Barbelith Underground > Conversation

I’m afraid my answers won't be as long as the questions!

1. There is actually a scientific process to creating zombies. A compound is made using blowfish toxin--in Haiti they call it the toad fish and so the toxin is called buffotoxin--and several holistic hallucinogens. When the victim is injected with it, often by placing a sharp, hollow bone, such as a bird bone, filled with the compound, in the victim's shoe, ze (but usually it's a man) becomes paralyzed for a period of time, but not comatose. Ze hallucinates wildly for two or three days, while the voudon performs ceremonies over hir to convince hir that ze is actually dead. When ze recovers from the buffotoxosis, which also causes severe brain damage, ze is convinced that ze is a zombie. So is everyone else, and they treat hir as one. Sometimes the zombies are sold to farmers to use as cheap labor (the only cost is a minimum of food and the drugs to keep the zombie docile--and, presumably, a retainer fee to the voudon to keep things running smoothly), and sometimes they are just turned loose to fend for themselves.

Now that you have this knowledge, what are you going to do with it?

Sorry, but I’ve heard of this. However, I’d never thought about what I’d do w/this info. Now that I’m thinking about it, I suppose I’ll prob’ly consider giving myself up for such a treatment next time I’m feeling suicidal, yet afraid of death.
Or I could consider sacrificing someone else to it when I’m super furious at them, yet feel that killing them would be letting them off easy.

2. Do you think I'm hot? or HOTT? If so, why, and if not, why not? Please note that this is not necessarily a come-on, I'm just curious. What if I wore a form-fitting sleeveless black shirt with steel rings over the nipples? Too derivative?

The only picture I’ve seen of you is one where yr sneering, so it’s hard to say. You’ve dark hair and blue eyes, of which I’m quite fond, but, if I can just out myself as a shallow bitch now and get it out of the way, quite a bit of how I’d feel depends on how tall you are.
That shirt is not my steez, but you may look hot in it, possibly, in general.

3. The maternal line of my family, quite coincidentally, contains a lot of truckdrivers: my great-grandfather owned a shipping route in rural Connecticut and Vermont, delivering farming supplies and carting off fresh eggs or whatever; my grandfather hawled industrial garbage and then, later, delivered booze, and my grandmother drove personnel convoys cross-country during WWII, transferring troops from the East to the West Coast. One of my cousins is a tank commander--she's stationed in Qatar right now--which is sort of like a gigantic, heavily-armed truck, except that instead of delivering farming supplies, she delivers whoopass.

My uncle continued the coincincidental tradition when he drove a munitons truck in Vietnam. He was heavily guarded all the time, because obviously a munitions truck is a prime target, but the roads were mined. He always drove on the left shoulder of the road, knowing that if he hit a mine it would blow up the passenger side of the truck and he had a better chance of surviving. He always had a guard riding shotgun in the truck with him, and he has told me that he went through several of them, driving over mines. He murdered them. When he came back to the US he became a fireman and EMT, still driving a truck, but now to save lives (I don't know if he ever made that connection consciously--he'd probably tell you he became a fireman for the union benefits).

Tell us a moving story about a member of your family. It needn't be tragic, like my uncle's, just moving.

Hmm. Ok. My father told me that when he was growing up, he always wondered why his grandmother had small roundish scars all over her chest. When he got older, he found out it was cos she was a heroin user, and would smoke cigarettes while on the nod, which she would then burn herself with accidentally. She and my dad’s uncle blew over 20 grand (and this was decades ago, so adjust for de-inflation) in an inheritance (from my dad’s grandfather’s death, maybe?) on H. At a funeral for some family member, my dad’s uncle stole his wallet for money for his habit.

4. What were you like in high school?

Alternateen. I totally looked down upon cheerleaders, wearers of Tommy Hilfiger, etc. I listened to indie rock and riot grrrl music and wore weird thrift store clothes, had short hair and didn’t shave my legs. I was friends w/every out lesbian at school. Everyone thought my best friend and I were lesbians cos we did absolutely everything together and had short hair and didn’t shave. I was constantly depressed the first two years of high school, grounded constantly for my bad grades. I would be grounded every report card until the next report card, which would then be bad, so I’d stay grounded. Which was, of course, depressing. I think I had a 1.1 grade point my freshman year. I just didn’t give a fuck. It’s prob’ly cos before my father would look at a report card w/all A’s and one B and be mad, (I’m not hyperbolizing that much) so I trained him to think that C’s were good grades. However, also cos I didn’t give a fuck, I was excellent at giving speeches, cos I was never nervous, cos I was just like, ‘fuck all y’all.’ I was also in the theatre program, which was a terrific program that you had to audition for and was taught by working professionals. So I studied acting, was in some shows, and learned about art history, stagecraft, movement. I never drank or did drugs. I mostly just didn’t have an opportunity. Sometimes I’d take off various articles of clothing in parks at night w/other kids, but it wasn’t pagan or orgy-like, just sorta teen hormonal wackiness. I also used to do stuff like, say, ok, on the posters for Homecoming, it said that you couldn't wear jeans or sneakers, and I wrote 'it's just the Man's plan to keep us down!' I used to talk about the Man a lot, in all seriousness, like, 'I will not kiss the Man's ring. That's what he wants, but I'm not going to have 2.5 kids and a picket fence, blah blah blah...'

5. Say you're a young mime, fresh out of mime school. You love mime with all your heart, but you recognize that the art form has become moribund. What would you do to inject new life into it?

I think the best thing to do in this situation would be to be all post-modern about it, and try to incorporate other arts into it. Maybe start my own clothing line inspired by mime-wear, maybe start a mime-band (altho’ I guess we’d have to be instrumental like GY!BE or something).
Alternatively, perhaps I could find some celebrities who used to love mime and get in touch w/them (somehow?) and talk w/them about how the art form might die cos no one cares anymore. Then maybe they could do some PSA’s like “Mime, it’s cool!” And “Mime! It’s not just for mimes!” Or not.

Thanks for the q's, Q. *sniff* I didn't know anyone *cared*...
oh, and stuff is capitalized cos I typed this in Word.

Kit-Cat Club

09:05 / 01.09.03

Lengthy - sorry. Questions from grant.

Do you think human societies actually learn from history? Can you give a specific example where a country took a specific course because it was hoping to avoid the "mistakes of history"? (Note: by history, I mean things that happened before the memory of the oldest living generation... no "not another Vietnam" rationales about Iraq, for instance.)

No, I don’t think societies learn from history, and I think the reason for this is that history is never an objective thing – so that when a society (or an administration, or whatever) cites ‘history’, they are thinking of the history which already informs their thinking. History, obviously, is not something which exists separately from those who write and read and think about it, and thus Sellar & Yeatman were entirely correct when they wrote that ‘History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember.’ When Tony Blair says ‘History will vindicate us’ he is apparently thinking of history as a discipline which judges the moral worth of actions, the truth of actions. As far as I am concerned (and I think most British academic historians think this way as well) history simply attempts to get to the bottom of what happened, to show what occurred at this time or in this place to these people in the context of this event. But the questions we ask of the past are what makes history, and since those questions are always governed by the concerns of the age in which they are asked, it is a fallacy to think of history and historians as an arbitrator or arbitrators. Perhaps Blair meant ‘posterity’.

There is of course a lengthy list of people who have consciously manipulated the writing and teaching of history in order to make it serve their own purposes (Hitler, Stalin, other dictators). And it is certainly the case that politicians in many ages refer to the past in order to illustrate or justify their actions. I can think of several arguments which use the mistakes of the past in their attempt to influence the present – the first which sprang to my mind was the Jacobite pamphlet movement which opposed the invasion of William of Orange and his army in 1688 on the grounds that a foreign army in the country would lead to a rerun of the Danelaw and Danegelt. However, I can’t think of an instance in which an argument like that has actually determined policy (wrt the more distant past). I am not sure if this actually answers your question…

What was your first computer like? Did you own the first computer you used? How did you learn to use it?

The first computer that I have owned all by myself is the one I have at the moment, which I bought from Tom for a paltry hundred quid or so. But before that I had a succession of computers cobbled together by my father, and also various office PCs, horrible college efforts, etc. Going back still further into the mists of time, we had a Commodore Amiga which I used to play games on – mostly versions of arcade games, Marble Madness, etc. etc. and which also had a music programme that I used to play accompaniments for my clarinet practice (but not for very long – it had no great facility for rubato). And then when I was about seven we had a BBC B, which Dad pilfered from his office and brought home in great excitement. It had that turtle thingy, and used proper computer paper (you remember – the stuff with pale green stripes and perforations down the vertical sides).

As for learning how to use them – I do remember Dad being very annoyed that I was more interested in the new cat than the new computer. I was obstinately luddite throughout secondary school, and as a result I arrived at university with no idea how to use email, and wrote all my essays in longhand for the first two years. I think it was around that time (late 1990s) that it became the absolute norm for everyone to have at least one computer in the house, so I suppose I was just going with the times.

All the computers I have had have been big beige boxes. I have ambitions towards a laptop, but fear my lack of funds mean that they will be perpetually thwarted.

What's your most attractive physical feature?

Attractive to me or to others? My most noticeable physical feature is my hair, though obviously that’s not necessarily the same thing (I am, however, hoping that in time it will weather to a distinguished pepper-and-salt, rather than just going sandy).

The things I like best at the moment are my crooked crooked fingers, but I like those because they are mine and my family’s, not because I think they are particularly attractive.

I never know what other people find attractive about me, but given the things which I find attractive about people, I would guess that it is probably not so much physical features per se as a combination of appearance, manner and character.

I find this a very hard question to answer. I don’t think this is modesty, false or otherwise. I just don’t really understand what makes something attractive. Usually I find that something/someone is attractive or it is not – and that’s the first stage, and then you try to analyse the attraction afterwards and sometimes you find you can’t.

The Earth is about to be invaded by an alien menace. We are outnumbered, but technologically on about an even par (except for the interstellar travel thing). Every citizen on the planet must take up arms to defend the homeland. No eventuality can be overlooked, and you have six months to prepare. What weapon do you fancy? Bare hands? Rifle? Rope? Harrier jump jet? What? And why that one?

Oh good lord. I have no idea. I was going to say, a large sharp axe, because then when the edge was worn down I’d still be able to whack them with it. But I am physically weak, so that’s no good. Or a bow and arrow, but my aim is poor (and you’d be bound to run out of arrow heads eventually, just as you would with bullets). A stiletto dagger could be quite handy…

Or I could just become a turncoat and double agent and try to subvert the alien command. Or they might even be nice and I would come to prefer them to humans. I think I would rather that than whacking things with axes.

Everyone at some point has one of those "I'm out of my depth" moments -- someplace where you've gone too far out or stumbled into somewhere you just don't belong. What was one of yours -- and what did you learn from it?

I have felt very much like that at times during the last year, actually. Some of the people here really do live and breathe history, and seem to spend their entire leisure time reading academic history books. Occasionally I feel very inferior in comparison, and very much as if I shouldn’t be here at all… even though part of me knows that it’s not always helpful to be so bogged down in historiography. I don’t know if I have learned anything from it, other than that I personally am not like that and prefer a much less hardcore approach to things.

I think I am fortunate in that most of the moments like that which I have had have not lasted very long, and that I am relatively certain that I can at least cope in most situations. I can think of several situations in which I might well be totally out of my depth – a high stress, aggressive office environment, for example – but am again fortunate to have been able to avoid them, so far at least.

Let's not argue