Thursday, June 27, 2002
Tuesday, June 25, 2002
Saturday, June 22, 2002
Thursday, June 20, 2002
Friday, June 14, 2002
Thursday, June 13, 2002
Wednesday, June 12, 2002
I didn't go to my 15th college reunion, which was, apparently, a mistake, as has been pointed out to me by several classmates through e-mail attachments. I've sent each of them their own personalized copies of W32.klez.
Tuesday, June 11, 2002
That, or they just use the same base MSDS for everything. To test this, I looked up water, CAS#7732-18-5, at JT Baker and, sure enough, they suggest goggles and lab coats. I also checked for water at Fisher Scientific got the following MSDS for water. They must have put the summer intern on non-toxic chemicals. Firstly, they give the molecular weight for water as 20.14, which would only be correct if it were deuterated water with traces of tritium, toxic stuff indeed! Secondly, in case of a chemical (i.e. water) spill, they instruct: "Absorb the liquid and scrub the area with detergent and water." Doh!
I recently got this link to a "real" tombstone with a hidden epithet. I have to say that I question either the validity of the picture or the intelligence of the creators. "Boy, John'll really be mad when he reads this (titter, titter), that is, if he were still alive..." Doh!
Thursday, June 06, 2002
Many years ago, when I was a youth, my neighbor Alex Jones invited me over to his house to listen to some records that he had checked out of the local library. He had been combing through the comedy albums and found two interesting titles by a group called the Firesign Theatre: "The Case of the Giant Rat of Sumatra," and "Everything You Know is Wrong." Although the former album was more accessible to our prepubescent minds - it's just one big pun - the latter was much more interesting, and not just because the narrator was "Happy" Harry Cox. (We still titter about that.) We went on to find and listen to their entire oeuvre, but those earliest finds still have some special meaning to me.
Much of "Everything You Know is Wrong" is an ongoing news story about a meteorite that produces a deep hole in the ground and speculation that it has opened a passage to the Hollow Earth. At the time I first heard the record, I laughed at the absurdity of the story and at their comical "experts" discussing the ramifications of the hole. Now I find myself once again confronted with holes and unable to shake the feeling that Phil Proctor controls my brain!
A little over a decade ago, Alex sent me another in a series of mix tapes that we had been using in lieu of correspondence. Overrepresented were the Tom Tom Club, Danielle Dax, and Pere Ubu, suggesting that these were his present favorites. I knew of Pere Ubu, the band, from Urgh! A Music War, and so listened happily to the various tracks Alex had included. One track was "the Hollow Earth," which Alex said had reminded him of the Firesign Theatre and added that some people(?) believed that the Earth was hollow, hence both references. A few years later, I began subscribing to the "Skeptical Inquirer," and found that the Hollow Earth Theory had surfaced, died, and resurfaced several times over the past couple of centuries, and that the 60's New Age movement had included one such resurfacing. Well, that explained the brilliance and timeliness of the Firesign Theatre album, and maybe Pere Ubu - who take their name from an absurdist, surreal French drama - had had a similar introduction. Maybe.
Over a year ago, my friend Mark was testing unusual search terms to find books at Amazon, and typed in the term "anus." He was directed to a book by Hiroyuki Nishigaki titled "How to Good-bye Depression: If you constrict anus 100 times everyday. Malarkey? or Effective way?." What's the connection? Well, recently my father sent be a site called simply "Holes": a collection of 100 pictures of holes. As I looked at the various holes, a voice in my head said, "just dig a hole that's deep enough, and everybody will want to jump into it." At almost the same time, we got yet another question in the Earth Sciences queue of the Mad Scientist Network insisting on the existence of the Hollow Earth.
So, I started researching the Hollow Earth Theory as it impacted my life, and found that the source of almost all information on the topic was one Raymond Bernard who wrote a treatise on the subject back in 1964. So HE was the source of this insidious meme that now haunted me.
As I went through the pages previously linked, I was struck by the two faces of Walter Siegmeister/Raymond Bernard: half of his life and writings were devoted to solving constipation, and the other half was devoted to expanding his spirituality. This seemed to culminate in "the Hollow Earth", in which alien spirit beings are constantly commuting through a great Earthly pore far too reminiscent of a great planetary anus. I looked back at the 100 holes, and was reminded again that "they knew not their holes from an ass on the ground." I went back to Nishigaki's sites - the parallels to Bernard's works suggested something more deepseated. It was then that I was reminded of seeing Whitley Strieber's "Communion" with Alex and others when it was released as a movie. Here, the alien's were directly commuting through Strieber's anus instead of the Earth's.
So, what's with all of these fringe authors' preoccupations with alternative spirituality and continence? According to the NIH, they're exhibiting the warning signs of Schizophrenia! Certainly, the descriptions of Raymond Bernard's later paranoia surrounding the Cold War that culminated in his "disappearing" in the jungles of South America to avoid radioactive fallout would point to a chemical imbalance, but what of the others? Dr. Hulda Clark, who has also posted to the Mad Sci Net, believes that Schizophrenia, as well as every other disease known to man, is caused by parasitic worms (guess wherefrom). It's like Freudianism gone awry. Maybe all of the religious fundamentalists that are plaguing the world today are just anal retentives overdue for their weekly enemas. Maybe Graham and Kellogg were right in trying to save the world one high colonic at a time.
I'm still waiting for Phil Proctor's next instruction.
Wednesday, June 05, 2002
I'm looking for some good sites on Raymond Bernard... because... well... I'm not sure why. I think I'm being mystically drawn to him. World renowned author? Rosicrucian founder of CIRCES? Expert Oenologist? French Filmmaker? Dr. Walter Siegmeister?!
Allright, 3 and 4 are clearly different people, and 1 and 5 are the same person, but what about 2?! It seems odd that the Raymond Bernard who wrote the book on the Rosicrucian influence on early American History is not the same Raymond Bernard who founded CIRCES as an offshoot of AMORC. Maybe he's really L. Ron Hubbard!
Monday, June 03, 2002
I inherited my present car, a Honda Accord, from my father after it passed the 100,000 mile mark. Like my previous Accord, it runs well and needs little repair - except for the factory-installed stereo system. Some time ago, the stereo began to make popping noises while cutting on and off - raising and lowering the antenna - annoying me greatly, as it prevented me from listening to cassettes without ruining them. I was in getting the car inspected and asked about the radio; the mechanic told me that this was a common problem with this particular model and could be fixed by a guy she knew out in West County.
Instead, I figured I'd just listen to the radio for a bit, and see if I could expand my musical horizons. About this time, our family moved from downtown St Louis city out to Kirkwood - in my childhood, this was the edge of civilization in St Louis county, beyond which were small towns, unincorporated farmland, Six Flags, and the Chrysler plant. While living downtown, I had started listening to the only jazz station in the area, WSIE, which unfortunately originates in Edwardsville, Illinois on the other side of the river. As I began making the trip to and from the new house, I would listen to the jazz as I loaded and unloaded the car. Only after discussing the programming with another listener did I discover that my car radio is possibly the only radio in Kirkwood that can pick up the weak, distant signal. Like Cheever's protagonist, I'm afraid that fixing my radio will end my listening pleasures.
But, even the jazz becomes tiresome as each DJ's playlist becomes more and more familiar. Sliding through the lower FM stations one day, I came upon the familiar sound of a preacher condemning sinners and praising Jesus and such, and stopped to listen. I would like to say that I found the Lord and John 3:16 and A-men and all that, but to my eternal damnation, the preacher was discussing the evils of evolution and giving the usual proofs of Creation. I was intrigued as every argument against evolution was appended with a proof for Creation that itself was denied by the argument. Stuff like, "the evolutionists want you to believe that man evolved from birds, etc., which is clearly a fairy tale! The Bible says that man was formed from the dust by God!" Thus began my nightly listening to Hank Hanegraaff, "The Bible Answerman®" during my drive home from work. So, if you see someone talking to the radio on I-44 during rush hour in a white Accord with the antenna going up and down, steer clear.
More great biblical teachings can be found at Landover Baptist Church, and some great websites can be found through Adult Christianity.
Couple my love for experimental music with my brother John's work as an architect, and you get two lovely, ambient sites: Cités Obscures and The Central City. Each site give the visitor an interesting set of landscapes and soundscapes to explore.