writing

Alarming, no?

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An emergency alert. In fact, the exact words were “The UK is set to test a frightening ‘Armageddon alarm’ within weeks which will see thousands of people’s phones flash and set off alarms.” And call me cynical, but my first thought was how awful for people with anxiety, who will be given a panic attack, even more so for those who haven’t heard about by the time it comes round.

Which then led instantly onto my next thought, or rather the chain of them. And here we go full conspiracy, what if the ‘alert’ is actually a special signal which activates the debated luciferase or coded info people believe to have been in the recent injections. And as easy as At the flick of a switch, people drop dead. They can say it was heart attacks, and apologise for ‘scaring people to death’ but they won’t mean it. It’ll be another sorry, not sorry. But that’s just crazy talk surely? Creating what would be something like a movie plot for real. Kingsman springs to mind here. Of the phone chips, and related devices to trigger violence, compliance, or whatever was needed to gain control.

Like I said, that surely is crazy talk, which is why I will say it’s a conspiracy theory. A dark one, but not unreasonable given our current circumstances. People with patience are playing a long game, and switched off any feeling for the masses a long time ago, if it was ever there to begin with. Using words again to start the mental worry, ‘frightening and Armageddon’ used there to give a very dramatic feeling, you know, like the ones they try and convey in the disaster movies, which may well have been laying the foundations for where we are now. Looked at in my article Prepped for disaster, or clever programming?

But the idea of an alarm, makes me think of the Eloi in the Time Machine film, where the siren starts and they fall into a trance and walk to their doom unaware, hypnotised by the sound and following an automatic response they have been ingrained with. Or the second Kingsman film even, where there is a plot to get rid of millions of people through poisioned illegal drugs. One which meant they couldn’t stop dancing, so would inevitably dance themselves to death. Then they were put in cages and stored in large empty stadium. Might be nothing of anything, but I can’t help thinking it was relevant, showing them in The main arena despite there being no ‘audience’ for the ‘entertainment’. Or it really was just a film, with no hidden meanings or connotations to anything. And maybe the ‘frightening alert’ is just a normal system they are testing with nothing to be wary of at all. But I can’t help thinking that maybe it isn’t…

The Siren by Daniel Jimenez

(c) K Wicks

It seems their hand… (poetry)

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It seems their hand

They’ve overplayed

And their welcome

Well out stayed

A box of worn tools

That wants to dictate

Creating a landscape

Of worry and hate

Of numbers and rules

And pawns for a plan

Not about living

But more if they can

Crush and contain

What it is that we do

Wanting to change us

To be something new

A dampened down version

To do as we’re told

The future’s not bright

In fact it’s been sold

But we are complicit

If we do go along

With all of the bullshit

And all of the wrong

That is now around us

And more than on show

Time keeps ticking on

And further we go

~

To whatever end

(c) K Wicks

Your Digital Informer

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Like having a Tamagotchi, but instead of leaving it at home while you go to school, you stay home and it goes to school for you. That particular ‘toy’ may not be the best example as I was a bit older and missed the craze at the time. But wasn’t surprised to see recreations of people in adulthood mimicking their behaviour as a child with one. Literally dropping everything and rushing home from school to ‘feed it’ or find it had died. Probably a strange compliance test at the time, to see who would prioritise technology over real life. Enough it turns out. I too have arranged things around television when younger, so although didn’t engage with the Tamagotchi craze, I was taken by technology and arranging your schedule around it. As many now have to, or choose willingly to.

But the new and slightly weirder piece of tech for this particular article, is the AV.1 robot. By a company called No Isolation. Sounds all friendly and benign doesn’t it? And has already been implemented in the UK, with more on the horizon. And its purpose? For attending school in place of children who for various reasons, cannot attend themselves, with the idea being that they can still take part in the lesson, and ‘be part of it’ remotely. Like I said, sounds all friendly and benign on the face of it. But as with many things, I like to give a bit of extra thought to these types of things.

Aside from the fact that if a child is too ill to attend school is still expected to learn and take part like everyone else from their sickbed, being a bit weird. It’s the fact there will be a constant electronic link, sometimes visual (as that is not compulsory apparently, only audio), between the child and the school. Which can and probably will be monitored by a third party. Also keep in mind, any device provided by the state through schools to families is owned by them, and they get to listen to what they want, record what they want, and can check the device any time they want. But it is an extra link directly into the home, through the child, rather than just being a direct link for the child to the school and teachers. They really do need to maintain the children’s constant indoctrination don’t they? Off sick and can’t cope? No problem, we’ll install a system so that you will never feel behind or left out – oh, yes, that does mean you will be constantly monitored, and assessed, and judged, and expected to perform as per requirement and timetable. Perhaps overlooking that many of those things are what people struggle with, but by enforcing them at home as well as in the compulsory institutions, you just make it so there is nowhere to go to get away from it. If you can’t cope with school, then having it in your house everyday may not be the best solution and can cause a whole host of other anxiety issues directly within what should be a ‘safe space’. But maybe that’s just me that sees it like that.

Either way, having something mechanical to be a stand in for your physical presence is odd to me. Because while it appears to be a stand in, you are required mentally to be there, logged in and giving it your energy and attention. Many adults and children struggle with zoom meetings, and interactions of that nature being constantly required. It seems that although it’s not you being there physically, the draining aspect of what it requires is too much. People can gain energy from being around other people, recharging and bouncing off each other. It can help to get you through a day, or not for some. But the compulsory nature of school anyway bothers me, and how they have tried to structure family life around it. Catchment areas, grades, expectations, financial requirements, scrutiny, rules, restrictions and punishments. And that’s just school and a fraction of how much it dictates in a child’s life, and parents. It’s such an intrusive and unhealthy relationship the establishment has with people and their lives. It seems more obvious now than ever.

(c) K Wicks

Perceptions of What We Think We See

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This is a follow up piece to Perceptions of self, because on top of the three ideas of how we view ourselves, how we view others and how we think others view us, a curve ball gets added.

Ai generated ‘humans’ are becoming part of our everyday experiences with screens and ‘entertainment’, whether we are aware of their presence or not. So, within that, our perceptions and expectations of ourselves are affected, as with all the previous shifts in the commercial industries. Film, TV, fashion, music, news, politics, finance etc. All the areas that are used to have a system and standard for you to be conditioned to and to become part of. People learn an awful lot from faces, I think maybe that is overlooked sometimes. Not by those who know, it is very much thought about.

We learn about many things by watching others as we grow up and go through life. We begin to understand ourselves and the world around us, often steering away from the types who hold us down or back from life. And many people have built-in senses to detect things in others, we call it instinct I guess, but through time and process we have developed skills to try and recognise signals and warnings. Although, I believe they are greatly affected by environment and well placed and nurtured false triggers.

So, enter into that arena, a new range of ‘faces’ and ‘people’ to infiltrate the social landscape. We have that going with real people too, personal identity and who you think you are seems to be Big business these days. And maybe that is helped by the curve ball I mentioned. Where we now have to factor in what it is we might be comparing ourselves against, and to be honest, we always should have been, but I believed that was towards other humans. And even then I finally twigged that it was a skewed standard being pushed on society. That many people have a perception of something that didn’t actually exist other than in the mind, hoping for it to be reality so much, that actual reality gets overlooked or put aside. But they do say, you create your own reality. You can see why the lines may have become a bit blurred.

Now we have that extra component, creating a new reality alongside and within the one we currently have. A virtual and artificial one as they call it, infiltrating us by way of technology. Because without screens and a power source, it doesn’t exist. We however, need a power source to exist too, but food, water and rest seems to be enough to sustain ourselves. Quite independent of technology. The other world however, cannot. Maybe that’s why they would like people to be 6g antennas, so that there is a constant source of ‘power’ if we did switch everything off and reset it. They become fully integrated with us with a view to switching us off before we do it to them. A self-preservation mechanism that was either programmed or developed. But that goes to the far-fetched extreme, like the Matrix portrayal as us being batteries and ‘scorching the sun’. This is a more behind the scenes, insidious integration that almost seamlessly slips into being part of your life. So smooth you almost don’t notice. Almost…

(c) K Wicks

Doors Of The Mind

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They say when one door closes, another one opens. And visa versa. And it seems to be used in relation to opportunity and describing being at a turning point, or crossroads in your life. Pick a road. Pick a door. But as a concept for a mental layout, I believe it also works well for some people.

Thinking of your thoughts as corridors and each decision you made or life event has a room added to the house of your life. Sometimes accessible as a memory, as if you can pop by and open the door. To glance in on what once was, for nostalgia. Or for purpose to learn from. But sometimes it is speculated, that we aren’t the only ones with access to those doors. And just sometimes, things can find their way through those doors from the other side. Either waiting for you to go back into that room, or may stray from the confines and be found wandering the hallways.

This is all talking of a waking conscious mind, there would be another layer of potential sinister when you factor in sleep and the subconscious. My article, A Quantum Leap, in Dreams may go into that more. But I am reminded of a couple of films around the above idea.

Monsters Inc – a film with very odd and creepy overtones, the doorways being a feature of how they travel to a child’s room. To scare them and steal their screams. Awake, and facing something terrifying appearing through a doorway.

Poltergeist – great films, and suitably terrifying. But appeared to have a problem with their walk-in closet I seem to remember, being the portal to another dimension.

Time bandits – it started in the wardrobe, they came out of it into Kevin’s room. Better than getting frightened for screams, he got to go on a super weird adventure.

Beetlejuice – the strange corridor they had to go down for their first meeting with Juno. Passing the caretaker, observing the room of ‘lost souls’. But this film also had the doorway to ‘Saturn’ where they were transported to when they tried to leave the house.

Coraline – a small doorway leads to an altered version of reality. Not dreaming, but while awake.

And then makes me wonder, if thoughts are perhaps portals to other places. They say you think things into existence, but maybe we just aren’t privy to all the different levels of where things exist or know where they are created. So what we believe might be random thoughts and ideas, really do create and destroy worlds, and all sorts in between. As well as there being a conscious realm, and a subconscious realm. Dreams are a strange subject too and it’s possible they could connect us to different thought dimensions, where we create worlds within them or can get sucked into them. Or all of the above, or none of them. We may never know for sure. But like I said, I do like to wonder…

(c) K Wicks

You Are What You Eat

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It’s one of those things you hear, and occasionally you might give it thought when it comes to trying to assess your diet or eat a bit healthier. Or it might be thought of when they maybe refer to overweight people eating fatty foods, or people who eat junk food. So they say, just think about what you eat.

But that’s not the saying is it. It’s ‘you are what you eat’. Funny if you imagine eating lots of doughnuts and turning into a doughnut, or like the character in Road Dahls Charlie and the chocolate factory, who ate the blueberry gum, and turned into a blueberry. But as with that last one, there was something so very sinister going on there. To show you how temptation can override even a warning, and it leads to being what you eat. Maybe that was the show and tell bit, by way of programming, but for something sweet and made into comedy or a fancy colourful musical. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down for example.

But the obvious ease by which you can get someone to ingest something, especially if you sprinkle it with sugar and name anything dubious with a strange unidentifiable code, is quite scary. Lots of people suspected additives in food and drink decades ago was causing some issues for people. Makes me wonder if that was really the tip of the iceberg, as it has been with so much else recently. Food though, is a high priority and with good reason. My article If you control the food points out why if you hadn’t given it thought previously. But that is from an angle of keeping it back from you or rationing it by way of monopolising. This one is from a perspective of where it goes after, and would appear has been filtering through. A brief look at the ‘new meat’ we have coming our way was covered in Beyond meat, or beyond ridiculous? As usual though here, I will reference a couple of films, as they go down the road of it being people turned into food and unknowingly being fed to people.

Soylent Green (1978)

Cloud Atlas (2005)

Reality however, is starting to tread a very strange and dark path. A mainstream wave of gore, simulated human mutilation and cult type fetish has appeared. Is that just a mere coincidence? That a few decades on from a burst in the horror and gore genre in TV and film, we have an overtone of that same representation now being acceptable. Which starts to make other things acceptable in some minds too. Sexy up vampires, oh look, adrenochrome talk hits the streets. Familiar concepts are more likely to be scoffed at as ridiculous or embraced, rather than have to go through the phase of being accepted as a thought. Half the job is done.

You are what you eat. Back to that, and another thing I think of when I prepare food, about how food is supposed to taste better when made with love. Now, that may be all well and good, but I bet there are some people (myself included), who sometimes make something that tastes awful, or just goes wrong. But I did wonder, about cooking and the idea of spells, and how it ties together. How you could possibly transfer an energy as well as the ingredients. If possible, it would lend even more weight to the original saying but gives it more.

So, what do we eat? Processed food, pesticides, mechanically made items which must lack ‘heart’ to a point. So do we become soulless if we eat nothing but empty food, not just empty of calories, but empty of life and natural process? They say your body is your temple, treat it as such. It may stand to reason then that animals treated badly may pass on something, food cooked with hate too, tainted in some way by that process. Insects being on the menu next makes me think the same. Farmed insects with no natural environment at all, just another species to try and dominate and construct a ‘reality’ for. And today I see talk of it possibly being the case that aborted fetal tissue could have been put into food products. I’m not surprised, but people are not impressed, and rightly so. And maybe this will make more people start giving thought to the whole process of food production, ingredients and what happens to food along the way before it even gets to us. Because if what is being said is true, the title of this article suddenly becomes a lot more than just words.

(c) K Wicks

Kangaroos

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Some animals make you think twice, possibly. Maybe it’s just me. Penguins are one, but this post is for kangaroos. They just seem like a normal (ish) animal, on a landmass far away from where I am. So, my reference of them will only be from what I have seen on TV. But when you see them, or at least when I really looked at them, there’s something strangely humanlike about them.

I grew up watching Skippy the Bush kangaroo reruns, and seeing a cute, furry and friendly wild pet type thing going on. Not realising at all the size they get to, and how powerful they can be.

A funny episode of Mighty Boosh called Killeroo focuses on one, an odd but entertaining watch nonetheless.

Tank girl – this could be what started my brain originally on this train of thought, a few decades ago, with the graphic novels of Tank Girl. And a race of half human, half kangaroo soldiers that were bred by some crazy scientist. Which leads me neatly to what got me thinking about it again, and is a story I have mentioned before and no doubt will again.

The Island of Doctor Moreau (H.G Wells) – it’s a dark, difficult and quite horrifying read really. I had to make myself finish reading it. A tale of twisted experiments on an isolated island by a crazy doctor trying to make animals more human.

Kangaroos outnumber people in Australia around 2 to 1, and I used to joke when I heard that figure, that a kangaroo army could hop and kick their way through the population before anyone knew what hit them. And laughed about the idea as a comical set up, and still do. But do sometimes wonder if what we see around us, and presume is ‘natural’, could just be remnants of a previously engineered time or place. Ourselves included in that. We only know what we think we know, but I can’t help thinking there is so much more…

(c) K Wicks