Tuesday 30 September 2014

Fear of...

Fear of anamatronics.
Fear of clowns.
Fear of clown puppets.
Fear of ticking clocks.
Fear of time ticking away.
Fear of darkened hallways, alleyways and doorways.
Fear of love.
Fear of hate.
Fear of what lies inbetween.
Fear of everything, of everyone.
Fear of nothing at all, of numbness.
Fear of disappearing.
Fear of being seen.

Monday 22 September 2014

Easy Access

Everything is made for easy access these days. In modern cities time is money and money is God and we're all devout believers. Metro systems give you easy access to areas, the internet gives you easy access to information, clothes are made for easy access to a myriad of body parts. Advertising gives corporations easy access to our subconscious.

Access. Access. Access.

Easy access to the centre of London, one of the busiest, most expensive areas in the world, can cost you more than a quarter of a million for a converted cupboard. Easy access makes people powerful. People with easy access to anything from drugs to ballot counts control the world.

The things, they told me, as they cut me open, that it was for easy access. Apparently my life energy is getting low and they need to connect to it directly at the source. It's not like I run on fucking Duracell or something. I would have told them that, as they where sticking their purple tubes into the cavity where my chest used to be.

I would've, but, they said I begged too much and, well, once they learnt enough about human anatomy from the other abductees, they cut my tongue out.

Friday 19 September 2014

The sanctity of language has been soiled. Good.

*crsssss-taktakatakatak-thud* This is a sound you hear often enough in cities. These "damn hooligans" on their skateboards, with their half-pipes, rail-slides and... well, I don't know what they're talking about half the time. Skaters have their own personal brand of English that doesn't really register with anyone who isn't a fan of gliding along on wooden plank with wheels.

It's a little weird that two people can be speaking English, but not understanding each other at all. One of the most celebrated story-tellers in the history of English literature, Geoffrey Chaucer, wrote and spoke a form of English completely different to that spoken today. Every era of history has had it's own peculiarities, it's own slang.

Swingers and teddy boys, punks and goths and hipsters, mobsters, gangsters, skaters and stoners. All subcultures with their own slang, their own sub-English.

The sanctity of the English language was questioned when the word of the year, 2013, was "selfie". The sanctity of the English language is a hollow concept. English has never existed except as a constantly changing, mutating, reforming mass of slang, swear words and borrowed grammar. That is what makes it one of the most expressive, rich vocabularies there is, because if you need a word, you just make one up (or borrow it from someone else's language). It's sure to catch on sooner or later.

To hear someone make slang funny, listen to Slang 101. Skip to 1:20, if you like.