adrift at sea
Today is an zombapocageddonarmalypse kinda day. I've been reading a lot of Transmetropolitan and/or particularly my man J.G. Ballard lately and that'll do it. On TV someone interviewed a 'primitive' tribesman in Africa, they're like:
Journalist: "Have you ever seen the internet?"
Tribesman: "Inter-what?"
Journalist: "Well have you ever seen a computer?"
Tribesman: "Com-put-or? ... HaHa I'm just fucking with you! Yes of course I know what a computer and the internet is."
Makes you think though? You'd have to go pretty far off the map these days to be somehow truly alone, marooned, or lost? Within the city there are islands within the concrete sea and our homeless and junkies know where. They are filled with garbage and ringed in rubble and fences, out of sight of surveillance cameras or by people with anything to lose. But you can't get lost in those asphalt archipelagos, and who doesn't have a cellphone these days? So as J.G. Ballard so wonderfully covered for city-dwellers that pretty much only leaves the subliminal fear of being trapped by a power failure in the tunnel of a subway system, or trapped in an elevator of a skyscraper over a long holiday weekend.
TRAPPED IN AN ELEVATOR FOR 41 HOURS
Footage of Nicholas White trapped in an elevator in the McGraw-Hill Building. New York
Robinson Crusoe and all the problems of survival on a tropical paradise. Perhaps made easier by your ship marooned conveniently nearby like your very own WalMart which you can plunder. In the perfect circumstances you get a Gilligan's Island scenario, you have/are the smart professor and of course there are Marianne's coconut cream-pies.
I still like to lay in bed in the dark, pretending I'm adrift in a lifeboat. Nearby the ocean-liner is ablaze and sinking slowly and maybe there's an iceberg nearby creaking, groaning, settling. It was one of my favorite games as a child, usually with my cat abducted and forced under the blankets with me.
Journalist: "Have you ever seen the internet?"
Tribesman: "Inter-what?"
Journalist: "Well have you ever seen a computer?"
Tribesman: "Com-put-or? ... HaHa I'm just fucking with you! Yes of course I know what a computer and the internet is."
Makes you think though? You'd have to go pretty far off the map these days to be somehow truly alone, marooned, or lost? Within the city there are islands within the concrete sea and our homeless and junkies know where. They are filled with garbage and ringed in rubble and fences, out of sight of surveillance cameras or by people with anything to lose. But you can't get lost in those asphalt archipelagos, and who doesn't have a cellphone these days? So as J.G. Ballard so wonderfully covered for city-dwellers that pretty much only leaves the subliminal fear of being trapped by a power failure in the tunnel of a subway system, or trapped in an elevator of a skyscraper over a long holiday weekend.
TRAPPED IN AN ELEVATOR FOR 41 HOURS
Footage of Nicholas White trapped in an elevator in the McGraw-Hill Building. New York
Click to viewRobinson Crusoe and all the problems of survival on a tropical paradise. Perhaps made easier by your ship marooned conveniently nearby like your very own WalMart which you can plunder. In the perfect circumstances you get a Gilligan's Island scenario, you have/are the smart professor and of course there are Marianne's coconut cream-pies.
I still like to lay in bed in the dark, pretending I'm adrift in a lifeboat. Nearby the ocean-liner is ablaze and sinking slowly and maybe there's an iceberg nearby creaking, groaning, settling. It was one of my favorite games as a child, usually with my cat abducted and forced under the blankets with me.