Category: Doodles

In case you are not as attentive as you ought to be, the New Years resolution of 2009 is: Chill the Fuck Out. Or CFO for short. If you like, you can make that homegirl gesture I’ve seen teenagers do (the floppy wrist thing) and say “oh, well, why don’t you just C-F-O, bitch!” and everything will be fine. I will elaborate on this further.

I’m sick as a puppy kicked with boots of botulism, and have spent the past week building myself a cocoon of self-pity out of spit, phlegm, slime and mucous. My brother and I have taken turns to laugh hysterically at our miserable state and inactivity; I have listened to old episodes of How to disappear completely and drunk copious amounts of tea. As an aside, I have little faith left in the healing powers of whisky – massive headache followed our attempt at Scottish healing.

The running shoes I brought are still in their bag. The book I brought has only been opened once. All meetings with friends came to naught and I’ve spend some ten hours looking for a new cellphone because I have come to hate the Samsung I’m currently stuck with. On the bright side, I did get to ride a taxi from downtown to Kungsängen, which put my suburb in a more accessible place, albeit only mentally.

As things stand, I’m looking for ways to get home to Gothenburg in time to infect everyone in the city with whatever it is that I have. The streets will run foul with the stench of decay and poor hygiene, and civilisation as we know it will be no more! That, or I’ll just have a cocktail and go home and sleep post fireworks.

Below is a Explosm.net cartoon, followed by one from XKCD.com. Both required reading in these times.

Tan Le, co-founder and president of Emotiv Systems, gives a live demo of a mind control device that uses a person’s thoughts to input computer commands.

→ Fora TV: Tan Le at The Entertainment Gathering, Dec 12 [via Tobias]

BILLION DOLLAR BILLBOARD – By Lee Beavington

Damien gasped.
“Look at the stars! They’re MOVING!”
His friends ignored him, stumbling over the beach with bottles in hand. Damien dug his toes in the sand and craned his neck. He tried to rationalize the tiny, shifting white lights. Too far to be planes, too close to be planets. The several dozen scattered twinkles rearranged themselves in the cloudless sky. Maybe he had had too much to drink. Unless..

A moment later he read the constellation of satellites.
DRINK DUKE BEER!
Then the satellites dispersed. A friend slapped him on the back. “Do as it says, eh? Bottoms up!”

→ From the webpage of G. W. Thomas, where a different author presents a very short piece of fiction each day. I recommend you subscribing to it by email here: www.gwthomas.org

Last Friday was spent at a party. A burlesque party. To better fit in with the crowd of Manson fans and strip-tease performers, I presented myself in tights and with a mustache + soul patch. I’m going to try this feature on for a couple of days. So far most people are bemused. I don’t know, is it too Wyatt Earpy? (Also, please notice the author pose I have going on. I’d be an awesome writer if I would only not have to actually write something)

Newspaper publishers should consider consolidating and outsourcing news operations — even overseas — to save money as revenues continue to shrink, the head of a major U.S. newspaper company said Monday.

→ USA Today: Outsourcing could be in journalism’s future.

In July of this year, the now-defunct Eureka Reporter reported that McClatchey has outsourced the copy editing of the Orange County register to India, outsourced the advertising design department of the Fresno Bee to India, and had intended to outsource the copy editing of the Miami Herald to India but ultimately changed its mind on that one.

→ Watching the watchers: Offshoring/Outsourcing Journalism: The Unstoppable Bad Idea?

Although caffeine does not produce with life-threatening health risks commonly associated with the use of classic drugs of addiction such as cocaine, heroin and nicotine, some caffeine users report becoming “addicted” to caffeine in the sense that they report an inability to quit or to cut down their caffeine use, they continue to use caffeine despite having medical or psychological problems made worse by caffeine. and they continue to use caffeine to avoid experiencing caffeine withdrawal symptoms.

→ John Hopkings Medical Center: Information about Caffeine Dependence

The motif of harmful sensation is a recurring idea in literature: physical or mental damage that a person suffers merely by experiencing what should normally be a benign sensation. The phenomenon appears in both traditional and modern stories.

→ Wikipedia: The motif of harmful sensation

Both McKinney and Bedard told me about people who took Tylenol or phosphorous, which also destroys the liver (and incidentally produces phosphorescent vomit). In both cases, they slept off the initial sickness and recovered for five days — during which time they decided suicide was a mistake after all and they wanted to live. But the liver had been destroyed and after five days each of them started to feel very sick, passed into deep coma, and died. “He knew it would happen and that there was nothing we could do about it,” Bedard said, “and his friends and family knew it, and for five days they sat in the hospital together waiting for it.”

→ How not to commit suicide, by Art Kleiner, 1981

I want you to know that I have a deep affection for you. I am deeply grateful for all your kindness. I wish I could have made a happier life for you. It was mostly my fault, please forgive me.

→ Suicide notes. ibid.

Jill Tracy – Evil night together:

I’m looking specifically about a rejection of postmodern theory (I apologize for the broad terminology), that looks at thinkers like Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Deleuze, Jameson, etc etc, that accurately comprehend their arguments, and then rejects them. That is, if postmodernist thought is broadly characterized by a general rejection of singular, grand narratives and a method of critical thought that involves a disbelief in foundations — then I’m specifically interested in arguments that go against these characterizations and arguments.

→ Ask.metafilter: Anti-postmodernism for postmodernists?

Not too long ago I would sit with Mac OS 7 and pick trough all the preferences and control panels and such, and I’d more or less know what they all did. Now I look at the limited number of files I’m backing up, and it’s five quarters of a million. I know my email folder is bloated, but 1,254,904 individual documents?

And in case this post causes you déjà vu, it might be because I think it was published before the crash.
That, or you are finally going insane.

I found a note that I’d written after a long discussion a group of us had a week or so ago. I leave it here for posterity to analyse and sit in judgement over:

So, whereas A and B are into it [spanking] because they’re fascinated by the play on power (who dominates whom and so on), me and C are more interested in the manifestations of power itself; Who actually beats whom, who really decides over whom, etc.

Where Bs game is about being the one in control or being the one subjected to domination, I am more interested in the nature of control and power itself — how does it feel to be beaten or to beat someone else, and ultimately (although it’s an extreme example) to see if there is a qualitative differance between killing someone and not having done it (not restrain oneself, mind you), and if that differance is noticeable enough to qualify a judgement call and not do it. In other words, where is the limit of what you can stand to do, and stand having done to you; not socially (i.e. how far am I willing to part with my civil — or representable — self) but rather existentially.

What person will I be if I quit now, and how much further can I take this before I don’t recognize myself?

I’ve been in Barcelona the past week, teaching a group of architects to use video as an self-analysing tool. I also have had plenty of avocado. Coming home tomorrow. You may now reach me on my phone.

Doing 90 through the forest we practiced overtaking each other, one after another without end, to the annoyance of the regular traffic. We were three students in each car, and besides my brother there was a young girl with a lisp and heterochromia sitting next to me in the back seat. I had been the first to drive, and now that Tomasz was doing the overtake-mambo, I was free to cough my brains out.

-You’ve got a cold? She askes after an extended volley.
-Not anymore, I answer. “Asthmatic bronchitis.”
-Oh, I had a horse with that.

Horses cough and have asthma? Seriously? It feels odd having the same disease as a farm animal.

Doc said I should feel better in a weeks time, but that I ought to medicate for another month or so. Oh, joy.

The only interesting thing to come of this is that I haven’t smoked the past week. Even thought I still consider myself a smoker, this might be a good time to break the habit. Becoming a sober smoker, so to speak.

Odd that, how easily one identifies with ones visible habits; I don’t remember not being a smoker. What the hell did I do with my time? I wasn’t happier, nor do I recall being helthier or more charming. I smelled less of smoke, but smoke often smells good. I’ve been sitting next to my brother, and dang it, the dusty tarry tobacco smell is nice.

I’ve booked time for both the written and practical exams, and if things work out I’ll be inserting car-related topics into every conversation for the following months. I will wear the license stapled to my forehead.

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For the first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought — no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings — no chains for my limbs — no lashes for my back — no fires for my flesh — no master’s frown or threat — no following another’s steps — no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds.

→ Why I am agnostic, by Robert Green Ingersoll, 1896: www.infidels.org

Looking up words from the above essay, I found that the etymology of “heretic” is from the Greek “hairetikos,” or “able to choose.” Which implies what? That humans are either heretics by design, or that those who have free will (and use it, one might presume) are not worthy of God? Or is that me putting too much into it?

In between bouts of coughing and spitting gobs of semi-living tissue, I actually get some driving done.
Today I almost caused two accidents, both in roundabouts. The second one found me pressing the accelerator and the instructor standing on the brake.

I might have misjudged the speed and distance of a crappy Golf that was speeding, with dry mouth, heart pounding and slight tremors as a result. But with everything taken into account, I’d rather fuck up in a car with a double set of pedals than one without; hopefully I learned some sort of lesson.

My diaphragm and abdominal muscles are so fatigued by now that I can’t cough properly. I hem, which is wholly unbecoming someone as goddamn manly as myself.

I was reading up on tuberculosis, and found the expression “Spes phthisica” which denotes a condition believed peculiar to consumptives in which physical wasting led to euphoric flowering of the passionate and creative aspects of the soul. The quote (and a very good essay on the subject) comes curtesy of Centers for Disease Control.

This is how my lungs have felt the past week. Today is my third non-smoking day in a row. I haven’t had a non-smoking day since I started seven years ago, which ought to tell you something about how sick I am.

Fall in Stockholm: Water, boats and ducks. Ok, yes, it’s pretty.

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