FoolishPeople

Tesco stocks up on inside knowledge of shoppers' lives

Tesco is quietly building a profile of you, along with every individual in the country - a map of personality, travel habits, shopping preferences and even how charitable and eco-friendly you are. A subsidiary of the supermarket chain has set up a database, called Crucible, that is collating detailed information on every household in the UK, whether they choose to shop at the retailer or not.

The company refuses to reveal the information it holds, yet Tesco is selling access to this database to other big consumer groups, such as Sky, Orange and Gillette. "It contains details of every consumer in the UK at their home address across a range of demographic, socio-economic and lifestyle characteristics," says the marketing blurb of dunnhumby, the Tesco subsidiary in question. It has "added intelligent profiling and targeting" to its data through a software system called Zodiac. This profiling can rank your enthusiasm for promotions, your brand loyalty, whether you are a "creature of habit" and when you prefer to shop. As the blurb puts it: "The list is endless if you know what you are looking for."

Dunnhumby's chairman, Clive Humby, offers a few more clues. Companies such as Experian, Claritas and Equifax have databases on individuals and Crucible collects from them all. Any questionnaire you may have completed, any reader offers you responded to, are bought to build up a picture of attitudes and habits. Crucible also trawls the electoral roll, collecting names, ages and housing information. It uses data from the Land Registry, Office for National Statistics and other bodies to generate a profile of the area you live in. Zodiac is employed to provide a more detailed profile. The combination is valuable to many consumer goods firms: dunnhumby generated profits of £4m on sales of £28m in the last year for which accounts are available. Some £12m of business was done directly with Tesco.

( I told you so, Tesco's is becoming Ruined Steel)

Losing Magick in the Crystaline Palace

I have a terrible memory. I couldn’t tell you coherently the paths and events I travelled to become who I was pre-Paradigm shift, but what I could communicate and understood fairly easily from an early age was how my internal landscape created desire and intent. It was due to this gift that I found out what I wanted, and needed, to do was to create live art. Specifically Theatre and it was through art I learnt that Magick is truly the science of art.

If any human stares long, hard and honestly enough inward they will eventually find Magick. It happened to me, because of my work and the self-analytical time spent creating it.

I remember the moment like it was only a few seconds ago. I am still shocked at how instantaneous the shift was, from the mundane world to the higher reality of Magick, a crystalline palace of pure emotion where those rare moments of affirmation and meaning are forever eternal.

It was simply put like waking up into a new existence, where everything made sense. I understood everything in my life that was previously confusing, problematic and complex. Every minor or major stress was put into perspective and dealt with accordingly.

With renewed enthusiasm I turned to creating live art, understanding how I unknowingly, ignorantly and instinctively had been creating Hyper Sigils in my previous body of work.

Now I planned to apply Magick to my practice of art and embrace my next project, Ruined Steel, as Magick. Through being completely candid within rehearsals, I created a strong Magickal group of artists. An order, with their minds embracing endless possibilities, we spent 8 weeks in a Magickally charged small village hall directly opposite George Orwell’s home and the farm said to be Animal Farm’s influence.

I wanted to communicate as loudly and as clearly as I could what I felt was the possible future worse case scenario for the human spirit once the strongest Egregores had finally prostituted us all.

Ruined Steel nearly killed me.

The character I played looses everything that is most important to him due to his duplicitous nature and greed.

If you intend to shine a very bright light on some very powerful demons and gods you had better be prepared for them to stare right back at where the light is coming from.

Through my own duplicitous nature and greed I too suffered like the character I played in Ruined Steel - broken bones, vertigo, relationship Armageddon, redundancy, debt. But through the character I was also able to experience the positive aspects of his strength; A UFO sighting, direct conversations with Gods, visits to secret military bases and the revelation of my base Magickal personality.

Thanks to my HGH and some very powerful and helpful gods I have survived. But I think I just about expelled every bit of my Magickal essence surviving.

Through the creation of this particular Hyper Sigil not only did I Exorcise and slough off the dead parts of my human persona but I also experienced freedom that I had only dreamt about.

To survive came with a price tag. Ruined Steel forced me to experience a reverse paradigm shift. The only way I can describe it is like snow blindness. I stared so hard and deep at all Magick could accomplish that I was almost blinded by it. The signals that came during RS were loud enough to deafen me; I could no longer hear the chatter of the universe.

Loosing Magick was like loosing one of my senses.

In all of this I take hope that I did my job right. That what I was trying to communicate got through to the right person. Maybe only one audience member understood the message. Maybe one is all it takes to make a difference.

In the final act of Ruined Steel the protagonist is redeemed by allowing himself to be devoured by the Egregore, poisoning it with his guilt and weaknesses. Through my own devouring I had also allowed myself to be consumed by what was no longer under my control.

E.T.A Hoffmann tackles and communicates, far better than I ever could, the reality of being divorced from the world of poetry and Magick in the story of The Golden Flower Pot, wherein he discusses the loss of Occult truth and ones struggle to regain it.

I have lost my way in life countless times, but it wasn’t until I lost my way in Magick that I understood what loss truly is and how true is the old cliché of you don’t know what you have until it’s ripped away from you.

I wrote the piece above for Key23. It appeared on Key23 on the 3/4/05.

'Smart bombs' to deliver fatal blast to tumours

I found the following article over at new scientist, It's nice when people look at you odd when you try to predict something for the future through your writing and then Science comes along and backs you up. This isnt the first time this happened on Ruined Steel.

NANOSCALE polymer capsules could one day be used to deliver chemotherapy direct to tumours, leaving adjacent tissue unscathed. The capsules would be designed to rupture when heated by a low-energy laser pulse, delivering their payload right where it is needed.

And From Ruined Steel

VAST
"I can feel the Nanite-Deactivators inside me turning off my vital organs with designer viruses and micro bomblets"

Beyond Honourary

It seems I have become permanently Foolish...

Back in the heady days of Summer 2004 I did not see it coming. I was blissfully unaware. I had an inkling that something exciting was looming up ahead, but little did I know of exactly what the following months would bring. Life was just pootling on.

Some might say that I have had my Foolish moments in the past, and they would be right in saying so - I have been a Foolish girl, that cannot be denied - but from here on in, however, Foolishness is to be an undeniably significant part of my life, and yea verily, I surrender myself unto it!

Please allow me to introduce myself - my name is Lois, aka Resky, aka TuckTuck/The Tuck, and I am here for your blogging pleasure.

The path of Foolishness was revealed to me following my involvement in the phenomenon that was Ruined Steel. Although Miss Resk and her hairpiece have now long been put to bed, my Foolishness remains gloriously intact.

I'm not sure quite what delights I may have in store for you on this blog of blogs, but whatever they are it is decreed that they shall be regular, so we'll be well aquainted within no time at all.

Splendid.

I have more to share with you on this, but not tonight I feel. Not tonight.

So, to bed I go - to much sleep and intruiging dreams.

See you all again soon...

The Tuck x

"The Dark Night Of The Soul"

The Ruined Steel Hyper Sigil nears its end in its current format.

This Hyper Sigil has taken me to places both emotionally and physically that I never dreamt I would visit. The Ruined Steel project has drained me dry of who I was, whilst simultaneously filling me again with a whole new base personality. This base personality has allowed me to experience the very real reality we all exist in above and to the side of the mundane one we experience daily.

Just some of the themes of the events surrounding the launching phase of Ruined Steel are the Paradigm Shift, UFO's, Magickal Group Creation, Cracked Ribs, Emotional Exorcism, Psychic Psychological breakdown, Psychic Physical Breakdown, Godform Visitations, Robbery, Decoding of base Magickal Personalities, Power Animal rapport, Weight loss, Extra Sensory Perception and learning that time actually travels up.

Ruined Steel has been the journey of "The Dark Night Of The Soul".

We have three dates left as we close on Sunday the 28th of November. I hope you will have a chance to see what FoolishPeople have created before FP moves into its next phase.

Last Week

Last week, and last chance you'll get to see the live performance of Ruined Steel (for now at least) . The last show is on Sunday which I think we are well on the way for selling out for.

It was a bit of an odd end to last week as the theatre was broken into by a group of young blokes who looked distinctly like Mad Max extras and both the sound and lighting desks were stolen. Much tsk-tsking ensued and alot of 'oh its such a shame, these are the very people we are trying to reach'.

That is until they came back and got in for a second time while we were still there and all that must-reach-the-unreachable-community enthusiasm went swiftly out the window to be replaced by 'Come back here you little f**king piece of s**t, and I'll rip off your skanky filthy f**king dreads, pull them through you puss-filled piercings, tear the lot out and shove them up your crusty f**king arse.'

Ahem. 

Draining residual aggression.

Resplendent in Pain

Torn muscle and possible cracked rib, who said actors are pussys? (Ahem)

John will go on stage tonight, albeit with less falling and hopefully less personal injury, and it's down to me again to try and distinguish between real and fake blood from the sidelines.

On another note, Lois Tucker FP member, RS cast and one time honourary blogger made a guest appearance on TotalRock.com today, and a mighty fine job she did too (especially in playing out to NIN).

Ruined Steel at Camden People's Theatre, London.

Not long now people, we get into our home for the next three weeks tomorrow morning and have our first full London performance on Tuesday then its every night (except Mondays) until the 28th of November.

Again I find myself awake, with an anxious look strewn across my face waiting for common sense to kick in to my subconscious and say 'stop fucking faffing around and go to bed you damn moron'.

Image, of course, is one from the Ruined Steel album soon to appear by Gothic Image. 

FoolishPeople At Creative Swing On The 5/5/04

The FoolishPeople Ruined Steel wagon rolls on. FoolishPeople will be hacking reality this Friday the 5th November (7-11pm prompt start) at The Creative Swing

FoolishPeople will be one of the headline acts at the Union Chapel halls, Islington, in aid of the 'Working Wonders' (Arts for Islington) volunteer project: www.artsforislington.com.

FP will be showing a very special one off prequel to the full Ruined Steel story.

Honourary Blogger

As I write its fast approaching midnight. I should really be switching off the light and descending into sleep, but I have been meaning to write this for days and days and have had a few failed attempts due to knackeredness, so seeing as the caffeine’s still working, here I go…

Ruined Steel rehearsals – well its hard to remember or even comprehend all that has occurred during the last five weeks in this secluded part of Hertfordshire. Your mind would boggle.

Rest assured, however that it has been an enlightening and enjoyable experience. All rehearsal processes are different but never have I been part of a rehearsal process quite like this and I doubt I will be again outside of FoolishPeople. John has chosen a warm and open minded cast and skilfully engineered a group atmosphere that has allowed everyone to be unusually open and honest, creating real trust and friendship among people who wouldn’t have otherwise necessarily had a great deal of common ground or closeness in the world outside of Ruined Steel.

Aside from it being genuinely heart-warming and reassuring to be part of such a group this dynamic transfers to what we do together on stage and it is mightily apparent in the work that has been created and has yet to be created. I really am very excited to see where Ruined Steel will take us and you during the next month or so.

What will I do once the run has ended? Arghhh…(I suspect there will be a grieving process) I am not going to think of that now however. I shall look forward to this weeks inevitable exploits and our imminent Hatfield adventure.

Fasten your seatbelts Humanity….

00:24
26/10/04
Lois Tucker

Lois Tucker plays Resk in Ruined Steel.