blög - page 5

• mkv-this

  i recently wrote a small text generation programme called mkv-this. it’s really just a wrapper for the markovify python library (which is what powers all your favorite twitter bots), a way of passing the options it provides to an end user.

  you can feed it text files, a directory (tree) of text files, URLs or PDFs, or a combination of these, and it will output new texts depending on the options you select.

  i have been feeding it my journal, my dream diary, my email sent folder, my notes and scrapbooks, as well as books by other ppl, etc. the types of juxtpositions, derailings and re-threadings it comes up with can sometimes resemble haruspicy, and often also utter trash, which is also great.

  the code (which is very bad but i’m slowly getting better), as well as details on how to install and use the progamme, are available at https://git.disroot.org/mousebot/mkv-this.

• february

  
  i made a forth month poem, february.

• january

  i made a third month poem, january.

• hangar

  
  picture yrself in a great hall, a hangar, built of alien alloys. picture your friends, families, loved ones, dear ones, communities, comrades, kin, your ppl and their ppl and their ppl and so on going about their livings, their daily commerce with small lime green plants and yellow grains and seeds from the outside, picture their handy creations kocked up from wood or clay or metal. picture their stories and theatres and histories and astrophyisicses. now picture an immense black form, a kind of solid matte box or crate that is the exact form of the hangars interior, now picture it filling the hangar, now picture vertical ppl celebrating something inside it.

• metadata as history

  
  

  my thought today upon waking: will metadata, which is a waste product of machine—machine interactions, become the historical record, ie externalised or technical human ‘memory’. ie will it (functionally if not literally) replace the library/archive: this person was here, that person was there, said this to this person, did that to that person, manipulated this, re-coded that, exploited these people, screwed those ones, invented this new value-extraction-from-living-flesh app which saved us all, ergo made civilization, programmed this satellite community’s shoddy air system, modified x gene in their lab-grown meat, sent the ppl in that other satellite to their deaths in space in the name of fearless technological progress but actually for the insurance money, etc… and this info wouldn’t be in a library, in the sense of a funcionally separated/localised institution, it would just be backed up in the logs on the machines running whatever different kinds of infrastructure.

  (more...)

• another month poem

  i made another month poem, december.

• store visit

  i was walking away from a polluted urban stream lined by peppercorn trees or willows and into a fairly large and empty urban distribution centre car park. and although outside, and although i just walked out of a polluted urban stream, i’m carrying a purple helium-filled merchandise balloon from a store, holding it by the knot. and then i walk ‘into’ another ‘store’, but its all outdoors, in a car park, there are no products on display, no walls, no cash registers, just a single uniformed shop assistant. i get nervous because she will see me as i try to climb over the thief-proof exit, which is one of those electic detectors you see at the exits of media stores, but this one is also fitted with a 7ft. high pane of plexiglass blocking the gap between the two detectors (which i guess means no one may exit the store legitimately because all customers are theives?), and this person-sized transparent wall is surrounded by nothing, no other obstacle, its just there out in the open of the car park, blocking only the footpath. i try to climb it, but as i near the top i realise it is too precarious atop it to shunt myself over, there are no footholds, just smooth plastic. i know ill lose my balance and the single shop assistant will notice me if i struggle. so i ease myself down and explain i bought the purple helium-filled merchandise balloon from another outlet, and the woman escorts me away in some direction toward something else.

• okay k hole

  friday was a really tough day, and/but then it turned into such a big and broad and full one. i’ve been manic and depressed at once, too tired and vague in the day to do or think anything, too frantic at night to sleep. i tried to organize my mess of thoughts and files and systems, failed, suffered, gave up trying to make any essay plans again coz it was just too hard and the weight of it was pressing me down into a collapsed hole. so went walking in the gloom and rain, walking in the park where the cops were searching the garden beds used by the dealers to bury their stashes. they didn’t look very confident of finding anything. it wasn’t really a raid, no sirens, no theatrical arrests. just stop the van quietly, get out and start scrounging around in the bushes, movements not unlike the dealers.

  (more...)

• newer posts
• older posts