November 24th, 2010

Traversing the FacebookwUrmhole

With much chagrin, a rather forced migration or simultaneous presence in a parallel dementia that would make any obliterati wince. The homely murk of our own ethereal abode not yet given to total abandon,  a para-site, a para-citation, a correcting of violations.  Or, in more euphemistic missives: a need for traversable wormholes.

An entrance into the social network, so called, under the illusions that we enter as some sort of facebookwUrm, rogue or cavalcade.  Incubating in the stagnant waters,  but no more linked to the fleshy minds of mammals than a domestic whirlpool is access to a value system outside of raw sewage.

A low-frills, ambivalent cultural virus, smug and given to smuggling derelict theory objects elsewhere, (((WFT))) now diving into the waters contaminated within the social mores of the continually, partially attentive.

And yet, already we “progress”.  Already we can be “poked.” And, so one wonders if this virus is itself immune to the ecotoxic swill it proclaims to infrapopulate? Metcalf’s Muzzle at the ready, for lack of a fully equipped respirator.  Fish don’t know water until beached, as the Mage McLuhan observed. This Owl knows water, doesn’t give a damn about the fishes.  Water is for dipping one’s claws, used for making coffee-stimulants, for disguising hidden conduits to the Hollow Earth, tomorrow’s de-orbited satellites and so on.  And yet already we find ourselves hooked.

June 23rd, 2010

Obsolucid Dreaming

Whimsical are the home-brew Pinatobu Options for cooling this planet, tactics advancing even now by the obsolucid dreamers who have taken them to the Peruvian hills. Operating in a realm of suspended disbelief, this no-fi geo-engineering scheme relies on the “fool’s gold” of rocks painted white, a retrograde remediation intended to attract displaced climactic conditions for glacial expanse.  Minnesotan Ice Men could not be reached for comments on what could be a formidable retirement home for their ilk.  But I digress.  

As a bioluminescent flying organism myself, I have a particular penchant for “giving a hoot” about both the sordid lack of funds for varied tactical reality campaigns and the ambiguous light-forms concerned. Equally admonished by my attention is the rising wave of scotological extremists clamoring for an outlandish void of autonomous lucidity lest it interfere with the reception of sanctioned astronomies.  Of such autonomous activity, bioluminaries, including Will-o-the-Whisps, the Min Min Light,  The Hornet Spooklight and St. Elmo’s fire find themselves faced with bouts of structural unemployment and the increasing demands of dark sky desperados.

It would not be unprecedented for a total recall of such uppity astronomers’ dim ideals.  Outmoded it seems are the now languishing liberal attitudes towards anomalous phenomena of the air.  Where as once giddy onlookers found Martian canals, lost planets and phantom airships in most any instance of atmospheric light-leak, such elements are now implicated as latent light pollution if paid attention at all.  If aforementioned geo-hacks are the craze, then bring forth a battalion of stones painted with alien craft, of mountains adorned with undulating orbs of the unknown…that these direct action paintings might summon forth falls of bioluminescent dissent en masse, recharging uncertain imaginaries, pronto!

March 27th, 2010

watch log #1

Standing watch at the dematerializedpelton
Gates of dawn,
me spotted cogified cosmonauts
constipated and command less. With branded barrels of JP-5 by their side,
star lust, Mars or bust, spare a brother a dime; beaming from mutant dimensional eyes
acquired from over exposure on underfunded flybys.
More members of Precariat class
Compounding a conundrum
these abandoned astronauts,
angry and ample, ascended upon my perched place
poised as protectorate.
Pausing, passing simulations over situations,
Summarizing summations,
“could anarchist astronauts gather before the ephemeral door while it whirled and twirled
and bore no resemblance to analog cyborgs?”
They so craved to lore into a post utopia all night convenient store.
Rolling snow dust hills separate us in distance,
while This Owl malignant magic codifies confidence within mind crust.
Raising voice to join in over-heard, overhead, over-stated choir…

August 5th, 2009

The Owl Has Landed

How is it that a bird of flight can suffer jet-lag?  Strange enough it is indeed!  Parallel processes include the fact that my reconnaissance within medieval villages in the south of France revealed not so many visible noctambules, but the sounds, the sounds! the sounds! It was a figure-ground reversal that haunts me still…It seems that even ancient villages are all tele-synesthetic these days–cable equipped, wi-fi bathed– so that anything more than invisibility would be just another iteration of the simultaneous whirl of globalisation.  Nocturnal predators in these anomalous spaces have adapted in relevant ways—they opt for old fashioned obsfucation of visually detectable coordinates.  And they do just fine panning their incessant hoots from every which where all through the night!

picture-4Still, the owl form appears—a laughable skeuomorph idling on fence posts and decrepit walls, a cheap mimicry that betrays the adaptive strategies of these noble creatures.  Like a small maple syrup jug with non-functional handle, these false idols are scattered about the countryside, dismissed by would be prey, gaudy deterrence machines all told.  Yes, yes– these regionally iterative trompe l’oeil reveal in reverse the mutant outgrowth of what was once called the picturesque.  Or, in other words, they reek of an inadequate ability to reset the sleep/wake cycle in response to info-environmental time cues, i.e. history is spatial: technocultural jet-lag.

July 2nd, 2009

Birds of a Feather

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”:mothman-1

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.

owlman1_ft16_19While 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.

WEIRD FICTION : Invading Mankind's Information Ecosystems