Land of Diskgrinder

I got a mention on Stephen Fry's blog here . I liked that a lot

This is the thing, the thing that sits in the corner of a room with a door I locked long ago, the thing that spits and smiles. That thing

Michael Craig-Martin . An oak tree , 1973. In a room at Tate Modern there is a three-quarter full glass of water on a high shelf. It is a work by Michael Craig-Martin called An oak tree. Beside it there is the following text: Q: To begin with, could you describe this work? A: Yes, of course. What I've done is change a glass of water into a full-grown oak tree without altering the accidents of the glass of water. Q: The accidents? A: Yes. The colour, feel, weight, size ... Q: Do you mean that the glass of water is a symbol of an oak tree? A: No. It's not a symbol. I've changed the physical substance of the glass of water into that of an oak tree. Q: It looks like a glass of water. A: Of course it does. I didn't change its appearance. But it's not a glass of water, it's an oak tree. Q: Can you prove what you've claimed to have done? A: Well, yes and no. I claim to have maintained the physical form of the glass of water and, as you can see...

Most people think of the mind as being an intangible halo around their head, from which they call facts from the hot sponge in their skull. Like the brain is a bunch of liquid and dirty meat that keeps track, but the mind is this pristine glow that sees the track. But a recent theory is that the mind is Extended into legs and arms and maybe notes you write on the fridge, thinking's done within a yard. Your mind is in your fingers when you touch, in your local motion when you walk, there when you sniff. Which is why scent evokes memory. As Reg once said, if your mind is in your head, why do you see everything outside, and not contemplate scenes inside?

Back in the early eighties, when I was variously unemployed (an unemployed labourer, railway trackman, kitchen porter, painter) I met a man called Reg. He was an artist. He lived in Somerby, Rutland and refused electricity or gas, preferring instead to light his house with Gales honey jars filled with paraffin with a wick poked through the lid. He was a mystic and a hippy, which in eighties East Midlands bitter bleakosity was unwelcomed by most (remember that the Vale of Catmose is in the lee of Lincolnshire, flat panned reclaimed fens where the wind is directly funnelled from the Urals). He was a fellow of the Royal Academy, and once drank an oak tree off a high shelf with Craig Martin. His paintings were abstract, and fairly fucked philosophically by his insistence on parallels with eastern mysticism and overdosing on cough medicine. Had he referenced Lacan , structuralism and maybe the decentred self he could have been successful. As he claimed his inspiration came from Kundal...

On mobile marketing Pith and vinegar. When I was forcibly retired from bombe development in 1946, I had an idea to introduce massive steam-driven mobile telegraphs (in a car that followed you on a leash) to the British public. But sadly I was killed by being forced to take a bite from a cyanide apple by MI5, because I bowled from the pavilion. So, dead, I could not patent my idea for touch-sensitive women. On apple When we were at Bletchley at the dribbling end of the war, when we had broke the code of the evil empire (and sacrificed Coventry so they wouldn't catch on) we had this same thing going on. Turing fucked off one weekend when SOE came in and shot all the pinkoes and pufters. Mind, they got him later. As your logo attests. On GPS Back in Bletchely in the dying embers of the world at war at two (more on that later) we didn't have the spy eye in the sky so there was no GPS. Instead we installed a thermostat in a horse. If it got close to the direction it would get ...

Unless the conspiracy theory kicks in Dull mambies are gruta and folbinating, I am frown with that. It makes the gap between my eyebrows crume and falter.

We invented the mobile phone in !943 We had the same thing at Bletchley Park (Station X) when we did a mobile version of the Bombe, it was this thing with valves and iron batteries in a wheelbarrow (ultraportable in the forties) that you could program in morse code. We released an SDK over the wireless until we got D-noticed by the MI5. Turing was way fucked off - took a bite out of an apple and gave you a logo.

You know what hypergraphia is, when words crawl up over the walls, and close the doors? There's mountains of madness and quatrains of qwerty

In the forest wold of Urf, Batheser was a little regarded troll, who spent most of his time sucking the juice out of mushrooms, or fungus, or toadstools, or anything that grew out of fallen and rotting trees. It was deep and dark in the hollow where he lived, the canopy was close and gripped together in a bugger's embrace; and the little light that filtered through was the efflorescence of mouldering things. Still, in the dark stillness, he was happy there. Until that one night when the two soft pink things fell into the hollow. One, in particular, did not appear to be broken, it mewled a little, and dribble came out of its front red-lined hole. The other one was dead though, bones sticking out, bits of it looking asymmetrical where it should not be (just by the extrapolation of form, not because Batheser knew any better). But the one that was left came good after a while. It didn't thrive on the rot fruit Batheser found, but it could eat the dried and salted bits of the ot...

There's an asteroid that didn't quite make it to earth-crushing disaster, and now has a stable orbit and ecology in the stratosphere. This asteroid, that is plutoid-sized, is just below the blue of mackerel clouds (strato-cumulus) and is the nest of jet birds. And on this sub-van-allen rock is a castle built billenia ago, by the ur-gods of the first flower (before iron got invented in supernovas). These gods are variously named Stan, Keith, Derek and Soulfucker. They are all gods of fortune and happiness, except Keith. Keith was a shit before shit was invented. In fact Derek and Stan had to evolve creatures with arseholes before Keith really found himself.

I mean, why bother? There's less bum things in the long tail, go and read some shite on CNN, or fail blog. Really, it's going to be more fulfilling than this. You can't sustain yourself on random crap thrown at a wall, hoping you get some spurious validation when some teen fucknad doesn't call you a n00b. My reply: you're a dribbling idiot, clearly you are a shit riding high on a tide of mediocrity that's only that high because people cleverer than you have put time and effort in to giving you lightspeed access to being an international tit.

man/woman said fuck this DRMed tree of knowledge, that apple looks tasty, and thence there was music

We all have soundtracks. I wish my particular incidental music didn't often involve tympani and swani whistle. Mind you, you could have worse incidental music: weeping violins, deep dark cellos and the occasional plangent horn. Time to move country. If your personal incidental music involves a series of stings and buffers, ending on pentatonic highs, you're in a sitcom. Get out now. If, however, your personal incidental music has a third in it, or anything suspended or diminished, you really need to look behind you.

Recession menus : it's better when you read it in reverse order. So to cap it: radiation and cockroaches by the light of the sun going nova 2 minutes ago from web Recession menus : eat your leg 14 minutes ago from web Recession menus : lightly soiled air, rebreathed through a faulty primus stove, out in the winter darkness of the fens 15 minutes ago from web Recession menus : the neighbours cat, lightly fried in engine oil, lit from within by depleted uranium. To follow, rat bums in brine 18 minutes ago from web Recession menus : a mess of vegetables scavenged from the gutter, boiled in water and served in a plastic bowl. To follow, mould and biscuits 21 minutes ago from web Recession menus : pea up a stick 25 minutes ago from web Recession menus : the chef's special, and so are you 27 minutes ago from web Recession menus : Pig parts forced through a thin mesh, shaped into an oblong and packed in a can that comes with a key. 28 minutes ago from web Recession men...

It's got a bit dark round here lately. Which is odd, as that doesn't reflect my mood - mildly irritated sometimes, occasionally exasperated by the bloodymindedness of inanimate objects (cars, washing machines, drills, keys and so on) but basically happy.

Sunday meanderings notwithstanding - reading an absolutely crap book: The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper "I'm so fucking funny me, what with my shite literary allusions" fforde (ttwat). But also and maybe, wrote another dull as shit-water fictional speculation concerning some fucked up corporate loonspuddery. And that's swearing. Ah me, for the life of an amoeba - gently extending a pseudopod heavenward in supplication to the one-cell, the one-father (unipotent, uniscient, unipresent; in other words, does one thing, whilst looking at one thing, in the one place - a man). Wafted around on marine breezes, fairly not fucked up by deadlines (I must engulf that fucker. Right now.) Or maybe I'll go multicellular (hydra? Barnacle? Anenome? Something with a plenitude of legs anyway).That way I can flick shit in all directions whilst ironing (7 tentacles for crap-slinging, one for adjusting the steam quotient). Or, balls. I'd like to have multiple balls.

And it was all variously good. Each of those years had one little happenstance that made the next year wanted. Same again this year. Big things are happening. Some not so good. But at least, if you walk barefoot through the park, and tread in shit of dog: well, at least you have toes to feel the warm embrace of canine clart in between. I'm not saying that's good, I'm just saying that's better than anaesthetic disregard.

Than introducing a new virus

As the thing with that thing that did not work out was eventually ok. That's about the best to expect.