My family in a nutshell

"... who present without modification, year after year, the spectacle of their odd and unaccountable habits, which they always imagine themselves to be on the point of shaking off, but which they always retain to the end; caught in the treadmill of their own maladies and eccentricities, their futile endeavours to escape serve only to actuate its mechanism, to keep in motion the clockwork of their strange, ineluctable, fatal daily round."

--Marcel Proust,  Du cote de chez Swann, translated by Moncrieff

"Of all things I have loved and lost, I miss my mind the most."

I started blogging in 2005 as it seemed the next interesting step from having a homepage.
I thought it would be cool to show off what I was doing, brag about my accomplishments and interact with strangers. This was, of course, back when meeting strangers was interesting, and not a masochist exercise in dodging shitheads and rage monkeys. (Parenthetically now, I have a new respect for women on dating apps having to deal with dick pics)
And the thing about constantly dodging a barrage of feces and dicks?  Makes it difficult to think about anything else: now all I ever want to do is complain.

Up until then, the Internet had been a continuous stream of meeting interesting people! People all over the world! Describing the things I do, and talking about the things I thought about seemed like fun!

That is not the case now.

Some of the things I might have talked about became self-censored. As anonymity evaporated, posts became increasingly PR oriented.  Bland, flavorless pap.

Think about it! 

Do you want your boss reading about how you blew all the windows out of a 1980 Pinto using a device made from electrical junk and a wading pool?
Do you want your dating pool to shrink because you wrote ten thousand words on your comfort food activity of watching 'William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet' and 'The Crow' back to back while eating popcorn soaked with maple syrup?
Do you want your mother's hoity-toity friend to get bent IRL because you verbally crushed her son in a IRC argument over Gillain Anderson Nude fakes?

Well, no.

I have argued before that networks- and information - is more valuable when scarce. I don't have the chops to chase that intuition down and quantify it, but while I think the early Internet had better, sparser, links, the new tightly webbed one is less desirable in a lot of ways.*

Analytics.
I don't care if Zuckerberg knows I have a poor regard for him** , but I do care if Youtube thinks its a good idea to suggest a constant stream of anti-feminist, gun-worship or pro-bigot videos. Something in my patchwork of interests provokes this. I don't know what: amateur chemistry, watching 'Forgotten Weapons', researching UFOs.***

But I am tired of it.
The world is full of poorly made, over-hyped 'algorithms', and the more in their databases the worse they seem to get. Show me videos that a well-read middle aged guy with a interest in science and weird tales would like, and I'd be happy.
So presenting lots of data isn't improving my experience, and the Net just seems like a more horrible and toxic thing every day.

I understand there is a lot of things that can be done to rebuild anonymity. But there is a lot of really well paid or really well motivated people hammering away at that. Criminals. Dictators. Corporations. We are plankton to those Leviathans**** , and how much of my life and time do I want to burn trying to become unpalatable?

Its easier just to dodge the baleen by growing legs and crawling up on the shore.

Today I looked at my bannerhead and realized I wasn't writing about any of the above.
I realized every time I started to write something, (and there are many aborted drafts) it was just a whiny screed about how things were all shite, and that is what even this post is becoming too.

So on occasion, if I want to write and publish something, I will do it with a one-time, throw-away blog or forum post. I will tag it under 'Radiopsychedelica' which still seems to be a rare enough search term to be useful. I won't delete this blog because I have a natural archivists abhorrence of words vanishing, even poor words.

 "And it shall be, when thou hast made an end of reading this book, that thou shalt bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of Euphrates:"  is not my style, thanks. 

 

So after much consideration,

This blog is closed.

*Marshall Mcluhan remarked on the institution of a Global Village, but never carried on to point out that in a village everyone knows everything about everyone, and only conformity is possible.


**Whereas I think Elon Musk wants to be Tony Stark, but is at best Justin Hammer.*****

***I really can't imagine what I did to get the constant stream of 'X but every time Y it speeds up' and 'White guy speaks Chinese' videos.

****Yes, that is a Hobbes reference.

*****You want to argue this? Really? Why don't we just fact-check what Musk has actually done himself and not just paid somebody to do and compare that to a fictional character.  And then, get a life. Both of us. This is EXACTLY WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE INTERNET.

Hexagramagons

I Ching hexagrams can be drawn as hexagons, with the edges marked with broken and unbroken bars : Hexagramagons


This would give a couple of interesting actions.
The first is that a surface can be tiled with hexagramagons. Matching broken to broken edge, or matching broken to solid edge would give two different tilings. Not sure yet if either tiling is complete in that every hexagramagon can be used, and further more, I do not know if a possible tiling is the complete surface of a 64 facet solid is possible. Hell, I am not even sure if there is a 64-facet solid with hexagon facets.

But before we get sucked into solid geometry, consider this: each hexagramagon can be rotated. And when it rotates, it can become another, different, hexagram.
With the exception of hexagram 1 and 2, which rotate only into themselves, the following chains exist:

000001<> 000010<>000100<> 001000 <> 010000 <>100000

000011<>000110<>001100 <>011000 <>110000 <>100001

000101<>001010<>010100 <>101000 <>010001 <>100010

000111<>001110<>011100 <>111000 <>110001 <>100011

001011<>010110<>101100 <>011001 <>110010 <>100101

001101<>011010<>110100 <>101001 <>010011 <>100110

001111<>011110<>111100 <>111001 <>110011 <>100111

010111<>101110<>011101 <>111010 <>110101 <>101011

011111<>111110<>111101 <>111011 <>110111 <>101111

001001 <>010010 <>100100

011011 <>110110 <>101101

010101 <>101010

111111

000000

The groups of six makes sense, because a hexagon has 6-fold rotational symmetry anyways.
It is the two groups of three and the one group of two that seem jarring.
Note that every hexagram is represented here, with no repetitions.

This gives some new oracular interpretive patterns. For instance, this implies hexagram 51 ('Shake', or 'thunder') is connected to 29('The Gorge' or 'The Abyss') and to 52 ('Bound' or 'Stillness').
For me, that combination immediately makes me think of Dante's Inferno, and Lucifer Morningstar.

All grist for the mill: forcing apophenia to discover that which might never have been thought of under normal conditions.

The next step is to construct a set of hexagramagon tiles to see what patterns may be laid out.

"What is Man, that thou should magnify him? And that thou should set thine heart upon him?"

' "...You think it'll be like that?"

"Don't you? You were there; you saw what's happening. The barbarians are rising; they have a leader, and they're uniting. Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don't understand civilization, and wouldn't like it if they did. The hitchhikers. The people who create nothing, and who don't appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civilization is something that just exists and that all they need to do is enjoy what they can understand of it--luxuries, a high living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have a government for?"
 "...You know why? Our rulers are the barbarians among us. There isn't one of them ... who is devoted to civilization or anything else outside himself, and that's the mark of the barbarian." 

"What are you devoted to, Otto?" "You. You are my chieftain. That's another mark of the barbarian." '

---H. Beam Piper Space Viking

...Not really taken to far out of context, even if I do say so myself.

"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value." ---Arthur C Clarke.

Do not quench the spirit

"...When many of the best minds in machine learning have decided that the most existential threat to civilization is the rise of Skynet, we have had a major failure of group think. Many ML researchers are more concerned with trying to bring about The Singularity, than in solving real problems."

--Ben Recht

Well said, sir. Well said. Too bad that it was phrased during a testing of faith, as it were, but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.

 

The Hidden Testament.

"He lived with regret at his own table– for his own sake have mercy upon him."

---Tolstoyish

The universe surrounds us with its laws and notions, and in many cases it takes a clever and discerning mind to tease Nature's ways out into the light where they can be clearly seen.

Perhaps there exists in potentia the Greatest Book, the Ultimate Bible, the Definitive Word the way that the fabulous kingdom of Amber hides within its endless reflected and distorted images.

Hidden deep within the enormous library of possible books, then could be the ur-Book. What can not be found by logic might be stumbled upon by oracles, and as such, the algorithmic  genii may as yet prove fruitful.

"The book had produced. Night was disturbed by the words to avert the latter, and hope, I not suppose, the pathless seas, and from my solitary isle like abhorred."

--Schmipsum

Of course, this is just a expansion of my favorite hobby. Considering the Doc Savage Canon as if it is reflections of real events is walking the thin edge of paranoia and conspiracy. I always feel the classic example of this is the Holy Blood/Holy Grail madness, crowned by Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum*  Its a hobby that is given an extra thrill by the possibility that at some point  I will become convinced by my own research that Clark Savage was real, and at that point will become irretrievably mad.

The Insane Gods of Chaos are sprung, like all Gods, from our foreheads, after all. Using software Markov Generators and Completion Anticipators ups the game, improves the  mirror we gesticulate in front of.

 Now its time to start running these programs upon the Canon, and see if we can shake out new adventures from the echos of the Ultimate Book.

"I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock."

 --Edgar Allen Poe

*Proving yet again that a intelligent academic can exceed any madman's excesses.

The Color of Mirrors, the Color of Madness

If the proper study of Man is Man than the Tunnel of Mirrors awaits.

The deformed Elephant God of Val Yu Village

 Ia! Ia! Cthulu fthagn!

Note the fleshy sucker like mouth at the end of the tentacle like snout; the ribby swept back 'ears', the reddish baleful eyes. The ringed lichen-like spots and the shiny black hooves complete the unearthly appearance of this strange small, crudely ( could we say devolved?) sculpture...

One of the great treats of junk shops is old books, and one of the greatest pleasures of old books is references to even older books.
I found a copy of Willy Leys book on cryptobiology - printed before the term even became fashionable, or possibly even coined.
Flipping it open, I immediately found the following footnote:

"'Another one, hardly known to naturalists, is described in an interesting book which privately printed in 1858. Its author was one Dr. L. Lewysohn, who called himself "Preacher of the Isrealitic Congregation of Worms." The title of the book is Zoologie des Talmuds (Zoology of the Talmud)..."

My practical side assumes them mean the city Worms, but its a pretty marvellous title to a English speaker.
'Prediger der israelitischen Gemeinde von Worms'?

Amazon claims I can buy a copy, but Amazon claims that of all apocrypha, and I haven't 85 pounds to spare in testing the theory.

I also found a copy of  ' The Frozen Stream, An Account Of The Formation And Properties Of Ice'  by Charles Tomlinson,  published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. It has some fascinating anecdotes concerning fabulous cold:

'In St Petersburg...Every one is very uneasy about his nose and ears which are very apt to get frozen; and as the sufferer is not aware of his danger by any previous uncomfortable sensation, the first person in the street who observes a nose putting on the appearance of white marble,  exclaims "Sir! sir! Your nose! Your nose!" and taking up a handful of snow, applies it to the strangers face and endeavors , by briskly rubbing, to restore the circulation. these are salutations which people of accustomed to in such climates, and by which thousands of these valued organs are saved from the clutches of the frost.' (emphasis mine.)

"The bodies of whales have been found embedded in icebergs..."

Bizarrely, the chapters on refrigeration and ice making are practical and accurate, as well as his adventures on the Saint John River during the Canadian winter. Its the mundane chapters that make the seasoning of madness more piquant: in what mind could the salutation of  "Сэр! сэр! Ваш нос! Ваш нос!" followed by a face full of snow seem reasonable?

As always, my reason staggers.


 

"At first I thought we were in the hands of people that would understand..."

Frankenstein's Island(1981).

I am still not sure if this mesh of intriguing ideas filmed through the lens of insanity is supposed to be a comedy, or merely a director's personal fantasy about a island of girls wearing leopard print bikinis.
Who are supposed to be the barbarian survivors of a pre-historic, yet alien race.
Why do they do nothing but smoke  from modified human skulls, pray to the ghost of Doctor Frankenstein, and initiate each other by stretching themselves between trees?
Why is one of the alien women not a alien woman, but a human girl, daughter of the caged and raving blood-donor?
Why are they wearing leopardskin swimwear?
Why is Frankenstein's ghost raving about the power of the thread of gold?
 Why is the lab decked out with more high voltage equipment than any three mad scientist's labs -- but includes a ammo tin, spray painted pink , and whirling balanced on one corner?

This has the worst Frankenstein's Monster I have ever seen. Really. To the Stiff Servo Effect we can add the Fly Combat Combo. Or musical sound effects. Seriously, he's lurching so hard in some scenes that it looks like he's dancing to the Monster Mash.


I could go on like this for an hour.


In what world do Colonels of the American armed Forces wear baggy dark-brown jumpsuits?
 In this movie's world. In  this movie all cinematic normality is overturned. This film could b e a dadaist masterpiece, and may indeed be a hidden and unknown one.
The deliberate lack of action, followed by the epic brawl through the laboratory. The camera pausing part way through its exploration of writhing semi-naked female 'warriors' and their turtle-neck clad, sunglasses-wearing zombie enemy, (each of whom stand and walk as though their testicles ache unbearably), to watch the plucky terrier enter the battle, bark merrily and flee again.


"Those logs are tangible...rooted to the ground."

I'm willing to bet that the producers laid their hands on some footage of John Carradine...perhaps a minutes worth of film stock, something that was thrown out because Carradine looks like he'd died and was being animated by strings. They use the footage to put his name on the billing.
Its a transparent con, but still, the image of a hologram of John Carradine being worshipped by nearly naked dope bunnys on a far-away jungle island is strangely compelling.

The movie's refusal to be exciting, or to explain anything, is hypnotically tantalizing. Its like watching a strip tease where the dancer keeps shimmying and wiggling and discarding clothes only to reveal more layers of inexplicable raiment; the creeping madness kept in check by the banality of set and actions; the dialogue drifting in and out of sense like the rambling of a schizophrenic , or trying to read a newspaper in Cyrillic....

"Doctor Frankenstein, before he died, perfected a very startling theory which utilizes a intermediary - a human brain which is the connecting link for transnmission"
"the brain is kept alive by---low voltage?"
"its staying in  an expanded threshold - a super nourished state"

Thank you Madame Exposition, everything is clear, now. But why does the One Eyed Man laugh?

Another taste of the Mandible

Early morning. Pre-caffination. My parieto-temporal and inferior frontal gyrus regions froze trying to read this phrase:

"On the other hand, the idea of attaining the cycle lifting of voltage waveform by bringing into use microcontroller which is of 8051 family can be extremely exact as per the plan engraved in assembly or C language so that the real time average voltage or electric current practiced at the load is fairly lesser than the entire signal if functional to the load."

This is almost poetry.

"On the other hand, the idea,

   of attaining the cycle lifting waveform 

           by bringing into use 

   be extremely exact as per the plan
           so that 

   the real time electric

  practiced at the load 

  is fairly lesser than 

  signal."

Perhaps I have the making of a book of found poetry here. I dredge the Internet for the almost Markov-chain output of humans and then parse and edit according to strict rules.

The work above was created by 'delete-only, but layout freely'.

Other rules might be 'add particles: "the, and. a, or, it, is" ', or 'cut/paste phrase'.

The key is minimal transmogrification, because I'm trying to reveal the natural beauty of these lunatic paragraphs. The title has , of course, already been found: 'Who Defrays the Mandible.'

Coming soon to Lulu.com, and God Have Mercy On Our Souls (because we sure as hell can't stop this train wreck)

Cue a mix of 'U Can't Touch This' and 'Please Don't Stop The Music'

By the Hand of Saint Markov

Years ago we were gifted with the Revelations of Alice.
Mystery dogged our days, and we prayed for further wisdom from the pure madness of the machines.
At last, our prayers have been answered, and fresh prophecy revealed via the hand of Charles Stross:

lovebible 

 " It spread over it a robber, a shedder of blood, when I listened with mad intentness. "

 

"...I'm dying with sleep"

Count Dracula's Great Love(1973) "El gran amor del conde Drácula"

"And believe me, I can assure you..." ...That this movie would make more sense if watched backwards. It certainly could not make less.

Seeing as the copy I watched had been converted from 1.85 : 1 aspect ratio by clipping the sides, 'JANUS FILMS' became 'ANUS FILMS' which was the first warning sign that I had once again been slipped the red and blue pill at once, and madness was to be my evenings companion.*

Emory Exposition and his traveling companions (The Southern Belle, the Sexy Governess, Strawberry and Blueberry Shortcake**)
Suffer an vanishing stagecoach wheel while traveling through the Dread Gorgo Pass on route to the abandoned sanatorium built at Count Dracula's Lair.

I am prepared to award bonus points for the actress flexing her nostrils during the blood sucking vampire/lesbian interlude, but I'll have to take the points away again for the idiotic whipping scene, and the on-again-off-again approach to nudity that only makes sense when you realize they shot the film so that all the titty clips could be pulled out and the movie would still work.
Well, they failed. Censored or not censored, this was one of those movies where you sink into a dull lassitude while watching, vaguely irritated that you can't make sense of any part of what you are watching, nipples or no.

The movie might have been better if it had had a guidebook, explaining what the hell was actually the point.
"Because the power of the unknown goes beyond death..." I hate to think this is so, because that means I'm never going to get any kind of understanding of this movie.
 Its not like Troll  2 where the filmmakers had no idea what they are doing,its more like Javier Aguirre was possessed by Philip K Dick, and  set out to frustrate understanding at every turn.

Giving  the illusion of explication by overdubbing monologue at random points was clever, and actually left me more confused than if I'd just watched the movie with the sound turned off.
Typical echo-chamber pronouncement:  
"The blood of the girl that loved the prince of darkness, and the blood of the virgin that has been tortured will be mixed together, thereby creating a new physical body for his daughter..."

Why do the vampire trio rise with gaping mouths to greet the light? Are they hungry baby birds?
I like the idea of Dracula surrounding his castle with beartraps to snare fresh prey, but wouldn't the peasants clue in on this eventually?
Being  vampiric seems to mean walking around slowly with your mouth open and never blinking:
I was waiting for 'Wendell' or anyone, really, to say 'Blah'.
Why does Dracula/Wendell talk in the third person? Why does he talk all?

The madness extends to the Wikipedia entry!
The plot description includes this gem:

'...Then he seduces all of the girls but Karen. And he then turns them and then chains them in his dungeon. And he makes them die by making be in the sun. then he goes and seduces Karen and then he knows he has finally found love. He the tells Karen that he loves her and he can`t let her be what he is. So he stakes himself and before he dies he says "Karen".'

I'm sorry, Wikipedia contributor, that is actually too coherent to be accurate. I'm also intrigued by your phrase '...by making be in the sun.'

All in all, this one is a treasure of madness, and one I will watch again.



*With movies like these, who needs drugs?

** The characters,not the confections (And yes, I know there is no Blueberry Shortcake character, but there should be, the same way there should be a Castle Grayskull Polly Pocket Edition.)