroom before bedtime. Christina walks in there on her cell phone, “He nothin’ he don’t do a fuckin’ thing, He’s gonna have to go back to Florida. My mom says ‘psychobilly’. Girl, I don’t got any fuckin’ money, I got bills…what bills you got?” The woman in the stall next to me, “oh honey, you don’t even want to know.” She’s laughing at the woman in distress, so am I. Christina is obviously stupid. “I got cable en gas en electric and trash.” She stays in the stall repeating these things. As I get out two postmenopausals are giggling at her. Those ladies have so much fun. I explained to them that I’m getting to know everyone in my group extremely well considering I haven’t spoken to them. My hands are dripping and the women are blocking both paper towel dispensers. One woman notices, “Oh, I’m sorry, come over here, sweet cheeks.” She’s angry because Dennis’ blood pressure is high, he might get kicked out of the clinic. “I givin’ him the silent treatment…he angry.” I go into the bunk room, turn off the light, remove the tentsized scrub top and slippers, draw my sheet curtain and try to get comfortable. I’ve already taken a five hour nap so getting to sleep will be complicated. I hear Christina come in. I know it’s her because she drags her feet. Her phone rings and she answers. She’s talking to a friend of hers, I assume. She talks about a yellow pair of Nike’s that cost $175. She hid them so the dog, Audacious, wouldn’t chew them up. She neglected to mention this expense when rattling off her bills. “Eveybody wants ‘em cause you can’t get ‘em around here.” Also, I learned that the dog had run away and was found. She says she’s glad he didn’t run away, “Not actually, I wish he would run away.” She started talking about a sagging eye that the dog has. She talks more about the dog, obviously she’s talking to whoever is caring for the dog while she’s in here. “We put him in the basement, chain him to the door handle…you have to have the kids tie another knot cause he squeezes out that tiny…we put a butter knife to keep the door…” whatever, I’m trying to sleep, trying to tune out. She hangs up before I anticipated. Spence doesn’t say a word. He’s always wearing headphones. He has a large unkempt beard and kind of creeps around with bad posture. He has a bit of a stagger to his walk. He plays his music loudly, last night it sounded like something…techno pop with screaming female singers. I wouldn’t have guessed that at all. Lance is pale with a very tidy blonde haircut and glasses. Seems like an overachiever. He

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doesn’t really fit in with this bunch. This is bunch of people who have no money management skills. I could easily see him behind a desk at some accounting firm. He doesn’t talk at all. He always wears a half grin. I only see him at mealtime and blood draws. I have no idea what he does. Ass Hat. This guy is a frat fuck. You can just tell. He doesn’t talk to anybody…but I’m sure it’s the result of an ingrained sense of superiority. He puffs his chest when he walks and maintains complete control over the swinging motions of his arms…so he can keep his biceps flexed. You never see him unless his number is called. Ope, spoke too soon – he’s curled up on a couch with a book, he’s bundled up in a blanket. Nate is excessively interested in Chad’s conversation. He looks athletic; they talk about supplements and various sports medicine related topics. “I used to take creatine.” “Creatine’s okay,” Chad says, “but if you’re eating right you’re body’s going to produce all the testosterone it could ever need.” Chad prophesizes to him about learning to take care of himself physically and emotionally. Put a fucking cork in it, Chad. These two have become casual buddies. They always sit together to eat and remain in the cafeteria on their computers for the bulk of each day, side by side. Nate wears flip-flops…there’s a lot of quiet ones in here. We’re watching the news segment where hidden cameras reveal jealousy between couples at dinner. A paid tall thin blonde actress as the server flirts with stocky bald man in snug t-shirt. His dark-haired big-nosed wife promises in a thick accent to, “rip every one a’ her finga-nails from her fingas… I’m gonna have to kill her, you know.” Nate says, “Oh those Italian women.” And then for good measure he says it again. Nate says things twice. And you see from the news, the Italian woman agrees, nobody can be trusted. Then her boyfriend proposed. I’ve taken to assessing the postmenopausals as well. There are seven of them. You can tell a couple of them used to be real beauties - #3 and #7. They seem to be the most subdued. I imagine a lifetime of not having to prove ones-ugly-self leaves well, little to be proven. They’re not absent from the group, they contribute but with little flamboyance. The most obnoxious, loudest one, #1, is also the fattest one. She has a dikey hair cut and loudly talks about her big ass. She makes the most jokes. They’re not always bad but if you make enough you’re bound to nail a few. #4 is the oldest. I like her the most. She’s the one who called me sweet cheeks. She makes the same joke over and over…but it’s always funny. “I’m sorry I can’t hear you, I’m

postmenopausal.” “What game are we playing again? I’m sorry I can’t stay focused, I’m postmenopausal.” She’s always giggling or rolling her eyes, wearing white ballet shoes. #5 is my least favorite. She tries really hard to be “cool.” When they were playing Skip-Bo she yelled “trick or treat” when she won a trick and sang “We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll (singing the harmony part) when she won another one. It’s like she’s constantly filling the air with unfunny jokes. Constantly trying to draw attention to herself. She yelled at Dennis to turn down the TV he was watching. Then she went on about “one person doesn’t need the TV that loud.” The postmenopausals have a monopoly on the flat screen and the movie selection likely because they have banded together. The mixed gender/mixed age group I am in doesn’t really care about one another, we have nothing superficially in common binding us. #5, “I want to see him in a field with no shirt on.” #6, “Glistening in the sun.” #1, “Oil those muscles.” They’re talking about a TV character. They’re really trying to hard…somehow. They have to prove their youth and sexuality by objectifying young men. They’ve pretty actively harassed Nate and Ass Hat, letting them know that they were watching them. They call them “hunkies.” Ooh, time for a walk, a chaperoned walk. Several of us take three laps around the perimeter of the clinic. #2 asks me if I have a job. It’s a boring story. I come back in, crawl back into my fort and become pleased with the smell of outside on my scrubs. It’s that earthy smell, not nasty like body odor, but still generally offensive, smells good right now. I’m trying to hide out and listen to This American Life in my fort but Lori is on the phone complaining in the bunk across from mine. She’s worried about her credit. She’s demanding the person on the other end of the line pay $1,000 to either an old landlord or an old roommate. “They want to talk to you!” She has to cover February, then they’ll take her deposit to cover March, then she’ll be cleared. This person wants the money by Thursday. It’s Tuesday now. “Is there anything that will prevent you from getting her the money on Thursday.” She’s repeated a variation of this twelve times at least. It’s highly annoying. “If my credit is ruined it’s going to take a long time to build it back up.” Uuuuuuhhhh…”So, I’m calling her now, okay?” Obviously she’s dealing with a serious pussy but Jesus lady, fucking pay rent. It’s just something you do once you’ve signed a lease. If you still have to cover February, you’ve obviously been slacking for a while.

Anne Gabriel xxi

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The Centermost Folds

PHOTOGRAPHS BY

Ashley d.G.

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Tommasi, Rafael, Valpolicella Classico Superiore, 2005

TOMMASI FAMILY VINEYARD IS AN ANCIENT VINEYARD LOCATED IN THE northwest region of Italy. An excellent region for the grapes that blend for this wine. Valpolicella is a light wine that is most enjoyable when it is quite young, before it is five years old. Paired with pasta, beef, white meat, fresh or aged cheeses. The 05â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Tommasi, Rafael, Valpolicella Classico Superiore, is intense ruby red. The nose reveals weak hints of fruit, even pineapple. It is not a big aromatic wine. On the tip of tongue a hint of cherry rolls back like velvet on the sides of the tongue to slightly sour, seemingly repelled from any salt or bitter on the tongue. The finish is quite smooth with hints of blackcurrants and pepper, lasting a reputable time on the pallet. Very drinkable. We rate it a find, and 90 points for the price range. $15.97 Whole Foods

RP DDG

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“SON, HERE’S SOME SUMMER”--FROM THE GATES, SOUVENIR PLACE ACROSS THE HIGHWAY. “Bang, bang, bang,” Like a gold shack on the water Wanna pick-a-nick out strawberries, “So, Brown, drink some hot totties,” givin’ sex-trope Babies an excuse f’ that fodder. Watch that yellow lake, little ‘an green?Boy, Sons O’ Guns: Punk it, Skunk it, Croup-Scoop Mommas Dig away, Staid it

Gummy, feel candy rubber have you a bad-bone, shady? formin’ yer fortunes pay: they won’t cure your sunburns.

Sun-tanned Soup Cans Anyone can make their Elvis Doo-Dad (‘An sell it) And not have to give any money to the Estate. Graceland’s a tourist Attraction?“Son, it’s the house where Elvis lived?Memphis, Tennessee.” “We ‘ah take a camera; “We ‘ah save our lives; “We ‘ah be hot, Brown.” (Brown.) (Son.) (Gettin’ some.) “Hey!

Oh, Honey, Ain’t this such a nice gait?”

Cessa Cantrell xxxi

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the majority of society would be absolutely clueless to Italyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s immense contributions to the horror genre. Italyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s horror scene boomed during the 70s, providing the world with such trailblazing icons as Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, and Dario Argento.

When discussing Italian cinema,

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Adding to this atmosphere of surreal terror is the music in his films. On most of Argento’s early works, he collaborated with the Italian band “Goblin”, and the music is amazing off its own merit. The music adds to the nightmarish state of Argento’s films, utiliz-

With all of these chips stacked against Argento, it seems that his merit as a filmmaker goes no farther than the gore-hounds and the exploitation junkies. Absolutely untrue. One simply needs to see Suspiria to discover that this man has an incredible talent for film, and a vast imagination to match. His use of color and lighting, while almost never subtle, are employed to create a dream-like unease in his films – a kind of “hallucinatory horror”. Green or red light will fill an entire room, casting dramatic shadows as the protagonist stumbles through this surreal hell that Argento has created. And all the while, the camera follows them with the mastery of an artisan.

Let’s examine the movies themselves, however, instead of simply singing the man’s praises. Critics of Argento point out that his movies often lack discernible character development, coherent plot, or artistic merit. Worse still, Argento is widely accused of being a misogynist, due to the large number of women suffering horrible deaths in his films. Argento himself even stated in an interview that he “would much prefer to watch [a beautiful woman] being murdered than an ugly girl or man” (though he does state that he cares not what people read into that statement). If one examines this closely enough, a parallel can indeed be drawn between Argento and Hitchcock – didn’t Hitchcock’s films feature beautiful women in horrible situations? Though not to the extent that Argento puts them through, but still...

Argento, son of Italian producer Salvatore Argento and Brazilian Model Elda Luxardo, actually got his start as a small-time film critic, going on to screenwriting (most notably his collaboration with Bernardo Bertolucci to write the story for Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti-western Once Upon a Time in the West). After this, he went on to direct his own films in the “giallo” style (mysteries containing extended use of violence, nudity, and expressive music). His first films fared well enough (backed by his father), but Argento really came into his own with the creation of Profondo Rosso (Deep Red in English), which is widely considered to be Argento’s masterwork, and which is the reason that Argento has gained the moniker of “Italy’s Hitchcock”. Afterward, Argento delved into the Supernatural horror genre with greats such as Suspiria (Argento’s other masterpiece), Inferno, and Opera (which is a blend of giallo and horror).

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Daniel Kissner

Argento is a truly amazing director, inspiring such horror greats as John Carpenter and Wes Craven. His films contain elements that were groundbreaking in the realm of horror. However, Argento’s recent work has lost him many fans for being tragically underwhelming. After his filming of Opera, considered by fans to be his last great film, Argento’s work has been declining and losing what made his films so distinctive in the first place – his distinct style. With the exception of perhaps La Sindrome di Stendhal, which still divides many fans, his work has seemed limp, uninspired, and weak. His most notable flops are an awful film based of The Phantom of the Opera (the book, not the musical) and Il Cartario, a weak film that seems completely devoid of anything... well... Argento. Sadly, his newest film, a completion of the trilogy started with Suspiria and Inferno, may be the final nail in his coffin. I found it to be a weak, “manistream” horror film, with poor acting and awful CGI – with the classic Argento barely (if at all) tangible. It kills me to say this, but Argento may have lost his flair. There may yet be hope, however – Argento is currently working on a film entitled Giallo, eliciting fond recollections of his earlier virtuosity. Will Argento, with the help of Giallo, return to his roots and regain his panache and style? Only time will tell. For now, however, I continue to adore what he was – not what he has become.

ing electronica to thicken the atmosphere that Argento sets. Argento and Goblin are like a key in a lock, a hand in a glove. Though the music is not always strong – In his film Phenomena (which stars a young Jennifer Connely), Goblin’s music is mixed with that of Iron Maiden, making one wonder what the hell Argento was thinking. Also, Inferno (his sequel to Suspiria) uses a different composer altogehter – Keith Emerson. Surprisingly enough, Emerson’s music works for the film (except for maybe one of the pieces – trust me, when you see the movie, you’ll know which one I’m talking about).

Écrive Honnête

DIRECTLY TRANSLATED: HONEST WRITING,

WRITTEN IN THE FRENCH FOR PUNCH BECAUSE HONESTLY, WE RESPOND well to that sort of thing. Or you mock it, depending on your vantage point of vindiction. In honest writing there is a certain degree of calling it like it is, or one should say, as you see it. See what we mean? Of course, you either do or you don’t, which is part of the beauty in honest writing. It’s about the naked relationship between the writer and the reader. The writer tells a story replete with all the elements he or she sees fit, and leaves out the rest. Sometimes convention is left behind. Sometimes the narrative becomes difficult to follow, or leaves out a part which absence offends the sensibilities of some readers. But it does not apologize. It does not edit. Ounce for ounce, this product tells more about the author to the reader, which is the essence of communication in the first place. We’re no longer as entertained by the story someone chooses to tell us in and of itself. We want to look at the teller. You love to read bios of your favorite artist, love to see their picture. The curiosity about the man behind the curtain is as important as the great Oz. The Oz alone is incomplete. It invokes the memory of Kerouac speaking to di Prima, I’d like to see the journal this came from; first thought, best thought. It’s a relatively subtle concept, but well-known and I think increasingly popular. A sort of primitivism—I said a sort of it, is manifesting in many realms and crannies of art world as we exist in the return from the pendulum apogee at the post-modern heights, embodied by monumental cleverness. It’s very important to be clever, as we all know. We will not forget what we’ve learned from post-modernism, but it’s certainly no longer novel. The post-modern swing of the pendulum was backlash against the opposite modern apogee. The nudity of art that we see zeitgeist tastes favoring now is somewhere in between where you end and I begin, to quote the ones who said it first. We still embrace the tricks and hoop-la of the modern and post-modern styles, but the philosophy driving art will transcend them. So we have a new stylistic paradigm, a new aesthetic being

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ever-born. I’ve begun to hover my finger around some trends, and poke at a few just to see what happens. It’s the scientist in me. And the work of Tomasz Kowalski struck my nerve first, painting in what Paloma called “really 2-D” with some disdain at first, until the idea of the tableaux became more clear. There was poignant symbolism involving spiders and flies, insect minds, systems of control, as well as systems of release, and frankly I found a lot of cognizant hope and a great sense of humor. Good color palette as well. He was represented at the Zak gallery (Mitte) in the fall

of ‘07 at the ripe old age of 22. Another artist represented by the Zak, Josef Bolf, has embraced what I would consider a more primitive paint wielding style to a roaring successful pleasure to certain of us, reminiscent of certain animation styles. The point is that we are finding pleasure in a shabby chic, a bare-bones, as it were, aesthetic which represents the status of so many of our minds— stripped of that intelligentsia persona that was once considered so important, now seeming insignificant, left only with our joys and pleasures, and perhaps some clever words with which to describe them. The word of the day is communication. We are a global community with instant access to networking and communication portals. We have technology at the behest of the masses for the creation of media by everyman. Media polish and craftwork are becoming child’s play. So the new differentiation is how complex and compelling is my content? Instead of spending the time sharpening and honing the point to Joycean perfection, one may use that energy to increase output. It’s a simple question of resource allocation, see?. Great ceramics instructors generally fall into two schools:

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Make me a perfect pot, or make me 50 pots in allocated time. Either way, you’ll get pretty good at making the pot in the time frame. Either way, you’ll effectively and entertainingly convey emotional/intellectual/experiential sensation, as a writer or other artist. Further, when the artist allows personal foibles, shortcomings, and biases to be more visible via decreased covering of one’s tracks, the reader/consumer is allowed increased scope of communication understanding, as two friends understand one another better than two strangers, talking face to face reveals more communication information than emailing. In short, the goal of the artistic endeavor is achieved more accurately. It feels like this acceptance of shortcomings in craft in exchange for increased transparency entre artist-viewer communications is the new pragmatism of our age. The aesthetic front. Animation, for example, trips the trigger of the honest writers because of animators’ consistent disregard for reason in their work, with the associated freedom to make happen in their world whatever suits the transmission of story. Emotions become changes in head size or color. Words can smack you in the face quite literally. For a great many solipsists, animation work embodies the truest representation of the world manifest. Contrary to some asinine commentary about Don Hertzfeldt’s short film Rejected (available via YouTube and Snotr), the work is not absurdist, but a use of absurdity to make abstract points about human experience in an entertaining way. This is what we call honest writing, where a point is effected without regard to reason, unedited for content, and sometimes awkward. It is not always loveable. But it feels more true than polished or seamless, if only by its aesthetic. And the proof shall be in the pudding, if the artist is enlightening, honest writing will show it; if the artist is thick, thus the like. Finally, there are four points which seem to hold standard as useful patterns of expression for this new aesthetic we’re describing. The repetition of a basic story idea in various lights and contexts, the appropriation of previously stated ideas, stretching of physical possibility/established reality, and the string-of-pearls of various shapes, sizes, and colors to achieve a unified emotional idea. See, right there, ideas are supposed to come in threes, anybody can tell you, and we just indicated four points. Can we do that? It doesn’t feel right, but fuck it, let’s see what happens. One just might be surprised. New shit has come to light! When we repeat a story in new contexts, with new characters, in new colors and shapes and backdrops, we show that reality is repetitive. We show that every person has similar experiences over and over and over again. We show how little personal freedom or novelty any person actually has. And we understand how much of our lives are based dictated by genetic programming, social expectation, and memetic tyr-

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anny It’s important to be able to shift the frame of mind into a new narrative “on a dime”, so to speak. It’s understood that a series of vignettes will convey a coherent idea even though the series be not a linear narrative. It seems at first like the expression of a coherent idea would require the coherence of a linear narrative, but once we understand the idea of emergent property and convergent property, we realize that 2 and 2 need not be the only equal of 4, but may be effected through any number of novel paths. When we know we’re wrong and spout it bold-faced with wiley eyes, we become our favorite murderer of the human condition (and you know you hate it)--what Henry Miller described as the enemy to the human sentiment, that figure that steps outside the womb of constant becoming to sit on the doorstep and speak Chinese that might give others pause to seek respite from the duty of constantly forgetting that you ever could or would stop heiling the dictator of your choices, those memes which tricked you into believing that they don’t exist by telling you that you actually control yourself. We stretch reality in art because we can, and because it’s the most accurate representation of the reality machine. See any cartoon, painting, read any piece of magical realism, surrealism, and any other discrete ism that illustrates my point. See the language? Art is about depicting something--the social conscious, or unconscious, depending on where or when, or the viewer, one supposes. And as for the appropriation of previously stated ideas: The implication is that said previously stated ideas are to be used without changing them from their previously stated form, but merely translocating them to new time and context. This is called quotation, and is used when someone has said what you want to say, and quite well, so that you don’t need to rephrase the expression. Issues of ownership arise like scorpion stingers to poison and destroy the free spread of ideas and information, poison born of the green and sometimes multi-colored blooded Juno Moneta. ...Bof. We’re not communists. We’re pirates who wouldn’t want someone to steal our money. But with bit torrents in my eyes, and the open source software community being so damned noble, and my inherent love of giving things away for the joy I see in someone else’s eyes like a mirror, the lines are blurred. And that, my friends, is Honest Writing.

Carson Moreno

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Andrew: I still feel like I’m missing something or taking something for granted. My line of thought: There’s a concrete world independent (relatively speaking) of human experience. This world is unknowable to us except as mediated through our senses, and the external world is then removed a further step when it is interpreted by us vis a vis our experiences, biases, socialized blah blah blah. We can try to hammer out a consensus understanding of the world, even if these attempts are imperfect. The best way to do this is with mathematics, since it’s the least impacted by our limitations. Math is a logical construct -- but so is language. (This may be a presumption on my part. Any linguists in the room?) The major dif-

Discussion on ference between the two, like I asserted in the previous paragraph, is that math is open to much less misinterpretation. (Again, maybe I’m simply assuming that there’s such a thing as “misinterpretation.” Still, I think we can agree -haha- that when you say something, there’s a specific message you intend to convey.) So what we end up with is this idea that verbal language is at its base functionally the same as mathematics. (I may be shortcutting something here.) The difference is in the efficiency and accuracy. But then we get computers. Here we come to a point I think I’m taking for granted -- that computers are merely a tool, and that applying to a text does not change the nature of the study or the text. It sounds like a lot of people in the field would disagree with me on that. Anyway, math, language, and all that. It seems to me that math gets about as close to validating structuralism as anything could. Language, on the other hand, with the accompanying baggage of human fuzziness, is where post-structuralism really comes into play. I mean, it seems that without our limitations, there’d be no problem. But we’re human, so... post-structuralism. I’ve been thinking about this for the last 29 hours, and I’ve only muddled the issue more for myself. Looking at this now, I can barely understand what I’m trying to say. The implication I’m beginning to see, however, is that I might be heading towards the idea that digital humanities is actually more valid than other attempts to study texts, since it uses tools that are less prone to error.

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Vanessa Steinroetter: I don’t know if this is a direct reply to your musings, but I wanted to take up Steve’s question of how computers can interpret texts - in the sense of reading meaning into printed text - again. Maybe, hopefully, my thoughts will be of interest, if not of help, to others. I have recently been reading an interesting little book on scholarly editions of texts (e.g. an authoritative edition of Moby-Dick or so), which introduced an interesting metaphor that made a lot of sense to me. According to the author, Jerome McGann, the printed text can be seen as an instruction set for the reader in order to recreate the actual novel, poem, essay, play, etc. This is nothing revolutionary of course, since reader-oriented interpretation has always maintained that each reading by each reader creates a different text. It does, however, help me visualize the problem that scholarship in the digital humanities has not been able to solve yet. Basically, any program you write will always just stay on the level of the instruction set, which - and I think Andrews says this too - is a more or less logical construct, with set rules of grammar, syntax and vocabulary that are either followed or broken. But, since it lacks the interpretive faculty of a human reader, it can never penetrate to the actual text, to what the letters and words mean, the invisible and transitory construct that appears with every reading, but only within the human reader’s mind. So, like Steve said with reference to the Whitman Archive, we can basically arrange the graphic representation of a literary text in all kinds of new ways, in new contexts, next to visual images or sound files, but the computer is still only working with the instruction set that a human reader can then use to recreate and experience the real literary work. Any interpretive work recorded on the Whitman Archive website is the result of human interpretation. I’m kind of venturing out on a limb here (since I have no experience with mathematical theories), but I would say that math probably has a much more universal assignment of signifiers to signified. Nobody really argues about what is meant by “1” or whether “2+4=6.” So, by convention, there are some fixed meanings attached to specific graphic representations that are so widely accepted that they approach absolute objectivity. The same cannot be said of language or of languages (just think of the differences between different languages and the difficulty translators often encounter when there is no exact word for a specific concept in the target language). I don’t know - does this make sense to other people? Is it too basic? Sorry if I’m stating the obvious. Andrew:

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This is really good, thank you! I think I’m in total agreement with your second paragraph, and I have only a couple additional thoughts on the third. My mathematician friends (as well as the movie “Contact”) say that math is the only truly universal language -- this is why we would use math to communicate with aliens. Even though we would share no common culture with them, we would still be able to talk via math, because math as we use it is merely a description of a system that exists outside us. By this I mean that the universe operates in this way regardless of our observations and descriptions; we are merely writing it down, i.e. the symbols we use don’t matter. Whether you represent the idea “four” with “4” or a purple polka-dotted three-dimensional pyramid, the idea is exactly the same -- no wiggle-room. Culture is irrelevant, and this extends to physics and chemistry, as well, if perhaps not to biology or geology. I guess I’m saying that I disagree (maybe?) with “...there are some fixed meanings attached to specific graphic representations that are so widely accepted...” I seem to be saying that the graphic representation isn’t really a part of the issue when we’re talking about math. What you go on to say about language, though—I like that. There’s a term in computer science: Turing complete. A Turing-complete language can do anything that any other Turing-complete language can do. Thereby (I think), any mathematical language (and by this I mean whether it’s Roman numerals or Egyptian whatever-they-used or even what aliens use) is Turing-complete. With human language, though, there is a failure on that count, you’re right. I suppose what I was trying to say about language as

Digital Hu

manities

logical construct is that all human thought can be reduced to logical representations (think 400-level philosophy) but again, 1) I’m not a linguist, and 2) ideas that exist in some languages can at best only be crudely represented in another, often without capturing any of the nuances—in other words, “what you said.” Stephen Ramsay: Andrew, you confess to “barely understand[ing] what you’re trying to say.” That’s understandable! You’re struggling with a very complex set of ideas -- one that many philosophers have pondered. The idea that mathematics is a “universal language” is a sugges-

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tive one, though you yourself are careful to make an important distinction about it. It’s not the symbols themselves that are universal, but the description of the phenomenal world in term of . . . well what, exactly?

A n d r e w

H a r n e r

e t .

One feels the need to define “mathematics.” “The study of numbers” won’t work (what about geometry?), and neither will “the study of symbolic manipulation” (what about programming?). The best definition I’ve ever come across comes from Keith Devlin (an excellent mathematician whose work you might enjoy). He says that mathematics is “the study of pattern.” So, mathematics describes certain patterns we can discern in the world (and some we can’t) using a rigorous system. That so much of the phenomenal world is describable this way suggests that the patterns being illuminated -- the relationships set forth -- are more than merely incidental, which tempts us into thinking that “mathematics” is itself universal. But saying that might confuse the system with the thing described (bearing in mind that mathematics does not always describe things in the world). But let’s stipulate this if we can. Let’s say that mathematics is a system that successfully (and at times, unerringly) describes certain aspects of the world (like the motion of planets, the laws of thermodynamics, the distribution of branches on a tree, population growth, the behavior of economies, and so forth). Because it is so successful at doing this, we call it a “universal” system. When we turn to language, then, the analogy we’re looking for is not with language per se, but with some system that can successfully describe the patterns we see. In this sense, mathematics seems most analogous to “grammar.” Now, grammar is a logical, rigorous system that (like mathematics) is both descriptive and predictive. We can use it describe the patterns we see in natural language behavior, and we can use it to predict which utterances will be valid within the language and which will not. Here’s the problem (as I see it): No grammar yet devised has successfully done this. And to prove it, all you need to do is open up any book of poetry. In such books, you will find thousands of violations of the rules laid out by any of the extant descriptive grammars. You will again and again find instances of utterances that (according to the

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system) cannot occur. And it’s not just poetry. If you google around, you’ll find lots of instances of language behavior that are perfectly “sensible” communicative acts, but which really do violate the logic of the system. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about the kind of grammar you learned in grade school, or the more sophisticated ones that linguists use (Chomsky’s generative linguistics, transformational grammar, or Austin and Searle’s “speech act theory,” to cite a few examples). One of the reasons I’m so crazy about Wittgenstein, is that I think he comes closest to explaining why this is so, and the implications of the fact that language does *not* conform to the rules of logic are very profound indeed. There’s another concept that we might throw into the mix here (just to keep things interesting), and that has to do with the relationship between computation and mathematics. On the one, there’s a natural alliance. Historically, computation grew out of the attempt to answer certain difficult questions about mathematics, and we can easily use computers to do mathematics. But at some level, they really aren’t the same at all. Mathematics is a fundamentally “declarative” endeavor. That is to say, a proposition in mathematics declares that some relationship exists (and tries to show what that relationship is, in terms of the more fundamental relationships declared in the system). Computation, by contrast, is a fundamentally “imperative” pursuit, in that a computational proposition (a program, say) is principally concerned with *how* we do something or other. So when we draw lines between mathematics, language, and computation, we have other difficult matters to deal with: like, can literary study be understood as an imperative pursuit? This is much on my mind, because I’ve been writing about this subject lately. There’s one thing I’m very skeptical about, and that’s the idea that computation might be a more valid form of reasoning about language and literature than other forms engagement. And that’s because I don’t think language can be made to fit within a rigorous meta-system. But you’ll find lots of scholars in DH who agree with you. There are many, many people in DH who regard ordinary literary critical judgments as basically squishy and entirely subjective, and there are just as many who have devoted their lives to proving that these subjective statements are either true or false using computers (or, at least, they’ve tried to do that). I have constructed very elaborate arguments against this position, but the arguments wouldn’t be elaborate if the basic idea weren’t so suggestive. I love Vanessa’s idea (or rather, Vanessa’s eloquent explication of McGann’s idea) about thinking in terms of “instruction sets,” and I’m especially drawn to the consequent notion that our programs might be instruction sets for certain ways of doing things with texts -- or better, certain ways of seeing texts. I did want to add, however, that

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mathematicians (or at least some mathematicians), do indeed argue about what is meant by “1” or whether “2+4=6.” One of the most strident attempts to do that in the twentieth century was undertaken by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead in a 3-volume book called Principia Mathematica. What that book tried to do is derive all of mathematics from a set of fundamental axioms. It’s rough going. The most famous line is, “From this proposition it will follow, when arithmetical addition has been defined, that 1+1=2,” which appears on page 379! That work raised two extremely important questions: 1. Can you derive a contradiction from the axioms set forth in the Principia? (i.e., is the system “consistent”) 2. Is there such a thing as a mathematical statement that cannot be proven or disproven within the system set forth by the Principia?

al.

(i.e., is the system “complete”)? The answer, as it turns out, is “yes” and “yes” (or rather, that a mathematical system -- any mathematical system -- cannot be complete and consistent at the same time). And one of the people who demonstrated this was none other than Alan Turing. He did it by “imagining a machine,” and that imagining led directly to the invention of the modern computer. However, it also left mathematics in a bit of a quandary. One of most important intellectual crises of the twentieth century came with the realization that this “universal language” contained an intractable, irrefragable flaw. Andrew, let me recommend a book that I think you’ll really enjoy. It’s called The Universal Computer: The Road from Leibniz to Turing, by Martin Davis. This is essentially a “mathematical history” of the idea of computation (written by one of the great pioneers of the theory of computation). It’s a very readable, completely fascinating book that touches on all of this.

Andrew Harner et. al.

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unframed 16 X 24 inch inkjet prints

Diana Goodwin Untitled : $250

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Contributors Ed Wilson is a freelance writer living in Vancouver, Canada; Portland, Oregon and Cyberspace. Edward, known online as Fenris23, specializes in rediscovering magical techniques in the fields of psychology and sociology. He is Co-Author of The Art of Memetics with Wes Unruh and his next project will be space/time/punctuation, an exploration of the experience of space and time. Wes Unruh is an editor for the blog at Alterati.com and is one of the founding members of the Key64.Net website. He has spoken at Esozone and is currently working on an experimental non-fiction book entitled Unrelated Thoughts and is also working on a novel entitled Memwar. His book The Art of Memetics, co-authored with Edward Wilson, will be published in fall of 2008. He lives in upstate NY with his wife, their cat, and the cat’s large yellow ball of yarn. RPDDG is a conglomerate figure who will author wine reviews for THE BENEFACTOR. They live in Western Nebraska, where they work, play, and exercise on the Bowflex. One has a two-piece blues band and is currently working on an autobiographical novel. The better half writes poetry and songs often employing her own invented language. Carson Moreno has a MFA from the University of Florida in Gainesville. He studies acoustical biophysics and perpetual motion machines. Dan Kissner is an aspiring screenwriter if he could only make himself sit down and do it. He’s very, very busy. Sleeping. Andrew Harner has been an undergraduate university student for about six years now. He was a cub scout for two years, a boy scout for seven, and scout master for one year. He’s been planning on buying a typewriter soon, which somehow seems like a project of noteworthy size and skill requirement. Andrew received an award for his writing in the fifth grade, for which he was honored at a dinner with the branch manager of a local bank. He was even invited to see the vault.

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Anne Gabriel

could not be reached in regard to the biography page.

Ashley dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Avignon Goodwin is a curator of art and ideas. She has a BFA from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. She collects very small things, dresses and shoes, and she cuts out pictures of both odd and common items from print publications and collects those. Additionally, she collects items of kitsch nostalgia, old magazines and antique Halloween masks. She collects vintage photographs, cigar boxes, scarves... Lisa Dalla Gassa will never make it. She doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a very sunny outlook on life, and could go at any time. She just wants a grapefruit tree in her backyard to get her from moment to moment, and that will be just fine. Cessa Cantrell is a gentleman and a scholar.

free for now

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