“They had a contest in Dun Laoghaire a couple of years ago, putting up a stone in a tree to honor Joyce, in Sandycove, near The Tower, and this is based on the stone and the tree in FW, which is another of the two twins -
The Stone is Dead and The Tree is Alive.
But The Hidden Unity is Coal-
if The Tree is dead long enough, it becomes Coal, which is Stone,
and so
There’s the link between The Living and The Dead.
Everything is linked.
So that put up the tree and the stone, and they had a contest for a sentence from Joyce to put on the stone, and people sent in their favourite sentences. And I was not disappointed in my expectation that my choice was not the one they used. My choice was from the letter he wrote to his brother Stanislaus, “What liberation would it be to cast off the political tyranny of England and remain under the intellectual tyranny of Rome?”
In a 95% catholic country, I didn’t think they would put that on the stone, and they did not. What they put on the stone was, “the sea’s ruler, he gazed over the sea...”, I can’t remember the whole sentence. It begins with, “the sea’s ruler”, and it refers to an English character in Ulysses, which lead to an outbreak of fury among some Joyceans - (inaudible) - What was wrong with the committee that they were so ignorant about Ulysses - so idiotic they picked a sentence about an Englishman from a Great Irish novel. They should’ve taken my recommendation.
“Spence didn’t get as far as 1999 in his Towards 2012 essay, but he imagined the rise of a “Stormer” generation of what he called “imperial youth.” As it happened, his predictions were more or less accurate. In 1999, we had nu-metal, The Matrix, tight clothes, short hair, No Logo anticorporate demos, the emergence of bondage styles, and the Goth underground moving into the mainstream, a revival of popularity for cocaine, and, more significantly, perhaps, the jittery rise of Red Bull, Starbucks and coffee society. Comics gave us proactive world-changing superheroes and villains in Authority, Marvel Boy, and Wanted.
When last I was at Exeter,
The Mayor in courtesy show'd me The Castle,
And call'd it ‘Rougemont’ : at which name I started,
Because a Bard of Ireland told me once
I should not live long after I saw Richmond.
Junior Fury :
It's one of your contracts, sir.
I've amended that contract.
You require your players to maintain a 2.3 grade point average.
I’ve committed to maintaining a 3.5.
You require ten hours of community service, and l've committed to 50.
Any unexcused absences, any other disciplinary issues at school, you can nullify this agreement and send me to any school you want.
Papa Fury :
And how many days do I have
to consider this offer?
Junior Fury :
None.
The second page is a letter you need to sign that confirms my withdrawal from St. Francis [Xavier’s]
They know l'm leaving.
Papa Fury :
What?
You withdrew from St. Francis?
Junior Fury :
l called Richmond.
They expect me there in the morning.
Papa Fury :
You called Richmond?
You should have spoken to me
about this.
Junior Fury :
lt was a personal choice for me.
Papa Fury :
Well, I can fix all that in the morning.
Junior Fury :
Sir, please listen :
All l wanna do is play for you.
If I'm one of the top students at Richmond, I mean one of the top in the whole school, and I have great SATs, I can go to any college in the country.
l'm asking you to Trust Me.
Papa Fury :
You really wanna do this, huh?
Okay.
Part of growing up is making your own decisions and LIVING with The Consequences.
At the prom. Everyone is standing, watching the stage. Xander is miming anticipation.
Announcer:
And the award for Sunnydale High's Class Clown for 1999 goes to — Jack Mayhew.
The winner puts on a balloon hat and acts silly.
Xander:
Please! Anybody can be a prop class clown.
You know, none of the people who vote for these things are even funny.
Buffy is at the punch bowl, ignoring the ruckus.
The announcer urges Jonathan to the microphone.
Jonathan:
We have one more award to give out.
Is Buffy Summers here tonight?
Did she, um...
The crowd turns and finds her.
She looks nervous at the attention.
Jonathan:
This is actually a new category.
First time ever.
I guess there were a lot of write-in ballots, and, um,
the prom committee asked me to read this.
"We're not good friends.
Most of us never found the time to get to know you,
but that doesn't mean we haven't noticed you.
We don't talk about it much, but it's no secret that Sunnydale High isn't really like other high schools.
A lot of weird stuff happens here."
The Chorus :
Zombies!
Hyena-People!
Snyder! (laughter)
"But, whenever there was a problem or something creepy happened,
you seemed to show up and stop it.
Most of the people here have been Saved by you,
or helped by you at one time or another.
We're proud to say that the Class of '99 has the lowest mortality rate of any graduating class in Sunnydale history.
(applause from the crowd)
And we know at least part of that is because of you.
So the senior class, offers its thanks, and gives you, uh, this —
Jonathan produces a multicolored, glittering, miniature umbrella with a small metal plaque attached to the shaft.
It's from all of us, and it has written here : -
' Buffy Summers —
Class Protector '
The crowd breaks into sustained applause and cheering.
Buffy walks to the stage and takes her award.
Cut to Buffy, watching the dancers.
Giles comes up behind her.
Giles:
You did Good Work tonight, Buffy.
Buffy:
And I got a little toy surprise.
Giles:
I had no idea that children en masse could be gracious.
Buffy:
Every now and then, people surprise you.
Giles: (looking past her)
Every now and then.
“Iain Spence published Sekhmet Hypothesis: The Signals of the Beginning of a New Identity as a book in 1995, but it wasn’t until two years later that I came across his ideas in an article he’d written for the magazine Towards 2012. As an illuminating way of reconsidering the familiar, I’m particularly fond of the Sekhmet Hypothesis, which never fails to get people talking at parties. As usual, please remember that this is just a framework; a way of ordering information into meaningful patterns in the service of creative lateral thinking, if you like. You may be able to find all kinds of examples to refute this data, but first bear in mind that I’ve used this predictive model to great effect and no small financial reward, and trust me when I say I’m passing it on as a tip, not as a belief system. If this book has made any point clear, I hope it’s that things don’t have to be real to be true. Or vice versa.
Soon you’ll notice how many advertisers and trend makers are aware of this theory and have been applying it to product placement, design, and the seasonal shifts of the rag trade since Spence published it. The more people know about it and react against it, or try to preempt it, the more the effect is likely to dissipate or find different ways to express itself. That may already be happening in the windblown halls of popular culture, although as I write, in 2010, Spence’s broad predictions are accurate still.
Sunspot activity follows a twenty-two-year cyclical pattern, building to a period of furious activity known as the solar maximum, then calming down for the solar minimum. Every eleven years, the solar magnetic field also undergoes a polarity reversal. It’s a little like a huge switch that toggles on or off, or the volume slider on a mixing desk, with loud at one end and silent at the other, and each period is given an identifying number. Cycle 23, for instance, had its maximum in 1999.
Spence suggests that these regular rewirings of the solar magnetic field naturally have an effect on the human nervous system, which leaves its traces most clearly in our cultural record—like a desert wind carving the shape of its passage into the dunes of fashion, art, and music. As a shorthand toward understanding the two maximum states we flip between, Spence suggests we can regard one pole as having a “punk” character, while its opposite may be thought of as “hippie.”
In Spence’s lexicon, at least as I understand it (his own website will set you straight if. wrong), punk maxima can be identified in a fashion vogue for short hair, tight clothes, short, punchy popular music, aggression, speedy drugs, and materialism. Hippie, as I’m sure you’ll have guessed, is associated with signifiers from the converse end of the spectrum, like long hair, loose or baggy clothes, longer-form popular music, psychedelic or mind-expanding drugs, peace, and a renewed interest in the spiritual or transcendental. He focused on youth culture trends on the basis that young nervous systems registered the magnetic reversals most profoundly and reflected them back in the lineaments of the art and music they made or consumed. So far, so good.
In 1955, when our planet was bombarded by cycle 19 solar magnetic waves, young people in the West responded like needles in a groove with rock ’n’ roll’s tight jeans, short hair, biker JD aggression, short, fast songs, and widespread use of stimulant drugs like speed and coffee.
Silver Age comic-book punk was embodied by crew-cut Barry Allen in his speed suit. “Chemicals and Lighting” could have been a song or a band.
The tight suits, establishment men, and emphasis on science and rationality are all “wrong), punk maxima can be identified in a fashion vogue for short hair, tight clothes, short, punchy popular music, aggression, speedy drugs, and materialism. Hippie, as I’m sure you’ll have guessed, is associated with signifiers from the converse end of the spectrum, like long hair, loose or baggy clothes, longer-form popular music, psychedelic or mind-expanding drugs, peace, and a renewed interest in the spiritual or transcendental. He focused on youth culture trends on the basis that young nervous systems registered the magnetic reversals most profoundly and reflected them back in the lineaments of the art and music they made or consumed. So far, so good.
In 1955, when our planet was bombarded by cycle 19 solar magnetic waves, young people in the West responded like needles in a groove with rock ’n’ roll’s tight jeans, short hair, biker JD aggression, short, fast songs, and widespread use of stimulant drugs like speed and coffee.
Silver Age comic-book punk was embodied by crew-cut Barry Allen in his speed suit. “Chemicals and Lighting” could have been a song or a band. The tight suits, establishment men, and emphasis on science and rationality are all typical, as are Stan Lee’s realistic superheroes such as the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man.
Eleven years later, cycle 20 reversed the polarity. By 1966, hair had become longer, clothes were looser and more flamboyant, music became more involved and sophisticated, and the drugs were mind expanders like LSD.
In 1966 the cosmic wave entered the comics, to bring with it the gods of Thor, villains like the Anti-Matter Man, and John Broome’s psychedelic Flash stories. The new heroes were antiestablishment “freaks” and mutants.
Nineteen seventy-seven brought a shift back to punk, as expressed in Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s fifties-influenced clothes and music, bondage and restriction, amphetamine sulfate use, and angry, confrontational politics.
The comics boom of that cycle gave us Judge Dredd, Frank Miller’s gritty noir, Alan Moore’s harsh logical realism.
Nineteen eighty-eight saw ecstasy, or MDMA, as the favored drug, accompanying long-form trance, ambient and dance music, Manchester “baggy” fitness wear as street wear, grunge beards, and a return to long hair. In comic books, this was the time of Deadline, Doom Patrol, Shade, and Sandman.
Spence didn’t get as far as 1999 in his Towards 2012 essay, but he imagined the rise of a “Stormer” generation of what he called “imperial youth.” As it happened, his predictions were more or less accurate. In 1999, we had nu-metal, The Matrix, tight clothes, short hair, No Logo anticorporate demos, the emergence of bondage styles, and the Goth underground moving into the mainstream, a revival of popularity for cocaine, and, more significantly, perhaps, the jittery rise of Red Bull, Starbucks and coffee society. Comics gave us proactive world-changing superheroes and villains in Authority, Marvel Boy, and Wanted.
This book will be published in 2011, when the fruits of the next wave will be hard to avoid. As I write, the word psychedelic is being used so often on TV and in magazines that it’s barely funny. Avatar’s hippy eco-vision of an interconnected natural world and the massive success of Alice in Wonderland (always popular during hippie periods) exemplify this current, as do the vampire heroes who have occupied the imaginative place once taken by sixties Pre-Raphaelite and Edwardian dandies. In comics, the “realism” boom has been quietly left behind like an unfashionable pair of trousers. The new superhero books are becoming more fantastic, colorful, and self-consciously “mythic.”
Spence’s article does not, nor will I, attempt to track the alleged effects of these undeniably real solar magnetic events on non-Western cultures.
Neither does he extend his argument backward to consider the ways in which the popular arts scene of 1944 could be described in “hippie” terms (LSD, however, was synthesized in 1945), or that of 1933 as “punk” (although perhaps Weimar decadence and the art of George Grosz could build a case there). And so on. I leave that contemplation to skeptics who choose to debunk the idea or to zealots who want to believe it.
Unless Terence McKenna’s “Timewave Zero” theories are correct, and we collapse into an atemporal singularity on December 21, 2012, 2021 will bring the cycle back around to “punk,” and if this seesaw sounds horribly predictable and repetitive, be assured that it will all seem fresh to the young people who take their own inspiration from the solar trade winds.
As for me, I intended to bring my run on JLA to an end along with the century. The Invisibles, too, was scheduled to wrap in 2000, and I planned to re-create myself again to complement the change in the weather. I was almost forty, had never felt better, and wanted to be ready for the harsher spirit I’d decided was on its way in the wake of the Labour election win, the death of the former Princess Diana, and the commencement of cycle 23.
I’d also just met my future wife, Kristan, a stunning, brainy blonde who dressed like Barbarella to go to the pub, worked as a corporate insurance broker, and read Philip K. Dick. It would be another three years before our paths crossed again and we were able to get together, but that die was already cast.
On a trip to Venice, Italy, I bought my first real suit—Donna Karan—and was encouraged to go corporate. Smart tailoring and the jargon of advertising, motivational speaking, instead of fractal-patterned shirts and druggy psychedelia, seemed the way to go in cycle 23. At heart, I’d always been an uptight Presbyterian anyway. I’d never been “able to get back to the radiant world I’d reached in Kathmandu, and I’d begun to “suspect it was because in some way I was already there. I had very little doubt that I’d “wake up” in that place at the moment of death, like a game player looking up from the screen where his avatar lies bleeding, only to realize he’s home and safe and always was.
“The drugs don’t work, they just make you worse,” sang the Verve, and after eight years of experimentation, ruthless self-examination, ego inflation, and ego loss, I had to admit they were probably onto something. The shallow hedonistic spirit of the nineties was too fragile to endure the cold of the vast twin shadows cast backward by an onrushing age of terror. Darker times were on their way, demanding a new clarity and rigor of thought.
I tried to articulate the outlines of the next trend by introducing to the pages of JLA a military-funded superteam called the Ultramarines, whipped up by Uncle Sam to keep the Justice League in check should their internationalist stance ever compromise US military security. By the end of the story, the Ultramarines had split from their paymasters and joined with a group of like-minded DC heroes in a hovering city-sized headquarters named Superbia, there to announce a bold new manifesto for change :
SUPERBIA HEREBY DECLARES INDEPENDENCE FROM ALL NATIONS AND OPENS ITS GATES TO SUPER-CHAMPIONS FROM THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE EARTH. WE INTEND TO SERVE AS A FIRST-STRIKE GLOBAL PEACEKEEPING FORCE. WE WILL KILL IF WE HAVE TO. IF WE HAVE TO, WE’LL LET YOU KNOW. TERRORISTS, DESPOTS, CORRUPT BUSINESSMEN … THE INTERNATIONAL ULTRAMARINE CORPS IS HERE. THERE’S NOWHERE TO HIDE.
As it happened, I’d almost exactly described what the next big development of the superhero concept would look like.
Meanwhile, I prepared myself for the oncoming zeitgeist by listening to Chris Morris’s bleak, brilliant, bad-trippy Blue Jam on Radio 1 every Thursday after John Peel. Oddly enough, I was beginning to find humor in all the things that had once frightened me. The prying eye of Big Brother, the aging process, loneliness, failure, and death were all just punch lines to the joke. I loved to listen over and over again to HAL 9000’s death scene from the soundtrack to 2001 : A Space Odyssey, and when Jarvis Cocker and Pulp released their masterpiece comedown album, This Is Hardcore, its unflinching evocation of middle age, stale waterbeds, and tinny bachelor pad music made me rethink my own lifestyle.
I was about as alien as I’d ever wanted to be, but I’d grown tired of one-night stands, drink, drugs, and the dating game.
(for he is worshipped in different forms and in many tongues, but it is always Odin that they worship).
He travels from place to place in disguise,
to see The World as people see it.
When He Walks Among Us,
He Does So as a Tall Man,
Wearing a Cloak and Hat.
CLARA:
Okay, plan.
DOCTOR:
We meet The Boss Man and we do The Usual.
CLARA:
Which is?
DOCTOR:
Replace him.
CLARA: (sotto)
How?
DOCTOR:
To The Primitive Mind, advanced technology can seem like magic.
CLARA:
It's going to be the yo-yo again, isn't it?
DOCTOR:
Yeah. It's in my pocket somewhere.
(The Doctor holds up his manacles, that are no longer securing him, and the yellow yo-yo.)
CLARA:
How did you do that?!
DOCTOR:
Magic.
(The Doctor throws his manacles in the air, and they hit the old man in the chest. Swords and axes are drawn.)
NOLLARR:
How dare you attack our Chieftain!
DOCTOR:
•I• am very, very cross with you...!
I am very disappointed.
I have taken human form to walk among you.
NOLLARR:
Who are you, Old Man?
DOCTOR:
Do you not recognise The Sign.... of Odin.!?
(He unleashes his yo-yo.)
NOLLARR:
You are not Odin,
and that is not Odin's sign.
DOCTOR:
Oh, and you would know that how, exactly?
Have you met Odin?
Do you know what Odin looks like?
(There is a thunderclap and the sound of a horn. A giant face appears in the clouds in the sky wearing a winged helmet and a Virtual Reality eyepiece.)
ODIN:
Oh, My People.
I — AM ODIN.
And now your day of reward has finally dawned.
DOCTOR:
Do not believe this foolish trickery!
(His yo-yo fails to reel itself back up its string.)
DOCTOR:
It's supposed to do that.
ODIN:
Your mightiest warriors will feast with me tonight in the Halls of Valhalla.
(Rays of light teleport down five large beings covered in armour, They have alien guns. The Doctor and Clara back away quietly while the Vikings move forward, and the aliens stomp to meet them.)
People with Borderline Personalities tend to project their own emotional needs onto other people.
And then feel incredibly betrayed when the people near to them fail to behave accordingly.
It’s actually, now I come to think about it, very similar to a royal character on a playing card —
It’s not Narcissism exactly, in fact it can be understood perhaps better as being the functional opposite of Narcissism.
The Narcissist looks to see echoes and reverberations of themselves in both their surroundings and derive value, meaning and significance from the degree of resonance that they find;
A Borderline Personality however, projects the fulfillment of their own lack and need onto other people, and then chases around after them (in every sense), hoping to obtain some tiny meaningful morsel as a treat, which they can overinflate into a banquet of human connection - all of it totally (or largely) illusory and inauthentic in some completely subjective and non-self aware distortion of reality.
This is going to be about That.
Then again, maybe I am just projecting.
Rupert Pupkin:
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
Let me introduce myself.
My name is Rupert Pupkin.
I was born in Clifton, New Jersey... which was not at that time a federal offence.
Is there anyone here from Clifton?
Oh, good. We can all relax now.
I'd like to begin by saying... my parents were too poor to afford me a childhood.
But the fact is that... no one is allowed to be too poor in Clifton.
Once you fall below a certain level... they exile you to Passaic.
My parents did put the first two down payments on my childhood.
Don't get me wrong, but they did also return me to the hospital as defective.
But, like everyone else I grew up in large part thanks to my mother.
If she were only here today... I'd say,
"Hey, ma, what are you doing here? You've been dead for nine years!"
But seriously, you should've seen my mother. She was wonderful.
Blonde, beautiful, intelligent, alcoholic.
We used to drink milk together after school.
Mine was homogenized. Hers was loaded.
Once they picked her up for speeding.
They clocked her doing 55.
All right, but in our garage?
And when they tested her...
they found out that her alcohol had 2% blood.
Ah, but we used to joke together, mom and me...
until the tears would stroll down her face...
and she would throw up!
Yeah, and who would clean it up? Not dad.
He was too busy down at O'Grady's... throwing up on his own.
Yeah. In fact, until I was 13 I thought throwing up was a sign of maturity.
While the other kids were off in the woods sneaking cigarettes... I was hiding behind the house with my fingers down my throat.
The only problem was I never got anywhere... until one day my father caught me.
Just as he was giving me a final kick in the stomach for luck... I managed to heave all over his new shoes!
"That's it", I thought. "I've made it. I'm finally a man!"
But as it turned out, I was wrong.
That was the only attention my father ever gave me.
Yeah, he was usually too busy out in the park playing ball with my sister Rose.
But today, I must say thanks to those many hours of practice my sister Rose has grown into a fine man.
Me, I wasn't especially interested in athletics.
The only exercise I ever got was when the other kids picked on me.
Yeah, they used to beat me up once a week... usually Tuesday.
And after a while the school worked it into the curriculum.
And if you knocked me out, you got extra credit.
There was this one kid, poor kid... he was afraid of me.
I used to tell him...
"Hit me, hit me. What's the matter with you?
Don't you want to graduate?"
Hey, I was the youngest kid in the history of the school to graduate in traction.
But, you know, my only real interest right from the beginning, was show business.
Even as a young man, I began at the very top collecting autographs.
Now, a lot of you are probably wondering... why Jerry isn't with us tonight.
Well, I'll tell you. The fact is he's tied up. I'm the one who tied him.
Well, I know you think I'm joking... but, believe me, that's the only way...
I could break into show business... by hijacking Jerry Langford.
Right now, Jerry is strapped to a chair... somewhere in the middle of the city.
Go ahead, laugh.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
But the fact is, I'm here.
Now, tomorrow you'll know I wasn't kidding...
and you'll think I was crazy.
But, look, I figure it this way.
Better to be king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You know, Sweets, I like what I've heard about you,
especially the name.
‘Harley Quinzelle.’
Rework it a bit, and you get ‘Harley Quinn.’
Like the clown character Harlequin.
I know.
I've heard it before.
It's a name that puts a smile on my face.
It makes me feel there's someone here I can relate to.
Someone who might like to hear my secrets.
It took me nearly three months to set up a session.
I studied all his tricks and gimmicks, and felt I was ready for anything.
You know, my father used to beat me up pretty badly.
Anything except that.
Every time I got out of line:
Oh, sometimes I'd be just sitting there, doing nothing.
Pops tended to favor the grape, you see.
There was only one time I ever saw Dad really happy.
He took me to the circus when I was 7.
Oh, I still remember clowns running around, dropping their pants.
My old man laughed so hard, I thought he'd bust a gut.
So the next night, I ran out to meet him with his Sunday pants around my ankles.
"Hi, Dad. Look at me."
I took a big pratfall and tore the crotch clean out of his pants.
And then he broke my nose.
But, hey, that's the downside of Comedy.
You're always taking shots from folks who just don't get The Joke.
Like My Dad.
Or Batman.
Harley :
Yeah, yeah, I can tell you're less than thrilled.
You know, for what it's worth, I actually enjoyed some of our romps.
But there comes a time when a gal wants more.
And now all this gal wants is to settle down with her loving sweetheart.
The Batman :
You and the Joker?
Harley :
Right-a-roony.
HA-HA! HA-HA! HA-HA!
Harley :
I've never seen you laugh before.
I don't think I like it.
Cut it out.
You're giving me the creeps.
The Batman :
You little fool.
The Joker doesn't love anything except himself.
Wake up, Harlene.
He had you pegged for hired help the minute you walked into Arkham.
Harley :
That's not — No.
No! He told me things, secret things, he never told anyone.
The Batman :
Was it his line about the abusive father?
Or the one about the runaway mom?
He's gained a lot of sympathy with that one.
Harley :
Stop it! You're making me confused!
The Batman :
What was it he told that one parole officer?
Oh, yes.
"There was only one time I ever saw Dad really happy.
He took me to the ice show when I was 7."
Harley :
Circus.
He said it was The Circus.
The Batman :
He's got a million of them, Harley.
Harley :
You're wrong.
My Pudding does love me! He does!
You're The Problem.
And now you're gonna die and make everything right.
“Join Me — Together, We Can Rule The Galaxy as Father and Son!”
That won’t work — AT ALL.
This might have :
"Curious. I have brought The Sith to their ultimate victory. Through study, I will soon learn how to defeat death. While I may choose apprentices, I will never choose a successor."
— Darth Sidious,
Marginalia in The Book of The Sith,
in the section titled
"Selecting an Apprentice"
“I Shall Be President ETERNALLY —
And Rule FOREVER!”
Lord-President Borusa
The Force is a concept
By which we measure
My Power
I'll say it again
The Force is a concept
By which we measure
My Power
I don't believe in magic
I don't believe in Qui-Gonn
I don't believe in Black Scrolls
I don't believe in Holocron
I don't believe in Vader
I don't believe in Grievous
I don't believe in Dooku
I don't believe in Sentirs
I don't believe in Mantra
I don't believe in Jedi
I don't believe in Yoda
I don't believe in Kings
I don't believe in Jabba
I don't believe in Anakin
I don't believe in Sith
I just believe in Me
Emperor Palpatine
That's Reality
The Dream is over
What can I say?
The Dream is over
Yesterday
I was The Senator
But now I'm reborn
I was Supreme Chancellor
But now I'm The Emperor
And so, loyal vassals
You'll just have to
Obey My Will
The Dream is over...
“Know This : — Your Apprentice Will Kill You.
The Sith Order is Now a Lineage.
Or Do You Believe That You Will Live Forever....?”
