MATERIALIST DOT NET

came down last night to partake in the birthday celebrations for ex girlfriends sister, who turns 26. ended up staying awake over bottles of red wine til 5.30 talking politics and god and endless things... very good.

learned many things, a favourite among which was that Erasmus was excommunicated by the church for translating that line about 'logos' in the bible, not as 'in the beginning was the word' -  but as 'in the beginning was the conversation', playing on a semantic ambiguity of the original greek.

amazing. one little word change turned the entire structure of christianity upside down in my head.

if only...

I have also secured some funky christmas presents. for myself and others. the funkiest has to be tetsuo - the iron man. a fuckedup baroque drum'n'bass eulogy of invasive, viral uncontrolled technology and frantically pumping cyborgs, in black and white, no dialogue, by a japanese director. the story about a man infected with a technovirus that turns him into a cyborg - has some priceless moments. like, when his penis turns into an enormous rotating drill and forces him to rape-penetrate-infect his monstrous cyborgised wife.

sick, brilliant and utterly compelling stuff. merry christmas to me.

finished my 2nd essay, and dammit, feels like the effort nearly killed me. mind and body tense far beyond conscious awareness. put the finishing touches down, relax, and BANG! head explodes with pain, feels about to split down the middle like a rotten melon.

must be I am getting too old for the strenuous life of the academic...

number one for 'naked mice'. number 569 for 'poor white trash'. number 4 for 'monkey amputation'.

and one of my favourites.

not to mention all the 'monkey penis' and 'normal-size penis' referrals. and the one italian who came here looking for 'monkey fuck woman'...

"We're doing everything we can to protect America," Bush said as he signed a bill creating the department. "In a free and open society, no department of government can completely guarantee our safety against ruthless killers who move and plot in shadows."

yup. the politics of ninja prevention. very important: unlimited proliferation of ruthless killers has been known to have adverse effects on 'democratic systems', alleged or not.

yup. 'ruthless killers who move and plot in shadows'. sounds like the recently murder-enabled CIA. also known to have adverse, even fatal effects on democratic systems. mostly in other parts of the world, so it doesn't matter...

yup. sounds like the american establishment has finally managed to establish their de facto political omnipotence, in the form of that elusive ideal of all aspiring political autocrats since the beginning of time.

a nation of wealthy, pliable, perfectly malleable, enthusiastic deficients. who will swallow any crap you feed them raw and beg for more. 

plato would be squirming with jealousy.

british feminists align with fundamentalist nigerians in condemning miss world.the enemy of my enemies is my friend. still, one wonders.

a bunch of stupid girl-child swimsuits trying to look wise and innocent, sexy but chaste, alluring but respectable, but most of all just preeeeetty.

I mean who the fuck cares, right?

now, the next logical move in the semiotics of global war... obvious symbols of western cultural hegemony anyone? obvious objects of fervently displaced, sexually misaligned patriarchal anger anyone? obvious representatives of incarnate, shallow, superficial materialism anyone?

like right. what an obvious choice for a terrorist, huh? perform and confirm your inhuman dedication on the stage of the world: I mean who bombs pretty girls? pretty young girls are sacred symbols - who bombs pretty girls? a saint or a madman, depending on the twists and turns of your particular ideology.

this would be the obvious choice - swimsuit murder on the catwalk. the obvious choice, that is, if terrorism were really the all-pervasive, looming shadow of death threatening us all.

were it not for the fact that it's all a fucking lie. blown beyond inflation, extended and globalised to cater for a domestic identity crisis in the logic of hyperpower. to fill the huge soviet-shaped gap in the global agenda. nice to have a shapeless enemy if you're trying to solve a jigsaw - it will fit anywhere...

were global evil like an octopus the truth, it would be a logical move. logical. the hatred of beauty is an evil thing [witness the contradiction - terrorism is irrational, madness, the total breakdown of causality, 'pure evil' - yet subject to all sorts of explanations, in the crystalline, messianic, lobotomal logic of envy, hatred and evil. we're good, they're eeeeevil.].

oh yes. they'd be bombing the pretty chicas. but it's not going to happen. why? it would happen. it would be a logical act by the illogical beast.

[how convenient to label your enemies illogical: it makes their very unpredictability somehow predictable. if they do not act it is not because they do not exist: it is because they are different, think different, act different to the logic of you and me.]

it would happen. were it not for the fact that none of what you hear is true. that our present, all-too-present shadow of death has the profile of a monkey with a flag.

hear, hear. nothing is true, everything is permitted. if you have the guns to back you up.

skulls and crossbones mark the oil deposits.

I'm starting to really have enough of land rights. 

I say: pack the damn bickering, tangled and unshaven population of northern norway up and ship them into space.

if nothing else, it would make my fieldwork a lot more interesting.

nigerian beauty pageant death toll rises to 215

"Some Christians feel especially bitter because with the exit of Miss World, they have lost a symbolic battle while the Muslims have won."

I know this is a sweeping and uninformed generalisation; maybe Nigerian christianity glorifies the body and revels in the cult of physical sensuality [I have my doubts...]. still, I think one has to admit that the world out there has gone pretty f***ing weird, when christians find themselves fighting in defence of a beauty pageant...

of all worthless tragic things to kill people over... having said that, at least there are no oil interests directly involved. dull hatred rather than greed: what a refreshing change.

I say, pack the damn queens up and ship them into space. pack the damn rioters up too. spacesuits optional.

I'm one of google's top ten sites for 'hydrocolonic'.

if anyone calls I'll be in the corner, shamefaced, slowly banging my head against the wall.

at my desk. cup of cold coffee. media player on shuffle: hard, melodic trance, gothic techno, random trash. curtains drawn but window open. cold clear sunny winter day outside. saturday. writing an essay.

a sort of vaguely neomarxian analysis of economic colonialism in the state administration of reindeer herding.

I think.

due in on friday, and I guess it should be ok. I have almost a week to write the damn thing.

still, I worry. if for some reason it all goes wrong, there is a hell of a lot of money at stake, right?

I am a bit beside myself. most of my best work is written in a nervous, self-compelled semi-trance. this is a good thing: I need that sort of edgy nervous tension in order to get things done.

except for this transient self-displacement, all is good. I'll be back in a week's time.

here is an old favourite from one of my previous journals. I have to say, I still think it's a pretty good ramble. amazing the things that flow through your brain when you're feverish at work.

Alien Mutant City From Space - 3/28/2001

don't know what my problem is at the moment. well, I do. I feel ill.
my body is the microcosmic metaphor of my surrounding environment: blocked-up transport sytem, crumbling houses and facades, congestions and arthritic pain, pollution and grime everywhere. strikes. simmering discontent. stress. no birdsong.

not to mention dim,grim&dysfunctional administration. breakdown in channels of communication. main difference is, I haven't got Livingston the Redeemer to make life tolerable and provide humourous asides.

clearly though, the City is an organism just like me. argument by analogy.

think me and mine fayre Citie both could do with a few weeks in a health spa. some hardcore hydrocolonic therapy to blow out ye Worme of Corruptione that wriggleth in our bellies. aromatherapy to drown out the methanic fumes of cars. loops of soothing dolphin songs in the background.

problem being, you might throw the baby out with the bathwater. if you melted the unhealthiness out of the City you might be left with a bare lifeless crater... same goes for me.

nay, say rather wholesale amputation. me and City both. in my case, whole body removed. would do me a world of good.

with the City, eradicate it, chop it into pieces and ship it off to the colonies. get prosthetic replacements. some sheep and fluteplaying shepherds, flamenco women and peach trees in. even if they're plastic they're bound to look better than the natural limbs...

in the case of amputation there are problems though. urban regeneration is one. the City might regrow its limbs, like the slimy mutant brackish-water salamander it is. what if it regrows like a starfish? chop a fragment off, drop it somewhere, and presto, another mutant City springs up in your back yard...

what if they use spores? you breathe some in on the air of the City, carry them around infested for years as they slowly grow, until suddenly one morning the newborn City erupts from inside you, ripping you open and gushing out across acres and acres of land in all directions, towering skyscrapers exploding up towards the sky from your helpless gutted crucified body...

probably its more subtle than that though. the City is a meme. the first city landed like an invisible virus from space, infected one of our poor little innocent treedwelling ancestors and mutated him forcibly into a vector for the growth of new Cities... opposable thumbs, social instinct, technological aptitude... all simply to procreate this race of gigantic inorganic lifeforms...

we're all just vessels for the replication of a race of alien mineral entities, Cities, from space.

slaves to the City.

do Cities reproduce asexually? underground roots and tendrils... maybe the tube systems. cars are red bloodcells, streets are veins and arteries. buildings are the skeleton. people are the nervous system. armies are the strong arms of the cities. countries are just groups of Cities banding together for mutual protection...

ever wonder about this 'progress, technology, economic development'-thing? why aren't we happy just the way we were, sitting around, eating fruit, mating, swinging from tree to tree?...

very simple. we're enslaved by the alien virus from space. we have to build Cities, because the City Virus forces us to. the alien virus has taken over our brains to the point that we don't even realise that we're slaves. we think we're fulfilling our own purposes, our own goals when we build cities... but nooooooooooo...

suddenly, a little urban sprawl will pop somewhere unexpected, complete with lame transport system, rats, traffic... do Cities pass through the fetal stage?

do they have babies?

yes. hamlets, settlements, villages... sometimes a village starts growing, eats up the surrounding villages. turns into a City. sometimes they die, sometimes they mutate or split or evolve... pure Darwinism.

humans are expendable, like skin cells. how many of your cells die every day? how many do you destroy simply by scratching your face, cutting yourself while shaving, getting drunk, just for fun!!!

suburbs are satellite Cities. babies still attached to the mother City.

autobahns are the pulsating giant veins of the global City network superbrain.

like umbilical cords.

what's the next stage you ask?

space. the final frontier. colonisation.

they'll eat up this planet, destroying all life on it, then move on to the next one... leaving nothing behind. taking all us poor assimilated humans along, cells in the twisted, sick body of gleaming new Space-Borne Cities... floating out like a swarm to find new planets to colonise. or maybe just subsist in space.

MIR was the first of the new breed. an experimental mutant baby City sent up to check out viability. just wait. they're changing themselves, becoming smaller, efficient, lithe, autonomous and self-contained. finding new means of sustenance in space: solar power, hydrogen scoops... maybe even becoming independent of humans.

Machine Cities. eternal structures, fully in control of themselves, having shed the weak and mortal Flesh in favour of electric, replicating Metal...

science fiction writers are the propaganda organ of the Cities. making space desirable, making human beings heroes in the race to space... obscuring the fact that the drive to space is not our desire, but the desire of the alien City Virus.

our radio waves might even be the intangible spores of the City. one day they'll bombard a planet way out there, twisting and altering and curdling the life on it into subservient new slave organism. soon, Cities will start to pop up on the surface...

[...]

my parents are too sweet. they sent me the cutest little e-card this morning. featuring the laudably cheerful protagonist you see here:

"Practical attempts... can be answered with cannons as soon as they become dangerous, but ideas that have overcome our intellect and conquered our conviction, ideas to which reason has riveted our conscience, are chains from which one cannot break loose without breaking one's heart; they are demons that one can only overcome by submitting to them." [italics added]

Marx, 1842 

ok, so what's the score?

I'm in cambridge. I absolutely love my subject: no two ways about it. my gigantic funding money has been confirmed, I'm getting a letter sometime this week. all I have to worry about now is not failing my current MPhil degree, and I will basically be sorted out financially til I just about hit 30.

cambridge rocks. I worry about not doing enough work, but it rocks. even with my sharp tendency not to socialise, I've managed to coalesce a protective shell of good people around me to shelter me from the human tide 'outside'. old friends and new friends alike.

two months after breaking up I'm having 'an affair' with a bright, cute little bundle of sarcastic energy. my ex-girlfriend is even being cool about it.

basically, I am waiting for the other shoe to fall. I'll take bets or suggestions as to what sort of horrible thing is going to happen to me soon, to balance out the general blessedness of my situation...

I know embedded MIDI files are the scattered loomfruit of the devil, breeding masturbation and moral turpitude wherever they find innocent pc speakers to express themselves through... 

but I am in a jovial mood today and felt like cheerfully annoying the hell out of the unfortunate reading public, as well as any innocent bypassers...

so, an old favourite. make sure you have the volume turned up [flats, I'm sure you in particular know to appreciate this one]. maybe dance a bit. spread the nena goodness here people! share in the good vibrations.

[actually, as far as I can work out the German, this song is very depressing. never mind. I carelessly amputated the vocal component.]

I got my funding.

repeat: I got my funding.

how much? ... [xxxxxxx censored]. taxable, but still enough to leave me with a very, very comfortable life, even after I pay my tuition fees...

I am so sorted it almost hurts.

thanks to everyone who crossed their fingers for me.

[I censored the amount of money out of superstition and modesty...] [more]

this is just too weird: 

"In Diplozoon paradoxum (a parasite of freshwater fish), the adult body is made up of two [hermaphrodite] individuals fused together, neither of which can survive alone.... There is no development unless two... larvae come together, then each grasps the dorsal button of the other by means of their ventral sucker. This triggers a metamorphosis that leaves the two larvae fused. The intestine ramifies through both individuals and the male and female reproductive ducts become reciprocally fused, so they are in a state of permanent copulation and cross-fertilisation is assured." [emphasis added]


I mean what. the. fvck.

seriously.

just think about this. try and visualise it. two little squirming wormy creatures, permanently fused to each other, both of them permanently, constantly, mutually penetrating and being penetrated for the rest of their lives: 'in a state of permanent copulation'.

what can I say. if I was making it up I'd laugh at myself. I say kudos to the universe for producing such a ridiculously nympho arrangement.

[obviously, adam and eve were at the back of the queue when modes of sexual reproduction were handed out, way back in the garden of eden...]

I'm second on google for the search phrase "someone who bothers a buddha".

you gotta love these things. in the meantime, please cross your fingers for me. tomorrow I'll probably find out the results of my first round of funding applications...

why is it that the American trailerpark proletariat is so enthusiastic about foreign imperialism? interviews, documentaries, wherever you look: a seething jingoist sense of righteous empire.

you know what I mean. illiterate white trash with american eagles tattooed on their chests. shotguntoting shopkeepers with semi-linguistic drawls, draped in american flags. armed baseball jingoists in the gulf: 'we're goaaaan go aouyt there 'n bomb shit. yeah. bomb 'em niggers real goooood'.

puzzling, to the rest of us. is it that their scum-like existence gives them no access to pride except the filtered achievements they receive through the media apparatus? vicarious dignity: I am excrement, but my nation is great...

like fucking ridiculous reasoning. fostering this sort of self-effacing is the prime strategy of the American moloch machine: rather than struggling to improve their lives and the lives of others, trash would rather sink into the opium haze of self-congratulatory vicarious achievement broadcast in the superbowl adbreaks.

I finally found a term that describes the phenomenon: 'servitor imperialism'. the imperialism of second-class citizens, designed to 'give individuals from disadvantaged groups the first opportunity to escape from a self-assessment as victim to one as conqueror' (Hechter:237).

pathetic, but true.

nice quote. where is it from? - it's from the introduction to Hechter's 'Internal Colonialism: the Celtic Fringe in British National Development'. for some reason I am reading up on the concept of 'internal colonialism' as deployed within marxist and post-marxist critiques of social inequality.

fun-kyyy. I never quite cease to be amazed at the fucked-up things human monkeys do to each other the moment they forget they're monkeys...

yesterday's excursion was very enjoyable. the sort of trip that leaves you feeling that your life is being lived adequately after all. that you aren't actually wasting your alloted briefness in the weltall. at the end of the day and to soft murmurings, flights of angels [or one, at least] sang me to my rest.

subsequently and notionally, I am doing work today. in practice, this means sitting around drinking coffee and updating software: at best, browsing through libraries compiling bibliographies. mostly, updating things like my half-life executable... preparing for some serious virtual genocide. click, click, click, and the rest is violence.

[why I organised this entry around this double paraphrase is beyond my ken. esotericism, no doubt.]