Paul2eD: How did I wind up with Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill on my iPod & her Walking the Witch on my laptop; both playing at the same time? WTF?

BobDobbs_: @Paul2eD My friend made this video: The Black and White Stripes 2 0 http://bit.ly/4Avvbz

R_A_W: Greg Archer: ‘The Vampire’s Assistant’ and 10 other reasons why we really dig vampires in 2009 http://bit.ly/G3nsq

Paul2eD: @BobDobbs_ @R_A_W  The two of you aren’t helping.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: @R_A_W What is the Purpose of Life? To be the eyes and ears of the Creator of the Universe, you fool.”

LaoTzu: Something cloudy and unclear / Before existence and non-existence, / Before heaven and earth / I do not know its name / So I call it TAO

BobDobbs: Hello Kitty “Anatomy” series http://bit.ly/HorMK

DrLeary: @Paul2eD Be cool. Don’t Panic. Chaos is good. Chaos creates infinite possibilities.

Bill Maher: Repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Because It Will Make Rush Limbaugh “Explode” (VIDEO) http://bit.ly/w3moO

Henry Miller: I am a man who pisses largely and frequently. This, they say, is a sign of great mental activity.

Steve Antczak: Moses parted the Red Sea, Oppenheimer split the atom, but “Bob” cut the crap.

Briefly, the background of the Bavarian Illuminati puzzle is this: On May 1st, 1776, in Bavaria, Dr. Adam Weishaupt, a professor of Canon Law at Ingolstadt University and a former Jesuit priest, formed a secret society called the Order of the Illuminati within the existing Masonic lodges of Germany.  Since Masonry is itself a secret society, the Illuminati was a secret society within a secret society, a mystery inside a mystery, so to say. In 1785 the Illuminati were suppressed by the Bavarian government for allegedly plotting to overthrow all the kings in Europe and the Pope to boot.  This much is generally agreed upon by all historians. Everything else is a matter of heated, and sometimes fetid, controversy.

It has been claimed that Dr. Weishaupt was an atheist, a Cabalistic magician, a rationalist, a mystic; a democrat, a socialist, an anarchist, a fascist; a Machiavellian amoralist, an alchemist, a totalitarian and an “enthusiastic philanthropist.”  (The last was the verdict of Thomas Jefferson, by the way.)  The Illuminati have also been credited with managing the French and American revolutions behind the scenes, taking over the world, being the brains behind Communism, continuing underground up to the 1970’s, secretly worshipping the Devil, mopery with intent to gawk. Some claim that Weishaupt didn’t even invent the Illuminati, but only revived it.  The Order of the Illuminati has been traced back the to the Knights Templar, to the Greek and Gnostic initiatory cults, to Egypt, even to Atlantis.  The one safe generalization one can make is that Weishaupt’s intent to maintain secrecy has worked; no two students of Illuminology have ever agreed totally about what the “inner secret” or purpose of the Order actually was (or is…). There is endless room for spooky speculation, and for pedantic paranoia, once one really gets into the literature of the subject; and there has been a wave of sensational “exposes” of the Illuminati every generation since 1776.  If you were to believe all the sensational literature, the damned Bavarian conspirators were responsible for everything wrong with the world, including the oil prices and the fact that you can’t get a plumber on the weekends.  – Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger

… an optimistic mind-set finds dozens of possible solutions for every problem that the pessimist regards as incurable.

Since we all create our habitual reality-tunnels, either consciously and intelligently or unconsciously and mechanically, I prefer to create for each hour the happiest, funniest and most romantic reality-tunnel consistent with the signals my brain apprehends.  – Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger

Every computer consists of two aspects, known as hardware and software. (Software here includes information).

The software consists of programs that can exist in many forms, including the totally abstract. A program can be “in” the computer in the sense that it is recorded in the CPU or on a disk which is hitched up to the computer. A program can also exist on a piece of paper, if I invented it myself, or in a manual, if it is a standard program; in these cases, it is not “in” the computer but can be put “in” at any time. But a program can be even more tenuous than that; it can exist only in my head, if I have never written it down, or if I have used it once and erased it.

The hardware is more “real” than the software in that you can always locate it in space-time—if it’s not in the bedroom, somebody must have moved it to the study, etc. On the other hand, the software is more “real” in the sense that you can smash the hardware back to dust (“kill” the computer) and the software still exists, and can “materialize” or “manifest” again in a different computer.

(Any speculations about reincarnation at this point are the responsibility of the reader, not of the author.)

In speaking of the human brain as an electro-colloidal biocomputer, we all know where the hardware is: it is inside the human skull. The software, however, seems to be anywhere and everywhere. For instance, the software “in” my brain also exists outside my brain in such forms as, say, a book I read twenty years ago, which was an English translation of various signals transmitted by Plato 2400 years ago. Other parts of my software are made up of the software of Lao Tzu, Herman Hesse, my second-grade teacher, the Simpsons, the Beatles, my mother and father, George W. Bush, my various dogs and cats, Dr. Richard Dawkins, and anybody and (to some extent) any-thing that has ever impacted upon my brain. This may sound strange, but that’s the way software (or information) functions.

Of course, if consciousness consisted of nothing but this undifferentiated tapioca of timeless, traceless software, we would have no individuality, no center, no Self.

We want to know, then, how out of this universal software ocean a specific person emerges.

What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves.

Because the human brain, like other animal brains, acts as an electro-colloidal computer, not a solid-state computer, it follows the same laws as other animal brains. That is, the programs get into the brain, as electro-chemical bonds, in discrete quantum stages.

- Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising.

The outstanding example of the negative self-fulfilling prophecy in our century is Joseph Stalin, who always believed himself surrounded by enemies.  His own party, he suspected, was permeated by deviants who hated him.  He steadily increased the size and powers of the secret police, and each chief of the secret police, in turn, was executed as one of the plotters against him.  They all signed confessions before they died;  Stalin insisted on that.  He wanted it in black and white, proof that his suspicions were justified.  Eventually, it appears, his closest associates conspired to poison him.

In contrast, there is the case of R. Buckminster Fuller, who stood one day in 1928 on the shore of Lake Michigan contemplating suicide.  He was despairing because of his daughter’s death by polio and his own lack of financial success as a construction engineer.  But, in a moment of Sufi insight, Fuller decided to gamble that the universe had some use for him.  Today, he is not only one of the most influential scientists in the world, the inventor of a new system of mathematics and a universally respected philosopher and poet, he is also a multimillionaire.  He is one of the most radiantly optimistic men on this planet, as everybody who has ever heard him lecture will appreciate.  Now, let’s not confuse self-fulfilling prophecy with the puerilities of positive thinking or other Pollyanna philosophies that ignore reality totally in favor of a cocoon of self-delusion.  Bucky Fuller, for instance, has had his share of hard times since his act of faith in 1928.  His dymaxion automobile cracked up on a trial run and was never mass-manufactured.  His most important scientific ideas were ignored for nearly two decades during which he was dismissed as a brilliant crank.  He has experienced the usual human bereavements.  Nevertheless, he transcended all such setbacks by believing that he could do something good in this universe.
- Robert Anton Wilson – The Illuminati Papers

Horselover_Fat (Philip K. Dick) The main character in VALIS is Horselover Fat, an author surrogate. “Horselover” is English for the Greek word philippos (Φίλιππος), meaning “lover of horses” (from philo “brotherly or comradely love” and hippos “horse”); the German word “dick” is “fat” in English.

Cartman_ Eric Theodore Cartman is one of the four main fictional characters on the animated television series South Park, along with fellow protagonists Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Kenny McCormick, though he is often portrayed as the series’ main antagonist in opposition of his friends. Cartman is an obese, foul-mouthed, mean-spirited, selfish, and ill-tempered fourth-grader living with his hermaphroditic de facto mother in the fictional town of South Park, Colorado.

_TylerDurden_ (Jack Palahniuk) This is what he says about himself, which in turn says it all…  “All the ways you wish you could be, that’s me. I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not. “  I am Jack’s alter ego. I get bored, I kill Jack…  Mayhem. Chaos. Soap. The title line sums it up what he leaves out about himself.He is upset with the world the way it is and will not be satisfied until the world is back in primative times… Without hitting rock bottom there can be no evolution, no resurrection.

R_A_W Robert Anton Wilson served as an editor for Playboy magazine, as a co-founder of the Institute for the Study of the Human Future, and as Director of the Prometheus Society. Long revered as an eminent metaprogrammer and Trickster figure, he is perhaps best known for his writings, including the Illuminatus! trilogy (co-authored with Robert Shea) and for his work as a visionary, occultist, libertarian, and Futurist. Until the late 1990s, he frequently lectured on TV, radio and in person in the United States and Canada. Arlen, his beloved wife and co-conspirator, passed away in 1999.

J.R. “Bob” Dobbs is the figurehead of the Church of the SubGenius. His image is derived from a piece of 1950s pop-art. According to SubGenius dogma, “Bob” was a drilling equipment salesman who, in 1953, saw a vision of God (JHVH-1 according to Church scriptures) on a television set he had built himself. The vision inspired him to write the “PreScriptures” (as described in the Book of the SubGenius) and found the Church. The “theology” holds that “Bob” is the greatest salesman who ever lived, and has cheated death a number of times. He is also revered for his great follies and believed to be a savior of “slack“. He was assassinated in San Francisco in 1984, though the Church states that he has come back from the dead several times since then.

Timothy_Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American writer, psychologist, futurist, and advocate of psychedelic drug research and one of the first people whose remains have been sent into space. An icon of 1960s counterculture, Leary is most famous as a proponent of the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of LSD. He coined and popularized the catch phrase “Turn on, tune in, drop out.”

Dr_Manhattan Jon Osterman was the son of a watchmaker who pushed him into studying atomic physics instead of following in the family business. Osterman started Princeton in 1948 and finished his Ph.D. in atomic physics in 1958. In May 1959, he was involved in research at the Gila Flats under the direction of Professor Milton Glass. During this time, he had a love affair with colleague, Janey Slater. While retrieving the watch he fixed for her in August 1959, he accidentally became trapped in an intrinsic field separator. His atoms were smashed, but, eventually, methodically, he reconstructed himself and emerged as Dr. Manhattan, a blue-skinned superhuman who can do anything because he has a quantum consciousness that reveals time, space, and matter as they truly are–in atomic detail.