We Are Here: The Pale Blue Dot

We Are Here: The Pale Blue Dot from dmahr on Vimeo.

(Gene Limbrick)

Collaborations or guest posts or something like that

I've taken the appropriate measures and now you can expect some postings on here from some of your best loved Awkward contributors.

Jack

Homorhetoric

(Rosemary Kirton)

"Welcome to yesterday on the internet. Ha."

The Church Of The Eternal Void - Excerpt #1

     "Work is only ever the organization of natural, unprofitable chaos into some semblance of function-able, control-able, tame-able order..." 

     Ebert tried telling himself this as he watched the world around him contract, shrinking ever-steadily towards an existence comprised entirely of one bed, a sweaty dressing gown and a window, wherever he happened to be.

     "Is the whole world in every room? Fuuck, I wish I'd never tried to read any philosophy."

     He thought about Martin Creed... specifically he thought about an utterly incredulous display he'd witnessed once on youtube. It was as if 'The Artist' had taken a stupid-pill for effect... the effect of appearing stupid. 

     "Why would someone do that?" 

     Creed's words, when written on a page, and occasionally the warm way in which he was prone to speaking about nothingness and somethingness, had comforted Ebert in the past, but his memory of this video was a painful one. It was like the artist had become ensnared in a trap of his own making; having to appear as stupid as possible all the time in order to authenticate his 'simple' works. To insinuate some ungraspable profundity he would fein dumbfoundedness in the face of ideas as complex as "people make art." In the end though, he just seemed dumb. 'Stupid'. At least that's what Ebert thought as he tried and failed to get out of bed.

Bad sound : good noise

I went and saw Until The Light Takes Us the other week in a cinema full of metalheads and hipsters in Dalston. It was a confusing, conflicted experience, but the film was pretty good I suppose. Lots of people laughed in some really worrying places, as well as in some of the right ones. Highlights (a little thin on the ground and definitely peppered atop a thick undercoat of 'rubbish', 'filler' and 'bad footage') included Varg generally talking in a flawed but stridently philosophical/still appropriately angsty manner about the whole thing and Fenriz talking on the phone to a music journalist about the lyrics from his new album, about techno music and about how you should just kill yourself - a conversation bookmarked perfectly at the end with a "yeah, so, fucking great, goodbye!" *hangs up phone* 

Champion Chumpington

Yeah, so this is like a self promotion exercise. I really want you to give me £2 cos I want you to read my writing and think I'm really great and like, tell your little sister I'm soooooo dreamy so she can think of me when she's in the bath.

Its pretty hard to hit the right tone with this blog. I mean, what do people want to hear? What do I want to say? Is anyone reading? Do I hate the internet? Do I just hate myself? Do I hate everyone else? Why am I still talking?

Being a 'writer' seems so ridiculous at any time other than when you are writing something. This stuff - writing about writing - doesn't seem to count. Its a strange sensation. All I really want to share is my self doubt, but what the hell is the point of that? No one wants to hear it, not even me. But here I am, being all reflexive and talking about talking like a bewildered, narcissistic knob.

Anyway. Blogs are useless. I might delete this thing... but I probably won't

 

A Very Dense Text

Another

...while I'm here... 

Some strange opposite of being marooned on a rock in the digital ocean

I've been stranded with no internet access at home for fucking ages. 

1 hour a day in Hackney Central library is hardly even enough time to notice that the young muslim guy sitting next to me has been casually browsing hardcore porn the whole time.

I don't own a scanner. Every time I scan something in in the library, something strange happens to the file and all that's there on my memory stick when I get home is an infuriating conflagration of chinese characters and an image that despite being there and having an icon all of its own, apparently has a file size of 0kb.  For some reason I have taken it upon myself to repeat this pointless exercise 3 times.

On the up side, spending lots of time in public libraries is good for me. I like the people. They smell like life and they all walk differently. Their clothes seem to utter idiosyncratic rhymes about their living rooms and the moods of their pets. I feel privileged to be one of this bony, stinky, oozy rude gang whenever the sensation strikes that I am, in fact, a key member.

I don't have any images to post. This entry is more a page in my diary that I am choosing to share with you, whoever you are. So, for the sake of consistency, here's a new fact about me;

I work (volunteer) in an Oxfam bookshop now in Crouch End. Its nice. I get free books from the recycling pile. If I had a scanner of my own I'd give serious consideration to scanning in the cover of a volume I brought home today from 1984 called,

Pre-Menstrual Syndrome 

- DIET AGAINST IT - 

your complete self help plan

by Dr Robert C.D Wilson

Underneath this bold red and green text there is a printed photograph of a blonde woman, under ungainly studio lights, very slightly cross-eyed, positioned in front of a heavy brown curtain, smiling, stupidly, like a sea cow and holding a basket of raw broccoli up to her face.

P.S Issue 2 almost ready!