"Bailout marks..."
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/09/29/bailout-marks-karl-marx-s-comeback.aspx

Hypodermic Light
by Philip Lamantia

included in Destroyed Works (1962):

That the total hatred wants to annihilate me!

it’s the sickness of american pus against which I’m hallucinated

I’m sick of language

I want this wall I see under my eyes break up and shatter you

I’m talking all the poems after God

I want the table of visions to send me oriole opium

A state of siege

It’s possible to live directly from elementals!

hell stamps out

vegetable spirits, zombies attack heaven! the marvelous put

down by martial law, America fucked by a stick of marijuana

paper money larded for frying corpses!

Here comes the Gorgon! There’s the outhouse!

Come up from dead things, anus of the sun!

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/26/bailout_talks_founder_wamu_collapses_in

Zoophilia...

09/25 -09/27 2008

Homeland Security Detects Terrorist Threats by Reading Your Mind
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,426485,00.html

Jordens resurser slut

http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=147&a=831937

Science and Mystery: Awakening the Ancient Brain

Last night I had a remarkable dream: the body lays flat, dry, devoid of moisture in the dream a presence is felt as the radient fog of the sun... It draws unnervingly near, this nocular cloud rain energy and in ten disembodied voices it announces: ‘Hello, remember me?’ The contexts of the dream (the details of which I will occlude) grows silent...

An image retained on my retina makes it clear to me as I wake up in the dead of the night that the ten voices belongs to a single mythological/symbolic/metaphysical creature "identified in ancient texts" as The Ancient Brain...

DREAM RETOLD: Concerning Mamu the goddess of dreams, he said

The experience of being back at college, pursuing "Psychology" none-the-less, is having a strong impact on my flesh being, indeed. This dream manifested the brain in all its glory. The brain is significant in several regards. Not boring you all with the details of my life, I must say that it has been an unexpected adventure so far. I have been passionately engaged in readings in philosophy and psychology for the past decade plus, decidedly outside of academic circles. Granted it’s been sporadic, wild and anarchic, spirals pursuing whims and desires ad hoc, following faint threads of poetic luster rather than concentric chains of methodological research. What about 'science'? Today I am engaged in a structured academic setting - lo and behold - I very much look forward to learning scientific methodology and perhaps even gaining a scientific context pursuant towards facts, evidence and testable theories a'la carte. The poignant dream about the ancient brain being, I feel, was prompted by reading the first chapter of the course textbook, where the ‘three levels of analysis’ is explained and elucidated etc. The triad carries valuable insights as a foundational framework to begin scientific work within: the Brain; the Person; the Group, all meshed together in the - fourth element - the Physical World [Lebenswelt]. Malleable matter molded into this and that individual. As an Individual I am contemplating this as I lay down to sleep after the first lecture. The Brain materialized as this “ancient presence”, that made me reflect as I was walking about the next day on how the mystery of being alive and being endowed with this “ancient brain”, then "constituting a person", who's existing in “a society” (e.g. a group/country/culture etc.) - is like the blind spot of the eye!

Throughout the daily routine it is normally not reflected upon, it is taken for granted, but all this is quite the mystery!

Dr Sophia P. stated in passing in that first class last Monday that she was not “looking for mysteries”, but contrasting instead with "Psychology is a Science" – of mental processes and behavior et al. – in search of clear ideas verified by facts supported by objective evidence!

Yes, yes, of course it must be such! How else?

However, as the ten voices in my dream last night made me recall, we - all of us - are also ancient, truly old – born long ago into a mysterious universe, a universe escaping our logic when we least expect it (like while reading chapter 1 of Fundamentals of Psychology in Context!) . My ruminations takes me here: our brains have evolved over millions of years, so has our logic and our scientific understanding (well, maybe a bit less than that – what/when is the beginning of Science anyhow?); our ideological constructs regarding what it means to be a person, a particular individual, in this particular culture/society/point-in-history are all evolving too with each passing generation, with each newborn human being – each one a miracle if there ever was one! To think that we will be able to capture all this bustling “atomic/ molecular” activity of birth and death into some neat and eternal Theory seems to me like perfected hyperbole, or at least navel-gazing hubris. That said, I wish to reiterate that the pursuit of knowledge itself - theory – for us here manifested as “Psychology as the Science of Mental Processes and Behavior” - and its delicate moments of enlightenment, lasting or not, and the illuminating awareness for the individual doing the hard work - is well worth the effort!

Gaining knowledge is a process - - - and I do believe true and false knowledge is possible!

It’s just that here at the outset I find it crucial to state that what we are engaged in is not “dipping into the pot of knowledge” to soak up the gravy of what has been determined for ever and all times to be “true”, but rather to construct and fortify synaptic connections that will lend themselves to critical thinking and self-awareness. The Brain is, as is the Person and Society (the Group), a work in progress.

'Science and Mystery: Awakening the Ancient Brain’ I decided to call this bb posting, because I have found that within the clearest facts of science is profound mystery, and within the most occult mystery lies a light of scientific knowledge.

As far as the anatomy of the “Ancient Brain” is concerned, well, it was just a dream.

knoxology democratio lickioo

comming soon

J. Krishnamurti

ganesha missing one tooth
is the perfection of imperfection
happening upon our gods instantaneously
whenever they're forever perfected by our human design
and thoughts

"Var Freud vetenskapsman eller charlatan?"

Thousands march in Sweden against globalisation
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080920213952.glrpuxfc&show_article=1

Skyfish - Flying rods ufo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amnNgXRK_vo&feature=related

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_(cryptozoology)

sant - OKÄNT - falskt

A planet has been pictured outside our Solar System which appears to be circling a star like our own Sun - a first in astronomy.

1RXS J160929.1-210524

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7617031.stm

http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article3324284.ab

FLOW: For Love of Water…

New Film Examines Global Water Crisis

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/12/flow_for_love_of_waternew_film

What are myths?
Bob Trubshaw

http://www.indigogroup.co.uk/foamycustard/fc042.htm

We all know what we mean when we use the word 'myth'. The problem is, different people use the word in many different ways. In everyday speech a 'myth' is something that is imaginary and untrue. Indeed, this pejorative sense was exactly what brought the word back into use in the mid-nineteenth century. Early folklorists defined folklore as survivals from 'primitive' stages of culture into more advanced stages. However this meant that 'primitive' societies, such as native American Indians, could not have folklore in the technical sense. So 'mythology' was adopted to characterise these living systems of tales and beliefs of 'primitive' people, and 'folklore' was reserved for the survival of these systems in civilised societies.

The origins of the word 'myth' reveal yet another different meaning. The earliest uses of the Greek word mythos are somewhat difficult to assess but in the Illiad this word and its compounds are used 167 times, almost always to describe a powerful male giving orders or making boasts. Mythos are performed at length, in public, by a male in a position of authority. Nowhere are they considered untrue, symbolic, sacred or such like (Lincoln 1999: 17–18). But later prose writers such as Herodotus (c.484–424 BCE) begin to tinge mythos with notions of tall tales and legend. For Plato (c.428–347 BCE) mythos acquires the sense of things he could not believe, in contrast to more rational and philosophical concepts, and this is the way the word was used by later Greeks. (Puhvel 1987: 1)

Early mythologists were not sympathetic to the richness of 'primitive' cultures, and their ideas seemed to them merely fanciful and 'savage' – they followed Plato in terming them 'myths'. However before long such myths were recognised as being of considerable interest, mythology – the study of myths – took root.

When the whole notion of 'savages', 'primitive cultures' and 'survivals' was demolished in the twentieth century, mythologists reinvented the meaning of 'myth'. Myths became stories in some way 'sacred' to a society, metaphorical means of conveying 'truths' (or perceived truths within that society). So myths gave a 'structure' to the society or group – they explained such matters as the origin and organisation of the cosmos, social organisation such as gender and kingship, and told of deities and heroes.

In the minds of key mythologists, myth became synonymous with religion. In the formative years of mythology it could be said that 'primitive societies had myths whereas civilised societies had religion'. However only a small amount of comparative mythology revealed that Genesis was one among many similar 'mythical' accounts of creation. The Bible was as much myth as, say, the Australian Aborigines' Dreamtime.

Many of the leading mythologists of the twentieth century considered that all myths are religious myths, and myths have a religious structure and fulfil a religious function. This is the sense in which myth is commonly used by mythologists today:
Myth ... is now recognised as a serious expression of some sacred truth. (Cooper 1992: iv)

Myth operates by bringing a sacred ... past to bear preemptively on the present and inferentially on the future ... (Puhvel 1987: 2)

So we may say that a myth is typically a sacred story ... (Cupitt 1982: 29)

A myth is a story that is sacred to a group of people ... (Tarzia 1999: 39)

However defining myth by reference to a term – 'sacred' – that has considerable complexities of its own is less than helpful. 'Myth' is widely used with these religious and sacred connotations, and as a consequence this usage will recur throughout this book too. Nevertheless, this book also explores myths where the epithet 'sacred' seems inappropriate. Myths do not necessarily recount tales of the origins of the cosmos, gods, rituals, or sacred events. A great many traditional ones do. A great many modern day myths do not.
If myths provide a 'structure' to how societies think about the world they often do so by contrasting perceived 'opposites' – the king with his servants, the rich with the poor, heroes with monsters, gods with humans, the socially approved with 'outcasts', order with chaos, constructive with destructive agents and forces, young with old, male with female, light with dark, and so on.

These 'structures' – a better term for the more complex ones might be 'ideologies' – are elaborated into narratives, that is stories recounting a sequence of events. A single mythical idea can be expressed in many different ways, and can be interwoven with other mythic motifs. Societies evolve one or more 'families' of myths, which change over time and probably have counterparts in other societies. Myths have a tendency to degenerate into epic legends, ballads, or to survive only in the attenuated form of 'superstitions', folk customs and other 'nostalgic' notions.

The origins of myths are invariably with pre-literary or 'oral' societies which, as Walter Ong has discussed in detail (Ong 1982), differ greatly from the way thinking evolved after the advent of writing. Philosophy and science work by inductive or deductive arguments. In contrast, myth uses narrative to explore such 'abstract' notions as origins, causes, goals and changes (Hatab 1990; Flood 1996: 27). Modern-day myths differ greatly from those of oral societies (although mythic motifs are every bit as prevalent in modern-day society, as will be explored in articles such as the politics of culture).

What has not changed is that myths are essentially verbal. Mythical entities may be depicted in pictures, carvings, masks and other iconic forms. Myths may be alluded to or re-enacted in ceremonial, ritual, drama, dance, magic and other forms of symbolic activities. But these images and activities are not, in themselves, myths. Modern myths find their most fluent expression in the 'non-written' media of cinema, TV and computer games but, despite the importance of visual images in these media, the narratives rely greatly on the verbal aspects of the script and on mythic motifs that are essentially verbal distinctions rather than purely iconographic.

Myths are deadly serious

Modern mythologists use the term 'myth' without any pejorative overtones. Indeed, as Jaan Puhvel states:

Myth in the technical sense is a serious object of study, because true myth is by definition deadly serious to its originating environment. In myth are expressed the thought patterns by which a group formulates self-cognition and self-realization, attains self-knowledge and self-confidence, explains its own source and being and that of its surroundings, and sometimes tries to chart its destinies. By myth man has lived, died and – all too often – killed. (Puhvel 1987: 2)

Although Puhvel's wording is rather stilted, this is a definition that suffices to unite the senses in which 'myth' is used in foamy custard (although Puhvel continues with the statement that myth operates by bringing a sacred past to bear on the present, which I am less comfortable with as some of the most powerful modern day myths are secular).

I fully concur with the profundity of the final sentence of the quotation from Puhvel. Myths are not the preserve of primitive societies but predominate in all cultures. At the time of writing, in 2003, one economically- and militarily-dominant culture is currently inflicting its simplistic myths on the rest of the world. These myths are killing and ruining the lives of people in Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, south Asia and numerous other places. Political and economical myths sharing the same ideologies are being inflicted on every nation.
Mythology is often considered to be the study of narratives from people who are well-separated from 'us' in space and/or time. Indeed, most mythology has been the study of such myths. But we are missing out on the real importance of mythology if we do not also consider the myths that are alive and well in modern day 'Western' cultures. The underlying emphasis of this book is to show that 'old school' mythology – which associates myths with 'others', distant in place and/or time – needs to be augmented by approaches that fully engage with myths as they manifest in almost every aspect of modern life, secular as well as religious.

Lance Bennett has argued that myths are not so much the contents of consciousness as deep structures that shape the contents of consciousness (Bennett 1980). Repeated exposure to myths – or merely mythic motifs – rather than conscious learning is responsible for embedding myths into the structure of our consciousnesses. The consequence of these 'deep structures' is that myths manifest in the modern world as 'fragmentary references, indirect allusions, watchwords, slogans, visual symbols, echoes in literature, film, songs, public ceremonies, and other forms of everyday situations, often highly condensed and emotionally charged.' (Flood 1996: 84); see introductory guide to cosmologies as 'deep structures'.

In modern society such myths are as likely to be intermeshed with political ideologies as they are with the notions of the sacred. Indeed, in today's secular world political myth has almost as much authority as sacred myths once had. 'Political myths' and 'sacred myths' have a close affinity, in that they are essentially narrative forms of ideology. Despite the close similarities of political myths and sacred myths, academics still consider that the two cannot be equated; see separate article on politics of culture.
Mythology, mythography and other definitions

These introductory attempts to 'define' myth are intended only to set the stage for the more detailed discussions elsewhere in the foamy custard site. However, two further definitions and distinctions are necessary before continuing.

'Mythology' is widely-used as a term for a collection of myths from a common culture. However the origin of the word means the 'study of myths' and, to avoid undue confusion, it is in that sense that will be used exclusively in my contributions (except in quotations). This also implicitly recognises that 'mythology' is usually inappropriate for describing the myths of a culture, as cultures actually have mythologies, rather than merely 'one' mythology.

In recognition of this confusion, American mythologists have begun to refer to the study of myths as 'mythography'. At one level this makes good sense, as the Concise Oxford English Dictionary states that a mythographer is a 'compiler of myths'. But the same dictionary defines mythography as 'the representation of myths in plastic art' (making mythography a direct counterpart to iconography, the representation in drawing or paint). So using 'mythography' to mean the study of myths simply adds confusion for those not previously familiar with the term.

bibliographical references

BENNETT, W. Lance, 1980, 'Myth, ritual and political control', Journal of Communication, 30, 166–79. COOPER, J.C. (ed), 1992, Brewer's Book of Myth and Legend, Cassell. CUPITT, Don, 1982, The World to Come, SCM Press. FLOOD, Christopher G., 1996, Political myth: A theoretical introduction, Garland. HATAB, Lawrence J., 1990, Myth and Philosophy: A contest of truths, Open Court. ONG, Walter J., 1982, Orality and literacy; reprinted Routledge 2002. PUHVEL, Jaan, 1987, Comparative Mythology, John Hopkins UP. TARZIA, Wade, 1999, 'A glance into mythography', 3rd Stone, 36, 39–44.

Varbild

"As far as I know, capitalism 'builds itself' only through exploitation and nothing else."

Israel asks U.S. for arms, air corridor to attack Iran

http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1019989.html

LHC - THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER
Homepage:
http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/

Trying to recreate conditions in the first billionth of a second after the Big Bang dawn of the universe 14 billion years ago...

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080910/D933PMQG0.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4722261.ece

http://www.aftonbladet.se/webbtv/nyheter/utrikes/article3283407.ab

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/science/11collider.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/10/nyregion/10end.html?ref=science

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7604293.stm

"The disturbing object - that is the first step to art."

- Marcel Duchamp

"We observed a new jewel in the solar system," said Uwe Keller, head of cameras on the European Space Agency's probe Rosetta, likening asteroid Steins to a "diamond in the sky".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7599962.stm

More Images:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7602214.stm

In Swedish:

http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=148&a=824951

Giorgio de Chirico:

"Every object has two aspects: The common aspect, which is the one we generally see and which is seen by everyone, and the ghostly and metaphysical aspect, which only rare individuals see at moments of clairvoyance and metaphysical meditation. A work of art must relate something that does not appear in its visible form."

The Soothsayer's Recompense, oil on canvas by Giorgio de Chirico, 1913;

in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

"Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were the first to teach the deep significance of the senselessness of life, and to show how this senselessness could be transformed into art . . . . The dreadful void they discovered is the very soulless and untroubled beauty of matter."

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/1/st_paul_police_conduct_mass_pre

Amy Goodman and Two Democracy Now! Producers Unlawfully Arrested At the RNC!
Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar have been arrested while covering a protest at the Republican National Convention in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota.
Read more and learn how you can take action…
Monday, September 1 8:20 pm EDT

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2008/9/1/amy_goodman_and_two_democracy_now_producers_unlawfully_arrested_at_the_rnc#

Watch Here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjyvkR0bGQ

General News About Protest:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080901/D92U49RO0.html

a new magazine manifesting
surrealism’s continuing creative luminescence

http://leedssurrealistgroup.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/phosphor-issue-number-1/

http://leedssurrealistgroup.wordpress.com/

WELCOME TO "THE DOMAIN OF THE MARVELOUS"

"No longer is it a matter of the narrow roads where traditional beauty is offered in its clarity and obviousness to the admiration of the crowds. The crowds were taught the victory of intelligence over the world and the submission of the forces of nature to man.

Now it is a question of seizing and admiring a new art which leaves humankind in its true condition, fragile and dependent, and which nevertheless, in the very spectacle of things ignored or silenced, opens unsuspected possibilities to the artist.

And this is the domain of the strange, the Marvelous, and the fantastic, a domain scorned by people of certain inclinations. Here is the freed image, dazzling and beautiful, with a beauty that could not be more unexpected and overwhelming. Here are the poet, the painter, and the artist, presiding over the metamorphoses and the inversions of the world under the sign of hallucination and madness ...

Here at last the world of nature and things makes direct contact with the human being who is again in the fullest sense spontaneous and natural. Here at last is the true communion and the true knowledge, chance mastered and recognized, the mystery now a friend and helpful."

-- Suzanne Cesaire, 1941