Undulating Ungulate

Over the past few days I have been rereading The Invisibles by Grant Morrison.

Wow.

I think it is fair to say that it is my favourite comic ever, and something I may actually need to own.

For those unfamiliar with it, The Invisibles bears as much resemblance to a standard comic book as a shark does to a goldfish. They may exist in the same medium, but one is capable of eating your living brain while the other is tame and mindless.

Last time I think I read each volume separately, spread out over time. Having the whole thing to read at once makes a huge difference. Continuity and reality gets hacked up pretty badly, but it really is all one thing and does seem to hang together.

Morrison’s intent is to replicate, for readers in comic book form, the effect his alien abduction/travel out of space and time/encounter with higher intelligence/mystical experience had on him. He wants your mind to bleed, to stretch and twist it to encompass wonderful new things. Reading The Invisibles is bit like LSD. You come out of a few hours of reading with heightened perceptions, a sense of wonder and joy, and an awareness that there is more going on than you know.

So much wild, awesome and crazy shit happens I’m not even going to attempt to summarise it. Other than to say it’s the coolest, funnest, most mindblowing comic ever, and well worth tracking down.

Filed by billy at 10:42 pm under consciousness,reading
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1. an interview with the head of DARPA – the people who do freaky advanced research for the US Government – about what they’re working on…

2. a James Cameron produced documentary claiming to have found Jesus’ family tomb, along with evidence of a son with Mary Magdalene.

3. psychedelic octopus and friends found in antarctica

Filed by billy at 5:45 pm under the world
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The moose recently read The Rings of Saturn by W G Sebald.

It was amazing.

I don’t know how long it has been since I read something genuinely new in literature. Sebald is, and it is a tragedy he died so suddenly a few years ago. If they give out the Nobel post-humously, he should be a shoe in.

Is it autobiography, fiction, medititave essay or history? It is all and none, a seamless, dreamy blend one loses oneself in, loses the narrator, loses everything but the thread of the moment as it draws us through experience. Uncaptioned photographs, often taken by the author, others historical, are scattered through the text.

Sebald’s great theme in Rings of Saturn is memory and loss. As he walks the english countryside the slightest sideways glance can lead across centuries of time and oceans in examination of the minutae of forgotten worlds bursting with promise and vitality, now all but lost to us. Each thread followed, story unravelling until astounding tapestries are revealed, profound and moving meditations on human striving, the epic horror of human suffering, and what remains.

What really affected me is that for the first time ever I have found an example of what I want my next novel to be like; only partially at that, but the associative, detailed dreamscape I have sensed but never seen is here for the first time revealed as possible, in the most majestic and triumphant sense. My themes and interests differ from Sebald’s, and whatever form my future work eventually takes will differ greatly, but it is so heartening to see a lantern in the wilderness, a guide post from one who has forged ahead, where before there was naught. (Perhaps I overstate the case in the first blush of enthusiasm; I have far from integrated the experience, and wish to explore Sebald further before coming to anything like a conclusion. Yet to even temporarily bypass my critical filters, something extraordinary must be at work.)

We have not but scratched the surface of what prose can do and be. Sebald is one who has gone deeper.

Filed by billy at 9:53 pm under culture,reading
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But yes. Maybe.

Guns’n'Roses may actually be releasing Chinese Democracy.

I mean, at this point that’s a lot like someone saying they’re quitting smoking for the tenth time, but you can listen to streaming audio of the first single, Better, and that must mean something.

Maybe.

Filed by billy at 3:02 pm under culture
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Here are some search strings that people have found their way to the site with over the past year.

crystal detectors placed down the bottom of deep mines are hopi
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albino cultural response
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zombie psychology
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orbital mind control
6′ pop-up moose present
blonde nymphomaniacs
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things that look like hitler
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profound confusing quotes

I hope you all found what you were looking for.

Filed by billy at 10:24 pm under meta,the moose
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Easily the best thing I’ve read about Iran/America and world tensions around it; specifically, the utter insanity of America attacking Iran, and Russian, Chinese and European interests and reactions.

And hey, it’s Michael Ventura. Again.

Filed by billy at 10:14 am under politics,the world
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Or rather, are more people becoming more on to it?

Like, if we graphed it, the curve would be rising. So is it that the rate is increasing sharply? Enough to notice? Or am I just projecting my hopes here? Because the badness has its own graph, and that curve is rising too, and sharply. More and more, I think Bucky was right: “whether it will be utopia or oblivion will be a touch and go relay race until the very end”.

Maybe the real question is are YOU becoming more on to it?

Get to it, soldier.

Filed by billy at 11:58 pm under consciousness
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My God, that party was huge.

As in the biggest house party I remember.

I can’t believe no one died on the mattress slide in the backyard, though people tried pretty hard.

It is surreal to have one’s home filled with hundreds of strangers.

Apparently the ninjas were a really good security force.

Made it out to the party at Massey Memorial pretty late and saw in the dawn, but suspect I missed the best of that. So it goes.

Came home to discover the wreckage of the party gibbering on the mattresses at the bottom of the garden at 7am.

The house is carnage.

But the sound system and camo zone will stay in place a while longer.

Filed by billy at 1:49 pm under new zealand,the moose
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Ended up at a select committee hearing yesterday to give a verbal submission as part of a small group. We’d got together to do something positive at random and picked the Waste Minimisation bill as a place to start.

I’d never been inside Parliament buildings before. It was a little surreal. We have security? And metal detectors? And the inside is weirdly plush and serious and grown up. It was pretty funny, actually, seeing NZ take itself seriously.

The select committee was held in a room drenched in Maori carving and wall hangings, which was again oddly comical in effect. Sort of overdone. It was kind of funny to be up close to a bunch of members of parliament who were vaguely familiar from TV and get to watch them sweat and snort and stamp about. Er. You know what I mean. Or you don’t. I guess there’s no novelty in any of this for the myriad of civil servants out there, but it was pretty funny to me.

It was actually weirdly heartening to see democracy in action. A range of disparate MPs representing disparate interests seated around a table puzzling through a knotty problem – something that needs dealing with but the implementation of which is tricky – with input from relatively informed members of the public. We were there to speak to our submission, which again I found comical as I’d drafted most of it and, having not read the bill for months, couldn’t understand a word of the specifics, so mostly I shut the hell up and let Morgue do the talking, contenting myself with subliminal psychological warfare against the National MPs , and answering one of the shitty questions put to us by said National MPs.

On the whole, fairly painless as a process, and one I would certainly consider doing again.

Filed by billy at 10:18 pm under new zealand,politics
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Russian fishermen catch squeaking alien and eat it.

Headline of the year, so far.

However, ufologists and scientists were greatly disappointed when they found out that the fishermen had eaten the monster. They said that they were not scared of the creature so they decided to use it as food. One of the men said that it was the most delicious dish he had ever eaten.

Yummy.

(Cheers, Ed)

Filed by billy at 5:08 pm under Uncategorized
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