My Blog

Day of the Zombie in Portland

professorplague — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 22:31:09 GMT

After arriving in Portland just two days ago, I can feel the psychic undercurrents crackling in my favor. The Road was kind to me, and provided me with safe passage from El Sobrante. My ride was a van piloted by Walker, a Zen Buddhist who lives in a monastary near Portland. Not surprisingly, it was a most tranquil ride, even when the alternator crapped out and we had to spend a rainy evening in Grant's Pass. Walker was kind, mellow, and inquisitive, and we split the driving duties and talked of many things. Walker wanted to stop in Eugene to visit friends, so I took the opportunity to gather reinforcements for the upcoming Day of the Zombie show on Jan. 13th. Chains pledged his accordion to the cause, and jumped in the van with me the next morning. Others promised to be there to lend support and be the audience I want to perform for. Joe from Inkwells, though in the midst of recording a new album, agreed to learn the songs on bass. In Portland I have aquired a drummer and re-enlisted my old flute player. We practiced the other day with Meghan and it sounded great. And Noah has graciously lent his home for future practices, which will occur daily at 4pm until the 13th. I feel terribly lucky that I have made friends with such uber-talented folks, and feel a bit bashful that they're all so stoked about my project. A couple of days ago I was told that there is a very positive writeup for Day of the Zombie in this month's issue of SPIN. How nice that it happens to be the same issue in which the lovely and talented Sansa is featured prominently. Meanwhile I'm gathering other hard-to-reach allies close to me, old friends and neighbors, and playing with tots while drinking the best beer in Portland, Captured by Porches. Those of you in the City of Nicknames, give me a call or email me. I'm mostly in the NE part of town, but I will travel to meet you. If you want to help make Day of the Zombie go off triumphantly, let me know and I will put your skills to use. One week to go, folks. Let's make this happen.

My Anthropology Final

professorplague — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 08:47:45 GMT

Whew! Done with school. Until next month, anyway. I'm so sleepy right now. I was up until 5:30 a.m. trying to pull together my final essay for my Anthropology Theory class, which is a reworking of this essay from my religion class last spring. I went about 5 pages longer than I was supposed to this time, and I still had to abruptly cut short my analysis at the origins of Islam, and I didn't even start on Christianity. Ugh. Anyhow, here is the final result. Thanks to those of you who offered constructive critiques at the last minute. Forgive the clunky structure; that's what the assignment called for. As always, comments and criticism are welcome: Spiritual Technology and the Rise of Monotheism Part I: Abstract This paper explores the role of religion as it relates to media ecology, or the changes in perception and involvement initiated by technology. Specifically, it explores the emergence of monotheism as a reaction to writing systems, and the phonetic alphabet in particular. I've always been interested in how ancient peoples saw the world, and it made sense to trace the journey (I hesitate to call it a progression) to today's worldviews as a series of technological developments. In this paper I make use of Malinowski's functionalist Theory of Needs, as well as McLuhan's ideas about media environments and William McNeill's patterns of equilibria (which reference disease vectors but apply equally well to social systems). My stance is that religion arises out of a need to release social and psychic stress from the environment, and when new technologies disrupt environmental equilibrium, religion will reflect these new stresses. The linear, stratified pressures of the phonetic alphabet ushered in the concept of sterile monotheism, an infinite being paradoxically without form. Space does not permit a full accounting of monotheism's rise, but I feel I have laid out a convincing argument, not of causality, but of a dialectical relationship between writing technologies and the development of concepts of God in the Middle East. ********************************************************* "Tell him that we have fucking reprogrammed reality. Tell him that language is a virus and that religion is an operating system and that prayers are just so much fucking spam. Tell him that or I'll fucking kill you." -Neil Gaiman, American Gods Spiritual Technology and the Rise of Monotheism Part II: Introduction Writing is the foundation of Western civilization. Indeed, the collection of institutions, attitudes and worldviews we think of as "civilized" are inseparable from the social and psychic changes our relationship with writing technologies have engendered. In nearly any context, "civilized" can be substituted for "literate", with particular preference towards phonetic literacy. It is telling that even Morgan, in a 19th century taxonomy of human societies, listed use of the phonetic alphabet as the only difference between barbarism and civilization (Morgan 2004:63). As a medium for the externalization and storage of thoughts, the written word is very useful, of course, and has allowed the literate West to preserve and exchange knowledge in ways not possible for nonliterate societies. The most profound effects of writing, however, have little to do with what is written; rather, the sensory changes which the written word exerts on human fields of perception are the true legacy of the Word. Richard Leakey explains the processes which human technologies augment and act upon: "The ability to act intelligently in the real world depends totally on the perception of that world. Yet the picture of the outside world you carry in your head is totally artificial. It is created by the mechanics of your brain, the information-collecting systems: eyes, ears, fingers, skin, nose - and memory (1982:171)." Each new technology is an extension of one or more human physical attributes or senses (Malinowski 1965:171). As a particular sense or faculty is amplified by technology, its information-gathering role is also magnified – in an environment which includes all previous technologies (McLuhan 1964:24). In effect this creates an entirely new environment, and human societies respond with new technologies in a kind of dialectical feedback loop. "Any extension, whether of skin, hand or foot, affects the whole psychic and social network", McLuhan says (1964:19), altering ratios of sensory involvement with our surroundings. Three thousand years of alphabet technology - a visual augmentation of the first technology, the spoken word (Leakey 1982:16, McLuhan 1964:83) - has deeply imbedded itself in our culture, giving the Western world a lopsided visual bias that must "see to believe". "As an amplification and extension of the visual function," McLuhan declares, "the phonetic alphabet diminishes the role of the other senses of sound and touch in any literate culture (1964:87)." Religion's role, meanwhile, is that of a reflection of the fears and hopes of both a society and its individual members. Joseph Campbell tells us that "dream is the personalized myth; myth the depersonalized dream (1972:19)." If that is so, the myths of a society will reflect the stresses of its particular technological amalgam. Religion, then, is a spiritual technology, a pressure valve through which we individually and collectively release the stress created by our changing sense ratios. I intend to show that monotheism, where it arose in the ancient world, reflects cultural reactions to the stresses of writing technology, and in particular the phonetic alphabet, as it was gradually adopted by previously oral and pictorial societies. In an attempt to tie together so many loose threads, I feel it may be most instructive to apply a functionalist perspective to Marshall McLuhan's concepts of media ecology. Malinowski's theory of needs overlaps McLuhan in key areas. Humanity's ability to respond to new environments is its greatest survival mechanism. Technology is both response and environment, and no cultural study is complete without an understanding of the dialectic between humans, their environment, and technological change. I have drawn on a wide range of fields to support my argument, from history and economics to epidemiology and archaeology. In addition, I believe the myths of the faiths themselves are instructive in understanding the significance of writing's impact on the thought processes of the oral peoples of the Middle East. Certain passages in the Bible, for example, seem to identify the written word directly with the idea of divinity. While I intend to focus on the form rather than the content of writing, myth and metaphor can be helpful in revealing the message buried within the medium. Part III: Theoretical Discussion & Literature Review The first human technology, and arguably the one which sets us most distinctly apart from other primates, is our highly-evolved capability for language. The externalization of thought into symbols (primarily sounds) was the first technological revolution, and set the stage for every subsequent technological extension. Linguists, following Noam Chomsky's lead, have concluded that the human brain has evolved an innate capacity for language and grammar (Deacon 1997:103-104). That, combined with a highly developed social instinct (Leakey 1982:51-52), forms the biological foundation of all cultural endeavors. Essentially, the ability to communicate with each other, along with the desire to do so, was the flint and steel of cultural development. Like any other life form, humans are biologically driven to extend their influence. We are able to extend the human form not only through genetic reproduction but through learned external media, to a degree unparalleled in the rest of the animal world. The wheel is an extension of the foot, the spear an extension of teeth, and so on. The second axiom in Malinowski's "theory of needs" appears to agree with this assessment: "(E)very cultural achievement that implies the use of artifacts and symbolism is an instrumental enhancement of human anatomy and refers directly or indirectly to the satisfaction of a bodily need (1964:171)." This "enhancement" of our faculties also numbs our sensory involvement with the environment, creating psychic and social stress as the human body is removed by degrees from direct experience (McLuhan 1964:98). The introduction of each new medium into a social system upsets the ecological or cultural equilibrium, not dissimilar to the introduction of a micro- or macroparasite into a host, and "tends to provoke compensatory changes throughout the systems so as to minimize overall upheaval (McNeill 1976:7)." Malinowski, too, notes the profound cultural changes that result from struggle for equilibrium: Whether in the form of invention, or as an act of diffusion, a new technical device becomes incorporated into an already established system of behavior, and produces gradually a complete remolding of that institution (1964:41)." So those technologies which provide a survival advantage to a society eventually become part of the cultural fabric, imbued with social and psychic significance. This constitutes a kind of symbiosis, one which preserves and propagates both the technology and its users. The adoption of agriculture, for example, fundamentally altered human interaction with the environment. The surplus of food from agriculture initiated an explosion in the numbers of agriculturalists, and an acceleration of technologies in an effort to cope with the lifestyle changes this wrought. In humans, our survival instinct is complicated by contemplation of our own mortality. We watch our family members die, and as we grow up, we learn that we too, must grow old and die. Spirituality can be defined as an effort to dispel the stresses of the environment, of which inevitable death generally ranks high on the list. It is my view that spiritual technology comes out of a desire to communicate with, and thus curry favor with, the sources of environmental stresses. "Prayer," said 17th century poet George Herbert, "is reverse thunder." What counts as "thunder", then, is the particular mix of environmental stressors, which include climatic, biological, and social factors that populate the daily sensorium of a particular society. Each new technology soon becomes part of this pantheon of factors, reacting in a dialectical fashion to its environment and creating new stresses of its own. In this context, the community plays a vital role in prayer. The social instinct allows the individual to identify himself with the group, giving him a permanence he could never achieve alone (Campbell 1973:383). Group rituals reinforce this common identity, channeling the psychic stresses of the environment into an external force, one made in the image and likeness of the group. Campbell affirms the role of religion as a technology for collective stress release: "The whole society becomes invisible to itself as an imperishable living unit. Generations of individuals pass, like anonymous cells from a living body; but the sustaining, timeless form remains. By an enlargement of vision to embrace this super-individual, each discovers himself enhanced, enriched, supported, and magnified (1973:383)." Nonliterate societies tend to have a holistic, all-encompassing worldview (Schlain 1993:150-151) which lends itself to animist religions, in which every part of the external world contains a life force with which the individual can interact (and thus, influence). A fluid, nonlinear view of time implies a flexible pantheon of deities or powers which may be added or dropped as needed (Goody & Watt 1963:310-311). The act of writing, Goody and Watt say, creates a fixed sense of time and imbues the environment (and by extension, supernatural forces) with a solidified permanence: "The pastness of the past, then, depends on a historical sensibility which can hardly begin to operate without permanent written records (1963:311)." Writing is an extension of not only the spoken word but of memory. Thus it amplifies the significance of what is written as events worthy of social memory. All else can be forgotten. For literate cultures, the universe begins and ends with the Word. Discussion The first known writing systems appeared in the 4th millennium BC, among the nascent city-states of southern Mesopotamia (Leick 2001:5). The earliest versions of Sumerian writing consisted of simple wedge patterns on clay tablets, and arose out of a need to record the surpluses of animal and plant domestication (Innis 1950:30), a technology which was reshaping human behavior in the Fertile Crescent and elsewhere. Surpluses of food meant permanent settlements, and walled city states built to defend the newfound wealth (McNeill 1976:32-33). Conflict arose as never before, and both work and war became realities. It is perhaps significant that Cain, a farmer, commits the Bible's first murder. Religious life reflected a utilitarian aim, as the priest-kings and their subordinates combined political, economic, and religious duties, as Innis shows: "Lists, inventories, records, and accounts of temples and small city-states suggest the concern of the god as capitalist, landlord, and bank (1950:31)." Babylon's cuneiform marked the beginning of history, for it was the first attempt at a uniform written language. The tale of the Tower of Babel in Chapter 11 of Genesis regards such uniformity and control in secular hands with suspicion. No wonder then, that the jealous deity scattered the tower's builders with a lapse in communication. As the populations of the city states grew and specialization increased, pressure was exerted on cuneiform to express a broader range of ideas. Ideograms, such as wavy lines to represent water, began to be incorporated into a growing toolkit of symbols (Leick 2001:69). In Egypt as well, image-based writing slowly evolved from pure bookkeeping to express more complex spiritual concepts. This meant in many cases the gradual incorporation of signs that represented sounds (Innis 1950:26), though these were most likely mnemonic devices for oral learning (Leick 2001:69). Religion in the city-states was usually an admixture of agricultural polytheism and state-sponsored monolatry, with one god-king reigning supreme over both the people and the pantheon. According to Max Weber, strong centralized kingships in the Fertile Crescent, who wielded the concentrated power necessary for large-scale irrigation works in arid agricultural environments, contributed to the view of a unitary deity with similarly concentrated power (Kalberg 1994:567-568). However, the knowledge of writing was a closely guarded secret. It is telling that Thoth, the Egyptian god responsible for scribes and writing, came to be regarded as the god of magic by the 16th century B.C. (Innis 1950:22). The stratified nature of writing technology was inseparable from the stratified classes of bureaucrats in the Ancient world (Goody and Watt, 1963:314). It was preserved as a secret ritual, and was the key element in an incredibly conservative ruling class, which, like many of the writing styles of these ancient societies, remained virtually unchanged for centuries (Goody and Watt 1963:315). So at best, the elites of these pictorial societies were literate, while the masses beneath them retained their oral (and aural) sensibilities. The conservative nature of non-phonetic writing (for which symbols only exist which are thought important enough to symbolize), say Goody and Watt, makes it likely that phonetic literacy would have taken root outside the boundaries of the great non-phonetic kingdoms (1963:315). So it is not surprising that the Phoenicians, Semitic traders on the Western and Northern frontiers of the Babylonian and Egyptian empires, respectively, would develop and spread the world's first phonetic alphabet across the Mediterranean beginning around 1200 B.C. The Phoenician abjad (an alphabet lacking vowels) could be adapted to any language with minimal effort. And it was; Goody and Watt call the alphabet "the most extreme example of cultural diffusion; all existing or recorded alphabets derive from Semitic syllabaries developed during the second millennium (1963:316)." The Phoenicians' southern neighbors, the Hebrews, received the abjad as a promethean injunction and experienced a flowering of nascent nationalism, made possible in part by the decline of Egypt (Innis 1950:54), and perhaps by the unification of Yahweh(a storm god) and El (a solar deity) into one being. The key to this common identity, Weber says, was the shift to monotheism inspired by the gift of writing: "As a consequence of the covenant between Yahweh and the peoples of the twelve tribes of Israel and Judea, this mighty god could not be simply a functional, tribal, or local deity (Kalberg 1994:570)." Weber claims that what set Hebrew religion apart was a "contractual relationship" between God and His clients, which "despite numerous analogues, is found nowhere else in such intensity (Kalberg 1994: 569)." Innis suggests that the Hebrew emphasis on the sacred nature of the word reflects a reaction against the Egyptian and Babylonian emphasis on architecture and sculpture. "The written letter replaced the image as an object of worship," Innis says (1950:53). In any case, stone and clay tablets imply a certain permanence, of moral lessons that were locked in from generation to generation, literally "carved in stone". It is no coincidence that the Jews are known as "the People of the Book". Ian Young notes how often God is depicted as a writer: This conception of God as the writer par excellence probably reflects the prestigious connection of writing with government, priesthood and nobility (1998:247-248)." The mental exercise of abstraction present in the Middle Eastern religions, namely the conception of one infinite deity paradoxically without physical form, is a ritualization of the same process necessary for reading. Phonetic literacy involves the reduction of the physical world first to a series of sounds, which is to say spoken language. From there, the sounds are further abstracted into discrete visual symbols. Now completely divorced from the physical world, these are arranged in ways that, with the proper training, reconstruct symbols representing the physical world. The commandments against worshipping other gods and graven images imply an obsession with abstracting reality to the highest degree possible. Indeed, the Koran is another story about the power of words, even more so than the stories contained within. The basic premise of the Islamic holy book is that of a man chosen to be God's personal stenographer. Whereas the Bible is seen by Jews and Christians as a collection of stories about God, the Koran is considered by Muslims to be directly dictated by God. The words themselves become objects of worship. Many Muslims consider copies of the Koran sacred, and proscribe strict guidelines for how to treat the books. Since Muslims share the Jewish injunction against idolatry, pictorial representations of Koranic verses are forbidden. Thus, the verses themselves are often written in lavish calligraphy, seemingly fetishizing the symbolic words in the Koran beyond their literal meaning. The Arabic abjad is a descendant of the Aramaic script that was the lingua franca in the fading Assyrian Empire, a relic of the Arameans it conquered and scattered throughout its borders (Leick 2001:258-259). O. Hegyi explores the close dialectical relationship between Islam and Arabic, both of which were developed within a century of each other: "In the course of its spread, the Arabic alphabet – aided by conquest, commercial penetration, and the simultaneous propagation of Islam – became second only to the Latin alphabet in regard to territorial expansion (1979:262)." Hegyi takes pains to note that even in Islamic communities with radically different linguistic traditions, from Africa to Southeast Asia, the Arabic alphabet is considered an integral part of the faith (1979:266). Conclusion There is little doubt in my mind that technologies exert tremendous influence on human behavior, most of it unseen. What is unclear is the degree to which new and old technologies are shaping us (and our older technologies). In an age when the morning paper contains ancient history, the effects of media are tightening around our necks like iPod headphones. I must admit to a slight feeling of disappointment with the limitations of time and space as regard this paper. I feel as though I was just getting warmed up, when diarrhea of the word processor and a ticking clock foiled my carefully-laid plans for The Perfect Paper. In my historical discussion of the alphabet's relationship with monotheism, I soon realized with dismay that if I wanted to trace the Greek contributions to the alphabet (namely, vowels) and spiritual technology (the rise of pure logic, Euclidean geometry, and the changes to the Greek pantheon which literacy brought), I would need several more pages than would be polite to turn in. And that's not even mentioning the alphabet fetishization of the Christians ("In the beginning there was the Word and the Word was God…" and "I am the Alpha and the Omega; I am the beginning and the ending…."), complete with the fragmentation of the Church during the Reformation sparked by the printing press. And writing that much more wouldn't be fair to my fingers. Or my beleaguered professor. In the end, I may have picked too broad a topic, but I was wary of trying to take any particular religion out of the context of its historical and technological foundations. I just wanted to show monotheism as an accumulation of logical adaptations to the environment. This paper, like monotheism, seemed like a good idea at the time. Still, I think I have laid out a theoretical framework with which I may confidently approach a society, its technological toolkit, and its religious tradition with some amount of understanding. To review: Human technologies come from the fusion of two of our basic human instincts; the capacity for language and our social instinct. Technologies augment the human form and each other, while changing on every level how we interact with the world and creating an entirely new environment. The struggle to maintain equilibrium in the face of this constant change has given rise to religion, which we can perhaps classify as a counter-medium, but is really a "spiritual technology" for collective stress release. The problem with this theory of media ecology is that there are so many factors, so many technologies and fluid environmental variables, that it is difficult to conclusively prove anything. At a certain point you might as well be studying chaos theory. But some media, like the alphabet, exert such powerful effects that we can observe their distinct qualities in relief compared with non-alphabetic societies. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the theories of Professors McLuhan and Malinowski dovetailed to a degree that made this paper much easier to write. If nothing else, this indicates to me that media ecology is quite compatible with a utilitarian perspective. References Cited 1956 The Holy Bible (King James Version). New York: American Bible Society Campbell, Joseph 1973 The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press Deacon, Terrence W. 1997 The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Goody, Jack and Watt, Ian The Consequences of Literacy (in Literacy and Society) in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 5, No. 3. (Apr., 1963), pp. 304-345 Hegyi, O. ] Minority and Restricted Uses of the Arabic Alphabet: The Aljamiado Phenomenon in Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 99, No. 2. (Apr. - Jun., 1979), pp. 262-269. Kalberg, Stephen Max Weber's Analysis of the Rise of Monotheism: A Reconstruction in The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 45, No. 4. (Dec., 1994), pp. 563-583 Leakey, Richard E. 1982 Origins: The Emergence and Evolution of Our Species and its Possible Future. New York: E.P. Dutton Leick, Gwendolyn 2001 Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City. London: Penguin Books McLuhan, Marshall 1964 Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill McNeill, William H. 1976 Plagues and Peoples. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Morgan, Lewis Henry (1877) Ethnical Periods, in Anthropological theory: An Introductory History. (3rd Ed. 2004) R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms, eds. p.63. New York: McGraw-Hill Schlain, Leonard 1993 Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light. New York: Harper-Collins Young, Ian M. Israelite Literacy: Interpreting the Evidence: Part I in Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 48, Fasc. 2. (Apr., 1998), pp. 239-253.

Me singing on YouTube

professorplague — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 02:29:41 GMT

Hey, my friend Stephanie is doing a musical at Gilman on Christmas Eve. It's called "Bad Ronald", based on a made-for-TV movie from the 70s of the same name. Anyhow, I've agreed to be the balladeer/narrator. Stephanie filmed me playing "A Rose A Door" so they can do trippy projections over it. She posted it on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYUk66ga7MY Go check it out if you want to see me mumbling with a guitar.

Professor need a jobby job

professorplague — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 19:10:38 GMT

Hey there friends- Yikes! I just discovered I'm even more broke than I thought, what with overdraft fees. I need to get some part-time work ASAP. Anyone have any bright ideas? Please message me privately with any suggestions. I'm available Fri-Sun. and Wednesdays. Manual labor, writing/editing, bodyguard, receptionist, guitarist, singer, etc. Pick me, I'm desperate!

AD&D recap... why are you looking at me like that?

professorplague — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 02:59:17 GMT

So, I ran the second installment of my DarkSun/Gamma World AD&D game, based more or less on Stephen King's Dark Tower series. It was a total blast, even though we hardly got anywhere in the game. By the way, I hear Marvel is releasing a comic adaptation of DT next February. I'm so there. Anyhoo, here's a rundown of the major happenings in my game. Warning: Dork Alert! Player Characters: -A misunderstood 16-year-old ghul lord necromancer -A spiritually broken Space Marine who fears he has been impregnated by a thri-kreen -A bird-phobic lizardman from another world -A burly half-dwarf gladiator (think a grey-skinned Ving Rhames). The adventure began at the edge of the Silt Sea, upon which the lizardman and Space Marine had been drifting in a dune sailer which was part of a bone caravan (since metals are somewhat rare, weapons are often made out of bone, so they make valuable raw materials). They were delirious with thirst when the ship ran aground on a cracked hardpan desert that stretched out for what seemed like forever. With no food or water, the only possible action was to begin crossing the vast, lifeless plain. They began to die of thirst. When they were at death’s door, they came to an utterly inexplicable shack. In it was the young necromancer, who had been binging on an amphetamine-like cactus and had no idea how he’d gotten there. The unlikely trio found that there were unmarked cans filled with the food of the Old People, as well as a metal pipe coming out of the floor. They were able to fill up their waterskins from this, and continued on their way. Eventually they made it to the city of Tereon, carved out of a great shelf of obsidian sticking out of the desert. There’s some sort of strange plague here, one that involves weeping sores and hair loss. The dwarves, who long ago built this city, have been subjugated by the humans, and are confined to the ruined ghettoes of the outer city. The humans take the inner city, which includes an imposing black spire (above which there appears to be a dark cloud! And out here, water falling from the sky is the stuff of legend). Our heroes made their way to a tavern with batwing doors, where they were befriended by a toothless half-dwarf gladiator. Of course they decided to pick a fight. It was immediately a bloodbath, which pissed off the barflies who had bet on the guys who died. The Space Marine let one of his opponents live, but not before giving him a permanent grin by slicing through his cheeks. We may hear from him again… The fight was interrupted by commotion from the dwarven bazaar. A mob of sick humans, blaming the dwarves for their plague, began turning over their carts and beating up the just-as-ill dwarves. In the ensuing confusion, The PCs were pushed into the ghetto and sealed in. There they eventually found some common ground with the beleaguered dwarves, and were given an audience with Golden Elder Khazi, a priest of stone who is the dwarven spiritual leader: “The Templar’s magistrate, or rather, his vizier, has taken control of the Spire. It’s the vizier, for the magistrate is a weakling, a spoiled Templar brat. He has awakened one of the gods of the city, and they are draining our life away for their dark magicks. You saw those dark clouds around the Great Spire? The templars say it’s smoke, but I smell water in the air, such as were commoner when I was a dwarfling. My da’ said water used to fall from the sky each spring, and I believe him. And if you get near enough to the Spire, your very beard will stand on end.” Khazi also revealed an ancient prophecy: “It is said that at the top of the spire is a great Dwarven God, a spirit of wisdom trapped in one of the old machines. The legends tell that if anyone can outwit this old god, he will reveal the path to the dwarven homeland, and release us from our bondage. We cannot survive here. The city is dying, and we will die too unless we are delivered.” Golden Elder Khazni led them to a stairway covered in tiny ancient tiles, which were cracked and faded. The stairway led far, far down, dozens of stories. The trip takes several hours, and the priest never says a thing. He doesn’t light a torch either. Golden Elders don’t have much use for light. Finally he stopped in the darkness. “This is your path.” The PCs were in “a concrete sewer with a bar of iron, a Templar’s ransom of metal that runs lengthwise down the middle of the floor, and seems to go on forever.” “Follow the path of the Beam”, he said, pointing into the tunnel. “This will take you to the tower.” The four adventurers headed down the tunnel. A few hours later they came across a flatcar, the kind pumped by hand with a see-saw motion. They traveled like this for unfathomable amounts of time before they began seeing splotches of luminescent fungus on the wall. They knew that water must be nearby, and soon hear it trickling from a large grotto ahead (which was actually an ancient subway station, now overgrown with fungus and other life). What they didn’t know was that their patch was blocked with giant larvae. Inside the larvae were ustilagor, the larval stage of intellect devourers (basically a brain with legs which can attack psionically). The cart was blocked, and when the necromancer set several of them on fire, they all began to hatch. Melee ensued, and the Space Marine’s night vision goggles were destroyed. Fighting blindly, he fell into a crowd of brains and was attacked like crazy. The necromancer, with no night vision to begin with, blindly cast a burning hands spell which pretty much lit everyone on fire. They lived, but just barely. Our heroes dragged their asses over to the trickling water, and were just about to rest, when they hear the skittering of feet. It is a posse of mutants, here to eat the larvae. Descriptions here: "From the other track you hear the sounds of skittering feet. There appear to be a couple of dozen creatures. They seem roughly misshapen and lumpy in the dim luminescence of the fungus. Many of them have extra legs and other dangling appendages. An 8-legged monstrosity with a human-looking face (even has a mustache) A shriveled, sickly looking 5-foot rat with pink tumors poking through its fur. A fleshy pile with hundreds of fingers and giant eyes on 4 thick stalks. Several of them look very much like cockroaches. These ones seem slightly more alert, and stick together more than the others. There is also a large contingent with ratlike features, and they also huddle together as they feast on the brain larvae. One thin, almost skeletal mutant has two giant eyes and a grey beak embedded in mottled grey-pink skin. Stray feathers just out from odd-looking wounds in its skin. " And we stopped the game just as the PCs saw all these creatures, not knowing whether they would be friend or foe, and certainly not able to fight them off if they are hostile. Whee!

Day of the Zombie MySpace MP3s

professorplague — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 21:25:37 GMT

Hey all, I know I've been neglecting you for too long. Well, I'm a busy lil' necrojournalist. I just wanted to let y'all know I finally got off my ass and recorded some new tracks for my Day of the Zombie rock opera. You can hear some of them at http://www.myspace.com/dayofthezombie . For now, it's just me and a guitar, but my other tentacles are scattered to the winds for now. Go on, sign out of tribe and go check it out. I know, I know, MySpace sucks. So does the freeway, but I don't see you sticking to the surface streets. For those of you in Portland, some of you will be recieving CDs in the mail very soon. And it looks like the big stage production will be taking place at Noah's new space Someday, on Jan. 13, 2006. Yayyy!!! Thanks Noah. This is going to rock like friggin' basalt.

Spiritual Technology

professorplague — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 18:33:43 GMT

Here's something I pulled out of my ass for a final essay in my religion class the night before it was due. It's a little heavy on the McLuhan, but all my books were packed away. Poke some holes in it if you like. ***** Spiritual Technology Humans are technological beings. Like any creature, we seek to extend our area of influence and power, through any means possible, as a vital aspect of the survival instinct. But we take it further than the birds and the bees. With our increased intellect and gregarious instinct, we have developed behavioral patterns that extend our influence beyond our physical strength and genetic offspring. Each technology humans develop is an extension and amplification of one or more physical functions (McLuhan). The wheel is an extension of the foot, the spear an extension of the teeth, the radio an extension of the ear and voice. And each one, as it is incorporated into a particular culture, alters the delicate interplay of the senses. We tend to define societies by the technologies that impact them the most. Religion, you might say, is a spiritual technology, a pressure valve through which we individually and collectively release the stress created by our changing sense ratios. As we “progress” technologically and socially, we move ever further from our natural state. Even if we have never been in a natural state, we realize that something is missing from our lives. Religion, depending on the path one chooses, is a way to either reclaim some of this lost personal Eden or explain why it is missing. So a particular culture’s religion will change as the dominant technologies change the culture. Both cultural perceptions and religious doctrine are forever struggling with the changing technological paradigms. We are always fighting yesterday’s war with today’s weapons. The first great technological revolution was language, which ushered in the beginnings of culture as we know it. Language is essentially an extension of thought, externalized into abstract sounds in patterns of shared knowledge. This ability is one of the primary behaviors that set us apart from nearly all other creatures. Language began to enter another phase at least 4000 years ago with the rise of the written alphabet among the ancient Mediterranean civilizations. It is difficult to overstate the profound effect this advance had upon those cultures it touched. Western society owes much of its structure to the impact of the written word. The monotheistic religions that originated in the Fertile Crescent; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; are fundamentally tied to this technology. They constitute an advance in spiritual technology that arose as a reaction to the stresses created by the written word. Religions up until the spread of alphabet technology, which arose out of Egypt and was adapted by dozens of cultures, were primarily concerned with the stresses produced by that other great technological revolution, that of agriculture. As the nomadic and hunter-gatherer tribes gave way to the surpluses of sedentary farming, humans first came to know the drudgery of work. Surpluses of food meant permanent settlements, and walled city states built to defend the newfound wealth. Conflict arose as never before, and war became a reality. It is perhaps significant that Cain, a farmer, committed the Bible’s first murder. The first known writing was that of ancient Babylon, whose unique cuneiform patterns kept detailed financial records on clay tablets. This was a reaction to the surpluses of the agricultural revolution, and helped create a structured, stratified society for the first time in history. In fact, cuneiform marked the beginning of history, for it was the first attempt at a uniform written language. Babylon was also the birth of the first monotheistic religion. The tale of the Tower of Babel in Chapter 11 of Genesis regards such uniformity and control in secular hands with suspicion. No wonder then, that the jealous deity scattered the tower’s builders with a lapse in communication. Culture was spread primarily by the spoken word, and this eons old aural bias gave sound a magical, emotional quality. The Old Testament gives us some insight into just how much power language had to the ancients: “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” (Genesis 1:2-3) In the same way that one person can make his thoughts manifest to another through speech, God calls a whole world into being simply by describing it. When, later in the chapter, God creates Man “in his own image”, he does it purely through invocation. So too do we have the power to create worlds from building blocks of sound and thought. "Spirit", by the way, is in the preceding verse often translated as "breath". God is almost always depicted as simply a voice, a being only understood through sound. This changed as the Hebrews incorporated the alphabet into their culture. In one of the pivotal myths of the Old Testament, Moses ascends to speak with God and returns with stone tablets inscribed with the Word of God. In this tale God suddenly and directly injects writing into the Hebrew psyche, giving them a permanent foundation upon which to build their culture. The parallels with the Greek myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from Mt. Olympus for the benefit of mankind, are unmistakable. In any case, stone tablets imply a certain permanence, of moral lessons that were locked in from generation to generation, literally “carved in stone”. It is no coincidence that the Jews are known as “the People of the Book”. Monotheism also implies greater social stratification than the polytheistic paganism of other cultures. It implies a hierarchy of priests and kings. Since written language and the creation of documents were highly specialized skills, there existed a monopoly of information. Access to the WORD was access to God; whereas anyone can worship a carved image of a deity, it takes special training and access to worship the “One God”. The mental exercise of abstraction present in the Middle Eastern religions, namely the conception of one infinite deity paradoxically without physical form, is a ritualization of the same process necessary for reading. Phonetic literacy involves the reduction of the physical world first to a series of sounds, which is to say spoken language. From there, the sounds are further abstracted into discrete visual symbols. Now completely divorced from the physical world, these are arranged in ways that, with the proper training, reconstruct symbols representing the physical world. The commandments against worshipping other gods and graven images imply an obsession with abstracting reality to the highest degree possible In the same way, the polytheistic and animist impulses of earlier religions are abstracted, broken down, and reunited as a single uniform force. Instead of worshipping a tree, you might just as well be worshipping the letters T-R-E-E. Indeed, the Koran is another story about the power of words, even more so than the stories contained within. The basic premise of the Islamic holy book is that of a man chosen to be God’s personal stenographer. Whereas the Bible is seen by Jews and Christians as a collection of stories about God, the Koran is considered by Muslims to be directly dictated by God. The words themselves become objects of worship. Many Muslims consider copies of the Koran sacred, and proscribe strict guidelines for how to treat the books. Since Muslims share the Jewish injunction against idolatry, pictorial representations of Koranic verses are forbidden. Thus, the verses themselves are often written in lavish calligraphy, seemingly fetishizing the symbolic words in the Koran beyond their literal meaning. Christianity arose during the height of the Roman Empire, when vast networks of roads and easy access to papyrus allowed for quick communication from administrative centers in Rome (Innis). This level of bureaucracy would not have been possible with clay tablets. The intensification and expansion of literacy seems reflected in the insistence of the New Testament in equating writing with the spirit world: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) Indeed, Jesus seems to identify himself directly with the written word in Revelations, referring to the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” (Revelations 22:13) Still, literacy remained on the whole a rare skill, a pastime of the wealthy and noble. Oral culture prevailed as always in everyday life, with residual structure and order coming down from the literate ruling classes. Only the literate could read the Bible, which meant only the wealthy had direct access to the Word of God. This monopoly of information remained unbroken for another 1500 years. In the 1450s, Johannes Gutenberg’s innovation of movable type led to a surge in printing presses across Europe. Within a century, increased access to Martin Luther’s treatises, not to mention the texts of the Bible itself, helped launch the Reformation, which significantly challenged the top-down approach to religion. In fact, the emerging print culture was responsible for, or at least played a role in, the rise of even greater challenges to Church authority. The scientific method, the modern market system, and the philosophers of the Enlightenment were all made possible by mass communication through print. (McLuhan) Newer electric technologies are altering our approach to the world and each other at a blistering pace. It may be that the tightening spiral of cultural evolution has begun to outpace the religions of the Book, and more flexible spiritual technologies may prove more effective at treating the side effects of modern society. References: Empire and Communication By Harold Innis (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man By Marshall McLuhan (McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, NY, 1964) The Bible (online searchable King James Version) http://www.godsview.com/ The Koran (online searchable version) http://www.hti.umich.edu/k/koran/index.html Translated by M.H. Shakir Tahrike Tarsile Qur'an, Inc. 1983

Day of the Zombie needs musicians

professorplague — Tue, 23 May 2006 00:10:11 GMT

I have been asked to put on a presentation of my zombie rock opera "Day of the Zombie" in Portland on August 18, at a new club called Someday. It'll be a real hoity-toity affair, with interpretive butoh dancing and post-apocalyptic projections and miles of dreadlocks. I'm super enthused about it. But I have a problem; my regular zombie band is scattered to the winds, and I'm in Oakland. I need to put together a band to play this one show, to be background for a pretentious undead extravaganza of my own design. I play guitar, but I need pretty much everything else. There's a CD for the first act, but there are a bunch of more recent songs I'd have to teach you in person. Any takers? Help! Get in touch with me, eh? Try zombiedan@gmail.com

Government Tracking Journalists' phone calls

professorplague — Mon, 15 May 2006 22:26:19 GMT

Not to get too dramatic or anything, but this is really frickin' bad: http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/05/federal_source_.html ...[Brian Ross and Richard Esposito Report: A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources. "It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.]... Let me spell it out for you. If anonymous sources know the government will track them down, it will essentially end investigative journalism. Without investigative journalism, the concept of "rule by an informed citizenry" is one for the history books (if it even makes it into the history books). Get up and do something, anything. It's almost too late.

More geekery

professorplague — Wed, 10 May 2006 20:48:45 GMT

Hey, for those of you who just can't get enough of my gunslinger kit, or want to see what else I'm yammering about, go to http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&Mytoken=CD1E3BF2-606B-4063-A0CCE0F2983AF96D469065078 I've updated the kit a little based on some suggestions (thanks everyone, keep 'em coming) and added some proficiencies for the kit. So there. I'm remembering with a smirk how a friend once wrote on the book cover I'd put on my D&D book, "D&D= No game". Oh, if these dice could talk...

Gunslinger kit for 2nd Edition AD&D

professorplague — Sat, 06 May 2006 00:03:15 GMT

If you like Stephen King and D&D, you might appreciate this character kit: Gunslingers are the defenders of the world of light and order, a world that often has left them behind. Originally a kind of knighthood, much like the King Arthur’s knights, the gunslingers are unflinchingly devoted to the preservation and defense of the Dark Tower, a black spire that stands at the nexus of all the worlds in the Prime Material Plane, and holds it together. There are ancient forces of chaos and darkness which seek to rule the multiverse. To do so they must destroy the Tower and its aspects throughout the Prime Material, before they can reshape existence in their own image…or not at all. These agents of evil have destroyed whole worlds in their pursuit of their goals. The gunslingers stand in their path, even when the world has moved on and forgotten them. Gunslingers of Gilead are born into the role, raised from early childhood to be respected dispensers of justice, and to wear the guns of their fathers. They learn both extraordinary martial prowess and deep devotion to their cause. Gilead gunslingers tend to be lawful good. However, gunslingers may come from all walks of life and any race. Non-Gilead gunslingers must be lawful, good, or both. They may not be evil. The Tower is everything. “All things serve the Tower”, goes the old gunslinger adage, and they will sacrifice anything- or anyone- to defend it. Gunslingers may have to commit terrible acts, acts they know will damn them. Still, they soldier on, determined to stay alive through even the harshest conditions. For the Tower, they will pay any price. Most gunslingers pick a weapon at an early age and train with it, treating it as an extension of their soul. This intensive, almost religious training gives them +2 with pistols and rifles, and +1 to their initiative in combat, for every 3 XP levels. Usually these are ancestral six-shooters (d6 dmg, see six-shooter rules below), forged long ago from the swords of their ancestors. However, gunslingers are nothing if not practical survivalists, and they seek perfection with any weapon. He must specialize in a missile weapon (pistol, rifle, bow, sling, blowgun), but in a style of his choosing. Gunslingers are automatically proficient with any missile weapon. If someone becomes a gunslinger, usually it is because the Tower wills it. In service of this strange calling, they are often blessed (or cursed) with a wild psionic talent (DM’s discretion). This talent becomes apparent once the gunslinger finishes his training, as the martial awareness he develops enhances other parts of his mind. Many who train to be gunslingers fail the final Test of their training, usually a quest or single combat against their teacher. For their failure, they are banished and live out the rest of their lives in shame. Minimum stats: 14 Dex, 15 Wis, 16 Con Alignment: L and/or G Wild Psionic Talent Bonus proficiencies: legends and lore, direction sense/Planar sense, meditative focus, survival (player’s choice of environment) Recommended: Portal feel, tracking, hunting, etiquette, weaponsmithing [3] (bullets), hypnotism, planar knowledge Armor: Studded leather (AC7) Six-shooters are revolvers which (duh!) must be reloaded every six shots. PCs proficient in six shooters get 1 shot per round (per pistol; double weapon penalties apply). Specialists get 3/2. Every shot beyond this incurs a -2 cumulative penalty to hit. Technically, a gunslinger could fire all six shots in a round, but probably would not hit much. Reloading: In the heat of battle, reloading takes cool nerves and precision. It also takes time. For a non-proficient player, reloading takes one round per bullet. For proficient players, 3 bullets can be reloaded per round For specialists, six bullets can be reloaded in one round Special abilities: Once per day, the gunslinger can choose to concentrate for one round, making no attacks. For the next 2 rounds, he can hit targets which normally require a magical weapon. His attacks are treated as magical attacks. 3rd level: +1 initiative in combat 6th level: +2 initiative in combat. 7th level: The gunslinger may train other PCs or NPCs to be gunslingers. 9th level: +3 initiative in combat. The gunslinger also gains the psionic ability to travel astrally in dreams. 12th level: Once per week, the gunslinger may open a gate to any plane he has been to before, even if only in a dream.

Fear and Loathing on the Internet

professorplague — Wed, 03 May 2006 06:00:17 GMT

Exciting times. I just got my press pass for Yearly Kos (www.yearlykos.org), a convention for the internet-savvy wing of the Democratic Party; i.e. daily kos, MoveOn.org, etc.. It's in Las Vegas, at the Riviera Hotel, June 8-11. I'll be there in my capacity as a journalist and will be stocking my suitcase accordingly, mostly rum but whatever else I can dig up. My question is, is anyone else planning on going to this thing? I don't much care whether you agree with the politics of the event. I'm not there to agree, just to observe and mock when possible. You don't get an opportunity like this often. But a room at the riviera is $98/night. And I don't want to foot the bill myself. Any of my friends who are a) political junkies b) going to Vegas anyway c) journalists or d) into the internet? I need a roomie by May 15. Get ahold of me. It'll be a blast. I can drive.

Hey! Look at me! Live Journal!

professorplague — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 23:31:17 GMT

Hey- For those of you who enjoy reading my shizzle, I recently started a Livejournal thingie. I come to tribe less and less now, usually only 10 or 12 times a day. So if I don't post here as much, it's because I've been whoring myself over at Myspace and Liver Journal. So go here: http://professorplague.livejournal.com/ You may return to your trailer park dream castle now.

Help me figure me out!

professorplague — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 23:58:05 GMT

For those of you who know me fairly well. I don't usually do these stupid tests, but this one is kinda cool. Hey, help me out, folks. Go here: http://kevan.org/johari?name=Prof.+Plague http://kevan.org/nohari?name=Prof.+Plague It's super quick, just be honest. You can use a fake name if you must... -Prof.

A Rose, A Door

professorplague — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 20:19:22 GMT

Gm Cm Gm It’s a secret that outshines the day Cm A# Dm Gm F Only when you’re close do you notice anything Gm Cm Gm If you want me to show you the door Cm A# Dm Gm F Take a piece of chalk draw a square in the floor Gm Cm Gm & when it opens, you’ll see me no more Cm A# Dm Gm F Another world awaits you, maybe it’s better Your sacred symbols have all turned to lead They won’t help you swim in the grey between But if you’re seeking monsters to slay You’re sure to find some that won’t run away Step through & shield your eyes from the day A world very different & the stars are all wrong The space between worlds is thin Grin while you can; all you bring is your skin What protection can you offer me From things that only hunger and creep through the caves? And if you ever see the Rose I don’t suppose you could ever look away

A Speech given last year in front of a crowd of psi-trance 2CB zombies

professorplague — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 20:55:24 GMT

Mankind is forever altering the ways it interacts with its environment. We are remarkable adept at mimicking, even surpassing the basic physical abilities of other creatures, in order to claim them as our own. This incessant drive to extend our physical functions beyond ourselves, what I like to call the "tech impulse", is a defining feature of what we like to call "civilization". Taken at face value, human beings are not particularly impressive creatures. We are clawless, unarmored omnivores with no real deterrent against a passing predator. But we have evolved a gregarious nature, as the early humans with social instincts tended to survive longer. Slightly improved cognitive functions have allowed us to coopt the desirable functions of other animals, first by enslaving the animal, then later by technologies that mimic the animal. The horse becomes an extension of our own legs, the spear a portable claw reaching farther out than the fangs we envy. The yoke gives us the strength of the bull, just as the crown gave a select few the strength of millions. We have nurtured these technologies and abstractions until they seem to operate independent of any human function. Our tech impulse has quickened, a tightening spiral of evolution that leaves our physical bodies behind feeling somewhat confused and ill-equipped for its new role. At this point the human race could be described as the sexual organs of technology and profit. But this was not always so. Lately, evidence has arisen that we are in a state of evolutionary stasis, our development stunted by the parasitic technologies and media we brought forth into being. Long ago, at least a million years in the past, we humans were brought the fires of sentience by promethean intra-terrestrials. In a bizarre form of intergenerational biosurgery, our development was coaxed and programmed, much like we have done with the myriad species of dogs. Our skulls were altered to allow the relatively large braincases more or less common today. Fossils dating back to perhaps 1.2 million years ago, show rapid cranial enlargement in proto humanoids. Our head got so big we had to give birth at a much younger age to fit out of the birth canal. This is why human infants are exceptionally helpless; all humans are born prematurely, if they are to be born at all. But the intended result was achieved, at least in principle. These early humans, with greatly increased brain power, began to develop new vocal calls for new situations. This technology of abstraction was the beginning of language, and thus of culture. Armed with these new abilities, humans came to dominate nearly every environmental hardship they encountered. Meanwhile, the experimentation continued. The aliens (for lack of a more accurate term) took small, random samples of the human gene pool and performed psychic surgery upon them. These chosen ones were shown the hidden nature of their own physical structure, and were taught to transcend the limits of the "sensory world". A few showed great promise, and were sent back into the general population. It was hoped that language would be a conduit to spread these superior traits. We hear about some of these early experiments in the great myths of nearly every culture. The successful ones had internalized a kind of physical and genetic sentience. They could alter physical structure at will, heal disease, and lengthen life. And in theory, they could teach these abilities to others. At the same time, however, the side effect of cultural evolution started by language was manifesting in bizarre ways. Humans began developing external technologies, extending their physical abilities outward with inanimate objects and abstractions. This altered the delicate ratios of sensory involvement with the natural world, and disrupted the equilibrium necessary to absorb the older genetic technologies. About 10,000 years ago, humans began using agriculture in earnest. With agriculture came surplus of food, then hierarchies to defend and distribute that surplus. Cultures of work and production began to thrive, spurred on by externals techs which intensified and accelerated travel, language, production, and all other aspects of life. War became the grain of sand producing ever-greater pearls of efficiency. The modern world was born, and the keepers of the old internal knowledge were all but wiped out. The aliens, realizing their experiment had failed, left perhaps 1000 years ago, leaving behind a planet crawling with an unfortunate and misshapen species, themselves infected with the macroviruses of government, wealth, and progress. Still, as depressing as this may be, all is not lost. Old vestiges of our possible progress down our intended evolutionary path still rear up occasionally. But when they do, we are stricken with fear and contempt. They look and act differently, these freaks, and thus are seen as a threat. But I tell you, these freaks hold the keys to our genetic cage. We must keep those freaks who do exist alive and healthy. They must be treated with the respect their legacy demands. Those lucky humans who couple with freaks and produce offspring are the future of mankind, for they turn the gears of evolution forward. Unless this becomes our national priority, our species is doomed to burn itself out like a sputtering candle.

Sexy sexy

professorplague — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 20:04:37 GMT

Hey check out this link. It's got some really sexy pictures that will fill you with pride. Don't open this at school or work, because you just might get a raging stars & stripes boner. And who wants to jizz freedom all over the formica? OK, don't answer that one. http://www.salon.com/news/abu_ghraib/2006/03/14/introduction/index.html

Help out a Pdx band in the Gay Area

professorplague — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 00:19:05 GMT

Hey, my friends' band is coming through Northern California and need shows on both March 12 and March 18. Are you having a party and need something loud and weird to bob your head to? Did your wedding singer catch the mumps? Get in touch with me and I'll direct you to my friends in Mustaphamond. (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=4082966) They're really pretty good, when you think about it.

Grocery Store Blues Pt. II: Dog Confidence!

professorplague — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 01:13:32 GMT

SO as I was saying, the customers at my work are generally affluent and idiosyncratic to the point where you think they've got some kind of yoga-induced OCD. It has become risky to even ask them what kind of bag they want, because the paper or plastic issue is to them, one of the serious questions of our time. Sometimes I'll ask people which they want, and (usually older ladies) will ask me, with wide eyes which one is better. Meaning of course, you know, for the Earth and stuff. I've come to the conclusion that the whole idea of paper or plastic bags is a scam. "Whatever makes you feel better about consumption," has become my standard reply. Sometimes they'll recoil as though I physically slapped them. And often I wish I had. The most interesting difference between the Baby Boomers and subsequent generations is that the youth of today don’t think things will be better when they are old. The elders don’t either, but at least they can reminisce about when they did. A woman of perhaps 65 came in to the store a couple of weeks ago. She bought three tiny vials the size of my thumb. Her total came to about $70. “Jeez, what it is this stuff? It must be pretty good to be worth this much, eh?” I tried to find a list of ingredients, but there didn’t seem to be one. She was all too happy to educate me. “Oh this has homeopathic ingredients from the Amazon, and it cures anxiety and fear. Oh, and this one boosts confidence. And this one helps replenish cells.” In the mornings, there are few customers, and so I drink coffee out of boredom. I only mention it because sometimes, after a cup or two, it feels as though I can’t just bite my lip and bag the damn groceries and let them leave. Just sayin’. “Cures fear? Really? What are you afraid of?” I wanted to chase after the words with a net and cram them back down my throat. But I wasn’t prepared at all for her answer. “Oh, it’s not for me,” she said, smiling sweetly. “It’s for my dog.”

Grocery Store Blues Pt. I

professorplague — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 20:10:53 GMT

I'm beginning to think that half of my job at the grocery store is masking my disdain for the customers. I think I deserve a raise. Let me explain: I work at a natural grocery store frequented by all sorts of people, but by and large the customers lean toward liberal affluence. Really, the same sorts of people I used to make a ton of money off of when I was telemarketing on behalf of the DNC and Sierra Club (though, truth be told, most of the money I raised went to a subsidiary of General Electric). They believe that good will triumph in the end, if the "people" (meaning them 30 years ago) rise up and make everything better. It strikes me that the mainstream of both liberals and conservatives have given up entirely on the present and the future; they both want sweet escape back into what they see as their golden age. Conservatives, of course, want to frame everything in nostagia for the 40's and 50's, the brief period of unparallelled affluence in America upon which the American Dream is based. You know, go to college, work hard, follow the rules and keep your mouth shut in return for a car and a house filled with whiz-bang labor-saving devices. We can debate how realistic that dream ever was for which demographics, but my point is that if that was ever true, it no longer is and hasn't been for some time. Meanwhile, the liberal end of the mainstream spectrum believes in pretty much the same thing, except their golden age is about 10 years later. Ah, the 60s... An era filled with hope, youthful idealism, equality movements on the march. Oh, and the unbridled self-indulgence and hedonism that muddied the REAL changes taking place. It was a window of opportunity for people of a certain age and station; all the benefits of affluence, and the gratification of rejecting it at the same time. What a great time to be in college... Where was I? Oh, yes, the grocery store. A substantial portion of the business is in nutritional supplements. You know, everything from Emergen-C to cure-all suppositories and homeopathic (read: faith-based) remedies. We sell hand woven baskets from Ecuador, carted by donkey all the way to Alameda and sold at "fair trade" prices. A lot of New Age-y kind of products with bizarre ingredients. Often time there is no list of ingredients on the package, just pictures of birds and people with rainbow auras walking on a mountaintop. And they buy these things like crazy. At seriously kooky prices. I asked one woman why she needed 500 tablets of Omega-3 pills, and what Omega-3s did. She explained to me (in the voice of someone explaining to a 3-year-old why we flush after going potty) That Omega-3s cleanse you and prevent cancer, and that they are found in fish. Oh. I see. She began drilling me about what I ate, and how I really needed some Omega-3s right now. "I don't think I could afford to buy this all the time, but thanks-" "Sure you could," she interrupted. "I bet there's something you could give up in your life so you could afford Omega-3's. Potato chips?" I shook my head. Nope, don't eat too many chips. "Chocolate?" I shook my head. "Soda? Gluten? Carbs?" "Sorry ma'am; if I had money enough for fish oil tablets I would probably just buy fish." She seemed really frustrated, but kept smiling. "Well, I'm sure there's something you could give up for fish oil if you really think about it," she said and walked over to the bakery Maybe.

Good news! Chocolate rations are up!

professorplague — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 20:29:48 GMT

It's been a frustrating month for the artist in me. School has been increasing in intensity, like a rapidly sinking ship, and I've been forced to cast overboard a couple of classes so the important ones will get through. My grade point average will be shoddy, to say the least. Meanwhile I have several very important projects that require a lot of time and follow through, which is not one of my strengths. A short list: 1) Bobby Joe Ebola live album. More on that later. 2)My documentary about this summer's carnival tour 3)My WWI Board Game 4)Making puppets/costumes for my play 5)My zombie movie 6)My radio play On top of all this, like a thatched roof made of filo dough, is the fact that I am super super broke, to the point that I'm considering being an insurance fraud investigator, just because I apparently have the right skills for that. Oh and the reason I'm writing all this, why I'm not ringing up overpriced snake-oil nutritional supplements at the natural grocery store: I'm sick! I woke up feeling like hell on a bun, and though I'm $300 short on rent this month, I just couldn't drag my corpse out of bed. But I could get up to write this. Ugh. At least school is about to be over. Next semester I'll only be attending one day a wek, which increases my chances for a satisfactory job hunt. In other news, it looks like my old band's popularity on Amazon is spiraling ever-downward: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000A7I9IS/myspace08-20/002- 9180734-7307266?dev-t=D2WQY839001DMT%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2 Yesterday we were at the dizzying depths of #576,328 "in music". Today my EP CD from 1996 is ranked #576,745th. The funny thing is, it's on sale for $24.88. So someone thinks they're going to make $20 off that thing. We lost $10,000 on it. Good luck, pal. So for those of you still reading this thing, each of my projects (except for the live album, which is coming along swimmingly) needs a kick in the pants. Can you help? Here's what I need from you human catalysts out there, in the order listed above: 2)I need OSX10 for my laptop, and Final Cut Pro for either PC or Mac, so I can start editing this monster. 3)People who want to playtest this board game and help me smooth out the rough edges. Thanks to those of you who already have! 4)I have ideas but no tactile skills. I'm lost, drifting in loose orbits. Someone who'se good at making things with their hands, and has a feel for the grotesque. 5) I need, first and foremost, a producer, someone with the time and clarity to pull all the elements together. I have a script, a cast, a soundtrack, storyboard and a D.P. I need everything else. Help! 6)I need someone with a studio who likes to experiment with sound effects.

Jah, de pump!

professorplague — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 01:38:49 GMT

Yesterday I felt the pump. Oh yes. Since I'm so exceedingly broke, I've given up taking BART to school, even though the BART station is across the street from Laney College. So I biked the 70 or so blocks from my house. But I for some reason thought it would be a good idea to try going to school extremely stoned. So when it came time for my weight training class, I could do little mere than situps and riding the recumbent stationary bike. So my legs got a super workout. Then I biked home. Then later last night I got in free at Tourette's Without Regrets at The Metro, another 60 blocks from home. Unfortunately I was afraid of not being able to find a parking space, so I biked it in the rain. So round trip, an extra 120 blocks of locomotion. I got home brimming with ch'i. I could get used to this. Onward, chubby soldier!

Radio show

professorplague — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 18:49:17 GMT

So I've begun working in earnest on a radio play. I'd like to do a serial format, sort of along the lines of the Shadow/Superman but with layers of intrigue, a la X-Files. I'm excited about doing this, because it seems like a project that's actually attainable. Assuming I can get access to some recording equipment. Eventually I wouldn't mind doing live performances, but for now I want to sit down and record a 15-minute or so 1st episode. If that idea rings anyone's bells, get in touch with me.

Spooktoberfest review

professorplague — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 22:29:21 GMT

Ugh. My backyard is a battlefield. Crushed plastic cups and empty bottles, ashes, empty kegs. Last night's SpookToberFest party was a total success. I'm distantly amused that the crowd powered through 3 kegs of homebrew, a couple of bottles of Jagermeister, and case upon case of bottled beer of all types. We told people it was a potluck, but as far as I can tell, people only brought alcohol and sausages. No problem there. Most people came with excellent costumes, and those who didn't soon found themselves astride some adult diapers. Some highlights: -1Man Banjo! -Hot beer wenches dancing about with hands full of steins (would the german word for beer wench be "braufrau"?) -Random sharpie tattoos. -drunk as hell but no throwin' up -Ninjas vs. lederhosen There was a steady stream of calls this morning from people who lost stuff. Corbett wanted to know if I'd seen his shoe, which he seems to have lost when he slipped on the front porch. I'm not sure how he failed to reclaim his shoe, but it wasn't on the porch this morning. Sorry, Corby. Now there are a bunch of kids passing by my house, over and over again. I think the local school is doing a walk-a-thon. Damn kids, frolicking and merry-making.

Googling failure

professorplague — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:00:27 GMT

Interesting. This comes from Tom Tomorrow at www.thismodernworld.com. Try googling "failure". Then hit "I'm feeling lucky". Fascinating how the internet really has become a sort of collective oracle. No postings lately, because I've been super busy. I'm actually too busy to be writing this right now. I've got 3 tests tomorrow which I have yet to study for, but here I am shirtless and drooling, typing my happy ass off like I was shooting up through the keyboard. The NIMBY party Saturday night was fairly rad. I definitely felt like I was missing out on a key cultural subtext, as I was one of the few there who wasn't at BM, AMF, or both. But there was a little bit of every youth/pervert subculture there: punks, welder fags, hippies, vaudeville hipsters with stripey tights, transvestites, surly bikers, ravers, and even a few furries. Some poor bastard got drunk enough to pick a fight with the East Bay Rats, one of whom obligingly KO'd him. And the Darwin Award for the evening goes to... For a while there it loked as if the violence might widen, as the bloody burracho had at east a few friends there. But apparently they, um, (cough cough) were really busy... So no brawl. They party was still fantastic. The Hobo Goblins had a respectable crowd for playing after 2 in the morning. We got all the people who were either too drunk to leave yet, or had already been left behind for being too drunk. For those of you in Oregon, you should check out the premiere of "Neptune", playing at the Bijou Theatre in Eugene the weekend before Halloween. It's a great movie, even though I'm in it. Sort of a post-apocalyptic William Burroughs gangster movie shot in nature documentary style.