psyche

There is an old computer in a basement; it is not particularly dusty but it still exudes a sort of smell (which isn’t really a smell, but smell will do) which heavily implies that it is old. By old I do not really mean aged (although it has indeed aged), but more specifically I refer to that vaguely-defined state of oldness that exists in computer culture and probably in most other subcultures: the computer is a generic old thing and no-one knows precisely what it is but they know that it is from another era.

It had previously belonged to a man who liked it quite a lot and did some useful things and also, like any man, wasted a fairly large section of his life using to pursue things which ultimately meant nothing. Of course, he found out interesting things and his life was better but he also engaged in other things; he dialled into boxes ever so far away and played tricks on the telephone men and women and was occasionally proud of himself. The computer didn’t really remember him as such; certainly were there things on backup tapes still bound to it that had never been overwritten but, in a way that makes me sad, would probably never be looked at - in fact, I can confirm that they never were but, as you now know, they could have been. It now sat humming below the electronics shop. Its hum was permanent because it ran some antiquated but venerated software that required several hours which, according to its system clock, should not have harboured much human activity, for “housekeeping” tasks and so was left on by its more recent owner (a shop employee). It had been superseded by much, much faster machines.

Left behind by someone who found things out. I cannot really convey the strange tightness that I feel in my torso when I think about it; it’s like an edgy nostalgia: it had been left. Dark people in dark rooms had done dark things but found the way. Most left in a bad, lonely way. Others left in a way that was still lonely but they experienced a profound connection to something incredible. They broke many rules and, you know, I wish they would come back and help me but they won’t. I still sort of wait, you know. I sit here in my room at my computer staring at it and hoping something will come, although I know that I really have to make it come. I have to pull things to me.

Now, the light from the character bled into the darkness which might as well be considered part of the bigger darkness of the room. People had sat and done things but now no-one sat; I would’ve taken a melancholy photograph had I been there. No-one remembers the computer! It doesn’t even exist!I made it up! It died alone! I MADE IT UP.

Physics and guitar concert on Monday. Someone knows that I try!

Pax

I’ve just realised something that threatens to totally mess me up - forever:

Ethics is like psychology which is like quantum physics - the conclusions don’t seem right; they’re uncomfortable, inconvenient and go against everything I wanted them to be!

I just don’t know what I’m doing now.

Also, the good ol’ test (my results have worsened a lot since I last took this: perhaps I’m just more honest now? I think that’s it… I was expecting “Very High” for Histrionic, but hey…)

Pax

I wish I felt nothing.

Pax

Sixth form teaching has for the most part just ended. No more lessons. Easy term; just exams.

This is it! I am no longer a conscious being; I am now a vessel of hatred, arrogance and greed and all my actions are symptoms of human delusion. Exams! Racking up A*s! No matter how much I hate pressure or failure or being continuously outclassed, I have to say, this is good. This is what I was born to do.

To those of you doing exams, I say:

• Read the question once quickly and once carefully.
• Call upon every fact and unit of wit you have ever possessed and answer the question.*
• Never despair.

To those of you competing at life, I say:

• Hold your trump card till the end.
• Call upon every fact and unit of wit you have ever possessed and make your move.**
• Never lose your cool.

* Writing your answer down is very important too.
** Preferably the best move.

To paraphrase Joshua Waitzkin, it’s the second mistake that gets you. Make a mistake but then make the best of the resulting scenario. Such is the grand compromise.

Such is death.

Pax

I recently saw some video for The Fray’s How To Save a Life - it wasn’t the same as the one I’d seen before. This one had a white backdrop and lots of people crying and words like “Fear” and “Surrender” coming up. This sort of epitomises how teenage angst has been updated. Any complaints just become ridiculous and contemptible. I don’t know why. At some point in the past you could think “Argh. I’ll just KILL MYSELF and then you’ll be sorry!” or start crying, or be broken and expect people to suddenly realise you’re hurt/they’re wrong. However, it’s not like that. Life is an enemy that does not give up or act like it should. You actually have to risk losing. I don’t like risking loss so I basically avoid most sports and academic competitions. Loss is humiliating and belittling but it’s also honest. For those of you who don’t lose, it’s much worse than you would believe. However, some people don’t respond badly. Some people use their last match to burn their own life down, but others, for whatever reason, correct or not, are reformed and become stronger - like bone or muscle, being driven to the edge and becoming more powerful.

This is no longer an option; it is necessity. Karma, God, faith, hope - all symptoms of some minor confusion over what life is: an enemy!

Maybe I’m just bitter. Well, I am bitter. However, I am motivated by something else.

Pax

The PowerBook has had its broken US keyboard replaced with a new UK one - and its failed hard drive replaced. We just have to pick it up from the Brent Cross Apple Store. Hooray for AppleCare. I have no idea what’s going on. I have an obscene amount of work to do. I will never reach the higher level. I am glad that God does not exist. I am so sorry.

My brain is becoming even less… good. Things are looking clear now. That is almost not. What I say? 2

The guys at the Genius Bar there deserve a cookies or someti23

Pax

I’m not sure what it is. There are few people who are very good at a game but choose to resist the allure of profundity. Most competitors will begin to become so entwined in their art that they become ideal gamers and really don’t have to win all the time - they learn and adapt - but as a result of this, they do win. The few that keep the “play to win” attitude develop differently, training with demented intensity and becoming elitist to the core. I prefer this approach, to be honest. It is simpler and clearer, even if it’s less genuine - there’s no genius-level understanding, just hard work and foresight.

Perhaps this is a reaction to my own major malfunction (apart from having a small penis and being a nerd) - I’m not very good at maths. Granted I’m good enough and will probably not be really bothered by it in terms of employment or interpersonal life etc. but I have a cringing feeling that I know is accurate which tells me that it will bother me my whole life. Perhaps I’m just lazy. I don’t know what it is. What takes other people seconds to understand takes me minutes. Systems which I have interest in confuse me unendingly. It’s infuriating and cruel; I am just too stupid. I think I’ll make the best of it and on the surface it’ll look like I’ve conquered it and am happy to suck at chess and connect 4 and be unable to make simple arithmetical calculations as fast as the average eight-year-old, but tragically I don’t think I will ever forgive myself.

Pssht. Where did I go wrong? I don’t know. I’m not so bad that it’ll impede my life but it’s bad enough to hold me back from any kind of excellence. There is now nothing that I can say “Yeah, that’s what I do. It’s what I’m good at and what I’ll always be good at.” I don’t think there ever was.

I also think something else is wrong; sometimes when I see shadows moving or trees rustling in my peripheral vision, I think they’re people. Not like, I stop and consider the motion and think “Hmm, it might be a person…” but my gut reaction - what my brain immediately decides - is that it’s a person or animal or something, because I immediately freeze and have to look round etc.

I don’t know what it is. I don’t think I ever will. I predict I’ll always be stupid enough to fail to achieve really remarkable things, but work hard and have enough intelligence to seem like a hardworking unintelligent person or a lazy and slightly intelligent person.

So when you feel my contemptible loser’s gaze at your back, know that I am not ignorant. I am consciously aware of my failure. With slow applause I praise those of you with natural talent or the willpower to really be excellent. I, it seems, am a total fraud. My success is isolated and requires really hard work. I don’t know why it is!

Every part of me is disgusted by what I am; there are people with situations so many hundreds of times worse than my own that I cannot even begin to express my dismay at what a self-pitying wretch I am.

I wish I knew what it was all about! I don’t think I’ll gratify myself by descending into depression or anger. I’ll even smile, look: *smiles*. This is absurd. For fuck’s sake. If in months or years I look back on this and think “Ah, at least I predicted that my stupidity would persist in ruining my life like a crayon up my nose… I must’ve been somewhat intelligent…”†

Also, fuck.

Pax

† Hey, if I can’t fucking make bad jokes, I can’t do anything, right?

Note to future self:
Work hard, you fool! There’s a chance your intellectual inadequacy can be overcome! This is no fiction, where people are strange like you! This is life! Be a man!

No matter how I look at it now, life really is just perpetual shopping, whether it’s to keep oneself alive or to satiate one’s psychological need to have more stuff. As you may be able to tell, I enjoy randomly italicising things.

Marx implied that politics was governed by the economics of production and Baudrillard revised this to also include the philosophy, psychology and semiology of consumption.

People in crappy factories = factory farmed Other people = free range

But they still serve to continue civilisation, which is essentially a framework for mankind in which life is not good for everyone and profits are diverted to a small percentage of the population. Or so I reckon!

Pax

Maybe this is why I’m not a people person but again I am highly annoyed by people doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, or in this case choosing the right worldview for the wrong reasons.

Take, say, Elliot or Richard Dawkins or Dr Zetie. They are firmly atheist and secularist because they have considered the problems of faith and religion and have reached a logical conclusion. Now take several other people: they champion an atheist view because it’s easy to defend and it’s still countercultural. This makes me annoyed. If at some point they dropped the mind-melting arrogance and superiority complex they gain from touting such statements as “Religion was invented to control people.*” (Great, now stop telling people who worked that out when they were eight and go find some zealots to cleanse, you attention-whoring piece of… human) and perhaps sit down and really think hard, they could be nice!

Of course in Dawkins’ case as he said (paraphrasing): it’s okay to be arrogant because he’s right. But it’s not if you’re just being a twat and utilising some of the most clear and beautiful philosophies in the world for fucking social fodder, so FUCK OFF.

Pax

* Controlling people is difficult and annoying - so probably to make money off people, not to control them (although controlling them is a natural extension of making money off them in the most efficient way possible [cf consumerism])

I think that when any product is successful, it takes an emotion or feeling and reminds you of it so powerfully that you will pay money to have it, lest you forget that feeling forever. I believe that The Matrix was so successful because it encompassed two main “film feelings” but in an original and interesting way. The first was obviously the sort of epic war idea but that was overplayed in the sequels and pissed people off, and the scenes inside The Matrix became completely abstract philosophy and a lot of people got lost there. However, in the first, it was inside The Matrix that the second theme was captured - the same thing that they really nailed in the Animatrix - and the Matrix Comics… SHIT are those two good… I don’t really know how to describe it - it connects people. It’s everyone living out their lives with a sneaking suspicion that they push to the back of their minds and ignore, something most people do successfully. It’s the millions of people independently awake at 03:00 eating Cap’n Crunch from the box, hunched over their computers, genuinely wondering what’s up, from disillusioned teenagers in families scraping by in the worse-off areas of New York to rich Japanese software engineers pausing from their jobs for five minutes to really think.

It’s that notion that there’s a whole world there somewhere - not really far away, but hidden. A happiness or a sadness, a profoundly different environment that one simply must discover.

I used to stay up because I had homework. Then I began to stay up out of habit, randomly increasing my general knowledge via Wikipedia. Now I don’t know why I stay up. When I am dead and my life has come to nothing of real value, whoever you are, I ask you to think hard. These ideologies and philosophies seem to divide us but really, across infinite distances they unite us. They are written in books, most of which are never read by the right people or lost in conversation with uninterested people. Everyone goes their own way.

So yeah, The Matrix. How is this all connected? I don’t know. I don’t.

Pax