QotD: The desktop image one

The desktop image on my home computer is nothing. It's one of the identikit images offered with XP. I chose one and left it at that, partly out of laziness, partly out of a wish to reduce noise on my own system. Why make a poke at the registry when I don't have to? So I picked the black-and-white photo of the surface of the moon, eschewing the green hills and red desert dunes and the tree-lined corridor paved with autumn leaves. That's right, I eschewed the living shit out of those photos. I actually like the one of the moon - it's got a kind of lonely grace, even though I know that the Microsoft Bureau of Identikit Marketing sussed out my kind from the get-go, knowing that there's a subrace of sensitive twits out there who look at the moon and think Ah, lonely grace.

My work computer, though - that's where the desktop image party plays. I can't upload images onto Vox from my work computer, so I can only link to the image right now, but if you clink on the link and grab a gander at it, I'll hang out here til you get back. Don't worry, I got books, I got snacks, maybe some work to do.

http://www.slate.com/id/2146156/

See that? I'll be damned if that isn't the symbol of the Tristero, an ancient secret society at the dark centre of Thomas Pynchon's 1966 novel The Crying of Lot 49. Like most of his books, it's a tale of intrigue, drugs, physics, conspiracies and an alternative postal system. The existence of the Tristero, a cabal of messengers with roots in Renaissance Italy and transplanted to Italy, is hinted at when the main character discovers weird discrepancies in a set of stamps. Eventually she discovers the Tristero, whose symbol is a stylized muted horn. Go look at the picture again.

Here's a story about me, that book, some vomit and the future. In 1992 I took a road trip to Calgary (about 800 km from home) with some friends to visit another friend and basically hang out in another city for a few days. To my great pleasure, I discovered a second-hand bookstore quite literally around the corner, a fairly tidy-looking place in a two-story brick building with apartments on the second floor. The building appeared to be tilting backward slightly, a trick of perspective that made your eyes hurt if you tried to figure it out.

The guy who ran the store was such an amalgam of stereotypes that he looked almost exactly like the Simpson's comic book store guy: goateed, ponytailed, overweight and slightly slovenly, with a T-shirt that didn't quite make it over his belly. He even wore a pair of baggy shorts and battered old Pumas. He had the same manner as the Simpsons character as well - a sort of icy formality with an edge of sarcasm. You could tell that he had once been friendly and polite, but months or years of bookstore customers had worn his good cheer down and exposed the misanthropy beneath.

I liked him immediately. We talked about Philip K. Dick while my friends stood outside and smoked. Eventually I bought a cheap trade copy of The Crying of Lot 49 and rejoined my friends. I don't remember what we did that evening, but I managed to read the entire novel in or two gulps by midnight.

At three am I woke up on my friend's couch, a film of ice on my forehead and a bowling ball in my stomach. My body had wisely woken me up and given me time to find a sink or a toilet to throw up in a civilized fashion. The room was littered with the sleeping bodies of my friends, and I had to pick my way through them with a fever scrambling my thoughts. To top it off, I couldn't remember where the bathroom was. But I was certain of one thing: The Tristero knew that I had read the book, they knew I knew of their existence, and they had poisoned me somehow.

Bastards.

After ten minutes of puking I was able to drink some water, and my fever seemed to drop back a little. I concluded that the Tristero, being part of a fiction and all, had probably not tried to kill me, although the annoying waiter earlier that day may have. We went home the next day.

A year later I moved to Calgary. I ended up living in a bachelor suite above the bookstore and befriending the manager. After a year or so, he left the store and I started running it. The manager guy and I became roommates. Now he's married to a woman who used to live across the hall from me in that building.

It's not really a small world. We just make it small.

Update: I'm home now. Here's the muted horn of the Tristero for you.

Emblem of the secret call