# a nothing-happens novel by robert what status: underway ![[nothing-happens-novel-robert-what.png|600]] example novel cover **+** this novel in which nothing happens opens with that great borges quote about how pretending long laborious works exist and then making notes and summaries about them is often preferable to both reading and writing them (hashtag '#antiwork') **+** there are different types of nothing **+** and right there the process pauses for a while i've got to get my head down i'm tired from walking to the shops and back as well as still suffering from last night's half beer (asahi) so back in a bit **+** half eleven in the evening still binging on bosch i made a mug of darjeeling using three t-bags since the brand i brought was so weak an individual t-bag smells of nothing i mean what the heck what went so wrong with darjeeling that the bags no longer smell yet companies can still legally sell them (the answer of course is ongoing anthropogenic climate disaster) **+** instead of writing this novel i'm getting ready to re-watch predator: badlands because it rules and the main character is a trip he deserves his own tv celebrity interview show in which if his guest asks stupid questions - say about his outer mandibles - he casually punches them unconscious and laughs his deep yautja warrior laugh **+** today was interesting getting back from another short walk to the shops for some nose decongestant spray and some oat milk for my coffee my stomach began to rumble with ominous portent - i then quickly discovered just how much liquid feces it's possible for one man to contain; i squatted on the toilet and began to act a 'shit powered motorboat' (indeed there have been several people along my timeline who've told me i'm full of it' and right now staring at the spattered ceramic bowl beneath my sore arts i must concede to ir assessment) **+** listening to 'is it a crime' by sade one is suddenly lost and alone on the wet streets of london at night circa '85 among the smokey back alley bars and greasy chinese takeout joints of soho - searching for an old lover who owes one money for a passport to escape one's old wild life **+** resident internet theorist for-hire robert what had porridge this morning with oat milk and organic sultanas before listening to (unfinished) **+** the same toxic white academic who was harassing my partner via repeated unprofessional emails for months simply because he couldn't get his way and was shooting the messenger of a lazy arts company who does nothing to support them is now this morning about to be told to leave precisely because all his constant spoilt-manchild foot stamping his holding up the publication process and people have had enough. if i find out later my partner looses somehow looses ir job as a result his complaints there will be repercussions for his foul bullying behavior. this isn't drama but merely the daily bullshit and unenviable grind of daily existence under capitalism **+** thinking again about neuromancer - recently asked bill on bluesky to include more weird sex designer drugs and unexpected emergent social media effects in his next novel and he 'liked' my suggestion - thing is if he likes and agrees with it shirley that means someone else could write a decent novel of ir own instead of waiting for just another bad (read: straight male o' whiteness) sci fi author to churn out another middle-of-the-literary-road post-cyberpunk banger. consider neuromangler patient zero for all kinds of wrong-thinking about teh future **+** that such a nothing-happens novel does little but endlessly jump around from one often piercingly dull subject and (dis) location to another does not mean it's evoking the once exciting postmodern experimental works of the 60's and 70's - this is not naked lunch the nova trilogy or the atrocity exhibition or something cool sad or sublime by fernando pessoa it's merely me robert what sitting here on my distinctly non-ergonomic plastic dining chair typing as quickly and efficiently as possible before my back starts to flare up and my rsi kicks in again to remind me of something **+** that the witless praise karl ove knausgaard as some modern day marcel proust is predictably depressing; the whole flocking point is that there _isnt_ 'beauty and meaning in the minutiae of everyday existence' merely tedium and the navel-gazing narcissism of white privilege writ large - a stale sainsbury's madeleine comprised of half recounted half invented trivialities stupidities and banalities and anyone who says otherwise owns a far nicer private house than the shitty cold flat i'm forced to type in. if knausgaard was a non white non-male with a disability they'd get precisely jack-shit chances to be published - and that's flocked. nothing more tedious than a rambling man. new york times book critic dwight garner however wrote "i fell into the first two books of _my struggle_ as if I were falling into a malarial fever. i did little else for four days except devour them leaving email unanswered dogs unwalked dishes piling up in the sink." the shit? fraudulently melodramatic flan-glazing much there dwight? the only malaria on view is the fever dream of whiteness in which such awful boring men and ir apparently universal bullshit are remotely seen as worth reading in the first place **+** that's it i'm already done. thirteen chapters in and i can't think of anything to write other than about my failed imagination. that's pathetic but in a small way points to the naturally occurring stop-start nature of the novel process. the engine's cold before the journey begins so one was to keep it turning over for a while in the literary garage before trying to venture out into the fresh cold unknown of the great outdoors. or maybe one should just 'plan shit out' better - like those desperate idiots wearing sandals regularly rescued at great cost and danger off the side of ben nevis. thing is i don't want to try harder but work less and have more money in order to precisely nothing but chill - read weird books watch movies regularly wallop a heavy bag using internal chinese martial arts techniques and slowly chew wholesome organic vegan food in the privacy and majestic quietude of a non-rented house - staring out a triple glazed window at a garden dense with luscious organic mystery **+** a man from the group that owns this mass shitty housing estate is arriving tomorrow to secure the lightbulb fitting in the hallway fix the loose switch on the top of the oven and replace two rotten blinds once of which was made of the cheapest plastic known to humanity and got ruined by sunshine - the plastic holding the vertical cloth blinds in place broke apart like crumbly plaster. pathetic. speaks volumes about this overpriced dumb and about dear old endland generally - "minimum viable options installed incompetently." (how's that for an update to the hitchhiker's guide?) of course since he never said precisely when he's going to arrive we're gonna have to stay in all day and await his holy appearance with reverent patience. let me tell you when you rent you get treated like shit; if i owned a house then the person i'd hired would reasonably expect to turn up and the date and time i'd specified; rent however and these lazy flocks drift in and out like a stale kebab fart in the piss-stinking stairwell of a block of flats in bethnal green during the awful 70s (something i'm uniquely familiar with - not that i used to piss in stairwell but because my horrible obese chain-smoking criminal aunt lived there with her fried hair and horrible pancaked makeup) **+** at some point there was an attempt by the myth of 'the author' to change it up - no; never mind forget it **+** there should be a phrase given to the stupid intense inner feeling of 'needing to write like a (/real) writer'; to feel beholden to the cultural ideals and rules of 'what a writer is'. it is perhaps this feeling alone which keeps one from writing andor keeps one actively writing badly - to 'write like a writer' as opposed to simply like a human being trying to express the fact they find it difficult to express well - anything at all; they are simply and utterly confused by life and only know they don't know if there's anything to say at all. anything else seems a shaggy (writerly) dog tale. the writer doesn't even exist; forget the writer. the entity known as 'the writer' is the product of a limited imagination **+** had the real bad shits this morning and was pissing out of my arts for a good goddam twenty minutes. at least i didn't get bad johnny cash this time. as usual i didn't get to bed until late last night because of the recent agonizing uk heatwave and woke up groggy with a blocked nose and a stomach full of ache. talking of runny excrement that custom leather jacket-wearing jerk from nvidia was recently discussing his near future dystopian plans to end personal computing in favor of hiring ai agents. wts. sounds utterly awful as usual. is there no end to the ceaseless meddling of these loose stools - flocking everything up for everyone else and deliberating making everything like stinking liquid shit? compared to these llms and the supermassive data centers needed to run them what i unleashed into the bowl this morning at a rate of knots are positively wild flowers and fresh salt breeze by comparison. global hyperreal ludocapitalist spectacle is utterly foul in antinature - so depressingly vile and debased? **+** can't stand this cereal my partner keeps on buying like it's a religion. it's like chewing on wood chips. not that i don't need the roughage at the moment but jesus baby how about the occasional change. it's almost like you're algorithmically predictable consumer choices are a symbolic marker of the truer extent to which our malignantly useless little backwater uk lives are utterly tasteless generic and painfully ordinary - without a single spark of spontaneous delight or genuine interest **+** // republic of bob