The Perfection of Wisdom in 241 Words

(A treasure found in the sky, revealed to Jigme Odsel of Santa Cruz

by the goddess Iris, on the occasion of the 41^st of Confusion, YOLD 3186

All praises to Amitabha, Avalokitesvara, and Mahasthamaprapta!)

Once upon a time the Great Bodhisattva,

known in our world as Avalokitesvara,

practiced profoundly The Perfect Prajna,

so he did not worry or suffer mental trauma.

“Son of Śāri listen and attend to this tutorial;

form and emptiness are not different, it's reciprocal.

Feelings to consciousness, it is substitutable.

Skandhas are empty and void of false dichotomy;

we should categorically negate them subsequently.

No feeling, no consciousness, also no impulses;

no form, no perception, it is all emptiness.

No sensoria and also no sensation;

there is no space for sensing to happen in.

There is no sense-mind and no discreet entities.

Ignorance not defeated, you have my apologies.

It was never there, nor was old age and death.

No suffering, no stopping, also no path,

no origin, no attainment, no grasp.

There is nothing to attain, depend on Perfect Prajna;

your mind will not be hindered, and no fears will come to haunt ya.

Far away mistaken views; one abides in sweet Nirvana.

In all three worlds Buddhas are on Perfect Prajna.

Subsequently you should know That Perfect Prajna

is the great transcendent all pervading mantra,
is the luminous and great bright mantra,
is the foremost and utmost mantra,
is the supreme and super powered mantra.

It relieves your suffering, and isn't false, but true.

So this is the charge that I proclaim to you:

Proclaim the six words of The Perfect Prajna,

Gate, Gate, _Paragate, _Parasamgate! Bodhi! Svaha!”

Default Mode Network

(This article originally published by Gods and Radicals)

It comes in waves. That's the reoccurring observation I make when I've taken a “heroic” dose of psilocybin bearing mushrooms. Outside of the fact that I'm irrationally frightened literally every time I decide to trip, up to the point that it starts happening. Then there is the short period that I'm concerned, irrationally and deeply, that I've somehow poisoned myself. Then finally, the psilocin starts replacing the serotonin in my brain and I stop worrying so much about dumb bullshit. It takes effort to overcome the fears, but not a whole lot. I've noticed that the best way to conquer fear is to not take it seriously and to ignore it. Not taking your fears seriously is pretty stupid, and I'm stupid; that my fellow gentle-persons, is the key to “heroism”. Nah, I'm just kidding, the true key to heroism is putting your shit on the line for other people. I mean overcoming your fear is part of that, but merely doing that is not a sufficient condition for being a hero.

It is going to be a pretty round about explanation I have to give to explain what I see going on. I may drop a Tantric (non-)secret or two. You may even get bored. You may want to skip the whole damn thing. I'm also going to talk about neurology, and probably fuck it up. Then to finish, we're going to look a bit at the society of the spectacle, and what 2020 can teach us.

So if you are wondering when the hell I'm going to get to explaining the title, wonder no further. The default mode network videlicet wikipedia is thus: “[...] the default mode network (DMN), also default network, or default state network, is a large scale brain network best known to be active when a person is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest, such as during daydreaming and mind-wandering.” However, it is also active when we “think” about ourselves and others or talk about ourselves and others, to yourself or others. The DMN is your ego, or at least “ego” is the best Sigmund Freud could do without a scanning MRI and a fucking clue.

So there are a few things you should understand about the DMN, or “ego”. The first is that the “ego” is not you, but it thinks of itself as you but actually isn't, it's just a part of you. You, that is your ego, don't make decisions. Neurology has shown this, what is presented to you as a “decision” that you made consciously actually occurs before you are aware of there being a decision to make. If that is true, you might ask, then why bother with the whole Platonic cave BS then, why the deception from my own brain? Well, there is no deception, the “ego” isn't tasked with lying to itself. That isn't its job. The “ego”s job is to make your actions and person explicable to others on a social level. In order to do that, it has to have a reasonably good narrative as to why you did or said a thing. Those narratives become more believable if the “ego” pretends it is the master and commander, instead of what it actually is, the public relations department of you. So that's its job, to produce narratives. It is very good at this and indeed, it never stops. Ever. You are doing it as you read this, I am doing it as I write this. Most people's DMN is settled into what it is going to be by age 12.

The Buddha call the DMN monkey mind. But not one monkey, he felt that it was more like a whole troop, and all of them drunk. This is the incessant mental chatter of your “ego” that zen meditation is supposed to help calm down, and if you are willing to give it a go, it might. Takes a while though. And you have to resist those narrative distractions when they come back, in waves. Also you have to have the luxury of sitting down and not doing much for several hours a day. Not all of us have such a luxury, in fact few have such luxuries. There is a better way though, a so called “lightning” path, that got its start at a time in which things had fallen apart on the sub-continent of India. It was right after the collapse of the Gupta empire, and everything was all Mad Max, but without cars or chrome. Plenty of Witnessing though.

Looking at Medieval Indian art, and reading monographs and secondary sources concerning the period, I can only come to the conclusion that much of what could be called “siddha culture”, Tantric culture, etc., has its genesis in the rediscovery of the effects of the psilocybin mushroom. Mushrooms are very taboo in Vedic culture, so no surprise they hid their pharmacological knowledge in legend and image. Very possibly, the taboo nature of mushrooms themselves has to do with the identity of Soma, called amrita by the Buddhists. The iconography of Shiva, the Adiyogin, or, first yogin... anyway, the iconography is specifically translated when it comes to Shiva's white skin and blue throat. Avalokitesvara (which by the way means 'Lord of this World'), Shiva's Buddhist face, also has a blue throat and white skin. Mind you, not Caucasoid skin, actual white, white skin. White like the ashes left over in a funeral pyre. Both Shiva and Avalokitesvara carry jars of amrita or sakti. But if that isn't enough to convince you, how about an entire Tantric family of deities and Bodhisattvas centered around the “Uṣṇīṣa ”, or umbrella, which is, yes you guessed it, a white parasol with a blue handle. Krshna was a “cowherd” that had a very unique color of blue skin. He had all kinds of super powers n' shit. The Buddhists call him Mahasthamaprapta. Green Tara is a Bodhisattva associated with the Acacia. They used to call it Khandira. They called Syrian Rue Khandira too. Syrian Rue has all those good MAOI inhibitors. Acacia bark is full of DMT. Another chemical that takes you off the DMN. Maybe stop it with the ayahuasca vacations now? 

There is a preponderance of evidence like this, for the sake of space and flow I'm leaving a lot out. So, in the wreckage of the Gupta empire, the people of that age discovered that the psilocybin mushroom, along with other tryptamine bearing plants, takes you off the default mode network; they then equated this with the Buddha's accomplishment. That would mean that they thought the Buddha's accomplishment was getting off the DMN without switching out neurotransmitters, straight off the DMN on serotonin. That would be quite the accomplishment if that were the case. Well, I'd be impressed, your mileage may vary. This could also be happening during the Kundalini experience, or the samadhi experience. If your some sort of brain scientist, you might want to check that out. But what do I know, I'm just a historian.

Ok, so time to change gears. First of all, if you thought this article would be a nice break from reading about the troubles, SURPRISE! It isn't. Second of all, what changed in America? George Floyd, as far as I can tell, wasn't different enough from all the other black people murdered by cops to account for the very different reaction to his murder than to all the other black people murdered by cops. Personally, for my money, I thought video of Walter Scott being shot in the back by a coward wearing a police uniform would be the one. Nope. The coward got 20 in prison for his murder, but nothing changed systemically, and no one was out in the streets pulling down statues over it. Amber Guyger broke into a black dude's home and shot him fucking dead, she only got 10 for that! That was last year! And so many other murders. Nothing. Then George Floyd, casually murdered on camera. Everyone loses their shit. What changed? Was it a critical mass that was reached? Maybe, I won't discount it. But I think I have a better explanation. The Society of the Spectacle was disrupted.

Corona VIrus Disease 2019 made everyone stay at home. Millions of people out of work, permanently or not, got to sit at home and watch a cop casually murder a black man with a big shit eating grin on his face as the black man pleaded for his life. A lot of people will tell you the entertainment industry is the opiate of the modern masses, that it is the Spectacle generation machine par excellence. Nah, it ain't. Everyone wasn't done with Netflix yet, and Netflix isn't the only game in town, people had plenty to entertain themselves with, disgusting amounts of entertainment. But it didn't turn them away from the sight of a cop casually murdering a black man. If the collective gestalt of America has the society of the spectacle as its DMN, and Corona VIrus Disease 2019 disrupted the spectacle, then what was the spectacle? Oh man, this is like the riddle of steel! Come on Conan the Reader, you can do it, you can think of the answer, it is so obvious! Shall I tell you? It's the least I can do...

Americans work harder than a lot of people in the Western world, if not a lot of people in general. We bust our asses. We get paid shit. We work a lot of hours. The spectacle is your fucking job bitch! Guy Debord almost got it right. Having did not replace being, working replaced being, which was then replaced by work that isn't needed, what the economists call a, “useless fucking bullshit job”. And Corona VIrus Disease 2019 disrupted the spectacle. And that, my beautiful readers, is why the richy rich folk are desperate to get you back to work, so you will shut the fuck up and get with the program. Worried about you getting sick? Nah they ain't. It should be obvious by now that they are leveraging Corona VIrus Disease 2019 as a method of voter suppression. I mean, this is obvious to all of you, right?

So, what has 2020 taught us? It taught me that this whole time, what I thought was the spectacle that enchains our society here in America was just the bullshit that distracts you from the Distraction. Turns out the actual spectacle is your job. In the sixties the government experimented with basic income. See, back in the day, they all thought we'd be crushing elbows to get our foot in the door, so that we could maybe have the chance of working 15 hours a week! And everyone else gets to recreate. There is one reason, and one reason only that this was never to be as long as the richy rich have anything to do with it. That would disrupt the actual spectacle. Then everyone would have free time to recreate how they prefer, and if you are familiar with Americans, then you know that when we have a lot of time on our hands we start getting bored and we start going to church and we start paying attention to politics (along with the drunken partying and all that too). This frightens the rich extremely, because they don't actually hide what they are doing, if they ever even knew how. They don't have to, the spectacle keeps us all busy and tired.

I very much want to say that this will be the thing that finally roots out racism in America. But that fight, as well as the fight against authoritarianism in general, isn't a pitched battle and never was. I know, I hate that too. I was trained in my youth to fight pitched battles, and win. Even at the cost of my flesh. But this isn't that kind of battle, so I can get frustrated easily. I'm old now too, and lets face it, 24 years of anarchism (from age 16 on) and nothing got better, authoritarianism and racism only spread. To tell the truth, it feels like a personal failure. But there isn't time these days to wallow in self pity, nor is it healthy or good to try and make this about me. This isn't a pitched battle! It is many pitched battles, of many different kinds, that we all will have to fight over and over again through the ages. That being the case, an awareness of timing might be helpful. You just have to remember that your opportunities come in waves.

The Method of Art; the Aim of Magik

 (This article originally published by Gods and Radicals)

“The reliance on science for method is tragic; instead of religion try aiming for magik.”

The Anti-art art movements. You could argue that they started with Pataphysics, but anyone involved with that lofty and heady science would dispute such a claim. You could say it started with Dada, or at least those involved with Dada were the first to own up to it. The war on art. An anti-art art movement. It later gave birth to Surrealism, and both had heavy connections to the political Left. These movements however, were not anti-art, but anti-artifact. They were anti-commode-ification of the produce of the artist. They did this however by attacking the sensibilities of the consumers and critics of the art. This mistake simply led to a new way to commode-ify art. 

To say that I've read all art theory would be patently false, but what I've seen of it makes me think that there's a mistake in the thinking about art going on. We call artifacts art, and the activity of the artist, art. It can be very confusing when you have words doing double duty like that.

Art is the activity, and is commonly defined as such. But the common parlance eschews “artwork”, or “artifact” (from the Latin “arte”-“using art”, and “factum”-“something made”) and nowadays increasingly uses art to describe the artifacts and the activity. But this is false, the artifact or artwork produced by the artist is not the art, it is what remains after the working is finished. When the art is done, the artifact remains. The Art is the activity. And as you can guess, it is much easier to commode-ify an artifact than an activity. However, art can be commode-ified by means of commode-ifying artifacts. The artist becomes a servant of economic need instead of their own inspiration, producing artifacts on demand, or mass producing them, in an intense mimicry of factory production. It is through the artifacts that the artist is attacked by the Capitalist enterprise.

Once upon a time, back before recorded history, the tribe's holy man was the resident artist. But this meant more then, because he was also the resident healer, scientist, wizard, priest, and psychologist. This was the Art, as the ancients called it. The Art, as many reading this already may know, is the fancy pants term for Magik. I like using this spelling because it is reminiscent of the Greek spelling. They in turn got the word from the Persians. Really, the letters you use to spell it at this point is a matter of aesthetics. Through the millennia, the artist, healer, scientists, wizards, priests and psychologists all fractured out from the persona of the village cunning man into their own groups. Now, at the end of it, the artist increasingly becomes debased further into commode-ity production. Or to say plainly, there is more massed produced crap being called “art” than ever before.

Industrial commodity culture is incompatible with Art. I think we all know this deep inside. To get a sense of the feel of it, I recommend “Don't Hug Me I'm Scared” on Youtube if you haven't seen it. A fantastic exploration of creativity and art in the grind of Capitalism. Industrial commodity culture is incompatible with art because Art, even a little bit of it, can wake people up, out of the stupor of those psychological levers Capitalism uses on its victims, as revealed by the efforts of Stanley Milgrim and a robbery in Stockholm. Capitalism needs art to be a product, not medicine, rebellion, communication, political change, not a back door to social censure, and definitely, definitely not as spirituality in any form. Art, in Capitalism, needs to be a product for sale, an entertainment. This keeps the consumer passive. It definitely keeps the consumer from becoming an artist. That's the largest danger of all for the Capitalist enterprise.

To be an artist, to make art, is all at once to open the door to possibility, to being your own priest, wizard, scientist, psychologist, and healer. How can Capitalism survive such a thing? This reveals the mistake of those anti-art movements of eras past. It's a common mistake, made by many who feel they are in the “Left” quite often. Working within the system to change the system. You cannot counteract Capitalism's commode-ification of art by attacking from within. As has been demonstrated, put a toilet on a pedestal with a placard, and the so called “art world” will eat it up. The real way to use art to counteract the destruction of the artist, and his produce, is to get people doing art. There is no need or desire for art as a commode-ity if people are making their own artifacts.

The Artist as healer writes their own herbals of the local area, the Artist as scientist creates imaginary solutions to metaphysical problems, the Artist as wizard creates his own spirits and cosmos, the Artist as priest creates his own rituals and gods, the Artist as psychologist guides people on the quest to wholeness. If each of these professions reclaimed Art, or Art reclaimed them, then a serious threat to Capitalism would emerge.

Also threatened by this are the power structures of the doctrinal religions, the world's spiritual authoritarians. They too are threatened by the democratization of the Art. From the universal church in Rome fervently denouncing the worshipers of Santa Muerte, to monks being expelled for the crime of ordaining women, they stop at nothing to retain power over others spirituality. This and a seemingly endless legion of small time gate keepers have left spirituality as a chore for thousands of years in some parts of the world. Yeah, no shit there are a ton of people that are atheist, and just don't bother. I don't blame them; nope, not at all.

Here's a fun project! If you haven't done this before, try this out. Make up a god or goddess, or a genderless divinity if you like, go total free-form; and then worship it on an alter. Many reading this I imagine will already have an alter. Draw a picture or make a clay figure or whatever, and add it to your alter. It doesn't have to be a major god, unless you want that, it can be a minor god, a house god, the spirit of your family's Genius, or a tutelary spirit. Again, go total free-form. And then..., nothing. It's Art. Keep doing it, or stop. Or go further with it. Create a whole pantheon. Write horrible fan fiction about them. What? You'll write horrible fan fiction about Captain America, but you'd be too mortified to make up your own deities and write their mythology? Ok then, keep writing the Captain America fan fic, just remember you passed on the opportunity to write about something not owned by Disney. Don't get me wrong, I grew up with comics. I think the all movies are good, mostly. Warner Bros. spends the most and fails the hardest, but they still make their money. But when I hear the assertions that comic book superheroes are the modern equivalent of those ancient pantheons still known to us, I can't help but think that if we accept such an assertion at face value, that means “the gods” are owned by corporations owned by corporations. It is corporation turtles all the way down!

I should at this point bring something up, and it leads directly into the issue of what to do about the appropriation of art for the commodity market. I think just about everyone paying attention has caught my pun of comparing the commodification of art to the flushing of shit down a toilet. And that is what happens, the second art, or even Art, gets turned into a commodity to be traded, appraised, bought, sold, etc., it is robbed of all that that made it magik. And no, gentle reader, the short endorphin rush that comes with owning a new thing does not compare. It was this very theft and flushing down the toilet, of magik that the Anti-art art movements (or anti-art commodification movements) were concerned.

This whole time, I've discussed art as if it is an activity that only produces artifacts. It totally isn't. Performance art does not. It may produce props, sets, costumes, etc, but until recently with the advent of recording technology, the performance itself was a thing that existed only as a memory. This then would mean that some arts only leave memories behind, living reproductions of the event in living human minds. But of course, such an exalted state was not to last. Wax cylinders for recording sound, and later cellulose films, paved the way for the tech now available. This tech is not bad in and of itself, but does lend itself readily to the commodification of the performance arts.

There is a passage in Aleister Crowley's, “Book of Lies”, Chapter 69, “The Way to Succeed -and the Way to Suck Eggs!”, to wit, “This Work also eats up itself, accomplishes its own end, nourishes the worker, leaves no seed, is perfect in itself.” Now, I'm not suggesting, say, if you are an oil painter, that you start eating your oil paintings. Nor am I suggesting that the solution to this problem is oral sex. I mean, you can try it if you like, but I've been eating women out and sucking guys dicks for a while now, and the problem hasn't disappeared, I'm still having to sit down and write this. So obviously, lamentably, oral sex is not the answer..., to this problem.

What then is the answer? If you, dear reader, have read any of my earlier work on this issue, you may have already guessed where I'm going with this. The solution is, make art that self destructs, completely, or make art that must be recorded to be commodified, and then allow no recordings or reproductions. In other words, the work must eat itself up, and leave no seed. What I'm saying is that the focus on art should shift from products to experiences. This will, at a minimum, solve the problem until they figure out how to record people's memories and then sell those. This will buy us some time to deal with the actual problem with the “art world”, Capitalism itself. And of course, if you must produce an artifact, “Keep it secret, keep it safe!”

In this there is an objection that comes to my mind. I think on all those who live by their art, or to be more precise, live by the production of artifacts or the recording/public viewing of performances. To those who have these enviable positions, I would say, continue on. The only true solution to the commodification of art is the end of Capitalism. I would not have anyone impoverish themselves in such a manner. However, I would recommend that you keep the best away from hands with fistfuls of cash. Keep the best, the real Art, hidden from the profane. It is a lot to ask, I know. It means less money, and less glory, for the artist who works thus. I will not tell you you must do this. I only ask that you consider it, or something like it.

The destruction of artifacts that have already been commodified is mostly pointless. It does not rescue the art from being transmuted into shit. It would, as an act of propaganda of the deed, still have some value. But if the purpose is rescue or reclamation, I would say that effort is probably wasted. The point here is to preserve that spark, that which is ultra summa partium. As for myself, I've written more on this, and on ARS, the idea of the doing of art as that “Gnostic state” that Chaos magicians and other sorcerers speak of. Of how ARS provides that state, and much more, as the most central, easiest, and practical way to do magik. But few, if any, will read such works, for they are safe.

Guns and Dope: The Anti-Oppressant

(This article originally published by Gods and Radicals)

The Guns and Dope party: like most Discordian ideas and projects, it went nowhere fast. Also like most Discordian ideas and projects, it won't go away. A good joke wants to be told, even if it can only make you cringe with how cheesy it is. That's the punchline of the Guns and Dope party. It is a party that seemingly champions the interests of most Americans, and yet few have heard of it, and no one was interested it when it started. Since Wilson came up with the idea and then died (in what I'm sure are a series of acausal events, separated by like, at least a year or two, I'm sure...), new shit has come to light, man. It has no bearing on the Guns and Dope party I'm sure, since the party seems to be disinterested in asking a person to do anything so humiliating and debasing to human dignity as running for office. It might change your mind about the priority and centrality of some issues. 

Maybe you'll say to yourself, "Now who can argue with that? I think we're all in debt to Patacelsus for stating what needed to be said. I am particularly glad that these lovely children are here today to read this article. Not only was it authentic frontier gibberish, it expressed a courage little seen in this day and age." But what do I know? You'd think you could share your love of a comedy without everyone you try to share that passion with taking it to a racist place somehow? But oh no. Every time I tell someone I like Blazing Saddles, suddenly I get put on blast with all the racist jokes. Like race was the only punchline to every joke in that movie. Gives me a fucking headache. I mean, I'm not saying that it didn't have jokes that relied on the crushing racism of both the "Wild West" and 1974 America for its humor, just that it didn't exclusively do that. Eh, never mind. I can be particular at times. Let's get to it then; excuse me while I whip this out!

Gun control is in the so called modern age is seen as a liberal issue. But this was not always the case. The Mulford Act of 1967. A full year and some change before the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Mulford act was signed into law by Ronald Reagan (the actor?), who claimed that the Mulford Act "would work no hardship on the honest citizen." You know, because having the police raid your home and murder you and your family for the crime of being black is naturally no hardship for a true patriot. 

Now, most Federal gun laws legislate the manufacturing, transportation, and sales of firearms. This is not out of the ordinary because the power to regulate interstate commerce and all that crap is "constitutional", if you go in for caring about that kind of thing. The Mulford Act stands out, it was meant specifically to disarm the Black Panthers. Now, let's be clear, these are the guys wearing black leather jackets and berets, not the Wakandan King. You can tell they're serious too, because who else wears a beret with black sunglasses and a rifle but a serious mother fucker. I mean, without the beret, they would have just been weirdos with guns.

Why should one racist California law matter? Could you please stop referencing movies and get to the point? Where are you going with all of this? The answer is nowhere special. Well, the answer is stop and frisk laws; but also the answer is, no, I will not stop with the movie references, I get a big kick out of it and you're just going to have to put up with it until I get bored and move on to cryptography puzzles.

So the next year after the Mulford Act was passed, the 90th U.S. Congress passed the Gun Control Act of 1968, which was actually a response to the assassination of Kennedy, but it is the U.S. Congress, so a 5 year lag shouldn't surprise anyone. How the fuck does racism fit into the Federal effort though? I could do the lazy thing and point out a Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership opinion piece that claims the GCA of 1968 is copied wholesale from Nazi laws banning Jews from owning firearms, sans the Jew part and all the provisions for licensing firearms and not outright banning them. But such laziness would be wrong. Instead I'll just outright say that Politicians were afraid of an armed uprising in 1968 (the year Martin Luther King Jr. got killed, along with Bobby Ken), and that was the real thing that kept that 5 year lag from becoming an infinite lag. I wonder were the Congress got the idea to use gun laws to suppress minorities?

I mean, it was probably a bunch of Republicans in a Republican controlled Congress, right? Baeh! Wrong! In both House and Senate, Democrats had the seats. Not only that, but almost as many Republicans voted yea as Democrats in the House and Senate. Also, fewer Republicans said no than Democrats. Think about that a sec. Confused? Permit me to explain with much abbreviation and little detail. The Dems use to be the party of the Klan, and the Triangle fire flipped the bitch on the U.S. political spectrum. Want more detail? Read a fucking book!

Hey! Check this out!:

"( h ) I t shall be unlawful for any person—

"(1) who is under indictment for, or who has been convicted in

any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term

exceeding one year;

"(2) who is a fugitive from justice;

"(3) who is an unlawful user of or addicted to marihuana or

any depressant or stimulant drug (as defined in section 201 (v) of

the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act) or narcotic drug as defined in section 4731 (a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954); (sic)

Now, if you didn't want to read this legalese gibberish, I can tell you that it is the bill that will convert a state hospital for the insane into the William J. Le Petomane memorial gambling casino for the insane. Ha! No, it is a portion of the 1968 GCA. That part in bold seems kinda weird right? Well, to most it wouldn't, if that most was America in 1968 (haha, like people in America read it, right?). It comes after the provision which states, "it is not the purpose of this title to place any undue or unnecessary Federal restrictions or burdens on law-abiding citizens with respect to the acquisition, possession, or use of firearms appropriate to the purpose of liunting, trapshooting, target shooting, personal protection, or any other lawful activity, and that this title is not intended to discourage or eliminate the private ownership or use of firearms by law-abiding citizens for" blah blah blah, you get the idea. The direct mention of Marihuana(sic) seems fishy to me though. So after looking up "liunting" (the best I could find was 'linting', which is 'to walk around smoking a pipe'), I looked to see if any of the authors of the Mulford act moved up from state assemblyman or senator to U.S. Congressperson. Ha! No such luck. Just a whole bunch of dudes in the U.S. Congress and the California political class who all knew or were in the same circles as Nixon. Nothing to see here, move on.

So, no, I have no grand conspiracy theory for you about how this was all designed from the start. Just a bunch of rich white dudes that thought it best to specifically mention marijuana in a Federal gun control act. To be honest, it doesn't matter if this was orchestrated conspiracy, the inertia of racist habit, or complete accident. The result is racism; and similar acts, enacted in the same era, were definitely meant to be racist. So it's time for a hard subject cut; remember when Richard Dix came in here and tried to take over this town?

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. That is not a claim I'm making, and it probably isn't news to anyone reading this. It is a quote from a Harper's magazine interview of John Ehrlichman from 1994. Ehrlichman was Nixon's domestic policy chief, so he'd know what he was talking about. Want to know the source of the War on Drugs? Nixon! Yes, all bad things eventually lead back to Nixon; in fact, I bet you could make a pretty good game of a variation of Six Degrees of Bacon, call it Six Degrees of Nixon, and see if you can connect a fucked U.S. law to Nixon in six associations.

Anyway, he goes on to say:

"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

Oh wow, the 1968 Nixon campaign ran on a promise of fighting drug fueled mad-men and might have had an influence on an Congressional Act being passed that year, and was signed into law by a Democrat in October? Do tell, I'm so surprised. I've never even considered that a Democratic congress might pass a law to counteract the political rhetoric of Richard Dix, I mean Nixon (allegedly...).

This is the reality of the War on Drugs; it is thinly veiled, and sometimes not, racism. As well, it is about quashing political dissent; but mostly it has been about racism. I've seen the Left shoot down people that tried to drum up support for drug decriminalization pretty savagely. Because I guess, the "hard core" Left is against the government telling people what to do, except when it is about drugs, then the oppression is less important somehow (hopefully, if you still have some gonads and human blood in you, you're saying to yourself that you don't need anyone's permission to get high, good!). But for many on the “Left”, Uncle Sam swiping your recreation options from you doesn't count as important. And some of you fuckers probably wonder why the Left have a reputation of being such a joyless and humorous lot too, I'll bet. Well, if you can't get off your asses, to tell Uncle Same to fuck off, for the sake of getting high: can you be bothered to give a damn for the civil rights of black people? Yeah, that's what I thought.

So here we are, Stop and Frisk laws. Terry Laws are actually older than all this crap, by several decades. They have their origin in the efforts of the LAPD in the 1930's to combat "crime". Essentially they would flood an area where a crime had occurred and search anyone and everything. Of course this became the norm for black neighborhoods in the 50's. New York made the words "Stop and Frisk" the unofficial name by passing a law of that name in 1964. Yup, Stop and Frisk, which definitely has targeted minorities in large proportion, was in place before the contraband laws were. It shouldn't be a surprise that the supposed guardians of law and order have been holding on to Stop and Frisk tightly as they can, and use their tongues prettier than a twenty dollar whore to defend it.

So, not everything is coming up roses in California. We innovate a lot out here. Unfortunately, that means this state comes up with a lot of grade A racism and the racists to legislate it. From Stop and Frisk, to Ronald Reagan, we have a problem with racism in California that most people pretend isn't here. Even the Right pretends we're a centrist liberal fuckhead bastion, all the while their Moses and Jesus, Nixon and Reagan respectively, both hail from California. These are the real problems in California, the ones no one really talks about on the grand public stage of approved public discourse, a.k.a. "news". But never mind that shit, here comes Mongo!

Or as most know him, Donald Jiggle Jowl Trump. Nah, I'm just kidding, I just wanted to see the words Jiggle Jowl published. Actually, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, who is so super into coming down on Marijuana (black people) that it gives his little weasel rigor mortis, is who I want to mention. I could say a mouthful about him, I guess, but instead I'll use this time to say, "Instead of a weasel, why not an Ostrich?" 

Yes friends, the Guns and Dope party only nominates the finest Ostriches to Congressional office, specifically because their, "mysterious and awesome dignity will elevate the suidaen barbarity long established there." The attempts to suppress minorities through laws has instead led to the majority of Americans having their lives ruined, lives ended, their property stolen by the government. It has resulted in wasted money, and in inane bullshit being spread far and wide. Everyone has had a shittier life because some rich fucks wanted to oppress a minority their feeble psychology associated with the scary stuff. The oppression of a few only results in the oppression of all. We either take care of everyone, or we can take care of no one. This is not a philosophical proposition being offered you, it is truth based on fact. I doubt this article stated the case for this truth from fact clearly, eloquently, or convincingly. But that's ok, maybe someone better at this will read this and hopefully do better than me.

Of course, you'll have the good taste not to mention that I spoke to you.

How the Discordian Society created the Deep State, and other Silly Lies

(This article originally published by Gods and Radicals)

Once upon a time, in a land far far away (for most readers it would be far, for me it's a day trip), there was a group of Baby Boomers that enjoyed trolling Right Wing groups. They did this in an age in which trolling required effort, Art, forethought, finesse, and of course, a bit of a mean streak. Of course it wasn't called trolling back then; these dope smoking, Leftist, chronically jovial Baby Boomers, lets call them, Discordians, called it by its holy Discordian name, a jape. 

The jape was to convince these Right Wingers that there was an ancient organization, called the Illuminati, that really ran everything, and that the Illuminati wanted what they were most afraid of. Certainly, this was not the genesis of the human behavior that seeks order, and someone to blame, in a world that is less than satisfactory. But the modern belief in the “Deep State” has a lineage, and that lineage I think is clear. And the consequences of those old japes, long after all those old Discordians have died, is that the Right sought out a weapon, to destroy the “Deep State”. I say the Right, but there are two types of Right. The people in charge, who don't believe in anything but power and money, like all politicians, and the people who are on the Right, who believe in all the totem ideas that make up their Belief System (herein this will now be referred to as B.S.). 

Donald Trump is their weapon, selected by them, against the wishes of their leaders, to destroy the “Deep State” their leaders told them was real. Their leaders didn't realize that this has been a project of Operation Mindfuck for decades. They selected their weapon, but we made the windmill. That being said, I think it safe to say that a weapon that was chosen to defeat a fake terror we made up, that will succeed in destroying the real terror of the U.S. Federal Government (which will herein be called the United States F.G.), is actually our weapon. Naturally this means that the Discordian Society, long lambasted as lazy stoners who don't actually accomplish anything, life style anarchists as some former Marxist asshole wanna-be calls us (you hearing me Bookchin? Your seriousness has led you to jack shit!), has done more to defeat the imperialism of the United States than any other Leftist. We've come closest to toppling the whole thing. Which means any of you on the Left who don't claim to be Discordians have not very long to change the flow of history and have your special interest group be responsible for it. 

I triple dog dare you to beat us to the punch. 

But we've been at this plan for decades, so good luck with that. I'm gonna run down this history/pedigree of ideas for a bit, and then I'm going to make fun of the people that bought it hook, line, and sinker, in the meanest way possible. Because to come so close to seeing how the rich manipulate the people on “THE RIGHT”, and then to miss the obvious in such a wide way, is definitely worthy of cruel ridicule.

One could say that the need for order and someone to blame has always been there, but its modern genesis came in the 1882 publication of “The Gay Science”. I have no doubt that few if any Right Wingers have never read this book, for the obvious reason of the title, but also because it's a book. I say that because when I was a boy, Christians (which is their own internal code for Anti-abortion activist), were careful to show up to Nine Inch Nails concerts with signs, obviously intended to be in dialectic with the song lyrics to Trent Reznor's song “Heresy”, clearly missed the reference to Nietzsche. I think this because the signs said, “God is not dead and Yes we do care!”. So ironically, the reference went over their head like they're Captain America or something. Anyway, the god is dead thing is from Nietzsche, and what he meant was that a core provider of meaning and purpose for European society was gone. The way he saw it, most people had to have their meaning and purpose handed to them. God did this, or at least the idea of God, through the Church, but since the rise of “Science” (which will herein be referred to as Atheistic Materialism, and as well, “scientist” shall be referred to as stand-up philosopher (which is a movie reference that you get extra internet points if you can profess the movie I'm referencing in the comments)) that function was no longer being performed. People weren't getting that injection of meaning, or weren't getting enough. For if Atheistic Materialism was now pontificating ontology, who then shall be the Devil? Many tried to fit the bill in the period between the Pronouncement of Zarathustra (I mean Nietzsche, not his fictional character), and the First Jape. But none could do it. Only us Discordians could construct a Devil good enough for the fearful, ignorant, stupid and bigoted of the United States. Only we could stare at the festering corpse of God and say, “this world cannot function without a Devil”. And by “function”, we mean, “can't be funny”.

Robert Anton Wilson, in recounting his days as a playboy editor, recalls the moment he realized his Illuminati meme had finally started living apart from him, “The Discordian revelations seem to have pressed a magick button. New exposes of the Illuminati began to appear everywhere, in journals ranging from the extreme Right to the ultra-Left. Some of this was definitely not coming from us Discordians.” The Illuminati meme was created, admittedly not on purpose, by the first modern Discordians. I say modern because there were also Discordians back in Roman times, that's what the “V” hand sign is about anyway, that's the Roman numeral for 5, our most sacred number. But the story of the Roman Discordian Society is a story for another day, we're focused on the Ur meme for conspiracy theories. This meme spread rapidly, like a “magick button” had been pressed. The Illuminati became the “Other” for everyone locked into second circuit territorial squabbling so deeply that they had stopped thinking. For a while, the idea of the Illuminati had grown powerful, suckling as it were on the fears of stressed out, burnt out, tired, worn down denizens of the 70's. But an idea can only live so long without becoming passé.

Next thing you know you have Lizard People running the world. Which could only be a more apt metaphor had the writer who came up with it intended it to be metaphor. It's also some pretty savage satire, almost. There's also the individual output of Alex Jones, which is just torrential. Just, wow, it exists, it sure does. Anyway, most of this modern, science fictiony, “They Live” type of conspiracy theory is just cultural riffing off that initial Discordian Jape Jazz. Us Discordians in the here and now? We just work hard at pulling the strings of that marionette Devil.

The “Deep State”. I'm willing to bet one of the Cock bros thinks he came up with that. The Deep State was the genius idea one of the Cock bros thinks he had to facilitate the continuation of threatening rich old upper middle class white people and the under-served and mostly abandoned country folk they live off of with a black guy that was a president. What the Cock bros didn't realize is that the beast they thought they were going to saddle was their creation, that it was tame, that it belonged to them. Mwuahahahahaha! Fools!

Lets be honest, Donald J. Trump is too stupid, lazy, and weak to be a fascist. I do not say this to complement the Black Sun's dutiful little shit lords, but only to point out that Fascists do indeed believe in something, and are at least willing to kill, take risks, alienate family, and generally inconvenience themselves and suffer many different pains, all for the sake of being a shit lord. Trump would never undergo a moment of any of that for anything. He believes in nothing, the worlds first true nihilist. He is Nietzsche's “last man”. Remember, Donald Trump, underneath it all, hates being president. He's just too dumb and cowardly and narcissistic to quit. So for the first time in his life, he's had to make sacrifices, like being bored, not getting his way all the time, not being able to get away with lying all the time, not being able to randomly sexually assault women. Tortures of the damned folks, tortures of the damned. He didn't even think he would be president, he was setting up Trump TV or whatever they were going to call it, to start right after the election! He didn't understand the beast either. The idea of the Deep State is just the idea of the Illuminati, with a new paint job. You can't just paint a mustang and expect it to be broken, tamed, and ready to ride! That's crazy, you don't even paint horses to break them, you certainly don't just tap into the repressed Id being projected on to a memetic “Other” and expect to control that shit! Might as well try to convince teens not to fuck, even though they are literally descended from people who mostly like to fuck. Yup, that's right folks, the weakness of the fascist is his own stupidity. A fascist has to believe, and not believe, certain things. This inevitably winds up in a Warner Bros cartoon escapade of murder, rapine, theft, genocide and ultimately suicide for the fascists themselves. The Black Sun rewards loyalty with death. Anyway, Trump got elected because some rich idiot told the masses through his private propaganda engine for the Right that there was a Deep State. At first the rich idiots tried to fight Trump's rise to power, but since Trump is their number one viewer, he just repeats all their talking points, including the Deep State shit, they couldn't fend him off. Trump of course was planning nothing, he was just watching Fox to ultimately rip them off for Trump TV. His rallies were where he would riff on stolen material and see how it played. Stand up philosophizing is hard work, and Trump is a huge plagiarist; because you know he's never worked hard a day in his life.

He even brought Steve Bannon in to find the Deep State. Having performed the mighty ritual of keeping up appearances, Steve Bannon slimed away. Two years later, there Trump is, with the Government partially shuttered, and us Discordians, cheering him on like a gambling addict at a race track with their last dollar. Yeah, the national parks are sad. Especially Yucca Valley. I was stationed in that area. If you like stark landscapes, that's your place. I do, and it was beautiful. But I'd rather the common United States of American, with their limited means and selfish focus despoil our parks. Better that than the systematic destruction planned for it by the rich, so that they can make one more dollar before our oceans boil off. Anyway...

At the time of my writing this, in the 23rd day of the month of Chaos, it looks like for the first time in history, since like, 1913, a yearly ritual carried out by the Archons of the State will not happen. For the first time in history (since 1913), a president who talks at the United States of American people constantly, will have to address the American people somewhere else than a joint session of the House at the Capitol. He may even, horror of horrors, have to submit it in writing like every president after Washington and before Wilson! He doesn't even know how to read! Clearly he knows how to write, because he's on twitter all the time, but he would actually have to proof read his B.S., which we all know never happens. I'm personally thankful for Nancy Pelosi, who through the years has always maintained that cool, condescending, spitefulness that is helping to make the slow evaporation of the government possible.

So that's it, now you know the story. How we are fighting Grey Face with Cheeto Face. <Applause> We've got the United States F.G. listing like a drunk Van Helsing, making too many missed stakes. <Laughter> Our favorite marionette Devil still dances for you, still dances to distract you from the cosmic horror of no inherent meaning or purpose. One day, beautiful ones, you will see not cosmic horror, but boundless freedom. One day you will learn to make Art. But for now, marionette Devil.

Art Manifesto: Utopian Fever Dreams

(This article originally published by Gods and Radicals)

I have it on good authority that good art manifestos start with a declaration denouncing all previous art movements and putting them on notice that they have been found out to be hacks concerned only with money. In keeping with that fine tradition that may or may not even exist, I am putting the leaders of all previous human societies on notice, we have found out that you are run by hacks concerned only with money. Most leaders who are dead are safe from the embarrassment of being found out. Those leaders currently alive don't seem capable of shame, so for now lets just end the ritual formality of denunciation and get into it.

But what is Utopia exactly? It's heaven, heaven on Earth. A heaven built with one's own two hands. Everyone is in the Utopia game. Since Ur and Babylon, all of civilization has been an imitatio in divinus. Everyone wants to build “their” Utopia. Guess who's Utopia we are living in now?

Why Art Manifesto and not An Art Manifesto? Well, to put it quite plainly, I'm not just talking about art, or the arts, I'm also talking about THE ART, the only Art really. All of the rest of it is just practice in technique. Some people are technically amazing, and an even smaller slice of people actually achieve Art without ever intending to. Many who practice The Art have no artistic technique to speak of and yet still make it work. But many, many, many, who aspire to art or The Art, fail, miserably. Because they never even try.

If you are unwilling or unable to create your own Utopia, you will inevitably live in someone else's. Many create their own Utopias, but have neither the means or the will to build it very far outside of their imagination. This is the consequence of the Capitalist Utopia we all live in. Our Utopias either stay locked in our imagination, never breathing free, or quickly bankrupt us, or sometimes, get us locked away behind bars, either in a jail or a hospital.

Then there are some who have technique, they achieve unto The Art, and spend their lives churning out baleful anti-art, which like the flaming eye of Sauron, seeks out imagination, creativity and freedom, and burns it out of a person, replacing it with product jingles, corporate logos, and asinine TV/video ads. The products of these anti-art da Vinci's go on to live their own lives in the ether, astral plane, noosphere, collective unconscious, whatever you like to call it.

But imagine having the means and the will, and choosing not to create a Utopia. What does one call that? Imagine not having the imagination to create a Utopia. That is the beginning and end of poverty. The Capitalist Utopia has broken your body, and hence, your mind. Or it has broken your mind, your body is soon to follow. The Capitalist Utopia is a meat grinder, and Mammon turns the crank.

What kind of art can you make these days that some jackass isn't looking to commodify and sell. Or would it be better to say commode-ify? What kind of art resists best this trend of the endless shit torrent of “content”? What medium aesthetically and physically resists being owned and sold?

While we're on the topic of demonology, why do Capitalists get all the fun? Belphegor is in Peter Binsfeld's demonology too. He is the demon of sloth, and teaches mankind ingenious devices. Seeing him inside out, he encourages mankind to cast off drudgery and instructs in tools designed to eliminate work. He was known to the ancient Middle-East as Baal-Peor, his symbol was a phallus and he was associated with orgies. The Kabbalists know him as the disputer, would that more people in a labor dispute had made friends with him. What better demon to evoke for a Utopia? What better demon to preside over the end of someone else's Utopia?

In Tibet they have a tradition of art called sand mandalas. There was once a team of monks making a sand mandala in a museum, after they had left a small child decided to play in the pretty sand, the mandala was gone in an instant! But I do not suggest you take up making Art in sand. No, instead I suggest you take up Art with chalk. Lasts just long enough, but not too long. A medium burn in a universe on fire! Let your Art adorn every surface! Let every McDonald's arch face down with the orison of Papa Guedhe! The local block looking drab? Cook up a special haunt and make it interesting again, seal the deal with a Seal of Solomon! Chalk is cheap and so is talk! Get out there and make street Art!

Strikes and slowdown's were once the tools by which worker's unions twisted the arm of capital to get what they wanted. But the union slowly became a tool of the establishment. Wages have been stagnant since the 70's, and yet worker productivity has risen since to over 70%. The eight hour workday is an idea that goes back to 1810. Eighteen hundred and ten! We are living in the world of the future according to those people, now long dead. In the duration since, repeatedly it has been promised, more often than not in the contemporary discourse, that in the world of the future drudgery would be gone, post scarcity would render society radically different. So what happened?

Why chalk and not spray paint, or something else more permanently defacing? Well, in the case of paint, it no longer permanently defaces like it used to. Society has become accustomed to it, works around it. In other words, paint isn't permanent as it used to be, and permanence isn't the point. This universe is a burning house, everything is impermanent. Chalk then is the perfect medium as message, as well as resisting attempts to commode-ify Art. Most taggers tag in paint to see how long a run they have before their tag gets painted over. As well, most tags are just names written in elaborate, barely readable script. A bunch of latter day Andy Warhols, signing their name on civilizations concrete coral reefs. Boring!

Murray Bookchin, in his book “Post-Scarcity Anarchism”, a book written in 1971, seemed to be of the opinion that a post-scarcity that provided a high quality of life, as well as a harmonizing with the environment, was possible. That was in 1971. Some might argue that we weren't there yet, but are today. Some might argue that we are almost there, but maybe tomorrow. Many anarchists are jaded with the notion entirely, convinced that the long promised technology will never manifest, that it was a fever dream that distracts from the revolution. The reality is startling and may cause you to shit yourself from seizures; the shock from this revelation will be overwhelming. It was the Capitalists that promised the future of post-scarcity. They lied.

Spray paint has become passé, something to be ignored on the urban landscape, not pretty enough or weird enough to grab attention. Permanent enough that it is an annoyance to the particular “owner” or caretaker of whatever bears the mark, but not impermanent enough that it becomes worth looking at simply because of its short life. “Tagging” artists have also partially pushed into the mainstream, it is no longer the universally hated pastime it was in days gone by. In contrast, chalk is too ephemeral in its duration to be worth hating or accepting. The simple fact that it is still there makes one curious enough to look. Though it is imminently destructible, no one bothers, it's chalk, let the rain handle it.

Oh, they didn't lie about the technology, that's for sure. If we didn't have it in the 70's we definitely have it now. No, they lied about using it. They had no intention of ever improving the quality of life with it. No transformation of society was going to happen, regardless of whether or not the tech was real. The point of Capitalism isn't the greater good, it isn't the most benefit to the most people. It is about getting that mutha fuckin' money. Every single other thing that a Capitalist does is auxiliary to that. Give up all that money and power so that people can live in dignity and without fear of having basic needs met? “Fuck that bullshit”, says the Capitalist. The point of a Capitalist society is so that the most sociopathic and ruthless can get more. It's an asinine way to run a civilization, if you want it to last for more than a few hundred years, and not collapse into ruin.

How complex your works need to be is entirely up to the artist and their skill. You can go for the fully utilitarian mode of sigil work, or create murals that will wash or blow away within the week. What matters is your intent, and how much life you breath into that intent made physical. You might even find that as you make more works, that your technique and your ability to  bring these works to life, to Art, grows and takes on a life of itself, that's real Art.

And if our leaders are asinine, then why work so hard for them? It's one thing to show up because you need a paycheck, its another to let yourself be goaded into working as hard as you can because you're afraid one of the salarymen is going to call you lazy! Constantly on the media streams, these assholes get up in front of everyone and the gods to either implicate or out right accuse the citizenry of laziness, despite all research asserting the opposite. You have a 70” LCD TV that you bought on credit, what do you need with all that health care and minimum wage anyway? Right!?!

Not only will your works take on a life of their own, but they are also embedded there in the moments they occupy, there for any being with eyes to see them. The beings we (and I'm just going to assume that since you're reading this you are one of those types who talks to spirits, gods, demons, etc.) talk to exist on another plane, sure, which is another way to say higher dimension. Just like the floating silvery orbs often seen over populated cities might be aliens, sure, but are more like cross sections of hyper dimensional shapes being rotated on their 3+n D axes, and less like beings from another planet in our “volume sliding along a duration” type of existence. That means that the chalk is actually not just an aesthetic statement about anti-commodification, but also an effective way to conceal your works from the mundane peoples.

Look, in the past it was sabotage, strikes, and slowdown's that twisted the arm of capital. But punctuated events have become easy for the Capitalist and his Statist cronies to deal with. Instead, why not provide the ultimate slowdown? Belphegor makes sense as an adopted comrade spirit in these times. Corporations are now more than ever trying to foist as much work for as little pay as they can on the worker. If it isn't overtime due to under-staffing and high volume, then it is pursuing your personal GOALS, which must meet the SMART criteria, and though they are refereed to with various anti-prose euphemisms such as employee enrichment, what they are friends and fiends is extra work. Extra fucking work, as if the shit they have you doing for a whole third of your life wasn't enough.

I have a confession to make, I don't think the revolution will happen soon. I do not mean to say that we should not make the attempt, or struggle in other ways. What I mean to say is that until there is a collapse, the kind that normally happens when a society spins off into massive inequality in wealth and environmental degradation, that the inertia of our collective history will deflect naturally such efforts. We should struggle anyway, however, because the attempt itself plants seeds that can be watered later, to grow in the fertile corpse of our current context. I would not deny anyone that demands “revolution now” the opportunity to make it happen. But in the succession of “nows” that pass, why not engage yourself happily? Why not make Art? Why not paint this soon-to-be corpse of a civilization, like a cemetery mortician putting make-up on someone's gran-gran, in runes of struggle, revolution, liberty and community? If you have better things to do, then feel free, certainly, to get on with it. But if not, why not pick up a stick of chalk, and paint the world mad?

They don't lift a finger except to count their money, and they vilify us, these scoundrels, for not wanting to drudge in a world where drudgery could be done away with. It keeps us tired, unable to absorb information as fast, and closer to docile than not. It is not a lack of technology that prevents Utopia, it is the fear of the privileged, and indeed today they enjoy such “private law” that has not been seen since the days of aristocracy. The slick haired, over perfumed, chemically tanned aristocracy of money want you working hard so they can continue to enjoy the privilege that comes from their money. Ready to play hookie yet? Ready for an, ahem, “sick day”, full of fun and adventure?

Indeed, if I should be so bold, I might suggest that one's whole life should be a work of Art. A magical statement to echo down the ages, heard only by ears that can hear such echoes, and yet the waves of which affecting those who can and can't nonetheless. Like Nietzsche suggests to us, “What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.'” If indeed your life were to occur repeatedly in such a manner, would you want a third of that time spent drudging for a douche-bag with a watch collection worth more than hundreds of thousands of families incomes? Many think when they die the drudgery is over, and if it isn't, would this not then be hell?

“What kind of adventures”, you ask? Well, you could do a lot of things, with free time comes choice, a thing most at least dimly remember. I could make a suggestion, why not art? Paint the town red as they say. And why not magical art, or as they used to call it, The Art. An abattoir of Art, the concrete deserts of the worlds cities blooming on a spring, summer, fall, or winter day. Any time of the year is good. Not a bad suggestion if I say so myself. I should write a little primer, a wee little Art Manifesto to rouse my glorious fellow rabble into acts sacred and profound. Why not an Art Manifesto, I don't have much better to do. I wonder if anyone knows anything about Art Manifestos?

Who wants to live in hell on Earth? Why not then use Art to make a Utopia? Nothing fancy mind you, this present context is two breaths away from being a rotting corpse. Perhaps then we should just plant dreams in the subconscious minds of our fellow humans, and nightmares for Capitalists who hope we all stay sleeping. But whether or not we bother to plan our Utopia or with Jovian profligacy spread our Art like so many weedy species spill seeds into the wind, we should at least have a talk about Utopia. If you could live your life as a work of Art, in a civilization that was a work of Art, that might be Utopia, if you were into that. But definitely, lets talk about Utopia first.