Jean Rhys Wild Sargasso Sea

Anyone eager for a continuation of the Jane Eyre plot will be pleased by this 1966 novel by Jean Rhys. It takes one to the exotic location of Spanish Town Jamaica and follows the story of Antoinette, also known as Bertha the crazy hieena (in Jane Eyre). This is a good book, especially the ending, which is just as good as that other JE inspired work Rebbecca. The Gothic idea of the zombie is approached in the most intelligent way in the history of literature, the zombie is more a clever witch than your typical brainless corpse. The narrative is a split between Rochestor and Antoinette and works well at giving dual perspectives. Theres also a little passage narrated by Grace Pool at the end. So there are all these characters that readers of JE would be familiar with but theres a lot of difference in their portrayal.
Historically whats also at play in this book is colonial politics and race relations just after the emancipation in 1833. They get blended up in cultural mash.
Well worth a read if you are are a CB fan.

Anne Franks Dream: Part three

You are in the deep, the deep zone, a weird world of gloom and nothingness,'said David.
'Am to sit here forever,'
'No, even though you cant feel it your still falling, this ocean has no bottom,' and he then began reading the script
'survival in the dark zone is all about seeing and yet not being seen,'
a large zap exploded in the darkness and I saw another long grotesque ghostlike monster, it wiped past me, and then suddenly it was ripped apart by a gigantic red thing, snake like, but eyeless.
'Down in the deep,' continued David narrating, 'the horror is real, see Zenithon, an equal for any Leviathan, he first electrocutes his victim and then secretes an acid that allows for a mysterious metabolic transference to take place, one that science can only wonder at.'
Then the thing disappeared and it was dark again.
'Down here Zenithon is God, not me Frank. He's brings the light, and feeds the deep, all hail Zenithon,' said David.
David where am I going?'
'To meet your maker, he said, his voice weakening.
'And who's he?'
'It Maybe Bill Gates or maybe he's sold you off to some Arab who owns you now. To be honest Im not sure who's rostered on tonight, and it all depends on which channel your genetic future is being traded at, Lincaft, Halliburton or even Yawah's... and in some parts here the snails have control.'
his voice slowly drifted away into nothingness. And I was alone again, and an infinite despair filled my mind, and I began crying but my tears didn't dribble down my face. They shot up like rays of white light, rising, rising, and thought, 'rise rise, spark of joy, beautiful spark of divinity, daughter of Elsyium,' and then I heard a sound, the most beautiful sound I have ever heard, BADUMP BADUMP A DUMP A Duump, It was the beginning to Wagners flying Dutchman and I began to feel a warmth within me, the light growing from my tears was spreading. And as I was wondering why I didn't get the Ninth, I turned and saw the body of Nietzsche floating next to mine, his face was smiling, grinning into oblivion.
Good to see you Frank, don't see many people down here,' he said
'Were am I?,'I asked
'im still trying to figure that one out, but there has to be an exit down here somewhere.
Surely its eternity,' I said
Surely.
'Eternity what? the sun invaded by the sea,' said a girls voice.
And I turned saw Anne Frank hovering in the darkness, her little nymph body flashing, flashing, going zap, zap like she was stuck in a bug trap. I reached out to touch her and felt my brain explode.

TO BE CONTINUED.

Anne Franks Dream: Part 2

And then the boat smashed open and the Jaws of death rose from the deep and clamped down around my stomach and I gagged and I gurgled on my own blood, and as the giant mechanical teeth of Jaws pressed down on me, and I thought about the Japanese submarine, and how I had just delivered the bomb, the Hiroshima bomb, but then the shark began to pull me down into the water. It felt cool and dark. It pulled me down into the deepness. I sunk like a stone. down, down, deeper still, and colder and darker, and darker until complete darkness, an infinite blackness, and a silence, and a stillness. I felt like a photograph, a daguerreotype. Long into the darkness I floated there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming thoughts no mortal had ever dared to dream before. Then a bright blue fuzz erupted and went zapp in the darkness like a nuclear warhead erupting, and I saw the face of god, the omnipotence, it was David Attenburough. Exposed,a white divine gandolphian visage. He flashed and disappeared. Then he began speaking in his humble yet sterile english accent,
' Frank, Frank you have drifted into the deep, a place without walls,' and as he spoke I saw a hideous transparent white monster that glowed and flashed and had array of stalactite teeth and globular spherical eyes.
'am I dead, or alive,'
'Neither,' he said
'What do you mean?'
'Your dreaming the dream Frank. There is no reality here, you are neither alive, dead, real or unreal, dreaming or not dreaming'

TO BE CONTINUED

Anne Franks dream: Part 1

I never dream but bad things. Last night i dream't someone was trying to steal my shoes, and whats worse i woke up in the morning and they were gone. I went into the bathroom and took a leek, I looked down and i had no penis. Instead their was this head. A gremlin i suppose you could call it. it coughed out my pee all over the place. Then it turned around and began speaking to me,
'Hay frank do you feel okay cos you don't look okay.'
Thats when i checked my reflection and holy shit, my head wasn't even there. I had no head. Then i went and lay back down in bed, it was all too crazy. I turned in my bed and there was my wife but under the covers she was a giant praying mantis. She began to fuck me with a needle like clitoris and i screamed out
oh fuck me.
But she kept hammering away like it was the best sex she had ever had.
Thats when i woke up and saw a spider eating itself. I rolled over in my bed and the bed sheets were all red, and there was my wife all cut up and dead, her head was completely missing. Ohh my god what have i done. But then came a bang on the door, BANG BANG followed by
'open up nigger its the police'
'I'm not a nigger,' i said.
'well then open up white nigger, its the police'
I had no time to put my pants on for the door bust down and two large black men entered. It was Will Smith and another lesser known celebrity, they looked around my apartment with disgust as the place was a mess, a cess-pool, full trash and the smell of cat shit hovered in the air.
'Come to investigate a call in, a noise disturbance, neighbors heard screaming,' said Will
'Yeah, yeah, we come to investigate,' said the other one sniffing the air.
'My wife, i have killed her,' I confessed.
They looked at each other and laughed HA HAH HA
'You dont have a wife,' said Will.
And then the theme song began rolling BAD BOYS, BAD BOYS, WHAT YA GONA DO WHEN THEY COME FOR YOU?
And Will and his partner began moving towards me and their eyes looked mean.They were going to rape me, but then the walls burst into flames and riding on massive horses white men in cone shaped mask came bursting through the flames, going, 'Yee hah yeah hah. yee hah get up boys! and Will and his partner vanished.
And then i was on boat that was leaving an island. It felt good to be leaving the island, slowly the island grew smaller and smaller as the boat drifted out into the ocean. The boat was small and i was alone on it. Soon the island disappeared and i felt lonely, and the water began to swell, the waves growing and growing, knocking the boat around, then out of the brine i saw sharks, big long Grey sharks with the black dead eyes of death, but then i thought how can i dreaming? how? isn't the unconscious unconscious of death, isn't it infantile and unable to deal with death. Thats what Kristeva says in her seminal post modern essays on psychoanalysis? how can i be dreaming? Then a voice came from the sky, 'because your dead Frank.'
It was a familiar voice, it was my father, it was Heath Ledger.
"Frank you little cock sucker, i own you, your dreams are mine now, they belong to 'US said another voice and then Michael Jacksons mutilated face flashed in a sky of lightning.

TO BE CONTINUED

The pleasure of eating Vegetables

Biological ethics & Human parasites


Once animal and man were linked by nature but throughout our development over history the bond has slipped from equality, to sacrifice, to consumption, and to eventually torture. Today the link has been completely severed. Animals now mean nothing, the are contained in zoos, slaughtered by their millions by an industry of death, and finally they have become the victims of our own rational science. We test them, we inject them and we punish them. Why? because of our refusal to believe that we are animals. But now we cant even claim the right of equality with animals. We have become biological parasites.
As our technology spreads and the global population soars, animals go extinct, and the ethics of killing animals humanely drops... and who looses? Everyone.
One of the keys to solving global warming lies in the consumption of beef. The amazon is slowly being destroyed because of a conceived need for meat. There is too much meat already. Eating vegetables is the perfect solution to the failure of 'biological ethics'. Not only are you saying NO to an industry which views an animal as a machine, a product, denying them status as animals, but in refusing to eat meat you will be helping prevent the apocalypse of human stupidity.

Jane Eyre:The First act of free will

In choosing to leave Rochestor Jane Eyre confirms her human independence by displaying her willingness to die for it. It is an idea which can be traced back to Socrates and the birth of free will. It would have been convenient to stay on at Thornfield hall and become Rochestors mistress, but in doing so Jane Eyre would loose the idealism her character is fundamentally built on; Intelligence, Independence, and the idea of being true to ones self. This pure chastity in Janes personality holds continuity throughout the novel.
The idea of Janes 'self' is important when considering the importance of god to her. Love in Jane Eyre, although humane and passionate can in many ways be seen as the eventual transcendence to god under the union of matrimony. In giving herself to Rochestor out of wedlock, when viewed in the context of the 19th century theological morality, would have been highly damaging to her soul. Christianity often ignored in favour of more dynamic modern paradigms of analysis plays an enormous role in the formulation of Jane Eyres character.
In leaving Rochester and Thornfield hall Jane abandons herself to the wilderness of pain, destitution and possible death. Is this a test of her faith or an act of self destruction or
what Freud called a [selbsterhaltugstrieb] the drive to self preservation through the encompassing of an ideal sense of self being? Often in the novel Jane will act to the point of self destruction through physical and psychological means. This almost religious asceticism can be seen as the darkness within Jane, the rejection she suffered as a child eventually manifested as attack on the self. A constant self questioning, self destructing and self reforming. It's not easy to be Jane Eyre. The world threatens to destroy her just as she threatens to destroy herself. There is a social neurosis within Jane. But the beauty of Jane is that she eventually comes to a resolution within herself, a triumph of the will, which can be viewed in the history of human nature as artistically equal to the beautiful self awakenings that one sees in the philosophy of Frederick Nietzsche and the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh.

Singularity and Language

Oft to ponder the big questions in life I began my day in asking the question;

Given that everything in the universe is subject to thermonuclear death, what can be said of language, communication, words. When is a word at it's most charged state and when is it devoid of all energy,and zero power?

I began my research in the virtuals of science fiction but soon abandoned this for a faster system of language. A system that is both atomic and catalytic to language: Chemistry and language although at first glance would seem apposed, they both at heart share the same purpose of transformation.

(RS)-6-(Dimethylamino)-4,4-diphenylheptan-3-one) is also known generically as Methadone.

Methadone, Junky Juice, Petrol, Done, Drone, D.

Above we see its etymological destruction in various cultural forms; however, it can go no further in D. D is a singularity. Here we have a structural collapse of language down to its smallest common denominator. This unarticulated, instantaneous form radiates more energy than all others. In advertising language is reduced to this same minimality to amplify the message. Macdonalds becomes that giant M. Less becomes more, Its infinite power resides in what it isn't.

Is a singularity in language equal to the singularity of the universe.

In literature a good example of the singularity can be discovered in the novels of Franz Kafka. In naming his protagonist K. and not john, jill, frank, but in just K he encompasses the whole unverse of language. K can mean anything. K is everyone.
So what one can conclude from this is, is that by the implosion of language there is also an explosion of language. As with the singularity in our universe the smaller the point of infinite density, the greater the expansion.

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Neuromancer has to be one of the most important books of the millennium, a weird fantastic mixture of futuristic technology, virtual reality, corporate power and drug use. The novel's international setting, a bio-product of globalization in literature, is very stimulating; however, its first setting Cheba or Night city is unforgettable.

'Night City was like a deranged experiment in social darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept his thumb permanently on the fast-forward button.'

The books main controlling idea concerns technologies evolution into a godlike consciousness. Wintermute an AI wants to merge with another AI Neuromancer, but the forces that be( Tessier Ashpool an inbred family of psychopathic cryogenetic aristocrats) won't allow it. Revolutionary at the time was the idea of cyberspace, or the matrix, a virtual reality where characters can take on physical form. The main characters themselves are devoid of human emotion. This is symptomatic. Technology is attempting to replace the body. The body is something to be overcome, transcended. Our central characters are Case, a drug addicted cyberspace cowboy and Molly, a futuristic femme fatale. They both think they are working for Armatage,but he is just a schizophrenic puppet for larger fish.
The book, written in 1984 has strangely relevant views on media and terrorism in todays post, post terror, terror world..

'There is always a point in which violence may well escalate, but beyond which terrorism has become symptomatic of the media gestalt itself.'

This is true of terrorism today. Terrorism is a media unto itself.

Politics in Neuromancer has become corporate.

'Power in Cases world meant corporate power... Viewed as organism they had attained a kind of immortality.'
The corporation figures largely in Neuromancer. They tend to control both history and future. Human evolution is cellular to the corporation, which grows only through AI.

This is my second reading of Neuromancer and i could read it again. The narrative flows well and ideas are conveyed with ease. It has that power to be both entertaining and educational.

Master J.G Ballard's grand opus: Crash

I payed 24.98 minus my student 2 dollar discount for Crash. People in book stores tend to condescend one purchasing Crash. Ballardians are a persecuted people of substantial genius. Perhaps it was my insisting on the 2 dollar discount that had me so hated.

Crash, described by many as Ballards masterpiece, is a sick mixture of sex and machine and death set in the pyschogeographies that
Ballard was so fascinated by: airport terminals, business parks, TV studios, and highways.
In Crash our narrator and ex TV scientist Vaughan, prowl the expressways looking for horror crashes to get off on. Vaughan is a kind of post modern Kurtzesque character, once a talk show host but scarred by a car crash, he's obsessed with roadside grotesques and the death wish of penetrating Elizabeth Taylor in one final car smash. The Human in Crash has been replaced by a sexual machine stuck in an ongoing nightmare of death and sex. Celebrities and consumers are united by technologies promise of sexual transgression in the car crash.
Ballards writing has a horrifying style about it, graphic and violent, death images evoke our attention and we tend to repulse in their sick beauty. There is also an idea with Ballard that he can take us closer to reality But there is no reality in Crash just as there is nothing real in Baudrillard's simulations. The Crash continues even today. Reality is constantly pilling up and dissimulating.
Crash is a dark and perverse introduction into Ballards world. High Rise, Cocaine Nights and Super Cannes are more entertaining and less of a challenge on the neurotransmitters.
There is an interesting blogg with photo's of the now passed J,G Ballards house in Shepperton. His car still sits in the front yard. It is interesting to see the place where Ballard wrote his fantastic novels, Check them out at;

http://undergroundmangeomatt.blogspot.com/2009/09/ballardian-ground-zero-jg-ballards.html

When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sederis

I stole this book from a genetic acquaintance while they were in the bathroom.It was well worth the theft. I feel no guilt. David has set a new standard of diariarism, yeah thats right diariarism. He's a great writer. why? because hes' funny, not funny hah hah, but so funny you may have a little accident on public transport. When you read his books on trains, buses, or trams people look at you with envy. Their going, ' whats this mother fucker laughing at all the time. Its great. I cant say enough about this mans talent, hoo hahhh!! trailer-trash who call their television remote controls niggers, and French firemen who produce goblets during emergencies.

Women by Charles Bukowski

I feel ashamed to have payed money for this book, 34 dollars which is a hefty price for a paperback. I guess the price relates mainly to Bukowskis cult status of "literary caveman". There is only so much misery one can take, but whats worse about this piece of shit novel is that the miserable cockroach starts fucking all these women. All though i love bukowski as a writer this novel reeks of sick glory.
In Woman Chinaski,the down and out hero of Ham On Rye, Post Office and Factotum has been replaced by a successful leach who basically travels around trying to have sex with as many young women as possible. Although not as shit as his worst novels Pulp and Hollywood, Women is nothing more than a vile brag. Does the ends justify the means? does one have to be such an asshole to write such comic realism.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath. The name doesn't get any bigger when it comes to post second world war poetry. The bitch was a genius, a phenomenon in modern prose, a descended equal to the rank in the court of Milton, Alighieri, Rimbaud and Eliot. Anyone who has read Ariel can understand its stark matter of fact electro shock elegance.

The Bell Jar is just as sweet and as sour as existence is when your a genius like Sylvia Plath was. I read Plaths only novel sitting on a train and didn't stop reading until the conductor kicked me off. He said, 'get the fuck off my train you looser.' Perhaps i should have done a plath and jumped infront of the next oncoming train but there wasn't any oncoming trains, it was 1 am. Plath's novel is crazy. If anyone wants a lesson in first person intimate narration look past Salinger to Plath. Plath is as miticulous as a gorden orb spider. Her paragraphs are sexy shit.
The story concerns this young lady called Esther who is a little like us all in that she doesn't know what she's doing. It begins in New York and even from the start you get the feeling something is wrong with this little lady. Shes like an orphan to time or something, its hard to put, she fitts in but feels strange, uneasy, the world makes her... Constantly the things make her sick.

Then by the middle of the book she's returned the swamps of Massachusetts and everything is beginning to go wrong for her. Thats when she goes and sees this Doctor Gordan. Look i dont want to spoil it because it is a very pritty book as well as a fucked up nightmare vision of what can happen to you if your a genuis like Sylvia Plath was.