Pynchonian Videos

I joined a group on the Facebook that is called W.A.S.T.E. You need to ask to join and then be admitted. It is pretty cool as far as closed Pynchon groups go. Members hail from all over the world and they have knowledge of all sorts of Pynchonalia.

I'll be putting the more interesting stuff up here as it comes. One thing I found while going down the rabbit-hole on one of the W.A.S.T.E. links was a connection for a review of "Impolex".

For some reason I remember it as Imipolex, with the extra letter and syllable, but it's the name of a type of living rubber in Gravity's Rainbow.

Years back I'd heard that there had been a short film, or a fully independent project film with this name and subject, so it was obviously this.

About the group W.A.S.T.E.: Very few people have read all of the books. Even fewer have read all of them, all of the articles, and even Mortality and Mercy in Venice (a project TP wrote during a college class and published in London---and not included in Slow Learner). I'm not in that last group, but I've got my eye on MMV as well as finishing his Watts article from '65. Anyway, these folks end up knowing about some cool shit to which I'm otherwise not privy.

Also, for a tripped out view of a tripped out book, check out this currently working link to the movie "Impolex" itself.

I'd Never Heard of "Pynchon Notes"

Here we have our own little Pynchon website, and just the other week I learned about a Pynchonian deal of which I previously heard nothing.

Starting in 1979, scholars interested in the works of Thomas Pynchon began collecting bibliographical notes on all essays and articles written about those works. Recently they ceased publication.

Here is a link to the remains of the hard copies available for sale. I've been trying to find some copies of my own, but after pulling up the website to grab the URL for the preceding link, I'm tempted to just make the purchase.

If ordered in time, they ship a DVD copy of Prufstand 7 along with the issues. Prufstand 7 is a German-made meditation on rockets and death that uses elements of Gravity's Rainbow. In an odd note, up until Paul Anderson's Inherent Vice in 2014, it was the only movie that got the okay from Pynchon himself.

Who knew?

Who knew he's a black guy?

Holy Moly!

The Internet is good for something after all! Check out what I came across on the web, a photograph that actually appeared in an old issue of National Geographic:

One dog goes one way, the other dog goes the other way, and this guy's saying, "What do you want from me?"

He looks like someone we know.

Oh-ho! Without the beard...

In Non-Sequitur Question News...

Will the new Terminator movie answer the question of what happened to Sarah Connor's iguana?

Whoopsie...

So...I've been sick for the last few days. Like, as sick as I've been in years. Sore throat, deep and painful cough, nose both crusty and runny, and even my eyes got into the mix---Kaiser's physician's assistant told me it was viral conjunctivitis.

At least it wasn't bacterial? Whatever---it's still goopy and gross.

The cough has been worse at night, as this compounds the difficulties breathing: my throat gets worse because my mouth opens when my nose closes, and then the cough convulses me awake, covered in drool. Awesome picture.

Last night I picked up some dextromethorphan-only cough syrup. I filled the cup and gulped it down.

Nothing.

I knew it would take upwards of forty minutes to kick in, to when I would get a little dopey, chest relaxed, and then head to bed. So when I mentioned 'Nothing' a second ago, I mean that it was doing nothing an hour after having swigged it.

Every time I coughed it was one of those deep, nearly never-ending types. Now it was really late and I needed to get my ass in bed, so I chugged back another shot of the syrup, brushed my teeth, and slinked off to bed as Corrie watched episodes of "Bones" on Netflix.

Whenever it was she came to bed I had a coughing fit. Had I been asleep? As I convulsed in the dark, a colorful lattice shimmered in my field of version. With each cough it intensified, and it was when I noticed that one of the lattice structures was a pot-leaf that I learned I'd inadvertently dosed myself.

Whoops.

From that point on I would go through patterns of 90 minutes "asleep" and 40 minutes "awake", with those quotes being necessary because I'm not sure there was a whole lot difference between those two states last night.

For a lengthy time I was a member of the investigative team at the fictional Jeffersonian from Corrie's "Bones" show. Half the time I was a trainer of the young whelps, showing them how to read the breaths from the recently deceased. The other half the time I was the conduit through which the dead breathed. If only the young interns could record my breathing. Each breath was from a different person.

I moved out to the couch at some point, probably because I was self-conscious about my routine: breathe, breathe, breathe, coughing spasm, snoring fit, loud fart, turn over, repeat. I remember Tux looking comfortable on the couch and not wanting to move him, and since the blanket that's out front is small-ish, I figured I could curl up on the big half between him and the edge.

Legs curled up, barely covered under a lap blanket, I got back to my whacked out training routine. Tux never budged.

Lucky for me, today was a conference.

"Sorry. He's got stink-d---."

"I smell guacamole. You gotta smell this and tell me what you smell!"

So we finally watched The Interview. I didn't think it was bad as the critics who dismissed it after the whole hacking-debacle. It had it's moments.

What I'm really trying to say is: you need to check out "Freaks and Geeks" like I need to check out "Breaking Bad"---in the words of Barry the Baptist: "SHARPISH!"