FFR 189
To the estimable, if occasionally bewildered, cognoscenti and accidental subscribers of the Fowl Feathered Review,
One finds oneself, somewhat askance, addressing you from this — dare I say — 189th installment of what was, in a bygone epoch (circa last Tuesday), confidently declared a "quarterly" publication. Ah, the best-laid plans of feathered editors and men. Such pronouncements, like promises whispered into a hurricane, tend to dissipate. The culprit, you inquire? A profound, almost alchemical, discovery: caffeine. A true, unvarnished chronicle, I assure you, devoid of the usual journalistic hyperbole, which, as Perelman once observed, often descends into a mere "prurient interest in the lives of other people's parakeets."
It was in Prague, a city of Kafkaesque shadows and the profound melancholy of old trams, that the genesis of this particular printed cacophony unfurled. There, amidst the cobblestones and the ghosts of forgotten dialecticians, a chap — whose demeanor suggested either profound enlightenment or an impending nap — offered literary discards. Not by the book, mind you, but by the cubic meter, for the paltry sum of one Euro. Per box. One purchased, quite impulsively, what could only be described as a wheelbarrow's worth – perhaps two. Enough, certainly, to necessitate a considerable expenditure in liniment. The subsequent methodology, as Eco might postulate in a footnote about semiotic entropy, involved the meticulous, nay, heroic act of reducing these venerable tomes to short, horizontal strips. Think: intellectual ticker-tape. Then, with the blindfold of pure, unadulterated aesthetic conviction firmly affixed (a nod, perhaps, to the arbitrariness of destiny, or merely a poor night's sleep), each strip was adhered to a stiff board. Finally, the coup de grâce: a photographic session, lens adorned with a kaleidoscopic filter, transforming mere text into something approaching... well, a mess. A beautiful mess, perhaps, like a dream you can't quite remember, or a tune Dylan played on a harmonica that somehow makes perfect sense.
And voilà! The resultant phenomenon before you. A testament to the haphazard, the accidental, the utterly nonsensical. Its pages are a veritable crucible of disparate fragments: the pronouncements of an obscure 17th-century cartographer on the mating habits of pygmy shrews; an unfinished shopping list; the third stanza of a limerick about a particularly stubborn badger; the precise chemical formula for an artisanal cheese; a diagram of a particularly uninteresting knot; a single, poignant ellipsis; a receipt for a turnip; an exegesis on the inherent futility of hats. It's all here, like the contents of a very old, very jumbled attic.
So, partake if you will. Peruse, ponder, perhaps even prevaricate. To enjoy, to endure, to unsubscribe with the swift, decisive click of a disillusioned mouse – the choice, like the vast, indifferent expanse of the cosmos, is always, unequivocally, yours. There shall be no judgment from this quarter, for who are we to cast the first digital stone, particularly when one's own editorial process involves blindfolds and wheelbarrows?
Sincerely (a term used here with the utmost elasticity),
Virgil Kay
Editor, Rooster, China Wok Habitué (and occasional purveyor of finely shredded prose)
e-BOOK version of this issue:
PDF version of this issue is perched aloft your automobile, a flatulent cherub of digital information, its aerial promenade guaranteed by the sort of adhesive conviction one associates with a desperate hostage negotiation and the unblinking, metallic stare of c-clamps that, for all their stoicism, appear to harbor a secret ambition for a career in competitive strongman competitions. Explain THAT to the officer who pulls you over.
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