Before you shoot yourself in the face with a water pistol filled with bleach to cleanse the horrors of not knowing the source of the subject of this entry, I shall just start out by telling you. It’s from the wobbly lyrics of the first and title song, Largo, from an album I just acquired by Bill Rieflin and Chris Connelly. The latter sure has a wobbly voice. The record still got made and should show me that I should never be insecure about my singing, playing or flailing away at any inanimate or recently deceased animate object. Fuck um.

Since Dani and I are going to see King Crimson next month and Bill Rieflin is currently a member, I am checking out other work he has been involved in. This introspective album flows throughout my workroom, dampened by an excess of furniture. What ever happened to people loving open inner spaces? Yesterday, I enjoyed an album by the Revolting Cocks and one by Pigface. Rieflin was a member of the latter, but not on the album I found. He only participated on their first, which I shall listen to later today, given time and avoidance of perpetual imminent death.

Now I shall urinate.

Continued from some days ago:

The only things I like to do on a beach are smoke, drink wine and be introspective.

When I lived in San Sebastián, this point was certainly true. I sat for hours every evening on the wall overlooking Playa de Zurriola guzzling bottles of cheap wine out of two litre plastic bottles I’d bought from Lidl just across the river. Introspection was my game, if you don’t count getting quickly incredibly sloshed. I always carried a small, spiral notebook in my bag. In fact I still have it. I’d scribble scraps of blather in that notebook as they drifted past my consciousness. I wrote about the drifters, and I was one of them, I suppose. I wrote about the granularity of the wind as it rose from the beach and blasted a day’s emptiness away. I wrote about murdering the stupidity around me, of which I was most likely a part. I wrote of being ignorantly in love. I say ignorantly in retrospect because I have hindsight for a lens.

(Playa de Zurriola)

Strangely, I don’t recall smoking during that period, though I surely did time and again. I spent September evenings at that beach. I sat infuriated during the daylight in an internet café despising my distance from Praha, perhaps attempting to program, perhaps browsing pages without real purpose.

Some song sang in my ears last night on my evening walk I wasn’t living. I was just whiling away time. Or something like that. September 2002 in San Sebastián was whiling away time. Perhaps a few jots in the aforementioned notebook were constructive. As Sea Song currently sings in my ears, a cover version by Mrs Rieflin and Connelly, I’ll act my part and drift back to the subject.

Were I to live again at the beach, I’d surely walk there at night. During the day, with superfluous sun and humans crowding out any time for dreaming, I’d be ensconsed in a cave, much like this one, in front of my laptop, or holding my guitar, or shaving one of the many rodents I’d captured during the previous night.

I finished breakfast. Were I to say something similar in Spanish, Acabé el desayuno, I’d be routinely criticised in fair La Rioja for grammatical misuse. At worst, I’d be called a panchito and stoned until fragments of bones protruded from flesh. Perhaps I say this because I happened idly upon my ex-spanish teacher last night during an evening stroll. I ignored him, or he ignored me, or simply didn’t notice me in the crowd. I’d prefer to think the former. In my very short lived class, after my stoning, my broken body’d be strung up on one of the myriad classroom crosses. As my life waned, this ex-teacher and the other students’d chant He acabado el desayuno to the rhythm of my failing heart.

Acabo de desayunar is actually best. My ingominy will quickly be forgotten.

I have just finished breakfast. To make my Sunday morning as exciting as possible, I switched from bland oats cooked in soy milk with honey to stiff wasa crackers topped with mustard, ham and cucumber slices. The thrill of this abrupt change in life’s direction reverberates throughout the multiverse. The pulses jar the skies and wipe out all nacent life on Europa. Fuck um.

Yesteryear, ahem -day, I dutifully persued but one of the goals I inscribed into Martenblog with the knife of my insight. What was it? GraphQL absorbed my day. Acabé el tutorial. I began putting together a schema for Martenblog, which, when you think about it, isn’t that complex, you grub. I feel I became sidetracked by a DSL provided by graphql-tools. With this set of tools, I wrote the schema using a more natural language. It went like this:

(GraphQL)
(DSL)
(graphql-tools)

type Topic {
  _id: Int!
  topic: String!
  entries(
    limit: Int
  ): [Entry]
}

type Entry {
  _id: Int!
  createdAt: Int!
  entry: String!
  userId: Int!
  subject: String!
  topics: [Topic]
}

type User {
  _id: Int!
  createdAt: Int!
  username: String!
  entries: [Entries]
}

type Query {
  # page count, vole
  pCount(
    topicIds: [Int], # can happily be null
    search: String # can also be happily null
  ): Int

  # retrieve all topics
  topics: [Topic]

  entriesByDate(
    y: Int!,
    m: Int!,
    d: Int!
  ): [Entry]

  entries(
    page: Int,
    topicIds: [Int],
    search: String
  ): [Entries]

  # Get the two surrounding dates that are relevant.
  # IE, the ones that also have associated entries.
  alrededores(
    timestamp: Int!
  ): [Int]
}

Normally, I’d just provide a link to the relevant github page, but I’ll soon excise the DSL from my code and go with raw Javascript. Why? Because I’m a luddite? Yup. That’s the reason, you grub. I’ll luddicise the code after this blog entry, you fucking grub.

I’ve also had a few curious dreams of late. To be mostly honest, I’ve tried to avoid the recent electoral campaign. Parts seems to have drifted into my subconscious, however, as much as I skip the multituninous political facebook posts that appear on my ahem timeline. Given the dream I shall describe, perhaps this is not all bad.

Less and less of my dreams take their setting from the village of my upbringing. A few nights ago, during spastic sleep, Mr Donald Trump and I were driving around in a cramped, grunting vehicle. His right arm was broken and strapped to his chest. I was sitting in the driver’s seat, yet he was driving with his unwounded limb. This was possibly symbolic, especially considering that I time and again requested to take the wheel myself since it was positioned directly in front of me and within easy reach of my stubby appendages. We were riding around in the village of my upbringing.

He was amicably chatting about the rehabilitation of the village and his distaste of excess. He did not regret the distraught masses thinking him a maniac, though. He felt his clowning was well earned after a hard life of piling coin upon coin for his myriad offspring. They’ll surely toss it to the clouds with no thought of humanity, he lamented.

At some point, I felt a bit sorry for him and commented that his playactings may have painted him into a corner. He laughed and said Entropy is the measure of the amount of disorder in any system. Any system’s state naturally tends towards higher entropy. I really couldn’t argue with him since, in the end, this was actually my synapses talking to themselves.

We ended up stuck in some sort of road construction under a highway segment that most likely does not exist (nor of its like) in the village of my upbringing. The vehicle tilted crazily and eventually was almost vertical. Trump exited before I could. From my position, poised between a fractured windshield and a dissolved door, I lept to the ground. At the same instant, the beast flipped, landing face down. I was clear, but it clipped Trump’s broken arm, breaking it in a second place.

He howled and cursed. I woke up.

Here, I shall set out a few goals for the coming weeks. I shall accomplish but few of them, if any at all, but I certainly have a grand time making plans for the imminent future.

Before I do so, I shall procrastinate one moment by telling my gentle and teary reader that I am listening to a beautiful album called The Room by Harold Budd. I recommend it to all. Actually, I began it last night as I was winding down from self imposed lessons in the semi-new GraphQL, which so far, toots my muffin mightily. The album itself will wind down soon, possibly just as I am finishing this entry. I shall move on to something more agitative as I continue my lessons.

(GraphQL)

So, goals:

• Rewrite Martenblog using GraphQL.
• Write android / ios app for Martenblog using Cordova.
• Thurk with Tidal Cycles for at least thirty minutes a day.
• Continue with GOAT, which involves at the moment Albahaca and Stone Calendar. This will probably not be possible every day.
• Practise guitar every day.
• Vomit on an infant left in a pram outside of a pub every other day.
• Snort a powdered anvil.
• Stir up a ruckus.
• Fuck um.
• Scribe brilliances.

Let the debauchery begin.

(Cordova)
(Tidal Cycles)

Chirstian is in the toilet. He belongs there, as do we all. I’m sure he . chris does not care for anything.

He is the sociapath.the people who don’’t have a clue are christian’s point of view. i shall care for them until they are corpses. They rot in the fields while we wander in the wastes. That is very chliced.

Chris sits before me as a atomaton of these days. We will die together.

Continued from a few days ago.

Capitalism disgusts me.

I can claim steady ownership if this phrase, for it suits me, and marks me. Other humans, usually ones in my circle chastise me for it. I don’t mind. It’s difficult to live on an axis when most of the world only thinks in extremes. Clarification: Absolute capitalism disgusts me. The need to monetise practically every pursuit in life disgusts me. Perhaps disgusts is a hash word, as plenty of my friends are wont to this failing. It may be easier on the universe if I just leave them in shallow graves to fertilise the upcoming weed revolution. I’ll consider it.

A more suave point of view that I do now, to an extent, practise, is to be exhausted by excessive talk of monetisation of every activity instead of outright nastiness. The inborn fingernails of buisnesspeople shall not deter their bloody crawl to the apex of humanity. Though their phalanges protrude grotesquely, they conduct the new world order even without batons. The choir is the mass that hope to scale their heights. The orchestra sees Steve Reich walk out of the back of the auditorium but still plays on. No modulation.

I enjoy a good discussion with my fellow compatriots of this planet well enough to entertain their ideas to an extent. It ends badly at times when they refuse to rise from the bog into sparkling noontime. At times, my callousness is overreaching and I clutch at the only straw left - the demise of humanity for reasons of its greed. Scientific evidence cannot be denied, and even I have researched what more similar compatriots in the mathematical realm have proven. Mass extinction is no joke. And capitalism is directly to blame. This is no fucking abstraction.

On the other hand, I am a fan of chaos, and, as I once told Jennifer as she gaped at me. We strolled Zilker Park. I believe our intent want to either fly kites or bury her recently deceased hedgehogs. That last sentence was an outright lie, well, at least the second half of it. I told Jen that the purpose of humanity was to cleanse the world once more, to let it be reborn again by fire or plague or some other undoing of civilisation by our hand. She was repulsed. I don’t really blame her. She was even lovely enough that I’d have assembled her scorched bones myself into my final hovel.

Capitalism bites me in the rectum! So perhaps, beginning with the industrial revolution, our species found its purpose. History is slow. It doesn’t outmatch geological creeping in that respect, but comes close.

Cleanse!

Perhaps the flame death is preferable simply because conflagration is magnificent. Witness humanity and their tireless firework displays. But, in the end, we’ll probably have to go with a second option.

I fancy entropy’s beauty. Do you?

The black blocks of residential flats seemed to glare down at me as I passed on the train. If they did glare instead of it being only my imagination, it was in apathy. The consumers of such places are shielded from one another by black walls. The black absorbs all sound and even feeling. It mutes the percussion of emotions. The foetus beats in its sister’s makeshift womb. He’s tried to grow nails before, but just now has succeeded simply by force of will. He doesn’t wish to die.

The sister, once a foetus herself, wails as her innards are shredded. She even gasps for more than half a half-click of the device before expiring. The foetus, let’s call him Shambal, is gruesome, but we root for him. His erect penis impedes his progress as it bumps nagging on the floor. He’s headed for the food store. He knows its location, but by intuition alone. The sister was often there.

There are only figs. They crack and splatter on the floor after the effort to pull open the aperture nearly puts Shambal to eternal rest. He, too, finally tumbles to the floor from the counter onto which he had climbed, exhausting his frail form. The fig-muck cushions his drop. He scoops the pulp mass into his underdeveloped maw.

A conversation with the Christián Newman (see below) earlier got me thinking about the connection between inner dialog and a sort of self-attribution. When I, or anyone else, introduces a topic, Christián often directs the course of conversation towards facets of the topic he has included in one of his creative endeavours. My friend almost perpetually has a stream of said inner dialog flowing beneath any personal interaction. Thus, attaching a topic to that dialog is not really surprising.

From an outside perspective, it seems egoistical, as if he wishes to demonstrate his mastery or depth of knowledge. At times, this habit is tiring. Also, whilst pointing fingers at Christián, I have to admit that I am also guilty of this, though far less frequently. I attempt to catch myself.

Past episodes with Tony also come to mind. I have attempted to present a artist I appreciate to the guy and instead of listening and trying to absorb, he immeditely tries to sculpt his own voice to the song. I’m thinking of a particular instance now when I introduced Tony to the piece Farmer in the City by Scott Walker. His inner dialog interfered in a joint listening session and urged him to participate / change / better the music.

These threads are loosely connected, but demonstrate a human trait that disagrees with me.

Continued from yesterday, my precious horde.

Very strong English (especially American) accents annoy me.

It’s easier to bear the fools these days, actually. Another product of living with women for the majority of the last eleven years is a swelling in my personality’s penumbra called patience. I have always criticised others for not looking beyond the tone and delivery of speech to the actual words themselves. I’ve been a hypocrite! Well, at least some of the time - that is, when I don’t catch myself.

An old adage states that humans and certain mustelids criticise others for what they dislike in themselves. I’ll add that the distaste is often unconscious. Of course, my intense hatred for deeply resonant peasant accents is a direct result of my infancy, adolescence and especially my so-called university years. I nearly suffocated in a sigularity of misanthropy.

To reteach myself acceptance has been a hard road. It will continue to be a hard road. Well, actually, since everyone will celebrate my suicide at the aforementioned delta of the particular quantum universe’s existence, perhaps the road will not be that hard, after all, or even exist.

I am Bluebeard and I paint an immense portrait of the horde, all frozen in contorted enunciations in peasant-speak. Their legs have no toed feet, but are instead as trunks of trees descending into roots that flow and merge with every other pair. The delta is crowded. Every ghoul from my haunted university years stands clustered around the singularity where my corporal being and the crest of the wave of immediate future collide.

But that pointed caw coming from Southern Californian peasants still will not do. No. It will not do. They are not invited to my suicide party, in this or in any other quantum universe.

I was baptised twice.

I vaguely recall being submerged on or near the altar of a Baptist church in Clear Lake, Texas in the presence of Marcie, her family and the church’s congregation. I don’t remember my thoughts other than perhaps an inner warning cackle. As you, my prolific reader, have certainly read every other entry in this blog leading up to this one, it will come as no surprise that I concededed to this ritual to perpetuate amicable relations with Marie’s family (and curséd congregation).

Though memory is merely a phantom, I surmise that I relished the irony. I’ve always been a big fan of irony, even when directed at me. Tony was always fond of the phrase The universe is conspiring against me. I relate more to Let us laugh along with the universe as it laughs at us all. Grendel would relate to that.

I am an atheist.

My ancient love of following one statement or, in this case, list point with a sharp contrast is evident! As I ride the slimy back of time’s slug further and further to the apex that will send me cascading on a makeshift raft to the aforementioned delta and abundantly populated suicide party, I tend towards spirituality. Buddhism and Taoism especially beckon me.

A random entry from the Tao Te Ching, provided by my handly Tao Te Ching app nestled in the flash memory of my phone, follows -

It (The Tao) nourishes infinite worlds, yet it doesn’t seek to master the smallest creature. Since it is without wants an desires, it can be considered humble. All of creation seeks it for refuge, yet it does not seek to master or control.

The contrast with the Baptists of my university years is stark. To climb or fall from one to another involves ascending a sheer cliff or plummeting from one. Dogmatic religion is designed to control. I use the word DESIGNED because it was conceived and erected by an elite like a tyrannical government. The Tao is its opposite in this respect. I cannot take part in any “Spiritual Practise” that is not based in humility.

Audacity and arrogance see me balking. They cannot be included in anything I call spirituality. To teach and to follow are united. Both are the same humble path.

All that being typed, for the most part, I am an atheist. I dabble in spirituality and even at times daydream of a hovel on Saaremaa or in Tuzla and a simple life without possessions, wonton desires or ambitions. I’m still quite a long way off. Alienation by scientific progress sees many balking. Such phrases have been uttered on myriad occasions:

• Easier than thinking for yourself.
• Unity in ignorance.
• Old ways, the best ways.
• A cleansing of the spirit.
• Fuck um.

I like the last one the best.

Christián would be proud of me this morning as I have resisted the urge to stumble to the toilet and relieve my bowels. Great effort is required to achieve this feat. My mind battles the urges of my body. I am cleansed in my reverence for the spiritual. I have rounded the final bend of the river and can now clearly see the sea stretching blue against the horizon. From the peak, the remainder of my days are a pleasant, even enthralling downhill rush. When I am torn apart in the delta, in my transcendence, I shall not mind the dissolution of corporal being.

What I’d really like to say is that ghosting away physical discomfort is the crest of the wave of the immediate future. Like all waves, I see this particular one from my height, just seconds before the descent. Some rustle in memories of my youth slather a portrait of a tram at the apex of a roller-coaster. My youth was a waste, so I ignore it. This wave of the immediate future shall meet me at the delta.

We collide!

The performance is simple:

It is my death coupled with the death of the future, of innovation, and of all healing through spirituality. Everyone is invited to the event. You’ll be presented with a free pro-stagnation t-shirt upon entry to the fairgrounds. From the climax of the event, time shall cease to exist.

Shambal would understand.

Embrace the blackness of the static. Dynamacism is gone.

Fuck um.

On 25 December, 2005, I was inspired by a woman named Jana that I only met once at Na Květnici during December of the previous year, methinks, or even of the same year. Since I have begun to see through the flimsy partitions between universes, my estimation of time has drifted from its exacting nature into a sort of muddled horse-shoe toss.

(Na Květnici)

What was I inspired to do?

I was inspired to type into my livejournal (my surrogate blog at the time) One Hundred Things About Me. Throughout the epochs, I’ve conversed with many concerning personality traits and the flimsy border between one’s core, one’s malleable cultural / environmental residue, the liquid crust wrapping those two, and vapor without. The opinion of many, including the jaunty Shambal Brambel, is that the core is static. No amount of glory or tragedy can deform it. As for me, I do my best to put chips into it with the pick-axe of Sweet Entropy.

Those three exterior layers are sloshing around with my every step.

1. I am sterile.

Well, isn’t everyone, one way or another? I chose to not have children and I have no regrets. I honestly believe my life is better or at least more varied for it. Since I am a fan of diversity in both thought and action, the electricity that seared my ducta deferens was a boon.

These days, and most probably throught the majority of my days, I am (and have been) more concerned with intellectual and creative sterility. It is a subtle plague that seeped into western culture. I’ve watched it mature all my life. It is a maturity of diminishing returns. Younger and younger, people turn to comfort in stagnation. Routine bares less and less fruit, but nurtures familiarity. Personally, one of my greatest fears is the death of my personal creative process. I’ve weathered years of aching depression during which this creative process was pushed aside to make room for interpersonal relationships and / or work.

I haven’t yet had a stereotypical mid-life crisis, and hope I never shall, but I do muse about mortality when I sit back and take notice of the passage of this flimsy time. The glimpses of a corpse that one day will be empty of my consciounsess goad me to abandon those aforementioned interpersonal relationships and work. Write or compose, or at least fill tangible or virtual notebooks with ideas, ya cunt.

So, actually, fuck sterility.

2. I have a child that I’ve never met.

People (mostly women) over the epochs have implied that I am a callous bastard for not being concerned about this point. But dub me what you may, thoughts about the child I conceived in 1993 and his fate never appear.

3. I like wearing non-matching socks.

Living with women (with some well needed rest periods) for the most part of the last eleven years has mostly eradicated this routine. However, this particular point illustrates a a part of my core that either was installed by genetics or my niggard hatred of the homefront.

Of course, I am reminded of Dave. One of his modus operandi of morning (or more frequently, mid-afternoon) ritual dressing was to grab two random argyle socks from a drawer and place them upon his toesies. I hope it is still one of his modus operandi.

I perused a thread on Reddit some weeks, months, years, decades or epochs ago entitled something like Subtle Ways You Rebel. Though the course of the thread was more humourous than anything else, it reminded me of the importance of defying the uniform. Fashion is a bane. It rapes then buries needs to rise above homogeneity in shallow graves. It uses the industrial file of ephemeral cultural quirks to smooth rebellious crags.

Remind myself to continue to think. From today, subtly, non-matching socks once again. Don’t forget, you leprous slag!

4. I worked in the porn business.

I’ve written at length about this one.

5. I don’t like porn at all.

I’ve written at a lesser length about this one, which was directly produced by the previous.

6. Genmaicha tea is my favourite drink.

I do not possess any Genmaicha at the moment. I shall rectify that in time, most likely by consuming it in Praha next week. One thing I miss about Praha are čajovný. Nothing like them exists in Logroño, or anywhere in Spain that I have experienced.

Christián and I splurge every centimo we own constructing one in a bleak pueblo in Andalucia. We work until our limbs are scabbed nubs. We sit, night after night, backs slumped against the wall of a dim room filled with hookah smoke and fractured spanish barking. The clientele relieve themselves onto our wobbling forms. We stink of urine and our own festering wounds. We die.

To be continued.

I refuse to believe that this particular entry is for purposes of testing the new layout of Martenblog. I worked on rebuilding it system from scratch during the whole of the flimsy weekend. Why was the weekend flimsy, you ask? Well, my pugnacious starbeam, I felt light, as if I were drifting from one state of consciousness to another. I most likely was. And probably still am.

I began my reconstruction with a new framework dubbed Alkali. The result was a wasted five or six hours fighting with the DOM “template” language and update strategies. Since you won’t read the documentation, I’ll expound a bit. Instead of Redux’s store, which is a moderate step away from hierarchical data-structures that cause my skin to grow seeping warts and boils from sheer frustration, a concept of independent Variables are its core. Like Redux’s store, updates to Variables flow through the system and can dynamically synchronise the DOM. I am fond of this idea, as the Variables are decoupled, unlike Redux’s store.

(Alkali)
(Redux’s)

Unfortunately, the library is in its infancy and five hours of fighting with broken update flow deterred me from continuing. I abandoned Alkali and fell back on the now familiar Redux, to complete the whole of the code in two days or so, sans bugs. Martenblog code. Yeah… it’s still called mb-alkali. Perhaps it remains that way to inspire me to return to the nacient framework in the future.

(Martenblog code)