Let the chips fall where they may

OK, big news. A scientist somewhere has implanted a chip in someone's brain. The chip in his internal skull talks to an external computer. Certain mental states make the computer go "beep boop." It's a brain-bot interaction. Small, maybe. But you gotta start somewhere. The cyberpunk revolution has begun.

Maybe. Or maybe not. There's a difference between PR science and real science. This strikes me as the former...

This is no more a "man-machine" interface than a pirate with a peg leg is a cyborg.

Sure, it's an extension of humanity into the realm of the mechanical. But then, McLuhan's big point was that all technology is an extension of ourselves. TV tubes are an extension of our eyes, radio an extension of our ears, computers an extension of our brains, etc...

So, in that sense, a pirate with a peg leg is a cyborg. But I don't think that's what the cyberpunks were talking about.

If you look at the cyberpunk universe (and I'm mostly talking about Gibson's universe) certain basic technological leaps have been postulated.

The most basic being the readable-writable human brain.

At the moment, we're stuck inside our skulls, on the inside looking out through our eye sockets. I can tell you what I'm thinking or imagining. I can write it down. But there's no direct way you can experience it (unless you're a telepath, which is a different story.)

There's also no way for the memories in my skull to be uploaded and stored; no way for my brain to download conversational Japanese; no way for my brain to operate peripheral mechanical devices by pure conscious thought.

The cyberpunk universe postulates hardware/software sophisticated enough to change this. Descartes' mind-body problem turns into no-problem...

In the cyberpunk universe, you, the user inside the subjective privacy of your own skull, can directly access entertainment, information, whatever; operate machinery via pure conscious thought; hook yourself up to peripheral "puppet" robots for sexplay; make backup copies of your childhood memories; earn a living as a courier by storing other people's memories in your head.

This mental permeability also allows the badguys to get inside your head and fuck with you.

Something tells me that this is all going to happen someday. At the moment, as far as I know, scientists are just beginning to be able to operate primitive prosthetic limb replacements via neural impulses. Nothing that actually works yet. A jerk here, twitch there. Maybe one day, walking...

But it's still a long way from that to watching movies via a port in your head.

I'm not really knocking what the prof did -- just the overreaction to it, the premature victory party. Technological change ain't continuous -- it evolves by a kind of punctuated discontinuous disequilibrium. You can make all the incremental improvements you want. But every now and then, something comes along that's different in kind...

Like mechanical reproduction and storage media.

Once upon a time there were no photographs, no records, no audiotape, no movies, no video. You could draw somebody's picture. You could write down what they said. But there was absolutely no way to get an objective record...

A tape-recorded deposition is different in kind from a written record created by a Roman scribe with pen and ink. A photograph is different in kind from a painting.

What the cyberpunks are talking about is like that. When it happens -- everything will change. (And nothing will change.) But it hasn't happened yet. It hasn't even started. It's just an SF dream. So, for the time being...

Let the chips fall where they may.

Credit where credit is due

The idea for Gorilla Suit Jesus came to me not from Satan, but my cousin, Chris Jefferson. He called me out of the blue, laughing hysterically. When he could finally talk, he said "What if Jesus came back, not as a gorilla ..." Another five minutes of hysterical laughter. "But in a gorilla suit?"

So I speculated.

Brazil nuts

Finally got a look-see of the uncut, VHS copy of Terry Gilliam's Brazil -- helpfully duped from the Criterion laser disc by my pal in SoCal. (Thanx and a hattip to BadCog.) I'd seen the mangled version on TV, but never the real thing.

Jesus. Entertaining? Yeah. In the sense that the Book of Revelations is a wacky, comedic romp. What an experience. Terry Gilliam just mugged my subconscious. I'm still wrapping my brain around the sensory/conceptual assault.

But here's my preliminary verdict ...

Brazil is a movie about baby men. Baby men and their baby dreams.

The men in this movie are all boys. They blather stale sports metaphors. They whine, "It's not my fault!" like squabbling brats. They play tug of war with desks and computers. They exact revenge by switching oxygen tubes with feces tubes. Not even boys. Babies all. But let's stick with the hero ...

Sam Lowry (Jonathan Price) is the so-called hero. Sam's what Hans and Franz would call a baby man. His dreams are baby dreams. (The dreams of a "fifth grade comic book mind," to quote Mr. Roat.) In Sam's dreams, he’s a superhero—an artificially-winged knight out of a DaVinci notebook, rescuing a damsel in distress from the Forces of Darkness. The woman of his dreams ...

In reality, Sam’s a clerk. (Or “clark,” as they say in the UK). His world is a crappy, low rent dystopia: a cross between 1984 and a screwball comedy existing, “sometime in the 20th century.” The ecology is a polluted wasteland covered with happy billboards. The machines are Rube Goldberg contraptions that don’t work right; all the buildings are laced with ugly ducts (the way our streets are laced with wires and telephone poles). Sam’s society is obsessed with consumerism and paperwork. There’s also (in an echo of the IRA London bombings) a constant background noise of terrorism. People are always getting blown up, then soldiering on and pretending nothing happened. (The movie broadly hints that the terrorists are all working for the government.) Said government responds by grabbing terrorist suspects and interrogating them under torture—though reluctantly, and never in a mean-spirited way. (And charging their credit cards for the expense.)

Shitty world, kids. Sam, wisely, has found a hole to crawl into. A low-level, nothing job in the Ministry of Information. A safe place to hide from the universal bullshit. Sam lives in his dreams -- which are mostly daydreams. (Like Walter Mitty before him, Sam is constantly zoning out into heroic fantasies. Sam battles giant mechanical Samurai, baby-faced Hydra and other monsters.) It’s clear Sam's baby dreams come from Hollywood — based on Sam’s quotes from Casablanca and the movie posters in his apartment. His mother keeps trying to get him promoted, but Sam's not interested in climbing the ladder. He’s keeping his head down.

Sam's separate peace gets shot to hell, thanks to a paperwork error. A clerk kills a fly; the dead fly gets into the printout machine, and scrambles an arrest order. "Tuttle" becomes "Buttle." The wrong guy gets arrested and dies under torture. Jill, a woman who’s also dropped out of her society and found an anonymous job as a truck driver — gets involved. The Buttles are her neighbors, and she hates what's happened to them. Jill fights to get justice for the dead man’s family. Sam sees Jill making a scene at the Ministry of Information — and he’s seen her before. She’s the girl of his dreams, natch. Unfortunately, Jill's making a lot of noise and is now on the terrorist suspect list.

Sam's fantasy world and the real world converge. Sam, the human cipher, starts trying to act like a hero in real life to save the girl of his dreams. It ends badly. In a brilliant but sadistic move -- Gilliam gives us both the happy ending and the sad ending.

In his dreams, Sam rescues Jill and takes her away to a prefab home in an idyllic spot of countryside. (There's sheep, yet.) They live happily ever after.

In reality, Jill gets shot and Sam is lobotomized.

What a kick in the head, eh?

But it's chock-full of laughs. The script, by Terry Gilliam, Tom Stoppard and Tom McKeon, is a brilliant collaboration. It's funny as hell, and simultaneously surreal. (Nice trick. Surrealism usually ain't funny.) Lotsa bizarre imagery, as seen through a fish eye lens darkly; lotsa sparkling wordplay.The performances (by Price, Robert DeNiro, Kim Greist, Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins and others) are astonishing, and just one turn-of-the-screw over the top. Gilliam's art-direction/set design is dense, claustrophobic, brilliant and convincing. It's expressionistic. (In case you miss the point about the babyishness of it all, Gilliam puts his torturer and various dream monsters in baby masks.) Simultaneously, the sheer, multilayered texture of it all creates its own reality. You believe in this world, the way you believe in the world of Blade Runner.

So, why Brazil?

The title takes its name from the corny song from the 1940s, which threads through the movie like a lietmotif on the soundtrack. "Brazil" is the land of dreams, the place of escape, the place where people can be free, the place where they can love, the place that this world ain't. It's the Golden Country from 1984.

Evidently, that's a baby dream.

Sam and Jill should've minded their own business. Bad boy revolutionary filmmaker Terry Gilliam sez: You can't change the system. You can't fight City Hall.

No. That can't be the moral of the story. No.

Like I said, I'm still wrapping my brain around it.

Upright Citizen's Brigade

Out of sheer randomness, tuned in Comedy Central's Upright Citizen's Brigade.

Goddamn. What a slap in the face.

Basically, it's four improv comics who approach their material with fearless, fierce intensity. Weird routines about a "bucket of truth" and a DEA agent named Captain Lunatic (pronounced loon-a-tic). Wow. "Second City on acid" would be the cliche thing to say. Not quite. "Second City on rage" would be more accurate. The missing element is hostility. The naked, subversive decision not to be nice, not to kiss up to the audience.

Gusty, original stuff.

I'm hooked.

O Florida. Arrrrgh Florida

Florida, Florida, Florida. One of these days I'll take a stab at writing about me own hometown as my cousin suggests. For now, here's the big picture...

Florida is a very strange place: a nonplace place, scrubbed clean of placeness. This notherethereness is a quality as old as swampland and suckers; the first hand-tinted postcards actually had the palm trees painted in (before palm trees were planted); image coming before reality. Our house was always foundationless, built on sand.

The postcards said: welcome to Florida, land of the endless vacation, heaven on earth! But heaven, of course is for the dead. Somewhere behind the Rufus T. Firefly handbills, unedited reality lurked. Florida, land of smuggling and crime. Florida, land of pioneer hardscrabble. A place where you could find farmers who got their hands dirty. Not to mention cowboys and indians.

The crackers go back to the original Florida pioneer mentality -- a pioneer mentality a little to the left of the usual Calvinist mania. Where typical overachieving USofA pioneer cried out "I WILL FORGE AN HABITATION OUT OF THE WILDERNESS IN ORDER TO GO AND FORGE AN HABITATION OUT OF THE NEXT WILDERNESS! I WILL WORK FOR MORE WORK!" (insert heroic pioneer statue here) the Florida pioneer said "I will forge an habitation out of the wilderness and then to hell with it. The porch is sagging? Let it sag."

Instead of More! Onward! Upward! Higher! Deeper! the pioneer goal, in our case, was to kick back and relax. You want food? Fish. You want something else? Hunt. House need painting? I don't hear the house complaining.

As to citified Florida, creating the illusion of eternal vacation was work enough in itself, and led to a kind of creative insanity -- evidence of which you could see in the buildings. Some futuristic, like the steel and glass latticework structures of the Sarasota school of architecture -- or ebuillient, like the architecture you see in Miami's South Beach deco district. Not to mention the goofball school (similar to all the hotdogshaped hotdog stands in SoCal).

All of this mixed up with fantastical/recreational stuff like winter baseball, the circus -- and untold myriads of cheesy but delightful roadside attractions. Outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual nuttiness.

And then Satan came.

Touching/inserting his horned finger into the heart of our state, said digit miraculously disguised as an appendange on a giant Mouse's enormous white-gloved three-fingered hand.

Ha-ha.

The undead Disney, like some vicious Maxwell's demon sucking entropy from everywhere else in the system, sucked all the fantasy in my blackholesunshine state into its imagineered deathcamp where children's dreams from around the world are sorted, numbered, selected, burned and turned into soap and lampshades.

Disney's Dream Inc. killed all the lesser dreamers -- no Mom'n'Pop could compete with the Mouse, after all...

And so, step by step, inch by inch, the roadside attractions died; the fantastic pink and aquamarine hotels were painted brown or torn down entirely; the palm trees died of blight; the circus left, along with most of the baseball teams.

There was nothing left but real estate.

Which all goes back to what CJ said -- we've been malled. We are a place without history.

This is not to say we never had a history. But Florida's history has been scrubbed over, remodelled, and torn down into nothingness. Thomas Wolfe said you can't go home again. Round here, you can't go home again if you drive away and come back the next fucking WEEK. Buildings go up; buildings go down -- workers zipping around like bees -- don't blink or you'll miss it. It's like that scene in The Time Machine where the Time Traveler sees the sun arcing in one fibrillating blur until it's one arc of fire across the sky like a neon tube.

The history we had was interesting, but the people who come here from Someplace Else don't come here for any history -- anymore than YOU want to see somebody else's turds floating in the toilet bowl in a strange motel room. What they want is clean shiny generic motel, with clean shiny motel rooms. Above all, they a clean shining bathroom -- with a nice, clean, gleaming, sterile bowl of porcelain, a strip of paper in its toity-bowl smile proclaiming SANITIZED FOR YOUR PROTECTION.

And they sure as hell don't give a rat's ass about John Ringling, Jose Marti or Billy Bowlegs.

Just tear it down and pave it over, baby.

What they want is that perfect, virginal, sanitized toity bowl motel room...

A place to go where nobody knows your name. A place where you, small fish in big pond there, are now the big fish in the small pond here with lots and lots of money.

A place for people with money to have an endless vacation.

A place for old people with money to die.

A place that isn't, above all, New York City or Kansas City or Detroit or Columbus or Chicago.

The people who've come here from Someplace Else have made a deliberate decision to leave their history behind. They trash their own past with hooting satisfaction that some people get cleaning out their attics and throwing away all of grandpa's old photographs. All that history is a large part of what they've left behind. The last thing they want when they come here is a place with a history of its own...

What they want is utopia -- a place that's noplace. A nonplace place, scrubbed clean of placeness. (Which, of course, is what they got.) Florida -- or the Florida the developers built. Heaven on earth...

As close to being dead as you're ever going to get without actually being dead.

* * *

And so, in post-Mouse Florida, the developers' dream of a place that is noplace has been built and, goddamnit anyway, it's just like that cornfield movie: "If you built it, they will come." Around here, at any rate, it works.

All of which leaves the native Floridian in the position of living in a colonized, conquered, dishonored nation in his/her own damn state. Florida is sortof the Third World of America -- within America! A low-wage, two-tier economic colony, right smack in the continental United States -- yes!

Gnash! Snarl!

The People from Someplace Else have a habit of hiring from Someplace Else as they think anyone from Florida (especially if you've got even a lingering Southern accent) is some kinda gap-toothed, drooling, inbred, banjo-picking, worm-ridden "Squeal piggy!" degenerate out of Deliverance.

Folks from Around Here, who tend (at least with regards to fools like me who didn't leave) to slip below the stations proper to their natural abilities -- also tend to get into that twisted, passive-aggressive love-to-hate mentality you see in a lotta colonized countries. (Ah, it's the goddamn Brits, you see. They stole our birthright, they did. If not for them, ah, the greatness that could've been ours, me boyo. The greatness that could've been ours...pass us another pint wouldja now?)

Yes, my friends. It is a dependent, contingent kiss-ass, suck-up lifestyle here in Florida. As a wiseman once said, "A service economy is an economy of servants."

And that's exactly what we are.

Servants of the fawning, bowing, scraping variety. Basil Fawlty types, who appreciate the opportunity to beg for scraps from our colonial masters.

Of course they're better than we are. Obviously! There's no point in arguing. Consider the contrast ...

Because -- instead of inventing things, producing things, building things, or making something happen -- it's so much easier to wait tables or sell drugs or cook up some con-game or, in general, feed off of somebody else's money and then bitch about it.

The People from Someplace Else get to feel superior. We get to feel victimized. What a deal!

And that's the kind of sickness I see. Florida is corrupt (which is what's so damn interesting about it). So far, the best contemporary writing I've seen about it is Carl Hiassen's stuff.

My own idea is to (A) write a group of short stories patterned after Joyce's Dubliners. (B) A parable of sick growth patterned after Frazier's The Golden Bough. Big, big ideas as usual. I've got lots of 'em, yep. And I'll get around to writing this stuff, I really will....

Pulp Fiction Analysis

Tarantino opens Pulp Fiction with two dictionary definitions.

Pulp – a shapeless lump of soft matter.
Pulp – a lurid fiction.

Rather than dangle and tease, I'll cut to the chase. I think QT is giving a clue about the big point behind the movie. I think the point is this:
Human beings are essentially pulp – soft, vulnerable, weak biological beings that can be killed very easily. One false move, one bad decision, one wrong assumption, one bit of bad luck, one fuck up and you’re dead just like that. Suddenly. When you least expect it. At any fucking time. That’s our reality – and our minds can’t handle it. So, to compensate, we don't face the reality of our own vulnerabilities. We tell ourselves stories to deal with it. I.e.: pulp fictions.

So, look at the movie. Subtract the stories the characters are constantly telling each other and what's left is a series of random incidents of people getting pulped.

Jules and Vince Vega blow away a pair of yuppie punks who tried to rip off their boss, Marcellus Wallace. Nothing to it. Then, another punk hiding in the bathroom leaps out with a 45 and unloads a clip right at them. Every shot misses. It’s only by the grace of God that they don’t get killed. The remaining punk is not so lucky.

On the ride back to Marcellus’ place, Vince and Jules debate the theological implications of the recent apparent miracle. Vince absent-mindedly turns around to get some input from the kid in the back seat. He absent-mindedly blows the kid's head off.

Pumpkin and Honey Bunny assume that robbing a coffee shop is the easiest thing in the world. They’re insured, full of terrified customers “to cut down on the hero factor.” The manager and underpaid busboys and waitresses won’t lift a finger. So they pull a robbery. It turns out that two badass motherfuckers, two very heavy hitters, two professional killers – aka Vince Vega and Jules – are eating there. It’s only by the grace of God – Jules’ recent religious conversion – that Pumpkin and Honey Bunny don’t get killed.

Pumpkin and Honey Bunny also forgot to check the bathroom where Vega, all oblivious, was taking a shit reading Modesty Blaise. Meanwhile, Jules, Pumpkin and Honey Bunny are in a 3-way standoff. Jules is talking them through it, calming everybody down. Vince bursts out at the last minute and almost succeeds in getting X killed.

Back at Marcellus’ bar, Vince feels like shit (and a little disrespected) for blowing the kid’s head off. Vince takes out his frustrations on a boxer named Butch – he totally disrespects the guy. Marcellus has just paid this guy to throw his next fight. Vince’s disrespect makes him change his mind

Vince is given the assignment of taking Wallace’s wife Mia out on a non-date date. They’ve just had a fine evening, he’s taken her home and doing his best to keep his pecker in his pants. Out of sheer bad luck – his dealer was out of condoms (the usual container for heroin) and sold him some heroin in a baggie instead -- typically the container for cocaine. Mia goes through his stuff, sees it, snorts it – thinking it’s cocaine. She goes into cardiac arrest. He’s fucked.

Out of sheer dumb luck, courage and panic, Vincent succeeds in stabbing a spike-like hypo of adrenaline through her breast bone into her heart. She survives – he’s not fucked. Both agree to keep this quiet.

Butch has successfully fled – but his French girlfriend forgot his watch. (A precious heirloom from his dead father, which his dead father’s buddy shoved up his ass to keep from the Vietcong jailers.) He’s got to go back to his apartment – where Marcellus is sure to be waiting.

He goes back. He gets the watch. It’s a miracle or sheer dumb luck that he isn’t killed. Absent minded Vince is once again on the toilet reading Modesty Blaise. He’s also forgotten the gun. Butch, popping some pop tarts in his toaster, sees the gun and figures this out. Vince emerges from the toilet. The toast pops. Vince is toast.

Butch has gotten away with it. Out of sheer bad luck, Marcellus – filling in for the now-retired hitman Jules – is returning to Butch’s apartment with Big Kahuna burgers. He crosses in front of Butch’s car – then sees him.

Butch tries to run him down – Marcellus tries to blow him away. They chase each other, crash into a gun shop. Out of sheer bad luck, the proprietors are a pair of Deliverance style perverts who like to abduct people and bugger them in the basement. They do so to Marcellus. Butch manages to escape – but the same honor that sent him back for the watch sends him back into the room – now armed with a samurai sword – to save Marcellus from being buggered. Butch kitchen slices one redneck with a katana; Marcellus blows the balls off the other – with more torture promised in the future. Marcellus and Butch are now square.

All this violence is, basically, random shit. These incidents are wrapped, Tootsie Roll style, in a tasty candy shell of stories and bullshit -- i.e., pulp fictions. We hear about Tony Rocky Horror's fall through the greenhouse, what Big Macs are called in Amsterdam, etc., etc. These fictions shouldn't disguise the immoral moral of the movie.

It's a chaotic universe that will probably kill you. If you drop your guard and spend too much time on the toilet, it probably will.

End of Evangelion

Maybe it’s just me. But director Hideaki Anno seems to be off his meds.

Not a feel-good movie, kids.

More like clinical depression with giant robots and subtitles.

It all ends in a Jackson Pollock blood-splatter. The angels kill everybody. On the planet. (Or, depending on how you look at it, everybody merges into one collective consciousness inside a planetary sea of red LCL jello.) But, from where I’m sitting, it looks like everybody dies, except Shinji, that little shit, and Asuka. They wind up on a beach, alone in a dead world, and things just don’t look good for the new couple.

By way of analogy ...

If Anno had written Return of the Jedi, Luke Skywalker would have curled into a foetal position on his last mission and the second Death Star would have destroyed the rebel fleet. We would see them all die, in a long, drawn-out montage with lyrical music. Princess Leia would’ve survived, barely. Luke would have masturbated in her hospital room while she lay there in a coma. Then, after finding out all their friends were dead, Luke would have attempted to strangle her before impotently giving up. Leia would’ve moaned “I feel sick.” Roll credits.

But, hey, if all the Ewoks got wiped out?

Definitely an improvement.