Have you ever read McCarthy’s The Road? It’s a post-vaguepocalypse drama about the post-digital family unit. One of the central characters is a young boy of ten who bears the full uncensored brunt of being horror receptacle for all the inhumanities of survival in a doomed world. Repeatedly, he is exposed to things that make him dance spasmodically, his personal way of dealing with the incomprehensibly terrible. A sort of horror-seisure.

 

I’ve seen some of us do this too, admittedly in less grievous situations, often it’s a particularly bad telephone call. Our trunks pivot at mid-point, arms flailing. Chests violently protrude and buckle as though we’ve become sudden host to private, internal ricochet universes. We writhe and swear silently while completing the call, performing with decorum.

 

I know that low dopamine can trigger a syndrome called Restless Leg; it causes compulsive movement in order to dispel an intense, unpleasant sensation in deep muscle tissue. I wonder if these brief moments of horror tax the brain’s dopamine reserves, contorting the host in inexplicable, accepted patterns.

an ephusion where else would restraint have been

I will sit you all down individually and make you watch this and circle the best bits on the screen and I will stare at you teary-eyed and declare “We’re so close now, so close” and it will be the best time and we will be happy to be alive and we will leave the house then, one by one into the gaping instant and we will return to the other things we do in the day but inside us will be a point of focus, tighter for having seen all the glittering edges

Anybody else want to get “nyarlathotech” tattooed on their genitals? I’m thinking 90pt Courier.

My phone speaks lol

Who knew?

“Now, you’ll notice what I’m doing bears no resemblance to what You’re doing. But if you just try and follow me, I’ll come back to it.”

Would you like to know where I’m sitting? No, probably not. I’m sitting in Mark Emmerson’s PS4016 lab. I’m doing it right now.

As much as I like my new class, with GNIV.i we could all vent our frustration by making him cry. Or at least, make him shout at us.

(For those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Emmerson, he is an enthusiastically abysmal teacher in statistical computing. He will try all year long to be nice, and reasonable; then when the end of the year comes and he has succeeded in losing us all, he will try and cover his tacks by scuffing the trail we are all desperately trying to follow.)

Honours all round.