Something wicked this way comes...

This morning I experienced my first California Earthquake. Sara had just left for work and I was sitting at the desk writing when suddenly something notably changed in the atmosphere around me. It wasn't the Earth moving in at first. No, more like some kind of emmanation reached me a few moments just before the actual force waves did. The problem with trying to encapsulate or explain, to yourself or others, this type of thing is it happens so fast and appears without warning, that you can't really prepare yourself to itemize the insights when it occurs. But something definitely precluded it.

Then the Earth shook.

Now that sounds awful dramatic, and where we were it was anything but. It welled up and I was able to recognize it for what it was. I continued to sit and consciously experience (ie pay attention to) it for a few fleeting moments before it left as quickly as it came. However, and this was hard to discern where it stopped and I started, but an almost vertiginous (if that's not a word it is now, deal with it) feeling remained to play over my body and senses for a few minutes afterward.

All in all, interesting. Very interesting.

Now, it had already been a strange morning. Not 'Squid dressed as Nuns and throwing fish around the neighborhood' weird, nor 'Stranger walks up and addresses you by name' weird.

Subtle weird.

It is the kind of weird I have begun associating with my brain's snap over to what writer's like Grant Morrison or William S. Burroughs call 'Magickal Consciousness'* or Carlos Castenada's friend, the Yaqui Indian sorcerer Don Juan called 'Second Attention'. Essentially, this is a kind of consciousness that, while not drastically different than normal everyday consciousness is enhanced with a subtle layer of, well, for lack of a laymantic (again, another new word!) word to encapsulate it, something different. Different as in, there's extra sense operating. Think of when your in a room with someone you know is mad at you but hasn't yet said so. You FEEL it. That's what this is like, except you don't have as direct an area to pinpoint what is causing the strange sensation in your brain, back and balls.

To me it manifests similarly to a good buzz - it comes on and lingers for a while, making you curl your toes and perk your eyes and ears up, your attenae primed for reception at any wavelength. Only problem is, just like the onset of an Earthquake, it's impossible to pinpoint what frequencies that signal is going to come in on. However, the interesting thing for a novice like myself is, even though I don't have the skills to tune into it accurately, once you have those antennae up, you're not only getting the signal, now the signal is aware of you. It is in this way that strange things often happen in this state of consciousness.

So, beside the Earthquake, what strange things happened this morning?

Again, I don't know. At one point however I felt an awful lot of power in my body and used it to try and affect some change for the better in my life. We'll see.

..........

* I think Morrison goes into a more in depth description here:

http://www.grantmorrison.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=195&Itemid=83

In case You've ever wondered...

... or might need it, the 1999 revised Catholic church's Rite of Exorcism

I've always thought the whole heaven/hell god/devil thing was hokey at best, but I do think 'demonic' possession or encounters occurs. My take on it though is some people wallow in so much negativity and hatred that they anchor aspects of their personality or psyche here after they die, and that's what us live folk are encountering when things like this pops up.

Having spent a pretty decent amount of time at Bachlor's Grove cemetary I have had some experience with what may very well have been 'If you've convinced yourself, that's great' but sure as hell felt like something strange and possibly malevolent. Because of this I have had a pretty voracious interest in this type of thing for sometime. However, having spent the last 48 hrs. relaxing at my in-laws house in beautiful, lush Defiance, Ohio I've just caught my yearly share of cable tv and what I noticed was that shows about 'hauntings' and exorcisms must currently be all the rage. This may very well have to do with the fact that horror in general has been popularized as the 80's generation that grew up sneaking to watch 'Howling', 'Halloween' and 'Friday the 13th' have become the foundation of the consumer force. Icons like Ozzy Ozbourne do not freak them out, and the things their kids are exposed to do not have to be so squeaky clean. Thus, Mick Harris can jump from the popular HBO series Masters of Horror to NBC with a prime time series, horror movies gain a massive standing as viable box office lures for all ages and things like the stale and cheesy 'Ghost Hunters' and the just plain awful 'A Haunting' litter the daily line-ups of up and coming cable stations. This kind of pop culture exposure steals legitimacy left and right from investigation or conversation of the probably hundreds of possibly legitimate claims of paranormal happening throughout the country and the world. Ten years ago if you punched words or phrases like 'ghost hunters' or 'Haunted places' into a search engine you received links to some pretty voluminous articles. Now its all links to products and shows.

Looks like the spectacle will get us - even after we're dead.

It's been a while but I'm back...

... shit, burning the fucking candle at both ends lately with all these blogs. It's cool though - more writing is a good thing. Didn't want to neglect my original too long though, so I'll start with some interesting things that have been occupying the interior of my melon of late...

It's funny. I go through these boughts where I pay next to no attention to the study of anything scientific or occult, then something triggers my interest again and I'm off - and once that happens there is no room for anything else. I'm still struggling through the last bit of Mervyn Peake's Gromenghast trilogy, 'Titus Alone' and I bought that new H.P. Lovecraft tome I mentioned on CHUD, and I started Stephen King's 'On Writing' for inspiration through my writer's block, but now all that is on hold as I've fallen 'Down the Rabbit Hole' again. What sparked it off this time is stress. Work for a major chain book retailer has been enough to make me a crotchety old bastard, and I've been manifesting some pretty freaky headaches, so I finally decided I needed to do something about it or develop a tumor. Breathing was the first thing to come to mind and on that path lay the inclintion to break out my old ass British Edition of Aleister Crowley's 'Magick in Theory and Practice' in search of the specifics on performing what is known as 'The Greater and Lesser Rituals of the Pentagram'. These are invoking/banishing rituals that consist largely of moving energy around through the body and into/out of the lungs, perfect for energizing and cleansing the residues stress leaves clinging in all kinds of areas in the body.

Once I open that book, the trigger is activated and I'm rifling through book after book, shunting down avenues of forgotten knowledge and looking for ways to take a little bit more charge of my short and tempetuous time on this beautiful old mudball of ours. The first place I usually land is the book that, after Grant Morrison's 'Invisibles', is Terence and Dennis McKenna's 'Invisible Landscape'. This is a book I have never been able to finish, as usually I only make it so far before I am forced to seek out accompanying texts on Quantum Physics and the like in order to be able to go back and understand what it was the McKennas were writing about.*

The funny thing is as I start reading and thinking about this stuff synchronicities and other strange things begin to arise in the rest of my life. For one I almost always start dreaming heavy again. Normally I do not remember my dreams, but once into this stuff again they become ludicriously dense and symbolic. This then goes hand in hand with daytime bouts of my special deja vu, where I begin to have episodes where I'm sure whatever it is I'm doing I've already experienced. Kind of like bending the time antenna backwards from the future.

Then there's things like how the same day I began reading the Crawley I discovered a friend of mine at work who I've known for almost two years now is well versed in the study of aspects such as the Masons and Templars, Rennes-le-Chateau** and the like. Never come up before and then out of the blue we have a hour-long conversation about everything from the Templars to Quantum Mechanics. This of course only served to fuel my own fire and its been escalating ever since.

Now this time I am going to try to stick with Invisible Landscape for the entire book. I'm hoping this in and of itself will act as a catalyst to drive up the frequency on novelty and synchronicity to points that will help me reach certain goals I have recently been lazy and angst-ridden about following.

We'll see.
...........

*This is where we get into what I call 'Wiki-vertigo' - When you're on wikipedia reading about one thing and before you know it you've followed so many of the links interlaced throughout the original article you no longer remember where you began.

**I'll definitely have to post a more in-depth on Rennes, but in the meantime you can go here:

http://www.toolband.com/index_frames.html

for a pretty good introduction (and yes, that is the band Tool's website - another reason why they're just so damn cool)

I'm blogging for CHUD.com...

... so if You all get the chance, check it out. There's just one up right now, but more on the way (and no repeats between blogs, thus forcing me to write more and more and more.

What is it about retail that makes people act like such fucking assholes?

I mean, really, you go into a store to buy things. This isn’t Marrakech circa 1955, is it? No, this is modern day, consumer-driven America. EVERYBODY knows how this works, its pretty simple and the mores and patterns have been engrained in most of us (unless maybe you’re the douche bag INTO THE WILD is about) from the earliest days, so what gives? If an item is marked $9.99, guess what? THE ITEM COSTS $9.99 + TAX, how hard is that?

Here’s some of what I’ve been getting working in retail.

“Excuse me, this is the only copy of this on the shelf. Its marked $4.99 but I’d like a discount.” – this dickhead clearly doesn’t understand capitalism (not that I’m supporting it, in the long run we’re just now starting to see how shitty that works). IF IT’S THE LAST COPY OF SOMETHING, IN A SUPPLY AND DEMAND ECONOMY, IT IS MORE LIKELY TO BE SOLD FOR MORE THAN LESS. Example anyone in the U.S. should be able to understand right now: less oil to go around, the higher the price of gasoline is.

“I dropped this item on my finger, I’d like a discount,” – A discount? On what? The item? Because you dropped it on your finger? No, no, no my friend. For this we could work to get you a discount on sterilization, but not on the item. If you can’t handle products while shopping, don’t fucking touch them.

“The price tag says $19.99 so why is it ringing up $21.95?” – how long have you lived in the states? Seriously, if you were from Honduras maybe I’d understand, but I can tell by your bottled tan, coach purse and Christian Dior jodpurs that you’ve lived here all your life, so what gives? If you’ve never paid sales tax before either your butler just died at age 95 or you’d better get the hell out of the country quick before the IRS opens up a can of AUDIT SAUCE on your Beverly Hills ass.

And my favorite working in a bookstore:

“Excuse me, where are your non-fiction books?” – Well, hmmm, let me see now. Other than FICTION and SCIENCE FICTION, MYSTERY and ROMANCE, the funny thing is THE ENTIRE STORE IS NON-FICTION. When was the last time you saw a fictionalized cooking book? How about health? Okay, with the influx of everybody and their mother writing health books, I guess maybe this crosses that line, but seriously. Self Help? Psychology? History, for fuck’s sake? Come on people, if you need that much help you probably shouldn’t be leaving the house. Might lock yourself in the car.

Disintegration...

The Cure's Disintegration, the song, has been skipping on a loop for well over an hour now. I can't turn it off. The relentless emotional beating that this song chronicles is one of the most influential things I have ever experienced. It always sends me to create. I listen to the beautifully layered music and I become amped.

The pitch-shift chorus effect that gives Robert Smith a surreal backing vocal effect that sounds like children crying out in the rain. The staccato guitar effect (is that a guitar I've always wondered?) that stabs like a painful memory, persistantly spinning 'round and around' like a fresh wound, taking apart notions of this thing you call your life.

Who are you? Why are some choices wrong? Why are some lives doorways to pain and regret? These are demons I don't personally toil with daily anymore, but this album, this song especially really puts me into a story; its part The Crow*, part Neil Gaiman's Sandman**, part Frank Miller's Sin City and part fragments I have lived and written, in my days and in my nights, in my head and in my dreams, over and over again in that part of me that's not me but some crazy fictitious character I've been developing in my stories and scripts, written or only half-glimpsed, since I was a Sophmore in what they appropriately call high school.

Now, if only it would rain.



*The GN, not the piece of shit movie.

**Specifically Rose and the Doll's House trade.

The Sociological Importance of M.I.A. (really)

So I don't know where You stand on MIA. When I first heard her it was several years ago and Sara had ordered the first CD from somewhere like Amazon Singapore because it was not available in the states. At this point I don't remember if this was because she was just not exposed enough for anyone to mass release her disc in the states or if this had something to do with the entire 'she oposes her oppressive government so we she's too dangerous to let into our country' thing, but it doesn't matter for the sake of this little observational piece.

I like MIA. Not enough to actively listen to her on a regular basis (I like the music but her 'I'm too sublime to do more than utter easily repeatable phrases at converstational levels with hardly any emotional inflection' kinda irritates me), but coming out of that whole Electro-trash/clash thing ARULAR seemed an interesting progression. The beats on that album were very scattered and minimalist, like a blind man with a dyslexic sense of rhythm programmed the beats. It was interesting and different so I liked it. Also, there was that whole, 'watching a knife fight ala Street Fighter video game level in Sri Lanka' vibe to the music - like you were slumming it with some counter revolutionaries in a third world ghetto (remember I said third world ghetto later, that's the crux of my blathering today).

Now MIA has blown up. I know I'm writing this about 6 months too late, as the 2nd album came out a while ago, but its not even the album itself's presence I'm talking about - I don't actively see too many people listening to it or meet too many people that claim to be into her. But THE SMALL, WELL ARMED CABAL OF PRODUCERS WHO MONOPOLIZE THE POP WORLD RIGHT NOW SURE AS FUCK ARE. Seriously, I dig Timbaland and Pharrell and Co. I think they are amazing producers who get amazing drum recordings, make interesting musical arrangements and generally have elevated the fickle arena of pop. If in 2000 you would have told me I'd be a fan of the first Justin Timberlake album I would have finished my fucking beer and knocked you across the face with it (good thing you didn't warn me, eh?) but I am. Period. So now I have kind of followed these guys and seen some of what they've done. And it all has been influenced by MIA's music. Most recently Madonna's new album hard candy, produced by both Neptunes and Timbaland, got me thinking about MIA's impact, because Madonna is all about doing what is going on in the scenes beneath her, and Hard Candy (worst album cover ever. YOUR FUCKING 50, stop the faux bondage shit! really...) has MIA all over it.

And maybe its just LA but all the cars that drive around 'bumping' bass music - well its all hip hop chart station stuff and it seems from a distance like it all has that same 'third world ghetto' feel to it.

So now here's why MIA is really sociologically important. Warning, I'm about to offend any 'Love it or leave it' types out there, although if that's you, what you'd be doing on my blog in the first place would be an interesting question.

AMERICA IS A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY. No, seriously, it is. Don't believe me? Let's look at a few things, starting with a definition:

The term Third World was originally coined in times of the Cold War to distinguish those nations that are neither aligned with the West (NATO) nor with the East, the Communist bloc. Today the term is often used to describe the developing countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania.
Many poorer nations adopted the term to describe themselves.

That's from www.nationsonline.org, a site that from my brief research before quoting it, seems rather agenda-less, if that's possible in this day and age.

So that's where the term started, but that's not what the idea had become by the first time I'd grown old enough to understand how people were using it as colloquially. For that nuance you need only take that second sentence above and rewire it a bit:

'Today the term is often used to describe countries considered poor and exploitable by the major powers in the rest of the world, where poverty, oppression and lack of education are the rule of thumb'. (if you think I'm going out on a limb look at the way the same website from above broke down the lists

http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world.htm


First: our 'ruler' wasn't elected, he took office by white collar force. Nuff said. Oppression occurs via the government and perhaps more notably through the companies that lord over us. Disagree? Well, look at all those nice mortgage companies who made their money via predatory loans and then got the government to either bail them out or let em' sink while their CEO's jettisoned with massive pensions. Any of those debters get their mortgage forgiven?

On that topic, our economy is proof fucking positive of my point. Look at things like housing, unemployment, etc. No one has money except for what, some 5% or something? Everyone lives beyond their means. The only difference between us and what we used to think of as a third world country is we on the ground floor in this modern example are more useful to those exploiting us because through the magic of credit EVEN POOR WE CAN CONTINUE TO BE EXPLOITED. Those aforementioned forces of oppression folks used economical weapons such as credit cards, pay day loans and the like to cause the decline in the first place by continually squeezing every last drop from us they could.

And if you still need more proof of this economically, consider that major companies for all industrious or technologically advanced countries, including ourselves, that used to close factories or ship programming jobs over to these third world nations to exploit cheap labor are now moving them here because our money is so weak and our rights as workers have been eeked away until we're all just so fucking happy to have a job we don't flinch when our employers fuck us in the ass on a regular basis and still don't give us extra money or benefits, in fact they just continue to take them away. Air Bus and other European companies are opening plants here now because of the weakened state of the dollar compared to their Euro. There's an interesting article on that here:

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/dec2007/gb2007123_911979.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily

Enough already about the economic reasons we meet the criteria, lets move on to that old favorite education, or in our case, the lack thereof I mentioned earlier. Anyone think I'm wrong in saying we fit this criteria AND THEN SOME? Cause if you do, go drive down to the part of town you normally avoid (we all have them), park, leave your car unlocked with the windows rolled down and go for a nice long walk. Then tell me I'm wrong. Shit, for that matter, just walk into a Best Buy, a supermarket, a fast food restaurant...

Our cities have become schizophrenic amalgams worthy of 50's sci fi writer Phillip K. Dick's imagination: consistant, healthy 'communities' (remember when that world was real time and not just some 'virtual' idea) are gone, replaced instead by patchwork landscapes comprised of gated subdivisions on one block and low income, squallor-housing on the next. To further illustrate how we are the next evolution in the third world based on our poors' continued exploitation, while you're strolling through your friendly neighborhood ghetto, look at the cars parked on the street in front of the buildings: hummers, escalades, dodge 300's, etc. Can't afford a nice place to live but through the magic of debt I've got a $30k car.

........

So, back to MIA, coming from a third world nation, and having the cultural imprint of that in her music, it makes perfect, evolutionary sense, if sociologically one of the ways you can observe and understand a society is through its art and thus its music, then its perfect timing that she should alter the sound of our streets so appropriately: the music we hear while walking through town should evoke images of hostile third world streets - that's what we have. That 5% prey on us, we learn by example and prey on those around or 'below' us. Thus is the world we live in, go ahead and tell me its not 'third world'.