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Sunday, June 5, 2011

Band Mates Begin Mind-enhancing Experiment Without Hallucinogens.

This is Dyson Jergenson reporting for Capsicum Radio News.

Five band mates in the Portland Oregon metro area decided to conduct a mind enhancing experiment without the use of LSD or marijuana.  Clint McKitly, originator of the experiment, came up with the idea shortly after listening to an NPR piece about the structure of bee colonies.  Clint sat down at his frequently used drum set but was overcome in thought and unable to rock out his angst like normal. Instead Clint found himself in a series of thoughts regarding the specialization of labor in human society and its implications on the human mind.

That night over a dinner of ramen noodles and hot cocoa, Clint informed his band mates and girlfriend about the mind enhancing experiment he had come up with.  According to his girlfriend, Gia Johnson, Clint was “beyond excited” and showed up to the dinner after taking a shower, putting on his best flannel shirt, and combing his hair.  Gia and company listened to Clint’s hypothesis about how the unused 90% of the brain could be unlocked if an individual could focus all of his time on mental activities. This meant that some humans would become like ‘thinker bees’ whose only job is to sit and think.  Band mate and lead singer, Lex Real (his stage name), was completely on board with idea until he heard Clint’s next assertion.  The ‘thinker bees’ would have to literally never move from their chairs, meaning other ‘bees’ would have to remove waste from the ‘thinker bees’ and supply them with food.

“So basically, you want to be lazy, quit life, and have us clean up your shit and piss, and bring you food whenever you need it so you can think?” asked Lex Real.

Clint agreed with the assertion despite Lex’s crude depiction of the mind enhancing experiment.  He was able to get the band to commit to taking care of him and Gia to begin the experiment.  Lex goggled the word “percentage of human brain used” and read the entire article on Wikipedia entitled “10% of brain myth.” Despite Lex’s absolutely certainty that the hypothesis won’t work and that the human brain is already being 100% used according to all scientific data, he has agreed to support the mind enhancing experiment because he wants to see Clint make an ass of himself and it might give the band some good publicity.

This is Dyson Jergenson reporting for Capsicum Radio News.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Sydney, Looking at Itself from Across the Harbor


The city makes me excited to stand up on top of a large skyscraper and sing.  I like the techno music soundtrack to my life while I’m in a city. It’s inevitable every time I’m in a city.  There is always great techno music.  It symbolizes an integration of futuristic synthetic beats, the rhythm of blood pumping through the body, and dance.  Its like the music is drumming on to keep all the people in the city bustling along with their lives to contribute to the ever-increasing skyscrapers that surround them.

I heard great techno on the streets.  The amplifiers played the beats and men painted in white hummed through didgeridoos and clapped boomerangs together.  I also heard techno in Blue 36, the bar on top of the Shangri La skyscraper in Sydney. I expected my father to say, “This music is terrible.”  But he didn’t. I think in the city people just accept the sound of the future because that is the official soundtrack in the city.

It makes me excited, I feed off its energy, and it also begins to tire me out. I still crave it though. I forgot that I craved the pulse of modernity.  I’ve always known that I liked cities even though at this time in my life I couldn’t live in one permanently.  I think I could live in one, I would just want the conditions to be right. Like a place near a park, a place high enough up to see a majority of the city from my bedroom window, and enough money to afford a modest entertainment budget. Those requests are out of budget now for sure, especially the view request.  However, at least I know what I need to be permanently happy in a big city.

Sydney was incredible.  A really amazing modern city with great individual touches.  I love the integration of water into the city through the use of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.  Its as if the city gets to look at itself over the two sides of the harbor. And there is plenty to enjoy!  The south side of the harbor is very accessible to the public for hanging out at the outdoor cafes, visiting the Opera House, taking pictures, walking the Botanical Gardens, seeing some art, and shopping.  There was so much going on while we were there: free art shows, street musicians, night time laser light shows with interactive exhibits, constant boat traffic, constant bridge traffic, gorgeous sights from the top of the bridge and level 35 of the hotel, famous quotes on metal man holes through out the harbor walk, women poshly dressed to go to work, grizzled Aussie men doing all sorts of trady work, international visitors snapping pictures, children in prep school uniforms traveling via public transportation, interesting stores, and the smells of delicious foods.

Sydney in two days was a pure delight. I could have used more time but I’m happy to have enjoyed so much in so little time.  I’ve been contemplating how to get at the ‘urban high,' in the future.   I almost despised city life. The traffic, smell of smog, the loudness, the miserable looking people, the dirty roads, the poor city planning, people that aren’t interested in you, and the high cost. New York City is just around the corner from me and it would be easy to get to.

Sydney has renewed my faith in the human institution of city life.  I remember now the spark of having a high concentration of people in an urban environment.  Culture, music, variety, intrigue, art, food, fashion, words, and the future.  I owe Sydney a thank you for that and for reminding me that I’m next door to most populist city in the world.

Friday, June 3, 2011

Caving



The present is a continuation of the past and the beginning of the future all rolled up into one neat little Mobius Strip.  In English, I’m already beginning the reflections on this trip and I still have a week to go in experiencing. 

I was not feeling any passion earlier when it came to writing.  I started thinking about an article I read about Karsh Kale. He composes music and does most of his composing at home in New York. I feel similar to that. Sure, I’ve been blogging and having small stints of inspiration while I’m here but it’s all over the map.  Not that I’m complaining, the variety has been fun, the reviews, the sarcastic news, the music, and the occasional conversation with my stomach. 

I learned something on the way; I’m no traditional travel writer.  Bill Bryson and I can appreciate each other from a far but I don’t think we’ll be sharing a cup of tea at the annual travel writer’s association in Brissy. 

How do I know?  Well first, my stomach can’t handle it, just kidding, I freaking love traveling.  So its not for a lack of interest in seeing new things, tasting new things, experiencing a culture, taking a thousand photographs, looking for fresh sounds of a continent, and the like. 

Being on the road, plane, bus, camel, and car just became my job for the day.  I plan my meals accordingly, or lack thereof, get the job done, enjoy the fruits of my labor through the experience at hand that would have been impossible without the job getting done, and fall asleep exhausted, a tired that dreams new scenery, familiar people with new words, and icons of distant relatives.  I’ve been inspired to visit central or northern Africa, Thailand, and Abu Dhabi.  All dreams I suppose but at least I haven’t been entirely turned off from the adventurous process.

I think perhaps I’m too egocentric to be a travel writer.  I can’t get passed my own feelings while experiencing a new place.  This leads to writing that isn’t about the history of where I’ve been, the description of the beauties, or the tales of the people.  I just can’t report the facts as the facts. At least, I couldn’t do it here.  Maybe if I was getting paid by Australia Geographic to write about a place and the adventures the AG team were having I could do it.  But, my heart would not be in it, just my money clip.  Not that its entirely a bad thing, I mean, getting paid to do something you love even if its not exactly what you want to be doing is still pretty good.  Like a kid that ends up coaching a triple A baseball team instead of playing in the majors, its pretty freaking close.  

Going to a place has no substitute, but we can’t go to all places, and that’s why we have professionals to travel around for us and give us photographs, spoken words, and written words.  If you want to see the places I’ve been, find me, ask me to show you the slide show, buy me a bottle of wine, maybe two, and we’ll have a good time talking about the things I’ve seen, places you’ve been, tall tales we’ve heard, and lies white enough to get away with.  Its that experience that I could share as a traveler of Australia.

This all brings me to the beginning or perhaps the end, and that has to do with the role I feel writing has in the world, at least as I continue to wield it and think about it.  Writing helps me uncover more about individuality, inner self, inner world, personal perspective.  I am remembering an early post about exploring the self, removed from everything that is normal and routine. I suppose that’s what I’m getting at.  And, this conception of the written word certainly falls in line with my highest appreciation of authors who are in the category of ‘literary fiction.’ A story that is most interested in the exploration of the purest diamonds of humanity: spirituality, love, pain, emotionality, intellect, heroism, defeat, history, the future, struggle, and society.  Sure, all of the words are in a vehicle, some sort of action, exotic places, unique characters, drama, sex, and violence.

They all are part of the writing for the sake of maybe one idea or one feeling.  An itch that can only be scratched by involving an entire imaginative world to explore places of the psyche’ usually untouched by the travel writers of the physical world.

Anyways, that itch I was talking about scratching, exploring the inner world of humanity, that’s where the good stuff is for me.  I don’t know why, guess I should figure it out.  The challenge is intriguing.  There is not one sense involved in the heart and mind caving I’m talking about.  I can’t just look down one cave shaft, or smell the mustiness of a singular forest floor, or hear the gospel of fruit bat’s flapping wings in a mango grove, or touch the fuzziness of a Banksia Grandis pod, to get at the conception of what makes up the core of humanity.  So what can get at that?  What sees that which can’t be seen?  Rationality, intuition, divinity?  I don’t know the right cocktail of implements and senses to use in this sort of climbing expedition, I just know that it’s freaking hard, challenging. It takes everything and more that I don’t have to get there.

Example, I’ve written three beginnings to three separate novels. Two of which actually have some good ideas, concepts, and characters. It’s probably close to 100 typed single spaced pages.  I can begin a novel on pure adrenaline, rope in hand, and I’m cave diving and exploring around. I get down there though and I don’t have a torch, I don’t have any food, and my water runs out in just a couple of days.  All the tools I have to explore around aren’t there and I can’t just go to the store to pick them up because that store doesn’t exist.

“Come on down to Crazy Jared’s!  We’ve got brain cell boosters on sale for $19.99, intuitive cookies on sale for $5.99, and you won’t believe this folks, get your own personal dream encyclopedia complete with people, places, and things completely tailored to your date of birth, weight, height, name, social security number, and current residence for only $12,000. That’s right folks, we’ll have every unconscious thought, passion, and desire from your dreams, decoded for you personally, just an easy $12,000.”

Travel is interpreted in a lot of different ways, I guess my personal view on it may not be interesting.  Who wants to spend their lives thinking of themselves anyways? Egotistical for sure. I’ve tried to think of it in another light, one in which shows me that if I figure out what makes me act and think the way that I do, I might understand a little better what the hell you are trying to tell me because its pretty hard to figure out why everyone is out there acting the way that they are.  Maybe this is an egregious assumption, thinking that humanity has some sort of essential form of impulse that can be understood and reapplied.  I’d be the first to question any such claim myself, but it doesn’t hurt to look for it I reckon.  What’s that famous saying, “Life’s a journey, not a desination.”  So, I’ll keep journeying, caving, climbing, questioning, and I probably won’t get there, “ You can’t get there from here!” but maybe along the way I’ll finally pack the right tools, etch out that small map of the caves deep down below, and pass it along to the next one willing to explore a little further down the dark cavern of humanity’s soul.

My Dad Calls This a Mind Dump


eyes closed  on the world
close your eyes in faith and walk
neuron feeding frenzy

someone said  they don’t have time
that had to be the stockman   
lies to tell themselves

i’m at a stop
an Outback lu
it’s all really low
nothing much can grow

bachelor weeping
mulla mulla
absolutely stunning
with a partner

seven billion trial and errors
contiguously lucky
necessary and perceptive based

like chalk and cheese
that’s watertight
like cat and mouse
that’s fear versus fight

the chastity belt of wuses
geological in  your face

no dances for our dancers
a modern non-geological travesty
respectable forms of insanity

the fasting is forgotten
the violin is forgotten
savanna like diversity

Ken Duncan, Abu Dhabi, my 2nd Art Review




Pictures help me travel the world.  I traveled to Abu Dhabi today through the images of Ken Duncan, then thought to myself, “I’d like to go there some day.”  Now that’s what I call good travel ‘writing.’  I didn’t know where Abu Dhabi was before I looked at those pictures, now I want to go there.  I don’t think a writers words could have impacted me as quickly as Duncan’s photographs.

Ken’s work is really good. The pictures are digitally manipulated slightly to take out ‘imperfections’ but it’s worth the changes. His stuff blew me away and I’d argue against any photographic purest that is against digital manipulation that regardless of their hoity toity dedication to rule following, the experience of the viewer in terms of esthetics, feeling, and expression are far more important. Lets be real, a photograph untouched can’t reproduce the complexity of being, a being with all six senses attuned, in an actual beautiful place. So, give the photographs steroids and let me consume the muscle bound images. We’re not talking baseball, I’m all for photographic steroids, aka digital manipulation.



I can understand the other side of the argument.  Taking a photograph on film and developing it in a black room with chemicals is an art in itself that I can really appreciate it.  It’s something that I’ve never done and would like to do someday. Then came along the digital photograph and computers. The computer gives us much more detailed control in specific locations over an image.  Not using the digital version of photography for any sort of aesthetic pursuit that aims at having an impact on a viewer in terms of beauty or inspirational reasons, would be like telling movie makers that they had to use black and white super 8 cameras instead of HD film technology. (I’m really looking forward to Spielburg’s new movie this summer, “Super 8,” can’t wait like a kid can’t wait for Christmas morning.)

I’m merely focusing on aesthetics here, idea creation, and inspiration.  I do think a line needs to be drawn in terms of news reporting.  I wouldn’t want my news reported images to be majorly altered.  By that I mean, words changed, people added or subtracted, and the like.  I don’t mind if they auto adjust contrast and brightness or the like, that’s like focusing a camera.  Just don’t change the reality of the situation.

Bonus review.  I went to Sidney's Museum of Contemporary Art. I'm not going to even talk about it, it was that uninteresting. They are under major construction, so I'll give them that excuse. But for all you Aussie's out there, one point to the Poms, the Tate Modern in London has got you clobbered.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Red Dog the Movie

We listened to British writer, Louis de Bernieres, version of Red Dog which was set in Dampier, near where we traveled, on the bus as a tour group.  I cried like a Sheila.  The movie trailer looks realy good.


Friday, May 27, 2011

Increasing Concerns over ADHD and Technology, Dispelled.

28-5-2011

This is Dyson Jorgensen reporting with Capsicum Radio News.

Yesterday, founder of d80z and fitness guru Clint Fogurty released a press statement dispelling increasing American concerns over the affects of television, ipads, computers, GPS, the internet, video games, graphing calculators, cameras, iphones, cellphones, blue tooths, and other iworld devices are having on their children.

Clint was the first in the industry to introduce the concept of ‘muscle confusion,’ which allows fitness enthusiasts to build more muscles faster, skipping the unnecessary steps of goal setting, habit forming, patience, and sustained long term efforts.

During an epiphany after one of his own d80z workouts, Clint realized that the brain is also like a muscle, and he has developed a new program built around ‘mental confusion.’  Clint had this to say when reached out to by Capsicum Radio News, “Some say a lack of attention span is going to lead to the downfall of American ingenuity and our ability to compete in the new highly educated global marketplace. No, it is in fact the opposite.  Through rapid uncontrolled changes in our attention span we will in fact be able to multitask in my estimation 30-50 tasks simultaneously through our unconsciousness and open up the 70% of our untapped brain potential.  Through my revolutionary new program, ‘59009,’ you can train your mind through the technique of mental confusion to reach this untapped potential.”

Scientists at several leading American universities have already begun test studies on human subjects.  Preliminary results are looking positive as many of the subjects are unable to sustain a thought longer than 20 seconds and are still living quite successfully in the real world off of government benefits, Fluff and bologna sandwiches on Wonderbread, and internet reruns of their favorite television shows.

More is sure to come on this groundbreaking story.

This is Dyson Jorgensen reporting with Capsicum Radio News.