Lunch with James

(((Dad and I took James Bunch to lunch today. James says this year's drought isn't quite as bad as the one of 1925.))






(((Here's James' 3 big environmental issues:
1. We don't know where our produce comes from, and have no idea why it's perfectly fresh and ripe on arrival, but tastes bland and papery when we bite into it.
2. Man-made sewer systems poison the ground and the water. James is an outhouse, compost man--just like everyone else back in the day.
3. When you die, you deserve to be buried the next day by family members who stay up the night before, cleaning the corpse and making a simple pine box. That way your corpse fertilizes the earth like its supposed to. Embalming is for suckers.)))
(((There's a book out featuring him and his woodcarvings. I even have an essay in it, (because my mom edited the thing.)))

Buy the book.

Avant-Pop Metadrama Hamlet thing

(((New profile on experimental theatre auteur Elizabeth Lecompte describes her the Wooster's group's recent adaptation of Hamlet.))))

"Experimental Journey" by Jane Kramer
New Yorker, Oct. 8 2007

"The stage is minimal. A modular aluminum frame outlines a few deceptively quiet images: a wheeled armchair; Hamlet sitting in the armchair, reading; three video monitors facing out into the theatre and replacing bits and pieces of the actor and the stage; a wide stepped platform, stage left, and, behind it all, a large movie screen on which the curtain is about to rise on Richard Burton's "Hamlet." This is the look of a LeCompte production just before the world in her aluminum frame splinters into action and refraction--into the constant reconfigurations of illusion that you could call her signature. It happens in seconds here: Hamlet twists himself toward the screen and shouts, "O.K., play that movie!" and what you get for the next three hours is a virtual "downloading" of the film that Burton made of his own stage "Hamlet," in 1964--an attentive, impatient, fiercely disciplined, and comically anarchic return of that famous star turn to the theatre."

"You could describe the 'Hamlet' that opens this month as the culmination of a grand battle between LeCompte and Shakespeare. 'I started out thinking, This is not our language," she says. 'You can't "translate" from his English. It seemed like a fetish to me because I always see texts as objects. They have a solidity--it's not theoretical-- and I don't look for metaphor or analogy or meaning."

Lecompte: "I'm not an intellectual. I am not trying to mean anything--I'm trying to have a good time."

Link


(((I have absolutely no opinion good or bad of this adaptation. I'll have to to see it when it makes the regional circuit. The play's the thing. Go see it.If I was being catty, I'd quote Brendan Behan, tho.)))

I simply must decline,
To dance in the street for Gertude Stein
And as for Alice B. Toklas,
I'd rather keep me Shakespeare
And a box of feckin' choclas'

Church Universal and Triumphant

(((I know I'm just recycling alot of stuff from my old myspace blog right now. Leave me alone)))

"Gordon Melton lists the C.U.T. as a religion of the "Ancient Wisdom" tradition akin to Theosophy and The "I Am" Activity.

C.U.T. theology is a syncretistic belief system, including elements of Buddhism, Christianity, esoteric mysticism, the paranormal, alchemy and belief in elves, fairies, and other beings it calls elementals (spirits of nature). It revolves chiefly around communications received from Ascended Masters through the Holy Spirit. Many of the Ascended Masters such as El Morya, Kuthumi, Sanat Kumara, and Saint Germain have their roots in Theosophy and the writings of Madame Blavatsky. Others such as Buddha, Confucius and Jesus are historical religious figures.

Mark, and later Elizabeth, claimed to be a messenger of the Ascended Masters. As messengers they were able to communicate with these masters and became the on earth voice of these masters. They claimed to receive dictations from the masters which were published weekly as "Pearls of Wisdom".

Group members practice prayers, affirmations, mantras, and a dynamic form of prayer known as decrees. These serve many purposes: devotion, calling to angels for protection from forces of darkness, calling forth the light of God on earth, praying for healing, for wisdom, asking to know God's will, and for the transmutation of karma. One of the most important decrees is the Violet Flame Decree -- a method which is said to be the most effective means of balancing karma that has built up in the past. The doctrine of the Seven Rays is also taught."

((((The electric glossolalia of The Church Universal and Triumphant))))


Invocation For Judgement Against And Destruction Of Rock Music

Radio documentary "Violet Flame" by Brenda Hutchinson

Sounds of American Doomsday Cults

Violet Flame Rosary

Perpetual Rosary

((((I am the hilarious light of God made manifest everywhere!!)))

Christian Bok-Sound Poet

(((Joe Moore turned me onto this guy a couple of years ago. Whenever anyone asks me if I've heard anything interesting lately, I always direct them to "Mushroom Clouds," "Motorize Razors" and "Ubu Hubbub.)))
Link

Velvet Underground at Andy Warhol's Silver Factory

((((That's Edie Sedgwick boogying. You can hate the hip pretension of these people or just mope that you were never invited.))))


stop

Moustaches of the 19th Century

Link

Historical anatomy lithographs

((((This is all public domain. Go nuts. I know where my next tattoo's coming from.))))))

Link

Dying 47-Year-Old Professor Gives Exuberant ‘Last Lecture’

(((Virtual reality pioneer with terminal cancer, speaks about his childhood dreams. Really wonderful stuff.))))
Link

Automatons

((((Do they play chess and read tea leaves?))))))




Link

Jacob Boehme & other Christian mysticism

Hey, you can read the of 16th century Christian mystic Jacob Boehme online.
I don't think I'm going to, but you sure can.
"The eternal world or the external life is not a valley of suffering for those who enjoy it, but only for those who know of a higher life. The animal enjoys animal life;the intellect the intellectual realm; but he who has entered into regeneration recognizes his terrestial existence as a burden and prison. With this recognition he takes upon himself the cross of Christ."
Link
You can also read "The Cloud of Unknowing in its entirety.
Anonymously written by an English monk in the 14th century, Wikipedia describes it as "Christianity with a Zen outlook" and the basis for the practice of centering prayer developed by Trappist monks.
Perhaps President Bush has read it, for he too, is a passionate Christian scholar.
Link
Finally, if you want a soundtrack for psychedelic Christian reflection check out the Trees Community--young Jesus Junkies who played about 70 instruments.
Link

One-fisted Reading

Everyone has a pulp freak writer they secretly adore. I'm a fan of Michael Perkins. I met him at Bennington and found him to be an interesting hunchbacked man who lives in upstate New York and has never owned a car or published much since the 70's. He's by trade, a writer of one-fisted wank stories like you read in Penthouse and Hustler. His biggest commercial success was a novelization of "DeepThroat" which he never saw a cent from because the Mafia owned the rights.
Anyways, he managed to tap out a few Bataille-like erotica books like "Evil Companions" and "Dark Matter" during the 60's which depict the insane, ecstatic, death worship, dominance struggle that we all secretly know sex to be. They've been reprinted by "Blue Moon Books"--probably not an austere name in the publishing industry, but they're pretty hot, smart and disturbing things.
I was dredging the backwaters of the internet to find evidence of his existence and found this one link to some of his writings. When I met him at Bennington, he told me that the absolute last taboo in our culture was the sight of fat people making love. An interesting observation from a guy who has spent decades thinking about sex.
Book synopses I culled from Amazon

"Dark Star explores an underground sexual realm ranging from San Francisco's pagan play parties to Los Angeles's world of extreme porn video. In this tale of radical sexual relationships spinning passionately out of control, adult video star China Crosley uses an admiring stalker to help her escape a bondage and discipline marriage to porno entrepreneur Jack Blue."

"Harris, a small-time hood from New York, seeks refuge from his past in Mexico. There he falls in love with a mysterious prostitute who has a twin sister involved in ancient Aztec blood rites. Clare, a Los Angeles call girl, has escaped her own past with her friend Roxy, a young movie star with a taste for the perverse."

"Nicholas Wilde is a 50-year-old painter shunned by the art elite for his unflinching depictions of the female form. Rose Selavy is the 24-year-old muse who refuses to let him own her. When they meet, their passions burn red hot. But when Rose leaves Nicholas, he is left impotent. No woman can arouse him like his passionate muse."

I dunno, maybe he is a hack. I kind of dig him.


P.S. There's undoubtedly a boatload of seminal masterworks lost in the intellectual ghettoes of "genre" fiction--harlequin romances, space operas, and cowboy adventures.
Anyone who knows of any genre fictions that transcend into interesting (hrumpf!) literature should let me know, as I am very interested in such things. Don't say Harlan Ellison, Jim Thompson, or Philip K. Dick, as I already know those guys are pretty much amazing. Man, Harlan Ellison--there's a guy I haven't read in awhile.

It's The End of the World

20 years later and it's still such an amazing music video.

Link

I always wanted to be the kid in this video, but it turns out that being in a cool music video screws up your life. Maybe he should start a sludge metal band with Jeremy from the Pearl Jam video, the Blind Melon bee girl, and Eddie Furlong from "Living on the Edge." I'd digg them.

Father Death Blues

Eric recommended I look into "Father Death Blues" by Ginsberg. It's actually a very beautiful song--(I'm always pretty harsh on Ginsberg, probably because I worshipped him in high school). Dealing with the death of his father, but wiser in its way than Dylan Thomas' angry "Do not go gentle into that good night" and sad like Ben Jonson's "On My First Sonne", and ultimately with the same existential joy (an oxymoron?) of Donne's Death, Be Not Proud (Geez, my taste in poetry reeks of high school English).

Sometimes, I have these moments of clarity about death where I'm really not scared in the least. It's this great bar we all cross, yet no one has the least certainty about. Fading nakedly into infinity and oblivion is, I don't know, not totally uninteresting. All observations seem to point to an endless cycle of birth, death, and regeneration and the present moment being a type of continuous eternity. Fuck, love, think, make, move and then get out of the way. Seriously, not a bad deal. I guess if I were to choose a style of death, it would be either very serenely or tremendously violent--mediocrity in these matters is not preferable.
Oh, and I guess I would want people to sing this song at my funeral. And receive a green burial. I'd rather moulder like Shakespeare than slowly excrete formaldehyde into the soil.
Ok, I'm creeping myself out now. Must go check pulse.

Miscellaneous facts about George W.

This is no less relevant than his politics.

Favorite ice cream flavor: Pralines and Cream
Favorite color: Blue
Favorite song: "Wake Up, Little Susie" by the Everly Brothers
Favorite children's book: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle
Favorite food: Mexican
Favorite movie: Field of Dreams
Favorite TV shows: "Biography" on the A&E channel, baseball.
Favorite books: The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston, by Marquis James; The Good Life and Its Discontents: The American Dream in the Age of Entitlement, by Robert J. Samuelson; The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy
Favorite newspaper: Not applicable. (Condoleezza Rice and other staff prepare newspaper summaries.)
Favorite philosopher: Jesus Christ.

Good Bruce Sterling quote

Tack it as addendum to Faulkner's Nobel Prize Speech and you pretty much have my M.O. in a nutshell.

"Don't become a well-rounded person. Well rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a pufferfish. If you want to woo the muse of the odd, don't read Shakespeare. Read Webster's revenge plays. Don't read Homer and Aristotle. Read Herodotus where he's off talking about Egyptian women having public sex with goats. If you want to read about myth don't read Joseph Campbell, read about convulsive religion, read about voodoo and the Millerites and the Munster Anabaptists. There are hundreds of years of extremities, there are vast legacies of mutants. There have always been geeks. There will always be geeks. Become the apotheosis of geek. Learn who your spiritual ancestors were. You didn't come here from nowhere. There are reasons why you're here. Learn those reasons. Learn about the stuff that was buried because it was too experimental or embarrassing or inexplicab

Review of "Hallowe'en"

here's a review of the new Rob Zombie "Halloween" remake which shares the same sentiment I have about the "grindhouse" revival. Too gory to be serious; too eff'in' brutal to be a joke.

Jupiter

Growing up in the 80's, I've pretty seen all the pictures of the Voyager spaceshot in textbooks and encyclopediae since I was kid and haven't really thought much about them. I'm only now beginning to see these again and think, "Jesus, did we really send a fucking camera into space in the 70's just to take candid pictures of Jupiter's Red Spot?"

Seriously, this is what some people do with their college degrees, and they are superior to you and I.
"a persistent anticyclonic storm located 22° south of the equator that is larger than Earth. It is known to have been in existence since at least 1831,[35] and possibly since 1665." The planet itself is a gas giant with a metallic hydrogen core.
Whenever I'm feeling blue, I can always remember that here's this planet 318 times bigger than Earth with centuries-old massive hurricanes blowing over a surface of smooth metallic hydrogen, and I just need to focus on the positive in this world.

Introducing--my ADD junk food mind

This is how we think in the 21st century.
I was just looking up the Batman villain Solomon Grundy and ended up getting mired in the DC Crisis of Infinite Earths.--if you understand that thing you're a bigger geek than I. But anyways, I drew back to Solomon Grundy and discovered that he's based on a very catchy English nursery rhyme.. I looked at those and found this picture

Anyways, I looked up "Ring around the Rosies" and learned that the whole "plague connection" was a total myth--(good; the idea of hollow-eyed orphans singing that over corpsesmoke always creeped me). Anyways that linked me to the miasma theory of disease.. "Miasma," that's a word I couldn't stop using when I first heard it.
Point being, I didn't study any of these topics in great length; I just got the instaneous gist and went crazy drawing a gossamer web of tangents.
If I had been prescribed Ritalin for my ADD junk food mind, I'd still be looking at some damn Batman entry or perhaps writing speed-addled, elaborate Philip K. Dick fiction that collapses on its own construction and tethers out. Short attention spans aren't a defect--they're evolution for an age of increased information output.
Just look at the etymology of university--"unity from diversity." Batman to Miasma? That's academic, kid.
Now I'm sharing it with no one in particular on a blog complete with links and rocking out to M.I.A on my Itunes. I don't disagree with those who choose to ignore the internet in favor of reading Jane Austen under a great tulip poplar. I just wonder if they sometimes feel increasingly irrelevant.
Man, oh man, I need to find a slick fucking grad school. Oh, here's one.

Dudes

Here they come.

Coming to to eat ya.'

(People ask me why I don't drink anymore. It has a lot to do with these guys.)

Joy Division complexity

Visualize Complexity.
"PROJECT DESCRIPTION Using information design principles and graphical techniques, the 85+ recorded covers of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is mapped in relation to the original recordings by the band. Although available information was limited, the graph is data rich in representing time since original recording, recording artist, release name/date and label. Various graphical techniques employed (eg. radiating dots) allowed for data to be accessed (number of recordings per year) while also creating an interesting aesthetic presentation."
Link

William Gibson interview

New interview with William Gibson.. (I remember with Proustian accuracy the smell of my Neuromancer copy. I have since associated the smell of Tor wood pulp with a streamline obsidian future that never was except in Shinjuku.)

Nintendo Power

Had a pubescent brain pop just now and kicked back to about 16 years ago.
The Angry Video Game Nerd reviews Nintendo Power.
(Yeah, I was with Nintendo Power from Issue 2 {The gory Castlevania II cover} and thought I was the raddest kid on the planet. The thing basically shilled Nintendo. I think I ended up getting a 10 year subscription for Christmas and kept receiving issues well into high school. I still do things like research the entire history of Ninja Gaiden tho.

The Beat Generation

William S. Burroughs wasn't one.
Jack Kerouac was a degenerative alcoholic who wrote an interesting novel in 3 days.
Allen Ginsberg is simply proof of the dangers of Ketamine.
Lawrence Fehrlinghetti ran a bookstore.
Anne Waldman was a lit slut.
Jackson Pollock was a Cold War fabrication.
Andy Warhol was an autistic lightning rod tuned to a bad station--which is pretty neat, actually.
Jasper Johns just gets old really quick
Charles Bukowski was a disgusting, hyper-adolescent fantasy.
Bob Dylan plays the guitar and sings. Get over it.
Tom Waits isn't rugged or wise. He just acts it.
Lou Reed is self-centered and grumbly.
Patti Smith writes poetry like a high school student who's into T.S. Eliot.
Hunter S. Thompson was tripping the whole damn time.
Jim Carroll just plain sucks.
Jim Jarmusch is too obsessed with how his hair looks to be brilliant.

To all you hanger-ons and acolytes who anointed yourselves 'beatniks' and gladly admitted the label "rebellious icon" from the culture you supposedly 'countered': You are not as cool as I thought you were in high school, and probably got a lot of smart people hooked on booze, cigarettes, and heroin. Get up there and sing "We Are The World" with the real deals like Prince and Stevie Wonder. Thanks for slam poetry.

The Grotesque Body

"Satire exhibits the grotesque body, which is dominated by the primary needs ( eating, drinking, defecating, urinating, sex ), to celebrate the victory of life: the social and the corporeal are joyfully joint in something indivisible, universal and beneficial"
Why didn't I read "Gargantua and Pantagruel" in college?
Probably because I was being dragged nettlesomely through "Tom Jones," "Middlemarch," and "hamletmachine."
Link

Chikungunya on the rise

"The arrival of a tropical mosquito-borne disease in Italy has experts worried that such illnesses may become endemic in Europe.

Local authorities in Bologna, Italy, this week ordered parts of the city to implement mosquito-control measures to prevent the spread of the flu-like viral disease, Chikungunya."

Link

Save the Dugong

Manatees don't need airbases. Sign the petition.
Link

Shark and Surfer

Videogames that warp your sense of reality

I experienced this phenomena very strongly when Doom first came out. I was always checking around corners. Video games mess you up worse than GHB.
Link

Pictures of the year 2000 drawn in 1910

Steam Age Automated Post-Moderne of le Belle Epoque.
Link

Kenning

I'm playing with kennings Antique white people were a brutal folken. This is probably what they sounded like.

The Hanged God, his brow stars keened to feed the eagles in the spear din, lifted his onion of war and blood-ember to make a raven harvest. Rawwwwr! [Translation: Odin, his eyes angry, lifted his sword and axe to kill some guy.]

Sif's hair shone in the glory of the elves and a valleytrout did sing Grimnirs lipstrings in the earthgrip. Berzerkschong!! [Tr. Gold gleamed in the sun, and a snake read poetry in the dirt.]

The ravenfeeder treebroke his bloodworm against the Slayer of the Giants, hewing his wolf's joint. Aegir's daughters of slaughter dew spilled from the mountain of the hawk and the breaker of rings flame-farewelled to the sleep of the sword. Braaardz![Tr. The warrior cut off Thor's arm. Waves of blood spewed from his wrist and he died}

The breaker of trees sent the steed of billows across the whaleroad. Grrryyllwd! [Tr. The ship sailed across the sea]

The manlocked meatflame truthcoated a weapon-warred geekfeeder! Fyyylllggrlyd!!! [Tr. "300" was a gay porno disguised as an action film.]

Well, time to footchariot to the hearth-hold and teethgrip a seachicken grainpocket with with blood-dew. Berserkodygn!!! (Go home and eat a tuna sandwich with catsup!)

God, I would be such a cool English teacher

Testing

Future Home of Precis

". . . God, I need to start a blog. And get my teeth cleaned. Okay, I will post this and at least think of starting a blog. Banish all insecurities! I'm worthy of a blog!!! Here, I'll do a 3 minute free association writing practice to unblock myself:

I'm sitting at the office getting paid 8 dollars to be completely in the moment. Coffee. Cigarette. Not now; blogging. This is the future, we are blogging. No, this is the moment. 5 seconds ago this was the future. Now it's the moment. Moment. Crotch itches. Too much coffee. The moment. Completely in the moment. Thinking of googling "bugs bunny porn," but I'm at work and trying to be in the moment. Moment. "Mom"-ent. Mom. Mom. Ooh, gross, must not think "bugs bunny porn" and "mom." It fucks you up forever. Not like that. Not like that. Amused at myself. God, I'm so smart. And handsome and caring. No, you're a shiftless, worthless boner-loving douchebag!!!! Who the fuck just said that? Oh, inner editor. Let it go. Let it go. Back to the moment. Whatever, blogging's hard. I'm going to drink some more coffee and smoke a cigarette, maybe work hard today, go home and start doing yoga and reading the Koran (Qu'ran?). Possibly apply to grad school and learn Chinese. I'll just have to stop sleeping. But now I'm just so tired of being right here, blogging in the eternal moment. moment. moment. moment. moment. moment. moment. "