Real Virtuality

2011-10-13T23:28:00.002+01:00

I am changing address ...

http://simonkearns.com

the flash fiction continues there.

Two Hundred Words - A Puzzle

2011-09-09T09:04:00.003+01:00

Of the two hundred words, handwritten on a scrap of red card in black and sans serif, he saw at once that only three were key. The edges of the card were torn but the block of text appeared complete. The first clue was to be found in the first sentence.

He read it again. Out on the water he saw a boat approaching, the onshore breeze swelling a yellow sail. The second clue was buried in the text. He had to search for it.

As he sat contemplating the words, the boat drew up along the quay. He did not recognise the man who threw the rope, but he took it and tied it to the cleat on which he had been sitting. The boat looked foreign. He watched the sailor busy himself with the mast, then went back to the text.

The final clue was the most difficult. He read the piece again but couldn’t see it. He said the words to himself, mumbling them like a prayer, but he could not hear the one he sought.

A shadow appeared across the writing. He looked up. The sailor stood over him.

“Who are you?” he asked, in French.

____________________________________________

The list of words not to be used ...

2011-09-01T20:34:00.002+01:00

The list of words not to be used was put up on the door of the library. They had been written in alphabetical order. At first in groups, then one by one, the people approached them, read them, considered them. The following weeks saw a rash of haste as texts were consulted, words obliterated, and certain books burnt.

The list of words not to be used soon became the only existent example of those words. The people pretended to ignore it. From time to time, certain of them went by close enough to catch sight of one or two of the words. Certain of them committed the words to memory.

The list of words not to be used vanished about three months after it had appeared. Everyone noticed. There were rumours. Some said it had been removed by order, others that it had been stolen.

When enough time had passed, no one remembered how many words had been on the list. Memories faltered, secret arguments developed and opposing groups were formed. Centuries saw the list of words not to be used transformed into legend, millennia to myth. Historians speculate. Linguists propose. Writers imagine. The list of words not to be used illudes all attempts to be recreated.

______________________________________________________

Fugue No.3

2011-08-05T02:30:00.001+01:00

SUBJECT

The falcon cannot hear the falconer. The rain comes down in sheets.

DEVELOPMENT

- The falcon cannot hear the falconer, way up here where the clouds roil and the rain comes down in sheets. From up here the fist of the wind can be seen dealing blows upon the mountainside, ruffling its fur of fir trees.

- But way down there, above the tree line, in the heather, comes the maddened hare, path as jagged as the lightening. But even though the falcon cannot hear the falconer, it knows its task, as sure as claws are sharp, as sure as the rain comes down in sheets.

RECAPITUALTION

The falcon cannot hear the falconer, whose fist hangs in the air, whose eyes, from fur-lined hood, seek out his feathered will. Down here, among the heather, they wait or run, up here above the tree line where the crowd of fir stand by the fence and lightening illuminates the maddened hare. As the claws come down, as the mad end begins, as the rain comes down in sheets.

_____________________________________________

Retelling the story

2011-07-28T09:38:00.003+01:00

I slowly peeled back my eyelids and immediately wished I was still out for the count. The building opposite mine, a tower block, twenty stories, was leaning like Pisa. My head had hit something. Hard. There was a stickiness as I raised it. That song was still playing, something hip-hop, something infectious. As a soundtrack to a scene of grand destruction, it held its own. Delusional maybe, but a grandeur nonetheless. I checked my watch and noted twenty past one, the minute hand at an angle equal to that of the tower opposite. I hadn’t been unconscious long. It was quiet. Despite the car alarms honking like electronic geese, it was very quiet. A hush similar to snow’s, peculiar to a scene of massive violence. It could just be the ringing in the ears. The sirens hadn’t arrived. The dust was as yet unsettled. My mind, feeling gooey, tried to assure itself there would be an explanation for all of this. Though, it was still struggling with the building opposite and hadn’t yet taken in the fact that the skyline behind it was smoke and orange fire.

When I got to my feet, the first of the helicopters passed overhead. They didn’t stop. The walking wounded emerged from buildings, grey and bloodied. We stood around. Someone was saying terrorists, someone else, earthquake. Phones weren’t working. I passed a woman praying.

That first day… We all have a hundred stories about the first day. A year later, ten years later, a generation later, we’re still telling those stories. We slipped into their telling and made them fit our censored recollections. The one I told the most was the leaning building one. How I peeled back my eyelids, wished I hadn’t, and saw the tower leaning. In the telling I like to angle my hand to parallel the incline. Like this…

(Suggested by a story prompt from the site Flash Fiction Friday)

The Body

2011-07-22T02:02:00.001+01:00

When the call came over the radio, Detective John Larson almost didn’t take it. Some eerie instinct tried to warn him off. He hadn’t slept all night, but a body had been reported and he was up. He took the call.

It was out of town, open countryside, and miles from anywhere. Considering the location, it was a surprise to see so many people already there. They stood at the gate to a field in a tight group. Seeing no other police cars, he realised he was the first on the scene. The crowd watched his car approach slowly along the grass-spined track. They looked young. He sensed their mood immediately; it was buoyant, almost celebratory. Larson radioed base that he had arrived, but waited a few moments before turning off the engine. Something in the way the people waited, something akin to déjà vu, suggested an unfamiliar and awful ceremony.

He shook off the presentiment and got out of the car. As he did, a man appeared among the mob and came down the hill to meet him. He was in his late fifties, bearded and ruddy-faced, and wore a yellow raincoat. He was smiling.

“Morning officer.”

Frowning, the detective took the hand offered him, noticing dirt under the fingernails, a calloused palm.

“We got a call about a body.”

“Yes, that was one of my assistants. It’s her first.” The man winked and leaned close. “She’s a bit excited. Everyone is.”

“I’m sorry,” said Larson, drawing back a little, “who are you?”

“Oh, excuse me. Doctor Fred Durren. I’m in charge here. This way, please.”

He led him to the gate and through the people waiting there. They were lively, chatting and smoking. Larson found their attitude inappropriate, yet they cowed him, with their youth, their numbers.

“Who are these people?” he asked almost in a whisper.

“Just my little gang. They’re up from London for a few days.” And with that, the doctor set off across the field. Larsen hurried to catch up. As he did, he saw that quite a lot of earth had been recently excavated.

“Is it a grave?”

“Oh, undoubtedly,” answered Durren. “We found the cattle first. There were so many of them. Possibly as many as a hundred. Mind your step there. All killed at once. And then we found him.”

Larson was shocked; the doctor was speaking with an unconcealed relish. He was about to say something but his attention was taken by the size of the grave. Durren reached the edge and proudly pointed down at something inside.

The detective drew near and looked into the pit. The first thing he noticed were the wheels, two of them, they looked like wagon wheels. Then he saw the skeleton.

“Marvellous, isn’t it?” said Durren, wistfully.

“It’s … it’s been here for some time.”

Durren regarded the other with a strange expression. “Well, yes. At least three thousand years. Late Bronze Age … you were told this was an archaeological site?”

_______________________________________________

Fugue No.2

2011-07-15T09:42:00.002+01:00

SUBJECT - The breeze caressed the trees. The nightingales sang loudly.

DEVELOPMENT - The breeze, a southerly, and somewhat damp from the sea, made the trees whisper among themselves as if a stranger were in town. Moonless night in early June, and the nightingales sang loudly. By the window, the curve of you, a silhouette against the stars.

- The breeze caressed the trees, wavering every leaf, simply passing through, not bending in haste. Moonless sky of stars, silently flickered by bats, with constellations defined and bold. The curve of the plough matching that of your shoulder, as if a decoration. And the nightingales sang loudly.

RECAPITUALTION - The breeze caressed you, and the trees approved, dampened by the sea, and starry sky, the curve in the window with the curve in the sky and the night in the night wavered and flickered and the great bear at your shoulder, and boldest of all, as I kissed you, the nightingales sang loudly.

________________________________________________________

Already there

2011-06-30T22:30:00.000+01:00

The children gathered around it, thick with inquisitiveness and wary attraction. It lay on its back, rocking slowly from one side to the other, a mockingly mechanical motion, one leg in the air, clawing at the void that was already there, yet approaching at the same time. They watched, those children, eyes showing wonderment - terrified and excited and repulsed all at the same time. The chick, a swallow I think, one of those fallen on first flight, was them. Simply them: young, helpless, at mercy. A mother shooed them. I caught a glimpse of it. Best not look. But the children would. They looked because they had to know.

But what do I know?

Fugue No.1

2011-06-24T10:00:00.000+01:00

SUBJECT - Antonia was running. Johan chased her.

DEVELOPMENT - Antonia was running along a dried out riverbed. She ran over stones of every size and shape, slipping on drifts of pebbles, skipping rocks, and clambering boulders. Johan trailed her from the air, his eyes running over these stones, and pebbles, and rocks, and boulders.

- As Antonia was running, she realised it had always been thus; she ran, Johan chased. Along pried out streams of consciousness, over stories of every size and form, tripping on shifts of meaning, the ticking clocks, the clamouring elders.

RECAPITUALTION - Every time he was just about to catch her, they began again. But roles had been reversed. Johan ruined, Antonia chaste. He would never catch her. She would be forever alone. Tired out. With only reams of stories left, sifted for meaning, stammering, elderly. Antonia was running away from herself. And Johan chased her there.

______________________________________

The Spiralling Story

2011-06-17T14:32:00.002+01:00

>>>

Stars … stars … stars and stars. So many stars. Everywhere I look is stars. Turning and turning, in widening circles, the stars spin out in an endless sky. A sky with no horizon, only stars, a non-sky, absence of up and down, no reference, no sense of progression or return. I am made of the stars.

<<<

Stars have created me. I am at every level: galactic, atomic, particular, all at once, and forever, and again, and of stars, sometimes becoming singular, an independent consciousness that thinks itself unique – as all stars unthinkingly are unique in that collective of stars that is the non-sky, stars, absence of stars, and stars … stars … stars.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Unreality Television

2011-06-10T10:05:00.003+01:00

I was told, take him round the back and deal with him. I mean, there’s no ambiguity in that, is there? Everybody knows what that means. He knew what it meant. He didn’t struggle, didn’t plead. He was meek as a lamb. Hurrying almost, as if he couldn’t wait for it to be over. He was leading me. All I could think about was how tight the cord was on his wrists, that it must really hurt, that his hands were turning white. It was my first day, you know? I wasn’t gonna go making a scene. I mean, this is what we signed up for. Really.

Funny, though, cos I saw him a week later on Al Jazeera. Somebody must have moved him, cos he was face down when I left him. Seeing him on TV helped, actually. Made it more unreal. Anyway, I’d already quit by then.

----------------------------------------------------

The Man Who Ran

2011-06-04T02:17:00.002+01:00

He was running and running and running, and when he thought he couldn’t run any more, he carried on running. And all the people came out onto the streets to watch him running, and they said, there he goes, running and running. And he ran right out of this country and into the next one. But they don’t care about running in that country and I couldn’t say what became of him.

Error message

2011-05-27T20:15:00.000+01:00

404 – page not found.

“Damn,” I said, hit the refresh button, took a drink of wine, and lit the cigarette.

404 – page not found.

“Damn,” I said, hit the refresh button, took another drink of wine, and lit the cigarette (it had gone out).

404 – page not found.

“Damn,” I said, hit the wine, took another cigarette (it had gone out), and lit the refresh button.

404 – page not found.

“Refresh,” I said, lit the wine, took another damn, and hit the cigarette (it had gone out again).

404 – damn not found.

“Wine,” I said, took another page, lit the damn, and refreshed the cigarette (it had gone out).

After this I gave up.

Eternal Return

2011-05-20T11:16:00.001+01:00

As he drove to work that morning, Collins experienced a vivid and prolonged sense of déjà vu. It began at the last set of traffic lights. Just when they turned green, and he hesitated, his car stalled, as he knew it would. At that moment the boy in the blue cap appeared and scooted across the road. If I hadn’t stalled, he thought, restarting the engine. At the security gate the guard began saying something about the car park and Collins, the hairs on the back of his neck tickling, realised he could have recited the other’s remarks, word for word, as he spoke them. Shaken now, he made his way to the office and, sure enough, the large-scale map of the complex had slipped its supports and lay crumpled on the floor.

A scientific man, Collins would normally have sought out the rational explanation for these bizarre sensations, but today there was no time. He had to remain focused. Today, in its inaugural run, they would activate the Super-Large Hadron Collider.

Friday 13.10.1307

2011-05-13T17:57:00.001+01:00

“God is not pleased. We have enemies of the faith in the kingdom.”

Vincent lowered the parchment and stared out over the heads of the men assembled in the courtyard. He tried to avoid making the calculation, but his mind had already totalled the men under his command against those of the nearest garrison. There would be no contest.

“Fellow soldiers of Christ and of the temple of Solomon. This is a warrant for your arrest. Have no doubt, they mean to kill us all.”

It was the gold they were after. All this talk of faith and divine displeasure was just to cover up the basest of motives. He thought it perversely fitting that the incorruptible metal should attract such tainted hearts. Best to return it to its earthen womb.

“We will bury the gold and meet them unarmed.”

No one argued. No one fled. No one gave up the secret.

Blood at the Palace

2011-04-29T11:26:00.001+01:00

By afternoon the crowd filled the streets. We were mostly women, all walking in the same direction, all chanting the same slogans. When we got there, the tired October sun was going down behind the palace and the air turned cool. I stood near the gates. People were shaking them, shouting and screaming as if possessed. The guards drew back and watched from the other side. Their faces were pale with disbelief, agitation, and fear. No one could believe what was going on. Even the rain couldn’t calm the mob. As the evening drew on, hunger and cold fed the rage. It was around six when we broke through. I saw a guard go under. He never got back up. We ran into the palace calling for the Queen’s head, drunken on the opulence, the blood, the mad rush of unexpected power. Had it not been for Lafayette’s theatrics, the royal family would have been ripped apart that very night.

///3-little-words///

2011-04-22T10:38:00.001+01:00

Begin – fail – restart.

Begin – pronoun – fail – restart.

Begin – nominative singular pronoun - noun – fail – restart.

Begin - nominative singular pronoun – verb - noun – fail – restart.

Begin - nominative singular pronoun – verb – second person singular pronoun – win.

Not since

2011-04-15T10:23:00.000+01:00

When they had no other choice but to move, he found the photographs. With dust clouds and fits of sneezing, the cardboard box was retrieved from the back of the attic. Under its weight he tottered on the cantankerous metal ladder that led from the top floor. He dropped the box on the bare living room floor. When he opened it, time shattered into little shards of frozen history. In his mind the entire family woke up, one by one, or in smiling groups. The living and the dead. Behind them the empty room appeared full again. It jumped through decades, sofas styles, and carpets. Half a century of life. He had stopped looking at photographs after his first digital camera; stopped looking at his past. He saw a photo of a child and saw it was himself. He would keep these.

Loyalty

2011-04-08T10:24:00.001+01:00

The bullet took off half my face, from the left corner of my mouth up to my forehead. The fire took care of the rest. When they found my body five months later there wasn’t much of me left. A charred husk. I looked like the sausage that fell into the barbecue. Poking around, as detectives do, they discovered my wallet outside in the grass. The cash was gone, as were my bankcards. All that remained of my life, my identity, was a supermarket loyalty card. It didn’t return my name to me. All they could ascertain from the card was an inventory of my last shopping trip: shaving foam, six beers, a loaf of bread, and some triple A batteries.

Instant messaging & language

2011-03-30T13:48:00.002+01:00

The earliest forms of instant messaging over distances were optical telegraphs. A fire on a hill, a reflection of the sun, flags at angles. From 1792 to 1846, Napoleon used a semaphore network that extended across the whole of France. The updated Prussian system required towers every thirty kilometres and had a rate of about two words per minute.

The introduction of electricity produced real speed. In 1804, Francesco Salvà i Campillo, a Spanish doctor of medicine, designed a machine to send messages by electrical impulse. It was realised a few years later in Germany, and involved thirty-five tubes of acid, electrolysed by one of thirty-five wires that covered most Latin letters and numerals. The relevant jar would bubble to signify the character.

In 1833, Gauß and Weber used a positive and negative current to transmit the alphabet in binary code. The first message they sent would serve us well in our age of mass and instant communication. "Wissen vor meinen – Sein vor scheinen", "Knowing before opining, being before seeming.”

It only took another thirty-three years for the first transatlantic cable to be laid.

With the invention and spread of the telephone, instant communication became private. Previously, intimacy was kept under the wraps of the envelope, as telegraphing had to be conducted through an intermediary. The telephone would eventually grant the public instant information exchange in assumed privacy.

The arrival of email sounded a death knell for the art of letter writing, albeit a discrete, electronic chime. Emails have seriously reduced our ability to write letters, even our desire to write letters. Our postal workers strain under heavier bags, but this is due to two separate factors: the cuts in their numbers, and the sheer tonnage of physical junk mail delivered every day.

Longer emails will be checked for errors with no evidence of correction. The more common, shorter email doesn’t care about typos, general sense is understood, speed is the objective. The nature of what we wish to communicate is also changing. Personal letters were generally one to one communications. The email allows us to mail any number of people at once. We can send that holiday postcard to one and all with the click of a button. Specificity goes out the Microsoft window; a group email cannot correspond in the same way as a personalised, dedicated letter.

Furthermore, when we use email we see adverts all around our personal messages – this cheapens the message even more, draws it into the spectacle, the private is suffused with the public; our secrets carry commercials.

SMS, or short message service, had a number of origins. In Finland the system was used by Nokia engineers to inform of their whereabouts when out in the field. The company decided to offer the service to customers and very quickly realised that SMS was being used by teenagers to organise their social lives.

SMS has spawned a new sub language, and probably a new form of RSI. This is the telegraph message in the hands of the general public; the thumb dashes and dots across the keypad, corralled by predictive text into the most commonly used words.

Predictive text is the bane of language. Whereas once we may have sought for the right word, the perfect phrase, now we have a little help. By suggesting the most common words beginning with the first letters entered, our means of communication is, like Napoleon’s flags, constricting our expression. Words are gutted of vowels; the confused consonants crowd each other like the pressing queue for the last bus home. Hurry up, hurry up. Words made unfamiliar in this condition are avoided and so vocabulary diminishes.

Jean Baudrillard saw this coming. In 1996 he wrote: “At what threshold of consciousness of formalization will the machine intervene? … Thought would end up thinking only what the machine can take in and process.” (The Perfect Crime)

Despite this, one example serves to reassure the writer, Wikipedia lists a common predictive text error (a textonym), which chooses the word "book" to mean "cool" since book is debatably considered more frequently used than "cool" by some predictive text systems. Not for long I would imagine.

And now we have tweets. Every one of those 140 characters in a tweet message can be reduced to two words: I exist.

It is interesting, for a minute or two, to click from user to user, reading idle inanities swapped among friends and strangers. To wander from tweeter to tweeter is to stroll amongst the soundless chattering of a twenty-four hour chorus.

The restrictions could have brought about a haiku-like search for just the right word. Instead, wholly in line with the character limit’s origin in accommodating the cramped SMS style, tweets have incorporated the text slang of the short message service.

There are roughly a quarter of a million distinct words in the English language, excluding declensions. Our vocabulary is being decimated – no, strike that, for decimation is one in ten, our vocabulary is being obliterated.

The beginning of the end

2011-03-09T16:08:00.002Z

We heard the rumours only a month before we saw them. The coastal tribes crossed our lands in retreat. What was left of them. They said the new ones arrived on clouds. They said not even the mountains would be safe.

I saw them for the first time on the third night of the planting moon. The wind carried the smell of roasted goat, stolen from our neighbours. Some of their music reached us in the tree line. It was an abrupt measure, full of stops and starts, jagged, as if their souls would always be restless.

In the morning we saw that their tents filled the plain and we knew our world was over.

Sunlight

2011-03-04T23:57:00.003Z

At the beginning of every May, the date was variable, a quirk in the alignment of buildings around the third floor flat of Sandra Cavendish allowed a triangle of sunlight to appear on the kitchenette’s west wall. It began as a faint luminescence, vaguely discernable about a foot up from the skirting. An isosceles of light lasting half an hour which brightened as the sun rose, easing from regularity to an elongated scalene as it slid to the floor, always to be extinguished before getting there. For only six days, dependent on clouds, the visitation waxed and waned. Then was gone. It coincided with the rising of Sandra herself, who was up at seven-thirty almost every day. She spotted it the first spring she lived in the flat, and thereafter every year. On these mornings she felt good. The corners of things weren’t as belligerent as normal, the pills not so bitter.

One morning she angled a compact so as to mirror the beam back into the room, across the sofa to the television. The following day, ready for the experiment, she bounced the light from kitchenette to a hand glass on the television that cast it onwards to a framed photocopy of Klimt’s kiss. By the end of the six days allotted her, she had included four reflective surfaces and a diminutive mirror ball.

Inevitably the solar event ended. Normality reasserted itself. But she left the mirrors in place, for already the countdown of months had begun until the sun, tired, weakened, returned southwards and the ping-pong lightshow reappeared.

Delirious Scale

2010-10-21T23:01:00.006+01:00

Wherein the artist uses examples of dimensions beyond all possibilities to express the boundless nature of the imagination.

“And all this Vegetable World appeared on my left Foot,
As a bright sandal form’d immortal of precious stones & gold:
I stooped down & bound it on to walk forward thro’ Eternity.”

William Blake – Milton

Here Blake, inspired by the return of Milton to earth as a fiery comet, sees the sensorial world as a mere sandal, which, once strapped on, allows him to stride forth in poetic creativity.
It was in the preface to this book that Blake wrote what would become his most famous lyric, “Jerusalem”
____________________________________________

“Well I’ll stand up next to a mountain
And chop it down with the edge of my hand.”

Jimi Hendrix – Voodoo Child (Slight Return)

The power of Hendrix’s wah-wahed chops more than match the boldness of his lyrics. What I love about this verse is that after he has picked up all the pieces of the mountain and made them into an island, he suggests he may even “raise a little sand.” How generous, he’s going to make us child-like mortals a beach to play on.

____________________________________________

“You race naked through the wilderness,
You torment the birds and the bees.
You leapt into the abyss, but find
It only goes up to your knees.”

Nick Cave – Babe, You Turn Me On

In this mischievous song, which sees the Gothfather liken himself to a “little deer,” the upsetting of scale is used to portray the immensity of the singer’s lover, the power she wields over him.

A sign!

2010-07-01T01:01:00.000+01:00

I made some toast yesterday, and look!

The face of Charles Darwin appeared.

This must prove something.

A Slight Delay

2010-06-02T11:33:00.000+01:00

Nathaniel Webber, fat and forty, eased his ship against the tide of gravitons, geared down to third, and took up a wide orbit over earth. Coming out of light speed always give him the jitters. Going in and coming out. That thwock of light and the suddenness of location. It was Sunday evening and earth was busy; the weekend flyers were coming home to roost. He slipped himself into a lower stream and a light on his left flashed in time with a ping-ping chime in his right ear. Earth was calling him. His computer answered and was identified by the traffic centre’s computer. They chatted in quantum time, we’re going here – yes, you’re scheduled to go there. His monitor informed him he was free to come down in ... thirty-five minutes. Not too bad. He tapped on auto-cruise and sat back from the panel.
Thirty-five minutes. Which really meant about fifty, judging from the traffic. With his mouse he zoomed in on the craft in front of him. Tourists. Outer arm moneyed types, probably making the long journey to earth to find their roots. They’d go home with caps bearing the earth logo and stories of a special feeling, like we were there, where it all began.
He laughed and switched on the telly.

One For Sorrow

2010-04-18T10:31:00.000+01:00

The magpie didn’t move. Its attention was fixed on the ground, something there that the man, only a few metres away, could not see. This man, who had been still for so long the bird had not bothered with him, sat on a low wall waiting for something to happen.
All of this was being watched by another man through the scope his sniper rifle. He was just under half a kilometre away, tucked into the edge of a forest. The crosshairs panned from bird back to man, resting on his left temple. The sniper took a long, deep breath and prepared himself to ever so gently embrace the trigger.
Just then the magpie lifted, a flickering silhouette shot through with a brief blue sheen. Impulsively the sniper followed it, confused by its proliferation of wings, and he realised it was not one magpie, but two. They flew apart and off into the air. The sniper immediately dropped his line of sight back to the man, but he was gone.

France, Sep 8th, 1940

2010-02-05T00:57:00.003Z

He knew this was no ordinary cave. He knew it. The others scrambled into the chamber and stood close, well within the weak light of the lantern. Marcel studied the ground and took a step. Another. The ceiling was low. There was a wall to his left. He lifted the lantern and a great white bull appeared, arching over him. He stepped back
“Mais, c’est quoi ca?”
He raised his arm again and they all looked up. A stampede of creatures ran out along the wall.
“C’est des animaux,” whispered Simon.
This was no ordinary cave.
Open-mouthed, the four boys walked from room to room, calling out the names of the animals they saw. Stag. Bison. Bear. Horse. Bird. Like young gods naming their world. The first visitors to a gallery, reopened after more than fifteen thousand years of darkness.

Polaroid art: Don Ng (click on image for larger image)

No art

2010-02-04T14:20:00.000Z

We stand.
We wait.
Our costumes are heavy but we do not move. The ceremony will begin when everything is as it should be. There is no art here. There is no politic.
So many of us that we make the silence resonate. Who will be the first to speak?
We look at each other. Or we look away.
Only our faces show. The costumes are heavy, though made of feathers, and we do not move.
The ceremony will begin when everything is as it should be.

Polaroid art: Don Ng (click on image for larger image)

Logic Bombs

2010-01-22T13:42:00.003Z

In November last year the BBC news site ran an article detailing a new arena in global conflict. (Age of cyber warfare is 'dawning') According to a report published by McAfee, the world’s largest internet security company, we should be preparing ourselves for “cyber warfare.”

The language used in the piece is bristling with militaristic references. Many countries are “arming to defend themselves in a cyber war and readying forces to conduct their own attacks.” Apparently, there is evidence that recent instances of hacking were carried out as "reconnaissance" for “future conflict.”
Greg Day, primary analyst for security at McAfee Europe, is quoted as saying, "There are at least five countries known to be arming themselves for this kind of conflict."

Oh? Such as? The UK, Germany, and France. OK. And China. Worrying. Also mentioned is North Korea. Cue the alarm bells. What is cyber-speak for Def Con One?

But this is nothing new. The US employed “hack attacks alongside ground operations during the Iraq war.” There is even an operating manual “governing the rules and procedures of how it can use cyber warfare tactics.” Which prompts the question, what is out of bounds in cyberspace?

Interestingly, we are told many of the recent instances of hacking “were mounted with a explicitly political aim.” One expert goes on to say “most people can easily find the resources that could be used in these kind of attacks.” Yet the word terrorist does not appear once in the article.

The piece goes on to quote Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer at Veracode, a company that advises many governments on security: "In physical warfare it's pretty clear who has which weapon and how they are using them." - Is this man suffering from short-term memory loss?

A weapon of choice we can expect to see become more prevalent in this brave new world war is the logic bomb. A logic bomb is a hidden code designed to execute (explode) when a specific piece of program logic is activated. A virtual sleeper cell. The name, like the previous decade’s “smart bomb,” is an oxymoron. Whatever uses it is put to, logic itself is a benign thing – the idea of logic exploding serves to undermine the supposed certainties of the digital age.

A search for examples of logic bombs throws up a number of failed attempts, one of which, in 2008, was targeted at the, now infamous, mortgage corporation Fannie Mae by a disgruntled IT employee. A celebrated case of a suspected logic bomb takes us all the way back to 1982 and the Trans-Siberian Pipeline incident. The story goes that the KGB stole the computerised control system for the gas pipeline from a Canadian company. To avenge this theft, the CIA planted a logic bomb in the system that caused the pipeline to explode, resulting in the largest non-nuclear blast and fire ever seen from space. It later emerged that the whole thing was an April Fool’s Day hoax.

Forward now to 14th January, 2010, and another BBC article. (Google 'may pull out of China after Gmail cyber attack') “Internet giant Google has said it may end its operations in China following a ‘sophisticated and targeted’ cyber attack originating from the country.”

It is good to see that Google are reconsidering their decision to censor the services they provide in China, but, coming hot on the heels of the earlier warning, one must question the timing of this action. Firstly we are warned that China are “arming themselves” for cyber warfare, then, a few months later, we are informed of cyber attacks coming from China.

Today, 22nd Jan, two news items stand out. The first is China’s response to the support the US government has shown Google, and the warning that it may harm ties between the two countries. China, showing they fully understand the Newspeak of the digital age, has accused America of "information imperialism.” The second news item relates the fact that China is about to overtake Japan as the world’s second biggest economy. Second only to America.

POSTCRIPT:

On the same day the cyber warfare article appeared, another item was posted on the BBC news site. (Pakistan 'captures Taliban bases') In a video report by Orla Guerin, we are shown weapons seized by Pakistani troops fighting the Taliban in southern Waziristan. Amongst the usual ordnance, bullets, machine guns, shells, etc, are examples of improvised devices, the IEDs so familiar to American and British soldiers. One in particular stood out. A computer tower had been rigged with an anti-personal mine packed with three hundred ball bearings. The device was designed to explode when the computer was touched, triggered by a pressure mechanism underneath. A very real, and very lethal logic bomb.

+++ Virtual Assassin +++

2010-01-09T10:59:00.000Z

A novel about personal responsibility in a corrupt society …

Virtual Assassin is a tense thriller with powerful political and moral implications from new author Simon Kearns. It tracks the story of successful young graphic designer, Lee Coller, sickened with the Iraq war and the no-regrets position of Tony Blair. When he hears a VIP is about to visit his office, he obsesses it might be Blair and chalks out a plan of revenge. But will Blair visit after all? And will Lee do the unthinkable? Can one act of violence make up for so many others?

click here for an extract

click here for the publishers - Revenge Ink

click here to get the book via Amazon

Obama, Nobel & Hope

2009-12-10T15:05:00.004Z

“With your feet on the air
And your head on the ground,
Try this trick, and spin it. Yeah. YEAH!”

Pixies – Where Is My Mind?

We are truly living in the age of Newspeak. In the novel 1984, Orwell’s Big Brother reinforced his message that “War is Peace.” Throughout the War on Terrorism the American population has been continually reminded that the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are being waged so as to assure peace in the Homeland. War is Peace. It is no different in the UK; Brown habitually speaks of “the security of our country” in relation to the ongoing hostilities in both theatres.
When announcing the deployment of 30,000 extra troops to fight in Afghanistan, at the Military Academy at West Point, that nursery of belligerents, President Barack Obama gave us a Newspeak twist on a familiar phrase. He stated,
“We will go forward with the confidence that right makes might, and with the commitment to forge an America that is safer, a world that is more secure, and a future that represents not the deepest of fears but the highest of hopes."
Right makes might. He was quoting the closing lines of Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 Cooper Union Address concerning the abolition of slavery. It is a clever reference point, Lincoln went on to take the presidency and abolish slavery, now, 149 years later, the first black president uses his words to strengthen the morality of his decision to deploy troops.
“Might makes right” was first used by the American abolitionist Adin Ballou in 1846 to deride the warmongering of politicians. Ballou was a pacifist. His distillation of human nature into a three-word sound bite has now been contorted so as to reinforce the message of war. This is spin at its most devious, take a well-known sentiment and twist it so that its sense is reversed. But, what is truly impressive about this piece of spin is the fact it gives the audience the illusion that the government’s course of action has been morally sanctioned. We all know that “might makes right” is wrong, but “right makes might” gives the casual listener the impression that the use of force has been justified. We are in the right. This is a just war.

It is no longer just words that are being spun; events are contorted so as to buttress the new world order. Obama has accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace. The surge was officially confirmed in the weeks between the announcement of his winning, and his receiving of the award today. Not an auspicious beginning to this laureate’s record. Ostensibly we are told that the Nobel committee chose Obama in recognition of his agenda, believing that to award him the prize now will anticipate the realisation of his intentions. It is an award of hope, the very idea that carried Obama’s election campaign. Hope, all that remains in the jar after the evils and ills have already been released.

The Cuckoo's Post

2009-03-11T23:59:00.001Z

I have always wanted two passports but for now I content myself with my many email addresses. Four at the last count. And then there are the sites I manage, a blog, a myspace page, the authonomy profile. For each of these locations an avatar, a screen name, a password. It gets difficult to keep track of all this information, perhaps our children are already adapting, but I began with pen and paper – and it wasn’t that long ago.
Now, what are the odds that one of my sign in names and another of my passwords, to me unrelated, in fact correspond to those chosen by a different web user? Highly improbable perhaps, but not impossible.
Let us for the moment imagine that I mistakenly enter these corresponding units of information and arrive at someone else’s page. Would I click back and try again, or would I snoop? Would I tinker? What would you do?
Of course I haven’t actually written this entry, not the “I” you think I am. The owner of this page is in for a surprise.
Maybe he will like it.

From an email I have just received:

2008-10-09T13:22:00.007+01:00

“Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog.
“Blogs engaged in this behaviour are called spam blogs and can be recognised by their irrelevant, repetitive or nonsensical text."

Oh dear. I read on.

“Spam blogs cause various problems beyond simply wasting a few seconds of your time when you happen to come across one. They can clog up search engines making it difficult to find real content on the subjects that interest you. They may scrape content from other sites on the web, using other people's writing to make it look as though they have useful information of their own.

“You won't be able to publish posts to your blog until one of our humans reviews it and verifies that it is not a spam blog”

This communiqué has given me some food for thought. As it says – spam blogs can be recognised by their irrelevant, repetitive or nonsensical text. I must await judgement from one of the systems “humans”. My writing is to be assessed but, for better or worse, my writing often employs “irrelevant, repetitive or nonsensical text”. And what, in the end, is any kind of writing but the scraping of others ideas, “using other people's writing to make it look as though they have useful information of their own?”

In Dreams

2008-10-07T13:12:00.000+01:00

Once I set my laundry upon a clothes horse to dry next to the radiator in my room. From time to time I caught it with the corner of my eye and I imagined that someone was stood in the room with me, watching me, waiting for me to write something of worth. Since then I often I wake up in the middle of the night with the sense that someone is observing me. It only takes a few seconds for this apparition to vanish into the dark, or to resolve itself into a jumper on the back of the chair, but these few seconds are time enough for me to recognise the non-existent entity. Over the years I have come to be familiar with this vision, to the point now where I don't even have to look up to know that it is there, watching me, ready to dissolve should I lift my head from the pillow. And so, because I no longer need to look up, the entity remains for longer, it has begun to take on a reality - a reality of its own which is paradoxically dependent upon my not looking at it. I believe that it is grateful for my choosing not to stare it into nothingness. I have allowed it to form a rudimentary consciousness of its own. This consciousness is a reversal of the awareness that you or I experience (one in which recognition of the other is enough to formulate self-awareness). I want to talk to this creature, to ask it how it feels, ask what it is like to exist so precariously. Once I did voice a question. I asked for its name. It did not reply of course. I did not expect it to. Vocal chords are made of flesh and blood. I worry sometimes that if it were to answer me then I would be struck with the awful realisation that I am not the human in the equation, merely the phantom of a waking person and that to be noticed would be my undoing. Perhaps this is why I no longer look up at the apparition. Perhaps I avoid eye contact so that I may go on existing.

Those Dancers

2008-10-06T20:09:00.002+01:00

I am convinced that it is the song of cicadas that regulate temperature and not the other way around.
I say, those dancers remind me of Buenos Aires, and they say, they’re not dancers, granddad, they’re statues.
But I see them dance.
In the shimmer of siesta I see their angles and elbows move, counter clockwise, and from between them, flanked by an ocho and a quebrada, come the men in grey coats, defined not so much by the colour of their clothes, but by their bodies ignorance of the music, the clumsy shape of their walking as they approach.
The music stops, the dancers break the embrace. Strong hands on my arms. The band is applauded and I know that Teresa is dead.
Windowless rooms, screams, the taste of blood.
Nothing they did to me could hurt as much as the hands upon my arms that day in the Milonga. The realisation that you were gone. My dear sweet Teresa, you knew the risk, but you were not afraid.
Are you okay granddad?
What? Yes. I am fine. It’s the heat. It reminds me of home.

Polaroid Art - Donald Ng

The ALL NEW Samaritan

2008-10-06T20:00:00.000+01:00

Three robots were walking down a street one day when they came across a human lying in the gutter, there was blood on its head and it was unconscious.

The first robot said, “I am a StreetClean IV, model 5342. I was designed by the council to keep the neighbourhood free of rubbish. I shall remove this unsightly object.” It moved forward to lift the human.

The second robot stepped in front of it and said, “I am a Law Enforcer, serial number 4636291. I was designed by the government to uphold the law. I shall execute the legislature and remove this vagrant.” It moved forwards to lift the human.

The third robot pushed it aside and said, “I am a Gr8 M8 9-90. I was designed by the private sector to provide satisfaction and relief for humans. I see a human being in need. I shall revive it, care for it and increase its happiness.”

And so saying it bent down and treated the human, debiting its bank account accordingly.