A Love Letter to the Rubik’s Cube

by Lane Chasek

Claude Shannon (a mathematician and cryptographer who pioneered the field of information theory) was never the type of guy I would pin as a poet, but, as it turns out, he was quite the diddy composer. Along with his work in information theory, Shannon was also a fan of the Rubik’s Cube, and even invented one of the first Rubik-solving machines. Shannon’s “Rubric on Rubik Cubics” is a love letter to his favorite puzzle. It also reads like the lyrics of a They Might Be Giants song. Below are (in my opinion) the best stanzas (along with my annotations):

Once puzzledom was laissez faire
With rebus, crosswords, solitaire.
Comes now the Rubik Magic Cube
For Ph.D. or country rube.
This fiendish clever engineer¹
Entrapped the music of the sphere.
It's sphere on sphere in all 3D—
A kinematic symphony!

…

Forty-three quintillion plus
Problems Rubik posed for us.²
Numbers of this awesome kind
Boggle even Sagan’s mind.
Out with sex and violence,
In with calm intelligence.
Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange³— no!
Rubik’s Magic Cube — Jawohl!⁴

…

Respect your cube and keep it clean.
Lube your cube with Vaseline.
Beware the dreaded cubist’s thumb,⁵
The callused hand and fingers numb.
No borrower nor lender be.
Rude folks might switch two tabs on thee,
The most unkindest switch of all,
Into insolubility.⁶

…

The issue’s joined in steely grip:
Man’s mind against computer chip.
With theorems wrought by Conway’s eight
‘Gainst programs writ by Thistlethwait.⁷
Can multibillion-neuron brains
Beat multimegabit machines?⁸
The thrust of this theistic schism —
To ferret out God’s algorism!⁹

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¹Erno Rubik, inventor of the Cube, is actually an architect. But “architect” is a very hard word to rhyme.
²The “problems” Shannon refers to are the total number of configurations possible on a 3x3 Rubik’s Cube.
³Like many educated, conscientious men of his day, Shannon had terrible taste in cinema.
⁴German for “Yes, sir!”
⁵As an amateur cuber myself, I can attest to this. Do five minutes of finger stretches before an intense Rubik’s Cube session, and lubricate your swivel regularly.
⁶ If you switch two tiles (or stickers) on a Rubik’s Cube, the puzzle becomes unsolvable.
⁷ Both Conway and Thistlethwait studied the Cube mathematically and developed some of the first algorithms for solving it.
⁸Already, Shannon foresaw a Deep Blue-type situation in which humans would be outdone by their own cybernetic creations.
⁹A play on “God’s algorithm,” which refers to a hypothetical algorithm that would solve the Cube in the fewest moves possible. This is similar to “God’s number,” the maximum number of moves required to solve any Cube configuration (which happens to be 20).

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Lane Chasek (@LChasek) is the author of the nonfiction book Hugo Ball and the Fate of the Universe, the poetry/prose collection A Cat is not a Dog, and two forthcoming chapbooks, Dad During Deer Season and this is why I can't have nice things. Lane's current pride and joy is an essay he published in Hobart about Lola Bunny and the latest Space Jam movie.

Brent Spiner’s Autobiographical Fanfiction Noir…Thing

by Lane Chasek

Brent Spiner’s literary debut, Fan Fiction: a Mem-Noir: Inspired by True Events, is one of the most baffling books I’ve read this past year. Is it a memoir? A mystery novel? A parody of fanfictions? Turns out, it’s all three. In addition, Fan Fiction holds the title for most postmodern book written by a Star Trek alum (so far). Brent Spiner (known to most as Lt. Commander Data of the USS Enterprise) pushes the celebrity memoir genre in a bizarre new direction, one which combines fact, fiction, and fandom into a bloody, campy, nerdy potpourri. 

Fan Fiction begins with a brief chapter describing Spiner’s start in acting—his flight from Texas, his failed attempts to make it big in New York, and how he eventually landed the role of everyone’s favorite emotionless android with a heart of iridium-gold alloy, Data. This first chapter is the only part of the book that’s 100% factual. What follows is a Hollywood noir worthy of Tarantino. Spiner discovers a severed pig’s penis and a threatening letter while on the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation, sent to him by a psychotic superfan who wishes to take his life. Spiner, with the aid of a ravishingly beautiful FBI agent and her equally ravishingly beautiful twin sister who acts as his bodyguard, must uncover the identity of this would-be killer before it’s too late. Other Next Generation cast members play bit roles in the plot, providing plenty of trivia and fan service to the Trekkers and Trekkies who will inevitably read this title.

Making use of real places and real people from his life, Fan Fiction is just that: a fanfiction about Brent Spiner’s acting career by Brent Spiner. Though Spiner casts himself in the leading role, he’s far from the Mary Sue you’d expect from a typical fanfiction. Neurotic, paranoid, terrible with the ladies, haunted by memories of a wicked stepfather—though Spiner is a television star living in Hollywood, he’s still very much the awkward, nerdy kid who got bullied in Hebrew school back in Houston. And whereas the android he plays on Next Gen would have deduced the identity of Spiner’s stalker in a single forty-minute episode, Spiner is as inept as any average joe would be if placed in this situation. He flaunts his flaws, insecurities, medical ailments, and love for Laurel and Hardy shamelessly, and he succeeds in turning himself into a likable, realistic protagonist. 

Though not the most well-written book by a Star Trek cast member, Spiner succeeds in telling a story about celebrity, fandom, and the blurred lines between reality and fiction which, despite its occasional awkwardness, is a fun experiment in genre hybridization. Most celebrity memoirs tend to play it safe—and bland. Spiner created something with a lot more flavor.

My favorite quote from the book:

“Her lifeless body collapses onto my chest like an overstuffed sack of fan mail.”

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Lane Chasek (@LChasek) is the author of the nonfiction book Hugo Ball and the Fate of the Universe, the poetry/prose collection A Cat is not a Dog, and two forthcoming chapbooks, Dad During Deer Season and this is why I can't have nice things. Lane's current pride and joy is an essay he published in Hobart about Lola Bunny and the latest Space Jam movie.

Fan Wikis as an Artform

by Lane Chasek

Poet Kenneth Goldsmith once called archiving the folk art of the digital age. Whether it’s in the form of a Spotify playlist or a portable hard drive filled with Rule34, archiving is a creative act which allows regular people (i.e., people who don’t attach words like “artist” or “auteur” to their name) to express their tastes and sensibilities using the raw materials of cyberspace. As Goldsmith writes, “Like quilting, archiving employs the obsessive stitching together of many small found pieces into a larger vision, a personal attempt at ordering a chaotic world.” 

And while Goldsmith makes no mention of Wikis, I think the plethora of fan Wikis that populate the Internet today count as a form of folk art. Movies, cartoons, video games, book series, soft drinks—almost every intellectual property has a fandom, and almost every fandom has a Wiki. These Wikis are more than amateur encyclopedias—they’re a testament to the obsessiveness of 21st-century culture.

I’m a bit ashamed to admit how much time I’ve spent poring over Wikis for Mountain Dew, Star Trek, Digimon, The Wizard of Oz, etc. Reading Wikis for hours on end may sound pointless and downright torturous (even the best Wikis are plagued with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and tediously written diatribes about minutiae only the most die-hard of fans would care about) but every fan Wiki showcases the dedication and eccentricity of their respective fandoms, and for that I salute them.

Take, for example, this article for the character Blu from the animated film series Rio. Rio is a fun family flick, but it’s not what I’d call complex. The plot, characters, morals—they’re all simple, since it’s a movie made for children. But the article’s author writes about Blu in such exhaustive detail that you’d think they were writing about King Lear or the history of Constantinople. The article’s trivia section (word count: approx. 1600) tells you anything you’d ever want to know about this feathered fella, from his dislike of Brazil nuts to his interactions with every character in the film, no matter how brief or inconsequential. 

But my favorite part is the Quotes section. Usually, a Quotes section will contain a character’s most notable pieces of dialogue, but this article includes every word Blu has ever uttered in every piece of Rio media ever made, from the films to the junior novels. This Quotes section clocks in at an intimidating 4,600 words. The author probably spent hours consuming and re-consuming every piece of Rio media, meticulously transcribing each scene. Reading this article is both unnerving and heartening—unnerving because of the author’s mania for a blue CGI parrot, and heartening because of the author’s obvious love for the franchise, no matter how unhealthy that love may be.  

A lot of people wouldn’t call an article like this art, but I disagree. If Marcel Duchamp could scribble his name on a urinal and call it art, and if Kenneth Goldsmith can turn a database of traffic reports into a poetry collection, then why can’t this article be art? We live in a fragmented, obsessive, information-saturated world. Wikis (especially the weird ones) capture this ethos better than any other form of media I know of. The amount of time and dedication it takes to create an article like this (or any Wiki article, really) demonstrates a level of sincerity which I think is severely lacking in the realm of arts and letters today. Whenever “fine” or “serious” art finds itself stagnating or wallowing in its own cynicism (people who call themselves “artists” or “auteurs” have a nasty habit of doing this), it’s usually the role of folk art and outsider art to freshen things up and dig us out. 

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Lane Chasek (@LChasek) is the author of the nonfiction book Hugo Ball and the Fate of the Universe, the poetry/prose collection A Cat is not a Dog, and two forthcoming chapbooks, Dad During Deer Season and this is why I can't have nice things. Lane's current pride and joy is an essay he published in Hobart about Lola Bunny and the latest Space Jam movie.

Gore Vidal's Ridiculous Author Bio

by Lane Chasek

I’ve been thinking a lot about author bios recently. Specifically, what not to do when writing one.

The ideal author bio should be informative without overstaying its welcome, which is why I think 100-150 words is the perfect length for one. Anything past 150 words feels superfluous and (let’s be real) braggadocious. 

Which is why I’m so fascinated by Gore Vidal’s bio at the end of his 1984 novel Lincoln. This bio is nearly 400 words long and includes so much humble-bragging and needless detail that it may be the greatest bad author bio ever published.

Take a look at this first section: 

GORE VIDAL wrote his first novel, Williwaw (1946), at the age of nineteen while overseas in World War II.

During four decades as a writer, Vidal has written novels, plays, short stories and essays. He has also been a political activist. As a Democratic candidate for Congress from upstate New York, he received the most votes of any Democrat in a half century. From 1970 to 1972 he was co-chairman of the People’s Party. In California’s 1982 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, he polled a half million votes, and came in second in a field of nine.

On the surface, that all sounds pretty impressive. Until you realize that Vidal came from an aristocratic political family (fun fact: Vidal’s grandfather was a wealthy U.S. Senator who helped found the state of Oklahoma). Of course he was going to publish a novel when he was super young. But what baffles me is that, despite losing elections and never snagging a seat in Congress, he still felt the need to brag about a political career that went nowhere. He didn’t win, so what’s there to brag about?

In 1948 Vidal wrote the highly praised international best seller The City and the Pillar. This was followed by The Judgment of Paris and the prophetic Messiah. In the fifties Vidal wrote plays for live television and films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. One of the television plays became the successful Broadway play Visit to a Small Planet (1957). Directly for the theater he wrote the prize-winning hit The Best Man (1960).

In 1964 Vidal returned to the novel. In succession, he created three remarkable works: Julian, Washington, D.C., Myra Breckinridge. Each was a number-one best seller in the United States and England. In 1973 Vidal published his most popular novel, Burr, as well as a volume of collected essays, Homage to Daniel Shays. In 1976 he published yet another number-one best seller, 1876, a part of his on-going American chronicle, which now consists of—in chronological order—Burr, Lincoln, 1876, Empire, Hollywood, and Washington, D.C.

This section alone could have served as an okay author bio. Vidal’s a writer and here’s what he’s written. Simple as that. But this final paragraph takes a turn for the absurd.

In 1981 Vidal published Creation, “his best novel,” according to the New York Times. In 1982 Vidal won the America Book Critics Circle Award for criticism for his collection of essays, The Second American Revolution. A propos Duluth (1983), Italo Calvino wrote (La Repubblica, Rome): “Vidal’s development ... along that line from Myra Breckinridge to Duluth is crowned with great success, not only for the density of comic effects, each one filled with meaning, not only for the craftsmanship in construction, put together like a clockwork which fears no word processor, but because this latest book holds its own built-in theory, that which the author calls his “après-poststructuralism.” I consider Vidal to be a master of that new form which is taking shape in world literature and which we may call the hyper-novel or the novel elevated to the square or to the cube.”

A quote that long would work best as a blurb, but honestly, I have no idea what Calvino is trying to say here or why Vidal liked this review enough to excerpt it. It’s almost entirely nonsense. What does “a clockwork which fears no word processor” even mean? And what’s this about “the novel elevated to the square or to the cube”? Is there some mathematical element to novels I wasn’t aware of? Have I been reading linear novels this whole time when I could have been enjoying square, cubic, or hypercubic novels? What about fractal and logarithmic novels? 

Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what you should include in your own author bio, but really, it’s best to keep things simple. Your books, where you’ve been published, maybe your day job or alma mater, etc. Whatever you come up with, it won’t be nearly as ridiculous as Gore Vidal’s.

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Lane Chasek (@LChasek) is the author of the nonfiction book Hugo Ball and the Fate of the Universe, the poetry/prose collection A Cat is not a Dog, and two forthcoming chapbooks, Dad During Deer Season and this is why I can't have nice things. Lane's current pride and joy is an essay he published in Hobart about Lola Bunny and the latest Space Jam movie.

AI-Generated Poetry: A Literary Curiosity That's Here to Stay

by Lane Chasek

In our latest issue of Jokes Review we published “A Howl” by CarloMarxBot. This tour de Twitter is a brilliant pastiche of Ginsberg and, unlike most poems, was written by an AI. 

Though CarloMarxBot is the first AI to be published in Jokes (at least that we know of), AI-generated poetry is far from rare in the futuristic age of 2021. Today there exist dozens of online text generators and algorithms which can create poems. Below are just a few of them and the work they’ve produced.

This poetry generator developed by artist/scientist/software designer Zack Scholl created a poem that got published in the literary journal The Archive at Duke University. Scholl submitted his AI poetry to The Archive without telling the editors they were AI-generated, a kind of poetic Turing Test. (He goes into more detail about designing and testing his generator.)

Here’s the first poem Scholl’s program generated for me:

From What are Veins Galloped

A mechanical projection pities
even the vertical
grammatic land in language
to which the metaphor
will not be dedicated. The indespensable dignity of the shoreline!
And you stole in the animosity and flew a shattering imbroglio.
I am cracked by flint and bloodied steel, by clandenstine and rain.

An aquatic wind of phemonanas.
And the kiss to its foliage
and among the silvery lakes the slender one
the lady covered with free time.
Realized esoteric fragrance of strawberry the reasons for my respect
are set in my nose of cork.

Pacifying from smothered wooden.
Only promise, just the
phemonana, nothing but
it.
Candle.

With its clenched expand there are no utensils but rambunctious cycles of momentum and burnt umber
sea water of rosy lonely ash.

I’m sure this is trying to say something. I’m just not sure what.

If you switch the generator to “mushy poem” mode, you’ll get poems which are much shorter and less likely to contain strings of nonsense. The first poem I got using “mushy” mode was surprisingly good: 

Time With The Film 

Our new alcove, our angellic affection tetrahedrons.
As if to wake or enrich or chirp.

I could see this in a lit mag, cooked up by an actual human brain. The word choice is just as eccentric as in the previous one, but it doesn’t overstay its welcome. 

The Bored Humans poetry generator has a much different style. Here’s one example: 

Baby, Baby, Baby, Baby

My mother said to me,
“Baby, baby, baby, baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby
(I'm Miss American Dream after all)
I just envy you baby
You've got so much to do
(I'm Miss bad media karma)
Even though I'm telling you the truth
You said it out loud
(I'm bad mouth and all that?)
I've had a lot in my mouth
You better keep it close to the top
Don't know which movie you're into
Lose your secrets
Gotta be real with you
You gotta be real with me
Yeah, when I'm with you”

This one seems blues-inspired, maybe with a touch of 80s-era dad rock. This isn’t coincidental. Eric Borgos, the algorithm’s creator, trained it using song lyrics from artists such as Bruce Springsteen. Could it pass the Turing Test? It’s hard to say. You’d either have to be an AI or else a human with a lot of chutzpah to repeat “baby” twenty times in a single poem. 

This last one required a bit of Internet archaeology to unearth. Charles O. Hartman wrote his prose poem “Seventy-Six Assertions and Sixty-Three Questions” way back in 1994 and published it on The Grist Online in 1995. Hartman describes it as a “computer-assisted poem.” He goes on to describe the process behind its creation:

The rough draft of this poem, approximately ten times the final size of the text, was produced by my program PROSE (written in Borland C), which is essentially a finite-state automaton or context-free grammar language generator…All further editing was done by hand, with the strict rule that I could only delete (sentences, clauses, phrases, words), not add.

It’s a longer read, but I recommend checking it out. Hartman’s work is interesting because it shows how AI-generated poetry isn’t a recent trend. People have been using algorithms to create literature for more than twenty years, and the fact that a poem like this was created almost 30 years ago feels like discovering an Xbox controller beneath the ashes of Pompeii. 

Can AI-generated poetry be awkward at times? Of course, but you could say the same about human-generated poetry, too. Whether or not AI poetry can pass a Turing Test is pointless, since most readers (unless they’re very anti-technology) won’t care if a poem they enjoy was written by a human, an AI, or a human and AI working in tandem. We’re far from “AI T.S. Eliot enslaves editorial staff at Paris Review” levels of technological development, but in its current state, AI technology functions well as a toy/tool for curious writers.

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Lane Chasek (@LChasek) is the author of the nonfiction book Hugo Ball and the Fate of the Universe, the poetry/prose collection A Cat is not a Dog, and two forthcoming chapbooks, Dad During Deer Season and this is why I can't have nice things. Lane's current pride and joy is an essay he published in Hobart about Lola Bunny and the latest Space Jam movie.

J.P. Donleavy: America Destroys Writers

by Peter Clarke

I recently picked up a used copy of “A Fairy Tale of New York,” the 1973 novel by Irish-American novelist J.P. Donleavy. When I opened the cover, an old newspaper clipping fell out. I unfolded the clipping to find this article: J.P. Donleavy’s Manor Life by Connie Fletcher.

Beyond detailing Donleavy’s shockingly uneventful home life, the article features the following sections, where Donleavy explains why he feels America destroys writers and also why the Irish Finance Act of 1969 compelled him to move permanently to Ireland.

From J.P. Donleavy’s Manor Life, or How America Destroys Writers

Donleavy is a self-made Irishman. He enjoys what Ireland can do for writers.

“America destroys writers,” he says. “In Europe, a writer is regarded as a writer for all his days. In America, you’re always up at bat. Americans don’t know you’re there unless you’re glad-facing on the television. The whole attitude in America is, what have you done lately?”

…

Donleavy didn’t settle permanently in Ireland until 1969, when the new tax laws allowed authors and artists to live here tax-free. Before that, he lived in London. He wrote “The Ginger Man” on a budget of $11 a week, largely at his parents’ home in the Bronx.

…

Donleavy separates himself from other “returning Irish.” “Most of the returning Irish do have pretensions of grandeur of some sort. It is a tradition in Ireland that Irishmen who have made a lot of money in England or America or Australia will return home and buy up all the big country houses. That’s their dream and they do it.”

Donleavy’s being in Ireland, he claims, has everything to do with the Irish Finance Act of 1969, which exempts authors and artists from paying taxes on money received from their works. He moved to Ireland from London “practically immediately” and became an Irish citizen after the finance act became law.

“Having tax-free status is as good as winning the Nobel Prize.” Says Donleavy. He has no other source of income besides his writing, he says.

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Peter Clarke is the editor-in-chief of Jokes Review. He’s the author of the comic novels Politicians Are Superheroes and The Singularity Survival Guide. Follow him on Twitter @HeyPeterClarke.

Sloppy Jane's Accidental Literary Moment

by Peter Clarke

The internet is flooded with unintentional works of literature. From tweets to memes to corporate ad copy, every piece of online writing possesses at least some small amount of literary value. Occasionally, you stumble upon a piece of random internet content that’s so good you almost want to print it out and put it on your bookshelf.

At one point, I collected a folder of unexpected works of literature—a sort of literary “found art” collection. One of my favorite pieces in the collection is this GoFundMe post by Haley Dahl, the lead singer of the band Sloppy Jane. The post is from a few years ago and, as of this writing, is still up on GoFundMe. So, the post still serves a practical, functional purpose. But aside from that, it’s possible to look at this post purely as a work of literature. And as a work of literature, it’s pretty great:

I WILL EAT MY FAVORITE SUIT FOR 20K

Howdy

I'm Haley Dahl, bandleader of NY/LA band "Sloppy Jane".

In the fall of 2017, I was heartbroken- over not one particular occurrence, but over everything at once. I struggled with expressing this, because it felt really typically girly to cry about my feelings in a way that I couldn't consolidate with my perception of myself.

One morning, I was having an emotional discussion about this heartbreak with an involved party, and I became so overwhelmed with the need to cry in public, but still couldn't really let it loose for these reasons. All of a sudden, I looked up and saw an oversized black suit hanging from an iron gate. I threw down my bags and put it on, and finally, I cried, knowing that I looked like a stylish Operatic Man, rather than a young woman covered in snot, I knew that my tears were the tears of a grown man, which made them uncomfortable to witness. I made a declaration:

"I'm going to wear this suit until it rots off my body."

I wore this suit for one calendar year to the date, every day, without washing it. I wore it to every show we played, I wore it to sleep, I wore it in the 20-some caves I visited while beginning to work on my bands next record (which is being recorded, in a cave).

I had to retire it before it rotted off my body, because a literal medical professional told me I had to stop wearing it for health reasons.

I still have the suit and have been trying to figure out how to properly send it off, and for 20K, I will eat it in it's entirety. (only caveat is I might burn it and eat its ashes).

If I receive 20k, I will post a video of myself eating the suit and the aftermath of eating the suit (still unwashed and partially rotting), in November 2019, following the recording of my cave record, which will be recorded in October.

I love you
Haley Dahl

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Peter Clarke is the editor-in-chief of Jokes Review. He’s the author of the comic novels Politicians Are Superheroes and The Singularity Survival Guide. Follow him on Twitter @HeyPeterClarke.

Old-School Paperbacks Have the Best Cover Art

by Peter Clarke

I’m not sure if this is a popular opinion or not, but to me it seems obvious that old-school paperbacks have the best cover art. And the best design. I could probably write a 10,000-word piece to back up this claim, but I’d rather just show pictures of some of my favorite paperback book covers. And let them make the case for me.

After you’re done ogling these beautiful old-school covers, compare them to The New York Times list: Best Book Covers of 2020. Some recent book covers admittedly are pretty fantastic. But in general, the paperback covers from decades past—preferably slightly grimy and creased on the edges—are far superior, at least in my view.

I will also note that book design is generally an underrated art form. If you haven’t seen it already, I’d recommend checking out Chip Kidd’s 2012 Ted Talk, The Hilarious Art of Book Design. If you like books and have strong feelings about their covers, it’s worth watching.

And now, please enjoy these amazing old-school book covers, taken off my bookshelf and photographed just today, presented here in no particular order.

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Peter Clarke is the editor-in-chief of Jokes Review. He’s the author of the comic novels Politicians Are Superheroes and The Singularity Survival Guide. Follow him on Twitter @HeyPeterClarke.