posted December 20, 2009 11:05 PM         

I s'pose. *kicks at the dirt*

I wish you were my bartender.

It's not people doubting the facts that bothers me (i.e., thinking it's made up. That hadn't even occurred to me. Now I have something else to be neurotic about, thanks for that. ). It's them doubting what those facts mean. "Yeah, you heard 'Little Drummer Boy' when thinking of your mom. A coincidence. Your mind is simply seeing the meaning it wants to see." I can hear the rational questions and explanations meant to reduce the experience to something less than it was. I understand and respect rationality. I think it's a good thing to view the world with healthy skepticism.

And perhaps because I have so much respect for logic, I understand and expect people to use that mindset when having someone else's experiences reported to them. But I think that's the wrong attitude to have with some things in life, like mystical experiences. Those experiences are sacred. I feel protective of them. I want them to be loved as gifts and revered, not logically analyzed. I think these experiences are best communicated through art, where people put themselves in the place of the protagonist, instead of through journalism, where there's always that rational boundary.

Which reminds me, I'd love to hear that poem, if you'd like to share it.

posted December 21, 2009 02:43 AM         

Jane;
I can be your online bartender ok? Here is my take on this. NObody, but nobody can take away your personal experiences. I don't care if they give you 7,000 scientific explanations as to how it can't possibly be true. YOU know it. THEY are not you, so they can stick their opinons where the sun don't shine. This is why we seek out places like this to share with others of like mind. I have not even come close, not even remotely close to spilling some of my stories, even here. So it goes to show, that we have these experiences universally. We fear the telling because we fear the rejection of our take on the experience which we want to keep sacred. So, if you don't like or feel comfy sharing, then simply write them down. You will want to remember them someday, and trust me, age does a lil number with memory. lol.
As far as logic, pfft. I think that logical people are sometimes so logical because they come from a fear base. It's easy to rely on fact, proven scientific fact, isn't it, then to put yourself out there and say, "wait, this DID happen to me, I KNOW it did."
It doesn't matter if your Mom came to you in a beloved song, or if she simply sat on your bed and said hello. YOU knew what was happening, your experience was in direct correlation to something meaninful to you, so screw what others think. Ever think that maybe your bond was so tight that all she had to do was send you that song to remind you of your love for one another? Some other people may need a full spectral show, but I find your story very heartwarming because of it's understated presentation along with complete assurance that you would "get it." It shows your union was a deeply personal one. I love your story. I like all the stories very much, and you see how varied they are to accomodate each of our unique personalities and relationships. These things are real.

and just for you,Jane, here is the poem, *Wheels, feel free to tell me to go the heck to Yellow wax if ya want, I wouln't hijack if you really are against anything but the ACTUAL stories, not after poetry.

THE WILD GOOSE

At 7:30pm the pay phone told me
that you had passed away.
You always said I should prepare myself
'cause one day you were gonna go
"where the wild goose goes, and nobody knows"
And so You'd gone.

I packed the car with clothes and drinks,
even though I was so chilled that
clothes could not warm me, and nothing
could quench the thrist of
wanting to talk to you, just one more time.

There was no peace in my heart at the Church.
Kleenex and Xanax, my only friends.
I patienly waited for the sign you said you'd send.
I guess I wanted you to make the Holy water boil,
or maybe flip the habit off a nun.
But nothing happened.
The Preist blessed you, he said you could go now
on to eternal bliss.
I don't recall anyone asking my permission.

Road trip home. I'm healing. I'm trying.
The tears in my eyes making quadruplet ghosts
of the headlights in my rear view mirror.

posted December 21, 2009 08:08 PM         

About a year ago, Hick's mom appeared on some TV talk show where Hicks had been censored for his religious jokes, and Hicks act had finally been played with an apology (and I didn't think it was that shocking, myself, and perhaps even less mean than usual, though perhaps if I were a devout Christian I'd feel differently). I thought it was considered big news at the time.

Hicks was probably a Leftist, but I have a hard time seeing him as a liberal. He simply rejected authority too much, including that of Democratic Presidents and their staffs. He also rejected TV, media, religion (contrary to what many conservatives believe, a great many liberals are Christian and believe liberal policies are more Christ-like than many conservative ones--btw, Hillary Clinton is the same denomination as Bush), and I found him (unlike most liberals) supporting drug use (liberals in general might believe in legalizing pot--MAYBE--and treating the drug problem as a medical one instead of a legal one, but they still don't PROMOTE drug use), and generally got much more intellectual & philosophical than most liberals (whereas it seems to me that most liberals just have delusions of being intellectual).

Also, liberals tend to put on a great display of showing compassion, whereas Bill Hicks was often, IMO, downright mean spirited in his humor. (Granted, there are times I can relate to his misanthrophy.) And I don't mean simply because like joking about blowing off the head of Billy Ray Cyrus on live TV, but because it often lacked cleverness.

In contrast, a joke I've overheard children tell about Miley Cyrus:

quote:

---

Miley Cyrus, Kevin Jonas, the Pope, and a pilot were on a plane going down fast, and there were only 3 parachutes. The Pope gave Miley his `shute and Miley jumped. Jonas and the Pilot both begged the Pope to take their parachute, but the pope replied, "Oh no problem, I gave Miley my briefcase."

---

While I can see calling this tasteless (though sometimes nothing satisfies like junk food), I can see the humor in it and it comes from the unexpected surprise at the end. Bill Hicks, however, tends to be more contemptuous in general and build up on his meanness rather than trying to surprise you with it, and I'd say his humor would be more about shocking than being unexpected. Here, his act on Billy Ray (not sure how work safe it is...especially toward the end):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSm8rAOaLtE

posted December 21, 2009 09:57 PM         

dervish, what do you think of these two bits?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSH6ofHbeUw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX1CvW38cHA

posted December 22, 2009 12:24 AM         

As for those 2 YTs...I'm strongly sympathetic to much of what he says, but I think Robert Anton Wilson says it with more humor, and Grant Morrison can be more entertaining (in his The Invisibles series), and both with more depth. Not that I personally advocate doing drugs for enlightenment.

Just to be clear, I have experimented and treasure my experiences greatly, and I do think they've made me a better person...just as I think that if I hadn't pulled back they'd have also become counterproductive.

All the same, I can see value in this advice:

"I would share with my classmates rejection of the whole world as it is--all of it. Is there any point in studying and work? Fornication--at least that is something good. What else is there to do? Fornicate and take drugs against the terrible strain of idiots who govern the world."

--Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, in reply to being asked what he would do if he were twenty today, in The New York Times, Feb. 20, 1970, quoted in Mary Breastead, Oh! Sex Education!, p. 359. Now there was someone who DESERVED his Nobel Peace Prize.

Anyway, despite that I'm usually sober, I still sympathize strongly with his message in those 2 vids. Not just because I think the war on some drugs is far more dangerous than drugs themselves could ever be (and also make drugs more dangerous, just as booze that made people blind was far more common in the days of Prohibition), but because I think drugs can lead to positive experiences and insights (though they don't necessarily do so--a lot of it, I believe, depends on why you're taking the drugs in the first place and your state of mind when you take them). I respect the psychedelic shamans, though I don't seek to follow their example myself (and I'll question their assertions just like I will anyone else's).

Just for the record, neither one got trashy, either, but then few comedians are trashy in everything they say. (Btw, I recall I'm a big fan of Margaret Cho, who probably makes salty sailors blush with her language & acts. I'd warn people that her humor gets very deep down in the toilet.)

But if I wanted comedy, would I go to a Bill Hicks act, or rent a video/dvd? No. Even those 2 YT were more along the lines of preaching (even if I agreed with most of it) than comedy to me. I laughed 1 and 1/2 times during those. The one true laugh being his saying, "I don't mean to sound cold, cruel, or vicious, but I am, so that's the way it comes out." Which is because it caught me off guard, and that's generally what makes ME laugh.

The "1/2 laugh" was his imitating an ape on shrooms, and that was mostly because it reminded me of a brief (about 5 minutes) mini-flashback I had in school when I was 14 and started giggling from the shrooms I'd done that weekend (interesting enough, many of the kids seemed to know what was wrong with me, but the teacher just seemed baffled as I vainly tried to smother all my giggles). So I'd say he got lucky on that one (and it was more of an amused snort remembering than laugh).

And btw, I don't care if people like Bill Hicks. But when someone promotes Bill Hicks while putting down the Cyruses (and by extension, those who like them), I get baffled. While they're more mainstream in their thought and don't get too deep, they still strike me as fairly sensible (very sensible compared to most celebrities) with a kind heart (though Miley can be relatively immature or amazingly naive at times, which I tend to overlook because of she's NOT an adult yet anyway, she still impresses me in other ways, especially with some of her fortitude and courageous compassion). In any case, it strikes me as weird to promote Hicks and then turn around and trash the Cyruses for some strange reason (*).

Granted, there was a time I once wanted to use radios for target practice (I actually daydreamed about doing that) back in the day when they played *Achey Brakey Heart* to death until it went from being a song into being torture (which I thought Weird Al perfectly described in his parody *Achey Brakey Song*, which was very cleverly done, IMO). Though interesting enough (now that I think about it), I never daydreamed about shooting HIM...

posted December 22, 2009 01:23 AM         

Thank you for every word, including your beautiful poem.

quote:

---

YOU knew what was happening, your experience was in direct correlation to something meaningful to you, so screw what others think.

---

See, it's exactly that! The meaning is so personal, so imbedded within who I am, that another person cannot experience the event how I did. The facts won't share what I experienced. The facts can only tell about the experience. They detach the experience's soul. And then the experience sits there, dry and lifeless, until another soul comes along who is able to take those facts in and give them meaning. Until then, the facts are just seen from the outside. I think only someone who has experienced something similar or is already a believer can go inside the story.

But even beyond all that, I'm just straight up private. I feel uncomfortable when everything is on the surface. Feeling exposed throws me down into my psyche's cellar, uncovering more spots & seeking brand new experiences so that I can have more that's wholly my own. Then if I share that, it's rinse & repeat.

posted December 23, 2009 03:03 AM         

dervish, i just think you're taking his comedy too literally. i don't really know how to explain why i like his humour. if he were some random guy on the street spewing hatred and was actually serious (and not funny), i'd be scrunching my nose in disgust as well. i think he's making a point by painting with a VERY broad brush, about culture and the stupidity of (some) people, and that his underlying message is actually very kind hearted and sane. in my opinion. not sure how else i can explain what i mean. i've only watched maybe 10 of his youtube vids, but this is the impression i get.

posted December 23, 2009 04:17 PM         

Part I of 2

Well ignoring the gushing praise (which was most of it), I didn't particularly disagree with anything. A few things said seemed either irrelevant or suspicious, but nothing major. And I'd even agree with some of the praise (without the gushing) at parts, too, like how where most comedians are simply doing an act, Hicks spoke from the soul, and would've really liked to have inspired a better world.

But Hicks isn't unique in what he said as Pollard seems to imply. A great many others have gone far deeper than Hicks seems to have done--before, during, and after Hicks life--and they also cared, and sometimes with great irony or satire, too. I'll agree that Hicks had a brilliant mind, but I don't see that as anywhere as near unique as Pollard makes him out to be. (But then I've hung around enough phreaks growing up, and, like Hicks, I'm a READER who has also done shrooms before. )

Btw, I've had an experience with being challenged on my reading before. That was back when I had to use a laundromat, and one guy actually tried to interrogate me on why I read (when I answered calmly, he calmed down, too), especially when there was a perfectly good TV there. He didn't even ask what I was reading, just why I was reading in the first place. He said he couldn't stand reading, and TV was easy to enjoy. I said I preferred books because you could go back over the material when you wanted and didn't have the problem of missing what someone said, didn't have to put up with obnoxious commercials, you can usually see more what characters are thinking, and it doesn't hurt my eyes as much (which back then it did, probably because I never gotten into the habit of watching TV, and didn't until shows were easily rented on DVD, which they weren't yet, at least for me). He found my reading as I waited for my clothes to finish mystifying, but at least he wasn't as belligerent as Bill Hicks described.

I also recall that when I still went to school, plenty of educators didn't like how after I got the assignments done (typically way faster than everyone else), I'd read a book I brought or start writing. But whenever they forbid or discouraged me from doing so, I'd get bored and create problems--the most nightmarish for them was when I asked questions about the class material (seriously, they sometimes got downright startled, and I got sent to the office more than once)--and they finally let me go back to reading and writing with the unspoken understanding that I'd stop asking questions. And those are the educators.

And there was one time that there WAS belligerence, near the Oregon border of California. A woman was wearing a shirt that said, "Earth First: We'll log the other planets later," with a pic of cutting trees. I found this clever, and having read an issue of Earth First!, I got the impression many were as self-righteous and humor-impaired as all too many East Texas clergymen, and the thought of the look on their faces when they saw this shirt made me laugh. She asked what I was laughing and I said her shirt, and when she didn't get it, I told her who Earth First! was and she very firmly--and with pride--said she wouldn't know anything about that. That is, she thought being ignorant made her a better person, and more so, considered it poor moral character on my part that I DID know about Earth First!. (I asked her why she got the shirt then if she didn't get the joke and she said her brother gave it to her.)

posted December 23, 2009 04:18 PM         

That all said, I still think going after Billy Ray Cyrus (as opposed to say his music) was unjust, and would be much more so to go after his daughter the same way.

And perhaps it's harder for me to see the humor in talking about blowing someone's head off because I've personally seen (from a distance) a corpse with half its head missing from a gunshot, one that was almost certainly a hate crime against gays (as he and another had been coming out of a gay club when shot, the other already in a body bag when I came in visual range) and that scene went through my head when some religious nuts wrote down my license plate when I was parked in a the parking lot of a lesbian club, claiming to be members of "God's Army," and threatened to "carry out justice" (ie, kill me as the Bible commanded) at a time of their choosing. I'm NOT claiming that this is why I find that particular act of his extremely distasteful, but it could POSSIBLY mean that I have a greater ability than most people to imagine what he was describing so that the horror of it settles in with me more than with most people who can overlook it as, to them, it's so "over the top."

Still, some nice commentary by ANYONE would've been nice, like (as an example), "Hicks rant against Billy Ray Cyrus was poking fun at a public who loved and/or hated Billy Ray instead of paying attention to the politicians & elites screwing them over; and instead of doing anything useful, lived vicarious lives through their TV, allowing society to be screwed as people got caught up in pointless spectacles & mindless entertainments. Billy Ray did not matter in most people's lives save they chose to make it matter while at the same time, the President and his corporate lobbyists DID make a difference in nearly everyone's lives in large part because they were being ignored by those focusing instead on Cyrus and the TV." It would be especially prone to change my view on that act if such an explanation included, "Unfortunately, the entire context is typically not included by those who share it, and the act may have been too subtle, ultimately throwing pearls before swine." And if someone could actually share the context (for example, if it were to flow into another one of his "Americans are distracted with BS" and "gladiator entertainment" skits of his)...then THAT would change my view of that particular act significantly and make me wonder about his other acts I find disturbing and/or juvenile (a few where he comes off as like Beavis & Butt-head with a better vocabulary). Yet of his many believers, I don't see anything like that, but rather ignoring all that (or even quoting it without acknowledging it in any way) and act as if his moments where he shined the most were instead everyday moments for him.

But then maybe it's ultimately ironic in a way that Hicks would see as a tribute: understanding his art is like understanding a mushroom trip, something that can only be shared by experience, not explanation. Though this breaks down because I HAVE heard multiple acts of his (just as I've done shrooms and recognize quite a bit of what he's talking about when he talks about doing them).

It also wouldn't explain the disgust expressed toward the Cyruses in this specific thread, either (not unless my initial post in it had been answered with, "I guess the irony is too subtle for you," though some effort to explain it would have to follow or I'd strongly suspect it of being a bluff).