Category: General

Part one, if you happen to have come over from “…inexplicably fancy trash.” (Oddly, I was just reading some of Patrick Farley’s comics as well.)

So. Grant Morrison has been meditating on identity in his own chaotic way for quite some time now; those of us fortunate enough to have read Flex Mentallo have seen the deepest expression of this. I don’t take Morrison literally when he talks about fiction suits, although I know he may mean it literally. What I find interesting is the result. Whether you think King Mob is walking among us, or whether you think Morrison has deliberately taken on aspects of King Mob, the outcome is the same. Morrison edited his own sense of identity.

Morrison is also well aware of the voudon traditions, with specific reference to the loa: spirits which come and ride the bodies of those who invite them in. (As immortalized in a bad James Bond movie.) The connection there is pretty obvious.

OK, lots of abstruse theory and artsy weirdness and anthropology. Not that relevant to our culture. Except, except. I was browsing the Web the other week, and I bumped into a bunch of multiplicity sites. Pretty interesting stuff; multiple personalities who’ve decided they’re happier remaining multiple. I’m in no position to judge, but the stances these communities take seem awfully sane to me. They accept responsibility for the actions of the body.

As always, the Internet brings together the slim minorities, giving them a voice they might never have had otherwise. You can tell people what you are anonymously. You can find the handful of others who share your issues. I can’t imagine this kind of community growing up without the Internet.

Then, there are the soulbonders. I bumped into that community by way of an irate rant from one of the multiples; she felt that many soulbonders trivialized her very real problems. I can see that — it’s voluntary disassociation, and multiples don’t have any choice. But then (and this is what I was pondering the other day) I remembered Morrison’s fiction suit.

What’s the difference? Why should I take Grant Morrison more seriously than a bunch of fanfic writing teenagers? One answer’s obvious; deeper answers are not.

But again: results.

Soulbonding is a fringe phenomenon. Multiples are still marginalized. The changes in our lives which allow such communities to arise are not. It does not surprise me in the least that many of the multiple personalities I found like to roleplay online. Soulbonders, the same. The Internet is a very disassociative tool; it’s so easy to be whoever you want out there.

What does this mean for us? What does it mean for our children? What would it be like to grow up in a world where shifting online personas is as natural as breathing? I feel identity shift, from time to time, and I came to the Internet as something close to an adult.

It’s not just chatting online, either. My computer desktop has a sort of reality in my mind. It’s a place, because my primate brain doesn’t have a good metaphor for a computer desktop besides “place.” I have huge amounts of control over that space. Consider the thousands of skins I can put over my MP3 player, or the hundreds of themes I can apply to my desktop as a whole. I think that ability is telling something to my hindbrain. Reality is plastic, just like identity.

That doesn’t apply to stuff outside the monitor? Tell these guys.

Part three if I get more inspired. I ought to talk about Timothy Leary’s views on identity editing as well, after all.

Well. Verbal confirmation of employment today, and an offer on Monday or Tuesday. I would be very surprised if I didn’t accept the offer. Oh; it’s back in Boston. There will be moving in my future.

I hereby coin the following internet neologism:

google://search+terms+here

I almost believe that browsers should implement that. Actually, I do believe they should implement search://search+terms+here. Someone go write a paper, OK?

Bloodhag is a Seattle speed metal band whose songs are all about science fiction authors. There are MP3s. I can’t possibly embellish on that.

And Larry Niven thought you’d need teleportation to get flash crowds. The Washington Post ran an article about the crowd dynamic created by cell phones. Yet another example of the information revolution hitting us in ways we don’t expect.

This quote from Grant Morrison also seems tremendously relevant:

“I finally figured out what my agenda is with The Invisibles, and with the superhero stuff as well. Within a year, we’ll see man’s first contact with a fictional reality. That’s what the magic’s all about. Fiction and reality are going to become interchangeable. It will happen very slowly, but the first thing I’m going to try and do is change places with King Mob. I’ll be in the comic, and he’ll come out the comic. It’s a technology; one of the things we can do with the comics universe is go into it. I realise now you can go into any comic or any piece of fiction wearing a Fiction Suit. This is pioneering stuff, we are now astronauts entering fiction as a dimension. I can go into the comics world wearing a Superman body amd walk around and tell them stuff like what’s going to happen on page sixteen if I want. I thought, what if yuo treated that reality as being its own real autonomous world? In the same way that those hyperbeings could get me out, can I get anyone out of there?”

Do I believe that one has the right to do whatever one wants to one’s body and mind? Yeah, “an it harm none.” (Credit: Aleister Crowley.) Kind of a bleak belief, though. Maybe more later, maybe not. Your Google search terms for the day are “pro ana” and soulbonding.

If sex is a bother to you, you might not want to read “…inexplicably fancy trash.” If good writing is a joy to you, you probably do want to read it. If both of these suppositions are true, you have a dilemma. Lucky you!

It’s a Weblog, and more or less work-safe, but it’s the Weblog of an erotic writer… pornographer… guy who writes sexual stories. Uh. All the words are so charged, so connotative! There is a man (I think) who took on a pseudonym in order that he might safely write erotica. This is not the Weblog of the man, it is the Weblog of the pseudonym. There’s a lot of sex in it, thus. Also some politics.

The stories, which are but a hop, skip, and a jump away, are very good. The James Sisters is full of Utena references.

Today is Blogathon 2002. Short form: participants update every half an hour for 24 hours straight. People sponsor them. Charities get money. Noble!

I happened on the highlight list, which took me to the point of this entry, Diary of a Mad Monk. The guy is planning on 24 biographies of Roman Catholic Saints. The first few entries rock.

This is possibly my favorite blog ever: Pru’s Psychic Spy Training Facility. There’s something tremendously charming about a remote viewing class taught via weblog.