[what precedent might this be? A further blurring of identity, loss of distinction between oneself and The Corporation.]
Google Takes a Page Out of Twitter's Book: Invites Employees to Sleep 'On Campus' for a Fee
Google is charging its employees $99 a night to stay at its on-campus hotel to help "transition to the hybrid workplace."
https://gizmodo.com/google-invites-employees-to-sleep-on-campus-for-a-fee-1850709102
thanks to @vvandinsky
@vvandinsky And here's the flash-fiction (really short) science-fiction story I wrote about Google...
https://medium.com/@johnshirley/to-live-and-die-in-googletown-cfcc2ea4d9d4
Speaking of short SF about Google, in Raymond Chandler's correspondence he writes the most extraordinary passage. This was in 1953:
@JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky Reads like solid Golden Age pulp, doesn't it?
@pieist @JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky I didn’t know Chandler was an Alfred Bester fan
@MishaVanMollusq @JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky
Ha! I got more of an Eric Frank Russell feel from it.
@MishaVanMollusq @JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky
I'll be damned, I had never thought to wonder where the band Haircut One Hundred got the name for their one and only album, "Pelican West". I just assumed they liked the sound of it.
I've just now learned that Eric Frank Russell's first published story was called "The Saga of Pelican West". Never republished. As far as I can tell nobody on the internet has made this connection before. Anyway, here's the story on archive.org:
@MishaVanMollusq @JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky
I downloaded a set of Nero Wolfe radio dramas from the 1940s and was listening to them on a tablet I keep by the bedside for that purpose. I was pretty delighted at the end of the first one as they read out the credits, to hear that it was written by Alfred Bester. Later I listened to the last bit of each of them; that was the only one, unfortunately.
@pieist @JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky neato.
Have you ever tuned in to Moon Over Morocco?
@MishaVanMollusq @JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky
That is genuinely new to me. It looks intriguing. Where do stream/download/incant by moonlight it from?
@pieist @JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky I don’t know that it’s streamable. I have seen it for sale .
And I just found Episode 1 on YouTube
@MishaVanMollusq @JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky
If I trigger the quantum uncertainty neuron in my forebrain can I innately comprehend it in its entirety by a full universe-comprehension inference?
@MishaVanMollusq @JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky
Yeah I admit the vast smorgasbord of the unrestricted multiverse has made me spoiled and lazy
@MishaVanMollusq @JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky
Forgive my silliness. I'm interested in listening to it.
@pieist @JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky I listed to this during a period when I was reading Burroughs’ letters to Ginsberg…while he was mostly in Tangier
@MishaVanMollusq @JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky
Which parts of him weren't in Tangier?
I'm sorry I'm a miserable bastard
@pieist @JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky you might be interested in this Rucker novel for elaboration
@MishaVanMollusq @pieist @vvandinsky Burroughs letters to Ginsberg kind of put me off both guys, though I've read a lot of WB in my time. Tales of renting little boys in Mexico and stuff.
@JohnShirley2023 @pieist @vvandinsky It has all the back Story on Kiki…who later ended up being a character on The Venture brothers involved with Colonel Gentlemen loosely based on Sean Connery.
Hot claws at the window for three thousand years flown in fresh from the Crab Nebula.
Oh…I just flashed on the Rent Boy scene that squicked you. Very Naked Lunch/Soft Machine scenario
@MishaVanMollusq @pieist @vvandinsky As a victim of child molestation I have little tolerance. We're talking about children, not adult "rent boys". If men want to rent themselves, fine. Children don't choose it. They get stuck doing it, or forced. And it's never good for them, to say the least.
@pieist @MishaVanMollusq @vvandinsky Yes but then your head literally explodes.
@JohnShirley2023 @pieist @vvandinsky for similar reasons as why one should not walk their whippets near @SutroTower
@MishaVanMollusq @pieist @vvandinsky
I was curious what you meant by that. So I googled it. Do you mean this?
https://www.zbsmedia.com/product/moon-over-morocco-original-radio-version/
@JohnShirley2023 @pieist @vvandinsky that’s where I saw it for sale
@pieist @JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky That seems a little too perfect to me, and I haven't found any references to it earlier than 2015. I wonder if it's real?
@daviddlevine @pieist @vvandinsky Well there may not have been a collection of letters by Chandler until 2015. It's not like he was Lincoln or Mencken.
@pieist @JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky
I want to read the rest of that story
@pzriddle @JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky
I think it concludes with him realizing that the bright blue manda grass suggests inadequate nutrients in the soil, and him donning his space overalls and digging in a soil amendment.
@pzriddle @JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky
Not many people realize that Gardener's Monthly was taking SF submissions in those days.
@pieist @JohnShirley2023 @vvandinsky
There are four or five other viable company/drug names in there, I think.
@pieist @vvandinsky Ha! But Google it seems is a person. Well he is not wrong about much science-fiction. It can be parodied just that way!