grobbo posted:

It was both pretty inept and fundamentally light-hearted, but I just watched Velvet Buzzsaw and I was struck by how it probably had the most Ligotti-ish premise I've seen in mainstream cinema or TV.

('The Bungalow Tapes' for the macabre outsider art that reveals a hypnotic, horrific truth, or any story where a bunch of affected, competitive artists are destroyed by their exposure to something genuinely visionary and awful)

Am I missing anything else, that one unmade episode of the X-Files aside?

Relevant Tangent posted:

every story that references the King In Yellow is what you're looking for

It's a good collection of short stories but the title story is not as good as some of the pastiches of it.

pikachode posted:

teatro is pretty sexless and i was starting to think ligotti might not be a sex weird, but to my great relief his earlier stories often have a Girl in them and he is absolutely a sex weird

e: also his dad's name is "gasper"

chernobyl kinsman posted:

this convo made me go re-read most of teatro and i forgot how funny ligotti can be in his thoroughly broken, unbelievably depressed way. like the clown puppet is hysterical

quote:

Since Mr Vizniak’s shop was located on an obscure backstreet, the neighborhood outside was profoundly inactive during the later hours of the night. And since most of the streetlamps in the neighborhood were either broken or defective in some way, the only thing I could see through the small front window of the shop was the neon lettering in the window of the meat store directly across the street. These pale neon letters remained lit throughout the night in the window of the meat store, spelling out three words: beef, pork, goat.Sometimes I would stare at these words and contemplate them until my head became so full of meat nonsense, of beef and pork and goat nonsense, that I had to turn away and find something to occupy myself in the back room of the medicine shop, where there were no windows and thus no possibility of meat-store visions. But once I was in the back room I would become preoccupied with all the medicines which were stored there, all the bottles and jars and boxes upon boxes stacked from floor to ceiling in an extremely cramped area. I had learned quite a bit about these medicines from Mr Vizniak, although I did not have a license to prepare and dispense them to customers without his supervision. I knew which medicines could be used to most easily cause death in someone who had ingested them in the proper amount and proper manner. Thus, whenever I went into the back room to relieve my mind from the meat nonsense brought on by excessive contemplation of the beef-pork-and-goat store, I almost immediately became preoccupied with fatal medicines; in other words, I would then become obsessed with death nonsense, which is one of the worst and most outrageous forms of all nonsense.

quote:

Are you watching? Have you been here? Is this the room that you remember? Where we laughed and gassed and flirted? Where we've been for all these years? poo poo. Motherfucker. Your children are already getting old. Your skin as thick as clay mud. Let's go. Let's have a chicken sandwich. Eat while you can, is what I'm saying. Chew the rubble. Suck the fat. Is that your Timmy on the floor beside you? His small eyes wide and full of curse? He's going to die. Your little Timmy. He's going to perish of something dumb. The Book says all first babies busted. You will watch your young boy die. Feed him antiseptic, vitamins and chicken soup. Kiss him on the face. By month's end he will be zero. His ghoul will clog your pretty home. Evenings of screech, of squawk, and rattle. Prepare yourselves. Turn the TV loud. Hide the windows. Clench the gun. Every home will fill thick with the souls of those it once covered over. The walls will move in smaller. The ceilings will come down. You've had all these years to pay attention. You've had time for spinach salads and Sunday football and summer beer. You've prayed for air conditioning. You've fixed your eyes to the small screen. Bastard. Bitch poo poo dicksucker. God is tired. Think of all the doors you've never opened. Of the photographs you've allowed to filch your image. Think of nothing. Think of poo poo. I can see you from here, you know. I am the Alpha and Omega. I am the Fonz. I've been inside your bed. Think of drought, then think of water. Years absorbing. Endless rain. Walls fattened, roof beams buckled. Your brother underground grown rot with wet. And after the rain, the infestation. The moth eggs in your ear holes. The growth of hair. You won't see that. You won't listen. There is something in your eyes.

Oxxidation posted:

Oxxidation posted:

pikachode posted:

tell me more

Oxxidation posted:

We Witnessed the Advent of a New Apocalypse During an Episode of "Friends" by Blake Butler

pikachode posted:

i've overcome my bitterness about not being able to buy his books for cheaper than a motor scooter and am seeking him out online

Oxxidation posted:

stick to Scorch Atlas and maybe Three Hundred Million if you're feeling daring, he hasn't written in years and his work is uneven

more available here

Traxis posted:

Can anyone recommend any books that have a found footage/mysterious signals/numbers stations vibe? So far I've read:
House of Leaves
Transmission by Ambrose Ibsen
Experimental Film by Gemma Files
The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp
and the short story collection Lost Signals

pikachode posted:

do you know if blake butler is a legitimate crazy person (like ligotti!) or if he's just actually a pretty normal person who does drugs, because his comprehensible stuff is great but his incomprehensible stuff is the sort of translucent nonsense i recognise from the diaries of acid fiends

quote:

Even the tree which blooms, lies, the moment that one perceives its bloom without the shadow of horror; even the innocent “How beautiful” becomes an excuse for the ignominy of existence, which is otherwise, and there is no longer any beauty or any consolation, except in the gaze which goes straight to the horror, withstands it, and in the undiminished consciousness of negativity, holds fast to the possibility of that which is better. Mistrust is advisable towards everything which is unselfconscious, casual, towards everything which involves letting go, implying indulgence towards the supremacy of the existent. The malign deeper meaning of comfort, which at one time was limited to the toasts of cozy sociability, has long since spread to friendlier impulses. When in the chance conversation with a man on the train, one acquiesces, in order to avoid a quarrel, to a couple of sentences which one knows ultimately certify murder, is already an act of treachery; no thought is immune against its communication, and uttering it at the wrong place and in the context of a false agreement is enough to undercut its truth. Every visit to the cinema, despite the utmost watchfulness, leaves me dumber and worse than before. Sociability itself is a participant in injustice, insofar as it pretends we can still talk with each other in a frozen world, and the flippant, chummy word contributes to the perpetuation of silence, insofar as the concessions to those being addressed debase the latter once more as speakers.