Snorkfuffle, Inc.

In related news, I'm coming to Sydney in the last week of August. The one after next, for the Wed/Thu/Fri happyfactory. I'm busy on the weekend though, so no happiness then. Only science.

So, this is what my house looks like:



This is a bookcase of stuff, which I found by the side of the road. It's fairly laden with camera equipment, which is also my fault. Also, a couch with a teddy.



That is Chris, one of my flatmates, attempting not to get busted for federal crimes.



That's a side-of-road seat, which is remarkably comfortable. The Soundotron is a speaker-and-turntable-and-radio thing that hums and sounds like it's trying to contact the moon. Chris bought it from a fellow who sells stuff.



Another view of the main room. With a hallway in it. Also, more couches.



This is a typewriter I got from an op-shop not too far from my house. It's swiss, and pretty easy to type on. Also, with impossible carrycase.

So, this is what I've noticed about Melbourne that seems worthy of mentioning.

- Trams are really quite cool. In many cases, they have a lane seperated from traffic, and stop whenever they like (leaving people in cars to sit there for a while).

- The Age has had, for the past four days running, an article on the badness of global warming and the lack of meaningful action by any Government. This made the front page twice.

- The trains here are operated by a multinational cartel called Connex. The computer systems on the trains will not allow the driver to apply the brakes if the wheels are stopped, and the wheels (in tests) slipped and locked in this fashion on leaves and soapy water. The only thing a driver can do is remove the ignition, and apply the parking brake. The solution? Remove 1/3rd of Melbournes engines, but attach the attendant carriages (and an extra engine) to other engines. The argument is, if the brakes fail on one engine, they'll work on the other engine. Sadly, if this does happen, it means one set of brakes has to maintain the same functional ability at 200% of it's normal load.

- There are three things that Melbourne drivers do frequently: U-turns absolutely whenever they feel like it, run red lights (perhaps because, as Chris said, there is a set of lights every 100m), and perform hook turns. The last leave you sitting in the middle of an intersection, hoping the tram will pass before the lights change.

- There is an alley near Swanston St where a large collection of Taoist street signs have been put up. For example 'Souls frequently enjoy becoming moist', 'The image of the imageless, the form of the formless'.

- Mangoes are $1 at Victoria Markets.

- The weather here is significantly colder. Also, on my first day, it changed from almost-cloudless to rain six times before sunset. This has repeated itself on other days.

- Muse are fantastic, and have a neon piano.

- Ikea have become the first exemplar among many why something is a little bit wrong with corporations.

- On that note, the city council for the Melbourne CBD has recently decided that outdoor, large-scale advertising (of which they were already disapproving and strict-on) is an insult to the existing buildings that 'encourages bland architecture for advertising purposes' - and as such, need to be restricted further.

- The 70s are cool, yo.

- I've been told many times that Sydney is a high-sex, trend-whorey and vain city. It is anecdotally confirmed in contrast, since cookie-cut subculture-adherents are *much* rarer here, and so are the 'high-society' peacocks with trendy shoes and Fauxhawks.

- On comparison? Chapel St vs. Oxford St = Indepedent theates showing Hayao Miyazaki doubles and delicious pancakes vs. DO YOU LIKE TO GO CLUBBING OR SEX WHAT!!???!

Somewhat.

Somehow, I was attempting to make a useful contribution to this many-mouted Beelzebub, with all things common and rare making haste from his cultural output orifices.

http://static.flickr.com/92/268450316_4112e67be3_b.jpg

http://www.wikihow.com/Deal-With-an-Existential-Crisis

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CzEdITdGht4

http://stylepolice.blogspot.com/

http://www.philosophistry.com/archives.html

Even if I haven't, perhaps all I tried to do was return to ye olden (glory) days when things like http://www.couplandesque.net/ appeared at me with an uncertain mechanism operating at emotional speeds. Life takes a step and time takes two.

So! The question must be: what then is the purpose of social commentary? By way of foreword, multimorpheme prefix or otherwise introductory preamble - let it be said that this was inspired by altogether too much listening to the new (and scandalously leaky) of Montreal album. In this, it seems that Kevin Barnes has attempted some kind of bitter/cynical broadside on the bloated and barnacled behemoth what the historians might eventually call 'early 21st century western culture'.

Particularly, he has made an assortment of jibes from the opening track. Whilst it might simply be too simple to understand Suffer for Fashion in the manner suggested by the lyrics and title, it certainly appears as if he has dropped his pseudosurrealist genrelessness for commentatordom. I do believe that I am currently engaging in a circumlocutious discourse.

Then to sharpened point of this enlightened foil: social commentary seems so very empty. Whilst it is certainly a thing of some usefulness when applied correctly, my perception is that culture is currently overburdened with commentary, opinion, remark, editorial and other forms of discussionesque periodicals. Is it possible that one more crime to be attributed to the popular media is that of miring the everyman in sloppy dialogue without gain? Can movement be expected or desired when the perceived culture is a torrid morass of expert opinion and urbanite armchair-based babble?

I perhaps contend, not. There may come a point when talk is simply too superfluous. It is here ==> . <==

I'm afraid that with this, I am trying to understand some ponderances by throwing them out and seeing how they return. So, to that: The edicts handed down by some people, and perhaps most, are pure drivel. For what reason? Because the shit people do is not guided by some overarching, wonderful purpose. Do people hurl insults at people they don't know, shoulder through crowds, teenagely sneer at people: for a reason? Perhaps they have some tacky and superfluous cause (They don't deserve to live / They aren't suave enough / ), but nothing that really stands up.

My point: actions are so often tainted by irrelevance, knee-jerks - there is no good reason for doing one of those kneethings over another. This is part and parcel of something else: Look around you. Do you think that inanimate object just there, shares your respect for...law? (If you do that kind of thing) - Do you think it is part of the insultingly pervasive ideological sphere people carry inside them, and assume extends into the world? It might be said that in the case of Law, that it is meant to be true for all people, some philosophical disease of which the entire nation is a carrier. Is that even partially true? Individuality reigns, and inside any given individual variable like 'respect for law' vary.

I think I know what i'm trying to point out as cancerously annoying: those humans who walk around, taking up the illogical mantle of God and Lawgiver, thinking that what they think, what they do, anything about them: is relevant or should be inflicted upon any other person at any time in any location. I count myself guilty on this charge, and I can think of others as well (guilty once more, even). The 'world' doesn't care about moralisations: the world *cannot* care. A tree doesn't have the neurological capacity to run around vomiting moralisms on people: and even if it had a mouthorgan, could it? Those encephalised mammals, those sweaty bipeds with a cortex in one hand and the weight of opinion in the other thinking themselves the stand-in God, the ruler by a function of aristocratic tea parties and Empires. This grotesque kind of everyday totalitarianism: I do not think it can be allowed to live. Why do you hate the people you do? Why do you think anything? Disposition and Logic are the parents I would say, sometimes one, sometimes both: But the masses do not weild reason well enough and dispositions (inexplicable? I think not) are not the kinds of things from which one is justified to destroy a microcosm: whether is a person or a world is a difference in magnitude and not in kind.

i don't like money. i don't really like having it, and it is sometimes annoying when i don't. perhaps, that's why i don't like money. in any case ?¿ items given from other people to me that cost any perceptible amount of money make me feel awkward: this is because it creates a debt in my mind that i cannot repay. even if such things are given in a sense of "it's ok/nevermind/blah", the language implies that they are just ignoring a slight sufficiently small as to be easily snubbed. perhaps, i am reluctant to be a free-rider in a a few cases? specifically, those where i'm mooching from people whom i would not want to insult with that kind of action.

having said that, i am quite hypocritical. the absolute conclusion of that would to be go and live in a forest. perhaps, actually, to die in as non-costly a way as is possible, but i'm not doing those things in the slightest. i don't want to. so, it's more accurate to say that i am notliking of having/not-having spending/not-spending money simply as a function of a greater inclination to owe people nothing, combined with some manner of lazyness a/o lack of employability (due in perhaps no small part to a lack of effort). so, comment away, as is permitted by this semiforum.

Henchpeople!

The Zombie Day in Brisvegas caused many an ooh-ahh amongst you (I should hope), but it is significantly (p<0.005) the time for this to happen in Sydney. So then, how would this go about happening? I want suggestions - contacts, minions, methods of effecting widespread information dissemination. I for my part would think some form of leaflet-mediated carpet bombing would be in order, in selected locations only. LJvomits, bulletin-board attacks, email-strafing: good/bad? possible/impossible?

Do you desire to feast on encephalised meats? (Slogan?)

http://www.brisbanezombiewalk.tk/

go to that website, this instant. this should happen in sydney. without exception.

the very concept of a political 'party' is hated forever. the reason for this is that organisations of people banding together to support some quest they might not even care about or are just sheeping along to is counter to:

every vote is one of conscience. parlimentarians should be made to consult their own morality and thoughts on every matter. these should take direction from:

politicians were philosophers first. if you can't think in a hardcore way about everything, and espically what you are doing, should you even be running a bath?

so, just what is to happen? time, life! is passing, but with every expired second one must wonder whether one approves of what happened inside it. i have been thinking and reading and talking a lot lately, and it has reminded me of some ongoing yet nevermoving project in my mind to remove all infestations. the word, amusing as it is, is not overblown - i fear that individuality, perhaps in general but at least in my case, is constantly under seige.

paragraph! (not for emphasis, but for readability). what do people do, what do i do? getting to know people is like letting a fish get used to the temperature of it's new bowl by doing that bag-inside-the-bowl thing. whether the exchange is two-way, i cannot say (two-way monologue?), however people alter me. now, it is quite possibly obvious from the word 'infest' that i don't see this as entirely a good thing.

to wit: people aren't horrible. indeed, interesting people are just that, and such knowings are important, but one must wonder what remains of individuality? is ther even such a thing? (cultural studies, woe). it feels like it is far too easy for me to let the change go unmonitored. as in, let the personalities mix together in my mind until it is like adding two colours of food dye together - they can't be unmixed.

i for my part am curious. in typing this, i don't intend to alienate or insult anyone i know, this is a phenomenon of mine - however, i feel that getting lost in non-me thought processes and languageisms is like some addiction. so, well, what is to be concluded? all that has to be done is a spot of willpower and forewarning need to be baked until golden brown.

but it also leads to this amusing implication, and combined with something V mentioned in passing = really, thinking and over-thinking are all well and good, but they introduce an aura of hesitation - now, of thinking and overthinking i have nothing to say just now, but the hesitation aura isn't good science. it stifles the individual. in this case, myself.

so, i think, in conclusion: i'm making up a new morality., or rather, discovering what i already think. it's motivating.

whilst scouring my room of superfluous items, i found:

Idles of the Mind

Errors of the Tribe
- jumping to conclusions
- thinking you have enough evidence when you do not
- wishful thinking
- find evidence you want to find, see the facts you want to see
- limitations of human senses
- carelessness, inaccuracy

Idles of the Cave
- blind obedience to authority
- " " environment, custom and opinion
- sticking with favourite ideas, believing everything a certain person says is true

Idles of the Marketplace
- the confusion of how people talk
- inaccuraces and ambiguities in how people speak

Idles of the Theatre
- systems of thinking that lock our minds into a pattern
- complicated abstractions far removed from experience


this was written down rather hastily in a philosophy lecture, as the lecturer was explaining it. i don't know who came up with these (Locke comes to mind, however), but i do like them significantly.

consider the scene: after a spot of magic at an otherwise uninteresting sworday, whereupon black was found to be a really handy colour (espically if it was added to blue), i sought lunch in the form of a maccas thickshake. some new system seemed to have been in institution there, whereby worker bees took your order whilst you queued, gave you some docket detailing your food-desires, and then you paid for that item at the counter (and the precious eatmeats were exchanged for that).

consider, in the days just before (or perhaps in the beginning of) the industrial revolution, there were those who had the luxuries offered by the society in which they lived, and those that did not (this is western-centric of course, and i suppose it divides amongst a proletariat/bourgeoisie line). now, automation and industrialisation would have allowed for a great increase in productivity, and thus, after a fashion, the old p/b line would have blurred as those of the proletariat, whilst still having to sell their labour, would have been able to live in a style somewhere approaching that of the bourgeoisie.

so, going back to the scene at maccas. there was quite the queue there. my waiting period spawned such thoughts as 'too many plebs and not enough worker bees', but to my point: in order for all of the plebs to stay in the bourgeoisie-style life into which the industrial revolution had put them (taken with the population and life-expectancy increase caused by that), the culture had to change. people could no longer be treated with pauseful dignity, there was no time for that - for every person to be managed and organised (by anyone - government or maccas), they had to be processed by the system quickly. i suspect the very concept of the queue did not exist in the early industrial revolution times. thus, while this at first may have been a necessity to process the required number of people as fast as possible, the next generation of people raised in that kind of environment would not have known the era of pauseful dignity. (i imagine pauseful dignity as being that in which, for example, if one wanted a car, or a house, it was built for them, by a craftsman. things of an expensive nature were by-order, and for the elite. not mass-produced model-lines, from which one must choose). so, if those children had grown into the western world in which being processed was to be expected, when they became the adult generation they ran the system the same - except they had a lesser concept of the era of pauseful dignity in which there was some element of respect.

if this process repeated across generations, as i suspect it did (because from my knowledge of history, respect for humans from humans has been on the decline), then the feelings of dronedom, of helplessness(?) in some sections of society nowaday, the disdain at the insincerity expressed in every cut-and-paste 'how are you today?' from every shopflunky, the inseperability of living in the modern day and the casual cruelty of the evermore sociopathic fleshmass - are caused by the population boom, and the technology that enabled (and the desire that motivated) a comfortable life for all. when people speak of 'democracy', and it's greatness, i think it is garbage - the very term 'representative democracy' is a misnomer. furthermore, the environment cannot sustain the exponential growth on which the economy (and now, humankind) relies. there is too much money to be had in servicing the needs of the population now (enter the corporation), and thus it influences politics. i think the picture i am seeing, and thus describing here, is that the industrial revolution is a sucking vortex from which foresight is the escape, and it also a thing that encourages not doing fore-sighting. so, i invite critism of all i have said here, but even if finishing on a question makes me seem like a wank-filled columnist, i will ask - has attempting to make everybody rich simply resulted in the beggaring of some, a shattering of respect for mankind (did that ever exist?), and the exponential richness of a few - all at the cost of sustainability?

So finally, this thing might get off the ground. The World Domination Society (WDS) is mainly aimed at ruthless mindfucking, and political-flavoured mindfucks are to be expected as well. The point of it is basically amusement on the part of it's members - because really, qouting aloud from the Principia Discordia and trying to convert people in a ScientologyTM fashion is indeed amusing, espically when you hand about the Important Religious Survey. Also consider the benefits of srutting about the city in a tye-dye toga whilst duelling with gloves. Think of it people, it's absurdist hooliganery with the added bonus of a cool name. In short, minions for such are desired. Once the Exambeast has met it's death of Circle the Most Approptiate Answer then missions will begin to take place.