THE FUTURE NEXT WEEK: or LOLLARDS IN SPACE

Lollards is winding down — last show tonight! — but dry yr eyes and defuzz yr lesser thoracic palps bcz we have EXCITING NEWS for our LOYAL LISTENERS, viz 1 x new eight-week series on Resonance FM 104.4 starting next Tuesday, 1 April 10-11pm.

DARE YOU MISS IT?

A Bite of Stars, a Slug of Time, and Thou will delve deep into the science fiction short stories of SF’s Golden and Silver Ages. The pulp and avant-garde writing of c.1935-65 has fallen out of public memory; hosts ELISHA SESSIONS and MARK SINKER and their astounding guests* will return to this forgotten motherlode, once bedrock of the entire field. Eli will read evocative extracts, then quiz Mark and guest on authors, styles, subtexts sexual and political, technique, value, impact and legacy, plus changing fashions and meanings in backdrop, tech and alien allure — and anything else that pops into their pulsating crystalline brain-lobes.

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS! hurrah so we will announce the story in advance, and you can read it if you like.

Episode one:
Extracts from John W. Campbell’s 1938 classic novella WHO GOES THERE?
Guest = “Starry” Sarah Clarke, Hegemon Ambassadrix of the Nebuline Dark-Matter Cluster J-Pop 9

Update:
Sluggards are go! You can hear Episode 1 now, or keep up to date with all the episodes on the Slug of Time page.

*viz Fellow Lollards and more: fans, experts, creators, backroom boffins, visitors and elder beings overground AND underground, squamous AND unnameable…

QUIZ: kidlit is a genre dead as dead can be!

Alicia in Terra Mirabili
Aliciae Per Speculum Transitus (Quaeque Ibi Invenit)
Cattus Petasatus
Ferdinandus Taurus
Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis
Ieremia Piscatore
Maria Poppina
Pinoculus
Quomodo Invidiosulus Nomine Grinchus Christi Natalem Abrogaverit
Virent Ova! Viret Perna!!
Regulus
Tela Charlottae
Walter Canis Inflatus
Winnie Ille Pu

(there are 31 titles listed on amazon in this subsection: i left out all the asterixes as they don’t count) (most of the above are fairly easily guessable — one requires actual real latin vocab and a bit of gumption)

mah jongg attacks!

belatedly reviewing lust, caution, the element i most woke up to was probably the mah jongg, a game my family played a little when i was a teen — we had a very strange set made not of ivory-bamboo or fake plastic equivalent but some curious crumbly black brick composite

as a game it has several evocative elements: problem being their evocativeness is often add-on orientalism introduced into the western version of the game; chinese mah jongg (as we saw in the film) is a fast-played social gambling game; i imagine ang lee had layered in certain plot/atmosphere/subtext elements which will have been lost on all non-players (not that i spotted any) (not that i really consider myself a player, tho i do sorta kinda remember the rules) … read on …

the meme that cannot die

while huntin the net for info on who wrote or drew BLACK MAX i found this link, to a page detailing the first issue ever on LION comic (23 feb 1952), some 20 years before i was a reader — it lists the contents, as follows:

Outlaw Of Space (with Captain Condor)
Sandy Dean’s First Term
Lone Commandos
Brett Barlowe, Detective
Jungle Robot
Rod of the Trading Post
Big Hank, The Soft-Hearted Heavyweight
Jingo Jones And His Invisibiliser
The Lion Birthday Club Page
World-wide Quiz
Sports that roused the Romans
What happens when you dial 999
Inventors are the boys for brainwaves

pancake fillings OF THE FUTURE

a scientific report

the project: to road-test some of the fillings people have (incomprehensibly) not yet adopted

the fillings of the future:
i: mushrooms fried in pumpkin seed butter, with garlic oil and red wine
ii: fried bacon and date syrop
iii: chopped avocado and marmite
iv: spinach and ginger syrop
v: ham and gentleman’s relish
vi: brie and japanese plum sauce
vii: grated carrot and cinnamon … read on …

you can’t have grated parmesan w/o GRATE

YOU WILL NEED
3-4 fennel bulbs
2oz butter ( = quarter of a butter)
1 x cup double cream (use the whole cup-sized carton)
6 oz parmesan (this is abt 3/4 of the slice you generally get)
Pork loin chops

THEN DO THIS
a: grate the parmesan
b: meanwhile heat oven to gas mark 6-ish, 350°F, 175°C
c: slice the fennel (top and tail, then quarter vertically)
d: place fennel in large oven-proof dish, dot with butter, float in cream, smother in parmesan (but keep abt 1/3 back for later), grind fresh pepper on top — ideally it should all be packed in there … read on …

unholy substitutes for muzak: #1&2 (my local) pret and (my local) somerfield

ok my local pret — the one in angel — generally plays reasonably demanding jazz (ie hard bop mostly not “smooth”): this seems to me quite a daring move, given that (surely?) more ppl willingly dislike jazz than like it? (at least to me hard bop always seems like a music most people don’t listen to in a background-y don’t-mind-either-way kind of a way?)

as for somerfield: before xmas i found i was strangely heartened that they were playing “best of elton john” (the “future of rock’n'roll” ©j.lennon c.1970?) on endless loop — i don’t know why i wz pleased, it just suited my mood always to be surprised at this… however today it was “once in an lifetime” from tolkien and his headzes’ remains and lights LP, which surely means simon reynolds’s work is done here!

(on our) back back BACK

[naughtyclanger.jpg] Tonight’s Freaky Trigger And The Lollards Of Pop gets Down and Dirrrty with international pop: should we be scared of what we don’t understand? (We share our experiences so you don’t have to.) Plus what else scares us: the irrationality and roots of fear — what is the REAL fantastickal menace? And once we’ve found it, how — in today’s hyper-messy hyper-smuttified society which shows every sign of worsening — shall we keep ourselves safe and clean? Chips, tips, sex by dicethrow and and a SCARY SPECTRAL GUEST (maybe), all in our Junket of muck!

It’s at 7PM, on Resonance 104.4 FM if you’re in the South Bank area and at www.resonancefm.com if you’re not - broadcast over the internet and then podcast afterwards on www.freakytrigger.co.uk. Junk Bondsminx is Sarah Clarke, Hi-Tech Jinxmonkey is Eli Sessions, the Massed Menks of Vulgar Panic are Magnus Anderson, Tom Ewing, Kat Stevens.

And (below the cut) is that special plea once more from Ed Baxter, programming director of Resonance FM. If you like Lollards (or indeed anything else on Resonance), act accordingly! … read on …

paper versus rock: marianne dreams at the almeida

as her xmas present, doctrah becky took the younger of her two little godsons (he’s seven) to this dramatisation of catherine storr’s puffin-club children’s classic, a book she and i grew up on — and i got to tag along (i’m 47): marianne, 10 and very ill, discovers that when she draws with a particular pencil she can visit what she’s drawn in her dreams; as her illness progresses, she learns to take responsibility for her powers in this very particular dreamworld, and to help the — rather difficult — person she has inadvertently trapped there and made life grim for… that’s a relatively unspoiler-y version of the story, which is intensely atmospheric, complete with awesomely sinister watcher-monsters, a very non-cute problem to solve, an adventure which can — very realistically within its dream-context — be undertaken by the children it features, and a lot of cheerfully inventive wit about the sometimes tricky relationship between what you drew and what you intended to draw…

The outing got exactly the right result, since smaller godson chattered very earnestly about it all the way home (including clearing up an important plot point which bears on intra-sibling jealousy, a big issue in his relationship with his older brother*), and then declared to his mum and dad on arrival home: “i think [very long pause to choose words exactly] that it was the GREATEST CHRISTMAS PRESENT EVER!” [in what follows there BE spoilers, subtext spoilers especially, though i'm keeping narrative ones to a minimum] … read on …

did you think i would leave you crying, when there’s room on my toast ect ect

so last night i discovered two inter-linked and utterly heartwarming cookery FACTS

one is that in cookery, if angels are played by OYSTERS then devils are played by PRUNES!

two is that in these recipes, for every horse (= small piece of toast) there are TWO RIDERS! bless!!