fnordication…

I was at Barnes & Nobles the other day and came across a book that I had no idea what it was… but I wanted it. It had Kate Moss walking down a flight of stairs looking ridiculously good. I opened the book and it had some great photographs in it and also came with a DVD. So I decided to pick it up. Ended up being $40, which isn’t really a bad price for a photography book. After I came home I happened to check Amazon and it was only $26 and change. So I returned the book to B&N immediately the next day. Thankfully I hadn’t taken it out of the plastic. I also found out that it was basically a book that is used as an advertisement for Agent Provocateur, a lingerie company. All marketing schemes should look this good.

I decided to place my order on Amazon for it tonight and also browsed around looking at some of the other photographers I like. I came across a ton of books that I didn’t even know about that came out. There were like two Richard Kern books that I missed, so I had to order one of them. Also a new Jan Saudek book was released so that’s a definite purchase. There are some Roy Stuart books coming out that I will have to keep my eye on too. As well as two new Joel-Peter Witkin books put out by Phaidon that I want, so I ordered one of them. I also wanted to get the new Silent Films book that was released recently so that got thrown into the cart. AK wanted a Carole Lombard DVD set that was dirt cheap so that sneaked it’s way into the shopping cart.

What was supposed to be saving me $14 basically ended up costing me an extra $100. But I didn’t want to miss out on these books. Over the years I have skipped on purchasing some of these art books and then next thing you know they are out of print. So I went a little crazy, but maybe these things will give me some of the inspiration I mentioned looking for in my last post.

As I’ve mentioned earlier I’ve been wanting to save up for a new camera. Of course, since then Sony has released a better version of that camera. The A700 seems to kick the A100 in the ass, it is nearly double the price, so it’s going to be even tougher to save up to get. I am going to just have to bite the bullet and get it one of these days.

The A700 is just such a gorgeous looking camera with some great specs. I am pretty much decided that this is the camera I want to get. The A100 scared me a bit with all the bad reports on the excessive noise on the higher ISOs. Since I hope to be using the camera I buy for some live band shots for Soundsect, I have to make sure that it will be good for low light situations.

I recently purchased a Mamiya RB67 off of eBay because it is one of those cameras I always wanted. I always loved taking pictures with a medium format camera. It’s funny now though. Since I have been away from the process of developing my negatives and prints I just can’t find the time (or drive) to use it. It’s also such a beast. The thing weighs so much. I finally got around to getting some new film and tried the Polaroid back and it took a gorgeous picture, so I really want to get out there and start taking some pics but I am just a little stagnant. I need some motivation.

Once I take a few shots I will post some up here.

…in the shape of this blog.

So I stupidly (with the spurring of Stewie) signed up for NaBloPoMo. So if all goes well you should see atleast one new post a day from me. I know, what was I thinking? I haven’t updated this blog in like 3 months. Really, I don’t know what I was thinking, but WTF let’s see if I can do it.

So as I was trying to think of what to write about on the first day I figured it might be best to post about what I just did for the last 6 hours: watched the Halloween Ghost Hunters Live special. Yes, 6 hours of watching the TAPS team investigate the Waverly Sanatorium. I think I enjoyed it more this year than last years at The Stanley surprisingly. They still brought on a wrestler as the special guest thanks to the idiocy that is SciFi Channel, but he was definitely a lot better than the jackass wrestler last year. There were some dull moments, usually those that had Kristin and Heather on the screen. These are two of the worst “investigators” ever on the show. Let’s sit on our asses and ask the ghosts to rub our feet. WTF? And seriously… the instant you pull out Dowsing Rods, you lose. That simple. You can not be taken seriously.

They used this event to push the Hunt for the new Hunter contest that has been going on for a while now, and had the three finalists do a quick bit of investigating with some of the team members. Really, all three of the contestants blew. None of them knew wtf they were doing and obviously this contest just drew all of the reality TV type contestants. I would bet money that they also have applied for things like Stan Lee’s piece of shit Superhero show. Mark, the first contestant to go, was completely boring and I honestly have to question if he even had an interest in the paranormal before signing up for this thing. Deanna, the second girl, was ok. She was the best of the bunch, but that isn’t saying much. She atleast seemed to be somewhat into it. Pat, the last guy to go was fucked from the get-go. The two lazy asses (above) that he was teamed up with did nothing but berate him the whole time. He sucked and would have sucked with or without that, but it still was annoying. They were belittling his virgin attempt at EVPs, but yet you are the same dumb bitches who were using two metal sticks to find ghosts only a short time before. Of course, since he still thought he had some chance of winning he let it all slide and said nothing but nice things about them after the fact.

Not all was bad though. There were some interesting events that happened and I will be curious to see how they play out on the follow-up evidence show next week. I am not expecting too much, but you never know. They did get some interesting footage from Waverly last time they were there:

I’m sure I will have some comments on the show once it airs next week. I wanted to talk a bit about Ghost Hunters International, but I’ll save that for another post.

I’ve been tagged by Alien Redrum so I’ll play along.

Meme Rules: You go to Wikipedia, type in your birthday (month and day) & you list 3 events, 2 births, 1 holiday, and tag 5 friends.

Events:

1904 – The first underground New York City Subway line opens; the system becomes biggest in United States of America, and one of the biggest in world. – figured I would pick a local event as the first one.

1964 – Ronald Reagan delivers a speech on behalf of Republican candidate for president, Barry Goldwater. The speech launched his political career and came to be known as “A Time for Choosing”. – Reagan = Asshole

2005 – Riots begin in Paris after the deaths of two Muslim teenagers – Working class revolt, unfortunately for a pretty dumb reason ultimately.

Births:

1923 – Roy Lichtenstein, American artist (d. 1997) - Never really been a fan of his work, or Pop Art in general, but he was one of the better Pop Artists and had his moments.

1924 – Ruby Dee, American actress - I was going to go with Theodore Roosevelt but opted for Ruby Dee instead. A great activist and actress and married to the brilliant Ossie Davis.

Holiday:

United States – Navy Day - Not quite sure what happens.

I’m going to tag the following:

Skat
Aquaknits

I doubt either will do it.

I stole this from Ace.

1. Two Names You Go By:
1. shiki-jitsu
2. fnordboy

2. Two Things You Are Wearing Right Now:
1. Mephisto Walz t-shirt (Nightingale version)
2. a pair of black DC sneakers

3. Things You Would Want (or have) in a Relationship:
1. laughter
2. love

4. Two of Your Favorite Things to do:
1. sleep
2. watching movies

5. Two Things You Want Very Badly At The Moment:
1. the clock to move faster so I can go home
2. money to buy a nice place

6. Two things you did last night:
1. watched Incident at Loch Ness
2. ate some White Castle hamburgers

7. Two things you ate today:
1. pancakes and eggs
2. buttered roll

8. Two people you Last Talked To:
1. gary
2. sam

9. Two Things You’re doing tomorrow:
1. work
2. driving to work

10. Two longest car rides you’ve ever experienced:
1. driving to Vermont
2. driving to Massachusetts

11. Your two favorite beverages (right now):
1. Dunkin Donuts Coffee Coolatta
2. Dr. Pepper

I’ve been reading the book Generation Hex the last few days and it has got me thinking and reminiscing. The book is full of essays from various magicians and occultists talking about how and why they got into the practice and study of magick and where it has led them (up until this point). Also where they think it is going. It is a pretty interesting read, even if the essays are kind of hit or miss.

The last five years or so have been up and down for me as far as my active interest in the occult and more importantly conscious magickal practice. I have never stopped being interested in it, or reflecting on it in my daily life and as a whole, but I have not taken any active steps to do anything. I have strayed away from most discussions on it as well. I am not sure why exactly, but I have. In the last couple of months though there has been something growing in me, my pineal gland has been twitching. I have started hunting down some books that I never got around to purchasing in the last 15+ years, of course a bunch of them are OOP now. I’ve also just had this overwhelming sense of something on the periphery just beyond sight. Certain events and chance meetings have made me reevaluate some of the sites I have run (chaostatic.com) and was in the process of building (Principia-Esoterica.com). Who knows where those two sites will be going.

I have decided to start this series of posts that allow me to trace my steps (as best as I can) to where I am at now. While I hope to make it an interesting read, this is more for me. I have never sat down and truly mapped out this aspect of me.

The Beginnings
I wish I could remember what got me into the occult in the first place. I really can’t remember. It’s always been something that has interested me. I remember really you being into ghost stories and the paranormal. I remember going to little dive theatres in NYC with my father to see stage magician acts. I think all these experiences and interests started me on the path. A lot of my entertainment also pointed me in that direction. All the heavy metal music with their mentions of Crowley, Lovecraftian elements, etc. Films like The Gate and countless other horror films. The idea of being able to bend and shape reality to your wants and desires is not only a wonderful thing to a 10 year old child, but it is also not too far out of the realm of possibilities to someone that age. We are all probably at our most imaginative and purely creative as a child. As we grow older our art and creativity come more from a reflection on our experiences and as answers the world around us, they don’t seem to come from as much an untouched place in our minds that unjaded youth provides.

Growing up in a non-practicing Christian home the obvious place to start looking is towards the perceived opposite: Satanism. Of course the “satanic panic” of the 80′s helped point me in that direction as well. Being only 11 or so, the majority of my time was spent listening to Death Metal, reading books (LaVey, Necronomicon, etc), traipsing around a cemetery at night, and doing some “rituals”. While I remember having fantastic results with some of the evocations, etc that my friends and I were messing around with it really was all fairly half-hearted. I knew what I was doing was working, I saw the results, but I didn’t care about the overall system.

I knew I needed to start shopping around.

To be continued…

I was trying to find a name of a band that did a song that I barely remember at this point. It was on a skateboard video put out by the company Gullwing called Full Power Trip. I have the VHS sitting in a box somewhere, I will probably have to dig it out. In my search I came across a great site that catalogs and has info and reviews on old skateboard videos: SkimTheFat.com. They have a good list of over 700 videos and one of the highlights is that they feature the soundtrack list for the videos. Unfortunately they don’t have a listing for that particular Gullwing video.

Of course this made me nostalgic so I had to throw some Naked Raygun in Winamp. I also found out that most of the older videos I loved are on DVD now. H-Street’s Hokus Pokus, Powell Peralta’s Ban This and Propaganda, Santa Cruz’s Reason For Living (which had a great soundtrack), Speed Freaks, etc. I think you can even get Rubbish Heap on DVD now. I’m going to have to keep my eyes open for some good deals on these.

Rev. Jerry Falwell dies at age 73

Good riddance, fuckin’ hayseed.

In the mail today I received the review copy of the latest Psychic TV (PTV3) cd, Hell is Invisible…Heaven is Her/e. This album is really, really good. I wasn’t expecting it to be this good. I had high hopes, but I figured with all these new studio albums from some of my old favorite bands that have come out and been really good (Throbbing Gristle’s Part Two, Dinosaur Jr.’s Beyond) that eventually one of them would have to suck. So far so good. The review will be up on soundsect.com in a week or so. Until then I will be playing the shit out of this disc.

Completely unrelated, I decided I need to start getting some money together. I am starting to mentally go through what I can eBay, and have come up with a number of things. I have a couple of pairs of sneakers that I have bought in the last year that I never even used because I wasn’t 100% happy with the fit or the look. One of the downsides of ordering online and being a procrastinator about sending things back. I also have a number of DVDs that I really don’t need/want anymore. Those will take me longer to go through and get together ready for sale, but it’s time. All this shit is just taking up space here and it’s money that could be sitting in my bank account. I also have a website to finish for a client, I need to get cracking on that. It would be nice to have a few more hours in the day to get all this done.

I decided this week that I need to save up some money and get a good quality digital camera. I already have a few decent point and shoot cameras, but I want something that I can have some control with. The Sony Alpha DSLR-A100 has been on sale basically everywhere this week, but I just don’t have the money for it.

 

Nice looking camera, good price for what it can do. Decent specs. It’s been a long time since I have been this interested in doing new photo work. Maybe in a month or so I will have enough free funds to think about picking this up.