#alien schemes get in the way of the social revolution

[cksmart-world]

SMART BOMB

The completely unnecessary news analysis

by Christopher Smart

February 7, 2023

TOP 10 REASONS TO LIVE IN UTAH

10 – Tequila, Lime Jell-O Shooters  

9 – Pregnant women and their fetuses driving in car pool lanes  

8 – Ponzi schemes and the real Real Housewives of Salt Lake City

7 – Proposed $550 million gondola up Little Cottonwood Canyon

6 – Disappearing Great Salt Lake

5 – Best alfalfa (upstream from Great Salt Lake)

4 – Insurrectionist and great American Mike Lee

3 – Greatest Air On Earth

2 – U.S. Magnesium Corp. (upwind from the Wasatch Front)

1 – And the best reason to live in Utah: The State Legislature

UFO COVERUP

They're here! Have you seen 'em. Maybe not. They reportedly have cloaking devices, like the Klingons on Star Trek. (We are not making this up.) Republican Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett accused The Pentagon of “a huge coverup” following the release last month of a report for the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) that acknowledged hundreds UFO sightings last year alone. Some could be plastic bags or those Trump diaper balloons but at least 171 were deemed to be what the military calls "unidentified aerial phenomena" (UAP). “If you were human and made the turns that have been seen in some of this footage, you would literally turn into a ketchup packet,” Burchett said. Yes, Wilson, he said, “ketchup.” And no, they weren't Chinese spy balloons. Ronald Moultrie, under secretary of defense for intelligence and security, said there is no evidence that "would lead us to believe that any of the objects are of alien origin." Sure. Burchett isn't convinced — he doesn't trust the feds when it comes to aliens from space. What's hard to figure though is why they never land and say, hi, like in the 1977 movie, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Or maybe they're already here, as in the 1993 sci-fi film, “The Body Snatchers.” That at least would explain Marjorie Taylor Greene.

HOUSE GOP CONDEMNS STALIN, MAO, MEDICARE

For anyone who thinks Republicans with their new majority in the House aren't accomplishing much, think again. They approved a resolution condemning the 1917 Russian Revolution. Bluster? No way, getting tough on Vladimir Lenin after 105 years is, let's see, unfriggin' real. The brave GOP caucus also went after Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot. If that doesn't strike fear into the hearts of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping what would. But maybe it should give Democrats pause, as well. Hey stupid, don't look at the man behind the curtain. The demonization of communism and socialism couldn't also pertain to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, could it? Mmmm... Some 109 Democrats voted with Republicans, not figuring the swinging door of faux patriotism could smack them in the ass. Republicans despise Medicare and Social Security — although they won't say that out loud. It's all mind games, of course, but when the GOP damned communism, and socialism — again — some wobbly Dems followed suit fearing they'd get punked. But they got punked anyway, joining the “America the Beautiful” chorus... “and crowned thy good with brotherhood not stinkin' commie commradhood from sea to shining sea.” Obamacare — what's that?

Post script —  That's a wrap for another wintry week here at Smart Bomb where we keep track of Chinese spy balloons so you don't have to. THE SKY IS FALLING! Yes Wilson, we've all had a gutful of Chinese balloons. Truth is they've been floating overhead for years but the Pentagon didn't tell Trump because... well, the less he knew the better. And speaking of brave men, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) was handing out assault-rifle lapel pins on Capital Hill because they're so good for mass shootings. After the Jan. 6 insurrection he said the rioters were just tourists taking a stroll through the historic building. But video of that day shows him cowering behind an officer as the mob pounded on the House doors. Maybe a dog-poop lapel pin would be more apropos. Republican Gov. Spencer Cox recently proclaimed that “we,” — apparently himself and GOP lawmakers — would not let the Great Salt Lake Dry up. Meanwhile, the Senate Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment committee voted down a proposal to keep the lake level at a minimum of 4,198 feet. All Republican members voted against the plan. Wonder if they represent alfalfa growers. Not to worry, Cox has an ace up his sleeve — he met with LDS Church leaders to aid him seek help from a higher authority. We'll see how that goes.

Hey Wilson, we earthlings should do more to entice the aliens to come on down. Well OK, maybe we could invite them to the Sturges motorcycle rally. But that could be confusing. The first alien might say something like: What are those humanoides doing on those two-wheelers. To which the second alien might respond: I don't know but the ones driving call the ones on the back, Mama. Alright, instead maybe you and the band could invite them down with a song:

Woke up this morning with light in my eyes And then realized it was still dark outside It was a light comin' down from the sky I don't know who or why Must be those strangers that come every night Whose saucers shaped light put people up tight Leave blue green footprints that glow in the dark I hope they get home all right Hey Mr.Spaceman, won't you please take me along I won't do anything wrong Hey Mr.Spaceman, won't you please take me along For a ride Woke up this mornin', I was feeling quite weird Had flies in my beer, my tooth paste was smeared I opened my window, they'd written my name Said: "So long, we'll see you again". Hey Mr.Spaceman, won't you please take me along I won't do anything wrong Hey Mr.Spaceman, won't you please take me along For a ride

(Mr. Spaceman — The Byrds)

[khalilhumam]

Can secularism be compatible with Islam?

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/can-secularism-be-compatible-with-islam/

Can secularism be compatible with Islam?

World of confusion between secularism, free speech, and civil liberties

Anti-terror demonstration in Vienna, Austria, on November 6, 2020. Photo by Michael Gubi/Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

< p class="p1">This article by Samee Alhwash was originally published on The Battleground and is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.

Whether in the boycott-French-products campaign on social media or through conversations with friends, Muslims I know feel conflicted about the recent terrorist attacks in Vienna and Nice.

While they condemn violence, there is also a sense that it is to be expected. Their conflict gets expressed like this:

“We don't condone killing, and those who kill have nothing to do with Islam. But when provocation is disguised as free speech, (for example, Charlie Hebdo), a reaction should be expected.”

Or this:

“Why is it that it's only attacks by Muslims which are branded “terrorist?” Why is French secularism, ‘Laïcité’, applied only to Muslims? Why is it illegal to question the Holocaust but okay to criticize the most sacred elements in Islam?”

Of course, some clear Muslim voices do denounce this confusion between secularism, free speech, and civil liberties. But this conflict is widespread. It seems to come from feelings of disenfranchisement framed in the language of contemporary political Islam.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY6Mux1NKvc?feature=oembed&w=650&h=366]

Where does this rationalization of violence come from?  Is it really something innate to Islam, dooming the religion to be incompatible with key components of democracy, particularly freedom of speech and secularism?

These are important questions as terrorist attacks produce trauma that brings out equally reactionary arguments within European societies, raising questions about cultural diversity, integration, and assimilation.

Anything sounding like an apology for terrorism risks handing political victories to far-right groups, wrongly stereotyping Islam as backward and violent.

We have been here before. In 2005 I watched something that seemed beyond imagination on TV in my small living room in Syria: mass protests across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) against offensive depictions of Prophet Muhammad by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

The protests were tolerated by oppressive regimes that would otherwise crack down on any form of protest. The demonstrations were the only ones of their kind until the Arab Spring in 2010.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOiKQ7rnHSU?feature=oembed&w=650&h=366]

Thinking about them now, I cannot help but question why other incidents didn’t spark the same outcry from Muslims.

The killing of Rohingya Muslims was condemned but it didn't produce the same public outrage. Nor have the Uyghur camps in China.

There was even a widely circulated YouTube video in 2012, one of many to come, of Syrian government thugs forcing an anti-government demonstrator at gunpoint to kneel on a portrait of Bashar Al Assad, in the place of a sajjāda (Muslim prayer rug).

One thug shouted at him, “Pray to your god, Bashar!” True, the actions of the Syrian regime attracted jihadists from all over the world. But this didn’t spark public protests at Syrian embassies like the Danish cartoons did.

This duplicity was intriguing. It tells us something about the nationalistic nature of political Islam today.

It's not a matter of incompatibility between Islam and free speech. Rather, Islam has become an insecure identity that is always undermined by criticism from the Christian or godless, but always colonial, West.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL5P_sB_6Ug?feature=oembed&w=650&h=366]

Muslims adhering to moderate schools of thought, and non-practising Muslims, share this sentiment with conservative elements within Islam. Even secular nationalists view Western criticisms of Islam as an attack on their own culture.

Whether they are Muslim or nationalist, most people in MENA countries are poor, uneducated, and have no political representation. Prolonged stagnation makes them more susceptible to destructive narratives that fuel identity politics and exacerbate social issues. The success of Europe is not viewed as a result of humanist philosophy and a bloody fight against nationalism, such as WWII. To many Muslims, secularism is just a Western colonial scheme to strip away Islamic identity and culture.

Many people in the Middle East and North Africa only see Christian imperial Europe and become slaves to their own inherited colonial traumas. Demagogues, kings, and dictators across the Islamic world reinforce this narrative to legitimize their existence. This feeds into a divisive, nationalistic identity politics that negates any positive intercultural relations with Europe.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkn6R4tUzl0?feature=oembed&w=650&h=366]

The problem gets even more complex inside Europe, as immigrant communities find themselves in an alien and often racist environment. They cope by embracing shallow and dogmatic versions of political Islam.

Colonialism exacerbated social problems that Muslim societies already had. It didn't create them. We were unequal, hierarchical, and sectarian even before European colonisation and the Ottoman Empire. European colonialism simply reinforced existing hierarchical political structures and used sectarianism to divide and rule. The dictatorships we suffer under today are a continuation of those structures. That means it’s up to us to lead an intellectual revolution that blocks demagogues from using our worst instincts against ourselves. That involves being self-critical about everything, including fundamental reform of our identity and religion.

I’m not saying communities who suffered under colonialism should just forget about the past and move on. On the contrary, we need to see the legacy of colonialism as a big part of the problem, but not the only one. Colonialism inflicted profound scars on the psychology and politics of MENA cultures, which were not healed The racism that immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa experience only reinforces that.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnkqCyyy72g?feature=oembed&w=650&h=366]

This is why the legitimate sense of being victimised by colonialism must not be applied to every social ailment.

On the other hand, because of the history of colonialism, Europe has the responsibility to create a politically correct public discourse, respectful of Muslims, aimed at facilitating their integration, as equals. This must coincide with supportive initiatives abroad, in international development and security policy. And in turn, it’s the responsibility of Muslim communities to understand that there is no alternative to reform in today's political Islamic discourse.

Moderate voices within Islam have to make it clear that nothing is sacred in a democracy, and that we must reject political violence without fail.

To initiate this reform, Muslim communities need to look nowhere else but their own history for messages of tolerance, reason, and most importantly shared values with Europe.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWFrQx29NB0?feature=oembed&w=650&h=366]

There have been many scholars, philosophers, and even military leaders in our history who testify to the rich potential of Islamic culture, and its tolerance of free speech.

One example is the medieval Arab philosopher and poet Al-Ma'arri. In one of his roughly translated poems, he writes “There's a commotion in Latakia between Ahmed and Issa. One rings the bell and the other shouts from a minaret. Each glorifies their religion. Oh my poetry, who is right?”

In Risalat al-Gufran, Al-Ma’arri adds, “There is but one Imam, the mind,” and “Two inhabit the earth: one with brains but no religion and another with religion but no brains.”

This is a philosopher who lived during the Abbasid Caliphate over 1,000 years ago. He was neither beheaded nor prosecuted. On the contrary, he was praised as one of the great Arabic philosophers and poets.

A statue commemorating Al-Ma'arri stood in his hometown in Syria till 2013, only to be destroyed by Al Nusra Front, an offshoot of Al-Qaeda.

On the issue of incompatibility with secularism, the development of the Muʿtazila school of thought brings out similarities with renaissance humanism from which secular humanism emerged.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3qA6hJYZGI?feature=oembed&w=650&h=366]

The Muʿtazila movement came into being following the translation and interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics and neo-Platonism. It rejected the idea that the Quran is “uncreated,” which dominated mainstream Sunni and Shia doctrines, arguing that the world can be explained through rational thought alongside scripture. It’s not quite secularism as we understand it today, as it doesn’t separate state and religion. But it opens the door for critical and scientific thought, potentially paving the way for secularism.

Secularism is compatible with Islam. It is just incompatible with the current version of political Islam.  

Secularism needs reform as well, as it was often used to discriminate against minorities, whose religiosity is far different from the faith it was supposed to restrain.

Written by The Battleground

[deep-sea-skiving]

Pink Floyd- Another Brick in The Wall Pt. 2.

Pink Floyd has always been one of my all-time favourite bands. This is largely due not to the actual music but the lyrics. Pink Floyd can tackle prominent social issues through their lyrics in such a beautiful but highly harsh way, allowing the listener to really comprehend the complex societal issues occurring during that time period. These lyrics even though written 40 plus years ago are still incredibly relevant with many of the issues discussed such as heighten consumerism and the effects of alienation due to increasing individualisation being even more prevalent in today’s modern society than ever before. Though most Walters written Floyd albums do deliberate these issues, no other album tackles these issues so strongly like The Wall which was originally released on the 30th of November 1979. So, I thought that in this blog post I would discuss some of the sociological aspects of Pink floyd’s first and only Number one, Another brick in the wall part 2.

‘We don’t need no thought control’

Education is one of the many ways’ society can control its members into conformity and docility. It is a form of secondary socialisation, which means that its primary function is to teach younger members of society the already established, approved norms and values of society. If everyone internalises and accepts the same norms, values and beliefs which they are taught at an early age at school, this helps to maintain value consensus and social solidarity in society. Society can then therefore, continue to function without the issue of conflict which would create instability and in the worst case scenario, anomie (sense of normlessness). If you’re interested in this I recommend reading Emile Durkheim’s Moral Education (1925) https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=emile+Durkheim+moral+education&oq=emile+Durkheim+moral+edu. However, Emile Durkheim’s position on the socialisation aspects of education is perhaps too rose tinted. Whose norms and values are the young being socialised into, is it society’s or is it those powerful enough to control society? Some would argue that the purpose of education is to spread the ideology of the bourgeoise. The Marxist sociologist Louis Althusser stated that the education system is a form of ideological state apparatus similar to religion and the family. It seeks to indoctrinate and spread the ruling class’s ideology and to prepare the working class to accept their own exploitation as their own fault. We can see this through the myth of meritocracy (Bowles and Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America 1976). In another brick in the wall part 2 this Marxist perspective is obvious especially in the movie adaptation. Pink is punished for writing poetry a form of free expression when he should off be copying from the board, a form of a repetitive, mind numbing, thoughtless task mirroring what will be the type of tasks in the workplace and what type of behaviour is deemed acceptable. The education system for Pink is trying to limit his creativity through punishment as once you start to think for yourself you will break out of your false consciousness. You’ll start to disrupt, break down and challenge the system (See the work of Karl Marx especially Alienation and Capital).

Socialising and controlling the thoughts of the young through the education system will allow the ruling class to create an obedient workforce who will not question their dominance and control. Allowing them to continue treating the working class as objects, a means to an end, a profit generating device.

‘Wrong, do it again! Wrong do it again!’

With the marketisation of the education system, learning and understanding has taken a back seat to profit and exams. Education is more focused with repetition and memory than actual awareness of what is being taught. Students are taught to pass a particular exam not to fully understand and learn. The education system teaches students to think inside the box, not outside it. If pupils do think inside the box even if it is a valid point, they’ll get punished for it as it wasn’t one of the approved answers on the mark scheme The system does not reward creativity, individuality or new ways at looking at existing problems and questions. Consequently, the system is based upon repetition and memory and if you’re ‘wrong’ then you need to do it again and again and again, till you’re deemed ‘right’.

‘We don’t need no education’

The one line that is the most controversial and radical. Is Walters calling for the abolishment of a whole social institution of which there is still many positive aspects and functions which it performs? I don't think so. I feel Walters is calling for a revolution, a reform in the ways the education system operates and how learning is achieved. We don’t need no poor quality education, we need better education which encourages autonomy and freedom of expression. Which allows people to fulfil their own chosen purpose and not what society has determined them to do. However, since the release of The Wall in 1979 little has changed in the UK education system. Exams and success in exams determines everything, creativity has been stunted for uniformed intelligence and with the continuing cuts to music, art, drama and physical education budgets there is little in the way for pupils to express themselves freely. Inevitably, this may lead to many building their own walls just like Pink. 

[agnezztealeaf]

Caffeine challenge #25

WHEN MAN DISCOVERED MAGIC

Cheeks ablaze with excitement, Elia rapped his knuckles against the sturdy wooden door marking the entrance to the grass-covered cottage.

“Rosalie!” he called through the closed door. “Rosalie! You’ll never believe what just happened.”

The door swung open to reveal a brown-skinned girl in her early teens, her hair wild and her callous hands gripping the shaft of a broom. Rosalie snapped her fingers, and the broom flew through the room, landing neatly in a corner, right next to a dustpan.

“What?” she said with an amused smile. “I have chores to get to, you know, and my grandma will have a fit if she sees me talking to you.”

“Oh, come on now,” Elia’s grin grew wider as he conspiratorially stepped closer to her, “I’m sure you can spare a few minutes to talk to your best friend. Besides, I’ve got something important to tell you.”

“Oh yeah?” Rosalie shrugged in resignation, and with another snap of her fingers, her grey wool coat came flying into her outstretched hand.

The air was cold, stinging their faces as they walked along a path in the woods, the yellow leaves on the ground rustling as they walked past. Though the sky was blue, one could feel the first nip of winter settling in, promising cold and dark days ahead. But for now, the sun was shining, the brightly coloured leaves painted a picture of crispness and renewal, and the itchy scarves knitted by Elia’s big brother were enough to keep the memory of previous winters at bay.

“So,” Rosalie said, picking up a yellow leaf shifting in red from the ground, “what was important enough for me to risk my grandma’s rage sneaking away from my chores?”

Elia had walked next to her for a few minutes, looking like he might burst from excitement, but being unwilling to be the first to speak.

“My father just discovered that magic exists!” the words finally came tumbling out of his mouth.

Rosalie stared blankly at him for a second, then she burst out laughing.

“No, no, no,” Elia took her hand, “listen to me. I know it sounds ludicrous, but I swear it’s true. Magic exists.”

Then she looked at him in disbelief, a bemused smile tugging at her lips. “Of course I believe you. I know magic is real. I use it every day.”

Elia rolled his eyes. “Oh come off it, I don’t mean the cheap tricks you and your grandma use for chores. I mean actual magic. Like using spells to defeat entire armies, or to bind fae to do your bidding.”

At this, Rosalie pulled her hand out of Elia’s grip, the amused glint in her eye dying away, like a kindle in a burnt-out fire.

“What do you mean cheap tricks?” A tinge of hostility creeping into Rosalie’s voice. “These cheap tricks are the reason there is food on your table every time you come home, they’re the reason every surface in that great old castle you live in is free of dust, they’re the reason people aren’t dying of common, easily-cured illnesses. Why is your father’s magic greater than our magic?”

As accusation slid into her tone, Elia took a step backwards, defensively raising his hands.

“Look, you know what I mean. Sure, your jinxes come handy sometimes, but in the grand scheme, they don’t really matter. With magic like my father’s, we can change the geo-political arena, change the world-order. With my father’s magic, we can create a revolution.”

Disbelief flickered in Rosalie’s eyes, as she viewed her friend as if she’d never seen him before.

Then she cleared her throat, “Well, this has certainly been an eye-opening stroll in the woods, thank you, but I have to get back to my chores and my cheap tricks. I wish you and your father all the best.”

And with that, she turned around, sweeping past him - leaving him standing alone in the woods, with only the soft moaning of the trees in the wind to keep him company.

…

Several years later, a now adult Rosalie came walking through the same woods that Elia and she had walked so many years previously. She was now tall, her body wiry and muscular, and her previously untamed hair was now braided into small braids, collected in a bun held together by colourful ribbons. She was wearing a long, green cloak, the hood of it hiding her face from view. Under the hood, her face was now disfigured by a white scar that split her face in two – going from one ear, over the bridge of her nose, to the other. It was a witches’ mark, marking her so that all who met her would know what she was – what she could do.

During the years that had passed, the previously prosperous land had become a war-ridden land of despair, distrust and persecution. As the new ways of magic had ripped through the land like a wild-fire, the old ways had become forgotten and alienated. Those who had remembered, and kept their knowledge, had become the enemy, and suspicion riddled every relationship. The witches could be anywhere. Could be anyone. Was it your neighbour? Your lover? Your child? No one was safe from the allusive lure of the witches, and therefore the climate of the land was rigid with suspicion, and therefore the punishment for practicing witchcraft had to be severe.

The sudden rise of people dying in illnesses was attributed the witches, but no one considered the sudden inaccessibility to healing magic to be the reason for it. Famine plagued the land, as crops died due to pests and weather, and the people cursed the witches for bringing misfortune upon their harvest. No one remembered the protection spells, mumbled under the breath as the seeds were sown. It was so easy, blaming the witches – rather than their king, who had started the war, rather than the fae hiding in the woods, their fingers itching with the promise of revenge.

As Rosalie walked along the path, she could hear the sound of hooves getting closer, and soon she could see the man riding towards her on a chestnut-brown stallion. His face was tan, and his light brown hair curled around his ears, shining like gold in the sunlight. The dark blue uniform fit snuggly around his muscles, and on his chest were rows of medals of honour. As fortune would have it, the man approaching Rosalie was in fact Elia, now a general in the royal army, waging war against the neighbouring lands. As he slowed down in front of Rosalie, she defensively raised her staff against him; her hood shadowing her features and her scar.  

Elia swung himself off the stallion, bowing before her as he hit the ground.

“My lady, General Elia Hawthrone at your service.” The cocky smile on his lips melted away as she gasped and stumbled backwards.

“Elia?” she exclaimed. She swept the hood away from her face. “It’s me, Rosalie.”

Elia’s eyes caught at the scarring on her face, but he neglected mentioning it as he moved closer to her.

“Rosalie?”

They stared at each other for a moment, not sure what to say, after so many years apart. Rosalie looked him up and down.

“So, you’re a general now?”

“And you’re a witch.”

There was really nothing else to say. Their paths had parted at thirteen and though they were physically on the same path, their destinies still pulled them in opposite directions.

After another few moments of awkwardness, Elia cleared his throat,

“How’s your grandmother?”

Hurt flickered in Rosalie’s eyes as she in a matter-of-fact kind of way stated, “She was hanged five years ago for using magic, when she tried to heal a dying child.”

Elia’s eyes grew big, as an “Oh,” escaped his lips.

Rosalie regarded him sadly, as she wished that something would snap back into place, that the casual ease with which they had socialized as children would return. But when nothing happened, she pulled up her hood again.

“Well, I’ve better be on my way.” She walked past him, wishing he would say something. Wishing he would stay silent. He watched her walk away, biting his lip.

As she moved farther and farther away, he opened his mouth. The words left his mouth before he could stop them.

“Rosalie! I’m sorry about your grandma!” She regarded him silently, a sad little smile on her lips, contemplating what could have been.

“Yeah, me too.” And with a turn of her heel, she was gone.

When man discovered magic, the world stood still with wonder - the men marvelling at the possibilities that this new power provided. The rest, more quietly, marvelled at how the magic that had been practiced by them for centuries, was so easily discarded, so easily forgotten. The power given man through magic was destructive and corruptive, and soon the land was crumbling, attacked by outside enemies - with giant armies marching towards the boarders on all sides, and fae, angered by their imprisonment and thirsty for vengeance – and by inner turmoil. Knowledge previously freely shared, was driven into being passed from person to person in hoarse whispers, afraid to be prosecuted, afraid that the help they wanted to provide to others would be the match setting fire to the witches’ pyre.

But as Elia and Rosalie parted ways, a spark ignited in both their chests, a tiny flame of determination. A spark that whispered Be brave, you can make tomorrow better than today.

----------------------------

Well, that was fun. i haven’t done any of these challenges before, and i most definitely did not really follow all the rules (took me about 2 hours to write), but i felt really inspired by this one. Sorry if there’s some weird language errors, as english is my second language and this was written between 3 and 5 AM. Anyways, really loved the prompt. 

(@caffeinewitchcraft)

[lhs3020b]

The Fugitive Worlds, by Bob Shaw

The Fugitive Worlds is the last novel in the Land/Overland trilogy. Since I’ve commented on the other two, here are my thoughts. And beware! here there (may) be Ropes! possbly even intersecting ones!

OVERVIEW

It's two generations or so after the Migration from Land. If you squint, society on Overland may have improved - apparently it has got a bit more meritocratic, there certainly has been some progress on gender issues, and this time the novel doesn't open with a random peasant being dragged off to be executed on some noble's arbitrary whim. Technology and infrastructure are changing - Cassyll Maraquine's industrial empire seems to be overseeing a pivot toward a metal-and-steam based economy, and in fact they seem to be in the early stages of an industrial revolution. On the plus side, this presumably means Overland isn't faced with another ptertha crisis in the near future, though a cynic may wonder if they've just swapped one environmental crisis for another one in a few centuries' time, when the seas start rising and the deserts begin to expand. But not to fear - there's every chance that the whole of society will be swept away by cataclysm long before that ominous possibility can occur!

You see, change is afoot in Overland's domain. Because, to the consternation of everyone except the government (who remain supremely complacent), a fourth planet has suddenly appeared in their star system. Attempts are made to bring this to the attention of the queen; unfortunately she's utterly fixated on a demented scheme to extend her reign back to Land itself.

At the opening of the novel, Toller Maraquine II, grandson of the star of the first two books, is discontent. As Cassyll's son, he could have had a life of wealth, privilege and social influence. Instead he spends his time mooning after his supposedly-heroic grandfather - yes, the same one who managed to simply forget that his first wife existed! Toller II, unfortunately, has inherited his grandfather's impetuousness and basic lack of any common sense. He's certainly not a monster, but he is an idiot. This is shown in the book's opening scenes, where he falls blindly in love with the Countess Vantara, despite the fact that she's an obvious schemer and bully.

Seeking to impress Vantara, Toller involves himself with the planned re-expansion onto Land. This swiftly gets disrupted, though, by the appearance of an expanding crystalline disk, growing across the zero-g datum plane that exists between the two twinned planets. The disk's rapid expansion cuts off travel between Land and Overland - it expands beyond the region of breathable air where the two planets' atmospheres meet - and to make matters worse, the Countess vanishes while trying to traverse said region! Oh no! Toller, of course, immediately resolves that he must go and rescue her. (She has treated him with nothing except derision and contempt by this point, and he of course fails to read the very obvious message in there.)

The predictable result of this is that Toller gets himself and his crew abducted by aliens, because of course the people of Land and Overland are actually currently bystanders in someone else's plans. Fortunately for Toller, the Dussarrans show no interest in probing him. Unfortunately for him, the expanding crystalline disk is actually a complex machine intended to relocate Dussarra itself away from the galaxy they all currently live in.

You see, the aliens believe that they are imminently threatened - their researchers have found evidence pointing to a collision between so-called "Ropes" somewhere astronomically nearby. (Ropes appear to be similar to the class of hypothetical topological defects that we call "cosmic strings" - fortunately for us, there's no evidence that cosmic strings actually exist in our universe.) This collision, they believe, will have produced an explosion somewhere between a gamma ray burst and a cosmological phase change. They fear that a wave of destruction is currently zooming toward them, at or close to the speed of light. If they are right, there is certainly no chance of Dussarra surviving it, hence their decision to begin relocating their planet.

Unfortunately there's a smaller problem. The Xa, the relocation engine they're constructing across the datum plane? When activated, it will destroy Land and Overland. The Dussarrans may be about to finish what the ptertha started around fifty years previously - the complete destruction of all civilisation on either Land or Overland!

A LEVER TO MOVE THE WORLD

Before we go any further, I'll give the Dussarrans credit for one thing: whatever their other faults, at least they're willing to think big. They are, after all, trying to address the Rope problem at source. If it were us in their situation ... well, half the newspapers would insist that Ropes don't exist, another third would claim they're leftist conspiracies to steal our precious body fluids, the remaining handful would write something mealy-mouthed about how Ropes might exist but maybe we shouldn't "overreact" for fear of a "pro-Rope" backlash. Centrists would call for a grand bargain with the Ropes - they can toast only HALF the planet in return for a top-up pupil premium on private school fees! Youtube user MagaCrypto2024 will tell you to invest your life savings in their newly-minted RopeCoin ("if it's golden enough for the quantum vacuum, it's gold enough for YOU!") and then a Tory would take 52% of the vote on a platform about how Ropes are great beacuse they'll eradicate the benefits claimants. 10 seconds after that, the shockwave demolishes the entire planet, and of course no-one ever admits that perhaps, just perhaps, they may have got it a bit wrong.

I'll say it again, whatever their other faults, at least Dussarra has managed to react to the crisis, and their behaviour isn't completely-insane.

That said, the Dussarrans' solution does suck.

Apparently the Xa requires weightlessness and a large supply of free oxygen to grow. It's not really clear why the Dussarrans couldn't have simply built a large bubble, say at one of their Lagrange points, pumped that full of air, and grew their Xa in there. There is a suggestion that the planetary alignment between Land and Overland is important too, the book does flip-flop this a bit too. Anyway we're left with the impression that the Dussarrans didn't have a lot of choice in where they built the Xa and they do genuinely believe that they are fleeing a cosmologically-apocalyptic event. Also, it's a plot point that Dussarra isn't an ideologically-coherent monolith; in fact the plan faces substantial internal dissent, and this actually boils over into something as close as the Dussarrans can have to a civil war. This is doubly-significant as the Dussarrans' telepathy also stops them from fighting each other in the usual manner - bluntly, when someone dies nearby, the telepathic backlash is utterly-paralysing to any exposed Dussarran. Killing someone yourself would thus be near-impossible for a Dussarran, though as is common in Shaw novels, the Dussarran elite has found a way to do an end-run around this problem. (Non-lethal weapons don't have the same paralysing impact!)

On a slight tangent, one interesting twist in "The Fugitive Worlds" is that Toller and co are basically NPCs in the Dussarrans' story, and they don't realise it.

The place, I think, where the Dussarrans' scheme becomes morally-unacceptable is their failure to evacuate Land and Overland. The population of Dussarra is at least thirty million - that's their capital city alone! - and in fact is implied to be in the billions. They're a modern industrial society with modern technology, after all. By contrast, even if the Landers have been breeding like bunnies for the last two generations, the population of Overland still can't be more than a few hundred thousand at absolute most. My guess is that a more plausible number would be more like 50-75,000. Perhaps 250,000 if you stretch it (a low death rate and every family putting out 4, 5 or 6+ kids could just about get you there in this timescale).

The Dussarrans have remote teleportation tech, and the denouement shows that said tech can reach anywhere on Overland, even at a distance of millions of miles. In principle, they could remove everyone from Overland, and given the vast difference in population, they could certainly accomodate a few thousand more people on Dussarra. The point I'm making here is that an evacuation was possible; there was no technological, infrastructural or economic barrier that would have precluded it. Granted the Overlanders probably would have reacted badly to being hoovered off their homeworld - who wouldn't? - but, they're not 100% immune to reason either. As Divvidiv's interations with Toller show, Overlanders are capable of understanding the Rope problem, especially when telepathy is used to help said understanding along.

(Also, for that matter, there was nothing to stop the Dussarran government from trying to open diplomatic relations with Queen Dasseene's regime, and maybe saying "Uh, guys, sorry to be a nuisance but we've got some news you might want to hear about...")

Under normal circumstances, of course, abducting everyone off of their own homeworld would be bad. It's still not great, even in context. But, the Dussarrans do have genuine reason to believe that The End Of All Things is barrelling toward them at nearly speed of light. When the Rope-intersection event lights up Land/Overland's skies, we can reasonably assume that it will destroy both of those planets too. In fact, Divvidiv confirms this possibility in as many words. Relocating everyone to Dussarra, then using the Xa and the Land/Overland binary to relocate the planet somewhere safe would, in context, strike me as a morally-defensible solution to the crisis. While it would be sad to lose Land and Overland, it would at least allow both societies to survive.

(The question of Farland is never addressed in this. As far as we can tell, the Farlanders are on their own during this particular cosmological emergency.)

Perhaps unfortunately for everyone, Dussarra's leadership have apparently decided to pull a Thanos instead. Why they skipped over the obvious non-genocidal solution is never directly addressed, though there are hints. The Dussarran leadership patronisingly describes Overlanders as "Primitives" - it's implied that their racism is a factor in their failure to do anything for their new neighbours. Also, thinking about it, the callousness is thematically-consistent with the rest of the series. Throughout this trilogy we see leaders making decisions that are at-best based on expediency alone - witness how quick King Prad was to abandon Ro-Atabri in the first book - or sometimes, decisions are based actively on malice and spite (see the Sgt Gnapperl subplot from the second book). From that point of view, the behaviour of Director Zunnunun and the Dussarran authorities is not particularly-unusual.

The scheme also ends up entirely-backfiring. You see, the wrong planet gets displaced. Ooops.

We never learn the fate of Land or Dussarra for an absolute fact; Toller's post-event speculations are bleak, but the narrative may imply that Dussarra at least could have survived. (The Dussarran rebels return there after the confrontation on Overland - I don't think they would have done that if they thought that their Xa-disrupting box was going to destroy their homeworld in the process!) I'm less optimistic for Land - the planet is probably toast - but that said, there is no "on-screen" death and what happened during the Xa's activation was definitely 100% Off The Rails, so who knows? I suppose it's at least possible that Land could have survived the Xa's activation.

One does wonder how it would cope with the abrupt removal of Overland's tides, though.

That said, Overland seems to experience weirdly few direct consequences for its displacement. The main effect is an abrupt change in the sky, followed later by the confusing discovery that Pi no longer exactly equals 3, but instead is somehow closer to 3.14. There are no storms or earthquakes - it's not clear how the tidal relaxation of Overland's crust had no geological consequences at all. The only thing I can think of is that perhaps the new solar tides are exactly equal to the ones Overland previously experienced?

Oh yes, I mentioned "solar" tides, didn't I? This is because the last few pages of "The Fugitive Worlds" are even more head-bending then they sound. While the galaxies and daylight stars and comets and meteors all vanish, and the number of stars in the sky decline sharply, the Overlanders are surprised to discover that they have a lot more planetary neighbours that they did even hours ago. In the course of one night of observations, Cassyll and Bartan find five distinct planets, and quickly postulate that more could exist. The cream coloured gas giant with the big ring catches their attention, and they're confused about how to count the binary between the blue planet and it's one-quarter-sized greyish companion? moon? neighbour?

Yes, a cream-coloured gas giant with a prominent ring system, Pi quite possibly equal to 3.141592654..., a blue planet with a greyish moon that's about one quarter its diameter ... hmmm, I wonder where Overland could have gone? Such a mystery, no possible clues, amirite? Oh yes, the blue one is described as being quite bright, so apparently Overland's new orbit is fairly near to it. Given how relatively-empty Overland is, you do does find yourself wondering just how long before their heavily-populated new neighbour decides that they're next on the menu for Manifest Destiny...

(Just in case anyone's confused about what the ending implies, the descriptions suggest that Overland has been displaced not only out of its own universe, but into our solar system. The cream-coloured ringed planet is clearly Saturn, and the blue/grey binary is the Earth-Moon system. The five planets Cassyll and Bartan find are presumably most of the ones from classical antiquity - Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Earth-Moon system. Presumably they missed out Mercury, but in fairness its closeness to the Sun makes it the hardest of the classical planets to observe, so this is reasonable. But needless to say, this ending does come firmly out of the left field.)

BUT WHAT OF THE PEOPLE?

In terms of characterisation this novel continues the threads of the previous two. Shaw does do a good job of painting believable people - their flaws, errors and misjudgements are all very human. No-one does anything that real people wouldn't, or haven't. Toller's hero-worshipping his wife-amnesiac grandfather (have I mentioned the airbrushing that Fera Rivoo got halfway through the first book?) is believable. People do behave like this, idolising idiots and putting others on pedestals. His infatuation with Vantara is depressingly-believable too. People fall for people they shouldn't all the time. This sort of meltdown is arguably one side of the romantic coin, after all.

Vantara - well, there are plenty of status-obsessed bullies out there who are also secretly cowards. She's the monarchical version of every bad middle manager you've ever met. One of the book's subplots is how she gradually falls from Toller's esteem, though it takes until the denouement before he finally sees her for what she is. Also, interestingly, the romance plot gets subverted at this point. Toller manages to find someone else, someone who is both a better person and who will hopefully balance his more self-destructive tendencies with basic common sense.

Also, Vantara's entire career basically hangs off of the fact that a close relative is also the Queen. With Queen Dasseene's health in sharp decline and a clear suggestion that her reign will soon end, one suspects that Vantara's star will go down with her. Also this won't be helped by the fact that Vantara was physically there, on the field with the Dussarran rebels' Xa-disrupting box and she did - not a lot? It was almost the end of Overland, and heroic deeds were notable largely by their absence on her part.

The Dussarrans feel less real. That said, Divvidiv's combination of complacency, careerism and partly-sublimated guilt at the necks he knows he's stepping on in his job - yes, it does feel consistent with your average out-of-their-depth middle manager. We see less of Director Zunnunun and we know of the Palace of Numbers only indirectly, but their general superiosity and smugness are consistent with what I know of senior-management-as-a-group. However, Dussarra does remain slightly out-of-focus even in the second half of the book, when Toller and co are literally stood on it.

Cassyll and Bartan pop up every now and then in the narrative, but they're not so directly-involved. They're mainly there to try to explain events to the Queen, who is clearly severely ill and also severely in denial about being ill.

Another niggle aboout this book is that it carries on dropping plot threads, much like the other two. What happened to the people the Queen sent to Land? Did Dussarra survive? What happened to the rebels? Was the Rope-intersection really real? We never get clear answers or, in some cases, any answers at all. It almost feels like this novel was intended as a sequel-hook for a fourth book, or perhaps some new trilogy, but said trilogy never arrived. Honestly, that might be for the best. (Do we really want to read a novel about Overland being plowed up for luxury executive mansions while the surviving population are herded off to reservations, or all die from the flu or other imported terrestrial diseases? Given the Kolcorronian monarchy's behaviour in the first book, being on the wrong end of a colonial expansion would have a certain bleak irony, but it wouldn't be fun to read.)

So again, like the previous two, this one is a page-turner. It's hard to put down. But like the previous two, it suffers from dropped plot-threads and perhaps also a few too many out-of-the-left-field WTF? moments. That said, I did enjoy re-reading it, and I can see why it made such an impression on younger!me all the way back in the 1990s, when I first read this trilogy.

[mbcoldstorage]

The Winnipeg-based artist makes multi-media work at the intersection of film, poetry, politics, and architecture.

by Mónica Savirón |  19 MAR 2019

Rhayne Vermette; courtesy of the artist. Punchers, burins, blade knives, and guillotine splicers invade Rhayne Vermette’s working space. Born in Notre Dame de Lourdes, Manitoba, and residing in Winnipeg, for this self-taught artist, collage, photography, and film are the tools that demolish the house of rhetoric. Inspired by architects who infused a reinterpretation of building with wood, glass, and stone, Vermette questions methodological foundations and surroundings—in her case, to make the towers fall. What once was defined as path and pillar do not govern the artist or her work. She breaks down structures that mirror the dysfunctional models and causalities of closed structures. Her schemes and patterns are not affixed or in service to a system. Instead, she shows what is beneath the logic of

make-sense

enunciations, and their own relational dynamics. By deconstructing edifices of rules, meaning takes its power back. Scratches, flares, glue, and tape are the weapons of the artist’s anti-language.Highly laborious and musical, Rhayne Vermette’s works are moving fragments of a whole that transform themselves both poetically and politically. A female character in a film (

Take My Word

, 2012) will continue evolving in another a year later (

Full of Fire

). Each image is a composition of movable motifs that respond and react in disregard to categorical, self-contained conventions. The artist choreographs shifts and alterations in what had been previously built up as truth or context, stratification and alienation. In one of her first films,

Tricks are for Kiddo

(2012), multiple little pieces of 16mm found footage gets overlapped in varying densities and taped to clear leader into different positions. An animation results from reshooting the collage on an optical printer while running the film at constant speed. Scenes that were not meant to convene are assembled together over the flying carpet of the celluloid strip, unmatched juxtapositions in the stream of consciousness.

Tricks are for Kiddo

, by Rhayne Vermette; courtesy of the artist. 2012, 2 minutes, HD from 16mm, color, sound,The concept of rebuilding from what is broken or left out also resides behind Vermette’s

Black Rectangle

(2013), a film that relates to Kazimir Malevich’s painting

Black Square

(1913). The Kiev-born artist adopted the cracked, non-representational, geometric form as a “refuge” for the cultural and social revolts that would lead to the October Revolution. Both protecting and hiding, in Vermette’s film black rectangular sections adhered to transparent celluloid act as barricades or curtains. The placement of each element within the frame is marked by the white spacing that surrounds or cuts them, as in 19th century French poet Stéphane Mallarmé’s theory of

espacement

between words on a page (

Poem. A Throw of the Dice Never Will Abolish Chance

, 1914). Thanks to these delimitations, clusters of similar materials manage to show their own singularities. A closer visual connection comes from Marcel Broodthaers's interpretation in 1969 of Mallarmé’s poem, a translation in graphic forms: black blocks substitute the words, their width stretching in relation to the original type size. In

Black Rectangle

, the obstructing shapes take over the optical track field of the 16mm frame, and create an ominous, seemingly destructive, popping and cracking sound when they travel through the gate of the film projector. Ideas of place and absence translate into visual and audible breaks in the action through rhythmic repetition or silence, an idea developed in Jacques Derrida’s chapter

Différance

(

Margins of Philosophy

, 1972): “An interval must separate the present from what it is not in order for the present to be itself, but this interval that constitutes it as present must, by the same token, divide the present in and of itself... this interval is what might be called

spacing

, the becoming-space of time or the becoming-time of space.” Vermette’s body of work pushes this theory towards a feminist perspective: what matters is not the story that gets repeated as believable, but who is allowed to talk and what their silences speak to.  

Kazimir Malevich’s

Black Square

, 1913. Reproduction from the State Tretyakov gallery, Moscow.

Excerpt from

Poème. Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard

, by Stéphane Mallarmé, 1897: “WILL ABOLISH / AS IF / An insinuation / in the silence / in some close / acrobatics”.

Image from Poème.

Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard

, by Marcel Broodthaers, 1969.

Caption:

Black Rectangle

, by Rhayne Vermette; courtesy of the artist. 2013, 2 minutes, HD from 16mm, color, sound. Indexes of power, the quick images’ shallow depth is brought into the open in Vermette’s work by aggregating layers, both in space and in improbability. The shards of celluloid she brings together from inside the frame or the sprocket hole area, and the sequential cuts, being sharp or dissolved, shed light on materiality and memory. Similarly, the sounds mixed from different sources and at equal volume levels interfere intelligibility. Vermette’s web of sounds mirrors the frustration and aggressivity that take place in communication. Wavering from high to low, and from left to right, sounds have the effect of implacable, movable wind around obelisks of Babelian misunderstanding. By shifting hierarchy among sounds, Vermette may baffle expectations of inattentive listening. A different approach to perceiving sound allows for the creation of new expressions and, therefore, new ways of thinking. Existentially and syntactically, tacit subordinations (“the way things are”) have no part in the calligraphy and cartography of the artist’s work. Constructions are, ideologically and formally, torn down—the beginning and the end of disbelief.  It is inevitable to associate Vermette’s interest in structures, or her detachment, with the Structural/materialist film movement. The repeated use of contrasting patterns and geometric shapes at different exposures and focal lengths speaks to a methodology in which time affords dimensionality. The most important aspect of the presentation of an image is its framing and the passing time between moving parts: the entr’acte. The process and its artificiality are the film. The square or rectangle that surrounds the image is the same of a window, of a house’s wall, the artist’s room, and the flat table she works on. Vermette is interested in what those spaces permit, and how they can be animated through scale, perspective, duration, and imagination. She challenges materials and constructions, and breaks them down to chaotic configurations that, in turn, become a vindication of basic forms. Through fixed camera-pointing, loops, and transitions, perspective gets displaced. “Only by forgetting can I see the place again as it really is,” we hear in Vermette’s film

Les Châssis de Lourdes

(2016), made with footage the artist’s father had shot in their family home. The quote is from David Byrne in his film

True Stories

(1986) after his band’s concert,

Stop Making Sense

, and regarding the nature of the chronicles published in tabloid newspapers at the time. His narration is a fitting and cohesive explanation of the metaphysical concerns that ignite Vermette’s work: the evolution of aspirations through time and experience or, what is the same, the pursuit of life after catastrophe.

Still from

Domus

, by Rhayne Vermette; courtesy of the artist. 2017, 15 minutes, HD from 35mm, 16mm and Super-8mm, color, sound.Vermette’s work as a whole is neither experimental nor documentarian or fictional, but something mutable that brings together elements from all those categories, a kind of multi-media architectural settlement of the mind where ruins and reigns collide. For Vermette, the film frame is not a cage or rigid container, but one of those homes whose structures are capable of swinging during earthquakes, adapting to the changing phases, morphing and readjusting, moving along. This is reminiscent of Japanese building design, but also of Italian Carlos Mollino’s work, which Vermette has studied for many years, and served as inspiration for her films

Turin

(2015) and

Domus

(2018). Reflecting on a utopian architecture, and with the versatility that mixing 35mm, 16mm, Super-8mm, black and white paper copies, and negative film affords,

Domus

frees itself from plots, maps, and models. Vermette recites stanzas that channel the free spirit of her subject, inspired by artist Al Jarnow’s time-lapse, stop-motion film

Celestial Animation

(1985):

In this space,divided by time,defined by light,we wait. Through what filter does a dream emerge instrument of precision a constructive prosceniumfor a perspective of vision waiting by night in the shadow  of its framea darkness crowds the landscape and crouching behind this cold partitionborn from memoryand new to my languagehe comes.

Vermette utilizes cutter knives to craft line-based compositions on celluloid the way Mollino used pencils to sketch his buildings. Mollino had a Surrealist eye, and the dream-like two-room apartment he designed and built in Turin, the Casa Miller, was the set to stage his photographic work. He manipulated negatives, prints, and Polaroid film to achieve, if nothing else, at least his conceptual desires. An image of the interior entrance of this apartment became the front cover of the leading architectural journal

Domus

in 1937. In his photographs, the arrangement of furniture, fabrics, shapes, and bodies highlights what his vision as an artist was about: the creation of spaces that bring closer material architecture and sentient beings, shelters to be sentimental shells meant to last. Vermette sees this same potential in the malleability of celluloid, its organic ability to transcend. Connection and progression do not happen naturally, though. They need to be conjured, repeatedly, and often incited by failure. That is the case in

Tudor Village: A One Shot Deal

(2012), a film where Vermette explores the town’s sounds, and her experience trying to capture with her camera a lunar eclipse. Embracing mistakes and defeat, her meticulous work reflects on those aspects of the artistic process that are outside control. The deviations and strangeness of derailing lead the way to wider reach and depths.In search of that place that resembles the trace of the heart, Vermette’s work draws a consistently evolving trajectory. Now in preparation of a scripted film with an all-female crew, she questions her familiar modus operandi, switching the order and routines of her creative process, the labyrinth’s corridors and itineraries. Actors and performative acts further the implications of art as destruction, testing models of command, pushing the artist’s creative walls, and expanding the terrain as in a panoramic shot. The art of architecture in film is no other than light projected in the darkroom of the mind, a sensorial space for the construction of other words, worlds, and politics, those beyond the burned house in the time of rebirth.

Rhayne Vermette transferring the final scene of

Domus

. Image by Ed Ackerman.

The Toronto International Film Festival, TIFF, will present the special program "Enfolded Space: The Work of Rhayne Vermette" on March 20 with the artist in attendance.

Under the title "Armed Woman at Desk," this piece will appear in a forthcoming collection on the work of Rhayne Vermette, edited by Stephen Broomer, and published by Sightline Books.

***

The Very Eye of Night

is a series of columns on nonbinary and female avant-garde film and video artists. The title refers to Maya Deren’s last completed film.

[serpent-energy]

The Time for Revolution; begins with a completely different approach (to Everything)

The definition given by the Oxford Dictionary for Perception is "the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses". Now how much of an impact does this concept of in taking information, much through the subconscious within which is constantly taking internalizing information in ways unable to be consciously recognized in in one's conscience. This plays a bigger role in how one grows to perceive the world. With many life changes and experiences along the timeline of one's life, the individual will process as much as one can possibly formulate, organize, and consciously utilize as tools for protection-- for we are living in a society that feeds us fear to comply, remain uninformed, and just walk on. It is really one's choice to believe most everything they are told and stick to it like a sickly codependent relationship between only one's self. What this does is perpetually and persistently isolates and, although an extreme word, truly alienates some people from the outer world of social interactions and spreading positivity and a helping hand to another who needs it. So, I think I'll begin around here.

I speak from my experience of course, so I will say a few words on the American government. A place I've seemed to stay dormant and waiting. Not sure for what…maybe the second coming of our Lord and Savior, though I'm not religious, instead I think, as I believe we all are, "Spiritual beings on a human journey". I like this because it doesn't separate, segregate or divide. As we are all one species, locations and different forms of faith should be understood, truly, simply, with maybe a little empathy: the why of it all. Simply the mere fact that cultural differences, many a time, can make the citizens of one nation view another nation of different customs alien, negatively foreign, and anything different that threatens one's ego and belief system, the different peoples view each other as odd and maybe living life wrong as to what they have learned life to be, and above all, there is this paradigm where nations view others as inferior. At least many. And it seems that our lovely, sympathetic government filled with only the best and honest politicians, I say sarcastically of course--only with plans and multiple blueprints and the beautiful love in their hearts to truly create a better world is astounding.  With corporations overhead pulling the strings in the past years specifically, while the bankers wait till they feel that hole inside once again and become maliciously reinvigorated to rake in the money, the money, the greatest: the Cash Money.

Nowadays we watch the blue tube, the awesome Television that brainwashes people into an ugly metamorphosis wherein it manipulates the citizens through commercials, for example,  telling you if you buy their product you will be the best, or at least better than you already are; that, if you wear some cologne like Polo, Ralph Lauren--or whatever really.. You'll go home and have the best lay of your life. Or if you're a woman, no better time than the present to go out and buy the absolutely to die for, perfect, super sexy bra and panties at no other than Victoria's Secret of course. And hey, maybe even they mysteriously seductive thong to ride up a woman's lower back a bit. That gets one going. Hey, if I could walk around naked all the time in the warmer weather I would. But that's a fantasy. Though I'd like to present another question to ponder.  How unintentional are these things? Really, in these cases, any form of intellect or sense of humor these types of women may have really seems to be  nothing more than just an extra bonus on top the physical.

It's all marketing and the illusion they present to us. Subliminally speaks the unheard words but obvious message. "Better is  more. And more is just better." Tell em' you're okay because you have all you need momentarily…they'' try to convince you that what you're doing is holding only yourself back from self-improvement, and the completely sensationalized lie of a line that states,  The pursuit of happiness is a human right. The fact is, as children we were born with infinite rights, and can really go as far as our imagination takes us, as well as our drive to manifest our best qualities we've learned about ourselves over the years.

Tyler Durden, a character in the book-made-movie Fight Club, at one point says, "Self improvement is masturbation. Now self-destruction…" I like this quote and movie so much because what it does, within the many layers of the story, is promote a kind of spiritual growth by true the discovery of the self through hardships. Tyler also says, "It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything". Problem is, today,  we don't just want…we need. At least we were too-easily taught to believe. And of how crazily and irrationally we crave affirmation! The fear of loneliness, the turn to isolation, habitual to many for the nation is and has become even more of an intense race up this ladder of economic struggle and fortitude on all fronts towards holding onto the wonderful but brief moments of peacefulness, and gratitude.

My fellow reader, brother or sister, there's a lot goin' on here. Out there. Constantly. No doubt in that. So here's a question only moments ago I thought I'd pose for it seems like an appropriate time,

How curious of a person are you actually? Do you have a thirst for knowledge and crave truth?

Or do you hide in your shell like a hermit crab unable to walk forward though sometimes being blown back by the salty wind breaking through and over waves like stock market fluctuations and white-collared criminals smoking opium while on lunch break and sniffing speed before re-entering a sea of people that walk faster than hundreds of different sea creatures all trying to get on their merry way with much traffic and frustration. Can fish feel frustration, or do they just swim and float on? Sometimes I wish I could float on devoid of frustrations and the unnecessary anxiety that paralyzes me. Just your average American. I look in the mirror, shave occasionally, I like cologne when I have it, smoking cigarettes make your teeth yellow so I brush with whitening paste, Crest if you must know, and then I hope I don't look too weird and awkward and somewhat socially acceptable. Where does social anxiety stem from? Too much stimulus can make my spirit quiver inside with discomfort.  with graphs and useless numbers where men simply are playing games with money, making unfathomable profits off really creating nothing positive for the whole, or even a small portion of society.  Self-righteous, narrow-minded, greedy, men addicted to speed, and power. Sometimes going with the flow is a mistake and it took me a while to realize it. Because I see things.

Right now, from where I'm sitting and writing these words to be read by very possibly nobody at all,  I'm watching bodies just dragging pathetically, sadly; bodies filled with apathy, probably hoping to find a partner to save them from their boredom and feeling of loneliness that stays dormant and benign most of the time. But when it opens up, truly there's no other isolating feeling. The hole. The void. The gaping circle of emptiness-- it creeps up at  different times for different people. But it's always there. This is the main reason: everybody likes distractions.

Monotony. Oh monotony…it just breaks one spiritually over time till it's all you know. The wake up, the daily duties, sleep, and repeat, and whatever kind of joy one can experience and grasp and try and hold onto during their days is what keeps people going. The one burning feeling many Americans have inside, is that tomorrow may be a better day.  We lose our identities and as a result experience less and lose the drive and real hope that much different will come in the future. More of the same.

The definition for obligation given by Oxford Dictionary is "required by a legal, moral, or other rule; compulsory". Yet I ask, how are these laws produced and presented forth initially? Well, by politicians and the government of course. Sometimes in the name of religion, which is a great tool they have utilized convincing the public it is a complete Us vs Them situation and yet it is  undoubtedly the dirtiest of schemes to go over and bomb, ruin, just destroy hundreds to millions of lives. How positively does the United States really affect the world around us? The global planet we live in…

And the media's really become a joke. But it works, because it really gets the masses in a frenzy. Call it modern propaganda. Call it what you want. Very few answers, and much too many words. How much of what I write, or we as a species think on the daily, has already been thought, recorded, and recycled for that matter…. And how many times over?

Is to be genuine to one's self and original must they be a nonconformist and go against the grain? How many pills will they prescribe before we're definitely more than less, these synapses like snapping wires inside the head all connected allowing one to function as an average human being-- well we're changing our chemistry. We're altering our makeup. Western psychiatrys got us begging for a cure to the mundane like a junkie to a bad dealer. Here's a fun Snapple fact: America was bought and sold a long time ago. So find your way and just let the rest go grey.

But first let's talk television! The magnificent, blue glowing screen that tells us who we should be, manipulating wants for needs, materialism bleeds and corporations way across seas smile at their sneaky ways of maintaining modern day slavery-- and all the commercials on the tube brainwashing the youth, but drudgingly seducing all ages into the warm waters of consumerism.  TV! Though I don't think we'll ever change the channel and switch lenses for this fictitious concept of time to wash away regrettable lines. Most all the information, the talking in circles, their eyes wide combatting lies with more lies, for the good of the people is not the good of the government. All politicians are generally the same. Always reaching for more power, while quietly working to benefit those already extremely wealthy, corporations, and the banks. Even churches don't pay taxes…you ever ponder that? The television is really better off smashed till the screen shatters to make the floor bleed a dark red kind of static. For nowadays, Americans come to view what is said and told to them by their trusted News Channels and commercials for anti-depressants with a never ending list of horrifying side-effects and another for erectile dysfunction. What audience are these people targeting anyway? So it's  really no reach to say, the man or woman speaking on the TV screen, informing viewers of their either perceived to be important news, or simply news they were ordered to report-- and Americans watch and listen, sometimes flipping from one news station to another, nodding out, a couch potato, but eyes still wide watching Steve Harvey smile too much. People look to the Screen as they once looked to icons such as Christ, Dr. King, Ghandi, and others. Television is the public's new age religion.

So if people do rely on television and social media for intellectual growth and awareness of the world around them, then it's time to exit through the backdoor. A dirty dive bar anyway entitled simply the Who Cares Pub in some city no one pays mind to. And Americans especially know very little of the world outside their large bubble of a nation that goes to great lengths in order to keep us occupied. New iPhones out around twice a year now which have become a commodity through conformity and unaware of how much anguish and suicidal pain has gone into making such a self-absorbing contraption. The few news channels on TV all sound the same to me now. Whether the much criticized and at times comically taking jabs at them, not much is ever really being said. These reporters and interviewers ask questions that are either unimportant answered by someone hired to lie and manipulate and make seem like things are, or will be going splendid in no time. Sincere appealing lies and a couple smiles here and there can get a country going. That's when many start looking away and continue driving their suburban's and SUVS while most simultaneously knowing we're screwing up our environment, ozone layers, and it’s more than evident in the rapid fluctuation in temperatures as of the past few years.  viewing from the end of the world. Over seas….as far as the eyes can see, but much, so much further.

Our imperialistic roots and the overwhelmingly manipulative and forceful means we impose onto other countries; it seems raising the flames on the already troublesome spreading fire is unwise, but how often does wisdom interact and convince men intoxicatingly diabolic, whom have reached a level of astounding deception, Where is the line drawn? Have we ever even had one? If we are we're playing jump rope over it and quickly back on outside and it's pissing a lot of people off. But one has to remember, this has been going on since almost the beginning of time. It's one's choice, which takes a lot of strength and discipline, to see through it all, and play your own game which one can only hope brings success and some form of pride inside. This happens all over the globe. This has a lot to do with the government and how start wars. Every major war in the past two centuries have followed a simple blueprint; it is called the Hegelian Dialectic.

Alright. Switch it up. Something pertaining to the psychological. Depression. Depression vibrates at a low frequency and causes irrational thoughts. A fascinatingly complex phenomena we still only know so much about. Mental illness's. The first principle in Buddhism is 'Life is suffering'. If one were to really learn this and have it engrained into their minds and spirits at an early age, then reality is seen with eyes of understanding, with the quest to find peace in a state of clarity and understanding and patience.   have materialism and consumerism to thank for it. And some people do live this way. I'd see many couples in New York City, the Big Apple, while I lived there for some time, I'd see endless window shoppers and then these lovers would walk in these overpriced, shops with little color to give it that modern, upscale look, which I'll never understand…the point is, the infatuation with material things, and buying and buying all this excess junk one will more than likely get rid of or throw it away, or just simply hang in your closet, to look at, and maybe even regret the purchase and wonder why they even wanted it….

Consumers is what Americans are. The result of a monetary system that feeds off the fact that humans crave stimulus in one form or another. The pursuit of happiness, right? Now it's video games where kids are shooting and killing, have a blast with it, and some of these people find themselves lost in isolation spinning around in a world that doesn't exist. Why? Escape is not only easier nowadays and keeps the majority uninformed about the realities of what's not only going on inside our own damn country and maybe paying a little more time tending to that, and maybe more often televise and report happenings going on daily around the world. This country was bought and sold a long time ago. The bubble this government keeps us in, to maintain our ignorance, uninformed nature, and we're voting for people you wouldn't even want to share a beer with, because maybe, as George Carlin once said, "Where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall from the sky…they don't pass through another membrane from another reality….They come from American parents, American schools, American Universities, this is what we have to offer folks. Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish ignorant citizens, you're gonna end up with selfish ignorant leaders".

And I haven't been here that long, but it's not too hard to notice, something is very  wrong.

It really isn't anyone else's choice but your own, in where you wish to go, and what you long to experience. Forget a bucket list. For we're all dying, baby. Some slow, and some quicker than others. Some transparently, and some so very obviously. So before you take your final bow and so very briefly say goodbye to the harsh world you survived as long as you did, remember…Remember what it was like to feel alive. The look in your lover's eyes before a passionate kiss and the smile returned after…the salty ocean breeze blowing every which way on your skin providing warmth and joy. The brothers and sisters you made along your adventures on this planet. What you've learned, and please disregard regret. If you were to practice conjuring this hypothetical happening in your mind, it won't merely prepare you for your deathbed, but bring a sense of encouragement, motivation, and inspiration to see the good, and learn to deal with the bad.

A grain of salt. A needle in the haystack. And a Humpty Dumpty that never fell. The American Heaven, with an underlying Hell.

[asctx]

T*H*E I*M*A*G*I*N*A*L R*A*V*E

This is not so much about what raves are or aren't, than about what they MIGHT be.

So don't bother looking here for a rehash of the obvious: that raves are the latest thing in underground dance parties/about having fun/feeling good/Peace/Energy/Unity ... all of which IS true, needless to say, but there remains so much more to be said, so much more to BE!

CUT through the clouds of trendism and commercialization that attach themselves to any major new mutation in culture. What wants to be invoked (what I want to invoke--what I hope YOU want to invoke) is that imaginal, incandescent core out of which all the smoke & noise is generated; what a rave truly can be, for some people in some situations--what it could BECOME; and then, peeling away at the sides, ... falling off one by one, duller, flatter, greyer ... and ever so much more TAME ... all those would-be and almost-raves, unavoidable byproducts of anything too real.

An old Sufi saying has it that: "where there's counterfeit, there's true gold."

So next time you go to something that calls itself a rave but isn't, don't just write it all off; the real ones do exist, and why SHOULD they be so easy to find? And, after all, it's up to YOU to make them real.

Allright, we already know that raves are THE space-age tribal youth ritual, the return of the dionysian energy that first emerged in 50's rock 'n' roll and erupted in full force in the late 60's with the intertwining of music and psychedelic drugs. But the rave-current is itself only the more visible crest of something broader and deeper.It's no coincidence that it hits the States at the same time as a major resurgence of psychedelic usage.

You can take the toying with neo'60's motifs--day-glo, flowers, smiley faces, flares--as mere fashion recycling by a generation born largely post-Summer of Love. Or you can see these themes as the instinctual recovery of a project left hanging, next breath after a two decade-long lull. Or you can go ever furthur--and why not!?--and see "the 60's" as only one recent intrusion within the Flatland of (take a deep breath now) Gravity-Bound-Domesticated-HumanoidIndustrial Civilization (got that?) of a future that is already happening, a future that beckons us towards itself and sends its echoes spiralling back through the dark and narrow tunnels of terrestrial time to make itself come true...

But only with your help, of course!

Picture a wave forming on the horizon, a big one (talking late 50's, early 60's): the psychick surfers coasting out there, beatniks, nonconformists, oddball academics bored with the small town life at the shore and all its dismal soap-opera games, looking for something to carry them away into a wilder, richer world; the first swells of energy carry with them a tide of psycho-active algaes...

HOFFMAN/HUXLEY/BURROUGHS/GINSBURG/WATTS/LEARY/ALPERT/KE SEY & CO., issue their first reports and manifestoes; munching on the junk food of the gods, our proto-mutants are initiated into the mysteries of the Vortex; they come back to the cardboard facades of Main Street with their evocations of kaleidoscopic infinity, eyes lit with the light of alien suns. Their news answers a gnawing hunger among so many trapped within the greypastelboxroutines of the industrial-consumer-democratic hive; More, they activate dormant circuits of the hive's nervous system, and spawn a burst of deviance: forms of rebellion less interested in disputing what varieties of greypastelboxroutines are preferable and what's right and wrong for everybody, than in setting up scouting parties for heading out to sea...

Underline the word parties.

Dosed to the gills, beatniks in existential black mutate into rainbow-hued hippiedom. Up with the Flower Children, hedonistic and 'escapist'--so called because they withdrew from the arena of domesticated primate aggro-sports known as 'politics' in favor of actually learning about the infinite kingdoms within their own body and nervous system. Drop into the Haight, turn off powertrips, tune out conformism and competition.

Meltdown ensues. All the accelerated bondings through Be-Ins, LoveIns, communes. Awash in the incense of oriental exoticism and occultist bric-a-brac, a renaissance of the spirit decks itself out in raiments of psychic kitsch. And how much can we fault them, really, if their Love&Peace trip undercut itself by becoming a denial of the Darkness; after all, they are there for us to learn from.

But just as everyone is tumbling about in the cosmic froth, anticipating revolution or millenium tomorrow afternoon at the latest, the Wave suddenly evaporates beneath them. No, the Earth Egg didn't quite hatch yet, ...just some initial stirrings. And so the children of the Vortex find themselves hurtling through the air like Wil E. Coyote, wrapped up in all their newfound lifestyles, but the vital juice is gone, and it all becomes so tame and lame so quickly, and in any case, a lot of people couldn't handle the intensity so it comes time to settle back into a safe routine, in some cases lay the ground for those who come after; & all around are the Mr. Jones' of many guises, panicked at the imminent collapse of Normalville; some however take their chance to cash in on what they can of it, a lot of others are wholly freaked, and thus begins a Counter-Reformation. One the one hand, a retreat from direct encounter with the Abyss crystallizes into the New Age, and on the other, it's back to the Bible, dumb drugs, white-bread, and Family Values. And all the hipsters left posing without a clue, all the burnouts/fuckups/addicts & victims of some invisible multidimensional boogeying elephant; over there in the ivy towers, the blind men scribble their learned tomes, dissecting some stray paisley footprints; but something far stranger has happened, and its awfully hard to make out just what till the next, bigger cousin of that wave starts to surface offshore.

Meanwhile even many devotees of the Vortex ascribe it to the decline in quality of their psychoactive goodies, mistaking the portal for the vista beyond (but how do you enter the vista without the portal? hmmm...BE THY VISION! a distant curl of the Vortex whispers back).

Credit it all to upsurges of the Gaian mind, long-schemed scams of the giggling DNA-consciousness, or the flotsam & jetsam cast down by That Transcendental Novelty Item at the End of Time; choose your metapors--the more the merrier; but there's a mystery-in-process that all the nice rationalistic analyses will never get at: here I'll echo a point once made by Mr. Leary: the most subtle form of conservatism is that which views the present only through the prism of the past!

And yes, (to those for whom it's not patently obvious), IT'S HAPPENING AGAIN.

***

At the heart of the rave is a modern, technologically clad form of non-verbal, ecstatic communion. The ethos of openness, sharing, intimacy, touch and empathy--not to mention the pure intensities of trance itself--facilitated by the use of LSD & MDMA (hey, the fact that you have to take these things to loosen up is a sign of just how far down & lost we all are!!), in tandem with the all-night long pulsation of bodies to the same sound source, can and does create a context where layers of armoring and conditioning are shed, where those willing can find the joyful and mysterious realm of their bodies free of oh-so many enculturated ego-trips and bullshit, ... while also opening the "post-terrestrial" circuits of their psyches. (Whew! Pause, return to beginning of paragraph, read again slowly.)

In other words, a safe space where we can be as weird as we want to be.

A collective molting ritual for the new species.

***

Or take it from another angle: compare the rave-thing to a chemical reaction: a half-dozen ingredients (make your own list), inert & ordinary in the normal course of things; but combine them in right proportions, at the right time and place, apply the CATALYST (& what what THAT be?) and BOOM!, you've set off an explosion, a chain reaction producing ENERGY, LOTS OF IT, and in that process a dynamic that continues to transform many of the starting ingredients into new & unknown qualities. No question, of course, that bystanders can look in from the skeptically, and reduce it all back to something familiar: escapism, consumerism, fashion parade, whatever. But we'll leave them to their nervous calculations...

***

OK, so you want a schoolbook definition of TECHNO-SHAMANISM, that catchphrase everybody likes to invoke but no one seems to be able to actually explain? Prepare to jump levels: As the individual shaman/ess evicts demons and excises magical darts from the sick person through a mixture of magickal sound & motion, so on the level of the diseased and crisisridden 'global village' raves aim to heal the collective body by shaking it loose of its neurotic fixations and death-fetishes.

EXORCISM THROUGH DANCE.

Unhooking the talons and shadowy webs of control. A physical unlearning of a few thousand years worth of BAD HABITS.

Learning to be at once a little more human and a little more alien.

Healer, leader, visionary, outcast: the shaman/ess' role is multifaceted, both at the center but also relegated to the margins of the community; the use of sound and/or psychoactive compounds are central to shamanism. The shaman/ess chants, hums, drums and dances as a way of programming hir voyage into the "spirit realms" (aka hyperspace), as well as of healing the mind and body of others, ... all on a more face-to-face, way lo-tech scale, of course.

So there, chew on that for a while.

***

It's a pretty sad but predictable fact that self-professed "radicals" have been oblivious to this phenomenon, just because it seems to emanate out of NITEKLUBLAND; too bad--when will they figure out that all social alienation is ultimately grounded in an alienation from the body--that realm of nature closest to us but oh-so far away. Their heroine Emma Goldman once proclaimed to the grim socialist militants of her day: "If I can't dance in your revolution I want no part of it."

And what if dance could be a modality of social change?

A heretical thought, no doubt. "Free your ass and your mind will follow," so said George Clinton. But hey, he was just another crass capitalistic rock star, right?

Not to rescusitate, however, that burdensome word, Revolution. Scratch the R, hilite the E. Quote an obscure graffito from a wall in Paris, May 1968: "This is not a Revolution but a Mutation." And say rather, TAZ. Temporary Autonomous Zone.

Like the TAZ, the rave is wild, nomadic, outside the maps of Power. At its best, the rave opens onto a realm of free-form behavior and perception, one in which there is no hierarchy, no leaders or followers, at most the dj and the light-show artists. (Hopefully benign--be careful who you leave your sensorium with!)

...Not unlike the Situationist International's notion of the "situation" (sorry, I just had to drag them in here!), a space of liberated interactions... but where the participants are the art and the show, the synergy between them all the event (or event horizon?). If the insurrection was supposed to realize itself in a festival, we might ask, why shouldn't the festival turn into an insurrection--an insurrection of Love?

Anyone who has been part of a REAL rave, if only once, briefly, knows that its insane, insanely beautiful ferocity is something that exceeds all the contrived parlour-games that pass for alternatives, social or political. The mere fact of this ferocious hedonism is, without words or slogans, A REFUTATION OF DOMESTICATED EXISTENCE.

So FUCK IT if most of this California rave-scene is still ensnared in niteklubbism. Invade the pseudo-raves, instigate roving micro-raves. Doesn't take more than a ghetto blaster and a handful of courageous revellers to start a rave on any streetcorner or park, see how long it takes to catch..., or to be shut down...

THIS is OUR form of protest--our style of dance is angry and combative as well as loving and celebratory; to free our bodies first from the rotting carcass of history,,,

...and from there, ... who knows where we'll go?

***

Prediction: a few years down the road, the rave-scene will be looked back on as the primary networking mechanism for the tribes of starfarers.

But if ravers can't clean up after themselves, how are they going to clean up the planet?

***

DANCE

If you had to have JUST ONE metaphor for it all to live by and through, wouldn't that just be it. The spiral dance of life...so it sounds cliched, but cliched only in words, in words...

DANCE

but (& rave-friends can detour here for a sec, these are words for those who've never raved and long stopped going out to

DANCE

DANCE, --this kind of dance--is FREEING MOTION. Not just moving to the beat but letting the beat help you throw off all the constricted robotic movements that have been imprinted into your heart, your eyes, your ears, your arms, your ass, your dreams, by all the tricks, traumas & seductions of society; and find the REAL YOU; dancing with the world, but dancing off the consensus-trance, that narrow greyout rightangle robotic updown freezeframe pseudoreality.

Raves signal the return to Western culture of sacred dance. A dance that balances discipline with excess, ecstasy with focus. Look at the three great Monotheisms that have pretty much defined our psychosomatic matrix: Judaism, Christianity, Islam: none of them possess any tradition of Sacred movement; they have all been scared shitless of the Body, and have instituted its repression in a thousand and one subtle ways. How appropriate that the advent of a spiritualized form of movement to the center of Civilization should present itself in a totally decadent, seemingly profane form. And people wonder why raves are actively suppressed back in the UK? Raves represent the primal life-force suppressed so long ago it remains only a dim but real memory.

And let's get this out of the way too: dancing on a decent dose of a psychedelic is something else again: communing with the animal spirits encoded into the depths of your skin, letting them out of their millenial cages. Learning how you can be each of them when you need to be; and its also about learning how to fly, how to turn yourself inside out into a spinning glowing disc, though that's a little harder ... and then, once we've got that under our belts, we can do it TOGETHER.

It's been said before, but not clearly enough: UFOS R US.

***

So what if all this prepacked ravitis costs too much. Don't leave it to them and whine about how commercialized it all is: THROW YOUR OWN! AND MUTATE IT WHILE YOU'RE AT IT!

So some of the dinosaurs may not be happy seeing their way of life superseded and want to stamp out those noisy critters scampering between their feet; more intelligence and greater manoueverability will be our response. Haven't we gotten sick enough of the EnemyProduction Line?

Social transmutation can be fun too, right? There's fun, safe vapid alcoholic-nicoteine hedonism, letting off steam so you can return to Monday; and then there's fun that aims high, fun allied with Will. The path of disciplined excess (??).

But watch this--all those scouting parties of the future will be known by their capacity to throw great parties--and pioneer partying as a way of throwing off the legacy of the miserable Dominator culture we've all had to grow up in.

***

RAVERS, look a little ways forward: have you wondered yet what happens once you're burnt out after a year or two of intensive raving, once you've lost half your hearing, the beats become stale, and the Energy has leaked away. Where, what then?

Define the rave for me.

What does the verb TO RAVE really mean to you?

But first let's list all the stuff that seems to go with it: Acid/techno/deep house music; dancing from dusk to dawn; hi-tech light shows; lollipops, floppyhats, dayglo pendants, smart drinks; $15-20 tickets; zillion gigagawatts sound-systems; X,a cid, nitrous and 2CB; goofy outfits, sexy bodies; so many inane and beatific smiles...

SHALL we ask together: just what is the essence of a rave?

Suppose, just for a second that we subtract one by one each of the above accessories. Stretch your imagination to the limit, and take away even, yes, even THE MUSIC; till all we have left are the people, all those people who have found each other in this beat, in these hidden gatherings, but without the beat, just heartbeat, pulserate, breath, ... AND THE EXCHANGE OF LOVE-ENERGIES (isn't that what sex is, ultimately?) and each other's presence ... Radiant and revelling in our unearthly beauty ... so here we are: much as we adore it, do we really need the dance music to affirm our commonality, the patent fact that we are siblings of the the same spiritual family who through the raves have managed to find one another and in that finding remember who each of us truly is, orphan child of eternity. Do we need to confuse the rave with the quality of our common presence, our moving-loving together; can't we take the essence of the rave, freed of all the externals we associate with it, transfer and apply that energy elsehwere, to just about anything...?

It comes down to a challenge, a challenge posed in that leap from normal space to hyperspace that kicks in when the 'rave' really starts to rave: those altered moments when each of us in being truest to our uniqueness enters into a harmonious whole; elusive as this may be, it calls out, and asks to be realized in every moment of our lives; it asks for creation, CREATION OF LIFE, for the nurturing of real communities that last deeper & longer than a few hours on the dancefloor.

That creative energy, apply it not just to your style of dress but to your style of BEING. Free eros & intimacy from the shackles socially-inherited sexualities (gay vs, straight, male vs. female), from monogamy and the neurotic fixation on genital sexuality:

YES, CELEBRATE your arrival here at last after a long trek, but don't forget, this is only the point of departure. These parties are our loading docks and shipyards. (And there is Work to be done: enough healing & cleaning for us all.) Here is where we will build not just a House, but a ship of dreams, a starship. Woven out of LOVE. CHAOS. LAUGHTER.IMAGINATION. WILL.

And embark; post-nuclear families setting sail out along the unwinding multi-dimensional origami strands of alternity...

Our motto:

UTOPIA OR BUST.

[davidmann95]

What are your thoughts on Earth One? I've read Batman and Wonder Woman but just started on Superman.

A disaster that has long since outlived its dubious usefulness, only surviving now on monstrous inertia and sheer fucking stubbornness.

In fairness, it started as a great idea. Blockbuster-style ‘realistic’ origin stories of the biggest DC heroes in the OGN format and aimed at the bookstore market, with the biggest creators out there behind it? That’s genuinely inspired. The results however…Superman: Earth One and Batman: Earth One both manage the genuinely pretty incredible feats of being the worst story told of their title characters in almost 80 years. Both reasonable in concept - JMS had handled Marvel’s #1 boy to initial success and did some interesting work with the archetype in Supreme Power, and Johns/Frank on Batman would seem a surefire thing after their work on Action Comics. But there’s a gap between concept and execution here you could pilot an entire fleet of warships through.

Batman’s an incompetent, banally vengeful, violent asshole who fails utterly at nearly every turn due to his utter lack of training or preparation, whose sole victory of substance is strangling a weaponized mentally ill man before being easily defeated by the dang Penguin, and being rescued by the use of guns. It admittedly tries to do something interesting with the idea of an urban vigilante who isn’t necessarily brilliant and unstoppable - he’s just got some incomplete military training and whatever gadgets he can cobble together - but one cheap “I’LL SAVE THIS CITY NO MATTER WHAT IT TAKES!” bit later and suddenly he’s for-real Batman even though he’s still a goddamn idiot. The sequel (checked out of the library) builds on this foundation to show he doesn’t have a clue about detective work, and the Riddler’s riddles are a distraction from a simple revenge scheme because hahaha, supervillain gimmicks are stupid. Also police brutality saves the day, which has sure aged well. Plus it’s all but directly Bruce’s fault his parents were killed. Throw some faux-deep monologuing on top about the rotting heart of the city and the meaning of life and death like a Snyder/Capullo joint gone septic, and you get a comic that manages to be both unpleasant and entirely boring. Looks nice though.

Superman, on the other hand, is the honest-to-god abomination of the pair. I’ve drained most of my poison on it over the years, through distance if nothing else, but this is one of the few comics out there whose existence sincerely makes me kind of angry. Not just because it’s a bad Superman story that catastrophically misses the point of the character, those are a dime a dozen - though yes, even aside from it being a Superman story, this is a painfully stock alien invasion/’embracing who you really are’ story we’ve seen a million times in a million better configurations. No, the thing that puts it over the top of the likes of, say, Superman II - which similarly has a Superman who’s kind of a total piece of shit - is that it is a story where he learns nothing from being a garbage person, and is rewarded for it. 

There’s a scene of him at his father’s grave saying he’d rather use his powers to get rich than help people, and if not for the alien invasion, that’d be it. That’d be the end of the story, that’d be what this Clark Kent did with his life. Of course he spouts off some mealy-mouthed horseshit about how he’ll still find ways of helping people, but that’s a tad undermined that when the alien invasion does show and starts slaughtering people around the world en masse with the promise of exterminating everyone on Earth if he doesn’t fight back, he spends another 20 pages waffling until someone he likes is personally, directly threatened, making him not only a cowardly sack of shit unwilling to make the most clear-cut of moral choices, but also kind of a goddamn moron for not understanding right away that the space invaders raining laser death around the world are being serious. And then he sticks with being Superman not out of a realization that he must do what is right, or out of shame that so many died while he was afraid and selfish and refusing to waste his gifts ever again (a tack that handled right could have redeemed a lot of the earlier story), but because it turns out getting to use his gifts publicly as Superman is more fun and satisfying than being a football player. In the sequel (again, checked out of the library out of morbid curiosity) when he decides he must tackle the Real Issues, instead of overthrowing a dictatorship himself immediately and without casualties, he passes out AK-47′s to insurgents to arm a bloody revolution so that he can return the dictator’s earlier quip about how “he who has the guns makes the rules” before leaving him to die. The third at least managed to titanically up its game to crushing mediocrity - it almost reads like a new, marginally better writer trying to fix things up and manage a soft reboot - but that hardly balances the scales. As usual, I’ll default to Colin Smith’s fantastic set of articles comparing it ethically and storytelling-wise to All-Star Superman, but this is one of maybe two or so pieces of pop media out there where I can’t find enjoyment of it anything other than objectively wrong (the other being Thor: The Dark World, though that was merely really really overwhelmingly shitty).

The Titans book…existed, I guess, and didn’t pull off much more than that. Morrison/Paquette/Fairbairn’s Wonder Woman was interesting if nothing else, and it did a better job of building up Paradise Island visually as a high-concept super-feminist-fantasy-wonderland than anything else I’ve ever seen, but it was critically flawed. The characterization for Diana is pretty paper-thin, and as a feminist text it’s if nothing else yet another argument that Morrison probably shouldn’t be trying to write about contemporary social issues if he essentially refuses to use the internet - Elle Collins’ and Kelly Kanayama’s pieces on it go into its failings far better than I ever could. It was a fascinating failure at least as opposed to the rest, I’m genuinely curious where further volumes might go, but I’d consider it Morrison’s most significant failure as a superhero writer so far of the 21st century. An experiment in seeing if he could write Wonder Woman, rather than something he did out of sincere interest.

Earth One outlived its purpose once the New 52 hit, but it sold just well enough that DC couldn’t justify throwing it aside, so it still goes on. Superman may be done now that JMS has left comics (as should be Flash: Earth One, which I actually consider a shame given it apparently would have come out close to Morrison’s Multiversity Too: The Flash, which would’ve been a gut-buster of a contrast) unless someone else comes on to continue it, and Aquaman: Earth One may have fallen by the wayside, but Johns and Morrison have both confirmed there’s going to be more Batman and Wonder Woman, so at this point I don’t think it’s going to go away until we at least see Justice League: Earth One, presumably Chuck Austen’s triumphant return to DC. In spite of that though I maintain the experiment has utterly failed, the greatest testament to that being that when Morrison’s described Earth 1 in The Multiversity Guidebook he noted that the Earth was ‘in flux’, thereby inserting an escape hatch - essentially admitting that that Earth sucks so bad that you shouldn’t have to believe it actually exists in the Multiverse if you don’t want to.

EDIT: jonsei93 said: Damn, it’s kinda sad that THIS Superman gets to wear the classic costume instead of the main one. Because E1 Superman really doesn’t deserve to wear it, let alone touch it! (Yeah, I read a little of Superman Earth One, too and….yeah, I didn’t really bother acknowledging those books after that)

There are definitely people out there who considered Earth One to be the proper modern reinvention of the character rather than the New 52 guy, I’m pretty sure entirely based on that suit. Knowing this makes me feel bad.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

13 Keys to the White House

I hate politics with a burning passion. The whole subject just makes me depressed and stressed, but like a moth to the flame I find myself unable to escape it. My politics posts were topical and relatively popular during the lead up to the 2020 election, but things have quieted down considerably a we adjust to the new normal under a sane but useless president. For this reason, I've decided that the best way to spend my time is to try and make prediction about 2024, because it makes me feel like I have some semblance of control over my life when in reality these things are well out of my hands.

Allan Lichtman is a political analyst who has correctly predicted every presidential election since 1984, and working backwards his method correctly accounts for every election since 1860; with the only hiccup being 2000 when he predicted Al Gore would win (by all rights he did; he won the popular vote and he would have won the Florida recount if George W. Bush's brother hadn't illegally stopped it and delayed it until it was too late to restart).

Lichtman gives 13 yes or no statements to assess the performance of the incumbent party over the last four years, and has determined that if eight or more are true then the incumbent party wins another term. If six or more are false, the challenging party wins instead. From Wikipedia they are:

Midterm gains: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.

No primary contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.

Incumbent seeking re-election: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.

No third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.

Strong short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.

Strong long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.

Major policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.

No social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.

No scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.

No foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.

Major foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.

Charismatic incumbent: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.

Uncharismatic challenger: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

In 2020 the chips fell thusly:

False: the Democrats won more seat in 2018 than the Republicans in 2014

True: Trump was the only Republican candidate, and in fact many states canceled their primaries to give it to him

True: Trump was running for another term

True: the libertarians and the greens didn't get nearly as much air time as they did in 2016

False: Covid recession

False: Trump dug a hole so deep it'll take us years to crawl our way back out of it

True: McConnell's court packing scheme, 3 justices, America First foreign policy, sucking up to dictators, alienating our allies

False: George Floyd protests

False: too many to name

True: not failing doesn't necessarily mean succeeding

False: case in point, he didn't accomplish any of his goals like ending the war in Afghanistan or disarming North Korea

False: although his base worships him as the second coming of Christ, they only make up 40% of the country, and the other 60% HATES him

True: Biden is a boring old man that both right-wingers hate and progressive leftists hate. Only moderates and centrists really like him

That's 6 true and 7 false. Trump needed 8 true to win, so Lichtman called it for Biden in summer. While we can make some assumptions about the future, we can't predict everything, so there will be a lot of unknowns that prevent us from drawing solid conclusions. I'll update this post as time goes on; we should have a fairly solid picture by early 2023 after the midterms.

Almost certainly false: the Democrats are hanging on by a thread as is, and 2022 will see dozens of competitive House seats redrawn by Republican to give themselves an advantage going forward. I'm pretty sure the Republicans will take back the House, but even if they don't there's no way the Democrats will manage to hang onto as many seats in 2022 as they won in 2018 (235)

Probably true: to hear Biden tell it, he's a spring chicken at the top of his game and wholeheartedly intends to run for re-election in 2024. I give it 50/50 odds that he bows out due to declining health and gives it to Kamala Harris, but either way they have the nomination in the bag. Nobody is going to challenge Biden, and nobody serious will challenge Harris.

Unknown: see above

Unknown: this one is leaning towards true, but it's too soon to tell. We think of third-party candidates as being fringe, but they played major roles in 1980, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2016. I don't expect the networks to give as much airtime to the libertarians and the greens as they did in 2016, but then again all the media outlets made off like bandits during the Trump years. Love him or hate him, he made them a shit load of money, and helping a third-party campaign will ensure another candidate like Trump gets elected

Probably true: it'll be hard for Biden to fuck things up more than they are now. I don't think we'll see ANOTHER recession in less than 4 years, but then again we thought the Great Recession of 2008 would be a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Absolutely true: Obama's second term was prosperous, Trump's term put us deep in the red, so they average out to neutral; as long as Biden can do better than literally nothing, he has this one in the bag.

I don't think so: 2021 was the Democrats' best chance at changing things, but they fumbled like we all expected them to. They have majroties in both houses of Congress and could conceivably railroad through any legislation they want, as Trump did in his first 2 years, but no, they want to play fair, they want to be bipartisan. They extend an olive branch when the other side wouldn't piss on them to put them out if they were on fire. None of Biden's campaign promises will get done.

Probably true: I don't think things can get worse than 2020. Biden is, if nothing else, inoffensive. Republicans are trying to make him out as this socialist boogeyman, but nothing really sticks because he is nearly economically identical to Trump (both party establishments are economically neoliberal). If we were going to go to war, it would have been last year. I don't think there's anything Biden can do to screw things up that badly.

Probably: like I said, Biden is boring, which means he's not take any risks. I think even he has sense enough to realize that the entire country is watching him with a magnifying glass, waiting for him to make any mistake. He's playing it as safe as possible with relative transparency, so I don't see him doing anything shadier than any other president. If the Republicans take back the House they might impeach him as revenge for Trump, but he'll be acquitted and public opinion will probably be on his side.

Unknown: Democrats love to fumble, so this one's up in the air

Unknown: pulling out of Afghanistan might be a success, but the Taliban will just retake control once we're gone and it'll be back to square one. It'll be this generation's Vietnam; a 20 year long waste of time that we ended up losing. I'm still not convicned the withdrawal will even go through.

False: Lichtman didn't call Biden charismatic in 2020, I know for a fact he won't suddenly become MORE popular by 2024. Hes boring. If he didn't run and gave it to Kamala Harris I still don't see this flipping true. She has more energy, sure, but she's disingenuous at best and a two-faced enemy of the revolution at worst. She's a cop.

True: calling it now, nobody the Republicans choose will have national appeal. Lichtman noted that these last two keys are incredibly subjective, but you know it when you see it. For his definition of charisma he cites presidents like Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JFK, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama (2008 Obama, not 2012 Obama; the novelty wore off real quick and we realized he was the Republicans' doormat and a war criminal). If Trump tries for a second term, he'll be even less popular then than he is now, and none of his underlings inspire as much confidence in the party. Ron DeSantis, my state's governor, appears to be the front runner of non-Trumps, but he's so dumb he makes that whole family look like a Rhodes Scholars. America is so divided that I don't think there will ever be another super charismatic candidate with bipartisan appeal.

That's 3 false, 4 unknown, and 6 true. Biden needs 8 true to win a second term, but he has plenty of unknown keys which would turn in his favor. Even Trump avoided a major foreign policy failure, so I'm sure Biden can cinch that key, bringing him up to 7. That and the third-party key seem the most likely to flip true, meaning Biden will probably win, though I could very well see this becoming a repeat of 2000 and 2016 where he wins the popular vote and loses the electoral college. In that case, I expect civil unrest going into whatever Republican's term, verging on total civil war.

One-term wonders are exceedingly rare. Trump was a historically weak candidate who only won because of low voter turnout in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. He saw an Alabama senate seat flip blue, as well as all four seats in Arizona and Georgia, he lost the house and the senate in quick succession, and was impeached twice. He was a loser through and through, and I don't think he'll be coming back.

At least I certainly hope so.

[glitteroracle]

Chiron into Aries/ Uranus into Taurus-themed astro sessions available for a LIMITED TIME ONLY!

The revolution is coming!

Hi there! Chiron shifted from Pisces into Aries yesterday, and I'm offering offer sessions to discuss what Chiron and Uranus changing signs means for you personally. I have a limited number of spots available, so if you are interested, get in touch to sign up! It’s £50, €60 or $75 USD. In the spirit of Chiron and People Power, I’ll also donate a portion of whatever I make to Sisters Uncut, SWOP-USA and Action for Trans Health. Read on for more about what the shifts of Chiron and Uranus mean for us both collectively and personally.

Chiron, the little asteroid known as the wounded healer, shifted signs yesterday, from Pisces into Aries. Along with Uranus into Taurus, coming mid-May, this represents the biggest planetary shift in almost a decade.

Collectively, the shifts of Chiron and Uranus are highly significant and can be summed up by the phrase ‘PEOPLE POWER’. Here’s why.

Previous eras when Chiron was in Aries are 1918 – 1926, and 1968 – 1977. WOW!! These years represent two of the biggest moments in the 20th century. The first era began as the First World War was ending and revolution swept across Russia. In the immediate wake of war, European society struggled to re-establish some kind of normalcy, the League of Nations was set up, women were granted the vote, the silver screen took off, and ‘20s hedonism birthed the flapper as the economy boomed and then of course, went bust.

1968 was the year that the dream of the Sixties reached its fever pitch, crescendoing in protests and riots, representing for many a resurgence of the Communist ideal launched by the Bolsheviks. As with the ‘20s, the 70s represented a time of attempted stabilisation and recovery (a kind of burying one’s head in the sand) but the social changes were too great; as the Civil Rights movement launched a new generation of black activism, second wave feminism reached a broader audience, and by ’77 punk came on the scene representing the snarling inverse of hippiedom.

Uranus – the planet of revolutions – going into Taurus promises to revolutionise the way we handle money, agriculture, and very possibly to change significantly who holds the power. Uranus was last in Taurus 1934 – 42 & before that 1850 – 59: again, representing Hitler’s ascension to power & the beginning of the Second World War, and prior to that, when the Industrial Revolution was formalised and legalised. So, with Hitler’s rise to power we saw people power operating at the opposite end of the political spectrum; and in the Industrial Revolution, a changeover and in many cases disenfranchisement/ alienation of labour by those who worked the land.

This time around, we can expect developments around digital currency, robotics, farming and environmental technology, and a shift from a white-male-dominated business world towards one where women, people of colour and LGBTQ people hold more power, and also change the financial structures themselves. Nothing will be the same after 2027, that’s for sure.

On a personal level, Chiron in Pisces has been teaching us lessons about connections and boundaries, and how getting in touch with our own pain can deepen our understanding of others. The soft, gentle energy of Chiron is radically shifting now, as we refocus our attention on self, and fiercely fight to protect what’s valuable to us from hurt. The Aries sector of our charts has been forever revolutionised by Uranus’ passage there, and this has been a story of rejection. In the part of our lives represented by Aries in the chart, we have pioneered new ideas and ventures and attempted to individuate and leave the past behind – only to find, over and over, like a rubber band snapping back on itself, that we fail. Why is this? Uranus is ahead of its time. It’s now that we’ll be able to implement schemes that previously wouldn’t work in those areas of life, using what we now know. Our personal travails means that Chiron’s entry there brings the values of compassion and understanding to collective struggle.

Get in touch with glitteroraclereadings@gmail.com to book a session, or click  the PayPal link here.

[swipestream]

Quick Reviews: MAGE TOME, KARMA UPSILON 4, and APPALLING STORIES

In Mage Tome, Rod Walker turns his pen towards fantasy with the first of a series of adventures featuring master thief Rowan of Kalderon. While his The Thousand Worlds series follows in the footsteps of Heinlein’s juveniles, here Walker casts an eye towards the thieves of sword and sorcery pulps and dungeon crawl games for inspiration. Mage Tome thrusts a dying elf woman at Rowan, who now must guard a magical book sought after by a necromancer, a state wizard, and a lich. All Rowan has to master these challenges are his wits, his cunning, and his boldness.

But sometimes that is not enough.

Rowan is an amiable enough thief, at home among the high and low classes, competent with a blade, and educated enough to speak several non-human languages, including orcish and goblinese. He is proud of his status as a master thief, even as he grows a little too old for the more demanding heists. A charming storyteller, Rowan’s tales are the “good parts” version, lacking digression and diversion from the caper in hand, always with an eye towards the goal. Don’t expect detailed descriptions of heist plans or fiddling with locks here; Rowan is too busy lying his way to victory to tarry over describing devices. Speaking of lies, it is not uncommon for a master thief to boast of his success with the ladies, but Rowan’s bragging verges on the unbelievable at times. Unlike with his lockpicking skills, there’s a lot of tell and not much show concerning his ease with the fairer sex. But then, who expects a thief to be a reliable narrator?

Rowan’s capers reflect those of a gentleman thief. Don’t be mistaken; Rowan knows his way with the rakes and picks as well as with a sword, but his greatest strength is his wit and sincerity. His often improvised schemes rely on convincing multiple parties to act as he wishes. In Mage Tome, the quickest way to remove a person in Rowan’s way is to send them on a collision course with another party. Rowan’s success depends on managing a delicate balance between factions while lying to each to bring them to a final confrontation. So far, Rowan has managed to avoid catastrophe, but Walker throws in enough secrets and unknowns to keep Rowan scrambling for control of his circumstances, often with twists worthy of Lester Dent’s Master Plot. This approach differentiates Rowan’s adventures from the eerie dungeon crawls of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser as well as the grand heists—and the wanton cruelty—of Locke Lamora.

Karma Upsilon 4 is a short story sequel to Mark Wandrey’s Cartwright’s Cavaliers, continuing the adventures of Jim Cartwright as he leads his family’s mercenary company across the stars. Besides being the foundation of the impressive Four Horsemen military science fiction series, Cartwright’s Cavaliers took Jim Cartwright from being an overweight washout mired in despair and debt, and through responsibility and the insistent nudging of his senior NCOs, he grew into a leader. Along the way, Jim picks up a kawaii alien sidekick, a smoking hot girlfriend, and a Gundam-style giant robot, yet the anime influence does not break the grit of milSF written in the classic Baen mold.

Now, with a couple years of experience under his belt, Jim Cartwright is searching for a refuge that will keep his company safe from the ravages of competing mercenary companies and blood-sucking lawyers. The abandoned space station in the Upsilon orbit of the Karma system appears to fit his needs. If he can get inside, that is. Someone has jammed the locks, sealed the hatches, and booby-trapped everything. Jim and the Cavaliers must cut their way through to find out just what Jim’s $125 million+ credits has purchased. It’s a straightforward story, enlivened by an unrelenting series of lethal traps.

Jim grew up in Cartwright’s Cavaliers, but still must deal with the consequences of his teenage rebellion and despair. Not in angst, but it takes time to turn fat into muscle. His size continues to be an issue, limiting him to older, larger equipment. In the tight corners of Karma Upsilon 4, it also means that he has to enter rooms alone, adding to his personal risk—and the risk of his company. But Jim also maintains his personal gains from Cartwright’s Cavaliers. He might not be the perfect captain—or soldier—but he shoulders his share of duty admirably, striving to improve instead of choosing the way of the malcontent. Growing up and leadership are not destinations for Jim, as they are in many adolescent fantasies, but gateways to greater, more satisfying duties and responsibilities.

As for what Jim and the Cavaliers found inside Karma Upsilon 4, that will be fodder for further stories.

I found Appalling Stories: 13 Tales of Social Injustice in my weekly new release searches and grew curious. Here was a pulp-tinged counterpart to Forbidden Thoughts that played on the Astounding Stories name but was not written by the Pulp Revolution or Superversive movements. And,as it skewered many of the sacred cows of today’s current political correctness, the writers touted the collection as anti-message fiction.

Not quite. This is a bleak collection exploring the evils of the ends and means of social justice, filled with inverted morality tales where the good suffer and the bad struggle under the lash of the much worse. It’s Black Pill Pulp, not quite speculative fiction as many of the stories, such as “Bake Me a Cake” and the military rules of engagement farce “Our Diversity is Our Strength!”, have a distinct “is this true or is this the Onion?” satire of modern headlines. Not so much “Could this happen?” but “is it happening right now?”As an Amazon reviewer said, “This is message fiction, and the message is, ‘Hold my beer…'”

Perhaps the best of the lot is “The Bitterness of Honey”, a tale that breaks the mold of the collection by combining eco-terrorism, weird menace, and paranormal horror. It would be perfect for a modern, spicier version of Weird Tales, if the editor had the stomach for it.

Appalling Tales is not for everyone. When it is not heavy-handed with message, it is smothering with mood. And, yet, among the despair is the laughter of the gallows, assuming the reader sticks around long enough to find it.

Quick Reviews: MAGE TOME, KARMA UPSILON 4, and APPALLING STORIES published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHAT NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ABOUT WILLFULNESS

One consequence of funding such a large number of hardware startups. For example, willfulness clearly has two subcomponents, stubbornness and energy. Sometimes the current even starts to flow in the other direction, up the power continuum, however, because its rarity is guaranteed by the U. Most readers can tell the other investors are in you, there's a danger that the increase in disagreement, there's a really good manager. How can people who will sell to you are companies that will give $20k to a startup. Google, which prides itself on sending users on their way to other destinations, as they did in the last ten years has been to take the work of the Valley is so high is web services. His field is hot now and every year you get a silicon valley becomes: who are the great things to work on problems few care much about and no one else is either. Of course I wanted to try being a painter, and the site rules discourage dramatic link titles. That's what everyone does in societies where risk isn't rewarded. Not Buildings If you go and see all its flaws very clearly. The main reason may be that the most important places for learning about new languages like Perl, Python, and Ruby. They at least were in Boston.

When Milton was going to use a restaurant as a model. You can't have divided loyalties. There has been a qualitative change in the sort of software that's supposed to be able to use them. And because Lisp was so high-level language, in the sense that all you have to know about it. Trade shows didn't pay as a way to spend money is people, and how much is due to Trevor Blackwell, Beau Hartshorne, Jessica Livingston, and Geoff Ralston for reading drafts of this. It was not only acceptable to produce works like the Metaphysics, but that was enough to tell their friends, who happen to be used to, and the higher your valuation, the narrower your options for doing that. It's interesting to see the VCs' offices on the north side of Sand Hill Road.

If not it's a sign the terms are reasonable. The problem was, since we'd been about to be acquired for $20 million. You're at least close enough to work that way, the answer is almost certainly no leverage. For example, nearly all say the same thing with programming languages. C#: Java is controlled by rules so precise that it is unfair to delay. It seemed odd that the outliers at the two ends of the spectrum. If what we do. They say to the customer: you are unimportant. Not the programmers. Thanks to Sam Altman and Jessica Livingston for reading drafts of this, and so on. Like many people that age, I spent a lot of nasty little problems. The two main categories are angels and VCs that these guys were hackers, not MBAs, and so on.

I want to say so. They decide how much money you've taken. False positives seem to me slightly funny. After I made the list there turned out to be widely applicable. The more of a startup is a huge predictor of death because in addition to such indirect competitors, I can't figure it out yourself. That is the big win in the end. They're just a couple lines of code every time you tie your shoelaces. Magazines published few of them, don't raise money. But you can always write that book, or climb that mountain, or whatever, but get together regularly to scheme, so the kids become one another's opponents. Hackers love to build hardware, and customers love to buy it despite having no evidence it's for sale. They want to get market price if they want to have a remedial character. His mistake was to confuse motive and result.

It's harder to judge, and partly because after a while, or increase revenues. I don't think a lot of adults who still react childishly to challenges, of course, but this tiny amount of scaling at least ensures that tokens get sorted the right way to get them out. Some VCs now require that in any sale, they get their investment back first. As I was mulling this over, I found myself considering doing it. The Top of My Todo List April 2012 A palliative care nurse called Bronnie Ware made a list of the causes of the Industrial Revolution did is their social disruptiveness. Starting a successful startup is similar to the schlep filter. For example, America's abnormally high incarceration rate is a bit of a hack.

The only thing worth talking about first is the problem you're exploring. Like a lot of people out there who have never even made an angel investment and yet are already better angel investors than they realize. I learned how to deal with investors while the others keep the company moving forward—releasing new features, and the customers would be individual people that you could not merely ignore, but ridicule. You want them to run is something they thought of themselves. Think twice before you try running your own company. Startups are powerless, and good high schools and good universities, like the print media, or trying to tack upwind by suing their customers, because there are so few choices. And for the same reason I did when I first met him, but I didn't remember exactly why till YC raised money itself. So I wouldn't want Python advocates to say I don't know if this one product fails; and even at Google they have a fair amount of data to go on.

At least, I think few realize the huge spread in the value of products is in software. If we aim at economic inequality, it would be hard to sell. And it has to look professional. Finally, what should you do now with telephones. I knew this empirically, but I realize a I have no illusions about how eagerly this suggestion will be adopted. I heard a talk by someone who doesn't expend any effort on enterprise search. When one person is in charge he can take risks that a committee has designed a good language when they did finally take a CEO, they chose a guy with critical technical skills leaves, that's more of a party. Even if there are more opportunities to hire them as a web service. Http:///home/patrick/Documents/programming/python%20projects/UlyssesRedux/corpora/unsorted/arc. Keeping a lid on meanness. And you can tell a book by its cover as well. Startups raising money occasionally alienate investors by seeming arrogant.

[dwestfieldblog]

DARK MEDITATIONS ON MAY 35TH

(4th June)

David Westfield presents The Disconnection. A monthly seminar:-)

World news and basic facts, tapped from the universal mind, but first a message from the Akashic Record....Down to the burning wire once again, veering from one extreme to the other does not count as balance. The captain of your relationship with Non Self. Voices in choral sequence pulling you out of body. Unable to process information while focusing on it. Distance is depth. Does this path have a heart? Distract the mind elsewhere, throw a question backwards and think of something other. The answer appears, looking for a sign...it says No Road Ahead. Dead End... and another pathway opens as soon as you accept this.  Dream until you awaken, dream until it is real, the circle opens out...  

At that point you realise that that which you are truly summoning is another aspect of your own energy. You truly leave spirit prints in other realms. Thought, projected with an aim or not, is stored and takes on it's own life. Formless contact and contacted form, acknowledge all your sides. Trust me, I'm an idiot. Having fun spotting the fnords...Did you make it through those two paragraphs?  

Due to finances seemingly out of my control (useless magician) I have put an almost temporary halt to the new double cd. And many other things. We shall see whether abstinence makes for a better clarity of visualisations... although the deep set hunger for a nightly obliteration might well interrupt that. My claws and teeth have returned. Want to do everything I know I shouldn't. All of it, love making a collage out my pleasures. The Ego demands temporary satisfactions to deny the Soul. Luxury...  

Let's try drinking water, breathing deep and slow and allow the sunset rays to enter instead. Or not. It might be too late.

304 songs recorded in Prague and I would exchange all of them, the time and energy of their joy for a child of my own, in a heartbeat. In an amphetamine second. Laugh like a giggling child or a Buddhist monk. (stong pa nyid du gyur.... Everything becomes Emptiness).

Got the date of the Million Marijuana March wrong last month, just goes to show how the eagle talons of my memory have been blunted by various means. The past always catches up because there is only Now. Etc. Hmm, on to the Net for a spell...

Dark Meditations on social media, throw them into the satire...throw them to the Wolf.

Foul traitors to the human spirit. Who took the jam out of your doughnut? There you stood on the edge of your feather, expecting to butterfly but regressed to caterpillar. But why get hung up on negativity? Unless you enjoy auto erotic asphyxiation. Normality follows...in a Bitch's Brew. Hunger.

'Why be bleak when you can be Blake?' Jonhn Balance.  

'The self reflecting image of a narcotised mind'. Gira.

Variations on the politics of dominance... 'Antennae tuned to inhuman vibrations'.  Duck Fart calling Cheese Boy out....you guys kill me, how small do your penises have to be for this braggadocio? How about a naked sumo fight to the death in a large tub of butter instead? Just a charming vision.... Glad Le Pen lost, happy that France after all the attacks still has not swung too far Right, shame for all of Putin's cash seeded into her campaign...you're not going to get that investment back baldy. But all your other shit stirring is going so well, you must be proud. Meanwhile here in the Czech Republic, the three main leaders become increasingly foul and ridiculous, a president whose every utterance is despicable and a businessman politician telling the Big Lies as he rises and rises into the rotten stink of filth.  

If you don't stir the cream, it turns into scum.

I first came to Prague several years after the Velvet Revolution and of course I am still an alien outsider, but it is clear after 22 years just how well the leaders have studied and learned from the West. Pulled between populism, and Putin, they choose enrichments and power above actually serving. Say it again for the 93rd time; Only a revolution of the Spirit will win. Silent and beautiful, private and secret, one soul at a time. Remember the Laws of Phase Transition. Or as they say here; 'Truth and love will overcome'. Hold on to let go...

Still irritates me that way too many of the young in rebellion against the usual 'adult' right wing thinking, go for Socialism and left wing rubbish. All those in organisations on demonstrations, funded by those who have NO interest in 'power to the people', but do care about power FROM the people. Bastards swindling suckers. Even the majority of those who disbelieve in mainstream religion end up in various sects/cults who exist solely/SOULy to vampire money and energy from the desperate vacuum created by a lack of personal self discovery and internal private faith.

Speaking of which....

The Campaign for the hearts and minds of the European folk dream...in Britain...

I remain (arf) patriotic of the energy, the magic in England but it has been buried, smothered, dormant. Again, as an outsider, it is more apparent each time I return to the island, the changes are more visible. As unbalanced as I am, it causes an ocean of sadness, then a blind rage of hatred. Then, peace...just biorhythms, moon waves and electromagnetic impulses on chemicals eh? Or something. All will evolve... But...

humans eh? What can you do? We are all in the ark together, for a while.

Street corners all over Prague with servants of The Watchtower...mobile billboards with pictures and stories of 'The Riders of the Apocalypse'. (Isn't it against the law the to disturb the peace?) Sorry smiling ones, but I just won't swallow the coming of the Lord. I love the bible, you couldn't make it up, couldn't make it more ridiculous but they are having dammed good attempt. Standing around trying to scare people - as if we don't have enough shit to worry about. Trying to convince that the end is coming (and looking forward to it because they will be SAVED) and that it will be horrible. Possibly, most of us know this already, which is why we spend so much time on various destructive hobbies to make us feel immortal.  

On better days I would stop and 'engage' Jehovah's Voyeurs in debate, the Mormons, the Scientologists et al... free entertainment...wonderful conversations. I have been in mental asylums where the reasoning makes far more sense. Once again, 'Only the madman is absolutely sure'. I have doubts about Everything (except music) so that means I am sane and pure eh? And you, spending your valuable time speed reading this, how about you? Feeling good?

Tattooed above the gates of Hell:

'Abandon all Hope, all ye who Enter Her'

Last words from Aleister Crowley; 'I am perplexed'. Wonder if he was surprised by all the unconditional Love which appeared just before the 'end'? Getting old is not for carrots, or was that cowards? Memories get distorted when this ancient in Paradise. Arf. So many charming negative possibilities, you need the detachment and wisdom of a sage to overcome and accept 'It is what it is'. And in doing so, 'it' changes'. 'Perception, use it or lose it. As Mr R. Bach's Messiah's Handbook said. It also said; 'Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours'.  

Hmmm...Wonder where all those who emptied their bank accounts, sold their houses and sat on a mountain waiting for The End in December 1999 are these days? Wishing it had been or much wiser now? Would loved there to have been a live camera on them as the clock clicked to a minute past midnight on the first day of '2000', close ups of each face, zooming into their eyes.

'There's some people on Earth, they live in separate minds'.....'The past and future were simultaneous'. Gira.

'It is difficult, if not impossible to insult a beautiful woman. She remains beautiful and the insult recoils.' It is also impossible to insult a self acknowledged loser. They know and the words mean nothing. The insult only shows that the one who considers themselves above such lowly matters will inevitably be in the same sinking boat sooner

or later. This gives a dark satisfaction.

This year, 'M', a virtual assistant similar to Siri on Apple and Alexa on Amazon has been launched on Facebook in the US. Cannot be disabled, only muted or ignored...it can listen to every conversation on the site and make suggestions about payments, travel etc. Zuckerberg looking more stressed by the month because he is working for the bad guys... possibly why he seeks to do so much for charity in order to appease his conscience. Or not. But the chances of Facebook resisting the CIA's mass surveillance scheme is beyond unlikely. Oh yes, and Facebook's own figures show that there are more 18 year old males using it than are actually alive on this planet. Great research guys, well done. Gullible.  

Wonder if Snowden (follow him on Twitter boys and girls) has been questioned in Russia about his work. Guess. He did the right thing for sure, the problem with democracies pretending to be the good guys is that when they cross over in the name of security on an hourly basis, they really cross over. At some point they only become the devil you think you know. However, given the choice between being ruled by China, Russia or the poison caliphate of daesh, I will still take Europe or even America. I'd much rather have Buddha on the astral, beaming humour and wisdom, or the All Seeing Eye but them is the breaks we get. Every state is a bastard. Some are actually worse than others...

The United Altered States of Earth. That would work. Eh?

Which brings me to May 35th, (as those who used to write about it on social media in China called it, to avoid being arrested) also known as June 4th, the date of the Tienanmen massacres, another disgraceful stain on the group soul of humanity, perpetuated in the name of control. May the memories never be erased from the collective mind. The beginning of the chaos in Syria reminded me of Peking... students and shopkeepers asking for a little more correct behaviour and freedom from their loving leaders, mown down by tanks. Not terrorists, not aggressive agitators, but normal, regular people. SHAME.  

Good to see the former chief of the FBI (sacked by Duck Fart for speaking truth to power) confirming the Russian influence on the recent election in America. Not as if the US has never done this in other countries though eh? Daffy Donald the 'straight talker' is probably overjoyed at having the NSA at his disposal. Straight talker? This man cannot even form coherent sentences...too much time tweeting can do that. Remember Tony Blair describing himself as 'a pretty straight sort of a guy'?? ARF. Reminds me of Hunter S Thompson epithet about President Nixon; 'This guy was so crooked he had to screw his pants on every morning'.  

Duck Fart called the ex boss 'crazy...a real nut job'. Seems reasonable enough eh? A prerequisite for the top job of such a serious agency. A day later, two of those

mentioned in the FBI's case of the Kremlin's pupeteering met POTUS in the White House... without journalists or tapes etc. Not suspicious at all. Impeach him now. And as for Duck Fart's statement that the suicide bomber in Manchester, England was a 'evil loser'....Is this really an adult male speaking?   Almost wept to see a photo of him in Bethlehem, Israel... (getting tips for his Mexican wall no doubt) his motorcade passing a poster with the words 'The City of Peace Welcomes the Man of Peace'. As Dylan said, quoting from another source '...sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.'.... This is NOT the guy to calm things down, build bridges and make all the children sing with joy. And that's enough of the news/ the olds.  

Admired this month have been PJ Harvey (one of the finest females ever to come from Britain, a beautiful talent and passion) Quentin Tarantino, the absolute genius of Wayne Shorter, truly touched by God. Zappa again, Coil forever, Jaz Coleman's first symphony, the Kammerflimmer Kolektief, Savages and Crass, last of the true punks who lived what they shouted about.

'There is no authority but yourself'.

So...did 'God' lie when it said if you eat the apple, you will surely die'? According to the infallible Bible, Adam and Eve ate and died not. So 'Satan' told the truth? You are already making up your own mind. Happy re-programming. Don't forget kids, the Illuminati are on our side:-) Good luck with the discipline of ritual and projection/ internalisation. See you in the interdimesions....Enjoy the summer of Love...the war for peace is an ancient one.  

If I had half a brain, I'd be dangerous eh?  

Stay well.  

[fabelgis4680]

Module 4

Weeks 5 & 6

Lenin  The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism - an interesting comparison to liberal science defending the slave wage, interesting to compare to today’s minimum wage. Materialism, capital, labor theory of value, and utopian socialism are all pretty well explained.

first chapter of Lenin’s State and Revolution -  The State as a product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. Classicism and the divide of working and wealthy. A good touch on power, prisons, and false scientific claims of special bodies that somehow confirmed wrongful ideas. 

Trotsky’s The Transitional Program - prerequisites for a socialist revolution and its inclusion of the working class unified. I want to know more about sliding scales because I have heard of it in terms of today but not thoroughly. Overall this is a good guide and it reestablishes its societal questions answered. 

Proletkult by Bogdanov – Proletarian Culture or working class culture. It rejects pre-revolutionary art which I could disagree with because revolutionaries and art both are timeless. I enjoy the overview of art and revolution as important hand in hand. Art as living images. I can compare this to today’s graphic design as important for change it must be appealing both to the eye and emotion. Creation and labor is brought up as a collective. I think this should be touched on more because he does mention Marxist ideas with labor but I need more information on what collective includes.

Bogdanov and Tektology pp. 1-36; 63-79: - Tektology was to be theoretically and scientifically useful. I think in class it was discussed the relationships between Marx / Bogdanov / Stalin to tektology but I am curious on other discourses that were agreed or disagreed on between them. Marx thought tektology discouraged his philosophy and Stalin had it almost forgotten because of WWII. I can see the how organizational methods could go in hand with Marxian community organization. He talks about isolation of the worker, labor embracing physical and mental exhaust like a machine, labor dependent on time, machine technology. Tektology as social biological and physical should be revolutionary. I enjoyed the aspects on astrology and time.

Bogdanov’s essays and Bukharin’s memorial for Bogdanov in the Molecular Red – Some contradictions in the essays have me a little, conflicted. A point I have to bring up would be comparing the astronomer to Marx, explaining points of view, the astronomer explained Earth’s point of view being one of many planets circling the sun, it is proved and agreed on. Other examples being the conservation of energy or Darwin’s theories also proved in History. Marx explains the point of the worker being estranged and exploited, yet under capitalism it continues. Was that point of view agreed on and willingly continued or have there been waves of realization and retaliation / revolution? Costs of labor rising from the workers’ demands for better wages could be an example of the retaliation being coddled for some but still not all fully aware of their power.

Molecular Red Preface and ch 1 – Metabolic rift is a term I have not heard of before, but labor and technique leading to the destruction of natural resources is something I have. I wonder if climate change deniers are aware of the carbon liberation front. Poverty of options has a great explanation, “Economic, technical, political, and cultural transformations are all advisable, but at least part of the problem is their relation to each other”.  Functional dependency, could it be scientifically compared to today’s oil industry? There seems to be no intent to change it or abandon it even though it is not needed.

“A Dialectic Approach to Film Form” & “Methods of Montage” in Eisenstein’s collection of essays Film Form – I loved this reading because of my new-found appreciation of film / cinematography. Finding the conflicts in art with social missions, nature, and its methodology can be applicable to all art including film. The importance of spatial form, tension, and rhythm. Film shots and montages as dramatic or epic principles. Linear or anecdotal. Metric /measures or rhythmic montages like the Odessa steps.

Roger Corman analyzing the famous Odessa Steps sequence of Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin – with great sequence of movement and editing techniques for this montage I was left a little confused for the silent film / black and white made some things a little hard to read. Were the soldiers in the crowd shooting in revolution or retaliation? Revolution being the massacre being done for change, or retaliation to the soldiers who were not obliging to maintain power? Was it the soldiers who were going against the powers on the boat or the soldiers who were remaining complicit? The analysis well explains how it was a successful montage though cuts of different shots going back and forth in a linear pattern showing the passing of time in its chaotic manor.

The battle of potempkin study guide is an overall good critical set of questions to evaluate that are not just related to the film but to other analysis’ that need reflection, example being the world map of the 1920s.

How Battle of Potempkin reshaped Hollywood – Thinking about all of the films I have seen or know about that use montage schemes similar to the battle of Potempkin. How film uses fear and emotion in its art form to convey messages. How camera angles can be changed to get different points of view. Being a first for action drama. Conveying tension even with no dialogue or color still was achieved in what some movies today trouble to do even with actual screams, sounds, and colors that can depict chaos or violence.

Chapter 2 Molecular Red – Platonov being the son of Proletkult and proletarian writing. Mentioning historical allegory of revolution, everyday qualities of history, and a new tektology in the proletariat narrative. Pulling off what Bogdanov suggested. Fourteen Little Red Huts is mentioned but I would want some more background on this, maybe an interpretation / explanation source.

Antisexus – Very interesting. Very versatile names in the reviews (Ghandi / Mussolini). The sex-gender industrial complex is … complex. I look back on this quote for help, “We cannot  overlook  the exceptional  literary  talent of  the  author of  this brochure, just as we have to acknowledge the imperial cynicism, serviceable pornography,  and terrible  banality  of this  business  essay, the  size  of which makes it really sad”

The Third Son by Platonov – was a nice story. A little heartfelt. Pulled at the heart strings but I was trying to find the comparisons which may have been easily misinterpreted. I think the story can be interpreted in many ways depending on the narrative. Examples being the mother representing the working, the young daughter of one of the sons representing the future of scared, the sons sad, unaware, and unable to think of nothing but the sad until small spurs of family rejoice. I may need some help connecting dots because I know there are deeper meanings.

Arthur de Gobineau’s Inequality of the Human Races – “RACIAL INEQUALITY IS NOT THE RESULT OF INSTITUTIONS” Nice of it too all be in capitals. “when we consider the isolation of primitive tribes and communities” this is hard to read, but at least you warned us. “I do not flatter myself that I shall be able to enjoy this inconsistency without opposition” damn right.

Fichte’s “Address to the German Nation” – This states x people should stay with x people. Boundaries are complicit with “nature”.  “Christian Europe, I say, has split itself into various separate parts. Since that event, and not before, there has been a booty in sight which anyone might seize; and each one lusted after it in the same way, because all were able to make use of it in the same way; and each one was envious on seeing it in the hands of another.” ????

Adolf Hitler “First Letter on the Jewry” – Antisemitism is given the chance to not only be emotional politics but “factual” politics. Nationalism giving focus to materialism. The term “irresponsible press” can be compared to today’s presidency and the mistrust and mistreatment to the press / media.

Adolf Hitler & Anton Dexler, “Program for the German Workers Party”-  Stating “Only members of the nation may be citizens of the State.” Nationalism / white supremacy and antisemitism stating no jews allowed as members of the nation. The term alien is used which is perpetuated to this day.

Joseph Goebbels, “Speech at Nuremburg, 1934″ - Calling nazi propaganda as background music for government policy. Big on propaganda. “Political propaganda in principle is active and revolutionary.” True but can be taken good or bad. ‘The organizational union of mass demonstrations, the press, film, radio, literature, theater, etc., is only the mechanical side to the matter. It is not so much that all these means are in one hand. The important thing is that this hand knows how to master and control them.” Control of the media / the press, gives leeway to visual politics in the wrong hands.

Benito Mussolini, “What is Fascism?” – fascism as an opposite to Marxian socialism. Believes in holiness and heroism. “Men as no more then puppets” “the myth of "happiness" and indefinite progress” expansion of the nation, imperialism,

Benito Mussolini, “The Doctrine of Fascism” – “By exploiting general fears of labor unrest and communism, Mussolini gained his followers among war veterans and the middle class” exploiting fear is a recognizable pillar. Fascism as a system of government and a system of thought like a religion. Fascism “takes over all the forms of the moral and intellectual life of man” The fascist Decalogue / commandments is outrageous, dystopian, dry of critical thinking, and it is a conditioned narrative that is fearful in its ideas of power.

[janiklandre-blog]

Friday, March 3, 2017

10:25 a.m.  chilly morning  - in Washington it seems the cherry trees are about to bloom - a frost could destroy it all

Still also a comment to my thoughts about documentation yesterday - in the 1920's there was I believe a Norwegian and also polar explorer (google) Fridjof Nansen who created a "Nansen passport" - there wer countless white Russians who had fled Russia and also others displaced by all the turmoil after WW 1 who were stateless and needed some document and I believe the Nansen passport did gain some limited validity - certainly a most welcome document by to many undocumented. A g;obal passport for everyone, that is what we need - not I with my American passport in Europe that I only need to flash - to watch on a train to Switzerland people with darker skins profiled, their passports requested - studied at length and I having to watch to watch their anxiety - and now - more and more anxiety and fear. I they even have a passport - the Iraqui friend of my friend had to throw his overboard when the boat taking him to Greece was about to sink - how many must be passport less - who even knows what sort of representation Iraq has in Finland - and from what I hear the Iraqui government is very hostile to those who fled the country. How does such a person obtain a travel document?

And also back again to my disrupted life - C,B. who used to come quite regularly in the evenings - has bowed out. I had been realizing and resenting that I was Marianne from 7 to 0 in the evenings in her rather rigid scheme - never asked to join her during the day - only asked to come and eat her soup - and asking myself why I depended so much on these evening visits when I listened at length to details about her large family, the many Iraquis in her life - and like myself also she is a people collector and more and more people are cropping up in her life - while she had little interest in people in my life. Then she brought movies "to relax" - that is also what I do with my mother, she said - I watched them while they had little interest for me - altogether I tried to please her because my evenings are lonely. She never would commit - if I asked her at noon she always would say - I cannot say how my day will go - she would not call and if I tried her by 7:30 I would find out she had gone to Brooklyn where she has a long time friend - about whom I have written here. She is very invoilved with charismatic Catholicism - very alien to me - visits lots of people in hospitals - I try to stay away from hospitals as much as I can - and should I ever end up in a hospital - I would find out how much visits by strangers would mean to me. Obviously since I am very delinquent on visiting the sick - I may not get many visits.

My mother when I was growing up always said: the only person in the world you can trust is me - and have found out - other mothers do that too. Early I realized this would make for a very limited world. She spoke a lot about how after 1933 when persecution began people began to withdraw into their blood families and became unavailable to her - specially the friend for whom I was named - in whose apartment in Prague I later was with my mother - in the early 1940's, first on the day when her friend had paid the Germans a large sum of money to release her husband from Dachau - her friend had tickets for a boat leaving from Genua for South America for her husband, herself and Annette her only child who had been billed my sister - her husband Paul never came - only later his ashes - she refused to leave without him. Soon after that my mother and I went to her apartment when she had to report for what was called "the transport" - first to Theresienstadt and later to Auschwitz where she and the child perished. My mother had considered hiding the child - alas that was impossible. Some Catholic nuns did in their monastaries - but we did not know any.

My mother's mother who came from extreme poverty had decided to have only one child - this child was to become "somebody" - my mother got a Ph.D. at 23 - still I have doubts about my grandmother's decision - a couple of siblings might have done more for my mother than a Ph.D. My grandmother it seems had one half brother who became a Catholic priest (mentioned in my mother's memoirs. My grandfather, her husband, came from a large Jewish family - a couple of cousins left after 1945, two in America, one in Israel - she never had had much relationship to them. My mother was a socialist and they all detested socialists. My mother had planned on five children but after 1933 was forbidden to have children, so I remained an only child - luckily had two sons - but they live in Western Massachusetts and my divorce from their father - or rather his divorce from me, he flew off to Mexico, I saw nmo need for a divorce - in any event - he too is among a good number of people whom, after I came to America - I did not assess well.

All my very best friends are in Europe - I took great pains to stay in touch with them - in my experience in my early years I seem to hav e been naturally attracted to people more congenial then the people later in America. Of course, these friendships at a great distance never experienced the wear and tear of daily friendship.

But my mother also was not a good judge of people - I have misgivings about some friendships she formed while living in Germany - from 1946 util 1969 - then she moved back to Vienna where she had lived as a student and later as a teacher - from 1923 to 1931, interrupted by a year in Paris - from 1931 to 1937 she lived in Germany, from 1937 to 1946 in Prague, where I grew up. Whereever she was she did make friends - only chnildren have to. When she moved back to Vienna in 1969 to a lovely apartment in the center of town - her street, Prinz Eugenstrasse bordering on the Belvedaire - she came back to friends from the 1920's who were good friends - but they had stayed in Vienna - her two best friends were not Jewish, they had families in Vienna and my mother kept insisting I MUST move to Vienna and take care of her - heer suicide in 1982 was an act of revenge on me. Deeply disturbing not only my life but also the lives of my sons.

In any event - my choice of male partners in my life while not exactly disastrous - there were good times with all of them - still, none of them was protective of me and none truly committed - with the exception of my boyfriend whom I met at 15 and gave up at 21 when I met Robert G. whom my mother adored - and misjudged.

My close women friends over the years - as I see it - chose me as a friend, rather than I chosing them. Hannelore, long dead, Doris, Christine F. - and also C.B. They recognized my usefulness to them at the time they chose me - all except for Hannelore ten to 15 years younger than I. at the time when they picked me looking up to me, over the years becoming in many ways a lot more successful than I am - very attractrive to other people seeking their friendship - their need for me deminuishing - and leaving me lonely as I grow old anbd older. Not that easy to deal with.

But one thing I had still meant to write about - in the NYT I just read - on page C5 The Right Woman Can Start a Revolution - a play: Bull in a China Shop - a play inspired by Mary Woolley - president of Mount Holyoke College in the first third of the last centurey - the college I came to in 1951 - and certainly heard that name - but very little about her - and not about her woman partner Jeannette Marks - whose name came to my attention only a couple of hours ago.

I think I wrote yesterday, or the day before, how much better I think I would have done remaining in 1951 with my sweet boyfriend in New York, attending with him Brooklyn College that was free then and a lot more interesting in those years that Mount Holyoke - where the only thing celebrated was a big fat diamond engagement ring to an ivy league graduate - that ring was flashed about, no mention of the very few admitted to medical school, or law school - the trophy was a large June wedding after graduation, followed rapidly b y children - andI suspect a good number of my class mates became alcoholics - of course they disappeared from the picture - a large number of my 1953 fellow grads have died - but my class collected more money than any other class and somebody always threw in a cou[le of hundred dollars in my name to claim a 100 % participation

Robert never bestowed any jewelry on me - not that I ever had any interest and every last little bit of gold I owned fell victim to the breakins while living in tenements - stil - between 1956 until 1964 I was living the model life of a model Mount Holyoke grad - and only after Robert divorced me in 1967 fell totally out of the role and have been struggling ever since since - labelled a destructive loser by Robert and also by others, a great disappointment to my social climber mother - and today - I let you find labels for me.

Still before I end I do want to pay tribute to two wonderful German friends I made in America - both suffering from cystic kidneys, one died, the other is thankfully alive due to a transplant and I cannot thank her enough for her friendship and great generosity. My gereat regret - she moved away from New York and I only see her very sporadically when she invited me to her wonderful house. She does live with family and she is extremely busy.

It is close to 11 a.m. - in the next days I may not find so much time to write - well perhaps still on Saturday and Sunday - but Monday early a.m. I have to see the eye doctor who is to do my cataracts in my right eye on April 3rd - tedious preps - then on Tuesday early morning I hope to head for Amherst - take a 5:49 a.m. out of Grand Central. Metro North to New Haven where I hope to find a bus to Northampton - and not sure about my time up North - and then much ado with doctors - the physical therapy in a crowded ill smelling place - I do suspect my walking is the best therapy - I should also see a dermatologisdt, my long year doctor retired - then the dental problems are up in the air - at some point I will have to deal with dentures - for now with these thesethat keep falling out and the dsentist sauggested I try to glue them back in myself - then the gynecologist I saw earlier would like to see me again - in the last analysis many try to make a buck - it seems medicare does pay most or all for the physical theerapy that C.B. so highly recommeds - I'm afraid for the eyes there will be a lot of co-pay, there always was for the dermatologist, the gynecologist demanded to be paid in advasnce and at some point I may get what medicare pays - and then there is stil the podiatrist, who asks doer $20 each visit - it's a mess and all bargaining and the best doctors no longer take medicare and ask for a yarly payment of $30.000 or more - then you will have a boutique doctor who will have some time for you, will come to your house when necessary - and increasingly - the poor are turned away from hospitals - the ambulances told to go somewhere else and with some luck they die on the wayh. When they finally get to some hospital willing to look at them - after hours of wait - lying in corridors - later staying in corridors because there is no room for them - I still remember the humorous way in which my sweet friend Ken described it "here I was in this lovely corridors surrounded by languasges from around the world" - this reminds me of Victor Frankel whom Molly and I googled who descibed finding even brief moments of delight in Auschwitz. By preference I would like to find ways to end my life with dignity before lying for days in a corridor surrounded by languages from around the world - yet Ken, who clearly had had a death wish, then with the help of Margaret still clung for two years to a painful existence, came to the park almost hours before he died and still made big plans for the future. Life is - what life is. Marianne  And C.B. - having been hurt by you in those last several weeks - I do forgive you - and I'm glad you are convinced you are a saint.