I sat through the Avengers trailer at the cinema on Saturday night. Does anyone know why Robert Downey Jr is doing Werner Herzog’s voice?
If you’re just joining me: this is my digital notebook, which gets added to one or twice a day, usually just once, sometimes not at all.
TODAY:
- Serpent Mound is a Native American earthwork – I did a bunch of research on these a few years ago for a graphic novella that comes out in 2027 – and I came across this wonderful bit in a new article on it: “Those who built Serpent Mound could not have known that it sits amid an astrobleme, Greek for “star wound”—a five-mile-wide eroded crater left behind by a meteor impact 320 million years ago.”
- The Eden Book Society: a literary hoax project from Dead Ink Books
- An asteroid photographed from 37 miles away
Heard from my old friend Mac Rey last night, who’s developing his personal project STRANGE COMBAT. Back in the 60s and 70s, DC used to mash up genres in odd ways, and one of the stickiest was the “supernatural war story.” The Haunted Tank and that sort of thing. If you’re my age, then you found tattered copies of these in charity shops and rummage sales at fairs, and thought, what the fuck even is this thing? But if you were Mac, it got stuck in your head and laid eggs:
Quick happy exchange with Nika Zola Jesus about her launching her own label/house, which I find completely inspirational. And she joined the growing group of people poking me to start my own house, which I’ve been thinking a lot about this year. Self-publishing is hardly new to me, and I have an ebook process partly figured out. I just need the jolt, and it hasn’t come yet.
New Soeur L’Enfer song is dropping later today.
OPERATIONS: I need to get 8pp of script out the door and then pivot to personal projects
STATUS: this first cold of the winter is hanging on. Spent yesterday offline batching meals and fixing the coffee machine. Tonight I need to clean out and reposition the coffee bean roaster. I love roasting coffee: the sound, the aroma, and that golden seam on the bean.
READING:THE ROUSE, China Mieville (UK) (US+)
Nineteen fifteen, Robert King, “Occult Aspects of the Battlefield,” invoked “swirling groups of combatants who had left the body, locked together in an intense emotional stress, fancying they were still engaged in slaughter.” You could be sure the War Office had its copies of that. What’s the word for something that is a nightmare and a dream, a dreaded outcome and an aspiration all in one?
LISTENING: THE WAY APPEARS, India Gailey & Leah Plave
On The Way Appears, cellists India Gailey and Leah Plave offer a collection of uniquely collaborative new music for two celli. From the synchronicity of flocking birds and the fractal symmetry of snowflakes, to the self-organized structures of political movements, the music illustrates emergence…
LAST WATCHED: HAMLET AT ELSINORE was on last night, preceded by a short interview with Steven Berkoff. I enjoy Berkoff, as he is completely mad and never not acting. Berkoff also gave us one of the great televisual moments of 2003. He was so restrained and almost respectful in performing Stilgar in CHILDREN OF DUNE, keeping the volume turned down so he didn’t run over the other actors. And then, finally, he couldn’t take it any more:
DRINK: Fraoch Heather Ale
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Find me at Orbital Operations every Sunday.