The Many Storeys of the House of Leaves

Okay, so here’s something I wrote when I was a student. It’ll only make sense if you’re already familiar with House of Leaves, and if you have read it, I shouldn’t need to explain what I tried to do with this one.

But I will anyway. This is the original disclaimer I attached to it:

I have done some things in this assignment in an attempt to emulate House of Leaves – the word house appears in blue, some footnotes don’t exist. Furthermore the essay itself is written in a pseudo-Zampanò style; pretentiously grand and with the use of uncommon and untranslated (at least by the essay-writer) foreign phrases. It is as fervently impressed with House of Leaves as Zampanò is with The Navidson Record, and similarly dismissive of the opinions of quoted others. The ‘aside’ footnotes are a response to this style in the same way Johnny Truant responds to House of Leaves in the footnotes. There are intentional typographical errors in both. A third ‘voice’ is present in the form of ‘editors’ who make useful notes and corrections on the piece à la House of Leaves. These three are distinguished using different fonts as in the original. It is essentially part-essay, and part-creative piece.

Now, in its online form all the fancy-schmancy colouration and font abuse (not to mention the simplicity of reading the footnotes) is totally erased. So I urge you to view the PDF, which keeps all the original formatting, and gives a much clearer impression of what I was trying to do. The PDF also contains the bibliography, which is very important but too long to bother with here. So hit the jump to read the dodgy version, or download the PDF and make me happy.

Melancholy Music for Rainy Days

I make playlists for myself all the time, and today I was trying to think up ways I could get the RIAA on my back. Uploading one of them to this site seemed not only like a good way to achieve that, but a good idea for a recurring feature too.

art by Rob Gonsalves

I suppose some people might describe this compilation as depressing, but I prefer to think of melancholia as being more sophisticated than that. It’s okay to get in touch with your quiet side every now and again, and a lazy rainy day provides a nice backdrop for it. Tracklisting and details after the jump.

Curb Your Enthusiasm? I think I have

After I watched the finale to the seventh series of Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which Larry David writes and produces a Seinfeld reunion show, I found myself writing some kind of attempt to digest it. It turns out I may have been purging a poison from within me.

Around this fucking block again

Another blog, more words. And who cares? Who’s reading this shit?

Well, I said that last time. It was ‘practice’ for my degree course, which involved writing. And I shared the link with some friends, and we all had good times blogging and commenting on each others blogs, because that’s the way the internet was in 2006. And now it’s all about twitter, which I’ve resisted forever because it seemed so utterly self-indulgent, but I caved anyway because it doesn’t matter. It’s all coincidental.

But now my old blog is top of the Google rankings for revealing search terms such as ‘Sandoz acid’ and ‘upbrixle’ and other things I don’t care to mention. It’s embarassing, more than anything. But I have a job now – writing for video games, somehow – and so I don’t have to be coy anymore. I can write for me, and it will be here, and no doubt in 2012 my inane rants about varying levels of solipsistic gibberish will be high on Google too. It’s not because I’m particularly good, it’s just probably because the system is still broken.

So if you’re in the audience this time, understand: This is all for me.

Ho ho! Then why is it public? What a jip. I’m full of shit – but that’s probably why I’m on the internet.