4 legged spiders

Posted on by ceyton

I love an incongruous thought twixt seemingly unrelated media. This time it started with the film Ator: the fighting eagle, a sandals and sorcery yawner that even Rifftraz couldn’t make interesting. But I watched it enough to know that the bad guy was the Spider Lord. You could tell he was a bad guy because, duh, spiders.

The next day I read through P.K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. In order to show use the android’s lack of empathy they take a captured spider away from their dimwitted host. “Cut off it’s legs ad see if it can crawl with only four of them”. While they sit and watch a TV celebrity (an undercover android) declare that empathy is a hoax, the android Pris is at the kitchen table with a pair of scissors, mutilating what could be the last spider in the building.

1st repeat of a theme is happenstance, the 2nd is coincidence….

My next read, Under the Green Star by by Lin Carter, a classic Burroughsian fantasy. I’ll talk about it more in my DAW reads. The pertinent part to our thread here is when the hero fights a a giant spider to save the obligatory princess. The spider is a monster, an “albino vampire”.

—and the 3rd is a communication…

“The Bugs are not like us. The Pseudo-Arachnids aren’t even like spiders. They are arthropods who happen to look like a madman’s conception of a giant, intelligent spider, but their organization, psychological and economic, is more like that of ants or termites; they are communal entities, the ultimate dictatorship of the hive…..Their warriors are smart, skilled, and aggressive—smarter than you are, by the only universal rule, if the Bug shoots first. You can burn off one leg, two legs, three legs, and he just keeps on coming; burn off four on one side and he topples over—but keeps on shooting. You have to spot the nerve case and get it . . . whereupon he will trot right on past you, shooting at nothing, until he crashes into a wall or something.”

We have in a short time random media introducing the spider as a loved pet, then a helpless mutilated plot device, a fierce adversary, and then our ultimate inhuman enemy in an interstellar war.

The last quote is from Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, a novel I am struggling philosophical with as I re-read it three- and a-half decades since my first time through. It is Heinlein at his most right-wing, hiding behind ‘hip libertarian’ language. But notice the image of the 4 legged spider brought back. Here again the android, in this case Heinlein’s military mouthpiece in his power-armor, mutilating the spider. It’s ok for our military hero though, he has an alien opponent whom he has further ‘othered’, calling them “Bugs”.

This is what dehumanizing, ‘othering’, does. It is us giving ourselves permission to ignore our empathy so that we may create 4 legged spiders, ultimately dehumanizing ourselves.

Androids among us

Posted on by ceyton

Just finished Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by P.K.Dick for the first time. One of his more solid novels.

The theme of empathy is threaded throughout, being the main difference between humans and the Nexus 6 androids. The androids at one point declare that empathy is a lie, a myth that humans perpetuate to oppress them.

It is not difficult to look at this through eyes accustomed to our modern circumstances. We’ve all seen the arguments about masks. My wife and I watched the PBS interview with Dr, Fauci and one of the questions he was asked was about anti-vaxxers. There is a concerted effort to quash empathetic action so the privileged are not inconvenienced.

This got me thinking about the nature vs. nurture. Some humans, eg. sociopaths, psychopaths, the deeply autistic, are born without empathy, while others are programmed by propaganda. Ultimately this what the Black Lives Matter is in essence, a cry for empathy.

Charlie and the Golden Meme

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I have been thinking a lot of the various memes that Roald Dahl created with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They are referenced often, probably more than the old favorite The Wizard of Oz.

My wife and I have been steadily making our way through the multitude of seasons of the Amazing Race. There is Golden Gnome ticket in one season, another a contestant compares a ballon ride to the Glass Elevator bursting through the top of the factory.

A random episode of Travel Man, with my hero Richard Ayoade. They are about to climb up a medieval tower, and the guest references the same Glass Elevator.

Of course, The Office episode with the Golden Ticket in the paper.

In the first episode of the show Hannibal, the analogy of the golden ticket is used to describe what a serial killer is looking for in his victims, that spark of life that for a moment satisfies his desires. It is properly Qabalalistic interpretation, where we must dive from Malkuth into the Tunnels of Set, seeking out the sparks of light lost at the Tzimtzum, when the retreat of Ain Soph from the world shattered the vessels and scattered the light.

Most of the references of course are made from a merely popular culture level, informed by the Gene Hackman movie and possibly the Depp/Burton version. I’m not sure, I tend to be removed from the popular and cinema-informed.

Dim Screen

Posted on by ceyton

Over the last couple of weeks my laptop screen has been dim, hard to see.  Maybe because I was growing old…..

Or maybe I needed to restart the graphics driver:

Windows key + Ctrl + Shift + B

Worked like a charm.

My DAW Yellow Spine Read Thru

Posted on by ceyton

In 1971, editor Donald A Wolheim left Ace Books to start an imprint with his wife Elsie.  The new DAW Books were mass market paperbacks with a distinctive yellow spine and the DAW logo on the front.  

Growing up, my mother loved to drag her sons to various thrift shops.  An avid reader from an early age, I would scour the used books for science fiction, fantasy, horror, and obscure non-fiction, especially fringe religion.  Those habits never changed. 

DAW yellow spines were my favorites, although they tended to be hit or miss.  A few years ago I decided to collect and read through the imprint until they changed the design away from the classic yellow spine. 

These are their stories.  

The reasoning (reposting)

Posted on by ceyton

Update:

“Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, thrice is enemy action” … thrice?

Go figure, a DC comic quoting a James Bond movie contains a blind.

A) What is a blind?  A blind is either dis- or mis- information given to misdirect a false, lazy, or insincere seeker.

B) What is The blind?   “enemy action”

Why do I think this? In my interpretation of a post-Thelemic worldview, after you are given (or ‘notice’) transmitted information in a series of ‘coincidence’, it is an opportunity to investigate and learn.   Again, we are not pretending this is sane behavior, just a self-examination into personal perception of reality.

^^^

Original post:

“Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, thrice is enemy action”   Recently read that in a Hawkgirl comic, which attributed the quote from the movie Goldfinger.

The basic premise is that there is information being ‘transmitted’ to us, disguised in the everyday noise we are bombarded with.  Hidden patterns, word games, puzzles, personalized clues.  We are not pretending this is sane behavior.  In fact, deciphering these “messages from the Secret Masters” is nothing less than a romanticized artificial psychosis.

Hence the danger.  This is Left Hand Path workings, driving yourself falsely schizophrenic based off of subjective gleanings of information.  This is not a simple ladder to enlightenment.  This is a journey into your own pathetic need for meaning.  There is no winner, there is no prize.  Once you start, the only way out is thru.

These will not be mere reviews of books, and other art.  This will be a surface look at the construction of my personal Qabalah.  Most of this work is gleaned from years past.  I no longer torture myself with daily workings.  My past work has brought me to a different, hopefully better, perception.  However, one cannot just abandon the work once one sees the light.  Keep in mind the daily lesson of the false dawn.

Moon Called

Posted on by ceyton

     Some nights I just can’t sleep.  I pad into the guest room, wrap myself in a blanket, and grab a random paperback.  I’ve been on an Andre Norton kick lately and grabbed Moon Called.  Pecover of Moon Called paperbackrfect choice.

Grandmaster Norton has several different writing styles and this one is in her high fantasy style.  The novel is stand-alone, almost a vignette.  The Heroine is a fantasy version of a Wiccan, the bad guys are alien and sinister, the “Old Times” gave us radiation and left over tanks. Her religious poetry seems like it’s taken from a Book of Shadows, in fact I’m working one of the poems into mine. 

The book is not about the plot or action or even defeating evil.  It’s about it’s Wiccan heroine finding purpose and solace in her love for the Lady.  One reviewer on GoodReads mentioned how much this book meant to her in 6th grade in the early 80s and how it help formulate her adult identity.

Her review was written a decade before I read Moon Called.  It lead me into thinking about how random books can shape a personality seeking adolescent.  How my own life was shaped by Zelanzy’s mythopoeia, Moorcock’s despairing heroes.   

      I’ve been reading Ms. Norton since my early days but I’m only now understanding her constant current of influence on me.  Damned subtlety. 

My only complaint about the particular style of this book by Mother Andre is what I call the “fog”.  Her dark fairy tales make me feel that sometimes we enter a fog-drenched part of the woods and I lose the thread for a paragraph or for a several pages.  Doesn’t matter the time of day I’m reading.  I know, this is more on me, I start daydreaming within the prose.  I’m afraid I’ve been ruined by short attention entertainment.  I should read more. 

Appendix N Book Club

Posted on by ceyton
(Since a very young age, I have kept a list of To Read books.  It was started as centered around Gygax’s Appendix N and Uncle Al related works.  The list, hereafter referred to as the Biblio, remains my main focus of study and reading.  Related posts tagged Bibliography, naturally)

The delightful podcast Appendix N Book Club recently (December 2, 2019) interviewed the legendary author Michael Moorcock.   I have a few takeaways.

At one point Mr. Moorcock name-dropped author John Brunner as a fellow anti-racist. This stood out to me because Mr. Brunner’s book Stand on Zanzibar was a heavy piece of programming for me.  I’m probably overdue to read it again.

They also briefly discussed on whether D&D (etc.) has ruined fantasy fiction.  I thought of this when a Forgotten Realms ™ book showed up on my randomized To Read bibliography list.  So I’ve given myself permission to remove all the FR ™ books from my bibliography.  I’ve gotten nothing from any of them and found most of them unreadable.  There was one I shall not name that was a naval fantasy retelling of Atlas Shrugged.  Ugh.

So I am in the midst of retooling the Biblio, as always a work in progress.   I urge the reader to explore the Appendix N Book Club podcast.  Good people and very inspirational.

New Media Artist: the Ong’s Hat creators

Posted on by ceyton

{All posts under the New Media Class category are for a History and Theory of New Media class I am taking during the 2019 Spring Semester at SUNY Empire. Please be aware that all comments must be approved before they are posted}

In the late 90s and early 00s, the internet was a different place.  Instead of everything being based on large corporate Social Media sites, you typed subjects, thoughts, queries, and keywords into the search engine of your choice and jumped in.  Instead of becoming lost in an endless news feed or auto-playing YouTube videos, you jumped from site to site. 

I don’t remember how or why I stumbled onto Ong’s Hat.  I vaguely remember knowing it was a constructed game but nonetheless it pulled me in.  The original website is gone, and the game declared dead and annoying by one of its main creators.

 The story started long before.  The quantum physicist/mystic/out-there genius Nick Herbert had started hinting at the Ong’s Hat story back in the days of online bulletin boards. Then friends of his, including Joseph Metheny and Peter Lamborn Wilson, started uploading and linking to the Incunabula. 

The Incunabula was presented as a rare book catalog.  Some of the books were real, others were fake (“unpublished”) books by real authors, and others were made up whole cloth. The striking thing was that once you started reading the book descriptions and annotations, you learned a story about a secret ashram of mad scientists, religious splinter groups, and reality hackers who were in a race against shadowy government forces to… well those clues came slower.

So you pulled up your trusty search engine and went exploring.  You followed clues that lead to Moorish Science, Church of the SubGenius, Mondo 2000, Robert Anton Wilson, and more. You could find fake websites that had a phone number to call for more recorded clues.  You could stumble onto forums with cool people talking about mind-shattering ideas or fall into a pit of lame conspiracy theorists.  You could discover the email address for Emory Cranston, the ‘made-up’ author of the catalog, and someone would answer your email with more cryptic clues.  Joseph Metheny even appeared on a few episodes of the conspiracy radio show Coast-to-Coast.

It was fun, it was smart, playful, and intersected media in a way that really hadn’t been explored before.   And in these days of weaponized conspiracy theories like that mess QAnon, it can never be repeated.

Kinsella, Michael (2011). Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong’s Hat. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi

Joseph Matheny : Ong’s Hat & ARG Auteur. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://josephmatheny.com/

Monaghan, P. (2011, July 31). Retrieved March 10, 2019, from https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/pageview/the-surprising-online-life-of-legends/29221

Oelbaum, J., & Oelbaum, J. (2019, February 21). Ong’s Hat: The Early Internet Conspiracy Game That Got Too Real. Retrieved March 10, 2019, from https://gizmodo.com/ongs-hat-the-early-internet-conspiracy-game-that-got-t-1832229488