My friend Kelli Shaeffer's new album 601! (hosted media)

                                                                 

                                                                 
                                                                          601, the album.

 

Holy Mount Eerie (Hosted Media)

I was never a huge fan of Mount Eerie, until I saw them at Mississippi Studios back in April. I did have a certain admiration for certain qualities in the music, it's sweetness, the sense of distance, and warmth, but for some reason it never it never really made a home in me. My friends would rail about it, but I wouldn't understand, "I kind of get it, there's these qualities... but there's no sum totally. No incommensurable reckoning." All this changed for me on April 11 2013. My friend Jenny invited me to the show, but it wasn't just us, she had a date too. So I was a 3ed wheel, ah what ever. He kind of disappeared at one point and was gone for about 45 minuets, when he finely appeared I could see that he and Jenny where reading each others minds; he was apologetic, and she was like well you're making decisions, and then he left again. It wasn't like he just didn't give a shit, Jenny lived in Mexico city for awhile last winter, and this guy went all the way there from Portland OR just to see her. There was something deeper happening between them, these were moments of reckoning. I just stood and watched. As waves of heavy meditative sound crashed over me, entirely crushing me with its power. One of the songs ended like one of those anime blasts that cleans out human civilization forever, pals after pals of subsonic electric blast. Deep inside of this apocalyptic vision I saw the sweet lyrical prayers of youth, that I had only barely sensed in the earlier transubstantiations. There he was the sweet meditating monk of Mount Eerie, weathering the storm. I was reminded of the last time I was in California, standing in the ocean, waiting in the water to feel the pure force of nature knock me clear off my feet. I would roll in the water and just know the power of God in my body. I knew then that God is in the storm, if only you can hear him in the whisper. Eternity cleans every thing, and eternity lasts forever. It's hard to hear this music on these tinny computer speakers, you must use your soul to hear what is no longer there.

I was glad that Jenny was there to hear this music with me, like witnessing it with a friend some how made it more real.

 

  Mount Eerie

Jerron Paxton sings Shine On Harvest Moon (Hostd Media)

Slavoj Žižek on happiness.

Slavoj Zizek says happiness is indefinitely deferred, because we don't desire what we think we want, but desire it's self. Is there not something sage like in this proclamation? In spite of his "pervy" presentation.

What is the connection between Cyprus and Student debt?

Anser: unpayable interest.

Social Ecology Vs. Deep Ecology by Murray Bookchin (Hosted Media)

Deep Ecoligy is a genocidal logic, Social Ecology calls for the end of human genocide. Libreterian Socialist and radical ecoligest Murray Bookchin thinks we can do better! Support Social libaration, and Earth libaration for they are one and the same!


Social Ecology vs. Deep Ecology

Crime of Time (original material+Bruce Springsteen)

Tonight south bound on an empty road to Wilsonville, on my way to work, I was pulled over for going 25 miles over the speed limit. Yeah, I'm a speed demon. The officer asked me way I pulled over to the left side of the road and if I knew how fast I was going. I told him that I was on my way to work, and was admittedly in a rush because I already had to stop to fill up, and now behind schedule, didn't notice my speed. "I can't afford a ticket right now; I'm already having trouble paying my rent... I'm really sorry," I say. I hand him my license and registration. My registration card was expired so he asked me if I had current registration and I said I did. He asked me if I was lying, and I thought for a moment and said, "Nope." I think I paid for two months last month. He was like, "alright," and headed back to his car. I sat praying to God that the law would let it slide this one time. I really can't even rap my head around what this tickit is going to means for me, or what I could possibly do to to take care of it. It's as if my body has gone numb and I can't seem to get my self to care about what’s happening to my legs. I know God doesn't usually take this kind of mail, the pleading of a criminal cot in the act. I guess they say grace doesn't work this way, just because God forgives sins don’t mean the Gov. gives a shit. Separate jurisdictions I guess. They say you got to live with your mistakes, but most of us don't even know how. What am I supposed to do? Pay the ticket instead of my other experiences, and just wait for the eviction notice? [Actually I've made such petitions to God with quite favorable out comes, whether it was providence or coincidence that gave me the brake remaines to be seen. I like to think that God is on the side of the rebal every now and again.] This might sound naïve to you, but I don't know how this law stuff's support to work. No really, can I get on a payment plan for a ticket?

When I was 17,  I was arrested for loitering in the Battle Ground Bargerville parking lot. I was walking to meet my friend, Matt Norquest, who was just getting off the pay phone--I guess he was probably calling to get a ride home. I would have given him a ride, like a helpful neighbor if we hadn't been intercepted by the "good guys." But we were intercepted. The cop interrogated us in order to put us on a "watch list" for repeated loiterers. It was no mystery that we were being targeted more or less for what we looked like, it might just have been that we were of a certain age, and we weren’t buying anything. Yes, kids that wear polo’s and kaki’s get busted for smoking there “cigarettes-a-weed” all the time, (that was the fashion of the day), but in the minds of the cops, whatever they were doing, it couldn't have been as bad as what we were doing, because we looked like punks. Matt always wore the same thing; brown corduroys and one of that black zip-up hoodies that every grungy kid had back then. I vaguely remember that he pinned trolls heads to his sweeter, but I don't know. I remember his hair was greasy; he really didn't look that weird. I had long blond hair and ware brown knitted sweaters back then, I remember that Teresa’s mother (another friend) once asked if I was a surfer. I think the cops must have thought we looked like trolls though, because we really weren’t doing anything out of the ordinary. I guess in a way we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, apparently the cops had just broke up a fight just a few minutes earlier. What did that have to do with me? Well, the real trouble started when, I thought I'd be clever and gave the officer a fake name, (a very obvious fake name) and he started to threaten me with arrest. The demons of cowardice started to taunt me and I fest up. Maybe God was trying to teach me a lesson about lying. At any rate this shit wasn't working, and the pressure was cooking me alive. The cop arrested us both, and another car came to pick up my friend. I remember there was a T.A.(teacher’s assistant) there in the parking lot, she was just there all of a sudden. I pleaded with her to "help me," how weird is that! I remember watching Matt as we rode away. He looks annoyed. I know he was more than a little pissed at me. I remember the plastic seats in the back of the squad car, and how they didn't have set belts. This crazy feeling came over me. I didn't know what was going to happen. I felt a little beside myself. I started to float around in the back seat, like a birth day balloon. I think I was a little shocked, like, "what just happened?!" I have so many feelings toward that incident; shame for wining and almost a little bit crying, lying, and not lying very well, for getting my friend tangled up in something that had nothing to do with him, (had nothing to do with ether of us). I felt proud of it too, it was a real run in with a particularly unpopular small town police force. I was living, things where actually happening to me. I know what it's like...

They gave me one call. I called my dad. They showed me to my cell. I don't know how long I was in there, probably an hour and a half. The sun was still shinning on the ride home. My dad didn't lecture me; he just said he didn't want me to get bitter toward cops. I come from a long line of reluctant rebels. My dad harbors bad feelings towards this sort of pettiness, and I imagine my grandpa is the same way. All he said was “I just don’t want you to get biter.” Its funny Friedrich Nietzsche would have said the same thing, "Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment." I actually tried to resist resentment towards cops. It was weird, for a while, whenever my punk friends would rail against cops, I'd just sit their quietly.

When I came to school the next day people where asking me about it. I was proud to tell the story. Latter I heard that Matt was telling people I cried, which wasn't really a lie. When I saw Matt I was surprised to see how stoic he was over it. I latter found out that he got fired from is management job at Blimpy’s. I think the cops found some paraphernalia, or some shit. I remember marveling at the fact that he had a management job, while still in high school, and in a town that wouldn't even tolerate the sight punks like us. Now they have a famous skate park in Battle Ground. They had been passing around this one petition from the time I was in middle school, probably much longer, and the park finally opened when I was like 25. Now my little brother skates there all the time. Things have changed.

There was no where you could skate when I was a kid, it was a crime.

Tonight when I got pulled over the cop was pretty nice. He still gave me a ticket, but he showed concern. He said, "I have to give you this ticket because you were going 25 miles over the speed limit." The ticket was for 624 dollars, but the officer said I can get cut in haft if I can prove that I have current insurance. I think he could tell I'm trying, and actually kind of pitied me. I had no excuse, but that doesn't mean that this isn't going to have a drastic effect on my finances, and probably by extension lots of other things. I can't really turn to my folks right now, they where at one time quite well off, but now, they have tremendous tubal paying their own bills. I barrowed 200 dollars form them last month and that was already stretching it. They need those 200 dollars to pay really important bills this month. I checked my bank account yesterday and there was a penny in it, not kidding. I don't know if that is a good singe or a bad omen, I certainly can't make a penny stretch tell the 15th when I get played. One good thing: their passing out food at the Bridge, (the Food Church) tomorrow. That will help.

 

Whither Situationism? (HOSTED MEDIA)

This article traces the historic co-option of the French Situations rebel-communist aesthetic by late late-post-modern capitalism. But this article isn’t all doom and gloom there is a light at the end of the tunnel, there the author calls for "meta-modelizations that allow us to rebuild our non-dialectical and undetermined future." My close friends will note the similarity between this notion of none-dialectical mete-modeling, with ideas we have been tossing around in our discussing of possible future art movements. In my opinion we need to continue to build on the work that has been done by the Situations and others. The main thing is to disrupt the continuation of quantifiable expansion at all levels, we must seek quality. The other trend that we must continue to feed is free or affordable activity. We must never forget that festivity makes a mockery of luxury. Let them buy and sell it, we will share it for free.

Whither Situationism? (Intellectual Gridlock and the Control Society)








   

That The Universe Is A ‘Giant Brain’! (hosted media)

Mystics have long intuited the silent presents of God with in the very fabric of the universe: the Brahman of Hinduism, to the dharma of Buddhism, from the Tao of Laozi, to the Logos of Orthodox Christianity just to name a few, (not necessarily the same thing in all cases but undoubtedly sharing some characteristic similarity!)  And now! New state of the art commuter simulation technology has produced images, based on complex algorithms gathered from empirical data, which resemble neuron growth in the human brain. Could this be the image of the invisible God? A Theoligical CAT scan? Iconoclasts have long denied such a possibility... Icon of G-d, or Cosmic Idolatry? You decide! I for one find this kind of reverent speculating boundlessly edifying. 

That The Universe Is A ‘Giant Brain’!