My Proving Grounds Storming the Reality Studio. DVD commentary tracks. Rivers and streams of Appalachia and the man-made horizons of East Coast sprawl. Zoology, forestry, and the bio-conservation movement. Robotics, simulacra, and artificial life. Experimental parks, gardens, and cityscapes. Trains, depots, way-stations, and automats. REM sleep and dream research. Pros and cons of the biotech revolution, of the transhuman restructuring of the soul. World cinema and grindhouse-wuxia splattercore. Medieval Gothic tryptyches and the graffiti on railroad bridges and highway overpasses. Marionette theater and stop-motion phantasmagorias. Shamanism and neuroscience. Beasts of logic and birds of paradox. The superiority of Aboriginal and Native American spirituality. The slides and traps of Gotham. The Sistine Chapel and Marvel comics. Ancient cartography and the digital imaging of virtual metropoli. Stone temples and adamantine hypercities. Totem, hieroglyph, and cyberdeck. Water, atmosphere, and the metaphysics of architecture. Xenoarchaeology and the Gnostic labyrinth. Masques of encryption and games of personae. Zen meditation and the cult of speed. Gnomic epitaphs and marathon exegeses. Baroque choral music and raging death metal. Mosh pits and classic jazz. Science museums and sculpture gardens. Astronomical observatories and electron microscopes. Cathedrals and abandoned amusement parks. The Bible and the Necronomicon. Ibsenian/Shavian drama and the White Wolf Storytelling System. The cosmogenic gazetteers of world religion and the search-engine of empirical science. Pranks, bluffs, endgames and nocturnes. Discovering what history, religion, art, and science have made of us. Stealth jets and prehistoric flying reptiles. Prison reform and the politics of criminal justice. Democratic eco-socialism and the soulcrushing leviathan of Capital. Community service and impassioned solipsism. Futurology and revisionary history. How "the street finds its own use for things." Film festivals and RPG conventions. Alienating the public with Lit-nerd esoterica. Being an indie film and documentary whore. Mentoring juvenile offenders (I shit you not). Doing philosophy. Answering children's questions. Wasting time online. Trying to control my bibliovoric, bank-account draining Amazon.com triggerfinger.
The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges
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My Cabal
"I started as an omnivore, worked my way up to dilettante, and if I live long enough, I'll be a polymath." -Bruce Sterling
Fellow alumni from Interzone University: Scholars. Writers. Artists. Literati. Bibliovores. Logoeccentrists. Xenophiles. Rogue Empiricists. Introverts. Indie Cinephiles. People who know who a good chunk of the people on my Heroes list are. Anyone whose cognitive and artistic concerns have made them lonely, aggrieved, marginalized, promethean. You know who you are.
My Audiodrome Lisa Gerrard, Hildegard von Bingen, John Tavener, Arvo Part, Purcell, Faith No More, A Perfect Circle, Corpses Wired For Sound, Maxwell Demon, T. Rex, This Mortal Coil, Danzig, Carcass, Arch Enemy, Dead Can Dance, Peter Ulrich, Guided By Voices, Winston Salem Burn, Cathedral, Tool, Sepultura, Cynic, Opeth, Maiden, Sabbath, Priest, Slayer, Primus, Mr. Bungle, Fantomas, Anacrusis, Death, Blind Guardian, Amorphis, Godflesh, Jethro Tull, Tom Waits, Sacred Reich, Jaco Pastorius, Misfits, Dimmu Borgir, Old Man's Child, Bethlehem, Cradle of Filth, Dream Theater, Napalm Death, Tiamat, Iced Earth, Rush, Samael, Megadeth, Mind Over Four, Chris Cornell, Shakespear's Sister, Ministry, Killing Joke, Believer, Voivod, Overkill, Corrosion of Conformity, Mercyful Fate, King Diamond, Aversion, Exodus, S/T, Strapping Young Lad, The Shaggs, Spinal Tap, The Folksmen, The Soggy Bottom Boys, Wombat Vengeance, Hedwig and the Eastern Bloc Rockers, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Echo & the Bunnymen, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Ted Lyons and the Cubs, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, Leonard Cohen, Altan, Sick Of It All, Stu Hamm, Victor Wooten, Johnny Cash, GWAR, S.O.D., Alasdair Fraser, Dead Kennedys, Fear, Bruce Dickinson, Life Sex Death, The Who, Scatterbrain, Obituary, Prong, Michael Hedges, Michael Manring, Pierre Bensusan, Brendan Perry, Enya, Tenacious D, Loreena McKennitt, Type O Negative, Atheist, South Park soundtracks, Art Garfunkel, At The Gates, Deicide, Right Said Fred, The Cast, Robin Holcomb, Anton Maiden, Mike Schank, Sonic Death Monkey, Stovokor: The Klingon Tribute Band, various folk-Celtic divas.
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My Panopticon The Celebration, Ratcatcher, Buffalo '66, Naked Lunch, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, Passion of Joan of Arc, Breaking the Waves, Viridiana, The Beckett On Film Project, Wax: The Discovery of Television Among the Bees, Fitzcarraldo, Stroszek, Every Man for Himself and God Against All, F for Fake, Coming Apart, Shadows, Faces, Minnie and Moskowitz, A Woman Under the Influence, What Happened Was..., The Wife, Sans Toit Ni Loi, The Lion in Winter, A Man For All Seasons, Crumb, Dead Ringers, Empire of the Sun, Solaris (both versions), The Fly, Watership Down, Memento, Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy, Kids, Stranger Than Paradise, Mystery Train, Down By Law, No Maps For These Territories, Brothers Quay, Faust, Dr. Strangelove, Orlando, Dune, Meantime, Bleak Moments, The Kiss of Death, Nuts in May, Abigail's Party, Home Sweet Home, High Hopes, Naked, Topsy Turvy, Wings of Desire, American Movie, Trekkies, Capturing the Friedmans, Bamboozled, El Topo, Holy Mountain, Repo Man, Stalker, The Name of the Rose, Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Ran, Schizopolis (but only when director's commentary is playing), Marat/Sade (but only with the sound turned off; I improvise all the voices/songs myself), Safe, Barton Fink, Lolita (both versions), Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, All About Eve, Merchant of the Four Seasons, Petra von Kant, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, The Color of Money, Mikey and Nicky, The Trial (both versions), Ben-Hur, Life of Brian, Glengarry Glen Ross, Lakeboat, La Jette, Chinatown, Unbreakable, The Red Balloon, My Life as a Dog, Winged Migration, A Clockwork Orange, March of the Wooden Soldiers, Dead of Night (1945), Swiss Family Robinson, Old Yeller, Ed Wood, Se7en, Yor: The Hunter From the Future (play the song!) , The Ice Pirates, Tron, Dawn of the Dead (1978), The Fatal Glass of Beer, Oleanna, Adaptation, Harold and Maude, Being There, A Little Stiff, Map of the Human Heart, Vigil, An Angel At My Table, Best Boy, Best Man, Swoon, L'Avventura, The Lathe of Heaven (original version), Wicker Man, Suddenly Last Summer, Lost In La Mancha, The 400 Blows, Spider's Strategem, L'Age d'Or, Hoop Dreams, Stevie, Waking Life, The Paper Chase, Last Picture Show, Grey Gardens, That Obscure Object of Desire, Chuck & Buck, Melvin Goes to Dinner, Triplets of Belleville, City of God, Little Noises, Baraka, The Qatsi Trilogy, Brother's Keeper, To Be and To Have, From Mao to Mozart, The Blue Kite, Funny Ha Ha, Diary of a Country Priest, The Indian Runner, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, Russian Ark, Laughing Club of India, Walkabout, Rosalie's Journey, Murderball, The Corporation, Primer, Grizzly Man, The Aristocrats, Stone Reader, Mana: Beyond Belief, A Scanner Darkly, Jesus Camp, Session Man, My Best Fiend, This Filthy World, Helvetica, The King of Kong, New York Doll, I Like Killing Flies.
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My Idiot Box
BBC World, Videodrome, Mr. Show, The Office, Steve Coogan, MST3K, The Wire, Current_TV, Sabotage, City of Men, The Singing Detective, Insomniac, Primetime Glick, First Person, Frontline, Disinformation, Uncle Goddamn, West Wing, Traffik, Ali G, The McLaughlin Group, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, Aeon Flux, Strangers With Candy, Jeeves & Wooster, Black Adder, Harvey Birdman, Black Books, Max Headroom, The Edison Carter Show, Whackets, Porky's Landing, Missle Mike, Bigtime TV, Lumpy's Proletariat, The Western Tradition, BBC Sherlock Holmes, To Serve Them All My Days, Scenes From a Marriage, City Arts/City Life, Shogun, Reality Dating Shows (hee-larious), Upright Citizens Brigade, Home Movies, H.R. Pufnstuf, The Altered State of Drugachusetts, Headbangers Ball, 120 Minutes, Lancelot Link: Private Chimp, The Prisoner, Spitting Image, Pinky and the Brain, Whiz Kids, 3-2-1 Contact, Liquid Television, The Maxx, The Tick, Doctor Who, The Young Ones, Little House, Alien Nation, Twilight Zone, What's Happening?, Penn and Teller: Bullshit!, Reading Rainbow, The Gong Show, Life Goes On, A Wedding Story, An Adoption Story, Discovery Health Channel, Mr. Wizard, Turkey TV, David the Gnome, The Great Space Coaster, G-Force, Oil Painting with Bob Ross, The UP Chronicles: 7 to 49, Takeshi's Castle (any Japanese game show, really). Also, check out: Blundercats , Smurfs: The Lost Episode , Porkchop Sandwiches .
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My Soulforge
Necronomicon, Little Big, Aegypt, Middlemarch, The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, Suttree, Blood Meridian, As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Ulysses, In Search of Lost Time, Don Quixote (the 10% of it that rocks), Zuckerman Bound, Gravity's Rainbow, The Aeneid, Crash, The Drowned World, The Atrocity Exhibition, The Terminal Beach, Tree of Smoke, A Voyage to Arcturus, Paradise Lost, The Songlines, Faust, The Western Lands, The Naked Lunch Tetralogy, Picture of Dorian Gray, Cerebus the Aardvark, Libra, Lord Jim, Moby Dick, Imajica, Adam Bede, Mill on the Floss, Barchester Towers, Bleak House, The Petersburg Tales, Miss Lonelyhearts, Schismatrix, Islands in the Net, Crystal Express, Globalhead, Distraction, Holy Fire, Zeitgeist, A Good Old-Fashioned Future, Visionary In Residence, The Difference Engine, Idoru, Pattern Recognition, The Country of the Blind, Accelerando, Promethea, Pride and Prejudice, Why I Hate Saturn, Lolita, Grendel, The Living End, Dune, Gai-Jin, Da Vinci's Notebooks, Stephen Hero, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Airships, The Throat, Fight Club, Carrion Comfort, Skin, The New York Trilogy, Madame Bovary, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, Bad Behavior, The Seagull, Ambient, Little Nemo in Slumberland, The ACME Novelty Library, The Little Disturbances of Man, Box Office Poison, Eight Ball, Ex Machina, Preacher, The Left Hand of Darkness, Man and Superman, The House of the Dead, Crime and Punishment, Brand, Peer Gynt, The Anxiety of Influence, Agon, The Palm at the End of the Mind, The Thief's Journal, The Gay Science, Either/Or, Beowulf (the Heaney translation), The Zohar (the Rosenberg translation), Complete Kafka and Borges, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, The Road to Science Fiction, Wising Up the Marks, The Annotated Lovecraft, Krypton Nights, Bartleby the Scrivener, Axiomatic, Asia Grace, The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium, Newjack, The War Against Cliche, The Altering Eye, S M L XL, I Robot, The Book of J, God: A Biography, Amphigorey, Adventures of Tintin, The Anatomy of Melancholy, The Mechanical Bride, Biggles Combs His Hair, Ethel the Aardvark Goes Quantity-Surveying, Optic Nerve, the White Wolf hardcovers, any Chaosium manual, Techgnosis, The Broken Estate, Aeschylus, Lucretius, Aurelius, Juvenal, Petronius, Cicero, Apuleius, Boethius, Livy, Seneca, Valentinus, Plautus, Suetonius, Psellus, Procopius, Bruno, Schopenhauer, Ruskin, Pater, Emerson, Bergson, Cioran, Frye, Dame Yates, Empson, Knight, Paglia, Barzun, Shattuck, Dennett, and I really need to get some friggen sun....
My Protagonists
Bruce Sterling, Adrian Veidt, J.L. Borges, Camille Paglia, Chris Ware, Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, Paul Laffoley, Chuck Schuldiner, Jeff Walker, Reverend Jesse Custer, James Wood, Ray Carney, V.S. Pritchett, Harold Bloom, Walter Benjamin, John Clute, John Malkovich, Toshiro Mifune, Felix Guattari, Mike Leigh, Mark Dery, Erik Davis, Penn and Teller, Marcel Proust, Bill Hicks, Dennis Miller, William Gass, Clive Barker, the Gnostic Jesus, Alexandro Jodorowski, David Cronenberg, Walter Pater, John Ruskin, R.W. Emerson, Gershom Scholem, Gilles Deleuze, Glenn Danzig, Lisa Gerrard, Michael Manring, Derrick Jensen, Avram Davidson, John Cassavetes, Tom Noonan, Harmony Korine, Jeremy Brett, Lancelot Link, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, Charlie Brown, Joseph Merrick, Chris Burke, Bob Flanagan, Soren Kierkegaard, Paul Muad'Dib Atreides, the Mentat Emperor.