hOTFLASH
This page is for recent discoveries.
12/22/03 I should have added information from the bottom up... not top down... so the newer stuff would be at the top of the page. So we'll start doing that now. Beginning with John Taylor Gatto's site:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/index.htm
Followed by some links on "911" that should turn a few gears:
Start with the idea of "The Enemy Within" by
Gore Vidal: http://www.serendipity.li/wot/vidal1.htm
and Manuel Valenzuela: http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_3981.shtml
Now... follow the links and connect the dots...
http://www.questionsquestions.net/links.html and http://physics911.org/net/index.php and http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/index.html and http://gauntlet.ucalgary.ca/viewstory.php?sid=8259 are you FREAKED OUT yet???
Oh... we KNEW there'd be scandals...
http://www.failureisimpossible.com/needtoknow/scandals.htm
1/14/03 Here's one:
http://www.mersault.com/thinking/allyourbrand/why.htm
Their ".org" site seems to be down (allyourbrands). But here's a cry in the wilderness that illustrates what Culture Jamming is all about. It's written in straightforward, no-poopadoodle prose (warts and all). This text illustrates that while we struggle to make a valid science out of memetics, die Katze ist aus dem Kasten heraus!
(See "Schroedinger! Erwin! Professor of physics!" or "Cecil Adams" or "Straight Dope")
1/16/03 HOLY MOLY GUACAMOLE!!! Check out "Mirror Neurons!"
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/ramachandran.html
Dr. V.S. Ramachandran asserts this is "Today's Most Important Unreported Story." This may imply what a "meme" actually IS.
1/18/03 A haunting essay
http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html#Top
"They Thought They Were Free."
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security."
This is a very strange website, and I suppose they would balk at the parallell here that seems so obvious to me. Their home page is decorated with the usual 9-11 kitsch patriotic icons. Either they have an incredible sense of irony or they really don't see it. Do you? Or am I just being paranoid?
"In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to you colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, "It's not so bad" or "You're seeing things" or "You're an alarmist."
And, once again, my intention is NOT to gainsay anyone's patriotism. But read this essay.
"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop."
It made my blood run cold.
1/23/03 How "writing" is "done"
This is not really a "recent" discovery- just something I have been intending to do: provide a link to some of Hal Crowther's essays. Here it is:
http://www.indyweek.com/durham/columns/hal.html
Some of his best are in two books: Unarmed and Dangerous and Cathedrals of Kudzu
I know of no one who slings the lingua franca any better. So many comp-rhet conversations revolve around "just what IS 'good writing'?" Well... there it is.
1/26/03 Goodbye, Mr. Mauldin Sir.
It's a sad story- in a world full of sad stories: the passing of Bill Mauldin, "the greatest cartoonist of WWII." I won't bore you with the details of how much this man's work influenced my life. Undecided on what link to give you, I decided on this one:
http://www.toonopedia.com/upfront.htm
because it shows the cover of his BOOK: it was one of the best I've ever read. It still is. I could never hope to draw like he did (I TRIED). But swore one day I would be able to WRITE as well. No, it's not "great literature." But it helped a little boy learn to read- because he wanted to understand the drawings- and his Old Man. Here's a passage from page 58:
I've lost friends who were ordinary people and just wanted to live and raise a family and pay their taxes and cuss the politicians. I've also lost friends who had brilliant futures. Gregor Duncan, one of the finest and most promising artists I've ever known, was killed at Anzio while making sketches for Stars and Stripes. It's a pretty tough kick in the stomach when you realize what people like Greg could have done if they had lived. It's one of the costs of the war we don't often consider.
Those thoughts are deep in us, and we don't talk about them much.
Now 'scuse me. I gotta go work offa debt I owe ta Willie an Joe. An thanks, Mr. Mauldin. Sir.
2/4/03 Guess whose all bases are belong to whom?
Yep. No telling how (or by whom) a meme may be co-opted.
That "secret" internet phrase "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" is memoralized on a version of the Sore Loserman Rally sign. Baffle those Democrats as they try to figure what in the heck that means! I'd tell what it means, but, then I'd have to kill ya!
Of-the-shelf propaganda memes for all your canned thinking "needs!" Here's the link with no further comment:
And in the interest of "equal time" here's another one:
http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/PhotoAlbum1.html
3/20/03 I'm telling MOM....
I believe "God causeth rain to fall on the just and the unjust." God is watching us from a distance cos dem monkeys sho smells bad. I also believe She has a sense of humor and can put them eight great tomatoes in that little bitty can woo woo-- to wit:
http://www.23ae.com/?posts=999&titles=1&cat=2
I think these smartapples found a server nobody knows about and here are the results and SOMEBODY has been reading too many ding dang books and they're gonna get their pooties paddled when somebody ELSE finds the cookie jar with a big honkin firewire cable runnin out of it. On this day of the Petrol Kreig we all could use a smile...
9/2/03 Back again with the Diyala Bridge "Meme"
A blog proportedly written by a 24-year-old Iraqi woman: http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
On August 28,2003 related a tale of a $300,000 bridge rebuilding job... the contract won by a U.S. contractor for... $50,000,000. A google for the particulars on this revealed (so far) several other blogs about the same story... and pointing toward the riverbend site. The "thought contageon" factor on the web is obvious. What is not so obvious is whether this story is true, and if so, where is our "media?" Stay tuned...