No Means

"We only become what we are
by the radical and deep-seated refusal
of that which others have made of us."
John-Paul Sartre

Thanks to Howard Rheingold for Twittering this.

My John the Baptist Years

I used to be a corporate whore, and I stayed in nice hotels, and ate in nice restaurants.... but it didn't satisfy me. I had sexy girlfriends, who thought I was funny... but didn't understand me, and that left an empty space I needed to nourish.

They were my John the Baptist years, my wandering in the desert years.

I set up Hot Vimto as a vehicle to reconnect to my creative inner child through reminiscence, smut, and rock and roll, but I have had to accept that I can't even describe myself on my own terms! At least, not to my satisfaction. I have been pretty messed up over the course of my life, and the most important thing has been re-connecting with my integrity.

*Waves*

Floreat Escapeons!

Today I ask you to join me in celebrating Donn Coppens of Whatevepeg, MB (that presumably stands for Mad Bastard). Donnnnnnnnnn chose to celebrate his birthday this year by having his genitalia surgically enhanced to please the ladies.

Well isn't he the optimist?



In honour of the great and anomalous Escapeons and his enduring efforts to drag Canada back to the Age of Enlightment, I am posting a video by top pop combo Ladytron, which is an ode to male sexual performance, which reaches its peak at the age of seventeen (biologically, if not culturally).

They only want you when you're seventeen
When you're twenty-one
You're no fun
They take a polaroid and let you go
Say they'll let you know
So come on

(*repeat 7 times*)

We only want you when you're seventeen
When you're twenty-one
You're no fun

LADYTRON

* I assume "repeat 7 times" was meant to be witty.

Gordie Gets Real

Reality
is whatever doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it.
Philip K. Dick

Thought for the Day

"I do not mind being contradicted,
and I am unperturbed when I am attacked,
but I confess I have slight misgivings
when I hear myself being explained."
Lord Balfour

My Queer Studies

I hope you'll excuse me for deviating from my normal standards of trivia and frippery to discuss something that matters to me.


Some of you know, and some of you don't, that I've been working on a PhD thesis, and a fine old mad-making piece of merriment it has proved to be.


I've been researching Lloyd's of London: how the insurance industry negotiates contracts, and the difficulties of designing an electronic environment to negotiate in, instead of doing everything face to face in this fine, shiny building on the corner of Lime Street.

Over the weekend I discovered an important concept that explains something what I've been trying to explain. To my surprise, the insight comes from Queer Studies; specifically, it comes from the insights we get once we stop thinking about nature and culture as fundamentally separate, and look at meeting the universe halfway: how we perform the world into existence by the ways we study it, interpret it, and try to change it.

So there you have it: the application of Queer Theory to the insurance industry. For example, performing New Orleans into existence, again, after Hurricane Katrina. (That seems to be a very slow project.)

I shouldn't allow myself to get distracted, but there's another chapter in the same anthology called 'An Unfinished Conversation About Glowing Green Bunnies'. I mean, that's got to be worth a read, hasn't it?

It Ain't Over...

Hey! It ain't over!

Gee, I hope that I'm crazy...
I feel you driving and you're only the wheel
Slow down, let someone love you
I've never touched you since I started to feel
If there's nothing to hide me
Then you've never seen me
Hanging naked and wired

Somebody lied
I say it's hip
To be alive

Now your smile is
Spreading thin...
Seems you're trying
Not to lose...
Saints are not supposed to grin
All you've got to do is win.

That's all ya gotta do...
It ain't over

Me, I'm fresh on your pages
Secret thinker sometimes listening aloud
Life lies dumb on its heroes
Wear your wound with honor,
Make someone proud

Someone like you
Should not be allowed
To start any fires

Now your smile is
Spreading thin...
Seems you're trying
Not to lose...
Saints are not supposed to grin
All you've got to do is
win.

That's all ya gotta do...
It ain't over
Seek and believe in you
It ain't over, no
DAVID BOWIE

New York Conversation

I was sleeping, gently napping, when I heard the phone
Who is on the other end talking, am I even home
Did you see what she did to him, did you hear what they said
Just a New York conversation, rattling in my head

Oh, my, and what shall we wear?
Oh, my, and who really cares?

Just a New York conversation, gossip all of the time
Did you hear who did what to whom, happens all the time
Who has touched and who has dabbled here in the city of shows
Openings, closings, bad repartee, everybody knows

Oh, how sad, why do we call
Oh, Im glad to hear from you all

I am calling, yes Im calling just to speak to you
For I know this night will kill me, if I cant be with you
If I cant be with you ...
LOU REED

The Dark Knight

This afternoon, I went and saw The Dark Knight on Broadway.
It is an extremely good movie.
Heath Ledger as the Joker? Brilliant.
Heath Ledger in a nurse's uniform? Not really.

Gordie is Dark

Your Freedom is History

A very interesting report of some research from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, in collaboration with the Charité University Hospital and the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin.

The researchers used a brain scanner to investigate what happens in the human brain just before a decision is made. Apparently, our brain makes a decision up to seven seconds before we become aware of it.

Participants in an experiment were asked to choose whether to push a button with their left hand or their right hand. They were allowed to decide well before they pushed the button, and were also asked to record at what point they felt they had made their decision.

In the seven seconds before Haynes' subjects chose to push a button, activity shifted in their frontopolar cortex (a brain region associated with high-level planning.) Soon afterwards, activity moved to the parietal cortex, a region of sensory integration.

Haynes' team monitored these shifting neural patterns using a functional MRI machine. Based on these brain patterns, the researchers were able consistently to predict which hand the subjects would use to push a button.

Taken together, the patterns consistently predicted whether test subjects eventually pushed a button with their left or right hand -- a choice that, to them, felt like the outcome of conscious deliberation.

So: does free will exist? I say, yes, it does. But our consciousness gets involved several seconds later. By the time we're aware of what we want to do, our brain and are body are already committed.

Daddy's Girlfriend

When I was very little my mother used to point at the television whenever this actress came on and go "Look! Look! Daddy's girlfriend!"

I had only a vague idea of what girlfriends were, but I decided that my mum was saying that before he met her, my dad had been going out with Eva Gabor. This made me think my dad must have been extremely cool.

I wondered why they weren't still together. In those days, I didn't understand how relationships ended (or even, I suppose, that they could...) I was only five at the time, and my dad was really, really old. I didn't understand about mistresses, either, but I thought it was better not to ask my mum too many questions.

The existential implications of having a different mother didn't even cross my mind.