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loadstool

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 10 months ago

12 May 2007

Leaving for Rome tomorrow! I'll be taking classes, and for one of them we're required to write about 500 words per day in a journal. Going to go and Wiki it instead...will probably make a new wiki just for that, to be linked here sometime in the next week. I haven't packed yet, so ciao!

 

16 May 2007

Unfortunately, I don't have regular access to the internet! We're staying right near the Piazza Navona and everything is WONDERFUL. I'm quickly learning Italian...Who knew!?

Wow, loadstool, have a great time in Rome. It's incredible that you get such an opportunity. Thanks again for all your support on my final project, hope I was able to reciprocate in some way. Great to get to know you, hope I see you around. -Echan

Oh, you were definitely helpful. Nice work with your project! -loadstool

Thanks! Unfortunately, I don't have regular access to the internet, so


10 May 2007

Here's my final project...small edits to be made later on after my last final.

Well then way to go and make me look like a shmuck! I couldn't even get through all of it--- I had to do a intense scanning because otherwise I would get trapped! RoBoCoP

Way to go! I think it kicks ass, to be perfectly blunt. Maybe it's because part of my dream was in it, but it was incredibly surreal to read the whole thing. I got sucked in to its vortex and didn't get out for more than half an hour. A+++! -Ceridwen

 

Selected Dreams from my journal 2001-2007 - not all were used.

Dreams from others - not all were used.

 

Useful stuff:

Antero Alli's Angel Tech

RAW's Prometheus Rising

William S. Burroughs's My Education

McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage

Clastres

Timothy Leary's Info-Psychology

Holger Kalweit's Dreamtime & Inner Space

(BTW, mobius, I promise to get those two books back to you next year...I'm leaving town tonight.)

Samuel Menashe, winner of Neglected Masters Award. "new and selected poems." American Poets Project.

Malaclypse The Younger's Principia Discordia

and, of course, RAW's Cosmic Trigger, Vol. 1

 

loadstool: looks awesome. If at all possible mobius would appreciate transmission of said texts via us postal service, will gladly reimburse for information transmission costs. Also, if you could annotate that bibliography a bit, it would help. Just provide some details about the way each book helped in the project, what is useful, worthless puzzling visionary etc. - mobius

 

Alli, Antero. Angel Tech. Santa Monica, CA: New Falcon Publications, 1994. Alli’s manual uses Dr. Timothy Leary’s theory (regarding the eight circuits of the brain) to teach readers to hack their own minds and understand their own maps. Without Leary’s technical jargon, Alli explains each circuit (or grade) and provides activities for progressing through them. Dreaming is discussed occasionally throughout the book; they are maps of the mind, maps that the dreamer creates. This is one of the central ideas of my project. Understanding one’s dreams as maps allows for greater understanding of one’s reality-tunnels.

 

Burroughs, William S. My Education. NY: Viking, 1995. This is a collection of Burroughs’s dreams and a few other writings. Dates are removed and the reader is not quite sure when Burroughs is relating a dream or just making a comment. One of his useful comments explained why dreams are often absurd--no context. It was a major influence on the format of my dream project. By weaving together multiple dreams, a narrative gives them some context. Context is also added by references to our class--the audience.

 

Clastres, Pierre. Society Against the State (excerpt). <http://www.primitivism.com/society-state.htm>. Clastres criticizes the idea that people need the State for survival. He is referenced twice in my dream project, primarily for laughs, but also to show that the State--even in our dreams--is often ineffectual. (The Police Officer fails to infiltrate a TAZ--the Society of Control Film Festival.)

 

Kalweit, Holger. Dreamtime & Inner Space. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, 1984. Kalweit provides a rich account of shamans from all over the world. Shamans employ altered states of consciousness for spiritual ends and explore "inner spaces." It was a really good browse, and I’ll definitely get my hands on a copy over the summer. Chapter 25 ("When the Anthropologists Arrive, the Gods Leave the Island") touches upon the idea that the individual "I" is part of a bigger "I." This idea is carried out in my remix by trying to incorporate many people in the project’s universe.

 

Leary, Timothy. Info-Psychology. Las Vegas, NV: Falcon Press, 1989. Humans are evolving into more intelligent, more connected beings. There are eight circuits that humans pass through on the way to becoming bettah. Consciousness is a chemical and so can be altered chemically. It was an interesting, though a little confusing, browse that allowed me to see the more biological side of Mind.

 

Malaclypse the Younger. Principia Discordia. Boulder, CO. This is a key text for Discordians and would-be mind hackers. It trains one to see with "many 'I's," as Robert Anton Wilson says. For my project I used the puzzle of the five pebbles, which I thought was a good way of showing the "I"s.

 

McLuhan, Marshall. The Medium is the Massage. NY: Bantam Books, 1967. Using both text and pictures, McLuhan shows the effects of medium and technology on people. The book helped me a lot at the beginning of the semester, so I bought a cheap copy of it. In the dream project, I quoted McLuhan as saying "as we begin, so shall we go." I’m actually taking this out of context--(this is a remix, after all). He is using it to show how we change with technology, but I’m just using it to indicate progression. I also like how it sounds.

 

Ricks, Christopher, ed. Samuel Menashe: new and selected poems. USA: Literary Classics of the United States, 2005. Hands-down one of my favorite poets. I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to employ some of his work in the project.

 

Wilson, Robert Anton. Cosmic Trigger: Volume I. Tempe, AZ: New Falcon Publications, 2005. Yep. I thought his description of Leary’s circuits was pretty good.

 

Wilson, Robert Anton. Prometheus Rising. Tempe, AZ: New Falcon Publications, 1983. A deeper exploration of the circuits, though it slacks a bit on the last four. Slacks a bit on the last four...


7 May 2007

Though the "film festival" didn’t go exactly as planned, it was still worthwhile and I'm glad I went. It just sort of entropied more and more and it was wonderful. Nice work guys!

 

I had planned on sharing a remix after Sleeper/Naked Lunch--and though those films were not played--was still able to read it (posted below).

 

Some context:

Over spring break I was caught for illegal downloading; I used BITTORRENT to download Heroes for my cousin in Iraq. Kind of F'd up 'cause he's over there ostensibly to protect our society, and I get in trouble for supporting him. Anyways, my ISP sent me an e-mail to warn me, so I remixed it to relate to the film festival and my final project.

 

In Sleeper, there’s this sort of highly exaggerated society of control, so the remixed letter ties in with that. Also threw in a Naked Lunch reference.

 

Dear Citizen:

 

Please be advised that the State and/or its subsidiary and affiliated companies (collectively, NBC Universal) are the owners of exclusive rights protected under copyright law and other intellectual property rights in many motion pictures, television programs, written and digital discourse--including your dreams and dream journal--as well as human wetwares and mind programs. NBC Universal diligently enforces its ownership rights.

 

It has come to our attention that you are about to share your dreams in a public space, but we have been unable to identify the location. The unauthorized public reading of your dreams constitutes copyright infringement under Section 106 of the U.S. Copyright Act. As you may recall, these copyright laws are in place for your own protection. Dreams and dream journals fail to contribute to the culture of production, rendering citizens dangerously useless. Additionally, the public file-sharing of dreams is far too intimate, and the State wishes to privatize intimacy as much as possible. In an effort to preempt this reading, we are sending you this letter.

 

The dreams in danger of being illegally shared are as follows:

 

 

11 AUGUST 2002

i had one of those dreams where you think you're awake and lying down, and can't move your body. according to my mom, your mind is awake but the body is asleep...pretty cool, i want another one.

 

24 DECEMBER 2003

I was looking at the back of my head. I took my head off my body. The top of my head had holes in it. Like someone had cut holes in my skull. I could see my brain. My head was also bald in some places. I put my head back on and started looking at photographs of my head that were taken right after "they" did this to me. In them, I was completely bald, and my head was very...unpleasant looking.

 

12 DECEMBER 2004

Two nights ago: I dreamt that I was special and that the government wanted me to work for them as a spy. This guy approaches me wearing a trenchcoat and one of those top-hats. He hands me another trenchcoat and top-hat to wear and sends me off on some secret assignment. I complete the mission successfully, and he says it was just a test, but now I can become a real spy. But I must abandon my identity and say goodbye to my friends and family. I must be a spy and only a spy. I agree hesistantly, and in a hotel room, tell my family that I have to go and they'll never see me again. I run out the door and run into a different room in the hotel, and my family chases me. I lock myself in the other room and my family is banging on the door because they don't want me to go. Somehow, they get the door open, but I've already dissapeared.

 

6 MAY 2005

I dreamt that I was a vampire. I have these kind of dreams often, but they're usually darker. So I go into a monster bar, like all us monsters get together and drink, but I'm only a new vampire, so I'm not really aware of our cultural norms. I go into the bar with my human face on, not knowing I'm supposed to put on my monster face. Like I walk in, and everyone stops talking and looks at me. And I see all these different kinds of faces, not everyone is a vampire.

 

10 NOVEMBER 2005

I was in the basement of this guy's house. There's a pentagram in the floor, the lines of the star being made out of thick black string, wound around five nails or needles at the points. I'm with four other guys (five of us total), and we are standing around the circle. I ask the man whose house this is if his wife is home from work yet, and he responds that he thinks she's upstairs. I go upstairs and find his wife crying in the bathroom. She looks at me and tells me, "It's not his being gay that bothers me. It's that he's killed himself and has made a bloody mess on the carpet." I tell her that she's cold, and she responds, "I have to feed my sick mother now." I go back to the basement, and find him dead in the middle of the pentagram. I go back upstairs, and she is dead in a pentagram too. I run from the house, and force myself to forget everyone and everything I know, to get amnesia. I see pictures of everyone I know falling away from me against a black background. It's weird, because as the dreamer, I am omniscient, but as my character, I know nothing. When my character returns to the house, he has somehow grown very old.

 

23 MAY 2006

There is a swimming pool I'm in and I like the feel of it. It is a lake really, a lake in a pool. It’s warm and dark and dark, but there are many lake-things in it to touch, and that’s why I like it. As I float through, groping for anything, I feel two unusual fish. It is too dark to see, but they feel red.

 

21 APRIL 2007

I am a fairy who grants wishes to humans if I’m caught. I am flying around a suburban neighborhood. All the backyards are connected to each other. I am being chased out of one house by this guy who is trying to catch me for a wish. For some reason, I’m having difficulty flying. I am flapping my arms wildly trying to rise above the ground. I finally start to elevate, but move very slowly. He is able to catch me by my foot. I manage to just barely escape, but still have difficulty flying. Eventually, however, I am able to fly again with ease. I rise up and up and see the horizon and mountains all around me. The sky is clear blue and below me I see nothing but fields. It is beautiful, and I do not think I can describe it accurately. I say to myself “I am dreaming” and—this next part happens very quickly—I start to feel myself wake-up and worry that my lucid dream will end. I remember reading that moving your dream body helps keep you in the lucid state, so I start to spin my body around in the sky, but I never complete the circle. I wake up.

 

 

These dreams indicate that you are coming dangerously close to understanding your own mind and programming it yourself. This is the domain of the State and/or its subsidiary and affiliated companies (collectively, NBC Universal). Dreams mean nothing, just neural housecleaning. The quicker we forget our dreams the better. William S. Burroughs kept a dream journal, and look what happened to him--addicted to bug powder. Cease now and do not infect others. NBC Universal believes that the entire community benefits when these matters are resolved cooperatively. We urge you to take immediate action to stop this infringing activity and inform us of the results of your actions. We appreciate your efforts toward this common goal.

 

Very truly yours,

 

The Society of Control


18 April 2007

Alright, so this is my attempt at visualizing our wiki based on

who posted on whose blog (as of yesterday; posts made today are

not in there). What I did was go through each blog and look to

see who posted on it. I may have missed some, especially if posts

were not signed. Here is the data set.

 

 

Try moving the spheres around; we can't get away from each other!

 

 


 

 

Hey loadstool. Check out Ceridwen's page about their dream. -RoBoCoP

17 April 2007

I am working at the West library entrance thinking about what to do for my final project. (I work in the library at the welcome desks at the entrances.) A patron asks me about a secret door in the library that I have no idea about. She wants to know if she can use the door at night to browse the books and exit the library while other doors are locked. I tell her I have no idea, and she responds that she’ll figure it out. I am also eating BBQ chicken with a knife and fork. I move the plate out of sight so patrons cannot see it. Then, mobius comes up to me through a nearby window (which acts like a drive-thru window). He somehow knows about the secret door and helps the girl out. She thanks him and leaves. I tell mobius that I think I have a better idea about what to do for my final project. I suggest doing something about dream narratives, and he says “No, it’s been done.” Then, a girl--a very short girl--comes up to the window wearing a yellow flower-garland, a Hawaiian grass skirt, and a white tank-top that says "CUMIN" in orange letters. She smiles and tells me a bunch of people are having a luau. I say "OK" and she leaves. Then, I remember another project idea. I tell mobius I am thinking about doing something with Timothy Leary’s Eight Circuits. He makes that face he makes when he gets excited. I

wake up. Admittedly, I was thinking about doing something with Leary’s Eight Circuits before I went to bed, but then threw the idea out. I had this dream later that night and woke-up feeling confident that I finally had something to do for my final project--I decided to reconsider what I had dismissed. I re-read the portion in Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger that discusses Timothy Leary’s Eight Circuits (pages 197-209). Wilson describes the Circuits in the Prologue in this way: "we are all evolving into the use of new neurological circuits, which will make us superhuman in comparison to our present average state" (15). According to Leary, there are eight circuits (also referred to as gears or grades) which we (we being robots, wetwares, or whatever vocabulary you wish) pass through on the way to ultimate transcendence, AND/OR pure being AND/OR information AND/OR et cetera. Like the Tao, it cannot be contained in the symbol of a word because it is infinite.

 

As succinct as Wilson’s explanation of Leary’s model is, I needed more information. I tried to pick up Timothy Leary’s Info-Technology at the library--but no copy was available. It was also not at Schlow library, Barnes & Noble, or Webster’s. I turned to Google for help. Although I could not find Leary’s book, I did stumble upon other helpful programs. Via BITTORRENT, I downloaded: Timothy Leary’s How to Operate Your Brain video; Leary’s Turn on, Tune in, Drop Out album; RAW’s Prometheus Rising; and--most useful--Antero Alli's Angel Tech: A Modern Shaman’s Guide to Reality Selection. I unearthed them from several Google searches (finding this site to be pretty helpful). The information overwhelmed me. I decided to turn away from the Eight Circuits and try to do something else.

 

 

However, in turning away from the circuits, I found myself in even more chaos and confusion. I was browsing any discourse within reach, searching for something, anything, to spark a "good idea" for a project topic. It was at this point I watched Leary’s How to Operate Your Brain--a half-hour long exercise in reprogramming. I was reminded of the chaos everywhere and the freedom in that. I remembered I was only in "two inches of water"--a phrase that seems to have greased the metaprogramming cogs in this class.

 

I looked through Alli’s Angel Tech and was simultaneously turned on and off by it. The book takes Dr. Leary’s circuits and explains them in a way accessible to a wider audience. My issue was that it seemed too structured, too instructional, too much like a model--models being reality-tunnels. In Cosmic Trigger, RAW himself describes the Eight Circuits as one of several and/or explanations to show that "something more physical and palpable than hallucination” is going on with reality (11; 14-16). If the Eight Circuits is just one explanation, isn’t Angel Tech just promoting another reality-tunnel? RAW presents several models in Cosmic Trigger and allows for any or none of them to be at once. How can Angel Tech purport to be a guide for raising intelligence when it appears to advance a particular belief (the underlying premise being that belief is a barrier to intelligence)? Upon deeper browsing of the book and un-premising of what I assumed the book was, I found the book to not advance a particular reality-tunnel at all. In fact, it actually encourages (not tells) the reader to question it.

 

Here is where I begin to discuss my plans for the final project. I hope to mix my dream journal with the Eight Circuits (a.k.a. eight grades) explained in Alli’s Angel Tech--a sort of metaprogramming of one metaprogramming model. I’m still working out the kinks (and doubt they can ever be "worked out" anyway), but plan to mix in a way that shows how maintaining a dream journal can be a useful metaprogramming practice. "The Society" cannot control our dream experiences. They can try to study them and quantify them, but they cannot control them. We should take advantage of this.

 

I would love to get others involved, so please share your dreams! Or join me with the mixing!


9 April 2007

Well, over spring break I was caught for illegal downloading. Using BITTORRENT, I downloaded the TV show HEROES for my cousin in Iraq. (Yeah, fucked up, right?) I received this e-mail from my ISP, warning that NBC could sue (!). (After receiving the e-mail, I continued to download 24 and LOST--also for my cousin--as well as music for personal consumption.) I put off posting the letter here until something interesting happened. Nothing has so far. Looks like all I got was a wag o' the finger. I've been uber-busy lately, but I'm hoping to do a remix of the letter at some point. In the meantime, I thought I'd try out the Many-Eyes program that mobius posted. Pretty fun:

 

 

 


31 March 2007

A university-wide wiki!

Join the Penn State e-mail list and wiki! Check us out at: http://psu.collegewikis.com.

 

The Penn State Wiki connects you with your classmates to give you easy, efficient answers to any of your questions. When you want to know the best class to take next quarter, the best local dentist, the closest place for a haircut, or anything - just post your question through the wiki, it will go out to your classmates, and you'll have an answer immediately.

 

You *must* be registered to receive your classmates' questions and view answers. Register now at http://psu.collegewikis.com/index.php?title=Special:Userlogin&type=signup.

 

Enjoy!

 

And, if you like this idea and want to be involved, visit our FAQ page to find out more.

 

-the CollegeWikis team

http://www.collegewikis.com


29 March 2007

Ubik Remix and explanation

 

I don't consider myself much of a teacher or grading type person, but here I go anyway Your piece is really creative and grabbed my attention mainly because I am taking CAS483 right now and it is all about making webpages. So the code intrigued me. The code format reminds me of the mechanical nature of the world that Joe Chip and Runciter are from and all the appliances talking to them and giving Chip a hard time for not having the right change. The deletion of spaces and the splitting of words reminded me of how the book ended and left me all jumbled and confused again. The code would be a good compliment to Arpeggi's recording of Jory's voice. Though I have to disagree with the <i> tag being just italics. I think that you could use it to show the "selfishness" that Ella is describing to Joe in asking for him to take over her body. When it is all said and done, I guess I would give you an A- because this piece is pretty cool, but I think you could have gone a little deeper with the analysis. -RoBoCoP

RoBoCoP covered most of the points that I wanted to make. Thanks RC! But to reitterate, this is an unbelievable way of showing the reader the industrial overtones of Chip's world. This remix better symbolizes the interactions and involvement of every mechanical and consumer product that runs the character's lives. Awesome job on using your creative ideas to remake the organization of the story. PS: I read this story written by a biotech enginner about AI interacting with its creator. It framed the story solely through emails. Much like yours through a creative HTML.

Grade=A

 

Call Me Ishmael

 

Woo! Thanks for the input, RoBoCoP. Regarding the <i> tag: it was supposed to be a joke, but I guess that didn't come off well enough, haha. -loadstool

<words>
<meaning>
<speak entity=”Ella Runciter”>I think.
At least, Glen says so.  I keep dreaming
about a smoky red light, and that’s bad;
that’s not a morally proper
womb to be born into.</speak>
<laugh entity=”Ella Runciter” quality=”rich” tone=”warm”>
<speak entity=”Joe Chip”><i>You’re the other one,</i>
Jory destroying us, you trying to help us.
<premise-lock>Behind you there’s no one, just as there’s no one behind Jory.
I’ve reached the last entities involved.</speak>
<speak entity=”Ella Runciter” tone=caustic>I don’t think of myself as an ‘entity’;
I usually think of myself as Ella Runciter.</speak>
<speak entity=”Joe Chip”>But it’s true.</speak>
<speak entity=”Ella Runciter”>Yes.</speak>
<nod entity=”Ella Runciter” mood=”somber”> 
<speak entity=”Joe Chip”><interrogative>Why are you working against Jory?</interrogative>
<speak entity=”Ella Runciter”>Because Jory invaded me.
<consubstantiation>He menaced me in the same way he’s menaced you.
We both know what he does; he told you himself, in your hotel room.</consubstantiation>
Sometimes he becomes very powerful; on occasion, he manages to sup-
plant me when I’m active and trying to talk to Glen.  But I
seem to be able to cope with him better than most half-lifers,
with or without Ubik.  Better, for instance, than your group,
even acting as a collective.</speak>
<speak entity=”Joe Chip”>Yes. It certainly was true.  Well proved.</speak>
<speak entity=”Ella Runciter”>When I’m reborn, Glen won’t be able to
consult with me any more.  I have a very selfish, practical
reason for assisting you, Mr. Chip; <i>I want you to replace me.</i>
I want to have someone whom Glen can ask for advice and
assistance, whom he can lean on.  You will be ideal; you’ll
be doing in half-life what you did in full-life.  So, in a sense,
I’m not motivated by noble sentiments; I saved you from
Jory for a good common-sense reason.
<addendum>And god knows I detest Jory.</addendum></speak>
<speakentity=”JoeChip”><uncertainty>Afteryou’rereborn,Iwon’tsuccumb?</speak><speakentity=”EllaRunciter”><reassurance>YouhaveyourlifetimesupplyofUbik.attity=”EleIgaveyou.p</seak></uncertanlaRuncinty><kentispeaty=”JoeCybeIcandefetJory.</aysonthecertificaspeahip”>MMak><ponder><speaAsitskeiter”>Destroyhim,youmean?He’snotin-vulnerable.Maybeintimeyoucanlearnwaystonullifyhim.

I think that’s really the best you can hope to do; I doubt if
you can truly destroy him—in other words consume him—
<speak entity=”Lewis Carroll”>’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;</speak>


28 March 2007

 

Well, today's been really weird for me, and I thought I'd write about while I'm in the mood. I guess I should first state that I've been really ambivalent about going to law school for about three years. As a result, I've been crazy about grades, became VP of the PSU-ACLU (for the resume, of course), and have structured my college courses to help me "be a lawyer." In my CAS 321 (Rhetoric and Law--Never take it; it's the "bullshit" kind of rhetoric that people often censure), we've been doing mock trials (45% of our grade). Today was my turn.

 

I'm not going to be poetic about this at all (though you can, of course, make what you want of it): I did S-H-I-T-T-Y. The opposing attorney inoculated himself against nearly every argument I had; I was completely incoherent; I forgot some of the facts; and I fucked up procedure. I was less concerned about the 45% it's worth than I was about embarrassing myself.

 

I skipped the following class, went home, and cried. (Have you ever realized that you've been wrong about yourself?) I don't think I could never be a laywer; I suppose I should keep that option open, but I now see that it was something I never really wanted in the first place. "I have to be a lawyer or I will live in a shack because I'm an English major" was hindering me.

 

While I was crying in bed, I kept thinking "two inches of water...two inches of water"--no joke. I lay there for like an hour maybe, trying to fall asleep. Finally, I just got up. I didn't know what to do, but I knew I wanted to do something else. So, I continued to work on my Ubik paper (which, by the way, I must return to after posting this). Not sure what I'm doing tonight, but I am not going to upset myself over my mock trial poorformance.

 

Other stuff:

 

Echan wrote: "Yikes! A whole week! It's funny how once you have fallen off the horse, it's soooo hard to get back on, i.e. i have had a really hard time bringing myself to write on this wiki for no good reason other than I feel bad because I am not writing. A vicious cycle." Yep. I feel the same way. Discourse produces discourse, right? So thanks for posting that. Let's get our proliferation on!

I am the hive

You inhabit

Celled inside

Me you multiply

 

-Samuel Menashe

 

Definitely one of my favorite poets. I'm not sure how well-known or anything he is, though. I work in the library, so books just kind of fall into my lap. Anyone have an interesting interpretation of that poem? I was thinking maybe that it could relate to inhabiting discourses. Or something.


 

15 March 2007

 

Something I once believed was: “Never write anything down if you don’t want other people to know it.”

 

I never even wrote that down. The problem was I didn’t want anyone to know anything about me. I ended up, for a number of years, not writing at all unless I needed to--“business” or “school” type writing--nothing really substantial. I consider myself still in recovery today.

 

Once, I owned a diary to write other things in, but that was all I did with it--owned it. I kept it under a mattress, opening it only to stare at it, thinking about writing something, and then hiding it away. When I finally had the guts to write something, I wrote this: I have a crush on G___.

 

I immediately ripped it out and burned it (to simply throw it in the trash was unacceptable--someone could find it and read it. Plus, I enjoy bright, burning thingies). If I could go back in time, I would take that 11-year old’s pen and write what he never should have ignored. The things I could tell him about himself...1

 

I was afraid of sharing myself, of connecting, so I withdrew into other realities--videogames. But not just any kind of videogame--I would only play Role-Playing Games (RPGs), emphasis on Role-Playing. I barely wanted to be myself, let alone share that self with other people. (I’m now rethinking the "self" from some class readings, but everything should be read and re'd...but anyway...) I did not have friends on my neighborhood block, and so few people to talk to. This was one factor which contributed to my commune-ication troubles.

 

The other factor was my family. Though I love my parents, I have a weak connection to them. They’re from another country and their English isn’t great. When I was in kindergarten, an incident at school prompted my parents to stop speaking to me in Tagalog. I learned English from anyone and anything that wasn’t my family; English distanced me (and my siblings) from my parents. My communications with my father remain terse and meaning is often confused. (To exacerbate the confusion, he is hard of hearing in his left ear). My mother is the kind of person who says anything to say anything at all, to not be silent--I assume in an effort to form any connection at all with her children--and she appears, to the stranger, to be unintelligent and boring. Of these two people, I am a product. I’m lucky to have a conversation for longer than ten minutes. I prefer much more to listen, to be the "bottom" in the communication process.

 

So I’ve been trying to draw some sort of conclusion from all this, but I’m not sure I can. They’re really just speculations, and ones that could be inaccurate. Some of what I’ve written might be true, but they are also untrue--I sometimes connect with my parents (more frequently lately) and perhaps videogame-play is just a scapegoat for my own inadequacies. (Is that a mark of poor writing? To have no conclusions?)

 

1 I forget where I read or heard about non-locality...maybe it was in Cosmic Trigger. If I remember correctly, non-locality means that everything is connected in a non-linear way; the present affects the past as much as the past affects the present. Perhaps my current "self" is already affecting my past "self."


loadstool-- Yeah I am taking 471 again. The theme is history of rhetoric kinda. We read excerpts of stuff and try to write in the style of the pieces or take one piece and write it like the other. It is kinda cool. I guess I better start that paper that is due on Thursday for that class... The assignment is actually very similar to the Ubik assignment. REMIX!!! RoBoCoP

 

 

1 March 2007

 

As mentioned, here's a dream I had a number of years ago.

I had a dream just now. I'm a woman in this one, as I sometimes am in my dreams.

 

 

My husband and I are having marriage counseling. The room we are in is bright, though not overbearingly bright like how they show white rooms in films. There are

two doors, both on the same side. Each is its own tiny room with a stool. There are windows in those doors so that one can see the person sitting inside. The main

room is divided in half, but only by a line of paint. On each side of the line, there is a table. On the wall opposite the doors, there is the exit. No other

objects are in the room.

 

My husband and I are on the left side of the divide. The counselor is mediating us about something. We're not really arguing over anything, but my husband has the

look of someone who doesn't care, and just wants to leave. I remember his face vividly, which is odd since I don't usually remember faces in dreams. He is blonde,

with a buzzcut, and has an ugly, pug nose. He is heavyset, though not fat, like the football player or boxer. Muscular, but not in the handsome way. In a

word, butch. Not very attractive really. I don't know why I married him. Not that I marry for attraction. Anyway.

 

Oh. He was also wearing this hidious white and tan striped polo shirt. Anyway.

 

On the other side of the divide, is another couple. The woman is sitting on the stool behind the window'd door, and the husband at the table speaking one-on-one

with a counselor. She emerges elegantly, but like a bitch. She walks like she wears the pants in her relationship and knows it and why is she wasting her money on

this she could be elsewhere dammit. The man stands up and out of nowhere they yell and bicker at each other. Their names are Maggie and Terrie. I probably got the

name Maggie because I saw Million Dollar Baby before I went to bed, but the Maggie in that movie is nicer.

 

My husband is no longer paying attention to our mediator, but has been listening to the other couple argue. As the session concludes, the other woman waits by the

exit, not for her husband, but for mine. She stands there, one hand on her hip, holding a purse with the other, head tilted, leaning onto one leg, and chewing gum,

looking like, "What are you waiting for?"

 

I look at my husband, who has grown sympathetic to her from listening to the argument, and he says that he's just going to drop the "poor woman" off at home, then be

right back for me, the gentleman that he is.

 

He doesn't return, of course. I don't blame him though. She was awfully pretty, more than me.

 

Asshole.

 

The next part is almost a completely different dream. Maybe it was and my mind is just combining the two. I may or may not be a woman in this part of the dream. I

can't remember. Whatever, it doesn't matter. Anwyay.

 

I go home. It's my old house (which Home usually is in my dreams), and my dad and I are in the garage, our crap strewn about on the walls and floors. I don't know

if I can call it a garage though, because there's no door for the car. It's pretty much the garage room, but instead of the car door, we have a huge window.

 

One day, or maybe it was right when I got there, we discovered that a part of the window had been shattered, and we find the weapon - a few red bricks in a plastic

bag. There's also some papers around with writing and drawings on them, mostly drawings, ones that I couldn't understand, but they were very detailed. I do

remember one of them had a stick figure with "$49.99" crossed out in a speech bubble, and written beneath it $39.99 instead.

 

We search the window for clues that could lead to the assailant, and we find a knife with a yellow holding (In reality, it's the bread-cutting knife at Quizno's),

and more papers. We assume the culprit is a child or juvenile teenager, but that was just as assumption. As we're searching for clues, a man appears at the window.

It was really scary...very horror movie serial-killer like. Stepped in very quickly and just stood there. He appeared to be in his late 40s and wore brown

sunglasses. He had terrible skin and a mustasche, and wore a white hat with a logo t-shirt.

 

He threw some more bricks through the window, which scared me, so I ran to the back of the garage...And here the dream goes down two different paths, because I was

beginning to wake up, and trying to control which way the dream went, because the original was not to my liking.

 

In the original way, I run inside to call 911, but my father remains in the garage and gets his ass beat, and I try to get him inside.

 

In the other way, I run inside to call 911, and my father is with me, and we trap the intruder between the door and panel, and I cut him with the Quizno's knife.

 

Well! That's it.

 

It was the last part of the dream that struck me as I re-read it. Was this metaprogramming? Was I a Pat? The reason I started a dream journal in the first place was because I wanted to control my dreams. I heard they become easier to remember if you write them down right away, which somehow helps in programming future dreams. In class today, someone mentioned something along the lines of: "If you keep trying to have the experience, it won't happen." I find this to be true. Though I don't have as many dreams as I used to, I can usually remember a lot of details. Maybe I'll make this my project and take sleeping pills for a day.

 

Here's one of those MagicEye things:


1 March 2007

I think I've found my LSD. Does anyone else keep a dream journal? I've written down nearly every dream I've had since high school, and was amazed at the content. It's very poorly written, but I've been blown away reading it. Perhaps I'll post some up here later.


22 February 2007

 

 

  • "Come on guys; this is Youtube, not a political forum. Geez."

 

  • "Fuck you cockshamed liberal rhetoric inhaling faggots. This waluum individual is entitled to his opinion just as much as you cunt fearing asspounders are entitled to fit as many aids infested cocks up your ass as you can. There's no law that says you have to accept homosexuality or agree with it, so fuck yourself back to the whiny Berkeley-esque schools you came from."

 

  • "what a sickening homo. People like this guy should be thrown out of the country. They do not deserve the freedom our fathers fought for. If they want to be damned to hell, they should take their sinful ways somewhere that they are wanted.

Keep your gay homo love to yourselves, and out of our classrooms & sporting events or you will get the reprisals you sick fucks deserve."

 


21 February 2007

 

Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;

It is the center hole that makes it useful.

Shape clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful.

Cut doors and windows for a room;

It is the holes which make it useful.

Therefore profit comes from what is there;

Usefulness from what is not there.

 

 

 

-"Eleven" from the Tao Te Ching.

 

 

Which translation of the Tao is that? ~Echan

Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English.

 

In Cosmic Trigger, I've only finished the preface, but some of what Wilson writes about reminds me of Gorgias (whose Encomium of Helen was mentioned in class). Gorgias said:

  • Nothing exists.
  • If anything did exist, it could not be known.
  • If anything could be known, it could not be communicated.

 

"A-ha!" you say. "But isn't Gorgias himself claiming to know something? And isn't he communicating it to us?"

 

 

Words are distinct from perceived materiality/reality (as has been discussed in our Wiki many times). "Black" is not black and "white" is not white. They are symbols and we _____ them.

 

 

The medium is the message--not the matter.

 

On the very first page of the preface, for example, Wilson writes: "...my viewpoint in this book of one of agnosticism. The word "agonistic" appears explicitly in the Prologue and the agnostic attitude is restated again and again in the text." I don't know about you, but my mind replaced "of" (between "in this book" and "one of agnosticism") with "is." My mind also read "agonistic" (which rhetoric is often accused of) as "agnostic."

 

Unrelated: Looks like mobius has been pasting some of our Wiki entries as Facebook notes. Intertwingling of mediums?

 

16 March 2007

I was looking at the first page of the preface again, and it doesn't say "agonistic" like I thought it did. It says "agonstic"--just a typo. I guess that further shows how people can see things they want to see.


19 February 2007

If the epigraph in the final chapter of Ubik parallels the epigraphs of the previous chapters, perhaps Dick hints at the selling of reality. Like the coffee, salad dressing, and deodorant, it should be taken only as directed. The epigraph reads:

 

I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, they do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be.

 

 

It is Dick who created the suns, worlds, and lives of the novel, and he has sold us that reality (for $12.95, plus tax). In the final chapter--just when we think we understand it all and can move on to some other book, some other reality--Dick undoes the world. We feel unsettled. Caveat Emptor. Let the buyer beware.


18 February 2007

Colors!


16 February 2007

I just finished Ubik. Give me a minute...


14 February 2007

I got 95 problems but the Print ain't one.

 

 

Synthesis! :

 

I was in a History class and my thoughts meandered (apparently in the tradition of Young Jessie). We were talking about the Reformation. Basically, people were becoming disillusioned with the Roman Catholic Church and leaving to form their own sects. Martin Luther, for instance, posted his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, and has since been widely portrayed as a catalyst of the Reformation (though I'm sure it's not that simple). The document outlined ninety-five problems he had with the Church, including the practice of selling indulgences. Anyway, the recent invention of the printing press disseminated information/ideas and spread discontent with the Church. People broke off and new sects formed. When this happened, didn't these people merely displace one power-institution with another? In class the other day, mobius explained bio-power (which, by the way, I'm not sure I totally comprehend). My understanding is that bio-power is what happens when an institution regulates/maintains/controls its population, as opposed to struggles with it; it is the natural evolution of power in capitalist societies where the State is thought to be essential. Did the rising Protestant sects just trade one controller for another? Or does bio-power only apply to the State, not religion? Re-inform me.

 

As I understood it, biopower refers to the state's 'concern' for the health and wellbeing of its constituents. This is the basis from which the state begins to regulate what goes in our bodies, i.e. food (hence the FDA), the regulation of medical practices, and also the regulation of drugs, which is how we got to this ridiculous situation in the War on Drugs. Biopower, as I understood it, was the State's power over what goes into our bodies.~Echan


8 February 2007

BigYellowPeep asks whether we work too much. I took a class last year called the Sociology of Time, and my professor's answer was basically: "Yes! This is a culture of speed and we need to slow down!" A lot of the class related to the assigned reading for today (Society Against the State). Technology is supposed to give us more leisure time, but in desiring excess goods we actually work more; time is commodified and we want to get the most bang for our buck. (Reminds me of a line by Metric: "Buy this car to drive to work. Drive to work to pay for this car.") There are actually some social movements going on (e.g., the Slow Food movement, the Slow Sex movement) advocating for a higher quality of life brought about by considering quality over quantity/productivity. The professor was not against all technologies, only "technologies of speed."

Yes, a generally tantric relation to the wetware interface is, I think, here to stay. loadstool's link to SlowSex ( which will certainly help our Google rankings) links to something much more and less than a movement: tantra collects techniques of ecstasy related to mind hacking through meditation and a focusing of attention on precise and blissful practices of embodiement. You can, tantric teachers argue,(slowly and gently) heal yourself with your attention and feel bliss all the time, if you learn how to focus your attention on achieving this state of body/mind. The "West" has focused on this as a "sexual" practice, but this tells us us as much about our systems of taxonomy - how we cut up the world into categories - as it does about tantric practice. Perhaps the first axiom of such a tantric practice ( it is, I would argue, the very origin of Metaprogramming, if there is such a thang) is: Notice that you are a body/mind. Be still. Cease to imagine yourself as a player in what Clastres describes as the insane Cartesian game of splitting ourselves in this fashion: male/female, inside/outside, body/mind. BookWorm rightly notices that Clastres could use a little tantra himself when it comes to noticing the ancient femaleness of labor seeking more equitable and joyful distributions of the labor to be minimized through a meditation on Clastres. - Mobius P.S> What is the point or effect of being "against" a technology? How about learn how to thrive with, dwindle or forget a technology instead?- mobius

 

While a mass-slow movement might sound great, I don't know how feasible it is. When new technologies are available, people feel left behind if they don't have it. Do we only "need" technologies when everyone else has it? (I didn't have a cell phone for the longest time, but now I wonder how I ever lived without it.) I guess the balance to strike is to use technologies of speed when needed, but to use them in moderation. I definitely need to think over this a bit more (I have few convictions), and it's time for class.


6 February 2007

Alfred Kinsey's research on human sexual behavior is widely known (and contested), and his research institution continues to function long after his death. His FOIA file primarily concerns the reception of "obscene materials" for scientific research. In trying to obtain anonymous erotica for study, Kinsey and his staff encountered several obstacles--mainly the government. The government wanted to destroy the materials on the grounds that they were obscene, but a judge ruled in favor of the institute. On another occasion, the government wanted to know who was sending the erotica, but the institute's director at the time had no way of knowing. Basically, the FOIA file shows how sex information is controlled.

 

 

From googling around, I found information I thought should have been in the FOIA file. Several religious sites claim that Kinsey was a pederast and filmed videos in his home attic. I was incredulous, but decided to check it out. Most of the sites cite James Jones' Alfred C. Kinsey, a biography. Unsure of the book's trustworthiness, I checked it out and flipped through it. It seems scholarly and neutral, but Jones speculates greatly. For example, he suggests that circle jerks were not uncommon at summer camps, so surely the young Kinsey at least watched them. There are, however, some truths: Kinsey apparently performed masochistic masturbation. Martin Duberman's book review sums it up well: "Through research, scholars discover what material exists. Then they must decide what it means. Alfred C. Kinsey gets high marks for industry, low ones for insight." While the book admittedly shows that Kinsey had some nontypical sexual practices, his work is not necesarily discredited. I guess this just goes to show that more points of view (and a little digging) bring more complete truths.


1 February 2007

Provisional Idiot's Facebook-esque idea for RFID is, well, awesome as long as I can alter privacy settings or turn it off. Houdini mentions that the technology could compromise the privacy/safety of oppressed individuals. As a queer, I do have to be cautious about who my orientation is revealed to, but I don't fault the medium; I fault the users of the medium. My sexual orientation is listed in my Facebook profile, and I've received a fair share of not-so-friendly messages because of it (most recently at 4 a.m. this morning). I refuse, however, to remove that information from my profile. The difference between Facebook and a similar RFID-based social networking program is that the RFID program can identify individuals in close proximity (an obvious risk to physical safety); on Facebook, I merely get immature messages and am safe(r) from harm.

 

 

 

I made a short list of possible RFID uses, but realized soon after that many of them have already been mentioned. Anyway, the technology could be used to:

  • find lost items (from car keys to airplanes)
  • check-out library materials (where I'm "working" right now...)
  • match socks (or other pairings/groupings) together
  • measure distances without worrying about obstacles
  • settle sporting disputes (Did the ball go past this point?)
  • quickly and accurately locate 911 callers
  • I've also been thinking about RFID in bullets and guns.


31 January 2007

In my first entry, I defined collaborative as "the result of at least two authors' minds," but it was a limited definition. After reading the other posts on author/readership, I'm pretty sold on the author-is-reader-is-author idea. Words/symbols have no meaning until they are interpreted, so any reading of something is inherently collaborative. If, however, I accept that belief, I must reject my original view that this wiki is not collaborative--so I will (Kill your babies!).

 

 

 

As requested on the syllabus:

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5  License.

I'm a little confused about the Creative Commons license, though. Even though it's less restrictive than "all rights reserved," doesn't it still allow someone to claim ownership of intellectual "property"?

 

 

 

From the FAQ: "Creative Commons licenses give you the ability to dictate how others may exercise your copyright rights—such as the right of others to copy your work, make derivative works or adaptations of your work, to distribute your work and/or make money from your work."


23 January 2007

In the proposal, mobius writes that "the forms of attention necessary to understand the choices available to any given writer in any given context and medium atrophy as we begin to surf rather than read." Even now I notice this: I'm tabbing between various internet spaces and my attention is being diverted. I write a little, say "whatever," and check my Gmail account or something--I have the freedom to do so. We have many choices available to us in this medium as we read/write/(re)rewrite (which is what I think the edits someone made to my (the?) last post are hinting at). We're exposed to various links, often clicking on each to see where it takes us, but doing so deflects our attention from the original piece. As users of a medium which so easily steers us, we (or I...) need to control our attention instead of letting it control us. While links can be distracting, they can also be helpful if a student needs to better understand a concept. To decide what is and what is not helpful is, I guess, part of what working here will foster. Perhaps the self-control learned from this wiki can be carried over to other mediums. After all, distractions and diversions exist external to the web environment. This is probably obvious to most, and I may have just repeated claims, but I'm kind of a slow learner (which may not be a very good excuse, but I'm trying to settle my cognitive dissonance!).


21 January 2007

I'm a junior majoring in English and CAS, and this is my second time using a wiki. I don't recall any collaborative writing actually taking place the first time and am wondering exactly how collaborative our wiki is. When I think of a collaborative work, I think of a single document, the result of at least two authors' minds. At this point, our wiki seems to be just separate blogs linked together from a common home page. Even though some of the wiki pages have spoken to each other (Houdini to BigYellowPeep and moops for example), it is less collaborative, in my view, than it is responsive. This has some implications if what we truly want is a collaborative piece. Currently, the single page with links to different spaces allows metaprogrammers to choose which blogs to read and which to ignore; ignoring certain bloggers or posts would certainly hurt true collaborative efforts. Perhaps having all posts on a single space could help remedy this (if it actually is an issue), though it may not be practical if everyone is posting videos from YouTube or something, extending the loading time of the page.


Comments (1)

Anonymous said

at 10:28 am on Jan 22, 2007

The Recent Activity page ( in the sidebar) usually keeps us all on the same page. On this wiki it does not seem to work. Can anybody figure out how to fix it?

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