Fear of the Future.

It feels like I can't stop eating. It feels like every half-hour I make a trip down to the cupboard. And maybe it wouldn't be so bad, after all it's recommended to eat many small meals, except the stuff I eat is often sugary or starchy. Though my meals aren't huge typically and I eat very little breakfast and sometimes skip dinner. So I wouldn't worry about my wasteline so much.

I read in "Trystes Tropiques" by Claude Levi-Straus (a great book) that poor Indians survive on a handful of rice a day. Americans lead a stationary existence (that is they sit on their ass whether in the office, in front of the tv or in the car) and yet have restaurant portions twice the size of other Western countries. So surely a lot of that goes unused. The Indians must be squeezing every drop of nutrition out of that rice. It probably puts a lot of unnecessary stress on the digestive system of Americans too to have all that food pass through.

How do you make your food use more efficient? Do you simply start eating less until your body adjusts? There are other benefits. When eating less you can stretch out less food into the time occupied by your previous large meal and really enjoy every bite and chew it properly. Maybe chewing properly is another key. No need to rush your meal, relax, less stress. Don't hesitate to leave food on your plate.

When you think about it none of it makes any sense: not the drug, not the scramble suits, nor the agendas of any authority figures. Maybe I need to watch it again and at a time when I am not struggling with staying awake. And yet I enjoyed the movie for it's fine acting, funny lines, lovely visuals and funny lines (mostly delivered by Robert Downie's character).

I do not think it is very well explained why people take Substance D (would any drug culture really name a drug with such a dry name?), we never see the characters enjoying it. All that we really know is that it is immediately addictive and leads to very bad consequences (all starting with a D). So the movie appears as anti-drug. But on another level it is one of the best advertisements for drugs because if life looked like that on drugs then there should be people lining up at their favorite substance vendors.

I suppose that the drugs could be viewed as an allegory of consumerism and relentless corporate pursuit of profit, of corporations providing both the problem and the cure (as in Haliburton rebuilding what General Electric destroys) because it is later revealed that it is really the big corporation New Path that is producing Substance D. Though it is puzzling how such a huge operation could be concealed from everyone and that noone knows what plant the drug is produced from.

The scramble suits are another headscratcher. The operatives only wear it in front of other operatives but never on their assignments. And yet they don't really hide anything. Everyone knows that you are wearing one and your identity could be determined from your height, mannerisms and simply by following you - just check who leaves the building when.

I am not even getting into the whole Bob Arctor spying on himself thing as it was way over my head at that hour. I can't figure out if he really was in two personalities after the drug or merely trying to avoid giving anything away. His lenient treatment when people simply criticising the drug war (played by Alex Jones, hillarious because in real life he is a radio host of a famous conspiracy theory/anti-government radio show) are tazered and taken away in black vans who knows where.

The real highlights are the drugged-out of their minds characters played by Robert Downey Jr, Rory Cochrane and less so Woodie Harrelson. Downey's character is the big word spouting motormouth, Cochrane the extreme paranoiac (hillarious scene near the end where we go inside his mind) and Woodie Harrelson the braindamaged manchild.

This movie will not appeal to the mainstream audience but maybe will find a cult niche among a certain slice of youth of the day. It definitely bears rewatching not just to sort out the plot and philosophical issues raised (maybe an impossible task) but mostly to catch all the jokes.

As a kid I once undertook a study on the escalation of violence in movies. Ok, not really. I taped Home Alone and Home Alone 2 off the TV. One day I watched both and marked down every trap, hurled brick and humiliation inflicted on the two villains. The sequel came out on top. A predictable result I suppose.

Some threads of thought that I have picked up on:

Capitalism is in complete ascendancy and admits no alternatives. Things like "end of history" (due to the defeat of communism) are relevant here. Capitalism claims to be emminently "realistic", no fantasies or theories involved there, this is how people act and respond naturally.

Moreover capitalism sees the present as the best of all possible worlds. This is probably connected to the first point. Everything always tends towards optimum and equilibrium (this is a central tennet of capitalism) in a free market and thus any outcome in a capitalist system is by necessity optimal and perfect.

The future has been abandoned. I have hit upon this again and again. Our horizon has shrunk. How often do you read of moon bases? Compare to the 70's. There is probably a connection between this and the previous two points.

You know how you would be reading some doomsday-type article on how bad the environment is or how we are all full of toxic chemicals or how corrupt politics is...whatever, and then they put all the optimistic signs at the end? Why do they do that? End on a downer because the overwhelming message is that things suck so why leave the impression that everything will be ok?

Second, I noticed how a lot of real, deep techno is full of that 3 over 4 latin type rhythm. Really, it's the most basic body-moving, head-nodding rhythm of all. That Wayne Marshall guy is on to something.

Walking clock-wise the centrifugal force will make the blood flood your left brain hemisphere enabling logical thinking.

I recently rented "Christianne F - Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo", a movie about Germany's famous teenage heroin addict. The movie is your typical heroin story, "just wanna try it one time" followed by spirling into addiction, a brief withdrawal and the plunge to prostitution to score more junk. Not very interesting, especially since there are no subtitles so I was forced to watched it in overdubbed English.

But the movie did introduce me to David Bowie. Ok, so not exactly an underground musician but if you haven't heard the Berlin Trilogy (comprised of Heroes, Low and Lodger) that he produced jointly with Brian Eno in the late 70's, you are really missing out. I love the instrumental half of Heroes, totally ahead of the time ambient stuff.