Cyberpunktuations

One of my articles in the Tokyo PC Users' Club magazine (c.1990) was a condensation of a article on cyberpunk by Mark Downham, some of whose statements were so obscure or pretentious that I was inspired to make cartoons of them:

         

Charge It To My Valentine Card

Some years ago (around 1990, in fact), when I was editor of the Tokyo PC Users Club magazine, I wrote this poem for the February Issue.  I suppose I might be sued someday for copying the Look and Feel of "Let's Get Away from It All"...

Best of Autotune The News - 3 Mixes

A T.S. Eliot Parody

I've been looking for this recording for years, having first heard it as a teenager. Dylan Thomas reads Henry Reed's "Chard Whitlow", a brilliant parody of the T.S. Eliot of "Four Quartets". ..



'Chard Whitlow'

(Mr. Eliot's Sunday Evening Postscript)

As we get older we do not get any younger.
Seasons return, and to-day I am fifty-five,
And this time last year I was fifty-four
And this time next year I shall be sixty-two.
And I cannot say I should like (to speak for myself)
To see my time over again - if you can call it time:
Fidgeting uneasily under a draughty stair,
Or counting sleepless nights in the crowded tube.

There are certain precautions - though none of them very reliable -
Against the blast from bombs and the flying splinter,
But not against the blast from heaven, vento dei venti,
The wind within a wind unable to speak for wind;
And the frigid burnings of purgatory will not be touched
By any emollient.

I think you will find this put,
Better than I could ever hope to express it,
In the words of Kharma: 'It is, we believe,
Idle to hope that the simple stirrup-pump
Will extinguish hell.'

Oh, listeners,
And you especially who have turned off the wireless,
And sit in Stoke or Basingstoke listening appreciatively to
the silence,
(Which is also the silence of hell) pray, not for your skins,
but for your souls.

And pray for me also under the draughty stair.
As we get older we do not get any younger.
And pray for Kharma under the holy mountain.

-- Henry Reed

"...It's often been said that a good parody must first of all be a good poem. ``Idle to hope that the simple stirrup pump will extinguish hell". A lovely line, that. So Eliot: sounds marvellous and profound but what does it actually mean? Indeed Eliot apparently liked this poem. "Most parodies of one's own work strike one as very poor. In fact, one is apt to think one could parody oneself much better. (As a matter of fact, some critics have said that I have done so.) But there is one which deserves the success it has had, Henry Reed's Chard Whitlow'']
`Chard Whitlow' is clearly a reference to the village names in the titles of the poems Eliot was writing at that time. The title is actually the weakest part of this little gem, for English village names are fatally easy to parody; Private Eye have been doing it for years. Sir Herbert Gussett writes from Loose Chippings and from Milton Friedman. I've been guilty of a few myself: Gunghoe is obviously somewhere in the Chilterns and Flimsea in the Fens....but where is Long Natter? One day I am going to write a prolix Trollopean novel set in the Cathedral city of Heominster. (Yes, it does rhyme with `Leominster', of course).
In this connection we should also remember the small North Island town of Waiwhakakiwi, Stephen Leacock's Ontario Lake Owatawetness and Bill Bryson's New England settlement of Squashaninsect. Thank God there are still people around who love language."

http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~tf/poem14.html
http://snipurl.com/t7qc9

FAR SIDE Slideshow

Here's a slide show I made of some of the best Far Side cartoons:

Clichés for A Broken Heart

From Ïmaginative Qualities Of Actual Things, by Gilbert Sorentino

"...I saw Bunny the same day. She was with three or four ugly Beautiful People, laughing, crackling, full of life, but underneath...! It was clear that her heart was broken.She was carrying a torch, she took a lot of time out for tears, she won't die, she'll live on, she gets that old feeling, there'll never be another Guy, she won't forget the night she met him, the songs of love are not for her, she dances with tears in her eyes, her love for him meant only heartaches, she'd like just one more chance, willows weep for her, every street's a boulevard of broken dreams, she covers the waterfront, she can't show her face, she smokes, she drinks, she never thinks about tomorrow, sometimes she can't even think of his name, sonnets she writes of him, she's aware her heart is a sad affair, their love went out just like a dying ember, she'll never smile again, half a love never appealed to her, she rushed in where angels fear to tread, she has those blues in the night, she's got it bad, she doesn't want to walk without him, she'll remember April, he'll never know just how much she loves him, she falls in love too easily, she should care, it was like a trip to the stars, he came, he saw, he conquered her, oh, how they waltzed, it's just her luck to be in love in vain, she wishes she didn't love him so, haunted heart won't let her be, don't cry, Bunny, she didn't see her in his eyes any more, her heart cries for him, she'll never be free, she talks to the trees, she won't cry any more, he's unforgettable, that's what he is, she wishes he were here, she needs him now, the night is bitter, she'll never stop loving him, and, frighteningly manic, she says, "Drink up, all you happy people!"

Pre Hip Hopping

This is the spirit in which people went to work when I was younger....

What Is Art?

Lilek's Matchbook Museum

Lilek's Matchbook Museum:


"A remnant of that temporary craze for Polynesian-Tibetan fusion cuisine. "