tim rogers novel essential elements: 1) sex 2) harassed by cops or authority figures for being a smartass 3) images he's obsessed with like "world where all escalators have stopped" or the magpies
You posted this around the same time I got back into reading/listening/watching tim again. This is embarrassing to admit, but as I was skimming through people's thoughts about his life (yes, reading the impressions of outsiders about an outsider) I had the thought: "oh, this is kind of like saddleblasters". I almost feel like I owe you an apology... anyways, I enjoyed
very much reading both you and Balckwell's thoughts on writing. Writing about writing is always a finicky thing. Thank you for sharing.
regarding tim, our perspectives are perhaps kind of strange because we were both obsessed with him wayyy back (i was 16 i think when i first started reading his work) and then have turned pretty sour on him (at least in my case), as often happens with people you idolize during such formative years... I didn't really want to get into all that in the letters though
thank you for reading! i realize in retrospect that the bottleneck that i was in when i wrote that was more like the long looping glass tubes of some laboratory experiment or complicated coffee-making apparatus, as it went on for years and years, going in countless circles.
my friend who plays the most video games works at a defense contractor, developing Massive Murder Machines, since it's a low-stress job that allows him plenty of time to come home and game all evening
though i also know another guy from the forums i posted on that lived in a van, worked part time jobs or made money repairing old consoles and doing mods, and spend as much time as he could to playing the oldiest wonkiest nes games
i don't know if the second guy has attained anything approaching buddhahood, but i always admired him. since he actually played retro games on original hardware over and over rather than merely talk about CRTs (what most retro gamers do), he had all sorts of insights about the endless wonders hidden in these tiny pixel worlds
(also i feel obligated to spoil the fun by pointing out the buddha explicitly discouraged his followers from playing games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_that_Buddha_would_not_play)
Now, if you were to make a composite of those two people, you would end up with something like Palmer Luckey's life. Lol Maybe a Buddha discouraged game playing because they can disconnect one from reality sometimes, in the same way that a drone weapon tends to remove one from the consequences of their own decisions. When you automate killing with a disposition matrix, you end up with Ellison's AM.
unemployed people seem to possess the hidden knowledge of life; the wagecage wrecks the body, mind and soul.
mantou is a pleasant name for a dog and whisky goes hard as fuck; it's asian americans naming their dog shit like "boba" that makes me cringe. i think there's an inherent beauty in letting yourself just be, without trying to find a greater theme or narrative to it. or maybe i just think that because it has not been long enough since i wrote my last college application essay
i feel like my whole life is this conflict between wanting to fit my life into a narrative and being disgusted by any attempt at "definition"... narratives often allow for community and self-understanding, but over-committing to one can be soul-sucking. i think this ultimately is one of those things with no easy answer, requiring one to walk the middle path...
also, mantou the dog is big, white and fluffy, so the name makes sense... far better than "小黑“, i.e. "little black." (though in my defense he was already named that long before either xiaoxi or i had ever met him.)
@saddleblasters that's a good point! living life aimlessly doesn't feel great, but neither does overanalyzing. it can definitely be tough finding a satsifactory balance between the two
one of the arcade random encounters of all time... must restrain myself from correcting you about the train sign i bought
you'll have your chance to set the record straight!
saddleblasters you're dropping so many collabs this week and each one is as crazy as the linkin park / jay-z crossover was in 2004