Lazy have not been posting. He have maybe turned into a troll and lurks under this bridge, until the sun goes down and it gets too unbearably cold, when he repairs to human company once again.
29.3.05
All water under the bridge
Lazy have not been posting. He have maybe turned into a troll and lurks under this bridge, until the sun goes down and it gets too unbearably cold, when he repairs to human company once again.
24.3.05
Verses for Isabella
[... who reminded me about rhyming words, again. If you're reading this, bella, there's an email address in the sidebar, so you can ask for more...]
What do you see when you stare in the headlights? Your
Nerves are exploding with white blasts of starlight.
Voices are screaming and pleading to vacate the
Place where you’re standing to placate the hatred, which
Drives you from gold tinted skies in the place where you
Bathed in her warmth in a room in the basement, a
World that is gone into shadow and wasted, the
Past is a lie and the future is fated to
Tear deeper cuts in your flesh, unabated.
This mad final stand in the howl of the engines
You’re screaming your hatred, it feels like it’s wasted
The sound of the parties, the women you’ve tasted
The freedom you fought for is given to pasty-faced
Leeches who feed on the victories you’ve tasted
People you’ve hated return from the shadows
To haunt your depictions of far-away places...
[intended for performance by Mike H, who has the delivery]
What do you see when you stare in the headlights? Your
Nerves are exploding with white blasts of starlight.
Voices are screaming and pleading to vacate the
Place where you’re standing to placate the hatred, which
Drives you from gold tinted skies in the place where you
Bathed in her warmth in a room in the basement, a
World that is gone into shadow and wasted, the
Past is a lie and the future is fated to
Tear deeper cuts in your flesh, unabated.
This mad final stand in the howl of the engines
You’re screaming your hatred, it feels like it’s wasted
The sound of the parties, the women you’ve tasted
The freedom you fought for is given to pasty-faced
Leeches who feed on the victories you’ve tasted
People you’ve hated return from the shadows
To haunt your depictions of far-away places...
[intended for performance by Mike H, who has the delivery]
23.3.05
An ode to the hepatitis C virus in free verse
The current standard therapy for hepatitis C is a combination of interferon and the anti-viral drug ribavarin in a 48-week course.
Common side effects of this heavy chemical onslaught (they give you anti-depressants first) include flu or heroin withdrawal-like symptoms such as fever, chills, headache, muscle ache, and fatigue. Other common side effects are nausea, loss of appetite, depression and related symptoms, such as anxiety, irritability, insomnia, and mental confusion.
While less common, psychiatric side effects include aggressive behavior, psychosis, hallucinations, and mania; a few cases of suicide have been reported. Some people taking pegylated interferon develop neutropenia (reduced levels of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell). Pegylated interferon can also cause thrombocytopenia (reduced levels of platelets, a type of cell that helps blood to clot), colitis, pancreatitis, heart and thyroid problems, lung disorders, and autoimmune diseases. Other side effects can include vision problems, itching, hair loss, and injection site reactions (soreness or swelling at the site of injection). It is also important to be aware of the potential side effects of ribavirin.
That was just the interferon, you see...
If that's the cure, I think I prefer the disease, thank you. From the fragmented depths of the C:\ drive I find words for every occasion, and so here:
I have a friend who carries the virus
But he doesn’t take it as seriously as you.
He takes the piss and jokes about it.
He won’t stop drinking wine, the bastard, he always has a glass to hand -
No, I’m not talking about myself.
How would I have got hep C?
Isn’t it some disease for junkies and queers? –
Now you’ve made me forget what I was saying.
Something about… something about…
This exceptional Merlot, perhaps.
Let’s have another glass.
[comments enabled due to popular demand. comments on future realgem posts may or may not be enabled.]
Common side effects of this heavy chemical onslaught (they give you anti-depressants first) include flu or heroin withdrawal-like symptoms such as fever, chills, headache, muscle ache, and fatigue. Other common side effects are nausea, loss of appetite, depression and related symptoms, such as anxiety, irritability, insomnia, and mental confusion.
While less common, psychiatric side effects include aggressive behavior, psychosis, hallucinations, and mania; a few cases of suicide have been reported. Some people taking pegylated interferon develop neutropenia (reduced levels of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell). Pegylated interferon can also cause thrombocytopenia (reduced levels of platelets, a type of cell that helps blood to clot), colitis, pancreatitis, heart and thyroid problems, lung disorders, and autoimmune diseases. Other side effects can include vision problems, itching, hair loss, and injection site reactions (soreness or swelling at the site of injection). It is also important to be aware of the potential side effects of ribavirin.
That was just the interferon, you see...
If that's the cure, I think I prefer the disease, thank you. From the fragmented depths of the C:\ drive I find words for every occasion, and so here:
I have a friend who carries the virus
But he doesn’t take it as seriously as you.
He takes the piss and jokes about it.
He won’t stop drinking wine, the bastard, he always has a glass to hand -
No, I’m not talking about myself.
How would I have got hep C?
Isn’t it some disease for junkies and queers? –
Now you’ve made me forget what I was saying.
Something about… something about…
This exceptional Merlot, perhaps.
Let’s have another glass.
[comments enabled due to popular demand. comments on future realgem posts may or may not be enabled.]
16.3.05
Brian Messitt
Brian was back in England for one of his short yearly visits. I spoke to him on Saturday on the telephone. He said he would drop by on Tuesday morning: he wanted me to scan some glossy prints into the computer (that computer in the picture, my computer, the one I'm still writing at), and he had a few things for me from India, and "we'll rap, Mike". He spoke like this, well-spoken, literate, laced with sixties slang that I know mainly from William Burroughs books.
If you lived in London, you would have seen the Tuesday Evening Standard headlines screaming "Man beheaded in North London street".
I didn't read the story. Dr Otter told me it in his own words. Dr Otter and me, we share a deep black streak in our humour and we were laughing about it. What was funny? The way the murderer turned to calmly tell horrified onlookers: "It's personal" before turning back to hacking.
Brian didn't show up on Tuesday. I don't even know how to tell this story. You can guess what it is. "Oh my God, you must be the only person who hasn't heard," said his son in a strained-sounding voice when I phoned just now. Immediately, it clicked into place.
Compare the sympathetic story the Mirror wrote ("Tributes for dad killed by axe maniac") with the salacious near-gloating (or is that just me seeing that?) write-up in The Scum. Like they are really relishing being able to throw in "he was openly homosexual", "the hippy resort of Goa", being able to use the disapproving euphemism "lived an alternative life-style".
Why am I writing now? I haven't seen the Standard. It's a big media story now. They will be looking for anything juicy and scandalous to add to the story. I can guess they will be saying all sorts of things about him. His son phoned me later to tell me not to believe anything they were writing. Speaking evil of the dead. My friend, I've worked for newspapers, I know how they (or some of them) fucking work. I am happy bloggers are destroying their monopoly on "the public sphere".
It's a live media story. Do I write anything here that IF, IF some stinking journo stumbles across it he will have some other fucking sensational fucking angle to fucking follow up? Hahaa! Well, look, I'm media, too, here on realgem. So was he "openly homosexual"? (You've just summed up someone up with one label - concise and fucking punchy, you sewer-dwelling cunt.)
No, he was everything. He had women when I knew him and he was 67. He had fucking LIVED, you fuckers, and done fucking everything. But that's all the information you get, until you've moved on to the next story. Here, look, it's the quote the Mirror chose to use: "He was a traveller at heart. He was free spirited, but came back to see his family."
Why am I writing this all, now, here? Idle rhetorical question? Or am I addressing your "what is he doing running first thing to blogger when his friend has died?" No. It's because without Brian, I would never have begun thinking of myself as a writer.
Now he is never to finish editing his never-ending book. I know I'm a character in it. I don't know if I'll ever be able to read it.
"Something worse could have happened," said la gitana when I talked to her on the phone. It sounded absurd at first but it's true. "He could have got cancer or something and taken years to die." So it couldn't have been any other way: a suitably colourful end to a colourful life.
footnote
NARDAC writes about dreams. The nights just past I slept easy enough; no, I fell asleep easily enough. Which is something to be grateful for, any high-wire insomniac or manic will tell you. And woke strangely unrested, with nebulous memories of disturbing bleak dreams of India. B_rian loved India and lived there.
I have notebooks full of the dreams I've had over years. When I dream of India, they are good dreams; strange, colourful, mystical; not with that strange feeling of desolation, ruin, and a harsh light that hits the ground at the wrong angle.
15.3.05
Lunch with Texan bloggers and a walk down Oxford St
Lazy wakes badly hungover and slightly sick on Sunday 13 in a strange house which turns out to be in Upper Clapton. Diary reads lunch with the malung's Texan blogger friends. The malung calls to say they are in Edgware Rd. The self-employed Lazy's cheques still haven't cleared so he sets off across London by expired bus-pass.
The malung's blogging friends are all Texan women (he has others) and completely unlike people associated with realgem. This is Kimberley of Headaches are Underrated. She is visiting England for a week. The malung thinks Kimberley is "six times more babe-like and six times less Texan" than he had expected, but doesn't say this to her and only tells me afterwards. Read the malung's description of the meeting here. Again, his comment about how these girls "come from a state where people carry guns openly in the street" and are unshockable by me represents esprit d'escalier in some degree as he didn't think to tell me this until afterwards.
But I am glad he is getting the hang of journalism: you use the quotes you want, to tell the story you want. "You can only tell the truth by lying," as someone said.
The camera is on auto and its little brain decides to use the flash which is reflected in the fine granite of the building behind.
"Where'd you get the bike from?" Bicycles in London are quite a disposable commodity and circulate a lot from owner to owner.
Also reflected in the granite is (I believe) Kimberley's friend Brooke crossing the road.
"Are you a sinner or a winner?" This man wins theological discussions by having a loudhailer.
There is something sinister about the way that as you make your way down from one end to the other of Oxford St you pass him twice and you're sure there's no way he could have made it that far that quickly and invisibly, and still be standing there preaching amplified Jesus like he's been doing it all day right there. Which is what he does, every day, seemingly always there. He has boundless energy and is always bouncing or jogging on the spot and only interrupts the endless "Are you a sinner or a winner? Choose Jesus!" routine to make lecherous comments to young girls.
There was a Spanish girl called Lola sitting reading a London guidebook at the bar who said she was a psychologist. I told her I needed her help and that London was an old and evil city. Then I rambled about my preoccupations to the malung and felt less like a screaming mental case inside.
Then the next day (today, or yesterday, but I'm still awake), I wrestled with my mental demons and cast them into Hades.
Immediately my luck changed and the universe started taking care of me again, manifesting beautiful women, money from nowhere, lethargic supermarket security, and bus drivers who don't look at the week-old one-day Travelcard I flash at them.
13.3.05
Some have expressed concern due to the needle-in-vein photo, thinking it some sort of cry for HELP (what a watery-looking hit it was anyway...), so: empty bottle methadone, empty strips of various tablets. 2nd day no opiate-receptor-binding chemicals whatever.
You can talk about withdrawals, but really, you can have a bad time and dark thoughts on a rough day no matter what it's brought about by. Don't want my life-story to turn into a catalogue of the chemical influences I put in my head (because my diary has...)
This is normality. We are always programming our brain chemistries, one way or another. How much qualitative difference between the nine-to-five/Eastenders/Prozac zombie, and the heroin zombie?
...but, then, that recurring motif again...
realgem may see no new material for a few days as Mike H has work and other internet publishing projects to attend to. You may find some photos, interesting links or cryptic but entertaining snippets of written archive material, but nothing that will take more than 15secs to post.
11.3.05
Nothing can stop me now!
I'm going to publish anything.
(And what's next for realgem?): A PayPal button with the legend: "All donations will be used to cover expenses (drinks, drugs and "free lunches") in obtaining the most extreme real-life stories (journalistic, pornographic or literary) illustrated with my ever-improving digital photography."
And YES! I check Mikey Delgado for the first time since ages and he's back (or has he just been changing the dates?) with Part 3 of Uttering a Forged Instrument!
(And what's next for realgem?): A PayPal button with the legend: "All donations will be used to cover expenses (drinks, drugs and "free lunches") in obtaining the most extreme real-life stories (journalistic, pornographic or literary) illustrated with my ever-improving digital photography."
And YES! I check Mikey Delgado for the first time since ages and he's back (or has he just been changing the dates?) with Part 3 of Uttering a Forged Instrument!
Backstage in blogworld
It is cliché to describe blogs as self-obsessed. I am going to write about other people. As a means of developing this, here are excerpts of e-mail communications from blogging friends, whom I know personally on the physical plane to varying degrees, from intimately to never-met.
(But what's next for realgem?): I am working up to begin publishing a series of stories and photos that some people who know me (but hopefully not yet this blog) will consider privacy-intruding or libellous or some such...
>The Malung - Dave Bones the film-maker, who told me to come to London(malung-tv-news, Socialist Wanker)
>carlos carah - draws writes drinks does heavy drugs chases women (bostumana)
>deek deekster - famous blogger brimming with good energy, wit and intelligence (Blog of Funk)
>NARDAC who understands the tragicomedy (Holy Smokes!!!)
>paulette - makes music, has a website, was introduced as a character to blogworld as "P", on another blog (this one), somewhere sometime in the mists of time (mafagafinhos)
(But what's next for realgem?): I am working up to begin publishing a series of stories and photos that some people who know me (but hopefully not yet this blog) will consider privacy-intruding or libellous or some such...
>The Malung - Dave Bones the film-maker, who told me to come to London(malung-tv-news, Socialist Wanker)
from: Dave Bones
to: 'lazy'
subject: mus remem to rid bik pist agin wonday
hey i just typed in Dave Bones to google and I come out top of the list. what a fucking rockstar no? I mean really superstar status no?
[Also see tequilasnotforme.blogspot.com for an interesting never-met assessment of this complex character.]
>carlos carah - draws writes drinks does heavy drugs chases women (bostumana)
I´m alright in this side of the globe, but feeling insane sometimes. Since i´d came back i just find some troubles and problems with girls and alcohol. I went to Rio in New Years Eve and it was very bad. The girl that i pretend [intend?] to like found another guy and i went crazy with acid on the beach. But i didn´t feel sad. I really don´t care about this brainless brazilians bitches.
I hope you well. Life changes. We just need to try to not lose control, and it´s a hard thing for us: hedonists junkies.
[…]
Ei man, i´m reading your blog and i like it!
Tonite i´ll drink a lot for you!!
And FUCK my job!!
[…]
All I can say to you is to forget about her. I was in love with a girls when i was in London, but when i arrived here she was with a big friend and i just keep she out of my mind. It wasn´t easy, but i´m ok now. She wants me back, but no way. I´m free now! We´re fucking young to be married! Buried!
[...]
I should have take a picture of me last night and put it on my door, just to remember how i was yesterday. Like a piece of shit.
Last thusday was my last club night, and i made a lot of bad things there, then i went to another party to play some rocknroll and did shit too. I think a have a lot of enemies in Brazil now. I don´t care about it.
I´ve been laughing (?) a lot this weekend. Here everybody is saying shit everytime. I told about you to some girls here and they want to know you. I said that it will happen soon.
>deek deekster - famous blogger brimming with good energy, wit and intelligence (Blog of Funk)
it's a small world, but not if you have to dominate it!
how are you? are you living feet from me in fact? i live near Highbury Corner.
[...]
Nice to meet you yesterday.
This is the March 5th night of fun
[...]
very good i really enjoyed last night, just this side of depraved with lots of entertainment
you were having fun i noticed you bopping with alacrity
she was lovely, alacrity
>NARDAC who understands the tragicomedy (Holy Smokes!!!)
The best part is obviously the booting out of your female character. However, like a good sitcom, I know she'll be back sometime in the next few episodes.>Dr Otter - highly literate cryptofascist, chess player, a character so extreme and illegal that he must remain untraceable to a real-life location (Dr Otter's 5th Column on Socialist Wanker)
[...]
I knew the banished one would wangle her way back onto your pages.
She's turning into the Dylan of your 90210.
btw, sounds to me like you're definitely NOT over her.
You're a funny monkey, and you taste the rawness... just try to get your balance back.. sounds mighty earthquakelike over there
YES!...Discrimination, exclusivity and the persuit of excellence are the ONLY routes to worthy artistic/literary endeavour ... Perhaps give you a bell later.
Having looked through Constantine,Parfrey and Home et al I can find no reference to meme theory..Perhaps I am missing something,and you could possibly help me by showing me around my book collection?....Jus' kidding, but I think what you had in mind was the Shelby-Downard article on monism etc..
Also,the guy on the bus had on some kind of wool affair,like the ones worn by islamic types...And honestly, I dont START fights..Never have..Nor do I relish belligerence...And consider this,my freind, your levels of belligerence are fairly high and you dont even have the luxury of pleading old age....Sorry but your last email did have a fairly nauseating air of condescension about it.
Hope you're using the number I gave you [the heroin delivery in 20mins number] with due care and restraint..Remember as the old guy said (smartass) "you must always pay it all,pay it all,pay it all back...Every bit you have stolen.....".
Isn't the snow pretty?(exhales)...
>paulette - makes music, has a website, was introduced as a character to blogworld as "P", on another blog (this one), somewhere sometime in the mists of time (mafagafinhos)
I really didn't understand what you tried to say, but enjoyed your blog. You seem much relaxed and cheerful!! Well done, Mike! I just think you should remember me with joy at all times as we agreed, but that picture with my middle finger up show a little bitterness in the air. Nevermind.
PS: I write my blog for me. Can you please erase the link? Cheers.
[...]
I don't want other people to read my blog. I need to write more often so it becomes a real bolg. Till then, I'll "keep myself to myself"
I promise to get back to it as soon as possible.
Have a good day
[...]
Ok
Please make sure you remove my blog's link from yours. Please.
"The bloggers shall inherit the Gonzo"
I was looking for more work in publicity/advertising/journalism (that order of preference) through the Monday MediaGuardian of a couple weeks back when I came across this article (New Media column by Paul Carr. You may have to register from where you're clicking in? But look, The Guardian is still one of the best newspapers in the world, and they publish everything in their print edition online for free... you should be signed up already...)
As media over-proliferates and fragments and we move into a Transmet future, it is for the bloggers to take the Dr Gonzo mantle... and some have already proven that "advertisers are more than willing to pay handsomely for first-person online journalism, especially if it is edgy and has a unique voice".
This relates to the post below which was born out of uncertainty about what realgem is for. My friend the Malung does real independent journalism...
As media over-proliferates and fragments and we move into a Transmet future, it is for the bloggers to take the Dr Gonzo mantle... and some have already proven that "advertisers are more than willing to pay handsomely for first-person online journalism, especially if it is edgy and has a unique voice".
This relates to the post below which was born out of uncertainty about what realgem is for. My friend the Malung does real independent journalism...
To document everyone
I'd like to document everyone around me. I know some spectacular people. Strange things happen to them. Sometimes I take photographs. I would also like to go up to people in the street and coolly take portrait photos.
Instead I choose to be bland and anonymous.
Instead I choose to be bland and anonymous.
10.3.05
Energy for my beautiful thing
Horrifying early wakening to a adorissima esposa shouting at me down the telephone… Oh yeah, we were gonna meet at the café at 8 to arrange everything for the visa interview and I'm still sleeping…
We sit and drink coffee watching the people pass, me chain-smoking and feeling the tramadol hit (ahhh!), she non-smoking and glowing with health… We agree London is a good place for us right now. “Well I fucked every other government department here already,” I muse and she laugh her beautiful laugh. “Now we can do the Immigration service, too…” And we talk over breakfast about lust and transforming sexual energy into creativity and manic forward momentum… We kiss good-bye, too long and passionately to be ex-lovers, and I feel desire behind the opiates: “Now do something with that energy…” I tell her, she grins and nods, we walk off fast, in opposite directions.
All jealousies and past anger (because she still fucks me up, that woman) fall away, forgiven or forgotten, and it’s a beautiful morning and I walk smiling and happy to be alone in the world and another phrase of Aleister Crowley’s echoing in my head: “Love, and do what thou wilt.” We are all free: you, me, she. And we, I like to think, always with some time, love and energy for anyone...
In Camden Town I run into S___ who I used to train with and am reminded of another life I lived, so long ago I hardly remember… about four or five months or so… When I cooked meals every evening and trained martial arts and practised tai chi and yoga and wasn't addicted to anything and felt more muscular... S___ and I talk Taoism, turmoil, the pain of love and bootleg DVD eBay trading over lunch-time lager for him, gin & tonic for me… An empire-builders’ drink… Lemon for the scurvy, quinine for the malaria, alcohol for the violence…
Tai Chi is a most extra-ordinary art or science of one’s own nervous system, an equivalent to which was never invented in the west, the practice of which I resolve to take up again… And yes, I am pleased to find I remember the Yang short form, and I just played it through twice.
The Yang form was developed by a slight, inoffensive-looking little man called Chen Man Ching, who due to his understanding of soft strength energy mechanics, his mastery of chi, could throw a large man eight feet with the merest flick of his wrist… Chen Man Ching devoted his life to martial arts and Taoist meditation... He was considered to be an enlightened Master...
He died at the age of 75 of alcohol poisoning with a smile on his face, saying: “Hahahahaa! I fooled you all!”
We sit and drink coffee watching the people pass, me chain-smoking and feeling the tramadol hit (ahhh!), she non-smoking and glowing with health… We agree London is a good place for us right now. “Well I fucked every other government department here already,” I muse and she laugh her beautiful laugh. “Now we can do the Immigration service, too…” And we talk over breakfast about lust and transforming sexual energy into creativity and manic forward momentum… We kiss good-bye, too long and passionately to be ex-lovers, and I feel desire behind the opiates: “Now do something with that energy…” I tell her, she grins and nods, we walk off fast, in opposite directions.
All jealousies and past anger (because she still fucks me up, that woman) fall away, forgiven or forgotten, and it’s a beautiful morning and I walk smiling and happy to be alone in the world and another phrase of Aleister Crowley’s echoing in my head: “Love, and do what thou wilt.” We are all free: you, me, she. And we, I like to think, always with some time, love and energy for anyone...
In Camden Town I run into S___ who I used to train with and am reminded of another life I lived, so long ago I hardly remember… about four or five months or so… When I cooked meals every evening and trained martial arts and practised tai chi and yoga and wasn't addicted to anything and felt more muscular... S___ and I talk Taoism, turmoil, the pain of love and bootleg DVD eBay trading over lunch-time lager for him, gin & tonic for me… An empire-builders’ drink… Lemon for the scurvy, quinine for the malaria, alcohol for the violence…
Tai Chi is a most extra-ordinary art or science of one’s own nervous system, an equivalent to which was never invented in the west, the practice of which I resolve to take up again… And yes, I am pleased to find I remember the Yang short form, and I just played it through twice.
The Yang form was developed by a slight, inoffensive-looking little man called Chen Man Ching, who due to his understanding of soft strength energy mechanics, his mastery of chi, could throw a large man eight feet with the merest flick of his wrist… Chen Man Ching devoted his life to martial arts and Taoist meditation... He was considered to be an enlightened Master...
He died at the age of 75 of alcohol poisoning with a smile on his face, saying: “Hahahahaa! I fooled you all!”
7.3.05
Transmetropolitan, and the romance of shoplifting
Of all these various near-future dystopias a comic book - or "graphic novel" for some (not in this household) - called Transmetropolitan comes nearest to capturing the incomprehensible information-saturated sensory-overload future all this media and communications tech is bringing us.
TV screens set in the street at pedestrian traffic lights (like already in buses in London). Broadband internet in your shades or glasses or designer goggles. Speakers and screens blaring at you from everywhere.
Random media idiots with head-worn cameras feeding images to live webstreams of 24-hour reality shows being filmed in the street.
Resurrected people from the 20th century who had themselves cryogenically frozen who never recover from the future-shock and are ignored by the rest of society and become sad, irrelevant, lonely outsiders. Extra-terrestrial UFO people who sell their DNA to a sub-culture who make their "life-style choice" to graft UFO-people DNA into their own and thereby become half-aliens... People who upload their minds and memories into clouds of molecular nano-machines that float around like puffs of pink smoke but can take on any form they wish...
People with programmable drug dispensers grafted to their spines for total control over their brain chemistry.
A society where your social status is determined by your access to bandwidth...
You could throw in the AI web games now being developed by shadowy top-secret directorates within Microsoft… If you take the effort to glance through these texts here you will see what I mean… A game which will intrude into reality and invade your life, make you phone calls, send you emails and faxes, graft itself into the websites you look at and the TV you watch, all as part of the plot you have to unravel...
http://www.seanstewart.org/beast/intro/
http://www.avantgame.com/writings.htm
Some people would say this sort of thing goes back to Dick. Philip K, you know, the writer. (Having the surname of Dick would be quite cool. "Name please sir?" - "Dick," I would say calmly and levelly, daring them to react somehow, thereby guaranteeing they would. I guess.) I picked up a copy of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch for myself from Borders in Angel, where all books and magazines are free, although I am not advocating shop-lifting.
Also, you can sit there in the cafeteria bit upstairs and use the chocolate powder sprinkler (for cappuccino, y’know) and the milk to make yourself free chocolate milk. And sitting with someone special, read – perhaps - the marvellous special-edition (with fine red felt or something luxurious and plush - were they leather even? - covers) with glittering gilded lettering of The Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss, and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back in the same volume. Maybe some people will think this is really cheap, though, especially if you then walk out with some magazines or something.
But to shoplift a book for a girl who likes to read, isn’t it like so beautiful and romantic? Some people I know might say something like that is really fucking pikey, Mikey , and me, I would just smile, cause they'd be a poet and not even know it.
TV screens set in the street at pedestrian traffic lights (like already in buses in London). Broadband internet in your shades or glasses or designer goggles. Speakers and screens blaring at you from everywhere.
Random media idiots with head-worn cameras feeding images to live webstreams of 24-hour reality shows being filmed in the street.
Resurrected people from the 20th century who had themselves cryogenically frozen who never recover from the future-shock and are ignored by the rest of society and become sad, irrelevant, lonely outsiders. Extra-terrestrial UFO people who sell their DNA to a sub-culture who make their "life-style choice" to graft UFO-people DNA into their own and thereby become half-aliens... People who upload their minds and memories into clouds of molecular nano-machines that float around like puffs of pink smoke but can take on any form they wish...
People with programmable drug dispensers grafted to their spines for total control over their brain chemistry.
A society where your social status is determined by your access to bandwidth...
You could throw in the AI web games now being developed by shadowy top-secret directorates within Microsoft… If you take the effort to glance through these texts here you will see what I mean… A game which will intrude into reality and invade your life, make you phone calls, send you emails and faxes, graft itself into the websites you look at and the TV you watch, all as part of the plot you have to unravel...
http://www.seanstewart.org/beast/intro/
http://www.avantgame.com/writings.htm
Some people would say this sort of thing goes back to Dick. Philip K, you know, the writer. (Having the surname of Dick would be quite cool. "Name please sir?" - "Dick," I would say calmly and levelly, daring them to react somehow, thereby guaranteeing they would. I guess.) I picked up a copy of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch for myself from Borders in Angel, where all books and magazines are free, although I am not advocating shop-lifting.
Also, you can sit there in the cafeteria bit upstairs and use the chocolate powder sprinkler (for cappuccino, y’know) and the milk to make yourself free chocolate milk. And sitting with someone special, read – perhaps - the marvellous special-edition (with fine red felt or something luxurious and plush - were they leather even? - covers) with glittering gilded lettering of The Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss, and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back in the same volume. Maybe some people will think this is really cheap, though, especially if you then walk out with some magazines or something.
But to shoplift a book for a girl who likes to read, isn’t it like so beautiful and romantic? Some people I know might say something like that is really fucking pikey, Mikey , and me, I would just smile, cause they'd be a poet and not even know it.
"funk - we make nice stuff happen"
Deek of the Blog of Funk (sidebar) invited me to a party yesterday, thereby confirming that other bloggers exist and are not just internet entities.
This damn fish was there too. It’'s looking at me and thinking “"Jesus God, that human is drinking its 8th gin and tonic. In fact, it's drinking like a fish"”, and being a simple creature it probably doesn’'t even know about valium, methadone and cannabis. But Deek will witness that I was: "“having fun i noticed you bopping with alacrity. she was lovely, alacrity”." Oh she was!
I still worry about taking all these sedative chemicals (or why should I? We programme ourselves...) I used to hack my nervous system with things like pranayama and tai chi before...
This is the drug machismo bit: yeah I am still fucking bopping with alacrity on doses of chemicals that would knock you out for days hahahahahaaa!!! And fuck this, let's see if I ever ever stop.
But I do always remember what Aleister Crowley wrote about pranayama, and it worries me that I seem to have dropped its practice in every-day situations, which I used to do near-instinctively.
6.3.05
What it was that Crowley wrote about pranayama
For mind and body alike there is no purgative like pranayama, no purgative like pranayama. [he repeats this several times to emphasise the point, like] yea, for mind and body alike there is no purgative, no purgative [etc] like pranayama...
Emphatically. Emphatically. Emphatically. It is impossible to combine pranayama properly performed with emotional thought. [note: he means the primitive 2nd-circuit mammal emotional-territorial thinking, as in the 8-circuit model of consciousness and the terminology of RAW and Dr Leary.] It should be resorted to immediately, at all times during life, when calm is threatened.
4.3.05
Random bibliomantic selection from notebooks approx Oct 2002
Worst things in the world:
1. used teabag in an ashtray, like a slug with cigarettes stubbed out on it
Look Out For Dodgy Black Magic Types Looking For Victims to Zombify
"I get off the plane and I ask someone the time and I get a right-wing answer."
This Cosmology is Infinite! Consider this a Free Sample.
“The pleasure of your acquaintance is infinite, but why are you wearing that body?"
”Well, it's quite comfortable. So where do you find a party in London on a Monday night?"
Send this robot to take over the Tory party.
“No problem sir I will infiltrate their scene.”
The charge is sodomy with malice
“It was self-defence, your honour.”
“Sodomy’s a fine thing, lad. Shame I can’t fuckin stand gay people.”
There was an old woman trying to get in.
So I hit that wizened old bitch with a tyre iron.
It’s nasty up around Highgate… I was coming out of a shop when this old lady leaned out her Bentley with an AK and tried to blow me away. But she missed with all thirty bullets… as she sped away, she ran over three albino Pekinese with matching collars at a zebra crossing... Two of them died...
But being the highest point in London, once the terrorists hit London with nerve gas, we’ll be alright, on an island rising from a hazy sea of green mist. And all the alpha-males will still be able to gather around in their dressing gowns drinking coffee.
1. used teabag in an ashtray, like a slug with cigarettes stubbed out on it
Look Out For Dodgy Black Magic Types Looking For Victims to Zombify
"We’re a cooperative."Every second person is selling drugs – it’s ridiculous. It defies all laws of economics.
"A cooperative to do what?"
"Umm... commit electric fraud, and, umm...."
"I get off the plane and I ask someone the time and I get a right-wing answer."
This Cosmology is Infinite! Consider this a Free Sample.
“The pleasure of your acquaintance is infinite, but why are you wearing that body?"
”Well, it's quite comfortable. So where do you find a party in London on a Monday night?"
Send this robot to take over the Tory party.
“No problem sir I will infiltrate their scene.”
The charge is sodomy with malice
“It was self-defence, your honour.”
“Sodomy’s a fine thing, lad. Shame I can’t fuckin stand gay people.”
There was an old woman trying to get in.
So I hit that wizened old bitch with a tyre iron.
It’s nasty up around Highgate… I was coming out of a shop when this old lady leaned out her Bentley with an AK and tried to blow me away. But she missed with all thirty bullets… as she sped away, she ran over three albino Pekinese with matching collars at a zebra crossing... Two of them died...
But being the highest point in London, once the terrorists hit London with nerve gas, we’ll be alright, on an island rising from a hazy sea of green mist. And all the alpha-males will still be able to gather around in their dressing gowns drinking coffee.
The voice says: Do not grasp clumsily. Let the moment pass. There will be another one.
Arbitrary bibliomantic choice of words from notebook circa Apr 2003
The prayer of one with pain in his soul.
[By 4.15, I could no longer see the earth
By 4.17, the last angels had bid me farewell and I was racing through the interstellar void towards the face of god.
Frost began to gather on my wings. It was bitterly cold, and it was dark. Blackness, with the icy pinpoints of stars: in every direction, forever.]
Who do I have to kill?The reply of the Lord
What lies do I have to tell?
Who do I sell my soul to, oh Lord?
I am all powerful
Mr invisible
Justice, yeah.
Don’t be miserable
Take up your handgrenade
And take control, yeah
[By 4.15, I could no longer see the earth
By 4.17, the last angels had bid me farewell and I was racing through the interstellar void towards the face of god.
Frost began to gather on my wings. It was bitterly cold, and it was dark. Blackness, with the icy pinpoints of stars: in every direction, forever.]
My friend M__
M__ could be Charlie Manson, or he could be a benign Gandalf after fifteen years on methadone. We used to play chess, but I'm not gonna publish anyone's photo on here without asking first.
The touch of psychosis in the early dawnHe has his own church, but it’s starting to crumble. Pieces of masonry are starting to fall from ceilings. It’s an old chapel by the canal, which was already old when they turned it into some sort of workshop, and now it’s M__’s chapel. His eyes glint at you from under bushy curling eyebrows like Nietschzean moustachios, one pointing up and one pointing down. When I first met M__, for a few weeks I had this conviction he could read my thoughts.
He stirs and wakes and moves a pawn
3.3.05
24-hour what? Metropolis fuck
I was crossing a bitterly cold and dark London sometime just before or around 5am, sitting in the back seat of a bus, wondering about the much-vaunted 24-hour drinking licences. We're pulling into the West End, so yeah, where I go?
I would go for a drink now to some bar I never been before, would do me good. Because despite the residual endorphin-imbalance cold in my bones I really feeling okay, feeling adventurous. So I thought I can check on the internet - Google "24-hour bar London" or something - but the fucking easyInternet on Tottenham Court Rd closes fucking 2am. This is the fucking West End. So what sort of fucking metropolis is this, when you can't go out to dine at 11pm and then have comfortably many hours left to go and drink and dance?
Where if you feel the need to go for one drink alone somewhere at 5am and you maybe run into a beautiful stranger or anyone to mesh minds with, it's some sort of a fucking impossibility? Fuck them.
(A note, though: I had not been out dining, drinking and dancing or any such. I had spent half of that night sleepless in M__'s crumbling church on L__ B__ Rd, stranded east of Clapton in bitter cold and rain... It was an epic mystical quest across the wastelands of north and east London, in weather as bitterly cold as any I remember in this city... A mystical quest to reclaim my brain chemistry... Be ye mystic...)
I would go for a drink now to some bar I never been before, would do me good. Because despite the residual endorphin-imbalance cold in my bones I really feeling okay, feeling adventurous. So I thought I can check on the internet - Google "24-hour bar London" or something - but the fucking easyInternet on Tottenham Court Rd closes fucking 2am. This is the fucking West End. So what sort of fucking metropolis is this, when you can't go out to dine at 11pm and then have comfortably many hours left to go and drink and dance?
Where if you feel the need to go for one drink alone somewhere at 5am and you maybe run into a beautiful stranger or anyone to mesh minds with, it's some sort of a fucking impossibility? Fuck them.
(A note, though: I had not been out dining, drinking and dancing or any such. I had spent half of that night sleepless in M__'s crumbling church on L__ B__ Rd, stranded east of Clapton in bitter cold and rain... It was an epic mystical quest across the wastelands of north and east London, in weather as bitterly cold as any I remember in this city... A mystical quest to reclaim my brain chemistry... Be ye mystic...)
HST on marijuana and writing
Citing fair use I reproduce a passage of the obligatory article / obituary / tribute to Hunter S. Thompson from eXile which it won't let me access or link to any more:
It took me such a long long time to finally admit to myself ("Weakness, Mike! Can't handle it, you feeble mind?") that cannabis is not helping with what I want to do. Oh I smoke every so often, I smoke now, but that is for sedative purposes - programming my brain chemistry - it soothes this harried wakefulness.
There are drug users and there are skilful drug users. Which one you are is what makes all the difference.
The original article is here, see if the server will let you read it.Ever since he got famous and kept saying openly that he loved and used speed, they'd been waiting eagerly to see him turn into something they could use to scare the kids back to nice, dumb, cell-toxic booze. They were willing to tolerate a discreet stoner -- marijuana users are pitifully harmless people -- but not a smart, tough, 6'3" redneck who sang the praises of the hard stuff. (In fact, one of my favorite comments he made about drugs was that he could write effectively on every drug EXCEPT marijuana.)
(John Dolan, eXile #208)
It took me such a long long time to finally admit to myself ("Weakness, Mike! Can't handle it, you feeble mind?") that cannabis is not helping with what I want to do. Oh I smoke every so often, I smoke now, but that is for sedative purposes - programming my brain chemistry - it soothes this harried wakefulness.
There are drug users and there are skilful drug users. Which one you are is what makes all the difference.