Reality-Check ௹﷼⨌∰ↈ Augmentations

This is a portrayal of schizophrenic degradation over a period of years by a patient drawing cats; I think in the late 1920's. I don't want to get into the why a lot of mental disease is exacerbated by 20th century problem/pill solutions but I think it's a useful benchmark for codifying drifting reality.

I quite like the fire god pussy at the end. Frankly it looks splendid and if that's what cats look like, then I want some of that. Well, rather that than the cheeky catwalk turn and that exposed-in-my face feline arsehole they serve up currently.

I also want to introduce to you something I came across from my subscription to dope nation the other day that I've been holding back for you while I get over  Wittgenstein's mesmerizing come down. Truly he is the peak.

In a way it's 'a' good coincidence, as I specifically want to talk about the effects of morphine, because when I've been screaming so loud at an entire hospital complex, to put me out my pain they jacked me up on 200mg of Pethadine AND 200 mg of morphine (eight times the hourly dose they prefer to administer) that it's only when I saw this picture that I realised what went on through the blinding pain. 

By this I mean that even though it's the most cathartic transfer of schmerz to no pain in my life, I previously had no idea that beneath the sea of doped up tranquility, that what was really going on in the hospital bed festooned with pipes and wires and drips and gastric pipes up my nose was a lotta lotta sedated neurological activity.

OF COURSE NOW I SEE. The mind was merely being deceived. And I think you can view that in these pictures below which frankly are the most dangerous artistic and neurological experiment I have come across to date that the morphine tricked me into thinking the pain had gone away. Here the portrait of Bryan on Morphine that demonstrate otherwise.

And so I claim that the Psilocybin (magic mushroom) below, is ostensibly cheekier, funnier, more dramatic and a little bit bucking bizarre. But as I've done both, I'm allowed to shoot my mouth off about that. 

There's a lot more of the artist Bryan Lewis Saunders doing drugs for us all; that is him, you and I over here. 

Update: I can't find the exact post but Clif High talked about using snow to diminish burnt toes and the pain duration lasting infinitely longer than just dealing with it sans snow.

8.1 The Fascist Advertising Complex

 

There's no need to worry about an intellectual outcry from the advertising community on this because 95% claim to be working on the 5% that is sweet. I know, hard to figure out the math but that's the way it works in the Tardis.

But Does It Float

My favourite art website is on cracking form recently in case you've noticed the change in style for visuals here. Tons of synchronicity too if you keep your pineal gland nice and squeegee clean.

Ctrl Alt Del - Wittgenstein

I've been telling people for a couple of years that my attention is shredded. Back in 2006 Google released a cloud based RSS reader and my datastream which was heavy anyway went up by let's say, around 10 times as much in volume. To compensate for this I naturally read faster, ditched stuff quicker, learned to scan read and get to the point where I can pick out the interesting sentences, the bits that fire off more endorphins with 2 or 3 screen swipes by my eyeballs per page scroll.

I don't advocate becoming so data intensive as there's always a quid pro quo and what I made up for in breadth was mugged by the reality of depth, though the complex caveat of that is I also covered a lot more breadth-of-depth. 

So that's all clear then isn't it? 

No? Whatever. It's complex but the road traffic accident victim (did you see this yesterday on Vimeo?) was my attention span for traditional deep reading. A sort of brain death if you can make it to the end of that video.

I used to inhale literature and then that waned to non fiction with post WWII U.S politics and then that distilled to just pure digital fact hunting; scanning at the speed of light ( though with admittedly low clock cycle CNS CPU) on the internet and suddenly I started to fail at reading books I'd have stuck it out with before. 

I failed on War on Peace and succeeded with Hamas. I stumbled on Don Quixote and lucked out on good manners, I tired over and over again with Moby Dick but uncovered it's roots in all three Abrahamic religions (it takes a wilful effort of dismissing the obvious on that point as I learned recently from experience. It will probably only linger for a few seconds at most, or if you're lucky you'll figure out why all three religions tell variations on the same stories). 

The list goes on and on, choose a topic, put my name next to it and see what the Google turns up. I've written more bollocks on other people's blogs than I have on my own and that's saying something.

But it's consistent bollocks. I know this even though I'm completely inconsistent in real life because when I comment it's coming from my heart and I get a chance to discretely retract a few unchoice words unlike in real life, like yesterday when I wanted to delete my mouth when I realised the business card I requested at the Emporiums "It's happened to be a closet" (sic) was denied because the poor girl thought I was asking for her personal business card. And so when I secured it off someone more senior I lost my temper...only to regret my aggression that pointedly articulated 'of course there's a business card for the establishment' in a voice a little louder than a gentleman uses. I wish I could have deleted the tonality of my words. They were bullying and unfair.

So no books of importance for so long. Well of course I still read, but most books look like shitty shinola compared to the outstanding contexutality and accessibility of the webz. 

But how adorable is analogue paper? It's a real chick puller these days to carry a book. Sometimes I take a walk with one just to look the part against you arseholes with your noses stroking your iPads and  your greasy fingers in your iPhones. Books are very sexy. They always will be and let's face it; tech just hit a design wall. Rectangles are the new black till we figure out 3D multi-colour morphing fractals and shape shifting tech devices. And then who knows? We might even be able to burp it up as language as well. True Visual language.

A little bit like this early monochromatic attempt:

And then out of nowhere. Like a bat out of fucking Honda....

....I was off the grid for a few days and rereading some of Taleb's Black Swan in between emailing him, as he's a bit of a gent in real life unlike his haughty character that comes leaping of the page. 


Then I hit solid fucking Gold. I pulled out my Ray Monk's Wittgenstein - The Duty of Genius and inhaled 600 pages in three sittings. I could FEEL my brain saying. "YES MY SON"..."You're still tasty" "Dammit you're so fucking hot" "This is FUN". "You are SO back". 


This is where it all started. Reading books. God I had such an amazing time those three days of utter undisturbed silence.


So much so that when I leaned back after the final page and realised the scope of Ludwig's attempt to reconcile his intellect with his life (a failure that he would be first to admit), as I pondered the maths and the logic needed to define it all as the illusion it really is. The abstraction and sheer effort required to line up all the ducks in one go and press a big banging button. I shed tears for the sacrifice involved in the venture we call history. I didn't undertand it all of course, many times I could only smell the scent of the effort around the edges. 


It was best described a few months ago in that video where the voice says: Nobody knows what the universe is for, but all agree that it is extremely expensive. 


I hope those cocks at CERN know EXACTLY what they are doing as they tamper with space and time.That they aren't taking risks without OUR permission or consultation. It's us who pay the price for science. NOT the team players on the Manhattan Project who all wrung their hands  in post war angst at the enormity of what they unleashed on the world.

So yeah. I nailed a book I'd loved once in the past and actually it sent me spiralling into space at times as I realised the conversion of Vicky (as he was privately known in one Swansea household) from that which can be articulated to that which merely exists. The word to the verb. The idea to the act. The doing of it all...the doing.


Thank you Ray Monk for bringing one of the most complex people alive. A man whose presence scared his closest friends into moderating how much time they could tolerate with his intellectual fierceness. Russell, Keynes, GE Moore. He broke all their backs and yet, was it really Feyerabend who finally had the courage to challenge him in a way that he appreciated. The same Feyerabend who briefly taught McKenna at Berkeley? Small world baby. Small fucking world.

I'll leave you with Wittgenstein on Science and to which I direct the researchers at CERN to consult the rest of the monkeys on the planet, if a hint of risk is present. You don't know  ANY more than we do. You're just monkeys in cotton underpants tinkering with dark matter.


Wittgenstein:

'The truly apocalyptic view of the world' he wrote, 'is that things do not repeat themselves.' 

that things do not repeat themselves, that things do not repeat themselves, that things do not repeat themselves, that things do not repeat themselves, that things do not repeat themselves, that things do not repeat themselves, that things do not repeat themselves, that things do not repeat themselves.......

JOY IS BMW

Slavoj Zizek talks about the necessity for the poetry that the Serbian Slobodan Milosevich wrote and used to stir the emotions of his countrymen to carry out war crimes against the Croats and other members of the Balkan states back in the 90's. I can't remember the exact wording though he quotes it in some of his online speeches. Roughly speaking it goes something along the lines of 'come with me, dont worry about the rules, today you can stare at the sun, you can play and do as you feel, free and unblinking from everyday life'.

Is one man's ethnic cleansing another man's (BMW's) brand experience? I'll find the exact words to the poetry and post it below when it turns up. Incidentally, Zizek says at the beginning of the video I link to at the start of this post exactly the same thing regarding images, as was quoted in the Wittgenstein fascist advertising complex post I did the other day. I'm quite sure they're unconnected other than perhaps mutual nods towards Baudrillard's gulf war simulacra or Guy de Bord's Society of the Spectacle.

I'm mildly amused that people at the screening of this thought it was cool. This is not unexpected from BMW customers.


Update

In Defense of Philosophy: Derek Jarman - Wittgenstein

Whenever I hit on a rich seam of content of the net I mine it empty like the hardcore info glutton I am. About 5 years ago there was nothing on the internet in video or audio that Chomsky had said, and which I hadn't consumed (the only use of that word I feel comfortable with). That's changed a bit as there are whole channels devoted to Chomsky who I fear is the last great American intellectual. The rest being too cowardly to take on the Anti Semitic Zionists dominating Israeli and AIPAC political discourse at present (though at least the formidable Haaretz is printing more bravely than any American newspaper has done).

Recently I just wolfed down Zizek's entire content except for a badly recorded lecture, a problem that recurs often with many amateur recordings, and may require a software solution that just irons out the speakers voice for something more synthetic but less aggressive on my ears and speakers.

I've been wanting to write about this Golden Age of the internet. It's truly awesome and I can't imagine it being any better than this. In fact I dread it all going downhill compared to the current flood of top quality content, peer to peer sharing, pretty good speeds/bandwidth, and net neutrality. I can't imagine this lasting given the disproportionate advantages that predatory business takes of any commons resources (House of Commons is next) and the depressing discretions that people/public seem willing to sacrifice, but I might be wrong on that as even China struggles to keep a lid on content it doesn't want shared and at least the French seem prepared to protest on behalf of Europe.

I don't want to write too much about Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein as I've not seen it yet. But it is 69.2% downloaded and as it's 4.33 am and I've an early start tomorrow I should try and grab another hour or so because the real point is I woke up in the wee hours and just passed a pleasant hour listening to Tariq Ali (lovely chap) and Jonathan Derbyshire (he seems like a nice lad too) talking about all things Ludwig and Jarman, through the generosity of the Tate Channel which just emphasises that point I want to elaborate on which is that that I'm finding a critical mass of content on the subjects and topics I'm most interested in. Often there's only a few thousand views of it on Youtube so I can't imagine this is any different and yet it's a lovely example of the long tail in action. Or at least keeping my boat floating.