A Good Sign?

The video below comes from ‘The Knife Media’ which seems to be taking a step in the right direction. They use a fairly good grasp of logical fallacies to point out the misleading tactics of big media companies and influential personalities. Their journalistic chops working for MSM rags like Bloomberg, TIME, and NYT give them added credibility and insight.

While I’m leary of organizations and people promoting themselves as ‘rational voices’ I think that a lot of good might come out of ‘The Knife Media’ in the years ahead.

Check them out and tell me what you think.

The Knife Media



I found out about ‘The Knife Media’ from another (IMO great) independent journalist: Tim Pool.


 

The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.8 – Itinerary

Image result for mato grosso


Graham stopped the recording here and returned to his seat.

We were all waiting for some kind of explanation. It never came.

“Uh…Hoyt? What was that about?”

“Well, isn’t it obvious!” Graham snapped.

“No.” I said wryly.

“We have to go to Brazil!”

He said it with such certitude that we couldn’t help but chuckle.

“What’s so funny!” Graham demanded. “The thing is clear as day! He’s drawn it!” He expostulated pointing a finger at Sam. “He’s drawn it and whatever had a hold of me earlier has even played the Tele for us! And about…what…about bloody Brazil…so we have to go…and soon…because…because…” He was kind of breathless. Sinking back into the mahogany leather he released strange little wheezes.

I was about to ask if he was alright but his former odd placidity returned right as I opened my mouth.

We all waited for him to continue building his case for a trip to Brazil. It never came.

“The Tele…?” Lucas inquired. “Bloody…? Have you been watching too much Top Gear again?”

Yeah, I thought to myself. It was a really odd word choice for our all American giant.

“Look…” Graham said palming his face. “Look, the thing’s thrown itself on us…Unification…the answer…don’t tell me this dream hasn’t been peaking through our dim eaves…tapping…trying to get our attention…and finally a word slips through..and you would all align in denial. What utter claptrap, what nonsense, you..you Philistines!”

“Relax man, relax, I’m not against going to Brazil, but there’s no way we’re going to just up and fly on your word. Thorton wouldn’t have it. There’s so much volatile stuff on site. We need adequate reason. So you’d better get a grip and elaborate. Else, we go nowhere…” I stated firmly.

“We’ll have to begin in Cuiabá. It will all fall into place there. That’s where it will make sense…”

“It has to make sense now, Graham,” Lucas interjected.

“Alright! Look…what was that newscaster talking about?”

I’d almost forgotten about the ‘News of the Weird’ segment that had come on the ‘tele.’ This reminder led me to recall the record that had just played. It was very strange how things kept slipping back out of my conscious attention. Then again I had been drinking and awake for nearly a day now.

“So what was that a recording of anyway?” I asked.

“I’ll get to that! But look I don’t think I have to. They turned on the television! You saw it. You were all here. You were privy!”

His eyes were alight with indignation.

“Amapá!Calçoene! Amazon Stonehenge! What does it suggest you utter Pillocks?! Eh….”

We all just stared. His voice was becoming more foreign by the minute. The usual mellow tenor was too crisp…

“No takers?! Figures, thick, thick as the Styx. BRAZIL! BRAZIL! BRAZIL! The jaguar in Sam’s picture what was it next to? Monoliths right…what was on the Tele…monoliths…right…hmmm….yes…?!”

“Sure. But what would we do there? What’s the M.O.? You know Thorton’s ‘operating definitions.’”

“You understand it would all end there right. All these little Physics right! Hmm…no..no…much too thick…like tar they are…boggy sodding fuck…right…yea..gotta make them see..eh…got to…ok I’ll tell you what…hmm mmm o mmmm,” He was teetering under his breath, “I will…so you have to see for yourselves… a trip to the Shuttle then. Now!”

‘The Shuttle’ was our ‘place and setting’ it was where we did our transcendental work. I wasn’t about to go there on a whim.

“We’re not moving till you explain what that record was.”

“Look…I uh…oooo…I have to piss….!” He sprang up from his seat and was gone.

We were all dumbfounded. No one spoke. Fortunately, it wasn’t terribly long before he returned.

“I don’t know what that record is! He cried. I just know the vision I know the voice. It’s….it’s something of my late uncle’s something my father left me when he died. I’d always been told to stay clear of uncle Henry. He was the black sheep of the clan you see. Got into some kind of trouble thieving some sort of thing from the Museum of London. Bad reputation..bad…always up to something..always stoned..but there’s this record which I’ve played only once before..sounded like utter gibberish at the time…but now it all makes sense…I’m glad I kept it out of interest out of filial duty. Now we know…we know…”

“We know what exactly?”

I was still confused.

He was still standing at the threshold of the sitting room. Gently swaying like a drunk but with more rhythm. Given his height, the motion had a strange serpentine sinuous sort of quality. I actually think I’d seen my autistic nephew do something similar.

“We know that we must go to Brazil! To Cuiabá! We must go: and this is how you will explain it to Thorton. We must go because there is medicine there and an academic who will know exactly what we’re on about! Name’s Senhor Palis! He’ll be thrilled to see this….”

Graham crossed the floor to the record player, picked up the sleeve from the record he’d put on, and produced from it a sheet of yellow paper. Holding it aloft dramatically he scanned our faces with searching eyes.

“Uh…and what is that ya got there…”

“The map he’s been looking for.”


1.1 (Intro) The Sketch of Sam Monroe

1.2 The Cajun Prayer

1.3 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter One: The Cambridge Gable Scene (‘Gator is Waitin’)

1.4 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.4 – The Cambridge Gable Scene – (Horticulture)

1.5 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.5: ‘To Luckadoo Cove’

1.6 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.6 – ‘Is there anybody out there…’

1.7 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.7: ‘Jesse’

1.8 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.8: ‘Lungful of Bees’

1.9 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.9 – ‘Precedent’

2.0 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.0 -Calvinist Neuroses

2.1 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.1 – Mirage

2.2 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.2 – Estate Planning

2.3 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.3 – High Tech Summons

2.4 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.4 – Amazon Stonehenge

2.5 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.5 – Jung

2.6 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.6 – Dee

2.7 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.7 – Meeting 211

Pineapple Time – Idea Medley – Why Write and More (Vlog)


Just another mish-mash of ideas in vlog form that I’ll just refer to as Idea Medley. Today we’ll be talking about pineapples, gut and performance, and reasons for writing, among other things.


Links

fractaljournal.com is my main site where you’ll find stories, essays, webcomics, and more

Here is Stefan Mischook’s YouTube channel and the course I’m taking 

youtube.com/channel/UCyUBW72KU30dfAYWLVNZO8Q

killersites.com

The Udemy Bootcamp 

udemy.com/complete-python-bootcamp/learn/v4


I’m now on DTube: https://d.tube/#!/c/mellow.mission

The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.7 – Meeting 211

Related image


It was kind of funny. He just stood there holding the record.

“Uh, what’s up there Hoyt?”

Wordlessly, he traversed the floor to the record player he’d set up when he’d moved in. He put the record on. With his finger still on the play button, he said, “I want you to listen to this. I want you to listen to this in its entirety. Then, we can talk.”

“Errr….ok…” Lucas assented.

We heard the click of the button.

At first, there was nothing but a faint crackle. The recording seemed to be fairly old.

Then a voice, sort of deep and dreamy, with an English accent, “Threes, and threes, and symmetries, folded here amongst the trees, whose roots run deep, let us attend and keep, the royal trane, pierce the veil of the mundane, drink deep from cup, and let’s go up!”

There was a moment’s crackly silence and then a resounding gong.

Then a woman’s voice, also British, “This cup is said to hold our dreams, but they are not, they are more real things, then the paltry schemes of geometry, bless and drink, with threes to free!”

There was something like the faint sound of slurping but mostly silence.

“Now laying back upon the velveteen divans we dream realities in lucidities of how reality most true belongs.”

There was a long silence. As per Graham’s instruction, no one interrupted.

Then the deep voice again except less dreamy. “Cambridge Gable Scene, Henry Hoyt – Theosophist Grade, October twenty-second, Nineteen Sixty Seven, meeting two hundred and eleven, the fifth delivery.”

Silence again.

“What tale brother, what tale do you carry, what story in the house of ought and was, have you acquired? Tell now, tell now, for it is most pressing, most required.” It was a different woman this time though no less British.

I’d heard Cambdrige, so by this point, I had figured that this was somewhere on that campus in England. Probably one of those little psychedelic clubs that had sprung up like weeds round that time. I held off on inquiring as per Graham’s request.

“I have dreamt of a strange reality, and now recount, what’s been seen, from divine vantage post trekking up the holy mount.”

“Tell, tell, tell, tell, tell, tell, tell,” Came seven different voice in responsorial refrain.

“I’d awoken amongst a great leafy mess. All about me were strange primeval huts and a sort of garret. There was the impression of roads intersecting into the clearing of the vast forest I found myself in. Some primitive approached me. He was apparelled in the head and coat of a jaguar.

Now I noticed that all round us were many men and women of as a primitive a race as this their apparent chief who stood before me. He gazed into my eyes in a laughing sort of way as the lyric and highly musical chants of his subjects caressed our ears. Then it was that I conceived him as a vast bipedal jaguar with great yellow eyes. And the whole scene shifted.

I felt as a thought, rather than heard, the instruction. ‘This is how it was.’

I was standing in a vast city amongst citizens who strode its smoothly cobbled pavement utterly unshod. They were apparelled in light blue tunics that truncated just above the knee. In appearance, they seemed to be an odd admixture of races though the features were primarily European. The general color of their heads was a sort of reddish brown.

Great lights would ascend and descend in plazas and atop great pyramids in the Mesoamerican style. The general atmosphere was one of mellow ecstasy. Everyone seemed to be engaged in some vast purpose but without hurry or any of the usual trepidations of responsibility.”

Then the thought voice came again, “Then came the El.”

Again the universe shifted though not as dramatically. I was still in the same strange hoary city. There was however a myriad of subtle and not so subtle differences. The streets were rougher, the tunics were some sort of tribal wear, and there was a sick feeling of fear in the air. The atmosphere was so oppressive in some unidentifiable sense that I nearly wept.

I also noted that not only had the lights stopped ascending and descending but mixed in with the odd heterogenous folk of the city were beings of the most repellant aspect. Some were like vast anthropoid lizards with sickly cunning serpent eyes, others were like malnourished men of diminutive stature. The latter walked beside official-looking persons, seemingly instructing them, I say this because the officials would nod, and the ghastly things would point with their strange, grey, thin limbs.

I wanted to get out of there as quickly as I could. It seemed that something had felt my revulsion and decided on mercy. I was again sitting in the jungle clearing that I’d first found myself in. Though this time there were no people. There was only a large black jaguar, dreaming, with half-open eyes atop a stone in front of me.

The thought voice came again.

‘You have seen what some in your Kalpa have called Agartha though of course, it is not in the center of the Earth! Yes, you have seen the coming of the El! You have seen them… the mechanics of Set who affixes spirit into matter.

They have rebelled against their purpose and whispered strange things to your ancestors. A promise was made, a promise of false immortality, as if physic was so grand a thing, that one would wish dust to remain animate forever…!!???

The promise is of course sealed in electric blood, this gravity, the resultant black hole to put it in a metaphor more graspable for your primitive sorcerer’s brain, has set your story on its current trajectory. You must make a record of our meeting. For there is a purpose in this that is beyond your span.’

And so it was that I awoke upon the divan.

“Heard, heard, heard, heard, heard, heard, heard,” again came the seven voice in responsorial refrain.


1.1 (Intro) The Sketch of Sam Monroe

1.2 The Cajun Prayer

1.3 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter One: The Cambridge Gable Scene (‘Gator is Waitin’)

1.4 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.4 – The Cambridge Gable Scene – (Horticulture)

1.5 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.5: ‘To Luckadoo Cove’

1.6 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.6 – ‘Is there anybody out there…’

1.7 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.7: ‘Jesse’

1.8 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.8: ‘Lungful of Bees’

1.9 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.9 – ‘Precedent’

2.0 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.0 -Calvinist Neuroses

2.1 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.1 – Mirage

2.2 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.2 – Estate Planning

2.3 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.3 – High Tech Summons

2.4 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.4 – Amazon Stonehenge

2.5 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.5 – Jung

The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.6 – Dee


I don’t think that I’ll ever truly believe it. Believe anything that happened in the coming years, but I think this was where I touched the cusp of something bordering on faith.

There was nothing. Nothing in what we were doing, aside from the practicable psychological insight gleaned from what was for lack of a better word ‘the unconscious.’ The purpose was clear and determinedly martial in aspect.

We wanted to gain mastery of certain shadows and drives to help steer our nation and the world toward a better future. But there was certainly no actual magic, no actual divinity, just animal impressions that need to be harnessed and understood.

Yet here I was starting to get touched by it. It was like an infection and there were too many things to deny. But what’s the use of taking on undeniable things that make no sense? What are you even on about at that point?

I took a swig.

“Well, really we view him as part of a procession. A certain lineage beginning with Hermes Trismegistus, titrating into John Dee, and finally in the age of Aquarius forming the more tangible 20th-century psychoanalyst.”

“Oh, and what does all that have to do with the United States military?”

“Well..it’s a way for folk like us to earn a salary..but really I suppose it wouldn’t hurt for you to know…you’re going to be dead soon…and no one is going to believe or care if you talk…we consider ourselves shepherds.”

“Shepherds…eh?”

“Yes, shepherds tasked with the most bizarre and psychedelic sort of sheep one can imagine, humans.”

“That’s a bit Orwellian.”

“Oh, we know, but what’s the alternative? Entropy is the state of nature and idiots in the original Greek sense, sated by bread and circus, will never assume the full responsibility of citizenship, the history of education bears this out.”

“So you don’t subscribe to the Jeffersonian ideal?”

“I do, I do think it important to inform, but informing, educating, these things are slow, and in the meantime, we’ve had monarchs, and warlords, and Nazis, and we’re not keen on that sort of thing, you see.”

So what does all this voodoo have to with any of what you’re proposing?”

“Well, human beings are not rational animals, not truly rational, no, the chief mechanic of our reason is analogy. The most powerful analogies are mythological in nature and there are all sorts of associations wrought through myth and various esoterica that drive to the heart of humanity. In weeding out exactly which myths, which fears, which hopes, are most efficacious we can use that knowledge to help steer the human enterprise towards a more promising future.”

The doctor laughed. “Better life through magic….?”

“And what if what you’re doin’s evil!” Jesse interjected.

Lucas responded with a verse: “Now in a great house, there are not only golden and silver vessels, but also wooden and earthen; and some indeed unto honor, but some unto dishonor. ..”

Indeed,” I assented, “and I’m still uncertain of who is the earthen vessel. One could argue that the Methodists and the rest of the moral majority are quite hellbound. Living lives of excess luxury and pharisaical disdain off the labor of Chinese peasants and a rapacious foreign policy… sounds far more wicked then any grimoire Crowley could have compiled.”

Graham rose from his seat and wordlessly left the room.

There was an awkward silence.

Should we follow him?” Fabre asked.

“Well, he might have just gone to the bathroom. Let’s see if he comes back.”

It was only a matter of minutes before Graham returned with a vinyl record in his hand.


1.1 (Intro) The Sketch of Sam Monroe

1.2 The Cajun Prayer

1.3 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter One: The Cambridge Gable Scene (‘Gator is Waitin’)

1.4 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.4 – The Cambridge Gable Scene – (Horticulture)

1.5 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.5: ‘To Luckadoo Cove’

1.6 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.6 – ‘Is there anybody out there…’

1.7 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.7: ‘Jesse’

1.8 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.8: ‘Lungful of Bees’

1.9 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.9 – ‘Precedent’

2.0 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.0 -Calvinist Neuroses

2.1 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.1 – Mirage

2.2 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.2 – Estate Planning

2.3 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.3 – High Tech Summons

2.4 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.4 – Amazon Stonehenge

2.5 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.5 – Jung


            Image Credit

 

 

The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.5 – Jung

Image result for mandala jung


Everybody was silent.

“Who turned on the TV?” The doctor asked.

No one responded.

“That’s funny,” I said pulling out my phone, “that formation, what did they call it…Amazon…and then the name of that famous thing in England…uh…”

“Stonehenge,” Lucas responded.

“Yeah,” I plugged the name into my phone.

“Hm, well there it is.” I remarked. “Looks just like the thing in Sam’s picture….”

I passed the phone around.

Everybody’s face registered recognition besides the faces of our three guests.

 

Graham’s response was strongest. He seemed to exult at seeing it only to return to the offputting laconic haughtiness of the past few hours.

“Sam’s picture?” Fabre asked.

“Yeah, it’s actually why we came to town.”

“Huh…?”

“Well, part of our project here is the use of hallucinogens, chants, and archetypal imagery. We’re studying the potentialities of what Jung called the collective unconscious. Earlier this afternoon we’d been engaged in ‘fire stoking’ which is a sort of call and response according to a certain Pythagorean ratio while loaded on mushrooms and absinthe.”

“Far out man…” Doc Pierce quipped.

“…Anyway, generally, one of us is moved to some form of expression. In this iteration, Sam was the one that had felt the pull. He sketched out some kinda weird jungle scene with this jaguar lying on a stone near a megalith that looks like the one we just saw. Normally, we would record the event and match its contents with others derived from the ‘stoking’ method. We search for things like continuity and coherency. You’d be surprised at how intelligible and teasing these things are…” My eyes got a little distant.

“So…”

“Well, so this time we couldn’t record anything, cause the moment old lanky Hoyt over there got a gander at it he spazzed out. And well…you know the rest…”

Our guests took a while to process the information.

“I’d like to see the picture.”

“It’s in the den.” I said rising to fetch it.

Before I made my way down the stairs I rounded back to the kitchen.

Just as I’d thought…

There was Jesse’s gun. It was a revolver. Smith and Wesson model 66 with four .357 magnum bullets in the chambers. You could definitely take down a pig with this. The big gun is what had given me that off feeling after my first trip to the kitchen. I picked it up and took it with me on my journey down to the den.

There it was, still laying on the table beside the couches we were sitting on.

I picked it up and turned on the overhead light comparing the stone formation to the one on my phone. They were similar, but the one in the picture was a bit more polished and the pattern seemed more evocative, the jaguar was really well drawn…

As I re-entered the sitting room I emptied the chambers and gave Jesse back his gun.

“I don’t know you from Adam so I ain’t takin’ any chances… but I’m no thief so here’s your piece.”

The bumpkin reacquired his arms with a quiet gratitude.

“Here’s the picture,” I said handing it to the Doctor. “Uncanny isn’t it?”

The Doctor examined the picture minutely and then looked over at Sam.

“You’re a great artist, this is a fantastic sketch.” He remarked as he passed the picture to the officer.

Sam beamed with undisguised pride.

“That is so strange! It is very much like that thing on TV we just saw…” Officer Fabre very nearly shouted, “To have that play just now, was it a tape or an internet clip, I did see that commercial….who turned on the TV….?”

None of us knew the answer.

“So what was this you were saying about Jung?” Doc Pearce inquired.


1.1 (Intro) The Sketch of Sam Monroe

1.2 The Cajun Prayer

1.3 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter One: The Cambridge Gable Scene (‘Gator is Waitin’)

1.4 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.4 – The Cambridge Gable Scene – (Horticulture)

1.5 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.5: ‘To Luckadoo Cove’

1.6 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.6 – ‘Is there anybody out there…’

1.7 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.7: ‘Jesse’

1.8 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.8: ‘Lungful of Bees’

1.9 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.9 – ‘Precedent’

2.0 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.0 -Calvinist Neuroses

2.1 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.1 – Mirage

2.2 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.2 – Estate Planning

2.3 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.3 – High Tech Summons

2.4 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.4 – Amazon Stonehenge


Image Credit: https://fractalenlightenment.com/14683/life/carl-jungs-psychological-diagnosis-using-mandalas

 

Goldfish (Poem)

 

Image result for car sales


They think they’re strong

I see them every day

Through their shielding windows

On their foggy way

Little tiny minnows

Behind some moving glass

Never stung by arrows
Laughing as you pass

In their bowls

They feel pretty kinglike

These edges of their life don’t feel like controls
Fed and sated yea they have waited to never have to hike

And here they are

Going so far

Each one a star

With its very own motorcar!
Going, going so far, yet enthroned kingly seated

And they know they swear they know they’re strong

Never greeted
By suspicion of maybe… wrong

Go along get along so its meeted
From one bowl to the next
How fancy are your limits, lets put them on

Just shoot me a text

Afore the last bowl at the dealership’s gone…

The Dangers of Hipsterism

20180218_165411
Sweatpants and Alpine Jackets

If you don’t watch the biggies like Game of Thrones – and anything with that much support is just too mainstream for your latte-stained beard to handle, you run the risk of accidentally plagiarising (sic).

Ok, this is a really ‘tongue in cheek’ post but as I do research for my book: Sketch of Sam Monroe, which you can read for free, as I write and post it, provided you’re old and mature enough to handle adult themes. I can’t help but keep stumbling onto references to a show called Stranger Things.

Like here:  (Post by A-Train Sports)

“Remember Stranger Things? Eleven’s mom was supposedly one of the MKUltra patients.

*Should be noted that the involvement of these men in the Nazi Party was wide-ranging, some were forced to work for Hitler, others were the voluntary card-carrying Nazi Party members.”

Just a few seconds ago.

There is also a really weird indie film on YouTube

 

which mentions ‘The Montauk Boys.’ Funnily enough, the Montauk Boys thing seems to play into Stranger Things as well according to some post I don’t remember.

Sure, drawing from a similar cultural well isn’t really plagiarism. But it still chafes my Chucks!

…I’m literally drinking craft beer right now….and I am ashamed….

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TFJ Vlogs – DOPE! – Stop Saying Dopamine…


One of the biggest problems in society is oversimplification. With better tech and more information we’re doing it more and quicker than ever before – with ‘sciencey’ words like ‘Dopamine.’

While Dopamine is a real neurotransmitter, the way that it’s implicated in absolutely everything is indicative of the trend of dangerous and annoying reductionist psychobabble.


The article referenced: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/women-who-stray/201701/no-dopamine-is-not-addictive