Google's New Favicon.

I see that Google has a snazzy new favicon. If you don't know what a favicon is, it's the miniature (16x16 pixels to be precise), customizable logo right in front of the site name in your bookmarks (favorites), or along the bookmark toolbar above the main window if you use that. Even shortcuts from the Windows quick-launch area if you use that! Not sure about the docks in OS X or Vista - whether they use the custom site icon or the generic browser icon.

"Fav(orites)icon" - Get it?

Anyways, it looks like this (old and new comparison):

Much more modern aesthetic (some would even say Apple-esque) than the old ugly-but-trusty icon, though it now no longer dovetails in with Google's logo and homely-but-friendly home page aesthetic. I wonder: Is this a sign of bigger changes to come regarding Google's branding design? Note the other "Google sites" of importance - Gmail, Docs, Groups, Calendar, Picasa, and so on - all have their own unique favicons as well. These are nothing new, but the look of the main homepage and its icon is the company's most identifiable asset, like Mickey Mouse for Disney or the bitten Apple for, er, Apple. Or the big steaming turd for Microsoft.

Ok, so this was one of the more pointless blog entries I've done. Hey, I'm only human. Besides, as an amateur graphic designer and typographer, I notice these things.

Dark shines a light on the light.

I am currently listening to extremely dark music that is intelligent and contains a lucid philosophy or style-mode which sets it apart from the typical brainless metal/goth/industrial and what have you. To wit: Coil, Tool, A Perfect Circle, Swans, Nine Inch Nails, Joy Division, Nico, Einstürzende Neubauten and onwards into the ever-downward spiral. Rather than being a way of keeping myself down, as it might seem, it is a comfort to me that there are other intelligent beings on this earth who see beauty in sadness as the balance to emptiness in joy, and do not shy away from profound philosophical questions in their music. Compare this to most bands who get airplay now, even so-called alternative fare soothingly wafting around the comfy chairs at Starbucks, and you'll see what I mean. I'm not one to shy away from much (except mind-altering drugs which in your opinion may be my fatal flaw or an acceptable stance given my history with them, even as determined as I was to have a transcendently positive experience). Peering over that edge seems to be built into my essential humours (we now call them genes) and no matter what kind of noble life I try to lead, and show decency to others, I fall under the inescapable curse of my very nature again and again.

In trying to understand this, I am trying to understand my allure to the existentialist, even nihilistic side of music and poetry. I think I've moved beyond the age of glamorizing it, thinking it's cool to be dark, or of thinking it's something which is wholly compatible with self-growth or life in general. It explains life, but like an acid released when the scroll is read, it destroys it too. Nevertheless I will never be satisfied with insubstantial pop or feel-good folk, country, or pub-rock (usually rife with covers tracks) that infest the world from Coldplay on down to David Gray, to cutesy Nashville punsters and who have their stupid material written for them and only provide a voice and a face to the public. People who don't write what they perform and play their own instruments make me angry. There is always time to learn and to become whole. True explorational people (artists we usually call them) extend as far as they can go, into artwork, video, design, installations... always searching for a better way to put across what is in their minds and thus both release the bottled demon and the genie who grants us all our wishes. It is a no-compromise approach to existence, rushed headlong into by the bravest amongst us, the Nick Caves, Ian Curtis's, Michael Giras, Leonard Cohens and many others.

All the rest of music is an exercise in self-congratulations, laziness of intellect, or a desire to find safety inside a created nest, which Buddhism points out is a false safety. Only by constantly exposing yourself to that which you don't understand and oftentimes frightens you will you learn gradually to lose your fear of all things. All people on this earth are human, and so work and play at the level of you and me. They are not demons or angels. What is there to fear from someone who is classified in the same biological taxon as you? Nothing. Other minds may present startling ideas that shake you up and take some time before finding their place in your own world view, and indeed your world view may alter in some ways to accommodate new truths. Traveling - physically or mentally - makes one wiser but less naively happy. Knowledge is the birthright of every being born on this earth, and in the end by knowing all extremes, it begins to become possible to define the topology of not only human consciousness but reality itself. To shun one half for the other leads to false happiness; which is to say, suffering.

And transcending this everyday suffering for a new, holistic and balanced view of nature is a goal of mine, and millions of other searchers besides. I am of the opinion darkness can only exist with light, evil with good, and that these dualities define the endless cycle of being. To cling to one and fear the other gets you nowhere but more and more neurotic. Might as well open your eyes to the truth, because whether you look or not, it's there.

Sade.

The world hasn't heard much from Helen Folasade Adu in recent years. Her last album came out in 2002 and a concert tour followed shortly thereafter. Since then it's been rumored she married a Jamaican man and had a child, but she has not been a public figure.

With one small exception. In recognition of the genocide occurring in Darfur, which was then something many were not aware of, in 2004 she wrote a song called "Mum," which has a title that can be interpreted two ways - it's at once about the recent passing of her mother (and the brief lyrics reflect that), but it also strikes me as meaning the world has kept "mum" about this tragedy in The Sudan. After all, it's only Arabs killing Blacks.

This song was very hard to find for years, I've spent several years myself trying to track it down as it was only played live as part of a benefit concert in 2005 and then including on a benefit album in 2006 along with songs from other artists. And no, it wasn't included on the much-hyped Imagine: The Campaign To Save Darfur album (any "exclusive" regional version), which in the end seemed a very pretentious title for an album and one which put Yoko Ono back in the spotlight for another 15 minutes and made her a lot more money through exposure of a new generation to her husband's work, though the proceeds from the actual benefit albums went somewhere to help Darfur, I guess. Amnesty International? It all faded so quickly here in the West. What was the last anyone heard about that benefit campaign or the people it was supposed to save? Or about the conflict in Darfur at all? No, we're back to watching American Idol after caring briefly.

Anyways, Sade quietly recorded this song and I finally got hold of both the lyrics and a couple of sites hosting a video made for it, though it does not feature the singer herself. It's a simple, haunting, and beautiful song. What else did you expect?

Click here for a bigger, better video clip.

"Mum"

Mum

These eyes, they are the witnesses
They need no other reasons to cry
And now that they are a river
They will never run dry
They cut you down
Now night is endless
And I wait for morning to come
Lying there helpless
You saw me lose you, mum
And you were the strongest tree
Falling, watching me
The cold eyes of hatred showing you no mercy
So in this darkness, the place I dwell
In it is the darkest well
And as my arms begin to mend
They only wish
To hold you again

Fly On The Windscreen.
(Martin L. Gore)

Death is everywhere.
There are flies on the windscreen, for a start.
Reminding us, we could be torn apart.
Tonight.

Death is everywhere.
There are lambs for the slaughter, waiting to die.
And I can sense the hours slipping by.
Tonight.

Death is everywhere.
The more I look, the more I see.
The more I feel a sense of urgency.
Tonight.

Come here.
Kiss me.
Now.

Come here.
Kiss me.
Now.

I have a dream oh
But when will I, when will I
I do have a dream
But oh when will it ever come true?

When will I see her, talk to her
Hear from her more than I do?
When will it be just you and I
And the night sky,
And the good side of life
For me and you?

I have a dream, oh
When will it ever come true?
I just want to be with you.
Don't paint me with a brush
That does me no justice.

(image from Man In The Moon in the public domain)

A Cascade of Flowers

(and other things)

Osiris

This can't be what life's about
I felt that at such an early age
Our modern "progress" feels so empty
Just take a look at spiritual traditions
The Perennial Philosophy of the world
Existing in pockets of peoples not yet indoctrinated
Carved into the stone remnants of those who died out
And you will see a life path more fulfilling
Than computer chips, warheads, and plastic dolls
And landfills as catch-me-alls
You will see mathematical harmony,
Spiritual harmony, emotional tranquility
A teaching of all things commensurate with their worth
Not a jumble of ancestor worship or cults with
Animals headed gods leading legions of delusional souls,
No, it is we who are deluded, and cannot see past pure
Materialism into the heart of the living world.

being cool

high school
never did learn those
social skills
the harder you try the less cool
you are, it's counterintuitive
yet some of the people got it
I had the perfectly cool friend
who seemed well beyond us in age
a splash of european blond hair
always had money in his wallet
field trip, a time
for us to show our individuality
I'm trying too hard as usual
to get the pretty girl,
the smart girl, the girl that has
perfect genes just like him
he's lying back with a stick of
grass in his teeth, she's
asking me about galaxies
but her eyes are elsewhere
I'm auxiliary sort of
like james dean's young greek
foil in rebel without a cause
i say all the right things
to never win anything I am after

NICK CAVE

Stranger Than Kindness.

Stranger than kindness
Bottled light from hotels
Spilling everything
Wet hand from the volcano
Sobers your skin
Stranger than kindness
You caress yourself
And grind my soft cold bones below
Your map of desire
Burned in your flesh
Even a fool can come
A strange lit stair
And find a rope hanging there
Stranger than kindness
Keys rain like heaven's hair
There is no home there is no bread
We sit at the gate and scratch
The gaunt fruit of passion
Dies in the light
Stranger than kindness
Your sleeping hands journey
They loiter
Stranger than kindness
You hold me so carelessly close
Tell me I'm dirty
I'm a stranger...
I'm a stranger...
I'm a stranger... to kindness.

self portrait

Mummy went away.

My dear I don't know what to do.
Every vein was cold and blue, till
Mummy went away,
She went away.

Then the old world came back to play, so tired
was I of this ritualized hell, the same four
walls and ceiling, two cats that cry for feeding
I opened up my bottle by closing the one I was given
and for three or four days descended. Scared but living
and whenever I got most afraid, that's when I became
the most brave; it was magical, it still is
but I'm so cold that I'm burning through my skin
just wanted to feel again, this is so cathartic
crying at every pinprick of emotional garbage
and notes of songs raze the mountains that bound me
and motes of dust blaze like meteors all around me
the wide angled world is so much larger than life
and just a little more than disorienting.
I see endless black voids between my thoughts
where I have to tiptoe lightly, and the lattice
upon which I walk sears stripes of coal and goldleaf into
the bottoms of my feet and I can't hear a drop of sound
without convulsing and sensing the whole of it surround me
breaking me down and then the entire thing pulses
and I'm wound into harsh tears that hurt with such pleasure
something like steel wire and wide open, hopeful eyes
no morphine trance anymore to keep them shut tight
no draperied spaces where I walk - the sun is full
even in the middle of the night, but I'm cold and
I can't stop shaking. Because I'm lucid now, I'm out,
I couldn't have imagined this two days ago
rolling in sweat through several twilights
became the sweetest reality in high def depth
everything was crisp and electrifying and electrocuting
every time I moved I felt the texture of reality flow
with me, and it twisted all that was inside of me into
tears in every case, sometimes jolting and cringing
so fucking afraid, and almost reaching for the opaque
brown bottle to bottle up inside of again, moth-eaten,
but then the light got in, and chords literally shook out
the opening stanzas to the creation of the heavens
and I couldn't remember ever feeling so completely alive
since I was just a child, or maybe in my teenage years
and now I know what wings I had then and how I've faded down
the long slow path to uncaring and plastic-wrapped faces
a gauzy aloofness born from being made out of nothing,
the moon just a flat white ball, the sun just a flat
whiter ball, and the stars splashed onto the flat velvet night
were like distant dreams of faded lights and in any case
no business of mine. I could go back to living like this,
maybe, dearest one, I don't know what the hell to do.
Now I know why drug addicts do what they do,
it's to try to recapture something so on-fire
and so personal and so ineffable, they explode
chasing it straight into the heart of the atom's light
and I've got that pinpoint inside me now, trembling
with Brownian motion, still-captured black and white slides
have leapt into an ocean of color and time has started up again;
when I was five or eighteen or ten, it was like this then
and I don't know how much saltwater two human eyes can
produce within the space of an hour but I'm testing that now
and I can't fathom why people would ever sleepwalk through it
but I'm trying not to think of even thinking to going back to it
and yet I know somehow I'd follow those addicts into
the hellish heart of that sun loving every minute of the pain
if I stay too long for a teeth clenching tan beneath
its living rays, and if man were meant to feel hazy or crazed,
which should it be? I'm still burning with crazy energy
some part knows this is the way life is supposed to be
for those with eyes that see, ears that can move musical
mountains into the deep heart and blast it to pieces and then
put the shattered thing into a shiny toy all over again
and it feels new and hard and polished all over again, and good,
and if I cry, it's cascades of shaking thankfulness for
throwing up all this experience I've woolgathered, locked deep inside
and never let myself ride through with the violence of wind in my face,
never tasted snowflakes. Never laughed so hard with so flimsy
a reason, never trusted myself so much to deal with any
situation, even real fear, never died because dying is a lie they
tell the dying, dear. I'm the grand king of the mountain today
whispers the voice of the Present that's got me moving so fast
to taste everything again and smell divinity in a flower
and to suck cold clean air into my lungs at last!
and hear the brutal power of music stretching on for hours
pushing my sticks and bones around the four corners of this room
which was a sick room, I see that I was living in a place
of great illness alone, the kind you have when you are pale
and hopeless for no earthly reason and you just have to cope
so you build little nests to move to from hour to hour
and you wish the clock would wind around faster, or some disaster
would strike, 'cause what does it matter? I see this from on high
towering out into the darkness like a bird taken flight
for the first time in its lucky life, or a caged thing who's
convinced itself that flight is not was it is cracked to be
and who's stopped believing, if not quite entirely...
but I'm afraid of freedom too, because it makes my head spin
and I've never really learned the proper things one should do
in subtle given situations, I tend to overshoot by miles
smiling until I hit the side of a building, killed by
my own wish to escape from my vial. Life can be vile stuff,
suck everything you have from you and make you think you
are soaring in ecstasy, when you're just Icarus heading
into the sun, and the people they go away and leave you,
either way, and real scariness hurts my guts and shreds me,
leaves me like crushed twigs after a boulder has rolled
over cold and shouting blindly how it can finally see...

My dear, I don't know what to do
Every vein runs hot and true, now.
Mummy went away,
She went away.

From Milton's Paradise Lost:
Lucifer is cast out of Heaven

(engraving by gustave doré)

Untitled

She was the color of love
You could see it in those eyes so blue
Never laid eyes on such a pretty face either
She was quiet but nice, a real nice girl.

She was the color of roses
When they're brought indoors and plunged into water
They just open up to the world like they can't wait
To take their next breath.

Thought I'd never have a chance with her
So I was her friend, cause everyone needs friends
Even the prettiest girls are the 'new girl' sometimes
I knew she'd find someone better than me.

Her house was a bus stop away
And I used to wait and walk the mile back
I said I did it for the exercise
I said one day I was gonna play second base.

And so we got to talking, and I saw that she
Crossed her legs the opposite way
We laughed and I think that was the very first night
I cried into my pillow for being happy.

She was the color of red lipstick
Stole it from her mom's drawer and used it on the bus
I'd smudge it just as she got to the real fine parts
And she'd kick me as hard as she could.

We got to hanging out by the swings, by the bars
She could do cherry drops and other scary things
I pretended I could do them too if I'd wanted to be a girl
But I thought she was so damn brave.

Thought I'd never have a chance with her
And it was just a matter of time, a matter of months
Maybe a year, my fear was so strong back then
I didn't know what I meant to her at all.

We didn't even think of those things mostly
She had the last garbage pail card that I needed
I tried everything I could think of to get it
I pleaded, I went down on one knee and proposed.

Just so I could get that girl the color of rose
To part with a token she kept in a drawer in her room
I saw it once, it smelled like perfume
I'd thought I'd never love another person again.

And the magpie on the phone line by her window
Used to watch us in a curious way as it piped its call
I said I wanted to go downstairs and play foosball
She lingered a bit and then followed, laughing softly.

I'd let her win and she knew it and I knew she knew
But nothing was ever said
And one day on the playground she didn't show
And my heart felt itself fill with dread.

And my legs, they felt like lead.
And then the voice in the classroom in a clinical kind
Of sorrow said all of the things I can't bear to think of now
How she'd been playing in the river and drown...

And it rained that day like a hundred floods
All come down cause of what all the kids had done
Teased us for carrying on and whispered we're in love
As both our faces turned the color of blood.

And it rained that day like a torrent from heaven
That was hurled at the game board to stop the games
I'm older now but I still can't stop crying
And my pillow shrinks each night to feel me so cold.

And the elms still bend in on windy days
And the school bells screech for other little souls
And the playground's full of laughter
And the waves in that river pound against the banks.

Why do the clouds alight the way they do?
Why do petals always bloom in odd numbers - is it true?
Why do trees fall in the winter when they were strong
The year before they splintered?

Why do we come and go at all
When it causes so much pain
What can twelve year olds do that's so bad
To make the world ever treat them like that?

And it ain't stopped raining since
And the little magpie she just stares all day long
And it ain't stopped raining since
And that magpie she stares all day long...

And it ain't stopped raining since
And the little magpie she just stares all day long
And it ain't stopped raining since
And that magpie she stares all day long...

And there's silence now round the house near her perch
For she hasn't the heart,
For a song.

Everything's Gone Black.

My doc he needed a psychiatrist
For all the things I come complainin' of
My shrink he neededed a therapist
When I told him all I done

An' me on my angry road to heaven
'most had to visit that great beyond.

Nothin' holds no fascination with her gone
Like a black light bring posters other lives
No, she filled my books an' hobbies with another light
Now I got nothin to do but set in my bed and remember

On this angry road to heaven I chose
An' pretend to forget til September.

But it's all gone numb in my mind
Can't sort out these days and weeks
Put these pieces in any kinda order
Can't think straight at all

Everything's gone black, now
The store is closed, the lights is out
The drawbridge got pulled shut real tight like
All the staffers, they done gone home for the evenin'.

This goes out to the one and only Maalie:

click for an even more grandiose countenance of this wonderful wingéd beast

Ok, I'll make you all a deal. If I get a decent number of comments on all this stuff I've put out recently - at least my own stuff if not the music videos and such - I will post another Pub Quiz, to give everyone a chance to de-throne Rex or for Rex to repeat as champion and further cement his legacy. And there will be a new prize this time, which I won't reveal till the trophy ceremony. And the quiz will be as fair as I can make it considering the split between men and women, and Brits and Yanks. But none of it's happening until I get more feedback. Hmphh.

"The Fellas"

Painting the Existence.

I spent a good deal of time one night about a week ago not necessarily dreaming or awake or asleep, kind of a mix of all three. Usually that's bad, but this time when I woke up I had a really clear vision of how to encapsulate much of my daily questioning, those mental blocks that keep me from budging, into a series of topics, laid out in order on some kind of framework that is either linear or maybe ever-ascending (like an musical fugue that ends right where it began, but an octave higher), or else just plain circular—I don't know which yet, that's a metaproblem which is one of the impossibilities about writing about "everything"—the writing itself must be included in the system it describes, or else it's not complete (it's not "everything"), but for mathematical reasons it's been shown that nothing can fully describe everything including itself; that there always has to be a metalanguage used by a meta-author outside the system. Einstein called them hidden variables. Bohr shrugged and went on with the rest of it and didn't worry about what it meant. Philosophers run up against it and get knocked over no matter how good the plays they diagram on their whiteboards. Gödel proved it symbolically then committed suicide. There always has to be "a little more that remains undescribed." This is why most of the true math geniuses in history have gone mad and killed themselves, why the existence of God is both required but also leads to the paradox of endless regression, and why Buddhism says not to ask the question in the first place!

BUT, if that point could be overlooked, like putting on a record that skips for the first two seconds and putting the needle down at the third second, we could procede after a fashion, and the rest of the mental challenges that I find myself pondering so much of the time do lend themselves to being described in a rudimentary way, such that relationships can be established between disciplines, hierarchies shown even when tangled or topologically loopy or even impossible, boundaries put around what questions can be asked, what is really just the same thing in another guise, and so on. So you reduce the entire realm of things and experiences and all the rest of it into falsely-discrete topics but ones that flow from one to the next using Occam's Razor (a postulate and mere tool but clearly identified as such) and attempt to turn it into something that is not as overwhelming as it was before. The form such a work takes could be a series of blogs, guides, or chapters in a book. Ideally it would be a book, like some magnum opus that one would keep adding to (hopefully not the way Philip K. Dick did, though) until it felt finished, or maybe it just writes itself and is fairly taut and cohesive and voila!—One's managed to solve it all (within the allowances, again, of self-referential no-no's; not dividing by zero, avoiding the bathtub drain, the balloon knots and logical bootstrapping, the asymptotic infinities, the strange loops, the singularities where everything breaks down completely) or at least reduced it to very basic building blocks (doubtful), or maybe one goes insane in the process (but that could happen anyway). Who knows? But something like this occurred to me in that semi-conscious state, which I hurried to jot down:

Meta's Guide to Everything.
01. Getting here.
02. How to be? What to do?
03. The mind and imagination.
04. The reality of the world.
05. Religion, philosophy, history, mythology.
06. Drugs, disease, and perception.
07. The dreamtime of the Aborigines.
08. Is there any objective truth?
09. Is there only one truth?
10. Is physical law absolute or malleable?
11. Found or invented?
12. Logic, mathematics, topology.
13. Relativity and modern cosmology.
14. The limits of measurement.
15. Quantum physics and chance.
16. Uncertainy and infinite worlds.
17. A universal theory of gravity.
18. What does it mean to have boundaries?
19. What exactly is time?
20. The validity of science.
21. Natural selection everywhere.
22. Art, aesthetics, mysticism, transcendence.
23. A roll call of tangential phenomena.
24. The larger tale of humanity.
25. Circular or linear? Open or closed?
26. Dividing by zero, black holes, singularities.
27. Paradoxes and their relatives.
28. The curious problem of infinity.
29. Magnitudes of infinity.
30. Self-referential systems.
31. Analogical structure at all levels.
32. Reductionism, chaos, antichaos, complexity.
33. Emergence and holism.
34. Entropy re-examined.
35. Is life inevitable?
36. Is mind inevitable?
37. Intelligence and information.
38. What does it mean to ask why?
39. Anthropic principles.
40. Something from nothing?
41. Climbing toward the light.
42. The existence.

It has to be said these chapter titles are as plain and descriptive as I could make them rather than trying to get cute and mess up what is obviously a very ambitious thing already, and that there are bound to be things I left out but will think of later, or subjects that need rearranging in this scheme, and so forth. Also these are just headings. Although I've got it in my noodle what each is about and could write lengthy subtitles after each title or just plunge right in and write the chapters themselves (the goal, eventually), it's impossible to really glean whether there's anything but the delusions of a madperson here just by looking at the list of chapters. As an article of faith (heh) you'll just have to trust that I know what each will basically say and how it will lead into the next, even if the precise details remain to be hammered out.

Getting it out and not messing up the beautiful construction is the problem, like trying to get a beautiful baby out of a woman without cutting her open. Inevitably it's not quite as beautiful when it gets smushed and smashed and pushed out, though (with a good editor in the case of a book, or a nurse or simply time in the case of an infant) it can be reconstituted to what it once was. Right now there's a huge baby inside my mind and only the tiny apertures of language and time and the handicap of being able to only think of one aspect of this huge thing at a time and never grasp the whole on all levels (I said it was a BIG baby) that is the chief problem of getting it out and not losing what is a nearly perfect construct in my mind in the process. I suppose I've been put off by the enormity of such a thing for years (while also working on seeing how things are more and more clearly, making connections and simplifying as I age), but putting it into topics like this makes me feel good that I've made some kind of progress, even if it's just an organizational task that eases that weight a bit since I can always refer back to it when I begin to veer down one of the infinite side roads that threaten to make me lose my way.

I'm starting to work on Chapter 1; we'll see how long my inspiration lasts. It won't be an easy read if it's ever done but maybe it will hold together somehow. It's hard to know what level of detail to drop into. What about nonhuman biological systems? More about the humanities, like linguistics, economics, and other systems? Etc. All these will be blanket-covered but the book would have more and more value the more real world topics it pulled in, explained, related to other strands of the overall web, and in turn provided both weight to my arguments as well as further axioms to serve as a foundation for subsequent topics. It's this sort of "nothing is given, that's one thing to look at and here are the ramifications of that philosophically. If x, y, and z are given (say, that there is one objective reality, and that math and logic are axiomatic), then we get all these other things following from the most basic principles, and I go through each one. Harmonics, sociodynamics, physical sciences, music, the works - each builds upon the previous and provides a foundation for more topics, like a tech tree. But change the axioms and the picture could be very different; science may not be valid in its initial presumptions and we may live in a universe where esoteric knowledge and mysticism are possible, and how would that then work? What systems are possibilities that are still internally consistent? Is there any way to know what kind of reality we actually are in, or is that question itself meaningless, and if so, why?" That kind of initial setup could be a Volume 1 in itself, but I intend to discuss it, make some arbitrary but reasonable assumptions (as few as possible just to get off the ground), and then proceed, or else nothing would ever get written and what kind of magnum opus is that?

Obviously it'll be a long work though I intend to make the language as terse as possible, and not get poetic at all, and only use analogy when it's truly needed, and when it truly works. This will necessarily make it a very dense read. I mean, somebody is attempting to explain everything in some kind of framework that holds it all together. That's not bathroom reading. You'll have to put on your thinking cap and pay very close attention to each transitional step or you'll lose the thread. And where threads split and come back together in different ways (a tangled hierarchy), there will be a way to handle writing that but it's going to take effort on the part of the reader as well not to get lost. You can only make things so easy before you start cheating and leaving important bits out. Think about it—almost every time you really understood something and felt changed because of it, it was the result of honest hard thought and following tons of steps, each implying the next, until you had that Eureka moment and something about the world became understood to you in a fundamentally new way. Every chapter will have to be like that in a sense for this endeavor to have real value.

And who knows, maybe I'll make a bunch of money.

"Alternative history" and other esoteric fields.

Just a (sort of) simple question. What is your attitude toward esoteric beliefs, that is, beliefs that there are truths that either lie outside of science (the paranormal), or hidden knowledge from, say, prior advanced civilizations that is either consciously or more likely unknowingly kept from us due to great catastrophes or some cycle of human progress then regress which largely destroys/hides the wisdom of earlier golden ages?

I'm not asking because I believe or don't believe. I won't tell you that. What I am interested in is your belief or at least open-mindedness toward truths other that orthodox science. Or is the scientific method THE best philosophy and has rendered mysticism like religion and speculative history obsolete? Are mysteries like the age of the Sphinx and the purpose of the Pyramids at Giza, and similarities in myths (like a great flood) and technology across the ancient world mere coincidence, technological inevitabilities, or proof of something going on that we have yet to account for with our modern exploration techniques?

What about other mysteries like the fate of the Ark of the Covenant, King Solomon's treasure, the Knights Templar finding various objects in and beneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the idea of Jesus surviving the crucifixion or at least impregnating Mary Magdalene so that one King Marovee could be born in France and found the Merovingian line of Kings? The Priory of Sion existing to keep that knowledge alive in the face of Catholic oppression? The Freemasons being up to various secret things, most of them no good? Illuminati, New World Orders, Rosicrucians, HAARP and Tesla-based WMDs, alien visitation, David Icke's reptilian world leaders, and so on? If you believe ANY of it (and I'm not passing judgment on whether you should), where do you draw the line?

Again, I ask only because I am curious. I will not reveal my opinions on such matters under any circumstance for the time being and just want to gauge the proportions of what some would call gullibility and some would call open-mindedness to all possibilities. What about astrology, tarot, i-ching, palmistry, phrenology, eneagrams, mystery schools passed down from the ancients concerning sacred geometry, zero-point energy, magic, genetics, even immortality? What about reincarnation? Transcendent meditation, acupuncture? The existence of a soul? How is belief in the paranormal different from claiming that quantum reality makes any rational sense?

State your beliefs, opinions, disbeliefs, or whatever you want in the comments section. I am only gathering data and will not ridicule or praise anyone.

you

you have draped me in your words, pictures,

common things that would pass

right by most people I daresay, but I have a nose

for these things

and I know what's going on in your mind even when

maybe you don't know it yourself

at the same time, my time here is theadbare

I feel i'm only renting time

I want you to save me so I can save you

but how does that sound when you really spell it out?

people tell you to grow up, you feel like feinting

though you're the toughest person on earth

I could be dead, I could be a corporate CEO

but I'd never find you in all these multitudes, it's true

dog packs to prowl, pigs rich and scowling, and sheep to prune

so I adopt a simple life, a safe life

by donning nothing at all

Jesus, you see, he was wearing almost nothing at all

but you, you are a mystery

that my mind wants to find intruiguing

I'm so tired of people steeped in arts, tired farts

who pretend their way through life

join me at the bridge, Charles or Charlemagne, what's in a name?

we'll spin the night away in a solid block of parades.

My Friend.

I have a friend who worries about "hurricanoes" attacking his town.
He tranposes his Bs and Vs like a Spaniard or a Mexican,
And most words that begin with the prefix re-, he changes to pre-,
Like "pretarded."

He also mixes up his Bs and Ds, hiding in the closet from "durglars"
And reading books about scary "binarysaurs." He likes T-Rex of course,
But he calls him "Dinosaurus Rex" for some reason, and he's terrified of "nushrooms."

I forgot, he also generally switches his Ms and Ns, if he "premembers" to.
He's my best friend ever, I think.

Untitled

You still think you're right
You haven't changed at all
After all this
What's in my head might as well be a phantom
You're going ahead with your life
Damn the torpedoes

You never understood me
I don't think you wanted to
I don't even think you could
You treated me like a glass toy
Amusing but easy to break
Little mind that never could stretch to fit reality

People without sensitivity
Dismiss sensitive people
People who sense subtlety dismiss
Others who live blindly
We never made it work at all
Now I'm supposed to put it behind me

With our child's picture here to remind me.

Untitled

Sunflowers lean like a dream in a field

A shield made by nature that greed never peeled

Like an onion whose fun is disrupted by steel

She was the white in the black of the light

For a plight I had suffered that cost me my life

If not for the way that she stayed to revive

Meteors fall and the spheres gear a call

To my head when I'm ready to clear all the walls

All-out sprint with the angriest pangs of them all

Sunflowers lean like a scheme that she made

This maiden of sunshine who laid by my grave

And made it the glory of lore ever played

Vlad Tepes

(1431-1476)

[notes]

WHEN THE TIGERS BROKE FREE.
by Roger Waters.

It was just before dawn
one miserable morning in black 'forty-four
when the forward commander was told to sit tight
when he asked that his men be withdrawn.
And the generals gave thanks as the other ranks
held back the enemy tanks - for a while.
And the Anzio beachhead was held for the price
of a few hundred ordinary lives.

And kind old King George sent mother a note
when he heard that father was gone.
It was, I recall, in the form of a scroll
with gold leaf and all.
And I found it one day in a drawer of old
photographs hidden away.
And my eyes still grow damp to remember
His Majesty signed with his own rubber stamp.

It was dark all around
There was frost in the ground
When the tigers broke free.
And no-one survived from the Royal Fusiliers Company C.
They were all left behind
Most of them dead
The rest of them dying.
And that's how the High Command took my Daddy from me.

[notes]

top photo property of national park service; bottom two property of declan mccullagh

Harpy

To put the touches on something beautiful
End it with a stroke unlike
The black innards of the earth that so many
Hopefuls and wishfuls howl
From the wounds on their faces
Day after day, to end it after all
With beauty, magical
Was my charge in this forsaken place

Now I'm at chemical oblivion
To end it at a stroke would be the crowning
Mark of failure of every ancestor who gave
Me her DNA. Life is unlivable
And it stays that way. Year after year,
We hope, we do what we can
But day after day we are crushed beneath
Our own two feet again.