tags: Unreal City
1997
November
- 1997 Nov 10
- Running Down on Rails
When the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around.
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2001
July
- 2001 Jul 13
- City of Angels
An excursus on American cities.
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2002
January
- 2002 Jan 10
- It Wasn't That the World Changed…
More thoughts about Dhalgren and the nature of synchronicity.
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December
- 2002 Dec 8
- Vector Tracings
I remember white outlines on a black background, kind of like a blueprint being drawn before my eyes. I don't know. Like a concept diagram. There was a road, or a railway. I know: as if reality were being generated as I cast my eyes upon it. More concretely, like a primitive 3D shooter (like Doom, or Counterstrike) whose graphics engine relied only on vector tracings, and which could not keep up with realtime. I suppose, if I really knew what I was doing, I would try to approximate it with a Flash animation, but such as it is.
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2003
May
- 2003 May 16
- The Matrix Reloaded — Unreal City (SPOILERS!)
The Prophecy shall be fulfilled. Every city is a manifestation of Unreal City—Babylon, Rome, London, New York, Chicago, L.A., everywhere and nowhere.
· Read more… - 2003 May 17
- Curiouser and Curiouser
I am Alice in fucking Wonderland right now. It’s only a matter of time until the shit hits the fan and the Jabberwock comes chomping on my ass.
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August
- 2003 Aug 23
- to all the girls i've loved before
OK, I admit it. I’m a Julio Iglesias fan. Somehow, a few of his songs have gotten attached to some of my recurring dreams. And somehow Unreal City—this bizarre amalgam of L.A., Chicago, and NYC—keeps popping up in my dreams, too.
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September
- 2003 Sep 7
- the man in the high castle
What if the Axis won?
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2005
September
- 2005 Sep 23
- chi-town revisited
so to be honest, I decided to come out here because of a girl. now M can't say I've never come out to visit.
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2006
May
- 2006 May 16
- drive-by blogging: trains in literary naturalism and in weird fiction
Odd that parts of The Octopus by Frank Norris (sighted on makeweight) makes me think immediately of The Iron Council by China Miéville, although I suppose this is not surprising considering Miéville’s political sympathies and literary background.
· Read more… - 2006 May 26
- may, might, shoulda, coulda
I think I probably wrote this somewhere else before, but I always find the month of May filled with possibilities. I have always identified it with the end of the academic year, with graduations, with confirmations, with Pentecost. The point of transition, the time when the old order slows down, and the hint of new beginnings tantalizes.
· Read more… - 2006 May 27
- radiohead saved my life
I am currently watching Showtime where they have Radiohead in concert (2004), and I am amazed at how the first few chords and guitar strums of their songs can evoke such vivid memories and even bring a smile to my face.
· Read more… - 2006 May 28
- the undercity
Watching “Batman Begins” I am reminded of what struck me first about Chicago in 1998 (never knowing that I was actually end up there for a substantial portion of my life. Also interesting that they chose Chicago instead of NYC for their depiction of Gotham.) It’s the lower level of the city, reserved for truck shipments and serving as a quasi-expressway leading into the Loop. For the longest time, it was a haunted appearing place, since the intersection of Lower Wacker Dr and Lower Michigan Ave had been dismantled, in the process of retrofit. It reminded of the section of Midgar (from Final Fantasy VII) which lay completely underneath the “Plate,” which is the upscale downtown district overlying the slums.
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July
- 2006 Jul 12
- saving the imaginary world
There is a city I dream of repeatedly that I believe is supposed to be somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, either in the U.S. or in Canada. The first time I dreamt about it, I thought that it was Seattle, although most of its features don’t at all correspond to what little I know of Seattle, and it doesn’t match with Vancouver either. The dream I had last night seemed to associate it with Calgary, but this is clearly wrong since it is not on the ocean, nor is it near any other bodies of water.
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2007
July
- 2007 Jul 1
- future megalopolises
Or megalopoleis for the pendantic.
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August
October
- 2007 Oct 22
- world on fire
In Southern California, autumn does not bring the changing of the leaves, nor the bluster of the cold. Rather, it brings fire and ash, as the Santa Ana winds dry out all the brush, leaving behind powder-keg conditions. All it takes is a stray spark, or the mindless malice of an arsonist, and literally all hell breaks loose.
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November
- 2007 Nov 3
- the under city
On the way home, I took a different route today. I absentmindedly stayed in the right-hand lanes on the Santa Ana Fwy. going north, and ended up getting shunted onto the Santa Monica Fwy. heading west.
· Read more… - 2007 Nov 25
- grains of sand in an hourglass
Come December, and the end of the year is nigh
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and though the air is dry and warm
the sky glimmers, shimmers with cloudy gray
and the waning sunlight casts long shadows
upon the cold blue sea
2009
February
- 2009 Feb 19
- the geography of los angeles
Now, I haven't actually lived in L.A. since 1999, but I go there as often as twice-a-month to visit my parents and my sibs. In the time I've been elsewhere, certainly a lot has happened. When I left for college, Echo Park and Silver Lake were still kind of sketchy areas (Echo Park is, after all, part of the demesne of the infamous Rampart Division that had its infamous special anti-gang unit) and I felt like a lot of Angelenos had no idea that Eagle Rock was in the state of California, much less part of L.A. But as R can attest, the hipster population in Echo Park and Silver Lake have certainly increased, and I continue to be astounded at how much Colorado Blvd. and Eagle Rock Blvd. have gentrified. I knew it was a beginning of a new era when a Starbucks finally opened on the corner of those aforementioned streets.
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June
2010
July
- 2010 Jul 21
- unspooling ariadne's golden thread
So "Inception" totally blew my mind. A lot of thoughts have been streaming through my head since, and the synchronicity of some of these thoughts have been kind of unnerving.
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