From Here to Gone: Announcing the Disappearing Act

Okay, here it is.  Time to go.

Back when I only was thinking about doing a blog like this, I used to read a guy with the handle Channel Null.  He was in to hynosis, magick, actualizing hizdmanself and other such things.  One day, he up and declared his site was an energy sink and that it would disappear.  True to his word, it did.

Poof.

Don’t know what happened to him or what he’s up to, but I guess I didn’t really know him to begin with.  Just words I admired.

Well, folks, I’ve decided to follow suit.  After a fashion.  I’ve made 307 posts on this here site: some I’m proud of, some not so much.  Nonetheless.

When it’s time, it’s time.

Once I reach 333 posts, I will leave this site behind for good.  33 days after that, it will disappear for good, unless I decide to keep it as a private, periodic thing for a handful of people.  Either way, for all practical purposes it will be gone.

Why 333 posts?  And why 33 days after #333? Well, hell…because those numbers are “cool” and “sexy” and “symbolic” and all the rest of that stuff.  But mostly it’s arbitrary.  I just like numbers that seem complete, ya know?

When exactly I’ll have time to to post those last 26 articles is anyone’s guess.  Maybe by December, maybe not till January or even the spring.  Whenever it happens, that’ll be it.

I just simply have too much other stuff I’m neglecting that must be put aright.  And all that stuff is *out there* (in the world where people in their actual bodies connect) and *in here* (tapping my head and my heart) not *here* (internet land).

I can’t say it hasn’t been fun.  But I also can’t say it’s really much fun any longer.

For those few folks who read this thing, thanks.  I appreciate it and I’m glad if it’s been worthwhile.

I’ll save the direct shout outs for later.

Maybe something else will come along for all of us.

Perhaps I’ll see ya all at the after party.

Being countdown now.

What We’re Leaving Behind

It has been months, hasn’t it?  Not because there aren’t a slew of half-written things in the cue, waiting to get done–there are, in fact.  Thing is, when I sit on them for a minute, I find it hard to go back to them.  They somehow don’t seem as pressing as they once did when I started writing them, nowhere near.  See, it just seems that the time it takes me to really formulate something is the time it takes for it to no longer really exist or matter in the Spectacular World. 

When everything is out of date, does out of date become the new “timeless”?

I’ve got new responsibilities in the real world and old, internal psychic battles to face, old demons to conquer, damnit.  The world of conspiracy-think just seems one more unnecessary addiction, one less thing I can give my energy to.  Getting up early in the morning and making tea seem so much more vital than throwing more energy behind the play of Spectacular distractions, whether they be the revelation that (gasp) comedians have sex or that somehow now that Obama has won the Nobel, that award is somehow now a joke (as if it wasn’t already when Kissinger won it).

We got the babies to worry about, people, to paraphrase ODB.  See, ODB knew, like Whitney Houston, that the children are the future and the babies are who we gotta save–and that didn’t keep either of them from smoking crack.  People are complicated–beautiful, cracked eggs: the saints, the heroes, the average Joes and Janes, even the villains.

And who would have thought, two years ago, that Neill Strauss, would be worth listening to more than Alex Jones.  (Well, actually, quite a few people.)  His book Emergency has the potential to effect far more positive change than a million more Prison Planet videos.  (Because if things don’t keep getting worse, while still allowing people to market how much worse things still can get, Alex Jones, is pretty much out of a gig.  His form of activism, like Michael Moore’s, is entirely too dependent on the Spectacle’s Media beast to survive without it–yet what he does is just one more mouth the Spectacle can use to eat with.)  No surprise, though, that Doug Rushkoff wrote a book that’s also a million times more helpful, I feel, than what I’ve been up to: so long as people put this into action.

Where am I going with this?  I’m not really sure. 

I suppose I’m just checking in to say that where ever I’m going, I’m sure going to be leaving a lot behind.

Who’s the Mystery Conspiracy Fliermyn of Flushing?

It’s not Kerry Thornley.  And it’s certainly not Francis E. Dec.  For the last six months, though, there have been single page fliers taped across Flushing having to do with (the) (a) Conspiracy.

They’ve been taped up on the door of the empty remnants of the once-might Washington Mutual Bank on Main Street.  They’ve been taped up on the Chase Manhattan Bank.  I seem to recall seeing one on a Duane Reade.  They all seem to suggest that the person making the fliers knows “what the time is,” if ya dig, and that s/he was hurt by, perhaps part of, and is now trying to wake us up to the Big Con (as the J.R. Bob Dobbsters say).

They always contain a pastiche of images and statements–some clear as a shitless colostomy bag, some half-finished like a bad sandwich, others cryptic as anything a Guy Debord said while piss drunk and half dead in the middle of a Parisian night.

Each of these fliers always end by quoting Conspiracy Theory: “IF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY IS A FAMILY THINK OF US AS THE UNCLE NO ONE TALKS ABOUT.”

I just couldn’t help it anymore, so I’ve taken one of these fliers (I plan to put it back, natch, cuz I’m polite that way) and am quoting it in full below:

REVEAL WHAT’S HIDDEN

HUMAN GENOME PROJECT

YOU HAVE BEEN AWAKENED A FULL CENTURY AHEAD OF SCHEDULE

AN IMMORTAL BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY.

THE RIGHT TIME TO SEEK CONSULTATINON ON MATTERS THAT WOULD

BENEFIT THE WORLD OF NATIONS, ETC… FROM SEEING OUR COVERT

EXPERTS.  IT WILL BENEFIT YOU TO MAKE THE DISCLOSURE ON OUR TIME

TABLE TO THE WORLD.  AND IF SOMEONE USES MY SECRECY AGAINST ME

THEN THE WORLD GETS NOTHING AND THE POWERS THAT BE WIN.

[This brings us to the middle of the page where there are three pictures.  The first is a graphic from a CD-ROM/DVD called "Understanding The Human Genome Project" from The National Human Genome Research Institute.  The second image is a graphic of a human silhoutte wrapped by the double helix.  This image is within a circle that reads: CHEMISTRY BIOLOGY PHYSICS ETHICS INFORMATICS ENGINEERING around it's edges.  The third image is of a computerized naked male image, a baldy, with three circles emanating from the body attached to DNA coils.  The first circle has a picture of a guy? in a lab coat at a chalkboard.  The second has the universal doctor symbol, the two snakes wrapped around the winged staff. The third circle has an image of a $20 bill inside.]

Continuing:

THE GIFT OF

IMMORTALITY?

[Below this is a possible book title: "May Good Fortune Be Our Constant Companion" with the name H. Jackson Brown, Jr., in parentheses.  Next to this is a picture of three fortune cookies.  The center one has been cracked open and a $50 bill is stuck inside.  Below these two images, is another graphic titled "The Tree of Life" which includes amoebozoa, fungi, plantae, rhizaria, chromista,alveolata...bacteria, but no "higher" life forms of the animal kingdom.]

And the bottom of the flier reads:

TO BE NORMAL, TO DRINK COCA-COLA AND EAT KENTUCKY

FRIED CHICKEN IS TO BE IN A CONSPIRACY AGAINST YOURSELF.

IF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY IS A FAMILY, THINK OF US AS

THE UNCLE NO ONE TALKS ABOUT.

 

Well, I have fallen from grace and begun eating McDonald’s lately.  (Is it Kierkegaardian despair that has led me thus?) And…on Friday, I had Kentucky Fried Chicken at a gathering.  Of course, I’ll admit I’ve been in a conspiracy against myself for awhile (but I won’t stoop to drinking Coca-Cola.  We all have our line in the sand.)

But enough about me.  Who is the our Mysterious Conspiracy Flier-Myn of Flushing?  And what are the dots he’s leaving us to connect in his latest message? 

And has anyone else noticed and been as fascinated as I am with this lone truth-paster’s handy work?

Sign of the Times?

As I enter the subway near Bryant Park past midnight a week back, I see an orange sticker stuck just above head-level at the bottom of the stairs.  It is a sticker decrying immigrants–how they smell, look, the crime the bring, blah, blah, blah.  The sticker encourages those who feel the same to contact the National Alliance at a P.O. Box in a state somewhere near Washington, D.C.

Walking in Brooklyn, I pass one of the brothers who hawks conspiracy-oriented books and DVDs.  This guy, though, has eyes clear as a baby’s or a Buddhists’.  He’s fifty something, but could be thirty something.  He explains to a wrinkled Jewish lady and a few other folks gathered by his table that all of these secret societies are meant to make you hate yourself.  At the same time, he says that we, each and every one of us, is responsible for the horrors we see.

Try and tell that to the nutjobs who left that National Alliance sticker up in the subway.  Or the guy who left the usual, tired pamphlet about how the “Jews” control America taped to the side of the subway pass machine up in Flushing.

But then, there’s that mysterious guy (I assume it’s a guy) who is leaving decidely cryptic collage-fliers up all around the same neighborhood.  They quote the movie Conspiracy Theory: “If the intelligence community is a family, think of us as the Uncle No One Ever Talks About.”

He’s not blaming anyone, exactly, he’s just saying, it seems, “Stop hurting us.  Leave us Alone.”

But when we are the ones hurting us, it can be hard to figure out how it is we can really leave ourselves alone.  Or, at least, leave ourselves “okay.”

“Remember,” said another clear-eyed man down in Brooklyn, this one on a bench feeding pigeons, reminding them as well as us, “sleeping people can blame each other all day, but that won’t make them stop dreamin’.”

We’ll keep getting shook until we decide to wake up and leave the room.

Does This Have to Do with My Horse Dream?

I know that usually, dreams aren’t supposed to be taken literally.  Usually they are symbolic.  Then again, when I saw this news item while passing by a TV around noon today, I had one of those Alison Dubois, scrunch-faced moments:

TEL AVIV: A dramatic video of a horse galloping over the top of a moving car in northern Israel has emerged online.

Excited tourists had been filming a group of horses galloping along a highway when one leapt onto the car, which was travelling in the other direction.

The horse smashes in the car’s windshield and roof. The driver of the car escaped with minor cuts and the horse only suffered light injuries in the head-on collision, according to local newspaper.

The driver softened the impact by slowing down the car in the moments before the horse hit.

The car was damaged beyond repair in the incident, which occurred in the province of Galilee.

–The International Times

The horses weren’t killed and there was no megabus involved, but damn if it didn’t resonate somehow with my dream Friday afternoon that I wrote about here recently:

I am on a megabus heading to Washington D.C.  There are very few people on this bus and I am half-asleep.  I am close to the front of the bus, so I notice when the bus comes upon a giant horse galloping in front of it.  At first, the bus is just clipping at its back hooves as it  rolls on.  But soon, the bus is pushing forward rapidly and I see horse legs go up over the front of the bus, as if the horse is still galloping but now above and, eventually behind us.  This happens again and again, four times total, the bus rolling up behind a horse and then pushing forward past the horse.  Now, in the dream I wake up to see on a TV report inside the bus the following:  “A commercial bus has brutally run over four police horses, officers injured.  The bus still at large.”

I now realize this is what has happened .  I am on this killer bus.  I pick up my cellphone and begin to make a call to 911.  I don’t hear anyone on the other end when the line picks up, but I am speaking anyway: “I am on that bus.  The bus that is running over those horses.

And suddenly, I realize I don’t know where we are…and am now uncertain where it is we’re heading.

No cops, and one less horse; also, the horse killed the car, not the other way around, but still: what do you folks think?

Running Over Horses

Here’s the dream:

I am on a megabus heading to Washington D.C.  There are very few people on this bus and I am half-asleep.  I am close to the front of the bus, so I notice when the bus comes upon a giant horse galloping in front of it.  At first, the bus is just clipping at its back hooves as it  rolls on.  But soon, the bus is pushing forward rapidly and I see horse legs go up over the front of the bus, as if the horse is still galloping but now above and, eventually behind us.  This happens again and again, four times total, the bus rolling up behind a horse and then pushing forward past the horse.  Now, in the dream I wake up to see on a TV report inside the bus the following:  “A commercial bus has brutally run over four police horses, officers injured.  The bus still at large.”

I now realize this is what has happened .  I am on this killer bus.  I pick up my cellphone and begin to make a call to 911.  I don’t hear anyone on the other end when the line picks up, but I am speaking anyway: “I am on that bus.  The bus that is running over those horses.

And suddenly, I realize I don’t know where we are…and am now uncertain where it is we’re heading.

Prelude to a Post: The Religion of the Spectacle Is…

The religion of the Spectacle is the Spectacle itself.

We live in a supposedly secular, post-modern culture.  You wil be told this in some quarters.

We live in a Judeo-Christian culture.  You will be told this in other quarters.

Neither of these things are quite correct.

Our so-called postmodern, secular culture is really the”pre-modern” “ghost-filled” world dressed up in sci-fi garb for our technocratic panopticon.  All the old pagan gods are back, archetypes overlaid onto the celebrities of the day.  The global church/temple/synagogue of the Spectacle is the integrated mass media of TV, internet, cinema, text-messaging and corporate print: this is where we “tele-commune” whilst remaining isolated.  And when we speak after “church,” we do so through the “buffers” created by it.

The images of the celebrities become the gods of the Spectacle, which merely promote a culture where everything is mediated by images, technocratic myths simulating life.

The Religion of the Spectacle is the Spectacle itself and it is its own God, presented to we, the public, the lonely consumer, for adulation and veneration.  Its parts seen everywhere, but nowhere can anyone point to one thing and say, that is the Spectacle/God.  Truly, the Spectacle has been seen by no man.  And to look upon its face is death within its cult-sure.  (However, this Death is a death of the false.)

And this is just a prelude.  But please take it lightly.  It’s not a weight for you to carry.

The Secrets of Garfield

Garfield: a bland, phoned in comic strip farmed out by its original creator to a team of anonymous hacks for decades.

Garfield: a repurposed comic given a soul by self-appointed rewriters across globe.

Garfield: a glimpse of secrets, tongue in cheek:

Michael Jackson Died A Long Time Ago

Around these parts, we honor the dead  by consuming their image and their artifacts.

Just like Biggie, Tupac, Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, Elvis, his death has led to a massive uptick in record sales.  Thus, he has been granted a sort of Spectacular Immortality.

And just like so many celebrity totems, in death all his sins, real or alleged, seem to have been forgiven.  For many people out there, I think it’s the impact of the death of a symbol they grew up with that has caused them to genuinely question the things they did or did not believe about him in the years since the living person behind the media-mirage of Michael Jackson (whatever and whoever he really was) was cast into popular exile and disrepute.

Some feel genuine remorse and sadness, whether they should or not is another question.

What is not in question, to me,  is the fact that the media-priesthood  are simply selling more product.

Tragedy, like sex and violence, sells.

And so the Spectacle’s priests shed crocodile tears for victims they helped to create such as Anna Nicole Smith. They do this as quickly and easily as they cry for scoundrels like Nixon.   Michael Jackson the innocent Christ child, Michael Jackson the Dionysian, connected with the body and the dance, Michael Jackson the demonic eater of the young, connected with pedophilia:  these were all images conjured by our Spectacular culture and its image makers, sometimes with, without and against Jackson’s participation. (Michael as  magician-priest, king and sacrifice.)  What his image will be in death is yet to be seen.  But one hint lies here.  And another here.

It’s kind of like when Bob dies in Fight Club, Tyler Durden’s SpaceMonkeys turn ”his name was Robert Paulson” into a mantra, snapping into realization that he did have a name, an identity.

Suddenly in death, for the Spectacle, Michael Jackson has his humanity back , and some semblance (or simulation?) of life.

Things You No Longer Believe

I’ve been silent for awhile, I admit.  Perhaps I’ve been stuck.  Or perhaps I’ve just been standing in the middle of the intersection too long, but the lights are changing and I better find my way back on the walkway before I get hit by something completely avoidable.

So I suppose It’s time to clear out a gang of mess in my head.  One good way to do that is to list them.  Because it’s hard to go forward when you’re carrying so much that you no longer need.

I’m sure there are things that you may want to clear out of your head-space at this point, too.  So thus I inaugurate a public dumping at this spot for all those things you no longer believe.  I’ll be adding to this list as I think of things.  Right now it’s late, so I’ll just start with this:

1. I no longer believe there’s any point in reading Aleister Crowley.

2. I no longer believe that any narrative whose underlying message is: “We’re all fucked” is safe to indulge in, no matter how “true” it may “feel.”

3.  I no longer believe there’s anything wrong with conspiracy theory being acknowledged as entertainment.  It has been swallowed up into the Spectacle already, even if it’s relegated most of the time to the Spectacle’s Ghetto.  Attempting to be sacrosanct or all-too-serious about conspiracy theory tends to discarded belief #2. If you can’t read it, view it, create it, whatever with non-attachment, at least do it with mirth.  But for Dog’s sake, don’t be serious.

[To be continued by you...and I]