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June 29, 2005
Mmmmmmmmmph, Mmmmmmph, Mmmmmmph!
Last week Publisher Brian filled me in on what happened during some meetings he had in New York during BookExpo. It turns out that, on one hand, that there's some AMAZING news; on the other hand, I can't actually tell you what it is just yet. I've tried to find out what individual parts of the news I can reveal, but so far Brian is silent like a grave.
People, this is killing me. And yes, I realise this makes me an evil sod. When I can tell you, I'll tell you. Actually I did once tell you about it, late last year, after we got home from the Great Big Trip. At that time it was okay to tell you because the odds of it actually happening were astronomically remote. Now those odds have shrunk somewhat, but are still nothing a sensible man would bet on, and we have to keep things mum for a bit.
Even so. Did you ever get The Most Freaking Amazing News Ever, and find yourself unable to tell anyone? If it goes on like this I'm going to rupture something from the sheer pressure involved.
He did tell me I could tell my immediate family, which I did, waking my parents up in the process. Mum was gobsmacked. Dad was astonished out of his socks (he was, too; I've got photos). Michelle, without whom none of this would be possible in the first place, was giddy. Michelle never gets giddy. (Okay, she got giddy about Christopher Ecclestone on the new Doctor Who, but so did I, so I'm not bugging her about it.)
Now, what I need is a way to legally adopt you folks who read this page. Then I could tell you all I want, and you'd be pretty gobsmacked, too.
In other news: we've crunched the numbers and it now looks very much like we will certainly be able to go to next year's Worldcon, LA Con IV--and even stay in the convention hotel for once. We may or may not have new books to promote at said convention. And, interestingly, when we go through US Immigration, and they ask why we're in town, we can say, "We're here on business," because, well, apart from the Worldcon, we'll also be having a meeting with someone who has nothing to do with Worldcon, and probably if I told you more Publisher Brian would (a) kill me, and then, to preserve secrecy, (b) kill you. You don't want that.
* * *
Fun With Rewrites
The HYDROGEN STEEL rewrites are just about done--yay! Today I sent off what I'm hoping will be the last fixes. If that is the case, we then get to curl up and read the new updated manuscript, patrolling for copyediting gremlins and other tiny problems of the sort that only Brian and I will notice. Leaving said gremlins in the manuscript is not an option. It would be like trying to sleep in a bed with cracker crumbs down by your feet: you're just not getting any comfortable rest, knowing the damn things are down there. I'm also hoping for an opportunity to go through the ECLIPSE manuscript once or twice more before its release.
* * *
Author Boy: Pool Shark
Twice a week now for what's now probably about six weeks, Michelle and I have been hitting the local public pool, usually Thursdays and Sundays. Michelle swims better than I do, so she does laps and walks up and down. I just walk. Last Sunday I made it to 50 laps slogging through the water forwards, and 10 more going backwards. The 50 forward laps works out to 1.25 kilometres, which is the farthest I've walked in a very long time. And I felt pretty good doing it, much better than I've felt trying to walk that far out of the pool. Ultimately I'd like to take it up to a mile, which would be 80 laps. For that I might need some kind of music for stimulation, because chugging up and down isn't the most stimulating activity.
* * *
About Those Damn Headaches:
Still here, sadly. Yesterday was a particularly bad one, quite possibly brought about by the prodding of the physiotherapist on Monday. She's found what appears to be a problem with my neck, where when she prods it just so I feel the headache waking up, as if it was the morning after a really big night out with colourful mates.
I am still getting the damn things, usually every evening, but not always. Tonight, for example, I'm very cold, but no headache. It's been great--though kind of worrying. You're sitting there, waiting for it to show up, even thinking, "Hmm, it's late. Where could it be? Stuck in traffic?" I'll take it when I can get it, though.
* * *
The Cosmic Ballet...Goes On
Who's been watching the amazing planetary conjunction this week? Mercury, Venus and Saturn have been slowly converging on the same tiny patch of sky, and you can see it each night here about 6pm, looking west-ish (when the rain clouds part long enough in that direction). Tonight two of the planets were so close I couldn't pick them apart. It's breathtaking.
And a shiny space cookie for the first person to identify the quote for this particular item. If you can do it without resorting to Google, two cookies!
* * *
And that's it from me. How have you been?
Posted by adrian at 10:11 PM | Comments (10)
June 22, 2005
Author Boy in Caffeine-Related Blunder
Lately I've been up to my eyes doing rewrites and fixes for HYDROGEN STEEL, which Publisher Brian tells me are going well. This is good to hear.
I didn't get any homework done this past Monday, though; nor did I get any fresh ANTIMATTER VOODOO scribble done. I wasn't well. See, I did something dumb.
It's like this: a couple of months ago, I gave up caffeine--which at the time was under suspicion as a possible cause of my epic headaches. I'm pretty sure it wasn't, but I'm staying on the decaf because no caffeine is good for my blood pressure, among other things.
Monday afternoon, Michelle and I went out for a coffee to our latest coffee discovery, the MuzzBuzz kiosk located in the carpark of nearby Malaga Markets. MuzzBuzz provides excellent coffee in a handy drive-through, or walk-up, format. So we drove up (Michelle does the driving, btw), and Michelle ordered a small flat white for herself and a largish double Macchiato for me. Note the salient detail: a double Macchiato features two shots of espresso.
By the time Michelle realised she'd forgotten to order a decaf double Macchiato, it was too late. She explained the situation, and I thought, oh well, how bad could it be? I mean, I've inadvertently had actual caffeine, and the worst that happened was I got a bad headache. I figured this time would be much the same, and thus enjoyed my coffee.
Hmm...
Within a few minutes of finishing, things got much faster. I got all jittery and jumpy, and discovered I could talk really really quickly. And that was fun, but it wasn't the end of it. Then came the observation that my hands were shaking so much I couldn't write with a pen, right when I needed to handwrite a short letter (Michelle wound up taking dictation). Then there were all kinds of strange roiling, fluttering sensations in my innards that I thought were entirely uncalled for, and a constant sense of feeling incredibly on-edge, like wasps buzzing around in your head. It was a dreadful sensation--and it wasn't finished. The day wore on, bringing further miseries. At one point I thought I was going to be physically ill, I was feeling so out of sorts.
And then, much later, as the buzz wore off, the caffeine withdrawal headache kicked in, and kicked in hard. I spent much of the evening holding my head and feeling dismal--well, more dismal than usual, that is. Even the next day, I still felt a little out of sorts, not quite right, and a bit jumpy. I was absolutely gobsmacked about all this, that a double espresso (with its perhaps 300 mg of caffeine) could affect me so drastically.
I am so back on the decaf!
Posted by adrian at 06:59 PM | Comments (3)
The Onion--Now From The Future!
Today, The Onion features a special edition beamed back in time to us from the year 2056. I think you'll find it suitably amusing. I've only skimmed parts of it so far, but I suspect the goodness runs deep.
Posted by adrian at 06:38 PM | Comments (0)
June 19, 2005
Yes, you can time travel into the past--but no touchie!
The following New Scientist piece explains new theoretical research into the paradoxes that we all thought should kick in if one was careless enough to travel back in time and kill off an elderly ancestor. Not that you would, of course.
Turns out that yes, you can go back (once you solve certain large-scale non-trivial problems, of course), but the nature of quantum whatsits pretty much prevents anything paradoxical from happening--ie, anything that might create, er, problems for you existing later, and such.
Since I'm currently writing a time-travel story, this is good news. Said story, btw, is currently up to 13,100 words. I'd be doing better, now that I'm banging out around 1000 words a day, if I hadn't had to chop 2000 words this past week.
In headache news: I've been seeing a musculo-skeletal physiotherapist every Monday morning. She's got me sitting differently, doing things with my arms differently, and trying to figure out what's going on with the upper-most vertebra of my spine, the right-hand side of which seems problematic. I'm wondering if it could be something as simple as that I'm right-handed, and thus do a lot of mousing. I'll ask. Upshot: I'm getting fewer, and less-intense, headaches lately, and they are turning up much later in the evening than hitherto. Not always, but often enough to draw comment.
Anyway, read on for intriguing time-travel-related goodness.
No paradox for time travellers
* 10:00 18 June 2005
* NewScientist.com news service
* Mark Buchanan
THE laws of physics seem to permit time travel, and with it, paradoxical situations such as the possibility that people could go back in time to prevent their own birth. But it turns out that such paradoxes may be ruled out by the weirdness inherent in laws of quantum physics.
Some solutions to the equations of Einstein's general theory of relativity lead to situations in which space-time curves back on itself, theoretically allowing travellers to loop back in time and meet younger versions of themselves. Because such time travel sets up paradoxes, many researchers suspect that some physical constraints must make time travel impossible. Now, physicists Daniel Greenberger of the City University of New York and Karl Svozil of the Vienna University of Technology in Austria have shown that the most basic features of quantum theory may ensure that time travellers could never alter the past, even if they are able to go back in time.
The constraint arises from a quantum object's ability to behave like a wave. Quantum objects split their existence into multiple component waves, each following a distinct path through space-time. Ultimately, an object is usually most likely to end up in places where its component waves recombine, or "interfere", constructively, with the peaks and troughs of the waves lined up, say. The object is unlikely to be in places where the components interfere destructively, and cancel each other out.
Quantum theory allows time travel because nothing prevents the waves from going back in time. When Greenberger and Svozil analysed what happens when these component waves flow into the past, they found that the paradoxes implied by Einstein's equations never arise. Waves that travel back in time interfere destructively, thus preventing anything from happening differently from that which has already taken place (www.arxiv.org/quant-ph/0506027). "If you travel into the past quantum mechanically, you would only see those alternatives consistent with the world you left behind you," says Greenberger. “The most basic features of quantum theory may ensure that time travellers could never alter the past”
"This is a very nice idea," says physicist Avshalom Elitzur of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, who also suggests that further work in the area could help to clarify the nature of time itself. "Time is a very mysterious thing."
Posted by adrian at 06:29 PM | Comments (0)
June 14, 2005
Author Boy Tries Something Different
I've been experimenting with different ways to arrange my work day. At the moment, I've got a thing where, as soon as Michelle goes off to work at the Blood Mines each afternoon, at 1:30pm, I get stuck into the scribble, and see what happens. So far, yesterday and today, I managed to bang out 1000 words each time without too much effort.
This, compared to the way I have been working these past several months, is shockingly productive. My main problem is getting distracted too easily. What used to happen was that Michelle would take off for the Blood Mines, and I'd then spend "a while" noodling around on the web, looking at all the interesting things available to read, of which I can find way too many, and, say, around 3pm I'd think about doing some scribble. Maybe.
Hmm. This was bad. It meant that some days not much happened--but I read a whole lot of really interesting stuff! :( Now I'm leaving the interesting stuff for once I'm done with at least 1000 words. With a bit of luck, I can work up to 2000 words a day in time.
And of course, I am still employing the mighty Official Writing Coffee Ritual, in which I must have a coffee in the designated Official Writing Coffee Cup (er, mug). It helps.
Also today: more homework for HYDROGEN STEEL. This covered events in the final 7 chapters, which needed a surprising amount of work. I've now been through the entire manuscript. This will have to go through some number of further cycles, working through the entire book, fixing ever smaller problems. If it's anything like ORBITAL BURN, we'll be fixing tiny problems right up until the point Publisher Brian tells me there's no more time because the book's going to the printer the next day. Nothing focusses an author's attention like that kind of pressure.
All of which leaves me now feeling wiped out. Headachy, hungry, and trying not to notice the stack of dirty dishes requiring my attention over by the kitchen sink. Also: it's bloody cold here in Perth at the moment. We're in the thick of winter already, and June's only just started. Normally we don't get rain and chilly temps like this until July. Instead, I'm told we've had the wettest start to June in 70 years.
Posted by adrian at 08:45 PM | Comments (2)
June 10, 2005
10,000 Words--Author Boy Falls Over In Complete Shock
Tonight, just now in fact, I brought the ANTIMATTER VOODOO manuscript up to a new total of 10,000 words.
I remember when generating a word count like this would take me maybe a week or ten days. Things are different now, for some reason I don't fully understand. Now it feels like it's all I can do to put together 10,000 words I can stand well enough to leave them alone. In any case, I'm damn chuffed. 10K is 10% of the whole job.
Right now I'm in the thick of chapter three. Protagonist Mick Whistler, terrified young man, has had a bad day. First his mum takes off with a mysterious alien--apparently of her own free will, and without an explanation to Mick. Then, that night, still traumatised out of his scone, he's outside, on his way to see a certain Sergeant Ganley, and feeling worse than he's ever felt in his life, when he notices, while looking up at the sky, that stars are disappearing, all over the sky.
He will also need reminding that he took off without feeding his dog, Zonk.
In other news: I've received and dealt with part 3 of the latest round of edits for HYDROGEN STEEL. Only one part to go, covering the final six or seven chapters. Phwoar! So far each installment of these edits has only taken me about three hours to deal with--which is great! Last year, when the book was undergoing a lot of serious rewriting, it would take all day and a lot of each evening, for two or three days, to get each installment done.
Now I'm wondering if Publisher Brian has given any thought to cover art for this book.
Posted by adrian at 10:25 PM | Comments (6)
June 08, 2005
The Hosepipe Effect
I got a great laugh today at The Daily Linguini, reading about the host's experiences with a newborn son, and what can happen while trying to change his nappy/diaper. I've excerpted the money quote...
But nobody warns you about the Hosepipe Effect.Oh, I know, people say, "It's not like changing little girls, you know, he'll wee on you if you're not careful." But we are bloody careful, alright, dammit? They make it sound like there's some warning, or that it's a case of grab-some-cotton-wool-and-on-with-the-mopping. But no. The only warning you get is a brief nanosecond when his eyes cross slightly and he gets this momentary perplexed expression, and then this godalmighty jet of warm wee hits you between the eyes, with enough force to propel you into the wardrobe unless you're holding onto something solid, and then... the Hosepipe Effect kicks in, and suddenly the damn thing is going PSSSSSHHHHHHH all over the change mat, the cot, your duvet, your wife, your nice work clothes you've just finished ironing, and the gargantuan pile of spare baby clothes you've lugged upstairs for when he wets himself.
Tomorrow, we're buying him some crocodile clips.
Posted by adrian at 03:04 PM | Comments (1)
June 07, 2005
Modelling the Brain, You Say?
Red-hot cutting-edge sf author Charlie Stross has a fascinating post about the efforts of IBM and a team of Swiss university boffins (described in the New Scientist) to construct the first cellular-level computer model of the human brain. They expect the project to take at least ten years (I imagine that, like the Human Genome Project, it will take less than ten years once they get cracking and the technology improves). This all ties in with the current modish notion in the sf field regarding the Singularity, and the possibility of one day being able to upload one's mind/consciousness/personality into either something like the Internet, or into a handy robot body. Before you can upload, you have to have the means to scan your brain down to a pretty fine resolution. Whether or not such a future computer model of your brain would actually be "you", remains a vexed philosphical question, and no doubt will remain vexed for quite some time to come. Fascinating to contemplate, though.
Posted by adrian at 07:45 PM | Comments (4)
June 04, 2005
Drilling to the Centre of the Earth
The Guardian today has the following evocative article, in which a team of Japanese scientists and engineers are planning to take a purpose-built ship out to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where the Earth's crust is thinnest, and drill down, through the crust, to the mantle beneath, looking for life, among other things. It's a gobsmacking project. It could take them a year just to get through the crust, for example.
Read on.
Journey to the centre of EarthDavid Adam in Yokohama
Saturday June 4, 2005
The GuardianJapanese scientists are to explore the centre of the Earth. Using a giant drill ship launched next month, the researchers aim to be the first to punch a hole through the rocky crust that covers our planet and to reach the mantle below.
The team wants to retrieve samples from the mantle, six miles down, to learn more about what triggers undersea earthquakes, such as the one off Sumatra that caused the Boxing Day tsunami. They hope to study the deep rocks and mud for records of past climate change and to see if the deepest regions of Earth could harbour life.
Asahiko Taira, director general of the Centre for Deep Earth Exploration in Yokohama, near Tokyo, said: "One of the main purposes of doing this is finding deep bacteria within the ocean crust and upper mantle. We believe there has to be life there. It's the same mission as searching for life on Mars."
Rocks in the upper mantle produce compounds essential for life when they react with seawater. "This is a system which we believe created early life. There may be a chance that we can catch the origin of life still taking place today," Prof Taira said.
The 57,500-tonne drill ship Chikyu (Japanese for Earth) is being prepared in the southern port of Nagasaki. Two-thirds the length of the Titanic, it is fitted with technology borrowed from the oil industry that will allow it to bore through 7,000 metres of crust below the seabed while floating in 2,500 metres of water - requiring a drill pipe 25 times the height of the Empire State building.
The deepest hole drilled through the seabed so far reached 2,111 metres.
After final sea trials this year, the scientists will set sail for the deep Pacific where the Earth's crust is thinnest. Drilling is expected to begin next year.
It could take more than a year to drive through miles of crust and reach the mantle, so the ship is fitted with six rotating thrusters controlled by GPS satellites to keep it directly over the hole. The drill is surrounded by a sleeve that contains a shock-absorbing chemical mud, and a blowout valve will protect it should the team strike oil or superheated rock in the crust.
The project is part of an international effort called the Integrated Ocean Drilling Programme which also involves the US and Europe.
Shinichi Kuramoto, one of the Yokohama team, said Chikyu's main objective is to retrieve mantle samples for analysis. "Humans have brought back lunar rocks to understand the universe, yet we have never reached the mantle which accounts for most of earth."
Previously undiscovered bacteria that can survive the anticipated 100C temperatures of the upper mantle could be useful on the surface. Heatproof enzymes isolated from bugs brought back by earlier Japanese drill missions are now used in washing powders.
Cores of rock and sediment from the so-called "earthquake nest" where the mantle meets the crust could also help geologists understand seismic events, and to perhaps give more warning.
"We can estimate how frequently marine sliding or earthquakes occur from learning the history of earth but we still don't know when they will occur in the future.
"We take cores to better understand the mechanisms involved," Dr Kuramoto said.
Sensors placed in the borehole could detect changes in strain, tilt and pressure in the ground miles below the surface. "That will be a great advantage in giving us a few days or hours warning before something happens. Current warning systems in Japan only warn us 10 minutes before a large earthquake strikes. We need real-time data from the exact point."
Posted by adrian at 02:25 PM | Comments (1)
June 03, 2005
Day of Mixed Nuts For Author Boy
First, a bummer: today I heard from Fremantle Arts Centre Press regarding my submission of ORBITAL BURN. They wanted to consider it with a view to publishing a local edition.
They passed. Bugger. A formal Day of Author Moping begins.
Second, something fab: I banged out 1000 words on the new book in under an hour, bringing the total to 9100 words. Not much to you, but to me, considering the difficulty of reaching this point, priceless.
The formal Day of Author Moping ends early. W00t!
Posted by adrian at 09:35 PM | Comments (2)
More About That Dinosaur Soft Tissue
A couple of months ago (in a post now inaccessible since I reinstalled Movable Type) I posted a story about some paleontologists who'd found the fossilised remains of a T. rex and discovered, on cutting open a thigh bone, that it contained unfossilised soft tissue. Which was gobsmacking enough.
Now, a follow-up piece: read on!
Dinosaur bones show T. rex link to birds
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent Thu Jun 2, 2:02 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur that died 68 million years ago has provided some of the strongest evidence yet that birds are the closest-living relatives of dinosaurs, scientists said on Thursday.
Soft tissue found in the animal's thighbone strongly suggests it was a female, and just about to lay eggs, the researchers report.
The bone tissue is strongly similar to that made inside the bones of female birds -- and no other living type of animal -- when they are producing the hard shells of eggs just before they lay them, said Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
"In addition to demonstrating gender, it also links the reproductive physiology of dinosaurs to birds very closely. It indicates that dinosaurs produced and shelled their eggs much more like modern birds than like modern crocodiles," Schweitzer told reporters in a telephone briefing.
Female birds produce a layer of bone tissue called medullary bone when they are laying eggs. It is rich in calcium, providing minerals that would otherwise be leached from harder bone material, leaving the bird susceptible to fractures.
"The way that crocodiles lay and shell their eggs is they hold them in their reproductive tract and shell them all at once," Schweitzer said.
"Birds shell their eggs one at a time as they move down through the reproductive tract. It is a pretty calcium-intensive process."
ALREADY A STAR
This particular T. rex fossil made headlines in March when the same team of paleontologists reported it contained preserved soft tissue -- the first ever found in a dinosaur bone.
"The reason that we have found all the things in this one particular animal is this specimen was in a very remote part of Montana, in the Hell Creek formation," said Jack Horner of the Museum of the Rockies and Montana State University.
"It was so far out in the country that we needed to helicopter it out and we actually had to split the thighbone into two pieces to get it into the helicopter."
When Schweitzer unwrapped the cracked-open femur she immediately saw the soft tissue and went to work proving its remarkable state of preservation.
Horner plans to crack open some other bones.
"We have 12 specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex here at this institution, and we are about to find out if any more of them are females, just by looking inside," he said.
It was a stroke of luck to find an animal at just the right stage to be making medullary bone, Schweitzer said.
"It would not be present in a brooding animal," she said.
"But it would be present as long as there was an egg left to lay. The animal was probably near the end of its laying cycle."
Finding another such specimen will be difficult.
"I think it is pretty much a long shot," she said.
In April, Tamaki Sato of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, and colleagues reported they had found the fossil of a dinosaur in China that carried two eggs in its body.
Its physiology also was closer to modern birds than to modern crocodiles, Sato reported.
Horner said most experts are convinced the two-legged dinosaurs known as theropods were closely related to living birds.
"This is another piece to the puzzle and there are a lot of them," he said. "Anyone who would argue that birds and dinosaurs are not related -- frankly I'd put them in the Flat Earth Society group."
Posted by adrian at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)
June 02, 2005
Bring on the Infernokrusher Fiction--Now!
I've been hearing about so-called "slipstream" fiction for a few years now, and have never found a decent, accurate, pithy definition that didn't sound like "permission to write whatever I damn well like and who cares if it makes any sense or not?"
Today, I learned that "slipstream" is on the way out. We are now entering the "Infernokrusher" era.
This post from Chrononautic Log (and which I found out about in the first place from the fabulous Making Light) explains it better than I can.
Notes toward an Infernokrusher manifestoSlipstream, ultimately, is just a wussy term. We should be drawing names less from wishy-washy words (slip, stream) and more from monster trucks (krusher, inferno).— Meghan McCarron
Catch phrases
# Explosion is the new transgression. Demolition is the new deconstruction. — Benjamin Rosenbaum
# How far is the distance between infernos and krushing? — an Infernokrusher koan by Dora Goss
# Instead of “Well, where are we slipping? Are we beaver-like dam builders, or just clumsy waders?” we can now ask “Are we glad things are on fire? Do we like to Krush?” — Meghan McCarron
# More than the death of the Reader, Infernokrusher prizes the sudden, violent dismemberment of the Reader
# Monster truck fiction — ‘soft infernokrusher’ — rolls across genre boundaries . . . and krushes them
# Infernokrusher fiction explodes stagnant genre conventions, e.g., that it’s not okay to have all your characters run over by a monster truck in what would seem to be the middle of the story
# Infernokrusher is a violently anti-materialist movement, regardless of the materials involved
# While other attitudes to art yearn to communicate truths, to move people, to challenge, or to entertain, infernokrusher art wants to blow stuff up
# It is important to note that an infernokrusher sensibility does not require literal infernos or crushing
# Core Infernokrusher fiction would never forget to fill up the tank. — Karen Meisner
Redefinitions, subgenres, philosophemes
# slipstream -> proto-infernokrusher fiction
# slipstream : infernokrusher :: uniformitarianism : catastrophism
# Elemental truth in infernokrusher fiction: Nature crushes stuff too
# Religious truth in infernokrusher fiction: God likes to blow stuff up
# Innocence in infernokrusher fiction: e.g., eight year olds natural krushers
# The ultimate ambition of infernokrusher art is to blow up the world
# Heretical spinoff: slow infernokrusher fiction
# Important subgenre or trope in feminist infernokrusher fiction: blowing up Barbie
# Infernokrusher critiquing involves burning manuscripts and melting them to slag (the more positive reviews are more explosive)
# Resolved: Hot pink — color of infernokrushing
Pieces, presses, publications, organizations
# Ignitrix: (1) a goth, feminist Infernokrusher ’zine (2) sobriquet applied to Meghan McCarron as coiner of the term “infernokrusher”
# Thrown Down A Well Still Burning: a moody, “soft infernokrusher’ poetry ’zine
# Burning Hammer Review: Academic “soft infernokrusher” journal, probably from the University of Pittsburgh
# Burn Ward: Dispatches From The Infernokrusher Frontier: an anthology of Infernokrusher criticism
# Monster Truck Press
# Twelve Ton Press
# Megaton Press
# Swan Inferno!!!!!: the canonical Infernokrusher Ballet
# Blowtorch!: the canonical Infernokrusher Broadway musical
# Hammer and Napalm: Infernokrusher eating club at Princeton
# McSweeney’s #27 — the Infernokrusher Issue: comes soaked in gasoline, with a match
Deviations and faux-infernokrusher tropes:
# infernoes/krushing only as metaphor
# infernoes/krushing as resolution rather than violent irruption — trappings, but lacks sensibility
The infernokrusher coat of arms
# Monster truck, in flagrante, rampant
# Motto: Da ogne bocca dirompea co’ denti un peccatore
The first Infernokrusher poem
#I blew up the plums
that were in the icebox
and which you were probably saving for breakfast
forgive me
I like fire— Dora Goss
If you visit Chrononautic Log to check all this out for yourself, don't forget to check out the droll comments as readers begin to consider Infernokrusher literature, music, and of course, literary criticism. If you were ever exposed to university level English course litcrit (and I was), you will be mightily amused.
I also liked the Dora Goss poem here about the plums. Though I'm sure William Carlos Williams is rolling in his grave somewhere.
Posted by adrian at 09:01 PM | Comments (1)