The Pub Travels Through Time, but Regresses

My former favourite pub is a time machine...

I swear to god it is something to do with the cellar. I caught a glimpse down there once, I didn't see any barrels of beer or spare bottles of spirits or crates of over priced coke bottles the size of thimbles.

Instead I saw a blue glow like Cerenkow rediation, and the sound of some massive demonic device that seemed to be sucking all the power out of the pub and setting off fire alarms, and bringing forth smoke.

This device seems to be some kind of time regression device. It's the only thing I can think of it being, For it is caused evolution, of the human race in particular, to run backwards.

Sometimes, I wonder if that also includes myself.

When I first started going, in the dim mists of (pub) time, the pub was a quiet stronghold of the intelligentsia, and dammit we were proud. The only pub open till 2am, it was our own speakeasy. It got more popular. Students were there playing music. There were lock ins for the chosen few, until 830am in one case.

Then the bad people heard about it, and initimidation arrived, along with horribly cheap coke snorted in the medievally unhygienic lavatories. The lock in bar staff left, and bar staff who encouraged the presence of thugs arrived.

The hairlines got lower, the knuckles began to drag. Faces began to bear the mark of inbreeding, rough voices, IQs lower than the pool balls used on the (sign of doom) pool tables. Fruit machines for the hopeless gambler. DNA decaying, you could see strands of it disappearing out the window, synapses dying just by being in there.

Bouncers on the door. Sub humans now present, girls with cottage loaf bun hairstyles, lacquered so they are hard and shiny, like the crappest bargain hunt antiques. Voice boxes have now de-evolved to the point where they can only make harsh, guttural sounds. As for the men...

Ballards Drowned World...people have lost the need for brains, they are operating with their spinal columns alone. Floodwaters rise, the pub is filled with giant ferns for the rabble to fight in. They spend so much time punching on the floor, the local pub-goer now walks on all fours. They copulate in the pub by masturbating onto the floor, the females then rub themselves in it like a lamprey or hag fish. 4 weeks later flat headed children are born, and she is ready for the next litter.

I'm watching all this. Recording it. Scientific observations from my corner. Taking genetic samples from drool and spittle and breeding fluids.

My once favourite pub is now in the Pre-Cambrian.

The Smallest Theatre

I regret there not being a proper art space in town for happenings to happen in. There's museums with a bit of room in them, a council hall for fusty exhibitions and stilted sculpture, and some commercial art shops selling overpriced oily things. Aside from school assemblies about overworked pit ponies, that's it.

Our proper theatre has nothing but tribute acts and has been-ers paying off a tax bill, and gigs are of the pub standard only, I'm afraid.

Myself, I like open spaces. But I also like small spaces, and in this town there are many – the old museum, caveish spaces in the indoor market, the tunnels under the town, endless pub upstairs rooms, side rooms, underrooms, overrooms..

Many places for people to think in are needed too, but a performance space is a must. I imagine having a theatre the size of a large living room, accommodating only the elite, with a small stage, a deranged MC in the Joel Grey crossed with evil Victorian scientist mold – oh how I wish this could be me – and small scale theatre, comedy, dance and burlesque acts.

The atmosphere would be elegantly depraved, on a compulsory level, and no low class kinksters shall be allowed. A door policy will be maintained, probably involving would be guests being able to quote from Kubrick or Cronenberg. No tracksuit bottoms, and anyone wearing Henri Lloyd within a thousand yards will be chased after by one eyed psychic bouncer, and killed.

Tolouse Lautrec will be raised from the dead to do the interior decor and publicity posters, and the official club anthem will be Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, as used in Zardoz. The bar will sell no lager, and anyone without an enjoyment of fine spirits will be ejected through the roof. There might be the odd event that will attract protests from the religious or the censorious – we will ignore all of them bar one, a random festive occasion in which all club members shall lynch our oh so moral enemies upon burning pentagrams.

But I don't want things to be too gothic, for I want the atmosphere to be welcoming to those who aren't adored to the nth degree. No nu-metal. No emo. But let's keep rules affecting the club members to a minimum shall we? And make those affecting the great unwashed who affect us positively DRACONIAN!

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 27.01.14

CONCEPT - The Multi Eyed Organic Telescope

We have telescopes, optical and otherwise, that massively multiply the aperture of the individual telescopes concerned by combining their light slash information, into one focal point, or place.

Probably the original design of this type was the Multiple Mirror Telescope in Arizona, where 6 1.8 metre mirrors operated in combination to produce the light gathering capacity of a 4.5 metre one, in a revolutionary design like a football, on an altazimuth mount.

The Multiple Mirror Telescope

The concept was used in radio astronomy, such as the Very Large Array, where it resulted in a radio telescope with an effective diameter of 27 miles or so.

The Very Large Array

So, as I patrolled the racking in my workplace, letting my brain escape from the confines of the stifling warehouse, and uncomfortable polyester uniform, I thought of replicating a similar instrument, but with the human eye...

What would you see, I wondered, if you were to somehow network every pair of fully operational eyes on the planet, and get them to all look at the same thing in the sky? Collating the information at a single nexus  - presumably done by scientists with non networked eyes, because that would get freaky - what would be the result. If you got half a billion eyes to look up at the Andromeda galaxy, would you get a superior result from one pair of eyes looking alone? 

And then, on a smaller scale, get a hundred folk to stand round a statue and look at it, to get a really good three dimensional image of it? If lots of people look at a fly, would you see it in great detail?

Or really, is this just an excuse to come out with a fantastic way of giving everyone the mega-willies? People walking around with 3g slats in the backs of their heads, wifi ariels installed in their spleens...non-concensual installation of eyeball CCDs on people's retinas as they beg for mercy?