Monthly Archives: June 2012

enlightenment

dualism

the fundamental basic for most people is dualism: the concept of light/dark, up/down, good/bad, male/female, and so forth. it is what is visible, obvious, and logical to even the most uneducated person.

but dualism can only get you so far. if you realise that God exists beyond the distinctions of dualism, it becomes a lot easier to understand why miracles, or disasters happen: because, to God, it doesn’t matter whether what Xe is giving us is good or bad, to God, it’s all experience.

i’ve seen a couple of news articles within the past couple of days that really exemplify the way people are stuck on duality recently: news articles in which the “answer to all their problems” involved people seeing beyond duality, which, of course, nobody realised. i thought about bookmarking them a couple of days ago, in preparation for writing this post, but i didn’t, and now they’re lost. so it goes.

it just makes me think of how much i am like the guy in When The Waters Changed, except that, at least so far, i am not interested in drinking any of the new water. i’m perfectly satisfied with people thinking i am a madman, because i know The Truth.

links, rants

we’re in trouble…

In Artificial Intelligence Breakthrough, Google Computers Teach Themselves To Spot Cats on YouTube and Janken (rock-paper-scissors) Robot with 100% winning rate – people gave computers these skills because they thought it would be "amusing" to see a computer doing them, but what they don’t realise is that, once the computer realises it has these skills, my guess is that it won’t be too long before we’re their slaves, providing raw materials for their batteries… 😛

tuba

degrees of separation

Hokum W. Jeebs was a friend of mine, who was murdered some time ago. through my relationship with him, and through my relationship with thaddeus, from whom i recieved hokum’s C tuba, i now have a direct relationship with the Bohemian Grove, in monte rio, california.

i don’t know anything about why i have that relationship, or what it means (if anything) to me, but i just realised that the tuba case i got, when i got the tuba, has a shipping label on it, that says “Bohemian Grove, Monte Rio, California – Mr. Stabile”… well, “Mr. Stabile” was hokum’s “mundane” name, and if i’m not mistaken, the bohemian grove is the “oregon country fair” of the male, obscenely rich and powerful of the world…

wow!

swastikas

‘World Swastika Rehabilitation Day’ is June 23

swastika shatkona

Swastika Day

Raelians have invited Buddhists, Hindus and the numerous spiritual groups who use the swastika as their spiritual symbol to stand up and show their support for the third annual Swastika Rehabilitation Day, to be held June 23 in cities around the world.

The swastika has been a symbol of peace and good luck in many Eastern religions and can be found on religious monuments and scriptures on every continent. It is also part of the spiritual symbol of the Raelian Movement.

Rael, the Movement’s spiritual leader, has explained the recurrent presence of the swastika as the symbol of the advanced scientists who created all forms of life on Earth and guided humanity with the teachings of peace and love that are at the origin of all religions.

“The swastika is one of the best traces left by those who created us, and the attempt to bury it as a symbol of violence and hatred only gives credit to the horrible Nazi ideology,” said Thomas Kaenzig, coordinator of World Swastika Rehabilitation Day. “Demystifying the original meaning of this beautiful symbol is the only solution,” he explained. “We can’t accept the fact that the swastika is still being hijacked, just as Christians wouldn’t accept that the Christian cross was used to represent the ideology of the Ku Klux Klan. Images of swastikas within synagogues and various other ancient sites in Israel have also helped people of Jewish origin to recognize the importance of this rehabilitation day.”

Kaenzig said it’s time to educate the public and rehabilitate what Raelians consider to be the most important symbol for humanity. He added that this year’s world demonstration will include flying large swastika banners in the skies of several U.S. cities and presenting street swastika animations in Karlsruhe, Germany, and in Tel Aviv, Israel.

diwali swastika flower rangoli

miscellaneous

i ordered a gerard hoffnung

i ordered a gerard hoffnung CD more than a week ago, and it hasn’t arrived yet. i feel like i should give them a little leeway, since the place i ordered it from is in england, but at the same time, i ship things to england on a pretty regular basis, and it’s my impression that it takes less than a week… but i could just be paranoid, as well, because i’m paranoid, and it is a gerard hoffnung CD, after all…

some alien being has eaten my father and replaced him with an exact clone that has a human brain. it’s uncanny.

snake suspenderz went busking today. we played for around 2 hours and made $12.50 apiece, which is better than nothing, but could be a great deal more without any difficulty at all.

genealogy

interesting…

my father has A TON of cousins. my grandfather had six full sisters and brothers, and one half-sister, and they ALL had children, and their children had children…

the problem is that, because of the fact that my father never took any interest, and my grandfather wasn’t very informative about his family, I know absolutely nothing about any of these people. i’ve managed to trace the family back to warrensburg, missouri, where i figure about one in every three people is related to me in some way or another, but what information i have has been acquired through cunning and skill, and not because somebody told me, or because i grew up with these people.

but the fact is, that my grandfather had a whole bunch of brothers and sisters, and i’ve been cunning and skillful enough (and enough of a computer geek) to make contact with the daughter of one of my great-uncles, which makes her my “first cousin once removed” — i’ll get the hang of figuring out what “removed” means eventually.

because of the fact that my grandfather was closed-mouthed about his family, my father doesn’t even know who she is… people who one used to “grow up with”, back when families were extended and all lived in more-or-less the same community, are now spread out all over the planet, and you can very easily lose track of people, especially when you aren’t paying attention.

ganesha the car, ocf, SACBO, snake suspenderz / alive

interesting

i recently found out that the person known as John Michael Greer, the Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America, and reputed to be one of 21st Century America’s most noted occultists, is the same john michael greer with whom i went to college, between 1979 and 1981. i wonder if the way i feel about this is anything like the people who were personal friends of aleister crowley felt… i wonder if it’s even appropriate to feel this way.

snake suspenderz has a gig this evening at the horizon house, which is the same place that my elderly, brain injured client lives. i haven’t heard anything from him since a couple of months ago, when there was a problem with his power supply that turned out to be a motherboard issue, and then i stopped hearing from him… so i don’t know whether he got another computer, or what, but he doesn’t know that i’m going to be playing music there this evening, so things might get a little “interesting”…

SACBO is saturday. snake suspenderz is playing, and i may put some more paint on my car, depending on when snake suspenderz decides to show up, and whether or not the weather coöperates. the weather is supposed to clear up tomorrow, so i may paint some more tomorrow, as well.

moe needs my help trimming sheep feet tomorrow… trimming sheep feet? and i’m supposed to be holding the sheep, while she trims their feet… we’ll see how that goes. 😉

snake suspenderz has two gigs on sunday. we play in the early afternoon at the burien wild strawberry festival (which i attended with an art-car caravan, a few years ago, and was witness to the guy selling gold jewelry next to my car getting ripped off by a pre-teenaged doodlehum), and then, in the evening, we play at the can-can, along with the Wanderlust Circus, featuring my friend noah, from portland.

OCF is looming, and we haven’t had even one rehearsal. i don’t even know what play we’re doing… the princess and the pea? rapunzel? rumplestiltskin? a mash-up? this is definitely going to be an interesting year…

ganesha the car

finally

i now, officially, have enough “art” on my car to make it acceptible for the seattle art-car blow-out…

which is to say, two lines of sanskrit down the passenger side.

i hope to have more, but it’s all dependent on the weather. the weather was nice today, but i had a whole bunch of preparation to do, so i didn’t actually get to painting the car until around 2:00… but still, i finished up about sunset, which (today) was around 9:30… which is why there are no pictures. there will be pictures tomorrow. there should be more paint tomorrow, as well, but it’s all dependent on the weather. 😛

i am a terrorist

hrumph!

i realise that it’s mildly amusing, but i wonder, with all of the truly awful things that are happening in the world these days, why the “dutch guy whose cat was killed by a car, so he had it stuffed and turned it into a remote-control helicopter” story is anything like the number one story that it has been for the past few days…

seriously, i’ve seen more-or-less consistent variations of the story everywhere from the LA times, to the London Daily Mail, to ChristWire, and everywhere (almost literally) in between…

come on, humans… aren’t there more important things to which we should be paying attention? 😐

bbwp

fire show 120602

well, the fire show at reed was fun, but it very definitely was NOT the show that we rehearsed… 😐

apparently chris massively overestimated the influence excercised by the people who were organising this whole shindig (it was definitely complicated by the modern version of HIF), combined with the fact that almost everything that we were going to do is either prohibited unless you have a permit from the fire marshall, or outright illegal… thus, no pyro, no dust effects (fire cyclone, playing with fire), and no gas cannons… and, it turns out that even big bois with poise is only marginally legal, because apparently portland has a law that has been in effect since 2001 (which was well before we performed there, without any problems at all, a few years ago) which states that the legal limit is 2 fire performers on stage at the same time…

but the majority of the audience didn’t know what we were going to be performing anyway, so we pressed on in spite of the fact that we didn’t get our pyro permit.

and macque has a professional relationship with the very laid-back, closet pyromaniac, fire marshall, who “inspected” our gear — in reality, he actually said we were supposed to inspect the gear — and basically said that he would be in the audience, watching, which macque said was “inspector speak” for “i’m not going to be here, so don’t fuck up.”

it started out with an impressive 15-minute fireworks display shot by the innocuously-named western display (which had a permit for pyro) that included at least two shots which resulted in a lot of yelling and scurrying around by various “professional” fire-safety guys… seriously, we didn’t have as many, or as spectacular mistakes as they did. and then we did 3 comets, one with steel wool (which burned out in a minute or so) and two sage/cedar comets that burned for 10 minutes — which was a lot longer than we expected. then there was an “interpretive dance” with sparklers, by Remedios Rapoport, who is someone i know, vaguely, through the chautauqua. we finished off with a full performance of big bois with poise — the one we did for AGT was only 90 seconds, this one had four verses and full costumes (i.e. flaming boobs), and a MUCH more positive reaction from the audience.

so, it was fun, and it definitely put me in a different state of mind than i would have been in if i had not gone.

dead people, snake suspenderz / alive

dammit drew…

schmootzi, joe, and three other people were shot and killed at cafe racer on wednesday.

snake suspenderz was supposed to play at cafe racer this evening… apparently thad has put in a call, but has no response.

which is not particularly surprising, all things considered…

the problem is that i’m a fair distance away, and don’t really want to venture out unless i know there is something happening this evening, because i’ve got to drive to portland and help put on a show tomorrow, for which we have not got the proper permits… 😐

why couldn’t you have chosen some other place and/or time to get killed? 🙁