16/02/2010

King of Power 4 Billion % by Paul Robertson





The World is Black Today

This weekend a friend of a friend was murdered by an 18 year old who had previously mugged him. Seems to be some form of revenge for going to the police, even though it didn't lead to anything from what I've heard.
And even though I've never met the guy I almost started to cry before. I'm going between anger and sadness, I'm starting to think I've read too much about it, watched a picture or two too many of the guy who died. He seemed like the kind of guy who was always nice to you, always helpful and happy. He even worked with children and the elderly for fucks sake. Sure, he lived in a bad neighborhood, but who doesn't theses days?
So I've been spending hour after hour reading forums, articles and checking the memorial on Facebook. I'd like to give my friend a hug, but she lives too far away. I can't even imagine how she must feel.
I also stumbled upon other cases of people belonging to subcultures getting attacked because of it.
If attacking someone just because they differ from you in how they look isn't hate crime I don't know what is. It's sad and pathetic that we've come this far and yet these things continue to happen.

Sophie Lancaster

Brian Deneke

Life. Human.

These are really the only things I know about myself. Or at least the only things of which I can be certain. The rest could very well just be all in my mind.

I had a dream last night for instance. I almost knew I was dreaming, I lingered at the thought as I sat in a stone chair carved out as a part of a huge amphitheater that in its turn was carved into the side of a red mountain. In front the mountain was a huge valley, filled with people from many worlds. Some of them where huge, some where small, some looked humanoid in form, other's like bugs, big cats, and all kinds of possible and impossible creatures.
That's at least what I think they looked like. It was after all a dream, so it's hard to be sure what anything looked like at any given time.
Between me and the crowd in the valley (or maybe a dried out riverbed) was a row of chairs, or something of that sort. There was a bunch of people there, most of which I didn't pay any closer attention, but there was a woman there that I constantly kept watch over. She was royal somehow, a Queen or a Princess maybe, and I was her bodyguard.
I seemed to perceive time differently as well. Everything seemed to go in slow motion for some reason. I was aware of the people around me, other bodyguard, diplomats, and politicians mostly.
Anyway, the young queen with the blue and pink face was speaking to the crowd, I'm quite sure it had something to do with world peace, harmony between all of the races gathered, and things like that. Big things, things that where important to all of us who cared for others.
Suddenly there where thin, black and slimy robots tearing trough everything on their way towards the queen, moving on all four. They didn't seem to care about the other people around and literally hit them aside with their black and somewhat uneven limbs. People where clearly getting injured, and there was something about the robots that seemed particularly menacing. Somehow I knew, or maybe I heard a low hum, a shift in the particles and atoms around me maybe? I knew that they where going to explode when they got close enough. In fact, I could almost see burning blue light radiating from them already. I got up from my stone chair slowly, not because I wanted to go slow, but because of the resistance created by the atmosphere. That didn't seem to be a problem as soon as I got moving though. In what literally registers as a flash I was standing before the queen, she was short and thin, dressed in light orange robes that probably matched her skin. I slid my arms in behind her slowly and jumped. Another flash and I'm high up in the air, flying away from the threat. As I hit the ground, easily dampening the shock of the impact with my legs so that the only thing that happens is that the red dust is thrown up around us. It seems to stand still for a moment before it is suddenly blown away by the blinding explosion at the amphitheater. There is hardly any shockwave though, mostly just a blue light that seems to vaporize most of the people assembled there, as well as a thick layer of stone.
The shock that hits me is of another kind, an emotional kind. I fall to my knees shivering from emotions. The queen is now sitting on a rock, and I plant my head in her lap crying. The tears are so heavy I almost choke on them. I cry for those that just died; the hundreds of people gone in a flash of blue burning light. I also cry for the future. The queen looks at me with a sad expression on her face.
In the corner of my eyes I notice a man that seems to have been looking at the speeches from a distance. He stares in shock and disbelief at the fading light.

Then I wake up. All of this a dream, an entire world gone as soon as my brain switched on from the standby we know as sleep. I'm not even sure what I was in that dream. A cyborg perhaps?
A ordinary being enhanced with magic? A genetically altered person, specifically tailored to be able to get people to safety? Maybe I'm a combination of all three?
What I do know is that when I was dreaming all that was real. It seemed slightly unreal, but not more so than the fact that time seemed to go slower for me. I checked everyone sitting around me with one look that took a fraction of a second. The crowd, a lot more than the people around me, took maybe an entire second. A second was a lot of time to me, and the entire speech would have been like years in case my sensory input was still more or less human.
It's probably one of the best dreams I've had. The kind of dream you could base a book on.

When I started writing this the thought was to convey the idea that our life and our humanity is the things we have in common. If we forsake this, and ignore our life or our humanity, what are we then?
The story about my dream was not as much about some alien world, as it was about humanity and life in general.
It’s slightly altered, but mostly I just gave it a better ending. I never really managed to get that far in the dream, sadly.

Something I wrote after a very vivid dream months ago, though it might have been longer.

05/02/2010

Die Antwoord

Welcome to China



Links

Four out of five animated shorts for the Oscars. Pretty much the only interesting things about the Oscars if you've got an interest in movies.

How to communicate with vegetative coma patients.

Suspiciousminds flickr. For those of us who like Urban Exploration.

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