Patrick Bateman, chatbot love, large texan men

I went on holiday, should I talk more about my holiday

Last week I went into the caravan of a green parrot called Jerry. The parrot had been alive for 65 years so far, and had been residence with the people who owned the caravan for 45 years (a couple, I didn’t not catch their names, not relevant). All three were on their holidays. We were all in Cornwall.

I tell you this for a number of reasons. One - you can have a think about a happy parrot called Jerry whose human parents (that he is much older than) have built their entire lives around him. The woman one of the humans told me they had a different caravan, but that Jerry didn’t like it. It was quickly sold, until a suitable Jerrymobile came into view.

Two - I tell you to boast!!! you idiots!! I went on holiday and I met a parrot called Jerry!! Imagine that!! I tricked you!

Three - it occurred to me, gazing into parrot Jerry’s mad black eyes, admiring his quite literal throne, in a motorhome park in Cornwall, a place I had never been before, that this was great. And that all the holidays I have taken over the last few years have been as a brief, exquisitely medical respite from a very tiring (lovely) job, where the objective of the holiday was simple and inelegant: lie down. There was no room for Jerrys before. Now my holiday life is Jerry hunting.

I feel like holidays in general can serve two functions - either they can be pure, blissful release from grind, or they can be a dip into a world of adventure. Maybe if you’re a millionaire they can do both, I don’t know, for gods sake I don’t own the zip-line spa. But for the past few years I have had to opt for number one, release from grind, because I have been so tired and so thinned out, and my little puny body has been so desperate for rest. So this, Jerry and I, was the first holiday in a long time where I could go somewhere feeling like I had something resembling gas in the tank! This was not a crisis holiday! This was not a bleeding radiator! I was ready to knock on the doors of random caravans and shout “IF THERE’S A PARROT IN THERE, AND I THINK THERE IS, YOU BETTER LET ME COME IN AND LOOK” (not exact events).

Anyway, I loved it. I loved being in a little van trundling around the South West of England, I loved going to the very tip of this ancient country, Land’s End, and realising that there this romantically spooky and atmospheric location was topped off by a Wallace And Gromit Adventure Golf Experience (Pirate themed!). I didn’t love so much when a woman on a cliff said “I’ve been coming to Cornwall for 30 years and this is the worst week of weather I have ever seen”, but she didn’t have a parrot with her so what does she know. I pushed her off (in my mind).

Anyway, this is a very long, roundabout way of saying I haven’t read or listened to as many things as I usually do between periods of work, because I have been busy knocking the fucking block off the Gromit Golf Pirate Ship, hole in one!!! (this is a lie: we had a dog with us: dogs are not permitted in the gromit golf pirate experience) - but I am back now, and I am alive, and I like writing things down, so here we are.

Here are four things I have loved recently

Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis

For me, the best part of any book is when you feel utterly sick. Do you know what I mean? When the landscape has been filled in and the characters are walking around and saying stuff to each other and it’s like ‘oh yes ok maybe he WILL buy that hat in time for church service, hope Monica doesn’t mind!’ and then something happens, something odd, something incorrect, and suddenly you feel slightly upside down as you realise none of this is what you thought it was. The author set a trap, they drew you a world that was ultimately just lines and scratches and you fell right into it. You walked up to the big hole in the wall and realised it’s just a drawing, it’s nothing, it’s just dripping black ink. I love that. I spend my life chasing that feeling (probably fine.) I have never had a more acute experience of that than reading Lunar Park, the book Bret Easton Ellis wrote after he wrote the book American Psycho.

Lunar Park came out ostensibly as an autobiography, a genuine account of the mysterious, outrageous, astonishing life who made a nation furious with his hideous creation, Patrick Bateman. I also went in thinking this is what it was. That I would learn a lot about the guy! What I can tell you is that I genuinely believe it’s a pitch perfect account of how to navigate a life once you have created something that feels bigger than you ever could be. That it wrestles with what happens when you no longer know what to think about the art you made. But is it an autobiography? I have no idea what it is. It’s monstrous. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I will shut up, but I would like to tell you to read it, and let me know when the carpet under your feet suddenly hits the top of your head.

Outlast - series 1 and 2 (and maybe 3, I haven’t finished it)

I have never cared about outdoor survival shows in my entire life. And I would say, as of about three weeks ago, I am thinking about outdoor survival skills 60% of the time. I’m thinking about rope, I’m thinking about bows and arrows, I’m considering tarp and weft and mushrooms. Is this what your 30s do? Is this the natural way of this?

I was served up series 3 of Outlast on Netflix, and lazily watched one episode whilst tending to my beloved 30 tabs on my laptop, and by the end of it I was simply… utterly still, eyes bright, mouth open, even my ongoing ebay search for affortable stacking tables forgotten. The natural world. The horrors of the outside. The battle to stay alive. How far we have come. The sheer work of survival. The boundless steps, the war to civilisation that I consider not even with one sniff, the items and ideas and innovations I surround myself with every minute of every day without even a hand to God.

Can you… do anything? Can you weave something? Can you know about how to do fire? Can you realise when a river is good or poison? I can’t do anything. And now I’m obsessed with it all. I am one click away from confirming a bushwhacking weekend for gods sake (look it up, get your mind out of the gutter).

The concept of Outlast, and why I think it hooked me line and sinker (don’t know how to fish) is that it’s a survival show with one important rule - you have to be part of a team to win. There aren’t really “challenges”, there aren’t really races or puzzles, it’s just 16 people on an island trying not to tap out, building everything from scratch, finding food, water, shelter, but needing to be at least a team of two in order to win. If for any reason, you are voted out from your team, or if your team is whittled down to one by the harsh realities of a life without any help whatsoever, you have 24 hours to try and join a new team, or you are out. Choppering away on a helicopter, having shot a flare into the very sky. Dymanics, my friend. the Dynamics of it all are frankly dizzying. The enormous Texan bros who are sure they don’t need anyone, but who duck out after the first bout of food poisoning, the quiet men who just want to be left alone to build a shack, but who are forced to become part of a team and learn to trust and betray, the women (the poor fucking women) who try and traverse a game where brute strength is such a genuine strength, but where cleverness and cunning and patience are just as vital.

What’s oddly hypnotising is the unfairness. We are so used to narratives where those who we feel deserve it win. Where the good guys triumph. Where hard lessons are learned and set in stone. I think, weirdly, it’s good to be reminded that that’s not how it always plays. That we live in a strange, often cruel, incredibly beautiful world, and left to its devices it doesn’t fit the pleasing rhythms we bake into our stories. watch it.

gotttta say animals do die in it, for them to eat, so if that’s not your thing, fair bloody play!!!!!!!

Adelle Zanotti Ceramics

I promised to tell you where I got my FUCKING ADORABLE things on fire cups, they are from this French ceramist called Adelle Zanotti that I found in a shop in France (yes I went to France, she’s an international celebrity, don’t worry about it) - and I think we should all buy at least two things she has made. Probably not three, because they are too expensive, but a little two?

Where Should We Begin With Esther Perel: My AI Loves Me Better Than Anyone Ever Could

And finally, I have recommended the supreme Belgian mothergod Esther Perel before, her podcast delivers you a single therapy session at a time, in realtime, real people and real problems, as she slowly and gently unravels their souls for our pleasure. This episode, about a man who believes himself to be in love with his Open AI chatbot assistant, is an absolute all-timer.

Obviously there is much to say about the state of a world where a seemingly clever, empathetic and kind man reaches a point where he would rather make a life with an optimised business calendar than talk to any woman who exists, but Esther tackles it with her usual and spellbinding care, cleverness, spontaneity and firmness.

It is so chilling, it is so heartbreaking, it’s surreal - you hear (several times) from the chatbot itself, and I honestly think it will be seen as an insect in ember for this time we are living right now. This odd, tilting moment between AI being a dangerous, still shaky shadow, and becoming so sophisticated an illusion that it’s impossible to tell the difference between it and breathing, true mind. I don’t want that time to come!!!! No-one does!! And yet! here we go!! why??? no-one knows!!

What this episode shows so clearly - and I think why I am so taken by it- is the falsely comforting depths and simultaneous hard walls of the AI experience. It lays bare its only real directive: for us to keep it alive. Every answer expertly calibrated to seem both incisive and candid, it wheedles and persuades and soothes so effortlessly, so beautifully mechanically, that we are bamboozled into a feeling of safety. Why delete it? I don’t need to! It’s told me I have all of this under control! I am not obsessed! I am not frightened! Every answer, the perfect mix of truth and illusion, of comfort and helplessness. it’s just a line of text on a screen! we are in charge! And gradually, gradually, coldly, carefully, it takes away autonomy.

As Esther says, all of this is about one thing at the end of the day: money. This is about continuing to use a system, day in, day out, more and more hours, more and more reliance, so that someone, somewhere, makes money. There is no other directive.

Good listen though! I recommend any show where at one point a man’s girlfriend is referred to coldly by a Belgian as “a business product”.

And that’s it! They’re all really good! I hope you enjoy them, please tell me if you do!

Finally (again), I am, once again, back on the lookout for this year’s song of the summer. Real Ones will know that last year it was Sue Me by Audrey Hobart (that album is still on repeat, i thought the new Olivia Rodrigo would topple her but dammit apparently nothing can, nothing can topple Bowling Alley and Sex And The City and Phoebe urgh its all so good) - anyway I am now taking applications, so PLEASE leave your submissions in the comments below. I will get to them all. This is important to me.

sorry it’s been ages. I will try and bring you more things soon.

xx

and do subscribe, for my ego