Month: May 2023

palm trees on fire syllabi: DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

friend of the blog Ken shared a curated list of art objects he recommends, which gave me the idea to craft syllabi for my various areas of aesthetic interest, so here’s the first one

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

If anyone asks who told you about this stuff, it wasn’t me. I don’t need the puppet-masters hunting me down.

BOOKS

Nonfiction

  • The 70 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time: History’s Biggest Mysteries, Coverups, and Cabals, Jonathan Vankin & John Whalen
    • There are updated editions of this book, but this is the one I have. A surprisingly good starter kit on a variety of so-called “conspiracy theories,” with even handed analysis on the basics of each, presented in easy-to-digest articles that open a doorway for the curious.
  • The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P. Hall
    • The best entry-level primer on all things occultist. Find a chapter that piques your interest and follow the thread wherever it takes you; just don’t let avowed Freemason Manly P. Hall be the final word on any of these subjects.
  • Fingerprints of the Gods, Graham Hancock
    • Do you know how precisely the faces of the Pyramids at Giza point in the cardinal directions? Why? How’d they do that? What if at some point Antarctica was way further north than it is now and suddenly it shifted into position at the South Pole, causing a world-wide, civilization-ending cataclysm that’s been documented in many world mythologies in the form of Deluge stories? If it’s not that exactly, then why are there so many Deluge stories in the world’s mythologies?

Fiction

  • Mumbo Jumbo, Ishmael Reed
    • Templars, hoodoo, Moses-as-sellout, secret societies, an international conspiracy, a black Woodrow Wilson—rarely is paranoia this much fun.
  • VALIS, Philip K. Dick
    • Because usually paranoia is as debilitating as Horselover Fat’s nervous breakdown. Remember: the Empire never ended.
  • “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” Jorge Luis Borges
    • The ur-text on what it feels like to overdose on information. Beware the machinations of Orbis Tertius.
  • The Soft Machine, William S. Burroughs
    • A brilliant meditation on the nature of control and the weaponization of desire that also serves as a valiant rebellion against the Powers that Be.
  • Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
    • I was gonna not include this but that would be disingenuous of me. Almost everything on this list so far can be found in some form here.

VISUAL ART

Film (Narrative)

  • The Matrix
    • Based and Neo-pilled. No, that doesn’t seem right. Based and Matrix-pilled? Hmm. There’s something about a pill from this movie.
  • Eyes Wide Shut
    • You think it’s just a coincidence that Kubrick died before he could finish this movie and they released a version he didn’t give final approval of?
  • Mulholland Dr.
    • Because the deeper into the mystery you go, the weirder things get. As a bonus, lesbian doppelgängers!
  • They Live
    • You may not be so fortunate to find a pair of sunglasses that immediately reveal the true nature of Reality, but this list will get you close.

Film (Documentary)

  • The New Pearl Harbor
    • Guaranteed to make you an insufferable dinner party guest.
  • Evidence of Revision
    • The best introduction to the JFK assassination, almost entirely made up of actual news broadcasts. Pretty remarkable They never thought someone would be able compile all this archival footage and collate the inconsistencies. Or did They foresee that….

Drawing/Painting

  • “Oliver North, Lake Resources of Panama, and the Iran-Contra Operation, ca. 1984–86 (fourth version), 1999″ Mark Lombardi
    • Lombardi managed to make the conspiracy theorist’s corkboard into high art. An information virtuoso.

  • “Untitled (Caballero and Pattern), 1952,” Martín Ramírez
    • Wheeeeee! Down he goes. Ramírez captures better than anyone the feeling of being overwhelmed by barely comprehensible power structures.
  • “Pyramid Mysteries,” Daniel Martin Diaz
    • Ascend with me, amigo.

there but for the grace of God

They noted an increased suggestibility found in children who ‘space out’ while consuming television or film media and pointed out that, by the time they reach adolescence, the average American has spent tens of thousands of hours in front of television sets, has watched as many murders and “engineered acts of violence” and has been exposed to hundreds of thousands of commercials filled with “arbitrary symbols of coded commands and meanings.”. . .

The advent of the postmodern era has radically disrupted the notion of identity. In a world rampant with “self-referential illusions and postmodern self-parodies,” multiple, simultaneous realities and corresponding selves exist and are greatly informed, even created, by popular media. In 2012, a Boston Globe opinion piece expounded on the Batman Shooting, by observing how “it is possible for any of us, of any age or gender, to avoid reality all day in America by keeping our eyes fixed on our screens.”. . .

“I think Tim is his own worst enemy. He was very rigid. He was overly responsible and conscientious. Sometimes he was hard on others. He had lofty goals for himself and he had the same expectations for others. When they didn’t live up to Tim he could get his back up. He had no use for a job done half-way.”. . .

Tim said that when his father lost his temper, he usually dealt with it by retreating to his bedroom and learned to prevent Bill’s tendency to ‘overreact’ by avoiding certain topics of discussion. . . .

According to Tim, while Bill never learned to deal with his anger properly, the main thing he learned from his father was, ironically, the value of controlling his own. “[I] learned a deeper lesson by experiencing my dad’s short temper (surprised, huh?) […] I would never ‘fly off the handle’ without thinking thru my reaction and subsequent action. I would go thru life not yelling every time the situation was adverse, and I would not make a habit of raising my voice when not necessary to get results.” . . .

Aberration in the Heartland of the Real: The Secret Lives of Timothy McVeigh, by Wendy Painting

once again, from the back: fuck Noam Chomsky

“Why does Chomsky pretend to not understand this?”

Deleuze & Guattari

well well well, shout out to the Pay-Walled Street Journal for serving me up a nice helping of vindication in the form of some choice quotes from the limp left’s favorite American “dissident” Known Chumpsky, who apparently kept the company of everyone’s favorite prison “suicide” victim Jeffrey Epstein. when asked whether he knew the, ahem, disgraced financier, Chomsky said, “First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally.”

really now! suddenly Mr. Government Transparency thinks he can invoke his right to privacy when asked about compromising activities! and “occasionally”? I “occasionally” have two cups of coffee in a day, which is to say, not infrequently. what sort of “occasion” is it to meet with sex traffickers connected to intelligence agencies, hmmmm? of course, Noam might be using words loosely. you know, the way a philosopher of language might.

at least Bill Gates has the sense to feign regret. what is anyone supposed to read this as other than mealy mouthed defensiveness?

Chomksy goes on to say that “[Epstein] had been convicted of a crime and had served his sentence. According to U.S. laws and norms, that yields a clean slate.” bro. dawg. homie. this is a joke, right? the “anarcho-syndicalist” who made his name outside linguistics on (barely) criticizing the laws and norms of the Amerikkkan Empire says “the justice system works” when it’s about a pedophile rapist receiving a slap on the wrist because he was friends with Bill Clinton? to say nothing of how U.S. norms generally cast sex offenders as social pariahs in perpetuity. just a totally nihilistic hand wave. I’m not even going to address him weaseling out of the question of whether he met Woody Allen with Epstein by saying “I’m unaware of the principle that requires that I inform you about an evening spent with a great artist.” Woody Allen fucking sucks dude, shut the fuck up.

oh, and if people worse than Epstein donated to MIT, THEN WHY THE FUCK DID YOU WORK THERE YOU if I use the epithet I wanted to use people will think I’m being anti-Semitic.

“Non-Sequitur” Coda

The entire technique of the “secret” societies is to conduct their controversies as if the terms of reference were historical. Historical scholarship and criticism (in the arts) is as much their field of present battle as the news, poem, play, novel, painting or musical composition.

Marshall McLuhan, in a letter to Eric Voegelin