Friday, December 26, 2008

TOYNBEE TILES



A Media Virus by Bobby Campbell
(New strains every Thor's day

"SUBSTANCE IS INVERSELY PROPORTIONAL TO PONDERABILITY"
-Franklin Merrell Wolff

The Toynbee Tile media virus is a wonderful curiosity that I am
happy to propagate onward, upward, and spiraling out of control!



The virility of this cryptic memetic aggregate, interestingly enough, does
not spring from digital age machinations, this is no internet phenomena.
These messages have been intractably embedded in the concrete and asphalt hardware of cities all around the Americas for over 25 years.

My home city of Philadelphia, PA, USA is a focal point in the mystery, as there are such a great many of these plaques in our streets, and evidence suggests that the original creator was likely a native resident.

Do please allow this audio/visual presentation by The Vivian Girls Experience to shed some light on the situation:



I first learned of this very peculiar rigamarole via Justin Duer, a highly notable Philadelphia artist/musician. We were sharing display space at the Philly Zine Fest, when he was interviewed about the long awaited documentary on the matter, Resurrect Dead.

Here is Justin and Co. providing further exposition on a Philadelphia local news segment:





It wasn't until a couple years after overhearing Justin Duer's interview that I would actually become fascinated by the mystery myself.

In late November of 2007, upon catching a news story on the radio about the tiles, I began to poke around a bit on the internet for to enjoy further information on the subject. I had satisfied my curiosity w/ only just a few brief blurbs, when I inadvertently knocked over my copy of Joseph Campbell's "The Hero With A Thousand Faces." I picked up the book and but of course it had opened to a page wherein the word "Toynbee" shone out like some kinda clownish beacon.

"The hero has died as a modern man; but as eternal man - perfected, unspecific, universal man - he has been reborn. His second solemn task and deed therefore (as Toynbee declares and as all the mythologies of mankind indicate) is to return then to us, transfigured, and teach the lesson he has learned of life renewed."

"Well, sure, okay, fine!" I thought, I'll dig a little deeper then, and in so doing I turned up this video of a St. Louis local news segment, which features a man with a blue beard discussing Toynbee Tiles. And well, it just so happens that I know a fella w/ a blue beard, as do many of ye esteemed MLA alumni...



I promptly fired off an E-mail to our friend The Capt., who confirmed indeed and of course that it was he in the video.

2 days later I would find my first real life Toynbee Tile.



Several months later, en route to my first day of work at a Philadelphia media company, I would walk over a Toynbee Tile while transferring from train to bus.

Having eagerly reported for duty an hour early, I then went to enjoy a coffee at the Penrose Diner, and while reading my well worn edition of Marshall McLuhan's "Understanding Media", happened upon the following passages:

"In his Study of History, Toynbee notes a great many reversals of form and dynamic..."

"In the ancient world the intuitive awareness of break boundaries as points of reversal and of no return was embodied in the Greek idea of hubris, which Toynbee presents in his Study of History, under the head of "The Nemesis of Creativity" and "The Reversal of Roles."

And so it goes, the miscellaneous and disheveled happenstance of experience, where nothing happens for a reason, but everything can get put to a purpose.



"YOU MUST MAKE AND GLUE TILES! YOU!"

Friday, December 19, 2008

JOHN TITOR



An Ongoing Media Virus by Bobby Campbell

"IT IS THE BUSINESS OF THE FUTURE TO BE DANGEROUS."
- Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage


In the autumn of 2000 an avatar called "TimeTravel_0" began to communicate through the world wide web, claiming to be a visitor from the year 2036! Though that someone should make an outrageous claim via the internet is hardly noteworthy, except but when so very many people actually come to believe it. (and also when those that disbelieve it engage with such vigorous opposition.)

John Titor, as the character would eventually be known, entertained netizens for nearly 5 months, offering creative speculations on the physics of time travel, and prophesying a great many catastrophes for the immediate future. Upon the Spring Equinox of 2001 he bid farwell, for to return to the year 2036, and has not been heard from since.

Though the avatar itself has long since dissapeared, the John Titor media virus carries on even 8 years later. There was a notable outbreak just this past September on account of a meme he left behind:

"John Titor: ... the major breakthrough happens at CERN ...The creation of microsigularities...its a black hole about the size of an electron... "

Most of the Titor predictions have come and gone, with perhaps some generalized correlation to some actual events, though really, without actually having come true.

That there is not a civil war raging in the United States right now, as predicted by John Titor, should invalidate his claim to having come from the future, right?

Not quite!

Within the sticky shell of the preposterous time travel story, there are sub plots which necessitate contemplating actual and incredible postulates of the science of our day.

"The Everett-Wheeler-Graham or multiple world theory is correct. All possible quantum states, events, possibilities, and outcomes are real, eventual, and occurring. The chances of everything happening someplace at sometime in the superverse is 100%."

So as to craft an enduring and vital media virus, John Titor did not claim to be from THE future, but rather A future.

Thence the saga continues!

Monday, December 15, 2008

Parental Guidance: contains implicit language

clan tattoo
I didn’t mean to be sly at all, but can’t help but find myself influenced by the company I have kept at the Maybe Logic Academy. A bunch of manipulators of language and creators of sigils tend to influence a person.

I met quite a few adepts of one kind or another. A lot of esoteric chat still occurs that goes over my head.

The whole thing here at OM just grew and grew as an extrusion of the forums and courses online (all of which continue).

It became a node for links to student's own blogs (see list down the right) -

- ranging from DR003.4K's THEATRE OV DISCONTENT to Borsky's 'Pataphysical Clinamen, from Dedroidify (whatever happened to him?)to Acrillic's World Piss:Spore of the Words).

We have also added links to other interesting places (when the MLA started I simply couldn’t keep up with all the links to fabulous things and places online that got thrown at me).

And I hardly even notice how much of the time I write in E-Prime, now (except when I don’t).

But that doesn’t mean anything.

[He flings himself onto a horse, and rides off madly in all directions...]

You DONE fucked with The Order

I wrote a rhyme and drew it too but had to give the finger to all of you before i pulled a very long eared rabbit outta hat,
You just fucked with the order. 
Dont fuck with that. 

Now Bring Your Come Backs.

Friday, December 12, 2008

The Power of Flow

Against Master Eckhart's Da-sein?


Eckhart Tolle's 'The Power of Now' is seen nowadays in New Wave circles as a parangon of wisdom. The awakening by recluding inwards, abandoning the past and the future to realize only the moment exists over and over again at first seemed to me a very sane thought. I attempted to live in the moment (long before I even heard of Tolle's ideas) on several occasions, unable to keep it up for a very long time (but then hey, time is an illusion, right?).

Traveling through India I read diagonally a few pages at the beginning of a book called something like "Sri Lalita Sahasranam", being a philosophical account of the Vedistic ontology. You can get the original text if from Scribd.

It is part of the ancient Bramanda Purana. The title means litterally 'the collection of 1000 names (attributes) of the divine power' and is the description of the Sakhta doctrine through worship of the Goddess (Lalita Devi), in the form of her and of her male appearance as Shakti. Lalita is the goddess of bliss and an avatar of Parvati, and etymologically stands for "She who plays". She's the creative aspect of Brahman (seen as an asexual principle above the concept of 'god' or 'goddess').

Shakti Lalita


The book I read was a study on this, having geometrical drawings to explain the text, which at first looked very technical in contrast to a poetic text, but were great to clarify the interpretation. I haven't found what study it was, maybe from Swami Tapasyananda or from Amma Sri Karunamayi Vijayeswari.

I found this site showed all 1000 verses and an interpretation plus a large amount of quotes.


A few quotes I liked in this site:


"Mother is the first manifestation of power and is considered a higher idea than father. The name of mother brings the idea of Shakti, Divine energy and omnipotence. The baby believes its mother to be all-powerful, able to do anything. The Divine Mother is the Kundalini sleeping in us; without worshipping Her, we can never know ourselves. All merciful, all-powerful, omnipresent - these are attributes of the Divine Mother. She is the sum total of the energy in the Universe."

Swami Vivekananda, Inspired Talks, My Master and Other Writings, July 2, 1895, Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, NY, pp. 48-49.

"Sophia is the Goddess for our time. By discovering her, we will discover ourselves and our real response to the idea of a Divine Feminine principle. When that idea is triggered in common consciousness, we will begin to see an upsurge of creative spirituality which will sweep aside the outworn dogmas and unlivable spiritual scenarios which many currently inhabit."

Caitlín Matthews, Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom, The Aquarian Press, 1992, p. 5-9.


"Maya, avidya, and ajnana are terms of Vedanta philosophy usually translated by such words as ignorance, nescience, and illusion. They generally denote the same thing. Through ignorance, the Vedantic philosopher contends, the non-dual Brahman appears to have become the manifold universe; the Absolute, the relative. Ignorance has no absolute existence, for it disappears when one attains the Knowledge of Brahman. But it is not non-existent, like the son of a barren woman, for it is the cause of the names and forms of the sense-perceived universe. It cannot be described as either real or unreal, or both real and unreal; as one with Brahman or other than Brahman; as either corporeal or incorporeal, or as both corporeal and incorporeal. The real nature of ignorance is inscrutable, since the mind through which one understand it is itself a product of ignorance."

Swami Nikhilananda, Self-Knowledge, Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1989, p. 122-23.

(The last one seems a great quote for Matthijs Van Boxsel's Encyclopedia of Stupidity! )


Now I was especially struck in this account by the idea that the point of contact between individual and Cosmic Consciousness is seen as the point where the duality of all existence is realized as the ultimate illusion. It's the difference between living in the world of creation and realizing there is no creation. I saw further links with the (zen)buddhist concept of the illusion of all being.


And I sensed in it an important source for the development of Kabbalah, at least the one I was taught, pertaining to the parts a comedian has to loose when quitting the stage: his body and his role. Transliterated: at the time of death, one has to not only abandon the mortal coil, but also to acknowledge that the thought of the 'I' one had of oneself was just a token identity, a role played on the stage of life; you are not who you think you are. The path to the true self can only be walked on by a good kabbalist (or so do kabbalists tell). Letting go the materiality (body) and the idea that 'me' is really me, and adding the third even more difficult predicament - total acceptance (dissolution into a higher, cosmic self) are the three conditions to elevate through death, or, for a few, through life.

Shakta kabbalah



Actually there is one major difference between the Sakhta doctrine and Kabbalah: in the latter the male principles in the right pillar of severity (from bottom to top the sefirah Netzach, Chesed and Chochmah) are considered active, creative and expansive; the female ones on the left pillar of mercy are seen as passive and conservative (Hod, Geburah and Binah). Male is the cosmic father Abba in Chochmah (wisdom); female is the cosmic mother Amma in Binah (understanding). Just the opposite from the female creative principle in the Hindu philosophy.

"Everyone knows 'I am'. there is the confusion that the 'I' is the body. Because the 'I' arises from the Absolute and gives rise tu buddhi (Intellect). In buddhi the 'I' looks the size and shape of the body, na medhaya means that Brahman cannot be apprehended by buddhi. (…) Just get over the false conception of the 'I' being the body. Discover to whom the thought arise. If the present 'I'-ness vanishes, the discovery is complete. What remains over is the pure Self."

Talks With Sri Ramana Maharshi p. 68, available on Scribd.



Mirrored or not, more and more it seems to me in this doctrine are arguments to partly incriminate the concept of 'now'.


A spiritual warrior, if assigning oneself to just one stage in awareness exclusively would hardly experience the effect of consciousness expanding. Shouldn't consciousness be stretched?


1. At first through the multiverse of viewpoints (POV), in the way described by Robert anton wilson or Aleister Crowley before him. One of Crowley's exercises consisted in convincing himself during one week of being a devout catholic. Wilson's exercises involve doing something totally out of one's habits. Therefore in effect, when taking another role,

a. realizing the ultimate illusion of all of them;

b. through the Copenhagen interpretation, of accepting all illusions as clues telling not about the world but about the observer;

c. by multiplying the POVs, multiplying the possibilities. The more choices to deal with any given situation, the better teh chance to deal with it with the best fit paradigm. In this, it is not the goal to get lost into one reality tunnel and to keep it, but to keep travelling through them, stretching or multiplying the awareness field.

2. Seems to me a similar line of thought can be had fot the illusory timetable. I think it is necessary to realize the power of now, but also of the past and of the future, simultaneously. Stretching the 'now' outwards, like Dr. Manhattan in "The Watchmen", might offer a better acceptance (realisation) of the illusion of reality.

Furthermore, the concept of grabbing the singleton that is the moment of now seems to have some flaws.

1. First I fear this might for some people bring them further away from an illumination into group mind, and closer to the 'I', and also indulge them into an extensive use of the verb 'to be'; some could even cross the barrier towards solipsism. I will not dwell here on the concept of e-prime which clarifies the dangers of the verb 'to be' and developped from Korzybski through Bourland.

Again: you 'are' not who you think you 'are'. Again, the illusion of all 'being'.

2. Second and most, Wilson, Bandler, etc. wrote a lot about the amount of time needed between an external impulse, the activation of the nerves, the electrical information send to the neurons, the discharges needed for the brain to actually realize an event (from the multitude of impulses surrounding us every instant, only an infinite drop catches our attention -conscious or not, while most are lost), and the symbolic buildup needed for us to acknowledge what we have experienced. So for me the 'moment' looks like a long chain of events, not the 'cause and effect' but different ways of mapping the same event.

"He was the cause-and-effect man: he kept at her astrology without mercy, telling her what she was supposed to believe, then denying it. “Tides, radio interference, damned little else. There is no way for changes out there to produce changes here.”


“Not produce,” she tried, “not cause. It all goes along together. Parallel, not series. Metaphor. Signs and symptoms. Mapping on to different coordinate systems, I don’t know ...” She didn’t know, all she was trying to do was reach."

Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow




Maybe the mathematical definition of

'NOW' = all the moments of your life put together seen as different facets of the diamond.



I think in this aspect also of Alfred Jarry's description of the moment total bliss in 'Les Jours et les nuits', as a single moment in which all eternity is experienced.

"And with strange aeons even death may die."

H.P. Lovecraft.


I remember another thought exercize by Bob Wilson, "Why are you here?", producing an infinite chain of events, in which he started from being invited to give a lecture at a bookshop and stopped at the dimishing amount of fish in Northernst Europe in the ancient times which forced the vikings to invade Ireland. I have a book called 'Et c'est comme ça que je me suis enrhumée' by French Etienne Lécroart, without any words. It starts with the big bang, moving through a chain of events until the last drawing of a lady , who was telling it all to explain how she catched a cold.




I feel a lot of appeal to the Ars Memoria, Dame Frances Yates wrote an excellent book on it called "The Art of Memory".


A memory of memory, an account of how people through all time have tried to live with - and sometimes in - the past. Giordano Bruno studied it, and after him, Raymond Lull and Robert Fludd. We grow as a civilization (group mind) because we build on the past.


I feel a lot of appeal as well to futurology, the science of trying to predict the future, which started with early science-fiction writers and went on with Bob Wilson, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Nick Herbert, Saul Paul Sirag et all.

We grow as a civilization (group mind) because we want to build the future.


And finally I can relate a lot to the power of Now, as the individual needs to free hirself from the boundaries of past regrets and future hopes, from the chains of guilt and pride, all born from the illusory idea of cause and effect, life seen through the goggles of a Goldberg device… This can be seen as a differential approach to time.

Lingam

I would see value in the development of a system combining memory, now and fantasy into a flow, more of an integral approach to time.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

R.I.P Post.gate


"The world of television was in mourning yesterday [10.12] after the death of Oliver Post.gate - creator of some of Britain's best loved children's series. Bagpuss, the Clangers, Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine and Pogles' Wood were just some of the favourites produced by Mr. Post.gate - who narrated the programmes too. Although only 13 episodes of Bagpuss were made in the 1970s, the P.I.N.K 'saggy, old, cloth cat' has been voted Britain's best loved children's television character. 

Post.gate's Quirky stop-action animations, made with collaborator Peter Firm.In for their SmallFilms company, were a staple of British TV in the 1960s and 1970s. The [studio] for making the films was a disused cowshed in Kent. 

Mr Post.gate -----

A cousin of PRE_WAR Labour Party Leader and PACIFIST GEORGE LANSBURY -- was a conscientious objector during WORLD WAR II AND LATER A prominent member of the Campaign for NU.Clear DISarmament"

Not only that, but my mother fucking loved his pasty white British pussy. He gave a whole generation of post-war kids (some born of prostitutes and gun-runners) something FLUFFY to believe in, and he will be missed. An inspiration to all. He didn't need to be scary, neither. 

R.I.P Old chap. 

DREAMING @WAKE!



An Ongoing Media Virus by Bobby Campbell








Soundtrack: The Complicated History of the Concept of the Soul
by The Mr. T Experience

"ALL YE SUCKERS WHO ARE GONNA GET TRIMMED, STEP THIS WAY FOR THE BIG SWINDLE!"

- Groucho Marx as Mr. Hammer in "The Cocoanuts"



Over these last few years the 2012 media virus has proven to be very formidable indeed, the millenarist plot has taken on a great many twists and turns, for the most part abandoned and dismissed by it's early adopters, it has evolved into a kind of fundamentalist, new age, lowest common denominator, main-stream of complete and utter bullshit! Not to say that it wasn't always bullshit, but now it's bullshit that's rapidly becoming a household name!

A media virus consists of a protective & sticky outer shell, which contains within it a memetic code. The adhesive shell becomes attached to a host medium and thence it's memetic programming gets injected therein.

"The virus code mixes and competes for control with the cell's own genes, and, if victorious, it permanently alters the way the cell functions and reproduces. A particularly virulent strain will transform the host cell into a factory that replicates the virus."

Douglas Rushkoff, Media Virus

The outer shell of a media virus is the "surface issue" or "face value" of the news event, idea, or whatever form the Trojan horse happens to take. The programming within the shell is the implication of the resultant dialectic, the worms in the can, to mix a metaphor!

It seems apparent that "The Eschaton" makes for an exceptionally sticky outer shell, but what manner of programming dwells within?



Who's kidding who here!?

As some of ye brave and bold readers may yet recall;

Joseph Campbell and/or Henry Morton Robinson
report of Finnegans Wake Book III,
Chapter 4: HCE & ALP- Their Bed of Trial. (Starting on pg 555)

The characters have woken from the dream &
“It is the morning after the night of the winter solstice”

I can still find no indication of this in the text myself, but it provides an impetus to imaginate...

More interesting though is this excerpt from the audio book version of Terence Mckenna's "True Hallucinations", which ellucidates the McKenna Brothers' experiences in the Amazon Jungle at La Chorrera, the inspiration for novelty theory, timewave zero, and by extension much of the 2012 media virus. (the entire audio book is freely available for your listening pleasure, here.)









Friday, December 05, 2008

Towards a Maybe sign language nutation

The Indian Head Nod Phenomenon

Abstract:
While travelling through India, the author was confused by a strange expression of body language. It offered him both the base for a quantum sign language and a revolutionary disclosure pertaining to the energy shortage on the subcontinent.

A westerner might get confused by the constant sideways head-swinging in the course of any given conversation with Indian people. Mosbunall Indians seem compelled to nodge their head in a fluent motion on an imaginary axis that starts from the top of their nose and goes to the back of the head, this axis also tilting slightly at about 23°, awkwardly the same degree in the obliquity of the ecliptic, responsible for the precession of the equinoxes.
Your typical Indian headswing if used in Belgium would precisely mean "Weeeelll actually in most cases the answer would be yes but sadly (and don't blame me) in this particular conundrum it's a definite and absolute no". In India it can mean many things. Sometimes it stands for 'Hello', or for 'I see what you mean', 'OK', 'Absolutely', 'I can see your house from here', 'Maybe yes', 'I have no clue whatsoever', 'I couldn't care less', 'Maybe no', 'Nay' or just plain 'No way and stop looking at me'.

The meaning of this body language depends it seems to me on the speed of the swinging and the tilting of the axis.
My estimed colleague Leonhard Paul Euler calculated the irregularity in motion of an axially symmetric object such as the earth, or a head, and called it 'nutation'. In the following generic formula, a nutation arises whenever one of the Euler angles changes while the other two remain constant.
Photobucket
Less generally, Angle P (Precession) moves the line of nodes around theexternal axis, angle N (Nutation) rotates around the line of nodes and angle R is the intrinsic rotation around an axis in a body that moves.

When nodding, the Indian head moves in a similar way to a double gimbal, or a simple gyroscope. Indeed I had the strange feeling when hypnotized by the soothing motion, that everything else ceased to move and only the object of my study was moving, a famous gyroscopic effect of motion stabilization.
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It was my experience that a fast headnod with a strong tilt, as those infringed upon persons that get shaken hysterically by total loonies jumping out from the bushes, usually appears extremely negative, while a smooth fluent movement, as if falling asleep sitting in a cozy little train, dreaming of porridge, appears quite positive. The intermediary quantum states seem used for less extreme matters of opinion. As such this specific movement appears to be an excellent candidate for the elaboration of a Maybe Sign Language (patent pending in Patagonia). More flavours could arise, as the immobile stare ('Yes of course - shiver - how on earth do you dare questioning') to the nighthmarish visions as shown in the movie 'Jacob's Ladder' (No no no oh fuck don't push that butto...). A future visual dictionary might provide an excellent tool for the foreigner travelling through India, set back at first by its multiple language barriers, from Kanada to Tamil, from Sanskrit to Malayalam. The gyroscope again, as a stabilizer in interpersonal relationships. This sign language will not only bring people together, it will also shatter their little manicheistic paradigms.
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Moreover, the gyroscopic implications seems endless. Let's not forget that many perpetual motion theories make use of this apparatus. Now it is wel established that India suffers from regular power surges (in my experience about twice a day for half an hour). As at least one part of India, the Indian heads, seem to be in perpetual motion, a small mechanical device adapted to each skull could discretely transform part of the kinetic energy into electrical current stored in a portable battery.
Photobucket
An entire bus of Indians, enthusiastically nodding away, might provide at least enough energy for the, aptly named, headlamps of the said vehicle. The recent Indian moon exploration, if fuelled by this gigantic energy source, could become as casual as a stroll along the Ganges!
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Rufus T. Firefly, Esq.

Thursday, December 04, 2008

A Proto-Chimeran Diatribe Against the Sexes


"I'll Never Be Bored Again"

Despite the amount of times I stick my head up my own ass in one day,
Out of inadequate adaptive abilities in relation to territorial males,

Even if I have no idea of the Real World, and no one will give me office space
Because I smell of disappointment and self-loathing,

And even when I feel I lack sophistication in my actions,
I'll keep faith in my knowing, and keep doing,

Because I forgot what the because was, and I can't stop
Loving small children. 


Monday, December 01, 2008

AUTO REMIX: CUSTOM PAINT by Chu 51



Great artists share their art and crafts with the world. Community artists make the world a brighter and more cheerfull place--Fly.



















AUTOMOBILE REMIX by CHU 51
Photographs by Fly
http://schudio.co.uk/

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