zondag 7 december 2008

Locus cumulonimbus

How far does the cry go?


Hoffa, does the car go?


A fur d'escargots?






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The litterary technique of using alliterated sentences throughout the text, often used by Bob Wilson and occasonally by Thomas Pynchon, was first theorized upon by proto-dada (and patacessor extraordinaire) Raymond Roussel in his small text "Comment j'ai écrit certains de mes livres" ("How I came to write some of my books").
In there the solitary excentric millionaire clarifies some of his compositional techniques. Phonetic mutation was one of them: the first, inocuous, phrase got mutated into another, with the some sounds but a different meaning, appearing as the last sentence, and the novel wrote itself between them. Roussel was a main influence on surrealism. All of his texts use the same homophonic constraint; in his biography of Roussel, François Caradec compares them to the snake that bites its own tail. The French writer's collective OuLiPo adapted this technique ("Homophonies approximatives"), adding the constraint of extra phrases in the body of the text.

How far does the cry go?


The visible landscapes of a tempest, showing only the lightning, have been the subject of examination using stratospherical cameras. New bodies of light have been discovered above the clouds. One of them was named a "Red Sprite", a 40 km high and broad jellyfish of electrical discharge with a red head and blue tentacles, hovering above some cumulonimbi during lightning.

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Large and short-lived, they might be the result of a shortcut between the ionosphere and the earth surface, probably happening during a so-called 'streamer', the event just before a lightning where the earth surface acts as a cathode, attracting electrodes from the surrounding gas molecules, an upwards cahin reaction of chaotic ionization until a bridge is formed with the clouds, acting as an anode, and lightning flashes down the prepared canal.
Then you'd have the gigantic "Elves", a halo appearing at a height of 90km lasting only microseconds, growing at the speed of light, probably an effect of the electromagnetic pulse caused by the lightning underneath. Finally, the "Blue Jets", first discovered by Nasa, cones of blue light towering above a tempest climbing to a height of 40 km at 100km per second, their blue colour a result of the ionization of the surrounding nitrogen molecules. Fairly recently a team of Taiwanese meteorologists discovered "Gigantic jets", a 30.000 cubic km. carrot with a half a second lifetime.

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In 1940 Nicola Tesla was precisely experimenting with lightning in Colorado Springs. His life-long goal had been to make wireless transport of energy possible. Already a prototype car had been produced for the excentric inventor, for which the energy source was produced by a huge coal-based factory. A fair amount of work and energy for such small results, and the factory had to remain active day and night to keep the engine running during Tesla's many travels.

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The start of World War 2 had at first a devastating result on the energy industry, unable to keep up with the demands of the growing weapons industry. Through the amendation of the Neutrality Act, Cash and Carry purchases had been enabled with the allied forces. One day the entire country was immobilized, since no fuel was available for transport. The transport business was on the verge of collapse. A general strike was the result; Tesla's factory stood in the spotlights as the workers were only rewarded a measle fee. Young Jimmy Hoffa, not yet the leader of the Teamsters back then but a rising star nonetheless, gave several enthrilling speeches, one of them symbolically at the Colorado Springs factory. After a standing ovation, he wanted to leave for his next appointment, but his car was out of gas.

Tesla, fulminating from the crowd, sneered the historical words:


Hoffa, does the car go?


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Hoffa obviously wasn't pleased. He vehemently insulted Tesla, comparing him to various body parts, and left on foot.

He walked and walked and walked and walked, and suddenly little Jimmy stood at the edge of a wonderful magickal forest. All was soft and woolly in there: he saw woolly trees, woolly birds, woolly rocks, yes even the grass was furry. Little Jimmy jumped up and down, exhilarated by the sight. Suddenly he stopped: at his feet in the furry grass, he saw small snails, naked and shivering. Little Jimmy took one of the little snails softly in his hand and asked "What happened to you, little snail? Everything here is woolly, but you are naked as a hooker's butt at 4 in the morning". Softly, the snail explained to him how an evil witch named Meret Oppenheim had entered the wood and had stolen their fur to create strange and apostatic art objects. Jimmy put down the snail and left the wood, flabbergasted. Suddenly he giggled and said to himself:


"A fur d'escargots??????"






In 1925, Raymond Roussel decided to travel through Europe in his customized Rolls. In there he had a salon with a double bed, a bathtub, his office, a bar and a kitchen.

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Derisanamcope, November the 13th

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