Sacred bowling alley to be saved for future Discordian pilgrims

Building to be preserved in redevelopment effort

Christians have the Holy Land, Moslems have Mecca, but Discordians have the place that historian of Discordianism Adam Gorightly had dubbed the "Brunswick Shrine," the bowling alley that Gorightly has identified as the likely place where Kerry Thornley and Greg Hill created Discordianism. *

The building in question is Friendly Hills Lanes, a bowling alley at 15545 Whittier Blvd. Whittier, California. In June, the bowling alley shut down after 60 years in business.

But it's not the end of the historic building. It's being redeveloped as a commercial building that will hold retail tenants, including an Aldi grocery store and BEVMO! liquor store. And the redevelopment will be done to preserve the building's historic character, including preserving the outside sign.

That's the word from Don Dooley, planning services manager for the city of Whittier. I interviewed Mr. Dooley.

The new developer, Dan Almquist, has been acquiring the building and is turning it into a three unit commercial building. The existing bowling sign outside will be adapted for reuse, said Dooley, who serves as the secretary for the Whittier Historic Resources Commission, the city body charged with preserving Whittier's historic buildings.

Whittier's interest in the Friendly Hills building stems from the fact that it is considered an exemplar of Googie-style building design, a space-age style that originated in southern California, particularly as the style of design applied to bowling alleys, Dooley explained. The bowling alley was designed by Powers, Daly and DeRosa, at the time the big name in southern California bowling alley design.

That has allowed the building to be certified by the Whittier Historic Resources Commission as eligible for being designated as a landmark under the California Environmental Quality Act.

This in turn allows Almquist to enter into an agreement with Whittier to carry out preservationist and historic restoration work as he converts the building into a new use. He is entitled to certain tax advantages and will get a measure of flexibility in complying with building codes as he works to preserve the building, Almquist said.

The Historic Resources Commission has approved Almquist's conceptual plans, and he'll be going before the city's planning commission on Nov. 16 for conditional use permits for adaptive reuse of the building.

The building's alleged role in giving birth to the Discordian religion and movement did not come up when the Historic Resources Commission met.

"This is something I am not even aware of. This is the first I have heard of it," Dooley said. "When you are doing  historic resource, you don’t necessarily find all of the information. It could be significant as it's related to the property.”

When I had phoned the city of Whittier's planning department, I had left a message identifying myself as a newspaper reporter for the Sandusky newspaper in Ohio (which is true), figuring that would be more likely to get a return call than identifying myself as the author of an offbeat blog.

Mr. Dooley was curious why a reporter in Ohio was interested in the fate of a California bowling alley, and I attempted to explain my blog and my interest in Discordianism.

* Adam Gorightly informs me that the term "Brunswick Shrine" actually was used by Thornley and Hill.

Higgs' book becoming available in the U.S.

The new John Higgs book, Stranger Than We Can Imagine: An Alternative History of the 20th Century, out for weeks in the United Kingdom, is becoming available in its various editions in the U.S.

Confusingly, the paperback edition is listed on Amazon as being released on Nov. 10, but the website says it can get it to me by Nov. 2. The Kindle edition will be released on Nov. 1, and I have to wait until Nov. 1 to get it, but the "International edition" for hardcover came out in September. Barnes and Noble says the paperback comes out Nov. 10, but I can get it in a store now, although the website says there are no stores in my area (there is actually one within half an hour of my house.) If I buy the Kindle ebook, I have to pay $1 more than for the Nook ebook. In any event, I'll have a copy in my hands soon.

I'm reading the new Elvis Costello memoir (elevates the rock star memoir genre —it's a really good book so far), but I can't wait to read John's book.

If you want to try encryption, try Mailvelope

The usual answer that is given to ubiquitous government spying, such as that encouraged in the bill mentioned in yesterday's post, is to use encryption.

The main difficulty in using it is that almost nobody is willing to use it; as with anything, you learn do something by doing it. I only have one regular correspondent who uses encryption. But email encryption can also be difficult to use. Mailpile looked like a promising email client at one point, and for many people it probably still it, but the latest beta completely quit working for me and I had to abandon it. I now use Mailvelope, a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox which has become quite good and quite easy to use. I recommend it if you want to give PGP encryption a try. 

The web-based Proton Mail is an option if you just want to use a web service similar to Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, etc. There, the main problem is finding other folks who will use it. If you want to try it, you can write to me at tomjackson@protonmail.ch.

'All your data belong to the government'

Ron Wyden

The latest government surveillance bill in Congress, S. 754,  seems to be well on its way to passage. "Let's tell private businesses in America that they should share consumer data with the federal government to help stop vague cyberthreats, and in exchange immunize them from liability for any possible violations of users' privacy. What could possibly go wrong?" writes Scott Shackford at Reason.

Here's how they voted in the U.S. Senate. 

I'm pretty down on politicians in Congress at the moment, even more than usual (the two most prominent "libertarians," Rand Paul and Justin Amash, both voted for war with Iran by opposing the nuclear inspection accord, and one of my senators, Sherrod Brown, just endorsed Hillary Clinton), but Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon has been good on this issue, so I'm following him on Twitter and posting his photo here. (Brown voted against S. 754, so we have to give him that, and he voted for the Iran treaty. All of his good work on civil liberties and peace will be negated if Clinton is elected, but the Republican nominee likely will actually be worse. How was YOUR week?)

znore on Sirius

Image of Sirius from the Hubble telescope

Groupname for Grapejuice had a blog post that I didn't get around to for awhile, which collects much of his research on Sirius, the Dog Star. 

znore also has been appearing on a podcast. 

Monday links

Jesse Walker has a new one in the works. 

John Higgs does, too, but I don't have any information yet. 

October 2015 Eris of the Month. 

Sword fighting libertarian church seeks tax exemption.  (Hat tip, Cat Vincent.)

First commercial moon landing planned in 2017. 

Cat Vincent recommends this novel to RAW fans. 

Social media campaign begins soon to end war

November will be devoted to a big (I hope) social media campaign on behalf of peace. Details here. 

Hat tip, Antiwar.com on Twitter. 

A RAW quote

A Robert Anton Wilson quotation, turned into a piece of art. At the Robert Anton Wilson Fans page on Facebook, Andrew Wilkins writes, "Great quote from Robert Anton Wilson. if you dig it feel free to like, share, use and otherwise spread this image and message. Click to see full size. Quote from The Illuminati Papers. (Image design by Maya Mitchell & Andrew Wilkins)."

Mr. Wilkins says on Facebook that he is a writer and filmmaker who lives in Michigan. Ms. Mitchell is a banjo player, songwriter and artist who works with autistic children. She also is from Michigan.

Favorite science fiction books

Doesn't your heart beat faster to see the cover of an Iain Banks Culture novel? Well, mine does. 

Inspired by Michael Dirda's list of ten favorite science fiction books, and by Ann Leckie's interesting list, I decided to do my own "top ten" list.

What I quickly ran into was that many of the best SF books I ever read were not, in fact, novels. But that when I started including story collections, I had to bump too many novels off my list.

So what I've done is compile two lists: One of ten favorite SF novels (that's the list that "competes" with Dirda and Leckie) and one that lists collections. I've made no attempt to pick the "best" books or most influential books or whatever. There are my favorites, and in many cases are books I've read more than once. For Gene Wolfe and Dan Simmons and Philip Jose Farmer, I've picked single titles, but I'm really referring to the series as a whole (The Book of the New Sun, Hyperion-Endymion, Riverworld.)

Ten favorite novels

1. The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells.
2. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein.
3. Tau Zero, Poul Anderson.
4. This Immortal, Roger Zelazny.
5. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick.
6.  Hyperion, Dan Simmons.
7. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer.
8. Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson.
9. Islands in the Net, Bruce Sterling.
10. Excession, Iain M. Banks.

Ten favorite SF story collections

1. Dangerous Visions, Harlan Ellison, editor.
2. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Harlan Ellison.
3. The Dying Earth, Jack Vance.
4. The Book of Philip Jose Farmer, Philip Jose Farmer.
5. Nine Hundred Grandmothers, R.A. Lafferty.
6. The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury.
7. Mixed Feelings, George Alec Effinger.
8. The Sentinel, Arthur C. Clarke.
9. Gene Wolfe's Book of Days, Gene Wolfe.
10. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. 1, Robert Silverberg, editor.

RAW Trust to reprint 19 RAW books

Christina Pearson

The Robert Anton Wilson Trust's new Hilaritas Press has issued its first email newsletter, which you can read here. 

The main news is that the RAW Trust plans to reprint 19 RAW titles, in both paper and ebook editions (making many of them available as ebooks for the first time) under the Hilaritas Press imprint. As you'll recall, the trust terminated New Falcon as RAW's main reprint house earlier this year so that it could take charge of the effort.

The newsletter doesn't give publication dates but says they are close. It also doesn't list the 19, but I asked Richard Rasa for the list, and he shared it with me. Here are the 19, in current order of planned publication:

1 ~ Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977)
2 ~ Prometheus Rising (1983)
3 ~ Quantum Psychology (1990)
4 ~ Email to the Universe (2005)
5 ~ Coincidance: A Head Test (1988)
6 ~ The Earth Will Shake (1982)
7 ~ The Widow’s Son (1985)
8 ~ Nature’s God (1988)
9 ~ Cosmic Trigger II: Down to Earth (1992)
10 ~ Cosmic Trigger III: My Life After Death (1995)
11 ~ Sex, Drugs and Magick: A Journey Beyond Limits (1988)
12 ~ The New Inquisition (1986)
13 ~ Ishtar Rising (1989)
14 ~ Reality Is What You Can Get Away With (1992)
15 ~ Wilhelm Reich in Hell (1987)
16 ~ The Walls Came Tumbling Down (1997)
17 ~ TSOG: The Thing That Ate the Constitution (2002)
18 ~ Natural Law, or Don’t Put a Rubber on Your Willy (1987)
19 ~ Chaos and Beyond (1994)

The dates are when the books first appeared. The last two have never been reprinted.

As you can see, the reprint plans include all titles except for Illuminatus!, Schroedinger's Cat and Masks of the Illuminati, which remain in print as paper and ebook editions from their original publisher. Also omitted are collaborations with Timothy Leary which are apparently controlled by the Leary estate.

The other news is that there is now a RAW Trust website to check out.

The email newsletter is written by Rasa, identified as "metaprogramming director of the RAW Trust," and RAW's eldest daughter and literary executor, Christina Pearson. Christina's portion reveals biographical details about her father not included in Cosmic Trigger II: Down to Earth and is worth quoting:

 ... I am Bob’s daughter via memes, not genes. Yet he was far more my dad than bio-dad ever was! Bob married my mom Arlen when I was between one and two years old, after she left a very unhappy marriage. I have no memories of that time, all I know is I grew up with Bob as my father, in every sense of the word except “blood.” He understood that she was a “package deal,” with two small daughters from her previous marriage, and he took us on willingly and gladly in order to have Arlen as his companion in life.

He taught me to play chess at 5 years old, and then would “fall in amazement” off his seat when I made a good move; he would lie in waiting, pretending to be the troll under the bridge while waiting to pick us up from the school bus; then as we walked over it, he would roar “WHO is walking on MY bridge!” We would laugh hysterically, running away, and he would chase us... and, sometimes he had to write bad checks so us kids could eat.

Being raised in the House of RAW was such a wide and deeply rich spectrum of experiences, ranging from incredibly difficult situations to some of the most joyful, enlightening and spectacular! Someday, I hope to write a bit about it.

I can't wait to read that!

Literary matters

Michael Dirda

If you like books — and I have to assume you do, or why would you be reading this blog? — I invite you to read my interview with Michael Dirda, Pulitzer Prize winning books critic for the Washington Post.

You can also read my feature story about Thomas Wolfe fan Aldo Magi. He's a very serious fan, arguably more serious about Wolfe than I am about Robert Anton Wilson.

Special bonus for readers of this blog: Mr. Dirda has shared his list of his 10 favorite science fiction novels with me (limited to writers in English, one book per writer) and so I pass it on to you:

1. The Time Machine, H.G. Wells.
2. The Purple Cloud, M.P. Shiel.
3. Last and First Men, Olaf Stapledon.
4. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester.
5. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr.
6. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin.
7. The Drowned World, J.G. Ballard.
8. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick.
9. Dune, Frank Herbert.
10. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe.

Not an Illuminati membership card

Still mining gems from the Discordian archives, Adam Gorightly posts a non-membership card for the Illuminati, created by Arthur Hlavaty and sent to Greg Hill.

Arthur, I notice, still uses the Pope Guilty I moniker at his blog.  I didn't get the "oval throne" joke at first, but I want to get credit for catching the Heinlein reference in one of his recent blog posts.

Adam also recently unearthed a "lost" short story by Camden Benares. 

Cosmic Trigger online discussion group starts early next year

Charles Faris

The next online discussion group (following previous groups for Coincidance, Masks of the Illuminati, Quantum Psychology and Illuminatus! will be an online discussion going through Cosmic Trigger: The Final Secret of the Illuminati! (aka, Cosmic Trigger, Vol. 1. 

The discussion will be led by Charles Faris, who has frequently contributed in the comments and who wrote one of the final entries at the conclusion of the Illuminatus! discussion. I asked Charles for a brief bio, and he obliged:

Charles was born in Alabama, raised in Hawaii, and spent his post-college life bouncing back and forth between Iowa and Bay Area California. He has worked as a dishwasher, busboy, lifeguard, grocer, retail whore, telephone solicitor, political canvasser, waiter, caretaker for the mentally disabled, chimney sweep, writing teacher, massage therapist, yoga teacher, and more. He has written a novel (burned), 2 collections of poetry (lost), 1 collection of short stories (MA thesis), and a variety of random non-fiction (HA!) pieces for a variety of dis-reputable journals. He is currently working on a writing project of which he can say no more. He currently resides in Roslindale MA, a suburb in Boston with long term love Randi, son Rowan, and cat Sabina.

Charles would like to begin in mid-January and is "bubbling with ideas." The idea is to do 10 pages at a time, or so. We are hoping the Robert Anton Wilson Trust's new edition of Cosmic Trigger, featuring the new preface by John Higgs, will be out by then. 

I will let Charles take the lead and make all of the decisions on the discussion, but I will be contributing the comments, along with everyone else who cares to jump in.