Diggin' for gold

From fellow traveller .sWineDriveR., originally posted on VAPID BUCEPHALAS, a fine collection of images both beautiful and strange, an animated GIF of the world's most famous anthropomorphic chocolate homunculus:  Choco.

I created Choco many years ago, but it's sWD that has really brought him to life with numerous drawings and comic strips.  One day we'll have to get back to the series of strips we were collaborating on.  Problem is, I'm very lazy.  Anyway, I love this little GIF and it gave me a big smile.

This is as good as an opportunity as any to let you know there's a long-standing Choco page on Facebook, which has all the Choco-related LoS posts and strips, plus some other sketches and storyboards.

More recently created is a Laws of Silence page on Facebook which, for the moment, merely allows us to advertise posts, but which may become "LoS Lite", with links and musings too little to develop into posts.  Or maybe not.

Please check out one or both of these pages and don't hesitate to "Like" them.  If you haven't subscribed to LoS by RSS or e-mail, it's an easy way to keep up with new posts as they come out. 

At the moment, we've got a doozy of a post in the boiler, a collaboration between The Gid and I, a little different from our usual subjects; after a busy January for LoS, things have slowed down a bit because we've been devoting all our writing time to completing it.  So, stay tuned....

A thing to devour

These strips were created by LoS pal .sWineDriveR., assuming the authorial identity of Jonathan Trenchwheat as he documented the surreal adventures of the Lil' AA.  The children of the Lil' AA were caricatures of actual Associationalist personages, embodying in an exuberant form the salient characteristics of their adult counterparts.  Pen and ink avatars of avatars.

They first appeared on Plastic Tub, which as far as I know was the first Wiki published online to be used for collaborative fiction of a sort, albeit one presented à la Wikipedia or Wiktionary.  I believe it to be the first Wiki "art project".  Created over a glorious couple of years, it has been dormant now for what seems like decades.

When it failed, it could be banal and awkwardly written, when it succeeded, it was brilliant.  Not to sound egotistical; it was the brilliance not of each individual, but of the so-called "third mind" arising from the furious vapors of sustained collaboration.  We Second Advance AA'ers honed our skills there and created, if not a universe, an amusing microcosm....at least.  We put in hours and made each other laugh in a game of one-upsmanship and in a labor of love, only rarely descending into dispute.  Any resulting acrimony was usually beer-fueled and indicative of genuine passion, generating heat equal to anything aroused by say, discussions about the West Bank.

But this is not time for nostalgiac paeans to a sleeping giant.  I re-stumbled across these strips this evening and was struck yet again by their seeming casual brilliance.  .sWineDriveR. here evokes the golden age of comic strips with a style and humor uniquely his own.  They're baffling.  They're funny.  They "work".  A blend of pure psychic automatism and meticulous craftmanship.

But enough of my pretentious flattery, just enjoy the strips.  Don't get distracted by my hunt and peck accolades.  I only hope that by putting these strips out there again, those accolades will be sung by someone who is not a friend and collaborator of their author, someone far more clever than myself.  Because these strips deserve some accolading.

Anyway, we've availed ourselves in slow times of the Tub before....they're easy posts, sure, but it's really to help promote our obscure past.  Gid and I were regular editors on the Tub and, to be frank, it irks me that the Tub is hasn't garnered some online attention for it's wit and innovation.  That's not what we did it for, but after all the work, I'd like it to be seen and read.  Yeah, I'm being self-serving and self-congratulatory, but what of it?  We should all to toot our horn every once and a while.  I risk coming across as a pompous ass, which in fact I am, but that doesn't make me wrong!

So check it out already!  And maybe, just maybe, the best interpretations offered up will be rewarded by a collage or hand-written poem, delivered to your door by post, wherever you door may be.

Copyright infringement

It's everywhere....

Choco Strip 2

This new strip was was featured yesterday on Vapid Bucephalas: "Gallimaufry tin for vaporslave and knicker-bockins, widdershins, flip-flaps, chimney-knacks, swinedrivers and such."  A bit like LoS, although we generally avoid widdershins so as not to run afoul of the French legal system. 

Artist T. Wilson says: 

"Another Choco strip, one of many featuring the apparent murder of his enigmatic sidekick, DingDing — his visualization is a work in progress … "

But not to worry folks, as any Chocologist can tell you, DingDing can't really die, being as he either a hologram or a figment of Choco's imagination.

Coincidentally, the following images were posted on my facebook page an hour ago by old chum Dr. K Jensen, who wrote a post for us some time back (Sausages in suitcases: A visit to the Plum Island Animal Disease Center) and an avid collector of votive paintings from Honduran Choco Cults.

Hope you're enjoying the strip!

Choco votive painting, acrylic on canvas, Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Choco votive painting, detail

Choco Lore: DingDing

More required reading for majors in Choco Studies:

DingDing in Water:Pillow

Unknown origin. He arrives amid a steamed cloud of futuristic hoo-haw, waving a withered mit. His nose is a television dial. He is a television dial. He is given a return ticket to the stars, first class.

DingDing was a representative of the alien race that helped to create Choco. Although he only appeared as a hologram, his sage advice proved a useful source of burlesque humor and moral support to the beleaguered chocolate hero. Kind and witty -- ever a pillar of staunchness -- DingDing communicated in a melange of hurdy-gurdies, clucks and twiddlings. Translations were offered as subtext or in subtitle, though for most it amounted to little: Dacusse described the accompanying transliterations as "vaguely anomic lisping" and "great gloamy piles of steam rising from a woodpile."

Choco, of course, displayed no difficulty in deciphering DingDing's holographic missives, a fact not lost on Dacusse, whose childhood Choco-Envy "was akin to wanting bigger muscles."

He was so popular in Canada that in 1982 he was given his own CBC television show, The DingDing Hour. The program was made with puppets and continues to be diffused to this day under the direction of Argentine puppeteer Pablo Mollusconi.

Choco Strip 1

"Love Ain't Sweet!"

Brief Treatise on Choco, 1995 collage by Timothy Wilson

Thanks too our pal .sWineDriveR. (previously mentioned here) for yet another cool new banner.  Just in case you're wondering what it all means, check out Choco on Plastic Tub:

The origin is simple. A small alien probe descends upon earth, dispensing pancakes and sausages to befuddled farmers, nomads, tribesmen and campers. Eventually it falls into the hands of U.S. government agents, who succeed in discovering the probe's mission. In addition to providing the alien race's favorite foods to the Earth-masses, it contains alien DNA and instructions on how to turn the raw material into an alien capable of sharing its wisdom. The device for making the transformation is built from material found readily in any American kitchen. But there is a problem. An Air Force Colonel attached to the project, a religious fanatic, sabotages the device which he believes to be a Satanic plot.

As the experiment begins, a scientist munching a bar of chocolate is caught in an unfortunate explosion, but instead of dying, begins a slow transformation. After 27 agonizing days, he emerges from his room as a five-foot chocolate bar. He walks, he talks. He is an anthropomorphic chocolate bar. His powers include telepathy, levitation and telekinesis, in addition to an almost inexhaustable range of knowledge and abilities. He is subjected to a barrage of tests and it is determined that Choco's DNA is a mix of human, alien and chocolate bar.

True scholars will also want to check out Choco Cults:

These groups are not linked, and are often in violent opposition to one another. However, they are all obsessed with creating a rich and creamy milk-chocolate homunculus.

What is mystifying about the cults is that they seem oblivious to the fact that their violent activities are anathema to the spirit in which Choco conducts himself. Irregular Choco public service announcements seem to have no effect at all. Some pundits are led to wonder, at times aloud, if this is not merely an expression of "the end justifies the means mentality gone awry, amok even" (Dan Rather), but a "Psy-op perpetrated by Gnomes" (Michael Hoffman).

On the other hand, take care not to succumb to Choco-Envy:

Fondle examined the lifestyle of four children from the Midwestern town of Silonon, Kansas, and elaborated a complex treatise revolving around their use of mediated entertainment, translation devices and "hyper-sexual grimacing, the untoward bending of limbs and a striking predisposition for shapeless homunculi, robots and monsters of all variety."

Thanks .sWineDriveR.!  And thanks also to Kevin Statham, author of Choco's motto:  "Love Ain't Sweet!"