Every Day Is Halloween 4: All-Purpose Stabulation/Squibulation Person

Every Day Is Halloween 4: All-Purpose Stabulation/Squibulation Person
by William D. Tucker

A god-the God?-answers the sweaty, gross prayers of some degenerate aspiring filmmaker, most likely some jerk-off film school graduate ... 

And some god-the God?-spake . . .

saying . . .

If you're willing to inject a virus into the computer graphics pipeline

while wearing DIY prosthetics makeup
of a monstrous being you spent a month of Tuesdays cooking up inside your brain
must be an original
no cosplay allowed

AND

you agree to shoot using only film and 100% analog editing equipment and techniques
no sound,
must be black and white

AND

you light one of the letters of the Hollywood sign on fire-any letter, so long as it burns

then
you will be blessed
with an All-Purpose Stabulation/Squibulation Person
a kind of ersatz human from another plane of existence
(e.g. a recent theatre school graduate)
who has been completely neutralized, stripped of all individuality by advanced acting techniques
who you will be permitted to use as you see fit
in your artsy-fartsy black and white shot-on-actual-film movie

typically,
end-users stab and/or shoot these neutrals after imbuing them with the identity of their choice of fantasy target
(identity induction protocols/procedures are included in an accompanying instruction booklet found inside a kangaroo-ish skin pocket in the abdomen)
it could be
man, woman, child
someone you knew in life,
someone powerful,
someone evil,
someone innocent,
mom,
dad,
an ex,
someone you imagine,
even a fictional character,
I mean
vengeance fantasies are stupifyingly common among aspiring filmmakers these days.

BUT
you don't have to go down that road
you could cultivate your neutral into a real human being
befriend them
nurture them
set them free
even if that almost never happens-you could do that shit
you really could
you could break that mold into tiny pieces
but the odds will most likely exert a crushing power over your pittance of "free will,"
and you will run to type
and make some kind of an arty fucking snuff film
as per usual
as per the norm
just another angry little shit with a camera,
aaaand
a head full of power/domination fantasies
nothing special

but go ahead and prove my ass wrong
wrong as Richard Nixon
I would be very amused by that
amused AF
-October 2017

Copyright 2017 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission. 

Free Agent 2: The Throne of Contemplation

Free Agent 2: The Throne of Contemplation 
by William D. Tucker

As part of my indoctrination into RIVALCORP, I am cracked, scanned, and drained-which means I sit in a well-appointed Throne of Contemplation  with all my bodily needs attended to, the drug-pump primed just so, and my choice of authorized flickers via direct brain stimulation. I re-watch the Beverly Hills Cop Trilogy, including the TV edits. I'm actually a really big defender of Beverly Hills Cop 3, and I even think there are some inspired cuts in the censored-for-television version. A couple of the shootings are actually more abrupt and violent with the cartoonish squib-work cut out, but other scenes do suffer. I go through every iteration of the Beverly Hills Cop saga before cycling into a state of lucid dreaming.

I got into the habit some jobs ago of refusing to dream when locked down into the Throne of Contemplation, because I didn't want my internal phantasia to be recorded and made property of the system. But then they would just interdict the sleep state, and that took awhile to resist. Once I got into lucid dreaming I forced the most depraved scenarios and imagery into the system: vast howling chancroids vomiting up greasy feces and broken off teeth; syphilitic samurai seppuku; cockroaches eating eyeballs out of Muppet Baby faces; a U.S. president eating nothing but hair for every meal ... but I got worn out with that routine.

Why bother to monkey wrench the system? The system is, itself, Sabotage Incarnate. The true believers keep it puttering along on a lean mixture of malice and avarice. Juvenile shock perversities  are amusing dirty jokes to spice up a puritanical day.

Moreover, I'm certain every loyal employee has engaged in such acts of so-called resistance. I got the idea from a colleague who has been mostly deleted from my memory. The system is fully capable of total erasure of an individual identity but that method has been deemed, for now, to be inefficient. The web of an individual mind has too many useful strands, connections, intersections, and working networks to be obliterated outright when it can just be steered onto the right path with the proper rewards and stimulation. Some pruning-sure, fine, and they have refined that capability to a shockingly precise degree. I admire it. I do. What they've achieved is absolutely astonishing. Solo units such as myself have largely seen an enhanced quality of life at the end of all processes. So why fuck with shit?

I don't exactly love Big Brother, or whatever you want to call it-it ain't that warm of a sentiment.
And I wouldn't say He loves me.
But He's done right by me in terms of the basics.
-August 2017

Copyright 2017 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission. 

Free Agent

Free Agent
by William D. Tucker

Mid-cycle
None of the faces or uniforms or masks or languages registered
ran diagnostics on my eyes, ears, heart
it wasn't my eyes, ears, heart

I went to the company store to buy new getup
was promptly removed from the facility

And they were kinda rough with me
which was funny at first
made me feel like Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop,
but they weren't truly abusive,
didn't throw me through a plate glass window

The paramilitaries looked new and shiny
upgraded from combat webbing and shaved heads
into a league of techno demi-gods
or a cosplay science ninja team
heads encased in robo-insectoid helmets

On the street before the great and convoluted facility
I stood crying
I tried so hard to suppress all emotion
but the internal drug-pumps had already deactivated upon my termination
the tears flowed
I blubbered even.

I stood there for an hour or more,
half hoping I'd be shot by a shiny paramilitary
but no dice.

I stalked down the middle of the road,
hoping to be rundown,
but all the autocars swerved just so,
even broadcasting messages of compassion, recommending suicide prevention hotlines, Jesus Christ,
Buddha, L. Ron Hubbard;
one especially devout car offered to roll with me along my dark path,
but I mouthed insipid syllables 'til it left me alone with a pamphlet full of mistranslated, out-of-context Bible quotations.

A half hour passed
I settled into a stalking rhythm which the autocars found agreeable,
just a little deviation from their ground-plans
didn't even get clipped
I'd always wanted to test the collision detection on these machines
and an autocar pulled up next to me, told me to get in, and something inside me responded to a signal
-the chem-pumps I think-
which guided me to yes.

In the air conditioned cab, stimulant-alcoholic drinkbox in my hand
the autocar spoke at length about all the opportunities that awaited me inside RIVALCORP
which wasn't the true name, but a cipher
because the real name was knowledge reserved to the executive class
or possibly just the great algorithms in the Cloud of Clouds
the near immaterial  deities rumored to have the whole game on lock these days.

I couldn't even recall the name of the company I was just fired from,
my mind only coming up with PREVIOUS GIG, PASTCORP, variations on that general theme.

I swiped my consent through screen after screen
of terms and conditions
just like I did when I got headhunted for PASTCORP.

Why do they even allow any memories, for fuck's sake?
They write in so many strategic erasures and interdictions,
everybody's hacking into everybody else's chem-pumps,
just do the full wipe, fer Hubbard's sakes!
I'm pretty sure they like it like that-leaving in just enough to promote an illusion of free will,
easy enough to frustrate, tip over into despair in a world of unlimited choice,
and thus conformity, obedience, self-indoctrination follow on with the quickness
to still the cognitive dissonance.

Also,
a full wipe just means you gotta increase resources devoted to re-skilling, re-indoctrination lead times,
so,
yeah,
it's cool.

The autocar regaled me with readings of official poetry as it whisked me towards another great and convoluted facility. The verses stirred my at-a-distance-controlled heart. Shit would work out for a few hundred cycles more, I would know where I needed to be.
-August 2017

Copyright 2017 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission. 

Hopper

Hopper 
by William D. Tucker

1.
White light against a plaster wall
Looking with my back turned.
Window is the vacancy of intersection.
A perspective on one aspect of the jagged upper texture
There is pointing and then there are jabs from the buildings.
You sit there, white light on your back.
The room is so suffused with cold, clear light.
Nothing is hidden yet nothing is revealed in the cold, clear light.
We speak of matters with a speech that the Observer does not render exactly
In the rendering, we become a pantomime.
Nowhere above and beyond this room,
So filled with light,
Can we ever speak truly of the vacant point of intersection.
Who has ever spoken before the cold, clear light suffused this room,
How was it even possible?
It isn't blinding, it isn't sudden, in fact it lacks all flourish or sensationalism.
The cold, clear light simply is, and it is in a most unavoidable way.
Nothing hidden, nothing revealed.
Looking with my back turned.

2.
Drink. Purchase. Sitting. Another drink/purchase.
Routine of the room of the cold, clear light.
Papers. Organize. Read. Papers. Sort. Prioritize.
This is the work of the room of the cold clear light.
Pillows. Laughing. Porch. Train car. Outdoors. Indoors.
This is the room of the cold, clear light.
Green, beige, red, blue, yellow, purple:
These stand out in strange new ways beneath the cold, clear light.

3.
He wished to communicate sunlight on the side of a building.
Many received his communication.
Others received many other things besides.
Drink. Routine. Cold. Clear. Light.
"More real than real" as one person put it.
Critical response: good, suffused with the cold, clear light.
He did not try to explain, except for elaborate designs and plans.
Many view. Experience an array of emotions.
There is a look of awareness at the science and rigor of construction.
Science/rigor/effort is reduced to "emotional response."
Cold, clear light becomes invisible.
"I get a sense of loneliness," one person says.
"This makes me feel a certain way," says another.
Rigor, effort, construction, science subsumed by "emotion."
Opinion. Subjective. I like. I think. I feel.
Drink. Routine. Cold. Clear. Light.
Looking with my back turned, I see them turning away having observed,
felt, thought, and processed very briefly the offering before them.

4.
Plans. Construction. Intersecting lines of purpose.
The science and the rigor necessary to achieve that specific effect.
"I want to communicate sunlight on the side of a building."
Result: opinions.
I think. I feel. Maybe. I like. I did not like.
I am approached for moments, perhaps, having extensively researched, practiced, and calculated myself.
Moments.
The rigor disappears. Lines of intersecting purpose are softly, gently smudged into pleasant, distinct blurs of opinion.
Invisible. Cold. Clear. Light.

5.
Opinion passed.
Return of routine.
Beyond initial foray into understanding.
Drink. Office. Papers. Organize. Dance. Sunbathe.
Analysis:
Cold, clear light becomes visible perceptible
Intersecting lines of purpose rise to the surface.
"I can see the wires."
Repetition of analysis.
Rigor and science unearthed
Notebooks are thumbed through
Paradigm shift/analysis again:
Cold, clear light hides nothing and reveals nothing.
Analysis:
"In this place there are fewer, wealthier people. No one has any memory of the past. Everyone is prosperous, satisfied, happy, and no one quite wants to remember how it got that way."
Paradigm shift/analysis again:
"He is expressing a deeply ambivalent attitude towards his subject matter. The elements of the voyeuristic collide with an overwhelming sense of the privacy of each person's universe. Ultimately, the voyeuristic wins out, because, alas, the end result is the work itself. He could not resist looking into the realms of privacy and then sharing what he saw with others."
Paradigm shift/analysis again:
"It is the portrayal of man's environment as supremely indifferent that wins out over everything else. His settings are neither threatening nor comforting, destructive nor supportive, good nor evil. His humans, likewise, have learned to dwell in this environment with all harmony by becoming creatures of supreme indifference themselves."
Analysis. Results ad infinitum. Each analysis different.
Return of opinion.
Opinion refined.
Opinion/analysis synthesis.
Still opinion.
Cold, clear light hides nothing and reveals nothing.
-February-April 2003

Copyright 2003 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission. 

living skeleton actor fuck (7/24/15 version)

living skeleton actor fuck

by William D. Tucker

role puts flesh and guts and blood on me

it used to make me feel complete

now it makes me feel heavy, arbitrary, old,

like I was never quite here

it’s fuckin’ weird

Because

I have all the evidence in the world

that I was here

never really went away

never gave up

but, uh, I dunno.

the feeling inside

does not change

a lot of work,

a lot of awards,

a lot of love from all over the world

but it’s, uh, it’s definitely a king of shreds and patches kinda deal

yeah . . .

. . . multiple past personas inhabiting my body at an advanced age . . .

OVERCROWDING OF PERSONAS

My head is thick with Personas-I won’t lie . . .

but for my next project

very stripped down

just the bones

black box theatre

no vocal chords, lips, tongue, lungs,

none of that.

maybe just have the air conditioning cranked up to the max

with, like, the script in front of the vent

breeze will lift the text off the page

let the words whisper right through me . . .

heh,

won’t that be something?

-May-July 2015

Copyright 2015 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

MOVIE REVIEW: ARRIVAL (2016)

Arrival

Based on “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang

Starring

Amy Adams

Jeremy Renner

Forest Whitaker

Michael Stuhlbarg

Tzi Ma

Mark O’Brien

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Screenplay by Eric Heisserer

Music by Johan Johannsson

Cinematography by Bradford Young

Edited by Joe Walker

“Don’t let it end this way…”

-Klingon Chancellor Gorkon’s (David Warner) dying words in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

“Holy fuck . . .”

-Ian (Jeremy Renner) in the film Arrival (2016)

A woman, a new mother (Amy Adams) speaks to us in poetry about time, and loss, and mortality. We see a life in fast forward-birth to death-a young daughter’s life cut short, in fact, leaving a divorced, bereaved mother to pick up the pieces and soldier forward with her life as a college professor. She is absorbed into her daily routine, as she walks through a university common area where students and staff cluster around a giant flatscreen. When she gets into the lecture hall, most of her students are absent, and those that are present are glued to their screens. She asks what’s up. A student answers by requesting the professor to tune the flatscreen to a news channel …

Strange objects-designated ‘shells’ by the US government-manifest in the skies over twelve human nations all across the Earth. They have no visible means of propulsion, and emit no waste products measurable by Earthling science. The shells look like slices off some titanic, impossibly hard alien fruit, or maybe the shavings off some monstrous carving. They just hang in the sky, defying all our physics, no doubt provoking hack cable news pundits to make references to H.G. Wells,  the Sword of Damocles, maybe out-of-context (mis)quotations from the Bible, especially the Book of Revelations.

One of the twelve shells has touched down in Montana. The US Army mobilizes to throw up a security/quarantine perimeter around the alien object. A secret effort is made to attempt to communicate with whatever intelligence lies within the shell ...

Soon enough, the woman from the cryptic opening is further delineated within her professional context: Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) of the US Army gets in touch with linguist and college professor Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams), whose mastery of human languages in both theory and practice makes her a vital asset to the US’s Forever Wars on Terror. Colonel Weber, abruptly visiting her office in civvies with an armed escort, makes a terse, complimentary reference to their previous collaboration involving translations from Farsi: “You made short work of those insurgent videos.” Dr. Banks says, “You made short work of those insurgents.” Her solemn tone evokes a sense of betrayal-she didn’t sign on to be a cog in a killing machine. But when Colonel Weber offers her a chance to work on translating what may be an extraterrestrial language-the faltering initial gambit of First Contact between humanity and an intelligent alien species-she jumps at the chance.

Dr. Banks is, after some runaround by the government, inducted into a secret operation to communicate with the alien beings inside the shells. Banks is paired with Ian (Jeremy Renner) an astrophysicist. They are overseen by Weber and the deeply suspicious, but intellectual, CIA agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlbarg). Dr. Banks and Ian are paired up to work on the problem of communication with extraterrestrials from the differing perspectives of language and mathematics. After some initial discussion of the differences between the soft science of linguistics and the hard science of numbers, Dr. Banks and Ian, consummate professionals who respect each other, get to work on the essential question to be posed to the aliens: “What are you doing on Earth?”

Meanwhile, human societies lose their shit. What’s left of it. Especially here in the USofA: food riots; mass suicides by a religious cult; the National Guard is deployed to maintain order through force; conspiracy mongering by online socially mediated echo chambers stokes fear and distrust of science; talking heads of corporatist Neoliberal media outlets churning out sensationalist pseudo-scientific talking head chatter dilute the information ecology; and, through it all, the very worst human instincts are aided and abetted by online right-wing, Neo-Fascist, and white supremacist disinformation ops. Ignorance, fear, anti-intellectualism, nationalism, racism, and late stage capitalist distortion of reality for infotainment, profit, and fuel purposes derange the human species’ collective capacity for communication and collaboration. Suspicion is also generated by the secretive efforts by national governments to keep their efforts to communicate with the shells under wraps.

Dr. Banks and Ian feel the pressure from Weber and Halpern to force results by cutting corners on scientific rigor within the security culture bubble thrown up to maintain US supremacy, even as other nations compete to be the first to crack the alien riddle. China, led by the hawkish General Shang (Tzi Ma), is the primary rival to the US. Nuclear armed, paranoid nation states all in thrall to doctrines of national supremacy, all trying to be first to decide whether to slaughter the aliens or forge a way to the negotiation table. It’ll all work out in the end-won’t it?

Director Villeneuve crafts a sci-fi film as visually and sonically rigorous and mysterious as Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, while weaving  in human emotions of loss, longing, wonder, despair, paranoia, anger, hatred,  and desperation. This is science fiction which is grounded in the central performance of Amy Adams, with the special effects as a support, contra Kubrick’s masterwork which casts human beings as specks within the cosmos. Humanity, however imperfect, has to reckon with its own agency as citizens of the cosmos in Arrival, whereas in 2001 humanity is at the whims of vast, alien powers manipulating our evolutionary history for unknowable purposes.

A major theme is the peril of communication between past and future both within ourselves as individual sentient beings with complex memories, and on the level of a human planetary society making a faltering first attempt at hailing an utterly alien intelligence and the redefinition of human identity that entails. Another theme is disorientation: the movie begins with a montaged depiction of Dr. Banks’s daughter’s birth-life-death which gives no hint of the first contact saga to come. But the grief and loss within Dr. Banks partially drives her mission to communicate with the aliens. When the human communications team first enters the central chamber of an alien shell, they are subject to weird gravity effects, and a key shot is framed upside down hammering home the idea of losing all human moorings when coming into the presence of the truly alien.

It would be criminal for me to spoil this movie any further. Part of Arrival’s power comes from the process of discovery. This is one of those movies you’re just going to have to see for yourself, Dear Reader. It’s a smart film about ideas, emotions, and high stakes conflicts. It is the rare science fiction film that functions at the same level of sophistication as science fiction literature. Think 2001, Gattaca, Solaris, Blade Runner, and Ghost in the Shell. Arrival will pop up on lists of the greatest sci-fi movies in years to come. Try to see it on the biggest, brightest screen possible, with the sound cranked to the max.

Every Day Is Halloween 3: living skeleton actor fuck

role puts flesh, blood, guts on this frame
not to mention tumors,  scars, bad thoughts, eureka insights,
mercy, sadism, self-sacrifice, greed, ambition, romance;

build each persona up from micro-replicators
into complex thoughts, interlocking processes of pattern recognition,
various esoteric mental exercises culled from misreadings of Stanislavski and Grotowski,
irrational desires, fears, obsessions, joys;

book the gig
fill me up
live in the moment
'til it got heavy
with burdens of reputation
now he's just repeating the same old shtick
fuzzy stretch where I didn't shoot after 4:30pm for about five years
'cause I was stinking shitfaced
but it made me more of a cult fave in the years to come
I'm slurring lines on camera,
always seated, slightly listing to one side,
visible use of body double when standing and shot from behind
obvious ADR by anonymous voice over artist
since lips and tongue were only capable of blotto-talk
the voice is one thing and then another
sad at the time
YouTube clipjob comedy gold in this New Era.

online parodies resurrected me
for stunt casting, for the new wave of self-aware exploitation flicks.
a lot of work,
a lot of love from all over the world
festival and con bookings
I go even if it's on my dime
depends on the size of the marketing budget
but I'll go just for the feeling
nothing like this was ever supposed to be in my future
what a racket,  you know?

my latest job
is a dipshit detective
gets his head cut off by a psycho lumberjack
they didn't even do a proper cast of my head
the wig
from behind
kinda looks like my hair
but they do it old school when they put my head through a hole in the set floor
and have me silently work my mouth like a freshly decapitated fish head,
it's actually an homage to a previous death scene I played
in the 1980s
one of the Italian Mad Max knockoffs
I did three or four of those back in the day
current crop of directors go crazy cramming in callbacks,
scenes from the past,
b-movies constitute their own reality, history, liturgy

I have this weird dream:
I strip it all down to the bone.
not even rehearsal clothes, like in my repertory theatre days,
not even the bare skin, like in my experimental protest theatre period.
no skin, blood, guts, eyes, brains, lips, tongue,
just the skeleton
all pinned and jointed together,
suspended from an ornate carved rack,
polished and lacquered to a piercing sheen.
you crank up the air conditioning,
put the script in front of the vent,
words lift off the page,
whisper'n'rage through my ribcage.

Something that stripped down-well, they could slather on some CG if that's too pure of a hit.
Make me into a transforming talking car or some shit.
-July 2015-October 2016
Copyright 2016 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission. 

34 Hour Tetris Escape Plan

Within the 34th consecutive hour of a Tetris session lies the bardo gate.
Death,
Transcendence of earthly illusions,
And Rebirth lies across the border.
Death and Rebirth,
But not total forgetfulness.
You will carry with you knowledge of Reconfiguration,
Transformation,
Mutation,
Iteration in the Moment.
Cross the threshold, the real work begins.

SKULL HOPPER

SKULL HOPPER
by
William D. Tucker

1.
White light against a plaster wall
Looking with my back turned.
Window is the vacancy of intersection.
A perspective on one aspect of the jagged upper texture
There is pointing and then there are jabs from the buildings.
You sit there, white light on your back.
The room is so suffused with cold, clear light.
Nothing is hidden yet nothing is revealed in the cold, clear light.
We speak of matters with a speech that the Observer does not render exactly
In the rendering, we become a pantomime.
Nowhere above and beyond this room,
So filled with light,
Can we ever speak truly of the vacant point of intersection.
Who has ever spoken before the cold, clear light suffused this room,
How was it even possible?
It isn't blinding,  it isn't sudden,  in fact it lacks all flourish or sensationalism.
The cold, clear light simply is,  and it is in a most unavoidable way.
Nothing hidden, nothing revealed.
Looking with my back turned.

2.
Drink. Purchase. Sitting.  Another drink/purchase.
Routine of the room of the cold, clear light.
Papers. Organize. Read. Papers. Sort. Prioritize.
This is the work of the room of the cold, clear light.
Pillows. Laughing. Porch. Train car. Outdoors. Indoors.
This is the room of the cold, clear light.
Green, beige, red, blue, yellow,  purple:
These stand out in strange new ways beneath the cold, clear light.

3.
He wished to communicate sunlight on the side of a building.
Many received his communication.
Others received many other things besides.
Drink. Routine. Cold. Clear. Light.
"More real than real" as one person put it.
Critical response: good, suffused with the cold, clear light.
He did not try to explain,  except for elaborate designs and plans,
Which were not accepted as any sort of explanation.
Many view. Experience an array of emotions.
There is a look of awareness at the science and rigor of construction.
Science/rigor/effort is reduced to "emotional response. "
Cold, clear light becomes invisible.
"I get a sense of loneliness, " one person says.
"This makes me feel the way I felt in college,  at 4:25am at a Waffle House after a night of drinking," says another.
Rigor, effort,  construction, science subsumed by "emotion."
Opinion. Subjective. I like. I think.  I feel.
Drink. Routine. Cold. Clear. Light.
Looking with my back turned,
I fall back into myself,
"I wished to communicate ..."
Taking over from "He wished to communicate ..."
I see them turning away having observed, felt, thought,  and processed very briefly the offering before them.

4.
Plans. Construction. Intersecting lines of purpose.
The science and the rigor necessary to achieve that specific, sleepless effect.
"I want to communicate sunlight on the side of a building."
Result: opinions.
I think. I feel. Maybe.Kinda.Wouldn't it be funny if.  I like. I did not like.
I am approached for moments, perhaps,  having extensively researched, practiced, and calculated myself.
Moments.
The rigor disappears. Lines of intersecting purpose are softly,  gently smudged into pleasant, distinct blurs of opinion.
Invisible. Cold. Clear. Light.

5.
Opinion passed.
Return of routine.
Beyond initial foray into understanding.
Drink. Office.  Papers.  Organize. Dance. Sunbathe.
Conceive ideal spectator,
Cloned from my own mind,
Hand them operations manual,
Put them through course of certification,
Indoctrination,
Overseer behind their eyes,
Now let them work:
Analysis:
Cold, clear light becomes visible, perceptible
Intersecting lines of purpose rise to the surface.
"I can see the wires. "
Repetition of analysis as per doctrine.
Rigor and science unearthed
Notebooks are thumbed through
Paradigm shift on schedule, as per doctrine:
Cold, clear light hides nothing, reveals nothing.
Analysis,  as per doctrine:
"In this place,  there are fewer, wealthier people.No one has any memory of the past, nor any need for such memories.Everyone is prosperous, satisfied,  happy, and no one quite wants to remember how it got that way."
Paradigm shift on schedule, as per doctrine:
"He is expressing a deeply ambivalent attitude towards his subject matter. The elements of the voyeuristic collide with an overwhelming sense of the privacy of each person's universe. Ultimately,  the voyeuristic wins out, because,  alas, the end result is the work itself.  He could not resist looking into the realms of privacy and then share what he saw with others."
Paradigm shift on schedule, as per doctrine:
"It is the portrayal of man's environment as supremely indifferent that wins out over everything else. His settings are neither threatening nor comforting, destructive nor supportive, good nor evil. His humans, likewise,  have learned to dwell in this environment with all harmony by becoming creatures of supreme indifference themselves. "
Analysis.  Paradigm shift on schedule as per doctrine.  Many cycles.
Results ad infinitum.
Return of opinion.
Opinion refined,
Elaborated as per doctrine on schedule.
Still opinion.
Overseer disengaged, cloned brain discarded.
Cold, clear light hides nothing and reveals nothing.
-April 2003-May 2016

Florets and Rostrum-shod Stylets Chopped'n'Mushed in the Maw of the Nuclear Devil Ape

I eat broccoli at all times
Even when it crawls with wee blue bugs
Aphids=Protein

Hustleforms

Don Quixote becomes the book
Hamlet the stage
Captain Ahab the harpoon
Bruce Wayne the cape and cowl ersatz bat
Travis Bickle the gun
The Thing from Another World every-goddamn-one.
You can't be happy with who you are
If you wish to become a legend
Good, evil, categorically transcendent
In your time
Or the time beyond.

Back when I had friends

We would get together to play Wild Bunch,
And always fight over who gets to be Ernest Borgnine.
I usually ended up being Warren Oates.
I had the wardrobe for it.
And the teeth.

Wait Comix

Excellent comix
only functional wait mechanic
to bust you out of the eternal, punitive present.

Making the Villain Fist

The Invisible Man,
Dr. Doom and countless aspiring conquerors drawn by Ditko and Kirby,
Darth Vader,
crushing the cosmos in a fearsome gloved or gauntleted hand,
compacting Reality down into an ultra-dense chess piece,
it's a thing these people do, you know?

Every Day Is Halloween 2

Every Day Is Halloween 2
by William D. Tucker 

Sequel
slash the budget
dump it in some film school grad's lap
command and control functions stay with the producer

Maximize marketing budget
optimize gore
optimize tits
optimize confusing, pseudo-arty shaky-cam bullshit
optimize shouting
optimize piss' n'shit grim'n'gritty color palette
optimize bogus "true story" websites

Economize talent
shoot in an anti-union right-to-work state
hire actors with low Q-ratings
for low pay
work them like pack animals

Strangely,
there's always money for 3-D post-conversion

If it's a hit,
crank out another one,
same formula

If it bombs,
write it down,
dodge some taxes

It isn't art,
nor is it truly entertainment,
but it's a healthy living
for the New Era Corporate Citizen.