Puck

A Cheney Saturday

2007-07-21T05:13:55Z

Dick Cheney is POTUS while George is under anesthesia for a “routine colonoscopy,” say White House reporters.

It’s a chilling thought,” one passerby told AXcess News when asked if they were concerned over Cheney’s short-term rule of the White House.

Girl-gone-wild Cheney says, “Give me my nuclear codes. Give me my everyday fuck you, Corpus Christi be damned. Give me executive power and I will coup like a dove. Give me ’till the bitter end and I will change you forever, America.”

Too late, asshole. Too. Fucken. Late.

Bang

2007-07-17T07:01:44Z

fiction by Brian Charles Clark

“I’m in heaven,” Orkney sings as he and his little black bag bloom through the door. I’d swear he was gesticulating wildly, but no, it’s just his aura flaring.
I’m smacking cornflakes, sitting stoic as a reader in bed.
“Where ya been? Been specten ya.”
Orkney trips another step into the little yellow room. He grins like a refrigerator door swinging open, waves away my question.
“We’re in the news,” he says.
AWOL, base police, truncheons, court marshal, the Group W bench.
“I’m trying not to jump to conclusions here,” I say. I feel like an old felt hat. Too comfortable to have much backbone. I eye Orkney suspiciously.
He hands me his cache, snicks it on. I click the Morning with WNN bookmark automatically.
“Click on obituaries.”
“Scu me?” But I click anyway.
Flip me. There we are. Our names.
“We were killed in the war.” We were killed in the war? Did I miss something?

exQorpse

2007-07-15T11:50:26Z

More fun with the letter Q and the binary number of the beastbot: exQorpse, a PHP-driven dadabase from Shawn Rider. I say “more,” because Shawn has done other things–many brilliant, weird, and irrepressible things–like this before. exQorpse is premised on a sound idea shared by surrealism and new media: conversation is an art. Shawn may go wrong in leading the initial player of the Qorpse into negativity; there’s a lot of spamnet negativity. But, interestingly, the user can come back into the poetic conversation with a new nickname and find him/herself quoted (out of context and databasically; not all the words are ones you wrote): nicknames carry on with a life of their own. Interesting, and very Shawn, this persistence of memory. As some sort of expert system, the concept of the exquisite corpse game has intriguing use as a brainstorm device. This isn’t it, but it approaches proof of concept. After a few zillion more hours research and programming (and yo mamma’s gonna pay for it in taxes, guarantee), this Q of a brainstorming machine may be looked back upon as a forefeather.

I’m2Sexy

2007-07-14T17:02:57Z

a musical offering by DJSkrotekkki

I’m not sure what all goes on in the mind of DJSkrotekkki, but it is surely wondrous strange. I’ll let him speak for himself:

My latest assault on the sonic front emerged from the trenches of a creative block. After countless months had come and gone without any progress being made on another music project, I thought something less demanding and more “fun” might un-jam the rifle, knock loose the crust of mud, blood, sweat, and grime that had accumulated on it during its time on the battlefield - something like… a cover song. Being a fan of the sardonic, ironic, and just plain hilarious (and being unsure of my own vocal abilities), Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy” seemed to be the perfect target. The fact that I’d had the idea in my iron sights for a while didn’t hurt either.

The song’s structure is such that I could throw all sorts of things into my rendition of it, providing an opportunity to experiment with a plethora of production tactics. And test my pipes.Honestly, I’m not sure how to gauge the vocal performance. Given the constraints (or were they restraints?) I was working within, I suppose they’re okay. After all, they are intended to be humorous and definitely succeed in that regard.

More work went into the music than I’m willing to admit - or type about. However, I will list the hardware and software used and abused during the (de)construction of the song: bass guitar/amp, guitar/amp, microphone, Goldwave and Fruityloops. I also sampled the kick from Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer”, drums and sounds from Skinny Puppy’s “Left Hand Shake”, various sounds from Microsoft Instruments, and of course, a Timothy Leary interview.

Bring your lawn chairs and enjoy the battle.

And here’s DJSkrotekkki’s “I’m2Sexy” for your download and/or streaming pleasure.

Bird’s Gonna Fly Away

2007-07-11T09:04:29Z

music by DJ Funken Wagnalls, video by vjvz

It ain’t Hollywood, it’s Puck. Less than 4 minutes long.

“Second Shot” by James Greathouse

2007-07-07T19:37:13Z

Beatmeister James Greathouse writes:

Terrence McKenna reads the opening to Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.

Made with Audacity and Sony ACID XPress 5.0 (both free).

Made on a Dell I rescued from a dumpster with a 930 MHz Intel Pentium III processor and 512 MB of RAM. All I did was add a CDRW drive rescued from a dead computer and reinstall the OS. It is hooked up to a 20″ Trinitron monitor pulled out of a dumpster. The keyboard, mouse and powered speakers came to me the same way.

I would hope that the mention of James Joyce and Terrence McKenna speaks with more meaning than anything I could say. If these artists go unknown to the audience then I have little expectation that my musings would prove illuminating. It seemed appropriate to me to use Finnegans Wake in a layered mash up. Truthfully, I doubt any other text could be more relevant to such a process.

This is placed in the genre of general semantics. The great debt semiology owes to general semantics recently came to my notice. Thank you Alfred Korzybski for saying, “The map is not the territory.” Anyone who reads Roland Barthes ought to find this meaningful. And if you don’t read Barthes, then the meaning is still up for grabs, isn’t it?

When you die, hearing is the last of the physical senses to remain.

Greathouse submitted two versions of Shot; I like them both (especially The Fall in First Shot), so here they are: First Shot and Second Shot.

Learn more about Terrence McKenna here–and download goodies, including more of McKenna reading Finnegans Wake.

A Brief History of Permeable Press

2007-07-07T04:53:08Z

A few facts (some may be made up) about Permeable Press.

“Stein’s Box” by DJ Funken Wagnalls

2007-07-04T19:12:13Z

Here’s “Stein’s Box” for your listening pleasure. I’m not sure how to categorize this piece: is it techno? trip-hop? drum ‘n’ bass (without the bass)? “Stein’s Box” was inspired by reading Gertrude Stein’s prose-poetry, especially “A Box” in the Collected Writings of Gertrude Stein. Your humble DJ adapted Stein’s words, recorded the vocal and produced the song.

Here’s a sample of the text DJ Funken Wagnalls used in “Stein’s Box”: “Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle.”

I Think the Government Is Watching Me

2007-07-03T19:39:04Z

Help yourself to the MP3 of “I Think the Government Is Watching Me.” This may be the world’s shortest rap song. Cottonmouth and I recorded this a couple years back; it’s been languishing on a hard drive for far too long. The image is from Robert Edward’s film Paranoia.

Puck is back

2007-06-30T20:03:14Z

I’m reviving Puck, which I published as an ink-on-paper magazine back in the 1990s when there were still trees. I’m looking for a few good contributors. Interested?