[Ed. note - I promised some general pop-culture commentary. So let’s start that trend off by paying tribute to nerds who know more than their bosses.]
If ever there was a marriage of convenience, it is that of Pixar and Disney. One had ideas, one had money, and they figured there would be no harm in combining those resources. As is often the case, cracks appeared.
The two companies clearly have differing opinions on what makes a good animated feature, and that becomes even more obvious whenever one of them releases a new movie. Over the last few years Disney’s animation department has become nearly irrelevant, while Pixar seems well on their way to becoming undisputed masters of the medium.
At this point in their relationship, I have to assume that Disney is growing quite uncomfortable with the beast they created. Pixar started out merely upstaging their parent company with prettier pictures, and have since moved on to films with smarter plots and more fully-drawn characters; true “all-ages movies” rather than “kids’ movies.” Now they’ve moved into viral marketing with a strong anti-consumerist tone.
“Buy N Large” is a fictional mega-corporation that fits into the storyline of Pixar’s next movie, “WALL-E.” The concept is that Earth has been completely buried in the detritus of rampant consumerism (due mostly to the practices of companies like Buy N Large), so the human population migrates into space colonies, and a fleet of robots known as WALL-E’s (Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth class) is left behind to clean up the mess and make Earth habitable again. After 700 years, only one WALL-E unit remains active, and he’s struggling valiantly to clean everything up on his own, with little success. Meanwhile, the Earthlings have gone soft(er) after seven centuries of living the good life in space, becoming even more lazy, gluttonous, and materialistic than they were on their homeworld. That’s not even the plot of the movie, that’s just the premise.
Apart from that surprisingly dark concept (dark for a Disney property, at least), the other thing that caught my interest was the design of WALL-E himself (check out the trailer for a look at the little fella). Designers were instructed to “see it as an appliance first, then read character into it,” according to Pixar’s Andrew Stanton, who also joked, “I’m basically making ‘R2-D2: The Movie.’”
Is there even a market for WALL-E? I know I want to see it, and a few of my friends have expressed interest, but we’re a weird bunch of bastards.
The amusing part, which Horatio so astutely pointed out when I brought this up to him via e-mail, is that Disney isn’t going to do anything to stop this. From Horatio:
Disney is in an interesting position here. Generally just about any artist or company can get away with whatever they want, as long as they’re popular, successful, and profitable, which is why Trey Parker and Matt Stone can say absolutely anything they want on national television, and Viacom has to lick it up and meekly beg for more. […] Any media conglomerate would give up half their holdings for a property like South Park, or for that matter, a property like Pixar. […]
And whether they like it or not, Disney has accumulated a lot of social baggage. The Silent Majority Voters that make us so nervous make Disney nervous too, because they’re the ones who demand that Disney continue to serve up innocuous shit that can be put on the TV to babysit children without supervision.
Of course, Disney’s tried its hand at computer-animated features without Pixar’s assistance, with mixedresultsatbest. That works in Pixar’s favor as well, not just by making them look good, but by providing some useful camouflage. Amid the sea of formulaic CGI crap produced by Disney and others (hello, Shrek!), it’s likely that weird little movies like WALL-E will slip unnoticed onto the DVD shelves of wholesome families nationwide. From there, it can go to work indoctrinating children against consumerism, and instilling in them an incurably nerdy love of robots.
Last week, I purchased Van Halen’s 1984, The Talking Heads’ Remain in Light, and Tom Waits’ Swordfishtrombones, fresh and unused on CD, for only $8.00 a piece at Manhattan’s Virgin Megastore. If I’d had a little more cash, I could have also bought about a dozen early Bob Dylan albums for the same price. Earlier this year, I scored tons of AC/DC, Police, and Elvis Costello albums for only $10 a pop at the same store. This sounds like a damn good set of sales, but actually the $8/$10 bin at Virgin has become a standard feature. And just when I’d almost given up hope.
You see, the music industry has fed consumers some pretty ugly broken promises over the last couple of decades. When the first compact disc was manufactured in 1982, it cost $30 and was an ABBA album (ouch!). I don’t know much about inflation rates, but that’s got to be the equivalent of $50 or $60 in 2007 dollars. But this was new technology, and as production increased and simplified, the costs would certainly go down. Which they did, to $25 and then $20 in the mid-’80s, and then sometime in the early ’90s, they hit the $13-to-$18 range and just stayed there. For those of us young rockers who were still waiting for prices to go down just a bit more before converting over from cassette tapes, we wondered what the holdup was. The costs of production continued to plummet throughout the ’90s and into the early ’00s, but the cost of albums to the consumer plateaued.
Well, anyone who was paying attention to album prices suspected that something was amiss, and the discrepancy only became more pronounced when packs of 50 blank CDs went on sale at Rite Aid for $10, and CD burners became a standard feature on personal computers. If you’ve been to see any local bands in wherever you live over the last few years, their demo albums (often made at home and sold exclusively at the pubs they perform in) almost always sell for $5-to-$8, and this is without any corporate sponsors. And the big-time acts really got into it starting in 2003, when individual songs became available for download from iTunes for 99 cents. Still, mainstream music albums, whether at Sam Goody, Borders, or Wal-Mart, remained at a hefty mark-up.
And then, just as we were all fine-tuning the technology for music fans to download, rip, and burn their own damn CDs, legally or illegally depending pretty much on the basis of personal moral codes, inventiveness and whim, suddenly retail prices have plummeted. Coincidence? Bitter pricks like Andrew Keen will insist that any Internet user who has ever downloaded a song is a soulless thief who is mercilessly putting artists out of work the world over, even if they buy everything legitimately from iTunes. The fault, Keen and his contemporaries insist, is ours, and we’re personally taking food out of the mouths of the hungry offspring of Warner Bros. employees every time we download a classic Devo song. This sort of corporate victimhood is pathetic at best, and damningly hypocritical when you look at the numbers, especially in the light of a report released by the Federal Trade Commission in 2000.
In an investigation of music pricing complaints throughout the 1990s, the FTC found that Universal, Time-Warner, Sony, EMI and BMG (the Big Five in the industry) had conspired to enforce a “Minimum Advertised Price” to all retailers, in effect pricefixing album costs at an artificial high starting in 1995. Essentially, it went down like this: the basic system of “it’s cheaper to make, so we’ll lower the price” that applies to things like Chinese-manufactured tube socks, was applied to music CDs by early-‘90s discount retailers (your Best Buys and Circuit Cities and whatnot). Prices briefly plummeted to around $10 an album, and this bothered the hell out of the Big Five. So, they conspired to institute the Minimum Advertised Price, and covered some advertising costs in exchange for retailers’ agreement to keep their prices over a certain minimum and halt the plummeting. The result: albums soon went right back to that $13-to-$18 range.
In the report, FTC Chairman Robert Pitofsky was quoted as saying, “The FTC estimates that U.S. consumers may have paid as much as $480 million more than they should have for CDs and other music because of these policies over the last three years [1997-2000].”
$480 million worth of overpriced albums in the late ’90s. I don’t know precisely what their math was, but if we estimate an average of $5 too much per CD, that comes out to 96,000,000 Van Halen albums that United States consumers were overcharged for.
Following the investigation, the FTC unanimously agreed upon settlements with the Big Five, which prohibited the practice of bribing retailers with promotional dollars in exchange for mandatory pricefixing on CDs. And the effect in 2001 was, as you might have expected, virtually nonexistent. Somehow, the rules had changed, but the prices to the consumer hadn’t. That’s to be expected in luxury economics, when the demand is consistent and the supply isn’t an issue. It doesn’t matter what the rules are, because there’s always another legal loophole to sniff out, and I’m sure their lawyers managed it just fine. If prices were ever going to go down, the consumer base needed to be able to exert a force as powerful as the force of the Big Five’s conspiracy. That balancing force was born with the release of Napster in 1999, and has been growing ever since.
In other words, maybe the net-haters in the music industry have a point, and online filesharing really has compromised their economic power. But, if the industry were still governed purely by the cost of production (with a reasonable profit, of course), wouldn’t the average album cost be around $8-to-$10 by now anyway? My guess is yes. My suspicion is that, far from putting artists out of business, online music sharers have simply forced record companies into unwilling fairness. If two armies of equal strength must live side-by-side, they won’t bomb each other into oblivion; they’ll sign a treaty. Apple’s iTunes is one such treaty; the $8 bin at Virgin is another.
And now that that’s settled, I, for one, will happily honor the treaty and buy those $8 albums in droves, because, frankly, my stereo speakers sound way better than my laptop speakers.
Today marks the release of Richard Gere’s new movie The Hoax, which examines the infamous con artist Clifford Irving. Irving’s claim to fame was an “authorized” biography of the reclusive Howard Hughes, which though the book was sold and money exchanged hands, was an utter fabrication.
I haven’t seen it, and most likely won’t until I can put it in my NetFlix queue, but I feel obliged to use any soapbox I can to shout that there is already a film about Clifford Irving (and the world he became a seasoned fraud in, Ibiza) that I’m certain is much better and has been pushed into unfair obscurity. It’s not a reenactment. It’s not a documentary. It’s not an essay. It may be a documentary-essay.
Orson Welles’ F for Fake began as an account of famed art forger Elmyr de Hory and ended up part biographical, history as it happened (in the case of Irving), an editing tour de force, a fake-out itself, and a totally engaging, infinitely fresh picture. It was one of Robert Anton Wilson’s favorite movies. It’s one of mine. I implore you to get a bottle of wine and sit down with it before you go to watch Gere make with the Hollywood version.
I never thought I would have occasion to type the phrase “Naked Chocolate Jesus” into a search engine, but this implausible day has arrived. I can’t tell you how satisfying it was.
Artist Cosimo Cavallaro planned to debut his latest sculpture “My Sweet Lord” in the Lab Gallery (located within the Roger Smith Hotel) during Holy Week, culminating with a midnight showing on Easter. This rendering of Mr. Jesus Christ is 6-feet tall, 200 pounds, stark naked, suspended above a chalk cross, and entirely made of delicious dark chocolate. I’m just guessing about the tastiness. The world may never know, because Cavallaro was shut down. Shocking shocker. Naked Chocolate Jesus was packed into some ice and sent away; no room at the inn, apparently.
Once word got out about what would be on display at the Lab from April 2-7, the “watchdog” Catholic League got their loincloths all in a bunch and began to bombard the hotel with protests. Bill Donohue, the head of the CL, was very vocal about dissent to the exhibit. He called on his fellow faithful to boycott the hotel, imploring that it was already “morally bankrupt.” He actually called it “an all-out war on Christianity.” Please chew on that for a moment, folks.
So, why the fuss?
Is it the chocolate? Well, I’ve seen a chocolate Jesus before, and I’d be willing to bet that you have as well. I know you’ll think me a heathen, but I’ve even eaten a few. (Including a particularly palatable square that contained the Lord and all twelve of the apostles.) It certainly can’t be the nudity; there’s a naked Jesus statue in St. Peter’s. The problem can’t be the full Monty, right? That’s simply anatomy. Jesus was a man; he has been depicted as such before. Donohue has specifically cited the timing, but I’m not so sure this would fly with his organization at any point. Cavallaro can’t help it, Bill, this just happens to be the time when you will give him a large amount of free publicity.
Cavallaro has a history of pretty disgusting food art. He’s covered the model Twiggy and a room in a Manhattan hotel in cheese and even sprayed pepper jack all over a house in Wyoming. His last exhibit at the Lab, in 2004, was a four-poster bed laden with 312 pounds of processed ham. The move to the chocolate medium just seems classier, non? Maybe we should be supporting him, instead of sending the NCJ off to an indefinite fate, if only to keep the chocolate coming and the rancid cheese out of the scene.
Donohue reinforced his “bad timing” argument by stating that the gallery would not show Martin Luther King, Jr. with “his genitals exposed” on MLK day nor would it show Muhammed naked during Ramadan. (Martin Luther King, Jr. did not technically start a religion, but who am I to quibble with Mr. Donohue on any of his instructive opinions? Perhaps he has him mixed up with Martin Luther.)
This would be the way to go, actually, for squat little Cosimo to maximize the firestorm and get the most exposure out of this incident. (That pun was not intended, but it is a joyful happenstance.) I see a series: all of our spiritual leaders, on their highest holy days, peeled lovingly from a naked, gleaming, cocoa mold. The Buddha would provide a treat for all of Manhattan. Maybe it’s me, but I think that’s a transcendental experience. The chocolate won’t last as long as marble, metal, or wood… but if the Easter bunny can be the star of Holy Week and Santa can steal Christmas, why can’t artists get in on the fun?
Cavallaro describes his art on his website as “the struggle between need and desire; the known and unknown; the warm security of the womb and the chill uncertainty of the world.” Quite the tall order and I’m not certain that I could identify any of those themes in the Naked Chocolate Jesus. Somehow, it doesn’t matter. What matters to me now is where that thing went and how I can get an invite to the party where, inevitably, Jesus will be coming to dinner.
Filed under: Culture — Horatio the Half-Mad @ 8:11 pm
The world’s newest pop-culture hero is also one of the nicest in recent memory. No one has a single bad thing to say about Bao Xishun, and from everything I’ve read, there’s nothing dirty to dig up. Which, considering that I can’t find anything on the news today beyond bullshit in Washington, more bullshit in Iraq, and hostages in Iran, is a nice change of pace. Maybe that’s enough of an explanation for why people love Bao Xishun. Maybe a hero who isn’t also a complete dick, or hypocrite, or maniac is refreshing. Maybe we’re just looking for someone we can all look up to. Even at the risk of committing a really terrible pun.
See, Bao is a Mongolian shepherd who happens to be the tallest living man in the world (7′ 8.95″, to be exact), according to the folks over at Guinness. He hit the news in a big way a couple of months ago when he saved the lives of two dolphins at China’s Royal Jidi Ocean World aquarium in Fushun in December 2006. These were regular dolphins, mind you, not the Baiji River Dolphins indigenous to China that were declared more or less extinct during the same month (rough month for dolphins). The rambunctious little bastards had gnawed indigestible bits of plastic off of their tanks, and it was slowly killing them. Conventional methods weren’t working, and surgery was declared a non-option, so in an ingenious move, veterinarians at the park decided to call in the Tallest Man in the Motherfucking World. Hell, he was right over there in Mongolia, so why not? Bao stuck his mighty arms straight down the dolphins’ throats and pulled the plastic out of their stomachs with his bare hands. Ballsy and benevolent, that Bao.
But had we heard the last from Big Bao Xishun? Hell no. Almost immediately after wiping the stomach guk from his hands, he gave us character depth. Bao’s mother, whom he had lived with ever since Rheumatism got him discharged from the People’s Liberation Army, had died. Though content with herding on the countryside, Bao was lonely. Bao had never married. Bao wanted a wife. So what did he do? He put out a personal ad, in newspapers all over the world. I’ve looked everywhere for the text of this fucking personal ad and no one seems to have it, which, now that I’m used to the Internet, is driving me nuts. Without the ad, we’re left with some nagging questions, the answers to which would give us valuable insights into Bao’s character. What’s appropriate to put in a personal ad in that situation? Did he mention that his name is in the Guinness Book of World Records? Did he point out that he was the dolphin-saving guy? Or did he just write, “Tall shepherd seeks pleasant life partner”? I don’t know. If you know, e-mail me at lordhoratio@gmail.com.
Whatever the ad said, it worked, because in March Bao married 28-year-old saleswoman Xia Shujian (Bao is 56). For the sake of tastefulness I’ll leave out the assumed speculations regarding Honeymoon Night logistics, but that doesn’t mean everyone else will. And this is where the buzz really starts to take off. People already remembered Bao from the dolphin episode, and this new development got everyone excited. Look at Bao! He was lonely and now he’s got a cute young wife. Nice guy gets the girl! Adorable girls and their nerdy friends chatted about it on message boards like this one, where “isn’t that sweet” went right alongside “how big do you suppose his you-know-what is?” Last Thursday, an AP article announcing the marriage was circulated in just about every mainstream publication you care to name. Suddenly, everyone was talking about Bao Xishun. It was the most cheerful thing in the news. Bao Mania was born. Could T-shirts and Quiznos endorsements be far behind?
A quick lesson on the nature of Bao’s record height may shed some light on another factor contributing to his rising popularity. See, most enormous people, like “tallest person in medical history for whom there is irrefutable evidence” Robert Wadlow (8′ 11.1″) are actually sick. Wadlow, for example, had a tumor in his pituitary gland, causing the disorder known as Gigantism. Sufferers of Gigantism are just that – sufferers. Sick people. In last-century carnie talk, freaks. But Bao Xishun? He’s been thoroughly examined, and it’s been confirmed that no Gigantism or other pituitary imbalance is in evidence. That means that Bao is neither sick nor a freak, but is instead simply a very tall man. He’s genetically superior to the rest of us. A guy you want to keep in the community, and in the gene pool.
Bao’s height made him noteworthy. His healthy genetics made him impressive, instead of pitiable. His military service made him a good citizen. His dolphin rescue made him kind and charitable. His simple shepherding lifestyle made him humble. His search and eventual marriage made him human. We’ve got all the makings of an epic movie here, people. Bao could be the Chosen One, the Man of Destiny. (Chosen for what exactly, I have no idea, but go with it, I’m trying to establish an archetype here.) Even if he never does anything else for the rest of his life, I guarantee, Bao Xishun is only going to get more famous. Keep an eye on this guy, folks. This could be the first pop-culture superhero of the 21st Century.
Discordians and other fans were saddened, though not particularly surprised, when author and philosopher-genius Robert Anton Wilson died on Thursday, January 11, after a prolonged illness. Plagued by Post-Polio Syndrome for many years, Wilson’s medical problems were brought to a climax late last year when his accelerating sickness was coupled with unexpected poverty. A largely internet-based fundraising campaign swiftly raised the necessary cash to cover his medical expenses, which allowed him to die in relative comfort.
In December, Wilson began keeping a blog from his hospital bed, though his entries were few. The most relevant came five days before his death, on January 6:
“Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.
Please pardon my levity, I don’t see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.
RAW”
The following message appeared on that same blog, and eventually on many other sites, serving as the official announcement (probably originating from one of the Maybe Logic insiders).:
“Robert Anton Wilson Defies Medical Experts and leaves his body @4:50 AM on binary date 01/11.
All Hail Eris!
On behalf of his children and those who cared for him, deepest love and gratitude for the tremendous support and lovingness bestowed upon us.
(that’s it from Bob’s bedside at his fnord by the sea)”
Compared to the deaths of other superheroes in recent years, this one is, due to its expectedness, surprisingly easy to take. Douglas Adams’ treadmill heart attack in 2001 was felt with horrified disbelief, and I still find it disturbing to think about. When Hunter S. Thompson fed himself a shotgun sandwich in 2005, we were all shocked, but upon reflection, we probably should have seen it coming. In comparison, Wilson had a long time to prepare, and was, by all accounts on record, at peace when the time came. The many, many people who look upon him as a brilliant teacher (myself included) perhaps have had time to come to terms with the inevitable, as well.
Look, people, I’m not very religious, and I don’t know what happens to people after they die, but I do know one thing. If anyone is clever enough to pull off the Obi-Wan Kenobi “if you strike me down I’ll become more powerful than you can possibly imagine”/friendly blue ghost trick, it’s Robert Anton Wilson. And I think that says a lot. Even if most of us do no more than take the dirt sleep, I think maybe ‘ol RAW is still out there somewhere, making trouble.
Meanwhile, his estate is planning a memorial service for February (presumably in California), date forthcoming. Rawilson.com is probably the best place to watch if you’re interested in when the service will be held. Also, the folks over at discordian.com, who were already planning on holding a Papal Inauguration ceremony and ritual at the PantheaCon pagan convention in San Jose, CA in February, are now planning on holding their own Wilson memorial during the convention.
Update:
Since RAW was so often snubbed by the mainstream media during his lifetime, it didn’t even occur to me to look there for further coverage of his death. It seems the New York Times has proven me wrong, with a nice and lengthy obituary on their website. Among other things, they cover his many books and even mention Discordians in the context of The Illuminatus! Trilogy, describing them as a group who “resist [The Illuminati] through convoluted tactics that include a network of double agents.” A bit vague, yes, but how often do you see Discordians mentioned in the New York Times?
Filed under: News, Culture — Horatio the Half-Mad @ 12:28 am
Rumors regarding a disturbing turn of fortune for Discordian guru Robert Anton Wilson began to circulate around the Internet a couple of weeks ago. These involved reports of a decline in his health from a preexisting condition, but also of previously unknown financial difficulties. The worst appears to be over, at least for now, but for those of you who are still wondering exactly what happened and where the information was coming from, we at The Beak have prepared a brief summary.
A little background: Robert Anton Wilson was the genius behind The Illuminatus! Trilogy, an early conspirator and friend to the founders of Discordianism, and the prolific author of a score of philosophical works, including Prometheus Rising and Cosmic Trigger. He is revered alongside the great minds of the Counterculture, right up there with people like Tim Leary and William S. Burroughs, though he is far less well-known at present, and his nonfiction works are increasingly difficult to find even in the independent occult bookshops where they once thrived. Nonetheless, he is still an inspiration to millions, and far ahead of his time. He has suffered from Post-Polio Syndrome for over a decade, and his death has been rumored more than once (the most famous instance is chronicled in Cosmic Trigger III: My Life After Death). The subject of a 2003 documentary rich and exciting in video clips and interviews but dreadful in terms of cinematography, Wilson has, for the last few years, been considered to be in declining health, albeit the sort of declining health that could last for several years.
Which brings us to October 2, 2006.
The first indication that something was afoot that most of us got came in the form of postings on a variety of online message boards, featuring the headline, “Robert Anton Wilson Needs Our Help.” These early postings all linked to one source: author and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff’s blog. Rushkoff was featured in the Wilson documentary, and appears to have forged a certain friendship with Wilson which has resulted in, among other things, a teaching position with the fledgling Maybe Logic Academy. Evidently, Rushkoff was the Go-to Guy first contacted when Wilson came to his financial difficulties.
The first blog, on October 2, informed us that Wilson’s “infirmity and depleted finances have put him in the precarious position of not being able to meet next month’s rent.” He continued with, “Right now, Bob is a human being in a rather painful fleshsuit, who needs our help.” And after a personal note, included a Paypal account and a postal address where donations could be sent.
This was all very worrying, moreso due to the post’s vagueness.
The next piece of useful information came later that day from Mark Frauenfelder of boingboing.net, a site which gains a measure of credibility due to its association with visionary writer Cory Doctorow. Frauenfelder revealed a message he had received from Denis Berry, reportedly a friend who was managing Wilson’s care, who wrote, “Robert is dying at his home from post polio syndrome. He has enough money for next month’s rent and after that, will be unable to pay. He cannot walk, has a hard time talking and swallowing, is extremely frail and needs full time care that is being provided by several friends-fans-volunteers and family. We appeal to you to help financially for the next few months to let him die at his home in peace.”
With this message, readers all over the Internet began to realize the potential gravity of the situation. Boingboing repeated the donation address, and the donations soon circulated as fast as the rumors.
Over the next couple of days a variety of summaries turned up on prominent Discordian sites, such as 23ae.com, but the only original data appeared to be coming from Rushkoff and Frauenfelder. On October 3, Frauenfelder ran another note from Berry, which stated, “this morning Bob’s daughter [Christina] showed up at his house in tears because she had checked his PayPal account and found money for next month’s rent plus more.” Rushkoff ran a similar announcement a couple of days later. But it was not until October 5 when we heard from the man in his own words. First published on Wilson’s own site:
“Dear Friends, my God, what can I say. I am dumbfounded, flabbergasted, and totally stunned by the charity and compassion that has poured in here the last three days. To steal from Jack Benny, “I do not deserve this, but I also have severe leg problems and I don’t deserve them either.” Because he was a kind man as well as a funny one, Benny was beloved. I find it hard to believe that I am equally beloved and especially that I deserve such love. Whoever you are, wherever you are, know that my love is with you. You have all reminded me that despite George W. Bush and all his cohorts, there is still a lot of beautiful kindness in the world.
Blessings,
Robert Anton Wilson”
And so the matter remained for a while. The donation drive was officially called off, though reports of official totals differed. On October 5, Boingboing reported (via a note from Wilson’s daughter) a total of over $68,000. On October 9 Rushkoff reported a total of over $80,000. A newsletter from the Maybe Logic Academy dated October 19, supplied to me by Lady L. (F.A.B.) reported a total of “more than $50,000”. Discrepancies aside, the financial side of the crisis seemed to be at an end. Discordians and other Wilson enthusiasts, demonstrating the power of the Internet as a medium of rally and communication, came out of the woodwork determined to make sure that their hero not be troubled by the material world. To my knowledge, this is the swiftest and most effective Discordian initiative on record, and they are to be congratulated.
Probably the main reason Wilson’s fans focused so heavily on the financial aspect of the situation was because they could do something about it. We’re helpless in the face of a major illness, but we’re damned sure not going to allow the added disgrace of poverty. Rushkoff probably put it best when he said, “I refuse for the history books to say he died alone and destitute, for I want future generations to know we appreciated Robert Anton Wilson while he was alive.”
But what of Wilson’s health? His condition is neither new nor surprising, and many fans have already made peace with the understanding that the inevitable is, well, inevitable.
On October 10, Wilson’s site ran the following announcement, explaining a bit more about where the latest health complications had come from: “Bob has post-polio syndrome which has severely damaged his legs and weakened his body. He had a hard fall in June of this year which landed him in the hospital. He has since not been able to walk and is thus confined to his bed, requiring 24 hour care. Due to Bob’s acute weakness in June and July, many of his family and friends felt that Bob could go at any time. He has since rallied slowly with up’s and down’s, and like most things, his condition seems in the maybe state. Bob has no pain, has a hearty appetite, is in steady good, sharp humor and is surrounded by family and friends.”
That sounds pretty good, all things considered, but the most recent data available comes to us from Rushkoff, dated October 13, in the form of a thank-you note and photo. Take a look. His appearance is heartbreakingly frail, but look in his eyes and you’ll see the same old superhero.
That’s where our story ends, for the time being. If anyone has any further information I may have missed, please send it my way via lordhoratio@gmail.com. And I’m happy to report that, even if you have trouble finding them in stores, his books are still available for order online. What better way to celebrate a great thinker than by actually paying attention?
Not long ago, as Horatio noted in this post, the International Astronomical Union sat down to decide what made a planet a planet, and which bodies deserved the title. The big controversy of the meeting was whether fan-favorite Pluto would lose its planet status, but I was more interested in whether or not we would add a few new planets to the roster.
The asteroid Ceres was up for the honor, as was Pluto’s moon Charon, but most interesting (to me) was 2003 UB313, an as-yet-unnamed object that was larger than Pluto. If Pluto got to be a planet, I thought, this thing had to be one too. And they’d get to name it! This is the sort of shit that gives nerds like me a serious buzz.
Well, the ruling came down. Pluto wasn’t a planet, and neither were Ceres or 2003 UB313 (I didn’t hear much about Charon, but come on. That thing was tiny). They weren’t just asteroids or “objects” either; they were the freshman class of the newly-created “dwarf planet” category. Dwarf planets were exactly what they sounded like, and now one of them needed a name.
2003 UB313 had previously gone by the nickname “Xena” (after Lucy Lawless’s popular TV character) but that name would hardly do for a planet, even a dwarf one. So the astronomers set to work coming up with a better moniker, and at the end of their deliberations they chose…
Eris. Planet Eris. Named for the Greek goddess of chaos and strife, star of counter-culture classic the Principia Discordia, and my all-time favorite classical deity (I even have the tattoo to prove it).
The scientists came up with some bullshit explanation about how creating the dwarf planet classification caused discord among astronomers, making the name a perfect fit. I’m not buying that for a second. These guys named their planet after the modern version of Eris, an icon of freak culture and an inspiration to countless geeks and stoners the world over.
After all, who names planets? Distinguished scientists, that’s who. And “distinguished scientist” is just a polite term for “nerd who’s old enough to remember Eris’s last pop culture splash.” And though the evidence is mostly circumstantial, it does start to stack up.
For example, there’s the fact that in ancient times, Eris just wasn’t a very big deal. She figures into exactly one myth. Most books on mythology, when recounting that myth, use Eris’s name exactly one time. She’s usually not even in the index. The other planets are named after some serious gods, though; Jupiter and his little pals had temples devoted to them all over ancient Rome, and their predecessors had similar temples in Greece.
That raises another point. Greek and Roman deities are more or less the same*, but with the exception of the unfortunately-named Uranus, all the planets bear the names of Roman gods. From Mercury to Ceres we’ve got nothing but Roman names, but Eris, as you may already know, was Greek. They could’ve just as easily given the planet her Roman name, Discordia, but no one on the panel had ever read a meandering comedic novel about Discordia.
So I posed a question to Horatio: What if we had been on that panel? Wouldn’t that be the first name we threw out? And wouldn’t our bullshit explanation sound a lot like the one the scientists actually gave? After all, they want their work to look legit, and they certainly don’t want it to be identifiable as a product of their collegiate gigglefests. Chances are there are tons of old pothead astronomers in the Carl Sagan mold who have been waiting their whole lives for a chance like this.
I also jokingly asked him what it meant for the field of astrology, but I have yet to receive a reply. Not that it matters, since I’m more interested in what it means for the Discordian religion. Sooner or later the connection is going to come out, and even if it doesn’t Eris’s public profile has just increased a thousandfold. Before this, only Hellenophiles and Discordians knew her name. Now it will be taught to millions of elementary school children.
This may diminish the Eris mystique a bit, but the increased exposure could be worth it. Which is to say: there may not be many people who worship Zeus/Jupiter, but they still far outnumber the people who dig Eris. And hey, Discordians will finally have a planetary correspondance, which will give them some Pagan cred.
The implications are far-reaching. The mainstream media will offer up brief versions of Eris’s place in culture and mythology. Astronomers will be beset by laughing fits for years to come over the stunt they managed to pull. And upon hearing the new dwarf planet’s name, all of my ex-girlfriends will probably think about me for a few minutes.
My friends and I were into Eris before it was cool, and as such I almost feel tempted to welcome her to the planet club. But that would be a mistake. No, instead I will welcome humanity to her abode, because for the first time in milennia they remember her name.
She is chaos. She is alive once more, and she has come to tell us that we are free. So get to it, humanity.
*I understand they’re not really the same. Rome had its own deities, and then gradually adopted Greek myths and inserted their own characters into the stories. The end result, though, is that the average person on the street just assumes the two sets of myths are identical.
Filed under: Culture — Horatio the Half-Mad @ 2:29 pm
On a planet of six and a half billion humans, Upper-Middle Class White America is doing its part to make the population explosion even worse. You’ve got be kidding me.
So: the firm I’m currently temping for decided to take a four-day weekend, and, since I’m not one to leave the house before noon if I don’t have to, I found myself on the couch watching NBC’s Today Show. If you’ve never watched the Today Show, only the first fifteen minutes are worth it. That’s when they get all their relevant stories about current events and politics and interviews with John McCain in. The rest of the three-hour onslaught is mostly romance tips, cutesy banter, and concerts by that Nick guy that married Jessica Simpson. At this point I should probably mention that I don’t have cable at the moment.
Anyway.
Half-asleep, I actually watched some of the fluff this morning, and learned something that, while it was packaged as cutesy family trend blather, should have appeared right between the latest Baghdad roadside bombing and predictions of the upcoming Category 47 Hurricane Jones. It appears, according to this morning’s Today Show, that the current trend in white upper-middle class America is now to pop out an average of three children per household. Do a little arithmetic, and that’s two humans, making an average of three more, per “traditional” marriage. On a planet with a human population of around six and a half billion. This is probably a problem.
There are statistics involved, which I’m not going to bother looking up, because a bubbly “expert” was on hand to explain. She specifically explained that this was the “new affluence”, and that, among well-off suburban Americans, a flock of screaming munchkins are now considered “status symbols.” As in, “I make so much money I can afford to feed all of these things, and eventually buy them cars and put them through college.” Christ, if anyone other than Angelina Jolie considered adopting starving African kids as status symbols, that continent’s under-ten population would relocate to Maine and Delaware overnight.
The trend seems especially strange to me, as I had been operating under the assumption that the two primary goals of Americans in the 20-to-35 category were 1.) writing Dave Eggers-esque memoirs, and 2.) making whiskey cool again. However, I suppose it makes a certain sick kind of sense. You can kick a trophy wife to the curb anytime. But a trophy kid is going to be a burden for a minimum of eighteen years, and usually more like thirty. You’ve really got to be rich to pull off that shit.
So, Trophy Wives are now popping out Trophy Children, because suddenly Hummers just aren’t cool anymore. We can thank high fuel prices for that one more than we can any amount of environmentalism or common sense, but just when you thought Mother Nature might get a break without going all Noah’s Ark on us, now it’s time for a fucking overbreeding crisis. Because America, other than some of the bars I like on a Friday night, is not overpopulated. But the resource consumption of one American is equal to that of like three thousand people from India, and that means that any increase in our populace is potentially as worrisome as when China passed the one billion marker. It also means Al Gore may need to make another movie.
I should mention that this trend is not universal to all Americans. For example, after the Today Show, I flipped to an episode of Maury Povich which featured Telia, a woman who’s appeared on the program eight times, and genetically tested ten different men to find out if they’re the father of her child. Each man, upon learning that he was not the father, jumped and shouted with blissful euphoria, high-fiving the audience. So, happily, not everyone is interested in further fueling the population explosion. Telia, your tears are a ray of hope.
There is a bright side to this, I suppose. Namely that, after the horrors of the absurdly cocky (post-WWII) Baby Boomers, expectations were that all Social Security money for Generation X and my own marginally later generation (Gen-X Part 2, The Revenge) was going to be used up, and none of us would ever get to retire. Well, with the first baby boom of the 21st century, if those little fucks are going to swarm the workforce and make me obsolete in my fifties, then at least there will be enough of them to pay for my Social Security and Medicare and robotic respiratory implants. Though it’ll be interesting to see how they manage to get to work without oil.
Watching daytime TV is basically a bad idea, so I’ll turn it off now, but not before mentioning that for as long as I can remember, Bob Barker has ended every episode of The Price is Right with the phrase, “Help control the pet population; have your pets spayed or neutered.” So I’ll close this article with, “Help control the human population; put a fucking rubber on your willy.”
