[This submission is long and pointless. feel free to remove any parts of it you want without fear of damaging its artistic integrity, for I don't believe it ever had one.]

To the Reader:

For your pleasure and safety, the following text has been painstakingly crafted so as to contain no artistic merit whatsoever. Be warned, however, that if you do find any meaning in the following si(g)ns, I will hunt you down and kill you.

                                                                --the Author

.I.

T H E O R Y

Aveil of allusions, a referent-less reference, Nikki, the postmodernist, is sitting in a hotel lobby, the latest issue of REsearchTM®© held between her legs.  The cover reads CAPITALISM SUCKS! REsearch issue 25, $19.95 ($24.95 Canada). Meanwhile, in another part of the same hotel, Nikki's boyfriend, Max, the cyberpunk, is reading the latest issue of CTHEORY (which he had just downloaded onto his laptop from a Mosaic hyperlink to semiotext(e)'s Web server in Michigan), and he is reading it with one hand. The sensual curves of the injection-molded plastic case of Max's laptop often cause him to operate it in this manner, but that's okay, the plastic cleans easily. Max pauses, reaches for a tissue, then continues to read:
|  He claims that "the
|conditions of necessity for direct, sensual,
|sensory experience" and our "presence here and
|now" are menaced.  For Avital Ronell, too, the
|(virtual) world after the Gulf war is not the same
|as it was.  In Support our Tropes II, she claims
|that cyberspace is "west of the west, a memorex
|cowboy frontier."
|   "Techno-art is against appearance as being
|against power as truth, against nature as
|necessity.  It is for fiction as a significant of
|change, for the sign as a variable of freedom, for
|the media as the guest accommodations of nature."
|These are programmatic statements which Kant, Hegel
|and especially Heidegger leave in the dust ("Anti-
|art is against Heidegger").

|  He is curious as to the effects of
|simulation, fragmentations and acceleration on the
|'artist-philosopher' (Nietzsche).  The search for
|new forms of expression can, however, be overrun by
|the impulse for synthesis and connectivity, which
|Roetzer classifies as "ideology of the information
|society."

Information Society was the last great techno band.  Their ideology, simple:

ART
REPETITION
   =    
=
FORMULAE
BEAUTY

"I wanna know what you're thinking. There are some things you can't hide."

*****

Across the street from the hotel is a church, where Christians gather to repent of their si(g)ns. In the shadows of the church, a man lurks with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his raincoat. He is waiting for unsuspecting soft young children to pass by. He is breathing heavily. Within the church, Father Saussure is confessing a young man. "Forgive me Father, for I have si(g)n(n)ed." The young man is describing his si(g)n in great detail, for he has not yet learned that the si(g)n is arbitrary. Next to the church is The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a bridal boutique and dominatrix parlour. A sign in their window reads: "WE BEAT THE COMPETITION!"

.II.

L O V E

The two friends walk together to a café, where they talk far into the night, catching up on old times. K talks of his job in a convenience store.
         "...and they think that just because they're cute I'm going to give them free candy. I hate women like that."
         At another table, several years pass uneventfully.
         "Yesterday Goneril walked into the store. She was buying a toothbrush. The rest of the day all I could think about was how the bristles of that brush were going to explore every corner of her mouth. I was green with envy. It's really quite unpleasant."
         "I thought you only went for twelve-year-old girls."
         "This is different," K responds.
         "Have you considered the obvious?" J asks his friend.
         "What? You mean climbing a tree outside her apartment with a pair of binoculars? Yes, I considered it, but there are really no trees in the right place, and you can't see anything from the street."
         "No, I mean starting a conversation, telling her your name, that sort of thing."
         "Oh."
         At another table, Father Saussure and Sister Domina are sitting down for tea and crumpets.

By this time, Max and Nikki are in the same room.
"Do you love me?" asks Nikki.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because no one misunderstands me the way you do."

*****

"Have you ever looked up jade in the dictionary? Do you know what it says?"
"I give up."
"It says:
        "jade n. 1 a) a disreputable woman;  b) a flirtatious girl."
"Ahh...that would explain the term jaded, wouldn't it?"
"Exactly."

*****

In a lonely garrett the amourous youth tears the petals from a defenseless flower. She loves me, she loves me not,...
In a lonely garrett the amorous youth tears the petals from a defenseless flower. Elle m'aime un peu, beaucoup, fou, pas du tout,...
Different mantras, same buddha.

Without categories, all would be silence.

.III.

R E A L I T Y

Hegel, on death:

Through this it comes about that the dead, the universal being, becomes a being that has returned into itself, a being-for-self, or, the powerless, simply isolated individual has been raised to universal individuality. The dead individual, by having liberated his being from his action or his negative unity, is an empty singular, merely a passive being-for-another, at the mercy of every lower irrational individuality and the forces of abstract material elements, all of which are now more powerful than himself: the former on account of the life they possess, the latter on account of their negative nature.1

"Every lower irrational individuality"?  I know, it's comforting to call them that.  Ones mind can grapple with "irrational individualities" and come out feeling victorious.  But they're called worms, Georg, WORMS; and you can't reason them away.  There's really no escape.

1  G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A. V. Miller (New York: Oxford University Press, ...), 271.


Captain Crunch Crucified.

The inadequacy of truth, that inevitable excess: is this what makes us human, or simply what makes us real?

story: man eating alone chokes to death, dies of embarrassment.

Yes, it is a fine line between the sublime and the absurd, but let us not
merely cross that line, let us annihilate it.

In the modernist world, Life could still be the subject of Tragedy.  Now, in the postmodern world, the only possible responses to life are laughter and suicide.

I have God envy.
God is dead. Lucky stiff.

There is a difference between great art and true art. Great art is like a symphony orchestra; it makes beautiful music. True art is like a bird; it makes music that is more beautiful even than that of a symphony orchestra, and then it shits on your head.

The musician X  believed that bird songs were more beautiful than any human music, and he tried to emulate the lyrical grace of bird songs with his music. In performance, while playing his guitar, he made a point of always defecating on his audience.

Love mutilates
daisies.
Love mutilates
daisies.

Armageddon in a tea cup, filberts are raining aetherial squirrels like horshoe crabs sand garden game of tennis anyone? i would that the veins of the queen freeze my bones we come together, like tygers -- tyger, tyger burning bright, in the dark ***** of the night -- but below the waste, all stench decay oh fie! fie! foul! filth! fie!  we hate them psalms of 700 positions a cross careening off a cliff like the proverbial dictionary of madness.  I AM NOT LACAN.  did you kill your mother?  that is the only way to fly.  her head is off, and sent to Piaget. Nay, daughter, show your wisdom in your close patience.  convenient is it?  jesus was an architect like leroy wright the inventor of the synaesthete. do you see the same thing in this tin teacup of madness a starry night, a perfect season for van gogh to go shopping for hearing aides. the birds in the fields can only mean death, or rain, or the second coming of Chaos and Mother Night.  bare  your bodkin.  the noize will be our art. there is no controversy about static. you can't censor the saturation-destruction of information. bandwidth is the new messiah. crucify! crucify!  a nail hammered through a jelly donut reminds the professor of soft young children, the philanthropist's daughters. white noise; a spray of stars; sulferous light dripping onto a modernist beach in Dublin.  absense will yet be my madness, i run from health as from something diseased.  i have been bitten.  take these broken wings and learn to fly -- standing on the shoulders of giants, we see but a little louder than they do.  darling, come here, take those filberts out of your ears.

ART       =      FORMULAE
LIFE       =      NOISE
REPETITION       =      BEAUTY
standing once again, like silenus, overlooking the abyss of banality, i find it
necessary to write.


i like my women defined negatively.  stitch a scarlet letter on
her absence.
do you ever find yourself irresistably attracted to men in bowler hats?
parachutes engender asparagus

the sign is not the referent, and the referent is not the sign.  
the gap between them is where you find sex and poetry.  

the popular are different from you and I.  they have fewer friends.


Subj:        opium

the den of iniquity is the refuge of the priest.  prisons are built with stones
of law, brothels with bricks of religion.  that's why they call me mister
duality.

i'm repressed and i'm
sexual, powerful and
sometimes ineffectual
i'm black and i'm
not black
life is a dream but i
live in reality and
that's why they call me 
mister duality.

come on dad gimme the car tonight

your hairdo is a thing of wonder
there's not a doorway
that you could fit under

it was a drive by love affair

come on dad gimmer the car tonight
i'll tell you what, i'll tell what i'm gonna do

there's only one that i know how to do well and i've often been told that you
only can do what you know how to do well

i'm gonna pick her up, i'm gonna get her drunk, i'm gonna make her cry, i'm
gonna get her high, i'm gonna make her laugh, i'm gonna

and that's be you, be what you're like, be like yourself

cuz i ain't had much to live for, no i ain't had much to live for, but how can
i explain, personal pain, how can i explain, this deep, down, driving, driving,
we're driving, we're driving, hey dad, speaking of driving...

and so i'm having a wonderful time but i'd rather be whistling in the dark

ladies and gentlemen, the Bobs!

and you can't fuck with the violent femmes, YOU CAN NOT FUCK WITH THIS BAND


synesthesia, a great big box of crayolas stuffed into my ears

synesthesia

at least you have the self-respect to look them in their poisonous blue eyes (blue like ice, like broken glass, so blue you could slit your wrists on shards of their eyes and bleed between their white fingers and pale marzipan breasts) to look them in their blue, blue eyes (cold and blue as the ice in their veins) to look them in their lecherous green eyes and say NO, YOU MAY NOT HAVE A FREE PEPPERMINT PATTY!  THAT WILL BE TEN CENTS PLEASE!!! you cannot know how deeply i respect that. for such a one came into the computer lab this evening, and looked up with blue-green eyes, eyes like a pair of irridescent Amazon butterflies about to mate, looked up with aquamarine eyes, eyes of amathyst, eyes of JADE, and i, looking up with eyes far less worthy of verse, jaded eyes, i, who should have said         i'm sorry, ma'am, but we don't have extra floppy disks here. but i, looking up, melting in religious adoration of those limpid, fertile, algae-covered pools, succumbing to her white-phosphorous smile, a smile that could melt concrete, i said "here, take this. tell no one. and remember me, fairest one. remember me." i would have thought, such a concrete other as is my current fortune ought certainly to have rendered me immune to such green-eyed diseases.  but it doesn't work that way.  presence and absense, concrete and abstract, satisfaction and desire, these are not opposites, they do not cancel each other out, do not annihilate one another.  rather they sit next to each other, uncomfortably, like strangers on a bus, or like large stones in the concrete rock garden of life.  (only the stones remain.)  life exists in the balance.  i want to have everything, including not to have what i want. (mark my words: no quantity of twelve-year- olds will ever render your greta any less grotesquely desirable.) >i would enjoy meeting with her or having her pointed out to me from within a >crowd, or would this be too concrete.?. no doubt you shall, though i worry


life seemed like a fairy tale, for twenty minutes, and then it wasn't.
she turned out the
light, went
upstairs, took
      off her
        wet
        concrete
        saliva
        and
            pebbles.



(inescapable fictions of desire and subjectivety.)


a mind is a terrible thing.


"he wasn't looking for love, he just wanted metonymy."

monocular infatuations.  atrocity.

mindless repetition.  ecstacy.  the language virus replicates, and i spread the
disease.  but

why can't i get just one fuck?
why can't i get just one fuck?
i guess it's got somethin to do with luck but
i waited my whole life for just one...

                                                
                                                -Violent Femmes
                                                 "Add It Up"


life is the displaced phantom image of existence; life is the shiny happy face
of a non-returnable coke bottle grinning cheerfully in the desert, five-hundred
miles from the chemical warfare, the melting skin; life is art, the phantom
displaced image of anti-art; life murders existence with metonymy; it is
against the law to exist; existence is logocide; existence does not exist.

Fuck art let's kill.
Fuck art let's fuck.
Whips and chains, paints and brushes, it was definitely an art-fuck.



if you can put your money where your mouth is, people call you sincere.
if you can put your penis where your mouth is, you get an extra point on the
purity test.


mindless repetition.  ecstacy.  the language virus replicates.  i spread the
disease.  but

>life as metonymy for existence.
 though, my existence is hardly a life.
 and my life is hardly an existence.  J'est une autre.

You can tell that I am a shattered ego, for so many 
of these words are (not) mine.





ladies and gentlemen, Silenus Nietzsche and the Existentialists!


|  But no single place
|exists for Bataille's "community of shattered
|egos" to gather.

"suffering is the origin of consciousness"      -dostoevski

"life begins on the other side of despair"      -sartre

"most stroking feels good"        -thomas a. harris, m.d.
                                 author of 'i'm okay, you're okay' and
                                 'staying okay'

But isn't this just meaningless nonsense?
Only nonsense can be meaningful for long. The text is incomprehensible. That's what keeps the meaning from escaping.