Paraphilia Magazine Issue 2

Just a quick note:

Paraphilia Magazine has just hit the stands. Haven't had a chance to read it yet but to judge from a quick skim, it looks great. Please go to www.paraphiliamagazine.com for a pdf copy.

Don't be a chump, it's free!

Bathrooms are ...

"Bathrooms are for fucking, shitting and fighting, in that order."


First line of an abandoned pulp/parody I was writing years ago. Who knows? It may see the light of day yet ...

Re: my previous blog post -

“If we don’t read the books with which we carefully line our apartments, then we’re no better than our dogs and cats.”

Terrence McKenna attributes this to William James in his talk “Surfing Finnegan’s Wake”. (Although, I couldn’t find any other attribution for this.) That said, the quote does embody a wonderful Victorian attitude, doesn’t it.

My Personal Reading Challenge; or My own Fire Sale (literally)

I have a new goal: To read my entire book collection before my 50th birthday or the whole lot goes up in flames. That’s right, burn the whole collection if I don’t get off my ass and finally read these things that have been hanging around my place, in some cases for 25 years. I’m addicted to my books. I collect them, I don’t read them. So I decided to give myself some serious motivation.

I have nine years. This should be plenty of time. I’ve done some rough calculations and I have approximately 350 books left to read. Which works out to about 38 books per year. Say one a week, give or take. Some I should be able to blaze through, like Jim Thompson, Chester Himes, and R. Crumb. Unfortunately, I have the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason and a bunch of William Vollmann, which will make it difficult to keep on schedule. Not to mention family and work and etc. and the fact that I continue to buy books. But I think I can adjust for all this.

Right now I’m reading the Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano with Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole and Information Bomb by Paul Virilio on deck. So let’s get this challenge underway. Well, maybe later. I’ve got lots of time.

Some books I've bought lately

No commentary. Just the list. See next blog posting as to why this is now an "issue".

Time for Revolution – Antonio Negri
Information Bomb – Paul Virilio
Galactic Pot Healer – Philip K. Dick
Lies, Inc – Philip K. Dick
Dictionary of the Esoteric - Neville Drury
Doc Savage Brand Of The Werewolf &
Fear Cay (Nostalgic Ventures edition)
Doc Savage The Red Spider (Nostalgic Ventures edition)
Her Magesties Secret Service – Ian Fleming
Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz
Radio Free Albemuth – Philip K. Dick
The Grifters – Jim Thompson
Poor People – William Vollmann
Celebration – Harry Crews
Scar Tissue – Harry Crews
Feast of Snakes – Harry Crews
Key of Solomon the King
In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities – Jean Baudrillard
Complete Richard Allen Vol 1 – Richard Allen

Remembrance of Pranks Past

With April 1 just past, I became sentimental about some past pranks. A grade school favorite was to pour ground black pepper into my hand, tempt somebody to come closer to me, then throw the pepper into their face. Pure comedy gold.

Eventually, another opportunity came with the Vancouver Opera Society. They had an ad campaign for their production of Don Giovanni where the poster art of Don looked exactly like porn legend Ron Jeremy. My friend, Jerry, crafted a beautiful letter criticizing the VOS’s decision to actually cast Mr. Jeremy as Don in the production. This letter was mailed off to the VOS, newspapers, opera magazines, international opera houses and a local music store that was a supporter of the VOS. We wanted other defenders of culture to denounce this travesty of high art being tainted with the stench of porn. A class action suit was also hinted at. We received a few bewildered responses and a great correspondence with the owner of the local music store who got the joke. However, we could have pushed this one and didn’t. This was my first real prank on an outside target, so it suffered a bit from lack of experience and faulty execution.

Oddly enough, my most successful prank happened at work. I individually shrink wrapped everything on a coworker’s desk while she was on vacation. The response was great – a big yell of surprise when she realized what had happened, with coworkers crowding around the desk with astonished looks and giving their own theories of what happened. I walked past her desk to use the fax machine, poked my head through the crowd and said “Wow, that’s odd. Anybody see a fax for me?” before heading back to my desk. The IT guy had replaced the wallpaper on her computer with a picture of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence from Bad Boys as a calling card. When she saw the picture, the IT guy was blamed and I kicked up my feet to enjoy the festivities.

A funny aside, I shrink wrapped everything in plain view of others in the office, nodding and chitchatting to coworkers as I stood at her desk. However, at the reveal, these same coworkers were genuinely surprised and concluded that it was someone who worked the weekend shift (the prank came to a head on a Monday). The IT guy worked on the weekend (plus the new wallpaper) so all fingers pointed to him. He was cool with it as he achieved some notoriety.

Now, there is one I’ve been itching to do, but circumstances might make it too risky (I mean kinda dangerous!) at the moment. More later.