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Wednesday 25 November 2015

BREAKING NEWS - French Polishers Ad Kid “Still A Twat”

STAFF, AGENCY REPORTS - 

RESEARCHERS have concluded that the kid from the Yellow Pages ad where he phones up to fix his table is ‘still a twat.'

The discovery was made by boffins from Hoegaarden University of Popular Culture in Groenigen, Netherlands after years of painstaking study of the available material.

Professor Cornelius Funk said in a paper published in Journal Of The Culture that, “We first studied the phenomenon through his stupid fucking monobrow and  his dickwad hair,” which alerted scientists to the possibility of arseholery.

He explained that the teen dingbat appeared to have woken up in the aftermath of a party, albeit a tame-looking one given the lack of any evidence of proper fun.

“His nobhead shirt simply added to the pile of data but our suspicions were finally proven by the fact that this obviously spoilt little fucker immediately knew how to search for a French Polisher when he noticed a poxy little scrape on his wanky fucking table,” said the Professor.

Since the ad was first aired in 1991 the Internet has revolutionised the way people communicate but Professor Funk said that even had the polisher been summoned virtually, the findings still would have been the same.

“The way the French Polisher was contacted was studied but proven to be irrelevant to the context,” he continued. “We had no other conclusion than this kid was, indeed, still a twat in 2015.”

"He is no doubt still a virgin," added the boffin.

He revealed that his team Hoegaarden University was now poring over initial data which seemed to indicate that, ‘The bird coming out the shower,’ was ‘Still fit.’ 

Full findings are yet to be announced.



Thursday 12 November 2015

Nearly done

You know that feeling, when you're near the edge of a cliff, or walking on a high bridge, or even at the side of a busy road. You know the voice?

The voice saying: jump.

Every other fibre of your being and your brain and your body knows not to do so. But there's a compulsion, somewhere, deep down, that shouts to be acknowledged.

You never do, of course. But there is a what if... somewhere, and it rises and wiggles and tickles until a car beeps or a seagull cawks or you feel a rivet under your steps. Then things snap back into place and self-searching is replaced by talking or thinking of where you're going or what's for tea instead.

This is how I feel today about work.

I've written 85k in about six or seven weeks for a book project and it's all reasonably serviceable stuff. Maybe even good. I think it's not too bad.

And I think I'm going to be able to finish the writing phase today. It's definitely only about four hours' more of work. I have the research and the ideas and the rhythm all down. Just really allowing all that to percolate and make itself ready.

And I've got this voice saying: Why not just delete those emails to myself with the drafts; delete all the bookmarks; delete all the research; throw out all the albums and the music; set Word to 'replace all' with the text of a Snoopy book?

God it's a rascal feeling that. You know the one. I think I've proved I can do it so why bother actually finishing? Keep it pure as an idea. Stop it now, whilst it's still just me and a computer and songs and interviews and research. You know?

I am so seduced by the nihilism of this that I have allowed it to flourish in my head, even whilst every fibre of my being, and all that, knows not to do it.

I'm going for a cup of tea. Then I'm going to finish my book.

But first, I'm going to pretend that I'm going to delete it from existence. What japes.

Thursday 5 November 2015

Two Thousand-Fifteen

People talk about feeling the walls closing in on them. But it’s the opposite. 

The Internet is a vast expanse of everything and nothing and meanings everywhere.

But everywhere you stand the meanings and everythings shift and are different. It’s endless strands of nothingness; a mulch, a mush, a mashup of moments divorcing and remarrying at every instant. It’s endless snakes around your ankles, a mobius Ourobourous of patterns that make no sense and all sense at the same time. To stand up amidst this multidirectional, multimetan infinity is impossible.

The walls don’t ever close in: That’s the problem. Walls would make sense of it. Enclose a space. Define something. Allow the unpicking of some of the living tangle. Bring time to it.

Instead, the data does not flow but cancers itself through every possible atom there ever is or ever was. And it’s always moving, always mutating, always self-reflecting and spewing itself back out again in infinite copies of itself.

You, too, are data. You are tangled, mutant, strands of nothing. A double helix is nothing against such infinite power of averaging, of flatlining, of the race to a million billion shades of the same grey mush that was so seductive before it began; before we truly worked out that our worship was as useless as the god we created.

Deifying data killed information. Meaning is nothing. Everything is there, ready to be dislocated and briefly believed before being cast away in favour of the next shard, the new speckled lie. The trumpets of Jericho hailed nothing but the deluge. You can’t drown in it but you sure can’t swim. The best anyone can hope to do is to float, eyes open but mind shut against the constant frazzling ordure of meaningless input. Input, input, input, and there is nothing you can do because you invited it over the threshold.

Consumption has been replaced by infinite doses of data dressed in whatever flimsy masquerade suits the moment. The moment has been destroyed by the repetition of the infinite copy, the final and the perfect divorcing of linearity from humanity. Data units so numerous that they choke all meaning, that they bury context in a damp dust of input, input, input.


If you want an image of the future, imagine a lorryload of sand flowing into a human mind, forever.