TO UTUPOEIA? Let me tell you, there’s no more efficient means to get the MARROW OF THE MOMENT out of every month’s mediacorpse than FU. You get all the guts, and none of the glory, thanks to the natural properties of Shem, a critical biological benthic detritivore of the lowest order, digestive, critical, and disgusting! How can one paranoiac/entity do it every month?
Just consider this synchronicity: Yesterday at the brutalist remnant of our public library I overheard a man in some backroom giving the exact same speech about CREEPSTEIN as you hear in today’s From Utopia segment “A Gathering of Spooks”. I can only assume that FU acts as a kind of taproot, digging deep into the subconscious mutterings of our so-called social fabric and milking the liquids for obscure, otherworldly poetic means. Such is habitat! As Shem saith, “I glimpse the driver smiling in the mirror—nothing better to do…” The journey towards the 31st Annual Convention of the Spatial Paternity of Ordered Knowledge reminds me of Stanislaw Lem at his craziest, specifically the Futurological Congress, of which this is clearly a counterconference. And as for the “No Gods Protest” (scam?) it recalls the saying of Isidore Isou when confronted with the clichéd slogan… “All gods, all masters!”
Micropolastic Nature Angels continues the traumauntological theming with a subtle and frightening atmospheric mood spell. Trying to actually read the tiny occult jargon textblocks that flow past the hypnotic imagery will certainly do something to you. Personally I recommend dissociating to this with a snifter of your favourite irreconcilable liquid.You could also “put it on” in the background of your next social event, and render all vibes stagnant and paralyzed.
And where does Romonde lead us this month? A sublime psychodrama involving undead spacecraft, a proliferation of coffinplay, something or someone called a “POLL-LEAST MORTICIAN”, and the act of mutating repose. I am simply stunned by the philosopun phrase “DARWIN-OR-LOSE”. This one is exceedingly abstract and beautiful, delineating the “backstage lichen corridors” behind all things, the spiral towards coffinrepose, the heat death of the Etcverse. And in just a few short pages!
After these heady plummets, we are treated to some “relief” in the form of some anti-ads. In “The Country is (Not) Real” we have the ultimate mash-up that everyone has been waiting for: a flaying/de-skinning exercise at the NATIONAL level. A nation is a strange thing, too big for community, too small for internationalism, much like a kind of geopolitical skin-tag. I am glad there are experts looking at this.
The second “ad” is a call for “volunteers”. To call it suspect, ambiguous, irregular etc. is to miss the point entirely. A kind of analogical charity is beckoning for our time and effort. GO WITH THE FLOW? World leader facials and collective orgasms await you. As the old army ad never went. “Be all that you can’t be…”