Things have changed here!
For regular readers of the blog, the first thing you'll notice is that I'm posting under my real name; after years of humming and hawing I have decided to put Muffy St. Bernard to rest, at least temporarily. There are a lot of reasons for this (and I've discussed many of them before) but the upshot is that I can redirect my energies: instead of spending time, energy, and money (not to mention razors) on doing drag, I can focus more on making music instead.
Hence the new title of the blog: "Lemurian Congress." Ten years of "UPhold" were enough, and the name change signifies a somewhat more polished direction. I've been collaborating with other musicians recently and we're doing some great stuff...stay tuned for samples.
Third: less New Yorker articles. For whatever reason I don't find myself reading the back issues at the moment. Hopefully my own original writing will be a suitable replacement.
I hope you'll stick around and that you'll find the blog as interesting and diverse as it always was. So welcome back!
15 comments:
Glad you're back! Was beginning to wonder whether anything drastic had happened...
BTW, I always liked the name "Muffy St. Bernard," even if, as I suspected, it was a pseudonym. It is exotic and elegant, so why not keep some bits of it around?
Good luck with the new music! I like the new blog name (and I have printed the Wikipedia entry on Lemuria for reading later).
P.S. How's the cat?
Well hello there, dear Adam. Nice to see you again. I'll never forget the first time I met Muffy at Club Abstract, but I am quite fond of good ol' Adam too. Welcome back indeed!
I am happy and excited that we'll be seeing more of your writing and less NYker articles. Not that they weren't...um...great...it's just that your writing is greater.
And congrats on the pursuit of your music. I think that's fantastic. Lemurs, huh? For a moment I thought they were those poor, misguided critters that jump off cliffs but then I realized they're those cool critters who leap around and have ringed tails. Hurrah!
I too am glad you've resurfaced. Your writing is consistently eclectic and interesting.
Thanks all! There's so much backlogged stuff that I barely know where to start...fortunately my schedule is freeing up so I'll be able to tackle the backlog very soon.
"Muffy St. Bernard" was a great pseudonym, and I might just take your advice, Gary...one of the collaborations I'm involved in is a band called "Pico & Alvarado." I'm Pico...maybe "Pico St. Bernard?"
Lemurs: Yes, they're the inspiration because they ARE cool critters! I like to think of them having a congress, and the link to the mythical continent of Lemuria is a nice added touch.
Muffet is amazing! I'll post more soon, believe me.
Glad to see you back, and good luck with the new music. Creepy Pedro made for a creepy cliffhanger!
You're right...I wouldn't want to have Creepy Pedro as my epitaph!
Aha... there you are - glad to have you back writing!
Now we have to get YOU back writing too! :)
Congratulations!
An unintended consequence of the retirement of Muffy St. Bernard is that your blog now passes through my employer's censorship algorithm, which means I can read you and get paid for it.
As you ponder things Lemurian, you may be amused by the Shaver Mystery, current in US SF circles in the 40's.
Sorry.
Shaver here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sharpe_Shaver
Shaver wrote of extremely advanced pre-historic races who had built cavern cities inside Earth before abandoning Earth for another planet due to damaging radiation from the Sun. Those ancients also abandoned some of their own offspring here, a minority of whom remained noble and human "Teros", while most degenerated over time into a population of mentally impaired sadists known as Deros—short for "detrimental robots." Shaver's "robots" were not mechanical constructs, but were robot-like due to their savage behavior.
These Deros still lived in the cave cities, according to Shaver, kidnapping surface-dwelling people by the thousands for meat or torture. With sophisticated "ray" machinery that the great ancient races had left behind, they spied on people and projected tormenting thoughts and voices into our minds (reminiscent of schizophrenia's "influencing machines" such as the Air loom). Deros could be blamed for nearly all misfortunes, from minor "accidental" injuries or illnesses to airplane crashes and catastrophic natural disasters. Women especially were singled out for brutal treatment, including rape, and Dash notes that "Sado-masochism was one of the prominent themes of Shaver's writings."[3] Though generally confined to their caves, Shaver claimed that the Deros sometimes traveled by spaceships or rockets, and had dealings with equally evil extraterrestrial beings. Shaver claimed first-hand knowledge of the Deros and their caves, insisting he had been their prisoner for several years.
If the impressive five-o-clock shadow visible in the photo with Muffet is any indication, you'll still need to raze from time to time. Unless there's a ZZ Top-like crop in your future? Can the pendulem swing that far?
Thanks for sticking with me, Tulkinghorn and David! I'd never thought that the old blog title might get it blocked in certain places.
What you're seeing in the Muffet picture is in fact a 24-hour shadow, shortly before the daily (if not twice-daily) shearing. Spare a thought for us gorillas who needed to not only ACHIEVE a convincing female face, but also MAINTAIN it for up to eight hours (if not more).
I've been writing... I just haven't been blogging. Until today!
It feels very weird venturing back onto the web. If anything I think I'm more self-conscious than before.
That's good news, Eli! I tried to post on your blog but I got this error:
Unable to load the following extension file: ext.akismet_check.php
Thanks for the heads-up! Seems to have been an obscure but easily fixed bug in the spam filter.
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