Frank Zappa Lives! (And so does Frodo...)

Frank Zappa ponders the future, in 1976.


But now let's hear what he was pondering...



Inca Roads


And


City of Tiny Lights



News of the the Project/Object Tour has recently prompted some enthusiasts to proclaim


"Frank Zappa Lives!"

The slogan "Frodo Lives!" has been appearing on subway walls since the '60's. So Frank Zappa lives, does he? I think Frank resides in much the same place, not the subway, but in the hearts and minds of people who either remember a time when we thought, just wait, as soon as our generation comes into its own the war pigs will finally be sent packing. Everything will be legal, everyone will be cool (in the old meaning of the word, as in not hassling other people, appreciative of interesting, enlightening ideals, etc.) Who would have guessed, back in, say 1976, that things would actually get worse? That we would look back on those days, when we did our thing with only a nominal degree of having to avoid the authorities, as a kind of golden age?





That the goddamned Young Republicans we used to laugh at would grow up to plant bombs in tall buildings, wrap themselves in the flag, and announce the dawn of the Fourth Reich/Crusade?






(Reichssicherheitsamt, the office of the Gestapo, translates neatly to Homeland Security.)

"There's no question in my mind -- the beer, the balloons and the bunting all start with 'B' for some cosmic reason."
(Words that start with B and remind Frank Zappa of the Republican party.)

As usual, Frank was way ahead of his time--he only left out "bombs" from his list of Republican B-words (okay, maybe bastards and...okay, I'll stop...)

Not sharing Frank's vision and foresight, the apparent abysmal failure of our most certain certainties in 1976 still seem as inconceivable to me now as it was then, if only because what Jim Morrison said was true then and must still be true now:

The old get old And the young get stronger
May take a week
And it may take longer
They got the guns
But we got the numbers
Gonna win, yeah
We're takin' over
Come on!

But then, and I had forgotten this, after the interlude of the chorus in the song (and 30-40 years in our lives) Jim comes back in, and the revolution has not yet taken place and we are old:

Your ballroom days are over, baby
Night is drawing near
Shadows of the evening crawl across the years
Ya walk across the floor with a flower in your hand
Trying to tell me no one understands
Trade in your hours for a handful dimes
Gonna' make it, baby, in our prime

And it still hasn’t taken place when our “ballroom days are over”! But then, when all hope has faded (and remember, Frodo was in this position, too) the long-awaited but no longer believed-in blessed event does occur after all:

Come together one more time
Get together one more time (music rises, we do take over after all)

Now did you notice the pattern that emerges in Morrison’s liberation rant? We start out thinking we’re going to change all the bullshit we see growing up—Watergate can’t happen again because there are no more Tricky Dicks…except the next dicks are even trickier and we’re left in our hippie hobbit holes wondering what the fuck happened. But then, many more years later, when we’re trying to explain our hopes and dreams to our kids, who at first glance seem somehow different from us, the things we’re saying unexpectedly start to resonate and, Christ, maybe it’ll happen after all.

There is an actual scientific explanation for this phenomenon: Morphic Resonance, second cousin to Synchronicity. The basic idea is that it takes some repetition (generations?) for an emergent pattern to form and build resonance, but once it does, the whole thing crystallizes and voila! “We're takin' over… Come on!" It is going to happen; it’s just that it’ll be our kids’ generation that’s young and strong when it does. I know it’s hard to believe this, since everywhere we look it’s a prison planet that we see, but if you pay attention you will see cracks in the façade. In Europe the young and old are talking about the expansion and evolution of consciousness (remember when we were having such conversations?) and fuck the stupid Americans…except, and I remind them of this, we’re not all fascist robots. And we do have the numbers, even if they still have the guns…we don’t want or need the guns—when the universal mind, the collective consciousness (finally) asserts itself, the reptilian fucks will train their guns on themselves or just plain fade away. Want proof?

The doubling of information is accelerating, exponentially. It took 4 million years from the first stone tool in Africa to the state of knowledge in the Roman Empire in 1 AD. The sum total of available information doubled again in 1500, and again in 1750, and again in 1900, 1950, 1973…by 1991, when Robert Anton Wilson wrote The Cosmic Trigger (Vol. II) it was doubling every 18 months. By 2012, when we reach the critical mass for the event known as the Singularity, the “other face” of which is Mass Enlightenment, the sum of knowledge/information will be doubling a million times a second…

About now you might be asking yourself why we don't see the results of this acceleration in the growth of knowledge/information--the answer is two-fold. First, a great deal of the advancement of information accessibility is in computer science and nanotechnology. Yeah, we can see computers getting faster, cheaper, more powerful, but what about the real quantum leaps in applicable technology? This is an easy one. Is it in the interest of our "leaders" (those who plant the bombs, create phantom enemies and then use the fear they've induced in the populace to control them) to make things like free energy, anti-gravitation devices, etc. readily available to the public? Look, we wouldn't even need the free energy technology (about which there is so much speculation) in order to loosen the grip of the corporations which control us by controlling the government. There was a plan afoot in the 1980's to connect the world's electrical power systems into a world grid (one of Bucky Fuller's many big ideas). If the power infrastructure of every nation on the earth were thusly connected, two things would happen:

1.) Massive energy conservation would occur, as night-and daytime regions of the spinning globe traded off production and consumption, and

2.) No one in their right minds would think about bombing or invading other countries, since this would interrupt their own supply.

By 1990, everyone had signed off on this plan (G.E.N.I., or Global Energry Network International) except, and this will come as a shock, the U.S.

Shortly thereafter, Gulf War I commenced and the bombing and invading have gone on in one conflict or another ever since. As to what technological wonders are being kept under wraps, who could know, since secrecy is noe so deeply imbedded in government that it's now a crime to inguire about things that are classified. And since you can't know what's classified without asking, asking itself has been effectively outlawed. Despite all the gag-rules and dismantling of whistle-blower protections, scientists on the "outside" are making some interesting speculations about what's being kept from us on the inside. Try to remember Frank Zappa's attitude toward censorship and secrecy, about the inept agents creeping around Laurel Canyon trying to keep an eye on him--if Uncle Frank was suspicious, why wouldn't we be?

It’s a bit more difficult to see evidence of the evolution of consciousness (after all, those HAARP and ELF transmitters are trying to jam “something”) but just remember what Steve Hillage sang in Radio, from Motivation Radio: “…and when they beam and program noise pollution, the love and light will neutralize their rays…”



Spectroscopic analysis is discovering strange changes in the structure of our DNA, our blood, and our great blooming brains...



So, of course Uncle Frank lives! You see, if the Nazis never really went away but instead just infiltrated first the CIA, then the Republican Party, then the White House, etc, etc, then by the same Morphic Field Propogation, we are keeping Frank Zappa just as much alive, if not more so, since we've got the numbers...And, as it seems to turn out, we're discovering (at the very weird intersection of physics and consciousness) that we can deliberately create reality through the mechanism of Morphic Resonance by directing our mutating, expanding consciousness...Pretty trippy, eh? So celebrate this. And, as long as you’re celebrating, call it Christmas, the way Frank did: http://www.zappa.com/whatsnew.html
(Just remember the thing with the yellow snow...)

An Open Letter to Howard Dean, all the Elected Democrats

Hi there!
Do you folks even make any pretense of being the party of FDR any more? Will you even consider the opinion of the common man, whose struggle has given you your present position? You owe us that. Do you read Molly Ivins, by chance, or are you keeping those eyes wide shut? You should (see Chamberlain in his role in the history of appeasement…or just ask any Czech—they remember.) Or, better yet, if that’s too heavy for you, check out Ed Helm’s piece on Paul Hackett (the Daily Show, 3/14/06). This captured everything that has made a laughingstock out of us—here you have a guy with credibility, integrity, passion and, most importantly, he’s got justice on his side! He’s right on the issues and not afraid to say so. How refreshing after watching you triangulating ass-clowns sell us down the pike!! And what do you do? You have Chuck (where’s the buck) Schumer pressure him not to run!! Are you in collusion with the Nazis on the other side of the aisle, are you completely beholden to the corporations which finance both of your “political parties,” or are you just that far out of touch with reality? Wake up, smell the manure (it’s all around you), kick Joe (I kissed the president) Lieberman the fuck out of our party and do your jobs!!!
Look, this is about more than short term political gain (your strategies have been working so well!!) this is about saving our democracy. Not since the ill-documented (attempted) fascist putsch in the’30s (see Smedley Butler) have we been this close to the edge. And what do you morons do? You leave Feingold hanging while you calculate your leverage!!! Harry Reid is a dried up, wispy geometry teacher, not a Senate Leader. Joe Biden can’t take his eyes off the nearest mirror—where is the inspiring leadership we need? We need a brave, principled, progressive voice, not another republican party—the one we already have has done enough damage!!

Please, please, please…oh yeah, if you even think about nominating “Hillary” I’ll jump, I swear I’ll jump!!
Most goddamned seriously,
Haeuptling Aberja

Eureka! Congress is Possessed (by the Echoes of its Doppelgänger!!)

Look no further, I've been struck in the head by the brick of insight: whereas all my internet brethren have been flabbergasted by the spinelessness of the alleged "opposition" party in their inscrutable non-reaction to the open perfidy of our pugnacious president and his reptilian cabal, as seen in the unapologetic abandonment of the quixotic Feingold in his recent censure motion, I just realized what's really going on here. Since life in these decidedly anti-Homo Homogenized States has been shown to imitate what passes for Art (The Price is Right?) it is there, in the world of counterfeit reality, that we must look for explications of the inexplicable. Specifically, I would posit John C. Wright as the oracle of this Dumbfounded Age, and not just because I like to read his books, which I certainly do. In the two-book series Mists of Everness and Last Guardian of Everness, Wright reveals, one would hope unintentionally, the fiendish plot concocted by dark agents of the mythic past to take control of the world by first bending the organs of American Democracy to their will. They do this by unleashing the Selkie, seal-like demons of the rancid deep who tend to speak in Pirate-ese, from their "encounters" with sailors over the centuries, on the already compromised, alright, open whores in Congress, who are easy prey due to their obvious lack of principles.

In a really creepy allegory of possession, the congressional sluts are sort of slit up the middle, their rotten entrails disengorged, and the Selkies "climb" in, generally avoiding detection except by those willing to entertain strange thoughts...In the great climactic scene (no, I won't give everything away) where the good guys take back Congress and unseat, literally, the pseudo-president, the deflated skins of the former congresspersons slide off the seal-body things onto the floors of the House and Senate, leaving the revealed Selkies barking and flapping their flippers most repulsively.

This explanation leaped to my mind yesterday as I watched Arlen Specter interrupting the Feingold-Hero like the crooked small town mayor in innumerable B-Horror movies--I could have sworn I saw his skin slip, sagging in a strange and unnatural way (I know the man's gravely ill, but if he's going to act like a demon-possessed agent of the Dark Side screw him, he's fair game.) Another interesting parallel between Wright's allegory and the "real" world is the significance cast on the necessity of those who've sworn to uphold the Constitution being made to defile it with bodily fluids or vile imprecations before they can participate in the sinister conspiracy--it makes you wonder what the Lizards made their accomplices do in all those acronymically known organizations (you know, CIA-FBI-NSA-FAA-NORAD, etc) before they could launch Operation Prison Planet...The only questions left are:

a.) who's going to save us?

b.) how do we unzip the Selkies in the Hall of Mirrors?

c.) how did Wright figure all this out, or was he doing it in the time-honored tradition of Samuel Coleridge, by ingesting laudanum before sitting down to write?

The Immorality of Politics (and vice-versa)

Hi there! The spleen is a little understood and much feared organ residing inside of most people. The fear and occasional loathing it inspires is largely due to its periodic venting, which can be quite messy. Had lunch already? Good, now we can get started. What a crock! Here we've got the wealthiest country in the world, a pretty decent constitution (at least on the surface, but more on that later) and no natural enemies (ditto on the later thing...) If we didn't have our metaphorical heads rammed so far up our very real, lard-marbled arses, do you, gentle reader, know what we could do? Any guesses? Ever hear the phrase "leader of the free world"?

The most shocking truth of all that you might read here and in the many other similar blogs written by perfectly ordinary people is that instead of systematically building the perfect dystopian nightmare, we could be making heaven, right here on earth, right now. We have the technology, we have the capability to fix the awful ecological degradation we've inflicted on the earth, to clean up every single mess we've made and turn this planet back into Eden. And we could give every citizen of the world meaningful, well-paying employment in the process. Buckminster Fuller, a true visionary and practical scientist as well described such a process as simply changing our economic and political focus from weaponry to livingry. Among Fuller's many innovations was a new geometry, a new way of thinking about space. One of the great practical applications was a new type of housing that weighed from 1/100th to 1/1000th of a conventional home (so that it could be shipped anywhere in the world) and yet was stronger and much more aesthetically pleasing than the square boxes in which we all live. He pointed to the positive, charged atmosphere of the Epcot Center in Florida as an example of what industry could do if it just changed its mission to one of sustaining and venerating life.


The Philological Library in Berlin

Project Eden in Cornwall

Okay, so why haven't we done this, why haven't we shifted our focus toward the affirmation of life and away from the race toward death and destruction? I'll give you a clue: it's not because the people of the earth don't want to, can't live in peace with one another (as we've so often been told) etc. It's because we aren't allowed to. That's right, we could have heaven on earth, but the powers that be, whether because they're afraid they'll lose control of the world, or because they're just sick bastards who prefer to be the only ones living in the lap of luxury (maybe they feel that sick, hopeless humanity mired in its filth and poverty provides a nice contrast for their gorgeous lifestyles) will not let it happen. Oh, they'll say it's because there isn't enough money in the world, or because there's too much conflict and strife...That is a lie, a cruel perversion.

Wars are never, ever started by the people who die in them. Look up Smedley Butler's famous War is a Racket piece. In it, he lays out the essential, ugly truth of the reasons we have wars. Money. Mind-boggling, inconceivable profits. It doesn't even matter if your country loses if you're a titan of industry--after the war you'll quietly set up shop again with no losses whatsoever (see I.G. Farben, Siemens, Krupp, etc, etc. in postwar Germany.) In fact, if you really look into this business of war profits, you'll find something even more disgusting: the same companies provide the materiel and financing for both sides. Roosevelt was so angry about it when he discovered the treasonous actions of Prescott Bush and his friends that he suspended (some) of their operations and only stopped short of prosecuting the fat-cat's perfidy out of fear of creating panic and lowering morale among the troops. What about political conflicts and ethnic tensions as the causes of war, you might ask? Let's check with an authority on the subject:

"Of course the people don´t want war ...
But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship...
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
Hermann Goering, Nazi leader, at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II


Okay, what about the money to build heaven on earth--where's that going to come from, you might ask? "Where does it come from now?" I'd ask in reply.
Do you think "the markets" is some organic structure that represents actual wealth or production? Or that the banking system was put on earth by someone's God? It's a fiction, too. Absolutely, 100% arbitrary. If we wanted to, we could set up a system with a regulated, logical relationship between capital outflow, production of goods and services (which could include anything of intrinsic value, from replanting a hillside devastated by clear-cutting to working with the many damaged people suffering through life in this hellhole we've made on earth) and infrastructure needs. In a heartbeat we could set up such a system. Think of the change in people's attitudes if everyone loved their jobs, not just the ones with the corner office and the stock options.

Now, here's the rub--you knew it was too good to be true, right? We could change the world in the way I've mentioned here, but we'd have to change our governments to do it. Especially in the United States, where the concentration of the greatest wealth in the fewest hands is worse than anywhere else on earth. The income disparity in the US also points to a disparity in political power. Everyone knows the old adages: power is money, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. In order to change the system, we'd have to make such major reforms that, while certainly doable, it would be paramount to organizing another constitutional convention. There were things that our founders never anticipated. Avarice and greed they were familiar with, but the kind of sick and perverted "democracy" we have now would make them run for the colonial privy to retch their guts out in disgust. The biggest enemy of democracy is secrecy.

Government by secrecy is taxation without representation. We started the War for Independence over precisely this issue. In our founder's time, a despotic, arrogant king (George, for you coincidentalists out there) and a disdainful parliament presumed to take taxes from us without giving us input or oversight in the management of government. Guess what? It's happened again.

But that's impossible, you say, we have elected officials who safeguard our freedoms while working within the framework of the constitution...what have you been smoking this morning? Safeguarding your freedoms?! Wait, I've got a better one: "...spreading democracy in the world..." Boy that one gets a lot of mileage! Ever heard it?

Of course you have (we're also very good at marketing phrases, provided they're devoid of meaning and/or only intended to move merchandise.) So, how come we don't mean it when we, as a nation, "say" something? Because "we as a nation" do not exist. It's a fiction. It's a well-known marketing fact (is there any other kind that matters any more?) that if you repeat something often enough, it's as good as true. Peeling the rubbery scales off of an oft-quoted phrase to reveal its scabrous underbelly is not as easy (or appetizing) as it sounds.

On the surface of things we have this "great country" bringing "democracy" to the world, right? Bullshit. The reality is that democracy is the very last thing we want, around the world and especially at home. Just look at our track record. In Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Nicaragua...the list goes on and on...we brought down democratically elected governments through assassination, kidnapping and torture and then installed repressive, right-wing dictatorships which we could then control. Anyone remember Patrice Lamumba? He was the Gandhi of the Congo, so we killed him, too.

Is anyone buying this Clash of Civilizations crap out there? How about the cartoon controversy? Did you also hear that the same right-wing Danish newspaper refused to publish a cartoon of Christ with fire-crackers in his crown of thorns standing in front of an abortion clinic because "the community might find it offensive"? Which community, you self-righteous bastard? Freedom of speech my digestive tract! So, just when you thought we had entered a modern era of diplomacy and democracy, we're back in the Dark Ages, off on another crusade.


It doesn't have to be this way. This sign held by
an Israeli Arab says, "We are all brothers, we will
not lose our lives in peace."


So why is this crisis being foisted upon us? Orwell, that brilliant, bitter oracle for our time laid down the roadmap to tyranny in the modern world. In order to control the population and crush any political opposition, you need to have a perpetual state of war. Think I'm just reading all this stuff into our current state of affairs? These bastards are so brazen they're even using Orwell's phraseology, or very near equivalents. Perpetual War is now The Long War. The Ministry of Truth is the Office of Strategic Information. Big Brother watching over you is Total Information Awareness, the agency that was so bold as to use the eye-in-the-pyramid symbol of secret societies everywhere as its logo.



Now, it's true that the modern office of Big Brother was "shut down" in 2003, mostly due to public outcry at the creepy logo (we don't have time/interest/intelligence to read words, but boy oh boy we know our logos!) However, surprise, surprise, it turns out that the people who set up TIA, Poindexter and Negroponte, the advocates for democracy who were convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran/Contra Hearings, pardoned by Poppy Bush (yes, the flower) and reinstalled in high office by Junior, just moved it underground with the rest of the secret apparatus of our real government.

And this is the reason that politics in America is a crock. What is the point of voting for the candidate of your choice when the CIA, or any of the 15-20 known clandestine organizations is just going to do whatever their bosses, whovever the hell they might be, tell them? It's secrecy and money which have turned this country into a despotic, empty-headed empire. I'll slow down a little to let this sink in: if things are done in secret, there's no oversight. Without oversight by elected representatives, it's not democracy. At present, even if there were oversight, it would be by professional prostitutes, not representatives of constituencies. In slow time: under the current "system," you can't get elected without big money from corporations. Therefore, if elected, you promptly spend your time whoring around for more money for your reelection, answering the demands of your paymasters and pretending to engage in the current political "debate" on behalf of your constituents.

There are a very few ethical politicians (Russ Feingold, the only one to fight the most un-American legislation ever passed, the Patriot Act, Cynthia McKinney, the only brave soul to question the farce that was 9/11 and who paid for it by being so viciously attacked by very big money groups that she lost a subsequent election, although, surprisingly enough, won her seat back again. One could add Representatives Waxman and Conyers, but they are effectively kept in the basement, so to speak, and then there's Ron Paul, but after that they're all pretty much whores, plain and simple.)

Now, it could be that if we were to somehow enact publicly financed campaigns, that is no money accepted from any donors, we might be able to have some semblance of representative government, but there would still be a few hurdles. (Publicly financed campaign laws, or "clean election" laws, as they are known, have been enacted in Maine, Vermont, Arizona, Massachusetts, New Mexico, and North Carolina to great effect, but also at great cost. Paul Wellstone was murdered shortly after introducing similar legislation in the Senate. He is sorely missed.) The monied interests will not let this kind of reform take root and, even if it were to, they have other tricks up their tentacle sleeves. Let's look at Diebold for a moment. They promised to deliver Bush the State of Ohio in 2004 and they kept their word. No paper trail, no investigation, not even from Kerry, Bush's erstwhile "opponent."

No, the only way to really force the bums out would be to demand disclosure of all our covert operations, well, since 1945 at least, and then start Truth and Reconciliation work, just like in South Africa and Chile. It's the only way to truly change--by first acknowledging our past. More on that next time. Remember, we are capable of much more than they keep telling us...





(I'm writing this piecemeal by attaching edits to a single existing post, since I haven't figured out how to post in chronological order here at Blogger, so keep looking "under" what you've already read, if anyone other than my good and loyal nephew is actually following these external introspections, for recent "posts".)



Okay, just a few more words about secrecy and then it's off to some more interesting stuff. If you were to look back at our history with anything approaching an open mind, you'd soon see that it's pretty vile. To be fair, most of all history is the story of people being obscenely unkind toward one another, it's just especially galling that we in the States have been brainwashed into believing that we were somehow different, that our "little experiment called democracy" sets us apart from the other murderous bastards. Dr. Goebbels knew differently, and so would you if you'd just stop and think about it for a moment. In what country was it said, "The only good injun is a dead one"? (Our genocide claimed 12,000,000 lives--how big was yours?) Where was it not a crime to kill, torture or rape a black person because they were property and therefore not really human? In what proud nation could you find signs (in all regions of the country, in the 20th century) which read, "No micks, colored or mexican need apply"? In the 1930's there were "sunset" laws in the North as well as the South which made it illegal for african-americans to remain within the city limits after dark. Jews were not admitted to many clubs and associations, and still aren't where their "betters" can get away with it. Final word on our proud heritage: pick up any high school history book and compare it side-by-side with Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. One of them is propaganda.

Still, our ideals are laudable; we just haven't been able to get beyond our bias and hatred enough to actually implement them.