Month: March 2021 (Page 12 of 13)

* (restored)
—-

 

‘A British diver and his German partner have discovered what they claim is the world’s largest submerged cave system – effectively an underground river – beneath Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Stephen Bogaerts and Robbie Schmittner had spent four years exploring whether the Sac Actun system links to other cave networks before they made the final connection that revealed a single system that is 198.25 miles long. Sistema Sac Actun is a classic fault and fracture depicted anchailine cave formed predominantly in the Carrillo Puerto Formation of the Yucatan Platform 1.6 to 24 million years ago.

‘The two divers entered the system separately on January 23, 2007 through an entrance (cenote) named Calavera, which is Spanish for Skull. The cenote gets its grim name from the 3 circular openings in the roof of the cave that resemble the eye sockets and mouth of a skull when viewed from above. Calavera is also known as Temple of Doom. The divers worked their way through huge chambers and tiny tunnels to meet up at the connection point they had always believed they would find. Mr Schmittner was carrying a bottle of champagne, which they left secured to the spot.

‘Mr Bogaerts is from south London but has spent much of his life exploring caves around the world. He settled in Mexico eight years ago. The 42-year-old explorer says that putting Sac Actun at the top of the global table of submerged cave systems is far from the end of the story. He and Mr Schmittner are working on exploring whether Sac Actun connects to a 58km-long system called Dos Ojos. It could yet prove to be the longest cave system of any kind – a record held by the 360-mile, dry Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky.

‘The Yucatán Peninsula – particularly the area running south from the resort city of Cancún, on the north-eastern tip, along what is known as the Riviera Maya – is full of holes, in large part because of the combination of porous limestone bedrock, rainforest cover and relative flatness. Over the millennia the substantial amount of rain that falls here has meandered its way towards the sea, turning slightly acidic because of the dissolving rock, and carving out an extraordinary underground labyrinth. The caves are entered via open pools known as cenotes. There are 55 cenotes in the cave.’ — collaged

 

________
10 Cenotes
all texts by Steve Bogaert

Carwash

Carwash was one of the first cenotes to be found and dived by explorers. It got its unusual name as years ago local Taxi drivers used to take their cars there to wash them. Its proper Mayan name “Actun Ha” means Cave Water. During the summer months there is typically an algae bloom at the surface of the cenote sometimes several meters thick which reduces visibility considerably. At other times of the year lots of tannic acid laden water is washed into the cenote and creates an amazing band of orange water at the surface tinting the sunlight shining down through the Lily pads in glorious shades of red, gold and brown. It is like seeing a sunset underwater. The entrance of the Cavern is very wide with a lot of light penetration and has a screen of dead trees in front of it creating the cool effect of a drowned forest.

 

Angelita

An enchanted island under the water surrounded by a mist shrouded lake through which reach the branches of a drowned forest like the gnarled fingers of demons and creatures of the dark and hidden places. As soon as you descend below the hydrogen sulphide layer into the saltwater you will be in the dark, the ambient light trapped by the cloud above. Do you dare to dive below the mysterious thick cloud of hydrogen sulphide to discover what lies beneath?

 

(Calavera) Temple of Doom

Calavera or Temple of Doom is not just an interesting “hole in the ground”, but a cavern dive of a different type. To enter the water some courage is needed as the diver needs to jump 3m/10ft down or climb the steep ladder. Some of the best places inside the cenote are The Madonna passage, The Hall of Giant Rooms and the Coliseum Room and The Tanic domes circuit. The limestone displays a snow white ambiance with crystal clear blue tint water. There are several large rooms and a variety of passageways with cave formations located in several areas.

 

Casa Cenote

Casa Cenote is unique in that although at the moment it is still a cenote separated from the ocean by a short land bridge that land bridge is slowly disappearing. The Halocline depth varies considerably as well and multiple haloclines are often visible at different depths in the water column which can trap different colored silts and sediments giving each layer a distinctive coloration like a psychedelic cocktail. With such changeable conditions no two dives in Casa Cenote are ever alike. It has an almost alien or otherworldly feel and has often been likened to a Salvador Dali picture or an underwater Gaudi garden.

 

Chikin Ha

Chikin Ha is a very large half moon cenote with a massive undercut ceiling and crystal clear water. One enters through a large halocline tunnel giving a great view of the calcite rafting, large breakdown formations and massive breakdown piles decorated with fossils, crystal formations and speleothems.

 

Barbie Line

Barbie line leads the diver into a very large open cavern area with lots of light penetration before doubling back on itself through the “time tunnel” a beautiful phreatic tube with an amazing view out of the cavern at the end. Barbie line has is decorated with many beautiful columns and enormous Stalagmites and Stalactites formations, all rendered unearthly by a disorienting light show.

 

Bat Cave

The Bat Cave is highly decorated with many intricate and delicate speleothems. The entrance takes you through small, dark areas and into a large air filled underground cavern with a solution chimney entrance in the ceiling that lets in light. As the name suggest the Bat Cave is home to many bats that roost high up among the stalactites covering the ceiling.

 

Pet Cemetery

Pet Cemetery was given its name by the cave diving explorers who first discovered it because of the various animal skeletons found in the cenote and you can still see the lower jawbone of a tapir as well as the fossilized remains of an extinct prehistoric camel. It is probably the most decorate cavern of all andit can be quite dark in places as there is not much ambient light penetration.

 

The Pit

For a long time “The Pit” was a closely guarded secret and very rarely dived due to its remote and inaccessible location. The Pit is also the deepest cave so far discovered in Sac Actun with a maximum depth of 120m/400ft. Much like Angelita as you descend further you will see an island appear out of a cloud of hydrogen sulphide. This is probably the most awe inspiring and spectacular site in the Sac Actun system or perhaps any underwater cave system in the world.

 

Zapote

Cenote Zapote is named after the Sapote (from the Nahuatl “tzapotl”) trees growing nearby. The Sapote is an evergreen tree native to southern Mexico measuring about 20m /70ft tall which are cultivated for their soft edible fruits, the medicinal oil obtained from their seeds and their wood. Zapote has quite a long drop from the land surface to the water surface of 6m/20ft but access is easy via a set of stairs. Zapote is another sinkhole cenote with the typical hourglass profile. Floating at the surface in the roughly circular pool the sheers walls rise above you like the ramparts of a fortress and once you start your descent they get progressively narrower until a depth of 20m/66ft before starting to open back up again.

 

_____________________
The Discovery of Hoyo Negro

‘We started the exploration while following the main tunnel and progressed relatively fast by using scooters to cover more terrain. After about 1,500 feet [450 meters] we began to see the light of another entrance, so we headed towards it and surfaced. After about 400 feet [120 meters] the tunnel narrowed to form a circular shape, almost like a huge cement pipe. I made one tie-off and, while waiting for Franco to complete his surveying effort, I took a good look at the strangely shaped tunnel.

‘All I could see was the whiteness of the cave walls along the sides, and beyond that it was all black. I thought to myself that this is either the largest tunnel I have seen or there is something unusual at the end of it. After Franco caught up, we continued for another 200 feet [60 meters] and eventually reached the end of the tube-shaped tunnel. To our surprise the floor disappeared and all we could see was blackness in all directions. It felt like we had reached a big drop-off or the edge of a canyon wall. We tried to slow down our heart rates as we were not really sure of what to do next.

‘The immense size of Hoyo Negro is difficult to comprehend. Once you enter the pit you cannot see the floor below, and all that can be seen in front of you is a black void — an inviting entrance to the abyss. While we tried to conducted mapping and surveying of this unfathomly immense pit, we noticed some peculiar things sitting on the distant bottom. When we finally reached the floor, we saw what looked for all the world like a mastodon bone. We couldn’t believe that, and no sooner had we turned around when we to our total amazement spotted a human skull resting upside down with other nearby remains at about 140 feet [43 meters] depth.

‘The human we found with the megafauna remains in Hoyo Negro represent the oldest evidence of humans yet discovered in the Americas. Although a number of early archaeological sites have been excavated, only few sets of Paleoindian remains have ever been found. During the Late Pleistocene, these caves were dry. The first people to occupy what is now the Caribbean coast of Mexico wandered into these caves, where some ultimately met their demise. As the last glacial maximum came to end, the melting of the polar ice caps and continental ice sheets raised sea levels worldwide. The caves of the Yucatan Peninsula filled with water and the First Americans were hidden for millennia — only to be discovered by us within those dark reaches.’ — Alex Alvarez, Franco Attolini, and Alberto (Beto) Nava

 

______
The cave

_______
In motion

Snorkling

Diving

 

_______
In repose

 

—-

*

p.s. Hey. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Glad to hear the medical shitshow your mom was caught up in is back to being just a show now. Now you can just enjoy David’s shitshow, ha ha. My new plan is to try to pretend the hacking attempt isn’t happening, although with alert emails continuing to arrive every 30 seconds 24/7, it ain’t gonna be easy. Fuck knows what it’s about. Given its utter lack of success after so many non-stop days, it feels like the hacker is just into banging its head against a wall or something. ** Dominik, Hey!!! Thanks. I’m going to see if there’s a way that I can fool myself into ignoring the hack. I haven’t found ‘It’s a Sin’ yet, but I’m looking. You’re right, that love would be unbelievably buff by now not to mention probably dead of exhaustion. He’d make a good slave. Love crowdsurfing at any gig or concert in the world, he’s not picky at this point, G. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Tom Waite? Any relation to Geneviève? I finally found your email and wrote to you. ** _Black_Acrylic, Definitely into the image of you mending in a luxury hotel. Any highlights so far? ** Bill, Hi. Thanks. Oh, well, yeah, you wouldn’t want to actually read any of those Stalag fictions, as I would imagine those samples made very clear. Ah, finally I will be ready for bandcamp Friday! Thank you a lot, Bill! ** Damien Ark, Yep, just as weird as it seems. Good to see you! ** Tosh Berman, Thanks, Tosh. At the moment it feels like a perpetual motion machine is trying to hack in here, but … ** Jack Skelley, Jack Skedaddle! Yeah, I’m avoiding the Skellington nickname like the plague, you’ll be happy to know. Luckily or not, I think my acid masterpieces are beyond compost. Thanks about the obnoxiousness. Fistfuls of cheesy Paris souvenirs, man! ** Steve Erickson, Nope, it/they remain tireless. The Heard/Depp thing is a brawl of ugliness, yeah. Not that some people without apparent lives aren’t being fiercely side-taking, at least in my feed. I remember you mentioning that about the doc. Oops. ** Brendan, Ha ha, yes, about ‘Hogan’s Heroes’. I loved that show as a kid. I can’t imagine rewatching it, but I still think it’s a clever, legit TV series premise, which makes me cancellable, I’m sure. Luckily, so far, my hacker seems to be a masochist as well as a sadist. Love, me. ** John Newton, Hi. I don’t think the Stalags are very readable unless one is into the trashiest camp crap. Coffee and green tea are my last remaining recreational drugs. Enhancing my own clarity is kind of nice, though. I’m into it. ** Brian O’Connell, Howdy, Brian. Oh, wow, cool, that the post’s stuff aligned with your pre-existing interests. Mm, no, no special thoughts on the phenomenon, at least this morning. Just kind of a ‘huh’. Writing first drafts of fiction, unless I’m super obsessed or something, is a ‘let’s get this over with’ thing for me. With film, it’s a lot more fun, I guess because you have a lot of company. I have a thing for award shows, I like the form for some reason. But the Oscars is only interesting, sort of, because it’s the Big Dog of award shows. But who wins and stuff seems utterly meaningless, and unless you’re into rooting for a film to make lots of money, it just seems like mega-publicity. Yeah, sure, respecting without adoring, I think that’s legit and pretty common, no? True love, even between you and art, is naturally a rarity, I think? Sorry about the little depression stint, but, yeah, I hear you. I battle depression onsets quite a bit these days, and I’m not a naturally depressive guy. Bring back the world ASAP please! Oh, that’s not a plea to you, but rather to … whatever forces. Thursday seems ideally ripe for both of us, so let’s see. ** Okay. Today I thought I would try to take your minds off of aesthetically demanding things by restoring this old vacation-style post. See you tomorrow.

* (restored)
—-

‘Stalag Fiction was an Israeli genre of erotic pulp fiction that employed Nazi characters. These books, which were very popular in the early 1960s, had graphic scenes of domination, torture and sadism between female SS guards and Allied soldiers in German POW camps. The readership of these Stalags were primarily teenage boys, a majority of whom were the children of Holocaust survivors. These pulp fictions are an example of the international post-war cultural trend of presenting Nazism as intrinsically decadent. The introduction of the genre coincided with the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. …

‘The first Stalag was Stalag 13. All of the Stalag books were promoted as translated fiction written by pseudonymous authors with “American” names. A name of a fictitious translator–alongside banners such as “For the first time in Hebrew…”–is added for “authenticity.” But all authors were Israeli and wrote in Hebrew. Stalag 13 tells the tale of Mike Baden, British pilot held prisoner in a POW camp. One day the camp’s SS staff is replaced by “Two platoons of female SS storm troopers, wearing tight pants, shining boots, and vests from cloth that stretched across tall and upright breasts.” …

‘Ezra Narkis, the publisher of the first Stalags, had specialized in men’s magazines and porn pulp. He claims that Stalag 13 sold 70,000 copies. Another account says that producers of the TV show Hogan’s Heroes heard about the book’s success during a visit to Israel and decided to adapt it. The show also took place in Stalag 13. There were about 80 titles of Stalags in all, beginning in 1961 with one title published in 1965. …

‘A common plot device is a dominatrix in charge of a unit of female SS guards. Some were adapted from real life SS women such as Ilse Koch (the “Bitch of Buchenwald”) and Irma Grese (the “Beautiful Beast”) of Auschwitz. The brutality of these Nazi female characters has a price. In Stalag of Leaches, the dominatrix is tossed into a pit of leaches, while in Stalag 217 the female in charge is strangled by her ex-lover. Every Stalag ends with “settling the score.” …

‘Both the books of Ka-Tzetnik 135633 (House of Dolls and others) and the Stalags have had a lasting effect upon Israeli society. According to Israeli filmmaker Ari Libsker, whose 60-minute documentary Stalags: Holocaust and Pornography in Israel was released in 2008, it is a similar blend of “horror, sadism and pornography” that perpetuates the memory of the Holocaust throughout the Israeli consciousness into the 21st century.’ — Eric Brothers, Suite 101

 

‘Many Americans have never heard about the Stalag fiction phenomenon; Ari Libsker‘s short but valuable documentary, simply titled Stalags, makes for a troubling, though thoughtful, introduction. Stalags constituted a genre of cheap exploitation novels that briefly thrived in Israel in the early Sixties during the period of the Adolf Eichmann trial, when the atrocities of the Holocaust were initially and tentatively broached in the public sphere. Stalags usually stuck to the same tried and true formula, pawning themselves off as translations of memoirs by American or British soldiers who had been imprisoned during World War II by the Nazis and subjected to sexual humiliation and violence by SS she-devils. In the end the soldier gets to turn the tables by raping and killing his inhuman torturers.’ — Michael Rowin

ON THE MEDIA: How do you think these books contribute to the young generation of the ’60s’ idea of what went on during the Holocaust?

ARI LIBSKER: First of all, at that time, we didn’t have information about what was happening. We had only read Anne Frank. And Anne Frank’s diary stops in the moment that the Nazis take her to the camp. And most of the parents, they were ashamed. And there was only one man who gave the information to the Israeli people. It was Ka-Tzetnik. He was the first Holocaust writer in the world. He was before Elie Wiesel. He was before Primo Levi. He published his first book in ’46.

OTM: His books were actually the precursors of these Stalag pulp novels.

AL: He was “Mr. Holocaust” of Israel, and his books were considered to be holy books. But when you analyze his way of writing, you realize that his book was completely pornography. House of Dolls talked about a pleasure block within Auschwitz, which was populated with Jewish girl prisoners who were there to serve the guards.

OTM: Sex and Nazism, a very potent combination.

AL: Yes. It’s easy to criticize low culture, but it’s hard to criticize a person that is considered to be high literature. Ka-Tzetnik made more damage than the Stalags because, if you were a child and you read the Stalags like two times, five times, you understood it was pornography. But they did not understand that Ka-Tzetnik was a pornographer too.

OTM: So the kids, the teenagers who read House of Dolls and the Stalags in their formative years, in the early ’60s, they’re now in their late fifties and early sixties themselves.

AL: Yes. They are the generation that controls Israel now. This is the age of Ehud Barak, the age of Ehud Olmert and the age of Binyamin Netanyahu.

OTM: And yet, House of Dolls continues to be taught in the curriculum, have been taught in the curriculum since 1992. Why?

AL: I don’t have any answer to this. To get more attention from the young generation, they’re given the hard core of death, violence, and, in the case of Ka-Tzetnik, sex. I think that we still deal with the Holocaust in a pornographic way. It’s the way that we repeat the horror again and again.

Download the film gratis here

 

Stalag fiction @ Wikipedia
‘Stalags’ @ Nazimedia
‘Horniness Meets Horror’ @ Village Voice
‘Israel’s Nazi-porn Problem’ @ Salon
‘Holocaust Porn’ @ NYPress
Ka-Tzetnik Profile @ Jewish Resistance
‘Ka-tzetnik’s Use of Paradox’
Book: ‘Stalag Fiction: Nazi Exploitation, The Holocaust, Sadomasochism’
Film: Ari Libsker ‘Stalags’ (2008)

 

‘The first ‘Stalag’ was not a Stalag, but was instrumental in bringing the short-lived genre to life. The pseudonymous author Ka-Tzetnik 135633 — concentration camp slang for “prisoner,” and his Auschwitz number — published his book House of Dolls in 1953. It was the first Israeli book to confront the Holocaust, a diary of a sexually abused 14-year-old Jewish girl who was forced to be a prostitute in Auschwitz. The girl was the author’s sister, who was put to work in the brothel of Block 24 in the notorious death camp.

‘House of Dolls is essentially the Israeli equivalent to The Diary of Anne Frank in the United States and Elie Wiesel’s Night in Western Europe. Ka-Tzetnik 135633 became Israel’s official literary witness to the Holocaust, similar to the role Elie Wiesel has in Europe and America. House of Dolls is required reading in the Israeli school curriculum, and gives students their first exposure to the Holocaust. But there is a problem. Considered a Holocaust classic for many years, scholars now consider House of Dolls to be pornography and made up.’ — Sandra Williams

Excerpt:

Joy Division.

Here, in the rose-tinted blocks, there was no flogging. Here they kept close watch over the girls’ bodies to keep them whole, undamaged. Here, when a girl was flogged she was not permitted to return to the Joy Division. She was immediately tossed on the van and- Off to the crematorium!

Here every girl got a new outfit. Every week- clean underwear. Compared to the food in the Labor Division it really was paradise here, as Renya Zeidner had said. But the girls who lapsed into sin in this paradise received a “report.” Just a “report.” Sinners with three such “reports” were led out, usually with teh arrival of a new transport, to the Execution Square, where Elsa, the Master-Kalefactress, cleansed the sin out of their bodies. Sin Purgation it was called. Upon which the purgated bodies were tossed on the van: Let the other maidens of paradise behold and beware of sin.

Here, every day, at two o’clock, German soldiers, on their way to the Russian front, came from the nearby transit depots to entertain themselves with the girls of the Doll House. The girls had to put their all into the satisfaction of their esteemed guests. If such a guest was not satisfied with the “enjoyment,” he had only to report it, on leaving, in the orderly room and give the girl’s breast number. After three such “reports” the girl was automatically doomed: She hadn’t duly appreciated the great honor bestowed upon her; she had made light of the honor of a German warrior!

*

Enjoyment Duty.

There is not a sound in the block. The girls sit, each on her bed, legs propped on the floor. Fifty beds, in two single files, with fifty girls seated backs to each other. No one had decreed this seating arrangement. They seem to be sitting this way deliberately, so their glances should not meet. Fear is contagious. Soon they will be called upon to smile. The smile is not optional. The smile attests to the girl’s attitude to Enjoyment. Her life depends on the smile. Soon they will be called upon to be happy.

There is not a sound in the block.

For a while yet they are permitted to commune with fear, with this thing about to take place here. Now they are still permitted to feel the horror of what awaits them. And they abandon themselves to the opean arms of fear, which any moment will have to give way to the Germans. Soon their faces will wear smiles. The noble German guest hasn’t come here to look at sad eyes. He has come to Enjoy! To get his bucketful of joy! That clear to the Doll? If not, he’ll make it clear to her! First of all, let’s have the number! He wants a copy of th enumber in his pocket. Just for the heck of it. Afterwards, when he passes by the orderly room, he’ll think it over. But just now, with her brand number already jotted down in his pocket, let the Doll be so good as to love him up! The way he likes it! With gusto! Gay does it! He wants to get his fill of her just the way he washes down a mug of Prussian bear, white foam and all.

Outside, the gong booms-

Two o’clock.

It’s time.

There is not a sound in the block. Fifty girls- as if they had nothing to say to each other. Fifty beds- like ffity stools arrayed on the Execution Square before the naked bodies are strapped to them.

Outside, German voices are approaching. Elsa is screeching final orders to the kalefactresses, drowning out the Germans’ ribaldry. Maybe that will help draw their attention and serve them notice just who and what she is here. Even Yaga lingers on the square in front of the blocks. They hustle and bustle and shout outside like stage directors before curtain time on opening night. Any moment now the block gate will open, and the Germans will come in.

Fifty beds- like fifty before the firing squad, standing motionless in a straight row, staring into the gun muzzles, waiting for the bullet to pierce the heart-silent. They have nothing to say to each other.

Every day. At exactly two o’clock.

[…]

Enjoyment Duty.

At Daniella’s bed, the German hangs his jacket in the closet. In the adjacent bed, the girl looks right into the German’s eyes. She smiles- but her smile weeps, as though she had drawn it out of a jar of tears where it had been soaking. The girl’s eyes rake through the German’s countenance, trying to divine as by face-reading: What does this face have in store for her today? Is there a human spark hidden behind it? She searches for the spark. She wants so to find it, hold on to it, reach out a hand to it like a drowner. Her life is now in his hands. She now belongs to him, all of her. He will express his opinion about her. His opinion- an irrevocable verdict. Will he sate himself, like the beast gorging down its prey, grunting and going on its way, or will he let her have a “report” just for kicks, so as not to miss out on this extra pleasure?

[…]

In a nearby bed, the German gets up, makes ready to leave. The girl’s arms, white and naked, cling to him. Her face twists into a smile as her lips whisper, “Please sir, was the gentleman satisfied?”

The German shoves her away, spits, walks off. The girl sits there, her naked white arms hanging spiritlessly from her knees. She looks to him. He is going away, carrying in his pocket the fate of her polluted life. The Execution Square looms before her eyes. She looks, looks. The German is already gone, and she is still looking to him-

Was he?…

*

Suddenly, he felt an awful pain around his eyes. From every limb of his body, from his skin, from the roots of his hair, the pain converged upon his eyes and all started beseeching him:

“A tear- a tear- please, just one…”

He rolled off the white sheet. The searing pain around the eyes grew more agonizing, more excruciating. A roaring blaze. The pupils of his eyes flared up like two seething volcanoes, and the pain erupted and streamed into his every bone. He dragged himself to the table, let himself into the Mussulman seat. Queer sounds started escaping from his throat. The weird cheeping of an ailing bird. His arms reached out to the empty chair opposite.

“A tear- Please, only one- just one…”

He lifted his gnarled, calcified hands and pointed to his eyelids: There….he…he feels something there, something he’s never felt before…He twittered and breathed his plea to the empty chair:

“…tear…only….only one…”

Hippocrates of Concentration Camp Universe! Prescribe this patient his cure!

 

‘Nazi She Wolf Beauties of The SS’ (trailer)

‘Werewolf Women of the S S’ (trailer)

‘The Dolls of Fuhrer’
Watch it here

‘Nazi Love Camp 27’ (excerpt)

‘Gestapo’s Last Orgy’ (Trailer)

‘The Beast in Heat’ (entirety)

‘SS Experiment Love Camp’ (Trailer)

Fräulein Kitty (Excerpts)
—-

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Misanthrope, Hi. The hacking thing is still happening full force, and it’s starting to effect the blog and making it quite sluggish and difficult to work with, and it’s driving me a bit nuts. The lack of exposition or backstory in ‘WfD’ is beautiful and way, way up my alley, obviously. I hope your mom’s health upswing is still the law of the land. ** Dominick, Hi, D! Yes, the hacking thing is super stressful, and, like I told Misanthrope, even though whoever hasn’t been successful in getting inside, it’s making the blog very slow and very hard to navigate. I’m starting to wonder if it’s ever going to stop. Urgh, anyway … I’ll see if I can see ‘It’s a Sin’ on one of my (whispering) illegal sites. Ha ha. Love as huge and impossible and stupid as hippies used to hallucinate about on acid, G. ** David Ehrenstein, My email box has been invaded by hundreds and hundreds of WordPress hacking notification emails with more arriving every minute, and it’s a big mess in there, but I’ll go try to find your email once I’m done here. Tom Wolfe wasn’t a hack back when he wrote his first couple of books, and the proof is in their pudding. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. I don’t know if you remember when Gisele and I co-curated that big exhibition and series of performances at the Pompidou called ‘Teenage Hallucination’, but we showed two of Bartlett’s dolls in it, and they’re really small in person, and, yes, very weird. Great, congrats on the transfer! Very happy to hear it! Here’s hoping it’s as homey as possible for as short a stint as possible. ** Bill, Hi, B. Yep. Oh, I have to go check what Carrington story it is. I haven’t looked yet. Hold on. It’s ‘The Debutante’. I recommend the book club type thing or something like it. It’s great fun both when talking writing and just shooting the surrounding shit generally. ** Jack Skelley, How many times have people refereed you as Jack Skeletor? Well, add me to the supposed hordes. Amazing that you could read on acid. Don’t think I ever managed that. Wrote on acid, although ‘wrote’ is being really kind to what I incoherently spewed through a Bic pen or whatever. Happy you liked ‘Alone’. Yeah, Mr. Moore knows how to getcha. Hugs, punk! ** Steve Erickson, It’s true, watching that Britney doc, it’s amazing how intensely things have changed since the days not actually very long ago when she was assaulted by the media unchecked. I like Eilish, but I think I’d need to hear the doc is something special to watch it. Curved Air, yes. I, like I think everybody back then, bought their first album, which I think was ‘Air Conditioning’ because it was one of the first LPS to be released only on picture disc. I hardly remember it other than thinking it wasn’t anywhere as exciting as the picture disc novelty aspect. Vague memories of thinking they were something kind of like if It’s A Beautiful Day had heard a Henry Cow album and tried to catch up or something. Maybe I’ll dip back in. ** Brian O’Connell, Hi, Brian. Strange dude, cool stuff, beautiful and weirdly fixated and kind of great, yeah. For me, the editing is where you make the film. Granted, after carefully doing the shooting and, of course, the casting and so on. But I feel the same way about writing fiction. When I’m writing I’m mostly thinking ‘hurry up so I can get to the editing’. Curious. I agree, Bogarde in ‘DiV’ is one of the great performances. Back in the day when I was young and naive and whatever enough to care what won the Oscars, I remember being completely outraged that neither he got nominated for best actor for ‘DiV’ nor did Malcolm McDowell get nominated for ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Those overlooks still seem outrageous even now when I don’t give a shit about the Oscars. Carrington’s prose is terrific, and will do about the Andersson. The next book club isn’t for a week and a half, but I’ll remember. I get you on Cassavetes. Me too, really. I admire his films, but I’ve never felt passionate about them like so many do. I’m more in the formalist/style camp, for sure. Or a perfect mix of form vs. naturalist like, oh, James Benning. It’s always interesting when one doesn’t love the films of a filmmmaker when pretty much everyone you know and respect loves them. For me, Tarkovsky is an example. I get why people love his films, but they don’t do anything for me and kind of irritate me if anything. Your scrawl was lovely and not remotely a scrawl, my friend. I hope Wednesday finds you to be an upbeat soulmate. ** John Newton, Hi, John. My pleasure. Ah, editing poems, nice. That sounds exciting. Take care. ** Right. Today I thought I would resurrect this old post about a most curious … literary (?) phenomenon of the past. Interested? See you tomorrow.