She is riding bareback on a zebra along the side of his house, peeping in long after sundown. Herman, sitting oblivious by the fire, broods ever more ecstatic for another day gone by in static un-changeliness. The cars racing by and spaceships blasting off and there sits Herman, reading books about poverty and ecology from hundreds of years ago. Her zebra starts and stands up on her hind legs, throwing you nearly off her and onto the cold, damp earth. And bareback zebra riding is said and done. The stripes do help one to maintain a rigid and perpendicular posture. Content with idling and clean out of booze Herman makes his way to his bedroom and lays down to sleep. Visions of many a fantastic catastrophe plaguing his sleep and she comes slowly through the window. Naked and moist, noiseless and screeching. Herman is sweating quite a lot and the window left open has invited a breeze to tremble his bones. He is sort of whispering or whimpering or screaming or laughing, it's hard to tell, but he is repeating someone's name and for a moment she believes it is her name he is murmuring.

"Is it me you're calling for?" rousing him from chaotic slumber. "Is it my name you are whimpering restlessly? Cacophonously?

     Opening his eyes he has never seen her before and reaches for the butterfly knife he keeps in his nightstand for this very type of occasion. Our gentle rider and her zebra escape through the window and take to their rainbow flight. Waking to a despised alarm, alas Herman remembers nothing more than a sleepless night. He hums his way into the shower, a lingering dissonance of orchestral shots and chopped up, slowed down screw samples. Our beloved protagonist gallops to the coffee shop, unshowered and unshaven, remembering his promise to not think bad thoughts and enter the world of the living and of the dying every day. The coffee shop presents it's own epic dilemma for our tragic hero. Waiting in line, avoiding eye contact and conversation, ordering from the counter with a clear and audible voice. Trying hard not to use an improper tone for fear of upsetting the workers. These workers, who hold the key to his morning consciousness and a not insignificant portion of his social dyslexia.

"I don't know what it is, I just keep ordering improperly and getting cheese martini's and olive sandwiches."

"I draw you all the time. I keep having a lot of trouble with you shoulders, though. They look quite broad today but other days I'd say you look exceptionally wimpy."

All that said, he ordered a biscuit with sugar and a coffee full of margarine.

"Do you think it's something I can work on?"

"I really wouldn't know much about curing social diseases."

"Right, well I expected as much and really prefer not to talk about it in public anyways."

     Making his way out the door he spills coffee on his hand and licks if off before it runs onto his sleeve or onto his pants or his shoes. She on her horse, high in the sky strokes the fire and takes the boiling water off the rack.

I told her she's so cute and wouldn't she like to come home with me and she said no and I said wouldn't she like to give me her number and she said no she'd really just prefer to dance or whatever.

I told her to give me a kiss and she did and I told her to give me another and she did and I told her to use her tongue and she said she has a boyfriend and I said what the fuck do I care about love?

#1: I'd like to assure our audience, who or whatever they may be, that although there's not been much new content over the course of the last couple / several months, that we've not given up - no, not even close. We're just too lazy, ambivalent, busy or drunk to really do anything about it. But not to worry, there is much, oh so much more to come. We've got passion, people, so hold on to them newfangled urban horses of yours.

#2: We are in desperate need of contributors. Maybe desperate isn't the right word. Maybe it'd be better to say: "We don't really care if you contribute, but we guess it'd be kind of cool." Look, this isn't the kind of deal where you get paid shiny new nickels for writing shitty blog posts about shitty shit that no one cares about. This is about YOU and YOUR ART. You don't create for this site, you share with this site.

Future LightningBulb.com contributor: You are an artist. You make art. You do your thing - your own, very special delightfully unique thing. You want to contribute to LightningBulb.com in order to share your art with other artists - other beautiful people like you. That's the idea folks. Bringing people together, sharing ideas, creating change. All that stuff.

#3 Assuming I do manage to put together a good group of contributors, the site will surely (and probably does already) need a redesign. I'm way ahead of you. Just know I'm thinking it.

So come join in on the LightningBulb.com cultural deconstruction crew, and leave your helmets behind. We're looking for: poets, short story writers, journalists, opinion writers, politicos, podcasters, photographers, painters, graphic designers, visual artists, musicians, sound engineers, filmmakers, videographers, documentarians, experimental performance artists - you know, ARTISTS. The whole enchilada. So, slather yourself in sauce, eat your rice and beans, and be the change you want to be in the world - by joining this website.

Your most humble hammer-wielding iconoclast,
Man Magma

we don't fit in anymore

One more time someone made a backhanded comment about what a bore everyone is and how no one is dancing or knows how to dance in the first place. It's fine with me really, I mean, I was the one who said it. But after a while, he grows so bored with his own uniquely mono - tone . Can't they just drink a bit faster or take some anxiety pills or something? It just brings me down to see a room full of squares not moving to this amazing music emanating from the stage. I expect this kind of self-loathing fear of expression in Houston, but we are in the "live music capital of the world," are we not? So get a fucking life and learn how to dance. I'm sure your girlfriend is really great in bed, but must you stand stiffly behind her, hands frozen to her hips, for the entire set? Yes, I'm sure she loves you for sparing her the uncomfortable hysterical anxiety of entering a public venue alone. God how she loves you. And you love her. The both of you never have to fear your asocial dyslexia bearing its brutal wrath again. Oh, to be singled out in this chaos of monogamy. Won't the dear lord just prefer us all to melt into one another and never feel alone again?

I have about as much faith in American "democracy" as I do that Jerry Falwell will rise from the dead and return to Earth as the Second Coming of Christ. As someone who has never voted, an embittered apolitico who leans towards expatriation over participation, you may be surprised to hear that I actually have something slightly positive to say about some of the presidential candidates in the race for the 2008 election.

I've been watching the debates that have taken place over the course of the last couple weeks, and I must say, I'm incredibly impressed with a few of the candidates; in particular, former Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel (D), Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich (D), and Texas Representative Ron Paul (R). I watched the first two debates in their entirety, but have only caught clips of the most recent Republican debate. So I thought I'd break down some of the "bluster and bombast" for you, and share some of the more interesting moments from these debates.

First Democratic Debate: April 26th, 2007

In my opinion, and you can hear it from the mouths of the politicians themselves, the Internet is the reason that we're able to hear such voices of dissent, and it's the reason that these guys are even being allowed to participate in the national debate. You can be certain that, if the mainstream media and frontrunning candidates had anything to say about it, politicians like Gravel, Kucinich and Paul would gagged and bound and left in a dark corner somewhere in the White House's basement. See for yourself by checking out the following petitions:

You can already see that there are powerful forces trying to shut these guys up. I just think it's amazing to see how the Web 2.0 phenomenon is affecting the political process and possibly (but not probably) democracy. To me, it seems to be unprecedented, at least in recent history, that a presidential debate actually has candidates speaking their minds on important issues, as opposed to simply speaking the party rhetoric.

Support these guys in any way you can - and spread the word!

Mike Gravel's website
Mike Gravel on MySpace

Dennis Kucinich's website
Dennis Kucinich on MySpace

Ron Paul's website
Ron Paul on MySpace

"Creativity comes from awakening and directing men's higher natures, which originate in the primal depths of the universe and are appointed by Heaven."

-from the I Ching

Cartesian Dualism

"And, firstly, because I know that all which I clearly and distinctly conceive can be produced by God exactly as I conceive it, it is sufficient that I am able clearly and distinctly to conceive one thing apart from another, in order to be certain that the one is different from the other, seeing they may at least be made to exist separately, by the omnipotence of God; and it matters not by what power this separation is made, in order to be compelled to judge them different; and, therefore, merely because I know with certitude that I exist, and because, in the meantime, I do not observe that aught necessarily belongs to my nature or essence beyond my being a thinking thing, I rightly conclude that my essence consists only in my being a thinking thing [or a substance whose whole essence or nature is merely thinking]. And although I may, or rather, as I will shortly say, although I certainly do possess a body with which I am very closely conjoined; nevertheless, because, on the one hand, I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in as far as I am only a thinking and unextended thing, and as, on the other hand, I possess a distinct idea of body, in as far as it is only an extended and unthinking thing, it is certain that I, [that is, my mind, by which I am what I am], is entirely and truly distinct from my body, and may exist without it."

-from Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy: Sixth Meditation

Nietzsche's Apollonian and Dionysian forces

"What is the meaning of the antithetical concepts of Apollonian and Dionysian, both conceived as forms of intoxication, which I introduced into aesthetics? Apollonian intoxication alerts above all the eye, so that it acquires power of vision. The painter, the sculptor, the epic poet are visionaries par excellence. In the Dionysian state, on the other hand, the entire emotional system is alerted and intensified: so that it discharges all its powers of representation, imitation, transfiguration, transmutation, every kind of mimicry and play-acting, conjointly. The essential thing remains the facility of the metamorphosis, the incapacity not to react (--in a similar way to certain types of hysteric, who also assume any role at the slightest instigation). It is impossible for the Dionysian man not to understand any suggestion of whatever kind, he ignores no signal from the emotions, he possesses to the highest degree the instinct for understanding and divining, just as he possesses the art of communication to the highest degree. He enters into every skin, into every emotion; he is continually transforming himself."

-from Twilight of the Idols

Carl Jung's Self and Shadow

The Shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and it therefore, as a rule, meets with considerable resistance. Indeed, self-knowledge as a psychotherapuetic measure frequently requires much painstaking work extending over a long period of time.

-from Collected Works: Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self

We carry our past with us, to wit, the primitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is only with an enormous effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden. If it comes to a neurosis, we invariably have to deal with a considerably intensified Shadow. And if such a person wants to be cured it is necessary to find a way in which his conscious personality and his Shadow can live together.

-from Collected Works: Psychology and Religion

I've posted a letter to Salon.com in response to Walter Shapiro's article suggesting that we repeal the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. You can find the letter, "Shapiro Willfully Ignores the Point", here.

I'd like to take a moment to address a topic tangential to Sid Scatman's little gem, the riaa and the mpaa are a bunch of bitches. I will be using some rather big, highly-stigmatized words and phrases, but that's okay. So here's what this is all about:

I read up a little on the recent congressional "Future of Radio" hearings. Naturally there are already multitudes of bloggers tackling the subject, but I'd like to possibly cast a light on it that hasn't been brought up much that I know of. Here's what I'd like to posit:

We have been nearing, over the past decade or so, one of the most critical moments in time that we will have the opportunity to experience in a single humble lifetime. We've arrived at a big intersection in the sky of ideas: Postmodernism in several veins - art, culture, business - butts heads with oligopolies and modern law, in a battle that will have a result. The implications of the outcome bear heavily on the future course of thought and communication, and philosophy has been having its day in the court of public policy and opinion already.

Perhaps we can begin by establishing the act of anonymous sharing to be a manifestation of certain postmodern values - if we are going to mix and mash our media, modes, and methods without respecting the integrity of any of them in particular, we are going to have to reject - or retool - certain modern values favoring that integrity, or the notion that "there's a right way." People like Greg Gillis of Girl Talk fame make art that is no longer by any means "out there." Their use of the postmodern mode has come into its own in terms of cultural acceptance and enthusiasm - these days we favor things like pastiche, multimedia, and a certain disloyalty to established, isolated methods of conveyance of our ideas. MTV began lowering our attention spans years ago - I don't mean to suggest that this is all their fault, or that it deserves any indictment really, but you see postmodern approaches to nearly everything these days. Architecture, advertising, music and specifically the DJ's art, viral marketing, integrated ad/media campaigns, cultural diversity - it's literally everywhere these days. It's culturally accepted in spite of the dirty name I and others have called it. And if it's culturally accepted, then surely most of us accept the idea that it's okay to borrow and share and not worry too much about whose intellectual property is whose.

Borrowing and sharing are part of a postmodern ethos if for no other reason than because they are necessary to the postmodern approach that most of us accept and promote through patterns of consumerism that don't really adhere to the traditional, or modern, approach that organizations like the RIAA and MPAA cling so tightly to. And the law, so far, has been reluctant to make big decisions for either side. It has failed to stop the illegal downloading of media under copyright and has not reduced the number of cases of copyright infringement by artists and individuals. The RIAA and MPAA have both failed to act on what is postmodern common knowledge - when the floor of your market falls out, you better start following the money elsewhere, and quick. That's right folks, they just couldn't come up with any creative ways to create income. And yet, an individual blogger can make a living off of her own intellectual property by selling advertising and various other methods.

I think we've come to the point, culturally speaking, where we look on arcane institutions like the RIAA and MPAA as pariahs and we're not interested in fattening their pockets anymore. When we've still got the option to share media for free and are comfortable enough with that idea to take the risk that one day we'll be sued over it, and the prices on media set by these bullying behemoths are breathtakingly far beyond actual market value, agencies touting arcane and restrictive values in order to preserve, rather than evolve out of, an arcane business model are shooting themselves in the foot and actually reinforcing the postmodern ethos that so irks them. Silly bastards.

So the law, which generally favors the modern over the postmodern, is going to have to either adapt into a poster-modern version of itself or kill what it can of the postmodern in order to save its sorry modern ass. Clash of the titans, folks.

A US appeals court has refused to allow the lawsuit of a Lebanese-born German man who says he was tortured by the CIA to be heard in court. The court in Richmond, Virginia said hearing the case could lead to state secrets being revealed, which in turn could endanger national security. Khaled el-Masri says he was seized by the CIA in Macedonia and held for several months in 2004 on suspicion of links to terrorism. He was released when US officials realised that they had the wrong man. El-Masri has been seeking an explanation and an apology from the United States, as well as 75,000 dollars in damages.

Now, hear this. I'm not much of one for posting news articles, for many reasons. If you've read this post on every other blog in your daily snarfing, then to some extent, I've failed; and to some extent, I apologize.

The day that innocent people are kidnapped, tortured and then completely suppressed, ignored, and in fact denied, is the day that absurdity throttles the full length of it's massive pimple-covered member deep into the folds of human tolerance, oozing a foamy, acid bath of ignorance and denial all over this grotesque tragedy.

If you don't know, now you know.

For fuck's sake,
ds

When driving your Audi you will find it to be more responsive than a Google search. The steering is phenomenal and wont let you down unlike your cell phone reception.

- http://austin.craigslist.org/car/283636091.html

an interesting study in advertising to those who don't need.

i'm sure you've all seen pictures or maybe even seen a popular youtube video about spiders and the effects of various drugs on their web-weaving.

these are all rather pedestrian notions, but i'll put a couple out there:
1) i'd like to see some science...how long did it take each spider? how were they dosed?
2) if we knew the above (probably someone does) and had a measure for the quality quotient, productivity when using a particular drug would just be quality x quantity.
3) how transferable is spider science to human science? can it be shown that caffeine affects spiders and humans comparably?
4) at what point does one begin to sacrifice quality in the name of quantity using caffeine?

it's only interesting because it's a problem i confront most days i go to work.

maybe joseph smith was onto something bigger, or maybe he just needed good work done and could afford to wait.