Pat Perrin's Blog, page 11
November 5, 2013
Which Came First — The Tool or Its Name?
Here’s some news that amazed me recently, and also got me to asking myself a lot of troublesome questions. Working gears have been discovered in an insect. Scientific American’s video of these gears in action is pretty breathtaking to watch. The story broke just a couple of months ago … The juvenile Issus—a plant-hopping insect found in […]
September 2, 2013
Invasions of Privacy … the Kind We Like
A couple of posts ago, I mentioned the allegedly late Timothy Leary’s disdain for privacy—“the evil of monotheism,” he called it. Personally, I’m as alarmed as anyone else about threats to personal privacy from both government and corporations. But some invasions of privacy seem downright benign—or at least they do to me. For example, Pat […]
August 27, 2013
When a Hoax Really Meant Something …
Fake news stories are all the rage these days. And yes, they can be hard to distinguish from real news. I have friends who were taken in by a recent story reporting that Arizona was implementing a gay-to-straight conversion program in its public schools. I wasn’t fooled by that one, but I have been hoodwinked by […]
August 6, 2013
Timothy Leary in Cyberland
I think about Timothy Leary a lot these days. He is widely believed to have died on May 31,1996. If so, it’s really too bad. A pioneering technopagan and an elder statesman of Cyberpunk, he would love our time. Google, Twitter, Facebook, and all the rest of our digital paraphernalia—Leary would revel in it. What Douglas Rushkoff […]
August 2, 2013
Metaphor and Tom Robbins
In yesterday’s post, we announced the publication of Jamais Vu Views, the long-awaited companion to our underground classic The Jamais Vu Papers. It is available in paperback and Kindle. Both books include jamais inter-views with real people participating in a fictional story. Our first-ever inter-view was with author Tom Robbins in 1987. At the time, we were fascinated by the role of metaphor […]
August 1, 2013
Jamais Vu Views
It’s finally out in both paperback and Kindle—Jamais Vu Views, the companion to our underground classic The Jamais Vu Papers. Some of you have been waiting for this book for two decades or more. Others of you have no idea what we’re talking about. So let’s go back to Los Angeles in 1987, for the […]
July 4, 2013
NOT Signed on July 4, 1776!
Way back in 1997, I compiled, edited, and introduced a small collection of source materials about the Declaration of Independence. It was fascinating to explore the Story of that great document! Here is the epilogue I wrote for the book: What really happened during those first four fateful days of July, 1776? As the previous pages […]
May 28, 2013
The Lullaby Tree — in paperback
My last post announced that my new play, The Lullaby Tree, was available in Kindle. Now it’s out in paperback as well. I hope you’ll have a look at it. As I mentioned before, it’s aimed more at readers than theatrical audiences—a “closet drama,” as it were. —Wim Today I’m sharing Aesop’s not-so-famous Third Act Soliloquy … […]
May 14, 2013
The Lullaby Tree
My new play, The Lullaby Tree, is now available on Kindle. It is inspired by the shortest verse in the King James Bible: Jesus wept. —John 11:35 Here’s a bit of PR copy: The Lullaby Tree is the first play in Wim Coleman’s forthcoming “Aesopeia” cycle about the life of the fabled fabulist Aesop. A no-holds-barred […]
April 21, 2013
Small Talk in the Worlds of WEIRD and un-WEIRD
“Save oxygen: stamp out small talk.” Thus Spake Aforista I seldom agree wholeheartedly with the Postfuturist Sage Aforista, but I’m right on board with this saying. Whenever small talk starts, Pat and I both glaze over and remain in a quasi-catatonic state until the conversation returns to something real. As someone who loves language and [...]
