An alsex

It has come to my attention that there are some misconceptions about anal sex which I would like to clear up. Anal sex is not gay sex. A straight couple having anal sex isn't having gay sex, they are having ANAL sex. Just like the use of penetration between a lesbian couple isn't straight sex and no penetration between a straight couple isn't lesbian sex. It's SEX. Some of it is kinky and some of it is vanilla, get over it. Sex is sex is sex.

In The Ticket That Exploded there are men anally penetrating other men, but this doesn't mean that a gay person is going to be any less disturbed by it then a straight person. There are no women in the book as well, does this mean that women are more prone to enjoying the book then men are? No.

The person who finds TTE to be a great read will most likely be someone who can look past what makes them uncomfortable and enjoy the writing style and rich word choice behind it. It will have nothing to do with sexual orientation, gender, or I don't know... whether or not one arm is longer than the other.

Prichard Quote of the Week

While discussing the differences, if there are any, between letters and emails Prichard said, "If the internet has the capability of being this finite thing, does it not mirror our existence here?"



Beyond that I would like to comment on Anderson's male spiders, the ones that came up with the empty-package trick. Bravo. Way to stick it to us females. Never been so impressed with an insect's ability to keep from being eaten.

The ticket that exploded my mind

Making sense of The Ticket That Exploded is not high on my easy meter. The absence of commas makes sentences an interesting experience. Punctuation doesn’t seem like that big a deal until you don’t have it anymore. Removing that one small thing changes the whole flow of a sentence. Not necessarily a change for the worse, just different. Actually, much of the book is different. Burroughs uses a splicing technique which really throws me off. Probably my biggest problem is that I keep waiting for that “ah-ha!” moment when everything is revealed to me and makes sense. Each chapter I think, “This is it, this is when all will become clear”. Instead I am presented with a handful of individual scenes which are comprehendible out of context, but mean nothing to me when I try to apply them to the big picture. Sex, conversations, odd jobs, dreams; all these mundane actions I can grasp and examine outside the story. As a whole though, I’m unable to fit them together. Occasionally I feel like the book is a jigsaw puzzle that I have most the pieces to (and a few pieces from other puzzles), but a handful of them the author spilled water on so now they have expanded and are waterlogged and don’t fit… and on top of that, a few of the pieces are actually from other puzzles.

Let us talk about the side notes. Whoever wrote them obviously is trying to inform the reader in some way. In my opinion though, there are far more important things to be explained then the immersion tank and accumulators. Knowing about those is helpful, but not the information I want. Could it be that the creator of the notes is confused? He has no insight to give besides those few tidbits. Or is he simply expecting too much from the reader? Neither answer is comforting. If I’m just not reading it right then I feel pretty dumb. On the flip though, if the fact of the matter is that the writer of the side notes is as confused as me then who isn’t confused? Does the writer even know?

Sigh.

I suppose I am impressed with Burroughs’ ability to take bits and pieces from other books and songs in order to… err… enhance his own writing. The “do you love me?” piece was cute in its own way and was a surprising change in attitude. The distance and lack of caring toward previous sex acts made the affection (passion?) shown in that chapter stand out. Previously everything had a numb feeling to it. Sex, no big deal to those involved. Where the Nova gang is involved though, sex appears more enlivened. Inspector Lee’s discontentment towards enjoyment of sex reminds me of something similar in our own culture. The taboo state that kink and s/m has in our minds shows our own close-mindedness or fear of things we can’t understand. Oh hey what a coincidence, I fear The Ticket That Exploded because I can’t understand it. Maybe that is what Burroughs is trying to show the reader. Fear of the unknown doesn’t give one right to condemn it. What I fear might be what another takes pleasure in and vice-versa. Our feelings toward something are only chemical reactions so it’s very possible for a common place positive emotion for me to be negative to an opposing culture.

[This blog is has now been hijacked by Sarah’s roommate who sat in on Thursday’s class: The lack of a stream conscious makes following even a simple paragraph an arduous task, which lead him to conclude that Borooughs goal was not so much to tell a story as it was to force the reader into contrasting the individual scenes with his or her own personal beliefs and values. This process would be similar to being tied to a chair and beaten across the face with a slightly decayed trout only more scarring. He also felt that Groundhog Day was interesting in that the main character was unable to break the cycle of the repeating day by lashing out and trying to take control of his destiny, but instead was only able to move forward and end the cycle after he essentially gave up his own nature and conformed to society’s beliefs over what a conscientious citizen looked like. It is basically the death of the one for the benefit of the many. He doesn’t ascend to a higher morality or try to find spiritual enlightenment; he throws himself to the mercy of his situation and begs for absolution.]

Prichard Quote of the Week

While discussing the way the narrator in "The Invention of Morel" idolizes Faustine, a student brought up how our society does the same with people like Britney Spears. This of course led to talk of our culture's apparent fascination with the downward spiral of her life. Prichard then interjected with "I have a theory about her, that that is her legacy."




About the movie Groundhog's Day:
What WOULD someone do if they were doomed to repeat the same day over and over. I particularly enjoyed his endeavor to eat whatever he wants and sleep with who he wants. That would get old pretty quick though. His quest to win over Rita was cute and reminded me of 50 First Dates. Only so far you can go with a person in one day though, which he learns the long and hard way. I guess I would learn to cook. That's something I wish I was better at and perpetual groundhog's day would give me the opportunity to accomplish that.

Cooking would of course come after building an army of fierce snowmen though.

"The Invention of Morel" by Casares from page 53 to end

Alright I’ll be honest. My ideal ending had Faustine pulling off her fleshy mask of deception and revealing herself to be a cyborg. I was quite disappointed to instead find myself with a fair amount of answered and unanswered questions.

First off, since we never find out what had the narrator on the run from the cops I decided to make up a felony for him. Our dear fugitive was charged with the murder of a repairman who he was holding hostage until his washer was fixed, the poor guy died of a stroke (which was brought on by fright). Really though, I’m very curious as to what the true crime was and just as curious to know why the narrator found it unimportant to tell the reader about it.

Something I found interesting was how on page 56 the narrator hides behind a statue of a “dying phoenix”. This really stood out for me because Morel’s immortality leaves behind skinless, hairless carcasses. It has a kind of parallel to the myth that a phoenix is reborn from the ashes of its dead body.

As for Morel’s invention, it was very presumptuous of him to believe that people wouldn’t mind that he was using his machine on them. What of those who believe in afterlife? You can’t be reborn, go to heaven, or even ascend if your soul is stuck on repeat. Morel doesn’t even stop to wonder if maybe some of his friends don’t WANT to be immortal. If what he has done can even be called immortality. You wouldn’t even be able to interact or be aware of the passing time outside their own. He also assumes that the time they spend on the island is full of happy memories. Does it not occur to him that maybe some of them are unhappy there? All Morel really accomplishes is capturing a piece of what he and his friends were, a shard of their lives.

Here is one of my most irritating questions, what of the copy made of the narrator’s hand? Morel says that your soul is transferred to your copy… so wouldn’t the narrator’s soul of already begun to transfer to it? If he has two copies of himself then where does his soul go? I think he has created variables that could disrupt Morel’s machine or just destroy the attempts the narrator was trying to make to spend eternity with Faustine. Morel said that he can’t create life. That means that their souls come from their real bodies, it’s the original, not a back up. If the machine can’t create life then one of the narrator’s copies is shit out of luck in the soul department. Things aren’t looking good for him. Especially because, of the two, the soul will probably go to the copy recorded first.

Prichard Quote of the Week

After watching the strange german subbed film about nanobots, grey goo, and creating a backup of our conscious Prichard remarked on how we were unfortunately "left with the taste of nano-beef".

---

As for the film:

I'm very interested in those robots that taught themselves to walk within seconds of having a nervous system thrown at them. Kinda scary and entertaining. Oh, and the computer model with the creatures fighting for the green cube... I'm wondering if that is where the idea for Spore came from?

"The Invention of Morel" by Casares up to page 53

I am about halfway finished with “The Invention of Morel” and what follows are my thoughts on that first half.

I think that when the narrator started the machine on the island and screwed around in the basement, the one where he got freaked out by his own echoing footsteps, he messed with the dimensions of his reality. He threw his reality of the island back into Faustine’s reality of the island (which could possibly be the past?). Also I think that Faustine’s reality is unfortunately doomed to repeat itself, as shown by the repeated conversation that Faustine and Morel had. So not only is the narrator in two realities, but he is caught up in the other’s loop; a rather harsh punishment for being curious.

This is only my current assumption though. While reading the book my opinion is constantly changing. In the beginning I thought that the people who had been on the island before the narrator (the ones the Japanese found without hair, skin, and fingernails) had been killed by robots that took their skin and whatnot so as to wear it as their own. If you are wondering how I came up with that it’s because Faustine seemed to be so set in a routine that the presence of the narrator didn’t even affect her. Like she was only programmed to do one thing, watch the sunset.

Other things on my mind:

Am I ever going to find out what the narrator supposedly did to become a fugitive? He’s skittish and always afraid someone will tell the police where he is, but what was he accused of? Why did he have to flee to some horrible island where he constantly gets sick from the food he is forced to eat? Another thing that keeps cropping up is the question of whether or not the narrator is who he thinks he is. In a dream of his the narrator finds that he has to kill a man, but he IS that man. Something I imagine is always troubling to realize. In another dream Morel is the director of an asylum, but sometimes the narrator was the director of the asylum. It makes me wonder if the fugitive and Morel could be one in the same. If not, then maybe the fugitive’s reality is so frayed that it is trying to correct itself by merging the two realities. That is, if there even are two realities.


What I am finding most difficult about the book is coming to any true conclusions about a character. I can’t yet comprehend what is happening on the island so how can I pass judgment? I have no idea who is real and who isn’t or even what is really going on in their lives. I feel like while reading I have to keep my feelings at arms length so as to better adjust when everything is finally revealed. If I get too distracted with the narrator’s obsession with Faustine am I going to miss something? It’s really hard not to get sucked in though. The narrator has developed feelings for a woman that he used to watch from the bushes and he has never talked to (or at least never had a conversation with). Furthermore, he says creepy things like, “I think I shall kill her, or go mad, if this continues any longer” (p. 37). The actions of the narrator make me really interested in finding out what he was accused of. I’m not so sure he was innocent anymore. Yes being alone on an island can make a person crazy, but he doesn’t even question if some of his thoughts about Faustine or wrong.

And what of perception? All I have is the narrator’s point of view. He could be missing the small things or interpreting them as something else. He passed off the repeated conversation, Faustine not talking to him, Morel’s indifference to his flower bed, and even the museum returning to normal after the partiers left. I wonder what details aren’t being written down that are small to him, but would be huge to me. I’m sure a lot of things are going on that the narrator just doesn’t feel are important enough to write about. I’d like to know what he or even the others on the island are doing during some of the time gaps.

Overall the confusion and anticipation for the answers are manageably frustrating. I’m excited to have things figured out and if that doesn’t happen then I’m at least excited to find out what Morel’s invention is.