Begin Grinding
Have you read DOKTOR SLEEPLESS #4? Did you perhaps put “grinding.be” into your webovisor, just to see what happened?
Boo.
My name’s Warren Ellis. You won’t see me here very much. I have given this place over to a crack team of mental patients with the brief to discover and present The Future — particularly the “future” of DOKTOR SLEEPLESS and grinder culture — wherever it lays, in potential, in the soil of The Present. I said to them:
Imagine: you want to be a superconnected, modified, new kind of human, and you consider your own body to be a work in progress, so you’re constantly looking for new things you can do to yourself (and others) while also keeping an eye on the collapsing planet around you because you want to have enough time to finish your body (or wish to use your many communications-technology devices to record it all as it collapses around your ears). That’s what you’re trawling for and gathering on grinding.be for others to keep up with.
This is how it begins. I imagine it’ll mutate, in time, as any culture or scene does. It’s going to be fun to watch.
Start.
Warren Ellis
Bloody England
3 January 2008
Yes. This!
I want to live in the future. May Tesla bless you when he returns.
May flesh and intertron become one.
You crazy fool.
That’s all well and good, but does this mean the definition of a Hot Babe is going to change?
“Ooooohhhh… look at the XG-23 Chronodial on that babe over there…”
This is… unwise. But very many fascinating things are.
Alas, but I cannot afford the future. I won’t be there when it comes. Still, I’ll try. Close my storage place. Hook up with a new cell phone company…today was an utter failure in that regard…just opened the door, glanced over the stuff. Something told me I can’t. I can’t. I can’t do it. And so I couldn’t. But I did go crazy on the looking at and through the cell phone places…trying out all the wonderful new phones…like the HTC slider…don’t remember the number…but, wi-fi and good camera and okay battery life and Vista software…but of course for being on line you need to do the dsl or fios trip…but, for mobile, on the go, it will work…and you can pick up a keyboard and hook up usb if you couldn’t get one bluetooth…the future awaits any one who can afford the financial ream job. Fucking sucks to be alive some times. I have a horde of comics to buy now. Thanks Warren. Keep Going!
Mike – for a lot of people it already has changed. Attractiveness has been tied to technology at least (and probably before) the invention of the automobile – what, you’ve never heard some buxom blondie declaring her devotion for the bloke in the Hot Red Corvettemobile?
Bringing it closer to the bone doesn’t change a thing. Tattoos are no longer a fetish but an attribute for social-sexual selection. Piercings. Implants. Plenty of people weigh the technology someone has placed in their body as part of their overall sexual worth.
And wouldn’t I love to be the girl with the beautiful Zeis-Ikon eyes…
Well, it was a delight to wander into my favorite comic shop and find Spiraltwist in the flesh, grinning and reading off a long list of Ellis-based goodness to occupy my dollars with. The dreaming should be excellent tonight. Gravel combat magic-ing both the Hulk and Iron Man into submission while folks with telephoto-contacts on their eyes record it all live and beam it directly to their pod-mates… I look forward to lurking in this future, pass me my rocket pack.
[...] a group blog Warren’s setup to document Grinder culture. As he says: Imagine: you want to be a superconnected, modified, new kind of human, and you consider your own [...]
[...] grinding.be » Blog Archive » Begin Grinding (tags: warren-ellis comics futurism body-mods) [...]
getting used to type with my two new sixth fingers.
Interesting, especially because there are a fair few of us internet types who really don’t look after our ‘meat’.
Is the future of body-mod a way to avoid having to exercise? Are the weird nutritional supplements one way of doing this?
Whatever happened to ‘smart drinks’?
Flesh of my flesh, Byte of my Byte
Tom Reynolds: You haven’t seen those electric ab-cizers, that stimulate the muscles with little electric shocks, to make them look toned? Of course, there’s no functional strength… but look pretty!
There is also some creepy electric mask that I think proposes to do the same…
People will take any shortcut possible to look conventionally pretty, and suffer great trials to look unconventionally pretty. The last remaining question is what lengths people will go through to be hyper-functional.
Slendertone Ab Belt
Rejuvinique
This is a great idea personally through reading the doktor sleepless series so far ive found an uncanny sense of association with the grinders, i would willingly advance my body through extreme additions.
Why should i wait for evolution to happen to future generations when the only evoulution that can occur in a molly coddled enviroment is cultural. And theres the catch, culturally we are stagnant so only through extremes can we trully become evolved culturally physically and mentally.
[...] is one of the reasons I take the “find outbreaks of the future” mandate so seriously. First of all, outbreaks of the future are not always pretty; but secondly, [...]