pseudoscientific

The Kill-Freak Syndicate!

“The philosophers’ inventive theories of time and money directed and guided the managerial class towards the ways by which they could change the world to suit themselves.” — Steven Simpson, Blinded by Science

In the old mansion house in the swamplands where the cops would never find him, the occupant paced the dining room. Anikulapo-Kuti was possessed of an unusual, chaotic intelligence. Dinner was at seven.

Psycho-gulls ate from the pre-conscious archives and regurgitated scones and tea in the afternoon. Fearful they were not, yet with fear and terror were they deplored as they cut a finger slicing a side of beef or cracked an Arabian plate.

Description lost out to prescription. Pushed with a haste that could only be stalled by informational products, marvellous new vices were engineered in leaps and bounds and spread abroad by the forces of evil.

Poverty Inc moved into new territories, solving problems with a new spin on an old dogma, promises of betterment, a way to bridge the gap. Condescending to point at a picture of a pauper in a cloth cap holding a noose round the neck of a woman accused of witchcraft, and pointing out the barbarism, the faulty metaphor was recycled against a backdrop of leisurely hours spent haranguing the natives about how lucky they were to till the soil.

“Turn the ghost up in here.”

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Situation Normal: All Fucked Up

“The only triumph the bureaucrats can claim for their invention of the cost of identity is the truth in their assertion that no synchronal force is binding. But their victory is hollow. Neither sleep nor death offer any escape.” — Stravo Kellarman, Enemies of Life

I dedicated my research to infinity and infinity for finite ends. My job was to unlock and enchant, delight, and unburden, and return the feedback loops to mystery. Like a botanist of the slightest gesture, I would exact the cause, and unravel and blossom.

In a fevered orison at night I confessed nothing written here was binding. Nothing written here would apply two weeks later, but for the duration of the sampling of this voice the reader became both ventriloquist and oracle. Captivated by the synthesiser, the name of our fad would be “Histrionic”. Our words were sung from behind the sofa. We resided there with the racoons and coyotes, like ambassadors of scorn, prevailing over the followers, non-ironic and fake, hypnotised by the synthesiser: supersonic, electronic, perfunctory.

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The Big Homunculus

“I see its eyes as they move in its head and on to me. I feel it looking at me. I feel that it apprehends the very nature of my being and at the same time transmits its own. I move, but I cannot move from its sight. Happily, I am transfixed.” — Jodi Stroman, Gimmicks

The new era had unleashed a new evil: the birth of the Big Homunculus. As the buzzword left the mouth of the Reality TV presenter it was quickly absorbed into the brains of the watchers. Some concern was shown for a rabbit hole that lead to the tomb of established law and order. Later in the day, the buzzword was rediscovered on the floor of the interrogation room, scrawled on repeat prescription.

The cybernetic fantasy had become the template for a new kind of unreality. Pseudoscience had brought the human population into unerring compliance with the social body. Society’s gods were factual data that were fabricated, re-constructed and replicated by the available machines. Automation provided freedom of expression under the rule of the economy. There would be no need to compete for survival because the thing called society would be ruled over by the majority and finally reach TOTAL DEMOCRACY.

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Equipole

“I am not dead because I was never born. I did not live, and I never died. I am the living death that resides at the center of the world.” — Master Qiang Myeong-Suk, The Unvanquished

If the language of the “novel” was to function at optimal level, this alone would be insufficient proof that words are sounds represented by artificial symbols rather than units of communication.

They could be both, Nasrul figured. Words were noises, grunts and tribal signs that masqueraded as communication and this meant that they must be under the control of certain shady operators for the prophet. Naturally, this implied that another form of justice would have to be enacted so that the illusion of power would be removed from the repressive order of the written and spoken. (more…)