Freckles & Doubt

Spam is the new surrealist poetry. I still cherish with some fondness the email I received a few months back from the nice Jewish gentleman with the recently dead wife and the fixation on Kabbalah, "post-Auschwitz Spiritists" and Jewish goddess figures, whose ramblings encompassed pre-Christian gender politics, medieval sex magic, Borges, Bacon, Conan Doyle and game theory before even faintly approaching a point, which turned out to be an interest in one of my fairy-tale papers he deemed may be relevant. (Short answer: hell no). Shenanigans with font size suggest that this was a cut-and-paste approach comprising lumps of reference inserted into a hail-fellow-scholar-well-met sort of template, possibly distributed wholesale to swathes of randomly-selected paper-writing populace. The whole left me with the faint, irrational suspicion that some sort of money was going to be demanded about three exchanges in if I in any way responded. Which I didn't. Is this a new scholarly spam? I am curiously tickled to be singled out by it.

Today's was even more surreal, which is rather entertaining and has distracted me very nicely from my current state of hellweek frantic. I reproduce its initial lines wholesale, because wtf, and also because its particular confluence of high-class drivel - mystical conspiracy theory, apocalyptic religion, random header kipple and second-language grammatical and idiomatic solecism - is so deeply entertaining.

Urgent and Immediate Attention - Invitation of Chosen ONE-See “ATTENTION”

I am Saviour of Earth.
This Message is prepared from far away, beyond every Universe.
#############################################################
***************
ATTENTION
***************
Thank you for your immediate attention.
Read “Before Print” on the below, before print email.
_________________________________________________
This email have previously sent email.
During the time of email sending, some of nation government leaders or
ministers, such as Russia, China or other nation government, maybe changed.
People should consider of it.
_________________________________________________
This email have previously sent email.
To improve understanding of email, it would better, read from early days email.

With attached Message document “MASTER_OF_ALL.pdf”.

Readers should consider of it.
#############################################################

There are, in fact, attachments labelled, among other things, MASTER_OF_ALL.pdf, but I have not clicked thereon, on account of basic hygiene and generalised fear of surrealist rabbit-holes.

The perpetrator is addicted to the third-person and admits, apparently with some pride, that "Although Chosen ONE have study background of economy, but during the time when he was lived in western nation, Chosen ONE also studied several years of IT [Information Technology] subject, including, “internet” and “website development”, but never experienced some of sent email, seen on receiving email account, but some of sent email, not seen on same receiving email account, even with correct email address, by not typing email address, but selecting email address from its list." However, "Chosen ONE don’t want spend more of time to solve such problem, or to make discussion with “Gmail” from “Google” internet company, about it. Because Chosen ONE already observed it several months of time, also, importantly, Chosen ONE have to keep focus his attention to element of Earth along with element of Moon. Focusing on element of Earth & element of Moon is important to him."

I now have a mental image of some sort of wild-eyed bearded figure crouched over a green-screen monitor in a shack somewhere, clumsily channelling his element of moon fixation through this strange "internet" thing he only faintly grasps.

This actually requires some sort of medical diagnosis, I think. Schizophrenia?

I blush to admit my slight obsession with the TomKat meltdown, which is really no more than the continuation of my obsession with TomKat, and before that with Tom Cruise himself. This is not, I hasten to clarify, any sort of fangirl he's-so-attractive sort of thing: I can't stand the man, and my interest is more of a sort of horrified fascination with the spectacle he presents. Twiddling my thumbs in traffic this morning, I came to an interesting realisation: like really quite ridiculous amounts of things in my life, this particular urge is also a manifestation of purely academic interests. (Case in point, David Bowie, who's about self-conscious genre play. At least partially. Shut up.)

I do a lot of work with metafiction. Metafiction is characterised, in the words of highly useful critic Patricia Waugh, as fiction "which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality." It's one of the favoured techniques of postmodernists, that sort of "ha ha this is a book not the real world" with which they step outside their own text to comment on it. Tom Cruise doesn't quite do that, but the fervour and intensity with which he constructs himself as an icon at any given moment borders on parody, creating an artefact - a "star" - whose self-evident falsity is intrinsic to its function. That is - he doesn't present "star" and try to naturalise the identity, he tries to naturalise the performance. Tom Cruise is never not performing Tom Cruise, and the non-existence of a genuine Tom Cruise is so taken for granted that its absence permeates the performance. And the performativity of Tom Cruise takes for granted that we acquiesce in the performance - we relate to it as performance, a text, not as a reality. He's also a simulacrum: he is a performance of a self which goes beyond simply obscuring or replacing a reality to the point where it is not related to a reality at all. Dear Baudrillard, how we miss him.

At any rate, the gossip-column coverage of the TomKat breakdown has been affording me much innocent joy: Katie Holmes seems to have blindsided him utterly with the divorce, leaving him groping for an appropriate response to perform. Even better, it's been such a kick in the teeth to the whole Scientology schtick - she has escaped! because she fears your weird cult! because of what it'll do to her daughter! and she's being superbly tactical about the whole thing. Scientology evokes in me a sort of combination of fear and derision, so it's nice to see the creepy-control-freak-omniscience undercut.

The whole thing has also given me absolutely my favourite quote about Scientology of all time ever:

This is what I find hilarious about Scientology even though it’s obviously scary as sh-t: the entire operation sounds like a game you would have invented in your parents’ basement playing with friends back in grade school where the object - to get to Level Supremeness of The Power Destiny - was to hop up the stairs on one foot, blindfolded, with one hand doing the Spock sign and the other holding an egg, while reciting Twas The Night Before Christmas because Miss Green made us memorise it for the holiday revue.
Courtesy of Lainey Gossip.

Hee.

Right, own up. Who's got my Buffy Season 4^H^H^H 7? and, more importantly, what's the deep-seated human foible which leads me to believe, every single time I lend something out, that of course I'll remember who borrowed it and therefore won't have to write it down? Because I never do remember. Never. Because my memory transcends all metaphors of fluff and swiss cheese and goldfish to wander, vaguely and hopelessly, around whole new elevated planes of confusion, absence and loss.

Further to the above: also missing copies of Twin Peaks, Iron Council, several Bujolds and a bunch of other things which, naturally, I can't remember but which are causing suspicious gaps in my shelves. Please interrogate your stashes severely and report back posthaste.

Edited to add: further dispatches from the Elevated Plane of Confusion and Doubt: no, wait, not Buffy Season 4, I actually still have that (which means you can collect it this evening, w-n); it's Season 7 I'm missing. Also Doctor Who season 3. Also, my brain.

Vignette from yesterday's party: distressed four-year-old comes dashing through the house to find me, because something in my bedroom (where three of them have been perpetrating unspecified small-girl evil) is ringing. I wander through and switch off my bedside alarm clock, which has mysteriously set itself.

"Someone must have switched it on," I say thoughtfully. "I certainly didn't. Who was playing with it?"
A ring of innocent faces gazes at me raptly. They exchange conspiratorial looks.
"The cat did it!" volunteers someone.

This morning I was rudely awakened at 7am by the ringing of my alarm clock, at the extremely loud and intrusive end of its graduated scale, which is audible even three rooms away behind a closed door. Staggering, dazed and semi-nude, through the house, I eventually tracked the bloody thing down tucked in a corner of the bookshelf in the guestroom, beeping its little head off.

I knew we'd be in trouble when the cats developed opposable thumbs. I struck a blow for an unsubjugated humanity by wantonly not feeding them breakfast before I staggered back to bed.

Aaargh! Day of annoyance, filled with annoyance and annoying things, all annoying me. Apart from a long string of students (the last one driving me to near madness by her terminal vagueness) I had a lovely response planned to a BoingBoing item about global warning, but Cory Doctorow (gasp!) slipped up and reposted something from 2004, and they've subsequently taken it down. I feel saddened at the realisation that BoingBoing is not, in fact, godlike in its inscrutable wisdom. I also can't remember the pithy comments I was going to make, but it's probably a safe bet that they involved orang-utans.

In the Department of Oh Gosh I'm Still An Awful Klutz: slipped on the steps on my way down to my office this morning, and came down hard on my posterior (fortunately off centre, thus saving my poor coccyx another beating, which is just as well). I have an enormous blue and purple bruise on my left buttock, and grazes on my right hand. I thought I'd given up on this all-too-obsessive embracing of gravity at odd and inappropriate moments. Possibly the Cosmic Wossnames are punishing me for not having gone to the gym for a week, in which case I blow a raspberry in their general direction. I haven't had time to go to the gym, and have been too darned exhausted to boot. I plan to be better this week, although that's got off to a great start with my projected 4.15 escape being sabotaged by annoying students until about a minute ago. Sigh. Now I'll have to fight great droves of the sweating for access to the machines.

In the Department of Everything Comes Down To My Current Favourite TV: Dyatlov Pass, courtesy of Charlie Stross. It's clearly an X-Files episode, and I hourly expect a sarky Wikipedia edit to reflect the foolish writers' obliviousness to this fact. My wayward imagination is insisting on putting a shivering Mulder into black-and-white snow photographs à la the famous Elijah Wood one. Odd.

In the Department of Thin White Duke Worship: have become suddenly and unaccountably addicted to Outside, the latest Bowie album I've acquired. This is puzzling me no end, since it's (a) a weird concept album in which the actual tracks alternate with potentially pretentious formless segues, and (b) considerably further towards the electronic (and strange avant-garde jazz) end of the spectrum than I'm generally happy with. I have, however, been bopping around the house to it all weekend in a state of high glee, while the cats watch me with suspicion and, I suspect, derision. There's one song in which I swear Bowie channels Ian Curtis - in that classic Bowie fashion, it's actually slightly more like Joy Division than Joy Division is. Since it's called "No Control" it also kinda rubs your nose in the ironic postmodern wossnames. Although not any more so than is usual for Bowie.

Last Night I Dreamed: I was wandering around the palatial skyscraper which housed the giant, glitzy room which was the sort of royal-court-like focus of the political machinations of a whole bunch of noble, or possibly corporate, houses. After a certain amount of being lost and intimidated and surrounded by snooty people in beautiful clothes, I was adopted into one of the houses by its kindly older head, who for some reason looked a bit like Steve Martin. I subsequently had to join a procession of the younger members of said house, who were being uniformly bitchy to me, and was somewhat horrified to discover, halfway round the room, that I wasn't wearing shoes and was being roundly ridiculed for my stockinged feet.

Am clearly in full-on retreat from (a) book updates, (b) bunny accessories, (c) my ginormous pile of marking, and (d) my state of health (still feel sick). And what better way to retreat than into TEH INTERNETS? Clearly this internet thingy is a cunning scheme from an interstellar civilisation to completely corrupt all human endeavour and progress by the simple ploy of selecting for literacy, curiosity and lateral thought, and then hopelessly distracting it, causing humanity's intellectual cream to FRITTER AWAY their time uselessly. At current rates, in about 10 years the BEMs will be able to stage a full-on assault on our planet, meeting no resistance whatsoever as everyone will be too busy blogging the experience to actually do anything about it. Baudrillard would be proud.

Ahem. Anyway. Linkery.

• The Lyttle Lytton Contest. Like the Bulwer Lyttons, except restricted in length, making for a delirious punchiness. Also, the perpetrator of the contest deconstructs them, presumably in the search for a platonic ideal of humour.
• Wondermark: An Illustrated Jocularity. Price sixpence, or by Post Sixpence Halfpenny. Severely lateral, and appeals desperately to the hopeless Victorian geek in me.

Things that are not working, apart from actual work: the sitting-room lights, my car alarm (keeps going off randomly), two bars on my heater, and the front gate, whose remote has apparently died.

In other news, today's postmodern internetty experience: wandering onto Facebook in a sort of academic what-are-the-cool-kids-doing finger-on-pulsy sort of way, to find out that, ahem, my dad's there.

Bunny Threat Level: bleah.

Just randomly. Or because I like them showing up in burgundy.

This is insanely addictive. My morning's ritual hunt for the missing Walter Benjamin has been punctuated by gunfire and squeaks of woe. (Courtesy Twentysided.)

This is an amazing discussion of writing, reading and what makes a book really worthwhile. (Courtesy Evil Auntie Peril).

This is a bizarrely fascinating analysis of pitch and inflection in phrases from Martin Luther King.

The alien overlord has struck back. In order to prevent me implementing the suggestions made by various witterers about early phoning, it has infected our phone with random bursts of static, presumably in a significant pattern to assist the brain-liquefying process. If you need to phone me in the next few days, I suggest you do it by e-mail, since the static makes the land line only marginally worse than the cell reception in this house. I await the arrival of Telkom's Alien Infestation Unit.

Dream update: last night was Harry Potter.

The subject line is one of my mother's favourite quotes, and is taken from a particularly sententious announcer on Zim radio who used to follow up reports of practically anything with a head-shaking comment of "It's all part of life's rich pageant". Which is not a patch on the Zim announcer who, clearly bemused, identified the preceding classical piano piece as "Chopping Polonies In A Flat", but is still fairly quotable.

Life's rich pageant this morning was supposed to be a simple one-on-one struggle between the sound effects of the Army of Reconstruction, and my construction of merry encyclopedia entries and rapid-fire editorial comments on Young Mike's Commerce Honours project. Instead, I am being investigated by the police, in the shape of a rather sweet and very Afrikaans Captain from Paarl, plus silent side-kick.

Those who hang around Shire Central with any regularity may remember my occasional run-ins with assorted kooks and weirdos who find my name and/or photograph on the web, usually associated with the SCA, and, constructing elaborate personal scenarios around my mere existence, take it upon themselves to contact me. The opening salvo in this campaign was the gentleman of Native American descent known in local SCA circles as "the Foot Fetishist", who sent me a letter from the US, enclosing a photo of him (dubious, in a speedo) and another of his feet (dubious, hairy, sandalled), and wanted to start a correspondence for purposes of obtaining photos of my feet. I have not yet lived this down. However, the Foot Fetishist had a useful purpose, in that he creeped me out enough that I did a quick purge of all websites pertaining to me in any way, and made sure any contact details were box number only. This was fortunate, since the second approach was from a couple of gentlemen residing in the local maximum security prison.

The letters were, in their peculiarly bent way, works of art; hand-written with the painstaking care and regularity that suggests unhealthy obsession, and decorated with interesting pentagrams, drops of blood, weird symbols and general mystic squiggles. They made dark, cryptic mention of the "secret organisation" to which we both, apparently, belonged, and its high-level council of elders, mysterious powers of life and death, and general occultic menace. One gentleman professed himself willing to die in our cause. This was, of course, exceedingly disturbing, given that the secret organisation to which they referred was apparently our beloved local chapter of the SCA, who, while being medieval loons of the first water, are neither secret nor occultic, and are cryptic only in the higher mystic realms of things like heraldry, Elizabethan costuming and stick-jock tactical jargon.

Having made a valiant, public-spirited and unavailing attempt to inform the prison that some of their inmates were several sandwiches short of a picnic (they weren't interested), I promptly forgot about it. Yesterday, however, after various frantic phone calls between me and the local Marshal, it transpired that the intelligence unit were investigating the SCA, on the grounds of recent "allegations" made by one of these absurd gentleman, who, it turns out, is doing a life sentence for taking out a particularly nasty hit on his wife, and who appears to make a hobby out of baroque and implausible conspiracy theories which attempt to exonerate him from his crime. Apparently I figured in the allegations, by name, as the kingpin of this secret organisation - good lord, I'm an Evil Overlord! - and the local Marshal as the top assassin who implements my Evil Overlordian plans.

In the event, the slightly bemused Intelligence officers appear to be quite happy to accept the letters as evidence of inmate criminal lunacy and various printouts, newsletters and websites as evidence of the SCA's fairly harmless medieval lunacy, and we can all go on our way rejoicing. But the episode has left me with two overwhelming impressions: (a) the life of a life-sentence prisoner must be a bleak and horrible thing from which extended fantasy is the only escape, and (b) the Internet has an awful lot to answer for.