Addiction Eyrie: The Viral Mint

Man is probably not a machine, but he behaves as such in a situation where the machines impose his operating rules. Indeed, the progress of technology should not be understood as necessarily being the progress of mankind: far from it, they are not accompanied by a progress of thought, reflection and responsibility, since they eliminate their intervention and even often make them impossible.

—Günther Anders

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Home is too familiar and being away always alienates. Alienation can be romantic. Without the romance. I usually long for home when away from it, but a bizarre bed and bath is better than bupkis. A fake free star accommodation provides the respite of exotic solitude not found in either. Home is too familiar and being away always alienates.

 

Whatever variation on the theme, it's unfailingly wrapped in foil. The wrapping is protection. From dust, though that'd be a bad sign in a hotel room. From the germs on the gem placer's fingers, though we've fingered each others' fingers as an extension of cordiality, to a fault, most of us, without thinking about washing immediately after. Years ago an acquaintance of GDR extraction remarked annoyed that it was no wonder so many co-workers would inevitably fall victim to whatever cold virus was currently going around, because they'd shake hands with everyone every single morning. I noticed this distinction between former east and west employees at the workplace. You cannot foil an illness with that kind of hands on collegiality. But forgoing the prevailing culture can be downright rude.

 

I centered the pillow prize on that book left behind in the bedside table drawer. Nudging to fudge this complement into a relationship resembling an ankh, I amused myself with the thought of unwrapping it instead and closing it into the pages the way one does to preserve the luck of the Irish. How this sweet tempered circle would blot a random sect of text and lead the next guest tempted to open such a book on a superstitious quest to find the obscured words to complete the passage. This would certainly reveal the single central meaning of life to determine the next move of the Discoverer of.

 

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While it's too easy to chalk up individual violence to the availability of the tools for the same, it's silly to say said tools don't have their role to play. Still, a background check to ensure the safe transfer of tools involves a kind of case prevention that would be a drop in the bucket compared to the larger issue of an individual's will to use tools to kill in a way virtually no other individual would consider considering. And this against the backdrop of a sovereign state that transfers a scaled up version of that destructive power around the world with greater non-partisan approval than it debates any of its other self-claimed responsibilities. In other words, it's a drop in one pail of water from the well.

 

That these horrors are anomalies could be why they reportedly make such waves of incomprehension. That they hit home is why they reputedly capture the imagination — not in the captivating sense, but in a way that holds the imagination captive as the anomalies accumulate and take on another quality. In spite of all the odds in their favor, I cannot imagine most parents who send their children off to school every day don't imagine they might fall victim to a single attendant of mass destruction. So I can also imagine they'd feel safer if that one wayward whim, who they imagine is able to get any tool with the ease of the licensing of the driver, had a hurdle placed in front of him, imagining, as I am now, that even if only in the most rare of instances, one just as randomly might decide not to carry out one's rampage because of the extra effort required. Or just kind of forget one'd wanted to.

 

Put this way it sounds absurd insofar as it's a poisonous drop that will find it's way into the water supply eventually. Or maybe not. Maybe one out of however many such ostensibly wayward whims are suffering a temporarily intense emotional response that would evaporate into the ether of post-pubescence once they had time to reason, join the Army, and never return home to use his driver's license.

 

Or all such anomalies are demons. This is a symbolic allusion to something whereby the human capacity for empathy is damaged at a level resulting in having what seemed like an anomaly becoming endemic to human nature. To use another biblical metaphor, imagine one person's values entail the worship of mammon. Any violence that accompanies this fixation is unique to criminals of the state, for the state has its monopoly on legal violence ostensibly to secure what belongs to the individuals who make up that state.

 

But wait. What if society's values are sanctioned by the same fixation and agents delegated by the same state can secure special access to this mammon? I've read this results in a sort of era independent Roman rot.

 

The current iteration sees structural bruises untaken for their rotten values. That these could be to the detriment of others has been an issue for advertising and entertainments. See the hippy in an SUV clear the beach of all its plastic waste. Watch the athlete doing vaguely identifiable community center stuff with families in his hometown not seem entirely out of place with a soothing voice-over speaking some slogan for booze. Observe the sublimated patriot imply that, yes, Virginia, you can do the feel-good patriotism, equal opportunistically smiling behind the greenish glow of your army's radar or even snagging the helm of the battleship whose one-time sci-fi-like progress need not person the guns. Think of that the next time you hear a witness of some traumatic tragedy say it was all "like a movie". Don't get it? Don't worry, we'll tell you when it's safe to stroke your apps to place your bets or invest in something called crypto. By branding alone we prove we would like to think something else, whatever 'tis we're apparently compelled to do ourselves.

 

Anyone not feeling so good might feel effectively branded something else. The difference between our youngest legal warrior wasting unarmed non-combatants and a delinquent gunning down school children: one year, ten thousand miles, the number of meetings and the amount of paperwork, and the flavor of sanctioning that can't see the solution for the drops. Whoops. You're soaking in it. Surroundings.

Memoriam

[Originally "I remember" from Monday, 21 November 2005.] 

As soon as the Twin Peaks theme began to play, the various video recorders came out, began to float in and around my line of vision. I felt a conflict. I had something in my pocket, having also brought it for such a purpose. Not to video Julee Cruise singing Falling—clearly the most popular, most people’s favorite song of the evening, hence the sudden mass of tiny, glowing monitors—but something anyway. The initial nuisance had me thinking that I could in no way justify doing this myself. Yet I knew I wanted to get something in the machine. Am I a vampire? I’ve tried to fabricate a line which could be crossed, to delineate between them and me, which dictates that what I’ve done didn’t impede anyone’s experience. I can’t know this for sure. I did suffer the fate that I imagine for the others, however. That is, that I can’t imagine anyone truly enjoying the experience that was before us, to be experienced, now, when they were so pre-occupied with artificial encapsulation. And what an experience it was; except for the twelve seconds that I spent framing her singing my favorite song. I can watch the crappy quality of that imagery over and over, and I just might, to remind myself that I’ll never get a chance to enjoy that twelve seconds again. I took this picture of the book at the foot of her mic stand when the lights came up after the show. 

 

That's a spider on Horton's head. Hmmm.

 

[Subsequent to this I began an email correspondence with Julee long enough to find out what a spirited personality she had. I also got to know some of her non-Badalamenti/Lynch work, like on The Art of  Being a Girl and My Secret Life, as well as her Pluramon and Khan collaborations. Like me, she liked "more mashed potatoes" for dessert. She began musically on the French horn. May she know eternal peace.]

Streng genommen

Taymur Streng '62 - '22

Der Parkbank Pinkler Kapitel XXXIII: das Kontinuum (in der dritten (;-/)

„You win brand battle.
  We win brand war.“

—Chief Running Gag

XXXIII.

 

»Da ist sie. Häftlingsnummer 78906-54.« 

 

Elke freut sich drüber, dass ihr ihre Chefin gerade die Akten in die Hand ausgehändigt hat und freut sich drauf, ohne die übliche Unterbrechung weiter zu forschen. Das heißt, zum ersten Mal in ihrer Erinnerung an die Geschichte vom Pinkler, endlich zwei aufeinanderfolgenden Teilen der selben Handlungsstrang, ohne eingeworfene Nebenhandlung, nachgehen zu dürfen.

Natürlich wird ihr Gedanken ohnehin abgelenkt, zum Beispiel, von genau dieser Gedankenstimme, beziehungsweise die, die soeben einwirft, dass, wenn zwei anscheinend unabhängige Ereignisse, die sich auf denselben Untersuchungsgegenstand beziehen, gleichzeitig auftreten, ist es etwas anderes als die typische Ablenkung. Das heißt, es ist alles anderes als ihr üblicher Zufall.

Von diesem Blahblah abgesehen und unabhängig davon, ob eine Fügung soeben versucht, aus dem Sinnäther erkannt zu werden, was Elke eher zweifelt, (da man keine bedeutungsvollen Zufälle aus dem Strom des Bewusstseins fabrizieren sollte, indem man diese mit bedeutungsvollen Ereignissen gleichsetzt), gibt es die persönliche Angelegenheiten, die sie nicht loslässt, oder aber, (oder aber wahrscheinlicher (wie sie schon weißt)), was sie nicht loslassen will, samt der anschließenden, eher professionellen Kritik, dass sie Privatsachen von der Arbeit getrennt halten sollte.

 

Sollte...

 

(...und sollte es noch einen eingeklammerten Einwurf zu wenig geben, kommt gleich die professionelle Kritik, dass ein professioneller Kritiker, der mehr als sein Gewicht in Gedanken wert sein ist, sollte sich solche Einwürfe für sich behalten, oder aber sich zumindest die Gedankengerede sparen. (Sachkundiger sind sachkundiger.))

 

Es ist auch nicht erst das zigte Mal, dass sich KM Lamprecht in ihren Gedanken verliert, gerade darüber nachdenkend, wie sie der geeignetste Weg befolgen könnte, einem Gedankengang zu folgen, ohne sich darin zu verlieren. Als promovierte Kriminalistin fühlt sie sich irgendwie speziell qualifiziert, etwas an diesem Studiengang zu vermissen, nämlich die Lehre von der Erfassung und Abgrenzung von Instinkt als Trieb und Instinkt als Gespür, geschweige denn die Aussicht, diese zu erlernen.

 

Andernfalls kann sie einfach weitermachen. Gegenwärtig besteht die Anwendung dieser Methode in der Praxis darin, dass sie den vor ihr liegende Ordner aufschlägt. Da sie nun merkt, das schon gemacht zu haben, fängt die vorherige Gedankengang wieder von vorne an, mit folgendem Kurzschluss:

 

Es war einmal ein aufgewecktes kleines Mädchen, das auf der Bettkante saß und einen Strumpf, den sie wie eine Ziehharmonika zerknüllt hatte, zwischen ihren beiden Daumen hielt. Sie hatte diese Methode von ihrem Vater gelernt und fand, dass sie tatsächlich am leichtesten über den Fuß gleiten konnte, dessen letzten Schritt sie an diesem Morgen noch nicht vollzogen hatte. Wie lange sie mit dem Strumpf in der Hand dagesessen hatte, wusste sie nicht, aber es war lange genug, um aus ihren täglichen Tagträumen herausgerissen zu werden, ausgelöst durch das Hupen des Busfahrers eines Busses, den sie verpassen würde.

 

Wahrscheinlich hatte sie die Socke zunächst ausgestreckt vor sich gehalten, und als ihr Kopf in Gedanken versank, wörtlich und bildlich, waren auch ihre Hände in den Schoß gesunken, wo sie sich in dem Moment befanden, als das aufgeweckte Mädchen geweckt wurde. »Schon wieder.«

»Schon wieder.« seufzte das immer noch aufgewecktes und nun schon aufgewachsenes Mädchen. Anstelle jenes Strumpfes erscheint nun ein Polizeifoto, oben recht wie auf einem Lebenslauf. In diesem Fall enthält der Lebenslauf neben den Personalien eine Liste von Delikten. Elke hat noch nicht damit begonnen, sich in die einen oder andere zu stürzen. Das ist ihr Vorhaben, bevor sie selbst Kopien der gesamten Akte anfertigt. Das Bild blickt sie an.

 

Der Dienstälteste hat recht, was das Schenken von zu vielen Vertrauen in routinemäßig neu erstellte Abschriften angeht. Zu seiner Zeit war es kaum mehr als ein Durchschlag. Ein Duplikat einer Fälschung ist genauso fake, wenn nicht gleich mehr. Es ist aber leichter, die Schummelei in ihrer ursprünglichen Form zu erkennen. Elke will nun die Details im Original weidlich durchgehen. Sie muss nur so lange wie nötig ihre Gedanken ordnen. Der Rest ist reine Soße.

 

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xxxii. << -- >> Kapitel ??

In an Easterly Way

If I told you, would you believe me, or would you think it's only oily hearsay again already? Gather round my feet, you boys. Watch them wiped of tears with long locks of harlot hair. See some will affect an air of disgust, secretly breathing it in as hot as the hair flows long.

 

Say you will eschew the raw loser script to seek instead a certain something from the prophesy of the prosperity of universal suffrage, which, as familiar to a time, indemnifies offspring of them in that way from the certainty of their certain fate, which way means with child destined to die. See the cross as symbolic of the conversion all bear when all is seen & said & done, so as the rabbis reviewed told tales before.