The Pork Fried Rice Paradox

I'll be honest with you – I'm sort of writing the following not so much for you (or in the interest of good blogging material), as I am for myself. To work things out in my mind, to gain perspective. So this post itself might be sort of word-heavy and meandering. Just so you know.

***

In 1993, I was in my second year of college. I had no plans, other than to complete a degree in some field where I could make money I guess. I picked my career in a bloodless manner devoid of any passion or thought. Attending these classes, I noticed that many of my fellow students had done the same. And we were all supposed to become high-school teachers. Wonderful.

We would teach the next generation how to do it, how to make one's way in society without feeling ANYTHING. What we were learning outside the curriculum, just in our motivations for being in college in the first place, would be valuable lessons for our charges. They would repeat our mistakes, buy into our values. Maybe once in a while we'd encourage somebody to aim higher; maybe we would simultaneously encourage them and give them the ANTIDOTE, the warning not to disappoint themselves by trying in such a heartbreaking world.

Quietly, however, I had written my intended vocation off and decided to instead pursue a career as Creative Underachieving Slacker. I had no picture in my mind of how graduation would be. I was very aware that I was going through the motions, marking time. It was if this time was meaningless, merely "filler." I would later refer to this way of living as "collecting bananas," or "working for bananas." The idea was, it was living as a monkey might, mindless, receiving a banana as a reward, as wages. "Why are you here?" Answer: "I'm here for the bananas."

I have always had the knack of seeing the bigger picture. But this has been, ultimately, not so much a helpful thing. Because I would anticipate the hills and valleys ahead of me, and label everything else "bananas." You know the saying: "it's not the destination, but the journey"? Feh. I saw the bigger picture. I was currently living the part of the Godzilla movie without Godzilla in it. That's more than 75% of the entire goddamn movie. I gotta watch poorly dubbed Japanese actors and Raymond Burr. Who the fuck wants to watch that? How does that benefit my life, truly, other than to dilute my focus, to seduce me into the Filler World, the world without Godzilla, the world of collecting bananas?

The only part of life in "Filler World," sans-Godzilla, that seemed vital to me was when I wrote or painted. And of course such activities would have felt vital, because it was sort of operating in a realm outside of time. And that creative realm was the true heaven, the truest nirvana. I mean, you always think it's going to be those so-called peak moments when you win something or get a lot of money etc. That ecstasy you feel when Godzilla finally gets on the screen, eating subway cars, stepping on watertowers. But that's not the true heaven. The true heaven is the aligning of your Self with your true purpose, and that's timeless, and that's jumped the guardrail out of the world of struggle and bananas into something else entirely.

Anyway, they didn't teach any of this to me in college. I just went along on my way and collected bananas. And then I traded the promise of steady bananas and banana-insurance for an uncertain future of just about any crappy job that came my way. Silently, I had made the decision to merely support myself enough to allow me the timeless moments with my art.

Then through a series of coincidences I ended up being "talent scouted" and sent to a special academic program for "the nation's next leaders." Yes, I know: "ha ha fucking-ha." But a professor approached me in class and said I had rare talent, and that he was the head of a special program for gifted students. One student in every discipline would be chosen for this program, representing every different nationality. Stop me if you heard this one before.

The program was literally based on Classical concepts of learning-as-personal-enrichment. To place a vocational spin on any aspect of it was tantamount to smelly farting. We had special rooms within the college proper to operate, special times for class, special privileges. And: money!

I always had money thrown at me back then. I was given money and told: "go contemplate something profound." So I did. They didn't want me to waste my beautiful mind on the ugly world of working in retail, of numbers and products and spreadsheets. Because I was one of the nation's future leaders. As I wrote before: "ha ha fucking-ha." But you know, I appreciated it. The money bought me enough time to enter the Timeless. In fact, if I wanted, I could dwell in the Timeless – writing, drawing, reading, appreciating, viewing – as much as I goddamn wanted to.

This is the portion of the story where I mention that certain aspects of this special program were FUCKING WEIRD.

You just don't get something for nothing. Even in the case of benefactors, sponsors, patrons, etc. It's a trade-off. It's not purely philanthropy. It's still a business. And I can respect that. That makes sense to me, and I don't think it's evil in the least. I'm not looking for utopia.

But you know, the architects of the program I attended actually WERE looking for utopia. That was literally the entire focus of the first year there. Utopias. I mean, you hear these paranoid conspiracy-theorists talk about "New World Order," all this stuff. Crazy, right? But that was literally what we discussed. We were told that we were enlisted to help bring about a paradigm shift in each of our respective fields, culminating in a new social order. And I could now start talking about the funding of the program, and I'm sure the paranoids would have a fucking field day.

But I never really appreciated/was aware of that aspect at the time. Hell, I barely read the books on our syllabus. I wrote poetry most of the time. Sometimes I sketched trees. Sometimes I listened to Tracy Chapman in the lounge. That's about it.

Except –

***

OK, now here is the fucked-up part. I knew you were expecting a fucked-up part, that some talk about how I was forced to study Thomas Moore & Aldous Huxley just wasn't cutting it on the scale of fuckedupness.

Almost concurrently with my acceptance in this special program, I began to have really weird things happen to me. Weird, fucked-up, Jacob's Ladder Mothman Prophecies weird-ass fucked-up shit.

Now, even at my wildest as a teenager – bringe drinking, trying a little bit of pot, etc. – I have never experienced what I experienced starting that crazy Summer of 1994 when I first attended this program.

It started with really subtle cases of deja-vu/prophetic dreams. Really subtle, meaningless. The sort of things where you go: "huh." Like, I'd dream what my friend would be wearing the next day. Or, I'd dream I went to the ticket counter to buy a ticket from a certain person I've never seen before, and that person would be sitting there selling me that ticket the very next day. And I think all of us have had little stuff like that happen to us – it happens, and we just write it off as coincidence. No big deal.

Then I started having stuff that felt like going on LSD: out-of-body experiences, hyper-lucid dreams, prophetic dreams beyond the realm of coincidence, etc. Freaky freaky shit. Whitley Strieber-level shit. Jose Chung's From Outer Space-level shit.

Now, had I been the only person in my class experiencing such weirdness, that would be one thing. But a classmate was also noticing crazy shit happen to her. Hell, we even shared the same dream one night, ending up in the same dreamtime Chinese restaurant, looking at the same dreamtime spilled pork fried rice on the floor.

She was sure it was all CIA. She thought we were all a CIA experiment. She thought it was a set-up. She thought our food and drink had been laced with something.

I don't know if that conclusion has any validity to it whatsoever. Maybe all the funky stuff we discussed in class simply had a subconscious effect on our minds. Maybe it was electromagnetic waves accidentally hitting our school. Maybe we drank too much coffee (we sure as hell did, up to our fucking eyeballs with mocha-laced caffeine).

Whatever the case, I had produced massive quantities of writing and art at that time. Massive. I couldn't even sleep sometimes, wired, just typing away at my word processor. I would just take a whole legal pad and write one poem after another during class. Not like a normal way of writing, a consideration of words, any sort of structure. Just mountains of words and ideas pushing through my head, like shoving an apple through a pinhole. It was glorious. I was in the Timeless. I didn't care about selling my work, or publication, or anything. I was in the Zone. You don't need drugs to get that sort of high.

And maybe, when you get so far into the Zone, so far into the creativity, crazy shit and weird phenomena just sort of happen to you. Because you've opened yourself up so much. I mean, when you work your job and come home and draw or write – the job sort of acts like a buffer. It keeps you grounded. The "bananas," as I call them, are banal but they do nourish you. It's your one foot on the ground.

I think a problem artists have sometimes, though, is that these "Filler World" activities, the pursuit of the everloving banana-wage, can seduce you into giving up your Timeless pursuits. Suck the energy out of you. Convince you that your art is a pointless pursuit. And more than just pointless – it's a selfish pursuit. And immature. And Grant Morrison can do it 100x better than you, Jim Lee can do it 100x better than you, so why even fucking bother?

I know that special program in college was most likely training me to become "A Soulless Tool Of The Upper Illuminati (or is it "The Court Of Owls"?). But in the process, they afforded me the money and time and space to be truly creative. I mean, shit lot good it does me now, and true I might have been better off learning a skill like Accounting. But I will look back on those years with a great deal of fondness nevertheless. Because, in spite of everything: I was MYSELF. I was the purest, undistilled version of me.

Anyway, that program had me on the track for a Rhodes Scholarship, for a PhD at an Ivy League, maybe even a side job as some sort of Manchurian Candidate-cum-semiotician working for the spooks. Then I was offered a job editing some comics, and promptly pissed it all away. All that investment in me over the last several years: wasted.

Or was it?

***

Well, thanks for lending an ear to another installment of my crazy anecdotes and theories about the world. And Evil Illuminati Masonic Merovingian Overlords, if you are reading this: I can always use more money. As Sally Brown might say, you can give it to me in tens and twenties.

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J.R.'s Zombieland: One Nation Under Twinkies

The "Thanksgiving Season" started with the "threat" of "All American" products such as Twinkies and Wonder Bread being taken away from our gaping maws forever:

...the media Narrative blames it on the unions:

Let's ignore the obvious here: that Twinkies, Wonder Bread, and the other Hostess brethren were probably not the best food to address our nation's health problems.

It is most important to note at this time that according to the Narrative, Hostess products = "Traditional American Values". Twinkie The Kid is a cowboy, most of their products incorporate red, white and blue colors, and of course, there's the Nostalgia Factor:

So in the Narrative, anybody who would stand in the way of Hostess bread and pastries production is therefore "anti-American"...and, in a way, anti-childhood:

Now we have the unions and consumer groups protesting against "Black Friday," and its relatively new sister "Gray Thursday" (the latter forcing people to work on Thanksgiving instead of spending it with their families):

...but that doesn't stop the literal mobs of shoppers:

What can be more all-American than shopping on Black Friday? If the unions and others are opposed to that, they must be "Commies," right? Thank god Thor Chris Hemsworth and his pals are gonna save us from the Commies in the box office in "Red Dawn":

As an added sync, the "South Park" Thanksgiving episode this year was a parody of "Thor":

At stake during this episode? A shortage of turkey stuffing. Which is almost as bad as a shortage of Twinkies.

While the sight of copious hordes of shoppers beating each other up on Black Friday reassures us that everything is okay (yeah, it sorta looks like those hordes beating each other up for gas in the Northeast only a few weeks ago, but this one's cool), we are reminded as a nation to stay on the alert: sites like Drudge, Fox News and others warn us that there is not only a War on Christmas, but a new War on Thanksgiving.

And let's face it -- there's just a big war on everything that makes America, America, right? The war on Twinkies, the war on forcing minimum wagers to work on Thanksgiving, Paul McCartney's war on the poultry industry by asking Americans not to eat turkeys -- not to mention the entire Twilight Of The Action Movie Gods that we've addressed in an earlier post (hitting Ragnarok proportions since we last visited it).

And then finally -- the most ominous omen of all:

That's right: J.R. Ewing himself, the arrogant, no-apologies lovable sociopath capitalist icon of the 1980s, has passed away (with all due respect to actor Larry Hagman, who died in, of all places: Dallas, Texas; Texas, as we all know, has seceded from the United States in the comic books). In other words: we've lost Twinkies, we lost J.R. -- the "American Dream" as we know it is over. Certainly, Drudge understands the significance of the event in the Narrative. It is truly "The End."

Is it a coincidence that in the post-apocalyptic movie "Zombieland," cowboy-hatted "Tallahassee" seeks the ultimate form of sustenance and symbol of a civilized, pre-undead America -- the Twinkie:

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"Nothing's Going To Change My World"

Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
---"Across the Universe", The Beatles

About a year ago I heard a pretty shocking thing about a very important event from a person who was uniquely in a position to know. I told my then-boyfriend about what I had heard. He said he believed it, but he'd rather not know. He said it was distasteful to even know. That it was wrong to know or talk about or speculate on. He said there are truths in this world that are by their very definition "bad" to know.

And he didn't say this in an ironic way, like he was criticizing the prevailing belief system. No, what he was saying was that he completely and consciously bought into that belief system, and HE DID NOT WANT TO KNOW ANYTHING DIFFERENT, fingers in his ears, "nahnahnahnah, I can't hear you, nahnahnahnah..."

These things are "bad" to know  because they so shake our little hermetically-sealed universes, challenge our belief systems, make us feel patently uncomfortable. They are threats to our identity, our perceived place in the world. They shake Ego. And so the Earth stays flat, and baby Jesus is born on Dec. 25 in that manger, and everything we read in the history books is true. And our bodies are nothing more than meaningless organic machines born of absurdity, or better yet, the property of Jehovah.

A friend of mine always described this mentality as "warm blanket." Nothing beats being wrapped in a soft, warm blanket. Ask Linus.

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Reptilians, Skrulls, Chitauri, Oh My!

In hardcore conspiracy theorist circles, one of the most prevailing and popular theories is that of the "Reptilians."

In brief, the theory goes that there are reptile-like "shape-shifters" who have infiltrated our society. The origin of these green shape-shifters depends on who's telling the tale. Some say that they are fairly recent visitors from another planet, others claim that they are indigenous to Earth and evolved from dinosaurs parallel to human development. But a key part of most of these theories circles around the creatures' ability to take the form of other humans.

Reptilian

According to popular conspiracy theorist/new age dude David Icke, the Reptilians have committed their deception at the highest levels of government and high society. From the Wikipedia entry on Icke:

"In 1999, he published The Biggest Secret, in which he wrote that the Illuminati are a race of reptilian humanoids known as the Babylonian Brotherhood, and that many prominent figures are reptilian, including George W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, Kris Kristofferson, and Boxcar Willie.^"

The idea of the "Illuminati" is another quite popular both with Icke and conspiracy circles in general. It is also the name of the comic that more or less "officially" kicked off Marvel's "Secret Invasion" series of books, a series that concerned a shape-shifting alien race called "Skrulls" who had infiltrated the Earth ages ago, impersonating human beings.

Skrull

It would seem that the Reptilian theory is quite similar to the crux of the "Secret Invasion" plot -- that green shape-shifters from another planet have taken the guise of prominent world figures and plan to take humanity over from within.

Now, the Skrulls, as far as I know, were invented in the early 1960s by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. They predated the Reptilian theory by several decades. It might even be possible that the champions of the theory have simply been influenced by the comics of their youth but don't consciously remember it.



None of this is to say that the "Secret Invasion" plot was ripped off of a popular conspiracy theory (though if he did, it would be nothing to be ashamed about -- Grant Morrison has been doing the very same thing for years). The archetype of the green invader from another planet, the reptile-appearing alien, and the extraterrestrial shape-shifter covertly disguised as human has been with us for some time. In the end, unless you are a talented folklorist, it might be impossible to tease out where these ideas all started.

For example, regard the 1980s ABC miniseries "V," in which Reptilians in human "skin" set out to enslave humanity:



Now flashforward to another ABC show this Fall, the sitcom "The Neighbors." It also features Reptilian-looking aliens who masquerade as humans, the Zabvronians:

Only this time around, they are portrayed truly as our "friends":

 
A final point that brings this discussion all the way back to David Icke. In the "Avengers" movie, the Skrulls were replaced with their "analogues" if you will, the Chitauri:

 

In Marvel's alternate Earth "Ultimate" line of comics, the Chitauri are a version of the Skrulls, and are shapeshifters:

But I have heard of the Chitauri way before I read either the "Ultimate" comics (first published in 2002) or watched "The Avengers." And that's because I viewed the series of interviews David Icke had with Zulu Shaman Credo Mutwa, released on a videotape/DVD called "The Reptilian Agenda" in 1999.

Here is Mutwa's illustration of the alien race called the Chitauri, his knowledge of which he claimed to have received through his ancestors:

 ...and that's where I'll end this post.

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"All These Worlds Are Yours Except Europa": A Look Back At "2010"

Editor's note: Here's another one I wrote back in -- you guessed it -- 2010. Though, as I point out, it was a rather inferior movie to "2001," there were many interesting bits to it that referenced myth, astronomy, and, of course, pop-culture syncs. This is going to need a 2012 follow-up on many of the points raised here, I think.

"2010" – the sequel to the classic Stanley Kubrick film "2001" – is a long boring movie. I'm not saying it's a bad movie. But it's like if you took the snail's pace of the Kubrick film but minus Kubrick's genius. Nevertheless, it contains quite a number of interesting ideas, such as "The Alien Savior Theory," "The Two Suns" theory, and a very deep connnection to "Star Trek III."
Spoilers!


The movie starts with a long boring talk between Dr. Floyd (played by Roy Scheider) and some Russian scientist. The gist is, the Russians want to find the ship that disappeared in "2001," and reactivate HAL. The ship/HAL is moored somewhere around Jupiter. The Russian scientist blames America for not sharing the Monolith with the rest of the world. Scheider's taut facial skin grimaces in sympathy.

Roy Scheider maintains this expression through the entire movie.

The film was made in 1984, so you can expect a fair amount of Cold War tension in "2010"; remember, this is the year "Red Dawn" came out. In fact, the film seems to be way more concerned with American/Russian relations than the Monolith, HAL, Dave Bowman, or space exploration. Throughout the film, you can almost hear Sting sing "Russians."

Can you guess who the "world leaders" are on this magazine cover?

Meanwhile, the scientist who created HAL, Dr. Chandra, talks to his new computer, SAL, about bringing HAL back. SAL is voiced by Candice Bergen (sort of doing her version of Charlie McCarthy) and seems to share HAL's passive-aggressive tendencies. Bob Balaban plays Dr. Chandra as a small nervous quiet man who successfully contains a great deal of unexpressed inner rage, which is a real stretch for him.

Now Dr. Floyd, Dr. Chandra, and a very low-key but still quite neurotic John Lithgow join a Russian team of scientists on a mission to Jupiter. The leader of the Russian mission is played by Helen Mirren, back when she was young and not an unusually sexy 60-year-old. The Russians don't trust the Americans and act robotic. It's up to the plucky Americans to get the Russians to smile.

Will Helen Mirren smile? Stay tuned!

At this point of the film, you might be wondering where the hell is HAL, Dave Bowman, the Monolith, the apes with their tools, the Starchild, and everything else. Instead, we are treated to verrrrry slow scenes onboard the ship going over procedure or the whole Americans trying to make the Russians smile thing. In one scene, you actually root for Lithgow's character to die, just for something exciting to happen.

Zzzzzz...

But lo! Dave Bowman mysteriously appears on his former wife's TV screen and brushes his mother's hair as a ghost. He talks of an exciting new thing happening that will change the world forever. Then: back to more space ship procedure and making the Russians smile. Mirren's character finally smiles. Yay.


Suddenly, Russia and America are at war. Dr. Floyd's team is recalled from the Russian ship. Then Dr. Floyd is contacted by the mysterious Dave Bowman via the reactivated HAL. We discover that the real reason HAL went crazy in the first movie is Because It's All The American Government's Fault. Bowman's appearance is the best scene in the entire film, because you are so lulled into a semi-comatose state by this point that seeing Bowman as The Old Guy and The Really Old Guy and the Starchild really wakes you up. Dr Floyd is told by Bowman to clear out in two days, because something really awesome is going to happen.

A whole bunch of Monoliths fly to Jupiter and the planet starts to eat itself. The Russian spaceship hightails it out of there, and HAL tragically sacrifices himself to save everyone. Jupiter turns into a small sun. A message beams out to all the people of Earth:

"ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE."

Jupiter's moon Europa, meanwhile, is benefiting from the new heat source and is seen rapidly developing a lush rainforest-like landscape.

Now Earth has two suns, and its inhabitants are joined together in peace. The Russians have learned how to smile. The End.

Some points to absorb that might or might not have relevance:

The Aliens are here to bring about a New Age of peace...right?

1. The film features the classic "Alien Saviors" plotline. Aliens contact earth and offer world peace. Sometimes they engineer some sort of "crisis" or grand event to get our attention and realize that we are all citizens on planet earth. Right before I watched "2010," I viewed the old "To Serve Man" episode of "Twilight Zone." Similar plot, very different outcome. Are the aliens here to truly offer world peace and facilitate our evolution, or do they in the end want to simply eat us? Many science-fiction films struggle with this question.

There are many similarities between "2010" and "Star Trek III"

2. Europa turns into some sort of "Genesis" planet, a new Eden: much like the "Genesis" planet featured in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock" the same year. In both films, the war/tension between two groups/cultures (Russian/American, Klingon/Federation) is a main theme. In both films, there is a central iconic character who seemingly died in the previous movie but might be resurrected (Dave Bowman/Spock). Both films feature a New Eden planet artificially created to jumpstart life (Europa/Genesis). Both films feature the destruction of the famous ship from the previous/initial film (Discovery/Enterprise) – this destruction proceeds despite/to spite government officials back home. Lastly, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was very influenced by the work of "2001"/"2010" novel scribe Arthur C. Clarke.

3. The theme of "two suns" is also featured in "Star Wars" (the two suns of Tattoine).

"Star Wars"

"2010"

4. To relate some of these themes with "real life":

• The names of both the "2001"/"2010" ships (Discovery) and Star Trek's ship (Enterprise) were used as that of actual space shuttles. The Space Shuttle Discovery was launched the same year "2010" was released (1984).
• Scientists believe that with the oxygen in its atmosphere and likely underground cache of liquid water, Europa is a very good candidate for containing/sustaining extraterrestrial life.
• Scientists say that other Earth-like planets with two suns are likely.
• There are many conspiracy theories surrounding the emergence of a second sun in our solar system, 2012, "The End of the World," Jupiter igniting and turning into a sun, the Mayans, the aliens, kitchen sink, etc. It would take more research on my end to determine whether those theories are directly/indirectly inspired by the movie "2010," have pre-existed "2010," or whether there are common streams that both the conspiracy theorists and Arthur C. Clarke have been influenced by.
• There are also conspiracy theories floating around that this year (2010) will be the one where we are officially told that alien contact has been made with Earth ("disclosure"). This theory is linked with the movie's tagline "The Year We Make Contact."

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