What did RAW think of 'Casablanca'?

Theatrical release poster for Casablance, believed to be public domain, via Wikipedia.

When I look at the list of Robert Anton Wilson's 100 favorite movies, supplied to me in 2014 by Jesse Walker, one thing jumps out at me: My favorite movie is missing. My personal favorite is Casablanca, which of course is a favorite for many other people, too.

The list is described as RAW's "personal and eccentric list," so maybe he was just trying to avoid cliche selections, but I'm still curious what he thought of the movie. I thought perhaps Scott Apel might know; Scott has written books about movies and would watch films with RAW. But Scott says, "As for Casablanca, I can't recall ever discussing it with RAW. I love it, but I have no idea how he felt about it (as opposed to the movies we did discuss regularly, like Silence of the Lambs, and -- of course -- Citizen Kane). Sorry I can't help you out there."

It seems odd if RAW never held forth on a classic famous movie (see the recent discussion at Marginal Revolution). Can anyone weigh in? Then again, I've always been surprised there is no evidence RAW was  interested in Twin Peaks. 

Some Erik Davis news, and a question

 

Erik Davis (Twitter portrait)

Erik Davis,  who wrote about Robert Anton Wilson in his excellent book High Weirdness, has posted "PKD's Divine Interference" in his Substack newsletter, substantial excerpts from his long essay on what happened to Philip K. Dick about 50 years ago, "when Philip K. Dick glimpsed a delivery woman’s Christian fish necklace and launched into the extraordinary series of bizarre experiences and events that the author referred to as '2/3/74'.” 

Also, this announcement from Mr. Davis: "Come study "The Psychedelic Universe" with me and my PhD crony Christian Greer at the University of Amsterdam this summer: a two-week in-person immersion seminar on 'Global Perspectives on Higher Consciousness'." More details here. 

My question

Separate from the above, I recently located and transcribed an article by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, "Come Back Lyndon," for the Robert Shea collection I am working on. It was published in in the July 1971 issue of The Organ, an underground newspaper in California I mentioned recently.

The piece, which draws on the "Illuminati Mythos" in Illuminatus!, has this last sentence: "Do not, O Illuminati, leave us out here in the twilight with no more for host than a sincere Coca Cola machine." I don't understand the sentence. Am I reading it wrong? Is there a wrong word or a missing one? Or do  I just  have poor reading comprehension skills? 

RAW on the hypnosis of 'reality'

Prometheus Rising, one of Robert Anton Wilson's best-loved books, has a passage that is one of my favorites:  

"When the Russian mathematician, Ouspensky, was first studying with Gurdjieff, he had great trouble understanding Gurdjieff's insistence that most people are machines and totally unaware of the objective world around them. Then,  one day, after World War I had begun, Ouspensky saw a truck full of artificial legs. These artificial legs were being sent to the frontline hospitals, for soldiers whose legs had not even been blown off yet, but whose legs would be blown off. The prediction that these legs would be blown off was so certain that the artificial legs were already on their way to replace the natural legs. The prediction was based on the mathematical certainty that millions of young men would march to the front, to be maimed and murdered, as mindlessly as cattle marching into a slaughterhouse.

"In a flash, Ouspensky understood the mechanical nature of ordinary human consciousness." 

This is from the Hilaritas edition of Prometheus Rising, and it's certainly one of the RAW books you should buy and read, if you are a RAW fan. 

This passage comes to mind when I think about the current U.S. presidential election, which, if all goes badly, will gives us a Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden rematch.

We are sleepwalking toward an election that many Americans dread. The Republican Party could select at random any sitting Republican governor of any U.S. state, drawing names from a hat, and would have a candidate who would seem to have more apparent common human decency, and apparent connection to reality, than Donald Trump. Similarly, in the minds of people who aren't fanatical supporters of the Democratic Party, any sitting Democratic governor would be better than Joe Biden.

I probably don't have to defend my characterization of Trump for most RAW readers. If you really need a refresher, see "Who Can Best Destroy America?" by the philosopher Michael Huemer, which I offer because Huemer cannot be dismissed as a partisan Democrat, and because getting to know Mr. Huemer's Substack seems worth  your time. 

As for Biden, Prop Anon and Paul Graham have been doing a pretty good job on X of chronicling Biden's apparent indifference to the situation in Gaza, but given the culpability of Hamas and the complexity of the situation in the Mideast, I also will point to another recent example that there seems to be something wrong, "Secret Service Had to Adjust Tactics to Avoid Bites From Biden’s Dog," a story from the New  York Times (similar news reports are available elsewhere.) 

My link gets you behind the Times paywall; read the story and see if you think most Americans would allow their local mayor to treat employees at City Hall this way, for months at a time.   Biden allowed his dog, Commander, to bite Secret Service agents (i.e., his bodyguard, for non-American readers) 24 times, and that figure is not a typo. (In fact, for  reasons cited in the Times piece, 24 apparently understates the situation). In many cases, these were serious injuries. In one incident, tours of the public portions of the White House had to be interrupted, so the pool of blood could be mopped up from the floor first. Biden only finally sent away the dog when news reports became too embarrassing. There's also a wonderful quote from a White House PR sycophant, Elizabeth Alexander, that stands out, even in the annals of political lying: “The president and first lady care deeply about the safety of those who work at the White House and those who protect them every day." 

I see postings on social media from various left wing British fans who I'm fond of, and often they will post about some supposedly terrible British politician. I think there may be some sort of regional/cognitive  bias at work here -- I assumed Oklahoma politicians obviously seemed like the worst in the U.S. until I moved to Ohio -- but I think I can defend the proposition that national U.S. political figures seem obviously worse than comparable Brits. In your face, limeys, we have the Olympic gold medal worst politicians in the western world! USA! USA! 

Jill Biden spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander, who wants you to know that "The president and first lady care deeply about the safety of those who work at the White House." Duly noted, Liz! 

Hilaritas podcast features Vincent Murphy on artificial intelligence

The latest episode of the Hilaritas podcast, released today, featured RAW fan and AI enthusiast Vincent Murphy.

"In this episode, Mike Gathers chats with RAW Lucubrator and Guerill-AI Ontologist, Vincent Murphy," says the show's blurb. 

Available at all of the usual podcast places, but the official site with the show notes is here.

Beethoven's Ninth: Big in Japan

Masaaki Suzuki in December 2023. Creative Commons photo by Jiewei Xiong, details here. 

Tyler Cowen's podcast series, "Conversations With Tyler," has a new episode up, an interview with Masaaki Suzuki, who has recorded a huge amount of Johann Sebastian Bach's music. Suzuki is a conductor, organist and harpsichord player and is the founder and leader of Bach Collegium Japan. 

Given Robert Anton Wilson's interest in Beethoven in general, and in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in particular, I thought I would share this bit:

COWEN: What do you think of the hypothesis that Japanese audiences — they have a special interest in iconic works such as Beethoven’s Ninth, and there’s an insistence that they hear the best or experience the best, and single out very particular things. Do you think that’s true?

SUZUKI: Yes, Beethoven’s Ninth is very special here, especially in December. There are more than a hundred performances of Beethoven’s Ninth only in December.

There's more at the link, and classical music buffs will find the whole interview interesting. I link to both a video and audio links and a transcript, but simply as a podcast, it's available in all the usual places. 

Tyler is a careful and polite interviewer. He has been trying for awhile now to get an interview set up with Paul McCartney. I'm pretty certain Paul would not regret agreeing to the interview, but Tyler has not been able to land it. Can anyone help? 

Wednesday links

Caption: "Beethoven is everywhere." Source. 

 Valentine's Day is the libertarian holiday. (Essay by Scott Alexander). 

Joseph Matheny on the Long Seventies podcast.

Julian Assange, and the Biden administration's attack on press freedom.  And Edward Snowden weighs  in. 

Some serious Bach discussion. 

Christian Natinalism in a second Trump administration?

The Republican governor who opposed FDR's racist policies. He apparently lost a winnable U.S. Senate race because he defended Japanese Americans. 

Middleman cites 'Illuminatus'

 Confusingly, there is more than one band called Middleman. But I'm talking about this one, a new punk band out of London. 

The above video is for the new single, "Falls Apart," from the upcoming EP, John Dillinger Died for You. 

"The EP John Dillinger Died For You, the follow up to December 2022’s well-received Cut Out The Middleman, takes its name from The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and is being released 19th April on Evil Speaker Records."

More here, including a touring schedule. Hat tip, Nick Helweg-Larsen. 

A couple of thoughts on the Hugo Awards scandal

"Finnish weird" author Johanna Sinisalo (do you know that genre?) accepting her  Prometheus Award at the Helsinki Worldcon in 2017. Photo by Ryan Lackey. 

The Hugo Awards mess has now made the New York Times, and I thought about it as I was doing my grocery shopping Sunday, here are a couple of thoughts:

1. Andrew Jackson is not one of my favorite U.S. presidents, but I know a striking quotation  attributed to him: "One man with courage makes a majority."

Surely this seems like an example. There were at least five western fans heavily involved with the Hugo Awards in China: Dave McCarty, Ben Yalow, Ann Marie Rudolph, Diane Lacey (listed on the Worldcon Hugo Awards page) and Kat Jones (outed in the investigative story referenced in my Feb. 16 post.) Surely if just one of them had called bullshit on the process, threatening to resign and go public (and back it up if necessary), the whole censorship regime would have collapsed in ruin. (Diane Lacey has now had a change of heart, as I wrote on Feb. 16. She must wish she had said something earlier, and in fact she has apologized and become a whistleblower).

Dave McCarty, who has apparently deleted  his Facebook posts on his role in the Chinese Worldcon, still has a gratuitous slap at libertarians on his Facebook "favorite quotes" section. As much as libertarians disagree among themselves about hot button issues such as global warming or immigration, you'll have trouble finding many libertarians who (a) support censorship and speech codes and (b) fear finding themselves in the minority in a disagreement. Maybe a libertarian on that Hugo committee would have saved Mr. McCarty;s reputation. On the same page, Mr. McCarty brags about  "being the administrator for the 2014, 2016, and 2018 Hugo awards," but by some oversight, he leaves off 2023.

2. I haven't seen anyone point this out, but surely the victims in the Hugo scandal include Chinese science fiction fans, who must have been very excited to see the World Science Fiction Convention come to China for the first time.

R.F. Kuang, the obvious front runner for the best novel Hugo until McCarty and Company deleted her book from the Hugo ballot (she already had won Nebula and Locus awards for Babel) was born in China. Her family came to the United States when she was four, so she's an American, but wouldn't it have been exciting for Chinese fans to see a writer from China win the Hugo? 

Chinese fans also have to read about their Worldcon being an infamous disaster that makes another Worldcon in China currently unthinkable, and surely that must sting, too. 

I was involved, by the way, in a science fiction award being given to a Finnish writer in Finland. A few years ago,  I nominated The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo for the Prometheus Award, and it actually won.  By a nice coincidence, the 75th Worldcon was held in Helsinki in 2017, and our representatives for the Prometheus Award were able to publicly present the award to Sinisalo at that convention.  Yeah, not a Hugo, but still a pretty cool occasion. 

'News democracy' website explains 'Illuminatus!'

 

Harriet "Hattie" Brewis, eating a sandwich in between scoops (official portrait on X). 

The Illuminati, and the Illuminatus! trilogy, get a writeup in a new article, "Who are the Illuminati and why are they taking over TikTok?" The piece at the Indy100 website includes  a discussion of Discordianism  and how it gave rise to the trilogy.

I did feel a bit uncomfortable with how writer Harriet "Hattie" Brewis, the "chief reporter at Indy100," treated the trilogy. After describing the Discordian pranks of Wilson and Shea, she writes, 

"Wilson and Shea became so invested in the whole endeavour that they penned a series of three novels titled ‘The Illuminatus! Trilogy’, which pinned some of the great mysteries of the time on the Illuminati, including who killed President Kennedy," she wrote.

"Among the most far-fetched theories they put forward was that Weishaupt (the society’s original Bavarian founder) had assassinated George Washington and assumed his identity as president of the US," she wrote.

Brewis obviously did a lot of research for her piece, but I did wonder whether she quite internalized that all of this was satire, and not meant to be taken seriously.

You can read her other stories here, such as "Taylor Swift's message to Travis Kelce after the Super Bowl leaked in new audio."

The Indy100 is a project of the Independent, a British newspaper. The idea is that readers pick what the top stories are. The site is billed as "The News Democracy." 

New book by Alan Moore and Steve Moore will be out soon

A new book has been announced that will please some of my friends: The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic by Alan Moore and Steve  Moore, out on Oct. 15, hardcover $50 in the U.S. 

When I forwarded a press release about the book to Gregory Arnott, he told me, "I've been waiting on this for sixteen years. I feel like I've received life changing news."

I assume most of the people reading this blog will know who Alan Moore is, the English author of the novel Jerusalem, and various famous comic books such as Watchmen and V for Vendetta. Steve Moore (no relation to Alan), who died in 2014, also was a comics writer and writer; his novel Somnium is one of the best fantasy novels I ever read. In the afterword of the 2017 edition of Somnium, Alan calls Steve "my oldest, best and strangest friend."

Here is the news release from Top Shelf Productions, I will put artwork from the release at the bottom of this post:

LOS ANGELES, CA (February 16, 2024). Internationally celebrated publishers Top Shelf Productions (USA) and Knockabout Ltd (UK) are proud to announce the publication date of the long-awaited THE MOON AND SERPENT BUMPER BOOK OF MAGIC. Born of the longstanding creative partnership between legendary writer Alan Moore (From Hell) and his creative and magical mentor Steve Moore (no relation), this celebration of magic and the occult has been meticulously under development for nearly two decades and is brought to life through a combination of prose, illustration, and sequential art from five incredible artists. This veritable grimoire of the magical, the mystical, and even the macabre will be on sale in October 2024.

The secrets of the celebrated Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels (sorcery by appointment since circa 150 AD) promise to be revealed in THE MOON AND SERPENT BUMPER BOOK OF MAGIC. This clear and practical grimoire of the occult pairs the knowledge of the proprietors of the aforementioned Grand Egyptian Theatre with illuminating visual delights from artists Kevin O’Neill, John Coulthart, Steve Parkhouse, Rick Veitch, and Ben Wickey. Unprecedented in its scope and splendor, this tome is full to bursting with illustrated instructional essays, activity pages, biographies of the great sorcerers, and forbidden knowledge sure to tantalize even the most disillusioned of adults into believing in magic once again.

“One of the great honors of my publishing career has been to work with Alan Moore on so many monumental projects, like From Hell and Lost Girls,” says Chris Staros, Editor-in-Chief of Top Shelf Productions. “THE MOON AND SERPENT BUMPER BOOK OF MAGIC represents an amazing capstone, created by Alan and Steve, and brilliantly brought to life by five unforgettable artists. It’s been a privilege to watch those magical minds spend years building this grimoire, and I’m proud to join Knockabout in finally sharing it with the world.”

THE MOON AND SERPENT BUMPER BOOK OF MAGIC (ISBN 978-1-60309-550-1) will be available in fine bookstores and comic shops in October 2024.

THE MOON AND SERPENT BUMPER BOOK OF MAGIC

Written by Alan Moore & Steve Moore

Art by Kevin O’Neill, John Coulthart, Steve Parkhouse, Rick Veitch, and Ben Wickey

Book design by John Coulthart

ISBN 978-1-60309-550-1 | 9" x 12" hardcover | 352 pages | $49.99 (US)

Co-published by Top Shelf Productions & Knockabout LTD (UK)

Available everywhere books are sold in October 2024

More on the Hugo Awards mess

Significant new information finally has emerged in the Hugo Awards mess I blogged about on Jan. 23.  As I explained in that earlier post, several nominations were deemed "ineligible" for the award, including Babel by R.F. Kuang, which had been the frontrunner for the best novel Hugo. 

Much of the blame for what happened has been put on the Hugo Award administrator for last year's Chinese Worldcon, Dave McCarty, who has refused to discuss what happened, but there were other Western fans on the Hugo committee. On one of my social media sites, Bluesky, I wrote (on Jan. 28), "I don't know Dave McCarty, but I'm puzzled why the other North Americans on the Hugo committee -- Ben Yalow, Ann Marie Rudolph, Diane Lacey -- have not received any pressure to explain what happened."

Well, one of that trio who had been cooperating in the coverup, Diane Lacey, apparently finally had enough and broke the code of silence, releasing emails that show, as everyone suspected, that the Hugo Awards committee engaged in political censorship. Here is the resulting investigative story by Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford, posted on File 770 and elsewhere. Here is Diane Lacey's apology letter.  There's other stuff at File 770, including one of the fans now implicated in the scandal, Kat Jones, whining about being outed and demanding special treatment.  Jones was actually the Hugo Awards administrator for this year's Worldcon in Scotland; the embarrassed committee has now announced that she has resigned. .

There's been a lot of comment, including this followup blog post by SF author John Scalzi.  (I have a posting in the comments). 

Joseph Matheny on Vayse podcast

"Some rare art transcends reality, some even rarer art seems to create a new reality altogether - the work of Joseph Matheny does both of these things while embracing the trickster spirit inherent in the magickal traditions in which his work has its roots."

Podcast and lots of show notes here.  The podcast is widely available from various other services and apps. 

 

UbuWeb has become an archive

One of my favorite Internet sites, UbuWeb, is no longer updating its online collection of avant garde art but apparently will persist as an archive. 

When I checked the site recently, it was dated 1996-2024, and it said, "As of 2024, UbuWeb is no longer active. The archive is preserved for perpetuity, in its entirety." There's not much else explaining what happened, but the About section has a good one-sentence explanation of what it's about: "Founded in 1996, UbuWeb is a pirate shadow library consisting of hundreds of thousands of freely downloadable avant-garde artifacts."

There isn't a lot of Robert Anton Wilson material on the site, although it does have this interview and this panel discussion from a convention devoted to the work of William Burroughs. If RAW fans look hard enough, they will likely find items that interest them, such as this collection of old recordings made by Aleister Crowley. 

My favorite part of Ubuweb are two collections of contemporary classical music, The Avant-Garde Project and the Wolf Fifth Archive. Much of those two collections are out of print LPs. The UbuWeb version of AGP is not complete, but try this.

I always meant to offer some live recordings of music to the site, too late now.