Zombie God: Republicans' Convention Wrecked by Hurricane Gustav

Truly, God moves in a mysterious way, Her wonders to perform.

Post-Modern Space Compression Celebrated in North Korea!

Youth and Students' Balls Held

Pyongyang, July 28 (KCNA) -- Dancing parties of youth and students were held in different parts of the country on July 27 to celebrate the 55th anniversary of the victory in the great Fatherland Liberation War. At dancing parties held at the plazas of the Monument to Victory in the Fatherland Liberation War, the April 25 House of Culture, the Pyongyang Indoor Stadium and other places in Pyongyang, youth and students presented sea of dances … looking up to President Kim Il Sung, the invincible and iron-willed commander and the legendary hero … who led the Fatherland Liberation War to victory with his … distinguished commanding art and matchless pluck, thus demonstrating the dignity and honor of heroic Korea to the whole world.

Songs … "Our General Is Best" and "General Employs the Art of Compressing Space" further enlivened the atmosphere of celebration.

And if you have been, thanks for looking.

On Zombie Creativity

(Liquid tantalum freezing - computer simulation - my colour emphases and changes)

Again, one has to fight slightly against the image - and it usually is an image - of the living dead walking like, well, Zombies, arms outstretched, aching to chew brain, having none of their own. How many times must one repeat, Zombies are indistinguishable in every way from human beings. By definition! There is no epistemological, hetero-phenomenological nor any other test that can spot a Zombie.

The question "can a Zombie be creative?" is thus trivial, and the answer is of course yes: if by creative you mean doing things that, if a human being had done them, you'd call creative (cf. Artificial Intelligence, "Computer Art" etc.)

Further, in this Zombie blogger's own experience, to be a Zombie is to have almost a sharper insight into the creative process, unmitigated by "feelings" of, well, anything. And no, you can't use creativity, anecdotally or statistically, to tell if someone is a Zombie since once again you just wouldn't KNOW if you'd found one or not. (The fact that I assert that I became a Zombie in 1998 is of no relevance - I might be lying, one way or another.)

So where do new ideas spring from? When all real emotion and feeling is stripped away, what does a Zombie DO to have a good new idea?

A Zombie - indeed a human being too - does well to consider that new concepts often arise at the disjunction between disciplines. For example: between hydraulics and crowd theory; or between materials science and sociology; or psychology and alchemy.

(Electron microscope image of iron-doped strontium titanate - MIT)

In general, one needs an understanding (the greater the better, obviously) of a minimum of TWO separate disciplines. In addition, one needs a third, meta-discipline, which enables one to see and make sense of the very disjunctions and associated structures and events of which I am talking. These might be, in a physical model (any area which studies, as it were, fault lines, will do) metallurgy or geology. The former has much to say about what happens at grain boundaries, those areas of chaotic "structure" where solidifying liquid metal growing leaf-like, perhaps, in one direction, seeded by a speck of impurity, a micro-temperature change etc., meets metal solidifying in another direction, from another source. Like two marching armies meeting at an angle, they will come to a halt where they meet with much chaos and "holes" etc. at the crucial boundary. It can easily be imagined that the crystal structure, as it is called, of a metal gives rise to higher-lever mechanical (etc.) properties. The marching armies are in fact regular 3-dimensional arrays of atoms lined up in more or less precise structures, cubic, hexagonal etc. It is easy to "slice" or deform a metal along this "grain". Thus the smaller the crystals, the more the boundaries, the more the changes of direction, the tougher the material is likely to be. (These crystals or grains are usually microscopic, but a look at zinc-galvanised iron, or an old brass railing or doorknob, will often show crystals of centimetre size or greater. You can see them because the different alignments of atoms or moleclues reflect light in different ways! Magic!

A society in which everyone believes the same is easy to disrupt, or "slice through". One in which there are lots of differences is likely to be more immune to such disturbance and less open to collapse.

Geology might be another good area with which to have an acquaintance, where creative "magma" might squirt out between impinging tectonic systems.

Of course, the ideal area from which to make sense of "fault-line creativity" is 'Pataphysics, the science of exceptions and the unexpected, which sees everything as an exception, and unexpected, the universe being that which is an exception to itself.

Zombie creativity thus springs not from any interstices or chaotic regions between living and dead, yes or know, 1 or 0 etc. (there are none - Zombies are simultaneously BOTH) but rather from the detached - oh so detached - observation of the changes between, as Leonard Cohen or Spencer Brown, Buddhism or 'Pataphysics would have it, the shoreline and the sea. (G. Spencer Brown's first imperative is "Draw a distinction", perhaps a circle on a damp beach with a stick. One might think this is antithetical to "yes and no"… but there can be a tunneling under… Oh I love this!)

Art and writing are two areas where this may be expected to happen.

Thought for the day

"To every complex problem there is a simple solution, and it's wrong."

H. L. Mencken

Immigrants Ate My Lawn

À propos the person in Austria who allegedly locked up his daughter with whom he fathered 7 kids, of whom one died, over 24 years, and the debate and breast-beating about "do we look out for our neighbours enough"…

I'm sure that the "denouncing tendency", well-known in conservative, uptight places like Austria - but increasingly found all over the place - "they haven't got papers!" "she took photos of her kids in the bath!" "immigrants ate my lawn!" and so on - in other words a phobia against what's different, whipped up by the gutter-press - goes absolutely hand-in-hand with an unwillingness to investigate, to complain about, even to see, REAL wrongs that are going on behind a "correct" facade. You "behave" on the exterior? Fine, you're one of us. Do what you like to your wife and kids… It's fairly sickening, really.

A Zombie approach is to know that we, or people we vote for or tacitly support, are doing stuff like this all the time. These appalling people become transparent to us. If only walls would too, we'd have the lot of them behind bars, from this sick fool to Bush.

What's for tea?

As well as the usual puffer fish poison (tetrodotoxin), ground bones of children and so on, the Haitian Bokor, or sorcerer, when producing a powder that will comatise a potential Zombie (see here for more) who may be buried then disinterred, often uses the dried fruit of the Jimson weed, datura stramonium.

Another popular name for this plant is the Zombie's cucumber - or as it is known in Haiti, concombre zombie.

The rather pretty plant and interesting fruit are shown below…

Of course one hesitates to appear old-fashioned, though there may well be an argument that the living dead can damn well do as they please, but I can't stop thinking about cucumber sandwiches.

This refreshing accompaniment to English tea-time, and an obligatory part of the English Zombie Cricket Match, to which the British film "Shaun of the Dead" made reference (see illustration…)
…may also be prepared at home as a cheap alternative to the more usual cold roast beef, chilled horseradish and vodka soup, rose-petal couscous and Christmas cake with whipped soya product.

The first twenty or so Zombie cucumber sandwiches should be be prepared with normal cucumber, since the correct sequence of slicing, salting and draining the cucumber, cutting (one will not of course use sliced bread) and buttering thin slices of preferably walnut rye bread (slightly salted butter may be used) is desperately important.

Zombie tooth brush

A most excellent start to the new year. Ok, I'm desperate.

That's the way to do it! Slight anger from North Korea

Elimination of Ri Hoe Chang Called for by Koreans in China

Pyongyang, November 24 (KCNA) -- The General Association of Koreans in China Wednesday issued a statement titled "Let's decisively eliminate Ri Hoe Chang, a heinous sycophantic traitor and anti-reunification element, in the name of nation."
The statement accused Ri, a political imposter in south Korea, of going mad with his ambition to become "president" these days, noting that he is a wicked sycophantic traitor, an anti-reunification element and a kingpin of irregularities and corruption.
The traitor at a press conference slandered pro-reform forces, ballyhooing about "a decade wasted," and not content with this, he not only blustered that "he would radically reshape the policy toward the north" but also openly revealed his sinister attempt to bar the inter-Korean relations from improving, the statement said, and continued:
This guy, who is no more than human scum, was forsaken by the times and the public and eliminated from the political arena for his despicable sycophantic and traitorous and anti-reunification acts and irregularities and corruption. His bid to take "presidential office" is, therefore, an intolerable insult to the south Korean people and an unpardonable mockery of justice and conscience.
The south Korean people from all walks of life desirous of the June 15 era should properly see through the danger of the present situation and mete out a stern judgement to such dregs of history as Ri Hoe Chang and decisively eliminate him so that he may not raise his head again. The statement accused Ri Hoe Chang, a politician whose days are numbered, of declaring his candidacy for the "presidential elections" recently though he was forsaken by the times and the nation for being dregs of history and working with bloodshot eyes to win people's favor.

'Pataphysical music from Hang Drum

The Hang drum, from the Bernese Swiss dialect for "hand" - yes, the Swiss always sound as if they have a cold - is a wonderful instrument. Last night I was lucky enough to meet two skilled players. Looking today on the web, I found (a) that it is almost literally impossible to buy one and (b) this page on eBay where one can buy a CD of Hang music (only until November 12).
Now, on this page you can also listen to excerpts from the tracks.
All at once. Turn your sound up; get them ALL going.
This is 'Patamusic at its best.

Zombie Dylan

An Admirable Song

Since 'Pataphysics concerns itself with, as well as exceptions, the constrained, the weird and the excellent, I am happy to bring you, in case you don't know it, the most astonishing "Weird Al" Yankovic who apart from his stunning Dylan imitation has taken the palindromic to new levels. Please admire this.

Art from Chemical Warfare

Art Performance Mirrors Workers' Firm Faith and Will

Pyongyang, September 20 (KCNA) -- The performance of Art circle members of the Hungnam Fertilizer Complex (1) was given before capacity audience at the People's Palace of Culture in Pyongyang, which began on September 15.
It fully reflected the invariable faith of the Korean working class to thoroughly adhere to the socialist principle, revolutionary principle, in any adversity and their revolutionary optimism.
In satiric dialogue "The voice of Hungnam," choral recitation "Let us add luster to the revolutionary heritage of the fatherly leader under the leadership of the great General," wind instrument music and song "May, Month of Victory" and other numbers, the performers gave impressive presentation of the immortal feats the peerlessly great persons performed at the complex.
Drum and song "General on a Galloping White Horse" which involved over 80 people and instrumental music and song "Ballad of Mt. Singo" and other numbers touched the heart strings of the audience for their unique form of works that could be created only in working site seething with worthwhile labor and life.
Duet "Following the General" and "We are a worker-couple" sung by a discharged soldier-couple mirrored the faith and will of the workers that they are sure to win when they firmly believe in and follow leader Kim Jong Il in whatever ordeals.
Vice-minister of Chemical Industry Pak Chol, when interviewed, said that the repertoire is full of the heroic stamina and enthusiasm of the working class and helps feel the worth and pride of labor. I came to more keenly feel again that the true life can be seen among workers and only the art pieces created at working sites can be popular among the people, he added.

-------------------------

(1) "The Chemical Directorate Training Department organizes combat training of chemical warfare units and subunits as well as specialist training. It coordinates with other entities of the directorate on a number of questions and directly oversees the chemical warfare school, officer schools and training regiments, particularly the Hungnam Chemical Engineering College, which trains officer cadres for chemical warfare troops and at the same time performs functions of an NBC center.
North Korea has at least eight industrial facilities that can produce chemical agents; however, the production rate and types of munitions are uncertain. Presumably one or more of the agents [sarin, tabun, phosgene, adamsite, prussic acid and a family of mustard gases] comprising the basis of North Korean chemical weapons are produced at the Hungnam Fertilizer Complex, probably asphyxiating and tear agents." (wikimapia)

Zombie Athletics

Today we are privileged to be able to see a hitherto censored image (actually from 1996) of the Dear World-Popular Slim and Most Excellent Athlete Kim Jong-Il, son of the Immortal Darling Immense Father (deceased) Kim Jong-Il, whose Collected Woks (sic) are the talk of many an intellectual gathering, participating in his own Exemplary Fashion and giving Dear On-the-Spot-Guidance to North Korean athletes.

In fact, research (Yue, G.H., Bilodeau, M., Hardy, P.A. and Enoka, R.M. (1997), Task-dependent effects of limb immobilisation on the fatigability of the elbow flexor muscles in humans, Experimental Physiology, 82: 567-92 in Smith, A. (2002), The Brain’s Behind It: New knowledge about the brain and learning, Network Educational Press.) has shown that by simply imagining one is taking exercise over a number of weeks, one's muscles do grow stronger…

Good.

Shakespeare's Face Revealed in Badly Stained Knife.

Yes, more pareidoliac action.






















Also, whilst taking a random Zombograph of wild mushrooms, tasteful flowers usw., I noticed a large pile of dust forming itself in to the approximate shape of a dog.
The inanimate objects of the world are clearly trying to tell us something: a warning? No, it's not that.

Bush Face in Pudding Shock! Yet More Pareidolia

Pareidolia in North Korea…

In a miraculous coming-together of some of the main themes of this blog, we present the scandalous North Korean Central News Agency photo, released by "accident", showing the Irrevocably Magnificent Wondrous Leader and Great Gastronome Kim Jong Il, son of the Immortal Leader (deceased) Kim Il Sung, inspecting a Yorkshire Pudding which, when removed from the Peoples' Army Oven, revealed the hideous likeness of "President" and war criminal Bush.

…and the devil's face in a red pepper

Video installation

Detail

Zombie Biscuits - Emergent Properties

A clearly visible "Black Zombie" (inset enlarged) - note the eyes. The appropriate authorities have been notified.

Regular readers will know that I have previously celebrated examples of the stupidly gullible (usually "religious") believing that they have found or observed sacred imagery in potatoes, aubergines, American subways (the underpass and the sandwich) and so on. Doubtless there are many who would willingly put up with long queues of the frenzied and the rich outside their doors, pushing and fighting to see some holy phenomenon and perhaps to buy some small but not insignificantly priced memento.

Now, you too can participate in this gastronomic iconography, using these easily made ZOMBIE BISCUITS - a startlingly realistic image virtually GUARANTEED in every biscuit. Your friends will be amazed, the press stunned.

They also taste very good, though clearly to eat one would be tantamount to heresy under some religious regimes.

Preheat an oven to 200° C, (500 °F - Ha! Let the Americans burn them!) then make a dough that would usually end up as oatmeal biscuits:

50 g oatmeal flour, 175 g wholewheat or spelt flour, 2 level teaspoons of baking powder (raising agent), 90 g cold, chopped up butter, 2 level table-spoons of sugar, 2 table-spoons of milk; a pinch of salt, and a few pinches of oat flakes.

Mix all the dry ingredients and the butter together in a large bowl with the fingertips until they become crumb-like, then add the milk and mix and knead to form a dough, about 2 on a scale of 0 to 9 where 0 = totally dry and 9 = sloppy and wet; the mixture should seem a bit too dry, if you tried to roll it out now it would crack. Leave the dough covered in the bowl for 10 minutes.

Now toss 50 g fresh blueberries into the bowl and mash them into the dough. The juice that emerges will make the dough moister. Don't let the fruit totally disintegrate though.

Put the dough in a lump on a floured surface & roll it out to about 0.5 cm thickness with a floured rolling pin or bottle. Using a small glass, cut out circles of approximately 5 cm diameter and place them on a baking sheet, either special baking paper or non-stick metal: they can stick badly if not. Prick the biscuits several times each with a fork, and place in the preheated oven. Ignore, for the moment, all the dark forms in the biscuits. Just do it automatically, don't think. You want to be surprised by the emergent properties.

After 10 to 12 minutes the biscuits should be just changing colour at the edges, no more. Remove from the oven and put somewhere to cool for a few minutes.

Now you can observe the multitude of Zombies, saints, prophets, gods, sexual symbols, miniature horses and cosmic patterns that you have created. Savour each form, photograph the best, send it to the local press— the national press will take up the story later. Declare that the fruit fell in by accident, though as if it were meant to, and that you didn't notice the picture until much later.

In case there are biscuits containing (but this is unlikely) no significant religious or other imagery, the biscuits should be eaten with either Blue Stilton or Red Leicester cheese, available from any decent cheese shop. Roquefort or Cheddar make rather poor, but just about acceptable, substitutes.

To those who might aggressively argue that I am cheapening or demeaning food-based religious experiences, just shut the fuck up.

And if you have been, thanks for looking…

Important Restaurant Access News from North Korea

"Ryonmot Restaurant

Pyongyang, July 4 (KCNA) -- The Ryonmot (lotus pond) Restaurant at the foot of Mt. Jang has been recently reconstructed. Now it is crowded every day.
Its predecessor was the Janggyong Restaurant. The restaurant, once a small one, has changed its looks completely to be a public catering center. It tells about the warm love shown by Kim Jong Il for the people.
Over 40 years ago, he took part in the project for expanding the road between Wasan-dong and Ryongsong along with students of Kim Il Sung University. The project was launched according to the plan of President Kim Il Sung for the capital construction.
One day in May, he called at the Janggyong Restaurant which was common in the city at that time. He said with apprehensions that the door-sill of the restaurant was too high.
The manager was deeply moved by his kind words. In fact, the employees of the restaurant and many customers went in and out through the door since its opening but they did not feel that."

Orders can be phoned in, but don't trip over…

Of Poppies and Wild Roses

On the RER train from Châtelet to Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, I thought: there's no intrinsic value, no special beauty, colour and so on, not even in these poppies and wild roses. It's just a human construction. The rail-side rubbish, any blade of grass, is just as real, no more nor less a part of the universe blah blah blah. And of course while this should make one happy, uplifted, in awe of the oneness of all things, it actually is… depressing.

But the reflective Zombie part of me wants there to be the possibility of a slip sideways into, you know, something a bit more vivid.

Here's where 'Pataphysics comes in. The science of imaginary solutions. You know, don't you, about imaginary numbers. For any number, along the line of real numbers, you can construct a "complex number" by combining the number with a multiple of i, the square root of minus one. This new number then lies on a complex plane whose horizontal axis is the real numbers …-2, -1, 0, 1, 2… and whose vertical axis the imaginary numbers.

Although it all sounds a bit silly, it has been of immense practical use for many, many years.

The point now is that 'Pataphysics is a lot like i. If the mundane lies along a (railway) line then 'Pataphysically to put into question, to vivify, all that we see we merely have to consider this new (not spatial) "dimension" of the world as, at least temporarily, real. Then a rose is not a rose is not a rose, and this arose from a consideration of the fact that we are not just finding a new way of looking at things, which would be all too facile and fleeting, but rather rendering the rose (and poppy, and everything) more complex… at which point, it can be seen to be more simple, essentially in (and this is the new bit, not facile, not provisional) a new way.

Or mathematically:

√−5, in words the square root of minus five, which would be banal even if not "impossible", is to be avoided and i√5 used instead. The one is "trying not to be bored or world-weary". The other is both "complex" and simpler, hence more beautiful; and in passing, we can use it, practically.

Now the "poppies and wild roses" sound like a song, their beauty seen from the train not a metaphor but… a 'pataphor, this latter not my invention. I don't know how all this seems to you, but to me it was, just when I needed it, therapeutic. The recognition (via 'Pataphysics, and its manifestation in the Paris-based College of 'Pataphysics) that there are processes, ways of making sense (even if via what some might call "nonsense") of the world, that are transformatory, is a revolution. That is to say, one turns around once, sees the whole, arrives back where one was before but nothing will ever be the same again. Do it once, and be happy; twice, and…

…and if you have been: thanks for looking.

Melancholitron

On melancholic days like these, one's immune system crashed because of age and Sarkosconi's election and the presence of nasty fools in the world, one's thoughts turn, as so often, to the old Meccano factory on the RER B line from Roissy Airport to Paris. 'Pataphysics, and Zombie, you see, make anything attractive, or equally boring, or something. There is no colour, no beauty "really". One struggles, then, to see beauty - glory? - in this very fact. The Sensitive Zombie, one of life's grosser oxymorons.