ABOUT & CONTACT

I write, as you may have discovered, about unconditional love, death, the origins of civilisation, the horrors of work, small gods, paradise, philosophy, the truth of politics, gender, mental ‘illness’ and miss genius. I also make infographics, comic strips, subvertisements and little guides to everything, much of which you can find here. I am not qualified to write about any of this.

I love (and endeavour to write) outsider literature — Steppenwolf, Catcher in the Rye, Valis type fiction, and non-fiction inspired by Louis Mumford, Ivan Illich and John Zerzan. By ‘outside’ I mean outside of civilisation. I don’t reject everything within the history of civilisation, which would be silly, but I do believe that, ten thousand years ago, man (and I do mean man) made a catastrophic wrong turn into self.

Life-wise, I have worked—in Russian cement factories, Spanish anarchist squats, Japanese high schools, Qatari military schools, Sudanese oil companies and Saudi shit-holes—and I have groomed horses, impersonated priests and sold shrunken heads—but it’s in avoiding work, for twenty five years, that I have really succeeded.

I am the author of The Apocalypedia, which I spent a large part of that twenty five years writing, in order to make unfathomable sense of everything, usefully offend everyone offendable, demolish the preposterous notion, once and for all, that quantum mechanics and the female orgasm are unrelated and say something actually new. Since Green books accidentally published it I’ve revised about 2.5% of it; hopefully they’ll accidentally publish a second edition.

I also co-wrote and designed Belly Up! an absurd and satirical adult comic, and 33 Myths of the System, a free guide to the Unhappy Supermind, Belly Up TV, a six part cross between Monty Python, the Day Today and Bahubali, a novel, called Drowning is Fine, about crap sex, desperate penury and ecstatic erotic revolution and another teevee show called Fired, a black comedy about working yourself to death. This is one of the best things I’ve ever done — enthusiastically endorsed by Terry Gilliam if that means anything to you — but I’m finding it very hard to get it made.

At the moment I’m just finishing my follow-up to 33 Myths, Self & Unself, which is a work of popular philosophy. My intention is to write a bona fide masterpiece, the first actual advancement in the tradition since Wittgenstein and, beyond him, the mighty Schopenhauer, a friendly, readable (well, mostly — some parts will be difficult), mind-blowing guide to everything. An absurdly unrealistic aim I well know, but I believe that all good work comes from failing to achieve the impossible. I’m pretty sure that at the very least that some parts will be wonderfully strange and truthful, or strangely and truthfully wonderful.

You can write to me at the email address on the picture. Please tell me a bit about yourself, because it’s nice to feel that you are talking to a flesh-and-blood person and not a disembodied virtual brain machine-gunning questions—but don’t worry if you would prefer just to write a few lines of anonymous abuse, because that too I will warmly welcome into my innermost.

I really do welcome criticism, and very much encourage people to send it, even if I usually ignore most of it. I don’t think anyone can do anything worthwhile unless they open themselves up to the harshest critique.

Note also there’s a mailing list pop up at the top of these pages (which you can dismiss). If you put your address there you’ll get very occasional news updates of my doings and froings. It’s a good idea if you like my stuff because I don’t have any other way of making announcements, apart from a thinly attended twitter account, and if something does emerge that will interest you, you’ll not hear if it any other way. I won’t put your name on the mailing list if you just write to me though.

By the way, Google, Amazon and my book flap all describe me as an ‘activist’. I’m not. I’ve never done it. I could imagine a kind of activism that I would love to do, but the opportunity has never arisen.

Finally, if, for some reason, you want to know more about me, I’ve written this rather self-indulgent post.

Technical Stuff

The site was built on WordPress.org (which I don’t like, but have no time or skills to change to something simpler and lighter) using the Kalium theme.

The typefaces used are Plantin MT Pro and Gill Sans MT Pro.

The site doesn’t look as good on a smartphone because I don’t have one (yes, correct, because I am too smart) and I don’t know how to change images and layout for mobile devices.