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The Reboot Box

We're The Great Old Ones Now

13:18 / 14.03.03

Thought experiment:

You are struck by lightning and your memory is erased. Fortunately, you have left yourself a Reboot Box - a stash of things which will help you to become you again, get you back up and running. Books, names, relationships, history, music, theory, fiction, tv and radio, influences, pasta, activities, sports, games, opinions, analysis, instructions...

So. What's in your box?

13:26 / 14.03.03

Oh Nick, you're a sight for sore eyes! I'm sorry, I'm not answering your question... I'll go away and think it over...

13:36 / 14.03.03

nothing

Probably cos i'd never get round to making one. Maybe the post reboot me would be different, maybe not (hell, I'd never know either way).

13:41 / 14.03.03

I'd be tempted to stock the box with things to let me become the person I wish I were, rather than the person I am: total amnesia's a great way to break bad habits, after all.

So: fatherhood, husbandhood, holiness, humility, rigor, discipline; running shoes, beans and rice; drums, half-finished manuscripts, pencils; good sense, gentleness, eyes that see, ears that hear.

The rest I can pick up as I go along.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:43 / 14.03.03

Nick! D00D! You've missed so much! Including the "Dude!" phase! Dude!

I'm just really glad you're back. Will answer properly later.

This is turning into a *lovely* day! Friend is reacting really well to chemo (in the sense of it working, rather than in the sense of it building strong and healthy muscle mass),and Paxman/Portillo slash. W00T!

13:48 / 14.03.03

Nick! Good job you put "Barbelith" in you reboot box before you wiped the memory banks or you'd never have come back!

(Thread's gone to shit - re-title this "I've been away! But now I'm back" and start another reboot box one)

13:55 / 14.03.03

I would be so tempted to just fill mine with random bollocks as a cruel joke on the post Ctrl-Alt-Deleted me. A baked bean can ocarina, A Val Doonican hot water bottle, piles of hamster hair, the word 'BRITTLE MONKEY' written in ketchup on a policeman's helmet. However, looking at my current personality, maybe this has already happened...*

*Apologies to Douglas Adams.

14:47 / 14.03.03

Okay, I really think that this is all I'd need: Husb, Barbelith, and my database. And now I'm tempted to get in the way of a lightning bolt...

Whisky Priestess

15:42 / 14.03.03

Nice de-lurk, Nick.

I'd obviously take a copy of the Ancrene Wissde, the medieval guide to being a good nun, a couple of pounds of juicy steak, and a note saying "Silence is golden, never show off and don't fuget your dislecksick"

Naaaah .... not really. Probably one of the most important things would be a list of my ridiculously picky food preferences, as I'd hate to rediscover what I really dislike eating by trial and error.

Also a box of fags, a cocktail shaker and full bar (Jameson's included of course). A small selection of impractical and eclectic outfits, the manuscript of my novel so that I could read it with total objectivity and decide whether it was mostly good or mostly shit.

A list with headshots of my friends and exes (perhaps some sleeve notes too) the complete musical works of Del Amitri and Tom Lehrer (gotta take the rough with the smooth).

And a massive amount of money I would have stolen before I rebooted and could not be put on trial for because I was not, technically, the same person when I committed the theft.

I think that's all. Oh, and the entirety of the A-Team on DVD. And a DVD player.

16:17 / 14.03.03

I wrote a list, but it depressed me so I'm not posting it. I like Jack Fear's idea of becoming the person you want to be but I'm not sure I have it in me to be anyone better. However, I'm willing to find out. Lightning bolt? Bring it on, baby.

16:22 / 14.03.03

So now I have this image of Cholister and me, with our boxes, walking out in a thunderstorm and wearing foil hats.

16:47 / 14.03.03

Sounds like another SFD Smash! style picture, to me.

17:22 / 14.03.03

Diana Wynne Jones - complete works except for the Dalemark Quartet

The Smiths, Talking Heads, Leonard Cohen, Future Bible Heroes

Blake's 7 and assorted B7 slash zines

Dennis Cooper - complete works

Labyrinth, The Lair of the White Worm

Potted biography of my elder sister

Jenny Pausacker's Central Secondary quartet

The Malory Towers sequence

The Dark is Rising sequence

Sylvia Engdahl - The Far Side of Evil

Charles Perrault's fairy tales

Vergil - complete works

Tacitus - Annals

Shade, Sandman (worse luck), Dork, Milk & Cheese, Invisibles

Tony Kushner's Angels in America - 11 viewings of each part, original NT productions

Of Grammatology

Image - Music - Text, The Rustle of Language and The Pleasure of the Text

Complete Ruth Rendell. Near-complete Steven King. Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers.

Katherine Applegate's Making Out series.

(Hi, Nick!)

17:29 / 14.03.03

If you put Morrissey and Stephin Merritt in a box together, who would get out alive?

Tryphena Absent

17:58 / 14.03.03

A Diana Wynne Jones, probably The Lives of Christopher Chant but maybe Fire and Hemlock, Whose Body by Dorothy Sayers, Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto, The Prime of Life by Simone de Beauvoir and The Sailor from Gibraltar by Marguerite Duras.

A PJ Harvey album- I'm not bothered by specifics.

My favourite version of The Twelve Dancing Princesses published by Faber. One Malory Towers, one Angela Brazil and a Chalet School book- probably the fifth because it's not too early and there's no Mary- Lou.

My photo album and the picture of my housemates that sits on my desk.

Photos of my favourite coat and a pair of Vivienne Westwood shoes that I aim towards.

DVD of Raise the Red Lantern and the Channel 4 production of The Camomile Lawn.

My pentacle and a list of URL's and email addresses, ooh and my address book... and a small dark chocolate Lindt easter egg, a teabag and eyeliner.

Damn I'm missing a lot... Annie Dalton, Susan Cooper, Ravel, Miles Davis, Julie Andrews, Jade Darcy and the Zen Pirates, Murasaki, Paul Steinberg, Freud, Queneau.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

22:22 / 14.03.03

(Hiya, Nick.)

Right now I'm thinking that a note saying "Go back to sleep and just don't bother" would be the kindest thing I could do to my mindwiped succesor. Failing that, the diary I kept when I was 14.

22:59 / 14.03.03

a tshirt saying "who am i?"

the misfits albums, up to and not including the last two.

herbie hancock, all of it.

wes montgomery, all of it

gravediggaz, all of it.

slayer, all of it.

sly and the family stone, all of it.

lee perry, all of it.

Now thats what i call music, volumes four through twenty

too many books to list individually, but including the works of kafka and poe, a little lovecraft, the james bond novels, some dworkin, some jeffries, the invisibles, and like i said, so many more. ( a library card and a list might be more realistic)

a bass, guitar and drum kit

drug box, containing LSD, psylocibin and MDMA, with instructions on their usage and effects, some cannabis, in both green and hash form(sealed, onviusly), a jar of coffee and a bottle of tequila.

a mobile phone conatining important numbers and a small book with information on why they are useful.

i could probably think of more, but those would certainly get me started.

oh, and a pair of slick shades.

23:52 / 14.03.03

Nick-sempai!!! (Sorry, everyone'd already cried Nick in a happy tone, so I had to mix it up.)

Okay:

My photo album- it's already annotated, my driver's licence, a few choice papers I've written for school, a card with location of favorite restaurants.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the series, all of it. Shoujo Kakumei Utena, all of it. Barbarella, a tape with a couple episodes of Invader Zim, Clone High, Daria, Home Movies, and Sealab 2021.

Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, Aeschylus' Oresteia, Francesca Lia Block's Dangerous Angels and Echo, Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles, C.S. Lewis' Narnia Chronicles, Madelene L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time quartet, any one of my dictionaries of angels, the Feb.22 pages out of The Secret Language of Birthdays, and my dream journal.

Mix CD, featuring, among others, Nick Cave et al, Rasputina, Pain, TMBG, the Tea Party, Shakkazombie, K's Choice and Veruca Salt.

Package of Ramen, package of instant miso.

My old vanilla perfume, something smelling of sandalwood, my old raspberry shampoo, my mom's perfume (Shalimar), and some old spice original anything (my dad's aftershave).

00:00 / 15.03.03

What would I put in the box?

Repression pills in case I learn anything I never wanted to know....again.

But seriously, I don't know, a mallet? a note explaining the magical qualities of this mallet, something about having to go to the northern ice plains to find the snow mage to retrieve your memory, a side note saying beware those who would try to convince you that you are crazy and some chap stick and a pair of gloves? It would be kind of fun to go on a quest.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

00:10 / 15.03.03

Snake Plissken! I thought you were dead! (ooops... sorry, wrong thread.)

My dog. A couple of my best friends (which ones probably subject to change- it would all depend when the Almighty got round to nobbling me.) A Bagpuss DVD. Ed Wood DVD. Eno and Byrne's "My Life In The Bush of Ghosts". "Ruby and the Stone Age Diet" by Martin Millar. "Thunder and Consolation" by New Model Army, and the first NIN album.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

09:19 / 15.03.03

Whoooa, mule.

Think about it.

You've got a box maybe one cubic foot. In there you've got to put enough memetic mojo to generate yourself, or at least someone you wouldn't hate, against the influences the rest of the world - the medical machine, the state, your family, the information companies, and so on - will be focusing on you.

This isn't a time capsule or a Magick Box of Cool Shit. Get it wrong, and like the man says, the Matrix has you. Putting in Mother Goose and Crowley's Magick might not do the trick...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:38 / 15.03.03

I stand by mine. I'd reboot as me without all the bad shit.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:51 / 15.03.03

A handgun, one hundred rounds of ammunition, and a glossy photo of Tony Blair.

Oh, okay then.
Real answer to follow.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

11:05 / 15.03.03

Do you have any idea what it's like firing a handgun one hundred times in succession? You'd need fingers like cooking bananas.

And think what you'd become... All you'd know about yourself was that you left yourself a weapon and a photograph of someone who is, in the larger scheme of things, a centrist politician. So either you'd turn into Jason Bourne without the kung-fu, or some kind of Sussex redneck.

Regrettable Juvenilia

15:43 / 15.03.03

Do you have any idea what it's like firing a handgun one hundred times in succession?

Would you believe me if I said "Yes, it's not a part of my life I like to discuss on Barbelith, but my experience has not been that of other men"? But no, as indicated it was something of a joke, referencing both the Bourne Identity as you spotted, 100 Bullets, and our own past disagreement about Antony. I need time to think of my own answer. But welcome back...

16:51 / 15.03.03

One cubic foot, neh? Well, I'd start with:

Tibetan Book of the Dead, I Ching and Meditation in Action (Shambala Pocket editions)

The external harddrive from my Mac and instructions on how to access the data (contains: script drafts and notes, digital photos and my film footage)

DVDs: Buckaroo Banzai, Harold & Maude, Lain: Serial Experiments

Invader Zim lunchbox filled with glitter make-up, flyers from several nightclubs, wedding invites and letters from friends, a few photos with names on the back and the mixed cd my boyfriend gave me recently.

Thoth tarot deck.

Instructions to shave the back of my head and research that symbol along with my other tattoos.

Two ee cummings poems: "Pity this Busy Monster Manunkind" and "Since feeling is first"

And that's probably all I have room for. Pitch in copies of "The Gashleycrumb Tinies", "Frogs to Princes" by Bandler & Grinder and "Jitterbug Perfume" by Tom Robbins if I can manage it. How's the writing going, Nick?

16:58 / 15.03.03

rhymes with tracy: your only problem with a list like that is that by the time you've reschooled yourself you could also be reflect. If you're a chubby bald bloke, that is....

The Return Of Rothkoid

02:15 / 16.03.03

A fez.
A copy of Nighthawks At The Diner.
Arvo Pärt's Tabula Rasa
A deck of tarot cards.
Dirty Three's Horse Stories and Ocean Songs
Some gin, some martini, a shaker, glass and olives.
A silver bangle.
A copy of Running Press's chronological complete works of Poe.
A copy of Moby Dick
Oxbow's An Evil Heat

That, I think, is it. Maybe some hair mud and a black Bonds t-shirt, if there's room. That should fit.

03:28 / 16.03.03

My "Four Track Mind" t-shirt, a CD of my songs, a copy of Fortean Times, a calendar of saints, my grandmother's diary, the US Constitution (the document, not the ship), a Juluka album (probably African Sky Blue), a tarot deck (Waite-Rider, probably. Typical.), Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles," a copy of David Carradine's paean to Bruce Lee: "Circle of Iron," a Bach album (preferably something with the Double Concerto in E minor), and as many issues of the Invisibles comics as would fit. Everything else I could probably reconstruct as footnotes to that.

03:30 / 16.03.03

Oh, and a packet of curry seasonings, and a teabag - herbal, mint, most likely. And a machete - the only gardening implement a real man ever needs.

Lilly Nowhere Late

05:30 / 16.03.03

I think a photo album of my daughter would do the trick--everything
remotely good about me is now in her. I think I would need a copy of
"Dhalgren" to read while I waited. Maybe a recording of TMC doing
"Song to the Siren."
Then again every time I get ready to leave my house I feel I need a
reboot so I can find my keys, purse, phone, brain, etc.

09:48 / 16.03.03

My actual list:

Finished and unfinished writings, academic and non-academic
Robin Wood tarot deck with a book on the tarot
Some SF/fantasy novels - first three books in Orson Scott Card's Ender saga, Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy, Dune
My degree to give me a kick start in re-learning about anthropology
Picture of my dog
Music - 'Towards The Within' by Dead Can Dance, Rammstein's 'Mutter', the tape version of The Cure's 'Standing on a beach...', 'Galore', also by The Cure
Magical accoutrements and some notes on magic
Address of my Cafe Press site
Something to remind me how much I like being a dyke - I can't be waiting around for another twenty years to work that out

13:44 / 16.03.03

To take up Bizunth's suggestion, I think I'd have to go with strange, random junk and false memories, turning the whole thing into a misguided experiment in self-annihilation and shifting personalities etc.

I'd also include a printed copy of Nick's initial post in this thread with a note saying "New Me - I reckon this is a dead good idea, regards, Old Me" and a small electronic gizmo with a single red button on it, marked "WAIT ONE MONTH THEN USE." When button is pushed, bolt of lightning will emerge and whole twisted cycle will begin once more.

I'm sure there's a really bad, contrived trick ending short story in that..

15:20 / 16.03.03

Maybe just a piece of paper with "www.barbelith.com/underground" on it, my log in name and password.

As I'm pretty much the same in real life as Sax, that would probably do it. Just check out the various forums to see what I'm reading, listening to, watching on TV, look at the Conversation to see who I'm stalking, and bingo. Business as usual.

15:24 / 16.03.03

I can't believe I forgot the address of Barbelith, and my login name/password. I'd be fucked without that, and not in a good way. I'd also have my favourites list off IE, so that I don't have to search out all that stuff yet again. I could have everything, writing and all that, on a cute little USB drive. That would be nice.