CitizenJones

Introduction: The Novel as Subversion

From its start, the English novel has represented an adversary culture. Although it seemed to bow to the tastes and needs of the new bourgeoisie, it also stood for new and often dangerous idea, criticized the predominant culture, and displayed what were often subversive forms of behavior. It upset familiar assumptions, questioned realistic presuppositions, and tested out, however sparingly at times, new ideas, forbidden desires, secret wishes. As it plumbed the subconscious and countered rational analysis, it touched, as Lionel Trilling has shown us, various areas of neurosis and psychopathology within the reader. If only for these reasons, the novel, we can say, ran counterproductive to a productively minded society.

The Adversary Literature, The English Novel in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Genre
By Frederick R. Karl
Farrar, Staus and Giroux (New York)
Copywrite 1974

Flash Fiction - Return of the Third Reich

Agent Orange this is the Garden Nazi come in Agent Orange...

Agent Orange this is the Garden Nazi come in over

This Agent Orange I read you loud and clear over

Agent Orange I need a status report on the Jones garden come back.

Roger that G.N. defoliation is ninety-five percent complete over

Roger that please report back to base when you’re finished deflowering the garden over
We have a shipment of chemicals to offload from the Messchersmidt ASAP.

Ten four Garden Nazi. My ETA is about forty-five minutes over

Roger that pick me up a berry berry slurpy on your way back and grab yourself a bite to eat too.

Roger that G.N. see you back at the base Agent Orange OUT

Garden Nazi OUT

Ever since the German third Reich had been reduced to the status of landscape maintenance the gardens of lower Bavaria had been in a steady state of decline.

Couldn’t the fascist regime do anything that didn’t involve desiccation, destruction, and creating generalized mayhem everywhere it went? How hard can it be to spread a little manure without trampling everything under the sun?

03/01/04 WEBSITE OF THE DAY

03/01/04 - Website of the day award goes to Dogster.com - because we all know that mankinds best friend loves to sniff butt and lick face - Dogster.YO!!.com

02/20/04 - Website of the day award goes to Science Fiction Citiations for the OED
use this site to find the earliest usages of words in the science fiction genre
click here to check it out

Previous Winners Listed in Continuation

Carnival of Pulp: Golden Age of Science Fiction

The Carnival of Pulp: Ancient Science Fiction

More Evidence that Citizen Jones searches high and low to bring you interesting
imagery from the SciFi genre.
more exciting material is on the way!!!
Stay Tuned!!!

Bokko-Chan, The story of a B-girl who didn't have a heart of gold

What's up you old Blanket Stiff...I am sending you a story from The Best Japanese Sci-Fi because it's just such a damn good story..

Bokko-Chan, The story of a B-girl who didn't have a heart of gold

by Shinichi Hoshi, Translated by Noriyooshi Saito, Typed by Michael-san

The robot was really a work of art. It was a female robot and, being artificial, she was designed to be the perfect beauty. Every element that went to make up a charming girl was taken into consideration. The trouble was that she looked a little prissy but who can deny that a prissy air is an indispensable prerequisite for a beauty?

Nobody else had ever ventured to build such a robot. Indeed it was silly to build a robot just to do the work of a man when for an equal amount of expense one could design more efficient machinery or hire suitable workers from among the many whose applications jammed the "Situation Wanted" columns of the classified ads.

However, this robot was made at leisure by the master of a certain bar. A bar-master, in general, will not drink at home at all. For him liquor exists only as his stock-in-trade which should never be consumed for private use. And those haunting drunkards who frequented his bar so willingly helped him to make money with which he was able to spend his off hours in pursuit of a hobby.

It happened that his hobby was the building of a charming robotess.

Scary Monkey Story

"This image is on loan from www.monsterartstudios.com, where the graphic novel: Playthings by Kevin Thayer is soon to be released (Halloween). Thanks Kevin!!!" C.J.

All around Alberta were mad poo-fliinging monkeys. Screaming, screeching, making that weird monkey sound - ooo-oo oo-oooo-oo Ahh ahh!!! It was terrifying. They were running in circles around her waving their furry brown nuckles at her and gnashing their teeth. As they ran they swatted at her Shark Babies lunch-box. Alberta stood fast with her eyes squeezed shut so tight her teeth were showing. This only made the monkeys madder. This antagonized the monkeys. Until they got what they wanted from her.

The pink and green plastic lunch box swatted from her hands, trunndled end over end until it came to rest at the base of a giant eucalyptus tree. The monkeys swarmed around it thumping on it noisily.

It was usually about htis time in Alberta's dream that YoYako arrived. She usually showed up to the sound of screeching hot rod tires and automatic gun fire with a touch of smoke and burning rubber thrown in for that total visceral effect. The special effects feature of the Silver Sentinal body suit were trully a marvel of technology.

YoYako was Alberta's hero.

Her fists flew with amazing speed and an unhinged furry. The silver body suit and pointed helmet with grasshopper like eye covers protected her from all sorts of physical harm: fire, toxic gasses, and blunt weapons like dirty scratchy monkey teeth and claws. Her feet and hands protected her from everything else. Yoyako was a little silvery blur of high pitched fighting furry. Her menacing arrival on the dreamscape scared the monkeys high into the eucalyptus trees with hardly a fight at all.

As they fled they hooted and threw down broken branches to show their disgust and frustration.

Alberta smiled, unclenched her eyes, and giggled,"I love it when you do that YoYako!!"

The Silver Sentinal punched a few keys on her wrist com control pad and a large mechanical buzzard with a laser cannon in its beak swooped down from on high and started blasting at the monkeys, forcing them to continue moving further and further away from the heroine and her knewly safeguarded charge.

"I ought to kill one of them for messing with you like that", Yoyako grumbled sternly.

Alberta mimicked Yoyako's posture and parotted her to the smallest detail. But her eyes were wide and a bit of nervous sweat formed on her palms at hearing such a grim remark. Alberta's fight or flight instincts were still fully charged. Never-the-less she giggled and skipped over to her lunch box. Whatever was bothering Yoyako wastn't going to get Alberta down, not today, not with mom's warm home made ginger-snaps fresh from the oven waiting at home.

"Thanks for saving me Yoyako. Mom would've been very upset if I had lost my new lunch box on the first day of school."

Yoyako nodded. Her charge was safe for the moment.
She disappeared in brilliant flash of silvery light.

Two are better than one

With all the flap over same sex marriage these days I decided to do a little research of my own in the Old Testament, and this is what I came up with (see below).

Ecclesiastes - Chapter 4 verses 4-9

Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man's envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.

The fool folds his hands, and eats his own flesh

Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind

Again, I saw vanity under the sun: a person who has no one, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, "For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?"
This also is vanity and an unhappy business.

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they are warm; but how can one be warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken.

The following is from the Harper Study Bible - Prepared and Edited by Harold Lindsell, Ph. D., D.D
Published by Harper And Row
Copyright 1959 - Library of Congress Catalogue Number 64-17541

Ecclesiastes "traditionally has been ascribed to Solomon.. [however] many scholars suggest a post exilic date for the book...This is one of the most difficult Old Testament books...Despite all of this, and the fact that the book cannot be outlined adequately, a message of tremendous significance is to be found in its critique of religion which has been secularized, and of men whose thoughts have been misguided. Stressing that search for happiness and satisfaction in earthly pursuits apart from God ..ends in "vanity of vanities"...Ecclesiastes bears witness to the climctic statement that while man cannot reconcile all of his problems in ths life, he can safely trust God who knows the end from the beginnning and who will ultimately justify His ways"

Senator Space Explorer

New York Times Thursday February 5, 2004

THE SENATE'S BUSINESS
With Offices Shut, Senators Are Washington's Newest Space Explorers
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Published: February 4, 2004

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — Senator Susan Collins tried to get into the Capitol on Tuesday but was blocked by armed police officers who did not recognize her. Senator John B. Breaux insisted on entering his office to feed his goldfish, just as he did during the anthrax attacks of 2001.

Senator John McCain, who survived five years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, did his best to be blasé, declaring, "I'm going to die in bed."

On the day after the poison ricin was found in a mailroom in the office of the majority leader, Bill Frist, the Senate was open for business on Tuesday, though it was hardly business as usual.

With all three Senate office buildings closed, most staff members were forced to work at home, and their bosses were jammed into any available spot in the Capitol. Inside the chamber, lawmakers trudged on with what Dr. Frist called "very productive, very useful business": debate on a $318 billion transportation measure. Outside the chamber, there was a gritty determination to continue working, and a distinct, uneasy sense of having been there before.

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