Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, I like to play around with alternative backstories for cultural artifacts. I also like to set up series of such backstories with rigorous (well, rigorous-ish… rigourish?) rules. I have, as yet, two series.

• Call the first one something like “Right-wing Talent Goes West.” Here I take various kinds of pop culture — movies and tv shows, mostly — and posit them as the products of major figures from amongst the reactionary literati of the late-ninteenth through mid-twentieth centuries. I also have a rule where I only do one per country. I figure I’ll stop at nine. Here are links to ones I have so far:

1. Celine in the Sunshine State
2. Waugh on the Boardwalk
3. Junger on the Beach
4. Evola in Fat City
5. Lovecraft, Screenwriter
6. Mishima Among the Cornfields

I anticipate perhaps three more. Nine is a good number.

• “Early Modern Webcomics.” Pretty straightforward: projecting webcomics into an early modern (1455-1789) context. Here are the ones I have so far:

1. Bocaccio’s Mal di Legno
2. Durer’s Sprechen Donnereschen
3. Geoffrey-Jacques’ Matieres Questionable