Moving

Everything must go!
Not really...I may come here to rant politically, virtually screaming my frustration with politics into the net. However, I'm wanting to get away from that and move forward.
I've started a new blog to help hone my multimedia and writing skills, hopefully parlaying it into something that might provide a bit of scratch. I've spent too much time giving too much credence to various political cretins arguments, that I find pinned down.
With that, please drop by my new blog Complex 39. I hope to fill it with commentary, photography, interviews, etc.. The work I hope will reflect a Ballardian/RAW/Post-Industrial world.
A nod to Adams via Charlie...Thanks for All the Fish....

Complex 39 at http://complex-39.blogspot.com/

Lost a friend today

He was 43. Only had trouble in the past 9 months and no one saw this coming.
Nice guy. Great upright base player. We weren't especially close, but I had known him for about 10 years. Always a pleasure to have around. Thanks for the cigars...

From his brother Scott:

Hello

Jon **** ******* passed away the morning of Wednesday January 17th at home in his apartment in ******** at around 8:15 AM. It appears he died of complications from a sudden seizure. He probably was unconscious before he even knew what was going on, and passed away quickly without suffering.

I'd not been able to reach him over the course of the afternoon Wednesday, and when I called his place of work, he'd not come in and they'd not been able to reach him. On hearing this I felt worried and headed over immediately to his place and let myself in. I found him already gone.

Police, paramedics and others of that sort came over and were professional and warm. Their appraisal of what had happened was the same as mine. He'd had serious seizures of an epileptic grand mal type starting 9 months ago, and even though the meds he'd been taking for that had seemed to be helping, there's just no way to completely protect against this kind of circumstance.

It had been his 43rd birthday this last weekend, and he and I had a great weekend up in New Hampshire visiting with our parents. He'd been in excellent spirits, had a notable glow of well being and happiness. We had great family time together. Tuesday night he'd had a filmed interview and rehearsal with Lenny and the Piss Poor Boys, and they say he'd been in fine form, happy and laughing and doing some of what he loved best.

If it just has to happen that someone has to go, this is as good as it gets. Top of the game, enjoying life, and no warning or suffering.

But I miss him so bad. He was an amazing person, and my only brother. I loved him so much. Still do.

RIP Jon

Kryptonite

http://kittenwar.com/

You just have to see it. Prepare to waste time...
It might even get a warm, fuzzy reaction from a certain Englishman I know.
Kate and I have taken the strategy of picking the "less cute" cat, just to buck the system.

VS.

Brain...Hurts...

but it's that sort of good hurt that comes with exercise. It doesn't get much better for me than R.A. Wilson commenting on the work of physicist John Bell and his theorem.

Reality Ain't What It Used To Be: Thirty-five years after Bell's Theorem
by Robert Anton Wilson Published November 1, 1999 in Whoa!

Bell's Theorem, a mathematical demonstration by physicist John Stewart Bell published in 1964, has become more popular than Tarot cards with New Agers, who think they understand it but generally don't. Meanwhile it remains controversial with physicists, some of whom think they understand it, while others frankly admit they find it as perplexing as a chimpanzee in a Beethoven string quartet. (More...)

Poof! And he was gone....

Robert Anton Wilson, "Occupation: Mind Fucker"
January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007

RAW Essence
January 11, 2007

Robert Anton Wilson Defies Medical Experts and leaves his body @4:50 AM on binary date 01/11.

All Hail Eris!

On behalf of his children and those who cared for him, deepest love and gratitude for the tremendous support and lovingness bestowed upon us.

(that's it from Bob's bedside at his fnord by the sea)

RAW Memorial February 07
date to be announced

From Wikipedia (attention Charlie)

RAW described himself as a "Model Agnostic" which he says "consists of never regarding any model or map of the universe with total 100% belief or total 100% denial. Following Korzybski, I put things in probabilities, not absolutes... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory." More simply, he claims "not to believe anything," since "belief is the death of thought."

Some great quotes from Old Bob:

• “If you think you know what the hell is going on, you're probably full of shit.”

• “Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.”

• “The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization.”

• “. . . there are periods of history when the visions of madmen and dope fiends are a better guide to reality than the common-sense interpretation of data available to the so-called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven't noticed already.”

• “The shock of discovering that most of the power in the world is held by ignorant and greedy people can really bum you out at first; but after you've lived with it a few decades, it becomes, like cancer and other plagues, just another problem that we will solve eventually if we keep working at it.”

• “The most thoroughly and relentlessly Damned, banned, excluded, condemned, forbidden, ostracized, ignore, suppressed, repressed, robbed, brutalized and defamed of all Damned Things is the individual human being. The social engineers, statistician, psychologist, sociologists, market researchers, landlords, bureaucrats, captains of industry, bankers, governors, commissars, kings and presidents are perpetually forcing this Damned Thing into carefully prepared blueprints and perpetually irritated that the Damned Thing will not fit into the slot assigned it. The theologians call it a sinner and try to reform it. The governor calls it a criminal and tries to punish it. the psychologist calls it a neurotic and tries to cure it. Still, the Damned Thing will not fit into their slots.”

• “I don't believe anything I write or say. I regard belief as a form of brain damage, the death of intelligence, the fracture of creativity, the atrophy of imagination. I have opinions but no Belief System (B.S.)”

• “Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt. . . . Idealists regarded everybody equally corrupt, except themselves.”

I'll see you on the flip-side, Bob.

Ungood

Now that they've had their practice...a hurried effort to get us into Iran before W leaves office? They'll start finding documents that secures Iran's complicity in plots directly against the U.S. as all low level diplomats tend to carry. Maybe with enough affronts they'll provoke the Iranians. Maybe they'll just preempt it.

US forces storm Iranian consulate
US forces have stormed an Iranian consulate in the northern Iraqi town of Irbil and seized six members of staff.

So wrong...

...yet it feels so right!
Conflagration...setting the baby sitter on fire.