In the early 1980's, Tyco furnished a small device called the REM Syncopater, that very nearly resembled an answering machine of the era, a decade and a half before the introduction of voice mail. The device consisted of beige plastic and to be honest, looked less than fantastic and only slightly functional, with two buttons for play and pause along with a standard mechanical alarm clock that had been shrunk in size to accommodate the size of the casing. Perhaps because of its lackluster appearance, or due to a poor marketing and advertising campaign, the small machine collected dust on the shelves of independent toy stores, selling only to a handful of confused adults who were performing last minute shopping for their nephews, nieces, or godchildren.
However, the workings of the REM Syncopater were based on a series of cassette tapes that had to be purchased individually for somewhere around the price of 9 to 12 dollars. After a brief perusal of the instructions, the user attached child-safe electrodes to their head just above the ears before preparing for sleep, and let the tape roll. The cassettes played on a loop, leaving it up to either the user's discretion to halt the progress of the "experience" or up to the settings of the miniaturized alarm clock. Ideally, the electrodes, which I reiterate were completely child-safe, allowed the user to stimulate dream-centers in the sleeping brain using crude manipulation of alpha, beta, and theta waves; leading the user down a path of programmed dreams based on the features of each cassette. Since this was indeed meant as a child's toy, the tapes were generally geared towards rather unimaginative explorations of cliche child themes, with dream programs for fighting dragons in a castle, or for sailing with famous pirates. The girl-orientated cassettes invovled tea parties with princesses and escapes into unicorn fields, and the rather ho-hum tape entitled "Own Your First Pony."
While the creative nature of the device may have been lacking, and furthermore, was completely forgotten with a halt in production due to the increasing popularity of early video games, there existed groups of scattered converts who professed that the REM Syncopater, in fact, worked like a dream. However, they were quick to profess also that the effects were not exactly exact nor even orientated towards the purported themes, but had nevertheless substantially augmented their nighttime experiences. One of the former users of the device, a psychologist who had played around with his child's version in a series of unofficial experiments, claimed that the electrodes touched off a series of phantom sensations in his body while he remained half-asleep, which were so powerful that he attributed the sensation to "flying amid dark fields of cherry trees, after dipping down from the clouds in order to alight on an impossibility." Invariably, he deduced, and quite correctly, that the unreliable nature of the cassettes was actually based in the manufacturer's purposive mislabeling of the contained experiences, which he verified at a later date using collections of Polar Adventure and World War Two Fighter Pilot. Each Polar Adventure tape was in fact geared towards the probability of a homosexual dream encounter, while World War Two Fighter Pilot involved the intricacies of a crack-house residency. He became of course, suitably and morally outraged, as any father of two would be.
And yet, Tyco's REM Syncopater lost the seed of its infamy and its questionable virtue as a piece of technology when in 2010, a series of ebay auctions granted the toy a somewhat new distinction as a desirable collector's item invoking themes and consideration of past retro fads such as Spin Art or the rather macabre Teddy Ruxpin. Among the new owners of the toy was a Finnish electronics engineer, who beyond being mechanically and electronically inclined, decided to overhaul the magnetic tapes in order to create a more desirable experience that was personally tailored to his own whims and fancies. Soon, he was traversing dreamscapes that involved having exquisite lunches with King George the II, sentencing Adolph Hitler to the gas chamber (as was his wish) and performing numerous series of deft sexual escapades that he kept secret from his wife of twelve years. It could be said that his modified Syncopater became the best thing to ever happen to him, and it was not strange for the man to down sleeping pills at odd hours if only because he had become so heavily invested in the experience.
As is often the case with the fantastical or at least unregulated, models of these toys inevitably became invested with political and business dimensions. After almost thirty years of relative obscurity, the designs and projected usages for Tyco's model were reviewed by curious companies and governments, who saw long-term potential for both profit, new forms of advertising, voting manipulations, and even education. The new design, produced by Apple in prototype quantities only (called the iDream) is entirely digital and no more obtrusive in physicality than a standard MP3 player. A database similar to the popular iTunes will be completed by the end of 2011's fourth fiscal quarter, allowing users to download dream experiences that vary from playing musical instruments in popular bands to single-handedly saving the world from nuclear catastrophe using psychic powers. These packets of sleep experiences will be available for around the price of a standard DVD.
Of course, there are those who venture that such a business model is only conducive to psychic manipulation, pointing out that there are sure to be implanted subliminal messagings that addict the user to the Apple brand experience of dream. One critic even pointed out that such a device could shake the moorings of social reality to the point where dreams become so realistic, or at least more desirable than standard waking reality, that people lose their investments in being human. Apple Public Relations issued the statement in response that they would be certain to manufacture a series of experiences that lent waking life a kind of normalcy, with grounding dreams and even dreams that make stagnant experiences seem joyous by comparison. "Currently, the state of dreaming constitutes an anarchy. We are poised, as were the frontiermen of old, to expand order along this vast territory, to further the cause and cooperation of civilization, and to have fun doing it."
Rumors circulated by Lulzsec indicated the existence of pirate programs, used for counter-capitalist purposes involving dissemination of poetic, artistic, and revolutionary dreams. Independent media groups have also supposedly cultivated a brand of dream that informs the user outside of models of corporate philosophy, experiences that in effect show the dreamer the value of creating sustainable gardening options for low-income communities residing in supermarket deserts, the meaning behind Bakunin's socialist revolutionary rhetoric, and even an experience that exposes the truth of various banking cartels and their roles in warfare throughout history. The dreams themselves could potentially be downloaded for free by interested parties from the internet. Also rumored is the existence of programing software that allows the user to cultivate their own dream experience, much in the manner of the Finnish engineer.
Government watchdog groups have already discussed the prospect of creating a legislative body used to control labeling of dream programs, along with keeping certain dream experiences from being possessed by minors. While discussed in the House of Representatives, the implementation of dream laws remains to be instituted, especially due to a new debate regarding the new distinction between licensed and created dreams versus the old biological and unregulated natural experiences. Howard Langston, Republican House Minority Leader, said in effect "We want to get our citizens on a program that will insure their cooperation as free and democratic people for the rest of their lives. The way I see it, there were too many problems with our father's and grandfather's dreams, which were experiences that could not be controlled nor safeguarded against unwarrented intrusions. While they may not have realized it, nature made them sick in a sense, while we are about to be safeguarded from the effects of chaotic sleep for generations to come."
Self-proclaimed maverick psychologist, Philip Togut, summed up his fears and hopes for the technology in an academic article printed by the Brache Institute for Jungian Analysis. "The root of the problem, as I see it, is that dreams are valuable albeit hallucinatory experiences that impart sustaining visions of archetypal knowledge as it is contained in humanity's collective unconscious. Dream manipulation, in a sense, is nothing new; we perform similar actions every time we turn on the television or go out to the movies. The question I want to ask is 'How is our knowledge of current technology that exhibits psychic manipulations going to translate to this new apparatus?' Will it help to save us, or will it damn us? Using parallels from the existence of television, I see the new movement into controlled psychic behavior as ultimately damning, noting that current news stories are cultivated to lend senses of passivity and fear to the minds of an over-stimulated mass of people, that every couple of minutes some large corporation without a sense of human decency or of psychological boundaries is releasing advertisements that have been conscientiously and immorally geared towards finding new ways to get consumers to spend their money. Did television producers and the owners of stations see potentiality in the existence of their now familiar technology? I think not, because otherwise we would already have television channels that gave people free college educations, paid for in part by the necessary evil of advertising. We would have stations that gave people information regulated to increasing their livelihood through the imparting of information necessary to trades and economic augmentation. We would see programs that investigated and informed us about the mysteries of the world around us, that would settle our fears and prejudices through programming about people from different parts of the globe, people with different values. And yet, where this dream technology is going, I can assure you, we don't necessarily want to be, as I am certain it will be at best a one-dimensional space that divests us of the mysteries of our nighttime travels while in effect filling our minds with nothing but psychic junk."
And yet, planned production on the iDream continues, bolstered by favorable stock market activity around the world. Steve Jobs released the following statement "I see a future of renewed intimacy between Apple consumers and our company. And in response to the flurry of criticism of our product, you can rest assured that the device will always feature an on/off switch."
gestalt temperament
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Report From The Council of Post Apocalyptic Psychiatry
Following is a report from the field by an anonymous researcher invested in the tenets and philosophy as drawn by the Council For Post Apocalyptic Psychiatry:
Take every devastated Sunday morning ruined by hangover or drug use that you have ever known, compile it as extended metaphor, and apply it to the spirit of the surviving populace's yearnings. It is evidenced foremost that we carry the themes of post-apocalyptic landscapes within our minds, sometimes conscious and raised to the interpretation of the world in the manner that a banner relates to surges of wind, sometimes pressed like shrapnel into the machinery of our subconscious. You can see evidence of hoarding instincts in the soft mercenary actions of deluded citizens of the former republic, just as you witness survival sickness in conscripted laborers living out their time within the shackles of bondage. Ideals and mercies are hard to come by in this strange world, with freedom and love remaining rare ribbons. For some reason, perhaps based in our biology, the inhabitants of this wasteland continue to abide by the absurdities of bygone ages mingled with an overarching compulsion to survive.
I met the family at a reconstructed house by the shipyards, where the ballistic missiles had plummeted into harbor cranes and oil tankers in order to cripple trade. I could tell immediately that there was something peculiar in the house itself, for it had been constructed along pre-war lines that denoted former values of symmetry in architecture and proficiency in labor. But yet it had been made from debris, with its porch constructed out of a dissected shipping container and it's sidings evidencing the use of yacht hulls. A woman in a cocktail dress waved politely from the porch, beckoning me to come in. This was, as a formality, rare and charming, given the propensity of other survivors to behave with apathy or thinly veiled homicidal impulses. I followed her motion, curious.
"I want to show you what we have been doing," she said, as I followed her into the house. I was immediately overwhelmed by symbols of great wealth in the post-apocalyptic era, things such as functioning clocks, a door that led to a well-stocked kitchen, and electricity provided by an actual working generator. "We have, in our way, been rebuilding the world here." She gave me a relieved look when I smiled, than proceeded to act coy. "Of course, we have been ridding ourselves of unnecessary things as well."
I met her husband Mark and her child Logan. They struck me as oddly vulnerable, open in conversation and distanced from the verve of ruin and struggle. Mark claimed that he had indispensable knowledge of engineering and architecture, for he was old enough to have been among the last wave of graduating students from the former trade schools. He said he had spent five years on the house, with his only defense of the land being redistributed signs that claimed dangerous levels of radiation were in the area. He told me that fortunately, they had used clean bombs only on the area, and that the crater the house straddled ended up serving as a suitable basement.
They treated me to a banquet of vegetables and fresh fruit, which had been harvested from the woman's (Teresa) multiple gardens spread across the region. I had not tasted crisper apples in my pre-war days, and felt eternally grateful and indebted to them. I reached into my rucksack to offer canned green beans in exchange for the favor, which they surprisingly declined, saying that they were fortunate and understood where others weren't.
As our discussions ranged from the scattered attempts of the old government to reconstruct itself, our talk eventually fell on the subject of belief and religion. Teresa had been scavenging at the former university archives nearly two miles inland, and had much to say on the topic as pertaining to biochemistry.
As a disciple of the Council of Post Apocalyptic Psychiatry, I was invariably intrigued and considered it my good fortune to be able to benefit from her dissemination of knowledge.
"Dopamine," she said "was an often maligned and abused biochemical. It was insubstantially linked to socially undesirable behavior occurring among the alienated and misunderstood, for whom there was no outlet of sublimation of desires existent in capitalist society. They possessed dopamine, just like you and me, which nearly half of the brain maintains as a neurotransmitter that is actually responsible for such things as learning and belief."
"These poor people were subjugated by the development of drugs that destroyed their ability to experience dopamine, which also gives palpable expression to joy and well-being in life, as well as maintaining the role of a reward mechanism in the brain during the experience of agreeable circumstances. They were forced to live in controlled environments, without the benefit of a belief-causing agent designed to instill meaning."
"Suffice to say, it can be evidenced perhaps that the distribution, function, and real world evidence of dopamine function within people who were attracted to the role of psychiatrist was completely abnormal and delusional in the manner in which some sane people are known to be. This is evidenced in the fact that they were able to view a multitude of forms of human experience as disease, which is a completely unfounded belief given that it is experience itself that shapes our conceptions of disease, not the other way around. Furthermore, historical evidence bears out the fact that the mad have contributed more to the overarching understanding of life than have psychiatrists, particularly with in the realms of art and literature."
"However, my main point relates to the notion that since we have been fortunate enough to be given a clean slate, and that I fully believe that dopamine and its invocation of belief remain today a key component in the human puzzle. Everywhere you look there is evidence of an overriding incredulous nature, as though the annihilation of belief in the possibilities of the everyday were a fact of human disposition. Our construction and gardening projects would not be possible, however, if it were not for some burgeoning belief in the finer qualities of humanity and its capacity to overcome challenges while remaining integrated amid the environment. It is therefore my assertion that the survivors of this wasteland called the Earth investigate dopamine-releasing situations in order to cultivate it as an experience, in order to instill in themselves and others the potential for revolutionary changes based on a religion of the self that lends itself to experiences of euphoria along with redefined consciousness of matters of the mind that have long since been stagnating. I guess what I am saying is that it is about time that we began positively building on facets of our biochemistry that have long since been neglected."
I was sufficiently taken aback by her speech, for it seemed that I had possessed many Old World understandings in terms of biochemistry myself. While it took time to settle, I could see in this family threads of reconstructed hope and love that had long since been languishing within the crevices of the wasteland, where people remained on the verge of utter criminality with only their own self-interest preventing lapses into barbarism. Certainly, their generosity and benevolent attitude did much to instill in me a renewed spirit that acted favorably upon my sense of well-being as I bid them goodbye and walked out of their remarkable oasis.
Take every devastated Sunday morning ruined by hangover or drug use that you have ever known, compile it as extended metaphor, and apply it to the spirit of the surviving populace's yearnings. It is evidenced foremost that we carry the themes of post-apocalyptic landscapes within our minds, sometimes conscious and raised to the interpretation of the world in the manner that a banner relates to surges of wind, sometimes pressed like shrapnel into the machinery of our subconscious. You can see evidence of hoarding instincts in the soft mercenary actions of deluded citizens of the former republic, just as you witness survival sickness in conscripted laborers living out their time within the shackles of bondage. Ideals and mercies are hard to come by in this strange world, with freedom and love remaining rare ribbons. For some reason, perhaps based in our biology, the inhabitants of this wasteland continue to abide by the absurdities of bygone ages mingled with an overarching compulsion to survive.
I met the family at a reconstructed house by the shipyards, where the ballistic missiles had plummeted into harbor cranes and oil tankers in order to cripple trade. I could tell immediately that there was something peculiar in the house itself, for it had been constructed along pre-war lines that denoted former values of symmetry in architecture and proficiency in labor. But yet it had been made from debris, with its porch constructed out of a dissected shipping container and it's sidings evidencing the use of yacht hulls. A woman in a cocktail dress waved politely from the porch, beckoning me to come in. This was, as a formality, rare and charming, given the propensity of other survivors to behave with apathy or thinly veiled homicidal impulses. I followed her motion, curious.
"I want to show you what we have been doing," she said, as I followed her into the house. I was immediately overwhelmed by symbols of great wealth in the post-apocalyptic era, things such as functioning clocks, a door that led to a well-stocked kitchen, and electricity provided by an actual working generator. "We have, in our way, been rebuilding the world here." She gave me a relieved look when I smiled, than proceeded to act coy. "Of course, we have been ridding ourselves of unnecessary things as well."
I met her husband Mark and her child Logan. They struck me as oddly vulnerable, open in conversation and distanced from the verve of ruin and struggle. Mark claimed that he had indispensable knowledge of engineering and architecture, for he was old enough to have been among the last wave of graduating students from the former trade schools. He said he had spent five years on the house, with his only defense of the land being redistributed signs that claimed dangerous levels of radiation were in the area. He told me that fortunately, they had used clean bombs only on the area, and that the crater the house straddled ended up serving as a suitable basement.
They treated me to a banquet of vegetables and fresh fruit, which had been harvested from the woman's (Teresa) multiple gardens spread across the region. I had not tasted crisper apples in my pre-war days, and felt eternally grateful and indebted to them. I reached into my rucksack to offer canned green beans in exchange for the favor, which they surprisingly declined, saying that they were fortunate and understood where others weren't.
As our discussions ranged from the scattered attempts of the old government to reconstruct itself, our talk eventually fell on the subject of belief and religion. Teresa had been scavenging at the former university archives nearly two miles inland, and had much to say on the topic as pertaining to biochemistry.
As a disciple of the Council of Post Apocalyptic Psychiatry, I was invariably intrigued and considered it my good fortune to be able to benefit from her dissemination of knowledge.
"Dopamine," she said "was an often maligned and abused biochemical. It was insubstantially linked to socially undesirable behavior occurring among the alienated and misunderstood, for whom there was no outlet of sublimation of desires existent in capitalist society. They possessed dopamine, just like you and me, which nearly half of the brain maintains as a neurotransmitter that is actually responsible for such things as learning and belief."
"These poor people were subjugated by the development of drugs that destroyed their ability to experience dopamine, which also gives palpable expression to joy and well-being in life, as well as maintaining the role of a reward mechanism in the brain during the experience of agreeable circumstances. They were forced to live in controlled environments, without the benefit of a belief-causing agent designed to instill meaning."
"Suffice to say, it can be evidenced perhaps that the distribution, function, and real world evidence of dopamine function within people who were attracted to the role of psychiatrist was completely abnormal and delusional in the manner in which some sane people are known to be. This is evidenced in the fact that they were able to view a multitude of forms of human experience as disease, which is a completely unfounded belief given that it is experience itself that shapes our conceptions of disease, not the other way around. Furthermore, historical evidence bears out the fact that the mad have contributed more to the overarching understanding of life than have psychiatrists, particularly with in the realms of art and literature."
"However, my main point relates to the notion that since we have been fortunate enough to be given a clean slate, and that I fully believe that dopamine and its invocation of belief remain today a key component in the human puzzle. Everywhere you look there is evidence of an overriding incredulous nature, as though the annihilation of belief in the possibilities of the everyday were a fact of human disposition. Our construction and gardening projects would not be possible, however, if it were not for some burgeoning belief in the finer qualities of humanity and its capacity to overcome challenges while remaining integrated amid the environment. It is therefore my assertion that the survivors of this wasteland called the Earth investigate dopamine-releasing situations in order to cultivate it as an experience, in order to instill in themselves and others the potential for revolutionary changes based on a religion of the self that lends itself to experiences of euphoria along with redefined consciousness of matters of the mind that have long since been stagnating. I guess what I am saying is that it is about time that we began positively building on facets of our biochemistry that have long since been neglected."
I was sufficiently taken aback by her speech, for it seemed that I had possessed many Old World understandings in terms of biochemistry myself. While it took time to settle, I could see in this family threads of reconstructed hope and love that had long since been languishing within the crevices of the wasteland, where people remained on the verge of utter criminality with only their own self-interest preventing lapses into barbarism. Certainly, their generosity and benevolent attitude did much to instill in me a renewed spirit that acted favorably upon my sense of well-being as I bid them goodbye and walked out of their remarkable oasis.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Fixing the Past: How Ancient Civilizations are Undermining America
I've got a bone to pick with the mummified ruins of ancient civilizations. I'm certain that many of you out there harbor similar sentiments, and are loathe to express them due to current conceptions of what constitutes "politically correct" speech. I write this in the spirit of refreshing honesty, as things have certainly reached a boiling point in this nation in regards to the taboo subject of race, and it is my belief that these words will spark true change for the better.
America, as those Scythian-loving liberals are wont to call it, is a "melting pot" of different cultures and races. I would say that America is indeed a pot, but that it is rather melting in a chaotic furnace whose flames have been stoked by unacceptable tensions caused mainly by Babylonian immigrants and Sumerian ne'er-do-wells who have taken advantage of our great nation's open policy of acceptance and sullied the great spirit on which our country rests upon with open appeals to harmfully coddling policy measures such as Visigoth affirmative action and free health insurance for low-income Phoenicians. This, my friends, cannot stand. We can no longer pander to the adz-makers and spear-throwers of society who openly detest all that is modern about America, and I urge the government to quit offering welfare to Etruscans who come here just to live off the fat of our hard-earned tax dollars while contributing nothing but hordes of their own progeny who make our public schools dangerous and who have made the streets of the inner city unsafe with recent explosions in the number of reported drive-by-slingings.
But yet, the poor and under-civilized peoples of yesterday are not the only threat to American prosperity. Time and time again, I have heard with marked anger about the nefarious dealings of the Assyrian bankers, who only support their own while foisting foreclosures on earnest citizens like you and me. We could perhaps overcome this through collective and righteous action were it not for the lies of the Byzantine-run media, which has kept us invariably divided in the fight to oust the scourge of archaically-inclined foreign hordes who belong not in this great and vast land of opportunity, but rather in its overlooked history books. Ideally, however, I would have these people placed not in historical documentation, which our children are known to avidly consume, but rather would cast them into the hallways of dependable American amnesia, where they would languish and be forgotten by antediluvian minds who only wish to get through their day without having to hear from some Indus Valley scumbag about how his people were the first to domesticate sheep.
On the subject of history books, I read with ample horror the passages on these parasites in my child's school text, which is nothing but lurid propaganda designed to credit useless Mesopotamians with inventions and accomplishments that in reality, were far beyond the capabilities of their worm-infested brains. To read that the sickening Sumerian fruit vendor who rips you off on grapes had something to do with the creation of the wheel AND writing is really too much for any red-blooded American to stomach, and let it be said that any mention of the Peloponnesians is enough to make the most jaded and iron-stomached among us vomit in disgust. Don't even get me started on the Ptolemaics, the Spartans, or the Cretans, who I whole-heartedly believe are responsible for the souring of our precious young minds with deviant considerations of empire expansion.
It is time that we set our most brilliant scientific minds to work on a time machine that would send these plagues of society back to the time-periods from which they rightfully came, so that we may effectively put the past behind us without having to give a shit about who invented agriculture or algebra, so that we may never have to witness primitively dyed clothing, and so that we may breathe free and easy in a utopia that lives in the present amid fantastical modern achievements such as Crocs and the neutron bomb. This is to say emphatically that the whore of history has seduced its last young mind, and that we will no longer tolerate the opinions of the people who first formed democracy or who formulated rudimentary concepts of exchange value in a surplus-based economy. America is first and foremost about progress, symbolized by great recent achievements such as engagements in two endless foreign wars, corporate psychopathy, along with boasting both the highest infant mortality rate and largest prison population in the industrialized world. It is time we deported troublemakers and got back to the time-honored traditions of giving marijuana offenders disproportionate punishments and allowing our government to murder people with the death penalty, while insuring that the under-educated are well-armed within the scope of the Constitution and that public discourse centers around celebrity scandals. It is high time we availed ourselves of trash from the past, and centered our attention once again towards developing piratical economic policies while wrecking the environment, so that our grandchildren may know a drab wasteland free of the influence of polar bears and equality.
America must move forward. So get out there and smash some cuneiform tablets in the spirit of patriotism, break some amphorae, and blow up some Egyptian obelisks. Hang a sign that says "Koine Greek not spoken here," refuse to wear sandals, and above all, never barter.
America, as those Scythian-loving liberals are wont to call it, is a "melting pot" of different cultures and races. I would say that America is indeed a pot, but that it is rather melting in a chaotic furnace whose flames have been stoked by unacceptable tensions caused mainly by Babylonian immigrants and Sumerian ne'er-do-wells who have taken advantage of our great nation's open policy of acceptance and sullied the great spirit on which our country rests upon with open appeals to harmfully coddling policy measures such as Visigoth affirmative action and free health insurance for low-income Phoenicians. This, my friends, cannot stand. We can no longer pander to the adz-makers and spear-throwers of society who openly detest all that is modern about America, and I urge the government to quit offering welfare to Etruscans who come here just to live off the fat of our hard-earned tax dollars while contributing nothing but hordes of their own progeny who make our public schools dangerous and who have made the streets of the inner city unsafe with recent explosions in the number of reported drive-by-slingings.
But yet, the poor and under-civilized peoples of yesterday are not the only threat to American prosperity. Time and time again, I have heard with marked anger about the nefarious dealings of the Assyrian bankers, who only support their own while foisting foreclosures on earnest citizens like you and me. We could perhaps overcome this through collective and righteous action were it not for the lies of the Byzantine-run media, which has kept us invariably divided in the fight to oust the scourge of archaically-inclined foreign hordes who belong not in this great and vast land of opportunity, but rather in its overlooked history books. Ideally, however, I would have these people placed not in historical documentation, which our children are known to avidly consume, but rather would cast them into the hallways of dependable American amnesia, where they would languish and be forgotten by antediluvian minds who only wish to get through their day without having to hear from some Indus Valley scumbag about how his people were the first to domesticate sheep.
On the subject of history books, I read with ample horror the passages on these parasites in my child's school text, which is nothing but lurid propaganda designed to credit useless Mesopotamians with inventions and accomplishments that in reality, were far beyond the capabilities of their worm-infested brains. To read that the sickening Sumerian fruit vendor who rips you off on grapes had something to do with the creation of the wheel AND writing is really too much for any red-blooded American to stomach, and let it be said that any mention of the Peloponnesians is enough to make the most jaded and iron-stomached among us vomit in disgust. Don't even get me started on the Ptolemaics, the Spartans, or the Cretans, who I whole-heartedly believe are responsible for the souring of our precious young minds with deviant considerations of empire expansion.
It is time that we set our most brilliant scientific minds to work on a time machine that would send these plagues of society back to the time-periods from which they rightfully came, so that we may effectively put the past behind us without having to give a shit about who invented agriculture or algebra, so that we may never have to witness primitively dyed clothing, and so that we may breathe free and easy in a utopia that lives in the present amid fantastical modern achievements such as Crocs and the neutron bomb. This is to say emphatically that the whore of history has seduced its last young mind, and that we will no longer tolerate the opinions of the people who first formed democracy or who formulated rudimentary concepts of exchange value in a surplus-based economy. America is first and foremost about progress, symbolized by great recent achievements such as engagements in two endless foreign wars, corporate psychopathy, along with boasting both the highest infant mortality rate and largest prison population in the industrialized world. It is time we deported troublemakers and got back to the time-honored traditions of giving marijuana offenders disproportionate punishments and allowing our government to murder people with the death penalty, while insuring that the under-educated are well-armed within the scope of the Constitution and that public discourse centers around celebrity scandals. It is high time we availed ourselves of trash from the past, and centered our attention once again towards developing piratical economic policies while wrecking the environment, so that our grandchildren may know a drab wasteland free of the influence of polar bears and equality.
America must move forward. So get out there and smash some cuneiform tablets in the spirit of patriotism, break some amphorae, and blow up some Egyptian obelisks. Hang a sign that says "Koine Greek not spoken here," refuse to wear sandals, and above all, never barter.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
The sky was hot and cold and full of glare. Their voices stabbed at the air between the front and back seats. Her voice was calm, smoothing the static. She tried to sound hopeful, to force all that she wanted from the afternoon into clear round words. She spoke of bridges and birds and uncoiling line and the boy whined, “There will be too many people there! They’ll think you’re crazy.”
Why, she thought, should birds being hung from an iron railing, to sway in the wind over the train tracks, be considered crazy? She understood that she would not be invisible as she stood on the bridge, but was it crazy to want to be uninvisible for a few minutes, to reach into a bag and to draw out a bird, to let a child’s hands draw out the monofilament and fish the open air for a moment…?
She considered an essay put forth by the Council for Post-Apocalyptic Psychiatry, which explored the relationship between social etiquette and the manifestations of mental illness.
…when one is expected to adhere to social norms of action that are repetitive,impersonal, and driven by external forces rather than internal forces, the individual becomes constrained. In that state of constriction, there exists an anxious tension, as well as the associated emotional states of frustration, sorrow, and feeling a 'little pissed that the world is so fuckin’ square.'
Freedom of expression in the post-apocalyptic era is codified by cultural compartmentalization of societal roles and their function of maintaining the illusory landscape of scripted participation. Even artists are, in their acceptance of relegation to the tidy constructs of cultural diversity, subject to constricted self-expression.
The Council has found that the inflexible and often oppressive criticism which is prevalent in this post-apocalyptic age serves to limit and reinforce our roles as they are prescribed by race, socioeconomic status, and clan values. When one diverges from the expectations of his or her group, they are actively or passively ostracized. Often, the initiation into an ostracized state involves the use of pathological labeling and mental health indictment.
Defining as "crazy" the failure to adhere to prescribed course of action has proved to have a deleterious effect on the mental health of post-apocalyptic citizens. In order to avoid the dehumanizing isolation imposed upon those deemed "crazy," many people have sought to become invisible within their roles, fulfilling the expectations assigned to said role so thoroughly that any aberrant personality traits are cloaked by acceptable mannerism and endeavor.
It has been found that, over time, the social brutality of forced invisibility results in clinically significant increases in maladaptive and sociopathic activity, such as watching television, compulsive accessorizing of role through over-consumption of material goods, self-harm through ingestion of toxic foods, and diminished desire to imagine a world other than this one.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
What is the purpose of leaving presents for strangers? A small length of wire, twisted into the form of a bird in flight, a curious scroll attached, the desire to surprise someone who you've never met - these are the components of bewilderment.
The economy of gifts is governed by occasion and perceived worth. Presents are a powerful tool in reinforcing our roles as consumers and participants in material culture. Thus, offerings that are of questionable value and without specific recipient represent a dynamic new generosity characterized by an invitation to see the world as pointless, strange and lovely.
At first glance, these small sculptures appear to be garbage.
It is only upon closer inspection that one discovers their true form.
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