I was thinking about an engineering white paper that I would write on attraction. There is definitely something about magnetically attracting things that have the same vibration that you are projecting. It’s most plainly obvious when you think about they way you’re drawn to beats and melodies that resonate the right way with you. For example, given a field of speakers all broadcasting different musical genres, I personally would gravitate toward rock played from the soul over say… psytrance or fashion groove. That’s just me.

But that goes to a further point of the idea of harmonics. A musician’s hand on a guitar or piano that knows what combination of notes create a chord knows the concept of harmonics. A live DJ (as opposed to iPod DJ) just has to match beats so I’m going to toss out those musicians for this illustration. It boils down to those notes existing at frequencies that when combined, build something bigger and fuller and more beautiful and descriptive — a chord. Think about what Fm says — dark, disco, funk. Or what F#m says — some sort of deep blue and violet beauty with sanguine tears. And the straight G/C/D major progression which is what fake hippies that are trying to impress college chicks with their shitty guitar playing sound like. All of the chords mentioned there require 3 notes to exist, and reverberate different emotional signatures. And those emotional signatures are the footprint of harmonics.

So why do F#, A, and C# work as notes that make up the F#m (F sharp minor) chord? They belong together because of the frequency at which they vibrate. Likewise, I think that can be extrapolated to peoples’ vibrations. The thing is though, that with people, they are notes that are conscious, awake, alive, and interactive. So I think it is obvious what I am driving at — which is that you can find other “notes” that work with you to complete a chord. Take that in whatever manner you wish. Love, friendship, business partners, whatever, but the fact is you are only going to feel harmony with people that vibrate in a way that complements you.

The caveat I would offer is that as conscious beings, you are able to control the note that you wish to represent. You can emulate many notes if you wish. That is another name for schizophrenia which I think nobody is immune to (like the way that every single person is on a graduated scale of homosexuality).  So until you’re fully aware of what note you actually are, you might be part of songs containing chords that are not at all what you were designed for. I mean c’mon, I was into Dungeons and Dragons for a while for fuck’s sake … well ok I guess I was sort of designed for that. This schizophrenic activity can actually be fully deliberate in the act of harmonic chameleoning, which can be useful if you are in an acting/spying/veritable-sheistering career.  But when it comes to actual life, it behooves you to know your real frequency. Otherwise you could be contributing your note to a Kenny G tune and not even know it. You could also be sucked into a chord by people maliciously looking for a missing note, which you are able to emulate.

One last thing which speaks to guitar dissonance and feedback – which is that … yea sometimes distortion sounds cool as fuck. So def spend time with dissonant people. You might get a cool sound, some head bangers, some misanthropes, and a shitload of morphine, heroin, and/or cocaine. Basically that means just do what you do everyday — deal with lamewads.

-rishi

McJesus, originally uploaded by Fabio Rex Too.

I’m sort of glad I wasn’t the only one that had this kind of thought. Here’s my take on McDonald’s plus Christianity. I specifically used the Papacy though:

I even had to write a paper on this piece for my Art and Ideology of the 2oth Century class and I got an “A” on it! I feel like I’m in 4th grade. Grad school, it’s like 4th grade but more expensive. Here’s my paper — it’s about how this piece covers the ideas of Frederich Nietzsche.

My Paper:

“Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.”
— John F. Kennedy

here’s another awesome one:

“If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent Texas and live in Hell.”
— General Philip Sheridan

Here’s a nice oil of JKF from the White House Historical Association:

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_cult/courses/beauty/web5/rusala.html

This is an interesting paper by a student at Bryn Mawr College by the name of  Rachel Usala. It talks about the relationship between pain and beauty, but as the disclaimer states, is in no way meant to be authoritative.

Some good stuff:

The intensity of real pain, emotional or physical, makes us more receptive and alert to beauty.

…

The ultimate paradox is the relationship between beauty and pain. Pain can result in beauty by transforming people into stronger individuals, but we strive to eliminate most of the suffering in the world. The more pain and conflict we eliminate from our own personal experience, the more potential beauty that could result from suffering is lost. We become more and more unable to relate to the sufferers of pain because we lose their aesthetic perspective. Self-inflicting pain can create a kind of localized and transient cultural beauty, yet to inflict pain on others is not beautiful.
It is significant, however, that the pain-beauty relationship is a paradox and not a contradiction. Small, painful cultural practices that we use to beautify ourselves are avenues for us to express our roles as contributing, integrated members of society. We need pain to remind us of our vulnerability and make us constantly alert and aware of the beauty of the world around us, but we also need its end because the resolution is part of the aesthetic experience. Tension implies resolution.

Yup, that’s how it goes.

original post on gawker >>

to me scientology is something that has their business model straight. you take a look at what christianity had to deal with, and be proactive about your litigation. and then you bank.

this video is being touted as “The Cruise Indoctrination Video Scientology Tried To Suppress”

i couldn’t embed. click through to gawker.com to check it out

is that pessimistic? maybe. but i don’t know. i have this itching suspicion that my little piece of paper is just going to end up going down a slot, crashing onto a conveyor belt, eventually ending up in a triple steel enforced transport module full of ballots, driven in an armored storage tank and immediately tossed into a volcano.

am i alone in thinking obama is just going to get shot? er … if he gets “elected.” who ISN’T thinking that? seriously, have you ever been to cincinnati, ohio? marietta, oh? columbus, oh? detroit, michigan? raleigh, north carolina? atlanta, georgia? dallas, texas? aspen, colorado? yeah. he’s going to get shot. and you’re going to be able to watch it on youtube in super slow motion recorded on an HD handycam.

ok now i bummed myself out.

but all i do is sit here and watch the daily show not even have to try anymore! i mean, there ARE jokes to write about stupid things liberals do. but i think the thing is that liberals do things that are stupid, but conservatives have a tendency to do stupid things that are also frightening and evil.  ok i just wrote that joke. not so good.

really, there should just be 1 worldwide alert. it’s brownish-reddish and it stands for “clusterfuck.”

ok i’ll stop with the suckfest here by mentioning 1 “positive” thing. being “green” is getting marketable. thanks, capitalism!

-rishi

This is an excerpt from the book The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles.

It is the letter that appeared in newspapers around the world on December 10th after John Lennon’s death by Yoko and Sean:

… I showed him a picture of his father on the cover of the paper and explained the situation. I took Sean to the place where John lay after he was shot. Sean wanted to know why the person shot John if he like John. I explained that he was probably a confused person. Sean said we should find out if he was confused or if he really meant to kill John. I said that was up to the court. He asked what court – a tennis or a basketball court? …

That’s exactly right, Sean. Tennis or basketball. Good call.

excerpt:

“Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.”

Mitt, are you a fucking psycho? Please stop running.

He says he believes Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of mankind. I say everybody knows ducks come from volcanoes. How do you not know ducks come from volcanoes? It is proven true by my belief. If you don’t believe ducks come from volcanoes then you are an idiot and you’re going to spend your afterlife in Cincinnati, OH.

Let me just be very clear that religion has nothing to do with freedom. Religion causes mentally unhealthy things like sexual repression, intolerance, and Jerry Falwell. It makes Israel and Palestine keep up their little game of tetherball or whatever the fuck they’re fighting about over there. It causes Divine Right to be used as a justification for horrendous violations of human rights. Fuck that noise.

I know by saying this that I sound intolerant of religion. I am not saying that — nor am I saying that I am an atheist. You want to pick a religion? Go for it. Join a club. Just know what you’re getting yourself into.

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=122386

Published: December 04, 2007 NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Top executives from two of the nation’s five broadcast networks sounded pessimistic notes this week about prospects for an early resolution to the writers strike, even as they tried to suggest substitute programming in the interim would please both viewers and advertisers.

…

Both TV executives suggested it was hard to come to terms on an issue that was still taking shape. “We are trying to figure out what the world of new media will be,” Mr. Moonves said. While content producers are entitled to a share of the pie, he continued, “right now, we don’t know what that pie is.”

There is no fucking way they don’t know what the pie is. You’re telling me that NBC and CBS don’t have well schooled business and market analysts telling the execs what the profit projections are in which sectors? Then how are those networks still in business? WB and UPN may have hobos working in their marketing departments, but NBC and CBS wouldn’t even have content on sites like hulu.com or any content on iTunes without information from those professionals. Not knowing what the pie is would have left those networks asunder long ago. There is NO WAY you could be in the dark about Youtube’s prominence as a video entertainment channel. And there is NO WAY you could know about Youtube and not think to use your television broadcast revenue to develop an internet broadcast channel of your own.

This is 5 start bullshit. Rock on, writers. Show the world how crappy TV is without you.

To deflate my point, no offense writers, but sometimes there is crappy content even WITH you there.

 http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,70131-1294365,00.html

A British teacher is facing 40 lashes in a Sudanese jail if convicted of insulting Islam’s prophet by letting children name a teddy bear Mohammed.

This is actually happening. Sorry Islam, but you’re being kind of lame. I might die for saying this. But you gotta’ cool out. I respect you guys believing whatever you want but there is NO WAY this woman was trying to disrespect you. Do you actually believe that? I might have to question your faith if you DO sentence her though.

I already question most faiths in their flawed logic. Once you select a religion you are immediately intolerant of other religions. Some religions implore you to kill people from other religions. That is NOT GOOD. In fact FUCK THAT NOISE. Seriously? You have nothing better to do? Fuck you a million times over if that’s what you choose to do with your life.

Besides, every religion has it’s gems. Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism. They’re all good. And they all imply that there is something like a god out there. If you move from subjectivity to objectivity though and do just a little exploration you will see that most of them overlap, even as far as historic events that caused a paradigm or dogma to solidify. But when you select one you exclude the others. Some insist on playing that stupid game of conversion. We’re not playing Othello here people. We’re playing life. Use religion correctly or eat a steaming bowl of dog turds is what I say.

XM is not something I currently subscribe to, but I think their ads campaigns are excellent. I just saw a new one while watching current.tv, but could not find the clip. It’s something reminiscent of a slaughterhouse, but it has normal people on a conveyor belt which moves them through a music playing machine. When they come out the other side, they have customized musical tastes and lifestyles. I think it is a commercial ad that supports the diversity of cultures. But the one I listed here also conveys that sentiment. Checkout the gold tooth at the end, ha.

XM obviously makes money by celebrating the diversity of music, but still it is something to be celebrated. What really is cool is when a new genre is invented as fusion genres inspired by existing genres. Off the top of my head I will say Ratatat is a good example of this with their fusion of hip-hip, rock, end electronic funk. Another obvious example is Led Zeppelin getting their sound from blues and rock.

It’s a shame when one genre gets ridiculed by another. I for example, like to mock the song “I Wanna Rock” by Twisted Sister because I am a jerk. Let me just pose this question: why wouldn’t he just rock instead of repeatedly exclaiming that he has inclinations of rocking? It just doesn’t make sense, people. But yeah that is bad because Twisted Sister does indeed rock – don’t base your decision on the quality of their music on that gaping hole in logic.

I am just saying that I enjoy the musicianship demonstrated by artists like Indian classical musicians including Zakir Hussein, Hari Prasad Chaurasia, Ravi Shankar, and Shiv Kumar Sharma as much as I enjoy good pop hooks & lyrics. Adult contemporary can shit themselves to death at an Oprah taping for all I care, but who knows, maybe I will enjoy that genre when I am dying or dead?

Right, anyway, rockon ad agency who did this ad.

Dear Friends and Family, an Enormous Merry Diwali to all of you!

I took some time this morning to finally translate these ancient, thousands of years old Vedic texts that have been sitting in this cardboard box in my closet for over 4 years! They’re fine, they were only slightly damaged. Here are some of the Diwali-related exerpts I recently uncovered:

May the glorious lights from the spiritual plane be on.

May you grow many legs in action toward peace. If you grow many arms that is probably ok too because then you can like hold a bunch of stuff, but legs make you go faster.

May a wall of a thousand explosions poison a bad guy. Let us pray to ignite that wall. [I'm not sure I got this one right]

May you meet a unicorn.

May nobody agree that most religions overlap and even come from the same ball of extremely acute awareness speckled with various amounts of mysticism and sometimes hallucinogenic drugs. Hopefully only some of you decide to kill each other over those differences like all the time, like it’s your freakin’ JOB.

May black people rap and play gospel and blues real good. May brown people of all kinds always be paid slightly under market value for pretty tough nerdy jobs. May white people [this portion was damaged] with monkeys.

May your karma buffet sport a fancy calligraphy “all you can eat” sign. May there be a table for two or a party of 5+.

Anyway, let me know if you want a copy. I’ll be near a FedEx/Kinko’s today and I gots some loose change.

Merry Deepawali,
Rishi

It’s almost a joke. They deployed the Minnesota National Guard in Iraq for one of the longest tours of duty — like 22 months. When they get back they get fucked on the educational grant because their tour, 729 days long, was 1 day short of qualifying (730 days). The lieutenant is just trying to get 1 day added to his troops’ records so they can 1) be taken care of as he promised and 2) his troops can afford the fall semester. But the Pentagon says it’s not that easy and that they are going to have individual reviews with each soldier and that this matter would be “dealt with” by January 8. Note, that doesn’t mean that it will necessarily be resolved and remedied so the DO get educational funding by January 8.

Fuck the army. Fuck the military. I’m not saying fuck the troops, just the people in control. I’m saying that if you still think there are smart people in power as opposed to slightly evil moronic douche nozzles, then have a cup of coffee and pay ATTENTION to what is going on sometime. Again, fuck those douche nozzles.

Go on the interweb and find some video news coverage of the Pentagon reps trying to cover their asses. So fucking douchey.

Original articles:

http://www.wcsh6.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=71741

1st Lt. Jon Anderson said he never expected to come home to this: A government refusing to pay education benefits he says he should have earned under the GI bill.

“It’s pretty much a slap in the face,” Anderson said. “I think it was a scheme to save money, personally. I think it was a leadership failure by the senior Washington leadership… once again failing the soldiers.”

Anderson’s orders, and the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days.

Had they been written for 730 days, just one day more, the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/5/112724/513

In yet another brilliant move in assholery, National Guard troops are being denied benefits after the longest deployment of any ground combat unit in the Iraq War. This unit, the 2,600 member strong Minnesota National Guard (Is it me, or is the GOP really trying to piss off their convention state?), was in Iraq for 22 months after being kept there for President Bush’s surge.

But when they got home, they had a special kiss of fuck-offedness from the Bush Administration and the Army. The troops are now being denied their GI Bills for furthering their education. See, their orders were written for 729 days, had their orders been written for 730 days, just one more day, they would have qualified.

1 day.

After hearing about the situation in Burma, I am at wits end trying to figure out what the fuck one is to do in a violent military dictatorship climate. Monks, who are highly revered in the region, led protests in rebellion and for the most part, the government had restraint about using military force to crush the protests. There was huge support for the protests by the civilians and a giant party of protesters were able to peacefully march into the capital.

This protest at the very least attracted global attention to the region. In fact, you can show your support by signing a petition here: www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with…

But today, BBC reported that overnight, the military broke into monasteries and beat and arrested several hundred (?) monks. It is obvious that the junta is just trying to remove the monks from the crowds of protesters so that they can open fire on the civilians. That will allow them to remain in power without the global community intervening as urgently as they would if monks were being fired upon as well.

Here are 2 good BBC reports:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7009825.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7015751.stm

The region is traditionally unstable. The military dictators don’t recognize the democratically elected Aung San Suu Kyi as anything and have arrested her repeatedly for trying to establish a democratic environment. The US and Europe have imposed sanctions on trade in the region except for a few loopholes. One loophole allowed a Burmese-Thai gas pipeline to be run by a union of French oil company Total S.A. and their American counterpart Chevron. This pipeline is the cause of many human rights abuses in the area.

I am not pro-terrorist, but I can see why someone might look at becoming a military dictator as a very viable option in a climate like that. I mean, it’s a get-rich-quick scheme definitely. But what are your other options? Come up with a chain of low-cost department stores that take over the nation and then the world? Sorry, Wal-Mart’s got that cornered. Maybe come up with an operating system for personal computers that becomes the go-to OS and gets distributed with any standard build across electronics retailers all over the world? You’ll have to squash Bill Gates first and it’s tough to start down that path if your family is too poor to even afford a computer.

But what DOES happen in the region as a source of income that is in some way competitive to the minimum wage of the rest of the world is drug smuggling, which also funds the underground terrorist network. Drug smuggling in Burma also fuels China’s addiction problem.

So yeah. Where do we look as a solution to this clusterfuck? One man says China is the key: www.ksg.harvard.edu/news/op…

He’s a harvard professor and all, but you know what I would do? Go over there and get a pet python — those things are freakin huge.

Maybe it is because I am not from the region, but I have a hard time believing there is a high school that still exists where a black student would have to ask the principal if he can sit under the white’s tree. The principal says do what you want. And the next day there are nooses hanging from its limbs.

First of all, ‘sit under the tree?’ I mean I love trees but is that really the thing that sparked ALL this shit down in Jena, Louisiana. That’s like out of Tom Sawyer or something. “C’mon Huck, let’s go sneak into the burlesque theatre and watch the black face show. Them negroes is so funny.”

Dammit I wish I had a jet and didn’t work F’ing 40 hours a week because I would love to visit and just soak this place in. There’s only one way this place could possibly exist and that is a ripple in time.

I mean if I was Kenneth Purvis and I wanted to sit under some tree, any tree, I would have said “can i sit under that tree or are we from the 1800s and retarded?”

Jena has been declared to be in an emergency state. Black people all over the place, even from England, are making what is being called a “pilgrimage” by the media to this high school where all the events took place. Here is the overview of the incidents leading up to this situation from MTV news >>

And here is coverage and some interviews from the lovely Amy Goodman:

That clip is only part 1. There are several more parts to her coverage available on YouTube.

part1 | part2 | part3 | part4 | part5 | part6

And so I’m not trying to sensationalize anything here, but this story includes pickup trucks, sawed-off shotguns with pistol grips, showdowns at the fairgrounds, and more. I am having a hard time grasping the fact that these events could exist outside fiction. Is someone writing an old-timey novella?

Does this kind of stuff seriously still exist in real life? If this situation is not in fact an elaborately coordinated gag of some sort, then good god, what the hell are we doing Iraq?

Is it not obvious that there’s PLENTY to take care of here at home before we start trying tell other people how THEY should be? If I was an Iraqi citizen reading a ton of US News and the US came knocking on my door I might be like “What the fuck? You’re trying to get me to be like YOU? FUCK THAT.” And then I would be shot.

I am no stranger to racism, having grown up in Marietta, OH. Don’t get me wrong, I knew some very sweet and loving and intelligent people from there, but I also knew some 1800s retarded people. And I say that because at this point in time racism is akin to mental retardation. It’s like thinking the world is flat or something. Here is a link to the science behind skin pigmentation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_pigmentation

If you don’t read that article, at least know that it is documented. There is one point of interest that is worth checking out — at the very bottom of the article — it is this image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Valtorta_cave_painting.jpg
The caption reads:

Cave painting from Valtorta spain dated to 13,000 years ago. The bowmen are depicted as darker than the animals