Offmessage

Off on my travels again… Back Monday 8th. With an American election and Bonfire Night I reckon it’s definitely a week to be away from computers…

The International Necronautical Society. Apparently (from the manifesto):

4. Our ultimate aim shall be the construction of a craft that will convey us into death in such a way that we may, if not live, then at least persist. With famine, war, disease and asteroid impact threatening to greatly speed up the universal passage towards oblivion, mankind’s sole chance of survival lies in its ability, as yet unsynthesised, to die in new, imaginative ways. Let us deliver ourselves over utterly to death, not in desperation but rigorously, creatively, eyes and mouths wide open so that they may be filled from the deep wells of the Unknown.

Ah, the joy of goths with computers…

Nothing doing in this universe? Perhaps news is better in another timeline?

For his “role” in Farenheit 9/11… How nice.

Girls vs. Boys

Nucleus. You can almost call it educational. You can definitely call it infuriating.

Thanks to things for pointing me in the direction of Trashshures…

To create and then “abandon” a series of art works in the city of New York. […] Through this project they will become simulations of a very real urban phenomena: the waste of a failed artist.

I’m a sucker for this kind of thing.

It’s a long running obsession with the techniques of literary surrealism here at offmessage (like the dada engine page and exquisite corpse. Thanks, then, to mefi for pointing me in the direction of the Digital Dada Library - a source of much pleasure and inspiration.

Also, on a related note, I’m not sure if I’ve pointed you in the direction of Jeff Noon’s fantastic Cobralingus site (or buy the book here) before. Well worth a read, particularly if you’ve just been delving into the dada library above….

John Peel dies of a heart attack.

I guess everyone has a John Peel story… In my teen years he had the 10 o’clock show on Radio 1 and during his tenure there introduced me to current acts like the Cramps, We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Going To Use It and Half Man Half Biscuit as well as older acts like Joy Division, Beefheart, and Lord knows what else. But. It was one night in April 1999 that I will always remember him for…

Lying in the bath, listening to the radio, John Peel told his listeners with some sadness that Alexander ‘Skip’ Spence had died. He went on to play a homage to Skip, including Omaha by Moby Grape and War In Peace from Oar. Those two tracks (and subsequently the two albums they’re from) have stuck with me ever more and the albums have stayed close to the stereo ever since.

Trying not to be trite, my thoughts go out to his family. We really have lost a great voice.