Ask me

Yes, that's how I really look like. When I have pictures taken I hold my face straight with little pieces of transparent tape, and tons of make-up on the top. I wear a nice plastic face to go to work. That's why I get so many jobs, I suppose. People like plastic.

My life runs smoothly. Everything is as it should be, and it irritates me. When everything is in "order", I attract different situations. People start talking about train times or what they ate for dinner, and I feel like hanging myself. Is it how it feels to be Swedish? Bang.

I am going to get out of this loop or I'll have to cause a big problem for myself, switch off and make tons of pure music. You laughing? That's how it goes. Ask a musician.

The U.S.A. own space

That's a cracker: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/18_10_06_usspace.pdf

Source office: http://www.ostp.gov/

Playing with knives

I played records in the most unusual circumstances, and to be honest these are the ones I like the most. Back in Brazil when I still played techno, I remember my gig at Temp in a huge "samba warehouse", pouring down with rain outside, the floor was wet and the equipment kept giving me electric shocks. In an inexplicable fit of masochism I kept messing around with the mixer like never before. Ouch.

Another remarkable episode in Sao Paulo was when my friend R played at Lov.e, one of my favourite clubs ever. We went there together, very early cos he was the first to play, and when opened his case he noticed he had forgotten his headphones. Loads of people coming, panic, what should we do? Haha. Leave me to it, I said. Go get your headphones, mate. He left me with his bag full of records and my favourite dance floor to entertain. I mixed the tunes for half an hour by watching the level meters flashing. The mixer so smooth, the sound so clear, the crowd so lovely...

There were so many nights filled with technical problems. Cross faders coming off in my hands, no monitors, inverted knobs (maximum is minimum and vice versa), fucked up needles, fucked up mixers, all sorts. Last Friday I played at The Synergy Party at SeOne, a massive club under London Bridge, high ceiling, brick walls giving that nice industrial feeling to it, full of smiley hippies mixing party, protest and quality information. Good stuff. 4 sound systems, food and proper coffee.

So I got to the stage to play at the Peace not War sound system. Most people were sitting down cos it was 6 in the morning, the crazy ones were in the trance sound system but the vibe was good nonetheless. I asked the Mc to say some crazy shit and he looked at me suspiciously. Hold on mate, I thought. Wait till I smash your brain with my music.

I started playing. In 5 minutes there were 100 more people and by the end of the set they were hundreds, screaming thank you, with that ecstasy urgency. I know, I know, my shit is heavy. Sometimes too heavy.

I asked the longhaired middle aged hippie engineer to record it with my mini disc but he said the batteries went and he replaced them but it stopped a few times anyway, so I have fragments of that night, which is a shame. Haha, I was missing the technical problems. But hey, I recorded a session at home with the same records so if you want to hear what it sounded like, click here

Mushroom talk

"[...]Since it is not easy for you to recognize other varieties of intelligence around you, your most advanced theories of politics and society have advanced only as far as the notion of collectivism. But beyond the cohesion of the members of a species into a single social organism there lie richer and even more baroque evolutionary possibilities. Symbiosis is one of these. Symbiosis is a relation of mutual dependence and positive benefits for both of the species involved. Symbiotic relationships between myself and civilized forms of higher animals have been established many times and in many places throughout the long ages of my development. These relationships have been mutually useful; within my memory is the knowledge of hyperlight drive ships and how to build them. I will trade this knowledge for a free ticket to new worlds around suns younger and more stable than your own. To secure an eternal existence down the long river of cosmic time I again and again offer this agreement to higher beings and thereby have spread throughout the galaxy over the long millennia. A mycelial network has no organs to move the world, no hands; but higher animals with manipulative abilities can become partners with the star knowledge within me and if they act in good faith, return both themselves and their humble mushroom teacher to the million worlds all citizens of our starswarm are heir to."

How to find happiness

If you want to be happy, move to someplace where more people report feeling that way. However, the happiest countries may not be the ones you want to go to. And don't get breast implants, unless you want to become seriously depressed.

An analysis of happiness in more than 65 countries by the World Values Survey shows Nigeria has the highest percentage of happy people, followed by Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador and Puerto Rico, while Russia, Armenia and Romania have the fewest. They say, "New Zealand ranked 15 for overall satisfaction, the U.S. 16th, Australia 20th and Britain 24th-though Australia beats the other three for day- to-day happiness."

The things that make people happy vary. Personal success, self-expression, pride, and a high sense of self-esteem are important in the United States. "In Japan, on the other hand, it comes from fulfilling the expectations of your family, meeting your social responsibilities, self-discipline, cooperation and friendliness," the researchers say.

The study shows that happiness has remained the same in industrialized countries since World War II, even though incomes have risen, except for Denmark, where people have become more satisfied with life over the last three decades.

But one thing that doesn't make people happy is getting more things. The study says, "Survey after survey has shown that the desire for material goods, which has increased hand in hand with average income, is a happiness suppressant."

One example of this is the fact that women who can afford the luxury of breast implants are more than three times as likely to commit suicide. Ceci Connolly writes in The Washington Post that studies in Finland, Sweden and the U.S. all show the same reaction. This isn't true with women who've had mastectomies, only with those who enlarge their breasts for cosmetic reasons.

Being able to spend money this way is an incredible luxury, so why does it leave women so depressed? Researchers think that women who want this kind of procedure think it will solve their psychological and dating problems-and then find out it doesn't. "The ironic thing is that nobody was looking for this suicide information," says Joseph K. McLaughlin, who ran the Finnish study. "There have been lots of studies of women with breast implants, and the only consistent finding that's problematic is the suicide excess."

Women's advocate Diana Zuckerman says, "Tripling the risk of suicide is a shocking finding-growing evidence that the 'cure' might be worse than the problem it is supposed to solve. We can't just go along with the manufacturer's assumptions that implants are great for women's mental health."

One key to happiness is finding inner peace.


Found at http://www.unknowncountry.com/ via God is not an asshole

Downward spiral

You've been reading far too many books on body language. I've got my arms crossed cos I'm cold, shit. Nothing against you, mate. No, I'm ok. Just a bit distressed. Forgot my book twice this week and got hooked again. No books in the train, let's grab a newspaper. First I read them cos I have no books and a few days later I just read them for the sake of it, leaving my book in the catacombs of my huge bag. A few weeks pass and I'm looking for them papers avidly.

Sometimes I just don't think. You see me checking every carriage while the tube train stops at the station, as if I'm looking for someone, my eyes surveying all seats like a boarding school inspector. Even when I'm right at the beginning of the platform and I have to peep real quick cos the train is moving real fast, I still try. It all means I woke up too late so there is no more Metro newspaper by the entrance of the station, but I can usually find one. Immediately in those lucky days, never in those bad ones.

For some unknown reason, in the last couple of months the free newspapers multiplied themselves like gremlins in a pond. We now have 3 types of fuckers, and an average 25 copies laying around in each carriage. They are made with special ink that doesn't come off on your hands. Goooooooood. Content? The Metro is quite entertaining but full of useless statistics. The other 2? Well... Kate Moss farted, X got bigger boobs, Y got stabbed, letters from the furious readers, completely revolted with Madonna's new African baby (get a life!), and so on.

The TV critic used a whole page to completely destroy 3 programs, and I wondered what type of human being watches complete rubbish in order to criticize it. Isn't it the most miserable way to spend your days?? And then I realized I was down there in the food chain. I was criticizing the negative critic of rubbish TV programs, so I must be three times worse.

So in this downward spiral of filthiness I came out of the tube to find a Big Issue seller. God bless ya, mate. Bought it and read it, cleaning my system, brought back to light.

Here is the ad that I like the most:

Say goodbye to your petrol station. Use totally green road fuel. A simple upgrade can make most diesel lorries, vans and cars run on locally-produced, carbon neutral rapeseed oil. Feel good about your car and fight climate change.

http://www.biomotors.co.uk/

To speak the truth they will have closed mouths.

Lovely. All of a sudden television and glossy magazines seem to be relevant and useful. Read this:

[...]The critical mass of enlightenment can be defined as the smallest number of awakened human beings whose collective influence can initiate a significant shift in global consciousness. The process of creating enough enlightened ones to achieve this critical mass can be likened to the transformation of coal into diamonds. The pressure of surrounding human unconsciousness creates an urgency in the potential enlightened one to awaken from illusion. The total weight of so much unconscious 'carbon' exerts a tremendous pressure, through which a few coal stones reach the appropriate mass to become 'diamonds.' These awakened beings embody the crystal clarity of enlightened consciousness which can transform the level of consciousness of the entire planet.

[...]


The end of the Kali Yuga is history's darkest moment. In her dark age, the population explosion has dumped more unconscious human burdens on the Earth than ever before. According to the Indian mystic, Osho, these darker times exert a higher pressure of unconsciousness, which could produce a greater buddhatomic detonation of joy and awareness. Osho estimates that at least 5 percent of the human seed base has the potential intelligence to germinate an awakening. Out of an expected manure pile of 5.5 to six billion people fertilizing earth during the nightmarish nineties, there are more potential buddha buds than there were people alive on the Earth at any time for most of man's four million year history - between 275 to 300 million spiritual rebels![...]

http://deoxy.org/critmass.htm

Dragons are princesses

Oooook, life goes on. I can tell you are wondering which nasty company I'm working for now. It's a very nasty one. Westminster council. Legal daylight robbery going on in London, people. I won't give you a full parking price list cos there must be children awake at this time, but I'll tell you, people are not happy with the rules downtown. Today an angry guy did the maths and guessed if he comes to west end everyday he would spend 200 pounds a week on parking and congestion charge and fees, and probably unfair tickets to add on. They are pushing, and I'm pulling. Don't use you car then, for fuck sake!

Quoting my friend P quoting someone else:
"Perhaps all of the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is, in it's deepest being, something helpless that wants help from us."
Maybe Westminster council is a well-disguised environmental group that wants help from us. They want us to stop using our cars in order to save the planet! Oh, that's so noble!

Anyway, my job. My job is to inform people they can pay for parking by phone, and to let them know Westminster council will get rid of all the parking meters in 3 months so paying by phone will be the only method available. You have to have a credit card, a mobile phone obviously, and trust. A lot of trust. I couldn't work out what the environmental group behind Westminster council wants with this move, but I'm sure I will find out.

I guess you are worried about my safety. I mean, I could lose my 2 weeks job if they find out I gave away their identity. That's really nice of you, but don't worry cos as M pointed out, my google rating is 3, which means what I write is not really relevant to the bigger picture. Google keeps 10 wise bearded men and a Geek with a clipboard in a room in China. The wise bearded men browse the web day and nite, all of them simultaneously reading the same website (sic), while the geek with the clipboard takes notes on how many wise bearded men nodded with their hand in the chin. Only 3 bearded men nodded while reading my blog, so I can write whatever I want. Thanks wise bearded men.

My job starts really early so I have my Colombian coffee with buttered toast and a ginko bilobaobaoba pill, which allows me to be 10 times more clever right away and read my book in the tube. I'm reading Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Breakfast of Champions. It's one of the funniest and wisest books I read lately. Wild fantasy. I love when a book makes me look forward to getting in the tube again. This one does.

Urgent appeal

I can't express how sad I am. Robert Anton Wilson is dying from post polio syndrome and has money to pay the bills for the next couple of months only. I am shocked by how cruel life can be. He sold over a million copies of The Illuminatus Trilogy, thousands of copies of Cosmic Trigger plus all the other wonderful books he's written but even though he's not been able to afford a decent end for his life. He is a genius and influenced the way I live my life tremendously. It is painful for me to see him suffer this way. If you have any spare money, please send him. I'd be immensely grateful.

Money can be sent to his PayPal address olgaceline@gmail.com. You can also send a check to RAW c/o Futique Trust, P.O. Box 3561, Santa Cruz, Ca 95063.

Please send him some money. Please. This is out of order.

http://rawilson.com/


http://www.rushkoff.com/2006/10/robert-anton-wilson-needs-our-help.php


http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/02/robert_anton_wilson_.html