CANNABIS LEGALIZATION FORUM

I'm busy working on my presentation. Hope to share the results later this week. --Fly.

Christmas Bonus Show 5

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Passages from Finnegans Wake (1965)

"A half-forgotten, half-legendary pioneer in American abstract and animated filmmaking, Mary Ellen Bute, late in her career as an artist, created this adaptation of James Joyce, her only feature. In the transformation from Joyce's polyglot prose to the necessarily concrete imagery of actors and sets, Passages discovers a truly oneiric film style, a weirdly post-New Wave rediscovery of Surrealism, and in her panoply of allusion - 1950s dance crazes, atomic weaponry, ICBMs, and television all make appearances - she finds a cinematic approximation of the novel's nearly impenetrable vertically compressed structure.

With Passages from Finnegans Wake Bute was the first to adapt a work of James Joyce to film and was honored for this project at the Cannes Film Festival in 1965 as best debut."

Movie embedded from ubu.com
Torrent available from Greylodge
Soundtrack available from WFMU

The Art Instinct

We may not be quite as zealous as Dawkins here at OM, but discussion of the evolutionary origins of humans and human behaviour still bears fruit.

I just read The Art Instinct, and enjoyed it immensely. This doesn't read as esoteric and obscure art criticism, but neither does it dismiss all the modernist experiments. I won't try to summarize it here, as it has an excellent website of its own...

The Art Instinct

He has a lot to say about Duchamp's wonderful Fountain (you can see it in our header) because it was an outright winner of 'most influential piece of art of the twentieth century' back in 2004.

Many people remain offended, but that may come from their misreading that to mean 'being' the 'BEST' piece of art of the 20th Century - not the original question in this survey, of course.

Some people just enjoy upsetting themselves and feeling outraged. Come on folks, this happened 90 years ago! Keep up....

And yeah, Newsweek's survey in 2007 came up with a different answer. So much for experts.

RAW HYPERSHARING LANGUAGE VS. THE EQUATION.

RAW Sharing:

Robert Anton Wilson...
Top of my list of great heroes,
And he shared a wiccan-warrior vision of internet as a
Global revolution,
F-e-e-d-b-a-c-k

Characters and equations
A tale of the tribe, new conversation

Language vs. The Equation.

And he left us 36' books and 1000’s of articles
Maps and metaphor's for future circuits

Helping guide any thinking individual
Compelled to continue processing
The tale of the Tribe, maybelogic & RAW’s
Special language equations:

alphabet/ideogram
Joyce/Pound
Shannon/Mcluhan
TV/Internet.

A RAW internetwork of his quality critters,
Epic and Recyclopedic field of influence,
All-at-once when
Processed with the rhythm,
Surprise
LSD coated page-side bombs explode
Turning the flatted page into
hyperspace,
Radiating the readers consciousness
The page and – off – the page
into pypa-space.


Sharing Pound’s ‘Ideogramic method’
Sharing Joyce’s ‘Hologramic Prose & Epiphany & Finnegans Wake'
Sharing Bucky’s ‘Synergetics and Planetary design-science’
Sharing Shannon’s ‘Information Entropy and BITS’
Sharing Nietzsche’s ‘Eternal Return and influence upon Existentialism’
Sharing McLuhan’s ‘Global Village & The medium is the messsage'
Sharing Bruno’s ‘Pantheism and Decentralized Multiverse’
Sharing Vico’s ‘New Science & Ricorso’
Sharing Orson’s ‘Cinematic Methods’
Sharing Fenollosa’s ‘Chinese Written Character Poetry’
Sharing Yeats’s ‘Gyres, Symbolism & humanitarianism’
Sharing Gesell’s ‘Natural Economic Order'
Sharing Popper’s ‘Open Society'
Sharing Remy De Gournmont’s ‘Dissosociation of Ideas’
Sharing von Neumann’s ‘Theory of Games and Economic Behavior’
Sharing Leary’s ‘Eight Dimensional model of consciousness'
Sharing Reich’s ‘Bioenergetic Force’
Sharing Crowley’s ‘System of practical Magick’
Sharing Korzybski’s ‘General Semantics & English-prime’
Sharing Alfred Jarry’s ‘pataphysique’

RAW transfers a torrent of open ideas
Wrapped up in cutting satire, oozing Hilaritas
Sharing ideas that have shaped the 21st century,

The information radiates from his gestalt-texts
Although he is not here
to add further clarity & feedback
What he left still has the revolutionary potential -
A completed circuit of a perfected (life-work)
A Tale of the tribe, tied up with a Mobius
Spider-silk bow-tie.

Email to the Multiverse of Tweets
& Hyperverse Blogs of Great Old Hags &
Books by Pyrateas with
Links shared...



--Steve Fly.

Unearthed | Robert Anton Wilson P.1 from Kivastone Pictures on Vimeo.

Unearthed | Robert Anton Wilson P.3 from Kivastone Pictures on Vimeo.

Lost treasure and random access

As well as publishing, we have always used this blog as a node, a common reference point - and have collected some fine links which you will find lower down the right hand side - under Like-Minded Links. Social bookmarking, I guess, in a primitive form.

So while we find ourselves drawn away to other pastimes, and the posts slow down on this site, please do take time to check out some of our favourite (favorite) stuff.

For instance, and at random:

Joyce in Images

led me to the "ERREARS & ERRORIBOOSE" WORKSHOP which happened in Zurich
It was organized by Fritz Senn, with Ruth Frehner and Frances Ilmberger (Switzerland).

It was devoted to "the pervasive occurrence of mistakes, fumbles, errors, howlers, and misunderstandings" in Joyce's works. It took its title from FW140.32.

Hakim Bey's The Temporary Autonomous Zone


online Oblique Strategies

I got simply “Water” this time

There’s a whole discussion on of OS on Enoweb

Or on the OS website

Here’s another randomizer

And another

Oh, and you can still buy a card set at Enoshop UK for £30.

But that’s how easily I get side-tracked. There’s the wonderful Brainsturbator resource
The anarchy archives http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/index.html

The Gravity’s Rainbow Wiki

If you prefer a Yuk the try the Sub-Genius page,
Or the art of the Prank

or if you lean to the intellectual and find Marcel Duchamp intriguing, then try tout-fait (it’s in English)

Go into the Grey Lodge Occult Review and, like Chapel Perilous, you may find years have gone by when you emerge (or is that the faerie-mound, oh well…)

For the bookish, we often have referred to the Sacred Texts site

And so on.

Our Historys Back: A Box-book cover.

In a flash of inspiration, I just crawled off my laptop, and made some cover-artwork for my project OUR HISTORYS BACK.

And... thought I might share some photo's I just snapped a minute ago. I cut up some back issues of TIME magazine that I had knocking around my apartment, one's that I rescued from work. I found the 'watch-adverts' attractive, with cogs and wheels and dials, and so I soon came up with a concept including ref/ to the 1936 Games - where most of the story is based around.

I should probably now make a drawing of these photographs or something, as I feel I cheated a little bit by cutting out pictures from TIME magazine - and some others books. I had fun anyhow...

Making Clouds

I only started playing with stuff freely available, and TagCrowd made this, a bit alphabetical

'is academy acid agaric ago alli although america anton appears appropriate apr art associate associating auction audio aug author basement believe better bill bit blanking blog bloggers bloom bobby bogus book brain brainsturbator brown builds cage campbell cantos captured charles church circus clinamen clip coffee college comments cool cow curses damn data days dec dedroidify depression derren disclosure discordia doctor douglas dreaming dreams drug duchamp elements emery etc explain fall feb finnegans flavor fly foundation free fucked future gaia gate gets gnosis god going gravity hicks high-tech home hunahpu hypnosis idea illuminatus imagine initials inspiration institute interlude introductory irish james jan john jokeland joseph joyce jul jun kelllerman labels language leaf league leary links live logic lottery lsd magazine magus maps mar marilyn martin matter maybe maybelogic mcluhan media members menstrual million mla molly monroe moon neurotransmitting news nlp note nov numbers occult oct odd online operations oyesesyeses past pataphysics patient perilous pm post posted posts prank probably productions promises properly psychedelic raw read reading reads really recorder redux refurbished resource resumed review roaratorio robert rushkoff s23 sacred seems sep setting share simply sinclair site skip sleight-of-hand sole something sounds split-screen stage stop study stuff supernatural surrounded synapses synthesized taken tape taz theatre thinking thinks together toto tribe true trust uk ulysses understand understanding uses virus visuals wait wake war wearing weeks whatever whole wiki wilson wings words worked zenarchy

created at TagCrowd.com

Then I tried Wordle

And finally, tried a few different Wordle settings for a Maybe Tale - you can tweak them onsite for fun...

Oyesesyeses!

James Joyce, Ulysses, Chapter 18: Penelope

Marilyn Monroe on James Joyce's Ulysses

"Oh yes, dreams. I know they are important. But you want me to free associate about the dream elements. I have the same blanking out. More resistance for you and Dr Freud to complain about.

I read his "Introductory Lectures", God, what a genius. He makes it so understandable. And he is so right. Didn't he say himself that Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky had a better understanding of psychology than all the scientists put together. Damn it, they do.

You told me to read Molly Bloom's mental meanderings (I can use words, can't I) to get a feeling for free association. It was when I did that I got my great idea.

As I read it something bothered me. Here is Joyce writing what a woman thinks to herself . Can he, does he really know her innermost thoughts. But after I read the whole book, I could better understand that Joyce is an artist who could penetrate the souls of people, male or female. It really doesn't matter that Joyce doesn't have ... or never felt a menstrual cramp. Wait a minute. As you must have guessed I am free associating and you are going to hear a lot of bad language. Because of my respect for you, I've never been able to say the words I'm really thinking when we are in session. But now I am going to say whatever I think, no matter what it is.

While reading Molly's blathering, the IDEA came to me. Get a tape recorder. Put a tape in. Turn it on. Say whatever you are thinking like I am doing now. It's really easy. I'm lying on my bed wearing only a brassiere. If I want to go to the refrig or the bathroom, push the stop button and begin again when I want to. And I just free associate. No problem.

You get the idea, don't you? Patient can't do it in Doctor's office. Patient is at home with tape recorder ...

Well, that's something for you to sleep on, Doctor.

Good Night."

BONUS! Sally Kelllerman reads the end of Molly Bloom's aforementioned monologue, much to Rodney Dangerfield's delight, in Back to School. (The sounds pretty low on the clip, you'll have to jack up your volume)



and if you notice, at the end, the first book on the class' reading list is Finnegans Wake!

Roaratorio, An Irish Circus On Finnegans Wake

"Roaratorio, John Cage's 1979 composition, is a work of staggering complexity. To put it simply, it involves several elements all working together at once to create a soundscape of Finnegans Wake." (Read More)

James Joyce Reads From Finnegans Wake

James Joyce reading from the Anna Livia Plurabelle section of Finnegans Wake in 1929.

Back online for The Fall

We didn't really take a break, just got busy with some other stuff which might amuse you.

In the UK, Derren Brown predicts the lottery numbers live on tv, and the first number that comes up (in the 'real' lottery) - Yup, 23. And the announcer even mentions then that the Lottery has raised £23 million for good causes.

On Friday, Derren promises to explain how he did it, but you can watch the clip here.

His blog (All your minds are belong to us) has closed for a while, due to the amount of traffic.

Speculation (the great viral buzz) revolves around a split-screen arrangement, or special ink on the balls (activated remotely), or something else...

Or maybe he just uses magic? :-)

Follow atheist, entertainer and arch-debunker Derren Brown through Twitter, or Facebook. He uses a combination of misdirection, suggestion, psychological reading, sleight-of-hand and (probably) high-tech gizmos to achieve the effects he goes for. Persuasion, perceptual illusions, probability, he explores them all.

It seems amusing that the technical magical term of 'Misdirection' seems to have entered the common language now, even if people may not entirely understand some of the subtleties - and many people attribute his odd 'powers' to NLP, whereas that probably remains a misleading part of his patter, rather than an explanation. He retains his ambiguity about it all - while emphasising that he does not believe in psychic powers, gods and demons, etc. In fact, although he has worked as a hypnotist, he doesn't really 'believe' in hypnosis either. He claims partial inspiration for his style of performance from Martin S Taylor and his 'Hypnotism without hypnosis' show - and (although he plays down his connection to conjurors now) can handle a deck of cards expertly.

Note: he only shares initials with David Blaine by chance. He appears far more witty and urbane to me.

BOBBY BUILDS JOHN SINCLAIR AND FLY A STAGE

Master-builder (Bobby of Buddhafart) built a beatiful stage, flyer'

Bill Hicks w/ The Good News

OSIRIS JONES GETS AN ICE CREAM

Berlin 2009 MLA Cut-Up.

every breath, more by a friend
A time, again.
Sitting in seat number 23.
Watching the cake-walk.
To of DIVERSITY,
That sweet SPICE digital weather Earshots
But no damp or and talking
Sitting sight,

But they Corporate Exstinguishing
On strange
Conversations and coffee and friendlyness.
The laughter, Spittlemarkt and we
Cannot speak talked plenty after places after traces
Of beer served of
Humanitas!

Suspense, riffing and down Flexible minds,
Distinguished what maybe?
And Long Pleasant pool
A day space changed, of ‘cannot of each feedback
Differences
Oh jolly NLP, Joyce in the thought
With web buddies.

Forgetting Wittgenstein
In concrete with glass:
Light pink and grey, music. Mothman in the drinks
To spreek what? and self owning ones.

Three became head between her’s, his England, Netherlands
Walking Loops – next,
Beatbox, Synth sampler multi the air,
So and sincerity (SINCERITAS)

Humour, (HILARITOOTH) riots 67') another incredible
Piece and spilt Arlen – must pass rants
Sky, breaks the net love you shrubbery blend is for for vegetable
E Space developers.
The head.
Temporary Clusters a br
eak.

Us off pist' societies, people and tribes Caligraffed Everywhere
East street art, stickers, overgrown
Sidewalks talk and music, Free world word Stadium – fuzz.
Diving board - splash,
Out place, time
Moment.

A thread-workers.
Live interknitting. electronic
Stage space,

My screen to not to quote?
Literally - Talk of about we to be
Present. I, chasing
Wittgenstein until I people and Hash
V is Saturn
And (Detroit maybeee's
Most tolle'rant masterfully,

Snowboarding over the Wiener contact, smiles, spoken and smoking thermal spirit of in Chapels
Handmade KFC, Burger rock band A-Ha of Shen and jokes not bombs.
Deconstruction of of playing and listening
All-at-once, with PLUCKING movie, book the edge of eternity, to say
I lifted once description of out of mini Norse rockers.
Time and seven from great Europe Congratulations Elffolk
Some light pale wet

- Sunshine on a over delectable text
No Starbuck, Street - business for
City temporary clusters of meaning
Out, Eurolines
To swerve cheer, Laffta
Play of what not nearly after noons place and spin
Imaginations ping whim - Walking up

words lost?
And fielded back for another connect capatain, image and word, LO!
TV, yes

--Steve Fly.
Berlin 22-25th
July 2009.07.26
sea black felt good I want street corners
The cream of mushroom soup
B landing.
Shem and of meaning almost pot some friends
Eye six and seven, eight!
BorskyChristyChrisFuzzTonsMacaBogusFly
Experienced beer waffle
I BOB.
Tales of smoking

Eating words heart
Norse female Iggy Pop of Live anchor.
Dillinger Rules unspeakable. Wisdom and calm mouth.

Dillinger Rules say speak’
B'ham, notes)
Wild cards many BOB's
Had Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logio-Philosopicus. were saved by
Friends and nutrient knowledge
And has it.

Heavenly No Mouse, No Moustache’
No with a thousand
Faces.
Habits, likes, dislikes and and form shook up
Whole wind
Of deep the street

Housing of memory
Graffiti on Churches, friends...Sparks dart fembot pop?
Groove pool table Hot Coach on U2 train East!
To time.
Korzybski in wild trills' dutch soup back with speeching a trunk full Morrison
Talk of over in thinkers
Friends, maybes

Even cutting kickback
Banter. what "is", cats and is fur’ Rings around other
Dylan and them fielded loving perceptive forcast
The pintter-patter of Blackberry maps.

Heavens crunched Belgium, Germany, are close by rumour crossed wired
Laughter, carrots, strawberries & Tea, on (words)
Drop subject matter
Syntax enough
And talked AIR
music.

Synchonous “aha’s” “wow’s” and
Names foot plot truth,
Sincere, On chat,
With old feel honoured look
Away towards Day
Out of in the I thought

Each 5 minutes became we, Schnitzel ridges
And and Grant in the gush of Laptop Pissa’
Off lifting punk King in on the Phone,
The loud cracking yokes.
Pushing over my the great wrestler

Of sense, ourselves as a non and’
Some of their’s – a one man music showman the Pool.
How many home-base run
Around of the RA played a joke...

Scrambles (invocation of Fun everyone…. ”What we cannot speak Eyeline, and rainy day.
Alreadymade all, and many distinguished
Bicycles.
Happy Beer H is for wall, dodgy up and and them a mutter
Who? four, five, life.
English was and listened story, mine,
His, and drinking, one night,
Rico instru'

- The I thought.
The swimming,
Yoga, Novel video recording, sunshine
HemJoymint and word, a (HUMANITAS)
Free minds cast into screen
Drop names not bombs
To quote or of life!

Here's silence” – my teeth the encyclone' styles of the street, Escher
No Skype, but SUN The hero's rants without punctuation!
All of about, with in the vents.
High City food A Chapel Emulsion
Writing in technicoloured in the electronica - Iraq

A stolen of Olympic and off naked lunch.
Good hard to waves of
Maybe a wall
Of pong
Bouncing from saying and on a and the....

Fragments of memory

Amongst other adventures, we visited the Absinthe Depot - some of us sampled, others shopped.

We also went to the Pergamon Museum, and among other things saw the extraordinary Ishtar Gate from Babylon (or at least the front half of it, the rest remains hidden in storage) which the people of Iraq want back, apparently.

Ishtar = Venus = Aphrodite = Isis = Astarte (where the 'equals sign' means 'isomorphic with').


She famously descended into the Underworld, but found herself forced to shed veils or layers of clothing as she went, which made her real mad! Read yer myths.


I loved the dragon chimera they call Sirrush (or mushhushshu)

Zer Cool!

We had a good time (far too short) in Berlin. It seemed very peaceful, lots of greenery and parkland, a virtually invisible police presence, a genuinely bohemian and creative vibe in many places. A few quick pix (no time for words right now).









We walked all over the place, with odd but OK weather (although too hot for Chris!) We never really got rained off, which we had expected.







We explored parks and squats, tourist attractions and back streets.


A certain amount of eating and drinking and smoking occured.

We went to a couple of clubs - heard some good music...










And we talked, talked, talked...



I have no idea how people see us, whether as a bohemian arts group, the James Joyce Appreciation Society, an anarchic symposium on alternative economies, or just a bunch of sinister clowns.

Es war zu kurz

Just got home from the fifth Euro MLA-meeting. As soon as our host Tons graciously sends my camera home which in my stupid distraction I forgot I hope to gather a little impresion from out too short stay. Meanwhile right now the gang (Tons, Bogus, Chris, Fuzzbuddy and Fly) is still taking Berlin!
borsky

RAW scavenger hunt!

The Robert Anton Wilson memorabilia auctions at eBay got me thinking about the auctions Bob had while he was still alive and struggling to pay his bills.

He auctioned off individual cards from two complete Thoth decks during that time. Each was inked with a cool potato-stamp creation made just for these cards. I bought two and know of a lot of other people who also got some, but I started wondering... could we locate them all?

I'd like to give it a try. I encourage everyone who bought any of these to go to the Maybe Logic thread linked here:

MLA Scavenger Hunt thread

Post what you got, and feel free to spread the word.

Hidden, Secret, Mysterious, Occult, Supernatural, Esoteric, Surreal and Magical

As we come to the end of five years of study at MLA I have started considering the words I use to describe the group. If I call MLA a group of online like-minded people, who read the same sort of books and have the same sort of odd interests or ‘take’ on the world as myself – friends look at me funny, as if I have somehow excluded them. I haven’t. They just haven’t shown interest in this stuff, and internet allows me to hang out with a few dozen people I couldn’t find in my home town, who speak the same language.

Secret, occult

As it happens, most of what we discuss doesn’t feel terribly ‘secret’ (concealed, disguised), although we find the conspiracy model intriguing, and secret societies (or, as we’ve all actually heard of Masons and the CIA and MI6 - maybe “societies with secrets”)...and some of it definitely lurches out of ‘straight’ psychology, philosophy and anthropology into deeper realms of magick, shamanism, heretical religion and areas many people might consider ‘occult’ or ‘esoteric’ studies.

Esoteric

But anything can appear ‘esoteric’ – maths remains a mystery to many, just as does punctuation or poetry, say. It simply means something understood only by ‘the initiated’ – but that can simply mean ‘people who know how to cook’ or ‘people who can fix a computer’ for instance – we don’t have to wander into magical realms, here. Who said "the problem with mysticism is that it starts in mist, and ends in schism”? So, yes, I guess we have ‘esoteric interests’ like Bucky Fuller, or Wilhelm Reich, James Joyce and Robert Anton Wilson.

Exoteric

And plenty of people cheerfully prefer exoteric versions of events (the world of appearances, ‘common sense’, plain speaking, simple explanations, etc).

“The Christian exotericists, derived largely from uncultured slave populations, inaugurated a religious revolution against the Christian esotericists, the cultured and well-born followers of the Gnosis”. W.Y. Evans –Wentz; The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation. 1954

The 'Unexplained'

And then again, we seem to share a certain ‘Fortean’ interest in the odd and the unusual, in explanations like 'synchronicity' and what it might imply about how the world works, and that veers into Quantum Physics – and alternative explanations of possible universes or realms or states of mind, and where they sit on a spectrum from dream to imagination to reality.

Hidden

I don’t know how much really remains hidden, and how much simply appears obscure because you find yourself wearing shades in a dark nightclub – so the symbol of coolness (and blindness) actually renders one blind. Hoodwinked by oneself, and one's desire to appear cool.

And ‘occult’ didn’t originally have all those connotations in its original use, it simply meant hidden, concealed or hard to detect. The moon occults the sun during an eclipse.

Supernatural

These shifts in meaning and emphasis still intrigue me. Back in the Nineteenth Century, when Darwin threw down the gauntlet to the 'Western World', and Freethinkers discussed worlds without God, many people yearned for ‘something more’ and the first New Age season occurred.

'Nature' did not suffice, so they sought the ‘supernatural’ in psychic phenomena, spiritualism and other ‘mysteries’. If we use ‘Nature’ to describe the whole universe, then nothing lies outside ‘Nature’, but we sometimes use it to describe ‘the known’.

Paranormal

This did sometimes seem rather superstitious and too much like the old-time religion so with the new pretence to a 'scientific world-view' people in the 1920s adopted the quasi-scientific word ‘paranormal’ to describe events that didn’t fit in with their world view. This smuggled in the assumption that we share a world view that we can all agree upon, whose ‘normality’ sets the standards by which we measure events.

True Believers and cultural relativity

As communication and travel speeded up, and the world shrank, the idea that any one person, culture, philosophy, religion, science or tribe had The True World View became virtually untenable, indeed rather ludicrous to Martian Anthropologists, but a lot of humans still have vested interests in their local POV.

We had another season of yearning for a New Age at the end of the Twentieth Century, that persists even now.

Nothing new under the sun

'They say miracles are past, and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless. Hence it is that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear'.

(All's Well That Ends Well, 2. 3. 1-6) William Shakespeare

Magic and Magick and the Wyrd

And then we have that wonderful old word 'magic' which everyone knows and uses, for events from the trivial (everyday) to the most rare, unusual, secret, mysterious, occult and unknown.

And whether it belongs in stories and myths and other metaphors and analogues for real life, or as a serious (and very esoteric and occult) study remains an open question to me...

But mosbunall people around here know I remain a Fool and a Cosmic Schmuck, mosbunall of the time...

As Above, So Below

And then we have Hermeticism (from thrice-great Hermes, of course).

Frances Yates offers this description, referring to the Renaissance period:

“This philosophy, or outlook, was compounded of Hermeticism as revived by Marsilio Ficino, to which Pico de Mirandola added a Christianized version of Jewish Cabala. These two trends, associated together, form what I call ‘the occult philosophy’.”

So you’ll find those of us into Neoplatonism, Gnosticism and Hermeticism, too.