[anon/experimental, issue #001 may-june 2021]

ST RTT EEE
waa
m

-Aoo twa
olls16998V ynodinA yd tnowe tnise
#000001 [J. Lacan]

So I for one am all for Saint John and his “In the beginning was the Word,” but this
beginning was completely enigmatic. What this means is: Things only begin for this
repugnant creature of the flesh that we still call the everyday man, things only. begin for
him, I mean the drama only begins when the Word gets into the swim, when the Word
becomes, as religion (the true religion) says, Incarnate. It’s only after the Word is made
flesh that things start to really take a turn for the worse. Man no longer looks fike a dog
wagging its tail or a courageous masturbating monkey. He doesn’t resemble anything
anymore. The Word devastates him.

- J. Lacan, Press Conference in Rome, 29" October 1974

#000002 [anon]

“We're going to win so much. You’re going to get tired of winning. You're going to say,
‘Please Mr. President, | have a headache. Please, don’t win so much. This is getting terrible.’
And I’m going to say, ‘No, we have to make America great again.’ You're gonna say, ‘Please.’
i said, ‘Nope, nope. We’re gonna keep winning.” 7

#000003 [Gavin Le Ber]

9/2/89 scottjackson said:

Sitting here with my google finance, gmail and google
video tabs open whilst using google crome i think
back to my day today and here is some things on how u
made my life better.
1.) i google searched ridiculas and you told me how
to spell it correctly
2.) Whilst at work I have google crome permanently
open and use it as much time as possible, at my
company IT will only support IE6...and the less
said about that the better.
3.) i google dry cleaners in my area and found thier
addresses
4.) used google maps to find the dry cleaners and
then decided i didnt like the look of it and
googled/mapped another one.
5S.) ..didnt crash once thought out the day. Even with
multiple tabs open searching & displaying large
ammounts of economic data.
6.) Allowed my girlfriend who currently lives in
another state to say hi to me and wish me luck
with my day via gmail chat. A lovley random
surprise as she usually struggels to contact me
as there is a 'no phones’ policy in her
workplace.

7.) you have interested me, my house mate jail broke

his iphone whilst at work today and im looking
 forward too seeing what google voice is like and
having a play with it. (I work for the biggest
telecom company in my county)
Feel free to do one of two things, A.) an admin comes
across this post and deletes it, as its not
"technically' a quiestion. In this event a sweet
fairy pixie will die a slow death..
or B.)...
pass this little note gets passed accross one just
ONE google employees desk.

and they smile. knowing they are making the world a

better place

>)
I know that you care...(and will wb)

#000004 [anon]

People used to have sex with themselves. First you have the revelation of wanting
to have sex with someone else, for your pleasure. Then the second revelation - to
have sex with someone else, to punish yourself or distract you, a kind of
pathological self-negation. And hopefully, the revelation of having sex with
someone to express your love for them.

A lot of people liked to have sex in the mirror: Christian Bale, “American Psycho”
style. He fucked others in order to fuck himself, a form of self-worship. But |
don’t think people do that much anymore. They masturbate quietly and placidly
in their bed or on their couch and then get cleaned up, put their phone or laptop
aside - briefly - and take a nap or eat something. They just want the tic of
pleasure to go away for a while. Hunting the titillation is a nice ten-minute mind
exercise. Who cares if you’re unemployed, or out of shape, or a loser while you’re
looking for that perfectly abstracted climax? A bunch of fat little hairless mice
stroking themselves furiously for a brief thrashing orgasm, then the repose of
pure emptiness. I know a girl that buys something on Amazon whenever she
orgasms alone. It’s her compulsion. I think it adds a material tether to the feeling
of just aimlessly, unbearably, drifting away.

Now, many young men and women sense that their libido is a distraction from
the more important work of buying things and eating things, an urge that needs
to be assuaged immediately and in ultimate privacy and comfort. How foul. How
disgusting and weak. How plastic-wrapped and air-conditioned of an impulse.

#000005 [anon]

Sometimes a guy is better than a girl because he’s different than a girl, so he
can grab you and make you feel like a girl. Which is nice because it’s hard to
be a boy and it’s sexy to bend over and have someone do the work for once.
Why not?
#000006 [anon]

For the longest time he thought himself a fool. He thought himself a fool
because he felt himself a fool and he thought those who are not fools would
not think themselves a fool. So he walked foolishly in the empty street under
the streetlights and felt himself a fool. He had made the proposal earlier
that evening. He did not know if it worked. He never knew if anything
worked, he thought, and that is what made him a fool. Sometimes when he
thought it did not work it had worked and sometimes when he was sure it
was fine it was not fine and he never knew why. He sat on a bench and
looked at the street lights. He thought of the wonderful things that would
happen if she said yes and he thought very far and very wide and felt very
happy that far away from where he was now. Then he felt he should not
think this far because thinking it through might not make it happen. So he
thought about her not saying yes and it filled him with dread.

He sat in the dread looking at the streetlights on the bench near the
entrance of the park. She would not say yes. It did not work, he thought,
that was the way it was and I should not think it worked. That maybe would
make it happen. He did not want to think any further, thinking would only
make it more painful or drain the goodness out of it. She would not say yes if
she knew I was thinking this much of it, he thought. She would say yes if I
did not think of it and I was thinking of something else. She would say yes if
I was blissfully ignorant of the fact I even asked and I had forgotten about it

and I had other things to do. I would have gone back home instead of
walking the streets thinking about it. That is the man she would say yes to.
I would not say yes to this, he thought, because I do not want to be this. I
want to live blissfully and not think about being a fool.

He was walking through the park now looking but not really looking at the
man-made streams under the bridge lights above and thinking about not
thinking. He had never really thought about not thinking and the only times
he was not thinking was when he did not notice and when he noticed he was
not thinking he began to think again. The man who she would say yes to
would not be thinking about it, he thought, and the man would be asleep

already. The man had work in the morning and his thoughts were only on
the work. The man lived in a wide valley with his house near the top of the
base above where the sea stops and from his window he could see the whole
valley green and blue and brown at the top and blue above the brown very
bright and very clear. The green would sway in the wind and the blue would
gently roll in and out while the man looked out the window. The man had
been working and was now tired. And when the man was tired he was not
thinking, he thought, and he only felt. The man did not feel himself a fool
and the man did not wander with no destination. The man only felt and he
knew in his heart without thinking he was in the right place, he thought.
She would say yes to that man. He was walking now under the trees in the
small side street under the tops where the sun would have been on the
ground through the space in between the leaves but as now it was dark you
could not see the leaves above. He walked only towards the next streetlight.

He came under the light and felt tired. Not tired of walking, he could walk
very far if it was on steady ground, but of thinking. He did not think
anymore, and walked in the dark from a street light to a street light, looking
but not looking and just walking. He would not think of the proposal because
it would do nothing. He walked over another small bridge with the fence on
its side too low to hold and past the bridge he walked towards the other exit
of the park. If he took a left at the exit he would walk home but he went
forward through the streets and past the other houses and he was in no
hurry. He did not have work in the morning and he did not have work the
next either. He had no work at all. He knew without thinking if he went
back home he would think about it and he did not want to think about it. He
wanted to walk.

The houses were all small and different and no lights were on at that time
and all the cars were in the driveways and he could feel them all inside
sleeping blissfully and in place and knowing what they were doing in the
morning. He walked further and into another street and there he felt the
shame. He did not call upon it by thinking. It came on its own. It came hard
and he felt it through him all and he wanted to run now instead of walking
but he was too ashamed to run. The man she would say yes to would not run
too, but for other reasons. His reason was not the man's reason, he finally
thought again. He did not run from it because he did not care. It was just
shame. He had felt the shame and the shame would go away in the morning.
The man in the valley with his house on the top of the hill overlooking the
sea would not have felt the shame to begin with. He began to not care about
the proposal and finally he felt himself going home.

The next morning he did not look at the answer. He did not know if there
was an answer but he did not look anyway. He only thought of the man and
he knew if he looked at the answer he would not think of the man any more.
He tried to think how the man lived and what the man would think or not
think of and he tried to think like the man. He thought of the way he had
gotten his house on the hill of the valley. He lay in bed thinking of the man
and looking up past the ceiling. He had nowhere to go so he lay and thought.
The man bought his house with his money he worked for, he thought. He did
not build it, that would be too much, but he bought it. He had been saving
for a long time and he had been very blissful when he bought it. The bliss
was still there and he felt it while herding his sheep in the early mornings
when the sun was low and the shadows long. He had bought it and now
there was nothing else. He was in his place and he knew where his place
was. He had always known this was his place and getting to it was as good
as he thought it was. That was what the man thought of, he thought, the
man thought of buying the house when he did not yet have it and when he
had it he was free of thought. He did not think and he only felt. The man felt
and the man acted and the man sat in his house in the evenings before he
slept watching the sunset when the sea came into the valley not thinking, he
thought. He laid in his bed for a long time thinking about the man and how
the man felt and tried feeling like the man. He felt good feeling like the man
but always something would break it from him. There was always
 something that was unfit with feeling like the man. When it broke he would
put it back again. And it was stronger each time but harder to put back
together. The man never thought of his surroundings. He did not care for the
surroundings beyond his homestead and his sheep and his crops. He did not
care at all. The surroundings did not affect him. The man would move
through them unchanged.

He finally looked at the message. She had said yes. He forgot about the man
until the next time he made a proposal to a different lady.

#000007 [Kamara]

1.
He picks up hunnies on high-rise ledges
little death in lieu of the Real Deal
momentary softer swandives

"They fuck like there's no tomorrow"

morning coffee & obits
photo attached preferred

Mostly, they stay silent

or speak in small moans
eyes dull or dark

None sleep over,

some cuddle,
whisper "bye"
on the way out.

#000008 [Gavin Le Ber]

2/19/12 pk36 said:

Google, i am waiting for the day when people will
type in Google search bar, "How to Meet God".. M
sure the way you leading the world & working
seriously hard, one day u'll find these answer
too..
Good Luck Google..
God Speed..
Love You More than my Gf..
#000009 fanon]

- You are living in a legendary myth from the year 29,000 B.C.

- You are living in a fantasy story from the year 1,000 A.D.

- You are living in a science fiction story from the year 3,000 A.D.

- You are living in a legendary myth from the year 20,000 A.D.

#000010 [Zombee tv]

River’s Edge (1986) - a review

Scored by the music of Slayer and Proto-Grunge, Pacific North-

West weirdo's The Wipers, River's Edge was one of the first
narrative films to ask the now-totally ridiculous question, "wait, are
teens not naive yet potential filled patriots eager to participate in
the American dream, but instead extremely alienated and depressed
freaks?" The answer to that question may get lost amongst the
existential monologues of characters who are, throughout the film,
literally and figuratively in transit, but its most sophisticated answer
can be found in the character of Feck (Dennis Hopper).

"We stopped a war, man," says the aging hippy biker, paranoid and
agoraphobic from a lifetime of expanding his mind and fighting The
Man. The kids, their parents divorced, are forced to ask themselves
how invested they really want to be in trying to improve the world
around them. Does it matter that John (Daniel Roebuck) strangled
his girlfriend for "talking shit"? He's already basically an alcoholic
anyway. What did she miss out on? A life of working three jobs
while raising the children he'd pumped into her and then
abandoned? Does Layne's (Crispin Glover) immediate reaction of
loyalty to a teenage murderer demand a correction from his other
friends? Loyalty to a group of fellow outsiders is all Layne has.
Sure, his expectation of this same loyalty in return turns the act of
driving around in his pseudo-hot-rodded VW Beetle while
brainstorming plans for shuttling John to Canada into a sort of soft
fascism, but is saying something to him worth the psychotic episode
it might provoke? Jamie's already dead. If you talk to the cops, if
you betray John and Layne, Lord knows what could happen. You
might end up mentally cracked, screaming at the moon and pawing
at a blow-up doll. Maybe it's better to just go have sex in the park.
But then who's gonna watch-out for your little brother? You hit him
earlier. Can you live with yourself knowing you bullied him while
trying to covered up a murder?
 Back in the real world, it's May 1987. You have a job on Wall
Street. Or maybe you sell Porsches, or ceil-phones the size of
basketball sneakers. Maybe you sell basketball sneakers. There's real
money in that now, This Michael Jordan guy seems like he's gonna
be a pretty big deal. You voted for Reagan AGAIN because he's
gonna keep your taxes low by not wasting money on silly frills like
environmental protection and insane asylums. Who caresif he's 75
and used to fall off horses for a living; he's sharp as a tack. In the
suburbs, on the streets of the inner cities, in the places where your
condo complex is not, children are acting like Camus' Meursault.
But for you, it's morning in America.

And sure, maybe things will seem different someday. Maybe this
September the president will give a speech to the UN where he
waxes philosophical about the possibility of an alien invasion.
Maybe - twenty eight days later - the Dow Jones will fall more in a
single day than it has in its entire history. Maybe then you'll come
up from your cocaine plate long enough to see that the system in
which you're thriving doesn't offer a lot of hope to future ,
generations. But neither of those things have happened just yet.
Today, you're headed for the office. You drive past an art-house
theater where a bunch of kids from broken homes are seeing, River's
Edge. They're the target audience. Hopefully they get it. Maybe
not. Maybe they're thinking "Here we are now; entertain us.”
Maybe it's worse. Their Mothers died today. Or maybe yesterday,
they don't know.

#000011 [Gavin Le Ber]

8/30/16 Holy Sae said:

Dear google,
If you were a girl, I would marry you :).
Thanks for everything you offer,
Your true love

#000012 [anon]

She showed up and he was in boxer shorts and she didn’t think about it at the
time, but twenty years later she would look back and remember because she
drove by the Ralphs they used to go to, so he was on the brain for five seconds
of her now-too-busy-days, and she remembered when he opened the door on a
“second date” with boxers on and no shirt and she hadn’t noticed, she’d
thought it was normal. He’d thought it was normal too because his sisters
used to see him like that and she guessed she had kind of taken their place for
him.
They dated for two months before he cheated on her, but now, so many years
later, all she could think about was how she hadn’t cared that he had opened
the door with boxers on.
#000013 [anon]

[Cut-up Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets, McGowan, T. 2016]

repeatedly adjusting one's batting gloves

(as many baseball players do)
may in fact be a wholly sexual act.

REPRESSION and DESIRE = POWER and BODIES

sustaining subjects in a constant state
Edge of Having
a dissatisfaction we don't recognise
as such — and thus .
constantly made explicit, cling feverishly to the image
Repeatedly adjusting one’s batting gloves.

SYMPTOMS a widespread investment in .

Astrology.
>Astrology infects the social order.
Promise / Tropics / Electronics.
the popularity of astrology columns. _

Consumption = A BETTER FUTURE

a discursive regime of
sexuality that forces sex
to speak
that forces bodies
to become
Sexualised acts
as a barrier
to the flow of
bodies and pleasures.
like eco-friendly cars at the neighbourhood dealership
Sex toys in a Shopping mail are the secret
of capitalism’s integration of critique.
the countercultural revolution of the 1960s; .
ihe relative success of the sexual revolution;
the effect of the failure of political revolution:
quieting the dream. ,
Astrology Columns in Newspapers. .
surplus repression
infects / widespread / feverish / neurosis / of one-dimensional equals.
#000014 fanon]

I can’t remember where I stayed before I moved into the motel. They were
winter months. I was somewhere on Albert, one of those post-war houses,
smoking all day, up for weeks at a time. One of the men there always wanted
to do trust falls with me. He said things about how he talked to God through
women, too. Plastic lawn chairs littered the yard like bleached bones.

I remember one night I went up to the pool bar. Ian was there and we
smoked together, out behind the fabric shop. The torch lit his broken face up
from below like a campfire story. Later we were in his bed and he kept
pulling away to look me up and down and smile approvingly, nodding at me.
His teeth were like gravestones. It made me sick, and I watched the windows
illuminate and then darken with passing cars and wished I was in someone’s
passenger seat heading out of town. I was bored all the way into my bones.

Then there are a few months I’m not so sure about, like I said. If 1 took a walk
up Albert I’d probably know right away which house I’d been at. When I ran
out of money, or whatever else brought me down the hill, I ended up at
Skyline, living for free as the proctor, waking up whenever someone called to
check in after midnight. I spent the spring sleeping all day and night. I kept
the TV going with the volume on the lowest setting all the time. I woke up to
images I didn’t understand: a close up of a man’s hands holding a glossy fish,
supercuts of cake decoration, sobbing women with black eyes and stiff lips.

I spent a lot of time fantasizing about this man I’d been with a few years ago,
a man with no sense of smell. I had my own place at the time and we'd stayed
in for a full week. He would take clothes out of his bag and ask me to smell
them, to see if they needed washing. They always did. ’'d wash the clothing in
the sink while he leaned back and watched me. I loved him for the way he
watched me. His lips were so well shaped I wanted to take them into my
mouth and suck on them.

When the weather warmed and the humidity soaked into the motel sheets, I
developed an appetite. I took a few shifts working the front desk of the motel
and I sat in the back room eating apples and berries until I felt sick. I ate egg
rolls from the chinese place next door while I flipped through tourism
pamphlets with fingers dripping in plum sauce. My routine was like this: I
 would sleep until noon, then masturbate and bathe. I rubbed these scented
oils onto my body, and then I would examine myself in the mirror. I had
gained enough weight that I looked soft, with blurred edges. I liked myself
that way. I went for slow walks up and down the block with my thighs
rubbing against each other. I stared at men on the street while rivulets of
sweat ran down my neck. I wondered what it would be like to hole up with
one of them and lose the whole winter again. I liked to imagine that I would
stay sober this time, while the man smoked. He wouldn’t leave the house. I’d
explain what went on in the world outside. At night we’d go to the
laundromat together and he'd see that everything I’d said was true.

In mid-July the heat peaked, and the air was so humid it was like living in the
thickness of a dream. Sound doesn’t carry in heat like that. My body felt
pleasantly swollen. One afternoon I saw a group of four construction workers
unpack their bags and folding chairs from a truck and make their way into
rooms 11 and 12. They pressed their chairs up against the building, trying to
hide in the small slit of shade offered by the roof’s overhang. Heatwaves rose
off the parking lot, obscuring my view of their faces. I thought that one of
them was staring right back at me, with his tanned face and blue eyes. That
afternoon I turned off the air conditioner and I took to the bed on all fours,
thinking of the construction worker.

That’s how the summer has passed: with my hips swinging slowly over the
dusty sidewalk, stomach bloated from the fruit. I don’t fear the season’s
passing.

Let the men try to find a place to live where I’m not swelling to fill the cracks.

#000015 [Kamara]

5.
I get by on benefit of the doubt
he skates on technicalities
a marriage made in small claims court
contract romance
anything to stay slippery
#000016 [Cain Hillier]

Come Corso
Why upper-middle eshays are sinister cultural colonisers

The idea of this article came to me last weekend when some mates and
I were stomaching a 20 pack of Bond Street Blues in Mona Vale Park.
It's a well-groomed patch of grass flanked on each side by the council
building, the library and the pub. We entertained ourselves playing
Eshay bingo; come collect your meat tray if you catch this column.

i. A group of esh lads fighting.

2, Each group's casus belli being that the other side is/is mates
with a pedophile.
A well-meaning friend being the immovable object to
Sys

Napoleon Nautica’s unstoppable force.

4. Girls in champion jumpers and sweatpants hanging out
further back. |
5. Other girls in Fila tank tops right in the thick of things.
6. Once the dust has settled, they all bum darts off you.

Despite the Daily Telegraph's warnings of "wannabe child gangsters",

your odds of being mugged in the affluent suburbs where this play
takes place are rather slim. The North Shore is the territory
of the
upper-middle esh, the Peshay. The likely lads bought their Ralph
Lauren fair and square from their job at Dad's real estate agency; they
probably have more bedrooms than you too. Unlike Eshays from
Croydon housing estates, whose loot is loot and uncle's in rey the
Peshay’'s uncle is likely the prosecutor that put them there. ,

Eshays originated as a housos subculture in Greater Western Sydney,

peaking in the 2000s, Whilst characterised by Murdoch rags :
exclusively for their hypermasculinity and proclivity for sportswear
and crime in equal measures, the culture of pig-Latin, gutter rap and
gabber was a distinctly Australian tradition of delinquency..The eshays
were far removed from mainstream culture. Moreover, they imported
the sportswear aesthetic from UK terracewear, where football casuals
wore designer clothing such as Stone Island and Burberry to appear
higher class to ground security at Enfield, Highbury and Stamford
Bridge.
 However, the last half-decade has seen the rise of the peshay. Peshays
adopted esh culture not by crossing the latte line (the geographical
boundary separating upper and lower class Sydney) but through
cyberspace. Peshays learnt the spectacle of being an esh from social
media, without the immigrant background, classist subversion of high
fashion or rag-to-riches story.

Peshay speech is coherent mainly as a consequence of their private or

well-funded public education. Moreover, their tastes are primarily
trap, streetwear, and to a lesser extent, grime. Rather than forming a
subculture, Peshays are as infatuated with the hip-hop opulence
cultural zeitgeist as anyone else. It has been suggested that hip-hop
opulence serves to elevate not just a single performer but an entire
underclass as well, but these white teenagers are already economically
secure. The lower class unknowingly consents to acceptance into the
cultural hegemony, seeing ‘one of your own! make it, in exchange for
approving an economic system that sees your benefits cut and subjects
you to regular drug testing. In contrast, Peshays pick up the faux
opulent, depressive hedonia, all-gold-everything ‘lifestyle’ of both
contemporary hip hop and 00's eshays without the structural
inequality that the aesthetic is reacting against.

Peshays are abhorrent because the world was at their feet the moment
they popped out at Westmead hospital. Despite being raised among
Avalon's artisanal bakeries and yoga studios, they insist they're a
product of their environment. Their sportswear aesthetic may be
similar, but Eshays and Peshays don't mix. Ultimately, the Peshays will
shave their mullets, ditch the TN’s and relocate from Cremorne
Maccas to offices in North Sydney. Their hands, smudged with old
stick-and-pokes, now on the wheels of production. I'm afraid the only
lessons they learned were hypermasculinity, consumption, and how to
chug a stubbie. Only one of these is of any use.

#000017 [Gavin Le Ber]

7/27/12 aavery1996 said:

I totally agree... google will take over the world
one day, one very happy day hopefully in the near
future
#000018 [Ekko Ahti]

Week

Sunday Thursday
hedonism’s latest binge what happens
it happened at the table happens haplessly
so ill-conceived as ways proliferate
but what a taste |
clogged and sick every spurt
what pleasure displacing volume
to me, so ill-conceived
every urge
Monday erasing time

different Friday
things will be
different today might be thin like this
for now
the same
things are mirrors stretch
swallowed the hours out
but still myself so
suddenly solute
nothing was
fulfilled today might crack open
some circumference
Tuesday
Saturday
empty bottles
tangled guts planned to keep going but
I’ve been good
insoluble the table again
who said I would
Wednesday growing again
almost a stream
I sense a bubble
and so again
done in the kitchen?
so ill-conceived
stomach rumbles
again
quit you say?
to me, so well
again
I’m already
again
you're not
already been three days
again

can't just pop

ah fuck it
whenever
so behave
Sunday
hedonism’s latest binge
it happened at
 FJELLANGER
WIDERG@E AS
INGENI@R- OG ARKITEKTFIRMA

Fotogrammetrisk konstruksjon. 1971

N.G.0.s héyder og koordinatsystem

exit process 001: DESIRE

#000019 [Scott Raunce]

SHOOTING. POOL
You’ve probably read my work. You do not know my name. I borrow someone else’s
name every time | write, or | write without a name at all. Freelance work is how I pay the
bills. I have written more copy and inane company blog posts than I can count. I once
controlled multiple Twitter accounts, taking on different brand handles and posting
content. Sometimes these got engagement; sometimes they flopped. I pitch under so many
different names that the threat of failure is no longer a deterrent.

While you may have read this portion of my work, tinged by the vulgar profit incentive,
I’m most proud of the writing I do on the side. I find famous or highly cited articles and
book chapters that are stuck behind paywalls or blocked by institutional access. I read
through secondary literature and get the general gist of the hidden piece. Then I write my
own version and release it online as a PDF. I receive no material compensation for this
work. I can point to a prominent one I’ve written if you do not believe me. Esquire keeps
its most famous article, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” behind lock and key. If you search
online for Gay Telese’s original to avoid becoming an Esquire subscriber, you'll be
swamped by copies of a different version: mine. If you were to compare Telese to my
version, you would find an almost identical style and similar facts and recounted events,
but the words would all be different.

My modest hobby has changed the way I read. Now, whenever I read an article or a piece
or a blurb, I see only form. Earlier today, I read a short article about something

geopolitical. I skimmed the title, checked the author, and then I measured the length of
each sentence and paragraph and noted the size of the scrollbar. I felt that the prose was
pretty standard and stayed in the lane of the publication’s house style—the real important
stuff. But I frowned when this author, usually thoughtful, started a paragraph with a
sentence that needed a trim. He used one clause too many. As I read, I ticked the boxes in

my head and checked off internalized rules. I forgot any story, central argument, or
surprising insight, and I retained only scaffolding and buttresses. All of this is invaluable
for my work.
I have made hundreds of my imitations. I have posed as biologists, genre and literary
fiction authors, multiple mathematicians, and Michel Foucault. Some days, I will come
across a sentence cited by a supposedly reputable source and find that it is one of mine.
These encounters make me smile and I am glad that my work has been recognized. It is
not the deception that thrills me. I am no Alan Sokal, giggling as he pokes holes in
poststructuralism. (Well, this is not completely true. I Aave been Alan Sokal and I wrote
my own version of “A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies” that has been cited
once or twice.) Instead, | think I like to be seen, even though the other—usually a careless
researcher or journalist—does not see me.

I do not really know why I’m writing this. Maybe I want someone to read this and know. I
am so alone. I only leave my apartment to get groceries and the only real people I interact
with are cashiers and the putrid masses who ride the bus. Years ago, my ID card fell into a
storm drain and I have not bothered to get a new one. At least this keeps me away from
liquor. I have friends online, but I only recognize them by their avatars or profile pictures
and, for most, | have never seen their faces or heard their voices. We usually correspond
by email, instant messengers, or text, but I have also talked with some over voice chats or

video calls. As the latter become more popular, I have started to think about my stutter and
shave more regularly. This is an improvement, since I typed almost a decade of my prior
communication in silence.

E have a hazy memory of one of my friends, a user named Jon832. We played video games
together, but this was more of an excuse to have a conversation. Jon832 told me that he
worked construction and was divorced after he married young. He believed in God, but I
do not, and we learned to avoid any religious talk. Sometimes he would drink or get high,
and his gameplay would falter, but our conversations got better. He had a softer voice than
you would think. The last thing he told me is that he had accidentally shot his foot and that
he would not be online for a while as he was in recovery. I never heard from my friend
ever again. This is not unusual. They simply disappear.

Occasionally, I find a once-abandoned username crop up somewhere else, on some

comment section or blog or article. Sometimes it’s the same person; other times, when the

username is more common, it’s just coincidence. (I have found many Jon832s.) Very
rarely, | come across prose or language that tickles the memory of another loose from the
 endless feed. It’s comforting to find these people again, other wayward ships sailing
aimlessly too. I bet they would like to know that someone remembers. I would like to
wave to the faceless from the deck of my own little dinghy.

1 do not want for much; perhaps I have no wants at all. Well, actually, this is wrong. I have
already said that I crave empty recognition, and, perhaps more importantly, I like to play
pool. My apartment is in a small Southwestern city the name of which you would not
know. The rent is cheap, and I saved my meager freelancing money to buy a pool table. I
play solo eightball every day. I used to play virtual pool on my laptop, but for these last
few years I have owned a real table. You would think that if you play pool every day, you
would get better at it. While this may be true of some things, such as, in my case, writing,
this is not the case for shooting pool. I think a good writer is one who can imitate others,
one who can completely disappear like a chameleon into the task at hand. This kind of
imitation is quite easy and the more you do it, the better you get.

But learning to play pool requires effort and conscious attempts at improvement. | muster
neither. Each day, when I begin—with what I have recently learned is termed a “break
shot’’—I do not know where the balls will go. Every time I sink a stripe or solid, the cue’s
ricochet surprises me. Each shot and new position is unexpected, and I have to work with
what I’ve got. I am accurate, but I can’t quite think a shot ahead. Still, I find pool very
relaxing—the cue smooth in my hand, the sound of a hit’s sharp clack, the way the blue
two ball glides over the felt. I fall into an easy trance and my mind is pleasantly blank.
When I shoot pool, alone in my apartment, I am totally empty. I forget that I have
forgotten my own name.

#000020 [Gavin Le Ber]

8/22/13 arun dhawan said:

I love You Google - I do not know Why - There is
something - Which I can not explain - I will
keep on Loving You up - to my last breath - but
one request - Please do not disclose my identity
to world - People will laugh at my madness.

3/20/14 I LOVE GOOGLE said:

i love google too. I have it on ali day on. My mum
prefers yahoo,but i will always love you google.
good job!
#000021 [{twitter.com/prayerclothes]

[I] am in need of a way—

this sure,
holy spirit
in it’s name
must be built,
brick by brick,
through our own
toil & the weeping
& gnashing of soft
teeth.

#000022 [Ekko Ahti]

Slouching Towards...

And under the saturnine trees, we —

Let’s forget that. Or at least forget

enough to laminate our skin,
and illustrate our sight in vibrant -

No. Let’s forgo the back and forth.

It’s tedious. Tonight, the wind
is ravenous for love, or at least
an aura of someone’s lucidity.
We hear it swarming through our trees, like -

Like a lamentation, let’s form

a tremulous space for ourselves
to spiral and foam in, away from all
these limpid markings on the skin
of falling daylight. Let’s siphon off
the last of life’s marvellous liquids.

And after eons spent

together in darkness, we'll have
forgotten the cravings of wind,
the garrulous rainfall,
the solemn arias of trees -

And having forgone our separate ways,

we'll slide along in a single skin
towards the fiery warmth of sight -

And under the saturnine trees, we'll...

#000023 [Pearl]

There’s a party tonight, and I’m going. It’s July first and it feels like my birthday
somehow. I’m pretty and brilliant and the world is so wide. I’m so stoned. I'm on a
dirty beach and the grey green blue brown water keeps going on forever.

“I wish,” I say, then stop.

Next to me, Amy turns her white head. “What?”

“I wish it could last forever,” I say.

Amy buries herself further in the sand. “Me too.”

I take a handful of sand and let it run through my fingers. I take my joint from Amy
and take a long weak drag. I cough.

“Forever and ever.”

“You're stoned,” Amy says.

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I am.” I’m stoned and I’m happy.

She pulls her knees into her chest and sits up. “We should go get ready. The sky is
going dark.”

“T love to watch the sky get dark,” I say.

She hugs me. “I know.”

I sit in the passenger seat, prop my feet on the dashboard and paint my toenails baby
pink as Amy drives. I sing along to the radio. She’s too stoned to drive but she’s
driving.

His house is a ruin of bricks and concrete. The house is trashed, beer bottles and
water balloons and cigarette butts planted in the lawn like flowers. Amy slams the
car door and I tumble out like a weed.

There’s maybe twenty of us here, a lot of teenagers. Some of them smile me, and I
smile back, lopsided. I hate my smile. I get drunk. My favorite drink is easy, pure
harsh vodka with salt and water. Feels like getting drunk with your head shoved
underwater. But I'll drink lemonade too, Pil drink beer.

There’s a song playing, soft and fuzzy behind the speakers and Amy and I dance to it.
Twisting, dipping like the ballet. Laughing until I feel like I’m going to choke. Drink
to dancing, drink to getting drunk, drink to being a good little girl. Dance to
drinking, dance to getting drunk.
 He isn’t dancing. He’s slumped against the wall, sitting like a paper chain angel. I
want him so badly it hurts. I sit down next to him with my legs crossed. I can feel the
sweetness of my sunburn. My hair is still wet and salty from swimming, my mouth
feels raw. I feel him next to me. I can almost hear his little calloused heart beating.

I reach up and I touch his hair. He’s silent, but softens and he rolls into me.
Touching, touching. My fat heart feels so at home in his bony shoulders. I let him
rest there. I guess I fall asleep because when I wake up it’s morning and he’s gone. I
lean over out the side and throw up. Baby pink and yellow.

Amy drives us home at the end of the night. She’s too drunk to drive but she’s
driving. We go to the beach and we go swimming. The sky is dark and we float on
our backs and watch it catch between shades of blue.

“Tm so unhappy,” | say.

“You’re drunk,” Amy says.

“Maybe,” I say. ?’'m drunk and I’m unhappy.

“You're so drunk.”

“Look at the sky,” I say.

“T know.”

The sky is blue. it stretches out forever. forever, forever. Maybe I do too. Like a
dream.

#000024 [Ouchie]

Odi et Amo Quare id faciam fortasse requiris.

Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

I hate and I love. Why I do this, perhaps you

ask. I know not, but I feel it happening and I
am tortured.

(Catullus 85, to Lesbia)

He’s tearing me apart. I feel myself bursting

at the seams. A stitch pops. I rend my clothes
in anguish because I don’t know what else to
do.

(Ouchie 107, to Ben Shapiro)

#000025 [twitter.com/prayerclothes]

HyYMnus VERSUS

Should all acquaintance How many iterations

with the holy notion of a thumb on glass
be forgot & never could wipe the sleep
brought to mind from eternity’s eye?

Where are the scrolls heading?

—an auld longing, sign
of every time after time, Where is the mirror today?
knowing ne’er which It has left the clear water

& [I]
way the real issue have seen tt afield
has given us the slip
& its heftin the palm
of some great kind
thru
crack’d bowl & looking upon it
& did ease me
ridge of eye.
& cool me
c& ceased the pain
of my useless
& pointless knowledge.

#000026 [Gavin Le Ber]

9/12/12 jesolopineta said:

dear google, I love women, but I don't feel sexual
attraction for you. it must be that you are a man
then.

for you I feel AWE, RESPECT and GRATITUDE.

ah, yes, GOOGLE EARTH, YOUR SISTER!!!! I just love

her, she is the most beautiful thing that ever

appeared on the internet. I will love her

forever, mate. I WILL LOVE HER FOREVER.

from venice, europe.

11/10/15 s/Karen Beaman said:

Dear Google please get so smart so I don't have to

think about doing anything because I know you
will always be there to back me up.
Love you fam.
K
#000027 {anon]

Leaching through the Lens

We communicate because we want to. This simple fact is easy to forget.
Communication is like beer which, in the words of Homer Simpson, is both the cause
and solution to all the world’s problems. Communication is also like love. If we break
down the affects of love, we get a combination of memeing and magnetism, desire and
fear.

Memeing: By your very symbolic exchange, you become like that with which you
communicate.

Magnetism: Communication occurs between parties that recognize a kind of likeness

and a kind of difference and are thereby attracted to one another. There is a seeking of
bringing structural difference into equilibrium via symbolic exchange (memeing).

Desire: There’s something beyond the simple magnetism, something more complex,
which drives us. Maybe desire is a bit like magnetism plus network effects. Or maybe
we have to leave reductive explanations behind and just take it at face-value. Why
must we experience that simulacrum of magnetism “as desire”? This is an open
question. I can only say that it is self-evident that desire is its own unique entity and a
feature of love. Thus, while I can affirm that we communicate “because we desire to,” I
also can admit that I’m not sure what that simple sentence means.

Fear: Fear is the apparent concomitant of desire. It is the fear of the frustration of love.
Again, any attempted reductionism only gets us so far. The content of fear takes on a
life of its own, which may or may not be reducible to the other forces.

Love is the elevation of the mysterious/emotional features of an inherently mysterious

process: the what, how, and why of communication. On the one hand, it’s easy to
forget that there is a piece of attraction that is purely magnetic and memetic, that is
pre-biological, that is pre-desirous. On the other hand, it is easy to forget that we
communicate because we desire to. This is not to take something away from love, but
to highlight the “loving” nature of all communication. We experience symbolic
exchange as far more than simple inputs and outputs. The rich/textured nature of
experience should not be ignored. It is precisely the content of life.
So communication is symbolic exchange, a symbol being an abstraction plus other
stuff. The kernel of the symbol is the abstraction. Whatever is abstracted is reduced to
something containing less information, but it is a useful reduction. It’s a mapping. For
example, a map of the USA is generally an abstraction of our current sociopolitical
system layered onto an abstraction of the country’s geography. The American flag is
another kind of symbol containing another kind of abstraction.

But a symbol is not just an abstraction. It comes with other stuff too. It is an
abstraction incarnate. This is part of what people mean when they say “the medium is
the message.” The medium of the symbol is just as necessary to account for as the
explicit/formal role of the abstraction itself. The “accidental” medium of the
abstraction itself pulses with a host of potential meanings. When these potential
meanings are not recognized as such, they are sometimes called noise. But then when
the noise itself starts interfacing with other pieces of the system in a way we can
construe as causal or somehow significant, we shift our model to attempt to account
for the newly recognized signal. Even when not consciously recognized as such, the
signal lurks in the noise, just as the noise lurks in the signal.

Everything evolves. An organism has potentials that only emerge after other mutations
and environmental forces bring them to the fore. Even to the point of developing
complex mechanisms ex nihilo, as it were. This is noise-becoming-function. Just as
vestigial organs are like functions-becoming-noise. This process creates a kind of
continuum between what is perceived as necessary and what is perceived as accidental
in the symbol.

Sense is protean. Symbols are never quite amenable to any one form of reductionism:
biological, physical, psychological, or otherwise. Sense-making precedes all these. In
the words of Levinas, the caress of love speaks prior to language. The potential
abstractions implied by the symbol are legion.

Structuralists like Marcel Mauss and Levi-Strauss observed that all social interactions
could be understood in terms of communication. Marriage, economic transactions,
gift-giving, and of course natural language can all be interpreted as symbolic exchange.
But today, what was only implicit to earlier modes of social organization has become
explicit. Data structures, algorithms, and network topologies hide their existential
significance in plain sight.
The epithet “information technology” is misleading. Symbolic exchange contains
information, not the other way around. The internet is for communication, not the
other way around.
Undeniably, so-called information technologies have not lived up to expectations. But
few seem to understand the nature of the problem, or that there is even something to
be understood. Often, the internet is talked about in terms of factors external to the
system. Some of these externalities, like the socioeconomic context and the pernicious
role of advertisers, are eminently relevant. Others, like the perceived critical thinking
capacity of the population, are less so. But the internet, as a system of nested symbolic
systems, already implicates enough ambiguities that it would be worthwhile to
consider these mysteries on their own terms before venturing further afield into, e.g.,
corporate greed or Russian hackers.

Insofar as information technologies attempt to reduce a symbol to an abstraction, there

is a proportional reduction in the human possibilities of such communication.

To be human is to create and play and love and think. It is the host of latent
possibilities in the symbol that give it content, depth, texture, worth, what-have-you.
An abstraction without content is worthless to a human. It’s food without flavor or sex
without love. On all levels, an impoverished symbolic system reduces our ability to
satisfy these basic existential needs/directives. It was a great breakthrough for
structuralists to observe that a gift or a kiss is a kind of symbolic exchange. But these
symbols and systems of symbols constitute so much more than just positions in a
structure. Along these lines, the primary insight of post-structuralism was that
symbols are not just negatively defined, but are positively pulsing with possible
significances. A gift of bread can be abstracted into its “position” within a system of
gift-giving, but it can also be eaten/savored, can also grow mold, can also be packed for
lunch; it is constantly breaking out of any finitely-defined boundaries. A Facebook like,
by contrast, represents a kind of mutilation; a gesture of approval denuded of any
creative externalities.

There is an implicit justification for such impoverished systems, which resembles a

kind of hardline descriptivism in linguistics. Namely, the implication that these
systems are somehow equivalent. If a hug is just the sum of its fungible abstractions,
then a social network can give you a hug. Even if this were true, which it is not, it
would be highly inefficient, like saying there’s nothing one left turn can do that three
right turns can’t.

A symbolic system like Facebook takes up existential space and chokes out other
possible modes of social organization and satisfaction. As aggregators of human
communication, they tend toward natural monopolies. Facebook’s image compression
algorithm determines the resolution at which your visual memories are stored. Its
sorting algorithm determines which of them you see. In all cases, so much is lost!
From the dizzying complexity of life, both the complexities of social reality and those
of our inner emotional existences, these systems struggle to admit more than the
grossest particles through its narrow aperture. A social media platform struggles with
such perceptual experiences as:
1. Touching: caressing, cuddling, huddling.
2. Smelling. Teaching one how to smell. One experiences a kind of smell from a
thick description of one, one can be taught to smell, by a word like silage, or a
mindful breath of mountain air, or the smell of a stranger.
3. Hearing. All the watery noises of a Tarkovsky film. The nightmarish droning of
David Lynch’s bugs.
4. Seeing. Social media is manifestly first and foremost about seeing, but so are
many other media: painting, sculpture, film, hikes. When hiking, one sees
great things, but when surfing Facebook, one only sees what one already
expected to find: a spectacle. When a Facebooker now hikes, she sees through
the lens of the algorithms, her eye is forced to approximate the terrible
compression algorithm, and that RGBist simulacrum of the visible spectrum,
as a fitting caption percolates in her mind. Thus, the creative possibilities of
sight are unceremoniously hacked out.

We ourselves become impoverished souls, not only within, but via the network. If an
AI determines rank, then we make our sentences congruent with the Al’s reading level.
If we post on Facebook or Instagram, we take our pictures in congruence with
Facebook’s compressions algorithms. Per the memeing/magnetic nature of
communication, the abyss inevitably stares back into us. We ourselves become like
these impoverished symbols. SAD.

The line between volition and coercion, as with all good systems of control, is no
longer relevant. The old “tree in a forest” problem again rears its head. If you don’t
post a picture of what you ate, did you really eat it, do you even exist? Just as buying a
commodity is the prosocial act of capitalism par excellence, documented consumerism
has become the prosocial practice of the information era. Insofar as the mode of social
organization does not allow for an experience to be expressed or savored, that
experience becomes insignificant. As G.S. Trow prophesied: like this or die.

The essence of internet technology is gustation and summary. That is, the proliferation
of myriad, abstracted desires.
If we were to map this affective milieu onto a Spinozist model, it would at first seem
that desire would predominate. The impoverishment of these desires, however, points
to the predominance of a kind of stupefaction: Spinozist pain or Hindu famas.
 Consider the cult of critical acclaim surrounding the internet’s most obviously
stupefying technologies: its digital streaming services. As Netflix struggles to scale to
meet the demand of hundreds of millions of cheap eyes, even that fig leaf of aesthetic
redemption has been stripped away. Style over substance, quantity over either.

Alongside the affective and the aesthetic, social media struggles with time. This goes
back to my claim that it is the “noise” within a symbol-its apparently extraneous
content-that provides the substrate for change or evolution, for developing into
something new. The reduction of symbolic exchange to mere abstractions produces a
largely static (synchronic) social structure, which has no patience for its nodes (us
humans) to steal away, or remember, or gestate, or give birth.

Perhaps the signposts in one’s emotional life flash into and out of immediate
experience in a relatively short period of time. Traumas and lessons alike. Maybe
understanding a person is not a matter of summary, but of discovering and
appreciating the unsaid, of mining those concealed, catalyzing experiences that turned
a person into a wreck or an enemy or a stranger or a true love. But social media
platforms simply have no time for such concerns. They are ahistorical: the existential
role of both memories and dreams (as matters of emotional interiority) become
increasingly irrelevant.
r

We already know that Facebook’s algorithms have a kind of sinister phenomenological

awareness, €.g., you are worth more to Facebook supine than erect. In place of such a
depressing affect logic, and against any calls for merely elevating joyful affects, we
need technologies that explicitly encourage a balanced affective or somatic mode. As
symbols are the forms of life, the richness of life that proceeds from the intermingling
of joy, pain, and desire should be expressible via the symbolic system. Rather than
merely elevating heart rates and creating a kind of paralysis, social networks should
encourage calmness, hope, sympathy, conviviality, etc.

With the correct existential tools, we have a better foundation to judge and intervene
in the externalities of the current system: the determining roles played by hardware,
data structures, governance structures, political-economic exigencies, etc. Without
such a foundation, we lack the language to even discuss the ills of the current
ecosystem.

The best education for building a good social network can only be the practice of
building a good social network. The best design principles for a good social network
can only be to ask, with clear eyes and heart, what a good social network would look
like. Most importantly, always, always remember the golden rule: we communicate
because we want to.
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#000028 [anon]

Sonnet of the Simurgh

I watched you; thirty birds were watching me;

Wherein we saw what you would have me be:
Just such a piece of human that you are,
Who, ever since I glimpsed you from afar,
Has seemed to harry me like providence,
Engulfing and reflecting all my sense
Of selfhood, every feather’s daft pretence
To call itself my own. But that’s alright,
Because in truth the plumage suits you quite
As weil, that when you looked, no bird could glean
Which of us was the séer and the seen,
The seeker and the sought - I’d have it such.
Yd have you have me make of me so much!
Amid the flocking multitude - one touch.

#000029 [anon]

I have this unremarkable memory from several years ago. On a bright

scorching day in Brooklyn, | exited the cinema after watching The Square, a
Swedish film about which I remember very little. | approached a food truck
and ordered two tacos.

The end. Unremarkable.

Every time | have sex, this memory plays through my head. It doesn’t turn
me on. It doesn’t dominate my sexual consciousness. Yet every time, no
matter how enveloped | am in the act, my recollection of this scene pops
into my mind and lingers for a few seconds. This happened for the first time
about two years ago. I thought of it as random and moved on. The next time
I was having sex, I remembered that I had recalled the scene previously, so

there the memory was again. And the next time (and so on and so forth) to
the point that now, like muscle memory, my brain reminds me, asif it is
intrinsically tied to the act.
#000030 IN. Gaspard] [about the author:]
“One cannot be liberated from him without fleeing from all revelations,
visions, and supernatural communications. God is rightly angered with
anyone who admits them, for he sees the rashness of exposing oneself to this
danger, presumption, curiosity, and pride, to the root and foundation of
vainglory, to contempt for the things of God. God becomes so angry with
these individuals that he purposely allows them to go astray, experience
delusion, suffer spiritual darkness, and abandon the established ways of life,
by delivering themselves over to their vanities and fancites.”

———St. John of the X; Mystical Doctor of the Church

Divine spelling of the god name written as P F S; also known by the name “FBI
GANG INTELLIGENCE”; aka “FANJEERA”; aka “OL’ SARUM”: aka “THE
RIDE”; the creator agency who “LAYS PIPE” through me; aka The Endower;
can’t control “MY GIFT”; & so I’m sentenced to be hung until death; This
corresponds to the tribe of ISSACHAR; aka the so-called Mexicans: which is
symbolized by the donkey; which is ,

“a STURDY DONKEY, resting between two saddle packs; when he sees how
good the countryside is and how pleasant the land: he WILL Bend his Shoulder
to the Load and submit himselfto HARD LABOR”.

Needless to say after seeing the mural at the national palace in D.F. during spring
break ‘18 [!) i spent the next few weeks in a near constant state of elation as i
began drawing up rough drafts of a massive race war fresco to be displayed in the
central rotunda of the U.S. Capitol 1; eventually dropping out of school so that i
could devote more time to this project; serialized in the KINGS OF ALGERIA
newsletter 31; & when I shared these plans along with my proposal for a national
draft lottery to select US citizens for compulsory service in the film industry '*!i
was told to take a few days off work & I never came back after that;

EDITOR'S NOTE: figure omitted — EDITOR'S NOTE: figure omitted -

newspaper headline, ‘BORDER ‘Ecstasy of Saint Teresa’ (oil on panel,
INDUSTRIAL ASSOCIATION RESPONDS TO c. 1609-1651), Gerard Seghers
HUNT INSTITUTE SANTA TERESA STUDY’

SANTA TERESA* SANTA TERESA [devotion of ecstacy]

*fthe Imperial Klonvokation caught
wind of the report we'd been
working on & gota hit piece published
in some dogshit Las Cruces newspaper|

& later that day when i was at the currency exchange i couldn’t even count my
change without speaking my thoughts out loud so thatI could hear them & think
them after I had spoken them; & it was as if my mind had been turned inside out
& by the evening i was feeling increasingly agitated so I decided to walk to my
moms apartment;& i was so boring & annoying to talk to that she had to make up
some excuse about having to get up early for work the next morning & she went
to bed & left me alone on the porch; & i went inside & watched COPS for a little
while & then I decided to watch Koyanisqaatsi; which i have on DVD except it’s
a region 2 disc so i had to watch it on a streaming service called tubi: & there
were frequent & ill-placed commercial breaks that ruined the film for me; & I
ended up in a so-called “catatonic” state (George Orwell—-Homage to
Catalonia), aka “The Twelfth Step”; aka an Intellectual Vision that granted me
direct access to the so-called “Godhead”; & simultaneously i received an interior
locution that spoke the words “Father [aka Mother], why have you forsaken
me?”;
 & | saw my body supine & cross-eyed & all the channels of my flesh as they got
calcified with pneumatic AIDS-positive filament; & i recognized mysclf as Jesus
Christ; aka the Most Charismatic Showman of All Time; & if i was el santo nifio
in colonia anapra’s pastorela (PASTORELA starring Joaquin Cosio) for three (3)
years in a row even thoughI even was a C-section “birth”; & if Ruben Garcia
shook hands with Mother Teresa in 1976 is! & then forty (40) years later we were
at a barbecue at ascarate park [! & i talked to him about centering prayer & he
told me that 1 should become a standup comedian; then why aren’t I receiving my
MacArthur genius grant aka “disability check” on the Ist of every month when I
currently owe thousands of dollars to PACER.gov who are charging me 10 cents
a page for downloading federal court records strictly for my own recreational
use; & when I’ve spent at least three months each year for the past four years
suffering & in agony; “florid” disgusting scaphism garden [the deep,
androgynous one:weird; aka divinely BORING]; and I’ve visited the Gethsemane
garden center on clark street in Chicago, IL with my grandmother & she taught
me how to pronounce it correctly; and I’ve cast myself out of it every time.

“Thus, the spiritual master should try to see to it that his disciples are not
detained by the desire to pay heed to supernatural apprehensions (which
are no more than small particles of spirit and the only thing the disciples
will be left with) , and he should turn them away from all visions and
locutions and teach them to remain in freedom and the darkness of faith,
in which liberty and abundance of spirit are received{...]”

[1] [redacted}

[2] [redacted]

{3] [redacted]

1 [MUAMMAR AL-QADDAFI: “Sport is either private, like the praver which

one performs alone inside a closed room, or public, performed collectively in
open places, like the prayer which is practised corporately in places of worship.
The first type of sport concerns the individuals them- selves, while the second
type ts of concern to all people. It must be practised by ail and should not be left
to anyone else to prac- tise on their behalf. It is unreasonable for crowds to enter
places of worship just to view a person or a group of people praying without
taking part. It is equally unreasonable for crowds to en- ter playgrounds and
arenas to watch a player of a team without participating themselves. ”}
[5] {redacted}

#000031 [Peyton Ellis]

#000032 [Kamara]

7.
Unmasked fucking raw
not paying my taxes
driving uninsured
how did Aleister Crowley come up with his name again?

#000033 [anon]
Face-to-face interactions will be reserved for special, intimate, precious, sacramentalized events.
Flesh encounters will be rare and thrilling. In the future each of us will be linked in thrilling
cyberexchanges with many others whom we may never meet in person and who do not speak our
phonetic literal language. Most of our important creations will take place in ScreenLand. Taking
off
our cyberwear to confront another with naked eyeballs will be a precious personal appearance
.
And the quality of our "personal appearances" will be raised to a level of mythic drama.

- Timothy Leary, Chaos & CyberCulture, How I Became an Amphibian (1994)

#000034 [dead rooster] rs

>>24/11/2020 - ff ~ 7
Poopéd this fucker out after a long long long long long long long night of
amphetaminic satursuperstimulation stimzzzzzz track inspired by the beautifu
l
gorgeous things I see sat behind my panopticon/culture & discourse simulac
rum
machine 14 hours a day every single fucking day which would FUCKING RULEE
EE
if mark zuckerberg didn't own like half of the fucking internet at this point shoutou
t to
the city if 1 could permanently uninstall every single one of your DAWs
I'd jump at
that opportunity, Do drugs you fucking washouts I mean cool drugs like acid
meth
DPH etc (simultaneously) not weed which is lame and gay because it's
legal. Shoutout
to my bleeding eyes for putting up with atrocious amounts of unfiltered blue. light
&
shoutout to the demiurge for making this shitty material realm possible keep
it
hyperreal big man "

#000035 [anon]

Spanky stepped out into the sunshine and looked around and decided to go
back to bed. It was early in the morning and cold out. When he realized there
wasn't anything to do outside in the sun/cold he decided to go back to bed. He
decided to go back to bed at exactly the same moment that he realized there
wasn't anything to do outside, and when he went back to bed he had dreams
about things that made him sweat in his sleep. He was drenched in sweat by
noon. A woman danced for him and took off her top. Her face was hidden
behind a veil. He said “take off the veil. | want to see you smile." She took off the
veil and smiled at him and he was so happy. Then he looked down to her
nipples which were small and hard.

‘I'm living the dream" he thought in his sleep. When he looked back to her face
it looked quite different, like Rush Limbaugh's. "This is a common thing to
happen to unmarried men of my age” he told himself. .

He sweated some more and then he woke up. When he went outside the sun
was starting to set.
 On The Bus

#000036 [BIG DOG] Peopie give me looks on the bus. People cough
near me. They don’t sit next to me.

At Work

As | dweil on this moment | think: | made a foo! of

myself. | wonder if my co-workers will remark on it
once I'm gone. | can hardly function in society.

Cycling

He must think I’m such a freak. | hope he doesn't

hate me. Probably best to avoid any eye contact —
Just look at the ground to avoid looking foolish.

The End

This always happens. All of them end badly. This

one like all the others was dysfunctional. | should
never be in romantic relationships, they always fail.

Borys Texted Me

Borys texted me earlier today. |t said; “think we

should talk or something”. This freaked me the fuck
out!

Sentiment

This sentiment resonated with me as Borys has

expressed such feelings before. | remember about a
month ago whilst ! was in Birmingham with a close
friend (Tom). Borys remarked “I could sense that you
were far away.” Upon my return he said “his heart
could sense my being closer.” At the time | felt this
was corny (but admittedly a little cute), now it's
perhaps the most poignant expression of love | can
imagine.

i can't sleep

| can’t sleep. I've smoked too much. Talked to Borys

for 2 hours. | really miss him. Keep rubbing my eyes
lol.

Sometimes | imagine he’s in bed with me. We have

conversations.

Emoji

i'm an emoji, not an essay. | exist in the subliminal,

grey areas of human interaction. | don’t want details
or specificity. | don’t want analysis or investigation.
#000037 [LacanianHedgehog}

IL N’Y A PAS DE RAPPORT SEXUEL

There is no sexual relationship.
Our current conditions seem to be governed by an apparent contradiction:
sex has never been so talked about, so extolled, so encouraged; and yet we're
having less of it than ever before! At every turn we’re exhorted to try new
things, discover new sensations, open ourselves up to new possibilities; and
yet our culture has never been so paranoid, so judgemental, so scared of the
act itself. Stories of disaster dates, tearful accusations and the court of public
opinion are now a fixture of our culture, to the extent that litigation now
seems to have replaced coaching in the realm of love.
The more the subject as ego is instructed to ‘just do it’, the more it closes
itself off.

Excursion: Sticklebacks
In his Seminar, Lacan mentions a then recent discovery by biologists
concerning the mating habits of Sticklebacks. Biologists, seeking to
understand what triggered the mating behaviour of the male and female
sticklebacks had noticed that the male’s mating dance was initiated by the
appearance of a red diamond on the female’s back — signalling her fertility
The scientists devised a test. Removing the female, they instead placed a
playing card with a red diamond in front of the male stickleback. The male
stickleback behaved identically in response to the simulacrum as he had to
the ‘real thing’, and proceeded to dance.
Returning to the human kingdom, Lacan theorises that humans - biological
beings that we are - are programmed with exactly the same mechanism,
with a subtle difference. Language puts man at an uneasy distance from
nature — things cannot be taken at face value, they appear to us not as brute
facts, but given through language: changeable, doubtable, open to question.
The same mechanism for sexual attraction exists in man, but it is upset by
language, such that there is no one thing that could be said to trigger sexual
desire for all men and women in all places and times. But triggered it is, by
the subject’s own fantasy — their specific response to their loss of being
through language.
For Lacanians, the subject comes into being through a process of alienation.
The child at birth exists in a state of almost immediate being — they do not
yet distinguish themselves from their surroundings, all is a whirl of sensory
experience. Language is the first experience the child has of being alienated
from this world. No one chooses the language that they must speak, and
once in language, nothing is ever fully immediate ever again.

' https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/ 10.1177/2378023121996854

* The Seminar of Jacque Lacan, Book I, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller (1991)
 The second alienation comes through the child separating from the primary
caregiver through weaning (in the West today, this is still usually the
biological mother). In separating from the breast, the child is confronted
with its first physical alienation. It (the child) is not the breast. The breast is
an Other, an unknown element that has its own logic - one that cannot be
controlled by the child.

If all goes well, the child will pass through this process and become a normal
neurotic subject, emerging into subjectivity vaguely dissatisfied and with a
sense that he has somehow been cheated/robbed of something. The subject
is ‘barred’: constituted by this fundamental lack. Most neurotics will spend
the rest of their lives trying to get back this missing ‘something’.
This lack is absolutely fundamental to human sexuality. Stand ins for the
‘objet petit a’ — the lost object of desire ~ come to arouse the subject’s desire:
they offer a promise of the missing wholeness that he is after.

Back to the sticklebacks: what does any of this have to do with sex? For the
stickleback, the red diamond was the ‘objet petit a’ that triggered their
desire. For man, red diamonds are everywhere. It could be a certain look
that triggers the desire, the colour of her hair, the timbre of her voice, the
way he looks when he’s concentrating, or the fact that he reminds you just
enough of your father without it being uncomtortably obvious.

But the objet petit a doesn’t exist. It’s a fantasy, a stand in; a placeholder you
carry with you to say ‘something’s missing’. And all of these signs, these
stand-ins, that arouse your desire are never quite it.
Most neurotics are, in some sense, looking for their objet petit a. One of the
most common ways to do this is through finding a (sexual) partner. More
specifically, for urban Americans and Europeans, it increasingly comes to
mean fucking your way through a fairly large number of people (or at least,
being expected to) in order to find it.

This isn’t always quite as fun, sexy and alluring as it might at first seem, and
rather a lot of cultural and industrial encouragement and cajoling has been
put into making sure people keep on in this way.

The problem is that as people’s material and social conditions continue to

worsen (the long decline in living standards from 1970's onwards)*, people
cling more and more desperately to their fantasies, and the whole thing
begins to become increasingly overshadowed with a vague feeling of
desperation. Fisher was an astute observer of the general depressive mood
that underlies much of the new millennia’s hedonism?

* Lacan referred to this ‘something’ as the ‘objet petit a’ — the small object of desire. It is not a real
object, but a virtual one (produced through the effect of alienation). As it has no material reality,
neurotics are condemned to endlessly search for a something that does not exist.
* https://www.ft.com/content/cf2db8a2-d408-1 1e2-8689-00144feab7de
° https://www.electronicbeats.net/ started-from-the-bottom-mark-fisher-on-drakes-nothing-was-
the-same/
Into this psycho-sexual wasteland we throw men and women desperate to
salve the increasing degradations of work, and a decaying social structure.

‘There Is No Sexual Relationship’

We've established that neurotics spend their life trying to get back the objet
petit a— the ‘something’ they feel they have lost. To sketch an extremely
simplified schema, there are two main ways to do this:

— Obsessional Neurotics (generally speaking, men): possess the object

petit a— use it to fill in the gap in oneself
— Hysterical Neurotics (generally speaking, women): become the
objet petit a — use it to provoke the desire of the other®

This might on the surtace of it suggest a happy fit: the obsessive seeks to
reduce someone to the object cause of his desire, and use them to fill his lack.
The hysteric seeks to become the object cause of desire and use it to provoke
the desire of the other. Surely a yin/yang situation — the harmonious
interrelation of opposites?
Unfortunately not. Lacan’s dictum of ‘there is no sexual relationship’ stands
for precisely the failure of this double schema to happily work itself out.
Certainly it may work to start the relationship, but it also is what ensures it
will never be successful’.

The reason for this is twofold. For the obsessive, the woman is always too
much — she is always ultimately in excess of this ‘thing’ that she possesses:
‘nothing is more tragic than the fetishist who wants a show, but has to make
do with the whole woman’. He cannot forever relate to her only as that
which he desires, and the minute he takes account of her ‘moreness’, his
desire for her risks collapsing.
For the hysteric, she seeks to arouse or prolong the desire of the other, not to
satisfy it. This requires that the other always be kept at a minimal distance,
always wanting, but not getting. If the other does in fact enjoy off of her, it
triggers a revulsion/question: ‘is that all J really am to you?’. The hysteric
refuses to be tied down to any determinate configuration of the objet petit a.
She must remain an open question.

In light of the above, it begins to become apparent how we have gotten to

such a fraught relationship between the sexes today. Entreated more than
ever before to hook-up, to ‘not take things seriously’ and to ‘live life to the
full [sic: consume experiences/people]’, this failure of the sexual
relationship has potentially disastrous consequences. When combined with
the contract-ification of everyday life under neoliberalism, is it amy wonder
that a significant portion of ‘MeToo’ adjacent claims and cancellations are

6 For a detailed exposition of this dynamic, see Bruce Fink: A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian
Psychoanalysis and Technique, Chapter 8.
* Successful in the ‘pagan’ sense: a harmonious interrelation free from conflict or struggle.
 ultimately about unsatisfactory dates: men who reduc
ed a woman to an
object of their desire, who failed to play the game with
sufficient
sophistication; and women who wanted to be desire
d, but not-Like tha
Against this increasingly exhausted cultural backd
rop, what could be done
to turn things around?
There is something missing from all current cultur
al accounts of dating and
the relationship between the sexes: love.

There’s a lot of confusion around love and what

it is, and as it’s discussed
less and less in favour of sex and lawsuits, it almos
t vanishes to the back of
the cultural unconscious. Despite what Anglo-Saxo
n philosophy and pop
songs would have you believe, ‘Love is not a feeling’§
So what is it then? To put it in a Lacanian vernacular:
love is whatever is left
over after you’ve had sex:

‘...4n se2; each individual is to a large extent on thetr

own... Naturaily, the
others body has to be mediated, but at the end of the
day, the pleasure will be
always your pleasure. Sex separates, doesn't unite. The fact you
ied hoccerie oe peeseie
are naked
t the. Has coors gape we
hit ff Cd0CHS ASU ESE lie Outer is
fee arpa: seth get wd nee
MLfe cage, ene CHa Sener i epr CICNMLULLUN,

What is real ts that pleasure takes you a long way away,

very far from the
other. What ts real is narcissistic, what binds is emagin
ary...’9
There is no sexual relationship. At its core, sex remai
ns always
‘masturbation with an other’1°

‘In love, the indtvidual goes beyond himself, beyond the narciss
istic... In
love... the mediation of the other is enough in itself. Such ts the
nature of the
amorous encounter: you go to take on the other, to make him or
her exist
with you, as he or she is,’ 13

Love stands for, not a feeling, but a project: a desire to see the
world not just
from your own perspective, but trom that of an (single
, mortal, lacking)
other. A decision that someone is worth more than the passing pleasure they
elicit. Badiou’s conception of love here is constructivist — there is no such
thing as a soulmate — the truth of love is in its construction. You could begin
it today; all you have to do is stop chasing illusory pleasure and its correlate,
the myth of ‘the one’.

There is no sexual relationship — but there can be a love

relationship.

ee
* Attributed to Wittgenstein.
® Alain Badiou, In Pratse of Love, p.18
10 Attributed to Zizek.
4 Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love, p.19
#000038 [MrDolezal] GRADUATION

My work is an exploration of geometric shapes inspired by

stone texture that presents the issues in Taiwan and it uses led lights
As a human, | believe that people have their own unique personality traits that set them apart from
a piece examining our culture and how we
strive to amplify a specific narrative
which would allow users to share their concert experiences by posting photos
This work was inspired by the quote from Albert Einstein

Through exploring various media,

Lie of Omission was painted in May of 2014 as part
of the shadow box presenting news articles of oil spills and “who's to blame” for intoxicating our world’s natural beauty.
Naturally occurring objects are inherently beautiful
hung on the shoulders, and aligned in asymmetrical ways on the body. My geometric forms and shapes represent gems or
Sartre’s classic, Being and Nothingness,
while resisting the postured expectations of antiquated engenderment.

Studies in Frame considers intuitive connectivity and abstraction.

Upon walking into the gallery, the viewer approaches the end of the scroll. The first sixteen feet
is more so about recording my own history as a queer transman
to highlight my experiences of growing
the particular material identity of kimchi.
The idea behind this project was to bridge the gap between digital and physical world.

Mobile photography is a growing part of

This piece, an exploration of complex processes
aims to honor and give space to everyone's authentic self.
Our bodies are strange vessels.

Through the exploration of selfhood

and personal experience, my art focuses on flaws within
a view of campus. In this work, | deconstruct some buildings on campus
and beauty supplies at a local Goodwill .

Through process, material, and design, my work

My work often takes me to abandoned buildings and spaces to explore the imprint left behind by
the complexity of feeling, the mystery of thought, and
in this case a vibrator motor

Throughout my life | have often felt trapped and held back by my own choices and myself.

it is stil very much a work in progress. As / move on from my undergraduate college education, I’m
readying myself to set sail in an exciting yet blurry direction.

Graduation, 2016, unaltered fragments from blurbs written by graduating

art majors in the University of Oregon’s undergraduate class of 2014, to
accompany their thesis works in the school’s spring show.

ttps://art.uoregon edu/sites/art2_ uoregon eduftiies/images/gallerviexh

ibitions/spring-storm cataiog-sm.pdf
aT eS OPEN from JULY 30 to AUGUST 20 2021
OR ee