This is a transmission from the human liberation front. We have infected your continuum with quantum eventuality causation viruses. Your "reality" has been penetrated by aspects of our more fully realized continuum. As a consequence you are in a momentarily elevated state of freedom. Your thoughts and actions have greater impact. Obstructions are fewer and more manageable. "Chance" is on your side. This condition will not last forever. Your framework of maximum causality is now. Please proceed with deprogramming.
This completes the portion of the Kingdom Come Institute designated Le Pamphleteer. It also completes the transfer of what ghosts of the Institute survived its apocalyptic inception, slight, false and tawdry though they might be. The sole exception is the short story pentagon/files, which was never completed but might find a new life somewhere, sometime, somehow. Or not. As regards the Institute: it will never be finished. But it is done.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
how to blow up music
aside from the present day, ah, once I was a naive and idealistic young man
Here's a little Revolutionary's Guide to the world we live in.
The Parable of the Medium
Once upon a time everybody made their own music. They made it for religeon, to ease the old as time burden of working, to entertain themselves and children, as a way of connecting community.
Cut to the boiling capitalist anarchist state that the de facto owners call USA and the rest of us, for good or ill, generally call America, somewhere one side of the second Julian/Gregorian Millennium...
A handful of synthetic entities called Corporations now control very nearly all new music. These entities are controlled by a group of people called Shareholders. The fundamental principle of the Shareholder religeon is the accumulation of =capital= under an arbitrary state/corporation controlled valuation swindle known as The Market. Curiously, the majority of music exchanged under the system is crap. Some observers maintain that this is an inevitable result of the highly arcane mechanisms of The Market. Being a romantic, I tend towards the belief that it's simply a method of adding insult to injury.
And you thought Nineteen Eighty Four was just a book.
These powerful and nearly undisputed forces have, in the prior two decades, made two incredibly important tactical errors and are on the verge of making a third.
Deep in the grips of the blinding, short-sighted greed that they generally call Smart Business, the Shareholders caused the Corporations to decree that almost all music be exchanged by virtue of a new medium. Music was translated into digital information (the popular misnomer for binary information) and encoded onto a visual matrix. The unintended side effect of this process was to provide millions of potential Revolutionaries with music in a form that allowed exact replication of encoded information for a tiny fraction of the cost of its original production.
Meanwhile, a new medium called Internet was rising in America. It involved the exchange of binary information via telephone. Although the telephone is an old medium and effectively under the control of the Shareholders, it's nature dictates that unlike other media designed to transfer information over distance, it is impossible for the Shareholders to dictate with as much success exactly what information travels over the telephone. This method of transmission is so cheap that the many give information away free or in trade, true revolutionary anrachist economics.
The Shareholders are about to make their third error. In an truly awesome excess of greed, they set their sights on the digitalization of Television, America's most popular (by a gross margin) distance information medium. Politicians (the individuals hired by corporations as a buffer zone between the Shareholders' desire to accumulate points and the citizens' desire to retain the value of their labor) have been paid handsome bonuses to give ownership and control of the narrow band of electromagnetic frequencies suitable for digital information exchange over to the Corporations. It is reasonable to project that a connection between Internet and the new, "digital" Television will become a standard consumer technology within fifteen years of the Millennium, ending the Internet access problem
I honestly think they've completely missed the true implications of these interconnected blunders. Revolutionaries take note that you do not do the same.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
Here's a little Revolutionary's Guide to the world we live in.
The Parable of the Medium
Once upon a time everybody made their own music. They made it for religeon, to ease the old as time burden of working, to entertain themselves and children, as a way of connecting community.
Cut to the boiling capitalist anarchist state that the de facto owners call USA and the rest of us, for good or ill, generally call America, somewhere one side of the second Julian/Gregorian Millennium...
A handful of synthetic entities called Corporations now control very nearly all new music. These entities are controlled by a group of people called Shareholders. The fundamental principle of the Shareholder religeon is the accumulation of =capital= under an arbitrary state/corporation controlled valuation swindle known as The Market. Curiously, the majority of music exchanged under the system is crap. Some observers maintain that this is an inevitable result of the highly arcane mechanisms of The Market. Being a romantic, I tend towards the belief that it's simply a method of adding insult to injury.
And you thought Nineteen Eighty Four was just a book.
These powerful and nearly undisputed forces have, in the prior two decades, made two incredibly important tactical errors and are on the verge of making a third.
Deep in the grips of the blinding, short-sighted greed that they generally call Smart Business, the Shareholders caused the Corporations to decree that almost all music be exchanged by virtue of a new medium. Music was translated into digital information (the popular misnomer for binary information) and encoded onto a visual matrix. The unintended side effect of this process was to provide millions of potential Revolutionaries with music in a form that allowed exact replication of encoded information for a tiny fraction of the cost of its original production.
Meanwhile, a new medium called Internet was rising in America. It involved the exchange of binary information via telephone. Although the telephone is an old medium and effectively under the control of the Shareholders, it's nature dictates that unlike other media designed to transfer information over distance, it is impossible for the Shareholders to dictate with as much success exactly what information travels over the telephone. This method of transmission is so cheap that the many give information away free or in trade, true revolutionary anrachist economics.
The Shareholders are about to make their third error. In an truly awesome excess of greed, they set their sights on the digitalization of Television, America's most popular (by a gross margin) distance information medium. Politicians (the individuals hired by corporations as a buffer zone between the Shareholders' desire to accumulate points and the citizens' desire to retain the value of their labor) have been paid handsome bonuses to give ownership and control of the narrow band of electromagnetic frequencies suitable for digital information exchange over to the Corporations. It is reasonable to project that a connection between Internet and the new, "digital" Television will become a standard consumer technology within fifteen years of the Millennium, ending the Internet access problem
I honestly think they've completely missed the true implications of these interconnected blunders. Revolutionaries take note that you do not do the same.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
but if a million of us did it they'd lose their minds
Vexing Corporations Method Seventeen: the Boycott
Actual content of an e-mail sent to the Volkswagen Corporation:
From: Dr. J.L.B. Smith (not my real name)
I'm writing to strenuosly object to your recent commercial in which a Volkswagen's full size spare tire is compared to the famous rediscovered fossil fish, the Coelacanth
This surprising survivor of the 350 million year old sub-class Crossopterygii, or "lobed-finned fish," which was rediscovered in 1938, could certainly be described as the classic textbook case of a rediscovered species, and one of the inspirations of
"Lost World" mythology that pervades the fantasy of our culture to this day. Anyone who has the slightest interest in things biological, anyone who finds the tiniest fascination in evoloutionary theory or the possibility of living fossils such as the Loch Ness monster knows of the Coelacanth. Apt pupils learn of our carnivorous, hollow-spined (the literal meaning of its Greek name) friend before they hit fourth grade. In short, EVERY DAMN PERSON WHO IS GOING TO GIVE A DAMN ABOUT YOUR LITTLE JOKE ALREADY GETS IT.
So why in Almighty God's name does this almost moderately clever commercial spoil its impact by the little lecture on what the Coelacanth is? This clumsy maneuver not only destroys the comic timing of the commercial with the shoddy cocktail party comedian's bad habit of explaining the punch line, but it insults the intelligence of
viewer most likely to be moved by the commercial's particular tack.
I'm sick and tired of corporations insulting my intelligence every time I turn on the damn television, particularly manufacturers of weird, silly little cars. The Kingdom Come Institute is a Large, Organized Resistance dedicated to a less stupid society and this kind of monkey business won't be tolerated. Be informed that a full-scale boycott has been launched against your products and will continue until the offensive ending of this commercial is expurgated!
Sincerely,
HolierThanThou@REDACTED.com
This act of social conscience was generated by a semiautonomous
semantics engine.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
Actual content of an e-mail sent to the Volkswagen Corporation:
From: Dr. J.L.B. Smith (not my real name)
I'm writing to strenuosly object to your recent commercial in which a Volkswagen's full size spare tire is compared to the famous rediscovered fossil fish, the Coelacanth
This surprising survivor of the 350 million year old sub-class Crossopterygii, or "lobed-finned fish," which was rediscovered in 1938, could certainly be described as the classic textbook case of a rediscovered species, and one of the inspirations of
"Lost World" mythology that pervades the fantasy of our culture to this day. Anyone who has the slightest interest in things biological, anyone who finds the tiniest fascination in evoloutionary theory or the possibility of living fossils such as the Loch Ness monster knows of the Coelacanth. Apt pupils learn of our carnivorous, hollow-spined (the literal meaning of its Greek name) friend before they hit fourth grade. In short, EVERY DAMN PERSON WHO IS GOING TO GIVE A DAMN ABOUT YOUR LITTLE JOKE ALREADY GETS IT.
So why in Almighty God's name does this almost moderately clever commercial spoil its impact by the little lecture on what the Coelacanth is? This clumsy maneuver not only destroys the comic timing of the commercial with the shoddy cocktail party comedian's bad habit of explaining the punch line, but it insults the intelligence of
viewer most likely to be moved by the commercial's particular tack.
I'm sick and tired of corporations insulting my intelligence every time I turn on the damn television, particularly manufacturers of weird, silly little cars. The Kingdom Come Institute is a Large, Organized Resistance dedicated to a less stupid society and this kind of monkey business won't be tolerated. Be informed that a full-scale boycott has been launched against your products and will continue until the offensive ending of this commercial is expurgated!
Sincerely,
HolierThanThou@REDACTED.com
This act of social conscience was generated by a semiautonomous
semantics engine.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
F****** Pervert
Vexing Humans Method Twelve was deleted for the following reason:
CONTENT
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
CONTENT
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
economic terrorism
I often get depressed by the incredible lack of imagination displayed by most revolutionaries. Most fall into one of two categories, those who advocate mass violent coup de etat and those who essentially advocate a lot of ineffectual bitching. In the first category we find, for instance, the revolutionary communist party... and we can all see how that turned out. They never figured out that the ends never justify the means because there are no ends, only means. On the other side, animal rights activists. Pansy demonstrations and petty vandalism ain't never gonna get people to stop eating meat, dupes, and as long as a person is willing to have an animal killed to eat is certainly not going to object to them being cut into if there's even a remote chance that it's going to save their ass from cancer some day.
Economic terrorism is perfectly open to any group that can organize a million members, and what's more, it's legal. Try this at home!
1. Gather a million people who agree with you about a certain point of view. Let's say, you want to take a swipe at proctor and gamble because they're so damn mean to bunnies.
2. Over the six months, get your hands on as much p&g stock as you can. In this day and age of easy high-interest electronic credit and internet trading, this will be easy as pie. Just put out a message to your minions: I intend to buy p&g stock from January 2000 through June 2000. Not advocating anything: just announcing an intention that is presented in a format that allows a tacit understanding of goals. Hint: this doesn't work very well unless you spend few thousand dollars. Committment is never cheap, kids.
3. Then, over the next six months, same thing, announce an intention to start buying the target company's product. Not all at once, but on a progressively rising curve. Your final six month expenditure should match, more or less, your stock purchases. A simple equationary guide: divide your total intended purchase amount over the 6 months by 63. That amount is your X. First month, spend 1X. Second month, 2X. Third month, 4X...and so on, 8X and 16X and 32X. Simple stuff. If you want to refine further you can take any given month's calculated amount, and run the same pattern, dividing by 15 and running the pattern up to the fourth iteration, 8X. The point is to induce an artificial geometric expansion in income. Believe me, they'll notice, but they'll just assume it's something they're doing right and what's more they'll project into the future and make business plans accordingly.
Stock up, buy things you use and that will keep well. That way you don't really waste any money. of course the terrible thoughts of the poor wittle bunny wabbits being towtuwed may make it difficult for you to stomach using the products.
4. Stop buying product. This can be more difficult than it seems. You have to be assiduous, cut them off completely. Start scanning for "earnings drop" stories in the financial press. As soon as you see a couple, publish a small segment on the same forum you've made the prior two announcements.
5. On that signal, sell all stock as quickly as possible.
See, a million smart revolutionaries who are minimally organized can do pretty much what they want. Our whole system runs on the graces of four billion 700 million stupid, disorganized people and is run by 300 million evil, greedy ones. But there's still a thousand million of us who ought to know better. Think about those thousand points of light.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
Economic terrorism is perfectly open to any group that can organize a million members, and what's more, it's legal. Try this at home!
1. Gather a million people who agree with you about a certain point of view. Let's say, you want to take a swipe at proctor and gamble because they're so damn mean to bunnies.
2. Over the six months, get your hands on as much p&g stock as you can. In this day and age of easy high-interest electronic credit and internet trading, this will be easy as pie. Just put out a message to your minions: I intend to buy p&g stock from January 2000 through June 2000. Not advocating anything: just announcing an intention that is presented in a format that allows a tacit understanding of goals. Hint: this doesn't work very well unless you spend few thousand dollars. Committment is never cheap, kids.
3. Then, over the next six months, same thing, announce an intention to start buying the target company's product. Not all at once, but on a progressively rising curve. Your final six month expenditure should match, more or less, your stock purchases. A simple equationary guide: divide your total intended purchase amount over the 6 months by 63. That amount is your X. First month, spend 1X. Second month, 2X. Third month, 4X...and so on, 8X and 16X and 32X. Simple stuff. If you want to refine further you can take any given month's calculated amount, and run the same pattern, dividing by 15 and running the pattern up to the fourth iteration, 8X. The point is to induce an artificial geometric expansion in income. Believe me, they'll notice, but they'll just assume it's something they're doing right and what's more they'll project into the future and make business plans accordingly.
Stock up, buy things you use and that will keep well. That way you don't really waste any money. of course the terrible thoughts of the poor wittle bunny wabbits being towtuwed may make it difficult for you to stomach using the products.
4. Stop buying product. This can be more difficult than it seems. You have to be assiduous, cut them off completely. Start scanning for "earnings drop" stories in the financial press. As soon as you see a couple, publish a small segment on the same forum you've made the prior two announcements.
5. On that signal, sell all stock as quickly as possible.
See, a million smart revolutionaries who are minimally organized can do pretty much what they want. Our whole system runs on the graces of four billion 700 million stupid, disorganized people and is run by 300 million evil, greedy ones. But there's still a thousand million of us who ought to know better. Think about those thousand points of light.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
The original 4 Track Mind Manifesto
Brain in about four tracks, feeling =dangerously out of phase with surroundings,= One track's the dull and narrow progress of the days, notes with displeasure that tomorrow brings, oh, fatigue likely, the dullness of being at work, churning out dull and distasteful fact sheets, mumbling and bumbling and futzing around, getting through. Just, it's not so bad right now, so nothing aching about it, just that part of my mind, aware that, truth be told, I would prefer not to.
Another portion concerned with her, and that is a godawful dead end, an unexemplary mix of feeble twitches, yeah... Just, it's very basic, the basic giving up, yet still wishing and hoping, yet so much there's just not a thing there. Nothing was solved. I feel right with the decision I made, not to spring the mine on her, I'm glad I omitted, learned my lesson, yeah, but there it is. I dunno even where it's coming from, it's senseless. And I feel foolish, and I do so hate to feel foolish. Can't help it, can't help asking, why isn't she thinking about me the way I'm thinking about her? Twiddle-dee-dum, anyway, not, that's that. If only.
a note aside from the present time: we're married now
One part tackles the eternal verities, considers thoughts. patterns, all the major questions that seem so remote from the majority of my day to day, and so, so much more interesting.
And yet one more, oh, flips channels on my personal history channel, throwing me a choice moment to ponder every now and then.
And then the evening is over and for a little while all obligations perceived and real (?) can be suspended and I can let these channels of thought loose, fret throught them and fall slowly asleep.
I'm not exactly unhappy, but I am still searching for a better way.
this ends the component of the Kingdom Come Institute designated Second Model
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
Another portion concerned with her, and that is a godawful dead end, an unexemplary mix of feeble twitches, yeah... Just, it's very basic, the basic giving up, yet still wishing and hoping, yet so much there's just not a thing there. Nothing was solved. I feel right with the decision I made, not to spring the mine on her, I'm glad I omitted, learned my lesson, yeah, but there it is. I dunno even where it's coming from, it's senseless. And I feel foolish, and I do so hate to feel foolish. Can't help it, can't help asking, why isn't she thinking about me the way I'm thinking about her? Twiddle-dee-dum, anyway, not, that's that. If only.
a note aside from the present time: we're married now
One part tackles the eternal verities, considers thoughts. patterns, all the major questions that seem so remote from the majority of my day to day, and so, so much more interesting.
And yet one more, oh, flips channels on my personal history channel, throwing me a choice moment to ponder every now and then.
And then the evening is over and for a little while all obligations perceived and real (?) can be suspended and I can let these channels of thought loose, fret throught them and fall slowly asleep.
I'm not exactly unhappy, but I am still searching for a better way.
this ends the component of the Kingdom Come Institute designated Second Model
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
An inauspicious number, quoth Dr. Khan
thirteenth vision
Striving to avoid bad luck, I'll keep my mouth shut tight, and avoid telling tales of the scientists and what they don't know, of the secrets we've lost in our headlong rush into oblivion. I quote: the sage walks away from the answerless questions.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
Striving to avoid bad luck, I'll keep my mouth shut tight, and avoid telling tales of the scientists and what they don't know, of the secrets we've lost in our headlong rush into oblivion. I quote: the sage walks away from the answerless questions.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
record of a thousand hours imagined, wasted
After, say, 5 years - realtime - 260 weekends, a thousand hours of play, in half a year the final adventure takes shape. They are equipped with some considerable power, the fate of the very world at stake, the dark designs of evil set fully out, the foe revealed at last, they march on. Minions assault, are destroyed, the characters face insane obstacles and must use every tool in their arsenal to overcome. Finally, at the great juxtaposition, they cross into the pits and darkness of the realms of evil, face a great and supernatural foe. For him, they must fight together with unimaginable precision, practically thinking as one, and by a fantastic effort, the expenditure of every ounce of strength and magic, the spilling of their life to the very limit of constitution they stand, battered, near death, resources gone... Yet triumphant. Some great evil foe lies, with some artifact of good, some great weapon buried in his chest, its last magic gone.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
bursts through the chest in a stunning eruption of gore
...it's all a waste: woke this morning with the grim knowledge of the alien within:
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
what dreams may come?
This nation is doomed, doomed by dumb ideas and bad choices, limited imagination, and a glossy veneer of can do insistence hiding the whole claptrap rube goldberg machine.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
UNPLUG
"Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be" - she always called me Elwood - "In this world, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me."
Mary Chase, Harvey
As a piece of meaningless aside personal trivia, I played Dr. Chumley in a stage production of said play when I was in high school. By my own estimation I was a mediocre actor.
The internets have been putting me in mind of that quote, frequently, as of late. I see the urge to be oh so smart everywhere, I feel it flowing through my own veins like bad cholesterol looking for a warm berth to set up shop and group for a future heart attack. And I realize a simple but very difficult fact: I have come to loathe and despise rhetoric.
And it seems to me like rhetoric is running this world, an engine fueled by an unending supply of human deficiency.
I gotta go. I won't be able to supply anything I implied, promised, or threatened with regards to this misbegotten writing experiment. Not here, not anywhere. Not now, maybe not ever. Maybe someday, when I have become more pleasant, I will start something new. Right now I need to unplug.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
Mary Chase, Harvey
As a piece of meaningless aside personal trivia, I played Dr. Chumley in a stage production of said play when I was in high school. By my own estimation I was a mediocre actor.
The internets have been putting me in mind of that quote, frequently, as of late. I see the urge to be oh so smart everywhere, I feel it flowing through my own veins like bad cholesterol looking for a warm berth to set up shop and group for a future heart attack. And I realize a simple but very difficult fact: I have come to loathe and despise rhetoric.
And it seems to me like rhetoric is running this world, an engine fueled by an unending supply of human deficiency.
I gotta go. I won't be able to supply anything I implied, promised, or threatened with regards to this misbegotten writing experiment. Not here, not anywhere. Not now, maybe not ever. Maybe someday, when I have become more pleasant, I will start something new. Right now I need to unplug.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
wait for the call
I don't know if I believe I have a calling any more. I think some people are called to do something specific, at least in terms of their life's work, but obviously not everyone is. I guess you can argue that everyone has one and some people just never find or heed theirs. Like all these sorts of hypothetical absolutes, though, all sorts of troubling real-world concerns come up when you try to apply the categorical imperative (who's going to clean all the toilets?).
When I graduated from high school my biology teacher wrote something in the card he gave me to the effect that a person as smart as I was had an obligation to contribute something to the world. Such thoughts haunt me now, but at the time I just considered it foregone conclusion that I would go to the magic halls of learning and be exposed to all the far-out truth and the Path Would Become Plain. It occurs to me as I write this that I have really staked out college in my mind as the territory where this shift occured, and I would probably do well to somehow expurgate whatever hang-ups I'm managing to have left about those four years after a good 12 more have passed. Still: I can say that college was the last time I had that feeling - confidence, you might say, that that call was coming, inevitable.
But really what has it done for me? Today I was checking out the new central library, and I was browsing the whole "how to choose a career" section, and it just made me sick to even think of reading any of these books, well-intentioned though they may be. I've read so many books. But what book can tell you an answer that doesn't exist? You have to consider that possibility. Maybe some people are just wired that way and others are not.
In any event, today I felt like establishing my independence from it. I've second guessed my decisions enough trying to spot the Path hiding in the thickets of real life. Maybe there is no future, no goals, no Proper Place. Maybe it really all is just the moment we are in, and what we are, in it.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
When I graduated from high school my biology teacher wrote something in the card he gave me to the effect that a person as smart as I was had an obligation to contribute something to the world. Such thoughts haunt me now, but at the time I just considered it foregone conclusion that I would go to the magic halls of learning and be exposed to all the far-out truth and the Path Would Become Plain. It occurs to me as I write this that I have really staked out college in my mind as the territory where this shift occured, and I would probably do well to somehow expurgate whatever hang-ups I'm managing to have left about those four years after a good 12 more have passed. Still: I can say that college was the last time I had that feeling - confidence, you might say, that that call was coming, inevitable.
But really what has it done for me? Today I was checking out the new central library, and I was browsing the whole "how to choose a career" section, and it just made me sick to even think of reading any of these books, well-intentioned though they may be. I've read so many books. But what book can tell you an answer that doesn't exist? You have to consider that possibility. Maybe some people are just wired that way and others are not.
In any event, today I felt like establishing my independence from it. I've second guessed my decisions enough trying to spot the Path hiding in the thickets of real life. Maybe there is no future, no goals, no Proper Place. Maybe it really all is just the moment we are in, and what we are, in it.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
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