p.s. Hey. ** Chris Kelso, Hey, thank you. Wonderful book. Oh, shit, apologies about the mistaken identity. I’ll go switch it when I’m outta here. He does look at least a little strangely like you, no? ** Dominik, Hi!!! And my pleasure, as always. Love snagged another good one there. Yes, that slave was verbally robbery-worthy. Okay, one last love quote from the slavery division before we hit the juke book again. We develop ourselves through self-development, signed Love, G. ** Charalampos, Happy that a couple of them snagged you. Love back from the 8th wonder of Paris. ** Steeqhen, It must be hard being a scat receiver if you’re a vegetarian. I often choose plane movie fodder based largely on how much flight time they can kill, so that sounds like a must. I hope you got the writing accomplished to your satisfaction. Yes, I honestly crave guest-posts. They help me out a lot, and a Dr. Who one by you would be most excellent. Thank you wanting to. ** _Black_Acrylic, *Ka-ching* Celine, nice. Is that one of the Celine books that they found recently and are now publishing? ** James, Me neither on the tentacle porn front. Strange. The Masshole contains artworks, and she published it herself, so I think she’s just trying to cover her costs. Plus, art books of 100 pages are very often $45 or even more. Thanks for poring over the selection. Probably more titillated than irked. Or you don’t think you know any gay sex slaves. I think gay sex slaves tend to be fairly discreet, probably especially around 17 year olds. There’ve been a few slaves who wrote to me privately to either say ‘wow!’ or to ask me to please remove them from the post. Getting older is like death and taxes, yeah. I found the dead body in the amusement park ride post if you’re interested: Elmer McCurdy’s Dead Body’s Day. I have you met your new step-mom? Does your dad have good taste in such things? ** Jack Skelley, Hey, thank you for the filling-in. Keep revolving, dude. ** Victoria Brooks, Hi! Thank you so much for coming in here. I loved your book, as I guess I already made clear, and I’m very happy that my fellow US citizens are about to revel in it. It’s very nice to meet you. All respect, me. ** Misanthrope, Chick-fil-A, err, okay. So he’s a rebellious gay boy. You should be wary of her. I guess try not to let one betrayal make you lose your faith and good nature re: people. Mine was severely tested by, say, that JT Leroy masquerading monster, but I held fast. But, yeah having your trust betrayed is the worst. When that happens to me, I find it basically forever unforgivable. ** Steve, Hi, No, I didn’t see ‘Separated’. I need to. Everyone, Steve reviewed Seo’s BLOODBERRY here. (Scroll two thirds of the way down the page for it.) Sucks about the sneezing. Sucks how the relentlessness erases the small but tenable pleasure of sneezing or rather post-sneezing. My weekend … I saw a big exhibition of Harmony Korine’s art, photographs and videos from the collection of Agnes B who was HK’s mentor up through ‘Trash Humpers’, so there was a lot of great stuff. We submitted our film to two festivals whose deadlines are now. And we finished its teaser trailer. And some wandering and emailing and a bit of writing. It was fine, thanks. Hope yours wasn’t hampered by your nose and was sprinkled with friends. ** Lucas, Nice, good old Cologne. We’d love to show RT in Cologne. If there’s an opportunity, we will. My weekend was okay as spelled out to Steve just above here. The collage looks excellent. What more do you think you need to do to it? Oh, wait, you just said, never mind. Yay about the SCAB acceptance! Congrats to everyone associated! Your laptop okay? You able to look at my response lengthily? ** Dan Carroll, Great that the first meeting sounds so promising. I loved your piece about Lynch and lip-synching. It was beautiful. Lovely thinking and writing there, sir. Good, yes, ‘Black Sunlight’ is so exciting right? I think I first read it about, oh, ten years ago? It took me a while to discover it. I’ll look for ‘At Night All Blood Is Black’, thanks. Sounds like it’s really something. ** Madison Murray, Hey! Oh, no, thank you! What a crazy, wonderful book. It was a true pleasure to be able to absorb. And it’s so nice of you to come in and say hi. Take care, and big kudos from me. ** jay, Hi. Cool, *ka-ching*. Thanks about the art that I show here’s impact on your sense of bodily self. (What an unwieldy sentence.) That’s a very high compliment. I’ll try to keep it up. You portrayed the tricky, shocking in-the-moment mishap very well. It was like being there just without the sharp intake of breath. I love winter but I must admit a little warm air, especially vacuum-sealed, would be quite welcome in this environment at the moment. I hope that Jesus, assuming the gif-makers are right that he actually existed, which I doubt, saves your soul today, assuming that whatever that people call a soul exists, which I also doubt. Naming the unknowable is always suspicious. I.e., a dog licking your faces means it loves you. Says who? ** HaRpEr, Hi! Thanks, pal. So, mold … that means your apartment is weirdly moist? Or it’s an entity like a slice of cheese or something? Ugh, sorry. You mean the photos are the generators of the poems? Like their content or style or both? Sounds really interesting. I’m happy you like ‘The Letters of Mina Harker’. I wish Dodie would finish another novel. She’s been working on one for years, and she read part of it when she did a reading here recently, and it was great, and I harangued her to finish it, but we’ll see. Lucky for Bonello that you have that soft spot, haha. I find his work very uneven. ‘Nocturama’ is very good if you want to try that. Avoid ‘Saint Laurent’ though. Ugh. ** SP, Hi. I am getting the sense that as of the last couple of days people in the States are finally realising it’s either fight noisily and like hell and right now or doom everyone. Glad you’re finding fun anyway. Like what kind of fun? ** Uday, Hi. What important books are you revisiting, and why are they important? Big question, too big maybe, sorry. Nothing massive on my end this weekend, but some chipping away at things, I think. That’ll do (for now). Don’t let the season-based gloom penetrate you. ** Okay. Jesus is in the house! Give it up! See you tomorrow.
What began as a curious investigation into the motivations of Victoria Brooks to produce this novel, a multi-faceted introspection of personal experience laid out in contrast to far-reaching claims of the nature of reality, has, I’m afraid, devolved into a rigorous genealogy of philosophical concepts. Here, at the end of the book, is the only place where these investigations can be safely stowed away, for the keen interest of the sad few. While those who have read Silicone God for enjoyment may, at this point, lay the text aside, to safeguard its mystery. —-The mistress, according to Brooks, has (along with all other beings) become part silicone by means of the Silicone Becoming. It is the next logical stage of evolu-tion, but the text takes on a nefarious edge. Evaline, the advanced future being who comes to provide Shae with a sacred text from Time (the future), is mostly silicone. In her encounter with Shae, Evaline encourages her to lick some pussy. Be a proper queer. But Shae is by nature a Mistress, a supreme being according to the mush-room gods. —-Somewhere I heard Victoria Brooks say explicitly that they considered and were fascinated by the fact that silicon beings (note the lack of an ‘e’) are often proposed in science and in sci-fi as a possible other substrate of life. Appearing directly under carbon on the periodic table, silicon is an analogue to carbon in the sense that it can form four covalent bonds, and thus it is plausible that silicon could replace carbon in the organic molecules that constitute carbon-based lifeforms (that is, all plants and animals, including the human). Silicone, on the other hand, is a synthetic material that includes carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen whose arrangement of molecules into a smooth-yet-non-absorbent surface makes it the ideal material for the construction of sex toys. —-Silicone with an ‘e’ is a compound, non-reactive, non-porous, and synonymous with passivity. It takes the potentiality of silicon as an atom and renders it inert by completing its potential for bonding. If we take as true a stereotypical view of male sexuality that prefers a passive partner, it makes sense that the mushroom gods would proclaim the silicone mistresses supreme, as a sexuality saviour, although it’s not a good look for the phalluses. (The mushroom gods are explicitly phallic: The Gods take the form of mushrooms, or towering phalluses just as you’d expect.)’ — Charlene Elsby
‘Shae wants to stop shagging other women’s husbands and be a proper queer. Plus, she’s bored of only ever getting to use her new strap on a pile of cushions. The answer seems simple enough: come out, go out, and finally get it on with the fit bird at Dyke Night. Or it would be if Evaline, a wayward silicone mistress from the future, wasn’t jealous…
‘A surreal, dirty little book that falls somewhere between Derek McCormack, David Cronenberg, and the tentacle porn you ‘accidentally downloaded’, Silicone God is for those who like it very, very weird.’ — House of Vlad
Excerpt
Extra
Silicone God LAUNCH – hosted by Elle Nash
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‘The huge New England grocery store chain Market Basket hasn’t taken too kindly to the author of a “comically perverted” art book on Massachusetts’ North Shore — it’s issued a cease and desist order for her use of its logo as the template for her decidedly profane own logo.
‘“The copying, distribution and public display of these designs without permission or license from Market Basket constitutes a clear violation of Market Basket’s intellectual property rights,” attorney Robert F. Callahan Jr. of the Boston law firm Robins Kaplan LLP wrote on behalf of Demoulas Super Markets, Market Basket’s parent company. “Further, these designs threaten the valuable goodwill associated with the Market Basket brand and its marks.”
‘Callahan said that Tewksbury-based Market Basket “is not a litigious company and has no desire to engage in protracted legal proceedings regarding this matter” but that it is “committed to protecting its intellectual property rights.”
‘The Herald obtained the cease and desist letter from recipient Madison Murray, a 28-year-old writer, artist and OnlyFans creator in Massachusetts. Attorney Callahan did not return the Herald’s emailed request for comment sent Thursday.
‘“I think my first reaction was shock. I opened it up right when I first woke up,” Murray told the Herald in a phone interview. “I guess I was validated, that’s a good way to put it. Obviously it was unfortunate, but it was also good to feel like I was on the radar of Market Basket.”
‘The issue of concern is Murray’s use of Market Basket’s basic logo design as the template for her own logo promoting her book, titled in part “A deep and raw look into the North Shore of Massachusetts” which comes complete with a “Parental Advisory: Explicit Content” logo on its cover.
‘As for the book, Murray said that it’s her debut collection of self-published “photography, collage, poetry, and erotica about North Shore, Massachusetts” and is “comically perverted.” She specified that it’s primarily about what she calls “the south shore of the north shore,” defined as Revere to Rockport. She sells the 100-page hardcover book for $45.’ — The Boston Herald
Madison Murray My Gaping Masshole My Gaping Masshole
‘Madison Murray’s debut art and poetry book, My Gaping Masshole, is wide open and prepped to take you on a ride through the North Shore region of Massachusetts. Experience “Lana del Revere,” “The Real Housewives of Hamilton-Wenham,” “Dogtown in Wonderland,” “Gallows Hell,” and more with topographical erotica, poetry, and digital collage.
‘”I was raised in Salem, bullied out of Danvers, and rejected by the Rockport townies, so I’d say that my relationship with the North Shore is as toxic as Lynn Shore Drive at low tide. I love it like an ex I still fuck sometimes. My Gaping Masshole is my shitty attempt at showing my love for the North Shore in the only ways I know how.”‘ — MGM
‘It is a compliment when I say that I never feel quite safe in a Margaret Ross poem, and this is especially true of my experience of reading Ross’s much anticipated Saturday. Ross’s ability to signal existential threat/fear in the most quotidian circumstances of “immortal dailiness” or, perhaps most intensely, in moments of desire, is one of the great gifts of these poems.
‘Always in question in these poems is the possibility of any sort of coherent self, fixed or over time. And of the value of that self, its worth (“I didn’t need anything / I could buy” she writes in “Socks”), as defined by its desires, as in the title poem, “Saturday”.
‘This topsy-turvy evocation of experience comes uncannily close to what, I think, many of us feel in any given circumstance without realizing it. That Ross helps us to see, to feel that complexity, is one of the marvels of her work. The word “Saturday” derives from the Old English Sætern(es)dæg, a translation of Latin Saturni dies ‘day of Saturn’, the ancient Roman god of agriculture. Saturnalia, the festival celebrating this Roman god, was a time of carnival upending, during which masters often served slaves and many expected activitiMargaret Ross @ goodreadses and traditions were inverted. I love Ross’s choice of “Saturday” for the title of this book. It signals, on the one hand, the relative quietness and ease of the work-week’s “day off,” but it also signals that disruptive or potentially disruptive energies exist in every temporal instance.’ — Lisa Russ Spaar
‘Margaret Ross’s highly anticipated second collection of poems, Saturday, chronicles a brute education in love and decorum through ceremony starter kits, basement classrooms, and a mission school turned art camp, seeking to “touch the myth beneath the fiction.” Dexterous and musical, Ross writes stunning lines with unmistakable precision. These poems accrue from fleeting details, think in images, and resist simplifying the nature of feeling. In emotionally raw scenes lit by yearning, cruelty, wonder, and delusion, Saturday explores various forms of intimacy and estrangement in unforgettable ways.’ — The Song Cave
‘What beautiful lucidity these poems have, what quiet, firm intelligence. Margaret Ross’s poetry has the vivid characterizations and scenic quality of stories, but with another more mysterious quality that is disturbing and ineffably moving.’ — Mary Gaitskill
Excerpts
Saturday
It was, it was explained to me,
a holiday to enter spring
while honoring the dead
and so its celebration was
a picnic in a cemetery. Flowers
and fruit and fish
cooked as her father liked
and a kind of pastry
that had been her uncle’s
nickname. Her aunt was
bringing paper iPhones, purses
and a little villa just for fun
to burn. I passed carts
selling them as I walked up
the slope behind the city
hospital. A child
climbed a parked car
shouting that he was
a horse. I took
a picture and the colors
on screen looked richer, less
treacherous. Downhill
a stadium surrounded
by white trailers. Underwear
hung from the clotheslines.
I took a picture of myself
but I did not appear
the person that I was.
The picnic would be
nearly done. She’d said
they’d leave behind
chrysanthemums
made of cloth to last
and scented so they smelled
not like chrysanthemums
but like a woman.
Evolution
The corpses weigh nothing, nearly nothing, even your breath
is breeze enough to scatter them
We steamed them in tupperware with a damp sponge
then we tweezed the stiff wings open
The wing colors would brush off if you touched them
3,000 butterflies raised and gassed
and shipped to Evolution, the store in New York
rented by an artist hired to design a restaurant
He wanted to paper the walls with butterflies
Each came folded in its own translucent envelope
We tweezed them open, pinned them into rows
on styrofoam flats we stacked in towers in the narrow
hallway leading to the bathroom
Evolution called itself a natural history store
It sold preserved birds, lizards, scorpions in lucite, bobcat
with the eyes dug out and glass ones fitted, head turned
Also more affordable bits like teeth
and peacock feathers, by the register
a dish of raccoon penis bones
This was on Spring
The sidewalks swarmed with bare-armed people
there to see the city
You could buy your own name in calligraphy
or written on a grain of rice
by someone at a folding table
Souvenir portraits of taxis and the Brooklyn Bridge
lined up on blankets laid over the pavement
The artist we were pinning for had gotten famous
being first to put a dead shark in a gallery
For several million dollars each he sold what he described
as happy pictures which were rainbow dots assistants painted
on white canvases
I remember actually thinking his art confronted death,
that’s how young I was
We were paid per butterfly
The way we sat, I saw the backs
of the other pinners’ heads more than their faces
One’s braids the color of wine, one’s puffy headphones, feather cut
and slim neck rising from a scissored collar, that one
bought a raccoon penis bone on lunch break
Mostly we didn’t speak
Another life glimpsed in a detail mentioned, leaving or arriving
She lived with a carpenter who fixed her lunches
Come fall I’d be in college
I smelled the corpses on my fingers when I took my smoke break
leaning against a warm brick wall facing the smooth white headless
mannequins in thousand-dollar shift dresses
The deli next door advertised organic toast and raisins on the vine
Mornings, I tried to learn from eyeliner
and shimmer on faces near mine on the train
Warm fogged imprint on a metal pole
where someone’s grip evaporated
Everyone looking down when someone walked through
asking for help
At Evolution, talk radio played all day
A cool voice giving hourly updates
on the bombing of another city which it called
the conflict
The pinner in headphones sometimes hummed
or started a breathy lyric
“Selfish girl—”
I watched my tweezers guide the poisonous exquisite
blue of morpho wings
Their legs like jointed eyelashes
False eyes on the grayling wingtips
to protect the true face
The monarch’s wings like fire
pouring through a lattice
Extra
Strange Cage. Margaret Ross.
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‘An obligatory warning before we begin, brought to you by the Society for the Suppression of Supernatural Vice …
‘From Sextus Empiricus we learn that sensation is change; to change is to be mortal; to feel is to die; therefore, the damned cannot feel; they burn without pain, uncold and unwarm; infinite infants, senile immortals; father-mother and child, they give birth to themselves. In the same way that Hafiz — in his mystic fuck poems (ghazal, sultry-sacred diminuendo) — breeds roses, wine, cryptoerotic mountebanks, neophyte doms, every molecule and moon (the moon too is a molecule), a slot-and-slut machine of mispronounced or misspelled amino embryons that somehow reproduce a genomic dipygus named Hafiz. There is no distinction but what our arrogance or madness compels.
‘Now given all that girls, what’s the point of trying to fuck a ghost?
‘Every ghost is damned. The Damned are eternal. For them, counting and time are unthinkable. Thinking is unthinkable. Thinking about time takes time (the time to zip from neuron to neuron, but the distance between ghost neurons is the distance from Archduke Franz Ferdinand to Emperor Palpatine (or from Leopardi’s ‘Mother of the Eucharist’ to Chance the Rapper’s ‘Sunday Candy’). Ergo, ghosts are stupid, however much of a cunnilingual crackerjack they may be in a munch.
‘And get used to topping.
‘Or sub-topping or bottoming for a demi-dumb-dom. Ghosts don’t act. They react — inconclusively.
‘Ghosts are generic. You’re specific, with a specific body chemistry, you-do-you stimulants, a mensurable chonkitude and proud of it. Ghosts (here the Neoplatonists converge on postmodern biology) are airy, anorexic oxygen, abstract, a rom-com drizzle-down in a CGI hurricane. Ghosts fuck democratically but have never yet fucked a specific constituency. They gift diffusively, sport hazy, scattershot hard-ons for Humanity. They are perpetually infecting and being infected (though, again, inconclusively) with STDs. And while a little gris-gris in the pee-pee is no reason to panic, the risk of viral transmission from eternity to temporality deserves systematic study.
‘Every ghost is damned.
‘Sure, being damned does give them that goth-core-dank-OG-vegan-vampire-cosplay-lo-pan-steampunk-ragazza-baccazza-homeless-hipster with a dark past appeal. There’s the fact that ghosts don’t change so you’re never tempted to change them. And yes, that chiselled chest (like anabolic ice), that gelid smile, those brooding tits and ghastly gams could outlast the Laocoön Group and most museum catalogues. You like dad-bods? That dad bod’s gonna stay a dad bod from Eve’s First Brunch (the apocryphal Adamic Grand Opening) to the biocidal degringolade of the polycellular borganism. And as long as they died at least “half-mast”(see Tip #1 below) they’re pretty much randy to go, at least until their penitential promissory notes are paid down. I have yet to encounter Ghost-Cialis on WebMD.
‘A macabre ménage inspired by Boccaccio’s eulogy for ten raconteurs dying of the bubonic plague but really just an excuse to jibber jabber about the death of a funeral, star dementia, statutory immortality, the algorithmic assassination of a subculture, impotent architecture, headless demagogues, tips for the aspiring ghost fucker, doctors as a suicidal species and even death itself (the boring kind).’ — Calamari
Excerpt
The Patchwork Compendium
Dedicatory Remarks
I build a monolith of my sister’s arms, her hips, her teeth, her ears. An anthology of body parts, a patchwork compendium.
As you climb, you will find that I have incised a may-or-maybe memory into each part and molded each from scale model casts of my sister’s body, smuggled from the morgue with her consent. I make no excuses. I do not evade arrest. This monolith is my advocate.
#
Invocation
“We know the flesh only through his bones, the bones he cloaks in putrid clothes,” intones Bar Shibli of the man they flayed against the Weirding Creed of God, his skinless master-martyr Hallaj. According to the chain of transmission which begins with Karnaba’i, Shibli stole what remained of Hallaj from the Queen-Mother’s museum of schismatic heads and entrusted it to the Remnant hiding in Khorasan, and it is said the head will never rot. As for Shibli “he made a prayer mat from his master’s flesh.”
#
Patchwork #0: Muqaddimah
I wonder, comcestral niece or great-granddaughter who read this inscription, if you know the word maquette, a word in the ancient patois-melange cognate with the Italian bozzetto of our Recombinant Mothers, a preparatory model for a sculpture or, in other contexts, the twisted helices, a tremulous sketch of blood. It would do reverence to your own Blood to look up these words before climbing on. Remember, one day your bodies too may loom here with the rest of us.
#
Patchwork #GNRH1: The Scale Model
On her deathbed, #252 of 500 crowdfunded hospital tombs, I heard my sister paraphrase Proust. “The sculptor is tidying up.” And then, perplexed. “The sculptor forgot the tits.”
#
Patchwork #Msx2: Our Ladyneck of Worms
She is a budding taxidermist and she has found a headless bird with a maggot-neck of worms. A maggot is a breeding tomb; these cadavers give birth to flies.
Death does not bother her. What bothers her is that these maggots have vandalized the bird’s final art, which the bird had sacrificed its life to sculpt.
Yi-Shuen grinds her teeth, flips the bird with a spatula into a ragged shoe, flicks the maggots into a pot of boiling coffee, skins and sprinkles borax on the feathers. She saves and stuffs eighteen birds that summer, one rose-finch, three starlings and other names which I would only recall years later when I took up bird watching in locales beyond the reach of cellphone towers to forestall a second intimation of divorce.
#
Patchwork #20E: Indulgences
“Death bothers me,” she confesses to the stars.
She hunches her shoulders inwards as though she had butterfly wings vast enough to engulf herself and engender a kinder metamorphosis.
#
Patchwork #TBX4: Shahada
The fifty-fifth rak’ah and worming circumambulation rubs her belly raw.
“Com-passio-nate thy supplicant, Holy Worm which grows inside the Worm, Hole which grows inside the Hole.” She worships. No one will think to connect this invocation and apostasy with her idolatrous body-mods.
#
Patchwork #18.01528: The Book of Water
“Man is but a book of water,” according to the antique ‘Phrase Book of Innocuous Body Language.’ Correct, but hyperbolic according to the latest science.
Of other people we only know their drier parts. And since we have found no Rosetta stone for “reading” human H20, I should forgive myself for how little I knew about my sister.
#
Patchwork #C5orf50: The Headless Head
For Halloween my sister dresses up as a headless David Hume. It’s the year before she abandons me and switches majors from philosophy to biology (having dropped taxidermy, age 16, as a “bit too goth”). Like all biologists she will be a tragic failure, unable to put the fundamental axiom of her own death to the test.
The costume is a tight fit.
“Please don’t goose-step on our cat,” I admonish as Yi-Shuen stumbles blindly. Our cat is less cat and more basic parlor tiger who does her best to simulate a big game hunter rug.
I see a girlike indentation through the neoprene neck. The indentation scowls. I think maybe she is not quite getting the effect she sought.
David Hume, let us not forget, was a philosopher of the World Before who denied the “I” (playfully, his enemies accuse) and advocated what Bint Mithana calls ‘bundle theory’ which reduces the human mind to a plantlike array of sensors lacking any sense of self. Conspiratorially, Hume has been opposed by those I like to call dharmic materialists who think that you and I are only the residual slime of the real world as it slugs on by, with solipsists as a nervous buffer state between these two philosophic Powers.
Extra
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‘When ingested in one sitting (not a particularly audacious feat being a pocket-sized paperback), the book takes you on a journey that’s hard to put down. In fact, it’s almost akin to a mind-bending trip, through a quagmire of provocative ponderings and thinly tied-together concepts.
‘Of course, at the core we have the starting concept of human melting. But from this baseline position, Kelso explores more than just the physical idea, but instead using melting as a metaphor, a concept, almost a platform for your mind to jump off and roam the outer realms of physical and metaphysical metamorphosis.
‘Now, essentially what we have here is a collection of short essays linked together with the theme of melting…or precisely the opposition of the body. At times this is perhaps tantamount to a thoroughly unpretentious whispering philosophy. At others, an informed dissection of pop culture and the historical footprints which led us here.
‘All through this the essays are almost poetic in their delivery. The choice of words, the rhythm and the carefully considered coarse of this interconnected (but somehow still fragmented) journey which Kelso has plotted out for us.
‘The exploration of the piece probably reaches further afield than the opening pages, and perhaps your preconceived thoughts on the book contents, might have led you to think it would. From modern pop culture, to historical works, to literary pieces, and everything in between. But more than that it presents a unified creative philosophy which ties this whole spiderweb of ideas together into a collective whole.
‘Yes, at the start, at the core, is that physical conceptualised idea of the physical human form melting ala the bread-and-butter of Body Horror. But the areas covered, almost conversationally so, are far from just that visually discomforting starting place. This is an ocean’s length from merely gawping in delighted revulsion at ‘Meltin’ Milton’ or ‘Oozy Suzy’ Garbage Pail Kids cards. This is a purposefully open-ended internal discussion. A sandbox for ideas and concepts to be played around with.’ — DLS Review
Chris Kelso On Melting: Essays Against the Body Filthy Loot
‘The boiling point of human blood is approximately 100.5 degrees Celsius (212.9 degrees Fahrenheit). Flesh itself does not ‘melt’ per se but it can be vaporised, dried out, and eventually turned to ash. So, if organic material literally cannot melt, why does it present such a fascinating new system of transformation to us?
‘On Melting compiles essays and interviews which are in opposition of the body. Kelso explores the beautiful potential of our protoplasmic degeneration with hope and longing in his heart.’ — Filthy Loot
Excerpt
Extra
Visiting Hour by Chris Kelso
*
p.s. Hey. ** jay, Hi. Yep. That top photo is neither real nor AI. Pretty well done. I think it’s pretty common to end up missing the thing you’re trying to escape, yeah. What feels like a burden becomes a missing power source once discarded or outgrown as the case may be. I’m sure you’ll be fine. You’re not editing it, ok. Editing can be the best part, but not when you’re not the director. It was warming up here, and then it chilled down, and today … we’ll see. Have an award winning weekend. ** _Black_Acrylic, Excellent news there! Especially in this age where culture is the first thing getting short shrift at the government level. ** Misanthrope, Having been close with a number of junkies, ultimately all you can hope is that when they bottom out they’ll live through it. Ah, Young Elio. Curious to hear how he’s doing. Have fun, but mainly hope your brain exhausts itself so you can sleep. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Finding a Slayer love quote was no picnic, haha. I agree. Hence … Love rolling in piss, sloppy spit, musk, piggy pubes, sloppy deepthroat, butt juices, making oinky noises, eating from bowls like a good pig, and snorting up all sorts of fun, G. ** Steeqhen, Hey. And then there are the guys who realise that eating shit is like going to the fanciest restaurant. Thanks for the excellent ‘Wicked’ review. I still think I’m going to save it for my next plane trip and in-flight entertainment option, but that’s good to know because I’ll move it up the queue. I’m about 100% certain that Ms. Kidman signed a very iron clad NDA as part of the agreement that she could divorce Mr. Cruise without being assassinated by the Scientology goon squad. ** Darby☏, Cassettes! Good for you, I miss cassettes. Or I miss having a cassette player rather. Wow, no, I had no idea that, one, there was a real place called Cape Fear, and, two, that its landscape was so documented in fiction filmography. It might be interesting to go through all those movies and just edit out the parts where they show the surroundings and make a documentary about the place. My guess would be that the Fear thing is because ships were afraid of the Cape for some reason? Most mysteries end up being solved in unexciting ways. You have a great weekend, and I will do my best. ** James, I wish there was some way to pass along your readings on the slaves to the slaves themselves. I think they would be so impressed. Plus you might get laid by one or two of them if you wanted. But, alas, it’s the extremely rare slave who ever knows what my blog has done to them. That’s happened only maybe twice, three times ever that I know of. I too wonder about how aging will be scientifically or technologically counteracted in the future, and I wish they hurry the fuck up. I did a post about the most famous dead body in a dark ride case, but I can’t remember what I titled it, so I can’t link you up to it. But I’ll try to remember this weekend. It’s a good one. I’ll have to believe you about the increased stubble today, but I do! ** SP, You’re in the pit of hell. Stay strong and sane. I’m sorry but I think anyone of any age who’s okay with that racist, transphobic wannabe dictator as president is either paying no attention at all or is very sick and stupid. No middle ground there for me. Weird and confusing, absolutely. Try to have fun though. ** Dan Carroll, Hi, Dan. Great, how did it go today? Exciting. And awesome about the post! I’ll get there once I’m out of here. Everyone, the great Dan Carroll made an exciting looking blog post about the use and occurrence of lip-synching in David Lynch’s films, and, needless to say, it’s a must. Find it exactly here. I remember that about ‘The Others’ too, now that you mention it. Yeah. Happy tip of February to you too. May yours unfurl as opposed to decompose. ** Lucas, Good old reliable slaves. Cool if you can and want to finish the Phil Ochs post, but no pressure. ‘The Physicists’ … no, what’s that? Personally, I think you can stop with ‘EEE’ if you run out of gas or if it runs out of gas. But I do that with even the greatest books sometimes. I’m counting on your weekend being a helluva good one. Mine? We’ll see. I’m going to see a big exhibition of Harmony Korine’s stuff today, and that should be good. We’re uploading the teaser trailer we made for ‘RT’. Buncha film stuff, hunting prospects and so on. Like that. xo. ** Bert, Hi, Bert. Welcome, and thank you a lot for coming in here. And thank you so much about the blog and my work. That’s really gratifying. No, I know of ‘Surrender Dorothy’, but I’ve never seen it. Okay, I’ll go find it. What is it about the film that obsesses you? How’s college? Is it working for you? What are you studying and/or interested in? Or there’s a few questions only if you want to say more. In any case, very nice to meet you. ** Steve, Yes, and may it be filmed in IMAX 3D with Smell-o-Vision. I will henceforth avoid ‘Companion’, thank you. Urgh. Here’s hoping your cold goes the way of the Theropod as soon as this very morning. Oh, nice, exciting about that new Errol Morris. Sounds like something he could really do something with. Thanks! ** Justin D, Hi. Good, I thought they were a relative laugh riot myself. High five to you, my black humor bro. No, I haven’t seen ‘The Girl with the Needle’, but I just watched the trailer thanks to you, and it does look quite tasty. Hm, cool, thank you. And for the song, which I will use as my weekend’s intro music. I mean that’s what will be playing as I walk onto the weekend’s stage triggering whatever applause available to erupt. So, you really helped me out there. What distinguished your weekend from your usual weekend? ** HaRpEr, Hi. Yes, yes, re: Blanchot! Such a kerfuffle about someone smoking weed. But I guess weed is still illegal in the UK? Here too, but I think that law is only enforced here in Paris if you’re a non-white person from the suburbs. That seems so primitive. The kerfuffle. Good for normal people to get the shit scared out of them though. I guess. ** Joe, Hi. Haha, you would think. But the odd thing is that I assumed my whatever … status as an artist would be the thing that was my ticket in, but the lawyer says they don’t give a shit, and they’re not even really bringing up my work or its reception in the application. Strange, I hope they’re right. Have a really homey but edgy weekend. ** Right. This weekend I foist upon you five books I read recently and can honestly and forthrightly recommend to you all. See you on Monday.
FLUNKER, six fictions, 124 pp., coming from Amphetamine Sulphate in July. US, July 4: Preorders open. UK/Europe, July 19: Preorders open. Cover by Michael Salerno.
* POSTPONED: May 27 – 31: Paris @ Théâtre du Châtelet: THIS IS HOW YOU WILL DISAPPEAR * POSTPONED: October (dates TBA): New York @ Brooklyn Academy of Music: CROWD
Victoria Brooks Silicone God
Madison Murray My Gaping Masshole
Margaret Ross Saturday
Arreshy Young CODON
Chris Kelso On Melting: Essays Against the Body
Now available in North America 
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