Friends

http://www.jonathancarroll.com/blog1/2009/11/carrollblog_1116_5.html

After they broke up, she continued to send him things in the mail occasionally. Nothing big-- CD's she made of favorite music, new books she read and liked, small stuff. She did it simply because she thought he would like them too and she wanted to share them even though they no longer had contact. Just a nice thing to do. According to the rules of romance you're not supposed to do that after you've stopped seeing someone, but who made those rules? She had loved him and they were very happy once. Wasn't that reason enough to send things now and then that she believed would make him glad? They had gotten along so well when they were together, she was certain he would understand now why she did it. I liked this and I think you will too. I remember the things you liked. That's all. Nothing more or less. I hope you enjoy it. But he didn't understand. Eventually he wrote her a short curt note saying "I don't know how to feel about these things you've been sending me." Once they'd told each other essential secrets about themselves and confessed to weaknesses they had tried to hide from the rest of the world their whole lives. For a short blessed time, they'd felt both safe and at home with one another. Despite that intimacy, now she had become only a stranger bearing gifts and of course we should always be suspicious of them.

As I can feel unconsciousness coming on, I leave you with this:

Photo: Tazlimur
Costume, Hair/make-up: Jessica Rowell
Model: Zoetica Ebb
Couch courtesy of Allan Amato

I love Moon Wiring Club. And not just because I got their new record this weekend, which I am going to play tonight because I’ve been sick and/or unconscious with some weird bug since Friday morning. Oh no. (What if it cured me?) No, I love them because they do things like this, too:

In 1982, Gelographic RadioTelevision co-broadcast a test transmission for the tentative BBC5 channel.

Although the station idents were deemed a massive success, sadly the only known survivors of this viewing were unable to be traced, due to radiation issues. This archive footage has been recently unearthed, and provides a tempting glimpse into what those who watched through the smoked glass were able to see.

The musical accompaniment, acclaimed in some quarters, features on the new Moon Wiring Club album ’Striped Paint for the Last Post’, due ’sometime’ November. Certainly before the feast of Syllabub in any case.

Remember: confusing electronic music is a great British tradition.

• Help Phoenix Marie
  "We are raising funds to get urgently needed medical treatment for our beloved friend, Phoenix Marie. She has been battling a life-threatening progressive heart valve disease since 2006, when she had her first heart failure and near death experience. With no insurance to cover her, Phoenix sold almost all of her valuable belongings and clothing and did eBay sales for half a year in order to see a specialist and receive the tests and costly x-rays needed to diagnose her condition. Her heart disease was a congenital defect (from birth) that was apparently misdiagnosed in childhood as harmless and left unchecked…"
  (tags:people )

Apple has filed for patent on a technology they call an "enforcement routine," that’ll display ads on pretty much any device with a screen and demand that you view them — or else you don’t get your device back:

Its distinctive feature is a design that doesn’t simply invite a user to pay attention to an ad — it also compels attention. The technology can freeze the device until the user clicks a button or answers a test question to demonstrate that he or she has dutifully noticed the commercial message. Because this technology would be embedded in the innermost core of the device, the ads could appear on the screen at any time, no matter what one is doing.

http://www.jonathancarroll.com/blog1/2009/11/carrollblog_1115_4.html

The Sum of Man
by Norah Pollard

In autumn,
facing the end of his life,
he moved in with me.
We piled his belongings—
his army-issue boots, knife magazines,
Steely Dan tapes, his grinder, drill press,
sanders, belts and hacksaws—
in a heap all over the living room floor.
For two weeks he walked around the mess.

One night he stood looking down at it all
and said: "The sum total of my existence."
Emptiness in his voice.

Soon after, as if the sum total
needed to be expanded, he began to place
things around in the closets and spaces I'd
cleared for him, and when he'd finished
setting up his workshop in the cellar, he said,
"I should make as many knives as I can,"
and he began to work.

The months plowed on through a cold winter.
In the evenings, we'd share supper, some tale
of family, some laughs, perhaps a walk in the snow.
Then he'd nip back down into the cellar's keep
To saw and grind and polish,
creating his beautiful knives
until he grew too weak to work.
But still he'd slip down to stand at his workbench
and touch his woods
and run his hand over his lathe.

One night he came up from the cellar
and stood in the kitchen's warmth
and, shifting his weight
from one foot to the other, said,
"I love my workshop."
Then he went up to bed.

He's gone now.
It's spring. It's been raining for weeks.
I go down to his shop and stand in the dust
of ground steel and shavings of wood.
I think on how he'd speak of his dying, so
easily, offhandedly, as if it were
a coming anniversary or
an appointment with the moon.
I touch his leather apron, folded for all time,
and his glasses set upon his work gloves.
I take up an unfinished knife and test its heft,
and feel as well the heft of my grief for
this man, this brother I loved,
the whole of him so much greater
than the sum of his existence.

• BBC NEWS | World | Europe | ‘Body sold’ to Russia kebab shop
  "Police in Russia have arrested three homeless men suspected of killing a man, eating part of the body and selling other parts to a kebab shop"
  (tags:crime )

Kimberly Poeppey-Del Rio is an antique dealer and paranormal investigator from Milwaukee. Some of her sightings have been published in the books Hunting the American Werewolf by Linda Godfrey (Trails Media Group, 2006), Weird Wisconsin by Linda Godfrey and Richard Hendricks (Sterling, 2005), and in Loren Coleman’s revised edition of Mysterious America: the Ultimate Guide to the Nation’s Weirdest Wonders, Strangest Spots, and Creepiest Creatures (Paraview, 2007).

Q: What does morbid curiosity mean to you?

A: Morbid curiosity is something most people have, but often don’t want to talk about. It’s that attraction to weird and unusual things, like a car accident. Morally, they don’t want to look, but can’t seem to tear their eyes away. For some of us, morbid curiosity is just part of life. We don’t notice we have it, but others often look at us kind of funny.

Q: How did you discover Morbid Curiosity magazine?

A: I don’t recall how I found the wonderful magazine, but after I found it, I made sure it was always on the shelf in our store!

Q: Did you have more than one piece in the magazine?

A: I only had one story, “Another Day, Another Dead Guy,” which was published in Morbid Curiosity #8 and reprinted in Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues. It’s about me and my dad purchasing items from a house where the people died and decomposed for quite a while before anyone found them.

Q: How did the piece you have in the book come to be written?

A: When I was offered a chance to have a story published, my husband and I had a hard time picking one. I have so many! We chose “Another Day, Another Dead Guy” because it was fresh in my memory, which made writing easy and fast.

I guess the only thing I would add to the story now is that I still don’t think my dad believed me when I told him not to stand on the big black stain on the carpet because that’s where the lady decomposed! Perhaps he’s in denial, because dancing around on the stain of a dead person’s decomposed fat is just too gross to admit to.

Q: Have you had another morbid experience that would make a good story?

A: I have lots of morbid stories to tell!

Q: What was your favorite story in the zine, other than your own?

A: I always loved reading other people’s strange true stories, but I must admit my favorite was the one about the fellow who would join bums in hidden subway tunnel rooms for group sex in the dark! Wow! I felt so normal after reading that one! LOL! (Editor’s note: That’s “Viral Portraits of Desire without Memory” by Doug Rice, Morbid Curiosity #3.)

Q: What are you up to these days?

A: I’m married to the same wonderful guy. I’m still a paranormal investigator, with almost 30 years under my belt. I’m still an antique dealer. My band “The Shadowpeople” has a new lineup, but we are still making great spooky music that can be heard at www.myspace.com/theshadowpeople.

http://www.jonathancarroll.com/blog1/2009/11/carrollblog_1114_4.html

Coming towards me is a ravaged junkie. One of those young dirt-covered, head nodding, eyes half-closed, slow wobbly-walking sad cases you can pretty much bet will either be dead or in a hospital before the year is out. Someone I know calls them '4th Dimension People' because they don't really live here anymore. They're somewhere else-- sort of alive, sort of dead, sort of in a 4th dimension someplace we earth inhabitants have never been or experienced. I start to walk a wide arc around him as he approaches. But when we pass each other, I suddenly smell the most wonderful cologne. I've never smelled such an aroma before. It's delicious, mysterious, beautiful and there is no question that he is wearing it.

Q: What does morbid curiosity mean to you?

A: “Yes, I’m sure there’s a good reason why that sort of thing is not discussed, but tell me anyway.”

Q: How did you discover Morbid Curiosity magazine?

A: I was invited to the first issue.

Q: You had a bunch of pieces in the magazine. Which was your favorite?

A: I had several essays and book reviews in the magazine. My favorite essay is “Closed Casket.” (Editor’s note: Brian read that story, from Morbid Curiosity #5, in a coffin at the Museum of Death in June 2001). My favorite book review? Prolly Death to Dust: What Happens to Dead Bodies by Kenneth V. Iserson (Morbid Curiosity #1) or maybe The Blood of Strangers: Stories from Emergency Medicine by Frank Huyler (Morbid Curiosity #4), which I started writing at my father’s funeral. I mention that because it’s a perfect example of just how true the phrase “morbid curiosity cures the blues” has been.

Q: How did the piece you have in the book come to be written?

A: After the incident in the standing cell, I found it literally impossible to tell that story without a dozen or more digressions into other aspects of the visit to the camp. Setting the whole thing down -- even as what I now regard as a rambling narrative -- brought the experience into a sort of focus, one that I’ve been, I don’t know...gratified?... to hear has touched the feelings and imagination of a number of people.

It’s like the story of the Germans asking Picasso about the painting Guernica: “Did you do that?” To which he is supposed to have replied, “No, you did.” All the people who’ve made Auschwitz what it is, past and present, made the essay. I just wrote what it felt and looked like that Easter Saturday in 1995.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to add to that story now?

Brian at the Museum of Death

http://www.jonathancarroll.com/blog1/2009/11/carrollblog_1113_3.html

She said: I think about you every day.
He said: I think about you all day long.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/very-sekrit-passphrase.html

"We think they should come over to the merch table and point to this poster...




...and say 'That chick in the yellow corset crowdsurfing looks kind of hot. I wonder if she's dating anyone?' And then they get something for free."

"DAY-GLO HUMAN UDDERS!"

(I feel I must point out that these are really not what are best in life, and that Molly Crabapple should be arrested and probably waterboarded for making me look at this.)

(And also this.)

(Cowgirls. Honestly.)

• Constellation 04: Cover for Sag/Cap issue
  "Here's a sneak peek at the new cover for Constellation's Sag/Cap issue out at the end of the month featuring Dame Darcy, Peter James from "Some Secret Place", Pluto in Cap, Travelmania, gorgeous photographs by Christina Labey, & horoscopes based on your inner animus. issue will be available at the end of the month."
  (tags:peopleiknow magazine design covers )
• Holy water dispenser combats spread of swine flu - Telegraph
  "…a churchgoer waves his or her hand under a sensor and the machine spurts out holy water."
  (tags:cult tech )

Because Ariana’s sliiiightly crazy, she’s created a free HAPPY()SAD theme for Tumblr users. This is, of course, based on the HAPPY()SAD t-shirt she and Rich Stevens released yesterday.

Q: What does morbid curiosity mean to you?

A: Morbid curiosity is an irresistible and largely insatiable urge not just to know, but to also experience life, especially the less mundane things.

Q: How did you discover Morbid Curiosity magazine?

A: If I recall correctly, I had been slinking around the Castro (in San Francisco) during my internship year and came across a very well-stocked magazine shop that had my favorite underground zine at the time (My Pathetic Life). I discovered this new, unusual magazine: Morbid Curiosity, volume 1.

Q: Did you have more than one piece in the magazine?

A: I contributed two pieces: “Happy Trails in Southeast Asia” (from Morbid Curiosity #3, which appears in Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues) and “The Chronology of Two Carnivores” (from MC#2), co-written with Diego Ruiz, which included some weird histopathology I performed.

Q: How did your “Happy Trails” piece come to be written?

A: I usually get a flash of an idea and sit down and write it before it escapes. The quality is usually inversely proportional to the time I spent writing. I recall writing “Happy Trails” pretty quickly; it was stream of consciousness/memory writing.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to add to that story now?