...like Caine in Kung Fu.

Saturday, June 24, 2017

Actors Who Have Played William S. Burroughs

Peter Weller in Naked Lunch (1991)

Dennis Hopper in The Source (1999)

Kiefer Sutherland in Beat (2000)

Viggo Mortenson in On The Road (2012)

Ben Foster in Kill Your Darlings (2013)

J.G. Ballard Playlist

J.G. Ballard Playlist

1. Hawkwind - High Rise
2. The Fall - Industrial Estate
3. The Buggles - Vermilion Sands
4. Madonna - Drowned World/Substitute
5. Gary Numan - Down In The Park
6. Joy Division - Atrocity Exhibition

A few years back, right before I was supposed to have spinal surgery, I was reaching under the television for the cat when the LED pumpkin that was perched precariously atop fell and cracked my noggin. Ended up with a black eye. The bone underneath still feels weird to this day.

That Sinking Feeling

Sinkholes Around The World

There are two basic types of sinkholes: (1) A cover-subsidance sinkhole and (2) a cover-collapse sinkhole.

A sinkhole near Brisbane, Australia.

Guatemala Sinkhole

Most are naturally occurring, but humans can contribute.

Why Sinkholes Open Up

Harwood Hole - Abel Tasman National Park, New Zealand. 183 m deep.

The Devil's Hole sinkhole near Hawthorne, Florida.

Teiq Sinkhole - Oman, Jordan. One of the largest sinkholes in the world by volume - 90 million cubic meters. 250 m deep.

Blue Hole - Dahab, Egypt. 130 m deep on the edge of the Red Sea. Free diving attempts often prove fatal.

Bahmah Sinkhole in Oman, Jordan.

Sinkhole Swallows Florida Man

A helicopter hovers over a sinkhole that's 120-feet wide and 180-feet deep in a gypsum stack at IMC-Agrico's New Wales plant, southwest of Mulberry, Fla., on June 29, 1994. (Scott Wheeler/Reuters)

The Great Blue Hole is a giant submarine sinkhole off the coast of Belize.

Sinkhole Swallows Two Homes, Threatens More in Tampa.

Friday, June 23, 2017

Character Breakdown & Vocabulary from PKD's "The Crack In Space"

Dateline - 2080

Herb Lackmore - Oakland Branch of the U.S. Dept. of Special Public Welfare

Lurton D. Sands jr. - Famous Org Trans Surgeon, getting divorced from...

Myra - Abort Consultant

Cally Vale - Lurton Sands' mistress

Tito Cravelli - Private Investigator hired by Myra to dig up dirt on her husband

Darius Pethel - Owns Pethel Jiffi Scuttler Sales & Service

Stu Hadley - His salesman

Rick Erickson - Repairman for Pethel Jiffi Scuttler Sales & Service

James Briskin - Republican Liberal candidate for president. Black.

Salisbury Heim - His campaign manager

Patricia Briskin - His wife

Phil Danville - His speech writer

Bruno Mini - Failed Terraformer

Frank Woodbine - Famous space explorer

William Schwartz - State's Rights Conservative Democrat incumbent

Verne Engel - runs CLEAN (like the TEA Party)

Thisbe Olt - Golden Door Moments of Bliss Satellite

George Walt - 2 headed proprieter on the Satellite

VOCABULARY

Newsclown - A person who delivers specially selected light news.

Aristotle's Law of the Excluded Middle

Wozzeck by Berg

Islands of Langerhans

Pyloric Spasms

10 Great PKD Stories That Hollywood Hasn't Filmed Yet

SFFaudio Podcast: The Crack In Space

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Kilgore Trout Short Stories

Breakfast of Champions Trailer 1999

2BR02B
"Asleep at the Switch"
The Barring-gaffner of Bagnialto, or This Year's Masterpiece
The Big Board
"The Dancing Fool"
The First District Court of Thank-You
Gilgongo!
The Gospel from Outer Space
The Gutless Wonder
"Hail to the Chief"
"How You Doin?"
Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension
Now It Can Be Told
Oh Say Can You Smell?

The Pan-Galactic Memory Bank

"Pan-Galactic Straw-Boss"

Pan-Galactic Three-Day Pass

Plague on Wheels

The Planet Gobblers

The Smart Bunny

The Son of Jimmy Valentine

"This Means You"

Venus on the Half-Shell

Fictional character

Kilgore Trout is a fictional character created by author Kurt Vonnegut. In Vonnegut's work, Trout is a notably unsuccessful author of paperback science fiction novels. Wikipedia

Creator: Kurt Vonnegut

Played by: Albert Finney

Occupation: Science Fiction

Children: Leon Trotsky Trout

Play: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Movie: Breakfast of Champions

Case File 88: Breakfast of Champions

Intro to PKD 101

Philip Kindred Dick - Kindred was his mother's maiden name

Born December 16, 1928 in Chicago and died in 1982

He lived most of his life in Berkeley, California

He suffered from asthma, paroxysmal tachycardia and bouts of eczema

Had a twin sister named Jane Charlotte that died not long after birth

His 1965 novel "Dr. Bloodmoney" has a character that lives inside another character and communicates telepathically.

When he was a child he had an imaginary playmate named "Jane".

Dr. George Engel coined the term "Twinning" referring to the deep connection twins have, and the particular trauma of losing a twin sibling.

PKD won the Hugo Award in 1963 for his novel "The Man in the High Castle".

The Hugo Award is named after Hugo Gernsback - a publisher of SF pulp magazines.

He is considered a "Soft SF" writer - more concerned with challenging the cognitive construct by which we order our lives, versus "Hard SF" which is more technical in nature.

A PKD protagonist is one who saves the world through empathic awareness of its suffering and perceptive insight into its ultimate irreality.

Films
1. Blade Runner (1982)
2. Total Recall
3. Impostor
4. Paycheck
5. A Scanner Darkly
6. The Minority Report
7. The Adjustment Bureau

Edgar Allen Poe - Proto SF?
"The Case of M. Valdemar"
"The Mystification"

PKD had a series of visions between Feb-March 1974. He referred to those as "2-3-74".

PKD was very fond of elaboration, extrapolation, reinterpretation and outright putting people on.

PKD gave an interview to Rolling Stone in November 1974.

Works
1. Eye in the Sky 1957
2. Time Out of Joint 1959
3. Confessions of a Crap Artist 1959 (published 1975)
4. The Man in the High Castle 1962
5. Martian Time-Slip 1964
6. A Crack in Space 1964
7. Simulacra 1964
8. Dr. Bloodmoney 1965
9. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch 1965
10. Ubik 1969
11. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said 1974
12. A Scanner Darkly 1977
13. Valis 1981
14. Divine Invasions 1981
15. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer 1982

VOCABULARY
1. Ganymedean

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganymede_%28mythology%29

2. Hermetic

http://gnosis.org/hermes.htm
3. Epigrammatic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigram
4. Ratiocination

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ratiocination
5. Anima

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_and_animus

6. Gnosticism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

7. Logos

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos

8. Demiurge

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge