Part III: In Defense of the Damned
"the Damned" is presumably the same group of ideas and phenomena that do not fit into our perceived reality "correctly" and are thus discarded, after those peculiarities that Charles Fort named his famous opus, The Book of the Damned.
I was going to comment on RAW's quotes about the bush administration, but I backspaced after deciding that I've talk way too much about republicans in the White House in these posts. Presumably everyone here has access to the news and is capable of making their own comparisons.
Guns and Dope Party
The George Washington quote at the beginning of the essay reminds me of a point that Bill Hicks made: no matter how many sub-machines guns and assault rifles a survivalist has, the government has tanks and bombs (and now drones). While I have nothing against gun ownership, I come from a very West Virginian family and even own a pistol, it is a good thing to remember that the average citizen stands no chance against the might of "our" government's armory.
Remember when everyone thought Skull and Bones was an important conspiracy?
The Gadsen flag is an example of a symbol whose context has rapidly changed since the publication of email to the Universe. It is now primarily associated with the Tea Party and such grassroots rightwing sentiments.
For anyone else who was unfamiliar with the term "suidaen" it is the descriptive term for the biological family Suidae whose members include pigs, boars, and hogs. I'd take ostriches over pigs any day.
"If Olga doesn't talk to you, you need more pain medicine, and frankly I don't understand how you've survived three years of Bozo without it." I was in the middle of one of my valiant yet futile attempts to kick my nicotine habit around November 7th 2016- I gave up on the 8th figuring we won't be around long enough now to justify me worrying about it. (I speak partially in jest, knowing how addictions can find infinite reasons for the continuation. For those of you concerned about my health I am currently on another one of my "quitting kicks.")
Damn. Isn't Lysander Spooner's tax plan ingenious? Where I'm from a lot of people love to bitch about Medicare, Medicaid, WIC (damn those money grubbing women, infants, and children) and such being funded from their pockets. I'd much rather pay the minuscule amount of tax that I lose to social programs than the massive amount of my taxes that go to funding Babylon-Washington and the defense of Israel.
Now that the republicans and those damn russians have decided to let bygones by bygones and final become the dream duo of bullshit nationalistic politics, a sizable chunk of our population is revealing their natural love of tsardom. Of course, as I listen to people's opinions (unasked for) about others drug use, I realize that many of the critters on the planet of the apes believe in regulating what drugs, herbs, compounds, etc. can go into the bodies of the private citizenry. To someone like myself who doesn't believe in victimless "crime," this makes those critters seem hostile and dangerous; far more dangerous that the poor sot injecting heroin in some vaguely imagined trap house. Tsardom, police quotas, and the piss police will all have to be utterly rejected for this to ever be anything resembling "the Land of the Free."
Every man and woman is a tsar. And everyone reading this is a pope. Make your own goddamn rules and govern the one person you actually have a right to govern in the way that seems best to you.
The John Adams quotation on pg. 175 brings up the invaluable legal tactic of jury nullification which RAW writes about extensively elsewhere. I try to educate as many people as possible about the existence and necessity of jury nullification.
RAW's explanation of why Olga is essential serious, scientific, and sincerely surrealist aspects of the Guns and Dope Party is deft and resonates with me. That is why I am always proud to endorse the idea that 33% of Congress really should be changed to ostriches. I'd like to see Congress be productive and civilized someday.
W.C. Fields closes the chapter and I'll insert a non sequitar, my favorite story relating to the old comedian/philosopher:
On his death bed, he supposedly asked his banker, "Do I have enough money to buy all the children of Philadelphia a bike each?" The banker looked at his notes and said yes. Fields stayed quiet for a moment in deep thought and replied "Well fuck 'em!"
9 comments:
I got excited a few years ago when "Southern Star" come out on DVD, and I promptly bought a copy.
pg. 163 Coincidentally, I talked with a college class about the film "Network" this morning before I started rereading this section.
Bob took parts of this section from an interview I did with him which begins on page 23 of my book. Originally the "you" on page 170 of "email to the universe" referred to me, I think.
I've never watched Southern Star and tried to look for some stills of the OG Olga for the post but couldn't find any. I first watched Network when I was sixteen after seeing a picture of Faye Dunaway eyeing her oscar whilst poolside and smoking a cigarette. It was during the same period I was reading Thus Sprach Zarathustra, Fear and Trembling, and The World as Will so it really resonated with my adolescent soul.
I can only imagine the satisfaction at being mentioned, however obliquely, by RAW. I'm still terribly glad that Alan Moore both praised and mocked my review of Show Pieces in an obscure interview. I was right though- the mis en scene of Jimmy's End was totally influenced by the original finale of Twin Peaks.
Back in the 50s Earl Long, the crazy governor of Louisiana, listened to a diehard segregationist and replied, “The Feds got the A-bomb.”
Tom, if you want to quit tobacco for good I highly recommend NLP, though choose your practitioner carefully - one with lots of experience. What got me to finally quit ( was never a heavy smoker but... ) was reading this: Cold turkey almost immediately.
One genetic mutation occurs on average for every 15 cigarettes that a typical lung-cancer patient smokes, according to a study that has identified for the first time all of the mutations acquired during the lifetime of a cancer patient.
Scientists have completed a full genetic analysis of the genomes of cancer patients, and hope the information will lead to a fundamental understanding of the causes of cancer – and possibly drugs and treatments – by identifying the mutations that turn a healthy cell into a cancerous tumour cell.
They studied a lung-cancer victim who had built up about 23,000 DNA mutations in his lung cells that were linked with exposure to the toxins found in cigarette smoke and had accumulated over his lifetime.
They also looked at a patient with malignant melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, who had acquired 30,000 specific genetic mutations known to be associated with exposure to sunlight.
Scientists believe this new insight into the genetics of cancer will eventually lead to new drugs and tailor-made treatments that target the specific changes to the gene that help to trigger the disease, as well as new techniques for identifying secondary cancers that have evaded treatment in other parts of the body.
"For the first time, we have a comprehensive map of all mutations in a cancer cell," said Dr Peter Campbell of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, which led the Cancer Genome project to decipher the entire DNA sequence of tumour cells in order to identify the mutations.
"The profile of mutations we observed [in the lung-cancer patient] is exactly that expected from tobacco, suggesting that the majority of the 23,000 we found are caused by the cocktail of chemicals found in cigarettes. On the basis of average estimates, we can say that one mutation is fixed in the genome for every 15 cigarettes smoked," Dr Campbell said.
The study, published in the journal Nature, involved the sequencing of the entire genome of a lung-cancer cell 60 times in order to be sure that all of the smallest mutations were identified. The scientists then compared the genome sequence with that of a healthy cell taken from the same patient.
A similar procedure was performed on the cells of a patient with skin cancer, which is how the researchers were able to show that the malignant skin cells contained changes that resulted from exposure to ultraviolet light, said Professor Mike Stratton at the Sanger Institute.
"These are the two main cancers in the developed world for which we know the primary exposure. For lung cancer it is cigarette smoke, and for malignant melanoma it is exposure to sunlight," Professor Stratton said.
"With these genome sequences, we have been able to explore deep into the past of each tumour, uncovering with remarkable clarity the imprints of these environmental mutagens [mutation-causing agents] on DNA, which occurred years before the tumour became apparent," he said.
@Tony Smyth To clarify, Gregory Arnott is the guest blogger for the post, so he's the one trying to quit! I never saw the sense of smoking tobacco, myself.
Quitting smoking isn't that hard. I think I must've quit about 23 times before I got bored by that process and stopped re-starting!
@Tom It makes you look cool, duh.
@Tony Thank you for the recommendations and the terrifying information. I'll keep that in mind when I have cravings. I don't know about finding an NLP practitioner around here but I have plenty of books on the subject.
@supergee thanks for making me laugh today.
Genesis of the Guns and Dope party:
http://www.pelorian.com/multiverse/lasagna.html#gadp
In Bob's original announcement in an email to his friends (the GroupMind), Bob wrote:
"After refusing many pleas to run for governor,
I have reconsidered and now enter the race
as an unofficial write-in candidate. After
all, why shd I remain the ONLY nut in California
who ain't running?
"My party, the Guns and Dope Party, invites extremists
of both right and left to unite behind the shared goals of
"1 --Get those pointy-headed Washinton bureaucrats off
our backs and off our fronts too!
"2 --guns for everybody who wants them; no guns for
those who don't want them
"3 --drugs for everybody who wants them; no drugs for
those who don't want them
"4 --freedom of choice, free love, free speech,
free Internet and free beer
"5 --California secession-- Keep the anti-gun and
anti-dope fanatics on the Eastern side of the Rockies
"6 --Lotsa wild parties every night by gun-toting dopers
"7 --Animal protection -- Support your right to
keep and arm bears
"More position papers will follow; we know at
least 69 good positions"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At one point I wrote to Bob,
"Bob, I'm totally behind the party, I love a good party, but I need some clarification. I've never had a hankering to fire a gun. I think from time to time that guns are lethal penises. I know I'm overly optimistic, but I always imagined a world without the need for guns. Guns seem too dangerous for most of the barbaric primates on this planet, with ample evidence to demonstrate that. I'm even a vegetarian, and so my diet is pretty easy to capture without internal combustion weaponry. Am I just being naive, having not been confronted with a gun toting lunatic? Please give me some reasoning behind the Guns part of Guns and Dope. I understand the libertarian model, but I'm not sure how to get behind actually supporting gunship diplomacy."
Bob wrote back,
~~~
We don't wanna force guns on anybody. See point 2 above and cf point 3.
Both the pro-gun people and the dopers [medical, religious and/or recreational] feel like minorties, and the TSOG agrees with this estimate of their weakness. Our contention holds that in California both groups woikin' together make a MAJORITY. Ergo, they have much to gain and nowt to lose in combining forces. Each side only has to realize this and agree "We'll tolerate their hobbies if they'll tolerate ours" and we can even beat Schwarzenegger.
~~~~
Bob's descriptions of the GADP in emails to the GroupMind were borrowed by him later when he composed the text that went on the first GADP website, and then later edited for Email to the Universe. That website was designed by Lance Bauscher (Maybe Logic documentary producer). I helped Lance with the graphics, but he later asked me to take the site over, for a variety of reasons. That led to the creation of the current site: http://www.gunsanddopeparty.net
The material referencing the Bozo administration continues to sound eerily prescient regarding the current clowns in office.
"Every man and every women is a tsar!" obviously suggests Crowley's "Every man and every women is a star."
The mention of the film "Southern Star" reminds me of another Crowley reference - Chapter 29 in The Book of Lies is called "The Southern Cross" and includes the phrase "... and there are no stars but thine eyes." This may strain credulity, but I see it connected to an earlier passage I mentioned in a previous comment. I lived for a couple of weeks in The Southern Cross Hotel when working with Yothu Yindi in Sydney.
The last paragraph on p.169 that follows the Southern Star reference outlines the NOX formula from "The Book of Lies;" on the surface, the bit in parentheses seems a random association. X = both star and cross.
Freetopia reminds me of Freedonia from the Marx Bros. "Duck Soup."
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