Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Picnic In Space Outtake 002
PROBE: Understanding is Only Half the Battle
"Understanding is half the battle. The central purpose of all my work is to convey this message, that by understanding media as they extend man, we gain a measure of control over them. And this is a vital task, because the immediate interface between audile-tactile and visual perception is taking place around us. No civilian can escape this environmental blitzkrieg, for there is, literally, no place to hide. But if we diagnose what is happening to us, we can reduce the ferocity of the winds of change and bring the best elements of the old visual culture, during this transitional period, into peaceful coexistence with the new retribalized society" -- McLuhan, “Playboy Interview.”
Monday, May 30, 2011
235 New Vidz From BuzzCoastin (With Many Clever Titles !)
The Buzz Coastin MoM Inventory (so far)
On McLuhan and Bucky Fuller :
McLuhan & Bucky Fuller 01
http://vimeo.com/19742905
McLuhan & Bucky Fuller 02
http://vimeo.com/19779611
McLuhan & Bucky Fuller 03
http://vimeo.com/19813597
McLuhan & Bucky Fuller 04
http://vimeo.com/19821601
Adjusting to the Cold Machinic
http://vimeo.com/19859092
Take Today: The Executive as Drop-out
http://vimeo.com/19879400
Whirled Game
http://vimeo.com/19913512
Tensegrity
http://vimeo.com/19967927
Practical Management
http://vimeo.com/20125744
the emporer becomes clown
http://vimeo.com/20127798
under the dymaxion dome
http://vimeo.com/20131601
technology as cliché
http://vimeo.com/20184138
the after-image of art
http://vimeo.com/20185384
nature imitates art
http://vimeo.com/20186077
McLuhan Centenary 6 :
possessed by technology
http://vimeo.com/20277995
asymptotic
http://vimeo.com/20278715
spiritual causality
http://vimeo.com/20355584
McLuhan's Park Bench
http://vimeo.com/20358876
hedonistic puritan
http://vimeo.com/20403918
everybody is possessed
http://vimeo.com/20404651
bug porn
http://vimeo.com/20451397
Bucky Fuller Modern Puritan
http://vimeo.com/20453254
wild naïveté
http://vimeo.com/20455942
Utopia or Oblivion
http://vimeo.com/20456496
MoM Seminar 1 :
the inaugural jest of honor
http://vimeo.com/20628992
retrieving the tetrad
http://vimeo.com/20638006
am eye getting an echo hear?
http://vimeo.com/20643025
mirronic
http://vimeo.com/20694381
the medium is the real deal
http://vimeo.com/20700961
at the pub
http://vimeo.com/20703739
cartoon link
http://vimeo.com/20736224
a non-idiotic state of affairs
http://vimeo.com/20737680
boarderline cases
http://vimeo.com/20772061
blurry hawaiinan dream
http://vimeo.com/20772643
interior landscapes
http://vimeo.com/20779763
abc minded
http://vimeo.com/20780508
P.C. Robort
http://vimeo.com/20813492
disconnected
http://vimeo.com/20814098
MoM 2 :
george remembers mac
http://vimeo.com/20821820
george remembers mac 2
http://vimeo.com/20829788
The DEW Line
http://vimeo.com/20857267
On Mac's Quest for the Truth
http://vimeo.com/20860075
On McLuhan's Stroke
http://vimeo.com/20862215
On Margret and Maggie
http://vimeo.com/20865096
On Mac @ Fordham & Woody Allen
http://vimeo.com/20868165
McLuhan & the Mass
http://vimeo.com/20902719
CounterBlast & Wyndham Lewis
http://vimeo.com/20904426
Diagnosing McLuhan
http://vimeo.com/20906766
McLuhan & S. I. Hayakawa
http://vimeo.com/20909948
the psychedelic probe
http://vimeo.com/20942762
misunderstanding mcluhan
http://vimeo.com/20943083
the hidden dimension
http://vimeo.com/20944374
the android meme environment
http://vimeo.com/20944888
mac's last words
http://vimeo.com/20948723
culture is our bee's wax
http://vimeo.com/20949303
critical mass
http://vimeo.com/20952020
now out
http://vimeo.com/20967425
android meme zenocranknee
http://vimeo.com/20971304
if it works its obsolete
http://vimeo.com/20972219
invisible landscapers
http://vimeo.com/20972973
tactile
http://vimeo.com/20973367
cocaine ate my panties
http://vimeo.com/20974020
tachyon burst
http://vimeo.com/20974411
z end
http://vimeo.com/20977515
MoM 3 :
Dandy Warhol
http://vimeo.com/21147104
Andy's Amigos
http://vimeo.com/21148271
Mac the Hacker
http://vimeo.com/21154077
east west vice versa
http://vimeo.com/21181858
mass age media whorehouse
http://vimeo.com/21184314
burn after seeing
http://vimeo.com/21185402
rekindled
http://vimeo.com/21246129
coastin' rollers
http://vimeo.com/21246898
the shit - media blackout
http://vimeo.com/21247844
when buzz met bobby
http://vimeo.com/21256232
ya kant please everyone
http://vimeo.com/21256758
the buzz in china
http://vimeo.com/21281037
ionic quadraphiendia
http://vimeo.com/21291756
abjectively diverted china
http://vimeo.com/21327498
Enemy Session 1 :
project 69
http://vimeo.com/21430667
techno fundamentalism
http://vimeo.com/21431653
masochistic hedonism
http://vimeo.com/21433918
McLuhan cut, pasted & booked
http://vimeo.com/21469510
Laundersdale Minssions
http://vimeo.com/21470093
McLuhan is the Massage
http://vimeo.com/21471129
critical catholic sensibility
http://vimeo.com/21474586
dialog from the sidelines
http://vimeo.com/21476473
do eye detect a put-on?
http://vimeo.com/21481825
silence, cunning & exile on main street
http://vimeo.com/21484179
affected electric age
http://vimeo.com/21507761
easy answers
http://vimeo.com/21509915
Mute, Dumb & Jute
http://vimeo.com/21510114
android meme skitzoid scene
http://vimeo.com/21510760
MoM 4 :
Mike meets McLuhan
http://vimeo.com/21518400
the whirled is an edit
http://vimeo.com/21520163
all that glitters is not gould
http://vimeo.com/21541355
the tactile i
http://vimeo.com/21542085
knot many people get it
http://vimeo.com/21542934
the tetraheads
http://vimeo.com/21543817
the vultures showed-up
http://vimeo.com/21544236
Rollin' And Tumblin'
http://vimeo.com/21544505
impractical non-application
http://vimeo.com/21544884
media fast
http://vimeo.com/21545494
McLuhan's Valid Fallacy
http://vimeo.com/21549898
the west shall shake the east awake
http://vimeo.com/21574756
techno paranoia
http://vimeo.com/21577989
stopgap band-aid
http://vimeo.com/21579515
Is there life before death?
http://vimeo.com/21586958
Meereschal MacMuhun
http://vimeo.com/21587598
through the maelstrom
http://vimeo.com/21587825
Le Trompe-l'Oeil
http://vimeo.com/21589254
boarderline case
http://vimeo.com/21625706
the nowness of now
http://vimeo.com/21626179
science of sonorous silence
http://vimeo.com/21630033
synnbildising graters and things
http://vimeo.com/21631435
weaving language
http://vimeo.com/21631952
MoM 5 :
txting is haptic & tactile
http://vimeo.com/21684459
nuvo autism
http://vimeo.com/21699656
bjorn on an esp party-line
http://vimeo.com/21733521
an inventory of effects
http://vimeo.com/21735345
this moment never stops
http://vimeo.com/21740633
the old farts at play
http://vimeo.com/21741269
california dreamin
http://vimeo.com/21745266
here cumz eMultibody
http://vimeo.com/21783598
art is what u kant get away with
http://vimeo.com/21784312
knot 4 people who still have hearz
http://vimeo.com/21784722
holiopathic
http://vimeo.com/21794909
txting, brb ttyl
http://vimeo.com/21796417
drink canada dry
http://vimeo.com/21836461
bug race
http://vimeo.com/21837216
the shape of things to cum
http://vimeo.com/21840133
Telescoping McLuhan
http://vimeo.com/21841799
violins of speech
http://vimeo.com/21865445
dangling participles
http://vimeo.com/21866993
hello bye bye kitty
http://vimeo.com/21867339
the sheen of charlie
http://vimeo.com/21868635
tv tattoo u
http://vimeo.com/21901503
friday's culture
http://vimeo.com/21902915
aphoristic massage
http://vimeo.com/21905366
media environmentalists
http://vimeo.com/21907226
contentsed wody
http://vimeo.com/21913472
up is down
http://vimeo.com/21915435
Enemy Session 2 :
the conspiracy of theory
http://vimeo.com/21968033
the motor clobber make use of his law language Edzo
http://vimeo.com/21974221
big brother goes inside
http://vimeo.com/22061927
silence, exile & punning
http://vimeo.com/22063801
MoM 6 :
let it be
http://vimeo.com/22065214
memoria
http://vimeo.com/22067013
left brain right brain stuff
http://vimeo.com/22068304
periferal focus
http://vimeo.com/22069287
effects proceed their causes
http://vimeo.com/22072003
TV eats children
http://vimeo.com/22112144
nuc the whales
http://vimeo.com/22114987
the job of suffering
http://vimeo.com/22115687
secret honor
http://vimeo.com/22116916
Enemy Session 2 :
psychedelic anesthetizer
http://vimeo.com/22118981
MoM 6 :
the crow's i
http://vimeo.com/22119508
analogic computation
http://vimeo.com/22128641
electrocracy
http://vimeo.com/22158095
the clash of media mixes
http://vimeo.com/22159162
basic transe states
http://vimeo.com/22159433
Enemy Session 2 :
art as autism as advertising
http://vimeo.com/22163083
basic tetrad management
http://vimeo.com/22182645
flexidisk txting
http://vimeo.com/22188032
media shock
http://vimeo.com/22191075
the Mudquirt accent
http://vimeo.com/22192490
MoM 6 :
schizophonia
http://vimeo.com/22193478
MoM 7 :
paramodern
http://vimeo.com/22372758
post tactile
http://vimeo.com/22393735
metaphors & mirrors
http://vimeo.com/22442187
global theater
http://vimeo.com/22500669
spacebook
http://vimeo.com/22502805
the medium is not the medium
http://vimeo.com/22503787
telephone daze
http://vimeo.com/22504349
one point five seconds
http://vimeo.com/22506121
macbook crash
http://vimeo.com/22506639
Virta-Flaneurazine
http://vimeo.com/22507893
signifying nothing
http://vimeo.com/22512157
mirror neurons
http://vimeo.com/22536874
within the sound of my voice
http://vimeo.com/22541086
Multiplicity
http://vimeo.com/22542999
iMe Wii
http://vimeo.com/22544819
MoM 8 :
languid language
http://vimeo.com/22688608
slowed speech
http://vimeo.com/22700350
The Noize
http://vimeo.com/22730185
very pc
http://vimeo.com/22741685
It's Menippean Friday
http://vimeo.com/22765670
black weekend
http://vimeo.com/22788903
squared tactility
http://vimeo.com/22789191
trending now
http://vimeo.com/22790424
fame & unfortune
http://vimeo.com/22795558
queen for a daze
http://vimeo.com/22800496
the image is the massage
http://vimeo.com/22801205
tatoo u
http://vimeo.com/22822552
shifting relevance
http://vimeo.com/22823330
cluster-fuck drop-out
http://vimeo.com/22825965
mystery machine
http://vimeo.com/22827053
good vibrations
http://vimeo.com/22833006
night in shiny carmore
http://vimeo.com/22838116
failure to communicate
http://vimeo.com/22875983
android meme disconnection
http://vimeo.com/22839617
MoM 9 :
go figure ground
http://vimeo.com/22984388
covering more ground
http://vimeo.com/22985005
cave art
http://vimeo.com/22986304
buzz wawa
http://vimeo.com/22990994
numbing down
http://vimeo.com/22997049
decontextualizing the digital
http://vimeo.com/23026059
bullet rave
http://vimeo.com/23027042
eraserhead quadrapheania
http://vimeo.com/23028007
pseudo-virtual dithyrambic
http://vimeo.com/23029430
multinano environment
http://vimeo.com/23035554
over simulation
http://vimeo.com/23098355
everything@once.calm
http://vimeo.com/23099038
paper cuts
http://vimeo.com/23099939
media bias at work
http://vimeo.com/23100775
stop making cents
http://vimeo.com/23101552
knowing ignorence
http://vimeo.com/23104578
MoM 10 :
inertia
http://vimeo.com/23312132
speed-up slow down
http://vimeo.com/23314510
group think
http://vimeo.com/23353883
canary in a coal mind
http://vimeo.com/23355202
buzz pattern
http://vimeo.com/23397926
garbeled is the massage
http://vimeo.com/23400528
the disappearance of an image
http://vimeo.com/23402135
http://vimeo.com/23402854
knowledge explosion
hearz the point
http://vimeo.com/23403380
media dynamics
http://vimeo.com/23429279
culture is are bizmess
http://vimeo.com/23430128
unchartable see
http://vimeo.com/23430805
warwhore's art
http://vimeo.com/23431877
media fallout
http://vimeo.com/23435840
the snow must go on
http://vimeo.com/23436417
MoM 11 :
lairs of confusion
http://vimeo.com/23577341
MoM 12 :
Rumpelstiltskin
http://vimeo.com/23938250
understanding effects
http://vimeo.com/23940954
MoMday Night Seminar: Tonight
Start time : 7PM EST [NYC]
The primary conference dial-in numbers are:
- USA: +1 760 569 7070.
- Canada: +1 559546 1500.
Access Code: 929710.
Check out : McLuhan-On-Maui [MoM] Facebook Page
PROBE: Plexure as "Acoustic Finneganese"
Oswald : " I have been reading James Joyce's Finnegans Wake
since I was 13 years old."
since I was 13 years old."

John Oswald - PLEXURE 1993
12 movements & 21 sub-movements
concept : first 10 years of Compact Disc era concept format : 22 minutes or 1 side of an LP record bpm : 47 > 384 + theme : time & love
1. Open
- Suck
- Rip
2. Urge
- Slow
- Slice
- Blink
3. Manifold
- Philosophy
- Phase
4. Blur
- Moment
- Wow
- Nest
5. Zoom
- Alone
- Gogh
6. Cyfer
7. Compact
- Phase2
- Snap
8. Worse
9. Mad Mod
10. Temperature
- Tempus Amoré (Hyper Love Time)
- Tempo Pact Massive
- Hazzard
- Warning
- Treacherous
11. Velocity
- Tremendous
- Tremulous
" Featured Artists "
Aretha Vanilli,Bing Stingspreen,
Bo No Ma,
Sam & Deee-Lite,
Sam & Dead,
Engelbert Costello,
Ice Garfunkle,
Bolton Chili Overdire,
Moody Crue,
XTZ Top,
John Lennoncamp,
Bee Jesus,
B.T.O'Conner,
Sinead O'Connick Jr.,
Twisted Steely,
Axl Galas,
9 Inch Monkees,
Bo Dire,
Percy Faithful,
Joni Cocker,
Superloaf,
Jon Bon Elton,
Little Keith Richard,
Twisted Kross,
Madonna & Englishmen,
Fats Bono,
Spinal Top,
Dire No More,
Doobie Osmond,
Debbie Idol,
Frank Sinappa,
Allman Dominoes,
They Might Be Grateful,
Anthrax Squeeze Factory,
Halen Oates,
U-52s,
Depeche Mould,
AC/Dylan,
Marianne Faith No Morrisey,
Blondie Sabbath,
Ozzie Osmond,
Cheap Pixie Peppers,
Beastie Shop Beach,
Lynrd Lovett,
Cream Styx,
Jerry Harry,
Jello Bellafonte,
Milli Fudge,
Ozzy Loaf,
The Captain & Terence,
Joni Shithead,
Spiro Giants,
Stevie Ray Vangelis,
Jethro Byrne,
Mariah Cocker,
Sound Garth,
Yo Yo McCartney,
T.L.C.& C. Meat Factor,
Whitney REMTV Hammercamp,
Bonnie Ratt,
Alannarama,
10,000 Nine Inch Megasmiths,
Bobby Bon Jackson,
Julian Lennox,
Paula McCarey,
and Kool Mo Chuck.
Finneganese :
"funny funereels," "allnights newseryreel," "they leap looply, looply, as they link to light," "cellelleneteutoslavzendlatinsoundscript," and "a ... riot of blots and blurs and bars and balls and hoops and wriggles and juxtaposed jottings linked by spurts of speed." ... "what can't be coded can be decorded if an ear aye seize what no eye ere grieved fore" (482), "verbivocovisual" (341), "sendence of sundance" (615), "plumbs and grumes and cheriffs and citherers and raiders and cinemen too" (6), "revealled by Oscur Camerad" (603), "Moviefigure on in scenic section" (603), "great things were expected in the fulmfilming department" (398), "Vouchsafe me more soundpicture! It gives furiously to think" (570), "allnights newseryreel" (489), "funny funereels" (414), "optophone ... ontophanes" (13), "broodcast" (567), "roll away the reel world, reel world, reel world" (64), "thank Movies" (194), "confesses to all his tellavicious nieces" (349), "our moving pictures" (565), "Moviefigure on in scenic section" (602), "if you are looking for the bilder deep your ear on the movietone" (62). "in deesperation of deispiration at the diasporation of his diesparation ... was found of the round of the sound of the loud"
---
Read more about John Oswald : http://www.plunderphonics.com and http://www.pfony.com
Sunday, May 29, 2011
PROBE: X-Ray
1.) Let me begin with your concern about “the effect of visual, communal images (via television) upon the survival of literacy.” In the first place, television does not present a visual image, but an X-ray icon which penetrates our entire organism. Joyce called it "the charge of the light barricade"—part of the Crimean war against mankind. Stained-glass images are not visual either, since they are defined by light through, as in Rouault paintings. The structure of these images is audile-tactile, as in abstract art, both of Symbolist and Cubist kind.
2.) The patterns of formerly hidden processes now begin to obtrude on every hand. Prescience, prophetic vision, and artistic awareness are no longer needed to establish an understanding of the most secret causes of personal and social processes. Mere electric speedup makes X-ray awareness natural.
3.) Some feel that Christianity's existence must always stand in the tension between being in the world and standing outside it. Kierkegaard was keenly aware of this, as were St. Paul and, later, Martin Luther. But the tension between inner and outer is a merely visual guideline, and in the age of the X-ray inner and outer are simultaneous events.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
PROBE: " We're Starring in a B Movie"
" Before Television, nobody knew the calibre of the clowns governing the country."
In the mid-sixties, McLuhan presaged that TV would prompt politicians to become entertainers as style and image dwarfed substance while "the news" turned into an entertainment package. McLuhan noted that "a four-year stint in the White House is no longer easily distinguishable from something arranged by a booking agency." Furthermore, said he, given the direction of show-biz politics, an actor could very well become President inside of two decades. Ronald Reagan moved into the Oval Office in 1980.
"When Sputnik went around the planet in 1957 the earth became enclosed in a man-made environment and became thereby an "art" form. The globe became a theatre enclosed in a proscenium arch of satellites. From that time the "audience" or the population of the planet became actors in a new sort of theatre. Mallarme had thought that "the world exists to end in a book." It turned out otherwise. It has taken on the character of theatre or playhouse. Since Sputnik the entire world has become a single sound-light show. Even the business world has now taken over the concept of "performance" as a salient criterion." -- McLuhan, "Roles, Masks and Performances"
Menippean Topics : Preface and Almanackers to Autonomous Pen

note to dear reader : HERE ENDETH THE PREFACE


The following list of 'Menippean Topics' was found on several sheets of paper neatly tucked inside the record jacket of the Nino Rota soundtrack LP to Federico Fellini's 'La Dolce Vita,' which was purchased with about a dozen other records at a yard sale in The Annex neighbourhoood of Toronto, on a sunny Spring Saturday afternoon in 1986. As a sidenote, one of the other LPs purchased that day was a 'sealed copy' of Lou Reed's 'Metal Machine Music'2xLP, which was 'nabbed' for a measly 10 bucks. [Which co-incidently, has just been re-released in a digitally remastered edition on Sister Ray Recordings, and released on 180 gram Double Vinyl, AUDIO DVD and BLU-RAY.
MENIPPEAN TOPICS
The chief techniques of defining a work as Menippean satire have been three: either (a) simply by the formula, "a mixture of verse and prose," or (b) by a comparison of its contents with those of a known Menippean satire, or (c) by means of a "definitive" list of features. Each of these is inadequate to deal with the problem of definition of the form, Menippean satire. The first is inadequate both because it allows for the inclusion of works that are not Menippean, and because it excludes a great variety of works that are - that are either wholly in verse or wholly in prose. The second is inadequate because it too makes no provision for innovation. While the third (and most popular) likewise does not provide for innovation, it is also inadequate because critics have not agreed upon what such a list should contain and because, as this appendix illustrates, a complete and thereby definitive list would be unwieldy if it were in fact possible to compile one. Further, in all probability, no Menippean satire would use all of the ingredients of such a list. Moreover, all three techniques are inadequate because they result from appraising Menippean satire abstractly and descriptively, from a distance, and because they ignore the interaction of the satire with the reader.
As has been shown in Part One, descriptive or abstract approaches fail to come to grips with Menippean satire for the reason that it is inseparable from its effect on its audience. All of the features hitherto used to describe the form, or any example of it, may be regarded as tactics chosen by a Menippist to engage and retune the sensibilities of a reader by deliberately violating his sense of decorum in one or another way. If the catalog of features appears to grow with each period of Menippism, then, it does so because the Menippist has a new, or at least a different, audience sensibility to contend with. For each change of sensibility implies both an intensifying of awareness in some areas of experience and a blunting of awareness in others. Furthermore, the catalog may be enlarged for the Menippist by the development, either through his own work or others', of new literary patterns and techniques. This may in some measure account for the paradoxical fact that Menippean satire is at once highly experimental and highly conservative of tradition (it is mimetic).
The following list of Menippean topics does not attempt to be exhaustive: it includes little more than the commonplace features - e.g., those discussed by Frye, Williams, Bakhtin and Korkowski. While its size may demonstrate the futility of a merely descriptive approach, the list may serve another purpose. A structural study of these and other Menippean topics may eventually yield basic patterns of Menippean decorum which will in turn provide greater knowledge of how human perception is altered and managed.
MENIPPEAN TOPICS A :
Almanackers. They were often used as the butts of the satires, as street-level philosophi gloriosi. Cf. The Owle's Almanacke by L.L. (Laurence Lyly). Astrologers have been attacked regularly by Menippists since Lucian's Astrologia. Cf. Nashe ("Adam Fouleweather"), Rabelais, Dekker.
Anonymous Author. The author's anonymity is apologised for in a fake introduction, for example, one written by the printer or bookseller who might plead any of several reasons. A common reason is that the author, a man of quality, does not wish to reveal himself as a writer of this sort of production. E.g.: Donne's Ignatius, His Conclave, Swift's Tale. In a variant, Joyce would often aver that his interlocutors in conversation, or passersby in the street, were composing and writing Finnegans Wake, not he.
Apologiae for the Work. One or more apologies are often used to establish relations to other Menippists, by citation, by reference, or by plagiarism. They can be used to establish tone, to banter with the reader, or to lay trails of red herrings. They may appear at the beginning of the work (as in Donne's Ignatius or in French editions of La Satyre Menippée) or anywhere inside as a digression (as in Harington's Ajax and Sterne's Tristram Shandy).
Autonomous Author. The author exults in a freedom to do whatever occurs to him. This topic is frequent. Examples include Lucian, Seneca, Fronto, Synesius, Erasmus (Folly), the Obscure Epistolers, Agrippa, Despérieres' dogs, Rabelais, Swift, Sterne, Byron. Sterne: "I have a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very nonsensically, and I will not balk my fancy. - Accordingly I set off thus." (Tristram, p.74).
Autonomous Pen. The pen, or the act of writing, is remarked to take control of the author or narrative and to pursue its own course, observed and commented upon by the author who feigns powerlessness to control it. Ancient mock-eulogists had similarly feigned powerlessness to control their rambling oratory. E.g.: Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum (1516); Swift, Tale of a Tub; Sterne, Tristram; Nashe, Lenten Stuffe. Sterne has: "In a word, my pen takes its course... I write a careless kind of civil, nonsensical, good humoured Shandean book, which will do all your hearts good...." And: "But this is neither here nor there - why do I mention it? - ask my pen - it governs me – I govern not it." Tristram Shandy, ed., Work, pp.436, 416)Banquet. A favored Menippean device for displaying gluttony and other excesses, this topic also serves as both a strategy and a symbol of Menippean encyclopedism. The range of users is from Petronius (Trimalchio) through Rabelais to Finnegans Wake. (In the ballad, the party at the Wake becomes so rowdy that the corpse rises and joins in the fun.) The Wake is a banquet in many senses: of history, of learning, of languages, of personae, of words and puns, etc. Other examples may be found in Lucian, Convivium, the symposia of Varro, Athenaeus' Deipno-sophists, Macrobius, Beroalde's (Francois Beroalde de Verville's) Moyen de Parvenir (a philosophic banquet of the dead), La Satyre Menippée and Bouchet's Les Serées (1583-4). In the sixteenth century, the French seem to have enjoyed Menippean banquets particularly. Perhaps this topic is a direct link to the derivation of "satire" from satura lanx. See also Michael Coffey's article in the Oxford Classical Dictionary for a brief conspectus of ancient symposium literature.Blustering Narrator. The author asserts his authority (extreme), an assertion often couched in Herculean terms. This is often accompanied by a teasing of the reader and chitchat or feigned worry about the book's organization. Swift's is perhaps the most complete example. The hack, in Tale of a Tub, claims "Absolute Authority in Right, as the freshest Modern, which gives me a Despotic Power over all Authors before me..." and so on. This remark is contained in a "Panegyrical Preface," which is put in Section V of the Tale. The long line of Menippean precedents includes Lucian's Alexander the False Prophet, Cornelius Agrippa's De Incertitudine, Nashe's Lenten Stuffe, Burton's Anatomy (e.g., II.4.2.1, III.2.3, and I.2.4.7), and John Taylor. In A Voyage Round the World, Dunton demands, as he opens a new chapter, "Room for a Rambler - (or else I'll run over ye)."
As has been shown in Part One, descriptive or abstract approaches fail to come to grips with Menippean satire for the reason that it is inseparable from its effect on its audience. All of the features hitherto used to describe the form, or any example of it, may be regarded as tactics chosen by a Menippist to engage and retune the sensibilities of a reader by deliberately violating his sense of decorum in one or another way. If the catalog of features appears to grow with each period of Menippism, then, it does so because the Menippist has a new, or at least a different, audience sensibility to contend with. For each change of sensibility implies both an intensifying of awareness in some areas of experience and a blunting of awareness in others. Furthermore, the catalog may be enlarged for the Menippist by the development, either through his own work or others', of new literary patterns and techniques. This may in some measure account for the paradoxical fact that Menippean satire is at once highly experimental and highly conservative of tradition (it is mimetic).
The following list of Menippean topics does not attempt to be exhaustive: it includes little more than the commonplace features - e.g., those discussed by Frye, Williams, Bakhtin and Korkowski. While its size may demonstrate the futility of a merely descriptive approach, the list may serve another purpose. A structural study of these and other Menippean topics may eventually yield basic patterns of Menippean decorum which will in turn provide greater knowledge of how human perception is altered and managed.
MENIPPEAN TOPICS A :
Almanackers. They were often used as the butts of the satires, as street-level philosophi gloriosi. Cf. The Owle's Almanacke by L.L. (Laurence Lyly). Astrologers have been attacked regularly by Menippists since Lucian's Astrologia. Cf. Nashe ("Adam Fouleweather"), Rabelais, Dekker.
Anonymous Author. The author's anonymity is apologised for in a fake introduction, for example, one written by the printer or bookseller who might plead any of several reasons. A common reason is that the author, a man of quality, does not wish to reveal himself as a writer of this sort of production. E.g.: Donne's Ignatius, His Conclave, Swift's Tale. In a variant, Joyce would often aver that his interlocutors in conversation, or passersby in the street, were composing and writing Finnegans Wake, not he.
Apologiae for the Work. One or more apologies are often used to establish relations to other Menippists, by citation, by reference, or by plagiarism. They can be used to establish tone, to banter with the reader, or to lay trails of red herrings. They may appear at the beginning of the work (as in Donne's Ignatius or in French editions of La Satyre Menippée) or anywhere inside as a digression (as in Harington's Ajax and Sterne's Tristram Shandy).
Autonomous Author. The author exults in a freedom to do whatever occurs to him. This topic is frequent. Examples include Lucian, Seneca, Fronto, Synesius, Erasmus (Folly), the Obscure Epistolers, Agrippa, Despérieres' dogs, Rabelais, Swift, Sterne, Byron. Sterne: "I have a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very nonsensically, and I will not balk my fancy. - Accordingly I set off thus." (Tristram, p.74).
Autonomous Pen. The pen, or the act of writing, is remarked to take control of the author or narrative and to pursue its own course, observed and commented upon by the author who feigns powerlessness to control it. Ancient mock-eulogists had similarly feigned powerlessness to control their rambling oratory. E.g.: Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum (1516); Swift, Tale of a Tub; Sterne, Tristram; Nashe, Lenten Stuffe. Sterne has: "In a word, my pen takes its course... I write a careless kind of civil, nonsensical, good humoured Shandean book, which will do all your hearts good...." And: "But this is neither here nor there - why do I mention it? - ask my pen - it governs me – I govern not it." Tristram Shandy, ed., Work, pp.436, 416)Banquet. A favored Menippean device for displaying gluttony and other excesses, this topic also serves as both a strategy and a symbol of Menippean encyclopedism. The range of users is from Petronius (Trimalchio) through Rabelais to Finnegans Wake. (In the ballad, the party at the Wake becomes so rowdy that the corpse rises and joins in the fun.) The Wake is a banquet in many senses: of history, of learning, of languages, of personae, of words and puns, etc. Other examples may be found in Lucian, Convivium, the symposia of Varro, Athenaeus' Deipno-sophists, Macrobius, Beroalde's (Francois Beroalde de Verville's) Moyen de Parvenir (a philosophic banquet of the dead), La Satyre Menippée and Bouchet's Les Serées (1583-4). In the sixteenth century, the French seem to have enjoyed Menippean banquets particularly. Perhaps this topic is a direct link to the derivation of "satire" from satura lanx. See also Michael Coffey's article in the Oxford Classical Dictionary for a brief conspectus of ancient symposium literature.Blustering Narrator. The author asserts his authority (extreme), an assertion often couched in Herculean terms. This is often accompanied by a teasing of the reader and chitchat or feigned worry about the book's organization. Swift's is perhaps the most complete example. The hack, in Tale of a Tub, claims "Absolute Authority in Right, as the freshest Modern, which gives me a Despotic Power over all Authors before me..." and so on. This remark is contained in a "Panegyrical Preface," which is put in Section V of the Tale. The long line of Menippean precedents includes Lucian's Alexander the False Prophet, Cornelius Agrippa's De Incertitudine, Nashe's Lenten Stuffe, Burton's Anatomy (e.g., II.4.2.1, III.2.3, and I.2.4.7), and John Taylor. In A Voyage Round the World, Dunton demands, as he opens a new chapter, "Room for a Rambler - (or else I'll run over ye)."
Friday, May 27, 2011
PROBE: Odor and Prayer
PROMPT: un-FINN-ished McLuhan Timeline
PROMPT: Pyramids Attacked by Octopus
"The need to retain an attitude of complete clinical detachment is necessary for survival in this kind of work ... The road to understanding media effects begins with arrogant superiority. If one lacked this sense of superiority, this detachment, it would be quite impossible to write about them. It would be like an octopus attacking the great pyramids."- McLuhan in The Hot and Cool Interview, Stearn, 1967
Thursday, May 26, 2011
MoMday Night Seminar 13: Available for FREE Download
Special Guest: MJ (the hypnotist).
The Tweets from this session follow in reverse chronological order:
MoM NOW: Signing off. The world of matter calls...my thanks to everyone that has participated in MoM13. MoM continues...
MoM NOW: x-raying, the gate of horn, McLuhan on the papacy, defending the mass...
MoM NOW: McLuhan's MoM, Prairie women, McLuhan's announcement of his conversion, life in a protestant country
MoM NOW: McLuhan, the Mass and the Church, liturgy and the homily
MoM NOW: back on hypnosis, ruts, axel wheels, power
MoM NOW: Ion says "its tweetable". Just the facts... pentads hexads mystery landscape
MoM NOW: 3hr 45 minute mark as significant.
MoM NOW: flp into disappearance of mystery
MoM NOW: The Logos, tetrads on IoN, enh mystery landscape, ob all chemical body, astral, tv body (a lot), ret. . fairly tale world
MoM NOW: McLuhan and detachment, the McLuhan archives, the actors voice, macabees, summerians, logos and physics, the enochian
MoM NOW: Purgatory, the 9th gate (movie), Torchia, Johnny Depp
MoM NOW: McLuhan making fun of occult arts, the new unseen, the book of shadows, layers of hell (and memes of)
MoM NOW: the dialectic of violence, becoming what you hate/fear, the minds eye, traditional occult arts and wisdom
MoM NOW: Woody Allen, wow, whale tails and whoopings, super-civilized and subatomic man, playing with old dichotomies
MoM NOW: Hmm..., peruvian, bablylon, larouche, charts, butlers and angels, Haarp, Alex Jones and coast to coast,
MoM NOW: Winters and the mimetic fallacy, putting on the mimetic zone, formal cause, formal causality as obsolesced?
MoM NOW: choice! The magnificence of..., The Wake, ISSY, McLuhan the respectable professor and the dirty and edgey
MoM NOW: new words, dogma, merging, noticing the difference (varigation...), where the rubber meets the road
MoM NOW: cavier, appetites, pixellation, tactility, colour TV, ...and what has changed
MoM NOW: Early America, Orwell vs McLuhan, what Orwell missed,
MoM NOW: carnivals, ash wednesday, the french, ...and the intrusion of a voice purporting to be a new medium
MoM NOW: IoN as current day blasphemous figure, McLuhan as observer and commentator on FRINGE phenomenon, fear greed and boredom
MoM NOW: Lewis revival in the 90s, Captain Beefheart, Bowie on LEWIS. G. bernard Shaw, beatniks, insulting society
MoM NOW: WTF, Lewis on Hitler, and what this meant for McLuhan, Lewis as supporter of monster and being banned from London society
MoM NOW: McLuhan as painter, how McLuhan talked about the mystery landscape, Finnegans Wake, Lewis, Charles Manson
MoM NOW: Angelology, angels vs super-angelic state, nostalgia for superheroes, the movie THOR, portals, Natalie Portman
MoM NOW: [gear shift] media theology, god-making machines, Tony Schwartz, media gods...
MoM NOW: laser controlled bombs, TV war, print orientated perspectives on McLuhan, ... and the esoteric arts, angels, and the media
24 May Favorite Reply Delete
MoM NOW: The Galactic mind (Thompson quadrant) as obsolete image, visual space, Walter Bowart, 911, Santa Monica, gulf war
MoM NOW: Who is the Illuminai now, management, wealth, distributionism, the mystery landscape...the NEW medium
MoM NOW: The Romanov's, Rockerfellers (BoB's old crew), there is no more chamical body control, and what is going on right NOW
MoM NOW: [we are going conspiracy now] Illuminati, secret councils, Android meme and its after-image, Thurn und taxis, Prince Charles
MoM NOW: Lewis and the secret causes of WWII, Self condemed, McLuhan as character in that work/novel.
MoM NOW: The after-image of the disappearance of media, BoB says he was assigned to STOP McLuhan, the Illuminati
MoM NOW: Everyone disappeared in 1945 (says MM), the crisis of the artist, Elvis, ego's and chemical body creativity
MoM NOW: baudrillard (the figure who inspired Matrix) says he will not be involved in making the film. The matrix made the matrix
MoM NOW: Shrinking media and molding media enviornments, the meme of thinking you are in charge, the great liberation-there is nothing there
MoM NOW: 1983/84, computer rebellion, zero, canelling the game, junk bond economy, enron, and the collapse in 2008
MoM NOW: Gamification, Understanding media, games as extension of man, Copeland, THOR, and the collapse of gamification
MoM NOW: Super creativity, youtube, broadcast yourself, passive consuption...everyone as workforce
MoM NOW: FW..who is writing the book, McLuhan on the source of jokes, celebrating the audience.
MoM NOW: How can you tell the hypnotised from the hypnotist (updating Yeats on the dance and dancer). Who is hypnotising who
MoM NOW: legislation in relation to hypnosis, brain-washing of the chemical body, self-hypnosis via media enviornments...and WHO
MoM NOW: McLuhan's writing method, making inventory, naming, charting, and the limitations of creativity....very lazy
MoM NOW: Rumpelstitlskin, how do you name a post-verbal complex TYPHON (multi-headed monster)
MoM NOW: folding back to MoM12, tetrads of formal causality, Eric McLuhan's new book. NAMING and formal causality
MoM NOW: post-ether, E=MCsquared as SCULPTURE, post-media, Einstein, was he aware of radio hypnosis
MoM NOW: Madison avenue could not hypnotise a mouse. Facebook, do I still exist?, what is left of McLuhan...what is the subliminal hypnosis
MoM NOW: McLuhan, television, and the tactile cliche, and the post-tactile
MoM NOW: The struggle to be noticed, environment placement as oppossed to product placement.
MoM NOW: Kroker on Panic this and panic that (Kroker's meme)...good for the late 90s. Panic Hollywood..panic everything
MoM NOW: Twitter has been "overloaded" so the report has been fragmentary
MoM NOW: ipods and private bubbles, sense ratios, private and not private, ...the new hypnosis, crowd dynamics
MoM NOW: shifting ratios in perception, hypnosis in the current media enviornment, McLuhan's analysis of media
MoM NOW: effects preceed causes, the rituals of hypnotism, the difficulties of hypnotism, criminals, distracting the watchdog of the mind
MoM NOW: (Techniques) reverse reaction, repitition, delayed action (anticipating effects), association...pre-conversations
MoM NOW: The study of hypnosis in relation to McLuhan, the basics of hypnotism, the five laws of suggestability, mallarme, defining/creating
MoM NOW: When 1984 becomes cliche, the job of the artist, seeing the ordinary as extraordinary, the task of dehypnotising
MoM NOW: reading strategies, the effectiveness of words, cliche to archetype process, McLuhan on numbing
MoM NOW: dialogue, mental transportation, manipulating conversations...going against the grain, conspiracy theory
MoM NOW: Getting spooked, tapping into strange things, post-hypnotic suggestion.
MoM NOW: hypnotism and memory enhancement. perception. perceptual enhancement.
MoM NOW: hypnotism. self-hypnosis. control. the "potential" to tap other parts of the brain. memory. power.
MoM NOW: Being in the world but not off it. Parrellels between artistic strategies and Christian strategies. How new media envs...
MoM NOW: Slowly setting in. We are currently talking with MJ. He is a hypnotist.
From 7pm NYC time I will begin to Tweet/SPAM the topics and threads being discussed. The topic per minute (TPM) count will be high.
MoM NOW: 10 minutes to MoMday. The primary conference dial-in numbers are: USA: +1 760 569 7070. Canada: +1 559546 1500. Access Code: 929710.
"You-Do-It" Histography: McLuhan's Audience(s) as Producers
INVENTORY ITEM #1.
"Join the story" links though to: http://storey.it/case/1/step/2
INVENTORY ITEM #2.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is marking the anniversary with a suite of special programs on ABC Radio National, culminating in a “pop-up” (temporary) radio station on ABC Digital on the weekend of July 23 and 24, which will include archival material and explore life in the present digital age.
We are also developing a special online space, which will include an interactive infographic depicting a timeline of McLuhan’s life, and the media and communications landscape from his birth until the present day (and into the future!).
We’ve kicked it off with some starter dates and events:
Now, this is where you come in.
As a part of this project, we would value your input on what you believe to be the best or most significant cultural phenomenon or events during this period of the McLuhan century (1911-2011), in any of the following categories:
- Communication Technologies - Significant technological developments or advances (for example, the first colour television broadcast by John Logie Baird in the UK on 4 February 1938), or the first mobile telephone, brick size (2kgs) in 1973, or even Agent 86’s shoe phone, first depicted in the first scene of the first episode of Get Smart in 1965)
- Media Events - Ways in which the media has reflected historical events (such as images of the Vietnam War, Apollo 11 and the moon landing, the felling of the twin towers etc.)
- Great moments in modern culture - (for example, the opening of Australia’s first Westfield Mall in Blacktown, July 1959, legalisation of gay marriage in the Netherlands in 2001, Vatican II from 1962-1965, First public broadcast of a presidential funeral in 1963 following Kennedy’s assassination, etc)
- Advertising - Iconic or representative advertisements (from the Marlboro man to Burger King’s subservient chicken)
- Biography - Significant events in McLuhan’s life and work (including publications, television appearances etc)
- Future Directions - Your own McLuhan-esque observations, insights and predictions for the future
We will be collating this data and incorporating it into the infographic.
HI CYBERNAUGHTS! Spring 2011 Edition
Scott Taylor’s low definition anti-blog blog in search of high definition artscience.

Lady Gagabadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronn
tuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk
JANET ECHELMAN: http://www.echelman.com/
ELECTRIC CAR: http://www.bornrich.com/entry/mercedes-benz-aria-concept-electric-luxury-car-for-2030/

Lady Gagabadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronn
tuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk
JANET ECHELMAN: http://www.echelman.com/
ALEXANDER LYSOV: http://www.hellomyfuture.ru/
LUKE BARCELONA CANO: http://lukecano.com/index.php?/selected-work/re-rendered-series/
LIGHT PAINTING WIFI: http://www.thisplacement.com/
DIAMOND VARIATIONS: http://cinepoeme.blogspot.com/
SKYLAR TIBBITS: http://sjet.us/index.html
LEANNE EISEN (TORONTO): http://leanneeisen.com/home.html
LIANNA SHEPPARD: http://liannasheppard.com/
SARA HARAIGUE: http://www.saraharaigue.com/
SHANE HOPE: http://shanehope.info/
JORINDE VOIGT: http://jorindevoigt.com/
RED SQUARE NEBULA: http://gizmodo.com/#!5785252/the-red-square-nebula-rips-a-hole-in-space+time
ELECTRIFIED SWORDS: http://gizmodo.com/#!5785007/fighting-with-electrified-swords-will-always-end-in-fire
RETRO RINGWORLDS: http://gizmodo.com/#!5783661/retro-ringworlds/gallery/1
ULTRA-MINIMALISM: http://gizmodo.com/#!5783291/could-you-live-in-this-ultra-minimalist-home/gallery/1
SOUND OF EARTHQUAKE UNDERWATER: http://gizmodo.com/#!5782628/this-is-the-actual-sound-of-the-japan-earthquake-captured-underwater
BREATH-TAKING SATURN VIDEO: http://gizmodo.com/#!5782085/this-breathtaking-saturn-fly+by-video-is-exactly-what-everyones-soul-needs-right-now
BRAIN SCAN OF A FRUIT FLY: http://gizmodo.com/#!5776919/what-is-this
MAGATRON TANK: http://gizmodo.com/#!5771262/this-5+ton-megatron-tank-was-hand-built-by-a-man/gallery/1
ANDROID ACTIVATIONS: http://gizmodo.com/#!5769151/a-stunning-visualization-of-android-activations
TOYOTA FACTORY: http://gizmodo.com/#!5766546/the-fantasy-land-toyota-factory
TESLA’S STRANGEST INVENTIONS: http://gizmodo.com/#!5766507/these-are-teslas-strangest-inventions-in-3d
SOUND OF A COMET: http://gizmodo.com/#!5766541/this-is-the-sound-of-a-comet
AURAMA APP: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/05/how-the-reverend-bayes-will-fi.html
IMMAGINARY PHONE ON PALM OF HAND: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20500-imaginary-phone-lets-you-answer-calls-on-your-palm.html
BIGGER BRAINS FOR SMELL: http://www.kurzweilai.net/mammals-first-evolved-big-brains-for-better-sense-of-smell?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=93eac3d297-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email
TIME MACHINE: http://timemachine.gigapan.org/wiki/Main_Page
MUSIC AT MIT: http://www.media.mit.edu/search/node/music
MULTIPLE BRAIN-WIRING FOR LANGUAGE: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-04/uor-sls042910.php
ABSTRACT THINKING: http://www.physorg.com/news191667393.html
ROBOTS: MICHAEL JACKSON THRILLER: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdDKB3Q1Yw&feature=player_embedded
VISUALIZATION OF RFID FIELDS: http://singularityhub.com/2011/03/24/eye-opening-visualization-of-rfid-fields-video/
SOUSVEILLANCE: http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/05/23/david-brin-on-the-path-to-positive-sousveillance/
JASPER DE BEIJER: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkEIC_YOCGU
ASENDORF & RODER: http://www.triangulationblog.com/2011/04/maps-by-kim-asendorf-and-jorn-roder.html#more
INVISIBLE TOUCHSCREEN: http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/16/view/14678/zerotouch-invisible-touchscreen.html
ANISH KAPOOR: http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/14562/anish-kapoor-monumenta-2011-leviathan.html
BORIS PETROVSKY: http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/14594/boris-petrovsky-nixie-mixie-matrix.html
AKIKO IKEUCHI: SILK VORTEX: http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/14568/akiko-ikeuchi-silk-vortex.html
TONY ORRICO: PERFORMANCE DRAWINGS: http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/14440/tony-orrico-performance-drawings.html
ROBERT HODGIN: BODY DYSMORPHIA: http://roberthodgin.com/body-dysmorphia/
CROWD CONTROL: http://gizmodo.com/5804021/lenticular-lens-floor-directs-pedestrians-to-one-side-of-sidewalk-but-makes-them-want-to-puke
OXYGEN BUBBLE DRESS: http://gizmodo.com/5803717/an-oxygen-bubble-dress-for-those-who-crave-clean-air-and-infinite-attention
TELESCOPE: http://gizmodo.com/5803309/the-telescope-thatll-look-back-at-the-beginning-of-the-universe
DESK: http://www.bornrich.com/entry/lectori-salutem-desk-by-jeroen-verhoeven-is-a-sheer-beauty-to-look-at/
SILVER FLOW: http://www.bornrich.com/entry/mercedes-benz-silverflow-melts-to-take-the-needed-silhouette/
ELECTRIC CAR: http://www.bornrich.com/entry/mercedes-benz-aria-concept-electric-luxury-car-for-2030/
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