Fnords

For some geek-humour reason, fnords came up on a mailing list I'm on and one thing led to another.

It's a fuck of a long time since I read Illuminatus! and Schrödinger's Cat, and a lot of intellectual water has flowed under the bridge since then, but I still have a bit of an adolescent soft spot for those paranoid, drug-addled, absurdist hippy fantasies. Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson shamelessly appropriated whatever shambolic fragments of mysticism, science fiction, anarchy and random plagiarism came their way, and the lunatic tapestry they created remains a seminal document of the era -- and also a continuing apocryphal bible for that ever-popular internet religion Libertarianism.

There's a lot of crackpot twaddle in there, a lot of bad acid trips, and I'm sure much of it has dated horribly. But there's something touchingly romantic about the underlying humanism that still, more than two decades later, seems to me to be worth hanging onto.

Also, I clearly remember a gay sex scene in one of the Schrödinger's Cat books that, despite having all the rude words replaced with names like "Rehnquist" and "Falwell" (a gimmick stolen shamelessly from Gore Vidal), was one of the most incredibly erotic things I'd ever read at the age of 14 or so :)

So. Hail Eris! All hail Discordia! Why should we let the forces of darkness immanentize the fucking Eschaton?

Shiny

Incomplete Image

Whirly Twirly

Even now there is something comforting about the ceiling fans, something nostalgic and warm. Something emblematic of the tropics. I can't help but associate them with hot places, with mosquito nets and cicadas and shaking your boots out in the morning to dislodge sheltering scorpions. With cheap travellers' hostels in Asia and comfortable houses in suburban Sydney.

Back in October 1989, at the moment when wandering India without a clue or plan or return ticket suddenly shifted from being a charming romantic fancy to what seemed a catastrophically misguided reality, it was, as much as anything, the ceiling fans that saved the day. Well, as a symbolic counterpart to Guy's strength and practicality.

The culture shock of downtown Bombay at 3.30 am was almost enough to put us on the first available flight home. It was hot and smelly and dark, and seemed, but for the rats in the gutters and the emaciated cows, deserted -- until we realised that all those little gift-wrapped bundles we saw were sleeping people, shrouded in cloth from head to toe, like mummies, for a tiny vestige of shelter and privacy. The only waking soul we encountered tried insistently to sell us hashish, which we declined.

We lugged our rucksacks around, looking for somewhere, anywhere, to stay, and eventually found what seemed the only hotel open at that hour -- unfinished, hostile, and priced according to its monopoly status. We paid out what seemed a fortune in rupees -- certainly, we wouldn't be able to afford to stay long at such rates -- and settled into the squalor of our room for the few short hours to check-out time, lying in the warm dark trying to sleep; trying to comprehend the scale of the mistake we'd made in coming here.

Daunted but undefeated, Guy was up and out before I even awoke, and in the daylight things looked, maybe, not quite so bad. By the time we had to leave, he had scouted out the neighbourhood and found us somewhere else to stay.

The Salvation Army Red Shield Hostel sounded unpromising, but it was clean and friendly and cheap, and full of people who knew what they were doing in ways that we so clearly did not -- and best of all it had ceiling fans everywhere. We could lie in our bunks plotting our next move with our Lonely Planet guide, and gaze up at the dusty blades stirring the air, and suddenly the romance of the journey was back. It hadn't been such a terrible mistake, and there would be no need after all to slink back to the comfortable ignominy of home.

Understanding

"Sorry?" I couldn't hear what he was saying, couldn't make it out.

"Is there something something something around here?"

Now I was feeling stupid. I genuinely couldn't understand the question. All four men were looking at me expectantly. There wasn't a lot of background noise. The guy was speaking English, albeit with a heavy accent, but the sounds he was making just weren't turning into words.

I remember situations like this in India, in reverse. There are probably more English speakers in India than there are in England; as in many ex-British colonies, it is still an official language. For many people there, English is an Indian language, belonging to them, that we pallid barbarians from across the sea barely grasp and tend to mangle incomprehensibly. And who is to say they are wrong?

In any case, a simple matter of asking directions in India can quickly develop into an entertaining pantomime in which the funny accents of the foreigners are a source of great confusion.

"Excuse me, which way is the post office?"

The listener tries his best to understand what you are saying. He is unfailingly polite and helpful, but you are simply not making any sense. A crowd gathers, the question is repeated, each syllable carefully enunciated, but as far as these fluent English-speakers are concerned you might as well be talking in ancient Sumerian.

Eventually, someone turns up who has some specialized knowledge -- perhaps he has lived in England, spent some time there studying our peculiar argot. He is bundled to the front of the crowd. Everyone shushes each other to enable the question to be asked once more.

"We are looking for the post office."

The interpreter smiles: the light has dawned. He turns to his companions and announces: "They are looking for the post office!"

To your clumsy foreign ears there is no perceptible difference between his pronunciation and your own, but suddenly everyone understands: "Oh, the post office! Ha-ha, of course! The post office! Why didn't you say so?"

I was reasonably certain the men in the car on Farringdon Road weren't looking for the post office, though it was only a block away. I still couldn't make out the phrase. It just wasn't triggering any neurons. I wanted to help, wanted not to seem like I was making fun of this man's accent.

Sheepishly apologetic: "I'm sorry, I can't understand what you're asking."

He repeated the question, and this time the syllables fell together into some kind of meaning. "Is there a red light district around here?"

A red light district?

"Uh. No. Not that I know of, sorry."

If I'd been thinking more clearly, perhaps I would have pointed them towards Kings Cross, though I don't really know where or whether all that stuff goes on since the whole area turned into a building site. Actually, I don't know where it went on before, either. I did once get propositioned at the HSBC cashpoint by a woman in spike heels and a tight leather microskirt. I was on my way to what turned out to be a weirdly inept sex club, not much more than someone's basement, and I was tripping on some ill-advised ketamine. Then, as last night, I made my excuses and stumbled away.

Desperate Times