Nemonymous Two

Nemonymous Two came out in May 2002 and is the first to disclose the names of those published in the previous issue. It features a a story of roughly four and a half blank pages titled "Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds", arguably the first formal blank story ever published. There is also the now legendary 'Emmanuel Escobada' story that still remains anonymous at the request of its author.

Contents
"Climbing the Tallest Tree in the World", Rhys Hughes
"Mighty Fine Days", Antony Mann
"The Assistant to Dr Jacob", Eric Schaller
"Buffet Freud", Dawn Andrews
"Ice Age", Iain Rowan
"The Vanishing Life and Films of Emmanuel Escobada", Anonymous
"Berenice's Journal", Richard Gavin
"Showcase", Sarah Singleton
"Eyes Like Water, Like Ice", Jai Clare
"Earthworks", Simon Kewin
"Striped Pajamas", Margaret B. Simon
"The Drowned", Joel Lane
"Adult Books", Robert Morrish
"Nothing", John Travis
"The Secret", G. W. Thomas
"A Spot of Tea", Janet L. Hetherington
"White Dream", Neil Bristow
"Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds"

Nemonymous One

The first issue of Nemonymous appeared in November 2001. The missing bylines below were announced six months later, in Nemonymous Two. This anthology was arguably the world's very first self-contained anonymous collection of multi-authored stories.

Contents
"A Smile in the Sky", Gary Couzens
"The Friends of Mike Santini", Terry Gates-Grimwood
"The Quiet House", Allen Ashley
"With Arms Outstretched", Daniel Pearlman
"Breaking Rules", Avital Gad-Cykman
"The Gravedigger", Lawrence Dyer
"Alone", Shawn James
"The Idiot Whistled Dead", Simon Clark
"The Unmiraculous Life of Jackie Mendoza", Tamar Yellin
"Across the Hills", Tony Mileman
"All for Nothing", Rhys Hughes
"Double Zero for Emptiness", Mike O'Driscoll
"Strobe", Paul Kane
"Balafer de Vie", Lida Broadhurst
"Mansions of the Moon", Jeff VanderMeer
"Gamlingay Churchyard", A. D. Harvey

Taught by Masters

Written today (21 June 2009) and first published here.



They ended up not wanting to have names. A group of people who ripped off their unseen labels one by one. There needed to be an example set, however. Nobody would unname themselves without a lead to follow. A First Mover. The pre-emptive Clockmaker. If this were a story, the author would start with the example-setting character’s name – followed by a narrative of his rite-of-passage from name to namelessness. A tale of bravery and hardship, of a dimmer-switch controlling the light of identity, of those who failed to follow and remained named, of those who did follow and became unnamed. Yet to name the leading character as he was once named would be to jam the dimmer-switch by wedging in what it was trying to dim. The others who remained named would gain prominence by having real characters’ names in the story while the rest floundered about unidentified – not only confusing the pecking-orders within the plot but the plot itself. To call them by false names or even by letters like A, B, C would, no doubt, cloud the issue even further. Meanwhile, it’s good for any story’s author to relax and concentrate on the plot’s landscape, its spirit of place, before worrying about the entrance of characters,

The public park in Colchester, with Norman Castle, flower-neatened gardens, an empty bandstand, all eventually leading down grassy slopes towards a small boating-lake. Nobody has hired a boat today. It must be one of those times when everyone is asleep at home. The Longest Day of the year. Light at Night like the Land of the Midnight Sun. Even here in England’s Essex. The dimmer-switch of the Sun turned right up.

Without people, there can be no story to tell. But now, at first dimly seen, are tall dark shadows wandering around the Castle. They are the nameless Masters of Existence trying to form gradually into real people. They have been given no belief in the story-premise that all the real people are at home sleeping. Yet the Masters, so-called, remain only partly formed into what they had hoped to become since the story had given them no names other than as fictionalised Masters of Existence, no names on which to hang their identities. The story refused them any such luxury. So mere shadows (if slightly flesh-corrupted) they remained, ever-circling the Castle like forgotten druids. Masters of Existence who could not even master existence for themselves!

Suddenly, there appeared, on the margins of the boating-lake, the legendary Clockmaker whose clocks had hands but no numbers but, more often, numbers but no hands, because, with the former, one could at least guess the time they told. A real flesh-and-blood person. Taught by Masters, but lacking their ambition of existence, the Clockmaker actually succeeded in becoming what they had desired but failed to be. The Clockmaker knew that any ambition destroys the goal of that same ambition.

And now is time for waking. We are here, stretching, fully-formed, truly nameless, stirred by pre-alarmed timepieces within our minds but pure of heart and unconstrained by the deadlines of finding identities to wrap ourselves in. Owning identities simply because we didn’t want identities, the only pre-condition for identity being not to have one.

And the story can at last begin.

Big Brother - Summer 2009

CONTINUED FROM: http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/celebrity_big_brother_2009.htm

These are DFL's comments taken from a conversation here: http://www.ttapress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=182

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Siavash and Angel - truly weird. Rodrigo. Yes, I did think. That's the winner. I don't know whether it will matter that he usually goes to Church every day. But what about the scandal of Noiron's Eyebrows? And why did Davina keep calling Marcus a 'Wolverine'?

Halfwit seems (inadvisedly!) to be taking a leaf out of that lady's book who used to croon jazz songs on a previous BB. What was her name? I sense the three who passed the SAS tests simply knew they would not be subjected to something dangerous (however dangerous it looked). I simply admire their opportunism, not their bravery.

But there is much open-ended meaning in incomprehensibility.
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she was less than happy to have it pointed out that her elevated Double FFs had a plastic seam.

Oh, wll, you can't have everything.This phenomenon is probably the most telling of our bizarre (often cyborgnine) society. BB is SF in action. 'Dhalgren' theatricalised and extemporised.

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What a pitch Sree made in the Diary Room - that tremulous break in the voice, that tearless crying,that passionate declaration of love for EVERYONE

Sree was Soreeee! But now he is SO REEELIEVED!

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And there were echoes of last year - Siavash is having trouble with his identity since he does not have his own clothes. He knows not who he is.

Again and again BB fits into the Nemonymous template. Cf: Halfwit and Dog face. And that entity called Nothingness who sits at the bus stop when the camera is not on it. A ghost? If so, of a past BB HM?

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I had one wish come true - Angel stays. I had one wish not come true - Siavash stays. Such is life.

Me. too, Marion. Benazir was not abe to come out from under her name. She was brave: a Shakesperean tragedy. A soliloquy on an otherwise empty London bus that nobody heard. Not even our old friend Nothingness.

I think Halfwit has an interesting view of his new BB existence, whereby real life is now fading as if controlled by a dimmer-switch and the HMs are puppets.

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The chemistry between Sophia and Saffia is fizzy and with more than a whiff of sulphur on Sophia's part.

This chemisty is more like mutually induced alchemy to create gold from the dross, i.e. feisty personalities for themselves. An unspoken pact through a mock antipathy.

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WEEEE-EEED! But you were right about open ended convos, Des - no matter that what they say is incomprehensible , there is no doubt of the chemistry between them.

Yes, another form of symbiosis (this time Cairon and Siavash). But often with such things (as in insects) one often dies as a result of the symbiosis. And sooner or later, a husk will topple down the eviction steps towards a new Zombification of Davina.

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Angel is having a problem with Siavash's language ( I was RIGHT to like her!)

Angel, right on! Serendipitously, I'm reading a wonderful novel called 'The Angel's Game' at the moment by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

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Siavash's wardrobe is every bit as colourful as his mouth. It is a Frankenstein chemistry experiment gone wrong, what with feathers and beaks and bandsman uniforms,...

Sergeant Pepper in a mutant dream of Venice. He is all contraptions, tags, pieces, masks - a Caliban (not Tallyban) at the Masque of the Red Death. I like Noiron and the lightly-stylised moustache and glasses suit her.

Vignette upon vignette tonight:

And the vinaigrette on Halfwit's salad. Plus Noiron's lorgnettes.

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Siavash in the bath attended by handmaiden Cairon - what was all that about?

Yes, Vereeee strange. In fact I'm finding this BB experience stranger than most. Reality skewed a notch or two. Full of mignonettes and obliquities and Marion's observations shimmering in some hothouse of odalisques & lizards.

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...the evolution of language tonight:sentence order got all mixed up ... singing opera, and murdering 'Summertime'...

Who was that lady who broke into songs in a previous BB?

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Lisa is turning into House Mother

Lisa is an archetype HM. She is the Platonic Form of an interchangeable modern creature who just is, so simply confident and brash.

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Kris says he's an annoying little bugger. Marcus thinks he;s immature. Cairon thinks he;s a pimple.

Sree is a self-incubated plant of delicate immaturity but one that will grow into a triffid from the seedbed mulch stirred by BB's searing searchlight beams

I find myself more in tune with the Russian Soul but alerted now, by Marion, to Rodrigo's proximity to a shop window mannequin, I find this an even more interesting contrast. Mannequins and Marionettes, Lizards and Odalisques, Egyptian tomb-effigy or walking Tea-Cosy, I am glad I'm watching BB, simply to enjoy Marion's observations to the full! Dogface is a charm-catalyst that is like an open flower that only can respond passively to Nature's stimuli - and here in 2009, Nature is made of many teasing tentacles of modern instincts quite alien to life as I remember it, say, in the Fifties. I don't know why Charlie seems to be the current favourite to win. I think Noiron is a dark horse. A doodled-upon icon. And sensible and nice, too. I, too, hope Sophia goes on Friday.

I love the twirling moustache motif, which also fits in with Noiron's real mock-up (if that's not a contradiction in terms) of a moustachio. Two memorable phrases were said yesterday: 'Zero tolerance' by Sree. And 'Lost in Translation' by Noiron. In an oblique way, each is very telling, and potentially devastating to the way we think BB works as both a Reality TV show and a cultural breakthrough in Art and Aesthetics. If others reading this thread enjoy Marion's wonderful BB reports, you should read her fiction works, and I'd suggest her book 'Sleepwalkers' (a collection of stories), which I reviewed here: http://ttapress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=875

Huzzah! Sophia is first Housemate to be evicted, but really second evictee and third preson to leave the house, after Benazir and Saffia (who left to see her children after getting in a Benny with Sophia) and Sree had a Benny with Cairon while trying to exercise zero tolerance (on the face of it the first BB HM to try to maintain a zero tolerance regime on swearing etc) but perhaps all this is lost in translation while Cairon gets on a course for anger management and Lisa tries to make up for not intervening in the first Benny...while Charlie acts as a counsellor and ... more later

Sophia's interview went well. I like the three interviewer approach and i even began to like Sophia. This shows you that people are not really people unless seen in the round of the many habitats that they pass through (including the BB House and any web presence).

Some more bite on the screw of one-on-one relationships, following Cairon and Sree, now Dogaface and Kris, Halfwit and Lisa, Siavash and a giant pierrot hat.

Good on BB calling the fake romance of Kris and Dogface. Marcus and Lisa - what's the betting on them having a romance before BB s finished? I'd have a menage-a-trois any time with those two. Sree and Noiron - another romance? Some of the others seem like an audience - wide-eyed - as if they can't believe what is going on. Angel is quite mad no doubt, but she seems sane in there. Karly the hard cynic. Not sure about her. She must wonder what she's got herself into! You can see the hate she looks at Marcus with. That slithy tove of a wolverine. Rodrigo seems to have gone low-key. Halfwit is someone I'd dread meeting on a BTCV holiday. Cairon and Skiavash - another fake romance? Charlie is just plain street-ready. An ordinary lad.

Lisa is perhaps Sycorax, Angel Ariel and most of the rest are a single gestalt of Caliban and/or Trinculo & Stefano. Big Brother is Prospero. Noirin is Miranda. Sree /Noirin - I thought this was beautifully enacted by both parties, and whether they each have the emotions attributed to them by Marion, we perhaps shall never know when they become the next celebrity couple. I think Noirin's doodled face is fast becoming an icon, after all. She should be thankful for it. She should also be thankful for her own sweet nature. The flower dance was another pure BB 'Happening' that becomes an Art installation of the mind.

There are some genuinely interesting characters this year, some blossoming before our eyes. And difficult to tell posing from positioning from positivity of personality. After all, these 'cats' have walked the decade-old BB earth - having learnt for most of their 'sensible' lives how to play the game.

Very strange goings on indeed. It's as if the world has entered a new phase, Angel's phase, Angel's dream, sometimes Angel's nightmare. Cleansed only to dirty herself time and time again with other people. Absorb them, let them be your parasite. The Foggy Day in London Town is just anothe Bleak House. And there was Skiavash picking nits from Cairon's hair. Or was it more sexual than nursing care? Parts of Angel made manifest by incarnation? If so, how can Ariel's soul bear any body weight whatsoever? How can Rasputin reach Heaven - by telling Sree that Noirin was wanting him in the bedroom? No, by transmuting a-trinketed Trinculo to Tallyban via Kaliban out of Sycorax. It's strange that someone's Heaven is someone else's Hell. Marcus is cool. He is so cool, he can even shit cool. Apparently. A speech in the Diary Room that was seriously cool. Sleek wolverine within a body's weight.

CONTINUED HERE: http://weirdmonger.livejournal.com/111444.html

www.nemonymous.com