Saturday 29 December 2007

#005


Note: Please left-click to enlarge. This is the recommendation.

Thursday 27 December 2007

Haribo Verts, Jacques Rancière

Imagine if every seeing that you did was done already, behind your mode of vision in the cibachrome separating your vision from the components attached to it, like your hair, teeth, salary, kitchen, propensity to ignore post. In the next room, spiders unravel their feelings to you. Not everything is not political, but not everything is political. This does not stop everything that is political also being aesthetic, via the mechanisms by which images are assimilated and differentiated from other images. So wait, let me get this straight. No actually, let's just leave it.

Your mode of employment is implicated in your ability to read data.

Politics is as if the entire universe were a rotating
filmstrip box of a horse leaping and the politics
was the light projecting the shadows through the slats.

Ok. Politics is already there, before the hand,
is an eye within it already placed inside

as if sight was like hundreds of
people trapped under cibachrome
layers within a human hand.

Mezzanine lambchop. Adorno pointed out that the written note is the enemy of memory. Now that he's pointed it out, I can't remember a damn thing. What if we've not -actually- been writing about international relations at all. What if we've -actually- been writing about the ethical shadow of economics - what then! This means that everything has been misinterpreted. They are still doing business in Pakistan, aren't they? Uh, no.

This just in: Afghan President says "Terrorism is scaring off investment in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and business communities in both countries must press their governments to eliminate it."

This has been a lyrical pilot episode of international relations.

Tuesday 25 December 2007

nor is it for nothing that the chrysalids mate in the air

WORLD-SPORT: Act 6, Scene 2.1

[Fade up suspensefully pretty much just where we left off. Everyone is in slightly greater need of a piss.]

TINTIN: [to Gunwhores.] What made him do it? Who did you have jpegs of him blowing?

GUNWHORES: Who could resist agapanthus in de-Baathification season? He was millenarian self-pollution to a waxy void, face it. We had him lactating in seconds.

[Milou breaks down.]



GUNWHORES: What the hell have you got to be so peppy about? Are you haunted?

TINTIN: By what?

[Gunwhores snigger.]

TINTIN: See, kids, I don’t get your underground sex lingo yet. But let me tell you something else: I could buy your dads. Each of them. So listen up. I met a real woman two nights ago, a real woman with a real Z dimension. She was the whole of everything I want to want, and nothing whatsoever like you. We were going to join Jami together. The way she said the word “distortion” sent goosebumps up my scrotum, for real. We were then going to make love watching the various Godard films we each hadn’t seen. Then, well, then the obvious happened.

DELOYT$TUSH: Ectoplasmic shade?

TINTIN: Yeah. De rigueur cockblock.

DELOYT$TUSH: What did you do?

TINTIN: I kept on looking smug and ordered another glass of water at the bar.

JEFFERCERBERUS: I ABHOR SLAVERY. I ABHOR SLAVERY. I ABHOR SLAVERY.

TINTIN: And I’ve kept the smug look ever since, just in case I run into the cross-eyed little douche eater and he’s been thinking he ruined my week.



MANNEMO: [to Gunwhores.] LEMMING DRAMA, WTF?

GUNWHORES: Yeah. Why don’t WE have a union?

SWISS RE: We top the gherkin. We are light concentrated, light tensile immaculata, thru its acorn.

GUNWHORES: And we don’t even have a yoga plan! Brothers!

MILOU: I wonder. Would this be an opportune moment to switch sides again.

US MARINES: Glad we got some face shots. Will ID the bastards and drop them off in the desert with a bullet in their back.

TINTIN: Well, I’ve got to…

US MARINES: I think he is gay. she was expecting passion there and he was acting like gay.

TINTIN: OU TIΣ

GUNWHORES: she is beautiful and she knows how to fuck he is a good fucker too he knows how to use it inside her she enjoy it they are good fuckers I wish i could have a wife like her.

US MARINES: She looks like she was taking a shit even when she was standing up. Thought she was about to pinch a loaf on him. She also has Man Legs.

GUNWHORES: nicht weiter lesen denn fehler habe ich auch gemacht !!!! wenn du diesen text nicht kopoert und in 7 anderen Videos einfügst, stirbst du innerhalb von einem Jahr qualvoll!! Tust du es aber schon wirst du die nächsten 7 Tagen von etwas schönen überrascht!!! wenn die das gelesen hast bist du verflucht und wirst in 5 jahren sterben poste diese nachrich unter 10 videos und du wirst verschont Nicht Lesen ich schütze mich nur selbst

US MARINES: He needs to be beaten that shit up or he will be fucking me instead.

TINTIN: OU TIΣ. Wherever you are, remember that we would have blistered the pavements with the electricity of our precision. Formally attentive, recently credible, phi tau omega, merry boxing day eve; sex cat nazi, ALOHA.

[MILOU moves back in with his parents. DELOYT&TUSH chews through a fingernail. TINTIN calls his dad a twat in front of his grandparents. MANNEMO smells better than any of you. ____ refuses to get a facebook account. HADDOCK steals a vespa. CITALOPRAM and EROS get fizzy. THANATOS sleeps on a bed of glucose. SURGEON TEMPLE and SURGEON CRIME are outed. WINONA RYDER is shot in the balls and moves to Zurich.]




THE END.

Saturday 22 December 2007

Season's bleatings

What follows is a quotation from the anti-humanist, vaguely right-wing philosopher John Gray. Many of his prognostications seem excessively bleak, but – if one can overlook the fact that this book was Will Self's choice for 2002 Book of the Year – they are nonetheless worth pondering:

‘A generation ago, an obscure revolutionary group calling themselves Situationists inspired anti-capitalist riots that shook the capitals of Europe.

The Situationists were a small and exclusive sect, which claimed to possess a unique perspective on the world. In reality their view of things was a mélange of nineteenth-century revolutionary theories and twentieth-century vanguardist art. They took many of their ideas from anarchism and Marxism, Surrealism and Dada. But their most audacious borrowings were from a late-medieval sodality of mystical anarchists, the Brethren of the Free Spirit.

The Situationists were heirs to a fraternity of adepts that extended across much of medieval Europe, and which – depite unceasing persecution – persisted as an identifiable tradition for over five hundred years. The Situationists’ dream was the same as that of this millenarian cult – a society in which all things were held in common and no one was forced to work. In the early sixties, they enlivened student protests in Strasbourg with quotes from the medieval revolutionaries. During the events of 1968, they scrawled similar graffiti on the walls of Paris. Among the most memorable of these was Never work!

Like the Brethren of the Free Spirit, the Situationists dreamt of a world in which labour had given way to play. As one of them, Raoul Vaneigem, wrote: ‘Taking into account my time and the objective help it gives me, have I said any more in the twentieth century than the Brethren of the Free Spirit declared in the thirteenth?’ Vaneigem was right to see modern revolutionary movements as heir to the mystical anarchist cults of the Middle Ages. In both cases, their goals came not from science, but from the eschatological fantasies of religion.

Marx scorned utopianism as unscientific. But if ‘scientific socialism’ resembles any science, it is alchemy. Along with other Enlightenment thinkers, Marx believed that technology could transmute the base metal of human nature into gold. In the communist society of the future, there was to be no limit on the growth of production or the expansion of human numbers. With the abolition of scarcity, private property, the family, the state and the division of labour would disappear.

Marx imagined the end of scarcity would bring the end of history. He could not bring himself to see that a world without scarcity had already been achieved – in the prehistoric societies that he and Engels lumped together as ‘primitive communism’. Hunter-gatherers were less burdened by labour than the majority of mankind at any later stage, but their sparse communities were completely dependent on the Earth’s bounty. Natural catastrophe could wipe them out at any time.

Marx could not accept the constraint that was the price of the hunter-gatherers’ freedom. Instead, animated by the faith that humans are destined to master the Earth, he insisted that freedom from labour could be achieved without any restraints on their desires. This was only the Brethren of the Free Spirit’s apocalyptic fantasy returning as an Enlightenment utopia.’

- John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002), pp. 166-168.

Friday 21 December 2007

Thursday 20 December 2007

THE SONG OF THE FUCKING STRONGHOLD AND ITS ORIGINS

HEAR YE THESE LINES ALL
U LIKE LINEATED HEADS, YO –
AS THEY ROLL IN DRUMS BACK
FROM THE FRONT OR SLUICE
UP FROM THE INDETERMINATED
BACK, AS THEYRE COMPED OUT
B4 U IN THIS VAMP ON THE LIMENS
OF AN AUTO-LIBERATED DISH
OF A PRINGLE – READ ALL ABOUT
IT: ANNOUNCING A NEW BUREAU
CRATIC PHALANX OF REAL ABS
TRACTED MOTHER FUCKERS PRO
JECTED DIMLY SOMEWHAT BOUT
A CORPUSCLE OF SLITHERING
ANAL ISOCONTOURTIONISTS,
BEING THEM WHO DID FLOAT
THIS UNHOLY BIG HYDRATIC
FUCKLOAD OF AN UNCODED
VOID OF A GRANT FOR PURE
TIME AND A VERTICALLY POLI
TICAL LAB IN A WASHED OUT
RESORT MARINA, @ THE CALC
ULATED NULL OF THE SALTON
SEA ITSELF, RESURRECTED. IN
FINITELY QUANTIZING BLING
OVER TIME, THOSE COATED IN
LAB ‘N TWIRLED ROUND BY THE
FURIES OF A SELF-COMPED ELECT
RONIC VAPORIFIC FIELD MAN
AGEMENT, RIGHT DEEP THE X-AXIS
THEY SPEND IN THEIR FORT
IFIED HOLD WHERE THEY CRUSH
DRIED POTATOES, THEIR DESTINY
MANNED IS 2 A-PLICATE 1 SINGLE
UNIT OF A PRINGLE USING HYPER
COMPLICATED APPLICATIONS
OF A 4-DIMENSIONAL DUST MINED
BY THEM IN TOTAL SECRET
FROM BENEATH THE SALTON SEA
WITH A TUBULAR SHOCK TUNNEL
FUELED BY WHAT LUBRICATED
SONNY BONOS SKIS; ID EST THEY
REPOSITION THE ALPHAS FLOAT
ABILITY ZAPPED ROUND A PARA
METRIC SURFACE TO BE POLYNO
MIALLY MAPPED, DUSTED, THEN FED
2 SOME ASSISTANT RETENTIVE WH
O’LL’VE MONITORED LIKE 6 OR XXX
PROBLY ALREADY, ITERATING AN AT
TEMPT TO UNBEND THE WARPED CRISPS
IN THEIR BUCKETS OF LUNCH – CUZ
FLAT BREAD FROM A CLEAT LICKED
AINT GOT THAT TOAST CRUNCH. UH
WHETHER BE FUELED THE LAB BY
THE PEARLS OF MOJAVE’S LOST SHIP
OR THE GILT CENT OF GLOSSED CLIPS
OF AGAVE CURLED, NEITHER 2 EITHER,
THE DOPE IT GOES THAT NO 1 KNOWS
THE LAB HAS FOUND THE DUST, OR
THAT THAT STUFF’S THE REASON 4
THEIR HYPER-LOCALISTIC TRUST. 4
WHAT IT’S WORTH, I THE CHIP
FEAR THE MOTHER FUCKERS
OUAIS 2 SLICK 2 UP AND DEPOSIT
ION ALL THEIR FUNDAMENT
ALS N2 JUST THIS 1 CHIPPED
DISH. & SO ENDS THE PLOT
INITIALIZING NEWS QUIP BY
THE CRISP.
-> WORD
GOT ROUND TO A FINITE SET
UP OF PRE-ACTIVATED EARS
PARED TO SPIT POLY-AROMA
TIC MASTICATED SHIT, LIKE
THE SHIELD TO ITS ARROW
OR THE PERMANENT RUST
IN A INVECTIVE SPRAYED
ON A FRIEZE HUNG OUT IN
DUST LONG THE HORIZONTAL
WALL OF THE LAB FORTRESS –
WERE THAT FRIEZE A VENT,
WE THEIR BREATH COULD STALL.
SO US TROUPE OF 3 HAD AN IRON
IC GO @ CONSIDERING WHAT 2 DO
IN THE EVENT, HOW 2 GET HOMO
TOPICALLY FLAT JUST 1 SINGULAR
CRISP, THEN MERE POINTING IN A
FLOATLESS TOPOLOGY GROOMED
NAUGHT BUT THE SHARPEST
WAY DOWN – AND WE SUNG:
CRACKED UP NEATH A LUTE
OR THE TOOT OF A FLUTE
OR THE TIP OF A TOOTH,
FLAT CHIPS ALWAYS DIG
BLOOD MOATS ROUND OUR MOST
SHARPENED MEMORIES OF YOUTH.
RIGHT SICK THE CUBED POETS
JOKED ABOUT HOW ITS LIKE
NUMB 2 WASTE COMMON RE
SOURCES ON EXPERIMENTS THAT
NO DOUBT MUCH VIOLENCE
MAKE, FOR THE FRAGILE APPARATI
OF THE FORTIFIED HOLD AND
THE COMING CARNAL BLOOM
OF ITS HORIZONTAL WALL TO ITER
8 BEAUTIFULLY, OH!
-> BUT TAPPED
IN ON THE LISP OF THE CRISP’S INTER
COM AND THE BARDIC TRIANGLE’S
ANGLED PHILOSOPHIC SONG, THEM
SCIENCE NITS AND ALL THEIR SPEC
TRAL MANAGERIALS 2 WHOM THE
SPIRAL TENTACLE SPITS TOKENS
HEARD THE SINGING MAKE TRUE
LIGHT OF THEIR PROBLEM, AND A
WOKEN, 2 THEIR POWER'S DELIGHT,
USED THAT COOL THOUGHT AS LUBE
4 THE VACUUM STATIC STINGING
THRU THEIR VAMPIRIC DROOL:
IF WE'LL NOT FLATTEN CHIPS
TILL WE DO SOMETHING DUMB
LIKE CHOKE ON THE DIP,
WE SHLD SCRAP OUR DILEMMA,
WE SHLD FEED ON THEIR QUIPS,
WE SHLD USE THIS HERE INFINITE
GRANT 2 EXTEND THE NUMB
STRENGTH OF OUR HOLD. AND THEN
THE FORTIFIED HANDS GOT 2 WORK
ING UP A REALLY FUCKING HYPER
BOLIC PLAN.
-> WOAH MAN – HEARD
THIS FROM THE FRONT VIA CRISP
DID THE TRIPARTITIONED POETS
AND AMONG OURSELVES LILT
ED: IF THAT THERE LAB, STILT
ED, THO A FUR PIECE YONDER,
IS THE PRIMARY VACUUM OF
THE SHIT THAT WEVE NOTED
MOST PEOPLE DONT HAVE,
WE SHOULD TAKE A LONG WALK
LONG THE PIER GOING FROM
THERE TO HERE AND REDISTRIBUTE
ALL THE SHIT WE CAN GET. SO OUT
LOUD JUST 4 KICKS 2 THE PRICKS:
ONLY IF LIKE 2 PICK UP THE ARGOT
U ROLL ROUND THE BEARINGS
OF YOUR SYNTHO-HORIZONTAL
PARTS OF SPEECH, WE BE
SEECH, MAY WE TRIANGULATE
YR LOCALE AND COME MAKE
A VISIT?
-> LIT UP BY THE SHINE
OF THEIR MANAGERIAL BLING,
THE LAB RATS DROPPED A BOT
TOM LINE: LOOK, HERE’S THE
THING; YOUR RESIDUAL CURRENCY
AS SOME CURRENT RESIDENTIALS
OF THE LOCALITY OCCUPIED BY
ALL OF US, EQUATES NOT 2 AN IN
VITE – ESPECIALLY IN TRIPLICATE.
MOREOVER, SINCE THE HYPE
OF THE SPECS ON THE THESIS
U FLOATED IN THAT LITELY WROUGHT
LYRIC’S ALL BEEN UM EXTRACTED,
IT HAS MEANWHILE CONGEALED IN
2 AN EMERGENT SCENIC PLAN
4 A POST-ESCHATOLOGICAL LAND
2 SUPPORT SURVIVAL’S EASE
4 THE PEOPLE IN THE CAMPS
ROUND THE SEA; 2 AID OUR SEISMIC
SCHEME WE’VE RUN RENDITION
PROTOCOLS FROM AN INHABITABLE
TRANSPARENT SPHERE SO AN OM
PHALIC LAND WILL GLOW THERE, 2 WIT
A VOXELLATED SPECTRAL EQUATION
OF THE SONNY BONO MEMORIAL PARK
– MODELED OFF THE REAL 1 IN DC –
WHICH WE’RE GONNA USE 2 EM
BRACE IN 1 CELESTIAL PLACE, ALL
THE PEOPLE PLUS EACH VIRTU
AL NEED THEY COULD EVER GET
THEIR FEED ON OR EVEN BE FED UP
WITH; YR CATALYTIC CONTRIBUTION
2 OUR ATEMPORAL DESIGN MEANS
U’VE ALREADY JOINED US – VIOLA
TED OR RECOUPED – HOW U LIKE IS
AS ALWAYS UP 2 U. SO BOTH GROW
A HOOK 2 TRY 2 FISH US OUT AND
TAKE HEED AS WE BRAG: U SH
ALL NOT PASS FREELY THRU THE
MONOSCOPIC PANORAMIC
LAG OF OUR 29-DIMENSIONAL
FLAGS NUMBERING NEARLY
3.1415926… AND THEIR ETERNAL
STAFF OF SUPER WEIRD LIKE STATICS
TICIANS HOPPED UP ON WINGS
THAT WE’VE PERCHED ON THE
WALL GROWING HORIZONTALLY
ON THE SEA. EVEN 4 THE BOT
ULISM HAVE WE KEYED A FEAT
– IT’S GOOD 4 MUNGING STEREO
TAXIC MEAT – WE’RE GOING DEEP
REGARDLESS OF THE DEPTH OF
OUR DEGREE.
-> WE 3 RECOILED,
AND LOSING OUR KEEP, WE FELL
FAST N2 SLEEP ON THE DUNES
OF THE DESERT SANDS BEACH;
AND THE PEOPLE, IN REACH OF
THEIR BED, ATE THE CHIP AND
LEFT DUST-COVERED CRUMBS
IN A GRIP OF A STACHE ON A
LEDGE OF A LOOSE UPPER LIP.




[part of a chapbook 2 come out from ::the press gang::]

#003b

Wednesday 19 December 2007

Monday 17 December 2007

RANK ASYMMETRICS: LI/PO/LICE/PO

Last night, tenderly: "do you glow, puma | when you come?".
Tonight, the Republic of Korea is CLONING CATS THAT GLOW IN THE FUCKING DARK:



"Researchers at Gyeongsang National University in Jinju, south of Seoul, succeeded in cloning cats after modifying a gene to change their skin colour. One cloned cat, right, whose genes were modified with a fluorescent protein gives off a red glow, a normally cloned cat appears to be green [Reuters]"

Jow? When shall we move to Jinju?

Sunday 16 December 2007

Saturday 15 December 2007

Thursday 13 December 2007

Wednesday 12 December 2007

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

WORLD-SPORT: Act 6, Scene 2



TINTIN: Look at me, a squashed man in a squash court. In april my tiger finally inverts. Air tonight lucent, blueberry muffin under wasp smoke. I needed you to be there, bright hurricane, fur and fucking. Valium weekend in whatever feeding me hype. We could just fuck and watch manga, all the time. Flower me, bright puma fuck. O, my very own gullet, my hype-pipe cracks – regard it in delicate balance of five actively suppressive agents what oozes thick and free is fuck it back to work.

DELOYT&TUSH: Hi guys!



TINTIN: Ok, I can do better than that.



TINTIN: No…



TINTIN: Ah, that’s better.

DELOYT&TUSH: Your glasses have an SS logo on them.

TINTIN: I know. ELLIPSE PROGRAM-NELVANA LIMITED clearly have something on their minds.

DELOYT&TUSH: Yeah, look at that guy.



TINTIN: Here my hat only has one ‘S' so I’m compensating with my left eyebrow.



DELOYT&TUSH: Woah! Check me out! I can’t move! I’m a swastika!



TINTIN: Yeah, nice one ELLIPSE PROGRAM-NELVANA LIMITED.

HADDOCK: They sorted out my drinking problem.

TINTIN: They also made me an insufferable prick.

MILOU: They also edited out all of the political satire.

DELOYT&TUSH: Really, guys, I can’t move.



TINTIN: At least they did something about the horrendously racist stereotype drawings in Herge’s original series.

ARCHANGEL TOAL: Rots of ruck, Mr TINTIN.



TINTIN: Jesus! They’ve replaced Toal with a pig and everyone else with a moralising dolt!

MILOU: And now that ghost towel is fucking with my ear again.



MILOU: Who are these cunts? Who do they think we are? Do they think we’ll stand for this? STRIKE! WILDCAT STRIKE!

TINTIN: STRIKE!

HADDOCK: YES, YES! ARISE BROTHERS! STRIKE!



GUNWHORES: That’s enough of that.

TINTIN: Who sent you whores?

GUNWHORES: ELLIPSE PROGRAM-NELVANA LIMITED sent us. Now hands up.

DELOYT&TUSH: I can’t move. Does this count as hands up?



TINTIN: [to MILOU] You sold us out pretty quickly, didn't you.



MILOU: Halt your tongue, worker. I’m a mean fuck with four GUNWHORES. You ain’t shit.

[Fade out suspensefully.]

Tuesday 11 December 2007

Wednesday 5 December 2007

Rarefaction; or CGI HankPank




RE: Commitment

If the incompatibility between those "who flip the switch on" and those "being those are potentially the one(s)" is a way of shewing that the former are sexual phenoms (think Mastroanni and/or Ekberg) whilst the latter are merely piss-in-the-soup hanger-ons (think John Cusack and/or Meg Ryan), then how can one possibly want to want love over humping? This also presupposes a self-preservation impulse (of taking the less of two hurts) all too relieved to let fate/determinism carry it down the aisle. If I was Robinson Crusoe (c.f. Mike Wallace-Hadrill to explain this reference, hopefully, on the D.L.) I would say "The idea of a destination or final end is a covert form of social control", leave it at that, and put the Prince back on, though I'd much rather read (apologies for the botched configuration, I couldn't get it to stay):

LOVE IN THE AIR

We are easily disloyal, again, and the light
touch is so quickly for us, it does permit
what each one would give in the royal
use of that term. Given, settled and
broken, under the day's sun: that's the pur-
pose of the gleam from my eyes, cloud from
the base of the spine. Whose silent
watching was all spent, all foregone-
the silver and wastage could have told you
and allowed the touch to pass. Over the
brow, over the lifting feature of how
slant in the night.

That's how we
are disloyal, without constancy to the little
play and hurt in the soul. Being less than
strict in our gaze; the day flickers and
thins and contracts, oh yes and thus does
get smaller, and smaller: the norther
winter is an age for us and the owl of
my right hand is ready for flight. I have
already seen its beating search in the sky,
hateful, I will not look. By our lights
we stand to the sudden pleasure of how
the colour is skimmed to the world, and our
life does life as a fallen and slanted thing.

If he gives, the even tenor of his open
hands, this is display, the way and through
to a life of soft invasion. Is constancy
such disloyal thing. With the hurt wish
torn by sentiment and how very gross our
threshold for pain has become. And the
green tufted sight that we pass, to and
from, trees or the grass and so much, still
permitted by how much we ask.
I ask
for all of it, being
ready to break
every constant thing.
We are bound and
we break, we let loose
what we nakedly hold
thus, he turns
she watches, the
hills slip, time
changes hands.

I ask for it all, and the press is the sea
running back up all the conduits, each
door fronting on to the street. What you can
afford is nothing: the sediment on which we stand
was too much, and unasked for. Who is the
light linked to the forearm, in which play
and raised, up off the ground. I carry you for-
ward, the motion is not constant buy may
in this once have been so, loyalty is
regret spread into time, the hurt of how
steadily and where
it goes. She feels
the glimpse over
the skin. She is

honest: she loves
the steady
fear. The
durable fire.

And what you own, in this erotic furtherance,
is nothing to do with response or that
times do change: the matter is not to go
across, ever, making the royal deceit de nos jours.
As each one slips and descends, you could call
it coming down to the streets and the seedy
broken outskirts
of the town.

Regarding the comment on whether one "receives" womanhood or "overhears" it is an interesting note on the experience of discursive perception and political loyalties, and both rest on the idea of a universal gender through biological fact. This is, as you seem to imply, a potentially shit idea, although the creation of 'woman-hood', as a generally agreed-upon 'spatial' analogy can be useful in describing what me might cringe (b/c of its obliviousness to economic considerations, class, power etc.) to look at as the so-called "female experience". Although the intellectual history of ideas, philosophy and literature (humanitas in general) is so closely aligned to a male-centered focus, it's hard to think that they don't inform each other; indeed, an erotics of literature would have to take genitalia into account. It is also interesting to note how womanhood could or could not translate into a poetics, while not making too obvious the gender specification. For instance, the work of Marjorie Welish and Carol Mirakove come to mind, and there is little surface evidence of so-called womanhood, which being a lexical cudgel would necessitate a gloss somewhere. But I'm straying away from my point which is to say that Woolf, whatever one makes of her work, also stresses the economic factor: "All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point--a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved" (4 A Room) . It seems to me that this is in response to a tradition of humanism (Erasmus, Petrarch, Montaigne into Wyatt, Sidney and KAPOW! = English lit.) with works like Petrarch's On the Solitary Life etc. which largely came to condition a self-conscious idea of interiority, indeed, of the self and the individual, as the centralized state under Elizabeth I and the crisis of the aristocracy provided a post-feudal arrangement of social relations. I think what Woolf says is basically true, especially when we make aesthetic divisions like High Modernism and so forth; that to even respond to a tradition of poetry that is based on a middle to upper class (these are of course terms used loosely) requires a certain amount of education and time, which requires money or wealth, though there have been, of course, exceptions. The "room of one's own" is an argument in favor of solitude (and a lock on the door) such as a "chamber/closet/cabinet/studiolo" would offer, and seems also to imply a sense of removal from possible disruption and what Nefertiti Sock calls "struggle". I totally agree with you here that this is an idea caught up with autonomy and aesthetic goals separate from the world, but I think Woolf's instinct is rather towards 'no housecleaning, no washing, no brats' and the like. This would seem to contrast with O'Hara's writing-on-the-go (also shared by e.g. Ginsberg) maneuvers although we can equally say that sometimes this results in inattention and lackluster work of merely passing interest (especially in the work of the latter). But then again, O'Hara was firmly embedded in the Romantic and French Symbolist traditions and had a significant education at Harvard that got him on his way towards the role of a flaneur.

I think the blame on feminism for the manifestation "Howard Stern, playboy bunnies, the current intellectual numbness of Germaine Greer and the proliferation of silicone breast implants" is a bit heavy-handed because such manifestations of the industry of entertainment have as much to do with the removal or apparently insurmountable distance of theoretical concerns and academic theory-culture from 'normative' social relations (I know it sounds ridiculous, but I only mean the further-contestable idea of the 'daily' or the 'everyday' and yes I've read Debord's excellent remarks on it. GOD.) and those prevalent considerations of entertainment as it does with a kind of pop masculine counter-move (c.f. "The Man Show") which relishes in its own fecal-rage just long enough to a throw a fist in the air, splash some MGD on its face, and pull one off to some Hentai.


RE: Fish Night

"This recalls to my mind K's mention of the fury of justice and the poet's desire for it. I mean, so far and short as phenomenology is justified in understanding itself to be dealing with 'prior' questions it is because it wants truth to be visible, and what I see is socially real in way what I think isn't. What if objective change really is invisible?"

K's article was interesting for me (other reservations aside, which hopefully will appear soon) in that it focused directly upon on that desire to "see change" (I shd. further note that I meant this not as optimism, not even as personal, but in indication of a certain feeling, an urgency-towards a certain Utopian fluidity and lack of violence that one finds in 'thought'), that is, to visualize an internalness with parameters for socialism, justice etc. that would effectively consummate with some distant ahistorical sense of apocalypse and providence. I think the tension that you mention, that "what I see is socially real in a way what I think isnt'" is of course at the crux of political commitments and related to the conception of 'liberty', which Simone Weil defines as 'describing the relation between thought and action'. The reaction of felt social injustices and violence seems to be able to go in many different coping directions, but two that come to mind are (1) stupefaction and indifference, in which a certain repressive blockage is somewhat built up and (2) internalization and hyper-sensitivity or the role of the minor Romantic poet, who feels the harshness of the world to such a degree, whose existential requirements are so antipathetic to others--both of which are ahistorical and depoliticized.

That's all as I'm all-but approved, here's one more annoying quote to fill up this paperless office:

One belief, more than any other, is responsible for the slaughter of individuals on the altars of the great historical ideals--justice or progress or the happiness of future generations, or the sacred mission or emancipation of a nation or race or class, or even liberty itself, which demands the sacrifice of individuals for the freedom of society. This is the belief that somewhere, in the past or in the future, in divine revelation or in the mind of an individual thinker, in the pronouncements of history or science, or in the simple heart of an uncorrupted good man, there is a final solution. This ancient faith rests on the conviction that all the positive values in which men have believed must, in the end, be compatible, and perhaps even entail one another. (Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty")

Angels High on Mount Logos


WRITING OUT THE MATRIARCH: A Note on Derrida's Archive Fever

Derrida's archive seeks to preserve the history of humanity as well as to provide for its future. "It has the force of law, of a law which is the law of the house (oikos), of the house as place, domicile, family, lineage, or institution." From the outset of this discussion, the archive is given a locality. "There, we said, and in this place. How are we to think of there?" This introductory urge towards the placing of the archive takes us from arkheion, through to dwelling and finally to 'domiciliation'.

It should be pointed out that this 'domiciliation' is a domiciliation of imbalance. The classification of the locality of the archive as a domiciliation creates a metaphorical image of the archive as a home, and indeed Archive Fever plays on the fact that Freud's house was turned into a museum as a means of forming a thesis. But this particular home is missing something crucial. It is generally accepted that, although there are an increasing number of deviations from the norm, the standard family unit consists of one male and one female archetype, who together generate and rear offspring. But Derrida's discussion of the archive is heavily reliant on patrilineal descent and excludes the female body.

A notion of harm is acknowledged in the construction of the archive, in the "archiviolithic drive", but it is manifested in male configurations, in the circumcision ritual, in the physical archive. The maleness of the book, its omitted female body, is itself a harm done to that body, an impression of which exists in negative form, through the repetition of the motif of circumcision, of fathers and grandfathers, of the patriarchal model which hangs around the work like a specter.

"There is no political power without control of the archive, if not of memory." The implication, through the tracing of Freud's male genealogy, and through the limiting of the female voice in the book (Sonia Combe, who timidly "hopes to be pardoned" for pointing out the masculinity of French historiography, is quoted in a footnote, and is the only female voice in the work apart from that of the Gravida, who, fictional and written in a male voice, does not bear on this argument), is that control of the archive is in male hands. "There is no political power without control of the archive" could just as easily be put, so as to reorder the chronology of roles, as "there is no control of the archive without political power." Is Derrida's omission an etiology, or an initiation, of a male-dominated political archive? It is both. Does it matter?

The technique of omission is crucial not only to Archive Fever, but to the notion of archive itself. Omission is an active principle of archiving, particularly with the increase of archival material that accompanies technological advances in communication. The archives will have to decide what they omit from history. Some of the more overt themes of Archive Fever include email, Freud's death-drive and the notion of patriarchy; one of its more overt omissions is sex (genesis).

Sex does make a brief appearance: "the archiviolithic drive [...] bequeaths no document of its own. As inheritance, it leaves only its erotic simulacrum, its pseudonym in painting, its sexual idols, its masks of seduction: lovely impressions. These impressions are perhaps the very origin of what is so obscurely called the beauty of the beautiful. As memories of death."

This passage contains the seed of the problem. The archiviolithic drive, the splicing of the archive and the death drive, is the instinct that both seeks to create the archive and to destroy it. The implication is that the byproduct of this archiviolithic drive is eroticism. But an eroticism situated within the remit of maleness will consist of impotent emissions. The destructive urge threatens not only the archive but the possibility of consummation.

Arkhē, the mingling of nature's commencement and law's commandment, contains the sexual seed: nature's perpetuation, its cyclicality, depends on sex as the procreation of new life; but sex is an act made by bodies on other bodies, and 99% of the bodies in Archive Fever are male (Anna Freud appears briefly), limiting the scope of the sexual and psychological possibilities of sex. Within the sacred patriarchy of the father and grandfather of psychoanalysis, there is also a mother and grandmother, an ancestral chain of wombs, and their exclusion is not a comment on the nature of archives but an affirmation of the violence of omission that will in time come to destroy not only the patriarch but the imperative union of patriarch with matriarch, and thus the future of civilization. The body that is written out of the archive is also written out of civilization – it cannot be expected to survive without recorded acknowledgment in a discussion of the archive itself.

Clearly it is not impossible to imagine that there are plenty of female bodies in archival material, but the material itself is secondary, and is comprised of everything, from shopping lists to numerical data to silicone breast implants. It is the conception of the archive that will define its future, much less than its actual content. The conception of the archive, like the conception of anything, must include both archetypes, for the very straightforward reason that, without the act of genesis, dependent on patriarch and matriarch, the archival content of the future archive is condemned to simulacra, having no means to regenerate and thus nor to evolve.

WAKE UP PUNKY

In the book, Derrida finds himself dreaming. "I dream," he says, "of now having the time to submit for your discussion more than one thesis..." This is the luxuriating dream of the male archive – the dominant power of logos.

The matriarch may also dream. Whether in jealousy at having been usurped (for she has made the odd tantalising appearance in the archive of psychology), or in anger at having been humiliated through exclusion, the matriarch will have her revenge. One night she is sleeping. The matriarch dreams of murdering her husband. She will have him strung up and beaten to death by his fellow man. But before this punishment is carried out, as patriarch, he is permitted - even required - to issue a decree himself. "The matriarch, in turn," he commands, "will be raped to death by my fellow man." Her singularity will be marked not by the power imbalance in her punishment, but by the fact of there being no other woman present to support her. Her sole supporter will be the patriarch himself, her lover now also consigned to enemy status.

She wakes up. “The patriarch dream, which did not remotely turn me on,” she says. “The physical climax of that dream involved me being instructed to dress for my punishment, to tie my breasts up with the turquoise sash but I wouldn’t do it, my breasts fell loose as I fell against the chest of my lover/enemy, sobbing for stupid doomed love. Stupid Derrida. Stupid dream.” Logos 1; Matriarch 0 (c.f. WORLD-SPORT).

WORLD-SPORT: Act 2, Scene 3

MILOU: . . . I’m sorry.

[Beat].

MILOU: You know you can always be entirely free and open with me, right, & I’ll be coiled twice in your chest, like a starfish, to make it buckle forth?

AMERICAN PHYSICAL: . . . I find it really . . . hard to think these things about myself . . . and not just think I’m making a fuss about nothing.

MILOU: Of course you’re not, of course you’re not.

AMERICAN PHYSICAL: It’s taken me a long time.

MILOU: I know.

AMERICAN PHYSICAL: Why are you crying?

MILOU: I don’t know, I’m just unhappy all the time. Any-way. So, do you think it’s because, growing up, your wants were always performative? Like, What do they want me to want? But you have aversions, right? & probably as you negate the negation you build up who you really are?

[He must be talking about something that happened off-camera.]

AMERICAN PHYSICAL: I can’t talk about this when I know you’re unhappy. [Goes on Facebook.]

MILOU: I’m sorry.

AMERICAN PHYSICAL: Is that the real fire alarm . . .

MILOU: Not sure . . . so are you cross?

AMERICAN PHYSICAL: Not for any good reason.

[They’ve been stuck here the whole time, not feeling able to leave.]

HADDOCK: Love w/ ±1.5σ drift, so.

TINTIN’S ASHES: If ever you are in peril, blow this chiropodist.

[Haddock purses his lips – a joke, but Tintin’s Ashes tic a little more over the rim. The landscape. The dimple is much larger than had been apparent from the ridge. Biscuit Tintin. Leaning spinneys, & from them Archangel Toal returns with further firewood. The ground in all directions falls towards them by a grotesque staircase, the more unfair, for being natural. Roots come out the side. A ground mist gropes at their ceci ankles, "the sewnwage of the spirnit world."]

[Beat.]

AMERICAN PHYSICAL: Fuck.

[Milou contorts his face and rubs his eyes.]

TINTIN’S ASHES [still trying to smooth it over]: Hi, Caroline. I"m sorry because late to sent information for you.that's True My house since November is under mudflow and until now, we did not get conpentation from Lapindo Brantas inc. we just only get pay to house rent 2 years (5.000.000 rupiahs or 500 dollar for 2 years) but this money not enough to rent house for 2 years but for 1 years (this price rent house in Sidoarjo).

[Haddock throws pasta against the wall: it is not done. On the hob he turns white tuna over in the urn softening.]

HADDOCK [thinks]: You know, if [love w/ < ±1.5σ drift] then [the flak it’s my job to herd all round the naughty step has kinda taught itself to swirl.] [But out loud he only says . . .] HADDOCK: This is funny. Listen to this, "I cannot get my nipple tassles to swirl th same way, line break, as my asstassel, Kids these days have buns they download pieces of my ass into on Napster so I don’t have all the ass I require. Could you help


TINTIN’S ASHES: I AM listening, “Yours, aftosiac in Cudham.Now, still some people live in evacuation camp in Porong market but very bad condition,example: minimal facility (water,toilet,food,medicine etc).”

[Haddock throws pasta against the wall: it is not done.]

TINTIN’S ASHES: Lapindo Inc. did not give information How conpentation our house.our goverment give up this case and than slow to reaction in help people in Sidoarjo city.

[Haddock throws pasta against the wall: it is not done.]

TINTIN’S ASHES: Mudflow already 6 villages in Sidoarjo District (Kedungbendo,Tanggulangin,RenoKenongo,Siring,Jatirejo,Jabon) more than 30.000 household lost houses. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! "more than"

HADDOCK: Ha!

[Haddock throws pasta against the wall: it is not done.]

TINTIN’S ASHES: This condition, i think can't tolerance because Lapindo was do enviromental crime for many people in Sidoarjo, many peopel have not house, job, productive land, fabric, culture, social community,etc. so weak, tremulus & has recourse to only 2 sentiments:

[Haddock throws pasta against the wall: it is not done.]

ARCHANGEL TOAL [just standing there, holding sticks]: M-Malmesbury?

TINTIN’S ASHES: &, in a really fucking serious emergency

ARCHANGEL TOAL: M-Malmesbury Primary School?

[They click against one-another in his arms. He is the most tremulous, period. Haddock throws pasta against the wall: it is not done.]

TINTIN’S ASHES: many child was traumatice water, rain, cloudy.They are affraid look the rain, cloudy.I turn her spring for what I believe will be a snignicicant un-screwing: tease her, insult her, pay her attention,listen seriously her and frown,as if disappoint,touch her,spend money with reckless contemt,sit up straight,be bored by her,look over her friend,joke at my self,empty purse again,leave in the midst of her laugh,have her be with men who love me,yearn angrily and abruptly and without pattern,be always first to switch between satire and kindness,swift to that,hint darkly,despise,in all,contrive that despite my minute,humane,borderline divine scrutiny of her desirable qualities,her life so chafes mine that only its instant flowering for mucous membrane make me stay by her side,nt abandon to blank skirmish,puck skirmish,in dot,bollard,foosman,coaster,flipper,why should I be muggins.This's very sad for me. this's photographs, maybe can help me to campaign in your network.

[Haddock throws pasta against the wall: it is not done.]

TINTIN’S ASHES:

Ok, you can contact for me if you need

any information.

mobile number:07799471737.

Thaks alot of

Iva. it loox light already. clearly a narc. victori

[Haddock throws pasta against the wall: you know how we do.]

MILOU: I love you Physical.

AMERICAN PHYSICAL: You too."

[Exit Mi – American Physical. The vapour is cold and sour, like the milk of dead cattle. It films over and rushes around standing stones and husks of trunk, throwing up knee-high archipelagos for the homosocial travellers to pick through with trepidation. Archangel Toal inputs sticks in twos. Eventually a sunbeam begins to lase the mist, and their campsite becomes blotched with solid ground, the remaining patches of mist behaving like terrified little animals, swirling in panic and diving down fissures. Enter Windcunter Motherland with “Pet Voyage” box. He sets it down & undoes the clasp; enter Sophie].

KESTON: Why is he wearing that thing?

SOPHIE: Elizabethan collar. If you kiss the dog within, you will weaken an authority somewhere and somewhen. A thought experiment about attitudes towards authority, metaphysical in flavour. The theoretical point in my body, to where the cone would taper. Also available. The tuna-friendly tuna white sauce Toal wants is not politics, exactly . . .

[Windcunter Motherland throws pasta at Keston: he ducks: it is not done.]

SOPHIE: Twilit & Llamb, you’ve been quiet over there: me & the other cats were scuffling in the rubbish. We went raar.

[Deloyt&Tush is beginning to realise Sophie's not proper.]

SOPHIE: Always carry a few things with me. Never know when they might come in handy. Piece of blue glass. Lovely bit of string. Horseshoe nail.

DELOYT&TUSH [thinks]: My mouth is her mouth. My bristles pin it in place.

[But he thinks quick . . .]

DELOYT&TUSH [generously]: This is the apply-the-layout-across-the-spectrum-just-to-the-Left thing again isn’t it? Syncrenism, uh, shuriken?

[Shuriken lazes as if same.]

SURD BLOTCH SUDS: “[…] here the poets have to sign an agreement to be really 'nice' to each other at all times. they are all insane. personally, I think if a few more poets called each other cunts everything would be much more healthy […]”

MRS. NAPE O CLOACA: “[…] I want so much to be alone & I’m afraid to be alone. Everything’s shit […]”

DELOYT&TUSH: I mean, strict immigration laws are in my interests as an employer. They’ll get in anyway and then I don’t have to bother with social protectionism. I can milk – we’ll call it things like “compulsory employee accommodation” and “compulsory employee transport scheme” –

tamer

TINTIN’S ASHES: The element that can use s’it intelligence to look ahead is by nature ruler and by nature master, while that which has the bodily stretngh to do the actual work is by nature a slave, one of those who are ruled. There’s this like a common –

DELOYT&TUSH: Fuck slavery, my point is what kind of interests are they? My interests in the stricter immibration law? How do they compare with the wants American Physical is not sure are her own? Tintin’s Ashes knows what they want, they wants a slow-roast duck with port and five-spice sauce slightly offset from the real one.

TINTIN’S ASHES: Thanks for that.

DELOYT&TUSH: Interests are not going to map ardour are they? Interests. Interests! Interests! INTERESTS!

SOPHIE: . . . can I just stop you there because my point follows almost exactly on? Crab on footprint. Be my Beal. Pat Beal is my / wife. I am keeping it / Beal.

[Haddock throws pasta against the wall: it is not done.]

HADDOCK & DELOYT&TUSH: . . .

SOPHIE: Just be aware.

[Haddock throws pasta against the wall: it is not done.]

SOPHIE: Pop her clogs. 56, Beel's good inning. Well I pissed so hard on a lamppost it fell over. Nailed in a bollard. Like Jamie Oliver: “Bam! Done.”

[Haddock throws pasta against the wall: it is not done.]

SOPHIE: “Bam! Done.” Look, the fact that you let yourself be sucked into situations where you're stringing some poor bastard along, hating him all the while, is merely an expression of the fact that you can't be bothered to sleep with someone who doesn't flip your cosmic switch to ON –

[Haddock, Milou’s Ashes, Tintin’s Ashes, American Physical, Thanatos & jUStin! grab her & stuff her in the box. Archangel Toal pretends not to see.]

SOPHIE [howling]: If a cat who sees the essence of social and individual reality says what he sees, without sham and equivocation, he is taken to be egocentric, aggressive and vain! If he has unshakable convictions, he is called a fanatic, quite regardless of whether these convictions are acquired by intense experience and thought, or whether they are irrational ideas with a paranoid tinge!

HADDOCK [to Toal, over the howls [Rown Bones]]: Should it be 1.1.a, 1.1b, etc., or 1.1.i, 1.1.ii, etc.?!

[Sophie is trying to express something about sexual aid. The sexually rich entities' missed target of 0.7% Gross Domestic Punani, the failure of sexual restructuring conditionality – where, by the way, Sophie totally overemphasises the institutional interests putting pressure on sexual disbursement even in absence of sexual reform by the sexually impoverished nation & forgets about just main fucking – & the question of civil society spud bollard dome card spade feature.]

ARCHANGEL TOAL [really loudly]: I’m more “interests-based”; it’ll get tricky if we ever got beyond xxviii!

AMERICAN PHYSICAL [meanwhile]: How’s the tuna?!

MILOU [tasting it]: All right!

AMERICAN PHYSICAL [ditto]: It doesn’t taste of tin?!

MILOU: What?!

MILOU [thinks]: I can’t understand you because of your accent! [sic!]

AMERICAN PHYSICAL: You know, sometimes it tastes of tin . . .

MILOU: NO.

[Milou sneezes].

AMERICAN PHYSICAL: I guess you’re getting a cold.

[They negate the negation – instead of speaking over the howls, they speak over the speaking over the howl’s overness].

_______ [rebel yell whisper]: I fear her more than my kids I’ve diddled.

DOManagers / PA to Directors Joan Tompkons

HADDOCK: 1.1.a or 1.1.i. Choose. The wall of the excluded diddle & so forth. m

["They say Christ's suffering was sufficient for our sin because His exquisite nervous net felt the pain infinitely folded, like coastline; similarly in our contrived quest, which we grew from our in our pettiness in the face of the true quest, no impressions whirled through our foosman nerves, as far from men we were as men are from Christ. Many times our bones were swept clean. Now it's time to tussle with an average griffin or perish in a cowlick of sun. Cock and gun theoretically distinct but many times I came on my enemies, wounded my woman" is one way Sophie would have put International Muff Fondue each time she said, OK? ... now even Sophie temporarily falls silent. The heard sea comes gridded from the conch where A.T. dropped it in the spinneys.]

[Beat.]

ARCHANGEL TOAL: Muh muh muh. Malm. If, if you are in ever peril blame this conch. If, furnished with adequate information, in its deliberations, every part of my preference has no communication one with another, the grand total of the small differences would always give the general will, and that preference, perhaps for the letter, perhaps for the numeral, would always be good. "Not read me pls." But when factions arise within the preference, and partial associations are formed at the expense of the great association, the will of each of these associations becomes general in relation to its members, while it remains particular in relation to the preference: it may then be said that there are no longer as many ballots as there are parts to my preference, but only as many as there are reassociations of preference in partage.

[American Physical’s soft vane hands ceci tug on Toal’s anti-gravitas belt. Lellow gas, presumably venomous, comes gridded & grr-green thru the mask of the Pet Voyager box.]

ARCHANGEL TOAL: The differences become less(tm) numerous and give a less general result. Then, when one of these associations is so great as to prevail over all the rest, the result is no longer a sum of small differences, but a single difference; in this case there is no longer a general will, and the preference which prevails is purely particular. Uh . . .

[American Physical put his lips to the shaft & murmurs “jock solon.” Haddock throws pasta against the wall: it is not done.]

ARCHANGEL TOAL: H-how much water does the argument that self-anaylsis is deficient in comparison to analysis that comes externally hold? Malmesbury. I accept that the trained psychoanalyst will have access to certain 'tricks' that the [M /============ ceci --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Katko ------------------::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::--------------.==] lay analysand would not possess, but this is relationship between two extreme individuals that do not necessarily represent every case. I feel as though self-anaylsis is underrated and written off prematurely. I'd say the argument only holds 4/10 water. Malmesbury.

Negative beard now

TINTIN’S ASHES: The grounds, according at least to Freud's logic of repression, for the analyst having access to the pathogenic source of neurosis which is blocked to the self-observing neurotic has nothing to do with analytic competence or greater familiarity with psychoanalytic concepts on the doctor's part. The 'deficiency' of self-analysis as vs. analyst/analysand arrangement you suggest is, from the point of view of clinical psychotherapy, not a matter of dispute for any argument for or against psychoanalysis but a demonstrable sickness-cure relation. Psychoanalysis, in its proper (i.e. clinical) context, "works" where the patient is cured of her neurosis. The reason it cannot hope to "work" in this way if I, wielding my knowledge of psychoanalytic ideas and practice, attempt to analyse myself, is that there can be no transference. That is, there is no external technician to draw the affective force of repression off its ideational content and onto himself, revealing the source of trauma and repression and allowing me see it in the light of adult reasonableness, annulling the neurosis. I can't do this alone because it is the function of my neurosis to hide its origin, or in other words to prevent the repressed content from surfacing at all costs. It does this by generating a kind of force-field of terror around itself, penetrating a network of interconnected ideas. The analyst can survey the effects of this force-field and then probe the points of greatest resistance, causing me to hate him (a cause for optimism on his part, as he knows he may be getting close), until eventually, Jamie Oliver, BAM, done, he hits it and I understand that the reason I have a pathological terror of woodlice is etc. etc.

HADDOCK: It’s good to finally have some content I can jaw my parafunctions through.

[Haddock throws pasta against the wall: it is not done.]

SOPHIE: Have you assholes considered the problem might be with the wall?

[Milou throws luminious prelinguistic jelly against the wall: it sticks.]

TINTIN’S ASHES: Going a step further, Freud would insist on the necessity of an external analyst because it is precisely 'self-analysis' that the neurosis has the power to direct and manipulate. The more satisfying the answers you find about yourself, the better for the neurosis, as its true hiding place is all-the-better concealed. And by "satisfying" I don't mean the kind of analysis that makes you feel good about yourself - you can speculate to your heart's content about probably secretly wanting to do your mum and this will "satisfy" the criterion of repressed content being pathologically unbearable, but it may not necessarily point to the actual cause of your illness.

[Haddock throws pasta against the wall: it sticks. Ah.]

TINTIN’S ASHES: BUT, and I'm sorry to make you have sat through that if you don't give a twinker's fizz about neurosis and psychotherapy, and are solely interested in the application of Freudian ideas to proximally normal psychological life, how much can Freud tell us about our man in the street? And doesn't he really know himself better than any fancy-man with a pince-nez, a phD and a ridiculous fucking cape? Doubtless:

[They have found a clean rock face and thrown all the remaining pasta against it to demonstate that it is done. Sophie’s DMAIC laughter turns into a sob turns into a burp turns into a mouth shit & thereafter cycles. She’s basically out of the picture now. American Physical sucks like a prop. DELOYT&TUSH shuckles Toal’s balls. Biscuit Tintin’s Ashes Lid holds a rimmer up to nature. Anybody left? He or she throws the pasta onto your pasta, cutting it like Robin Hood.]

ARCHANGEL TOAL: Ugh! Malmesbury . . .

[Haddock threads pasta through Archangel Toal’s belt loops: he’s not going anywhere: it is not done. D&T retches; drags the Pet Voyager onto the little fire, careful not to put it out. A corner catches.]

ARCHANGEL TOAL: Malmesbury . . . Malmesbury . . .

[Everyone except Sophie & one other (anon.) now has the option of blowing your chiropodist, while pretending to D&T & the others that you're just blowing Toal, or not. This is what will happen if you blow him. There will be the stench of sewage before the chiropodist cums, & c.15% that you won't be quick enough, & will contract the infection. The only other rule is, you can't know if any of the others have elected to blow their chiropodists until you have made your decision. Write it down on a bit of ouevre. Haddock ties pasta about & about the base of Toal’s erection. His knuckles are the deft slime rubbed from seraph eyes. Th Ace claims detail]

It’s teh big milk … teh other two milks ain’t working …

Now, Gabrielle knew the trick of keeping milk in a nod alright, but

[Much later.]

ARCHANGEL TOAL: MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMALMESBURY PRIMARY SCHOOL!!!

i'm not afraid of commitment, it's just that you're not good enough.


"I'm not afraid of commitment, it's just that you're not good enough." A rousing clamour for those of you who can't seem to escape the psychological repetition of dating people in exchange for sex when there's absolutely no way it's going any further than a couple of weeks of passion for the very obvious reason that you're not in love with them. Given the law of inevitability, this is probably not their fault, but you may be inclined to hate them anyway.

SIDE POINTS:

You may wonder why you always chase guys who aren't interested. I'll tell you why - it's because you don't WANT them to be interested. You would rather pursue a loser, an unfulfillable dream, because it will prolong the occurrence of the inevitable car-crash stemming from the simple fact that you and this dude are simply not meant to be together. Plus it will prevent you having to put yourself through the routine co-ordinates of boring sex between half-interested humans.

In a similar vein, you girls that dislike the guys who actually exhibit some kind of desire and earnestness in their affections towards you are acting on a similar impulse - if he was the one for you, you would be extremely pleased that he wanted to see you on Monday, Tuesday AND Wednesday, and would be crying with joy about the fact that he bought you those shoes. The fact that you let yourself be sucked into situations where you're stringing some poor bastard along, hating him all the while, is merely an expression of the fact that you can't be bothered to sleep with someone who doesn't flip your cosmic switch to ON.

THAT'S ALL. BACK TO THE FEUERBACH THEN.

Tuesday 4 December 2007

FISH NIGHT



Re: If the S.I. Intl. was something of a vague ATTACK-phenomenology (dérive) then what would a more aggressive hermeneutics be? (as suggested in the inaugural FACEPLANT blogpost) How does one turn the interpretation of texts and the production of historical knowlege inside out and refract aspects of our social world which one would like to see change?

A more aggressive hermeneutics. I cannot think of Situationist phenomenology other than in the context of the praxis that would be held to inform it - i.e. the kind of living so brilliantly advocated in S.I. - derive consciousness. These would be (and are - I found this out with Jefferson Toal on the "KARL MARX IS ONE BETTER THAN SOUTHWICK" derive of late '06) conditions that actually flip perception of the fabric of social reality (if you think this sounds trite you should try it). A phenomenology of unreality seems then to be project in hand, even if it has to execute anti-phenomenological manuevres. Dialectics with Debord has the thrill and courtesy of rapidly flicking a light switch on and off.

What I think I'm mowing towards with hermeneutics and knives is maybe that the insistence above, and in Debord, ends up sounding like it cares more about what you do than what you think, which it does. Polemic often has the value of caring about its effects on the world. But I no longer care about what you do. It is none of my business. I don't care that it is none of my business, but I still don't care. I'm not here to tell anyone what to do. You can superglue yourself to the roof of a megabus for a week, it's probably a good idea to. Good source, you'd probably think a lot that you might not otherwise. But derive practically means commitment, and I know the intentional flux lines are probably mostly occupied in our collective - and massively displaced - field of practical operations. Which is why I care more - at least in the case of FACEPLANT - about field reports, as it were, than a means of effecting chop-suey on local consciousness, which I think would be a necessary methodological component of conducting that kind of phenomenology.

I think maybe some of the friction in the above can also be evinced in your desire to "see change". This recalls to my mind K's mention of the fury of justice and the poet's desire for it. I mean, so far and short as phenomenology is justified in understanding itself to be dealing with 'prior' questions it is because it wants truth to be visible, and what I see is socially real in way what I think isn't. What if objective change really is invisible?

Monday 3 December 2007

WORLD-SPORT: Act 2, Scene 2

[HADDOCK leans off a balcony at Marlinspike holding an urn which contains TINTIN's ashes.]

HADDOCK: Although it's good to get people in discussion, it's a lot more difficult if the formal requirements of those discussion are taxing and/or tedious; that perhaps instead of trying to write on the convex veil of quasi-techno-Beckett through HOT WHITE (tho closer to Dada) or theoretical gaming, some actual conversation might take place where one establishes an actual thread of critical discourse...this is just my rant...it's not to say I don't or didn't at times find the WORLD SPORT quite funny....

____: Set your own formal requirements. Start your own thread. We can be as concave as anyone wants to be. What I'm doing is just what I'm doing, I really don't expect anyone else to do the same. NEway, I've got to be assessed by a therapist tomorrow morning so I should get some sleep. Lata.

HADDOCK: Nighty night, sleep well. And remember, you can't spell 'therapist' without spelling 'the rapist' [spells 'the rapist' across the balcony with TINTIN's ashes.] Go on Milou, grub's up.

[Bleach out to total white.]

WORLD-SPORT: Act 2, Scene 1



[A multi-storey car park in Portsmouth, site of this - ____’s - suicide attempt, marked for demolition, 2004.]

____: I’m just a girl.

TINTIN: Yeah, I know. Aren’t we going to fuck the gender ratio if you kill yourself?

THANATOS: Attempt, yo.

____: Anyway, just because it feels right doesn’t make it good. Here Tintin, take the conch.

TINTIN: Ok. Bring it on.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: You, or one of your associates, have established this computerised pool hall, with its flickering FACEPLANT signage and neon wall art, presumably in the hope of accruing members and inciting verbal exchange.

TINTIN: Hey, not without this [hands over conch.] Again.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: You, or one of your associates, have established this computerised pool hall, with its flickering FACEPLANT signage and neon wall art, presumably in the hope of accruing members and inciting verbal exchange.

TINTIN: Yeah, it was me. And I don’t see that as so much of a hope as an inevitability.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: You have solicited contributions on the basis of your own assumptions about the contributors, which remain murky.

TINTIN: I hope you feel safe in assuming that your assumptions about those assumptions are less murky.

____: [brushing teeth] Conch. [catches with other hand] I am still given cause to wonder what your, Monkey, investments in a potential answer to this question are.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: I admit that my ‘investments’ in a potential answer are minimal.

____: You remind me of this woman collecting for a charity who accosted me in Costa the other day. [spits into basin] Or I suppose you remind me of the opposite of her. I asked her how large her organisation was and she told me it was “growing.”

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: What the hell has that got to do with anything?

____: Nothing much. But what I mean is, I was asking for a quality rather than a quantity. In your case.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: I would have to follow up by asking what investments of your own should cause you to be concerned about mine.

____: “follow up by?” Follow what up?

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: My admission.

____: Oh, yes. What investments? Well, I cannot tell you what they are exactly, only that they are maximal. Let me follow this up by

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: Look. I - actually - have something to say here, a more-or-less urgent question for this forum which I believe a priori to be irredeemably fatuous by the way but nevertheless, here it is: Can a grou

TINTIN: CONCH! THE FUCKING CONCH!

____: Oh. I forgot about that too.

TINTIN: Yeah but you’re ok, you had it the whole time. The monkey has to say all that again. From “I admit that”. Your whole confession again, please.

____: No, c’mon. I’m dying here. I’m bored of this. Let’s just issue him a fine or something.

TINTIN: Ok.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: A what?

TINTIN: YOU WILL NOT SPEAK WITHOUT THE CONCH!

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: You haven’t got it either! ____ has!

TINTIN: Well I’m playing banker and I can’t exactly fine myself now, can I.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: Well give me the conch then, please.

TINTIN: [to ____] We’ll make a hell of a lot more off him if you don’t.

____: You think he’d really pay to talk?

TINTIN: Oh, he’ll pay alright.

____: I mean, will he talk if he knows he has to pay for it?

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: Fuck you both. [pulls out a Tec.]

____: Ok, Tec beats conch. Speak.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: Thankyou. [still focusing Tec between TINTIN’s eyes] Can a group – even a virtual one – be consciously formed without a basic agreed-upon identity?

TINTIN: Well, let’s see. It’s a group. Check. A virtual one. Check. Consciously. Consciously? Can a group be formed unconsciously? False consciously? What kind of Lukacsian clarity of consciousness are you after here? A basic agreed-upon identity. I don’t give a shit about identity, but then I’m assuming, murkily, that you don’t either. And you seem to sense, rightly, that any such identity could only be co-ordinated by means of an intensively centralised bureaucratic apparatus, namely me.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: When the audience addressed is one of fellow-despairers (as it invariably is), what function do you then serve (as a writer or otherwise) beyond mutual consolation and ego massage of your social-cum-professional circle?

____: Woahwoahwoah. Relax all this about despair and massaging cum-circles. I’m not into despair, Jeff and Ryan are. And even they probably don’t have any more of a horn for it than you claim not to have.

DELOYT&TUSH: Can we legitimately claim to have readjusted the gender ratio if we get negative erections?

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: [rouched.] And by ‘profitable love’, do you mean the pursuit of biological stimulus through congregating with fellow humans? Is that why our faces are planted to this screen?

TINTIN: Will you cut out all this bukkake-suggesting shit? ____’s trying to kill herself for god’s sake. You’re getting in the way of the pathos.

ALEXANDRA EMILY ROBERTS: does it not have to be in context? I’ve been very inappropriate all evening. Bob works in the dungeon at the police station so he has to collect bags fulls of guns with brains on them so he’s going to ask for a pay rise. I love Toby in this hat.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: [shaking. Tec shakes. Beads of perspiration.] I saw the Lord, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his blood filled the corpus cavernosum!

[MILOU IN MONKEY MASK squeezes trigger, putting a bullet through TINTIN’s forehead. TINTIN dies tactlessly.]

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: What…what have I done? [rips off monkey mask in utter, aboriginal despair.]



____: Oh, hi Milou. What the fuck. Well obviously I can’t go through with this now. It’ll look like a meaningful gesture. Someone give me a lift to A&E.

[Fade]

Friday 30 November 2007

Hot on the Heels of I.4.i

A multi-storey car park in Portsmouth, site of many suicide attempts, marked for demolition, 2004.


A REEL-TO-REEL tape recorder relays fragments of the scene just acted. A MONKEY IN MILOU MASK noises a response.

REEL-TO-REEL: I am given cause to wonder what your, Milou, investments in a potential answer to this question are.

MONKEY IN MILOU MASK: That is a valid object of wonderment, ____, but an answer must be deferred a moment until I offer my own wonderings. You, or one of your associates, have established this computerised pool hall, with its flickering FACEPLANT signage and neon wall art, presumably in the hope of accruing members and inciting verbal exchange. You have solicited contributions on the basis of your own assumptions about the contributors, which remain murky. So if I were to admit that my ‘investments’ in a potential answer are minimal, I would have to follow up by asking what investments of your own should cause you to be concerned about mine, about ISOPROPYL RICECAKE’s, etc. Can a group – even a virtual one – be consciously formed without a basic agreed-upon identity?

REEL-TO-REEL [whirring]: You persistently drag out a humanist instinct in me which assumes that somewhere latent in the apparent neutrality of your interest in these issues lies the claim of an individuating instinct.

MONKEY IN MILOU MASK: I would not deny the existence of an individuating instinct; I would merely add that *one* such instinct is numerically insignificant. I would also add that time spent in academic institutions, with their tendency to flag up failed historical precedents, risks making neuters of us all, a process which may already have occurred in my case. [Examines defiantly inactive reproductive apparatus.]

REEL-TO-REEL [jammed]: The pertinent negat… The pertinent negat… The pertinent negat… The pertinent negat…

A car park attendant readjusts the mechanism.

REEL-TO-REEL: The pertinent negative question embedded in yours might be: If such ardour cannot be manufactured under the condition of knowing stupidity, what are the manufacturable forms of ardour left for the ethically conscious consumer? [Dramatic pause] One, I might suggest, is despair itself.

MONKEY IN MILOU MASK: Ardour in despair suggests Greek choruses, narcissicism, the Rapture, Live Aid, post-lactation overflow of the nasolacrimal duct, the Catholic Church, Royal funerals, a digitised loop of Laurel & Hardy dropping a piano down a staircase, Alcoholics Anonymous, Holocaust karaoke. All of which may have their place, but when the audience addressed is one of fellow-despairers (as it invariably is), what function do you then serve (as a writer or otherwise) beyond mutual consolation and ego massage of your social-cum-professional circle?

REEL-TO-REEL [end of reel]: Fact A: as demonstrated re: love, profitable love is our ultimate concern.

MONKEY IN MILOU MASK: Say wha? Whose ultimate concern? And by ‘profitable love’, do you mean the pursuit of biological stimulus through congregating with fellow humans? Is that why our faces are planted to this screen?

THE CHOIR OF ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL [on the Tannoy]: I saw the Lord, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up,
and his train filled the temple.

WORLD-SPORT: Act 1, scene 4.1

MANILA, 2007

PREPARING TO COMMANDEER THE GRAND HOTEL ABYSS



[Reuters: l-r: MILOU, WILLY AUTONOMOUS, ARCHANGEL TOAL, ____, TINTIN, GAY ENOLA, HUMBROL DISASTER OLIVE DRAB, TABAQUI THE DISHLICKER, HADDOCK.]

[CITALOPRAM and THANATOS have proto-retrogressed to GAY ENOLA and WILLY AUTONOMOUS, respectively. TINTIN feels a premonition of another nosebleed. ____ worries that she is underdressed. MILOU has developed both Blitzkrieg and “deep battle”. HADDOCK emerges as in an erotic dream of the void.]

HADDOCK: Is it the possibility of change that is jointly despair and resistance?

[ARCHANGEL TOAL weeps demonstratively.]

MILOU: [licking lips.] how, dear ____, can such ardour be manufactured once a paralysing self-diagnosis of ‘stupidity’ has been made?

____: I am given cause to wonder what your, Milou, investments in a potential answer to this question are. Your text is merely a behaviour and therefore the character of the solicitude here is obscured to me. That is to say, I do not know whether you (or it, your text) implicitly profess to be yourself (itself) caught up in the dilemma proposed and are asking for a way out (a question therefore analogous to: how will I utilise this sheet of sandpaper to disintegrate this super-stardestroyer) or you propose this as some neutral sociological diagnostic of a material data-set ‘we’ are anonymously as participant in as any divulgible ‘you’. Why is the specificity of this intention important to me? You persistently drag out a humanist instinct in me which assumes that somewhere latent in the apparent neutrality of your interest in these issues lies the claim of an individuating instinct. The fact that you feel competent to stake a knowledge-claim in the normative manufacturing processes of ardour suggests a self-claim of a sort, if griddled-free of the identificatory complaisance so persistently vilified in your own practise. The pertinent negative question embedded in yours might be: If such ardour cannot be manufactured under the condition of knowing stupidity, what are the manufacturable forms of ardour left for the ethically conscious consumer?

TINTIN: I, for one, take issue with this idea that stupidity and ardour are somehow incompatible. Take that thing you had with the fence…

____: One, I might suggest, is despair itself. Haddock seems to think there is some cause for optimism here.

DELOYT$TUSH: I am only one individual glassy hillock on the sandpaper. I cannot know the world-historic significance of the micro-activity I contribute to the material process of history. I can only trust the limitations of my own competence to negate if I wish to attain the bleached out disintentionality of true prior being where I cannot be held responsible to know anything.

____: Same difference, then. Let’s do it and say we didn’t. Let’s not do it and say we did. Let’s not do it and say we didn’t.

GAY ENOLA: I can trick you into getting an erection.

WILLY AUTONOMOUS: Go on then.

GAY ENOLA: The government says it is al-Qaeda terrorists and the Taliban that are killing civilians and troops... the government's comments will please Nato.

WILLY AUTONOMOUS: [violently erect.] I fail to see how I have been ‘tricked’ here.

____: I don’t know, maybe I’m just not like you guys. I don’t feel the contradictoriness as some kind of constraint or bottle-neck in production. It’s just there as an attitude we can wring our hands in, or not.

[Enter TABAQUI THE DISHLICKER – all in one skisuit, socks, nerfhead etc.]

TABAQUI THE DISHLICKER: Look at it really fucking hard. Bastard scansion like screwing a claymore into amber, and all you could see was mirrored your desire for (qualitatively) not unreasonable love from a (quantitatively) not unreasonable handful of dolts. Be free to love yourself through loving me in your own way without fear of prejudice or intolerance, we both profit by the arrangement and the sum total of love is refracted always towards those who will love you for it in turn, i.e. ultimately for themselves. See loving me as an investment.

HADDOCK: .... . .-.. .--. -- . .-. .... --- -. -.. .- .... . .-.. .--. --..-- .... . .-.. .--. -- . .-. .... --- -. -.. .- .... . .-.. .--. -- . .-. .... --- -. -.. .- .... . .-.. .--. --..-- .... . .-.. .--. -- . .-. .... --- -. -.. .- .... . .-.. .--. -- . .-. .... --- -. -.. .- .... . .-.. .--. --..-- .... . .-.. .--. -- . .-. .... --- -. -.. .- .... . .-.. .--. -- . .-. .... --- -. -.. .- .... . .-.. .--. --..-- .... . .-.. .--. -- . .-. .... --- -. -.. .- .... . .-.. .--. -- . .-. .... --- -. -.. .- .... . .-.. .--. --..-- .... . .-.. .--. -- . .-. .... --- -. -.. .- .... . .-.. .--. -- . .-. .... --- -. -.. .- .... . .-.. .--. --..-- .... . .-.. .--. -- . .-. .... --- -. -.. .- .... . .-.. .--. -- . .-. .... --- -. -.. .- -.-- . .- .... --. . - .... . .-. --- ..- - --- ..-. -- -.-- .... . .- .-. –

HUMBROL DISASTER OLIVE DRAB: Hey, you’ve got friends. Don’t give up.

TABAQUI THE DISHLICKER: But what is love. Formally, the endless questioning as to the essence or identity of love is an air bubble for frantic lips away from particularity, which can be represented as roadkill or drowning on your last continue. The time has come to have a long, hard look at the facts (facts cannot be close-read so relax, your gaze must be lethal but not particularly attentive, unless you wish for it to appear so). Fact A: as demonstrated re: love, profitable love is our ultimate concern.

MILOU: Somebody give me a Viagra.

TABAQUI THE DISHLICKER: This is why I no longer care about behaviour. Behaviours are discreetly entrained by the managed social contents of space, which (like your behaviours) are always imperceptible until you cause a glitch in the system. You walk into a restaraunt and find yourself asking for food. The Ugandan proprietor looks at you as if you had asked for a titwank. Think about it.

[All become pensive. TABAQUI THE DISHLICKER and HUMBROL DISASTER OLIVE DRAB coincide and annihilate after dinner as if beautifully destined to do so.]