Charles Bukowski

I finished off Bukowski's Post Office yesterday. It's as near flawless a book as I've ever read and I greatly enjoyed rereading it. Aside from Bukowski's signature simplicity which in some ways is close to Orwell's loathing of unnecessary complex words the commentary is very much one of mechanized, process driven 'scientific process' America. Where clocking in and clocking out, and how to stand during coffee breaks leads to an extraordinary goverment agency regulating the most trivial of tasks through nauseous bureaucracy.

I'm always struck how bureaucrats are never fingered for having no other option than to create more rules to justify their existence. The only option as I see it, is to fire them not keep them busy. Indeed their job function should include a larger bonus the quicker they can achieve their goal and lose their jobs. In an ideal world bureaucrats would be a free floating army like the Chinese migrant workers assembling as swat teams when anything became so dysfunctional that change was needed without the commitment to regulating that change ad infinitum.

I laughed loud more than once rereading the following passage where he is reminded of the awesome security benefits in working for the Post Office

Security? You could get security in jail. Three squares and no rent to pay, no utilities, no income tax, no child support. No license plate fees. No traffic tickets. No drunk driving raps. No losses at the race track. Free medical attention. Comradeship with those with similar interests. Church. Roundeye. Free burial.

Johan Galtung on "The Fall of the US Empire"

Good points made on how in the long term it paid huge dividends for the British and Soviet Union to relinquish their empires. Not that you'll see that sort of discussion in American media other than the admirable Democracy Now.

The Experiment

Most of what the interviewee "Charles" has to say tallies with other sources I've reviewed, but like every quasi poacher turned gamekeeper interview I've seen from CIA drug runners to super soldiers or masonic ritualists their agenda is questionable, gritted with bias and spiked with disinformation . That doesn't mean it's not worth watching and Bill the interviewer does an admirable job of interviewing a psychopath who in some quarters would be labelled a constructive sociopath. Clueless losers not withstanding.

Secrets

Oddly enough after my MESSENGER and Mercury Rising posts I discovered that NASA commissioned astronaut Stuart Atkinson to write a poem about Mercury. It's on the NASA MESSENGER website and to say the least is intriguing.

Terence McKenna - The Angel Within The Monkey

Dolores Cannon & The Convoluted Universe

I ignored Dolores Cannon at first because of a slight bias I have in a rapidly diminishing list of biases towards people who don't fit my picture of clever and urbane. Dolores doesn't go into the dimensional and multi universe stuff here that is absolutely on the nail but instead flies with full on stories about the sequencing of colour in the universe which is essential viewing if only because nobody ever talked about the idea of coloured universes  and experimental ones with cuboid planets and geometric polygonal orbits. You may think she's making that stuff up but her M Theory is way more advanced than your average rocket scientist. Word.

This next clip I'm also adding because it's also a real sweetspot use of Kraftwerk's Das Model and because Aunty Dolores is more radical than any scientist at CERN but a whole lot safer.

Orgy Lovers Unite

Once in a blue moon and maybe even less than that, I want to get in contact with you more directly and with greater certainty. I'm adding the Google Connect embed so I can do that. Please join up if gang membership appeals. 

You know the score, uprisings, civil disobedience, anti corporate greed, eco terrorism and general trouble making.

Turned Off TV

I know I've blogged about 'But does it float' before, but today's offering is hitting my Z spot if I can use that expression for the zeitgeist demonisation of the end of the TV era I'm noticing. 

Here's a couple of turned off TV's below. Something I almost feel affectionate for from a bygone age when screens played out a unique signature of light-drama at the electric curtain call. 

I've rejected a TV screen in my home for years now to the point that when I visit other peoples homes I'm taken aback how intrusive and badly informed the TV is. Like an ungrateful house guest. Bellicose and belligerent.

MESSENGER

It's not often I can sit through a 160 minutes of unvarnished Hollywood with a poorly rated 10 year old movie but I just did. It's called The Postman and I can't remember who suggested I should watch it but I think it's closely linked to the John Titor story I've been intrigued by recently. The post apocalyptic details are uncannily similar.

The hook that was most interesting in this otherwise pedestrian movie was the idea that it wasn't what was said or done that motivated disparate groups to rise up against the Barbarian impersonating Bethlehem character, but rather mishap, serendipity, legend and myth coalescing around a couple of peaceful ideals. By the time Costner slips on postal uniform and a tells a few fibs to cadge a free meal, he had worked his way into a dispirited people's conciousness and the idea of a great hero reuniting the former United States grows to become an epic story. This galavanised people into writing letters to long lost connections in a post-electric-grid world. One threatened by marauding armies extracting taxes and punishment.

I admit I also watched it as a sort of compromise movie as I felt my girlfriend would enjoy the ease of comprehension and the romantic scenes which Costner delivers on with admirable fortitude. I could barely stifle a giggle from the idea of a pseudo postman getting laid in city to city from women yearning for pregnancy from post-nuclear sterile husbands. Hot bath and free meals too. What's not to like about that?

But the odd synchronicities encouraged me to sit through the movie because it occurred to me that I'm also reading Bukowski's Post Office, and then there's the success of the first satellite called MESSENGER to orbit Mercury only days ago and for some reason I feel that Mercury is the definitive under rated planet to be given sufficient analysis compared to the two that NASA is obsessed by. Mars (God of War) and Saturn from the Greek Chronus which means time and who was also the father of Zeus.

Mercury is of course the obvious choice if one wanted to play the Vatican and assign a patron saint to advertising. The messenger. Hermes. Closest planet to the Sun. You heard it here first.

Does Advertising Numb Basic Human Compassion?

China's capital has banned outdoor advertising that promotes hedonistic or high-end lifestyles as the government seeks to ease public concerns about the country's widening wealth gap. This seems quite timely on the heels of my, is advertising immoral or unethical post. How long can pimping luxury products blatantly in the face of people who cannot afford them but create the wealth that purchases them continue? Something is shifting in the world with respect to conspicuous consumption. Full story over here and hat tip to David for finding the story.

Supply On Demand?

The Wizard Of Oz

The whole story is a satire of the corruption in the businesses and corporations of America in the late 1800's. The Scarecrow represents the western farmers with no brains, the tin man represents the eastern industrial workers who worked in the factories with no heart, and the lions represent the congressmen with no courage to stand up against the corporations. The yellow brick road represents the gold standard, and the munchkins are the average citizen.

They used to let this scene be embedded but now no longer which is interesting as I have a hunch that a great unveiling is imminent. I cut and paste the above comment as it's better than anything I could have written.

Don't Give Up On The Humans

If it wasn't for Doug Rushkoff I wouldn't have heard a podcast where Terrence McKenna talked about Marshall McCluhan. That odyssey hasn't abated since. I think he's one of the most important thinkers alive and here he articulates once again the case for the importance of emancipating people by harnessing their ability to create tools instead of just use tools. In other words program or be programmed. Here he is at Google with another important talk. It's about choice and alternatives. About unleashing potential.

You May Need To Sit Down

So It Wasn't A Balloon?

Osho - Emotions Blind Us

Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking?

Update: Marina Abramovic has inspired Lady Gaga to explore performance art.

Advice

We've seen how morally bankrupt the British political system is on all sides. Blair sells the Libyans arms that are then used against their own people and then later Cameron bombs them from the air to keep a tight reign on the oil so you can nip down to the corner shop and pick up your newspaper which you can read while checking to see what channel the war is on.

It's highly unlikely I will die in the UK so this isn't about my well being. It is about advice to my British friends. Tariq Ali is the nearest thing the Brits have to a natural born leader with the wisdom and track record to do the right thing. 

Should the diaphanous mirage of left and right politics evaporate to reveal a singular entity pulling both left and right levers I put it to you my British friends that you have no better  strategy than to ally yourself closely with the repressed peoples of Pakistan. Should that ever make sense there could be no better guide than Tariq Ali who I suspect can navigate the delicate and precarious framework of doing the right thing without antagonising India. Both countries immigrants are crucial to keeping the the United Kingdom out of war. 

Though of course you might want to watch Tariq's latest talk in Australia and draw your own conclusion.

279 Shopping Days To Christmas

Earlier for the second or third time I tried to explain over the phone why the distinctive leitmotifs of time are changing. Why the linear model is increasingly looking like a fractally recursive and more chronologically compressed model of time than the one that existed say 30 years ago. Three people have just written what I've attempted to say in the last couple of hours and appeared in my feed almost sequentially so it seems right to share them right here and right now:

1. We Must Know
2. Neil Perkin
3. John Smallman

If you're feeling time starved and looking for inspiration then those three posts are a good start. Remember. You can't save time. Only spend it.

Is Advertising Immoral or Unethical?

The short answer you know anyway but that wont change anything. A blog post is unlikely to prompt a vendor of materialism into questioning their value set.

Let me start with an apology. At one point a couple of years ago I was flying between Shanghai and Hong Kong as the Global Account Planning Director on a piece of Coca-cola business. I was in the air so much that one week I ate more airline food than terrestrial meals. The hard work paid off. The creative was all over the show at the first meeting, and as everyone else was too busy I managed to rewire the creative script/animation and of course presented with unusual pride and conviction and sold the ad to the client. She's now head of Coca Cola marketing and is Rob's client. Lucky for him she's no-nonsense solid Gold and a bit of thinker too. We both held similar radical Maoist ideas that I don't hold today but was shocked to hear my client echo. 

I did not come up with the idea. I only rewired it to make sense. That ad went on to increase the RTD beverage sales of that drink 73% year on year. No small volume in the fastest growing and largest market in the world. That's a fuck load of sugared water. That's a lot of apologies to Chinese kids.

Was I responsible for that? I doubt it. The idea was cute, my timing was great, resources were thin and I had total licence to make it how I thought it should be made. It was Chinese New Year (but then it was Year on Year sales) and things came together.

But I can't claim to be innocent in the entire enterprise. If I'm honest with myself it was my presentation skills that nailed a quick sign off. The lovely account manager who handed me the reigns was actually cute enough to say I was "fantastic" when we presented. I wasn't, but then it would look OKish from someone who had a ton more experience around the world at a global level, and so I was happy to do it. She was happy not to get bogged down in endless back and forth which is a serious problem with Asian clients and junior Asian account handlers. She also tipped me off that my mediocre Japanese boss was losing face around me and that I wasn't to trust him. That advice alone put 10 000 bucks in my pocket when he eventually fired me. I spent it on a watch that was subsequently stolen in that taxi back in Hong Kong. So that's Karma for you. Easy come easy go.

So I'm just as guilty as you but I have given great consideration to how brands can be part of our future. 

The answer to whether it's immoral or unethical? 

Mostly immoral and largely unethical always (as with anything) contextual. Generally speaking for a planet that is groaning at the seams ecologically it's no different than selling arms to Libya before bombing them.

It's not like I'm suggesting I'm any better than you. I'm not. But I don't mind talking about it. So how exactly do you feel?