Ikea

Ikea.

The word summons up a winter landscape covered in a wide variety of cheap furniture half-buried beneath the snow. A vision of a future where the last humans are laid to rest in pine flat-pack coffins stacked on the roadsides of silent cities. Doll children remain where they were abandoned. Electric cameras in galleries have been watching works of art for a million years. In this place there are no animals, plants or bacteria. The DNA inside fossils has petrified. Everything is still.

Ikea.

Aliens Of Kepler 186-f

The National Associated Space Agency (NASA) has recently discovered life on another planet. The planet, Kepler 186-f orbits the Kepler star, an M dwarf that is roughly 44% the size and strength of our sun. Scientists are already deciding on renaming the planet something more memorable, such as Tarkus or Izitso, due to its importance in the history of human civilization.

The planet is composed mostly of rocks and ice due to being a lot further out than Earth relative to Sol. Because of the weakness of Kepler at high noon it gets as bright as a nightclub toilet so therefore the vegetation of the planet is enormous. The leaves on the trees are each as big as satellite dishes, and of a similar shape. Fungus is also prevalent, as on Tarkus the ice gets mouldy. Due to the spectrum of light thrown from Kepler, the flowers are all ultraviolet and lack any visible colour. Kepler 186-f also has no moon and so its oceans are still. These enormous ponds are home to shark frogs and leech whales, above them fly flocks of giant flies that have the ability to sing like birds, although they do this through their proboscis and so create a sound similar to a wet trumpet. On the plains of ice live a variety of strange alien creatures that are reminiscent to some of the animals on our planet; wooly pigs, two headed cat monsters, tortoise spiders and mirrors that walk around to name but a few.

Kepler 186-f is 600 lightyears away, so we are seeing the planet 600 years ago. If the aliens living there had good enough telescope technology and were watching us, they would see the world in 1414, perhaps watching the Battle of Agincourt and wondering if we were imbeciles who ate mud and slept in chimneys. With this intergalactic empathy in mind, the supposed most intelligent being on Kepler 186-f are the Kepleroids. These strange beings look a little like us, although with eyes the size of basketballs standing on highly veined stalks. They appear to live in a village that spans entire continents, often walking for miles to visit their neighbours with what must be meat pies. They also play a variety of night sports and ride around on dead horse things with the legs replaced with wheels. The Kepleroids seem like a benign and peaceful race, and it would be ethical to eat them should the opportunity ever arise.

A NASA spokesman suggested that we build a spaceship and send it off to explore this planet and exploit it for any fossil fuels they may not be using. This alien petrol would be made from alien dinosaurs and would power a car to drive from Paris to Beijing on a single tank! NASA is currently looking for a crack team of astronauts to go on this mission and have styled the crew requirements to mirror that of the characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Although a 'Wesley Crusher' isn't required.

OKStupid: The World Of Online Dating Cracked Open Like An Egg

I approach the bar with some trepidation; it has been years since I have been on a date. Due to a recent string of mysterious events I ended up on a semi-blind date with somebody I had met on the internet. The world of online dating wasn't new to me; I had used it before to help crack the case of the mysterious OKCupid Killer, although this time I wasn't seeing it through the objective lens of a criminal profiler but of the sort of embarrassed, sort of curious, sort of desperate subjective lens of a single male living in the city.

With my legs freshly shaved and the new clothes I was wearing brushing against my body like the wings of a moth, I felt like a new person. Not just new; different. I was a strong, independent man with my own life. As I pushed open the doors of the bar I decided that whatever was to happen on this date, it didn't change that fact. It was just a bit of fun, right? On the other hand I could be walking into destiny; to meet the future mother of my ten or so children who would cradle my dying body in a lethal skiing accident. I saw her waiting at the bar. She was a lot shorter than her profile said she was. As I neared I began to smell the furniture polish that would continue to dominate the olfactory senses for the rest of the night.
"Hello." I said, leaning my head slightly as I appeared into her view. She turned to me and smiled.
"Hi." she said. We introduced ourselves. She offered to buy me a drink, but I declined. We went and sat by a table by the window and began to talk, though within five minutes our conversation was drowned out by nineties RnB. After a strained conversation she suggested we go to another bar down the street, a bit quieter.
"So, what do you do then?" I asked her eventually.
"I'm between jobs at the moment, heh. You?"
"I'm a journalist." I say. She'd started to buy me drinks, the Peach Schnapps cocktails were slightly sickly sweet and not doing my empty stomach any favours.
"Oh right, like Nicholas Parsons?" she said.
"Uh...yeah." I said.

For the most part she talked throughout the night, of her love of football and previous relationships she had, now and then making what I imagine were meant to be flirtatious comments though she came across as a bit creepy. Nevertheless, she kept buying me drinks and before long I was feeling quite drunk and after returning from the bathroom and waiting for her to put her phone down, I couldn't help but begin to flirt back. When we left that bar her hand 'accidentally' brushed across my rock hard chest, although neither of us acknowledged it.
"I think I'll go home now." I said, looking around for a taxi.
"Yeah, it's getting late huh?" she said. I nodded and watched as she flagged down a black cab. We rode in silence, although even through the drunken haze I began to panic slightly. She hadn't given the driver her address. I should have gotten dropped off outside a shop or something. But before I could find a way out we were outside my flat. She paid the driver and looked around.
"So, it was nice meeting you." I said, smiling at her.
"Do you mind if I come in for coffee?" she said. I paused. Did she just mean coffee? Or more? She had been buying me drinks all night, surely I could make her a brew, thank her and let her leave.

She entered my flat and looked around. She seemed out of place. An intruder.
"What's that? That's mad that." she said, pointing at a framed print on the wall.
"Judith beheading Holofernes. It's by Caravaggio." I said.
"Who?"
"He's an artist. Did you say you wanted coffee?" I said, going to the kitchen. She followed me and had her hands on my hips.
"I don't need a coffee." she said, voice low. I turned around, her face was inches away from mine. The smell of furniture polish was overpowering.
"Oh." I said. She leant in for a kiss, I couldn't help but reciprocate. She was eager, at one point our teeth rubbed together like the twisting of a pearl necklace. She took a few steps back and lifted up her dress, revealing herself and looking at me expectantly. I shook my head slowly and climbed onto the kitchen counter.

She left soon after, leaving me to sit alone in my flat with a herbal infusion and Radio 6 playing in the background. There was a chime from my phone, another e-mail from the dating site. I looked out of my window and sighed. Why did I live in this dumb robot future instead of the golden days of house phones and dance halls? I rolled up a trouser leg and began to tattoo a daisy chain around my calf.

Plastic Artifacts From 20th Century Cartoons

The Farage Conspiracy

The silence penetrates the city street like imaginary snow, a pataphor for the homogeneous white washed England Nigel Farage is supposed to wish for in his uneducated dreams. In one hand I am holding the latest smart phone; a Samsung G-26 with twenty gigabytes of Wi-Fi. In my other hand I am holding a briefcase containing one hundred pounds in a variety of denominations, it weighs heavy. Footsteps. I look up, at the end of the alley appears my anonymous contact, he resembles a diabetic John Hurt. Looking over his shoulder as he walks down the street he jumps at the sound of my voice.
"Deepthroat?" I murmur.
"Are you the journalist?" he says, tilting his head back to peer at me through half-rim spectacles. I nod, showing the case in my hand. "Let's go somewhere more public." he says, leading the way down the road.
"Were you followed?" I ask.
"No."
"What is it you had to tell me?" I say. We are walking at a fast pace, past the rumble of buses and a construction site. Anyone trying to listen in will struggle to hear what we're saying.
"There's a conspiracy at the top layers of UKIP. It changes everything." he says. UKIP. The four letters that mean more to the future of politics in England moreso than any other. The party was a hard right neo-conservative grass roots amalgamation of bourgeois soft nationalism and anachronistic jingoism lead by a cabal of ridiculous husks of men. And of course, they were gaining popularity.
"How so?"
"We were wrong...so wrong." he says. We begin to cross a road and he stops, turning around. "Look, if I'm not alive by the end of this will you promise me-" a gunshot echoes from above. He looks down in slow motion and watches as a bullet sends his shirt flapping apart. And a truck hits him. I run over to his mangled body and pick him up by the shoulders, trying to shake him awake. I check his pulse, after finding nothing I bow my head.
"Goddamn it...you sons of a bitches." I say. I look up and notice the sniper on the roof of the Arndale centre. I begin to run.

Through the shops and sets of doors, I take the stairs two at a time as I reach the roof. The sniper is a good distance away from me and so I begin to sprint after him. He suddenly spins around and begins to shoot at me, though I do a forward roll and dodge the fifty millimetre teflon-coated bullets. He runs to the edge of the roof and jumps! He just about clears an alley and lands on the roof of the next building. I am not too far behind him, easily leaping the gap and running. We then begin a rooftop parkour chase across Manchester until we run out of buildings.
"It's over." I say. The sniper looks at me with scared eyes. There's nowhere left to go, unless he was just mad enough to jump down. The sniper turns and begins to run in slow motion. "Son of a bitch." I say to myself, running after him. Just as he's leaps off the building I reach forward and grab his ankle, swinging him down through the window in the floor below us. He crashes through the glass and disappears from view, though once I've swung myself down it doesn't look like he's going to run again. My expensive shoes crunch fragments of glass into the plush red carpet as I walk towards him.
"Looks like you need an ambulance." I say, looking at the lacerations all over his body.
"Leave me alone!"
"No way pal, we're just getting to know each other. Now how about you tell me who sent you to shoot Stuart Wheeler and I won't break your face! Quid pro quo motherfucker." I say, kneeling down.
"Nigel sent me."
"Farage?" I say, eyes narrowing.
"Please...kill me." he says.
"With pleasure." I say, picking him up and tossing him back out of the window. Turns out Farage had sent an assassin to kill one of the members of his staff. But why? What secret did my informant have for me? I flash back to earlier that afternoon, for some reason everything is white and blue and all the sound is really echoey. I replay my meeting with the snitch. "Deepthroat...conspiracy....changes everything....wrong...promise me...deepthroat...promise me...wrong...throat...everything...everything changes...deepthroat..." I focus more, putting my fingers to my temples. I remember what he was wearing, zooming into his inside jacket pocket. There was the menu for a takeaway tucked in there, I knew it as being close to a budget hotel in the area. Seemed like as good a place to start as any.

Half an hour later I am emptying out a suitcase belonging to my contact as I stand in his hotel room. After rooting through his dirty laundry I manage to find a keypass to a UKIP facility just outside of Manchester. I drive as the sun sets, listening to a shitload of retrofuture cruelpop.

I enter the compound, flashing the keycard to the guard on the gate and park up outside. The night is a cool turquoise around, the lights from the city twinkle like distant nebula clusters against a cubist backdrop. There is a soldier stationed on one of the doors.  
"Hey bub, you got a light?" I say, taking a Lucky Strike from out of its packet. He nods, taking out a zippo and holding it out, shielding the flame with his hand. I give him an uppercut to the jaw and knock him out. 
"Didn't anyone tell you that smoking is bad for your health." I say, giving a little 'heh' afterwards before taking the uzi submachine gun off him and checking the ammo. I go through the door and do this weird sidestep sort of skipping as I dodge from crate to crate, stopping once I reach a corner and peeking around it, sweat gathering on my brow. Two guards are quietly talking to each other in the middle of the corridor. At the end there are a set of double doors with radiation signs printed onto the windows. I tap on the wall. 
"Huh?" says both of the guards at the same time. They begin to walk towards me. Just as they're about to turn the corner I leap out and bang their heads together.    

I pause just before I enter the next room. Who knew what secrets this facility held? Toxic waste mutants, cyborg animals, a clone army. I cocked the uzi and burst into the room. Farage was stood in the centre, lit by a single spotlight, drinking a pint of bitter in the darkness.   
"Farage." I growl.  
"You should have let me know you were coming. I'd have got one for you." he says, taking a sip of his beer. I walk up to him and point the gun at his face.  
"Give me one good reason not to blow you to kingdom come dirtbag." I say.  
"Just one? How about...five?" he says. Behind him a wall of televisions turn on, showing a map of the UK. There are five atomic symbols marked in the same places as London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast...and Manchester!  
"Is that what I think it is?"  
"If you think that I have five nukes hidden in the most important cities in the UK, then yes. You're right."  
"Why I oughta-" I say, though Farage cuts me off with a flourish of his hand, revealing a detonator.  
"Now now, no need to lose our temper. Let's talk, shall we?" he says. I notice he sounds similar to Jeremy Irons in Die Hard With A Vengeance.  
"Sure...let's talk." I say, lowering my gun. Farage takes a sip of beer and begins his monologue.    

"The United Kingdom Independence Party is my child. Literally. I gave birth to a conceptual humanoid that has over one thousand heads, although those are attached to the bodies of actual people. Are you familiar with mind control? I am...a puppet master. I was trained in the KGB then sent undercover to England to pose as a right wing politician, although my true mission is to separate the UK from the EU, destabilising the continent for Putin to come and take over. England is the anus of Europe, everything ends up going through this country before crossing the Atlantic. An excellent place to launch an attack against America from, wouldn't you agree? I am not a politician for pot smoking I.T consultants to complain about on the internet, I am who your parents vote for as they get older and more racist. I am the most important person in European history since Franz Ferdinand. I hope a future band names themselves after me too. I am the alpha and the omega. I am the one who knocks." he says. I look behind him at the map of the UK. Maybe five cities were worth trading to stop this maniac. But I wasn't a murderer. I simply lean forward and spit in his beer. 

    

TNG Fan Fiction; Riker's Curse

Geordi LeForge and Data were stood in engineering, examining a flow chart pinned against a wall.
"If we remodulate the frequency in which the dilithium crystals vibrate that means-" says Data.
"It means that this might just work!" says Geordi. He quickly snaps up a hand to tap his comm badge, bearing the insignia of The Federation. "Geordi to Captain Picard."
"Come in Geordi." says a comforting yet powerful voice through the communicator.
"Captain, if we pass dilithium crystals through a gamma frequency then we can get our warp engines back online."
"Commander LeForge, I trust you to do what's best." says Picard. On the bridge of the U.S.S Enterprise, Captain Jean-Luc Picard sits in a black foam chair in the centre of the room. Around him is his trusted staff, Commander William T. Riker, Lieutenant Worf, Dr. Beverly Crush and Troi.
"Computer, red alert." says Picard. Some lights turn on and a siren begins to be played through miniature speakers embedded in the ceiling. Outside the ship the warp engines begin to power up silently in the blackness of space, ready to fire the entire U.S.S Enterprise at many factors of light speed.
"Engage." says Picard. The entire ship and it's thousands of passengers are zipped through the galaxy at millions of miles per hour.
"Commander Riker. Set a course for the Delta Quadrant." says Picard.
"Computer, set a course for the Delta Quadrant." says Riker.
"Affirmative. Setting a course for the Delta Quadrant." says a computerized female voice.
"Lieautenant Worf, you have the bridge. Number one?" says Picard, turning to his second in command. Riker's eyebrows lift slightly.
"Captain?"
"Number one, if you would follow me into my quarters." says Picard, leading the way.
"Affirmative captain." says Riker, standing up and wiggling his body around.

The two men stand in a strange salmon coloured room. There is carpet on the walls, floor and ceiling due to Picard's predilection for turning the gravity off and doing a futuristic form of yoga and flute playing.
"Captain?" says Riker.
"Number one...what I'm about to tell you is top secret. I trust that once I tell you, no-one else outside of this room will know." says Picard.
"Of course captain, your secret is safe with me. Not just as a Starfleet officer but as a close friend." says Riker, straightening up slightly. Picard nods. He knew he could trust the bearded man before him. For ten years they had served together, lending each other a hand, and over the years they definitely considered each other to be best friends.
"Will. There is a serial killer on board. So far he has killed at least twenty eight members of this crew."
"Captain?"
"I have kept it secret up until now. The thing is this serial killer was allowed on board by The Federation. They know about it. He has been given a license to kill, it's all legal."
"Why would Starfleet send a murderer on board?"
"I haven't the faintest idea." says Picard, glancing at his fish bowl.
"Well can't we stop him?"
"It's not possible. They have replaced the Prime directive with a new one; they are free to kill anyone they want."
"That's ludicrous. It goes against everything Starfleet stands for!" shouts Riker.
"That may be the case. But regardless of that, we are Starfleet officers. I swore an oath; that I would uphold the Prime Directive with my life." says Picard.
"Not this one I didn't! Jean-Luc, we have to stop this serial killer, now!"
"That might be more difficult than you think." says Picard.
"Why?" says Riker.
"Because the serial killer...is you." says Picard. Riker stares at him, mouth agape.

They stood in the holodeck, watching a robotic exoskeleton enter Riker's room as he slept. It gently picked him up and fastened him into the suit like a puppet. Together they left the room, walked down the corridor and up a turbo lift.
"I don't understand." says Riker, turning to his captain.
"Watch." says Picard, staring at the hologram in front of him like a driver accelerating towards oncoming traffic.
They watched the somnambulist cyborg walk up behind a member of the crew, Riker didn't recognise him. A lever on the robot moved, putting a knife into Riker's hand before pushing his arm forward followed by his whole body being released from the suit. The knife went forward into the back of the man's neck, twisting slightly as it chipped away a piece of bone. They both fell forward, the man gurgling beneath as blood pumped from the wounds. All the way through Riker remained asleep and was gently picked up again and walked back towards the turbo lift.
"I still don't understand. Why would Starfleet do such a thing! It doesn't make any sense! I'm not a killer."
"You are Number one. We just watched you do it."
"That wasn't my fault, that damn robot practically did the whole thing! It must be destroyed."
"Practically, yes. Actually, no. You're in a serious situation Will, but I'm here to help." says Picard.
"How long have you known about this?"
"I was the one who chose you Will."
"What?"
"I got to decide who would wear the robot suit. I thought that you were the right man for the job, but I'm beginning to doubt my decision. I should have chosen Data, he wouldn't have minded. I felt...guilty."
"You made me kill twenty eight people and you feel guilty?" bellowed Riker.
"Yes. I'm sorry." says Picard. Riker punched the old man in the forehead, knocking him backwards. Revealing itself from the holodeck wall which had been cloaking it, the robot suit walks forward and clutches Riker.
"No! No! Get off me!" he shouts. Within seconds the robot suit has now wrapped itself around Riker and forces him to walk through the door. Through the corridors they run, the suit guiding Riker's hand as he carves his way through anybody that stands in front of him. Riker's screams are occasionally joined by others, until his is the only sound left on the ship.

Banquet

The biggest problem facing the Western world is that people are eating too much food. The anti-famine is upon us, the plague of locusts in reverse, the soft undulating curves of the obese as they vibrate in electric litters, watching videos of starving children as salted corn snacks are eagerly pushed between rotting teeth, bundles of food wrapping set onto landfill sites like plastic bouquets onto a mass grave. On one end of the spectrum is the human cow, on the other is the neurotic living skeleton. Before the Industrial Revolution an egg was an egg, now it is a complex net of protein, carbohydrates, fatty acids and acidic fats symbolised by an egg.

The calorie intake for a city contains enough energy to power a rocket on its way to the moon. There is such an abundance of food it has become a natural resource, like sunlight or mud. On television we watch middle-aged chefs dance around huge kitchens, spritzing cheeks of veal with saffron to be fed to minor celebrities. We eat better than any king in the entirety of human civilization. The sublimation of sexual energy into creating food. Cooking is foreplay, eating is fucking, digestion as a form of pregnancy. The foods that are taboo are not based on their components but how healthy they are deemed to be. It is less important that a pig was slaughtered and more about how it is presented; a sausage McMuffin or a sliver of flesh served with a sage and black olive fondant? There is a violence in food preparation, its tools are somewhere between medieval torture instruments and modern medical devices. It is a process heavily reminiscent of death, for we eat the dead (animal or vegetable).

There are those that feed like birds, eating is no longer a way to feel fulfilled but a process of absence. They are drawn towards zero, like orbiting the event horizon of a black hole, often their lives revolve around nothingness and attaining this zen-like state is the entirety of their existence. There are those that feed like hogs, eating is no longer a way to feel fulfilled but a process of stuffing. They receive pleasure from the sweet foods, the childish foods, the foods of apes. They cannot receive pleasure in any other way except for the brief moment on the tongue; they masticate to fill a hole in their stomach that exists in the mind. Their lives also revolve around nothingness, though rather than becoming lost in the void they would rather replace it and have everything fall into them.

000
000
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Those between these two extremes are themselves haunted by the prospect of balance. This is where complex diets come in, rituals passed down by modern gastropriests that one should follow to attain weightlessness. A paleo, gluten-free, organically farmed, locally sourced diet is perceived as one of many possibilities, to be joined with Atkins, Ketogenic, CRAM and other ways in which people who don't know how to eat look towards for inspiration. If anybody was to eat these certain foods then they will all end up looking the same. Diets are a fascist concept.

You may be reading this and wonder what it is that I eat? Well I shall tell you. Every one hundred steps I pick up the nearest thing and eat it. Leaves, gum, boomerangs, sandwiches, insects, dogs, cars, buildings, jewels, anything. By not considering at all what I eat besides following this basic rule, my diet is much more varied than that of the average person. Less a Food Pyramid and more a Food Hanging Gardens Of Babylon. Of course, there is no correct way to eat food, just to eat when hungry and remember vegetables.


Stillleben mit Fleischkorb, Frans Snyder

Manchester Central Library Review

The grand opening of Manchester Central Library took place on the 22nd of March after its closure for four years. The £98m revamp restored much of the Library’s original interiors as well as funding entirely new spaces designed by boffins at Manchester University along with international style guru Jacobi Mendelson.

Hundreds of thousands of books were retrieved from a salt mine, kept in a sodium stasis state until being arranged in alphabetical order on the shelves once again. Such rare books include works by William Shakesbeare, an 8th century book on astronomy, an unpublished Simon Beckett play titled ‘The Bone Sharks’ and a complete Florentine Codex. Visitors can happily pluck them off the shelves and leaf through them hungrily, but all of the books have also been scanned by lasers and converted into a pdf file specially designed for Manchester Central Library. In fact a large portion of the library is digital; the entire recorded history of mankind exists in large underground databanks that can be accessed over wi-fi and printed out at a new publishing house found in a distant wing of the library.

Upon entering the Great Hall you cannot helped but be brought to a standstill by its magnitude. Pillar after pillar of green marble line the room, stretching upward to support a domed ceiling that emanates a gentle light over all. Marble statues of deities connected with knowledge are interspersed between the enormous pillars, each of them have the quality of highly polished pearl. The glass floor is made up of a series of interconnecting black triangles, each give the impression of standing above infinity.

Thick wooden doors open into the grand Reading Room, an enormous circular room with tables and chairs arranged in a pattern based on the Fibonacci sequence. It is entirely silent. Walking through people occasionally look up from their book and watch you walk past, there is an air of paranoia around. I am acutely aware of the sounds inside my body. The gurgles of stomach acids, the sighs of the kidneys, the unsticking of eyelids during a blink. I make my way through another door and along a sweeping staircase running around the exterior of the library. There are replicas of author’s desks now and then, in which visitors can access all the books they wrote as well as the books the author had read. Oak doors lead into a room lined with shelves, holding roughly two million books. If one was to sit and read every book in this room it would take roughly one million years.

Clustered around the large halls are secondary rooms. An Italian restaurant is somewhat surprising, though a logical extension of the Renaissance themes seen around the Library. Frescos are painted on the wall lit softly by candles. The next room is the archives, roughly six gigabits of information contained on special cards that can be entered into a computer and read at a leisurely pace. The latest computer gaming systems are also here, the Sega Megadrive and Dreamcast consoles linked up to HD monitors. A tree grows, tendered to daily by a robotic gardener that adjusts artificial lighting and hydroponic systems. Overall one gets a sense that a library doesn’t have to just be a place poor people go when they don’t have a telly. It can be a place of inspired learning. There is a recurring phrase carved into every single piece of skirting board in the building. ‘Dulce Et Ego, Cor Domorum Veni’.

As one climbs the staircase more rooms can be accessed. An art gallery, an operatic theatre, a three dimensional mirror maze, even a vivarium all can be found in the Manchester Central Library. Once one reaches the top floor they are treated to a 360 degree view from the roof of the library. Most of Manchester is obscured by multistorey budget hotels and empty office space, but the roof is nevertheless impressive due to the bubble formed that keeps visitors dry. The bubble is constantly collapsing and reforming as a wave of atomic energy is projected from the rooftop generators through water molecules in the air.

Overall Manchester Central Library is a 21st century take on what a library is, with reference to multiple zones of time, cultures and architecture. Sections of the library are unbuilt, leaving gaping voids between walls in which one can glimpse the libraries previous incarnations. Other sections are overly built; huge chunks of rock can sometimes be found obscuring a corridor or clustered overhead like a nest of wasps. It is a pastiche of the human brain, the new god in the new millenium. I am eagerly awaiting its closure in fifteen years for an entirely new refurbishment, perhaps a simple holograph attached to the side of a drinking fountain, or a first person shooter in which one can get the 20th century American literature DLC at $14.99. Nevertheless, irregardless, at the end of the day, ad nauseam.

Generation Y or Gem her a shun why?

Teenagers these days are different to the teenagers of the past. They listen to different music, use technology and dress differently. They also act differently. I took to the streets to interview them.

"These days we do things differently than in the past. I feel almost like I didn't do the exact same things as my parents did." says Adam. He is studying a creative subject in a town in the Midlands to give you the impression that he is somewhat of a nieve idealist. We look at out a street I would describe with bland adjectives and perhaps mention the juxtaposition between an advertisement and what is happening nearby.
"Why is it do you think we have subcultures? And why is it they change so much?"
"I'm not entirely sure so I will give a slightly nihilistic yet self-aware response as I lack the confidence to truly say what I think due to the question being mostly unimportant." he says, checking the end of an object one associates with being symbolic of that sub-culture. A group of teenage men and women are walking down the street across from us, although these are dressed differently to Adam.
"Is that a different sub-culture, perhaps one that somehow rivals yours?"
"Correct. The shared beliefs in which each subculture values can differ in importance. Although this brings up the question of if people belong to subcultures based on their beliefs or does the subculture shape the beliefs of the person to which it belongs. I propose it is less of a chicken and egg scenario and more akin to the Portuguese man o' war, a single being made up of several different creatures or in this case, concepts." says Adam, gesticulating in the fog rolling in around us. I thank him and cross the road into a café in which the other teenagers have just entered.

I sit down nearby and after eavesdropping for ten minutes or so can't help but mention that I am a journalist on a website and if it would be possible to interview them.
"What do you want to interview about?" says one baby-faced youth.
"What is it like being a teenager in 2014? I mean, I know I look young but I'm not a teenager." I say, laughing to myself.
"We are undergoing a severe biological transformation and this causes a certain amount of ennui." says a tall girl.
"Yeah, it's like in our culture being a teenager is a thing you do between being a child and being an adult. But the way in which it happens is totally unhealthy." says the baby-faced youth, drinking a can of pop that didn't exist five years ago and is mocked slightly by people it isn't marketed to. The other people sitting at the table nod their heads.
"So you think there's an alternative?" I ask, pulling a microphone out of my trouser pocket and letting its foamy tip rest on the table.
"I think it'd be more fluid if teenagers left their homes once they show the first signs of puberty. They would gather in special camps out in the wilderness where they would learn about themselves and the world around them. The community is encouraged to experiment and build on interpersonal skills whilst undergoing an education and learning the basics of self-sufficency. I believe that this would lead to general feelings of well-being and happiness that would have a trickle down effect through the generations until we achieve a kind of...utopia."
"Well I'll get right on that." I say, laughing. "Next you'll be saying we should cut funding for the police and armed forces and put it into education and welfare."
"Well now you mention it..." says a pimple-faced miscreant. Like Jesus cleansing the temple of merchants, I flipped the table over and started throwing plates around.

Six hours later I am stood on a cliff next to a woman about to jump. I look down at the rocks and the surf below, listening to the wind carrying the call of gulls which fly around.
"Don't try and stop me." she says, breathing heavily, face wet with tears.
"I'm not." I say, kneeling down on the grass and flipping my legs over the edge.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm climbing." I say, letting my body slip as I clutch onto handfuls of grass. One of my boots catches a rock and I begin to rest my weight onto it. Gradually I begin to clamber down, sometimes a foothold gives way beneath and I slip a few feet.
"Stop it! It's dangerous!" she shouts down at me.
"If you jump I will catch you." I shout back up. I climb down for a while longer, rubbing the sweat from my eyes with the sleeve of my tweed jacket. I glance back up and she is still there, watching me. There comes a point in which there are no more places to put my feet or my hands. I can't go back up as most of my previous holds have crumbled away and fallen into the sea beneath me. I am stuck.
"Excuse me. Can you call mountain rescue?" I shout up. But she has disappeared. One of my hands begin to cramp as I hold myself against the cliff face. "Shit."

All The Waters Of Earth

In which all of the animals came together for a glorious feast.

The Island Of The Birds

Under the day moon I sat in Platt Fields Park, observing the island in the centre of its lake. The park came about in 1907 after the Worsley Family sold Platt Hall and its grounds. Once a thriving area of fun and slow walks, the park fell into disarray until slowly rising again to be one of the more popular green spaces in Manchester. Although I am not concerned with the history of the park or even its future. The reason I was there that day was to explore the island. The many species of water fowl that plague the toxic lake come hither and tother from the land, the actions which occur on the island are hidden from sight due to the foliage yet a great cacophony constantly squawks and honks away from sunrise to sunset. The island belongs to the birds. And like many great men before me I decided to explore their territory and if any treasures were to be found, bring them back to regular civilization. Leaving my electronic gadgets behind I stood at the waters edge and began to swim.

Signs around the lake remark that their is 'blue green algae' in the water which is poisonous to humans, causing Lou Gehrig's Disease or other brain wrongness. Inversely, blue green algae is used in health supplements sold in Holland & Barrett. I decided to ignore the warnings as there was worse in the sea and people surfed in that every day. The act of swimming itself was not tiresome, each gentle stroke from my breasts brought me closer to the mysterious land mass. Yet as I neared the birds began to circle. A tufted duck was first to come near me as I gently swam.
"Hello duck." I said, spitting out lake water. It tried to peck my eye, so I instead took it's bill in my mouth and bit it clean off. Another bird gently swam over to me, a Canadian Goose.
"Hello goose." I said. This one began to peck me all around the head and so I reached out of the water and snapped its neck. I was nearing the shore of the island now and thought I was clear from any more attacks until a Cormorant flew in and landed in front of me.
"Hello cormorant." I said, raising a foot from the silt in case I needed to kick it. But the Cormorant looked at me with one eye, turned its head and looked at me with it's other, and then vomited up what appeared to be a curry before flying away. I knelt by the strange evacuation, dipped my fingers into it and brought it up to my nose. Chicken Korma. I spat in dismay, for I had been damaged by a bird on a more emotional level than any physical violence could. Yet now was not the time to get in a tizzy, for there was an island to explore. And all around me were the shrieking of the birds.

The earth around me was covered in bird shit, miniature footprints and feathers. It smelt of dust. The island rose in a gentle slope to its low peninsula, I watched the ducks and geese waddle away from me. My clothes were coloured in algae and dirt, the blood from my goose wound ran down my face. I began to scramble over the ground, the terrain had been made by the birds and so their small paths did not fit my lumbering form. The shells of eggs crunched underfoot as did the hollow bones of long dead avians. Within five minutes I had pretty much explored every square metre of the island and had so far found nothing remarkable, besides glimpsing what the world would look like if completely overrun by birds. I could hear the sirens at the park gates, a crowd was beginning to gather by the waters edge, shouting every time they spotted me in the undergrowth. I didn't have much time. Batting away an ill-tempered swan I forced myself towards the centre of the island. Maybe there would be some kind of monument, some kind of reason for all of this. An end to justify the means. Yet all there was was a particularly fat goose that looked at me with those reptilian eyes, the same eyes as every other bird that betrays its evolutionary heritage.
"Why am I here goose! Why!" I shouted. I didn't expect a reply and just sat by it, beginning to cry at the hopelessness of the situation. I felt a scaly webbed foot on my hand and looked up. The goose was staring right at me. Maybe trying to convey some message. I think I understood and so nodded, taking firm hold of both the goose's feet. It spread out its wings and began to flap. Flap, flap, flap. Over and over. And slowly but surely we were beginning to fly! I dangled on the little orange feet and watched Platt Fields Park below me as both of us flew away, laughing together as if we were infants. When it dropped me off at home I caught it with a net and ate it for supper, for it was the biggest goose I had ever seen. I had tried to answer the mysteries of the island yet found that there was no mystery. Perhaps it would be better in future to pose questions than answer them.

How To Smell

What are the smells currently around you? Unless foul it was likely you didn't even notice them in the first place. Yet breathe in slowly, through the nose. What are the things that give off a smell nearby? Perhaps a cup of tea, an ashtray or a dog. Better yet you may be reading this out in nature and have the luxury of chlorophyll and wind. But you might be asking yourself 'am I smelling enough?' and the answer is 'probably not'. An entire perspective, up there with touch, sight and hearing, yet having a good nose isn't taught in schools and rarely discussed in public. I have been experimenting with my nose recently and thought I would share the findings with you.

First of all, how does smell work? Well, how does vision work? Light is shone onto objects and then bounced back at different frequencies picked up by the rods and cones in the eyeball. It is similar for smelling. Smells are bounced off objects and hit you in the nose. Here special cells called sniffodoruns detect any irregularities in the pure scent of nothing (from which all smells are made) then send messages to the brain which translates this information into smells. On the smell spectrum we have sweet, sour, dirt, water, musk and grass. All smells have varying elements from each of these six primary scents and no other smells outside this spectrum can be smelt by the human nose, although it is thought some animals can detect Ultrabitter and Infrasweet.

When you breathe through your nose it is important to do it slowly. Too quickly and the increasing air will push the odours away from the sniffodoruns and give the sensation of coldness. Although I do recommend breathing in quickly once to properly feel where your sense of smell is actually located. You should feel a sensation at the front of both nostrils (even though you are only breathing through one) that runs up your nose and into the middle of your head. You can use your tongue to triangulate where the true sniffodoruns are whilst with tracing a finger up and down the dorsal ridge of your nose. Close your eyes and focus on this point, imagining the sniffodoruns detecting the delicate yet complex fragrances all around you. Can you identify each unique smell inside the symphony of odours? If you are unsure what something is, perhaps moving around the room would be helpful. At first a sense of smell can be quite weak and require close proximity in order to fully smell something, although like the ear of a musician, the nose can be trained and improve over time to be more sensitive.

The next step is to smell your hands. Go on, give 'em a sniff why don't you! What is it you can smell? Do you know why? If there is anybody else nearby, ask to smell their hands. You might be pleasantly surprised to find their hands will smell totally different than yours. Perhaps you're able to identify if they smoke or not, what they've had to eat, if they use soap and what brand, all sorts can be learned from smelling the hands of a person. Next is to smell them all over in order to properly process their scent. It can help if you look at them whilst you do this and they talk to you, in order to fully build up an interperspective feel of a person. In a more subtle way you can take to the streets, smelling joggers as they run past you.

One should be careful with their sense of olfaction. Not only do you have to protect it by not smoking or insufflating drugs, but you may smell some things previously unimagined yet more horrifying than any vision or noise. And like all senses, will begin to fade with age and steadily decline into nothingness, which is all the more reason to begin training now. Have you ever smelt pregnancy? How about smelling a sunrise? Many avenues reveal themselves whilst focusing on an underrated perception.

Shall Turn To Blood

Noise Festival Presents

A Shakespeare & Longfellow Production

ALL THE WATERS OF EARTH SHALL TURN TO BLOOD

at Antwerp Mansion, Manchester. 1900.17.3.14-18.3.14


###


Nestled in a dark cranny at the edge of Curry Mile, Antwerp Mansion is an open hive of artistry. The Victorian-era building is home to photo shoots, raves, team building weekends and art exhibitions, a cultural gem of the city that is equally important to similar locations such as Islington Mill or The Whitworth Art Gallery. Artisans from across Europe carefully restore the original covings around the building, using only the best quality jute sacking, gypsum plasters and associated ancillaries in the return of the buildings grace. Indeed, its virtues lie in not just the walls but in the people, for Antwerp Mansion is the preliminary expedition for the slow gentrification of curry mile itself.

On the 17th of March at exactly seven o'clock the doors of the mansion will be flung open. Doves will emerge from the dusty corridors, spraying glitter from their wings as they soar across Manchester. All the waters of Earth shall turn to blood. The equivalence of royalty in the contemporary Manchester art scene will visit, wearing the finest frocks and gowns, to view a series of paintings and sculptures that would make Mozart himself jealous. The exhibition appears to be about a meat planet, but over the course of the evening observers can't help but notice that the air around them is sticky with a certain substance. And upon further pondering people will realise that there is a little bit of magic in the air. Things seem to float. Colours change. Instead of talking they were now listening, to the cosmic bell that is chiming around them.

BONG!

BONG!

BONG!

and they will know that everything was true.

Atlas Sands

I walk. I walk and I walk and I walk. From the airport runways to the heart of the city centre, Manchester is one of the best places for any keen hiker to explore on foot. There are mile after mile of roads in Manchester, I estimate there is enough tarmac for a single road to run along the entire coast of England. And on the side of these roads, more often than not, is the pavement. For where would we be without pavements? Perhaps the unsung hero of Manchester, its pavements are walked on daily by its entire population and on which lost items can be found, promises can be made and even a few secrets kept. Anything can happen on these mysterious walkways, five and a half feet wide and infinite in length. In Los Angeles there is a pavement with the hands of famous celebrities embedded into it. In Manchester the pavement is covered in the bloody handprints of gunshot victims. I went to see what kind of pavements I could encounter on a standard day of exploration.

Before long I found myself stranded on the embankment of the M62, the traffic rushing past me on both sides. The air around me moved quickly, filled with the smell of diesel and rain water. I shut my eyes and found myself in a

death dream

falling forward, clutching at my left eye. It had gone cold. Stumbling blindly I reach a concrete bridge and begin to scale it with my fingertips.
"Gone gone samba, rolled rick potassiums and inobstruble magnificents." I mumble to myself. A sacred mantra I had picked up from the last necromancer in Berlin. Eventually I managed to pull myself upward to near safety and began the long walk home, pulling fragments of teeth from out of my tongue, musing, simply musing on the bare bone facts of life. What if instead of people we were pavements? I know, I know, it sounds crazy, I know. Okay? But just hear me out here~

~ quantum physics ~

~ I hope that adequately stated my point, but though even irregarding the fact that the pavements were a source of trouble in our lives, it is possible to empathise with architecture at at least an atomic level.

Gym Membership

In the nineties it was rare to see a jogger. Nowadays exactly half of the people you see on the street is running around dressed in the finest cotton wanking outfits, ipad strapped to the chest, nose full of nitrous oxide. It is more common to see a beefcake whilst out on the lurch than ever before. People love exercising. But in the future knee problems will wash over the populace, so no problem! Titanium joints delivering a heavy metal buzz stone. I switched from smoking tobacco to weed, now I'm a genius. Personally I do 30 rep HIIT exercises running from the 5-0 24-7/C://jttps:www.sandras.com

Weights that contain energy. Bikes that contain energy. Yoga balls that contain energy. If everything is made out of energy and the laws of thermodynamics state the eventual destiny for everything is heat death does that mean the soul lives on? To what end, running an electroencephalogram on the intestines in order to read the waves from neural activity in the gut and comparing them to the waves in the brain. Synchronicity. Otherness affected by diet. Increase in supposed paranoia via feelings of depersonalisation caused by foods with fake sugar in them.

I have deeply studied the rigmarole of gym exercise and have concluded it is an extremely highly fetishized masturbatory zone in which one can view an array of human material whilst exercising ones body to the point of pain. The muscle men of today will be the toothless geezers tomorrow, clutching at your ankle and laughing from the drain. Children on steroids ripping off the heads of flowers. 'Power' bicycles weighing ninety kilos speed through imaginary bike lanes, slicing in half electric cars and vaporizing mutants like tron in the dark.

We are living in a gym future. Why isn't the Milky Way an enormous protein shake spilling pearls over the cosmos? The Red Bull breakfast sponsored by Bruce Willis. A ninety degree angle in the form of a piece of metal that is thrust and grunted upon as the projection of sublimation via chemicals in the water supply. Super soldier serum basically.

Money Review: The Five Pound Note

B2B is dead, P2P is the future (people 2 people), it's easy nowadays to run a sql server at home with three dimensional data storage, in both cloud and metacloud. Beyond the stratosphere is Moon 2.0, designs for newspapers on other planets, the working class in spaaaace.

Here are 5 tips to make your business healthy;

1. Optimize search engine results, especially paying attention to the russian and even chinese internet.
2. Content is king, but who is God? George Washington's face on a hundred dollar bill y'all.
3. By upgrading your internet connection to the new 'broadband', you can upload at a basic 526kb/s.
4. Remember to print out business cards at home and hand them out at corporate events. Save money by being sponsored by a paper manufacturer.
5. The fifth tip is just have fun.

Do you want to make money by working from home? Simply click on advertisements on the internet. You're making someone money but that person isn't you, so think outside the box. Start making up your own advertisements and post them to your friends, earn £1 with every 1000 clicks. That means after roughly 10,000 clicks you'll be earning £10,000.

The thing I love about the Apple Macs is the designing. It's cool, it's hip. Young people love it, good brand recognition. The PC on the other hand has the image of being something found in the homes of sex criminals. Here's a tip for Bill Gates; make computers out of gold. That way they will be very expensive. It's important nowadays to get tattoos. Tattoos are a way of archiving the viral. Charlie bit my finger. Fastforward twenty years, Charlie killed someone. Why? He had been programmed to do at an early age by cannibalistic projection.

You ever lie in bed and wonder what you did that got you where you are today? You might think back to some key moment then remember something before that happened that set the event in motion. In fact you could go back through your entire life, then your parents, and your ancestors but guess what? They have nothing to do with you lying in bed. Reaching financial independence isn't a luxury, it's a fashion statement.

Maybe you should re-mortgage your house so you can get hair or breast implants? A little money saving tip that does me good, for every £1 I spend I put £2 into a savings account. That way I barely have any money and sell Christmas presents in order to fuel my drug habit. But what about the recession? Turns out it never happened. Just a bunch of jerks started talking about politics because talking about something important made them feel important. Why not empathise with your bank? I encourage readers to sneak up to it in the middle of the night and start smearing themselves against the windows.

Notice the women in the centre of the five pound note. They are crying because the babies are being drowned. The aristocrats on the left are overlooking the scheme. A woman watches a child and a dwarf wrestle. The shapes on the inner wheel arch are reminiscent of the sayagata pattern, interlocking swastikas. Elizabeth Fry has hair like Marge Simpson. Overall a fascinating design, perhaps some of the best money around. 5/5 stars.

Dog Looking At Jupiter

It has a penchant for astronomy.

Principles Of Mask Culture

The Venetian mask is synonymous with Venice. Known as being an important part of the autumnal festival, tourists flock from around the world to see the face plates decorated to a high standard. Historically the Venetian nobility would wear these masks for a good majority of the year when out in public, allowing them to commit a variety of lewd and anonymous acts. Some men would wear ones like the cranium of a humpback, allowing them to eat and drink. Others involved holding a paddle in the mouth in order to support the mask, rendering its wearer mute. Wearing masks was outlawed in the 18th century but was legalised in the seventies again, leading to a booming economy to the city built on a marsh. The mask is seen throughout history to grant its wearer a costume for the face. As humans express themselves through the musculature wrapped around the oculars, wearing a mask allows one to change their identity, be it for theatrical purpose or to evade identification. A masked person finds it easier to commit violence than an unmasked one. Hiding the face is common in military and religious subcultures around the world, but once features are applied to this covering the user can empathise more with the face they are wearing. For instance, in a werewolf film the actor may wear a facial prosthesis in order to appear werewolfian. Yet if one was to see through the mask, the actor would be pulling a strange expression (as would anyone acting like a monster whilst wearing a mask). The sorts of expressions are unseen in our day to day social interactions, but nevertheless have the potential to occur almost constantly.

In contemporary times the mask is linked with the party protest subculture ‘Anonymous’. People aged between 11-56 occasionally don a ‘Guido’ mask from the film ‘V is for Vendetta’ and pose for photographs at various political hotspots around the world. Made popular through the internet messaging board ‘4chan’, the group has hacked government e-mail accounts, leaked sensitive data encryption keys from the UNEFCA and helped bring down Colonel Bombay. The mask itself is a sort of ironic twist on the appearance of Al-Qaeda terror suspects, with wearers often accompanying the mask with a comfortable set of clothing and perhaps a placard covered in slogans, size 18 Impact font. These middle-class yobos often can be seen petrol bombing police horses or doing drive-by attacks from hi-jacked aeroplanes. This is the exact same reason people wore masks in Venice and will go on to follow the destiny that lurks in history, the banning of masks. Though this time it will be for every mask. The world will have no more masks left to wear.

This itself may not be as bad as it seems. Are we entering a world post public? I’m talking digital communications. Nerds are trend setters due to their close proximity to high technology, and if there’s anything we know about nerds is that they don’t leave the house.
“Mom! Bring me some fuckin’ Doritos!”
Yet there is still the need to be anonymous. In the early days it could be argued the internet itself was a mask for a user, allowing anyone to read or write whatever they wanted. But the internet of 99 is different to the one of 14. Nowadays you can't even find out the weather without logging into your bbc account that's linked up to your Nintendo Passport. The opposite of anonymity is fame, recognition. We're entering new private. A fridge that knows your birthday. A tie that helps you diet. A bong that has lights on it. Smear tech smart walls that watch your children and broadcast your thoughts to the government. Your car can fall in love with you. It will be harder and harder for one to do anything without being conscious that you're being watched before it's even been seen.
"Am I making this sandwich in a cool, awesome way?"
"Heh, that was funny. Just need to write it down."
"I'm going to learn the ukulele."
All the world's literally now a stage, rather than a metaphoric one. This is where people will start wearing masks even more because why not, what if you just wore a mask of a person and stood around, watching the sun rise? Gazing at the gap, between two stones, on the floor, at the intersection, of imagined lines. The axioms of living, the neural cartesia welded in place through action. The ego will being to boil and split away from the consciousness like a molten bin liner. People will wear masks more in the future because internet.

Fractal Food Chain

Dust mite on spider carcass.