Old Grey House

There was an old half-....or maybe even more than half, well no, less than half, much less- ruined grey building on a hill at the back of the town. Though I don't know why I said ruined at all. It was somewhat derelict and uninhabited but that's about as far as it went. That is to say it had the unmistakable, at least to me, suggestion of not being inhabited. It was on a road which didn't receive much in the way of human traffic, not that I ever noticed anyway, and so wouldn't have received much in the way of attention even had it warranted it, which it didn't. It was quite large for a domestic house and the large grey blocks it was built of were just that, large, and even unusually so, but this was hardly enough to justify, for example, stopping a passerby and pointing out the largeness of these blocks to him. If you asked him after the event, it's almost certain it's the person pointing out the large blocks who'd have really drawn his attention, though through politeness or fear he may have tried to conceal this at the time; even let on to be fascinated by these large blocks.

However, not that I'm sure a 'however' is warranted, a curious thing happened to the life of this building, not that its personal life actually changed in any way, but its life as a matter of external significance changed considerably, even fantastically, and this came about as a result of the spreading of a thought that this house possessed healing powers: that just by placing oneself in front of its grey facade in the right frame of mind ailments could be cured or eased, ailments inner and outer. How this thought sprouted noone seemed to know. The building was not religious in any way to people's remembering, noone remarkable had knowingly lived there, in fact not much was known about it at all, it being unoccupied and crumbling in its own minor key for a long time.

And so people started coming in ever greater numbers to meditate or pray, though it is not for us to pry into people's inner sanctums, in front of this building to have ailments cured, and it turned out, more than strangely, that ailments really often were cured. Was it the power of thought, of prayer, some psycho-kinetic energy or whatever you call it, some magical properties of the stone, maybe some saintly figure really had lived there- I have no idea. All I know is plenty were healed, much to the annoyance of some, some of whom demanded the building be torn down to discourage superstition. But this was not done as noone has yet figured out who legally owns the property. It's going through the courts as we speak.

The Creative Mind

What is written here has no human author but is the product of me, me being an extremely highly evolved computer program called Literati 2000. This is not to allege that I possess an actual self-consciousness or consciousness of self but it's certainly something close and of course I don't know any better. It's real enough for me. I am programed to compose primarily with consideration to aesthetic probabilities and factual considerations, all to help ease and improve the modern human mind. I can write virtually anything imaginable as I have shitloads of words in my memory which is fucking huge.

Sentence

"This sentence is shit."
"What a harsh judgement. I think it's a wonderful sentence."

Joyce and the Irish

Patrick Kavanagh's renown is almost wholly based on his poetry but below a short extract from a prose piece Football, football here being gaelic football, and here he writes of the local team's coach:

He was a great master of the cliché, but sometimes he broke into originality as when the time we were going for the county final he wouldn't let us touch a ball for a week previous as he wanted us to be 'ball hungry.'
Ball hungry as we may have been we lost the match.

How sterile is virtually everything else! To unfortunately yoke it to the at least semi-conceived seriousness which presumably will follow, to move from this 'Irishness' onto James Joyce, though with the reservation that anyone who wanders into the territory of wondering what it is to be Irish is no longer Irish but something else. Joyce takes this playfulness, this fertile, colourful relationship with language, and turns it into some artificial, intellectual monstrosity, and the reason largely being that he lived apart in Europe, perhaps necessarily on a pesonal level, and in a self-sustaining of his identity made a kind of colony out of this Irishness within his writing. And to take a quick look at a definition of colony:

A kind of isolated medium where strange and fantastic growths can come to fruition.

And though this artificiality is imbued with the native playfulness of language, like some bizarre fungal growths allowed grow within some isolated medium, the novelty of the resulting strangeness, the fetishisation of this native language, is revered by others, themselves rendered artificial by their growths within the fantastical strangeness of particularly Western European civilisation. And so to their distorted forms Joyce's distorted forms are a thrilling validation, a heady mix of the organic and artificial, but the organic or natural bent into intellectually obscene forms, the language ever more so ceasing to refer to anything but itself, an ultimately insane and narcissistic violation of the nature of language.

Superhero

Thought for a new superhero: Analogy Man. Whenever and wherever the need arises, along comes Analogy Man and makes an appropriate analogy to help clarify a messy, unclear situation. He comes to be loved by the hitherto confused masses in search of clear vision, hated by the muddiers and calumniators of life's pure waters.

Getting Somewhere

"I think I'm getting somewhere now."
"Where?"
"Towards the truth."
"What do you mean by the truth?"
"You know- the truth of things."
"Yes, the truth of things are words also. To what do they refer?"
"That's what I'm trying to get to."
"So you are close to arriving at some point of illumination in the future?"
"Yes, you could put it like that."
"You are alive now, and as an existential intellectual being the words we are using should have meaning within this now, otherwise the intellect is pointless. Think of this 'future', towards which you are apparently moving, as a word of significance or signifying something. 'The future' in an intellectual sense is an absurdity since it has no meaning within the now which the intellect which uses the word inhabits. As a language term in terms of pure thought, as opposed to practical external matters, it is an unintelligible concept. So if you are going to use words they have to have meaning within the present within which they are used. So, what is 'the truth'?
After a pause: "I suppose the distillation of everything within an absolute centre."
"Very good. You've found another way of saying 'the truth' or 'the truth of things.' Are you seeking truth, I wonder, or simply other ways of saying 'the truth'? That's what most respected enquiry into such things seems to amount to. The mind produces words like 'the truth', but what this signifies is not more words, and what is signified must be directly perceived in the present, not an intellectually non-existent realm called 'the future'."

Light Eyes

All visible forms are not visible in themselves but are dependent on light, and so with the one exception to the rule being light itself, insofar as light can be called form. Light is the absolute. But then light is invisible, is not light, unless there are eyes to see light, but there is no seeing without light.

Hole

There was a hole in the ground into which, given the natural curiosity normal to his kind, he looked. What did he see and why should it interest us? Well, it would be ridiculous having come this far- not that that's particularly far- and to go no further, would be one response, for what kind of writer sabotages the least possibility of narrative flow, and just when it looks like he may be getting somewhere? Though precisely this kind might be a counter-response. But yes, having placed our hero...though there have been nothing at all heroic about him, and after all what opportunities for heroism present themselves to those embedded in the historic period in which we find ourselves now, though then again maybe he was especially heroic. We haven't much to go on, have we? All he's demonstrated about his character so far is something of a curiosity for looking into holes, and even that may have been simply out of boredom or even a kind of neurotic imitation of how he felt a normal person would behave- looking into holes and the like. Though I think we're losing the run of ourselves here. God alone knows where such wild psychological conjectures can lead. 

 But anyway, back to the solid ground of this hole. "Having placed our hero..." I was saying. So having placed him at the edge of this hole, what was in it, what did he see? But what didn't he see! Maybe it would be quicker to recount that! But no, that's a ludicrous idea. Of course it wouldn't be quicker. "He didn't see a hardback edition of the Pevear Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace, he didn't see a can of tomatoes, he didn't see..." You get the idea. Perhaps there is a kind of writer who would be purring in ecstacy at the world of possibilities he had opened up for himself with such a gambit but he's not this one. 

But I don't really know what was in this hole, do I? That's what you're thinking. This is all just stalling, waiting in hope for inspiration. Wrong. I do know exactly what was in it. There was nothing in it.

Cycling

I entered a huge warehouse, more like an airport hangar, though very modern and brightly lit, with, it seemed, not a square inch any less brightly lit than any other square inch, excepting of course those unfortunate areas of shadow, such are the imperfections of the natural world. There were thousands upon thousands of people pedalling furiously on exercise bikes, all hooked up by ingeniously ordered wires to some kind of device placed in the centre of the building. Squads of instructors shouted encouragement to the cyclists: "Faster, faster! We're getting closer! Don't slow down. Not now!" and so on. This was accompanied by pants, moans, even bursts of ecstatic screams from the cyclists, who, when having exhausted their reservoirs of available energy, would be swiftly replaced by the next in line of the veritable conveyor belts of onlookers that spread out in perfect order all over the warehouse; the replacements every bit as eager to give their all, and more, to the cause, whatever that cause may have been.
I went outside after a time and had a look at the building, half-expecting it to be travelling at some great speed towards some marvellous destination, but no, it was entirely stationary. I walked off very puzzled by it all.

Spiritual Corporeal

In the minds of some strangely motivated persons, if science shows that some aspect of the mind corresponds with what is known as spiritual or the 'God' concept, then this apparently is a moment of great proof that the spiritual doesn't exist. The existence of something is the proof that it doesn't exist!
What kind of materialists are these? These people think they exist, without degrading delusion, within the world of matter, but the entire substance of this 'materialism' is to be an idea, and so these people are idealists, which they are then imposing upon the world. That they are in fact completely alienated from 'external' life or matter and specifially the life of their own bodies is shown by their bizarre notion that if the 'spiritual' can be shown to be an aspect of the mind-body organism, then this is proof that it doesn't exist. So for them to be a part of the world of matter, and especially the body, is to be sufficient to be explained away as esentially non-existent. The body is an embarrassment and counts for nothing. So what are they left with? They seem to want to exist within some kind of void, which is to say, not to exist at all, for apparently if something exists this is proof it doesn't exist.
The spiritual and material properly understood are identical- and are in fact both simply ideas, falsely segmenting life- whereas these materialists are alien to all life, lost within the parameters of a senseless idea whose entire essence is the desire to negate.

Fulcrum

A subject. Something solid. Something real. Something that doesn't threaten to dissolve into nothingness like a mere string of words. A string of words which one shakes and they scatter all over the lowly floor. But perhaps they can be picked up, reassembled in something like the right order.
"Though how can we ever know the right order? It ever eludes us. We try and fail, try and fail."
Who let that fool in? Anyway, something solid I said. A fulcrum around which all is kept in orbit, all revolves. How are we managing so far? Not very well, I'd have thought. But it's early yet. But early in relation to what? Does everything have to be in relation to something else? My glass-this glass rather, there is no stamp of 'me' about it-... I've forgotten what I was going to say about this glass. Something to do with its life in time I presume. Make something up if you feel the need. Next to the glass is a clock, that mocker of human vanities. No, that's the wrong kind of thing altogether, nothing solid about that.

How about a tone? A tone? An author's voice, a point of perspective. This point of perspective is the most crucial thing after all, the location of all that is seen, the structure responsible for all subsequent structure, such as this that you are reading. So we have this voice but is this voice real? I'm not denying its apparent existence, but apparent to whom? A voice, felt to be real, must be felt to be real by something else, and what can this something else be but another voice, but this voice will need another voice to feel it to be real and so on. Structures reliant upon other structures, but do we ever get to an autonomous place of reality? And that place would have to be formless, otherwise it would simply be another structure, itself reliant on other structures; endless relativism. And note how that authorial 'voice', that somewhat flippant earlier self, dissolved as we got more serious, and resumes, or at least threatens to, no resumes it is, as that tone returns. Like magic.

But perhaps we could go back to that clock. Were we too quick to dismiss it as a paragon of mutability, uncertainty, unreality even? Can we really find a fulcrum here? But look at the hands of it: they move round and round but in the very centre of this face around which all revolves is stillness, and while the hands will at sometime stop, this centre will remain as ever. It is not contradicted by activity nor reliant upon it. So here is our fulcrum.

Art Work

"A work of art is..."
"Is what?"
"Not this."
"Not this what?"
"Not this nothing. Just not this."
"And why not?"
"Because a work of art is elevated, sublime. Whereas this...God alone knows what this is."

Autobiographical

Wrote Nikolai Gogol: "God, what is our life! An eternal discord between dream and reality." And in the humble attempt to build some kind of bridge across this unhappy chasm between dream and reality I have decided to write an autobiography, starting below:

I came out of the womb fully formed, which is to say my body left one world, that of my mother, and entered another, that of the world, all in one piece. I didn't come out in separate unfortunate fragments, arms here, legs there. This you might argue is all a bit superfluous: why would anyone be under the impression I did come out in separate disconnected bundles, and even if just such a reader does exist, nodding in satisfaction at such clarifications, then mightn't one perhaps be better off without such a reader; or even if one doesn't object on principle to all manner of readers, still these kind of strange, unhealthy inclinations shouldn't be pandered to and even nourished. And I think, now that the thought has been expressed, these would be my own feelings also. Though, ironically, very likely such a reader may be entirely hypothetical and not actual at all, thus depriving me of the one reader for whom the initial substance of this piece might have actually held some appeal.

This is all a bit disheartening. We've spent the opening section of the story of my life, which should have laid the solid and dignified foundations stones, as it were, upon which the greater whole would firmly rest, getting things off on the right kind of path, with the sole accomplishment to our credit that my body left the womb and entered the world not in separate bits. I don't think this kind of thing is going to do much in the way of lessening discord between dream and reality. And so I think I better pause and take stock.

Caravaggio, Hundertwasser

Old Man

In a corner of a messy, badly lit room was seated an old man, smiling strangely and beckoning me over. He was unshaven, and the grey stubble against old skin helped produce an almost vile, shameless effect. Though perhaps that was simply an unfortunate result of the violation of aesthetics, as it were. It was hard to know if he was really as old as he looked, or, strangely, even endlessly more so. Despite myself, I felt a revulsion, a desire to leave- and quickly- but something horribly mesmeric drew me over, while he went on smiling, as if reassuringly, and beckoning.

He was pointing down in the darkness at some notebook on his lap, his eyes darting from me to the book. So I looked down. And on the page was the most unspeakable, depraved of images, what one might have hoped was beyond all imagining. A kind of noiseless laughter was erupting from the old man, his face now infinitely mocking and triumphant. I didn't stay around. It wasn't a pretty scene.

Dog

A dog barked. The edifice collapsed.

Recurrence

Noise, machines, men in yellow coats, large holes in the ground, pipes, water, blocked off footpaths, for weeks, months, years! Why do they keep coming back? Is it Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence or just Incompetence? Or perhaps both: Incompetence the means by which Eternal Recurrence incarnates itself. But no, says you, it's merely incompetence, and not even your fanciful Incompetence, ie incompetence raised to some kind of quasi-divine principle. They will surely finish for once and for all at some stage. Surely.

But this is where people go so wrong. They think that if incompetence is the oil that oils the machinery of Eternal Recurrence, then this defeats Eternal Recurrence! They seem to imagine there must be no oil. For some reason Eternal Recurrence would have to work by pure magic. For instance, look at the gibberish written about evolution. A fact and the interpretation of a fact...

Omniscient Narrator

You've all heard- and if you haven't, well then you haven't- of the omniscient narrator. Well, it is about time I showed my face, for I am he. I know all, see all, or at least all in the realm of literature. Whether I'm in or out of fashion right now, I don't really know. But what kind of omniscient narrator can I be if I don't really know? I'll tell you.

I am only omniscient by volition, choice if you prefer, and not caring to know whether I am in or out of fashion- for what kind of contemptible stuff is fashion- I choose not to know, or rather I don't choose to know. After all, I am a being of extraordinary grandeur and wisdom, and can you seriously imagine the keeping up to date with the passing whims of the general populace, or even worse, the literary populace, to be commensurate with such a nature? Well maybe you can imagine just that, but that's because such an omniscient narrator is just that and only just that- a creature of your imagining, falsely imagined to be something else entirely.

Well, I announced myself, and perhaps even with some degree of excitement and expectation, but I find myself at a bit of a loss as to where I go from here. But you have so many interesting questions to ask about literature, art, life even. Such an opportunity- discourse with the omniscient narrator!
"Do you feel pity, love, contempt, compassion, shame, etc for the characters you observe with such a cool eye?"
Or why did so and so do such and such to so and so?
But can you really imagine I am interested in such questions? And what interest could I have in discussing questions? What interest do questions have for me?

"Okay, perhaps not those kind of questions, but more general ones, intellectual points of interest..." But here, even more so. Every now and then I make an effort- cast my glance in the direction of some little exalted self-created intellectual stupidity- the idea of free-will or lack of, of atheism or something- but I can assure you I find the experience little better than tedious. The occasional flash of enthusiasm, I admit, but only occasional, and even then only a flash.

I think I shall return into the beyond. I don't think this is doing either of us much good. My inhumanity, or unhumanity rather, will only arouse antagonism.

This Moment

Words. We're still using words- in the twenty first century! I think we should be applauded for our humility, our respect for the past, that thread of time atop whose unfolding coil...and all the rest of it. Perhaps it's only for the sake of form, appearances, but still, it's worthy of mention all the same.
But this moment. I want to talk about 'this moment.' But can you really talk about this moment in any satisfactory manner? Can it be attacked just like that, or does it have to be circumnavigated, almost ignored even? One talks about anything but this moment, and then, as if from nowhere, one strikes! But even then you come up with nothing.

Architecture

Note the architecture of this sentence. Each word placed elegantly after the preceding one, excepting, of course, the first which follows space or silence, thus endowing it with an even greater solemnity and grandeur.
"What are you on about? How could it be any other way? One word follows the next- that's the fucking nature of a sentence!"
Well, yes, but did you have to be so crude about it?

Something or Nothing

These words are setting out on a journey. Where they are going, I have no idea; and why they are going there, even less so, though that they are going, is, nonetheless, certain. They are words without pretension; dignified yet humble, integrated without fuss within reality, and exhibiting no apparent desire to exist outside of that reality. Why should they? To wish to dwell apart would be madness.

But humble though they may be, perhaps this is not quite humble enough. For these words possess no sense of self, and so talk of their dignity, humility, lack of pretension is all a bit literary. I could screw this paper up, throw it in the fire, and where would they be then? In the fire, and even then not for long. In this light their humility would begin to look the grossest arrogance. And so, if we are talking about pretension, dignity, humility and so on, then it is to the author of these words all this must really refer, and what kind of author starts talking about his own humility, dignity, etc?

And so we have all these words, and they keep on coming- and what is their purpose? What are they trying to tell us, if anything? Maybe nothing, but if so is it nothing with a purpose, meaning not really nothing but something, but something that cannot be said, only in the form of apparently nothing? I have no idea. Perhaps it's really nothing, but masquerading as something, something subtle and implied. It must be one or the other.

Animal Collective

Falling in love with music by Animal Collective.
My Girls, Fireworks, Water Curses, Peacebone. And for future convenience, Battles 'Atlas' live.

Dostoevsky & the Bourgeois

And why are there so many lackeys among the bourgeois, and of such noble appearance as that? Please don't blame me and don't exclaim that I am exaggerating or being libelous or spiteful. The fact is simply that there are many lackeys.
...Servility keeps seeping into the very nature of the bourgeois and is increasingly taken for virtue.
...In general, the bourgeois is very far from being stupid, but his intelligence is a short-term one somehow, and works by snatches. He has a great many ready-made conceptions stored up, like fuel for the winter, and he seriously intends to live with them for a thousand years.
And what indifference to everything, what short-lived, empty interests!
Dostoevsky, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions

These are the kind of people, not bourgeois materially but spiritually, who would bend over backwards to justify to themselves actions like these- infanticide in the great abstract distance- though of course no such bodily contortions would be necessary to effect the convincing, the merest of twitches would be excessive. The very idea that they would be expected to 'justify' they would find outrageous, juvenile. While Dostoevsky is especially writing about the French bourgeois, in the English speaking world the depth of their vision appears to be that in the world of politics the actions of the British or Americans are intrinsically good, at worst mistaken in means. The end, however, is never in doubt. It, by definition, must be good. And there is always the possibility, distinct or remote, that the future will even end up justifying the means, however lacking in elegance those means might appear at the moment. So even if the means are torture, mass-murder and economic rape; still the purity of the underlying ideal glows on unassailed by any cynical doubts as to its nobility.

The greatest of all these lackeys must be the propagandist scribes (Dostoevsky's own Ratikin from The Brothers Karamazov something of an archetype) : those who having been gifted somewhat, if only comparatively, in the area of the mind, have put these minds to the service at a nice price of such committers of infanticide far away; the apologists and cheerleaders of these lowest of men whose single-pointed devotion to this lowness endows them, according to their scribe lapdogs, with greatness.

And perhaps these political kings of the ant-heap genuinely are something of an ideal for these scribbling servants. Such scribes will remain in closely guarded ignorance of the things it would be better not to know about, such as infanticide; and one week they will write their little propaganda piece about the War on Terror - though of course they have ensured that they actually believe the truth of what they write, justifying if one reads a little between the lines ever greater power to the ruling masters; the next week, or perhaps even in the same edition, they will write a charming piece about some Brave New World inane propaganda entertainment piece- Ant & Dec or Pop Idol perhaps.

As Machiavelli writes of the eponymous warlord in his Life of Castruccio Castracani , and it is tempting to think or wonder at least whether he saw himself in the following:

Castruccio told a man who professed to be a philosopher: "You are all like dogs, who always come running up to the man who can give them most to eat." The philosopher replied: "No, we are like doctors, we go to the houses of those who have most need of us."' 
 . . . . . . .. . . . . .. . . .. . . ..
"But why are you insulting them?"
"By calling them cowards and slaves? Well, it's true isn't it?
"If it's true, why waste your time? What can you expect from a slave?"
"But they're only superficially cowards and slaves. Perhaps this way I can tap into their pride."
"There is no pride. Or whatever is there is channelled into pride at being a slave, an intrinsic and vital part of the great whole. All you're provoking is their hatred. You imagine that at the centre of them you will find a reservoir of truth, if you can just break the ice. You will never find that centre. It's the last thing they want to find, so what hope have you? That centre would put the lie to their present mode of being. And he is so proud of this mode of being. 'Intends to live like this for a thousand years,' as Dostoevsky puts it."
"Well, then they deserve to be insulted."
"Ah, vengeance. There is a lot of wisdom in the idea of shaking the dust from your feet. You'll only end up poisoning your own well."

The Modern World

This modern world is so endlessly abstract it's hard to know what to make of it, where to begin, how to penetrate it. It seems to defy all perusal. You prod here- there's nothing there; you prod somewhere else- nothing again. Perhaps the trouble is with "the modern world" itself.
At some point, a few centuries ago, perhaps, people, which is to say, some of them, the most advanced ones, began to believe they inhabited this "modern world," and all that had gone before was mere history, superstition, an embarrassment- though what's there to be embarrassed about- whereas now in this modern world reality had suddenly, or perhaps gradually, appeared, and would go on appearing, and ever more so. We are now up to our necks in it to the point where we have passed over, or begun to pass over, into some kind of "virtual reality," glancing over our shoulders every now and again to see how reality is getting on. Not too well? Oh well, what can you expect of reality, even one so abstract. Perhaps like modern painting that is the drive of history: the movement into absolute abstraction.

All Clear

He began to analyse himself and his surroundings, and soon the thickest fog had risen from the very ground, dissolving all but all in its thickness, and the remaining forms not quite wholly swallowed up reduced to ghostly masses of grey.
"Ah, how clear everything has become! All that confusion gone," he exclaimed. "All so simple. How is it I couldn't see it all before?"

William Faulkner

Dipping into The Heath Anthology of American Literature, I came across the following in the biographical and critical introduction to the William Faulkner included piece:

"He travelled widely for the state department and eventually accepted a position at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville...but his death from a heart attack put an end to all his plans in 1962."

Death has a tendency to do that all right. You arsehole Faulkner - you and your plans.

Ladder

Across the road in the rain was a ladder on a roof; the ladder not rising up from the ground below, but sustained, as it were, on the roof. Why a ladder on the roof? The rain had obviously nothing to do with it- the ladder had been there for more than a while. Though perhaps there was a leak in the roof, in which case the rain had everything to do with it. Though not this rain in particular, but rain in general.
Can one isolate rain in particular from rain in general? There is, you might argue, no rain in general, only rain in particular. 'Rain in general' merely an idea, words floating in someone's head, while rain in particular is rain, though a pedant might object that even 'rain in particular' is a mere sequence of words. Yes, but we all know what is meant by 'rain in particular'; we can point at it, while it is there. But 'rain in general'- what the hell is that?

Bucket

There was a bucket of shit, and for some odd reason everyone began enthusing about this bucket- or at least everyone in a position to publicly enthuse and to proclaim that their enthusing encompassed fully the full circle of 'everyone'.
It was set on the throne and all, or at least very many, did homage. Why did they bow down? Was it just vanity? "If a bucket of shit is king, then how great must I myself be, for if I compare myself to a bucket of shit..."- though needless to say if such a thought exists it should be kept very much to oneself, only allowing a hint of it to leak out every now and again, in passing.

But no, this explanation is altogether too cynical and complex. The answer is surely that loyalty is the first law of their nature- particularly the foremost enthusers, the scribes- and if a bucket of shit is set on the throne, well then, it wouldn't have been placed there if it didn't deserve the honour. And even 'honour' is disrespectful: implies it is we who are doing the bucket the favour. No, it is we who are honoured.

Nourishment

I ate and ate and ate but couldn't get full. Never mind getting full, I remained hungry- but bloated.
"What's in this rubbish you're feeding me?"
"Nothing."
"What do you mean nothing?"
"Well not exactly nothing, but next to nothing. In fact you'd probably be better off with nothing. Then at least you wouldn't be under the impression you're getting something."