Tuesday, 21 August 2007
It's the quiet ones you want to be careful of..
It's me, Joe, here to introduce myself. It's been years since we started this whole thing, and it periodically phased in and out of our lives, I like to think of it as a documentation of our years in a crappy snob school. I'll do what I can to represent my thoughts and opinions of both past and present, just don't expect me to have a regular pattern xD
Monday, 13 August 2007
Money, a waste of value.
Money, creating stress and depression planetwide. Sounds about right doesn’t it. Well anyway finally a non fiction piece of writing. Me and my good friend Alex Harman got into a rather heated debate the other day. It concerned the digitalisation of all money globally.
In the UK today more and more places are accepting debit/credit cards. small corner shops, fast food chains, country pubs. Literally the only people who don’t accept plastic nowadays are butcher‘s, grocer‘s, hotdog, ice-cream stands or vans. And that’s only because of the lack of internet connection. However many groups are trying to pioneer large cover(citywide) wireless networks. To which all people pay a pay as you go rate, or even a monthly rate. That way anyone can use the internet anywhere. If this were to exist then the aforementioned vans and stands would have access to the internet and hence card swiping technology.
This would mean that every outlet of every kind would be accepting card. Now if that is the case what is the need for cash at all. I mean a £20 note is only a promissory note, equivalent to twenty of those little round things called pound coins. Coins remember are the only form literal money. Which is odd. When you pay £200 on paypal to some guy in Hong Kong, 200 pound coins do not get flown to this man and delivered to him. Thus truly exchanging the goods for the money. Instead someone deducts 200 from your balance and adds it to his. The money so to speak is never owned by either party. All that’s happened is that some ones and zeros associated with that particular some of money float around like a digital promissory note and make Mr Inamoto feel happy about shipping his prize fish to Kent.
At this point an interesting business idea popped up and distracted us for a while. If people are becoming increasingly detached from the money they think they own, then why not to some extent do away with it all together. Imagine a great site, comparable to Ebay and such things, where everyone posts a list of items that they want or are looking for. Adjacent to this list is a list of things they have that they wouldn’t mind getting rid of. Then other people who want what you have get notified. The other people can approach you with a proposal for a trade, a swap if you will. Eventually both parties come to an agreement and the goods are shipped. It would be policed in a similar way to Ebay, by the masses.
That could be great we thought. Because everyone knows people assign real value to objects, regardless of price tag. People can get what they feel is honestly what its worth to them. But then we thought. Ok we would have to implement some sort of trade ring facility. For example, if Mr A wants item B and Mr B wants item C and Mr C wants item A. This would occur as a single three way transaction. But what about larger chains. What about people who have things that few people want and want things that few people have. The chains would have to be enormous. You would need to have some kind of object, marked in a particular way, of specific and defined value. That way people could trade their items for these fixed value objects until a date where they see something they want to trade them for. If you hadn’t already guessed, this is money. Bit of a pointless distraction, well hang on.
So okay, if everyone is paying by card and thus not ever owning money. Where is all this money. Its all sitting in a bank. It’s not divided into neat little piles for each person, which is why I always laugh when someone asks me what branch my account is held at, its just strewn about in piles of similar denomination. Well that doesn’t matter, if it was divided by account, there would have to be people transferring these funds back and forth globally to the likes of Mr Inamoto. So nobody actually moves or transfers the money, It’s very rarely actually owned by anyone, and all that we deal with is abstract totals. If we allow this kind of detachment from our wealth, why on earth do we still let banks take the piss. When you pay to transfer your account into another one in another country, when you emigrate for example, why should you pay a fee. All that’s happened is Tanya Slater, cashier has typed a few numbers into the computer in front of her, and sent a few ones and zeros to the destination bank, where Sarah Delarosa sends a few back. Job done.
Its not just banks. Stock brokers make their living sending ones and zeros back and forth between computer. Exploiting flaws in the system(the global economy) to make millions. I can understand that the value of a nations currency should change depending on its economic wealth. But to let people get away with such blatant thievery is plain wrong. They send 1001010111010101010 from A to B for a few weeks then bring it back and, bobs your uncle, totally out of nowhere, new money is created from a glitch in the mechanics and they have more money than they started with. that’s like giving your best mate a tenner (£10) when he has £90 to his name. he wins the lottery and you ask for 10% of his now inflated bank balance. Its absurd. The only reason it is like this is because we have billions of redundant, unused token coinage sitting in vaults across the globe doing quite frankly fuck all and a bunch of money for nothing brokers who don’t want to lose their cheat codes.
So we have a giant global swapping system with an entirely detached economy based solely on personal wealth of individual members globally. One fixed interest rate. No stock brokers. Just plain old bartering. The only exchange rate around is you and how much you want that new toy. If you want it more you subconsciously decrease the value of the currency you own so are prepared to give more of it away to get the bear. Simple psychological economics otherwise known as human nature. If it worked online surely it can work in the real world. I mean seriously, why not just put all the coins and promissory notes in a museum someone are exchange every persons wealth into a new entirely digital form. The PWU(personal wealth unit) for arguments sake. All transactions are electronic, faster simpler, overall people benefit, banks can’t rip you off as often. But for the minority, the brokers, they are on for a big downturn in their shares so to speak.
It wont happen today, probably not even in my lifetime. Because human nature also has some downfalls. Close minded paranoia for one, but what about identity fraud, system crashes. Well, on the fraud, it would actually be better to have total digitalisation. Think about it, say robber Rob clones your card and draws out 4 promissory notes to the total value of £200. The banks in their eternal wisdom have printed on them. To supply the bearer with £X, so until he is caught that isolated value of money is in his control entirely. If currency is digitalised and a card is cloned, the victim can go to a bank and open a new account, instantly transfer all funds leaving the robber with nothing other than a warrant.
Even now we are overlooking advances in security. If we fast forward to the point where people don’t carry coins anymore anyway, most cards will come with fingerprint, if not retinal confirmation in addition to a code. I say fast forward as although the technology exists today, people have to get over their political small man syndrome. I doesn’t infringe your human rights if the bank/government having your fingerprints. But they could know wherever I was, what just in case you decide to one day ditch your life at the monastery and take up life as an international crime lord. I have never understood objections to it, maybe because I’m too open minded, if there is a reason please let me know.
And on the bank crashes, the problem is no different from an equivalent situation nowadays. The severity increase would be minimal. But hang on I am only thinking on a national level. If we zoom out, all of a sudden, we see that the problem that was previously limited to HSBC suddenly affects THE ENTIRE WORLD. Stop, HSBC is already a global company. A system crash a HSBC would be no different. Now and then, in both cases it would be catastrophic. Which is why banks put so much money in to back up’s and failsafes. Because at the end of the day, if it were to happen, we would be put back in the stone age. My word versus yours says that much money is mine as billions descend on the bank vault looking for what is theirs. In the world with digital money arbitrary data storage would exist and thus there could be tens of thousands of backups, and you cant fight of what not there. We would have to resort back to swapping and we know where that leads…..
Value, it seems cannot be lived with or without. We will always assign value to stuff. But money on the other hand can be lived without, at least in its current out dated system. Rates of global trend change have been increasing and I think the older generations are getting left behind. As the silver society lives longer it see a parabolic increase in changes. They live longer and changes happen faster, it’s to be expected that some find it hard to adjust. But when I am grey and old. I hope I will embrace change to prevent the horrific stalling of our civilisations development that we see today.
thanks
In the UK today more and more places are accepting debit/credit cards. small corner shops, fast food chains, country pubs. Literally the only people who don’t accept plastic nowadays are butcher‘s, grocer‘s, hotdog, ice-cream stands or vans. And that’s only because of the lack of internet connection. However many groups are trying to pioneer large cover(citywide) wireless networks. To which all people pay a pay as you go rate, or even a monthly rate. That way anyone can use the internet anywhere. If this were to exist then the aforementioned vans and stands would have access to the internet and hence card swiping technology.
This would mean that every outlet of every kind would be accepting card. Now if that is the case what is the need for cash at all. I mean a £20 note is only a promissory note, equivalent to twenty of those little round things called pound coins. Coins remember are the only form literal money. Which is odd. When you pay £200 on paypal to some guy in Hong Kong, 200 pound coins do not get flown to this man and delivered to him. Thus truly exchanging the goods for the money. Instead someone deducts 200 from your balance and adds it to his. The money so to speak is never owned by either party. All that’s happened is that some ones and zeros associated with that particular some of money float around like a digital promissory note and make Mr Inamoto feel happy about shipping his prize fish to Kent.
At this point an interesting business idea popped up and distracted us for a while. If people are becoming increasingly detached from the money they think they own, then why not to some extent do away with it all together. Imagine a great site, comparable to Ebay and such things, where everyone posts a list of items that they want or are looking for. Adjacent to this list is a list of things they have that they wouldn’t mind getting rid of. Then other people who want what you have get notified. The other people can approach you with a proposal for a trade, a swap if you will. Eventually both parties come to an agreement and the goods are shipped. It would be policed in a similar way to Ebay, by the masses.
That could be great we thought. Because everyone knows people assign real value to objects, regardless of price tag. People can get what they feel is honestly what its worth to them. But then we thought. Ok we would have to implement some sort of trade ring facility. For example, if Mr A wants item B and Mr B wants item C and Mr C wants item A. This would occur as a single three way transaction. But what about larger chains. What about people who have things that few people want and want things that few people have. The chains would have to be enormous. You would need to have some kind of object, marked in a particular way, of specific and defined value. That way people could trade their items for these fixed value objects until a date where they see something they want to trade them for. If you hadn’t already guessed, this is money. Bit of a pointless distraction, well hang on.
So okay, if everyone is paying by card and thus not ever owning money. Where is all this money. Its all sitting in a bank. It’s not divided into neat little piles for each person, which is why I always laugh when someone asks me what branch my account is held at, its just strewn about in piles of similar denomination. Well that doesn’t matter, if it was divided by account, there would have to be people transferring these funds back and forth globally to the likes of Mr Inamoto. So nobody actually moves or transfers the money, It’s very rarely actually owned by anyone, and all that we deal with is abstract totals. If we allow this kind of detachment from our wealth, why on earth do we still let banks take the piss. When you pay to transfer your account into another one in another country, when you emigrate for example, why should you pay a fee. All that’s happened is Tanya Slater, cashier has typed a few numbers into the computer in front of her, and sent a few ones and zeros to the destination bank, where Sarah Delarosa sends a few back. Job done.
Its not just banks. Stock brokers make their living sending ones and zeros back and forth between computer. Exploiting flaws in the system(the global economy) to make millions. I can understand that the value of a nations currency should change depending on its economic wealth. But to let people get away with such blatant thievery is plain wrong. They send 1001010111010101010 from A to B for a few weeks then bring it back and, bobs your uncle, totally out of nowhere, new money is created from a glitch in the mechanics and they have more money than they started with. that’s like giving your best mate a tenner (£10) when he has £90 to his name. he wins the lottery and you ask for 10% of his now inflated bank balance. Its absurd. The only reason it is like this is because we have billions of redundant, unused token coinage sitting in vaults across the globe doing quite frankly fuck all and a bunch of money for nothing brokers who don’t want to lose their cheat codes.
So we have a giant global swapping system with an entirely detached economy based solely on personal wealth of individual members globally. One fixed interest rate. No stock brokers. Just plain old bartering. The only exchange rate around is you and how much you want that new toy. If you want it more you subconsciously decrease the value of the currency you own so are prepared to give more of it away to get the bear. Simple psychological economics otherwise known as human nature. If it worked online surely it can work in the real world. I mean seriously, why not just put all the coins and promissory notes in a museum someone are exchange every persons wealth into a new entirely digital form. The PWU(personal wealth unit) for arguments sake. All transactions are electronic, faster simpler, overall people benefit, banks can’t rip you off as often. But for the minority, the brokers, they are on for a big downturn in their shares so to speak.
It wont happen today, probably not even in my lifetime. Because human nature also has some downfalls. Close minded paranoia for one, but what about identity fraud, system crashes. Well, on the fraud, it would actually be better to have total digitalisation. Think about it, say robber Rob clones your card and draws out 4 promissory notes to the total value of £200. The banks in their eternal wisdom have printed on them. To supply the bearer with £X, so until he is caught that isolated value of money is in his control entirely. If currency is digitalised and a card is cloned, the victim can go to a bank and open a new account, instantly transfer all funds leaving the robber with nothing other than a warrant.
Even now we are overlooking advances in security. If we fast forward to the point where people don’t carry coins anymore anyway, most cards will come with fingerprint, if not retinal confirmation in addition to a code. I say fast forward as although the technology exists today, people have to get over their political small man syndrome. I doesn’t infringe your human rights if the bank/government having your fingerprints. But they could know wherever I was, what just in case you decide to one day ditch your life at the monastery and take up life as an international crime lord. I have never understood objections to it, maybe because I’m too open minded, if there is a reason please let me know.
And on the bank crashes, the problem is no different from an equivalent situation nowadays. The severity increase would be minimal. But hang on I am only thinking on a national level. If we zoom out, all of a sudden, we see that the problem that was previously limited to HSBC suddenly affects THE ENTIRE WORLD. Stop, HSBC is already a global company. A system crash a HSBC would be no different. Now and then, in both cases it would be catastrophic. Which is why banks put so much money in to back up’s and failsafes. Because at the end of the day, if it were to happen, we would be put back in the stone age. My word versus yours says that much money is mine as billions descend on the bank vault looking for what is theirs. In the world with digital money arbitrary data storage would exist and thus there could be tens of thousands of backups, and you cant fight of what not there. We would have to resort back to swapping and we know where that leads…..
Value, it seems cannot be lived with or without. We will always assign value to stuff. But money on the other hand can be lived without, at least in its current out dated system. Rates of global trend change have been increasing and I think the older generations are getting left behind. As the silver society lives longer it see a parabolic increase in changes. They live longer and changes happen faster, it’s to be expected that some find it hard to adjust. But when I am grey and old. I hope I will embrace change to prevent the horrific stalling of our civilisations development that we see today.
thanks
Original blurb
Another entry from the history books here. I managed to find the original blurb we came up with.
In hindsight I find this blurb very pretentious and anal. But it’s part of the projects history so belongs here as much as anything else.
Written for adults by teenagers with a smug sense of satisfaction.
Every chapter is a question that one hopes they must never have to answer either due to its perplexity or absurdity. Each tale hastily written without prior planning to catch the essence of the topic and prevent order and structure from forming. This book may totally alter your perception of reality as well as social, philosophical, political and religious ideas, or, it may be a pile of rubbish that makes you wish you kept your receipt.
Every chapter is a question that one hopes they must never have to answer either due to its perplexity or absurdity. Each tale hastily written without prior planning to catch the essence of the topic and prevent order and structure from forming. This book may totally alter your perception of reality as well as social, philosophical, political and religious ideas, or, it may be a pile of rubbish that makes you wish you kept your receipt.
In hindsight I find this blurb very pretentious and anal. But it’s part of the projects history so belongs here as much as anything else.
Saturday, 11 August 2007
Morning
This piece was written two and a half years ago. It worries me. I however like the tell it as he sees it nature of the main character. I think it reflects on the blind acceptance we encounter after a night out. This was intended to be a short from the book.
Morning
Hello, my name is Michael, I am sitting in my living room. Something is not right today. Had a good time last night, probably too good. Is the sky normally green in the morning? I turn to the penguin in the armchair next to me, I ask him if he will turn the telly down. He graciously nods and reduces the volume. The channel hops back and forth for a while before decide to graze on the news for a time. Breaking news, mad axe murdering goldfish, nothing interesting, no wait, go back. A large goldfish swims leisurely across the screen, from the presenters left. He, I presume, uses his chosen implement to behead the reporter. Following this he, how many axe murderers are female nowadays anyway, begins hacking at the corpse with gratuitous fervour. Every stroke, a graceful arc of blood, eviscerated gore pattering on the news desk, scarlet ichor misting the walls. The fish turns to the camera, a bubble of water emerges from his, women don’t do things like that, mouth before rising to the ceiling and bursting.
Went for a walk to clear my head. Going to have to douse the volcano in the back yard, might damage the azaleas. It begins to rain, water dripping from the pavement before plummeting down to the sky. If I wasn’t wearing baggy trousers I would be soaked. I saw a monkey walking his dog, he nodded, I returned the compliment. Went to work, flexible hours are nice. Someone had let the onions out, they were war dancing round the tied up senior management team, prodding them with makeshift spears (pencils). I could help them but they gave last months promotion to Cynthia “look at my cleavage” Patterson. She can’t even spell financial co-ordinator. I moved on.
My office, my sanctuary. I cleared my desk and lay down. I detached and used my left arm to scratch my back. that’s the best thing about having a prosthesis, you can scratch all those hard to reach places. It’s a long story, lets just say chainsaws and delusional ants are not good bedfellows. Suddenly my ears pick up, and triangulate the sound of a wardrum. Damn. The onions must be sailing on the fourth floor. This building genius you see. The fourth floor is directly above this one, the forty fifth. It makes sense if you think about it apparently. I just reckon its to do with the boss only having to go up 12 steps to get back to his office after lunch. Talk of the devil.
Dave Richmond CEO, was calling my name. the onions were feeding him feet first through an A2 shredder. The strained groans of the machine fighting to pull him through. His now silent mouth opening and closing slowly reminded me of the goldfish on the telly. His feet and lower legs had already turned to bright red ribbons in a currently small pile on the floor. His blood trickling down the equipment like freshly juiced OJ, pure and still warm. His waist approaches the aperture. The gorping has stopped now just feint panting. His pupils are blown and he is in massive hydraulic shock. It will be over soon. The machine grinds to a halt and smoke weeps from around his waist. Heh. He always wanted to wear a grass skirt.
For whatever reason I ignored Randal(he’s mute) being raped by Sheila on the photocopier. I just wanted to go to the rooftop, don’t know why. Floor 633497 (the tech guys had some spare numbers left), HQ of a notorious mafia family. Few enter here, many fear here, these guys seem alright to me. Beethoven’s 5th, quaint. The room small, cosy with a round card table at its epicentre, 37 legs in total(health and safety‘s final solution to wobbly table accidents). I enter the boss’ office. The music died. Shot three times in the head. Apparently Frederico doesn’t like classical, the boss handed me a six shooter and looked pensively upward. The rooftop.
The twang of snapping elevator cables is certainly a unique sound, typically associated with snapping nerves. A rushing sound as I migrate to the ceiling. 3 hours of freefall remaining. Approx. 20,000 floors to go. Oh so that’s what that puddle on the floor is. Give or take 178minutes later, I was feeling rather pensive. I asked the lift to please stop falling. It agreed. I asked it to take me to the roof. It did. I stepped outside and exploded. Well I would have done if I could be bothered. Why on earth is 95% of the buildings staff on the roof. But they are queuing so I will join. The line terminated at the perimeter of the roof. Next to the termination was a sign. 3 hours of fun. Cost of use. Life. Everyone else was in spacesuits. Obviously their bodies were prepared to explode. Every ten seconds or so the next person in the line tripped over the edge. Jumping in a spacesuit isn’t easy.
I saw a little hut. An alarm bell went off in my head. If it’s ever happened to you, you will know how much that hurts. After ramming my prosthetic into my aural canal I managed to expel the unwanted metal. The hut had a sign saying do not enter. I entered. The universe unmade itself. The sign did make sense. Its simplicity probably prevented unnecessary attention. I was on a platform. Not unlike an aircraft carrier deck, just without the aircraft and about the size of my kitchen. With me was pure evil and the cutest baby in the universe(can you still win that competition legitimately if you’re the sloe entrant?). The baby was in a pram and in it’s hand was a lollipop. It had take me written on a postik note attached to the pop. Pure evil just pointed. It had to be done.
I took it. The baby began to cry, hot tears rolling down it’s flushed face. It’s eyes screwing up in anger, eyebrows frowning. It’s mouth, toothless, wide open, gums bearing. It’s wailing louder and louder. Its legs kicking and arms rocking the pram. It’s anger growing. It’s eyes were bloodshot. Blood began to trickle from it’s ear. Its pupils blew and the wailing turned to angry, bone jarring, screaming. The blood seeping and staining the light pillow. Blood began to dribble down it’s cheeks, emerging from somewhere within the eye socket. Angrier and angrier.
[time is slowed down for the next 1.25 seconds to describe the event s in appropriate detail]
The babies eyes detonated. It was a heinous blast of blood and jelly prevailing several feet into the void. Blood begins jetting, like a red geyser, from every orifice. The baby begins to lift up out of the pram. Its gut wrenching sound burrowing into your soul and ripping its face off. Transfixed I cannot look away. The babies belly button bursts in a violent outgushing of flesh and claret, spewing into the void from the fissure. The tear extends up the torso. Crack. The sternum splits. The ribcage erupts in unrelinquished glory like an airbag filled with tissue. Lumps of organ, shards of bone. More blood than a dozen men splashes over everything. A large portion of the skull is arcing through the air toward me. A slow and gentle dance. I know I will never move in time. Slowly. Slowly. Closer. Closer.
Hello, my name is Michael, I am sitting in my living room. Something is not right today. Had a good time last night, probably too good. Is the sky normally green in the morning?
Morning
Hello, my name is Michael, I am sitting in my living room. Something is not right today. Had a good time last night, probably too good. Is the sky normally green in the morning? I turn to the penguin in the armchair next to me, I ask him if he will turn the telly down. He graciously nods and reduces the volume. The channel hops back and forth for a while before decide to graze on the news for a time. Breaking news, mad axe murdering goldfish, nothing interesting, no wait, go back. A large goldfish swims leisurely across the screen, from the presenters left. He, I presume, uses his chosen implement to behead the reporter. Following this he, how many axe murderers are female nowadays anyway, begins hacking at the corpse with gratuitous fervour. Every stroke, a graceful arc of blood, eviscerated gore pattering on the news desk, scarlet ichor misting the walls. The fish turns to the camera, a bubble of water emerges from his, women don’t do things like that, mouth before rising to the ceiling and bursting.
Went for a walk to clear my head. Going to have to douse the volcano in the back yard, might damage the azaleas. It begins to rain, water dripping from the pavement before plummeting down to the sky. If I wasn’t wearing baggy trousers I would be soaked. I saw a monkey walking his dog, he nodded, I returned the compliment. Went to work, flexible hours are nice. Someone had let the onions out, they were war dancing round the tied up senior management team, prodding them with makeshift spears (pencils). I could help them but they gave last months promotion to Cynthia “look at my cleavage” Patterson. She can’t even spell financial co-ordinator. I moved on.
My office, my sanctuary. I cleared my desk and lay down. I detached and used my left arm to scratch my back. that’s the best thing about having a prosthesis, you can scratch all those hard to reach places. It’s a long story, lets just say chainsaws and delusional ants are not good bedfellows. Suddenly my ears pick up, and triangulate the sound of a wardrum. Damn. The onions must be sailing on the fourth floor. This building genius you see. The fourth floor is directly above this one, the forty fifth. It makes sense if you think about it apparently. I just reckon its to do with the boss only having to go up 12 steps to get back to his office after lunch. Talk of the devil.
Dave Richmond CEO, was calling my name. the onions were feeding him feet first through an A2 shredder. The strained groans of the machine fighting to pull him through. His now silent mouth opening and closing slowly reminded me of the goldfish on the telly. His feet and lower legs had already turned to bright red ribbons in a currently small pile on the floor. His blood trickling down the equipment like freshly juiced OJ, pure and still warm. His waist approaches the aperture. The gorping has stopped now just feint panting. His pupils are blown and he is in massive hydraulic shock. It will be over soon. The machine grinds to a halt and smoke weeps from around his waist. Heh. He always wanted to wear a grass skirt.
For whatever reason I ignored Randal(he’s mute) being raped by Sheila on the photocopier. I just wanted to go to the rooftop, don’t know why. Floor 633497 (the tech guys had some spare numbers left), HQ of a notorious mafia family. Few enter here, many fear here, these guys seem alright to me. Beethoven’s 5th, quaint. The room small, cosy with a round card table at its epicentre, 37 legs in total(health and safety‘s final solution to wobbly table accidents). I enter the boss’ office. The music died. Shot three times in the head. Apparently Frederico doesn’t like classical, the boss handed me a six shooter and looked pensively upward. The rooftop.
The twang of snapping elevator cables is certainly a unique sound, typically associated with snapping nerves. A rushing sound as I migrate to the ceiling. 3 hours of freefall remaining. Approx. 20,000 floors to go. Oh so that’s what that puddle on the floor is. Give or take 178minutes later, I was feeling rather pensive. I asked the lift to please stop falling. It agreed. I asked it to take me to the roof. It did. I stepped outside and exploded. Well I would have done if I could be bothered. Why on earth is 95% of the buildings staff on the roof. But they are queuing so I will join. The line terminated at the perimeter of the roof. Next to the termination was a sign. 3 hours of fun. Cost of use. Life. Everyone else was in spacesuits. Obviously their bodies were prepared to explode. Every ten seconds or so the next person in the line tripped over the edge. Jumping in a spacesuit isn’t easy.
I saw a little hut. An alarm bell went off in my head. If it’s ever happened to you, you will know how much that hurts. After ramming my prosthetic into my aural canal I managed to expel the unwanted metal. The hut had a sign saying do not enter. I entered. The universe unmade itself. The sign did make sense. Its simplicity probably prevented unnecessary attention. I was on a platform. Not unlike an aircraft carrier deck, just without the aircraft and about the size of my kitchen. With me was pure evil and the cutest baby in the universe(can you still win that competition legitimately if you’re the sloe entrant?). The baby was in a pram and in it’s hand was a lollipop. It had take me written on a postik note attached to the pop. Pure evil just pointed. It had to be done.
I took it. The baby began to cry, hot tears rolling down it’s flushed face. It’s eyes screwing up in anger, eyebrows frowning. It’s mouth, toothless, wide open, gums bearing. It’s wailing louder and louder. Its legs kicking and arms rocking the pram. It’s anger growing. It’s eyes were bloodshot. Blood began to trickle from it’s ear. Its pupils blew and the wailing turned to angry, bone jarring, screaming. The blood seeping and staining the light pillow. Blood began to dribble down it’s cheeks, emerging from somewhere within the eye socket. Angrier and angrier.
[time is slowed down for the next 1.25 seconds to describe the event s in appropriate detail]
The babies eyes detonated. It was a heinous blast of blood and jelly prevailing several feet into the void. Blood begins jetting, like a red geyser, from every orifice. The baby begins to lift up out of the pram. Its gut wrenching sound burrowing into your soul and ripping its face off. Transfixed I cannot look away. The babies belly button bursts in a violent outgushing of flesh and claret, spewing into the void from the fissure. The tear extends up the torso. Crack. The sternum splits. The ribcage erupts in unrelinquished glory like an airbag filled with tissue. Lumps of organ, shards of bone. More blood than a dozen men splashes over everything. A large portion of the skull is arcing through the air toward me. A slow and gentle dance. I know I will never move in time. Slowly. Slowly. Closer. Closer.
Hello, my name is Michael, I am sitting in my living room. Something is not right today. Had a good time last night, probably too good. Is the sky normally green in the morning?
Sea Thunder
It’s never good when the first non introductory post in a blog is off topic, but I hope this may give you some insight in to my personality. This is a little poem I wrote age ten. It was published in a local school poetry compilation. I think at the time I was trying to show the sheer power of the ocean through the use of metaphors, however one could say they are used excessively, but heck it was 1999.
Sea Thunder
The watery avenger, nature’s titan,
The hellbound boats were thrashed and trashed,
Thrown by Poseidon’s will.
Tsunamis ravage among matchstick yachts,
And the wind screams terror to all it meets.
Twisters toss the sharks aside,
Whales flee for their lives,
Many a seaman have come insane in this endless labyrinth,
The minotaur of which, predators are prey.
The lightning brings down Zeus’s mighty grumble,
The rain slashes, the hail crashes, because of the monster storm.
The silver stallion is tamed once more, put to his restless slumber,
The sea is serene as Aphrodite beholds her jewel cloak turquoise blue.
I really like this poem, for a ten year old I think that last line is a master stroke… it just makes sense in my head, don’t know about you.
Sea Thunder
The watery avenger, nature’s titan,
The hellbound boats were thrashed and trashed,
Thrown by Poseidon’s will.
Tsunamis ravage among matchstick yachts,
And the wind screams terror to all it meets.
Twisters toss the sharks aside,
Whales flee for their lives,
Many a seaman have come insane in this endless labyrinth,
The minotaur of which, predators are prey.
The lightning brings down Zeus’s mighty grumble,
The rain slashes, the hail crashes, because of the monster storm.
The silver stallion is tamed once more, put to his restless slumber,
The sea is serene as Aphrodite beholds her jewel cloak turquoise blue.
I really like this poem, for a ten year old I think that last line is a master stroke… it just makes sense in my head, don’t know about you.
Introduction
Well, hey.
My associate Joe and I for the last 3years have been writing stand alone chapters for a collaborative work we were intending to get published. Unfortunately RLS [linkie] does it’s best to rear it’s ugly head as much as possible. The work is at about 40% completion and now as university approaches we are going our separate ways. Thus it was decided to share our work as it stands and add to it as and when. That’s why this project exists….
What was the book going to be about. Well at first, aged 15, we decided it would be about proving that “kids today” didn’t only think about drugs, alcohol, skateboarding, music and sex. As it continued it sort of became a series of thought experiments, dealing with ranging topics from the first theories of the suns movement to important discoveries in the centuries associated with superstitious numbers. Also to pad out the non fiction there is some quite frankly deranged prose coming from the deepest parts of our, at the time, never ending quest for random. But it has continued evolving since, and now deals with current events. By current I mean last hundred years or so. One thing you will see a lot if is our patented(not really patented at all, in fact that was a blatant lie) “RLE”(short for ridiculous logical extrapolation), this deals with taking the theories thought to be true at a point in history and exploring there logical ends and driving beyond into the depths of irrationality(my god that was a complicated sentence).
Anyway I don’t want to tell you too much as it may affect your enjoyment. I warn you now however, this blog is not for everyone. Some people may find it pointless, pathetic, infantile or just plain boring. However if you do like what you see, don’t hesitate to drop a comment, they are always appreciated and we will try and respond as best we can.
Thanks
John
My associate Joe and I for the last 3years have been writing stand alone chapters for a collaborative work we were intending to get published. Unfortunately RLS [linkie] does it’s best to rear it’s ugly head as much as possible. The work is at about 40% completion and now as university approaches we are going our separate ways. Thus it was decided to share our work as it stands and add to it as and when. That’s why this project exists….
What was the book going to be about. Well at first, aged 15, we decided it would be about proving that “kids today” didn’t only think about drugs, alcohol, skateboarding, music and sex. As it continued it sort of became a series of thought experiments, dealing with ranging topics from the first theories of the suns movement to important discoveries in the centuries associated with superstitious numbers. Also to pad out the non fiction there is some quite frankly deranged prose coming from the deepest parts of our, at the time, never ending quest for random. But it has continued evolving since, and now deals with current events. By current I mean last hundred years or so. One thing you will see a lot if is our patented(not really patented at all, in fact that was a blatant lie) “RLE”(short for ridiculous logical extrapolation), this deals with taking the theories thought to be true at a point in history and exploring there logical ends and driving beyond into the depths of irrationality(my god that was a complicated sentence).
Anyway I don’t want to tell you too much as it may affect your enjoyment. I warn you now however, this blog is not for everyone. Some people may find it pointless, pathetic, infantile or just plain boring. However if you do like what you see, don’t hesitate to drop a comment, they are always appreciated and we will try and respond as best we can.
Thanks
John
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