Saturday 24 May 2003

still no sight of this site in the browsers.
'I'll Quit,' Vows Vincent Gallo After Brown Bunny Boos

the maker and star of the monumental "buffalo 66", vincent gallo, is so hurt by the scathing reaction to his film "The Brown Bunny," that he has vowed to make it his last.

"If my film is not comprehensible to people then I have failed in my purpose. I am disappointed that once again, what I like is unpopular. I can only apologize to the people who feel they have wasted their time," he said. .
big brother

tania was a bit bossy and conservative with the champagne wasn't she.
in another 2 and a half hours this site should re-appear.
big brother

that crap conversation by the pool between nush and the chef bloke.
big brother

i like sissy. and scott really is cute.

when anoushka discovers her new housemates have put her up for eviction it should help shape her for staying in.

jon might perhaps be intelligent, but i'm biased against his vocal delivery. he could turn into an alex, who's anal snobbery last year became a part of his endearing charm. boot jon out if thats the choice.

no older housemates this year. cameron looks the oldest.

the nominations for eviction are: anoushka, federico, jon, scott.

how are they feeling now that they know? day one.

Friday 23 May 2003

big brother
justine seemed alright, when she was in the diary room nominating, and nush seems ok too.

jon and anoushka up for the vote so far, and now scott, who looks cute.
a few months back in an evening standard article on ordinairy contemporary drug use, a sociologist is quoted saying something like "i don't know why drug use has become so widespread." where has he been during the past century of thoughts, actions and culture?
big brother
housemate number 5, jon, has an irritating voice.
big brother
well of course i'm instantly prejudiced against cameron, because he is religious. hopefully he'll challenge my prejudice, but i can't help feeling he'll live upto being a religious type.
ok. apparently this site will re-appear sometime around 4 a.m. meanwhile i'll settle in front of the telly screen for the start of big brother 4.

bb is what telly was invented for, yet as much as i look forward to it i doubt i'd ever apply to participate on it. mainly because its almost impossible to get beyond people's assumption that big brother participants are only doing it for fame.

on that subject, the concept of fame in the 21st century is surely as redundant as the concept of privacy. i'll expand on that thought later perhaps. another big brother cliche surfaced a short while ago when i was at f's. i mentioned i was looking forward to tonight's bb start and a friend of her's responded by saying "get a life." its that tired knee-jerk belief that screen life (telly, mobile or mac) is somehow inferior to so-called real life. the sort of sleepwalking ideology sponsored by white dot in their anti-tv book thats titled "get a life". they say "extropian's think the end of biological human beings is a great idea. white dot wrote this book because we don't."
403 forbidden

its been 2 weeks since i was notified, at the last minute, that my server was in liquidation. this site has been down for a week. now i am relocated and re-uploaded. but am still unable to see anything but a 403.

if you can see this site could you perhaps mail me and let me know.

Monday 12 May 2003

its MY BIRTHDAY

the good news is that clare short has at last resigned from the government. ok she is new-labour rebel-lite but it could be interesting. however the best birthday present of all is that the scaffolding has been dismantled from outside my front door today. it was 5 months almost to the day, dec 9, when the roof builders first nearly killed me, in my bed, missing me by inches.

but not a good weekend either. theres been more than just birthday cards in the post and on saturday my step-dad was lying at the bottom of my parent's stairs, blocking the frontdoor, when my mum came back from her dialysis.

on friday my day began with 3 letters through the letterbox. 2 debt related letters and one notifying me that the server for this site had gone into liquidation. this is the 3rd time that my server has gone belly up and i've been passed on to a business not of my choice. this new administration would cost me additional money, so i've organised getting myself re-pointed elsewhere. meantime there may yet be a temporary disruption to this site.

added to this on friday the phone rang and another old debt pounced on me and i've arranged to re-pay it at a pound a month for the next 500 months.

yesterday there was a phone message from my mum but i didn't speak to her till this morning. my mum is 70 this year. she is profoundly disabled with diabetes, and she goes to hospital 3 times a week for dialysis. on saturday when she got home she discovered my step-dad was blocking the front door and she couldn't enter. she doesn't have a habit of carrying her mobile on her, nor useful phone numbers, nor a spare insulin injection. my step-dad, who is about 75, is her primary fulltime carer.

we still don't know what happened to him. he was conscious but unable to move from the door. my mum can't walk far. from the lounge to the toilet is about her max, and she can't stand long either. the neighbours were out and she eventually got to the local pub who phoned 999 for her.

a fire crew got in through an upstairs window. it also turned out to be fortunate, while the emergency teams were there, that someone pointed out that her car was unlocked and so my mum put a set of car keys in her pocket. because when she got home again after my step-dad was hospitalised, she still couldn't open the door. so with the car keys she was able to drive to one of my aunts.

my step-dad is still in hospital. all we do know so far is that he has a serious urinary infection. his short term memory isn't functioning well.

Sunday 11 May 2003

"At the Wadsworth Center in New York State, Department of Health scientists have trained subjects to move a cursor up and down a computer screen by altering the amplitude of their brain waves.

By thinking about weightlifting, subjects could move the cursor upwards. Thoughts about relaxing brought the cursor down. Eventually the cursor could be moved without the imaging process.

Stopping the cursor at a particular point is currently beyond the capacity of all subjects...."
'migration out of biology'

"for a different planet you might want to download into a different vehicle." max more

Thursday 8 May 2003

the plastic bag working definition of social software

"augmenting human intellect: 1968" via plastic bag
FURNITURE PORN
( via jaded )

"The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia"
"What do you mean when you talk about "yourself"? Leading neuroscientists Peter Halligan and David Oakley are rewriting the rules on consciousness. 18/11/2000 "

"....consciousness occurs too late to affect the outcomes of the mental processes that it is apparently linked to. You may prefer the notion that you are in charge of your own mind. But where did that idea come from? If you stop to think about it, you'll probably find that it just popped into your head—like all your thoughts."

"Perhaps you have decided to read the rest of this article. But did "you" really make that choice? Keep reading, if you can. You may never think of "yourself" in quite the same way again." new scientist 18 nov 2000 ( archive registration needed)

"How much of the world around you do you really see? You only take in a tiny piece of information at a time and that can have unnerving consequences, says Laura Spinney 18/11/2000"

"You're walking across a college campus when a stranger asks you for directions. While you're talking to him, two men pass between you carrying a wooden door.

You feel a moment's irritation, but they move on and you carry on describing the route. When you've finished, the stranger informs you that you've just taken part in a psychology experiment.

"Did you notice anything change after the two men passed with the door?" he asks. "No," you reply uneasily.

He then explains that the man who initially approached you walked off behind the door, leaving him in his place. The first man now comes up to join you. Looking at them standing side by side, you notice that the two are of different height and build, are dressed differently, have different haircuts and different voices." new scientist 18 nov 2000 ( archive registration needed)

giacomo costa architectures

claude levi strauss:
"there is one fact that can be established: the only phenomenon which, always and in all parts of the world, seems to be linked with the appearance of writing...is the establishment of heirachical societies, consisting of masters and slaves, and where one part of the population is made to work for the other part."

feb 12 2001
"unexpectedly small number of genes raises questions on humanity's controlling influences."

"straight from the fridge dad:"
"bone orchard, wordsville and tonsil paint".

stereotypes
"by the age of 4 children can describe their culture's stereotype of men and women, youth and age, ethnicities and race....."
new scientist 30 sept 2000 ( archive registration needed)

"about 3% of the population, mostly children, are too dreamy or are hyperactive. either way they're inattentive: they don't listen, don't learn, repeat mistakes, flit from one thing to another. ritalin focuses them."

"We are experiencing a spiraling increase of medication usage particuarly among school-age children. america uses more Ritalin and similar medications than any other country in the world." parents against ritalin

mar 26 1999
uk youth jail conditions rotten to the core

rowlands on cassavetes:
"his opinion was that society made women quiet crazy- it was their mothers making them crazy half of the time. he said men got all the blame but their mothers told them which way to act..."

advice to newly-weds:"always keep your mirror and lipstick under your pillow. be sure to wake before your husband. never, ever, let him see you without your lipstick."

orlan

"man who thinks his wife is an identical impostor gets £130,000" (mar 5th 1999)

"whats the point of marriage if he's not making her happy?" she asks. and the father replies: "i don't understand, who told you that the point of anything is to be happy."

boris mikhailov pays homeless people a month's pension to pose naked.

a heterosexual man who was raped in prison reported it immediately, despite being terrified, but because he had got an erection during the attack, the judge stopped the case ever going to jury.... survivors uk


"people aged over 50 are fed up with the way they are shown- or not shown- on tv" dec 1 2000

lars von triers

Yuan Cai and JJ Xi tracey emin, Marcel Duchamp,

"blind woman to be given artificial eye" (april 27 2000)

adbusters: "our faith in a higher power has been replaced by everyday low prices"
'home office': "building a safe, just and tolerant society"

world prison population more than 8.75 million people 2003.PDF

trends in england and wales prison population to 2009.PDF
Pink Mouth Sex In A Can
"Tiger Tail Ale with Pink Mouth Orifice. Your fantasy friend will never fail you. Mild vanilla scent."
via blogjam

Wednesday 7 May 2003

"is art merely cheesecake for the mind?" independent 7 feb 99

"watching gays 'getting their jollies off' is not my idea of 'fun entertainment'". westminster university student review of channel 4's "queer as folk". spring 99

November 04 1999 "uk channel 4 to screen first ejaculation on tv" "no penis wil be shown, instead the seed will be seen flying through the air in slow motion..."

Piss Christ, Andres Serrano

London's National Portrait Gallery, a "DNA image" of the genetic scientist Sir John Sulston. by Marc Quinn (creator of 'self', 8 pints of the artist's blood frozen into a sculpture of the artist's head).

ritalin: most "ADD sufferers" are boys.

mind itself is: "a persistent phenomenon that emerges from the virtual space of our imaginations."
"creation: life and how to make it"... steve grand

metro thurs aug 2000
"scientists yesterday said they had made a motor out of dna...."

this is the beat generation james campbell
"the beats occured like a noisey gear change at a point of cultural acceleration...."

Tuesday 6 May 2003

Simballrec's "45 seconds of:"

"45 seconds of:", is a new electronic music compilation from California-based imprint Simballrec that features 99 tracks all 45-seconds long
( via my analog life )

Sunday 4 May 2003

del lagrace volcano

bespoke sexual identities.
edmund white's "the beautiful room is empty"
"he was so little at home in the world that each of its rituals (shaking hands, buttoning a coat, taking a step) required his concentration."
invisible jim
the french choreographer jerome bel
some quotes from bela tarr

Saturday 3 May 2003

consumerism has been cast as the new patriotism....time dec 01

samuel beckett's
krapp's last tape....

the fraud's prayer
"our market who art on earth
hallowed be thy show
thy state power come
thy will be done
on the streets as it is in work
sell us this day our daily lie
and justify us y/our property
as we submit to those that assert property relations against us
and lead us anywhere but into autonomous temptation
but deliver us from anti-heirachical initiative
for our's is the stagnation
the cop and the celebrity
forever....or never?
amen"

"in the western world, parliamentary government, the judiciary and the media are democratic in appearance and totalitarian in reality." jean luc laurent

"once we can describe a thing, have a word for it, do we no longer perceive it?"

observer mag 23 mar 03
alter boy: "a mind controlled child"

observer 23 mar 03
rupert murdoch poised for bid on u.s. tv. if sucessful murdoch's global pay-tv empire would stretch from asia (star), through britain (bskyb) to the u.s.

slow food make eating sensual again

mona hatoum

AbioCor artificial heart.

spike milligan

pigjo, pan international global jack-off: "wank for peace"

chris morris
"if a terrorist group wanted to hit britain, all they'd have to do is kill 100 random celebrities. the country would go into a nervous breakdown."

the pedestrian project yvette helin

"conventional military power stands little chance against a band of swarming 14th century terrorists." John Arquilla

guardian science mar 13 03
"the european commission is trying to restrict the transfer of torture technology. but regulations will be meaningless if non-member states don't support the action."
list

radio 4: "if no news is good news then news at ten is good news all the way".

nothing: "abscence of the thing sought."

marylin munroe,
on being invited "to brighten up the table."
"its like being a musician, you're invited so that you'll play."

"strange days:" (directed by Kathryn Bigelow)  "paranoia is just reality on a finer scale."

"we want to make jam and marmalade as exciting as possible." (a spokeswoman on tv news a short while back, concerning robinson jam finally getting rid of the gollies.)

4d and the nostalgia honeytrap:
"as we get older we learn to filter out more and more detail, so theres less going on, theres fewer markers and time appears to go faster."

the way we were. excerpt from hetero-dictatorships past: (date unrecorded)- "in bbc tv's 'heart of the matter' tory mp geoffrey dickens said he wanted all homosexual acts to be illegal with police given the powers to raid gay adults who were sharing a home."

a team from national autonomous university of mexico and univ of california san diego has shown that by activating 2 of the sepallata genes along with the 3 original gene groups, they can create petals in place of leaves..."

new scientist 3 mar 01
"hydrogen-filled airships and planes could be powered by their skin."

sept 11th: 'the greatest political casualty was the fantasy of missile defence as a front-line posture against 'rogue' elements" (christopher hitchens 16 sept 01)

pgp inventor phil zimmermann thinks: "if we install blanket surveillance systems, it will mean the terrorists have won. they will have cost us our freedom."

"i find comfort in anything that reminds me of life before the bad time, like cooking." (email from lewis holman, an accountant, to his friends and family)

list 2:
wearing watches, vaccinations, mobile phones, xmas consumption, xmas mobilised population (just like joseph and mary in time for the census), more than 15 million uk soap viewers 4 days a week, nazi invasion of channel islands and jersy, mosley 40,000 british support, far right gains in uk local council elections 2003.
small things

earlier in the week i discovered that the little spider, the lodger in the window recess of my toilet these past few months, has died. or its been eaten by a bigger spider. or has simply buggered off. i can't tell if thats it's own carcass on the sill, or the discarded bio-wrap from it's past meals.

i'm saddened that its gone. there was a genuine pleasure checking in on it each day and though easy to dismiss, such small pleasures constellate into the greater pleasure-fields that mark time.

its partly due to the spider's departure that i experienced that madagascan cockroach moment on thursday. coz it has crossed my mind to perhaps re-house an insect or much larger spider in a habitat in the toilet.

or maybe an A-quarium screen, above where the toilet paper hangs, at my immediate eye-line when i'm sat shitting. there are few places in life where you spend accumulated time sat facing a really up close wall. prison is about the only other similar experience.

my toilet walls are papered with mostly grant morrison speech bubbles. so while that patch, in front of me for years, could at least benefit from an updated text, it is the perfect plot for a few thousand neural networked mini-flatmates to plug-in, set up camp and evolve.
'BIGGER CAGES, LONGER CHAINS....'

340: Four Interdisciplinary Studies in 19th and 20th Century Intellectual History:

Psychoanalysis, Mysticism, Nihilism, and Marxism


"......comprised of four interdisciplinary units......

a comparative study of a particular theme as it appears first in a nonliterary text and then in a major work of fiction:

1) Psychology and Literature: Psychoanalysis and the Short Story. The theory of psychosexual development and the father-son conflict (Freud and Kafka).

2) Theology and Literature: The Irrational in the Novel. Mankind’s religious, mystical impulse in conflict with the logic of science and the demands of rational self-interest (Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky).

3) Philosophy and Literature: Existentialism and the Novel. Nihilism and the concomitant destruction of Christian morality and the Western concept of the self (Nietzsche and Sartre).

4. Political Science and Literature: Communism in the Drama. The ethics of Communist revolution and terrorist activity. (Marx, Lenin and Brecht)."

360: The Existential Quest in the Modern Novel

"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him." (Nietzsche)
"If there is no God, then everything is permitted." (Dostoevsky)
"Everything that exists is born without reason, continues to live out of weakness, and dies by chance." (Sartre)

dictionary index
... fissilingual; fizgig; flagitious; flane; flaneur; flaskisable; fleer; flexanimous;
flinders; ... nidification; nidor; nidus; niggardly; nihilification; nihilism; nihil
obstat; ...

The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia
generation online .com

Friday 2 May 2003

BUTTONS AND ROACHES

yesterday i experienced my very own "desert darlings" moment (channel 4, tuesday 9pm) when i held a madagascan "hissing" cockroach in my hand.

in the petshop in camden, north london, where i was stocking up on cat and hamster supplies, there was a woman who mentioned her friend's phobia of buttons.

i said that i had 3 friends with button phobias.

i was at that point stood near a small tank filled with the madagascan roaches. i said that though i can pick up spiders and i welcome them in my home (though sadly they're often taunted by peggy the cat), i wouldn't pick up a roach and they do make me shudder a bit.

another woman, who worked in the shop, got the roach habitat off the shelf and opened it up. there were hundreds of them, varying in age and size. they didn't fly and she said their only defensive manoevre was too create a hissing sound.

she picked one up and showed me its little face. she drew attention to the fact that its face was actually kind of attractive.

and then she placed it in my hand and it just stood there. they were more docile and flatter than our regular roaches. it was heavier than a spider.

i stroked it's back, which was ridged and very solid. when she picked it up again she pointed out that i would feel its velcro like holding-on power.

they live for about 5 years and she feeds them on soft fruits. the males have a stumpy horn like ridge on their brows.

Thursday 1 May 2003

DIFFERENCE

"the time has come for those who are different to stand united." so says the movie poster for today's opening of xmen2.

in the virgin megastore, in camden north london, police and an ambulance crew are removing a topless young man from the shop. he is behaving in the manner of someone who is, or is about to be, classified as having mental health problems.

meanwhile in town, swarms of yellow jacketted police corral a group of mayday protestors. many of the protestors probably identify themselves as different. in reality their off-the-peg anarchist identities are formulaic and ordinairy. sadly it is also, all too often, nothing more than a heavily scripted youthful phase in there lives. full-time mainstream role-playing beckons.

a bit of violence and destruction can be a laugh, and its equally satisfying to cost big businesses a few million in losses for a day, but don't kid ourselves that these commodified gladitorial games are any kind of revolution or progress.

there are always those delusioned anarchists/protestors who might aswell be jehovahs witnesses or party politicians, and are about as tiresome as the mediocre capitalist process they believe themselves to be opposing.

while there are countless situations when it is nescessary to physically fight with the police, i mostly distrust the motives of protesters who ritually battle the police during any token demonstration. i can't help seeing their predictable reactions towards "authority" figures as blatantly unresolved conflict with their mostly middle-class parents. tantrums dressed up as sincere ideology.

and i distrust the ironic class war that exists unacknowledged between the predominantly middle-class, college educated protestors, filled to the gills with outdated romantic/tribal ideals, versus the predominantly tabloid-reading, intellectually-challenged police with their similarly anachronistic belief in morality and order.

ultimately the "anarchists" are as vital a cog in contemporary hyper-capitalism as the police are, who at the end of the day are also just working people. 21st century radicalism demands that any boundaries colluding in the concept of "they" and "we", us and them, are made deliberately blurred. it is nescessary to subvert this grand distraction that there is any real difference between our "enemies" and our "selves". through complexity true revolution can begin.
FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY