This site is going to be a repository for most of my writing, music, video, art and other projects as well as the occasional update on current projects. They will slowly be posted here as I get around to it. So hang on. - JL
- This article ran in Life in the Wires: The CTheory Reader.
Cloning is the world wide web of the biotech age, where crazy and perverse desires are able to find expression.
For money, to gain or maintain power, to right past wrongs, or to promote ideology, plans are being made, dreamed, to bring historical figures out of non-existence so their flesh can dress ideas.
Due to the recent rapid advances in cloning procedures, these fantasies, whose barrier to manifestation in reality is the presence of one who is dead, will soon be able to be fulfilled.
- This article appeared in the now-defunct journal The Thresher in late 2001. This is the edited and slightly altered version that appeared in the journal.
Considering the placement of their respective ideological products on the political spectrum, Mexican revolutionaries the Zapatista’s (wearing costumes as cool as Slipknot’s or Gwar’s), whose frontman Subcomandante Marcos’ songs of freedom from Neo-Liberalism has gained a swooning fan base of leftist intelligentsia worldwide; and ’90s Wired magazine-style capitalist techno-libertarianism — the founding faith of the dot-bomb economy, boostered by the likes of right-wing former-BMO Congress Newt Gingrich — apparently have little in common, apart from their mutual enmity.
But post-modern, memetically-spliced, political Frankenideologies dont necessarily fit neatly on a line graph. While it is doubtful that Subcomandante Marcos and Wired-magazine founder Louis Rosetto could put aside their ideological differences long enough to go out and hit the strip clubs together, there are curious similarities between the two. Central to both their visions is a belief in the necessity of the de-evolution of the state, in favor of a decentralized, networked society. More peculiarly, both ideologies use biological referents (actually, not so much used by the Zapatistas themselves as by their American supporters) to justify the state’s dismantling. And as any Madison Avenue colonized supermarket shopper knows, natural equals good, right?
- This article originally appeared at Disinformation and The Konformist around 2000-2001.
It was 1937 when the Nazi’s in Germany made a hugely popular foray (over three million served) into the world of art exhibition. The show was called Entartete Kunst, or Degenerate Art. Its goal was to educate the public about art that the Nazi’s believed promoted non-German themes: mental illness, criminality, Jewishness, Bolshevism, modernism, homosexuality and non-Aryanism. A list of some of the artists included in the show reads like notes scribbled into the notebook of a bored first year art student during a lecture about the most important avant-garde artists of the first half of the 20th century: Max Ernst, George Grosz, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Franz Mark, Piet Mondrien and Kurt Schwitters. The idea of such cultural Fascism seems ludicrous to post-post-modern 21st century citizens such as ourselves: just another example of the twisted oppression perpetrated by the 20th centuries’ poster boys for evil. It couldn’t happen to us in our wired, democratic-capitalist times, could it? Or would we be well to remember Deleuze and Guattari’s statement in “Anti-Oedipus” that “tyrannical or democratic, capitalist or socialist, there has never been but a single state.” Cultural scapegoating and persecution may be innate to the state, whether Nazis, Democrats, or Republicans, are in control.
- A comic script written around 2001-2002.
PAGE ONE (eight panels)
Panel 1. A shot of a dilapidated trailer in the woods.
CAP: IN THE WOODS OUTSIDE OF JERRYVILLE . . .
Panel 2. Inside the trailer are Surf and Zap. Surf, a chubby, average and harmless looking 18 year old wearing sweat pants and a stained sleeveless undershirt is sitting on the couch in front of a large screen TV lethargically trying to grab the remote (but not getting his ass off the couch to do it) from Zap, who is three feet tall, 40 years old, bald and filled with nervous energy. Zap runs around the couch, laughing maniacally with an oversized remote control in his hand, just out of Surf’s reach.
CAP: . . . IS THE TRAILER HOME OF SURF AND ZAP.
SURF: AW COME ON ZAP, GIVE ME THE REMOTE.
Panel 3. Zap continues to run around the couch out of Surf’s reach.
ZAP: WHAT? YOU DON’T WANT TO WATCH THE NEWS AND LEARN ABOUT CURRENT EVENTS?
SURF: YOU KNOW I’M ALLERGIC TO LEARNING. PUT IT ON WRESTLING.
Panel 4. The newscaster on the TV speaks. The screen behind him says “BREAKING NEWS.”
NEWSCASTER: WE’VE JUST LEARNED OF A HOSTAGE SITUATION AT
THE MEGA TOY WAREHOUSE. FROM WHAT INFORMATION WE HAVE BEEN ABLE TO GATHER AN UNKNOWN NUMBER OF CHILDREN AND ADULTS ARE BEING HELD HOSTAGE BY A MAN WITH A MACHINE GUN.
Panel 5. Surf looks disappointed.
SURF: AW CRAP! WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAVE TO HAPPEN WHEN WRESTLING’S ON? LET’S SKIP THIS ONE AND LET JERRYVILLE’S FINEST TAKE CARE OF IT.
Panel 6: Zap hands Surf a pillowcase with eye-holes cut out of it.
ZAP: YOU KNOW THE DEAL YOU MADE WITH YOUR UNCLE ON HIS DEATH BED, SURF. WE GET THE TRAILER AND SUPER SATALLITE TV HE INVENTED, BUT WE ALSO HAVE TO USE HIS INVENTIONS TO HELP THE CITIZENS OF JERRYVILLE WHEN THEY’RE IN TROUBLE.
Panel 7. Surf and Zap both have pillowcases covering their heads. Zap is standing on the couch beside Surf with the remote control in hand. Surf is pressing buttons on a control panel that is attached to the couch by wires.
SURF: YEAH YEAH YEAH, I KNOW. LET’S JUST GET THIS OVER WITH.
Panel 8. A panel slides away on the roof of the trailer. Surf flies the couch out of it.
SURF: MAYBE WE CAN GET BACK HERE IN TIME FOR X-FILES.
- A comic script written around 2001-2002. - JL
PAGE ONE (four panels)
Panel 1. Scum, who is wearing rags for clothes and is covered with such a thick coat of dirt and grease that it is hard to determine his age or features, stands in a rat filled alley watching a dish boy throw a garbage bag dripping with lard and oil into a dumpster.
DISH BOY: WHAT THE FUCK YOU LOOKIN’ AT, FREAK?
Panel 2. A close up of Scum’s face. A pink tongue darts out from between his filthy lips.
SCUM: FOOD.
Panel 3. Two large and shifty men stand in front of the dumpster that Scum was looking at. One of the men hands the other a package.
MAN 1: HERE’S THE ANTHRAX, BROTHER.
Panel 3. They shake hands and smile. Scum’s eyes can be seen peeking out from inside the dumpster.
MAN 2: THANK YOU, BROTHER. HAIL ATLANTIS!
MAN 1: HAIL ATLANTIS!
Panel 4. Scum stands up in the dumpster, tearing meat from a bone with his teeth, watching the men leave the alley.
SCUM: ?
- I wrote this at the request of a small comic book company who I submitted a sample script to. It was for a 9/11 tribute comic. I never heard back from them again. - JL
PAGE ONE (six panels)
Panel 1. A rural European schoolhouse.
CAP: DENMARK. 1943. THE SMALL VILLAGE OF NORBY.
Panel 2. Jorgan, a young boy, around twelve years old, sits at his desk, looking out the window, his pencil and notebook lying untouched in front of him.
Panel 3. His teacher, a kind looking woman in her twenties, stands beside his desk. Jorgan wakes up from his reverie, looking surprised.
TEACHER: - JORGAN . . . -
Panel 4. Jorgan returns to work.
JORGAN: - SORRY, TEACHER. -
Panel 5. The teacher squats beside Jorgan’s desk.
TEACHER: - IS SOMETHING BOTHERING YOU? YOU HAVEN’T BEEN YOURSELF LATELY. -
Panel 6: Jorgan looks at his teacher. His face shows concern.
JORGAN: - ARE THE NAZIS . . . GOING TO HURT US? MY FATHER SAID THEY ARE UPSET ABOUT OUR NEWSPAPER . . .-
- This is a work of experimental writing done in the early-to-mid 90s. It previously appeared on some blogs and in Kenji Siratori’s anthology (debug): Primary Techno Noir.
one day chief njiri and his gang of alien criminals came to visit chief edem - they stayed several weeks and had wild parties every day - on the last day of the visit chief edem drank so much beer in the morning that by the early afternoon he had passed out -
it was on that afternoon that chief edem dreamt of a space ark flanked by smaller ships -
tonight she had that certain chic, she admitted to herself -
her honey blond hair swept upwards into a cluster of careless curls that rested on her head - her sleek black dress fitted her sweetly curved figure to perfection - the vault locks that orbited the earth were picked by star constellation hands -
“aha!” exclaimed the guyanese art critic. “the vibration and shaking of the bus made him see a triple image, but instead of reflecting back on one image once the bus had stopped, he kept on seeing three suns.”
they danced around the hole all night thrusting their fishbowls into it and shouting -
“then herbert, estimate! estimate it in round numbers and put it down!” -