Pleasure

Is reality obsolete? From low-tech function like body piercing and artificially-stocked fishing pools, to the latest in bionics and VR gaming, Iara Lee's cyber-age intellectual survey – call it a *.DOCumentary – downloads a Future Shockful of data and defines the parameters of advanced technologies that delete nature and reprogram mankind. Cryonics defy death; the Internet exists outside time and space; smart drugs and surgery upgrade the mind and body. But are we headed
toward human optimization, or system crash? Timothy Leary, RU Sirius, Lisa Palac, John Barlow and others offer sound bytes against a mesmerizing screen display of cutting edge computer-graphics and archival clips. Exhilarating and disturbing, Synthetic Pleasures raises issues nobody today can afford to abort /retry / ignore.

Do you know the 116 paths to pleasure?

^116

»Old wine and young wives,« says an old German Gasthaus wall inscription,»are the best time killers.« A beautiful summer's day is only 24 hours long, but a beautiful woman is forever. When you reach a certain age (euphemism for: really old) there are only two things important: wake up and move. Everything else is irrelevant. If Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was such a milestone in the cause of human suffrage, how come www.slavefarm has over a million hits and a waiting list of »amateur« slaves wanting to be exposed? If the educational system of the world doesn't need drastic overhauling, how come the youth of today get their kicks from crack cocaine, killing and mutilating domestic animals, breaking young planted saplings, running down garbage cans with their parents' cars and committing all sorts of totally mindless vandalism, like committing suicide? Am I the only one totally horrified by this generation of De Sade's great grandchildren?

It gives me no pleasure to keep receiving these rating points. As fast as I spend them more are offered and I feel obliged to accept. There's no joy in it, simply a compulsion to accept a gift and find something for which to use it. They continue to accumulate and all I can hope is that in 30 days I will be free of them all.

and everyone here is caught up in the pleasure of the pain – and everyone here hides shades of shame – yeah but lookin' inside we're the same ...

The most intriguing use of the word 'pleasure' came from the Duchess of Wellington – who appropriately spoke of her triumphant husband pleasuring her »with his military boots still on« after some continental battle.