Apocalypedia: A Utopian Guide to What Is and What Isn't - Rilegato

Allen, Darren

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0857844059 ISBN 13: 9780857844057

Casa editrice: Green Books, 2016

Riassunto

Encyclopaedias and dictionaries are often boring, of no help when it comes to secretly filling train carriages with subversive balloons and they rarely manage to offend everyone. Lexicographers assume that language is a big machine that you need an instruction manual to use, rather than a river of silvery ribbons that bursts out of your astonished mouth, or a spectacular instant tree that grows between people in collective surrender to something bigger than the both of us, or a slow lightning strike that pins you, howling with delight, to the sky, or some peculiar paradoxical state halfway between hard cold crystal- line structures driving us to a revolutionary, world-changing point, and mad hot erupting flowers of aimless joy. People who read dictionaries rarely snort soup out their nostrils in outrage, or nod with serene recognition at far distant and long estranged ideas suddenly flung together as mysterious friends, or feel gently inspired to fall in love with waiting forever, or seriously consider the only solution to heartbreak there is or possibly could be, or leave work to master horsemanship, or leave school to get educated, or up and seize their wives about the middle, ready to embark on a week-long reality-cracking godgasm, or stroll whistling into the void.

The Apocalypedia is, therefore, a scurrilous, lyrical, lunatic and friendly countercultural A-Z that satirises modern society through an original and revolutionary collection of flash-essays and comic vignettes. It presents an apocalyptically optimistic and deeply original way of understanding human nature and of living in a civilisation that is in rapid and terminal decline. Looking at a combination of common value-charged words and new words coined to give voice to the often overlooked beauties and horrors of everyday experience, The Apocalypedia is a comic revelation of the kaleidoscopic twists and turns that ordinary consciousness makes throughout the day. A delightful gift book for the radically-inclined, the romantically baffled, the psychologically broken, the fledgling creative genius, the reckless, the sensitive and the actually dying, the book is an entertaining and uncompromising satire of modern culture.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull?autore

Darren Allen is an author, artist, activist, philosopher and media-botherer. He has travelled widely, living in Japan, Spain, Russia, the Middle East and England, working as a technical author, English teacher, textbook designer, horse-groom, illicit priest and seller of shrunken heads; although he prefers to rely on exquisite good-fortune over paid work.

Estratto. © Ristampato con autorizzazione. Tutti i diritti riservati.

The Apocalypedia

A Utopian Guide to What is and What Isn't

By Darren Allen

UIT Cambridge Ltd

Copyright © 2016 UIT Cambridge Ltd.
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-85784-405-7

Contents

TITLE PAGE, 
PREFACE, 
INTRODUCTION, 
A & B, 
a bongas of articles, 
a pallas of classic blips, 
a uriah of blocks, 
a gudrun of body parts, 
BOREDOM, 
HOW TO BRAINWASH YOUR CHILDREN, 
a reich of transitions, 
a loyala of warps, 
BUREAUCRACY, 
C & D, 
MR. CERBERUS, 
CALENDAR, 
a mallord of colours, 
COLLAPSE, 
a yosser of culpas, 
CONSCIENCE, 
CONSCIOUSNESS, 
how to die, 
a pooter of delusions, 
E & F, 
EMOTION, 
exsuperation tactics, 
THE FALL, 
a moloch of fallacies, 
classic fallacies, 
a mytholmroyd of feelings, 
FOR PLAY, 
an ermey of futility traps, 
G & H, 
GARDEN, 
GENDER, 
GENIUS, 
a brief history of god, 
GROUPTHINK, 
I & J, 
IMPRO, 
how to improvise, 
INDECISION, 
K & L, 
THE KAMICHAN SEX-LOVE INDEX, 
LAUGHTER, 
LAW, 
M & N, 
a carbo of notices, 
NEWS SPEAK, 
O & P, 
oxyhebous reversals, 
PARADOX, 
a brangwen of partnerships, 
a güell of philias, 
PHILOSOPHY, 
a kitaro of phobias, 
THE PINK TIP AND THE PROBE, 
PORNSTARE, 
a drella of pomo-tactics, 
PROFESSIONAL, 
Q & R, 
friends of reg, 
RELATIONSHIP AND PARTNERSHIP, 
a leigh of relationships, 
RITUAL, 
S & T, 
HOW TO INDOCTRINATE YOUR STUDENTS?, 
THE SCIENTIFIC SELF, 
THE HISTORY OF SELF, 
SELF-MASTERY, 
SEX AND LOVE-MAKING, 
friends of shango, 
a szass of sicknesses, 
SOCIALISM, 
SOCIETY, 
an eno of sounds, 
THE SHANGO PSYCHIC-CIVILITY INDEX, 
THE SORBY SCALE OF DISPLEASURES, 
SUBVERSION, 
SYNONYMS AND ANTONYMS, 
HOW TO INSTITUTIONALISE THE WORLD, 
TASTE, 
the future of technology, 
TRANSDIMENSIONAL, 
U & V, 
UNVERSATION, 
UTOPIA, 
UTILITY TIPPING POINT, 
some rough utp limits, 
VIBE CONDITIONING, 
VIRTUAL REALITY, 
VISIONS, 
A VOTE FOR THE APOCALYPARTY, 
W, X, Y & Z, 
dear office dweller, 
PLANET X, 
ASLEEP, 
SELECT KALEIDOGRAPHY, 
INDEX, 
COPYRIGHT, 

CHAPTER 1

A IS FOR apocalypse where lives UNLIVED FREAK

B IS FOR bed where things UNSAID SPEAK

abb

vb to blab it out in the presence of authoritative silence

abreact

vb 1 to avoid a subtle point by restlessly or emotionally 'skidding' over the message, blunting (or DIGITISING) its nuance, thereby creating a crude meaning to be offended by, or an excuse to stop paying attention 2 to focus exclusively on the technical meaning of an utterance, in order to avoid its VIBE

accumb

vb 1 to lose beautifully 2 to be blown out like a man 3 to retire at the height of one's powers, before making a tit of oneself, before SHUFFING OUT or at the first sign that the harvest is over

ack

vb to realise, with heartsick dreadhorror, that your life was created by a former self you no longer recognise, or even particularly like

addiction

n ego's tight, concentrated focus on or over-experience of that part of self which it is 'best at' (its SPECIALITY) or 'most enjoys' (its VICE) in order to suppress the discomfort or threat of UNSELF

• signs of addiction include:

• DESENSITISATION · numbed response to pleasure, crude (or DIGITISED) EMOTIONS, BOREDOM (REALITY seems predictable or solid), VIBE blindness, senses dimmed and sensations drained of banzai! and p'tang!

• OVERSENSITIVITY · to potential SATISFACTION (on perma-alert to the possibility of getting or scoring) and to potential frustration or denial, or to sources of criticism (which are automatically ignored, ridiculed or attacked before they reach full awareness)

• INTOLERANCE · of difficulty, uncertainty or effort

• APATHY · low-level anxiety, withered will and standard so-bloody-whatism

• BACKGROUND SHAME · along with continued use despite negative effects (ill-health, creative-atrophy, UNHAPPINESS, dishonesty, fear of others, impotence, etc.)

• not, in any sense, a sickness; see PANCULPISM

• see SELF; for types of addiction, see NARCOTIC

• never satisfied

advertise

vb 1 to spray shit with glitter 2 to train the world, by covering it in MARKET PORN, to believe that quality (peace, security, etc.) can be bought

aedile

adj descriptive of one who habitually makes unpleasant comments, checks the reaction and, if nobody nods or smiles in agreement, claims he was joking

afuxia

n 1 inability to get things to work out like they do in the movies; e.g. confronting the boss, post-casual-coitus, kicking down a door, etc; leads to FLAPPING AROUND 2 dreadful yet compelling abyss that opens up in the mind's eye when you are not able to think of something because all you can think about is that you can't think of what it is you are supposed to be thinking about

ananarchy, omnarchy

n 1 a society comprised of DUNBAR GROUPS temporarily lead by whoever happens to be fittest for whatever activity is underway 2 apt and paradoxical rule by context, governing good friends, lovers and all truly cooperative groups, for 99% of human [pre] history

• near synonym of ANARCHY n innate tendency to circumvent unaccountable domination; flawed by excessive rationality, fear of OBEYING, a tendency to mob and rather too much face-bleeding punk

anglut

n 1 feeling of regret, during the last mouthful of a meal, that one has forgotten to enjoy all the other mouthfuls 2 feeling, on saying goodbye to someone you never cared much for, that actually, in fact they are a good fellow 3 FUTILE attempt to get back the joy of a song, childhood or cake by doing it again

antonym

• see SYNONYM

apartment, flat

n garage for the overnight storage of economically productive wage slaves, set up for the economic function of upgrading commodities

apocalypse

n something as it really is

A BONGAS OF ARTICLES

MASHI-MASHI · a twingelette of jealous pain, when experiencing consummate beauty, that makes you determined to do better in your own work

UTTORATE · to be struck with the sense that reality has come apart at the stupid seam and any mad thing is now possible

YON · reverberating sensation after the initial FEELING of a lovely song, painting, gesture, phrase or kiss has ceased

AWARITY · the bittersweet feeling created by ephemeral or soon to be lost beauty, such as figs in season, a beautiful woman glimpsed from the upper window of the 55 to Lea Bridge Road or a functioning operating system

TAIKA · love for the largeness or smallness of a person or thing

TOUND · to know, in a place beyond knowledge, that love and death are somehow at the heart of it all

BABUA · to know, in a place beyond tound, that squelchy analogue boing-boing sounds are at the heart of it all

YUGEN · plummeting awareness of the profundity of the universe, that triggers feelings too mysterious, and tender, for words

appean

vb to agree with everything someone says in order to get them to shut up

apperceive

vb to experience the subtle feeling of life buzzing around the body underneath and around EMOTIONS, tensions and other PAINS

apt

adj & vb 1 OBEYING the context before a plan, a theory or an authority 2 use or love of the right tool for the job

• APTISM n the supple principle that all moral, aesthetic, political, psychological and philosophical theories, systems and ideas are beautiful or useful in context; and ugly or inept out of context

• lacks a definable mechanism for choosing the most apt principle to apply in a given situation (i.e. knowing what on EARTH to do) because, for the aptist, no such mechanism exists — ultimately only the situation, or CONTEXT, is intelligent enough to know what to do

• some ideas cannot fit any context, and so can never be apt; such as MONOTHEISM, SCIENTISM, FUNSHISM, CAPITALISM, FASCISM and GOLF

• antonym of APPROPRIATE

art

n playful expression of timeless unself in the form of the TIMESPACE SELF

• ultimately art has nothing to do with TIME, and so, at the time, is overlooked by temporal (which is to say FASHIONABLE) people

• great art = the universal (see GENIUS) + the social (see SCENIUS) + the personal (see SELF), expressed through consummate TECHNIQUE (see CRAFT)

• antonym of PORN

• generates ARTICLES n.pl. sublime bubblettes of vibe-hue which pop slow-mo or boom hugely in the receptive SOLAR PLEXUS

ashuln

n 1 a smile that steals away the pride of haughty woman 2 a glance that flattens the ego of swaggering man

assuefaction

n the state of being so well accustomed to a situation that one ceases to appreciate that it is worse than shit

asusu

vb 1 to feel uneasy in a new place 2 to give up something new because you look a fool doing it 3 to turn spastic in someone else's kitchen

augury

n to intuit the whole from softly absorbing the part

• see FRACTAL

• antonym of SCIENTISM

average man

n.phr one who systematically confuses reality for self; whose inner nature seems predictable or unparadoxically knowable

• always occupied by some ambition or fret to which, after a moment of exultation or relief, he morbidly returns

awhape

vb to play the bum drums on your wife

awk

vb 1 to be wrong by being right at the wrong time, or in the wrong way 2 to lie by saying anything at all

• antonym of ARRE vb 1 to be right by being wrong at the right moment 2 to be heard by shutting up

awolden

adj & n 1 [descriptive of] that which is familiar yet mysterious, well understood yet at the same time baffling 2 obvious and known to all, yet routinely misunderstood and overlooked

• e.g. the massiveness of the ground, the cowness of cow, the weirdness of having a hand that you can move, the unique 'herness' of your girlfriend's neck, why there should be anything at all, or just mushrooms

• AWAULD vb finding sustenance for joy in failures, wastelands, waiting rooms, puddles and other unlikely places

basta, baster

vb, n & exc 1 to draw the line 2 a line drawn that you will never allowed to be crossed 3 a complete, unwavering refusal to compromise; ever

• assisted by THE UNIVERSE

beauty

n sacrifice + reality ÷ fractal

• see Q-WORD

belief

vb a guess + hope mix bolted onto a confused and frail personality, so that it A) has a good reason to argue with or exterminate someone in its way B) can prevent the inconvenient inevitability of death from spoiling its plans or C) can reassure itself that the CULT it clings to has cosmic validity

• sometimes means A) suppose B) guess

bellymind

n the most intelligent part of your body, situated right behind the navel

• the source of GUT-INSTINCT and FEMININE INTUITION

• never wrong; but frequently confused with the more insistent EMOTION about a hand-width above the navel, also called 'intuition', but which only has about a 50% hit rate (see DOUBT)

• doubles up as an exemplary incinerator for fear, anxiety, anger and the desperate wanty-wanties

• can, if cut off from SOCIETY and REASON, be used as a weapon of MYSTISHISM

• a.k.a. SOLAR PLEXUS

biastify

vb to excuse one excess of self by comparing it with its OPPOSAME / false ANTONYM

• e.g. to defend the CULT of OPTIMISM by comparing it with that of PESSIMISM, cold rationality by comparing it with hot emotion, being 'a responsible adult' by comparing it to being 'an irresponsible CHILD', FUNSHISM by comparing it to BOREDOM, corporatism by comparing it to statism, or the implicit violence of MODERN uncivilisation by comparing it to the explicit violence of the lawless PRE-MODERN cults which gave rise to and sustain it

blick

n & vb a tic, wince or spasm used to cast out an unpleasant experience or memory

• range from tiny nervous eye-flutters and scrunches, through stomach-sucking grictus grimaces, right up to anguished face-clawing pelvic judders of shame

blip, saccada

n & vb a micro-expression, far too swift to consciously detect, but which delivers a superpotent meaning beam to the bellymind

• used to send secrets across the room, for broadcasting good news from radio me or for VIBE CONDITIONING

A PALLAS OF CLASSIC BLIPS

ZELP · a tiny clench of distrust around the eyebags or a swift furrow-pinch of micro-terror from suddenly not knowing who someone really is

ORM · disconcertingly serious glint of gripping, imploring desperation briefly glimpsed in laughing eyes HEMPH · a warm flash of 'I'm not really serious' from the upper cheek

TRAVVER · a minute lip-tightening or forehead-crinkling of not liking a suggestion

SHUG · cute goof of hesitation caused by not being able to believe that someone really just said that

PHURK · an involuntary 'yes I'm guilty' smile, a thick 'oh shit' blink or an 'I'm lying' swallow (see RELATIONSHIP)

VIBELETTE · any one of an infinite gamut of moodhues that ripple over a calm face in conversational flow (precursor to the ARBRE-LATTICE)

SKASH · soft sigh of the door behind the door behind the door of the eyes, opening

GADUMLEIF · an imperceptible nod that signals that, yes, old friend, we really are going to do this terrible, magnificent, and quite possibly final, thing

A URIAH OF BLOCKS

CONTROLLING · over-planning, teaching or forcing action or conversation towards where you want it to go, rather than where it wills itself

GAGGING · going for the larf rather than for the communal story, avoiding a vital point with smirky asides or seeking attention; also PUTTING DOWN

NOING · refusing a proffered side-reality, pretend identity or playful illusion by being overly literal; also CHALLENGING and DEMANDING PROOF

GASSING · restlessly going off on one tangent after another, unable to rest in the collective conversational channel or perceive that others are waiting in vain to be invited into the flow; also ANECDOTING, BITCHING and BRIDGING (faffing around in order to avoid doing or talking about something meaningful)

PORNING · sex-violence gags that are smirk-smirk exciting or angry; rather than surreal or splendidly out of place PREENING / GRANDSTANDING · using the conversation as an excuse to advertise yourself

TESTING · 'how much do you like me?' (inc. the sneaky accusation of the 'why must you always?' rhetorical question)

FACTING · sucking the living guts out of an interaction and filling it with a punch tape of likes, dislikes, facts and complaints (see SPONKING)

FLATTERING · telling someone they are beautiful or talented instead of showing them with your beauty or talent5

DOGGEDLY WORKING · grimly going through the motions

JUDGING · reducing a comment or action to a frozen, binary good–bad fact, to which all are forced to turn their weary attention, away from the life of the scene or conversation; also SILENT JUDGING

SUBMISSION · cutting off connected intimacy by inhabiting the cautious, silent, ironic, distanced, fearful or submissive egopersona (see OBEY)

block

vb & n 1 to shut down improvised conversational or collaborative flow 2 to turn down an unselfish offer to roll into the unknown 3 to respond to what you want to hear, or to a caricature of what you can't hear

• see UNVERSATION & IMPRO

A GUDRUN OF BODY PARTS

GLABELLA · the space between the eyebrows; ranging from alien-wide to plod-witted thin

PROIN · the sad, set jaw of one who habitually resists and resists, never fighting back

ULLETS · close-minded thighs

LIETTE'S-TREAD · the vee on a bald man's head between the folds of the forehead and the glabrous smoothness of the ensuing dome

MINKLES · wrinkles across the upper lip caused by a lifetime of moaning, or a thumbprint of perma-stress pressed into the putty of a pounded brow

FLUNGE · subcutaneous rhubarb

YUX · the stiff, inflexible upper-lip of the PARVAPHOBIC, the puppyish mush of a too satisfied maw or the dulled mattpatina of bovinity over the DOMESTICATED eye

YORB · the biscuit-laying ovipositor of a persecuted baker

ARBRE-LATTICE · a network of pathways across the face of someone who has, for 70-odd years, allowed every FEELING to wander freely over it, and every VIBE to flare through it

CRAMBOES · your grandmother's antlers

BUGGERLUGS · fleshy, hanging cheeks, bristling with black stubble and reeking of after-shave (a.k.a. JOPPERS)

QUINK · perfection-enhancing imperfections such as wonky teeth, sticky-out ears and fragrant grass-green pubic hair

SOLAR-PLEXUS · cold, SILENT sun of awesome obliterating super-reality which radiates from the BELLYMIND

IMPOPULANCE · the smooth, tense poverty of a rich man's smile

IPSIMS · features a Victorian author would highly esteem, such as noble brow, humane lips, poignant ankles, etc.

body

n the soft brown space-suit which converts the transdimensional ÜBERSELF into sense, feeling and thought

• either APPERCEIVED from within as a wyrd symphony of out-flowing vibe-sense, or perceived from without as a SHAMEFUL-TO-REVEAL, sinful, remote or uncanny genetic FLESH-PUPPET

• always PRESENT (closer to the living CONTEXT) and so more APT, or INTELLIGENT, than MIND or EMOTION

boredom

n 1 the point where the horror of ego-possession first pokes into awareness; engendering a restless desire to think, want, compulsively worry, consume narcotics, wage war, MASTURBATE and manufacture uncivilisation 2 a feedback cue that one's engagement is half-arsed or that one's ARSE is halfengaged 3 DOMESTICATION

• antonym of IDLENESS

BOREDOM

TO BE BORED is to come up with inadequate reasons not to talk to shop assistants with lungs full of helium, play recordings of ecstatic laughter on the tube, SEE sparrows, bring up death in unlikely places, smear yourself over the walls of your house moaning in gratitude, foxtrot through no entry signs, interview your friends, perform daily actions as if holy rituals, visit a prison, leave root vegetables on steps, wrestle with your friends, make bread, trombone up your girlfriend's arse, picnic in a cemetery, learn mycology, lie about your job to taxi drivers, organise a treasure hunt in your house for your lover ending with you, naked, hiding in the cupboard, do the poxy washing-up, make love in a hedge, give everything away, master impro, master joinery, build an organic shed-cathedral in the garden then impersonate the pope for your neighbours, organise situationist theatrical protests in corporate coffee shops, fast for five days, turn up for work dressed as spiderman, heavy metal drum roll as your arse hits cold toilet porcelain, grow fins, learn to crack necks expertly, sniff the smell of now, live alone in a shack, feign elk, or strobe blue, cry 'I am the expressive egg!' shoot up into a little white ball, and fly out the window

* * *

brainwash

vb to create MARKERED STEREOTYPICAL paths through the PSYCHE; along which the attention habitually flows, esp. when stimulated — via rewards and threats to EGO — by a TOTALITARIAN SYSTEM

HOW TO BRAINWASH YOUR CHILDREN

THE SELVES OF YOUNG CHILDREN are so soft that they do not just 'experience' what is happening, they are it. There is no separate 'me' witnessing 'not me'. For the very young the sounds, smells, sights and, most intensely, the hyper-subtle vibe of the room (a.k.a. the CONTEXT) are indistinguishable from the child's default inner state of soft-consciousness, which she shares with the selfless adult, or the selfless hedgehog, in selfless communion.

Needless to say, such a mode of experience is acutely subversive and must be obliterated. Children who are allowed to grow up in continual contact with inner ease grow into adults who do not need external stimulus to feel content, or to bolster their sense of self-worth. They are poor consumers, poor workers, unprofitably sensitive to CONSCIENCE and reluctant to compromise. They are, in short, a threat.

(Continues...)

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Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Green Books
• Data di pubblicazione: 2016
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0857844059
• ISBN 13: 9780857844057
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 366
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile