Saturday, February 19, 2011

What I did today

The internet is a strange thing, it leads me from data to data and then the day is suddenly gone. Here's the magical path of today.

Early in the morning I read this. It's 26 pages, it took an hour but it was really fascinating if you're interested in the workings of cults and other faith-first based social mechanisms.

I found that link in the incomparable Illogical Contraption blog, where everything is what it seems, all at once, all the time.

Then of course, off of to Wikipedia.


There I read the article on L.R.Hubbard again (I have read a biography of his also which I felt was too sensationalized. The slow motion rape was quite interesting, though). There's a link there to Hubbard's connection to black magic. This isn't the article, but it's close enough. Couldn't find the real thing. Sometimes tracing the internet back is a dangerous proposition.

Somewhere in that article about Hubbard and black magic, there's the connection with Nazi Occultry. This book is namedropped and quoted:



Which of course I promptly found and read the first fifty pages of, which is frankly, as much as I want to know about Nazi Occult history. But it did fill in some gaps in my understanding of why and how the Nazi regime could hold such sway over the German populous (and no, it doesn't involve any mass castings of spells).

In that book, there is a quote of another book, the Black Arts



Which I found and read 50 pages of as well. Besides the very Heavy Metal-esque cover, the recounting here is more general and I didn't feel as if I were learning anything new. Somewhere in the middle of all this, I managed to one-coin ESP Galuda. "You managed to what, what?" You might cry. Well, to one-coin something means to play an arcade coin-operated video-game all the way through on one credit. This is a mean feat usually (sometimes not to video game aficionados because some arcade games are generally considered easier than others), especially to the eyes of laymen. I am partial to a type of shooter game called "Bullet Hell". I've been playing DoDonpachi for years and I was at one time close to one-coining the first loop of the game (after which you replay the whole game at an increased difficulty, something I never viewed as an accomplishment for my fragile reflexes). ESP Galuda is a far easier game to DoDonpachi, and after only a few weeks of casual playing, I managed to finish it. My final score was 16 million something something. From such statements you may glean into how little I'm interested in score-based achievement in arcade games. But I finished the damn thing. To give you an impression of what that entails, here, watch this:



That's the last half-stage and final boss rush.


So, eight hours later I am much informed on issues Scientologist, somewhat on Nazi Occultry, barely further on the dark arts at large. I also carved a completely useless notch in my gamer belt and extensively corresponded with a few people on the internet over various common interests. And soon I'm off to watch "Black Swan" in the theater. No work has been achieved, no wisdom gained.

My life is half like this, half a mad dash to complete artistic projects at the nick of time. What did you do today?

-Helm

2 comments:

Alex_P said...

Man, I'm a bit late on this, but yesterday was a good day for me. I entertained a friend of mine at my house and showed him some bands I thought he would like. I burned him a copy of Awaken the Guardian, and he said himself that he thinks it will change his approach to music. We'll have to see, but that really felt like an achievement. This is a friend who doesn't really know how to search for music, and who is sometimes easily satiated. The rest of the day was spent playing Assassin's Creed except for a supper with family, so there wasn't much in the way of personal education.

I've certainly spent long hours perusing the internet, leap-frogging from factoid to factoid, pursuing concepts. It's really fun, and it's how I spent a good portion of my adolescence. Now, I'm always "that guy" who has a surface understanding of a wide variety of topics. It's useful in the context of house parties.

Helm said...

It seems like I'm an android built for house parties, only somebody forgot to install that firmware update that pushes to actually go out and 'perform' in adverse conditions. I'm very charming if you put me one on one with someone who's interested in what I have to say. But put me in a social situation where someone doesn't directly want to talk to me and I become sipping-drink-bot.

The general rule I'd like to keep to is to go out with no more than 3-4 people at once. More and it's just a mess. Add obnoxiously loud music on top of a large social gathering, and all my factoids about Nazis & the Occult are useless!!!!!!


Good job on turning someone on to "Awaken the Guardian". I can't see that doing harm to anyone.