Kurt Vonnegut: 1922 ~ 2007
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Category Archives: Personal
The Dark Legacy of Carlos Castaneda
For fans of the literary con, it’s been a great few years. Currently, we have Richard Gere starring as Clifford Irving in “The Hoax,” a film about the ‘70s novelist who penned a faux autobiography of Howard Hughes. We’ve had the unmasking of James Frey, JT LeRoy/Laura Albert and Harvard’s Kaavya Viswanathan, who plagiarized large chunks of her debut novel, forcing her publisher, Little, Brown and Co., to recall the book. Much has been written about the slippery boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, the publishing industry’s responsibility for distinguishing between the two, and the potential damage to readers. There’s been, however, hardly a mention of the 20th century’s most successful literary trickster: Carlos Castaneda.
If this name draws a blank for readers under 30, all they have to do is ask their parents. Deemed by Time magazine the “Godfather of the New Age,” Castaneda was the literary embodiment of the Woodstock era. His 12 books, supposedly based on meetings with a mysterious Indian shaman, don Juan, made the author, a graduate student in anthropology, a worldwide celebrity. Admirers included John Lennon, William Burroughs, Federico Fellini and Jim Morrison.
Under don Juan’s tutelage, Castaneda took peyote, talked to coyotes, turned into a crow, and learned how to fly. All this took place in what don Juan called “a separate reality.” Castaneda, who died in 1998, was, from 1971 to 1982, one of the best-selling nonfiction authors in the country. During his lifetime, his books sold at least 10 million copies.
Castaneda was viewed by many as a compelling writer, and his early books received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Time called them “beautifully lucid” and remarked on a “narrative power unmatched in other anthropological studies.” They were widely accepted as factual, and this contributed to their success. Richard Jennings, an attorney who became closely involved with Castaneda in the ‘90s, was studying at Stanford in the early ‘70s when he read the first two don Juan books. “I was a searcher,” he recently told Salon. “I was looking for a real path to other worlds. I wasn’t looking for metaphors.”
Robert Anton Wilson Needs Our Help
While we don’t generally speak our mind here at Nerdshit or try to solicit anything from our readers other than, hopefully, a gradual broadening of your mind and worldview, this is a great exception. Robert Anton Wilson, the philosopher, writer, comic, mystic trickster (and on and on), is set to relinquish his body to a disability he has had all his life, and he needs a bit of help to comfortably make that transition. R.A.W. has been monumentally influential in our lives. I can say with certainty that I would be a completely different, and I dare say, more constricted personality, had that influence not touched me.
So here’s the news…
Note from Robert’s friend, Denis Berry: Sadly, we have to report that wizard-author-intelligence increase agent is in trouble with his life, home and his finances. Robert is dying at his home from post polio syndrome. He has enough money for next months rent and after that, will be unable to pay. He cannot walk, has a hard time talking and swallowing, is extremely frail and needs full time care that is being provided by several friends-fans-volunteers and family. We appeal to you to help financially for the next few months to let him die at his home in peace.
Robert’s writing has enlightened-educated many and if you can please commit to help pay a portion of his expenses until his passing which sadly won’t be that long. All monies will go directly to Robert and can be sent to his PayPal address olgaceline@gmail.com. You can also send a check to RAW c/o Futique Trust, P.O. Box 3561, Santa Cruz, Ca 95063.
If you have been fortunate enough to have your perspective widened by this crazy old coot like we have, then you’ll understand and will do what you deem best.
Much love,
The nerdshit crew
notes via futurehi
Bush Talks About His Ipod
At the end of an interview broadcast Wednesday night, Fox News anchor Brit Hume asked Bush to show him what’s on his playlist these days.
Bush : Beach Boys, Beatles, let’s see, Alan Jackson, Alan Jackson, Alejandro, Alison Krauss, the Angels, the Archies, Aretha Franklin, the Beatles, Dan McLean. Remember him?
Hume: Don McLean.
Bush: I mean, Don McLean.
Hume: Does “American Pie,” right?
Bush: Great song.
Hume: Yes, yes, great song.
Unidentified male: . . . which ones do you play?
Bush: All of these. I put it on shuffle. Dwight Yoakam. I’ve got the Shuffle, the, what is it called? The little.
Hume: Shuffle.
Bush: It looks like.
Hume: The Shuffle. That is the name of one of the models.
Bush: Yes, the Shuffle.
Hume: Called the Shuffle.
Bush: Lightweight, and crank it on, and you shuffle the Shuffle.
Hume: So you—it plays . . .
Bush: Put it in my pocket, got the ear things on.
Hume: So it plays them in a random order.
Bush: Yes.
Hume: So you don’t know what you’re going to going to get.
Bush: No.
Hume: But you know—
Bush: And if you don’t like it, you have got your little advance button. It’s pretty high-tech stuff.
Hume: . . . be good to have one of those at home, wouldn’t it?
Bush: Oh?
Hume: Yes, hit the button and whatever it is that’s in your head—gone.
Bush: . . . it’s a bad day, just say, get out of here.
Hume: Well, that probably is pretty . . .
Bush: That works, too. ( Laughter )
Hume: Yes, right.
Candid Video of William S. Burroughs From August 1996
I came across this video on our town website, Lawrence.com, as Burroughs spent the last years of his life here in Lawrence, Kansas. It’s about 20 minutes of amature video of Bill just hanging out with friends (including Steve Buscemi and Allen Ginsberg), shooting the shit and being his charming self.
Nasa tries to figure out real-life Rain Man’s brain
It took Kim Peek just over an hour to read Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October. Four months later, when asked to give the name of the book’s Russian radio operator, Peek quoted the entire relevant passage.
It was a prodigious feat. Yet for Peek – the real-life ‘savant’ on whom Dustin Hoffman’s character in the film Rain Man is based – such recall only gives a glimpse of his powers. He knows 9,000 books off by heart; he can direct people around US cities from maps he has memorised years ago; and he has total recall of the dates of all major world events.
Now studies of Peek’s abilities are being used by scientists to shed intriguing light on the human mind, and to open the way for men and women to exploit far more of their intellectual potential, as the latest issue of Scientific American reveals.
‘Kim’s story tells us that the human brain is far more flexible than we had thought,’ said Darold Treffert, a psychiatrist and co-author of the Scientific American paper told The Observer. ‘Like many other savants, he has suffered disability in one area of his brain, but has compensated by acquiring remarkable new abilities in other areas. This shows we all have considerable hidden intellectual potential. By studying Kim and other savants, we can learn how to tap those powers.’
Grime Pays: a Karl Rove chronological tour
From the time he was 10 years old, Karl Rove, Bush’s closest and most important political adviser, has made a specialty of dirty tricks. They run all the way from trying to slime a candidate by calling him a peacenik or gay to planting phony campaign literature on an opponent. If the Wilsons turn out to be anything but just another weird turn in Rove’s career, that would be real news.
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FALL 1970: Rove pays visit to Chicago campaign headquarters of Alan Dixon, a Democrat running for state treasurer. Disguised as a volunteer, Rove steals official campaign letterhead and sends out 1,000 invitations to people in the city’s red-light district and soup kitchens, offering “free beer, free food, girls, and a good time for nothing” at Dixon headquarters. When hundreds of homeless and alcoholic Chicagoans show up at a fancy Dixon reception, Rove succeeds in embarrassing the candidate. Dixon still wins the election.
1971: Rove drops out of college to devote full time to College Republicans, where he becomes prot?g? of dirty trickster Lee Atwater, the group’s Southern regional coordinator. Rove becomes executive director, then national chairman.
1972: Under mentorship of dirty trickster Donald Segretti (who later went to jail for Watergate), Rove paints McGovern as “left-wing peacenik,” in spite of McGovern’s World War II stint piloting a B-24. Rove also works as staff assistant to George Bush Sr., then chairman of Republican National Committee (RNC).
23 Questions with Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson “is” one who is not “is.” Perhaps we may describe him as a psychedelic philosopher, a postmodern trickster, an intellectual comedian, a twister ripping through the psyche. He first came to prominence as an editor of Playboy in the 1960s. During that time of magick he got involved with the Discordians, a “new religion disguised as a complicated joke,” or “a complicated joke disguised as a new religion.” Along with Robert Shea, he co-authored the Illuminatus! trilogy of novels, a work of mind-bending (fiction?) that weaved together multiple conspiracy theories and elevated Discordianism to true cult status. A close friend of Timothy Leary, he shared Dr. Leary’s passions for radical psychology and futurism. His book Prometheus Rising melded model agnosticism to Leary’s 8-circuit model of the brain to create a system that taught people how to deconstruct dogmatic personal belief systems. His numerous other books explored topics such as quantum mechanics, alternate universes, non-Aristotelian logic systems, sex magick, Wilhelm Reich, James Joyce and Orson Welles. His model agnostic approach to inquiry makes him a unique writer, one of few who can slip seamlessly from rationalist scientific thinking to non-materialist metaphysical speculation.
While he has struggled with post-polio syndrome in recent years, he remains active in propagating his various passions. Lance Bauscher, Cody McClintock and Robert Dofflemyer’s 2003 film Maybe Logic explored and presented Wilsonian concepts wrapped in subtle yet explosive color and rhythm, a fitting tribute to his ideas. This project spun off into the Maybe Logic Academy, a learning institute that is “grounded in the philosophy and perspective of maybe logic, an approach which emphasizes the fallibility and relativity of perception and tends to approach information and observations with questions, probabilities and multiple perspectives rather than absolute truths.” New Falcon Publications will soon be releasing his new book Email To The Universe.
Mavericks of the Mind interview Rosemary Leary
Rosemary Sarah Woodruff Leary was one of the world?s great psychedelic pioneers. She worked throughout her life to educate people about the psychedelic experience, and was instrumental in helping to orchestrate the cultural revolution of the Sixties. This she did at the expense of her personal freedom, which was compromised for a significant portion of her life.
“I’d like to do this whole thing all over again on a sunny day with some wine..”
Thompson’s ashes to be shot from cannon
DENVER, Colorado (AP)—Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes will be blasted from a cannon mounted inside a 53-foot-high (16.15 meter-high) sculpture of the journalist’s “gonzo fist” emblem, his wife said Tuesday.
The cannon shot, planned sometime in August on the grounds of his Aspen-area home, will fulfill the writer’s long-cherished wish.
The Self-Aware Universe: An Interview with Amit Goswami
WIE: In your book The Self-Aware Universe you speak about the need for a paradigm shift. Could you talk a bit about how you conceive of that shift? From what to what?
Amit Goswami: The current worldview has it that everything is made of matter, and everything can be reduced to the elementary particles of matter, the basic constituents?building blocks?of matter. And cause arises from the interactions of these basic building blocks or elementary particles; elementary particles make atoms, atoms make molecules, molecules make cells, and cells make brain. But all the way, the ultimate cause is always the interactions between the elementary particles. This is the belief?all cause moves from the elementary particles. This is what we call “upward causation.” So in this view, what human beings?you and I?think of as our free will does not really exist. It is only an epiphenomenon or secondary phenomenon, secondary to the causal power of matter. And any causal power that we seem to be able to exert on matter is just an illusion. This is the current paradigm.
Now, the opposite view is that everything starts with consciousness.That is, consciousness is the ground of all being. In this view, consciousness imposes “downward causation.” In other words, our free will is real. When we act in the world we really are acting with causal power. This view does not deny that matter also has causal potency?it does not deny that there is causal power from elementary particles upward, so there is upward causation?but in addition it insists that there is also downward causation. It shows up in our creativity and acts of free will, or when we make moral decisions. In those occasions we are actually witnessing downward causation by consciousness.
A critical look at the life of Terence McKenna
Terence McKenna was the Magellan of psychedelic head space, and humanity’s first ambassador to the hyperdimensional machine elves of the Eschaton.
McKenna argued that plant hallucinogens were inimical to modern cultures because they undermine authority structures by democratically giving all users equal access to the big picture: “Because modern institutions depend on the transmission of a certain world view and then willing acquiescense in the truth of that world view by the populations into which it is being exported. In other words a kind of cultural brainwashing is necessary for modern cultures to work at all. The consequences of the acceptance of this situation of brainwashing is further acceleration toward catastrophe.”
The Meme Machine: An Interview with Dr. Susan Blackmore
Dr. Susan Blackmore?s book, The Meme Machine, is probably the most accessible and fully-realized exfoliation of memetic theory. Blackmore declares that the distinction between human beings and other animals is the fact that we imitate. In Blackmore?s own words, ?When you imitate someone else, something is passed on. This ?something? can then be passed on again, and again, and so take on a life of its own. We might call this thing an idea, an instruction, a behavior, a piece of information … but if we are going to study it we shall need to give it a name.
?Fortunately there is a name. It is the ?meme.? ?
No Gene Is An Island: Interview with Howard Bloom about Genes, Memes, SuperSychronicity and the Collective Consciousness of Everything
Many many years ago, my friend Richard Metzger went to interview Howard Bloom about his then current book The Lucifer Project and came back with his mind blown. Ever since, he has been telling me (and presumably everybody else) to read this man’s work. With the recent release of Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, I finally took the plunge. As usual, Metzger was on to something big. This is an “intelligent design” theory that they won’t be teaching in Kansas any time soon.
According to Bloom, we are all part of an evolving intelligent system that started at the big bang. I “got it” around the second chapter and, for a moment I wondered why I would want to read the rest of the book. But I pressed on. Bloom beautifully evokes the collective minds of everything from trilobites to bees to human societies. His writing style is rich, scholarly, and expository; playful and convincing.
from NeoFiles
R. I. P. Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of journalism in books like ``Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,’’ fatally shot himself Sunday night at his Aspen-area home, his son said. He was 67.
``Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family,’’ Juan Thompson said in a statement released to the Aspen Daily News.
Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, a personal friend of Thompson, confirmed the death to the News. Sheriff’s officials did not return calls to The Associated Press late Sunday.