DEEP SCRATCH

Category: Ezra Pound

  • TTOTT is for The Tale of the Tribe: v1.0

    TTOTT is for The Tale of the Tribe: v1.0

    The Tale of the Tribe. [TOTT.]

    An ambiguous and widely missunderstood grouping of FIVE words, or four if you miss off THE’

    I think the phrase “A Poem including History” works as a helpful pointer. Finnegans Wake and the Cantos’

    Are each “The Tale of the Tribe” in their respective ways. “Illuminatus! Trilogy” too!

    These 3 texts when considered together may constitute a triangular structure, from which RAW’s TOTT SHINE most

    Brightly?

    Also the book by Michael Berstein [1980] “The Tale of the Tribe: The Modern verse epic of Ezra Pound.”

    Steers us once more toward uncle [EZ] who with [JJ] become the two primary exhibitors of

    RAW’s TOTT. [which i figure is NOT his final published book “email to the Universe”, but something much bigger

    woven and threaded throughout his books, and sombunall of his literary influences, an invisible landscape. ]

    So what i refer to as [RAW’s TOTT], as opposed to anybody else’s idea or conception/perception

    of the TOTT remains something we have yet to define. But he left us many clues. [rising drums and Cello’s]

    Maybe it requires a total revision of RAW’s entire catalogue

    With the new TOTT gloss, [best condensed at the back of his bookTSOG]

    To move closer to lifting this great ball of TOTT crystal IMHO.

    …the alphabet vs. the equation….?

    …language as Class Warfare…?

    Here’s a condensed paragraph from RAW, giving us
    Further clues:

    **I hereby acknowledge the debts my works owe to Remy de Gourmont,
    for his method of dissociation of ideas, to Alfred Korzybski, for his
    formulations of general semantics; to Richard Bandler, for his
    invension of neurolinguistic Programming; to Buckminster Fuller for his
    synergetics, to Claude Shannon and Norbert Weiner for their studies of
    control and communication between animals and/or machines; and to
    Ezra Pound for Ideogrammic Method.
    None of them deserve any blame for my errors or blunders.** -Robert Anton Wilson, email to the Universe.

    I would like to echo Bob’s sentiment here, as he does not deserve any blame for my earaws or blunterz.
    !

    And here we have a neat introduction to [RAW’s TOTT]compiled by the sparkling MLA.

    “==Tale of the Tribe==
    The first of Wilson’s MLA courses bridging the political,
    the social and the psychological, [[Tale of the Tribe]] promises to be a landmark
    journey with our dear Dr. Bob. Starring **Giordano Bruno, Giambatista Vico,
    Friederich Nietzsche, Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound, Alfred Korzybski,
    James Joyce, Buckminster Fuller, Claude Shannon** and **Marshall McLuhan** —
    the nucleus of the extraordinary minds that have helped shape the
    information age of 21st century and the mindscape of **Robert Anton Wilson.**
    Join Wilson as he explores the themes, minds and ideas of his forthcoming book, The Tale of the Tribe.–A.A MLA Admin.

    And here is a question by BOB,
    from the back of his book TSOG: The thing the ate the constitution,

    That i think crystalizes RAW’s TOTT,
    And deserves DAILY revision…

    What do Giordano Bruno, Giambatista Vico,
    Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound
    Alfred Korzybski, James Joyce, Buckminster Fuller,
    Claude Shannon, Marshall Mcluhan and Internet all have in
    common? You”ll find out. -TSOG.

    I have started doing this new work, condensing the nodle clusters

    From RAW’s work’s [the names of the characters to begin with]

    And started arranging them in different ways. [having searchable source’s has greatly inspired this posting]

    I feel that i have stepped over/through some boundaries in some sense,

    By cutting bits from RAW’s writing and sticking them together. [byte-ing RAW]

    But, with the strictest supervision, and with a community who can FEEDBACK

    with each other while doing so, we can basically continue RAW’s work,

    And study his structure, technique and methods?

    In some sense this new work of mine is nothing more than a collection of Robert Anton Wilson quotes.

    But unlike any other collection of RAW quotations,

    This one focuses on RAW’s Tale of the Tribe, the historical characters,

    who “make it new”.

    I hope the MLA, TRIBE, and everybody else can join this great

    Work in conception/perception.

    But for me this is just the beginning, the bare bones, an historical

    Kind of invetigation. [phase I]

    I wish for audio/visual components, and hyperlinking which help

    Make the words NEW.

    Maybe email is the best way to work this out in the initial stages?

    axistao@yahoo.com

    Sinceritas.

    Fly Agaric/Acrillic
    Steven James Pratt

    Sharing Pound’s ‘Ideogramic method’
    Sharing Joyce’s ‘Hologramic Prose & Epiphany & Finnegans Wake’
    Sharing Bucky’s ‘Synergetics and Planetary design-science’
    Sharing Shannon’s ‘Information Entropy and BITS’
    Sharing Nietzsche’s ‘Eternal Return and influence upon Existentialism’
    Sharing McLuhan’s ‘Global Village & The medium is the messsage‘
    Sharing Bruno’s ‘Pantheism and Decentralized Multiverse’
    Sharing Vico’s ‘New Science & Ricorso’
    Sharing Orson’s ‘Cinematic Methods’
    Sharing Fenollosa’s ‘Chinese Written Character Poetry’
    Sharing Yeats’s ‘Gyres, Symbolism & humanitarianism’
    Sharing Gesell’s ‘Natural Economic Order‘
    Sharing Popper’s ‘Open Society‘
    Sharing Remy De Gournmont’s ‘Dissosociation of Ideas’
    Sharing von Neumann’s ‘Theory of Games and Economic Behavior’
    Sharing Leary’s ‘Eight Dimensional model of consciousness‘
    Sharing Reich’s ‘Bioenergetic Force’
    Sharing Crowley’s ‘System of practical Magick’
    Sharing Korzybski’s ‘General Semantics & English-prime’
    Sharing Alfred Jarry’s ‘pataphysique’

    RAW transfers a torrent of open ideas
    Wrapped up in cutting satire, oozing Hilaritas
    Sharing ideas that have shaped the 21st century,

    Steven James Pratt

  • UB is for UNKLE BOB: The Principle.

    UNkle

    The U.N.K.L.E BOB’! principle.

     

    Fly Agaric 23
    ©®–

    ‘Reality it is not I who am writing this crazy book,” said Joyce of Finnegans Wake. “It is you, and you, and you, and that man over there, and that girl at the next table.” Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era, Page 126

        The late great Hugh kenner (1932-2003) in his book “Joyce’s Voice’s” creates something he calls The Uncle Charles Principle, so called in honor of the “naming” pipe smoking, uncle who sat on his arbor or “shitter’”, in James Joyce’s early master work “A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man”:

    ‘Every morning, therefore, Uncle Charles repaired  to his outhouse, but not before he had greased and brushed scrupulously his back hair and brushed and put on his tall hat.” –James Joyce, Portrait  of the Artist.

              In Robert Anton Wilson’s book Coincidance, described by some as a kind of readers guide to James Joyce, Bob describes and exhibits the “Uncle Charles Principle” in many ways although the three words: “Uncle Charles Principle” are suspiciously absent from Bobs writing. Wilson’s gives off an aura of the “UCP” with his  vivid reflections and methods for teaching along theories synthesized from such great minds as David Bohm, Alfred Korzybski, Giordano Bruno, Timothy Leary and many other of the goodvibe Illuminati, ‘those who incorporated some version on the hologramic principle in their individual and particular system, scaffolded into RAW’s fantastically condensed essays. The Title of the book “Coincidance” is taken from Finnegans Wake itself,

    Fly On The Tale Of The Tribe: A Rollercoaster Ride With Robert Anton Wilson

    by Steven James Pratt

    Link: http://a.co/gOGNKyV

    (more…)

  • R is for RAWrientalism

    RAWriental

    RAWrientalism.
    RAW: Robert Anton Wilson
    rientalism: Orientalism.
     “The two philosophers most frequently mentioned in Finnegans Wake, Nicholas of Cusa and Bruno of Nola, taught a dialectic of resolution of opposites. Joseph Needham in his monumental Science and Civilization in China, repeatedly mentions both Bruno and Nicholas as the only two Occidental philosophers before Liebnitz to have a basically Taoist outlook” –RAW

    Fly On The Tale Of The Tribe: A Rollercoaster Ride With Robert Anton Wilson

    by Steven James Pratt

    Link: http://a.co/gOGNKyV

    (more…)

  • R is for Resurrection:


    “Helmingham Erechenwyne Rutter Egbert Crumwall Odin Maximus Esme Saxon Esa Vercingetorix Ethelwulf Rupprecht Ydwalla Bently Osmund Dysart Yggdrasselmann? – James Joyce, Finnegans Wake P. 78

    I have been channeling the inner sap of the fly agaric mushroom for over ten years now, taking her everywhere with me, perched on my shoulder like a parrot she has become an integral part of my thinking writing and general creativity. A Destroying Guardian Angel, shamanic ally, or just a sham? fly agaric has influenced many parts of my life, e-mail addresses, pen names, DJ avatar’s and on. The deeper i look into fly agaric the more she throws up interesting information at me. Everytime i try to walk away she just pulls me back in again.

    “Announced by the hundred-lettered word,(3) the story of the fall begins with Tim Finnegan (H.C.E), the “bygermaster” or Ibsen master building. Building a tower he falls from his ladder. His wake, attended by friends and relatives, and his revival proceed according to the ballad. Builder dead becomes a sleeping giant, extending from Howth to the magazine. A Salmon, he is sacramentally devoured by his survivors; for this “brontoichthyan form” is a thunderfish or Jesus-God. Adam, jesus, faller and creator, Finnegan will be Finnagain. (4-7) – William York Tindall, A readers guide to James Joyce.

    So, a few years back i finally flew, i flew all the way from my home and visited the New Age worlds of America in beautiful California and found myself wrapped up in Finnegans Wake and Illuminatus! Trilogy and other wild and fantastical Psychedelic counter-cultural activities. Bands, Movies, War protests and lots of love and great weed. Living in a book is probably the best metaphor for it but without full control of the narrative. But thats a bedraggled idea in 2007, living in a book, especially after that movie “The Number 23”.®

    “When we confuse the orders of abstractions and ascribe objective reality to terms and symbols, or confuse conclusions and inferences with descriptions., a great deal of semantic suffering is produced. – Alfred Korzybski, Un-sanity versus sanity, VII. The Mechanism of Time Binding, P. 499, Science and Sanity

    I originally figured back in the mid 1990’s that by creating an avatar (fly agaric 23) and alternative (acrillic) devices for changing perception, i was developing a method by which to experience things simultaneously, together as more than one “I” labelled Steven. Readings of “In search of the Miraculous” by P.D Ouspensky combined with “Cosmic Trigger” by Robert Anton Wilson and “Design for Dying” byDr. Timothy Leary gave me the confidence to experiment comfortably with changing the parameters of my consciousness and also having the will to write it down and translate it for recording purposes. To play. Which led to me slowly taking it more seriously, the jokes i mean…

    “Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the – James Joyce, Finnegans Wake P.540

    The fabled mushroom Amanita Muscaria or the fly agaric has been widely considered as a resurrective elixir in many cultures across the globe from China to Ireland and in ancient times, 30’000 years ago and up into so called modern times. Even Post-Modem times. Today with the abundance of telecommunications and the new language tools with which to conduct independent research into such matters, like Marijuana and also global internet (Google, Wikipedia, Amazon) with which we can now provide a more encyclopedic representation of ourselves based on faster broader feedback mechanisms. Previously occulted papyrus such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, Finnegans Wake, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Illuminatus, The Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Cantos of Ezra Pound can be processed in a completely new way now. The ability to conduct research quickly and without having to be geographically localized to the original texts, among other advances has moved humanity and culture closer together i think, psychologically and spiritually. Only the scaffolding of the words remain around us today, the language dependent media viruses that propogate and project reality are broken down. We have a new model for free, playful individuals to get connected together in a global community – a stateless socialism, a new world based on peaceful communication. Read on.


    “Not only were Marsh’s theories now beyond all scientific credibility, but his methods— such as quoting Allegro’s The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross or Graves’ The White Goddess as if they were as reputable as Boas, Mead, or Frazer— seemed to indicate senility. This impression was increased by the eccentric dedication “To Ezra Pound, Jacques De Molay and Emperor Norton I.” The real scientific scandal was not the theory of Atlantis (that was a bee that had haunted many a scholarly bonnet) but Marsh’s claim that the gods of Atlantis actually existed; not as supernatural beings, of course, but as a superior class of life, now extinct, which had preexisted mankind and duped the earliest civilization into worshiping them as divine and offering terrible sacrifices at their altars. – Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus, Page 181.

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    Anita
    the wife of Honophrius, has been told by her tirewoman,
    Fortissa, that Honuphrius has blasphemously confessed under
    voluntary chastisement that he has instructed his slave, Mauritius, to
    ur;,e Magravius, a commercial, emulous of Honuphrius, to solicit
    the chastity of Anita. Anita is informed by some illegitimate
    children of Fortissa with Mauritius (the supposition is Ware’s)
    that Gillia, the schismatical wife of Magravius, is visited
    clandestinely by Barnabas, the advocate of Honuphrius, an immoral
    person who has been corrupted by Jeremias. James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, page 572

    Steven James Pratt

  • JJ is for James Joyce. EP is for Ezra Pound: transformations.

    Joyce and Pound Transformations.

    Don’t be a, I’m not going to! Sh! nothing! A cricri somewhere! Buybuy! I’m fly! Hear, pippy, under the limes. You know bigtree are all against gravstone. They hisshistenency. Garnd ond mand ! So chip chirp chirrup, cigolo – Finnegans Wake, Page 146.

    Each pioneered a new method with which to present to the rest of the world what they had learnt – “Epiphany” and “Ideogramic method” respectively. Often, and more especially with Ezra Pound they presented encyclopedic information without personal commentary, quoting and using an impersonal sampledelia of worldwoid historical artifacts. Or records. They were both denounced at various times in their lives as Mcloonatics for their genius and gift. Charles Dodgson once accused Joyce of turning his back on the common man after he read Finnegans Wake; i think mebbe this was a kind of sick joke. But in 1939 when the book came out, maybe Joyce wanted to communicate some kind of turning, revolution without killingry.

    Uncle Ez experienced twoeeks in the human-bird cage while under U.S custody charged with high Treason for his famous, radical M.C’ing and Disc Calendar jockeying, while in Pisa, Italy during WWII. When he finally returned to America the scholar poet spent thirteen years in St. Elizabeths Hospital for the mentally unfit; ironically situated in Washington D.C, today a global hotspot for the mentally ill and wholly dogmatic nut job cranky leaders of the know “free” world.

    Pound called many of his villains “usurers” to denote their tendency to take a particular form of natural abundance, naturally naturally abundant in nature, and then slowly trickle this natural abundance through a corporate capitalist controlled channel the size of an average ass hole, to the rest of humanity. (99.8%) with extra added taxes, tariffs and further unholy blockages of a naturally regenerative system, ironically in the name of profit, business and “fair”trade.

    Joyce has a powerpun’t stereo effect that spins like a spiders web and knots like a vine certain propositional functions into a breathing constellation of seemingly contradicting processes, a perpetual “paradox”; throughout Finnegans Wake. A semantic vortex full of semtex. Like a poetic transcript of Joyce flicking TV channels or surfing old 30’s internet TV-web sites, seemingly on a whim with a dance and a cheer. When combined with the intelligent interactive processing of a reader, these revolting identities begin to awaken and piece themselves together seemingly miraculously to any observer; weaving a tapestry of mental imagist scenes surprisingly different from the usual subject-predicate formal logic executed in literature and modern new-speak to such devastating effect. These hierarchical and multi-valued teachings are a part of what we call maybelogic. Propositions like: “Enel-Rah” is the “Nine gods of egypt”, or “Kong Gander O’Toole” is “Kung Fu Hsei” seem to become more surreal and illogical than the use of the culpa (is), in simple everyday speech.

    This kind of is’ing thinking categorically thrusts the reader/thinker into a character identity crisis; inevitably forcing us into more flexible, non-aristotelian perceptions upon which we can crystalize relative constellations of multiple attributes, resonances and characteristics. Plurabelle. With aristotelian bricks in your breeches you may take a heavy fall. With relative maybelogic models and metaphors the bricks will transform into smaller atoms and then flowers or maybe bright mushrooms, and you will find yourself swimming back into the authors videotext; grasping at new semanticklish maps and punny gridlooks and various keys. Very Helpful items when out on the ocean surfing Finnegans Wake among the hungry great white Fnords.

    Pound developed an equally perplexing and strange new bird (new Eagle) called ‘ideogramic method’ – influenced by the chinese written character and the Oriental ideographic Zen/Buddhist/Taosit/Confucian lineage of poetry-painting. What became “ideogramic method” seems perplexing and strange to the western alphabetic culture critics who were receiving these strange new picture-poems or, axis pivots, without adequate tools for 21st Century thinking. Condensed mini dynastic dramas and fountains of seasoned prose, picking up signals from the emerging global village; our present. Alphabetical symbol systems, pictographic symbol systems, heraldic symbol systems, musical symbol systems; mixed together with meter into an epic poem, a long epic poem for a new era, a new phase, a new calendar P.s.U and a new seal for humanity. “Revolution… in the minds of the people”.

    Finnegans Wake and The Cantos together seem a kind of literal apocalypse, the end of the word as we know it. The end of the woid as we don’t know it, and the buginning of the eternity of plurality, the “Now” it, the interacting process world of the future. We seem to be entering a knu era where the kind of quantum jumping in literature synonymous with James Joyce, Ezra Pound, William S. Burroughs, Robert Anton Wilson is emerging in more wide spread cultural and social-linguistic phenomena, propelled by internet and social knittworking. This quantum jumping phenomena appears as indistinguishable from magic, prophesy and time-space travel to me. Its just a matter of the terminology used to describe the coex experience.

    Fortunately for the Maybelogic Academy and its members we had a master scholar in the works of James Joyce and Ezra Pound to help guide us through the challenging artists individual reality labyrinths, their most complex works and ideas, models, grids. Their con.texts for describing “what the hell is going on?“. Robert Anton Wilson provided the vital bridge between Finnegans Wake and The Cantos by assigning specific chapters from his 1991 book – Coincidance; providing us with multiple Skeleton Key’s, keys, corpses and texts to hang our own personal and individual world views upon, and watch grow. I highly recommend all three of these texts for every 21st century citizen as a global travel guide and introduction to the New Word order. Dr. Wilson’s 1959 Essay Joyce and Tao, seems an excellent resource for students more interested in his own fascinating relationship, stemming more than half a century with arguably the entire 20th century’s greatest writer: James Joyce.

    My own personal experience with Finnegans Wake and maybelogic has led me to construct my own personal grid, or method, for representing what i have learnt from my teachers, in hope of contributing to a wider awareness of awareness: GUCT.

    Concrete facts demonstrable in nature propose a healthy fishing pond to begin fly-fishing for fat facts. I soon discovered that the after effects upon common house flies having acrilick’d the red-golden white-cream speckled toadstool species: Amanita Muscaria, in common forests provided a perfectly harmonious semantic “grid” for me to present my imaginative ripples and thought patterns. Zillions of critters get high, fall down, sleep and wake up into nature and this process of inebriation is scientifically demonstrable as a chemical processes in the nervous systems of most higher animals. Evolution through inebriation implies chemical compounds found naturally abundant in nature. And there are thousands of different ones.

    Amanita Caps are found abundantly today in nature and have just the right chemical mixture to bring about such vivid weird highs, sleeps and wakes. Lewis Carroll incorporated these chemical reactions into “Alice through the looking glass”, as a space-time morphing device, a literary effect, and included the actual toadstool too. In fact the awakening, uprising, resurrection, coming again, commodious vicus of recirculation, ascension and perpetual “birthing” of epiphanies… nicely represents the “spirit” of Finnegans Wake as i perceive it. I like to think that James Joyce knew of amrta very well, a guinness from nature. Magical resurrections are reflected in the process about which the Book lends its title: “Finnegans Wake” – an irish Ballad in which a fallen Irish-man Tim Finnegan is presumed dead but then miraculously springs back to life at his own wake, spirited up out of his coffin by some wayward spilt elixir from some feisty festive mourners.

    Reading aloud in a group, in a field, in a cave or coffee shop will provide wonderful musical acoustic elements to these books and unlock tongues tied down since first birth. Reading aloud the Wake, especially the Wake can literally grab you, and sing to you, whisking you off to some other place.

    Otherways wesways like that provost scoffing
    bedoueen the jebel and the jpysian sea. Cropherb the crunchbracken shall decide. Then we’ll know if the feast is a flyday. She has a gift of seek on site and she allcasually ansars helpers, the dreamydeary. Heed! Heed ! – Finnegans Wake, Page 5

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    Steven James Pratt

  • LOTT is for Language of the Tribe:

    “Ideograms thus have a kind of double focus, pointing to both the world of human activity and to the unchanging patterns of natural energy and fruition. Because POUND was convinced that signs granted by nature itself are infinitely richer than any conventional notation – “and from nature the sign:” (CII:730) – the ideogram assumed a privileged, almost sacred, value in his eyes. By its joining of cosmic order and human observation, the ideogram, like a religious icon, can induce calmness and meditation. It forces the read “to stop and reflect,” but it also compels the poet to go slowly, to draw each character with a care and patience that makes anger and bitterness impossible. The ideogram is a tangible sign of order in the cosmos, and its tracing is possible only when the hand holding the brush moves, for a few moments, in unbroken sympathy with that larger harmony. – Michael Bernstein, Page 158, the Language of the Tribe, The Tale of the Tribe (Ezra Pound and the Modern Verse Epic)

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    http://electronicdrugs.blogspot.com/
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    http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

    Steven James Pratt

  • Virgin and Carlyle

    Don’t do it Richard.
    Hold on, Everybody Is Coming. Stop.
    Think. Look.
    No Blood for Oil.
    Stop. Sky. Virgin. Cloud. Mist. Earth. Banks and Environment think tanks.
    All the so called news groups ALL forgot to LINK Wikipedia to their news
    Or any link other than ABORTISEMENTS? wonder why?

    Carlyle Group @ wiki

    Report: Virgin Media receives preliminary offer from Carlyle Group

    The Associated Press
    Published: July 2, 2007

    LONDON: Virgin Media Inc. has received a preliminary offer from private equity firm the Carlyle Group valuing the company at around 5.5 billion pounds (US$11.1 billion; €8.2 billion), Dow Jones Newswires reported Monday.

    Quoting “a person familiar with the matter,” Dow Jones said that Carlyle has offered between US$33 and US$35 (€24.38 and €25.86) per share for Virgin Media. The company also has roughly 6 billion pounds (US$12.1 billion; €8.9 billion) of debt.

    Shares in Virgin, which is listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market rather than in London, closed on Friday at US$24.37 (€18.05) per share.

    Virgin Media could not immediately be reached for comment.

    UBS said that a private equity approach for Virgin Media could result in a reduction of competitive pressure on rival British Sky Broadcasting PLC.

    Today in Business

    Australian Wesfarmers offers $18.75 billion for Coles

    No oil yet, but African isle finds dealings slippery

    U.S. and South Korea agree on a trade pact

    “It could also result in a more pragmatic approach, with Sky and Virgin finally reaching an agreement on Sky basics which could be in the interests of both groups and Virgin Media customers,” analysts said in a research note.

    Virgin Media, the byproduct of a number of mergers, including the former cable operators NTL Inc. and Telewest and the mobile operator Virgin Mobile, reported its seventh consecutive quarterly loss in May after subscribers defected to rival BSkyB.

    Virgin Media lost customers earlier this year when it stopped airing basic BSkyB channels, dropping popular programs such as “Lost,” “24,” and “The Simpsons,” as the result of a battle over fees during negotiations to renew a distribution agreement.

    BSkyB has long dominated pay TV in Britain, accounting for around 70 percent of the country’s pay-TV subscribers. But the arrival of Virgin Media has threatened a shake-up of the status quo, and relations between the two have become increasingly rancorous.

    Entrepreneur Richard Branson is the largest shareholder in Virgin Media with a 10.5 percent stake. He also licenses the Virgin name to the company and gets paid for promotional appearances. – http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/02/business/EU-FIN-COM-Virgin-Media-Carlyle-Group.php
    —

    News

    Virgin Media bids may price-in an end to digital TV battle

    Alan Shipman – 02-Jul-2007

    Private equity interest in UK cable provider Virgin Media could spark a bidding war, but heavy debt and loss of subscribers cast doubt on upper-end valuations reaching £10bn.

    A biddding war is looming for Virgin Media, the recently rebranded union of UK cable operators NTL and Telewest, with private equity group Carlyle reported to be preparing a bid that could value the company at over £5bn. If it goes ahead, Carlyle’s offer is expected to spark counterbids from other media groups, though media ownership regulations could restrict the field. A sale would give Richard Branson, who took a 10.5% stake when NTL/Telewest merged with Virgin Mobile, funds for new projects including a bid to repurchase Virgin Radio, which Scottish Media Group is preparing to spin off.
    Virgin Media has begun to exploit the synergies from adding mobile phones to its television, landline and broadband bundles, and to tackle the customer service problems suffered by its constituent companies before unification. But the company inherited large losses from its previous spending spree on regional cable franchises. And profits have ebbed as its core cable television subscriptions come under pressure from rival digital broadcasters Sky and Freeview, each of which has amassed more TV viewers, helped by the offer of free channels. Virgin’s new owner is expected to seek more cooperation with Sky, ending the war which has seen it withdraw channels from the cable operator, an action currently heading for the courts.

    —
    Reports: Virgin Media eyed in $10B buyout
    Buyout firm weighs $10 billion-plus offer for British cable company that counts Branson as biggest investor: newspapers.
    July 1 2007: 8:23 PM EDT

    NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Carlyle Group is in talks with Virgin Media over a buyout offer of $10 billion or more and Richard Branson, the British cable company’s biggest investor, is open to considering a deal, news reports said Sunday.

    The New York Times, citing a person familiar with the negotiations, said that the talks are still early and may not lead to a bid. The report noted that as their warchests have grown, U.S. buyout firms like Carlyle have looked more aggressively to do deals overseas.

    Sir Richard Branson

    On Saturday, two American private equity firms, Providence Equity Partners and Madison Dearborn Partners, joined with the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan in a deal to buy Bell Canada, that country’s largest telephone company, for about $33 billion in one of the biggest leveraged buyouts on record.

    Buyout boom’s best days may be over
    British weekend news reports said Providence might be interested in making an offer for Virgin Media as well.

    The Times of London, quoting unnamed financial sources, said Branson is open to a buyout of the British cable company, paving the way for a potential deal at $10 billion (£4.9 billion) or more.

    The New York Times said in its report a deal could be worth nearly $20 billion if you include assumed debt. That would rank it among the biggest buoyut deals ever in Britain. Last month, Alliance Boots, the pharmacy chain, agreed to a $21.8 billion offer from its deputy chairman and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts after a bidding war, the newspaper noted.

    A spokeswoman for Virgin Media declined to comment, according to Reuters.

    Virgin Media in May reported its seventh consecutive quarterly loss after subscribers defected to rival BSkyB, the New York Times said. The loss widened to $242 million.

    Branson, through his company Virgin Group, holds a 10.5 percent stake in the $8 billion Virgin Media, the London Times said in its report.

    http://money.cnn.com/2007/07/01/news/companies/virgin_talks/?postversion=2007070120

    —

    Critics of the Carlyle Group frequently note its connections to various political figures. Some of the sectors and companies in which it invests are highly sensitive to political activity; indeed, its actions may be viewed as a form of political arbitrage. This may create conflicts of interest when political decision makers have their own personal wealth [1] linked to such investments. Carlyle is the largest private equity firm located in Washington, D.C., its corporate headquarters are located on Pennsylvania Avenue.
    Critics refer to Carlyle as a private military contractor, because it owns controlling or partial interests in several military contractors. For example, it used to own United Defense Industries, which was developing the Crusader artillery project. This project was funded in eight consecutive Clinton budgets but was cancelled soon after Bush became president, eliminating the remaining $9 billion of the original $11 billion contract. A much smaller contract was awarded to United Defense to capture technologies developed during the eight years of development.
    In the book House of Bush, House of Saud, author Craig Unger states that Saudi Arabian interests have given $1.4 billion to firms connected to the Bush family. Nearly 85% of the $1.4 billion, or about $1.18 billion, refers to Saudi Arabian government contracts awarded to defense contractor BDM in the early to mid 1990s. Carlyle, however, sold its interest in BDM before former President George H. W. Bush joined as an advisor.
    Former President George H.W. Bush retired from Carlyle in October 2003. George W. Bush served on the Board of Directors of early Carlyle acquisition Caterair. Bush left the board in 1992 to run for Governor of Texas.
    The Saudi Arabian relatives of Osama bin Laden were also investors in Carlyle until October 2001 when the family sold its $2.02 million investment back to the firm in light of the public controversy surrounding bin Laden’s family after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. The bin Laden family has publicly disowned the al-Qaeda leader.[citation needed] Osama bin Laden has no publicly known or acknowledged economic interest in Saudi Binladin Group (SBG), whose investments were in part managed by the Carlyle Group until the arrangement was terminated by mutual consent. – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlyle_Group

    Steven James Pratt

  • M is for Monkey: Journey to the West

    “Well, it’s about Ezra Pound and James Joyce, whom I regard as the two major innovators of twentieth century literature. And oddly they both had a very powerful influence on Marshall McLuhan who has influenced how we think about all media, especially internet, even though internet didn’t begin to develop until after McLuhan was dead. – Robert Anton Wilson, speaking of his “Tale of The Tribe.” – RAW Utopia Interview 2001

    Classic Oriental theatre and picture/poems rendered into a Hip Opera. Monkey: Journey to the West, in (2007), and so on through the emerald jungle of Orientalism and Modernism, now glossed with wind and rain of Wikipedia, Google, Youtube, Google maps, blogs, hyperlight communications. Escaped the city on a train, like a Haiku through the wilderness between London and Manchester. New weather patterns. Next will be the Vedas, the Sutras, the Dead Sea Scrolls, The Popol Vuh, Finnegans Wake i hope, the classics made KNU. The Worlds classics. Here we have something that i boldly think constitutes a new paradigm shift, equivalent to mass enlightenment in the Buddhist sense, in some sense – illumination, lights, simply. If we could just choose to see it that way. Awaken to the lower lights. Greet these holographic entities and make them welcome, they are here to stay. Bonded by an undefined spirit behind the curtain, a hidden hand in mind: The tech support mist of mind. Monkeys in the mist. Fresh air rushes in-coming, the virus of language sneezed from outerspice. The end of word is HERE. burp!


    Monkey: Journey to the West Provides a new kind of band, and a new kind of Opera, a backdrop this week upon which to hang a bunch of important questions facing mankind: Virtual Reality and Oriental Reality. Who distributes it, how?

    “Peace comes of communication.”– Ezra Pound


    Every-things happening everywhere nowadays! Like in Finnegans Wake. So Knu pist modem to to show a bit of gnu-historical glow and knu-contextual flowing relationships sailing to our subject matter of eve’re:thing. See “Google”, “Wikipedia” etc. (The internet of things). The Oracle of surprise information.

    “We have speculated that the vacuum fluctuation of space-time is a holographic modular hierarchy whose individual levels posses properties in common with the King Wen sequence of the I Ching and morphology of DNA. – Terence and Dennis Mckenna, Invisible Landscape. mckenna.psychedelic-library

    The Epic tale Journey to the West, both in the 1580’s and the 2007’s spills out of the conventional stage box with wet and wild bardic spewing from all quarters, metamorphoses, telepathy, sympathetic magic, levitation, spells, Sacred Elixirs, Autopoiesis,love potions, telekinesis, sign language, teleportation, Crypto-zoological nightmares, wild psychedelic visions and alien voices, transbutation, animism, direct communication with space Gods, weather gods, insect gods, mountain Gods and MONKEY gods, Gorilla “Gods” all sorts of Nature “gods” often called AVATARS in the more Easterly quarters. Interplanetary sentient web 3, a flurry of Angels, a paradigm shift, a re-orientation and redefinition of our collective internet of things, our reality engines. Identity? Am i google now? If i think of it?



    “The idea of representative government after we overthrew the monarchy was: we’ll have representatives who will represent us. In the first place, they don’t represent us! They represent the corporations who pay their campaign finance. And in the second place we don’t need anybody to represent us. Now that we’ve got internet we can represent ourselves. So I think all those people should be thrown the hell out of office and forced to make a living as honest men and women do, rather than by lying to the gullible and selling them out to the corporations, and we can represent ourselves through internet.

    As a matter of fact, Buckminster Fuller–one of the most brilliant people of the twentieth century, often compared to Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin for the extent of the fields in which he was an expert, he was an expert in at least a dozen fields–one of his last books has that theme. He calls it desovereignization: getting rid of human representatives and representing ourselves though electronic media. So I am not as original as I sometimes think I am. – RAW Utopia Interview 2001



    Gorillaz are not the first virtual band they are one of the first really enlightened band, literally. They are light beings. Part human origin, part non-human, artificially represented as real (avatar): Spooks, Phantoms, Projections, alien hyperlight beings etc. Not of the word. Beings of Monkey magic-LIGHT. Gorillaz are Aliens from another dimension. They have landed again. They are mythical magical beings; they have a strange new hemisemi-fictionalized history, partly based on real flesh and bloody humans but humans who sometimes pretend and imitate themselves and so making them also satisfactorily “unreal” and so falsifyable, and so “Real” again! and around we go! but, they make up for this confusion, for me, with a very convincingly real presence when on the stage communicating through sound-waves and music. But writing about music is like blowing smoke rings about architecture so i’ll leave that for crumbling music press. Monkey: Journey to the West seems more Real and interactive and present NOW than most political Puppets on the world stage in 2007. The hologramic projection equipment and the magic (Peppers Ghost Technology) provide Gorillaz with Monkey Magic, new creation engines, partly programmed by a real Chinese master – Chen Shi-Zheng. Gorrilaz’ combine with the incredibly rich and incredibly vast portal of new discovery and rediscovery of The Orient, via Chen Shi-Zheng.

    Joyce’s Epiphany, McLuhan’s “Electronic Orientalism” and the human tech-support team helping to translate and propagate a new hyperlite from a newBudust’” Sutra. Follow the journey of Wu Cheng’en and his experiences with a totalitarian Chinese culture intolerant of great poetry in a similar way to how totalitarian America was mostly Intolerant of Ezra Pound and totalitarian Great Britain was Intolerant of Oscar Wilde and other great genius of world literature.

    Monsters and demons are trying to obtain immortality by eating flesh! This provides a large part of the plot in Monkey: Journey to the West. I am familiar with Immortality themes within some mythological contexts and some cannibalism in mythology and fairy lore may can be glossed as the trickery of prankster drug cultists who created “False” etymologies for certain species of sacred fruits to keep them hidden and hidden. Entheogens are chemical and biological candidates in for real ingredients within real wet dazzling “Immortality Elixirs” like Ayahuasca or other psychoactive brews, teas and snuffs. In both the (biological) reality of the damp forest and the freshly perfumed hillside and in the digitally remodeled virtual reality of the myth space/time including history Also see RAW’s essay on why Hannibal Lector would make a better President than George W. Bush!

    “The forces which produce the branch-angles of an oak lay potent in the acorn. Similar lines of resistance, half curbing the out-pressing vitalities, govern the branching of rivers and of nations. Thus a nerve, a wire, a roadway, and a clearing-house are only varying channels which communication forces for itself. This is more than analogy, it is identity of structure. – Ernest Fenollosa, Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry.

    Monkey teached me to revisit the relationship between words and images and things. Poetry in the print media world now a unique kind of bridge-space between words and images. A GLUE that binds cultures, languages, history, religion, Law and science all together, a tale of a tribe, a modern verse epic, a cultural encyclopedia. See “The Cantos and Finnegans Wake! Something more than the sentencing masses. Monkey: Journey to the West has some of the qualities of a Modern verse epic and due to its 2007 web 2 re-release and digital transmission by hyperlight communication around the globe millions of times in a minute into outer-space/time; Monkey: Journey to the West (An OPERA feat. The Gorillaz), is something the pre-internet poets such as Joyce, Pound, Po and Crowley and hundreds more seemed to be dreaming of in their folded up catapillar form. The crystal ball of freely available classics.,

    Classics of world literature, poetry and tribal encyclopedias, e-post, e-modernism and the beginning of a new Global Theatre perhaps, the electronic age as the coming of the hyperlight age, youtube, facebook, myspace, google, wikipedia, flikr, photobucket, e-bay, and bluetoothing wireless “everyware” (Sterling 2006).
    Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage. — Henry Louis Mencken

    Imagism in the early 20th Century was heavily influenced by the relatively unknown, Ernest Fenollosa partly revived by Robert Anton Wilson and more directly by Ezra Pound who famously included many pictograms or word/images in his grand synthesis “The Cantos”: A Globally oriented praxis of language and culture including Oriental cultures, especially Chinese languages. (which was a center study text in Wilson’s course “The Tale of the Tribe” at Maybelogic Academy in 2004. I have come around and around to thinking that uncle Bob encouraged others to read and re-read Pounds Cantos so as to be sufficiently equipped with a single bound poetic guide (an oracle) to help us and our new emerging multicultural global community (VILLAGE) and our own relative comprehension of “reality” and “History” to boot as we crawl through the sewage of the 20th into the new 21st century e.v.Finnegans Wake is the other single bound Oracle that Robert Anton Wilson recommends. I would add his “Illuminatus!” to make three blinding bound Oracles for better processing 21st century life.

    “For centuries, the epic tale of the Monkey King’s journey of enlightenment has been an omnipresent part of Chinese culture, delighting young and old with its heady mix of adventure, mystery and magic,” said the Manchester International Festival’s website. – cartridgemonkey.com

    Alphabet and ideogram meat again stuck in web 2, Finn again for humanity to move forwards again and to get around the obstacles and roadblocks blocking our communication canals again.

    I use the term Gorillaz‘ to mean Human beings and alien light beings, a part of the many collaborators who are Gorillaz tech-support mist in some sense, the production crew, the multiple personalities behind the metaphorical curtain of a 21st Century virtual band.

    Monkey: Journey to the West maybe a knu catalyst for a new paradigm shift in the western lands if we see it clearly due to the new means of community within which classic literature from the Orient and all over thw world can begin to weave its magic “binding” qualities. Everyware! And catalyze the sort of cultural exchange and feedback the modernists would have liked, i guess. The classics of Oriental culture translated for a Western world word 3 experiencing alphabet psychosis.

    “You cannot own the power and the magic of this world. It is always available, but it does not belong to anyone.” – Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

    Fly Agaric 23 Wed 27 June 2007.

    “Internet belongs to the people that use it. Nobody has found an effective way of policing it, and they never will as far as I can see. Any way of controlling internet would involve creating a world government and the people who most want to censor opinions are the most opposed to world government. So they can’t do it that way. If they try to do it any other way they’ll wreck most major corporations that depend so much on internet to do business. So it can’t be done.

    Internet is going to remain free, and I believe, I’ve believed since I was in my early twenties, that everything that accelerates the flow of information and communication benefits the human race, and every communication jam damages us. So internet is the greatest tool, or device, or gimmick, or whatever you want to call it, for accelerating the flow of information between peoples. It is, I think, the most revolutionary force in the history of humanity since the invention of the wheel–especially when Asia and Africa get online in a major way. That’s what I really look forward to.” –RAW Utopia Interview 2001

    http://www.youtube.com/user/flyagaric23
    http://twitter.com/FLYAGARIC2019
    http://stores.lulu.com/flyagaric23
    http://fatteningblogsforsnakes.blogspot.com/
    http://flyolympic.blogspot.com/
    http://wordspore.blogspot.com/
    http://tsogblogsphere.blogspot.com/
    http://flyagaric2019.blogspot.com/
    http://acrillic.blogspot.com/
    http://maybelogic.blogspot.com/
    http://electronicdrugs.blogspot.com/
    http://ataleofatribe.blogspot.com/
    http://www.myspace.com/flyagaric23
    http://www.myspace.com/flyagaric24
    http://www.myspace.com/rawmemorial
    http://soundcloud.com/flyagaric23
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/14660896@N05/
    http://djflyagaric23.blogspot.com/

    —-

    Steven James Pratt

  • T is for Tale: of the Tribe (Happy NEW Year!)

    I made this reply at a forum to a question about the
    Tale of the Tribe – the title of an unfinished book by
    Robert Anton Wilson, and also the name of a past course
    At the Maybelogic Academy, which may return as a self
    Directed course in the future!

    fly

    There is a book titled “The Tale of the Tribe”:
    Ezra Pound and the modern verse epic by Micheal Bernstein.
    Although RAW’s interpretation of the tale of the tribe and
    The course work material expand way beyond Pound and poetry
    This book IMHO still gives a wonderful “Rag bag of notes”
    From which to tuck into. It might be classed as literary criticism
    At a library or bookshop? but now after RAW’s touch,
    This book has become a great research tool for me,
    I would say a good introduction to some RAW TOTT material

    The Chinese Written character as a medium for poetry by
    Ernest Fenallosa proved to be another valuable, insightful text
    For making the most of the class, and perceiving differently
    You can find this text on-line.

    The Cantos of Ezra Pound and
    Finnegans Wake by James Joyce are two primary
    Texts/maps/puzzles permeating the entire course,
    And known universe – read them and re-read them Bob
    Might say.

    Here are the wiki entries for the major tribe players below,
    If you can hold the vision – these characters with RAW himself
    At the mixing desk are THE “tale of the tribe” – in some sense,

    Happy New Year!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Mcluhan
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Pound
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Joyce
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Fenollosa
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucky_Fuller
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giambattista_Vico
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alister_Crowley
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Leary
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Butler_Yeats
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lilly
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Anton_Wilson
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_circuit_model_of_consciousness
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krassner
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korzybski
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzsche
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_von_Neumann
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

    Steven James Pratt

  • LS is for Li Sao and Canto CXIII

    for Bob.

    “And the road upper apple-boughs

    mostly grass-covered

    And the olives to windward

    Kalenda Maja

    Li Sao, Li Sao, for sorrow

    But there is something intelligent in the cherry-stone

    –Ezra Pound, Canto CXIII.

    LI SAO by Qu Yuan

    I cultivate plenty of fragrant thoroughwort
    And plant a multitude of orchid
    With ligusticum and sweet grass on the ridges
    And inter cropped wild ginger and dahurican angelica.
    I wish they grew tall with luxuriant branches and leaves
    That I can reap when they grow up.
    I lament not that they may wither
    But they go degenerated and mixed with disorderly weeds.
    I am dressed in the garment
    Made up of water cal trop leaves and lotus.
    I won’t care if I am not to be understood,
    So long as I remain lofty and honest.
    Putting on a high official hat,
    I adorn myself with long ornaments.
    Even though the fragrant and clean
    Are nowadays mingled with the filthy,
    My moral characters are never harmed and corrupted
    That are so perfect and pure!

    Setting out from the Change Mountain at dawn I keep driving
    Till I arrive in the middle of the Kunlun Mountains at dusk.
    Here I want to have a stop
    In front of the carved doors of Immortals’ Palace,
    For the sun is soon setting.
    I order Xihe, the chauffeur of god of Sun, to pull up his chariot
    So it won’t come near to the Yanzi Mountain
    Where the sun enters and sets.
    Along the long and far-reaching road
    Up in Heaven and down to Earth I will seek!

    Qu Yuan

    Steven James Pratt