Tim recently started a Celebrity Tarot project, to which several people have already contributed. I found several of the entries inspiring and amusing enough that I decided to make one of my own. And so I present... The Mousigician.

On the eve of the new album's release, this article takes a revealing look at Trent Reznor's battle with alcohol and other substances over the years. Of all the artists, his music has probably affected me more powerfully than any. Here's hoping the ongoing recovery goes well for him.

My first delivery from peerflix. And what a dull movie it was.

Warning: Unpositive words ahead.

Q: "Weren't you writing something about an upcoming megafest a few months ago? Didn't that already happen?"

A: "There is always an upcoming megafest, and there always will be an upcoming megafest."

Amen.

Where does this story pick up? It picks up yesterday morning, at around 9am. I was on my way out the door to go and meet with $mentor[0], when I noticed that there was a voicemail on my phone. I called. It was the manager/owner from the Great Harvest Bread store.

Nicole Kidman plays a U.N. interpreter from a war-torn African tribal nation. When she overhears a plot against the life of the leader of the country, Sean Penn is the Secret Service agent assigned to investigate the case.

The past several days, while riding to the... er, well... "office", I couldn't help but notice the big "Now Hiring" sign hanging outside the Great Harvest bread shop. So today, I finally went in and asked about it.

A 7 point plan. If they did as this guy suggests, even I would become a Catholic. Totally.

Wise words today from deconsumption. In light of last August's under-publicized scandal in which New York police arrested over 1800 people, most of whom had committed no crimes whatsoever, it is tempting to view law enforcement as evil incarnate. But this article points out that doing so would not only be counter-productive, but could even play directly into the interests of the totalitarianists.

It is really the police officers themselves who are caught in the vise. They certainly have no desire to be the strong arm of a police state. The underlying ideal of every officer I've ever known is to be the "good-guy", the hero, the protector of their community. But the profession is inherently military in it's nature, which means that it can easily and subtly shift from "protecting and serving" the community or neighborhood, to "protecting and serving" the dictates of government and corporate authority. And as the latter dictates frequently place the officers in direct opposition to "the people", a conflict of identity may appear. Most typically, this happens when "the public" comes together in public protest or demonstration of some kind.

[...]

While the "rule of the people" may or may not be usurped by "authorities" on a merely ideological level -- through the passing or repeal of laws and such -- it can never effectively be realized (as in "made real") without the support, or at least the non-resistance, of this special class of law enforcement, military, and para-military departments and agencies who in reality are themselves representatives of the common citizenry. To re-phrase it from a different perspective: any authoritarian power fundamentally relies on and encourages the distinctly divisive qualities which are already inherent in society, and especially with regard to the accentuation of what we now label "liberal" and "conservative" characteristics.

Resistance, therefore, if we wish to pursue it, must begin by creating cohesion, and by fostering appreciation and understanding. And from a purely practical perspective, the place where this cohesion is most needed is with our police and military forces.

For myself then, it seems that the most helpful place for "revolution" to begin is by attempting to refine and re-define the ideology of people in enforcement positions of any sort so that they adhere to a more "popular" ideal. So far, the precedent set by the "liberal" media has been generally to repremand and discourage our police officers. And while I won't argue against the validity of this, we should perhaps realize that this has had a very discouraging effect on them, leading them to some degree to view themselves as being unsupported by the public (and conversely, further depending on their direct authorities for encouragement and support). So despite the fact that we as people have no access to the mainstream media to voice our opinions, we might perhaps want to begin to be more aware, in this forum of the internet, of the sincere debt and respect that we owe to the men and women who choose to work in these professions. We can let them know that we depend on them to keep our communities safe from harm, and that sometimes that harm comes on orders from people in positions of authority. Thus we need them to make responsible, and sometimes very difficult, choices -- and most especially whenever they are being told that the "enemy" is "us".

Solidarity with the police may not be a popular goal with many anarchists, but I think he's definitely onto something. I know from personal experience that police can be helpful in certain situations. Maybe if more of us made friends with police officers, they would be less likely to exhibit behavior such as occurred in New York.

"When you are crazy you learn to be quiet."

This article discusses ways the World Bank takes advantage of countries hit by disaster or war. While simultaniously putting them deep in debt, it forces poverty-stricken nations to pass laws that give more power to multi-national corporations at the expense of local citizens, who are often already in dire straits. A recent example from southeast asia:

Although hotels and industry have already started reconstructing on the coast, in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and India, governments have passed laws preventing families from rebuilding their oceanfront homes. Hundreds of thousands of people are being forcibly relocated inland, to military style barracks in Aceh and prefab concrete boxes in Thailand. The coast is not being rebuilt as it was--dotted with fishing villages and beaches strewn with handmade nets. Instead, governments, corporations and foreign donors are teaming up to rebuild it as they would like it to be: the beaches as playgrounds for tourists, the oceans as watery mines for corporate fishing fleets, both serviced by privatized airports and highways built on borrowed money.

I've been intentionally avoiding posting about all the recent Pope stuff, mostly because I don't really give a crap what the Catholic church does, so long as it stays away from me. But I think today's post from Tim deserves a link, and a little copy-n-paste. (Warning: potentially inflammatory material ahead.)

You think Fundamentalists are intolerant? Well guess again, motherfucker! Fundamentalist reactionary beliefs versus Catholicism are like Carrot Top fighting fucking Godzilla. You hate abortion? Well guess what, we won’t even let you use condoms! Top that, bitches! You hate Muslims? We ran thousands of years of Crusades to kill them. It didn’t work, but fuck, we pulled all of Europe into it. You want to institute a theocracy based on Biblical law? Been there, done that! And we’ve got the infrastructure already in place to go right back there. You hate pagans, gays and other weirdoes? No problem. Let’s launch another centuries-long Inquisition to thin out their ranks. They’re just gonna turn us all into witches if we don’t anyway, right?

"Reality" television may have already peaked in popularity, but I think it’s important to see how this dovetails into the current state of the collective psyche of this nation. The messages encoded in the format of reality television teach people how to act and react to the situations that they are confronted with. Reality television is a more aggressive, updated model for interactions between subjugated peoples. I say updated as in, updated from the older, more static "American Dream" model of the sitcom.

Take a small group of people and give them a very clear goal to achieve at all costs. Encourage them to do whatever they can get away with. Constantly reinforce the simple love/hate, good/evil, rich/poor, succeed/fail themes that undermine and control our perception of values. Reward duplicity, make sure that you "get yours," because nobody else will "get yours" for you. You are a rat and you’ve been dropped into a maze; it’s cheese or bust motherfuckers.

The research paper was clearly the work of experts. It had a long, baffling title and its authors were familiar with key topics such as "simulated annealing" and "flexible modalitie".

Submitted to the World Multiconference on Systematics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), a computer science event to be held in Florida in July, it was promptly selected for presentation.

There was just one problem: it was complete gibberish. A random collection of charts, diagrams and obtuse lines such as "We implemented our scatter/gather I/O server in Simula-67", it was generated by a computer program written by three Massachussetts Insitute of Technology students.

In the latest piece, he takes on... well... pretty much everything. The philosophies of liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism, eastern religion, western religion, science, the economy, the definition of intelligence, and ultimately the meaning of life itself. Make no mistake: This man is a total heretic! He'll erode through the foundations that underlie everything you've been taught your entire life. That's why I love reading his stuff. But nevermind me. Read this latest piece. Whether or not you buy into what he says, it will make you think.

Today on Democracy Now, Amy Goodman interviewed one of the victims of police misconduct which occurred last August in New York City. In his case, the prosecutor used video evidence that had been altered to edit out portions which clearly showed the man was innocent of the police's accusations. The original footage was discovered by a lawyer of one of the other victims, who then compared both versions of the footage side by side to discover the discrepency.

The man also talks about the techniques the police used to trap entire crowds between intersections, arrest everybody present, and then detain them under deplorable conditions. It pretty much corroborates earlier reports by other sources, a story eerily absent from the mainstream media. (Had the protesters not been so well-behaved, I bet there would have been lots of headlines about them on CNN.)

Oh, and in the interest of fairness, she also interviewed a representative of the NYPD. He made a lot of excuses, but never bothered to answer WHY the police arrested so many people who were doing nothing but observing.

An organic farmer in the UK observed that immediately after the government started requiring most farmers to use a pesticide to try to eradicate a parasitic fly, the outbreak of mad cow occurred, while his own exempted herds remained free of the disease. Despite lack of government funding, he launched his own scientific investigation, which confirmed that mad cow is caused by an overconsumption of "organophosphates" present in the pesticides. Since I lack the biological or chemical knowledge, I'm not even going to try to explain the details. Despite his successes, governments lobbied by big chemical companies have refused to launch any of their own studies to confirm or repudiate his claims.

Readers of Fast Food Nation will find this story familiar. The "chicken mafia" -- a few companies which control the overwhelming majority of chicken sales in the U.S. -- uses lies and blatently anti-free-market tactics to drive "contractors" who raise the chickens into debt and poverty.

I am sick to my stomach. I turned it off before the end. All I can say is that after watching for a couple of minutes, I'm tempted to come out in favor of the death penalty for the sick fucks who would commit such acts. Anyone who would tear the skin off a live animal while it stuggles and squirms does not deserve to continue as a member of the human race. Obviously, this video is not for the faint of heart. But anyone who buys a fur coat should be forced by law to watch it repeatedly, clockwork orange style.

I loved it. What an excellent film.

A new movielog entry (and the mechanism with which to input it) is in the works. Meanwhile...

Thank you, TVTorrents. The L Word is an excellent show and I'm hooked. Each time I tell myself, "This is the last episode I'm going to watch today, so I can save the rest for later," the end credits roll all too soon, and I can't help but queue up the next one. Yeah, I'm a sucker for that shit.

Dang, everybody's blogging up a storm today! Good stuff. Fantastic Planet on the absurdity of the pursuit of "efficiency" in modern life:

Take your average factory-produced "time-saving" household item, let’s say a washing machine. From the beginning of recorded history until 1797, people washed their clothes in streams with homemade soap. They washed their clothes, for the most part, less often. Most people didn’t own many items of clothing depending on the historical era; a few shirts, a couple of pairs of pants, a tunic or two, some leggings, maybe a dress. You probably did laundry maybe once a week at most, and spent a couple of hours doing it.

Then, with the abolitionist movement, came the "Efficiency Revolution." Check it out: clothing was now cheap, factory produced, manufactured, assembled by twelve year old girls in Industrial sweatshops. Meanwhile, the monied class who could afford clothing became more concerned with appearing less like the working class, which meant cleaning their clothes more often (pretty much out of sheer vanity). People had more stuff to wash. It took longer to do laundry, even with the latest machine, a hand-cranked barrel. Then comes the advent of the time-saving electric washing machine, the same one we basically still use today.

Here’s how efficient it *really* is to use a modern washing machine:

The seperate components need to be mined, manufcatured, forged and shipped to the assembly plant. This means that laborers now include miners, truck drivers, assemblers, the scientists and designers, advertising firms, actors in commercials and models for print advertisements, customer service reps, accountants and law firms. This production process wouldn’t be possible without similar production processes for delivery trucks, televisions, magazines. There are also the maufacturers of laundry detergent, dryer sheets and the various laundry accoutremonts like irons, ironing boards, spot removers, etc. It also requires the production of the factories themselves, the materials used in their construction. The chemical processes involved in ore refinement and plastics manufacture deplete the ozone layer and strip the Earth of its resources, and fuel our dependence on fossil fuels. All the time saved in washing clothes with washing machines is wasted in hospitals and doctors offices treating health conditions that result from the modern industrial process. You’re looking at, I’d guess, at the very least tens of thousands of people involved in getting your clothes clean in a washing machine so that the wealthy minority can shave some time from their commute to their jobs where they work in order to be able to afford laundry detergent, new clothes and washing machines!

And this is efficiency!?

Ran weighs in with a new essay. In it, he addresses many of the common arguments against the "primitivist" viewpoint. (To my knowledge, he's never used that term to describe himself, but many of his thoughs seem to go along similar lines.) Insightful as ever. Check it out.

This article explains how the U.S. government and a few of the largest market players (institutional investors) can collude (legally, since 1988) to rig the markets. It also explains how a little-noticed Bush administration revision to corporate tax policy last October has acted to temporarily stem the decline of the U.S. dollar, but at the expense of long term economic viability (at least for the United States). An interesting read for anyone who takes an interest in economic matters.

A new generation of outdoor malls are beginning to appear. Dubbed "lifestyle centers", they are designed to have a "look and feel" similar to what was once known as a downtown area. But there is a subtle difference. Every square inch of these "lifestyle centers" is privately owned, and thus subject to whatever decrees the holding company decides are in its commercial interests.

Lifestyle centers are privately owned space, carefully insulated from the messiness of public life. Desert Ridge, for example, has a rigorous code of conduct, posted beneath its store directory. The list of forbidden activities includes "non-commercial expressive activity" -- not to mention "excessive staring" and "taking photos, video or audio recording of any store, product, employee, customer or officer."

The new totalitarianism need not come only from "the government" (except to the degree that government sanctions and ordains ownership of property by such entities). When every inch of land is owned by a corporation, it doesn't matter whether or not Congress can pass laws abridging the freedom of speech, because whoever owns the ground on which you are standing will do it instead. We're not quite that far gone yet, but things are quickly heading in that direction.

When I read this email from EFF, at first I didn't notice that it had been sent on April 1. But I laughed anyway.

Alpharetta, GA - Diebold Election Systems and Choicepoint, Inc., today announced a joint venture that could revolutionize the voting market. The concept is simple: combine Diebold's demonstrated expertise in voting systems with Choicepoint's superior data-mining techniques to produce PredictaVote(TM) - the first 100 percent voter-free, predictive voting system.

"The beauty of this approach is that it is self-correcting," explained Choicepoint CEO Derrick Sithe. "If someone wants to increase the chances that his or her vote will be counted correctly, the voter simply needs to open up more of his or her life to our data-collection methods. Apply for more credit cards. Register for more grocery loyalty cards. Purchase more subscriptions. Fill out more warranty cards. Compare that to today's paperless e-voting machines, where voters have no way to determine whether votes are accurately counted. There's really no comparison."

I'd paste a quote from it, but the whole thing is too good. Fantastic Planet's series on Gnosticism and the Slow Crash concludes with an inspiring, upbeat, and encouraging message.

Though it isn't directly related, I can't help but think of one of my favorite lines from Tori Amos's latest disc...

But everybody -- especially if you're tired of doom and gloom scenarios surrounding the "Crash" -- I encourage reading the linked article.

Canada is considering granting refugee status to several people who have been persecuted by the United States government for helping medical patients whose doctors prescribed marijuana. In some cases, it's a matter of life and death. Though their appeals may be something of a long shot, the issue highlights the hypocracy of the current administration regarding "states' rights", and underscores the absurdity of a country that would hand out harsher punishments to people who commit the "crime" of growing plants in their yards than violent offenders, rapists, and murderers.

I hope they win their asylum, but even if the Canadian judges agree, I doubt it will happen for the simple reason that such a precedent could open the floodgates. If everyone who is unjustly prohibited from growing their stash in the U.S. is allowed to immigrate, Canada could quickly be overwhelmed. Then again, if Canada does the "right thing", it could embarrass the government here into adopting more sane policies. One can always hope...

For the past few months, Rigorous Intuition has been publishing a series of interviews, articles, and art of survivors of childhood torture, purportedly at the hands of the CIA, with cooperation (and participation) from other high level government officials.

As readers here probably know, I tend to be pretty cynical about governments and bureaucracies; even so, the very thought, considered seriously, that this country (and others) are effectively being run by a cult of child molesters reaches the edge of my acceptance zone. It is stupefying to the point of triggering cognitive dissonance. Beyond that, anyone who openly talks about such stuff is likelt to be called a "conspiracy nut" and dismissed by both liberals and conservatives. In his latest post, Jeff Wells discusses the justifiable motivation for such denial:

There's something to be said for ignorance. Not the slack-jawed yokel variety, but the purposeful kind, that looks away from something unbearable, and seemingly implacable, and pretends it isn't there. As survival strategies go it's not such a bad idea to whistle past a graveyard, especially when there's a monster in the graveyard who wants you to believe there are no such things as monsters.

Do I believe it? Does it even matter whether I do? For me, what practical difference is there between believing that George Bush and his friends want the world to live in a state of perpetual war and poverty (pretty obvious), and believing that they (and their predecessors for the past several decades) have overseen a secret network of ritualistic child abuse and horrendous mind control experiments (so-called "conspiracy lunatic" territory). Frankly, in terms of my life, I can't find any practical difference. The latter is simply a few orders of magnitide more disturbing.

So why do I read such stuff, while constantly attempting to find a balance between being skeptical and open-minded? I guess I just want to know the truth. It is out there somewhere, isn't it Scully?

Fantastic Planet is running a fascinating series of articles on how the Slow Crash can be viewed in the context of gnostic religion. The latest installment focuses on the role of the Archons. The whole thing is worth reading, but here's a snippet to whet your appetite:

Eventually, the ultimate goal of the Archons would be to excise the divine spark from the Materia completely. How better to do this than to establish control systems in which humans are completely at their mercy, and how better to do that than draw out any crisis currently facing the planet indefinitely? That’s far more worrisome for the long term than any societal crash could be.

Well, not necessarily indefinitely. Once all of the dissenters have been "taken care of," the Archonic Utopia would doubtless be a sort of soulless Eden, similar to Huxley’s Brave New World, where everyone is at the mercy of the State and consequently the Rulers -- no need for independent thought or freedom. It may not look anything like what you think of as a "police state." It might even be some kind of weird "ecotopia"-- they might have to shift the focus once resources run out even for them. Remember, their goal isn’t destruction, it’s preservation.

Plus, they’re super good at manipulating their control systems by reading which way the public wind blows. If the public starts to lean left, the Archons are pushing them that way. If the public verges to the right, the Archons are just a few steps ahead. The point is that the Archons will always manipulate people into believing that they’re not being influenced. They’re masterful propagandists. Hijacking via co-op is their specialty. Peak Oil a valid concern? Just wait until the Archons get their hands on it. Worried about environmental change? Wait until you’re not allowed to leave the compund on odd numbered days.

How do they want us to react right now? If their ultimate goal is to keep us in, and to stay in power by keeping us under control, they need to address the threat of the Logos. The best way to do this is via distraction and misdirection, something else at which they’re really skilled. They want us to expend our passions, be they anger, fear, love, greed, outrage, emotional investment or what have you, on staged systems and day-to-day existence. They want us to wake up, go to work, read the news and get outraged, attend political gatherings, go home and go to bed feeling as though we’ve accomplished something special, when the opposite is the case. That way we won’t notice the Crash, or recognize it for what it is. They’d like us to hate one another for stupid, external reasons, because every time we do, we fall just a few steps behind. They want us to see others in terms of objects. They know that every time they slip up and lose just a modicum of control over an independent being, that being might see behind the facade and open his or her arms to the Logos.

Since I read the book over a week and a half ago and have now returned it to the library, I really want to at least write something about it before it slips from my memory. Within a 24-hour timespan, I read Philip K Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch from start to finish. That's one hell of a headtrip. (Warning: If you're going to read the book, and don't want any plot details spoiled, don't read any further. I won't give away the ending, but some people might enjoy letting the whole thing be revealed in the narrative.)

Since I needed to return a library book that was coming due anyway, today I went to Boulder and attended Food Not Bombs. Happily, this time, the food was already out and being served when I arrived. A few thoughts on the experience.

Today, I garnered the motivation to pick up the phone and place calls to some temp agencies and inquire about applying for work. (Simple enough, right? Well, except for the fact that I don't enjoy job hunting. That's no secret. Also, I generally dislike talking on the phone. Combine the two, and... uggh. At least to the silly phobias in my mind. So I had to give myself at least a small pat on the back for taking that much action.)

In their original context, were the Ten Commandments written as an abjuration against authoritarian religion, rather than an endorsement of it?

The text begins with the presentation of a liberator, styled YHWH (a form of the Hebrew verb "to be"), "who brought you out of the house of slavery." YHWH is not a god in the sense of the surrounding society. Gods guarantee authority, and YHWH destroys it: "You shall have no gods." Idolatry is the greatest sin in Judaism, Christianity and Islam because it means bowing down before symbols of oppression. Even an image of YHWH is forbidden -- the only image of YHWH is humanity (Genesis 1:26). To "misuse" the name of YHWH is not a matter of saying "goddamn": it is to use the name to wield numinous power, as was done with the names of the gods -- that is to say, it is to practice religion. The Ten Commandments forbid religion (Exodus 20: 1-7).

The commandment about the sabbath has nothing to do with going to church. On that day, "You shall not do any work": it is a commandment against the idolatry of work. The revolutionary Israelites were slaves, valued only for their work. "We are people, but you have forgotten it." The next commandment is similar. "Honor your parents" has nothing to do with obedience: it means not to discard people just because they are too old to work.

The rest of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:8-17) are a picture of the society that was being rejected, a society that claimed the power of life and death ("You shall not kill"). The commandment against adultery is not primarily about sex (the Hebrew bible isn't very interested in sex) and the commandment against stealing is not about property -- they're against stealing people. Biblical scholars have recognized for many years that these commandments are condemnations of the powerful who invaded households to steal concubines and slaves.

The article goes on to describe how the modern view of the Ten Commandments as supporting authoritarian constructs is actually a relatively recent invention of the past few centuries. Though it is certainly an interesting and agreeable interpretation, I don't altogether buy into the idea that the ancient Israelites were all about egalitarian ideals. Look at how oppressive many of their other laws (also recorded in the Bible) were. It does, however, show how easily a "sacred text" can be "spun" to mean a variety of views, sometimes in direct opposition of one another.