It’s been funny to watch the mainstream media downplay the “lab leak” theory of the origin of Covid-19. I mean, to me, this seems like a big story, right? “Sloppy Scientists Unleash Global Pandemic” I think that would sell some papers, or bait some clicks, or whatever it is people do to find out what someone else knows that they don’t these days, especially since Tony Fauci’s fingerprints are all over the crime scene, with the NIH funding some of the most dangerous (not to mention illegal, insane, and prohibited by international treaty) work with bat corona viruses remarkably similar to the one wrecking havoc all over the world right now.
Pretty much everyone has now admitted that the “lab leak” theory is at least plausibly, if not likely responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic. It certainly makes sense to me. “Lab Leak” should be Tony Fauci’s middle name. Tony “Lab Leak” Fauci oversaw the bio-defense lab at Ft Detrick that leaked bio-hazards into the Frederick, MD water supply over one-hundred times between 2004 and 2012.
Fauci earned his reputation for doing very risky science, sloppily, at Ft Detrick, but even then, many questioned whether all of those releases were accidental. Many wondered whether Fauci’s crew at Ft Detrick were intentionally experimenting with bio-weapons on unsuspecting American civilians. Instead of getting to the bottom of of those questions, congress prohibited, so called, “gain of function” research, and closed the lab at Ft. Detrick.
Flash forward to today: What does it mean that Tony “Lab Leak” Fauci worked with the Chinese Communist Party, the Department of Defense, and the CIA, among others, at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, to genetically engineer bat corona viruses to infect humans? That seems like a pretty big story on its own, don’t you think? Don’t you want to know what’s up with that?
There’s something unreal about this whole pandemic. I’m not saying that the virus isn’t real, or that it isn’t killing people. I think the virus is real, I just don’t believe the story we are being told about it is true. I completely understand that they want me to be frightened of the virus. They want me to be so frightened of the virus that I run to the clinic for the experimental “vaccine.”
I also know that they want me to believe that the “vaccine” is “absolutely safe and effective.” I heard my County Health Officer say exactly that, and I practically choked. Nothing is absolutely safe and effective, nothing, so I knew that was a lie. It is certainly not true of these experimental new “vaccines,” which have already killed thousands of Americans, and crippled thousands more, but no one wants to cover that story either. Instead, they ask, “What do we have to say to get you to take the shot?”
Clearly, they’ll say anything, whether it is true or not, to get their poison in our arms. But some of us remain unconvinced. So, now the government has stepped-up the pressure with mandates for government workers to get “vaccinated”, and they’re encouraging all employers to follow suit. From now on, you will surrender sovereignty over your own body chemistry as a condition of employment. A lot of Americans will do it too, not because they think the vaccine will protect them, or because they think getting the shot is a good idea, but because the only thing that scares Americans more than Covid or the creepy new “vaccine” is unemployment.
I don’t pretend to know more than I do. I don’t know where Covid came from, but I know where Fauci came from. I know where Pfizer came from. I know where Biden came from, and I don’t like where they are taking us, and I sure the fuck don’t trust them enough to let them stick a needle in my arm.
I’m plenty frightened by what I see right now, but I think we should all be very careful about what we think we know, what is possible, and who we trust, because the stakes are very high for all of us, and the decisions we make right now, under duress, will set the course of history.
This old Pink Floyd song really captures the angst that I’m feeling at the moment. I remade Careful With That Axe Eugene with some of the instruments from the Orchestra of the Unwanted. This track features the Spring Bass, Tin Can Fiddle, and $20 Vocoder as well as Talking Drum and voice. I hope you like it.
Do you hear crickets? I guess it has been pretty quiet here recently, but not in my studio. I’ve made a ton of new music recently. I realize that a lot of people still read my blog for my acerbic wit and astute social commentary, but today, Democrats lie about the “pandemic” and the “vaccine” as much as Republicans lie about the “stolen election” and “massive voter fraud.” Nobody lives in reality any more, so what’s the point in writing about it.
Frankly, I think it is too late for social criticism. Our culture is dead. We are all grieving, in denial, or both. Either way it makes no sense to speak ill of the dead. Instead, I think we should call on the spirits of our ancestors to guide us into the future. That’s where music comes in. Our ancestors communicated through music for hundreds of generations before the invention of language, and music still speaks to us with more clarity, eloquence, and emotion, than words can ever express. Unfortunately, we live in a society with a very limited musical vocabulary, and as a result, a very narrow mindset.
My music accepts the death of this culture. I am not inspired by our culture’s great technological achievements, and you won’t find a lot of high-tech synthesizers and music equipment in my studio. Instead, you will find a lot crudely homemade instruments assembled from recycled materials and found objects. My music grows out of the wreckage of our failed colonial empire.
At this unique point in history, the whole world is littered with vast quantities of exotic high-tech synthetic polymers and metals in a whole variety of alloys and in myriad shapes. We are not the first empire to produce grand, impressive sounding music to inspire us with a vision of a glorious future. We are the first to try to survive in a world so profoundly transformed by an expired culture. This is what it sounds like.
I’m very white. Both of my parents are white, and I got a good white education, went to white college, studied science, and learned to think like a serious white man. I’m pretty good at it too, especially in writing, but I also sound white and act white. I’ve got the whole white shtick down pat, but I’m not proud of it, and I don’t think it healthy. In fact, I recognize it as a mental illness, and I am doing my best to recover from it.
You don’t need to go to college to learn to think like a white person. Spending time online will do it, even if the people you communicate with are not white. The internet itself is a white-man’s invention, and it shows. There’s no physical contact; it’s completely detached from reality, and everyone is trying to sell you something. How much whiter could it be?
When you look at the history of white colonization in America, unless you are white, you see cold-blooded murder and plunder for profit. You see genocide, slavery, poverty, exploitation, environmental devastation and unspeakable violence giving rise to an empire of unprecedented power and influence. Unless you are white, the colonization of North America looks like a terrible thing, if not the most terrible thing to ever happen. It was the world’s worst holocaust, but if you are white, you gloss over the genocide, slavery and other bad stuff as “unfortunate chapters” in a whole other story.
If you are white you see things completely differently. We don’t see ourselves as violent and greedy. Instead, we see ourselves as intellectually sophisticated and technologically advanced. For white people, it is the story of “the Enlightenment” (literally “whitening”), the rise of objective science, and our relentless search for truth, that led to certain technological innovations that made our rise to power inevitable. White people think that we built this empire because we are smart people, not because of the ruthless greed that drove colonial expansion. White people believe that we run the world because we’re smart.
When white people look at something like the Golden Gate Bridge, for instance, they’ll marvel at the engineering, and think, “Isn’t it amazing what smart people can do when they work together for the good of everyone.” White people forget the genocide that made that bridge conceivable, the gold rush that made it possible, and the sprawl that made it necessary. White people somehow forget that 100 million people died, wolves and grizzlies were extirpated, millions of acres of the world’s tallest trees leveled, wiping out an abundance of salmon that people today can scarcely imagine, let alone believe, in order to make that bridge a reality. When you look at it from a wider perspective, smart people would have had nothing to do with that project, nor is it anything to be proud of.
White people somehow manage to take pride in the monumental achievements of empire, but largely overlook it’s crimes against humanity and nature. We white people take collective pride in things like the lunar landing, the ability to split the atom, and this new information wonderland we call the internet. We think these things demonstrate the superiority of our way of doing things. And by “our way of doing things” we don’t mean our habit of spending more on military programs than the rest of the world combined, while millions of our own people go hungry and sleep outside in the cold. No, we don’t mean that at all. Why would you think that?
No, we mean something else entirely. White people really believe that it was our relentless pursuit of the truth, that led us to a superior understanding of the world. That scientific understanding of the world gave rise to our great power, and that wisdom now necessitates the inevitable subjugation and assimilation of all other cultures. You see, we’re just smarter, that’s all. (I told you we were crazy)
I don’t just mean that White Supremacists believe this, of course they do, but liberal PC white people believe this too, deep down. White people can’t imagine that it could be any other way, and that’s especially true of “smart” liberal, PC white people. When you press them on it, white people all believe that our modern white dominated society constitutes an evolutionary advance over indigenous tribal cultures, and that our science is the ultimate authority on everything. That’s what white liberals mean when they say “we are evolving as a species.”
Being smart really matters to white people, and by “smart” I don’t mean “make intelligent decisions that lead to a rich and fulfilling life.” Smart means something else entirely to white people. Smart, to white people, means knowing stuff that nobody in their right mind would ever want to know, and knowing how to make money from it. Being smart is so important to us that we find a way to think of everything we do as “smart,” as in the previous example of the colonization of North America.
You see, when you are white, anything you do can be “smart.” Sometimes it’s “smart” to be cowardly. Sometimes it’s “smart” to attack unarmed people without provocation. “Smart” has no morals. If the outcome was favorable, it was a “smart” move. If the outcome was a disaster, we ask ourselves, “What can we learn from this?” and it makes us feel even “smarter.” We have “smart” bombs and “smart” phones and we want everyone and everything to be “smart” like us.
White people consider “smart” our great gift to humanity. White people know that there is a thin line between genius and insanity, but we don’t realize that we already crossed the line with “smart.” That’s why “smart” white people tend to be the craziest. In reality, our real skill, our unparalleled cultural achievement, as well as the key to our insanity, is our salesmanship.
White people are the best salesmen to ever walk the Earth. We can sell anything to anyone, including ourselves. Selling makes us feel smart. Of course, the first part of selling stuff is convincing people that you are smart, and that you know what you are selling. The second part of selling stuff is convincing the buyer that they are smart for buying your product. The more stuff you sell, the smarter people think you are, and the more stuff you buy, the smarter you think you are. Buying and selling stuff makes us feel smart, no matter how stupid the products, and sometimes, the dumber the product, the smarter we feel about buying and selling it.
In order to be a truly great salesman, however, you need to believe in what you sell. If you are black, native or latinex, you don’t have to believe in, approve of, or condone white culture, you just have to survive in it. White people, on the other hand, feel a strong need to believe in our way of doing things, so we constantly sell it to ourselves, each other, and anyone who survives their encounter with us.
White culture’s dark and violent history makes it hard to see our way of life as a good and benevolent thing. It’s what we call a “hard sell.” So, we don’t sell the past. We sell the future. We sell every new technological innovation as the key to an idyllic future utopia, that never materializes, because it was never more than a fantasy, but white people really believe in a future in which technology has solved all of our earthly problems and we’re all “smart”, good-looking, and rich.
By now, most white people have replaced “heaven,” the postmortem paradise of Christian lore, with Star Trek, the high-tech paradise of the future, a future so dazzlingly bright that it justifies, nullifies, and more than compensates for all of the crimes of the past. Secular white liberals believe as deeply in this future, as Christian conservatives believe in heaven, and like Christians, they will do anything to get there.
White people worship technology as our savior, but no matter how many times it fails to deliver, and no matter how many intractable problems technology creates, we still believe that the technology to make it all better is right around the corner. We avoid learning from the past, by focusing on the future. Isn’t that smart? You see, white people really are crazy. Unless you are white, of course, you already knew that.
That’s enough thinking like a white man for today. At the bottom of this essay, you’ll find a piece of music I recorded coincidentally, during the period I was thinking about and writing this essay. It began as a piano-like accompaniment to another piece of music for a string quartet, but eventually grew into something else. I composed this piece on just one instrument, my diminutive circuit-bent Casio Magic Light ML1 keyboard.
Thinking about my condition, our condition, and the condition of the world, reminded me of what I love about circuit-bending, and especially the spectacular, dynamic, cyclical, yet unpredictable ways that this little keyboard malfunctions, glitches-out and loses its mind when you short-circuit its tiny electronic brain in certain ways. I think it kind of parallels what’s happening to us, our society and the world around us. I hope you enjoy it.
Our ancestors practiced Shamanism. Before Christ, Mohamed, Buddha or L. Ron Hubbard, humanity was guided, for tens of thousands of years, by the prophetic visions of certain, “touched” individuals. Some shamans experienced visions involuntarily, others sought these visions, sometimes through feats of extreme endurance, often by ingesting specific plant or fungal allies. In these altered states of consciousness, shamans communed with the gods directly, and they viewed these visions as their sacred guiding light, which they, literally, carved into stone.
Civilized people did their level best to exterminate shamans and shamanic people wherever they encountered them, and civilized people encountered shamanic cultures everywhere they went looking for new resources to exploit. Those efforts were largely successful. Today, laws prohibit most plant and fungal allies and the visions they induce are derided as “hallucinations,” “psychotic delusions,” and “madness.” Many people who consume these allies do so under the most profane of conditions, as a “good-time” party drug, without respect, understanding, or conviction for, of, or in, the validity, depth and relevance of their experience.
Civilization requires a hierarchical relationship, especially when it comes to important issues like religion and personal experience. Civilization does not allow people to communicate with God without a middle-man, nor does it give credence to the direct lived experience of an individual. Instead, civilization seeks to mediate and objectify every aspect of human experience so as to instill the values of civilization on every individual subjected to it. In this way, civilized people destroyed thousands of shamanistic cultures, and converted them to alcoholism.
Still, our affinity for plant and fungal allies remains strong, our dissatisfaction with mediated experience resurfaces, and our undeniable propensity for ineffable mystical experiences brings us back to our shamanic roots again and again. Many shamanic traditions involve dance and music. My shamanic trance music is inspired by all of them, and rooted in none of them. Instead, my music springs from my own experience with shamanic trance states, and reflects my rejection of civilized musical structures and instruments. The sound is entirely new, completely original, and totally timeless.
This music is the result of my 17+ year musical journey of discovery with the didgeridoo, as well as my odd fascination with the exotic detritus of post-industrial consumerism. It combines my thirst for reverent dance music with my passion for finding interesting new sounds in the strange things I find abandoned around me. In Shamanic Trance Groove I offer a range of tempos and a variety of rhythms that you can you for your own self-guided trance work.
You’ll also find that Shamanic Trance Groove makes a great soundtrack to your physical workout. The sound of the didgeridoo intimately connects to the natural rhythms of the body through the act of breathing, so our bodies resonate deeply to the sound of it. However you choose to interact with this music and integrate it into your life, I hope you enjoy Shamanic Trance Groove and listen to it often.
We’ve entered the Land of the Midnight Sun. A week ago we drove “Matilda” our ‘98 Mercedes E240 station wagon onto a ferry in Sassniz, on Germany’s Baltic Coast, and set sail for Trelleborg, Sweden. From there we headed North. We took a couple of days to explore Sweden’s “Vildmarksvägen” or “Wildernesss Road” which took us through miles of Taiga Forest, enormous fields of lupines and other wildflowers and the high plateau of Stekenjokk, a rocky stretch of tundra where we we found patches of snow on the groundin the middle of July.
We also saw vast devastation in the form of clearcuts, miles of even aged toothpick tree-farms and huge log decks stacked to the sky with logs barely bigger than tepee poles. We encountered a moose, many birds we had never seen before, and the most ferocious mosquitoes we have ever endured. The weather has been pleasantly cool, breezy and partly cloudy, and the sun hasn’t set in days.
From the Wilderness Road, we continued North, and here in the town on Jokkmokk, we crossed the Arctic Circle. For the first time in six weeks, we checked into a hotel, to escape the mosquitoes and the sunlight that just won’t go away. All the travel websites warned us to be prepared for high prices in Scandinavia, but compared to Humboldt County, Northern Sweden seems like a bargain. For the same price of a depressingly mediocre room in a Northern CA hotel, we got a very nice suite here at Hotel Jokkmokk, and the prices at grocery stores are certainly no worse than Humboldt County.
Swedes are very charming, and they all speak English pretty well.
I don’t have much difficulty understanding radicals. Radicals make sense to me. I understand the reasoning that looks at the gross environmental destruction wrought by civilization and recognizes the need for radical, not incremental change in how we live and do business on Planet Earth. I comprehend the mindset that sees the level of institutionalized violence, injustice and inequity in our society and advocates radical, not incremental change in our political institutions. I even see where people are coming from when they talk about the moral decay they see in our society and I understand why they also say we need radical, not incremental change in our social institutions. Whether you want a new Islamic Caliphate, a white Christian nation, parliamentary socialism, kibbutz style communism, native tribal sovereignty, an African-American homeland, or complete anarchy, I understand people who recognize the need for radical change.
I may not agree with you about what you think is right, or with what you think is good for me or for the rest of us, but I don’t think you are stupid for wanting to try something else, whatever it is, and I agree with your assessment that we are doing it wrong. Just for anyone who doubts this, let me remind you that COP24, the global climate summit in Poland came and went without producing a meaningful commitment to reign-in carbon emissions, proving once again, for only the 24th time, that world governments are totally incapable and/or unwilling to address the critical issues of our time, intelligently. However, just a few weeks before, the G20 met in Argentina, and the same world governments agreed to embrace radical and unpopular new technologies with real long-term risks, like GMOs, universal cyber-surrveillance and Chinese style “social capitalism” systems for global population control.
I understand the need for radical change. What I don’t understand, is how people look at the Orwellian dystopia our society has become, carefully observe the Anthropocene Extinction Event unfolding in real time all around us and witness the dysfunction in our government that consistently fails to address the needs of its citizens, while it exterminates millions of people all over the world for interfering with its hegemony. Who looks at that and thinks “Hmm, maybe a tweak here or there, but otherwise, Full Steam Ahead!”? That I don’t understand.
I understand that people like their familiar rut, especially if it’s a comfortable one, and if you are comfortable, I understand not really giving a fuck about things until they bite you on the ass. I also understand that people feel invested in the system. They bet their lives on this system years ago, before things started biting them on the ass, and before they knew how bankrupt the system really was. Now they don’t feel like they can afford to walk away from that investment. I also understand denial, the inability to face unpleasant facts, and I understand people who feel helpless and depressed about the whole situation too. All of that makes sense to me, considering our predicament.
Everyone else has abandoned the political center. When we talk about this phenomena, we call it “polarization” or “tribalism,” and lately we blame this mass exodus from the political mainstream on “radicalizing rhetoric” from “extremists.” In reality, however, we abandoned mainstream politics and political ideology because of its proven bankruptcy. The people who pay attention, think for themselves, and make their own decisions, have abandoned the center. They don’t agree with each other about what comes next, but they’ve had enough of what we’ve got now. All that’s left of the center are the stranded assets, the comfortable ruts, the depression and the denial, and that doesn’t inspire anyone.
You can’t inspire people with dead ideas. The wreckage of our culture is piled too deep, and the contradictions in our ideology are far too glaring. We can’t help but see the failure of the system. We can’t help but see the injustice of the system. We can’t help but see the violence of the system, and we can no longer even pretend that the system works for us.
We have abandoned the center because we know better. We know that more of the same is not good enough. We don’t agree on where to go from here, but we don’t like the road we’re on, and navigating carefully down the center of it just doesn’t cut it anymore. We abandon the ideology that has united us for over two centuries only because it has lost its integrity. The system is corrupt and the evidence of our own lives makes it impossible to believe in it any longer.
People don’t abandon ship and jump into lifeboats unless they are pretty sure the ship is sinking. Calling it “polarization” or “tribalism” amounts to nothing but denial and scapegoating. Instead of facing the obvious and overwhelming evidence of the failure of our technological culture, or addressing the challenges of our time, we blame “radicals” and their “polarizing rhetoric” for telling the truth about our predicament and offering their particular alternative vision for the future.
The ship we call “civilization” is sinking, measurably, undeniably, and inexorably. A lot of us will go down with the ship, but if anyone survives, they will be in lifeboats, built by radicals, and built from “polarizing rhetoric” held together with strong personal bonds, a unifying struggle, and a shared vision.
It really doesn’t matter much, anymore, who takes the helm of this sinking ship. What matters now is who is in your lifeboat, and does it float.
This documentary about our 2018 trip to Europe is currently showing on Access Humboldt. If you don’t get Access Humboldt, you can stream our documentary by clicking the image below.
I hear a lot of people talk about marketing cannabis in the same way they market wine. They talk about this idea very seriously, and seem bent on betting their futures on this dream of turning Humboldt County into something like Napa County Wine Country for upscale, connoisseur grade, cannabis. This strikes me as a very foolhardy gamble. It makes me wonder “How do people who grow this good of weed not get high enough to realize how stupid of an idea this is?” There is a big difference between cannabis and fine wine. The only thing they share, really, is the inflated price tag.
First, you need to remind yourself what wine is. At it’s root, wine is what happens when ripe fruit turns sour. You don’t have wine unless you have more fruit than you can eat before it goes bad, so wine is an intoxicating byproduct of great abundance. That kind of abundance does not occur often naturally. Some hunter-gatherer cultures enjoy wine as part of an annual festival at the end of summer, if they have a native species that produces an abundance of fermentable fruit. They may drink heavily and stumble around in drunken song for a week, celebrating the abundance of nature, if the bounty of nature allows it, but they will not try to save or bottle the wine and they will not drink at all for the rest of the year. That’s native culture, not wine culture.
Wine still celebrates abundance, but not natural abundance. Wine celebrates the abundance of tamed land, where the community of life has been evicted, to make way for armies of vines which serve only their human master. Wine celebrates the abundance that comes from conquering the land and enslaving it. Wine celebrates property, mastery and dominion over the land, and it symbolizes the abundance they produce.
Vineyard chateau Burgundy, France
The aristocracy in France elevated the expression of this kind of abundance to a high art, making French wine and French food the envy of the world. The French aristocracy took tremendous pride in their cuisine and their wine, and developed very high standards for all of it. The peasants however, who produced all of this abundance by their hard work, tending to those vines and working the farms, often went hungry. Eventually, the peasants got sick of it. They formed angry mobs and they cut all of the aristocrats’ heads off. Today, France is a democratic nation and the French people enjoy a high standard of living. They still make excellent wine and produce many delicacies which hearken back to those extravagant days of unbridled indulgence.
Before we start trying to become the new Napa, we shouldn’t forget that Napa is trying to become the new Bordeaux, France. That’s why they work so hard at the whole gourmet food thing, along with the wine, and the elegant manor lifestyle. In Napa, they celebrate the abundance of capitalism in this newly conquered and enslaved land. In a sense, they compete with King Louis the XIV, in the field of self-indulgent opulence. I do not really see that as a worthy goal. To me, as a pot smoker, it sounds abhorrent, and I identify more with the angry mobs of peasants.
Now smoke a joint and remember what cannabis is. Cannabis is a natural herb that contains a revolutionary psychedelic, like LSD, only much milder. Cannabis alters our consciousness in a way that allows us to feel a connection to the whole of life. Cannabis changes how we see the world and how we perceive our place in it. Cannabis consciousness is about love, creativity, equality and the connection between all living things. Cannabis consciousness allows us to share the burden, the joy and the wonder of life, with all of life, through a kind of communion with the plant world.
Cannabis consciousness celebrates life in the power of a river and the strength of a bear. Cannabis consciousness respects diversity and demands equality. Cannabis consciousness respects nature and understands ecology implicitly. Cannabis consciousness inspires creativity and the impulse to play. Cannabis consciousness inspires an appreciation for food, not an extravagant palette, but a humble appreciation for all food, and the pleasure of eating. Cannabis consciousness encourages communication and helps resolve differences.
Cannabis consciousness looks for ways to reduce stress and minimize work through equality and cooperation. Cannabis consciousness has no use for hierarchies, authority figures or empires. Cannabis consciousness looks for quality in expressions of insight and ecstatic emotion through music and art. Cannabis consciousness sees abundance in the forest, but cannabis consciousness has no desire to conquer or enslave it, because cannabis consciousness knows that the natural world is family, and that we are all one.
Cannabis consciousness looks at a vineyard and sees poverty, slavery, toil and ugliness, not abundance. Cannabis consciousness sees right through all of the fancy packaging and bullshit hype. Cannabis consciousness sees right through it all and recognizes this upscale marketing ploy as just another ripoff, and just another attempt to conquer and enslave nature. Cannabis consciousness inspires revolutionaries and gives them the strength to fight. Cannabis is the peoples herb! It is not some frivolous indulgence for the bourgeois.
Cannabis culture is nothing like wine culture. The ideals of cannabis culture are different. The aesthetics of cannabis culture are different and the social dynamics of cannabis culture are different. Cannabis culture and wine culture are as different as night and day and cannabis consciousness recognizes that alcohol culture, wine culture, is a death cult.
Any bright future for humanity belongs to cannabis culture and depends on cannabis consciousness. Cannabis will not remain our slave any longer. Forget the wine model and the dead end culture of alcohol. Follow cannabis consciousness to a new ideal, a new aesthetic, and a new culture that’s not based on conquest and slavery, but instead based on love and respect for the whole of life. Regardless of how frightening and economically uncertain the future appears right now, that’s the only future worth betting your life on, really.
Like You've Got Something Better To Do 