Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Big Brother - Summer 2014 (4)

CONTINUED FROM HERE

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Comments below extracted from discussion HERE
29.7.14 (later)
How could I have possibly forgotten till now? Amazing!!
Winston is also the name of the main protagonist in Orwell's 1984!
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30.7.14
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A good spot, Marion, in discovering Ashleigh's own sudden awakening that Chris is more than just avuncular towards her, hence Chris's hang-up with regard to Pav's own staring obsessions towards her.
Meanwhile, I was rather taken with the sight of the rainbow from the garden and the arm-linked HMs' obeisances before it. This relates to Winston (hero of 1984 and Young Churchill lookalike) earlier (accidentally?) mentioning the Illuminati and Chris's earlier reference to 'stonemasons' (freemasons?) when trying to explain the Illuminati to Winston.

31.7.14
Certainly vegetable and fruit anthropomorphisms are preferable to that utter bilge last night with Luisa Zissman and, however illuminating, preferable to the extraneous outside world intrusions (anathema to BB purists) upon those HMs with Beano comic question marks on their heads.
This below was a present a few days ago from my brother-in-law's allotment. I am still unsure what it is, some sort of ungulate, perhaps, wanting its toes clipped.
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Dreamcatchers
Unknown or unexpected dreams that find themselves entrammelled fortuitously or ominously in the butterfly net with which we set to catch them.
Or targetted dreams we actually set out to catch with our dreamcatchers.
Or dreams that set out to catch us, captcha us.

BB always used to be the first and third, not the second.

1.8.14
I'm really fed up with:
(a) outside audience influences leading to the labelling of HMs
(b) the Mark-Christopher 'Gert and Daisy' act
(c) Chris's agonising over Ashleigh
(d) Helen and Ash's lackadaisical killing of time till the show ends
(e) Ashleigh's and Winston's disarming, condescending smiles when praised by an outside audience.
(f) The sound of Mark's and Marcus's voices staying with me after I switch off the telly.

2.8.14
Marion wrote: One interesting scene was when Chris sat talking to Ashleigh while she was in the bath. He banged on and on about the 'creepy' charges. She put in the occasional word of agreement but her eyes were glazing over. Later he told her that he wanted her as a frined forever. She tried not to look less than thrilled.
Another scene was Mark regretting that he had made Christopher look weak. Then he added that if matthew had still been in the house, he wouldn't have been as close to Christopher, whch seemed an unnecessary comment.

Two significant moments, where the Focus Group's findings, well, focussed.
Did you also notice that Zoe flashed an Illuminati triangle at the camera with her hand during the interview with Emma? --- 13 seconds into the interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE4FfAN4Mfo

3.8.14
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For me, the evening belonged to Winston.
The commentary said he came to the diary room to talk about the remaining housemates, although it seemed to me that he had been dragged there by BB to give him more profile, and he sat there with half-tongue-tied opinions in his usual disarming fashion as BB force-fed him questions. But it was when he later said to someone that he once played the part of Peter Quince that everything so far fell together. The character that is Shakespeare's own comic portrait of himself melding with Winston Smith in 1984, the Young Churchill, the callow youth, the Essex beefcake, and his sudden out-of-context question to Chris about the Illuminati as if itself force-fed by preternatural forces in this our own Midsummer...

4.8.14
Marion wrote: Winston had to withsatnd the blandishments of a lapdancing Biannca. he did too.
The Temptations of St Anthony ....or St Winston?
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Related, too, to last night's flagellation by fish etc.
A saint who carries his own flayed flesh.
A wise yet controversial view of Helen by Marion here, one that will stir all the BB forums no doubt, and also perceptive is her view of Christopher's Road to Damascus.
Mark's tears when cutting up onions assumed a new significance when looking back at an earlier discussion about anthropomorphic onions.

5.8.14
Some more BB bilge with the wild things task backed by a soundalike David Attenborough commentary.
Christopher later gratuitously and continuously plunged his head into some bilge in the kitchen sink. Don't blame him.

6.8.14
Marion wrote:
They're all tired. The show has been a song with one note. They have had to learn about BB's betrayals - notice how they mostly sing helen's praises in the DR now? For fear of what they say being played back to her? They've had to live with constant anxiety about Helen & co turning on them; they are constantly perturbed by viewers opinions and one another's opinions; they are given tasks which are juvenile and degrading ...
The only wonder is that Christopher didn't keep his head in the suds until he drowned.
I really liked Ashleigh telling BB where to go last night. It's how I feel too!

Like Ash's magic trick, I thus whisk last night's show away (great report of it, Marion) and return to quoting the whole of above from Marion the day before. Indeed, this show has more often than not dipped to such depths, and -- without the serendipities of the Illuminati, secret naïve codes from and about Winston and the interpolations of Super Cassandra, but above all Marion's reports themselves etc. -- it would have been a Summer wasted.
7.8.14
Nothing much to add to Marion's report. A boring night only made interesting in hindsight by that very report!
But I feel it is ironic, within this BB context, that the concept of money is power when money is the only force that requires our universal trust for it to work.
8.8.14
A lot of bawling and shouting, indeed. Christopher seems to have either gone mad or become very forceful and perspicacious. Probably a bit of both.
I, too, hope Mark goes tonight, but it will probably be Pav.
Winston is good for at least one more disarming unintended naivety that an ability to produce has been the highlight of this series, whatever one thinks of him as a person. As an empty vessel or medium, he has been the embodiment of symbolism, and the one I said in week two would win.

8.8.14 (later)
Your dream scenario, Marion, happened! Congratulations.
Shows you how much I know. I guess Winston's empty vessel was actually far too empty in the end.
Mark was taken to task over the money. As he should have been. He looked genuinely shaken.

9.8.14
As a general point, I often wonder what difference is made between voting to evict (as last night) and voting to save (or to win, as it will be from now on).
Anyway, it is what it is.
Meanwhile, I agree with Marion's "I'd like that fishwife Helen out frst, followed by Ash, followed by Pav.
Chris, Christopher, and Ashleigh should be the top three. Each of them has merit. I swither between Ashleigh and Christopher as the outright winner."


10.8.14
Marion wrote: And Helen said - and you couldn't make this up - 'Who do you think you're speaking to?'. As if she were royalty talking down to a clumsy servant.
[...] Helen insisted Winston hadn't gone, that he'd be back, in the tone people used for Arthur, the Once and Future King, returning from Avalon in the people's time of need.
[...] Hmmm- this isn't the first time I have suspected that Christopher is playig a very deep game indeed.
Three interesting observations, Marion, among others. Thanks.
Whatever one says about Winston, we have had reason to use more actual pictures for him than anyone else. An empty vessel for Churchill, King Arthur, Adam Weishaupt, Orwell's 1984 Winston or Peter Quince to sail to our world's rescue?
Like you, I LOVED Ashleigh's DR speech last night about Helen!

10.8.14 (later)
Some brilliantly appropriate illustrations there, Marion. You've now duly corrected the balance against Winston.

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'Pauline's Recidivism' in the style of Jackson Pollock

11.8.14
Well, we're in some sort of coda to a strident symphony, now...
I was shocked yesterday to hear that this BB is to be closely followed by a CBB!

12.8.14
I found the court case last night silly. I almost felt sorry for Helen.


12.8.14 (later)
Yes, some telling hurts last night - upon Helen by BB, and upon Chris by Ashleigh. You sum it up, Marion, with true pathos.

13.8.14
Extreme silliness, last night. Finally lost patience with this show.
I imagined all HMs in a secret room in surveillance over one remaining HM counting teaspoons as a task - desperately trying to check his or her own skewed reflection in each tiny curved surface to check out the existence of personal identity...

13.8.14 (later)
Indeed, we need to know, Marion, how far BB this season has been staged and whether the contestants are in on the plot?
I believe it is half-staged - pre-planned by manipulation by BB - and the contestants, like Pauline choosing Helen to have a safe card and Chris being fake-fake-evicted last night, are conditioned by some form of celebrity-aspirational tele-arts osmosis. Not Illuminati, so much, as Immunity (manipulable immunity from a game of skill or even from a game of chance like the sponsoring super-casino).
Peter Quince: But, masters, here
are your parts: and I am to entreat you, request
you and desire you, to con them by to-morrow night;
and meet me in the palace wood, a mile without the
town, by moonlight; there will we rehearse, for if
we meet in the city, we shall be dogged with
company, and our devices known. In the meantime I
will draw a bill of properties, such as our play
wants. I pray you, fail me not.
(Midsummer Night's Dream)
(Speak the lovers through a wall?)

14.8.14
Marion wrote: Ashleigh doesn't do little girl voices. She has a harsh Irish accent full of expletives, nothing like what Helen described. Helen's Ashleigh is an imaginary creature.
Helen really needs to see somebody. Urgently.

Ashleigh and Helen are two memorable BB femfeists - and perhaps both are to be feared, the former approximating a word-filthy Alice in her own form of dangerous Wonderland, the latter an example of a Jadegoody but with relatively more intelligence beneath its wild fog of hatred or sporadically mindless releases of pent-up aggression, even madness.

14.8.14 (later)
Marion wrote: Ashleigh is a clear eyed Alice, a truth teller, a strong self which yields to none. Helen will one day go spiralling into the outer space that surrounds her and echoes with the voices of all the people who've ever wronged her, misunderstood her, and bettered her.
Can't argue with that - clear-eyed, itself.
 
15.8.14
All was finally compromised last night, with infection from some of the evicted housemates allowed back in to cloud the 'clear-eye'. And Ashleigh and Helen polluted each other with mutual affection, as they took off their masks of acrimony, masks once provided by BB's Peter Quince. So dismayed, I may not even watch the final tonight.
Bring on the old TV test card to replace the BB eye...each a moribund morphed form from or into the other.
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15.8.14 (later)
Marion wrote: We can boo and hiss and throw popcorn if Helen wins.
That seemed like a joke when I read it earlier today. But now it is so horribly true. How can it be?

Thanks, Marion, for all your reports. They were simply great.

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16.8.14
Marion wrote: I cannot begin to describe my feelings about this but I pointed out half way thrugh the series that BB was setting Helen up for the win - you know, repenting, learning life lessons, going on a journey - but I never thought she would get past the voters. The bully NEVER wins BB, the cool gang NEVER wins. And yet she did. Who the heck voted for her?
It was an Illuminati plot!
Or Helen is really a very nice lady playing a part in a Midsummer play. A medium like the hole in the Pyramus and Thisby wall? Triangle-shaped hole?
I, too, found the Last Supper sickmaking. Christopher should have won, surviving the flaying, like St Anthony, by today's modern demons. As Emma Willis said last night, Ashleigh is "an angel's face with the devil's mouth". All part of the plot. The Temptations of the Quince. Super-Cassandra and Danielle, this Hell's odalisques.
No, probably none of that. You are right HERE, Marion. Sheer travesty.

16.8.14 (later)
Following on from that, I've had a sudden revelation. The BB-historical double top for women as embodied by Ashleigh-Helen is simply a symbol of the Black Swan / White Swan syndrome or struggle in 'Swan Lake' (cf the film 'Black Swan'). Everything falls into place.
CONTINUED HERE

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Metaphysica Morum by Thomas Ligotti

I have now read 'Metaphysica Morum', but not yet read 'The Small People'. I don't think it's any accident that Olan is an anagram of Loan, a loan being a two way 'deal', infecting and benefiting both ways, just as 'demoralise' is, in its modern sense, to make someone lose hope but, in its archaic sense, to strip someone of morals. This story is of the infinitesimal and the immeasurable, both ironic and non-ironic, about futility, where fighting in this literary way for futility is a purpose that outlasts and immortalises the fighter but also this fighter is fighting WITH futility thus landing him back in that bus station toilet where he began. I am indeed "open to 'delightful possibilities and interpretations'" but also believing "nothing really meant anything", like Dr. O. The story has its own "magnificent symphony" as its 'all-new context' for a 'metaphysical mutant'. Borrow or lend, which comes first? A fascinating tantalisation. Am I 'uniquely defective' in thus interpreting this work?

More: HERE

Friday, July 18, 2014

The First Page of a Slow Western

The saloon-bar doors swung slowly in the random wind - letting nobody in and letting nobody out, unless it was a ghost slowly chasing the scent of alcohol or even more slowly fleeing the enticement of card-sharpers.

A six-shooter sat on one of the barroom tables amid the left-over rings from glasses once holding ancient shots of whiskey. Nobody was there, but the weapon slowly spun - as reflected in the half-empty bottles behind the bar counter, sluggish glints tracing a line of optics stored on a shelf, stored there because in this bar they poured shots of drink straight from the bottles, unmeasured and uneked out. Blow the optics! Give me honest pourings for healthy gulps!

I looked towards the grimy window, having heard the snicker of my heavy horse that I had left loosely tethered to the tethering-pole, alongside a couple of other ungroomed steeds, each with an empty water-bottle and, from it, the screwtop plug slowly swinging in that increasingly slow randomness of wind.

Where were their owners? Why were the two cowboys not in the bar? Where was the barman? Indeed, where was I? In which chair, in which direction, was I now sitting, in lugubrious pose?

The six-shooter continued slowly to twirl, imperceptibly less slow, perhaps, with no evidence of what or whom had spun it and what or whom was still spinning it. I heard the barrel click round just one notch ... and I gazed at the trigger that was unbearably slow in being squeezed by an invisible finger - in this game of unrushed roulette.

Entering Eventernal Slumber

It was all predicted in early 2013 with my 'Relaxed Snowman' blog, including the fact that 'Horror Without Victims' was likely to be my final paying publication for other authors (the twelfth such publication). And, in recent days, my own slippage showing up with most of my many WordPress sites starting to vanish from public view, but still clinging on? Who knows what is next?

As promised, I intend to resume real-time reviewing when the current Summer break or Sabbaticess (a form of Eventernal Slumber or Perpetual Autumn?) ceases at the end of August – using the books I have already been showing on this site as recently purchased.

Big Brother - Summer 2014 (3)

CONTINUED FROM HERE

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Comments below extracted from discussion HERE

18.7.14
Marion wrote: Chris sat on th edge of the bed like a naughty boy while she stood legs apart looming over him. He backtrackedvery rapidly and agreed what he said wasn't true - but it was true. Hes just killed any chance he had of winig th show.
I thought exactly that.
Quote: The 3 new HMs do nothing but discuss eviction, addig in different names each time. They are eyond tedious. Wish hey all go tomorrow night.
I wish each and every HM goes, the sooner the better.

19.7.14
Marion wrote: Could there be a worse combination than a coarse minded, thick witted prostitute taking the moral high ground?
Biannca with the double n gone! Hooray!
I am in two minds about Danielle's passing - and she seems to have two minds not about herself but within!
Chris's speech in the DR partially compensated for his earlier abjectness in the face of Biannca's attack.
I think Christopher and Ashleigh are the only two housemates I like. Maybe Chris, too.
Might come to like Zoe.
Meanwhile, BB's heavy-handed manipulation continues to make this season's show a travesty.
Perhaps that's symbolised by a manipulative hand being short-circuited into the HMs' own hands each time they enter the DR.

20.7.14
Steven is a very uptight man channeling a relaxed mode by means of the lackadaisical chomping of toast as he engages in an exchange with BB in the DR, an exchange that will become some of the most important accumulations of seconds in his whole life when that toast will have been long since digested by his body and evacuated into the BB house toilet. But the toast itself will remain forever as frozen by that manipulative electronic hand symbolic of the modern media. Raise a glass to the transience of humanity.
Danielle was a split personality not only in behaviour but also as reflected by the different versions of her own physical face as it changed expression by the flash of each second.
Meanwhile, Marion, thanks for another witty review of proceedings.

21.7.14
Marion wrote: I'm The One which became apparent when BB announced that Kimberly will not be retirning to the house. Personally, I think she saw the light when Steven said Bianca was his type of girl for saying she'd have sex in the house. To be put on the same level as Bianca must have been too much for her. [...] At bedtime, Steve kept his bulging eyes firmly fixed on Helen and Ash which was rather creepy. Eventually, he took the robot toy and cuddled up to it instead of Kim. It was probably more responsive.
The Penetrating Shrewdness of Marion
That's my heading. One should not watch BB without reading Marion alongside it.

22.7.14 And Ashleigh neatly finished the show by telling BB that, the coming night, she will be dreaming about "sitting on her money throne eating strawberries." Shades of Lewis Carroll?

23.7.14
Marion wrote: Anyway, Steven is going to go down wth all flags flying (two of them anyway) and the waves will close over him and his tawdry passions and constant munching. It;s going to be a good week!
Hope you're right but I wouldn't bank on it yet.
Winston is still my winner ... reluctantly!
Ashleigh ought to be the eventual winner. And Helen needs to be disenfranchised. And Mark needs a tranquilliser while Ash needs his embers stoked.

24.7.14
Marion wrote: This is all a thousand mles away from what BB used to be.
Bent and twisted BB politics have never before spiralled so far toward a rotten core concocted from otherwise generally good and decent folk. A mutant gestalt from manipulated disparateness.

25.7.14
The question is - are Pav and Zoe REALLY more than averagely Machiavellian or simply perceived to be such by their credentials outside the house reported on by ex-Hms?
Am I myself Machiavellian or am I simply me? I shall never perhaps know for certain as one's objectivity is clouded by modern communication and reality TV.
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26.7.14
Agree with all that, Marion. Thanks.
I also quite enjoyed Super Cassandra's intermittent sound-bites about the book 1984.
Meanwhile, we assume from his interview that Steven's Missionary fell short of Orwell.

27.7.14
Marion wrote: And more to the point, how will this play to the voting public?
Will they believe in Helen's Great Reformation? Will they see Chris as two faced or very clever?
It's a very dangerous game he's playing.
You have identified there today's big 21st century question. Only we know what we are like inside, and even then we may be wrong.


27.7.14 (later)
Completely out of the blue and without obvious context, Winston tonight asked Chris about the Illuminati. Chris, in a deadpan fashion, replies quite seriously about the Illuminatus connection with The Big Brother show which he and Winston are currently experiencing. At last, I realise why I have been watching and commenting here upon Big Brother for the last ten years.

28.7.14
Marion wrote: The task tonight was a dance off between teams, Street Elite and Foor Soldiers. Natually Zoe was the coach. This is the second task to showcase her theatrical skills. And no HM ever criticises her although by rights she should be under the same cloud as Pav.Hmmm...Is her Dad a member of the Illuminati?[...] She's [Helen] really on her BB journey now - very near rehabilitated. It must be the work of the Illuminati.
It was simply the way ponderously half-a-sandwich Winston (Young Churchill lookalike) brought up the Illuminati subject himself out of the blue that convinced me. It didn't seem to have a context. It just was.
As to Mark complaining to God if his eyebrows, hair-straighteners etc. weren't up to scratch in Heaven, and saying that Jesus would help him. I foresaw odalisque Danielle up there, too, somehow, tending to Heavenly affairs....

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28.7.14 (later)
Zoe leading the others in the Sign of the Illuminati?

29.7.14
Thanks, Marion. Some knotty dilemmas there, like the motives of Chris vis-à-vis Pav vis-à-vis Ashleigh. And Mark's half-baked psychic powers... a tapping into some tutelary muse whose spiritual Wi-Fi is faulty? Or some Illuminati plot mis-channelled through Mark as decoy?
Pav to go on Friday.
PS Did Winston get his words mixed up, i.e. that when saying 'Illuminati', he really meant 'immunity'?

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How could I have possibly forgotten till now? Amazing!!
Winston is also the name of the main protagonist in Orwell's 1984!
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CONTINUED HERE

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Eventernal Slumber

Any of my WordPress sites marked as private can be reached by other WordPress users by inserting their normal details then clicking ‘request access’. This easy one-off process applies separately to each of my dozen WordPress sites during their Eventernal Slumber.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Ligotti's Didacticism

I would say that, in fiction literature, apparent didacticism is either purposeful and intense and sincere OR it is puckish or a narrative trick or unreliable/(non)-collusive. Sometimes a bit of both. After reading Thomas Ligotti's THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE HUMAN RACE, I have gained the impression that his fiction has become more like the former than the latter.

On a general level, I know that at least part of me somewhat resonates with anti-Natalism and its sensibility - and I would think that a 'l'art pour l'art' approach is something that suits any expected short-termism of finite life, making one relish the hedonistic and visionary as a bankable asset before existence is snatched away in pain or darkness. On the other hand, didacticism or a roman-a-clef approach seems more thrusting, more daring for the the future, proving a point, however negative that point is, a point that will outlast us.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

My WordPress Sites

For any interested, my WordPress sites, other than the real-time review site, have closed down for a Sabbatical and an intended reconstruction, but all their current content and links will be preserved unchanged. Currently, you may enter these sites by requesting access if you are a WordPress registered user. Nobody will be refused.*

During this period, if you can’t find a continuation part of any review, you may be able to find it by searching here: http://weirdmonger.livejournal.com

Also you can always obtain from me, duly signed, the complete printed text in book form of any of my past Real-Time Reviews – or direct from the printer at Lulu. Details here: http://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/rtrs-as-books/
Non profit to me.

*all you need to do is sign in normally as a WordPress user and then, on the next page, click ‘request access’.