Reading In All Media

There is no end to people complaining about technology and new media. It isn’t limited to luddites and other varieties of reactionaries. One hears all kinds of views why the world is going down the crapper, from high-minded critiques from academics to your mother’s nagging about her grandchildren. Recently, Michael Harris wrote about this on a personal level:

“For good reason. It’s embarrassing. Especially for someone like me. I’m supposed to be an author – words are kind of my job. Without reading, I’m not sure who I am. So, it’s been unnerving to realize: I have forgotten how to read – really read – and I’ve been refusing to talk about it out of pride. […]

“For a long time, I convinced myself that a childhood spent immersed in old-fashioned books would insulate me somehow from our new media climate – that I could keep on reading and writing in the old way because my mind was formed in pre-internet days. But the mind is plastic – and I have changed. I’m not the reader I was. […]

“For many writers, this is the new wisdom. A cynical style of reading gives way to a cynical style of writing. I’ve watched my own books become “useful” as they made their way into public conversation. I never meant them to be useful – in a self-help sense – but that was how they were often read. I say this with less reproach than surprise: Almost every interviewer has asked me for tips and practical life advice, despite the fact my books offer neither.

“Meanwhile, I admit it: The words I write now filter through a new set of criteria. Do they grab; do they anger? Can this be read without care? Are the sentences brief enough? And the thoughts? It’s tempting to let myself become so cynical a writer because I’m already such a cynical reader. I am giving what I get” (I have forgotten how to read).

There is some truth to it. I can’t deny that. But I can’t fully agree either, at least not for me personally. My brain doesn’t operate normally, something I know because I have the official tests from when I was diagnosed as learning disabled in childhood to when I was sent off to a psychiatric ward in my early 20s. I’m fully documented as ‘special’.

I don’t give a flying fuck if a book is written and presented in a linear manner. I never have been prone to linear thought, much less linear reading. It’s long been my habit to read dozens of books simultaneously. I skim books and I flit around them like a drunken butterfly. I often read the conclusion first and impressively will then proceed to read the text backwards, paragraph by paragraph. No linear cultural expectation is going to keep me confined. Fuck that!

All of that was true for me long before the internet. It’s why I hated formal education, to such an extent that I learned to read late, almost flunked out of 7th grade, only graduated high school by cheating on tests, and dropped out of college twice. Schools don’t teach the way my mind works. I remember when I first started spending much time on the world wide web. It was mind-blowing! For the first time in my freaking life, I was experiencing something in the larger society that operated the same way as my ‘abnormal’ brain. If I was abnormal, then all of the internet was abnormal and it was my kind of crazy.

I still love to read. And I feel little conflict or competition between literary media as a physical book and electronic media as the internet. I simply have different contexts in which I immerse myself in any given media. It’s all good.

I like to go for long walks in the morning and that is when I find the best time for concentrated reading. My reading-while-walking habit also began long before the internet, maybe back when I was in high school. I typically walk out to my parents’ house at the edge of town and it takes about an hour-and-half, allowing me to read a couple of short stories or maybe a few chapters of a book. I also like to snatch some time to read while riding in a car/bus or sitting around waiting for something, including free moments at work. I always keep a physical book nearby for any occasion with my ever present backpack usually containing many choices of reading material.

There are hundreds of books I’ve read that I never would have discovered if not for the internet. I’ve probably spent thousands of hours reading book reviews and perusing Google Books. On the other hand, I admit that social media can be addictive and pointlessly distracting. I had to learn to avoid much of social media or at least avoid the worst elements of it. I don’t have any doubt that I’m being subtly influenced in ways that I’m unaware. But I seem to have a certain amount of immunity that others lack, as it doesn’t feel unnatural or foreign to me. I love all the vast info available on the internet, as I love books. Media whore that I am, I love it all. I devour all forms of media. And after a while, they all blend together in my mind and experience.

Bring it on! Let the world be transformed by media. It will be a fun social experiment. Anyway, physical books are more likely to survive climate change than is the human species. For the last remaining humans huddled around fires as civilization collapses, there will still be plenty of physical books left in old decaying libraries. The survivors will have plenty of time to read, in between fighting off packs of mutants and evading zombie hordes. But until then, may media bloom like a thousand flowers.

Faith in the Power of Knowledge

I was continuing to think more about knowledge, learning and communication.

I’m always reading and researching. One thing I love about my Kindle is that it allows me to do a search of terms across all of my books, excluding the physical books on my shelves. I have enough ebooks now that doing searches is more fun activity.

That is how I was wasting my time recently. I was doing various searches just to see what would come up. I was looking up terms like “Anti-Federalism” and “Articles of Confederation”, but also terms such as “eligible” combined with “vote”. Doing this kind of activity reminds me of how much there is to know and how little I know in comparison.

With those last search terms, I found my way to Liberty in America’s Founding by Howard Schwartz. I always have so many books I’m meaning to start reading or finish that it is nice to have books brought back to my attention. This particular book I had almost entirely forgotten about. My search first brought me to a section on Jefferson and Locke, and then looking at the table of contents I noticed the author had a section on John Dickinson. Oh, what a lovely find/rediscovery.

Just reading a few short sections really did get me excited. The author was presenting a very original perspective. The guy is obviously well informed and he brings so much together. It is books like this that demonstrate the power of knowledge to shift one’s perspective. I can’t help but wonder what would happen if knowledge were to shift the perspective of our entire society, a shift to a new understanding, maybe even an entirely new paradigm.

That is why I so often return to the Axial Age, the Enlightenment, and the Revolutionary Era. Those were fulcrum points in history when entire worldviews shifted like plate tectonics. At the heart of those shifts were new understandings and perspectives. Beginning with the Axial Age in particular, books were what much of that hinged upon, books as a technology to transfer knowledge and insight from one mind to another, across boundaries of nations, religions and ethnicities.

I read and write so much because I have this genuine faith in the power of knowledge. I wish I had endless amounts of time to do nothing but read and write.

 

Pacifiers, Individualism & Enculturation

I was visiting my brother and his family up in Minnesota. My sister-in-law at one point brought up the topic of pacifiers. She had taken the pacifier away from her daughter a while back because there can be problems if pacifiers are used for too long. I commented that pacifiers aren’t even necessary since babies have been fine without them for millennia.

My sister-in-law gave a response that got me thinking. She said that it helps babies to learn self-soothing. It instantly hit me that the pacifier is a tool of enculturation. It is used to create self-independence and thus create the sense of individualism that is so highly prized here in the West, especially the US.

I’ve often thought that individualism, in particular hyper-individualism, isn’t the natural state of human nature. By this, I mean that it isn’t how human nature manifested for the hundreds of thosands of years prior to modern Western civilization. Julian Jaynes theorizes that, even in early Western civilization, humans didn’t have a clear sense of separate individuality. He points out that in the earliest literature humans were all the time hearing voices outside of themselves (giving them advice, telling them what to do, making declarations, chastising them, etc), maybe not unlike in the way we hear a voice in our head.

We moderns have internalized those external voices of collective culture. This seems normal to us. This is not just about pacifiers. It’s about technology in general. The most profound technology ever invented was written text (along with the binding of books and the printing press). All the time I see my little niece absorbed in a book, even though she can’t yet read. Like pacifiers, books are tools of enculturation that help create the individual self. Instead of mommy’s nipple, the baby soothes themselves. Instead of voices in the world, the child becomes focused on text. In both cases, it is a process of internalizing.

All modern civilization is built on this process of individualization. I don’t know if it is overall good or bad. I’m sure much of our destructive tendencies are caused by the relationship between individualization and objectification. Nature as a living world that could speak to us has become mere matter without mind or soul. So, the cost of this process has been high… but then again, the innovative creativeness has exploded as this individualizing process has increasingly taken hold in recent centuries.

The democracy of e-books

Here is the link to a blog post by Quentin S. Crisp:

The business of books

The following are my responses. I want to be clear about one thing, though. These are my responses to my perception of Crisp’s presented view in this particular blog. My specific perceptions here, of course, may not be entirely accurate and most likely involves various biases and projections.

To speak of Crisp more generally, I like him and agree with him more than not. In this particular case, however, I found myself having a bewildered response in trying to understand why Crisp’s ‘loathing’ was so strong, especially as his loathing seemed directed at a group of people of which I am a member, i.e., Kindle owners. 

My first response:

I’m of the type who thinks change just happens and there ain’t nothin’ can be done about it. After civilization began, it was all downhill from there. I’m fatalistic about progress. I embrace it until civilization collapses. I’m curious where it will lead before then.

I bought a Kindle for various reasons, but my original reason was that I wanted something to replace my electronic dictionary. I still buy some physical books, not as much as I used to though. It’s a good thing because I was running out of room in my apartment.

By the way, why does “just sayin'” irritate you so much? I would assume it originates from American English. I’ve used the phrase “just sayin'” on occasion. I just find it amusing to say. It’s silly and stupid.

As I read your blog post, I must admit I felt some gut response to defend the world wide web. It’s ‘democracy’ in all of its beauty and ugliness. As Freck said in A Scanner Darkly, “Well, I like it.”

In early America, the government gave subsidies to presses so that it would be cheaper to publish newspapers and books. This would also meant more opportunities for writers. Of course, not everyone had a newspaper column like people now have blogs. But I’m sure the average published writing back then wasn’t all that well-edited. I was wondering about this. It would be an interesting analysis to look at first editions of books across the centuries to find out when writing was the most well-edited according to the standard grammar of the time period.

Having more writers does create more chaos. Even so, I’d point out that (since you were blogging about VALIS) I’m with PKD in having faith in chaos and the good it can safeguard. The corollary to chaos is innovation. Every age of innovation began with the crumbling of the previous age. We can’t know if it will lead to progress or destruction, but either way it can’t be avoided.

My second response:

On the whole I’m more sympathetic to chaos than order, as anyone who’s visited my flat can probably testify, but I think I’m most sympathetic of all to benign chaos – that is, self-regulating chaos of the idyllic kind which seems to be championed in the Dao De Jing, etc.

I’m also a man of much personal chaos. But there is a difference between one’s own chaos and someone else’s. And, as you say, there is a difference between benign chaos (benign to me, at least) and other varieties of chaos. I don’t know how benign PKD saw chaos, but he didn’t see chaos as an automatic enemy. He saw the divine as that which can’t be controlled, that which in fact will seek to avoid control. The divine sought hiding in the chaos so as to not to be found by the demiurgic forces that seek to control the world for their own purposes.

The argument that is always raised with any new technology, when anyone objects, is basically that “it’s all good” or “you can’t stop change”. But the same argument is never used in the case of politics. In politics, the points themselves are generally argued, and people, however stupid their decisions may be as related to the points, hardly ever just revert to “all change is good and/or inevitable.” So why do this with technology, which is, after all, as much of human manufacture as politics?

That may be true for some or even for most, but it ain’t true for me. I see two warring tendencies in society’s progress. There are those who see all progress as good and those see all progress as bad. An interesting middle position is that of Jeremy Rifkin in his book The Empathic Civilization. In Rifkin’s analysis, the progress of civilization is both destructive and creative. On the creative end, new technology (for traveling and communication) increases collective empathy. But it does so at a very high cost. Will our empathy for other people and other life increase quickly enough that we will find solutions to the destruction we’ve caused?

I don’t know. I just thought such a way of thinking might be applicable to this issue as well. Modern society changes ever more quickly which means much of the past gets lost. With the introduction of Western culture (including the Western invention of the book), many indigenous cultures are destroyed and lost forever. Likewise, with the introduction of new technologies, the traditions of the West can also become endangered. However, there is also a counter trend. For example, the digitization of books has saved many books from the dustbin of history. Some of these books only had one physical copy left remaining in the world, but now anyone anywhere can read them.

I think people have been hypnotised into thinking technology is inevitable and has a kind of universal objectivity to it, in other words, that it doesn’t have cultural implications or cultural bias. But all technologies have cultural implications and biases. Someone has made a decision somewhere to switch tracks to this or that thing.

Yeah, that is true. Even a simple technology like books hypnotize us into a certain way of looking at and being in the world. The printing press probably was the first to create or at least widely promulgate this perception of inevitability and universal objectivity. The vision of inevitable progress goes at least back to the Age of Enlightenment. More broadly, of societies around the world, a collective decision over generations was made to switch from oral to written, from stone and clay to scrolls and then to books and now to e-books. No single person or even group of people is making this decision, but this isn’t to say that individual choices don’t have influence. It’s just that individuals are increasingly choosing e-books. Still, you are free to think people like me are wrong or stupid for choosing e-books.

My third response:

I think that PKD must have been at least ambivalent towards chaos. In Valis, he identifies ananke, or ‘blind chance’ (also translated as ‘necessity’, or could that be ‘you can’t stop change’?), as a symptom of evil in the universe, and generally seems to equate rationality and order with good.

Oh yeah. I’m sure PKD was ambivalent about lots of things. I should’ve clarified my thoughts. I was partly referencing PKD’s view of what he called “God in the gutter” or “God in the garbage”. PKD was fascinated with chaos, not that he idealized it.

People accept free will in politics and other areas of life, so why not in technology?

I have no clear opinion about freewill. Part of me is attracted to the view of philosophical pessimism. I don’t think individuals are all that free. We act according to our natures and our natures were formed (with genetics and early life experience) long before we had any opportunity to aspire to become self-willed agents. And, on the larger scale of society, I suspect we have even less willed influence.

As I see it, freewill is a very modern concept, if anything created by and magnified by technology. Books are just one of the early technologies that have formed the modern sense of self. the book format was first used by the early Christians and it was that era when individualism was beginning to become what we know of it. With modern technology, people have an even stronger sense of self and of a self-willed relation to the world.

The problem you seem to be perceiving is that as the masses gain more freedom then more specific groups lose their monopoly on specific areas. When everyone can be a writer, everyone can influence the culture of writing, not just ‘professional’ published authors. Writing is no longer an elite profession. The internet and other new technologies have democratized writing and empowered the average person. For example, I’m just a parking ramp cashier and yet I’m talking to you, a published author. Online, I am equal to you and we’re both equal to everyone else. Power and authority have little meaning online, unless you’re one of the people who owns a major internet company like Google.

You have a sense, as an author, of losing power even as many people around the world are gaining power through more opportunities of reading and writing. But that isn’t how I see it. A small press author like you gets more readers from more countries for the very reason of newer technology. A century ago, you might never have been published at all or have remained almost entirely unknown. There are trade-offs. You gain more ability to reach more people but so does everyone else. Also, you have been self-publishing recently. Yes, you are more careful in editing, but because of limits of funds many small press publishers (whether self-published or not) often have issues with quality editing as it is very time consuming. I know Mike has bought expensive small press books with many editing problems. So why blame the average person for such issues? Why should anyone get to decide who can publish or not? Who would be on this publishing board of literary oligarchs?

I know you aren’t actually promoting oligarchy or anything. But how do you think the average person would be persuaded to your position? Considering the increase of writers among average people, you’d probably have a hard time even convincing writers of your position. This, however, doesn’t mean your position is wrong. Many of my own positions seem in the minority which doesn’t cause me to stop holding those positions. However, on this issue and as an American, I do have a healthy skepticism of any elite who wishes to tell the masses what they should do. Maybe if I were a part of the elite of professional published writers my views would be different… or maybe not. Matt Cardin bought a Kindle before I did. Mike is a collector of rare books and a lover of a fine book. He also has been considering buying an e-reader so as to not to have to read the expensive copies of books he owns.

There are a couple of factors I see.

First, there is an increase of freewill rather than a decrease. It’s just that there is greater equality of freewill (more opportunities to influence, more choices available) than ever before in all of the history of civilization. However, this creates other problems. As the ability to publish writing spreads to the lower classes, the upper classes lose control of defining correct and acceptable grammar. As the English language spreads to diverse cultures, British English becomes less dominant in defining correct and acceptable English grammar. For example, the more informal American English has become more popular because of American media.

Second, there is the development of large corporations. It’s ultimately not the average person defining writing and publishing. Large corporations (like Amazon and book publishing companies) aren’t democracies. This is probably where your insight fits in. These big businesses often promote a false sense of freedom and opportunity. What we’re experiencing is a shift of who is the elite controlling society. In the US, the founders were mostly an intellectual elite and small business owners who were actually fighting against a transnational corporation (British East India Company). But now such transnational corporations have taken over every major country and economy and taken over society in general. It’s the corporate elite, instead of the traditional intellectual elite, who now mostly control the publishing of books. It’s also large corporations who own most of the media companies (newspapers, tv, movies, internet, etc). It’s these companies who have the greatest power to influence language and there main motivation is profit, not maintaining the proud tradition of literature.

Eugenics was ‘progress’ and a new idea once. Should we have accepted it merely on those terms?

There is always the question of defining ‘progress’. I would, of course, agree that not all ‘progress’ is good.

However, I would point out that eugenics as a basic idea isn’t new. Spartans supposedly threw deformed babies off of a cliff. Male cats when they become the new alpha male will often kill the kittens of the former alpha male. The only modern part is that eugenics was able to be done on a larger scale and done with more precision. I would say that eugenics isn’t progress itself, although it can be used in the service of certain visions of progress.

I think everything I’ve said still stands. If there were concomitant spritual or social progress, technological progress would be simply useful, possibly irrelevant, probably harmless. But I don’t think that genetic modification, for instance, will represent true progress, because it will be an amplification of the steering will of a number of individuals in order to wipe from existence the possibility of certain other steering wills.

I also think everything I’ve said still stands. 😉

Actually, I don’t know to what degree we disagree. Like you, I’m not blindly for progress. Mabye less like you, I’m not against progress either. Like most issues, I’m agnostic about progress. It brings out my fatalist side. I can read someone like Derrick Jensen and find myself strongly persuaded. All of civilization (books and e-readers alike) is built on and maintained through massive dysfunction, oppression and violence. On the other hand, nothing has yet stopped the march of civilization’s progress, despite millennia of doomsayers.

I honestly don’t think it matters whether I like e-readers or not. I loathe lots of things and yet those things continue to exist. I loathe war and yet my tax money funds wars where worse things than Kindles happen.

I own a Kindle not because I have a strong opinion in support of e-readers but because I have a strong opinion about reading. I like to read and love books, in any and all formats. An e-book if it’s public domain is free and if not it’s still usually way cheaper than a physical book. As a relatively poor person, I can get more reading material for my money with e-books. As a person living in a relatively small apartment, I can from a practical perspective own more e-books than I could physical books. Even my public library already allows the public to ‘check out’ e-books. I personally like having my opportunities and choices increased. If that happens through e-readers, it is good by me. Or, if it happens by some other format, it is also good by me.

Similarly, I don’t see Kindle as a form of real progress, since what it does is allow people who don’t care about books and literature to call the shots.

Yes, I understand you feel strongly about this. But why does any individual get to decide which people are perceived to care? I suspect many of these people do care and some to a great degree. Like many normal people, I care. Don’t I matter? Defining who cares is like defining what is or isn’t literature, what is or isn’t art. In some ways, you might be right. Literature as we know it may be in the process of being destroyed. This is just like how Socrates was right that the oral tradition as he knew it was being destroyed by written texts. The ironic part is that Socrates supposed words are now recorded in text. It’s also ironic that your views here are recorded on a blog.

We don’t really know what will happen, and I hope the outcome ends up being more positive than negative, but I honestly don’t see much that’s positive coming out of it at the moment.

Yep. I don’t entirely lack hope, but in the long run I think it’s all doomed. We’re all just going along for the ride. Sometimes the ride is fun, often not.

Reading is already one of the most egalitarian of cultural media. It is an open university.

It’s true that it is to an extent an open university, but not equally so. Poor people in wealthy countries have a lot less access to this “open university”. And people in poor countries have had little access to it at all until very recently. The internet and e-books have opened up this “open university” to the entire world.

Now, however, Amazon have got the thin end of their wedge into reading, and I’m rather afraid (this seems to be the direction), that before long, Amazon (with Kindle) will be saying, “All those who want to come to reading, must do so by me, and my technology. All those who want to come to writing, must do so by me, and my technology. Keep up. Plug in. Buy the next model.”

The issue of transnational corporations taking over the world isn’t the same as the issue of e-readers, although like everything in life there is overlap. Right now, there are numerous devices (computers, tablets, pads, e-readers, smart phones, etc) that anyone can use to read almost any book (or at least any book that has been digitized) and such devices are becoming cheaper and more widely available. Right now, even poor people can access some kind of device that allows them to access the entire world’s library of public domain literature. I see that as a good thing.

Yes, many plutocrats would like to use the power and wealth of corporations to take over the world. They might be successful, but don’t blame the average person who simply wants more freedom and opportunity to cheaply and easily access reading material. In time, the natural trend of things should lead to open source e-readers being developed just as there are open-source computers and browsers.

The difference between us, in this matter, seems to be where we direct our loathing the most. The main problem I see is a plutocratic elite rather than the democratic masses. Democracy can be messy and ugly, but I think it’s better than the alternative. You seem to be equating the plutocratic elite with the democracy-seeking masses because the former is always trying to manipulate the latter. Even if the latter is being manipulated, why blame them instead of those who manipulate? Why not try to end their being manipulated rather than trying to end their having influence?

I realize that you have an old fashioned respect for the intellectual elite. I do too in many ways. I think the demise of the intellectual elite has had major problems. Maybe there will always be an elite. If so, I’d choose an intellectual elite over a plutocratic elite. In case you’re interested, Chris Hedges writes about the loss of power and influence among the intellectual elite in his book Death of the Liberal Class.

I would emphasize that this issue is part of a larger set of issues. Reading, writing and publishing are being democratized just as knowledge and education is being democratized. The first public library was only in recent centuries. For most of the history of ‘Great Literature’, most people had little or no access to any book besides the Bible and often not even that. Public education is likewise very new. I think it was Jefferson who helped create the first publicly funded university. Now, starting in the mid 20th century, almost anyone in the West can go to college if they really want to and if they have basic intelligence.

There is another tidbit of history related to American and British history. Thomas Paine was a working class craftsman. His father, a Quaker, taught him a love of learning and made sure he received a basic education. But lack of money and social position disallowed Paine to follow a scholarly profession. Fortunately, he went to London where he discovered many self-educated people. The lower classes weren’t allowed into the universities and so these people paid people to give them lectures. It was the rise of democracy that first took form through knowledge and education. From the perspective of the elite, this led to what was seen as chaos challenging tradition, the masses challenging authority. It probably didn’t look like democracy as we know it. During this era, there was much rioting and violence. An old order was collapsing.

The democratization of knowledge and education has led to problems in some ways. It created a literate middle class who mostly read crappy pulp fiction, but it also created a massive publishing industry that made books available to average people. It’s this pulp fiction industry that allowed someone like PKD to make a living at writing, despite the literary elite at the time thinking his writing was worthless.

I’m far from being an optimist, but apparently I’m the one defending optimism. I suppose I’m just playing Devil’s Advocate. Maybe it’s easy for me to be an optimist as I don’t have skin in the game in the same way you do. Your livelihood is dependent on book publishing. Nonetheless, I would point that, from a practical perspective, if you want to continue to make a living as an author, you should embrace e-readers. However, if principle is more important than profit, you are free to fight the Goliath to your dying breath. I wouldn’t hold that against you. We all have to pick our fights.

Books about Culture by Christians

I’ve been recently looking at books written about mythology and culture.  In particular, I was looking at books that look at the mythology of movies.  But, in the past, I noticed a similar trend in books about Jungian typology.

One thing I notice is that books that have a Christian slant often aren’t as interesting or insightful as those that have a more general or universal slant.  This is partly just my personal bias, but I think others might agree with me.

Its not that Christianity is itself a weakness in analyzing deeper truths within culture.  Instead, the problem is that many Christians who write about mythology in culture(movies, chidren’s novels, etc) use mythology as a proselytizing device rather than taking mythology as a serious field in an of itself.   I certainly don’t mean to imply that Christians lack insight, but someone who tries to see the entire world through Christian theology has a limited view through which to express what insight they may have.

I’m not criticizing Christianity in general, but I am criticizing proselytizing.  Even so, my criticism is slightly wider than simply preachy didacticism.  Often these Christian category of books suffer from the same superficial quality that many self-help New Age books have.  As such, there can be a lack of detailed analysis and objective discernment… which can too often translate into a lack of deep insight, or at least a lack of deep insight outside of the Christianity.

Why I bring this up is because it annoys me, but it doesn’t annoy me because it comes from Christians.  I look for spiritual perspectives and I appreciate the Christian perspective, but few of the Christian books that flood the market are worth reading.  Of course, there are lots of junk writing being published from more than Christians, and, so, my criticisms are applicable to writers of other persuasions.  The reason I’m picking on Christians is because when looking for spiritual views on culture I tend to find a slew of Christian books.

Plus, I think that what I’m pointing out demonstrates a real trend that exists within mainstream Christianity itself.  I went to hear a Christian author speak(I don’t remember her name) and she spoke about the relationship Christians should have towards secular culture.  She pretty much said that Christians should use art to communicate the Christian message.  She was saying that Christians should try to effect culture all the while not letting themselves be influenced in return.  That seems a rather condescending and manipulative attitude.  It seemed that the only purpose she saw for art was as propaganda.  She was a nice and intelligent person, but she saw the world as an us vs them conflict.

This Christian author was speaking at the University library and there was also an exhibit of Blake’s work there.  After the talk, I perused through Blake’s writing.  Blake demonstrated how art and religion can inform eachother rather than either one controlling/manipulating the other for its own purposes.  Also, unlike the Christian author, Blake had genuine insight that anyone could learn from… no matter what the religious belief or lack thereof.

 

18 minutes later

Nicole said

looks like a good thread starter on the God Pod – what thinkest thou?

 

about 9 hours later

Marmalade said

Here is the link to the thread on God Pod.

 

about 20 hours later

Marmalade said

There is two other points I want to add.

Firstly, the attitude of this kind of Christian is that they’re trying to justify something.  If they like some pop culture product such as Harry Potter, they feel a need to justify why a Christian can morally appreciate a movie about magic.  So, they feel a need to justify their enjoyment to other Christians, and they feel a need to justify their Christianity to other fans.  All of this can distort their view of what they’re analyzing.  They’ll look for Christianity in something the creator may never intended as Christian art.

The other thing is that the reason all of this is happening is because Christianity is no longer the center of mainstream culture.  This makes life more challenging for a traditional Christian who wants to solely devote themselves to their Christian tradition.  The fact of the matter is that most mainstream entertainment and culture isn’t Christian.  Beyond this, even Christians are less Biblically literate because the younger generations spend less time reading the Bible.  Nowadays, much of what Christians know about the Bible comes from movies and tv.

Biblical exponents realize the younger generation is focused on popular culture.  So, they try to use popular culture to explain Christianity, but they do so warily.  In the process, what they use to communicate Christianity comes to alter how Christianity is understood.  They realize that Christianity no longer plays as dominant a role and is now being influenced in return by the culture it exists in.

Personally, I see this two-way influence as a good thing.  Christianity has survived not only in its power to influence but also in its power of relevance by its ability(and willingness) to respond to changes.  Christianity spread so widely because its adaptable, and because its able to hold onto its core truths while adapting.

 

1 day later

Nicole said

good, and i also want to expand on the wider Christian community ie Catholics, liberals… will do so in God Pod. light and peace

 

8 days later

debyemm said

I ended up reading here because I started at your subsequent blog post, which referred to this and so, I felt I needed to read this to put that one into context.  So, still not having read it, I do understand the disappointment you express here.

Agendas are the reason, in my opinion.  So, if the writing or art is a means to an end, to convert you to the author’s point of view, or as you point out, justify the author’s interest in a topic as not violating the author’s Christian ethics, then I think the writing betrays it’s agenda and so, to a reader intent on discovering quality content worthy of their time, it may appear to their mind as shallow or diluted, or as not originating in thoughtful contemplation, or inauthentic and deceptive.

I believe that the best Christian writing, which express a depth of insight, would be expressed by an author who utilizes their core values as the foundation for their discussion or contemplation of a topic, even a non-Christian one.  It would also be possible to utilize these same values as measured critical or analytical tool for questioning beliefs, theirs or some others, or for expanding upon them in a novel way.

While your main criticism – proselytizing – is a characteristic of unquestioned or strongly defended beliefs (as in my way is the only way to truth and salvation); I believe the fault lies in the total lack of inquiry into their validity, as well as in the overall quality or skill of the writing itself.

Even an author whose intent it is simply proselytizing has a right to publish.  There are no rules as to who can write what or for what purpose and being Christian or writing about Christian topics does not change that fact.  The burden is on the reader to discern whether the writing appeals to their personal bend of mind and to put aside those writings that do not.

Deborah

 

8 days later

Marmalade said

Deborah, you said:
“I believe that the best Christian writing, which express a depth of insight, would be expressed by an author who utilizes their core values as the foundation for their discussion or contemplation of a topic, even a non-Christian one.  It would also be possible to utilize these same values as measured critical or analytical tool for questioning beliefs, theirs or some others, or for expanding upon them in a novel way.”

I agree with that.  Certainly, its not that a Christian has core values that is the issue.  Core values can give a reference point for insight, a lense through which to discern meaning.

“While your main criticism – proselytizing – is a characteristic of unquestioned or strongly defended beliefs (as in my way is the only way to truth and salvation); I believe the fault lies in the total lack of inquiry into their validity, as well as in the overall quality or skill of the writing itself.”

I don’t think I meant proselytizing to be my main criticism.  Its just one of the more obvious factors.  The behavior of prosyletizing is an external sign of a general attitude… and, as you said, a defended/unquestioned belief system.  Everything is secondary to the belief system including the quality of writing.  As long as God’s Word is communicated, it doesn’t matter the author’s words used to do the communicating.

However, this level of proselytizing is an extreme.  Many people can have a desire to communicate their beliefs all the while being able to question, but the stronger the beliefs the more difficult it is to question them.

“Even an author whose intent it is simply proselytizing has a right to publish.  There are no rules as to who can write what or for what purpose and being Christian or writing about Christian topics does not change that fact.  The burden is on the reader to discern whether the writing appeals to their personal bend of mind and to put aside those writings that do not.”

Yep, they have a right to publish.  I have absolutely no criticism of Christians writing.  In fact, I’ve been recently reclaiming my own sense of Christianity.

Discernment of the individual is paramount, but mass of superficial and uninsightful writing out there still annoys me.  I’m a writer and love to write.  I’d love to be published some day, but I would only want to be published if I had something to say that was worthy of being said and hadn’t been said many times before.  Even when I  blog, I try to add something that is meaningful or helpful or kind.  There is enough meaningless words on the web.

Of course, what seems worthy is different for different people.  Those Christian books that annoy me probably seem quite wonderful to many others.  Even if only a minority of people like your work, its worthy of being published.  Even if nobody appreciates your work, maybe its worthy.  Many artists weren’t appreciated in their own lifetime.

Blessings,
Marmalade

 

9 days later

debyemm said

Yes, I sensed all along that your love for good writing is why the kinds you outline bother you.  Like you, I try to add something meaningful or helpful or kind.  Otherwise, it does seem pointless to me.  Noise to hear myself chatter.  I have to keep that at bay enough as it is.

Who has time for meaningless words?  Well I guess someone does obviously.  But you and I, while recognizing equal right of access for all, still like the cream, do we not?

Deb

20 Books about The American Empire

– The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2001 by Gore Vidal

– The New American Empire by Rodrigue Tremblay

– Secrecy & Privelege: Rise Of The Bush Dynasty From Watergate To Iraq by Robert Parry

– Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline Of The American Empire At The End Of The Age Of Oil by Michael C. Ruppert

– The Secret History Of The American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, And The Truth About Global Corruption by John Perkins

– Killing Hope: U.S. Military And C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II by William Blum

– What Uncle Sam Really Wants by Noam Chomsky

– Devil’s Game: How The United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam by Robert Dreyfuss

– Crusade: Chronicles Of An Unjust War by James Carroll

– 9-11 by Noam Chomsky

– At War With Ourselves: Why America Is Squandering Its Chance To Build A Better World by Michael Hirsh

– Rogue State: A Guide To The World’s Only Superpower by William Blum

– Economic Governance In The Age Of Globalization by William K. Tabb

– Day Of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise To Global Dominance And Why They Fall by Amy Chua

– The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story Of War, Politics, & Religion At The Twilight Of The American Empire by Matt Taibbi

– Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace: How We Got To Be So Hated by Gore Vidal

– War On Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You To Know by William Rivers Pitt & Scott Ritter

– The Limits Of Power: The End Of American Exceptionalism by Andrew J. Bacevich

– Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints And America’s Perilous Path In The Middle East by Rashid Khalidi

– America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives And The Global Order by Stefan Halper & Jonathan Clarke

Interesting Books, Alternative Views

Here are three books I haven’t read, but I’ve recently heard interviews with the authors which makes me interested in the books.  I list them together because they seem to have something in commom in that the authors are taking alternative perspectives on society.

Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
~ Barbara Ehrenreich

 

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
~ Dan Ariely

 

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

~ Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

 

I might read these books eventually or else I’ll see what others have written about their ideas.  In particular, Ariely’s book intrigues me.  If there is one thing I’m sure about in life, it’s that humans are irrational.

Recommendations for your Mind and Imagination

Do you need to blow out the dust and cobwebs from your mind?  Here are my recommendations (in no particular order):

Robert Anton Wilson – He is the penultimate countercultural writer.  He knew how to make conspiracies fun.  The Illuminatus! Trilogy was entertaining fiction that covers a lot of the same material he writes about in his nonfiction.  If you just want his ideas straight, then a good book would be Prometheus Rising.  I personally think the world would be a better (or at least more interesting) place if everyone read some RAW.

Terence McKenna – In the area of psychedelics, he is my favorite writer.  But his mind is wideranging which covers similar topics as Robert Anton Wilson.  I started with True Hallucinations, but any of his writings are quite enjoyable.  For the sake of variety, The Archaic Revival is a good collection of essays and interviews.  I have a book that has these two published together which is quite nice.  I’d also recommend listening to recordings of him speaking because his enthusiasm is contagious.

John Keel – A truly weird writer in the Fortean tradition.  The first book of his I read was the The Mothman Prophecies which is a good introduction to his ideas, but for his full weirdness read The Eighth Tower.  By the way, the movie based on the first book was decent entertainment (and I do recommend it as worthy attempt at portraying difficult material), but a lot of the weirdness got left out.

Patrick Harpur – Read Daimonic Reality.  Not quite as all-out weird, but still helpful in shifting your view on reality.  It’s probably the best all-around introduction to help you grasp the wide spectrum of the strange and the paranormal.

Jacques Vallee – A scientist with a very respectable intellect who doesn’t let his evenhandedness get in the way of his appreciation of the oddness that is the human being.  He is well known fo his Passport to Magonia where he discussed the connection of UFOs with folklore, mythology, religion and non-ordinary experiences, but there is no need to seek out that out-of-print book.  He reworked at least some of the material in his more recent book Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact. 

George P. Hansen – I’ve read The Trickster and the Paranormal which I highly recommend.  However, it’s no casual read.  He packs in a lot of info that you probably won’t see connected together by any other author.  If you can read this book and not feel a little uncertain about objective reality, then I’ll be impressed.

Victoria Nelson – Her book The Secret Life of Puppets was an inspiration to me.  She gave me new appreciation for some authors I was already familiar with and made me aware of some works I’d never heard of.  I found it very enjoyable the way she connected certain strains of Western thought, popular culture and weird fiction.  It’s a very accessible book of very deep ideas.

Eric G. Wilson – His writing is directly in line with Victoria Nelson, but with more emphasis on philosophy and religion.  Both authors look at the underbelly of Western thought.  I find his mix of ideas appealing, and I like how he keeps his focus on what it means to be human.  I first read his The Melancholy Android, but his Secret Cinema might be a better intro to his thinking.  Neither are massive tomes, but he packs a lot in.

William S. Burroughs – He is best known for his fiction, but I’m going to recommend some of his other writings instead.  One book that offers an interesting glimpse of an interesting mind is The Cat Inside.  It’s partly autobiographical and partly musings about life.  Another one that I really enjoyed is My Education: A Book of Dreams.  Burroughs had a rare mind.  He is one of those writers who I can sense the actual person behind the words.  If you really want to get the sense of Burroughs, then you have to listen to his recordings.  He read many excerpts from his works and he did some interviews, but what I love is simply the sound of his voice.  Once his voice is firmly implanted in your brain, then read some of his books.  A very odd and entertaining adaptation was made of Burroughs’ Naked Lunch by David Cronenberg, but actually it’s also an adaptation of Burroughs’ life and writing in general.  I really liked Cronenberg’s loose adaptation and he has done a number of enjoyable weird movies worth watching such as eXistenZ.

Philip K. Dick – He is another writer who I have the sense of knowing as a person because his writing was often autobiographical.  He didn’t travel widely as Burroughs had, but his mind certainly travelled widely.  I’ve enjoyed all of the fiction I’ve read by him.  One of his more interesting novels might be Valis which is the first in his Valis Trilogy.  However, to really appreciate his fiction it’s necessary to read some of his nonfiction.  I’d suggest reading either In Pursuit of Valis: Selections from the Exegesis or The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings.  Even if you’re not someone who normally likes theology and philosophy, PKD’s odd take on them might amuse you.  It’s hard to find non-fiction writings any weirder than what he has to offer.  If you want to read some writings about PKD, there is a lot of good stuff out there (for instance, those who’ve written about him include some writers I’ve mentioned above: Terence McKenna, Victoria Nelson, and Eric G. Nelson).  My favorite book about him is Pink Beams of Light from the God in the Gutter: The Science-Fictional Religion of Philip K. Dick by Gabriel Mckee.  Mckee provides some useful context by which to understand PKD’s philosophizing.  Also, my favorite movie adaptations are Blade Runner and A Scanner Darkly.  I really love the latter done by Richard Linklater who also made Waking Life which is an even stranger film.  Some people didn’t like the rotoscoping technique of Linklater’s adaptation, but personally I thought he captured PKD like no other movie.  A Scanner Darkly is one of those stories that is so mindblowing in it’s depressing darkness that I was glad it’s balanced with a playful attitude and the actors in the film captured well that playfulness.

Franz Kafka – Now, this guy is a writer who can always lift my mind out of mundane normality.  His fiction is required reading and personally I’d recommend his short stories, but if you’ve already read some of his fiction then I’d recommend the Blue Octavo Notebooks.  These notebooks were different than his diaries and they contain some very interesting musings and fictional snippets.  By the way, I’d recommend Jeremy Irons‘ simply titled movie Kafka and Orson Welles‘ The Trial.

Douglas Adams – I figured I should include this author simply because he has a very weird imagination that is endlessly humorous.  He throws out a lot of odd ideas and manages to tell an enjoyable story at the same time.  If you feel like you’re taking life too seriously, any of his fiction would be a good antidote.  His most popular work is his Hitchhiker Trilogy, but I think I might’ve enjoyed even more his novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.

Barry Yourgrau – His stories are just outright goofy but in a good way.  The only book I’ve read by him is A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane and so that is the one I’d recommend.  He has also written children’s stories, and he has done some spoken word which can be found online (check out The Sadness of Sex on Youtube which is just the first part of a larger work). 

Thomas Wiloch – I just like his imagination and the fantastic images he creates can be quite striking at times.  I suppose one could think of him as a darker version of Yourgrau.  I have read some of his stories from different collections, but the only book of his that I own is Screaming In Code which has some nice pictures in it.  I don’t know which would be his best book, but if you just want a taste of his writing you can find some of his stories online.

Neil Gaiman – His Sandman series is some of the best graphic novels around.  They’re strange stories with high quality artwork.  He manages to create some very distinctively intriguing characters and places them in equally intriguing worlds.  I won’t vouch for all of Gaiman’s work, but I’ve enjoyed all of the graphic novels I’ve read by him.   A good graphic novel is always nice when you’re trying to escape from reality.  Gaiman has also been involved in films and shows either in writing the scripts or in having his work adapted.  I’ll mention only two notable examples.  He wrote the story for Dave McKean‘s move MirrorMask (and they’ve worked together before in graphic novels).  McKean has a surreal visual imagination that goes well with Gaiman’s writing.  His story Coraline (which I’ve never read) was made into a delightful animated stop-motion 3-D film.  It was actually a bit freaky considering its target audience would seem to be young kids.

Alan Moore –  He has done a lot in the field of graphic novels and I’ve only read a small portion of it.  I started with his Promethea which I absolutely loved.  It’s an imaginative work about imagination.  Moore has also done some darker stuff which is also good such as Watchmen (a decent movie adaptation was made of it, but it’s seems surprisingly difficult to do justice to a graphic novel in the constraints of Hollywood).  What I like about his imagination is that it has some intelligence to it.  I like seeing interesting ideas placed in a visually stunning medium.

Grant Morrison – I first read his Doom Patrol which is truly bizarre.  I’ve since read some of The Invisibles and The Filth.  Both of those are equally bizarre.  If you like weird, this as weird as you can get and still tell a good story.

Bill Willingham – I include him for reasons of basic amusement.  Like Gaiman, Willingham draws on folklore in his Fables series.  Otherwise, they’re very different in style.  His Fables series tell the stories of the fairytale characters we’re all familiar with but mixes them together with an overarching plot.  It’s just fun to read.

Harlan Ellison – He was friends with Philip K. Dick for a time.  He isn’t as well known as PKD, but Ellison was also one of the early innovators who helped popularize the field of weird fiction.  He is a very prolific writer and I certainly haven’t read all or even most of his work, but what I have read I’ve enjoyed.  Even though he doesn’t quite have the philosophical depth of PKD, he does have a strange imagination.  There was an interesting graphic novel adaptation of his work called Dream Corridor.  It’s uneven in the quality of different adaptors, but overall his stories translate well to a visual medium.  Another very interesting collection is Mind Fields: The Art of Jacek Yerka, the Fiction of Harlan Ellison.  The art in that book is truly surreal and Ellison wrote his stories as direct inspirations of each picture.  It’s been a while since I read the stories in that collection, but the pictures have stuck in my mind.

Thomas Ligotti – Something about Harlan Ellison’s work reminds me of Ligotti.  I’m sure I like Ligotti better, but I don’t think they’re really comparable.  Ellison is dark and Ligotti is even darker.  However, by saying he is even darker I don’t mean grotesque or violent.  It’s dark in a more subtle sense.  Many consider Ligotti to be the best or at least most weird writer in horror fiction.  A good collection of his stories is Teatro Grottesco, but maybe the reason Ellison made me think of Ligotti is because the latter also has a graphic novel adaptation of his work (i.e., Nightmare Factory).  I should mention that some serious Ligotti fans dislike the adaptations.  I understand that much of the enjoyment of Ligotti’s work comes from his mastery of language, but still some of the artwork in the adaptations is truly compelling.  His story The Frolic was made into a very good film.  Although I’m not sure that Ligotti’s writing will blow out the dust or cobwebs from your mind, his stories probably will do something to your mind.

 Matthew Rossi – I own his Things That Never Were: fantasies, lunacies & entertaining lies.  As far as I know, this is his only published book, but I’d hope he would continue writing.  I don’t know the type of person that this book would appeal to.  It isn’t exactly either fiction or nonfiction.  It’s just intelligent silliness.  Obviously, he is someone who has accumulated lots of useless information in his head and so decided to try to put it together in such a way that it made it somewhat plausible.  He mixes up history, mythology, religion, genre fiction, conspiracy theories and pseudo-science.  As Paul Di Filippo says in the Introduction: “Rossi’s several incompatible mindchildren aren’t fighting. they’re violently screwing, and out of this brain-intercourse is going to arise an unpredictable hybrid of startling portent.”  Also, if you like Rossi’s writing, you might enjoy Myths for the Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe by Win Scott Eckert.

Some collections that are required reading:

 

I Saw Esau: The Schoolchild’s Pocket Book

Edited by Iona & Peter Opie

Illustrated by Maurice Sendak

 

This is a well-chosen collection of songs and rhymes that children have repeated for many generations.  I was only familiar with some of them probably because the editors collected these 50 years ago in British schools, but I enjoyed many of them that were new to me.  These songs and rhymes are just pure silliness, and Sendak’s pictures are almost on every page.

 

Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: the subversive folklore of childhood

By Josepha Sherman & T.K.F. Weisskopf

 

This is a great find.  I recognized many of the songs and rhymes.  This is the unedited version of your childhood.  A nice thing about it is that the collectors provide multiple versions which demonstrates the innovativeness of children.  Some people might be surprised by the dark perversity of the child’s mind, but I can’t say I was surprised.

 

Grimm’s Fairy Tales

By Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

 

If you haven’t ever read any of these, you should.  And if you haven’t read them in a long while, then you should read them again.  I really love these stories.  There are many different versions and I don’t know which is the best.  I’d probably go with the Jack Zipes edition.  I didn’t read these as a kid and I doubt many parents these days would read them to their children.  Some of them are fairly dark, but that is part of what makes them amusing.  The Grimm brothers supposedly had even cleaned these stories up a bit when they realized that their target audience might actually be children.  I would love to see the original versions, but I don’t know if there is such a collection.  Anyways, the Grimm’s versions are enjoyable.  I personally find something immensely appealing in the simplicity of a fairy tale.  Many fairy tales (especially in their earliest unpolished form) have a dream-like quality about them.  The only modern fiction that comes close are prose poems or flash fiction.

I’ve already mentioned some movies above.  Here are some other movies that just amuse me or in some cases help free my imagination and inspire a sense of wonder (I’ll only list my top favorites, but you can find all of my favorites on my About page):

Monty Python – Pretty much anything by them is amusing.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show – I enjoy this movie in the same way I enjoy Monty Python.  Inane weirdness and silly songs and dance.

Army of Darkness – This is one of the best cult classic horror camp movies ever made.  I’m a fan of Bruce Campbell’s brand of humor.  If you’ve already seen this movie and enjoyed it, then I’d recommend Cemetery Man.

Waking Life – Strange ideas presented in a strange style.  This was Richard Linklater’s first use of rotoscoping which he later used in A Scanner Darkly (which I also highly recommend).

The Nines – It’s hard for me to judge this movie for it is strange to the extreme and yet certainly not weird simply for the sake of weird.  It’s an amazing movie, but it probably requires watching it more than once.

Donnie Darko – Another movie that really makes you ponder reality.  There is some very startling imagery in this movie that sticks in my mind.

Dancer in the Dark – I realize this is a movie people either love or hate.  I admit it’s a bit difficult to get into at first, and of course not everyone appreciates Bjork’s singing.  However, there is no movie like it.  After a while, I was completely pulled into the world of the protagonist and I thought it a very fascinating world.  It shows how imagination helps someone survive even the bleakest of situations.  So, if you like despairingly depressing movies where the characters break out into song and dance, then this is for you.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – This also was a movie I had a hard time getting into the first time I watched it, but it’s grown on me.  This movie literally takes you into the mind of the protagonist.  It’s both funny and sad, something like life itself but with more entertainment value.

The Truman Show – This is one of the best Philip K. Dick movies ever made that wasn’t specifically based on a Philip K. Dick story.  All I can say is I hope I’m not trapped in a reality tv show.  That would be truly sad, especially for those watching.

Dark City – This is an even darker and more fantastically weird version of The Truman Show.  Being trapped in a reality tv show might not be such a bad fate afterall.  It’s an awesome movie and the visuals are just amazing.  By the way, it’s somewhat similar to the Matrix Trilogy, but Dark City was made first.

What Dreams May Come – This is a more positive view of the imagination, but it has plenty of dark to it as well.  Even if you discredit it for the romantic optimism, I hope you can appreciate some of the stunning visual scenes.  This is the only movie I’ve ever watched that made the afterlife seem compellingly real.  For certain, the Hell that is presented feels much more convincing than the Christian version.

The Fountain – This is one of my all-time favorites, but I can understand why others might not like it.  Similar to What Dreams May Come, it plays with ideals of romantic love but it stays away from sentimental superficialities.  It’s a very convoluted movie which some have complained about.  However, if you’re like me and have some ability to understand complexity, then it shouldn’t bother you.  There is some very intelligent use of visual language that helps hold the narratives together.

Altered States – This was a very original take on the scientist that goes too far, but in this case he nearly falls off the edge of reality.  Psychedelics and monkey-men, sex and religious imagery… what isn’t there to like?

Return to Oz – If you liked the original The Wizard of Oz movie (or maybe even if you didn’t), then you should see this.  It’s Oz transformed.  I’ll just say that, upon her return, Dorothy isn’t greeted by singing Munchkins.

If you don’t have the time to read a book or watch a movie and need some quick amusement or mind-expanding edification, then here are some websites for you.

The Church of the SubGenius

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

The Landover Baptist Church

The Onion

Uncyclopedia

Principia Discordia

fUSION Anomaly

The Deoxyribonucleic Hyperdimension

deviantART

TV Tropes

Thomas Ligotti Online