Weird Fiction

Data bodies , lorkurers (PZed and others) are on the prowl, satiating panopticonscious hungers of unnamed entities with scavenged nutrients.  Considering that “When there’s no more culture on-line, data bodies will roam the earth,” and that the next level devolution embodied by meanderthals is oppressively apparent in the streets, we are due to crash land in a new dark age.  Morally ambiguous actions in noirish net-spaces produce visible shadows on Earth.    A feat formally reserved for the largess of the Sun, the Moon and other planetary bodies, the data shadow knows what lurks in the networked minds of men!  Operating inter-dimensionally,  shadows and fog formulate neo-noir scenarios, all echoes of earlier exploits…

In the 19th c., proto-noir was more or less identifiable in the mode of gloom–the intrinsically murky.  It was when Claude Chappe’s semaphore lines were all the rage and blow-hards like N. Bonaparte dotted the lands with a complex network of these optical telegraphs that murky things, too, started getting interesting.   “Three hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets,” he famously proclaimed, boasting the power of the press, foreshadowing the impact of blogospheric bombardments we know today.  Signal and noise became grayed out, inaccessible in either extreme. Evident it was that operating an optical telegraph in the vicinity of a marsh or bog, quag or swamp would provide frequent collisions with fogginess and subsequent bouts of interference.  Organized crimes would soon follow.

While imbibing such non-normative nourishment would actually be, and indeed still is, vital to survival and resistance to a monocultural diet-tribe, Napoleonic types are so often rattled by decentralized modes of meaning that such optical elusion is a real chagrin!  Night fall, let alone trolls, swamp things and other such shadow beings who provided then, as they do today, a bevvy of provocative perils for unsuspecting netizens.

As Quagczar’s very hideous existence reminds us daily, there are marshlands amidst this info-dimensional vortex, too.  Embrace the murk, friends.  You can carry a gun and a rope to scare off snakes and avoid quicksand if you please, but marvel at the info-marsh before it dries up!

Net neutrality debacles, should they fall forward to the neutering of the Net,  will force mass migrations of variously strange life-forms into the physical realm.  Of this Noahchian flooding of virtual life-forms into the terrestrial lands, it is the data bodies who may be particularly mischief-inclined. Doppelgangers of the virtually enthralled populace, data bodies already rifle through feebly firewalled minds of plugged-in mammals who peruse the networks unconscious of their heightened vulnerability.

At land, mental file transfer will continue with mechanisms that are as of yet unknown to humanoids.  Like second-wave vampling without the altruistic agenda, a mode of mind-jacking will materialize, one that is in cahoots with unfathomably dark and labyrinthine forms of panopticonsciousness.

Indeed panopticonscientious objection is concievable, the system itself  is capable of considering how and when to blink.

Space-time collisions indeed.  Miniature black holes and other claims of certain scientists pale in comparison to the chronovampiric conquest of our cosmos by uncertain cine-molecular missives as evidenced in the self-reflexive fragment hovering above.

Quantum physicists, in all their pedestrian theories about the hypothetical Higgs Boson and its alleged time-traveling mischief, have nothing on neuroaesthetes currently cavorting within Weird Fiction’s ficto-quizzical milieu.

Cine-molecular sabotage is a rogue anomaly operating in our midst, seeking entrance to this and other realms—including prominently the panopticonscious lifeworld of the immediated real and, as always, the fleshy-minds of mammals.  Alternate universes open up in the inframince, like an obliterati’s escape mechanisms made momentarily visible or, at least, providing a perverse morsel of nourishment for those with a taste for  non-normative neural cuisine.

The selfish cine-molecule is so abhorrent to conventional wisdom that  rippling backward through time and there subjecting derivative audio-visual terrain  to most officious invasions from the future is a common occurrence!  The cine-molecule, a microscopic mental vampire, embeds itself in the fabric of reality, weaponizing space/time in a kinesthetic battle for hearts and minds.

Necessarily brief this post will be, emphasis on brevity and necessity.  Moonlighting in this Weird milieu for awhile now, I have found my mind so cluttered with restless flows of images, half-formed ideas and in other words am increasingly pestered both passively and aggressively into continuing my reports on these ficto-quizzical agents.  So…despite the current wave of brain addling heat… here are some Metaphortean musings on the creature known as “This Owl”:

This Owl is purported to be omniscient, panopticonscious, densely networked and, at times, creepy as all hell. Rarely materialized into “humanoid” form at Weird Fiction event-scenes, yet always quick to followup with reviews and anecdotes related to any particular evening’s occurrences. Some audiences have reported hearing a faint fluttering of wings, incessant ringing of phones and other anomalous sounds.

While shy of a confirmed link, or two, there is reason enough to consider the “Mothman,” or “Bird man” as an adjunct operative. Zoological authorities will always laugh off any cryptid by pointing to a commonplace look-a-like. In presence of Mothmania circa 1966-67 and onwards, experts aplenty have cited the barn owl to quell anxious denizens of the West Virginian countryside.

Truly, the colossal corpus and red glaring eyes don’t compute with typical taxonomies of owls but the point here is not merely Fortean notions of intermediacy. Owls, especially the species inhabiting info-ecosystems, are most curious and perhaps paranormal creatures, to be wary of…

Visual associations aside, This Owl, like the Mothman (and so many other monstrous creatures) is also a sort of portent or omen of impending crises. Alas, as noted, the heat is close at hand and my Metaphortean diagnostics are greatly incapacitated presently. I will have to end here, taking cover in shadier climes for a spell.

Space Time Transience is a good gig…and certainly in this economy I have no complaints in that regard. Still, as one of many underlings responsible for maintaining a multimedia tapestry at once strange and familiar, I am at odds, at times, over notions of experience design. Is it enough to confuse and bemuse? Is confusion in itself an open or closed system? Is it also prone to solidify into signage for sampling and re-use, or is noise inherently transgressive, end of story? Monstrous new modes of glimpsing the unfathomable are so quickly commodified into ‘noise filters’ and emulators that futilitarianism provides a somewhat alluring outlook. Even the razzle-dazzle of my daily threads could be defused and repackaged as retro-fashion. “Punkrock wears out faster than a leather jacket” quipped M.Garite aeons ago, and in other words, some helpful hints from HP:

“In the true weird tale there must be a hint…of that most terrible conception of the human brain–a malign and particular suspension of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against assaults of chaos and the daemons from unplumbed space.” (Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature, 1927)

Media literacy is paramount these days, and imaging is as uncontrollable as an itch. Networked appendages mobile devices, cellphones, cameras and other such phantom limbs advance in all directions. Immediacy (but not instaneity) is old hat or at least reinterpreted at slowed-down pace. Aligned to the seemingly natural conditions of media-delay. While some humans speak of “kodak courage,” of being emboldened to “go beyond their physical limits” when in front of a camera, I suspect a deeper turbulence more akin to phenomena witnessed in John Carpenter’s The Thing. Isolated instances, amplified by the network into info-mesh, repeated and echoed into visual densities of these many mirrored images constitute an encounter with a mildly dystopic cosmic host. Kodak courage, or deepset Panopticonsciousness? Who owns the mix? And who is that suit schmoozing up those daemons from unplumbed space?