[ the domino effect ]

-Furious fathers are physically attacking the drivers of ice-cream vans, the jolly chiming of Home-Ice bells sending them into fits of mad, self-righteous rage.
-”Anger and aggression can be provoked by unwanted sounds, it can drive people over the edge”, comments psychiatrist Berthold Grünfeld, himself not willing to let the melody irritate him: “This is of course subjective. Some people get provoked by sound, some can handle it better- it might help to remind oneself that in just a couple of minutes, it will all be over, and try to think about something else in the meantime”, is his advice to posh hotheads everywhere.
Lars Dirks (20), the ice-cream driver attacked by an insult-spouting father in one of the most affluent city neighbourhoods, might view the matter a bit differently. He got away unhurt, just with the fear and a few scratches, but says this is not the first time he’s been attacked in the same area: “Some people seem to take the sound of the bells as a personal insult”, he despairs. “In one neighbourhood, there’s a man photographing my van each time I arrive, it seems like he want to take it to court- But my job must go on, I can’t let them scare me”.
-Ice-cream vendors, it seems, must have balls of steel. It is an extreme-sport challenge simply to get though the day.

---[[ the X reporting, from arctic city, the fields of nowhere.]]----------

[ sherpas, B-sides, steppes ]

Spring has sprung, hormones fluttering the air.
In a particularly realistic dream, Martin/Implode and I run off together to Sandefjord to squat an abandoned garage, drinking longpints in village pubs with weather-worn fishermen and depressed local poets.
In the course of just two rainy springtime months, we open a ragga jungle club in the revamped remains of an old fishfinger factory. The clubnights are a great success. The local youth loves us. Healthily sceptical, we decide to finish it off, and spend the money on a two-years trek to visit throatsinging monks in Inner Mongolia instead.

-Arriving in Ulan Bator, Martin is chatted up in the hotel bar by the vulgar (but big-busted) daughter of a resident BBC-reporter, and buggers off without warning, I'm left alone to pay the bill.
Lost in depression, I aimlessly wander the streets, but then miraculously bump into Julia Roberts' TV-team, they're back in Mongolia to film a follow-up to the 2002 success "Living With Horses", but they've yet to find a suitable sherpa to follow them and carry all the expensive camera equipment and Ms. Roberts' make-up bag. I take on the task readily, and they give me $500 upfront- I'm saved the humiliating agony of 2 years' washing-up debt repayment.

Both filmstar and crew turn out to be great, likeable characters, we get on mighty fine, the three-month steppe trek is only interrupted by a minor case of sunsting (Bill, the asthmatic cameraman) and an 'incident' with a sprained ankle: When I trip over the provisional outdoor lavatory, late one night after we've grilled some tasty possums with a family of friendly ex-nomads, on their way from high-tech city living to the annual Horse Race in Karakorum- they left the grill-spears clumsily scattered around on the ground, and in my rush to empty my aching bladder before being discovered by bloodsucking vampire insects, I don't bother to bring a flashlight with me, just running out in the pitch-dark night, hence the nasty result: Lots of uncomfortable tripping over sharp hurting objects and loud scandinavian swearwords which wake up the entire camp- I'm devastated.

The crew decides to continue without me, they pay for a pirate minitruck-taxi to pick me up back to the capital, but not before a tear-filled goodbye with lots of sparkly, american friendliness and group-hugging, from Julia I get the biggest hug of all, as she hands me a signed copy of an obscure 80's record where she duets with Winona Ryder and Michael Douglas (the B-side is a 'dance'-remix featuring Jazzy Jeff and Kenny G)..."It was SO nice working with you, give me a call if you pop by L.A. sometime, hon", she beams.
I accept my fate with stoic smiles, and eagerly long for the comfortable return of hot water showers and free dental floss. It's nice to be back among people again, rumours of my existence spread fast, and I soon get work as a combined nanny/au-pair/shop assistant/fashion model in the household of local Khöömïï-pop star, Sansar Huu (Son of the Cosmos). After a year of hardworking, ethusiastic fun, I've saved enough for the airfare home.
-Later, when i awake from the dream, I switch on the morning news to find that a catholic nunnery in Stokke (not far from Sandefjord) has burned to the ground.
-I decide never to sleep again.

[ chain reaction ]

AFTER THE ALAN MOORE- INTERVIEW:
Brian awakes to the gentle sound of exploding galaxies and the Islington Green Radio Choir For Disadvantaged Children, recording Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (-with an indignant Dame Judy Dench, yelping and swearing and kicking the walls down from inside the broom closet she was confined to by class bully Brutal Tim, who remembered to tie her up like a true bondage artist before he fled to the tranquility of the BBC recording studio-), leaving her absent from the glorious spectacle which is about to take place (-even the studio technicians covers their ears when the cataclysmic belching starts, the director despairs, two boys are suspended for shouting rude words and tossing little bits of gum and rubber-balls into the hair of pretty girls, Viola the tired-looking teacher hushes up the offenders and urges everybody to behave, a fluster of sticking-out-tongues and unprintable words are exchanged before they resume the "singing" and splendid lowbudget-effects which the BBC have so painstakingly trained them to perform, during the jungle-hot summer school with fuckall refreshments and thermometer crawling beyond dripping sweat, soaking the worn-down studio carpets with irremovable stains-)

-The aetheric wailing of theremins and bolivian insect-buzzing from archived Attenborough tapes enriches the atmosphere of amateur radio drama, as the director quietly despairs over these anaemic kids' inability to learn even the most simple songlines, a non-existent musicality which he later learns to work to his advantage, equipping the kids with bogus laser beams and tiny cardboard figures of daleks while they get green lights to go ahead with the other phase of the play, which involves a very tired Aphex Twin running around the room dressed in a giant Maize Cob(tm)-costume, wielding a triangle and urging the kids on to start their cacaphonic canon of Speak-and-Spell machines which the play now requires, being the phase where our hero descends on the alien planet near Pheibos and Kodos, populated by mysterious blob-like amoeba creatures, solely communicating in Morse code and quadratic equations.

A baffled silence emerges when Brian walks into the studio, dressed in a plain moroccan kimono and sipping his cup of organic tea. -"Don't worry about me, just go on", he muses, kicking off his slippers and leaning himself to the studio walls with a relaxed elegance, feigning immense interest in such an unstructured play, or maybe his interest is genuine, anyway you can never tell, his enigmatic smile reveals nothing, is as much of a mystery as the creaking calculators, now singing their last verse as their circuits is about to overheat in the hands of untrained schoolchildren, blippety-blopping their way to eternal doom.
A gong is struck, William Shatners pre-recorded voice narrates the alien enounters taking place in this fictional soap-opera, lending an air of glamorous gloss to the generally un-spectacular affair. Noone applaudes, but Brian smiles gently and enthusiastically, infecting the kids with his optimism, pushing their boundaries, atonal sing-song voices culminating in a grandiose crescendo, everyone in the room joining in on the faux-cosmic shout-out, their grand elegy to the stars, every eye gleaming with innocent joy, every spine tingling with space-travelling excitement.
With the burp of a rusty Mini-moog and the glittering of a Space Echo-rumble, the choir fades out and everyone gets invited to Brian's for tea.

RANDOM LINK:
[ Brian Peter St. John Le Baptiste de la Salle Eno : OBLIQUE STRATEGIES ]

[ Y2K philosophy ]

[ from Phinnweb ]