BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Conversation >

Jack The Bodiless: Shiftless Fop 2020! a Barbeinterview of a kind...

  
 
Jack The Bodiless
15:16 / 10.10.02
For those who wanted to see me sweat like the pig in jam that I am... here y'go. I'll be answering questions past, present and future for as long as people are interested. I'm answering all of the ones that exp messaged me with, along with two he omitted because I was being a whining toad. Anyone wanting to ask any additional ones, pipe up at the back, and take the chewing gum out of your mouth before addressing the class. Yes, that means you Australians as well.

Anyone asking anything rude can expect to be verbally fucked in the ass with a broken bottle. Life is hard for me right now, and I'm taking time out from hanging with the love of my life to post to this thread, so I'd like it to be worthwhile.

What are the best and worst things about being related to expressionless, and how do you think your answers will affect interpretation of his posts by the rest of barbelith in the future?

The best and the worst things about having exp as a brother are actually the same thing... although he's the younger by three years, and is certainly no more intelligent than me (the wee crevice), he's funnier, more articulate and, to re-coin an horrendous phrase from last week, 'more barbegenic than I am', meaning that the issues and ideas he's concerned with are more apropos the Underground than the ones that interest me.
The way this affects my life is really very simple. I meet people. They get to like me. I intorduce them to exp. They get to like him. They realise exp is better than me, and that I am merely the design prototype, whereas exp is the completed, patented, and playtested version. Result: exp steals all of my friends. Again.
He also swears better than me. He has natural talent. It's infuriating, especially as he's a Christian and should have no use for it. It's like giving a priest an enormous cock... he's only going to use it to frighten children.
But I am much better with speeling and gramer. Hah! Now who is best? It is me!
I have no idea how this will affect the way people see the boy. Probably not at all... in fact, it appears to be nothing more than a window into my own mishapen neuroses. Curses.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
15:20 / 10.10.02
Hypocritamus, ephemerat and yourself: who will be the first to finish a novel? Explain your answer as bitchily as possible.

See, that's out of order. Each of us have our own crushingly difficult burdens to bear when it comes to writing... Hypocritamus is torn with angsty OCD concerning his novel, taking the Etch-A-Sketch approach to writing (when it goes wrong, simply lift PC in the air, shake, and begin again). I'm currently blocked worse than the toilet after curry night at my local, but even when I wasn't, I found so many ridiculous reasons not to attempt to write (depression, the beginning of a new and wonderful relationship, fear and loathing, alcohol abuse, horrific debt trauma, etc) that I might as well have been. And ephemerat finds it next to impossible to find the time to write nowadays, what with his hectic schedule of drinking, smoking, hanging out with students who drink and smoke, and collecting giros/filling in benefit forms.
But in answer to your question, it will be a close run thing between myself and Hypocritamus. The ex-Parliament of Fools (tortoise) is halfway there, and devotes plenty of time to writing and research - all he needs to do is quit vacillating over the thing, and he's finished... but, of course, that can be more easily said than done. I (hare) have two-thirds of the plot fully fleshed out, and, when applying myself, am lightning fast and usually happy with my first or second draft... but need to get over this pesky block before I can get back into it.
The 'rat, sorry to say, is a non-starter. At times I'm not even sure he knows he knows how to run.

Should have said, by the way - I've divided the questions I got into PERSONAL, HYPOTHETICAL and MISC... going for the personal ones first. Any questions about my anal retentive qualities will be referred back to this sentence.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
15:22 / 10.10.02
You: puritan or hedonist? Whichever it is, do you have any sympathies for the other?

Hedonist. My reputation's still recovering from a period of almighty promiscuity, and miss spooky and I spend most weekends in a state of blissful sleeplessness through lethal cocktail-like combinations of MDMA, amphetamines and alcohol. Having said that, we've cut down on the drinking recently, myself considerably so. Haven't been tipsy in nearly six weeks. I'm not an alcoholic, but I have a tendency to abuse alcohol when I'm low, and the last couple of months have been wike a howwible dweam, so I'm trying to be good.
Do I have any sympathy for puritans? I have a great and long-standing admiration for those who abstain for spiritual or personal reasons, mainly because I've never come close to possessing that kind of self-discipline. But don't push your moral freakshow on me, Grandpappy!
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
15:24 / 10.10.02
Why did you take your name from a character from the Galactic Milieu Trilogy?

Because I love Julian May's work, and so should you. Because 'Jack The Bodiless' is an ideal nom de guerre for socialising in a virtual world. Because when you shout it loudly and triumphantly in the street it sounds like an exhortation to give handjobs to ectoplasmic manifestations, which is very Lord Fanny, IMWildlyPhantasmicO.

That'll do for now... may be back later on this evening.
 
 
Persephone
20:58 / 10.10.02
I am merely the design prototype, whereas exp is the completed, patented, and playtested version.

No, Data! That's just what Lore wants you to think! It's not true.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
21:50 / 10.10.02
Which of your preoccupations/interests do you think are barbelithian then? Ask because it seems to me that most things are grist to the Barbemill (except possibly heraldry, though I must admit I haven't tried that one out yet...)
 
 
Seth
23:54 / 10.10.02
The sons of the prophet were hardy and bold,
And quite unaccustomed to fear,
But the bravest of these was a man, I am told
Named Abdul Abulbul Amir.

Brownie points for whoever gets the reference in the context of another post to this thread.

Everything Jack says about me is untrue, but that won't stop me from getting him to write my next CV. Oh, and I steal your mates because I have none of my own (they all seem to act like five year olds, apart from Mike).
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
09:18 / 11.10.02
Kit-Cat: yes, technically there's anything for all sorts on Barbelith... that wasn't quite what I meant. It's not that I'm not suited to Barbelith, rather that, in terms of core interests/fascinations/perversions, with the exception of fetish clubbing and a wee interest in bondage/domnation, both exp and Flyboy have far more to post about than I do. I increasingly use Barbelith to talk to my friends and gossip... hence the 'barbegenic' references.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
09:20 / 11.10.02
Will your brother get angry if I cough politely and mention the Barbebreaks CD again? (fielded by exp: I'm sorry. I'll get it sent on its way just as soon as I can get round to JtB's to use his CD writer. Is it OK to do that this week, bro?)

Hah. You only come over when there's food, Two Meals.
 
 
Seth
22:40 / 11.10.02
Have to disagree on the Barbegenic front - you've got much more to draw on, including all kinds of fun lit theory, you've read tons more and watched far more movies than I have. All I seem to do on this site is bang on obsessively about two, maybe three subjects, and even that not very well...
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
23:01 / 11.10.02
Marillion doing Lavender's Green on TOTP, with Fish trying to do Bob Dylan and being defeated by an A3 pad-- laughable, or strangely endearing?

Very endearing (and it's Lavender, not Lavender's Green...). Bearing in mind that Fish was trying to avoid miming, not even bothering to pretend to sing and just trying to show the lyrics rather than mime to the song on Top Of The Pops, at a time when EVERYONE was miming to their Top 20 single. Lavender got to number 6/7 in the UK charts. Trouble was, he was very likely fucked off his tree, hence the trouble with the pad...

(For those who haven't been lucky enough to see it, he tries to do Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' with their second single off Misplaced Childhood and fucks it up when he can't keep up with the song being played over the PA)

...but Fish wanted to be an iconoclast, at a time when every critic was trying to portray him and his band as Everything Punk Was Trying To Kill. While I'm much more a fan of Steve Hogarth's Marillion, Fish wrote some absolutely beautiful songs with them.

Thing to bear in mind is that Marillion have never been fashionable. Ever. However, I have never met anyone who hasn't found at least one of their songs to be a) surprisingly good or b) powerfully uplifting. Ever. That includes 'dance' fans (an entire remix album of This Strange Engine, which Paul Oakenfold was very into), goths ('Splintering Heart', 'Out Of This World', 'A Collection', most of Brave), indie kids ('Afraid Of Sunrise' - very Belle & Sebastian), angst rockers ('The Hollow Man', 'The Answering Machine', etc), jazz fans ('Icon', 'If My Heart Was A Ball It Would Roll Uphill', etc), metal kidz ('Cathedral Wall', 'King', etc), britpoppers ('Beautiful', 'Separated Out', etc), prog fans (nothing since 1984's Fugazi, except 'This Strange Engine' - the title track of the album), old school British 80's epic pop rock fans a la Waterboys/Duran Duran/Police('Easter', 'Estonia', 'Between You And Me', 'Cover My Eyes', 'Man Of A Thousand Faces', 'An Accidental Man', etc), and gorgeous love songs a la The Righteous Brothers ('Beyond You', 'Waiting To Happen', etc) and U2 ('Holidays In Eden', 'Dry Land', etc). Then there's 'Cannibal Surf Babe', which I defy anyone not to have a sneaking lust for... Todd Rundgren/Brian Wilson/Chilli Peppers describes it best. 'Beyond You', by the way, IS the best unrequited love/break up song EVER WRITTEN. Massive mono Phil Spector-esque production. I defy any Jeff Buckley fan not to well up.

Not everyone is going to love them wholesale like I do... but individual songs show exactly how diverse their appeal is. All I've ever asked is that people give them more of a chance than the lazy mainstream music media give them. So there you go. Stall set out once again!
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
01:48 / 12.10.02
exp: Have to disagree on the Barbegenic front - you've got much more to draw on, including all kinds of fun lit theory, you've read tons more and watched far more movies than I have. All I seem to do on this site is bang on obsessively about two, maybe three subjects, and even that not very well...

See, I'd say those exact same things about you. Life's an odd thing.
 
 
Seth
09:53 / 12.10.02
I'd also argue that most of Marillion's material is far more Lithic than most of what gets harped on about in the music forum. Songs cover such diverse subjects as the massacre of the students in Tianamen Square, prostitution, Northern Ireland, the OJ Trial/Kurt Cobain/Elvis/Mike Tyson (yep: pretty much in one song), Jungian psychology, insomnia and more recently science vs magick (bear in mind some of these were back in the eighties, and therefore much more topical than this list first appears. Also that they handled the subject matter in a very different way to say, erm... Bono, which can only be a good thing). As well as lots of great love songs. Plus their self-financed indie approach has a lot to be said for it, and the lengths they'll go to for their fans.
 
 
Jack Fear
12:40 / 12.10.02
Hey, who's being interviewed here? Get off the staaaaaaaaaaaaaaage!!
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
14:06 / 12.10.02
Uuurrrrrrgggghhhh... I feel like shit. Too much of a good thing last night, methinks... anyone reading this? I'm not able to devote huge swathes of time, so it's going to take ages to wade through the questions, and I can stop if it's boring...
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
03:33 / 13.10.02
You're not getting out of it that easy, boy. Go check the other thread... I'm still waiting...
 
 
Saveloy
15:05 / 14.10.02
More, Jack, we need more (please). It's good, not boring.
 
 
No star here laces
15:19 / 14.10.02
Could we ever persuade you into a lime green tracksuit? Under what circumstances do you imagine this happening?
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
13:46 / 15.10.02
Could we ever persuade you into a lime green tracksuit? Under what circumstances do you imagine this happening?

But of course you could. Provided it was a) pretty tight, b) made of lime green PVC or rubber, and c) that I could choose suitably hardcore accessories (boots, heavy jewellry, gaffa tape, maybe some lippy...)

And as regards circumstances - honey, find me some pure MDMA and I'm yours...
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
14:04 / 15.10.02
recount is as much detail as you can any favourite or significant childhood memory...

Well, this one's been plaguing exp ever since I dredged it up out of the back of my head a couple of years ago...

I'm about eight, exp's about five, and playing with matches is a big no-no for tiny people in our house. exp (who had the cutest wee rosy-cheeked round face under a mop of brown hair) decides he wants to fuck around with them anyway. See pretty fire. Pretty fire nice! exp happy!

Mother and father find casually struck and blackened matches lying around like the aftermath of a house party on Gauda Prime. It is a dark day in the House Of The Prophet (technically this was pre-apotheosis, but it doesn't sound nearly as impressive when you say 'The House Of The Landscape Gardener'). Father goes through the roof, and demands to know which of us is responsible. I stand there, shocked to the core, a Good Little Boy, falsely accused. exp stands there, mopped and rosy, as innocent as Judas himself.

Father determines to punish us both, utilising the Solomonic wisdom that would later characterise his calling as itinerant Jeremiah For The Post-Revival Generation (there's a clue to exp's riddle of earlier on in the thread... well, not so much as clue as a blatant spoiler, but anyway...).

At this point I begin to realise that exp is not going to own up. I look down at him, and see a small, scared little boy, who knows he has done wrong, but is too scared of the punishment to 'fess up. And Jack steps forward, nobly lifting his chin, and 'fesses up in his place.

Ten minutes later, with a seriously smacked leg, sent to bed without supper, TV or toys, I realise two more things. That this is not a far, far better place that I have gone to, and that the sweet-faced little Damian is downstairs watching Dr. Who and playing with my Lego, without a care in the world. Lower lip wobbles. And in a supremely un-Cartonesque moment, I nip next door to Mum's room, where she's reading on her bed, and announce (all tearful) that in fact I hadn't touched the matches, and had only said I did to protect my wee brother. Mother and Father are touched by my Christ-like spirit. The sudden desire to hug offspring overlaps to include my Cain of a little brother, and his CRIME is overlooked. Despite everything, I miss Dr. Who anyway.

The moral of the story? exp is, and always has been, a total bastard.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
14:14 / 15.10.02
Are you, or have you ever been, a member? Please list all non-work related organisations, and supply anecdotes as you see fit...

I supply to a variety of organisations, all of which (sadly) are charitable and do not take kindly to receiving used hand grenades or machine parts/farming tools from south coast alternative types. Friends Of The Earth, Amnesty International, SENSE, Barnados... the list is far from endless, or complete, my memory being what it is.

My membership of any organisation can usually be traced back to one of several warm Saturday afternoons last summer when, single and still all tingly from the previous night's chemical feng shui, I was very happy for attractive women to stop me in the street and earnestly talk at me for as long as possible about whichever charity their boss was telling them to sell that week. I have no shame whatsoever, and until my relatively recent attachment to someone singularly spooky, would happily sell my sister's ovaries to the Nebulous Libyan Terrorists Out Of Back To The Future if there was an attractive woman to talk to while I was doing it.

I have no anecdotes... got a date out of one, but she found out I had a reputation and got scared off (in this case, scared off by the parts that weren't actually true), but we're still mates. All I got for my pains was a bit of eye contact and a social conscience. Goddamn social conscience.
 
 
Saveloy
15:23 / 15.10.02
The matches story rules with the FISTS - the fists of iron. Thanks, Mr The Bodiless. Please feel free to post as many of those as you see fit.
 
 
Seth
17:27 / 15.10.02
After all these years, I'm still happy to play with fire and Lego. Dr Who I can kinda take or leave.

You, on the other hand, are a mug. Who seems to want to blame me for the fact. But nothing will change the fact that parental punishments mysteriously stopped when Dawntreader came on the scene.

We have a common foe.
 
 
A Bigger Boat
18:34 / 16.10.02
Jack, why you no talka wid yo real accent anymore?
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
08:13 / 17.10.02
Aiyiyi!
 
 
Ma'at
09:11 / 17.10.02
Greetings Dark and gorgeous FraudStud!

So inquiring minds want to know...when do we get to see you naked except for black bodypaint and re-creating the death scene from the Phantom Menace with Chris and Duane?

And can I take pictures?

Also can I elope with your girlie?
 
 
Tezcatlipoca
09:20 / 17.10.02
[threadrot]

Ummm....Ma'at, exactly which inquiring minds actually want to see Mr Bodiless naked...?

[/threadrot]
 
 
Ma'at
10:01 / 17.10.02
Look foolish Aztec God go throw some people off a pyramid and stop spoiling my fun....

Alright I'll ask a 'proper' question then..

Jack, If you were a household appliance which household appliance would you be?
 
  
Add Your Reply