Barbelith Underground > Conversation

1. It was before my time here, and therefore is utterly inexplicable to me: What is this proliferation of "Jacks" on Barbelith? Is this Invisibles residue or what?

There's always been us Jacks on Barbelith (for the record, though, I started life on the Nexus and on the Underground as 'Wiseguy'), just like there's always been Jacks in real life. In the olden-days, Jack used to be a colloquial for 'man', 'mate', 'pal', hence all manner of anthropomorphisms, maverick cops, minor household gods, pirates, everymen, etc, being called Jack. Every man-jack of 'em. Sounds rogueish, too, which is attractive to certain rogues, or wannabe-rogues.

It's certainly nothing to do with the Invisibles - I named myself after a saint in Julian May's high-brow space opera 'The Galactic Milieu Trilogy'.

2. In "From Hell", Dr Gull asks Netley if he likes women, not as sex objects, but really likes them, as people. I ask you the same question, but about celebrities.

No, I only like celebrities as sex objects.

Odd question - I'm going to assume you mean 'celebrity' as in, 'someone famous for being famous'. I think the original question is actually asking whether Netley believes that women are actually people in the same sense as Gull obviously believes men to be, and therefore likeable, as men are likeable (Gull being a horribly insane misogynist, amongst other things). Relating that context back to your question, there are two obvious answers:

i) Sometimes. People are people, after all. You watch enough Big Brother, you start to believe that you actually know Steve X or Jodie Y, know what they're like, whether you'd get on with them in real life. Sometimes you're convinced you'd despise them.

With these kind of shows, I tend to find you make the same kind of value judgements on the participants as you would with people in real life, just with vastly different and completely mediated evidence and experience.

ii). No. Celebrities aren't people - they aren't real, in the same way that Baudrillard says the first Gulf War never happened. They're virtual people, created and edited for a precise outcome. They're no more sentient than a Speak & Spell.

However, it should be noted that if you ever actually meet a celebrity, then at that point they cease to be a celebrity, as you have direct evidence of their existence. This will only apply to you. Telling your mum how Jade from Big Brother 3 was actually luvverly in real life, and not at all stoopid, only adds to your mother's mediated experience of that celebrity.

In short, celebrities are like ideas of 'people', but with all of the 'person' taken out. Plato would be... confused.

3. Do you miss the Barbefeuds of yor? Cuz I kinda do. But I wasn't really around for them--this could be like "missing" the '60s. What would you do to shake this place up a little? Or does it need shaking up? (NOTE: this is not one of those "Is Barbelith Dying" questions.)

No, not really. To be honest, I'm really bored with the whole raft of assumptions and notions surrounding the 'Barbe-' prefix. I'm bored with the idea of Barbelith as a 'place', and as a 'community', and have been for some time. Far as I'm concerned, I log in if I'm bored, or to catch up with friends I know from real life.

Most of the big feuds were exasperating, irrational, and occasionally hysterical, and brought out some of the worst in everyone who participated. No one was big, clever or grown-up. I certainly wasn't, and no one else came out of it smelling of roses either.

I don't believe Barbelith needs 'shaking up', because I'm not interested in its future, its development, or its potential any longer, hence asking to step down as a moderator of the Conversation and the Gathering a while back. It's not necessarily dying, it's just changed, and I've made it reasonably clear over the last few months that I'm not a fan of what it's changed into. For me, the Underground is just one of several ways I know to be silly with some of my mates, and occasionally read something interesting or diverting. Sometimes I even take part in a debate, for old times sake.

However, some of my best mates, home and away, still post here and don't necessarily share any of my views. I'm an old curmudgeon, and am content with being the Grandpappy of the Southampton Barbelith Posse, sitting in my rocking chair, loading my blunderbuss and honing my grumpiness to a fine art.

4. Your brother is a "respected member" of the board, too, isn't he? What's it like being in this quasi-anonymous community with a family member? And what do you think of his interests, which seem very different from yours? (You don't have to answer that last part if you don't want to.)

Love the 'too' in that first sentence. It's been a while since I was a respected member of this board, Q.

set is cleverer, funnier and more articulate than me. He is also a much nicer person than me. This is something I've known for years, and have made my peace with. When I introdiced him to Barbelith, I fully expected him to carry on doing what he does in real life on the board, and I haven't been disappointed. I'm very proud of the boy. I'm also very proud of the fact that most people assume he's older than me (I'm 28, he's 25), which I take as a compliment, since I very much enjoy being the immature one of the two of us.

We have a lot of the same interests, but generally speaking he hasa greater enjoyment of esoterica and is a little more focussed (possibly obsessive) in it, both in pop culture (music, movies, whatever) and in his spiritual life. I'm the hedonist, he's the ascetic. Basically, I'm an old lush/drunk, he's a pop-cenobite. I'm not really heavily into magic, with a 'k' or without, and my reading has atrophied recently, to my spooky darling's disgust.

Tattoos, though. Tattoos are cool.

5. Another Eddie Campbell-related question (I'm totally gay for Eddie Campbell): Toward the end of the Bacchus epic, Bacchus becomes king of a pub that secedes from the UK because of an exploitive tax law or something, and wild hijinx ensue. Are you familiar with this story? Describe the tiny republic that might form around Jack The Bodiless, its inception, its internal politics, its foreign policy, and so on.

I'm not familiar with Bacchus, but I think I get what you mean, and I'd be lying if I said I haven't already come up with plans, schemes, policies, manifestos and fucking MAPS detailing my inevitable ascendancy...

The following is to be imagined being read by Nicol Williamson. Or, if you're not sure what he sounds like, then Tom Baker.

"To begin with, after the great radiatioactive Purge of 2075, the Isle Of Wight was rendered uninhabitable, and was happily sold off by the Eurafrican Government to an aged and reclusive billionaire writer, who claimed that he wished to use it as a massive mausoleum for his family.

"Fools!

"Before long, satellite photographs showed unprecedented works beginning on the dead island. an enormous city-state, the likes of which dwarfed even Norway's New Yggdrasil or Australia's Bastard City. No one could tell what was occurrin', for shortly afterwards the satellite images began fuzzing, as though being... jammed... in some way. When closer neighbours noticed a sharp downturn in ambient radiation from the new state, making it once more safe (safe!) to live upon, they began to really sit up and pay attention.

"After only a year, the Glorious Republican Apotheosis of St. Jack The Bodiless opened for business. Operating as a sovereign state, it began to recruit for new inhabitants of the formerly lethal countryside on the island, offering training, jobs and homes to the homeless and destitute of all cultures, creeds and races. Clad in his huge robot battlesuit, Iron Jack was a benevolent but ruthless despot, putting down any dissent with an awful evenhandedness that put historians and the dissolute in mind of a chain-smoking, heavy-drinking Alexander.

"When the armies of Eurafrica attempted to annexe the fledgling city-state, they were met with an impenetrable sigma-field the likes of which science did not wot of, and, thwarted, settled in for a long and manky siege. Strangely, they were unable to prevent the Bastard Cybergod Jack from trading with their mortal enemies in Canada and Australia, despite the distance and heavy-handed sanctions. Goods, services, people... they almost magically finessed their way past armies and fleets. Eventually they figured out the alarming truth - the Dark MetaElvis had invented both time travel and teleportation, and was utterly self-sufficient. Self-sufficient, but not self-absorbed, for the Bodiless Republic played no favourites, just as it took no prisoners. The island-city grew from without, above and below the waterline, until it housed some seventy million souls, and a good few thousand lawyers.

"After ten years of the siege, things began to settle down, and no one really noticed a great deal of movement in the waters of the Solent. The world economy had picked up as a result of certain significant yet careful trades of fantastic technology negotiated through the blockade, and life had begun to return to normal for the French and English neighbours of the Apotheosis...

"Until one day the sigma-field expanded, pushing back by main force the flotilla of ships that still held designs on containing the baffling Place. And slowly, watched by millions as the satellite jamming devices were finally, ceremonially switched off, the island rose, rose, ROSE out of the water, revealing the hideous, flowering, spastic engines that had been hidden for so long. Looking remarkable like an enormous cross between a corkscrew, a wheel, a squid and an angel, the Apotheosis soared into the sky, and thence into the void, in exactly the same way that bricks don't ((C) Douglas Adams, 1977), and was never seen again by mortal eye..."

Something like that, anyway. I also have an amphetamine mine in my garden and am married to both Christina Aguilera and Amanda Donahoe, but those are mere details in the Scheme.

Cat Chant

08:46 / 05.09.03

how was Australia? what (cultural) differences/similarities with the old country struck you? Home sweet home, or nice place to visit, wouldn't want to live, hellhole?

Ooh. Cool. Thanks for asking: how could you tell that all I want to do is talk about Australia? Well, the main thing was that it was a different country: I'm like the opposite of Baz Auckland, I'm completely a non-traveller. I can't think of anywhere outside the British Isles that I have any desire to go to, and I have such a horror of being a tourist/making stupid generalizations that I've never really started getting even the sketchiest ideas about other countries/cultures (I know, I know, it's counterproductive). So Australia's a very interesting place for someone like me to start, because it was colonized so recently that it only has, like, 200 years of [glancing up at Kit Kat's gorgeous answers] what Europeans can recognize as history... Not that I found out about much of the history, but I went round some art galleries whizzing through 200 years of landscape painting and it was astonishing, really, how laughable the early settlers' attempts at representing the landscape were, how alien Australia was at to the settlers at first and how long it took before the trees/animals/etc they painted started bearing the faintest resemblance to themselves (there's some very squirrel-looking kangaroos in those early paintings, and the gum trees are just - bizarre). I don't know how much of it was the galleries and how much of it was the routes we took through them, but there was a real narrative, moving from these surreal attempt to paint an alien landscape according to European traditions, through to some contemporary fusions of Aboriginal and Western art... And of course it's only as a tourist/outsider that you *can* appreciate such a simplified outline of a country's history and personality, so maybe there's something to be said for being a tourist, after all.

The thing that was a really huge difference, though (predictably enough, maybe), was the fact that Australia's a colony - and, in fact, colonization hasn't actually finished yet, as people kept telling me. The biggest headshift was that - well, in Britain, claiming rights as an 'indigenous' Brit is sheer racism, and of course the opposite is the case in Australia, so the racial rhetoric/discourse is very different. And I was expecting Aboriginal culture to be a lot more visible (even in a commodified form) - partly because a few of the places I'd visited early on, like a wildlife sanctuary outside Melbourne, had at least made an effort to explain Aboriginal names for plants & animals and some of the stories about the site we were on. But then when we got to Sydney, there was a ton of 'historical' stuff, like brass inlays in the floor round the quay showing the coastline in 1788, and it all was as if the place had only existed since colonization - the comparison I kept coming up with was Wales, and things being labelled bilingually. I was sort of half-expecting at least lip-service to be paid to Aboriginal cultures. (It was then explained to me that since some of the language groups around the Sydney area had been completely wiped out, it wasn't possible to use Aboriginal names for a lot of things in that place.)

Anyway. I could talk about this stuff forever - it was a big-deal six weeks for me - so I'll have to stop somewhere. To get to the rest of your question - yes, I could live there (and probably will, in a couple of years, cross fingers touch wood). We found a shop in Melbourne that stocks real ale in bottles, so even the famous English/warm beer problem is solvable; and otherwise Melbourne is a very hip and groovy place full of very good restaurants, clothes shops with 'no sweat shop labour' guaranteed clothes that are actually nice (People Tree take note!) and posters for demonstrations. Also, trams.

But I should add the huge caveat that while I was there J's TV wasn't tuned in and we didn't buy any papers. I read a couple of countercultural Australian magazines which were v good & interesting & made me feel v positive about Australia, but other than that, the art galleries and the shopping, I didn't consume any Australian 'culture'. Apart from back issues of The Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Health Workers Journal, which is probably unrepresentative. Also, I was mostly hanging out with people of a different generation/background than my own, so it was hard to tell what was Oz/English differences and what was generational, etc.

where would home sweet home be? this can be a country/region/type of house/living arrangement/society etc... whatever you think of as an ideal home. is there one?

Oh yeah, there is. What would happen would be that all my friends bought houses on the same terrace, and then we would have - well, like a commune but with doors we could lock against each other. Rather like Evan Dorkin's desire to be King of the Chimps and Dwarfs - you know, we still have cable TV and soda pop, but we're still a semi-autonomous community that looks after its own. So, private space, but we would all share in bringing up the children, cooking, eating, etc. Best of both worlds. We would be the proverbial village that it takes to raise a child. And we would, you know, make all our own clothes out of hemp and stuff like that. We could share things like washing machines and TVs - because this thing where every single individual has to have hir own TV, dishwasher, washer-dryer, etc, is insane.

As for where - well, we'd need to be near a city, because I can't function in the countryside - I start hyperventilating when I'm out of earshot of traffic noise - and also because it's just easier to be an ethical consumer somewhere where there's lots of shops; but we'd also need biggish gardens or an allotment, to grow food and flowers. This would be somewhere in the British Isles with good scenery, ie Yorkshire, Scotland, or Wales, so we could get into the countryside if I wanted to hyperventilate for any reason.

Now the important stuff: hair. how have you looked during your best/worst hair days/months/years?

I've actually just gone back to my default hairstyle, which I haven't had since I moved to Gauda four years ago: short/clippered at the back, short/razored at the front. I have done so with a slight sense of defeat, giving in to the fact this is just the haircut that suits me and there is no point trying to have anything else: though I did really enjoy having jet-black hair in a bowl cut, which was my last hairstyle. (My hairdresser *hated* it and kept going "Are you SURE you don't want me to put some layers in that?", which was also amusing. It didn't suit me at all, I just really liked it.)

None of which has answered the question. My hair aim has always been to look either like a fourteen-year-old boy (this is becoming a sadder and sadder goal as I get older and older) or like a cartoon character, usually Shade or 'indistinguishable big-eyed manga boy'. So, on a good day I look like a 14yo manga boy: on a bad day I look like a pudding.

more food: favourite meal/setting for food with a)friends b)barbelithers - and who would you invite(stealing slightly from Q's question to me) c)Harry/Snape.

Love this question. Well, I love part c, anyway, so I'm going to get thru a and b quickly.

Food with friends: well, in my anxious period (now pretty much ended), restaurants were the most anxious space for me, involving, as they did, both being out of the house *and* having to talk to people *and* eating food all at once. So I'm going to say: round at someone's house, ordering home delivery and/or sitting on the floor and eating bits and pieces. Not a proper sit-down meal. Somewhere where no-one can see whether you're eating or not. Just in case you can't eat.

For the 'lithers - ideally we'd go to the Grove Café which is right next door to my house, because I am incredibly lazy... Well, okay, because I find people v scary and want to be near a safety zone, just in case: also because I can manage being in charge of an evening if I'm, like, *really, officially* in charge - ie "Everyone is going HERE at THIS time" - but not if it's one of those "oh, I dunno, what does everyone want to do?" deals which always end up with *everyone* being slightly disappointed, anyway. And it's easier to be a butch top in an area I know well & feel safe in.

Also, though, the Grove is cheap, it's quiet, it's got a really nice vibe, and it does really good pizza (including vegan pizza) *and* wonderful curry *and* wonderful burgers, so everyone can get what they want. Except that I think you're not allowed to drink in there. So it might have to be the Reliance pub/restaurant, which does very nice, if more expensive & pretentious (lots of rocket & brie), food. Hmm. I notice that my main priority in choosing a restaurant is that the tables should be of solid, unvarnished, dark wood, without tablecloths. I hope this isn't some sort of boarding-school flashback...

... which brings me back nicely to part c. Hooray hooray hooray! Harry as a baby butch taking Snape out to a restaurant and being all nervous in case he gets it wrong - and Snape controlling his sarcastic impulses because he knows it's important to Harry - is something I have a huge kink for *anyway*, so I've been enjoying pondering this question for the last day or so, but I can't really do it justice here. My three choices for Harry and Snape are:

*Harry takes Snape out to a very-slightly-wrong restaurant. Baby-butch/older-femme dynamic, where Harry is too nervous to focus for the first half-hour and tries to be very much in charge of things, while Snape quietly makes sure everything goes all right without undermining Harry's adulthood/butchness, while also hugely enjoying the unaccustomed sensation of having someone make an effort to please him.

*I really like the idea of them eating Chinese takeaway out of those white cardboard boxes you see in the movies, for some reason. This would be while they were both in the Ministry of Magic, staying up late for something to do with the war: Harry orders takeaway because he knows Muggle London better, and Snape discovers he really likes it.

*Dinner in the Great Hall. This is actually a scene I never managed to write in a long H/S story where Snape is giving Harry private lessons (*way* ahead of you, JKR, but you got the denouement wrong) - it's the moment in their relationship where Snape finally realizes that Harry is more-or-less his equal, and they eat together on top table, much to the amazement of the rest of the school. I'd love to see that.

**Ooh! As for which 'lithers: that's a mean question, because I'll forget people and I can't keep up with the name changes and stuff. But - actually, I'd really like an all-barbegirl (ooh! Barbie Girl! Hee hee!) meet, which I realize is extremely prejudicial and probably insulting to several people that I invite or that I leave off, so I shouldn't have brought it up, but now I'm going to anyway. So there would be:

Me. Cholister. Kit-Kat Club. Ma'at, Anna de Logardiere, Fred, Bengali in Platforms, Persephone, Alas, Mr Disco... and I'm going to stop there, arbitrarily enough or because I've just caught myself cheating.

you were talking ages ago about a feminist theory of exercise/weight loss/body reshaping. did this ever go any further?

Embarrassingly, no, not really: I've spent the last year or so - since I quit smoking and went from a size 10 to a size 14 - trying to decide whether to love my new body shape or to return to my days of "I'm so skinny! Whee!" euphoria via some form of feminist dieting/exercise. By 'feminist' I meant - well, I sort of hate the idea of having to cut myself off from my body in the way that most diet programs seem to want you to do - you know, so my brain is the subject in control and my body is the object of my will, apprehended in terms of numbers and measurements.

Anyway, in the end I decided, in a very Hallmark-card type way, that I should probably get to like my body big *before* I decided whether to lose weight or not, that being the real issue (I'm not dangerously overweight according to my last check-up). You know, like you only get into healthy relationships if you're happy on your own, etc, etc... And - this is probably going to really annoy a ton of people as well - I feel like my fat is quite *gay*. Like there's a particular dykey way of taking up space unapologetically. So I sort of have a crush on my wider self now, and it's got connected up with a lot of stuff about being visibly gay, being happy with myself in general, finding new ways to relate to the world, taking up space...

Having said that, I still get really fed up with not being able to fit into the trousers I like, and I'm only *just* learning to be able to measure clothes by eye to see if I can fit into them - I stayed a size 10 in my head for a lot longer than I was one physically.

Let's not argue