RIP.

They shot Jimmy Mohlala dead.

This isn't the start of more quasi-philosophising; no, this is news. Jimmy Mohlala, a senior South African politican, was murdered by a bullet or bullets because he dared to reveal the corruption inherent in the building of the stadium at Nelspruit for the 2010 World Cup.

Mohlala had the courage to speak out, and he fell where the treacherer's gun cut him down. Those who love South Africa, those who love football, those who grimace when great, heavy lives far more worthy than our own unbalance and fall back to earth with the rest of us, we will never let your memory fade. Right-thinking people the world over join me in condemning the drinkers of his blood.

Yet this awful eventuality should not be used to condemn South Africa itself, or the continent upon which she sleeps. I know already, though, that the rest of the world, its media in particular, will have an absolute field day writing about the African savages and their thirst for violence. You do not do so in my name.

The South Africa of your minds, with its undercurrent of dissonance, and fractured irreperably, is not the South Africa that drugged me when I slept in order that I woke up in love with it. It is not the terrible pendulum of sun over Mpumalanga that I knew, it is not the woman frying up fat koek for the incredulous tourist, it is not the smiling acceptance of a million little power cuts that I experienced.

Rational South Africans castigate without end those who did for Jimmy Mohlala, and this grief is more representative of a nation than his killer or killers. It doesn't stop the hard-of-thinking from rushing in and tipping a whole landmass and its inhabitants into the sea, though. Faulty Popperians see a single example of something and declare it representative of its class.

You can do this, like L and I did with romantic ideas, because ideas are fair game. Nations and groups of people, are not, and their obliteration from the realm of humanity by the realm of humanity - intentionally or not - is something that must be avoided at all costs.

PrincipLes.

A few days ago, L and I tried to confound the very nature of our humanity by dissecting what characteristics or thoughts are inherent in romantic behaviour.

This is the problem that people have with science - it takes what is natural, beautiful and inexplicable and (apparently) reduces it to a list of sober, brief statements. L and I held romance above our heads, her hand gripping one end, mine the other, and on the count of three we smashed it an infinite number of times against the ground until it gave up all its mystery. The light of reason seems to shine too brightly on the bloodied edges, and people are disgusted.

Scientists have been accused since time immemorial of tearing away what is significant and replacing it with their pragmatism. They plucked the earth from the centre of the universe and relegated it to the margins; they dragged man away from God's right hand and put him in with the animals; they told him that he no longer even has dominion over his own thoughts.

The vast space roamed by a raging, volatile God has been snipped away at by the sharp tools of scientific reason. Like an endangered animal, his habitat has been decimated year-on-year, and soon there will be nowhere left to hide. Science will catch him in its net and drag him, the dazzle of a trillion flashbulbs perforating the divine, agonised retina, into the laboratory.

When L, her beautiful, serious face belyinng the depth of her thought processes, unsheathes the bright scalpel of her intellect - I would kill to sit at its controls, even for an hour - then another square of God's territory is handed over to the freezing arts of logic, inference and falsifiability.

If L has succeeded in contaminating a square of land by writing her list of general principles, then I might steal a fraction of one by stating what thoughts or ideas are specific to her. This is not the way to do science - it normally proceeds by the accumulation of specific examples which demonstrate an overarching thesis. L went backwards, expressing general ideas firstly. Now it is time to state the case for L alone - her principLes, if you will excuse the word.

• L delivers extended romantic gestures without even realising it; burning her ambitions to rubble at my stake such is her determination to stay up all night. I realise now that ERGs require an explanation or an insight - you don't have to explain that you are staying up all night, because I already realise (insight or comprehension) as much. With explanation, insight or comprehension, we are presented with an ERG.
• Furthermore, L exemplifies the nature of sacrifice that we discussed previously. Simple romantic gestures, as stated, require none of the three lights mentioned to understand them.
  
• It is possible to strip simple (non-romantic) gestures of their sentiment due to improper, harsh language. I told L that I'd sooner see her go to sleep than think of her impossibly shattered body slumping over the keyboard. She (through tiredness or otherwise) misinterpreted this, and concluded I'd rather not speak to her at all.
• Sometimes I have to sit and deliberate for a while before I'm capable of saying (or writing) words that are both mutually comprehensible and represent things (feelings, ideas) which cannot be properly expressed. L does not, however, have to think, such is her connection with her own romantic self, and with the simple object she directs herself at.

Empty.

Your author no longer has anything to say to anybody.

Even the blank, prepared statements which are dispensed from my mouth like placebo now fizz away to nothingness under the suffocating carpet that is my tongue. I am mute, because the wire that I dreamed about manifested itself and cut my vocal cords to pieces.

There is a constellation of imagery floating around as internal processes - if they were made of gas, the pressure would soon build and blow a hole in the side of my skull. The frieze of metaphor and suggestion, liberated from the temperature of its oven, would spill out and emit their heat in a time series. The heat and light I recognise as being the force behind words. Once cold, there is nothing left but convention.

I go about my days sullenly, discouraging others from engaging me in conversation. Those who do are dismissed as quickly as possible, even though they only ever request functional things: what's the time, do you have a light? Often, I won't bother to speak at all, shaking my head as I move along quickly. Those who ask the time are given an answer in a stiff, robotic voice: Itisfourteentwentysevenwillthatbeall?

This is what it means to be devoid of anything, to have allowed yourself to be emptied for the course of a lifetime. I am a stickler for convention, because the predictability of its intonation gives away as little information as possible. Answering the question 'how are you?' with the empty receptacle 'not bad' is far less revealing than 'well, you know,' or 'now you come to mention it....'

Perhaps the first line of this post should be revised. It is not so much that I have nothing to say, as having nothing that I want to say. The silent ones mark themselves out thanks to the utter paucity of the information they supply. As with some of the local phrases I listed that are at the heart of every dramatic work, sentences which are used so often that their meaning has worn away are the mechanism which turns conversations.

It is when such clichés become torn from language, and supplant language itself, that a person becomes a silent one. A retinue of grunts, short words which pin down no specific idea, these become an under-language in their own right. They express everything that needs to be expressed, yet say nothing.

Vernacular.

I wish to analyse not so much the circumstances, but the language and attitudes, prevalent in a printing factory which pays the minimum wage.

My job is not that of the playwright, who appropriates everyday language and appends it to situations which are plausible but fictional; in this case I take common language and report it unmodulated.

The use of South Yorkshire slang to an uncomprehending, smiling Sri Lankan man who had loaded his stack of paper into the machine incorrectly: it's wrong rooerd rahnd! tha's gorrit wrong rooerd rahnd!

Removing the Sri Lankan man and myself off one job and onto another: tek these two usless fookers, cuz the can't do owt.

Caught texting 'L' when I was supposed to be working: tha might want ter do that in thi ooern time.

Listening to a woman on the train home during a cold morning: a thowt me feet wa gooin ter drop off.

A man preparing to go for his break: am off fer sum snap nar.

On trying to get a task finished quickly during the above man's break: gerrit dun afooer that dick gets back.

On jamming the machine: tha not geein it no air.

I describe a spare language, devoid of sentiment and spat out in passing, like a drive-by shooting. It is not lifted from the pages of a book, though, but scraped from the tongues of men.

Principles.

A few hours ago, L and I tried to state definitively what it means to behave in a romantic manner. We were both tired, though, and although we got so far, we still have some way to go before we arrive at a definition.

I tried to provide an aswer to a similar question some months ago using the example of a rose, and, again, got so far without providing an unequivocal answer. Having spoken to L, the one who exhales happily and gives birth to a whirlwind; for whom rainbows are a prototype of her smile; I am now ready to either build upon or discard my previous assertions.

L and I more-or-less agreed upon the following statements, or principles, which demonstrate romantic thinking or sentiment:

• The sentiment must (for the present purposes) be something which is mutually comprehensible. I cannot present a piece of balsa wood as an 'artifact of romance' and expect it to be understood, in a culture where balsa wood is not tied to the idea of love or commitment.
• Mutually comprehensible objects are - amongst other things - ones which we have been conditioned to accept for their symbolism - in western culture roses, flowers, heart-shaped objects.
• The presentation of a mutually comprehensible object is understood to represent a sentiment or sentiments beyond both words and actions. It states that which cannot be stated, yet it can be understood upon receipt of the object. Such receipt we call a 'simple romantic gesture.'
• Mutually comprehensible objects might exist in a transitory fashion. The playing of a (mutually understood) piece of music, its significance pulsating against the air, is another simple romantic gesture.

'Extended romantic gestures' are built upon their simple relatives. As well as being extended, they require more effort in their execution and comprehension:

• Extended romantic gestures are, as the name implies, more significant - due to the idea of sacrifice which is at their core. If I have a fear of heights, then asking someone to marry me when stationed at the top of the tallest building in England is an extended romantic gesture.
• Extended romantic gestures require an explanation before they can become (extended) mutually comprehensible objects. Only when the subject of the gesture is presented with supplementary information its significance be fully imparted. So a piece of balsa wood in lieu of the sentiment which binds could be an extended romantic gesture - providing that its attendant explanation is sufficient.
• L, the flash of lightning which bisects the sky, pointed out that even a detailed explanation does not necessarily convey the full power of particularly esoteric or difficult gestures. If L is in general reluctant to articulate what or how she is feeling, then for her to do this in itself is an extended romantic gesture. I, however, need to be fed with more information than is reasonable for her to provide before the full force of her symbolism becomes apparent. Hence we speak of a discontinuity.
• L, who folds the universe symbiotically into herself as she sleeps, disagrees with the assertion that all extended romantic statements are the fusion of at least two innocuous or simple romantic statements. This needs more thought and dialogue with L before I can draw a conclusion.

Antithetic.

In recent days, I've taken to visiting chatrooms and asking the inhabitants there how they know they are not striking up a conversation with a computer instead and not a human being.

Effectively, I am reversing the aims of the Turing test when I do this: instead of a piece of artificial intelligence trying to persuade a human subject that he or she is conversing with another human subject, I am a human endeavouring to convince another human that I am in reality a computer (pretending to be human.)

Strictly speaking, the aims of the Turing test are not actually reversed, because the correct setup requires three parties: a human subject (A) alone in a room; and subjects (B) - a human trying to convince (A) that (B) is human and (C) a computer programmed with some artifical intelligence code has the role of persuading (A) that (C) is a human subject and that (B) is not.

In the pared-down and reversed test that I've implemented, there are only two subjects - (A) and the negation of (C). The modulating influence of (B) is not present at all. Despite the omission, I assert that I would have passed the negation of the Turing test if I managed to convince a human subject that I am a computer (pretending to be human.)

I've failed to convince the chatroom (and instant messenger) inhabitants that the entity with whom (which?) they're communicating is a machine. Does this failure have any implications for those involved in getting a machine through the real Turing test? Common criticisms have been:

• sentence structure is too obviously written by a human
• fake error messages such as [text cannot be read at location n] and [string error] are
  
• evidently convoluted

I'd suggest that spelling mistakes at intermittent intervals and typical displays of human uncertainty - let me look up the answer to that; there's more than one way of thinking about the question you just posed - are necessary if not sufficient conditions for getting an artificial intelligence system through the test. A proliferation of error messages, however, seem to tip the opinion of the human subject into thinking that (B) is a human pretending to be a computer.

The paradoxical point I wish to make is that particular exaggerated human traits are enough to convince a subject that the conversationalist they cannot see is a computer. Perfect spelling, an exaggerated grasp of the tenets of a particular body of knowledge, making exhaustive lists of specific information - these three things suggest a other-worldliness which can only be embodied by a machine.

L.

It seemed quite natural to state that everything I write after an arbitrary point in time should have your fingerprints on it; that from now I put together strings of letters that have you as their engine. That now is akin to a magical invocation, a discontinuity. Any passing stranger should be able to note as much. In the former, we are aware of the stammering inability to describe in a comprehensible way thought processes and events. With a shake of a head and a dismissive click of the mouth we can reject what has gone before as the rantings of a bloody amateur. Ah, in hindsight it's so easy to criticise the lack of a thesis! Whoever the anonymous blogger is, the one who describes himself as the fusion of man and weblog, deserves to be castigated for a lack of scope and the inevitable jump from idea to idea to idea without ever pinning down even one of them. At Christmas 2008, something happened to synthesise the disparate voices of this author, or to dampen down all but one of them. Like tuning the static and the unwanted banter of disc jockeys and news programmes out of a desired radio broadcast, there was not unity but a singularity which had been promised, but unforthcoming, for years. Details of the event that cancelled the separated-out murmurs and brought clarity and purpose are not easy to come by. Some accounts suggest it was a woman with the initial L; some suggest the marking of someone's birthday; some both or neither. It led, though, to a period of creativity which defined the symbiotic relationship between blogger and blog - and, ironically, led to his uprooting from the blogosphere and into mainstream writing. Romantics will invariably accept the line that a woman - and only a woman - was able to claim responsibility for the surge in directed, coherent output. Such a female, her identity only ever guessed at but not recorded in a way which might lead to her presenting a world which has its breath held with her story, has been one of the classic vehicles of literary history, carrying a multitude of men forward upon the simulacrum of her smile or her voice. Her lack of a name, her lack of an image and a background means that any and all writers can project their own vision of her; there exists within her at once the infinity of the creative devastation she inspires and the emptiness of the idea that nothing which can ever be produced by a mortal can anywhere near match what has already been churned out by the random calculations and brute force of natural selection. It had been asserted in his earlier writings that the fusion of man and weblog had long eschewed the idea of a religious divinity. Imagine, then, his isolation when he was forced to conclude that his muse was the consequence of no more than a bag of genes being shaken up and drawn into the tactile world, and this combination shall henceforth be known as L. Such is the dilemma of every agnostic - why should there exist great beauty, great hope and the inevitable destruction or re-evaluation of values caused by such great beauty and great hope ex nihilo? On your birthday, the universe temporarily ceases to spit out the numbers which are the result of its calculations, and turns its face of close to absolute zero upon itself to briefly contemplate the troubles of the little humans who arrived out of the blue on one of the average planets in a region lablled the Solar System. For those weary, slight beings, the innocuous glance of a woman from the long-dead moment of a photograph is enough to cause them to suspend everything bar the lonely pursuit of the slightly drunken face that pushes itself into view during sleep, during the half-alive moments which signal the end of sleep, and during waking hours.