MATERIALIST DOT NET

... is. last line cracks me up every time.

ominous gluttonies of doom and long silences to the contrary, no I haven't died, by my own hand or otherwise. just sequestering into an impoverished repetitive rhythm that will, presumably, build in scale over the next few months until I reach the middle of the submission tunnel. a baring of life that, if not pleasant overall, is still necessary. still, as industrial historian siegfried giedion once remarked, the encounter between organic substance and the rhythm of the machine is an imperfect juncture - and I'm nowhere near it, or genuine productivity. stil, focusing sufficiently to lack in the ontic surplus to engage in writing... apologies to emailers reading this, thanks and I will get to it, when I get to it.

soundtrack for the week has been sepultura's chaos AD; a lot of rammstein; some system of a down; front line assembly; and zombie nation's excellent c64 remix kernkraft 400 [yes, it is a commercially very succesful remix of an 8bit computer game soundtrack, 'lazy jones' to be precise. whoa! and the angel opened the 7th seal...]. all of which are eminently suited to writing about industrial violence. and scaring little ladies in the park. music collection tripled in size and manifold in quality thanks to the discovery of a word-of-mouth local network.

two thirds of the way through the rather nice ps2 rpg shin megami tensei: nocturne I've now lost interest, like a lot of games the rhythm of the script slacks off after a promising beginning. amusingly, starting out I named the principal characters after a friend in wolfson, my current liaison and the head of the cambridge anthropology department. half an hour into the 50+ hour game, ms strathern destroyed the universe, killed all human beings and populated tokyo with demons. friend and liaison alike have now, around hr30, fused with respective alien gods to recreate the universe in enjoyably half-appropriate ways: misanthropic but sensitive friend to create a 'world of solitude', where no one interferes with anyone else; liaison, to create a universe where the strong [and highly educated: she starts out as a high-school overachiever...] rule the inferior. leaving the central character yours truly with the prospect of likely having to kill both of them off. kind of interesting, as far as palliative wastes of time go.

town still empty from christmas, days stuck on repeat. getting on with some chapter edits, eating sufficiently, taking my special iPod friend on walks to get coffee in town. late last couple of nights playing a catatonically slow, really unrewarding PS2 game I picked up for cheap the other day. sometimes I really fucking wish I was 16 again - puerile scripts were so much more enjoyable back then. fleshing out a new okcupid profile [haha, thought I was going to link to my profile didn't you. fat chance.] during flat ebbs of inspiration - at this pace, should hit the 2'000 question mark sometime near the middle of next week. slowly, shifting my centre of gravity back where it belongs. bang in the middle of ego.

tired of the ol' seeing eye, browsed around for something more cheerful. found a relatively recent one I kind of like - a year and a half ago, maybe. still have hair, just visible on the sides of the pic. I'm tired, looking up from a menu in an american chain-restaurant next to the grafton center in cambridge. notice the pen stuck in the neck of the jumper. very characteristic.

visage recognizability dramatically increases the possibility of being approached by autograph groupies; I admit it's also probably shocking to readers both known and unknown, though for altogether different reasons. I'll accept feedback on whether I should go back to sub-cosmic visual anonymity or not.

way intense dream last night, broke up a night of restless tossing, woke me drenched in sweat. characters were all carl barks' ducks - some deep-seated layer of my consciousness communicates using cartoon characters. it comes out when I'm strung out, lost and confused or, like now, when I haven't eaten for a few days.

there was excavation of ancient roots and a sequence of cloudhopping, on ornate and crystalline but extremely fragile clouds. there seemed to be temple architecture on the clouds. just when the clouds were about to collapse, one of the nephews - dewey, I think - looked down and saw something way down there, in the sea: a strange gigantic entity composed of two invisibly interlinked squidlike vertical structures, tentacles moving upwards. the two parts span around each other underwater like a binary sun system. they were completely distinct and separate, yet it was clear they were part of the same entity: similar to how the fingers of a three-dimensional hand moving through a two-dimensional plane appear separate. the entity was identified somehow as "Death", an approximation, but it was mobilizing to make sure something did not happen. it seemed to be linked to the collapse of the cloud structure, though I'm not at all sure it was going to prevent it.

when I woke up I was thinking, for some reason, of the union of heaven and earth in chinese alchemy. smiling, also, with a simple thought that hadn't occured to me. the permanent clenching of the solar plexus I've been wandering around with for a few months eased, leaving some space to breathe. throughout the morning I wandered around with a sense in my guts that things would eventually be ok after all - that the roots in me of my current dark patch would eventually be resolved: could, in fact. for a while, thrown to the side as I am in in my own head, this has been abstract. thought rather than felt.

it's really quite strange. I don't understand why I'm in this state, except to say that I seem to be trapped in an old, old structure of thought-suspicion-dark-fear-unreciprocation-need-feeling that I had convinced myself I had dealt with and dissolved long since. guess I had only suppressed it. embarrassing as it is, I think I can trace it back to when I was four, little child crying because mommy went downstairs. much as the part of me I identify as "I" is proud, has dignity and knows better, there is still a raging tiger and a gaping hole that doesn't speak english in my ID. it's reemergence now is, I guess, a result of how I've let myself go this year and indulged in superimposing silly daydreams and wish fulfilment fantasies on reality. maybe it's a good thing all this crap has come out in the open - unless I work through it, I have a feeling I'll never be quite emotionally whole or able to engage with people on their own terms.

I swear I'd forgotten the pleasure of walking down the street to a soundtrack nobody else hears. it transfigures the world entire. a few hours walking around, eskimos and egypt 'welcome to the future' on indefinite repeat; apoptygma berzerk, 'bitch' and 'non-stop violence'; some early chemical brothers, from 'exit planet dust'; and a healthy dose of early instrumental techno. the voiceless purity always works, touches a clean space in my head that has nothing to do with humans. lifts you out of the pit, lets you touch things more lightly again. cut off at one remove from the world, it becomes interesting again. smile at kids crossing the street, appreciate a beautiful face, notice the gestures of strangers - all the while stephan groth is in your ear, yelling "believe it or not but I'm still alive / your feeding on my blood is like a kick in the eye" ['bitch']. the music takes you out of yourself, makes you alone but not lonely.

I'd be an iPod poster-boy for free. apple: if you want some of that homeless grungy structurally unsound amoeba chic, I'm here for you.

long dream involving enemies and superpowers. most vividly remember a small very sexy elfin girl who could envelop herself in a thick, sticky and invulnerable globe of transparent mucus. faced with infinitely substitutable villain nemesis #217 on an arid beachfront scattered with ruins, the power failed and required her skin to be re-humidified - the solution was me smearing her spit on her skin, something which in turn swiftly degenerated into manic kissing and sex. not sure why the villain would permit the time for this, but I'll give my subconscious some leeway with dramatic structure.

I do wonder at myself these days. queued up for some serious chakra realignment. self-indulgent teenybopper melodrama the order of the day. even my digestive system is messed up. violent catharsis. sex drugs and to some degree rock and roll seem to be somewhat incompatible with tenancy agreement terms in the ivory tower. alternatively, buy some sleek little topnotch palliative consumer goody. like a vaio s5xp with an extra 1gig strap-on RAM dildo. thank you, oh gods of gratuitous research expense budgets.

happy new year to you all. I aim for morale improvement.

[later] yes, I did slightly sanitize the above text. have also, in the meantime, acquired one key to spiritual elevation amidst the brackish currents of mundane life. a teensy-weensy little fifth generation iPod. loaded to the rim with c64 remixes and old trance it serves the master's purpose splendidly. consumption may not be the path to enlightenment, but it sure as hell brightens the interrim sometimes.