Humpjones

Posted Dec 25, 2007 6 comments

It’s been a long weird month and I won’t even address it here.  I found this article sitting in the scrap pile and I don’t remember writing it.  It’s very appropriate for a Christmas Day spent alone with coffee and my thoughts.  I’m back, and I will be writing a lot in the next few weeks.  Meanwhile, enjoy this and enjoy your “free time.”

Real Winners Know They’re Really Just Losers

I used to agonize over the irony of my wiring.  It drove me a little crazy, between you and me.  Why is it that the second I accomplish something—anything—it’s immediately not good enough? I happen to know the answer—no big deal, it’s just a combination of my mother and father and the people I look up to being mostly liars.  More importantly, the answer doesn’t matter to me anymore.  I see myself for who I am and now that I’m in a position to heal, find closure, and change my darn life....I don’t really want to.

I’m interested to see how far I can take this.  (Apparently a lot of other people are wondering the same thing.) We all have parasite voices in our heads—sick, abusive and paranoid scripts that just loop over and over and make us feel like shit.  It’s so common and so pervasive I can’t even exaggerate.  We’re all possessed by demons that we just kinda put up with while they drive us to exhaustion and numb acceptance of defeat.  We’re all having constant inner conversations with disembodied, repeating language viruses that fucking hate us.

The funniest part is that anyone who thinks I’m exaggerating is lying to themselves. 

And kids think being a magician is fun.

Here’s a handy shortcut I discovered this year.  It’s just a sentence, but when I use it on myself it’s very effective.  It’s gotten great results with other people, too.  It makes them very, very angry—but when I talk through the anger we both discover the sentence was also very, very true.  It’s about depression, which is the most common brain virus in our culture, and there’s a very good reason for that.

If you’re depressed, it’s because you accepted defeat. Giving up on your hopes and dreams leads to depression.  Rationalizing why you’ve given up and allowed yourself to be caged leads to depression.  Remember the caged monkeys: we know this from rigorous observation of animals in captivity.  First symptom: depression.  Caged animals get depressed.  Free animals get happy, healthy and horny.  If you’re depressed, it’s because you accepted defeat.  Grow a spine, sharpen up your teeth, get back to work.  And please, shut the fuck up.

10,000 Days of Thunder

So what’s the source of these demons?  Castenada wrote up a metric ton of lies that wound up becoming true, and he called it The Predator.  I’ve speculated about Toxoplasmosis, but I’m not too attached to my own theories.  We’re all fond of our own ideas, but eventually you gotta wash your socks and throw out the kleenex, folks.  I try to do that as soon as possible, your approach may vary.

I’m not gonna pretend I’ve got any solutions, either.  Still working on my self, myself.  As Jay Levinson advises—and it’s some of the best business advice you’ll ever find anywhere—“Engage in no expansion until you have eliminated all of the mistakes in your current operation.” In other words, I’ll tell you how to live when I can get a reliable mechanism for steak dinners and fresh grapefruits.  Meanwhile, I’ll eat whatever I can, whenever I can, and continue perfecting my personal system. 

Peace Out, Don Juan

If there’s anything I desperately want to get through to anyone and everyone reading this....here it is.

I am not fucking kidding.

I dress up in silk shirts and rap about sex because the core issue here is all too real.  I’m going to pass the mic to Carlos Castenada and his fictional-but-real creation, don Juan, because that ventriloquist act was a big influence on Humpasaur Jones.  If you’re interested in exploring this hilarious nightmare further, start with John Keel.  Me, I’m going to stop contemplating pretty much anything until after Christmas.  Too much living to do. Stay warm and stay crazy, I will be back with a hangover after New Years Eve, unless I get some truly depraved photos while I’m on the road.

“I want to appeal to your analytical mind,” don Juan said. “Think for a moment, and tell me how you would explain the contradiction between man the engineer and the stupidity of his systems of beliefs, or the stupidity of his contradictory behavior. Sorcerers believe that the predators have given us our systems of beliefs, our ideas of good and evil, our social mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations and dreams of success and failure. They have given us covetousness, greed, and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal.”

“But how can they do this, don Juan?” I asked. “Do they whisper all that in our ears while we sleep?”

“No, they don’t do it that way. That’s idiotic!” don Juan said, smiling. “They are infinitely more efficient and organized than that. In order to keep us obedient and meek and weak, the predators engaged themselves in a stupendous maneuver - stupendous, of course, from the point of view of a fighting strategist. A horrendous maneuver from the point of view of those who suffer it. They gave us their mind! Do you hear me! The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind. The predators mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with fear of being discovered any minute now.”

“I know that even though you have never experienced hunger,” he went on, “you have food anxiety, which is none other than the anxiety of the predator who fears that any minute now its maneuver is going to be uncovered and food is going to be denied. Through the mind, which, after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them. And they ensure, in this manner, a degree of security to act as a buffer against their fear.”

6 comments

Filed in: Zeitgeist

Posted Dec 01, 2007 12 comments

I run about 10,000 websites at this point, but here’s another one: it’s called Audible Hype, and it’s all about a DIY music career.  I’m currently running Wombaticus Rex, Algorhythms and Humpasaur Jones, as well as starting the label World-Around Records, so the site is basically a running journal of everything I’m learning.  I try to keep things professional over there, but I’m also pretty upfront about being a broke hick rapper with no fucking clue what I’m doing.

I do know enough to know when I’m doing it wrong, though, and let me tell you, this December tour I’m leaving for in about 12 hours is a textbook case of Disaster by Design.  I just so happen to be looking forward to it for that precise reason.  I also realize that most humans are not wired for that kind of insanity, so let’s frame this whole adventure as a Cautionary Tale, complete with lessons and good advice.  Ready?

Never Do a Tour Without Confirmed Gigs

I have exactly one.  It’s in Buffalo, New York, on Sunday, December 2nd at Broadway Joe’s.  The folks in Constant Climax, and their management at Deepthinka Records, were kind enough to put me on the bill.  After that?  I honestly have no idea what’s going on, and that’s probably not a good thing.  It means I can’t promote a single gig I’m doing, it means I can’t do research on the areas I’m headed into, and it means I can’t keep anyone back home informed about where I am and what I’m doing.

My biggest chunk of advice to broke rappers and DIY musicians: be polite, but don’t fucking be nice. Being polite is 100% nesecessary, be professional, be courteous, be honest.  But being nice is when you give someone more credit than they have earned.  Being nice is trusting people when you know damn well there is exactly one person you can trust.  You need to have access and control to every detail of your tour—or guess what?  It’s not your tour.

This means: contact information for every venue you’re playing at, contact info for the local artists you’ll be playing with, and contact info for anyone and everyone you know in the area.  This means multiple copies of a written schedule that includes all of the info, plus the addresses of all your gigs and the agreed amount of payment for each stop on the tour.  For more common-sense, good advice, check out Jeri Goldstein.

Never Do a Tour Without Money and Merchandise

I set up a hectic and ambitious schedule for getting two albums done in a single week: recorded, mixed, mastered, out the door and into the hands of the manufacturing plant.  I didn’t get that done.  Shocker, I know.

Of course, I don’t exactly have a job, either, so that places me with about $0 in funds as I pack my bags today.  Not complaining, just explaining.  This is, remember, merely an instructional video on What Not To Do. 

Despite coming off as the Dirtiest Old Uncle on Earth, I’m actually burdened—nay, handicapped—by several core principles which have complicated my life a great deal in the past few years.  For instance: no, I’m not going to sell people a burned CD with a permanent marker cover.  Sure, I think my music is worth money, but that doesn’t give me an excuse to be moving shitty product.  Would you buy a pizza in a plastic bag?

Never Do a Tour Without a Support Network

....and I’d never do that.  The biggest reason I’m looking forward to all this, and none too worried, is because of my friends.  Well, my family, my tribe..."friend" is a mighty devalued word these days, after all.  I know that Louis Mackey and Uncle Duke have my back to any extent once I reach Illinois.  I got my bus tickets paid for through my friends at Fallen Arrows, and that wouldn’t have worked on short notice without Charles Blingus saving my ass.  For the record, Blingus has been pretty much continuously been saving my ass for several years now.  This site would not exist without him, and neither would any of the others.

Awhile back I did a Brainsturbator article on who I am and what I do, and it was an exercise in personal clarity and personal branding.  It also omitted the fact I wouldn’t be anything or do anything without the support of my family.  I have a cell phone now, it’s a gift from my mom.  I have a business now, it would never exist without my partners.  I have a Muse now, too, but she’s appearing courtesy of her own damn self.  We’re still trying to figure out why the Universe went so far out of It’s Way to set that one up.

Bonus Advice from an Anonymous Mentor

1. All women have STDs.
2. Never drink a drop until you get paid for your show.
3. Get contact info from EVERY other artist on stage that night.
4. If you don’t have business cards, you can’t do business.
5. Anyone who wants to smoke you down has shitty weed anyway.
6. Ignore any conversation about politics or other musicians.
7. Always grocery stores, never restaurants.
8. Never let anything you own leave your sight.
9. Give the audience what they want, but fuck what they expect.

12 comments

Filed in: The Music

Posted Nov 24, 2007 3 comments

“You seriously didn’t even THINK of that?  Are you retarded?”

Well...apparently so. I was explaining our current legal situation to my best friend and life consultant, that’s the question I got.  Fortunately it was over the phone...she probably would have hit me if we were face to face.  The situation is this.  I asked my buddy Jacob North to paint the cover for the Humpasaur Jones EP, Keep it Moist, and I asked for...well, I asked for this:

The problem is this: the Pope is a “real human being,” but as I’ve already made clear, I don’t think that’s technically true.  So sure, okay, Catholics will be upset.  I happen to be on drinking terms with several Goetic demons, though, so Catholics I can handle.  The real problem is Belladonna.  That’s totally a real person, a real woman who makes her money off selling her image, her likeness, and her special talents.  If you don’t know which “special talents” I’m referring to, ask around.

So to answer the question I opened up with: No, I really didn’t even consider the possibility this cover was completely illegal. But I’m well aware of it now.  World Around Records is considered a joke by many people, and that’s deliberate.  We want people to sleep on us while we incorporate, take out loans, solidify our connections, and lay the groundwork to blow up “out of nowhere.” (As a side note: the dumbest myth in our culture is the “Self-Made Millionaire.” Without my friends, I am nothing, believe that.)

We do have an actual legal department and they’re working on this.  In the meantime, we wait.  Well, okay, that’s a total lie.  In the meantime, I mix the Wombaticus Rex album, mix the Algorhythms EP, book a national tour for all of 2008, and work out about 10,000 details every single day.  As far as releasing Keep it Moist, though, we’re waiting. 

So here’s a gift to anyone who cares enough to read this: an RAR’d folder of the accapellas to around 1/2 the songs on the EP.  A number of people have asked about doing Humparemixes, and I am all for it.  Go nuts. 

HUMPASAUR JONES ACCEPELLAS

3 comments

Filed in: The Music

Posted Nov 21, 2007 7 comments

Most of my favorite stories are probably lies.  I might have even fallen for a few of my own.  One of them goes like this: the really hardcore Zionists in the Isreali military were actively pursuing a bioweapons program that would target the Arabic genome.  They were pouring money into research, only to find out that their own genome was so closely related that any weapon they developed would target them, as well.  Of course, Isreal really does have active bioweapons programs, just like the United States, Britain, China, Russia, so although the story is impossible to verify, it’s still pretty catchy.  Like the rumor about how George W. Bush can actually read—you really want to believe it, you know?

Or the one about Henry Kissinger giving a speech on controlling the world through a staged alien invasion at Bilderberg—it’s tempting, and thus probably bullshit. Did you know that cold water actually boils faster than hot water?  Neither did I.

I Read the News Today, Oh Fuck

I still want to broadcast optimism and unconditional love, and good sex, too.  Happy sex, loving sex, goofy sex.  Yes.

But I’m not advocating looking away from all the exceptionally unsexy stuff that is currently afoot on spaceship Earth.  As a reminder to myself more than my audience, Sex Science 3030 is an ongoing exploration of where human evolution is headed.  Here is a very dark and signifigant clue:

By firing radioactive ammunition, the U.S., U.K., and Israel may have triggered a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East that, over time, will prove deadlier than the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan.

So much ammunition containing depleted uranium(DU) has been fired, asserts nuclear authority Leuren Moret, “The genetic future of the Iraqi people for the most part, is destroyed.”

“More than ten times the amount of radiation released during atmospheric testing (of nuclear bombs) has been released from depleted uranium weaponry since 1991,” Moret writes, including radioactive ammunition fired by Israeli troops in Palestine.

Moret is an independent U.S. scientist formerly employed for five years at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and also at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, both of California.

Adds Arthur Bernklau, of Veterans For Constitutional Law, “The long-term effect of DU is a virtual death sentence. Iraq is a toxic wasteland. Anyone who is there stands a good chance of coming down with cancer and leukemia. In Iraq, the birth rate of mutations is totally out of control.”

This baffles me on a lot of levels, but let’s begin with the logical, and the pragmatic. 

Even if you harbor a total and psychotic hatred of all humans that live in the Middle East—and many monkeys have that precise brain infection—you would still have to agree that this kind of warfare is insane and stupid.  Spaceship Earth is not a hippie fucking metaphor, if you will permit me some cussin’.  This really is the only place in the galaxy that human beings can survive unassisted.  Or at least until me, Louis Mackey and Adam Kadmon eat some acid and sit down with a bunch of graph paper.  The effects of radiation are destructive to the entire planet’s life system.  We’re all on a single spherical object, we all ultimately breathe the same air and process the same water in the course of time. 

There’s always skeptics, of course.  Doubters would point out that the effects of radiation and toxic pollution are slight and over a human being’s lifetime, they won’t add up to much.  Well, that’s true.  That’s partially because they also measurably reduce human lifespan, so yes, that would logically dimish the “total effects over time.” See, I might get pretty damn toasted, but I still believe in clarity.  Doubters are missing a larger point with their jackass argument, though: the human race will continue to exist after we are dead. Think about your grandkids, or better yet, let’s think about 3030. 

How much of this planet will be livable by current human standards?  Will our current human standards apply?  If the ambient levels of toxins increases on a gradual enough curve, will humans simply develop an immunity?  Is it signifigant that most of the major “conquests” that white people supposedly accomplished were actually achieved by accident, when we brought over strange new diseases?  Is it signifigant that we didn’t have the same problem other races did?  In other words, are white people the cockroaches of the human species?

7 comments

Filed in: Sex Science 3030

Posted Nov 09, 2007 10 comments

So clearly, I failed to communicate last time around.  The article was called “UFOs Land in Arizona, Sex Orgy Ensues.” Maybe I was drawing a little too heavily from “weirdo” documents—all of which came from the US federal government—maybe I just didn’t get the point across.  Maybe I’m taking too long to set things up, so let me be blunt.

Humans live in captivity. You, me, the people we know, and everyone else. It would appear that they are held in captivity by other humans, but some critics, like John Keel and Carlos Castenada, disagree with me.  So did Charles Fort: “The Earth is a farm. We are someone else’s property.”

If you can’t handle UFOs with your sex, folks, you’re definitely in the wrong decade and I don’t even have the heart to explain what the Space Brothers will do to you.  You’re also at the wrong website, at least for the next few weeks, because “alien sex” is a running theme I’m going to lubricate, stimulate and occasionally milk.

Prove It, Stoopid

The social contract is lie.  Nobody consulted any of us about what nation we were born in, who our parents were, what their religion was, anything.  Democracy is a joke.  (Actually, a gang bang.)

Look, “social conditioning” is not something that only paranoids talk about.  It’s increasingly recognized as a serious liability by professional people who work in high-responsibility areas.  One of the most fascinating tentacles of Psychology is devoted to the study of how our social conditioning impairs our decision-making abilities—it’s called ”Cognitive Bias” and it’s the single best tool for DIY self-awareness training you can find this side of Yoga. 

The hardest thing to do is get outside of your own head.  Let’s not discuss mere politics: just imagine yourself moving straight up out of your chair for around 10 vertical miles.  This is the best perspective to actually see the structure and mechanics of human surface culture, and not coincidentally, it’s also the UFO-eye view, although I’ll be leaving the Greys alone for this article.  Simple questions: are there limits on human behavior?  Are humans compelled and coerced into behavior and situations they don’t nescessarily desire to be in?  Are there forbidden zones and mandatory actions?

There is a very strange myth about the United States of America being a “free country” and it seems to have corrupted a lot of people’s thinking.  There are many, many limits on your behavior.  I’m not just talking about laws—those are the new ones that aren’t embedded yet.  Most of our limits we’re never even consciously aware of, it’s just the background pulse of our culture, bringing all our brains into sync.  People walk around pissed off and unhappy all day long—do you stop them ask them what’s wrong?  Do you offer to help?  No, because this is normal background noise.  We’re surrounded by aggressive, sullen and confused people who are charging up for any opportunity to unload negativity and hate unto the foreheads of some random stranger.  But of course, nothing’s really random, especially here in prison.

The Effects of Captivity on Human and Non-Human Animals

Noise, restraint, isolation, pain, psychological distress, overcrowding, regrouping, separation from mothers, sleeplessness, hypersexuality, surgery and anaesthesia can all increase mortality, contact sensitivity, tumour susceptibility and metastatic spread, as well as decrease viral resistance and immune response.

Captivity fucks animals up.  I know I’m supposed to be a sex scientist, but that’s more honest than any clinical description I could offer you.  It fucks animals up, it wears down the adrenaline gland, increases the sex drive but reduces stamina and energy, and increases bizarre ritual behavior that’s usually either highly aggressive or self-destructive. 

Do you know what a Fnord is?  It’s something you learn that you can never unlearn, and it changes your perspective forever. I sometimes think of Fnords as the invisible bars of the prison planet.  They’re often simple facts we don’t fully consider the implications of. Like last year’s scientific study indicating that men who are exposed to images of hot naked women have a harder time making rational decisions.  That’s the most obvious thing in the world, right?  We needed a scientific study to tell us that?

Well, yeah, we did, because now it’s been tested enough to be a fact, instead of common sense.  Common sense is what tells you “A picture is worth a thousand words,” when in fact 99% of all English readers sub-vocalize when they read words, and all advertising and persuasion experts know that ad copy is more important than your images. Most of the best ones don’t even bother with images.  You know why?  There’s only about 5 images you’d be using anyways.  One of them is a smiling, wealthy man. One of them is hot naked women. Look around a bar and there’s Budweiser models fellating bottles everywhere.  Walk past any magazine rack and there’s hot naked women just begging for your rock hard, throbbing $4.99 plus tax.

Nothing is random here in prison.  Our environment is not an accident. 

Devo Was So Totally Right

I tried to avoid morality for 10 years straight and it finally caught up with me.  I was sitting on a friend’s back porch, thinking about William S. Burroughs and how disgusted he must have been when he died, watching two more generations roll over and play dead before any shots were even fired.  I was watching a group of middle-school aged kids beat up on someone smaller and slower when I realized I was watching a group of kids beating another kid up.  While I was sprinting down the stairs, it dawned on me that I need to stop reading and thinking for about 10 years.  Lately, everything makes less sense, and everything is more detailed and beautiful. 

You do need morality, not to impose on other people, but just as an internal compass.  We never really know what’s going on, but it’s important to have good foundations for guesswork.  Here’s the Humpasaur Jones System of Ethics for a Prison Planet:

1) You’re either helping people escape or you’re keeping them in. I used to hate simple, polarized statements like that, because life and the universe is a huge open-ended game with unlimited options every single second.  However, captivity imposes a structure over our lives wether we like it or not.  I’m not advocating killing prison guards, unless they’re serious little peckers, and even then, at least have the common decency to make sure you get away with it.  I am serious, though: if you’re not actively helping people escape, then your mute obedience is directly giving power to the prison system.  We all need to work together to keep those fuckers on their toes.

2) You’re always being monitored. So, accept that and monitor yourself.  Do the people who watch over you understand your behavior better than you?  Do you take advantage of self-surveillance and use it to observe yourself, and adjust your patterns and routines to be more efficient and effective?  Are you comfortable with nudity?  If not, why not, are you mentally retarded or something?  We were all born that way—no, really—and it’s cool.  Are you comfortable with performing?  Because you’re always doing it whether you like it or not.  I would suggest learning to like it, and do it well.

3) The worst they can do is kill you. The great thing about death is that there’s really nothing worse that could happen to you, and once it happens, it can never happen again.  Better yet, once you die, you’re no longer in a position to be bummed about the fact you died.  The situation in 2007 is already fucked beyond the point of no return.  We’re not saving the world, we’re not going to improve things, we’re not going to beat the machine.  We’re going to save ourselves, we’re going to minimize damage where we can, and we’re going to watch the machine collapse and eat itself. 

And me?  I’m going to go have breakfast.  A lot of the inmates bitch about it, but actually, the food here is really good.

10 comments

Filed in: The War on Sex