Category Archives: Lit

A fire underground

Lit, Pals,

A fire is burning deep underground where you can’t put it out.

Pockets in earth whistle and moan with the fires exhalations. Everywhere your land whispers to you that change is happening where you can’t see. The earth is churning and bucking like there is a beast trapped deep beneath, struggling to escape and walk free over all you love.

Your house is unsettled.

Cracks spider out from the foundations of your living. The pictures fall. Everywhere, the scent of ash, the fear of the beast loosed.

What can you do but lie in your bed, afraid, wake, hang the pictures, patch the walls?

Could you dig down to it? Would you put it out or fall in, letting the flames run through you?

Lie in your bed as it all burns.

Read “The Degaussment” right now, you fool.

Books, Lit, Reviews,


James Boice reached out to me to collaborate on a digital version of his short story “The Degaussment”. I didn’t have time to make anything worthwhile before he released it, but I was blown away by the what he sent me.

This is a story of mad obsession, a dying technology, horrible wounds, and a skill that eats its owner alive. I tore through it in a sitting, then read it again later. You aren’t going to pay $2 for a better experience today, so grab it now.

James gives a crap, so he’s not just selling a Kindle or Nook version – you can buy a DRM free epub file that works or a PDF for the same price. I ended up buying all the rest of his stories – he’s selling them for $.99 each.

I do not often tell you to buy something. Buy this.

A Poem about Proper Paperwork

Animation, Art, Hacks, Lit, , , ,

Today is my birthday, and I’ve been overwhelmed with happy birthday wishes. I’m very fortunate and grateful.
I’d like to give you a gift back.
Here is a poem about the importance of filling out forms.
Please enjoy “We Know” in a browser like Chrome or Firefox.

Tonight we will be having dinner at Superfine in DUMBO and then off to see “Black Watch” at the St Ann’s theater. Perhaps we will see you Saturday at Cinco de Matto?

How to Safely Win an Impossible Book

Lit, , , ,

When I heard that Charles Yu was giving away the mysterious “Book from Nowhere” from his novel I was terribly excited. The book is a McGuffin/plot point in Yu’s novel “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe” – the protagonist is the author who gives himself the book before shooting himself in the stomach.

It’s one of those books.

The publisher actually created a physical mockup of the all-metal book from the story and let Wired give it away in a contest – best comment wins the tome. I dashed off an entry and a few days ago I learned that I won that contest.

My winning comment was what I could get done in a little bit, but I’m so excited to have won that I cooked up a special presentation of the story I wrote.  Charle’s book deals with fathers and sons and families and regret and time and loss and paralysis and so does this.

Click here to read “How to Safely Live on in a Science Fiction Universe”

I wrote this.  I can’t illustrate worth a damn, so I wrote some code to do it for me.  Every time you load that page, it will reach out to Flickr for Creative Commons licensed images on the subjects of mistakes, loss, time, etc.  Much thanks to Tove Hermanson and Sam for their help as my editors.  There are also links in there. Click them.

The Fish that Fell in Love with the Moon

Lit, Pals, , , , , , ,

Once upon a time, there was a fish that fell in love with the moon. While other fish swam in water warmed by the sun, our fish waited for the cool moonshine and the rise of his beloved moon.

He loved the moon and everything about her. He loved her delicately laced surface, the white light she gave off, her changeable waxing and waning.

One night our fish decided to seek out his love. Continue reading The Fish that Fell in Love with the Moon →

Ofanya

Lit, Pals, , ,

As you come out of the forests and first spy Ofanya, you mistake it for a ruin or a bombsite.  Closer to the crumbling towers and half-roofed houses it becomes apparent that the people hurrying about are not in peril or panic.  They are going about their business calmly but quickly among the wasted blocks of Ofanya.  There is no danger, save for when a building collapses.

Spending time in the falling, failing city of Ofanya, the people reveal themselves to be full of great ambition.  No one is a banker or a grocer or a shopkeeper.  Everyone is a writer or a musician.  All are working on projects of staggering beauty and terrible deep complexity, so they have no time to spend on day jobs.  talk to anyone and they will tell you about the three hour underwater dance cycle they are dedicating to the battle of normandy.  A shy young man will show you his preliminary sketches of for a full-body tattoo of his life, the lives of his ancestors and the predicted lives of his someday children.

They cannot stay with you long, these poets and sculptors.  There is no one who will keep a shop in Ofanya, so there is nowhere to buy bread.  In the morning, the artists all wake up and scour the countryside for wild wheat they can handmill to eat.  The muralists go to the river to catch trout.  All the time everyone complains about how they can’t get a cup of coffee.  They greet each other mainly by asking for cigarettes.

You grow weary of Ofanya as everyone you meet asks you for favors and loans, promising they will remember you when their script gets made.

Ofanya is a city of infinite desire and little execution.  The houses and towers are not destroyed, they were never finished by balladeers who are writing songs about love and death.  The shit and piss stinks in the streets as there are no sewers dug, no street cleaners.  Everywhere the thin starving artists plead with you that they cannot delay their art to move to another city, but they cannot complete their art as thy have to spend all day searching for food, firewood, and shelter.  Something must be done about this hell that is Ofanya.  With a little planning and cooperation this could be a great bohemia.  Ofanya just wants you to set up a bakery, where your labor will be repaid in songs of glory and monuments to your industry.  Ofanya wants you to build an apartment block, which would be covered in heroic murals in tribute to you.

Don’t ponder this ridiculous proposal for too long.  You will begin to compose an essay in your head, a masterful argument that will strike the people of Ofanya with reason and put them into a well ordered society.  While you prepare this powerful rhetorical thunderbolt, you will grow hungry and make your way to the woods to hunt for some walnuts or blackberries.

Two stories about light and information

Lit, Pals, , , ,

When I was younger I saw small haloish ripples around some shadows.  I thought I had magic powers, that I could see auras.  I believed I had this secret power for quite some time.  While reading a moving presentation by Matt Web about ancient Patagonian communication (it’s sort of heartbreaking), I learned what it was.  I was seeing the resolution problems of my eye.  In shadows, you can see the very resolution limits of light information itself.  How fascinating that you can see these physical limits of the universe in action.

One footnote of his led me to go read and eventually write about the story of the first telegraph network, which was completely human powered.  I’ve put up a little something for you about Claude Chappe’s Optical Telegraph, and I’d appreciate any feedback you’ve got on it.