Celebrity Big Brother - January 2013

Continued from my earlier reports of other Big Brother shows since 2004 HERE

Marion's aide memoire is shown in full below, available publicly HERE (written in real-time when the celebrities were introduced on the first night), followed there by her still on-going reports and my own responses to them:

Frankie Detorri - world class jockey and the perpetrator of some scandal or other.

Rylan Clark – X factor contestant. Can’t sing but is good at falling to his knees and weeping. He’s basically unintelligible when he speaks which is probably as well because form what I could make out, he has a bitchy side. He also wears a Union Jack jacket which made Brian look good – no mean feat - and prances across the floor like a young daft colt which isn’t fitting when you’re six foot five.

Paula Hamilton – supermodel of yesteryear. She has modelled for everyone who is anyone and is a philosopher too who discusses things with a coconut called Boris, she says. Her image is so clear cut she could slash her wrists on it.

Tricia Penrose – soap queen and damned by the Press for her dress sense. Quite a claim to fame.

Ryan Malone – Neighbours star. He also was suspiciously warmly clad and, quelle surprise, was doomed to go down to the basement.

Gillian Tayleforth – Kathy Beale of Eastenders fame. Good face. Lovely figure – she’s wearing very well indeed.

Sam Robertson – formerly Adam in Corrie. Fine looking boy in his kilt. Technically single, he says, which I don’t quite understand.

Lacey Banghard (yes, really) – page 3 idol and star of nuts. She’s most comfortable dressed in just her underwear, she says, and trilled merrily about how her boobs just keep growing and she hates the way men stare at her. She has this fake breathless little girlie voice which emanates from this huge deep fake chest and which will drive me insane if she stays for long. And yet gorgeous Sam was adjudged the more fake and the most in love with himself between them. FIX!

Claire Richards – formerly of Steps fame. Rather self conscious about her struggles with her weight and declares boldly that she doesn’t give a toss any more. And why should she? She has a pretty face and a kindly eye. Outrageous that she should be half apologising for herself.

Razor Ruddick – former footballer run to seed. He insists he’s a big pussy cat. I don’t believe him. He also says he likes to go about in the buff. I’m trying not to believe him.

Spencer and Heidi Pratt – American Reality show Royalty, apparently. She’s all syrup; he’s got the eyes of a psychopath. She was a Miss Universe (or nearly Miss Universe?); he wasn’t. He’s jealous – doesn’t like other men near her. I guess that’s the drama they will stage.
I’m glad Frankie and Rylan consigned them to the basement which really is sufficiently uncomfortable to please me.

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MY ON-GOING COMMENTS DAY-BY-DAY (my website here for those interested: www.nemonymous.com)

Thanks for the aide memoire, Marion, and the acute as well as cute observations. I had only heard of two of these people before: Gillian Taylforth and Frankie Dettori. So what value the word 'celebrity'?
There may have been fixes and rumours, and I guess that Jim Davidson was originally intended to partner Frankie in 'the deliberation of the gods' ... And Fate is indeed a very strange thing made up as it is with fixes and rumours as well as the synchronised shards of random truth and fiction, to coin a phrase!
The split of the House is the most polarised that I can recall. I guess there will emerge a two-way filter of personnel before long and twists and turns...
BB remains the only taboo left that can be embraced by those trying to find truths in the fiction of borderline reality. Many so-called revolutionaries or mavericks as well as aspirationally creative writers become very angry at such TV entertainment and at those, like me, who take, as part of a panoply of experiment, an interest in what they call populist trash...

I'd only add my irritation at Heidi's continual front-of-dress hitching upon those Lovecraftian mounds to which Marion alluded. Spencer and Heidi, Spidie as they're known as a couple. Worth embalming in a Horror story!

I agree with the thrust of Marion's report above - and last night's summary programme was a blind-worm ouroboros crawling through the curdled plumbing of my chilly and dank brain.... Much game-cynicism, too, exemplified by the machinations of some people vis-a-vis the transference between the two polarised areas of the House. And game-confusion. As a sufferer of iritis, I am a believer in each eye being a discrete world of its own and some of my fiction is geared to that conceit. So, Rylan's hypothesis was an - errr - eye-opener. I think he may end up winning this particular CBB. As Marion suspects, perhaps we are missing a lot of action of other contestants through ch5's tendentious editing....

Rylan suggested that Charles and Camilla retire to the delights of Southend on Sea, and the crown going straight to Will and Kate. As long as they don't come to Clacton, I say! Unlike Marion, I found last night's show unsatisfactory. Many of these people are paid actors or creators of entertainment worlds as their living, but they, en masse, couldn't dissuade me from believing that they don't really care what happens in these few weeks of CBB that they are suffering for money, leaving me with a sense of that laissez-faire jungle culture lifted from the celebrity-get-me-out-of-here reality show that I dislike and find as unsatisfactory as the current, hopefully temporary, state of this CBB.

As a separate issue, here is an article by Victoria Coren about Jim Davidson's non-appearance in this CBB: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/06/jim-davidson-arrest-standup-comedy

Marion wrote: "There is something very about this couple."
I quite agree, Marion!
That may have been a Marion typo but it sums up this couple as mutual self-puppeteers of nothingness with tinges of Ligottianism and Aickmanism.
As I said before, Ligotti fiction = Humanity becoming various Metaphors – while Aickman fiction = Various Metaphors becoming Humanity. Here Spidie is neither and both. Phenomenon. Worth watching the series for this alone. Not that I objectively like the resultant creature! But I hope it stays - as one half of it predicts.
Another striking thing last night was Paula. I actually believe she was genuinely in slow meltdown last night. I feel sorry for her. A bit like Vanessa Feltz on the original CBB. A bit like Shakespearean tragic action in real-time before he actually wrote the play.

Sorry, should be SPEIDI not SPIDIE!
Cf the couple on the sofa in the video for the new David Bowie single today.

I think Speidi has been wrong-footed in its plots and ploys on more than one occasion. It should be kept in the House merely for its value as catalysticity. Is that a cold sore (a recurring theme for BB in the past) on the male half's lower lip? If so, that may acount for some of the 'marriage vow' preening so as to avoid osculation?
It was a touching scene between Rylan and Paula. Beauty and the Beast, but which the Beast? Again, for good or ill, two major players.
Yes, I'm pretty sure it was Paula being referenced vis-a-vis the party in the past.
Claire being beset with her own past success as a present torment - was a BB classic. Tantamount to David Bowie being played 'Where Are We Now?'24/7 when he's 80 and by then living just south of Croydon.

Paula's interview was rather stilted, almost as if at a police interview saying 'no comment' to every question, for fear of harming her 'career', perhaps. But Brian was equally stilted...
The earlier scene of Speidi with Paula was amazing: the Reality Royalty couple (should be Irreality Royalty, really) acted tantamount to Jehovah's Witnesses of the Reality for which it is Royal, syrupy, preachy, absorbing Paula in its web...
...talking of which, Speidi is now to be given by BB its own lair officially for such processes to fully symbioticise....
Marion is annoyed about this, but this is the Reality of staging Reality, I'm afraid. If a spider can have a grin, this spider did - across two mouths, one ulcerated.

Very chilling, indeed, is Speidi. God Save the Queen, God Save the Queen, followed by a high-five! Taking up the sibling thing, we perhaps should call this monster the Cold Sororist?
Rylan seems to be becoming the star of this show and his lachrymotics were a delight.
I think Ryan the Toadfish has a big following on Channel 5 as they broadcast NEIGHBOURS. (Ironic with the sibling thing being his neighbour-from-hell now!). So, perhaps Sam is likely to go tonight. No loss.

Agree with all that, Marion, and i was open-mouthed at the end with Rylan's time-truncated outburst!
I had to laugh at Sam saying he didn't hit on Lacey Banghard because she is so innocent! Lacey with her eponymous condom business!

http://ttapress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=182&p=26280#p26280
Just read that and learn. This said everything I wanted to say and everything I didn't want to say but would have said had I thought hard enough!
The outcome of the return from the spy-hole by Speidi also reminded me of the classic Victor big fight years ago, but with different crude abrasions as well as different subtle innuendos. Sometimes enthralling in a filmic way, or theatricality, sometimes disturbing and obnoxious. We do at least have Speidi to 'thank' for that emotional provocation.

Marion wrote: "An interesting psychological note - Spencer has taken to referring to himself and Heidi in the third person. 'speidi will be nominated this week...' and so on. Very strange."
Strange, yes, but now seemingly natural in the evolution we've gradually watched of the horrific single creature Speidi from two selves and two bodies. The synchronised shards of random truth and fiction have now even provided a lair for this creature.

I agree that Speidi is being increasingly treated with kid gloves by BB and that this creature is now subtracting from the life of the show, making it become a caricatural parody of BB, and, as if infected by all this, there now ensue boring grotesqueries among the others. Sad.

There is something Jekyll & Hyde about Speidi as a unit, perhaps the first ever example of two people in symbiosis with this phenomenon in synchronised tandem. Also, I think they could be accused of deliberate sabotage of this CBB show, and I wonder what arguments there have been beforehand about their contracts etc. and what arguments there will be once they leave!
I wonder what we haven't been shown.
I expect and hope they will go tonight. Then I might stop having nightmares about their voices!
Razor did indeed do well last night. He's pretty game.
The others are all a bit dumpy-lolloping, except when Ryan is cavorting in the novelty snow!

Marion wrote: "This is an abortion of a show, all out of balance and all staged."
Really can't add much to that. Had an odd chuckle at the caricature Dictator and his Saddamite statue.
And at Razor's Jim Royle act in scratching the front of his exposed Y-fronts! But nothing to write home about.
Speidi's sneer-borne voices continue to bug me. And their actions are not consistent, changing tack at the slightest sniff of their own wayward self-perceived character-building for future profile in UK.

Speidi's snuggling legover scene was indeed breathlessly fabricated. As has been indeed Channel Five's wrong-headed and tendentious editing with regard to the 'Spylan' programme. Poor show.
One of the four detached women will go tonight, I reckon Or is it three?.

Marion wrote: "This has to be the worst BB in history. I shall be glad when it's over."
Well, can't argue with that. And I'm afraid I didn't catch what Gillian said about tasks.
The only possible highlight was Rylan doing his pre-death make-up as Aschenbach (from Death in Venice).
The angel/devil task was ludicrously staged, with no build-up to Razor and Rylan being cast in these parts.
And I feel that Speidi is tantamount to a BB mole or agent provocateur - a professional Reality Show participant without even a glimpse of anything REALLY real about its two halves. A strange paradox about the 'real' world that the assumed real world has become.
And have you noticed that the male half of Speidi always has a water bottle or other form of drink in his hand EVERY time we see him? Perhaps he has to drink for two. :|

A slightly more enjoyable programme last night, mixing the cerebrality of celebrity with fishtail slapstick. (Albeit the latter under the direction of BB's official double-headed 'agent provocateur', that continues constantly to 'water' itself to the bottled gills).
The debates on Fame and Reality were actually - Heaven forfend! - interesting.
The Flinching Heads 'happening' was Beckettian or Pinteresque.
And following Speidi's distaff side 'pole-dancing', I can fully see what Marion meant about the paradox of such feminine attractiveness without intrinsic sexiness.

Marion wrote:
"Heidi does her best, I'm sure, but she just goes through the motions of what is expected of her- a wholesome cheerleader cannot turn to vampish-ness so easily. She's a divinity manque. Razor's reaction to Gillian all dolled up was proof of that - 'she scrubs up well for an old one,' he said. A backhanded compliment to be sure - but recognition of an earthy warmth that Gillian possesses even at 60.
I'm sure that's true of you too, Des, now that you've turned 65. Happy Birthday!"
Marion, that's extremely astute of you in the first paragraph (I do recall that comment by Razor very well), and very kind of you in the second paragraph. Thanks so much.
des

The whole Speidi thing is weird and worrying, its voices still haunting my anxious dreams. Give it credit (or debit), at least, for that. A Horror Creature where Fakeness is a virtue, or so it (fakely?) claims. Fake clandestine handjob, included, if indeed it was fake or intended, real or imaginary... No Horror Writer could have created it. No Horror writer worth his or her salt can miss it.
Yes, a Big Blogger incident of major proportions. BB has gathered some kudos for that nifty stunt. Still uncertain how to interpret the intentions of all parties, and body language talks with crossed torso.
Marion's description of Rylan above, meanwhile, is spot on, with Noel Coward dressing-gown and fake Scissorhands. Also, his Aschenbach beard shaped and neatly darkened...
The others are just bystanders, despite efforts by Razor to stand-out on the cutting-room floor. And trusting Marion's BB judgements, as I do, keep an eye on Tricia.

Marion wrote: "Gillian has let slip that Rylan Scissorhands leaves the house on Sundays to attend rehearsals for the X-factor tour. Whatever happened to being sealed off from the outside world?"
That is very disappointing. It makes a mockery of the whole process, especially if Rylan is being bolstered and fed info by his chums on X Factor. When coupled with Speidi's agent provocateur status, the whole thing becomes scandalous with viewers being encouraged effectively to give money to Ch 5 when voting for HMs on this unlevel playing-field, ie when ringing the special telephone numbers.

Marion wrote: "The show is so awful this season that it is almost fascinating. [...] No HM should go in the eviction tomorrow night - we should be able to evict the entire Channel 5 production team for staging such a ludicrous manipulation. They should have trusted the material they had in the HMs and allowed them to develop organically instead of trying of forcing them nto these set pieces."
I agree. But there is a dilemma there in those two statements. There is some gladiatorial pleasure - demonstrated by the British public in the 1960s/1970s where essentially contrived Wrestling matches with Mick McManus, Jackie Pallo, Giant Haystacks were watched by millions on TV every Saturday (Kent Walton commentating) with little old ladies in the live audience getting out of their seats and shrieking violently at the competing Black versus White. All contrived for maximum effect.
This CBB seems to be feeding off this telephonically lucrative mass-hysteria (as CBB perceives it), and Speidi is just the equivalent of tag-team wrestling where it is the Black team and Claire and Tricia are the White. Was there a professional wrestler in those old days called Spidey or Spider? I think there was!

Yes, what Marion says. Razor from the cutting-room to the mustard. A great old shaver.
Speidi has flip-flopped through this whole series. Perhaps that's part of its game plan, but are we ever shown it pre-planning its game plan? Or does it already know what the other thinks? Or osmosis by water bottle? Or beneath the bed covers?
Taking its bed away seemed somehow symbolic.

Marion wrote: "...he looked like one of the demons from the Exorcist. He creeps me out."
That is perhaps the skill needed in becoming a so-called Reality star. But is this as an accomplished actor or as the person for real?
Tricia said in her interview that the programme would have been boring without Speidi. A moot point. But I tend to agree with Marion when she says: "So it is on to the final. Hard to get excited about it really - the potential winners have been clear from the start. Gone is the ferocious excitement provoked by genuine competition amongst the HMs." -- with that genuine competition being subsumed by the antics of 'Spylan' and by Channel 5's tendentious editing.
Meanwhile, the creepiest thing is Speidi's distaff side and its gratuitous gushing (like its other half's water bottle in free flow).

Yes, not much happened tonight, except tears, and words written on a wall, mene mene tekel upharsin. Fame is the Spur? Or Fame is the Spider? The Final impends.... I hope no-one wins.

Razor out first. That's a surprise.
I think Rylan is likely to win. And a remarkable performance by Spencer (calling him by his separate name for once rather than as the nameless 'spear' of Speidi). I really don't believe all those tears but it was a unique moment during all these years of watching BB, not *really* knowing for sure. Almost a self-crucifixion at the Last Supper.

I am surprised that Ryan is in the last three. It must be the Neighbours Toadfish factor that is featured daily on Channel 5, not that I watch it!

Well, the interview with Speidi didn't really prove anything; they flip flopped throughout the season because they really couldn't focus on a game plan, or they were being their real nasty selves, or they were very clever, or they had billionaire friends voting for them, as Ryan said in his interview. Whether they were truly entertaining, as Brian claimed, is probably right in the sense that people love villains, and the day of the organic BB is now finally over after heading in that direction for the last few seasons. Sad.
Congratulations to Rylan, not that I ever really liked him.
Above all, thanks to Marion for her reports. See you in the Summer.

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Marion's full reports available publicly HERE

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EDIT (June 2013) MY COMMENTS ARE CONTINUED HERE

Quantitative Kamikaze

I 'coined' these words and expressions: ‘zeroism, egnisomicon, egnisism’ in conjunction with PF Jeffery (1967), ‘whofage’ in conjunction with PF Jeffery (1973), ‘agra aska’ (1983), ‘weirdmonger’ (1988), use of ‘brainwright’ in modern times (1990), Salustrade (1992) use of ‘yesterfang’ in modern times (1997), ‘wordhunger’ (1999), ‘nemonymous, ‘nemonymity’, late-labelling, veils-&-piques’ (2001), ‘denemonise’ (2002),‘megazanthus’, ‘weirdonymous’, ‘chasing the noumenon’ (2003), ‘wordonymous’, ‘wordominous’, ‘the-ominous-imagination’, revelling in vulnerability (2004), ‘a woven fire-wall of words’, ‘the synchronised shards of random truth and fiction’, ‘nemoguity’, ‘vexed texture of text’, ‘fictipathy’, ‘nemotion’, ‘the hawler’, ‘the angel megazanthus’,‘klaxon city’, ‘horrorism’ when used as a word for the philosophy of horror fiction (2005),‘publication-on-reading’, ‘antipodal angst’, ‘the tenacity of feathers’, ‘a writer’s mandala’,‘wordy weird’, ‘nemophilia / nemophobia’, ‘magic fiction’ as the obverse of the more common expression ‘magic realism’, ‘weirdtongue’ as the ‘name’ of a language,‘Glistenberry’ as an alternative name for ‘Glastonbury’, ‘tonguage’ as a ‘conscious’ language, ‘yester-eggs’ as a term for Proustian ‘selves’, ‘the parthenogenesis of reality from artifice’, ‘all is for the pest in the pest of all worlds’, ‘Baffles’ as fables with muffled morals (2006), ‘fanblade fable’, ‘abutting the if’, ‘word clones / word clowns’, ‘bumps for books’,‘rite of review’, ‘cone zero’, ‘a basket of coinages’ (2007), ‘small press cover ark(ive), the baser pulps’ ‘orrorfaces’, ‘the wheel culture’, ‘netogenic’, the first fiction about a ‘drogulus’,‘Innerskull’, ‘meganthus‘ (2008), ‘CERN Zoo’ in literature, ‘Real-Time Reviewing‘, ‘ligottum‘, ‘the pit and the pessimum‘, ‘ligottus‘, ‘fubbcuckle’, ‘extraneity creep’,‘pillowghost’, ‘intowards’, ‘powderghost’, ‘nightmare’s moat’ (2009), ‘THE TENSES’,‘scream munch’ as another word for ‘captcha’, ‘skight’ – threepenny bit, ‘invitations from within’, ‘novellatory’, ’Ress’, ‘Venn Dreams’, ‘Tearsheet Doll’, scanbuncle, A Götterdämmerung of Guts , Holistic Horror (2010), SFtopia, Salustraders / Overspacers,Novellarette, Inquel, Gaddafery, Jungian autonymity, sudracide, an impesto novel,trendbaffler, our planet as reliquary, fictionatronics, Lovecraftianisation, “To know the worst is also to know the best“, vignellarette, “Nothing is controlled by logic other than logic itself.”, nightgators, Horror Genreators, dicksplay, roman littoral, ghostalt,poltergeistalt, horrasy, Horrasy: The Horrastic and the Heuristic, srednibution,srednidipity, Lovecraftian indescriptivities, bememorise, alephantiasis, reva-menders,metapomorphic, rarifiction, neoloquism, Was the God Particle born instable? (2011),angelivalent, literal-meaning dreaming, the ‘Higgs boson’ of Horror, The Weirdonomicon,Aickmania, shortcomings harnessed are stronger than strengths unused, privacy-trawler,disarming strangeness in connection with Robert Aickman, Fiction is like currency: belief is everything, oblique concomitant / oblique contaminant, age at the edge, A writer should make clouds shine even if the world’s sun has gone, The Call of the Silly, pastilential,eschairtology, e-born, read-tangler, ghorror, the authorial cloud, grosmance, quixotiose,most placating is playacting, ‘friendly fire’ fiction, dilemmachination, absurface,aeontonomous, HobbYiSt / Hobbit, aeontonomy, Horror Without Victims, fuckerlode, Earkth, Pronoun Horror, The Ives of November, PreMonday-ition, NoV – No Victims, an amid-life crisis,God created Ground in His own image by adding ‘run’ to His name, Old boots are always better than no boots, truth is never brash, End tring, Tendring is Trending, HorNET Nest,The empty future expects our arrival soon, if you fit, wear yourself, The Worldwide Cliff(2012), quantitative kamikaze (2013).

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The Horror Anthology of Horror Anthologies

This is an article I wrote for Brian Keene's on-line magazine JOBS IN HELL in 1999:

WHITHER UBIQUITY?

BY DF LEWIS

It's as if it's my real name: the Ubiquitous DF Lewis (called this so many times, I've lost count), even called "the ridiculously prolific DF Lewis" in a recent organ!  How do I manage this? Or, perhaps more important, why?

    Well, some have claimed that I play on my reputation to get so much stuff published (at the last loose count--over 1200 different stories in touchable organs like magazines and books from 1987). I counter-claim it is DESPITE my reputation that I've managed to achieve what I have achieved. I've been hauled over the critical coals so often--sometimes so devastatingly--I wonder why anyone continues to bother publishing the little rotters at all. But still they crank out, as best as I can muster them for the neat ranks of dead insects that some call print.

    I suppose I started with a splatter-gun method of submitting, spraying all manner of stories to all manner of unlikely outlets. Some hit. Most missed. But some hit real big. I've been lucky, too. Some real nice people who knew their stuff took me under their wing and showed me how to crest the sometimes-thin thermals of creative writing. I played on my strengths and weaknesses, by beginning to quote in my blurb all the critical comments made about me—-and I mean ALL. By experience, I learned to target my submissions, but this was only perfected after about six or seven years of doing it. Luck continued apace. Knowing people, rubbing shoulders, pressing flesh, all these things HELPED. Also—-and it wouldn't be fair to leave this out—-in order to work my method above, you'd need some capital to pay for the postage and materials, especially with so many missed targets, 'black holes' and fruitless acceptances. (It's easier now, I guess, with the Internet.) I have never made any money from writing and never expect to do so.

    Anyway, back to answering "how"--I started a few years ago something I've never regretted. Collaborating stories. Better than sex, I'd say. The mutual creative brainstorming is something else! And I believe some gems have been produced and have helped me through many a writer's block. Helps you get published when you're having it away with someone more famous than you! I could go into the philosophical/linguistic background to collaborating the way I do, but that is probably another article, some time.

    I even collaborate, in effect, onanistically—-utilizing old unused pieces from the different think-world of an earlier, discrete self, mix-and-matching them with my current brain cycles. And talking about brains, mining a brand new story from fresh ore is also like collaborating … if you've got two brains, as I have! (Perhaps being a thick-skinned eccentric also helps in any venture; not that I've consciously nurtured this persona. I just am.)

    I digress. I think I've covered the main points to answer "how". As to "why"? Simple. Because DF Lewis believes what he writes is worthwhile. And, at the end of the day, that is hopefully the main answer to the question "how", too.

    DF Lewis was never born--he emerged in ineluctable slow motion. Des, however, his counterpart, was born 18 January 1948 in Walton On Naze, Essex,UK. Sun in Capricorn, Leo Rising, Pluto/Saturn close to Ascendant, highly aspected Moon in Aries and Jupiter in Sagittarius, two Grand Trines etc. School in Colchester, Essex. Lancaster University (1966-69 where he met his wife. Two children, (28) and (25). 1970-1992 Company Pensions expert. Lived in Croydon (South London) during that period. Now lives in Clacton on Sea,Essex. 1200+ different stories published in print outlets since 1986. His novella AGRA ASKA published to critical acclaim during 1998-9, but few seem to have read it. Received British Fantasy Society Karl Edward Wagner award in 1998. Now his website hosts an electronic forum called Weirdmonger.

The Future Tearing Us, Breaking Us, Bruising Us...

‎"There's something in us that's the same, that belongs to us all; and I'll tell you what it is. It's the Future being born in us -- It's the Future tearing us, breaking us, bruising us so that it may be born."

-- from 'The Glastonbury Romance' (1933) by John Cowper Powys

Having started re-reading this massive novel in the Summer, I hope to finish it by the end of the future itself on 21/12/12.

Other quotes from this book: http://weirdtongue.wordpress.com/quotations-from-the-glastonbury-romance-by-john-cowper-powys/

Eternal Alternations

 From 'The Glastonbury Romance' (1933) by John Cowper Powys:

"...Miss Crow had experienced the eternal alternations, the great antipodal feelings of human experience, the shudder of death and 'the pleasure which there is in life itself!' And she was a woman to miss little, though she kept her own counsel of these experiences!"

Cf: 'The Conspiracy Against The Human Race' by Thomas Ligotti

John Cowper Powys' premonition of the Internet

After my reading yesterday of Sam Dekker's high mystic encounter with the Grail in the remarkable 'Is it a Tench?' scene, today's quoted passage from 'The Glastonbury Romance' (1933) by John Cowper Powys brings us down to earth - or does it? 

 "Poor old Abel had been suffering of late from two most vexing physical maladies, either of which would have rendered him miserable, but which together broke down his spirit. One was his villainous constipation, and the other a still worse attack of piles. With the utmost difficulty, under the encouragement of his faithful crony Number Two, the old man had been persuaded to go to the hospital clinic; but the slap-dash methods of the internes, and an interview, in an ether-smelling corridor, with the competent Aunt Laura, had sent him home trembling with nervous indignation, and resolute to confine himself henceforward to his own private remedies -- Beecham's Pills for the first trouble and copious Vaseline for the second."

'internes' is sic. A vague premonition of 'internet'?

PS: One wonders if the tench was meant to relate to the stench (!) that must have accompanied Sam's application of the enema on Abel Twig and the conveyance away of the then full chamber pot past the stew cooking in the kitchen. The two events: the enema and the grail are more or less connected explicitly by Powys in this section. Or was it the chamber pot and the grail?

All my previous quotes linked from here: http://weirdtongue.wordpress.com/quotations-from-the-glastonbury-romance-by-john-cowper-powys/

Some later comments on my Facebook: IS IT A TENCH?

 

DB: Des indeed... one of the weightiest, most profound questions in all fiction.

 

JBC: Is that a fish? 

Des Lewis Yes, but David is right.

 

JBC: To sum up. In this fiction either the narrator or a character asks the reader or another character of a tench, asumed to be such in the fiction, is it a tench and that's the weightiest question in all fiction? I'd ask David to expatiate but he might and it might be lengthy and I'd have to wait till he finished while all the time believing otherwise and not expecting my mind to be changed by him. Oh! he's being ironic. Is he being ironic? You don't hink he is. I'm throwing this fish back.

 

Des Lewis This is another Facebook post by DB on a different thread: [[hmmm...... I've always thought the repeated "is it a tench?" question was emblematic of the tendency to respond in an almost ridiculously matter-of-fact way to something absolutely transcendent; and the conjunction of the grail scene with the enema scene a parallel but not exactly comparable pairing of the most elevated with the most base. Both seem to me to embody profound truths about human experience and reaction. I'd not matched "tench" and "stench" though... that's interesting too.]]

Des Lewis I then added a linkage between the Holy Grail scene (is it a tench?) and the Chamber Pot scene (where the results of an enema are put).

JBC: The question's repeated? The author was imputing to the character doubt of his eyes and understanding of the obvious (though one fish might look much like another, but not if he's repeating the question). Something's being imputed. It can't be a matter-of-fact way, because of the repetition. Could be a neurotic tic. How the fuck's a tench transcendent? of fishy Xianity? Oh well, it would, in Glastonbury and that myth of Joseph Arimathea, and the grail, but only if you're predisposed yourself to invest with transcendence (which I wouldn't be). But the author presumably is, so might be pairing what he thinks most elevated with the base (though I might make a closer pairing that the grail itself or at least its contents are emetic.) Is it David not matching tench with stench or the author? Matching fish with cunt, perhaps? intentionally or unconsciously?

 

Des Lewis I think I am the only one linking tench and stench, grail and chamber pot, although Powys seems to indicate in the text some form of linkage. I read this book first in 1976 and again this year(am still reading its 1200 close-printed pages). If you're not mystical or of a transcendent frame of mind before you start it, I 'Pascal's wager' that you will be by the time you finish it?

 

Des Lewis Someone seems to have asked the same question - quite innocently? - on this cooking forum here: http://playstuff.net/showthread.php/3756-Cooking-(not-a-nVidia-graphics)-thread/page3

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Untitled Painting by Ade Hodges

"'IS IT A TENCH?'"

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My other quotes from 'A Glastonbury Romance' by John Cowper Powys:
http://weirdtongue.wordpress.com/quotations-from-the-glastonbury-romance-by-john-cowper-powys/

animula, vagula, blandula

Today's quoted passage from 'A Glastonbury Romance' (1933) by John Cowper Powys. [I've today realised that I've got the title wrong in all my recent posts about this book. It should be 'A Glastonbury Romance' not 'The Glastonbury Romance'!]

"His father's hands came out of his pockets now and one of them was thrust into the aquarium! He had caught sight of something there that Sam, at any rate, ha

d never seen in the aquarium; no! not since as a small child, he had watched his father changing its water and its weeds.

There were now three kinds of weeds in the aquarium, two of them river-weeds, and one of them a pond-weed; and it was in an entanglement of this pond-weed that Mat Dekker had found what was such a shock to him and what, at any other time, would have been an event of the first importance in Glastonbury Vicarage. He had found a dead fish.

'Dead! One of the Meare-Rhyne ones!' muttered Mat Dekker now, holding out the tiny little corpse for Sam to see.

It looked very small indeed in the priest's great brown palm -- very small and silvery -- like an 'animula, vagula, blandula' in the hand of God.

'That's what it is -- one of the Meare-Rhyne ones!' echoed Sam."

My other quotes from this book: http://weirdtongue.wordpress.com/quotations-from-the-glastonbury-romance-by-john-cowper-powys/

Picturesquey and Deboshed

Today's quoted passage from 'The Glastonbury Romance' (1933) by John Cowper Powys:

"...the Protagonist and Antagonist of this memorable occasion. Never had the contrast between the two men been more marked.
Philip was dressed in a fawn-coloured overcoat and light soft grey hat. He wore spats beneath his blue-serge trousers and in his hand he carried a cane with a round jasper knob that Persephone had given him. He had a red camellia in his buttonhole and his whole demeanour was composed, debonair, alert.

Bloody Johnny, on the contrary, was really scandalously attired. He had dodged, as his custom was, on public occasions, all attempts of his family to groom him. He was not even picturesquey untidy. He looked like a deboshed verger who had turned billiard-marker in some fifth-rate club."

 

Other quotes here: http://weirdtongue.wordpress.com/quotations-from-the-glastonbury-romance-by-john-cowper-powys/

HorNET Nest

http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/hornet-nest/

PRUFROCKS A NEW STARBUCKS IN TASTELAND

Nietzsche's Braces

Today's quoted passage from 'The Glastonbury Romance' (1933) by John Cowper Powys:

"Furtively in the darkness she allowed herself to fondle the man's muscular wrist; and then from his wrist her long slim hand slipped down to his great swaying hips. Here, as her fingers strayed, she found one of the leather straps of his braces hanging loose; for when he had been buying that set of heavy tea-cups at Wollop's, he had been persuaded to purchase a new pair of braces for himself by the youth who read Nietzsche and these articles his powerful fingers found it very difficult to button. When he felt her knuckles against his side the spontaneous intimacy of the gesture tickled his fancy as much as her actual touch tickled his ribs; and with a deep-drawn chuckle he stopped dead.
'Do it up, if you can, kid!' he laughed. 'It's beaten *me*, that bit of leather.'
She put both her hands to it and finally -- though not without an effort -- she got it fastened. This was the first time in Persephone's whole life that she had buttoned a man's button."

Other quotes: http://weirdtongue.wordpress.com/quotations-from-the-glastonbury-romance-by-john-cowper-powys/

The Candy Ion

It was a Biblical mote that caused a negative electrical charge via the optic fuse -- becoming the increasingly searing pain of the mysterious iritis disease, a disease intermittently besetting Desmond's eyes since he was a young man in the early 1970s, till treated, each time, with special steroid drops. Without such treatment, an inner-beam of agonising blindness would parthenogenetically ensue.

Desmond's wife -- for whom he had a choice of affectionate epithets amid the general condition of marriage that, at its optimum, provided a powerfully mutual I.O.U. -- oscillated, like most wives, between pity and scorn. After all these years she no longer claimed to be his youthful 'eye candy' but she nevertheless retained a seasoned charm: a bespoke spell that could elicit a miracle cure from the least likely of sources... A kickstart from despair. A remedial, if rogue, ricochet from the interface of negative and positive.

Desmond had long surrendered any chance of ever ridding himself of chronic iritis, but he suddenly wondered if crying with the right sort of tears might cleanse for good the organic roots within the optic labyrinth, just as syringing by a nurse could spirit away earwax in a different bodily organ. And a wife, if nobody else, had the power, he thought, to synergise her twin natures as nurse and aggravant with electrically emotional charges at each end of the marital spectrum induced at the precise magical moment of serendipitous catalysing.

But those charges had to be sincerely experienced, by both of them as inducer and recipient. He had to stir the mixed feelings that marriage often made into the most powerful of palliatives. He had to ignite the greatest sweetness within the greatest rancour by means of the greatest skilfully synchronised co-incidence.

He stared at his wife and uttered the most annoying of husbandly nonsenses with the most disarming charm. And the consequent tussle of mutual accusation and forgiveness brought irrigating tears of both laughter and sadness to their eyes as syphoned by the accompanying contrast of deep sincerity and alter-cation, resulting in the greatest surge of emotion that had ever been induced by the iconic magic of marriage.

"Thanks, sugar," Desmond softly said, as his iritic orbs were assuaged by the delicately balanced sight of the spirit summoned between them. But do Biblical miracles ever really take hold? Through a veil of tears, each face faced the other face with a sense of seasoned love coupled with a paradoxical pang of both certainty and misplaced hope. For ever or never, amen. Ion or Eon.

End tring.

End tring.

The Malebolge

"All human minds, as they move about over the face of the earth, are in touch with a dark reservoir of our race’s psychic garbage. Just as all the thrilling and vibrating thoughts that have animated human organisms survive the deaths of those organisms, so all the heavy, cloddish, murderous, desolate thoughts, in which free will and faith and happiness perish like asphyxiated gnats, roll themselves in a foul torrent into a great invisible planetary Malebolge. This Malebolge is always present and near, a little way below the surface, for all our human minds; and it only needs certain occurrences, or certain arrangements of matter, to cause an odious and devastating effluvia from its surface-scum to invade the arteries of our consciousness."
-- today's quoted passage from 'The Glastonbury Romance' (1933) by John Cowper Powys

My other favourite quotes from this book: http://weirdtongue.wordpress.com/quotations-from-the-glastonbury-romance-by-john-cowper-powys/

Crow's Tin

Today's quoted passage (about hawling?) from 'The Glastonbury Romance' (1933) by John Cowper Powys: 

 "For the last month the tin had been pouring forth with such a steady flow that Philip's spirits had mounted up to a pitch of excitement that was like a kind of diurnal drunkenness. He dreamed of tin every night. The metal in all its stages began to obsess him. He collected specimens of it, of every degree of weight, integrity, purity. He carried bits of it about with him in his pocket. All manner of quaint fancies -- not so much imaginative ones as purely childish ones -- connected with tin, kept entering and leaving his mind, and he began to feel as if a portion of his innermost being were the actual magnet that drew this long-neglected element out of abysses of prehistoric darkness into the light of day.

Philip got into the habit of walking every day up the steep overgrown hillside above Wookey and posting himself in the heart of a small grove of Scotch firs from which he could observe, without anyone detecting his presence, the lively transactions at the mouth of the big orifice in the earth, where the trees had been cut away and where the cranes and pulleys stood out in such startling relief against the ancient sepia-coloured clumps of hazel and sycamore, still growing around them upon the leafy slopes. Here he would devour the spectacle of all this activity he had set in motion, until he longed to share the physical exertions of every one of his labourers, diggers, machinists, truckmen, carters, stokers, miners, and haulers."

The World-Snake

From 'The Glastonbury Romance' (1933) by John Cowper Powys:

"The man rubbed his shins meditatively and leaning forward in his low arm-chair, pulled with both hands the shiny black material of one of his trousers close round his leg. This action seemed to give him some kind of spiritual comfort and he continued to enjoy the warmth, gazing into the fire with a curious film over his black eyes, the sort of film that might have covered the ophidian stare of the world-snake, at the bottom of the Northern Sea."

Nancy Stickles and the Blue Mist

 A favourite passage from 'The Glastonbury Romance' (1933) by John Cowper Powys:

"This particular day was indeed as characteristic of autumn in Somerset as any day could be. A blue haze was over everything, so thick and intense, that it was as if the blueness in the sky had fallen upon the earth, leaving only a vague grey hollowness in the upper air. The blue haze invaded everything. It crept through gaps in hedges; it floated over old crumbling walls; it slipped into open stickhouses and haysheds. And though it was blue in colour, it smelled strongly of brown mud and of yellow apples. The blue mist, reeking of cider-juice and ditches, seems to possess a peculiar somnolent power. Travellers from the north, or from the east, coming into Glastonbury by train through Wareham, may be sitting erect and alert as they pass Stalbridge and Templecombe but they will find it difficult to keep their eyes on the landscape when the train has carried them beyond Evercreech and they come into the purlieus of Avalon.

Sleep seems to emanate from this district like a thin, penetrating anaesthetic, possessed of a definite healing power, and it is a sleep full of dreams; not of the gross, violent, repulsive dreams of the night, but of lovely, floating, evasive day-dreams, lighter, more voluptuous, nearer the heart's desire, than the raw, crude, violent visions of the bed.

Nancy Stickles felt a wave of delicious languor steal over her as she contemplated the Glover family enjoying themselves on the little lawn and as she watched the blue mists floating over the old walls and lying in hollows between the narrow alleys, and hovering in pigsty doors, and privy doors and fowl-run doors, and flowing like the vaporous essence of some great blue apple  of the orchards of space over everything she could see." 

More of my favourite passages from this book: HERE