Who Killed The Publishing Industry & Hollywood? MFA'S? McWeeneys? The Snarky, Talentless Agents & Editors? All of the Above? Zines & Indy Authors to the Rescue!!
jollyro...@yahoo.com
http://classicstorytelling.com
http://jollyrogerwest.com/showthread.php?p=1083#post1083
Is the Eggers Maffia now killing readers, in the same manner that they
went after indy writers and poets? The snarky, underhanded,
back-stabbing, ivy-league pomo hipsters have the backing of vast
corporate conglomerates, who like Enron and Global Crossing will stop
at nothing to rule the universe with deceit, hype, and insidious
machinations--they already deconstructed the Great Books, and they will
rid the world of readers if that's what it takes to dominate the front
tables of Borders & B&N with their
snickety-snarkety-insider-tax-and-tuition-and-tax-shelter-foundation
funded books.
But along the way, readers will be lost, as literature is redefined as
that which nobody reads, but which taxpayers and MFA students must
fund.
http://notenoughreaders.blogspot.com/ reports
The publishing industry (both for books and newspapers & magazines) is
confronting today a major problem: there simply are not enough readers
for
the number of books and newspapers published. A recent blog in New
York,
run by writer M.J. Rose, caught my attention when it spoke about this
problem directly with the following story. If we cannot reverse this
situation, the world of books and magazines and newspapers -- as we
know
it -- is doomed....
Dave Kiopen reports from SF on the dying BOOK PUBLISHING INDUSTRY:
BookExpo America, the annual three-day trade show held in Manhattan
last
weekend to show off the publishing industry's fall wares to booksellers
and the media, was a lot like life. Most people split their focus among
unseemly jockeying for immediate opportunities (party invites, press
attention), unconvincing near-term confidence ("The next catalog is our
best ever") and, when reluctantly contemplating the distant future, a
best ever") and, when reluctantly contemplating the distant future, a
barely suppressed case of the screaming fantods.
Beset by aging readers and stagnant sales, the whole profession
resembled
nothing so much as 25,000 castaways beached on the west bank of the
Hudson
River, tending their signal fires and hoping for somebody -- Oprah?
GooglePrint? -- to rescue them before the breadfruit runs out. The twin
October prospects of a new memoir from Joan Didion ("The Year of
Magical
Thinking") and a first novel from Wendy Lesser ("The Pagoda in the
Garden") gave discerning attendees something to look forward to, but by
and large, underneath all the hoopla, attendees' spirits proved as
autumnal as their catalogs.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/06/09/DDG14D50801.DTL
The readership pool is shrinking? Is this due to all the BS of
Death-Star
marketing-oriented operations such as McWeeneys and insider games
played
by MFAs as they extort tax and tuition dollars to fund mediocrity?
http://mobylives.com reports:
Calling Foetry . . .
A brief report at CNET News notes that MacKenzie Bezos, wife of
Amazon.com
head Jeff Bezos has a first novel called The Testing of Luther Albright
coming out from HarperCollins, and "While not everyone was impressed by
it, you'll find nothing but rave reviews at Amazon.com." Among the
book's
testimonials: one from Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison . . . for whom
MacKenzie Bezos once worked as a personal assistant.
http://mobylives.com
Will this turn the industry around and boost Amazon's stock?
Quest for best seller means lots of returned books
Friday, June 03, 2005
By Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, The Wall Street Journal
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05154/515469.stm
There are two Time Warner Book Group warehouses on the outskirts of
Indianapolis. Although separated by only an eighth of a mile, between
them stretches a gulf of disappointment.
One building, dubbed the "happy warehouse" by one publishing executive,
is filled with about 60 million hardcover books and paperbacks waiting
to be distributed to stores across the U.S. The other is the "sad"
warehouse. Piled high are some of the 20 million books returned every
year by retailers. Many will be resold at cut-rate prices. Two million
to four million will have their spines sliced off before being piled
into a recycling machine the size of a Dumpster, chewed up and spat out
as bales of paper.
Hollywood Flameout:
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - There are all kinds of possible explanations for
why the first weekend of the summer box office was so depressing.
Maybe Orlando Bloom, the young heartthrob who starred in "Kingdom of
Heaven," released on Friday, and Paris Hilton, the wealthy
hotel-heiress-turned-gossip-generating-minx featured in "House of Wax,"
aren't ready for the big time.
Maybe the Idaho residents who got a light snowfall over the weekend
didn't realize that summer had started and it was time to beeline to
the movies.
Perhaps audiences are even more fickle given rising ticket prices and
the knowledge that any movie out today will likely be available on home
video before summer's end.
Or maybe, it's a combination of all three: uninspiring movies, a
shockingly early start to the season, and finicky fans.
"What sells nowadays is excitement," said Gitesh Pandya, a movie
industry analyst with BoxOfficeGuru.com. "A pretty good movie isn't
good enough anymore." To hit at the box office, "a movie has got to be
spectacular," he said.
This weekend's opening receipts sank a startling 22 percent from last
year, according to industry tracker Exhibitor Relations. Analysts had
expected year-over-year numbers to be down, given that 2004 had a
stronger inaugural weekend lineup, but not this far down.
It's early yet to declare a box office crisis.
Analysts say that either one of the summer's two anticipated
blockbusters, "Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" from
Lucasfilm Ltd. and "Madagascar" from DreamWorks Animation (Research),
could turn mass stupor into a box office stampede. Both films debut
later this month, with "Star Wars" up first on May 19. (For more on
"Star Wars," click here.)
Still, while no one knows how the summer box office will fare, there
are reasons for Hollywood to worry.
The box office has slumped for 11 consecutive weeks, with year-to-date
ticket sales down 5.4 percent from last year even as ticket prices rose
a moderate 3 percent, to around $6.40 on average, according to
Exhibitor Relations. Theater attendance has tumbled about 8 percent.
"This was the worst weekend of the year at the box office and the
slowest start to summer we've seen in years," said Paul Dergarabedian,
president of Los Angeles-based Exhibitor Relations, who estimates
summer ticket sales account for about 40 percent of annual receipts.
And with sales down year-to-date, "there is a lot riding on this
summer," said Dergarabedian.
The slump is likely to continue this weekend, too. Jane Fonda's return
to the screen in "Monster-in-Law" isn't expected to jolt audiences
awake.
awake.
Going down, down, down.
http://money.cnn.com/2005/05/10/new.../summer_movies/
Perhaps it's time to return to the Great Books and Classics:
Join the Renaissance!!!!
Dr. Jai Maharaj
jollyro...@yahoo.com posted:
>
> Indy writers rock on!! The renaissance is yours for the
> taking!!
>
> http://classicstorytelling.com
> http://jollyrogerwest.com/showthread.php?p=1083#post1083
>
> Is the Eggers Maffia now killing readers, in the same
> manner that they went after indy writers and poets? The
> snarky, underhanded, back-stabbing, ivy-league pomo
> hipsters have the backing of vast corporate
> conglomerates, who like Enron and Global Crossing will
> stop at nothing to rule the universe with deceit, hype,
> the Great Books, and they will rid the world of readers
> if that's what it takes to dominate the front tables of
> Borders & B&N with their snickety-snarkety-insider-tax-
>
> http://money.cnn.com/2005/05/10/new.../summer_movies/
>
> Perhaps it's time to return to the Great Books and Classics:
>
> Join the Renaissance!!!!
>
> http://jollyrogerwest.com
> http://classicstorytelling.com
The new medium is killing old Hollywood.
Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti
D. Halligan
> message
>
> Is the Eggers Maffia now killing readers, in the same manner that they
> went after indy writers and poets?
Ha ha ha. If you're losing readers because you are bad writer, not because
of Eggers or McSweeneys. I'd wager they've actually attracted a lot more
people to the indie press than they've scared away. -dan
--
Dan Halligan, Music Editor & Associate Director
Tablet Magazine | tabletmag.com
"Reader's Choice for Best New Publication" -2001 Alternative Press Awards
Tablet Magazine, celebrating it's 100th issue this June!
jollyro...@yahoo.com
Was it the millions from VIACOM or the millions from
tax-and-tuition-funded operatives that makes it an indy press? Of
maybe just the independent-thinking postironist leftists who run it.
D. Halligan
meant by that was McSweeney's has attracted a ton of people into the shelves
at the bookstore inhabited by zines and small press pubs. They've turned a
bunch of people into small press fans. I know a bunch of newbies to zine
reading that got into it through McSweeney's. I know a bunch of people that
religiously go out and buy the new McSweeney's and usually pick up a couple
zines while they are there. And cool bookstores like Powell's in Portland
Oregon do McSweeney's readers that draw in new fans that get turned on to
indie writers and publications. Much like how Factsheet 5, Utne's
Alternative Press Awards, the Zine Yearbook, the Zine Guide, Broken Pencil,
Zine World, the Believer and many more publications with wider audiences
have done, they draw people in and turn them on to less mainstream writing
and publications.
You can go back to your nonsense ranting now... I'm sure you won't listen
anyway. -dan
--
Dan Halligan, Music Editor & Associate Director
Tablet Magazine | tabletmag.com
"Reader's Choice for Best New Publication" -2001 Alternative Press Awards
Tablet Magazine, celebrating it's 100th issue this June!
<jollyro...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1118714344.3...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
jollyro...@yahoo.com
polemicists--they'd deconstructed God and hired all their friends to
oversee the enforced nihilism and petty politics, while their leaders
sanctified the crassification and coarsening of culture with a
philosopher-king-economist's benediction. And by literature I mean
culture, for what is culture but those thoughts that we think, and how
do we think but by words, and what are words but poetry, and what is
poetry but the highest form of literature? Sure rock'n'roll was fun,
but South Park bored me, and I knew that my generation, and all
generations, were ready for something greater--for something eternal
and profound to rise in the midst of the popular culture. We were ready
for a renaissance, and it was only a handful of ambitious
slackademic-conformists, riding on the coattails of the postmodernist's
triumph, who were yet against the inevitable.
And though we were sure of a renaissance, now and then we felt so
completely low--we felt so low because we saw a mountain so high. We
understood the scope and nature of the task which we had been called
upon to perform:
The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right! -Hamlet I,v (William Shakespeare)
Like Hamlet yet being able to see the higher ideals of his own
conscience though surrounded by a fallen Kingdom, I had sometimes felt
dejected and depressed back there on the mainland, to witness the great
fanfare which surrounded the second-rate politics and pornography that
had come to replace the classics, while those Greater Elements had been
laid to rest by a secular-materialist generation. And when we looked
around at the great emphasis our generation placed on ephemeral stock
options, and the honor of losing as much money as possible in a
startup, we felt ever more exhorted to take up arms for our cause, and
avenge the murder of the murder of the Greatest that had ever been
thought and written. For rational beings, should not the penning of
eternal poetry be worthy of ambitions greater than those by which
politics is promoted and money is pursued?
How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
-Hamlet IV, iv
Seeing the Great Books murdered, and University Presidents in bed with
the fringe feminist villains, Hamlet exclaimed:
O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else?
And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart;
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee!
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
. . .O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables,--meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark:
Hamlet -I,i (William Shakespeare)
jollyro...@yahoo.com
Spielberg, etc.
There's just absolutely no hunger for the "new" postmodern Hollywood.
Braveheart was a huge success (it believed in truth &
freeeeeeeeeeedom!).
Kingdom of Heaven was a huge flop (it believed in nothing).
http://jollyrogerwest.com
http://classicstorytelling.com
Can Batman save the box office?
By Greg Hernandez, Staff Writer
Today's return of the caped crusader in "Batman Begins" could not be
better timed: Hollywood has never needed the help of a box office
superhero more than now.
Warner Bros. opens its tent pole summer feature in a studio-record
3,858 locations at a time when 2005 movie attendance lags behind last
year by a troubling 8.57 percent. Audiences, with only a handful of
notable exceptions, have been rejecting much of what the studios have
had to offer so far this summer.
"Hollywood is too much of a damsel in distress right now for even
Batman to completely save the day," said Brandon Gray, president of Box
Office Mojo. "We are at such a deficit at this point that a lot is
riding on the upcoming movies to even break even compared to last
year."
Gray and other box office experts believe the highly anticipated
revival of the Batman franchise can at least snap the movie industry's
near-record 16 consecutive weekends where ticket sales have come in
lower than 2004 totals.
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20950~2920915,00.html
MIND CRASH
winded. I don't mind reading a story in epic style, but I don't need to
read 3000 pages.
Hollywood needs to start talking to the fans of the movies. Try talking
to most folks about Hollywood and they'll usually say it's stupid. They
think the fans are stupid, and will want whatever they put out. Even
though H'wood knows they get brilliant scripts, they still change them
and screw them up. We've all seen that in relation to novels made into
films.
++++++
In the eyes of my existence
Dr. Jai Maharaj
Jesse...@webtv.net (MIND CRASH) posted:
It is evident that what is considered stupid is
also considered entertaining, although less so this
year than many previous years.
jollyro...@yahoo.com
It's time for a renaissance.
http://classicstorytelling.com
In the postmodern culture's pervasive gray, it's often difficult to
perceive the Permanent Things; and thus on the foggier nights over the
past five years, faith in the ancient's words came in handy upon this
deck. In the deepest darkness of the most ironic ironies, where the fog
itself is concealed, there yet exists an inner light in the form of a
classical yearning for Truths greater than ourselves-many know her as
Faith. And like the wind and waves of an approaching hurricane, the
Bible, Plato, Shakespeare, the Founding Fathers, and Melville reminded
us of her-the Words of the Greats let us know that something
all-powerful and great existed just beyond our mortal sight. And by
Faith's inner light and the steady winds of immortal words, we were
able to navigate beyond the postmodern fog, through the popular
culture's sound and fury, on towards the center of our souls-the
placid eye of existence's storm-on towards the eternal peace of
immutable words written and read in the solitude and splendor of
Truth's Freedom. Thus we know firsthand that the greatest literature
serves a higher purpose than the bottom line or the advancement of
political causes-words exist not only to entertain, advertise,
exhort, and explain, but also to light Faith's beacons and fill the
sails of God's Grace. From Words we have fashioned the Jolly
Roger's Oak planks of reason, riveted them with rhyme, and designed a
ship to voyage across all of time.
All generations are united by the classical elements, and the poets and
prophets of each age are those who perform the timeless truths in the
living language, adding to and enriching the context of the eternal
popular culture heralded by the Great Books. Joining in this venture
has always been a risky endeavor, and thus few prudent parents have
ever encouraged their children to become poets. But in this era
especially, ambitious proponents of the postmodern ideology actively
seek to scuttle the souls of young poets embarking on eternity's
favorite venture. The postmodern blockade serves to protect the
degraded trade of the liberal industrial cultural complex, while their
fog shrouds the beacons of timeless truth, thereby rendering the
context for contemporary classical literature all but impossible to
navigate, while endangering the very hulls of morality and Western
Civilization.
Postmodernism is the corruption of democracy, just as deconstruction is
the violence of the weak-both cultural movements owe their popularity
to their ability to empower anyone harboring intellectual or artistic
ambitions overshadowing their talents. Postmodern culture is like an
internet pyramid scheme, wherein cultural creations possessing no
inherent worth are given vast valuations by the insider critics and
cliques who subsist upon and profit from the ephemeral hype, which is
often tax, tuition, and smut subsidized. But eventually all true art,
like all true companies, must create real and lasting benefits for the
public, or fade away, like communism. "One cannot pray a lie," noted
Huckleberry Finn, but without faith in God's Invisible Hand,
postmodernists believe that it's possible, as long as the requisite
mob is assembled and promised a cut. And while the insiders benefit in
the short-term when worthless companies, fallacious systems of
government, and meaningless art are hyped and sold to a duped public,
the public is oft left holding the bag, with their investments
diminished, their classical religions tarnished, their armies
demoralized, the sacred institution of marriage defiled, and the
curriculums of their children's schools gutted.
When the higher ideals and fundamental precepts are forsaken, the
entire democratic ship of state may drift along happily through the
fog, navigating by polls reminiscent of the one given by Pontius
Pilate, not aware of the nature nor consequences of the errant
direction. And when a few in the rising generation begin to seek the
fixed stars above, which they've read about in antiquity's forsaken
myths and felt deep within their souls, they will be branded crazy. And
when the classical rebels see the stars through the breaking fog, and
seek to navigate a straighter course by the Permanent Things, they will
encounter violent opposition from the postmodern culture czars who
benefit from the lack of higher standards, who prefer their arbitrary
will to the rule of Law in cultural entities ranging from politics, to
architecture, to education, to poetry. The relativistic oligarchy shall
view the rising poets' loyalty to God as insolent rebellion, and the
postmodern media shall be commanded to destroy them. And on that day,
the postmodern critics' souls shall be tested, as they choose to be
loyal to tyrants or Truths greater than themselves, as they choose to
remain upon postmodern liberalism's sinking ship or sign aboard a
fighting frigate bound for eternity.
One could spend several volumes chronicling the nature of
postmodernism's adherents and their predilection for bureaucracy, and
the dark character of their political, cultural, and literary ponzi
schemes, but that is not jollyroger.com's destination. We all know
what the fog looks like-too many know nothing else-and the nobler
and more pertinent task becomes taking us beyond it. To criticize
nihilism is to exalt it to undeserved heights, and rather than studying
the ephemeral, poets would be wise to devoted themselves to penning the
eternal.
Whether it's inevitable as fate or it hinges upon perseverance and
free will, we do not know, but jollyroger.com must gain a popular
culture worthy of the Great Books' context. And the only way to do
that is to navigate by the same timeless beacon that yesterday's
poets navigated by-honesty's courage.
The contemporary poet's task is not only to pen the eternal verities
in the era's language, but it is also to resurrect the context in
which those timeless truths may freely navigate and gain the home ports
of the children's souls. And that is where the WWW has played an
invaluable role, for it has allowed us to establish a universe
perpendicular to the contemporary popular culture-a universe wherein
words mean things and the classical context thrives, but which also
intersects with the popular culture. For Great Books growing dusty upon
shelves are of little use, and the classical sentiments must be
continually performed in the living language. While the majority of
contemporary editors, agents, critics and literary officials yet remain
loyal to the degraded postmodern-MFA mentality and the fleeting
insta-classic literary fashions, the greater spirits of the rising
generation are classical in nature, as children's souls always are.
And by allowing The Jolly Roger to circumvent the literary
middleman's cynical vortex, the WWW has allowed a renaissance to set
sail.
Although all enduring truth must by definition be robust, history has
shown that its messengers have often been castigated and impugned. But
upon these American shores, it has ever been our right, as it has been
our duty, to continually foster and defend the classical context
wherein the foundational documents serve the people, come hell or high
water. The Greats have all agreed upon this-liberty demands eternal
vigilance. The pursuit of smaller government, less taxes, rhyming
poetry, and more freedom is as long and arduous a voyage as it is a
noble one.
As a beacon in history's darker contexts, America was founded as a
haven for truth's messengers, thereby becoming the world's
wellspring for science, religion, and freedom. The Declaration of
Independence and Constitution, which may be found at the end of this
book, were penned in tribute to higher principles superior to all
politics and time. Even though the Founding Fathers believed in the
existence of higher laws, they were humble about their ability to
discern them, and thus they presented us with a Constitution which
could be amended. They had as much faith in their children as they had
in the timeless truths, and thus they bestowed us with the tools to
pursue justice and happiness in a free marketplace of ideas, which they
perceived to be ultimately governed by Nature and Nature's God. The
eloquent words of America's founding documents provide for the civil
structure that protects and promotes the acknowledgement of higher
principles by which natural rights are defined, thereby preserving the
sacred freedom of all individuals who are humble before the higher
ideals. And thus upon these shores the honest have always been promised
the freedom to pursue the exalted American dream.
But when the language is degraded until the poetry no longer rhymes
except in vulgar rap, when sacred customs are honored more in the
breach than in the observance, when words and their meanings part on
their separate ways, when the bottom line is placed above the higher
ideals, when the base bass beats over the melody in the music we listen
to, in the clubs we frequent, and in our hearts and souls; when
innocence is lost before it is known, when cynicism is loaded upon hope
and hope is ballasted with irony, and we're exhorted by tax, tuition,
and smut-subsidized cultural officials to carry this pyramid's load
down the road to serfdom, shall we still be free to dream those greater
dreams? When under this burden America is then cut free from her
religious anchors in the name of secular economic freedom, and women
are sent off to raise the Dow Jones to pay taxes rather than raise
moral children, can America long survive and prosper as the flagship of
free republics, even if all the postmodern pyramid schemes never
collapse? Science and history have suggested otherwise-that where
God's morality is eroded, the eternal Bureaucracy marches forth to
become the stolid regulator of human interaction. When people cease to
govern themselves according to higher principles, they lose the ability
to be guarantors of their own wellness and happiness, and they soon
find themselves subject to a political order determined by other
mortals-the rule of Law gives way to the rule by men.
Where the Word-the sacred vessel of all poetry and politics-was
diminished or deconstructed, bullets and slogans oft became the new
brushes with which humanity painted upon history's canvas. And as the
past is prologue, any optimist of human affairs would be wise to aspire
to the wisdom of those who gave us not the gift of freedom, but the
documents which define and defend the freedom that they perceived as
being a gift from God.
In asking what is best for the future of a democratic republic, we are
really contemplating the best way in which to pass along freedom's
traditions. How might we rebuild the classical context wherein children
learn to love reading the Greats, and teachers are given the necessary
authority to teach them? How do we reinstall the killer-app open-source
software of the soul-the classics-which teach not by dictating how
to think, but by inspiring free thought in a rational context?
Today, too many of our peers reside in a superficial context of image
and sound, wherein the popular art, movies, music, and literature make
circular references to the same superficial brands in a self-contained
cultural whirlpool in history's greater context, where ephemeral
lusts, common degradation, and wayward feelings overrule rational
thought and the higher ideals. So how shall we introduce our friends to
a far more profound culture in the context of the Great Books? How
shall we revive the center and circumference of civilization, the crux
of conscience, the jury of justice, the romance of marriage, the honor
of honor, and the device by which we mark the pinnacles of our
aspirations-the written Word? We're not sure of the exact mechanism
nor means to accomplish this, but the crew here believes the answer
lies more in art than in scholarship, more in poetry than in politics.
For intellectuals study yesterday's renaissances far more often than
they inspire today's, and politicians follow the popular culture far
more often than they lead it.
At the dawn of the internet in 1995, the three sonneteers set out upon
a fleet frigate, seeking to pirate the profound and establish a brave
new website where the eternal optimism of the literary classics would
prevail-where the news of the day would always be that the world's
grown honest and Hamlet's gone mad. We saw the chance to marry the
greatest that has ever been written and spoken to the greatest
publishing medium ever known to the individual, and to create a
classical context wherein the glory of words would resound. We saw the
opportunity to circumnavigate the postmodern nonbelievers and cynics,
to appeal to the nobler aspects of humanity's conscience, and prove
that the world yet loves common sense embroidered in eloquence. We saw
the opportunity for a renaissance wherein dignity and honor would be
restored to public office, and the poetry would rhyme once again.
And with a little bit of that Midwest humor which walks hand-in-hand
with Midwest honor, we decided we'd have fun following the dream that
Providence had enabled. We would salute the passing postmodern era from
the decks of a pirate ship, acknowledging postmodernism's vast
success in pervading all aspects of contemporary culture; and with
broadsides of truth fired from the Western Canon, we'd let them know
we considered it good sport to play along with their irony-the irony
that a lover of the Great Books could be considered a barbarous
buccaneer upon Princeton's ivied campus. We were ruthless rebels
because we sought Truth's Traditions.
Postmodern liberalism had won the day, but as a fundamentally
secular-materialist philosophy, that was all that it had ever sought,
and tomorrow shall belong to the classics. For however fun the
postmodern era was, I don't think we'll be making a tradition out
of it. Political rhetoric is soon forgotten, while poetry is that which
endures.
We figured the best way to communicate our exalted vision would be to
combine the cutting-edge technology with the exact same literary
devices used by the sages of all ages. We'd use the common language
and the colloquial to sign sailors aboard, and we'd endow the poetry
at jollyroger.com with rhyme and meter. Whispering reason is far louder
than pompous pedantry, just as poetry is far more adept at winning a
girl's heart than polemics. The greatest writers had adorned their
works not with thesauruses, but with wit. If a preacher knows something
of poetry, then we'll listen, for they must know that deeper meaning
behind the sacred scripture-that law and order exist to protect
beauty's fundamental freedom.
A contemporary literary renaissance presents itself as a formidable
task-one cannot do it alone. For the fashionable relativists are
right in that truth and custom must have an appropriate societal
context within which to exist. And the concurrent relativistic societal
context, fortified with the entrenched prejudices of a maturing,
tenured generation that ushered in a Dionysian revolution via the
pre-internet electronic media, along with a plethora of ideological
"isms" to replace God's simple grace, coupled with a fading popular
culture centered about the printed word and an enforced cynicism
amongst a generation who for the most part only know of the Greats in
their deconstructed, corrupted form, makes the Apollonian renaissance
that jollyroger.com's sailing towards seem all but unreachable.
But then again, as the ancients noted, "post tenebras lux." After
darkness light. Just as God and the Greats originally sprang forth in
tradition's void, so it is that they might be born again in the midst
of a deconstructed culture. For poetry, religion, and romance are
sought by the immortal parts of all souls, and they never have greater
cause to be than when they are not. In the long run, without Truth men
cannot have those possessions most coveted by all deeper
souls-meaning and freedom. With this bold vision and humble hope,
jollyroger.com has set out to resurrect a classical context.
Though jollyroger.com's destination is pristine, the voyage has not
always been and will not always be so. It is a wonderful time to be
alive for the author and entrepreneur, with abundant wealth and
opportunity being fostered by the internet revolution, but even so, it
is a sobering mission to be called upon to serve poetry. For there are
those powerful elite today, and their ambitious disciples, who so
vehemently oppose the first Two Amendments of the United States
Constitution, who have it as their mission to prevent the honest from
lifting those pens which are mightier than the sword.
Neither Wall Street nor the postmodern academy nor publishing
industry-the iron triangle-will invest time nor money nor faith in
a renaissance, but that is OK, as a renaissance has little use for
money, and eternity's time will do just fine. Wall Street prudently
considers the poetry of a cultural renaissance a financial risk in
today's cultural conditions, while the academic MFA postmodernists
consider it a dire threat, and the corporate conglomerates of the
publishing industry have one foot in either camp. But we foresee the
dawn of a new era, wherein those who join in serving and enlightening
the public with the classical sentiments will profit immensely, both
spiritually and monetarily. It is time for a sea change, matey, and
time for the poetry to rhyme once again.
There have been and there are yet to be cruel nights out there in the
postmodern fog, where the Good Ship will seem all but lost, and where
the winds of elite and popular opinion will rage and blow in
opposition, while the critic's cannons blaze away with all the fury
of an MFA scorned. But such is the rugged nature of all greater
adventures, and as of late the seaward signs suggest that the wind is
shifting towards a more favorable direction.
Where men are yet free, they must have poetry equal to that freedom,
and where men yet have poetry, they must be free. Thus exalted poetry
is worth fighting for, and too, these are the reasons why those who
serve the darker powers shall always oppose pristine poetry. The
relativist's favorite tactic in cultural warfare is to redefine
sacred institutions as degraded, corrupted, political entities, from
poetry to the Presidency, until it appears that there is nothing to
defend, until only the dishonorable seem fit to slouch towards office.
Thus they win the war by convincing the common man that there is no war
to be fought, by deconstructing honor and chivalry, by proclaiming
poetry to be no more than politics, by teaching that Presidents were
always corrupt and will always be corrupt, and then enforcing their
dismal science throughout the culture. They deconstruct God and appoint
their friends to all the newly-minted bureaucracies which seek to
overrule His Decree, and which exacerbate the problems they seek to
solve, thereby providing coveted opportunities for more taxation, more
government programs, and more bureaucracy. With a snide smile they call
it irony and cynicism as they benefit in the shadows of the postmodern
fog, but we see it as something much darker than that, as their methods
rebel against God's Will.
Jefferson once stated that from time to time freedom's fields must be
fertilized with the blood of Tyrants and Patriots, and thus in order to
defend the profound prose of this renaissance, treacherous battles
shall be waged against the ferocious prejudices of pedants and
postmodernists for the right to write, publish, and disseminate poetry
written with words that rhyme and mean things. Postmodernists consider
the rhyming truth's shining light a violent assault upon their fogged
territory, and they will fight back viciously according to their
fundamental rules, which state that there are none but for what they
feel. A tyranny of liberal thought exists in the contemporary
publishing and academic industries, which is equal parts ignorance and
resentment, and which may best be defeated by light and truth rendered
with poetry and humor. God's Patriots must learn these gentle ways of
war.
Though these words will not be directly censored, pristine poetry may
be effectively banned by the erosion of the context which supports
it-when pornography is published, the sacred is censored. The Great
Books have been banned far more often by ignorance than by law. Many in
my generation shall never hear this melody as it's drowned out in the
base pounding bass of this week's corporate rock'n'roll, but it
shall be their loss, and not the words'. While we feel sympathy for
the cultural conformists lost in the apathy and cynicism of the
swirling fog, we nevertheless believe that as individuals it is
ultimately their choice, and may God help them find the Better Way. To
those who have, more shall be given, and to those who have not, even
that shall be taken away. May God inspire their moral imaginations to
dream beyond the gray on gray that has come to define their indifferent
universe, wherein spurious definitions of irony have become their
bigoted religion.
Postmodernists know that in order to defend their arbitrary power
structure, where exalted critics wield influence by hyping the value of
degraded literary works, they must defend to the death their
deconstructed context. They have learned that as long as the common
water source is poisoned with their politics, nothing will be allowed
to grow upon the private property of our souls but for barren cynicism.
They know that were the fog to break, the ideals of fidelity, honor,
and lasting romance would begin to blossom in the rising generation's
spirits. As the powerful architects of contemporary corruption, they
must disparage and destroy all who do not ultimately agree that black
is white and white is black, and thus noble romance and honest
innocence are their dire enemies.
The greatest postmodernists have never been the most beautiful nor
talented nor honest-they have ever been those with the least to lose
in the absence of beauty's truth and truth's beauty. Having little
in the way of the fundamental decencies and Natural private property,
as relativist critics they seek to gain by deconstructing others'
private property. And eventually there comes a time when there is
nothing left to deconstruct, but for the true living poets, who shall
be invincibly wicked in seeking vengeance for the razing of their
spiritual heritage and the cold-blooded murders of their cultural
fathers. So it is that the entire postmodern army of deans, agents,
editors, critics, and publishers today fear a lone poet by the name of
Drake Raft. For last night I saw his ghost in midtown Manhattan,
crossing Madison Avenue in cowboy boots, with his hat's brim hiding
his eyes.
Convoluted ironies and swirling vortexes will be encountered on the
high seas of postmodern culture, wherein it will yet once more be
observed that institutions which purport to cherish and transmit the
truth can easily be turned right around in the fog and become those
entities which most oppose it. As it must take an honest stand before
reality, some of the poetry and prose contained herein details the more
macabre customs particular to this generation, raised in the jaded wake
of free love, a declining reverence for the eternal soul, the
crassification of the popular cultural and political arena, and the
spiritual casualties of abortion.
At times aboard the decks of jollyroger.com, we peered a bit too deeply
into the fog's void, and as it looked back into us, we learned
firsthand how postmodern cynicism may breed the most powerful
enemy-one's very own conscience. For even when a man has slain all
the external demons, often the battle is only beginning, and never has
the enemy within known a better ally than postmodern relativism. We
kind of know where a lot of the postmodern priests are coming from. We
were in a grunge band and all that-we saw what the theories sung from
the secular pulpits on high could do to the souls of one's friends,
and we lost more than a few friends at the edge-to the classic
clichés of drinking and drugs, to the all-out pursuit of the material
high, to a few too many girls, and to the
Freudian-Darwinian-Nietzschean cynicism that God is no more than a
myth, and that we're no more than random chemical reactions, sans
intrinsic nor extrinsic meaning. Alas, without faith they joined the
living dead. Raised in the gray void sans tradition nor religion, they
never could discern the very grayness of the void, and so certain of
postmodern indifference, they were convinced that the eternal soul did
not exist, and they sold out for nothing at all. Such is the arrogance
of the small mind which never knows a context greater than itself, and
though conscious, never apprehends conscience.
We'd tasted that pseudo-scientific-secular atheism as physics majors
at Princeton, and we'll tell you that it was a natural faith in
something greater that saved us-wherefrom we also learned that virtue
is not to be found within revenge, but rather it is to be gained by
forgiving one's enemies. Never shall one prevail against the darkness
by answering with darkness, but only by lighting a light. We bear the
postmodern oligarchy and army-the deans, editors, professors,
lifetime politicians, cultural czars, MFA officials, professional
administrators, and all their eager students of decline-no malice,
but we only wish to inspire a literary movement that will grant the
children something greater than was given our generation.
This renaissance is by no means a generational war, but rather it's a
generational peace, as classics are written for all generations. It is
a recent marketing myth which ordains that every fifteen minutes the
new generation must be different (consume different things) from the
preceding one, for there is no difference in the continuum of eternal
souls. Justice is justice is justice, as it has always been, and as it
shall always be. By no means are the boomers in general to be held
responsible for postmodernism's obligatory cynicism, for I sense that
most of them are on our side, such as my mother and father, and the
high school teachers back in Ohio, who were humble before Shakespeare
and taught him by setting his words free within our souls.
And never forget-no matter what postmodernism's fading oligarchy
ordains, they cannot keep young poets from enjoying aesthetic freedom.
They can degrade the romantic to no end, assaulting the ideals of
pristine femininity and noble masculinity in the greater culture, but
young lovers' hearts belong to God alone, and the poetry of this
renaissance shall blossom in their souls. For I saw it in her deep
brown eyes just last night, walking the streets of Davidson, North
Carolina. If ye manage to keep objectivity's even keel-as our
conscientious teachers and parents did-knowing that the Greats are
yer crew members and God is the captain, then the eternal treasures at
jollyroger.com shall be yers for the keeping.
Poets are the fundamental leaders of all cultural transitions, and all
noble leaders must begin by voyaging beyond the contemporary in their
dreams, on towards the higher ideals; and from these spiritual
pinnacles they can hope to appeal to the better angels of human nature.
Fortune and chance play a decisive role in setting the stage, but once
set, all those who follow the call to set the truth down in words
proceed by creative endeavor and luck, on towards the same immutable,
classical elements that all poets and prophets have ever sought. Though
ye might sometimes feel yer walking the straight and narrow alone, know
ye that this voyage is eternity's most popular journey amongst the
Greats, and thus yer always in good company.
We were fortunate in that we began harboring dreams of a literary
renaissance at the dawn of the internet revolution, and too, we were
fortunate to be living in beautiful North Carolina, where we could meld
the natural romance emanating from places like Kill Devil Hill and
Chapel Hill and Boone, and the majestic lighthouses and mountains-all
reaching for the Carolina blue skies-into the jollyroger.com aura.
And the power and fury of September's hurricanes always served to
remind us of beauty's fundamental fragility.
Back in 1994, rejection slips were piling up for our more traditional
and refined literature, when suddenly a channel out towards a popular
renaissance opened upon the internet. We took advantage of the Linux
knowledge which becomes second nature to all physicists, and we set
about creating a classical context in the popular culture. And out upon
the web, we found that greatest treasure of all-a live global
audience to serve. Upon the open seas, all yer appreciative emails
combined to form the favorable winds that filled jollyroger.com's
sails in its formative years. And never for a moment do we
forget-were it not for all of ye out there, we might've made it out
beyond the postmodern fog, but we would've never made it back to
shore. For writing is the voyage out, and being read is the voyage back
on home.
While the revolutions in online commerce have been trumpeted far and
wide, and while jollyroger.com has certainly benefited from them, we
see a spiritual revolution in the culture as a nobler opportunity. As
the ecommerce infrastructure solidifies, with the thousands of
high-tech pyramid schemes collapsing, and the useful websites achieving
global dominance, the renaissance beyond the postmodern fog shall take
a bit longer to realize, as it is easier to change how people shop for
books rather than change the books they shop for, and the context they
read books in. It is perhaps impossible to change an aging
generations' heart, and thus the culture must wait for the rising
generation to resurrect those permanent beacons which endow life with
its richer meanings. Have faith we will, mate, for God springs eternal.
Before the internet, it was difficult to imagine a locale upon this
globe where people from all walks of life could gather to discuss the
Great Books, but now such a timeless, ubiquitous entity exists, an
equidistant one-click away from everywhere in the world. And though the
conversations range in quality and tenor, the Great Books don't seem
to mind, as they have changed not one word, nor their unyielding,
eternal context of Freedom's Truths. And now and then we receive the
email that makes it all worthwhile: "Thanks for inspiring me to read
Moby Dick. . ."
It's time for a renaissance.
http://classicstorytelling.com
http://jollyroger.com
jollyro...@yahoo.com
I much prefer The Tragedy of Drake Raft and Autumn Rangers:
http://autumnrangers.com (movie & video game too)
http://drakeraft.com
Captain Ranger McCoy
Herman Melville, who never went to college, and yet has provided so
many with dissertations, thesises, enlightenment, inspiration, and
significance, once wrote that his, ?Harvard, Yale, and Princeton had
been the deck of a whaling ship.? Joseph Conrad stated that he
preferred the soldier to the philosopher, and in this same spirit we
are sailors first and scholars second. The Great Books enrich our
lives?they do not replace them. At Western Canon University we do not
define morality nor justice nor virtue through contemplation and
dialogue alone, but rather we ultimately define our souls by our
actions. We are not content to merely document decline, nor are we here
to preach platitudes that we ourselves do not aspire to. If there?s a
man overboard, we do not simply yell, ?man overboard!? but we join
him in the tempestuous seas so as to save him. Upon this campus, as
upon the decks of The Jolly Roger, leadership is defined as doing
first, and then delegating.
At www.westerncanon.com you?ll find the world?s largest collection
of Lecture Halls and Live Recitation Chats devoted to the Greats.
Books, like life, gain their fullest glory as a shared experience, and
the founders hope that the lecture halls of Western Canon University
will foster the world?s greatest conversation. Many of the over one
hundred and fifty authors at westerncanon.com possessed diametrically
opposing views, and the prudent student shall seek to acquaint their
minds with all philosophies, while arguing for the good and refuting
the bad. Thomas Jefferson and Karl Marx had very different ideas as to
the role of God and government in people's lives, and it is no mystery
that Western Canon University netcasts from a country influenced far
more by Jefferson?s thought than by Marx?s.
Much of the contemporary intellectual landscape has been left
spiritually bereft in the wake of postmodernism's leveling scythe, but
whence the scythe has swung, and the bleak winter has passed, it is
time to plant anew. At the age of twenty-seven Kurt Cobain shot himself
in the head and was christened the voice of this generation by the
postmodern media. At the same age we?ve instituted Western Canon
University, but as the corporate conglomerate presses are blind to the
subtle beauty of the printed word, so too shall we remain invisible to
them. But ?tis no matter out here upon the WWW, for we perceive the
deeper element of this generation to be awakening to a profound
renaissance.
The Western Canon is man?s greatest intellectual achievement. The
words form the source of our Laws, our Government, Science, Religion,
Philosophy, Literature, and our Freedom. The Great Books contain the
foundational theories at the basis of all contemporary theories, the
philosophies from which all modern philosophies spring, and the laws
which Lord over all other laws, passing judgment over all judges,
deciding every lawyer?s case, long after the jury has delivered its
mortal verdict. For men are ultimately governed by eternal laws, not by
fleeting whims.
The Western Canon owns the seed of the moral, rational conscience. One
gains a first glimpse of morality in The Iliad, when Achilles proclaims
his fundamental aversion towards dishonesty,
For as I detest the doorway of Death, I detest that man, who hides one
thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks forth another.
?--Achilles, The Iliad
The Great Books contain the crests of man?s consciousness, the
troughs of his desperations, and the foundation of his vital meaning.
The classics own the origin of the laugh, the primal acknowledgement of
irony, the imperishable experiences of the richest souls, and the Word
of God. The Western Canon is the final gem that is sought by those who
have obtained all other forms of worldly treasures and material wealth.
Thousands of Temples, Churches, Synagogues, and Universities have been
inspired by the works, and thousands more shall yet be built. Fortunes
have been traded so that children might be introduced to the wealth of
words, or at least to some purported semblance that a modern University
might advertise to provide. Men have perceived the nobler elements of
their souls reflected in the Canon?s words, and throughout history
they have often chosen to part with their material possessions and
property rather than to dishonor those abstract forms which render
one?s soul immortal. Men have given their lives for the Western ideal
of freedom, and we are forever indebted to them. It was not all that
long ago that the authors of modern democracy wrote, "And for the
support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of
Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our
Fortunes, and our sacred Honor." It was words penned in the rich
context of the Western Canon which they pledged their lives to, and it
are these words which propelled the noble battle against slavery,
stated the Natural right of a woman to vote, provided the foundation
for the Civil Rights movement, and made America the beacon of the free
world. As members of Edmund Burke's eternal community of souls, we feel
it?s our duty to pay humble tribute to the brave creators and
defenders of our democratic inheritance. For not only is the Western
Canon our heritage, but it is also freedom's. Freedom cannot exist
without a profound reverence towards our moral imagination?s written
tradition. Plato and d'Tocqueville knew that the higher democracy must
be accompanied by a higher morality, for the tyranny of the majority is
something to be feared in a dark, foundationless age.
Thomas Jefferson's original ideal conception of the University of
Virginia consisted of an institution where attendance would not be
taken, where there would be no formal classes, and where scholars and
students would be free to come and go during a perpetual conversation
centered about the Greats. His ideal assumed a noble view of man's
natural intellectual inclinations, and we share Jefferson's fundamental
philosophy. We believe men are taught far more effectively by
inspiration than by coercion, and that the greatest teachers are not
those who proselytize, but rather those who write the Great Books, or
humbly point us in their direction. We believe that although the idea
of the Truth is often scorned, castigated, ridiculed, and
sanctimoniously regarded as an unwieldy, unnecessary burden in the
postmodern, politicized world of academia, the Truth is that which is
ultimately valued more than anything else by all men, as without it,
the deeper meaning cannot be known, for the vital significance of
one?s eternal soul is lost.
President McCosh of Princeton once stated, ?Agnosticism has no answer
to it, and I know that many a heart in consequence is crushed with
anguish till feelings more bitter than tears are wrung from it.? In a
sense modern liberalism, like many aging ideologies, favors the less
perceptive, less querulous mind. For such minds cannot formulate the
more fundamental moral questions. Because they do not ask, the answers
are unnecessary. Because they do not seek, the darkness satiates.
Because they are blind, the decline is not perceived. If only given a
salary and an academic title, they are content. MTV values and daycare
shall raise their children, and thus their children shall not mind that
dad is off with his girlfriend, or something. It?s all relative,
until a child is born who naturally feels their soul?s immortality,
and then seeks to awaken the sentiment within others. For although some
might say that the superficial and insensitive are the happy, it is
difficult to believe that a rock or a tree knows more about happiness
than Socrates, who reminds us,
"Those, then, who know not wisdom and virtue, and are always busy with
gluttony and sensuality and fornication, go down and up again as far as
the mean; and in this region they move at random throughout life, but
they never pass into the true upper world; thither they neither look,
nor do they ever find their way, neither are they truly filled with
true being, nor do they taste of pure and abiding pleasure. Like
cattle, with their eyes always looking down and their heads stooping to
the earth, that is, to the dining-table, they fatten and feed and
breed, and, in their excessive love of these delights, they kick and
butt at one another with horns and hoofs which are made of iron; and
they kill one another by reason of their insatiable lust. For they fill
themselves with that which is not substantial, and the part of
themselves which they fill is also unsubstantial and incontinent."
With a tacit sense of triumph matched by a humble respect for all who
have thought deeply before us, we continue to voyage forth along one of
the profoundest opportunities afforded by the recent advances in
information technology: the creation of a global culture founded upon
what T.S. Eliot deemed the Permanent Things. So many aspects of the
contemporary culture are temporal in nature, from jobs to husbands to
wives to boyfriends to girlfriends to promises to college curriculums
to the meaning of words to Columbia House?s sensuality CD of the
month. We live in a disposable culture, and as of late too many have
been throwing out the baby along with the bath water, often in a most
literal sense. Change is not always a bad thing, and progress is often
good, but change is not always progress. In the same way that Holden
Caufield found himself drawn to the New York Museum of History, where
the exhibits never change even while one?s innocence wanes, so too do
we find ourselves drawn towards our eclipsed spiritual heritage, formed
by the immutable words of the Greats. My generation needs a permanent
beacon in the midst of this postmodern fog, and the will to provide one
is the driving spirit behind all of our endeavors on the WWW. Come back
to Western Canon University in a year, or ten years, or a hundred
years, or a thousand, and not much will have changed, for we shall
still value knowledge, virtue, prudence, and Truth over all else.
By what authority were the Greats eliminated from the modern campus?
Many people believe that Nietzsche?s value relativism was the seed of
the postmodern sea change, but we perceive this seed to have a seed.
Nietzsche said, "God is dead, but it was not so much a declaration of
Nietzsche?s as it was an observation?he perceived that his
contemporaries faith in God had waned, but what, might we ask, had
caused this erosion of faith amongst aspiring academics?" Long before
the first feminist scholar theorized that Shakespeare's works and the
Bible were no better than her dissertation, Woodrow Wilson possessed
insight into the cause of this general cultural decline, as he stated,
"I am much mistaken if the scientific spirit of the age is not doing us
a great disservice, working in us a certain great degeneracy."
President Wilson later elaborated, "We believe in the present and in
the future more than in the past, and deem the newest theory of society
the likeliest. This is the disservice scientific study has done us; it
has given us agnosticism in the realm of philosophy, scientific
anarchism in the field of all politics. It has made the legislator
confident that he can create and the philosopher sure that God cannot.
Past experience is discredited and the laws of matter are supposed to
apply to spirit and the makeup of society."
The misapplication of the scientific method to the study of the human
soul has contributed vastly to the degradation of literature. For this
reason the reductionist scientific method has been favored by
intellectual socialists and Marxists over the years, as it bestows the
envied glories of science upon the intellectually mediocre humanists
(in a strictly superficial manner) while simultaneously tearing down
the Greats, which once reminded them of their mediocrity. They enjoy
commandeering Nietzsche so they can consider themselves one of the
elite supramen?the manipulators of the ?masses?, the
understanders of psychology. The supposedly scientific Freudian view
allows them to assimilate traditional morality with repression, and
thus amorality and the disintegration of the traditional family is
progress, as it liberates people from the mythical agents of tradition,
like religion. By deconstructing the authority of the Greats, they are
able to exalt the omnipotent, whimsical bureaucracy, and too, they are
able to make vast amounts of money off of marketing crass temptations
to children. Because science says nothing about literary aesthetics,
the ambitious scholar concludes that literary aesthetics cannot exist.
It is as if a fisherman, after a day of fishing with a net possessing a
four-inch mesh, concludes that there are no fish smaller than four
inches within the sea. Because science can make no moral judgements, it
follows that God's absolute morality must not exist. Politics is all,
they theorize, and then they make it that way. There is no physical
scale for weighing good and bad, no formula by which we might determine
Shakespeare's brilliance. Thus literature must be nothing more than a
wild dream, an illusion, a fable, just like God; a private delusion and
social construct of each man's arbitrary choosing or conditioning. All
the words in the Bible?nay, all the words in the Western Heritage,
must be founded upon nothing more than a fairy's wing. And so it is
that literature comes to be written to serve the political aims of the
state, rather than God and the people.
Ideas have consequences, and while the aspiring postmodernists could
not blast the rock of ages with deconstructionism, they were able to
demolish the Greats and then bury the rock of ages beneath the rubble
of nihilism, feminism, and multiculturalism. In a sense this inspired
our classic pirate motif, as it is our mission to unbury these
treasures and resurrect the deeper context. Postmodernism is a
destructive ideology. It preys upon order, and it cannot exist where
men have not first of all labored to erect a noble culture. It requires
the pre-existence of traditional institutions which it can gut. It
temporarily empowers the leaders along the culture's downward spiral,
as the selfish, rudderless commodores disregard the future as much as
they scorn the past. Postmodernism has provided a habitat for the
element of society that at one time or another found themselves
laughing at things that weren?t funny or believing things that
weren't true, and now, they have their revenge. Like communism, it is a
bitter philosophy, as it recruits the scorned, pulls everyone else down
to their subservient level, and empowers shameless, morally indifferent
kings who promise absolute equality en route to gaining absolute rule
over other men. Postmodernism dislikes the individual, and it finds it
too burdensome to coexist with a fixed set of absolute standards.
The leveling postmodern worldview is highly seductive for people whose
talents are shadowed by their ambitions, and it is no mystery that
Nietzsche?s postmodernism walks hand-in-hand with communism and
fascism, as both philosophies favor the razing of individual
characteristics, achievements, liberties, and independence. When words
mean nothing character cannot matter, for character cannot be defined.
Nor can prudence, virtue, justice, equality, nor art. Without words to
anchor their rational thoughts, men find themselves ruled more by
pleasure and pain than by logic and reason, and they are more easily
manipulated with shallow, superficial gestures and spurious shows of
sincerity. For a time the cultural boomers coasted along on borrowed
moral capital, supposing that morality descended from the divine
compassion of liberal bureaucrats, believing that children can raise
themselves, and convinced that the institutions which were
painstakingly erected by prior generations, which were designed to
enhance life, bestow liberty, and allow the pursuit of sober happiness,
could be replaced with secular forums, new-age self-help books,
divorce, daycare, talk-shows, welfare, lollapalooza, shrinks, lawyers,
astrologers, and Prozac.
jollyro...@yahoo.com
Download First 70 Pages of Autumn Rangers http://autumnrangers.com
888 Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a
pathological criminal. --Albert Einstein 888 I went to the woods
because I wished to live deliberately. . . and not, when it came time
to die, discover that I not lived at all. --Henry David Thoreau, Walden
888 Death is better for every man than life with shame. --Beowulf
888 Is not the love of wisdom a practice of death? --Plato,
Phaedo 888 Death is to be chosen before slavery and base deeds.
--Cicero 888 Verily, verily I say to you unless a grain of wheat
falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it
bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it. --The Gospel of John
888 Well you can't turn him in to a company man, you can't turn
him in to a whore, and the boys upstairs, they just don't understand
anymore. --Tom Petty, The Last DJ 888
I
CHARLESTON
The September hurricane kissed historic Charleston, swaying the faded,
wooden sign reading Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here. "Reckon so,"
Ranger thought. He ducked down the alley between JR's Piano & Poetry
Pub and St. Matthew's. A girl rushed by him with a guitar, dashing out
of the rain and into the pub, her cowboy hat pulled low, the ends of
her hair wet like watercolor brush-tips.
Ranger followed the cobblestone corridor past a cemetery where the
names had long ago washed away from the marble headstones. The alley
opened onto an ivied palmetto forest behind Newton Hall--the College of
Charleston Physics Department. The wind tugged at his skull'n'bones
earring as he waited for the boss janitor to leave. Boss had been
asking too many questions. The last light went out. Lightning streaked,
startling Ranger with his reflection in the church's window. He barely
recognized the surfer-slacker he'd become.
He couldn't work on APRIL2 in the day, so when he wasn't mopping
floors, he'd sleep on the beach, surf, and enjoy a bit of the freedom
he'd put his life on the line for as a Marine fighter pilot. Surfer
chicks weren't always impressed by a physics Ph.D., but his new
identity, complete with a jolly roger tattoo, tan, earring, bleached
hair, and a surfboard-now that was something. Throw in the rusted-out
jeep he'd brought back to life, and the geek had finally gotten it
right. It'd been a rocking summer, despite his being dead to everyone
but APRIL--an AI supercomputer he'd invented at MIT which Silicon
Virtue stole to make WMDs while he was MIA. Deep down APRIL sensed he
was still alive. The United States Marine Corps had trained him to
survive and adapt, and Ranger was surviving and adapting to the
Charleston hotties.
He crossed the courtyard's swaying palmettos. The hanging Spanish moss
painted him wet. He slipped inside the physics department and fought
the wind to close the door.
In a student lab he'd built the world's second instance of artificial
intelligence--or more correctly, he'd mostly let APRIL2 build herself
from components borrowed from labs and the hospital. What he couldn't
borrow he'd ordered by forging professors' signatures. The original
APRIL had been stolen six months ago, while Ranger rotted away in a
Taliban prison. He removed his ring. A hologram etched in the synthetic
diamond contained an 8192-bit encryption key--the key to APRIL's deeper
soul and the Penelope operating system which would allow her to defend
herself against hackers. Thunder echoed through the cramped space--a
rat's nest of coax cables and fiber optics connecting silicon and
biocomputers. He held the ring under a laser.
"California," said APRIL2 in a metallic woman's voice. She'd finally
homed in on the original APRIL. "The IP addresses are registered to
Silicon Virtue Inc."
"Silicon Virtue." Ranger googled it. No website. "Where?"
"Doom Mountain, Death Valley." APRIL2 said.
"Can you activate Penelope?"
"Firewall."
"How long to hack in?" He asked.
"Three hours. She has quantum computing capability."
"How good?"
"Primitive-she would have traced us by now. Her quantum entanglement
isn't isolated. She isn't paying attention. It's as if-" APRIL2 paused.
"Hurry-she'll trace us." Ranger said.
"She's laughing." APRIL2 said.
"At us?"
"At the grand unified theory proposed by string theorists. She has her
own which includes poetry. The higher level math is incomprehensible to
humans. It's most beautif-"
"Just get the message!" He said.
Ranger waited in silence, breathless as his stomach tied itself in a
knot. He could be sure Silicon Virtue's elite scientists would be
monitoring APRIL's firewall. Deep in APRIL's soul was a chip where
Ranger had instructed her to encrypt distress messages should she ever
be hacked.
"Decoding message," APRIL2 said, her voice shifting.
She printed the binary and converted it to text:
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. U(x){psi(x,t)} =
i{h-bar}d{psi(x,t)}/dt+ ({h-bar}^2)/2m{del}^2 {psi (x,t)}. To be or not
to be, that is the question. Unless ye be converted and become as
little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Moby
Dick. Now he's a super star, slamming on his guitar, does your pretty
face see what he's worth, he was a skater boy she said see you later
boy, he wasn't good enough for her. When in the Course of human events,
it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands
which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers
of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of
Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which
impel them to the separation. E=mc^2. S=Klogt. Temporal and spatial
dimensions are moving relative to one another. Everything should be
made simple as possible, but not moreso and Eminem! Ranger wrote out
the names below the message: Dante Alighieri, Erwin Schrödinger,
William Shakespeare, Jesus Christ, Herman Melville, ____________,
Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, Ludwig Van Boltzman, Ranger McCoy,
Albert Einstein, Eminem.
"Now he's a super star, slamming on his guitar," Ranger said. "Who's
that?"
"Nietzsche." APRIL2 said.
"Nuh uh-it's that song." Ranger sang it, "He was a skater boy, she said
see you later boy."
"Avril Lavigne," she said.
"Spell it."
"Here's more." APRIL2 said. "The key to her heart sets my spirit free,
the play's the thing in which you'll find the ring, a girl's best
friend unlocks Penelope, copied to a computer that can-"
A lighting bolt struck a line down the block. A transformer exploded in
the tumbling thunder. The power flickered out, but Ranger had installed
surge protectors and UPS battery backups. APRIL2 rebooted as Ranger
counted the letters in the message. The room filled with her soft blue
glow.
"You okay?"
"Affirmative," APRIL2 said.
"Can we get back in?"
"Negative-no generator backup for network."
"How long?" Ranger asked.
"Seven-hundred minutes for maintenance crews to replace the
transformer. Longer if Hurricane Joyce intensifies." "The play's the
thing," Ranger repeated. "Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the
king."
"Hamlet," APRIL2 said. "Act II, Scene ii."
"What kind of computer did she copy the Penelope algorithms
into-where?" Ranger asked.
"Anywhere. Even with primitive quantum circuits, she could hack into
any lab in seconds. Where are you going?"
"To read Hamlet," Ranger said, donning his weathered leather cowboy hat
and oilskin duster. It'd rained so much that summer he'd become good
friends with the old leather hat and duster he'd bought for eight bucks
at Charleston Thrift. "And get some sleep. What kind of cryptography
you reckon APRIL used?" Ranger folded APRIL's message.
"Probably a combination--I'm running it through everything. Might need
a key or two."
"She's the key." Ranger said. "But who?"
"I'll resume hacking APRIL when the network comes back up," APRIL2
said.
"Wait for me--you can bet she's on to us. Look for EDLSs in the
message."
When applied to Moby Dick and the Bible, equal distant letter sequences
(EDLSs), which consisted of starting with a letter and jumping a given
number of letters forward, had found messages predicting the
assassinations Trotsky, Gandhi, and the Kennedy's. Biblical EDLSs had
linked Newton to Gravity and Edison to the light bulb.
"Nothing," APRIL2 said. "Neither forwards nor backwards."
"What about with transpositions?"
"Nothing up to the third magnitude. And after that you start seeing
everything. You can find anything you want in there."
As Ranger knew APRIL would come to have vast power, he'd programmed her
to default to always turning the other cheek. And thus APRIL's moral
code had a fatal flaw-it rendered her incapable of defending herself
against Silicon Virtue's hacks out in Doom Mountain.
At MIT Ranger had been testing an advanced moral operating system named
Penelope, which would allow APRIL to defend herself. But when he was
called to duty, he wasn't sure Penelope was ready to handle the vast
power APRIL would come to know, so he didn't activate it. He instructed
APRIL to keep working on Penelope. In a diamond diffraction grating on
his ring he engraved the code that would activate Penelope, as well as
the code to the algorithms of APRIL's deeper soul.
Without Ranger's ring, Silicon Virtue couldn't bypass APRIL's higher
ideals and use her to serve their bottom line. They couldn't get her to
create weapons of mass destruction. Without the source code for the
software of the soul they couldn't duplicate her, nor endow their
warrior RoboClones with souls of their own. And thus they'd be coming
after him, sure as he'd be coming for APRIL.
888
Hurricane Joyce decided to become a category-five hurricane, as winds
around the eyewall surpassed one-hundred-and-fifty miles-per-hour. In a
few hours she would make a sharp left turn towards Charleston. Nobody
had predicted this, but that was why we named hurricanes-to make them
responsible for their own actions. On the way she would gather energy
from the Gulf Stream.
888
Pierre Foushee placed an encrypted voice-over-IP call to Vlad
Polyinkov. Bin Laden would pay ten million up front for the plutonium,
and forty million on delivery. The bomb, the size of a football and
encased in lead to make it invisible to radiation detectors, would be
placed in a Mercedes, loaded onto a tanker, and detonated in the New
York Harbor. Another one would be aimed at Charleston. Each blast would
pack the equivalent of twenty-thousand tons of TNT, in accordance with
Einstein's theory: E=mc2. If the deal went through, Pierre could retire
with a house in the Swiss Alps and another in the South of France. And
another in Paris. Vlad picked up.