In a freakish accident involving seafood they received a technological complexity that allowed them to metamorphose their habitat into a strange buffered half-reality, a layer removed from danger and want, a layer of superficial sophistication.
However their true imperative was to spray the graffiti of their individual genetic logos all over the innards of their own kind at every opportunity.
This was the uncomfortable basis of their species' paradox and the unanswerable Sphinxian riddle of their own existence.
Wednesday, 20 June 2007
Friday, 8 June 2007
Manufactured
Suddenly it became impossible to be informal.
There were no jokes anymore. No space for laughing or irony.
There was no slack in the schedule to ensure there was enough scope to complete the necessary tasks.
There was not enough time to complete the work and it had to be left with loose ends.
Those who took pride in their work; those who tried to plan ahead and pre-empt problems, were seen to be dragging their heels, seen to be slow, lazy and awkward, and were stigmatised as trouble makers.
A matrix of monitoring was imposed to prove that there were no serious problems.
Success was then dependant upon smooth completion of monitoring. Statistics became their primary responsibility.
The paperwork had boxes for ticks where customers could express their delight. Those who couldn't obtain the relevant ticks were re-deployed out-of-the-way where they might become disgruntled and depart of their own accord.
It became essential to cover up problems as far as possible.
It wasn't exactly a blame culture. More a case of being seen to be competent; being someone who could smile and assure others that there were no problems; getting the right ticks.
And it wasn't about dishonesty. It was more about managing expectations and shielding customers from inappropriate and irrelevant interruptions to their delight with the service they had received.
Eventually it reached the point where the actual work was irrelevant. The business consisted entirely of maintaining relationships with smiles and assurances; papering over cracks and keeping the paintwork fresh, even if the underlying framework was rather shaky.
Ultimately a team of legislative marketing consultants was groomed and applied to the task of stripping everything back so that no time or money was wasted on non-core activities. Efficiency demanded only those features that were not irredeemably criminal and which did not spoil the tick system.
(illegal activities were acceptable so long as they could be remedied when detected. Activities that generated dissatisfaction were also encouraged provided they increased revenue and didn't adversely affect the monitoring of customer satisfaction via ticking.)
Everything had transformed. There were no colleagues or partners anymore. We were all customers of everybody else. Consumers of immaculate service. Unshakable and sturdy as any great dogma in history.
There were no jokes anymore. No space for laughing or irony.
There was no slack in the schedule to ensure there was enough scope to complete the necessary tasks.
There was not enough time to complete the work and it had to be left with loose ends.
Those who took pride in their work; those who tried to plan ahead and pre-empt problems, were seen to be dragging their heels, seen to be slow, lazy and awkward, and were stigmatised as trouble makers.
A matrix of monitoring was imposed to prove that there were no serious problems.
Success was then dependant upon smooth completion of monitoring. Statistics became their primary responsibility.
The paperwork had boxes for ticks where customers could express their delight. Those who couldn't obtain the relevant ticks were re-deployed out-of-the-way where they might become disgruntled and depart of their own accord.
It became essential to cover up problems as far as possible.
It wasn't exactly a blame culture. More a case of being seen to be competent; being someone who could smile and assure others that there were no problems; getting the right ticks.
And it wasn't about dishonesty. It was more about managing expectations and shielding customers from inappropriate and irrelevant interruptions to their delight with the service they had received.
Eventually it reached the point where the actual work was irrelevant. The business consisted entirely of maintaining relationships with smiles and assurances; papering over cracks and keeping the paintwork fresh, even if the underlying framework was rather shaky.
Ultimately a team of legislative marketing consultants was groomed and applied to the task of stripping everything back so that no time or money was wasted on non-core activities. Efficiency demanded only those features that were not irredeemably criminal and which did not spoil the tick system.
(illegal activities were acceptable so long as they could be remedied when detected. Activities that generated dissatisfaction were also encouraged provided they increased revenue and didn't adversely affect the monitoring of customer satisfaction via ticking.)
Everything had transformed. There were no colleagues or partners anymore. We were all customers of everybody else. Consumers of immaculate service. Unshakable and sturdy as any great dogma in history.
Wednesday, 6 June 2007
A day in the life
The day started off with a wish for violence. It was the overtakers, who insisted on conning me by driving illegally, in order to get-in-front-of me.
I forced them out of the way, but really I wanted to create a RTA pile-up to show them. My fist of right. Mangled aluminum and steel and spindles of rubber. Snowburst of scattered shattered glass cubes and thick gravy red blood.
However. I endured and arrived at the labour receptacle in goodtime. On my table was a newly arrived copy of a Biffy Clyro long-player. This cheered me, until I listened at it.
It was like a tin of artificially sweetened and coloured strawberries. All shiny and tasting of sugar and tart, in an American emo (sic) pitch-corrected style. I had to spit it out and cast the silver disk to the teenage urchins who like that sort of thing. It was too ordinary and filtered for impurities. Someone drowning in golden syrup. Modern Amber Nectar. Preservative. Sticky as flypaper. Spit it out I recommend you.
Everyone concluded that it sucked.
Then I was reading dental magazines for research purposes. And then ones about managing veterinary practises. Mind somebody else's business. You see. I can read between the lines and smell the marketing that is embedded in every human statement. Making you want. Making you feel lacking. Making you need the product behind the curtain, revealed only once you are gagging for it, fearing to live without it. Advertising is our life breath. Your consumer groove. Mine. Chomsky-hardwired into every sapient simian processing-unit, the real categorical imperative, THOU SHALT GET.
I swam in Greek tragedy. I laughed, incredulously to my watchers, to read how Agave mistakenly ripped her own son to pieces in Euripides' "Bacchae". Such stories. Such fun. Such coincidence of fate. I stood up and shouted "ha!" Nobody was impressed.
And then I obtained a copy of Plato's "Symposium" for entertainment. I would like to read it self-indulgently with too much wine, in the same way as you have to pour Malcolm Lowry's "Under the volcano" and Thomas De Quincy's "confessions of an opium eater" down your gullet at a choking dipso rate. We are all in love with our own ruin, as William Somerset-Maugham wrote.
I read the news today. One of my friends was burgled last night. He awoke to find the naughty burglar in the room where he-himself, or rather his body-vat, and his wife slept. Dressed in black, wearing a balaclava face, and hunched on tippytoes was the creeping one. The shadowy sneaker got away from the Sweeney, running, with a laptop and a handbag as his reward, stashed in his rectum.
You see, in this lovely nation of England there is enough street coke available to ensure that you needn't have to worry about your victim being present when you are on the rob. It's that good.
Have no fear. And if they do anything to spoil it for you, there is always litigation as a seaside resort of an option. Where there is blame there's a claim. Sue the fuckers. These people who think they can hinder a chap going about his chosen vocation, minding his own business, need showing a thing or two.
For lunch I consumed one single tin of Tesco's "Cream of Mushroom Soup". I was careful to ensure I only consumed the contents of the tin by regurgitating the metal container in the fashion of an owl voiding mouse bones and fur in a pellet. The cream contained in the tin tasted like salty christmas pudding. I burnt myself on the bowl during the preparation of the serving suggestion as illustrated and wished I'd been out to get an expensive salad roll from a local supplier instead.
But as the anger left me for sarcasm, which in turn bored itself away into diminishing sherbet bubbles, I felt alright. Time, like wine, heals all pain.
Arms golden brown, hair in Byronic ringlets of mouseyness, eyes plop-circles of glaucous green as if making a petition to you, a plea, and eye-lashes like spiders dunked in mascara.
Yeah. I was alright.
I forced them out of the way, but really I wanted to create a RTA pile-up to show them. My fist of right. Mangled aluminum and steel and spindles of rubber. Snowburst of scattered shattered glass cubes and thick gravy red blood.
However. I endured and arrived at the labour receptacle in goodtime. On my table was a newly arrived copy of a Biffy Clyro long-player. This cheered me, until I listened at it.
It was like a tin of artificially sweetened and coloured strawberries. All shiny and tasting of sugar and tart, in an American emo (sic) pitch-corrected style. I had to spit it out and cast the silver disk to the teenage urchins who like that sort of thing. It was too ordinary and filtered for impurities. Someone drowning in golden syrup. Modern Amber Nectar. Preservative. Sticky as flypaper. Spit it out I recommend you.
Everyone concluded that it sucked.
Then I was reading dental magazines for research purposes. And then ones about managing veterinary practises. Mind somebody else's business. You see. I can read between the lines and smell the marketing that is embedded in every human statement. Making you want. Making you feel lacking. Making you need the product behind the curtain, revealed only once you are gagging for it, fearing to live without it. Advertising is our life breath. Your consumer groove. Mine. Chomsky-hardwired into every sapient simian processing-unit, the real categorical imperative, THOU SHALT GET.
I swam in Greek tragedy. I laughed, incredulously to my watchers, to read how Agave mistakenly ripped her own son to pieces in Euripides' "Bacchae". Such stories. Such fun. Such coincidence of fate. I stood up and shouted "ha!" Nobody was impressed.
And then I obtained a copy of Plato's "Symposium" for entertainment. I would like to read it self-indulgently with too much wine, in the same way as you have to pour Malcolm Lowry's "Under the volcano" and Thomas De Quincy's "confessions of an opium eater" down your gullet at a choking dipso rate. We are all in love with our own ruin, as William Somerset-Maugham wrote.
I read the news today. One of my friends was burgled last night. He awoke to find the naughty burglar in the room where he-himself, or rather his body-vat, and his wife slept. Dressed in black, wearing a balaclava face, and hunched on tippytoes was the creeping one. The shadowy sneaker got away from the Sweeney, running, with a laptop and a handbag as his reward, stashed in his rectum.
You see, in this lovely nation of England there is enough street coke available to ensure that you needn't have to worry about your victim being present when you are on the rob. It's that good.
Have no fear. And if they do anything to spoil it for you, there is always litigation as a seaside resort of an option. Where there is blame there's a claim. Sue the fuckers. These people who think they can hinder a chap going about his chosen vocation, minding his own business, need showing a thing or two.
For lunch I consumed one single tin of Tesco's "Cream of Mushroom Soup". I was careful to ensure I only consumed the contents of the tin by regurgitating the metal container in the fashion of an owl voiding mouse bones and fur in a pellet. The cream contained in the tin tasted like salty christmas pudding. I burnt myself on the bowl during the preparation of the serving suggestion as illustrated and wished I'd been out to get an expensive salad roll from a local supplier instead.
But as the anger left me for sarcasm, which in turn bored itself away into diminishing sherbet bubbles, I felt alright. Time, like wine, heals all pain.
Arms golden brown, hair in Byronic ringlets of mouseyness, eyes plop-circles of glaucous green as if making a petition to you, a plea, and eye-lashes like spiders dunked in mascara.
Yeah. I was alright.
Tuesday, 5 June 2007
What it is like
You see, I only ever wanted to live like an Edwardian gentleman, but, instead, I find myself living in this nation of slavering wolves and pigs.
Monday, 4 June 2007
Holiday, outside
While I was away I managed to steal myself from the public sun and twittering crowd.
I found a valley, negotiated only by means of a stony footpath, at the end of which was a beach like a spew of immaculate ground rice. It was lost and the valley was overlooked by the ruins of a Cordovan fort.
This was my secret place for the week: the place in which I attempted to make contact with the austere horrors of nature. And it was the place in which I attempted to touch the beauty of nature. Horror and beauty are wild bedfellows outside.
I expected snakes and scorpions, but found none. I stumbled upon running-on-two-legs-lizards, skittish anti-gravity geckos, bombous devil's darning-needles, and huge columns of marching ants determined upon civilising the scrub.
The stream was dried to a stagnant skein of weed and mud, punctured by choked white boulders of yellow chalk, off-white stones and red-roasted soil. All vegetation was scratchy, brownish, bush-spine and parched pink thrift.
For birds I saw red-rumped swallows, azure-winged magpies, bee-eaters, and Sardinian warblers. Some of the colours were tropical. Almost like a child's illustration.
For butterflies I saw the blue-spot hairstreak, a couple of swallowtails, but mostly southern gatekeepers and cleopatras.
I found an upturned facies of rock that was once a beach, one hundred and fifty million Jurassic years ago. The squishing of the Tethys into Mediterranean, and the caesarian Atlantic belly-rip, had displaced it to an angle of some forty-five degrees from the horizon. I could see the petrified shells in the mudstones. I also spied three dinosaur tracks. Two the size of a hand; and a third, in the opposite direction, and much larger. Like monstrous, stupid, three-toed flightless-pigeon runways.
I was all squint-eyed and lens-flare stares, with dry breath, covered sweathead, leather arms, and walkers' boot, just thinking there about the past and the goddess, under the same sun.
I found a valley, negotiated only by means of a stony footpath, at the end of which was a beach like a spew of immaculate ground rice. It was lost and the valley was overlooked by the ruins of a Cordovan fort.
This was my secret place for the week: the place in which I attempted to make contact with the austere horrors of nature. And it was the place in which I attempted to touch the beauty of nature. Horror and beauty are wild bedfellows outside.
I expected snakes and scorpions, but found none. I stumbled upon running-on-two-legs-lizards, skittish anti-gravity geckos, bombous devil's darning-needles, and huge columns of marching ants determined upon civilising the scrub.
The stream was dried to a stagnant skein of weed and mud, punctured by choked white boulders of yellow chalk, off-white stones and red-roasted soil. All vegetation was scratchy, brownish, bush-spine and parched pink thrift.
For birds I saw red-rumped swallows, azure-winged magpies, bee-eaters, and Sardinian warblers. Some of the colours were tropical. Almost like a child's illustration.
For butterflies I saw the blue-spot hairstreak, a couple of swallowtails, but mostly southern gatekeepers and cleopatras.
I found an upturned facies of rock that was once a beach, one hundred and fifty million Jurassic years ago. The squishing of the Tethys into Mediterranean, and the caesarian Atlantic belly-rip, had displaced it to an angle of some forty-five degrees from the horizon. I could see the petrified shells in the mudstones. I also spied three dinosaur tracks. Two the size of a hand; and a third, in the opposite direction, and much larger. Like monstrous, stupid, three-toed flightless-pigeon runways.
I was all squint-eyed and lens-flare stares, with dry breath, covered sweathead, leather arms, and walkers' boot, just thinking there about the past and the goddess, under the same sun.
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