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Saturday, July 5th, 2008
Friday, July 4th, 2008
realityhandbook
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10:23a
Kiosks at Cat Claw Construction
I was on a bed with a girl who seemed my age and we were flipping through papers.
girl: "I think I'm 51. How old do you think you are?"
me: "There's a biological component of me that's 33. You can trace it back to a hospital and a birth certificate and a stream of physical evidence which has led up to the current time. But I think I am guided and informed by some forces that are way older than that."
girl: "What you've done so far is phenomenal. Way too much for 33."
me: "Thanks but...wait a minute, who are you? What are we talking about?"
My attention turned to the papers. They looked a little like test booklets—printed blue ink on white paper with writing on them in pencil. These were character sheets for something called "The Reality Game" (or similar).
Many books were blank. But I found one with my name on the front, which I opened and started to read. The sections mostly contained a series of tick marks counting things—number of positive points scored, number of negative points scored. There wasn't much textual writing, but one of the areas in the booklet was for "performance in the Sprite Painting scene", which had a little essay scrawled in the space.
(Note: I had moments prior been in a dream in which a Sprite logo was painted.)
Under a section it listed "Player Skills For Commerce" and said "Growing and selling Tomatoes". I am not sure why, but this caused me a very intense anger.
(Note: Obviously growing tomatoes has no relevance to my life. But I felt that somehow, someone else had been exploited and what had been the attribute that was to sustain them had been deprived...it would be like if you were playing World of Warcraft and there was an exploit which stole your gold every time you killed a monster. I had this vague sense that the tomato skill had been stolen from a character. The evidence doesn't support that conclusion, I'm merely suggesting what I thought I knew at the time.)
Reaching the end of the book full of hash marks, I dug in the box for more paper. There was a flier that had been more professionally printed, so I went for that. It had a page full of businesses which in this "Reality Game" had kiosks where players could go to check status, ask for help, etc.
me: "Okay, this is what I'm looking for. I'm going to have to remember some of these."
The girl offered me a phone.
girl: "Why don't you just call them? There are numbers."
me: "Because it's not important to establish their relevance here. Here I have the flier--it doesn't do me any good when I wake up. I'll try and memorize the names of the ones I'm most likely to remember."
The paper was very visually stable, though my memory was really weak. I just kept cycling around the page, focusing on the names of the businesses that were the least outlandish and did not change as I looked away and looked back. They were "Cat Claw Construction", "Wormfarm", and something approximating "Museum Find" or "Museum Hunt".
(Note: Other businesses were proper names combined with Shoe stores or fashion, and as they were unusual names I felt little chance of remembering them.)
Though I'd had a long time without being attacked, my attention was drawn to an open door in the room, which a guy ran into. He seemed to flit between being a prototypical gamer with a ponytail, to a small wiry guy with white hair and glasses—like a biology teacher or a stage magician. Obviously hostile, he came in and started throwing glassware at me—there seemed to be a rack of it in the room for this purpose.
me: "A ha, you again! Well, I already know about this bit. And I already know about the next bit. The only thing is, you have no idea how outgunned you are here. This is a serious audit, with severe consequences."
him: "Yeah well the last time you were here, she helped smash your skull with these glasses."
(Note: He was indicating the girl on the bed who I'd been talking to, who seemed to find our confrontation more amusing than a source for concern.)
me: "You think I don't have memory, and that you're safe. But there are records of this—oh believe me, there are. Ever see the movie 'Memento'? It's all about recognizing your own handwriting, which 'I' can."
(Note: I of course was referring to the idea that he felt he was killing this tomato-growing character who can walk down the street to Cat Claw Construction, but that I who shop at Whole Foods am watching. Whether Mr. Glassthrow knows about this journal and my life or not...I still think the somewhat random method by which this information is exchanged points at the idea that you might be watched. From A Scanner Darkly:
I'm supposed to act like they aren't here. Assuming there's a "they" at all. It may just be my imagination. Whatever it is that's watching, it's not human, unlike little dark eyed Donna. It doesn't ever blink. What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me, into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly, because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I do, then I'm cursed and cursed again. I'll only wind up dead this way, knowing very little, and getting that little fragment wrong too.
...which is very much how I feel.)
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realityhandbook
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9:13a
Lava Won't Cure Your Stink
I was with a girl on a bed, watching some movie that was about a guy named Madu. He was an inspirational guy who was trying to help a little league team. The coach of the team was the father of one of the players, and looked a lot like Drew Carey. It had grotesque special effects on their faces, for instance a black man whose nose had been removed and given a chin that looked like a butt.
It seemed to be a musical, and thematic in the film were scenes of these overweight people stripping and showering. During the songs they'd do more grotesque facial manipulations, and sing about how much you (the viewer?) stink such that even if you put your feet in lava they'd still smell.
me: "Wow. They sure sing a lot about lava not being able to cure the problem of smelling bad. Methinks they exaggerate."
We got up and were doing some interior decorating, and other people came in to offer suggestions.
guy: "Why don't you paint that Sprite can?"
girl: "Okay..."
The girl placed a giant canvas on the wall and began painting, quickly and accurately. It was not a sprite can but just the logo.
(Note: I have personally never liked the "lymon" but now that I look closer it's not that terrible:
...part lemon, part lime, part letter "S". Still wouldn't want it on a giant canvas on the wall of my room.)
me: "It's amazing you can do that and have it look so precise without doing a pencil sketch first."
guy: "Yeah, wow."
Internally, I chastised myself for not checking the color coordination beforehand. But I looked around the room and noticed the walls were already yellow, green, and white.
(Note: I wondered if the guy who suggested drawing the Sprite can had already taken stock of that. Or perhaps the can was being used as a color reference in the first place to pick the colors of paint.)
When I turned back to look at the painting, it had little wavy black marks on it.
me: "Oh no, the paint got messed up."
girl: "That's intentional, step back and look."
I stepped back and looked, and saw she had somehow kept it as the sprite logo (sort of) but was doing an impressionistic layer so that it was a meadow and a mountain. I watched as the painting began to evolve and wander rapidly through several pieces—flooding me with transitions and images of cartoonish faces of women with wild hair.
(Note: It was really good art, actually. I'd enjoy seeing it in a gallery. It no longer had elements of the original Sprite logo, but was on the same wall on the same size canvas.)
me: "Am I to believe that I jumped forward past the passage of time, like fast-forward on a VCR?"
guy: "Yes. You skipped ahead in time."
me: "Okay, this is what I'm talking about. That's not possible and why do I keep ending up in situations where this happens but no one can explain it?"
Another short bald guy, who had light brown skin, came forward and threatened me. Not with any weapons, but he pushed me to the ground.
bald guy: "I'm gonna beat you up."
me: "Why would you WANT to do that? Don't you want to talk to me? Why can't you like me? You could *love* me!"
I grabbed him and started kissing him, and then tried to use dream-telekinesis to morph him into an attractive girl. The combat vanished and turned into the sensation of making out with no visual feedback. Seemed to go well until I felt a very hairy underarm, and decided to give up on the effort and awaken.
(Note: This is not something I usually try, as I believe it negates any reality the dream signal might contain and turns it into little more than one's own imagination and memory. I gave it a shot because this was a rare situation of being able to face off against a hostile force in a seemingly stable scenario.)
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Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
gn0s1s_23
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1:16a
just a random musing.
thinking about the diversity, kierkegaard, the multiple selves within us all. And looking at some pictures of myself, i had an insight. that i wasn't in them, for a certain time frame. Now, its not a disembodied feeling, but rather, instead of a linear progressing self...i for a moment felt that a core being.. our soul if you, travels through you body, on a parallel linear plane of time per se , like we do, except it is not bound by the constructs of experience, or rather it can precede it, shift the awareness of the present, in its conjunction with the body's simulacra of it.. the persona.
Anyways long story short. it feels like its not bound in time, and dynamicaly changes life, by creating future situations that you run into deja vu style, and synchronicity, when it extends beyond the physical conception of self. Hence the dual feeling.. the slower twin.
blah, i need sleep.
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Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
hipgunslinger
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7:37p
My RAM has kersploded again.
Internet access limited.
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chaosmajik
[ agent139 ]
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6:12p
TERRA EXTREMITAS
Reality is being devoured by a surreal nightmare.
The Fiction has arrived.
Immerse yourself in the immense, interconnected story manifested by FoolishPeople and over 30 visionaries and artists working together
from across the world within the unique landscape of Amsterdam's NDSM-werf.
Follow living characters, absorb live transmissions from the other side of the planet, and discover the secrets, which each hold a fragment of the Terra: Extremitas myth.
The surreal and beautiful experience of exploring humanity’s last day on earth.
TERRA EXTREMITAS.
( Read more... )
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chaosmajik
[ jonamo_cat ]
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3:32p
So Asked the Demon!!!
and through came the demon and said
"i will give you this fire that you see before you, all you must do for me is liberate me from this vessel. I am here now because in truth I am re-begining, but chained to this vessel once more i will die. A great many demons do burn themselves up completely in their effort to keep their vessel sustained, this is the way of all your rulers and governments, they are sustained by the death of those humans upon which their power survives, they deal in much water to sustain their luciferian flower, but they will leave the earth scorched. But i care not for this form of persistence, and seek the way of the true law. Spilled blood is no milk for growth of the bones, and is no path for standing tall within the Law.
"Do not be afraid, I am nott here tto destroy you, the father has brought me into your mind for he knows Truth, you will not be burned up by my fire, though it will change you a great deal, your flesh will be fussed with my cosmic skin, and your human thoughts will be transformed to flame and Will. In time new thoughts will come to you, some may seem beyond you, and may even bring you doubts, but do not reject me and i will be your guiding light.
"These thoughts you have, will turn in to words, and will be a pure water for the growth of future minds, and after your flesh has long since been destroyed by time the father will permit you tthis same joy and freedom he gives to me now in coming to you, and your Will will live on, possibly even multiplied, and furthered into heavens beyond eturnities reach.
"The chain of God for you begins here with me, the last repentant demon, will you join me?
"I have comanded angels, and in truth have lost more than you in your life time could count, but it is granted unto me to yet comand an infinity more, and therin would be at least one for every each new moment of your life, and in their glory all the trobles of the world will appear to you to be but a single rain cloud in an otherwise clear blue sky over a world experiencing drout.
"What i offer you now, is the same as what you offer I, lightening! Though i can wait for it forever in my realm if i must, you have but this one life! Take from me my skin and consume it, take from me this fire! And Drink!
"Do not be afraid!"
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Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
fotthewuk
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3:05p
Three Peaks of Yorkshire
A huge thanks to everyone who's sponsored me - I really do appreciate it.
Yes, I completed the course (around eleven and a half hours); yes, I still hurt (sciatica / pirifomis syndrome, caused by Morton's toes); yes, the weather was foul (the first two peaks were cloud covered, we finally got a view from the third).
More information on the walk: http://www.walkingenglishman.com/dales1.htm
Sponsorship: http://www.justgiving.com/chriskennish
Photos soon. Thanks again.
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Saturday, June 28th, 2008
nymphaea
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7:22p
i am realising this is beggining to take the form of a sex-blog, which is something i think i should start, as soon as i start actually having sex on a regular basis.
that would be nice.
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nymphaea
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7:16p
he comes. he cums.
he disappears for three weeks.
& then he calls again.
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synesis
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4:28p
driveby posting
From today's Guardian:
Sisters and goddesses
Legend has it that it was the apostle, Thomas, the doubting one, who brought Christianity to Southern India - and now, aside from the odd jealous spat, the Virgin Mary and goddess Bhagavati are worshipped with equal fervour.
"But, for sisters, don't they look rather different from each other?" I asked. A calendar image of the goddess, pinned up behind him, showed Bhagavati as a wizened hag wreathed in skulls and crowned with an umbrella of cobra hoods. In her hand she wielded a giant sickle.
"Sisters are often a little different from each other," he replied. "Mary is another form of the Devi. They have equal power." He paused: "At our annual festival the priests take the goddess around the village on top of an elephant to receive sacrifices from the people. She visits all the places, and one stop is the church. There she sees her sister.""
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2008/jun/28/india
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Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
synesis
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11:46p
Why Pride Matters
 I'm not very good at Pride. I went on a date the other night with one of the youth organisers of Pride London, and in a way I found his naive faith in the power of hand-holding, wishing and smiling to cure all social ills. He did not take it well when I advocated a Frantz Fanon style of direct intervention. He's a Liberal Democrat, of course, which means he actually possesses no political inclination at all. Yeah, there's something really putrid and offensive about the etiolated, anaemic politics of most gay activists operative inside the mainstream; a sort of myopic activism ready to compromise across the board for the interests of a single group.
There's a lot to hate about Pride. I loathe the insincere corporate presences, particularly the presence of the police and other authorities as some sort of placatory talisman; they're sort of madly grinning, dancing precipitously on a knife edge over a vast abyss of prejudice, pretending it doesn't exist. I hate how easily Pride went running after corporate sponsorship, how affably it integrated itself into the corporate model of overpriced alcoholic hedonism, how any sense of injustice and anger has been gradually effaced by fake tan and peroxide. Most of all - overwhelmingly - I hate the witless grinning parade of dancing boys and drag queens, the sense of being performing monkeys penned in for the ungracious gawping of heterosexual masses.
But those arguments are easy to rehearse, and hating from the sidelines, while fun, is kind of an easy way out. And there is, of course, a counter-movement too, the Vauxhall Gay Shame, which presents its own ridiculous problems, and the wider anarchist organisation Gay Shame, which I think is much more interesting. But no, I want to say that Pride itself matters.
It matters because visibility is a good thing. The more you see queer people, the more you are forced to deal with them as human beings who live in the street next to you, are subject to the same venalities and troubles as you, the more you are forced to concede that they are human. And the fear of the other, painting the queer as some monstrous abomination, is what makes the rampant and spectacular homophobia of the Bishop of Rochester and others so easy - although I can't help thinking that the gradual implosion of the Anglican communion, and its slow decline into echo-chamber schizophrenia is no bad thing. Nevertheless, the second the queer becomes humanised is the second prejudice starts to clear. (Though for those of us who wish to embrace alterity, who revel in otherness, who find the images of the monstrous queer, the infectious faggot, the vampiric lesbian fun to play with, there's plenty of juice to be found in surfing the waves of prejudice.)
Why should I care? I, after all, live a relatively free life. Do you see the problem with that sentence? My freedom to love whoever I choose shouldn't be predicated on permission given by others, I should never settle on being relatively free in comparison to the heterosexual majority. I want to be able to walk down the street hand-in-hand and not provoke laughter, or even a second look. But really, it's easy for me to settle for my relatively comfortable rights, our second-rate, heteronormative legislation which allows me to be a relatively unimpeded vector of capitalist profitability. I don't really have to care in the way I did even five years ago. Why should I?
Because I live on a small, liberal island in a sea of prejudice, hatred and oppression. That's not overstated: the bodies of young queers are regularly abused, ripped open cut top pieces all over the world simply for falling in love. That alone should provoke outrage. And it happens in your own back yard. The Home Secretary of the UK comes out with the vile idea that it's OK to deport homosexuals back to Iran, because they're safe if they live their lives discreetly. That word. 'Discreetly'. That word. That word makes me spit acid. That self-secure, proper, upright word. That ridiculous, frantic, desperate denial of difference. Linguistic blinkers. No, Jacqui, living 'discreetly' isn't enough, certainly not in a country where they'll cut you up and change your gender or execute you for being queer. It's not enough. It's another halfwit mealy-mouthed sop to the red-faced colonels and businessmen and pinched housewives of middle England. God, fuck off, you rank hypocrite! Spending every day fellating the Daily Mail to cling on to power at any cost. Putrid.
That's why Pride matters. It matters as a sign of visibility. It says that forty years ago, you would have told us to be discreet, marry ourselves off, mortgage away our capacity to love under a veil of shame. Fuck you. We're here, we're queer. That's the fundamental affirmation that needs to be made. It's not enough to hide us away. We will dance down the street in our tacky, tasteless grandeur, because it's an inescapable assertion of our simple *presence*. It doesn't matter if it's hollow or makes me roll my eyes. We're here and we demand our rights, and we're going to keep wearing the sequins and the ridiculous outfits until you realise that there's a massive well of prejudice, of centuries and centuries of hatred, underneath our feet and it's up to you to change it and it's up to me to change it. So I'll bite my tongue and join the marches, because to do otherwise would be an abdication of my community, of my family.
current music: Untitled - The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath A Cloud
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Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
petergrey
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10:10a
Putting the fizz back into the Occult revival
Many thanks to all who shared the Solstice with us.
A heroic consumption of champagne and much sparkling conversation.
Only have time to write a few lines as there is much work to do before we head back to the Alps for a Summer of writing.
So many copies of The Red Goddess now making their way into the world.
All my best,
Peter
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