Thursday, December 30, 2010

Don't Be Surprised By Anthropomorphic AI

I've made my point, but let's see how I got there and back again.

Outside the Loews Theatre in Port Chester, NY, just after having the left the movie theatre for the opening screening of Tron: Legacy, the idea arrived within the first few minutes of analysis: why did the programs look like people? Why were they at a club and drinking?

Why's there anthropos in my artificial intelligence? 

My response is simple, "why wouldn't there be!?"

The phrase Artificial Intelligence alone is strange enough since it suggests that we could make a thing that thinks. In the construction of an artificial intelligence, two primary concerns should be the AI's ability to understand us and our ability to understand it. It makes sense to manifest the latter in a human form, since we have some understanding of the language of bodily expressions, and the former can be solved by teaching this AI our language. Binding this digital entelechia to the human form provides the benefit of understandability and the terrifying hazard of offering it everything that's wrong with humanity. Training, raising this intelligence to speak in any human language could spring the threat of it learning all the prejudices already encoded in our semantic web. 

Those biases are not a suggestion of hate in the language, per se, but they are suggestion of why, for example, the AI go clubbing in Tron: Legacy. The precise form of the stimulus regardless, the desire to get fucked-up may be a universal condition of a thinking being. We don't have a heck of a lot of evidence to go on, but--judging by the monkeys who steal drinks from beach side resorts--I tend to believe that there is something to  being conscious that, from time to time, makes one want to be slightly less than so. Though, it is fair to say that the relationship of the chemical alcohol to the brains of primates may help as well. Now, whether this impulse has something to do with a consciousness, particularly one aware of futurity, and the desire to alter it, or whether this has something to do with an intelligent being's ability to process stimuli and its voracious appetite there given, I find it hard to believe that we would develop an AI that didn't have some kind of reward processing. 

So it should make some sense that our attempt to create will likely be in and an imitation, made in our own image and crafted as we craft ourselves. Which is the real trick of the divine texts: the gods are always made in our image. We try to make the Other its own subject by subjecting it to ourselves, and the text of our history that we carry and that could Other ourselves as well. 

The primary concern, though, of Tron: Legacy and, similarly, Ted Chiang's The Lifecycle of Software Objects is not really the AI, Tron or the Software Objects, but about a somewhat more eternal human characteristic: legacy, lifecycle. T:L isn't about Clu and Kevin Flynn, but it is about Sam Flynn and Kevin Flynn, and how Sam had to live in the image of his father as opposed to Clu  who was made totally in Kevin's imagine. I don't have the time to properly riff on Chiang's work--and it's quite fresh so you should just go out and give it a read anyway, but I believe it becomes fairly obvious in the text that the devotion that the two main human characters, Ana and Derek, make to their digients* is no different than what may be displayed in child-rearing. Now, pulling "child-rearing" out is a bit of a loaded term, considering that Ted reflects in the text on the acuity of the digient's growing reasoning skills and in what ways they can and can not be considered "children" since they are totally new forms of intelligence, but the word stands since the emotions described around the relationship between the trainer-programmers and the digients does seem to be like that of a parent, or, perhaps, a pokemon trainer... if we didn't train pokemon to fight but instead, well... just educated them. 

Of course, there is a very serious difference between the two stories: one deals with a world where humans are uploaded into a digital world where AI look like humans, while the other story is about humans interacting with cartoon animals and cartoon robots that live within a virtual world a bit like Second Life. These differences in form are directly bound to the plight of their respective stories. While the programs of T:L are little more than stand-ins for humans, the digients of The Lifecycle at least suggest a space between some kind of pure intelligence that would just explode out of a computer, which would only be nominally artificial, and a mere duplicate of humanity. Clu's dictatorship sees him as being merely a better human, a more demonstratively human, and, therefore, monstrous human figure. The digients, like human children, do listen to and learn from their "parents," but they are also something a little more that is unrelated to their parents and is, instead, internal to themselves. Thus, the characters are bound together by language but they walk together in the shared pursuit of life.

However, T:L's programs are always running, like actual living beings, while the digients in Lifecycle can be "suspended," a full stop on their being opposed to the artificial sleep that the programmers include in them, but  can be accelerated so that they are conscious twenty-four hours a day. The digients suffer a number of metaphysical pains brought on by the fact that they experience the quandary of the cycles of life/death and awake/sleep far more acutely than humans can, never mind the fact that the digients are raised to be cloned, with some of their personality and memory intact, to be sold as a product. The process that is the digient can be halted, called up more or less in task manager or some such and then shut down, but it also can be restarted, and the digient would never know. Ignoring drugs and dramatic illness, human beings have only one skip in conscious and that's when they die and the record stops playing. 

The problem, then, is that Tron: Legacy isn't anthropomorphic, really, since the programs are just people in digital clothing and it doesn't really matter that they are digital beings. For example, the naturally occurring "life-forms" in Tron: Legacy, a new breed of programs that arise from the barren outlands beyond the city of The Grid, are miraculous simply for coming into being out of some wild, apparently unknown, while behaving essentially like any other program, perhaps being a little more curious and [pure/open]-minded, but we only have Olivia Wilde as evidence. However, since the behavior of the digients truly is unknown, given that there is a space that apparently exists between code written and ran, the digients need to be anthropomorphized so that they can be interacted with, in part because an image of them is to be sold and consequently formed into a pet by these consumers while the more hardcore users--mostly the programmers who originally made them--require a tactile set of responses that they can use to interact with, and so we need these characters to wear raiments that we can relate to.

So, going beyond the anthropic principle, perhaps now would be a good time for you to read Stars in my Pocket, Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delaney.

*Which are essentially intelligent tamagotchi--but so much, much more than those words can stand.
P.S.: Yes, I do also appreciate that lifecycle sounds like light cycle.

Monday, December 20, 2010

The Only Cute Baby

All babies are cute, or, to make the meaning align with history, cuteness is defined by babies.

Cuteness is composed of those features that appear infantile and, consequently, trigger an instinctual nurturing response, a recognition of the fragility of the so called cute object. Therefore, to say that a baby is cute would be redundant...

Unless there was something overwhelming abouts its humanity, something powerful in the sentiment of its being that even I would have to choke up, and even I would have to admit that I submit to the transcendental semantic truth of the existence of this "cute baby."

I have found such a child, and I share it, now, with you...

http://current.com/102vo4c

Monday, November 1, 2010

Tinnitus Andunoriginus

--Here we present to you a short parable about the need for demanding more out of your concerts and a dead musical industry, which is perpetuated by your lack of caring.


That, children, is the sound of gentrification.

That, mortals, is the sound of one hand jerking off without a dick.

That, fools, is what exists beyond the iron curtain of irony, which simply spins on a baroque ferrous wheel absent even the interiority that a monad may have.

That, plebians, is part of the problem.

That, you hollow men, is the purest of muzaks.



This, children, is why you can't have nice things.

Monday, September 27, 2010

The Man, Inc.






The Man, Inc.
By Max Simkins

The Part about The Artists
“It came to me in a reverie over drinks, you see,” I said to my attorney. Settled in his office in Tarrytown, each of us with our hands tenderly gnarled around an Old Fashioned, I unraveled for him the details of the night haunted gathering where I set the world into chaos.
            The party in question was at the home of one Yogi, which was carefully organized by his darling wife Booboo. I for one believe what Yogi said in telling me prior that his spouse had meticulously crafted this soiree, designed to celebrate the release of a member of our circle of friends and comrades from jail for a number of different drug charges, and maybe something involving a high schooler--but, her family moved down from the north to the city, and now have no interest in the case.
            Upon arriving at the estate, I realized that my party senses were accurate in their tingling and that it was the worst of all orgies of surface tension, dire to burst despite the knowledge that this would mean its death and not its healing. Booboo brought out booze by the barrel, but not a drop of mellow burns were scented in the home. It was a jubilee, but without music, save for the hoary grindcore of cacophonous conversation.
            But, you must see, that this artist, this performer, this… man that we were celebrating was not a stranger for the jail cells. From the tender age of fourteen, he was active in the marches and rallies against scientology, not that it did any good. His later work as a kidult steered more to the political, and, when he could buy his own beer, his intentions for his work became clear: crush, kill, destroy…
            Through ideas, of course, never through actual violence. And so he braved the media battlefield in the TVs and in the computers, on the streets and on the airwaves, by print and by word of mouth. It would be incorrect to say that he was alone in this kind of practice, but it would be just as untrue to suggest that his actions were in concert with other instrumentations of the feeds.
            So, the gathering in his honor was for another daring legal escape, raucously sung by those who sympathized, those who admired, those who clung desperately to a life—any life—being lived, and the brave few who had frankly nothing better to do.
            The one dire problem with the event was that a good time and good cheer do not make for good conversation. The melancholic might not be any better—though I’ll start the tally soon. Still, I was terribly disheartened to divest a portion of my time to display grace with my temporality because some kid, over ripe at the age of twenty six, was temporarily out of jail, and momentarily out of the clutches of someone who could use effeminate company. Perhaps I’ve eluded these conditions because I’ve virulently avoided being published, and I’d like to refute to great pains anyone who declares the internet—that divinization of Yog-Sothoth—a medium, but it is such a struggle to bore into people about the Gate, the Watcher, and the Key. All the same, there are things that even I’m afraid to say, such as defining the contrary directors who incarcerated him with one hand and pay him for his work with another.
            “No, I am not a fool, dear,” I said to a groupie. I had no idea who she may have been, since, with eyes shut, I had been screaming in the low husk of my voice, procured by drinking on a weak throat and lungs. When I saw once more, she revealed herself to be another member of a foreign gallery courting the artist to work there and, why I’ll never grok. A fleeting glimpse of sorrow passed back and forth in her eyes, and, disliking the pendulum, I asked her to try and tell me of the festivities proper, having arrived quite customarily late and believing that this might take her mind off matters. She told me that he made inexplicable comments, referring to some magistrate on Titan, one E.B. Black, and that he then conducted the audience into a spastic funerary procession masquerading as a conga line. Having led them through the estate and out to the back porch, he discharged his role as the head and declared the millennium descendant upon the death of the human millipede, even if there was barely more than a couple centipede’s worth of feet available to work with.
            A howl. A sound of frantic running. The clattering of glass in a dust-bin, and the cheers begin again, while sorrow still held her. Given that nothing yet had helped her heartache, I dared to be stupid: I asked her why. The question seemed at first to be an affront to her, but the truth was simpler: that nobody had ever stopped to ask. Her problem was simple: she could not comprehend the artist. How could he get away with what he did? How could a legal system apportion him the space to be? And how can this be replicated?
            I never particularly gave much of a thought to aiding the spread of infection, much as it might perhaps hasten the end. Still, an impulse came to my mind that might just help this corporate stooge. The solution seemed simple enough: incorporate. Divide self from soul. Let the self become an image that can be sued for libel and slander while the individual lives free. Sure, one’s voice would become embodied in a specter, but it was better than becoming the haunt of the masses.
            As a corporation, contractual agreements would be the responsibility of “someone” else. In a sense, it would give a person two lives: one that could burn out, and, if so consumed, the living breathing human could fade away. But if they were united citizens—living entity and legal entity, then they could quite likely do whatever they wanted.
            The story seemed fairly comprehensible to her, but she stuttered like someone who had their meaning of life question answered with natural selection. Existential bummer, man; the transcendental’s a theoretical crawling chaos, huh? Not quite—not quiet the problem, though it was certainly an animated conundrum. “But, what about his works? They seem to take on a life of their own? If you’re going to suggest incorporating a person’s speech and spirit, might you also be offering room for other spaces of speech to incorporate? Not just living words, but dead ones…”
            Had someone else not laughed at a terrible pitch inside, I may have been totally and royally fucked as I was struck without response, something distinctly rare. But I smiled, patting her hand and telling her it would be fine. She reciprocated, telling me that, indeed, all will be fine, and she left.
            A vase shattered inside.  I left then and there to avoid somehow being implicated.
            A week later, I retained the services of Bernard, “Bernie,” Bacarat. The sneaking dread of C&D letters were rearing their head because of a series of articles on a new energy-beer that might actually just be “Cocaine” or “Censored” with Everclear thrown in. I’m not a fan.
            Bernie, though, knew better then to believe that that alone should suggest me to him, even though he would offer his services all the same to a family friend. Skeptic by nature, Bernie was a reliable man, but one wondered whether his fidgety behavior was the consequence of delirium tremens or Parkinson’s, or whether all these aspects of him resided within the operating space of a far more chaotic concept as his spiritual fountainhead.
So, I told him my story. And he sat there, perfectly still.
            For a moment, I thought I saw the light of life leave his eyes and began to consider whether I would need to run to the bathroom and tear behind the mirror to find some nitroglycerin. He then brought his right hand over to a silver tin marked with a burning rose, unclasped the top, placed a cigarette in his mouth and another in my hand. Lit, it tasted of Amsterdam Shag, and “Amsterdam Shag.” Only when we were both finished did he tell me the horrible truth of the Aethereal cases. Four days ago, a sudden surge in articles of incorporation were noted by a colleague. Then, two days ago, the suits fell. Hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of law suits where creations were suing their creators. Artists sued by sculptures and paintings; films sued producers, directors, actors, and actresses, and even some best boys; musicians sued by LPS; video games took their necromantic organizers to court; and, at last, authors were made to forswear and bear witness for their “crimes” in the court of the crimson text.
            I tried to be nonplussed, but I’m not dead enough yet to remain lax before these trade winds, though still not so dead to be swept back to Tiamat.  Was I partner to Pandora, holding her empty box, or was I Heston among the planet of the apes, screaming sweet nothings to Lady Liberty and all those she vouchsafed? Better question, what was I to do about this?
            “I have an idea,” Bernie blurted out, words stumbling with nervous intent. “I have it on… certain authority that the Angelo case—you know the Angelo case, right? Father killed, mother, daughters, those dogs… who knew a pool boy could—”
            I had not a blistering clue as to what he was talking about. I smiled something bright and affirming and nodded.
            “Well, the kid turned out to be a bastard of the father’s and there’s a strong chance he’s going to get off and get the whole estate, though he’ll have to establish a fund for the… help of those poor people.”
            “Uh-huh.” I rapped my left fingers beside the silver tin. Guffawing, he outstretched his palms demanding that I make myself useful of the grace that he offered. He, likewise, helped himself to another smoke.
            “So…let me tell the rest of the story. The attorney representing the little changeling is a close and personal family friend who works at my firm. If I can put together a little bash—errh, that’s not quite—a celebratory assembly for the good sire, I might just invite a certain guest over. Now, if the guest goes around asking questions of revelers, then it’s on his head if he should take as reasonable and responsible the talk that he hears.”
            And so the plan was set.
The Part about The Attorneys
A week later, Bernie called to tell me what I already knew, that, a week further, the attorneys would descend on the Bacarat property for drinks, and for my cheer.
            Prior to the evening, I could peruse no details about the cases, but I was able to flesh out the nature of the two law firms that Bernie had invited for their particular relationship to the case. The firm of West, Bruce, and Laing was of note because their attorneys had filed an obscene number of cases involving creative works seeking restitution against the estate of their authors. Meanwhile, the attorneys of Farner, Brewer, and Schacher produced a deluge of libel cases looking to shut up any person who’d ever spoken their mind, for well or ill. But the clerks and judges didn’t bat an eye. Somehow, all the paper work was right, all signatures were initialed and all the proper processing fees assessed. But…how? Someone had to be covering for the artworks, to make the filing and incorporating legit, lest the works themselves were the real cover…
            Latched onto the minute and hour hands, slipping into the little gateway where the date is held, my watch and I engaged in lurid conversation until the time of the games began, taking company and sweet nothings from cups of coffee and butts of cigarettes. The entire affair of this legal party—Bernie had informed me that there would be no perusing of the silver tin this evening—seemed to me extravagantly odd. The charade of this invitation by my attorney played as oddly as if Sheryl and Shania had taken me back for drinks with the rest of the girls and the Madame…while under the impression that I was a federale. So why, Bernie, are you doing this? What do you know?
            A car was sent for me. I was not planning for this. I’m on good terms with Kuti Kabs for a reason, and not because I like punctuality. I’ll arrive on my terms, on my own; though it may not be directly under my own skill, it will be by my authority. The driver told me that Bernie had sent for me to come early so as not to miss a guest of certain interest. I told him I’d be fine. He said I would and opened the glove compartment, withdrawing a silver cigarette case, which was emblazoned with a rose. “Compliments of the retained, for the detained.” Indeed.
            Despite the deleterious start, the ride was utterly calm and uneventful. No one seemed to be around to smell the slightly fresh cut grass of lawn after lawn, the chemical screams of the weeds and plants desperately trying to summon a savior with their green leaf volatiles in the hope that some carnivorous insect would take out the mean green eaters. It’s a shame they’ll never understand that a Geocoris bug cannot cure their affliction of the John Deere like it could for a hornworm. Poor little zombie plants trying to summon an antiquated god with their dying gasp.
            Pulling up, finally, to the Tarrytown estate for another bit of good conversation on this particular weekend at Bernie’s, and noting my budding out, the driver tossed a canister of Febreeze into the back. “Give it a good spray for me--you and the back seat, if you don’t mind.”
            “Certainly, but will you be around for later or should I contact my comp—”
            “No need, I’ll be around. Just have to pick up the kids from the movies, maybe have a little dinner, and then drop them off at their mother’s.”
            “Sounds lovely.”
            “It should. Shouldn’t it?”
            I never saw the man again. I slept in Bernie’s basement, too burnt out from what proceeded.
            Bernie greeted me at the door, noting the few and far between exploits of the preliminary assemblage. “We all get a hand to play, or so they say,” or so he says, but I thought we’re at least born with two.
            The game was simple: the WBL people were expected half an hour before the FBS people, who would be forty five minutes before a totally separate gentleman from one small firm in White Plains who apparently found out about my questioning, and who had--thus--sought me out. So be it.
The attorneys of West, Bruce, and Laing strolled in with a poise known only to certain theologians, a type of grace that both exceeds our mortal concerns and at the same is actively engaged with them. While they may have taken their sweet time saddling up to the bar, they were quite nonchalant about drinking, sparing no time to discover the intended purpose of a drink. The fast talkers weren’t easy prey since they seemingly knew nothing, their focus gliding around topics political, while outsiders to the exchange perused what other individuals were offering of their time, except for one. One straggler was staring down something on the rocks. I believe his name was Mark.
Well, my new friend, the Mark, was a bit concerned about company parties, which is either what he was told this was or what he was rationalizing this as. He was a nephew of one of the partners, but he didn’t have much of an interest in corporate law: he’d rather be working for the HSPCA, or something like that. Sure as shit, he was not born to be a corrupt stooge.
I asked him to elaborate, and, with his second drink as a nurse, he fortunately agreed to the strain.
The firm had cut a series of deals with major media companies to sue not only the people who were enjoying their work, but now they wanted in on the creators, as well, who were never satisfied anyway. He never told me where the idea came from, but the intimations of corporate power lead me to believe that the parent corporations of these media companies must have baptized their catalog so they could be born again as incorporated constructs. Nearing the end of listing the varying litigants and their litigation he laughed, and, without any provocation, explained himself. The laugh was caused by the utter absence of fight in the authors. Most had simply settled out of court, assuming their luck run out, or that their masters were questioning their loyalty. Apparently, there was one slight difference between these cases and the pirates—aside from the fact that pirates only copy as opposed to stealing original works, the demands of the suits were only slightly beyond the means of the defendants and what the settlements came to be were, given the circumstances, quite reasonable.
An unruly level of banter crashed through the door, heralding the arrival of the second party. They were, after all, the triumphal carriage, which asserted for themselves some right to the volume control. On the other hand, they had no self control. They were well grown and groomed adults who had not so quickly forgotten the phrase “pre-game.” They also appeared to have nothing to hide, or, put another way, they wielded a pretense which they recognized as always actively deployed. Some people are smart enough to be able to revel and reveal some things and not others. But this is no science, no matter how gay it is. This is an art; this is a craft that can’t be bought on Etsy, or Ebay, or Amazon Marketplace. This—this is a legitimate witchcraft and, like all magicks, it has a double edge so it can cut you twice. The secrets of the libel deluge were far from exciting. In point of fact, they were utterly simple: they’re all my fault. They are all my fault. Lawyer after lawyer I asked and they all intimated the same thing. Each line cut me anew, but each explanation dulled over time: they knew that I was some two bit semantic schyster though they never said how, that I was here in search of a story, and that, no matter what I’d figure out, I’d fuck it up somehow. We creative types—we’re all fuck-ups you see. At first, companies were using the shadow puppets ‘cause we were hemorrhaging their money on public relations. But, then, museums, libraries, and other homes of the higher arts got in on the game thinking that they could save the good things we’ve made from the bad things that we are. I told them all, each every one—in each and every individual conversation that I had, that it would never work. They told me to fuck hope because praying to her will never offer me anything.
            People doing injustice to one another in the name of its antipode seems just the same in impetus but only more complicated in execution, a deserving punishment for over educated shit heads. The least that can be said of the whole affair was that we could at least understand what was going and we weren’t having a linen pulled over eyes that we didn’t stitch ourselves.
Finally, Bernie directed me to the main man in question, one man who was visibly altered beyond that which ethanol can. Brow furrowed and head and hand thoroughly entrenched in the process of scratching, he stammered out that he received a letter from a Book to sue Its Author. The Author was in a vegetative state, and His family had long since died out and His friends were long since dead to Him. All He had was His estate. The letter warned that the Man was going to squander the good reputation that He had developed through His writing and the Book would not stand for this, (though I must note, the attorney never revealed to me what tense the Book spoke in, if It ever revealed Itself as a subject in Its writing). The Book warned that all the good, empirical wisdom It contained would be shattered utterly when the Man woke up and that a gag order should be imposed on the Author. The note frequently made references to urgency, and in its closing it was said that the Book worried if It had acted too late to stop what was about to happen.
In the next hour, as the attorney was considering how to draft this gag order, and which judge to send it to, the phone rang. It was the hospital. The Patient had awoke and wished to let the attorney know that he no longer need his services since He had accepted the Glorious King Bufu as His god and attorney-at-law. The attorney could, if he wished, visit the Author in half-an-hour and get in on the press-conference. The Author was in St. Luke’s. The attorney was in Portland. It was a long trip to get here, but he needed to find and tell me his story from the moment that Bernie told him of my own story. He said I needed to finish this.
            I tired of this world moving inexorably towards a certain oblivion. Something needed to be done, and so I stood upon a nearby table and said my peace, “Works belong to their author and are a part of his body, mind, and soul for he is not merely the singular specific aspect of his presence, or that of the other, or the body politic or the body human, but something greater for he is many of these things all at once at any second at a great many consecutive instances. After all, at any moment someone could be reading, could be listening to what you have to say.”
From the end of the room, cutting through the middle of the crowd, a man in a black suit walked over to me and handed me an envelope.
“What’s this?” 
“You’ve been served.”
“For…what?”
“Slander.”
“Of whom?”
“The Man, Inc.”

Saturday, September 11, 2010

The Lovecraftian Symbolism in the Stained Glass Windows of Stone Row at Bard College

The first thing we need to establish is that this is based on viewing North Hoffman at, so as to have the windows lit by in the side lights quite clearly.

Now, I want you to also keep in mind that Yog-Sothoth is the Gate, the Watcher and the Key of the Way.

And you should note that the general color of the stained glass is a sickly green color akin to a quite lively ocean.

(Unfortunately I don't have photographic proof of this off hand, but, as I soon as I can get my hands on a worthwhile camera, I will upload pictures in the future.)

We should begin by looking at the the stain glass window of the second floor, the first one above the door. Staring at the window from below, the two crescents in the corners are wings and, then, the center of the circle with six circles setting on its edge, has the split oval which is a beak. Now, the question is what the six circles represent. If they are tentacles reaching straight out, we should think that this is an image of Cthulhu. But, since that is a fairly strenous thing for tentacles to do (stand at attention), I think it is fair to assume that those are six eyes around a beak with a pair of wings, or maybe two eyes. I think we can be fair in assuming that this is the physical manifestation of Yog-Sothoth, that this is the Watcher, the Lurker at the Threshold. It's primary color is the aquatic green light which is played against by the blue of the eyes and the orange of the beak.

Next, we have third floor stained glass window, second above the door, to look at. It could be a book, but it actually looks a pair of red outlined with red knocker Gates. And, hello, I did say something about Yog-Sothoth being the gate, since Yog-Sothoth is all and Yog-Sothoth, therefore, knows all of what Yog-Sothoth is.

But what is the key? I think we should be fair to assume that the first floor is the door and the Key. And what is there as symbol waiting for its aesthetics to be charged with meaning? The name of the dorm: Hoffman.

And we come to a full circle. The Way is opened through alchemical operations of the mind.

Sally forth Bard and know that you are dark vitally loved. I will sleepy easy knowing this... so long as I don't get a complaint about playing Yog-Sothoth's "Hypnotic Crushery" right now.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Is Bush Beelzebub?

Keith Olbermann: The general tone of the coverage is that mister bush simply doesn't want his name in the news before the election because it's like saying beelzebub or something. But is it possible that we are going to learn something aobut the role that congressional republicans played in getting up the fake intel on iraq or letting Bin Laden out of Tora Bora or how the economy got to be tanked or I've only got a thousand of these left, you can jump in any time.

Eugene Robinson: Well, it is indeed possible that there are secrets in there that we don't know. President Bush is not a man who was known for his self knowledge; he did not lead what would seem to be an examined life and so I don't hold really high hopes.

I think the real problem is reminding people of the Bush era, and I think even President Bush gets it. That that's not good for the republcian party.

---The former took place a couple weeks ago on Countdown.

My...thoughts on Governor George Walker Bush are difficult ones to work through. Being an individual who came of age in the aughts, the shadow of his presidency blankets these formative years in a fine layer of ash and soot, far beyond what even my own smoking would already itimate.

If you know me by now, and it isn't something that I should presume, then you likely now that I am one for a good bit of tonal flourish. The more potent the sensation, the duller the sense, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try for as powerful a language as possible. A fine line's been delineated, and I readily admit that it is quite easy to trip on either side of it, though the question of who is hurt by it--myself or my audience--is circumstansial.

So, let's think for a moment on whether it is unduly hyperbolic for Keith Olbermann to suggest that the former governor is Beelzebub, Lord of Flies and one of the seven princes of hell. Up front, yes, this is a bit much: Cheney fits far better since George wasn't a particularly powerful force in this world by the acuity of his own mentality. I get flustered when people say that a president is made by his cabinet, since I'd prefer to reflect on each position as having its own standards that exist parallel to synergetic responsibilities, but this man strikes me as an organ of a greater body at work, and, in particular, he is likely an appendix if not a hemaroid or carbuncle.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Satan Worshipers Call Obama A Muslim

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0819/poll-growing-number-incorrectly-call-obama-muslim/

It's a fairly simple thought: if these folks want to use very paranoid logic and poor evidence--his name, his Muslim "father" (who didn't really raise his son), a few years spent in a Muslim environment in Indonesia, willful ignorance of the ability for a person to choose the religion that speaks to them or that they speak to (a radical concept!), willful ignorance of that whole radical black preacher, and--oh, yeah--a desire to portray Obama as an other that society will allow them to hate, then I suggest we use almost similar logic to deride them.

Let us begin to assemble the parts of the outcome you should be expecting:

| These "evangelicals," and similar fundamentalist wackos, profess to express "Christian" values.
/ These people propose more war, greater divisions in the brotherhood of man through their constructions of race and gender, greater protection for the wealthy as opposed to rectifying the injustices of the poor, and  a flaunting of the divine mandate to be caretakers of the Earth.
\ Taken as a whole, their beliefs stand in direct opposition with the crypt- anarchocommunist leanings of the Gospel of John.

* These people are actively doing the work of the dark lord and worship at his throne.

Now, I dare you to prove me wrong.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Silly Schmidt Part 1: It's About Access, Not Profits


Note: This was supposed to be one post dealing with both the silly notion that there should be a different standard for the wired internet against the wireless internet and the idea that kids will have to one day have the legal right to change the name when they get older because of all the information about them that would exist on the net, but I am getting too long of wind for that to be reasonable for that to be reasonable in one post. Expect more shortly, perhaps even later tonight, but definitely soon...however you feel it to be.

The recent Google and Verizon articles of "net neutrality" is a load of arbitrary shit, primarily because of its distinction between wireless and wired connections.

To digress from the subject at large--stupid things coming out of Eric Schmidt's mouth, I don't give a flying fuck about how much money these wireless companies lose because they would engage in a just wireless world. If the companies focused less on profits, and, therefore, financial customers, and actually worried about the kind of service they are offering, then they might have a future. If we, at least for the moment, or moving from a place where we are going to try to keep around businesses--in some form, though probably not in the form of corporate capitalism, it might be a good idea for companies to actually try and offer a decent service and to be constantly trying to expand the capability and capacity of these telecommunication products.

Now, let's deal with Eric. The first big mistake that he made was his framing of the net neutrality debate. By framing it in the terms of capital, he leaves room for the idea that companies can do what ever they will with data rates, perhaps simply because wireless data hasn't caught up to the point where it can act on the same level as wired connections and, therefore--mayhap, replace it. Of course, if a company is going to lose money because it has to treat all connections fairly, then--sure--let them charge more if someone is going to make more of what they already supposedly paid for.

Let's get out of our heads the notion that we should care about net neutrality because of some idea of profits. You, chere reader, are not going to see any money from this. Okay, maybe that isn't totally true. Maybe one person, perhaps two--but not enough to start the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement1, will read this who works at a web based company, a professional blog, or some company that derives a strong portion of its profits, or--for the sake of this train of thought--any portion, from the internet. Still, that will not be my average reader and--unless they feel that the right to profit, not the right to make any income--but profit2, is more important than the right I will propose in opposition--they thus have no reason to base their judgement on the possibility of profit, something they will likely never taste.

Instead, let's base our standing on a more moral foothold and assume that net neutrality is something worth pursuing because it would make access to all information equal, or at less prevent it form becoming less equal. Obviously, if you don't have access internet, an absence of net neutrality only makes your situation infinitely worse. Then, from there, we work our way up from dial-up, and there certainly are people still connecting to the internet that way, all the way up to the fastest fiber optic cables that money can buy, and I'm thankful that I am in a household with such access. So, with that as a given, it's obvious that the net is, in one respect, not neutral. But, rather, what we are facing is another attempt by companies to take back what they have already offered.

The drive for profits has become so insatiable that companies are now trying to snatch back what they have already given away. Quake Live is now offering paid for subscriptions. Major newspapers are now walling off more of their content, or at least requiring you to register an account to access information--probably so they can better "monetize" on the information that you are selling to them simply by visiting the publication.3 So, from a consumer's rights point of view, there is a strong reasoning to see the non-neutral net as a step backwards from what you have today.

Now, would I necessarily want the government stepping in to Quake Live to ensure that everyone got all the features it can offer--for free? Hell no, and it would probably lead to the game being "toned down," or--essentially--killed. Do I want the government stepping in with funds to keep newspapers afloat? Fuck no! But, it seems like a no brainer to me that if you want a fair representation of reality, then you need to disentangle reporting from the profit motive--especially as the cancer spreads rapidly now, more than ever--if you want objective--not neutral--reporting. But that's a subject for another post.

We have a very different problem when it comes to the internet because it isn't merely a product that is immediately delivered. The value of the internet is not in and of itself. Just because I connect my computer to an Ethernet plug--or go over WiFi--does not mean I am using the internet or, in a real sense, consuming my purchase of an internet connection, though I suppose at the very least it would allow for my OS to update itself. So, much like a telephone--for obvious reasons, a computer requires something to connect to to make use of an internet connection. What's so great about the internet now is that I can get to stonerrock.com at the same speed that I can get to facebook.com. Well, perhaps not exactly. Though, while Facebook may be able to pay for fasyer servers and more bandwidth than Stoner Rock, and All That Is Heavy and Meteor City, Internet Service Providers play no other role in that exchange.

So, you can buy better tech or more bandwidth, but the companies remain neutral in the process. But, if Internet Service Providers start colluding with private companies, then the best thing the web has done--crowd sourcing--will likely vanish as the channels that allow for their access will vanish, simply because these openly shared avenues of information and discussion will no longer be able to afford to exist on the internet.

It's bad enough as it is that wireless data rates are disturbingly expensive for what you get in return, but what's more dangerous is the idea that people will be silenced for the sake of profit. Most disappointingly, if anything gains traction in the net neutrality argument, it will likely be slighter moneyed interests saying it will hurt their business. Oh noes! They won't will be able to cheat--er, compete. But, what really frightens me about a non-neutral net is the idea that speech decrying a move way from a non-neutral net--speech like this--could be silenced, and that would be wron--

I'm sorry, I can't let you do that Max.


Who said that? Who are you? And what right do you have to stop--ME!?


I'm Fios. Goodnight, Max.


---

1. 50 People--technically per day, which would therefore make these units even more impractical, so we're going to remove the time portion from it.
2. I'm therefore assuming that there is a possibility to make some money on net neutral internet--indeed probably enough to make a profit, but that the existence of a net neutrality is a force to prevent exorbitant levels of profit that would seem to the reasoned man to be unjust.
3. And--OH!--how I rue the fact that Blogger that displays  a tab called Monetize in the window here. Chere reader, now this, I will not use this blog to directly profit.4
4. I have no idea how I would define profits at this moment, so I will leave some room for me to forget what I said and for you to try to forgive me, hard as it may be.

Friday, August 13, 2010

What's Going on Here?

Can you chill out to this, or will the tone of the lyrics make you suspect the full mellowness of the tune?

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

On the Proper Pleasure of a Rolled Cigarette

Choosing to smoke a rolled cigarette is not just a matter of accounting and suggesting that you can get more out of your money when you're no longer paying for--as many--fancy chemicals and someone else to roll your cigarette for you. A rolled cigarette provides a level or participation and ritual that adds a sense of craft and ownership to this flight of fancy. Now, those who know me may be about to decry me as a quasi charlatan because I have used a rolling machine to aid in hand rolling a cigarette. 

Speaking for myself, no more! I have in the past couple months not merely rekindled my ability in my own acuity at hand rolling, but I've tempered it to a level that I did not think that even I could know. Part of that comes from a realization that lead me to ask the following:

What is the proper pleasure of a cigarette?
Is it in its consummation or can this quality be lessened or heightened?

The difference between true hand rolling and machine hand rolling comes down to a matter of upping the paper to tobacco ratio per pack, the former with the former and the latter with the latter. With a machine, you can stuff enough tobacco into that crevice 'til it becomes something as rich and long lasting as an unfiltered cigarette from a major brand, like a Lucky or a Tan Natural American Spirit. 

On the other hand, a slighter, totally hand rolled cigarette lasts not nearly as long, which may be better if time constraints arise--and I despise nothing more than a cigarette snuffed out as opposed to being clipped1, but it still is a cigarette that is being had. And, in this case, we get to a conversation on the proper pleasure of the cigarette that is a bit less tangible. It shouldn't be, but it seems so to me. 

Now, we've come to the place where one says that a cigarette is a cigarette is a cigarette, and the proper pleasure is merely the getting of the fix in any form. But, in this situation, I wouldn't suggest that the fix is in based on getting any does of nicotine, because that would still be something quantitative and fit in the ideology of the previously described mechanic where we have a higher upper bound for the amount of tobacco that we can get per cigarette, and, thus, modify the time spent "enjoying"2 a cigarette. Rather, in this other place, I suspect that it is the ritual of having a cigarette that leads to its pleasure: 

I suspect I desire a cigarette; I am going to have a cigarette; I roll a cigarette/ I get my pack/ I get my cigarette case, and I get my lighter; (I go out for a cigarette; I'm outside)/(I find my ashtray in my room); I procure my lighter; I light up and drag and drag and drag 'til done; I throw out the refuse where it belongs; I've had a cigarette.

In that whole situation, we saw how small that one moment was that provided me with my problem about the quality of the drags. When all we are trying to do is have a cigarette, we seem to be only fulfilling either a psychological need or a social desire--because who doesn't suddenly discover that they too should have a cigarette with another person every so often?--based on a deeply internalized presumption about our desire, while at the same time ignoring to probe this experience which is so essential to so many. Furthermore, more in this situation, we are working with a person who likely would very well exchange rolled cigarettes for filtered packs if the price was right. Also, I've excluded from the discussion so far the rolling of a filter into a cigarette, something that I don't do since, like a light beer, you are losing something in the filtration process and there different ways to make compromises than simply weakening something. Therefore, we are giving into the pretense that we will be consuming--and that is the proper word--at a greater quantity rather than reducing the quantity consumed for the sake of what may be a superior pleasure

I, for one, do not wish to aspire to the meager having, consuming of a cigarette. I want to ask serious questions about the aspects of a cigarette's pleasure. I want to ask questions about which tobaccos might deserve to become a real Gunslinger's bomber and which tobaccos, either for potency, time constraints, or quality--in the ironic sense, serve best under pico rolling measures. I wish to understand what pleasures you about tobacco, and, along the way, I may find a better understanding of my own sense of the matter. 

And I want you to participate in this journey with me, as opposed to us just having a cigarette. So, come unto me--my pretties, let us discuss.

---

1. Expect a piece in the future on the prevalence in media of characters lighting up only to quickly snuff out their cigarette.

2. I offer this derision not because I necessarily want to give ground to people against smoking, though their points are valid but we are making sacrifices for pleasure--just as we do with any drug, but because I want to take ground   from smokers. I have reason to believe that a number of smokers in this world may not actually give a shit about flavor and all similar metrics, are totally unwilling to try to smoke something beyond their brand, and they smoke not because it makes them happy but because they are trying to mollify some fear, and mollifying a fear is not necessarily the same thing as striving towards happiness. I call into order an elite, a vanguard of smokers in much the same way that any other realm that may have aesthetics can have such a group, even if they are full of shit!

Monday, August 9, 2010

What's A Textbook?

Speak to me of what defines a textbook to you. Comment, please?

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Blood of the Sun - In Blood We Rock (2007)

If you happen to like Grand Funk Railroad, Mountain, and Blue Oyster Cult, you'll like Blood of the Sun's In Blood We Rock.

Mountain is an obvious comparison, methinks, since the band's name would seem to come from the song of the same name by Leslie West, and crew, though, with less likelihood, it could come from the film with the same name. However, the truth is that--in the studio!--BotS is able to recreate the kick-ass, stadium filling sound of BOC and GFR.

But, what really sets BotS from other folks keep the torch of "classic rock" alive--like Stone Axe (truly the most immediate band for comparison), for example, is the use of organs which places the heaviness into whole 'nother realm, ala Atomic Rooster but having learned from the growth doom--even funeral doom, while also invoking the heavy progressive force of Fuzzy Duck, Atomic Rooster, and Lucfier's Friend. LF is also a good spring board into BotS since the switch into a genuine piano and slighter rock moments suggest the kind of honest unity of heavy and progressive that those german fiends conducted.

Though seemingly disbanded, the recently active Sir Hedgehog, who slammed down some excellent modern heavy prog, is a likely comparison, bu the vocals and heaviness of BotS bring to mind the Black Keys with greater speed than the Sir, and some of the effects imposed would make BK a better choice.

The band remembers all the best excesses of the 60's/70's--slaying riffs, pounding bass, wailing organs, and the occasional cowbell--to a great effect.

You've gotta listen to this, but, and even more importantly--if you can, get this on vinyl. It really deserves the fidelity and singular beauty of being a sacred relic and not another aethereal thing to scroll through.

Naturally, All That is Heavy can hook you up: http://www.allthatisheavy.com/search.asp?SearchTerm=Blood%20of%20the%20Sun&SearchType=BandNames
---
Expect more data to be spilt on their other two albums, Death Ride (2008) and their self titled (2009), in the future.

So, I Guess the Cyberpunk Dystopia's Here

Flash Crash. Frankly, that should not be a real thing; that should not be a part of history. But it is.

On the 6th of May, 2010, for but a single day, not much more than a moment on a greater scale of financial time, a thousand points of market value just sort of vanished... into... thin air.

Why? Because, among other factors, a bunch of machines, made by man of course, got confused when some particularly nefarious machines bombarded the market with bogus misleading trades, likely sent by other machines constructed by men.

There was a day when being on the floor, that very proximity to the bleeding heart of finance, meant something for your ability to trade stock. Now, it's a matter of having your computers closer to the market's servers so you can ping trades as fast as possible. Talk about market wizardry.

You can call up the silly thought that some AI is messing with the market for shits and giggles, or that the flash crash was an act of terror on the part of some idealogical group, but the more likely answer is that flash crash was caused by one of these firms attempting to mess with the others. Mathematicians get snatched up by these financial monsters to craft armaments with which to wage war, or, rather, to game the system. And game it is. I can't imagine much else that can explain the kind of behavior we are facing. Tin, or silicon, men wound up to scream trades at one another at a blistering speed so that other machine minds can quickly devise new lines for the song that ends the world.

Whether these minute fluctuations are noise, the byproduct of the complexity of the algorithms used to conduct High Frequency Trading, or the deliberate result of some agent, the really terrifying aspect of this is the rest of humanity who couldn't give less of a shit. Fuck discussing the whole world; even if we just consider the American economy, the fact that so much money, and intelligence--mind you, someone "smart" had to think this shit up, was put into constructing these machines haunts me, as it should their makers, their masters--which may not be one and the same. Someone built these things to manufacture wealth, as oppose to actually devoting their power to some kind of venture that may actually effect, and, perhaps--even, help, people directly, as opposed to the nebulous actions of The Market.

The game of greed is just that, a game, a past time to divert ourselves from the real tasks at hand. Let's hope that we can work together on something a bit more important.

---
Real thoughts on the matter can be found here: http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2010/08/market-data-firm-spots-the-tracks-of-bizarre-robot-traders/60829/

Friday, August 6, 2010

A Very Serious Request

I understand that there was a time when Glenn Beck was a substance abuser.

I want content from that period and from before that period. I want to know precisely the evolution of this...individual. I don't know what kind of bounty I can put on this, right now, but I you will have my utmost regard if you, dear, reader can provide me with content from this period, particularly in the case that the content features Glenn whilst on one of the substances that he was abusing.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

A Violent Dialogue

< WARNING > Late, Edge of Sleep, Ramblings Ahead < / WARNING >

I'm not so bold as to propose an answer to this right now, but I will at least quicken this question: can, and--then--when does, violence become a part of dialogue?

First, I would suppose we should wonder at a political conversation--with molotovs, but I am not opposed to thinking about other interactions and collections of people. Not now though, perhaps not ever, unless of course you speak up...

Secondly, and perhaps something that could shutdown this conversation before it even started is how we define violence. I forced myself too far towards a strict reading of violence as physical violence, political or otherwise, towards the marginalized and radicalized who use physical violence, individuals who tend to be treated as monsters demonstrating that they are something not to be empathized with. Far from it, but I digress.

The point here is that we should be willing to expand how we define violence beyond specific acts to cause physical harm in a militant sense but to a more general consideration of causing harm to a person. We should be able to define violence as the use of power against a person, or persons.

Society has apparently come to agreement that we shouldn't be up to our necks in fist-a-cuffs and more general use of arms--besides the ones you were armed with at birth. In fact, I would be willing to dare that military force pales in comparison to the type of violence that really bothers me.

What seems to me to be a more dangerous and far reaching form of violence are the actions of the powerful against the weak. On a smaller scale, this could be the use of physical violence, or even mental intimidation, but does this compare in the slightest to the Gulf Oil Spill or the molesting of our geists by individuals in marketing.1  After all, what else can we call these afflictions of corporate power on actual human beings but violence?

I won't be the first to call the corporation a psychotic imaginary frenemy acting as a veil for even more rabid and ravenous bunch of hounds masquerading in human flesh. Our brave blue dirt ball has been left scarred, bleeding, perhaps in shock by the acts of men with a full spectrum of moral intentions, dating all the way back to the days when those who wielded power could be slain and the power would be taken from them.

But, still, that power would persist. Kings fall and rise. But, we live in strange times now. Leaders can be killed and their dreams dashed, their stories rewritten, but it's harder to kill something that never was. A corporation is not quite the same tyrant. It's a man made monster that demonstrates what happens when you breath life into greed itself, but at the same time it is a composite entity of human wills. But, perhaps like Devastator, this gestalt of mines only lets the most rotten things come out.

Now, this is not to say that a corporation can't do good, but this is either a mistake on its part or the result of people who are wary of what they are dealing with. It's nature is to cause harm, to amass power so as to preserve itself. It is the worst thing inside of us: the lizard like thing that sees to its own desires at the expense of others, and, inevitably, to the expense its own needs and rational limits.

So how can you punch out BP? How can you pound the metatarsals of villainous HMOs into a fine dust that no medicine can recover? How can you do to Blackwater what's it done to the world?

How can we exact justice? And, in this situation, we are looking for justice to be a force.

I suppose what really is coming to question is when can we take back what we seemingly gave up at birth without a choice: a right to violence, for self defense or otherwise. As a citizen, this right is defaulted to the state, since it seems to at least make things more comfortable, for some, and peaceable to recognize, to some extent, our fellow man's right to life without harm. It removes fear from the general population, but at what cost?

There is no cost if the state is acting for the people, if it is acting redress the wrongs that are committed upon them. But it doesn't seem to be doing that, at least not forthrightly. It's not acting to right the wrongs done by these spectres, which may have minds but no body or soul to strike at.

Still, I'm not sure it would be any better to resort to physical violence. After all the power, the violence we are talking about now--the capital, which is also the capitol, of these phantoms--can buy all the pretty weapons they might need to drive justice to a halt. And this need not be a mere gun or blade, but their magic is best spent on shouting lies and distortions to the highest mountaintop till they coalesce into a form that brings acid rain and hateful thunderbolts on those who presumed they were praying to, as they were told, the rain gods. But these demons do not "make it rain" for the people, or even let it "trickle down."

I'd like to suggest that we can still do violence to them, we can still bring about justice and even invoke the bloody call of an eye for an eye without the use of bodily harm. Their greatest weapons are ideas, because, like their transnational forms, ideas can appear ethereal and can be hard to combat when deeply ingrown and well metastasized.

I will not say that we need to remind ourselves, constantly, of what is right, because we don't have a value as such to revolve around. But, instead, we can try and nullify the gravity of our worst crimes. Which perhaps is how we should perceive these injustices. To still believe in any war of us and them is foolish, even the us and them of the people and the corporate powers. Corporations themselves are but an idea, an idea that we can tar and feather and lock away in the books of law so as to be put back into the box that it crawled out of. But the people who run those companies are still people, just as you and I.

And just like they do to us, we should do to them. They send us wild with their burning visions of paradise, while their workers, truly their slaves, are left to suffer. If our government is unwilling to help us, then the violence we have left is to assault their bodies, real and incorporeal, with protest and boycott and to wage war on their minds and demand life be breathed into their mirror neurons such that their empathy, the seat of their humanity, drives them to take responsibility for the living hellscape that we are now chained to and help us break the chains that man has forged for himself. If they still refuse, then mayhap this be the natural ends of the human machine, unable to convince itself that another is real, and the simple brilliance that that heralds.

Lastly, I'll leave you with something that I've been listening to for quite a bit, and I highly recommend the rest of the tracks that you might comes across from the bar and, later, cantina jukebox in Starcraft II.2



1. My feelings on people in marketing sympathize with those of Bill Hicks. 
2. With minor exception to "Terran up The Night/"

Saturday, July 24, 2010

For Those Who Wish To Dream Lucidly

You could call me a veteran lucid dreamer. In fact, I've been doing it for more than a decade.

At the tender age of [5 to 7], precision is lost to me, years old, I consciously chose to lucid dream as a means to deal with a particular nightmare. Now, of course, I wouldn't have known what a "lucid dream" was back then, nor would I have known that it could be used as a tool to handle nightmares,  but all I knew was that the shit needed to stop.


Bless my mother's heart for letting such a young kid watch the Sci Fi channel, but that decision proved to be fraught with treachery. You see, somehow, I happened to glimpse the likes of the "Chucky" and "Puppet Master" films and that shit is not supposed to be seen by a child, because a child's world is filled with toys and glimpses of said toys doing horrible things to people will infest a child's mind. Now, the particular characters of the film weren't that meddlesome in my dreams, but somehow their latent evil came to infect my images of Bert and Ernie so that they became corrupted into evil little action figures that tormented me in my dreams: hiding in closets, crawl spaces, attics, and ventilation shafts waiting to strike with little knives or pens and pencils.

Even now, reviewing the memories of those dreams, or my mind's attempts at reconstructions thereof, is putting me on my edge.

But, after a while, I decided that enough was enough and that I would take back the night.

So, before I went to sleep one evening--lying awake in my bed, I played back in my head all the nightmares that had frightened me and resolved to end their power of my sleep. Then, I imagined that I stood against a half circle of all the previously mentioned characters--Bert, Ernie, Chuckie, the puppets--such that I recall in my mind it looking like they were ganged up on me, but in reality I had control over them as if they were brought before me to hear me speak. I envisioned myself telling them that they were not real, that they were merely figments of my imagination and that I wanted them to go away, that they had no power of me because I understood and accepted what they were and what they wanted to do, but that they had to resolve their illusory nature and leave me and mighty reality alone.

Sure enough, it worked. After planting that thought in my mind, it grew into a dream with the same story line. The performance took on the qualities of a particular Daffy Duck cartoon where the Detective Daffy, probably playing a send up of Dick Tracy, has the misfortune of coming face to face with a surreal version of his character's rogue's gallery that, as I recall, frightens him back into the arms of the real, rescuing Daffy from a dream turned nightmare. Now, this isn't to say that I never had another nightmare with these characters afterward, remembered or not, nor did my mind find itself without new material to frighten me. I believe that the same Christmas that my folks got me an N64 and the Ocarina of Time, my younger sister got a rather large plush doll of the character Arthur the Aardvark that I had my sneaking suspicions and fears about, no doubt instigated by my findings in The Dreamlands, fearful already, at such a young age, of what the imagination might conjure.

Still, I had conquered the nightmare at its essence and the images themselves could no longer grip me with terror, though they could certainly revolt me and cause an awful shock, a terrible sweat, and an erratic pulse. Yet, I always came out all the stronger knowing that, to at least some extent, I was in control.

But something else happened. From then on, I began to dream lucidly.

I was able to recognize that I was dreaming and, over time, I was able to perform various feats in the dream world, no doubt aided by my avid passion for playing video games and the controlled unreality that they taught me to interact with.

And this was fun, for a while. As a kid, my ability to participate in my dreams made sleep the ultimate amusement park. But with time came a certain boredom with the obvious repetition of dreams, and the inevitable fact that they were only as substantial as the stock I'd invested--and it was fast becoming pennies only.

As a teenager, trying desperately to grasp at straws of meaning, I decided to let go to the dreams and play along. I knew I was dreaming, and it was still a kind of amusement park--or, more precisely, a virtual reality, but I wanted to take it all in. I wanted to see the whole of the play and the cast and crew that made it happen. I had to go back in and take up the conversation once more.

I started, then, to actively work with my psyche, to explore whatever gurgled up to meet me under the dark sky, and, from there, I've come to get a grasp for what it is that I may be.

So, I ask those of who may be intrigued by the film "Inception" and want to play with their dreams as to whether or not you have the right reasons to do this. You are asking to explore the catacombs of your mind and may finds locked away in there that you did not want to find. I do not merely refer to things you might have dreamt up or even consciously imagined in the past, but I refer to real things chained down there, things you've seen, things you've done. Here there be dragons.

I warn you to be careful, foolish psychonaut, for it is you who might be played with.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

The Road to Hell is Paved with the Souls of Mimes

No, really, it is...



All credit goes to Garth Ennis, Jacen Burrows, and Andrew Dalhouse. Now go out and buy this damn comic and find out why all of this actually does make sense!