These fables are self-contained excerpts from the picaresque hopepunk work, The Cook For Any Price: Across the Rimless Sea. Because the tales encompass a world of spectacular landscapes and forgotten ruins, teeming with vastly different and occasionally commingled cultures, religions,…
Author: Neal Ross Attinson
Neal Ross Attinson is one of those text-compulsives who feels naked without a keyboard, or at least a a pad and pen. He is unafraid of adverbs, loves astronomy and gastronomy with equally unabashed passion, and lives with/in an eclectic library in Sonoma, California.
ORL Interview: Robert Anton Wilson
(AS A FOLO TO THE previous post, and at the urging of sinister forces who would prefer I remain nameless, I now present a reprint from the bygone Bulletin of Obscure Research, Far Corner (v1n5, c. 1991): an interview with…
ORL History, or Where’s Mine?
LONGTIME READERS WILL PRICK THEIR pointed ears at the mention of “Obscure Research Labs.” If you’re not one of them, but especially if you are, please read on: Back around 1989 or so, I became involved with a group billing…
Letter To A Dead Friend
Dear Sputnik, The attached photo of you arrived from a mutual friend two days ago, on what should have been your 48th birthday. I say “should” because it’s a primate conceit that the world be arranged according to our convenience.…
The Brotherhood of the Dunk
YOU SEE THEM CASTING FURTIVE kitchenward gazes after a good dinner of roasted chicken or perhaps beef or lamb, excusing themselves with a piece of bread and trying not to run. Shortly afterward, stifled sighs waft back to the dining…
Rainy Day Equation
SEMI-FERAL CAT, PLUS FORCED CONFINEMENT, divided by ping-pong ball, equals nothing else.
Three Hard Things
Kicking a whale up a beach Braiding grape jelly Comforting the chronically afflicted. (1/22/09 P.S. to RW: who asked “Why would you kick a whale?” The only reason I can think of is that 1) he’s down, and 2) you’re…
Talmidei Torah Considered As The Great Motorcycle Dialectic
(sans apology to and/or connection with Messrs. Jarry et Ballard) THERE ARE THE HARLEY RIDERS. They would not dream of owning any transportation they couldn’t twiddle with or hack. Every knob, every switch, every gear is known and its connection…
Pithyism #4
NEVER YODEL NEXT TO A sleeping cat.
See, This Is Why I Love Jack Vance
IT’S NOT THAT HE RENDERS whole worlds so vividly and so succinctly, peopling vast and history-thick galaxies with one or two spare sentences. It’s not the cinematic sweep of his prose, which respects his readers’ visual imagination by meeting it…
Modern Manners, Economywise
IF THE PERSON AHEAD OF you in the checkout line is stocking up on Meow Mix, don’t ask about their cat.
Pithyism #2
THE REASON WE NEED each other is that life rarely contains enough different viewpoints to even begin understanding Life.