Erwin Schrodinger got pulled over at the border. They asked him what he had in the trunk of his car. While he pondered how to respond without sounding insane, he looked up at the border crossing sign and discovered that he was being detained midway between Mexifornia and Califexico. “That depends,” he answered.
One customs agent held him at gunpoint while the others went around to the back and, without asking for the keys, sprang the trunk with a crowbar. There were screams. The agent with the gun ran around back to see what was happening; nor did he return.
Schrodinger put the car into drive and pulled forward into San Diego with a lurch that caused the trunk to bang shut.
Sometimes, even today, drunken fratboys coming back from Tijuana say that on still nights, above the honking of the stalled cars and the cries of the Chiclet vendors, you can hear the Policia screaming. The word they are screaming sounds a little like meow.
Summer of 1972. On a camping trip with my grandfather, staying in a cabin on Bass Lake in the Sierra Nevadas. I found this on the magazine rack of the general store, and in it was Steve Ditko’s “Deep Ruby.”
Left 4 Dead is out. It was intensely fun when I first played it a couple years back, and it’s leagues better now. I didn’t work on it, other than a fair bit of playtesting, so I don’t mind telling you it’s awesome.
I also recommend the blog, where you can find the large original of this image for your wallpaper:
I found this conversation in a recent movie and painstakingly transcribed it. It’s by one of my favorite directors, and I’d put off watching this film for a long time. I think far more people will recognize the game than they will the movie. Can you name the film?
“I conquered Thebes.”
“When?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“How’d you do it?”
“Well I got a little more than that actually…I ruled this land for 97 years and uh…and uh…I had like…I had all the sanctuaries built and then the uh…this hot lava leaked out of a volcano and half destroyed one of the my sanctuary to uh Demeter I guess it was and uh…but I didn’t have the marble to rebuild like the sculptures and to fix the sanctuary. But I already had all these um docks to like Calydon and Argos and I had everything…I was trading to like twelve cities. And uh I had a I had a really good army but um the river the river had just flooded and it flooded out like four of my docks and I couldn’t import the marble to rebuild the sanctuary and she got Demeter got really pissed off and so she made my fields infertile and so I couldn’t grow the grass I couldn’t grow the wheat to feed the horses and there was nowhere for the sheep to graze and the goats, and then the people were getting hungry and restless, and I couldn’t trade because the rivers had flooded. So Knossos, one of my vassals, got really upset with me and turned against me and they uh attacked me and because I couldn’t train any sheep because I didn’t have the wheat, I didn’t have the uh, I didn’t have a uh…”
“You couldn’t train any sheep?”
“I couldn’t train any horses because I didn’t have the wheat…and so when they attacked me I just got they just dogged me, and I actually went to send my army out to defend the city, and like you can only send them out if you have twelve trained horses and I had eleven. So I was one horse shy of saving the city.”
“So then you didn’t really…”
“Well I had conquered—I had just conquered Thebes when that happened.”
By the way, I really, really, really liked this movie. A few days after watching it, it’s still with me.
I’m glad Tina Fey won’t have to leave the planet, because there’s nothing more embarrassing than celebrities when they come slinking back from outer space.
Tonight at Fantagraphics in Seattle, a wonderful event: Paul di Filippo appeared with Jim Woodring (see his website on the blog’s sidebar) to read from Cosmocopia, which you can buy here (in a limited edition of 500 copies). Cosmocopia is a novel inspired by Woodring’s art, accompanied by some of said art, including a 500 piece Woodring jigsaw puzzle.
I have known Paul for many years, but we have never met in person. Years ago, he circulated a small zine called Astral Avenue, and I began to bury him in correspondence, little knowing how well Paul would rise to the challenge. For many years, I would receive one or two envelopes a week from Paul, each one heavily and lovingly collaged, and full of weird ephemera he’d scoured from the antique stores and garage sales of Providence. We eventually appeared in Mirrorshades together, and collaborated on a short story about the photographer Weegee (“Sleep is Where You Find It” aka “The Human Head Cakebox Murders”), and even tried to get a collaborative novel off the ground. Weirdly, with the advent of email, we corresponded less. When I lived on Long Island in 1988, we spoke on the phone once. We’d never met in the flesh until tonight. So to meet Paul and Jim Woodring, one of my artist heroes…in a shop crammed with Fantagraphics’s amazing creations…it was quite a night. Followed by huge amounts of great food, hilarious conversation and Hard Corn Poneography at Hing Loon. As an extra bonus, I met Max Woodring, who it turned out I’d already run into at the Gage Academy a few months ago. So it was a night packed with import and sure to give rise to significant strange events somewhere up ahead and unforeseen. I can’t wait to read Cosmocopia–and one of these rainy nights, maybe I’ll tackle the puzzle as well.
