This is appropriate news for his birthday: Someone's messing with a mummy!
The “voice” of an ancient Egyptian priest has been heard for the first time since he died and was mummified 3,000 years ago, researchers have said.
Nesyamun lived under the pharaoh Rameses XI, who reigned around the beginning of the 11th century BC...Now a team of researchers have 3D-printed a reproduction of Nesyamun’s vocal tract to hear what his voice would have sounded like.
It's not digital. They cat-scanned and 3-D printed his larynx, and they blow air through it. It goes, "Hrrnhh". (Are they sure it's not Jim Lehrer?) There's sound at the above link.
Regarding making Burroughs speak-- yes! His birthday.
He might have appreciated this. He was good at exposing manipulative narratives, especially around the larger cultural issues. One thing I've noticed about technology, a missing section of the curve as it were, is the stage we're in now: everything that used to work is cheapened down until it's unreliable dreck, and our Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow ("shining at the end of every day") keeps snagging on the same little things.
Like the next stream. My sound stuff has basically quit working. Part of it has to do with Windows 10 being a poorly-designed program. Windows 7, which Microsoft recently quit supporting, is actually better at things like uploading files and web-surfing (something else that doesn't work as well as it used to. Seriously. It's like being back on dial-up, sometimes.)
So, not to bang on it too hard, but interesting synchronicity: a more extensive Burroughs stream (at this point) is not possible because of technological breakdown on my PC.
However, there will be something, by tomorrow morning, as promised: "Real English Tea Made Here", a collection of his mid-1960s experiments which was released in 2007. At least that, until his birthday on Feb 5th. More, I hope.
