Non-fiction: Essential 90s (Stephen King's IT, C&C and Nirvana)

This video has been on youtube for a month -- I scripted five more videos that I will release from next week onwards. In this video I discuss the most essential cultural phenomena that define what it was like to grow up in the 90s. It gives insight in me as a writer and how I see the world.

 

MR. ED CHRONICLES - talk three with Michelle

Mr. Ed had watched the ice melt and he saw the debris that had come undone when it came floating up. It was all in the past and for that reason it was more like watching a late news report come in, rather than a drama that unfolds before a person’s eyes. There was a certain fascination though, because it was almost as if there was something there at the bottom of the sea that had a part in all of it. 

Mr. Ed had come of the opinion that Martossa wasn’t just a peculiar town, but that it was one of those towns that dragged a certain history with it. It was the kind of history that’s more subtle than the words of recorded facts and the stories that people told each other to try to make sense of what was happening all around them. But at the same time, it was more like those ancient stories, it was more of an oral history —the story changed over time and a lot of it had been washed away.

The town had gotten a hold on Mr. Ed and with each passing day this idea of the day that he would return to his old life became less pressing. It was almost as if some part of Mr. Ed’s mind had made up this history of Mr. Ed’s Frozen Pizza and it was slowly catching up on itself. It was almost as if it had come floating up when the ice melted and at some point it would either decay or go back down again.

It were the two women though that Mr. Ed found most interesting, much in the same way that it’s usually women that can both drive men to the brink of madness and to definite greatness. On some level both Phyllis and Michelle could have been Mr. Ed’s daughters: Phyllis was the kind of daddy’s girl with boyish interests, while Michelle harbored the kind of spunk of the kind of person that harbors something dark deep inside, which may violently lash out at some point —this made her very interesting, and also very relatable for Mr. Ed. 

1

The VR had become comfortable like an old leather jacket. At some point Mr. Ed asked himself whether it hadn’t augmented his sense of reality. He had started questioning things that had happened —bigger things than he might have otherwise.

Mr. Ed had never been much for conspiracies, but there was a part of him that was willing to believe that experiences in VR were more than an escape or an enrichment of reality. VR could very well be used for mental programming, since the total immersion would – in theory – make it easier to add subliminal messages, because there’s literally no escape, no chance to look away and for that very simple reason it might be very effective for indoctrination of any kind. 

There were these stories dating from the 90s, that this was done through tv, and that certain mind altering chemicals were added to food and drinking water. These conspiracies usually ended with the government wanting full control, turning people numb in that they no longer had any will, turning them into empty vessels that could be subjected to any will and whose minds could be filled with just about anything. 

Mr. Ed had always doubted that these stories were true to that extent, but in a way there was a similarity: both altered our sense of perception and our sense of reality. But it’s only VR that’s so immersive that it makes us want to forget about our condition and our predicament. 

2

Michelle’ssense of reality was definitely augmented by VR: she is in fullimmersion since she learned about a dark horror web in VR. It has scary AI-creatures running wild and it has the kind of interactive movies that were classified as too violent for regular media. There’s one in particular that’s called The Butcherof which it’s rumored that whole flocks of people have gone crazy after watching that channel. Murders, suicides, lapses into schizophrenia; all those short circuits were caused by it.

The Butcher is violent and vivid to such an extent that it becomes painful to watch and you start asking yourself what sick mind had come up with the fiction —and possibly worse, what kind of mind had turned it into a visual horror-fest. For the avid viewer it was hard to imagine that most of it was scripted and staged in such a way that itwould result in the maximum shock, which obviously meant crossing boundaries that were spiraling inwards until things became too shocking and causing an overload. 

For some this threshold was low, even though these were also the kind of videos that were blocked in the conventional media. The first video that Michelle watched was one of those, but instead of turning her away it kept her coming back for more. This video was under two minutes and it started with a group of guys fooling around with martial arts. There was a bit of kick-boxing, Thai-boxing, k3. It started with the guys kicking each other, but then they moved on to objects, until in the final scene they moved on to a wall. 

This wall was made of 6 horizontal concrete slabs that were held in place by two vertical concrete rails. In this scene, one of the boys kicked the second slab in half. He succeeded, but what he probably didn’t expect was that the four remaining slabs came down and amputated the guys foot. You could hear the guy scream. The camera went to the guy and zoomed in on the stump, and then it ran to the other side of the wall to zoom in with all the connecting parts sticking out: bones, tendons, blood vessels, lymph vessels, nerves, skin, fat, skin. The whole lot. 

When Michelle had first seen that video she had dreamed about it. She wasn’t a hundred percent whether it was real, but the scene started to haunt her: guy kicking, slab coming down, stump, foot. It was just that she didn’t feel what any ordinary person would feel: she didn’t feel pain in her own limbs and pain in her belly. What she felt was a definite fascination that had more to do with precisely executing a task than by acting or responding in any emotional way. 

Michelle came back for more and thatwas how she ended up on the channel of The Butcher. In the first video a guy was tied in ropes on a table and The Butcher appeared and he saidI have been ordered to remove the hand of a thief. The guy was clamped in what looked like a medieval instrument which made it impossible for him to move. 

The camera zoomed in on the hand that was clamped in. The Butcher started with a swift incision around the wrist. Blood started sprouting, but what was more unsettling was the way in which the guy started screaming. It wasn’t just a scream of pain, but was agony mixed with a loss of hope and a loss of faith. The Butcher put the knife to the side and continued with a bone saw that did the rest of the job. After this The Butcher started pointing out the same parts that Michelle had observed in that first video: bones, tendons, blood vessels, lymph vessels, nerves, skin, fat, skin. The whole lot. 

The Butcher took a hot iron plate and grilled the stump to stop the bleeding. It was the first and the mildest recording and after that it all started spiraling out of control and into insanity. The Butcher continued with more limbs, arms, legs, separating the meat. 

Michelle watched with increasing fascination: there was something about the act of butchering. It was the kind of fascination that some young kids have when they are finished playing with their toys and they then decide to dissect them to see how they work on the inside. It was just that she wasn’t sure where her fascination would end. 

3

This time the setting is a modern lobby in a dark hotel: black, grey and silver. The light has the feel of a cold winter moon. Mr. Ed picked the location, because he thought it would be appropriate —if he wanted a real shot at figuring out what goes on below the surface, it might help to emulate a place where bad things happen just around the corner, and where few questions are asked. 

Michelle walks up to the bar and orders two drinks. She casually hangs around and for a split second she’s unsure why she wanted to meet again.(the thrill).

“Why did you pick this location?” Michelle asks.

“It might be conducive,” Mr. Ed says, “A more public space.”

“Where is this place?” she asks, “I mean, if it was any place real?”

“This here is the dead of winter,” Mr. Ed says, cryptically, “A farawaytown in Alaska, Iceland, Green Land —you name it.”

“Such a town….” she says, “A good place to hide.”

“I know….” Mr. Ed says, and he can’t suppress a grin, “Who in his right mind will hunt a criminal to this far end of the earth?”

Michelle thinks: he’s still fishing for the extent of my badness.

“You’d be surprised,” she says.

“Where will it all end?” Mr. Ed says when Michelle has settled down, “How will it end for you?”

“What do you mean?”

“When should you fold?”

Michelle thinks: he thought about me.

“Only when it’s the best play,” she says, leaning forward and softeningher voice, “Roll dem bones.”

Mr. Ed thinks: she’s calculating and plotting right now.

“Never come clean,” Mr. Ed says, “That’s what my old man used to say.”

“Your prime directive,” Michelle says, trying to cornerMr. Ed, “Are you talking about you or me now?”

“Let me tell you a little story,” Mr. Ed says, “Let’s say there’s this guy and he has this really bad day —it simply couldn’t be any worse. He gets fired, he finds out that his wife is cheating, one of his best friends has suddenly died. If it was just one of these things, then it would mess us up pretty good, but this guy experiences all at once.”

“It’s shit to the max.”

“Right,” Mr. Ed says, “Now generally speaking different people respond differently to stress: some crumble up, while others fight to get from under it…. Now this guy, he was the latter: he literally lost everything and in his mind things couldn’t get any worse, ever.”

“So this guy flipped.”

“To say the least,” Mr. Ed says, “He went to a few crummy bars in a bad neighborhood, looking for a fight. In the first two bars they just laughed at him and told him to go home and sleep it off. In the second and third bar it was the same story: he was thrown out. The fourth bar was what he was after: He got into a fight with a guy who was playing pool. He was about to beat the guy and then another guysteppedin, then one of his friends, then another. In all his fury this guy who had lost everything won this fight. His fury burned so bright that he simply couldn’t be stopped.”

Mr. Ed takes a sip from his drink.

“In stories like these it might end up with the person getting over all his fears and achieving what they had only dreamed of until that point in time. It happened, but just a little different. This guy got stuck in this violence mode and slowly but surely this violence became the only way that he could function,” Mr. Ed says, “Scratch deep enough and you’ll find the true measure of a man.”

“So what did he do exactly?”

“He became a war tourist,” Mr. Ed says, “He would get the closest flight to war-zones that he could get, hang around, get guns and gear and set off. And this is where it became a beginning and the end: this guy didn’t go there to secure peace, or even for the thrills. This guy purely went there for the thrill.”

“To summarize: he found a way to tweak the system —he found a way to murder and butcher and not be caught or held responsible,” Michelle says, “So what are you saying? This guy was a dormant murderer all along?”

“Maybe,” Mr. Ed says, “And it links up with my premise: we’re violent by nature. Scratch deep enough and that’s all that we resort to.”

“That’s a grimview.”

“It’s the truth.”

“There’s one distinction though,” Michelle says, “A guy like that is a lone wolf. In a society violence serves the purpose of securing position and hierarchy.”

Mr. Ed leans back and there’s one thought on his mind: but that’s not what you think….

“You’re assuming that it’s always a means to an end….” Mr. Ed says. 

“When you get off on something….” Michelle says, leaning forward, “There’s an end….”

“What did you come here for exactly?” Mr. Ed asks. 

“I’m not sure,” Michelle says, “Maybe I came here to figure out what’s below the surface.” (the thrill of almostgetting caught!).

“….”

“It’s like a war by proxy: does funding a distant war make you guilty?”

“You’re in a position to prevent.”

“My point.”

“If I get my kicks out of watching other people do bad stuff, does that make me part of it.”

“Were you physically there?”

“….”

Mr. Ed thinks: did she see me? 

“What did you see?”

“It doesn’t matter….” Michelle says, “It’s a highly complex something and there’s no simple answer: there is a yesand a no, but it’s like telling a junkie that he shouldn’t drink.”

“….”

“It’s like anything else,” Michelle says, “There’s this outward appearance of sociability, society, human relations, art, and all that, but at the end of the day it’s all perception. It’s all individual. We can only grasp at straws when it comes to understanding what goes on in the mind of another person.”

“You want to know motive….” Mr. Ed states.

“It’s like this old story: there’s a man and a woman, they fall in love and live happily ever after,” Michelle says, “But that’s not how it works. There’s this vast undercurrent of human needs and emotions that’s like a hunger that doesn’t end.”

Mr. Ed thinks: she didn’t see me —she’s rambling about herself. This is all her, amigo! Brilliant and crazy and [BLEEP!]