* (restored)
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How to Build a Fog Machine
by Allen
‘This is our home-made fog machine. It uses the same regular fog juice used in store-bought fog machines. You can buy the juice from Terror by Design, Spencers, or party/theatrical supply stores (check your yellow pages). You can also make your own juice. It’s less expensive, but there may be legal issues if the general public is going to breathe your fog. According to the Halloween-L archives: “For fog juice, mix 15% to 35% glycerin to distilled water. Experiment, the less glycerin you use the cheaper and cleaner your fog will be but it will also be lighter and not last as long.” You don’t have to use distilled water with my fog machine design because there’s no heat exchanger to get clogged. You can get small amounts of glycerin at a drug store, or larger amounts from restaurant supply companies.
‘A piston air pump (bought at the local surplus store for $5) squirts the juice onto an inverted, disassembled iron (bought at a garage sale for $1). The iron is on all the time. It’s held above the juice by long bolts from the bottom of the box. The wooden box is sealed and waterproofed inside with a kind of paint called C.R.A.E. (Corrosion-Resistant Acrylic Enamel.) Any thick, waterproof paint will work. If you build something like this, be certain to keep enough space between the wood and the iron, you don’t want to start a fire! Any device like this should be thoroughly tested before being used unattended. Heat it up without juice in it to be sure it won’t burst into flames when it runs out of juice.
‘The juice is pumped into a metal tube 4 inches above the iron with several pin-holes in it to distribute the juice over the hot surface. The heat vaporizes the juice into fog. Fans (salvaged from an old computer) on both ends of the box blow the fog out the front of the machine. Unvaporized juice runs back down into the reservoir. The intake for the pump is a metal tube glued to the side of the box with water-proof epoxy. It’s bent 90 degrees at the bottom and the end is covered with a screen to keep little bits of junk out of the pump.
‘The pump is mounted on the back of the box so it will be cooled by the flow of air. The fan and pump run on 12v, and the iron plugs in of course. A 15 foot control wire allows the operator to turn the fans on and off and the squirt the juice.
‘We built this machine back when the cheapest fog machines were $300. Today, small machines can be bought for as little as $30. Unless you’ve already got all the parts in your junk box, or can get them second hand, it might not be worth it to build this machine.
‘This type of fog will not hang close to the ground unless you cool it below the ambient air temperature. To create this desired effect, you need to build a fog chiller.’
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How to Build a Chiller
by Scott
‘Parts: Cooler, Two 4″ dryer ducts (short sections), silicone caulk, tools to cut plastic, screen or netting, Flexible dryer hose, two 90 degree angle ducting, one 4″ to 2″ reduction ducting.
‘I built this out of a $15.00 Coleman cooler I got at Target the whole thing cost about $25.00. I started by marking the holes on the sides of the cooler to the size of the dryer duct and cutting them out. I first drilled holes around the line I marked then knocked out the plastic and foam core then smoothed up the edges until the dryer duct fit snug. I used silicone to seal the duct inside and out, it takes about 24 hours to cure. I then fitted netting around the inside of the dryer duct on both sides to prevent ice from falling out. I then put flexible dryer hose on one end and a set of 90 degree angle ducting pieces on the other. A reducing duct piece (4″ to 2″) will attach to the angle pieces. The 2″ end sits in front of the fogger nozzle and delivers the fog to the cooler and ice, then blows cool fog out of the dryer hose end creating a low lying fog.
‘I use regular ice from the corner liquor store and fill the cooler to the top with the ice sloping from the top to the bottom of the in/out ducts. This takes about three bags. The ice needs to be high enough to cause the fog to go through and around it, but not covering up the ducts. Some people may try dry ice in the cooler, I hear this works well. Enjoy.’
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How to Make Clouds Indoors
‘Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde does something pretty unusual: not only is he a great cloud photographer, he’s making those clouds artificially in the Neuehouse studio in Manhattan. How? Based on the video above, it appears to use some sort of spray vapor and a fog machine. His exact method and what is in that mist isn’t shared, but the result looks like a typical fluffy cloud on a summer day… except it’s indoors.’ — Jason Schneider
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How to Build a Mini-Fog Smoker
by Cameron
‘Fog machines consume “fog juice” to create smoke. That fog juice is made from a mixture of glycol and distilled water. Neither of those is difficult to obtain, but it’s easiest just to purchase the mixture from a local big box or Halloween store — both of which should have plenty of stock this time of year. That fog juice will evaporate and create smoky gas when it is heated up to a suitable temperature—around 200 degrees Celsius, so you just need a way to get it to that temperature.
‘For his build, GreatScott! used nichrome wire, which is used in a wide variety of devices that need to heat liquids. For example, you’ll find nichrome wire in an e-cigarette heater coil. It may also be possible to use other materials, like copper wire. That just needs to be connected to a suitable power supply to heat up. GreatScott! wrapped the nichrome wire around a wick, which pulls fog juice up out of a 3D-printed container. A fan blows the fog out of the enclosure, and an Arduino measures the fog juice level with a water level sensor and controls the wire and fan. GreatScott! does note that it may be possible for the vapor to be toxic, so be sure to investigate the safety requirements for the fog juice before building this fog machine.’
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Nine Magical Results
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*
p.s. Hey. ** Adem Berbic, Mm. I think ‘tush’ would need to have invisible quotation marks around it. Or maybe at least outside of the UK. Yes, hope but don’t count on it in my experience. The to-be-continued-if-you-fork-out-for-the-book angle could probably work. There’s also the don’t-overstay-your-welcome-onstage angle. I might be saying that because I just read that GnR played way too long at the Download Festival and half of the audience left. Eurostar-wise, be aware that we’re apparently heading into an awful heatwave here starting today and lasting at least a week possibly two. The theater that showed ‘Blood Tea and Red String’ just followed me on Instagram. Looks like a cool venture. I wondered whether I should propose ‘RT’ to them. Being moved, very nice. I’m seeing ‘Obsession’ today, but I don’t suspect that ‘moved’ will be one of its effects. ** test_probe, Hello. My pleasure. ** Dev, Does sound possibly a bit normie. Nothing wrong with that, mind you, in theory at least. Oh, sorry, I misunderstood, no doubt my problem. Then, yes, I’m happy to hear the residency is a shorty. That’s … intense. ** Charalampos, Hello from here. All the later Roy Andersson films starting in the 00s are incredible. Like I said, the Spanish publisher formatted ‘Closer’ like it was some conventional novel, and my use of equal length paragraphs, etc. is key to how the novel works, and so they killed the book. I didn’t know there is a Kate Bush Efteling special, and I’ll go find it even though I’m not the most massive Kate Bush fan. Thank you. ** Jack Skelley, Photos are probably enough. Sweet. No, I didn’t know the Myth Lab audiobook is real now. Wow. You’re so lucky they let you and whoever you want do the reading. Grove just sent me a sample of the actor reading ‘Closer’ on my audiobook, and I don’t think I even want to hear it. I spoke too soon about Chic. I thought we already had tickets, but no, and they’re 130 Euros a pop, so I’m not sure. Kill it at the Festival. xo. ** _Black_Acrylic, I heard that about Scotland, but the way I know that is that Rod Stewart canceled a concert supposedly for health reasons then flew to wherever to watch the Scotland match instead, which I guess is a big enough scandal that even I read about it. ** Bill, bakedjesus gets an ‘A’ for originality. Awesome that you enjoyed the gig. I don’t often read you speak so positively about your gigs. The name Andrea Parkins rings a bell, yes, but I’ll go check. Sounds really exciting. I hope the trip home is … how do you most enjoyably spend long flights? Films? Audio input? ** Tosh Berman, Hi. I had a phase where I was into genre fiction, but I mostly read the weirdos like Thompson, Cain, and those guys. Amy Gerstler has been singing the praises of Mickey Spillane for years, but I’ve never tried him. Normally the word ‘literary’ applied to fiction makes my skin crawl, but applied to a spy thriller is interesting. You know I’ve never read Proust, so I don’t know what that means other than that it’s an extremely positive point of comparison for the person who makes said comparison. And word ‘psychedelic’ is obviously a big lure to me. Hm… ** Barkley, Well, hello there, pal! I don’t think HB hated me per se, I never met him. But he thought/wrote that my work brings unnecessary negative energy into the world, and I guess he hated that. I’ve had people do tarot readings for me. Not a lot, but some. When I was writing the first version of my novel ‘I Wished’ and was really bent out of shape emotionally from thinking so much about George, a tarot reader friend did a reading for me to try to make contact with him for me in the beyond, but instead he got a message from the powers controlling the cards that contacting George was an extremely dangerous thing to do, and the powers refused to do it. That’s always made me think. Oh my god, I would so love to go on that dark ride. And it’s in Spain so … maybe. Thank you! There are few better routes to my heart. It’s so good to see you! ** Caesar, Oh, I think people outside of Argentina know how to pronounce César. Granted, I only really fraternise with sophisticated people. I’ll hope for a translation of her book, for sure. Oh, yes, that rings a bell about that writer contacting me, yes. It’s so cool of him to do that. Ugh that the new edition of ‘Closer’ is the same. Definitely don’t read it. It’s a disaster. Great, see you on Instagram. How’s your week panning out? ** Steve, Sobermaxxing, haha, you’ve got to love these new terms. Sad about your friend, but an excuse to go visit him in Ireland, no? What a nightmare, that gig context your friend had to work in. I’m seeing ‘Obsession’ today, so soon I’ll know. ** Laura, Well, a hater of my work, at least. Or maybe shrinking further would do him a world of good? I like dance music, I just don’t dance. I sort of bob. Like I said, the Spanish publisher just discarded my very careful and important formatting of the novel and tried to make it look as normal as possible, I guess hoping to make more money off of it. It was infuriating, but what’s done to done. Upward spiraling for you but without the spiraling part. ** HaRpEr //, No, not many penises. I want and I guess still want my work to be as androgynous as possible under the circumstances. It’s very true that small chunks is easier for those who are immediately intimidated by experimentation to feel like there’s a possibility that they could digest such a work. But you just have to stay true to the purpose even if it cuts your readership down to a sliver. Or so says I. ** laura w, I’ve been thinking about dice ever since you brought them up. I’m going to see if somewhere in Paris there’s a store aimed at dice aficionados. Probably not, but … I don’t know that Qiu Miaojin book. I’ll go see what it is. I didn’t publish my first novel until I was in my mid-30s, so young is relative to me. Yeah, the Knicks, people were even partying over here where there are no basketball teams or anything. Lucky you about the dying heatwave. A bad one is starting here today, and I can already feel the impending horror at 9:24 am. ** nat, I often wish I could write characters as good as some of those escorts. I would be way down for that guest-post obviously of it pans out. Thanks for even offering. I think I know where you are with your writing at the moment, and that can be the best part, believe it or not. Rock your everything. ** Right. I think the fact that a terrible heatwave is beginning in Paris today might be why I decided to restore this particular old post. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
Hey Dennis
Just got out of the hospital, that really sucked. I forgot what you told me last time, foggy days which is fitting for this post. I know someone who might build such a machine
There’s that specific sentence in Frisk about joining hands through the body that I really like. Or was it Somewhere else? Anyway have a nice day
I have enough of an association between fake smoke and live music that things seem off if I see live music and the smell isn’t there. I still remember the smoke/mist art at the production of This Is How You Will Disappear I caught being notably exceptionally cool. Unfortunately I draw a perpetual blank on the name of the artist you worked with for it, but I wouldn’t complain if I got to see more of their stuff.
Jesus Christ, the temperatures look gnarly over there. Wow, good luck. London will be at a smooth 29 degrees, which is odd because I feel like normally London and Paris weather stays pretty mirrored. I’ve been on a bit of an extreme heat comedown post-Paris and Cannes, so if you can waft some of the swelter my way I’ll gladly share the load.
Point made convincingly re: keeping the reading some kind of snappy. I’m getting weirdly neurotic about timings now even though most of the things I go to are quite chaotic in that department and I don’t think twice about it.
Oh yeah, the person running the screening seemed pretty nice. I asked them if they’d seen the movie on the blog because they said they’d put it together at short notice, and I was still spun out by the nicheness of the coincidence. It couldn’t hurt to ask, I’m sure. I think their through-line as an event series is occult-y stuff, but there wasn’t much occult about Sunday’s screening, to my relief.
I watched ‘Pickpocket’ for the first time last night, and there was definitely movement. More thoughts than can be done justice to this late in the comment.
A fog machine always comes in handy. All you would need is a strobe and some Acid House records, then you’ve got yourself a party happening right there.
That’s cool about Rod Stewart cancelling his gig to watch the game. Both of us being former England residents now supporting Scotland, so that does give us 1 thing in common at least. Fair play to the guy!
Hey Dennis! Fog machines are awesome. I remember reading a story about an accident where someone filled a swimming pool with water and put a smoke machine on, which suffocated everyone who dived into the pool. Here’s a story about it, if you’re interested: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-51680049 . You never really think about fog machines as putting anything out other than dyed air, which is probably why this happened.
Just got made permanent at my job, which is amazing. Had a celebratory slight bender this weekend, haha, had a lot of fun. I inherited the last box of stuff from Hungary that arrived earlier this week, so I’ve been in a slightly hysterical mood, but not in a bad way. Oh, and one of the new people I’m living with went on a long, long rant explaining ancient Greek sexual practice, in such excruciating detail that most people stopped eating their dinner because they were so repulsed. Bizarre behaviour, but really charming, I guess. Hope you’re well mate, see you!
I remember my science teacher (can’t remember which grade, but it was pre-middle school) showing us how to make fog with dry ice and that affected me to be fascinated by smoke and fog ever since. I just grin like a buffoon whenever it appears in a film or a live performance.
Anyway, hey Dennis, been a minute! Hope the early wave of summer is treating you alright. I’ve been braving the heat here to go out more. Had a busy weekend between Pride and a Sunday spent at a book drive, a film screening, and then a show with four screamo bands. Surprised I even had the energy to get in the pit, but the body is funny like that.
I’m also currently kicking myself for missing your “Mine for Yours” post halfway through the year, but since there’s really no limit on it anyway, I think I can share a bit of what’s grabbed my attention this year as a reply to this one! Have a good one!
MUSIC
Neurosis – An Undying Love for a Burning World
Kaatayra – Caminhos de Água
Mitski – Nothing’s About to Happen to Me
Jill Scott – To Whom This May Concern
Gena – The Pleasure Is Yours
underscores – U
Action Bronson – Planet Frog
Babyfather – icl
Genesis Owusu – REDSTAR WU & THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE
Thundercat – Distracted
Letterstoyou – a promise
Los Thuthanaka – Wak’a
FILM
Bouchra (Orian Barki, Meriem Bennani)
Blue Film (Elliot Tuttle)
American Stream (Chandler Chavez)
I Love Boosters (Boots Riley)
Obsession (Curry Barker)
Autonecrophile: What It Means to Be an Exquisite Corpse (Maxine Sizemore)
The Motherload (Van Tran Nguyen, Alex Derwick)
BOOKS
Language as Liberation (Toni Morrison)
From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate (Nathaniel Mackey)
Man Of A Thousand Fails: Film Noir of Elisha Cook Jr. (Bernie Dowling)
The Blue Cherub (PJ Lombardo)
On Disney (Sergei Eisenstein)
ART
Xin Ray Penland O’Brien: Bear With Us (MICA ArtWalk)
Abel Reyes: I Am Not Your Beast (MICA ArtWalk)
John Akomfrah: The Hour Of The Dog (Baltimore Museum of Art)
SCOUT Art Fair, curated by Devin Allen (ArtScape)
Someone told me you put my book on your best list! Ahh! Ty!! I’m glad you liked it!
Happy Bloomsday if you’re into that kind of thing!
this is a very exciting post today. it has the same energy as those mythical guides on how to build bombs but more innocent.
while i wouldn’t be surprised if dice stores did exist, you can usually get them at table top game stores! but the real treasures are to be found on etsy.
like these cool koi fish: https://www.etsy.com/listing/4512547651/koi-fish-resin-dice-set-shimmering
or these teef: https://www.etsy.com/listing/4351468658/tooth-d4-die-replica-life-sized-molar-4
i finished last words from montmartre- it was not as life-changing as i initially thought but what can you do, and i would still recommend it. i started rejection because several people have promised me it would blow my mind. i sort of lost interest in it because i’ve seen some comparisons between it and the sluts and i feel like a lot of books that get compared to yours end up not being like them at all except contentwise, if that makes sense, so i was like “ugh don’t tell me that”. it’s pretty enjoyable so far tho!
i am sorry about the return of the heat. i hope you find some pockets of aircon in to bask like a lizard.
also congrats jay!! i was a temp for like six months at my current job so i know how awful and stressful it is to not be permanent.
I remember I once made a smoke bomb as a kid not expecting it to do anything, but then it did and I freaked out and my dad called me a problem child to the neighbours. All I remember of its creation was that I cut up a ping pong ball and I think cotton wool, and packed it in some tin foil. It was beautiful though, all of the white smoke.
That’s interesting what you say about androgyny in your work. That’s always been an admirable quality to me. Virginia Woolf once said that all great writers write androgynously.
Yeah, I don’t point attention to penises in things I write either. Even saying the word ‘penis’ makes me think of a wimpy, embarrassed man quietly pronouncing it ‘peaaanusss’ to a medical professional. I’m interested in the malleability of the body and how it is labeled and divided according to zones so try to get away from those binary ways of mapping things.
The accessibility that certain techniques may add to my work was really just an afterthought. It wasn’t me sacrificing anything. I’m interested in writing my next book like that because it feels like the aftershock of the form of my current book where the paragraphs can be pretty long. It’s a conceptual trilogy I’m writing and I want each book to react in some way to the form of the one that came before it.
Yeah, it is true that I am a bit hung up on the difficulty of getting the kind of writing I do out in the open, but wallowing in that has never done me any good.
Hi, Dennis! I hope you’re doing well! It’s good to have this information just in case I ever travel abroad, so I won’t have to worry about how to say my name.
Ramiro Sanchiz is a famous writer of weird fiction—I don’t know if his work has been translated into English, but you might find it interesting. He’s a mix between Tim Maughan and Blake Butler (I love him so much. I really need someone to translate “300,000” already so I can talk to someone here about it. I recently found out he has a newsletter, so I’ll probably subscribe to it).
I guess I’ll have to keep reading “Closer” in English (I just read slower in English, which is why it’s sometimes a problem), but I’d probably feel even worse about spending money on a book that just changed its cover (before, the Anagrama edition had a drawing of a very skinny naked torso, and now it’s some kind of teenager wearing a mask very similar to Jason Voorhees’s, playing a guitar in his room. Jesus!)
Anyway, my week is going well so far. Working at a bookstore is exhausting (especially when the “Heated Rivalry” craze shows no signs of letting up and I have to fill a lot of orders within a certain time frame), but I have a lot of fun when new books arrive and I see titles like *A Blood as Bright as the Moon* by Andrea Morstabilini or *Piranesi* by Susanna Clarke—and I get excited thinking that other people are going to read them.
As I write this, I’m finishing up some readings on otaku culture for my next college class and listening to the shouts from my neighborhood (nothing serious! It’s the World Cup, and Argentina is playing its first match against Algeria—and Messi just scored a goal!! It’s a little something to cheer about, considering the wave of government budget cuts, not to mention the rising number of crimes against women. It’s all so sad, but soccer here, somehow, manages to bring us together as a community. It’s something, right?). By the way, how’s your week going? Are you working on anything right now? Sending you lots of love and a big hug. See you next time <3
P.S.: I already messaged you on Instagram, so I hope you got my message. One more thing: I mentioned “Heated Rivalry,” and I’ve been away from the blog for a while, so I don’t know if you’ve talked about it yet… What do you think? Did you see it? Are you interested?
hi Dennis!
i’m somewhat of a fog machine these days, but yours are cuter ^_^
mfs fucked up yr paragraphs, damn. they didn’t understand the assignment! obvi that evenness functions as v important hypnosis and gives a rhythm to all of the school home to-ing and fro-ing, that discreet cage w its slow parade of fictional!George lovers, for the most part that is. sorry they fucked you over ya habibi i wouldn’t have let them =(
(i read smth above about how your seance w actual George got thwarted years ago? uh i viscerally don’t buy that— unless he wanted to warn you that the world’s about to end or smth, no celestial rando would have known how to keep that guy from you, as if. someone was fucking about)
me i’m going for disorder on all levels prose-wise so i reckon if anyone ever tries to mess w that they’ll end up doing too much work and just give up halfway through. but if they actually ‘fixed’ it i’d totally crash out.
2-D boy should not shrink any more! he’ll become an illustration, Dennis, and the genre attached might be cringe.
ugh i like spirals v much but rn i’ll take you up on the nice upwards part, yes. <3
you come with if you could use any elevation tho, eh?
xo