Everyone plays computer games or knows someone who does. This hip new hobby is sweeping the national papers in cry storms of black ink and primordial jokes, with citizens experiencing literally hours of fun on the new Medal Of Honour game or racing each other on The Grand Theft Auto. The visceral nature of this high-tech, low brow pastime is often lost on those that are visually impaired, they often have no idea how the 64-bit graphics on the latest xbox is any different from the olden days gone by of Pac-Man and it's hit DLC, Ms. Pac-Man. Of course, blind people are able to play some modern games by listening to sounds and memorizing patterns, some manufacturers have experimented with lycra suits fitted with vibrating paddles that give an extra-sensory perception for enjoying the latest beat-em-up. But what about a video game made for blind people by blind people? Well what about it?
Ryan McBiudden is an entrepreneur using crowd sourcing to fund his mad-cap idea. We talk over Skype in separate coffee shops, talking loudly. I ask him to tell me all about the game as I slurp my Americano.
"It's simple. In this first-person shooter you play a blind man. There are no visual graphics at all, not even menus. Gamers have to rely entirely on sound." he says.
"Whoa."
"This is the world experienced by the visually impaired. It's heavily imagination based, with gamers having to construct a 3D map in their heads in order to navigate the post-apocalyptic city."
"Whoa, post-apocalypse? Now you got my attention." I say, dribbling coffee from my grinning mouth.
"It's a prequel to Day Of The Triffids. You play a character called Jack who wakes up completely blind and have to explore a world invaded by...alien plants? I think it's an invasion. They might have been there all along, I can't remember. Anyway, that's the game."
"Sounds good, I'll give it five stars. What's the multiplayer like?"
"We wanted to focus on delivering an excellent single player experience, though we're also working on-" he says. I pick up the laptop and smash it to bits against the table in front of me, hitting it over and over again, screaming as my brain boils inside my skull.
29.1.14
24.1.14
Bog Standard
Science. What's it all about? Since early Greek times the scientific method has been thought of as the correct way of transferring reality into concepts and has lead to some big advances for mankind. Numerology, the hammer, the water wheel and so on. Yet can we really trust science? Four hundred years ago scientists believed that the Earth was shaped like a torus, yet now we 'know' it's not. In another four hundred years what else may we look back on and think 'lol'? A group of scientists working out of a laboratory in Salford are trying to find that out, but not in the way that you might expect.
A woman at one end of the room is holding a torch. Next to me stands Dr. Stansfeld. The scientist turns on the torch and Stansfeld clicks his stopwatch.
"Ah, I thought so." he says, marking down a number on his clipboard.
"What's happening here?"
"We're measuring the speed of light."
"What have you found so far?"
"Well...it's the same as what's in the book. So that's good." says Stansfeld glumly. I can understand his glumnitude. For the last seventeen years Stansfeld has been rigorously testing every known scientific fact, starting from scratch.
"In school we take it for granted that what's in the book is correct. But what if it's not?"
"Well, I imagine people have been doing experiments on this sort of thing for...well, for centuries really." I say. Stansfeld shakes his head.
"You think they have, but where's the proof? I haven't seen it first hand, I need to make sure. That's what we're doing here. Making sure that science is right." he says. We walk around the lab, that resembles more a junk shop than a state of the art facility. He goes over to a desk and picks up a notebook and begins to show it me.
"This is where it all began. I retook the measurements used in which we measure everything against. The second, the metre. Time and space. From there you can work out speed, velocity, location and so on and so on." he says. Inside the book there are page after page of numbers and sketches. I ask him how long it took for him to prove that a second was actually a second. He responds by simply raising his eyebrows.
He then shows me some more advanced experiments. He went travelling around the world collecting ore samples in order to rebuild and prove the periodic table. He had his grandfather sign over his body to him upon his death so he could see for himself human physiology. I ask him if so far has he found anything different from what is already known.
"Not yet, although we are getting closer to 20th century science. Quantum physics, psychology, antibacterial medicine, that kind of thing. Because of all the advancements that happened then, I'm sure someone must have made a mistake." he says with a slight shine in his blue eyes. I ask him how he intends to replicate the experiments done at the LHC. He shakes his head.
"That damn thing. How do they expect anyone to be able to see for themselves a Higgs Boson? Still, I have been writing letters to the government to use sewage pipes under the M25 as a sort of replica. We're going to call it the Large Shit Collider." he jokes. I thank him for his time and leave promptly. Such valiant efforts all in vain, yet who knows what kind of crazy thing Stansfeld may uncover in his search for finding what is already there. Maybe orange is actually a shade of yellow or the world is actually upside down? It is people like he that which more the berry rub.
A woman at one end of the room is holding a torch. Next to me stands Dr. Stansfeld. The scientist turns on the torch and Stansfeld clicks his stopwatch.
"Ah, I thought so." he says, marking down a number on his clipboard.
"What's happening here?"
"We're measuring the speed of light."
"What have you found so far?"
"Well...it's the same as what's in the book. So that's good." says Stansfeld glumly. I can understand his glumnitude. For the last seventeen years Stansfeld has been rigorously testing every known scientific fact, starting from scratch.
"In school we take it for granted that what's in the book is correct. But what if it's not?"
"Well, I imagine people have been doing experiments on this sort of thing for...well, for centuries really." I say. Stansfeld shakes his head.
"You think they have, but where's the proof? I haven't seen it first hand, I need to make sure. That's what we're doing here. Making sure that science is right." he says. We walk around the lab, that resembles more a junk shop than a state of the art facility. He goes over to a desk and picks up a notebook and begins to show it me.
"This is where it all began. I retook the measurements used in which we measure everything against. The second, the metre. Time and space. From there you can work out speed, velocity, location and so on and so on." he says. Inside the book there are page after page of numbers and sketches. I ask him how long it took for him to prove that a second was actually a second. He responds by simply raising his eyebrows.
He then shows me some more advanced experiments. He went travelling around the world collecting ore samples in order to rebuild and prove the periodic table. He had his grandfather sign over his body to him upon his death so he could see for himself human physiology. I ask him if so far has he found anything different from what is already known.
"Not yet, although we are getting closer to 20th century science. Quantum physics, psychology, antibacterial medicine, that kind of thing. Because of all the advancements that happened then, I'm sure someone must have made a mistake." he says with a slight shine in his blue eyes. I ask him how he intends to replicate the experiments done at the LHC. He shakes his head.
"That damn thing. How do they expect anyone to be able to see for themselves a Higgs Boson? Still, I have been writing letters to the government to use sewage pipes under the M25 as a sort of replica. We're going to call it the Large Shit Collider." he jokes. I thank him for his time and leave promptly. Such valiant efforts all in vain, yet who knows what kind of crazy thing Stansfeld may uncover in his search for finding what is already there. Maybe orange is actually a shade of yellow or the world is actually upside down? It is people like he that which more the berry rub.
17.1.14
An Arrangement Of Skulls
Which is your favourite Homo? Mine is Homo Erectus, obviously, yet there are many other kinds of Homo that have lived on this very planet. There is Homo Habilis, meaning Man House, as the first hominid to build it's own shelter from mud and antler. There was also Homo Floresiensis that stood at only three feet tall and had prehensile tails! The story of human evolution is one of mutation, danger and conquest, and to celebrate the 2014th year that mankind has walked the Earth the Manchester Museum has put on a special exhibition, titled 'HOMO'.
Adorning the walls of the room are drawings of cavemen and large text annotations explaining how early humans used tools. From the foraging tribes in prehistoric China to the hunter-gatherer types along the coasts of Africa, there was as much variety in the way hominids lived in the past as there are today. The drawings ignite the imagination, of noble savages riding around on the backs of dinosaurs or conjuring up ghosts in the fire pits. Yet here is a little known fact that might surprise you; dinosaurs never existed! Scientists think that life on Earth starts underground as the pressures of the tectonic plates create bones in the soil and stone. When a skeleton is complete it is then swallowed up by extinct cloud beings that came to our planet via asteroid roughly 20 thousand years ago. The cloud aliens then put flesh onto the skeletal forms and breathed life into it, which is electricity. Nobody knows what happened to these cloud aliens but by looking at cave paintings we could guess that they maybe returned to their home planet after using the pyramids as a big ramp. Other facts titillate and mesmerise; that the first boat making race weren't humans but lemurs. That clothing was invented because monkeys started going bald. That early cavemen could talk to wild animals. Speaking of which, language is an important part of Homo Sapiens rise to evolutionary success. There is an exhibit in which visitors can press a short wooden stick onto their tongues and then try to talk although they will find it almost impossible! Humans evolved a much lower voice box than other primates, allowing our larger tongue to move around in amazing feats of oral gymnastics. It isn't known what the early languages of mankind sounded like, or how varied the vocabulary was, but one thing is for certain; when the first Homo Sapien was born from a Neanderthal she probably stood up and announced the arrival of mankind. The first sentence spoken on Earth after thousands of years of silence.
The main exhibit at 'HOMO' is a series of skulls depicting a theoretical lineage of humans. The skulls, all printed out using a rapid prototype machine borrowed from Manchester University, start with some kind of small half-rat, half-lizard. Gradually the front of the face keeps shrinking whilst the top of the cranium expands. Encephalitis over the decades caused hominids to get smarter and smarter, with brain capacity increasing about twice with each new species. The first men were likely to resemble chimpanzees, but with longer legs as they became more terrestrial. They also started to grow taller and taller whilst being less robust. The pinnacle of humanoid evolution came about with Homo Erectus and the Neanderthalic species, with brains and muscles being about twice as good as modern people. A curious kink in evolution means that when a trait becomes desirable it is emphasised heavily until regressing in later developments. This is why most animals nowadays are smaller than their prehistoric counterparts, with shorter teeth and often having allergies. When seals evolved from crocodiles they lost their noses and became cross-eyed, a strange selection by Mother Nature but nevertheless one we all have to deal with. This poses the inevitable question; are people more stupid now than they were in ancient times?
To answer this one has to crack open a history book. Any historian will regale you with tales of French peasants in the 16th century being able to recite the entire Bible in both Latin and English from memory, be able to complete complex algebraic equations in their head and would often wile away the hours discussing macro-economics through free-form poetry. The Romans managed to build cities of such opulent organisation they are often referred to as 'the ant people'. Going even further back the Ancient Egyptians spoke in hieroglyphics, making the very air around them form bizarre shapes through a form of quantum telekinesis. Who knows what the first Homo Sapiens were capable of!
One leaves the exhibition with mixed emotions. Awe at the endurance of our species. Sadness at the loss of our not-to-distant cousins. Anger at the future and it's lower gravity. And happiness at being a human being, the pinnacle of evolution and the master of the universe.
Adorning the walls of the room are drawings of cavemen and large text annotations explaining how early humans used tools. From the foraging tribes in prehistoric China to the hunter-gatherer types along the coasts of Africa, there was as much variety in the way hominids lived in the past as there are today. The drawings ignite the imagination, of noble savages riding around on the backs of dinosaurs or conjuring up ghosts in the fire pits. Yet here is a little known fact that might surprise you; dinosaurs never existed! Scientists think that life on Earth starts underground as the pressures of the tectonic plates create bones in the soil and stone. When a skeleton is complete it is then swallowed up by extinct cloud beings that came to our planet via asteroid roughly 20 thousand years ago. The cloud aliens then put flesh onto the skeletal forms and breathed life into it, which is electricity. Nobody knows what happened to these cloud aliens but by looking at cave paintings we could guess that they maybe returned to their home planet after using the pyramids as a big ramp. Other facts titillate and mesmerise; that the first boat making race weren't humans but lemurs. That clothing was invented because monkeys started going bald. That early cavemen could talk to wild animals. Speaking of which, language is an important part of Homo Sapiens rise to evolutionary success. There is an exhibit in which visitors can press a short wooden stick onto their tongues and then try to talk although they will find it almost impossible! Humans evolved a much lower voice box than other primates, allowing our larger tongue to move around in amazing feats of oral gymnastics. It isn't known what the early languages of mankind sounded like, or how varied the vocabulary was, but one thing is for certain; when the first Homo Sapien was born from a Neanderthal she probably stood up and announced the arrival of mankind. The first sentence spoken on Earth after thousands of years of silence.
The main exhibit at 'HOMO' is a series of skulls depicting a theoretical lineage of humans. The skulls, all printed out using a rapid prototype machine borrowed from Manchester University, start with some kind of small half-rat, half-lizard. Gradually the front of the face keeps shrinking whilst the top of the cranium expands. Encephalitis over the decades caused hominids to get smarter and smarter, with brain capacity increasing about twice with each new species. The first men were likely to resemble chimpanzees, but with longer legs as they became more terrestrial. They also started to grow taller and taller whilst being less robust. The pinnacle of humanoid evolution came about with Homo Erectus and the Neanderthalic species, with brains and muscles being about twice as good as modern people. A curious kink in evolution means that when a trait becomes desirable it is emphasised heavily until regressing in later developments. This is why most animals nowadays are smaller than their prehistoric counterparts, with shorter teeth and often having allergies. When seals evolved from crocodiles they lost their noses and became cross-eyed, a strange selection by Mother Nature but nevertheless one we all have to deal with. This poses the inevitable question; are people more stupid now than they were in ancient times?
To answer this one has to crack open a history book. Any historian will regale you with tales of French peasants in the 16th century being able to recite the entire Bible in both Latin and English from memory, be able to complete complex algebraic equations in their head and would often wile away the hours discussing macro-economics through free-form poetry. The Romans managed to build cities of such opulent organisation they are often referred to as 'the ant people'. Going even further back the Ancient Egyptians spoke in hieroglyphics, making the very air around them form bizarre shapes through a form of quantum telekinesis. Who knows what the first Homo Sapiens were capable of!
One leaves the exhibition with mixed emotions. Awe at the endurance of our species. Sadness at the loss of our not-to-distant cousins. Anger at the future and it's lower gravity. And happiness at being a human being, the pinnacle of evolution and the master of the universe.
15.1.14
Insomnambulist
Sleep. The word conjures up images of being asleep. Yet sleep is one thing severely lacking nowadays. Insomnia is suffered by 1 in 4 people in the UK and is one of the leading concerns with visits to the GP. Yet what exactly is sleep? And why isn't anyone getting any?
Sleep is a natural response to neural stimuli. One has to will themselves to go to sleep to actually achieve sleep. It is through the act of lying down and closing one's eyes whilst relaxing that one achieves a sleep state which quickly goes...to the REM state. That stands for Rapid Eye Movement, REM. Nobody knows exactly why we need sleep but experiments have shown that without it things die in a matter of days. Sleep is more important than food in this regard, so it is curious that being gluttonous is acceptable in society yet being sleepy isn't. A way sleep scientists have learned more about sleep is by looking at animals that don't sleep. And that's where things really start to get wacky, as it turns out the only things that don't sleep are jellyfish. From the worms to the eagles, every other thing tends to sleep at some point or another. It is thought perhaps things with brains require sleep in order to give the brain a rest from it's conscious state, yet the brain waves are still active during sleep. Gamma, Theta and Beta wave patterns appear throughout the night, each of them giving more dreams of varying complexity. Dreams are caused by the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) of the sleeper beneath the eyelid, the patterns the dim light makes against the vein structure forces the sleeper to make sense of the abstract. Somewhere along the way this gets translated by the subconscious into a mental image. Scientists have experimented on people's eyes when they're asleep and discovered that if the eyeball is held in place the dream is just a still image. All night the sleeper will dream of one thing, say a vase of flowers, and like leaving a computer on without a screensaver the image is burned into the subconsciousness, in this instance everything in the waking state will somehow resemble a vase of flowers. People often need to sleep for several hours in order to feel totally energised. Bizarrely, tiredness causes errors in brain function more so than anything else.
So now we know what sleep is and why it's so important, it's curious why people struggle with getting to sleep. I went to visit a self diagnosed 'insomniac' in order to see what they were doing wrong. Abigail McGregor lives in Cheetham Hill in Manchester and works as a graphic designer. She's on a good income, lives a healthy lifestyle and says she is pretty much happy in her day to day life.
"It's the night time I don't like. I can't get to sleep for hours, I've tried going to bed early, going to bed late, nothing works." she says. I ask her further questions and find out she's tried every trick in the book.
"Have you tried all of the tricks at the same time?" I ask.
"I find one of the most relaxing ways is to drink a herbal tea and take the valerian route a few hours before bed, but I can't say I'm happy with the results." she says. I suggest that I spend the night in her flat, watching her sleep and then have a discussion in the morning. She agrees.
It is about 11:00 PM and Abigail turns off her television.
"About now I start to get ready for bed. Usually I go to my bedroom to check everythings in order." she says. I follow her down the corridor to her rest chamber. Though she's paying a five figure number for this exclusive apartment situated on the top floor of the state-of-the-art Green Quarter building, her bedroom is still quite small. She turns the light on and looks at the bed.
"Usually I get changed into my nightie and take out my contacts." she says, going over to a mirror.
"I'll step out of the room." I say, turning the light off as I go out. No wonder she can't get to sleep with all this electricity surging round. After roughly four and a half minutes she steps back out.
"Now what?"
"Well I go to the bathroom and y'know. Sort myself out."
"I'm sorry?"
"Have a wee, brush my teeth." she says. I nod and follow her to the bathroom. Although I don't watch her urinate I kneel by the closed door and listen intently, which is perceived as less transgressive in our society yet is, perceptually relative, the same. I open the door again and watch her brush her teeth.
"Hold on, hold on. Do it longer." I say after she gives up after half a minute. I keep encouraging her until we have reached the recommended time of two minutes.
"Oh, I forgot...I sometimes get a glass of water." she says. I roll my eyes and follow her back to the kitchen, where she takes a 475ml glass from the cupboard and fills it from the tap. I shake my head.
"You should only drink bottled water." I say. No wonder Abigail had problems sleeping, she was infusing her body with fluorides! Begrudgingly I follow her back to her room and watch pull the covers back and sit on her bed.
"Now what do you do?" I ask. She picks up her phone from the bedside table and waves it.
"Check my alarms on. Sometimes check twitter." she says. I restrain myself from pointing out the obvious. If you check twitter before bed you won't get to sleep because twitter is too exciting. I watch as she lies down, turns off her bedside lamp and begins to fall asleep.
"What are you doing?" I ask after a few minutes.
"Well, I can't get to sleep." she says.
"But what are you doing?"
"Lying down...I have my eyes shut."
"Try turning over." I suggest. She does so.
"The pillow is slightly cooler on this side."
"Is it agreeable?" I ask.
"It's alright." she says. I stand at the foot of her bed, examining posture and duvet thickness. Abigail has chosen a duvet with a tog rating of twelve, which seems reasonable to me. I estimate an increased temperature beneath the covers of roughly 10%, the standard difference required to keep the body warm over the course of the night. Yet before ten minutes have passed Abigail has already moved again, this time facing the opposite direction.
"Stop. Abigail. Abi, stop what you're doing." I say, sighing. She sits up. "You'll never get to sleep if you keep wriggling around like that." I say.
"But it's normal to move around in bed. I'm getting comfy."
"Is it normal? How do you know?"
"I've slept with people before." she says.
"Forget what you think you know. I've watched a lot of things go to sleep and none got their by moving their bodies except maybe fish and birds which only go to sleep with one brain hemisphere at a time. But mammals don't. Maybe giraffes sometimes. Pretend like I'm not here." I say.
The hours pass. By looking at her through an infrared camera I see she has finally got to sleep. I get down on all fours and begin to crawl up to her side of the bed, staring at her as she sleeps, memorizing every facial tick and change in breathing rhythm. Partway through the night she wakes up to go to the toilet and returns. I have now positioned myself at the bottom of the bed and watch her get in under the covers. I begin to crawl towards the pillow, using my phone as a torch.
"What are you doing?" she says.
"Gathering data. My phone is linked up to stream into The Cloud where it's compiled into a rich format .xlsb file." I say. She goes back to sleep and I work my way out of the bed and explore her flat, paying close attention to the contents of both the fridge and her bookshelf. I go back into her room and check through her phone, downloading some fun apps for her to try tomorrow. The sun begins to rise behind a ceiling of grey cloud, it is morning. Her alarm goes off and Abigail wakes, I go to the kitchen and pour us two glasses of orange juice.
"Sleep well?" I ask when she comes in.
"Yeah, not too bad actually all things considered. How about you?"
"I didn't sleep."
"Oh."
"Abigail, do you mind if I give you some feedback?"
"Sure." she says, drinking the juice.
"It's mostly good. You slept for exactly six hours and twenty three minutes, which isn't too bad. Could get a couple more in there, but not bad. I noticed you got back to sleep pretty quickly after visiting the bathroom, so, good job on that."
"Thank you." she says.
"Now for the bad news. Heh. You remember telling you about moving at the start of the night? Well...you moved again at about two in the morning. I was surprised to see you managed to do it in your sleep. If that was me, that would have woken me up, but somehow you managed. You also did it again about ten minutes before your alarm went off."
"Wow."
"I know. It's like you can't stop moving or something." I say, laughing mildly. "All joking aside, I think I found the reason for your insomnia and the cure is pretty simple."
"Really?" she says.
"I think tonight you should lie in the bath and cover yourself with sand. It might sound crazy, but trust me, I've seen these problems before and it works."
"So I should sleep in a bath full of sand?"
"Not full, that's too much. But enough so that it covers your body."
"Dry sand?"
"Dry to start off with, then you turn the hot water on."
"And this works?"
"It can take a few nights but about 75% of insomniacs benefit from this new form of sleeping." I say.
"Well...I'll give it a try. Thanks."
"Not a problem." I say. "Now if you don't mind me, I really could do with going to bed myself." We both laugh and I leave her apartment, pleased with my discoveries throughout the night.
So there you have it, a cure for insomnia. Comments or questions can go below or fire off an e-mail at http://www.hotmail.com/thepile@gmail.com and I'll get back to you ASAP. Also check out our youtube channel for the latest updates and our new segment 'Cooking With Daria'. Thanks for reading.
Sleep is a natural response to neural stimuli. One has to will themselves to go to sleep to actually achieve sleep. It is through the act of lying down and closing one's eyes whilst relaxing that one achieves a sleep state which quickly goes...to the REM state. That stands for Rapid Eye Movement, REM. Nobody knows exactly why we need sleep but experiments have shown that without it things die in a matter of days. Sleep is more important than food in this regard, so it is curious that being gluttonous is acceptable in society yet being sleepy isn't. A way sleep scientists have learned more about sleep is by looking at animals that don't sleep. And that's where things really start to get wacky, as it turns out the only things that don't sleep are jellyfish. From the worms to the eagles, every other thing tends to sleep at some point or another. It is thought perhaps things with brains require sleep in order to give the brain a rest from it's conscious state, yet the brain waves are still active during sleep. Gamma, Theta and Beta wave patterns appear throughout the night, each of them giving more dreams of varying complexity. Dreams are caused by the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) of the sleeper beneath the eyelid, the patterns the dim light makes against the vein structure forces the sleeper to make sense of the abstract. Somewhere along the way this gets translated by the subconscious into a mental image. Scientists have experimented on people's eyes when they're asleep and discovered that if the eyeball is held in place the dream is just a still image. All night the sleeper will dream of one thing, say a vase of flowers, and like leaving a computer on without a screensaver the image is burned into the subconsciousness, in this instance everything in the waking state will somehow resemble a vase of flowers. People often need to sleep for several hours in order to feel totally energised. Bizarrely, tiredness causes errors in brain function more so than anything else.
So now we know what sleep is and why it's so important, it's curious why people struggle with getting to sleep. I went to visit a self diagnosed 'insomniac' in order to see what they were doing wrong. Abigail McGregor lives in Cheetham Hill in Manchester and works as a graphic designer. She's on a good income, lives a healthy lifestyle and says she is pretty much happy in her day to day life.
"It's the night time I don't like. I can't get to sleep for hours, I've tried going to bed early, going to bed late, nothing works." she says. I ask her further questions and find out she's tried every trick in the book.
"Have you tried all of the tricks at the same time?" I ask.
"I find one of the most relaxing ways is to drink a herbal tea and take the valerian route a few hours before bed, but I can't say I'm happy with the results." she says. I suggest that I spend the night in her flat, watching her sleep and then have a discussion in the morning. She agrees.
It is about 11:00 PM and Abigail turns off her television.
"About now I start to get ready for bed. Usually I go to my bedroom to check everythings in order." she says. I follow her down the corridor to her rest chamber. Though she's paying a five figure number for this exclusive apartment situated on the top floor of the state-of-the-art Green Quarter building, her bedroom is still quite small. She turns the light on and looks at the bed.
"Usually I get changed into my nightie and take out my contacts." she says, going over to a mirror.
"I'll step out of the room." I say, turning the light off as I go out. No wonder she can't get to sleep with all this electricity surging round. After roughly four and a half minutes she steps back out.
"Now what?"
"Well I go to the bathroom and y'know. Sort myself out."
"I'm sorry?"
"Have a wee, brush my teeth." she says. I nod and follow her to the bathroom. Although I don't watch her urinate I kneel by the closed door and listen intently, which is perceived as less transgressive in our society yet is, perceptually relative, the same. I open the door again and watch her brush her teeth.
"Hold on, hold on. Do it longer." I say after she gives up after half a minute. I keep encouraging her until we have reached the recommended time of two minutes.
"Oh, I forgot...I sometimes get a glass of water." she says. I roll my eyes and follow her back to the kitchen, where she takes a 475ml glass from the cupboard and fills it from the tap. I shake my head.
"You should only drink bottled water." I say. No wonder Abigail had problems sleeping, she was infusing her body with fluorides! Begrudgingly I follow her back to her room and watch pull the covers back and sit on her bed.
"Now what do you do?" I ask. She picks up her phone from the bedside table and waves it.
"Check my alarms on. Sometimes check twitter." she says. I restrain myself from pointing out the obvious. If you check twitter before bed you won't get to sleep because twitter is too exciting. I watch as she lies down, turns off her bedside lamp and begins to fall asleep.
"What are you doing?" I ask after a few minutes.
"Well, I can't get to sleep." she says.
"But what are you doing?"
"Lying down...I have my eyes shut."
"Try turning over." I suggest. She does so.
"The pillow is slightly cooler on this side."
"Is it agreeable?" I ask.
"It's alright." she says. I stand at the foot of her bed, examining posture and duvet thickness. Abigail has chosen a duvet with a tog rating of twelve, which seems reasonable to me. I estimate an increased temperature beneath the covers of roughly 10%, the standard difference required to keep the body warm over the course of the night. Yet before ten minutes have passed Abigail has already moved again, this time facing the opposite direction.
"Stop. Abigail. Abi, stop what you're doing." I say, sighing. She sits up. "You'll never get to sleep if you keep wriggling around like that." I say.
"But it's normal to move around in bed. I'm getting comfy."
"Is it normal? How do you know?"
"I've slept with people before." she says.
"Forget what you think you know. I've watched a lot of things go to sleep and none got their by moving their bodies except maybe fish and birds which only go to sleep with one brain hemisphere at a time. But mammals don't. Maybe giraffes sometimes. Pretend like I'm not here." I say.
The hours pass. By looking at her through an infrared camera I see she has finally got to sleep. I get down on all fours and begin to crawl up to her side of the bed, staring at her as she sleeps, memorizing every facial tick and change in breathing rhythm. Partway through the night she wakes up to go to the toilet and returns. I have now positioned myself at the bottom of the bed and watch her get in under the covers. I begin to crawl towards the pillow, using my phone as a torch.
"What are you doing?" she says.
"Gathering data. My phone is linked up to stream into The Cloud where it's compiled into a rich format .xlsb file." I say. She goes back to sleep and I work my way out of the bed and explore her flat, paying close attention to the contents of both the fridge and her bookshelf. I go back into her room and check through her phone, downloading some fun apps for her to try tomorrow. The sun begins to rise behind a ceiling of grey cloud, it is morning. Her alarm goes off and Abigail wakes, I go to the kitchen and pour us two glasses of orange juice.
"Sleep well?" I ask when she comes in.
"Yeah, not too bad actually all things considered. How about you?"
"I didn't sleep."
"Oh."
"Abigail, do you mind if I give you some feedback?"
"Sure." she says, drinking the juice.
"It's mostly good. You slept for exactly six hours and twenty three minutes, which isn't too bad. Could get a couple more in there, but not bad. I noticed you got back to sleep pretty quickly after visiting the bathroom, so, good job on that."
"Thank you." she says.
"Now for the bad news. Heh. You remember telling you about moving at the start of the night? Well...you moved again at about two in the morning. I was surprised to see you managed to do it in your sleep. If that was me, that would have woken me up, but somehow you managed. You also did it again about ten minutes before your alarm went off."
"Wow."
"I know. It's like you can't stop moving or something." I say, laughing mildly. "All joking aside, I think I found the reason for your insomnia and the cure is pretty simple."
"Really?" she says.
"I think tonight you should lie in the bath and cover yourself with sand. It might sound crazy, but trust me, I've seen these problems before and it works."
"So I should sleep in a bath full of sand?"
"Not full, that's too much. But enough so that it covers your body."
"Dry sand?"
"Dry to start off with, then you turn the hot water on."
"And this works?"
"It can take a few nights but about 75% of insomniacs benefit from this new form of sleeping." I say.
"Well...I'll give it a try. Thanks."
"Not a problem." I say. "Now if you don't mind me, I really could do with going to bed myself." We both laugh and I leave her apartment, pleased with my discoveries throughout the night.
So there you have it, a cure for insomnia. Comments or questions can go below or fire off an e-mail at http://www.hotmail.com/thepile@gmail.com and I'll get back to you ASAP. Also check out our youtube channel for the latest updates and our new segment 'Cooking With Daria'. Thanks for reading.
13.1.14
Infantilization: A Cultural Epidemic
In the last twenty years Western civilization has seen the steady decline of the adult man into a kind of prepubescent figure akin to Ronnie Corbett’s character in the television sitcom ‘Sorry’. The infantilization of adults, especially males, is due to a series of technological and cultural developments that have been put into place over decades and will go on to shape the next century. Nowadays it’s not uncommon to know someone simply as ‘man child’, though I argue ‘forever baby’ is a more fitting nom de plume. Why is it that it is culturally acceptable for a thirty eight year old man to spend all day sat in pyjamas, playing computer games and having his food brought to him by robots? The beginning of this regressive question first has to be answered by going back to the early 80s, or perhaps even further back. Probably.
Before 1981 the only alcohol available to drink in Britain was either wine or bitter. Drinking culture was deeply ingrained into the psychoemployment of communities, with working men’s clubs and wine bars dominating the cobbled highstreets of yesterday. As cheap air travel became available tourists would bring back stories of drinking a wide variety of booze abroad and occasionally had the cheek to bring it back home to slurp as a post-pub pick-me-up. At the same time groups of young men, often university students, would bemoan a lack of public drinking venues suited for themselves. Lager had been around for centuries, though with the rise of home brewing and soldiers returning from Germany, it was becoming a cool new product that eighties hipsters wanted to be seen drinking. Hofmeister was one of the first lagers widely drank across England. It’s advertising, that of a bear leaving a forest so it can play darts at a pub, was orchestrated specifically to latch onto the notion of groups of young men hanging out together. And following a bear. This was the birth of lad culture and a precursor to the further babying of adults.
Following lager came binge drinking, the illegal rave scene, MDMA, Playstation 1, The Matrix, Superhero films and Internet pornography, all of which lead to a perfect chronological storm of international infantilization. Of course women are often infantilized though externally rather than internally. They are encouraged to shape body hair, consider long term fantasies and enjoy listening to the word ‘awesome’. They are put into the role of foster mother for an entire generation of men acting like children. The reasons why this is go beyond lager marketing in the early eighties, and part of the fault falls at the feet of the film industry recreating popular films which the current generation watched as children. This, along with a general reflection on the latter half of the twentieth century, creates a sense of deep nostalgia brought about partly due to a wish to escape the present and also encouraged by post-modern parents. Time is no longer a two dimensional line of events but a crystal refracting past and present, fact and fiction, through digital recording media. Photography in the past was done by artists and hobbyists up until the invention of cheaper cameras which were easy to use. This, along with film development able to be done on the high street, lead to a tendency to record the growth of children more than anything else since the late seventies. It is from the perspective of a parent holding a camera we reflect on our own childhood and so this carries on into digital photography and camera phones. Everything is recorded and in recording the present is already thought of as the past. Almost immediately after a photo is taken it is looked upon and judged, discarded if not fitting the narrative one wishes to construct for their future. In doing this we live in a constant state of nostalgia, of trying to remember a time in which things were good, yet as the template for this started as children it would go on into adult lives like an echo that sounds every time your image is captured onto a jpg.
Overparenting. Imagine the child of a parental set earning sixty to eighty thousand bucks a year. The adults have grown through the post-modern times and decided that, through extensive regret, that their children should be a certain way. The child is then supervised throughout their burgeoning teenagehood in after school clubs and to reach academia targets, all the while with their parents looking out for them and even sticking up for them in social quandaries. This leads the pre-forever baby to attend university in which they’ve never experienced a ketamine overdose or had internal sex! This continues throughout their higher education, usually with the assistance of parents continuing to keep track of their child up until graduation in which they reach the workplace totally unprepared for the adult world of work. Of course this in itself has become infantilized through health and safety legislature in which every eventuality has been preconceived and so the forever babies live in a world in which nothing can really go wrong. The removal of lethal danger has lead to peons seeking out perceived risky activity through violence and sex during the weekend period, similar to ‘break time’ at school, further compounding the pre-pubescent beliefs of the average man aged 18-45. Hours spent whacking away at a playstation controller or exercising for the sake of exercise has lead to millions of men stuck in a state of continual childhood.
But to what end is the end of this beginning? Social media, especially Facebook, is now awash with forever babies updating everyone on their own child’s progress. Previously having a child was a benchmark into achieving biological maturity. Nowadays it’s a way to dress up a baby as Dark Vader and take some lol pics for potential miscreants to fawn over. Rearing a child is the forced conclusion for forever babies to say that they are an adult, yet they themselves will rear an entire generation of fools caught in the fractal-like pattern of babydom. This will continue until the entire world wears nappies and ingrates are forced to watch remakes of Dino The Last Dinosaur, Thundercats and Dangermouse until their eyes are smoking holes in the head and their tongue lays fat in the mouth, dribbling blood onto bibs made from recycled plastic.
Like many articles of this ilk, authors tend to bemoan the gentle fall of civilization yet offer no alternatives. Yet I offer a definitive alternative in which all of mankind can be saved from a constant state of regression, that which is of the highest importance; autoaccelerationism. Force yourself into states of economic and emotional hardship. One has the capacity to smash through the computer screen, the television, the windshield, the workplace and so one should. It might make others feel ill at ease that they could voluntarily take a hammer to their front teeth, yet I recommend that you should embrace these moments of madness. As children are not mad. They are children and act childlike. Predictable. It is the rancid, rotten egos of adulthood which drive people insane and so great personal sacrifices should be made for no other reason than the alternative is as good as never leaving the womb in the first place! Embrace chaos, the patterns flames make on metal, the eternal death structure brought about by your DNA, the implosions of suburbs, eating raw chicken, commandeering bicycles and so on. Rather zoom towards the end that clutch onto the beginning.
Before 1981 the only alcohol available to drink in Britain was either wine or bitter. Drinking culture was deeply ingrained into the psychoemployment of communities, with working men’s clubs and wine bars dominating the cobbled highstreets of yesterday. As cheap air travel became available tourists would bring back stories of drinking a wide variety of booze abroad and occasionally had the cheek to bring it back home to slurp as a post-pub pick-me-up. At the same time groups of young men, often university students, would bemoan a lack of public drinking venues suited for themselves. Lager had been around for centuries, though with the rise of home brewing and soldiers returning from Germany, it was becoming a cool new product that eighties hipsters wanted to be seen drinking. Hofmeister was one of the first lagers widely drank across England. It’s advertising, that of a bear leaving a forest so it can play darts at a pub, was orchestrated specifically to latch onto the notion of groups of young men hanging out together. And following a bear. This was the birth of lad culture and a precursor to the further babying of adults.
Following lager came binge drinking, the illegal rave scene, MDMA, Playstation 1, The Matrix, Superhero films and Internet pornography, all of which lead to a perfect chronological storm of international infantilization. Of course women are often infantilized though externally rather than internally. They are encouraged to shape body hair, consider long term fantasies and enjoy listening to the word ‘awesome’. They are put into the role of foster mother for an entire generation of men acting like children. The reasons why this is go beyond lager marketing in the early eighties, and part of the fault falls at the feet of the film industry recreating popular films which the current generation watched as children. This, along with a general reflection on the latter half of the twentieth century, creates a sense of deep nostalgia brought about partly due to a wish to escape the present and also encouraged by post-modern parents. Time is no longer a two dimensional line of events but a crystal refracting past and present, fact and fiction, through digital recording media. Photography in the past was done by artists and hobbyists up until the invention of cheaper cameras which were easy to use. This, along with film development able to be done on the high street, lead to a tendency to record the growth of children more than anything else since the late seventies. It is from the perspective of a parent holding a camera we reflect on our own childhood and so this carries on into digital photography and camera phones. Everything is recorded and in recording the present is already thought of as the past. Almost immediately after a photo is taken it is looked upon and judged, discarded if not fitting the narrative one wishes to construct for their future. In doing this we live in a constant state of nostalgia, of trying to remember a time in which things were good, yet as the template for this started as children it would go on into adult lives like an echo that sounds every time your image is captured onto a jpg.
Overparenting. Imagine the child of a parental set earning sixty to eighty thousand bucks a year. The adults have grown through the post-modern times and decided that, through extensive regret, that their children should be a certain way. The child is then supervised throughout their burgeoning teenagehood in after school clubs and to reach academia targets, all the while with their parents looking out for them and even sticking up for them in social quandaries. This leads the pre-forever baby to attend university in which they’ve never experienced a ketamine overdose or had internal sex! This continues throughout their higher education, usually with the assistance of parents continuing to keep track of their child up until graduation in which they reach the workplace totally unprepared for the adult world of work. Of course this in itself has become infantilized through health and safety legislature in which every eventuality has been preconceived and so the forever babies live in a world in which nothing can really go wrong. The removal of lethal danger has lead to peons seeking out perceived risky activity through violence and sex during the weekend period, similar to ‘break time’ at school, further compounding the pre-pubescent beliefs of the average man aged 18-45. Hours spent whacking away at a playstation controller or exercising for the sake of exercise has lead to millions of men stuck in a state of continual childhood.
But to what end is the end of this beginning? Social media, especially Facebook, is now awash with forever babies updating everyone on their own child’s progress. Previously having a child was a benchmark into achieving biological maturity. Nowadays it’s a way to dress up a baby as Dark Vader and take some lol pics for potential miscreants to fawn over. Rearing a child is the forced conclusion for forever babies to say that they are an adult, yet they themselves will rear an entire generation of fools caught in the fractal-like pattern of babydom. This will continue until the entire world wears nappies and ingrates are forced to watch remakes of Dino The Last Dinosaur, Thundercats and Dangermouse until their eyes are smoking holes in the head and their tongue lays fat in the mouth, dribbling blood onto bibs made from recycled plastic.
Like many articles of this ilk, authors tend to bemoan the gentle fall of civilization yet offer no alternatives. Yet I offer a definitive alternative in which all of mankind can be saved from a constant state of regression, that which is of the highest importance; autoaccelerationism. Force yourself into states of economic and emotional hardship. One has the capacity to smash through the computer screen, the television, the windshield, the workplace and so one should. It might make others feel ill at ease that they could voluntarily take a hammer to their front teeth, yet I recommend that you should embrace these moments of madness. As children are not mad. They are children and act childlike. Predictable. It is the rancid, rotten egos of adulthood which drive people insane and so great personal sacrifices should be made for no other reason than the alternative is as good as never leaving the womb in the first place! Embrace chaos, the patterns flames make on metal, the eternal death structure brought about by your DNA, the implosions of suburbs, eating raw chicken, commandeering bicycles and so on. Rather zoom towards the end that clutch onto the beginning.
8.1.14
Moving Road And Ting
Sick of cars? Walking? The drudgery of getting to work? The new invention by Salem Peters hopes to cure society of the messy questions of transportation. The new smart road is still being tested, though I had the chance to meet it's creator at his new Nokia sponsored laboratory.
The smart road is essentially a high speed bespoke travel surface in which citizens can join a rolling road that quickly jets them off towards their destination. Gone are the days of public transport, say hello to the days of transport publiqué. The road is made up of many narrow lines that each move at a slightly faster speed than their neighbour. This allows pedestrians to gradually pick up speed on the moving expressway, by standing toward the crash barrier people can gather up to speeds of twenty five miles an hour! And that's not including the speed in which people could run on this high tech pavement. The whole thing was a wi-fi hotspot to, and could be lit up at night. Salem Peters is hoping to add touchscreen technology at people's feet. You could order pizza or watch the news. I couldn't wait to see this in action, but the smart road is still in the developmental stage. Not to mention the extravagant cost of replacing roads with a complex set of graphene lateral microsteps, this will also mean cars aren't able to travel on these horizontal autopedestulators. Nevertheless, it was an interesting idea.
Salem Peters stands next to a glass window, his reflection doppelganging in the blackness. I stand next to him and look down on the smart road. Four hundred metres of the stuff has been built in this empty factory. I watch mannequins be moved forward, making a circuit along a fake street.
“Check your wi-fi signal.” says Salem Peters. I do and am surprised I'm getting a 4G connection.
“It's pushing five bars.” I say, impressed. “Mind if I take it for a spin?”
“Of course.” he says, turning to me and showing a mouth full of false teeth.
I go downstairs and stand on the fake pavement. Photos of shops have been printed onto high glossy cardboard as the mannequins move past me. The only sound is the gentle whirring of the smart road. I step onto it. It's an unusual experience at first, but gentle enough not to be surprising. After trying out the different speed zones it isn't long before I'm running along the smart road.
“This is fantastic!” I say, dodging between human sized dolls. The fake shops zip past me as I run faster and faster around the circuit, laughing and shouting 'woopee' to myself. I whip out my phone and take a high speed selfie, uploading it through the 3 gigabit connection onto social media streams. There's a knocking overhead and I look up. Salem Peters is standing at the window, watching me. He takes out a small touchscreen device and nods his head. The road beneath me is beginning to accelerate and so I hop to a halt, nearly knocking over a fake woman. Why is he doing this? I stagger towards the pavement though have found that the road is moving too fast for me to take a step on. I'm trapped. Mannequins zip past me, beginning to rock back and forth under the high speeds. One falls onto the still pavement and cracks into six pieces which roll inside the suit. I leap to the ground and hold on for dear life as the road accelerates beneath me. I have to get out of here! I crawl along the floor towards a fallen mannequin and use it to paddle myself closer to the pavement, the shops are now just a blur. Struggling to kneel up at the smart road's edge I lift the mannequin and shout before slamming it down onto the still concrete. I am yanked from the road and do a handstand on the mannequin as I grab onto it, skimming across the surface of the fake shop-front and straight through the window in which Salem Peters is standing, spearing him through another window. I watch as the mannequin throws him down the single storey and onto the wet grass outside.
“Help!” he says weakly.
“Looks like you got hit in the cul-de-sacs, road man.” I say, pulling a face at the sun.
The smart road is essentially a high speed bespoke travel surface in which citizens can join a rolling road that quickly jets them off towards their destination. Gone are the days of public transport, say hello to the days of transport publiqué. The road is made up of many narrow lines that each move at a slightly faster speed than their neighbour. This allows pedestrians to gradually pick up speed on the moving expressway, by standing toward the crash barrier people can gather up to speeds of twenty five miles an hour! And that's not including the speed in which people could run on this high tech pavement. The whole thing was a wi-fi hotspot to, and could be lit up at night. Salem Peters is hoping to add touchscreen technology at people's feet. You could order pizza or watch the news. I couldn't wait to see this in action, but the smart road is still in the developmental stage. Not to mention the extravagant cost of replacing roads with a complex set of graphene lateral microsteps, this will also mean cars aren't able to travel on these horizontal autopedestulators. Nevertheless, it was an interesting idea.
Salem Peters stands next to a glass window, his reflection doppelganging in the blackness. I stand next to him and look down on the smart road. Four hundred metres of the stuff has been built in this empty factory. I watch mannequins be moved forward, making a circuit along a fake street.
“Check your wi-fi signal.” says Salem Peters. I do and am surprised I'm getting a 4G connection.
“It's pushing five bars.” I say, impressed. “Mind if I take it for a spin?”
“Of course.” he says, turning to me and showing a mouth full of false teeth.
I go downstairs and stand on the fake pavement. Photos of shops have been printed onto high glossy cardboard as the mannequins move past me. The only sound is the gentle whirring of the smart road. I step onto it. It's an unusual experience at first, but gentle enough not to be surprising. After trying out the different speed zones it isn't long before I'm running along the smart road.
“This is fantastic!” I say, dodging between human sized dolls. The fake shops zip past me as I run faster and faster around the circuit, laughing and shouting 'woopee' to myself. I whip out my phone and take a high speed selfie, uploading it through the 3 gigabit connection onto social media streams. There's a knocking overhead and I look up. Salem Peters is standing at the window, watching me. He takes out a small touchscreen device and nods his head. The road beneath me is beginning to accelerate and so I hop to a halt, nearly knocking over a fake woman. Why is he doing this? I stagger towards the pavement though have found that the road is moving too fast for me to take a step on. I'm trapped. Mannequins zip past me, beginning to rock back and forth under the high speeds. One falls onto the still pavement and cracks into six pieces which roll inside the suit. I leap to the ground and hold on for dear life as the road accelerates beneath me. I have to get out of here! I crawl along the floor towards a fallen mannequin and use it to paddle myself closer to the pavement, the shops are now just a blur. Struggling to kneel up at the smart road's edge I lift the mannequin and shout before slamming it down onto the still concrete. I am yanked from the road and do a handstand on the mannequin as I grab onto it, skimming across the surface of the fake shop-front and straight through the window in which Salem Peters is standing, spearing him through another window. I watch as the mannequin throws him down the single storey and onto the wet grass outside.
“Help!” he says weakly.
“Looks like you got hit in the cul-de-sacs, road man.” I say, pulling a face at the sun.
6.1.14
The Year Ahead
The year two thousand and fourteen has arrived with much fanfare and insolence, like the half dream granted through head trauma, like the constant memory which never happened. As we are in the early days of the time of the year, why not take a look ahead at the sort of things we may expect to reflect on in the past, present and future sitting from a position of absolute time as one may sit inside a glass mountain overlooking a constantly shifting landscape;;; !
JNRAURY
The first, and some argue best, month. January is the aperitif of the year and is usually dry rather than sweet, meaning the dirtiest of politicians can be found stirring beneath Egyptian cotton sheets wishing cruel death upon those that they rule over. Of course the concept of politicians wielding any real power is a lie orchestrated by History books for no reason other than it suits the public to be told what to do until they no longer feel the need to be told what to do. True History is not made by great leaders or earth shattering events, but the mass consciousness of the public ebbing and flowing beneath technological concepts and philosophy and then acted out. Hunger has been a bigger driving force for people over politics, and 2014 is shaping up to be a year in which feeding one's family various Big Macs will be more important than the soft meats of David Cameron's face. January will also be the month in which Amsterdam finally sinks to the bottom of the ocean, never to be seen again and only told about in myths akin to Atlantis, but with weed. Strange polar winds that are extremely localised will fly in from the Artic, freezing people where they stand, even if they only went to put the bins out.
FBEAURTY
Once the month of Janus runs its course, February will start with a big bang in the style of a James Bond film. The international spy network will introduce themselves using their real names in bars and casinos the world over, their whereabouts being pieced together through a patchwork of selfies and upon their discovery the undercover agents will gather on the secret oil rig in the ocean and zap each other with ray guns. This in itself is unimportant, but future peoples will remember February as the saturation point of mobile technology with 1 in 5 people owning a high tech smart phone. Nomad tribes will be given Google Glass in order to record their day to day lives to be streamed over Youtube for millionaires to watch, and often bet on. iPads will be flown into Sierra Leone, smart watches to Calcutta, Raspberry Pi's to Kurdish rebels and so on. All of the wi-fi information floating about will make it difficult to walk in a straight line, leading to the invention of compensating footwear that automatically forces peoples feet to veer in different directions. With the proliferation of smear tech across the globe, more people will experience the world through a four inch screen. People will no longer act as they would but conform to a mysterious status quo in which all is judged based on its radness. Marriages will break up for the lols. Business decisions will be made based on cat pictures. Prisoners will be executed as they lack social media followers. If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to put it on Instagram, who gives a fuck?
MARS
The Earth's great and violent heart beats as it rotates around Sol far enough our planet edges into Spring, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere it is eternally Christmas. Which is more similair to the man; Sherlock, Khan, Assange? It is true that Benedict Cumberbatch tends to play the same sort of polymath in every single thing he's in, so it could be argued that he is acting more in real life than he is in front of the camera. Scripts arrive at his front door every morning in which he reads over a pot of Earl Grey. The scripts tell him to shave, drive through rush hour traffic, eat sustainable fish, and since Cumberbatch is a reverse actor he often struggles in the simple role of being a regular schmuck. Cumberpatch will also star in a hit film to be released this summer, starring alongside Idris Elba in a move to attract cat lovers everywhere. Crumberbath plays a gay butler working at Buckingham Palace in which he has a sordid affair with Elba, a blind harp player from New Orleans. The film itself is two hours of self indulgent nonsense but important as its release synchronizes with the entire palace, including the Royal Family, being swallowed by an earthquake. Rescue efforts are relatively nonexistent as all people can do is watch Buckingham Palace fade into the magma, wondering who will be on their money now.
AVRILE
If anything can be said about 2014 it will be quadcopters. The four rotored craft will be able to be bought for just two hundred bucks and provide hours of entertainment. Watch as the air fills with the high pitched noise of quadcopters sweeping across our skies, crashing into the windscreens of buses driving on motorways or hovering outside the window of women in a state of undress. We might not get flying cars, but who cares if we have flying cameras? An easy method of getting yourself a quadcopter is by ordering a book to your neighbours house through Amazon, waiting for the retail drone to come hovering over the horizon and then capture it in a hessian sack, all for the price of a Chris Evans biography. Of course the law will slowly catch up on this sexy new tech, but in the meantime consumers will enjoy the halcyon days of flying shit smeared quadcopters into banks and detonating them inches away from the managers top lip. How can governments complain about spying when they themselves spy on everyone? The quadcopter is a force of Communist justice that will seem entertaining for all until they blot out the sun and become sentient.
MAYA
You know what people like? Skyscrapers. Many architectural projects will begin and finish this year, as they have since we started pushing humongous stones into circles, but the sky is literally the limit with some breathtaking blocks of concrete popping up around the world. Bigger really is better as architects are forced to make buildings taller and taller for no other reason than being larger than the last. The Japanese will realise the logical conclusion for this is to build a building so big it encapsulates the Earth, only to be trumped by Americans who will realise that they should build a road that goes out of the solar system and into the Andromeda galaxy.
JNEU
Football will reign supreme over the mild summer, with all the favourite teams in the world getting together in Brazil, South America. The event will be sullied somewhat by the extreme poverty happening outside the stadium along with crime riots and animal death squads, but all of this will be ignored by mainstream media and gone on about in the guardian in articles with titles like 'The Favalian Underworld' or 'A Red Card For Police Corruption' written by sweating twenty something's who've never been to Brazil before nor go again after. All of this is inconsequential however as Brazilians have twitter and will then be focused on in buzzfeed lists like '23 Awesome But Sad Facts About Brazil That Will Change Your Life' and so on. Also the ice caps will melt.
JOLY
Due to the inordinate amount of celebrities dying who'd starred in films from 1968-1982, Hollywood suddenly realises that it needs a new batch of talent for the world to fawn over. Will Shia LeBouf be the new Jack Nicholson? What about him from Harry Potter, is he like Al Pacino or something? The sad answer is no. Nevertheless the vacuum created by the passing of these old fogies will create a new creative space in which the stars of the future will form, and I'm not talking about Colin Firth. The average age of the highest paid actors at the start of the year was 47. By the end of the year it will be 19. How? Acting. And sometimes dancing.
AGUST
What other tech can we expect in 2014? Good question. If you know the answer why don't you invent it? With rapid prototyping now you can! It's as easy as making toast, with children printing out guns and taking them to school to fire death into the bodies of their classmates. Even the poorest man can print out a Rolls Royce and appear in Hotel lobbies with printed money and a mouth full of crack smoke. Newspapers will cry out for moderation, yet nobody is entirely sure who reads newspapers any more and why should it shape the political landscape? Printers that can print themselves will start multiplying like aphids and eventually blot out the sun, alongside quadcopters and selfies.
SEPEMPTRO
The most important character in the history of feminism is Robin Thicke. His 2013 hit single 'Blurry Lines' was like a great bell awakening the world to the idea that half of it's population should be treated the same as the other half. Nowadays if you see a man hit a woman in the street you might shout that it's 'not on' then name and shame them on facebook. Elle, Prada and OK magazine will all jump on the gravy bandwagon and try to make feminism more girly. Why can't a feminist wear a cute crop top with Emmeline Pankhurst on it? Why should a man have to listen to a woman not wearing expensive makeup which has been force fed to an ape until lipstick pushes it's eyeballs out? Why the heck should Muslim women be allowed to wear Burkas when they should show off their hot bodies for both sexes to enjoy? The hot topic of 2014 is feminism, leading to the great gender war of 2015. But in the meantime why not catch up on some feminist theory and wonder if you can use your knowledge to have sex?
OCTOBRE
The cold bleating of Autumn will appear like a frozen fog throughout the civilised streets of Western Europe. People will complain, yet the amount of complaining is insignificant once London floods. For weeks the world will be saddened at tales of million pound flats being ruined with filthy Thames water. There will even be a photograph of David Cameron with his trousers rolled up as he waves to a camera. In the three inches of heel visible onlookers will gaze at the hairless leg of the prime minister and wonder what his flesh would taste like if he were to be held in a pitch black chamber and fed a diet of milk and honey until being taken outside and beheaded by a motorbike. Cannibalism will be rife in London post-flood, scenes of horror reminisce of the great starvations yet to happen in following decades.
NOVNOMBR
November is a cheery time as nothing in particular happens. People will check the news, talk to their friends, drive around for hours, yet nothing seems to happen. Television screens will only display white noise. All digital music will be replaced with a sawtooth tone due to a crafty virus that discombobulates mp3 files. People will begin to rot in bed as they wonder what it is they should be doing and coming up with no answer.
DECEMECEMBER
As the year draws to a close and Christmas begins to fire up its engines, one can't help but wonder what happened in 2014 anyway. Half of the events seemed to centre around pop stars having full sex in their videos or dogs that sort of sound like they can talk. But that is because people weren't looking in the right place. For the last few years the dolphins have begun to use tools, farm kelp, build simple mud nests in the underwater deserts. The first dolphin/human hybrid is born through a magical series of mutations and drags itself onto the shores of India, quoting Beckett and smoking roll-ups. It lives a simple life selling necklaces made of shells and studying the Vedas, though one of the more interesting things about this lifeform is that it is invincible and will probably be one of your favourite superheroes one day.
So there you have it, the year in advance, exactly as it will happen. Hope that helps when planning your holiday. Avoid Yellowstone Park on the 14th of March. Hasta la bye bye. x
JNRAURY
The first, and some argue best, month. January is the aperitif of the year and is usually dry rather than sweet, meaning the dirtiest of politicians can be found stirring beneath Egyptian cotton sheets wishing cruel death upon those that they rule over. Of course the concept of politicians wielding any real power is a lie orchestrated by History books for no reason other than it suits the public to be told what to do until they no longer feel the need to be told what to do. True History is not made by great leaders or earth shattering events, but the mass consciousness of the public ebbing and flowing beneath technological concepts and philosophy and then acted out. Hunger has been a bigger driving force for people over politics, and 2014 is shaping up to be a year in which feeding one's family various Big Macs will be more important than the soft meats of David Cameron's face. January will also be the month in which Amsterdam finally sinks to the bottom of the ocean, never to be seen again and only told about in myths akin to Atlantis, but with weed. Strange polar winds that are extremely localised will fly in from the Artic, freezing people where they stand, even if they only went to put the bins out.
FBEAURTY
Once the month of Janus runs its course, February will start with a big bang in the style of a James Bond film. The international spy network will introduce themselves using their real names in bars and casinos the world over, their whereabouts being pieced together through a patchwork of selfies and upon their discovery the undercover agents will gather on the secret oil rig in the ocean and zap each other with ray guns. This in itself is unimportant, but future peoples will remember February as the saturation point of mobile technology with 1 in 5 people owning a high tech smart phone. Nomad tribes will be given Google Glass in order to record their day to day lives to be streamed over Youtube for millionaires to watch, and often bet on. iPads will be flown into Sierra Leone, smart watches to Calcutta, Raspberry Pi's to Kurdish rebels and so on. All of the wi-fi information floating about will make it difficult to walk in a straight line, leading to the invention of compensating footwear that automatically forces peoples feet to veer in different directions. With the proliferation of smear tech across the globe, more people will experience the world through a four inch screen. People will no longer act as they would but conform to a mysterious status quo in which all is judged based on its radness. Marriages will break up for the lols. Business decisions will be made based on cat pictures. Prisoners will be executed as they lack social media followers. If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to put it on Instagram, who gives a fuck?
MARS
The Earth's great and violent heart beats as it rotates around Sol far enough our planet edges into Spring, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere it is eternally Christmas. Which is more similair to the man; Sherlock, Khan, Assange? It is true that Benedict Cumberbatch tends to play the same sort of polymath in every single thing he's in, so it could be argued that he is acting more in real life than he is in front of the camera. Scripts arrive at his front door every morning in which he reads over a pot of Earl Grey. The scripts tell him to shave, drive through rush hour traffic, eat sustainable fish, and since Cumberbatch is a reverse actor he often struggles in the simple role of being a regular schmuck. Cumberpatch will also star in a hit film to be released this summer, starring alongside Idris Elba in a move to attract cat lovers everywhere. Crumberbath plays a gay butler working at Buckingham Palace in which he has a sordid affair with Elba, a blind harp player from New Orleans. The film itself is two hours of self indulgent nonsense but important as its release synchronizes with the entire palace, including the Royal Family, being swallowed by an earthquake. Rescue efforts are relatively nonexistent as all people can do is watch Buckingham Palace fade into the magma, wondering who will be on their money now.
AVRILE
If anything can be said about 2014 it will be quadcopters. The four rotored craft will be able to be bought for just two hundred bucks and provide hours of entertainment. Watch as the air fills with the high pitched noise of quadcopters sweeping across our skies, crashing into the windscreens of buses driving on motorways or hovering outside the window of women in a state of undress. We might not get flying cars, but who cares if we have flying cameras? An easy method of getting yourself a quadcopter is by ordering a book to your neighbours house through Amazon, waiting for the retail drone to come hovering over the horizon and then capture it in a hessian sack, all for the price of a Chris Evans biography. Of course the law will slowly catch up on this sexy new tech, but in the meantime consumers will enjoy the halcyon days of flying shit smeared quadcopters into banks and detonating them inches away from the managers top lip. How can governments complain about spying when they themselves spy on everyone? The quadcopter is a force of Communist justice that will seem entertaining for all until they blot out the sun and become sentient.
MAYA
You know what people like? Skyscrapers. Many architectural projects will begin and finish this year, as they have since we started pushing humongous stones into circles, but the sky is literally the limit with some breathtaking blocks of concrete popping up around the world. Bigger really is better as architects are forced to make buildings taller and taller for no other reason than being larger than the last. The Japanese will realise the logical conclusion for this is to build a building so big it encapsulates the Earth, only to be trumped by Americans who will realise that they should build a road that goes out of the solar system and into the Andromeda galaxy.
JNEU
Football will reign supreme over the mild summer, with all the favourite teams in the world getting together in Brazil, South America. The event will be sullied somewhat by the extreme poverty happening outside the stadium along with crime riots and animal death squads, but all of this will be ignored by mainstream media and gone on about in the guardian in articles with titles like 'The Favalian Underworld' or 'A Red Card For Police Corruption' written by sweating twenty something's who've never been to Brazil before nor go again after. All of this is inconsequential however as Brazilians have twitter and will then be focused on in buzzfeed lists like '23 Awesome But Sad Facts About Brazil That Will Change Your Life' and so on. Also the ice caps will melt.
JOLY
Due to the inordinate amount of celebrities dying who'd starred in films from 1968-1982, Hollywood suddenly realises that it needs a new batch of talent for the world to fawn over. Will Shia LeBouf be the new Jack Nicholson? What about him from Harry Potter, is he like Al Pacino or something? The sad answer is no. Nevertheless the vacuum created by the passing of these old fogies will create a new creative space in which the stars of the future will form, and I'm not talking about Colin Firth. The average age of the highest paid actors at the start of the year was 47. By the end of the year it will be 19. How? Acting. And sometimes dancing.
AGUST
What other tech can we expect in 2014? Good question. If you know the answer why don't you invent it? With rapid prototyping now you can! It's as easy as making toast, with children printing out guns and taking them to school to fire death into the bodies of their classmates. Even the poorest man can print out a Rolls Royce and appear in Hotel lobbies with printed money and a mouth full of crack smoke. Newspapers will cry out for moderation, yet nobody is entirely sure who reads newspapers any more and why should it shape the political landscape? Printers that can print themselves will start multiplying like aphids and eventually blot out the sun, alongside quadcopters and selfies.
SEPEMPTRO
The most important character in the history of feminism is Robin Thicke. His 2013 hit single 'Blurry Lines' was like a great bell awakening the world to the idea that half of it's population should be treated the same as the other half. Nowadays if you see a man hit a woman in the street you might shout that it's 'not on' then name and shame them on facebook. Elle, Prada and OK magazine will all jump on the gravy bandwagon and try to make feminism more girly. Why can't a feminist wear a cute crop top with Emmeline Pankhurst on it? Why should a man have to listen to a woman not wearing expensive makeup which has been force fed to an ape until lipstick pushes it's eyeballs out? Why the heck should Muslim women be allowed to wear Burkas when they should show off their hot bodies for both sexes to enjoy? The hot topic of 2014 is feminism, leading to the great gender war of 2015. But in the meantime why not catch up on some feminist theory and wonder if you can use your knowledge to have sex?
OCTOBRE
The cold bleating of Autumn will appear like a frozen fog throughout the civilised streets of Western Europe. People will complain, yet the amount of complaining is insignificant once London floods. For weeks the world will be saddened at tales of million pound flats being ruined with filthy Thames water. There will even be a photograph of David Cameron with his trousers rolled up as he waves to a camera. In the three inches of heel visible onlookers will gaze at the hairless leg of the prime minister and wonder what his flesh would taste like if he were to be held in a pitch black chamber and fed a diet of milk and honey until being taken outside and beheaded by a motorbike. Cannibalism will be rife in London post-flood, scenes of horror reminisce of the great starvations yet to happen in following decades.
NOVNOMBR
November is a cheery time as nothing in particular happens. People will check the news, talk to their friends, drive around for hours, yet nothing seems to happen. Television screens will only display white noise. All digital music will be replaced with a sawtooth tone due to a crafty virus that discombobulates mp3 files. People will begin to rot in bed as they wonder what it is they should be doing and coming up with no answer.
DECEMECEMBER
As the year draws to a close and Christmas begins to fire up its engines, one can't help but wonder what happened in 2014 anyway. Half of the events seemed to centre around pop stars having full sex in their videos or dogs that sort of sound like they can talk. But that is because people weren't looking in the right place. For the last few years the dolphins have begun to use tools, farm kelp, build simple mud nests in the underwater deserts. The first dolphin/human hybrid is born through a magical series of mutations and drags itself onto the shores of India, quoting Beckett and smoking roll-ups. It lives a simple life selling necklaces made of shells and studying the Vedas, though one of the more interesting things about this lifeform is that it is invincible and will probably be one of your favourite superheroes one day.
So there you have it, the year in advance, exactly as it will happen. Hope that helps when planning your holiday. Avoid Yellowstone Park on the 14th of March. Hasta la bye bye. x
20.12.13
Yeti
I watch a clockwork ensemble gradually tick over, smiling Hanuman sets fire to a city made of ivory, fireworks pop and smoke in a three dimensional air matrix overhead. It is the winter fete and crowds have gathered around a wide selection of entertainment at Spinningfields Winter Experience. The ice rink is made of real ice. If you bite off the backs of slugs you can see their organs. There is a strong man competition. Gerrard Jones, 35, is one of the contenders and having come all the way from his home town of Earby, he's pretty eager to win. I ask him about his training.
“My method is hard soft.” he says.
“Which one?” I say.
“What do you mean?” he says.
“Is it hard or soft?”
“It's both.”
“Isn't hard and soft together just...normal?” I say.
“It goes hard, then soft. Hard soft.” he says. I thank him with a little bow. We both bow towards the stage then at each other, banging our foreheads. He clutches at his and howls.
“Don't bow at the same time. After one other.” he says. I bow towards him and when I lift my head manage to catch him on the chin. An official runs up to us.
“Are you boys ready for the weight lifting?” he says.
“Yes we are.” says Gerrard. I follow the twenty stone man to the back of the stage.
As Gerrard gets ready I peek through the curtain at the current champion getting ready to lift a block of ice.
“He must be cold.”
“Nevermind that, help me into this thing.” he says, gesturing toward a reindeer costume. He puts on the bottom half first, I help him put the giant cartoon reindeer head on.
“What about the top?” he says. I fetch the top part of the costume and try to pull it over the fake head.
“No, I need to take the head off first.” he says. I ignore him, climb onto a chair and begin to yank at the top of the costume. The chair slips from under me and I am left grabbing onto Gerrard, we stumble backwards and forwards, knocking over a table filled with sports drinks and then fall over.
“You idiot!” he says, voice muffled inside a fake reindeer head inside a fake reindeer torso.
“I'm sorry, I thought it went over your head.” I say. He begins to pull at it.
“It's stuck...help me get it off.” he says. I put a foot on each of his shoulders and begin to pull.
“Stop it...you're...hurting my neck.” he says. I shake my head and look around the backstage. There's a jar of vaseline. I begin to smear it onto the brown fur and around his neck, pushing big clumps of the yellow substance into him. I try again and this time it comes away easily, making me stumble backwards into the official. I wipe my hands on his jacket.
“Gerrard Jones?” he says at the body builder.
“Yes.” he says, face and hair smeared in vaseline. He goes out onto the stage, waves at the crowd then picks up the block of ice. Almost immediately it slips out of his grip and lands on his toe. He howls again, grabs at his toe and begins to start hopping around the stage until falling backwards through a curtain, managing to fall headfirst into the lubricated reindeer torso he had just escaped from. When he gets up he takes a few blind steps forward before stepping on a bottle of lucozade, making him slip out through the backstage and onto the ice rink. He begins to shout and howl as he slides across the rink, trying to pull the reindeer costume off his head. He finally manages to, then screams as he sees the wall ahead of him in which he bangs into at quite a pace. I run after him with some paper towels.
“Did you see that?” I say.
“I saw enough of it. Pass me a towel.” he says.
"I think you lost." I say, patting him on the back.
“My method is hard soft.” he says.
“Which one?” I say.
“What do you mean?” he says.
“Is it hard or soft?”
“It's both.”
“Isn't hard and soft together just...normal?” I say.
“It goes hard, then soft. Hard soft.” he says. I thank him with a little bow. We both bow towards the stage then at each other, banging our foreheads. He clutches at his and howls.
“Don't bow at the same time. After one other.” he says. I bow towards him and when I lift my head manage to catch him on the chin. An official runs up to us.
“Are you boys ready for the weight lifting?” he says.
“Yes we are.” says Gerrard. I follow the twenty stone man to the back of the stage.
As Gerrard gets ready I peek through the curtain at the current champion getting ready to lift a block of ice.
“He must be cold.”
“Nevermind that, help me into this thing.” he says, gesturing toward a reindeer costume. He puts on the bottom half first, I help him put the giant cartoon reindeer head on.
“What about the top?” he says. I fetch the top part of the costume and try to pull it over the fake head.
“No, I need to take the head off first.” he says. I ignore him, climb onto a chair and begin to yank at the top of the costume. The chair slips from under me and I am left grabbing onto Gerrard, we stumble backwards and forwards, knocking over a table filled with sports drinks and then fall over.
“You idiot!” he says, voice muffled inside a fake reindeer head inside a fake reindeer torso.
“I'm sorry, I thought it went over your head.” I say. He begins to pull at it.
“It's stuck...help me get it off.” he says. I put a foot on each of his shoulders and begin to pull.
“Stop it...you're...hurting my neck.” he says. I shake my head and look around the backstage. There's a jar of vaseline. I begin to smear it onto the brown fur and around his neck, pushing big clumps of the yellow substance into him. I try again and this time it comes away easily, making me stumble backwards into the official. I wipe my hands on his jacket.
“Gerrard Jones?” he says at the body builder.
“Yes.” he says, face and hair smeared in vaseline. He goes out onto the stage, waves at the crowd then picks up the block of ice. Almost immediately it slips out of his grip and lands on his toe. He howls again, grabs at his toe and begins to start hopping around the stage until falling backwards through a curtain, managing to fall headfirst into the lubricated reindeer torso he had just escaped from. When he gets up he takes a few blind steps forward before stepping on a bottle of lucozade, making him slip out through the backstage and onto the ice rink. He begins to shout and howl as he slides across the rink, trying to pull the reindeer costume off his head. He finally manages to, then screams as he sees the wall ahead of him in which he bangs into at quite a pace. I run after him with some paper towels.
“Did you see that?” I say.
“I saw enough of it. Pass me a towel.” he says.
"I think you lost." I say, patting him on the back.
19.12.13
Christmas Cuckoo Land
The Manchester Christmas markets are nestled in St. Ann's square, just by the newly refurbished town hall and Manchester's only public toilet. At this market extravaganza one can sample the tastes of a Christmas that never was at faux-cabin retail stations that labyrinthiate the markets, selling goods such as vintage clothing, e-cigs, pork and ornaments to thousands of pedestrians moving along at a speed more akin to the dynamics of liquid rather than humanoid locomotion. There is a rustic bar which sells the finest arrangement of booze seen in the run-up to Christmas; mulled wine, German beer and American ale all can be bought at great cost whilst one relaxes against a post, admiring the other drinkers cluttering up the place. Enjoy the sound of children running around combined with the aroma of boiling wine. Sample at the arrangement of Mediterranean food for sale, treasuring the stone fruits as you peruse your recent purchases. Perhaps a hand-knitted mug warmer is resting in the paper bag, peeking from behind the corner of a block of smoked cheese made by Kurdish goat farmers on the slopes of Mount Strandzha. Maybe a piece of upcycled boat jewellery made of finest steel awaits a loved one, maybe even a chain-link owl to hang above your bathroom door. It is a truly magical place in which communities come together to enjoy Christmas, not to mention bringing in a decent revenue to local businesses and independent creatives. All of this is watched over by a fifty foot Father Christmas sat on top of the town hall like a psychedelic gargoyle, it's festiveness overpowering.
After arriving in the early hours of the morning and having to wait outside I took stock of winter in the city. In the history of painting there were many landscapes about the Earth being closer to the sun, yet there weren't many Classical paintings of cities beneath the frost. How did Manchester look five hundred years ago on the site of the Christmas markets? The Britons, Angles and Danes perhaps met on this very spot and traded goods under the midwinter sun, preparing for Pagan and Christian feasts. A ram would have been killed in the fog, it's freshly skinned head emerging from a hessian sack as a sacrifice to the Gods of Yule. Meanwhile the Britons would celebrate Saturnalia by doing the opposite of what was normal. War hardened soldiers would wear women's clothes and dogs would act like pigs, each gave presents and passed the berries of mistletoe by kissing one another. Bonfires would be lit and epic poems would be told of Norse ghosts made of mud and of the giants D'Frigga and Yol-M'nnstatr sleeping in the earth. Nowadays the city slowly begins to wake with the smell of Greggs and bus exhausts, commuters beginning to flow in from primate nests and jauntily begin to jog up and down the pavement jostling for a free copy of the Metro or a cup of hot java. The workers of the Christmas market begin to arrive wearing bubble vests and bobble hats, faces pinched red from the cold and stained with iron oxide. I walk across the cobbles like some kind of prehistoric bird, head swivelling from side to side as I admire the warez being offered.
The hours pass by with ease as I make my circuit, snorting down hotdogs and talking to the city folk about whether or not it was about to snow, mind frantic at the Christmas shopping opportunities around me. 8.3% of your life haunted by a festive holiday. 8.3% of the twentieth century, of television, of conversation. I begin to climb the walls of the town hall, shouting at the people below.
“Cease sublimation!” I cry, heaving my entire body up using my fingertips, carefully picking my way up the brickwork. Eventually I reach the enormous Father Christmas and look down at the shoppers below. Some are jeering, others call for me to get away from Father Christmas. I take the fictional man in my hands and begin to shake and pull at it, trying to dislodge it.
“Is Father Christmas just an elf?!” I bellow, managing to tear the festive sculpture free from the steel supports. With the groaning of metal it begins to tip down towards the crowd. There is an enormous crash as the Santa lands on top of the market. I look down, suddenly aware of what I had done.
“No...no!” I say. But it appears as if a Christmas miracle has happened! Father Christmas has been impaled through the head with a gigantic crucifix brought in by religious extremists. Everybody is saved! I jump for joy.
“Looks like the son of God didn't die in vain after all.” I say, unzipping my jacket. I am wearing a Big Face t-shirt with Nelson Mandela on it.
“Silent night, holy night,
Son of God
Watched at night.
Crowning angels are silent at bed.
Holy Mary, mother of grace.
Rest in heavenly peace.
Sleep in heavenly peace.” I sing beautifully.
After arriving in the early hours of the morning and having to wait outside I took stock of winter in the city. In the history of painting there were many landscapes about the Earth being closer to the sun, yet there weren't many Classical paintings of cities beneath the frost. How did Manchester look five hundred years ago on the site of the Christmas markets? The Britons, Angles and Danes perhaps met on this very spot and traded goods under the midwinter sun, preparing for Pagan and Christian feasts. A ram would have been killed in the fog, it's freshly skinned head emerging from a hessian sack as a sacrifice to the Gods of Yule. Meanwhile the Britons would celebrate Saturnalia by doing the opposite of what was normal. War hardened soldiers would wear women's clothes and dogs would act like pigs, each gave presents and passed the berries of mistletoe by kissing one another. Bonfires would be lit and epic poems would be told of Norse ghosts made of mud and of the giants D'Frigga and Yol-M'nnstatr sleeping in the earth. Nowadays the city slowly begins to wake with the smell of Greggs and bus exhausts, commuters beginning to flow in from primate nests and jauntily begin to jog up and down the pavement jostling for a free copy of the Metro or a cup of hot java. The workers of the Christmas market begin to arrive wearing bubble vests and bobble hats, faces pinched red from the cold and stained with iron oxide. I walk across the cobbles like some kind of prehistoric bird, head swivelling from side to side as I admire the warez being offered.
The hours pass by with ease as I make my circuit, snorting down hotdogs and talking to the city folk about whether or not it was about to snow, mind frantic at the Christmas shopping opportunities around me. 8.3% of your life haunted by a festive holiday. 8.3% of the twentieth century, of television, of conversation. I begin to climb the walls of the town hall, shouting at the people below.
“Cease sublimation!” I cry, heaving my entire body up using my fingertips, carefully picking my way up the brickwork. Eventually I reach the enormous Father Christmas and look down at the shoppers below. Some are jeering, others call for me to get away from Father Christmas. I take the fictional man in my hands and begin to shake and pull at it, trying to dislodge it.
“Is Father Christmas just an elf?!” I bellow, managing to tear the festive sculpture free from the steel supports. With the groaning of metal it begins to tip down towards the crowd. There is an enormous crash as the Santa lands on top of the market. I look down, suddenly aware of what I had done.
“No...no!” I say. But it appears as if a Christmas miracle has happened! Father Christmas has been impaled through the head with a gigantic crucifix brought in by religious extremists. Everybody is saved! I jump for joy.
“Looks like the son of God didn't die in vain after all.” I say, unzipping my jacket. I am wearing a Big Face t-shirt with Nelson Mandela on it.
“Silent night, holy night,
Son of God
Watched at night.
Crowning angels are silent at bed.
Holy Mary, mother of grace.
Rest in heavenly peace.
Sleep in heavenly peace.” I sing beautifully.
17.12.13
Mamucium
Rainy Manchester. Rainy, god forsaken Manchester, with its glass towers and multiple football teams. With it's musical history that it clings onto like someone who used to be cool. With mile after mile of terrace and suburb surrounding a concrete nucleus in which nothing gets done. With its university fostering some of the most influential minds in recent history whilst also harboring a significant portion of average minds. Manchester sits snug in the borough of Greater Manchester, an egg inside an egg. Wigan, Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, Oldham, Tameside, Stockport, Trafford and Salford all circle the city like the moons of Jupiter, yet with less fantastical names. It has its own airport, street lights, public transport system and a rich sense of community through advertising. It is Manchester in which I first cut my teeth as a rookie reporter, writing up stories on traffic disasters and unnecessary surgeries, reviewing bands in dingy basements who didn't even know I was there. And like many others I had returned to the north of England, head empty and spine perforated. This was England post-recession, post 9-11, post-Diana, post-Thatcher, post-Industry. It was time to scry the zeitgeist from wi-fi hotspots, Bitstrips, competitive cooking shows and so on. Manchester was as good a place as any. London was expensive, Liverpool was cold, there never seemed to be enough light in Bristol, Birmingham was stuck in a perpetual state of 1979 due to factors known only to myself, Newcastle had poor drainage, I had been banned from Chelmsford, Durham and Sunderland, Bradford had disagreeable architecture, Belfast had it's own thing going on, and I couldn't seem to find a decent curry anywhere else save for Glasgow, but why would a high-tech media sociopathologist running a brain limb across the meme sphere want to move to Glasgow? So Manchester it was. Acid rain on an acid house.
And so I stride along the streets, twisting my neck to and fro, rummaging in bins for clues. A wizard, a psycho-geographer, a bum. I am none of these things. I am a metanoid thirsty for information, mouth glued to a hose connected to a car with a bomb in it. The year 2014 is nearly here, isn't it. The year in which the Queen dies. The year in which the internet is turned off in what is known as Intergate. The year in which China begins to populate the moon with annoying robots. Yet before all that must come January the first, New Years Day, a champagne and mephedrone binge. Probably. If not, why not? And why wait? This is winter and it is hot.
And so I stride along the streets, twisting my neck to and fro, rummaging in bins for clues. A wizard, a psycho-geographer, a bum. I am none of these things. I am a metanoid thirsty for information, mouth glued to a hose connected to a car with a bomb in it. The year 2014 is nearly here, isn't it. The year in which the Queen dies. The year in which the internet is turned off in what is known as Intergate. The year in which China begins to populate the moon with annoying robots. Yet before all that must come January the first, New Years Day, a champagne and mephedrone binge. Probably. If not, why not? And why wait? This is winter and it is hot.
22.11.13
LAX
“and that's how I got to be the governor of Los Angeles.” said Arnold Schwarzenegger, taking a cigar from the ashtray and taking a big lungful of Cuban tobacco. I look over at his stunt double with a skin tight green lycra hood over his head wait to one side of the set while the green screen is sweeped of debris. We're on the set of Terminator 5 set for release next year. I have been trying to get this meeting since I'd arrived in Los Angeles and it seemed fitting for it to take place on my last day in the states. Arnold Schwarzenegger sits across from me in a wicker chair dressed in his signature leather jacket and jeans. Terminator make-up is applied to bits of his head and glints in the high noon sun thrown from a 1000w redhead.
“So tell me about this new Terminator flick.” I said.
“It's a reboot, but also a sequel. A paraquel. I play the role of a terminator sent back in time then is stuck in an alternative reality. The film flashes forward to the present day, where I have been aging. This is the first film where we really explore the philosophy of what it must mean to be a Terminator. It is a cybernetic organism yet has the ability to learn, a metal endoskeleton surrounded by living tissue. What are the differences and similairities between humans and machines? We hope to explore that in the next Terminator movie. That and time travel.”
“So what has the Terminator in this film been doing?”
“Since he saved Sarah Connor's parents he started a career in politics and is now lobbying for restrictions on research into robotics. This terminator is a member of a community. One day a terminator from his future is sent back in time in order to assassinate him and he has to try and keep himself safe whilst also trying to find out why the terminators will exist.”
“Is there action?”
“Let me tell you, the action in his movie will blow Terminator 3 out of the water! We have the director of Fast and Furious to come in to film, there's Tom Hardy playing the evil futuristic terminator, Emily Watson to play Terminator's wife, Justin Timberlake to play John Connor and Dwayne Johnson as a detective, who also turns out be to be a robot.”
“Sounds like that's an all star cast Mr. Schwarzenegger. What other projects do you have in the pipeline?” I said, watching the action taking place on stage. The stunt double rides a flaming car like it's a surf board before leaping off whilst 760 miniaturised cameras begin to take pictures.
“I'm also going to make a sequel to Pumping Iron.”
“Excellent.” I said. We chat a little more before Arnie is called back on set.
“I'll be right back.” he walks off. I can't help but feel disappointed he said 'right', missing an opportunity to deliver his famous catchphrase. I pack up my notes into my bag and go back out to the car.
I ask Bill to take a long route to the airport. We drive along Venice beach, through Little Ethiopia, down to gentrified Inglewood and San Pedro.
“Did you manage to find the edge of the city?”
“I don't think it exists.”
“That's a shame. It was fun anyway.”
“Remember when I released those wasps in the museum?” I said.
“I liked that day we drove all the way to San Diego and you were like 'Is this LA? Is this LA?'” laughed Bill.
“What was the name of those women we met?”
“Where?”
“At the art gallery.”
“Casandra and Jacqueline.” said Bill, smiling.
“That was a wild night. You remember dancing on the roof of the Aon centre?”
“You fell!”
“Nah, I had a parachute. What will you be doing after this?”
“I don't know. Go get something to eat. Go see my family.” said Bill. We drive along Mulholland and through Glendale, San Bernardino heights then Santa Monica. The Paul Getty Museum, Dodger Stadium, Hollywood Boulevard, the Chinese Theatre, City Hall, LAX. The car parks up outside the entrance.
“Thanks Bill. Take care of yourself.”
“You too.” he said. I get out, shutting the door behind me which rocks the car slightly. I go to knock on his window and he rolls it down.
“I left something on the back seat for you. Live long and prosper.” I say, throwing a peace sign before going towards the departure entrance. Bill looks over his shoulder, then goes in the back. Just where I'd been sitting I left a bag. He unfastens the latches on it and opens it up, inside is a dead dog with it's mouth stuffed with a roll of hundred dollar bills.
I took a window seat as the plane began to drive on the runway and reflected on my journey. The quest for the edge of Los Angeles. It had been a series of thrills and spills but in the end I learned a valuable lesson. I take out a copy of City Of Quartz and begin to read. Partway through I realised the plane was still driving on the runway. I turn to the seat next to me.
“Why haven't we set off yet?” I asked. There's no-one there. In fact, there's no-one on the whole plane. I put the book down and walk up the aisles. “Hello?” I said. The plane begins to turn and I look out of the window at LAX slowly rolling past, again. I go through First Class and pause at the pilot's door before knocking. I wait for a while and was about to go back to my seat when I heard the door being unlocked. I turned around. In the frame stands a naked man.
“Who...who are you?” I said. The man began to walk towards me. Behind him I can see the runway stretch ahead of us and the plane begins to accelerate. I back off slowly, watching as he advances towards me before setting off into a run.
“Who are you?” I shout, running down the aisles. But there is nowhere to go. The plane begins to take off and I scramble through the seats as the floor begins to dip, just about managing to sit down and fasten a belt across my lap. The man appeared from around the corner and stared at me, seemingly unaffected by the sudden increase in altitude.
“What do you want? Who's flying this plane?!” I said. He reached up to his face and began to pull at his top lip. With the engines screaming on both sides of us I watched as he began to unzip his skin. The human form peeled away to reveal an Untitled painting by Rothko. I sat in my chair convulsing as the plane finally takes off back towards England.
“So tell me about this new Terminator flick.” I said.
“It's a reboot, but also a sequel. A paraquel. I play the role of a terminator sent back in time then is stuck in an alternative reality. The film flashes forward to the present day, where I have been aging. This is the first film where we really explore the philosophy of what it must mean to be a Terminator. It is a cybernetic organism yet has the ability to learn, a metal endoskeleton surrounded by living tissue. What are the differences and similairities between humans and machines? We hope to explore that in the next Terminator movie. That and time travel.”
“So what has the Terminator in this film been doing?”
“Since he saved Sarah Connor's parents he started a career in politics and is now lobbying for restrictions on research into robotics. This terminator is a member of a community. One day a terminator from his future is sent back in time in order to assassinate him and he has to try and keep himself safe whilst also trying to find out why the terminators will exist.”
“Is there action?”
“Let me tell you, the action in his movie will blow Terminator 3 out of the water! We have the director of Fast and Furious to come in to film, there's Tom Hardy playing the evil futuristic terminator, Emily Watson to play Terminator's wife, Justin Timberlake to play John Connor and Dwayne Johnson as a detective, who also turns out be to be a robot.”
“Sounds like that's an all star cast Mr. Schwarzenegger. What other projects do you have in the pipeline?” I said, watching the action taking place on stage. The stunt double rides a flaming car like it's a surf board before leaping off whilst 760 miniaturised cameras begin to take pictures.
“I'm also going to make a sequel to Pumping Iron.”
“Excellent.” I said. We chat a little more before Arnie is called back on set.
“I'll be right back.” he walks off. I can't help but feel disappointed he said 'right', missing an opportunity to deliver his famous catchphrase. I pack up my notes into my bag and go back out to the car.
I ask Bill to take a long route to the airport. We drive along Venice beach, through Little Ethiopia, down to gentrified Inglewood and San Pedro.
“Did you manage to find the edge of the city?”
“I don't think it exists.”
“That's a shame. It was fun anyway.”
“Remember when I released those wasps in the museum?” I said.
“I liked that day we drove all the way to San Diego and you were like 'Is this LA? Is this LA?'” laughed Bill.
“What was the name of those women we met?”
“Where?”
“At the art gallery.”
“Casandra and Jacqueline.” said Bill, smiling.
“That was a wild night. You remember dancing on the roof of the Aon centre?”
“You fell!”
“Nah, I had a parachute. What will you be doing after this?”
“I don't know. Go get something to eat. Go see my family.” said Bill. We drive along Mulholland and through Glendale, San Bernardino heights then Santa Monica. The Paul Getty Museum, Dodger Stadium, Hollywood Boulevard, the Chinese Theatre, City Hall, LAX. The car parks up outside the entrance.
“Thanks Bill. Take care of yourself.”
“You too.” he said. I get out, shutting the door behind me which rocks the car slightly. I go to knock on his window and he rolls it down.
“I left something on the back seat for you. Live long and prosper.” I say, throwing a peace sign before going towards the departure entrance. Bill looks over his shoulder, then goes in the back. Just where I'd been sitting I left a bag. He unfastens the latches on it and opens it up, inside is a dead dog with it's mouth stuffed with a roll of hundred dollar bills.
I took a window seat as the plane began to drive on the runway and reflected on my journey. The quest for the edge of Los Angeles. It had been a series of thrills and spills but in the end I learned a valuable lesson. I take out a copy of City Of Quartz and begin to read. Partway through I realised the plane was still driving on the runway. I turn to the seat next to me.
“Why haven't we set off yet?” I asked. There's no-one there. In fact, there's no-one on the whole plane. I put the book down and walk up the aisles. “Hello?” I said. The plane begins to turn and I look out of the window at LAX slowly rolling past, again. I go through First Class and pause at the pilot's door before knocking. I wait for a while and was about to go back to my seat when I heard the door being unlocked. I turned around. In the frame stands a naked man.
“Who...who are you?” I said. The man began to walk towards me. Behind him I can see the runway stretch ahead of us and the plane begins to accelerate. I back off slowly, watching as he advances towards me before setting off into a run.
“Who are you?” I shout, running down the aisles. But there is nowhere to go. The plane begins to take off and I scramble through the seats as the floor begins to dip, just about managing to sit down and fasten a belt across my lap. The man appeared from around the corner and stared at me, seemingly unaffected by the sudden increase in altitude.
“What do you want? Who's flying this plane?!” I said. He reached up to his face and began to pull at his top lip. With the engines screaming on both sides of us I watched as he began to unzip his skin. The human form peeled away to reveal an Untitled painting by Rothko. I sat in my chair convulsing as the plane finally takes off back towards England.
18.11.13
Baby Boomers; Late Bloomers Or Irrelevant Rumours?
I watch hour after hour of television pilots from the various networks, the blu-ray discs lay scattered around the glass coffee table of my penthouse apartment. I'm watching an extremely light detective show in which an elderly woman investigates teen crime at a local high school. I watch as she opens a door and is hit in the face with a cloud of smoke.
"Smells like my grandsons car!" she says. I scream at the television and throw a blu-ray as hard as I can at the screen. I throw it so hard it goes faster than the speed of light and momentarily, yet infinitely, exists at every point in space at the same time before recombining inches away from the camera lens on the set four weeks ago, flies another few feet before hitting the old woman in the nose. I then grab handfuls of the discs and throw them out of the window, letting it rain bullshit onto the streets.
There once was a time when teenagers were hip and every strand of marketing was directed at them. To get the 16-24 audience in a prime time slot was the dream of every television exec this side of Death Valley. Yet times were changing. Young people didn't watch television, downloaded all their favourite films and were slowly dwindling in a post-recession economic meltdown. Rather than hanging out at the hippest clubs you'd be more likely to find teens hanging out under bridges offering to sell themselves for a cup of coffee. And the people on the other end of this illicit barterdom? The elderly. They had more money than they knew what to do with and half of them didn't even remember that they had it. Kept alive with futuristic machines that turned back the clock, the vampire myth was becoming more of a reality each day, sometimes literally as children would have their blood swapped with that of centenarians in order to keep them alive.
With this in mind the future world of media has took a turn for the old. Rather than the ultra-violent non-linear post-modern slanged-up shows we're used to seeing grace our tv screens, networks are now focusing on a more slower paced form of entertainment. The shows are often populated by protagonists that are over sixty, the villains are young people, the plots amble along apparently aimlessly and climax in a snappy line delivered with a smile rather than an adrenaline roaring cliffhanger. And it's not only television that's acting old. Radio waves are now being filled with old time music, cinemas project movies twice as big for those with bad eyesight and social networks are now jammed with the elderly spewing racist nonsense every second. This problem won't go away overnight. In fact it will never go away. The population is getting increasingly old and will begin to outnumber the young. I took to the streets to find out what the public thought about it.
"It's a good thing I think, I mean, everyone gets old. Why not make more stuff for them?"
"My grandma watched Breaking Bad."
"Don't they already show repeats all the time?"
"I think it's a good idea."
So there you are. Four people said those things so therefore all public opinion must conform. Yet I couldn't help but feel as if the elderly were a growing problem. Before the decade is over, 1 in 4 people will be over the age of 80. That means one of these people will have to look after the geezer, another will have to tell them what to do and the other person will die of starvation. Is this a just world, or should we just lead the elderly to underground crypts and hope that they evolve some kind of subterranean civilization beneath our feet? Like most things, the correct answer is perhaps somewhere in the middle.
"Smells like my grandsons car!" she says. I scream at the television and throw a blu-ray as hard as I can at the screen. I throw it so hard it goes faster than the speed of light and momentarily, yet infinitely, exists at every point in space at the same time before recombining inches away from the camera lens on the set four weeks ago, flies another few feet before hitting the old woman in the nose. I then grab handfuls of the discs and throw them out of the window, letting it rain bullshit onto the streets.
There once was a time when teenagers were hip and every strand of marketing was directed at them. To get the 16-24 audience in a prime time slot was the dream of every television exec this side of Death Valley. Yet times were changing. Young people didn't watch television, downloaded all their favourite films and were slowly dwindling in a post-recession economic meltdown. Rather than hanging out at the hippest clubs you'd be more likely to find teens hanging out under bridges offering to sell themselves for a cup of coffee. And the people on the other end of this illicit barterdom? The elderly. They had more money than they knew what to do with and half of them didn't even remember that they had it. Kept alive with futuristic machines that turned back the clock, the vampire myth was becoming more of a reality each day, sometimes literally as children would have their blood swapped with that of centenarians in order to keep them alive.
With this in mind the future world of media has took a turn for the old. Rather than the ultra-violent non-linear post-modern slanged-up shows we're used to seeing grace our tv screens, networks are now focusing on a more slower paced form of entertainment. The shows are often populated by protagonists that are over sixty, the villains are young people, the plots amble along apparently aimlessly and climax in a snappy line delivered with a smile rather than an adrenaline roaring cliffhanger. And it's not only television that's acting old. Radio waves are now being filled with old time music, cinemas project movies twice as big for those with bad eyesight and social networks are now jammed with the elderly spewing racist nonsense every second. This problem won't go away overnight. In fact it will never go away. The population is getting increasingly old and will begin to outnumber the young. I took to the streets to find out what the public thought about it.
"It's a good thing I think, I mean, everyone gets old. Why not make more stuff for them?"
"My grandma watched Breaking Bad."
"Don't they already show repeats all the time?"
"I think it's a good idea."
So there you are. Four people said those things so therefore all public opinion must conform. Yet I couldn't help but feel as if the elderly were a growing problem. Before the decade is over, 1 in 4 people will be over the age of 80. That means one of these people will have to look after the geezer, another will have to tell them what to do and the other person will die of starvation. Is this a just world, or should we just lead the elderly to underground crypts and hope that they evolve some kind of subterranean civilization beneath our feet? Like most things, the correct answer is perhaps somewhere in the middle.
16.11.13
Dancing In Blood
A crystal interface is embedded into the plastic molded counter. Tablet computers secretly read your fingerprints and transmit them to large police organisations. I select the options and look at the rotating wire-frame humanoid begin to morph.
"It uses sixth generation DDR-RAM in a java environment, vintage-fitted to deliver an optimal end user experience." says Boff. I nod, face lit from below in a shade of blue. I look up at the OHP screen and see my creation come to life, Gene Roddenberry takes off his clothes and begins to slow bang Liza Minelli.
"What kind of algorithms are you running here?" I ask.
"A basic MySql hack modded onto Marionette. It's what Pixar uses."
"But..the chip set for this app must need...gigaquads" I say, turning away from the screen momentarily.
"Not so. It uses white space and a simple gaussian noise recombination. It's streaming data from the cloud auto-authed through a 16x DVD drive." he says. I turn back to the tablet and smear my fingers. Gene Roddenberry is replaced with Channing Tatum.
"I think I've seen enough." I say. We walk back outside and stand by the kidney bean shaped pool.
"There's still some bugs I need to grind out, but I think we'll be ready to go live Q3 2014."
"What gave you the inspiration?"
"Well, I started off wanting to make a really in depth cataloging system for porn. I'd spend hours watching clips, taking notes. I wanted to do it mostly for myself, I had quite specific tastes, but I thought it could be used by others. A truly in-depth search engine for any pornographic image or video ever recorded." he says, smoking an electronic cigarette. I look out towards the Hollywood hills.
"Then what happened?"
"Well, I checked the analytics of the search engine, looked to see what people were looking for and try and direct my analysis more towards trends. Turned out a lot of people were looking for actors I'd never heard the names of. Wasn't until I cross-referenced this with Facebook and made an infograph I worked out most people were searching for porn stars that had some kind of resemblance to someone they knew, consciously or not." he said. I shivered lightly.
"Creepy."
"I know. This data alone could predict porn, fashion, taste, style, whatever, it was like a weather report. I then thought of what to do next. Why not take the people out of the porn, make it more eco-friendly, more now? So I set about working on CGI porno where people could specify what exactly they'd want to see. That was the first prototype of that thing in there."
"Sure, makes sense. Make porn more family friendly by taking out the exploitation."
"Turns out equal rights are making a big resurgence, and people hate porn. But they also love porn. CGI porn makes it so anyone can watch it without feeling guilty."
"So what made you have it so you could change peoples faces?"
"Evolution. Why not watch Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon take turns on some robot? Even better, why not import some photos from your phone and watch your friends have sex?"
"Well...I dunno."
"Think about it. You could watch yourself having sex with anyone...without using your imagination!"
"Sounds like the future to me." I say, spitting into the pool.
"Hi-Def CGI dicks of any size fitting in any hole of any one. It's a cybersex future cumming at your screens!" he says, throwing his arms up in the air and laughing, his testicles vibrating like electric eggs. I kick them off before leaping from the balcony and running for a car.
The high speed chase begins in West L.A. and takes me bouncing over small humps in the road as I'm chased by jeeps. I swerve between traffic as an Asian man pops out of a sunroof and begins to shoot an Uzi. I do a hand-brake turn and the car scrapes through an alley at ninety miles per hour. I drive off a bridge and into the aquaduct, tyres spinning across the dry concrete. One of the jeeps hits a shopping trolley that gets caught under one of it's wheels. There is the sound of an engine revving down and I slowly turn around. Silently the jeep flips into the air, flips over twice and then hits a concrete barricade. As the metal and meat crash together loudly time and sound return to normal. I look in my rear view mirror momentarily and jam the car into a higher gear, taking a plywood ramp up out of the aquaduct, flying over a small house and back down onto the street. The other jeep hits the top of a palm tree and explodes. I drift around a corner, slam the brake on and manage to parallel park it between two other cars. As I get out the door falls off. A homeless man who has been watching the whole thing then looks down at the empty bottle of whiskey in a brown bag and raises his eyebrows.
I stand on stage with a punk band I had joined early in the week. I go up to the microphone.
"We are The Shit Wolves and we hate you!" I shout, hitting the strings of my guitar. The crowd starts to pogo as I shout into the microphone and the band plays around me.
"Come on join my frozen anarchy,
She said la la la
The police put you in jail
So they can fuck you
Ooh ooh
Oh oh woah-ho, ho!
Frozen anarchy across the states!
Frozen death blows across the states!
Oh, oh, oi, oi, whoa-woo awoo woah!" I sing.
Half an hour later we are backstage drinking warm beer. The band talk about whether it was punk to promote yourself using the internet.
"I still think we should send those cassettes to the radio station, with fuck you written on them." says the bassist, laughing at his own joke.
"We should go to Palestine and play to the soldiers fighting over there. It's like we're saying to Obama, we're a punk band playing in a war zone. You got a problem with it?" says the drummer.
"Well, I got my girlfriend to make the next poster anyway." says the keyboardist.
"Again? I thought we agreed to use that picture of that man who shot himself?"
"She already had 'em printed up man. They're pretty sweet."
"Yeah but that picture is fucking horrible." laughs the bassist. I take out a glass pipe and stuff it full of crystal meth.
"Boys...how about we make a Vine?" I say, lighting up.
"It uses sixth generation DDR-RAM in a java environment, vintage-fitted to deliver an optimal end user experience." says Boff. I nod, face lit from below in a shade of blue. I look up at the OHP screen and see my creation come to life, Gene Roddenberry takes off his clothes and begins to slow bang Liza Minelli.
"What kind of algorithms are you running here?" I ask.
"A basic MySql hack modded onto Marionette. It's what Pixar uses."
"But..the chip set for this app must need...gigaquads" I say, turning away from the screen momentarily.
"Not so. It uses white space and a simple gaussian noise recombination. It's streaming data from the cloud auto-authed through a 16x DVD drive." he says. I turn back to the tablet and smear my fingers. Gene Roddenberry is replaced with Channing Tatum.
"I think I've seen enough." I say. We walk back outside and stand by the kidney bean shaped pool.
"There's still some bugs I need to grind out, but I think we'll be ready to go live Q3 2014."
"What gave you the inspiration?"
"Well, I started off wanting to make a really in depth cataloging system for porn. I'd spend hours watching clips, taking notes. I wanted to do it mostly for myself, I had quite specific tastes, but I thought it could be used by others. A truly in-depth search engine for any pornographic image or video ever recorded." he says, smoking an electronic cigarette. I look out towards the Hollywood hills.
"Then what happened?"
"Well, I checked the analytics of the search engine, looked to see what people were looking for and try and direct my analysis more towards trends. Turned out a lot of people were looking for actors I'd never heard the names of. Wasn't until I cross-referenced this with Facebook and made an infograph I worked out most people were searching for porn stars that had some kind of resemblance to someone they knew, consciously or not." he said. I shivered lightly.
"Creepy."
"I know. This data alone could predict porn, fashion, taste, style, whatever, it was like a weather report. I then thought of what to do next. Why not take the people out of the porn, make it more eco-friendly, more now? So I set about working on CGI porno where people could specify what exactly they'd want to see. That was the first prototype of that thing in there."
"Sure, makes sense. Make porn more family friendly by taking out the exploitation."
"Turns out equal rights are making a big resurgence, and people hate porn. But they also love porn. CGI porn makes it so anyone can watch it without feeling guilty."
"So what made you have it so you could change peoples faces?"
"Evolution. Why not watch Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon take turns on some robot? Even better, why not import some photos from your phone and watch your friends have sex?"
"Well...I dunno."
"Think about it. You could watch yourself having sex with anyone...without using your imagination!"
"Sounds like the future to me." I say, spitting into the pool.
"Hi-Def CGI dicks of any size fitting in any hole of any one. It's a cybersex future cumming at your screens!" he says, throwing his arms up in the air and laughing, his testicles vibrating like electric eggs. I kick them off before leaping from the balcony and running for a car.
The high speed chase begins in West L.A. and takes me bouncing over small humps in the road as I'm chased by jeeps. I swerve between traffic as an Asian man pops out of a sunroof and begins to shoot an Uzi. I do a hand-brake turn and the car scrapes through an alley at ninety miles per hour. I drive off a bridge and into the aquaduct, tyres spinning across the dry concrete. One of the jeeps hits a shopping trolley that gets caught under one of it's wheels. There is the sound of an engine revving down and I slowly turn around. Silently the jeep flips into the air, flips over twice and then hits a concrete barricade. As the metal and meat crash together loudly time and sound return to normal. I look in my rear view mirror momentarily and jam the car into a higher gear, taking a plywood ramp up out of the aquaduct, flying over a small house and back down onto the street. The other jeep hits the top of a palm tree and explodes. I drift around a corner, slam the brake on and manage to parallel park it between two other cars. As I get out the door falls off. A homeless man who has been watching the whole thing then looks down at the empty bottle of whiskey in a brown bag and raises his eyebrows.
I stand on stage with a punk band I had joined early in the week. I go up to the microphone.
"We are The Shit Wolves and we hate you!" I shout, hitting the strings of my guitar. The crowd starts to pogo as I shout into the microphone and the band plays around me.
"Come on join my frozen anarchy,
She said la la la
The police put you in jail
So they can fuck you
Ooh ooh
Oh oh woah-ho, ho!
Frozen anarchy across the states!
Frozen death blows across the states!
Oh, oh, oi, oi, whoa-woo awoo woah!" I sing.
Half an hour later we are backstage drinking warm beer. The band talk about whether it was punk to promote yourself using the internet.
"I still think we should send those cassettes to the radio station, with fuck you written on them." says the bassist, laughing at his own joke.
"We should go to Palestine and play to the soldiers fighting over there. It's like we're saying to Obama, we're a punk band playing in a war zone. You got a problem with it?" says the drummer.
"Well, I got my girlfriend to make the next poster anyway." says the keyboardist.
"Again? I thought we agreed to use that picture of that man who shot himself?"
"She already had 'em printed up man. They're pretty sweet."
"Yeah but that picture is fucking horrible." laughs the bassist. I take out a glass pipe and stuff it full of crystal meth.
"Boys...how about we make a Vine?" I say, lighting up.
13.11.13
Mondrian
Black shuffle steps, raw torn lips, purple and white skin, ottered onto once another like crow, rook, raven, a minnow swims in the lake and leaps onto rocks. Elastic monster masks are contained into DVD slip cases. Cops eat donuts and drink offal flavoured tequila wrung from the bloated tripe. Ash rained from the clouds made from the cigarette smoke from a thousand freelance radicals living in cardboard boxes by the Los Angeles bay. Vampires slide out from orange coffins as Kanye West announces the release of his new album broadcast on podcasts uploaded onto Raspberry Pi's sent over to Africa by clueless billionaires with soft, wet hearts. Failing hipsters smoulder in personal immuno-pods that traverse them around the city, a high centre of gravity and an ease of target lead the burning sputes to tumble down onto the grey destiny. Galileo lying in his bed with his eyes open and the sun coming up from the hills, leaping up from the straw mattress, Galilei writing down concepts of physics that would remain intrinsic to modern knowledge on falling. The reality of cream covered custard pies hit against the face with the plate and the force of an arm. The heel hitting a banana skin and propelling the person forward before the accelerating weight causes them to fall. Video tapes of Jeremy Beadle creeping up on people dressed as an authority figure. Trembling Mondrians.
11.11.13
With A Chance Of Meatballs
“Nobody can teach your grandma to suck eggs.”
“I know.” I said. Of course I knew, I tried when I was sixteen. Nevertheless I looked out of the window and let my eyes pour down onto the street, out onto the bay. I pictured myself surfing.
“So what do you want me to do about it?”
“I don't think it's that complex. I'm just looking for some standardized information, I thought this would be the place to find out.”
“But you're asking about something metaphysical. You aren't interested in the administrative districts recognized by law, or the actual geography of architecture.”
“Geoarchitecural analysis.” I corrected him.
“So what is it you want?”
“To know where the edge of the city is. I'm not asking about where the city finishes and outside of the city begins. But the actual edge. To visit the places on the map where the line is appears no different from any other potential point on the line, therefore it seems arbitary.”
“You're suggesting that borders are infinite?”
“What's the point in learning a different language if you don't have any social skills. Comprendez?”
“But you pass through this meridian as you leave the city. You must know what's not Los Angeles, if only for it to be another city, so maybe you should look at where Los Angeles isn't and begin walking until you re-enter the city.”
“Maybe.”
“Well maybe the area where the city is and isn't can be quite a large area. A mile deep ring on the fringes of Los Angeles, a place caught between two states.”
“Maybe if you organised borders to be gradients rather than lines? Different zones...different...vibes.” I noticed he had caught a constrained night dream onto his face via a large cut given in his sleep. Long fingernails.
“If you'd like to do that, you're free to.” he said.
“The thing is though...what's it matter?” I said leaning back.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“Why do I care where it is. It doesn't matter.”
“You're the one who wanted to know.”
“Yeah whatever.” I said.
I leave city hall with a buck in my pocket and rash on my hand. I'd already spent the morning deciding on definitions of Los Angeles, California and all I found out was less than I thought I knew. So I decided to walk north. I went through the city and over the hills, eventually reaching city limits. The mountains around me were steep and glowed orange. I continued until there was no trace of anything made and started walking back. The sun was beginning to rise on the Mojave desert and I went back through the scrub and hill, back hot with sweat, red from the sun, and my shoes were rags and my eyes were shot with blood. Each step I took was the end. The cars went past and the trees were small and I want to drink but there was was to go back. Not all of the houses and structures were part of it, but they were a sign. I stood in the road and felt the air move and kept walking back and toward. There was a bit between city and nature. It was like seeing what wasn't there and if you turned or even blinked it'd go so you had to carry on staring to see it change and be real and that's what I did stood on the road looking at where the city was and wasn't til my eyes began to shake.
I revisited a diner on the edge of the city and began to fold the bit of bread they'd given me. Americans put sugar in everything they ate. I see a tall, heavy set man sat on his own in a booth by the window.
"Hello."
"Hey buddy." he says.
"You mind if I sit here?"
"Sure, why not." he says.
"You from New York?"
"Pittsburgh. You from England?"
"Yeah. I'm on holiday. I think you call it 'a vacation'."
"I know what a holiday is fella. So what brings you out here? You look like shit, pardon my French."
"De nada home boy. I've been walking."
"You looked like you walked through the desert."
"Didn't Christ return from the desert?"
"Lots of people did. What about our troops. You saying them mean sons of a bitches are like Jesus Christ I salute ya buddy." he says, biting into his grilled cheese.
"You know, I've been wondering who do I have to blow to get a drink round here. So I came over to you."
"What?"
"I said, will you buy me a drink. I only had enough for this piece of bread."
"Sure. You want a root beer?"
"Thanks." I say. He goes over to the waitress and grabs her by the arm and orders me a beverage as I munch on my bland meal. He comes back to the table. I gladly quaff the beverage before continuing; "You know, people say a lot about Americans. And one of those things is how friendly some of you are."
"No problem buddy. I used to be homeless, I know what it's like. You probably came over here from London hoping to be a big movie star, thinking that the streets were paved with gold. Turns out it's pretty hard after all, huh?"
"You got it."
"A lot of people come over. Be an actor, be a writer, whatever. It's not all it's cracked up to be."
"I met this girl the other day...she was also from England."
"That's what I'm saying." he said, nodding. I thank him again for the root beer and leave the diner, looking out at the city with blurred, fucked up vision. I laugh to myself and hid in the bed of a pickup truck, hiding beneath the dark blue cover sheet. Maybe I'd wake up in Los Vegas or on the beach. Maybe a thousand miles away with no phone or wallet, feasting on the dying around me.
“I know.” I said. Of course I knew, I tried when I was sixteen. Nevertheless I looked out of the window and let my eyes pour down onto the street, out onto the bay. I pictured myself surfing.
“So what do you want me to do about it?”
“I don't think it's that complex. I'm just looking for some standardized information, I thought this would be the place to find out.”
“But you're asking about something metaphysical. You aren't interested in the administrative districts recognized by law, or the actual geography of architecture.”
“Geoarchitecural analysis.” I corrected him.
“So what is it you want?”
“To know where the edge of the city is. I'm not asking about where the city finishes and outside of the city begins. But the actual edge. To visit the places on the map where the line is appears no different from any other potential point on the line, therefore it seems arbitary.”
“You're suggesting that borders are infinite?”
“What's the point in learning a different language if you don't have any social skills. Comprendez?”
“But you pass through this meridian as you leave the city. You must know what's not Los Angeles, if only for it to be another city, so maybe you should look at where Los Angeles isn't and begin walking until you re-enter the city.”
“Maybe.”
“Well maybe the area where the city is and isn't can be quite a large area. A mile deep ring on the fringes of Los Angeles, a place caught between two states.”
“Maybe if you organised borders to be gradients rather than lines? Different zones...different...vibes.” I noticed he had caught a constrained night dream onto his face via a large cut given in his sleep. Long fingernails.
“If you'd like to do that, you're free to.” he said.
“The thing is though...what's it matter?” I said leaning back.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“Why do I care where it is. It doesn't matter.”
“You're the one who wanted to know.”
“Yeah whatever.” I said.
I leave city hall with a buck in my pocket and rash on my hand. I'd already spent the morning deciding on definitions of Los Angeles, California and all I found out was less than I thought I knew. So I decided to walk north. I went through the city and over the hills, eventually reaching city limits. The mountains around me were steep and glowed orange. I continued until there was no trace of anything made and started walking back. The sun was beginning to rise on the Mojave desert and I went back through the scrub and hill, back hot with sweat, red from the sun, and my shoes were rags and my eyes were shot with blood. Each step I took was the end. The cars went past and the trees were small and I want to drink but there was was to go back. Not all of the houses and structures were part of it, but they were a sign. I stood in the road and felt the air move and kept walking back and toward. There was a bit between city and nature. It was like seeing what wasn't there and if you turned or even blinked it'd go so you had to carry on staring to see it change and be real and that's what I did stood on the road looking at where the city was and wasn't til my eyes began to shake.
I revisited a diner on the edge of the city and began to fold the bit of bread they'd given me. Americans put sugar in everything they ate. I see a tall, heavy set man sat on his own in a booth by the window.
"Hello."
"Hey buddy." he says.
"You mind if I sit here?"
"Sure, why not." he says.
"You from New York?"
"Pittsburgh. You from England?"
"Yeah. I'm on holiday. I think you call it 'a vacation'."
"I know what a holiday is fella. So what brings you out here? You look like shit, pardon my French."
"De nada home boy. I've been walking."
"You looked like you walked through the desert."
"Didn't Christ return from the desert?"
"Lots of people did. What about our troops. You saying them mean sons of a bitches are like Jesus Christ I salute ya buddy." he says, biting into his grilled cheese.
"You know, I've been wondering who do I have to blow to get a drink round here. So I came over to you."
"What?"
"I said, will you buy me a drink. I only had enough for this piece of bread."
"Sure. You want a root beer?"
"Thanks." I say. He goes over to the waitress and grabs her by the arm and orders me a beverage as I munch on my bland meal. He comes back to the table. I gladly quaff the beverage before continuing; "You know, people say a lot about Americans. And one of those things is how friendly some of you are."
"No problem buddy. I used to be homeless, I know what it's like. You probably came over here from London hoping to be a big movie star, thinking that the streets were paved with gold. Turns out it's pretty hard after all, huh?"
"You got it."
"A lot of people come over. Be an actor, be a writer, whatever. It's not all it's cracked up to be."
"I met this girl the other day...she was also from England."
"That's what I'm saying." he said, nodding. I thank him again for the root beer and leave the diner, looking out at the city with blurred, fucked up vision. I laugh to myself and hid in the bed of a pickup truck, hiding beneath the dark blue cover sheet. Maybe I'd wake up in Los Vegas or on the beach. Maybe a thousand miles away with no phone or wallet, feasting on the dying around me.
8.11.13
Forever Triangle: Uncle Jupiter
I am standing outside a school holding a giant cheque which reads one hundred and sixty thousand dollars printed in a font that resembles handwriting, designed by a team of graphic artists and distributed across the Western coast of America. It was the font of choice for these kinds of events, though there was a wide selection of fake handwriting available to charities, government bodies and the media. A flash bulb goes off in front of my face. Who uses flash bulbs any more. My mouth is dry and I gulp the back of my tongue. The woman next to me talks to the dozen or so reporters but I can't concentrate on what she is saying. The enormous cheque begins to slide down a sweaty palm and I worry I will drop it. Somebody finally takes the cheque off me and the woman puts an arm around my shoulder and we smile as more flash bulbs go off and people shout questions.
I am left alone in a hallway and hear my name called out. Fire doors open inwards for me and I walk across the auditorium floor, the applause falling as quickly as it rose. The head of the board of governers and the headteacher are stood to one side. I look around for a podium or somewhere less exposed but find none.
“Hello. Good afternoon. I hope we're all going to have a good time today. I just donated one hundred and sixty thousand dollars to your school. A hundred and sixty thousand. It's a generous donation, so generous that not many people are even able to do it. But I am, because I care. I care about the little guy, hitting the books, trying to make himself smart. I don't care if you're a jock, cheerleader, class clown or goth, everyone deserves an education that is paid for through generous donations like the one I just gave. I suppose you're asking yourself, why, why would this British guy come over to my school and give me nearly two hundred thousand dollars? But you know what? You shouldn't be asking why. You should be asking how. How do I get to be that guy?” I say. I wonder how loudly I am speaking. How do I sound, blowing air in short bursts over a wet blob in my mouth. I think about the size of my tongue.
“It's economics, Salzebury, the Gideon knot, Keynes, mythology, survivalism, trigonometry zoology, fluid dynamics, pyramid schemes, zombies, Rudolph Hess, microscopy, an excel spreadsheet, ipads, gemstones, bus tickets, viruses, environmentalism, brain transplants, pacifism, The Odyssey, facetime, gin and tonic, new shoes, the conquest of Mexico, batman, zygotes, fountain pens, mints, Sigmund Frued, Futurism, the Amazonian Rainforest, golf, Ludwig van Beethoven, buicks, childhood, pataphysics, buddhism and cell phones," I explain. "You can't just get a college education by paying for it. You have to work hard. Then you have to carry on working hard once you've graduated. The only difference is you'll be working somewhere nicer than cleaning up piles of shit in a school like this. You want everyone laugh at you? Think that you're a fucking joke? No, didn't think so. Take the easy way, drive a hyundai to work, have an affair, earn the average wage. All of it will seem terrible but at least it won't actually be terrible. That's why getting an education is important. You think I just threw one hundred sixty at this place so you could paint the corridors, put a basketball court somewhere? Hell no. I just give you the opportunity for an education. Make yourselves smart and in doing so increase the competition for jobs in the future.” I said, smiling. I looked down and shook my head before looking back up.
“You don't even know what. This is basic economics, but they don't teach that shit at high school. Don't want everyone knowing how to make mad money, who they gonna make money off? Y'all punks need to be schooled on some left wing sheeeeyit.” I say. I have grown confident as I speak. I feel strong and powerful. I pop open the top button of my collar.
“Ch'all better recognize socialism. You probably thinking of Groucho if I say Marx. But guess what. I'm talking about a guy called Karl. And he invented Communism along with this dude called Engels. Say what? Motherfucker invented communism, ain't that a Russian thing? Hell yeah homie. So's space travel. You think it's a coincidence all them dudes on the enterprise are chill?” I say.
“Anyway, I've donated almost a billion dollars to schools in Los Angeles. Y'all going to get a sweet education for gratis. Might seem fun now, but wait til you leave college. Everyone around you's gonna have been at the same college. I made this whole city totally fucked!” I say, miming smearing my hands across a dome. I laugh and walk out, starting to run through the empty corridors. It is a labyrinth of plastic, every door seems as same as the last. This is the place shootings happen. Eventually I reach the outside and have to lie in the car park, coughing. What have I done? There's no load game in real life! Everything had repercussions, from breakfast to noon. I sat up and started to run again, down streets populated by cars, veins bulging on my forehead. Nine hundred and thirty two thousand six hundred and twenty three dollars of company funds given away in the space of a day. I wondered for a moment if I would have to claim bankruptcy then laughed. Of course not. I still had things to do. I rang Bill and he picked me up.
“Take me back to the hotel.” I say.
“Sure. Are you okay?” he says. I begin to take off my clothes.
“Yes.”
I am left alone in a hallway and hear my name called out. Fire doors open inwards for me and I walk across the auditorium floor, the applause falling as quickly as it rose. The head of the board of governers and the headteacher are stood to one side. I look around for a podium or somewhere less exposed but find none.
“Hello. Good afternoon. I hope we're all going to have a good time today. I just donated one hundred and sixty thousand dollars to your school. A hundred and sixty thousand. It's a generous donation, so generous that not many people are even able to do it. But I am, because I care. I care about the little guy, hitting the books, trying to make himself smart. I don't care if you're a jock, cheerleader, class clown or goth, everyone deserves an education that is paid for through generous donations like the one I just gave. I suppose you're asking yourself, why, why would this British guy come over to my school and give me nearly two hundred thousand dollars? But you know what? You shouldn't be asking why. You should be asking how. How do I get to be that guy?” I say. I wonder how loudly I am speaking. How do I sound, blowing air in short bursts over a wet blob in my mouth. I think about the size of my tongue.
“It's economics, Salzebury, the Gideon knot, Keynes, mythology, survivalism, trigonometry zoology, fluid dynamics, pyramid schemes, zombies, Rudolph Hess, microscopy, an excel spreadsheet, ipads, gemstones, bus tickets, viruses, environmentalism, brain transplants, pacifism, The Odyssey, facetime, gin and tonic, new shoes, the conquest of Mexico, batman, zygotes, fountain pens, mints, Sigmund Frued, Futurism, the Amazonian Rainforest, golf, Ludwig van Beethoven, buicks, childhood, pataphysics, buddhism and cell phones," I explain. "You can't just get a college education by paying for it. You have to work hard. Then you have to carry on working hard once you've graduated. The only difference is you'll be working somewhere nicer than cleaning up piles of shit in a school like this. You want everyone laugh at you? Think that you're a fucking joke? No, didn't think so. Take the easy way, drive a hyundai to work, have an affair, earn the average wage. All of it will seem terrible but at least it won't actually be terrible. That's why getting an education is important. You think I just threw one hundred sixty at this place so you could paint the corridors, put a basketball court somewhere? Hell no. I just give you the opportunity for an education. Make yourselves smart and in doing so increase the competition for jobs in the future.” I said, smiling. I looked down and shook my head before looking back up.
“You don't even know what. This is basic economics, but they don't teach that shit at high school. Don't want everyone knowing how to make mad money, who they gonna make money off? Y'all punks need to be schooled on some left wing sheeeeyit.” I say. I have grown confident as I speak. I feel strong and powerful. I pop open the top button of my collar.
“Ch'all better recognize socialism. You probably thinking of Groucho if I say Marx. But guess what. I'm talking about a guy called Karl. And he invented Communism along with this dude called Engels. Say what? Motherfucker invented communism, ain't that a Russian thing? Hell yeah homie. So's space travel. You think it's a coincidence all them dudes on the enterprise are chill?” I say.
“Anyway, I've donated almost a billion dollars to schools in Los Angeles. Y'all going to get a sweet education for gratis. Might seem fun now, but wait til you leave college. Everyone around you's gonna have been at the same college. I made this whole city totally fucked!” I say, miming smearing my hands across a dome. I laugh and walk out, starting to run through the empty corridors. It is a labyrinth of plastic, every door seems as same as the last. This is the place shootings happen. Eventually I reach the outside and have to lie in the car park, coughing. What have I done? There's no load game in real life! Everything had repercussions, from breakfast to noon. I sat up and started to run again, down streets populated by cars, veins bulging on my forehead. Nine hundred and thirty two thousand six hundred and twenty three dollars of company funds given away in the space of a day. I wondered for a moment if I would have to claim bankruptcy then laughed. Of course not. I still had things to do. I rang Bill and he picked me up.
“Take me back to the hotel.” I say.
“Sure. Are you okay?” he says. I begin to take off my clothes.
“Yes.”
OK Coral
Thousands of miles of bone covered by a coloured skin, slowly turning the bleached whiteness of death. The sky screamed infernally overhead burning deeper and deeper through the ancient reef. It was the time. Unknowing, each mouth kissed the sea, releasing motes out from their stomachs that drifted into the ongoing storm happening beneath the foam. The cells that caught one another began to change, drifting down far from where they began onto a sheet of rock. The polyp grew a mouth and began to grow another, attached by a tiny membrane. And these copies would go on to grow another copy. With identical mouths they snared plankton, reaching upwards on a limestone skeleton towards the shifting sky.
In it's eight thousand year existence, the coral reef could sense that a change was coming. Death. It's life was many orders of magnitude slower than any other animal and so it's death appeared to be relatively quick. Parts of it starved or were broken off, others were above the water, forever caught in the frantic strobing of the star. On it's borders there was a creature making it's way through the crumbling towers, crawling with an affray of spikes. The huge starfish the colour of dusk crept across the reef, pushing their stomachs onto it and taking away a soup of sea water and digested coral. They moved slowly across the outermost layer, leaving nothing behind but blank stone. It gorged itself on mile after mile on an animal that didn't even know it existed.
The reef waited. Over towards where the sun rose it felt a strangeness in the water, a rotating churn. In moments huge areas of the reef were torn away, obliterated by moving air, ripping polyps off bone, tearing them to wet shreds. The crabs and fishes that lived amongst it's structures began to dwindle, living hard lives amongst the barren stone. Black, oily shit was poured over acres of the reef, drowning the mouths beneath an avalanche of waste. But it continued to wait.
On the reef lived a variety of different species of coral, and each species had colonies numbering the billions. They grew over decades, attacking other corals in their territory, capitalising on empty space, slowly exploring the fringe of the reef which itself transformed faster than the coral could manifest it's destiny. In the caves and over the mountains swam sea snakes, slugs, worms, fish, octopuses and turtles. More closely related to hard coral are the gorgonians, fractal sheets of living polyp that stretch into the water like enormous leaves. Similarly the jellyfish float through the water like the ghosts of bells, catching light in thin membranes from the setting star, colouring them crimson. All of this looked the same as it had for many epochs.Empires of colour rose and fell over the centuries, more dramatic and complex than any that could happen on the land. Yet it what was happening on the land that would bring an end to the Cambrian frontier.
Soft five pointed animals climbed into the metallic things across the ocean. They wore their skeletons on the inside, the only signs of hardness were white crescents set in the holes atop their necks. The holes moved up and down, making dry sounds in the air. The metal rays began to soar through the sky with their reflections caught on the brine beneath, on each wing of the things were long, hard tubes with fins coming off of the side and their ends painted in yellow and red. The bigger pieces of metal seemed to grow little clouds around them with a booming noise and from then they moved silently over the water, their echo taking time to catch up. As the moon gyrated on the other side of the planet it pulled the water away, exposing parts of the dead reef up towards the silent metallic things. They passed above, going towards the land, before making elliptical orbits back over the reef in the crystal water. The metal cylinders on each wing was dropped, one, two, three, four, down towards the water. When they hit they made indents into the sea as the surface struggled to keep, yet in they went anyway, plummeting down towards the reef, crashing through the coral and throwing up silt which threw up a brown fog. And nothing happened.
The light rose again. The soft animals wore black skins and plastic around their faces as they travelled through the water, down towards the eight cylinders. Already starfish and crabs had begun to explore the strange new hardness which had fallen from above. The soft animals swam towards each of the things, leaving behind little mounds of plastic before disappearing. And then the bombs went off. An underwater fire bloomed outward, roaring across the coral, shattering it's bones. The entire ocean pressed against this sudden bubble of heat, the water clapping together and then surging upwards, throwing pieces of death in the air. A shockwave continued over the reef eviscerating any soft flesh. The reef disappeared beneath a cloud of blood and sand and when it cleared nothing was left.
The coral did not feel anything. It had lived a long life unknowing anything but itself, it's purpose was simple. It had no choice. It was unaware at the beauty in which it created, the systems of life it supported, even of the corals surrounding it. In the black silence of it's existence it felt a hunger that lasted a thousand years. It wouldn't be able to comprehend the manner in which it's life was ended. But then again, neither could we.
In it's eight thousand year existence, the coral reef could sense that a change was coming. Death. It's life was many orders of magnitude slower than any other animal and so it's death appeared to be relatively quick. Parts of it starved or were broken off, others were above the water, forever caught in the frantic strobing of the star. On it's borders there was a creature making it's way through the crumbling towers, crawling with an affray of spikes. The huge starfish the colour of dusk crept across the reef, pushing their stomachs onto it and taking away a soup of sea water and digested coral. They moved slowly across the outermost layer, leaving nothing behind but blank stone. It gorged itself on mile after mile on an animal that didn't even know it existed.
The reef waited. Over towards where the sun rose it felt a strangeness in the water, a rotating churn. In moments huge areas of the reef were torn away, obliterated by moving air, ripping polyps off bone, tearing them to wet shreds. The crabs and fishes that lived amongst it's structures began to dwindle, living hard lives amongst the barren stone. Black, oily shit was poured over acres of the reef, drowning the mouths beneath an avalanche of waste. But it continued to wait.
On the reef lived a variety of different species of coral, and each species had colonies numbering the billions. They grew over decades, attacking other corals in their territory, capitalising on empty space, slowly exploring the fringe of the reef which itself transformed faster than the coral could manifest it's destiny. In the caves and over the mountains swam sea snakes, slugs, worms, fish, octopuses and turtles. More closely related to hard coral are the gorgonians, fractal sheets of living polyp that stretch into the water like enormous leaves. Similarly the jellyfish float through the water like the ghosts of bells, catching light in thin membranes from the setting star, colouring them crimson. All of this looked the same as it had for many epochs.Empires of colour rose and fell over the centuries, more dramatic and complex than any that could happen on the land. Yet it what was happening on the land that would bring an end to the Cambrian frontier.
Soft five pointed animals climbed into the metallic things across the ocean. They wore their skeletons on the inside, the only signs of hardness were white crescents set in the holes atop their necks. The holes moved up and down, making dry sounds in the air. The metal rays began to soar through the sky with their reflections caught on the brine beneath, on each wing of the things were long, hard tubes with fins coming off of the side and their ends painted in yellow and red. The bigger pieces of metal seemed to grow little clouds around them with a booming noise and from then they moved silently over the water, their echo taking time to catch up. As the moon gyrated on the other side of the planet it pulled the water away, exposing parts of the dead reef up towards the silent metallic things. They passed above, going towards the land, before making elliptical orbits back over the reef in the crystal water. The metal cylinders on each wing was dropped, one, two, three, four, down towards the water. When they hit they made indents into the sea as the surface struggled to keep, yet in they went anyway, plummeting down towards the reef, crashing through the coral and throwing up silt which threw up a brown fog. And nothing happened.
The light rose again. The soft animals wore black skins and plastic around their faces as they travelled through the water, down towards the eight cylinders. Already starfish and crabs had begun to explore the strange new hardness which had fallen from above. The soft animals swam towards each of the things, leaving behind little mounds of plastic before disappearing. And then the bombs went off. An underwater fire bloomed outward, roaring across the coral, shattering it's bones. The entire ocean pressed against this sudden bubble of heat, the water clapping together and then surging upwards, throwing pieces of death in the air. A shockwave continued over the reef eviscerating any soft flesh. The reef disappeared beneath a cloud of blood and sand and when it cleared nothing was left.
The coral did not feel anything. It had lived a long life unknowing anything but itself, it's purpose was simple. It had no choice. It was unaware at the beauty in which it created, the systems of life it supported, even of the corals surrounding it. In the black silence of it's existence it felt a hunger that lasted a thousand years. It wouldn't be able to comprehend the manner in which it's life was ended. But then again, neither could we.
4.11.13
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.
“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.
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