Hannah tells me her new favorite band is LCD Soundsystem- I nabbed their album on iTunes and have been listening to it obsessively the past few days, and if it's not my favorite band too, it's up there in the top five. The album is hit and miss but there are moments in the good tracks (two thirds of the way through "Losing My Edge," for example) when it all comes together, synths crashing in and overdubbed voices, crazy apeshit stuff, and you get chills and can't help but think "Yes. This is it. This is what I've been waiting for. This is the sound."
I've been on an electro kick again lately, a lot of new Ladytron, Mylo, Chicks on Speed, Delta 5, Fischerspooner. Raw dirty electro that makes me think of small clubs in big cities. Oh yeah. I was supposed to be in San Francisco this week to brief some consultants, but the thing fell apart at the last minute. No big deal, these things happen (I tell myself), but now I'm fervently hoping I can find a way to reschedule the trip for the week of October 16 because Ladytron is playing the Fillmore that day. Would be unbelievable to land back in the city again and see them.
Warren Ellis just posted a mad riff on the power of music. Yeah. He gets it.
Ugh. I'm packing up my office now--not because I'm changing jobs (sadly) but just because I need to move into a new office--and I just found this pile of unspeakable black slime in the corner of one of the drawers in my file cabinet.
I don't know what it is but it's really horrible. Has someone broken into my office at night to leave a pile of black vom in my drawer? Who would do it, and why? How did it get there?
This is starting to feel like a scene from Naked Lunch, which, obviously, I find disturbing...
Instead of complaining about the insanity of the last three weeks and whining about not being able to write anything here, I'll just talk briefly about a pharmaceutical I've just learned about that might be somewhat relevant.
It's called modafinil. Provigil in the US and Alertec in Canada. It's approved by the FDA but is delivered by prescription only right now, to narcoleptics and to the US military. According to an excellent article in the Washington Post (in which the reporter tested it on himself),
In trials on healthy people like Army helicopter pilots, modafinil has allowed humans to stay up safely for almost two days while remaining practically as focused, alert, and capable of dealing with complex problems as the well-rested. Then, after a good eight hours' sleep, they can get up and do it again -- for another 40 hours, before finally catching up on their sleep.
Originally aimed at narcoleptics, who fall asleep frequently and uncontrollably, modafinil works without the jitter, buzz, euphoria, crash, addictive characteristics or potential for paranoid delusion of stimulants like amphetamines or cocaine or even caffeine, researchers say. As with an increasing number of the so-called superhuman, posthuman or trans-human drugs or genetic manipulations rapidly entering our lives, modafinil thus calls into question some fundamental underpinnings of hundreds of thousands of years of thought regarding what are normal human capabilities...
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is searching for ways to create the "metabolically dominant soldier." Among the projects it is pursuing is the creation of a warrior who can fight 24 hours a day, seven days straight. "Eliminating the need for sleep while maintaining the high level of both cognitive and physical performance of the individual will create a fundamental change in war-fighting," says the Defense Sciences Office on its Web site.
Clearly, this would change everything... Imagine being able to turn the need for sleep on and off at will? Must investigate further.
Went to a kickoff dinner for my new team (new management) at my company, still based in Copenhagen, for now. Before dinner they fed us a few glasses champagne and had rented a Zodiac boat--one of these twelve person semi-rigid jobs with huge double engines that the special forces use, to take us out on a tour of Copenhagen harbor. When we got out to open water the pilot slammed both throttles to full and we accelerated to (we were told) 110 kilometers per hour. It was euphoric.
I flew airplanes for two years in the US, fifteen years ago, but this little attack boat was moving at significantly faster than takeoff speed for the Cessnas I used to fly. Screaming along the water, feeling every ripple on the sea, was a completely new experience for me. The pilot steered us towards a supertanker that was powering out towards the Kattegat, and turned away at the last moment so we could jump the waves in its wake. It was briefly terrifying, just because it felt so different than the planes I used to fly and I wasn't used to it. But then he pointed the thing back towards land, directly into the setting sun. We were flying--the wind was so strong I couldn't open my eyes--and I was in this state of pure sensation, unable to see clearly but feeling everything.
The pilot was twisting the boat in the water at full speed, and I couldn't tell if this was normal or not, or if the boat would suddenly flip over at that speed, or whatever. But it put me into a kind of Zen state I haven't felt for a long time. That state where you have no choice but to give up control and just surrender to the world. Absolute trust. And it reminded me very clearly of the trueness of those old Lori Carson lyrics... Words I haven't thought of for probably ten years or more:
I have wondered sometimes if eternity might not after all exist as an endless prolongation of the moment of death.
And that is the moment I would have chosen,
the moment of absolute pleasure and absolute trust.
The moment when it is impossible to quarrel,
because it is impossible to think.
Just got back from the US, and am dealing with the traditional staggering jetlag, complicated this time with a nasty sinus infection I got from the alternating blazing heat outside and freezing air conditioning at the convention center in Florida. Hurricane Ernesto never showed up, which was good, I guess, though I did hear after I got back that the security forces were on alert for a truck full of explosives that had gone missing and was supposedly heading for Orlando while we were there.
Going back to the US these days always feels like being in a weird post-apocalyptic movie. Maybe with Rutger Hauer in it.
Best line from the trip: "So which part of the teambuilding did you like best, the 'fuck you' part or the 'fuck you too' part?"