Thursday, July 07, 2005

From the LA Film Festival: The Lincoln Hunters

“The Lincoln Hunters” is a Japanese TV program (loosely based on the novel by Wilson Tucker) which had its American premiere this festival as a short film. Though the result suffers in continuity from its editing and is inaccurately dubbed, the Encouraging Voice of the Labyrinth recommends it strongly if it comes to your area, or out on DVD.

from THE LINCOLN HUNTERS: EPISODE 1: PREMISE.
By cloning Lincoln they thought we we all be beneficiaries of his wisdom, his compassion, his leadership
What went wrong?
Nothing went wrong. Lincoln is evil. Pure unadulterated evil!
Not all are sentient, most are just like this monster here, just empty evil top-hatted bisexual husks with the desire to kill and destroy. The others have varying degrees of intellect and awareness. Different configurations and powers.
Number 16
The 16th copy of the 16th President. As brilliant, charming and tall as the original. Pure Evil. Number 16 must be destroyed.
We think that Number 16 somehow engineered the whole accident. And World War V.
In the last days of the Civil War both sides were working on time machines. The Confederate time machine sought to reverse the Battle of Gettysburg. The Union Time Machine was designed to go deeper, to eliminate all black people.
As all humanity emerged from Africa, it is a good thing that the latter was stopped.
That’s what makes this Lincoln so dangerous. His Negrophobia has become a hatred of mankind. Fueled by his homophobia.
The early Civil War Era time machines were crude. They used static electricity and pieces of felt. They couldn’t send over heavy dense metals.
You had to go through naked?
Naked? No, you could wear a barrel.
They called us the Barrel Corps
Later, it turned out you could send heavy dense metals
The people running the machine think they’re pretty funny
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
They really got off on it.
We’re getting a distress signal from the recreational gynoid factory on Talos IV
You mean the fuckbot factory?
I’m really not comfortable with that term

Independence: Notes from a Party

“Smoking Malboro Lights and drinking Diet Coke; not really having any kind of experience, not willing to commit, not really doing anything.”

-You know what’s big this year? The indoor BBQ.
-Hey Ben, we’re having an indoor BBQ.
-You see, the trick is not acceding to his more original ideas
-Followed by the indoor fireworks.
-I seem you remember Arthur dodging for cover that last time you tried that.
-Yes, but we’re still friends aren’t we?

“I am so (lonely? horny? confused? bored?) I start hitting the copy of ELLE that is in the kitchen garbage can: Hey, sure I’d love to take your survey. You know Penelope Cruz? No way!”
“It’s a concept album. Only the concept is really sleazy.”
“What is it your fear? The dirt of other people? Of human sexuality?”
“That’s what our fucking President is going to say next State of the Union Address: There’s no pollution, there’s no evolution. Tom Cruise loves Katie Holmes. My wife’s cunt tastes great.”

1:21:33 AM

“Fourth of Fucking July”
“Fourth of Fucking Ju-Fucking- Ly”
“Fucking Forth of Fucking Ju-Fucking Ly”
“Wasn’t America better than any “homeland”; who lives in a “homeland”? A “homeland” is something that needs security. “America”: the country where we used to live.”
“Men and women live in different parts of the world. Which makes them tourists, travelers or homebodies.”
“How is sleeping with me different than any other of the dependent relationships you’ve snuck through your whole life long?”
“Because I got here on my good looks and possibly my cooking.”

“My deepest intuition is: you’re starting to write a story, you’re starting to live, which means, you’re starting to die, to really die, right on your feet like everyone else. Then it started happening and it made me a little worried, that when I had made a decision I would be filled with a kind of ecstasy. I felt free. I felt like I couldn’t lose, no matter what the outcome. When you watch the planes fly over LA through the old glass, they seem to swim like fish”

“Love stalks the hills. Beware. Cars snake by. The planes flying over LA swim through the bumps of the glass of these old windows. I had been sleeping outdoors lately. Don’t ask why. I’d been on the trail of something, something you might find useful. Or not. A cure, an antidote. I left camp early because the only kind of serum was truth serum and, in the contemporary world, truth has nearly been eradicated, so it’s not really a problem. I’m sorry I left this message. I shouldn’t have called.”

“I dreamed they gave your voice to a player piano. They knew you as an artist and a performer and they chose your voice. “
“An astronaut dying in his spacesuit takes ecstatic pictures of the sunset on the world he has crashed into. The trained scientist inside him knows that his brain is dying, and the smiles, tears and laughter he feels at each exposure are the product of toxins that cannot be removed, the stress of the crash, perhaps the knowledge of his certain death and of discovery. [Will they understand? ] he wonders. The shot of the sunset, yes, but his foot, his precious foot? This rock that reminds him of a cartoon. His heart is filled with love. The camera falls out of his hands. It is months later when the signals reach Earth; each image scrolls by slowly. Most weep because they already know the feed from his suit: they feel they are watching a man die. But his wife weeps because they are pretty pictures of things he liked.”

“I got fat over the Fourth of July weekend. It’s a really stressful holiday. There are all these loud noises. Stress makes you gain weight. There were burgers and beer n’ shit. DON’T STOP LOVING ME! DON’T STOP LOVING ME! DON’T STOP LOVING ME!”

“So you call this person on the phone because you’re sad and you don’t like being sad: you want sympathy and so you talk for awhile and then you feel better because this person really understands you they even love you and not for all the cool reasons you’d like to be loved (your cool hat, the clever things you say, the fact you’ve been working out) but for yourself. And they ask you to call them back later and you forget, of course and later, you’re not feeling bad and you’re surrounded by fun and friends, the very friends you don’t call when you are feeling bad because you don’t want to alienate them. Later on, the person that you forgot to call, calls you and they’re upset because you forgot to call them and they mention how you only seem to call them when you’re feeling bad, or lonely or drunk and you find yourself holding a phone. They say how wrong this is, that it’s even a little (or completely) exploitive. And you agree, of course, but you think to yourself: what is this, some sort of relationship? “

Quiz Answer: Fear the Englishman

In the Classical Pornographic Narrative, it is almost always the emergence of the prim, proper and aristocratic Englishman who signals a turn for the worse. In Reage’s“The Story of O” it is Sir Stephen, Rene’s brother who is to be dreaded; in Bataille’s “The Story of the Eye” is the fabulously rich and cruel Sir Edmond; in Gorey’s “The Curious Sofa” it is the owner of the curious sofa.
Something about the diffident and prim English Aristocrat seems to have filled French authors with dread, admiration and unmentionable feelings and much of the action that goes on in “The Story of O” was once best known as “The English Vice”.

The Encouraging Voice of the Labyrinth proudly salutes those brave enough to offer their answers. They will be allowed to read quietly, something soiled and dirty, while the rest of the class is forced into humiliating and suggestive exercises.

Please Stop Defaming the German People

I appeal to you, kind readers, in the spirit of internationalism, of humanity and tolerance -in the name of two World Wars -please, let us reconsider our troubled and hate-filled prejudice against the German people. All of the submitted answers to our little quiz universally singled out the Teutons as a race of erotic dread for the darkest of reasons. I know, I know we’ve all seen the video and asked ourselves: “that seems like a perfectly nice young girl -holy crap! Don’t the German people have bathrooms?” And yet we must move beyond this, like Reagan at Bitburg, or reporting before the Tower Comission. It is not the Germans we must fear in the bedroom or dungeon in the CLASSICAL pornographic narrative, but the perfidious Albion.