KinoVida

Full Circle and Back

Again, on time, by braisturbator + McKenna

It was McKenna who started this off, and I feel obligated to let him have the last word. “Time must be well used: this is a basis for a possible theory of ethics.” I’ve always been pretty fond of that one, mostly since it resonates with my own War on Sleep and the obsessions that make my dreams feel like a surrealist extension to my regular workday. (This is not “unhealthy” and I am not complaining.) For the big finish, though, I’d like to share one of the best riffs McKenna ever gave about time, during the course of an interview with Boing Boing Magazine:

So this process of complexification is going on in nature. When you look at it you realize that it happened faster and faster. It took a long time for there to be life, or just for planets to form, and stars to settle down. Then once you get life, you get a very rapid proliferation of form, and by rapid I mean in scales of hundreds of millions of years, and then you get higher animals. After that you get animals like ourselves, and you get language, and culture, and writing, and electronic media. Each of these steps occurs more and more quickly, leading to the conclusion that human history and the presence of tool making, poetry making, and thinking creatures on this planet have something to do with being caught, or you might otherwise say, fortunately positioned very close to a kind of anomaly that is haunting space and time. You can think of it as a collision with a hyper dimensional black hole.

We and our universe and everything in it are being sucked closer and closer into the presence of something which seems to be made out of pure idea. It’s very hard to English, but it explains basically what’s going on on this planet - why it is that 50,000 years ago, shit-hurling monkeys decided to set off on the long march toward the space shuttle, and an integrated global economy, and toxic pollution, and the whole ball of wax? A process of some sort unique in nature was unleashed 25-50,000 years ago. From that point on there was a tremendous push into symbolic expression and the cultural consequence of symbolic expression which is technology. And now, we’ve run the nut right off the end of the bolt, and the planet’s finite limits are being reached. But the process shows no sign of slowing down. So rather than see it as some apocalypse or some terrible flaw of human fate run amok, I see it as a natural phenomenon. Human history is not our fault.

The world is getting weirder and weirder by leaps and bounds. It’s moving faster and faster. It’s very science fiction. You have potentially human life-extinguishing epidemic diseases, at the same time that you have whispers of cold fusion and journeys to the stars. Meanwhile people are meeting little rubbery beings in their bedrooms in the middle of the night, and having rectal examinations. All this crazy shit is going on which is called the melt-down of Western civilization at the end of the second millennium. Then if you toss psychedelic drugs into the mix, shamanic plants and this sort of thing, and make journeys out into the architectonic superspace of the culture, you quickly realize the cosmic egg is cracking.

Via http://www.brainsturbator.com/articles/the_quest_for_the_elusive_chronon/#continue

Ask a Bald Scottish Lunatic

"...and they explained to me what time is all about: the Universe we live in is designed to grow larvae, right? They explained to me that, beyond space and time, we have our actual selves. These things that we’re experiencing right now are sections through time. Everyone in here is a section through time, but in actual fact, you’re not experiencing your real body.

What is your real body? Your real body is a process, it starts when you’re born and it moves forward until you die. That is you, seen from outside...you look like a giant centipede. Think of “ourselves” as processes through time, that’s what we actually are. We all know we were 12, but where is that? Point to it. Show me!

So these things said to me, “This is whats going on. We use time to grow larvae, because outside of space and time, you can’t grow anything. It’s timeless. If you want to make one of these higher dimensional beings—which is actually one of us, already—is you grow it in time. So, you make a Universe.”

And how you make a Universe is that you plug a little bit of yourself into the information world that they live in—which is what I seemed to be experiencing, a sea of pure information."

From Grant Morrison’s classic genius freak-out at the 2000 DisInfo Convention

Via http://www.brainsturbator.com/articles/the_quest_for_the_elusive_chronon/#continue

Arctic seas turn to acid

Robin McKie, science editor
The Observer, Sunday 4 October 2009

With the world's oceans absorbing six million tonnes of carbon a day, a leading oceanographer warns of eco disaster. Carbon-dioxide emissions are turning the waters of the Arctic Ocean into acid at an unprecedented rate, scientists have discovered. Research carried out in the archipelago of Svalbard has shown in many regions around the north pole seawater is likely to reach corrosive levels within 10 years. The water will then start to dissolve the shells of mussels and other shellfish and cause major disruption to the food chain. By the end of the century, the entire Arctic Ocean will be corrosively acidic.

"This is extremely worrying," Professor Jean-Pierre Gattuso, of France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, told an international oceanography conference last week. "We knew that the seas were getting more acidic and this would disrupt the ability of shellfish – like mussels – to grow their shells. But now we realise the situation is much worse. The water will become so acidic it will actually dissolve the shells of living shellfish."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/04/arctic-seas-turn-to-acid

In the Nature of Things

Terrorist subtitles

Actual children’s answers to the question “what is love?”

“When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.” - Billy, age 4

“Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.” - Karl, age 5

“Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.” - Chrissy, age 6

“Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.” - Terri, age 4

“Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.” - Danny, age 7

“Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss.” - Emily, age 8

“Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.” - Bobby, age 7

“If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,” - Nikka, age 6

“Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.” - Noelle, age 7

“Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.” - Tommy, age 6

“During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn’t scared anymore.” - Cindy, age 8

“My mommy loves me more than anybody. You don’t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.” - Clare, age 6

“Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.” - Elaine, age 5

“Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Brad Pitt.” - Chris, age 7

“Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.” - Mary Ann, age 4

“I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.” - Lauren, age 4

“When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.” - Rebecca, age 8

“When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.” - Karen, age 7

“You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.” - Jessica, age 8

Middle Kingdom

Chinese don’t understand the concept of privacy, and I like it very much. The Chinese guy travelling beside me on the way to Beijing stares at the form I’m filling with the details of where I’m staying. “Wushu! Wushu!” He repeats loudly, nodding and smiling at me. He knows I’m going to a martial arts academy, and that’s kind of cool to the Chinese. 35˚ in Beijing, off we go to eat meat on a stick. It tastes great! The streets are very messy, dirty, colourful and poor looking, very much like some suburbs in Brazil. One of the streets was being redeveloped but we could walk around the building site just like the workers, the health and safety nightmare. Coming from England, you can imagine my euphoric happiness and the satisfaction I felt jumping on pipes and kicking bits of concrete in the middle of the street. Yes! Freedom! I can break my bones in peace now!

I feel at home, and they keep smiling at me. A family with 2 cute little Chinese girls with flags in their hands stop and ask (I guess) if they can take a picture with me. I’m loving it. I wish I could squeeze their cheeks but they take a picture and bounce away, giggling and waving their random flags in the hot air of Beijing. They all seem so happy! ☺

But I’m pretty disappointed. I was expecting little Chinese dressed in proper Chinese clothes and those triangular hats, planting rice everywhere, even on the squares and gardens, but NO! They dress like motherfucking westerners! Just like us! And they want to sell us everything, and they have huge supermarkets, three, four-storey full of herbs, pills and acupuncture. At least that fits in my stereotype box.

The next day we’re off to the village where we are going to live for the next 5 months. Everything looks simple, very poor, yet people seem quite content. I wash my clothes in buckets, eat with chopsticks and shit in holes on the ground. Little kids stumble around with their little pants open in the back. No nappies, they just squat and do it. Chinese farmers drive around in their little truck motorbikes, the truckcycles, carrying their harvest, bits and pieces, and lots, lots of sweet watermelons.

Training is great but I feel this horrible pain down my back and it’s been there for 2 weeks now, so Sifu takes me to village hospital for some real acupuncture. The hospital is as you would expect: simple, full of Chinese with no sense of privacy, many of them being treated in the same room with no sign of shyness or discomfort. They don’t seem to be aware of their individuality, and I quite like that, in a weird way. Sifu introduces me to the doctor, who seems to be an old friend of his, just like everyone else in the village, really. Doctor opens a metal box, takes a few needles, wipe them with cotton buds dipped in alcohol and without hesitation, sticks them needles 2 inches in. Ouch. Can’t describe how it is to feel all the nerves and channels connecting the points where he stuck them needles in. Never felt anything like that. That’s real acupuncture, not that wussy thing I had all my life. I feel the needle he stuck near my thumb in the back of my hand almost appearing in the palm of my hand. Do you get me? Yeah! He stuck it through my hand! He spins and turns the needles inside me, leave them for a few minutes, takes them out, and that’s it: I’m cured. That ended up being a little sample of what China is doing to me, a little illustration of what awaits me in this journey. Pain and cure. Miscommunication and connection.

Anti-desertification Architecture

For an ambitious landscape design project, Magnus Larsson, a student at the Architectural Association in London, has proposed a 6,000km-long wall of artificially solidified sandstone architecture that would span the Sahara Desert, east to west, offering a combination of refugee housing and a "green wall" against the future spread of the desert.

Larsson's project deservedly won first prize last fall at the Holcim Foundation's Awards for Sustainable Construction held in Marrakech, Morocco.
One of the most interesting aspects of the project, I think, is that this solidified dunescape is created through a particularly novel form of "sustainable construction" – that is, through a kind of infection of the earth.
In other words, Larsson has proposed using bacillus pasteurii, a "microorganism, readily available in marshes and wetlands, [that] solidifies loose sand into sandstone," he explains.

Read more on http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/

Filling the gaps

So the purple man left, and off I went in the search of this new reality. Uniting my jobless state to my newly found youth, I found myself soon after teaching school dropouts. Yes, me.

The report from the previous teacher said the most horrid things about Luke, my new pupil, and a few interesting ones like “he always does headstands and won’t stay still”. I quite like the idea of learning how to do headstands so I packed my lunch, filled my bag with papers and coloured pencils and left to the centre, looking forward to get upside down.

We clicked immediately. I could not see the person described on the report on that kid. Off we went to the park to exchange ideas on martial arts and acrobatics. The first thing he mentions when teaching me acrobatics is that the only thing to fear is the fear itself and yourself. Haha. From then on it was all uphill.

There is something about the way all the kids at the centre talk to me that make me believe even more that purple man. We connect, and that puts me right at the centre of the storm. I can see from where I stand that their most serious problems are their teachers and their schools, no doubt. It’s hilarious.

We tell jokes and laugh out loud until one of the very problematic female tutors screams some random abuse, telling them to be quiet (??) and sit facing her chosen side of the wall. I don’t get involved. Them females think I’m mad. Who cares? I orgasm! Woohoo. Hahaaaa.

It’s sad yet fascinating to be present at the very moment society fucks up their lives. It’s quite entertaining to apply them tutor’s little stupid diagnosis to their own fucking selves. Your arse is dyslexic, you’re a serious case of OCD with a pinch of disillusioned paranoia and you bum DOES look big in that!

I can’t tell any further for legal and moral (hahaha) reasons. All I can say is that this is quite a fulfilling job, England is a massively dysfunctional country, TV is rubbish, Tesco sucks, you’re fat and not that funny and women should all wank until they come so they stop throwing their shit on innocent kids. Word.

Dubstep

No more beers

You know beer is really bad for you? Scientists discovered it contains oestrogens, which make you talk shit and do silly things.

Yeah, what’s up with women? It’s so hard to work with them. Maybe it’s just me, maybe the women I know, but I find men particularly uncomplicated, and women specially tormenting.

We were, the 4 of us women, organizing this fairly big party where I live so I spent most of my time in the last couple of months having to cut through a curtain of emotions to get to the point. Very tiring.

Every object needed at the bar was like a death row wish, every customer an ordeal, every second an hour of misery.

A simple thing like looking for a pair of scissors becomes a huge undelayable mission. So I have this blond female sweating, shaking in front of me asking for a pair of scissors so she could hang some stupid flags. What do I do? Laugh, obviously. A man comes in, hears the emotional appeal and strolls to the next house, coming back with scissors in a few seconds. Nice.

It happened throughout the party, throughout my life, but it could be just a conurbation of coincidences. Maybe.

Later on I had to present the issue of no drum kit to all the bands, and the guys smiled at me saying they would try and sort it out, while the girls band spent hours screaming and running around like nuttas, cursing the late drummer bringing the drum kit, demanding we set them up in a different floor, just cos they like it. Haha. Madness. The MEN brought the drum kit later on and blew everyone’s minds with their magik music while the girls disappeared after blagging money from the till. So shit. Is it just another coincidence? Maybe I don’t notice men’s problems, or maybe I like them…

It’s funny how the limbic system takes over the whole of the female brain if we have any emotional issue to be sorted. I hate it in my own brain. I trust women to be clever, ingenious and all things good, if only we could rewire our brains into something more efficient. We must realise it ourselves in order to have some equality. We're not ready yet. I feel for men, really. I’m gonna campaign for them. Enough is enough.

http://womenfortherightsofmen.wordpress.com/

Playing with the wind

It happened on a full moon. These new state fell on me like a summer rain and impregnated my being despite years and years of serious active conditioning. I was, yes, working for Microsoft, but I did not feel like talking about Apple. Whilst promoting Xbox games I did not mention how great Wii was. Weird. They smiled at me and after a long speech thanking me for all my hard work in these 3 years together they promised me lots of things. Yes, my own console, my own bloody games, my own medals, my own little crew to boss around. I smiled back and thanked them, soon focusing all my attention on the cat playing with a piece of string. I’m not from this world, and now I’m not even subversive anymore. Time to go.

From one hotel to another, from a beautiful view to a picturesque little town, band gigging in the whole of the country, promoted, recommended, tagged, pointed at, life went on like a dream while I stared at ladybugs. It’s been always quite dreamy, but that night at the festival the whole thing went out of control.

My boss: Paula, I need to speak to you.

Paula: Me too. Wicked.

My boss: I really like having you here, you know.

Paula: I’m sorry. I quit.

Leaving a flabbergasted boss behind, I walked slowly but surely towards the green fields, feeling my whole body expand and contract with my breathing, shivers up my spine. I swear I could hear the grass giggle. The breeze felt so good I could not stop walking against it, dancing with it, and the sky was just the way you’re imagining it now. How I love the twilight.

My dance with the breeze took me pass the green fields into the woods where I finally sat down on a stone looking outwards into the festival, happy to be. I could see the flashing lights in the distance and what to me looked like my bosses with their hands on their heads, puzzled, but that bit was probably just my imagination.

Speaking of the devil... Right before my eyes, a purple little being with greenish brown clothes and a funny squeaky voice emerged from a pile of hay, singing, and stared at me as if he knew what I was thinking. I told him I knew he didn’t know what I was thinking, particularly cos I wasn’t thinking about anything. You know if you’re an only child you’ll have the tendency to think people know what you’re thinking but that goes with time. I don’t think people can read my thoughts anymore. Only serious Yogis can catch our thoughts and that little purple being didn’t strike me a serious Yogi. Nothing against purple beings, let me clarify.

He stopped singing (thank fuck) and sat by my side, slightly freaking me out. His skin was rough yet shinny. Really weird. He said he came to congratulate me for what I’ve done, and to welcome me back. Welcome me back?? Back to??

He looked surprised, and asked me if I had not noticed the changes in my life. I told him everything was getting lighter, softer, easier, but that was just the result of my lifestyle. I told him I didn’t feel like subverting things anymore and that was weird, but maybe it was just me getting older. He shook his head in disappointment and fell silent for a while. I kind of lost my patience and felt like shaking him into speaking again, but his skin put me off and I just gave him my Tomb Rider kind of look. Than he spoke:

“I’m not an epiphany Paula. I’m just a child being who’s happy to welcome you back. I welcome you back into your life. I’m glad to announce you’re officially “growing younger”, skipping will be your new walking, singing and dancing will be your elixir once again, and you should leave this place and play with the wind.”

And so I did.

I Met The Walrus

Religulous

http://www.supernovatube.com/play.php?viewkey=2bf4699ca1c062980545

Summit

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/04/protests_at_the_g20_summit.html

Bruno

http://thevibe.socialvibe.com/index.php/2009/04/02/the-bruno-movie-trailer-is-finally-here/

The Primacy of Consciousness

http://www.peterrussell.com/index2.php

FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful

Found on Malung TV News

Smashing Telly

"Smashing Telly is a hand edited collection of the best free, instantly available TV on the web. Not 30 second clips (now with added clips, good ones) of a dog on a skateboard, or the millionth person to mime the Numa song, but classic clips and full length programs, with a focus on documentaries and non fiction. Smashing Television, not Gimmick Television.
Each entry is like a postcard, a short piece of text which describes a moving picture."
David
http://smashingtelly.com/