Sources of inspiration thread

[NiallM]

Via Coilhouse: PONPONPON

[Ashkin]

http://vimeo.com/4240369
Surprisingly inspiring.

[NiallM]

Reading a collection of Jorge Luis Borges' essays this list of rules for detective stories caught my eye:

The short story is of a strict, problematic nature; its code could be the following:
A.) A discretional limit of six characters.
B.) The declaration of all the terms of the problem.
C.) An avaricious economy of means.
D.) The priority of how over who.
E.) A reticence concerning death.
F.) A solution that is both necessary and marvelous.

From The Labyrinths of the Detective Story and Chesterton.

[mcc]

Music video for Mea Culpa, by Brian Eno and David Byrne, 1981

Discovered this some years ago and both the images and the music here stayed with me for a long time.

At some point the copyright owners seem to have kicked this youtube, but still have it up for free download on their official site. ???

The Holy Battery

[mcc]

My spouse took these photos, they remind me of Lone Survivor.

It turns out when you're breeding ball pythons, once the eggs are about 55 days old it's safe to cut open the egg and the python will just sorta hang out in the egg chilling for the next week after that.

[NiallM]

I've just started reading Jeff Noon's Falling Out of Cars. From the top floor of The Museum of Fragile Things:

The books in this room could not be read, not a second time.

I chose another volume from the shelf. Again, there was no title to the book, and even more of the pages had words missing from them. Some of the pages were almost completely blank.

'Please, do be careful,' said the attendant.

I turned to a page where most of the words were still present, and then started to read.

'Hence the potency of Bowie's impact on England: the marriage of alien and dandy giving birth to the ultimate outsider figure for the modern age, the queer messiah from space...'

Again I had to stop. Seeing the words disappear from the pages like this, it brought only a sadness.

And the bat bean beam blogpost that turned me onto the book.

[Jonathan Whiting]

I've just started reading Jeff Noon's Falling Out of Cars. From the top floor of The Museum of Fragile Things:

I've read a few of Noon's novels; Vurt, Pollen and Nymphomation. I found them clever and packed with interesting ideas at first, but later a little cloying and sticky; all icing and no cake. I've preferred the (not dissimilar) work of Michael Marshall Smith, which feels more coherent and complete.

From the linked review though it sounds like Noon's trying something a little different with this book, might it be worth reconsidering him?

[NiallM]

From the linked review though it sounds like Noon's trying something a little different with this book, might it be worth reconsidering him?

I've not actually read any of Noon's other books, so I couldn't tell you if this one's fundamentally different. I'm really liking what I've read so far though. From a cursory look at his wikipedia page I'd hazard a guess that it is somewhat different to his previous books, though not unrelated. It certainly seems to share themes with his other books, but feels like it may be more grounded(?) and focused.

I hadn't come across Michael Marshall Smith before; it looks like I should probably add him to my ever-expanding list of authors to check out :)

[Lance Burkett]

Realtime Procedural Demonstrations are my favourite:
http://www.iquilezles.org/prods/index.htm
http://www.vimeo.com/unc/videos
http://www.farb-rausch.de/

An interesting podcast about Neurotic Suffering:
http://www.archive.org/details/silkenvoice2006-09-30

STALKER:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4IBgcPaBdQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcNylGYq-v4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDbzAqiFWGQ

I found the previous entry regarding Nuclear Waste to be very intriguing. Thanks for all the stuff by the way.

[mcc]

KOOLY THE BEAR TEACHES HISTORY TO CHILDREN

[switch]

KOOLY THE BEAR TEACHES HISTORY TO CHILDREN

Did they ever find out who murdered Proudy the tiger?

[Ian Snyder]

This Super Recursion Toy is pretty fascinating to watch grow things.

[Terry]

Saw this, thought of our pageant:

[NiallM]

Doing some research for my own pageant game, I've come across some fun links:
A Modified Hexagram Ritual for Enochian Workings
Basic Satanic Rites and Exercises
Aleister Crowley's Liber O
Aleister Crowley's Liber V

This site has a bunch of famous grimoires, e.g.:
Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy
The Key of Solomon
The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses
Le Petit Albert

I'd also recommend Owen Davies' Grimoires: A History of Magic Books, which I read a couple of months back. My favourite part was the almost offhand mention of a pair of disaster-prone occult balloonists; Francis Barrett and George Graham. I also loved some of the depictions of devils in the French grimoires, which are completely different to how devils are drawn these days (my own photos; I couldn't find them elsewhere online):

[mcc]

I just got back from seeing Eraserhead for the first time. :D

Oh my god. Super inspiring. I got the first 15 minutes in and I just wanted to make, like, five Limbos.

I was giggling incessantly basically the entire middle third of the movie, but nobody else seemed to be laughing, so that felt awkward and I wound up kind of giggling muffled to myself, trying not to make too much noise, like I was trying to stay quiet in class or something.

We were in a movie theater, watching on a movie screen, but we were actually watching off a DVD, so whenever anything small, like a star, was in frame the pixels were all clearly visible, and whenever the screen went white you could clearly see the grid of pixels superimposed. The projection system was like one of those midrange systems you'd find in a conference room, one of the ones where it is like they're mixing color by just alternating the red, green and blue images very quickly and so whenever you move your eyes quickly you can briefly see the red, green and blue channels separate into separate images. The movie was of course black and white so the whole movie my eyes naturally would dart from object to object on the screen and everything was constantly leaving RGB trails.

Now who says David Lynch movies can't make for good date movies?