Miscellanea Sensibilium

A collection of articles by our members

Originally published: 23rd January, 1999

BY NUMEROUS CONTRIBUTORS

PLEASE BURN BEFORE READING

Part (un)holy text, part group artwork and part meaningless babble, the Miscellanea is where all the bits that don't go anywhere else end up. Any of our members are welcome to contribute, although we will only include your work if it has an information content above zero and seems (vaguely) relevant.

The Miscellanea will probably continue growing until it contains anything you ever needed to know on any subject in any language or until we run out of space, whichever occurs first.

"Yes, I want to be part of this great endeavour,
and here are my words of great wisdom"

If you are really desperate to get an article into Miscellania Sensibilium, then utilise the contact details shown somewhere on this site.

Please note: All articles, etc. within, are the sole ownership of the authors, if you do wish to reproduce these in any way, please provide a link back to this site and give the authors due credit.

We don't like copyright but we do like respect. Thank you.


Wish You Were Here

Originally published: 26th June, 2000

Limestone memories shift uneasily in my mind, reality seeping through their porous existence, changing them, mutating them into a more satisfying and aesthetic form for my present vantage point. Historians recreate the past to suit their purposes. We recreate our own past to suit our present.

A slideshow of images, meanings rearranged until everything is so hazy that anything could be real. Are humans the first artificial intelligence? Our world is a dreamscape of meaning; constructs built around our desires and fears. Reality is a dirty word now; a cheap prize given away on low-budget game-shows - audience applauds on cue as the past is shuffled and then recreated to suit. A child's memory game - "What was on the tray"? Does it matter? What do we want to have been on the tray? Reality has become the equivalent of the cuddly toy on the conveyer belt. Always present, but it's hidden meaning only guessed at. Special mystery prize, secret holiday destination.

Wish you were here...

Pagetop


Just a Short Story

Originally published: 21st January, 2000

Who would have thought that a computer glitch could have ever done anything like this? Who would have thought the human race would ever rely on a machine so much?

The Eleven O'clock news was read out in England by Trevor Macdonald, his counter parts all over the world did the same. Of course it should have been the Prime Ministers and the Presidents and such like that made the statement, but they had far better places to be.

As a result of the prepared speech, the world went slightly, and understandably, crazy. People started digging holes in their gardens with anything they could find, some even had the presence of mind to go steal JCB's and make holes that way. A lot of people just abandoned their homes and possessions and, inevitably, some looted those possessions, as well as shops, factories and banks. Quite a few climbed trees and buildings to wait. People set off to visit sick and elderly relatives, or just friends they hadn't seen in years. Some neighbours made up their long ongoing feuds and arguments, and others began to beat, stab or shoot one another, after all it had to be someone's fault.

Suddenly everyone was a Technophobe. Computers, televisions, microwaves, telephones and anything else that showed even the slightest chance that it might have some sort of artificial intelligence, were thrown from windows, smashed with hammers and destroyed, usually in no less than a thousand pieces.

Religion had a sudden intake of followers, even atheists went to pray just in case it would make a difference, God was in popular demand, sermons were once again filled with fire and brimstone.

Jack and Rebecca sat at the top of a hill, watching the chaos that was once their hometown, the screaming, shouting and the smell of smoke drifting up to them on snatches of wind. They held each other close for warmth and comfort and watched the stars. They were both crying, Jack for Rebecca and Rebecca for Jack, but both cried for the unborn baby in Rebecca's womb. Rebecca's hand rested on the bulge of her stomach as midnight struck to announce the arrival of the year 2000, a minute later the sirens of the towns alarms began to shriek their warning and to confirm what the experts suspected.

As they wailed Rebecca gave a short hiccup that cut off in her throat before it turned into hysterical laughter and turned to look at her husband

"What is it love?" he asked her
"The baby, she just kicked, it's the first time she's let me know she's really in there."
Jack smiled back at her
"You mean 'he' don't you?"

They held each other closer for a few more seconds and then...

That was when the first bomb landed, four minutes into the First of January in the year 2000. The baby, albeit boy or girl never had a chance to kick again. Jack and Rebecca were gone in seconds.

Nuclear Armageddon killed nearly everything in the world, Jack, Rebecca and the baby were lucky, but for the one's who survived the blasts, well, they to died too.

Eventually.

Pagetop


The Memoirs of Tarquin C. Ferret

Originally published: 8th March, 2000

(Lampeter Student 1822-1984)

Book 72 in a series of 34.
Tarquin becomes a man, or, Terror from above
(Crumpet forks at dawn)

Imagine, a brisk windy day in autumn. The sun shines down upon the trees that ring the Quad, bringing forth a cacophony of colours from the dying red gold leaves. Then, imagine if you will, a boy, firm of thought and strong of purpose, filled with youthful resolution and an earnest look to his ruddy cheeks. This was the scene that fateful Thursday morning back in 1835. Young Tarquin (myself) is thirteen, and is faced with the first real test of his burgeoning and swelling manhood. This trial by fire takes the muscular and rampant form of Rupert Camisole Chesterfield III, or, as he was better known to his friends (although he had few of those, and gained respect by his reign of terror and his always warm toasting fork), Geraldine. Why he had gained this moniker was unknown to the lower years, and those who dared to ask were whisked away to the room for a sharp lesson in manners.

Young Tarquin had managed, through his cunning and wit, (and perhaps his stout new running shoes sent by his Uncle Sheryl) to avoid the attentions of Rupert throughout his first three years at Walford-Bryn Preparatory School for Boys; but this had only served to pique Ruperts interest, and to swell his desire for the young Tarquin from a vague stirring in the loins into a throbbing, almost overwhelming, bonfire of lust and heady passion.

This undesirable turn of events came to a head when young Tarquin took longer than usual in the communal shower that morning. Whilst pulling his jockey shorts over his youthfully athletic buttock cheeks, he sensed a movement behind him. All the other boys had long since left for breakfast. Tarquin was alone. Turning, he felt a vague sense of fear and loathing, and there was an all-too-familiar scent of animal-like musk in the air. His suspicions were confirmed: it was Rupert, his face pink with anticipation, impending conquest and triumph.

Tarquin began to quiver. He had known this day would come, but had hoped he would be able to squeeze a few more drops of joy out of life before facing his nemesis. Then, remembering the oft-repeated words of his Uncle Sheryl (the black sheep of the family, but Tarquin had always been fond of him. And vice versa.), "Never take a bull by the horns when you can squeeze his balls." Tarquin took careful aim, and delivered a mighty blow with his oft-praised right foot, right to the core of Ruperts rearing manhood.

After a heart-pounding flight through the corridors of the Leonard Nimoy Arts Building, closely followed by the three-hundred-pound mass of expectant lust that was Rupert, Tarquin found himself trapped in the little-used Northwest corner of the Quad. With nowhere to run, Tarquin turned and defiantly raised his buttocks in the air wanting to get the horror over with. Rupert, faced with compliance and submission, became confused, his long-held fantasy of forceful conquest shattered in the face of utter posterior passivity. After a short while of holding his breath, waiting for the inevitable breach of his purity, Tarquin stood up. Turning around to see what had become of his foe, he was greeted by the cheers of the lower school, peering from the windows of the Mary Tyler Moore Science Building. Tarquin was the hero once more. Rupert left shortly afterwards, his reputation in tatters (He later became the Member of Parliament for West Spalding-on-the-Moor).

Pagetop


The OTS Interview - God Vs. Satan

Originally published: 8th March, 2000

This month we have a bit of a doozer. We have arranged an exclusive interview with not only the Big G, Allah, Alpha, Yahweh, call him what you will (just dont call him in vain); but also his counterpart, old Nick, Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, The One Who Walks Backwards (Big Dick to his friends). We will attempt to tread the fine line between journalistic integrity and outright heresy. Let the discussion begin…

OTS: So, God, Satan, how goes it in your respective domains?
G: Pretty good thanks, bit hectic last night but I think I've got it under control.
OTS: And you Satan?
S: Well, you know, people sin, people burn. Same old story.
OTS: You sound a bit fed up of it all. Are you?
S: A little I suppose, it gets a bit tedious. It must be, what? Forty, fifty years since someone came up with something truly original.
G: Yes, the war was a good time for us. (smiles warmly at Satan.)
OTS: Why was that then?
S: Well, you know. Like, back then, there was an easy line between good and bad. On the one side you had the allies, protecting the individual freedom and the like, and Hitler, massacring people in their millions. There wasnt any difficulty dishing the souls out.
G: Of course the bombing of Japan fucked things up a bit. Got a bit mixed up there. Even I couldnt say who was right or wrong there. Even if I am omniscient. Or something.
S: Nowadays its all different. Theres no black or white now. I mean look at Bill Clinton. Two thousand years ago that fucker would have been straight down to my place. These days the people have to decide whether he was a bastard or not.
G: And what do they know? If they could run things themselves, we wouldn't be here.
OTS: I see. Bearing in mind that the world is such a crazy, fucked-up place, do you not think that the heaven and hell dichotomy is a bit outdated as a concept?
G: Well, fuck you. I created the goddamn world, its my bloody show.
S: No, hang on here, I think the guy has a point. We arent as useful as we used to be.
G: Speak for yourself. If it wasnt for you then man would still be living in blissful ignorance in Eden. That stunt with the fruit was really low.
S: Yeah, but you put the bloody tree there in the first place. You wanted them to eat the damned fruit so that you could punish them and act the high and mighty father figure for eternity. An analyst would have a field day inside your head.
G: I am a bloody high and mighty father figure! Not just some pissy little imp like you. Oh to think that once you were my finest. I had such hopes for you. I looked on you as a son.
S: That was when you shat on my head was it? All I did was offer a few suggestions to improve things, but oh no, you wouldn't have it would you. Mr Lord of all Creation couldnt handle the thought that something wasn't quite right in his pissing wonderful toy world could he?
OTS: Okay, okay, lets get back to the interview here. So God, what was your actual motivation behind creating the world?
G: You know, it was one of those boring Monday afternoons. It was raining, I was stuck indoors. It was all dark and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Something to while away the lonely millennia.
S: I get back from the god-damned pub, and hed built this bloody World thing. I said it was a bad idea. It'll come to no good I said. But would he listen? Ohhh no! Look at the bloody mess now eh? Should have listened to us Seraphim instead of chucking us down to that pissante little world to sort out the mess he made.
OTS: Right. Anyway, what does an omnipotent deity like to do on his time off?
G: Well…
S: Piss about and watch re-runs of Baywatch
G: I dont get much time off really
S: Yeah right, apart from the last 2000 years. Hes been building a new World...
G: Hang on…
S: Yes, you dont want me to tell them about that do you? You were planning to leave them all in the fucking lurch werent you, you cheapskate old bastard.
G: Right, thats it, Im having you. Outside now you jumped-up minion.
S: Come on then, bring it on, any time you old has-been. I could take you down with one fucking punch.
G: You couldn't the last time.
S: I let you have that one, or else youd have cried. I was being nice. Fucker.

OTS decided to end the interview here and ran away, before being held responsible for Armageddon as well.

Pagetop


Make your own Millennium Dome

Originally published: 13th December, 2000

Have you always wanted to build your own Millennium Dome but don't have the cash-flow of the British Government?

Worry not! We at sensibilium.com have compiled these simple instructions for you to build your own dome from common household items.

What you'll need:

Instructions

  1. Slice the orange/grapefruit into the shape of the dome with the sharp knife (Children: Ask your parents to help you with this).
  2. Scoop out the innards of your dome-slice (eat the innards, if you wish).
  3. Paint the skin of your orange/grapefruit dome with the white paint. Leave to dry (go and have a cup of tea).
  4. Fold the A4 sheet 3 times along the longest length as shown by the dashed lines in Figure 1.
  5. Draw the dome sides on the folded sheet as shown in Figure 2.
  6. With your scissors, cut along the line you drew (Children: Ask your parents to help you with this).
  7. Now unfold your dome-side, and wrap around the base of your now-dry fruit dome.
  8. Mark off with your pen the point at which the sides meet, and remove from your fruit dome.
  9. Cut off the extreme edges of your dome-side, and carefully cut the edges so they meet smoothly.
  10. Use your coloured pens to decorate your dome-edge (add doorways, windows, etc.).
  11. Put glue around the lower edge of your fruit dome, and carefully wrap your dome-side around it.
  12. For extra strength hold the dome-side edges together with the sticky-tape.
  13. Allow to dry (go and have another cup of tea).
  14. Finally, stick each of your toothpicks evenly around your fruit dome, step back and admire your work.


Why spend billions?

Pagetop


Jack my bitch up

Originally published: 24th June, 2001

The internet becomes increasingly schizophrenic. Art sites that want to show off their textual skills, literary sites that are coated with so much graphical slickness that the mere touch of them is enough to make you slide right off to somewhere less pretentious. And then we have the sites that don't really know what they are, but my, don't they have pretty interfaces.

To find information on the net it has become almost de rigueur to have to bludgeon your way through ever more unnecessary "intuitive" graphical interfaces. Why? Why the fuck is this necessary? If I pick up a newspaper to check out the score in the latest minor war, I don't expect to have to negotiate my way through several beautifully printed but ultimately useless plastic coatings. Likewise, if I walk into an art gallery, I feel no great desire to have copies of the artists diaries lying around so that I can read about the torturous minutiae of their lives. Half of the attraction of a painting, or a photograph is the act of mutual creation between artist and viewer, that mingling of perception, the grey area between conceptual vision and derived understanding.

So, I ask you, why is it suddenly so common for a website to have a finger in every single pie going? Why is it that on the net, a collection of images cannot speak for itself, or a piece of writing cannot be appreciated without graphical interjection?

It would seem obvious that there is a whole load of "me too" psychology behind web design. Not only does everyone want a website, but they want their website to include every single "cool" feature that the designer has ever coveted on other sites. Websites have to be seen to be providing something for everybody, or at least to prove that they can do everything that everybody else can. The net still doesn't seem to have understood that the maxim "more is better" is completely false, and ultimately leads to lowest-common-denominator content on any platform.

One thing stands out. Although the internet is undoubtedly a far more aesthetically pleasing place to be these days, on a purely eye-candy level, it becomes ever more difficult to find anything that stands out, that is new or different. The focus on content is being lost behind the sharp, design-led revolution of a thousand geeks who know how to code, but haven't got a clue when it comes to filling their sugary confections with content of any value. The American dream of slick, mass-market homogeneity is slowly enveloping the net. All-singing, all-dancing, all-suffocating.

To be perfectly honest, I can't see the point of the internet at all if we are merely going to transform it into another cable network. Why not just sell the whole fucking thing to CBS and start a new revolution. Maybe this time we can get it right.

Pagetop


The AOL Syndrome

Originally published: 11th January, 2002

Or, Why does everyone have to be so fucking nice to each other anyway?

The net, they claim, is a place of moral degradation, corruption, filth and rude pictures of naked ladies. It is a destroyer of the youth, and undoubtedly, a tool of Satan. This is great, fucking marvellous. Wouldn't the net be a fine place if this were the case? Well, granted there may indeed be some nasty things on the net, but there are a lot of nasty things in the world too, and they can come get you even if you don't go looking for them.

The net, is however, host to the most unbearable levels of niceness. The kind of niceness that makes you want to cringe, curl up in a ball and hum "Prison Sex" to yourself. Bulletin boards and newsgroups in particular are Mecca's for this horrific latex politeness and sugar candy pleasantry, as are the numerous AOL chat things, whatever the hell they call them. Something to do with communities no doubt, the weasels.

Go to a bulletin board (no not now you idiot, some other time. I'm not done yet.) You won't have to read many posts before you get some poor fool uttering something of the highest levels of stupidity. At such a cue, you may find yourself becoming interested. You may wonder how the board regulars are going to respond to this. Just exactly how cruelly is this loser going to be shot down, to lie bleeding in his own digital ignorance? If anybody spoke with such ignorance and lack of eloquence in a real world social situation, they would be torn apart, mercilessly ripped to pieces and ridiculed for all to see. Or is that just the parties I go to? But NO! The imbeciles say nothing, or worse, they make soothing, inane comments in return.

They respond with kindness, or what they think is kindness, because surely a short sharp beating would teach one some manners and an understanding to think before opening the mouth again. They will, instead, skip lightly over the idiocy, even if this leaves them with nothing to say but "well, everyone's entitled to their opinion". What crap. Where the hell is the world going to end up if everyone is entitled to an opinion? Up the shitter is the answer. Individual liberty, equality. Nice. But when it comes to some grossly overweight 15 year old who spends half of his miserable life peering at search listings such as "naked Asian doggy anal cumshots housewives XXX free sex", and the other half attempting to be part of some "community" by shooting off half-assed opinions, then I'm sorry, but I think that the right to an opinion is forfeit.

What is it with the net that makes everyone so fucking self-righteous and determined to be nice to everyone else? Are we trying to ignore the real world out there so badly that we have to concoct this sugar-coated fantasy world that we can retreat to? Maybe we would do better to reserve some of that misplaced peace and love for the world outside our Windows where the real problems are, and get some of that pent-up hatred back on the net where it's a little bit safer, cleaner, and at-a-distance.

Do me a favour. The next time you read an ignorant comment in a discussion forum, flame them. Flame them so hard they'll wish they'd never been born. It may hurt, but in the long run, it has to be educational.

*There are exceptions to the nice rule. alt.gothic being a good example. Even though they've gone a bit fluffy recently.

Pagetop


SINK - a psycho-social interpretation

Originally published: 24th February, 2002

For those who have not played SINK, let me quote Principia Discordia:

SINK

A GAME

by Ala Hera, E.L., N.s.; RAYVILLE APPLE PANTHERS

SINK is played by Discordians and people of much ilk.

PURPOSE: To sink object or an object or a thing… in water or mud or anything you; can sink something in.
RULES: Sinking is allowed in any manner. To date, ten pound chunks of mud were used to sink a tobacco can. It is preferable to have a pit of water or a hole to drop things in. But rivers - bays - gulfs - I dare say even oceans can be used.
TURNS are taken thusly: who somever gets the junk up and in the air first.
DUTY: It shall be the duty of all persons playing "SINK" to help find more objects to sink, once; one object is sunk.
UPON SINKING: The sinked shall yell "I sank it!" or something equally as thoughtful.
NAMING OF OBJECTS is some times desirable. The object is named by the finder of such object and whoever sinks it can say for instance, "I sunk Columbus, Ohio."


Introduction

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Horab Fibslager for his observation: "I often get the thought in my head and it turns into a train". This is the starting point of my closer look at the game of SINK. The phrase "train of thought" is old, but, as many things old, it holds a certain truth. Ones thoughts often find themselves trapped on a track. Destination unknown.

It is not my intention to drown the essence of SINK in theoretical gibberish or to attempt to lessen the experience by attaching interpretations to the dynamics of the game. However, I do not assume this to be of such magnitude that it will stay in the conscious minds of my readers. Rather I imagine/hope it will sink in, and produce slightly more complex unconscious activity, come your next game of SINK.

Purpose

"To sink object or an object or a thing..." I found this part sheds light on the inseparability of the Real, but metaphysics of this degree is up to the individual reader to investigate/meditate upon. I will, throughout this article, focus on an interpretation of the "object" as a thought. The path of thoughts, to be more precise.

Our intuitive conception of SINK is throwing rocks in water. We all throw rocks in water at one stage in our life. This is an indication of the universality of SINK. Now the natural progress of a game of SINK is to firstly find an object, then throw/drop/eject said object through air into a different medium.

If we view the object as though there is a clear resemblence of how the mind works. The thought is found within oneself, this is unconscious in origin. Buddhists will go on and on about this. It is either picked up or disregarded. Once it is picked up it may be held in the concious mind. This is the parallell to throwing the object through the air. (The reader of occult interest will notice the meaning of the element air.)

The different mediums that objects can be sunk in are a parallel to all the different social contexts that thoughts are communicated in. Note how most objects will have a clear and describable path while in air, but that randomness and unpredictacility increases in denser mediums. Have you ever had a thought that seemed just right when you had it in your head, but crumbled when you introduced it to others? Some other obvious implications of this transition from air to other mediums, such as water, is increased fluidity. Fluidity often accompanies creativity.

Rules

Well, basically there are none. This should not surprise anyone. The rules section goes on to describe how anything may be used for the sinking. This describes the many contexts in which thoughts are communicated, and observes how they are social constructs (this point is made under "rules", which is a social construct indeed). Implied in the wording of "...I dare say even..." is the recommendation to search for new mediums/social contexts in which to expose ones thoughts.

I also note that the rules section is overly "wordy" compared to other sections. It contains many unnecessary words - as most rules.

Turns

Well, turns is a residue of over-emphazised order, and should naturally be ignored in a game of this caliber. However the section emphasizes that junk is the name of the game. In other words: Don't worry about what your thoughts are. Let them fly.

Duty

Find more objects. Throw new thought into the social context. If you wish to play, honour the game.

Upon sinking

For those of you familiar with the consept of "Sleight of mind" (Liber Kaos, Peter Carroll) this makes sense. The mechanisms of the game are played out in a chaotic order (read: disorder) and is as such partaking in the flow of chaos. If you stay in the borderlands between your conscious and unconscious, chaos will have all the better chance of manifesting itself.

Naming

Well, naming ones thoughts is another way of keeping track of the thoughts. So there, circle complete. I started out with "train of thought" and ended with keeping track of ones thoughts. The trains seem pretty much on track. Perhaps not on time, but that's another topic altogether.

Pagetop


Leakyheads

Originally published: 20th April, 2002

Ever come up with some truly original thought, and you thought that if only you could write it down or tell someone, that the world might change, or at least you might convince someone to think for a while?
Of course, often times you will forget (or maybe that's just me).

My mind is leaking

And the thought lies within your brain and many things happen none of which seem to relate to your thought.

And then one day, many hours, days, months, even years after, some celebrity/internet person/writer/drunken fool/shizophrenic street person, blurts out your thought for all to hear/read/see.
And then you remember, and all you can think is, "Well, I'm sure I thought of that last Monday" or whathaveyou.
Hateful eh.
Happens to me all the time.
If my bleedin' mind isn't being slurped by hollywood or the music industry, it's some poor mystic or dictator.

Bloody shite! Give me back my thoughts!

Pagetop


Dissolution of the Self

Originally published: 20th April, 2002

when i was mad i would often wake up and forget my name.
i would ask myself; who am i?
i would localize further.
i am
my self
i am
i
then i would ask; where am i?
localization would further.
i am here.
in my bed; in my room; in my boarding house; in this city on this planet.
i would awake and go about my routine.

i would see people i knew, but i had forgotten how to interact with them;
the usual routine by which the action of inter action might occur.
i would look at them and ask myself; who are they, would i say hello?
what are the parameters for introduction?
"hey, what's up"
easy but where would this lead to?
what was to come next?
should i talk about the weather?
comment on her new hair colour?
tell her my latest news?
what news?
i had none.
this day had been the same as before.
this week the same as before.
nothing different had happened.
i had walked around in circles.
i had woken up, gone to the local hangout place, smoked ciggarettes and joints with the friends i could still interact with, had gone to work, done the job, had breakfast, come home and gone to sleep.
nothing new.
no great adventure.
no strange mishap.
nothing new.
i was stagnating.

localization had become difficult, and i felt great fear when falling asleep.
the side effects from the acid became strongest then, just before oblivion, and i would fight it. would fear it.
i was afraid of what i was doing anyway, losing my
self.

quantifying myself was easy before, or so i had that impression.
but i could not remember clearly.
it was like the waves in a great sea
i vaguely recalled situations with this person, interacting.
but i could not compute, could not recreate.
things had somehow changed.
was she different or was it my self?

i decided it was my self that had changed.
my self had dissolved to many times while conscious.
maybe.
or i had erased the semantical set i was accustomed to.
maybe.
it was hard to say. it is even harder to say now.
i no longer see the waves so easily.
but localization is not so strenuous as it was then.

i pondered these things a great deal.
all my thoughts seemed alien though. as if they were someone else's.

as time wore on, i became to delocalize my ego consciously, and without the aid of chemicals. i would simply concentrate on the waves which obscured my vision; my ego would dissipate and my entire being would be the waves, the patterns in the cement. stretching across great stretches of space only a few inches in width, heighth or longtitude.
until my eyes would lose their moistness, and i would blink and resurface into my self again.

i realized after a time the truth of buckminster fuller's expression "i seem to be a verb"
i realized i had leaped across some great chasm, and had forgotten the part of me that come after "i am".
i had to relearn.

i began by removing the i from my self.
in my job as a machine operator in a plastics factory, this was quite easy.
would merely commence the task, a 7 second process, for two hour periods. my self would not assert itself, but rather dissipate. simple; take the product from the bin; remove flash here, here and here. place product on conveyer at appropriate location in space and in appropriate relation and repeat.
no i was necessary.
there was only am.
(i now believe this to have been a state of zen, or some other name in the hindu or buddhist traditions, but not being an ascetic of any of those traditions, i cannot say.)
am would carry on, moving in slightly different circles (i had moved residence to another section of town) but many of the significant points along this circular path would remain the same.
delocalization before sleeping had become less anxious. am did not fear the apparent dissolution so much as the side effects became less apparent. but interaction was still not effective.
i would still see her, whom i had once easily bantered and flirted with, but
i still could not bring myself to say even hello.
i reasserted into my self, and i became i am again.
i quit my job at the plastics factory no longer being able to and not even wishing to assert the "zen" state any longer. i began temping where i was employed at a large car manufacturing plant, inspecting and repairing parts from a untrustworthy outsourcer. this took twenty minutes from every hour. the other forty minutes, i drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. i also began to interact with my colleagues.
this i realised was easy because i did'nt care what they thought of me. it did not matter to me what they thought or cared about the self i projected. i flirted with obese and ugly women twice and three times my age. and talked about drugs and side-effects with what some people may refer to as white trash. i even had a lengthy discourse with a fellow who although coming from a middle-class family tried to fit into the jet-set crowd.

i did not care.

the semantical set became firmer and more dynamic.

i no longer stagnated.

Pagetop


ignorance

Originally published: 9th August, 2002

everyone is inherently ignorant. people who point at other people and say "this person or people are ignorant" are even more so ignorant.

inherent ignorance can be proven thusly:
no-one can know absolutely everything. show me a person who knows absolutely everything and that person would not be ignorant.

what do i mean by absolutely everything?

a person who knows everything would have to know what is going on all the time in every part of the universe and everywhere outside of it (if there is an outside to the universe) at all times past present and future.

as the existence of such a person is very unlikely, i must say that everyone is ignorant. people who are aware of their ignorance are slightly less ignorant, but still ignorant nonetheless.

Pagetop


Application to the Axis of Evil (TM)

Originally published: 25th February, 2003

Indeed, consider this my application to become a member of the Axis of Evil (TM). Let it be known that I, horab fibslager, do knowingly and with full intention of evil doings, plan to develop weapons of mass destruction, and not for the use of political/military deterrant, but for the use solely of evaporating a large circumference of highly populated area.
Furthermore, I do declare war upon the entire world, since they are all obviously far too corrupt, misleaded and foolish to exist under reasonable pretences of existence.

The only way the world may be spared from my wrath and of the post-nuclear winter, rampant chemical and biological agents which spread over the earth and wipe out all life above the ocean, will be the following:

  1. All nations, militant groups, police departments, army cadets, secret service, intelligence officers, and heads of state must declare all weapons, from nuclear weapon to the can of pepper spray.
  2. That all declared weapons must be destroyed and recorded as such, in a fully proper and accountable manner.
  3. All regimes, military groups, nations and other parties to be mentioned later will submit to weapons inspectors, and that all the citizens of all the nations must willingly comply and cooperate with the weapons inspectors.
  4. Every politician must give an oath never to speak in public again, and that also they will never tell a lie. Exaggerations of the truth are also not permitted.
  5. Every member of a military group must burn the vestiges of their positions, must ask Mohammed, Jesus and Buddha for their mercy, and must acknowledge that they are not worthy of such forgiveness.
  6. That all governemnts will dissolve themselves and submit wholly to a simple international yet locally applicable constitution.

Failure to comply with the articles of this declaration by any member of the world will result in the unilateral bombardment of every trace of humanity upon the face of this lovely planet with every plague, pox and horror known to man. There will be no extended deadlines, no arguments, no debate. There will be only compliance, otherwise, the whole of humanity will be a distant and forgotten memory. You are all in this together.

Lastly the architect of this declaration reserves the right to amend and add to the declaration, requirements, or parties to whom this pertains as he sees fit.

Pagetop


Calm and balanced essay on religion

Originally published: 19th April, 2003

And that includes discordianism.

As religions and things like them have ocurred independantly throughout history and across the world its safe to assume they have a purpose (no! don't mention haemorrhoids! shut up about your arse for one minute!). This cannot possibly be the conveyance of information, as the most successful religions seem to centre on patent bollocks, such as "it rains because God opens windows in the sky to let water in", much of which isn't even clearly stated enough to even aspire to being WRONG.

Therefore this purpose must be other than informative: it must serve an emotional or ego need, like that nice man who cuts you up and covers you in bruises and calls you a whore. (That was just an example. And shut up about your goddam arse-grapes already.)

Furthermore it must serve this purpose well, as religious people tend to live longer (true! possibly.) and are infuriatingly sanctimonious and smug.

Therefore we should allow people who wish to partake in this beneficial activity that liberty - but a line must be drawn, as for other spiritually beneficial activities which occur penalties in other realms, stating where this efficacy comes to its end. Some sort of intellectual health-warning, taking up one-third of the cover of any missal, prayer-book, pamphlet, scripture or theological tract in this vein:

"Believing this qualifies you as an idiot

60% apocrypha

40% hyperbole"

...or words to that effect. Providing people remember to insert the stuff into the correct mental "port" (look SHUT UP OK), and refrain from giving any of it a moments credence, everything should be just fine.

Pagetop


Even Dreams Die Easier

Originally published: 18th October, 2003

Sect. A:

A Thousand Tommorrows in which to Forget a Thousand Yesterdays

Where shall I start then?

How about when I was made. Unlike you monkeys I wasn't some accident your parents had. Indeed I was designed and manufactured like that sword you play with to impress the girls and scare off petty thieves on the road. I was designed by the top minds in organism manipulation. Now of course, I still had to be born the same way as you dirty monkey fucks, he looked a little bit offended at least this time, from a woman, but my DNA was custom designed. Designed for what you wonder? Well, my monkey friend, I was made to be the new top-of-the-line spy. Someone the ancient Imperials could send to a world and not have die before the fleet arrived to tell them who to kill. My designers emphasized regeneration, healing, and immunity, which has made me impervious to just about everything anyone has bothered to come up with so far including aging... which is why I'm such a god-forsaken, sexy bitch for a many thousand year old, he looks shocked at the assertion of being millennia old, but the pheromones are definitely not affecting him, meaning he was being indifferent and not getting stupid from my pheromones. Good, someone I can blabber at..

Anyways, that was back in the beginning of the Empire, not even the first millenia when all it consisted of was what they call the core-world and Earth. Earth was full of shit as it ever was, and wanted to keep their grip on the grip on the colonies as tight as possible, and so made me. But they were paranoid as ever, since they hadn't come up with the grand idea of cyclic jump-engines instead of the wasteful long jumps they prefered over the gate. The gates of course were easily sabotaged though, so I gotta give the stupid monkeys a little credit.

In my youth my proprietors educated me on the usual bullshit, Earth history, economics, politics that sorta crap. My real training started when I was 12 though, when I hit puberty. When a synth-mod, or synthetically manufactured modified human, as was the techie term then, was being manufactured there was two steps in those days, the initial genetic reprogramming, and then the hormone manipulation at puberty. My education in the ways of espionage started at this time as well, while I was being pumped full of the hormones that would make me irresisitable to all but robotmen and that irritable 25 out of 100 monkeys, like yourself, and fortify my apparent immmortality, they taught me to shoot, read monkey emotions, the skill of persuasion I would need for the three out four of you filthy fucks that wouldn't eat their own shit to please me, basic computer hacking (for when a tech-mod wasn't around to do it for me), and a general course in being a SOLDIER, despite not being one. I later found out why that was during the contest of the Western Republic that jumped for about 700 years. Stoopid monkey fucks build a million mass drivers around their prime worlds and think it's gonna stop an Imperial fleet from knocking. I never rode into battle during that shit storm with any SOLDIERs mind you, but the training made me look like a fucking roboman in the Class 2 armoured suits dropping from 10,0000 metres over that burning shithole that called itself Niberia. Probably kept most of the marines I dropped with alive just so they could die more horrible deaths on that planet. The Republic thought they were actually bleeding the Empire which was more concerned about the PR than how many freeze-dried wastes of sperm they would throw into the grinder. Me myself didn't give a shit how it truned out at the time, though I dont give much of a shit how it turned out now either. But regardless, that's a good example of how the Empire was. The bottom line was most important, a recreation of the ancient Spanish mercantilization of the Americas, with most of the same results, one way or the other. You have any idea who he Spanish were? He shakes his head no, of course he doesn't, no one has known who the Spanish were for a few thousand years, but I always thought it might be a change of pace to find someone with a vague knowledge of very ancient Earth history.. Let's stop in at this public house up the way. My designers didn't fully program the drunk out of me. I feigned a smile which reassured him. It was raining anyway so it made the appearance of the roadhouse a welcome opportunity to get dry and rest.


After we had eaten our meals in silence and finished our ales, my companion looked up at me with a questioning look, "Do we travel?" "No," I replied, "travelling the road in this weather wouldn't be any faster than if we stayed the night. Besides, your letters won't hold up to a night in this rain," referring to the package he had been charged with delivering to the landing site. "Go and have some fun with the wenches," I nodded at the females who were serving the roadhouse's patrons, "I know how much you monkeys like to carry on with each other," he stood up smiling at this sheepishly, "and don't distract them so much they forget to bring me ale," he nodded indifferently and went to one of the more crowded areas of the common room. I drank deeply enough that when I decided to head off to our room, I noticed a few looks of suprise from the crowd of monkeys that I showed no signs of intoxication. I decided to leave the bed for my companion as I knew the monkey lust for comfort was strong and not a trait I shared with my cousins. I laid a sheet on the floor and rested. And dreamed...

The cover to the stasis unit retracted as the reanimation process finished. My skull pounded and my joints were arthritic. Looking to my sides I could see I was not alone, though unlike the monkeys who had been assigned to be my escort, I recovered within minutes to their hours. I stood up and found my locker and began dressing. Breakfast would be served, then the prelim. briefing would take place. I already knew the full extent of the mission, more so than these monkeys, but being cannon fodder was nothing new to the Imperial Marine Corps. as was common they caught up with current events and how badly their investments were doing. The corporations loved to put marine investment capital into losing ventures, keeping the cattle on board for another 150 year contract. The briefing was short and the C.O. thankfully didn't ask me to say anything. He was probably the first veteran officer I'd dropped with since the insurrection began 30 years before.

Pagetop


Literacy

Originally published: 21st October, 2023

language is not wrong. and literacy isn't the queen's english. literacy is being able to understand what others are saying even if it's the not the most comfortable of things to read and hear. it's about understanding when the narrator is telling a blatant lie or being honest to god about what they are speaking. it's about percieving sincerity and earnestness or obvious deception and depravity. it's less about commas and spelling and factors more about how to perceive what someone is telling you. and for most of you you are so aggressively illiterate it hurts my faith in the human race. i want us as a species on this earth to be so much better than this. and yet. the reality is we as a collective entity are not. we are fools bringing the end of not only our own species, but of countless others. in our lust for the so called rat race of humankind. but rats are better than us at this point in our history as a species. rats don't eat each other for fun and entertainment. that is our unique distinction from the rest of living species. while they strive against each other and with each other. we instead choose glory in the horrors of adversity with cackles of laughter and glee and profit. we are the devil of this planet.

Pagetop