Category: writing

Married life had not been kind to Samantha Stephens. Even her worst nightmares at least had more excitement than this. She was just not born to be a cleaner, a dishwasher, a cook (not a chef, Darin’s ulcer did not allow for any sophisticated food) and a whore. Sometimes her housebound existance led her to spend whole days in a nightdress. There was no point in getting dressed; only husband or daughter would potentially see her, and sometimes she barely registered with either anyway.

The drugs were the key to her survival. Always acid, obtained in bulk at cost price due to a special arrangement with the chief of police. She gave up her body once a month, in return for her steady no questions asked supply.

When Darin left on a morning, she would drop a tab or two, and do the essential chores whilst she came up.

” I remember the first time so vividly. It was a sumptuous hot day, and I was stretched out in the garden, feeling the sun-rays dance across the surface of my skin. My body melted with the heat, and the sun’s magnetic field lifted me off the ground, pulling me in.

“Mother’s voice rang out beneath, asking how I expected to keep the perfect man if I spent all my days lazing in the sun. When I rolled over, she was stood towering over my body. For some inexplicable reason, she was clad in full witches garb, pointy hat et al. Whilst she was harranguing me, I found myself able to detect the sub-text to what she was saying, just like it were a bassline in one of those psychadelic rock band’s songs.

” One of us; born with the power. Try it out, unleash your force.”

” And quite how do you propose I do so?”

” Just wiggle your nose.”

I did. I felt a slight tingle in my face, but nothing happened.

“Now you must focus on what it is you desire to achieve. And for your power to be at its most effective, you must rhyme your words.”

Steadily I pieced the tattered fragments of my mind together, concentrating on what I truely wanted at this moment in time.

“Mother on this beautiful day, please just get the hell away”.

My mystic nose swooped across my face. Bells rang out, an endless chime that struck at my core. When I was able to pull my eyelids apart, she was gone.

I positively glowed. It was as if a light had been turned on in the darkness of my soul. I had a reason for being, no longer just the slave of man and child. I swept across the garden, creating new blooms wherever I pointed my nose.

And then a wicked thought crossed my mind. Well, it had been since Tabitha for me and Darin, he was just too stressed to even consider it. Don’t even mention the Chief of Police, that never lasted long enough for me to ever contemplate whether I enjoyed doing that or not.

I went up to my room, and with a swift twitch, two Nubian warriors had me pinned to the bed. Since that day, it has been my magical powers that have kept me going. Nothing else makes the day go quicker, gets rid of the hundrum of making dinner for Darin’s boss, or of surviving a tupperware party.

I set my mind down, knowing that this is bound to be lost.

I don’t have a place yet. No home, no town, no strong familiarity to call my own.

No girlfriend, no wife, no loved one, no child.

They are all a statement of fact.

I have decided on my place, Oxford. Its not mine yet, but it will be.

I can’t explain why it will be, its like dowsing. I’ve stepped all around the lines, and the sticks didn’t cross. As soon as I step in here, they twitch like crazy, and I’ve no idea why.

Maybe its an element of weariness, having moved so much, travelled so long, feeling a need to set down the roots. But I sense its something stronger.

Shut away in its rooms, experiencing not through watching, talking or seeing, but through typing. The carcophony of millions of fingers typing millions of words, pause, the chattering of keys and space bars as a low thump. Hours sat facing a glowing screen, quite often in darkness. Life lived through your fingers. They wonder what virtual reality is like. We have the first evolution of it now. Except more of the creation is being done in our minds, like returning to a word created by words, by radio. So much more to imagine, so much of the spirit like the noble earnest intentions of early American radio to entertain and educate in equal measures. Take people around the world for the first time, take them to events live as they happened for the first time. Took them to war for the first time. Every person being called upon to visualize to picture in their minds, things beyond their normal understanding of their own world. This is the spirit that has come back with the Internet. Certainly it can be twisted and exploited and exploitative, and often is. But the original intention is still there sometimes. You can look at spaceships, you can look at local government, you can find out things you thought you knew about. Things are made clear, things become understandable. We haven’t quite missed out on the pioneer spirit, its around a little while longer.

Hitch-hikers Guide meets the Net.

A vision of a future under the influence of the internet

The Nets vision with a fuck deal less pomposity

TECHIE STUFF

Your IP address is your DNA string.

Computers Far more powerful when the silicon chips are positioned under a perfect pyramid

DNA editors available, hard to do, so SKY offer 3453 channels and a pre-programed dick enlargement if you take the sports channels.

Microsoft’s final demise comes about on ‘Cold Sunday’ when an upgrade to their American operating system turned the entire population into fridge freezers for fourteen days. The rest of the world only noticed when their news broadcasts started to feature foreign reports.

Similar thing to Hitch-hikers, take someone from now and displace them to another place, in this case 70 years in the future.

World is full of experience surfers. You have complex programs which edit your nerves quickly and slightly so you feel sensations.

. The left one was horizontal, like most peoples, but the right one was at forty-five degrees. This meant two things:

· For all of his life Liam would have extreme problems with earwax
· He heard music just that little differently to most people

Guitars just passed him by; it was bass he needed, and plenty of it. His left ear was his James Brown ear, the one that liked Maceo Parker. The right ear was his darker side, his funkier side. This ear was Parliament, this ear was Larry Graham, it even looked a little like Bootsy Collins in his younger, early acid days, as long as you caught it in the right light late at night. He heard a part of any music just a little out of sync, and bass works better here. Music was truly a sensation to him, it reverberated through the whole right side of his brain.

Now Liam’s bizarre ear was to blame for some of his wilder ideas. His early nineties Neo-Beastie Boys rap combo Heckled by Sheep was a concept the Oxford Brookes Student union was unprepared for. All the record labels he sent the tape to were far more prepared, they have people trained solely in the act of telling young undertalented musicians just to stop fucking calling the office because the best in life they could ever hope for is to hum happy tunes to themselves as they front-face soup cans.

The whole picture was what Liam always saw. This week, whenever he closed his eyes, he pictured his big concert on the banks of the River Nile. At the foot of the pyramids at Gaia, he could see the huge stage lit by searchlights, lasers cutting through the sky overhead, guiding down the mothership

A young boy bored with his life becomes obssessed with a man who
lives in a shack .The man might be Sid Barrett .
The Lotus Eaters , a group of students who sit around all day
smoking themselves incapable . When the revolution comes , they
will be the first ones up against the wall , slouching against it.
There was a choice . Down to the youth club for a game of pool and
if he was lucky , a few mouthfulls of merrydown round the back .
Or , an evening in front of the television with his parents , and
if he was lucky , a diatribe on the state of English football from
his father . The cider would be a slightly more effective sedetive
to his brain , so the youth club won a narrow victory .
Four years ago , the leading members of the community decided to do
something about the ‘youth problem’ in the village . The ‘youth’
were just hanging about , talking drinking and breaking the
occasional window . So these noble people decided to provide a
place for them to go , a place where the ‘youth’ could pass their
time more constructively . The drama sessions and football clubs
soon fell by the wayside , and settles down into a location where
they hung about , that kept them off the streets .

The nature versus nurture debate. Do our bodies have everything at birth, or are we a blank slate which learns everything from experience? The reality is that it appears to be a sublte blend of both of these seemingly seperate ideologies.

We are both a generating and degenerating life-form. We grow and deteriorate, often simultaneously. Hair is dead cells. Whole cultures rise and fall in our bodies; sometimes one or two go full circle before breakfast. Bill Hicks used to talk of wiping whole civilisations off his chest with a grey gym sock.

We are an incredibly disposible life-form. We end up gently decaying in the ground, or melted down. At least in this instance we take more care of our bodies than our cars, which we are quite happy to leave rusting in so many locations.

There are so many parts of our bodies that are working away, not just as parts of a whole, but as entities, almost beings in their own right. They too are created, grow, learn, make mistakes, deteriorate and die, sometimes in their own right entirely seperately from our actual cells. I mean, you can wipe out vast tracts of brain cells just by watching say, a Police Academy film. Or what about that morning-after hangover you get from a serious night out. Is that down to your body soting out what made it through the night, assessing the damage, and reporting back with any difficulties?

Even at the cellular level we find all sorts of independant activity. I never wake up on a morning and decide that I’m going to get my cells to fight that throat infection. Of course they do it all on their own, part of your bodie’s untouchable conciousness.

Now addled with a useful combination of stimulants, the writer returns for another crack.

Let’s find the music , the music that will produce the appropriate rythmn for this next piece.

I hope for the reality where I can control this urge I have for writing, and do it properly.

Looking for the germ of a idea, the learning to fly, the sea, the revolution.

The freedom of the fast bike ride, the sensation and danger of even a fairly gentle off-road trip. Returning to the road trip.

I would venture out infrequently in relation to the amount of pleasure that a good ride brought me. The feeling of freedom, motion through soley your efforts, a satisfaction that the car could never bring. Being able to go virtually anywhere you chose. To be honest, it often wasn’t about the great outdoors, being at one with nature and all that sort of stuff. It was the battle. The war against me I loved. Fighting the unwilling body, the lazy mind, the dispirited soul. I felt that when I conquered all those elements, I could do anything.

The key to gears. I always used to attack climbs the wrong way. I would build up speed on the flat in my biggest gear, and then attack it. The bike would always slow, and quicker than I could change down, the pedals became huge blocks of stone for my feet to move.

Then one day someone explained how it worked. You get into a low gear at the foot of the climb. And stay with it. Churn and churn in that tiny gear. Your lungs burn and pierce your chest. You have to find the rythmn, stay on the one or you’ve lost it.

The ultimate skill in cycling is to change up on a climb. On a real climb, like Alpe D’Huze. Start the mountain with a group of climbers, the worlds best. Wait for the heat and the doubt to set in. Wait until the last of your opponents is about to break. They are all churning awaiting the noise they dread. That click of the gear-change, like a starting pistol, metal straining against metal. The true climber shoots away, leaving the others floundering in his wake.

The best I’ve ever seen this done was in the 1996 Tour, where Riis tortured his opponents for miles. A small group of about twenty riders were on the ascent of Alpe D’huez when he made his move. But this was no simple break-away. He left the group with devestating speed, then slowed up. It looked as if he had blown it, as he was caught and fell to the back of the pack. What he was doing though, was trying to break each and every one of them. He scanned each face as they passed him, looking for the fear. After a brief respite he launched himself off again. Three times he did this, each cause more opponents to drop off the lead group until finally, no-one had any spirit left. He left them all far behind and won the stage.

Well, I was an only child. Not many friends in the neighbourhood. Spent a lot of time in my room, imagining. Thinking of my future. Playing games for England, kissing the girl across the street. Funnily enough I never once imagined that data input would be my future.

I used to watch World of Sport, it is my first cognitive memory. I can remember the drag racing, the lumberjack championships, the exotic american typefaces. I wish I had been allowed to bet at five years old, because I had a pretty good eye for horses form at that age, a gift which has diminished with time. I can still recall that Sea Pigeon and Nightnurse were pretty safe bets. And Dickie Davies. Thinking back I am sure I saw him more than my father until I was twelve. My father was more of a Fred Dinage character in my life.

I can remember showing my affection towards girls by cycling. The more times you went past their house, the more you wanted them. Someone you really liked would be on a once every couple of days route. Claire Johnson was a twice a night, really worth making the out and return route pass through the same street for. Cute little nose. Never once came out of her house though. Ahhh, the life of a pubescent stalker.

Later of course, it was vodka. Never understood how I could drink the filthy stuff, neat, maybe half a bottle at a time. Think I was just warming up for acid frankly. With whisky, there is a point of extreme purity of thought before you get to the pissing in your pants stage. Not vodka, you just get the colours, the room swirls, you throw up on the cat, and your best mate tells you the next evening how you announced to the world you thought you might be gay before collapsing face down on the floor.

Now whisky I could really drink, neat doubles, the odd quadruple on cheap nights. I know for a fact, indisputable fact that I once had an hour-long conversation with a Welsh speaker, and we both made perfect sense, at least to each other. I wanted to be Jim Morrison, but lacking looks, three fellow travellers on the road to success and enlightenment and a good voice, I settled for his alcoholism and a ropey biker jacket. The only miracle is that I actually got laid in this period at all. Now I just want to be Noel Gallagher with less facial hair. Time teaches you to reign back on your ambition.

The complex mix of space flight, Egyptian mysticism and funk music combines to form the logic of alien visitation. Earth Wind and fire touched on it, releasing a stream of consciousness that has already been lost, like the green man, bits keep resurfacing in culture, little reflections of a long lost history appearing in the minds of people. The tall thin alien, reflections of us, with hands and feet elongated, are results of ourselves mutated by space travel, evolved through millennium of weightless procreation and radiation. Aliens are us, Egyptian space travelers trying to return to earth. We are the only creatures that populate the universe. It is hideously pompous to think of our society as the most advanced ever. Civilizations peak and trough, come and go. The Egyptian society rose to great heights, leaving legacies we are still to understand and comprehend.
Find the links: Alien – Travel – Egypt – Funk.

George Clinton nearly brought the aliens home. He was trying to bring down the mothership, the only thing didn’t realise was that the mothership was coming home, not taking us away.