Archive of the Video roundtable: Part 1, Part 2

Audio archive of Strange Universe (audio only)

Check out our friend Michael Dean’s new podcast: Guns and Weed!

Related Posts

• Radio ad for “Guns and Weed” DVD

We’re proud to announce two new show additions to the Alterati family.

Solipsistic Nation
Weekly radio show and podcast featuring best of all genres of electronic music!

CLARK
A gonzo mockumentary about a man struggling as an independent artist in a capitalistic world. It follows the comedic, downward spiral that can sometimes result in tragedy or greatness and the co-dependence of Clark and his manager, JC. Or it’s all pretentious bullshit. You decide. The results are hilarious and awful, no matter how you cut it.

Both shows will begin on this site this weekend.

Related Posts

• Transmedia Talk 40: Snow Town
• Transmedia Talk 40: Snow Town
• Transmedia Talk 39: Clockwork Watch

We’re proud to announce  Right Where You Are Sitting Now as an addition to the Alterati family. We’re so pleased to have them on board! Watch for their shows to appear here soon.

Rebels & Devils

The Psychology of Liberation

edited by Christopher S. Hyatt, Ph.D. introduced by S. Jason Black foreword by Nicholas Tharcher contributions by William S. Burroughs Joseph C. Lisiewski, Ph.D. Timothy Leary Ph.D., Robert Anton Wilson, Austin Osman Spare, Genesis P-Orridge, Aleister Crowley, Joseph Matheny, Peter J. Carroll, Israel Regardie, Jack Parsons, Phil Hine, Osho, and many others.

I feel honored to be included in such rebellious company. Available now!

Related Posts

• Episode 40 — Susan Sherman
• Episode 39 — Caroline Leavitt
• Full Stop Comments on Episode 37

Have you ever known someone who seems incomprehensibly malicious?  Someone who might possibly be crazy, or who makes you think you must be?  If so, then Evil Genes is a must read for you.  Or even if you are someone who is fascinated by the possible biological basis of evil behavior.  In an attempt to understand her older sister – who was apparently charming, fascinating and toxic to know – Barbara Oakley has made a life long study of the ‘successfully sinister’, both what makes them sinister, and what makes them successful.  She has put all that research, pulled together through the lens of a background in several disciplines and life experiences into Evil Genes. It is a fascinating read.

There were, I admit, moments in the beginning when I wasn’t entirely certain I wanted to continue reading, despite some fascination grounded in my own personal experience with toxic personalities (my own term).  One such moment was in the preface by Jim Phelps, MD when he explains that despite the type of people discussed in the book, most people are ‘remarkably good’, and gives as an example the willingness of most to continue trusting those that they have been given reason to believe (for whatever reason) are ‘good’ – even after that trust has been violated.  Sometimes repeatedly.  This makes most people remarkably good for what? is my question.  Given recent events (or even not-so-recent events) what, really, is the ‘good’ these people are expecting this person who has violated their trust to do?  And what, precisely (I wondered at this point) is the ‘evil’ that will be contrasted with this kind of ‘good’?

Then there were points in a few of the early chapters, discussing the foundation of studies of the disorders discussed in the book – psychopathy, anti-social disorder, narcissism, etc.  Much of my trouble with these chapters had to do with defining these disorders against the psychology of “normal” people.  (This episode of radiolab does a wonderful job of outlining the trouble with this idea in practice.)  And then there was the use of “Machiavellian” as an epithet, which I think does a horrible disservice to the man (though, to be fair to the author, she generally uses the term ‘successfully sinister’ instead).  I bring up these problems that I had with the book in the beginning, not to point philosophical flaws, but to convey what an excellent job Barbara Oakley did in winning me over by the end of Evil Genes.  She has managed to take an incredibly murky and complex subject and discuss it in a manner that fully conveys all the murk and complexity of the issues.

She gives an excellent overview of the emergent character of the various disorders discussed in the book, which require both biological and environmental factors in order to manifest, and covers the various shades of gray between the disorders themselves, as well as between the ‘subclinical’ and ‘clinical’ versions of them. (Subclinical being those who, due to having characteristics of any of these disorder are incredibly difficult, if not outright toxic, to deal with, but who either through comparative mildness of symptoms (or ability to fake it) are never actually diagnosed.  Then there is the incredibly fine line between manifestations of aspects of the disorders which can actually be beneficial, and those which are toxic.

Through the story of her older sister Caroline, Barbara Oakley also conveys some of the tragedy of those suffering these disorders.  To what extent can they be considered responsible for their behavior, given that their CNS, the apparatus we all use to evaluate and make decisions, is so flawed?  The question is merely raised, not answered, since there are some who do manage to overcome these problems, and some who don’t, and the difference between the two isn’t fully understood.  In fact, there is still a lot that isn’t known about all of these disorders and the author is quite clear about that also.

And all that is just a fraction of what Evil Genes manages to cover, through a combination of an overview of the neuroscience & psychology involves, plus review of some of the more infamous ‘successfully sinister’ political leaders, as well looking back on the life of her own sister.  And she manages to do it all with remarkable clarity.

Can you tell yet that I liked it?  So yes, if this is a subject that interests at all, I highly recommend that this is one book you definitely add to your library.

Life, Inc, by Douglas Rushkoff is one of those books that are timely, timeless and extremely important for understanding how Things Work Around Here.  Which is *not* to say that everyone will get it. Personally, I think Amazon ought to bundle this book together with Making Money by Terry Prachett as an aid to Getting It…but alas, there will still be those who do not, or will not get it.  For the rest of us – those willing, whether out of desperation or natural inclination – to look beyond our shared social hallucinations, Life, Inc is an extremely useful book.

It’s not always the easiest book to get through, mind you.   It gives  a step-by-step  history of the monopolic (it’s a word now, dammit) rise of  ‘centralized currency’,  money dispensed by a single organization (in the case of the US it’s the Federal Reserve), and the corporations that rose alongside it in a sort of feedback loop from hell.  The tone is at times polemical, and more than once he uses the term ‘abstract’ as a dirty word.  Being the sort of person who believes that life is far more complex than it’s generally given credit for, and also believes that there’s rarely (not never, but rarely) such a thing as an unmitigated evil I took exception to this. Abstractions can be incredibly useful, as anyone who works in math and physics will tell you – and not everything that happened in the wake of the rise of corporations and centralized currency was, or is, bad.  Whether those consequences were intended is irrelevant IMNSHO.

Before anyone comes down on me like a ton of bricks, let me say that I am in no way saying that corporations are “good.”  Corporations are not “good”, and often even when started with the best of intentions they end up doing evil things in the name of their bottom line and the interest of their shareholders – something which Rushkoff discusses in the book.  But they an be extremely useful.

By the end of the book, after he’s as sure as anyone can be that he’s gotten you to put on the damn glasses, Rushkoff admits to this is a roundabout sort of way.  He also admits that we probably cannot, nor should want to, get rid of corporations or centralized currency altogether. Corporations and centralized currencies both are tools, no more evil than a hammer or fire.  Still, it is also true that both of these tools  have run amok – like a cooking fire left unattended that is burning down the house it was set in and is now moving on to consume the house next door, and may quite possibly take out the
whole town.

What do we do about that?  Rushkoff’s answer is what bookends Life, Inc – the lesson of the past (in the Middle Ages) opens the book, and how it might be applied now is what closes the book.  It is the idea of ‘complementary currency’.  Complementary
currency is community created currency that lets locals create their own “value” in a way that is not-so-subject to the manipulation and disaster that we are witnessing now (and in the dotcom bust, and the Great Depression, and the Real Estate collapse that halted the Japanese economic conquest of the world, etc).  It is called ‘complementary’ because it is meant to work alongside centralized currency, not replace it.  It is a huge, fascinating and often misunderstood concept and I could go on and on about it…but really, that’s what Life, Inc is for.

So, read the book…excerpts are being posted on BoingBoing and on Rushkoff’s blog if you want a taste before you make the plunge.  Rushkoff’s website also includes forums for discussion, including discussions of practical applicatons or implemetations of the lessons of Life, Inc.

The location of the Fallen Nation audiobook files changed, so until I go through and update the posts here, the links no longer work. However, you can listen to all of these through the plugin on this page at JamesCurcio.net.

On that note… I recently re-coded and designed that site, and put a ton of old content there, from writing to full music albums. Enjoy at your leisure.

Sway, by Zachary Lazar, was an odd book.  I was never quite sure how I felt about it.  I’m not entirely certain it knows how it feels about itself.  It’s not a biography or a history, there’s not nearly enough information given.  It’s not historical fiction, either, as the characters are not particularly well fleshed out.  Or fleshed out at all, in fact.  It felt to me as though Lazar provided a frame, or skeleton and those familiar with the people and events would fill in the rest, or like he had taken an internal movie, and written down these scenes as he imagined they took place.  However, I’ve been told by someone who’s done some studying of this era and the people involved that many these scenes/portrayals are not true to type, so it’s more of an alternate history and anyone familiar with the subject is more likely to be struggling with the disparity than anything.

I suppose I should give you some idea of the subject matter so you have
some idea of what I muttering about now, no?  It’s about 3 of the events that signalled the end of the ‘peace, love and granola’ aspect of the 60′s – to whit: the Manson murders, the death of Brian Jones (a founding member of the Stones who by that time was no longer in the band), and the murder by the Hell’s Angels (who were acting as the Stone’s security) of a member of the audience during the Altamont concert.  And it all is touched by the films of Kenneth Anger.  Or something.  Bobby Beausoleil (a member of the Manson gang, and the only member Lazar follows in this book) was filmed by Anger, as were The Rolling Stones.  Although how all of these things relate or are supposed to relate is never really explained – Lazar lets the tape in his head play out without commentary or elaboration.

I will say this for Lazar – he does do an amazing job of setting and describing those scenes, they are a very vivid series of vignettes.  Just the same, one feels that the story – or his version of the story – would have been better served by connecting up these scenes better.  There’s no flow at all, just a series of jerky jumps from one scene to another, set in vaguely chronological order.  And the very simple language and sentence structure – while lending itself well to the visual aspect – does come off as patronizingly stereotypical at times.  There’s only a very small set of people I’d recommend this to: those who are a) familiar with the events and people and b) like to argue with their books (and you know you’re out there).  To those people I’d say this book was a must.  Everyone else – you can find a much better use of your money and time.

This round I’m reviewing one of my favorite books: Bridge of Birds: A Novel of an Ancient China That Never Was by Barry Hughart.  Although part of my love stems from the fact that I get to share it with a very good friend and not the book’s literary merits, don’t let that fool you – it is an excellent book.

All the children of the village of Ku-fu between 8 and 13 have fallen desperately ill, and it falls to Number Ten Ox, with the guidance and help of the sage Master Li Kiao (“I have a slight flaw in my character”) to determine the cause and find the cure.  Along the way they encounter ghosts, monsters (human and otherwise), an exiled and imprisoned goddess, a thousand year old myth and mystery and more wonders, pranks and cons than you can shake a stick at.

Part of the wonder is Hughart’s writing which manages to be charming without being sappy or childish, and beautiful without being ostentatious.  One of my favorite paragraphs is Master Li Kiao’s telling of his answer to a ‘barbarian’ who asked him how to acquire wisdom:

…”Take a large bowl,” I said.   “Fill it with equal measures of fact, fantasy, history, mythology, science, superstition, logic and lunacy.  Darken the mixture with bitter tears, brighten it with howls of laughter, toss in three thousand years of civilization, bellow *ken pei* – which means ‘dry cup’ – and drink it to the dregs.” Procopius stared at me “And will I be wise?” he asked.  “Better,” I said.  “You will be Chinese.”

Is that not fabulous?  Of course, it helps to know that Master Li Kiao is also a consummate scam artist, and has already sold the barbarian in question  on the idea that silk is manufactured from the semen of snow white ice dragons…

“Bridge of Birds” is a tale of mythic China, and has no serious philosophical message – just a desire to impart a sense of wonder and delight, which it does admirably.  Like Mary Poppins, is practically perfect in every way…However, like all practically perfect things created by mortal hands it must have an imperfection lest it rouse the ire of the gods.  In the case of “Bridge of Birds” this would be the editing…there are odd breaks in paragraphs and a few misspellings, but they are slight and rare and in no way detract from a thoroughly enjoyable read.  Go forth and discover it for yourself, or you will have nobody else to blame .

My goodness – it has been awhile. It is partly a bit of laxness on my part, and partly that the review I was working on is less ready in my head than I thought. So, in the meantime, let’s talk about Winkie. The easiest way to describe Winkie is probably to say that it is The Velveteen Rabbit on acid.

Winkie is a teddy bear – he is made of excelsior and mohair, held together with rivets and stitching. His eyes, from which he gets his name, are old-fashioned dolls eyes that close when the doll is horizontal, and are made of glass and metal. A teddy bear through and through, no flesh or blood to be found anywhere. The fact that he can walk, talk, blink his own eyes and (once) give birth does not change this fact. Neither does the fact that he is bitter, hurt and despairing and not feeling particularly cuddly.

He is a teddy bear in trouble. His ability to move under his own power has put him in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he is now on trial as a terrorist. As The Terrorist in fact – the mastermind of everything threatening. Sounds absurd, but then a walking talking teddy bear is already patently absurd – so what’s a little more absurdity?  Not to mention that his very existence is threatening to the generally accepted concept of how the world works.

There is a lot going on in this book, but I’m going to focus on the idea of definition. For most of his life, as a static thing, albeit one that could think and feel, Winkie was dependent on others to define him – as he was for everything else. Including, to a certain extent, his ability to be aware. Taking his cue of his identity from his owners, he wanted them to be more so that he could be more. The fact that they fell short was something neither he, nor they (being children) could really help. Just the same, Winkie resents them for failing to live up to his expectations, to be what he needs them to be for his own satisfaction. And yet he loves them, and despairs when they finally outgrow and abandon him.  He longs to be free of them and his need for them, to be free from this conflict within himself.  And when he does gain the ability to move, he runs away.

What Winkie discovers one he gains the power of self-motivation, is that the ability to move under his own power and flee his confinement is not enough to become his own bear, as it were, and he eventually finds himself once again at the mercy of others to define what he is and what he means.

This was an excellent book – full of black humor and tragedy and absurdity along the lines of Thorton Wilder, and pokes as much fun of our fear of the unexplained (and possibly unexplainable) as it does everything else. Highly recommended.

This past year has held a lot of changes and challenges for me. I broke up with my girlfriend of five years, (see? I told you I’d finally mention it publicly- no details though guys, LJdrama is so 1998), I’m working a full-time day job, I’ve put my non-or-little-paying creative projects on hiatus until I figure out what benefit I was actually providing to myself or others with them, I broke my almost year-long healthy streak with nearly two months of constant sinus infections, I’m gearing up for a move though I’m not 100% sure where to yet. And I’m falling in love.

Also, that was a really long sentence. Sorry about that, guys.

So, if you were actually wondering why the Fallen Nation audiobook is on hold, or why I haven’t been running so many G-Spots lately, or so on, this is pretty much it. It’s not that I’ve taken myself totally out of the game- I yam who I yam- but I realize I need to pull in a bit for a while, and not overcommit as I have so much in the past. Build a base, and then make decisions about where and how I want to spend my time and energy.

I am, however, completely open to suggestions from the peanut gallery on this matter, though I (as always) reserve the right to completely ignore everyone. It does help to know the things that I’ve done that have had an effect. So far Join My Cult! still seems to be in the lead on that account, if the number of “you changed my life!” emails from strangers is the metric. This is something I might have to work through in therapy someday. Or perhaps you all need therapy.

Until next time…

–James Curcio

Well, it’s been awhile, oh my brothers and sisters, but Tales of MU isn’t exactly easy to review…On the one hand, it’s one of the more popular tropes of the YA genre – young girl from a small town and a repressive upbringing has her eyes poppingly opened when she attends one of the top colleges in her field. There is one hell of a lot more to it than that, however. It’s a fantasy novel, for one – the top college is for magic users of various stripes. And Mackenzie Blaise (Mack to her friends, despite the fact that she hates the nickname) isn’t just a young girl, she’s also a half-demon; the first the campus has ever allowed. Raised by her fanatical, fundamentalist, exorcist grandmother, Mack doesn’t have the healthiest self-image, nor does she have the most stable personality now that she’s out from under her grandmother’s repressive (and protective) thumb.

There’s a *lot* of sex and violence in this story, and more often than not the two go hand-in-hand. Despite the fact that it is (generally) consensual (sometimes over-the-top, almost slobberingly so), I confess I find it more disturbing than arousing – mainly for the attitudes of the characters involved than anything else. There’s such a serious lack of self-awareness – and more often than not, a sense of self-worth. I find myself wondering if Mack will survive the year. Despite her professed interest in self-preservation, it is all too easy to see Mack bringing about her own destruction ‘accidentally on purpose’.

But wait! There’s more! As a half-demon, Mack is thrown together with the non-human minority and must deal with the discrimination and misconceptions applied both universally and particularly by the human majority who sees her (and her friends) as either a freak or a threat, or both. There are some really interesting explorations (in both the main story and the occasional bonus stories) dealing with issues and perceptions of issues around race and culture, and in a fairly open, non-dogmatic manner.

How does Alexandra Erin pack all of this into one story? Easy – Tales of MU is actually a serial web novel (check out others at Pages Unbound, and Alexandra is exploiting the medium to full effect with MU. Updating Tuesday to Friday (with bonus stories published on Monday), it’s up to chapter 277 and it’s still only the first month of class. This allows the characters to be fully fleshed out and all the messiness of day-to-day living on a extremely racially and culturally diverse, but not fully integrated, campus to be detailed, unfolding organically as Mack lives her life, and interacts with other students, to the best of her ability.

There’s plenty of drama, and humor, and everything else that goes into a story, and into Life. It is occasionally clumsy or heavy-handed, true – but I’ve most definitely read worse books vetted by professional publishing houses (*cough*danbrown*cough*). If you have some extra time, I highly recommend you spend it reading Tales of MU – but be warned…it’s highly addicting.

Excuse me please – it’s time for me to check if the lastest chapter has posted…

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