My email exchange with Michael White about the corporate bias of his 'left-liberal' newspaper and the inability of anyone there to answer the criticisms of Pilger, Chomsky, Herman and MediaLens about The Guardian's contribution to thought control in a democratic society. Mostly politics and mostly predictable evasions from a company man - didn't get into deeper, sweeter, waters - so readers who prefer to avoid silly spodwrangles should probably avoid this post and build a floating cathedral of fire instead.

For the last eight months or so I've been posting sporadically because I've been all beans go finishing two colossal projects - Sam How, the rabbit-based epic mentioned elsewhere - and, colossaler by far, The Gentle Apocalypse - my utopian newspaper / guide to everything / graphic novel / dictionary / trampoline; an early sketch of which was also once here. They've both transformed into something... surprising.

I'll still post, put up the odd drawing of Buddha as a peanut perhaps, but still not much more than once a month until the books are done. If you'd like to know when that is, drop me a line and I'll write back then with a gift. Also, if you've written to me before and I didn't reply, please try again - I recently discovered that mails were going into my spam folder and thence to the void.

Last time I was in Japan I lived in Ishikawa-ken where I played a kind of live computer game on New Year's eve. Crowds of us gathered outside a three story temple with long balconies and loads of sliding doors on all sides from which monks dressed as badgers shuffled out in file, scattering beans into the crowd which we had to catch in special nets and then take home and hide in a 'rarely looked-at' corner. The beans would, for the coming year, subtly emit good luck radiowaves - but not for oneself, only for neighbours you hadn't met. It was widely acknowledged in the Ishikawa prefecture that one's good luck came from one's neighbour's secretly generous beans.

This new year, in Kurashiki, was a more sombre, squid-based, affair.

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The invisible juice that flows through your bones when you find yourself laughing for no reason at all, escapes through your fingertips as a kind of gas, and can be passed on to your friend by pressing your thumbs against her forehead and humming the theme song to Hawaii-Five-O.

If you ever find yourself shivering with a strange delight don't be surprised if hundreds of laughing Japanese schoolgirls cycle past you, or something like that.

The tingling mass of molecules of my hand hums, spreading calm fuzz and a swell of light sunrising over the surface of my planetary self.

I had an Ikeamare in Ikeashwitz. My girlfriend, Ai-chan, and I were populating a new flat and on the shuttle bus I broke a basic relationship rule and started talking about an ex-girlfriend, Ariadne, who had given me the secret to mastering Ikea. The mention of the messanger put a wrinkle of irk between Ai and I, which I smoothed by emphasising the message; that only hell demands more peace of mind than Ikea.

Inside my chest is a vibe-detecting instrument, the naked pink tip. When I meet people this pink tip leans forward enquiringly, or it vibrates like a pleasantly electrocuted chicken, or it sways with melancholy happiness, or it shrinks away in horror, or it hardens resistingly preparing for battle, or it softens blendingly into yours. Although animal fear might put me on the back foot, or my interest in sex put me on the front, although I might not be paying attention, or I might be paying far too much attention; although, in short, I might be wrong; the pink tip never is.

There is the laughter of relief, making the train and slipping through the doors Indy-style, farts at funerals and tiny crimes that take tension away. There is the laughter of exhilaration, throwing yourself into the rapids, and the laughter of emotion, fear, awkwardness and approval. There is the laughter of newly formed groups, binding by creating butts, the laughter of superiority over the out-group, and the laughter of letting in, showing approval to the newly joined. There is the laughter of anxiety, trying to make it all okay with a smile, the peace-keeping lie-smile or rictus grin as you listen to one “it was good / big / weird / bad / interesting / uncomfortable / tiny / beautiful" advert-anecdote after another. And there is the laughter of emotion, of sex and murder.

Personally, I prefer the laughter of recognition.

I recognise large status reversals (the boss suddenly becoming the butler, or vice versa), I recognise dead things becoming alive, I recognise human character- istics given to animals, I recognise the indestructibility and innocence of a fool, I recognise perfect appro- priateness, spontaneity, exaggeration - or hyperbole - the serious reduced to the absurd and the sacred profaned - or farce - far distant ideas linked by puns and subtle surreality, strange timing, strange sizes, strange behaviour, and great beauty. I recognise the insights of a hyper-observant comic-master, here to show me myself, at a slight angle to the universe. I recognise all these things because I am an indestructible fool in a strange world, and it makes me laugh to see this.

But what I recognise most of all, is reality, what is happening. I am not a stranger in this universe. The objective world is my friend - and do we not laugh when a friend approaches? This is why genuinely innocent children and ancient tribes spend most of their time merrily sparkling with amused delight or ringing with bright laughter. When the world is seen as it is, it is surprising, bizarre, grotesque, savage, wild, apocalyptically alive and gayly butcherous; not demented and cruel, but mad, hilariously mad... and I am with it. We are friends, the universe and I. In all joy and horror - friends. This is the laughter of the whole truth.

As you may know, I've been working on a computer game called "Reality" which, now that I live in Japan, I'm going to sell to Nintendo, and they're going to sell it to everyone. The level I'm working on at the moment, which is called "Yawp!" is a driving, running, hunting, swimming, cycling, platform-type affair set across a few different "zones," and, the novel thing about it is that when you lose a life - when you fall off a cliff, or get hit by a car or an asteroid or whatever - the computer - the actual computer in your actual room that is - sets fire to your house, wipes your bank account clean and transports you, naked, to a random country. Or it infects you with a rare parasite that eats your brain and lungs. Or, if you're young and beautiful it makes you physically hideous. Or the reverse. Sometimes it showers you with money, sometimes it endows you with a strange and wonderful talent, like the ability to see all-round 360 degrees, as if your whole body were an eye, and other times it blasts off a leg and beats you to death with it.