perfidy

Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver

His critics might decry his tendency to make all his characters sound the same and his penchant for discursiveness, but I happen to love Neal Stephenson for those very things. Having now read the System Of The World trilogy twice through (the second time all out of order), I'm convinced that even if he is not a major author he is destined to become the patron saint of overeducated American geeks for at least a generation. Reading Quicksilver a second time through with the plot of the whole trilogy firmly in mind allows the reader to focus on the little things the discourses are explaining - the long description of the economics and logistics of siege warfare. The squalid premodern lives of German and Polish peasantry. The tangled pleasures of court politics and the education of the elite. Money.

There's nothing - nothing - better in this world than a thick swashbuckling novel you can learn from.

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China Mieville, Perdido Street Station

Why is fiction that's not set in the "real world" dismissed as "mere" genre fiction? (Minister Buckethead, please excuse the use of scare quotes. I mean them in this case to point up the silliness of calling the world that is described in any book as real, and the silliness of dismissing a book about crime as less worthy than other books merely because you are axiomatically predisposed to dub such a book 'crime fiction.' In the first case, the map is never the territory. In the second, Raymond @#!?%ing Chandler. Q.E.D.)

China Mieville, a Ph.D. student at the London School of Economics, seems to be obessed with being original. If not obsessed, it still is certainly a main goal. With PSS he has created a world and a city, New Crubozon, that manages not to recall any prior fantasy/sci-fi setting particularly strongly. Writing ostensibly in the niche genre of "steam-punk," which seeks to fuse Victorian-era technology with new-school Science Fiction style (a la Gibson/Sterling), he convincingly brings across the history of New Crubozon and the cultures of the various races that inhabit it, fusing magic and technology and good old storytelling into a fairly grand whole. Mievelle says, "Two untrue things are commonly claimed about fantasy. The first is that fantasy and science fiction are fundamentally different genres. The second is that fantasy is crap." This statement may as well stand as a manifesto for all three novels set in the world of New Crubozon.

There are some things Mieville does very well. He has an eye for the grotesque. His invention of the "Remade," people who through magic have been punished to fit the crime they have committed, is a shining example. (People whose lower bodies are steam-powered machines who must continually feed their boilers with coal lest they die. People whose hands have been replaced with tentacles.) New Crubozon is a grubby, filthy city that feels actually lived in by its fictional residents. Mieville also knows how to move a story along and juggle multiple lines. Although PSS is only his second novel, and he still has trouble with pacing from time to time, he is better at finding a balance than many better known authors. Mieville also has a gift for metaphor, making extended riffs on trash and detritus, body and self, and the relationship between New Crubozon's residents and the patchwork of the city itself (the villain Mr. Motley brings all these threads together into one).

However, his relative youth as an author works against him. From time to time it seems as if Mieville's not writing a novel, but a 700-page script treatment. How else to explain the scene when the police blow up the printing press for the dissident newspaper the Runagate Rampant along with the aging automation that cranks it? The action stops for several paragraphs as we follow the automaton's head through the air and back down to the cobblestones of the city. What surely sounded like a poignant postscript in Mieville's head reads like a Michael Bay film on the page. His nose for the original sometimes leads him into cliche.

The folks at Crooked Timber did a seminar on Mieville a few months ago that's worth a read (spoiler alert). Although I think I may soon get tired of Mieville's heavy, rich prose and don't expect I'll wait for his latest work like I do for Dan Simmons or Neal Stephenson, he has a unique voice and style and the intelligence and imagination to convincingly update the shopworn tropes of sci-fi and fantasy. Just don't call it genre fiction.

It was only a matter of time before someone went and made a film about hippies who put on a pop festival only to have their minds consumed by Cthulu. Enter The Miskatonic Acid Test. Described by its creator, Dark Lord Rob, as "sort of like Monterey Pop, only at the end monsters attack everybody," the film concerns the time in 1969 when

a group of students at Miskatonic University in witch-haunted Arkham, Massachusetts decided to emulate the West Coast and put on their own sort of "happening", where "music and atmosphere could combine to create an alteration of consciousness", with the clandestine help of a little LSD. Or maybe a lot. Unfortunately, the professor they chose to serve as faculty adviser on the project had an agenda of his own; see, he was a philosophy professor, one who specialized in the "study of Evil", and one who saw the Miskatonic Acid Test as an opportunity for a little experiment. As the music and drugs reached their peak he ascended the stage and began to read incantations from the dread Necronomicon...

with sexy results!

The filmmakers have even gone so far as to put together fictional bands to play the festival, including folkies The Gyre Falcons, the proto-punk Barrow Wights, and "the heavy, spooky hard psych of the" Plasma Miasma. Personally, I would have hoped they'd have included a performance by The Golden Apples or The American Medical Association, but then we'd have undead Nazis rising from deep lakes to take over the world and that kind of throws us into another mythology altogether

Maybe it's because I live in witch-haunted Salem, Massachusetts, but I really want to see this movie. Maybe we could have a Perfidy Horror Festival Night Thingy come this Rocktober at which we show "Evil Dead II," "Bubba Ho-Tep," and "Shaun of the Dead" and top it all off with "The Miskatonic Acid Test." And then we all go insane.

Even as the US Government plans the downfall of humanity, the world's scientists have their eye fixed firmly away from the ball, trying not to look at it. Don't look at the ball! Although, I have to say, if I randomly was handed the opportunity to study the very first documented occurance of gay necrophilia in ducks, I probably would too.

The most disturbing thing I've read today:

Ducks behave pretty badly, it seems. It is not so much that up to one in 10 of mallard couples are homosexual - no one would raise an eyebrow in the liberal Netherlands - but they regularly indulge in "attempted rape flights" when they pursue other ducks with a view to forcible mating. "Rape is a normal reproductive strategy in mallards," explains Mr Moeliker.

Just remember: that delicious duck you're enjoying with Thai red curry sauce may have been an anal corpse rapist.

Gaaaaah.

The pointy heads at DARPA (the Pentagon's special task force for crazy ideas that just might work someday if the laws of physics change) have really gone and done it this time. Their latest Pandoric outrage, which is yet another step towards delivering all mankind into an eternal state of bondage to our eventual robotic overlords, is a series of prizes to be handed out to groups who succeed in teaching a robotic dog to learn to walk on its own. The prizes are no joke-- up to $800,000. And neither is the aim.

Read the foregoing carefully. DARPA does not merely want these small robotic dogs to walk on their own-- to be sure, a hard enough task-- but to teach themselves to walk. This goal does seem innocuous enough. In fact, small nimble autonomous robots will surely be a great help for the military, rescue workers, and dangerous manufacturing and construction jobs in the few years before the overlords come. But I put it to our readership: once you have granted a robot the ability to learn to perform any given task, how different are the heuristics of walking and the heuristics of hunting? Of evisceration? Of leadership?

We at the Ministry have tirelessly tracked the gathering threat to humanity, and despite our repeated warnings the so-called "intelligentsia" plunge forward undaunted into the future. The seeds of humanity's destruction are contained in the very machines that are intended to make our lives better.

As one of our corporate slogans go: our problems are behind us. What we must do now is fight the solutions.

A final note: the article linked above also contains mention of the very first human-robotic arm wrestling tournament. A teenaged girl was pitted against a robotic arm and took three out of three matches. Advantage: homo sapiens sapiens! However, be warned. Giving the robots accurate metrics on our capabilities is never a good thing. Caution is indicated.

[wik]Other famous robot dogs: Sony's "Aibo" and Neal Stephenson's "FIDO." Stephenson in particular displays strong quisling tendencies. Note that his superpowered "rat-thing" dog cyborg is utterly devoted to humanity. Then again, that may be thanks to the moderating influence of its actual dog brain on its behavior. The real robots will not make that mistake.

The Ministry is swelling with pride to announce what you have no doubt already noticed - we have finally completed the upgrade of the Ministry website. Countless millions who were on the verge of asphixia can now draw a deep breath of contentment and satisfaction. As you wander through the new site, thrill to the streamlined and elegant design; bow to the supreme power of the three panel layout; turn green with envy that your website could never hope to be half so nifty.

The Ministry and its legions of exhausted, HTML-chipping slave laborers would like to thank the spineless, dickless, brainless, syphilitic, greedy, choad-munching, crack-huffing, morally adrift, ass-spelunking comment spammers who made this upgrade necessary. Thanks guys! You're real heroes for speaking truth to power and letting all of us know about online casinos and penis enlargement. The Ministry is pleased that it could provide (free of charge to you) the bandwidth to further your essential missionary calling, you pissant mongoloid fuckwits.

Anyway, the Ministry sincerely hopes you enjoy the new blog edifice, and please forward any comments or suggestions to us.

Here, offered without comment, are some of the names on the spam emails I have recently received:

Stench T. Franchiser
Haiti L. Disgruntles
Tinning J. Whews
Curviest V. Extempores
Decrescendo A. Twirler
Post T. Menopause
Kindling K. Nark
Other G. Militating
Heinous S. Armory
Slattern J. Yellows
Organ I. Offal
Tinier V. Bucksaw
Nymphomania O. Augusts
Pumps K. Dredger
Siam H. Stretchy
Curfew L. Lifework
Cybernetics L. Appallingly
Intolerant V. Shack
Roadrunner J. Derivations
Implosion P. Matterhorn
Clownishness I. Serenity
Chaperones G. Readjusting
Cochran J. Cardsharps
Grandiloquence L. Bloodstained
Eyewitness H. Bunsen
Cranium T. Capabilities
Paroxysm P. Soy
Milliner I. Pliable
Ecliptic F. Prejudice
Granules S. Gallic
Hornblower Q. Cadging
Tapering P. Waterbury
Renting O. Eratosthenes
Emotionally H. Pram
Solon O. Disassembling
Southerner M. Blameworthy
Major D. Unfurls
Nubian O. Socket
Mormon P. Hedgerow
Jane J. Vulgarity

[wik]And this just in, two more:

Spastic I. Bogeymen
Fibrous G. Rumpus

Ohio is a terrible place to live, and it's even worse if you own a business. The state taxes business at a high rate, to the point of taxing unsold inventory (!). Hence, if you own, say, a comic book shop or a regional distribution hub, you are perpetually smacked with giant tax bills. Several such hubs have recently moved from Ohio to Kansas and Indiana for this very reason. The state's lawmakers, a notoriously inept bunch, seem to think this wretched business climate is a pretty great state of affairs, and now want to make sure that everyone can share the bliss.

Check this out. Says Ohio State Senator Larry Mumper - "If someone buys and sells on eBay on a regular basis as a type of business, then there is a need for regulation."

So now there's a law. I would recommend not believing Mumper and his cronies when they swear up and down that they'll pass exemptions before the May start date so that every ebayer in the state doesn't have to, and I quote,

get a state auction license.

Besides costing $200 and posting a $50,000 bond, the license requires a one-year apprenticeship to a licensed auctioneer, acting as a bid-caller in 12 auctions, attending an approved auction school, passing a written and oral exam. Failure to get a license could result in the seller being fined up to $1,000 and jailed for a maximum of 90 days[,]

but right now no such exemption exists. In a scenario much like that of like the PATRIOT Act being used to bust terrorist menaces like head shops and filesharers, the club now exists with which to beat Ohioan Ebayers all about the head and neck. Some enthusiastic DA merely needs to pick it up.

Clearly, Ohioans are pretty dumb.

An oldie but goodie from Ace, a rundown of every g-d d-mn FPS video game you've ever played.

Now turn on God Mode and walk across that lava like a man!