The Severed Thumb Mental Trigger.

I spoke to the guy who made my sandwich today for a while about his recent run-in with a cucumber slicer (among weather, local bars and venues, and girls).  A couple days ago, he was slicing and dicing with an industrial sized destroyer of wanna-be pickles.  His hand slipped, and the device cut off the fucking tip of his thumb.  “Clean off”, he said, “there was hardly even any blood…. at first”.  My first thought was, why the hell are you even here right now?  Under his plastic gloves throbbed a thick, “nude” colored, thumb cast which grew from below his second knuckle all the way to the top.  Said it would take at least 4, if not 7 or 8, months for the tip to grow back completely.  But there he stood, making my sandwich (even though I offered to hop the counter and make it myself) with one good hand and a set of totally useless digits lacking an opposable one, not bitching about it at all.  In fact, he probably wouldn’t have mentioned it without me bringing it up. 

Where is the other employee, for the love of Man give this guy some help up here! Then the truth, the terrible truth, finally came out.  He was there working all by himself.  His boss left, presumably to schmooze some local bitches that he “owns” (take the term w/ a grain of pepper) a “restaurant” (take that term with some salt & pepper).  I asked him if he’d be getting some workman’s compensation, or at least a few paid off days while he grows back a fucking appendage.  “Nope.  Boss says this sort of thing ain’t covered.”  Good God man.  Do any of these places treat their employees well at all??

I watched Fast Food Nation about a month ago and it didn’t quite stick until I met this dude today.  Perhaps the movie was designed, by accident, to only be triggered by a sort of hypnopersonal experience akin to the Dr. Hurt‘s “Zur En Arrh” mental trigger of the Batman.  Though who’s the better subliminal controller: Richard Linklater or the worldwide fast-food corporate machines?  (No answer is needed here)  Apparently Yum! Brands Incorporated is abusing workers rights both here and abroad, and has been for some time now.  After this experience I’m NOT eating at this specific restaurant, the second largest operator globally behind “Yum!“, until further notice.  I’m already banning Applebee’s from my diet for some chicken wings that looked like blackened worm intestines in the middle, I guess I can add [take a guess] to the list also.  It’s too bad this guy probably can’t afford a good lawyer, cause he could take a big bite out of these mother fuckers.

-Sonny

Measuring Human Consciousness (REGs and PEAR).

On my way home this past weekend, fairly tired of the 6 CD’s in my changer, I opted for some uber-late-night talk radio to either piss me off, intrigue me, or bore me.  Turned out to be the middle option.  BIG time.  On AM 1500 Talk Radio an encore version of Art Bell’s Coast To Coast AM rattled through my head featuring one of the most interesting, and more importantly REAL, speculative science fiction topics I’ve EVER heard of.  I was so excited about it I woke my girlfriend up at 3, or whenever the hell it was, just to tell someone about it.  ANYONE; if she wouldn’t have woke, no doubt I’d be explaining this to the cat.  [*Lil' NOTE: Not sure why I didn't just write about this that night.]

As you know, or if you don’t know, Art Bell was the founder of the program (Coast To Coast) which is now hosted by a guy named George Noory.  The show specialized in quite a bit of unnatural phenomena.  Paranormal, Bigfoot, speculation and conspiracies, etc.  It all sounds like total bullshit at first but is in fact typically well supported by empirical evidence, and Art himself was at times quite a skeptic to callers.  But THIS, I had to see to believe.  I turned my radio on just as a tester/scientist was calling in about a new product based on a device originally designed by the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program.

This device, made by a company (it’s also the name of the device) called Psyleron, Inc., is available for purchase by the public.  It comes with software, typically for a PC (fuck Macs), and is connected via standard USB cable.  It’s described by one user as a “hyper-coin-flipper”.  What it does is it sends out a series of billions of +’s and -’s in the form of streaming, real time, graph/chart/history.  Think of a random number generator on an advanced calculator, this thing they’re calling a “Random Event Generator” (or REG), is exactly that a million times per second in a moment by moment sense.  So, if you were to place one of these in a controlled environment (an enclosed chamber) it would stay fairly close to center all the time.  It essentially measures randomness, or chance, by “flipping a coin” billions of times in succession.  Here’s how it works from THEM:

The measurement relies on small changes in the behavior of an electronic device designed to produce a random output. A random event generator, or REG, as used for the GCP data collection, is essentially a high-speed electronic coin flipper. Instead of heads and tails, the REG produces + or – pulses relative to a mean value, and these pulses are converted into 1′s and 0′s, the bits that are the language of computers. The bits can be counted, and stored as samples from a well understood mathematical distribution of random numbers. The device also is often called a random number generator (RNG), which is a name given to computer programs that produce “pseudo” random numbers. The REG and RNG devices used in the GCP are hardware sources of “true” random events — fundamentally unpredictable 1′s and 0′s.

With me so far, right?  Well, what’s absolutely even more fascinating than the device itself is that the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Program (who originally designed “REGs”) have discovered that human beings can actually control the device’s levels, effectively manipulating the amount of chance, or randomness, around them.  Don’t believe me, do you?  The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Program has been running tests with the REG’s, and a whole slew of human subjects for years now (in fact, they’re completely done).  If a human being near one of these REG’s even concentrates hard enough, the level of randonimity on the device will literally drop.  It’s consistent too.  The program has performed thousands of different experiments, each with millions of trials, and the data holds up.  The obvious philosophical query here is… what the fuck are they even measuring???  Princeton has this to say:

When it comes to “what we are measuring” the story becomes more complicated because there is no real understanding of the mechanism whereby an REG’s behavior can be altered by thoughts and emotions or intentions.  We do not know how a mental state such as an intention or emotion is able to inform the physical system to affect its behavior. In addition, all of the robust measures we have providing evidence for the anomalous effects are statistical in nature, and the signal to noise ratio is extremely low. This means that we typically cannot be sure that the “signature” of an effect in any individual analysis is driven by the hypothesized influence of consciousness.  After all the caveats, however, we can say that the evidence for an effect of consciousness on REGs is strong. We are driven by that evidence to infer that something like a “consciousness field” exists, and that intentions or emotional states which structure the field are conveyed as information that is absorbed into the distribution of output values of labile physical systems. The output of the REG differs from what would be expected without the influence of consciousness.

So, it’s our consciousness that’s effecting the REG’s in a linnear, and direct, way.  The caller of Coast to Coast mentioned taking the device to a play, a movie theater, or something where a very large group of people are concentrating on one thing together.  In these cases, the level of randomness in the room goes down.  It also does with meditation, studying, etc.  Princeton calls these “field studies” and summerizes them as such:

In “field” studies with REGs we have found consistent deviations from expected randomicity in data taken in situations where groups become integrated or unified by something of common interest. During deeply engaging meetings, concerts, rituals, etc., the data tend to exhibit slightly greater order than random data should, and we are able to predict this deviation with small but significant success.

I know many people don’t believe this shit, but here are many many links to the various sites, devices, and so forth.  Amazing stuff.

- The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Program homepage.

- PEAR’s explainations on REGs, human consciousness, experiments, measurements, etc.

- PEAR’s Research Publication (PDF): “Correlations of Random Binary Sequences with Pre-Stated Operator Intention: A Review of a 12-Year Program”.

- A link to ALL PEAR’s Publications.

- Psyleron Incorporated.

- The “REG Package” (for purchase).

- Holy crap it’s an amazing world we live in.

-Sonny

Pitchfork = Top40 Radio?

While digging through their archives recently I discovered the musical website severely lacking modesty now known as Pitchfork.com (for a long time it was “PitchforkMedia.com“) has much more in common with Top 40 radio, MTV (think TRL days), and the mainstream music industry than it leads visitors to believe.  I’m starting to think  of Pitchfork, and its many many imitators, as the mirrored image of the popular, best-selling music scene; they’re quite literally opposites in their composition, but still represent an attitude and philosophy that LOOKS the same.

Rinse, Reuse, Recycle

I noticed the most glaring and obvious comparison in rummaging through the site’s “Best New Albums” list all the way back to about 2002.  If you go back to the 27th page, you’ll find bands and artists Pitchfork would never dare talk about today (for many different reasons), or at least not in such a flattering light.  Some of these albums received 8′s, even mid-to-high 9′s which is virtually unheard of for Pitchfork.  I suppose the most clear argument FOR the site here would be the “initial-success” argument, which may honestly be the case for some of these albums.  It happens with filmmakers and writers all the time: they emerge onto the scene with an unbelievable debut (or mainstream debut), and never live up to that again.  The site is justified when it comes to albums from way back when (I can’t believe 2002 is already “way back when”) suffering from initial-success-syndrome.  But you’re lying to yourself if you think ALL of these bands and albums are sick with ISS.

What’s mostly happening here is two fold: either these bands have become too “big” or “recognized” for such an “underground” website to mention them, or they’re simply not the next big hyped obscurity like they once were.  See the gradual descent of artists like Cat Power, the Eels, Kanye West, or The Decemberists and you’ll see what I mean.  All these band’s Pitchfork ratings, and scores of others who once were obscure (back when AOL monopolized Internet connections with that awful hissing/buzzing sound) and who’ve achieved some level of “oh my God they’re SO good” mainstream success with people who liked Stuff White People Like (the website, not the “stuff”), have dropped gradually in creepy relation to their level of obscurity.  Instead, new names and faces have replaced the old next-best-thing.  Feist has replaced M.I.A. and so forth.

How is this so dissimilar from Top 40′s radio (albeit from the opposite side of the spectrum)?  In both cases, the hype-machines recycle artists who’ve become something they’re just not looking for anymore.  Granted, on the Pitchfork side it might not be their fault.  And they do still review bands who’ve become mainstream (see: The Decemberists); but they don’t talk about these bands as much, in news, live sections, or otherwise, and the newer reviews are always 3-5 points less than from 5 years ago.  The site has some decent writers doing reviews, though most of them could use some humility.  The problem is the overall flavor of the site, reeking with that stench of “you don’t know who this IS, do you lowly visitor??”.  It laughs at you behind your back, but wants your traffic for advertising purposes.  For greenery.  On top of that, there’s these two little tidbits which limit the site’s credibility in my eyes: Lil Wayne’s “Tha Carter III” was one of the best reviewed albums of 2008 (8.7), and the website has NEVER reviewed a Giraffes album in their rather long history (in Internet terms).  For these things, they can never apologize enough in my eyes.

-Sonny

80′s Tapeworm Legacies.

I was pretty young at the time, but when I was a little boy I had a fairly extensive tape collection.  Probably not as sprawling as my action figure collection, consisting mostly of X-Men, Batman, and Ninja Turtles, but varied for a little guy who just recently recieved his first comic book ever in the form of Punisher.  I had tapes ranging from Weird Al to Metallica to Appetite for Destruction.

The tape I always was the most obsessed with though was a copy of the 1987 album Bad in all its wanna-be street punk glory.  I also had 1991′s Dangerous on tape, but Bad was always my favorite of the two (Thriller was truly before my time).  I’m sure the Internet is flooded right now with everyone and their brother paying tribute to the man, and I guess that’s sort of what I’m here to do.  But I want to make this short and sweet.  Mike Jackson was the first guy to ever get me into anything besides Rock & Roll music, though his music (specifically Bad) often had shades of Rock.  To this day, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who says: “I hate Micheal Jackson’s music”.  Sure, every now and again you’ll get a “I hate Micheal Jackson” comment, but that has NOTHING to do with his music.  If there’s any one star, legitimate international STAR, who fell from grace so quickly to the depths of pure unlikeability, it’s MJ.  In the latter years, there was almost nothing likable about him (besides maybe the fact that he was a grown man w/ a child’s heart; but even that, to me, isn’t likable).  Still though, personality issues and accusations abound, his musical legacy never suffered.  And that is the highest compliment his relatively short discography can receive.  Thriller on vinyl is calling my name from the basement, I gotta go.

-Sonny

WWII Online.

Some clever work here by a guy named Brian Moore: a group of World War II propaganda posters/technology-age mashups.  Specifically here, Brian’s tackling the issue of net-neutrality and the amazingness of GoogleEarth.  Other topics in this Flickr gallery include Wikipedia, “tweeting” (see: “Internet Birdies”), and torrenting MP3s.  Again, the LINK.

To find out more, or to help out in the fight, about Net-Neutrality visit Save The Internet.com.

-Sonny

Make Way for Boomer Bears!

About two weeks ago an impromptu reading session of nothing but David Foster Wallace at a local Barnes and Noble led to “On DF Wallace and Shouldering the Blame“.  The “blame” being the consistent attacks from aging Conservatives, Liberals, and Undecideds alike that my generation is fucking up the country.  My generation is destroying the housing market.  Ruining what it means to go to the cinema (this might be true).  Ruining sexuality.  Ruining language.  Ruining existence for that matter!  Obviously I take exception to that.  I haven’t even had a chance to live yet, and already I’m to blame.  What’s funny is the same thing happened in the early 90′s; then the Gen-X-er’s turned into smart, sophisticated, tech-savvy professionals who put the business ethics and success of the Boomers to shame.  The 90′s bubble happened: up-and-comers made the cash, Boomers spent it.  Spent it like it was a fucking religion.  A ritualistic worship fest dubbed “the peak of American Consumerism”.  It’s too bad most of them probably haven’t seen Dawn of The Dead.  They could learn from it.

Finally, FINALLY, a published author (with enough skills to actually explain what’s happening culturally in America right now, not like me) with the chops is saying the same thing.  I’m holding the newest Newsweek magazine, thanks to Laura.  On the 18 page there’s a tiny little article called Boomer Bears.  Click the link, or if you’re too lazy, read mo’ fo’:

There’s no shortage of scapegoats in the credit boom and bust: exotic derivatives, overpaid executives, baby boomers. Yes, the generation that brought us hippies, then yuppies, then old people on Facebook is a culprit in the economic crisis. As the 79 million boomers have aged, the U.S. economy has reflected their habits. It’s no coincidence that the dotcom bubble and the early-2000s credit boom happened when boomers reached middle age-consumer spending peaks around age 46. Now, as boomers close their wallets and prepare to retire (the oldest of them became eligible for Social Security in 2008), they’ll start dragging down the economy instead of propping it up. “Baby boomers have peaked,” says investment manager Harry Dent, who has long warned of this coming demographic crisis. “They’re going to slow the economy down for the next 12 to 14 years.” This is exactly what happened in Japan, where an enormous asset boom crashed in 1990 just after a big chunk of the population hit middle age. Japan’s economy never recovered, and the Nikkei is still about 75 percent below its 1989 high. Could the same thing happen in the U.S.? One piece of evidence suggests yes: the U.S. today has a median age of 37, roughly the same as in Japan 20 years ago. Only one consequence seems certain, however: we’re in for another round of boomer navel gazing.

Thank you so so much Barrett Sheridan.  Thank you for finally seeing, and speaking up, about what’s happening to this country, why it’s happening, and what the future holds.  You deserved more space for this concept.  Unfortunately, as I’m assuming the majority of Newsweek readers fall into the “Boomers” flock, your notions aren’t popular with the regulars; so they push you into a corner of page 18, your article cries out for someone to listen, to get it.  I do.  Thanks.

-Sonny

The Good and the Bad – 6/23.

Yeah… Not That Into It.

- Kiss’ very first original studio LP since 1998 (see the miserable “Psycho Circus“) is just about finished, according to Paul Stanley.  No official release date has been set yet, but rumors have been swirling that the album will be an in-store exclusive through Walmart (much like AC/DC’s 2008 album “Black Ice“).  Could this be a new trend with aging rock bands??  And what the fuck exactly are they getting out of it?  I for one, think that they KNOW they won’t be selling a whole ton of copies, but enough for a corporation like Walmart or Best Buy to make the deal, so they make a little extra cash (say, the equivalent of 25,000 units) on the side to make up for the drop.  Lame.

- More proof that music award shows are absolutely uneccessary.  I didn’t know these even existed, but I guess Sunday night some awards show called the MuchMusic Video Awards aired.  All of the following actually happened: the newest 15 minutes chick (the one all the teenage girls like cause she’s “weird”) Lady Gaga wore a bra that shot flaming sparks out of the nipples (see: holyoverthetopish), Nickelback won almost every award ever (those buttholes are still around?), and that one of the douche-bags from the Black Eyed Peas named Will.i.am got in a fight with some douche-bag who makes millions by talking about celebrities named Perez Hilton.  Kill me now.

- Van Halen is about to pull the trigger on suing Nike.  They’re claiming that a new Nike Sneaker, the Nike Dunk Lows, infringe on Eddie Van Halen’s signature “Frankenstrat” guitar.  In 2001 the band copyrighted the guitar’s style, a mish-mash/criss-cross of black and white stripes on a red background.  The sneakers only feature the design on the very bottom, where the sole overlaps the side, see for yourself.  A cartoon chimp, seems pretty flimsy.  I say Eddie Van Halen’s a tool, not to mention overrated, for using a Floyd Rose Tremolo, a D-Tuna (which he also has copyrighted), and a swiming-pool’ed Ibanez I wouldn’t want to touch with a thirty seven foot pole.  What’s wrong Eddie, not getting as many royalties off of tapping and Van Halen II as you used to?  Need to expand the income by taking huge, rich corporations to court because they’ll likely settle out of court to maintain you’re bullshit lifestyle??  Okay.  LINK.

Sounds Good!

- UK newspaper/site The Guardian is trudging on, though probably with very little views, with their “50 Greatest Moments In Jazz” series.  The latest details a Jazz guitarist from Oklahoma City named Charlie Christian.  Christian was the world’s very first big-time, house-hold, G electric guitar player.  He started in the 30′s when the instrument was first being designed by the likes of Rickenbacker and Gibson.  He was only 25 when he died, in 1942, but damn if he doesn’t almost define the word “prodigy”.  There’s a whole ass-load of guitarists, nearly EVERY single one, who owe some amount of gratitude to Charlie Christian.  Here’s a link to him playing, and here’s a link to the article.

- The Flaming Lips (Hey hey, what do you know?  Another Oklahoma City artist!  This time 80 years later…) have titled their upcoming album as “Embryonic“.  They’re planning on releasing the disc in the Fall, September to be specific, but I find this hard to swallow considering they haven’t: settled on the track listing yet, decided if it will be a double-album or not, and chosen the two or three themes of the concept disc.  Good luck with that Fall release guys, I’m not being sarcastic.  Good luck.  LINK.

- A White Stripes documentary is about to be released chronicling the band’s tour after releasing 2007′s “Icky Thump“.  The DVD will feature the band playing in unusual, as well as normal, venues and places such as a public bus and a children’s show.

- I’m so so so glad Spinal Tap has finally returned with an album called “Back From The Dead“.  Yes.

-Sonny

Deviant ART Photography.

Browsing the most popular Artwork in the past eight hours of Deviant Art.  Here’s some photography:

More photography from ALL over the world @ Deviant Art here.

-Sonny

Born Into This: Blacklisted

Years and years ago existed a duo greatly feared by the underworld of the Earth. Zeb manipulated waves of all kinds: solar, shock, sound, electronic. This culminated in uncontrolled explosions, atomic collisions, inside his frontal lobe which extended sometimes miles from the epicenter. Each explosion caused his skin, and humanity, to deteriorate while simultaneously increasing his overall power. Sub, meanwhile, designed and planned their attacks with uncanny precision due to his ability of seeing, and influencing, the future. He supposedly beat infamous strong-man Mr. Giant to a pulp with his bare hands as a young man, foreseeing every blow in advance and knowing exactly where/when to strike. The two men were known as “The Blacklist Brothers” to everyone but themselves; they were notorious for creating lists of villains, and heroes alike, who’d done wrong in their eyes. They would not rest until any entity listed felt their wrath.

Causing much damage, the team’s methods were often question by the caped community. The Guild of Heroes – one of the world’s premier crime-fighting teams – recruited the brothers with the intention of controlling their actions through several means: a promise of unlimited resources if collateral damage decreased dramatically, the mental influence of the Guild’s psychic team, name and costume changes for public perception’s sake, and an experimental inhibitor serum administered daily. They agreed to all except name changes. Zeb and Sub made their presence known in several Guild of Heroes campaigns including overthrowing a very large centralized government and framing rival super-hero squad The Justice Union with assassinating the President.

The Guild’s board of directors liked what they saw, until the psychic team warned the brothers were planning to kill the team’s leader, Captain Justice, after seeing his name on a list in one of Zeb‘s mental projections. With word Captain Justice had been abusing the Guild of Heroes’ female capes, the board deemed the warning plausible and subsequently fired the duo. Some say the only reason Captain Justice’s name appeared on the list was because Sub foresaw their firing weeks before it happened. Zeb and Sub continued their vigilantism on their own. Post-Guild, powerful and cunning as ever.

In an astonishing move, The Guild of Heroes approached the other two remaining justice societies of Earth to devise a plan to kill the brothers once and for all. They enlisted the powers of the evil sorcerer and mastermind Reaver to temporarily suppress Sub’s powers. Without the gift of foresight, Sub died at the hands of Captain Justice while sleeping quietly in his own home. Zeb, who hadn’t slept since the Guild termination, meanwhile patrolled the city streets on his own. The moment Sub passed Zeb felt it immediately in heart and mind. His head swelled, sobbing on a skyline fixture in the moonlight. His breakdown initiated a massive atomic explosion of the brain, like nothing Zeb had ever experienced, killing nearly 2 million citizens.

Zeb died that night along with his brethren, in the rotting cityscape while the media glorified The Guild of Heroes for spearheading the clean-up and rebuilding process. The incident destroyed his face and twisted his mind to the brink. Unrecognizable, manic, shredded of all remaining humanity, he went into exile.

-Sonny

Number, Artist, and Prime-Time Changes.

Few quick things:

- Great, well written and explained, article about how JJ Abrams’ version of Star Trek (still haven’t seen it) is basically a rip off of Star Wars IV: A New Hope.  This guy’s dead on, he gets it.  Coincidentally, I’m not saying the movie sucks, just pointing out that this reiterates what I said before in “The Wrath of Reboots”: looks decent enough, but it ain’t REAL Star Trek, it’s an imposter.

- I didn’t realize this last Fall (probably because the Bengals suck so much ass, and are therefor never spoken of late in the season), but Chad Johnson — overrated NFL reciever currently playing for the Bengals – legally changed his name to “Chad Ocho Cinco”.  What a fucking idiot.  I hate football players so much.

- Future legendary, may be there already, comic book artist Phil Jimenez will be joining the uber-British Warren Ellis on his book Astonishing X-Men starting this Fall.  Here’s what Marvel released as a “preview” of how he’ll be drawing Ellis’ X-Team… LINK.

- Upcoming ABC show FlashFoward actually sounds really interesting for a prime-time network television show.  The show is centered around a very bizarre worldwide event which many people, who aren’t into speculative Sci-Fi, may roll their eyes at: for 2 minutes and 17 seconds every single person on Earth experiences a simultaneous mental and physical black out.  I know, it could be horrible… At least they’re trying; instead of creating a show about slutty whores trying to marry a celebrity (or dance).

-Sonny