Posthuman Blues

I had a recurrence of my near-nightly dream, which put a spell over the morning. The dream is so cinematic, so perfect in construction, that it's like a needle in the brain. I wake up and want revenge and realize with mounting annoyance that I can't have it.

I just got back from the coffee shop across the street. Instead of reading -- or, heaven forbid, getting some substantial writing done -- I monkeyed with my cellphone, finding all sorts of arcane functions buried within submenus. I wish it had word-processing capability. (Technically, I can use the text messaging menu to jot down notes to myself, but it's time-consuming and frustrating. Alternatively, I could use the voice-recorder -- I'm still keen on podcasting -- but without a USB jack to export sound files it's really not much use; I'm better off using a pad of paper.)





Yesterday I checked out Robert Sawyer's "Mindscan" from the library. The library has a self-check-out scanner, neatly eliminating the need to interact with librarians. It's essentially the same system I use at the grocery store: the play of laser light over bar-codes, the unavoidable wait for the receipt to print (always tinged by the fear that something inside the machine will jam, necessitating messy human intervention).







I currently have two movies replaying through my mind: "Brazil" and "The Man Who Fell to Earth." For whatever reason, these movies have taken it upon themselves to hound my subconscious. When I'm edgy or depressed the world actually seems bisected by the plight of Sam Lowry or David Bowie's alien, an assault on consensus reality as exacting and dire as Kafka's or Philip K. Dick's.