William Gibson's Blog, page 14

ALWAYS SOMETHING UNDER THE BED

[Guest-blogged by Jack Womack:]


They don't have to be Commies, of course. Early on they were Illuminati, Freemasons, the wave of immigrants in the 1840s, the Copperheads, the Carpetbaggers, the Papists, the Romanists, the tramps, the Eastern Bankers, the Jews, the African-Americans, the students; since then they've been Arabs, the French, and Democrats.

Would-be Rwandan disk jockeys are always very happy to tell you who should be added to the hit list. Update most of the faces depicted on this co

CO-DEPENDENTS

[Guest-blogged by Jack Womack:]


Growing up, we all heard on a daily basis that the Soviets were forever on the verge of overwhelming us with masterful strategy, superior technology, and brute force. Luckily, as we finally discovered, the Soviets were in fact most preoccupied with making it to the next drink.


As luckily, this message of our impending doom via our precious fluids was passed from one American generation to the next through calm, reasonable discourse.[image error]

WHEN I SAID I WANTED A MASH-UP...

I didn't mean I wanted to be mashed up with that guy. Ick. Burroughsian foulness of the first water. (Burroughs believed the tape recorder to be "God's little toy", and a potent fulcrum of magic. Best be careful what you mash together.) But props to poster Bravus for stepping up.

I now suspect that there's some deep fractal essence in play, with that material. Probably fundamentally impossible to rock it. And perhaps just as well.[image error]

THE GONE WORLD

[Guest-blogged by Jack Womack:]

Hello from Hicksville on the Hudson. A brief nostalgia break, prompted by memories of pre-Regooded NYC.


P & G Bar, Amsterdam & 73rd, opened 1939, closed at this location in February 2009.


The Meatpacking District (MePa[TM:] at present) was called the Meatpacking District for a reason, after all. This from 2007, now I believe a store for echt-German eyeglass frames.


When I was six, Lexington's local amusement park, Joyland, closed; a subdivision was built there and a st

LOVE THAT E-METER MERIT BADGE

And the enema book was actually discovered, I recall, on one of those gomi-spread sidewalk blankets that were such a common feature of the pre-Regooded city. The sort of find that makes all things seem possible, at least to the stroll-by bibliophile. And many, certainly, were, New York having been in those days seemingly not a part of the United States but something simultaneously autonomous and interstitially abandoned.

When I first visited New York as an adult (so to speak) at the start of my

"YOU FLEW THE GULLFIRE OVER LENINGRAD"

[Guest-blogged by Jack Womack:]



Two-page spread in the Intourist Guide to Moscow, 1937.[image error]

FERAL FEMMES

[Guest-blogged by Jack Womack:]



All people herebound be evilsouled heartside, no ho they sweet talk.



I be running streetwild come nightside and nobody safes when I ride. I bite.



I'm with the D-cons now.[image error]