Posted at 09:37 AM in :), Benevolence, Dreams, killing the backlog, Life Is Good, People, Photos, Sketchiness | Permalink | Comments (0)
24th October.
For the Facebook-equipped, here's a link to the Dinner Party Project manifesto.
This all started the night before G's Picnic at Prudence, when - in a sudden, entirely-non-drug-induced moment of feeling like I was peaking on fucking awesome drugs - I was compelled to inform my friends Vicwie & Kav that they would, at some point in the near future, be coming to dinner at my house.
Four other superstars from my work (including the legendary Bourkie) were subsequently invited. And Toots, obvs.
It occurred. It went off.
The rest is currently in the process of going down in relational aesthetics history.
(In accordance with her wishes, all of V*cw*e's audio parts have been edited out; the excisions are marked with bleeps.)
Posted at 04:20 PM in Art, Audio, Awesomeness, Chaos, Dreams, killing the backlog, Muntedness, People, Photos, Relational Aesthetics, Snugglebucks, The DPP | Permalink | Comments (0)
With Bourkie "B. Jerky" Bourke.
Posted at 11:11 AM in Audio, Awesomeness, Discombobulation, Dreams, Drunkenness, left the puzzle undone, ain't that the way it is, Life Is Good, People, Photos, The World Is A Disco Ball, Travel | Permalink | Comments (2)
It'll come good.
Yup.
Posted at 04:20 AM in :), Adversity, Awesomeness, Dreams, Genius, It'll All Come Good | Permalink | Comments (0)
Both of these things have been mentioned before. But I'm going to mention them again. Why the hell not.
OMFG etc.
I have been waiting for this device since my teens. And now I have it. I'm posting from it now, natch.
It's not without its imperfections (shit camera; no Bluetooth; and, most heinously, the basic text editing function has no cut and paste, WTF; etc) but it seems churlish to complain about them.
I'm still adapting to it, but it's already changing my life significantly for the more flexible and generally better.
(Going to Canberra next weekend & really, seriously need to be emailable at any time - with full access to your archives, FTP and the web - throughout the entire period? Hey, leave your cumbersome, valuable computer at home! Wander wither you will! Life is good.)
It's almost everything it should be, and it makes me incredibly happy.
The arrival of Spring.
Feckin' YAY!!
*nods*
Posted at 11:05 AM in Awesomeness, Dreams, Here Is The News, iPhone, Newness, Things To Be Thankful For, w0ot, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (3)
So long, the so-called Real World. It was nice knowing you. In some aspects.

ION: O. M. F. G. Why was I not told about this?! (That's what I get for not reading the news, I guess.)
Posted at 02:57 PM in Awesomeness, Dreams, F***book, Goodbyes, Heh, I'm Intrigued And Would Like To Know More, Liable For Nothing, Nothing, Signs Of The Apocalypse, The Liberator Who Destroyed My Property Has Realigned My Perceptions, Travel, Use Of A Telephone For A Fictitious Purpose | Permalink | Comments (6)
Posted at 06:22 AM in Awesomeness, Current Affairs, Dreams, Lunar Eclipse, Photos | Permalink | Comments (7)
LFN. :P!!
:)
xxx
(ION: \m/ (>.<) \m/)
TIA. (No, not that TIA.) (Necessarily.)
(LFN!!!)
(This post is dedicated to Mr R. Henley, who doesn't approve of this kind of thing. Appaz.)
Posted at 04:15 AM in Are You Hungry, Cryptography, Dreams, Liable For Nothing, Life Is Good, Nothing, People | Permalink | Comments (4)
It is going to go OFF.
Here is a picture that this chick posted on my wall, which I like very much:
As you can see, it depicts a longhaired cat sitting atop a moog or some such against a background of stars and bares the motto: "Astro Cat will play for you the Symphony of Space."
Like William Carlos Williams' red wheelbarrow, it is what it is.
No more, and no less.
Posted at 08:25 AM in Art, Dreams, F***book, Genius, Here Is The News, Liable For Nothing, Life Is Good, Muntedness, Nothing | Permalink | Comments (11)
So there I was, attending an uncivilised picnic in the park on Royal Parade, having a perfectly nice time & minding my own and a select handful of other peoples' business when who should call me completely out of nowhere on my - which is to say, someone else's - mobile telephony device but the J-meister.
(Previously.)
We hadn't spoken in the voice since November, when I drunkenly and unsolicitedly facilitated her and Henley's first ever verbal exchange. She's been in the country three weeks, apparently. Now she & the H-Dogg were in my hood. And they wanted to hang.
Headfuck!
The tone of her voice didn't make me feel like something she'd just scraped off her shoe, which was nice. So, throwing caution to the wind as I am wont to do on occasion, I went.
We met at Alia. We talked. We danced. A good time was had. It seems like we're all friends now. Which is totally what I wanted, although if you'd asked me twelve hours ago I'd have said this outcome seemed less likely than [insert comedy incredibly unlikely occurrence which in practice will never ever happen here]. They're totally coming to my housewarming and shit.
I don't know what else to say about all of this, but if ever something seemed blogworthy etc.
Hooray for drugs; hooray for Jebus.
Despite my cynicism regarding his religion(s), I am a fan of the man's work. That cunt was liable for nothing.
Posted at 09:45 AM in Benevolence, Boogie Fever, Damage Control, Discombobulation, Dreams, Drugs, Here Is The News, Liable For Nothing, Life Is Good, Newness, People, Signs Of The Apocalypse, silly humans *rolls eyes* etc, The World Is A Disco Ball, What Kind Of Fuckery Is This | Permalink | Comments (3)
Posted at 03:52 PM in Art, Benevolence, Cryptography, Discombobulation, Dreams, left the puzzle undone, ain't that the way it is, Life Is Good, Muntedness, People, Photos, w0ot | Permalink | Comments (2)
Posted at 10:19 AM in Art, Audio, Benevolence, Boogie Fever, Cryptography, Discombobulation, Dreams, Drugs, Evil, Found, Genius, Here Is The News, Illusion Of Time, Liable For Nothing, Muntedness, Mysteries, Night Time, Nothing, People, Photos, Self Analysis, Signs Of The Apocalypse, some do it fast, some do it better in smaller amounts, The Liberator Who Destroyed My Property Has Realigned My Perceptions, the walls are mushy, These Hippies Are Not Messing Around, Travel, w0ot | Permalink | Comments (2)
It was pretty fucking good. (As in "That's a pretty fucking good milkshake.")
Thanks to Major G, the Rainbow Serpent undercover vibe police, and most especially a man named Thad.
More will be said once I have fully regained the power of speech, and also my computer. Which I still don't have. Still.
So don't even care right now!
Posted at 06:17 PM in Benevolence, Boogie Fever, Discombobulation, Dreams, Here Is The News, These Hippies Are Not Messing Around, w0ot | Permalink | Comments (4)
It's coming and it's going.
The dirtballs in your pockets and take off both your shoes, etc.
:)
Posted at 11:31 AM in Benevolence, Dreams, It'll All Come Good | Permalink | Comments (7)
Posted at 10:41 PM in Art, Current Affairs, Dreams, Evil, Heh, Life Is Good, People, Photos, Pictures Of Lady J, Travel | Permalink | Comments (5)
*tips hat*
Sad day.
In other news, thank you to the anonymous person who ingeniously sent me this in a way I couldn't respond to:
If you are who I think you are - you're funny. And if I don't know you, that's even funnier.
Tell me - do you get curiously predictable headaches and phantom mice in your bed at 4am, too?
Posted at 11:48 AM in Art, Benevolence, Dreams, Evil, Heh, Night Time, Nothing, People, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (3)
I wasn't planning to originally, but Semi talked me into it on the grounds that the Greens will likely take some seats away from serious politicians, which is always a good cause. I hope he is having fun at Earthcore. I imagine that he is.
I just voted for the Greens whilst tripping on leftover cactus, partly in his honor. I'm sure Bob Brown (with whom I once shared a taxi, whilst dressed as a giant koala - i'm sure it wasn't just a dream) would not disapprove. I tried to imagine what John Howard would feel. I tried to imagine him feeling pain in some way. How I tried. But all I could see was him going "stupid hippies; ah well, *shrugs*, they will all self-destruct soon enough anyway", and not understanding at all. Which kind of pissed me off, but did at least make me feel like, in some obscure way, I had not done entirely the wrong thing.
Now I am trying to decide whether to watch The Dark Crystal again. I fell asleep before the end last time.
~ has suggested to me that the girl Gelfling ultimately dies; but I feel sure that this cannot be the whole truth. Henson and Oz would not do that to me. They would not dare.
I will watch their silly movie, in any case. They can bring it. Doesn't matter if the chick dies; the whole healed-crystal thing redundifies such petty concerns.
Yes, it does.
Posted at 08:46 PM in Art, Benevolence, Current Affairs, Damage Control, Desperation, Dreams, Drugs, Food, Genius, Heh, Here Is The News, Illusion Of Time, left the puzzle undone, ain't that the way it is, Life Is Good, Movies, Music, Night Time, Nothing, People, Pictures Of Lady J, Self Analysis, Sex, Weblogs, Whack | Permalink | Comments (23)
Posted at 04:30 AM in Art, Benevolence, Current Affairs, Damage Control, Dreams, Drugs, Food, Genius, Heh, Illusion Of Time, Life, Life Is Good, Movies, Music, Night Time, Photos, Self Analysis, w0ot | Permalink | Comments (11)
The cactus suggested, amongst other things, that I should return to life and start blogging here again, although it's simultaneously rendered me kind of speechless. In a good way.
Perverse. I blame myself for eating a psychoactive cactus during a Mercury Retrograde cycle. Heh.
Actually I don't.
I have no regrets. It was ace.
Anyway, we'll see what happens.
What have you been up to lately?
Posted at 10:25 AM in Dreams, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (12)
by Jorge Luis Borges
LIKE all men in Babylon, I have been proconsul; like all, a slave. I have also known omnipotence, opprobrium, imprisonment. Look: the index finger on my right hand is missing. Look: through the rip in my cape you can see a vermilion tattoo on my stomach. It is the second symbol, Beth. This letter, on nights when the moon is full, gives me power over men whose mark is Gimmel, but it subordinates me to the men of Aleph, who on moonless nights owe obedience to those marked with Gimmel. In the half light of dawn, in a cellar, I have cut the jugular vein of sacred bulls before a black stone. During a lunar year I have been declared invisible. I shouted and they did not answer me; I stole bread and they did not behead me. I have known what the Greeks do not know, incertitude. In a bronze chamber, before the silent handkerchief of the strangler, hope has been faithful to me, as has panic in the river of pleasure. Heraclides Ponticus tells with amazement that Pythagoras remembered having been Pyrrhus and before that Euphorbus and before that some other mortal. In order to remember similar vicissitudes I do not need to have recourse to death or even to deception.
I owe this almost atrocious variety to an institution which other republics do not know or which operates in them in an imperfect and secret manner: the lottery. I have not looked into its history; I know that the wise men cannot agree. I know of its powerful purposes what a man who is not versed in astrology can know about the moon. I come from a dizzy land where the lottery is the basis of reality. Until today I have thought as little about it as I have about the conduct of indecipherable divinities or about my heart. Now, far from Babylon and its beloved customs, I think with a certain amount of amazement about the lottery and about the blasphemous conjectures which veiled men murmur in the twilight.
My father used to say that formerly - a matter of centuries, of years? - the lottery in Babylon was a game of plebeian character. He recounted (I don't know whether rightly) that barbers sold, in exchange for copper coins, squares of bone or of parchment adorned with symbols. In broad daylight a drawing took place. Those who won received silver coins without any other test of luck. The system was elementary, as you can see.
Naturally these 'lotteries' failed. Their moral virtue was nil. They were not directed at all of man's faculties, but only at hope. In the face of public indifference, the merchants who founded these venal lotteries began to lose money. Someone tried a reform: The interpolation of a few unfavourable tickets in the list of favourable numbers. By means of this reform, the buyers of numbered squares ran the double risk of winning a sum and of paying a fine that could be considerable. This slight danger (for every thirty favourable numbers there was one unlucky one) awoke, as is natural, the interest of the public. The Babylonians threw themselves into the game. Those who did not acquire chances were considered pusillanimous, cowardly. In time, that justified disdain was doubled. Those who did not play were scorned, but also the losers who paid the fine were scorned. The Company (as it came to be known then) had to take care of the winners, who could not cash in their prizes if almost the total amount of the fines was unpaid. It started a lawsuit against the losers. The judge condemned them to pay the original fine and costs or spend several days in jail. All chose jail in order to defraud the Company. The bravado of a few is the source of the omnipotence of the Company and of its metaphysical and ecclesiastical power.
A little while afterwards the lottery lists omitted the amounts of fines and limited themselves to publishing the days of imprisonment that each unfavourable number indicated. That laconic spirit, almost unnoticed at the time, was of capital importance. It was the first appearance in the lottery of nonmonetary elements. The success was tremendous. Urged by the clientele, the Company was obliged to increase the unfavourable numbers.
Everyone knows that the people of Babylon are fond of logic and even of symmetry. It was illogical for the lucky numbers to he computed in round coins and the unlucky ones in days and nights of imprisonment. Some moralists reasoned that the possession of money does not always determine happiness and that other forms of happiness are perhaps more direct.
Another concern swept the quarters of the poorer classes. The members of the college of priests multiplied their stakes and enjoyed all the vicissitudes of terror and hope; the poor (with reasonable or unavoidable envy) knew that they were excluded from that notoriously delicious rhythm. The just desire that all, rich and poor, should participate equally in the lottery, inspired an indignant agitation, the memory of which the years have not erased Some obstinate people did not understand (or pretended not to understand) that it was a question of a new order, of a necessary historical stage. A slave stole a crimson ticket, which in the drawing credited him with the burning of his tongue. The legal code fixed that same penalty for the one who stole a ticket. Some Babylonians argued that he deserved the burning irons in his status of a thief; others, generously, that the executioner should apply it to him because chance had determined it that way. There were disturbances, there were lamentable drawings of blood, but the masses of Babylon finally imposed their will against the opposition of the rich. The people achieved amply its generous purposes. In the first place, it caused the Company to accept total power. (That unification was necessary, given the vastness and complexity of the new operations.) In the second place, it made the lottery secret, free and general. The mercenary sale of chances was abolished. Once initiated in the mysteries of Baal, every free man automatically participated in the sacred drawings, which took place in the labyrinths of the god every sixty nights and which determined his destiny until the next drawing. The consequences were incalculable. A fortunate play could bring about his promotion to the council of wise men or the imprisonment of an enemy (public or private) or finding, in the peaceful darkness of his room, the woman who begins to excite him and whom he never expected to see again. A bad play: mutilation, different kinds of infamy, death. At times one single fact - the vulgar murder of C, the mysterious apotheosis of B - was the happy solution of thirty or forty drawings. To combine the plays was difficult, but one must remember that the individuals of the Company were (and are) omnipotent and astute. In many cases the knowledge that certain happinesses were the simple product of chance would have diminished their virtue. To avoid that obstacle, the agents of the Company made use of the power of suggestion and magic. Their steps, their manoeuvrings, were secret. To find out about the intimate hopes and terrors of each individual, they had astrologists and spies. There were certain stone lions, there was a sacred latrine called Qaphqa, there were fissures in a dusty aqueduct which, according to general opinion, led to the Company; malignant or benevolent persons deposited information in these places. An alphabetical file collected these items of varying truthfulness.
Incredibly, there were complaints. The Company, with its usual discretion, did not answer directly. It preferred to scrawl in the rubbish of a mask factory a brief statement which now figures in the sacred scriptures. This doctrinal item observed that the lottery is an interpolation of chance in the order of the world and that to accept errors is not to contradict chance: it is to corroborate it. It likewise observed that those lions and that sacred receptacle, although not disavowed by the Company (which did not abandon the right to consult them), functioned without official guarantee.
This declaration pacified the public's restlessness. It also produced other effects, perhaps unforeseen by its writer. It deeply modified the spirit and the operations of the Company. I don't have much time left; they tell us that the ship is about to weigh anchor. But I shall try to explain it.
However unlikely it might seem, no one had tried out before then a general theory of chance. Babylonians are not very speculative. They revere the judgements of fate, they deliver to them their lives, their hopes, their panic, but it does not occur to them to investigate fate's labyrinthine laws nor the gyratory spheres which reveal it. Nevertheless, the unofficial declaration that I have mentioned inspired many discussions of judicialmathematical character. From some one of them the following conjecture was born: If the lottery is an intensification of chance, a periodical infusion of chaos in the cosmos, would it not be right for chance to intervene in all stages of the drawing and not in one alone? Is it not ridiculous for chance to dictate someone's death and have the circumstances of that death sec recy, publicity, the fixed time of an hour or a century - not subject to chance? These just scruples finally caused a considerable reform, whose complexities (aggravated by centuries' practice) only a few specialists understand, but which I shall try to summarize, at least in a symbolic way.
Let us imagine a first drawing, which decrees the death of a man. For its fulfilment one proceeds to another drawing, which proposes (Iet us say) nine possible executors. Of these executors, four can initiate a third drawing which will tell the name of the executioner, two can replace the adverse order with a fortunate one (finding a treasure, let us say), another will intensify the death penalty (that is, will make it infamous or enrich it with tortures), others can refuse to fulfil it. This is the symbolic scheme. In reality the number of drawings is infinite. No decision is final, all branch into others. Ignorant people suppose that infinite drawings require an infinite time; actually it is sufficient for time to be infinitely subdivisible, as the famous parable of the contest with the tortoise teaches. This infinity harmonizes admirably with the sinuous numbers of Chance and with the Celestial Archetype of the Lottery, which the Platonists adore. Some warped echo of our rites seems to have resounded on the Tiber: Ellus Lampridius, in the Life of Antoninus Heliogabalus, tell that this emperor wrote on shells the lots that were destined for his guests, so that one received ten pounds of gold and another ten flies, ten dormice, ten bears. It is permissible to recall the Heliogabalus was brought up in Asia Minor, among the priests of the eponymous god.
There are also impersonal drawings, with an indefinite purpose. One decrees that a sapphire of Taprobana be thrown into the waters of the Euphrates; another, that a bird be released from the roof of a tower; another, that each century there be withdrawn (or added) a grain of sand from the innumerable ones on the beach. The consequences are, at times, terrible.
Under the beneficient influence of the Company, our customs are saturated with chance. The buyer of a dozen amphoras of Damascene wine will not be surprised if one of them contains a talisman or a snake. The scribe who writes a contract almost never fails to introduce some erroneous information. I myself, in this hasty declaration, have falsified some splendour, some atrocity. Perhaps, also, some mysterious monotony ... Our historians, who are the most penetrating on the globe, have invented a method to correct chance. It is well known that the operations of this method are (in general) reliable, although, naturally, they are not divulged without some portion of deceit. Furthermore, there is nothing so contaminated with fiction as the history of the Company. A palaeographic document, exhumed in a temple, can be the result of yesterday's lottery or of an ageold lottery. No book is published without some discrepancy in each one of the copies. Scribes take a secret oath to omit, to interpolate, to change. The indirect lie is also cultivated.
The Company, with divine modesty, avoids all publicity. Its agents, as is natural, are secret. The orders which it issues continually (perhaps incessantly) do not differ from those lavished by impostors. Moreover, who can brag about being a more impostor? The drunkard who improvises an absurd order. the dreamer who awakens suddenly and strangles the woman who sleeps at his side, do they not execute, perhaps, a secret decision of the Company? That silent functioning, comparable to God's, gives rise to all sorts of conjectures. One abominably insinuates that the Company has not existed for centuries; that the sacred disorder of our lives is purely hereditary, traditional. Another judges it eternal and teaches that it will last until the last night, when the last god annihilates the world. Another declares that the Company is omnipotent, but that it only has influence in tiny things in a bird's call, in the shadings of rust and of dust, in the half dreams of dawn. Another, in the words of masked heresiarchs, that it has never existed and will not exist. Another, no less vile, reasons that it is indifferent to affirm or deny the reality of the shadowy corporation, because Babylon is nothing else than an infinite game of chance.
Translated by John M. Fein
Borges, Jorges Luis, "Labyrinths", Penguin Books, Middlesex, England, 1987
Posted at 10:00 PM in Books, Dreams | Permalink | Comments (9)
I had the most horrendous, terrifying nightmare ever last night. In the dream I was only half asleep - I have memories of getting out of bed and walking around my little cupboard - but what was going down was so extreme I must really have been fully asleep. Amorphous, unbelievably malevolent pan-dimensional beings were inside my head and in the very fabric of the air, trying to drive me completely insane in absolutely the worst possible way. And succeeding.
It was really like being in hell.
In retrospect, I find it incredibly cool that my brain is capable of creating such spectacular effects.
Posted at 11:54 AM in Dreams | Permalink | Comments (8)
I dreamt last night that I was Scarlett Johansson in a futuristic, Blade Runner-esque version of Tokyo.
An amalgam of Lindsay Lohan and baby sis's obnoxious former housemate Anna (who looks - and behaves - quite a lot like Lindsay Lohan) was trying to kill me, ostensibly because she disagreed with my stance on the war in Iraq - although there was some suggestion that she was in fact an agent of the Circle de Luce, and possibly Constance incognito.
An amalgam of JoJo aka Johana and 14-year-old pop starlet JoJo (heavily pregnant and smoking like a bastard, natch) had been assigned by the mythical, non-existent organization Fiat Nox to protect me.
JoJo/JoJo eventually took out Lindsay Lohan/Anna/Constance with a sniper rifle from a rooftop, then immediately went into labour. I had to fly her to hospital in a helicopter, causing me tremendous anxiety because I was not technically allowed to fly a helicopter without a fully licensed helicopter pilot riding shotgun. But it felt like the least I could do.
I can't remember what happened after that. I think I may have crashed the helicopter into a building. But we both came out of it alright.
Deadsoybean appeared as a shadowy double-agent of ambiguous motives.
The role of Bill Muwway was played with infinite worldweariness - and serious delirium - by Avery Cardoza.
And comic relief was provided by Cheshire Cat, who appeared as an endearing idiot man-child constantly asking strange and irrelevant questions. Occasionally he would also sing Wesley Willis classics such as Fuck You and Cut That Mullet. These interludes were mounted in the style of elaborate Bollywood production numbers.
In the end, the whole situation turned out to have been deliberately engineered by machiavellian Melblogerati queen Ms Fits, so that she could adapt it into a tv show, then post about how clever she'd been.
Posted at 08:27 AM in Dreams, Neurocam, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (7)
I dreamt last night that I was bitten by a tarantula at the behest of Chris Titan. It really hurt. Woke me up.
Perhaps I have underestimated him.
Perhaps not.
Jojo & Lady J have both updated, finally.
Neither of them had anything much 'Cam-related to say either.
Posted at 11:24 AM in Dreams, Neurocam, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (3)
I dreamt last night that I was a girl, specifically Constance. I've mused about being Constance before. I don't know why, other than that I think she's cool. And I've often fantasized about being a girl. I don't think I'm a repressed transsexual or anything. I just reckon it would be awesome. Girls are much nicer than boys. Or at least much more appealing.
Tangent: In my early teens I was completely obsessed with periods. I only found out mentruation existed when I was, like, twelve. This was possibly the origin of my interest in the occult. I was just astounded that this bizarre and horrendous phenomenon had been going on all around me all my life, completely sheilded from my view.
This unhealthy preoccupation was only entirely cured when, at the age of 22, I fulfilled my long term ambition of actually having sex with a menstruating woman, something I will never, ever do again.
I ran out of cigarettes last night. I thought not having any would motivate me to bounce out of bed bright and early this morning and go to the gym. But instead I just lingered in bed for a really, really long time. Then I went out in my pyjamas to buy some and came back home to drink coffee and blog. I'm a disgrace.
In other news, Jojo & Xade report excitably that Tori Amos is coming to town.
I saw her last time she toured 'Straya which was, I believe, in, like, 1994. Sort of tempted. (But upon glancing at the latest incarnation of her website: she really badly needs to fire her current stylist. Admittedly, though, so do I. Or at least I would, if I had one.) I haven't heard her current album, but I grew to love Scarlet's Walk, despite an iffy relationship between us at first.
I can't really afford it, though, especially since.. well, I'm so shat off about this actually I think a separate post may be in order.