I have found a new piece from the magnificent Steve Aylett!
"As far as I could tell every single one of the thousand or so rats was exactly the same. Again, why the repetition of the same idea? It could be that they were different from each other in some subtle way I didn’t understand, but what could it be? Would they begin individually expressing different viewpoints and notions never heard before? Or simply attack me in the most boring way, each rat gnashing in roughly the same manner as its neighbour? I’ll leave you to guess which was the case."
Derren Brown predicted the Lotto numbers live on telly!!
Then the marvellous imp "revealed" three ways of winning the Lottery: (1) forge a ticket; (2) really predict the numbers; (3) rig the machines. Most of his show was devoted to option (2). We watched the lovely, lovely, lovely Derren charm twenty-four also rather sweet chumps into believing that -- if they only shed their greed (like good cultists!) -- then, like Power Rangers dolls, aggregated into a mighty Prophet Mech -- why, those Lotto numbers would come tumbling towards them like a little Temporal Hamster, scurrying in her ball against the flow.
It seems like "Deep Maths," post-Christian anxiety around civil privatism, the sedimented avant-garde cachet of Breton's automatism, and the wisdom of crowds ("the studied perspicacity of lynch mobs" as Auntie May used to call it) make up the New Credulity, and upon it the lovely, lovely, wicked Derren has founded the New Paranormal -- that's not boycum sealing your copy of Freakonomics, Derren -- it's ectoplasm!!!
But then in the very exciting bit at the end, Derren strongly implied he had really used option (3) -- eyebrow-waggled his way into the Camelot set-up, a veritable Jedi Knight of the Round Table, and rigged the lottery.
Of course, some cleversticks of Youtube Inc. quickly divined how Derren could have “predicted” the lottery with camera trickery, a sort of option (4) thingy. His unstoppably understated video was picked up by national news, because this is how we roll. The enigmatic snowflake which, in the teaser to The Events, Derren coquettishly lifts up to his chest rather like the doomed and overweight child who repulses Humbert Humperdink in the early chapters of Nabokov’s Lolita lifting a sticky red lollypop to hers, seemed to sign that Derren had indeed frozen half the screen.
The latest twist though comes from a member of the show's live audience, a sort of living "deleted scenes", who reports that they were shown a clip of Derren on an open-top bus travelling under the 2008 Christmas lights on Oxford Street, snowflakes unravelling about his cheekbones and glittering in the pits of his eyes, and his fists stuffed with mock-up Lotto balls prophesizing the correct digits.
But the very latest twist is that the studio audience who watched the studio audience being filmed saw yet another secret bit of the show, which seems to show that there is an option (5)! Melody had tickets, but couldn't go on account of having suddenly become responsible for the creation of twenty carrot and ginger cakes, despite not owning so much as a spoon, so this is from mine & Poesy's memories, known to be rather wonderful and interesting. Do listen out for what I think may be a rather clever sleight in the final moments:
[Derren speaking] Ah, Derren, Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damn'd perpetually! Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease, and midnight never come; Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make Perpetual day; or let this hour be but A year, a month, a week, a natural day, That Derren may repent and save his soul! O lente, lente currite, noctis equi! The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The devil will come, and Derren must be damn'd. O, I'll leap up to my God!--Who pulls me down?-- See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament! One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah, my Christ!-- Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ! Yet will I call on him: O, spare me, Lucifer!-- Where is it now? 'tis gone: and see, where God Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows! Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me, And hide me from the heavy wrath of God! No, no! Then will I headlong run into the earth: Earth, gape! O, no, it will not harbour me! You stars that reign'd at my nativity, Whose influence hath allotted death and hell, Now draw up Derren, like a foggy mist. Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud, That, when you vomit forth into the air, My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths, So that my soul may but ascend to heaven! [This now cuts to a profile shot of my ex-boyfriend, Dream, which is weird enough in itself] Ah, half the hour is past! 'twill all be past anon O God, If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul, Yet for Christ's sake, whose blood hath ransom'd me, Impose some end to my incessant pain; Let Derren live in hell a thousand years, A hundred thousand, and at last be sav'd! O, no end is limited to damned souls! Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul? Or why is this immortal that thou hast? Ah, Pythagoras' metempsychosis, were that true, This soul should fly from me, and I be chang'd Unto some brutish beast! all beasts are happy, For, when they die, Their souls are soon dissolv'd in elements; But mine must live still to be plagu'd in hell. Curs'd be the parents that engender'd me! No, Derren, curse thyself, curse Lucifer That hath depriv'd thee of the joys of heaven. [The vast red LED blinks 12:00.] O, it strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air, Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell! [Thunder and lightning.] O soul, be chang'd into little water-drops, And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found! [Enter DEVILS.] My God, my god, look not so fierce on me! Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while! Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer! I'll burn my books!--Ah, Mephistophilis! [Exeunt DEVILS with DAN BROWN.] [A sort of chorus enters and begins to strike the set.]
Paroxyms of gay man lust overwhelm me and I must go for a wander. Adieu, world-swabs.
