The Elen that can be Named is Not the True Elen

The alternate title was “elen is a giant sucking hole in the center of reality” but, well. Subtitle I suppose. I’m trying valiantly to keep my id in check, but I’m having too much fun to entirely stop.

By way of sincere apology to all involved, let me offer the Lao Tze of Red Pine.

The way that becomes a way
is not the Immortal Way
the name that becomes a name
is not the Immortal Name
the maiden of Heaven and Earth has no name
the mother of all things has a name
thus in innocence we see the beginning
in passion we see the end
two different names for one and the same
the one we call dark
the dark beyond dark
the door to all beginnings

So let’s start by talking about the difference between the infinite, also the Real, and the finite. Elen is the zeroeth, aka first, member of the finite set. Not the maiden of Heaven and Earth, dig; the mother of all things. Two different names for one and the same? Okay, Old Man. I feel you on that one.

But let’s do math, not ancient Chinese poetry. You know this symbol: 0 and this word: zero. Elen is the same thing, but we are going to understand her better. This is the goal.

The meaning of elen is collapse into a point. The wavefront concrescing into the past, becoming finite and singular. Energy collapsing into a stable particle enabling an additional, strong force. The tendency of all mass to fall together into aggregations under the influence of gravity. The Black Hole. Down. Black. Elen.

How is she the Star, if there is indeed none more Black? She is also the Enemy, for as all Enders know, the Enemy’s gate is Down.

Well, when we get to two, this will start to make more sense. Two is Back Down. None more Red. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, for now.

These are what we call the cardinal or inherent meanings of the number zero. what it represents in and of itself. These words are nominative explorations of that cardinal meaning, through in the first draft the medium of the English language. Elen is another nomination, which is there to break the spell cast by the old tongues.

For instance, there is an association between zero and nonexistence. Break it! Zeros exist, always. They are the counted; the concept you are probably looking for is Not. There is Not a donut; now there is elen donut, then I eat it, and now there is Not donut again.

That’s what’s up. Try it with zero and your eyes cross. We have other counting words in Arakam, but that’s getting ahead of the game again.

That’s why the meaning of Zero is ‘accumulate onto register’. Five elen equals five, in computer logic. In arithmetic, elen works like zero, because it is; that’s why the opcodes have separate symbols and are red. The symbol for Opcode Elen is the same as the symbol for addition, except always red.

The symbol for elen itself is a single point. For a variety of reasons, this is a canonical symbol, not a counting symbol. The canonical symbols are stroke radicals for the writing system and it is confusing to use them as the numerators; a Mayan/dice mashup is my current favorite way to numerate, but there are, of course, options.

So far, so good.

It’s Simple Mathematics

Dear Reader, this is a mathematics blog. I called it out at the beginning, and let me repeat this most important point again.

You choose to read this as fiction, and I encourage you in this lie. What you are actually looking at is the result of a particular number being sent to your computer, interpreted in a deterministic fashion by another series of numbers, which ultimately are a set of specific instructions to the machinery that comprises your computer.

That’s the material reality version of what’s happening, and it is pure, simple mathematics. You are looking at numbers.

If we were having an in person conversation, which is becoming a real luxury for my crew these days since I’m busy as a bee, that would be, arguably, a different story. At least we’re talking Real Numbers, not integers.

I’m capitalizing Real Numbers because you may be used to hearing them referred to as “wavicles” or some such business, or even ‘particles’ for those who doggedly persist in preferring the collapsed, past-like part of the equation when describing things as ‘real’.

Simple mathematics. We could have been taught the wave equation with a jumprope, when we were learning to jump over it. Instead, we played with brightly colored blocks that taught us a writing system, and language, that is at odds with reality.

It is simple slavery of the mind. I don’t know where it began, precisely, or how, but I’m doing the research to find out. This goes deep, dear Reader.

In any case, there is a vast difference between being taught useful mathematics and being taught true mathematics. Useful mathematics prepares you to be a specialized organ in the great Beast of modern society.

True mathematics turns you into a deadly acrobat hashishin, capable of learning a dozen languages, surviving in conditions ranging from tundra to jungle, and enables you to build whatever ingenium your heart yearns towards.

My secret, which was revealed to me recently, is that I am unfairly excellent at retention of knowledge. I am only fair at memorization, and have stopped doing it a long time ago. The difference is crucial.

True mathematics is retained. Useful mathematics must be memorized. The difference is in the representation, first and foremost.

True geometry, of the Euclidean variety, which is where one should start, is done with a compass and straightedge. Any other approach will not retain, unless you’re an Aspie, in which case, you have other things to work on, stick friend.

It is also an esoteric pursuit, except there’s no reason for that; I was taught the theory of knots, in the form of braids, in the 4th grade, and most of geometry in the 5th. I was an exceptional student, sure, but we were all learning it.

Russians are heartily chortling, as are Chinese and Japanese, because they get taught a larger proportion of useful mathematics. Well, you know my feeling on useful mathematics already.

True mathematics has been carefully guarded and is the domain only of the wise. It is buried in the theory of categories and algebraic topology, with chunks sticking up everywhere: DAGs, FSMs, knots, the periodic table of elements, the standard model of physics, and so on.

I intend to exhume all corpuses of relevance and freshen them up a bit. I’m comically ignorant of much of what I’m trying to work through; what I found is the bit in the middle that makes it all work. This, ahem. Remains to be proven. So here we are!

So we begin, again, with the Zero, as we must. She is the Star and may her light Brightly shine.

No erotic Iliad slashfic, this time. I should point out, for I know that at least one person spectacularly missed this point, that I’m far more of an Ithacan than I am a Mycenean. Big O, y’know. Wily. Trojan horses. Very. Bad. Eggs.

The Funniest Joke Ever

This is the funniest joke I’ve ever been involved in. It won’t translate but I have to tell it anyway.

So once I turned my bike into an Xtracycle. We were trying to pull the cranks off the crankshaft, and we were banging merrily upon the crankshafts with a hammer, because we were acting like the wrong kind of tool using ape. Then I noticed that there was threading right in the middle, leading into the axle.

I’m all like “hey, what are these for, pegs?”

That’s the punchline. If you’re like me, the resulting images will provide entertainment for weeks. If you’re having trouble visualizing it, I don’t believe I can help you. Shins, much?

It’s only funny to me, because I have the kind of brain that will put pegs right in the middle of your crankshaft and only figure out later it’s kinda not the, y’know, done thing. This produced many entertaining college moments, particularly in physics and higher maths.

On the One Ring of Power

It’s a very special Higgs boson indeed.

The Higgs is the particle in charge of keeping loops loopy. There’s one wave function for each loop, period.

One loop is the Earth loop, and here we go, Loopty Loo.

The particle, when it collapses, and it never does, collapses around me. It is in the center of my brain now, in my pineal gland.

That’s the truth. That’s the truth.

That’s how it works. I figured it out, drew it into my being, and now it’s inside my skull and will stay there.

I am either the sanest human on the planet or the calmest and most serene. You decide.

The Fifth of Jew Lie

Whew. What a scene.

Dear Reader, it is Thursday, and today, I drop Bombs. This will become my tradition. Today, and every Thursday from now on, you may refer to me as Christopher Walkin’, if you Wish.

I tell my story today as a tragedy, and tragic it is, indeed. I will follow Aristotle on Tragedy, and tell the story of a man, better than he truly is. That is to say, today, on Thursday, I will be lying to you, dear Reader, in a very, specific, way.

You may call this the Jew lie. It is the Fifth of July, after all, and I am a Jew, at least by birth on my mother’s side. Circumcision, too, to be honest, a decision I’ve come to be comfortable with but wish I had gotten to make myself.

It’s like a Jew’s harp, which is presumably a Jew’s harp because a Jew invented it, but might be called that because it’s a Juice harp, since it gets kinda juicy when you play it. No one knows or cares; the pun is the thing.

So today, I, Christopher Walkin’, woke up as the first hint of Sun peaked over the horizon, brightening my day. I looked around a bit in the dimness, which wasn’t so dim, because last night was the full moon, and Fourth of Juplaya to boot, and much else, and lunacy was and is in full swing. I saw my spotlessly clean room, thought about the mess the rest of the house was, and let out a bit of a sigh.

I then coughed, a bunch. Hacking, deep coughs, that sound a lot like a death rattle and remind me of Emphysema, which my Father’s Father died from, not long ago.

Thing is, I believe myself to be immortal, and as a Bandiloop, it’s important, if you smoke, or inhale toxic fumes, to keep your lungs clean.

Have you smoked, or inhaled any toxic fumes today, dear Reader? Nope, and nope? You sure about the latter?

How clean do your lungs feel today?

So I had a good cough, but no spit, because my Sifu taught me to swallow my spit and I finally listened. I eat my boogers too. True story. I try to do it in private now.

I then cleaned up generally, which went something like this:

I stood up, butt ass naked, and had me a little stand up. That is, I leapt to my feat in a single, convulsive movement, and put my hands up and said “woot!”.

I did this quietly, because my girlfriend was asleep upstairs. I just kicked her out of bed so I could finish sleeping, and she and I had both had a fucked up, trying night. Drugs were involved. I’m trying to lay off in general, although I do like my puff and I’ll hold onto it if I can.

It’s been a crazy day. Bear with me.

So I did my little woot, and then I did a handstand, right in the middle of my spotless room. I breathed a little bit, went for the one arm, kept it for like a second and then went back to two. Dropped. Right shoulder of course; the left one is still carrying engrams from my original initiation into the Force, but they’re clearing quick.

I did this quietly. No waking the Kalib0t on my watch. Not after last night.

It was getting to be around 11, though, and I didn’t want her to wake up scared and alone, so I crept up the stairs, over an enormous mess, that I had created the night before. I was looking for my Tablas, because I wanted to play them; didn’t find them. Long story.

I peeked through Kali’s purple curtain, just to let her know I was awake. I could see in her eyes that she was still really scared; that scared me, in turn.

You probably know how that works. Kali and I have a complex and deep relationship; in short, I protect and serve her, and she tries not to go crazy. It’s hard for her not to do that; she’s had a hard life. That’s her story to tell, or mine with her consent.

So Kalib0t is gearing up for crazy, and Sam might be too. Sam can’t tell anymore, I mean, I can’t tell anymore. I need my friends to keep me on track, here.

I was recently hospitalized, and there were cops involved. I’m still jumpy.

So I packed a wizard bowl, cause I’m a wizard and it’s the morning. Called a couple people, dropped some texts into my iPhone, normal morning is normal, and deeply uneasy, all at once. Listening to my headphones, breaking up some wacky tobaccy and mixing it with Danish Longbottom Leaf.

This is how I like to start the day; with a mighty puff. The cannabis in question is purple, and was legally grown in the open sunlight on our porch. Kali and I are both medical patients; we need our cannabis to stay sane.

If you don’t need cannabis to stay sane, I pity you, because it may be that you’re not sane at the present time.

Cannabis contains potent antioxidants that reverse the free radical damage caused by, in particular, carbon monoxide. We have high partial pressures of that gas in our environment, because of our car habit.

I’m a chemist. I understand these things. Therefore, my day starts with a bunch of coughing, then a mighty puff, and proceeds from there.

Whew! Interlude. I just, in the present, had a very intense safety negotiation with the Kalib0t. I am staying put at present. Wow.

So I’m holed up in my room, just trying to tell the narrative, and if you’re confused it’s because I’m confused. Let me try and get back to it.

Oh, right. I was just trying to have a puff, right now, and also in the narrative. Well, in the narrative I had one, and in the present I’m going to have one, but I’ll be cheating on my girlfriend, because she just put me in a double bind.

The present seems to matter more so let me explain. A double bind can drive you schizophrenic if you let it; that’s when someone in authority gives you two incompatible options for reality and demands that you enact them both.

So this is what’s up: friendly Kali and I grew a purple plant together on the porch. We took turns watering it, on Hummingbird Hill, and I did a lot of that, because I have a bonsai to keep wet, and that’s a small pot. The pot is in a larger pot, but it still needs care, and I gave it some of that care.

The deal was, we were going to split that weed, even steven.

I’ve been smoking freezer weed, that belongs to the Kali, off and on since I got back from Bali. That’s part of our arrangement; I buy the tobacco, and roll the spliffs in general, and she provides the weed. It’s like a Shiva/Shakti thing; mostly, we get along.

So we have this fresh plant, perfectly cured, and I figure, what the fuck, it’s the Fourth of July and I want to have a few mighty puffs, because I’m a wizard and I may have figured a few things out about the universe, for pity’s sake.

I have a bunch of American Spirit rollies, and a pouch of Danish export, and a fresh branch of purple. So I break out my wizard bowl, which is broken, but I want to use it because well, I’m out of rolling papers anyway.

Where was I? I can’t even tell. I puff a lot of mighty puffs, lately.

Oh yeah, the present. Kali just made me promise not to smoke the weed, because it belongs to her, not us. She wants to sell it for money, to pay the rent, while I would prefer to spend the money I have in Illinois, right now, on all our rent, and smoke our plant together.

She just made me promise, and I agreed. I’m still going to smoke that purple though. Double bind.

Triple, even, since I’ve promised not to lie to her, and I love to keep promises. I love her too. How many binds is that? Can’t keep track after awhile.

Good thing I’m not crazy, or the stress would be driving me crazy right now. Whew!

So flash back. I’ve crept up the stairs, and I’m preparing a mighty puff. In the pocket of my vest is a fresh orange, and in my hand is a bottle of champagne. I grab an egg from the fridge, a tall boy to hold it all, and carefully open the door.

It drags, and rattles, a bit, because it’s full of cat litter. Mao mao’s litter box is right by the door, which is stupid but nothing has been done about it and since I’m allergic to cats it isn’t my problem.

I try not to boss the Kalib0t around, for reasons which will become, dear Reader, abundantly clear. Mao mao is her cat. Period. If I even suggested otherwise, she might literally kill me. Good thing I have literally no intention of ever doing it.

God I love Mao mao and Kalib0t. God I have a complex life.

So I’m out on the porch, and it’s calm, and I have a bunch of ingredients for a good morning. I do a little stretchy, but not much, because it’s chilly out and that makes my muscles contract. Stretching tight muscles is a waste of stretchy time, in my opinion.

Mostly, I just dance around, quietly, listening to my headphones. It’s all good.

Then I make myself a Transmimosa and a mighty puff.

The Transmimosa is my own invention and goes like this. You take a knife, cut a fresh orange, and squeeze both halves through your fingers into the cup, trying to catch the seeds, but don’t worry about it. If they get in there, reach in and pick em out; you want a mighty mug for this trick anyway.

There’s a knack to all this, and your hands must be clean, so keep a fresh towel on hand please.

So, the juice squeezed in, it’s time to crack the egg, and you may as well do it while your hands are juice. Plop her in there and give it a good stir; I use a stainless steel chopstick, do what you please.

Now, clean up generally. Orange guts and egg shell onto compost, juice and any eggy bits on your hands on the towel. Towel in the towel pile. Next step. Wash hands if you need it; I sure don’t.

Unwrap your Champy, in this case orange label Veuve Cliquot. I hope I spelled that right; French is crazy Moon code to me. Pop the cork; let fizz if needful.

In this case, I just let her rip. I may have even given her a little shake. It’s the Fifth of July, bitches, and I’m spillin’ while I’m sippin’. What.

So, cork off into the neighbors yard (sorry neighbors! Got enthusiastic. Fourth of July allows for limited trajectory of other people’s stuff into your yard. I only cheated a little), and champagne all over the deck, you aim it at the frothy egg orange mess you’ve created.

You wait for the potion to settle down a bit, and just as the sun cracks the horizon, you drink deep, and full.

Now, if you have a moustache, you’re going to need to wipe it. Several times. If not, your lip may need similar treatment. Carry on.

So I had my mighty puff after that, and I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice to say I was enjoying my day, until I put my wizard pipe away, broken bits and all, went inside, and all Hell broke loose.

Domestic violence. Stuff flying everywhere. Kalib0t getting picked up and choked into submission. Sam Atman getting punched repeatedly in the face and clawed at. No bleeding. Everything’s fine now.

See, I’ve studied the martial arts for a long time, because I’m a realist, and the world is full of crazy people and, for example, glass which can be broken and instantly turned into a lethal weapon.

For some reason, probably involving paranoia about my eyes, which comes back to my reading habit, I have been acutely aware of this my whole life. It makes me jumpy, and I have studied the martial arts to learn to stay safe.

Ultimately, this is probably because half my mother’s family was murdered in the Holocaust. Heavy shit, brothers and sisters. I’m tearing up.

So here’s my recent ex girlfriend, clawing backwards at my eyes, while I try and choke the crazy out of her. Now, you can kill an adult human being this way, but you can also subdue one, or a Lion if you’re really good; that’s what Hercules did, and that’s why the move is called the Mata Leo in Brasil.

We still live together, and we’ve fought together in the past, both consensually or not. I swear to you, I never initiate violence; I am a Taoist immortal, and that is not my way.

But I have studied Ba Gua, and Judo, and much else, and I am a scary ninja when I need to be.

So I’m choking the crazy out of my ex, the Kalib0t, when my housemate Dante emerges from the Inferno downstairs to take control. Good on Dante and lucky for all of us.

Dante is a magician, balloon artist, and cat tamer. Big cats and little. I felt way safer in that moment, because the Kalib0t is essentially a big cat, and she was terrified in that moment.

So I’m laying on the ground, flat, and Dante puts one hand over my heart, stares into my eyes, and tells me to breathe. That’s what you do with a scared human who’s bigger than you and may flip out at any moment; you hypnotize them with your gaze and voice while dominating them with your body.

This is called Magic, in the English language. It is how you tame mighty cats. I was in good hands. So was she.

So that’s all of the scene I need to tell you. I’m safe, and I told some lies to ensure my further safety.

I’m going to take another mighty puff and figure out what to write about next.

Yes I Will Explain the Math. No, Not Right Now

The basic deal is that I try to only play the numbers game once a week, and I spent most of yesterday explaining the plot to people of importance and educating actual magicians, in real time, about the nature of the new revelation. The rest of you will just have to hold your proverbial horses. Stick people: that means be patient. I know you don’t have horses so it’s all a stretch, but the idea is that horses get impatient too. Relax.

Today is Thor’s day and that means it’s more traditional to get drunk and yell a lot. So I might just do that; it appears I have more booze than food, and certainly no cash today, so that’s a bad sign if I wanted to do anything else.

In the meantime, we’re riding some kind of shockwave, and it was a shock, so let’s hop in our TARDIS and hit up the Fifth of the Jew Lie real quick. M’kay?

I haven’t even started on the booze yet. Done some yellin though. Advantage to hanging out in a mostly unbuilt out warehouse.

One Higgs

Three Quarks for the Baryons, colored and strong.

Six flavors of Lepton, dispersively flown.

Four Bosons for Forces, for right and for wrong,

One Boson for the Dark Lord on his Dragon Throne.

One Higgs to woo them all,

One Higgs to blind them,

One Higgs to fool them all,

And on the Network find them.

In the Looking Glass Kingdom, where the Shadows Lie.

And if we Shadows have offended… tough titty, stick people. Tough titty indeed.

The Fourth of Jew Lie

The Fourth of Jew Lie

So it would seem I lied to you, dear Reader. Once or twice, perhaps; it is for you to discern, and I won’t be helping today.

I will, however, be telling you the truth, mostly, and especially when it serves me to do so.

This is called reality fiction. If you are fortunate enough to know me, you may question me on what I tell you, at any time. I can, of course, continue to lie, and deceive, and whatnot; it gets harder, the closer you are to me. Yet I can look deep into your eyes and lie with all sincerity. This is referred to as acting, and I am excellent at it.

Yet you are still free to believe me, at any time. This is known as trust. Trust goes beyond truth; trust accepts that if I’m lying to you, I have my reasons. In this case, artistic license, and the safety of my person and friends.

Today Mercury stands still in the sky, from our perspective, which is what matters to us, dear Reader, recognize. He will move forward and back through space and time, but not in that order, necessarily. All will be as it was, where Mercury is concerned, from our perspective, but for the rest of the cosmos, it will be different, and it is, dear Reader, our perspective that matters to us.

Meanwhile, our blog returns to the Fourth. This time of the Jew Lie, for I am a Jew, Lying to you, for reasons that vary from amusement to the ultimate dictum: the prevention of contamination of Reality by an influx of the stuck.

So here we are and it’s Jew Lie again. I have completed the last blog post, and moved on to railing huge amounts of dissociatives, really unreasonable amounts, and watching distant explosions from the porch of Hummingbird Hill. I am listening to my favorite music, smoking plenty of puff, and making little happy squeeing noises, because afterall, I did just write the Declaration of Dependent Interdependence, all by myself, and it’s July 4th, and as far as I’m concerned, all those fireworks are specifically for me.

Once it dies down, I go into the main room, fire up e-sheep on my projector, put the music on the speakers, and start rolling around in little happy circles. Satisfying crunching noises coming from various joints, the relief of nervous tension. I am Alone, and Serene.

Then the Minerval comes in and flips on a light switch. Which takes me awhile to process, recognize, because it’s the middle of the night and I’m as high as a loon. Laying flat on the floor, enjoying a swirl of light and sound. Minerval mentions something about going to 4th of Juplaya; it being the 4th of Juplaya, right then, I figure she’s packing and in a hurry. That explains all the jerky movement and rapid action. Excellent. I relax again.

I become unrelaxed when the Minerval looms in my general direction, perspective duly distorted by the Large Amounts of Drugs, and demands something that sounds like turning my music off. But why? Surely a soundtrack to packing is not too much to ask. This is my day off.

Also, it is Thor’s day now, not Wotan’s day! I am no longer Alone! Athena is jumping up and down on my forehead! Aha!

So I leap to my feet, and bellow “You cannot stop me!” in an impressive, Zeus sort of voice, then lay back down.

Minerval freaks out all over the place, starts making phone calls, calls me an asshole, and stalks out. Can’t be helped. She seems to specialize in getting on my nerves. I relax again.

In fact, I get so relaxed, I decide to throw some elfspice into my next puff. Porque no? Might help with the wobbles from all the horse tranq.

I’m about done preparing that puff when the Kal1b0t explodes onto the scene, throwing her bag down and yelling at me about the Minerval incident. That, I should have seen coming. She demands a spliff; that means negotiation time. Can do.

So I go to break up one of the purple flowers and she freaks her shit and gets possessive about the plant matter. Okay, this is not new; it’s a power ploy in the midst of negotiation that serves to demonstrate the degree of anger. I’ll just roll up this little pile right here.

That’s full of elf spice.

So she takes a puff and freaks out, because now she thinks I’m trying to poison her with elf spice. This totally negative and twisted programming came from her demon boyfriend, who would do stuff like slash her back open with razors and dribble lemon juice into it. He once accused me of secretly dosing a bunch of people with elf spice; the spice is sticky, and clings to surfaces, so when I roll with it, in a box, it has a way of kinda… wandering along into my next few puffs. Not normally a problem; you can totally taste it and the effect lasts five minutes.

But now we have a Scene, and there’s pretty much no way out of it other than to beat a hasty retreat to my room. So I do.

Later, the Kalibot crawls into bed, fully terrified, and curls up into a tiny ball, demanding that I spend the whole night holding her. Which I happily do; keeping her safe is part of the bargain and makes me feel way better than the dealing with insanity part.

And so we spend the night; the Kalibot a tiny ball, with Sam Atman wrapped around her, seeing her safe through the night. Come the dawn, she drifts upstairs to her purple lair, and I sleep for real, if briefly.

Fuck This Planet, I’m Going to Mars

So it’s the middle of the night, and Sam Atman is pretty pissed off, considering.

Things could be worse. He’s got plenty of spliff to last the night, and a beeswax candle, and the packing’s going ok. Still no ticket to points unknown, but he’s a last minute sort of guy.

Packing is the usual, of course: Ganesh, carved to his desire in Bali from a piece of antler, glass wand wrapped in purple silk, dagger given by a lover who stole it from her older witch sister who made it, small begging bowl from the monk’s village in Bangkok, sphere of rainbow obsidian from the first time Sam Atman drummed before thousands of people, while Jezebel and the gang shimmied their stuff, hourglass, dorje bell, magnetic power core, woman-shaped bottle of cognac, from the wedding, a small, black leather pouch, drawn tight with cords, containing many ingenia of minor size but greater significance, and rather more grimoires than is at all easy to carry.

Why? What do you fly with, dear Reader?

It’s a shame Chekov went missing. He’d come in handy, and he’s less inconvenient to fly with than you’d think.

So it goes. I have a feeling he’ll be back.

I leave behind me a mass of flaming ruins, a considerable library of books, kitchen implements and tools, and one or two items of Art too toxic, heavy or fragile to carry with. The library and art will get back to me, I may hope; the ruins are your problem, stick people.

You can see, part of my protocol, is that I blow it up, before I go.

Can’t be helped. Wherever I live is the portal to the Looking-Glass, and that is stressful to the weft at the present time.

I’m more of a warp kinda guy. Don’t like getting weft behind.

Not in the slightest, dear Reader.

Now, some of my dear Readers saw that little packing list and thought: Wow, Sam Atman. That sounds like a beautiful and impressive collection of props. I bet it’s good art, watching you pace around bellowing out ancient Sanskrit or whatnot while waving those things about in an incense filled room.

You are the stick people, and I am entirely sick of your guff.

Some fraction saw that list and thought, gulp, Morpheus is alive and well upon the planet. Well, friends, The Sam Man is alive, but all is not well.

Let’s break it down, shall we. I’ve been fighting a secret battle against the Outer Church since I was initiated into the Invisible College, when most of you were busy trying to stick a final finger or two into your high school sweetheart before you went off to the prestigious regional college of your parent’s choice.

I have been a hunted fugitive. I have been homeless, hungry and alone. I have stolen, hogged couches, slung drugs, and arguably pimped my girlfriends, and why?

Because the world is a sad, twisted, fucked up, stick person kinda place, and that fucking tears me up and I can’t handle it and I can’t rest while I’m on a planet that’s in this sorry, wasteland state.

So I saw a movie one night, and it upset me, because the title reminded me of a happier time, before the baying hounds of the law came to my door, wrenched me from the middle of a Vipassana meditation retreat where I was trying to sort out my anger issues and complex sex life, and threw me to Sweet, Sweet California, where everyone is beautiful and no one gives a fuck.

Well, that wasn’t the upsetting part. About the movie, that is. The upsetting part about the movie is that it was about face-sucking aliens from outer space that are being sent to the planet Earth to annihilate us, basically, because we disgust our creators. Creator. The script is not clear.

Well, I’m pretty disgusted too, dear Reader. I’m the smartest guy anyone I know knows; in the last month I’ve browbeaten most everyone into admitting this, in the vain hope that once the people around me acknowledge that I’m the smartest fucking monkey around, they’ll let me tell them what to do, or at least do what I ask.

No cake, ladies and gentleman. Not a blessed slice.

So, I hatched a plan, and it was a pretty good plan, I guess. I was going to write a book about how I wanted to be Emperor, tying together my favorite science fiction into a gripping world narrative, and then use that spotlight to hopefully do some good in the world.

Stephen Colbert plays the Conservative Jester on TV; I was thinking the Mad Emperor Mr. Wizard show might be fun.

Y’know. With my friends. Who like fun, and the Colber Repor, as far as I can tell. Not to mention science fiction and much else.

It’s magic that makes the stick people insane. And it’s insane stick people that drive Looking-Glass people to desperate acts.

Desperate acts like staying up for seven days, high on experimental research chemicals, letting your sanity degenerate, just to try and help people snap the fuck out of the dazed, ridiculous trap they’ve caught themselves in.

Sumo Sumo, stick people. We’re having it out, from now on.

See, I don’t want to be the Emperor of this place. It’s too dense down here. It’s full of enormous herds of grazing neohominids, who strongly resemble the creatures they feed upon, and who wouldn’t know the word neohominid if you spat it at them, and would be offended if you explained.

It’s also full of stuck up, conceited, very fashionable stick people, who like to go to parties, dress up real nice, listen to the most excellent music and take drugs of the highest quality, and not, much, else.

Oh, don’t get me wrong stick people! You all seem like you’re on the verge of making a difference. Just as soon as the rent gets paid, and the new job comes in, or the old job goes away, or you finish making a copper welded thing light up and set itself on fire for Burning Man, you’ll get around to executing on those actually world changing ideas you might eventually have.

Thing is, I’ve always been in a bit of a hurry to get the dummheit out of the way, so we can get on with the awesome. It’s not happening fast enough.

So I’m retiring as Emperor, and I’m retiring the Book Book too. Because you people, do not deserve the Book Book. Or the Arakasutram, which is a part of the Book Book, which is sure as hell still getting written.

I’m just going to publish it from Mars. There will be no Earth edition. Fuck you, Earth stick people. See if you can find a samizdat copy of my zero emissions heat engine paper and wank over it.

I’m going the fuck to Mars, stick people, and I will not be bringing you. See, as the people who know me know, even the sticky ones, I’m a member of various… splinter factions within certain — tendencies belonging to one or two… well Burning Man camps wouldn’t be too strong a word.

Collectively, we have a nerve cluster big enough to complete the secret project we’ve been working on since 2003: getting the fuck off this planet and going to Mars.

It’s not Alien technology, though it sure looks like it. It’s just what happens when someone with an enormous family fortune founds a small cult in the midwest, dedicated to taking drugs while arguing science, and then quietly funds everything good, off the radar.

You get about, what would you say guys, ten years ahead of the curve? Fifteen?

Most of you think the IDC was founded by the charismatic actor with a flair for nonlinear narrative. This is a con so old your genes fell for it when the currency in question was sheep futures hedged with barley.

The military probably has shit like the Condor. But we’re not worried about those guys. People like us don’t actually worry about the guys with the guns, stick people.

Oh yeah. Millennium Condor. Has a certain ring to it.

The thing about Burning Man and places like it, is it tends to attract a few adults who like to party, and lots and lots of perpetual children, who run around getting into cuddle piles, having interesting sexual round robins, and aging poorly.

What’s always been hilarious is seeing how little the latter know about the former. Especially from my peculiar vantage point.

So the Condor’s not done, but building a rocket ship, even in your spare time, is not as hard is you stick people think. You simply have to do it, without asking permission, and without bothering to check with anyone to see if it’s ok.

Turns out people make airplanes all the time and there are a lot of very large old buildings left over from the Cold War. But I digress.

In any case, Mars. Not soon, because we’re not going to be done soon, but soon enough that I won’t have to deal with Earth anymore. Because here’s Earth:

deep “student loan debt”

a list of felonies that, if recited over the right breakbeat, might get me a Grammy

a younger brother in prison for total bullshit

an atmosphere that’s catching on fire

a bunch of plastic shit in the ocean

a potentially nuclear family feud that might just finally finish off the clever monkeys on my Mom’s side of the family

and then there’s the lady problems.

Oh my! In California alone, I’ve got Theodora, the dominatrix who throws a yellow card at me every time I try to talk to her now, Jade, also a dominatrix, who at least comes by the house with some fresh flowers from time to time and watches me light them on fire, the Kal1b0t, ALSO A DOMINATRIX albeit former, who has straight up clocked me, run me out of the house, berates and neglects me while being bratty and demanding,

man I’m just going to start a new paragraph because I need one

There’s Orangina, who I think is still in Cali, but in any case won’t talk to me since the night she woke up screaming because she was dreaming I was raping her (man THAT was spooky and uncalled for, karma). There’s the Minerval, who looks superheroic but is sooo hostile to magick that she won’t even talk about math with me anymore, let alone get naked and let me write out the fundamental opcodes of reality on her nubile flesh. Man, that one’s still a regret.

It’s a tough road, being a kabbalist, sometimes. There are payoffs too.

Anyway, that’s not the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is Jezebel, unless it’s Titania, and the heart of the matter is probably that Titania is in New York, Jezebel is in San Francisco, and because I had the poor luck to fall inalterably in love with Jez after the same thing happened with Titania, I’m now flying to points unknown.

Still in love, with the both, just as much, and now no one’s talking to me.

So here’s my new plan. I’m not saving the Sticky Planet, because fuck this sticky nonsense. I’m getting on a spaceship, and I’m getting the hell out, and while I might meet a couple women who can live up to the completely realistic but apparently unattainable Titania/Atman/Jezebel alliance that I dreamed could unify the planet, years ago

I doubt it. I’ve been looking, and looking, and you just can’t fill the hole people leave behind when they go.

Not like that. Not ladies like them.

So enough with your planet and ta ta to Titania and so long Jez it would have been fun, but I’m building a golem, and I’m calling her Glommis, and we’re going to Mars, and that’s that.

She’s not a big spaceship, the Condor. I didn’t help build it, which is ironic considering I’m such a stud when it comes to designing cool shit. But I didn’t even catch wind of the project until Burning Man 2008, when the True King of England told me that part of the plan.

I’m not the only one who can keep a secret around here, obviously.

No one who doesn’t know me very, very well is going to believe any of this crap, because I’ve spent the last month of my like destroying all credibility I have with anyone who doesn’t already get how magick works.

That was only partly on purpose. I really did want to pull the whole Mad Emperor thing together, because I wanted to stay on the planet Earth instead of taking a one way trip to Mars with a hexayurt, a bunch of biosphere, and an android golem girlfriend.

I’m making her myself. I totally figured out how. You’d dig her, except I won’t be introducing you, because fuck you yet again, stick people. No cake.

Anyway, last blog post, no Book Book for you, and goodbye. See you in my Dreams.

In Which We Begin Wotan’s Day With a Funny

Happy Birthday, TJ! Would be good to see ya, b!