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29 January 2004

 

Acid Evangelist
(Tim Appelo, Seattle Weekly, January 26, 2004)
So what was Kesey, devil or deity? Conservatives decry his flabbergastingly irresponsible acid evangelism; when he died two years ago, eulogists stressed his saintly side. Now that his celebrated bus, Further, has long since literally conveyed him to the grave, it's a better time to put Kesey to the moral acid test: He belongs to the ages, not his mourners, and this winter marks his literary last stand. . . . When Kesey forsook literature in 1964 to become a man of letters - LSD - did he blow it? Or did he ignite a refining fire that still burns bright at the heart of every rave in America? Did drugs make him, or undo him? Was Cowley right to believe it would've been better had Kesey just said no to the Bus, shackled himself to his typewriter, batted out more books, and steered clear of public acts of shameless shaman magic? . . . "Being shackled to anything, even a typewriter, just wasn't in Ken's nature," McClanahan opines. "The stage and magic, on the other hand, were very much in his nature." . . . In Stone's book, the Kesey character's apostate apostle calls his ambitious acid crusade "a flash" - the slang term for an LSD trip, which he considers a meaningless cultural flash in the pan. "It was our responsibility," retorts the Kesey character. "We should've stayed with that flash forever." . . . Why didn't Kesey nab that award with his own work? He stayed with that flash forever - lived the high life. "He let the Merry Prankster persona swallow everything else, let it take over and cannibalize his role as a writer," says David O. Weddle, who covered Kesey for Rolling Stone. "His life is a cautionary, perhaps even tragic, tale of the cost of celebrity and catastrophe of success for American artists. But in classic tragedy, the fall from grace throws into relief the magnificence of the hero's achievements." Kesey might argue that taking the plunge was his achievement. "Ken had a little joke," writes Stone, "a little jingle on himself. He said, 'Of offering more than what I can deliver, I have a bad habit, it's true./But I have to offer more than what I can deliver, to be able to deliver what I do.'" . . . Kesey was always more skeptical and self-critical than peers like Allen Ginsberg and the jaunty fraud and admanlike hack Tim Leary. At least Kesey never OD'd on ego. . . . Forester says writing a novel with Kesey was serious fun, anyhow. "I mean, the class was a party. Being around Kesey was a constant party." The first day of class, Kesey assigned Forester to roll joints for the seminar; one student sparked up and passed out. "Fell to the ground – out cold. One student says, 'Omigosh, is he OK? We should call someone!' Ken just stepped over the body and handed me the joint and just kept talking. Ken said, 'Aw, he'll be OK.'" A couple of minutes later, he was. "The first class, you pass out – how cool was that?" says Forester. . . . But his ultimate enemy was alcohol. "That's the horrible truth, that Ken drank himself to death," says Forester. "Even after he found out he had hepatitis C, he kept drinking. He had diabetes but he kept drinking, and he just wasn't gonna stop. Weddle once asked him, 'Did drugs ruin you?' He said, 'No, I know what's done me harm, and it's not LSD or marijuana, it's too many vodka martinis.' So he was self-aware, unlike most addicts." . . . In the end, it's crucial to consider Kesey's work in terms of its influence on people, because he was essentially social, a performer who could not long endure the solitary writer's life. No doubt the reality-scrambling potations he touted did harm to some, but his imagination could also rescramble reality for the better. One Oregon mental patient reportedly lost his Billy Bibbit-like crippling stutter as a result of the inspirational effect of working on the Cuckoo's Nest film. Paul McCartney says Magical Mystery Tour was inspired by Kesey. His entire life can be seen as the most influential bus ride since Rosa Parks'.

[COMMENT: What I most often remember about Ken Kesey are his hands. They were massive, strong, working-man's hands. This extremely enlightened man was the genuine article. I don't believe there was a phony bone in his body. Although I must admit that it must have taken a lot more endurance to keep up with him than I've ever had :-). The other thing I remember most is when, at the End of the Millennium Mushroom Conference, he had just completed an hour and a half high-speed, high-powered rap about the 60s, and then he paused for a very long moment. Slowly, with the voice and demeanor of an innocent child, he said, "And then it all ended when they started arresting us. I still can't understand why they arrested us."

posted by Lorenzo 10:55 PM

 

If you can't get enough of the news, you've got to see BUZZFLASH.COM
Here at Matrix Masters we like to think we are performing a service for our readers by giving brief summaries of news articles with links to the full stories. And, of course, we've got some original content here as well. But when it comes to comprehensive, real-time coverage of the news from a human (as opposed to Bush-like) point of view, you are going to be hard pressed to find a cooler source of good information than BuzzFlash.com. Just click the link above and check them out.

Here is what Jackson Griffith of NewsReview.com has to say about them:
BuzzFlash is Drudge's liberal analogue, and it's especially handy for any Web surfer who believes that most mainstream news providers these days only present a right-wing--or at least a pro-corporate--viewpoint. Also, the site is handy for finding important news items the mainstream media are reporting, but bury at the bottom of page.

To better help our readers pinpoint some hot but under-reported stories, we now have a column on our home page that carries the top 10 BuzzFlash headlines with links to the full stories. We hope you enjoy this new feature.

posted by Lorenzo 8:53 PM

 

Kerry's Dark Cloud
There are many things that bother me about John Kerry. Years ago, when I was a POW activist, I had the unhappy experience of seeing Kerry sweep the entire POW issue under the carpet with his Senate Hearings that continued the government's Big Lie about the fate of the POWs.

Then there is the issue of his Skull n Bones connections with the Bush family and the power brokers behind them. That bothers me as well.

Now there is Kerry's National Security advisor, Rand Beers, who recently left his job as Bush's counter-terrorism advisor. Face it. If Kerry is tapped to replace Bush, the best we can hope for on the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, etc. is for things to get even worse. Take a look at my recent blog, Kerry's National Security Advisor is a Drug War Zealot.

As much as it pains me to say this, perhaps we would be better off with a known quantity of evil in George W. Bush than being put back to sleep thinking Kerry will be any different.

posted by Lorenzo 1:38 PM

26 January 2004

 

Surreal Music at Bush-Cheney 2004 Campaign Rally in New Hampshire
So as to not let the Democrats get all the publicity, the Republicans staged a "campaign rally" in New Hampshire today. Since Bush doesn't have any competition, the regular press was largely absent from the event. Of course, the government's propaganda arm, CSPAN covered this event from beginning to end at taxpayer expense!

What the press missed by not attending this event was the music that the organizers blared through the hall after John McCain finished speaking. The song they played was Bruce Springstein's "Born in the USA." As you know, this isn't a "patriotic" song. It is much more in the line of protest songs such as Woodie Gutherie's "This Land Is My Land."

Born in the USA is a powerful statement about this country's lack of support toward our Vietnam veteran...something then-president Reagan missed entirely.

Here are a few of the lyrics:
...
You end up like a dog that's been beat too much
Till you spend half your life just covering up
...
So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man
...
I had a brother at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They're still there, he's all gone
...
Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I'm ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run ain't got nowhere to go

Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A.

posted by Lorenzo 3:58 PM

22 January 2004

 

BarlowFriendz: John Perry Barlow's Blog
The link above will take you to one of the more interesting blogs on the Web. In case you don't know much about John Perry Barlow, here are a few headlines:

• John Perry Barlow is a retired Wyoming cattle rancher, a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead, and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Since May of 1998, he has been a Fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.


• He co-wrote songs with the Grateful Dead from 1971 until their demise in 1995.


• In 1990 he and Mitchell Kapor founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization which promotes freedom of expression in digital media. He currently serves as its Vice Chairman.


• In 1990, he first applied William Gibson's science fiction term Cyberspace to the already-existing global electronic social space now generally referred to by that name. Until his naming it, it had not been considered any sort of place.


• In recent years, he has devoted much of his time and energy helping to "wire" the Southern Hemisphere to the North and has traveled extensively in Africa. His Wired piece, "Africa Rising" describes the first of these journeys. More recently, he has been working with Brazil's Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil, in an effort to get all of Brazil's music online.

This is a fascinating blog ... check it out.

posted by Lorenzo 9:21 PM

 

The US Is a Business Entity Not a Nation

I just received the following in an email from a friend (thanks Wild Bill!):

Let us not follow vulgar leaders
Who exploit the fear of death,
And promise the bliss of salvation,
If we are truly happy,
They will have nothing to offer.
-- from 365 Tao

I'm also reading Paul Krugmans' The Great Unraveling "It seems clear to me that one should regard America's right-wing movement -- which now in effect controls the administration, both houses of Congress, much of the judiciary, and a good slice of the media -- as a revolutionary power in Kissinger's sense." Krugman then refers to Kissinger’s doctoral dissertation at Harvard in 1957 in which he ". . . describes the problems confronting a heretofore stable diplomatic system when it is faced with a 'revolutionary power' -- a power that does not accept that system's legitimacy"

I see at least two ways to think about this. One way to make sense of what is going on is to view the US as another of the great trading companies (Hudson Bay, East India, etc.), and that this mammoth company (to which we are all enslaved) has just experienced a hostile takeover. Another way to think about what Krugman is pointing out is to think of We the People as the Revolutionary Power that does not accept the legitimacy of the current system. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “A little rebellion now and then ... is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”

posted by Lorenzo 7:52 AM

21 January 2004

 

Observations on Bush's State of the Junta Speech

What struck me the most in watching Bush's performance the last night was that he seemed to have no clue that not only is he the worst president this nation has ever seen, he is also the most reviled man alive on the planet today. It is almost as if he and his cronies are living in one consensual reality and the rest of us are in another.

Now for some thoughts on specific comments Bush made. And please be advised, these are mainly petty, nit-picking comments. Since almost the entire speech he gave was nothing but lies and misrepresentations, it doesn't seem worth the time to point out the obvious to people who are already familiar with what is going on in the world.

Bush used the phrase "military people across the world." While most people say around the world, I guess if you still believe that the world is flat that it is proper to say "across the world." I told you that some of these would be petty. But sometimes petty can be fun :-)

Bush, "We can't turn back to where outlaw regimes could threaten us.' I suppose he's trying to say we should feel safe now that Saddam can't launch a nuclear attack on Chicago in only 45 minutes. Of course, we all know that most of those "outlaw regimes" aren't really threats to the US . . . but then there is always North Korea.

My favorite moment was when Bush said that parts of the Patriot Act would soon expire. Before he could get his next words out, the Democratic side of the house broke out in loud applause. The look on Bush's face just then was priceless. He looked like a deer looking into headlights and wondering why those people weren't following his script. It was the only redeeming feature of the night for me.

Most of the time I felt as if I was watching a bad movie. Each time Bush felt like he delivered a line like he was trained to do he had this little boy smirk on his face, like he was saying, "I nailed the line that time, didn't I daddy?"

One of the most astounding lies of the evening (and one to which almost everyone in the room stood up at applauded) was, "The people of Iraq are free." Can you believe he had the gall to say that. Many thousands of Iraqis are dead because of these people, and the people of Iraq aren't even free to elect their own representatives to a constitutional convention. The people of Iraq are no more free than the people in lands that Rome once conquered.

I wonder if I'm the only one who thought that the service men and women in the audience looked less than enthusiastic about being there. At times when every one else in the room was wildly applauding one of Bush's platitudes these poor service people hardly clapped at all. The expression on their faces spoke volumes. Anyone who has been in the military has seen looks like this before, and they don't reflect the kind of gung ho spirit one would hope their troops would have.

My favorite twist of phrase from Little Bush was when he tried to imply that voting for anyone other than him would send a signal to the "thugs and assassins" that America was weak. I guess that once the Democrats have selected a candidate that Bush will arrest him or her as a terrorist. Don't laugh, it easily could get that crazy if we leave crazy people like Cheney and Bush in power.

And what did you think of the pictures of Cheney, hovering behind Bush as he spoke. To me, Cheney looked like a cross between a vulture and Darth Vader. . . . spooky.

At one point Bush was loudly cheered when he said the US had won a great "victory in Iraq." This was a very surreal moment. All the picture lacked was seeing everyone wearing togas. He then went on to say, "We have no ambitions of empire." I have read that as the year 2004 began, the USA had 725 military bases spread over 120 countries. If you superimpose US corporate power on top of US military power, it is difficult to not see this as the most far-flung empire in history.

At one point, Little Bush used the secret code for his intention to drill for oil in the ANWAR reserve by saying we had to "reduce our dependence on foreign oil." At that moment, the network I was watching cut to a shot of a rather bloated looking Energy Secretary who couldn't hide his joy at the thought of giving permits to his friends to drill on that pristine land, or at least that's what went through my mind at the moment.

I got a real laugh out of his plan to "reduce the deficit by one-half in the next five years." What a joke. Here is a guy who had a surplus when he came into office. Now he claims as an accomplishment that one year after a possible second term the current deficit would only be half of what he's run up so far. Anyone who applauded for that tidbit (and there were many) is simply insane.

By the time he gave his solution for the AIDS crisis (abstinence) I was sick to my stomach and thus missed some of his fundamentalist Christian ranting about amending the Constitution to be sure that gays and lesbians remain second class citizens.

I'll end with one point I can agree with Bush on. He said, "we have shown what kind of nation we are." Sadly, that is true. We the People have allowed this usurper and his cronies to take over our government. They have cleaned out our treasury. They have sent our young men and women to die in a quest for no-bid contracts for their buddies. And they are about to subvert another national election. If there is to be any hope of this nation once again holding its head high we must see that the reins of power are taken away from this dark cabal that has stolen our country. To the Barricades!

posted by Lorenzo 4:16 PM

20 January 2004

 

A Lot of People Must Be Interested in Kerry & Bush's Skull n Bones Connection
For about a year now, we have had a page on this site that provided links and information about John Kerry and George Bush's memebership in the secret Skull n Bones society. Until now that page has only received passing interest, with less than 100 people a month viewing that page. Since last night's results in Iowa, however, we have been getting over 100 unique visitors to that page every hour. . . . I guess some people are beginning to pay attention to the little details now.

posted by Lorenzo 10:08 PM

 

Bertrand Russell on the "Governors of the World"
The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm.
-- Bertrand Russell

posted by Lorenzo 6:00 PM

17 January 2004

 

The Downfall of Civilization
There is perhaps no law written more conspicuously in the teachings of history than that nations who are ruled by priests drawing their authority from supernatural sanctions are, just in the measure that they are so ruled, incapable of true national progress. The free, healthy current of secular life and thought is, in the very nature of things, incompatible with priestly rule. Be the creed what it may, Druidism, Islam, Judiasm, Christianity, or fetichism, a priestly caste claiming authority in temporal affairs by virtue of extra-temporal sanctions is inevitably the enemy of that spirit of criticism, of that influx of new ideas, of that growth of secular thought, of human and rational authority, which are the elementary conditions of national development.
-- T.W. Rolleston, Celtic Myths and Legends

posted by Lorenzo 4:46 PM

 

Maybe it is time to crack our cosmic eggs
. . . Consider this headline after reading the following quote:

A social world view, one shared with other people, is structured from our infant minds by the impingements on us from, and the verifying responses to us by, other people. A mind finds its definition of itself not by confrontation with things so much as other minds. We are shaped by each other. We adjust not to the reality of a world but to the reality of other thinkers. When we have finally persuaded and/or badgered our children into "looking objectively" at their situation, taking into consideration those things other than themselves, we relax since they are being realistic. What we mean is that they have finally begun to mirror our commitments, verify our life investments, and strengthen and preserve the cosmic egg or our culture.
-- Joseph Chilton Pearce, The Crack in the Cosmic Egg

posted by Lorenzo 1:10 PM

15 January 2004

 

Don't miss the story about Israel's murderous attack on the USS Liberty
Finally, a senior US Naval officer has revealed the truth about that infamous attack on the USA by Israel in 1967. Here are a few excerpts:

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's cancellation of the Navy's attempt
to rescue the Liberty, which I personally confirmed from the commanders of
the aircraft carriers America and Saratoga, was the most disgraceful act I
witnessed in my entire military career.

• There is compelling evidence that Israel's attack was a deliberate attempt
  to destroy an American ship and kill her entire crew.


• In attacking the USS Liberty, Israel committed acts of murder against
  U.S. servicemen and an act of war against the United States


• The White House knowingly covered up the facts of this attack from the
  American people.


• The truth continues to be concealed to the present day in what can only
  be termed a national disgrace.

The American people deserve to know the truth about this attack. We must finally
shed some light on one of the blackest pages in American naval history. It
is a duty we owe not only to the brave men of the USS Liberty, but to every
man and woman who is asked to wear the uniform of the United States.

posted by Lorenzo 8:44 PM

 

Thought for the day
The only knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.
-- Tolstoy

posted by Lorenzo 4:27 PM

14 January 2004

 

A universe of active intelligence that is transhuman
There was a declension of gnosis that proved to me in a moment that right here and now, one quanta away, there is raging a universe of active intelligence that is transhuman, hyperdimensional, and extremely alien.

I call it the Logos, and I make no judgment about it. I constantly engage it in dialogue, saying, "Well, what are you? Are you some kind of diffuse consciousness that is in the ecosystem of the earth? Are you a god or an extraterrestrial? Show me what you know."
-- Terence McKenna The Archaic Revival

posted by Lorenzo 7:53 PM

 

What Is Frogwood?
If you are looking for a really cool place to stay in the woods, you might want to check out Frogwood. It's run by a good friend of mine and comes highly recommended. Here are a few of their testimonials:
"This Frogwood place is clearly magical. The land has an ability to heal and to inspire. The trees are stunning. The comfortable cabins are perfect for the forest-living experience that Frogwood is all about. We will be back many times."
-S.L. San Francisco

"We need to get out of stuffy warehouses in crime-ridden neighborhoods and unfold in exquisite surroundings. I believe Frogwood is perfectly situated to be the ultimate chill space on the west coast...Breitenbush meets Burning Man."
-Bruce Pavitt, Founder of Sub-Pop Records, Seattle

"Frog people- I thank you a million times for the quiet stay at Frogwood Retreat. I needed some alone time and a re-connection with nature. The woods and the cabin were the perfect treatment."
-Monkito, Bay Area

"I always sleep very soundly and sweetly when I am at Frogwood. It's
very sweet and peaceful there somehow."
-J.R. , Veteran Sleeper

posted by Lorenzo 6:57 PM

 

Thought for the day
I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at the peril of being judged not to have lived.
--- Oliver Wendell Holmes

[COMMENT: Be careful how you judge people under that dictum. For example, I'd judge a person who is living a peaceful life in the country, out of the mainstream of current events, to be living perfectly within the "passion" of these times and thus is living quite large.]

posted by Lorenzo 3:59 PM

13 January 2004

 

Thought for the day
Those who become young late in life, stay young longer.
-- Victor Hugo

posted by Lorenzo 1:18 PM