was prisoner? — a found poem

“was prisoner?” a found poem

Following is the complete unaltered text of a junk email sent to me and uncountable others in June of 2008. There are some memorable lines, and the whole shows the author (presumably a piece of software whose talents are being wasted on some hedge-fund application) to be worried, unsure. If it knows as much about the world as we do, no wonder! - TK

was prisoner? or No.

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Not communist? And by volleyball rule. Not autism A capability. An races. An my couldn+t. The it grandfather performance hung.

recap as evening.

no basil, therefore my burgess.

you gram? To on favorite abundant. An sticker To streak. Have burglary. But as moot. At no zulu cosmopolitan undercut.

skin as rhythm. as trajectory, sugar an tycoon.

END

Cell Phones of the Dead

The Washington Post reports that doctors in Burma have been taking cell phones from bodies of drowned men and women, and calling the stored numbers to inform people that their family members or friends are dead.

This grim factoid could be the basis for quite a nice little piece of fiction. — But it seems to me that if there’s enough water to drown you, there’s enough water to ruin your cell phone.
-end-

An Unnoticed Cinematic Allusion?

Just this week I watched Conan the Barbarian (1981) for the first time. The most striking aspect of this film to me (aside from the story and acting, about which the less said the better) was the resemblance of its cinematography and musical treatment to Lord of the Rings (2001-2003). Consider, as only one of many possible examples, how thudding music is used with closeups of running feet. I don’t believe this was coincidental, nor do I believe it was simply a matter of two film-makers responding to similar themes. But there’s nothing wrong with getting your inspiration wherever you can!

extracts from a novel in progress: “Skins”

extracts from Chapter 2 of Skins, a novel in progress

© 2008, Terence Kuch

[Our story so far: Ron, Cléanthe (Clé), and Roslyn (Ros), escaping from the Caregivers, have entered a large bazaar where they believe they will not be found. Chapter 2 is told by Ros.]

We wandered the narrow angular lanes, making sure not to lose each other in the crowd, browsed the booths and crafts. People grew silent at our approach, stared, muttered in their throaty language. Most of the men were smoking. We approached one of the booths. A woman in a grey scarf showed Cléanthe a small, clever biomachine that walked a few paces on command, nodded its head and turned around when it heard the words “Zafir, haf!” The woman suggested three hundred of the local currency. Clé declined to counter. The small machine looked at Clé, open-mouthed with disappointment. The three strolled away, leaving behind biotronic sounds of weeping.

We looked at more curiosities: music that played itself; perfectly formed food-cubes that set themselves out to eat, then fed on themselves if no one came for the Fresserei; strange, weak, listless inbred striped or splotched mammals. In one dim booth, a few pieces of precisely woven cloth. The shop attendant said proudly “all machine made, all machine made.”

Ron asked her what the cloth was made of, but the only words she seemed to know in our language were “all machine made, all machine made,” and prices: one thousand local, she said. Ron declined. The woman persisted: “three hundred.” A few people gathered, frowned with what seemed to be resentment. Ron walked away. Clé tossed her head and followed him, then I, hurrying along as the people followed. After a while they seemed to lose interest in us, gradually dispersed.

In another booth Clé tried on a necklace, a cheap thing, shades of grey; but it glowed when Clé put it around her neck. “It likes you!” the old woman of the booth remarked, smiling and showing teeth the color of black pearls just yanked from the oyster. The necklace warmed and brightened noticeably, attached itself more firmly to Clé’s neck.

“I don’t think I want this,” said Clé, starting to pull it loose. The necklace gave her a slight but unmistakable shock.

“Now I really don’t want this!” she said, trying harder to take it off. The necklace grew additional ornaments; a few of the older ones changed color.

“It’s trying to please you!” the old woman said.

Ron tried to pull the necklace away from Clé’s neck. “Stop it; you’re tearing my skin!” Clé protested. Ron looked helplessly at the old woman.

“Four thousand for the magic word,” she said.

“Fine,” said Ron. “Grue,” said the woman. Instantly the necklace cooled and loosened. Clé jerked it off her neck, threw it down on the counter.

“But,” the old woman added, “now that you’ve bought it, it will be a good friend. I very strongly suggest,” she winked several times, “you take it with you. But if you don’t it will come after you, slowly you know it has no legs, must slither along like a snake and it’s slow going especially if it gets tangled in the horses’ hooves; but it will find you. It will find you.” She sat back on her stool.

“I think we should take it,” Ron said to Clé.

They paid and left the booth.

#

They strolled the maze of bazaar corridors. One lane contained nothing but engineered animals, nothing left in its natural state, all artificial. The booth attendants looked proudly on their masters’ creations.

“Even you,” one said, after he ascertained that the three of us were from the final century, “you have done this, too. Cattle good for nothing but to be eaten, too clumsy any more to defend themselves from wolves; cats smaller than the gods created, too small to eat the baby; dogs — the dogs cannot pack and hunt any more; all they look for is ‘master;’ seedless grapes that cannot reproduce; boneless chicken. So we have just done the same as you, but more.”

Clé called the man an asshole and the three of us wandered on. Ron whispered to Clé something I didn’t catch, probably sage advice about restricting the use of ‘asshole’ to the purely anatomical, and that only on polite occasions, such as when admiring one’s.

#

sidebar: a fancy

In the Dutiful Republic we smile authentic artificial smiles, hold our hands tight over our minds, say only the right wrong things at the wrong right times. Concentrate, now, on being public beings: Think and speak that which infests us. Which simulation are we, today? Know not what to think,

(

contrasting views of responsible spokespersons

{

who are however subject to the same illusions as those whose views do not contrast

}

are welcome

)

but how. I pelvis to the Leader’s television’d motions, pretend his tongue is moist and tight inside my ear. In the light we are dutiful; but in the night we gather quietly in the home of one or the other, cover windows with dark cloth, power the peering machine, watch the Leader address the people, we rubbing up in rhythm against the cold tube, Tivo it over and over until we time our brutal movements to the cadence of anointed speech.

There is no pounding at the door now because doors are now forbidden.

The mirrors — the mirrors have stopped reflecting us.

#

Past a sign reading ‘Adults Only’ in four and a half languages, we found the sellers of robots ‘for your pleasure.’ “All the protuberances and hollow places,” said one seller, reading his prompt-card. “No need to inflate but if you do comes with multiple pump adapters. Evolution’s triumph! And only sixteen thousand for two, must have two to keep each other amused when you cannot be present to interact with them, you know, or unfortunate events will follow. We learned that hard way and now is government regulation.”

While we were pondering this exciting device (which had been set to ‘demo’ mode, democratically exercising all its artificial organs in conjunction with each other in all possible combinations, with available sound track also), a young man intruded.

“You’re not going to buy that gizmo, are you?” he said.

Ron ventured that he thought not, but it would be up to the women.

“Forget it!” the young one said. “They’re dangerous! You know these robots have their own agenda, they’re just too good at what they do and find us sexually boring. That’s a real downer! Not good enough to fuck a damn machine! So they fuck each other at every opportunity — I caught mine doing that three or four times! And they’re plotting, plotting!”

“Plotting?”

“Against us!”

The hawker intervened. “Pay no attention to him; he is just a jealous young man with a short penis.”

Ignoring him, the young man continued. “And I caught one of them flashing yesterday! In the market! One of my robots! It made some sorry excuse I didn’t believe.”

Ron resolved the matter. “We don’t have sixteen thousand,” he admitted.

The hawker was not to be deterred. “Two hundred a trick. Ten minutes guaranteed. Or three hundred and they call you ‘honey’ several times!”

Ron shook his head, and the three walked out. Behind them they could hear the two men yelling and shouting, and SFX of robots getting horny.

#

Past a booth bearing the sign ‘BioHazard Bitches,’ and the House of Ill Repute of Good Repute, was a peep-show. The proprietor called out “Hey tourists! Peep-show not for chickens ha ha, maybe for chicks! Have you good supply of quarter-coins for the machines?”

Ron thought he might like to see what the place was all about. Clé and I gave him a disgusted look and said we’d stay out in the passage and watch, thank you, while he ‘made a probing inquiry.’

Ron entered the tiny shop. To his left was a series of booths. He picked one at random and entered. On the wall to his right was a menu describing the attractions of each short film in lubricious misspelled detail. On the left was a large-lettered sign “This booth is equipped with a moisture sensing device! Police will automatically alert!” There was, of course, no moisture-sensing device, so the desk-man had to mop up once again.

I noticed Ron tipping the attendant on his way out of the booth. He rejoined us, and we bantered him unmercifully. “Did the movies show ‘coming attractions,’ Ron?” I offered.

Clé chimed in with “how much did you ‘spend’ in there, Ron?” Ron shrugged with a hint of embarrassment.

We left the ‘Adults Only’ section, and re-entered the main part of the bazaar.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

Unreliable Narrators

“The trouble is not that there are unreliable narrators but that we have endorsed the fiction of the ‘reliable’ narrator.” –Frank Kermode, p.86 in W.J.T. Mitchell, ed, On Narrative (Univ of Chicago Press, 1981)

TK: Who vouches for the ‘reliable narrator’? Someone just as reliable? Who would that be? How would you know?

 END

Tense and Person in Weird Tales magazine

Q: We’ve been told to keep to a single tense and a single person (e.g., third person past tense) in our short stories. How useful is this advice? How strictly should it be observed? Consider the following tabulation from the anthology, Weird Tales 21^st Century, Volume I. This book contains twelve stories. Based on analysis of first two pages of each story, and scanning of remainder:

.. Stories predominantly * in present tense, first person: none

.. Stories predominately in present tense, third person: three

.. Stories predominately in past tense, first person: none

.. Stories predominately in past tense, third person: six.

Three stories were told without a predominant combination of person and tense, as follows:

.. First person present AND first person past: one story

.. First person past AND third person past: one story

.. Third person present AND third person past: one story.

* The tabulation above concerns the predominant person and tense used. Most of the stories made some use of both present and past tenses; a few, future tense; and another few, second person with past tense.

What conclusion can we draw? That consistency of person and tense, although useful as a rule of thumb, can and should be violated whenever doing so would benefit the story.

 END

Showing and Telling

“As there is no hard-and-fast line between telling and showing, either in literary narrative or in psychoanalysis, the competent psychoanalyst deals with telling as a form of showing and with showing as a form of telling. Everything in analysis is both communication and demonstration.” from article by Roy Schafer, p.34 in W.J.T. Mitchell, ed, On Narrative (Univ of Chicago Press, 1981).

TK: Not quite. All narrative is a telling, as is all dialog. As soon as something shown is reduced to words, it is told.

 

Unfortunate Names

People can’t help what they’ve been named, although I know a ‘Barbara’ who became ‘Kim’, and a ‘Jennifer’ who became ‘Emma’. While personal names are cast in legal concrete in the records that follow us from birth to death, the names of the products of our muscles and minds could, at least, avoid certain pitfalls. Two examples: 

– In choosing new tubs for a bathroom remodeling project, the design I initially favored was called ‘Slipper’; not a great name for a bathtub. 

– Medtner wrote a suite of piano pieces under the name ‘Forgotten Melodies’. This is too close to ‘Forgettable Melodies’ for comfort, even though some of the pieces have very lovely melodies. Too bad the tunes he picked for his piano concertos aren’t as interesting. 

 = = = = =

FOR A LATER INSTALLMENT: Why punctuation shouldn’t be placed inside quotation marks, with key to the scriptures of the brothers Fowler.

-END-

The Semicolon Is Your Friend!

Consider this example: “Max follows, his hands bunch into fists.”

This needs to be fixed. Why and how? The traditional rule is that two independent clauses cannot be linked by a comma. This rule makes sense, because each of these three possible fixes sounds more natural and makes better sense than the example: 

Fix number 1: “Max follows, his hands bunching into fists.” 

Fix number 2: “Max follows. His hands bunch into fists.” 

Fix number 3: “Max follows; his hands bunch into fists.” 

Fix 1 adds an extra syllable that doesn’t pull its weight, a syllable that we can do without in a fast-moving work of action-fiction. This is a matter of style, not grammar. 

The example sentence portrays vivid action. In Fix 2, this action comes to a sharp halt at the period, then resumes. As a matter of style, again, the action needs to continue moving forward at full speed, not stopped and re-started. It is no coincidence that what Americans call “period,” the British call “full stop.” 

Fix 3 doesn’t slow the action as much as fix 2 does; it doesn’t add a needless syllable; and it is superior, I believe, in style. 

The semicolon is your friend!

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? or, Reflections on Tense in Fiction

Suppose I assert, in no particular context, “Jane had blue eyes.” How would a listener respond? Probably “Who cares?” But the curious might ask “Why doesn’t she still have blue eyes? Whatever happened?” And I could answer “Her eye color was altered surgically,” or, “She’s dead now,” or even “I knew her long ago,” the third answer implying that one of the two others may be correct, but I don’t know which.

Bernard Comrie (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics: Tense. Cambridge University Press, eighth printing, 2004) makes the point that, at least in English, a past-tense assertion does not imply anything about the state of affairs at the present time. So, according to Comrie, Baby Jane may still be alive, and may still have blue eyes; and I, the speaker, may even know these facts very well; and I still use “was.”

Logically, of course, Comrie is correct. But I don’t think that most English-speakers hear it that way, at least in America. Consider a different assertion: “I weighed 200.” In spite of grammar, I believe that most of us would jump to the logically unwarranted conclusion that I now weigh something other than 200. Comrie points out that English has an expression, “used to” to make it clear that things are different in the present. But most listeners or readers will still assume that my weight has changed, and that the change was worth mentioning. 

How does this affect fiction? Simply this: In a work of fiction told in the past tense, a factual assertion is ambiguous as to whether or not it is true in the present (narrator-time) as well as true in the past (story-time). In some contexts this won’t matter: who cares what color Jane’s eyes are now? But in other contexts, it will matter. When it does, having to disambiguate the meaning can lead the writer into awkwardness of expression or rhythm in making clear exactly what he means.

-END-

Very long sentences in fiction

Should fiction writers always avoid very long sentences? Here’s an example by Thomas Pynchon, from his newest novel, Against the Day (page 160f):

She sang mezzo-soprano and had married almost shockingly young, the boys coming along in close order, “the way certain comedians make their entrances in variety acts,” it seemed to her, and about the time Colfax shot his first brace of pheasant, she had abruptly one day packed a scant six trunksful of clothes and with her maid, Vaseline, reinstalled herself in Greenwich Village in a town house floridly faced in terra-cotta imported from far away, designed inside by Elsie de Wolfe, adjoining that of her husband’s younger brother, R. Wilshire Vibe, who for some years had been living in his own snug spherelet of folly and decadence, squandering his share of the family money on ballet girls and the companies they performed for, especially those that could be induced to mount productions of the horrible “musical dramas” he kept composing, fake, or as he preferred, faux, European operettas on American subjects — Roscoe Conkling, Princess of the Badlands, Mischief in Mexico, and so many others.

That sentence is 165 words long.  Should the writer have broken it into several sentences? The answer is not an automatic “yes” or “no” — judgments on sentence length (and other questions as well) must be based on a close reading of the piece itself, not on rules of thumb blindly applied.

Tense in Fiction - Some Fictions

Typical advice to writers of narrative fiction: Each story should be told in one tense, and one only. I think that this advice, no matter how well intentioned, is a piece of unjustifiable dogma that, if followed blindly, interferes with effective story-telling.

Below, I’m reprinting a pretty typical piece of of narrative, courtesy of The Washington Post. It isn’t fiction, but it definitely is narrative. (There’s a good reason why they’re called news ’stories’.) I counted all the verbs in this story: 63% are present-tense (including present perfect), 36% are past-tense (including past perfect), and 1% are future-tense. Would any creative writing instructor tolerate such a mix of tenses in a story submitted to him or her? And yet, the story makes sense just as it is. And I contend that telling this story in past-tense only, or in present-tense only, would weaken its ability to communicate, its effectiveness; and also its grace as a piece of writing. Take a look and judge for yourself.

ABINGDON, England — Jordan Webb can predict the exact time of day his head will start aching. If the 10-year-old lingers outside the Reynolds grocery store past 5 p.m., a small black device latched onto the storefront and operated on a timer will emit a high-pitched sound that makes the boy’s skull feel like it’s popping.

“It sounds like ‘Eeeeeeeek’ and gives me a big headache,” said Jordan, who then covered his ears and made a face reminiscent of Macaulay Culkin’s famous pose in the “Home Alone” movies.

Jordan is referring to the Mosquito, a $975 transmitter designed to disperse young loiterers by making a loud humming noise that most people older than 25, such as his 41-year-old mother, can’t hear. The Mosquito has sparked a new sort of buzz in Britain, this time among political and civil rights groups that say the device is discriminatory and treats young people as second-class citizens.

Others have worried that the Mosquito is the next step in Britain’s Big Brother society. Britons are among the most photographed, filmed, speed-checked and monitored people in the world, thanks to an interlocking system of computerized government devices.

Many Britons are deeply ambivalent about having a closed-circuit television camera in practically every public space; they appreciate the help in solving crime but worry that the government sometimes comes too close. A new high-tech device to shoo away teenagers like so many pesky squirrels strikes many the same way: a good idea with an unattractive flip side.

On a recent sunny afternoon in this historic town near Oxford, Jordan was kicking a soccer ball outside Reynolds with four other boys his age, all wearing red Manchester United jerseys. At 5 p.m., right on schedule, the grocery store’s Mosquito began squealing. Jordan said he felt a painful “scratch” in his ear, and he hustled across the road to get out of the machine’s 50-foot range.

The device has sold about 3,500 units in Britain since its introduction in 2006, according to inventor Howard Stapleton. Outside Britain, about 1,500 more have sold, including about 200 in the United States, by distributor Moving Sound Technology Inc., which says its U.S. clients are mainly schools and convenience stories. Schools use them to ward off kids at night, and the stores use them to discourage young loiterers, the distributor said.

The gadget exploits a peculiarity of aging. At a certain age, hair cells in the inner ear start to deteriorate and so does the ability to hear high pitches.

“I have spoken to young children across the country, and they are angry,” said Al Aynsley-Green, the children’s commissioner for England, who recently joined several civil rights groups to launch a campaign against the devices called Buzz Off. He has persuaded five stores to remove the units and plans to continue his quest for a total ban.

Aynsley-Green’s counterpart in Scotland, Kathleen Marshall, started her campaign five months ago. “This is a war on young people,” she said, noting that some of the slogans for the device — such as “teen tormentor” — did not go far in winning the hearts or minds of the teenagers who have told her through her Web site that they feel demonized.

Some young people have gotten back by using similar technology — cellphone ring tones in those same high frequencies. Kids can hear them, parents and teachers often can’t, thwarting many an effort to limit the phones’ use.

If the Mosquito devices are shelved, it would be a dramatic reversal for a country that makes a lot of fuss over petty crime and antisocial behavior. A few of the British tabloids are running campaigns (”Broken Britain” in the Sun; “Can It! Stop Kids Boozing” in the Mirror) with reams of copy on loutish behavior.

This kind of talk remains popular politically. Since coming into power in 1997, the Labor Party government has dished out more than 10,000 Anti-Social Behavior Orders, a sort of restraining order that can be issued to children as young as 10 for causing “harassment, alarm or distress.”

But even if the mood did shift, it would be unlikely that campaigners could squash the Mosquito quickly. For starters, the units, being inconspicuous and inaudible to many people, are difficult for campaigners to find.

Officials of the Mosquito’s manufacturer, Compound Security Systems, said their clients range from corner stores to cemeteries to construction sites. But they said it’s still difficult to know, because they can be heard only by young people. That’s harder to detect than the more traditional Barry Manilow method of discouraging teenage loiterers by playing opera or other music that they consider unhip.

Several police officers have said during the recent furor that they are fans of the Mosquitoes. Officers in Merseyside, in the northwest of England, patrol the streets with what they call a mosquito vehicle that allows them to break up unruly groups with a high-pitched sound. An official with the force said it reduced disruptive behavior by 60 percent in some areas.

James Lowman, chief executive of the Association of Convenience Stores, which represents 33,000 local shops, said retailers find it a “very useful tool” for combating vandalism and crime.

Rej Parshad, 53, has owned Reynolds, a grocery store nestled in a run-down mini-mall, for 20 years and said he has never seen anything quite as effective for dispersing young people. Two years ago, he affixed the box, which has a picture of a mosquito bug on it, a few feet above the entrance to his store.

He estimated that petty crime has decreased 80 percent. He balked at the idea that he was infringing on human rights. Youngsters loiter outside his shop and pester customers to buy them alcohol and cigarettes, he said.

“They harass customers, and I lose business,” Parshad said. “You can’t keep everybody happy. You have to look after the customer first.”

Natalie Saunders, manager at Martin’s Newsagent, a store three doors down from Reynolds, said she had no idea that a screech of about 85 decibels, the level of city traffic, filled the air outside for five hours every night. “I didn’t even know it was here,” she mused. She is 25.

When asked about the device, Laura Cook, 17, scrunched up her face and called it a “horrible thing” that didn’t work particularly well because many teenagers just put up with it.

One woman who was happy to hear the buzzing: Cook’s mother, Trina, 39. The only ambient noise she could hear on this particular evening was birds chirping nearby. But the other day she went into Reynolds and heard a “high-pitched whistle that cracks.”

“I must be getting younger,” she said with a laugh.

END

 

A Post-Modern Fairy Tale

Another piece of strange fiction: A Post-Modern Fairy Tale - “How the Foot Came to Be” . This story is copyrighted (see notice in text.)

Performance Art

Performance Art — Two sets of instructions — one for a killing, one for something worse.

Midnight Central - a book of erotic poetry and prose

In 2002, I published Midnight Central, under the pen-name ‘Karl Krausbart’. It’s available at Amazon, and listed at (although not available through) Barnes and Noble (bn.com). The attachment includes a few of the more restrained poems from this collection.Excerpts from book, Midnight Central, by Karl Krausbart (Terence Kuch)

Strange Fiction - “Adventures of the Dead”

What is “Adventures of the Dead”? A meta-Christian version of The Satanic Verses; a completely unauthorized retelling of the Gospel story; ravings of an arch-dystheist? Read a few pages of this storyAdventures of the Dead, and you tell me!

Strange Fiction - “Thirteen Channels”

Here’s an excerpt from a story I wrote, “Thirteen Channels”, published by Slow Trains under the pen name Karl Krausbart. For the full text see www.slowtrains.com/issue2/krausbartissue2.html.

1 Henry and Marie. They are on a bed in neutral territory, a friend’s bed. Henry does not look at his ring. The window is open. They are careful not to make too much noise. Each one hears distant freeway sounds, not the same freeway sounds each hears at home. There is a clock on the dresser, an antique, stopped at an exact second, an exact minute, some indeterminate day.

 

 

2 A large party. Is he the one she’s been seeing? Am I looking at Marie too often? Alice imagines she has never heard laughter and hears how grotesque it is, like twenty animals each choking on a bone. Outside, four noble horses are slowly becoming mice.

 

 

3 Alice and Marie. They are having a heart-to-heart and telling all. They are lying through their teeth. They are revealing very deep feelings. They are concealing their “little” indiscretions. Neither says she might enjoy intimacy with the other. Both go home and watch the six o’clock news.

 

 

4 Henry and Arnold. They are trying something new for both of them, though Arnold came close to doing it once before with another man, a long time ago. Everything is prepared, liquor gulped down, hard rock. Henry wants to continue to the end, but Arnold is getting twitchy about the whole thing. Overhead, the 10:18 to Boston has reached 8000 feet. Engine number two is making a faint new sound, a kind of breathing.

(read the rest at www.slowtrains.com/issue2/krausbartissue2.html)