MATERIALIST DOT NET

yup. that's right. I'm going to Venice tomorrow morning, coming back to London
on (ash) wednesday. catching the entire climax of the venetian carnival.
 
 crazy. really haven't had the time to let this sink in on me yet. two of my
friends are going tonight at 4.30am from stanstead, me and another friend are
going tomorrow at 1.30, and another friend is coming down on sunday. we're
staying in a two-story converted flat with a balcony, overlooking the canal and
the <i>campanile</i> on St Mark's Square, with 16th-century sloping stone floors
supported by ancient wooden beams, lead-glass windows, fridge, two bathrooms,
four beds, all conveniences...
 
it'll be mad... the last time I went for the carnival I
was 17, I spent entire nights roving through venice, devouring the sights and
sounds and gestures and textures and lights and colours and the whole crazy
setup... chatting to complete strangers, dancing, trying to memorise everything
I saw... and ended up drinking wine and eating crackers under the archways of St
Mark's square with a band of drummers made up like clowns with huge red and
green wigs at 4am while one lonely security guard with a fluorescent yellow vest
and a huge moustache danced away to the beat of the drums in the middle of the
huge, empty, wet square where all the pigeons had gone to sleep, nestled in
among the arches and spires overlooking the square, and a few people smoking
spliffs and another few people who were just really, really happy doing fuck-all
and leaning back against the wet pillars and chilling...
I've got an entire 100-page written notebook I filled while I was there, trying
to keep everything in mind so I wouldn't forget it. Ironically I don't know
where the notebook is now...
 
[...]
 
 anyway... so sadly I'll be offline for about five days, which is the longest
I've been without access to my extended internet virtual nervous system for...
months now. can't actually remember the last time I was without internet access
for so long. must've been last summer or something. scary. bet I'll manage to
feed my junky addiction by plugging my senses into some obscure cybercafe
somewhere in venice, manned by dodgy-looking overweight arabs with sweaty faces
playing dominoes, with opium pipes in the back room...
 
maybe. or maybe I'll just enjoy a few blissful days of autonomy and running
around being a normal human being. once my eyes adjust to not focusing on a
screen anymore...

dawdling at work, and I thought I'd share one of my favourite <a
href=http://www.clonejesus.com target=new></b>sites</a><b> with you people out
there in cyberspace... more updating later, when I've managed to wake up and get
a few cups' worth of coffee into my system and the poor stalling 286 biological
processor in my head...
 
[much later] come to think of it, there are really unnerving echoes in this
concept of bringing about the end of the world... it reminds me of the ideology
of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, don't know if anyone remembers it but the cult spread
havoc a few years back in Japan by leaving unprovoked sarin nerve-gas packages
around the Tokyo underground system, killing many and permanently injuring even
more...
 
as far as I could garner from the muddled newspaper reports at the time, one of
the key idea was to bring about the end of the world by human hands... the next
step up from the vigilante "if God doesn't come and punish the wicked, I'll go
out and do it myself"... if god doesn't finish off the world, it's because he
expects us to do it. man being part of creation, the fact that he brings about
the apocalypse is just an expression of his destiny. man the born destroyer.
 
reminds me (again) of an idea of the qabalists, that if the Tetragrammaton, the
sacred name of G-d that consisted only of consonants and no vowels, were
pronounced correctly, the world would come to an end because the universe had
fulfilled its purpose... mankind was the highest instrument of G-d, because it
could speak, and by speaking it would bring about the end of the world. creepy.
 
but also in a sense a beautiful proposition. the 'purpose' of the universe is
the perception of g-d. human beings are the eyes of the universe, created so
that someone would be around to admire the beauty of creation, or so that G-d
would be able to see himself...
 
but then it's all just soap-bubbles isn't it. pretty soap-bubbles that justify
many not-so-pretty actions most of the time, and a few pretty ones every once in
a while.
 
crazy stuff...

had a weird dream last night. dreamt that the human race was somehow on the
brink of extinction at the hands of an alien race. in response to this the human
gene pool had been filtered, so the last surviving 20,000 humans all looked
exactly alike. they were all rocket scientist brunettes. begs the question how
they were going to have kids doesn't it... think there were some old
white-haired men in togas as well. don't know how they'd avoided the eugenic
melting pot project...
 
the protagonist of the dream (me I suppose) was sent up in a space balloon
powered by solar winds to battle this giant intelligent amoeba in the sky. an
alien I think. remember the feeling of standing on the jelly-like creature and
looking down on the earth below. very weird.
 
confusing. think I can guess where I got parts of it from. there was a news
report a few days ago that caught my imagination, of a man doing a parachute
drop down from 10000 metres or whatever onto a floating balloon mattress at 5000
metres. and standing on top of it... and I just re-read a PKDick story about
ancient martian amoebas floating through space to land on earth. and being
slaughtered by earthbound xenophobes. + 'oh to be a blobel'...
 
don't know where I got the human gene pool thing from though. weird.
 
whatever. my boss is looking good today. very pretty eyes she has. mmmm.

wow man.
 
one of our mice just spoke to me.
 
I was lying curled-up on the sofa, trying to work out why I was *not* in bed
(it's 2am here and everyone's now gone to bed in the flat except me), watching a
film on tv really intently but with no idea what was going on, when the mouse
that lives behind our electric heater came out and looked at me and squeaked
really loudly. (told you they were getting cheekier). he sounded like a squeaky
toy. then he darted off, behind the giant dresser where we store our crockery.
 
this is actually the first time one of them has had the guts to address me. I'd
like to think of him as an ambassador, sent to speak of the future peace between
our two people and settle some kind of co-evolution agreement. I mean, they
could keep the floors clean, eat our leftovers and keep insect populations under
control, we could feed them and teach them to read and write and so on...
 
sadly though, I think the little bugger was taunting me. there was a note of
challenge and contempt to his squeaking that made me think of the barbarian
chieftain at the beginning of gladiator. if he'd had trousers I'm sure he would
have pulled them down and turned his furry little butt to me and wiggled it...
'nyeh nyeh. we're taking over your flat and you can't stop us, because you're a
stupid squeamish liberal brainwashed by disney, who can't get himself to do
anything about it because we're <i>cute</i>. naaaah nana-naaanah'.
 
little pest. come to mock me in my dark hour. I'll get you for this.

whew. started writing an entry about one thing, and it became an entry about
something else entirely.
 
BTW, I admit I'm a lazy hypocrite. I rant and rave, but you won't see me
freezing my butt off at a 6am demonstration, or printing leaflets, or even
writing more than sporadic letters to amnesty targets... I justify this by
disconnecting my observation from any sense of responsibility or agency. haha.
I'm powerless, as whatever I do will not make any difference whatsoever. easy
way out innit.
 
maybe I do make a slight, slight difference in the world. I consume very little.
I buy books. clothes every six months or so, or once a year when I can't wear my
old clothes decently in public anymore because they're worn through. I've bought
something like 4 cds in the last two years. all my (very few) branded clothes
are second hand and "subverted" (sarcastic marks). I cut the neck off my
£2 ralph lauren second hand jumper, I wear my harrods jumper  inside out because
I can' be bothered to find out which way is right when I get up in the morning. I
try not to shop branded goods, I object and am outraged at policies and lies and
the apparatus of imprisonment we're so busy creating for ourselves that we can't
think about what we're building.
 
[...]
 
but I look at what I just wrote and I think hey, what a sad little f**ker I am.
trying to justify myself in my own eyes and those of the world by pointing out
all the little things I do out of indifference and laziness, not out of
commitment, trying to pass them off as "ethical". bladibladiblah. I drink coke,
I go through life without ever thinking about where the electricity I consume
comes from, what damage tobacco companies are wreaking on the world's
eco-systems, without any consciousness of the mechanical structure of the cancer
 I inhabit and form part of... I leave the light on in the bathroom at night. I
waste. I consume. I don't recycle except when someone makes it convenient for me
and reminds me of it...
 
truth is, I can't be arsed. I've got enough with myself and my own life. and
it's precisely because people think like me that the world is going to hell.
screw me. I am loathsome. I am the last man, as is everyone around me.
world-killers. 'I am become death, the destroyer of worlds' says the human race
to itself, and pats itself on the back for being postmodern and cheekily
irreverent and self-referential and re-appropriating an ancient text, if they
give a toss at all, if they're not completely, completely oblivious to it...
haha. I'm intertextual. all meaning collapses in itself.
 
f**k me.

ok, so I didn't go to bed. sue me. my flatmate artistette is chainsawing wood to
make shelves in the living room anyway, so sleep would probably provoke dreams
of burly rednecks with hockeymasks and suspenders chasing me down the streets of
baghdad with F-16s and intelligent missile systems and roaring deforestation
instruments...
 
just as well I'm not sleeping then. don't know why I'm so obsessed with this
neo-imperialist baghdad thing... since I became news-conscious about a year or
two ago (did a heavy course on social theory etc. for my MA) a little part of my
mind has slowly but surely been accumulating evidence for a trial against man
the political animal from the newspapers. mister putin the KGB killer and
autocrat, tony blair the hypemaster hypocrite with right-wing populist
power-sick policies and fluttering ears and rictus grin, dubya and gore, sharon
and arafat, whatever... immigration, war, arms races, disproportionate spending
on weapons or luxury lunches, golf courses or pointless conferences... the
environment, the global landscape of starvation, poverty, ideological hypocrisy,
indiscriminate power abuse...
 
the only people who make sense are minorities (not necessarily ethnic, more
political), and they only make sense as long as they're in positions of
minority. I'm sick of it. every time I open a newspaper there are more lies,
more spin, more hypocritical populist lowest-denominator policies, raw greed and
hate and intolerance and weakness and selfish interest disguised with
high-flying rhetoric and lies and "humanitarianism"...
 
compassionate conservatism my butt. I feel sick. we're building a room with no doors for ourselves. and we're
on the inside.

(notice the alliteration in the title. always the hallmark of quality!)
 
I can't believe it. less than a month after inauguration, my worst forebodings
are being confirmed. "dubya", redneck monkey god of America has flexed his
political muscles against Iraq. we are entering a new polar period of history,
where America rediscovers another enemy to justify itself... argh.
 
I remember the inauguration. I watched the entire affair live as it happened,
zonked out in my sofa one lazy, gray afternoon with nothing to do, shuddering
with fear and loathing... I remember thinking that oh my g-d. if this had
happened in a muslim country it would have been presented as <b>religious
fundamentalism</i>...
 
I mean, preacherman with thunder in his voice, hymns, invocations to god and the
entire myth structure of the American dream-apparatus... democracy, liberty,
freedom, dignity, civilisation... all these beautiful concepts with little
connection to reality... all invoked as triggerwords, with no basis in the
actual state of the State's affairs... all nicely backed up by God. what
happened to the God of Nature of the founding fathers? my theory is he killed
himself out of either disgust, pity, self-loathing, guilt, or the unbearable
realisation that the little verminous, scheming, crawling gutter creatures he
had populated his beautiful globe with were made in his image... and that they
were only carrying out the genetic vector implanted in them by their Father...
that if he, God, if he had had other Gods to argue with, bicker, kill, rape,
consume, ignore, go to war with, run over, exclude, torture, discriminate
against, butcher, dismember... He would have been doing <i>exactly... the...
same... thing</i>.
 
no wonder He's such a loner. no wonder He wanted to prevent all other gods from
existing. because given others of his kind, heaven would soon become the mirror
of the world below, and there wouldn't be a war. there would be an infinite
number of wars, on an infinite number of levels. and the cosmos would be the
mirror of the earth. abused, ignored, wretched and pale, covered in the shit and
detritus and plastic coke bottles of an infinite race of infinite beings,
fighting and bickering and watching cosmic tv in their sofas eating godly junk
food and waging wars against each other, inventing savage weapons with which to
destroy each other's civilian populations.
 
thnk God He was wise enough to remain alone in his Majesty.
 
I mean look at this. Sharon, architect of the palestine colonisation plan,
elected in Israel. within a week, america, historical ally against arab muslims
etc. decides to strike out with minimal provocation ( you can say what you want
about those 'poor pilots': they're an excuse). spot the secret message. 'f**k
you arabs, we're the global policeman'.
 
who needs a policeman if there's no crime? durkheim said the criminal was as
vital to the functioning of society as the policeman (i think). well, the
'global villain' is as vital to the functioning of the present global
amerocentric socioeconomicopolitical complex as America itself. wag the dog.
precipitate a crisis to deflect attention. create your own enemies, look
righteous in the light of their evil moon. scapegoat the jews. or the gypsies.
or jehova's witnesses. or the christians in rome. or vietnam.
 
humanitarianism my arse. it's a gesture of raw power, pure and simple. 'because
I can'. the nike swoosh as the new american applepie. I can't even be bothered
to continue, or even start, this line of argument...
 
f**k all this. if we die out as a species, in a rabid flurry of biological
strikes, anthrax and nukes, drowning in our own toxic bile and plastic crap and
f**king unrecyclable mcburger styrofoam boxes and 600000-year halflife
lifedestroying cancerous earthwarping poisonous waste and choking on car fumes
and factory exhausts and heavy metals in the water and our own polluted, dying,
destroyed atmosphere, stumbling blindly in the wasted ruins of shopping malls
and skyscrapers and gas stations and f**king fast food joints, scorched and
bleeding from all orifices, rolling our seared, sick cracking parched bodies on
the undying tarmac with poxmarked skin peeling off like cheap plastic wrapping,
soulless stupid channelflicking eyes and hands, minds destroyed by advertising
and jingles and vapid but impossibly beautiful plasticdoll people whose
pointless imaginary lives are broadcast to jungle tribes in the amazon who don't
speak a word of english but want their barbie dolls and their fucking plastic
surgery anyway, like second-generation beads and trinkets with which we're not
even buying the global manhattan, we're bloody well stealing it, poisoned into
uncritical idiocy with facile ideology and cheap profitmaximising poisonous
JUNK, blinking stupidly at the stars and hopping, wrenching  around close to the
ground like deranged froglike drooling imbeciles without minds or souls or
anything in our heads but the numb steady static of the ultimate information
overload that finally killed the human spirit...
 
... it's because <b>WE FUCKING WELL DESERVE IT</b>.
 
to the world elites, industrialists, warmongers, all the fearfully angry bigoted
selfish shortsighted mindsick and bodysick and soulsick morons, arms dealers,
the righteous, glorious, self-contented semihumans out there I quote the great
cartman:
 
 <blockquote>screw you guys, I'm going home.</blockquote>
 
The second to last man, basking in the afterglow of a righteous rant and feeling
nicely satisfied with himself, is now logging off, and going to bed.

*whew*: my g-d. this took a long, long time. very tired now, in my head as well
as my nimble little typing fingers. anyway. all you ever wanted to know about
me, from a survey apparently designed to hit relatively bright american
high-school teenagers. whatever. enjoy. til next.
 
-----------------------------------------------------
 
1) Chances are the person who you send this to already knows your name...so
answer this...if you could call yourself any name in the world besides what you
are called now, what would it be?
 
 not too bothered with names. except mine sucks. I would be called... FitzRoy.
because it's ridiculous and it would draw people's attention, then I could be
ironic about it.
 
2) When a mosquito bites you, do you immediately slap it or do you wait for it
to fill up with blood first THEN slap it?
 
none of the above. let it suck blood til it's too bloated to fly, then watch it
crash drunkenly to the floor.
 
3) Have you ever bought condoms, if so what brand?
 
 how am I meant to remember that? hate condoms, but I have bought them. many
times. who knows what brand. most recently, the ones they have in boot's. the
sensitive ones. don't like the rough elephant hide ones.
 
4) What age were you when you discovered the secrets of the "birds and the
bees"?
 
 7. not even lying. digging through my dad's library I found a book on
pre-colombian erotic ceramics and pottery. what an initiation, hey? started
masturbating when I was 9.
 
 
5) Which female pop singer deserves to have their "good name" slandered by
shameless tabloids first... a)britney spears b)mandy moore c)jessica simpson
e)christina aguilera...?:
 
 none of them. the less attention the press gives to their sex lives, the less
we hear of them, the less sexual tension and angst accumulates around them, and
the more likely their careers are to fizz. yiha.
 
6) During world war II, a woman was forced to choose to take with her to safety
only one of her two children, who consisted of one boy and one girl. if you were
faced with this choice, which would you choose or what would you do?
 
 don't think gender's really the deciding factor here. sexist question. I have
no idea what I would do, because I've never had children. Ask me when I have
them. and when I'm in the middle of a war zone. hate stupid hypothetical
questions: 'what would you do if you were a 90-year old impotent German man with
schizophrenia and arthritis who was forced to have sex with his own
granddaughter or they would both die at the hands of the alien slimemolds from
planet Grfhsdjcx'. yeah right. like you'd know.
 
7) What does the smell of cut grass remind you of?
 
 summer back home. lying in the grass. blue skies. sunshine warming your face.
watching clouds on your back with little bugs creeping on your bare legs. life.
 
8) Chances are you probably have a crush on someone...who that is your business,
but this question asks...what qualities that person has that draw you to them?
 
 yiha. see entry entitled 'my friend'. *grin*.
 
9) Are thunderstorms, in your opinion, super-cool or just plain scary?
 
 they rock. big time. nothing like them, anywhere in the world. take most of
your clothes off and romp around, grinning like a fool. yell. feel the wind on
your face. go back in, change your clothes and sit in front of a warm fireplace
with a cup of coffee and a quilt.
 
10) What is your favorite thing in the whole world to do and who do you like
doing this thing with? 
 
hmmm. varies, really. depends on the situation + my frame of mind. usually,
if I'm really enjoying what I'm doing there's nothing I'd rather do.
particularly sex, though.
 
11) What foreign accent do you consider to be "sexy"?
 
 erm? not turned on by foreigners. I am one myself. rather more interesting what
people say than how they say it.
 
12) Britney spears...real or implants?
 
 no, she's definitely not real. suppose she might have pulled it off if they had
better AI people at the android factory, but as it stands her brain is
**definitely** silicon (or worse). she's silly, pneumatic little girl that I
suspect enjoys being a manufactured media replicant.
 
 
13) A wall stands before you that goes endlessly in all directions. It cannot be
surmounted in any way. What do you do?
 
 gaze up in wonder at the concept of infinity. wonder whether the reason why I
was going that way was really that important after all. have a roll-up while I
think. turn around and walk the other way.
 
14) Do you believe in having premarital sex? If you disapprove, and a friend of
yours had premarital sex...would you abandon your friendship with that person?
 
 erm. never, **ever** had a problem with that. in fact, none of my friends have
**not** had premarital sex, I think.
 
15) Boy Bands:(choose one) a)I want to have sex with them, b)I wanna join them,
c)I wanna kill them, d)they are just misunderstood?
 
 none of the above. it's a job, and I wouldn't want to do it.
 
 
 
 
 ok, brace yourself for the next series of questions...
 
-----------------------------------------
 
16) If you were moving in a week, what things would you miss? If you could take
anything with you, what would it be?
 
 the flat. my big windows. my double bed (first time in my life I have a double
bed!!!). the painful hipness of it all. the hoodlums with guns. the crime rates.
the rats. the crack. my radiator. the playstation.
 
 my flat. my flatmates. my stuffed dog 'voffen' and his equally stuffed
girlfriend. my books. the rest of my stuff except the bed (it would all fit into
two big bags).
 
17) Did you ever or do you still wear your hair feathered, crimped, and or
poofed up "eighties style"?
 
 never wear it **any** style. occasionally sort out the naturally forming
dreadlocks. wash it. otherwise, let nature run its course. shave it completely
more or less every one or two years (these days).
 
18) Do you prefer hugs or kisses?
 
 don't prefer either of them a priori. depends on the situation. do both or
neither when the situation calls for it.
 
19) Oh no! Mean people are taking over the world! If you could be a super hero,
what would you be called,and what would your super power be?
 
 MacGyver. making nuclear reactors out of pocket trash and a coathanger.
 
20) We all know you hate your siblings if you have any but who do you know
(besides yourself) that has the most annoying brother or sister?
 
 get along quite well with my brother, siblings are fine and **little** siblings
are generally cute for short periods of time, as long as they don't drool on me
and I don't have to change their nappies.
 
21) How many beanie babies do you have (truthfully)?
 
 no idea what a beanie baby is. sounds like a fluffy McDonald's kids meal
gimmick. starting to wonder what demographic this survey is aimed at. *giggle
giggle*. *pout*. "he's so, like, COOL! and POPULAR!". gosh. what am I getting
into.
 
22) If it were possible to have sex with no physical consequences, would you?
 
 erm. astral sex? dig that. certainly.
 
23) We all know most everyone has a perverted side to them, so...have you ever
read a cheesy romance novel just to read the sex scenes?(be honest dammit!!)
 
 yaaah. not just that. when I was a kid I used to read psychiatry textbooks just
to get to the juicy sexual deviance parts. honestly. while the other kids were
out playing with swings. used to read the best bits out to them as well.
 
24) There is a turtle lying flipped over in the desert. He cannot right himself
and is dying in the sun. You walk on without helping him, why? 
 
excellent! this is the best question so far. because I don't want to leave
fingerprints. because he's surrounded by landmines. because the alien invaders
look just like turtles, and he might be one of them. because he might be
booby-trapped. because I don't believe in turtles. because he gets what's coming
for him for crawling out of his natural environment. because he's the
degenerate, stunted descendant of the dinosaurs, and he is a shame to his
magnificent ancestors. and so on.
 
25) Which of your friends has the biggest hidden perverted side?
 
 erm. I don't know. it's hidden. me. I've got the biggest perverted side. except
I'm not my own friend much of the time. do I actually have any friends?
wooooo...
 
26) What do you think would be the most interesting place to have sex in and
why?
 
 in zero gravity. lots of acrobatic potential. you could set loose huge scoops
of chocolate ice cream, chase after them and eat them, pretending they were
planets. erm. that's got nothing to do with sex, has it... well, you've seen
that jeans advert, haven't you?
 
27) If you could be any barnyard animal, what would you be? What traits do you
already share with it?
 
 I'm a pig. I'm cute.
 
29) When you have the house to yourself what do you do?
 
 whip up my necromantic gear and summon my dead ancestors for a good game of
twister. sorry. getting flippant. what do I do? eat. sleep. read. watch tv. exercise. stare at the wall. surf the web. rearrange my room. sit and
think. listen to music. water the flowers. try not to listen to the police
sirens and gunshots outside.
 
 
 
survey part three! s**t this is taking too long...
 
 
 
 even more questions. had to cut the original entry into three different ones...
well, hope you derive some enjoyment from this... :-)
 
-----------------------------------------
 
30) If you had only two days to live, what would you do?
 
 say goodbye to the people that mattered. try to console the disturbed. tie
things up. say all the things I haven't gotten around to saying because 'there's
always another time'. chill. try to go out with a grin, and in a quiet, serene,
energetic state of mind, to maximise the chance of post-mortem enlightenment
(cfr. the tibetan book of the dead) or being reborn in the pure land of the
buddha or in a good position in heaven or as an astral god-being or whatever.
also to make everyone I left behind feel happier about me going.
 
33) What is the best kind of kiss?
 
 context-sensitive. the one you wanted and which felt nice. not the one you
'had' to give/receive. the one delivered with feeling.
 
34) Are you a video/computer game freak? Who do you know that is the worst video
game freak ever?
 
 yes. not very skilled, but certainly a freak.
 
36) Do you consider yourself to be popular, in the "middle class" of popular,
just there, a dork (nothing wrong with that), or an outcast?
 
 sheesh. not an american high-school kid. all of the above and none. veering
towards a voluntary state of outcastness, I think. not very pronounced though.
more on the inside than in terms of being sociable. don't think anyone knows me
that well. 'just there', on second thoughts.
 
 when I *was* in school, I was the pretentious smart-ass black-clad buddhist
beatnik freak in a year of 40 soon-to-be-early-parents, mechanics, cashiers and
alcohlics, the kid that could get away with anything because the undereducated
rural teachers on the little Norwegian island where he lived liked him and
thought he was too clever to take on, and everyone else thought was weird and
impossible to talk to but nice and quite attractive. not 'popular'.
 
 no AK47s. never felt the urge to kill people.
 
37) What was your favorite fortune from a fortune cookie? 
 
can't remember any. getting bored and have to go home. never eat fortune
cookies because they're creepy and taste like paper dipped in sugar-water. eat
Baci chocolates though. almost the same. can't remember any of those either.
ARGH! need to finish this off...
 
38) What is the all around stupidest thing you have ever done out of all the
stupid things we know you did throughout your life? 
 
spending an hour of my life doing this survey, when I could have been going
home to eat and sleep and watch tv and do nice things. aaaarrr-gh. one more
question.
 
39) Do you have a friend that just will never let up when it comes to finding
out secrets? 
 
no. I'm very, very selective about the people I term friends. a modicum of
social intelligence is a given. besides, I have a way with discouraging people
who pry. I can be very, very, very untalkative.

alternatively titled, 'god is leading me onto the flesh and marrow'.
 
walking down to the supermarket after work today (the local sainsbury's parking
lot is at the end of our short, short street) my housemate 'artistette' and I
pondered that too long had we been denied the pleasure to roam free and kill
sentient beings. our primal selves were clamoring to be set free on the world.
 
at the same time, I've been reading Naomi Klein's no logo (as has everyone over
the age of 12 around here, it seems) and I decided to turn this into a response
to global capitalism. prepackaged meat, commodified animals, branded branded
branded food that makes you happy and good-looking and effortless by proxy,
because the pretty people eat it too... hence. what better way to respond than
to return to the land. stalk the urban jungle. drink water from puddles at dawn,
pounce savagely into the human throng and cull the weakest links, run like the
wind through the thundering stampede of the traffic etc. . reinforce the myths
of terror that mothers tell their children to keep them from straying. snatch
some succulent, ripe young flesh in the process, keep our protein intake up... I
mean, we need bogeymen! we need dark forces that loom threateningly at the edges
of civilisation. and come on, who here believes muslims are the new commies?
international terrorism doesn't exactly strike fear into the hearts of dalston
gangsters, crackheads and their racket brethren...
 
so we would be the new bestial antinome, paradigm-setters, the evil opposite of
civilisation. on a local level, of course.
 
now, we got back without accidents. and armfuls of fresh vegetables and
tortelloni and chocolate biscuits and other decidedly un-primeval foodstuffs. no
blood or raw palpitating human flesh in sight.
 
but as we sat down to eat, what did the magic glitterbox provide our starvign
minds with? 'silence of the lambs'. haha, I thought. what a coincidence. we
decided to organise a flat outing to the immediately post-valentine showings of
hannibal, and that was it. chose not to think too much about 'having friends for
dinner' etc. (beyond setting up a 'friends we'd rather eat'-list. more about
that later).
 
immeidately after comes what? 'angel'. oh cool. being a bit of a buffy fan by
definition (vampires, sacred trusts, evil conspiracies, graveyards, that kind of
thang...) and never having seen the "mature spin-off" (notice special
"sarcastic" marks on either side of that), I thought I'd give it a go... and was
regaled with the most glorious trash-tv line ever. I give it to you here in its
fulness. grok it, or be a fool:
 
'How were you parents?'
 
'great [wait for it]: tasted like chicken'...
 
Now, in my hysterically amused corner of the sofa, giggling in my head, I
started to detect a certain sinister note to the evening's entertainment. ZAP
after angel comes an advert. shadow flesh quivering, dark voiceover. 'man's most
ancient sin'. 'the terrible temptation of the flesh'. bladiblah. turns out
channel 4 is screening a documentary on cannibalism tomorrow night...
 
ok, ok. no need to get paranoid here. it's not that occult forces are guiding my
life in new gastronomical directions (though I can't help but draw links to that
cigarette the other day...if g-d is watching, it looks like I'm the hamster
whose wheel he hooked up to a car engine to see what happened. nasty spoiled
little brat he is...) . it's just that cannibalism is a) cheap thrills, b)
taboo, and c) relatively underexploited. with a few excpetions. 'ravenous',
'cannibal the musical', 'alive' (exploitation or not? hmmm...) spring to mind.
also, it's in the media because of Hannibal.
 
I mean, I still haven't seen a cannibal on jerry springer (besides hollywood
junk films and gwbush quote e-mails, the main window on 'the west' we have here
in Europe...), but there was that Japanese guy who became a celebrity for eating
a French student. wrote a book about it, he did. lowest common denominator
stuff, masquerading as 'high art'. yech. it still doesn't take that much to
provoke a (crude) response with cannibalism. try doing that with the death of
god, or middle-eastern politics. don't think so...
 
I digress. the point was, with my usual mystical flair and a bit of help from my
breakfast cereal decoder ring, I deciphered the secret message from the cosmos.
and I thought. ho-hum I thought. okey-dokey. who would I eat first? leave aside
my family, because I'd rather not. they'd be difficult to replace. I've still
got to prove myself to my dad *sardonic grin*, I love my mum too much to eat her
and my brother is the only person in the entire world who shares my sense of
humour.
 
soooo... that left a lot of friends. including one flatmate... now, I've got to
log off, as it's getting late and I'm rearranging my room to make space for my
bi-monthly dusting-under-the-bed-orgy. I'm not going to disclose our cannibal
top ten social culling,
 
buuuut I've decided to follow in the footsteps of more trendy and illustrious
diarists, and engage the reader by posing questions at the end of entry. my very
curious question would be: which one of your friends would you rather eat, and
more importantly, *why*? what criteria would you go by? chubbiness, fitness,
appearance, texture, skin tone, muscles, good circulation, hair colour, hat
size, political views, IQ, cuddliness, sexual attraction, similarity to your
mum, length of penis, ? hmmmm...

maybe I should stop reading him in bed... :-)
 
either way, my diary style is now a pun. 'terminal' lack of ambition. ha ha.
geddit? a computer terminal so lacking in ambition that it dreams of being its
own slave, a lame copywriter chained to a computer terminal. ha ha again.
 
*sigh*: I need a break.

here I was thinking there was a cause and effect relation between how I felt and
what my OD looked like. 'oh yeah. I feel grey, so I'll make my diary grey. haw
haw.'... that diary style was a visible expression of my invisible inner
states... however the Truth has now been revealed to me in a searing flash of
light... life will never be the same...
 
IT'S THE OTHER WAY AROUND!!!
 
I changed my diary to a more upbeat colour scheme, and no sooner had I changed
my diary style, than I felt happier again! I immediately inferred that the cause
and effect relationship is the inverse of what I thought it was... a series of
Is and Os lodged in a memory bank somewhere have primacy over my emotional
states! a change in one prompts a change in the other, as one'd expect, but
 
in truth, me, my flesh and my emotional states are the outer manifestation,
expression of some unthinkable abstract entity made of binary code, that just
chooses to manifest itself in the world as 'me'! like a kid dipping its hand
into water must look to amoebae... or the 3Der falling into 'flatland'... Lao
Tse's dreaming butterfly is having a lucid dream!
 
[...]
 
maybe I really am a cyborg. I mean, to what degree can I consider my online
'information bank' (e-mail accounts, free harddisks, websites, work) as separate
from 'me'?
 
in some sense my identity is consituted by and through 'external' elements and
symbols that I manipulate. clothes, objects, jewelry, talismans whatever.
objects that originate outside my biological system. my public 'face' is largely
exogenous to my self in the biological sense...
 
now, if part of my public persona of symbols is constituted by technological
systems, information stored in cybernetic media, hi-tech artifacts, it makes
these part of 'me'... extensions and expressions of myself,
 
like art. the presentation of self in everyday life is an art, in one sense of
the word, or it can be, in another... like, the seamless, flexible, unbreakable
mask of a well-versed socialite... it has to be admired, though it may be
unconscious and unintentional...
 
is unconscious art, performed not for the sake of artistic creation, really
'art'? a similar question is whether nature is 'art'. obviously you could
coherently and with ease argue both for or against this... what do people out
there think? is art without intention still 'art'?
 
and if I'm the unconscious dream of an electric god in the Real World outside
our minor and insignificant reality, a world which we're slowly approaching from
within the dream of its inhabitants, (like when you step out from one weird
dream landscape into one which more closely resembles the realm of everyday
life, without waking up...), am I a piece of unconscious art? to Christians, is
the universe the artwork of the Creator? and is it hubris or divinity to create
following his example? Hm.
 
Erm. Lala-la.
 
I think I'll go back to work now.

Back at my workdesk, and it's monday morning, yet another week...
 
For about a week now I've been feeling really 'flat' and 'unreal'... sort of
just about able to keep up with the world, certainly not able to shape it or add
anything of value or interest to it... feeling dim, unalert, confused, slow,
dark and damp like a moist black clod of earth... reflects on my writing as
well. look back on what I wrote over the week-end and I virtually can't remember
writing it... flat and unappealing, written out of a desire to try to keep
writing even though I didn't feel like it.
 
Not sure what brings these spells about, probably a combination of <excess
smoking>pollution, insufficient diet, underoxygenated brain, and obscure cosmic
rhythms... the end result of this particular cycle was that I woke up this
morning at 5.30am feeling like I couldn't breathe, like my brain was entirely
empty, fuzzy and tilted to one side, face and eyes hurting, and all the
preliminary signals of a migraine... I think I sat in bed for about 45 minutes
trying to wake up, inchoately groping for some control of my physical functions
and trying to breathe some life back into myself...
 
obviously life in the city doesn't particularly agree with me. In the end I got
control of it by doing my qi gong routine 3 times, raiding the fridge for 2
litres of apple juice and deciding *not* to have a smoke first thing in the
morning, before breakfast... feel a bit more like myself now ...
 
this sense of unreality isn't purely physiological either. it tends to enroach
when I don't get to spend much 'close' time with people, like chatting out the
contents of my head to someone in bed at 3am in the morning or in a long warm
bath or whatever... hence the importance in my life of women that I sleep with.
I'm quite a 'closed' person, socially, and if I don't express myself to others I
close off even more (vicious circle) and I end up in my own head, and that
drives me even more crazy because I'm very bad at entering into dialogue with
myself. curious trait that, I always think better when I respond to others....
lack the incentive to think for myself somehow.
 
anyway. the good news is, I feel more like myself now, sitting at my desk, than
I have for about a week. haha. ironic isn't it. wake up to myself just at the
time when I have to submerge myself.

we've got mice. lots of mice.
 
yesterday night we were sitting around the living room, chatting, watching
Almodovar's Matador out of the corner of one eye, when something like a civil
war must have erupted between the various factions of mice that have occupied
our flat. it started at about 1.30, in the corner of the main area / living
room, near the bathroom: loud squeaking and little grey bodies flying out in all
directions. for the next half an hour we saw mice everywhere: running along the
pipes on the walls, between our chairs, in under doors... the one tenant we
thought we had, had suddenly metastasised into 4 o 5 tribes of verminous,
scuttling little creatures.
 
personally, I'm quite fond of mice. as far as I'm concerned they're cute, quick,
furry little creatures with twitching whiskers. my gut instinct is to feed
them... in the case of some of my flatmates, however, they awaken primordial
hunter personae... we've had incidents of raging, screaming, wild-eyed flatmates
breaking frying pans against the floor chasing mice, and trying to smoke them
out of our dishwasher by lighting small pyres on the living room floor...
 
one of my flatmates in particular, a computer programmer, takes great pleasure
in inventing devious mechanical ways of killing the little pests. the look on
his face as he tenderly explains the mechanism of his latest death-machine
acquisition, or the biological cycle of his latest toxin (it kills them by
making them thirsty, then rupturing their insides explosively when they
drink...) is usually seen in maternity wards...
 
now, this flatmate, let's call him Programmer, left for the States before
Christmas, leaving a handful of his 'babies' around the flat... when he came
back, two other flatmates (let's call them Artist and Artistette, becuase
Artistette is the only female person in the flat, and she's an artist too...)
had pickled the dead mice in jars of vinegar and left them on his mantelpiece.
another story entirely...
 
following this incident, the mice have gradually either solved the riddle of the
deathmachines, or natural selection has gotten rid of the ones with a tendency
to stick their little heads too close to metal plates with cheese on them...
either way, they ignore his strategically positioned boobytraps. which angers
him no end. 'I can't believe they're so blase about it!'.
 
 I fear the stakes will rise, as neither side gives in to the other...

wow. got up at 2.30pm today. feel like I've just about recuperated my human
faculties now... not that I've managed to do anything else this week-end,
really. GFs mother and sister going to Pakistan, and 'stupidly' I went over to
see them on Friday night. and spent saturday dragging heavy shelves, packing,
photocopying, licking stamps (!!), making tea, trying to act as mediator between
two arrayed hostile forces (mother and daughter, both in the throes of
travel-hysteria)...
 
whew. came back yesterday night and though, hey, I'll just chill... then it
turns out my flatmate's got two friends over, one of which is a bright,
cute-looking blonde. what do I do? I go out with them and the rest of the flat
to a local jazz-bar, and spend the night yelling over insanely loud mary poppins
soundtracks and other bits of un-jazzy jazz... had an 'orgasm' though. ha-ha-ha.
2 parts coffee liqueur, one part irish whiskey, one shot of milk and some cream.
weird.
 
and the subject of conversation veered into the territory of psychosis and
mental illness, (60% of my flat is on anti-depressants) and went on til 3am...
 
by which time I was exhausted and went to bed.

made a few stylistic changes to my diary lay-out. like a bit of straight-edged
minimalism sometimes. makes me feel clean. besides, that's what both the world
and the inside of my head look like after a day in front of the screen.
 
planning to sleep a lot this week-end. I've started working on translating one
of my favourite books from Norwegian to English, Finn Alnæs' 'Gemini'. it's
never been translated before, so I feel like I'm doing humanity a bit of a
service. might even get published one day, if I do a good job. (and if I don't
get bored halfway through and start doing something else...).
 
Problem is, it's a pretty complex work, drawing heavily on German philosophy,
literary movements, contemporary social debates, and the language of astronomy
and anatomy (!?). at times it reacts against 'modern' literature by caricaturing
it. try translating from one language to another a well-executed, playful
'Joycean' stream of consciousness with rhymes, bits of German and alliterations
thrown into the original language. now, try to make that a <i>parodic</i> yet
still extremely well executed stream of consciousness... try doing that from a
Germanic language, where you put words together like Lego to form 12-syllable
superwords, into a melting-pot language like English, where generally words that
express degrees of the same concept are derived from wildly different sources...
 
[...]
 
quite good fun in short. keeps me busy.
 
suppose I should add in a bit of background to this. I grew up trilingual,
speaking norwegian, spanish and italian. started learning english when I was 10,
and moved to England six years ago, when I was about 18. studied german and
spanish for my BA. oooh. and I have a US citizenship because I was born there.
 
the end result of this is that I'm a bit here and there and everywhere. used to
spend a lot of time wondering where I 'belonged', but I came to the conclusion
that I didn't really fit in perfectly anywhere. which in turn is a glass
half-empty glass half-full situation. am I rootless or just very adaptable?
myself I'm quite happy with the 'half-full' hypothesis...