my thought for today is to recall all of the great influences of my life. the idea is to start with writers, musicians, directors – people i don’t intimately know. at some point, of course, i’ll work my way back inward toward the people i actually know and interact with. for now, a list and brief explanation of the many influences of my life. it is a list i will continue to edit as i put more thought into it..

writers:
robert anton wilson – the name i always begin with. the illuminatus trilogy broke my brain in so many wonderful ways at such an important age that it will forever represent a serious emotional, spritual, intellectual awaking. it was my threshold, my liminal guide, my initiation into most of the mindsets, worldviews, and ideologies i continue to prefer. it gave me a model for making models.

ann rice – laugh if you will, but the vampire chronicles were and are so much more than vampires. they’re an insightful view into so many beliefs and traditions from such a vast and diverse selection of religions and mythologies. again, for me it was a perfect time in life to read them. they did a lot to force me to question the religious views i had grown up accepting as fact.

kurt vonnegut – such wonderful and conflicted writing. he taught me that paradoxes really can exist within a person and be reflected in their writing. such optimistic cynicism and such a playfully biting approach to his writing and to the beautiful tragedies of the world.

terence mckenna – though i’ve barely touched on mckenna as a writer, his words contributed so strongly to the ways in which i now think. this is true in a couple, drastically different ways. the first is that he was the first enthobotanist to introduce me to dmt. there is little that has influenced my relationship to the world more than dmt. this is something i don’t think i can properly explain at the moment, but i will probably have to devote an entire post (or essay, or novel) to at some point. for now, it is enough to say that i think i would be a very different person if i had never stumbled on to mckenna’s scientifical-lyrical-mystical-intellectual approach to tryptamines. the second, which is almost a meta-thought category, is simple fact that i became hooked on audio lectures because of him. i’ve got to give credit to the terence mckenna audio library here, because it was the first lecture collection i’d ever downloaded. i think i stumbled on it through deoxy, but i’m not really sure. might have gotten some through torrents.

hunter s. thompson – caustic wit. surreal but meaningful commentary on all things american. drug addled analyses of politics, sports, american subcultures, and out-of-body experiences. how could i not love this guy. yes, this movie, followed by this book, did influence me to do drugs. and every bit of it was fucking awesome. the first column i ever wrote for oznog was a blatant imitation of his style. interestingly, though, it was the spider jerusalem aspect of hunter’s personality that i chose to emulate. it’s such a fun voice and i have to give him a ton of credit for the particular way in which i’ve uttered swears and insults ever since reading fear and loathing.

stephen king – largely because i’ve never read another author faster and with more intense fascination than i have him. every king book i ever picked up was several hundred or even thousand pages too short. specifically, the dark tower contributed strongly toward my admiration for long, epic stories and to my fascination with post-apocalyptic settings. though i never really pulled anything incredibly philosophically insightful or psychologically meaningful from his books, he can weave a mesmerising tale like no other author i’ve ever experienced.

neal stephenson – this man single-handedly made sumerian mythology fascinating for me. despite its painfully abrupt and unsatisfying ending, snow crash is what gave me the interest in mesopotamian myth that i’ve had for over ten years. it’s been the reason for so many of the classes i’ve taken, as well as for many of the books i’ve read. once i understood how biblical history interacted with real, ancient middle eastern history, i couldn’t imagine being more interested in any other mythology. i still scoff at egyptian and greek for being second rate hack mythologies that only wish they had the glory and prestige of the pantheon of an-ki. well, not really, but i have developed a little bias.

joseph campbell – first mythologist i had ever read about. i think i was 18 or 19 and didn’t even understand what mythology or myth were all about. then i found joseph campbell and i’ve admired him ever since. i think it was hero w/1000 faces i picked up first. he was the first person i had read who wasn’t a christian, but also wasn’t anti-christian. he interpreted things in such a positive light, completely removed all of my religious symbols from the spectrum of “right vs wrong” and made me understand that truth was different from fact. when i learned that it was his genius behind the mythic principles of star wars, the geek in me swore to worship him forever. it will take me a few more decades to understand everything he wrote.

richard elliot friedman – biblical scholar that made me want to be a biblical scholar. the documentary hypothesis has so strongly influenced my thinking about the bible that i can’t even imagine that i thought the way i used to think. the formation and rearrangement of ancient texts of all kinds, but the bible especially, have forever been changed in my head. i doubt i will cease being influenced by his thoughts. division of kingdoms is key and had i not stumbled across his books, i doubt i would have ever really become interested.

unedited.
more later…

this i already knew. either mr awkward or dr mcdougal turned me onto them a couple years ago and i’ve occasionally pulled them out when i’m in the mood. what sort of mood is required to desire that particular sort of electro-pop i can’t really say. i just know that sometimes i find myself thinking, “damn, i feel like listening to neon neon. so i do. and it rocks.

there is a song on the album titled “i told her on alderaan” and considering the righteous star wars kick i’ve been on, i keep getting that song stuck in my head. today i finally looked up the lyrics. i wanted to know why the star wars reference was included in an otherwise non-geek, non-sci-fi, non-star wars related album. the answer to this question still eludes me. but i learned a lot more.

first, the lyrics:
I Told Her on Alderaan
She had a face from an animation
Before a cinema screen projection
And if you ever got bad reception
She’d flash a smile and change the perception

She got suspicious of my intention
I didn’t give her enough attention
Like I would give into some temptation
I think her head needed medication

I told her on Alderaan
That nothing else was going on
x4

One day I took her to see the doctor
He put her in a cell and locked her
And all the patients, they started to mock her
For ever thinking that someone would leave her

I told her on Alderaan
That nothing else was going on
x4
(silver pylons in the sun)

now, the video:
strangely, it’s actually for two non-consecutive songs on the album – told her on alderaan and trick for treat..

now, after i watched that, i had to figure out what the hell the video was about. turns out the whole album is a concept album about the life of john delorean. the john delorean. the maker of the delorean dmc-12. yeah, that’s right. gull wing doors, baby.

points of interest:
john deloreon drank cutty sark scotch. he apparently did commercials as well, but i can’t find any yet.
the album is named stainless style because the delorean was stainless steel. it’s a play on words, you see.
neon neon is made up of boom bip and gruff rhys, known welshman and frontman for the super furry animals.
u.s. patent #5,359,941 filed by john delorean and found in 1994 was for a raised monorail system

that is what i’ve learned.

Scotch Whisky

or, at least, i love speyburn highland scotch. i won’t pretend to be an expert or to even have a full set of taste buds at my disposal, but i have learned a thing or two. these, i will share with you now:

• scotch is whisky from scotland. only from scotland. and it is always spelled whisky, never whiskey.

• it must be from one of four regions of scotland: highland, lowland, speyside, and islay. (fuck you, campbeltown!)

• the first known reference to scotch attributes its distillation to an order of monks. oh those wacky friars, if only they were so cool today..

• it is stored at room temp and best served on ice or with a little splash of water. i prefer water.

at first i was shooting it like everything else i drink and it was a bit painful and unpleasant. once i learned that it was meant to be mixed with water, i realized that it actually tastes really good. i also like that i can drink it slowly and feel the buzz come on gradually over the course of several slow swallows. it’s made getting drunk the past few nights altogether different. i also find that i’m less intoxicated by the end of the night.

second thing: pinball history is fantastic!
props to dr mcdougal for this.

Pinball Destruction

from the article:

“In New York, the pinball ban was executed in a particularly dramatic fashion. Just weeks after Pearl Harbor was attacked, Mayor Fiorello Henry La Guardia issued an ultimatum to the city’s police force stating that their top priority would be to round up pinball machines and arrest their owners. La Guardia proceeded to spearhead massive Prohibition-style raids in which thousands of machines were rounded up in a matter of days, before being dramatically smashed with sledgehammers by the mayor and police commissioner. The machines were then dumped into the city’s rivers.”

i can only imagine that the archaeological expeditions of some future civilization might lead to the conclusion that the natives of manhattan were known for their ritual sacrifice of large mechanical idols in the hopes of appeasing the vengeful river god, hudson.

third thing:  a simple , unintelligible list

1. washington irving meets charles babbage (also edward belamy – looking backward)
   
2. prague, winter king and queen, rudolph, voynich manuscript, john dee (mckenna lecture)
3. the golem and the babylonian captivity
4. liminal wiki – convert from evernote to wiki; stories read, names to follow, influences and resources
5. testy culbert.
   

time to go…

-Joseph Cambell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Just a thought.

As is probably the case with most people whose traditions are broken, I never realized the value of mine until they were gone. When I was younger, I was a greedy little boy with very little concern for Christmas tradition. I didn’t care nearly as much for the food or the presence of my family as I did for the presents from my family. If I could have traded in the pork pie (or even one of my siblings) for more presents, I probably would have done it.

That’s not to say I was completely unappreciative of the cozy familiarity of our Christmas traditions. I simply regarded them as secondary to the gifts. The symbol of Christmas was always, for me, Santa Claus. I loved everything about the jolly old man and he was one of the few truly magical figures in my world. I tried my hardest to wait up for him; I put out cookies for his reindeer; I wrote him careful and sincere letters telling him what I wanted and exactly how to get to my house.

My grandparents were always the hub of our family gatherings and it’s impossible for me to think of Christmas without thinking of them at the center. After I discovered that Santa Claus wasn’t real, I think I subconsciously began to associate Santa with them. After all, they were the people who made Christmas possible and they were also the bringers of toys and candy. When they went into the nursing home a few years ago, I was struck with the sudden and painful realization of how much those seemingly peripheral traditions meant to the whole family. Spending a Christmas in a nursing home is the fastest way to convince yourself that Santa is dead and never returning.

Over the past few years, we’ve been trying to pull our family back together and establish new traditions. It hasn’t been easy. The different branches of the family have fractured for various reasons and now Christmas seems to be several small gatherings that have yet to define new traditions. This year my grandmother died four days before Christmas. My mother spent Christmas in Texas with my sister and I spent the holiday with my girlfriend’s family. It was my first Christmas away from home. Though it was beautiful and warm, it was hardly the traditional Christmas of my childhood.

Though our family customs have been breaking down and we have yet to replace them with new ones, for me it has been a healthy time for reflection and deconstruction of past traditions. Over the past few years, I’ve been reading about the origins of Christmas and Santa Claus. Somehow, learning the truth within the myth has been comforting in a way that I have a hard time expressing. I found Michael Paterniti’s account of his search for Santa comforting and fascinating. I can relate to his search of “something that is nearly impossible to explain, perhaps more impossible to find, but boils down to a simple belief in, well, Santa.” Since the breakdown of my family traditions, I’ve been on a similar quest for Santa, albeit for possibly different reasons.

I look through photos of Christmases past while I read about Saturnalia and the Kalends. I set up my mother’s Nativity set thinking about Dies Natalis Solis Invicti. I light the Santa Claus candles with thoughts of St. Nicholas, Sinterklaas, El Gabal and all the other men behind the legend. I commit Clement More’s poem to memory as I remember the image of my grandfather in his rocking chair on Christmas eve. I set up my Christmas tree with thoughts of Odin and Yggdrasil. Reading about Mithra and the Magi reminds me of my grandmother singing “Away In a Manger.” This pursuit of origins is inextricably tied up with my recognition that my own personal traditions are gone. In a sense, the Santa of my childhood is gone forever. In another sense, I’m closer to Santa, Christmas, and my grandparents than I ever have been.

This recognition of my broken traditions has been enlightening and important to me because it’s allowed me to reflect more deeply upon what my own origins are. I have a better appreciation for my childhood and the traditions I was given growing up. I think in the future I’ll be in a better position to recognize the cohesive value of traditions, because of my search for Santa and his connection to my childhood.

i like that it begins with “o” because it foreshadows the sound that the inevitable climactic sensation it will bring. it’s appropriate that it begins with “or” because it reflects its own implicit choices.
but it’s the soft g that gives the word its squishy, lubricated sound that conjures the taste and smell of slippery bodily fluids. i can repeat it endlessly, turning it over and over in my mouth. the shape of the word on my lips and tongue is as detailed and chaotic as a tangled mass of bodies.
the ee sound at the end is the tingling excitement and anticipation of the beginning, the undressing, the first contact, and it creates an inverse relationship between the word and the action.

reminiscent of orgasm, orgone, and most closely, orgiastic. to say it is to feel it, and i can’t stop saying it.
orgy.
orgy.
orgy…