I recorded this conversation years ago and forgot to share it. Just typed it up now. It was one late night back in the day in the flat above Malk's Coffee Shop, after some debauched party or other. I'd been hitting the brandy pretty hard and Karl had been drinking something he called Wake Up Juice, which I think was just a combination of whatever bottles were nearest, but I may be wrong. I was almost asleep, but Karl was in full flow and I figured I'd record it for posterity. The lad was in fine form that night, so I decided to interview him.


Conversation with Karl Kinsella AKA wotmania user ‘Karl’ 29th September 2002.


KUKE: I heard you're becoming a meme.

KARL: It's true, I'm self-generating everywhere at the moment. I'm riding some kind of pop-culture wave, people can't keep their minds off me.

KUKE: It must feel pretty weird.

KARL: Not really. You get used to it. At first it was weird, like I knew the sea was nearby, or I could hear distant applause somewhere. But when I saw what was happening around me I realised I could feel this growing... SOMETHING... this, pop-culture entity, this tiny zeitgeist, this culture-spirit... when I realised I could actually FEEL that, growing, that's when I began to realise the potential of the thing, that I could USE it.

KUKE: Use it for what? What would you do?

KARL: I dunno, like, I'd suck all the power from this little meme-baby like a vampire and became more than the sum of my fleshy human parts, obviously. I could free myself from this puny meat prison and became a being of pure energy, riding the culture-waves and communicating with pop-spirits and dogs. Stuff like that.

KUKE: Why Dogs?

KARL: Because I like dogs. You see a dog barking at nothing? It'll be barking at me. I'm probably just passing through, having a quick chat, y'know. Chatting to the dogs. They're telling me about their day, that kind of thing. I'll be in the breeze. I'm the wind, mate.

KUKE: I thought I was the wind.

KARL: Eh, you can be the wind too pal, one day. You're hardly on Karl-level meme-status at the moment are you? You're more like a gust at the moment. Keep up the good work though, eh?

KUKE: Cheers.

KARL: No sweat.

KUKE: But wait, what happens when you become fully meme? Am I going to have to bury your nasty little empty husk? I mean, dude.

KARL: Nah man, my body will get converted into pure awesomeness.

KUKE: Cool. That's... awesome.

KARL: Yeah, only it'll be as though I was never real to begin with. Like I was ALWAYS a meme.

KUKE: ...That sucks.

KARL: Yeah. Reality can't handle that kind of crossover, it just wipes over it, nice clean edit, like. It's fair enough I guess.

[At this point I appear to have passed out, judging from the sounds of me slumping onto the table and then onto the floor. You can hear the clinking of glass in Karl's drink as he sits and thinks for a while, and then he chuckles and starts talking. I listen to this bit, now, over and over while I'm lying in bed staring at the dark and trying to figure out what it was he did, and why, and picturing him there in that place holding that drink talking into a microphone late at night with his friends sleeping around him. I can't know what he was thinking, not really, but I know he loved us all. He was the best of us, and I miss him.

Here's to you Karl, you crazy bastard.]


You know when you get that strange feeling where it's like reality is just a training program, and we are actually some vastly intelligent alien species in cryo-sleep in giant warships learning about the planet we're going to destroy when we arrive, not by just watching them but by ACTUALLY LIVING LIKE THEM... you know when you get that feeling? Well today wasn't one of those days. Today I didn't even have to use my AK.

Atomic Knowledge is when you convince your bones that you are moving BACKWARDS through time in fact, and that for every inhalation there is an exhalation and that learning things the second time around is EASY, because it is just REMEMBERING, and knowing that all of this is just, y'know, one breathe.

Whenever I get deja-vu I figure it's just a save point and I high-five myself.


Relax.


Take it easy.



I think I’ll sleep here.