Disney World part 1

I pull up to Disney World and hit the vape. This was the big one. Walt Disney World was one of the great American wonders, along with the Statue of Liberty, the Hollywood sign and Chicago. Acting as a kind of wonder-palace, the entertainment resort complex was nestled in the heart of the violent wildswamps of Florida. I had often wondered about Disney World, having it been promised to me as a child for eight consecutive birthdays, yet never having the chance to enter the amusement park until now. America by Baudrillard rests on the passenger seat, along with my vintage briefcase, a green poker visor and a half empty bottle of tequila. I squeeze the visor on and think of Disney.

 

Walter Disney was famous for being cryogenically frozen, as well as founding the animation studio and connected theme park that has become the entertainment juggernaut we all know and love today. Walt first had the idea for a theme park after visiting Luna Park in Coney Island. One ride on the wooden rollercoaster gave him a severe neck injury leading to spinal fluid started leaking into his blood stream. This somehow gave him faster reflexes and he felt more in-tune with the business side of Disney Corp. By combining elements of circuses, theme parks and freak shows, Walt Disney bought a bit of swampland in Orlando and turned it into the institution that every American child pays fealty to as they recite its special anthem every night. Disney World had become the spiritual home of modern America, with Mickey Mouse and Darth Vader acting as surrogate saints in the meaningless swill of U.S. culture.

 

The board of directors lived and worked at Disney World, occupying the top floor of its famous Cinderella Castle. They smoked cigars all day and paced around the room, shafts of light cascading through the windows and onto producers pitching them ideas for new films.

“Lion King 3”

“Wall-E 2”

“Star Wars reboot”

“Live action He-Man”

The board of directors went quiet, looking up from their broadsheet newspapers and manilla folders.

“Yes?”

“Live action He-Man reboot trilogy, eighties nostalgia, potential secondary market value two billion.”

“Yeah? So who’s He-Man?”

“It needs to be a professional wrestler. Positive correlation between professional wrestling and professional acting, good audience share for an established talent, if we can pick the right guy, we’d have the next The Rock.” Says the producer calmly. The directors all start puffing on their cigars happily.

“You got someone in mind, doll?”

“Nathan Frazer.” she says, then Nathan Frazer himself pushes open the double doors of the boardroom and starts flexing his muscles.

“I have the power!”

 

Meanwhile I’m down at the entrance smoking a Marlboro Red, trying to act casual around the ICE agents stood nearby. The three men have their faces covered with scarves, MAGA caps shielding their eyes from the harsh summer sun. They wore tactical gear, with little pouches placed around them containing dust, and each wore a set of desert camo trousers tucked into steel toe cap boots sponsored by Capital One. A Disney security guard is stood next to them, tucking his thumbs into his belt and smiling like his face needed a moustache. The queue shuffles along and I flick the cigarette into a trash can, try to act natural, calm, cool, carrying a briefcase full of criminal substances, starting to toss my head to one side and make a little sighing noise.

“I can’t wait to go to Disneyworld Orlando.” I say to the family behind me. I had a fake American accent I had practiced for hours in the car, mimicking the DJs on the radio, repeating things people had said to me again and again until it didn’t make sense. Every time I saw a sign welcoming me to a town I would say “Don’t mess with me, I’m from Bumfuck, Alabama.”, or wherever I was passing through. I had no idea if I sounded American at this point, as I’d been mostly talking to myself for about a month now in different made-up voices, but it looked like all my practice had paid off. The ICE agents didn’t pin me against the wall and threaten to kill me, they just kept waving at the flies that had gathered around them because they smelled of shit. I talked to the clerk in a booth, pressed a bunch of buttons on a touchscreen computer that signed my human rights away and entered the American Mecca.

Walt Disney World Resort.

 

Home.

 

I booked a room in the Wilderness Lodge, rushing to crank the air conditioning up. The heat and humidity was like being in a shower cubicle, except every time you opened the door you entered a more hotter and wetter cubicle than the one you’d just left. I threw my briefcase on the bed, ran the shower and sat beneath the cold water for a while, groaning. I opened the briefcase: 200 cigarettes, 5 grams of cocaine, 2 grams of MDMA, 2 grams of ketamine, half an ounce of Purple Kush, 3.5 grams of peyote, 5 grams of Salvia, a blister pack of Valium, a bottle of 5-HTP and multivitamins, a box of paracetamol, a device, two sets of clothing, a pack of tarot cards, a phone charger and 17 grams of dried psychedelic mushrooms. I chew a mouthful of mushrooms, light a cigarette and watch the tv in the hotel room for a while. The Wilderness Lodge wasn’t what I had expected. For one thing, it wasn’t in the wilderness. The other being that it wasn’t a lodge. It had the aesthetics of what you might expect from the early colonisers of the Americas, with moose heads on the walls and fake log walls made from plastic. I had booked myself a Twin Room, as I liked a bed to lay out my things and the other one to sleep in, though as the mushrooms started to take effect, I wondered to myself. What am I doing?

The hypothesis of this quest was that I was to witness the fall of the American empire. Yet I wondered if this reflected the fall of my own empire. My body. I looked down at the ageing flesh, the sagging skin, the fat belly, the white hairs on my chest and legs. I was getting old. I couldn’t stay awake for weeks on a cocktail of drugs any more. My therapist had gone insane. My mind had softened, forgetting the names of people I had just met instantaneously. I was far from home, far from youth and death seemed to be the only thing ahead. I decide to take more psychedelics to calm myself down, triple check my pockets for the keycard to my room and begin to take a walk.

Entering Deep Simulation

E-cigarettes
Social media
Body-building
Microwaves
Porn
Travelling
Video games
Make-up
Sport
Are all simulations of the intended act, made antiseptic and cyber. We are entering an apocalyptic society in which technology begins to invade not just our minds but our bodies. The world vibrates at a certain frequency as it tries to attain balance. The search for authenticity leads to a simulated version which becomes the subject rather than itself. A thing is reduced by being recorded, quantified, replicated. A video of a storm is not a storm, yet the person recording it was experiencing it behind a camera. What is in front of the camera becomes cinematic, there is a theatricality in the image. People nowadays walk around with a computer in front of them, ordering burgers to their pet dog whilst quitting work to go on a Call of Duty binge. I can shout to my phone and it sprouts small wheels and drives itself to me. In the film The Matrix it was thought denizens would be imprisoned in virtual reality pods with their butts hanging out. In the future reality will become more virtual, there will be no real world to escape to as technology will have replicated everything.

There is no imagination, just reference. Many critics throw this bone out once in a while, although they don’t understand that an Egyptian Pharaoh wouldn’t have been able to imagine being a heroin addict living in New York city. Therefore the original will always exist in the future. If time travel existed we could go into the future, copy some CD’s and bring them back. Can you guess what the number one song in the year 3589 is? Probably some grindcore.

In the video game the sims you play out the lives of actual human beings in abstract potentials. But whose to say all of this isn’t controlled by a mad robot? This questions the nature of reality and in doing so we realise it really is a moot point only the worst pragmatist would lazily bring up. The nature of reality itself is unimportant. Whether we are a brain in a jar, the dream of an elephant, the game of a god or any combination of the three. What scientists do know is that the skein of reality is malleable, similar to lava or perhaps magma. Through inventions like the internet or hypderdrives we can explore the alternate dimensions that exist on another planet. How about a world in which everything is legal? What about a world without poverty? Can you ever imagine that happening in this dimension bub?

To bring this essay to a close I’d like to share some thoughts with you.

Sand is like time, without nature involved we don’t know what to make of it.
Yonic symbolism is strongly lacking in our culture.
Think of life like a bubble floating in the air. When it pops aren’t we just one of the cosmos?
Quantum Physics has proved that we are watched by particles. Why?
There is an unbroken chain of parent and child that links you to a fish.
Magic is real…if you believe in yourself.
Sometimes there’s no such thing as coincidence. This is the uncertainty equation.
It’s fear that gives men wings.
If you sharpen a pencil until there is nothing left, is the shavings a pencil?

I Am The CEO

I cruised over the rocky outcrop with a cigarette pinched between my teeth, it was a recessed type of filter used by machine gun artists in the second world war. The All Terrain Vehicle came to a purring stop as I parked on the mountain side, looking at the city through my field goggles. I had been in Los Angeles a long time. And I hadn't learned nothing. Don't get a McJob, be a Steve Jobs. I had integrated myself into a large non-profit company and worked it from the inside out, sabotaging my co-workers, setting up chains of events so that they would find themselves destroyed. I was the puppet master. I was the Royal Tenenbaum. I was CEO, earning eighty thousand dollars a year just to go wine and dine chumps in order to secure investment. I sat across from gorgons eating expensive salad and drinking white wine. Success? I'd made the American Dream a reality. I was a semi-state fictional character starring in my own film before being made into life. Was this box office blockbuster going to bombasticate the socio-cultural landscape of Los Angeles? I was in the mouth of the world, my whispers being projected across multiple wi-fi dimensions directly into high definition big detail corporate monosynths. I lowered the binocs and dialled my assistant on my cell phone.
“Organise a board meeting, stat.” I whisper through cut teeth.

The limousine slinks it's way through the streets of Hollywood with me in the back, reclining on Swedish leather. Deep warbling world music swells in the speakers around me as a single tear coagulates on my bottom eye lid and captures the reflection of the street lights as they zip overhead.
“It's all so...beautiful.”
The limousine pulls up to a traffic light. I look over into the car next to me and see a young couple. The one driving looks like Danzig. His girlfriend looks over to me then says something to her partner. They both laugh. I turn back to watching the stop light and put my hands on the wheel. I rev the engine. The couple return the challenge. We are both revving our engines, the pitch of the valves increasing as explosions rapidly accelerate. The light goes green. I slam the stick shift of my ATV into Drive and begin flying down the length of the limousine. The racer next to me flies past, I can see his expression of concentration increase through the flicking windows. I hear a horn ahead of me and look up. The seven forty express train coming from Pasadena is on a collision course with me and the driver next to me. And he's slowly catching up. I flick the stick shift into it's race gear setting and begin to pull away. The train's horn toots again just as the front of the limousine smashes through the barrier across the tracks. I look over once more at the couple. He is frantic, eyes bulging, heads pressed against the wind shield. She looks over at me and winks. I push the ATV to it's limit and with a jump narrowly escape along with the rest of the limo. The other car meanwhile isn't so lucky. It's passengers are ejected two hundred feet in the air whilst the car is crushed beneath American railroad legacy. I come to a skidding stop just before the driver's compartment. A little window opens.
“Any problems boss?”
“Guess they had a train to catch.” I say to Bill.

The limousine finally pulls up on the very bottom section of the underground car park. I enter a set of steel doors and plod wearily through the benign corridors. I enter the board room and see it's members sat around a long oak table. A fire blazes in the heath, throwing shifting shapes across the little bald men. Silently I walk to the head of the table and put my seven thousand dollar Dolce briefcase on the table.
“Gentlemen of the board. Any acknowledgements?” I say.
“What are we here for?”
“I gathered you here today...for a presentation.” I say. “Just a few weeks ago the world's entire supply of titanium was bought out. All the mines, processing plants and country stockpiles were purchased overnight.” I take out a lump of titanium from my pocket and throw it onto the table.
“Gentlemen...welcome to the titanium business.”

I ascend the spiral staircase up into the tower. Printers continually churn out stock market prices, high energy business people talk to themselves on headsets, sometimes a basketball is thrown about in order to decide who's making coffee. I stand at a cubicle in which a long haired lawyer rests his feet on the desk as he makes a yo-yo bounce up and down, speaking Portuguese into a cordless phone. He notices me and puts the phone down.
“How's it hangin, hot shot?” I say, leaning against a thin wood.
“Long, loose and full of juice padre. How was the board meeting?”
“You knew about that?”
“Anybody whose anybody heard your business deal. You've transformed a non-profit law firm into the world's one and only source for titanium.”
“Walk with me.” I say, walking off. He follows.
“So what's next?”
“How much does a kilo of titanium cost at the moment?”
“Seven hundred and sixty five dollars.”
“But how much are we selling?”
“None.”
“Exactly. By the time we finished this conversation the world will value titanium twenty bucks more than it did when we started.”
“What's the game plan though here ?”
“What do you know about titanium?”
“Well...it's strong. And it's light.”
“That it?”
“I don't mine it, I buy it.”
“It's used in the manufacture of aerospace parts, sporting goods, surgical instruments and the storage of nuclear waste. It can also be processed into a white dye used in teeth whitening. But I'm going to do something else with it.”
“What?” said the lawyer. I exit the office and stand on a balcony overlooking the Los Angeles skyline as dusk settles in, walking over to the short wall seperating myself and a sixty foot drop. The lawyer grabs hold of the door and nods.
“You're not afraid of heights are you?” I say.
“Yes.”
“I thought so. You know what else titanium can do?”
“What?” he whispers, lips turning blue.
“It can turn a man invisible.” I say, taking a potion from my pocket and drinking it's contents. I watch the lawyer look directly at me in astonishment.
“Padre? Padre?” he says. I creep towards him. “Where've you gone man?” I grab him by both wrists and begin to pull him. He yells. “Stop! Stop!” I pull him towards the balcony and begin to climb over.
“See you in hell!” I scream as I pull him over the edge.

Organ Gorgon

I am riding in the back of a taxi with my assistant, Penny Naknamura. She's wearing a torn One Direction tee, orange zebra print spandex pants with a boot on one foot and a high heel on the other. I point at her feet.
"What's the deal with that then?"
"Asymmetries in babe, didn't you know?"
"I know everything, just not all the time. Doesn't it make you stand funny?"
"It's fash, saw it in New York last week. And New York last week is London next week, comprendez?"
"Yeah sure, looks stupid to me. How we doing for time?"
"We're ten minutes late." she says, taking her ipad out of her bag and looking at some nonsense site. It's what I have an assistant for, to check all the blossoming fat that is growing on the world wide web. I start to get a bit nostalgic for the glory days of the late nineties when my phone goes off. I pick up.
"Where are you?!"
"Relax, almost there."
"You're an hour and ten minutes late?"
"So? We're already late, stop worrying about it. Here, talk to my assistant." I say, handing my phone away. I've lost my train of thought. The taxi stops at some traffic lights and I get out, leaving Penny and the taxi driver shouting at me from the black cab. I pretend to have one of my episodes, though to be honest I feel much happier outside. I step in between the cars and make my way down the road, popping into a cafe, past the counter and kitchen and out into an alley, much to the chagrin of the staff there. The alley seems a lot more quieter though. I walk over to a bin and begin to practise my yoga.

I wake up a few hours later, I must have dozed off after finishing my asanas. I wonder if my assistant made it to the fashion show. Or was it a film premiere. It didn't matter. I had been pretending to be a journalist for GQ for the last few weeks and had found it all quite dull. They hadn't been interested in my stories about the snake infestation at a nearby orphanage or the series of grave robberies taking place in Yorkshire. It had all been style, surface, a thin veneer of lies masquerading as something of worth. I now felt foolish about getting all those tattoos, but still, 'yolo'. I walk out of the alley and back onto the street. This was where the action was, this was where the juice was at. I felt as though I could somehow read minds as I stared at people making their way up and down. Maybe that woman was trying to juggle a career and children whilst going through a rough divorce. Maybe that man was addicted to heroin. Maybe that group of teenagers were planning on murdering me. Variety is the spice of life, but what exactly is being spiced? They keep meat in the ceiling. I walk back around the corner and back into the cafe I had entered earlier, although this time the staff are shouting at me and blocking my way. I go back out onto the street and start to walk again, as if I am lost. I am lost in fact. I'm unsure of which city I'm in. I start shouting for help and for somebody to save me, but everyone walks past as if I smell of piss. I do this for a while then start walking again, but not before rooting through a bin to find a newspaper to stuff down the front of my trousers. I have always been hyper-sensitive to touch and the scratching and folding of the newspaper against my skin causes me a great deal of uncomfort. Somebody shouts my name and I look through the faces. It is my assistant.
"Where've you been?"
"I saw one of my friends I haven't seen for ages, I owed them some money."
"You missed the show. I took some notes for you, but you'll have to write the rest up yourself." she says.
"Thanks Penny. I love you." I say. I wince.
"What?"
"I said I love you by accident, on account of you resembling my departed wife."
"You're a widow?"
"It's widower. And yes. At least, I think so. She went missing a few weeks ago and I'm assuming she has died. Though now I come to think about it...maybe you're her?" I shout, pulling at her wig.
"Get off me!" she screams. It isn't a wig. And she's not my wife. I start to cry and run away again, ashamed of myself. How will I finish this story for GQ now?

It's several hours later and I'm frantically trying to guess what happened earlier. A film premiere? A fashion show? Maybe an art opening. I decide to mix them all together and have written about a film about art with models that are holograms or something. So far I have three thousand words and a few diagrams. I stuff it all in an envelope and post it off, not really giving a shit. I have some other stuff in the pipeline anyway, probably. I scratch at the tattoo of a monkey on my neck, wondering if it has become infected. I probably shouldn't have been climbing in and out of those graves in Yorkshire after all. I go to a petrol station to buy some flowers for Penny as an apology, then post those off as well. With all that done I decide to call it a day and head off towards a nightclub, ready to dance the night away and get powerfully drunk. Maybe I'm not cut out for a career as a journalist, at least in such an upmarket magazine. Better off to follow my own path. Maybe I could be like Hunter S. Thompson or something? I laugh at myself. How ridiculous and pathetic. The sudden urge to stab myself in the neck with my belt overwhelms me and it takes every ounce of willpower not to end my life right there on the pavement.
"Are you coming in mate?" says the bouncer. I look over and nod.
"I am."

Dinner Evening, 17th March

On the table across from me sits one of the most prodigious actors of our time. He is one of Britain's most prolific male actors with a career that spans decades, working with the likes of Martin Scorsese, Johnny Depp, Timothy Dalton and Christian Slater. He is Kevin Eldon, the actor. Kevin Eldon is surprisingly almost unrecognisable upon meeting him for the first time. He wears the expression of a powerful man, his trademark familiar face somehow reverting to an almost reptilian-like coolness sunk just millimetres beneath the pale meat. We are drinking Eldon's favourite claret: 'Boca Vino'. It is a thoughtful, deep bordeaux, with a kind of musky scent that lingers on the senses long after ingestion. I'd like to say that these traits were also common in Eldon, but he is more man than wine. We have arranged the dinner in order to discuss his new BBC 2 comedy sketch show 'It's Kevin.' though discussion has moved onto other topics.
"You see, I could have been Alan Partridge. It was my idea basically. The thing they changed was the catchphrase being 'A-Ha!', instead of having my idea.'I'm here!' he'd say. But he'd say it high pitched. That's the thing about inventing a comedy character that is taken in a different direction. Really, I'm the best Alan Partridge impersonator that there ever was. As Steve Coogan was doing an impression of my impression. It just changed the dynamic too much." says Eldon. We are eating white veal served with olives, tomatoes and roast parsnips. The food is delicious, I can understand why Eldon is a regular. As he continues to methodically eat his food, he has just finished a ten minute monologue about nineties British comedy. He is an excellent story teller and I had heard many other interesting, often funny, stories in the previous hour ranging from his experiences in stand-up comedy, his love of hiking, his brushes with death and his thoughts on conspiracy theories, especially regarding global warming.
"So...what do you think about twitter?"
"Well it's a good thing you brought it up as I was just going to say that I read something on twitter the other day that I think you may find funny, but first I must explain a few things." Kevin stops midsentence and looks over my shoulder. I turn and see that the famous DJ Stuart Maconie has entered the restaurant and is sitting a few tables behind us. He is alone.
"Fucking Stuart Maconie." says Eldon, losing his calm exterior for a second so that I see a flash of the beast, as if he was just a curtain containing some snarling bag of hate filled ape, all made of hot piss and fingernails.
"You have a problem with Stuart Maconie?"
"No, not at all. We've known each other since 1989. You know, some say that was the second summer of love, don't they?"
"I think they do."
"Did you do much of that then? You know, gone to one of those parties, taken ecstasy, ." said Eldon. He slices an olive in half and with great care lances it with a single tine.
"I have."
"Me too. So did Stuart Maconie. Anyway, what was it you were asking me about?"

Just as we are finishing up our main course a waiter arrives carrying a silver tray. On top are two glasses of lager.
"What is this?" says Eldon to the waiter, annoyed.
"Your friend sent them over." said the waiter, setting the drinks down onto the table. I go to turn around again but Eldon signals for me not to react.
"Thank you." says Eldon. The waiter leaves us to stare at the two pints of lager. They look ridiculous and crass by our empty plates and glasses of wine.
"Fucking Stuart Maconie. Every time." says Eldon, shaking his head. He then continues his story about the possible film he'd be starring in, a biopic of Alan Turing. Our plates are taken away and we wait for dessert. Eldon drinks both pints. When the cheese board is brought Eldon signals for the waiter to come closer.
"I'd like for you to send a glass of wine vinegar over to Stuart Maconie's table."
"Vinegar?"
"Yes. Tell him that it's what we're drinking."
"I can't serve a glass of vinegar Mr. Eldon." says the waiter. I watch all of this silently, chewing slowly on a lump of cheese. It has the atmosphere of a nightmare.
"Are you listening to me? I am friends with your boss. I have been coming to this restaurant for almost fifteen years. I am Kevin Eldon. So why don't you do what I fucking say?" says Eldon. The boy nods and walks off quickly, face red. Eldon cuts himself a slice of cheese and rubs at his jaw.
"You know, I sometimes think it's funny that people consider that they know who Kevin Eldon is because I appear on their televisions or laptops or phones. My trade as a comedian has lead people to think I am somehow the act I put on to entertain the public. But they forget that it's just a job for me. I am superimposed onto reality you know? I have projected a concept of myself outward and people consider it to be the truth. When the truth is I'm shape shifting. I am shape shifting before your very eyes and you cannot believe it." says Kevin Eldon. I nod, beginning to understand. He was an actor.

On The Criticism Of Jean Baudrillard

Or 'Mungo's Revenge', as it was affectionately known in some circles, definitely happened the other night in the city of Manchester, England. A feast for the eyes and laser surgery for the belly, OTCOJB (MR) specified the doubts and fears of a pre-apocalyptic society that had previously been unuttered for some unknown reason. Yet OTCOJB was a terrifying success, each piece of criticism raining mental and spiritual devastation, caught in the blast from nuclear weapons, bound by the spider and having a steel straw plunged into your body, over and over, removing the juices whilst kept alive for days (insect/human hybrids)

"When invading Europe the Romans created a map the exact same size as the land they were conquering, the parchment covering miles upon miles of forests, mountains and towns. As the decades wore on the plants and animals died, leaving early Europeans to crawl beneath the fading and yellowing parchment, drawing beneath a map of the sky. Surviving shreds of this map are encased in glass two thousand years later, looked at by the withered descendants of this land. Google are doing the same thing but with computers." - Jean Baudrillard 1998


On The Criticism Of Jean Baudrillard.















Examples provided from Dr. DC and Dr. SR.