Bokelskere.no

‘David Bowie has talent,’ Truman Capote told Andy Warhol in 1973 – a generous assessment from the man who thought Mick Jagger as ‘sexy as a pissing frog’.

Another GCHQ operation to harvest IP addresses of website visitors was code-named KARMA POLICE, apparently after the Radiohead song of the same name, which includes the lyric, ‘This is what you’ll get when you mess with us.’

Frederick Jelinek, the researcher who led IBM’s language efforts, famously stated that ‘every time I fire a linguist, the performance of the speech recogniser goes up’.

In time, the founder of Microsoft himself became associated with another computer scientist’s rule of thumb: Gates’s law, which claims that, as a result of wasteful and inefficient code and redundant features, the speed of software halves every eighteen months.

"I'm Moby, and I'm an alcoholic."

Lizzie Grant, whom I’d tried dating a couple of years ago, was one of our original backup singers, but she left the group to pursue her own career as Lana Del Rey.

I’d never met Pantera, but I loved their records. The first time Kelly had visited me, in 1999, I’d put on The Great Southern Trendkill while I was making dinner. She liked Belle and Sebastian and Fairport Convention, and was baffled that I would put on a Pantera album while adding organic basil to a vegan spaghetti sauce.

What I could never process was that each time I entered, I was visiting David Bowie as a friend. As a peer. Well, “peer” seemed absurd. Bowie was the greatest musician of the twentieth century, while I was a bald degenerate with an accidental hit record. He was a demigod; I was most likely a fluke.

It has been an enjoyable experience sharing these thoughts, penning a kind of bible for my woke disciples. But I will not rest until we have achieved our diverse intersectional socialist decolonised polyamorous genderqueer pro-trans body-positive anti-ableist privilege-checking speech-policing hate-free matriarchal utopia.

«Leira sto i wifi-strålinga – stort sett spillinga til Alf – da ble den et rasshøl», sa Tormod. «Man skulle tro det var internettet sjøl som var ute og fløy på bygda.»

Med harde bevegelser trykket Tormod klumpen ned i stålkolben på eltemaskinen og helte på det galvaniserte vannet fra en dunk, slik skulle han få fart på leiren igjen. Men idet stålkolben begynte å spinne, og eltekrokene grov seg inn i leiren, da skjedde noe underlig. Klumpen ga fra seg et langtrukkent, metallisk ul. Det var et innestengt, forpint hyl, som en defekt ble tonesatt. Maken hadde Tormod aldri hørt. Eller, jo. Hvis han tenkte etter, hørtes skriket nøyaktig ut som Axl Rose sitt skingrende, trange 12 sekunder lange hvin, midt i Slash’ heftige gitarsolo nr. 2, etter taktskiftet, i etterspillet (ca. 7:24) på November Rain, for den som husker det.

Et sted som har skapt problemer for en del radikalere, er Iran, der revolusjonen mot det oligarkiske sjah-styret endte opp med et religiøst dogmokrati. Noen biter stemte med kartet – kampen mot den vestlige kapitalismen og imperialismen, da særlig erkefienden USA, avvisning av det borgerlige demokratiet og den illusoriske ytringsfriheten, kamp mot porno og prostitusjon osv – men resultatet med tilslørte bypiker og offentlige halshugginger var ikke helt enkelt. På den annen side, i Kina er det jo også populært med offentlige henrettelser, og parolen «Nei til salg av kvinnekroppen» blir jo godt ivaretatt av hijaber og slør. Likevel, ytterst få ml-ere lot seg begeistre av Khomeinis radikalisme – med unntak av Palestina-aktivisten Trond Ali Linstad og noen av hans medisinerkolleger.

It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us—the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.

Notably deficient in proper hostility toward the Jews were the Scandinavian nations (Knut Hamsun and Sven Hedin were exceptions), which, according to the Nazis, were Germany’s blood brethren.