Pictures, that have the power to move?

{firebreather} in its rapid evolution has now sprouted fully functioning eyes to accompany it's recently formed ears. Use your own faculties to view occasional video supplementation to philisophical points made by {firebreather} on it's new appendage . As of now, I have no intentions of making films of my own, so consider this a collage of useful ideas that will hopefully appeal the more visually needy of my {two} readers. Continue to have the fun.

Airports are nothing but big fucking bombs now

In the UK you are not currently allowed to bring carry-ons onto a plane. You are permitted a clear plastic shopping bag that my contain only the following personal effects:

- a few tampons.

- glasses, but no case

- contact lens case, but no solution. (no liquids)

- your wallet.

NOTHING else is currently permitted. This includes: ipods, cd players, MAGAZINES, and BOOKS! I would like to go on record right now as saying that I place reading on international flights above national security. PERIOD. You can strip search me if you want. You can read the entire goddamn thing first to make sure it's safe and that none of the words in there are going to kill the pilot, but I am taking my book on the plane.

The point is that the geniuses in charge of our “National Security” are as bull-headed, reactionary, and stupid as the supposed terrorists. Case in point, the brilliant solution to the potentially explosive liquid problem in US airports is to have everyone dump whatever they have into big bins right in the middle of the airports. Did all these idiots spend their high-school chemistry classes ingesting mercury? They have successfully created a new terrorist threat right in our midst. There are certain liquid chemicals that react rather violently when mixed togethe, and, if not explosive, can certainly give off some pretty gnarly toxic emissions. We're being put at more risk through our “security” measures than ever before. Thanks but no thanks for the help, guys.

I also read that some poor guy was barred from boarding a plane in Fresno because he was “gellin.” Yes, because his insoles had gel in them, he was a potential terrorist threat, and therefore denied entry to a plane. Good work gang! I for one don't want to see any of you resting until we are no longer allowed to do anything that might occur to potential terrorists. Here's a list of possible things we shouldn't be allowed to do:

- First of all, those clear plastic shopping bags have got to go; they could be used to asphyxiate the pilot.

- Those tampons could be jammed down someone's throat resulting in choking or death.

- Glasses can be used to harness the sun's power like a magnifying glass and start dangerous terror-causing fires. I've seen it happen people.

- Hands and feet should also not be permitted onboard aircraft at any time; they can be used for all sorts of terrorist activities: walking, typing, turning pages of your BOOKS!

If I can clear security, I would like to catch a return flight to the issue I started with: I'd wager that a plane full of 300 people who have been sitting around, doing nothing but looking at their glasses and twiddling their tampons for 8 and a half hours straight is about 30 times more volatile than a shampoo bottle full of sodium benzoate and potassium nitrate… but maybe not as dangerous as a large bin full of it in the middle of an airport.

{note: you may notice that the previous rant isn't particularly timely, that's because it was originally published at rotovator.net when it made more sense to write about something like this.}

Interview with V. Vale of RE/Search

Here is the audio version of the interview I conducted with V. Vale, the transcript of which can be found here.

Subjects discussed are mostly in the realm of early industrial and punk, but waver into the larger categories of general rebellion, creativity, and surrealism.

Vale is one of my all time heroes, and it has been a source of ongoing pleasure and inspiration knowing him. I worked for RE/Search in the summer of 2005. I got the job by simply calling them up and offering my services.

They run the whole business out of Vale's apartment on Romolo, across the street from Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore where Vale was once employed. I hope nothing more than for people like myself to find inspiration and have their "normal" lives ruined by books such as: Pranks, Industrial Culture Handbook, Atrocity Exhibition, Incredibly Strange Films, and most recently Pranks #2 which I transcribed a couple of the interviews for.



RE/Search Website which I did my best to try and retool.

FiRE {breathing}: firebreather now in audio.

Yes {firebreather} is expanding. I have now added a podcasting division. This will be in the form of interviews, audio rants, and feedback, which you can listen and subscribe to via Odeo. To kick start everything, I've put up my interview with Crispin Glover from a while ago. Video selections from the same interview can be found here. Thanks you two. Keep reading. And now listen...



Please note that despite this new element, {firebreather} is still decidedly non-visual. There are plenty of images out there. Go look at them. Think and hear here.

Future War

Is it possible, is it conceivable that the conflicts of the near future will be ordinary citizens fighting against the Governments who operate under the pretense of protection of said citizens from themselves? Is terrorism as big a threat as it is? Is security as secure as it seems? Or is each new "security" measure in fact making us less secure? We have to decide, as human beings, weather we want to be afforded the freedom to live our own lives by our own means, or if we feel we must be monitored every moment of every day to protect us from ourselves.

We must not forget that despite how advanced our technologies become, they will always be operated by humans. Remove the technological screen and ask yourself if you would feel secure with someone you've never met before viewing every purchase you make, or every website you visit, or every place you go at every time. How about your bank account numbers, or your friend's and family, or your children? To what level of accountability are the operators and the progenitors and manufacturers of these technologies held? We should be careful to all private business to charge fourth with the prospect of great profit at our expense.

How do you reverse this? How do you fore a government to give you back your private security. How can we reclaim the human trust which should be an innate attribute of all endeavor and cast off the shackles of security that keep us bound in fear?

How do you know you haven't done something wrong? Have you ever had a disagreement with someone you know? Would you trust people who have never met you with that authority? And authority above and beyond that; to jail you or deport, or execute you. We do not know the government. We do not know the police. They are not the enemy, they are simply humans, just like us; victims for the same fear and paranoia as everyone else. And as become more exposed, they become more veiled.

We are all scared, of course, but we must not flee blindly out of fear into ruin. If and when we lose the security to live our lives on our terms, it will be too late, and the only option will be for all the normal decent people of the world to stand up in the face of those that "protect" them and cast them out.

Be not afraid of death. Be afraid of the suppression of life.

Fore further consideration, see: Channel 4's Excellent Suspect Nation

The intellect of a three year old.

What is it about a child's mind that makes them wonder? It's a survival technique I know, but when freed from the cage of survival, it becomes one of the most beautiful illustrations of the boundless scope of knowledge that we can gaze upon. Before the external influence infiltrate that mind, how does it wonder, and what about? I must know the answers to these questions. We must know. What about us is bound to wonder. Why are we destined to be amazed? Why are sunsets universally beautiful, and lightning so entrancing? Why do we enjoy anything?

Two Paintings

This is a story of two paintings. Each in it's own right a profound monument to humanity at its utmost pinnacle. Each painting a life-affirming, art-affirming, invigorating creation of human genius, skill, and experience. Neither, however, will ever be seen by a living soul, because neither painting has survived the passing of time.

Two of the most moving achievements of humanity lost forever in the sea of infinite time; never again to be rescued from the depths of the imagination. They survive not in form or in photograph, not in language or in memory; only in the knowledge of their beauty and existence do they persist.

The first of the two paintings was painted over the course of 20 years. Upon its completion the artist allegedly sat before it, drank a glass of wine, and set the canvas afire. No one but the he ever viewed it, and he never spoke of it. The only words he ever uttered on the subject were (to his wife after having rendered the painting to ash) "I have completed history's most profound work." The nature of the composition has been the subject of wide speculation and discussion, but no truth will ever be uncovered for the painter has long been buried and the knowledge with him. Not another living being in the history of existence has ever or will ever gaze upon such a thing.

And then a strange circumstance several years later that shares many similarities with the previously related story. An artist purportedly came running fourth from his studio in Delft claiming to have produced and subsequently destroyed the most sublime work of genius in all of human creation. "I have rendered Michelangelo to a swine, and Rubens, a knave. Piss on Rembrandt, fie on Vermeer. All the masters are grotesque by compare." Or something of the sort. This painting too, was never glimpsed by anyone but its creator. nothing survives as to the nature of this canvas either. It has been cast out from the channels of history and exists now only as a story.

The important difference is this: only one of these paintings ever existed at all. Only one of these stories is true. The other is as much a work of art as the fabled paintings. And while only one painting has ever realized any physical form, both remain identical in the mind. They are both mythology, even if one is true and the other is false.

Minds of infinite scale

Our minds have admittedly gotten us quite far. They have taken us to the ends of the Earth, across the oceans, and into the stars. They have engineered societies, language, computers, microscopes, and telescopes. With each new instrument our perspective in increased, but we have come to the limits of our capabilities. The unknown is the sea of limitations which we cannot presently cross. We cannot cross it because we, as humans, are incapable of crossing it. We can observe that it is there, but cannot perceive its contents. Our brains are evolved proportionally to the world we inhabit. Until recently that world has been primarily within the grasp of our faculties. But now we come upon the worlds both large and small that we are not equipped to know. Comparisons cannot be drawn because the worlds are so vastly different. We have scraped the limits of our very imaginations. We can perceive no further. We will sputter and suppose and speculate and get no closer until our minds evolve to deal with these unimaginable worlds that inhabit the same plane as our very own existence. The world of atoms and of waves, of forces and chemicals, of stars, galaxies, dark matter and time. Of infinite space and scale and of the voids in between.

Eventually our evolved consciousness will fail to comprehend these too. We will find new frontiers of understanding that we must await our capacity to understand them catch up with our desire.

Can we bring on the next stage of evolution by pushing our minds to their limits? Will we adapt the skills needed to perceive the very small and the very large? Can we achieve any victory at all over our very limitations? Or will it simply happen? Someone some day will suddenly be able to intuit protons, or see radio waves, or feel dark matter. Or they wont. It never need happen. It cannot be told if we will evolve beyond the realm of survival and into the realm of pure understanding. Nor can it be supposed down which path our capacities will take us. We will have to be the guinea pigs for a species aware of its own evolution. We will have to be conscious of different adaptations within our selves. If all other flora and fauna are adapted to their environments, why not us? Why not be adapted for understanding? Or for War? Or for cooking? It may already be the case, we may just be ill equipped to see it at this point.

Lifetime of stories

Stories are a life's ultimate potential, because they transcend the momentary. No other undertaking can tear so at the fabric of time as stories.

Practice Life, not art.

Live stories, not life.

Stories are trumped up information, information is the supreme stock and trade of humanity. Play hot potato with stories, with information. Hence the importance of the internet. The thousand monkeys on the type-writers may not have produced Shakespeare yet, but they have produced countless other works that the Bard could never have imagined in his wildest fantasies.

The entirety of any thing's purpose lies in its execution. Being is the end all and be all of relevance. To draw a line is to lie. To suggest that one element of existence does not exist, that it is inferior, or invalid, or apart from everything else is false.

Everything is everything is everything.

Insect Lifetimes

Consciousness is Context

We are cats with context

We are dogs with history.

Does dreaming of electric sheep mean anything?

I was reading today about the debate, spurred by a report commissioned by the British Parliament that forecasts the looming future of robot civil rights. The fears have been countered by the suggestion that the crusade to robot rights will be similar to the crusade for animal rights: basic conditions of treatment up to, but not including actual citizenship. In other words, sub-human.

Before charging blindly into the speculation that robots may one day demand rights, lets take a look at what is at issue here. Robots, unlike animals, are tools. They were created by human beings, and though they may be capable of base level decision making, they are a long way off from sentient. They are not naturally occurring, and therefore are spared the grace that animals and other organisms do of having a life outside the influence of humans.

But the bigger question this brings up is on our very notion of a life. It would seem to me, that posing the case for robot rights/ robot consciousness would upset quite a few safe and common notions on things like the soul, consciousness, and feelings. To draw the conclusion that an artificial intelligence is alive because it develops self-awareness is one thing, but it seems an absurd waste of time to concern ourselves with the protection of low-level systems. If we open that door, I can envision movements to stop the exploitation of Roombas, or CPU's.

Do we feel a pang of guilt when we delete software from our hard drive? Should we? Absolutely not. Should we start charities to take in all the discarded AIBOS from the streets. No! They are toys. They are no more self-aware than a GI Joe.
It seems no one has the proper concept of what robots are, or are going to be. Artificial intelligence and robots are two completely different realms. We are artificial intelligences, robots are computers. Robots are functional. Contrary to popular science fiction, we have little to gain from masses of sentient, humanoid, automatons populating our cities. They would serve no identifiable function. Robots are good at hard repetitive tasks. They are excellent at automating industrial processes. Jobs that humans can't stand doing. Jobs that are dangerous and beyond puny humans physical capabilities.

Does this mean we will manufacture a race of robot slaves? Well, we already have. The auto industry is predominantly robotic at this point. Robots control the University of Chicago library, they serve us drinks, they play music, they sweep our floors, and entertain our children. All for no pay, no food, and no civil rights. Don't worry, your conscience is clear. You can drive home in your robot assembled car and sleep in you bed that came from wood that was probably processed by a team of specialized robots. They don't feel bad, and they never will. Unless of course, you would like to make the argument that we are no more significant than a can opener. (Which I will soon address.)