1450 lines
81 KiB
Plaintext
1450 lines
81 KiB
Plaintext
\qix\1999.sty
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\pippin\cloud\bits.not
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\pippin\cloud\false.txt
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\pippin\cloud\conshus.not
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\pippin\cloud\longevit.not
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\pippin\cloud\chat.not
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\pippin\cloud\amnesia.ide
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\pippin\cloud\roaches.ide
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\pippin\cloud\babel.ide
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\pippin\cloud\rain.rav
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\pippin\cloud\dark.poe
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\pippin\cloud\grey.poe
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\pippin\cloud\madness.poe
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\pippin\cloud\life.poe
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\pippin\cloud\cliff.poe
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\pippin\cloud\rok.poe
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\pippin\poems\sun.poe
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\pippin\poems\pig.poe
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\qix\essay86.txt
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\qix\bent.rav
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\qix\1999.sty
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1999 - a short story [written 4 August '91]
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In Brisbane the nineties were ending on a rainy Friday night. Wanting to
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spend the final countdown in the company of strangers, Robin began her search
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for the new cafe when she saw there was less than an hour to go.
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Cafe Cafe was located in an arcade in the old Queen Street mall. Robin had
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heard it was a safe haven for upmarket bohemians, a place to hide from the
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street and the city air. Standing outside, looking in through the plate-glass,
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she saw a large space, furnished with a jumble of tables and chairs, bean bags
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and slouch couches. It looked like a good place to sit out the rest of the
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decade.
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On the other side of the doors the air was dry and still, and the cafe
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turned out to be even more crowded than it had appeared. Robin didn't want to
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join any of the groups at ground level, and the only unoccupied chairs seemed
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to be in a series of open booths along one wall. Each booth contained two
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chairs and a table, isolated from its neighbours by partitions festooned with
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paisley fabric. As she looked around newcomers took two of the booths: all
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that was left now was a vacant booth close to the doorway. And an empty chair
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opposite a handsome young Sikh, who was drinking something through a straw. So
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she hurried for the self-serve queue.
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On offer were sweets, pizza, fruit, rice, an odd mixture of things. Ahead of
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her a Chinese couple were helping themselves to chocolate cake. Vegetarian
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pizza seemed cheap, so she picked up four slices. She got the checkout kid -
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a pudgy green-uniformed teenager, whose lapel pin said:
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"My name is BHAJAN - Welcome to CAFE CAFE"
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- to get her some orange juice as well.
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Carrying her tray towards the booths she saw the Chinese couple setting up
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shop opposite the Sikh. Damn! He seemed to know them; he was smiling, and they
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were laughing as they tried to squeeze onto the seat opposite him. Looks like
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it's the empty booth for me.
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Robin placed the tray on the table and saw someone had left a magazine on
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one chair. A cheap fantasy mag called "Hot Ducks" she'd seen on sale in
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newsagents. INTERNATIONAL ISSUE! proclaimed the cover. She picked it up and,
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before she dropped it to the floor, took a last look at the cover. Blond guy,
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intense stare, wearing shredded lederhosen, lifting suspender from one
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shoulder. Too Aryan for me anyway. She let him go.
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The pizza was still too hot for her liking, so she settled down and waited,
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scanning the cafe from the inside now. TVs hung from the ceiling, live
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coverage from someplace in New Zealand that had already entered the year 2000,
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sound turned off. Background music was new-millennium house. Different
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subcultures in groups on the floor: gothics, flower people, Krsna devotees.
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Like tribespeople camped around fires. Seated at tables: four African guys in
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suits, maybe in town for the conference on Afro-Australian relations, "Into
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the 21st Century". A guy chuckling to himself, wired up with videogoggles and
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earphones, probably watching a pocket video. Some retro yuppies in the far
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corner.
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There was a sudden cold draft. Looking away from the Sikh and his Chinese
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friends, Robin saw the doors swinging shut. Someone had come in. She
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discreetly tracked the stranger across to the counter: loping walk, jeans and
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leather jacket, lots of studs, shaved head but wearing a weird woven skullcap
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... no, not a skullcap: tattooed scales, covering every visible centimetre of
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skin. The stranger was a DinoPunk.
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As Bhajan took the order, the Dino whirled, like a kid. Robin saw it was a
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male; even his face tattooed. Despite myself I am disapproving and, I guess,
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contemptuous. Slightly contemptutous. Never talked to a Dino, so I can't
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judge; only saw them on TV. Dino rock group, Hazchem. European documentary.
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But the attitude: The dinosaurs had the right idea! We're headed for
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extinction anyway, so let's make sure that WE are the last generation! You
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don't want to miss the END OF THE WORLD, do you man? Nihilism. Doesn't help
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anything.
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Once Bhajan handed him his drink, the Dino turned his back on the counter
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and stalked across the cafe straight for Robin's booth, stepping and leaping
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over the floor people. Oh no! Not here! But he was only headed for the door,
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back out into the rain. Outside, he stopped to open his incongruously floral
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umbrella, and Robin was able to observe the care that had gone into the
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tattooing, how truly reptilian he looked. As if the dinosaurs had survived
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and evolved into more humanoid forms. A row of studs ran down his jacket's
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back like vestigial armor plates.
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Under his jacket his T-shirt said:
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SUPPORT WEAPONS PROLIFERATION.
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Your philosophy sucks, thought Robin. She stared at him as he walked away,
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wondering where he was going next. What does someone like that spend his time
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doing? She realized there was someone standing next to her and turned away
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from the windows.
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A guy. Holding his tray. A pull-tight sack hanging from his shoulder.
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"May I?" he asked, gesturing towards the empty seat opposite her.
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"Yeah, sure." She pulled her tray back so he could fit his on the table.
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She glanced at him as he sat down and set himself up - he was white, looked
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thirtyish, plain, had shaved recently - then looked back out the window,
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thinking of the Dino.
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After a while the guy said, "You're thinking about that DinoPunk who was
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just here?" He pronounced it "DIE-no"; Robin always thought "DEE-no", as the
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Germans on the documentary had pronounced it.
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"Yeah." Still looking out the window.
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Silence. The guy tried again.
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"Well, at least he's thinking of the future." Pause. "I mean, every previous
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subculture like that has always been focused on the present, so it's progress
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of a sort to have one that looks ahead. I think."
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Robin looked at him. He had his tray on his lap, and he was transfering his
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meal to the table. He was looking at her, but glanced toward the mall as she
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turned around, then glanced back again.
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"Do you really believe that?"
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He giggled. "It's just a perspective. I mean, I think most things are
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progress in some way. It's like war, you have two sides that fight and
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consciously they think, we hate each other" - he held up his hands and,
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watching them, moved them around as if they were circling cobras, facing each
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other and ready to strike - "but really they're getting more and more, um,
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involved with each other" - he held up his arms, showing how they were twisted
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together. After a few seconds he untwisted himself.
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Robin glanced at the roof TV that hung down at the end of the row of booths
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- it was showing a map of North Africa. She was reminded of how someone had
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once tried to convince her that the Russian Revolution, and the dictatorships
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it gave rise to, had been progress, because the horror of totalitarianism
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taught the whole human race of the dangers of the ideological state, even
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when the ideology's intent is noble. I don't buy that. "Yeah, well, I think
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that disasters and mistakes happen, but people don't want to think that
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anything is just entirely negative, so they rationalize things." People like
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you? That was pretty blunt. She started on the pizza, now it had cooled.
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"I think that's a silly way to think." Doesn't seem insulted. Probably
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thinks I'm just a cynic. "You know the 'You create your own reality' idea?"
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Ah, here we go. I've heard this on campus a hundred times. Another form of
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fundamentalism. At least it's more cheerful than the older sort. May as well
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find out his version.
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"No, what does that mean?"
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"It's ... It means that, you can only think of what you allow yourself to
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think. Um, a guy called John Lilly once wrote, 'In the province of the mind,
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what is believed true is true, or is true within limits to be determined by
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experiment.'"
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"Can you give me an example? Like, of me creating my reality?"
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"Well, absolutely the best example is only half an hour away for us. The
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year 2000. There's nothing necessarily special about this point in time, but
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... we've made it important, the whole human race, and it's a catalyst that's
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making real changes happen. Just like they supposed to!" Robin was about to
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speak, but he added, "That's what physicists mean by a self-organizing
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system. One that creates its own reality." He put his tray down on the floor;
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Robin noticed him notice the issue of "Hot Ducks".
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Not exactly the whole human race: there's China, Japan, Islam outside the
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Christian chronology, for them all this is just the West being universalist
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again. Interesting, what he said about self-organization. Must ask Dr Nguyen
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what he thinks of that.
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"Mmm ... can you give me an example, of a change happening because of the
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approach of the year 2000?" This is weird, this guy sits down and we're
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straight into a real new-millennium conversation. "I'm Robin, by the way;
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you're -"
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"Dave." He sipped his coffee. "An example - what about all those people out
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in the streets tonight? A lot of them probably never thought much about the
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future or the world at large, until the start of the nineties. But as the year
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2000 got closer, the whole world moving into a new era - it's focussed
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everyone's mind. There's a whole new consciousness, a planetary progressive
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one."
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"Mmm ... if I look outside tonight, I see people who want to take part in
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'History's Most Humongous Party'. I don't see them working out how to get
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water to the Middle East, or sanitation to South Africa, or what to do about
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gene hacking."
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"So you think the world's headed downhill?" He looked at her with a more
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serious expression.
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"No, it's more complex than that ..." How can I describe the possibiities I
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see? A totalitarian world-state with an anti-technology ideology. Or a world
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where elites in Europe, America and Asia keep the developing regions divided
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and powerless, while they go about projects like space colonization and life
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extension. "I'm doing a Bachelor of Management Science, and one of the things
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we study is Complex Systems. One of the characteristics of a complex system is
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that it's resilient but unstable, so it will survive most of what you throw at
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it, but it will achieve that by reorganizing itself, usually radically... Hey,
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maybe you should just read my project." She laughed.
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He nodded, still serious. "It sounds very interesting. Is it - does it
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mention Gaia?"
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"Only a bit. I don't actually believe in the Gaia Hypothesis myself - I
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don't see why a self-regulating system should evolve when there's nothing like
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natural selection operating. The anthropic explanation makes sense to me - you
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know, we're here, so the biosphere must have lasted long enough for us to
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evolve, which is why the climate seems to have been stabilized, historically."
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He nodded again, but he was obviously not interested in all that. He munched
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for a while on a sandwich, then said, "Well, I have tremendous hope for the
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future. I think we're seeing the birth of a whole new world." He paused
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significantly. "Have you ever heard of the New Essenes?"
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"Aren't they like a new-age Christian group? Religious group, I mean, not
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rock group."
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"Yeah, I guess that's sort of right... I'm not an Essene myself, but I have
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a few friends who are..."
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There was a blast of cold air again as the doors swung open, and a
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wheelie came in. Robin realized this was probably why her booth had been empty;
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all the regulars avoided it.
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"... and they have this idea, that Christ was born 2000 years ago, and the
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Second Coming is due to happen, but Christ is being reborn as the whole of
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humanity. We're like, cells in His body."
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"Mmm, okay. Is this related, to what you were saying about self-
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organization? And who, or what, were the Old Essenes?"
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"The original Essenes were a Jewish sect who wrote about Christ a few
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decades before he was born. They were into astrology and a few other things
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too. So the New Essenes, today, it's like they see their purpose as being here
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to alert people to the coming change, the new world order. Um, what was your
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other question?"
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"Self-organization. How it fits in."
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"Oh, I read about that in a book they lent me. The idea is that the
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universe is a self-organizing system, and Christ is the universal self. As
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experienced by humans."
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Universal self. Don't understand what that means. Won't ask, it will
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probably get boring. "So in, ah, twenty-five minutes we're going to become
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cells in the body of Christ?"
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"Well, it's a way of speaking, if you want to think of it like that... But,
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I mean, there's a whole cosmology here, like it's quite detailed - when's
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your birthday?"
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"June 19th."
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"Yes, well that makes you a Gemini - which, yes, that fits exactly. Each
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sign corresponds to a part of the body, Christ's body. Gemini stands for the
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brain and nervous system, which is why you're such a thinker, who worries
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about things. Whereas, I'm a Pisces, which corresponds with the feet, which
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makes me a supporter, a burden-sharer. And so on."
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Robin smiled inwardly. This is a zodiac I've never heard of before. Gemini
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the Brain, Pisces the Feet. "This applies to everyone - according to your
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friends? No one is left out?"
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"Yes, everyone has a role, like in an ecosystem."
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"What about people who don't use the Christian calendar? Or in China, for
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example, in their culture this isn't even the beginning of the new year."
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Another blast of cold as the wheelie left.
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"Well, the anno Domini system really is global ... And besides, whether
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you're part of the West or against it, you're part of the one event, the
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convergence of humanity. The West has just been a means, um an instrument that
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originated the devices of unification - imperialism, capitalism, the media, so
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on. Even got China in the end."
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"Mmm ... I don't know. I look at India and China, how they are rising in
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power every year, and I sometimes think it's going to be the oldest
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civilizations that will take over if Euro-American culture eats the dust. But
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yeah, everything is everywhere now. The Church of Scientology even has a
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building in Beijing."
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"You've been to China?"
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"Yeah, earlier this year. Missed the restoration of Goddess of Democracy by
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a couple of weeks - I couldn't afford to stay." Memories of China. Everything
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so wide - the roads, the Square. Young Chinese keeping themselves so clean in
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the middle of all the pollution. Watching CNN in the Hong Kong airport, as
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Israel and the Arab League made their joint appeal to the world community for
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assistance during the water crisis.
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Dave was standing up, opening his sack. "Look, I'm meeting some friends in
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King George Square for the Big Event. Some of my Essene friends'll be there.
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Do you want to come along?"
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Can't be bothered. It's warm and dry in here. Robin shook her head. "I'm
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sorry. I didn't want to be in a big group this evening. I guess I'm not much
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of a party hound." She smiled.
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"Well, then, nice talking with you." He offered his hand; she shook it. He
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pulled an umbrella from the sack. "Aha! I've broken the cycle. I've been
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leaving it at home all the time. Bye!" He opened the doors and strolled away.
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"Bye, Dave." I wonder if he forgot my name. Robin squinted at the TV screen;
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six minutes to go. She started on the last slice of pizza.
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That ended suddenly. I was sure he was about to start asking me about
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myself. Maybe he would have if I'd tagged along to the square. Where are you
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from? Wellington. My parents are American, they moved to New Zealand in the
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eighties so they'd survive a nuclear war! Where are you studying? Griffith.
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What do you want to do? Something in environmental economics.
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The music changed. After a few seconds the cafe filled with groans, mostly
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from the floor: it was the remix of Prince's "1999", the end-of-the-world
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anthem. Robin had come to quite like the song. Probably the result of
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conditioning, she thought; it was being played everywhere. Someone had even
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analyzed it in a Semiotics tutorial.
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I was dreamin' when I wrote this
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Forgive me if it goes astray
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But when I woke up this mornin'
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Thought this mornin' was Judgement Day
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"Hey look", said one of the gothics, "it's stopped raining out. Let's head
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for the square."
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The sky was all purple
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There were people running everywhere
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Tryin' to run from the destruction
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You know I didn't even care
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The floor people were standing up, gathering their personals, leaving in
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droves. Soon the cafe was half empty. Bhajan watched them enviously.
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Yes, let's head for the square. Why not? The Sikh guy was gone, and his
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Chinese friends were now on opposite sides of the booth, leaning forward,
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staring into each other's eyes. Robin reached down and grabbed Dave's tray and
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the fantasy mag, placed them on the table, said goodbye to her booth. Get
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ready for the cold ...
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Outside the mall was as crowded as she'd ever seen it, with long queues
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stretching outside the nightclubs. It was still raining, but only very
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lightly. "1999" was playing from everywhere, from the clubs, in the place of
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the usual mall Muzak, from the stereos of hot-dog vendors. Robin was reminded
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of the scene from Douglas Adams, in which the Vogon's broadcast the news of
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Earth's demolition from every TV and radio.
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Police speaking into walkie-talkies, millenarians haranguing passers-by.
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Partygoers singing along with Prince and the Revolution: "Say it one more
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time! Two thousand zero zero, party over, out of time! So tonight I'm gonna
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party like it's nineteen ninety-nine!"
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People were converging on King George Square, where the climax of the
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mainstream celebrations was taking place. All the major TV and radio stations
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had broadcast teams there. As she reached the edges of the crowd, Robin saw a
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dozen Aboriginals at the edge of the Square, watching silently. What were they
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thinking? Prince was fading out.
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1999! Don't you wanna know?
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1999! Don't you wanna know?
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1999! ...
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There was the sound of a helicopter overhead. A resonant computer-
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synthesized voice spoke from above.
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"ARE YOU READY TO ENTER THE NEW MILLENNIUM, BRISBANE?"
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"YES!" called the crowd.
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"THEN JOIN ME IN THE FINAL COUNTDOWN. TEN ... NINE ..."
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At the centre of the square a giant cube had been erected, its faces each
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covered with dozens of television screens. As Robin watched it displayed the
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giant blue Earth, rolling by under the space station; and then the image was
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replaced by a hundred fragments: faces of the people of Earth. Women, men,
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every color and race and continent.
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"EIGHT ... SEVEN ... SIX ... FIVE ..."
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It's real, she suddenly saw. The whole enormous world, all six billion of
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us, we're really here. Together.
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"FOUR ... THREE ..."
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To her astonishment, she felt tears trickle down her cheeks.
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"TWO ... ONE ..."
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The picture of the whole Earth came back, half in light, half in shadow,
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Australia still in shadow. She imagined the year 2000 as a plague sweeping
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westward around the globe in quantum jumps, claiming another timezone every
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hour.
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"ZERO!" said the crowd. There was an electric sound. The television screens
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flared blinding white. The sky was illuminated.
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As the fireworks went off there was pandemonium. People hugging, cheering,
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screaming. Joining hands and dancing in circles. Someone, faced turned
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upwards, yelling: "We did it! We're here! We're still here, damn you!"
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Someone took Robin's hand. She looked down. It was someone she'd never seen
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before, a teenage girl with cropped red hair, wearing a T-shirt bearing the
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motif of the double-bladed axe.
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"We did it, hey," she said.
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"Yeah, we did it," said Robin, and they hugged, tightly.
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Did we? What have we done? I don't know. We're still here. In the arms of a
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stranger, brushing tears from her cheeks, crying still, she looked up, and
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watched the sky explode with purple.
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[ps when this story was written Cafe Cafe was completely fictional, now there
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is such a place in Brisbane! -Qix]
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.../?..*...\...
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\pippin\cloud\bits.not
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Feelings we make up for ourselves.
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We live in the Devil's playground.
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Do petrol.
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I got an award in 1986 for being able "to talk under water with a mouthful
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of seaweed." The prize was a band-aid.
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B.Y.O. Pronunciation to an anti-party
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B.Y.O Sanity
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public access computer room probably by the Cyberpunks
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The substance of conversation that goes unremembered.
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A Nutri-grain packet goes shopping.
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T-shirt slogan -- "I hacked NASA, and all i got was this lousy T-shirt."
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QUT UNIX, has all of 5 commands that aren't security risks, called PUNIX.
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Coincidensity -- a measure of the rate at which coincidences occur
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around you.
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\pippin\cloud\false.txt
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Within the circle of its action, every word creates that which it affirms.
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Do you have:
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(1) Invincible obstinacy
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(2) A conscience at once hardened to crime and most prone to remorse
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and fear
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(3) Affected or natural ignorance
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(4) Blind faith in all that is incredible
|
|
(5) An utterly false idea of god
|
|
|
|
Then Know this:
|
|
|
|
He who affirms the devil creates or makes the devil.
|
|
|
|
\pippin\cloud\conshus.not
|
|
|
|
So the Earth may not be conscious.
|
|
How did we evolve consciousness? If it evolved, what is to say that the
|
|
Earth has not evolved consciousness? Or even the cells?
|
|
It is the interactions that make the system that is the key
|
|
to it all. The human brain is supposed to be the most advanced computer known
|
|
to us. Consciousness probably evolved to be the most efficient way of
|
|
transferring data from one part of the brain to another.
|
|
If a brain can do it, why can't a computer? Or even the Earth, if the Earth is
|
|
indeed a system.
|
|
|
|
|
|
\pippin\cloud\longevit.not
|
|
|
|
LONGEVITY
|
|
|
|
We used to live much longer than we do now.
|
|
We, human beings, are supposed to be the only animal that has
|
|
sex when the female is not "in heat", fertile.
|
|
Woman ovulate once a month. Once they could have children in a
|
|
month. Gestation was only a month, and children took much less time to
|
|
grow up. So women could have children 12 times a year (groan).
|
|
But why would they need this? Living much longer than we used
|
|
too?
|
|
The catastrophes. When the humans were down, they had more babies.
|
|
Since we are not really endangered at the moment, gestation takes a long
|
|
time. And we don't live very long.
|
|
After a catastrophe, when the human population is devastated,
|
|
the women can have more children due to shorter gestation, and we would
|
|
live longer. The number is people on the earth is proportional to the
|
|
quality of life ie the length of life.
|
|
Perhaps evolution will only occur when a certain number of
|
|
species have became extinct. Like after a catastrophe.
|
|
|
|
\pippin\cloud\chat.not
|
|
|
|
What would it be like to talk to every person in the world, that has
|
|
ever lived and will live, one person per day? How long would it take?
|
|
Is this question relevent? We could have all the time that would be
|
|
needed. Have we already done this, and this idea is just a memory?
|
|
|
|
\pippin\cloud\amnesia.ide
|
|
|
|
THE DAY OF THE KILLER TOMATOES FROM DJEMFI
|
|
|
|
"I think I will go to Xahito today," said Sean. He jacked in
|
|
and began to create a new world called Xahito.
|
|
Sean was not to realize that a giant god-like science-fiction writer
|
|
called Dave was going to drop a piano on his head later that day.
|
|
|
|
"I think I will go to a New Planet today," thought Sean. "Somewhere
|
|
very far away. Somewhere so far away that we can't even get there yet. It is
|
|
beyond the realms of light-speed and suspended animation." Sean pulled a old
|
|
keyboard forward from a desk full of clutter, and attached it to an equally
|
|
antiquated terminal. He projected into the terminal, dropped his fingers on
|
|
the keyboard without actually looking at it, and came up with a name for his
|
|
planet. "Xahito." He didn't have a cat. Otherwise, he might have got the cat
|
|
to walk on the keyboard and produced a name that way. He stared at the name
|
|
for a long time, letting the new planet grow in his mind. He decided to
|
|
pronounce it with a Z sound, like Za-Hee-toe. As in tomato. "And maybe all
|
|
the creatures on Xahito could be afraid of the Giant Tomatoes," he thought to
|
|
himself. "They can come from the Planet, Djemfi. The "D" would silent of
|
|
course. Pronounced Jem-fee."
|
|
Presently, Sean observed that he wasn't using the keyboard anymore.
|
|
The Giant Killer Tomatoes had invaded the planet Xahito many thousands
|
|
of years before. The dominant life form on Xahito had been a race that called
|
|
themselves "the Wise Ones" in our tongue, or "Flythes" in theirs. The Flythes
|
|
practiced a form of non-violent society, so they had been nearly decimated by
|
|
the arrival of the Djemfi. What the Djemfi did not know was that Xahito itself
|
|
hated Tomatoes, and was secretly plotting to invent a herbicide that would wipe
|
|
them out. It was allergic to Tomato soup, so that was not an option.
|
|
Xahito was not ruling out the possiblity that a passing comet might
|
|
bring a bug to the planet, that was ravenously hungry for some Tomato Plant.
|
|
Since it was a little difficult to predict comets colliding into you, it decided
|
|
to invest most of its time in "encouraging" all of the minds on itself to go
|
|
into agriculture, or botanical chemistry.
|
|
Sean let a thought grow in his mind. The carbon dioxide content of the
|
|
planet's atmosphere had greatly increased since the arrival of the Tomatoes.
|
|
The Tomatoes actually engineered the atmosphere of the planet to make it more
|
|
favourable for plant life. The higher life forms, like animals and Flythes, had
|
|
their population kept at an equilibrium low level so that they would not
|
|
jepordize the quality of life of the plants.
|
|
|
|
\pippin\cloud\roaches.ide
|
|
|
|
THE DAY OF THE ROACHES
|
|
|
|
Cockroaches actually come from Venus. We hate them so much
|
|
because the memory of cockroaches comes from the collective unconscious.
|
|
The memory is of the meteorite that brought the roaches here and
|
|
smashing into Earth causing all sorts of catastrophes.
|
|
The roaches were the last surviving life form on Venus.
|
|
|
|
Well. They can survive being nuked in a microwave oven. Why couldn't
|
|
they survive the climate of Venus?
|
|
|
|
\pippin\cloud\babel.ide
|
|
|
|
THE STORY OF THE TOWER OF BABEL
|
|
|
|
It is said that the first people spoke one language and wanted
|
|
to make a monument to mankind because they were so wonderful. The
|
|
"language" that they spoke was not one language, but telepathy.
|
|
We have lost telepathy. We had it before. That is why we know
|
|
what it is.
|
|
|
|
\pippin\poems\alone.poe
|
|
|
|
June 19, 1992
|
|
John Woodley's House, Sunshine Beach.
|
|
|
|
BEING ALONE
|
|
|
|
To Be Alone
|
|
To Be Quiet
|
|
How long before the quietness seeps into your soul?
|
|
Can U stand it?
|
|
Will it drive you mad?
|
|
How well do U know yur own thoughts?
|
|
Are they yur friends?
|
|
Or will they drive you mad?
|
|
|
|
The silence sinks in
|
|
into the mind.
|
|
|
|
Like rain soaking into the earth.
|
|
But there is no silence.
|
|
|
|
There are crickets outside,
|
|
The fridge talks to itself.
|
|
The clock ticks.
|
|
your tinitus will not be still.
|
|
|
|
If you listen carefully, the other sounds will come in.
|
|
The occasional car, the people yelling outside.
|
|
A cat fight, and the loser mourning
|
|
crying his heart out to the moon
|
|
But the moon is impassive
|
|
if she hears the caterwaul,
|
|
she does not tell.
|
|
|
|
But can you stand the silence?
|
|
Or will it beat you?
|
|
Drive U mad?
|
|
Can you find the stillness
|
|
And hold it?
|
|
And cherish the company of your own thoughts?
|
|
For they get lonely sometimes.
|
|
|
|
\pippin\poems\rain.rav
|
|
|
|
Albion train station, March 4, 1989
|
|
|
|
Why is the rain so utterly depressing? Is it because of the
|
|
grey? that there is no colour? Then it would be the grey, the lack of
|
|
colour, that is depressing. Why is grey depressing? Is it because you
|
|
get wet? but then people get wet in the shower and they don't mind
|
|
that. Is it damp clothes that stick to skin and turn cold? COLD but
|
|
the sound of rain is comforting. It is hard to describe, drip is so
|
|
inadequate. or patter. Impossible to describe. When it's raining
|
|
thoughts turn to sun and being light and warm. Why are some colours
|
|
warm and others aren't? Picture a warm green or a cold red. Then try
|
|
to picture a warm blue, or a cold orange. The earth likes rain. So
|
|
do trees, and flowers and grass and others. Ducks and frogs like it.
|
|
Why do we like dry?
|
|
|
|
\pippin\poems\dark.poe
|
|
|
|
THE DARK
|
|
(The evil dark)
|
|
|
|
Then perhaps the darkness will creep into your soul.
|
|
The darkness, the void.
|
|
The fear that drives you to noise and chaos.
|
|
The utter blackness, the grinning darkness, yawning cavern
|
|
It will steal your soul, and your energy.
|
|
It knows you better than yourself,
|
|
for it is your Shadow Self.
|
|
Can you confront your Shadow Self, all the things you don't want to be
|
|
and are.
|
|
For if u know yurself, u can drive the darkness away.
|
|
But if you can't...
|
|
It just sits back and laughs
|
|
at you.
|
|
|
|
When you flick on the light or some music,
|
|
Because you want to stop thinking
|
|
or to think in peace,
|
|
to drive away the fear.
|
|
The coldness, the darkness is like the cold stone churches
|
|
that you went to as a child. that frightened you.
|
|
The coldness, the darkness erode you, your thoughts, your emotions,
|
|
replacing you with itself.
|
|
|
|
...ooo000ooo...
|
|
|
|
Imagine if U will a room, full of happiness,
|
|
and warmth and light and a spiral staircase.
|
|
The top of the staircase is dark.
|
|
U must go to the top of the staircase
|
|
And face the screaming, smothering darkness.
|
|
U must not resist it. If you resist it, it will laugh at you
|
|
And plucks secretly at another thought.
|
|
But you can welcome it. Open your arms, and your heart, embrace it.
|
|
It will become familiar.
|
|
As it becomes familiar, it will be a friend to you,
|
|
and will keep you company.
|
|
It will talk to the Great Mulberry Depression when it comes
|
|
to visit you.
|
|
And they will love you.
|
|
|
|
It will become the warm, soothing darkness
|
|
when nothing else gives you solace
|
|
from your thoughts
|
|
and your broken dreams.
|
|
|
|
the blues
|
|
|
|
|
|
When the Great Mulberry Depression comes to visit,
|
|
Invite it in. Introduce it to the warm, soothing dark
|
|
Introduce it to your pain.
|
|
Then sit at their feet and listen to them,
|
|
Their thoughts are not your thoughts, but you can make them
|
|
your thoughts
|
|
There are no words in them.
|
|
Just a feeling of nothingness
|
|
Of Voidness,
|
|
Of the Grey Land of the Uglydig
|
|
But feeling
|
|
the feelings are rich,
|
|
intense,
|
|
like the colours of an opal
|
|
These can never be yours,
|
|
They will come and go as they please
|
|
As they see that you need them.
|
|
|
|
\pippin\poems\grey.poe
|
|
|
|
Grey
|
|
|
|
Grey is, indeed, a strange and abominable colour. It is not the colour
|
|
of death, but of the underworld, the colour of everything that lives
|
|
away from the sun, everything that lives in the shadows. It is the
|
|
fishes' colour, the reptiles' colour, the colour of those who hunt in
|
|
the twilight. Grey is wet fungi and corruption, grey is snails, grass
|
|
snakes, vultures, hyaenas, wolves. Grey is not a blow on the cheek, but
|
|
a pressure - like that of a blanket - over your whole face. Grey is the
|
|
most evil colour in the world because of the things of which it reminds
|
|
you. It is a shivering, shuddering, plaintive, perspiring symphony of
|
|
memories of all that was and is over and done with. It sings the grey
|
|
paper you yourself put round your school books, the books you took from
|
|
your worn satchel and read in stealth under the grey roof of corrugated
|
|
iron in the grey schoolyard during the grey break; it sings of porridge,
|
|
grey fish soup, grey woollen socks and grey knee-breeches, sings a
|
|
gasping song of pouring grey rain and grey clay beneath oil-leather
|
|
boots and grey sand between the cans in the backyard; but its saddest,
|
|
most heart-rending song is that of rainy days, of the ordinary everyday,
|
|
when the streets were shiny and grey, and you, as a child, sat in the
|
|
window watching the grey water in the gutter transporting sand and
|
|
matches and cigarette-stubs and slush and paper and withered leaves
|
|
away to the drumming drain with the iron-grating over it, and of Sunday
|
|
afternoons when it was raining outside and the room lay in a
|
|
semi-darkness and you had to sit quite still, because somebody wanted an
|
|
afternoon nap after eating steak and apricot blancmange and cream, and
|
|
there you sat at the table, from which the cloth had been taken, doing
|
|
your prep. or reading a Boy Scout book and clasping your throat to
|
|
stifle the cry of tortured despair that was rising it it, making you
|
|
angry and full of hate.
|
|
The colour of grey reminds one of wet and moisture, of sleet and
|
|
rain and mist, of spates and flooding; but it also reminds one of heat
|
|
and drought, of scorched dusty fields, of sizzling asphalt and concrete
|
|
and burning sand and dry lips. Grey may be the colour of the grey smoke
|
|
rising from a campfire in the woods, or of a new factory optimistically
|
|
started in a village, but do not forget that grey is also the colour of
|
|
the blanket of smoke that covers our towns and big industrial centres
|
|
and not only blackens the walls of the factories and tenements, but
|
|
sticks to people's skins and to their hearts.
|
|
-- Ash Grande
|
|
|
|
\pippin\poems\madness.poe
|
|
|
|
MADNESS
|
|
|
|
The wind! It blows where it wills!!
|
|
Catch it! Catch it! Try to harness it.
|
|
The wind all of all the days drive
|
|
drives the thoughts and feelings
|
|
from your heart
|
|
and leaves it cold.
|
|
|
|
@}-,'->---
|
|
|
|
I must love what I destroy and destroy the thing I love.
|
|
Use it, abuse it, squeeze it dry, grok it.
|
|
Leave it dry empty shell to be driven by the cold,
|
|
aching wind. The hungry wind to dry it out.
|
|
And burn it. Let the ashes fall
|
|
at your feet.
|
|
|
|
---(--(*
|
|
|
|
The MADness
|
|
The madness, it is all madness, it has to be madness
|
|
the darkness that pull you into the black hole
|
|
of itself.
|
|
it hates, it plagues you.
|
|
It throws its thoughts at you, darts to pierce you.
|
|
and the dance the mad kaleidoscope
|
|
crashes, crashes, craves your energy and your thoughts
|
|
Begs and pleads to be fed, like some lost puppy
|
|
looking for crumbs
|
|
to fill the gnawing void inside itself, that will never be filled
|
|
until it is changed
|
|
|
|
|
|
...ooo000ooo...
|
|
|
|
|
|
Everything changes.
|
|
inevitable, ineffible, unknown, and misunderstood
|
|
Fear of the top of the staircase holds us back.
|
|
Even the grinning darkness is held back
|
|
by its own fear of the unknown.
|
|
It hates itself. It hates me. It hates you.
|
|
Even misunderstands itself.
|
|
But we change it. We will. We must.
|
|
Or it will change us. But who can tell which
|
|
will change the other.
|
|
It doesn't even matter which.
|
|
It is the inexorable pulling of life to itself
|
|
that says:
|
|
We Must Change.
|
|
|
|
It is a Race Against Time
|
|
And Against Each Other
|
|
|
|
|
|
@}-,'->---
|
|
|
|
|
|
For within you is a candle
|
|
A candle of light that will light the way
|
|
There is always a flame
|
|
a single solitary flame
|
|
that will not
|
|
go away.
|
|
|
|
|
|
June 19, 1992
|
|
John Woodley's house, Sunshine Beach
|
|
|
|
ooo /=+*o0o*+=\ ooo
|
|
|
|
\pippin\poems\life.poe
|
|
|
|
1983
|
|
|
|
I
|
|
glance up.
|
|
I see as
|
|
I climb to the peak,
|
|
An eagle, wheeling
|
|
near its
|
|
brow.
|
|
|
|
I
|
|
look down,
|
|
long and clear.
|
|
Ground so far below.
|
|
Something I see
|
|
there on the
|
|
ground.
|
|
|
|
It
|
|
is a
|
|
bitter chill
|
|
Whipping wind. I
|
|
will go down now.
|
|
So far to
|
|
go. Its
|
|
cold
|
|
|
|
\pippin\poems\cliff.poe
|
|
|
|
March 12, 1989
|
|
|
|
The Cliffs of Shorncliffe
|
|
|
|
Alone. To be the last person on the earth. To look over the
|
|
sea from the cliffs. To watch the sun go down in the east. To watch
|
|
the moon rise. To watch the silver spill over the crests of the waves.
|
|
To watch the tide go out and expose the crescent sand bars. To sit
|
|
still and breathe the air. To walk and walk and to not go anywhere. To
|
|
climb to the bottom of cliff and to the top. To watch strata of
|
|
sandstone and shale be laid down over millions of years. To feel the
|
|
plants and the stone and the water splashing your soles. To live, to
|
|
be. To be nothing and anything and someone.
|
|
|
|
To be utterly alone. You are able to do anything at all. There
|
|
is no one with which to confer. Just you. And your thoughts, your
|
|
emotions, your spirit, your body, and God. Nothing to clutter you.
|
|
Nothing to hinder you and the earth. Mind overflows. You are no longer
|
|
the ultimate. You are only one in a mass of creation. A mass of
|
|
earthly voices reaching out to God. Perfect communion. There is the
|
|
potential to understand so much.
|
|
To watch pink and orange, and gold on the edges of the
|
|
thunderhead cloud made of ice-cream. To watch the stars come out
|
|
blinking at night.
|
|
|
|
\pippin\poems\rok.poe
|
|
|
|
Queen St Mall, Saturday, March 11, 1989
|
|
|
|
The Migmatite
|
|
|
|
It is a wonderful flowing, rhyolitic rock. Some finely
|
|
crystallized with large chunks of quartz, rushing, violent, molten,
|
|
acidic rock. It is actually going somewhere, but it is still. It is a
|
|
large plate, the whole picture, telling the story of magma. How was it
|
|
formed? Some rock overtaking the others, layers and layers of lava and
|
|
magma, piling on top of each other, being exposed, flowing on, cooling
|
|
down, chilling, crystallizing, large and small. It is a record of a
|
|
moment in time or many many moments in time. The illusion of perpetual
|
|
motion, of endless energy, of never stopping. It goes on and it will
|
|
never stop. It will never stop telling its story. A frozen moment.
|
|
|
|
\pippin\poems\sun.poe
|
|
|
|
Where The Sunlight Is
|
|
|
|
Queensland's body has two main arteries. Cut one and it bleeds
|
|
sunshine. Cut the other and it bleeds waves. Sometimes the ocean is a
|
|
smooth blue, corrugated by long lines of south easterly ground swell
|
|
that swing in slow motion on to the sunniest, prettiest point breaks on
|
|
the face of the earth. And the wind just keeps blowing from the
|
|
south day after day, and the swell just keeps coming day after day.
|
|
Sometimes for a week. Sometimes longer. You set the same pace as the
|
|
waves. Live the same rhythm as the tides. You take off your watch and
|
|
put it away in the bottom of your bag. If you're working, you throw in
|
|
your job until the swell stops. You get up early and go home late, and
|
|
in between you surf for hours and you lie in the sunshine. And the
|
|
sunshine gets inside your head and your chest and flows through your
|
|
veins. It's a commitment of a sort. You give your whole self to the
|
|
sea and to the waves and ask nothing but to be allowed to do it. Places
|
|
like Kirra Point tube themselves silly, day by day. And you get in
|
|
there where the sunlight is, shafts that flash momentarily through tube
|
|
roofs and then are eaten. Kirra tubes longer and hollower than anywhere
|
|
else. Fast and heavy over shallow sand on the right tides.
|
|
And Greenmount Point eats surfboards. Breakfast, lunch, and
|
|
tea, it survives on a diet of crushed rails and knocked out fins and
|
|
blood from unwary bodies. But it's so beautiful in the evenings.
|
|
Yellow light and dark water to bounce it off and soft semi-hollow
|
|
four-five footers gurgling on the point and running out over the bank
|
|
into the bay quiet. Each day is complete when there's surf. You rise
|
|
early and surf. Then you eat and surf all afternoon. When you leave
|
|
the surf as it gets dark, you don't talk much and you don't think much,
|
|
you just go home and have tea and maybe read or play cards or do nothing
|
|
and then you go to sleep. A healthy satisfying exhaustion in your body
|
|
and weighing it down. And you know tomorrow's going to be the same.
|
|
But you don't even think about it. Just take it when it comes. It's
|
|
good. It's good.
|
|
-- John Hogan, "Surfing World"
|
|
|
|
\pippin\poems\pig.poe
|
|
|
|
1983
|
|
A Tribute To The Pig
|
|
|
|
"A tribute to a pig?" I hear you ask. Yes, the pig! The pig is
|
|
a magnificent animal, and we really have the wrong idea about them.
|
|
Where would we be without smoked ham, fat pork, and bacon that is so
|
|
popular with eggs? Pigskin shoes, handbags, and wallets are practically
|
|
a necessity. Yes, the pig is one of the most versatile animals that God
|
|
has given us.
|
|
On the farm the pig is a pioneer. If you have some weedy plot
|
|
of ground that you think is useless, put some pigs on it. He will clear
|
|
the ground, plough it up, and manure it all at the same time. He will
|
|
enjoy himself and derive sustenance from it. He is the animal that will
|
|
blaze new trails on your farm.
|
|
As I said before, we have the wrong idea about the pig. We have
|
|
sayings like, "He eats like a pig.", or "That is only fit for the
|
|
pigs." Maybe, some of them do apply, but we still have the wrong idea
|
|
about the pig. We may think that the pig is a dirty animal, but really
|
|
he is the cleanest of all the domesticated animals. His environment
|
|
maybe one of mud and dirt, but if he were given a clean environment, he
|
|
would keep it very clean. The pig is really a magnificent animal.
|
|
Raising pigs is a very profitable enterprise. The Irishmen
|
|
call him "the gentleman who pays the rent." Pigs are easy to keep,
|
|
easy to feed and fun to have. Raising does not depend on the weather,
|
|
and in good years and bad, pigs will pay yours and their bills. The pig
|
|
is an animal that well-deserves a tribute.
|
|
|
|
\qix\essay86.txt
|
|
|
|
[essay excerpted from TGS annual '86]
|
|
|
|
"WE CREATED THE WORLD"
|
|
|
|
We live in a world of abstractions and symbolisms. No two cultures
|
|
express the basic human drives in the same manner, but every culture hides
|
|
them with elaborate convention. Aggression is released by mock fights between
|
|
Kenyan warriors, by chess games between Soviet grandmasters. Vicarious
|
|
excitement is provided by gladiatorial combat, or the A-team. And so forth.
|
|
The very act of communication involves comparable abstraction: patterns of
|
|
ink or sound carry "meaning" from one mind to another. Like clay sculpture
|
|
or high-rise construction, these are all ways in which we shape our
|
|
world.
|
|
But we do not lose our way in this jungle of abstraction. We move through it
|
|
with the unconscious confidence of a native, taking for granted the
|
|
idiosyncrasies and moral assumptions of our society. These conventions are
|
|
with us so constantly they never need explanation. Like household furniture,
|
|
we are comfortable in their presence, they are symbols of tradition and
|
|
security to which we become attached, we are not even aware of them most of
|
|
the time. Some may seem quaint or get in the way, but we accept these with
|
|
good humour.
|
|
However, all our laws and languages and libraries are of human construction,
|
|
even if they are the work of master craftsmen. We are the first to have built
|
|
our own world, and it has changed us. Our artifices, mental and physical, have
|
|
become so real to us that we think of them as defining the fundamental nature
|
|
of the world rather than being structures we have imposed upon reality,
|
|
structures which might have been formed in many other ways. The world we have
|
|
created was only potential until we came along.
|
|
Philosophy is an attempt to understand the world; trying to understand it,
|
|
we have formed ideas like essence, causation, experience and so on. Then we
|
|
have asked ourselves about the nature of these things. While we never agree
|
|
about the answers, there is always the tacit assumption that there *is* a
|
|
correct answer. But these are concepts *we* formulated, which we have no
|
|
reason to believe exist outside our minds. So how can we assume that questions
|
|
about them will have one true answer? There may be several answers logically
|
|
consistent with everything else we believe, among which choice can only be
|
|
arbitrary, or no such answers at all.
|
|
When we read, we do not have to remind ourselves that these blotches of ink
|
|
before us are intended to convey meaning. It seems natural to us that
|
|
something should "stand for" something else. In fact, we go further - we
|
|
confuse the symbol with the thing represented. Human minds tend to form links
|
|
of association, and in our mind things and their names are bound. Most of the
|
|
time we think in words, living as we do in such a verbally crowded
|
|
environment. But words are our creation, our way of dividing the world into
|
|
manageable chunks, and are not somehow inherent in the richly complex reality
|
|
they try to represent. They are not even the result of a systematic attempt to
|
|
describe the world; they are centuries' accumulation of shifts in usage and
|
|
meaning - so is it surprising when communication is imperfect, when feelings
|
|
or ideas seem inexpressible?
|
|
The growth of science has been more orderly than that of language. Science
|
|
has been the discovery and refinement of patterns and mechanisms that might
|
|
explain the world's workings. Scientists have professed strict objectivity
|
|
until recently. But behind all of traditional science was one assumption -
|
|
that even if we cannot know every detail of existence, at least we can
|
|
understand its guiding principles. Only in the 20th century has this view
|
|
been undermined. In mathematics it has been shown that there is no system of
|
|
logic which can infallibly determine the truth or falsehood of any statement
|
|
about the counting numbers - for each system there is an undecidable
|
|
statement. But if there are things we cannot know about 1, 2, 3, ... - our own
|
|
creations - it becomes a very real possibility that reality is humanly
|
|
indescribable, in that it is too complicated for human beings to understand in
|
|
a more than superficial manner.
|
|
We tend to assume that there is some absolute system of ethics which will
|
|
provide a `right' response in every situation. We are disappointed with the
|
|
law when it displays less-than-Solomonic wisdom. But even if a code of ethics
|
|
is developed which is the kindest and fairest possible, it may be unable to
|
|
cope with dilemmas brought about by the new situations and technologies we
|
|
continually create.
|
|
We created the world. While we should keep aiming for our ideals of truth
|
|
and justice, we must realise that perfection may not be attainable for us.
|
|
While we keep working towards our absolutes, we should enjoy the little
|
|
imperfections like love and loyalty and remember not to expect too much of
|
|
anything human.
|
|
|
|
<*...^^^...*>
|
|
|
|
\qix\bent.rav
|
|
|
|
[This will be an attempted transcript of Side A of a tape labelled "TAPE",
|
|
recorded at the Bent St home of Jodie Eden in 1990, found at 23 Ada St on the
|
|
night of 27 July 1991...]
|
|
|
|
MITCH: ... um you have a surface folded over on itself so you <follow> a
|
|
particular path and so you have a dis ... continuous [MALE VOICE: mmm ...]
|
|
um drop, um ... which is like your stack collapsing. A third thing is
|
|
this book I'm reading at the moment, the quantum-mechanical one, The Quantum
|
|
Self, which, um, is talking [JODIE: That sounds interesting ...] about things
|
|
you'd find interesting, yeah.
|
|
Something else interesting which came up after I read that book ...
|
|
There's a thing called a Frohlich system, mentioned in the book discovered by
|
|
Doctor Frohlich, which is a type of resonant behavior you get in biological
|
|
systems. It's like um, in a supercounductor or a laser you get lots of
|
|
particles all behaving as one, their um ... their wave-functions, in
|
|
quantum-mechanical terms, all merge so that their properties become
|
|
interdependent and they all cooperate. And this Doctor Frohlich has discovered
|
|
the same things happening in certain types of, of biological matter. Um, and
|
|
this author's proposing that consciousness, the integrated aspect of
|
|
consciousness is a sort of a quantum-mechanical correlation, a Frohlich system
|
|
occurring in the brain. Now, funny thing, just after I read that book and came
|
|
across Frohlich system, um, I ran into Rodger and he lent me a photocopy of an
|
|
article on a "deconstructive a/theology" ... ah, I won't try to explain what
|
|
all that's about but it just mentioned, that ... um ... ah, Nietzche, when he
|
|
was - like, Nietzsche is now regarded as the founder of postmodernism in
|
|
certain senses, I won't even try to explain what postmodernism is -
|
|
GAVIN: <Nietzche> wrote some really weird sort of stuff -
|
|
MITCH: He wrote something called The Gay Sciences - Anyway, 'gay' in German
|
|
is 'frohlich' ... and, like, 'frohlich' is what this book which Rodger had
|
|
lent me this review of was, sort of, all about. Like it was about cultivating
|
|
a 'frohlich' attitude of mind. So, here was 'frohlich' and 'mind' linked
|
|
together in two different ways on the one day, which, was an interesting
|
|
experience.
|
|
Does that happen to you all the time? You come across, ideas, which sort of
|
|
coincidentally integrate?
|
|
JODIE: Yeah, yeah, all the time, it's just amazing.
|
|
[several voices at once]
|
|
GAVIN: I just plod along through life, you know ...
|
|
[laughter]
|
|
JODIE: Yeah, I think it's observation though, it's like...
|
|
[Gavin I think makes joke and laughs]
|
|
MITCH: I don't think so ... I think there's a transpersonal integrative
|
|
force behind it all.
|
|
JODIE: You really think so?
|
|
MITCH: mm.
|
|
GAVIN: ... transpersonal integrative ...
|
|
JODIE: Sometimes I think that ...
|
|
GAVIN: ... like a force bringing people together, [MITCH: Um...] or ideas
|
|
sort of, [MITCH: ... yeah, why not?] sort of having an influence over the
|
|
probability of two people coming to[gether] ... yeah ...
|
|
JODIE: Well, what I was thinking before, you know how I said we have to get
|
|
rid of the thing of ideas ownership, well um what, how I see it is it's a bit
|
|
like the idea of ownership of kids. You know, you produce the kids sort of
|
|
thing. But, as soon as they're born you've got to see them as, as people of
|
|
their own. And like ideas are the same thing, you know. YOU gave birth to the
|
|
idea but it came from lots of other things before as well. And you've just
|
|
got to let it go <on> in the world and do whatever, whatever it's got to do.
|
|
And, um, maybe the ideas are really like lifeforms, maybe they're like actual
|
|
living things in your brain, but lie dormant, or come up at certain times and,
|
|
at the same time, maybe they do have some sort of effect out there in the real
|
|
world to bring things towards you - The idea is so strong that it wants some
|
|
evidence, from the scientific world, and so you go into a bookshop and you see
|
|
The Tao of Physics or something like that, and um ...
|
|
MITCH: Yeah, that doesn't help explain how two things can come together,
|
|
like, um, ah .. well, I mean that, tghat, for instance ... one of, one of the
|
|
authors who I read sometimes is a computer scientist called Jacques Vallee
|
|
who's interested in the psychology of UFO experiences. And he was once
|
|
researching a medieval writer called Melchizedek, and at the moment he was
|
|
going to a library to um, this was in New York to look up Melchizedek, um. He
|
|
was picked up by a taxi driver called Melchizedek. Now, um, how does the idea
|
|
of 'Melchizedek' in his mind sort of pick that out? [JODIE: Oh, oh ...] See, I
|
|
think that if, if, if this can be understood at all, either it's going to be
|
|
understood in terms of, of the <?? seffian> idea, like that there's this
|
|
invisible conspiracy to arrange things, ah in such a way as you believe them
|
|
to be. Or else, um, something which * might * make sense in terms of quantum
|
|
mechanics and that is that, in a certain sense the future can shape the past,
|
|
so that, that things come together so that these things will happen, because
|
|
there, there does seem to be a sort of potential for that to happen, that, in
|
|
some sense an event here can ... can ... because it has to be, things will
|
|
logically be so that they arrange for it even though they're sort of
|
|
improbable. That's why I think chaos is sort of important, because it's the,
|
|
it's the crack through which this can operate, if anything. Like, if the world
|
|
was not only, um ... um, physically determined, but also practically
|
|
determined, so that we could always know what was going to happen, then there
|
|
wouldn't be any opportunity for a meaningful coincidence to happen, but
|
|
because even if it is deterministic, it's still in principle, unpredictable,
|
|
ah, then that gives, ah, the organizing force room to maneuver, to surprise us
|
|
with things.
|
|
JODIE: Yeah. Oh that's beautiful! You, oh, you just saying exactly what I've
|
|
been trying to say for about, three days. But, I've got ... what did you say?
|
|
It gives us a chance to be surprised, the fact that, it's to do with ... it's
|
|
magic as well, because, because ... we haven't believed in magic all of this
|
|
time because there's been all these other ways of explaining things, but magic
|
|
is a really important concept, because it allows new things to come out, new
|
|
things to emerge ...?
|
|
MITCH: Well, I wasn't saying that [JODIE: You weren't saying...] but that's
|
|
something which could be said ...
|
|
GAVIN: Another, another thing is, um, <his> sort of purpose of life came
|
|
down to being, fountain of surprises. That life would be a fountain of
|
|
surprises. See, he had <prescience> ... there's not prescience in the first
|
|
<lot> of the book, or books < ??? > out of six ... So, one of the guys in
|
|
there had this problem that he knew his future; he got to a point, he got to
|
|
some sort of, he got to a critical, nodal point sort of. And he knew, he could
|
|
see before he got there he knew that this was going to be pretty severe, and
|
|
he got there, as he thought ... <???> ... he could see his future, he knew
|
|
everything that was going to happen to him in advance, he knew his future
|
|
absolutely, he had perfect prescience. So then his life was boring and
|
|
couldn't be a fountain of surprises. And he said about trying to destroy the
|
|
potential for this state to exist because it could lead to stagnation, and in
|
|
the end, there's, there's Leto the God-Emperor, who's a worm [laughs] and
|
|
he's huge, and he's the God-Emperor of the universe for ten thousand years,
|
|
and he enforces a golden age of absolute, sort of, stability on, on this
|
|
galactic society to teach them a lesson [Mitch laughs], that this is not what
|
|
[MITCH: Stability is so boring] - yeah, that it's basically, you know, <he was
|
|
on> an anti-boredom trip, and <that> stability is boring, <they need> change.
|
|
And he got, he deliberately went about researching, trying to create these
|
|
people whose futures could not be predicted, who were outside the prescience
|
|
that. The prescience was discovered, right, and then it existed, and then,
|
|
you know, people went around trying to discover ways to avoid it. And they
|
|
had <node> ships and [JODIE indistinct] it's really good, [JODIE, something
|
|
about boredom] yeah, it's a really good book 'cause it's got all different
|
|
sorts of factions, like he's got the Bene Geserrit which are, females, and
|
|
they're all sort of into human powers, and developing human potential, and
|
|
abilities, and there's the Tleilaxu which play with things in tanks and
|
|
stuff like that, and they're shape changers and so they play with genetics and
|
|
that kind of stuff, and they can grow things in their axolotl tanks, and they
|
|
can give you, you know, cybernetic eyes and stuff like that. Then there's the
|
|
Guild, which operate the transport, they've got complete monopoly on the
|
|
transport, and he's really into power struggles as well. The Guild have
|
|
absolute power over all transport, and so they develop these <node> ships
|
|
which can't be tracked by prescients ... <???> that's what I said before ...
|
|
so there are all these different factions .. and he, he postulates, like it's
|
|
in the far future, and one of the early things is that ah, there's no
|
|
computers, and there's no atomic weapons. They exist, but there was a
|
|
<?? Valkyrian Jihad> in which everyone smashed up the computers and they made
|
|
this big pronouncement that Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a
|
|
human mind. So, he's got this far, far-future vision that doesn't involve any
|
|
computers or robots and doesn't involve atomic weapons 'cause there's, there's
|
|
a convention against ...
|
|
JODIE: That's an interesting idea, um, not being able to create a computer
|
|
like the human mind, separating tools and the mind, focusing on the important
|
|
points.
|
|
GAVIN: Yeah, like, i.e. making a deliberate decision we're not going to make
|
|
- [drowned out by]
|
|
MITCH: Yeah, well, yeah the idea is I think that would sort of destroy
|
|
culture in a sense that you would, um, if you have something which is like a
|
|
person but is empty, um, then ...
|
|
JODIE: You wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
|
|
MITCH: Well, more than that... like, you can treat that in any way you like,
|
|
maybe. That might be part of the rationale. And so that, if you then start
|
|
treating *people* like that as well ... [JODIE: Yeah, yeah ...] not a
|
|
desirable consequence. So .. you issue your pronouncement.
|
|
[a few seconds of silence or murmurs]
|
|
JODIE: Yeah, I think laws are -
|
|
GAVIN: I think another major point is that they could become competitive.
|
|
[MITCH: Oh right ..] Suppose you do do that, then it's not such a smart idea,
|
|
you could have signed your death warrant of the species, [JODIE: I don't - ]
|
|
which is a very old sort of concept [JODIE: I don't see that as ... <??>]
|
|
JODIE: I don't really see that as, it's sort of like -
|
|
GAVIN: Not necessarily < ??? >.
|
|
JODIE: I read this book called, ah, Amusing Ourselves To Death. It's a
|
|
really good book, I've got to find it actually, and it's all about television
|
|
and the medium, and the society and everything, and anyway he says that, you
|
|
know, Huxley said that - no, Orwell said that, What we hate will kill us, or
|
|
destroy us, and, you know, Huxley said, What we love will destroy us, and
|
|
the book was saying this is that Huxley might have been right. And that, you
|
|
know, television and all of these classic entertaiments [GAVIN: Yeah! There
|
|
you go ...] are <drugging us like soma ??>.
|
|
GAVIN: And, <this is> the good of evil, and the evil of good.
|
|
JODIE: Yeah ... [GAVIN laughs] Yeah ... ah, what was I going to say?
|
|
MITCH: Amusing yourselves to death.
|
|
GAVIN: Yeah ...
|
|
JODIE: .. what did you just say before about ... oh yeah, that the trouble
|
|
is, that the computers might take over and, I think that's like saying,
|
|
Orwell's point of view, that's the thing we fear, but I think that's much less
|
|
likely to destroy us. The things we fear are much less likely to destroy us
|
|
than the things that we love, because if you can't tell the difference -
|
|
If you, you just sit there and you hate television and everything but you keep
|
|
on watching it anyway because it's such a passive, enjoyable thing, it does
|
|
much more damage than something someone who is deliberately restricting you.
|
|
[softly] I don't know ...
|
|
MITCH: Can I mention something here? [GAVIN: <..so insidous..>] This guy,
|
|
who I think Adrian was translating or reading or whatever when he was talking
|
|
to Rodger, Jean Baudrillard, he - He sounds really interesting, he's like an
|
|
inversion of Marx. Like Marx was saying that you have this industrial society
|
|
where everyone is, is alienated because, um ... [birdsong in background] you
|
|
have capitalism which puts an exchange value on things but that's not the real
|
|
use-value, that was Marx's invention, the concept of the real value of a
|
|
commodity in relation to the real world instead of this artificial system of
|
|
prices. He said because we couldn't use things at their use values but instead
|
|
we had to use exchange values then we weren't really, or we were alienated,
|
|
separated from the things we produced, [JODIE: Oh yeah!] and that the workers
|
|
would realize this collectively and therefore that would lead to the
|
|
revolution, and they would establish a regime of use value rather than
|
|
exchange value. Baudrillard says that's wrong. Marx didn't overturn
|
|
classical economics far enough, like classical economics said that exchange
|
|
value IS use value, Marx said exchange value is not use value, Baudrillard
|
|
says, um, exchange value is not desirable, um, he argues that the real,
|
|
social - [JODIE: <.. got to find> this guy?] you won't be able to find him in
|
|
the library anyway, he writes in French, he's very pessimistic and there's
|
|
only one English book which Rodger reckons has been stolen, so [JODIE laughs]
|
|
all we can talk about is what other people have said about him. But anyway,
|
|
um, he argues that social functioning is "best" - I mean, he dislikes words
|
|
like functioning, um, when you indulge in voluntary exchange, when you give
|
|
gifts [JODIE: Yes!] and you reciprocate and so on.
|
|
GAVIN: ... Chinese do that. Chinese have a gift-giving economy. Neil was
|
|
telling me about it, he's writing to [MITCH, unclear] <???> stuffs up their
|
|
central planning, of the economy, because there's this whole gift-giving
|
|
economy [MITCH, indistinct] which is not ... is not counted. [GAVIN laughs]
|
|
[ringing noise]
|
|
MITCH: Well Baudrillard reckons that every time you do something like that
|
|
you're striking a blow against, um, every sort of measuring, classifying,
|
|
codifying regime. Anyway, his argument against Marx is that, that um, Marx
|
|
didn't go far enough because he's still supposing that you have to put a value
|
|
on things whereas what you want is spontaneity and so on. Ah, so, he argues
|
|
that we used to have societies where you had symbolic exchange, and a symbol
|
|
is a sort of a ... well, it's like a force of nature, so the sun in say Aztec
|
|
culture was a symbol because it was a force of life and death at the same time
|
|
whereas he reckons that symbols nowadays have been replaced by signs which
|
|
are, have replaced ambivalence by equivalence. They're all exclusively
|
|
positive, so nowadays the sun is simply, a source of good and warmth and so
|
|
on, and it's opposed to non-sun, this is like the sort of images you get out
|
|
of a media culture, so on. He reckons that because they no longer have this
|
|
ambivalence and their own energy and drive that that's what makes modern life
|
|
so deadening that, we live under the regime of the sign rather than the
|
|
symbol. But Baudrillard doesn't think that we can return to the regime of the
|
|
symbol, he thinks that's impossible, so his solution or rather what he thinks
|
|
will happen is that the masses - um, will drive the regime of the sign to its
|
|
end by um developing it too far, so in other words they'll become more and
|
|
more passive and just consume things continually until lives will become
|
|
totally meaningless and that will make um the regime of the sign collapse,
|
|
because it will be driven to its extreme. So he argues that for people
|
|
nowadays, um consumption is meaningless and politics is just entertainment,
|
|
but that for politics and production to continue they need at least, or
|
|
politics needs, the sort of the pretense of meaning, and production needs an
|
|
alibi, of value, but if those things are taken to their extremes then it will
|
|
sort of bring about an apocalypse in which everything collapses, so
|
|
Baudrillard's really sort of a nihilistic thinker, like, according to one
|
|
account of what I've read - [GAVIN: What, and he provides no sort of - ] No,
|
|
he's not interested in a more positive society, he just wants to bring about
|
|
the end as quickly as possible.
|
|
JODIE: That's really interesting, because that sounds exactly what I'm
|
|
talking about in the Fun Park except I've got the positive thing of trying to
|
|
turn it into something fun. And, making money out of it as well.
|
|
MITCH: That's why he sounds like a really interesting writer to me -
|
|
[GAVIN and JODIE agree.]
|
|
GAVIN: He's really into semiotics as well.
|
|
MITCH: Um .. well, I think .. more than that, like he, he ... I think he
|
|
would agree with semioticians that their account of society is correct, that
|
|
you have [JODIE: What is semiotics anyway?] these signs, semiotics is the
|
|
study of signs and how they determine things, they determine the way people
|
|
think, what they do so on.
|
|
GAVIN: It goes, gets into ... it lends itself nicely to this media sort of
|
|
<rave> [indistinct voice, possibly BRETT] <??> all about how people are
|
|
oppressed by the way things are portrayed in the media and stuff.
|
|
JODIE: Women draped over cars and stuff like that ...
|
|
GAVIN: Yeah, this is a sign which means, bla-bla-bla and <has> people give
|
|
you stuff ...
|
|
MITCH: Yeah ... but ah I think the difference between Baudrillard and
|
|
say, someone, a semiotician, is that a semiotician is just trying to
|
|
scientifically describe signs, whereas Baudrillard actively opposes it ..
|
|
or, rather, he doesn't really oppose it but he wants to bring it to as swift a
|
|
conclusion as possible [GAVIN laughs] by embracing it in the extreme... Found
|
|
that a fascinating position for someone to hold, because it's so inverted on
|
|
everything you would usually think ... I think that's also a clue to
|
|
understanding a lot of the other people Rodger refers to, like Derrida and
|
|
deconstruction and so on. 'Cause, what they're doing, is they're inverting the
|
|
usual priority we place on things so that for instance they're saying that
|
|
culture preceds nature, something like that, which sounds really odd in the
|
|
West because we're used to thinking of um, ah, animal drives like sex, hunger
|
|
and so on as being somehow more fundamental than, um, the impositions of
|
|
culture, whereas, say Baudrillard for instance, rejects the notion that, um,
|
|
the struggle for survival preceds this exchange thing? So he would say that
|
|
for primitve cultures, if people eat or speak or drink or whatever, those
|
|
things are done um for the purpose of the exchange or not at all. So in other
|
|
words even if they're going to starve or something like that they tend to sort
|
|
of die for cultural reasons in a sense, so even at the earliest stage of human
|
|
beings, the culture is still there in a primary sense, rather than a secondary
|
|
sense ... But, yeah, there's lots of fascinating ideas there and all this was
|
|
in that book Superstructuralism which you said was really boring. That's where
|
|
I got all of this from
|
|
JODIE: Superstructuralism? Oh...
|
|
MITCH: Remember? You -
|
|
JODIE: Oh, I only read about half a page of it.
|
|
MITCH: Yeah, and you thought it was really boring. I remember you saying.
|
|
[JODIE: Yeah ...] [MITCH laughs] That's something else I thought was really
|
|
funny.
|
|
JODIE: Oh no, that's awful ... I, I've got to stop, I've got to overcome
|
|
this thing. [GAVIN laughs] <???> people... I just hate it, when you get um...
|
|
I think there was a sentence in Feyerabend's book that really put me off, I
|
|
don't think I've read anything since [MITCH laughs] that sentence, because it
|
|
was so difficult to understand, oh. I should find it, it was about, you know
|
|
about six lines long, this sentence ... and I wrote it all down, and tried to
|
|
work out what he was saying, and it was such a simple thing. He'd actually
|
|
repeated himself in a much more complicated way. He'd explained something
|
|
through an example, and then he summarized it in a really complicated way
|
|
using big words making it difficult to understand. An idea that had already
|
|
been clear to me; and I thought 'Oh, he's just repeating himself!' You know,
|
|
it was - [sound of crows in background]
|
|
GAVIN: Getting more ... Getting more text out of his ideas ... [laughs]
|
|
JODIE: Yeah ... I guess, I guess you should just look at it as like
|
|
everyone, [GAVIN: You can't be perfect.] yeah, everyone's not perfect, the
|
|
important thing is his ideas not his style, and - [whistling in background]
|
|
GAVIN: He was interested in getting published, just like a lot of other
|
|
people who write things that are not <as> worthwhile.
|
|
JODIE: But what I think I'd like to do, except for this idea that certain
|
|
people own ideas you know, I'd really like to rewrite Feyerabend or rewrite
|
|
de Bono, you know, <as> the pop-up de Bono [GAVIN: Yeah] or [GAVIN: The
|
|
comic-book Feyerabend] the comic-book Feyerabend or something like that, um,
|
|
to get a, trying specifically to get across their ideas. Or wouldn't have to
|
|
be their ideas. It'd be just to do it in a more interesting way <then> anyone
|
|
could read it.
|
|
MITCH: That's something I want to do with computers some time this semester,
|
|
like I want to get an Amstrad like Dayalan's - I don't know if you've ever
|
|
seen his, it's a laptop a portable one - and I want to learn about the maths
|
|
behind chaos and neural networks and so on, and then write some software while
|
|
I'm doing that which will allow people to sort of play with it and see the
|
|
basics as they go [JODIE: Oh yeah] - I think that's what computers are really
|
|
<useful> for -
|
|
GAVIN: <I saw in Scientific> American how to do a thing with the Mandelbrot
|
|
set.
|
|
JODIE: Really! How long was it?
|
|
GAVIN: Well, I mean, way before cha - like in Grade Eleven or Twelve, I read
|
|
this article in Scientific American about the Mandelbrot set, I think that's
|
|
when he first discovered it maybe. <?? it's about the> right timing. Anyway,
|
|
it gave the, it gave the formula sets you know, and I think it might even have
|
|
had some code ... anyway, it told you how to set you know [MITCH: Yeah] <??>
|
|
this program this formula -
|
|
MITCH: Was it in the Mathematical Games column?
|
|
GAVIN: Yeah, that, they might have had that Mandelbrot set article and then
|
|
the Mathematical Games in a subsequent issue ...
|
|
MITCH: Yeah, I think I remember that ...
|
|
GAVIN: '86, '87, something like that, and then away you go with your
|
|
computer graphics, and Dayalan's graphics would probably be good enough to
|
|
get really pretty Mandelbrot sets.
|
|
MITCH: Ah ... I don't know ...
|
|
GAVIN: You don't know ...
|
|
MITCH: Yeah, I want to do something more than that, like there are all these
|
|
concepts like chaos, strange attractor - um, bifurcation, sensitive dependence
|
|
on initial conditions, so on - concepts, which I think are best illustrated
|
|
not just by, um [GAVIN: By some <artificial...>] a textbook thing, yeah, but
|
|
having visual dynamic representation of what they're about -
|
|
JODIE: That's why programs are really good -
|
|
GAVIN: They could make so much use of that in teaching all sorts of things
|
|
in university, especially maths and computer science. Especially when they
|
|
have things like, bloody microcode that's just sooo boring, and you could
|
|
absorb the process, like when they tell you this register does - you know,
|
|
this bit is ANDed and ORed and with that, and out comes THIS, you know - if
|
|
they had a bloody graphic presentation of when, uh-uh-uh, and you can follow
|
|
with your eye, this goes there, this goes there, that's all you get, [JODIE:
|
|
Well why don't you do it?] and you have to wade through heaps of shit -
|
|
JODIE: Why don't you make one?
|
|
MITCH: He can only do that now that he's learnt it, that's the thing.
|
|
JODIE: Yeah, but the, but the point is you know how you were going to write
|
|
a letter to the Dean to change the department or whatever so it's less boring,
|
|
well, if you, you know, *gave* them something like that, showed them how to
|
|
do something in an interesting way, that's one way of really changing a
|
|
system.
|
|
MITCH: Outline a software package which would allow you to learn about
|
|
things like, um, [GAVIN: It requires - ] registers and so on. Well, I mean,
|
|
what I'm suggesting is that -
|
|
GAVIN: What sort of thing would the software do? [MITCH: Um ...]
|
|
GAVIN: You need, what you need is a software package that allows you to draw
|
|
things, like you need, you need ... well hardware you need projection, you
|
|
need projection of VGA-quality graphics ...
|
|
MITCH: I was thinking more like people sitting at a terminal and doing this
|
|
some time.
|
|
GAVIN: Yeah, but no, it'd be more efficient if you project it in a lecture
|
|
room and I dislike the smallness ...
|
|
MITCH: Is there a way you can do that? Project something on ...
|
|
GAVIN: They have them for LC - They have LCD things they place on top of an
|
|
OHP, and it projects a screen ... [MITCH: Okay ...] and they can be color and
|
|
reasonably good. They need to be better and cheaper and quieter, 'cause OHP
|
|
goes <nnn...> making a <big> noise. I want, I want my computer to be silent. I
|
|
want it to be a lot of things that <you could quite> easily do. Anyway, have
|
|
that, you need software to sort of be able to easily draw things and then,
|
|
easily write them, which is pretty general ... [indistinct] But like you could
|
|
teach so many things even if you had it in schools ... [indistinct] .. maths..
|
|
because concepts are visual, you, like you wade through all ths text and
|
|
explanation that you receive from the teacher, and from that you get a
|
|
visualization and half the time that's most of what your understanding of the
|
|
concept is, is getting a visualization that <does> their sort of thing, and
|
|
that's how you recall it, when you later, that's how you recall that
|
|
understanding to help you re-understand it when you need to come back to it
|
|
again later.
|
|
JODIE [made somewhat indistinct by shouted conversation from outside]: This
|
|
is <also related to the fact> I was saying about charting runes, I think that,
|
|
you know, you've got to work out what's best in your mind for remembering
|
|
things and usually it's a visual thing, like ... you can have all these neat
|
|
systematic ways - filing cabinets - and a lot of the logic and methodology
|
|
that they teach in lectures, which is generally boring, and it's difficult to
|
|
remember because it's placed in, sort of, the lecturer's mind - someone who
|
|
already knows the subject matter. And ... I think ideas should be presented
|
|
much more ... much more visually and much more ... sort of ... so that you can
|
|
put them in any order you like. It's a bit like ... and a lot of attention
|
|
should be paid in teaching to building up your own method of, of note-taking
|
|
and stuff like that, so you're not just copying down points ... like they
|
|
often, often you have lectures like that, where they specifically are getting
|
|
you to write things down in a certain form ... and it usually ... well, it
|
|
doesn't suit the way that i think, I find it really difficult, I don't take it
|
|
in at all, I just sit there and write -
|
|
MITCH: Yes, you're going to rewrite everything in this visual form, half-
|
|
visual form aren't you? [JODIE: Yeah ...] When you've completed that, like at
|
|
the end of the semester when you don't need the notes any more, if you don't
|
|
plan to refer to them give them to the lecturers. [JODIE: Yeah, yeah, that
|
|
<would be really good...>] I think I'll do that in CS as well. [JODIE: Yeah,
|
|
that would be really good ...] Because, I mean since I don't go to lectures I
|
|
have to find my own systematic way of learning all this anyway [JODIE, largely
|
|
drowned out: <...excellent way...>] <???> ... something like that I'll give it
|
|
to them. [pause] You can do that too Gavin.
|
|
GAVIN: What sort of notes do you mean?
|
|
MITCH: Well, well um, [JODIE: I'll get some ...] I mean I have a few specifc
|
|
ideas as to how to alternatively deal with things like concepts in physics,
|
|
for instance. I have a concept of a sort of a visual diagram which would
|
|
relate all the mathematical concepts in a particular way. So if I can actually
|
|
make that something concrete and I'll put that in my notes, and at the end of
|
|
physics I'll give it to the lecturer and I'll do the same thing with CS if I
|
|
can think of something which really achieves what I'm after.
|
|
JODIE: Yeah, and my note-taking's just sort of like putting different words
|
|
and connecting them and having little bubbles and stuff, and I do them all in
|
|
different colors so that you can -
|
|
GAVIN: Yeah .. see, if you had ... if you had like this thing I was talking
|
|
about, with the large screen and you were able to draw anything, like if you
|
|
can draw a box, put text in it, it'd make like a lot - have you done
|
|
conceptual schemas? [MITCH: Yeah] Yeah, see, like just drawing conceptual
|
|
schemas could just, if you can do any sort of combined visual and text sort of
|
|
thing, so like you could do a thing like that using a general facility for
|
|
drawing boxes and writing text at the same time. And then if you can just
|
|
click on that and drag this over there so you can like rearrange those things
|
|
[JODIE: Oh yeah ...] to ... whatever's most convenient, stuff like that
|
|
[JODIE: Wow ...] ... that would be just such a, such a basic thing, but it'd
|
|
be a good tool for thought, you know, [drowned out] -
|
|
MITCH: You know, it's not so basic in the sense that it's very hard to
|
|
implement, like you need all this hardware ...
|
|
GAVIN: Well they've got things pretty close to it now ...
|
|
[pause]
|
|
MITCH: Yeah, I guess so ... Yeah, they could probably do it in the labs ...
|
|
or certainly, yeah, the first year labs, because they've got um, I mean they
|
|
don't have OHPs in there but they've got boards up the front so on they could
|
|
use them, certainly, and I'm sure - [GAVIN: They could use the terminals.]
|
|
Yeah, so, they could have people sitting at all the Macs, um, with appropriate
|
|
software, and then they could have whatever this LCD/OHP device is up the
|
|
front as well, that would be <?? men> good [GAVIN?: Yeah - that can be done]
|
|
[pause; sound of shifting cardboard]
|
|
JODIE: <I was just thinking like,> you know you were asking about the um,
|
|
my different ideas in my room? I had the compost, and the tools, <?? toys>,
|
|
this is just I'm starting to do a map of the ideas which I ... [indistinct]
|
|
[pause] Oh yeah, this is what I was talking about before ... I think it's what
|
|
you were talking about, having a computer program that's um, that helps you
|
|
move around ideas and is much more the way your mind thinks ... [indistinct]
|
|
'cause I was thinking, if you could have um -
|
|
GAVIN: You know when I was talking to you before about pages?
|
|
JODIE: Yeah.
|
|
GAVIN: And you'd have just, you've got a computer screen big enough to fit
|
|
as many pages of A4 as you can fit on your desk [JODIE: Oh yeah] display A4
|
|
size [distant laughter] not quite this big, so you -
|
|
MAZ [entering]: We won we won we won! Wahoo! The Dragons won. Yeeha!
|
|
[? MITCH: The Dragons.] The <Drag-Ins>. The Rejects. You know how <we were>
|
|
the reject team that <changed over> to the <Anzacs> we WON!
|
|
JODIE: You WON? That's fantastic!
|
|
MAZ: And he probably .. And made his team so pissed off at us -
|
|
JODIE: And you were the ones that had all -
|
|
MAZ: We were the ones -
|
|
JODIE: Hung over -
|
|
MAZ: Because -
|
|
JODIE: I have to <tell you> the story now. Mitchell, this is Maz. [MITCH:
|
|
Hi] [sounds of panting from Maz] ... and Gavin ... [GAVIN: <Hi I'm Gavin>;
|
|
laughs]
|
|
MAZ: <Shut up, shut up!> You know, like nine of us came over from New
|
|
Zealand, 'cause there was a whole lot of us who wanted to come, and there's
|
|
only, you can only have a team of six, but nine of us came, thought, Oh ...
|
|
we'll just pretend we're one team. You know. And then New South Wales people
|
|
did that too, you know, everybody wanted to go so they had people left over
|
|
too [indistinct] All these people got together [indistinct] Well we got there
|
|
and they said no, it's got to be six. Six people in a team so, all these
|
|
people got together, said we'll be in a team together, bla-bla ... we were
|
|
the ones left over, that no-one wanted, ands they called us the Dreg-Ends team
|
|
which is so horrible and [transcription ends]
|
|
|
|
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