An Influx of Megabytes

In capitalism, nothing remains sacred. The earth, water – all is pressed into the service of commodity consumption. Even Bible salesmen will entice you to get your name embossed on the cover. But conversely in art anything, no matter how vile, can be sacred. The artist can shout with true conviction: Did you kill that Mosquito? I was studying it!

In a totalitarian state, one need not make any decisions. All you have to do is wake up and praise the dear leader with every breath. In heaven, it is the same.

In Seattle, it is acceptable to dye your hair pink or blue if you are past the age of fourteen. It is a personal aesthetic expression of the whole city: artificially formed, but projecting a radical teen spirit.

I saw a punk rocker with a patch on his leather jacket that said, “Fuck the police.” In light of the recent austerity measures against public sector workers, it is interesting to think that punks and conservatives, two categories obscured significantly since their origins, have finally joined forces.

War and the Ocean: For people living far away, it is too easy to act as if these things do not exist.

I spent ten days in the Negev desert with a few newly discharged Israeli soldiers. They chided each other, “I fucked your mother,” or “I fucked your sister,” but always spared me of their taunting. I did not expect it when on the final day, a couple of the men said that they had fucked my mother. With this, I knew that I was now their friend. What they did not expect was the feminist reversal. I said, “Oh yeah, well I fucked your father!” And where the all-stars of the Bible used to roam, we joyfully debased, in the spirit of friendship, the holy trinity of psychoanalysis: mommy, daddy, me.

We all want to be the best, but if we are better than our children, in the end we will feel like shit.

I was bundled on the porch when a gangster bumping loud music drove by in a little slug bug. His unshakable mother reprimanded the snowball throwing youths: Oh let him be in the slug bug! He is my boy!

Is it possible to grow and thrive while living in your hometown? Yes, as long as you spend part of the year somewhere else.

Half an hour outside Reykjavik, on a landscape that resembles Mars covered in snow, the Thor Data Center is preparing for an influx of megabytes.

A selfish girl on a train to Chicago once said: Can you believe she missed her dead husband so much, she would go to his closet and smell his clothes?

A control freak once said: My fiancée is never late. If she was, she would not be my fiancée.

No one would ask, “So what are you doing after the orgy?” which is why Baudrillard compares that event to the apocalypse. An orgy is many little deaths happening collectively, mirroring the collective grand death we all have dreamt about. But with every ultimate event or dream realized there is disappointment that the pursuit has ended. This is why no orgy is complete without a scene. A wife gets talked into attending and then resents having to participate. A husband seems amenable to the idea until he sees his wife blowing a strange man. Nothing hurts like the buyer’s remorse of a dream that has vanished into its disheartening completion.

When Gandhi became world famous, manufacturers of round eyeglasses rejoiced.

If you are surrounded by three men who wish to kill you, concede to them that they will probably win. But then promise, that in the ensuing struggle, one of them will surely lose an eye.

Genie to the rich man: I will grant you any wish you desire but what you receive, double will go to the poor.
Rich man: Then put out one of my eyes.

Because history has been abolished in favor of the hypnotic allure of the perpetual present, we are perpetually children because our history has been abolished. I, for one, cannot imagine the past or future, only the same ancient task that unifies all humanity: figure shit out on your own. So please do not fault me if I feel that I am the son of no one.